…about someone I recently met, but there are certain issues involved.

I mean, he’s in prison [as of a couple of weeks ago] so I’d be in no immediate danger if I, say, called him a compulsively dishonest and thoroughly repulsive man. But I expect they’ll release him at some point  if he doesn’t get raped to death for impersonating armed forces personnel, and then he might come after me. He’s got form. Witness intimidation form. eep.

There are the moral issues too, of course. Should I write about people in this manner? Is it fair? He wouldn’t be anonymous to anyone with even a little ability to search for newspaper reports concerning certain details so it’d be even less fair than usual. Entertainment v ethics. WHICH WILL WIN?

We. Shall. See.

…or maybe a few OBSERVATIONS.

Twins: overrated.

Women who are fiercely jealous if you speak to their partner usually have a partner who is, as they say, Nothing Special.

Flowers: easiest way in the world to make me overlook anything bad you have done. Unless they are chrysanthemums or carnations. Those are shit.

Sportsfans: not clever enough to read.

There is little more hideous than a man with a haircut, y’know, like you might see on a T4 presenter or star of the critically acclaimed documentary Hollyoaks.

Nightclubs. In many ways a nightclub is like a water-butt full of stagnant rain and mosquito larvae. I think I need say no more.

Internet dating: HEY! Let’s sell unrealistic expectations! HAHAH! You’ll hate yourself so much more once you’ve become enmeshed in an embarrassing and disheartening cycle of paying to meet wrong-side-of-average prospects! YOU FUCKING  LOSER!

Marriage must be great. Why else would people keep getting married and divorced and married and divorced and married again? Either that or it’s some kind of altruistic act aimed at keeping women in shoes and solicitors in caviar.

Everyone you know and love will die. The only uncertainty is in which manner and order.

…at the time, how sweet that he had told his workmates all about me and wanted to introduce me to his friends. It wasn’t his fault that the information he’d given to various people was a year and a half out of date and largely incorrect. He hadn’t seen me for most of those months, and we’d only ever met three or four times. I should’ve been flattered that I wasn’t being kept separate from his social scene, as has been known to happen. Really, he did deserve some credit.

…fussed about specifics. Whenever it seemed like a vaguely apt time, we’d have a little anniversary celebration. Like this: ooh! We’ve been together for between x and y years! so we’d make each other anniversary cards and maybe share some wine. Maybe go out for a meal. Maybe not.

It was sweet, and neither of us could ever get in trouble for forgetting a significant date. Anniversaries are generally arbitrary anyway, unless you’re talking about marriage. Few relationships can be tied down to a day. Situations evolve. At some point you weren’t together, and at some other point you are, but the process of getting from one to the other probably isn’t best described in binary terms.

Anyway. It was sweet. That was my point.

…was quite wrong. I’m not given to crying. Well, perhaps I am, though not publicly.

But there I was, perched on the edge of his bed, unable to fasten the ankle straps on my Fornarina heels. Let’s be clear: I wasn’t having recalcitrant finger issues. I was unable to reach my feet. I’d had to shuffle the shoes around with my toes on account of not being able to pick them up. My back was fucked, I could barely move, and I was in tears.

It’s a longstanding injury. I’ve had intermittent pain and physiotherapy since my early teens and unless I’m very careful with my posture [and not falling over] I’m prone to agony. Spines are cunts. True story. What was also a cunt was me realising that something quite significantly bad had happened, and deciding to drink through it. Drink through it to the extent that it made perfect sense to accept the texted invitation to my workmate’s flat for exactly what you’d expect, even though I expect I knew that he wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend and didn’t particularly like me. Hey. He was drunk too. No-one was making particularly sensible decisions.

Anyway. It was the morning and back to the office we had to go. At the very least I had to leave his flat. So I really needed those shoes sorted, and I needed to stop crying because that’s really not the done thing. Plus it was humiliating.

He knelt down to gently fasten the fiddly leather straps.  Obviously common courtesy would dictate that one should probably take some kind of positive action in such a situation, but I hadn’t been expecting him to react so sympathetically. Having feared impatience, or worse, I was both touched and surprised by his kindness that morning.

…me [breath held, fingers crossed, please please PLEASE] you’ll recognise that music can become irrevocably and inextricably linked with memories. Memories of places, people, things. Events, and not necessarily nice ones. It can be, as they say, a right cunt.

Ever listened to an album that made your spine twitch with pure physical pleasure when you heard it first, except every time you’ve tried lately you can hear echoes of your tone-deaf acquaintance doing that monotonous speak-hoot thing over the top? They only had to do it once and they bloody went and RUINED the CD forEVER. Or maybe you made the rookie error of listening to a track you loved whilst having unsatisfactory sex with someone you didn’t. Good luck singing along to that again without the unwanted and uninvited accompaniment of ‘nam-esque flashbacks; hideous flickers of a concentrated, contorted face looming over yours. Perhaps an ex really liked a band so the band, by default, are SHIT because he was SHIT and anything he liked couldn’t be worth listening to, and now you can’t listen to the band anyway, not that you want to any more, because they remind you of that SHITMUNCHING FUCK.

I used to be able to listen to a lot more music. I think that’s what I’m getting at. Maybe it’s time for music rehabilitation. Time to reclaim those lost songs and associate them with new, positive recollections. How hard can it be?

…older boy lived on the same road as did I. Boy? Lad? manchapfellow? Never know what to call them. Anyway, then and now, I could honestly describe him as physically unfortunate. Socially, too. I’d feel somewhat cruel in doing so, but what price truth? eh? EH?

One time, he turned up at my door after school and invited me to join him as he walked his dog. I couldn’t say for sure how I responded on account of this happening well over a decade ago, but if you drew the words ‘abrupt’, ‘brusque’, ‘disgusted’, ‘horrified’, and ‘appalled’ out of a hat, I’d congratulate you on your accurate hat. I suppose I’m saying that I did not accept his offer. Why would I? He was a walking punchline for a thousand stupid teenage jokes, and I didn’t like dogs. Or him. I was too busy discovering the fury of, well, being, to be particularly adept at polite refusals. And strangely enough, I was not offered a great number of chances to try out new and exciting ways of turning boys down. I was not popular. This I could explain on various grounds, but fuckit. In Silver Lining News, at least I wasn’t pushing a Burberry pram at fifteen.

END TANGENT. Later, about a decade later, someone informed me that his invitation had been part of a prank, of sorts. His friends had told him that I really liked dogs. That I’d liked him. That I’d love it if he asked me to walk with him through the forest. What utter shits to set him up for such a guaranteed fall. I’m not sure if I’m more unimpressed by their initial act, or the somewhat perturbing way that they still find the matter amusing after all this time.

…to subscribe again, and you CAN NOT MAKE ME.

ffs. Bastard dating site emails. I HAVE NOT SUBSCRIBED FOR YEARS. It’s almost like there’s a message in that, somewhere. A subtle message, granted, so maybe they’d be forgiven for not noticing that I AM NOT INTERESTED and have not been for QUITE SOME TIME.

But still, they’re offering me a 20% discount on normal subscription rates. That’s 20% off something in which I have not the slightest interest. Fucking INCREDIBLE. I’ll take TWO! oh. wait. I’d still be paying 80% of normal subscription rates. For something in which I have not the slightest interest. And yes. We’ve been through this. I don’t agree with this industry. I don’t like it at all.

Also, 20%? Only twenty per cent? REALLY PUSHED THE BOAT OUT THERE, dintcha? That’s almost insulting, though I should mention that there is no thing and no one they could proffer to convince me to avail myself of this, their kind offer.

…discovered a draft message saved on my phone. No recipient. No clues, save for the time of writing. Four minutes past midnight on the 3rd of October. And this is what it said.

Sometimes people want something for you that is better than your idea for yourself.

As I have been known to say on occasion, double yew tea eff? Not at all sure what this was about, though that in itself is not unusual. It frequently seems important to me to make a note of words. Less so to provide an explanation.

SO. So so so. Any ideas? A big old made-up prize to the best suggestion. COMMENTS yo.

…advice. He picked some blackberries at the weekend and made them into a coulis. He is cooking for his new girlfriend, and wondered if he should make a chocolate soufflé as well. He invoked ramekins.

Hands up if you also think it was mean of me to tell him to serve the coulis with a sandwich. Then tell him to stop being so metro about food. Then complain that no-one was cooking me dainty gay shit. Because that’s what it’s about, really, isn’t it? hmmph.