Lonely but not alone

I was addicted to Ally McBeal simply because the show always ended with the main character walking alone in the snow or the rain looking glum. To finely complement this scene came a sad acoustic guitar number.

It sat perfectly within my own home of self-pity. It was like the right cushion to go with my carefully arranged living room décor.

And well after the show had ended, I could tediously reconstruct the scene and the silent guitar number wafting in and out of my carefully placed steps. I was her aimlessly wandering the streets forlornly looking for love in a busy city full of strangers.

How romantic can you get?

Except when you go a bit deeper, this scene is just a tad too shallow.

There is a big distinction to be made when it comes to feeling lonely and being alone. I might be single, but thankfully being alone is actually not a reality I need to swallow.

Lonely is longing to feel intimacy with someone closer than your friend. Alone is the state where friends and family are not as near as they should be.

It is the one single danger a single person should be aware of. It is the one distinction you must grab hold of to avoid days of moping about and summoning the sad guitar music.

For it will never help in the end, as comforting as it may feel at the time. It is not your perfect Habitat fleece to own. It is highly flammable and completely unsuitable for your living room sanctuary.

I understand all too well its draw and aesthetic appeal. But I urge you to resist its pull, as it is only a fleeting comfort that harbours warmth to your own self-pity.

Days watching sad movies can pass in a blur with no uncomfortable moments of letting your security blanket go for a night of unexpected and welcoming opportunities.

Play it cool and put your coat on instead. I am going to anxiously experience a world beyond my living room to let go of the acoustic number in my head.

Primarni doesn’t come with a smile

This ‘current economic climate’ is one long endurance test and muscle-toning exercise of our ability to post-rationalise those guilty shopping bags all the way home.

I am working out areas of my mind I’ve never used before in the quest to save a penny without scrimping on my materialistically-induced happiness.

Never before have I so fervently applied myself to the art form of baking. Recipes now followed to the last tablespoon and the oven sweating its poor socks off to keep up with one home-baked treat after another, which is then lovingly caressed by the glimmering glow of cling-wrap to await its stay in the over-booked freezer. It is then plucked out, transported with care to the office, unwrapped and nuked.

Yes, it is just one example of how I’ve let go of one treat to keep another one healthily in existience.

One new exercise regime I am finding hard to embrace is budget clothes shopping. I should feel overjoyed with my £15 ankle boot, but sadly it is over-shadowed by the black cloud of dissatisfaction.

I watch the glum androids of service staff as they avert their gaze over the top of many a greedy shopper’s head. And my thoughts wander to the utopian retail haven of enthusiastic, commission-driven shop assistants enquiring on whether I have the right size. I want to wander out of the dressing roam and bask in our collective admiration of the outfit choices I have made.

I want service with a smile.

Just like my frozen, home cooked lasagne in the middle after a five-minute microwave death it is time to deal with the cold harsh, fluorescent glow of when expectations collide with reality.

Over-attentive staff cannot survive in the bargain boot-camp environment of fallen clothes stripped off their hanger, shoes clumped in random piles and bonding with rolling tumbleweeds of dust and ill-placed human hair whilst the insanely glaring shopper negotiates their crazed path through what I liken to Discount Ground Zero.

So I wonder what has happened to this proud shop assistant.

Have they too adapted or are now rocking themselves to sleep after enduring a hostile day in a sparse, unforgiving cement shell that is now their nine to five retail home?

Or have they turned their back on the ‘crunch’ and sashayed off into the luxurious sunset with their smile and preened head-to-toe designer-draped self in tact.

Good on them I say. Good service should come with a price. And when all this is over I welcome your return and mine.

My credit card will be sure to welcome you with open arms.

Don’t take the player home

Every woman’s worst pitfall is becoming the notch in a man’s belt.

For every woman entertains a morsel of romance to every affair encountered – regardless of its sordid nature or spontaneous eruption of desire. There must be an after-taste of purity that leaves a woman satisfied she was the one for whatever fleeting exchange of physical intimacy that occurred.

A woman in these instances is like an instrument that likes to be played well. She likes to be appreciated in producing the purest of sounds to appreciating ears. She is often giving in a good performance. It is music that tames the savage beast after all.

And that’s why players live such busy lives for the many instruments they get to play.

The temptation and desire for sweet, sweet music sometimes overcomes a woman’s instinctual nurturing of their long-term wellbeing.

I don’t think players are faltered by the creeping years of age and sensibility; they are just exempt from the fine-tuned performances of the women they seek.

It’s a catch twenty-two. The more a woman holds onto the purity and integrity of her performance, the more attractive she becomes to these players. It is the ultimate ticket they chase. For a player is obsessed with what they can’t play. The orchestra they won’t get to hear.

If you choose to be played, give them a note – but not your best one. Save that for you. And let it carry on until you find the right musician who knows how to get the best performance out of you every time.

A player for a season. A musician for a lifetime.

Hollywood killing us softly

It’s evil. A genre of films has subconsciously wormed its way underneath the psyche of a currently unidentified vulnerable sector of society. It is slowly sowing the seeds for a very weak harvest of which the human race will suffer.

Okay, a tad dramatic. But it is worth painting a bleak picture for drastic measures to follow.

The growth of rom-coms is making the single woman suffer. For those feeling particularly vulnerable about their current relationship status, this genre of film feeds their misery in a way that liposuction temporarily cures the fat woman.

A cute band-aid for the trouble underneath.

Rom-coms breed unrealistic expectations of how romance should facilitate itself in a practical world. And women buy into these grand sweeping gestures on the celluloid screen and feel the hope that it will replicate itself in the reality we endure.

If we could all side-step the credit crunch, public transport and bad hair days then maybe, just maybe there would be enough space to let a little bit of Hollywood in. If we were all air-brushed the minute we left our houses and had undergone the Dr Phil confidence boot-camp, then perhaps, just perhaps that big magical soundtrack would sit behind the glamour of overcoming all the odds to get our dream-boat in the end.

But in practical terms, our lives do not resemble the Warner Brothers back-lot. And our dream-boats do not look like a George Clooney or a Brad Pitt.

It is a grey London day that is our setting with our leading man a little shorter, a little messier and a little less polished.

That’s not to take away from what is happening on the scene. It is still a beautiful thing.

All I am saying is make a little more room for reality and nudge aside the thought that romance should just be like the movies put it.

Do you really want to perform in front of a crew? Isn’t it just cute that only the two of you will know what romance and laughter really is?

DIY cleaning

As you all know cleaning is close to my heart.

My new flatmate produced a toothbrush on her latest bathroom mission and my legs turned to jelly. I wanted to limply crawl towards her and I kiss her toes. Disgusting, I know! As she was standing by the toilet cistern of which was to receive her magic touch.

She then produced her polishing rag. That was when I knew I was finished. I was already on my hands and knees. It was a true Ghandi moment. I would’ve immortalised her then and there into the gold statue she rightly deserves!

People that clean and know how to do it well are my kind of people.

It’s not some OCD sympathy club. Far from it.

You see cleaning is not a selfish thing. It is appreciating the fact that anyone could come over at any time… and don’t they deserve clean sideboards and sparkling windows to match their company?

Lately, a few of my friends have evilly tried to slide me to the dark side. They have lovingly invested repeated, flourishing accolades of their paid-for cleaner: she irons my sheets so well and doesn’t steal a thing.

But I am not convinced. I know you are proud, you cunning things. You have won back time on a weekend that at moments of weakness I envy you so.

Just don’t come between me and my Hoover, or my flatmate’s toothbrush. Step back you lounge lizards and sip your lazy gin and tonics while I keep on the scrub with my Mr Muscle.

It is domestic therapy I am squirting on about.

While I spray, wipe and polish, so too am I eradicating the dust from my mental closet.

There is something so strangely therapeutic in mind-numbing tasks. Simultaneously I cleanse the four walls I live in – both inside and out. And the outcome is as strangely fulfilling as a messy night out.

When did single people lose their rights?

Okay, it is a tad dramatic… but seriously come on!

My home, my sanctuary is now a barren field laced with booby trips just beckoning my foot or mouth to fall in. I’ve had to skilfully manoeuvre around my natural habitat to maintain my own sanity in the face of two couples co-habiting under the same roof I suffer under.

The kitchen and the bathroom seem to be the ‘hot zones’ where my patience dangerously weaves in and out of their occupation. My dinner sabotaged by their loving displays of conjuring up culinary delights to warm their cockles before copulation. My bathing subject to a hostile takeover as one partner after another stealthily slides under the radar to abort my need for warm water and a de-misted mirror.

My basic rights are under fire! This it seems is a survival story of a single person undergoing an endurance test no Navy seal would pass.

And I have not even touched upon the swift upheaval one experiences when conditions rapidly change – like a cease-fire. It’s an eerie silence before the troops come in.

I open the front door to find that two has become one – there is a sense of quiet and the deception that life has returned back to normal. And then like rapid-fire missiles of conversational chunks I embrace myself to take the hit.
Their barrage of love and gusto brought on by the absence of their other half, I take as body blows anaesthized thankfully by the affects of alcohol.

Temporary relief comes in the form of communication re-established between the two via a mobile phone interruption. But then it is back to action and the urgency is heightened as they unleash yet another tale of wounded emotions from a spurned advance of love or euphoria from a well executed move of commitment.

They are delusional. They’ve been AWOL and have deliriously come back home to a temporary existence of drinking, smoking, and swearing without the threat of their partner putting the alliance in jeopardy.

And as for me, well I feel like I’ve been put on rations. Those nights in where no one is in is scarce. I am adapting and letting go of lamenting about the good ol’ times.

Plus I am doing what any good survivor does – I am preparing my bunker for when times really do get tough. The one place that is still my own is my bedroom. And slowly but surely I acquire the necessary possessions to achieve an indestructible fortress of solace.

If you see a potty by my bed that’s when you know the war has really hit home.

Football & shopping

Somewhere someone decided what boys like and what girls like.

I’d like that ‘someone somewhere’ to meet all the boys and girls who don’t like the things we should. We are grossly disadvantaged in the manoeuvring of the complicated social threads that we all try to seamlessly bridge in making friends and influencing people.

What is a boy to do if he doesn’t like football? Are you forever exempt from the regular celebration of drinking, burping and growling your way through ninety minutes of action with your fellow beasts?

This penultimate exercise in male bonding is a unique moment in time where the jobs you have, the cars you drive, the girls you shag are left to the sideline and nothing else matters. It’s where mates are made.

So poor, poor non-football-loving male is out of the game so to speak. It is so unfair.

This matter is close to my non-conforming heart – for you see, I am a girl, and shock horror, I don’t really like shopping!

It’s what girls do right? And supposedly they do it really well. Some of my friends not only indulge the concept of retail therapy they have turned it into a fine art where the credit card is more toned than their power-plated thighs.

Evil fluorescent lighting, row after row of bad taste and unhygienic dressing rooms with complimentary bundles of fluff and hair hovering in the corners from the previous tenants just leave me curdling with disgust and contempt for those girls that regularly partake in this pastime.

Why would I like it?

It’s a constant dressing, undressing, zipping, unzipping, buttoning, unbuttoning squeezing and contorting into this season’s trends to find the generic outfit that fits – only to discover it will be what everyone else will wear just like you tomorrow.

Baahhhhh. I just don’t see why you would do it unless you really had to. And this is where I become two steps behind when it comes to female bonding.

My girly friends would scream louder than the announcement of a Marc Jacobs 70% sale, if I told them I magically liked shopping. It would bring a new dimension to our friendship. We would spend hours dipping into our favourite shops, bags on hands like prized camels tripping along the Sahara. We’d gush in delicious delight and momentously toast our friendship with bubbles and giggles at the champagne bar.

Would the bubbles be enough? If I was drowning in it, then maybe… maybe it could make me forget evil lighting, dirty dressing rooms and the pain of seeing myself in three mirrors simultaneously.

Thank god that someone somewhere who wrote the book on what girls like, what boys like decided we all like the pub. Because that’s where I am heading after thirty minutes of retail hell. Sorry boys you have another sixty minutes to go.

Avoiding expectations

As I heartily embark on another slice of birthday cake to mark another year of well-kept existence, I have begun to deal with the growing side order of expectations.

I guess it comes with age. Although, unlike a fine wine that matures it reaps no benefits. The expectation to follow a course set by the masses is one I am not easily digesting.

It seems a little unfair to expect that the three-course meal of mortgage, marriage and multiple offspring should be to everyone’s tastes. It also seems a little out of order to assume we all want a seat at this table.

By avoiding these expectations and freely exploring what is delectable to my palate, I’ve been spared the pain of indigestion.

I am one of the lucky few it seems.

But it doesn’t leave me with an after-taste of smugness for I must witness many of my friends desperately queuing or queue-jumping for a seat. Their relief of fitting in is palatable.

I wonder when they get there – when mortgage, marriage and multiple offspring – will they delight in the experience or be hungry for the next course?

Like any good chef, sometimes the pressures of timing can overshadow the passion of savouring what we have now. It all becomes a little scientific and bland without that lovely unexpected burst of flavour a secret ingredient like spontaneity can bring.

Give me a tapas bar any day – it all comes at once and it’s totally free-style.

Blats

A new word for my daily vernacular. Blats – short for blatantly. And I for one am loving it!
Because it is a good measure of where I am at.

After a period of much-needed rejuvenation, care of many a messy night with the ‘yoof’, I feel age lines have softened or are magically absent from the face I look into the mirror. A healthy sashaying of my thirty-something hips in my skinny jeans is a consequence of these times.

But now I know. Well it’s ‘blats’. It’s a short gig, not a tour for me.

I like that I know I can’t keep up. I like that I exit stage left for my own comfy bed, not a space on the floor. I like that I complain the music is too loud or Class A drugs are not compelling enough to bring me to the next sunrise. I like the idea of dinner parties over warehouse all-nighters. I like sushi, not a cheap greasy kebab.

I like that these choices have arisen from choosing the alternative. I like that I’ve been there done that and now know what I prefer.

It’s ‘blats’. I should not blatantly disrupt the journey they undergo in appreciating these preferences.

It’s also ‘blats’ that we should know better. We should not kid ourselves. We do not have the luxury of reliving this all over again – because quite frankly it is selfish.

There’s nothing more self-indulgent than a ‘mutton dressed up as lamb’ masquerading and consequently gate-crushing youthful optimism.

Why turn your back on the experiences you’ve gained?

Don’t don your slippers and reading book just yet. Forget crochet and golfing lessons. That’s not what I am advocating.

I just think it’s time to stop pretending, and be proud that the ‘yoof’ get us for exactly who we are. Their cynicism is sharpened to butcher’s precision – they will see past that and put you in the corner.

Blat’s. Get out of their grill and just keep it real yah?

It’s my drama and I’ll cry if I want to…

First of all I know this sounds like a stomach-churning truth, but I absolutely delight in hearing friends of mine discuss their relationship troubles.

Horrible I know!

But in a way it validates my choice to stay stubbornly single. And it reminds me that the glow of relationships only burns as brightly as I imagine in the honeymoon period.

But I have so typically diverted the subject back to me. Bad me.

Anyway, I have discovered that the girls I know who have enrolled themselves into the ranks of the ‘strong female army’ have feelings too. It is just a case of breaking them.

This can involve calorific treats or a wine-soaked soiree, but over time this soldier will soften and not pull rank.

I am fortunate enough to know some independent, feisty spirited women who have sub-consciously enlisted in this boot camp. I know – for I have wisely decided to go AWOL.

We are trained to fight on, to not question our innate vulnerability that comes with being a female, and to not succumb to a healthy barrage of self-pity. We are the women who bounce back from a long-hard battle of ego bashing and wear the brave smile as a badge to our dazzling armour.

But enough is enough. A semi-retired soldier can penetrate this built-in mind-set and encourage a disruption to protocol.

Because you are only as strong as the tears you allow yourself to shed on the battleground.

And that’s a true soldier’s soldier – a woman that lets her guard down.

Grumpy old woman

Oh goodness… I didn’t know about this. I was prepared for age lines, longer hangovers and a relaxed six-pack, but no one told me I would become grumpier the older I get.

Oh indeed I am.

Meet grumpy old woman: I over-sigh at people asking silly questions in queues, grunt at commuters with back-packs, hiss at the ‘pram brigades’ in pubs, tutt at colleagues not putting their mugs in the dishwasher, glower at wait staff not taking my order instantly, fume at help-desk staff’s inability to give correct information and huff at the youth of today expecting it all to be handed on a plate.

See… I am not even kidding. I am grumpy. I never used to be. I put this done to becoming older.

And even more worrying than my overall annoyance with the general public is my lack of tolerance for those who are actually nice to me – my friends. Re-arranging social commitments, forgetting that is their round or just hearing the same grievances about their partner makes me want to ‘grump’ my way back home.

Grumpiness is often the result of intolerance and impatience. Where did my tolerance and patience go?

It would be lazy to blame the erosion of my calm demeanour on London living. I think every Londoner has a degree of this environmental malaise lurking somewhere in their system.

No, I think it is more than that. I believe in order to protect yourself from getting the permanent ‘hump’ you must be resilient and dedicated to your immune system of letting things get the better of you.

That’s where my brother’s judo mantra comes in handy: embrace the feeling and move on. Or if that doesn’t float your boat, how about a little Karate Kid action: wax on, wax off.

I am not prepared to become all Zen and bring out the joss sticks, but what I will start doing is letting it wash over me.

And, I think a light dose of remembering what it was like to be me twenty years ago will surely help: I didn’t get the Barbie doll I wanted so a few tears went a long way to knowing that at the end of the day these things happen for a reason.

It is probably worth mentioning that the particular model of Barbie doll eventually had to be recalled because of some pelvic malfunction.

So wax on, wax off my friends.