Lust

The painters have been here all week. There are two of them, these painters; and they have names that sound like a culinary partnership: Salt and Pepper. Fish and Chips. Steak and Eggs.

Steak and Eggs?! Who really eats eggs with steak?!

Their names* alone make them a great combination, these painters who are busy brushing the exterior of our building a virginal white.

They finish up. They pack up their painter things: brushes and rollers and trays and buckets. They wave cheerfully over their shoulders as they leave our lives "forever" -- or at least for two years, we hope.

A good paint job should last two years, shouldn't it?

Yes, I am sure that a good paint job should last two years. Unless, of course, a hormone-addled adolescent named Victor gets hold of a can of spray paint. In that unlikely event, a good paint job will be tarnished by Victor's declaration of love for Julie:

"I'm gonna give it to Julie Hard Victor."**

Good to know, Victor. Good to have it written all over our front wall.

Lucky Julie.

*Laurel and Rum
**Lack of punctuation adds some ambiguity. Is Julie Hard Victor the proper name for the recipient of the mysterious 'it'? Or is Victor hard? Or is Julie going to get 'it' hard from Victor. The latter of these interpretations seems to me the most likely. Whoever Victor is, I must applaud his creative use of a capitalised Hard.

Gluttony

Late night pedestrian traffic leaves its drunken traces outside my bedroom window.

An empty beer can.

Chicken bones, which I suspect originate from a Texa Fried Chicken* establishment on the nearby high street.

Chips** strewn across our welcome mat***.

Bounty bar wrappers littering the lavender.

I hope the veins of the inconsiderate litterers are hardening as I tippy-tap-type.

Filthy bastards.

*No, that is not a typo. TEXA Fried Chicken. Not Texas.
** French fries.
*** Well, actually, I haven't got a welcome mat. If I did, one's chips/fries would not be welcome there.

Wrath

The Lavender Bush (not the specific one, which was stolen; rather, The A Priori Lavender Bush) predominates my microcosm of The Deadly Sins.

The room, hidden from public view, that abuts the space where the vile of my recent posts takes place, is, sadly, my bedroom. Generally, I am the hardest of sleepers; meaning, I can sleep through the most exciting of events. One of my not-so-prouder moments, I fell asleep on my feet in a bar in Madrid where an undeniable chemical attraction was supposed to be taking place between me and a potential paramour. This is to say: I can sleep. Hard.

All this to say: the disruption that took place outside my window, which jarred me from a warm, dark slumber must have been one hell of a disruption. Slurred speech. Angry grunts. Closing my eyes (assuming that I had opened them in the first place) I imagined the aroma of the prevailing wife beater herself,Stella.

Scuffling. More slurring. Shouting and shouting slurs.

Bloody Hell.

I lay awake until the slurring and shouting, slurred shouting and shouting slurs came to an end. The excitement was over; altercation avoided.

Tell that to the poor little lavender bushes. Call them collateral damage.

Amid the slurring, there must have also been stomping; for our fledgling front garden was squashed.

Greed

When My Man and I moved into our current flat, the space along the wall in the front yard - the space-for-planting plants - was occupied by some kind of brush grass that seemed out of place.

This is London; not the Serengeti. What the hell was she thinking?

The previous tenant was an Australian. Maybe the long thin shafts of missplaced foliage reminded her of home.

It didn't last, the foilage. Not because of gray skies and over-watering from London's clouds. Rather, the neighbour from upstairs knocked on our door and asked if she could replace the alien shrubbery with something more native. The Mista and I don't garden; neither do we look gift horses in the mouth. If the English Rose upstairs wanted to get her her hands into our soil, we wouldn't stand in her way. She spent a Sunday afternoon replenishing our space-for-planting with fresh dark dirt out of a plastic bag and the cutest, plumpest little lavender plants with chubby little grey-green thistles. When the English Rose finished up with her toil in the soil, we peered from behind our blinds and admired her handiwork. Our front yard was a new and magnificent place.

Kudos, English Rose! Kudos!

That night, I put my head on the pillow and dreamt of Sugar Plum fairies and Strawberry Fields and neighbours with a penchant for DIY*. I awoke vibrant and fresh and pleased with the world ... a mood that stayed with me for forty-seven minutes. At minute forty-eight, I turned the key to lock the bolt and secure our flat for the day; I turned to start my daily journey, but was stopped. Dead in my tracks.

Well, not really dead; but immobile.

Sometime during the night, as I lay frolicking in a bucolic slumber, a prowler had absconded with one of "our" newly planted bushes. I did my detective work. I inspected the scene. It was no act of vandelism. Not a drunken antic. It was an obvious act of thievery: the earth was dug up; no signs of struggle; the lavender was pilfered, I am sure, to adorn some bitch's garden.

*Do It Yourself

Sloth

For a long time it was a mystery.

My Man and I scratched our heads, looked at each other, and rhetorically – for we certainly didn’t expect the other to have the answer – asked, ‘Who? Who? Who would do that?’

Truthfully we shouldn’t have been so surprised. We’ve been around the block. We know the world is full of ass holes, or arse holes, depending upon in what part of the world you are.

For a long time I thought it was the curmudgeonly old man who hobbled down the pavement with a cane in one hand and a leash in the other. The leash was attached to a floppy-eared Cocker Spaniel.

That Curmudgeon would have a list of excuses to exonerate his poor behaviour:

First, and foremost, he was a curmudgeon; and curmudgeons by their nature are prone to a streak of unfavourable manners.

Secondly, he was a member of an altogether different generation; a generation, I reckoned, that hadn’t grown up during the age of pooper scoopers.

Finally, and most importantly, I was sure the curmudgeon wasn’t physically up to the task of bending down, not even to pick up his dog’s shit.

My Man wasn’t convinced by my detective work. He felt I was casting spurious blame. It wasn’t the first time My Man disagreed with an assessment I put forth; and it wasn’t the first time that My Man would be right to disagree with my assessment.

My Man had a plan. He proposed to work from home*, more specifically from the front room of our flat where he could monitor (spy on) the passers-by, canine and human alike.

His plan worked. Not 3 days into "working from home" and he caught the culprit empty handed, meaning she carried neither plastic bag nor any device with which she could collect her best friend's excrement.

So who was it? The slothful fuck of a woman who let(s) her dog crap in our yard? The ass-faced neighbour/high-end retro furniture shop owner, of course.

My Man caught her, caught her eye, and, trying to be a gentleman smiled when he asked, "You are going to pick up after your dog, aren't you?"

Ass-faced high-end retro furnitrue shop owner looked bashfully embarrassed when she replied, "Oh, of course I am."

You know what? The shit stayed there all week until The Mista stooped to pick it up.

We're still plotting as to how to curtail ass-face's unacceptable conduct. Suggestions?

*I do not believe My Man shared his plan with The Man**.
**The Man = corporate headquarters.

7 Deadly Sins

I'm not sure what our flat looks like from the street. I've lost objectivity. To me, it looks like ... well, our flat. It looks nice. Homey. As it should. It's an ordinary London flat, constructed from what, I suppose, was once a colossal home. I imagine that at one time it harboured some sort of enterprise; the front window has the aspect of a shop window, but it is now reconverted to something more appropriate to a residence.

Approximately 5 feet (1.5 metres) separate my rehabilitated window from the pavement where your run-of-the-mill passers-by pass by. That 5 feet (1.5 metres) is my front yard. And my upstairs neighbour's front yard. We share it. It consists of a concrete wall about as tall as a very short person's waist, a height that encourages loitering. Other than the wall, our front yard boasts a thinning layer of pebbly gravel; a space, running the length of the wall, for planting shrubs or flowers or bushes or trees or whatever catches your fancy; and two garbage cans (officially, one is the neighbour's, one is mine; but we do such a good job sharing I don't even remember which is which.) For as grand as our front yard may not be, it is still our front yard and, as such, provides a first impression. Should Right Said Fred someday catch me coming in or going out, would he judge me by the little strip of land abutting my front door?

If so, it would be a shame.

For as much as My Man* can try to impose order, mankind upsets it. The Front Yard doesn't make a very good impression.

Peering out from the inside I see the evidence. Peering out from behind the blinds I see the debris of the worst of human nature: sloth, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, pride, envy. All of it, right out there on the other side of the window in the little space that is My Front Yard.

Examples forthcoming.

*The shameful truth is that My Man normally toils alone in an effort to maintain the perfect pebble lawn. I half-heartedly help when properly encouraged.

Meme Manners

This wasn't how my mother raised me.

She taught me to write thank you notes and to keep my elbows off the table, and to cross my legs -- at the ankles -- when seated in mixed company.

She taught me manners. Lady-like manners.

When I first began to deviate from the course of polite society, she took a breath and shook her head. I could see the thought: "That's not how I raised you." A momentary reaction, before she joined the revolution -- took up hammer and sickle to chip away at the 1950s rulebook that had hitherto defined her behaviour. That is a story for another day.

What is relevant (here and now!) is that we (my mother and I) do not merely willy-nilly chip away at rules. Manners and consideration count for something and should be thrown to the wind only when such action is thought out and about.

That is why I am ashamed. Ashamed that I haven't yet given the fabulous and electric Katy a memey nod. Katy really is fabulous, and I believe she is very possibly electric as well. I'm flattered to have been in her thoughts when she was out tagging people. So, belatedly, here it goes:

5 Things About Me That You Just Might Not Know Already . . .

1. I'm special: I'm adopted.

2. My brother's special: he's a Doctor. Well, not really, but that's what he heard when my parent's repeated the mantra, 'You're special: you're adopted.'

3. I recently re-took the What Breed of Dog are You test. To my chagrin, I came up a Chihuahua. I then took the test on the behalf of My Man. He came up a Saint Bernard. I feel sorry for my poor Chihuahua doggy self when I think about being mounted by a Saint Bernard. I contemplate what our puppy children might look like.

4. Sometimes, a darkness descends upon my sunny self; despite how fast I run or where I hide or how many cups of chamomile tea I drink in the bathtub. It often begins with a mere mist of insecurity; as it gains momentum it becomes a crashing, crushing darkness whispering words about me that are patently untrue. You're' no good. You're worthless. You're a loser. It sucks the breath out of me; though really it doesn't because the sunny shell of me persists, and though just a shell she too needs air. While the darkness swirls, the shell of me goes through the motions of everyday life. She buys the daily, triple, venti, skinny, extra-hot, wet latte; she attends meetings and makes calls and jostles her way through the crowded tube on the way home. In the meantime, I cope. I count. I wait until it's safe to reoccupy my skin. I wonder if I would still be a Chihuahua if I could somehow fit this tidbit of info into the quiz.

5. I want a cat.

And, now to tag: Maritza, Harriet, Wendz, and tentatively Mr. Angry (just to see if he goes livid on the whole memey thing.)

Cross Your Legs

This evening my knees knocked all the way home, and I discovered a new precept:

No matter how quickly you think you have to head home (even if you're about to lose your glass slipper and the chariot is on the verge of becoming a pumpkin), you should take the time to take a wee in whatever toilet is available.

If you don't follow this precept, you're life is liable to be full of excruciatingly (truly) uncomfortable moments.

Words to live by: find the loo before you find the nearest tube stop.

That's all.

Going Down on the Up

When it's early in the morning, it's hard to keep your eyes peeled for little things like which direction the escalator you're about to step on happens to be moving. It will certainly jolt you to full consciousness when you do make that first step down onto an upwards moving stair. If you're a shaker and a mover and quick on your toes (like me), you'll do a quick little jig that turns you around so that it seems you were actually coming up. You will curse your luck that not far behind you in the normally empty early morning tube station there are a couple of Japanese tourists. They laugh at you and take your picture. You grin on the outside; but not on the inside.

Oh, you foul mechanical bitch.

The incident will, however, soon be forgotten as soon as you take your seat on your somnabulant journey underground.

---------------------------------------------

Why the hell was I up so early anyway?*

When I'm good (really good), my alarm goes off at 5:45 and I'm at the gym by 6:30.

I used to be better: during a really, really good period of my being really, really good, I consistently woke up at 5:00. By 6:00 I was at the office to drop off my laptop and send a timestamped email to my boss to impress him with my committment to my job. By 6:30 I was at the gym and by 9:00 I was ready for a nap energy-fuelled day of productivity. I don't remember much from that really, really good period of my life. People tell me that I yawned a lot. And that I was a right boring cunt.

I'm not that good anymore, but I try.

*The real question should be: What in the hell were the Japanese tourists doing up so early?

Bad, BAD water

Speaking of bad water, it's quite amazing that I still have a seemingly healthy, full head of hair.

Each morning upon raking my mop, a goodly portion of follicles are deprived of their lovely goldenbrown strands. Sad sacs.

Then, in the shower, more strands meet their demise as I lather up with shampoo.

The coup de grace of hair loss happens during the conditioning process. As I work my fingers through the untangling tangles, great clumps are released. It's quite disgusting, really.

Having no sisters, I never learned the feminine art of beauty regimen conversation. I've lived a solitary existence when it comes to the troubles with fingernail painting (where it really is necessary to stay within the lines!) and ingrown hairs (loofa-ing doesn't always do the trick!) and maintaining a spotless, yet youthful, glow on this mug of mine. Such was my lot with my hair loss* dilemma as well.

I mutely scooped out worryingly liberal clumps of hair from the shower floor.

Until one day, the daughter of a Malaysian general living in Mayfair inadvertently let me in on a little secret:

Not only does London water taste bad, but it's responsible for the unnatural separation of so many hairs from my head!

Who would have thought it?

The general's daughter consorts with types** who stoop to washing their hair with bottled water.

How much Evian does it take to wash a normal head of hair?

London water sucks, but washing with Evian (or even Volvic) is a bit over the top, don't you think?

*Before anyone gets the wrong idea: I am NOT balding. I am shedding. There is a BIG difference.
**The Posh Spice sort, I imagine.

Bad Water

This morning GMTV aired a segment on water; specifically bottled versus tap. Per the tried-and-true-and-formulaically-annoying television media format, GMTV lined up two guests with conflicting perspectives.*

Aging Ms. Hippy vs. British Soft Drinks Association Stooge.

Let's see who beats whom ...

Oh, no, let's not have a play-by-play; I haven't the stomach to recount the drivel that distracted me during my good-morning workout.

Suffice it to say the Hippy trounced the Stooge.

Tap water is cheaper and more environmental. No health benefits have been attributed to bottled water.

But, London water tastes like crap; no matter what the aging hippy says. London water is only contested in awfullness by that of the another capital, Washington, D.C. Also crap.

What to do?

*I recently saw this format on American television (CNN) when the Ethiopian ambassador to either the United Nations or the United States (CNN contradicted itself) was interviewed in regards to the recent conflict in Somalia. Mister Ethiopian Ambassador to either the United Nations or the United States was pitted against the feminine charms of a Scandinavian aid worker. The yippity newscaster did her darndest to encourage conflict.

Yippity Newscaster: Thanks for joining us, Ms. Charming Scandinavian Aid Worker. What is your assessment of the current humanitarian crisis in Somalia?

Charming Scandinavian Aid Worker: Quite frankly, YN, the situation sucks. Massive flooding has caused the current famine. The Scandinavian Aid Agency for which I work has had to cease its distribution of aid via the normal channels due to the precarious political situation.

Yippity Newscaster: Well Mr. Ethiopian Ambassador to the United Nations (or United States) what do you say to that?

Mr. Ethiopian Ambassador to the United Nations (or United States): The humanitarian crisis requires international attention, and we hope relief can be brought to the people of Somalia.

In short, CNN attempted to contrive an argument; and, seemingly tried to cast Ethiopia as an aggressor (the US ironically urged restraint and encouraged continued discussion). I hate this type of news casting. It’s crap. And sadly, it seems there are a lot of stupid people who don’t discern media manipulation.

Now that was a tangent, wasn't it?

Happy New Year

As CBF and I rushed to the liquor store yesterday afternoon in a fit of last minute, we're-going-to-usher-in-the-New-Year-with-aplomb-and-grand-style-come-hell-or-highwater enthusiasm, she commented, "Is this not the warmest New Year ever?" To which I nodded in agreement. It's been warm in the Smoke this year.

This makes me pause when formulating my New Year's greeting (which this post intends to be). The first words that come to mind are: A warm and happy New Year to one and all. But should I really be wishing continued warmth in the New Year? Would that not be applauding (thereby encouraging) our rampant expulsion of green house gases?

This year I resolve to better manage my time. I will not flounder about with such time-wasting questions like "Should I wish the world a warm New Year? Does a 'warm' New Year wish encourage global warming? Will they understand I mean warmth as in cheerfulness not as in increased temperature?"

No, I will not waste time eating my own brain*.

Nor will I waste time trying to conclude each published sentence with elegance and verve.

Instead, I will spend my time figuring out how to upgrade a personalised template into 'new blogger.'

I will waste some time in January on devising and monitoring a couple of New Year's Resolutions.

I won't spend time making my resolutions public, with the exception of the couple of hints I've given above.

I will continue to be fickle and inconsistent.

But this isn't about me. It's about you and your New Year. May it be cheerfully warm and happy. And not too hung over, if you're into that type of thing. And, if you are into that type of thing, I recommend a 'Silver Lining'**: a flute of champagne with a shot of vodka poured in. Use a good vodka. I like Gray Goose. It's tastey.

May 2007 bring you many Silver Linings and laughs and good tv programmes and books and good health and friends and loads of comments if you are a blogger and puppies and kittens and sunrises and sunsets and all sorts of good things that could make you happy.

In short: Happy New Year!

*Direct from the Spanish expression, 'comer el coco', which signifies unnecessary, almost paranoid over thinking of some subject or another.
**Introduced to me by my mother who coincidentally called just after CBF and I returned home from the liquor store with 2 bottles of champagne and a bottle of Gray Goose.