digressica.com

An odd thing happened as I left Swiss Cottage tube station this evening. I was walking very slowly up the stairs of the Eton Avenue exit while reading the London Lite (on a side note – gosh I love that text message column. I always want to send one in but usually by the time I’m out of the tube and have reception on my mobile, I’ve forgotten all about it. If anybody reading this wants to make me deliriously, girl-squealingly happy, please say hello to me via the London Lite text column. I. Would. Die.), and a man was walking down on the other side.

“Hello baby, you look very beautiful.”

Pffft, I thought, and kept walking.

“I love that sexy dress you are wearing.”

Since the only other person around was the homeless man sitting at the top of the stairs, I figured I could safely assume the guy was talking to me. However, as said dress features a very unsexy print of white baby deer, comes almost up to my neck and goes down to below my knees, and was paired with a buttoned-up black cardigan and opaque black tights, I felt his comment was at best misplaced, and at worst a damn dirty lie.

“Oh yes, very nice darling. And now you say thank you.”

Please allow me to repeat that last bit, just in case you didn’t receive the full impact.

“And now you say thank you.”

I’m sorry… what?

Now I say thank you? Okay, good. I’m glad you told me, actually. Because this isn’t the first time a complete stranger with an unidentifiable European accent has called me baby and made an unsolicited comment about my appearance, and I’ve never known quite how to respond before. To be honest, I would normally go for a stock standard “Fuck off”, but really that’s just out of convenience. I use the phrase so often that it’s never very far out of reach and I don’t have to scramble for it.

Now that I know what the proper response is in situations such as this, I look forward to a much smoother relationship with many of my fellow Londoners.

You know, I guess there have been other times when I’ve leapt recklessly to reactions such as irritation, indignation or disgust, when I could just as easily – and perhaps more suitably – have felt gratitude instead.

So, in the spirit of setting things right…

To the rather large black man who, as I walked past the doorway of a sex shop in Soho one evening a couple of weeks ago, invited me to come in with him “for some fun” – thanks. I know I told you to go fuck yourself, but what I actually meant was that while I already had plans for that particular night, your invitation was certainly appreciated.

To the young men who wake me up every second night yelling at each other across Primrose Hill Road, apparently trying to organise the best time and place for a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs, or possibly a knife fight (it’s hard to tell through the thick haze surrounding my brain at 2:30am) – merci beaucoup monsieurs. If you ever do manage to coordinate your busy social calendars, give me a shout and I’ll be ringside in a jiffy.

To the anonymous man who called my landline a few weeks ago at 3am to call me darling and enquire about a particularly intimate part of my anatomy when I was home alone, insomnia-stricken and watching Silence of the Lambs on television – muchos gracias, amigo. The ensuing ten minutes of irrational fear that because the phone had rung as I was walking right past it meant you were actually looking inside my apartment made me feel so alive.

To the local fast food joints who incessantly stuff delivery menus into our mail slot… I’m going to ignore for a moment the disturbing question of how you got into our building in the first place, and focus instead on some well-deserved gratitude for your perseverance. It’s true… one can never have too many Sizzling China pamphlets. Thank you for your contribution – not just to the rape and devastation of old growth forests the world over, but also to my own personal Heathrow injection.

Wow. Oprah was right. Gratitude feels good.

Got someone you need to thank? Go ahead, share.

Just a quick one. Tomorrow I start the Landmark Forum. If my next post kicks off with OMG this is soooooo amazing the forum has changed my life it’s a whole new world of possibilities and rainbows I have so many feelings it feels like a million little butterflies have exploded in my stomach and are gushing up my throat and spewing out of my mouth in a geyser of happiness and life… well, aside from the brainwashery, I’ll obviously be sorely disappointed that I’ve somehow lost the ability to punctuate.

In other news, today I got one piece of very, very good news followed by one piece of very, very bad news. You would think the two would balance each other out and the result would be a fairly level mood of non-emotion, but no. Instead I’ve spent the afternoon lunging wildly from giddy delight to pitiful gloom, interspersed with moments of quiet contentment and sharp, swift pangs of despair.

Dear London,

I can’t help but notice how many of us have been stabbing each other lately.

Perhaps, as a friend suggested, it is not so much that there is an increase in knife crime, but that the media is increasingly inclined to report on it. I don’t know. Either way, the London stabbings have not been merely brought to my attention; they have been force-fed down my oesophagus like a goose being fattened for foie gras.

Everywhere I go, macabre tallies shriek at me from newspaper headlines.

17 London Teens Stabbed To Death This Year!
No Wait – Make That 18
Oh No, There Goes Another, and Another…

This is getting ridiculous. And, frankly, embarrassing – someone in France called London the ‘City of Blades’ after last week’s tragic fiasco with the two French students who were murdered in their home. “London is a jungle,” people commented on French news sites. “Gangs kill each other with knives, but the English media doesn’t talk about it because these outbreaks of violence are occurring daily so it is no longer shocking.” It’s not that I blame them for having a go, but it’s a bit humiliating to have our civility called into question by the French, of all people.

However, I beg to differ on the English media comment. It seems to me they can’t stop talking about it.

Of course, we can’t prevent the London Lite from dedicating page after page each evening to the most recent stabbing and its fallout (taking up precious print space that could otherwise be occupied by photos of Amy Winehouse falling over), so I feel that we should instead go to the root of the problem – namely, the fact that people keep carrying knives around and stabbing each other with them.

I know it’s not all Londoners who are to blame, but there is a very small minority of us who are ruining it for everyone else. So if you’re reading this, you stab-happy few, I would like to ask you to please stop it. Keep your knives in the kitchen where they belong, and when you leave the house consider replacing your usual weaponry with some nice, useful accessories such as a man bag, a hacky sack, or this cute umbrella.

Naturally I wouldn’t expect you to throw your blades away just because an anonymous blog author asked you to. So allow me to bring your attention to just some of the many mutual benefits of this proposal, for knife-carriers and non-knife-carriers alike.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid the inconvenience of carrying a heavy, sharp object that you could accidentally hurt yourself or damage your clothing with.

Non-Knife-Carriers: We will avoid death by knife wound.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid a hefty jail sentence and possible anal rape while imprisoned if (when?) you get caught and charged with murder.

Non-Knife-Carriers: It’s probably worth mentioning the first Non-Knife-Carrier benefit again actually, as I feel it’s an especially good one.

Knife-Carriers: You will avoid ruining your entire life, losing all your friends, having everyone in London hate you and being the subject of a sneering press campaign, not to mention the guilt of knowing you seriously injured another human or ended their life.

Non-Knife-Carriers: We will stop being terrified of London teenagers and return to feeling merely suspicious, disapproving and superior towards them.

I think you’ll agree that this will be a win-win situation for everyone in London. I look forward to your enthusiastic cooperation. If any of the above points need clarification or if you have anything you’d like to add to the proposal, please contact me using the link below.

Yours Optimistically,

Digressica

Saw Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, G. Love and Mason Jennings at Hyde Park with V on Wednesday. It ruled – FACT. Jack is so especially swoon-worthy.

Highlights included a conversation between two girls overheard while standing in the three hundred metre-long queue for the portaloo:

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m not like gahhhhhlalala, I’m just a bit like yeah Jack Johnson alright woo.”

“Oh. I’m like yeah woo alright woo.”

One thing that always makes me smile at live gigs is the encore fake-out. You know what I’m talking about. The process goes thusly:

1. Lead singer finishes song and makes announcement something like this: “Right, thanks for coming, we’re outta here, goodnight!”

2. Entire band makes an obviously over-hasty exit

3. The audience clap and cheer a lot, while some people (amateurs) standing around you make nervous comments such as, “Is that it? They’re coming back out aren’t they? I don’t know, maybe they’re not…”

4. A few audience members exit; these are the people who are more excited about an unobstructed departure from the car park or an empty tube carriage than about seeing the act’s best and most built-up-to performance of the night

5. But wait – what’s this? The band! They’re coming back on! Oh, miracle of miracles, it’s as though we’re the best audience they’ve ever had and they simply can’t bear to be parted from us! What ho!

Historically, surely this must be the most enduring public mutual deception in the world. We know it’s a charade. The band knows it’s a charade. But it’s a reciprocal lie that we all actively participate in and enjoy. The band feels like we’ve really, really proved our love for them by screaming ourselves hoarse and clapping our hands raw, and we feel like the band really love us and are giving us our money’s worth by coming back out even after what’s supposed to be their last song.

Just once I would like an act to perform the encore fake-out, but on their return to the stage admit they weren’t really finished anyway, and they’d actually saved their very best material to play only once they felt we, the audience, had properly earned it. Because paying the exorbitant ticket price to see us perform just isn’t enough, damn it. We need you to beg for it.

This year I have witnessed my adored friend LC achieve record levels of happiness, effectiveness and personal Zen. And she wasn’t too shabby to begin with.

LC attributes much of this to a course she took earlier in the year called the Landmark Forum. I can’t say I fully understand the concept, but I’ve done some research and I can tell you the following:

a) Some people call it a cult
b) Some people call it a con
c) Some people call it life-changing
d) LC has never seemed saner to me.

So partly out of curiosity, and partly out of the hope that the forum will have the same neurosis-vanquishing (or at least neurosis-taming) effect on me, I’ve signed up to this (rather expensive) ultimate-transformation-in-a-weekend myself.

Next Friday I’m off to a white-walled office block in Euston to sit in a room with around 100 other self-regarding Londoners who also have too much time and too much money. Possibly to be brainwashed. Possibly to become Digressica 2.0: stronger, faster, better, less annoying.

For just £345 and around 40 hours of my life.

I know it sounds like I’m not into the idea at all, but actually this cynical veneer is more to do with self-preservation than any actual doubts I may have about the merits of the forum. To be honest, if I hadn’t seen a change in LC myself, and if I didn’t know that she’s a clever kitten who’s unlikely to be duped by a well-executed marketing strategy (as she works in marketing, she’s usually the one doing the duping), I wouldn’t have signed up and forked over a chunk of Great British Pounds that could probably buy me a three-bedroom apartment back home in Australia.

But that doesn’t mean I have naive expectations of shedding my obnoxious, self-centred, lazy, commitment-phobic caterpillar skin and becoming a poised, prolific, super confident butterfly. I’m maintaining a healthy level of scepticism about the whole thing, which made it more enjoyable to have this telephone conversation with the guy from Landmark Education who signed me up today.

“So, what made you sign up for the Landmark Forum? What do you want to change in your life?”

“Oh, um… I guess I hadn’t thought about it in great detail.”

“Just broadly though…”

“Just broadly… I guess… um…”

“Improve your career? Relationships?”

“Yeah, that sounds right – career, relationships… productivity…”

“Right. Okay. Good. Career, relationships, productivity. What else?”

“Oh… well it’s mostly just those things.”

“Okay, okay, good. So, aside from career, relationships and productivity, what would you like to get out of the forum?”

“Um… no, it’s still just those things.”

“Okay. Good. And is there anything else apart from productivity, relationships and career?”

“Nope. Just those. But thanks.”

“Great, great. Yeah. Okay, so aside from career, productivity and relationships, have you thought about what else you’d like to get out of the forum?”

“No.”

“Great, great. Okay, so – “

“No.”

“Great.”

I’ll let you know how this thing pans out.

Gasp and be gobsmacked, friends, for I have been a victim of crime.

Well, the crime didn’t actually happen, per se. Unless vandalism of personal property is a crime. But I think that’s just rude rather than illegal.

Allow me to paint you a picture: It’s Monday evening, 11 pm. I leave the Odeon cinema in Camden as the credits for Prince Caspian roll (preachy flick but nice special effects; more on that later). I stand at the bus stop waiting for the number 31 to take me home to Pretentious Hill – sorry, Primrose Hill. A dodgy-looking dude stands close to me… a little too close. Close enough to make me take a fairly substantial step away.

Then I realise… it’s cool. He’s standing there with (I presume) his girlfriend. Dudes with girlfriends are usually fairly innocuous, I think sensibly. She asks me the time.

“Eleven o’clock,” I say, looking at my watch and smiling. It’s a lie. The time is eleven-oh-three. I feel bad for not telling the truth… maybe she was on her way to something really important, something she couldn’t afford to be three minutes late for. I almost correct myself, but then I remember – I don’t like talking to people.

The bus comes. I get on it. It turns off Camden High Street and up Adelaide Road. It arrives outside my building. I get off, go up to my flat, chat to my housemate V, then go to my room to try on the purchases I made at the Gap earlier this evening. And that’s when I notice it…

My Gap bag has been slashed open.

Dun dun dunnnnnn.

At first I think perhaps I snagged it on something… but I haven’t come into contact with anything that could have made such a long, clean cut. I show V, and she confirms it – you’ve been the victim of a slash’n’dash.

But surely not, I say, still in feeble denial – nothing’s been taken. My new black top and brown cardi are still in the bag.

He probably slashed it and felt around in case you had a wallet or something in there, V tells me sagely. That’s why his girlfriend asked you the time – they do that to distract you while the other one tries to rob you.

Hmm, I say. Well, no harm done. I still have my wallet.

Then it hits me – what exactly is he trying to say by not taking the clothes I just bought? Was it a deliberate choice? Did he not like the feel of the fabrics? The colours? I know they were just wardrobe basics, but still. Did he pull it out, hold it up against himself and check his reflection in a shop window before putting it back? Did he look at the price tag and think, hmmm, summer sales – must be last season’s leftovers? Should I be worried when a would-be thief in a tracksuit and bandana won’t even steal my clothes from me? Maybe he didn’t think his girlfriend would like them.

Well, I’m glad I told that bitch the wrong time. She’ll never get those three minutes back, and I hope she really fucking needed them.

1. This is definitely the right season to dye my hair red

2. There is a drycleaner much closer to my flat than the one I’ve been using

3. The fact that I allow myself to sleep in until noon on the weekends probably isn’t helping my mid-week insomnia

4. Jersey royal potatoes oven-roasted in aluminium foil with salt, pepper, rosemary and a little olive oil = foodgasm

5. Topshop is much cooler than I gave it credit for

6. Sometimes there are people who just hate you, and you can’t do anything about it, and you shouldn’t bother trying, especially if every previous attempt to reconcile has been met with soul-withering hostility

7. This just in – it’s 4am on Sunday morning and the sun is coming up. I nee d some fucking sleeping pills.

I’m not an atheist. I’m not a whopping great Jesus-lover either.

I suppose aside from a few core values that I won’t bore you with (but which may include an unfounded conviction that if there is a heaven it will involve some sort of roller disco and the greatest hits of Leo Sayer playing on a loop), my great overriding belief is that it’s completely okay to believe in whatever you want, and that it’s even okay to talk about it, as long as you’re not on a recruitment drive, and as long as you’re not obnoxious about it.

But what constitutes obnoxiousness and what is mere youthful enthusiasm?

I was on a bus today (going to Brent Cross shopping mall to spend basically my entire pay check on clothes, shoes and hair clips), and just as my iPod battery died, this obnoxious but sort of sweet teenage boy behind me thought it was an appropriate moment to stand up and tell the assembled commuters how Jesus felt about us.

Apparently from Jesus’ perspective, it’s quite a positive relationship we’ve got. That’s with all of us, according to this kid – even the bitch who rudely pushed in front of me to get on the bus, which I thought was stretching the imagination a bit, but I didn’t say so.

I’m not sure this boy got the reaction he was after though. He didn’t really get any reaction. I don’t know how he felt about this. I suspect it must have been a bit of an anticlimax.

The thing is, I wanted to tell him, you’ve got to pick your audience. We’re in England. It’s not that we don’t appreciate the abstract fondness of your personal deity. It’s just that any public displays of affection make us feel faintly uncomfortable. Even if they come from an omnipotent, salvation-providing father figure.

I mean… thanks anyway. But seriously.

So I am starting a new blog (don’t worry about the first one, it was total rubbish), and think it’s probably best to lay down some ground rules. For me, obviously, not for you. I don’t even know you.

Rule #1
No ‘and then I did this’ posts just because I’m too lazy to come up with something interesting and/or useful and/or amusing to write about.

The scourge of the blogosphere – ‘And Then I Did This’ Syndrome, sometimes known as And Then I Did This, And Then This Other Thing Happened, And Then There Was Another Non-Event To Follow The First One, And Then Everyone Vomited From Boredom, And Then Ate Their Own Vomit Because They Were So Fucking, Fucking, Crotch-Punchingly Bored Syndrome.

No more, it’s the law.

(I can’t promise I won’t break this rule, but when I do I will try to swear a lot to disguise the fact that I’m shockingly uninteresting. You know, like Gordon Ramsay.)

Rule #2
No real names…

…because obviously I am such a truly cracking blogger that digressica.com will inevitably attract an Incredible Hulk-sized readership that will spill over from the anonymous world of the Interwebs and demand more, more, more of the Digressica Experience, and propriety be damned, they will hunt down all friends, family and co-workers even fleetingly mentioned in said blog and wring them for information, photos, used underwear and the answer to the question on everyone’s lips – who is the shattering genius behind digressica.com, and how can we be her friend? For reals.

(This rule has nothing to do with creating a cheap, artificial air of mystery, or protecting myself from the friends, family and co-workers I intend to bitch about.)

Rule #3
No bad language.

I couldn’t even type that with a straight face.

Rule #4
No excessive bad language just because I’m too lazy to come up with good words and shit.

Rules #5
Be awesome.

I can’t promise I won’t break this rule either. The truth is I’m actually crap, and this will become more and more apparent with every post.

Still… let’s just ride this crazy wave of deficiency together. It’s about the journey, man. Not the disappointing, embarrassingly inadequate destination.