I've stopped kicking myself...

"Well, the thing is..." I began, toying with the stem of my glass.

It had been a perfect evening.

He was charming. And sexy. With just a touch of the Clive Owen about him.
I was smitten.

I couldn't take my eyes off him.

I couldn't remember the last time I had felt like this, at ease with someone new. Had never been on a date with a man who understood me when I spoke about mystic law and reiki, and understood my angle. We talked, of Ogmore where he grew up, of snowboarding and writing and the complexities of friendships, love and flatmates and then, a bottle of wine and it was closing time.

"You see..."

I couldn't quite get the words out. I wish I'd met him 2 years or 2 months ago, had swept away every man from then and now to this one. Had the time to spend a few more nights, a day, a month in his company.

But there was never that time, just the plain realisation that the entire evening had been built on a promise that I was about to break. And so I told him; that I was leaving, that I had tried to tell him but couldn't, didn't have the courage to tell him I would be gone in a few short weeks because damn it...

I had wanted him.

So the next day, kicking myself I apologised for my lack of judgement and the next day he emails me back wishing me all the best and thanking me for my moment of clarity.
Not condescending. Just honest. Final. He won't be meeting me again.
And I understand why. Not because I'm leaving, and not because I'm not available but that I stretched reality a bit to breaking point.

And Saturday night over drinks and the post mortem, Theo looks at me.

"Surely he was perfect because you were leaving, surely he was all that you ever wanted in a partner because you want something to hold you back?"

So yes, as simple as that. A lesson well learned. I stop kicking myself.

I think.

Kentish Taaaahn

I've had to rush out to quickly to KT's finest internet cafe to check my emails, due to internet issues at the house (and to be frank pure procrastination about packing) and am stuck beside 2 loudly chewing girls arguing about nothing and a strange man who smells a tad like stale cigarettes and cheap perfume.

I'm only a bit bemused to say that as I leant back, I caught just a sneaky peek of his screen...

So, I wonder. Why go to a busy internet cafe, why not just relax in the comfort of your own home with a *ahem* magazine?!

I'm not so sure I want to touch this mouse again.

*Bzzz...bzzz...ow!*

I've been feeling good about the whole *bzzz... bzzz... oww! bzzz... owwww! bzzz... owww!* situation tomorrow.

Then the delightful Hammersley sent me his flickr set, and I read this.

I do have others, and I do remember them being fun pain.

If pain can be fun. Or good.

I'm booked in for 3 hours of good fun pain and I'm wondering if this was a rash moment of stupidity or clarity?!

Oh what a tangled web...

I totally fucked up last night.

But granted, I didn't mean to. I just couldn't quite get those words out, I was having such a great time. I was caught up in the moment.

So when I agreed to go on a date with the intoxicatingly delicious Welshman, I did so with an element of dishonesty. You see, I hadn't quite gotten around to telling him about an impending move.

In 3 weeks.

I had the opportunity, I had the means... I struggled with the morality of it.
Should I tell him? Should I not tell him? Thinking back now, yes. I should have bloody told him. But I didn't. I got lost.

Because I wanted to meet him. Because truthfully, I wanted him.

Because we didn't stop talking all night and I couldn't take my eyes off him.

I should have just been honest, when I first met him a month ago. Instead of laying it at his feet at the end of a great evening.

Update 1: The packing

Triumphantly I announce

"I have made a carton!"

The carton is large enough to fit an average human in and I step back, beaming with pride at my apparent handiwork.

The carton, 2 days later, is still empty.

I have 1 week and 3 days remaining to pack and 6 more cartons to put together. That works out as roughly 1 day to pack each year of my UK life. Or less than one carton per day.

I think I should get a move on.

Update 2: The Tattoo

I've paid the deposit.

I shall be inked again on Thursday and I am incredibly excited. It's been far too long.

The design proposal, it has to be said, is absolutely gorgeous and I am really really excited that I couldn't get into Into You after all, and instead found this little gem. Which I've walked by almost every day on my way to work.

Update 3: The love of my life

I've met him. Bet you weren't expecting that one, were you?

But that is another story, and far too long and complex to be just an update. But it hit me Monday evening and I realised I've been falling in love with him since I was 8. It just took me a while to get here.

Update 4: Denial

I'm in a healthy state of it. I'm pretty damn good at this whole "denial - not just a river in Egypt" thing.

I think I need to pack.

I don't want to go to the hospital.


Update 5: The Hospital

I've got to go back, again. On Friday. I've put it off for 2 months. But for my own state of mind (and health) I need to go. Frankly, I'm scared shitless.

And I'm tired of being brave about it.


Update 6: I need to stop from freaking out about the whole moving halfway across the world.

So I've booked a flight to Barcelona for me and The Gorgeous, and put a deposit down (I am all about the deposits this week) on a fabulous little flat near las Ramblas and the Picasso Museum.

I'm looking forward to escaping reality for a few days.

11:37 Saturday am: Cambridge Circus

I am early, and Kenny is late. This is almost completely unheard of.
He is far enough away that I can stumble across the road and get coffee.
If I don't have coffee, I tell him, I will die.

It was, as hideous weeks go, a desperately hideous week.

There's not one particular lowlight that tipped it, just a long series of hideousness rolled into one excruciatingly horrible 7 day period. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the weekend before saw me dancing through the streets of Soho in the early hours of morning, somewhat the worse for wear, in the company of bald drag queens and topless Brazilian men. Little sleep and excessive sambucca, my feet sore from too many dance floors.
Monday morning blues came thick and fast. Delayed Thameslink trains and broken down buses, tubes hot with bodies pressing into each other, a walk to work in freezing rain without an umbrella. Silly mistakes, lack of focus, quick flashes of anger and the overwhelming sense I was failing.

Last week I hated the world.

Kenny peers over at me through his trademark shades, sees my face – a mixture of unfocussed fury, a sadness I can't hold onto.

"You are a reflection of your environment."

I protest. I don't want to be miserable, glaring at passerbys through the largest sunglasses I can find. I don't want to see people, I'd rather hide and look at the world through a darkened din. He suggests it's a shame they're not pink; I tend to agree.

I don't know what it was, struggled, unable to shake it. For days I glared at my housemates, my colleagues, people on the bus, on delayed tubes, waiting for cancelled trains; pissed off with life, with the never ending grey days, with rain, with people, pissed off at myself for being pissed off.

Which pissed me off even more. My patience, it seemed, had disappeared.

It took me a while to see past the fury, the short sharp flashes of red hot anger that seemed to simmer underneath my skin, failed to diagnose the crazy blues, even after the shortness of breath, the undisguised feeling of paranoia of something nameless, complete helplessness.

Jean Jacque Rouseeau wrote: "There is no happiness without courage nor virtue without struggle."

I wonder what he'd say to Ken Livingstone and his Transport for London.

Part 2: The Theatre makes everything better

And so clutching coffee, we make our way down Old Compton Street, past coffee bars and pink fronted buildings, weaving down a cobblestone street amid waving rainbow flags.
And there we stop outside of Queen's Theatre.
Kenny, you see, has a surprise.

Now, I love the theatre.

I always have.

There is something about a theatre that makes me feel safe. I trained as an actress way back when, but it was never the lure of technicolour that held me fast. It was always the bareboards of the theatre that seduced me. Whether onstage or backstage, waiting in the wings or sat, eyes fixed firmly on costumed players; it has always been the theatre that made everything better.

And we make our way through the stage door, up past offices and dressing rooms, past forms bent over, laying hair onto nets and then the clean crisp smell of laundry. And there, amidst corsets and buttons and bows, I am measured and fitted. Swatches of velvet unfurled, a sketched design from Kenny's bag.

My leaving present from the Lovelies, a bespoke purple velvet coat.

And so, my feet a little lighter down the stairs (I confess that Kenny does have to hold me back from trying to sneak onstage) and we make our way back into the grey March afternoon; somehow the theatre making everything just that little better.

I'm not so sure I hate anyone anymore.

Seven things

Ooooh...

*claps hands excitedly*

I've been tagged by a lovely Texan

So, here they are...

Seven Things to Do Before I Die:
1. Write a book
2. Travel extensively: Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, South America, Korea, China, Japan, Russia etc…
3. Learn to speak another language fluently, other than French. Which I should like to be able to speak fluently again.
4. See tigers in the wild
5. Run a 10k. Or at least get fit enough that I could.
6. Be in control of my finances
7. Do something of value in a 3rd world country

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1. Run with conviction
2. Headstands
3. Budget
4. Speak nor read Russian.
5. Juggle
6. Leave the house without mascara or lipstick
7. Get past the 3rd date


Seven Things that Attract Me To Blogging:
1. I’m anonymous. Ish.
2. I’m a words junkie.
3. It’s a whole new way of networking
4. I can talk freely about ME, without alienating anyone
5. T’is better (and cheaper) than therapy
6. I can edit my rants
7. It gives me the motivation to write more often - bless the Evening Standard and THAT article. I kiss you.


Seven Things I Say Most Often:
1. * Danger!* Right before I drop / walk into something
2. “Fuuuuuck….”
3. “… hoo haa thing ma jiggy…”
4. “Tee hee hee, har har harr… hee hee he“ According to Anna, I laugh. Alot.
5. Endearments *Sweetheart, darling, sweetpea, sugarpie…*
6. "Oooooh!" claps hands "How exciting…!"
7. “Shots at the bar? Sambucca, yes?!”

Seven Books I Love:
1. Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
2. The History of Love - Nicole Kraus
3. The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
4. Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
5. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy.
6. The Art of Makeup – Kevyn Aucoin
7. Eccentrically crazy foreign cookbooks, I can’t get enough of them.

Seven Movies/DVDs That I Watch Over and Over and Over Again:
1. Like Water for Chocolate, Como agua para chocolate
2. The Breakfast Club
3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
4. LOTR Trilogy. Yes, all extended editions…
5. Star Wars Trilogy
6. Amelie
7. Bridget Jones' Diary

Seven celebs who I would be friends with
1. Angelina Jolie. Just because she's cool.
2. Viggo Mortenson. And not least because I want to have his babies. But only if he was Aragorn all the time.
3. Bono
4. Robert Smith
5. Sarah Mclachlan
6. Cate Blanchett
7. Bjork. Because she's just the right side of kook.

Seven People I Want To Join In:
1.Anna Pee
2.Chloe
3.Finn
4.Madelyn
5.You
6.You
7.And you. Yes you! Reading this now.

Confessions on a gym floor...

I was a cheerleader.
Oh yes. Yes, indeed I was.

* L...A...*

Impressionable at a young age by the popularity and prestige of those bouncy blue eyed blondes, I felt it was my calling, my ponytail flying through the air in perfect basket tosses…

STOMP

My teenaged limbs perfecting even the most difficult tumbles on the gymnasium floor, my voice singing out in spirit cheers…

* L... A...*

The reality itself, however, was quite different

* L...A...N...… *

But I...
STOMP

...I was always going to be a cheerleader.

* L-A-N-G-L-E-Y! *

I could talk of nothing else before I started high school. I'd sit on the sidelines of The Gorgeous' basketball games, just for a glimpse of these glamorous creatures, resplendent in green and gold (c'mon, whose school colours were ever flattering?)

*Langley!*

*FLUTTER OF POMPOMS*

But, sadly LSS never had those same blonde haired blue eyed Ked wearing beauties. Stuck on the border of the Township and the City, tucked alongside farms and fields, we were the school of misfits. But we tried, dammit. Did we ever. Our basket tosses took months to perfect (well, until we accidentally dropped AJ and she cracked her coccyx), we had the cheers and steps down to perfectly synchronised routine but somehow it was that other school, with their sleek blonde haired dancers, skirts brushing against lithe thighs, who gained the most attention and made us yell just that little bit louder.

We had the spirit. We just lacked all the charisma, the sparkle, the je ne sais quoi...Then the pretty girls joined the dance squad, it didn't matter they couldn't dance, they weren't there for their ability, pouting and shaking through difficult dance routines until a half hearted finish to the crowd’s adoration.

And we sat, one leg crossed over the other, pom poms to our sides, pounding the gym floor with the palms of our hands until they stung...

*We want...*

Slap Slap

While the boys ran up and down the court, dribbling, running and passing...

*Two points!*

Slap Slap

Mwah!

It's a fact. We eat it. We eat alot of it in our lifetime.

It's gorgeous. It's fabulously divine.

And I for one couldn't leave the house without it.

It's my secret weapon... glossy, wet, matte, silky, smooth, pinky loveliness.

It is of course lipstick. Mwah!

And last Saturday I found the most fantastic thing, if you head into Selfridges beauty hall (a zoo at the best of times, it's broken the best of us - believe me I know!) and head towards the back. You know, past Clinique, and Guerlain (there's a story about that but you'll just have to hold your horses on that one) and almost but not quite towards the stationery bit.

And there, voila... that little space devoted to small up and coming brands. Pop your head past Jemma Kidd Make Up School and you'll see it.
Rows and rows of rainbow coloured pigments, some delciously cute packaging and an incredibly approachable make up artist to guide you along your new adventure.

It's called Colour Lab, and they will customise any make up to suit your palette.

And that's not all. Say your favourite lippie is, god forbid, out of stock. Or discontinued. Not a problem. They'll make you a new one right then and there, and match the colour perfectly.

Do you want shine, matte, gloss? A little sparkle, a little more plum, a little more pink? And what about the scent? A choice of heavenly scrumptious choices: Parisian rose, (ooh la la!), cappuccino, chocolate, vanilla... yum.

And then lo and behold, the lipstick sets and it's all packaged up and you can even name your new bespoke lippie after what ever takes your fancy.
Mme Mojo has a new lease on life...

So go, I say.

Go now... before word really gets out and you'll be elbowing those fashionistas out of the way to get your hands on your own blend.