Good

Disquiet

Nothing to say for a week. Work is overwhelming, and few things irk me more than my day job impinging upon the brain space not reserved for it. Feeling edgy about a subject that refuses, cruelly, to resolve itself (subject, magic and loss aren't evening out), and passing that on to unrelated others in the form of suspicion and ill-will. Sleep is difficult - really, relentlessly difficult - for the first time in a while. Spending lots of time with lots of people in a vain attempt at self-distraction, but there are still all those quiet hours. Planning to move house, but got scared of the dark last night and wondered if living alone will frighten me. Maybe I'll feel better when I sleep.

Ian

I have an alarmingly smart friend, Ian Leslie. As well as holding down a full-time, pointless-but-demanding job like mine, he writes a political blog, Marbury, upon which I, like many others, am absolutely reliant. He started it last year to cover the US election campaign and if you're a regular visitor here you will have noticed I link to it regularly. It's awesome and you should bookmark it and use it, as I do, to sound insightful and informed.

On top of the job and the several-times-a-day blogging, he wrote a book. If you're missing all the fun of the electoral fair, you can relive it and get his very clever perspective on it.

My job: email exchange

Colleague (attaching photo): We'll have a rough cut on Monday, but I think the attached image embodies the essence of the spot.
Me: Just to confirm, those are blacked-up men in Hawaiian shirts with roaming chickens?
Colleague: Yes. On a meteor. That's on fire.
Me: We make an important contribution to the world.

Productive

This weekend I gave Ned his cat. I hadn't quite decided what she looked like, then walking to the drugstore yesterday I spotted a small, just-past-kittenhood cat with mottled auburn hair and bright, bright green eyes: a feline version of my own color scheme, I just noticed. People keep asking me which of the three main characters of One Two Three is most like me, but maybe I'm the cat. Despite my shameless attempts to coax her, she wouldn't come out from behind her fence to play with me, which made me more enamoured. So that's Rover.

The huge following of this blog has obviously caused a rush on Second Stop, because I almost didn't get a table today. Christ, I love this place. The coffee is thickly stimulating, almost all the food is vegan, and every so often, the grinning, ponytailed owner walks around handing out gleaming strawberries from a box.

Romance

I was supposed to go away this weekend to write intensively, but I couldn't find anywhere to stay in a remote spot because of the Valentine's Day rush on hotels, so I'm going tomorrow instead. So, today I came back to Second Stop, opened my laptop and began working when the following exchange occurred between me and the guy sitting at the adjacent table:

Boy (addressing no one in particular): “Oh shit, today’s Valentine’s Day.”
Me (since I was the only one who heard): “Are you going to get into trouble?”
Boy: “Always, especially at the weekends.”
Me: “No, I meant are you going to get into trouble with someone for forgetting?”
Boy: “Oh no. Nothing like that. Nothing like that.”
*pause*
Boy: “I’d rather just beat off a lonely one.”
*leaves*

Sway through the crowd to an empty space

This song was playing in my new favorite coffee shop this morning:

Nervy

I'm pretty sure I just drank too much this weekend and rounded it off with a trying case of insomnia last night, but my stomach's doing anxious OH-GOD-I'VE-FORGOTTEN-SOMETHING-CRUCIAL flips every few seconds... I don't think I have. Have I forgotten something crucial? I could happily curl up under my desk and go to sleep but I have a new office mate and I don't want to make her uncomfortable.

The email you never want to receive

"X friend tagged you in the facebook album V V old school pics."


Now the whole world knows I was blonde when I was 17.

Cigarettes and alcohol

Not all I need.

All I Need is my most played song. I found this video for it; it's soothing.



In the essay I wrote last week, regarding cigarettes and hope, I quoted Milton: "Where there is no hope there is no fear." Is that true? Last week I thought so, now I don't know.

Wrote a new chapter for Ned tonight. Normally I have some idea of where I'm going when I start a chapter, then meander towards the finish line, but this one came from nowhere. I only had one line and it ended with the word 'wake' so I decided to rhyme it with 'cake' and thus it became a chapter about childhood humiliation. Poor Ned. Maybe he'll have a good day eventually.

Will you put my hands away? Will you be my man?

Listening to the same two songs on repeat. This because no matter how fast your brain is whirling, this catches you up and overtakes you at around the 50 second mark:



And this because, while it doesn't make me happy, it makes me more comfortably sad. I think I've posted both these before. Hands Away, above, is probably the most consistently beautiful Interpol song, but PDA keeps you waiting then delivers one perfect minute: