We Didn't Meet Any Heptagamists, Though

EXT. ST IVES - EVENING

PATROCLUS and MR BC are walking along the beach with S., Patroclus's old friend from university, and his boyfriend, R., after a long, decadent lunch and a lot of reminiscing and catching up.

S. pauses to light a cigarette.

ME: I miss cigarettes.

Pause.

ME: Cigarettes were my only friends.

S.: What! I'm your friend! What makes you say that?

ME: I'm not sure why I said that.

Pause.

ME: That's like saying I like to watch my friends die.

Pause.

ME: I like to set fire to them, and watch them die slowly in front of my face.

Pause.

ME: Knowing that they dedicated the whole of their short little lives to my pleasure.


We finish the rest of the walk in silence.


UPDATE: I'm not sure this was the sort of post Fat Roland had in mind when he said I 'bring a beautiful humanity to the blogocube'.

Nicotine 1, Patroclus 0

Forget Nizlopi whatever-it-is vs Shayne Thing*, the real battle of the 2005 festive season has been me versus the demon weed. Things started out very well, with an eight-day unbroken run of not smoking at all, with no more horrific side effects than me snapping slightly at the lovely L (sorry, lovely L) at one point before dosing myself up to the eye teeth with those cripplingly expensive fur 'n' mint 'n' slime-based sweets that Nicotinell churn out in soothingly addiction-numbing quantities.

No, it was all fine. Scotland - fine. France - fine. This time I really will never smoke again, I told myself, proudly. I would have told other people too, but most of them were members of my family, and they sweetly pretend not to know I smoke.

Of course then I got back to Blighty, taking a handy coach straight from Stansted to the Four Seasons Hotel on Park Lane**, where my good friend the lovely S was nursing her millionaire jet-set father, who'd cracked a rib during a festive stop-over in London en route for Phoenix, or was it Tokyo?

One glance at S's packet of Marlboro Reds, and I was hooked again. We ended up taking a taxi down to the slums of Dalston E8 just so we could smoke all night, drink wine, listen to the Kings of Convenience and debate whether Sebastian Flyte actually dies or just fades out of the story***.

Needless to say I woke up this morning in an unfamiliar bed plagued with nausea, remorse and a terrible headache. Kids, take it from me - just don't start.


* I have no idea who these people actually are.

** Fact: I was once tear-gassed on Park Lane, surrounded by burning cars.

*** We tried looking it up on Google, but Google was infuriatingly tight-lipped on the matter. "I could just go out there and get the book," the lovely S suggests eventually. "No, that would be too easy," say I. We still don't know.

Class Struggle

I was minding my own business in Abingdon Street, waiting for the anti-war march to start, leaning on my "Bush: World's #1 Terrorist" placard, smoking a cigarette in the autumn sunshine and trying not to look too much like a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie, when I was accosted by a very handsome and earnest Trotskyist.

I switched immediately into slightly flirtatious mode, as is my prerogative now that I am unattached and Mistress of my Own Destiny. But Handsome Trotskyist was having none of it. "How much do you know about Marxism?" he asked me sternly, having established that I had come here from Shepherd's Bush and that I had participated in previous anti-war demonstrations.

Resisting the urge to tell him that I think Karl Marx was a feckless waster who allowed his wife and kids to starve around him in their garret rather than lower himself into the structure* and get a job, with the result that he was so crazed with hunger and cold and the plaintive whines of his wife and kids that not a word of his writings is intelligible to anyone, thus rendering them completely open to interpretation by a multitude of left-wing factions who can't agree on anything between them, let alone actually get it together to start a revolution, I replied "errr, a bit."

Seemingly encouraged by this, he went on to ask if I didn't think the world would be a better place if capitalism were completely abolished and replaced with some kind of Utopian society where everyone had a job and no one wanted for anything at all. "Not really, I'm afraid," say I. "I don't mind capitalism. (Note to self: Things Not To Say When Wielding A Socialist Worker Banner.) I think you can have responsible capitalism and still make the world a better place. But then I'm a company director, so I would say that."

"Oh, what company?" says he. "Oh, a very small PR agency in Chiswick," say I. He gives me a sort of pitying look. "Well, that's OK," he says. "It's hardly Halliburton, is it? Would you like to buy a copy of Class Struggle?"

So I did. And I read it all, this morning, in the bath. And bugger me if I hadn't completely forgotten what a revolting, profit-driven, patriarchal, violent, self-interested world we live in. I resolved to do something about this immediately. Sadly I got sidetracked and somehow ended up in Habitat buying pictures of orchids. But tomorrow...

* It's actually the base, isn't it? That's been bugging me for some while.

PS Don't Do It, Kids

Still, it's always nice to have friends to fall back on...



(Artistic licence courtesy of LC)



This evening's question is: do I have time to go to the Oxo Tower tomorrow, avail myself of two very fetching Mibo lampshades, and still make it to Parliament Square in time for the kick-off of the British Troops Out Of Iraq march? And more to the point, will the lampshades be a help or a hindrance to the entire proceedings? Am I going to find myself shouting "What do we want? More lampshades like this! I mean, an end to our totally unjustified military occupation of a foreign country!"

This has been me, Patroclus, bringing you the latest news from the frontline of grassroots political activism. And interior décor.

Mind you, I once turned up to an anti-Criminal Justice Bill rally wearing a suit. There was a certain irony to the fact that the crusty leading the goats up the steps of the QEII Conference Centre looked at *me* funny.

Recipe For Failure

This week I've been compiling a High Fidelity-style list of Ten Things I Want To Do Before I'm 40. To wit:

1. Resurrect the lost language of the Picts, brilliantly demonstrating it to be a heretofore unknown offshoot of the Finno-Ugric language family. This will require a certain amount of research to be undertaken in Finland; more specifically, in the big Marimekko shop - the one with all the nice trays and wall hangings.

2. Finish Masters degree, submitting brilliant dissertation about kittens and the internet, on the strength of which I will be immediately snapped up as a PhD student by some tip-top educational institution.

3. Write brilliant PhD thesis about knitting and identity, which will immediately propel me into the uppermost echelons of pop culture academia. Write a series of really quite dry and uninteresting academic books that will nevertheless sell like hot cakes thanks to their colourful, glossy covers and witty txt spk titles spelled out in real wool. Around this time I may also coin a fashionable new buzzword.

4. Miraculously become rich enough to afford a house in Ashchurch Grove, London W12, with very big, very clean windows and a lot of wisteria and ivy.

5. Buy a house in Ashchurch Grove, London W12, with very big, very clean windows and a lot of wisteria and ivy. Fill it with really pretentious books, some of which I will have written (see above).

6. Go around being a bit like Germaine Greer, only without all the talking and going on telly and stuff.

7. Purchase a cottage in Cornwall (or similar coastal county), for the sole purpose of observing the sea during stormy weather.

8. Stop smoking.

9. Learn Spanish, Arabic, Welsh and Finnish.

10. Fail to achieve any of the above. At 11.59pm on the 6th October 2010, scratch out "40" and replace with "70".

That's No Typo, That's A Space Station

This blog probably leaves the casual reader with the impression that I am a feckless waster, incapable of turning my mind to anything more sophisticated than the purchase of inappropriate footwear, the consumption of Philip Morris Corp.'s finest produce and the relevance of Nick Cave's lyrics to my own personal circumstances.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In my professional life, my dedication to creating outstanding marketing copy for the technology industry is unsurpassed (or so it says here on my bio).

Now I'm not going to mention any names, but some clients are more picky about their copywriters' stock-in-trade than others. Today I was treated to a briefing from one big technocorp about the correct use of grammar and punctuation. About halfway through, the speaker flashed up a slide showing the opening credits of Star Wars.

Speaker: "See here, after 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away' - there are clearly four dots. Dot dot dot dot. This is wrong. An ellipsis should only have three dots. Write that down."

Audience Member: "I think one's a star."

Well, it made me laugh.

Market Forces

Venturing out in search of lunch at about 3pm (the time at which it became apparent that coffee and Marlboro Blues alone cannot sustain one for an entire day) I was pleasantly surprised to find that the untidy assortment of drunks and smackheads that frequent Acton Market Place had been swept aside in favour of - *gasp* - a market.

A French market, at that. With real French stallholders selling real French stuff, and speaking real French to the denizens of W3. Who, even more surprisingly, turn out to be no mean Francophones themselves. Gosh. It was almost like being back in Saint Chinian, but without the hordes of Brits.

I resisted the urge to buy one of those huge blocks of olive oil soap (it would have just sat around in the bathroom getting dirty), but I did do my bit for the bourgeoisie by purchasing some fantastic brie, some tomme de Savoie and some wild boar sausage. Then undid it again by nipping into Morrisons to get baked beans and fags.

But all that's beside the point. The real question is: does this mean Acton is going all gentrified? Might we be spared the need to move back up North?

No, that's not the real question. The real question is totally unrelated to French markets and London property hotspots. The *real* question is: how the hell am I going to get to Islington tonight when my feet are quite literally - and for once I'm not exaggerating* - a mass of seeping, open wounds?

I swear, if you peer through all the blood and pus and frayed nerve endings, you can actually see the bones in my left foot. Is there something particularly wrong with me, or do all women suffer in this way? If the latter, why, for the love of God, do we keep buying flip-flops? Have we no sense whatsoever?

Probably best if no one answers that, actually.

* Much.

Crushed

Prime-time, plasma-screen viewing of my newly-delivered Heathers DVD last night elicited the following observations:

That crush I had on teen-era Christian Slater? *So* over.

That crush I had on teen-era Winona Ryder? That's so over, too.

THE DIVINE MS P: It's amazing that even in 1988 they show the teachers smoking in the staffroom.

ME: I was allowed to smoke at my desk in 1998 at [insert name of top five global PR agency here] - but only after 6pm.

MR P: I was allowed to smoke at Pontin's - but only Superkings.

Which made me laugh a lot.

I've Got The Mini Marlboro Blues

Nothing much to report except for a large cardboard box bearing the legend 'Colon Free Zone'. Feel free to insert your own gags there as I feel right out of comedic inspiration today. Trip to Salto Angel (trans: 'Salty Angel') delayed by a day due to Harrison Ford having commandeered every seat on today´s bus to Ciudad Bolivar. Damn you, Ford!

Following dinner (fish and chips, curry and chips, steak and chips) in downtown Puerto La Cruz (like Blackpool, only not as dangerous) last night, made chance discovery of the greatest cigarettes in the entire world. Mr P and his friend G (former King's Road vet and ex-scourge of the pampered Chelsea bestiary), who arrived the other night from Miami, are now considering setting up a major import-export operation to bring mini Marlboro Blues to the UK in return for some as yet unidentified commodity that is lacking in Venezuela. Colons, possibly.

I'm very sorry for the over-use of parentheses and total lack of lexical elegance in this post. I think the luxury air-conditioned apartment we've rented and the mini Marlboro Blues have affected my creativity. Normal service will be resumed.