One of the major consequences of lockdown – something no fumbling government minister suitably prepared us for, amongst many others – was that we’d forget how to walk in shoes. Granted, it may not have been a main priority but try telling that to the 79 pairs of shoes scattered around my house – I exaggerate: small flat. They have always been uncomfortable in their own special ways, of course – such is being a woman – but now, now, they are 79 pairs of torture vessels from the malevolent Middle Ages. The Bunion Crunchers, let’s say. “Sixty days in The Bunion Crunchers for committing treason, for thee!”

So I have grown accustomed to what I would never have considered to be one of the finer things in life: comfy shoes. Mainly, but not exclusively, my rotten trainers. Rotten is perhaps an understatement. They are made of holes and pollution. Bits flap, my toes poke through like voyeurs, there are mostly crust; they await me at the door like a prostitute riddled with syphilis. They have been fully expunged of all freshness, buoyancy, vigour. They are not serious trainers. I think they were from New Look (such is my Sports Life). They would be laughed off tennis courts, kicked out of running clubs. They should be quarantined and given a severe talking to – masquerading as a ‘means-business’ appendage sprouting vows of ‘I will get you fit!”, “I can tranform you!”, “I make you a better person!”, when really they are two flimsy flaps of fast fashion ‘pumps’. What a sad little word: pumps.

But pooh-pooh to all that as I galloped through gaping expanses during our frivolous ‘free time’. There I was, chuckling to myself, as we were once again out the door, on our allocated hour of exercise. Who would have thought we’d have become so acquainted? You and I? They were used to being hidden away, like sickly children.  I’d been known in the past to occasionally feed them with sporadic blusters of exercise. There was the week of Couchto5K, the six weeks of flyering (-hell) (see earlier post), sometimes putting them on to do Russian twists in front of the TV – hoping more of a “gym experience” would make me ‘go hard’ (I was already at home). But never, never, would I have voluntarily worn them as part of an outfit. Not unless I was wearing great big 70s flares, the depth and breadth of a family-size tent. Only then would I be free to bounce my way through my day. What’s she hiding under those awesome trousers? People would wonder. What’s making her so happy? Their minds would visualize vibrators or metallic platforms but they would be wrong – just my sad, glorious rotten trainers.

They have become my comfort and companions. How we leapt through parks on our daily walks. How we didn’t care if people saw us together. How we practically sprang, Tigger-like, taking in the glorious trees – have we ever really seen trees before? I mean, have we ever really looked at them? And then we’d gallop apace, my disgusting, fiery-footed pumps and I, back home, in wondrous comfort and realize we’d found each other. We vowed never to part. And then I’d place them by the door, ready for another adventure and I would gaze at them, in all their crunchy, grey glory, as I nestled back into that other comfort sponge: the sofa.

But now, now, World! Telling us to go out and do things and wear things and speak to people – perhaps – and…and my trainers just won’t do! They cannot complete ensembles, they cannot book-end ironed dresses, they cannot sit in friends gardens and steady drunken legs in pubs. They cannot be shown warmth and kindness in public. They cannot be shown love!

So I must decide: it’s the trainers, or my friends/family/work/social life/ holidays/ healthcare/fresh air. Either that or become someone who only wears sports wear a la a Kardashian or more realistically, a shell-suit slob. The jury’s out.

Now I take them out on treat trips. I’ll walk them to work and then put them in a bag – shameful – and change. But, oh, they’ve turned, my feet. There may be no coming back from this. You may be wondering what your feet are doing, too. They may be starting to rebel. They have spread out like starfish. They seem to have grown wide, proud. They splay. They want rights. They realise they have been manipulated into outrageous shapes and angles. They have had to inhumanely
teeter, they have broken the law of nature and been forced forward on some
perverse stilts whilst being forced to stand up straight. They don’t know whether they are coming or going.

But now they have tasted freedom and they want squidginess. They want to be enveloped by a mattress, they want their crevices pushed into memory foam. They want space to wiggle their little piggies all the way home. Each toe has an identity! Each toe wants to roam! They are sick of being eclipsed into a singular mass like the eye of Cyclops, or pointed into oblivion, burning hot and angry like the murderous peak of Mordor.

They make threats now, as you open your wardrobe door, and warn they will break your back should you even think to pull out those tight little Mary-Janes. You see pretty black croc pointed knee-high boots, I see bunions. I shudder.

At the moment it’s Summer and I have managed to soothe them like cantankerous toddlers with a pair of worn-out Birkenstocks. But Autumn is not far away. Be warned should you wish to hit the sales and buy yourself some seasonal footwear. It’s quite clear, these boots weren’t make for walkin’.

Let us not count the many many months I’ve been absent from my blog but dancing around it like it’s a burning pyre. Going wild around it, turning and gyrating, convulsing, moving in and out, a mixture of fear and worship. Sitting sometimes, sometimes standing. Sometimes trying to catch the flying embers escaping up into the air like rampant bugs, trying their damnedest to avoid capture. Sometimes I would look at this pyre and wonder if I had somehow spat it out and it was my guts I was skirting around. I grew accustomed to sitting by it, watching it, waiting for it to burn out, willing it almost. Disappear then, out up into the sky, or down, deep into the ground. Go on, I’m watching, I am preparing to see it convulse, and fade.

Clearly there has been a lot of contemplation going on around this so-called pyre. Too much contemplation. Contemplation is a plague! (I’ll touch on the actual plague another time). Yes, contemplation is a disease-ridden plague, I tell you! A little dalliance with thoughts and expansion of mind: brilliant, go for it. But, year/s long, conversations with the sprite that is your inner, rip-off, “life-coach”: bad. I have fallen into its little web and it has nibbled at me bit by bit, until the web is hole-less and I am entirely made of holes.

But I have pushed through this, dear reader and am learning to gag that savage automaton in my brain, sing la-la-la and carry on regardless.

Is there anything more tedious than a writer complaining about their inability to write? Like a thin person complaining to a fat person about being fat. If you’re thin, be thin. Continue on being thin! (And please let us wobbly-thighed alone. Talk only to thin people about being (non-)fat. You can all smooth your thighs together and look despairingly at your mean rice cakes like they’re naughty kittens). And thus, if you’re a writer…? On.

And thus here I am: writing. Writing about not being able to write, but writing, goddamnit. Perhaps it’s a way in. A release valve. Pressure lowered and passing through into the air as stagnant, fierce gas, shooting out in attack. Gas that immediately gets dissolved into the atmosphere as if it was never there, but for a moment, is a sharp, complete thing, an emissary released from the erratic reign of one’s brain, dispatched with a bag of letters (you’re thinking correspondence. You’re wrong. Singular words jumbled in a Scrabble bag that you shake and turn over and hope good ones spill out into your hands, not just ‘AAAINAA’). An emissary which gasped and was done for at the first breath of fresh, free air. The outside! What a new and interesting thing! Let’s -!

And gone. And thus, the first words of mine. Words so eager to get out, all scrambled now from months of being cooped up as prisoners. Sometimes they went on day release, got shit-faced and then returned, dutifully, for extended time inside. She rules with an iron fist, does she, up in my brain. Ever so hard, she is, sitting up there on her throne made of irregular patterns. Let’s called it ‘mercurial’, shall we? Yes, mercurial, like…like the Throne of Swords in Game of Thrones, but instead the swords are arrows and they dart, dart in every opposing direction, offering options, so many options, and finally the Queen – let us call her Queen – gets so tired of options that she cannot choose among them, can no longer differentiate, and so sits amid the possibilities and never leaves.

A bit gung-ho on the metaphor? Bear with me, I’m still finding my feet.

The time has come to gather up the mundane machinations of a life lived
in an office
in the undergrowth
bewildered in the wild that isn’t the wild
but a sea-bed of brown stripes
that wipe the wind from the effervescent sails
of all who enter
as they wail
into the photocopy machine
trying to glean some kind of reason-for-being
instead of just standing by
waiting for the pages to print
and some kind of life to prevail
and the Big questions to be Bigger than whether the machine automatically staples the pages together or not?

So I have come to rot.

And check Facebook with every other breath
as if it’s some test I must pass
in order to check whether I’m alive or not really living
but just being
in order to pay some preordained bills that secure your place in this world
so you can stand tall
and come to crave Bloody Marys with your bottomless brunch
to recover from the bottomless bottles of Prosecco you had the night before
because it was Friday night
and that’s what you do now that you have softened your soul
into the role
of Robot Receptionist.

‘Tis to exist.

And Monday will come all too soon
and you will bemoan the endless tiredness
those mistaken wounds
as you compare hangovers
and shudder at the thought of that cone on your head
that beacon of orange
someone’s livelihood surrendered into fits of giggles
and Sandra pissing herself
baby-less for the night
rekindling her Babyliss curls and the cackle that cracks glass
lost since the morning sickness
and nowadays a fondness for ginger biscuits
they ease the pain
in the stomach
and make retching less wretched.

Ah but those solemn days left us on the shore only to weep no more
as tides played, as dancers do
– we pranced too –
and navigated our way to Wednesday politics
of microwave lust and tattoos on show
we couldn’t grow
we chose to stay
our necks in a noose – loose –
with the freedom to go but with a tag on our wings
then it was Spring.
How the blossom billows and captures seeds of doubt.

There is a tree underneath
let us lay a wreath.

We meet for a coffee in disco lights and talk of wanting to kill ourselves
on cushions of caffeine dust
– such is the life for us –
we stop comparing pain for a second
to see a couple giggling beside the buckwheat muffins
(she strokes his muscle and shouldn’t).
They wear a square of grey suits – this is no casual loot –
no second date but a serious state
of affairs
presenting presentations in hope of promotion
and she has a boyfriend back home, up in the north
and she usually wears pink and won’t say no to fluff
– but this guy, he’s buff –
and we’re in the Capital now
and it doesn’t take Columbo to conclude
they have been flirting over the Tassimo machine
she even showed him her tattoo
she had to pull her skirt to the side and it made her feel wet
like a seventeenth century servant
showing the master her flesh
and they both watched her pimples rise in shock
to have escaped
their secret place, the warmth
and now he is looking at her as he picks up a muffin
and his cock twitches as he sniffs the chocolate chips
and he pictures his teeth sinking into her tits
– God this is bliss –
and it doesn’t matter that he has a wife and a baby that won’t sleep
right now there is him and there is her
and they are both giggling at some shit joke the client made
and underneath it all they know
their skin will touch tonight.

And it’s so bright, brighter than you ever thought
and it burns you into impartial depression
right through to your core.
Who knew there’d be so many options of hate
in every option of tea and cake?
And when Tuesday comes and you are sure it’s the end of the week
it’s death’s door
until Karen from accounts brings in something sweet
and you will join in the stampede
like you’re running from fate
and line up in the kitchen
– it’s the second coming –
no it’s strawberry muffins!
She was up all night
it’s her dream
she does it in her spare time, on the side
it’s just for fun now until she gets it right
she’d die if she could do it
then she’d leave this place for good.
The thing about Karen is:
she’s misunderstood.

But right now these souls are dead souls
and you are Hades navigating bodies
on your trolley made of tea

let it be me.

No
you will spread out these battered wings as you wait for flat iron steak
it’s a bargain at a tenner
it’s the going rate
just disregard the extras, the accoutrements
that you can pick and choose to make up a plate of normal food
it’s more fun this way you hear them say
as you line up along the wall
as if about to be shot
and the thimble of complimentary sherry they’ve thrust down your throat
will only add punch to your Twitter tomorrow
in which you’ll gloat
omitting the part about the toe you lost in the cold
and the shiver that hung on til the end
when the bill was produced
and the ten pound promotion miraculously grew
two more zeros

and this London was no longer your hero.

But for a beat
because this is the greatest city on earth
and how lucky you are to exist
in this place
to breathe this injurious air
to fight for your humanity
discover your fate?

Shall we breed?

Let’s spread this seed and layer up the blood.
This rage won’t age
it is fixed as the fingernails on the offspring
it will frame the circles on the family tree.
Have a baby, dear,
it will set you free.

But beware the silent fillers that cut through
that await you in the dark
the exquisite blue
that spark
of nothingness
of luminous legs and glasses full,
the filtered amniotic fluid and green-eyed juice
you never knew you wanted til now
til Lucy from development stood up from her desk
stood out one day
the last fighter on the field at Ypres
to declare peace of mind to the almost dead
that putting turmeric in your latte will change your life.

You’re blessed.

And can I highly recommend an Instagram feed?
To satiate your insatiable need
not to eat but to read
about this thing they call food
or food that’s not food, meat that’s not meat
but a juicy burger made solely of beets
so we can sleep well at night
breathe a sigh of relief
as we heap our woes upon our lavender pillows
knowing we’ve done our bit.

And when the morning comes and you separate
the plastic window from the paper envelope
you will let it pass through your mind
how happy you are to be middle class and rich
that you deserve this Nespresso hit
because life’s too short to grind
your own coffee or granulated, god forbid
you’ve earned it
and yes, if it came to it,
you would stand up and spit
at all those underlings of Britain
who don’t give a shit.

You’re here now, to save the day
to make a stand
to say: that the fields of gold we seek
lay not in turkey twizzlers and chips mid-week
but in the elegance of a moon cup launched into your vag
to collect all the diabolical blood (of which we do not speak)
a Goddess sarcophagus, clotted red,
or our secret surgeries, compressed
into a perfumed wrapper, purple, finessed
that cost us a milky latte
but conveniently neat
and we fold it up in the cubicle, like a gift
as Janice from Sales tells you all about her bloated feet
and then you walk back into your meeting
smiling
discreet
as if you’ve just been told a joke
because no one wants a weakling
breaking up the blokes
who have really got ahead with this assignment
while you were busy in the loo
preening your flyaway tresses
and flirting with Barry the bosses son
no doubt fishing for compliments
and a blue-chip dick to climb upon.

Fear those heavenly bodies
the Dictators
that tell you how to rob your life of gist.
Beware the divine weavers that weave the webs around your door
coaxing out your entrails
for the price of an inadequate manicure
but at least you’ll be able to reveal
this slice of your life
the majestic, the unreal
so you can once again conceal
the looseness of your eyes
your mind
the thousand inconsequential irregularities
that fracture the shape
of this China doll
hacked
by the bull of this law to destroy
passion, misspent
to poison the innocent
and re-educate the dead.

I wince at this state of affairs now, of course, guffaw, but there is something very real, very profound when you’re in the moment and your head is in the basket along with some hypnotised, narky snake and you will only be coaxed to come out when the DJ plays Dr. Dre.

Eventually you do leave – at least the bedroom – and the night will have soured. Sometimes you make it to the party, a hot mess yes, but still, there. And other times you will venture as far as your boyfriend’s arms and then the fridge, for wine. You will talk of your silliness and then you will sit amongst tattered sequins as your partner assembles Blade Runner, the Extended Edition. Whether this is punishment or not is lost on you because you will spend the rest of the evening casting your own images of this ongoing party that has now become the party of the decade and you have exceedingly missed out.

It still amazes – concerns – me that these are moments of madness and so readily achieved. It is laughable, and comforting when shared at a safe, retrospective distance with your friends – it will make a good story and you will have them cackle – but still, to dissolve into a crippling mental state – and I don’t use that term lightly – is noxious and perhaps something that one needs to address. For the very fact that such behaviour is something that needs to be “got over”, “laughed off” or even, “forgiven” means that women are still bracketed in, even if the cataclysmic reaction to your cellulite poking through your ripped jeans does seem perverse. Women are hysterical; end of.

I don’t want to be a snotty, wild-eyed mess. I don’t want to be so indecisive I’ll be excavating a top from my first year of Uni because I have decided it is the only, the only thing that will work – as I stand on top of 22 recently acquired items. I don’t want this evening to be filled with fury, frustration and eventually, forgiveness. I am attached to an unstableness and I am able to control it, most of the time. But if things got bad for whatever macabre reason how bad could it get? And would I really be able to control it? Is this just a hormonal thing? A chemical imbalance? Or just a tricky bastard gene?

And the most frustrating thing is that this exacerbates the notion by both men and women that women are erratic, flighty characters, prone to hysteria and bouts of unnecessary madness seemingly out of nowhere. Of course, some women are blissfully free of this sartorial paralysis but for a good bunch of us it is a part of everyday life. Is it because we care too much? Is it because deep down we are really quite shallow? Or is it because we are even more body conscious than we realize? And when we dress to go “out” we subconsciously churn up all the judgement we have had laid upon us – and we have laid upon ourselves – over the years, and we want to become the “vision” of all we aspire to and when that vision doesn’t look back at us in the mirror we really – really, genuinely – feel so dejected it takes the wind out of our sparkly sails and we wonder, even just for a second, if we want to go on living because it is so disappointing and it reaches right back, right back to your childhood, to the “awkward years”, to the posters on the wall, to Geri Halliwell’s thighs, to the swimming parties, to the sleepover when you wet the bed, to the little dress you bought and you hung up as inspiration to stop eating, to the many many nights you’ve been crippled, crippled by this wanting and could never utter the sorrow to anyone because it is so trivial and pathetic and so you gulp it down and pretend not to know this profound self-hate and you will only let it out when you are alone and safely out of earshot and you will cry all the tears for all the years.

So, in light of this, packing for a holiday has the same ramifications as being the person in charge of Trump’s hair care. The stakes are high and so are the winds.

We love fashion, we women. We love clothes, shoes, earrings, we love things, collecting things. Hell hath no fury than when a woman is in search of jeans. And if that beautiful day comes – and it is only said to happen to the very lucky, very few – and we find a pair that Fits and is Flattering and doesn’t make you look like you’re smuggling a bag of maris pipers out of Tesco, we will run down the high street with a happy banner and a tightly packed arse. This is not to be trivialized. Writing this I realize how integral these material machinations are to some construct of well-being that we all adhere to in some way or other, and while that is joyous and fun and a scaffolding for self-expression it is also trapping. We plunge in, and then we get to drowning. What are we searching for? A pearl at the bottom of the ocean? And so men regard us as creatures of the deep.

I wonder if over the years I had seen my boyfriend crumble at regular intervals, over an ill-fitting shirt perhaps, or the wrong shade of blue, and how that would have made me feel, how I would have come to regard him, and what effect that would have had on our relationship and our statuses within it? That fragility – would it linger there, in the background, often a beast, and I would gradually adopt the role of beast-tamer? I hadn’t asked to acquire this role but it was mine. Perhaps I was born to do it, perhaps it came naturally. Perhaps I did it out of love, out of duty, out of fear. And so is this so-called beast then a burden for my boyfriend or just our unsociable pet, that we love the bones of but also have to scoop up its shit?

There is no reason to say my boyfriend is the sole carer for my sporadically spilling, spoiling brain and I scoop up my own shit and put it in the designated bin. But it helps, boy it helps, having him there, and his energy to coax me out of my dark and stormy den. But then knowing someone is there – does that perpetuate the discovery of said den and the propensity to go and sit in it? Would you risk sailing in choppy seas if there wasn’t a lighthouse?

I do not write this lightly and although indecisiveness over what to wear and being debilitated by it sounds trivial and indulgent, it is about far more than that. It could be a condition so steeped in our make-up (psychological, not product, keep up) that we don’t even realize it and so we are chained up – when we open our wardrobe, when we scan a magazine – and unless things just naturally come together and you are having a “good” day then you might be, well, fucked, and you might question your very existence. You certainly won’t make your lunch date. And then, if you’re lucky, you might actually get to this party and all your wonderful friends are there and your best friend’s boyfriend is on top-up duty and so your Prosecco never diminishes and you leave when the birds are tweeting and then you’re sick all over your Uber driver’s head and your new dress so you have to throw it away and you don’t care because it was a bloody great night and all worth it.

So I want to get to this garden party before it gets dark. It is important to hover amongst the flowers in an artistic manner as the sun goes down and not arrive in blackness when you might as well be in a car park in Peckham sipping peanut butter beer and pretending to relish the irony of ’70s concrete walls that looks like the setting for a suicide. If you arrive in the dark everyone will have moved inside and you will just have to rely on the smokers, the resilient ones, hard edged and speaking in tongues, whereby once this was a primordial act, now they are rebels in dug out shelters, taking arms against the mundane militia, the fun ones seeking out fun, and who you will cling to when you’re all bribed to leave at 4am.
 

But it’s a bit bloody nippy, isn’t it? And we’re all regretting not bringing a pashmina but no one will admit that because they are only meant for 50 year old women at weddings who have spent the last eighteen months tracking down the exact shade of violet to go with their violet ensemble. Or violent, depending on your point of view. But no, far better to have a snotty nose for the rest of the week and have bubbles coming out of your nose in the finance meeting than resort to swaddling up. I mean, you wouldn’t be seen dead with a soft bit of cloth swung over your shoulders at crazy Luke’s BBQ where leather bunbags have made a re-appearance, in an ironic way of course, and you’re secretly praying for the day when pashminas become ironic so you can be warm and cosy and your nipples won’t be picking up Jazz FM. 

 You’re also concerned that at some point after that fourth glass of Pinot Grigio you will be ravenous and by being Very Late it might be a bit rock n roll but you might be out of sync with the Bringing Out Of Food and the only thing left to eat at 11pm will be vegan Samia’s banana salad. This will also be a serious concern of your boyfriend’s as he was “promised a BBQ” and to come between a man and his meat it to break a very serious moral contract. (I tried this once before when I made a shepherd’s pie without the shepherd. He scraped the lentils around the plate like tiddlywinks, searching for clumps of meat. There were none. He cried and I eat lentil pie for three weeks). 

So que July and we emerge from our dark, wintery tavern like the Thernardiers claiming malnutrition with crooked teeth, clocking and coercing anyone who has French doors to invite us round for processed meat in buns. And when someone does come up trumps we will jump around like Scots who have just snapped the Loch Ness monster.

So we have escaped. A drunken chat, a seed set, a last minute clamouring of organisation and suddenly we are here, in Spain. An impulse induced by one lone, bombastic night of London sun that rapidly turned into an absolute, a must-do, an imperative life decision, affording no time for financial nor work related deliberation. There, on the bench in our local Franco Manca – shoulder to shoulder with the other weary locals, the day’s work still pressed within the cracks of our faces, our knees squashed against our partners’ assets – we were rebels dreaming of Andalusian fields.

Hell’s bells, I thought, all this spontaneity…perhaps I could finally become “that” girl: the one who tosses a couple of lightweight dresses into a handbag, a couple of t-shirts, a pair of multi-purpose sandals, a couple of g-strings (less material), a tome of great literature and a Lonely Planet guide. Just call me Patti Smith.

Turns out the only affiliation I have with Patti Smith is her book ‘M-Train’ that I would take, along with three others. Why wouldn’t I? Because now, after a single, earth shattering, cold sweated moment of revelation I realised I could not possibly just take hand luggage, I could not be condensed, there was no such thing as lightweight living, no, I would pay easyjet an extra £44 to take a slightly bigger suitcase on hold. The kitchen sink was being dismantled as we speak.

So now there was to be options. The sartorial flood gates had opened. My boyfriend, The Beard, looked on in dismay. Three entire days before we were due to leave, he had packed his bag. That’s seventy-two hours he had gained in calm and seventy-two hours I had left in turmoil, making life changing decisions about how many varieties of black tops to take. (I would settle on seven).

The “shoe situation” was also something of a labyrinthine, psychosis-inducing plight. It still marvels me how one can balk at the presumption that eight pairs is nonsensical for a week-long holiday. These aren’t wild, whimsical accidents, these are fully justified provisions: trainers for travel, wedges for strolling, flips flops for poolside and hot sand salvation, mid-height black heels for evening, mid-height tan heels for evening, not so nice flat sandals for well, just because just BECAUSE! The same would go for handbags.

It’s true life would be exceedingly simpler if I could just decide on a palette. Am I the black-hued rock chick(en) who opts for anal over military and would only ever entertain colour in her wardrobe if it was a wine stain? Or the earth-hued Cambridge-type: a mouldy corduroy vision, swinging leather satchel along cobbled corridors and who would rather die than be parted from Grandpa’s cardie? Or perhaps the rainbow revolutionary who will put denim with pearls and tartan with stripes and try anything twice?

Turns out I am all of these things (minus the anal), and therefore getting ready for me is more a case of “getting into character”, so it is entirely mood dependent. Fantastic for a highly strung and sensitive girl and particularly for said nutter’s boyfriend. There has been many a nice occasion we’ve been due to attend – birthday bash, bbq, casual few beers, commonplace gatherings, not Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. Yet on a significant number of said occasions I have been so fraught that I’ve refused to go at all and The Beard will then loyally opt out too (with suspicious ease – ripping his waistcoat off like Michael Jackson before entering a detailed conversation about what we should now cook and will I finally watch Blade Runner on Netflix?)

This derailing is not entirely unusual for a girl, is it? We can go from a calm and steady ‘3’ in sanity to a searing, soaring, scintillating ‘10’ quicker than you can say “jumpsuit”. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like for The Beard. He is gifted a small window to get ready – a compact ten minutes to conduct a military style operation: Boxers. Vest. Socks. Deodorant. Shirt. Trousers. Belt. Scent. Beer. I hover around the door like a cannibal on the other side of a glass wall that is rapidly cracking. He settles down to watch seven episodes of ‘Parks and Recreation’ as I clamber in, Prosecco in hand, tricking myself into thinking this is the “fun bit”, that I’ve finally reached the golden hour, an effervescent purging of creativity, a buzzing Fashion House, music pumping and I will resemble Julia Roberts in ‘Sleeping With The Enemy’ as I bounce in front of the mirror, costume after costume, wielding her mighty smile and naïve assumption that all will be well. Well it wasn’t for her and it would not be for me. She would be hunted by her psycho husband and I would emerge two and a half hours later in much the same manner with mascara dripping down my cheeks, a bit pissed, very flushed, screaming “I NEVER WANTED TO GO TO THIS STUPID BASTARD PARTY ANYWAY!” and that yesterday these skinny jeans fitted nicely and now I’m squeezed in so tight my arse is around my neck.

The Beard, knowing not to disturb the growing gargoyle but, starting to panic about being unforgivably late, gently taps on the door a couple of times, opens it a jar, manages a swift “…erm, babe…?” before seeing that look in my eyes, the clothes depot that’s just had a delivery, the rainbow of nightmares and finally the love child of Barbara Cartland and Beetlejuice. He edges away as I sink to my knees amidst a brutal cloud of colour. The clock ticks like a sledgehammer hitting my brain and now Fear Of Missing Out syndrome has hit.

The party will be in full throng now. We will have missed the champagne. And there will be champagne because, no I’m not friends with Jay Gatsby nor was I made in Chelsea but post-30 every social gathering is a landmark celebration whereby engagement rings glitter and those old school boozed black outs will no longer consist of coming-to to find a lad who smells of ham trying to stick his fingers up your bum you will now wake up in a corner where you have spent the last 45 minutes cooing at baby videos. The dribble is real and alive. The last of these celebrations I went to there was a magnum of Krug head down in an ice bucket and I reacted a bit like someone who missed the last lifeboat fleeing the Titanic. So yes, there will be champagne and you will have missed it.

It is also vastly important to get to this party before it gets dark because it is A BBQ being held IN A GARDEN! For Londoners who have fgbeen deprived of green spaces for so long, to have sacrificed air and light to you know, chase their dreams, it is Very Significant when you are invited to a party In The Outside. Particularly when food is being cooked In The Open Air. Never underestimate the power of warm Prosecco and burnt sausages consumed as your heels get stuck in a lawn and your skin turns blue, my friend. This is British Summer and we have earned it…

Sauntering down a quiet street in Chelsea this sunny Sunday, I thought now would be a good time to smell my armpits. For the bus was unnervingly hot and filming at the crack of dawn on a hangover induces its very own kind of sweat. So I thrust my hand up my shirt into the hot, prickly nook and gave my fingers a proper good sniff. I was wearing a new jacket after all, and I really didn’t want some porous pits contaminating it.

Yes, dear reader, this does sound a bit disgusting. But it is just one of those disgusting things we do when we’re shielded by privacy, all alone, free and confident to sniff pits and look at our vagina in the mirror. Which is why, then, a little butterfly filled my tummy (and subsequently flew out my derriere) when I glanced up, hand in situ to spy a sculpture of a man glistening above me, perching his biceps on the balcony and smoking in the manner of a Noel Coward wet dream.

I wouldn’t usually swoon at a Chelsea farmer, nor was I sure that this was swooning, but then this was a unique situation. I usually wouldn’t have my hands up my armpits when in the immediate vicinity of another living thing, including dogs – for they would certainly tilt their head in terror.

So there I found myself, in this macabre play, cast as some sort of street urchin or Biblical pariah or perhaps just a dirty 30-something who likes fiddling with her crevices in public. Either way, my status was low and His was up – physically, geographically, emotionally. I thought he might have at least thrown down some gold coins. He was wearing a crown, wasn’t he? Or was that just the sun? Perhaps a halo? Or just his own glow? And were those stallions emerging from his mouth as he let out bold, meaty puffs from his cigarette? And did they not then gallop apace up to the skies, messengers to the Gods, with news that down here on earth – in Chelsea! – there is a girl with her arm in the air, sniffing herself, and maybe, just maybe okay with it…? Surely not, reply the Gods, surely Women of Earth do not actually have a smell other than peaches? Surely those intricate nooks and complicated crevices do not spoil and mutate into something odorous and obscene? Surely their sole function is to drape those languorous limbs over velvet day-beds in some sort of sexual manner, a Titian vision – fleshy, wan, invariable and naturally floral?

But no, Gods – I could see this figure thinking half way between Heaven and Earth – no, they do not behave in the ways we thought. Get up close and they are a bit of a mess actually.

I eat when I’m hungry
I eat when I’m sad
I eat when I’m happy
I eat when I’m mad

I eat when it’s cold
I eat when it’s hot
I eat when the feathers are proud
I eat when they’re shot

I eat when the wind rasps
I eat when it drops
I eat when the fierceness
Ceases to plot

I eat when my luck’s in
I eat when it stops
I eat when the moon shines
I eat when it’s blocked

I eat when I’m laughing
I eat when I’m lost
I eat when the fizz
Has turned into frost

I eat when the vessel empties itself
I eat when the whirlwind grins, and takes off

I eat when he rests his hand on my thigh
I eat when the walls shake
I eat when they cry

I eat when I simmer as I enter the room
I eat when I create our own little doom

I eat when those beasts rattle their cage
I eat when they eulogise, centre stage

I eat up the heart, the lungs and the breast
I eat them vigour, with pride and regret

I eat to soothe the sorriest soul
I eat to feed the feline, the feminine, the foul

I eat because eating is a thing in itself
I eat for nourishment; for death:
I could just about do without

I eat when the kaleidoscope claws its way through
I eat when it resets to this requisite humdrum, obsolete view

I eat because I am Warrior
I eat because I am wan
I eat because answering the telephone
Is a battle for one

I eat because my face is masked
By the screen
I eat because my insides SCREAM,
“We are rotten, you no longer pristine!”

I eat because I am charged
I eat because I’m the best
I eat because no one knows as I sit on my arse
Close to death

I eat because OH GOD THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO
I eat to beat those voices that always get through

I eat because I feel like I’m an unstoppable fraud
I eat because, well, who gives a shit about this broad?

I eat because I’m FUCKING HAPPY!
I eat because I’m FUCKING NOT!
I eat because all around me there are babies and snot

I eat because I’m not ready
I eat because resting is rot
I eat because all around me everyone is everything
I am not

I eat when I consider all the paths I must take
I eat because this might be just one huge fucking MISTAKE

I eat because eating is bloody good
I eat because we are all so misunderstood

5/5/17

You know you’ve had a good night when:

– Your try to open your eyes but your eyelids are cemented together with mascara and you resemble a blind Ancient Greek soothsayer
– You and your partner roll about in the sack, not in a sexual way but like two hot, angry potatoes
– You wake up as if in the desert and nearly wail when there is no water beside the bed. You briefly consider drinking the fluid from your partner’s eyeballs
– You are under the covers but your shoes are still on
– In fact you are fully dressed and your make up has shifted into the face of The Joker
– You have Nutella on your cheeks because you stuck your head in the jar just before bed
– Your eyeballs ache
– You seem to have become seven months pregnant as your stomach has expanded so severely it hurts. You wonder if you agreed to swallow a football for a dare but then realize it was because you eat twelve slices of toast at 4am
– You suddenly have a burst of energy and feel like organising an activity for the day but when you crawl out of bed you remember you have bought a day long ticket for the merry-go-round and you won’t be going anywhere
– You lean on the sink to clean your teeth
– You lean on the wall to get to the sink
– You get your hairbrush tangled in the hanging light switch
– You sit on the loo for 25 minutes despite only needing a wee because it’s nicer than standing up again
– You knock over the cotton buds all over the bathroom floor and picking them up is like playing Pick-A-Stick at Guantanamo Bay. You want to cry but no one will hear you
– Your eyeballs ache
– You have a bruise and a lump the size of a tennis ball on your ankle and you don’t know why
– You wonder why the smell of onions is following you around and then you discover you have burger sauce in your hair
– You walk into the kitchen to find every single glass has traces of toxic substances in them and as you do not have the physical strength to wash up you fill up a cereal bowl with water and take quick delicious gulps from it like a parched cat
– You have also used all the cutlery so have to stir your tea with a potato masher and butter your toast with a whisk
– You usually avoid your partner’s treat drawer but now you nearly pull it off its hinges searching for the last remaining Chomp
– You think you might like to sit on the sofa for a while but you go into the lounge to find the set of ‘This Is England’ and a skinny fella with rotten hair curled up asleep, cuddling your favourite cushion and still clutching a can of Carling. You would get angry but your brain cannot process such complex thoughts. You go back to bed and try to kick your partner who is snoring so loudly you think your head might explode
– You wonder why the room is so hot despite opening every window and door
– Your eyeballs ache
– You soon realize the only thing that you can mentally process is what you are going to eat for the day. You plan your food intake as a midwife would plan a home birth, with great detail, accuracy and medical precision. You even fill in the gaps in between the usual dining times with snacks consisting of mainly dips and Doritos. You plan what you will snack on as you cook and the only thing keeping you alive is the thought of gorging on a roast chicken. This keeps you going throughout the day and your mission is to get to the supermarket and back. There will be several obstacles like the front door, stairs and other people but you know this is something you must overcome and accomplish
– You picture this day of food with the same reverie as a Lost Boy in ‘Hook’ planning their psychosomatic feast
– When you are still in your pyjamas at 6pm and the roast chicken dream is fast fading, your partner suggests getting a Chinese and you think you have never loved them more
– It takes you two and a half hours to decide what you would like from the Chinese but you have kept hunger at bay during these tough decision making hours by consuming several snacks: two cheese and salad cream sandwiches, a family size bag of Kettle chips, two Kit Kat chunkies and some stale lemon drizzle cake. Your partner asks if you are still hungry and you think you might kill them
– Your eyeballs ache
– You declare you really will never drink again this time and you plan your forthcoming detox, knowing in your heart that if someone offers you a crisp glass of white wine after work tomorrow you will wholeheartedly say yes

I arrived at midday today to the usual malaise and the lacklustre lotharios sprawled around, which today even included the tech guy, Pete, who had come in to fix the foyer lights. Usually I’d expect an outsider to force an uprooted-ness, induce an ebb and maybe even a flow. But no, he too has succumb to the bucket-chaired waning, to the mid-morning, mid-week mood that renders the complete team inert. Even the hot nuts seem despondent, as if they are being held hostage in a sauna and slowly realizing their glory days are over as everyone still prefers popcorn.

Talking of popcorn, I arrive to twenty enormous boxes piled high in the foyer, and I wonder if this is the reason everyone is sitting around as if they have received some bad news. “This is going to take some unpacking,” I offer up, blandly. Fortunately for them it is me who is given the task. The Assistant Manager reluctantly offers to help and slowly shuffles off his seat as if from a wheelchair and he is attempting to walk for the first time. He hands me a pair of serious scissors and then disappears into the after-shaved ether that is the staff room, looking for another pair. He doesn’t return so I take my frustration out on the gaffer tape.

Twenty minutes later I am still going and I am only grateful that this is all before the “official” opening time of 12pm because it would have caused incomprehensible chaos if customers had started arriving, finding themselves having to mount Hadrien’s Wall just to get to the Pick’n’Mix. But then someone does arrive. Let’s just say your classic late 60s type – grey hair swept back into a dishevelled pony tail, a fleece with the lustrous remnants of her malting wolfhound and a pair of mud-caked hiking boots. Standard. But kudos to her for not giving in to the shackles of Dorset haute couture, no, this particular lady had decided to punctuate her rather beige ensemble with a blindingly bright red cap emblazoned with the words “Henry the Hoover”.

Needless to say I saw her coming a mile off like the red warning light at the top of a crane. She marched up to the cinema entrance with verve and gusto – like an angry parent about to handle the Headmaster – and slammed her hand on the door. It was a scene worthy of Pegg and Frost’s imagination: suburban psycho. I was on my own amid these flimsy crates and considered getting inside one for security. She looked quizzically at me, head tilted, growing in intensity, unable to comprehend that the door was locked. I shook my head at her and then looked pointedly, cartoon-like at the clock. She ignored that and proceeded to try every one of the three doors as I stood there motionless, helpless, barricaded in by sweet and salty snacks.

The art deco doors rattled as she looked at me again, dead in the eye, as if I was doing this on purpose. I realised then that I was still clutching a very large pair of industrial scissors, which in retrospect should have warned her off. But still, she persisted. This was a woman on a mission. We both then took turns doing the silent, across-the-door conversation whereby we both pretended to be deaf and dumb and skilled in the art of sign language yet unable to communicate anything. My information that the cinema would officially open in five minutes was not understood, or was perhaps, again, ignored. And so I picked up the master keys that had been carelessly abandoned on the side by the Assistant Manager who could now be heard shrieking along to Paloma’s “I Just Can’t Rely On You” in the auditorium. I thought, no, I can’t rely on you either.

I picked up the keys and then jangled them up in the air at the woman in case she didn’t understand what keys were and then set about trying to pick one that looked suitable. I wondered what portals existed here that I had not been informed of, what wings, realms, what doors beyond doors beyond doors…because I was now faced with about 340 keys to choose from.

The woman looked stricken now and so did I. I could hear the beat of the clock, time ticking, taunting us. My palms began to sweat and I was unsure how I had found myself in this situation, how this stranger and I were currently, suddenly desperate, under siege almost and the stakes were unswervingly high. No key fit so far and I felt defeated and frustrated at this woman for landing me with this conundrum. There was nothing else to do but shrug my shoulders and await the team that no doubt would emerge in a matter of minutes as if from under rocks.

But then the banging started again: bang bang bang on the door, her knuckles landing on the fragile glass with rapacious thuds. I was sure her left eye started twitching so I considered screaming “Help” in a gentle manner, as if to suggest “Help” for both of us and then when the Manager emerged I would arrange my face into some secret signal that would allow him to understand all that had come before. But then even if I had screamed my inconspicuous S.0.S. it would have been drowned out by the heavy snort of Henry the Hoover that was now creeping around the corner. So loud was this old soul that his inner workings made him sound ill or just cantankerous, that he had been pushed and pulled for several years and now his plastic colon was clogged. The pounding on the door ceased and the woman’s knuckles slowly slid from the frame. Something had caught her attention. And then it dawned on me…this woman must be a co-conspirator of the Hoover dynasty. Quite why it took so long to register the significance of the red beacon before me I don’t know, perhaps it was the mania of the last three minutes but I realized now this must be the reason for this woman’s earnestness. Why else would she wear a “Henry the Hoover” hat? There could be no other reason. It could not be for fashion nor practicality, so her mission must be to seek out and rescue sullied Henrys from all over the country.

And at that Henry himself shot around the corner, dragged aggressively by 80 year old usher, Jack; two old boys together. The pace of the two clashed as Jack moved in slow, unrelenting motion across the foyer picking up imaginary crumbs as Henry was yanked, as if being throttled. He was pretty useless after all. I wondered if the two should meet, what this woman might do if she were to get her hands on Jack, his abuser. From afar I imagine it was a nefarious scene, as if Henry was chained up in some closet and only released to do his chores and we watched on mockingly, laughing, as he choked on stale hot nuts that people had spat out, wishing they had got popcorn. Yes, how we must have looked, we barbarians, to this woman and her localized cap.

Fearing she might break the door down, I tried to gesture to Jack to gallop apace and spin Henry swiftly out of view. But he was deaf and disinterested, and just when I thought I had lost my fight, The Manager appeared. It was 11.57am. I rapidly explained the whole drama, shaking the keys up to him like a giddy gaoler in days of yore. He stood tall and proud, his hazardous gut seemed to retreat into itself giving him a momentary prowess and he strode majestically like D’Artagnan towards the entrance and the suspicious visitor. I was the innkeeper, he was the master. He had pantaloons, I had a crooked back. He grasped the keys from my withered hands and like magic picked out the correct one and threw open the double doors and bellowed, “How may we help you, Madam?”

The woman shrank back, shocked. She spluttered, “She…she…she wouldn’t let me in. I just wanted to make a phone call in the warmth. My son…he lives in America…I just need to make a phone call in the warmth…”

Well I might as well have had a head of vipers. It was my turn to splutter now. “I…didn’t know…I didn’t know…” The Manager shot me a glance and nodded like Merlin, with great wisdom and understanding. His foot was still in the door, preventing the woman from entering. I thought, any moment now he is going to release it and this rabid civilian will headbutt me with her Hoover hat and the last thing I will see before I pass out will be Henry’s eyes looking at me, pay back for all the times I cursed him when he got stuck around corners, and all the times I impatiently yanked the cord so hard he had been turned upside down, wheels in air, humiliated.

But The Manager did not move his foot. Instead, he looked the woman in the eye and declared, “The cinema will officially open at 12pm. Please come back then”. And at that he closed the door and locked it up. This was a Titan Of A Man. He glided back into the staff room, casting a considered gaze at the clock as he passed. The woman and I shared one last, incredulous look at one another. She edged away slowly, defeated, walking backwards and retreating into red phone booth in the car park as if she was a creature and this red structure was her safe place, her nest. I turned and noticed Henry had got stuck around a corner again and Jack had given up so he was left abandoned, on the edge, his eyes gazing at his last hope of freedom.

This woman may or may not have a son in America, it could have been a cover, an “in” and once over the threshold, she may have seized Henry and completed her mission. Or she could have just been telling the truth and I had clearly been desperate for adventurous distraction. Either way, it was clear these were serious times, this was a serious place with serious rules and what I do know is that the madcap with the mad cap and I with the black branded polo shirt and suspicious mind, both learned a lot in those few, reckless minutes on that fragile threshold of Life V. A Small Coastal Cinema Chain.