I am back from the edge. I was nearly vanquished by my lunch, but victory is mine. Went to Chequers, the ace sandwich bar off the Strand, to get a tuna nicoise roll. I got it on olive bread, and when I unwrapped it back at the office and realised it was bigger than my head, my shoulders sagged in defeat. But! I girded my loins (not that they play any role in lunch), and I pluckily dug in. And dug. And dug. It didn’t help that the generous bastards give you free soup with every sandwich, so I had a polystyrene cup of Stilton & broccoli to get through, too.

Today I want to shop. And here’s what I want to buy:

A wrap (ballet) cardigan
Cords in dark red, brown or navy
Metallic ballet flats and satin/metallic tap shoes
Fake flower garlands for my bathroom (does anyone know where I can get these? And not for £20 each)
A laptop (although I never will, as it costs a month’s salary)
A sewing machine (where to put it? I barely have room for a stereo)

Any one of these purchases would improve my life; if I had all of them I would want for nothing and would be happy for ever.

As Steve sagely remarks every so often, “You can’t have everything: where would you put it?” Silly boy. My reply is always “In the biggest house in the world, with a very large storage facility a short distance away.” I have thought this through.

The day has started badly. Am coffee deprived. Sitting at desk opening post, and already I’m angry. The one thing that really gets my goat is people spelling my name wrong. Now, it’s excusable if you’ve never seen it written down, as it’s quite a mouthful. But if I have been SENDING YOU LETTERS every couple of months for the PAST TWO YEARS, TYPED LETTERS, with my surname TYPED, then for fuck’s sake please make an effort not to call me Jacevitz or Jazewizz or Jackanory or Jetwhiskers. I know it’s nine letters, but the books you write contain much longer words and you seem to manage those without much trouble. Grrrrrrr.

The Emap zine awards took place this week: here’s the skinny from the Pamzine.

You can’t have read a paper over the past few months without seeing a mention of this book. Some reviewers have slagged it off for being low brow/militant, and despite a shaky start as the author gets a bit “Hey kidz! Punctuation’s COOL!” it is a right cracking read. A non-boring book about grammar; whatever next?

After yesterday’s awful lunch experience (bitter, glutinous lemon chicken that was neither lemony nor chickeny, cold noodles) nearly ruined Chinese food for me, I decided to have one more try today. From now on I shall eat only at Soho’s Yumi Food Bar, where £3.50 buys you noodles or rice and two toppings: the chicken curry and spicy ginger pork are particularly fine. The food comes in a vast plastic take-away trough, and eating even half of it is an achievement.

Two reasons why January is the cruellest month

1) All I want to do is lie down and sleep. Anywhere. All the time. Even at work (especially at work), on the bus, in the bath. At the moment the floor space under my desk is a jumble of old files, books, bubble wrap and paintings (just don’t ask), but I am thinking of converting it into a cocoon, with padded floor and sides. Have felt like this all month: shaggy dark hair in my eyes and bellowing when disturbed.

2) Despite Dr John Briffa’s hatred of anything that might possibly taste nice, on these short, cold days all I want to eat is stodge. Coffee, pasta, prawns, cinnamon bread and pierogi all get the thumbs-down from the good doctor: to me they combine to make the perfect meal. It’s a sad fact that the things I want to eat are making me tired and sluggish, while the things that would give me verve and pep aren’t appetising.

Another weekend, another two episodes of Joe Millionaire. On Saturday, three lovely ladies remained, vying for Evan’s dough. He had intimate ‘overnight dates’ (hook-ups) with each of the girls, flying them to some exotic locale on his private jet. Michelle, the curly-haired, slightly whiny one, asked Evan what turns him on. ‘Um, legs. I like legs,’ opined our shy hero. The next shot was of ’Chelle poking her scabby hoof, clad in sandals Pat Butcher would balk at, dangerously close to fake-millionaire Evan’s real family jewels. Despite her best efforts to sleep with him, Evan still got rid of Michelle when the time came to give out diamond necklaces.

Horrible Sarah, who did sleep with Evan (‘She knocked on my door. She wanted to look at the moon. [pause] Again.’), is still in the running. How he can find her dark brown monobrow (there is footage of Sarah filling it in a bit with a brow pencil, in case it’s not pronounced enough, I suppose) and blonde hair combo attractive is beyond me. And her conversation seems to be stuck on a loop of ‘How’re you holding up?’ and ‘I feel really comfortable with you. I trust you.’ It’s obvious* he’s going to pick gum-chewing teacher Zora, whose idea of dressing up is to wear a slightly more fitted western-style denim shirt than usual, and who feels bad that ‘the other girls can’t be here to enjoy [our date]’. Zora’s prudishness works to her advantage, too: whereas the other girls can’t wait to don a titty top and cavort in the jacuzzi with Evan, Zora is terrified of being seen in a bikini, despite being a bona-fide stunna. Thus Evan sees Zora as mysterious and ‘a challenge’. And this still works, apparently.



*Well it is to me, cos I’ve seen the last episode

one drink for the price of four

Am crabby today, and why should I suffer in silence when I can share it with you instead? Am surrounded by coughing, sickly people who feel the right thing to do when germ-ridden is to come to work and share the wealth. Stay the fuck at home! I don’t want to hear you hacking like a frigging Alsatian!

Ahem. In other interesting news, yesterday was mine and Steve’s anniversary. A drink was had at the American Bar at the Savoy, which I expected to be far nicer than it actually was. The bar was pretty, but the furnishings were similar to those you’d find on a P&O ferry, and the carpet was a migraineous swirl of navy and bright yellow. Also, turn down the lights! Everything and everyone (including me and my beloved) looks better in dim, sexy, conducive-to-drunken-flirtations lighting. As the drinks cost £11.50 each, we couldn’t afford more than one. Free bar snacks (olives, salted nuts and delicious, meltingly oily crisps) lessened the blow a bit. But really not that much.

It’s a sad fact that I complain about almost everything. Oh, the American Bar wasn’t as nice as the Green Mill, the hotel on NYE was mean and made us stay in their basement, and that rotten Toyota Corolla ad makes me never want to buy a car. Here’s where to complain about it . Unless you like seeing fat women being ridiculed and men being reduced to car-loving, shallow stereotypes.

Some great things

Joe Millionaire. Watched this on Sunday, and now there are only four lovely ladies sharing the French ‘shat-ew’ with hunky Evan. Funniest bit was when Evan asked the curly one what she’d do if she had loads of money. Her reply was ‘Um, I’d like, go to Africa? And work with the orphans. Like, bathe them and stuff. I guess that’s just the mercenary in me.’ The hired killer in you? Maybe she meant to say missionary. This tickled me no end, and when I talked to Steve later that night I said that maybe we could try the mercenary position one night, and go to bed with swords and grenades. Ok, well it made me laugh.

An elderly lady I saw this morning, who was wearing the coolest outfit I’ve seen in weeks: black 30s tap shoes, black patterned tights and a red knee-length coat. She looked like I want to look!

Was talking with a Polish colleague about Wigilia, our traditional meat-free (but fish-filled) Christmas meal. She said that this year she decided to attempt a dish utilising the national fish, carp. The recipe she used was called ‘carp in grey sauce’ (note to the Poles. Could we at least try to make our cuisine sound vaguely appetising? I’d pass on Sachertorte if it were listed on the menu as ‘brown cake’). Unsurprisingly, the carp in grey sauce was foul. Krystyna explained that carp eat all the rubbish at the bottom of the river, and sift mud, stones and used condoms to get to the nutrients. Apparently you’re supposed to soak/pickle/salt the fish to get rid of the taste of trash (mmm…trash…), but she failed to do this, so on Christmas Eve she and her family were eating a fish that tasted like dirt. I say stick to ears and pigeons next year.

My NYE in a four-star bunker in Knightsbridge

The 31st and the 1st were an eventful couple of days. On the last day of the year, Steve and I went to visit my sister and her children, the Mewlies. They’re two years old now, so not really mewling any more, but instead chattering, clambering, jumping, and standing over their Gran to see if she drops any of her meals-on-wheels lunch on the carpet. They are like pets, but with clothing: anything that an adult is eating must be better that what they get fed. (Having seen the meals-on-wheels menu, I think the reverse is true. But how to break this to a toddler?)

After doing the family thing, we went to check in to our swanky hotel, booked the day before on Lastminute.com. Our main reason for choosing it over the dozens of other places touting for business was that the description stated that the hotel had a solarium, gym, sauna and pool on site. Did it buggery! Once we arrived and were led to our room (in the basement, through several fire escape doors), we decided to call reception and see where all these treats were located, as there really didn’t seem to be room for them in a townhouse. Turns out they were a 10 minute walk away, and cost £15 to use. We complained and were given complementary day passes, but once we got to the gym, we discovered it was closed until January 2nd. I was about ready to cry, and I actually did shed a tear when the vodka martini I ordered back at the hotel arrived in a tumbler full of ice, no olive, and containing not a drop of vodka but Martini Rosso vileness instead. (The hotel bar was free – yes, free – and that is probably the only thing that prevented us from storming out in a righteous huff.) Oh, and the only place in our room that had mobile reception was far corner of the wardrobe.

The evening got better, though. Drinking champagne in the bath, going to Maroush for a cheap and tasty dinner, and walking around Knightsbridge looking at toffs’ houses. I’ll tell you one thing, the rich have really, really boring taste in interior design. So much cream! Chintz! Heavy curtains (to stop bitter proles like me peering in? Probably), dull antiques, nothing retro or punk, not even any Chinoiserie. This didn’t stop me from muttering “I hate you, I hate you” while my teeth chattered and I stared at a – blond, Tory – family toasting their wealth and incredibly fabulous life around a Christmas tree. Bastards. I was greatly heartened after seeing a rat darting purposefully towards a basement flat full of more nobbs. Vermin don’t care if you live in a pit or in a palace. Marxist Ilona, over and out.

Upon returning to our hotel, we drank more champers, set up the scrabble board (my drunk ass was whupped by a man who works in marketing, for shame!), and watched on TV the fireworks I could have seen – live! – from outside my front door…

Happy New Year!

Coasting through life

It’s interesting when you get a glimpse of how other people subconsciously see you. My boss gave me coasters for Christmas: very pretty blue ones, with 50s pin-up girls on them. In the past year or so, I’ve received three sets of coasters. When I told Steve last night that Jean sent me coasters, he got all cross. Turns out he got me some this year, too. I can read many things into this coaster-buying: that I am the kind of person who does not tolerate rings on her 1960s coffee table or kidney-shaped dressing table, that I am a hip, urban, swingin’ chick who drinks a lot and entertains every night. The negative spin on these is that a) I am anal and b) I am a lush.

But who the hell cares, cuz I just got promoted! Aw yeah. A nice pay rise, too, which I will celebrate by taking my boy for baby back ribs and beer, and buying a new pair of shoes. (Probably black cons – it’s not that big a rise.) My friend Jon has a theory about pay rises, which is that it takes exactly two months to adjust your standard of living to your new income before you start to feel poor again. For the first two months you feel like Rockerfeller: there you are in the pub, buying your third round of the night. A glimpse of you through the window of Poste Mistress, paying for a pair of designer shoes you can’t afford and will wear twice. Then your ‘needs’ grow to meet your increased salary, and there’s no way you can survive on the money…

I realised today that I’ve been lying to you all these months. The bit at the top of my blog says that it’s about “diary, books, recipes, crafting on the cheap”. Have I given you any recipes? (One. Back in June or something.) Have I provided a single useful piece of crafting advice? Have I fuck. Thing is, there are plenty of excellent crafting sites, and I could never compete with them for quantity and quality of information. So, like a true defeatist, I am not even going to try.

Winter is really here and my hibernation instincts are kicking in. Feel run-down and coldy and am convinced that the only cure is three days spent in bed reading and watching TV. Tried to do this over the weekend, but kept getting restless and going out. Plus have had hideous nightmares for the past two nights: last night I dreamed that I witnessed a giant lorry mounting the pavement and crashing through the wall of a church, interrupting a christening. The baby being christened was killed: I walked past the church and there was blood on the ground. The night before, I dreamed I was kissing a man I know, and it was really weird because I felt like I was cheating on Steve. Also, to convey that this man had a weird attitude to the ladies, my subconscious showed me a present his mum gave him on his 21st birthday: a beautifully cross-stitched sampler, spelling out “to my eunuch”. Huh?

Also, as if dreaming of babies being murdered were not bad enough, today I am a walking, talking fashion “don’t”. I should have a black bar over my eyes to protect my identity, like the real-life “don’t”s in fashion magazines each month. Wearing purple sort-of fishnet tights, winter coat with summer bag, hat that makes me look dead, and my mum’s 80s boots. I feel like I have taken fashion advice from Steve. (If I have a job interview and am stressing, I’ll ask Steve what I should wear. Invariably the reply I get is along the lines of “Antlers – your good ones – and a sou’wester. Also, galoshes and a thong.”)

What a weekend. I am fast learning that the world of publishing is not a very nice one, and underhand tactics haven’t been put to rest. In the bad old days, it was customary for editors to steal each others’ ideas and pass them off, and short of cursing and plotting revenge, there was nothing that could be done about it. On Friday night I was out drinking with the lovely Mr Saha, he of Finlay fame, when he happened to mention that a web diary we’re both hooked on is to be published as a book. When I heard this, my blood ran cold, as I’d proposed this idea to four editors at my company in January. None of them expressed an interest. Shortly after, one of the editors, head of the media list and 2002 Editor of the Year, left to take up a post with one of our Big Rivals. Now the book is being published by them in the new year. After speaking to several people at work, I’ve pieced together what happened. A woman who works here, who used to work at The Big Rival, remembers the (my?) book being brought up in acquisition meetings. Her friend is editing it, and she believes that the man I showed it to immediately passed it to The Big Rival. I didn’t think there was any legal recourse, but apparently a ‘no competition’ agreement was signed, and has now been broken. So that’s my news. I’m alternating between happy, sad and furious. Happy cos the author of the web diary is a wonderful, hilarious writer who ought to be read, and happy because my idea clearly wasn’t a bad one. Furious at Trevor Dolby (oops. slipped out) for stealing my idea and passing it off as his own. And sad because it would have been my dream book to work on, and I really believed it could be a success.

Ok, other than that, I drank a lot. Friday with the Open Democracy crew, Saturday with my sister and her boyfriend at his 30th birthday, then with Tim and Kyle, who is just ridiculously gorgeous and I don’t even want to be in the same room as her. This was at Mentasm, an irregular club help in someone’s flat in Stoke Newington. Going to Mentasm feels like entering an Austin Powers film, or, I imagine, Andy Warhol’s Factory. The kitchen is a bar (drinks tokens are bought from the coat check girl), the bathrooms are, um, the bathrooms, and the sleeping areas are cordoned off. Just a big, sparsely furnished space, then, with lots of drunk dancing folks. I had a beer, leered at Gruff from the Super Furry Animals (Jodie will be jealous… but he was there with his girlfriend), and laughed at skater boys wetting themselves cos Tony Alva was there… I wouldn’t know him if he bit me: I just saw a guy who looked like Craig Charles, and had an entourage.

Band names and bands they suit

Bolus – crappy heavy metal/rock band like Primus, and all those inexplicably popular bands like Good Charlotte and Blink-182.

Behemoth of Love – sorry kids, this one’s taken. Mine and Therese’s girly rock band, with jingle-jangle sounds and handclaps (like Heavenly meets the Posies). Formed (I think) in a bar one drunken morning, the band hasn’t progressed past naming. The obvious next step is designing T-shirts, bags and badges, and then drawing album covers. What instruments can we play? Don’t be so ridiculous.

Lord Huggington – this would be a faux-pompous Guided by Voices/Buff Medways affair, with all band members wearing red jackets with epaulets and brass buttons. Despite looking faintly silly, they would blow your socks off with the power and skill of their Rock.

Tasty Veil – three Japanese women dressed in very expensive, understated skate labels, singing about chocolate cake and hating their jobs.

Today I am sitting around eating carbohydrates, and that’s about all. Tesco almond fingers (currently buy one get one free!) are bloody delicious, and highly addictive. Plus I woke up at 4am cos Steve has flu and was having an attack of the shivers, so I got him some water and paracetamol and covered him in layers of clothing. Poor lamb.

For some reason the thought of updating my blog this week is like eating liver: I know I should do it, but I just really don’t want to, and keep putting it off. (Ok, not really like eating liver. I don’t put that off, I just don’t ever do it.) Here are some little odds and ends I wrote this week, very outdated, so what.

Last night I put away all my summer clothing and sorted my closet out according to these rules. I tell you, it felt so good.

Wore a beret to work, cos my hair was wet. Think I looked like a Chelsea Pensioner rather than Amelie, though.

He didn’t make us feel like dancing . . .
Steve and I saw Leo Sayer today. He had the trademark halo of curls, but light brown and not black as I remembered. Speaking of hair, today I am sporting a Jesus Christ ’do.

Wow, did you see that? So good I posted it twice... duh.

I’ve eaten at this place twice in the last two days. But it’s so damn good, as cheap as McDonald’s, and a lot nicer. Last night Tim bought me dinner there: we had a salad, two giant plates of pasta and a bottle of highly drinkable house red for £18. As Jodie once said, you can’t beat that with a big stick. Today I had lunch there with Steve, cos he is a sad puppy at the moment, and I wanted to cheer him up. We had pudding, too: how can you turn down the dessert menu when one of the options is called Funky Pie? Steve had the pie, which was, sadly, not as funky as I’d hoped, but tasty nonetheless. And I could sing ‘Funky Town’ while he ate it, too, as if I needed a reason. I had a fudge bombe (stop sniggering at the back!), and it was most fine.

Oh and Steve and I have decided that Mark Ruffalo and Janeane Garofalo have to get it together, just so they can have a baby called Griff Ruffalo Garofalo. Say it five times really fast.

Also, here’s the best thing in the world. Adam Ant has apparently recorded a charity version of Stand and Deliver. All proceeds will go to the Diane Fossey Fund. The song title? Save a Gorilla…

Oh and Steve and I have decided that Mark Ruffalo and Janeane Garofalo have to get it together, just so they can have a baby called Griff Ruffalo Garofalo. Say it five times really fast.

Also, here’s the best thing in the world. Adam Ant has apparently re-recorded a charity version of Stand and Deliver. All proceeds will go to the Diane Fossey Fund. The song title? Save a Gorilla…

Last night Steve and I were forced to shop at the Sainsbury’s of Despair: it's laid out all weird, so you spend 10 minutes looking for the milk, and everyone is wandering about in a similarly aimless, desperate manner, looking like they’re about to cry. It’s the one on Clapham High Street, and I was getting very bad vibes from it. Bought ingredients for fajitas and got the hell out. Made dinner, drank a Miller Lite (the Champagne of Beers! Or is that High Life?), which Steve had brought all the way from Chicago!

Now I am at work eating a crayfish salad (one of the saucy buggers has a bit of crayfish poo on it. I took it off, but what if I missed some? Will I live? Check back tomorrow if you care) from atop a pile of page proofs (I like to live dangerously) and looking at my Hotmail to see if I’ve somehow missed an email from a major publishing house saying ‘Yes, we’d love to employ you.’ Where could it be?

Have also had my hopes dashed (again). Was hoping to win the Green Card Lottery, move to Chicago, and live happily ever after. Steve was gonna hitch a ride on my coat-tails, too, so he’s bummed. We had a whole marriage deal worked out! Damn you, Immigration Services and your unreasonably strict guidelines! See, although UK nationals aren’t eligible for the lottery, if either of your parents were not born in the UK you can apply. As soon as I read this the tape loop of me sucking down beers at Ten Cat, hi-fiveing jazz musicians at Green Mill*, buying coffee and cheap organic ready meals at Trader Joe’s, all accompanied by Therese, started to play. Then when I read it again a few weeks later, it became apparent that what the clause actually says is that if one of your parents were not resident in the UK at the time of your birth, and if the country they resided in was eligible, then you could apply.

Back to the drawing board.


* This has never happened. It just suddenly sounded good to me.