Golly Gosh Gee Whizzzzzzz

Well, golly gosh it's be a long time since I posted. I wish there was some better reason than I'd forgotten my password... there isn't. Though I have moved jobs and moved house, which can masquerade as reasons...if you please.

Since the last datee (who incidentally turned out to be a bit of a strange one, lovely, great magic, but utterly emotionally unobtainable) I have seen The Vegan (for a month - kissed like a Vegan). Now it's all about the Marketeer... he's nice, two dates in and he already has the heebeejeebee's, not a good sign. that having been said I ran away with 'an AIDS baby' to 'New Zealand' for the first six months I knew the Pompous One... I learned from this experience, mainly I learned not to tell people I'd emigrated to a country I have never been to before - because when, six months later, you happen to run into them, they'll be sure to ask you lots of questions about your travels, and you'll have to blag knowing about North and South Island, when really you though New Zealand was part of Australia... rather like Wales...

So I know a thing or two about the HBJB's... so I'm baring with it for now.

15 Minutes to go

On date six with an, as yet, unnamed man...we got to talking about what we would do if we got the 'Fifteen Minute Warning' you know, the govenrnment announcement that would take-over the airwaves on the brink of nuclear holocaust to warn us we were all about to perish at the hands of a random and feisty faction group (or say, the Iran). I like to keep it light on dates me... oh yes...

This is a thought I have given, probably far too much, thought to over the years.. my answer is always to find the nearest church and wait there for Certain Death... I mean, I can't imagine a church ever being anything other than tranquil.

There'd be no point in calling my nearest and dearest, the phone lines would indupitably be 'down' if not literally, certainly metaphorically.

I'm not suggesting for one iota that I would 'Find God' or pray or in any number of ways go against my staunch atheism...

Of course this is how I'd like to think I'd react, just like I'd like to think I'd be a realyl great flautist if I'd learned the flute and an Olympian ice-skater, if I wasn't as agile as a dead penguin.

The truth is probably that: I'd cry, wish I hadn't been such a prick over the past 28 years, ask someone if they thought my face was shiny, cry wonder if I looked pretty when I cried, rummage through my bag for a mirror, powder my nose, fellate a stranger, tell them I loved them and, well, die I guess.

Of course, Date 6 and I knew that the idea of the Government giving the warning at all was slim to none, unless a maverick polititian or wiley reporter managed to surmount the media black out... but still

oh and 'Date 6' (although we are now on about Date 10) I will give him a proper name when I think of it, I'd hate to tag him with a shit name so early on. Oh and he's is filthy...

A hideous generalisation

I generally disagree with making hideous generalisations - especially ones based on sexist presumptions and arbitrary conclusions that simply can not, according to the rules of probability be true...

But it has come to my notice that many men are indeed ball-less...

If I had not left The Pompous One - I swear we'd still be together, he would continue to be irritated by me, I would continue to wish him dead, he would still not be laughing at my jokes, I would still be consumed by thoughts of him falling under buses, he would still think he was cleverer than me, I would still think he was a pompous jumped-up twat... these are all facts (except the bit about wishing him dead, of course I adored the boy, which is what makes the fact he thought I was a silly, peripheral, unfunny idiot with chewing gum from brains all the more difficult to bear).

He never would have left me, because he had no balls, he forced me to make a decision, me to soul-search and worry and fret and wish things were different. He left me to tell him what he already knew, he didn't even respect my feelings enough to let me go... I never knew what the old adage nay cliche) about if you love something letting it go meant, but that's it...he should have bit the bullet and let me get on with getting over him. which in reality, after the soul searching and worrying and fretting and panicking Id done the wrong thing was actually quite easy, there wasn't much love lost.


Ditto The Soulmate - we met, in what it has to be said are 'uncomfortable circumstances' he had a girlfriend, a girl I knew, and worse, really rather liked. There are many things I am, but one thing that I am not is a boyfriend stealer, my sense of female solidarity does not allow such indiscretions, we all know a boyfriend stealer and all women worthy of their vagina's hate them... so I broke the cardinal rule of womanhood, I negated my estrogenic instincts, I fell in love with a boy who was with someone else.
I made a silent decision - I loved him, more than I loved her, my love for him was greater than my guilt at hurting her and greater than my disgust with myself, it was greater than any love I had ever felt, and still stands as my Big Love - the one who everyone else has failed to supersede.

But he, although he To This Day says we're soulmates, to this day when he's drunk he begs me to be with him, oh no he wouldn't bite the bullet and leave her, only recently he asked me to start seeing him again, behind his new girlfriends back...of course I said no...

Bad Week

It has been a bad week, to put this into context - I have had tonsilitus, there's nothing like a temperature of 103, puss-tonsils and the acrid stench of death in a persons mouth to make them cross. To put it into further context, not all week has been that bad. I had a real high point Thursday - a proper manic style high, I was gorgeous, sensual, lovely, a smiling pink enigma - of course it was the mark of insanity - but it was glorious.

Right now I do not feel gorgeous, lovely or a smiling pink anything, I feel mainly annoyed.

I'm annoyed with The Tattooed One, I'm annoyed with the Media Whore, I am marginally annoyed with The Horse, I have a new person to be annoyed with - The Driver. I haven't fucked him, I'm not sure I will. He's 50, I am 28, his oldest child is 22...I lied to him about my age, I don't know why. I guess I was feeling gorgeous, lovely and enigmatic at the time...I'm supposed to be meeting him for Pimms tomorrow, I don't know if I'll go, we'll see.

There's another one too, the School Friend. But he probably deserves a whole chapter to himself.

The Bitch is Back

The Media Whore has really shit on my cornflakes...

He started a new company about four months ago, so far has not made a dime to line his pockets, I, as his friend, his confidant, his occasional lover have been there every step of the way, I have encouraged him, advised him, fed him, cheered him, taken him to the hospital when he injured his eye...I was a *good friend*...

SO I work for a creative agency in London - we only have one competitor.

TMW - as part of his new company, has arranged a speed-dating style meeting afternoon, getting my clients together to speak to various media groups... all well and good. Each media group pay £200 for the pleasure of seeing the clients. That's where it stops working for me. I don't have to pay to see my clients. It's tacky...naff. It's not like he's getting me in front of Richard Branson for fucks sake.

So I let him know, it really isn't my bag. SO and this is the bit that pisses me off. He stings me... he texts me to tell me that if my company do not want a presence, he will invite our one and only competitor, who, of course, would pay to be seen by this client group. Seething is not the word.

I am not a sales person, I am not full of bravado and target based ego - but he underestimates me and my will to succeed.

He foolishly supplied a delegates list to encourage my attendance, he foolishly told me that the delegates would not be charged to attend.

So I have arranged a lunch meeting on the day of the speed-dating - including three of his twenty delegates. A member of my team has arranged a second lunch meeting - including another four invitees. We have already cut his delegate list almost in half.

I know - my agency contacts would rather go for a swishy lunch with me than attend an all-afternoon meeting. Especially on the basis their superiors have not paid anything, so there is no onus on them to attend.

Then, rather than going as Media - I will attend as Agency, for free, meeting and greeting my remaining clients, fluffing around like the media-kitten I am. I will note how my competitor is SOOOO eager to score business that he is attending as media, he, afterall, is a sales person, whereas I am an advisor, an expert, offering a consultative service, not the hard sell.

I feel a tiny bit bad. I don't expect TMW to put our friendship before his business - but I do expect to be treated with respect, with honesty - as an equal.

Red Pill or Blue Pill?

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more

(The Matrix 1999)

A wise person once told me, that what's meant for me, won't pass me. This basically means I needn't try... I needed apply for jobs, needn't look for flats, or try to make him love me again, I needn't lose that stone just in case should I run into The Pompous One and his new girlfriend, not that I even have an opinion about that twat.

But will a laissez faire attitude make me, or indeed anyone else, happy in the long term?

What I learned about life is that when something is difficult it almost always leads to 'self-betterment'...or at least that's what we tell ourselves to make us feel better about the fact we've really screwed-up. When you're single you hear a lot about this 'self-betterment' business, sometimes described as 'growing' within yourself...mainly from happy couples.

My dad used to say; 'Behold the humble moron, he doesn't give a damn, I wish I were a moron, my God perhaps I am'. That was his 1950's version of the Blue pill.

But would we prefer to unwittingly live inside the coochie-coo faux-friendly interface of the Matrix, or be one of the few confronted with true, wretched, desperate reality?

My friend Ange's husband James, once told me that life isn't about being with someone, or not, it's about being the best you can be, the best version of you. Again the words of a happily married...

Idealistic, uh huh, probably also simplistic, definately cliche...and he did tell me on the weekend after I left The Pompous One, so we was probably pandering to my feminist needs at that stage, luckily he stopped short of playing Survivor by Destinys Child or buying me a Moon Cup.

Right now I am forcing myself to belive in the Matrix, I know The Tattooed one doesn't want to be with me, this I know because he told me that he doesn't want to be with "anyone" becuase he has "things to do, work things" and has "discovered ambition"...

Call me a cynic (I have been called worse), but I'm sure that's a blow-out.... because surely if you love hard enough, nothing, especially not something as nothingy as work would get in the way... because that's the magic of love, at first, and for as long as it lasts it's the magic that tells us that nothing else matters, the magic that tells us this time, this time it will last forever, that it will be perfect...if that's taking the blue pill it works for me...

Risotto For Lazy People Who Can't Find Risotto Rice

Things you will need, or at least I needed...

1 x deep frying pan, plus a little sauce pan and a kettle and a jug
Some White Rice, I used Basmati
Some White Wine I used my flat-mate's from the fridge
Some Chicken Stock
Some Button Mushrooms
Some Chestnut Mushrooms
Some Dried Mushrooms
Some Butter
Some Philadelphia
An Onion
Some Parmesan

• So I put a bit of butter in the pan, and some chopped up onion (about half an onion for one person).
• I waited for it to sizzle a bit, go a bit see-through and maybe even brown around the edges.
• I chucked a handful of rice in the pan, and stirred it for a while, mainly until there was melted butter on the rice and it'd gone a tiny but see through -it started to jump about a bit, so I added some liquid...
  
• I poured about a glass of the wine in the pan and stirred.
• I then drank a second glass of the wine.
• I heated the chicken stock in a separate pan and then poured it into the rice little by little, letting it the rice soak it up and the rest evaporate off.
• I boiled the kettle and poured boiling water over the dried mushrooms in a jug.
• I kept on adding little bits of stock to the pan and boiling it down
• Meanwhile I drank another glass of wine

When the rice was nearly done...

• I chopped-up the fresh mushrooms quite small
  
• I whacked the all the mushrooms (both fresh and dried) in the pan and included the water the dried ones had been soaking in as it was all lovely and mushroomy
• Stir, stir, stir...
• I plonked in a bit of philadelphia, probably about a table-spoons-worth
• I grated some parmesan over the top, quite a lot of it, I likes parmesan

I cooked some asparagus to go-with... my pee will be green tomorrow.

May