Intervals

And once more I post, on this, my much-neglected blog. Saying that, I read so often that those who blog are narcisstic idiots that maybe it doesn't matter.

Life isn't really made of anything at the moment. I'm scared more than anything of the future. I see myself alone, and lonely. Hell, it's probably just the end result of two weeks of having my singleness reinforced at every turn, and not going to work. It'll be OK.

Flat is about ready to go on the market - so am throwing myself into the nightmare of estate agents. I'm being courted by several (housing boom in my area) which has made me aware of how rarely I have experienced this sensation.

Surely no one should be able to get to 29, and say, with total truth, that no one has desired them for a decade?

Miserably slopes off, aware that this blog post really wasn't worth the reading.

Back from beyond (Croydon)

After only a few short months, I'm back on my blog. I'm sorry to have been so bad at updating this. There are various reasons. Lots of crap things happened for a while, although far and above the worse was the death of my friends' son, at only eight months.

It's hard to find any reason at all for something like that - in fact, there is none. But that was the start of 2006 and it's not been a good year. And my heart is with my friends all the time.

But for me personally, things are beginning to look brighter. I went on a personal development course last week, with my sceptic's hat on, and ended up making some very fundamental decisions. The realisation that I needed to realise, and say out loud, 'I don't like my job' being chief among them. Watch this space for developments. I'm looking forward to not feeling like a failure at some point in the near future.

I tried to pick up my new car today (not very new though, just new to me). My old car was taken off to be scrapped before Christmas, and the replacement car was written off by a scoutmaster in January. It wasn't ready, so I drove a knackered loan car all the way back home, along my least favourite road (A23) and have to make the same journey in reverse tomorrow. And then come back. For the record, drivers of SE London, you all suck.

I'm eating a very low fat diet too, and have lost a bit of weight. I'm not really weighing myself much, but I know it's a few pounds. I'm moving in the right direction. There's nothing like being told you're 'morbidly obese' to shock you into eating much, much less.

I'm not drinking much either, although last night I went to a Chilean wine tasting run by my wonderfully knowledgeable friend Michelle, at which no wine was under 13.5% proof. On the way home, I accidentally bought a bright pink DVD player. Who knows why?

I'm off on a little holiday this week - to Spa, I think. The place, not A spa, although maybe it will be one. I'm not sure. I'm ashamed to say that I was thinking recently that I'd not really travelled much this year. I realised that I'd managed a week working in France and two weekends away so far. So I probably shouldn't think I've grounded myself. The work trip will also be paying for my US holiday, already booked, and eagerly awaited.

So, a fairly dull but comprehensive round up of the last few months. I promise to be more entertaining in future.

And finally, following great demand, and the use of sharp claws, a word from Oscar:

Helo. Hapy New Yeer. The tree in my hose got put outside last wek. I am sad, becos I climbed it lots. Tes is at the vet now, havin her furr shaved of. I woz meen to hur in hur basket this morning, and got into truble. I wonder wot 'your turn later' meens? I am staying with Stephen tomorow. I hop he has his best speekres ready for me to plaw with. I still rool my hose.

Oskar

Helo, my frends

Oscar redux

I am not a gite, i ama stunna, lik Charlot sez.

It wil be Chrismas soon and i lik that very much. Last yere, we had a bigg tree in our hose until Egg day - i sued it four sleping in. Tess is a wimp and onley sleped under it. And at Chirmas, there were dangling bits on it for me to play wiht. And wen i played very hard, the tree fel over all teh time, and that woz funn.

Also, peepl come to oure hoose and i can play with thm. Meteing new peepl is good and i am vert nice to them. I mite go and visit sum peepl in there hoses too - I lik Steeven and Loora's hose cos there are lots of boks to eet and they think {qite ritely] that i am a gud thing.

Helo to all the peepl hoo reed my talking. I hop you lik my foto.

So Tired...

I achieved a first today and fainted! It was while sitting down on the bus, so I was denied the experience of falling down, white, still and to all appearances dead, but quite bizarre nonetheless.

I am SHATTERED, yet unable to sleep well. I spent my weekend in Munich largely day dreaming of sleep and dropped off in the art gallery. I need to spend a day in bed, and that's just not possible right now. I am counting the hours till 20th December, when my Christmas holidays begin.

Thank you for the kind comments. I'm sure I'll feel better by the Big Day, and, if nothing better, can at least get a day's kip. And eat chocolate and roast potatoes.

My car is still waiting to meet its breaker, and it's all very complicated to sort out. For a hoarder like me, throwing out a WHOLE CAR which I like so much is very hard indeed.

And I apologise for the post above. M made me do it.

Lucy, you were right

We had a disagreement over when I last posted. I was wrong. Duh. (I would make you more anonymous, but given current events, I thought that particular title would look rather bad...)

Well, I'm feeling better. I think. Everything got really horrible and in the end, I went to the doctor. So I now have some magic pills and am hoping they'll get me through Christmas. I was getting worried that I'd end up as one of those people with their head in the oven on Christmas Day (unlikely in fact that I could go in such a Plathian fashion as Oscar wouldn't let me do anything that unusual without joining in, and then I'd have to rescue him, etc.) and I didn't want that.

They have the twin side effects of insomnia and drowsiness which have both kicked in, and are rather irritating. The leaflet also promised 'anorexia' which sounded like a convenient weight loss aid, but the average weight loss is only 1lb. So not a great amount of use.

I'm still feeling fragile and very alone in the world. I know this isn't true. Still, I will be spending Christmas by myself, and that never makes me very happy. I'm someone who would love to have a big family to spend it with (well, if they all got on - and I know that's a big if). I'm on the edge of families around me but not properly part of one - definitely not essential to anyone at all, and so I have this sense of being my own support. Sometimes I'm not up to it, and this has been happening recently. Let's hope the little pills make me feel more able to do that. At the moment, mention of Christmas is quite hard - it feels like it doesn't apply to me. I don't even really have any Christmas presents to buy, and I love buying presents. So I feel rather shaken when I'm in shops/restaurants/any bloodywhere that's doing the whole Xmas thing. The stupid thing, I love it. But I can't right now.

My car died today too. It's been a great little car, and I shall miss it. The garage rang and asked me to come to see them, so I went in and was shown bits of rust and other supposedly deathly things. I have to go back and retrieve all the rubbish in it, before it goes to the breakers' yard - as someone said, at least it can help other cars to live!

Can you do the can-can?

Well, first of all thank you all for the kind words. And you too, anonymous, although why your ISP is in Luxembourg when you're not, I have no idea.

I'm feeling better most of the time, although things aren't really right yet. It looks, thankfully, like this was a blip - possibly the dark nights didn't help.

I have a new cleaner who came round at the weekend to look at the flat. She is scary and Does Not Tidy, so I will have to. (And I will investigate the many offers of help too - the 'leaving the keys and walking away' approach is hideously tempting, but seems just too lazy.

Oscar pulled his usual 'hello stranger' act with her, which impressed her. It consists of lying on the ground with a 'stroke me' face on, purring at many decibels. I rarely see this myself, in between the emptying of my shelves and the nibbling of my elbows. His dudgeon is currently top level as I have committed the heinous sin of giving him (and of course, silent Tess) a CAN of cat food. A can, not any old brand, but of the only type he'll eat (and which is the only Nestle product I have bought in almost a decade). A can of big, meaty chunks. An exemplary can. But it remains uneaten.

I have told him that there are cats starving in the world. I have asked him how he thinks he'd have survived ten years ago, before pouches were invented. I get nothing but a blank stare and a loud miaow for my efforts. I point to the bowl of biscuits, eaten mostly by Tess after Oscar has eaten The Meat, but he just shrugs, in a feline style, and slopes away to commit random acts of terror on my belongings in revenge.

Maybe not random, for he picks well. S and L, who provide wonderful holiday lodgings, have found that he can zoom in on specific things - expensive speakers, a first edition book (from a bookshelf of hundreds), packaging that matters. This is partly why I live in a shambles - I'm hiding all the stuff from him. He is particularly fond of my 'chicken fillet' enhancers, which therefore live (don't tell him) on the top shelf of the bookcase. I bought him a gruesome plastic disembodied finger from Warwick Castle to play with, which lies neglected and gory next to his food bowl, waiting to scare the new cleaner. Meanwhile, he has spent quality time 'killing' the plastic lid of a tempura sauce container.

I didn't mean to talk about Oscar, but his sheer hedonism and disregard for anyone but himself can sometimes be inspiring. Despite the occasional anguish, such as the substandard quality of today's meals, he has a wonderful life. He roams the rooftops at night if it's not too cold, sleeps wherever in the flat he decides he likes, which tonight is a soft chair next to the radiator. and he's a stunner.

Much blog about nothing

I really want to blog some cheerful stuff, having moaned for the last few posts. So here, in no order, are some things that aren't sad:

1. Oscar the Bravest Cat in the World running away from a tiny baby who made a small noise. I am investigating the availability of tapes of the sound to keep him under control.

2. James, who talked to people through the medium of a squeezy cow. This was years ago, and he's a bank manager now, so I'm sure it's all worked out, but the memory made me laugh the other day.

3. The friend of mine who heard that her boyfriend was thinking of proposing, who didn't want to hear it, and drank a huge amount to stop it happening. She ended up throwing up in the Bois de Boulogne, and he ended up in prison. Not cheery per se, but I'm sure everyone involved has seen the funny side now.

4. Sir Patrick Cormack's hair. I'm watching it on TV now. Google him if you don't know who he is. Very cheering indeed.

5. A stripey dress I bought on Saturday.

But really, I feel slightly like the mists are descending. It's a struggle to think of funny things, and I have, as someone has just described to me, a 'constant sense of dread' about life. I feel that I'm not measuring up in some ways, and that I'm losing out in others. And I wish I didn't have this cloud hanging over me.

I feel bad for even thinking of myself when very good friends of mine have spent the last 10 days in hospital with their tiny baby. They are being braver about this than I can be about the fact that the thought of a mid-year review is keeping me awake at night.

Sorry for the gloom.

Daddy's Girl?

Thank you all for the kind words. It's a little unfair to expect people to get my relationship with my father with only this to go on, and the full story needs time and patience. But we do not have a good relationship, much to the regret of both of us, I imagine. And he is definitely a man who appreciates presents - for years, I have given him things that I have spent time and money looking for and buying and got a small cheque in return. Sometimes it feels like this represents our entire father/daughter thang.

And yes, Austin's parents did give me a lovely present. They rock. As did many of my wonderful friends - not that it's something I look for from people, but it's bloody lovely to have them. Thank you anyone reading this who took the time and effort to think of me and get me something. They are all appreciated very much indeed.