Bye

My mum just told me you died in an accident. I never thought I’d be googling your name to find out how and why you died. I last saw you briefly over ten years ago. You were wearing multicoloured leggings and were dressed like a rubbish knight for a re-enactment weekend my friend had dragged me to. We ended up getting a lift in the same car home. It was raining heavily and the girl driving momentarily lost control and we nearly crashed into a tree. I hope you did not die in a car crash.

I first noticed you buying chocolate milkshakes from the caretaker at school. I was nearly 15 I think. You were two years above me, hanging out with a guy who, by some bizarre fluke, now works in the same place as my dad. I thought you were quite cool. Somehow, my friend (who didn’t even go to our school) found out I had a bit of a crush on you and engineered a chance encounter one evening. All very juvenile but heck, we were 15. Next came the dubious notion of ‘why don’t I help you with your homework’. Somehow we ended up going out for a little while. People found this hilarious, because, on the face of it, you were not at all cool. You had a tie-dyed jacket, for goodness sake. And almost long hair. You also collected dice. And actually enjoyed listening to Chris de Burgh. Combine this with bottlegreen jeans (this was the mid 90s after all) and you have an ill-styled ueber-geek. Albeit, I did think you were great. Do you still have my East 17 album, by the way?

And you and your friend took me from the school carnival to a hilltop overlooking town in the middle of the night and demonstrated to me how one smokes weed. I felt terribly grown-up. The fact your then stoned friend drove us back to school was probably not so good. You also took me to a rave. I hated every minute of it and your dancing was shit. But, I still thought you were the best thing ever.

I can’t even remember exactly why you dumped me. I do remember getting very upset at first, then I was gutted and then I drank a lot. I’d never been going out with anyone before, let alone get dumped. You went to another school soon after, but I saw you around every now and then, blending into ‘the people you see around’ – this happens when you’re 15, people come and go.

I had not seen you since this knight-re-enactment weekend thing, but I did sometimes wonder what had happened to you. Now you’re gone forever. Google informs me you invented a special smoke alarm and won a prize for it. There is even a photograph of you getting an award for. Taken this year. Oddly, you have the same haircut you always had. Now you’re dead and I don’t even know what happened to you. I hope it was quick and painless and there was no time for you to get scared.

Mikrofisch - Monsters of the Universe

Right, so this is not actually a Mikrofisch album. It is in fact the last Mikrofisch album (Masters of the Universe!) and assorted tracks covered by friends’ bands. What a marvellous idea indeed!

The result is a mixed bag of various German (and Dutch!! The USA are on here, too!) bands, well, interpreting songs. The resident rave track suddenly has a rather shrill flute on it and what appears to be real drums and possibly an acoustic guitar. The song by the USA is, unsurprisingly, very nice, too!

The Kids Are All Shite (this is actually proving popular in German indie clubs!) got a ravey makeover. I can’t make up my mind whether I like this one or the original better (quick recap, this is the one that goes ‘Fuck the Kooks!’ and ‘Are you gonna be my girl – FUCK OFF!’).

My personal favourite is Sechsundneunzig (eg. Ninety-Six!), which is a translated and adapted version of Let’s Kiss and Listen to Bis. Adapted in that it’s no longer about Bis, it’s about Tocotronic, complete with a bit of a Toco intro and some Tocotronic lyrics strewn around. I never heard of the guy who wrote it but I would very much like to phone him up and thank him profusely, because I do like a bit of nostalgia, ahem. I was there, in 1996, in my corduroy flares and Adidas jacket. I own the vast majority of Tocotronic’s back catalogue. I’ve been to a shitload of Tocotronic gigs, heck I even did the pogo dance down the front. Once we all went on a 5 hour train journey to see them play a gig in a disused railway depot. Oops, going off on one now!

Bizarrely, the cover of Drum Machines Will Save Mankind is laced with acoustic guitars and … oh dear … violins I believe. And real ones, by the sounds of it. Someone managed to Belle-and-Sebastian-ify a song about drum machines. Well and truly astounding.

I reckon everyone should try to get this album. You have no excuse – it’s a free download, dammit! And the Mikrofisches are very nice people. One half ran the rival fanzine in my home town 15 years ago, the other resides in London now and I haven’t seen her in ages!

http://www.komakinomag.de/?label:mikrofisch:monsters_of_the_universe

The Crocketts

Haven’t written anything for a while. Just dug out my Crimea album (Tragedy Rocks! It really is rather nice), because Owen from the Crocketts/The Crimea was running Manda Rin’s merch stall the other week. This got me thinking.

I still have my Nintendo Fallacy poster on the wall. It’s ten years old I suspect. I loved the Crocketts. I really did. Bit weird, because it’s not the kind of stuff I’d usually be into. Ah well ….

I sent them a questionnaire for my fanzine many years ago. They filled it in and even made a little drawing for it. After I moved to London, I went to interview them. I was shitting myself, as I asked for a toothless Glaswegian tour manager at some West End venue, the name of which I can’t remember. Much to my relief, my interviewees were Owen and Rich. Davey Crockett was not present. Phew. Because he was right at the top of my ‘most beautiful band people’ list back then. And ahem, I guess he kinda still is! God knows why, he doesn’t even have a full set of teeth. Oh and here’s a nice piece of trivia, he’s DJ Annie Mac’s brother! Anyhow, where was I? The interview! That went well. And I did bump into young McManus afterwards. I was so embarrassed and starstruck, it was pretty horrendous.

These people also had a habit of popping up at the same venues as me for a while. Sometimes they said hello. How exciting!

Then the Crocketts disappeared and the Crimea came along a little later. It was a delight to hear that voice again (I am a bit of a sucker for damaged sounding young gentlemen), I even had a little tear in my eye. I went to see the Crimea play at the Windmill and a couple of other places. It was never the same as the Crocketts and they seem to have gathered a bit of a scary cultish student fanbase that knew all the words to songs that weren’t even released yet. I felt oddly out of place and, most of all, very very dated. So I stopped going to those gigs. I somehow felt I had no right to be there.

Then, a couple of months ago, something really odd happened. I was on the tube, on my way home. The train stopped at Euston. The carriage doors were just about to close when two guys in leather jackets came bursting in with guitars and amps. One of them was Davey Crockett. I smiled at him, mostly because it’s alwas funny seeing people wedge open tube doors and falling into the carriage with this ‘I did it! I fucking did it!’ look on their face. Then I realised who he was. I would have liked to tell him that a) I wanted to marry him ten years ago b) I still had that poster and c) that I had met him a couple of times before. Albeit, I was too chicken to do so, so I just sat there, bright red, trying not to look, heart thumping. Very, very childish indeed. I’m sure there would have been no harm in saying hello. Somehow, I couldn’t. Dammit.

New pets!

Since I really can’t have a cat in my current living conditions and wanted some kind of pet again … after some deliberation, yesterday I acquired two baby rats! They’re white with red eyes, I can’t really tell them apart just yet, but, let me tell you, they’re a riot! They’re really inquisitive and quite tame already (the place I got them from had handled them nicely). When I open the cage door they come to the door, sniff my fingers and clamber onto my hand. Bless. Very smart, too! I put their little cardboard house upside down, they looked at it and made a concerted effort to push and drag it until it was a) the right way up and b) in exactly the same spot it had been in previously! They like yoghurt drop treats and take them from my hands with their little pink paws. So cute! No really, they are!

Weird thing is, I am petrified of sewer and ‘wild’ rats. Had one in my old flat once, it jumped out at 3am and eye witnesses inform me I jumped onto the sofa and screamed my head off for a good fifteen minutes.

But I like the pet ones! Does that make me a hypocrite? Guess it does a bit, but maybe I won’t be quite as scared next time one jumps out at me from me feed bin at the stables. I hope so, anyway.






Here is one of the little fellas. I think this one is Hubert, but it might be Basil. Hopefully, once they’ve grown and I get to know their personalities a bit better it will be easier to know who is who!

First impression of rats as pets is brilliant! They seem to interact a lot more than hamsters or guineapigs (although I LOVE guinea pigs, I really do!) and I can’t wait for them to be big and fat so they can have a run round the flat (they’re too small and wizzy to keep an eye on them at the moment).

The top whatever (un)romantic songs of indiedom

Milky Wimpshake – Dialling Tone

A close call between this one and ‘I want to be seen in Public with You’ and ‘I Love You, You Weirdo’! But Dialling Tone wins. Because it says ‘Your Boyfriend is so dull, he was probably born on Hull’ and ‘I even have my own record label, so come and sit at my table!’. I can relate to the latter. Only that when I did have my own record label, nobody did want to ‘come and sit at my table’ in that sense! I love Milky Wimpshake!!! They have a knack of putting words to the indie awkardness like nobody else. No really, they do (ok, I’m a bit pissed as I write this, but still …).

Dialling Tone is about wanting to phone someone and hanging up before they pick up the phone. Must have been written before mobiles and the ‘dial 1471’ option. Otherwise ‘they’ know you phoned.

Peptone – Candidate for Wax

I admit this is fairly obscure. It was on a Snakebite City compilation. It has a line in it that goes ‘and you smoke another kingsize as you wait for the phone’. Having done this sort of thing many times, I can relate to that one. I listened to this song a lot when I was waiting for this guy to call. This was over a decade ago. I did go out with said go for a short while, but the fact he was in a Death Metal band meant it was not going to happen. I could not take the embarrassment of having a boyfriend that dressed like fucking Kiss onstage, complete with black and white face makeup and a hell of a lot of leather. Erm, no, I don’t think so!!

I Wish I Was Him – Kathleen Hannah

Yes, that is her of Bikini Kill fame. The song is about Evan Dando. Obviously. And how he obtains his records via mailorder and how he is just so so cool. Its about finding someone so amazing you actually want to be them (I’d rather be Kathleen Hannah than Evan Dando actually, I hear from reliable sources he’s a bit of an arse!).

Marmor Stein und Eisen Bricht – Drafi Deutscher

Drafi Deutscher was imprisoned for exposing himself to children. Nice. Still, I kinda grew up with this song translates to ‘Marble, Stone and Iron breaks, but our love does not’. Odd, I know. Very German.). This was my parents wedding song (yikes!) and my dad played it in the car all the time. It really grew on me, and when I am feeling a bit down/silly I howl along to this at full volume.

Wenn du mich nicht willst – Lassie Singers

Sorry, another German one. Lassie Singers are a vaguely feminist pop/punk group that have been going under various pseudonyms for ages. I like them a lot. This one is about the conundrum that people only seem to like you when you don’t like them (treat them mean, keep them keen, I suppose) and what a shit idea it is to play along with this kind of headfuck. How very right they are. This sort of activity is very stupid indeed and should be avoided. If you have to resort to playing mindgames with people, it’s best not to bother at all.

Will You Still Care – The Crocketts

You see, I was intending on marrying the guy from the Crocketts when I was, well, younger. He has a missing tooth and is kinda cool. I saw him on the tube a little while ago. I had met him ages ago, but somehow I don’t think he remembered that. So I did not say hello when I saw him on the tube. Instead I grinned at him (he was obviously on a way to a gig, for he was lugging a guitar and amp around and got off at Camden), heart pounding (I still have a Crocketts poster on my wall. It marks the release of the Nintendo Phallacy EP and is quite tatty now), heart pounding like mad (I felt like I was a starstruck teenage again. Whoops) and praying to God he would get off soon before I made an idiot of myself.

Anyways, that song! It’s the one that goes ‘will you still care for me – I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO!’. This has helped me get over many a … is it wrong to call them boys now? It’s the sheer angriness of it (and the fact it has the word FUCK! In it!) that makes this such a fabulous tune.

Connie Francis – Schoener Fremder Mann

Another German one. Even though Connie Francis is blatantly not German. She did release quite a few songs in German though. And those made it into the family car’s glove box. My dad used to play this over and over again on the ten hour car journeys to Italy we did every year. Somehow, they got etched int my brain. This one is about beautiful strangers (note to self: don’t write ANYTHING when you’re somewhat tipsy on cider) and rather corny. But I do love her bizarre American accent. I remember the whole family singing along to this in the car (this one and other one about the little Italians – that one was highly non-PC!). Happy memories indeed.

Let’s Kiss and Listen To Bis - Mikrofisch

Ok, I shouldn’t drone on about my friend’s band. Silvia deserves better than being mentioned in some kind of bizarre drunken list of songs. BUT!! This song encompasses the heyday of music perfectly. Back when I did not have a real job. Back when I still did fanzines and things. Back when I listened to Bis A LOT. Admittedly, I don’t think I ever kissed anyone with Bis playing in the background (I probably could have done though, I went out with quite a few people who liked Bis!), but it’s a nice idea. This is one of those indie-reference song – ‘keep Sparky’s Dream alive and dance to Teenage Fanclub’. Awww. Bless. The it goes ‘hold on to the past and let it last forever …’. I wish I could. But I can’t. The second Bis reunion gig got cancelled because they didn’t sell enough tickets …. Dammit!! *I* sure had a ticket!!! Why cancel??

I’m pretty sure this song is some kind of pisstake or at least ironic. Still, when I first heard it I wept for joy.

Me and You vs The World – Space

Yes. I know. Space are not cool. I do love this song though. It’s very Bonnie and Clyde. Some sort of boy/girl robbery gone horribly wrong. And it’s quite catchy. So what’s not to like?

Things nobody seems to ever teach you

Washing machines

Did anyone ever take you to one side and explained to you how to wash your clothes without help? Me neither. A whirlwind of trial and error followed. I was 17 and had just moved out from my parents with a friend. We had a washing machine and no idea what to do with it. We settled on ‘everything at 40’ in the end. I still wash everything at 40 – unless I am feeling daring and go for a boilwash. And then realise that yes, the colour of the red top still runs after ten years and I have grey underwear once again. Why is there no crash course for this sort of thing?

Dusting

I have never managed this successfully with a duster. All it seems to do is spread more dust around. This seems rather pointless.

Making beds

Now I know that in theory you kind of flatten or fold the duvet and stick the pillow somewhere at the top. Only to then unravel it all again when you want to go to sleep. What’s the point?

Bleeding radiators

It’s cold. The radiators don’t seem to work. There’s always a male friend helpfully advising you to ‘bleed the radiators’. How the hell does that work? What will I do with all this blood? Is the blood boiling? Is that how they keep warm?

Cleaning windows properly

Spraying on windowcleaner and then wiping the contraption does not seem to work. Windows are left streaky and look no different to how they looked before you got started. How are you supposed to do this?

Excel

I don’t know anyone who has ever been trained on Excel before they used it for the first time. My first time with Excel was at a temping agency interview and I made it up as I went along. Having spoken to quite a few other people, it seems we’re all in the same boat. Nobody actually has any idea what they’re doing.

Look interested

An important skill! But how? Think of something interesting and you will instantly look interested even if you’re not. That doesn’t quite seem to work. Why not have courses to prepare you for those dull parties and boring conversations you will be forced to have in later life?

Things nobody seems to ever teach you

Washing machines

Did anyone ever take you to one side and explained to you how to wash your clothes without help? Me neither. A whirlwind of trial and error followed. I was 17 and had just moved out from my parents with a friend. We had a washing machine and no idea what to do with it. We settled on ‘everything at 40’ in the end. I still wash everything at 40 – unless I am feeling daring and go for a boilwash. And then realise that yes, the colour of the red top still runs after ten years and I have grey underwear once again. Why is there no crash course for this sort of thing?

Dusting

I have never managed this successfully with a duster. All it seems to do is spread more dust around. This seems rather pointless.

Making beds

Now I know that in theory you kind of flatten or fold the duvet and stick the pillow somewhere at the top. Only to then unravel it all again when you want to go to sleep. What’s the point?

Bleeding radiators

It’s cold. The radiators don’t seem to work. There’s always a male friend helpfully advising you to ‘bleed the radiators’. How the hell does that work? What will I do with all this blood? Is the blood boiling? Is that how they keep warm?

Cleaning windows properly

Spraying on windowcleaner and then wiping the contraption does not seem to work. Windows are left streaky and look no different to how they looked before you got started. How are you supposed to do this?

Excel

I don’t know anyone who has ever been trained on Excel before they used it for the first time. My first time with Excel was at a temping agency interview and I made it up as I went along. Having spoken to quite a few other people, it seems we’re all in the same boat. Nobody actually has any idea what they’re doing.

Look interested

An important skill! But how? Think of something interesting and you will instantly look interested even if you’re not. That doesn’t quite seem to work. Why not have courses to prepare you for those dull parties and boring conversations you will be forced to have in later life?

Children of a pretend revolution

Both of my parents are psychologists. Dear God!, I hear you cry. Both of them? By way of background information, I did not spend my childhood in group therapy. Yes, I had an awful lot of ‘educational’ toys and yes, my family talks an awful lot and yes, it’s all rather liberal and democratic.

So far, so good. But one thing I was always encouraged to do is speak my mind. And that it’s perfectly acceptable to talk back at people if they say something you don’t agree with. Or if they do something you don’t like. And yes, the latter did get me into an awful lot of trouble at school.

Another thing I learned is that injustice is not something to be tolerated. Which is why I did give that guy a primary school a black eye because he picked on my friend for being shit at basketball.

Fastforward twenty years. I am beginning to realise that the world does not work like that any more. Particularly not in a working environment. It seems to be ‘put up and shut up!’. But what if you think something is fundamentally wrong. You KNOW it’s wrong. You KNOW it’s not fair and you would really like to throw a mean left hook at the offending party. Only that you’re not allowed to. Because you’re at work. Some people are higher up than others. And you happen to sit somewhere at the bottom of the pile, ready to be dumped upon from a variety of angles. Last time I checked, ‘doormat’ was not part of my job description. And if I wanted to b part of a group email bunfight, I would join an debate group for masochists. I certainly don’t need this kind of activity at work.

You try to speak up and get duly brushed under the carpet. Take the moral high ground! Yeah right, the moral swamp, more like. And I am tiring of sitting in said swamp. I really am. And why can’t I rise from the swamp? Because ‘you can’t do that!’. I know this may sound pompous, but I was under the impression I was an individual of free will and could do what I want, as long as I don’t hurt anyone. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Somebody somewhere along the lines lied to me big time. Doing the right thing does not get you anywhere. Neither does trying to be helpful. And what’s all this bollocks about ‘going the extra mile’ about? You go the extra mile, somebody will lay out another three miles of broken glass you can then crawl over in your own time. Thanks, guys, really appreciate it.

This leaves me and my naïve believe that all you got to do is be nice to people and they’ll be nice also out in the cold. And the theory that working hard will be rewarded doesn’t rung true either any more. If you happen to the in the civil service, you can’t have any sort of payrise, so instead they bleed you dry. Particularly, if you foolishly agree to do every last task someone is trying to foist upon you. Sorry, I don’t live to work, I work to live. I do not want to be loosing sleep over work matters, thank you very much.

So change jobs! Hm, but somehow I suspect it wont be any different anywhere else. Because everything in the working world seems to be upside down these days. Or maybe it’s just me and I am being stupid for seriously believing what my parents drummed into me for all these years was nothing but a big fat lie.

More on the Facebook malaise

It’s hard to imagine now that I once checked my Myspace several times a day. I haven’t checked my Myspace for months now, because every time I do I have a message along the lines of ‘We looked at your profile and thought you’d dig our tunes. We are a trash metal band from Usbekistan …’. Yes, Myspace seems to be music only these days. Which is nice. If I want to listen to some bands that haven’t got any records in the shop just yet. Annoyingly, most of them have disabled the download function, so I would have to sit on Myspace all the time if I wanted to play a demo on repeat. Ho-hum.

Cue Facebook. The supposed grownup option. The grandmother of all Bebos. I gather Bebo is for chavs and kids who like to play with knives/enjoy underage sex rather a lot.

When I first signed up for Facebook, I vowed it would not be like my Myspace and I would only ever add people I actually wanted to add. People I already knew from the outside world (yes, there is a world out there. Hard to believe, but there is). I now have 94 friends on Facebook. Some of them are dormant. Like terrorist sleepers. They lay in waiting, only to suddenly ‘throw a sheep at you’ out of nowhere or try and coax you into a round of ‘Texas Hold’Em’. I keep meaning to rid myself of these. But can’t quite do it. Although they won’t even notice I deleted them. A Facebook Kill is a silent kill. So far, I only disposed of one person on Facebook. This was duly noticed, I re-added. Temporarily. Then I went for the full delete-and-block option. I win.

One thing I do have reservations about is work colleagues on Facebook. With Myspace, it didn’t matter, really because your profile is up for grabs for the world regardless (unless you pretend to be under age, at which point they filter out grownups eg everyone you know). On Facebook, nobody needs to see what I’m up to outside work. Not that I’m up to a hell of a lot, but still. There’s work life and there is life life. Needless to say, my ‘no work on Facebook’ rule soon began to crumble. Next thing I know, half my team is on there. I do draw the line at work people I don’t really know though. What’s the point in having people on there I hardly talk to in the first place. Yeah, sorry I ignored your request. Twice.

Then there is the groups. Joining seems like a good idea at the time, but after the 10th reminder message about a clubnight the other side of the country, you begin to tire of those. And, let’s face it, in most cases, the notification that ‘… has joined IF 25 PEOPLE JOIN THIS GROUP I WILL CHANGE MY NAME TO STINKBOMB’ is the first and the last you will ever hear of said group.

And don’t get me started on the Application junkies. These tend to be the people that greatly enjoy forwarding emails that say ‘send this to 10 people and your luck will change’ or ‘check out these toddlers in bumblebee suits and fairywings’ and other adorable headings. These people will insist you take a test to find out which Disney Princess you are, they will Superpoke you (despite the fact you don’t even have the goodamn SUPERPOKE! Application!), they will add you to their bizarre Top Trumps-esque entourage of supposed friends and, worst of all, hunt you down in the ‘who is online right now’ bit somewhere at the bottom of the page (if anyone knows how to disable the thing, do let me know!). There is no getting away from them. And you can’t even message them to stop this malarkey because their profile will be so cluttered with slow-loading applications (egg hatching, virtual Christmas trees at Easter time, all sorts of kerrazy cartoon versions of them, online fishtanks, entire cocktail bars …) that it will take about 48 hours to appear in the first place. And no, I DO NOT NEED THE PETROL HEAD APPLICATION IN MY LIFE! I don’t even have a fucking driving license!!!!

Still, it’s easy to get all obsessive compulsive over Facebook. I even check mine on the mobile (ahem). Despite the fact nothing ever happens and all I do is delete messages from promoters whose nights I will never go to and decline invitations to aforementioned far-flung gigs by bands I never even heard of. Or write one-liners that aren’t funny on people’s walls. Or saying Happy Birthday to people I have never even met. Or people whose birthday I would have definitely forgotten if it wasn’t for the handy Facebook reminder. If you want to be really crafty, send them a text to say Happy Birthday. It’s then less obvious you found the birthday on Facebook and they might even think you actually remembered their birthdays because you are such a kind and caring individual.

But. I am sure something else will come along soon.

Rock Lobster

Don’t you hate it when this happens? You’ve done everything there is to do, you’ve even taken some herbal sleeping tablets, everything is ready for the next day, you haven’t played computergames all evening, neither have you been watching too much television. Heck I even own a can of lavender spray. All that’s left to do is sleep, so you get to wake up the next day, nice and refreshed, like a normal person.

10.30pm. You’re all set. Pillows are arranged, gumshield in your mouth (quite disgusting, but at least it stops you from grinding your teeth into calcium flour over night), phone on charger, lights are off. Great. But why is it suddenly too cold in here? Let me find another jumper. Or maybe I shouldn’t. It’s August, after all. No, I think I will find a jumper. Maybe another duvet as well. Two jumpers and three duvets later, what is this now? Why is my foot itching? On second toughts, this pillow isn’t to comfortable, after all. Let me just quickly re-arrange all this. Right, that’s better. Oh, maybe I should go to the loo again. Nah, maybe I should not. Dammit, I will go.

11.30pm. Meanwhile back in my groggy brain, the B52s have launched into a splendid rendition of Rock Lobster. That song is about nine minutes long and they keep on repeating it. Don’t get me wrong, I like this song a lot. But not right now! Why doesn’t brain radio have an off switch? LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! Here comes the jellyfish! Aoooh-aah-ooh!

12.30pm. Wide awake now. Maybe another cigarette will help. Lights on. Find fags. Find lighter. Find ashtray. Whilst I’m at it, why not start reading the most boring book I own (The British Horse Society’s comprehensive guide to stable management) and have a little read. ROCK LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! I really am sick of that tune by now. IT WASN’T A ROCK! IT WAS ROCK LOBSTER! Stub out cigarette, put book away. Lights off again.

1.30am. Now it’s too warm. I am cooking under an array of duvets. This wasn’t a good idea. Let me take some of these off again. No, too many. Too cold now. Somebody do something! I have to get up again at 7. Supposedly, an adult needs at least eight hours sleep in order to function properly. What if I stop functioning at work? This isn’t good. I could come in for 10 I suppose. Alarm now changed to 8. Good. No need to panic now. … AND EVERYBODY HAD! MATCHING TOWELS! ROCK LOBSTER! I really need t sort out my dire financial situation. Maybe I could get another credit card. Only that they probably won’t let me have one. Hm. Why is it that I am earning more money than I ever had, but I’m still broke all the time? I really must do something about that. Right now would be good. PEOPLE ON THE PLAYA! HAVING FUUUUN!

2.30am. Ok, this isn’t funny any more. I now want to kill the B52s and their stupid LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! Maybe pony Angel is scared in her stable. There’s lightning in the sky now. I hope she’s ok. I wish I had a car. Then I could hop in my car and go and see if she’s okay. ROCK! LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! For goodness sake, why am I still awake? The 10 o’clock start tomorrow won’t really cut it any more either. I’ll be a walking wreck. Again. I wish I’d have a better reason to be a walking wreck. If I’d been out clubbing, at least I’d have something to talk about. HERE COME THE STARFISH!!

3.30am. The last resort. Swinny! Swinny is a little toy guinea pig I had since I was a kid. He looks a little worse for wear, but at least I have trained myself to not sleep whilst clutching a cuddly toy any more a few years ago. He still lives in the bedroom though. Is that so wrong? For God’s sake it’s now 4am, I am sniffing a toy guinea pig and am swearing under my breath and am quite angry with myself for being such a loser. Tomorrow will be better. ROCK LOBSTER! OOOOOOH! ROCK LOBSTER!

The Antisocial Socialite

Meeting groups of people I don’t know fills me with dread. Particularly, when the only thing group members and I have in common is that we happen to know the same person. It was easier before the smoking ban. At least you could sit in the pub chainsmoking when you didn’t know what else to do. I am famously bad at starting conversations and used to kick off with openers like ‘gee! Get rid off that beard!’ or ‘I don’t like your shoes!’. NOT popular. I have almost stopped doing this by now and frequently catch myself uttering the dreaded ‘so what do you do?’. Not great either, is it? Particularly when everyone else is already blind drunk and you instantaneously look like a total bore. I have no idea how many hands I have shaken in my life and how many times I said ‘nice to meet you’ when I proceeded to forget peoples’ names in seconds.

I can’t stand this ‘walking into a busy party where I only know one person’ feeling. I am incapable of chitchat and find it somewhat tricky to laugh along with perfect strangers about whose jokes I know nothing about. At parties, I actively seek out the few people I already know and follow them around religiously, because I simply cannot face striking up any sort of conversation with anyone else. I am probably terrified of coming across like a complete prat. On the other hand, not talking to anyone is likely to be even more prattish.

I used to be ok walking into a gig on my own. I even made acquaintances that way when I first moved to London and didn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I was ever particularly confident (for overly confident people are the most annoying of all), but I did okay. Somewhere along the lines, something must have backfires spectacularly. I tend to sit there, hiding behind a pintglass, trying to look enthralled at a conversation across the table I can’t even hear properly and pray to God I laugh in all the right places.

Either that, or outright hostility towards the unknown. Everyone is dubious until proven otherwise. Now, that is a very childish attitude to have indeed. It should be the other way round. Innocent until proven guilty.

I don’t even particularly care what people think of me. If I did, my life would have probably ground to an abrupt halt a long time ago, because I never really quite fitted in anywhere. I was always to weird, too honest, not dressed well enough and generally too nerdy. So why the heck can’t I be one of those intant socialites? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be one of those idiotic, hollow-brained ‘social butterflies’, because, quite frankly, I hate people like that. I really do. They epitomise everything I dislike about mankind: an obsession with first impressions, an obsession with looks, pub psychology applied to mannerism, a fake smile and a pathological urge to be everyone’s friend. I don’t want to be everyone’s friend! I honestly do not! I pick my battles and friends very carefully.

So why do I act like I’ve just been attacked with a stun gun when faced with a bunch of people I don’t know? I’m fine with that concept at work. I cannot do it in a social context. As a result I look like some sort of arrogant, aloof prick without meaning to. Great. Fantastic. And it’s getting worse by the minute. I can never think of anything remotely interesting to say and seem to have this pathological need to talk about a) my job or b) where I live. I don’t even like my job and it sure isn’t a job to be proud of. Its actually a pretty darn uncool occupation. I used to drone on about records and gigs to all and sundry. Now I fear this is likely to bore people to tears. And to be honest, it probably would. Nobody cares that I have signed Bis vinyl, that I used t write fanzines and promoted gigs. Nobody wants to know about my record label that folded many moons ago. I feel like a lost has-been sometimes. Thus, probably best not to share these things with anyone any more in the first place. Keep trap shut. Firmly shut.

When I had a few, I can get annoyingly argumentative. That isn’t good either. Nobody want to hear my hostile views about certain genres of music, dreadlocks, overly girlie girls and how society is intrinsically sexist.

Once I met people a few times, it tends to be okay. But these days everything moves so fast that nobody ever gets a second chance it seems.

I suppose I am basically screwed.

School reunion - part two

So the school reunion happened without me. Luckily, I seem to be unable to remove myself from the associated mailing list and received a link to page with 297 pictures of said reunion yesterday.

My god. How glad am I that I didn’t attend? Judging from the pictures, only about 15 people came along. Guess what, I hated 11 out of those 15. With a passion.

The girls haven’t changed at all. The majority of the boys are now either fighting pattern hairloss or weight issues. Or both.

There is also a significant number of wedding rings strategically shoved into a lot of the pictures. Hey, look at me! Fat! Bold! And married! Isn’t it great that even gits like me can find a woman?

Here they are, standing in the boys loos at the old school smoking fags. Just like the old days. And I was relieved to see that the roadpaint ‘Abi 98’ (eg school leavers 98) in the school yard is still there, albeit a bit faded.

One of them even sported his ‘Abi 98’ T-shirt. A hideous white contraption in X-large (thank you, Fruit of the Loom) with a ‘street’ logo on the front and a list of everyone in the class (there was 120 of us, it’s a long list, hence the X-large size) on the back. Adorable.

One of those garments was forced upon me at the time. I boycotted the whole thing. On the school leaving fete, I wore it inside out. This is after I had taken some scissors to the seams. I don’t remember much about this fete, other than being hammered and hurling verbal abuse at quite a lot of people, before slinking off early with my friends.

Much to my delight, some of the people really haven’t aged well. The ‘Mr and Mrs’ of the Class of 98 (yes, those blithering idiots even held a beauty contest) don’t look so good these days. She looks gaunt. His hairline is halfway up his head, but he still insists on wearing his locks in a ponytail. It wasn’t a good look then, it sure isn’t now. I think I prefer having average looks and maintaining them to peaking early and aging fast.

And they’re al pretending to have a blast. I am sure they didn’t. Some of these people hated each other’s guts at school, so why are they suddenly sharing drinks? Presumably a crazy haze of fake nostalgia. Nostalgia about stuff that never happened. About a time that was not that great. The big lie that ‘school days are the best days of your life’. Hell they are! In one trench you have powermad teachers taking out their frustrations on hapless youths. In the other trench you get a bunch of teenagers stabbing each other in the back. Doctors’ kids versus lawyers’ kids versus farmers’ kids. Imagine being a psychologists’ child in the midst of all this. It wasn’t easy.

Still, the whole thing reminded me of ten years ago. It seems like a very long time. I don’t know whether I have changed. So let me dig out the Yearbook of 98, where my flatmate wrote a little description of me.

There’s a picture of the whole class at the front. I have short hair that I’d dyed red. And I am growling at my flatmate. I’m standing between her and my friend Conny. Conny and I lost touch a while ago. I don’t think she coped very well with me leaving the country and started to behave rather strangely, before stopping all contact. Shame, really, I liked her a lot.

Anyways, my profile description. There isn’t a picture because I refused to have one taken. It says …

A day in the life of …

One night, Julia is tortured by a horrible nightmare. She is a geometric ball shape and has to draw a line through herself!
This is accurate. I have always hated maths and certainly despised geometry.

She wakes up and cheers herself up with a healthy portion of indiepop. This can be heard from her room from 7am onwards on a school day. By 7am she is ready to go (once various pink and glittery items have been attached and the hair has been flattened by brute force). This is after she complained yet again that her hair looks like a Playmobile figure.

Damn right it does. Still.

On arrival at school, she obtains a sticky sugary pastry and proceeds to draw on any available surface in biro and markerpen (trousers, books …). To be accurate, she isn’t drawing, she is writing wry, cynical comments on the world. Like when she called a complicated chemical drawing a worldwide tubemap and also mentioned that the whole contraption wasn’t getting us anywhere. She even invented a story to help people remember cell division in biology …

Yes. I remember it well. A ludicrous tale of someone going to the supermarket, making up telephone numbers and eventually turning into a donkey.

Back home, she immediately makes a beeline for the letterbox. Because only a day with mail is a good day. Because she needs at least a letter a day to be able to converse about the truly important things in life (music).

Her profound geographical knowledge (isn’t Hanover near Munich?) didn’t help the phone bill either. Because of this, it’s safer to write. Better check that letterbox again. And again. And Again.

I still do this. Only with emails, texts and social networking days. I get quite frustrated when nobody contacts me.

If there still isn’t a letter, she gets quite annoyed. To fend off total melancholy, she is writing a fanzine (Zosch!) – a one-woman publication in A5 she uses as a weapon in the forced conversion of us philistines.

Suddenly, the phone rings! She is petrified of fires in the home. Where do I put that fag? Simply put it out? No way, that wouldn’t e safe! She swiftly empties the cold contents of her coffeecup into the ashtray and launches into a desperate search for a pair of scissors. Once these are located, the burning fag end is swiftly hacked off and mixed in the with cold coffee, resulting in a fireproof substance. It is now safe to answer the phone in the other room.

Her hamster is currently living in the cupboard, to ensure it’s dark and quiet.
She often gos out in Munich, where she enjoys a good dance in these indie discotheques (requests for dancelessons are taken for: air guitar, indieshuffle, shoegazing, stirring style, hammer style and saw style. Beginners and more experienced participants welcome! Well worth it!).

Nope, I still can’t dance to save my life. I enjoy it though!

Once she got through another exhausting day, she can kick back and gaze at the array of rather younglooking popstars in the posters on her wall (who look like 11 but she swears they’re at least 25!). Asleep at last, she dreams about pink candyfloss, Helly Kitty and London … London … London

… So here I am. In London. So screw the lot of you stupid people from school. I may be perpetually broke. I may find life in the metropolis difficult at times, but … at least I followed my dream. At least I gave it a bloody good go.

Pick me up before you go go

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discover there is a whole weird new world out there. The people in it call themselves ‘pickup artists’. And yes, this is as bad as it sounds.

Successfully master meeting and attracting beautiful women.

The pickup artist, no matter how hideous they are, claims to be able to get any women he wants. Jolly good. And how exactly do they think this is going to happen? Oh sorry, I forgot. Women are but pretty creatures with peroxide for brains. You just need to find the on switch and the off switch and they’re all yours. They don’t think for themselves, have no taste and are just waiting for someone like you to pick them up. Sure thing, dude.

Now, I know people can be shy. And I know people can be clumsy. I also know some people find it very difficult to meet women and, like, talk to them. What I did not know is that it is now unacceptable to be a social retard. People like you or I shouldn’t even exist.

The pickup artist’s philosophy is based around the bizarre idea that all women are attracted to him. By default. Like these self-esteem tapes that tell you you’re beautiful, successful and everyone likes you.

What I can’t get my head round is why all women are supposedly attracted to these people. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did chatup lines become fashionable again? Does anyone actually still collect girls’ numbers as a hobby/to get laid/show off their address book to their mates? Quantity is chosen over quality. Women have become phone numbers. And phone numbers collectable.

Pickup guru Craig Hendleman (who, incidentally, is an Essex lad) even goes as far as claiming that when it comes to women being attracted to men looks aren’t important. Whilst at the same time droning on about blondes, nice asses and supermodels. He gets to pick and choose. Girls are apparently too thick to notice and physical features of any male, as long as said male is buying into the pickup philosophy.

Common sense tells me that beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder. Nobody needs to have a ‘type’ and I am certain most of what the media tell us is ‘beautiful’, the vast majority of people find pretty hideous. The pickup artist, however, is with the media on this one. Big tits! Cue ballscratching. Cue some male gorilla style bonding experiment. For peace and quiet’s sake/adding insult to injury, Hendleman actually goes as far as saying he was ‘with some very unattractive girls’. Yeah, and? You didn’t find them attractive, but there will be a number of people out there who find these ladies drop dead gorgeous.

Coming back to the shy types, the recluses, the geeks and the pathologically clumsy, pickup school is supposedly targeted at them. If I was a man, I would fall into all these categories. But I would also be quite happy with just the one girl. Not an array of shags and phone numbers. If someone happens to be on the introvert scale, revving them up and sending them out to streets and clubs armed with dodgy chatup lines won’t help them. They’ll be acting their socks off, but will no longer be who they are. There are so many different personalities and characters out there, why not find a girl with a personality to suit yours? Why pretend you are something you’re blatantly not? And how long can you keep up the pretence? What do you get out of the experiment? Oh yeah, phone numbers. And you might get laid by them. Well done you. But are you any closer to your quest of obtaining a girlfriend? The hell you are. Instead you treat women like pretty ornaments that had a lobotomy. Oh yes, that’ll get you real far in life. Everyone will take you ever so seriously.

And if someone walked up to me in the street telling me how amazing my legs were or if they could try my shoes on, rest assured my reaction will not be pretty.

Where do I stand?

Right. I’ve been working in what is effectively a complaints department for over three years now. I think I had enough. It’s not even supposed to be a complaints department. ENQUIRIES is the thin disguise used to make people feel a bit better about their workplace.

In reality, more than half the ‘contacts’ are from deranged, angry citizens. Fancy spending seven hours a day reading about how ‘disgusted’ people are, how ‘ludicrous’ the world is, just how much they hate their phone provider and how everything is a conspiracy by thee such-and-such ‘brigade’. The use of the word ‘brigade’ makes me particularly angry for some reason. What do they think this is? Who’s in all these brigades?

I particularly despise the old ‘I pay your wages you do as I say’ trick. Jesus, did you really think civil servants are exempt from taxes? Have you any idea how crap our pay actually is compared to the private sector? And do you know how many times I have heard this bullshit today alone? Ah no, you do not. Because you are one of those ‘retired white male caukasian’ people that make up the readership of the Daily Telegraph and you haven’t had a reality check for about a decade.

And why would you want to send an email ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS to get your POINT ACROSS? And why is any old shit suddenly a MATTER OF UTMOST URGENCY. And why do you keep addressing your letters to ‘the manager’, ‘the chief executive’ and the ‘head of complaints’ plus a whole host of invented titles, when you know damn well that any large organization has a whole host of people manning an Enquiries department dealing with this sort of thing? Like the blithering idiot who threatened to sue an admin person at Virgin Media for supposedly STEALING a letter that he addressed to Richard Branson HIMSELF and responding to it WITH A PACK OF LIES? How naïve are you? Do you really think the world is going to stop, just so you can get your godforsaken toaster repaired? By Richard Branson, preferably. My God.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be very helpful indeed. But only if you act in a civilized fashion and aren’t a raving lunatic droning on about taxes, the freemasons and whatnot.

Do what you like but remember, like Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer I HAVE THE GODDAMN MICROPHONE! And if I choose to shove your stupid complaint at the bottom of the pile., I bloody well will do.

Time to find a new job, methinks ….

Personal Services Required

Looks like Wifeswap spawned a whole new range of these household documentaries. Where we take a peek into Joe Blogg’s home and watch ‘people like us’, as opposed to the nutters on Big Brother. Or so I thought. Personal Services Required … just where do they find these people? Did they advertise in Nouveau Chav magazine? ‘Wanted: Essex couple with mansion. Must be New Money. Spraytans optional’.

I am absolutely gobsmacked. There really are people out there with nothing better to do than thinking about how twelve cushions should be arranged on the bed during the daytime. Now, bedmaking is a waste of time in the first place, but, surely, if, for some reason, you’re into this sort of thing, does it really require 20 minutes with a ten minute inspection following? I can’t even decide who I feel sorrier for, the poor sod applying for a live-in housekeeper position or those sad freaks who wish to employ a housekeeper. The first is well on her way to become some kind of modern day slave, the latter … well … they might as well take their hedgefund and jump off the nearest bridge. For there is nothing left of their lives. They have outsourced everything. Including the careful folding of toilet paper. Who would do such a thing?

Interestingly, they also offer a handsome salary to whoever is willing to move into their house and be at their every beck and call. It’s almost like buying a Grandmother, albeit a young, healthy one that isn’t your mother.

A friend of mine is a professional Nanny. She refuses to take on live-in positions. Because it’s only a job. As opposed to selling your entire body and soul the spraytanned lady of the manor. Mind you, not having to pay rent and bills sounds handy. But would you really want to be sharing a house with your boss, who may well inform you that there is a fly in his bedroom at 3am?

Having watched Personal Services Required twice now, I am absolutely horrified at some people’s need to wield power over servants. To even tell them what they should and should not be wearing. And to show them off to friends and family like novelty pets.

And I can’t make up my mind who was worst. The headhunting, orange couple who asked this guy to wear chauffeur’s livery to Tesco’s or the middle-aged, chavy but loaded single mother who spent the entire program drooling over the young, male Au Pair? The latter acted almost like she was a female sex tourist in her own home, for goodness sake! Mind you, the one who informed her budding new Au Pair that she was ‘going to mould her’ wasn’t that pleasant either. Mould her? Yeah, sorry, you are but a spotty nothing, but I am going to make you a star, my dear. You are but an empty shell and I will make sure that I brainwash you into total submission.

Where do people get these powertrips from? I suppose it is to do with money. Money can buy you pretty much everything. I am loaded, therefore I am. Now I will invest in some new friends, a big house, some kids. I will buy into being admired and liked. Because I am the one paying. What these people didn’t quite realise is that the one thing they don’t seem to be able to purchase is anyone’s respect. How do you respect someone with an unhealthy obsession with polished faux brass lighswitches?

No Miss, I have not been smoking in the girls toilet!

My contract says no smoking in the flat. I ignored this, of course. Next thing I know the agency announces that ‘our regular inspection is coming up’. Er, okay. Not that you mention this to me at all. Not in the contract either. Flat smells like a working men’s club before the smoking ban.

Panic. Must get rid of smell. But how? Stop smoking in there immediately. Okay, that didn’t work. I resorted to smoking in the bathroom. After the event I realised my bathroom has no windows. Oops. Next stop, Oust! If it works for badly dubbed Dutch housewifes, it’s good enough for me. I settle for the ‘Outdoor Fresh’ variety. Pfffft, there goes the can. To my surprise I woke up the next morning, delighted I had not manage to gas myself over night. Death by chemical pine – not great. The can says to not use on fabrics. Febreze! I need some Febreze! Two hours later I am spraying double. Febreze pointing on the carpet, Oust! Towards the ceiling. Bubbling away in the bath is half a tub of Vapour Rub I am cunningly steaming with boiling water. Nice one, Julia. If hell was on earth, it would smell of fake pines, menthol and fresh Febreze Cotton Scent goodness.

Then it hits me. What the hell am I doing? I feel like I am 15 again, standing in the girls loo at school, clutching an air freshener. Have you been smoking in there, Julia? No! So why is there smoke coming out from under the door? I have no idea. And why is there a fagbutt floating in the toilet? No idea. You can’t prove anything!

Or the time when I seriously thought half a packet of Strawberry Hubba Bubba would ensure my parents would not detect my fags and beer breath after a night out on the town. They knew, allright. But they took great pleasure in leaving me to squirm for a year, until they ‘officially’ caught me smoking. Only then did they tell me they were most aware of my filthy habit from day one, but they thought it’d be more educational to have me come down to earth with a bang all by myself. Thanks, guys.

So why on earth am I thinking the letting agency won’t notice the fact I’ve gone crazy on unusual smells? Why not just let off a stinkbomb and claim an upset stomach, no further questions asked? I am 29 years old now, I should not have to be doing this. I hold down a perfectly respectable job and I am technically speaking a grown-up. Admittedly, I live like a student, but … those tatty band posters have been with me for over a decade. I like them. And that signed Stereolab poster is irreplaceable. So are the He-Man toys. So there.

Don’t touch my bikini!

(By the way I’m not being weird, that is a quote from a song by the Halo Benders)

For I shall be going on holiday soon, it was time to take stock of any available swimwear I had. Three mismatched bikinis and one that appears a size too small later, I decided I may have to invest in a new garment.

Off I trundled to the Westend. It’s June, there’s loads of shops and there appears to be a sale on. Finding suitable attire should not be a problem.

First stop, Primark. An urban hell hole of a shopper’s warzone. Ladies are tearing at T-shirts and jumpers. I get confused and end up in the lingerie section. After feeling up half the bra section, I realise these are not for swimming in. Ooops.

Onto the beachwear! Locating something that does not consist of three strategically placed triangles and a bit of string is proving difficult already. God, if I wanted to show off quite that much of my dubious physique, I would have booked a week in a nudist camp! Do people really walk around wearing what is effectively a set of nipple tassles and a figleave? Hello? Less is not more. It is less.

On to H&M. Luminous colours seem to be very this season. I spot something that looks halfdecent in design, but, sadly, it appears to be only available in neon pink camouflage. No doubt it’d be great for hiding on the beach. Hiding amongst all the other neon camouflage ladies that is. By now I am harbouring a deathwish. It gets better: there’s a sign telling me that if I buy a bikini top, I shall get the bottom half thrown in for free! As opposed to what exactly? How many people are currently out frolicking on beaches bottom- or topless? Actually, I’d rather not know.

Next stop BHS. Ah, this is better. Sensible bikinis. Ones were you don’t end up with three quarters of breast tissue hanging out the sides. With matching bottoms that consist of squares rather than triangles. Needless to say, I found those in the ‘middle aged ladies section’ and they are thirty quid a pop. I will have to give that a miss.

Topshop! Two floors worth of organic, ever so urban pretend-vintage later, I finally spot the swimwear section. And there is it. A silver man-kini (or is that a woman-kini?). It’s so bright it has a halo. It looks like a fucking space suit. I haven’t seen such an exquisite alignment of lycra since the last cocktail party on Dallas. Better still, two women are actually picking the things up and take them to the changing room. I’m intrigued. They’re not actually going to … I hang around by the changing rooms (creepy, I know. But I had to know!). Both parties emerge victoriously and … take the silver shockers to the till! I am now convinced there will be an alien invasion soon. The kind where the old tinfoil hat just won’t cut it any more.

And all I wanted to do is acquire a bathing costume.

When the kids are re-united …

Yesterday I received an email inviting me to a school reunion. Ten years since I left school. Oh my. The sender I instantly recognizes as the irritating, overly sociable little git who constructed his own lie-down bicycle at the tender age of 15. In the ‘TO’ box, I soon spotted various irritants of my formative years. Funnily enough, the entire ‘in crowd’ is on there. And yes, I am still puzzled why it was sent to me, for I was never a member of this ‘in crowd’, Quite the contrary, I was with the weirdoes. The ones who did not live in Replay! And Chiemsee jumpers. The ones whose jeans were not made by Chevignon. If you have never heard of these brands, I suggest you pat yourself on the back right now.

Whoever invented the idea that school years are the best years of your life is a big liar. They are not. They’re the years you spend getting picked on, laughed at and smoking in the girls loos. The years with the ‘us versus them’ attitude, where you get the weird kids in one corner and the brand wearing offspring of the local surgeons and lawyers in the other. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t bullied as such. And I did have friends. I just didn’t get on with the majority of these, well, people and I certainly did not enjoy school. Who’d enjoy a powercrazed megalomaniac at the front of the room telling those at the back of the room exactly what they should and should not be doing? Exactly. And lessons were not ‘fun’. And those ‘hilarious’ pranks the class jokers played on people weren’t all that funny. And I doubt they’ll be funny ten years down the line either.

‘Remember how we used to … whatever … in the chemistry lessons? Wasn’t it such a laugh?’. No, it bloody well was not. Chemistry lessons sucked ass. And so did PE. We were only there because we did not have a choice. I, for one, ditched chemistry as soon as I got the chance to.

The email is accompanied by an itinerary and a questionnaire. The itinerary consists of a champagne reception in the school hall (and I am, in fact, surprised the decrepid building that was my school hasn’t collapsed entirely yet), then a tour of the school (why would I need a tour? I spent nearly ten years in that school!), followed by a ‘bavarian buffet’ (think Emmental, think Pretzels, think large sausage platters, think no more) in the café of the nearby park. For this I am asked to pay 35 Euros. I don’t think so. I have an excuse. I’m out of the country. Permanently.

The questionnaire is disconcerting, to say the least. The email tells me that those wanting to save themselves from 120 small talks should fill in and return the questionnaire. Hang on, if there won’t be any small talk, why would you go to a school reunion. Without a half-arsed ‘so, what have you been up to?’ ice breaker, this is going to be a very silent affair indeed.

‘What have you been doing over the last ten years?’

Left the country.

‘This is what I remember from the last day at school celebrations?’

The only thing I remember is that, during the headmaster’s speech, I plucked up the courage to talk to this guy in my year I had a crush on for ages. He was a bit strange and I had never spoken to him before, He told me he secretly liked Abba. I haven’t seen him since and I doubt very much he would turn up for the school reunion. He never spoke to anyone at school, collected war memorabilia and most people were a bit scared of him.

‘This is what I always wanted to say about my final week at school’

1.Yes, I was stoned out of my brain when I turned up for that last biology exam. 2. Yes I did indeed burn the book in which absences were recorded. 3. Yes, I did nick about 50 air fresheners from the toilets during my last two years at school.

‘This is what still links me to Regensburg’

Not a lot. My parents live outside of town. My sister is transient between Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich and my friends got the hell out of that town.

‘This is what I imagine myself to be like for the 20 year reunion’

Jesus, they’re planning another one? I have no idea, to be honest. Still alive, I hope.

Please take your items

Picture the scene. You’re in the supermarket. You’re hungry. You’re in a rush.

After repeating your order at the cigarette counter three times (what is it with non-smokers working at these counters?), you’ve filled your little basket and it’s payback time.

Queues, glorious queues as far as the eye can see.

You try to be smart and head for the self-checkout. To check yourself out. Up goes the little basket. Have you swiped your Nectar Card? As you fumble in your purse for the godforsaken card (that never seems to get you anything but vouchers for nappies you don’t need), your bloodpressure begins to rise. Card Accepted! Fabulous! You swipe a yoghurt and put it in your bag. Please place item in bagging area! I just bagged it! No really, I have. I don’t get it. On the one hand they are begging you to bring your own bags, on the other hand the robotic checkout girl throws a wobbly if you try to use anything but their bags. Please wait for assistance! Here comes with personal Checkout Captain in the shape of a spotty youth with a nametag saying ‘KevinHowCanIHelpAreYou21?’. Well, I am. Young Kevin certainly is not.

Onwards! I scan the next item. A packet of Heat Patches. The box states these do not contain any kind of actual painkiller. Still, Authorisation Required! Please wait for assistance! Now where has young Kevin gone? I decide it’s probably best to get the Ibuprofen ready also, since this is likely to cause another approval scene. Just in case I am planning to cut my shopping life span short with the help of 16 painkillers and a Heat Patch.

By this point my blood pressure has reached dangerously high levels and I am ready to throttle the screaming baby in aisle number three. Heck, I’ll throttle the teenager mother, too. That way she won’t be able to bring any more screeching, hairless little numpties into this world.

Shit. Now my bag is full. I fumble with plastic bags. A queue has formed behind me. Unexpected item in the bagging area! Yes, that would be my hand. Authorisation required! For my own flesh and blood. What is this? Some bizarre consumer assault course? I could be home by now, had I queued up behind the baby in aisle three.

At last! Insert payment! Only that the robotic check out girl does not like my 20p. The coin returns time and time again. I try the thing where you rub the coin on some metal (who came up with this idea? People do it in phone boxes, too. It never helps.). To no avail. Change of plan, I’m giving them a tenner. The tenner doesn’t want to go in either. Did I put the Queen’s head the wrong way round? Eventually, the machine eats my tenner and proceeds to spew out my change in a randomly located tray. Coins on the floor. I am beginning to sweat profusely, the queue behind me is getting restless. And so am I.

I hurriedly stuff my wares into bags and scuttle outside. Turns out one of the bags had a hole in it. There’s egg on my face, there’s egg on the floor. I am now very angry and kick the nearest dustbin in projected frustration. This swift motion causes me to drop bag number two. A milk bottle now decides to leak. I feel a one-woman rage coming on. Breathe in. Breathe out. For God’s sake, BREATHE. Walk away calmly. And stop pulling those horrible faces.

A Woman's Weekly

I think I am addicted to weeklies. It all started quite innocently with fishing out a copy of Love It! Magazine to read in the bath. Next was Take A Break, followed by Real People and there isn’t an end in sight.

Now, I consider my self a reasonably educated semi-feminist. I have no understanding of cosmetic surgery or the latest weight loss fad. Neither am I a 15 year old single mother with hoop earrings and hair scraped back so tightly my eyes have started to wander towards my temples.

But, how could I resist the riveting weekly story about someone having a sex-change? ‘My Groom is a Bride’! ‘How I became the first pregnant man in Bolton’!.

For the more harrowing tales, paragraph one will set the scene and force the reader to like the tortured protagonist. Hence, a lot of ‘I smiled’, ‘I cupped my baby bump’ and ‘I giggled as I stuck the last bauble on our Christmas tree’.

Inadvertently, some form of disaster will strike in paragraph number four. ‘Dwayne only had four weeks left’, ‘I was about to loose my baby’ or ‘I just didn’t feel comfortable as a man any more’. Luckily, good friends are always at hand to ‘soothe’. I could write a whole book on the overuse of the word ‘soothe’ in human interest stories. ‘It will be okay’, Stacey soothed, ‘Don’t worry, he only lost both legs, an eye and a kidney’, Jayneesha soothed …

After much soothing and despair, a solution will present itself in the shape of a ‘hunky mechanic’ with ‘rippling muscles and eyes like saucers’, accompanied by a picture of a grinning, hideous male with two litres of hairgel on his head, a gold earring in his nose, fake tan on his shoe and a shifty glint in his ears. Chavboy to the rescue! First thing chavboy will do is impregnate the protagonist, because then she will be able to do all the smiling and bump-cupping from paragraph once again and everyone is happy.

Should there was a baddie in the story, a picture of Baddie (no matter what Baddie did, if they’re male, they will always look like a pedophile) will appear at the end, with a caption saying ‘Bruce refused to comment, but did say he had never met Stacey in his life. Sadly, we could not interview him properly because he is currently imprisoned for petty theft or GBH’.

Another staple requisite for the likes of Love It! is the weekly plastic surgery story. Entitled ‘I hated my ugly hooter’ or ‘Bullied for my spaniel ear boobs’, this will explain to the hapless reader that a restructured bodypart can buy you eternal happiness. It also reminds you that anything smaller than a D cup will ruin your life (Oh no, better go hang myself on my A cup bra right now! I can’t possibly go on like this!). To reinforce the point, ‘before and after’ shots are provided. Before: blurred picture, bad hair, misery all around. After: big smile, full makeover (which tends to evolve around blond highlights and a low cut top or bikini), lens no longer blurry lens. Flat chested BAD. Big tits GOOD.

The cunning editor also manages to consiostently feature the amazing weightloss story right next to the one entitled ‘My Bulimia Hell’. What now? Am I meant to loose weight or gain weight?

Particularly annoying is the ‘You’ve Got Male’ section. Where do they find these people? Building sites? The job centre? They’re always topless and look like they’re likely to reappear in next week’s issue as an axemurderer. If I see another bronzed sixpack on some semi naked fireman I am going to puke.

Thumbs up for the Reader’s Tips page though (‘Carly’s Top Tips’!) though. Did you know there was ten useful things to do with the little net bags washing tablets come in? And that you can satisfy your neatfreak cravings by sticking clingfilm on the bathroom wall above the sink so you can just peel any toothpaste stains off the wall without actually having to scrub it? Did you know that your goldfish just loves frozen peas and that you can make a perfect gardening kneeling pad out of ‘an old showercurtain’? I don’t know about you, but how many old showercurtains do you have knocking around at any given time?

I can’t wait for next weeks issue. ‘I love my fake 32G boobs!’!! ‘I stole my best friend’s wrinkly dad!’!! and the much awaited ‘Cheryl Exclusive’!!