Does Carrot Cake Matter?

Apologies for not posting this week, but my computer at work broke, so I had to share with Valerie (in the same office) and of course had to be v careful. For a moment, there, I thought they weren’t going to replace the computer, ever, and this would mean I was going to be sacked FOR SURE, but it seems to be OK, though there is a strange atmosphere hanging over the place, somehow, and I didn’t dare make a fuss about the new computer taking so long to arrive.
Well, the party at Jasmine’s last Friday was an austerity party. We were supposed to make do and mend etc and bring wartime recipes. I took along a carrot cake, as they ate that in the war (though of course back then they were not baked by Mr Waitrose), but other people really got into it, making stuff no one in their right mind would want to eat, like mock-sausages and dried egg. I was very excited about this person I was being invited to meet, but it turned out to be – Glenn. Mind you, it was an improved model of Glenn. He had cut his hair short, and did not smell of alcohol (in fact drank fruit juice all night). He had a Tshirt under his jersey and later (we all went out to a Chinese restaurant) when he got hot I saw it read: ‘Die Hard: Take Viagra’, which is quite amusing, really. Glenn was incredibly well-behaved and very clean. And, as you know, he is extremely good-looking, with his dark hair, slim figure and blue eyes. He told me he’d been in AA since I last saw him and he is turning his life around. He lives on a big farm in Cornwall with a group of friends, and he kept saying why didn’t I move down there too (with Mirabelle, of course) as I could have my own place – no strings attached. It sounded like a sort of chalet in the woods that I could have if I wanted. It sounded quite tempting. Especially as they are almost completely self-sufficient, with a cow for milk, and a veg garden. Nothing else happened, but I found myself wondering, much as Sarah Jessica Parker does in those Sex in The City voiceovers: Is Money Really That Important? Maybe I’ll have to investigate. Or maybe not.

Clothes, clothes, clothes...

I was lying in bed at 4 in the morning, fretting about this and that, when I started thinking about clothes. Isn’t it weird how significant clothes are? Even clothes you’ve never worn, never even touched. Like – I just have to THINK about Richard Gere’s cheesy white suit (and cap) in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ and I feel this sexy frisson. And thinking about Richard Gere himself doesn’t do it. It’s the suit. And then there’s the lovely coffee-coloured dress (with tight belt) that Julia Roberts wears to the races in ‘Pretty Woman’. I loved that. I kept meaning to buy one like it, but never did, and now it’s almost as if I did anyway, I feel such affection and nostalgia. And I saw ‘Priceless’ last night, with Audrey Tatou in it, and that film is, really, about clothes. Not that any stick out particularly (though the evening dresses are amazing – though they wouldn’t suit me. They’re for very slim women with tiny tits.) It’s just that you find yourself looking eagerly at the clothes, not the people. They’re really NEW clothes, too: there are lots of shots of people snipping tags off them.
Anyhoo, Jasmine wants me to go to her place tonight to ‘meet someone that she knows I’ll like’ so I’ve been running over my clothes in my head. Pity I can’t buy new ones…

Obsessing About Bernie Ecclestone

Fretting about my dad has got me thinking about fathers. I’ve always disliked Bernie Ecclestone – without ever meeting him – just because he runs Formula One, probably bribed Tony Blair, and is repulsive, teeny, and married to a v tall, v glamorous v young Slav wife. (And looks like he wears an unconvincing, Elton-John wig. Ugh.) And yet his daughter Petra is a hard-working success and says: ‘Dad has worked hard his whole life. He doesn’t deserve to see his daughters going out flashing their knickers, I want to make my parents proud.’ Obviously, he’s a brilliant dad. And then look at Bob Geldof. Everyone has always SAID he’s a brilliant dad: devoted, self-sacrificing, strict but fair etc etc. And yet Peaches Geldof is out flashing her knickers, taking banned substances, marrying on a whim in Vegas etc. So he CLEARLY didn’t do it right.
I was obsessing about this yesterday, and Helen, who works in the other office on my floor, said it was because how you turn out is all about heredity. ‘Didn’t Geldof take drugs and run wild when he was young? Didn’t Paula Yates? See?’ I don’t really like to believe this. It means that your future is sort of predestined the instant you’re born.
Anyhoo, sorry about posting this dullish thought, but I have been obsessing about it.
Oh, and my dad is very kind and unselfish and never took vast quantities of drugs, so doesn’t really deserve to be slowly poisoned. (If that is what Jacob is doing.)

Strange Flus???

Haven’t posted because I’ve been feeling so peculiar and unwell. I haven’t really wanted to eat anything since the weekend (except tea and toast, very occasionally) and while it’s a bit worrying – what did Jacob put in the Green Thai Curry? – at least my clothes aren’t too tight any more. I’ve been reading all this stuff about people getting kidney failure as a result of cooking up poisonous mushrooms, so I hope it wasn’t one of those. I even rang my dad, last night about it. He said they all seemed to have had a peculiar kind of flu that had laid them low for a few days, but they were now on the mend.
‘What about Jacob?’ I asked
‘Oh – Jacob didn’t get it. He never does.’
‘So have you had a lot of these flus?’
‘From time to time. Let me see, we had one back in August. I remember that because it was an odd time of the year for flu. And then Dawnie and me were bad in June. Very bad, for two days, but that was brought on by the cold and wet.’
So this makes me wonder. Is Jacob some kind of a psychopath teenage poisoner, working up to some sort of serial-killing spree by practising on his family? Or have I just gone mad?
Still, it is nice being slightly slimmer. And I notice that almost everyone I know has put on about half a stone (or more) over the summer. Probably because it was so wet and miserable. And they’ve been worrying about the squeeze.

Strange Foods

On Sunday we had a Green Thai curry for lunch that Jacob made (he’s been having cookery lessons at school and got v enthusiastic about being a masterchef) We all felt strange afterwards, and I decided to go home early. I’m not sure it’s a terribly good idea teaching teenagers to cook. Who really wants to eat their stuff? I mean, you feel uneasy the whole time, especially when you look closely at their expression and see how little they are eating. (And remember how they like doing silly experiments.)
Anyhoo, it was a good thing I came home early as when I got in with Mirabelle in her basket I saw a note on the mat. I was just opening a tin of catmeat for her (Mirabelle lost her appetite while at my dad’s, oddly enough. But she was desperately hungry when we got home.) When I opened the note. It was from the landlord, giving me 24 hours notice of a flat-inspection. So I stuffed Mirabelle and her dish of catfood in her basket and just raced up the stairs to the Japanese girls, but they couldn’t have her, either, as THEY were having a flat inspection, too. So I raced downstairs again, shoved the dirt-box in a carrier-bag, and rushed out into the street with all my cat-related items, and luckily managed to get a cab and go to Rache’s. And she was in – it was so, so lucky. Then I had to rush back to the flat to be there when the landlord arrived.
It was Ok. The only sticky bit was when he looked round the kitchen and saw the opened cat-food tin on the counter. Fortunately it’s a top of the range pedigree variety and doesn’t REALLY look like cat-food. (Esp as the part of the tin with the cat’s face on was turned to the wall.) I spread some on a cracker and bit into it, and then hastily put the tin in the fridge. So either he thinks it was pate, or he thinks I’m a little eccentric. Or that I’m economising in a stupid way, due to the squeeze. And none of those are grounds for kicking someone out of a flat that they keep perfectly clean, are they?
I haven’t wanted to eat anything, since, though. I seem to have stumbled on the best conditions for dieting: get teenagers to cook for you, eat catfood, and practically DIE of panic and anxiety.

Spaghettiing the Banana

I had a lovely time on Saturday. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it – I went off to my Dad’s, in Bristol. He remarried ages ago, and this was a big party for one of his step-children (who is 21). After the birthday lunch (in the back room of a pub) we all went back to my dad’s house and the children were messing around. My favourite step-brother is the youngest, Jacob, who is twelve and looks sort of angelic – blond curls hair, willowy, brilliant at sports – but isn’t. We’ve always got on well (except when he was a baby, and I resented him, of course), and he tells me stuff be probably wouldn’t tell his dad or mum, and I find some of it really interesting and amusing. Like - recently he’s discovered that if you push a piece of raw spaghetti into a banana it gradually absorbs all the juice from the banana over a few hours, and turns into a sort of slimy worm that horrifies anyone unsuspecting who bites into the banana .
Last time I visited he was really into dropping a special peppermint called Mentos into diet coke, which turns it into an explosive fountain. (He first did it in the garden and accidentally traumatised his pet rabbits – they didn’t know what to make of this sudden monsoon of sticky brown rain. You can still see where it fell on the greenhouse.)He’s planning to fill the bath with custard and walk on it next week. (Because, for some complicated reason to do with physics, it can support your weight, so its sort of like walking on water.)
Anyhoo, it was so great spending hours having silly conversations with him and his friends in the Indian summery sun. It makes me feel I would really, really like to get married and have children soon.

The Importance of Lovely Bras

Went out yesterday and bought really beautiful underwear, as I thought: if times get tough I won’t be able to afford this. And, like lipstick and chocolate, it’s a luxury you can’t do without. I mean, suppose I lost my job etc and was living on turnips, and then I fell in love… well, I would definitely need this crushed-raspberry set then. I was OFFERED A STORE CARD when I bought them. Also, earlier that morning MBNA sent me a letter asking me if I was feeling hard-pressed by the current crisis, and suggesting that all my troubles could be solved if I TOOK OUT ANOTHER CREDIT CARD.
I spent a lot of time yesterday telling myself that, as Miggins kindly suggests, tarots only mean something if you believe they do. This would have worked, maybe, if I hadn’t chatted to Jo about it. She immediately told me about her aunt, who kept getting towers, and skeletons with reaping tools etc, whenever she did her tarots, and eventually got so concerned about it she went to a range of fortune-tellers, who all, one after the other told her she was going to die early. And she did die early etc…
Jo had this secretive, pleased look on her face while she told me this. I hate it when female friends look like that when you’re in trouble. Although I have to say that I occasionally find it quite hard to keep a similar look off my face. When Jo told me a while ago that her wedding was being delayed as Martyn had decided (and more important, his mother had decided), it should happen in the spring, when some wonderful wedding place he knows about will be free to book, I had to try desperately hard to look truly sad for Jo. I was sorry she was having to wait. But also, deep in my heart there was a tiny malevolent – totally wrong - bit of me that was cackling with glee.

Pink Cocktails and Bad News

I’m feeling a bit woozy and depressed today as Rache came over last night and we drank too many champagne cocktails.(A credit-squeeze version, using pink Cava from Tesco.) (Also, some of them with cranberry juice in, as Rache has cystitis. Or maybe some worse, Greek variant.) She was so sad about Vasilius going. He is the best thing that has ever happened to her, such a fantastic lover, such a superb man in every way etc etc.
The thing I was most interested in is that she told me that Oskar, the demon cat, who was making Rache’s life a misery by, for instance, peeing in her fruit bowl, has completely changed as a result of these two grumpy middle-aged Greek men occupying his quarters for a week. Rache explained that Oskar now looks apologetic all the time, is pathetically grateful even to be allowed into the place, and doesn’t even miaow when he needs feeding. He just looks at her pleadingly, with a winsome look on his scroffy face. I don’t know what those Greeks did to him, but it sounds amazing. Maybe Vas and Dimi ought to have their own TV series, ruthlessly sorting out troublesome cats all over the UK.(Only, maybe their methods are best kept secret.)
Oh, and just before Rache passed out on my sofa, mascara smeared all over her face, she confided that Pym was really worried about me. My tarots were really diabolically terrible, and he was just making them sound better to be kind. He’s never seen worse ones, and was shocked when they came out almost exactly the same the second time…
Great.

Chocolate Lipstick

Went out to drinking last night with Jasmine, who has got a new, ageing Goth boyfriend. (It was the Intrepid Fox, a truly scary place. I am never going to the toilets there again, NEVER. ) One good thing was, I discovered all kinds of strange side-effects of the credit-squeeze. Her boyf does French polishing for very very rich people. (He is always having to rush out on French polishing emergencies, that is, some stupidly rich person will accidentally scratch a side table, and a neighbour is coming round! Oh No! Quick! Ring up a French-polisher and bribe them a thousand quid to come round immediately!) For the last month he has had NO WORK AT ALL. None. So, clearly, you have to be ludicrously stupidly rich to be unaffected by the squeeze. Stupidly rich isn’t good enough any more.
And one of the reasons why our firm is in trouble is that we represent a yoghourt brand that people drink to improve their stomach bacteria or something. (It made me make terrible, unforgivable farting noises, like a rapidly deflating balloon, when I tried it, so I never did again. NOT glamorous.) And apparently, when people are feeling the squeeze they stop eating special yoghourts. I wonder what the last things they give up are? The consensus last night was that they might be lipstick and chocolate.

My New Gay Best Friend

I was so miserable yesterday evening, and then I decided to take the advice offered by the kind people who visit this website and ring Pym. He told me to come round at once – said he’d been wanting to ring me but hadn’t been able to get hold of my number from Rache because she was out nightclubbing with Vasilius and Dimitrius.
So I went to Maida Vale, which is a lovely safe place to go to at night, its streets seemingly empty except for well-groomed Arabs and their servants. Pym had opened some champagne (it is all he drinks, apparently), and made some crostini things to eat, and he sat me down and told me not to worry about the cards, they all had positive meanings as well as bad ones. In fact he said the same sort of thing Miggins and Topiary and had. And then he asked me if I wanted to try again, and held out the cards. So I took a deep breath and held them in my hands for a while (you are supposed to suffuse them with your being etc) and then picked out 7. And it was really weird, but I got pretty much the same cards as before, with the Tower in the middle. Pym said this nearly always happens. He studied the cards for ages, then told me not to worry, it was actually quite positive. He said there are going to be really massive changes in my life very very soon, and everything I’m used to will be turned upside down. But after that, I will find a lot of wonderful, good, positive things happening, and my life will actually be better.
I felt so much happier after this. And we just chatted away for hours. It’s amazing talking to him because he is so gorgeous and so kind. (He said he adored my shoes. I had worn one of my favourite pairs to cheer myself up. They are pink.) And he told me about a great vintage shop to go to, and then I told him about THE BOOK and he said he wished they’d write something similar for gays, as he is always getting his heart broken. (Though Rache has told me that he goes for incredibly beautiful, vain, shallow young men, so this is pretty much bound to happen.)I even told him about this blog, and he said it sounded like a ‘chick-lit blog’, which I suppose it is. There was something v pleasurable, in a weird way, about having such an intimate chat with a man I could never have sex with. I’ve never had a close gay best friend, but I can really see the appeal now.

My Disastrous Career

Last night I went to dinner with Rachel’s gay best friend, Pym. (Well, that’s his surname, but he likes everyone to use it as if it is his first name.) We went there because Rache was desperate to find some way of entertaining Dimitrios, who is v hard-going, and accompanied Vasilius EVERYWHERE (except the bedroom, obviously). Oh – and Rachel seems delighted with Vasilius now, she thinks he is just as handsome as before etc.
Anyhoo, we went off to Pym’s flat, which is in Maida Vale. It’s gorgeous: nearly all the rooms painted a coffee-colour (called Bath Stone), old oil-paintings in gold frames, antique furniture, There’s a faint smell of dog. (He doesn’t have a dog.) But then bachelor’s places do sometimes smell a little. (Either of dog or hamster-cage. It must be due to unwashed socks.) We had a roast dinner and things were very sticky because Dimitrios said he couldn’t eat the food, it was too dry, he hated the sauce, Greeks didn’t cook pork like this etc etc. Then he was restless and got up and kept fiddling with Pym’s priceless objets d’art which made Pym nervous. So Rache said why didn’t Pym tell our fortunes? Apparently he has this party piece where he tells fortunes with Tarot cards and he is really rather good. I’ve always been scared of Tarot cards and kind of thought they were wrong and sinister, but they said I didn’t have to do it. So first Pym did Vasilius, and told him his business would do brilliantly, and there was a new romance in his life. Then he told Rache she had been unhappy, but a new era was dawning. And the big success was Dimitrios, who hadn’t really wanted to draw cards, but, when he did, got loads of pentacles, which apparently mean money and prosperity and success, culminating in the ten of Pentacles, which is apparently pretty much the best card you can have. He was so pleased! A smile even lit up his sour old face. He practically kissed Pym. (Who v kissable. So handsome, a lovely sexy tanned face, always smiling, and gorgeous bright blue eyes.)
Well, you can guess what happened next. It had got really late by now, and everyone said why didn’t I try. And, after all, their cards hadn’t been at all scary. And Pym held them out and told me to choose. And an odd thing happened. It was almost like I could see the backs of certain cards glowing slightly, like those were the ones I should choose.
And we turned them over… and they were just horrible! REALLY REALLY SCARY AND VILE. The devil card was in there, and right in the middle a tower with people screaming and falling off it. I just burst into tears. So then we went home. And now I don’t know whether to ring Pym and ask him what they meant, or just try and forget it all.

Bitter Greek Reality

Sorry not to have posted, but things are very edgy here at work, and I don’t particularly want anyone to see me doing non-professional stuff when I’m supposed to be working. There have been a lot of serious meetings, and whenever you see the partners they look grim, so I’m starting to wonder if Michael was right after all, when he said the firm was in trouble. Wish I had looked for another job when he suggested it, as looking for new jobs it going to be loads more difficult now.
Ho well, other news is that Vasilius arrived last night. (Accompanied by his bitter, grumpy cousin Dimitrios.) Rache rang me up for a whispered telephone call. She said he looked completely different in London: sort of sallow and wrinkly. I suppose it’s a bit like when you buy one of those kaftan thingies on holiday and wear it every day, feeling relaxed and glamorous, and then you get home and try it on, and practically pass out with horror at how awful you look in it. Still, as Vasilius has gone to the huge bother of pretending he needed to go to a London to look at restaurant supplies (he’s opening a restaurant soon with his Dimitrios), and flying over here, Rache feels she pretty well HAS to sleep with him, now, whether she fancies him or not. She hasn’t got the strength of mind to say he can sleep on the couch and nothing more. (Or even the strength of mind to refuse to answer the door and pretend she isn’t in.) On the plus side, he brought her loads of cakes. (Which had also gone sort of sad and wrinkly on the plane.)