What a week!

Skydiving last Saturday (WOW) ,my birthday party on Thursday and another 30th celebration this evening. The sun is shining, the dog is behaving – I have a new dress (and a new perfume) to show off – life feels good. I have turned 29 which feels a lot more momentous than it should. I am over 2 and half years into recovery and feeling wonderful for it. I have been off the cigarettes for 7 months – a miracle if there ever was one. And somehow I can’t allow myself a bit of frivolity. I can’t accept that good things are happening – I feel a fraud or a fake and guilty for accepting gifts, as if I’m faking my own natal day. As if I don’s deserve it.

Baffling and insidious indeed.

Thankfully I have learned to keep things in the day. That includes this wonderful sense of freedom that a bit of sunshine brings to London. Everyone’s mood lightens, everyone finds excuses to wear as little as possible and clamber down to the park to soak up the rays and talk about the weather. The Brits love talking about the weather. It’s like an unruly sibling always in trouble but loved greatly when behaving correctly.

So enough withe blog, I’m taking the dog outside to harass the tourists

With bells on

Weddings. Lots of them. Weddings and babies and mortgages and christenings and baby birthdays. And divorces. Already? I want to ask? Are we really here already? It’s that in between place, and not as glamorous as a rite of passage or as meaningful as coming of age (we’re supposed to have done that already) its watching friends make life long commitments, sign pre nuptials (or not and then regret it later) – its marvelling at new pregnancies and then the almost surreal in their perfection, new babies. It was only yesterday surely? That you were sobbing over the loo, having drunk too much. Maudlin and exhausted and fed up with being the last one to know.

And now that I think about it that was ten years ago. So much has changed. But the passing of time didn’t mark you much. I feel ravaged and tired, although I know in fact the changes I have made have taken years from behind my eyes. Too much has changed. Often I wish I didn’t know a few truths, so I could be young and naive and that would make me shine. I lack lustre.

Fear, my oldest of friends, whispers. Softly and quietly. All my rushing around stops me from actually looking at where I am, perhaps its avoidance ( I know it is) I feel I have far too much to do, that its insurmountable – that I should have done this years ago. Rather than being holed up in soho, self involved and paranoid. If I stop what will I see? Will I be dissatisfied? Most likely. And through no fault of my own. I battle this, my fear. My dearest of enemies. Antagonist and ally.

Buses

I have been spending far too much time on buses recently – all over London. Part of me really enjoys the time to listen to recently bought albums on my ipod, catch up on my reading – send those texts I have been meaning to reply to, update statuses, facebook stalking, tweeting, and even blogging if I can remember my username. Too many tiny snippets of information and blackberry email deleting to really just sit on the bus.

It’s like a take my seat and instantly hit cyberspace and don’t look up till my stop arrives. All consuming half comments and almost opinions. I am not really witty enough for twitter and my facebook is too vanilla to be truly reflective. But I am compelled to check the feeds, load the photos reply to the comments.

Not tonight though – clearly none of the regulars were doing anything vaguely interesting online – they have lives and were actually out DOING stuff and I was too nervous to sit still. So I watch the familiar London streets loll past me – too many people on Oxford street. Everyone smoking sheesha pipes on Edgeware road. The trustafarian kids all out in Westbourne Grove, collared up coked up and ready to pratter along – vague and vacuous. The girl behind me on the bus shouting down her mobile phone ‘ you’re a dickhead yeah? I real one at that man, and now I’m wasting all my credit, shit man’. An older couple steaming up the window – why their age made me feel uncomfortable – I wouldn’t have looked twice if they were teens. I wonder at my own ignorance.

Its cold and its spring and there are movies I want to see.

Simple and probably a bit simplistic. London has too many people. Criss crossing over each other’s space. We live our fingerprints on everything. Smudged and slick

Teenage Kicks

I can’t get enough of teen soaps. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact I think I am still 17, or thereabouts, or that I am a sucker for over dramatised plots, and easily distracted by the ridiculously expensive clothing that I certainly could never afford when I was that age. Come to think of it, I can’t afford them now. There’s something all consuming about the cult of high school, the lure of first love and utter devastation of losing it.

Perhaps its just that, the newness of it all. The feeling that these friendships will last forever, your parents will stay together, your sister will always be the swat and the future will feel bright, open, fresh and perversely full of potential. The number of options was embarrassing, we could be anything. Like opening the door to the seaside on the first day of a holiday – sea air openness.

My life is not claustrophobic, or stuck in routine. But I miss that openness. That sense of endless possibility.

Perhaps that’s why I’m throwing myself out of a plane on Saturday.

Teenage kicks

Not Delia dahling

My other half is trying to teach me how to cook – again. He does this without actually setting up a lesson per se but by luring me into the kitchen, to ‘have a taste’ or ‘just watch something quick’. He’s obsessed, we spend our evenings watching Jamie make a total ass of himself in various places all over the world where he manages to cock up the local cuisine and offend someone’s mother. I beg borrow and steal copies of Nigella and Ottolengi from friends to put a smile on his face and I’ve even acquiesce to a few couple’s cookery lessons.

Delia, I tried! Even with How to Cheat! But alas failed - where's M &S?

The truth of it is that he loves to cook and happens to be very good at it – so I just don’t bother anymore. The kitchen has become his territory alone and I am terrified I may smash a new pot or warp a new expensive cleaver (is that even possible?) . Although I have no issues around cooking myself – my very existence suggests I could feed myself before he walked into my life with armed with Delia and some pomegranate seeds.

In fact I even enjoy it. I happen to be very bad at it. I have been known to burn microwave popcorn, to serve watery stir fry and partially inedible chicken casserole. I’m not a fussy eater. But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate good food – I lust after it – and having a live in Gordon wannabee suits me just fine. I just wish he’d understand that I have no desire to compete with him in this arena. The oven gloves are all his. I do not covet the brand new River Cottage cook book. I do probably need this:

Yes really, sometimes I forget to turn the kettle on

But if I am going to take control of my ever-expanding waistline (down partly due to his carrot and walnut cake – I have sold my soul for this and now washing up duties are mine and mine alone – until the very end of time), I am going to have to get to grips with what goes into my food and look at how to get the most taste without the most fat. I’m lucky in that I hold the weight well (or so I am told, I am trying to be more objective – I hate it really) with an hourglass figure. But its the long-term health problems that worry me – especially with my mom now testing a high cholesterol rate. Having quit smoking, it time to look at the rest. And let’s be honest, how good would it feel to be back in a size 10? Fingers crossed before I am 30.

Old heroes, soundtracks circa 1986

Thunder Cats, Jungle Book, She Ra, lasers, starwars, vulcans, LA Law, Dallas, knots landing, lady lovely locks, Mario, King’s Quest 1, 2, 3 and 4, frogger, digger and Castle. Before ipods and mobile phones and text sex and paranoia and too many djs. I remember things being highlighted in neon colours and square sunglasses. Perhaps being in that golden age of 8+ helps – everything is new and clean and ready to be discovered. It’s all coming back now, I hear Brad Pitt is lined up to play one of the Thundercats. Legwarmers were my staple winter accessory through 09/10 and I have rediscovered a passion for Fleetwood Mac. This is by no means a new observation – the oldness in everything that is new. The palimpsest of culture.

Wierd then that I walk through my neighbourhood this week and suddenly I notice the seasons visibility shifting and although I know I’m bound to repeat the same mistakes, and that a last chance is very rarely just that – something began to thaw. Maybe I’m moving on into new territory after all – that more indeed will be revealed. Just by stepping out the front door

Motivational?

I know that if I just go I will love it and feel better as well as smug which is always great. Why is it always such a battle? I am so tired of fighting with myself it just effing boring at this point. Why I need to be so difficult and confrontational even when I am trying to be good to myself. This self destructive bullshit really is just dull most of the time – dull and childish – but I indulge it especially when I’m feeling a bit fragile and only managing one meeting a week isn’t helping -I may hit the trafalgar square one later but again I’m can alreday see myself making excuses not to go. To just stY the same and never change – to get worse and be unhappy. What a rubbish inner voice I have! Where do you find new ones? Yoga??