New love grows on trees

My tux is crumpled on the seat of the pendulino night train. It’s about 12.30am and I’m leaning against a cold window, which is the only barrier between me and the vast, soft darkness of commutor belt racing by into the night. I’m playing ‘New love grows on trees’ as the couple in front of me nestle into one another and I’m aware I’m having a life defining moment.

I’m always aware of these involuntary snap shots of my life. Sometimes it’s moments you want to remember, and spend years consciously recollecting every sense as each time it gets harder and takes longer. A dog barking, the wind in the grass, the chest-bursting happiness you felt. Suddenly, it’s all there again, just as if you were right there. But this isn’t one of the good ones. I know it isn’t, but I can’t stop it. Like de ja vu. And it annoys me.

I’d been to Soho to meet a man so famous in his field that I don’t dare name him. We’d been talking for just over a week when he suggested meeting up. He called me honey when I challenged him, and I loved that. It was just condescending enough to be sexy in the way only an older man can get away with. So I agreed. He put my name on the door of Soho House, I spent a pre-date evening at a friend’s picking the perfect outfit. It was all perfect. Until I Googled him.

Page after page after page of intimate interviews, describing him as a softly spoken, staggeringly tall, eternal twenty something who padded around his office sighing quietly. I was a little bit infatuated already. Then there were the news items about his career which felt little need to even explain who he was, such was his stature.

By late afternoon of the day of ‘the big hoedown’ (his words) I was petrified. It could only ever have ended in disaster. One of my worst traits is presumption and, in my mind, this encounter was already utterly doomed.

I even tried to cancel, but he called to talk me around. So keen was he to put me at ease that he agreed to meet in a dirty old pub, rather than a swanky private members club. I finally felt comfortable. But it lasted just until the moment I walked through the bar and saw him slouched in his chair, sipping bitter and reading the Rough Guide to Rome. His expensive suit was juxtaposed against scruffy hair, salt and pepper stubble and glasses. He was gorgeous. He kissed me on the cheek and slid off to buy me a pint. While I was sat composing myself he even came back to check how I was feeling. Oh gosh.

Then it began. I don’t know why he did this, or why I turned into a mono-syllabic idiot, but he started interviewing me. I felt like I was being interrogated for a position I already knew was out of my league. Every conversation opener – which he started each time by leaning across the table, really close, with his shoulder almost touching mine – ended after just a few short sentences. My mind went blank on every subject. Completely blank. Too soon, I said, ‘This really isn’t working, is it?’. He hesitated and looked at me intently, like he was searching for something. ‘No, not really,’ he replied, and punctuated it by sliding back into his chair and turning away from me. Well, what else could he have said?

In the awkward silence that ensued he suddenly blurted, ‘Cheer up love!’ Shock! Where did that come from? Then I realised I’d just blown him out, 15 minutes in. But we still had our drinks and knowing I was no longer under scrutiny, I exhaled and began talking more fluidly. When the drinks got low, which is usually the cue to leave in such dire circumstances, he quite bizarrely refused my offer to escape. He said I was interesting and passionate and he wanted to talk some more. So we stayed. Maybe we shouldn’t have.

We spent the rest of the night drinking outside, when I smoked wistfully and we watched the crazy people of Soho going about their comparatively crazy London lives. We talked about our lives, and the stars outside my bedroom window. He had a charming ability to make you talk so candidly that I went from being a closed book to telling him things I really wish I hadn’t the moment they came out of mouth. But he laughed and encouraged and even cooed in just the right places. This should have put me more at ease. Instead I felt tiny.

‘This is my fault,’ I said. ‘I’ve completely messed this up. I put you on a pedestal.’

‘Why on earth did you do that?!’ he replied. He actually looked quite offended.

It was late when we agreed to head home. Finally, I could run away! But no, he was heading for the same tube. So we took an uncomfortably long walk through Soho Square. On the vast pavements I was taking three steps to every one of his while he and the street lamps towered beside me. I just wanted it to end.

Even at the tube, it wasn’t over; we had to use the same escalator. He got on first so his face became level with mine. For me, despite seeing in his eyes all the things he’d seen and I hadn’t, that was the only moment we became even vaguely equal. It was good moment. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the separate entrances for the Central Line and the Northern Line. ‘The end’s in sight.’ I sighed really too loud. ‘Oh, it’s not been that bad, has it?’ he asked. ‘Oh I’m so sorry, did you just hear me sigh?’ ‘Yes.’

At the end that was in sight, I reached up on tip toe to kiss his stubble and raced to the tube. I think I actually shuddered with relief.

My tux is crumpled on the seat of the pendulino night train. It’s about 12.30am and I’m leaning against a cold window, which is the only barrier between me and the vast, soft darkness of commutor belt racing by into the night. I’m playing ‘New love grows on trees’ as the couple in front of me nestle into one another and I’m aware I’m having a life defining moment. Like de ja vu.

If you’re still alive
When you’re twenty five
Shall I kill you like you asked me to?
If you’re still alive
When you’re twenty five
Shall I kill you I know you told me to
But I really don’t want to

I remember every single thing you said to me
You played the man and I was Calvary
And you said
New love grows on trees
New love grows on trees

Conversations in chilli

I’ve got a massive vat of very delicious chilli con carne bubbling away on my range and it’s got me thinking: is chilli a metaphor for life and, more specifically, personal relationships?

Kidney beans, in isolation, are bland. They leave you unsatisfied and hankering for more. But when tucking into a generous serving of chilli con carne, the humble kidney bean is a welcome treat to be savoured. You find yourself wading through the opaque, meaty sauce for your next fix of its tight, burgandy wholesomeness.

If you spring clean your life, as is so often the norm at this time of year, and find yourself left with a bean – just one, solitary bean promising nothing more than a quick, vegetarian fix of high density protein – it’s perfectly understandable to miss the meaty slop that made it such a rare and wonderful thing.

Life and chilli. Chilli and life. It’s hard to see between.

It started as a mistake

A couple of weeks ago, and on a whiskey high, I very, very foolishly agreed to my friend signing me up to a dating website. This was a mistake for so many reasons, not least because I’m actually (gasp) quite happy being single. But unfortunately, I’d fallen arse over tit for someone unsuitable and while dancing about to the Ting Tings with a whiskey in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and trying not to slip on my friend’s immaculately polished floorboards, it seemed like a good distraction.

After letting down a string of bald, fat, short, lunatics (yes, it’s cruel but let’s not pull any punches) I went on a blind date last night with the best option: a hot, ‘normal’, interior designer and Oxbridge graduate, Russ. I wish I had been blind. He wasn’t ugly. Far from it. But when I walked into The Duke in Oxford last night and a tiny little man darted round from my right hand side, asking if I was Gem, I did think he was a small waiter who was going to chauffer me to my gorgeous Russ. Nope, he was Russ.

Because there was some vague resemblance to the photo, albeit a foot lower than I’d hoped (and no, I’m not being rude, I’m talking about his face), I stayed for a few very soft, very sober drinks. And talked. And talked. And talked. And then made a mental note of how much talking is involved in first dates.

Now, making wild deductions from frankly scanty evidence is something I do like a pro. But really, there should be some trade descriptions involved in online dating. After telling me I look better than my photo - a compliment which was met with  stony silence while I wondered whether to tell him about irony - he let me down about absolutely everything he’d built himself up to be. I’ve gotta say, his honesty was admirable, at least.

So he isn’t an Oxford graduate, he’s lived Oxford. He isn’t an interior designer, he’s a recruitment consultant whose interior design skills stop at a bit of DIY. And (ok we hadn’t discussed this) far from being into music - don’t even message me if you’re not – the last gig he went to was Genisis. Those that know me will know the face I concealed when he said that.

Had he been vaguely ok beyond these disappointments, I’d have considered staying longer than a few drinks. But no, he then started asking me what I’d be if I won the lottery (exactly what I am, thanks) and whether I’d want to be a pop star (I’m 30, no). It’s very hard to explain to someone who, by their own admission, has been brainwashed by a stint at Disney, that I really am perfectly happy just the way I am. And he seemed overly obsessed with his family, telling me he’d put photos of them all around his bedroom.

‘That’s a bit odd,’ I said.

‘Why? What have you got in yours?’ he asked.

‘Agent Provocatuer underwear posters,’ I replied. ‘In frames. I’d keep the family snaps for the lounge.’

Sigh. I know I’m a bit kinky, but God… where do you start?!

I can’t even be bothered to explain why I was finally so put off by the reason he doesn’t like horse riding. But suffice to say it had to do with embroidered shorts and chafing. It’s the embroidery that worries me more than the chafing. But let’s not go into details…

Anyway, given all his references to meeting again I was a bit surprised when he give me a kiss on each cheek and told me my hair looked great before bundling me off towards my car. That was a goodbye? What? But I guess that’s my dating inexperience. Or he was nervous for reasons I’d rather not think about.

So I drove home feeling utterly disappointed and thinking about the one person I’d set out to forget. Thinking it’s so rare to meet someone who really ‘gets’ you and nights like this only serve to remind me how unlikely that is to happen again. Not really the result I’d been hoping for in this whole so-called distracting adventure.

After a polite exchange of texts when we both arrived home, I sat up most of the night intermittently eating very expensive handmade chocolates I’d been given for my birthday and drinking wine (what a waste on your own in a bed that’s handcuffable – as Russ pointed out), blinking into the darkness and wondering why I’m great and everyone else is a freak. Then I woke up to an email from the guy, inviting himself to my ‘palace’. I quote: ‘It’s an invitation I can’t refuse.’ Er, you can if I didn’t ever invite you!

I’m just not that lonely.

Patience − a virtue of the smug or the bane of our lives?

This was the week I rediscovered that people who find it hard to express emotion, for arguably very legitimate reasons, like to find someone to kick. It’s logical, I suppose. It’s like kinetic energy; it doesn’t just stop, it keeps transferring. And when people get upset and they can’t process it in the natural way, that emotion is going to come out ugly.

What they don’t realise is that it affects other people, and so the journey continues until a whole string of people become pissed off, and pass it on. How does this cycle break? By someone bursting into tears and / or saying ‘Sorry, it didn’t mean to [whatever], I’m just really stressed out about [whatever]‘. Ie being vulnerable.

Sounds scary? True, but actually it makes you stronger. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you’re vulnerable then it’s human nature for others to support you. If you’re angry and spitting, they’ll eventually give up and walk away, at least until you’ve calmed down.

It might sounds easy to just crumple, but some people find that the hardest thing. I should know, I used to be one of them. And in the midst of all my repressed emotion I’d really, really believe that I was in the right and this was a battle worth fighting. It rarely was and, of course, all I really wanted was for people to listen and be supportive – the stuff everyone wants when they’re upset. But by being all tough, I couldn’t have made those around me feel less like wrapping me up in a comfort blanket and dowsing me with hot chocolate.

Now, having been on the receiving end this week, I could very well feel like one of those people who just thinks ‘Fuck this!’. But another thing that’s taken me a while to buy into is that when getting a kicking from someone else’s boot, it’s sometimes (just sometimes) not your fault. In fact, it’s possibly not a fight between you and them at all. It could be about something else entirely, something that’s nothing to do with you!

OK, so if you’ve spat in someone’s face, lit up in your parents’ living room (and they hate smoking), or called someone a slapper, fair enough. Chances are, you probably deserved a virtual kicking. But if you’re left racking your brains for what you’ve done wrong and concluding, more often than not, that you can’t think of anything specific so convince yourself you must be a-terrible-person-worthy-of-people’s-hatred-who-should-set-about transforming-their-entire-personality-not-tomorrow-but-absolutely-immediately, then it probably wasn’t your fault.

Rather than being a relief, this discovery can be seriously annoying because essentially, consciously or not, someone is making you feel bloody drained to make themselves feel better. Pretty shit, no? Then it becomes an issue of forgiveness and that’s a whole other blog post!

I do wonder if people with a heightened awareness and therefore patience for this kicking activity, who subsequently excuse some fucking shocking behaviour, are more susceptible to being on the receiving end. Who knows, but personally I’d rather that than feel as bad as the angry person does while wearing the emperor’s new clothes.

What the fuck was that?

Today has been one of those really long days where everything goes utterly wrong. Not the kind of day that’s really seriously bad. Like if someone dies, or you screw up at work, or something really awful like that. Just everything went wrong.

First, I wake up at 6am. This is never a good thing. It’s still dark, so I go back to sleep. Then I wake up later, late. Run the bath and accidentally fill it with shampoo. I try to pour myself some smoothie and end up pouring it all over the kitchen work top. I have no clean tights so I have to wear leggings and socks which pad my feet out so much I need to roll around on the floor tugging my boots on. This makes me hot and quite cross.

Get to work half an hour late and drop all my paperwork in a puddle. My director later tells me he was hooting at me during this time, while I was trying to walk, put a hat on, find my swipe card and pick my paper work out of said puddle all at once. I didn’t notice.

I arrive at work feeling like I’ve been shot in the head. The phone won’t stop ringing. I mean, it literally won’t stop ringing. And it’s all journalists. This is about the only good thing about today. I do love being a press officer.

When the phone does stop and I can start being quietly proactive, I realise that a) my iPod is out of battery power and I don’t have a charger and b) I’m more irritated than I thought I was about the fact that the OU doesn’t support Mac users and I’m going to have to sit at work til 8pm every Thursday, including today, until I get my Mac sorted out. I have no idea what ’sorted out’ means, in practical terms, and this only annoys me further. Evenings are for friends and fun, not for sitting at work smacking my head against the desk. I go around the office and moan to various people about that until they’re annoyed and I feel slightly better.

The afternoon is worse. I find myself begging (yes, begging) not to be put on hold again by a London magazine company. I actually say, ‘Please, pleeaase…’ in a really beggy way that’s unbecoming unless one is genuinely desperate. I’m not.

Then I get overly caught up in hurling childish insults at a very good friend, which crescendos into me telling them to “go and play in the traffic with some power tools”. What the hell’s the matter with me? It’s not even funny. Cue guilt while I drag myself around a very lonely M&S, choosing a very expensive ready meal to eat in a very empty office, very much alone, while I wait for my first online OU French tutorial. Like oriental prawn dumplings are ever going to cheer me up now, even if they are a surprisingly healthy option.

Tutorial time finally arrives. I can’t remember what I’m doing during the wait, it was such an awful wait that my mind’s carefully blanked it for me. I discover that my headphones work, but my mic doesn’t. So I can’t actually join in the tutorial at all, despite having waited around in the office for 2.5hrs longer than anyone in their right mind would ever want to. (And let me tell you, the office is a scary place after dark even without the hoards of cleaners that swarm around trying to wipe you, your desk, and everything on it.) I can’t really concentrate anyway (fretting that friend has crashed or something else awful and it’s all my fault cos I hexed it) and I end up ever so slightly disrupting the class by deleting off the computer screen the wine bottle we’re all talking about in French. I honestly didn’t mean to do this, but the tutor thinks it’s a joke and I’ve gained the label of class clown. Great!

Arrive home cold, tired and with a dull headache to find that my cat – clearly unable to behave on her own for a few hours extra – not only has feathers all over her face, but has left an organ on my bedroom floor. It’s neat, and about the size of a kidney bean. What can this mean? It’s all a bit Blair Witch.

And if I could be arsed to switch on my Nokia N95 right now, for some closing remarks, I’d probably cry and snot into it and say it’s all my fault and jump edgily whilst whispering ‘what the fuck was that?’. It’s been a dark day.

Avez vous d’argent?

So I had the strangest night at the pub last night. I bet you’re thinking, ‘Yea, right. You probably tried a new flavour of crisps, what is this sh*t?’. And if you are, you obviously don’t know me. It was seriously fucking weird, or I wouldn’t be blogging about it.

So first of all, someone died. Ok, not actually at the pub. But nonetheless, they died. Apparently they’d asked their wife to pull the car over because they were feeling ‘a bit ill’ and then keeled over on the hardshoulder. Kinda selfish, no? Anyway, so the dead man’s hat was circulating round the bar. No, no, it wasn’t his hat. Forgive me. It was a hat that was worn at the funeral. Old Bill’s hat. It was a nice hat. A kind of London gangster hat.

Anyway, so I’m ‘enjoying’ a rolly outside the front door, in the pissing rain, and this hat comes out of nowhere and gets placed on various people’s heads with misplaced panache. The last head it lands on is a French bloke. Honestly. A proper French man. Where he’d come from, nobody knows. Apparently he was climbing a mountain, or something, but, like, it’s a long way from any frigging mountains. And the barman, who apparently is just in it for the social life cos he’s actually ridiculously upper class, starts a whole conversation in French with the guy, explaining (I think) that he looks like Jay Kay from Jamiroquai.

It’s while I’m trying to translate this conversation en Francais and shruggung in a cosy way and saying ‘I love this place’ that I’m offered a spliff. Of all the things! On the street! Obviously I decline, but I’ve gotta tell you about the man at the end of this spliff. He’s an absolute legend. Tatty, of questionable history, and an absolute gentleman. I mean, his English and manners are almost Dickensian. I might sound utterly fond of him, but he’s a live wire, make no mistake. I once saw him thumbing a lift on the A5, the day after Glastonbury, wearing little more than a vest. And one night, he came in the bar already totally blotto and fell into the hat stand. I didn’t much fancy last orders that night. But his most redeeming feature is he’s like a character from Shakespeare. The one that always comes in offering social commentary. Tonight, he’s telling my ex (mistakenly) that ‘his lady has never faltered’. This is a mistake because in fact we split up a year ago, a fact which he’s about to discover.

So we’re back inside and my ex has gone to chat music business in the kitchen (another story, for another time) and I’m quietly minding my own business, finishing my merlot, etc. and this social commentary character perches himself on the arm of the chair and (now tipsy and ever so slightly caned) begins asking me some very personal questions, after a dozen of which he discovers that I am, in his own words, ‘flying solo’. His response: ‘You’re shitting me! We should go for lunch sometime!’. To polite to vomit in my mouth, I reply: ‘Awww… [insert name]‘. Then, ‘What have you been doing for the last year? You should get yourself down the Theatre District!’. Me: ‘What??’ Him: ‘You’re confident enough, you can do it!’. Me: ‘Really, I’m fine.’ He’s almost leaning close enough to count my freckles now. ‘You’re a formiddable woman,’ he continues. ‘You don’t set out to stun, but that’s often the end result’. ‘Is it?’

Then I spot Jani, mouthing ‘What. The. &^%%?’ from the kitchen and hastily make my escape.

Again, huddled in a doorway, trying to avoid the gale force winds and lashing rain, we recap. I’ve just been asked out by a drunk, caned, Dickensian gentleman of questionable heritage who’s over 65. Well, you’ve gotta give it to him, he’s still got it (assertiveness, I mean). And, ever erring on the positive side, I muse: ‘But, you see, he’s like a character from Shakespeare. He gives such insightful commentary on all our lives.’ Jani: ‘He doesn’t. He takes the most obvious f__king things and tricks us into thinking it’s rocket science.’ A bit like Shakespeare himself then. I might not be going for lunch with the guy, but he’s still got a certain je ne c’est quai.

And then I went home. The End.