Spinsterella

GOOD THINGS ARE HAPPENING

2011-06-14T20:10:00.002+01:00

Well.

So just after I wrote that horribly self-pitying post about how incredibly skint I am, things got better.

1. I got a payrise! I am now earning the magnificent sum of £22,000.

2. I sold my car. For the magnificent sum of £280. Minted.

3. I have moved house. Thank FUCK for that. Still sharing, still insanely expensive, but at least i never have to see my idiot ex-flatmates ever again. Except when I go round to collect my frying pan that I left behind.

4. I have been on holiday. Even better, I ahve been to America with flights paid for by WORK!

HOUSE! Nah....

2011-04-26T20:16:00.004+01:00

So.

I was feeling catastrophically sorry for myself. I spentthe Easter break visiting my aged parents back 'home', because, frankly, I've not got anything better to do, and also because I have a sense of duty (unlike my siblings moanmoanmoan).

And I was feeling especially miserable as I waited for the 11.20pm bus from the airport. I am nearly 40 FFS, when am I going to reach the point where I could, say, afford to hire a car for a couple of days? Or book into a hotel for a late night/early morning flight? Or just afford the extra £30 to fly at a reasonable hour in the bloody first place? Anyhow...

On a related topic:

None of my friends live in shitty freezing cold rooms in shitty shared houses with morons. They all own houses; not just houses but massive, fuck-off 4-bed monstrosities. (This bugs me sometimes.)

But on Holy Thursday, as I walked down the streets of my home town, I found myself looking in the various estate agents' windows. And it turns out you can buy a two-bed house in my home town for £70,000.

£70K? I could afford that! Easily. Even with my redundancy-depleted savings and entry-level lucky-to-have-it current job, I could actually Own A House.

But I don't want to. Not in that unremitting shit-pit of a 'city' at least.

I suddenly feel like I have some control over my life again. Living in a shitty shared house is, I suppose, something of a lifestyle choice. 'Cos otherwise I'd fuck off home, wouldn't I?

Just how many bottles of shampoo does one person need?

2011-04-05T19:51:00.007+01:00

Cluttering up our bath-shower area, my flatmates appear to need eleven bottles of shampoo and conditioner (that I can see) between the two of them. Plus an at least equal number of shower gel, face wash and other unidentifiable products.

They could perhaps learn something from my mother, who visited for the weekend with a soap dish, toothbrush and toothpaste. Not because she likes (as I do) to sample other people's stuff when she's away visiting. No, this is all she has ever used.

Me, I have:

shampoo - 1
shower gel - 1
soap - 1
conditioner - 1 (not in use, it's for balancing my soap dish on)
facewash - 1

all tidily encased in a basket.

If I did, for some reason, need to have an extra four types of shampoo within arm's reach at any given moment, I'd probably keep them in the cupboard WHERE THERE'S SOME FUCKING ROOM!

Romantic regrets?

2011-03-27T21:25:00.003+01:00

...rather than continue taking over comment-space over at GSE's place... I don't think I have any. Not even the first one, who gave me a venereal disease that took over a year to get rid of. Not the backpacking two-night-stand who (allegedly) was hiding tattooes of burning crosses (!!!) under the big black celtic-style ink on his back. Not even the deformed-penis guy. There aren't any ones-who-got-away either. However, in years to come, I suspect I may regret having spent most of my thirties in unplanned celibacy. Hmm

What is she DOING in there?

2011-03-24T22:00:00.002Z

Neurotic Flatmate is in the shower. It's been nearly ten minutes.

So what? you may be thinking.

She is now going to bed. She will get up in eight hours and have another ten minute shower.

She does this every fucking day. What is there to do in the shower that takes that long?

Breadline

2011-03-20T19:38:00.002Z

A month in the life of my bank account

Income after tax: 1290

Rent: 483
Electricity and Gas: 53
Water: 9
TV and Broadband: 9
Council Tax: 41
Contents Insurance: 5
TV Licence: 5
Train to work: 97
Car Insurance: 37
Car Tax: 11
MOT: 12
Mobile: 20
Petrol: 30
Union: 16

Remaining disposable income: £473

Let me tell you, it doesn't go too far in this town...

It's never too late to try new things

2011-03-16T21:16:00.005Z

I've never been a joiner. Never played team sports, never been part of a club, never had a hobby (apart from top secret super-indulgent internet over-sharing, obviously).

Until now, things just seemed to happen organically in terms of making friends or finding people to go to the pub with.

Plus there's never been anything I wanted to do, or learn. Things I like doing with my spare time are reading, mooching around, gym classes (though not the ones where you have to team up with other people), and listening to Radio 4. Not activities you'll ever need an evening class for.

But, being desperately miserable with my living situation and lack of friends to Do Stuff With (see a few posts back), I finally got off my arse, and joined a book group.

And do you know what? I had a great time!

Me and about six other randoms had a few drinks and chatted, mostly not about the book at all. And some of us are going out for a non-book drink soon.

It seems, against all odds, I may have made some new friends.

A 40-year-old woman who's never had a cock in her mouth...

2011-03-03T20:32:00.005Z

...you're picturing Anne Widdecombe, right?

Actually, she's very attractive - tiny, delicate features, dresses well, looks younger than me (35).

And she's no nun. She's slept with 20-odd men in her life, has had at least two long-ish relationship, loves "snogging" randoms. Worked as a party-hard tour rep for years in her twenties.

How can this happen? Isn't she, at least, curious? And haven't any of these men, ever ... asked?

We didn't get on to the subject of - does she, er, get but not give? I don't know how that would work - it's a reciprocal thing, surely? And if that's not part of your foreplay-type shenans, what else is there?

Maybe there really are people who turn the lights out and get undressed under the duvet?

I'm hoping to see said woman again at some point under similar (girly, tipsy) circumstances, to try to get some answers.

Oh the horror...

2011-02-09T18:02:00.003Z

...a wedding invite.

I thought I'd seen the last one ever last year. Then, to my immense suprise this week, I got an invite out of the blue.

Wedding's at Easter - wow, how'd they manage to book a church and top venue at such short notice? I thought. Then I realised - with the aid of a bit of facebook snooping - that they got engaged yonks ago. And they seem to have moved in together at some point as well.

Why don't I know all this quite important information? Well because this friend is one of the two that totally dropped off the planet when I lost my job (and no longer had loads of free tickets for them to take advantage of). Actually, it's probably more to do with the fact that they both got girlfriends shortly before that and ... well, you know how that works with some people.

I admit that I am being massively oversensitive and possibly a little bit silly about this.

I also totally cannot afford to go. Or at least, I do not want to spend fuckloads of money on an evening feeling uncomfortable with a bunch of people I used to be friends with five years ago. Oh yeah, and I'd almost certainly be the only single person in the building.

Friends

2011-01-14T21:20:00.004Z

Am I too old to make new friends?

My flatmates (and supposed new-city-new-life-new-friends) are not bad people. But they irritate me to the point of wishing I'd never met them.

I thought it was just because of THEM: the non-stop shit telly (every single underclass soap and reality show; no news, ever. Not even ITV. Not even the frigging weather), the inability to stack a dishwasher, the lack of understanding of the importance of ventilation, the Capital FM...

Then I though of my (few, remaining) real life friends. And most of them'd be just as bad. How did we ever become friends? A goodly proportion of them were flatmates as well at one time or another, so it's not just the house-sharing thing.

Is it just too late? Am I too intolerant, and set in my ways? Is *everybody* either married, babied or mental?

Am I stuck with what I've got?

When I'm 40...

2011-01-08T17:41:00.003Z

(1) I don't want to be dying my own hair.

(2) I don't want to be living in a shared house.

When I tell non-London people that one of my flatmates is 40, their reaction is along the lines of: what's her story? what's gone horribly wrong with her life?

To which I respond along the lines of: it's LONDON, it's really fucking EXPENSIVE, even RICH people share houses, that's JUST THE WAY IT IS.

But. I really, really, really don't want to be living in a shared house when I'm 40. I've got four and a bit years...

2010: Good fucking riddance to all that

2011-01-04T20:20:00.004Z

Bad

I spent most of 2011 on the dole. This was grim, and got grimmer as the months went on and on and on and on and on.

I think my mother is getting more crazy.

My friends are all increasingly lost to girlfriends and husbands and babies.

I did not have sex. Or so much as a snog. Or anything. It's been THREE PISSING YEARS.

Good

I got a job. One where I can say - this is what I do - and it sounds pretty good (so long as I don't mention the catastrophically low salary) and my bosses don't hate me (yet).

I have new friends. Well, flatmates and work colleagues at least. And I am now living near to my few remaining friends who still, like, go out and stuff.

On Balance

Well, 2010 has finished considerably better than it started at least.

2011 Resolutions

I don't do resolutions, really. But I might think about maybe putting myself in a position where I might get some leg-over action ... before 2012, at least.

Yeah.

Damn and Blast (from the past)

2010-11-25T21:01:00.002Z

Well.

Remember this Bell-end ?

I'd kinda forgotten about him, so when I was flicking through new flatemate's Facebook pics the other day it took a moment for me to put the name and face together.

FFS.

They've been good friends for about 10 years, and were "more than friends" (?) for a while.

He's not one I'd be particularly bothered about seeing again. Happily he no longer lives in London, but he is coming to stay for a few days next month. Urgh.

Capitulation

2010-11-23T22:29:00.003Z

I think...

I think I might want a boyfriend.

There, I said it.

I've been feeling this way, vaguely, for a good few weeks now. I've managed 12 years of merry singledom, so I reckon I've given it a pretty good shot. Going out with someone for a while should make a bit of a change, at least.

Now. A boyfriend. So, where do I pick up one of them then?

Oh god, how did it come to this?

2010-11-03T08:06:00.002Z

I used to live alone ... I now have flatmates again.

The bathmat’s always damp and the telly’s always on. The kitchen radio is tuned to Capitol FM and, bafflingly, there are no curtain rails in the house outside of the living room. There’s no space in the fridge, and an distinct lack of consensus on the heating and window-opening policy. And don’t get me started on the “cleaning”..

It’s going to take some getting used to.

Recently

2010-10-18T20:52:00.003+01:00

Stuff wot I've done in the past couple of years:

Got fired. Repeatedly (bad)
Lived by myself (good)
Without a telly (good)
Didn't have sex at all (um, well you get used to it)
Watched everybody I know have babies (bad)
Apart from the gays (good (cos they still go to the pub))
Relocated to LONDON (good)
Got a job (massive relief)
Apart from the salary (woeful)
Moved back into a shared house (jury's out)

Started recently thinking that I might like to go out with somebody again, perhaps, one day...

It didn't happen...

2010-10-15T21:26:00.002+01:00

He. Stood. Me. Up.

By phone, that is. I spent the day waiting for a confirming-the-time-and-place text. Better than waiting in a pub for a no-show? I don't know, at least then I'd've had a drink in me at least.

Well, I wasn't that bothered anyhow. Relieved, really. So when I got a super-apologetic "sorry, I'm ill" text later that evening it was kind of a disappointment.

I don't think I'm cut out for the dating world at all.

er..hello?

2010-10-12T22:26:00.002+01:00

I am going on a date this week.

The first in almost three years (apart from a sortofathing last year that never actually went anywhere, at all, so we can discount that I reckon)... three years!

I think that's probably enough of an excuse to start blogging again, eh?

Suspended Animation

2007-12-15T23:03:00.000Z

...sorry

Swansong

We hate it when our ex-non-shagpieces become successful

2007-12-11T19:10:00.000Z

I don’t know why I thought of him.

It was a bloke I snogged once, no, twice, in second year at university. But for some reason his name (not him really, just his name) popped into my mind the other day. So I googled him.

And on page one was a probability. After a few captains of industry and world-renowned scientists of the same name was a reference to a band. I clicked, pulled up a pic, and there he was.

It was a proper website too, not just a half-arsed MunterSpace effort, and a proper band as well. With a recently released album complete with 4 and 5 star reviews from proper glossy music mags. Blimey.

I’m sure if we met again that he wouldn’t have a notion who I was. But I am cursed with fantastic recall so here is the sad story of how I failed to pull a struggling artist.

I was a student, working in a restaurant four nights a week. One of my cohorts was a girl called Kim. She was a bit feisty and I was slightly mistrustful of her as she seemed to have a tendency to make enemies of her girlfriends and housemates pretty quickly. (I, on the other hand, was probably a bit staid for her liking.)

But we had similar tastes in music and we both like going out drinking and dancing so we were perfect for an arms-length friendship.

When we finished work at 10:30ish we’d always have £6 or £7 worth of tips burning a hole in our pockets so Kim and I would head out to whatever indie night that happened to be on that evening. A quick change and a touch-up of the make-up and off we’d totter, still enveloped in that school-dinners smell that inhabits every working kitchen in the world, no matter how posh the restaurant.

One Wednesday night Kim ran into a guy she knew. He was tall and lean and northern and a bit 60s-ish but without being too try-hard. Mmm.

"Thomas used to live in my house," was how she introduced us – they had met the previous year during the annual student house-changeover.

"God, how embarrassing," Kim said as he left us, "I snogged him last week."

Embarrassing? I thought he was pretty fit. My face must have revealed exactly what I was thinking because before I’d even uttered a word Kim said, "If you like him, go for it. I’m not interested."

A week or so later we were out one Monday, and Thomas and a friend were there. Kim and the other bloke went to dance so at chucking-out time I was left with Thomas. It was snowing lightly as we walked up the street.

He lived one way and I lived the other but as we reached the top rather than say goodbye, he kissed me. Oddly, even though I can recall so much detail about the whole encounter I can’t remember how he kissed. He was one of those very complimentary men though, which is never a good sign.

Cabs were thin on the ground so we wandered around in the snow, decreasing our chances of actually finding a taxi by snogging regularly. One showed up eventually so I generously dropped him off at his place before heading home, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

The next Monday, there they were again, in the same spot in the same club. Were they expecting us? Perhaps. Either way I spent the evening with Thomas again. The end of the night followed the same template as the previous week, but we finished on a promise.

"I’ll see you here next week?" he asked. "I’ve got no money so I can only afford to go out once a week."

Something wasn’t quite right - if you can only afford to go out once a week you’re not going to make it a Monday, are you?

That Saturday I was out at another indie club. I just knew he’d be there, and sure enough, he showed up. With a girl. A short, very pretty, Asian girl. Much prettier than me. I know when I’m beat so I paid them no attention, drowned my sorrows and danced all night.

But because she was still friends with him, Kim kept me updated on Thomas’s blossoming relationship. I heard how he was already getting bored of her, she was a bit dull, she had really strict parents, she didn’t go out much…

Because she wasn’t a close friend Kim didn’t know that I invest every kiss with a ridiculous level of significance. I’d never even confessed to her that I really liked Thomas, so as far as she was concerned I’d just had a couple of brief snogs.

Then she came into work one day with an ever naughtier than usual look in her eye.

"I shagged Thomas last night" she told me, giggling with faux-shame.

"It’s funny," she continued, "I wasn’t interested in him till he started seeing that girl. It’s the challenge, I suppose."

I didn’t hang out with Kim so much after that. And I guess I had a lucky escape – I don’t fancy being the dull girlfriend who gets fucked around on.

But still, now he’s in a fucking band! With a fucking Wikipedia entry! Cock.

In the meantime..

2007-12-07T21:38:00.000Z

...despite the fact that everybody on the planet* seems to want to go out with me at the minute, I haven't forgotten about my little crush. And I knew I had one more chance to see him again...

SCENE: A works sort of thing.

I knew he'd be there.

But despite my hopes he hadn't casually emailed me after we met the other week to say 'nice to meet you' or 'thanks for the work you did for us' or any other tenuous excuse to say hello. His manager did, but who gives a fuck about that?

And I started thinking - maybe I read it all wrong...

Back at the works thing: I spotted him out of the corner of my eye deep in conversation with some other vaguely important bloke. Hmm. I'm not confident or important enough to barge in and go 'hello' so I got on with other schmoozing. Then the other bloke walked past. Did that mean that he was alone?

I turned around. Yes. I stormed over before anyone else could monopolise him and said hello. He kissed me on the cheek (yesss) and we had that inevitably stilted conversation you have to have with someone that you last saw when you were a bit pissed. But still nice. My waist tingledwhere his hand had briefly rested when he kissed me hello.

But barely seconds had passed before some young bloke came up and started talking to him, completely ignoring me. Completely. The worst thing was, I had just met this random bloke earlier and he had used me as an excuse to talk to Bloke I Fancy, then proceeded to freeze me out while talking utter shite.

So I made my excuses and left them, assuming that I'd see him again before the end of the night. But I didn't.

Fuck.

Bollocks.

That was it - I will not run into him for any work-related reasons again. Bollocks again.

*Er, about three people, that is.

Heartfelt Post Thankfully Avoided

2007-11-30T21:12:00.000Z

I was in bed the other night, crying, and I couldn't get back to sleep, what with the crying, and I almost got up and blogged what I was thinking.

Jesus.

I fell back to sleep eventually. But what did you miss? Something like this:

Why am I crying all the time?
Jesus, the last decent night's sleep I had was at Reading. What manner of loon goes to the world's most horrible rock festival to sleep?
I am very close to stabbing my boss.
And his cunting minions.
70 hour week = too much. I'm not being unreasonable, am I?
I think my job might be making me ill.
I JUST NEED SOME SLEEP.
And time. Time off.
Driving on the M25, fantasising about being involved in a hideous road accident, just so I can have a couple of days off work. Is this normal?
I can't remember the last time I even listened to the fucking radio.

Phew.

Thnk fuck I didn't post all of that, eh?

Another Exciting Day

2007-11-25T21:27:00.000Z

(I know! It’s only been a couple of weeks since the last one.)

I was out last night with my Indie Rock Friend, IRF’s lovely girlfriend and loads of his mates. It was one of those lovely afternoons in the local pub full of people who knew one another, and friends of friends, and a few by-standers all melding together in an air of general bonhomie.

I was nattering away to my friend’s girlfriend while at the same time enjoying the view I had of the bloke stood opposite us. Later, a few bevvies down, I got chatting to said chap. We got on rather well and I thought after a while: "He’s going to ask me out."

He did.

He and his friends had to go so he took my number and we arranged to go for a drink some time when we both manage to find a window in our incredibly busy schedules. He cheekily kissed me briefly on the lips as he left.

What about that then?

I was so pleased with myself that I immediately went out and spent the rest of the night pashing on a dancefloor with a shockingly good-looking young man.

Gosh.

I should do a Part II really, that’s a lot of action already. Ah, fuck it.

So me, IRF and another friend headed into town to a top indie-disco. First of all there was a bit of a dry run where a very young-looking bloke asked me if I wanted a drink. I demurred politely (too young, but still, nice to be asked).

THEN:

The three of us were thinking of heading home when we discovered a dancing space right by the bar, so we set up camp there. We were set slightly apart from the rest of the dancefloor so when a young, very good-looking chap came and danced near us I thought, ‘Aha! the lurk. I know what he’s up to.’ He got chatting to IRF first, then me. We talked, and danced, the four of us, then I got chatted up by the DJ for bit (!!) but I soon wriggled out of that to get back to my friends (and cute bloke).

Eventually, inevitably, he kissed me. We spent much of the next hour snogging like a couple of 14-year olds.

What was he thinking?

Aside from the fact that he was extremely good-looking and considerably younger, he’s clearly the sort of chap who spends a fair bit of time making his hair just right (assuming that you thing that Vince Noir looks pretty good). Now, this club was rammed full of extremely pretty 22-year-old women who had made a similar sort of effort with hair and frocks and eyeliner and stuff.

I am nondescript enough at the best of times and I was wearing the jeans, flat boots and black t-shirt that I’d been stomping around town in all day.

I was with two male friends, which I’d always assumed would be the kiss of death for the whole pulling thing.

He’s 26 (I google-stalked the minute I got home, hurrah for the kids and their fondness for social-networking sites). I’m, um, older.

So why me?

Men: endlessly baffling.

Well, don’t worry kids, he lost interest rapidly when he realised I wasn’t going to be going back to his shag-palace in Acton with him. And I’m sure he wouldn’t have had the slightest problem getting rid of his hard-on on the nightbus with any bird-with-eyeliner in the vicinity.

Still. Immense fun.

Suitable Bloke (the first one – you’d forgotten about him, hadn’t you?) has called already.

Forget it sister, I ain't moving to the country...

2007-11-20T06:43:00.000Z

I like living in the city.

Right in the city; walking distance to more bars and theatres and venues and world-class art galleries and restaurants than you can shake a stick at. True, I may not visit them very often but I know that they’re there whenever I need them.

I need to be able to get a bottle of wine/loaf of bread/newspaper at any time, day or night, without having to walk more than five minutes from my front door.

I’d rather gouge my own eyeballs out than live in the country, which, as everybody knows, is the kind of place where you never know from one minute to the next that you might not be tossed by a bull or pitch-forked by a yokel or rolled over and broken up by a pack of hounds.

However, I do realise that some people like to live in the country. Country folk, equally, are perfectly happy to let us urban kids enjoy our sexy city lives.

So why doesn’t the same logic apply to breeding?

When, occasionally, someone says something to me about having children and I respond with my usual, "I don’t want children, never have," they feel that they need to tell me:

"Oh, you will."

Er, no I won’t. Fuck off.

"Oh you will, when you meet the right person."

Aaaarrrgh!

I can accept that many people, most even, want to have children. So why can’t they live with the fact that I don’t?

A really interesting day

2007-11-15T19:05:00.000Z

(this happened last week but I'm still reeling)

Part One

At about 4pm I received an email from a bloke asking me out for a drink.

!

It was very well-worded too: with a fair bit of self deprecation and humour, and, most importantly, with perfect spelling and grammar.

He’s a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend I'd met at a party the previous weekend. He’s tall, not bad looking at all, quite fit, really good job, very bright, extremely normal, nice bloke.

Of course, I don't fancy him in the slightest.

Part Two

Three hours later I had to go out that evening for to meet some work-related person. I was uncharacteristically late and got lost so I was sweating like a rapist by the time I arrived..

But it didn’t seem like a meeting. It went like a really good date. We did the work stuff, then had a couple more drinks. All very professional.

But…

OK. He’s not tall, dark, or handsome. He’s younger than me. Our lifestyles are wildly incompatible. He probably does not have razor sharp obliques.

But I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t concentrate on anything.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

Update: if you want to see some obliques First Nations has helpfully posted some pics. (NSFW - there are also cocks and Ronnie Corbetts.)

Holiday. Celebrate (or not).

2007-11-06T19:04:00.000Z

Flicking through the travel section on Sunday, a thought suddenly struck me.

I've been reading the weekend supplements for kicking the arse of 25 years now, and I don't think I've ever seen a feature directed at single people.

They're missing a trick here. For a start, there are plenty of us out there. (If I was a conscientious blogging type I'd dig out some of those stats I keep reading about how there are more single-person households etc, oh yeah, we're taking over.) And we don't all want to go on any of those organised-type holidays, dear, sweet, mother-of-god, no. If fact, we happily-single types are probably more likely to want to do our own thing, what with being used to it and all.

So where are all the articles about good places to go? Here's an idea for a start:

Pick a city for a weekend break, mention a few things that a single person can do day and night, namecheck a few restaurants and bars where a single woman can eat and drink without getting harrassed, list some hotels that maybe have single rooms or cheaper rates for singletons etc.

This could work for the UK, worldwide, town and country, hot and cold. Then extend to more exotic climes and longer holidays: beachy places without kids or 20something party animals, hotels without families, etc etc. There is so much mileage here, why hasn't it been done before?

Old Media sucks donkey's cock. As we all know.

So why am I thinking about holidays? I haven't been back home much this year so, for a change, I have tonnes of holiday left to take and I'm left thinking what am I going to do with it all?

If it wasn't for slurry-for-brains new Flatmate I'd be perfectly happy to do a Charlie Brooker and stay at home for a week reading books, staring out the window and sitting in coffee shops. However if I spend any more time in her sompany I might have to do a murder.

So, seeing as the Old Media is no help whatsoever, help! Or, indeed, Halp!

I want to go somewhere for 3-4 days, not necessarily over a weekend. I'm leaning heavily towards a city-break (the countryside being full of bloody recreations, darkness and silence and sudden, inexplicable noises).

I like:

Eating in nice cafes and coffee shops
Mooching around interesting places like arty galleries and old churches and stuff
Cheapness
Not having to talk to anyone
Not feeling overly conspicuous because I'm All By Myself
Veggie-food
Not too difficult for an ignoramus who only speaks English

I'm thinking of places that are easyjetable but I don't suppose there's any reason why I couldn't stay in the UK. I feel like I should go somewhere though.

In recent years I've been to NYC (pretty fab for singletons, obviously) and Bilbao (less successful what with everyone hanging around in big extended family and social groups, and not being wildly veggie-friendly and everything being shut, for fuck's sake, during my major strolling around hours).

I'm thinking at the minute about Rome or Barcelona but am a bit worried about not getting a minute's peace (Rome) and not eating due to everything being made of bacon (Barcelona).

Any suggestions gratefully received.

New Year's Eve 1997

2007-10-31T20:05:00.000Z

I had started going out with The Ex shortly before Christmas and didn’t want to come across like I was angling to hang out with him come New Year. I had plans of my own, thank-you-very-much.

So I’d bought tickets well in advance for my sister and I to go to the top indie-stroke-retro nightclub in town.

Sis and I went round his place and had a few civilized drinks with him and his friends early evening before saying goodbye and enjoying a vodka-fuelled pub-crawl into town.

For my sister, visiting from another city, this was the first time she’d seen the girls who frequented the clubs I went to in those days. They wore full 1960s dress and make-up at all times, and even did that odd jerky dance that you only ever see on old footage from Ready Steady Go.

This turned out to be the funniest thing my sister had ever seen. She was openly laughing and pointing at them. ‘Stop that!’ I said. ‘I see these girls out all the time. They’re scary.’

More hours passed and more alcohol was imbibed. I went to the loo and came back and my sister (who doesn’t not have the same Shyness With Boys as me) was snogging someone. (It happened again – with the same guy? I can’t remember.) But I did get increasingly pissed off and threatened to leave if she didn’t stop.

She ignored me so I walked out of the club, expecting her to follow. She didn’t. I went back in, did the whole ‘I’m leaving NOW’ thing again, and she still didn’t come with me. So I headed home.

However, head befuddled with way too much vodka, I somehow got lost. In the city I’d lived for three years, and from a club I’d been to many, many times, somehow I manage to turn the wrong way. I found myself wandering around the financial district – miles in the wrong direction, utterly lost.

I remember falling over. I was wearing a matt satin dress that barely covered my arse, those shiny skin-coloured tights that made you legs look like they’d been shrink wrapped, heeled shoes and a long cream 60s coat. (I don’t dress like this any more.) I remember thinking as I slipped over in the ice (it was below freezing and snowing lightly) that it wasn’t the cleverest outfit.

Eventually I hit a landmark I recognised and I crossed town, heading straight for the bar where my boyfriend was. I begged my way in and staggered around the two floors, stumbling up and down the stairs a couple of time just to make sure he wasn’t there, not quite appreciating how late it was.

So I went round to his. He was just saying goodbye to his friends and I had (relatively) sobered up so he wasn’t too displeased to see me. I fell asleep in record time…

…then suddenly it was eleven the next morning. I woke up thinking HOLY FUCK WHERE IS MY SISTER?

I got a cab straight home and there she was, leaning forlornly against a windowsill that she was sharing with the wrapping of the sandwich and empty Lilt can that she’d bought as soon as the Spar had opened.

She hadn’t been there all night though, and she filled me in on her New Year.

The young man she was copping off with had said she could stay with him – he was also visiting his sister who was a student in the city. But she turned out to be one of the 60s chicks that my sister had been laughing at so openly.

The invitation to stay the night was hastily rescinded and my sister was, come two am, back on her own two feet.

She had only been to visit me a couple of times, but she managed to turn the right way out of the club and walked the entire three miles back to my house without taking a wrong turn. She did stop at every phone box and call my house. There was no answer, but she assumed it was because I was still in a strop with her.

Eventually she reached my house to realise that I wasn’t there. However she is much more intelligent and resourceful than me.

On the last street before mine she had passed a house that was still showing signs of life. The Stone Roses and Ash were playing. Students, she thought. My sister walked straight back round to that house, knocked on the door and said,

“I’ m sorry, I’m locked out for the night, can I stay here?”

The door-answerer, probably none-too-sober himself, didn’t seem too shocked. My sister made her way into a typical student living room full of passed-out and nearly-asleep drunk and stoned students. She spotted a two-seater sofa, and, after picking her way across the dead bodies on the floor, made herself as comfortable as possible and fell asleep.

She awoke the following morning to hear the various voices of her living room co-sleepers talking about her.

- Who is she?
- She just arrived last night and she had nowhere to sleep. She was here for New Year.
- By herself?
- Is she local?
- No, she’s Irish.
- She’s come all the way over from Ireland by herself for New Year with nowhere to stay?

My sister sat up with as much composure as she could manage given the circumstances.

“Cheers for letting me kip here,” she said insouciantly, as if flying to a strange city by herself and gatecrashing a bed for the night was something she did every weekend, then swanned out their front door in search of a corner shop.

Later, as we ate some reheated remnants from the restaurant I worked in we watched the news. A twenty-something man had died on his way home from a night out. Drunk, he had stumbled perhaps, or fallen asleep, and had frozen to death just a mile or two from home. My sister looked at me. She didn’t need to say anything.

Hot Jinners

2007-10-28T18:42:00.000Z

Joshua Homme

John Mclean

Joshua English

Ok, that explains everything, right?

UPDATE: Hmm, Mr English seems to have removed all up-close pics of him from his munterspace and replaced them with ones of him hanging out his washing. This is marginally better. Anyhow: scary, skinny, ginger ,heavily-tattooed young man singing delicate acoustic songs. Oh, yes.

Spinsterella Goes Out With Someone - Part 1.5

2007-10-22T06:08:00.000+01:00

(How he sneakily upgraded me to 'girlfriend' status.)

It had been a few weeks. We were out and about one night and we’d had a few drinks.

"So," he said, "have we gone beyond dating now?"

I changed the subject. I like dating. I liked dating him. But I didn’t want to be someone’s girlfriend.

A few days later, while we were sober, he said the same thing. I laughed.

"Did you notice the way I cunningly side-stepped that question the last time you mentioned it?" We had a funny piss-taking chat about dating and relationships that carried on cheerfully into other gerenal subjects. Avoided again - phew.

But the following week, we were out in a bar.

"Last night, a girl threw herself at me," he said. "She really wanted to come home with me but I said no. I turned her down because of you. Was I right?"

What a clever bastard.

"Well of course," I said – if you’re going out with me, you’re not to be fucking around with anyone else. But he had a point, subtly put. You can’t expect someone to be faithful if you’re not offering any sort of commitment.

"Good," he said, happily.

"Good," I agreed. Uncomfortably.

Spinsterella Goes Out With Someone - Part 2

2007-10-17T19:13:00.000+01:00

... then six weeks later I broke up with him.

Why? Well, why not? I just didn't like him that much.

We started off well - we went on the dinner and were falling over ourselves talking to one another, and we went out drinking a couple of days later, and we had sex, which was good if not awesome and we generally rubbed along together very well indeed over the next few weeks.

So he was very puzzled and pissed off when I dumped him. Especially seeing as I had no real reason.

I was pretty honest with him. I told him that I'm not a 'relationship person', our lifestyles are wildly incompatible, that there just wasn't enough there. And although things were going well now that I'd inevitably end up breaking up with him after three or four months which would have been even worse. That I needed time to be alone. That I was stressed out to fuck with work and I just didn't have time to go out with someone.

All true.

I couldn't quite say all the little ultra-honest things though. That he had turned out to be not quite as intelligent or interesting as I'd first thought. That he could do with brushing his teeth a bit more often. That his house depressed me. That I'm more socially important than him and I'm not comfortable with the balance swinging that way. That it doesn't matter how many guitars he has, he still doesn't have enough (any) books.

And I certainly didn't tell him that I'd done something Id never done before in my 32 years, and snogged someone else behind his back.

Spinsterella Goes Out With Someone - Part 1

2007-10-13T15:59:00.000+01:00

I was early as usual. I exchanged a couple of ‘been served?’ words with the guy at the end of the bar before perching myself on a bar stool, waiting for my friends.

Then, for some reason, I did something I’ve never done before in my life. I turned round and spoke to him.

‘Do you work here?’ I asked. Dear God. Not the most original of chat up lines, but he had something of a proprietorial air about him - I’d taken him for a just-off-duty bar manager.

‘No,’ he said, and it turned out that he has a pretty sexy interesting job that has just the slightest overlap with mine so we know a couple of the same people. Common ground established we got chatting. It went well. Very well.

He was fit. Hot enough that I was desperately wishing that I’d chosen to wear something other than an ancient band t-shirt and jeans. And I was thanking the lord that I’d at least patched up my make up before leaving the house.

There was a sparkle in his eyes as we chatted. We made one another laugh, we talked about music, and he seemed to enjoying my company as much as I was enjoying his.

I’ve never been so glad that my friends were late and was almost annoyed when, in dribs and drabs, they finally arrived. Soon we were moving on. I turned round to say goodbye to cute bloke.

God, I thought, this is going to be awkward. We’ve obviously really hit it off, but what next?

So I almost fell off of my chair when he said:

“It’s been good talking with you, do you want to go out to dinner some time next week?”

And just like that, I was back in the saddle again.

(Just in case anyone doen't know the full story, this is all very much in the past tense. I am finally getting around to telling the story of a bloke I went out with quite a few months ago, back when I wasn't blogging. Obviously, it didn't last.)

Accents

2007-10-06T09:38:00.000+01:00

Least Favourites:

Norn Iron
Posh English
That all-pervasive from-nowhere English accent.

I don’t mind, but am not especially fond of:

Scottish
Southern Irish
Scouse
Geordie.

I like:

A slight hint of Brummie
A slight hint of west country.
Welsh.
Northern

Having said all that, I very much like Ed Harcourt's speaking voice and, in the real world, that twat I pulled at Glastonbury, and this other bloke I really fancy right now (who I’ll tell you about in a bit). They’ve all got that from-nowhere non-accent.

Too Little, Too Late

2007-10-03T20:08:00.000+01:00

My Accountant Friend often has to go to what he calls ‘ra-ra corporate do’s’ of an evening. In my old job, where I was office-bound I was pretty envious - free booze and food. He played it down – your bosses are there, it’s all about networking , it's not fun. But still, free booze and food!

However, in my current job, I have to sometimes go out of an evening and of course the grass is always greener. Most of the time I’d rather not. I’d rather come home after a long day in the office and read a book, or blog, or even listen to my pigshit-thick flatmate witter on than go out and be pleasant to some random work-related folk.

And because my job, like so much else in my life, is pretty low-rent, there isn’t even always free drink. When there is, you still have to get up at 6am the next day so you can't really indulge.

But last week I ended up meeting the boss of some folk I do some work with with - he was visiting from Up London where all the sexy people live. And do you know what? – he was a bit of a fox. Because I fancied him I got a wee bit drunk and shouted at him (good-naturedly, like).

He gave as good as he got. I like.

By the time I left the business handshake we’d said hello with had turned into a cheek-peck kiss goodbye. Hmmm. He’s nice, I thought.

Three days later, I realised that my phone battery had died. Re-juiced, it beeped with a text.
Sent at 11:30pm, which, by my reckoning, was the minute he’d gotten back to his hotel room.

It was lovely to meet you (‘lovely’! so much better than ‘good’, or even ‘great’), see you soon (ooh – when?), Jon x

A kiss! I’m well in there.

Or, at least I guess I would have been if it hadn’t taken me three frigging days to respond.

Ex boyfriend in new girlfriend shocker

2007-09-30T12:59:00.000+01:00

So yeah, I had a boyfriend for a bit during those long non-blogging months. I'll get around to telling you all about that shortly.

But first – last night.

I was walking up the street with a (male) friend. It’s Saturday night, it’s busy as hell and heading towards us – it’s him.

With a girl!

Things that ran through my head in that split second:

He’s with a girl. Well, that didn’t take him too long, did it? She’s awfully young looking. Pretty? Yes. In an idiosyncratic way though. Does she look like me, ever so slightly? Maybe. I’m glad he’s met someone. I suppose he’s one of those relationship guys. Or maybe she's just a friend. Isn’t he going to say ‘hello’? Is he blanking me? Maybe he didn't see me. Maybe he thinks I’m with my friend. She looks like a student. I wonder if it's a first date. They're not exactly engrossed in conversation. Not going that well, heh. Oh god, why should I care?

Spinsterella reviews the Guardain Weekend Magazine (again)

2007-09-15T22:24:00.000+01:00

Oooh, so Jon Ronson's off then, eh? Has it really been three years? Well, doesn't time fly. ..

Does anyone else think that Mr Ronson is convinced that he has a level of celebrity that a bit, unrealistic?

I've just seen him on a trailer of a tv show where he was saying that he was interchangable with Louis Theroux. I mean really. And I'm not even sure if that was him, to be honest, and I've been reading his column for three years.

(It was a spoof, right?)

So who's going to replace him? Oh fuck, the Times have sacked our Julie (noooo! I do not need to know any more about Brighton fucking council) - naah, they wouldn't, would they?

Hmm, ooh, maybe it's be Charlie Brooker! Or Miranda Sawyer, or Marina Hyde. Gosh, that feeling of dread that kicked in back when they changed it might actually lift.

anyhow..what I really wanted to say was: Peaches Geldof, FUCKOFF FUCK OFF FUCKOFF

(there was yet another interveiw with PG in the grauniad last week, I don't think she's being touted as a replacement for Ronson. I hope.)

UPDATE: I have just read this with interest over ar Mr James Blue Cat's blog.

I read with interest that Jon Ronson's columns in the Observer Guardian magazine are being developed as a potential film.

What?

Facepack

2007-09-11T21:11:00.000+01:00

I finally signed up to Facebook the other day (possibly the last thirty-something in the country to do so), with the sole intention of using it to interweb-stalk ex-shagpieces.

So, with the absolute minimum of personal detail required, I am now On Facebook.

I checked with an early-adopter friend and he assured me that people can’t see whose been sneaking a look on your profile, so I was free to surf and shark …

I just couldn’t do it. I had a few likely suspects in my head that I thought I’d want to check out, but I just couldn’t bring myself to look.

I don’t know why. Generally I am irrepressibly nosy, and it’s all in the public domain, it’s not like I would have been cracking into anyone’s personal email account or anything.

Maybe I just don’t want to know…

New Year’s Eve 1994

2007-09-08T18:08:00.000+01:00

1992 hadn’t been a great one – being sober at midnight on a dangerously-rammed dancefloor covered in broken glass isn’t a good idea.

1993 was marked by hideous boyfriend-related matters.

But in 1994 I was home from university and was almost looking forward to running into some old faces and crowing about my new exciting life over the water. I went out with a couple of old school friends, Anna and Sarah.

The hours went on and much vodka was consumed. Midnight chimed and Anna was snogging her boyfriend while Sarah was also snogging someone. Who? I don’t know now, and I didn’t know then.

And I was all alone. My triumphant homecoming nothing more than a sham. I had no boyfriend, and, at that crucial moment, no friends.

But it was just a moment. By the time Auld Lang Syne had kicked in the couples had detachedthemselves from one another and I was somehow part of that weird cross-armed circle that’s unique to New Year’s Eve.

Eventually, and many, many vodkas later the night ended.

The next thing I recall is the three of us were walking up the road to my house eating a take out and me throwing a girly of epic proportions. I cried and cried and cried.

I blamed my emotional outburst on the fact that it was the anniversary of Last Year, and regaled Sarah with the details – Anna already knew. But that wasn’t the truth of the matter. I was just really upset that my friends had abandoned me at midnight.

What have you been up to then?

2007-09-03T21:17:00.000+01:00

Well, I....

Participated in The Big Kiss
Had my first ever Walking-On Shift
Two-timed someone
Oh, yeah, had a sort-of relationship
Developed a minor crush on a jinner
Lost a Flatmate
Got a new one
Realised that I had hardcore psychopathetic tendencies (related to #8)
Reaslised that me’n’GSE have quite probably been perving at the same blokes (though not at the same time).
Had a deep thought about The Role Of The Adult Spinster Child Within The Family
Finally read Notes On A Scandal and wondered if someone would pay me to do an MA in Eng Lit on Spinsters in Modern Popular Fiction. Seriously: Miss Havisham, the Wooster Aunts, Jordan in the Great Gatsby, Miss Marple, Mary Anne Singleton...(sorry, been thinking about this one a lot)
Thinking EVEN MORE about moving into a flat by myself.
My friend who hates babies is having a baby.
Went to the odd festival and gig and stuff.

I will be blogging about ALL of these and more, oh yes, at some point.

Um...

2007-08-29T20:20:00.000+01:00

I think I might start blogging again in a bit....

Just give me a minute or two.

Spinsterella takes a break

2007-04-19T19:58:00.000+01:00

For various reasons, I'm having to give up blogging.

Temporarily, in all probability. I may be back in 6 months or six weeks; here or perhaps in another guise.

For those of you that have been reading and commenting on these unedited, rambling, often drunken rants over the past, jesus, nearly two years - thank you.

I love you all (in a virtual, non-tactile way, obviously).

It's been fucking brilliant.

(And if you just got here - well, it was quite good sometimes. You missed it.)

Normality: A Definition. By Spinsterella.

2007-04-17T19:20:00.000+01:00

There was a late comment, I almost missed it, from non-blogger Alice, about the private school she went to:

"many pupils were from fairly 'ordinary' - albeit middle class – backgrounds"

I laughed (well, I supposed I lol’d).

Middle –class backgrounds aren’t ‘ordinary’! I thought to myself. What a preposterous notion!
Then I realised that this probably says far more about me than it does about posh private schools or Society or the MCs.

I grew up in a town with 30% unemployment. Yes, that’s thirty percent. I was amongst a very small handful of pupils in my class who had two working parents - many of them didn’t even have one parent in regular employment.

And this was the top class – we were the eleven-plus passers – can you imagine what the stats would have been for the eight lower streams? Virtually all of my friends were the first generation in their families to go to uni too.

You can probably imagine the culture shock I got when I got to university.

I thought it would be full of desperately poor indie-kids* like me. That, surely, was what being a student was all about?

But everyone was MC, and phenomenally wealthy to my eyes. They took for granted things like foreign holidays and being insured on their boyfriend’s parents’ cars (yes, that’s ‘cars’ plural) and buying clothes from proper shops – all things that were just incredible to my worldview. They all already had their own chequebooks and had televisions in their bedrooms and the confidence, God, so much confidence!

These weren’t particularly wealthy people though, looking back. None of them had their own cars (although they all had friends who did) and although their parents funded them, it wasn’t a bottomless pit.

They were ‘normal’ Middle Class.

But to me they were all like Creatures from the Planet Gold.

The stupid thing was, I had thought that I was relatively posh! We had Radio 4 and Sunday Times in our house. I’d even been on an aeroplane once, to go to London.

I soon learnt.

But back to the MCs. I suppose you can’t blame them. If you grow up knowing nothing but other MC people, of course you’re going to think that that’s normal.

But I’m glad that I grew up with the sort of people I did. The kids who couldn’t read, the ones who came to school with dirty faces, the ones who slept three in a bed every night, the ones who shared their parents’ bedroom because it was the only available space.

It means that I know that it’s not ‘normal’ to grow up with piano lessons and books – never mind books – literacy.

‘Normal’ clearly is open to interpretation.

But then again, on the radio the other day it said that 15% of children in Britain today grow up in a household where no-one works.

So I reckon that makes my version of normality rather closer to the average than anyone who pays more than a living wage just to send their cosseted little darlings to school.

Management Negotiations

2007-04-12T21:42:00.000+01:00

"Dear Boss,

I need you to give me considerably less work to do because I'm struggling to maintain my very important Top Secret Internet Life."

S'not going to work, is it?

('Specially when I've mentioned many of my current colleagues in a not very flattering light.)

Something's got to give. Sleep, food, or blogging?

Miss Brightside

2007-04-10T19:58:00.000+01:00

(After yesterday’s miserable post about spending the last 40 years of my life brain-damaged/paraplegic/otherwise unable to look after myself ALL ALONE, here are some happy thoughts.)

Good things about being a tragic singleton who rents a room in a shared house at the age of nearly thirty-fucking-two.

Minimises responsibility and time spent on really boring shit like paying bills. Most are included in my rent so other than going through the phone bill every few months (which, ok, is a complete pain in the arse) I never have to think about checking meters or paying bills. And I’m unlikely ever to get a sudden demand for thousands of pounds like Patroclus just because the utility company fucks up. Also - lots of hours saved every year by not being stuck on hold for some incompetent temp.
You can ‘borrow’ milk’n’stuff. Within reason.
Furniture is provided. Useful.
I can afford to live in a not too shitty area in a nice big house with a garden and a fishpond.
In fact, it's a fucking bargain
Someone to talk to (sometimes)

Melancholy (Pseudo) Sunday Night Post

2007-04-09T21:01:00.000+01:00

If I get ill (as opposed to just dropping dead one day), who the fuck is going to look after me?

Fancy Dress Strikes Again (maybe)

2007-04-05T20:21:00.000+01:00

Something that I failed to mention in my recent I-only-pull-in-fancy-dress post is the fact that it doesn’t always work. Not by a long shot. One of the many occasions I have gotten all tarted up without so much as a sniff was this New Year’s Eve.

I Nana Mouskouri (except I couldn’t get any glasses so it was a bit pointless but it did at least give me a chance to air my Margot frock again).

I even managed to talk to some people other than my own friends for a change, but not any cute boys. Specifically, not either of the cute little boy-men who work behind the bar. They intrigue me, these men – because, actually, they’re not young, they’re about my age.

(What are they doing working in a pub at that age? And didn’t I give up sharking after cute bartenders ten years ago?)

Some of (boy) Flatmate’s friends are proper regulars in there, so after closing time on NYE most of them ended up going back to a house party with the staff. Due to extraordinary drunkenness I went home to bed. When Flatmate filled me in the next morning I was torn between thinking damn, missed opportunity and thank fuck I didn’t get talking to either cute bloke while that pissed.

Then last Saturday night in the pub Flatmate was getting a round in. I had just been mugged on my way home and so was fairly merry on all the sympathy drinks plus shock. ‘The barman wants to buy you a drink,’ Flatmate said, so we both went back over and had a chat with cute barman #1. I told him my tale of woe and showed him the nasty graze on my hip from where I’d been dragged along the ground (which also gave me the opportunity to flash my (reasonably) taut stomach at him). This is all a bit hazy as my memory disappears when I’ve had a few.

Sunday morning I was chatting to Flatmate and his girlfriend.

‘That cute barman bought me a drink last night,’ I said excitedly.

‘He likes you’, said Flatmate. He then explained that a couple of months ago his friend Adam gave cute barman a CD with all of our NYE photos on it.

‘He’s probably got pictures of you all over his bedroom wall,’ he added mischieviously.

His girlfriend joined in. ‘You looked really pretty in those pictures,’ she said. I think she may have been Being Nice because in all of the photos I saw I was wearing Rob’s really hideous Matthew Kelly wig.

Anyhow, it looks like I owe cute barman a drink, doesn’t it?

PS – I have mentioned both Adam and Rob before. God, maybe I’ll have to get one of those ‘Cast of Characters’ things.

Who Needs Talent?

2007-04-02T21:11:00.000+01:00

When I was sixteen-and-a-half years old, a 16-year-old girl got her own column in the Sunday Times. Until that point I hadn’t really thought too much about who wrote what - I devoured the lot with an uncritical eye.

But I loathed Emma Forrest straightaway.

Partly, I suppose, it was down to her age. Mind you, I had no hatred of the equally precocious Caitlin Moran. In fact I rather liked her and still do. But mainly I wondered how Emma scored such an incredible break?

(Now, of course, I know that her mother is a writer who has done a lot of work for British television and her dad is president of the British Law Society…strange, really, that such opportunities are never offered to girls whose mothers are canteen cooks. Back them I didn’t even know about the existence of private schools with fees twice what I earned last year, nor could I imagine that someone my own age would be acquainted with the fairly well-connected Nigella Lawson, who would just gift you a Sunday Times writing gig.)

Mainly though, I hated Emma Forrest because her writing was so irredeemably dreadful. Even as a wet-behind-the-ears adolescent I could see that. I still remember her wittering on about the Manic Street Preachers. Jesus. It was bad.

Then I left home and happily she dropped off the radar.

There were still dark days though. Her name would crop up every now and again in a magazine or newspaper and I would think, "How in the name of Jesus is she still working? She must be 22/28/whatever by now and she still can’t write for shit!"

Even the fact that she had gotten really quite fat* didn’t give me any pleasure. Oh, OK, maybe a little bit.

Then I read an article in the Guardian Travel Section that shook me to the core. Emma Forrest and her ‘best friend’ Barbara Ellen had gone on holiday together.

NOOOOO!

My favourite and least favourite writers – best mates? How could that happen?

(The article must have appeared before the Grauniad went on the internets so I can’t link, but I'll surmise.)

Emma and Barbara, best friends (I still can’t think about that), go on holiday together. I can’t remember where, but somewhere laid-back and beachy with sea-front bars serving beer till dawn. Lovely. Except Emma doesn’t drink. (What sort of a cunting journalist, by the way, doesn’t fucking drink?)

Fair enough, not everybody likes boozing. But Emma insists on spending the entire holiday in the apartment, curtains drawn, reading. Barbara wants to go to the pub but doesn’t want to abandon Emma. And Emma stays in during the day too. During one poignant passage Barbara escapes and self-consciously goes for a walk on the beach by herself.

The article was written by both women – she says/she says - as a sort of ‘the perils of going on holiday with your best mate’ piece.

If I could have been arsed I would have written a letter along the lines of:

Dear Miss Ellen,

What a delicious method of exacting revenge on Emma Forrest after she ruined your holiday - juxtaposing your own fabulous prose with her barely-coherent sixth-form shite. Terribly harsh, but well done – that should be the last we hear of her for a while, eh?

PS – you can be my friend instead. I like red wine and going out and indie-rock music - you’ll love me! I’m free this weekend, next weekend, for holidays - anytime really. Call me! Don’t bring the kids, mind.

Anyhow, in the meantime, Emma Forrest has moved to the US (thank fuck) and had three novels published. Novels. She still churns out the occasional magazine article though, giving us the joy of lines such as: "I have always worn make-up to write: red lipstick for journalism, coloured mascara for novels, bronzer for screenplays."

What?

What?

Have you ever seen such gibberish?

I don’t imagine her sales figures are keeping Sophie Kinsella awake at night, but I guess she must have shifted a few copies here and there. Although just how tremendously fucking awful must your reviews have been to have to resort to using quotes from Amazon readers (and Julie Burchill)?

If you’re thinking of reading one of her books (and perversely, I am now), here’s a fabulous Digested Read.

So what lesson have we learned today children? That it doesn’t matter how fucking useless you are at anything as long as Mummy and Daddy’re rich and well-connected You’ll Be Fine.

Woah - hold the front page – Emma Forrest has a blog! It’s not good kids. Really. This woman, may I remind you, has been a professional writer for 15 years. She's almost as inept as GWABFA, who does at least have the defence of amateurism.

*btw she’s not fat any more, I should make that clear. Bulimia, of course. ISSUES ISSUES ISSUES

Regrets - Joe

2007-03-30T17:35:00.000+01:00

I’m a big believer in that old maxim you should only regret the things you haven’t done. That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and every bad experience is a good story. Etc.

But Joe. I’d wipe that one from the slate in the blink of an eye if I could.

We met in Perth, WA. There was a lively community of backpackers in Northville – lots of people working for a bit as well as the passing thorough.

Having recently split up with (wanker but very good-looking) Ex back home, then having had a fling with the (wanker but very good-looking) Ian – I was On Fire. So I thought.

Joe lived in a big house with about eight others which served as an informal party HQ for the assorted British backpackers in town.

The first time we almost copped off was at a Christmas party at his place. We were sitting on the floor, and I guess he must have either tried to kiss me or ask me out, because I remember him having a go at me for blowing him out.

‘You say you’re not interested because I’m younger than you,’ he said, but you haven’t even had the chance to get to know me at all’. I was 23 to his 19. Nothing happened that night, but my interest was piqued.

He was a Londoner, and I knew he was a bit of a bad boy. He’d told me that a couple of his older brothers were in jail and he was pretty relieved to have escaped. He had several tattoos as well. A couple of hideous ones on his biceps, including a British bulldog (which, obviously I gave him a hard time about) and two quite sexy big black ones on his back. He was tall, dark, charismatic and good-looking – I liked him

Shortly afterwards we pulled one another at the backpackers’ nightclub du jour and he came back to my place for some mediocre but not awful sex.

A week later again we met at the same nightclub and went back to his, but were so drunk that we both just fell asleep on his sofa.

But what was actually going on? Was this going somewhere? I don’t mean actually going anywhere, but in backpacker terms, were we, like, seeing one another until one of us left town?

I’d finished my waitressing shift one night and was boring the arse off my (male, Aussie) flatmate about the above. Does he like me? Should I just go round? Yes, he said, probably to shut me up.

I’d been round their house loads of times. His flatmates were all nutcases and it was non-stop party so I thought even if he’s not in I’ll have a bit of a laugh.

But I’d never visited on a weekday evening. I knocked and pushed the door open to the most excruciating moment of my life. Eight people (all residents, no interlopers) looked up at me from the film they were watching. They all stared at me for what seemed like forever.

Except Joe, who avoided my eye. It had taken a millisecond for me to realise that it had been an appalling idea. I suddenly understood the expression I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

Then one of the guys eventually said, ‘Hey, come in, we’re just watching a film,’ and made room for me on the sofa between himself and Joe. He made some conversation, Joe didn’t bother. All the while I was thinking ‘Oh holy fucking fucking fuck. I am just some girl, one amongst many, that Joe has fucked. And I’ve just landed round here like a stalker. I am an idiot.’

After about five minutes I decided to make my exit. Joe came with me. For form’s sake I was relieved – it was blatantly obvious that I’d come round to see him, not to, like, hang out. He walked me home and we had a snog. And that was that.

I’ve done many much more embarrassing things in my time, but that is the one moment that still fills me with skin-crawling horror.

That was that. Until…

A few months later I was in Melbourne and met up with a girl I’d worked with in Perth. We’d known a lot of the same people and Joe’s name came up.

‘The one with the tattoos,’ she said. ‘He’d had those flaming crosses on his back covered up though, hadn’t he?’

Fuuuuuuck.

People who fancy me are all fucking nutcases # 1

2007-03-28T20:16:00.000+01:00

The Scene: Kepler Track - New Zealand.

It’s supposed to be a three-day hike, but on day two myself and the sixty-odd other people sharing the bunkhouse awoke after a chilly night’s sleep to discover we’d been snowed in. (In Summer!)The wardens strongly advised us not to venture out so we were all trapped in the hut for the next twenty-four hours. It was good fun though - the camaraderie was great, I met loads of fellow-travellers, including an English guy called John, and read my way though an enormous pile of ancient National Geographics.

Back on the ground John happened to be staying in the same hostel as me. And he wouldn’t bloody leave me alone. He came and joined me when I was eating, reading, watching TV, nodding with wide-eyed enthusiasm and laughing uproariously at everything I said.

Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I gently discouraged him. When he invited me along to the pub with his friends, I just said no thanks. Your average bloke would give up quietly at this point, but not John. One morning I excused myself from his company, saying that I had to go and hand-wash my sleeping bag.

Finally, it was my last night. It’d only been a few days, but the effort of being nice to John while keeping him at arm’s length was taking its toll. I was in my dorm packing my bag, when he stuck his head through the door and asked me if I fancied a drink. "Sorry," I explained, "I’ve got to get up really early for a bus in the morning". As he turned to go I saw he had two bottles of beer in his hand.

I felt a bit guilty.

A couple of minutes later the two German girls who had also been in the dorm went out, and John burst back into the room. His puppy-dog demeanor had disappeared and his round face was pink with fury.

"I do not appreciate," he spat, "being laughed at by a bunch of giggling girls".

As he ranted on, I figured out that the German girls must have laughed at some point. It wasn’t at him, they’d been absorbed in their own conversation. Mad. I tried to placate him, but he wasn’t having any of it, and went off, still raging.

I'm not wild keen on fancy dress, but...

2007-03-26T21:12:00.000+01:00

…the only two times I have pulled in the past almost-two years I have been wearing fancy dress.

Is this because:

(a) Fancy Dress breaks down normal social barriers so you’re more likely to get chatting to complete strangers when out and about.

(b) I am a troll who only looks remotely passable when heavily disguised.

(c) I am so nondescript that when I’m not in fancy dress no one can actually see me.

I think it's probably (c)

Formative Experiences

2007-03-23T12:00:00.000Z

You’ve got to understand, before I get started, that most Irish men are hideously, grotesquely ugly.

So when you’re fifteen-years old and a wildly popular band’s frontman looks like this it leaves an impression. And again (Steve Wall is the moody-looking one and the fella with the squeezebox rather more representative of Irishmen as a race. Twenty years on and fuck me but he hasn’t lost it at all and good god, those cheekbones’d make any grown woman weep.

I was never a huge fan but they’ve got a few absolute barnstormers in their back catalogue amongst all the jangly, country-tinged indie-pop. They also knocked out a few pretty good videos – very arty and sophisticated (read black-and-white).

One in particular I remember especially well (getting to the point now).

It was set in a boxing ring with Steve playing the boxer. The entire video, therefore, consisted of Steve, in shorts, looking hot, wet, ripped; there was some sponging of Steve’s well-toned torso, pale, pale skin, glistening pecs, spitting of water (which I didn’t like then but now I sort-of, um, appreciate), damp curls, wetness, muscle, sweat, brutality...

So, feeling a bit nostalgic I went on an interwebsearch and managed to dig it up on You Tube.

And you know what? The hot-wet-sponge-action bit lasts about three seconds!

Cheated.

I’m sure there’s a market out there for Extremely Soft Porn for the Timid Spinster. Find Steve Wall. Sit him on a stool in a pair of shorts. Given him a bucket of ice-cold water and a sponge. Press Record.

I’d buy it.

(Mind you, I’ve got a bigger audience than he does these day; perhaps I could enter into negotiations for the real thing. On a temporary basis, like, I’d give him back.)

Help (again)

2007-03-22T20:07:00.000Z

(No, it's not about how to get into some other young feen's trousers. It's very boring. Sorry.)

I need your help.

Due to ever-less-erratic employment of late, I am increasingly in a position to buy stuff. Nice stuff. Fun stuff. Stuff other than Aldi food and the odd bottle of ropey red.

I desperately, desperately need new clothes. I don’t actually own a pair of shoes, and I don’t think my faithful FMBs will take yet another re-heeling. But fuck that, I’m going to buy a computer.

But where to start? I know nothing about technology. This machine I bought off of a dodgy bloke and it doesn’t do anything except word and the interweb – erratically. I can’t listen to music on it or even save pics. Or even open pictures most of the time. Plus I’ve fucked up the screen so the bottom half is blank – it’s like looking through a letterbox.

It needs to be a laptop, because *sigh* I don’t have a room to put a PC in.

So I’ve started looking and – aaaarrrgh!

I’ve been on the Dell and PC World websites and am utterly bewildered by the talk of RAM and gigs and whatever.

Should I just buy an entry-level version, or are they rubbish? Is it worth paying the extra £100 for the next one up? I do know that the next-one-up-from-the-house is a really bad way to order wine – does the same principle apply to computerey things? Help!

Oh, and I need to get a printer as well. I am almost 32 years old, for fuck’s sake, I am sick of having to go to the library every time I need to print something.

Oh yeah, I kind of need to do it sharpish for tax reasons.

Most Rambling Post Ever

2007-03-21T10:57:00.000Z

- or - What I Done On Me Holidays

God, you piss off ‘home’ for a week, and all sorts of shit happens in the blogosphere.

Catching up, I have just purchased a copy of Shaggy Blog Stories.

When I first heard about it I thought: hmmm, nice idea but undoubtedly it will end up stuffed with terrible shite from the ‘A-listers’ (doesn’t that very term make you vom?) and sure enough, there they all are…Little Red You Set My Teeth On Edge, My Boyfriend is a Twat Actually It’s Just a Load Of Old Drivel Really, Girl Who Can’t Write for Shit, and Petite Anglais (I don’t hate PA, but it’s not great, is it?).

But it also features Dr Patroclus and Mr Blue Cat. Both of whom are probably technically A-list what with being terribly popular and stuff, but they both have brilliant blogs so I’ll let them away with it.

Providing the minor-sleb angle necessary to these things are Messers Andrew Collins and Richard Herring, both of whom I rather like. Mr Collins, in case you don’t know, is a multi-platform media-type, although I do wish he’d stop fannying around and concentrate on what he does best which is being a radio presenter. Richard Herring apparently used to be on the telly, but I mainly know him from when he comes on Andrew Collins’s radio show and makes jokes that are slightly inappropriate for mid-afternoon. I'm not so keen on his blog but I'm sure he's not losing any sleep over that.

Best of all though, Shaggy Blog Stories also stars Betty and Geoff. Who are not only two of my favourite bloggers, but they're also the only husband and wife blogging team in the world. Well, the only one that matters. And, unless they’ve both been operating a very clever cover-up over the past few years, neither of them are involved in the meeja in any way, shape or form. Now they’re in a book so congrats to them both, and I don't mind admitting I find it all quite exciting.

When I am an old lady living on the streets because I have no home or pension or children to care for me, Shaggy Blog Stories will be my ‘thing’. I will accost random strangers on the bus, waving the book in their faces, saying, "I know these people you know! Not in Real Life, but I do know them!"

Not everyone's a fan, of course. In fact Bob has been so incensed that he has flounced off Yet Frigging Again. This unfortunately has somewhat overshadowed the song he has written about ME! Or rather ‘Me’, but still…

Anyhow, you all know all of that already. So what have I been up to in the blog-free universe?

Mainly wincing. But also this…

I wandered into HMV and they were, to my immense astonishment, playing ‘Kick Me Again, Jesus’, the first, rough-as-fuck but filled-with-the-promise-of-everything-that-was-to-come single from legendary Irish nearly-men A House. Most odd.

Then it segued into ‘Punk Rock Girl’ by the Dead Milkmen.

Fuck me! What is going on? Someone, clearly, has gotten hold of one of my taped-off-the-radio cassettes from 1990 and is following me around. How? Why? What other explanation could there be?

I asked the till-jockey.

The poor lad. If you attempted to base a fictional record-store geek on this guy you’d be accused of creating a cartoon character. He had the lot. Late teens, fat, pasty, acne, milk-bottle glasses, greasy wiry hair and a snowstorm of dandruff on his black uniform t-shirt. Also, god love him, so lacking in basic social skills and confidence that a simple question from an ancient female customer (what IS this album?) had him cowering like a cornered animal, stammering and not looking me in the eye.

Turns out it’s Fanning's Fab Fifty – Ah, the soundtrack to my teens. I would have bought it but it was £22 (what am I, made of money?) and I’m not that sentimental. And it’s got U-fucking-2 on it.

Oh yes, and a demented old man on the bus who smelt like an umbrella that had been folded away while still wet, told me I was the double of Greer Garson. I’m not.

Right then.

SHUT UP SPINNY.

Spurious Reasons for Dumping Blokes

2007-03-15T19:31:00.000Z

Some examples:

2004 - I didn't like the way he walked. It just...annoyed me. It's impossible to describe how he walked - but it was just slightly spoddy.

2002 - He told me that that evening he had eaten tinned potatoes.

1993 - I just couldn't be arsed

Drowned in Sound Pimps Spinsterella!

2007-03-14T07:25:00.000Z

And not even one of my tragic indie witterings either.

Observer Woman makes me spit too

2007-03-12T20:25:00.000Z

Last month I was so infuriated by something from the Observer Woman that I wrote them a letter. Well, an email. Not something I am in the habit of doing, let me assure you, but I was baying for blood.

If you’re not familiar with OW, it comes as a freebie once a month with the Observer newspaper. It fails miserably in its attempt to be an intelligent alternative to the glossies, fluctuating between the bonkers ("We know it’s common but we but love the gays") and the boring (every single article longer than 500 words ever). But usually it doesn’t bother me that much. It’s not any worse than the average monthly title, and at least you don’t have to pay three frigging quid for it.

So what roused my ire to such an extent?

This, from the beauty problem pages:

I cannot find an inexpensive body cream (under £4) that is not tested on animals. Are you aware of any? The Body Shop ones are about £8. (Luciana Brett)

Excellent question Luciana, and one I’d like to hear an answer to myself. Let’s see what ‘Beauty Queen’ Kathy Phillips has to say then, shall we?

Animal testing on finished cosmetic products has already been banned since 2004. By 2009 it will also be illegal to test any cosmetic ingredients or formulations on animals in EU member countries, or to sell cosmetics that were tested on animals. So most cosmetics are in the clear, it's just that some use it as a marketing ploy more than others. (Excellent – a straightforward answer. But hang on, she’s not finished yet.) But these are some good natural brands. Neal's Yard have a Chamomile and Aloe Vera Body Lotion 100ml, £7, and almond oil for £5; Green People have Body Comfort - 200ml for £10.99 - and Liz Earle, has Nourishing Botanical Body Cream at £5 for 50ml. (Nice bit of blatant product placement there. Well, it is a women’s glossy – they have to pay for it somehow. Now for the final message - some words of reassurance about not having to spend a lot in order to look good? Er..) However, I am upset that you not prepared to spend money either on your principles or, worse still, on yourself. You only have one body for life and you should enjoy looking after it. A good body lotion will last you longer than most cheap clothing, which looks terrible after a few washes:A £4 cream? Is that really how little you value yourself?

What?

For a start, Kathy Phillips looks like Suzi Quatro with bad highlights after a really rough night. I would not take beauty advice from this woman.

It’s not the blatant product-placement that pissed me off either (there were links to all products mentioned, surprise, surprise). We’re not stupid – we all know that magazines are advertiser-driven and I’m neither offended nor surprised that a page of advertising is (thinly, ineffectively) disguised as editorial.

I was, however, slightly taken aback that Ms Phillips, despite having a huge plug for her cosmetics company at the bottom of the page also felt it necessary to recommend some of her own products in answer to the very first question. Some subtlety, please.

What really had me spitting feathers was her attitude to the person who took the bother to write in.

I am upset that you not prepared to spend money either on your principles or, worse still, on yourself.

FUCK OFF.

A £4 cream? Is that really how little you value yourself?

I really cannot lucidly express how argry these two short sentences made me.

As I’ve said before – aren’t newspapers and magazines supposed to reflect their readership? Surely Luciana Brett and I aren’t the only Guardian/Observer readers in the country who think that £4 is quite a lot to spend of a bit of moisturiser, actually? At least the property pages don’t actually say, "You can’t afford this, can you, you fucking peasant?"

Anyhow – I can stop getting all irate about the Observer Woman because there is a whole blog about it here. The blogger reads OW so we don’t have to, picks out the best (most infuriating) bits and rips them to shreds for our enjoyment. Yay.

(Thanks to young Billy for the directions)

High Fidelity Moment

2007-03-10T21:02:00.000Z

In the rare moments over the past few days when I’ve not been daydreaming about having sex with That Bloke From Work, or, actually, mainly just contemplating reaching out and gently touching the veins on his arms, I’ve been thinking about having sex with Grant Lee Phillips. Fleshing it out a little bit further, I was thinking that maybe if Grant Lee Phillips had a desperately unhappy relationship with, say, me, he’d write another song as good as Fuzzy?

He just gives such good moans and ‘oh’s, does Grant-Lee, that I’m even prepared to forgive him that irritating hyphen he’s adopted of late.

Then, slowly, something dawned on me.

Given my penchant for dating failed creative types, back when I used to date, there is a distinct possibility that there are in fact songs, prose, and possibly, oh dear fucking god, poetry, in existence that are in some small way, about me.

Spinsterella's Nationality Notches (Alphabetical)

2007-03-08T08:18:00.000Z

American
Australian
English
Irish
Israeli
Scottish

A Spinster Asks for Help

2007-03-06T20:03:00.000Z

How do you all do it? Pull, that is.

I’m talking about in a work environment. How do get a bloke you only speak to occasionally (always, always work-related) to, you know, think of you in a different light? (Dimmed, with far fewer clothes and limbs akimbo.)

Um. Just in case I ever might possibly find your advice useful.

Some more background:

- We’re on a business park – there ain’t no culture of everyone going to the pub after work. ‘Accidentally’ leaving the pub at the same time as a half-cut Him would normally be my technique but that isn’t an option here.
- He’s kinda quiet.
- I've had my eye on him for ages
- I don’t even know if he’s single. (I know, I could just ask the people in my department about this one, but then they’d know I liked him.)
- I’m only a temp so I don’t have the luxury of time – I need your advice now.

I thank you in advance.

wrong, wrong, wrong...

2007-03-04T19:06:00.000Z

I had a bit of a mini crush on this bloke I worked with sometimes a couple of years ago. When he was leaving the company some terribly officious woman I’d never seen before in my life came round to our department with his leaving card and collection envelope. He was well liked and everyone dug deep.

Officious Woman came round after he’d left to tell us what we’d bought him.

“A really cool t-shirt, some little drums and percussion stuff...”

“Drums?” I interrupted.

“Yes, he’s really into drumming.”

“You don’t mean, like, bongos?”

Apparently so.

I went right off him instantly. Bongos? For fuck’s sake.

Dear Guardian, please stop commissing this drivel.

2007-02-28T10:27:00.000Z

Kirsty Gunn is not working on her next novel. She is not a columnist for the London Review of Books. She has chosen instead to disappear from the professional world and embrace a domestic life just as rich and inspiring…

‘Disappear from the professional world’? Apart, that is, from writing reviews and short stories, having a book published, and churning out 1,500 words of incoherent bilge for a national newspaper.

Kirsty set out her credentials straight away.

"I am a woman who writes and reads, who was educated to compete and be successful – academically, financially and politically – in the world. And I am also a woman who has chosen to have children and look after those children, not pass them on to a full time nanny or institution.."

Hold your horses there Kirsty - ‘nanny’ or ‘institution’?

Could your tone be any more accusatory? Is there any word in the English language so cold, so forbidding, so suggestive of abuse and lack of love as ‘institution’? Or a phrase so suggestive of indolence and indifference as ‘full-time nanny’?

What about the middle ground? Childminders, nursery schools, grannies…that’s where all my friends’ young children happily spend their days while their parents are at work. What about evenings, weekends, holidays?

Every young mother I know has gone back to work after having children. Some full, some part-time. Some after a few months, some after a year off. Not one of them has agonised about the decision (and given new mums’ propensity to talk about everything and anything baby-related I imagine they’d mention it if they did).

When I was a child, my mother worked, most of my friends’ mothers didn’t. Simple logistics are evident - women with three or fewer children worked, women with four or more didn’t.

No big deal either way.

I really do not want to read endless interminable articles about women giving up their careers becasue that's the only way to be a Proper Mother. Especially when they haven’t actually given up their careers at all.

Kirsty concludes by confirming that she is not a lead columnist for the London Review of Books, as if that is the pinnacle of, I don’t know, career, ambition, working life.

Would the Guardian run an interview with a shelf-stacker as Asda, triumphant that she had given up the chance to work on the tills For Her Children?

(Circulation of the LRB? 43, 469. About the same as the local rag in, say, Plymouth.)

Trophy Cabinet

2007-02-26T17:29:00.000Z

Dan was a friend of the Psycho (first serious boyfriend and virginity-poacher), and had the good fortune (in 1992) to resemble a better-looking Chris Cornell.

But he was, as the Psycho put it, a dirty skanking bastard. It was a point of great irritation to P that Dan maintained a flawless olive complexion despite remaining untroubled by soap-and-water.

I saw for myself one sunny day at a festival.

P and I ran into Dan in the campsite. Dan didn’t have a ticket for the actual festival; he and his friends had spent four hours on a bus in order to spend three days getting pissed in a field. Dan produced a used sanitary towel from the breast pocket of his checked shirt.

"Got this off a girl last night" he said, then attempted to stick it to P’s face.

Do all men keep trophies? If any of you can out-do a used sanitary towel I’ll be most impressed.

Update: More trophies from the men of the blogosphere.

We have:

1. Jewellery
2. Some dirty pictures and videos
3. Er, a house.

When I grow up...

2007-02-19T18:01:00.000Z

...I'm gonna get me some shoulder shoes.

Shoulder Shoes?

Shoes which are completely impractical for walking. Designed to attract the opposite sex with a view to resting them on their shoulders during the evening.

Thank you to Nicole-Kidman-lookalike Flirtysomething for that. (She’s single too. However, unlike me, she actually goes out and talks to men occasionally.)

Fuck off Panface

2007-02-16T19:19:00.000Z

David Cameron is planning to drag the country back into the 19th century by bring back the Married Couples’ Tax Break.

Just as well nobody's going to vote for them, eh?

Meme

2007-02-15T20:22:00.000Z

Nicked from Tim - do join in.

Seven things I have wanted to be:

1. Another girl in Battle of the Planets (aged 5)
2. Artist (aged 6)
3. Documentary maker (aged 14)
4. Lawyer (aged 15)
…. great yawning chasm of 15 years with no fucking idea
5. *******

(Sorry, can’t stretch to 7)

Seven Things I Have Been

1. Waitress
2. Bartender
3. Dishwasher
4. Factory Worker
5. Games attendent here
6. Inventory Controller
7. *******

Serious Fuck-off Academic Ninjas

2007-02-13T20:02:00.000Z

I have long been a fan of Ben Goldacre’s scribblings in the Guardian. Particularly when he’s in full Gillian McKeith-baiting flow. His critiques of that hideous shrieking witch (and various other deserving targets) are suffused with a blackly comic fury (a style of writing I’m quite partial to which is why I'm usually skulking round Betty, lc, Surly etc) .

In case you missed it, after mailing a few modest cheques to some dubious US institutes of learning, his dead cat is now just as qualified as Ms McKeith to be dispensing nutritional advice to the nation’s hopeless fat proles.

Dr Goldacre is also pretty good at taking complex scientific ideas and making them comprehensible to half-witted amadans like me who have read Ulysses but can’t wire a plug/understand basic science/count.

I like that his by-line pic is of Frankenstein’s Monster (I don’t like by-line pics), and that he doesn’t use his title for his journalistic ramblings.

I’d pictured a small, pasty-faced, squeaky-voiced (I’ve heard him on the radio), socially inept academic. But look...

He’s actually not bad-looking at all. He’s got curls. He’s thirty-two. (He’s possibly ginger but I’m Irish, I don’t care.) He’s going straight onto The List.

Bit smug, mind.

Perhaps it's catching...

2007-02-12T21:09:00.000Z

There appears to have been an outbreak of shagging amongst my fellow single bloggers.

Woo!

And also:

Fuckers!

(And no, I haven’t attached the wrong Gary post. Scroll down. For some reason he decided to announce that he’s had a bit of post-relationship-breakdown hot Thai lady-action by going on about his laundry for 1,500 words first. Blogs are no places for decorum and respect. They are for obnoxious rants, drunken ramblings and cat photos.)

In the increasingly unlikely event that I ever get to experience any sexual activity again before I die, you can be damn fucking sure that you’re going to hear all about it right here. In detail. IN CAPITALS. WITH PICS.

To me it was dilution

2007-02-11T17:32:00.000Z

It passed without much comment here, but over the water people were going a bit apeshit a while ago over a snidey comment made by Democrat senator Barbara Boxer to Condoleeza Rice.

Mrs Boxer remarked that Condi wasn’t making any sort of personal sacrifice over Iraq - this was interpreted as ‘What do you know about anything, you don’t have any kids’.

Overblown storm in a teacup, but it’s given me a nice introduction to what I wanted to talk about today
.
The pernicious, idiotic, but widely held assumption that you cannot understand/experience/appreciate love unless you have children.

See also the oft-parrotted: ‘I was so selfish until I had children.’

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I hate the notion that having children makes women ‘better’ in some sort of indefinable way. And that women who don’t have children are regarded as not altogether complete. Older women who haven’t had children are always asked in interviews if they regretted it. I’ve yet to see a seventy-odd Grande Dame Of Something-or-other answer with ‘fuck away off’, but I’m sure it’ll happen before too long.

Real Life/ Spinsterella Crossover Good News

2007-02-06T17:40:00.000Z

My little sister's getting married!

And I'm going to be bridesmaid!

Yaaaaayyyyy!

(I realise that I shall probably live to regret this excitement. Fuck, what if she makes me wear a puffy-sleeved peach puffball knee-length frock with black librarian shoes ?)

Hello!

2007-02-02T20:28:00.000Z

I've kind of lost me auld blogging mojo at the minute.

Not properly - I'm just busy-busy-busy with boring Real Life shit.

Back soon.

Oh - yeah - I watched Cat On A Hot Tin Roof on the telly the other day. Fuck me, six-and-a-half seconds of Paul Newman with his shirt off was almost worth all the shouting.

Update: I have been working all weekend (on-and-off) and I've just realised that I seem to have more work to do than I did 24 hours ago and it's nearly bedtime on Sunday night which means that Monday Morning is very soon. How is this possible? I know this is not interesting, but this is why I am not blogging right this minute. Perhaps I've forgotten how to count. I only need to be able to count to 26 - how can I have gotten that so wrong? Maybe I've got a long-incubating version of Mad Human Disease. God.

Moan moan moan

2007-01-29T10:01:00.000Z

I am going to talk about period pain here. You may prefer to hear about Patroclus’s extraordinary orgasms.

Not yer run-of-the-mill period pain, easily sorted out with a hot-water bottle and a couple of disprin. This is what it’s like.

1. Lower abdomen pain. I picture my innards as being wrung tight like a damp washcloth. There’s an ever-present dull ache, but occasionally this is bolstered by a stabbing, shocking pain. If it happens at home, I lie face down on my bed in the dark, pillow under my stomach. At work, I just have to grip my desk, feeling myself turn white, or try and escape to the bathrooms where I can double over without anybody freaking out.

2. Lower back pain. Unshakeable, and impossible to find a comfortable position, even lying down. Standing in the cold corridor with your back pressed into the cool of the wall offers momentary relief, although your work colleagues will think you are being a bit strange.

3. Nausea. Low-level, but also constant. The smell of cooking, even something as innocuous as a workmate across the way having some toast, makes it worse. Happily, like travel sickness, eating makes you feel slightly better.

4. All-over body ache. Like you’d done an energetic work-out the day before, but without the endorphins. Add in a fuzzy headache and general lethargy. I’ve never had flu, but I imagine that I already know what it feels like.

5. Hot flushes and cold sweats.

(If you accidentally co-ordinate Day 1 with a minor hangover and having actually done a too-hard gym class the day before, really, you’ll wish you’d never been born.)

It’s not always this bad, and it’s clearly stress-related. When I left my stressful old job a few years ago to go travelling ALL symptoms disappeared immediately. Unfortunately spending the rest of my life on a beach in Thailand isn’t really feasible. But it is getting worse as I get older.

Your advice is welcome but I am not going on the pill, OK?.

Spinny's Ill-Informed Guide To Taking Drugs

2007-01-26T09:04:00.000Z

Hyperventilation – first tried in 1988

You crouch down and take 10 really deep breaths. Holding the last breath in, stand up against the wall and get a friend to pump you hard on the chest. You pass out briefly, fall over, and are usually giggling when you come round.

Side effects – when our teachers found out they went mental and told us we could have died.

Alcohol – 1989

Vodka’n’coke it was in those days. Mixed up in my bedroom in a big jug borrowed from the kitchen (not noticed – as previously noted there wasn’t much cooking done in the Spinny Homestead) then poured back into Coke cans. Then we’d go to the disco already pissed.

Side-effects – You never grow out of it. Alcohol, I mean. I don’t drink coke these days, not even with a triple vodka in it. Filthy stuff.

Tippex Thinner – 1989

Forget about your glue and your aerosols – Tippex Thinner is top of the Solvent League. Gives you a bit of a whoosh and a giggle and it’s cheap and legal (to buy).

Side effects – Wears a suspicious bloody great hole in the sleeve of your school jumper.

Poppers – 1994

Tippex Thinner for Grown-ups

Side Effects – If you accidentally spill some on your hands it’s a really bad idea to think I can’t waste any and to stick your whole face in your hands. You’ll be a bit dizzy.

Cannabis – 1992

Growing up with the accepted wisdom that drugs are bad/wild/crazy I expected so much from my first joint that I was inevitably disappointed. I later discovered that you need a bit more than a few brief tokes to feel the effects. I smoked irregularly, more off than on, through the rest of my teens and early twenties. The fact that I can’t skin up to save my life explains why it never became a habit.

Side Effects – Massive toast habit.

Ecstasy – 1993

I tried it a handful of times. I was pretty wary – it’s just one pill, you can’t really control the dose, I didn’t even like dance music. But nothing happened so I started thinking that perhaps I was immune. Then, a few years later, on a night out in Perth, I discovered that I wasn’t. At one point a bouncer asked me if I was OK. Why wouldn’t I be? I picked you up off the bathroom floor twenty minutes ago. I got home at 6am and spent the next 6 hours throwing up bile.

Side effects – Chewing the inside of your mouth to shreds.

Diet Pills (Speed) – 1999

Freely available from the pharmacies of Ko Pha Ngang back then. I wasn’t going to stay for the Full Moon Party – such a backpacker cliché. Turned out to be one of the best nights of my life.

Side Effects – Um, none, really.

Sang Thip - 1999

I once got up in the middle of the night and went into the sea wearing only a blanket and my knickers. I’ve never behaved that oddly when on proper drugs.

Side effects – Don’t tell me that there’s nothing stronger than alcohol in it.

Coke – 1996

The last time I had any coke was in 2001, and I immediately fell asleep (I’d already had a few mid-afternoon Kronies and spliffs). I’ve only ever taken coke a few times over the years and have had miniscule amounts, so I’m not really qualified to comment…

Side-effects…however, you can always spot someone who’s just had a line a mile off as they’re always talking absolute bollocks.

Caffeine – 1986

I don’t drink much coffee – I get jittery (in a really nice way) after three – but I am really narky if I don’t get my required cup or two mid morning. That’s addiction. Black as hell, strong as death, bitter as disappointment, if you're putting the kettle on.

Side effects - none

Legal Highs – 2006

Note – not ‘herbal’ highs (tried them – don’t work). These ones are being marketed as a safe alternative to the likes of ecstasy and yes they do actually work. Controlled dose, reliable and predictable effects, and you don’t have to buy them off some uber-dodgy chav-type.

Side effects – kills your appetite for booze. Slightly tragic.

Drugs I haven’t tried

I somehow missed out on acid and mushrooms when I was having my misspent youth and always wanted to try them. However a post by Surly a while ago scared the bejaysus out of me so perhaps not.

Heroin – probably wouldn’t but my sister has smoked it once out of curiosity. "It’s what you expected your first spliff to be like," she said.

(For the record, I don’t do anything illicit these days except have a go on a spliff on the increasingly rare occasions I’m in the vicinity. (However if I was fabulously rich I'd probably have coke on my cornflakes like Noel Gallagher used to, just because I could.))

If Spinsterella’s real, then who the fuck am I?

2007-01-21T21:54:00.000Z

(Everybody’s talking about blogging personas. I’m copying. It’s what blogging’s all about, isn’t it?)

It was easy to begin with.

This would be a themed blog. It would consist of (1) stories about my exes, (2) stories about my current adventures (misplaced optimism, eh?), and (3) ruminations and rants on Being Single In Today’s Society. It would be completely anonymous. (I also had an ambitious plan to reclaim the word ‘spinster’ from it’s current derogatory status. I haven't quite succeeded yet.)

Back then I also had a 'normal' blog for talking about what I had for my tea and what I was watching on the telly. But I killed it off ages ago because it was rubbish.

Since then I’ve veered off course somewhat and Real Life Me is increasingly breaking out (ooh, it’s just like The Fly!). From this blog, and my comments on others, you can gather a pretty accurate idea of the books I read and the music I like, where I come from and what I (approximately) look like.

I have also leaped over the fourth wall and met some bloggers in Real Life. Patroclus and LC in a semi-planned manner (we happened to be going to the same gig) and Loganoc by freaky coincidence.

I’ve thought about setting up another blog for non-spinster stuff. I do have opinions on things other than Not Having A Boyfriend and would quite like to blether on about them too. I often think that it’d be nice to have a diary-style blog.

Another reason is that I sometimes find the hoops you have to jump through to retain anonymity (never mentioning work, being careful about real-time events etc) frustrating.

But how to do it? Just have it as an annex of this one – here’s my normal-life blog? But then I still wouldn’t be able to give any real-life details.

Start afresh; far, far away from here? But I’d miss the camaraderie of Spinny’s blog-chums.

I could be cunning - set up a new blog, gatecrash this corner, but keep it a secret….then I could have conversations with myself too! But I’m not post-modern enough for all that, and as I have penchant for combining blogging with red-wine consumption I’d be rumbled pretty quickly.

Anyhow, back to the point – how much of Spinny is Real Life Me? Well, I really am a 30-something spinster – it’s not like I’m a married 50-year-old welder from Gateshead called Barry. I like to think that Spinny is an exaggerated version of just one aspect of my personality.

But there’s probably more of her in me, and of me in her, than I’d like to admit.

Liars, Lunatics and Lush old pissheads

2007-01-18T16:56:00.000Z

And so to That London for reasons I can’t tell you about because it’s against my Strict Editorial Policy (but let me just drop the broad hint that it wasn’t quite this bad, and at least I managed to show up on the right day).

While in that neck of the woods I met up with West London's Most Eligible Bachelor and we ate uncomplicated carbs, drank booze and set the world to rights. Which mainly involved tales of backpacking derring-do, a ‘who’s got the maddest family’ competition, and some very important discussion of where the blogging persona ends and the real person begins.

We also established that I don’t really want a boyfriend so I should stop bloody moaning.

Right.

OK.

(What’m I s’posed to blog about then?)

Intimations of Mortality (well, of Getting A Bit Older)

2007-01-14T14:37:00.000Z

I’ve been listening to loads of Mercury Rev recently. Checking the tracklisting of Deserter Songs, the release date caught my eye.

1998.

That can’t be right, I thought. 1998? That’s eight, maybe nine years ago. Longer even than the eternity between finishing primary school and getting your A-level results.

So many things have changed since then. I’ve travelled the world twice, I’ve had several different jobs and I’ve lived in a fair few different towns. I’ve watched friends get married and have babies. I bought a car and startled my closest friends when I joined a gym. I passed that invisible but inevitable point where you take over from your parent as the adult in the family.

1998 is another country.

The last time I had a proper boyfriend was in 1998.

2007-01-11T19:05:00.000Z

Jonathan Donahue is just my type: tall, skinny and odd-looking.

But the last time I saw Mercury Rev live, closer to the stage than I’d before, I saw that he’s not that skinny after all. In fact he’s lean, toned and muscular (and oh yes, a bit sinewy), with a fantastic arse.

He was wearing a white shirt, a waistcoat, and proper formal trousers, which, it seems, do a much better job of enhancing the male form than dull old denim.

A few weeks later I saw Ed Harcourt, who was dressed in an identical rig-out. Young Ed’s a bit more conventionally good-looking, but I’d never thought of him in *that* way until I realised that he also appears to have a stonkingly hot body.

(Golly gosh, it was never like this in my day. We had Carter and Neds and the twig-like Mark Gardner (and if you don't recognise those names you've had a lucky escape, believe me).)

How strange. Generally I like stubbled scruffbags in tatty old jeans and white t-shirts (just fitted enough so you can tell that they have no body fat whatsoever). But it looks like proper trousers and shirts and stuff is the way forward.

Hmmm.

Although…

If I saw a lad walking down the street dressed like that, I would immediately assume he was an insufferably pretentious twat. Or, worse, that he was trying to emulate R*ss*ll Br*nd.

Maybe not then.

For Annie

2007-01-09T13:43:00.000Z

Everyone's talking about blow-jobs

I left some broad hints over at Annie’s place ages ago but didn’t show my hand (I can’t talk about blow-jobs on the internet!). But fuck it, it’s January and no-one’s around. So here, dredged from the depths of my memory, is:

Spinsterella’s Guide to Giving a Fantastic Blow Job

1. Enjoy it. If you’re only going down under duress you haven’t got a hope. Even a ‘right, I’m going to do a decent job here’ attitude will not give best results. Gritted teeth, even metaphorically, won't work.

2. Put cock in mouth. Try to maintain some semblance of rhythm. This will get you to the very basic levels of ‘pathetic gratitude’.

3. Here’s where it gets complicated. Men are all different (really) and they all like different things. So, for example, while some men like being bitten very hard, this is not a technique you should try just out of the blue. Watch his reactions, and vary what you’re doing accordingly.

4. Reactions? The change in his breathing, the tension in his stomach muscles, the pulsing in his veins. (Now do you see why I like sinewy, veiny men?)

5. Now for the Masterclass. When he is about to come, slow right down to stop him from actually ejaculating. Then go back to whatever it was you were doing to get him to that point - then do it again. Once you get it right, you can keep him at the point of almost coming indefinitely. Then, when you finally do let the poor bastard actually come…. It will probably take him quite some time to regain the power of speech, but when he does, expect to hear the phrase ‘best orgasm ever’.

Yet another wedding.

2007-01-07T11:55:00.000Z

Have you ever received a text message on your landline? It’s a bit disorientating.

A strange voice said, ‘this is a message from phone number 077…’ and I was scrabbling around for a pen, assuming it would be for Flatmate. As I was scribbling down the last few digits a different voice was well into the message before I cottoned on it was for me.

‘…apparently Sinead got married the other day on Ellis Island.’

(Sinead is one of my oldest, but no longer closest friends, as I have mentioned before.)

Ellis Island, is that one of the Blaskets? No, hang on, it’s in New York. Fuck! Details haven’t been forthcoming from the bride as of yet – but the rumours are that they had only three guests, two of her siblings and his best mate.

I need to explain a little bit more about Sinead’s background. She is one of eight children with an extraordinarily strict and religious mother. (Much more strict even than one of our other friends whose Mum goes to Mass every day and gives out Holy Communion and says the Rosary ever night.)

While the rest of us started going to the junior disco at the age of 12, Sinead wasn’t allowed. In fact she didn’t get out until she was about 16. One night she got absolutely trolleyed on Diamond White and had to be carried out of the club by the DJ. I was driving, and he insisted I should take her home. "I can’t take her home," I said, "her Ma’s an evil witch!" Unfortunately the ‘evil witch’ comment is all that Sinead can remember about the whole night before she passed out again in the back of my parents’ car.

She was 29 before she managed to confess to her mother that she had stopped going to Mass regularly. You get the picture. So to deny mother her moment of glory in the local church…

Good for her.

Another Wedding

2007-01-04T10:04:00.000Z

Is there a more dispiriting experience for the single woman?

First you have to get there. One of the few things that I suspect makes the horrors of having a relationship worth all the effort is that you can share driving and navigating duties. Trying to read a map, follow directions and all the while trying not to crash is pretty fucking difficult. Oh, for someone to sit in the passenger seat and say, ‘next left’. Especially when you’re going all the way to North Fucking Yorkshire.

Then there is the arriving alone. You get there an hour early and have to go and sit in the nearest pub by yourself until some people in suits and frocks come in and even though you don’t know them you attach yourself to them limpet-like just so you don’t have to walk into the church alone.

Then there’s the service, which let’s face it, is always piss boring.

There’s also the, ‘Have you got a boyfriend yet?’ All of the Bride’s friend’s from Up North are long-term attached good-hearted bims who don’t seem to realise that being single is not some form of abnormality.

And on to the hotel and the booze and the food. With the best of intentions, the Bride had decided to split everyone up; so my three old friends and I were all put at different tables. Except she didn’t split the couples up – they all got to hold onto their husbands/boyfriends. It won’t be so bad, I thought, assuming she’d put all of the single people together. I’d met a couple of the Bride’s single friends before – it might be good fun on the spinster table.

But I didn’t recognise a single name on the seating plan. I was sat with three couples I didn’t know and had to listen to them talk about babies and rolexes and property fucking prices before I was reunited with my real friends once the disco started.

But it was after bed-time that everything really went tits-up.

A couple of months ago I emailed the Bride to see if any of her single friends wanted to share a room. I’m really not wild keen on sharing beds, but £60 for a night in a hotel is not something I can afford. She emailed back:

"You can share with Marie. She’s staying at Posh Hotel where we’re having the reception so it’ll be £75 each."

Right. Not quite what I was after. But I figured that at least I wouldn't have to worry about getting a cab at the end of the night. Plus I was kind of intrigued as to what a £150 hotel room looks like, having only ever stayed in budget places before.

Not that impressive. It wasn’t very big, the bed was only a queen size, and the toiletries were the same as you get in a Travelodge. It did have bathrobes though – woo!

With a very long drive ahead of me the next morning I headed for bed around one, leaving the hardcore to continue partying in the hotel bar. I awoke when Marie came to bed at 4:30. She wasn’t alone.

"David is going to crash in here. We’ll top-to-tail, we’re just friends, it’ll be fine. You don’t mind, do you?"

Mind? Of course I fucking mind. The bed is barely big enough for two (especially given that Marie’s not exactly svelte), you are having a fucking laugh if you think three of us’ll fit.

"No, I don’t mind," I said.

They settled in and I went back to sleep. Until I was awoken an hour later by David’s snoring. I tried fruitlessly to get back to sleep, then eventually leaned over Marie and shoved him a few times to no avail. But I must have disturbed Marie, as she shifted in her sleep a few times until she was sleeping diagonally, leaving barely enough space for a small dog to lie in.

I got up and went for a wander through the deserted hotel, furious. I wanted to hit the road, but it had only been a few hours since I’d stopped drinking. I desperately wanted to go home, but not to die half-asleep-still-half-pissed on the M1. There were a couple of lovely big comfortable sofas in the still toasty-warm reception room. I lay down but soon realised that I wouldn’t be able to sleep without a cover.

I went back to the room. I gave Marie’s interloping leg a final half-hearted push, and this time it worked. She rolled over leaving some room – a narrow space, but just big enough for me to stretch out. Except she had taken all of the bedding with her and no amount of tugging would release her grip. I got up again in anger and frustration, resolved to take my chances with a four-hour-drive with gallons of champagne and wine and vodka still swilling round my bloodstream.

I was mentally composing the text I would send to a mutual friend saying; "Give my number to Marie, she can fucking call me if she expects me to pay for the room."

But then I spotted that the top cover, a thick, old-fashioned quilt, was wedged between Marie and David. I yanked it out (neither of them moved a muscle) and bedded down on the ground.

I thought that David might have offered some money towards the room in the morning. He didn’t.

So I paid £75 to sleep on the fucking floor.

It's 2007. Woo.

2007-01-02T11:04:00.000Z

To think that this time last year I did a Spinster Round-up of 2005 bemoaning the fact that it was a bit barren. Now I realise that 2005 was a riot of dating and fucking in comparison with 2006. I cheer myself up with the thought that at least it can’t get any worse in 2007 unless I enter a nunnery.

I never do New Year Resolutions as they are completely and utterly stupid. However there are a couple of things I am going to attempt to achieve in 2007.

1. I am doing the Moonwalk. Which, if you don’t know, is the London Marathon (walked, not run, I'm not mental) at midnight, in May. What was I thinking? Apparently you have to train and stuff. Jesus.

2. I'll be moving. Maybe. I can’t really commit to anything yet but I’ve been in the same house for three years now and I’m getting itchy feet.

Unlike many other bloggers, I am not planning to write a book because I have no imagination.

I am not planning to plan to get laid before the year is out, because that would be tempting fate.

I am not giving up booze for January because that’s the quickest route to misery I’ve ever heard of.

That’s it.

Happy New Year!

More bollocks in the papers.

2006-12-30T22:44:00.000Z

This Life is back for a one-off special, causing lots of tv critics to wet themselves in excitement. In the Guardian yesterday it prompted a piece by a Vicky Frost about female characters on the telly.

(This Life, if you don’t know, was a drama back in the ‘90s about a bunch of twenty-something lawyers living in a shared house in London. It was a huge success and garnered tonnes of critical acclaim, particularly for Daniela Nardini who played Anna.

I wasn’t a regular viewer (it clashed with my Thursday and Saturday night pub job) but I saw enough episodes to get a flavour and to enjoy it.)

Vicky Frost’s premise is that Anna was a fantastic character, and we haven’t seen anything like her since the programme finished ten years ago. Well, no, Vicky. Wrong on both counts.

OK, wrong up-to-a-point on the first one. This Life was good fun, but with the benefit of hindsight, was Anna really that great? Her characteristics: Scottish, strong, promiscuous, drink problem, hard-nosed, not terribly happy and not conventionally pretty.

Isn’t that just a little bit cliched? Why is it that promiscuous woman have to be miserable? Or that ‘strong’ women are always nasty? Why is it never a softly spoken Home Counties pretty girl who puts it about a bit? (And how much of the ‘great character’ of Anna is actually down to the undeniable talents if Ms Nardini?)

But let’s cut Vicky some slack. She saw the show as an impressionable late-teen so her undimmed fervour is understandable.

But then she loses the plot entirely.

Bemoaning the lack of decent women characters on our screen since This Life finished, she criticises Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw, Vicky reckons, is "a woman defined by her love of shoes." While good female characters disappeared from our screens (apparently), "Carrie et al were gearing up to do some really important shopping."

The gloves are off.

Has this woman ever actually watched a single episode?

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I love Sex and the City. When I first saw it I was bowled over – I had never seen women on the screen that I could identify with before. These women were strong, independent, funny and single. And unlike the god-awful Ally McBeal they weren’t all desperately looking for a husband.

It’s not perfect. It wavered in the final series, succumbing to the pair-everyone-off traditional happy ending. Chaste Charlotte and Slutty Samantha have a hint of the cartoon about them (an inevitable consequence of compressing all the original stories into just four characters). It’s not kitchen-sink realism – watching a re-run the other night I became irritated. Would anyone really go to the country with nothing to wear but stilettoes, and be terrified of a squirrel, as Carrie was?

Quibbles aside, it’s ground-breaking stuff. If these characters are defined by anything it’s their independence. They are all graduates with extremely good jobs - Carrie is a journalist, and a minor-celeb at that, with her picture on buses all over New York and in later episodes, a book published internationally. Samantha runs her own high-end PR agency, and Miranda is a successful barrister. Even the least independent character, Charlotte, works in a top art gallery.

If Carrie has a fondness for buying shoes it’s only because she’s earned them herself.

The characters fall in and out of love, they get dumped and they heartlessly dump in return. They date complete wankers and really nice guys. They have one-night-stands and long-term relationships. They eat in restaurants and go to parties. They have their fallings-out, but most of the time they are there for each other. I see them in myself and in my friends. Replace Manolos with trainers and Cosmopolitans with pints of lager, and their lifestyle isn’t that dissimilar to mine.

Many scenes drew a gasp of recognition from me. The early episode with Big where he pushed Carrie out of bed in his sleep – that's happened to me. The time Carrie stands Miranda up because Big has showed up unexpectedly – to my shame, I’ve done that sort of thing, but I've also been on the receiving end. Like Miranda, I’ve dated men who were much better-looking than me and squirmed self-consciously as they absorbed the stares of every woman in the room.

(I don’t have a whole lot in common with Samantha or Charlotte, but I have friends who do.)

True, the shoes and clothes have a part to play. But it’s a drama set in New York City about four successful single women – they're not going to be wearing tracksuits.

I could go on for weeks about Sex & the City but I think I should move on. Vicky’s got a point – there isn’t an abundance of strong female characters out there. There certainly aren’t a lot of spinster role models. Look at poor old Jane Tennyson, shuffling off in alcoholism, loneliness and general misery.

But if Vicky thinks that there haven’t been any decent women characters since the demise of This Life a decade ago I can only assume that she hasn’t been watching any telly. Here are just a few to be getting on with..

Elaine Benez from Seinfeld. Sexually liberated (that appears to be grauniad-speak for ‘fucking around’) and completely angst-free. Manages to get plenty despite her unflattering uniform of long flowing skirts and buttoned-to-the-neck blouses.

Rose Tyler. A Doctor Who assistant with balls. Tim’s suggestion (I didn’t realise the article was on CiF till now, I just saw it in the normal paper). If, as someone said, Rose is only defined by her relationship with the doctor, then surely the opposite is true? Where would the Doctor be without his assistant?

CJ from the West Wing. Ferociously intelligent, ‘strong’ without being a hard-nosed bitch, and so well-played that I almost think she’s real (I’ve usually had a few glasses of wine when I manage to catch it). Had I seen the show as a teenager I would have wanted to be her so badly that I may well have actually done my homework.

Nicky from As If. Young, promiscuous, confident, gorgeous, and not skinny. She’s a bit of a bitch, but it's good to see a girl in a teen drama having sex without it all ending in self-loathing and pregnancy – breaking the must-be-punished rule.

It’s not just the middle/high(if that's possible)-brow end of things either. Does young Vicky never catch the odd episode of Corrie? Wall-to-wall strong women characters from Rita to Rosie. Fizz’d have Anna from This Life in a fight any day, and Anna’s famously acerbic Scottish tongue could never rival that of Blanche.

Case rested.

(While I’m at it, take a look at this sentence:

"Women loved her because she was the kind of person they fantasised about being, and men because she was the kind of woman they fantasised about being with."

Oh please. Doesn’t the Guardian have cliché-alarms built into its computers? Or subs? For fuck’s sake.)

Spinsterella's Review of the Year

2006-12-29T18:44:00.000Z

Most Cringeworthy Accidental Voyeurism – I was at a gig. Standing right in front of me was a man I sort-of know from work. He was on a blind internet date that was clearly going quite badly.

Weirdest Man-behaviour – The bloke who asked me out on email then stopped speaking to me for several weeks. I can’t link to that post though because I had included the text of his email (of course) and I got totally paranoid that he had found my blog, so I deleted the post ages ago. (Runner-up – the one who forget to tell me about his girlfriend)

Arse of the Year and Album of the Year – Double whammy for the lovely drunken Ed Harcourt.

Single of the Year – "From Paris to Berlin, la la la disco la la la, my heart is something for love, something for love…" Come on. It’s great!

Disappointment of the year – Eamonn from Brakes naked from the waist down*. Underwhelming.

Festival Quote of the Year – "I fucking hate the Japanese. Did you know that in Japan they have a helpline for mothers who have been fellating their sons. Just how fucked up does a country to be to need a dedicated phone line for that?" AA Gill. **

Sexual Encounter of the Year. One snog. That’s it. 1/10. Must try harder.

Ultimate Spinster Moment of the Year – The cottage a friend had booked for his birthday weekend didn’t have quite enough beds for everyone, so he ‘volunteered’ me and his friend Em to camp. In November. He actually said, "I didn’t think you’d mind because you’re single". When I say I’ve got a tough skin I don’t mean literally.

***********************

Now, I suppose I could also fit a few New Year Resolutions in here as well. Except I don’t ever do resolutions because they are stupid, doomed to failure, and have no effect other than making you feel utterly miserable for the whole of January.

But…

As you know I’m already reading this Very Big Book, and to be honest I’m struggling already and I’m only on page 63. So I thought I’d also join in this Da Vinci Experiment which is being MC'd by Mr Tim Footman. Same same but different. A much less challenging tome, I’m sure you’d agree, but quite possibly more tortuous…

*He was on stage, all right?

** *Might* (I know, I know. I'm ashamed, believe me, I am. But in the interests of full disclosure I felt I had to confess.)

Actual Real Life Happenings (sort of)

2006-12-21T11:48:00.000Z

The Scene – Work Xmas Do – Last Night

Not nearly as pissed as you might have expected (given the lateness of the hour and the free booze) I got talking to a bloke from another department. We hadn’t spoken before, other than the odd hello if I happened to walk past his desk. It’s all a bit hazy, but here are some of the things he said:

Have you got a boyfriend?
You’re gorgeous.
You’re so confident.
I watch you walk past…
You’re lovely.
It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to kiss you now, would it?

Some things I said:

No I’m not.
No.
Um, I suppose.
But you don’t even know me.
There are an awful lot more attractive women than me around.
I’m actually really nasty.
No.

The conversation went round in circles for a bit, then he went off and I went home.

In the cold fragile light of this morning, I think I may have been a little bit harsh on the bloke. Still, that’s a lot of compliment-action to give to some bint you don’t know, even if you are really pissed.

(someonefanciesmesomeonefanciesmesomeonefanciesme!)

But if you want to read something good...

2006-12-20T09:29:00.000Z

First Nations on Flange!

(and dozens of new words for said. Best bit 'her mom's bathrobe' - I laughed till I cried.)

More Pop-psych Wank. Yay.

2006-12-19T10:23:00.000Z

It probably won’t be a huge shock for you to learn that I was never one of those long-term couples at school. I did go out with boys, but I tended to break up with them after three weeks. But there were a several people in my class who had serious boyfriends or girlfriends from the age of about 13.

Some of them ricocheted from one to another. As one six-week boyfriend ended, they would always miraculously find a new model at the next Junior Disco. Others were more serious, lasting months, even years.

I was wondering if being in a couple is a habit that forms when you’re a teenager? I didn’t have that closeness, that always having someone, always being Spin-and-X at that age, so perhaps that’s why I don’t crave the status or the security today.

Whereas A, my friend from home, hasn’t been single since she was fifteen. Is this because she got used to being part of a couple when she was young ?

If so, is there absolutely no hope for me?

Spinsterella's Next Book... You Decide!*

2006-12-15T13:30:00.000Z

I decided a year ago that in 2006 I was going to:

(a) read all of the books on my bookshelves
(b) not buy any more until I had done so.

I have failed miserably on both counts. Still, we’ve got a week or two left and you lot can help. Your choices are:

The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writing - Marquis de Sade

I was in Brooklyn a couple of years ago in a proper little second-hand bookstore with high, very narrow shelves to keep the fat people out and I spotted this and thought, ‘Oh, that’ll keep me occupied as I visit dozens of coffee-shops.’ But I just ended up reading my guidebook. It’s pretty big. The Sade, that is, not the guidebook. I believe it's quite naughty.

Mao - A Life - Philip Short

I was at home visiting my parents. My Dad had given me a £15 book token he had won at golf. I had just finished Wild Swans. I had just read a rapturous review in the Sunday Times. I’m that easily persuaded. This one's fucking huge too.

Kal - Judy Nunn

Yes, that Judy Nunn. You would think that she’d be busy enough what with being half of Alf’n’Ailsa** five days a week, but no, Judy still finds time to knock out 600+ page bestselling epics with big gold letters on the front cover.
It was a Christmas present from my aunt in Australia. Until the year before she died she always bought three books for the nieces and nephews she’d never met and posted them to us in Ireland. They were always by Australian writers, set in Australia with Australian themes. So when I was a child my favourite books included ones my teachers had never heard of like Playing Beattie Bow and I Can Jump Puddles.
As we got older she sent us teenage, then adult books, balancing choices like Oscar and Lucinda with stuff like Kal. I don’t know why I’ve never read it.
It’s only now as I type this that I realise how much thought she put into every single choice.

Call Me The Breeze - Patrick McCabe

The Butcher Boy is one of my top five favourite books ever. It’s awesome – bleak, shocking and incredibly funny. It’s also written in a Nrn Irn idiom, so if you want to hear how people talk round my way you should give it a go. In fact if you haven’t read it, put down what you’re doing and go out and get a copy. Now.
But anyhow, I started CMTB ages ago and just didn't get on with it at all. Does it pick up? Was I just not in the right frame of mind when I started? Worth another go?

The Trumpet Major - Thomas Hardy

I really don’t like trumpets. Or people in the army. Plus this edition has a really crap cover – one of those ones with a still from a 70s BBC production on it of a moustachioed minger, which has always put me off. I read the Mayor of Casterbridge when I was a teenager and I liked it but that's as far as I've ever gotten with Hardy.

Behold A Pale Horse - Emeric Pressburger

Emeric Pressburger? What in the fuck sort of a name is that? Anyhow I have had this book for my whole adult life so I can only assume that I took it from home. The price on the front says 3/6. Apparently it’s a ‘vivid, racy novel of smuggling in the Pyrenees’. Hmm.
Oh, I have just opened the book for the first time though, and it’s got pictures in it! It can’t be a kids book though, because there’s a picture of Gregory Peck smoking a fag on the front.
This one does have the unique selling point of being really quite short.

*With apologies, obviously, to Wyndham
**Stop Press - Ailsa died six years ago! Why does no-one tell me these things?

Update
Well, de Sade got the most mentions, but that was mainly telling me not to bother because it’s so boring. It looked like there was going to be no clear winner, with one vote for everything except the McCabe. But then the Mao inched ahead with a couple of extra votes.
You bastards! Haven’t you seen the size of it? And you know I’m already doing this Pynchon bollocks (and I’ve fallen behind already).
But it must be so. I'll start the Mao over Christmas and probably give up after a few days. But then it will be 2007 and the game will be over so I can go back to buying ancient Greenes and Waughs in charity shops for 59p that are full of strangely poignant bookmarks from other peoples’ lives and sprinkle you with crusty bits of kit-kat when you first open them.

Another list. Marvellous.

2006-12-13T11:50:00.000Z

Having suggested in the last post that (some) women (possibly) ‘girlie up’ their tastes, I’m about to contradict myself. Because the comments got me thinking about how most people, at the start of a relationship at least, feign interest in all sorts of things to impress their new shagpiece.

Things I have tried to show at least some interest in over the years:

Reggae
Hip-hop
Gym going
Their various ‘artistic’ endeavours
Dance music
Ecstasy
Cocaine
Metal
Teaching
Rugby
Football
Tough Guy
What used to be called ‘video’ or ‘computer’ games
David Gray

Again, not a lot, really.

Getting it all wrong yet again

2006-12-10T22:10:00.000Z

I used to think that my non-girlie tastes in everything should make me a more appealing proposition as a girlfriend than someone who, say, really liked Take That and Holby City and Sophie Kinsella(sp?) and chick flicks.

I like The Fall and Graham Greene. I have the pop-culture tastes of a swotty fifteen-year-old boy with no friends.

But I’ve very slowly come to realise that maybe this is not a good thing. Perhaps men like simpering bims? I mean women who are interested in different things to them?

Evidence 1.

A young couple (friends of friends of Bloke Flatmate) were staying here one weekend. They were just going to the local pub, but it was ages before the girl emerged. She was wearing a fashionable but unstartling selection of high street threads.
"It always takes her hours to get ready," her boyfriend explained as they waited. "One time we were going to Ikea, and she got changed FOUR times before we could leave!"
All this was said with a smile. They seemed very happy together.

Evidence 2

At work one day we were discussing My Super Ex-Girlfriend – which is apparently really, really dreadful, even within the chick-flick genre if you can bear to imagine.
Bright, funny bloke with impeccable music taste joined the conversation.
"Oh, I’m sure I’ll get dragged along, as I am to all the others," he said rolling his eyes in mock horror, but affectionately.

Why do otherwise intelligent men like women like that? Is it their caveman instinct? Does it make them feel protective? Or is it just that they like women to be different?

Yes, I am a complete twat

2006-12-09T22:04:00.000Z

(Off-topic stuff follows, please ignore)

Over at Tim's place the other day there was an intriguing comment by M.A.Peel about this.

I thought that it sounded like a good idea. (I know, I know.)

So today, I almost broke my arm lifting the fucker off the shelf (£5 off at Waterstones, only £3 off at Borders - I would've got it 2nd hand if I'd had the time. I mean jesus I hadn't realised it wasn't even out in paperback yet. I've never bought a brand new hardback before in my life - fifteen-fucking-quid? It'd better fucking be good).

Even though the whole experiment is a blog I will probably not link as me (I mean Spinny 'me' not 'real' me) because the commentators are all already terrifying nutcases and I don't want them coming round here.

Fuckers.

I was going to ask if anyone wanted to join me on this Pynchon Odyssey, but I realise how tragic that sounds so, um, just telling you all in case you're interested, OK? (This is by FAR the saddest thing I have ever done.)

Pop-psychology Wank

2006-12-07T15:16:00.000Z

Right then. That rather brilliant post from Patroclous that I stole has put the moment off for a while, but there's no getting away from it. It's time to disappear completely up my own arse, as promised the other day. I'm don't have any hidden depths really, so I can't imagine I'll wring more than three or four posts out of the whole thing. So don't panic. Anyhow, if you can't be a self-indulgent solipsistic twat on your own blog, what else is it for?

So. Deep breath.

Food

I’ve been catering for myself since I was twelve.

It was during the summer holidays. I don’t know why it happened, but my sister and I both started cooking lunch/dinner/tea for ourselves (individually, because we didn’t get on very well in those days). It always seemed to involve burgers and alphabites – fried. When I was 13 I stopped eating meat, so the burgers were replaced by frozen pizzas.

My mother just let us get on with it; I supposed she was relieved that she didn’t have to do it herself any more. That was the end of family mealtimes forever.

It wasn’t as if I was a precocious little proto-Delia – I didn’t actually know how to cook.

Throughout my teenage years, a typical evening would go like this.

My sister and I would arrive home from school and fight over the toaster. We’d usually have numerous rounds – often that’d be our evening meal. My much younger brother would have cereal, probably because he couldn’t reach the toaster. Even today he lives off overflowing bowls of rice crispies.

My Mum would have rice with stock and maybe a few peas; cooked, inexplicably, in the microwave. My poor Dad would have a normal meal - meat, potatoes and veg – cooked by himself.

I also started doing all my own washing and ironing shortly afterwards too.

When I fly home for a long weekend every now and again, people, friends and colleagues, will usually say something like, "You’ll be looked after by your mother for the next few days then – spoilt rotten with food and drink I suppose?". This vision of family life is completely alien to me.

So nature/nurture? Am I like this* now because I’ve been looking after myself for so long? Or did I make the subconscious decision to do it at a young age because that’s just the sort of person I am?

*by which I think I mean perennially single, ferociously independent, unlovable...

Everything men have been taught by me

2006-12-06T10:08:00.000Z

Here is the COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED and ALPHABETICAL list of everything my two serious boyfriends over the last 15 years have learned about from me.

American Psycho*, the correct use of apostrophes, (Irish) Guinness, the Giant’s Causeway, potato bread

*The effects that this can have on an impressionable 19-year-old are astounding. He started going to the gym way more often (using the stairmaster a lot because Patrick said it was the best), went on and on about shaving his chest to show off his pecs, and started saying things in a knowledgeable way like; "You should only drink bottled water out of glass bottles; Patrick says that plastic bottles taint the flavour of the water."

Everything I've Been Taught By Men

2006-12-05T11:45:00.000Z

Here is the (IN)COMPLETE, ABRIDGED and ALPHABETICAL list of everything I have learned about from my two serious boyfriends over the last 15 years (stolen from Patroclus):

Cryptic crosswords, halloumi, Henry Rollins (and metal in general), Ian Dury, mushrooms, pasta, sex, Sunday breakfasts, what a tryptych is.

(Another) Melancholy Sunday Night Post

2006-12-03T19:57:00.000Z

It’s bad, isn’t it?

This blog, I mean. It isn’t doing what it should.

How can I have a single-woman blog that doesn’t involve dating, flirting, sex, or even any hope of such ever happening ever again.?

What’s a blogger to do? I reckon there are two chioces. Either I revert to old-school blogging. This would mean that every couple of days I’d tell you what I’ve been doing – exciting, eh?

Or else I could go down the introspective route. You know, stick my head even further up my arse, indulge in some horrifically indulgent self-analysis, and debate and discuss at length why I am like the way I am. This would involve talking about my mother.

Old-School Blogging it is then.

On Saturday afternoon I went here, and on Saturday night I went here. They were both dead good, in quite different ways.

Um.

I had lots of pints on Friday night, but you probably all did that too.

Christ. What else. I nearly finished The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis on the Tube. It's not that good. Must've been an awfully thin year for the Booker. Oh god, oh god, oh god...

Maybe the time has come to try...internet dating?

*weeps*

I am totally fucking useless (slight return)

2006-11-30T17:12:00.000Z

I was at a gig the other night and who did I see in the pub beforehand but that good-looking chap from the Megabus/Brakes gig quite a while ago now.

And later, when the band came on stage, I found myself standing right beside him.

Did I take advantage of this serendipitous moment to befriend said chap? Say hello; maybe just make eye contact for a split second?

Did I bollocks.

(This is all getting awfully repetitive, isn't it?)

Spinny’s First Bra*

2006-11-26T18:04:00.000Z

(If you happened to know me any time between 1992 and 2001, you could be forgiven for sniggering at the title of this post, and making jokes about parachutes and engineering done by Harland and Wolff. For they were The Buxom Years. (All gone now. Sorry.))

I was a Late Developer.

The accident of my birth meant that I was ‘young in my year’ at school, but even still, I was small and skinny long after everyone else had sprouted bosoms and developed hips.

Towards the end of first year, virtually everybody acquired bras, whether they needed one or not. (I didn’t.) Our standard thin school white blouses made it obvious. We all, bra-wearers and non, took to wearing t-shirts under our shirts. But you could still tell.

Why didn’t you ask your Mum? you might be thinking. But we didn’t talk about stuff like that – we still don’t.

Then, towards the end of second year, my Mum produced two bras from Dunnes Stores. One for me, and one for my sister, who was a year younger. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my sister’s was bigger than mine, a 32AA to my 28AA.

My mother was obsessed with fair treatment of me and my sister, so she got to do everything else exactly a year after I did. So I was so humiliated that she got hers at the same time as me and didn’t have to endure that extra entire bra-free year at school.

Not that anyone ever said anything about it, it was just that everyone knew, and you knew that everyone knew. It was traumatic. I remember counting down…Sinead has one now, oh God, so does Siobhan and she’s even flatter than me. God, please don’t let me be the last one.

Now, it seems ridiculous. I see girls with boyish, flat-chested figures and I’m envious of their ability to find clothes that fit, and to run, and their sag-free future. And now I know that the vast majority of men really don’t give a shit about breast size, and the few that really like big ’uns are a bit (very) weird.

*Inspired by Realdoc’s recent post about, well, lots of stuff, but includes the First Bra Issue

Ex Story 14

2006-11-23T17:45:00.000Z

We were out for dinner. It wasn’t a proper posh restaurant, it was the sort of place where you could just come in and have a few drinks as well. But still, it was a rare treat and we were having a lovely time. On his recommendation I’d ordered halloumi. I’d never heard of it before but he reckoned I’d like it.

A girl walked past, recognised The Ex, and came over to talk to us. Now he had lived in town for longer than me and worked in a popular bar so he knew quite a lot of people.

But I knew straightaway that something must have gone on between him and this girl. It was her false bonhomie (Him: what have you been up to? Her: Oh, going out loads and just getting pissed and partying all the time!) and the way she looked at me, checking me out.

When she was out of earshot he looked at me shamefacedly and said: "We slept together."
I was horrified. She was a moose. Bit overweight, too much make-up, a bit, well, rough.

As he told me the story I started to see him in a different light.

"I got to know her because she came into the bar sometimes and we arranged to go out for a few drinks one night. But she ended up getting really, really pissed, it was embarrassing. We were in a bar in town when we ran into some people I knew. But she was pissed and she was really rude to them, really aggressive, for no reason."

So, nightmare date, what’s a lad to do? He took her home and fucked her.

I was only 21 and The Ex had been really reserved with me when we first got together, so I couldn’t imagine him just fucking some minger.

It got worse.

"A few weeks later my best mate and a couple of his friends were in the bar, so I went and joined them on my break. She came in, pissed, and sat at the same table as us. She was trying to interrupt our conversation and I was just trying my best to ignore her. Then she announced to everyone: ‘He slept with me, you know.’"

Ex was horrified at her behaviour, but I was pretty shocked at his.

It’s such a cliché that men will sleepwith an unattractive girl, then ignore her. The Ex was so straight and moralistic that I couldn’t imagine him doing such a thing. I was so young that I still had that irrational hatred of all ex-girlfriends/shagpieces/women who fancied him.

But this girl? I kind of felt for her.

(This story kind of carries on from, although certainly doesn't answer, GSE's comment on the last post. I don't get it either.)

Galloping, galloping knob.

2006-11-20T09:26:00.000Z

Joe and I had started at the company at the same time. With that stupidity common to employers everywhere, they stuck the pair of us in an office on our own, where we could be clueless together.
He was a few years younger than me, and good-looking in that nauseating boy-band jeans-and-smart-shirt way. He was also a cock of the highest order.

One day his phone was bleeping with text after text. ‘It’s this random girl from last night,’ he told me, rolling his eyes.

‘Yeah,’ he continued despite my palpable lack of interest, ‘she’s just a random girl I snogged last night. Now she just won’t leave me alone.’ Given that he was frantically texting her back, I don’t see how she was harassing him.

‘I could have shagged her, she was well up for it.’

Really.

Eventually he gave up but that wasn’t the end of it. For the next few weeks he continued seeing this poor girl, and I had to endure his phone calls to his friends which always went along the lines of:

"No, I haven’t shagged her mate, she’s too minging."

Or:

"She’s not good enough to shag."

I really, really cannot comprehend this line of thinking. Why would he continue to go out with her if this was what he thought?

Another time he was talking about his ex-girlfriend. They’d met at uni and then moved in together the following year. But Mr Boyband Tosspot wasn’t ready to settle down and it didn’t last. He explained to me, completely seriously:

"You’re either a player or a geek (pause for effect) and I’m a player."

It was quite a relief when I got sacked, to tell you the truth…

Start as you mean to go on...

2006-11-16T12:51:00.000Z

It hasn’t escaped my notice that all the stories I’ve entertained (sort of) you with of late have involve me getting dumped, treated badly, or just plain ignored.

But it hasn’t ever been thus!

Indeed, there was a time where it was me who did the dumping. That time was 1987.

Somehow I acquired a boyfriend in the first term of second year. I say somehow – I vaguely remember his friend asking "Will you go out with Conor?" and I said "Yes" and that was it.

Our relationship consisted mainly of getting really embarrassed when our classes passed one another in the hallway. He would blush crimson, and one of the other lads would normally push the poor kid into the oncoming path of me and my friends, strutting along with our folders clutched tight to our non-existent breasts. If we were both feeling particularly brazen we might exchange a nervous hello.

Over the course of our month-long relationship we managed two excruciating phone conversations. He was, and probably still is, unbearably shy.

Occasionally his friend would come up to me and ask, "Are you still going with Conor?" and I’d say yes.

It was coming up to Christmas – Mistletoe Disco was imminent. This was just the normal junior disco (Spagna and Bon Jovi and chanting ‘tiocfaidh ar la’ along to U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday) except people went racing round with mistletoe encouraging others to kiss.

I supposed I must have known that my first kiss was imminent, but I don’t remember being remotely anxious. When someone inevitably held up some mistletoe between me and Conor we just did it, surrounded by a circle of about fifteen of our friends.

They didn’t cheer or shriek or laugh (as my friends would undoubtedly do now were I to kiss anyone in public). I suppose they just watched. He circled his tongue in my mouth – it wasn’t the most pleasant experience - I swiftly disengaged.

I don’t remember feeling anything – no sense of achievement or relief. I suppose I hadn’t consumed quite enough teenage magazines by that time to view my first kiss as some sort of milestone.

Because I was twelve, I also didn’t have the weight of expectation which must have burdened some of my friends who didn’t get their first kiss until fifteen, sixteen.

Because it was Mistletoe Disco, you weren’t restricted to your ‘boyfriend’ so I also snogged a lad who had been at my primary school. It was the same as Conor, but with added cigarette smoke. Grim. Then, because I was getting the hang of things, I snogged Conor again.

Back at school our relationship went back to exactly how it was before. I don’t remember spending any time with him.

After the holidays, his friend came up to me in the foyer one day and asked if I was still going with Conor. I said no.

That was the end of that.

Will Self (Again) Part II

2006-11-14T12:25:00.000Z

Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked there. What I meant to say was something more like:

Will Self’s not exactly a looker in the conventional sense, is he?

Not like Brad (*wouldn’t*) Pitt or George (*yawn*) Clooney. But millions and millions of women find him extremely sexy.

The range of men who are considered to be attractive runs from fat-lipped lanky streak of piss Richard Ashcroft to potato-faced chubster Shane Richie. There are even women, lots of them I’m told, who think Vernon Kaye’s hot.

But women don’t have the same scope. I can’t think of a single female celeb with, shall we say, an idiosyncratic appearance, who is widely fancied.

I’ve always thought Kylie was a bit of an odd one – the big carrot-munching teeth, the boogley eyes, the memories of Charlene - but still, she’s hardly a moose.

Anyone else?

Will Self. Again.

2006-11-13T12:52:00.000Z

By the time I made it across the road to the paper shop on Saturday morning they’d sold out of Grauniads, so I had to settle for an Indie.

‘Course, nowt to read there. To make matters worse, the magazine was having a ‘gadget special’ issue. Christ almighty is there anything more coma-inducing than reading about ‘gadgets’?

But never fear, there was a lovely picture of that nice Will Self chap on the front cover which has occupied my twisted, fevered little brain non-stop ever since.

In case you missed it: he is standing on a segway (ooh, I saw lots of those on holiday) with his arms outstretched in the sunshine, fag hanging out of his mouth, disdainfully amused expression on his face.

God.

Wearing a crumpled white t-shirt, dark jeans and scuffed leather boots. Why don’t all men dress like that? Why don’t all men look like that?

His armspan…it’s just massive.

I have the suspicion that fucking Will Self would be like a session with Patrick Bateman. Up to a point; I would like to live to tell the tale. But I wouldn’t mind if I ended up bleeding, bruised and possibly crying.

(For the benefit of CB and anyone else who may be slightly puzzled yes this is what Will Self looks like. And here he is laying into 'journalist' and odious cunt extraordinaire Richard Littlejohn,)

Back

2006-11-12T16:57:00.000Z

You know when you've been off school with the chickenpox or something so you've been away for at least a week, and you come back and you feel like a total outsider because you've missed so much and you don't know what to say to all your friends and you suspect that they're all laughing at your scabs?

I feel kind of like that at the minute.

I know I was only on holiday for a week (plus nearly a week jet-lag recovery), but I've kind of forgotten how to blog.

I feel all tongue-tied and I don't know what to say.