Thursday, April 29, 2010

Mean Girl in the Ring tra-la-la-la-la

It was too good to last – this recent spate of good luck and fluffiness. I’m clinically incapable of accepting my good fortune without question. No, I couldn’t just go with the flow; I had to induce a state of paranoia that drove Sausage Fingers to brand me a ‘mentalist’. And he could be right. Secretly I know I have a depressive personality though I do draw the line at labelling myself a ‘manic’ even though my falls from grace are vertical and usually with little warning.

So I had a little PMT-induced panic over the stalled state of my yoga career. Who doesn’t occasionally have moments of boredom and despair? and I found every external element in my life to blame this on. I laid into The Lish – my darling child who really had been so good about all this upheaval but who has become quite the mummy’s girl of late – for basically always being there. She’s 4! What am I like? Well, that is where the mental bit comes in I suppose.

With so much real tragedy in the world I have to focus on stupid little things like not feeling (of late) like I’ve had enough ‘me’ time. I’m a selfish clot is what I am. Anyway, I’m over it now and I only hope him indoors and the nipper can forgive the Mr. Hyde in me.


And tonight the old man pushed me out the door to ‘go do YOU things (for fuck’s sake) – and don’t come back until you feel like you’ve spent time with yourself.’ This I did, gently clicking the door closed behind me to the shrill peeling of The Lish screaming: MUMMY!!! – you know like I was being taken away by the police and I feel much better for it.

It was a balmy night (not in the mad but humid sense) as I walked to the nearest Hotspot for another stolen online rendez-vous with ‘t’internet’. I walked past the local pub showing the first signs of the start of what I truly hope is a proper summer. Rugby-types and office girls spilling onto the pavement into the warm embrace of an unusually clement April night. I thought about how much I love temperate weather and then I saw a rat. Ahem.

And that’s not the only thing warm weather brings out. Apparently the British libido loves it too. I watched (glanced at really because it was gross) a tall streak of piss snogging the face off a fat bird outside a rather less fancy pub and found myself eventually thinking (when the nausea subsided): good for them – there’s hope for me yet.

On the way back the rugby types that were but an hour ago sipping Vouvray with more finesse than a gay man choosing a shirt were much worse for wear and I noticed that city boys are a very different class of drunk than your usual yob (which are of course in a class of their own). The city boy goes all quiet and boggle eyed, like he’s trying to hide it but he gives it away by the way he smokes – using his peace fingers and thumb to form a claw around the butt whilst shielding the burning end in the palm of his hand and taking the kind of toke you only see the chronically baked take. I’ve got your number mate. You can tell he’s also thinking, I’m so smooth, I’m definitely going to get laid tonight. Meanwhile it’s obvious the girl is thinking: You look ridiculous and you’re an idiot. I love it.

Not 200 metres from home, I walk past a dodgy looking bloke (I’m on the home straight now - how ironic that I should be assaulted at this time) and since I've willed the end of my good fortune, I'm convinved he's going to slash my face.  Afterall he looks like something out of A Clockwork Orange, bowler hat, drain pipe jeans and menacing glare and I thought...jesus’ bollocks – this doesn’t taste right? But it was fine – he was just another pissed up Londoner on his way home and I'm just another paranoid schizoid.  Serves me right.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Confessions of a British Asparagus Eater

I´ve never had it so good.  The Spanish bank that tried to take the piss earlier on this year got on its corporate knees and shelled out (this is unheard of in Spain) within 15 minutes of arriving at the branch in question.  It´s amazing what you can achieve when you approach a problem with the of icy resolve of Dr. Lector.  I´ve also apparently missed the volcanic ash cloud that turned many an Easter break into what for many will have felt like a stint in a Thai prison, so it looks like (though things could still go the way of the Afghanistan war) I´ll be on my scheduled flight home.

On the flip side (because of course for every high there must be a wrist-slashing opposite) I´ve been unable to endure for more than an hour at a time, my irrepressibly morose aunts who have reached the age where conversations (if you can call talking over eachother that) range from the visceral descriptions of their disgusting physical ailments (with roleplay) to food (resentfully scoffed through eternal protestation and yet in copious amounts) to the inevitable plunge into the infintite waters of death.  It´s like living with the bi-polar version of The Golden Girls. Plus of course they´re none too bright either though they have the absolute and irrefutable answer to everything, usually moronic and without foundation.  I have a suggestion:  it involves orifices and brute strength.

Anyway to alleviate somewhat the heavy cloak of sloth and stupidity, I ventured out to see a country/R&B act by the name of Scott R. Birham.  Please take note - that you may ensure you never, not even mistakenly wonder into this man´s path.  Imagine, if you will The Scene from Deliverance.  Yes, that one, add the sickly smell of old man (make him a smoker and drinker) and you´ve just saved yourself 12 Euros.  Mind you , it did beat staying home with The Mole Sisters.  Within 10 seconds of being on stage, Scott admits to having a horrendous drink problem and being a sex addict before lasiviously eyeing the crowd for willing groupies.

Not to disappoint you Scott, or bring down about your ears the musical empire you´ve spent days putting together but with revelations like that, the numbers aren´t looking good.  And, word to the wise  - in a country that so recently liberated its women from domestic enslavement (women I might add who make Glenn Close´s character in Fatal Attraction seem positively balanced) don´t refer to then as ´pussy´unless you like being run over by juggernaughts.  Just saying.

Outside of that I uncovered a copy of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas DeQuincey and I shall be taking very detailed notes.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Mental Armageddon

I can never sleep the night before a flight, especially if I have to be up early - with just one exception - the night before flying home for good from Canada ( OK - get over it already) and last night I was back to the typical night before ´something´tossing, sweaty self.

Different reasons each time since each trip carries different import. For e.g. the night before flying out to St. Kitts on a family break from the ridiculousness of the Canadian winter, in other words - the flight out of despair, I worried myself silly all night over a) missing the flight (always the most innane one and yet...) b) fearing the record amount of snow (it was the coldest, snowiest Canadian winter for 60 years - and my first...of course it would be...) and c) the house burning down with all our travel documents in it.  In the end it was the car that played up.  Dead battery.  But after shaving 5 years off life expenctancy we did eventuallly make the flight and a wonderful holiday ensued.

Today I´m off to Madrid to sort out a banking issue and see the family as a sort of aside (meet the Condes first before you judge the order of priorities...I dare you).  I am anxious to get the money side sorted and to be fair it´s my money so it will be sorted whatever the bank would like me do with it, but that still doesn´t stop me from becoming, as Sausage Boy calls me "Scenario Queen".  He´s right of course.  Since the whole Yoga and meditation thing took off, I´ve been pretty good but the old broken foot having reduced both activities to at best sporadic frequency, well it just goes to show that if you don´t use it you not only lose it, you stomp gorilla like into the jungle of relapse - the thick and tangled part that eventually kills you after years of sobriety. 

When I wasn´t fretting over scenarios A, B or C, I was watching odd memories on a mental ticker.  At one point laughing out loud and quickly having to cover up the madness with some self effacing comment or other (in the pitch black while Jim Jam King sighed and hurrumphed) but really I was remembering the lengths one friend will go to to get laid.  I´ll leave it at that.  This was followed by a recollection of a woman being, how shall I put this, lingually pleasured on a bar stoll in a pub in Islington one New Year´s Eve.  Pure class.  Thankfully this is a 2nd hand story - I wasn´t there.  No theses are places for the truly depraved of which somehow I count many of my closest friends. 

My night of cold turkey was not in vain however because on arriving at Victoria train station, glancing at the screen with flight information, I noticed an inordinate amount of flights had been cancelled out of Gatwick.  Ah well, it´s nice I wasn´t tossing and turning for nothing then.  But in for a penny as they say, I rumbled onto the airport towards certain nightmarish hell of queues and disappointment, of this I was sure when -imagine my surprise - one of the only flights leaving London that day was mine.  Well, this unnerved me no end and I became convinced, as I literally floated through check-in and customs, practically carried through on the shoulders of the customs monkeys with what I was now determined was the pitiless step of a Greek tragedy, that I was to become a ´ made for TV´ disaster story of the girl who having overcome her demons got on a flight that proved the rule: never fly over an erupting volcano.

For that is indeed what had grounded all the other flights: volcanic activity in Iceland! You bastard!. Not content with plundering the savings of half of Europe, you go into cultural and land liquidation - and now this!!  You wanker!!  Easyjet may never recover.  I did make it to Madrid but I may be stuck with the Condes forever - I´d rather spend an eternity wiping Bezebul´s arsehole over having to live with those snaggle toothed old crones - kind and generous as they are.  I live for the nightly news now - I mean at some point the volcano will snuff out right?

Still, the bank paid out.  It´s all too much.  I´m off to the clammy embrace of another sleepless night.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

I can resist anything but temptation...and swearing.

So, we meet again. Another day, another internet cafe.  Moving continents is tiresome work.  Still waiting for furniture that the shippers 'forgot' to put on the boat - it's been 6 weeks.  It's fucking disgraceful - yes I said 'fucking' - it is the only word that will do and those shippers are ground to air fucking cretins of the highest order with brains the size of an M&M only M&Ms have more substance. 

Then of course Sky- internet, TV and phone providers - 4 weeks on and they had no record of our order - funny then that they were able to send us a bill for services they claim not have been asked for.  Another shower of fucksticks.  To say nothing of the bank in Spain - they are royal C*NTS. 

That's better.

Well, since it takes less time to freeze sorbets in Rajastan than it is taking for my foot to heal - I've decided to take temptation out of the way (i.e. boredom induced, ill advised yoga) and go to Spain.  Since it's pretty much impossible to get a word in edgeways with my aunts and cousins in a room, let alone lay a yoga mat out - I figure this is the best chance I have of my foot ever getting better.  It will receive the treatment of inactivity it needs.  I shall of course be taking the Lish in the hope that some of the beauty of the Spanish language remain with her after we return plus of course - I have no choice.  The Sausage man is off to the States on business.  Vaya Con Dios. I mean that.  I hate being separated like this from him but I am guessing this state of dependency stems from all the recent upheaval.  It is not a healthy way to be. 

I'm working on it.

In the interim, I'm getting creative with spare time and limbering up to knock a few heads together at said Spanish bank.  Wish me luck.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

When in doubt - talk music

Today my little 'un turned 4.  She was a very good girl despite the fact that halfway through starters today (we met Daddy cool for lunch) I was struck down with the most horrific stomach cramps - no - not what you think, not even close.  I have no idea why.  Maybe I'm dying.  Bag of frozen peas.  That's what my old GP used to prescribe for EVERYTHING.

Right - as it's the Nipper's day I can't very well spend it amusing myself online so here's something I wrote earlier.

The Beastie Boys explained in a long ago interview that in the early days of rap, the conventional wisdom was that only black people were supposed to like hip-hop and only white people were supposed to like rock. But it wasn't like that at all.


As the first white rap group of any importance, the Beastie Boys received the scorn of critics and strident hip-hop musicians, who accused them of cultural pirating, especially since they began as a hardcore punk group in 1981. But the Beasties weren't pirating —because they weren't trying to be black rappers. They rapped about shit they knew : skateboarding, going to White Castle (the oldest American hamburger chain of restaurants that serve square burgers called ‘sliders’), angel dust and mushrooms. Real recognises real. The Hip Hop crowds loved them.

In addition to this they knew everything about hip-hop -- the Cold Crush Brothers, the Treacherous 3 and Afrika Bambaataa, all the old-school shit.

They merely treated rap as part of a post-punk musical underground recognising that the do-it-yourself aesthetics and anti-establishment attitude of hip-hop and punk weren't that far apart.

The Beastie Boys were considered macho clowns for much of the mid-'80s. Their debut album, Licensed to Ill, an amalgam of street beats, metal riffs, b-boy jokes and satire was misinterpreted and largely dismissed as a mindless, obnoxious party record by the critics. That it went on to become the fastest-selling debut in Columbia Records's history goes to show how visionary underground movements can be and how mindless and obnoxious the critics can be.

Outside of this unexpected early success they continued to be ignored by the press at the time which was no doubt too busy exchanging make-up tips with the New Romantics.

While much of the Beasties' outrageous bigotry started out as a joke, it became a self-parody by the end of 1987 - a year plagued with arrests and lawsuits. Many would have called it a day and laughed all the way to the bank instead the group decided to revamp their sound and image over the next two years.

Unable to pigeon-hole it and with only a cult following, the press was on hand to trash their second album Paul’s Boutique.

None of this stopped them from coming out with a third; Check Your Head in which they play their own instruments. Whether this was something the press related to (if you are in a band you play something or you sing) it turned the tide for them and the album brought the Beasties back to the top of the charts. This time it didn’t appear to be a fluke. They were ‘suddenly’ considered one of the most influential and ambitious groups of the '90s.

It was however not until the fourth album Ill Communication with the singles ‘Sabotage’ and ‘Sure Shot’ that they went double-platinum. Paul’s Boutique is now of course considered one of the best albums of the 80s with its densely layered interweaving samples and pop culture references to retro-funk-psychedelia; critics falling over themselves unable to praise it enough now that they had a label for it. Obviously.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Not So Merry-Go-Round

Not even in Kensington Gardens, ‘the’ Kensington Gardens, can fairground attractions be anything but chavvy. I’ve never met a polite or good looking Carousel attendant and today was no exception when I accidentally walked into the tail end of an Easter Fair. Even when you think you’ve found a diamond in the rough because occasionally you will see a rugged bad boy selling rides, they go and give you a toothless grin or let slip a truly sexist remark. Ah, irritating then that there was absolutely no way I was stopping The Lish from going on a ride. I tried to explain that perhaps the Carousel wasn’t really age appropriate, that perhaps she was a little too young; bit too short for the big horseys but this little girl is...let’s just say, I pity her future boyfriends.


However I was right. She was way too small for the horseys and I also found out that a Carousel wheel can spin. In fact half way through the ride (which of course I had to accompany her on) I was desperately trying not to show fear or throw up. But I tell ya, I was scared and nauseous. Watching the nipper’s face change from a look of elation to sheer horror was like watching a time lapse film of a flower bloom – in reverse.

All I could do was laugh. I guess that’s the end of the affair between funfairs and my kid – so it worked out well in the end. I wasn’t so lucky with ice cream vans.

“When the music plays it means they’ve run out of ice cream.” Yeah, that didn’t wash after she saw with her own eyes that well, it wasn’t true. The look of betrayal burned. You win some, you lose some.

Anyway, she’s 4 tomorrow. I know. Time flies. Does it? Does it really? Because call me a bad person, but no it freaking doesn’t. I’m thinking of taking her to the London Zoo by canal boat. I think she’ll like that but I’ll steer clear of any funny looking horses.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

How to look good dressed...never mind naked.

Limped through Easter and managed not to eat The Lish's chocolates - this is a huge achievement for me, they are thin on the ground these days (achievements).  I'm preparing you see for the big comeback.  I have roped in someone's hubby to take some stylish pictures of me in various yoga poses (this is a job for a good eye and a steady hand - so Sausage Fingers is out).  I was hoping to keep it all in the family.  Posing for pictures in a park is bad enough but then to have a stranger take those pictures...And then of course, well there's the spare tire.  It's what happens when you replace exercising with stuffing your face like you've still got the metabolism of a 25 year old.  Let's hope CCTV is broken too.  

I've also roped in another friend, a graphic designer to crank up the generator on his air brush cos he'll have his work cut out .  I cannot be the 10 tonne tessie yoga instructor, I don't care how Zen the practice is...and it is, don't get me wrong - in a few weeks I won't care but right now, the last thing I need is criticism from 'Ladies who Lunch' - my target client base.  They are not all in it for the Zen bit.

Yep, it's time to put my PR knowledge into 5th gear.  I'm branching out on my own.  Self promotion begins in earnest if I'm to stand any chance at all of making a go of this Yoga malarkey.

Right, I'm off to get some Spanks.  I promise to post the pictures, whatever they look like.  I like a laugh just as much as the next person.