cheese

I am not going to write anything interesting today. I am on a flying visit back home and have been provided with a selection of fine cheeses and single malt whiskies, so I am writing this solely because I said I would.

Daily blogging, everybody! It's a wild, wild ride.

assorted thoughts I had while watching Spice World alone at midnight

(I saw Spice World in the cinema when I was twelve, and never again in nineteen years until last night, when I was looking for a suitably stupid way to see out my 31st birthday. It is a terrible, terrible film, but up until it started trying to have a plot at the end, I quite enjoyed myself.)

The Spice Girls appear to be having trouble lip syncing. Surely that's one thing they should have learned to do by now?

Is Jools Holland meant to be Jools Holland here or is he actually trying to act? I genuinely can't tell. Jools Holland always seems like someone who's playing Jools Holland unconvincingly.

Oh, they're playing chess now, are they. Explain chess to me, Geri, go on.

So. Many. Spiral. Wipes. Whose idea was this?

A fake sock penis! I did not remember there being a fake sock penis in this film!

Richard O'Brien played the baddie in this (well, a baddie in this)? Jesus.

...is this a Gary Glitter cover?? Oh, apparently it's a huge set-piece Gary Glitter cover. I thought we didn't do that? With Gary Glitter being such a fucking awful human being and all? Had we not realised that in 1997?

Aaaand now there's a spaceship. And aliens. Who want autographs. And all the Spice Girls speak alien now.

Oh dear, Michael Barrymore is in this. This is uncomfortable.

Richard O'Brien has emerged from inside a toilet and then turned to photograph said toilet for some reason. I bet Richard O'Brien thought this was great fun.

The Baby Spice thing actually is a bit creepy, in retrospect.

Seriously, what am I meant to think about Alan Cumming here? What is his purpose? Is he a bad guy or comic relief? I am so confused.

Meat Loaf is a bus driver, Elvis Costello is a deeply unconvincing bartender, Peter Sissons is Peter Sissons, and Geri is Bob Hoskins. Got it.

The entire film is soundtracked by the Spice Girls, except at this one point where it's My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small. But they're lipsyncing to it anyway, and not doing any better than they have with their own songs.

These are seriously the shittest news stories they could possibly have come up with. "Boat drama", really? When you could have gone with "Spice Girls attempt to drown fans"?

God, Geri is TERRIBLE at this.

God, Emma is TERRIBLE at this.

Is there meant to be some kind of Emma/Mel C subtext here, or am I just spending too much time on The Toast?

Ah, a flashback to the Spice Girls and their friend I keep forgetting about in their local working-class caff in their pre-fame days. This is possibly the least believable thing yet. Oh God, and they're going to do an entire song here, lip syncing to the purposely shitty boom box.

Oh God, that was meant to be an emotional moment and I completely didn't realise.

MORE FUCKING SPIRAL WIPES.

OK, Stephen Fry has turned up and made me laugh on purpose. Well done, Stephen Fry.

They're taking their way-past-her-due-date friend to a rave? And now they've left her on her own to go and dance? To their own song?? What shitty friends.

Now all the Spice Girls are in the delivery room? WHY are they all in the delivery room?? Why is Geri directly between her friend's legs? Why did she get to hold the baby before its mother?

What, so now the whole photographer thing was a story being told by the movie people? And they've wrapped up the whole evil-newspaper-guy plot with a nonspecific headline? I thought he was pitching a film, but apparently he was narrating actual events? The fuck?

Oh, I remember the model bus thing! And them trying to scream convincingly at a bomb!

EWWWWW I am upgrading the Baby Spice thing from "a bit creepy" to "really fucking creepy". I didn't notice this at all when I was twelve.

Seriously, what am I supposed to think about Alan Cumming?? Why is he even here?

The Spice Girls are performing at the Royal Albert Hall and it is the worst lip syncing yet. Either that or worst editing yet. Plus I really don't like Spice Up Your Life.

That was the end of the film? Really? Huh.

Oh yay, fake outtakes. And then they pretended to be able to see the audience! And then the bus exploded. Good times.

thirty one

It's birthday time again.

Last year I wrote what was in retrospect an unnecessarily harsh post to mark my birthday, about how the year to come was going to be hard and I was going to have to do unpleasant and difficult things for my own good. I'm not going to write that kind of post again.

This is going to be an odd year where everything changes, but what that means is that I have choice. I get to choose where to work, I can choose where I want to live. I can choose what to do with my weeknights without feeling like I've let anyone down. I have obligations to my partner and my family and a few of my friends, but none to jobs I dislike, houses that are slowly disintegrating, or entire groups of loose acquaintances. This year I can do what I like.

For the first time in a very long time, I actually want to be working. I want to have a job and an office and vaguely annoying co-workers, and I want to be showing people that I'm smart and good at lots of things. For the last few years of my working life I spent every morning battling the dread in my stomach and wondering if there was any way I could get out of it, and this feeling of actively wanting to be employed and useful is so foreign to me that it's taken a couple of weeks to work out that that's what it is.

I'm remembering what it's like to want to learn. I've been taking pride in my dressmaking skills recently, beginner though I might be, and I've been excited about getting better. I've been thinking about new dance classes, singing lessons, ways to improve my Italian. I've wanted to start cooking again. I've thought about learning something completely outside my normal wheelhouse; getting an A level in a science, learning indoor plumbing or some other extraordinarily practical domestic skill. I've thought about learning illustration, to see if I can teach myself to draw something that doesn't look like an inebriated ghost. I've thought about performing, doing something fun that will silence at least one of the voices in my head telling me you can't. More than anything else depression took from me, I've missed curiosity.

I can see a future for this year the way I couldn't for previous years. 2013 was completely about the present, 2014 was confusing, and in 2015 I couldn't see anything at all. This year I can feel opportunities for something better. I want to feel more like myself while growing with another person, to let out some of the things I've always hidden because of a nonspecific fear. I've got high hopes for this weird-ass uncertain year.

30-year-old Jen had a miserable time of it. 31-year-old Jen is going to have fun.

the worst

Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader is following me.

It's no exaggeration to say that I hate this song. I hate this song more than any other song I've ever heard. It infuriates me to the point that I will leave a shop if their in-store radio starts playing the song, and if it comes on when I can't just leave (because I'm in a restaurant or whatever) then I will stop the conversation and put headphones in, or sit there with my fingers in my ears like a small child. I have developed such an antagonistic relationship with this song that I cannot listen to it all the way through without having a minor but genuine breakdown.

Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader is the worst song ever written. The plinky intro hits at just the right frequency to make me twitch, the guy sings as though someone is trying to shove a Pot Noodle up his nose, and every single line rhymes with every single other fucking line. Light rhymes with bright rhymes with might rhymes with fight rhymes with delight until I start gouging bits of flesh out of my palm to stuff up my ears with. I don't often hate things, but when I do, I hate them.

Once my friends and I were at a free local music festival, hanging around by the artists' entrance, and Toploader rocked up. They were rude to the autograph hunters. I shouted at them that I hope their record company dropped them, and after that it was years before I heard anything of Toploader again. The story of "Jen is an actual witch who put a curse on Toploader and it actually worked" made the rounds a fair few times at my school.

Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader seems to be having a resurgence, and for the life of me I can't understand why. In the last two weeks I've heard it in shops, cafes, and even in my therapist's office.

"Oh God, I hate this song, I hate this song, I hate this song," I said through clenched teeth as the opening plink started up. My therapist chuckled and went to fetch water. The closest I can get to describing how I felt when I realised that he wasn't going to switch it off despite being right next to it is that I possibly astral-projected out of my body in order to smack him across the top of the head. When he came back in and I begged him, almost at the point of tears, to please just turn the radio off, he looked confused. It's apparently not really normal to hate this song this much.

Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader genuinely interferes with my well-being and mental health. If I'm ever kidnapped and brainwashed, this will be the song they use to trigger me into doing whatever nefarious deeds they kidnapped me for. Hearing even part of this song can honestly ruin my day. And now it's following me. That song must be at least fifteen years old by now, there is no reason for anywhere to be playing it. It's not a classic that needs to be kept in rotation, it's a festering pile of plinky, nasal, twee, irritating shit, and it must be stopped. Maybe I should curse them again.

with no face

Story time!

When I was four or five, we had an infestation of slugs in our back garden. My parents were trying to grow some vegetables, and to keep the slugs away from the plants they decided to put out shallow dishes full of beer. Of course, that's not what they told me.

"Why are you putting beer in the garden?" I asked.
"It's for the Tomato Man," said my father instantly, in the same genial tone he uses for ninety-eight per cent of everything he ever says. "The Tomato Man and his Four Hippopotami."
"Why are you leaving him beer?"
"Because otherwise he won't make the tomatoes grow. We have to leave beer for the hippopotami."
"But if there are four hippopotami, why are there only three dishes?"
"One hippo has to keep watch."

This all sounds ridiculous and adorable, except that the more I thought about this story the more terrified I was. I would lie in bed at night, listening for them. My immediate reference for hippos was a set of brightly-coloured ones that had been strung across my pram when I was smaller and had now been passed down to my baby brother. I pictured three hippos, each in a different jaunty primary colour, drinking beer from the dishes in the garden under the cover of night, while the fourth one stared unblinkingly up at my window, waiting for any sign of movement. And if he saw anything, I imagined, he would alert the Tomato Man.

(This sounds SO RIDICULOUS. But this is what it was like being Baby Jen.)

Some nights I couldn't sleep for thoughts of what might be on the other side of my window if I ever dared to pull the curtain back before the sun came up. I'd decided what he looked like; a large tomato head with vines for body, arms, and legs, large flat leaves for hands and feet. I would picture it over and over again (with the same horrified fascination as Supposedly Adult Jen reading the Wikipedia pages of films too frightening to actually watch and then feeling sick for weeks). I could see myself tripping over to the window and pulling back the curtain. The slightest twitch would have alerted the hippo on watch, and by the time the curtain was fully drawn he'd be there, huge tomato head millimetres from the glass, staring at me with his featureless face.

I have been known to judge potential friendships in large part over whether they understand the terror of being stared at by a man with no face. I've now moved past this as an appropriate test, but it's still interesting to ask people. Is the stare in the eyes, or in the intent? If it's in the eyes, then you have nothing to fear from the goddamn Tomato Man, but if it's in the intent? You are never getting away from that stare. He can't blink, he can't turn his attention elsewhere. You can't distract him. You can't break his gaze, because it isn't there. I've been afraid of being watched since then, but fear of being watched by a person, a monster, whatever, has never been more intense for me than the fear of being stared at by something with no face at all. Yes, I'm still aware it was a tomato.

I kept this completely to myself for years, because to say something aloud gives it power. I got so used to keeping it quiet that it stayed a secret long after he lost his grip on me. It must have been at least a decade if not more before I told my dad about my childhood fear of the Tomato Man.

"What?!" he said, in the exact same tone as he'd told the story in the first place. "It was just some nonsense about tomatoes and hippos!"
"You know about my imagination, Dad."
"Well, yes, but hippos and tomatoes?"
"Anything can be scary."
"I didn't mean to scare you! I was talking nonsense."
"Man with no face, Dad. You conjured up a staring man with no face."
"...good grief."

visible

I've done that thing where I haven't written for so long that any attempt at a new post takes on a disproportionate level of importance, and I continue not to write because I can't think of anything inspired enough to restart with. This is silly, and so I'm going to do daily blogging again for the next month.

This year's been okay, so far. I've danced, I've seen shows, I've made clothes. I spent New Year in Sicily, though that's really not as much of a brag as it sounds. My friend had a baby and I managed to persuade her not to name him Oakley. I'm taking a burlesque course and seem to have agreed to do a performance at the end. I'm signed up with a temping agency, I'm going to Paris next month, and in August I'm moving in with my boyfriend. Life's alright.

It's going to be an odd year. So far I've spent quite a lot of it being angry. I know, I just said that life was alright, and it is. But I've been angry, and being angry on my own behalf is something I'm completely unused to. When I've been mistreated in the past I've always responded with sadness, or fear, or a compulsion to rationalise the other person's actions until it looks like everything is fine, and this hot feeling of how fucking dare you is new and weird, and it has to be said, not entirely unpleasant.

I'm angry at the extended family members who are treating me like a pariah. I'm angry at the friend who abandoned me and is now sulking and pouting as though he's the one that's been hard done by. Having spent my whole life reacting to bad behaviour by assuming I'd caused it and trying to disappear, it's a very sharp kind of relief to know without any hint of a question that this is not my fault, this is your fault. I've been lacking that kind of certainty for a long time, and while I've got no interest in staying angry forever, right now it's giving me back some of the energy I lost last year and I'm grateful for it. Not that I know what to do with it, mind you. I'm still working on getting my activity levels back up to normal, so all my restlessness is getting channelled into sewing; I've made ten garments in two weeks. Which is bonkers. I need to slow down, but I think I'm worried about directing that energy to the places it really belongs.

If step one is realising that this is not okay, then step two is telling people that this is not okay. I've made it my business to be as unobtrusive as possible, to not fight and not complain and not start drama, and the idea of stepping out of that is terrifying. I have an astonishing imagination, and yet I can't hear myself saying "that thing you did was incredibly rude" or "you've been acting like a massive knob and you owe me an apology" or "you are a fucking adult who won't speak to me because I don't want to run around in a circle trying to steal hats off people's heads and that is pathetic" (I have some very specific complaints) without adding something into the scenario to make it clear that it's not real. Like everyone is wearing snakes or it's all taking place inside an orange. I can't imagine any version of me inviting conflict and demanding to be noticed like that. But at the same time, if all the anger stays on the inside, it's going to do me no good whatsoever. I've always wanted to be seen, but I've never wanted to be looked at. One way or the other, that needs to change this year.

under construction

Whether or not I manage to complete NaNoWriMo, I tend to stay away from blogging in November. Either I'm too busy writing, or I can't get the novel to work and writing in general becomes imbued with pressure and guilt and worry. It's been the case for the last few years that I've written a lot less in Writing Month than any of the months surrounding it, and - spoiler - that was the case again this year.

I thought it would be different this time. I had pages full of characters, plot points, set pieces and stupid puns. If I got stuck on one thread, I had at least three others to dip into instead. I started November with more than enough prep notes to spin into 50,000 words, and yet what happened was exactly the same as last year - I wrote just enough words on the first two days, several thousand on day three, and then nothing. I panicked for the next two weeks, assuring myself it could still be done if I really applied myself, there are always those nutters who write the entire novel on the first day, I couldn't give up on it yet. But I did. At the end of the month I had about seven thousand words I don't care about and will probably never look at again in my life, and I have to wonder if maybe NaNoWriMo isn't the best way for me to get stuff done anymore. Maybe in my current state of creative block, setting myself ridiculous deadlines to finish whole novels isn't such a good idea. Maybe there's a better way to get fiction happening again.

This conversation keeps happening between my boyfriend and me:

HIM: You know, if every time you said "I might write about that" you actually wrote about it, you'd have quite a lot of stuff.
ME: But it would all be ridiculous.
HIM: What's your point?

It keeps crossing my mind that a definitive life change point like this would seem to present an opportunity for me to start carving out an identity as a Person Who Writes. I wouldn't expect it to pay any bills for some time, but when I think about what I really want to do with my life, it always comes back to that. I've imagined having all kinds of jobs, but if I think about any of them for more than a few seconds I find that I'm imagining writing about the job instead of doing it. Writing is my destiny, as my drunk father told me a few months ago over a bottle of Glenlivet, and perhaps I don't need to create the definitive example of my skills before I start sharing it with other people (that half dozen or so pages of Actually Really Good Writing I came up with six years ago has got a lot to answer for). There certainly seems to be a subset of people who are amused by hearing the nonsense I come up with, and that might be enough to start off with. When I can come up with a name for it, there will be yet another blog, probably not on Blogger, devoted to non-personal writing. It's time I stop hiding this part of myself in case it isn't good enough.

So now I've said it in public, I'm committed to it.