bee feast

The new Jamiroquai single is shamelessly, shamelessly manipulative. It just runs some hokey programme with all the right boxes ticked - whiff of Isley Bros, nice acoustic guitar, nicey nice piano, 'summery' chord combination that's like someone smearing a Cornetto across your cheeks - and sits back smugly and waits for you to sigh and feel all poignant and summery. And, blast him, it works. What a fucker. Now playing it to death in the knowledge that eventually I'll see/hear past its superficial emotional-button-pressing charms and dismiss it from my mind. At least the lyrics are even worse than Charlotte Church's (I don't mind liking that song quite so much though, and I admire her greatly for her genuine actual surfeit of proper spirit and womanliness. And she just looks so. . . rude. The Ricci lip-curl is present but her eyes are just brimming with proper grown-up happy all-for-me filth. Most famous women seem either vulnerable or hardened or both but she just seems totally self-possessed and knows exactly what she's about. She Is Great. Anyway.)

Really, pleasant as it is I resent my enjoyment of it. Hee hee. It's just like walking past some unspeakable little burglar in a Burberry cap, getting a whiff of some really nice scent and then that 'ding! dinner is served' thing goes and all the hormones rush to the table. How awful. What slaves we are to our reptile brain stems. It's actually just as well that our sense of smell is rubbish, because scents make our brains go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and if we were able to develop too many associations then we'd never get a moment's peace.

More citronella definitely needed around here, although hopefully the worst of the annual insect onslaught has passed now. The fuckers all have one last fling in autumn though, so I'll have to bandage myself from head to foot in a few weeks. Most of the ones I've got now I got camping and weddinging last weekend. They're quite impressive. My skin seems to have a fit over bug spit. Epidermis tantrumis. The dog and I have been bonding, sitting on the floor together scratching rhythmically for minutes on end. The best thing is that I have one bite on each leg with a small bruise right next to it, as if the midge had bitten me and then given me a good punch before fucking off. And there's a perfect row of four small bites on the back of one thigh too. Is there some significance in this, I wonder? (No.)

I'll be glad to see the back of this week. It's been an unhappy one. Not for me in particular although I've had better ones - people I know and people they know have had varying degress of shit happen. Not about to extend this to bloggers but Dooce posted this the other day, from inside some fresh new-medication hell:

Today is a better day, and that’s how I’m going to measure things for the next little while. It’s how a lot of us who suffer through this have to measure our entire lives.

This among other things makes me realise that things could be so much worse. I just get distressed, and pissed off, when I recognise that not everything can be changed or worked on, it just has to be managed and navigated and withstood. I can't bear people who excuse away their appalling behaviour by shrugging that it's just the way they am, but then you can't perpetually apologise for the things you can't help either. And I suppose you have to find a way to not be angry about them, either, even though it's like constantly forgetting that you can't run to the shops on your broken ankle. It's like "oh yeah - that". But I've done about all I can for the time being, more than some would be prepared to do, and after that I've just got to suck it up. And - and! - keep reminding myself that my personal vanilla shitshake is far more sugary than most people's.

Last weekend was good. As I suspected, the forum thing was more than pleasant and I was genuinely chuffed to meet all these people with whom I trade insults on a daily basis. I thought I'd just feel terribly affectionate towards them, the real people behind the postings, and I did. So much for the persona. Heh heh. But the persona is real enough too, it's not really contrived, just a streak that needs the opportunity to. . .streak. Suspect that's true for most of them. Although most of them, being well-adjusted types, don't have one. Brave souls.

It was nice also to realise that I've got colleagues again, proper colleagues who do words. I might feel like I'm dithering around like some terrible yeppie heh heh half the time, but when I think about it for more than a second I know what I'm supposed to be doing. More or less. It's not a matter of what feels best, it's what feels natural and settles in without any discomfort. If I'm doing anything else it's like being poked, constantly, with little sticks. Pokey pokey pokey. Don't stand at that photocopier. Poke. Away with you, falseness. Of course in many ways media is the last place for such a sensitive flower (I suppose I could adopt the defensive mannerisms of a gangsta flowa, dog), and I doubt I'll find anywhere I can sit without fidgeting and frowning, but y'know, at least there I have a chair instead of a spike.

"In our house Nathaniel sits on a SPIKE."

"A-and yourself?"

"I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be an EXTRAVAGANCE."

I fell over on the tube afterwards. I found the floor relatively comfortable, but I was beyond slotting that into any sort of career-life analogy by then.

The wedding was beautiful. Rolling fields, happy people. The groom cried, the bride cried, everyone present cried. It's almost too awesome a thing to contemplate. I went about smiling like a fool, and later after half a something, went about fretting like a fool. But at least I had my wellies on which saved me from cold and from insects and thistles. Sadly even my wellies couldn't protect me from the inevitable Person who started berating me about the nature of God at 3am - I suppose they could have done, but I didn't quite hate him enough to use his own lurching momentum to trip him into the fire. Our eyes did meet at one point during a lull in his rant, and we exchanged a look of pure mutual dislike. It was great, actually. Invigorating.

Other than that I met many adorable individuals. A large Hackney contingent had decamped to the South Downs to celebrate - very warm, positive, inclusive people. Ahhhh. I'm very grateful that among my multifarious hindrances to contentment, I don't have to count shyness. It's very handy, and leads to all sorts of good things, to be able to go and bellow something introductory at total strangers and go on from there. I'm not great at it but I can muddle through, and am glad not to be stuck behind a fence the way a lot of people are.

Went to bed in a tent soaking with mist, had barmy disquieting dreams, woke to a whole herd of cows arguing with a flock of sheep (the cows were more belligerent, but the sheep had the superior debating tactics) and fried egg sandwiches and tea and equilibrium restoring itself like a slow but determined child doing Lego. We eventually hauled ass back to London behind the most fascinatingly silly van (the feet! check the feet!):





and Chinese and some shite on Channel 5 about inadequate wives which was summarily dissected and left on the side of the plate like psuedo-sociological bones.

And then I came back here, stretching the elastic band from my back up north, to a warm-to-hot welcome from the two individuals worth upping sticks for.