Picos Gemeos

I'm alone in the flat, in my new office (the spare room.) I've just eaten a tuna sandwich and drank a cup of tea (while surfing Tumblr and YouTube for company). I have my headphones on and I'm listening to a mix that includes songs from Grimes, Zola Jesus and Hercules and Love Affair. I'm about to do some writing.

I woke up early today with my boyfriend's alarm clock. He needed to leave the house early to cross London and join his sister for a yoga class. He whispered to me just before he left that there were some pancakes and blueberries in a tuperware for me. I ate them for breakfast with butter, maple syrup and coffee.

Around 10am I left the flat for my local gym. It was blissfully empty (as it always is during mornings.) Afterwards, I bought some groceries at Sainsbury's and took a bus back because of the rain.

I've started a new writing routine: on Mondays, I have my breakfast at a nearby cafe and do one of Linda Barry's image exercises. Last Monday I pulled out of the envelope one of Henry Darger's images - a small girl leaning against a tomb-like stone in the middle of a field, surrounded by two ethereal, snake-like flying creatures. I wrote a short story based on that image which I plan on finishing up today.

Tomorrow morning, another local cafe, another randomly-selected image, another writing exercise. And so on for the rest of the year.

Later today I'll play Xenoblade Chronicles (because I intend to finish it in my lifetime) then cook a stir fry for dinner. There's a bottle of white wine chilling in the fridge and Derek Jarman's "The Tempest" lying by the DVD player.

Just before bed, I'll read a chapter of George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords. Only a month and a half until Game of Thrones' Season 3 starts.

It's 17.32pm Greenwich time and I'm drinking tea from a mug that says "Sex" while listening to indie music on iTunes shuffle. I've been alone most of the day - my boyfriend left in the morning to meet his sister across town and take a £13 yoga class. Like yesterday, he woke me with a cup of coffee before banging the front door in his wake.

I watched videos on my laptop for a while then took a bath (still can't take showers.) The plan was to take a bus to Stratford and walk to the communal garden - do a bit of digging in the dirt before heading downtown to meet loveinsuburbia for a drink. But the minute I stepped outdoors I knew the day was wrong: ominous drops hitting my head, heavy clouds over London, a sluggishness that couldn't leave me even with the help of soap box screamers outside Westfield. Bought some things in Sainsbury's (why were all the chocolate Easter eggs gone?!) and took the bus back home.

Did a creative writing exercise where I imagined myself to be a half-naked woman about to perform on a cabaret stage with two other lasses. Read a poem by T.S. Eliot. This made me think again of my story - of how the two cabaret dancers and I were performing to soldiers from the 1st World War.

Moved on to A Clash of Kings (the sequel to A Game of Thrones) while Radio 3 played Late Junction from a few days ago. Then I played Xenoblade Chronicles for a few hours (oh god it's going to take me years to complete this bloody soap opera JRPG).

When Sissy A was visiting, she let me copy dozens of films from her hard drive onto my laptop - we watched one of them last night (the new version of The Thing). A friend built a blanket fort in her living room two days ago and held a horror marathon underneath it - I'm tempted to do the same.

I just bought this game, which I may soon grow to regret (thanks to its hundreds of hours of game play):



Reasons to buy it:
- wink_martindale will fly to Canada soon for two weeks and I'll be home alone
- I do like videogames and haven't played anything immersive in years (this game has received good reviews)
- It looks fun
- I like sci-fi/fantasy

Reasons I shouldn't have bought it:
- I could use my spare time for yoga or the gym / writing a novel / going out / watching films
- I could have used the money for a nice meal out plus drinks
- All that time could be used revitalising LJ with tons of posts
- My reputation will be potentially damaged

Also, has anyone played Dead Island? Is it any good? *stern look at naturalbornkaosand sarahofthedead*

I woke up yesterday at 7.30am. wink_martindale made me scrambled eggs on toast and coffee for breakfast while I checked my e-mail. I left for work at 8.30 and traveled on a fairly empty District line until South Kensington, where I switched to the Circle line (is it just me or the Tube is emptier on Fridays?) I spent the whole day tying up urgent marketing stuff related to an upcoming festival we are promoting. The office was quiet and I managed to get a lot done, finally feeling more in control of my role after five days of feeling anxious about the festival. My new line manager has been good at reassuring me that we can only do our best and not worry about what's beyond our control.

When I got home, there were two gifts waiting for me: a copy of Tim Moore's Spanish Steps and the Oulipo Compendium. We shared some cod, chips and Coca-Cola from the local chippy while watching two queer films: Gay Sex in the 70s and Circuit. The first one is a documentary on how wild and excessive the gay scene was in the 70s - a carefree time that was short-lived and will never return. Did you know Bette Midler started her career singing in gay baths, wriggling her tits to gay men and throwing poppers to the crowds?! Or that saunas had dancefloors where gay men disco danced with only towels wrapped around their bodies? It's like another planet to me. The second film was a dreadful piece of porn acting without the porn, as Wink put it, about a horsey-looking gay cop that moves to L.A. and joins its gay party circuit. All the clichés wheeled out over laugh-out-loud lines. A great stoner movie actually.

Today, woke up at 5am to a frozen London. Played a bit of Nintendo then met a friend for breakfast in Stratford before heading to the community garden. Stratford is the new Hyde Park Corner: every few meters there's a God-bothering nutter screaming off their head or singing religious songs. The sunshine was great but as soon as you stepped into a shadow your blood cooled. Did some weeding then participated in a meeting about the future of the garden. Hopped on the tube and met up with loveinsuburbia and yaruar in a café by Islington Green. A couple of their friends joined us and they bought me a piece of cheese cake with a cappuccino before we browsed a nearby art store.

Hopped on the No. 277 back home and got comfortable on the couch as Wink prepared dinner. Now we are watching the X Factor and complaining about the lack of chocolate and popcorn in the house.

I'll never grow a moustache.

This weekend, wink_martindale and I will be babysitting our landlady's tiny fluffy white kitten Blanche. My landlady has to go to Spain for the weekend and asked if we could stay over her place and make sure Blanche doesn't misbehave.

My journal entries during the weekend, therefore, shall be known as The Blanche Diaries.

The landlady's Wii also apparently needs a lot of attention so I grudgingly agreed to make sure it stays happy and out of trouble.

After years and years of participating in NaNoWriMo[1] it looks like I'm finally on the homerun and ready to succeed in it!

Reasons why I think this year was easy:

1) I had no plan (i.e. I wasn't precious about what I was writing.)
2) I didnt' worry about coherence. I picked a random photo from Flickr each day and used that as inspiration. Slowly, reoccuring characters appeared and something David Lynchesque took form. No coherence though. No quality either. But, hey, it's just a rough draft.
3) I'm not reading back. I keep going forward, automatic writing. Keeping myself as close as possible to 1667 words a day. Not worrying about someone's blue eyes in one chapter suddenly going brown in the next.

Last night, sushidog came over for dinner and X Factor. I baked some spinach and feta burek, served alongside a simple salad with tomatoes. Sushidog provided the white wine and the delicious cookies for dessert.

Everytime I watch the X Factor I feel like playing videogames. It's because of the way each contestant is introduced: they stand at the end of a dark tunnel, badass face expression, while Tom Baker announces their name as if they are about to enter Mad Max's Thunderdome. We came up yesterday with the perfect X Factor videogame, which, if it existed, would surely sell hundreds of thousands of copies this Christmas and cause more demand and despair than the Wii a few years ago.

You choose which contestant you want to play. You then have to fight your way through different scenarios (Louis' mansion in Ireland, Cheryl's footballer palace, Dannii's Australian outback, etc) and defeat a boss at the end of each stage. It goes without saying that Simon is the final boss and it will take a lot of button pressing and power upping to kill him. However, if you manage to find Sinitta along the way, you can grab her by the legs and hit Simon on the head (she squeals "So Macho" with every strike) until he collapses. Contestants come with unique abilities and weaknessess. Rachel Hylton, for example, knows some great fighting skills from her time in jail, but has low charm skills and would struggle in the stage where you have to defeat Brian Friedman, the choreographer, in the Dance Studio. If you really want to power up with a Mega Scream that will knock out lots of baddies on rollerblades, as you are also dodging Dermot O'Leary and his Microphone of Doom, you are better off using Laura White or Ruth Lorenzo. If you want to play with your friends, you can all be JLS and kick butt just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There are lots of stages to unlock (what Sushidog calls "the Easter Egg levels"), including one with Sharon Osbourne (and if you are REALLy good, you just might find Ozzy in there somewhere too.) Does anyone know people in the videogames industry?



[1] This abbreviation really annoys me now. I use it, but with gritted teeth.

I'm not leaving the flat today.

I spent the morning playing video games (X-Men, mostly because it's like Heroes by proxy) and reading. I started E. M. Forster's Maurice and it looks like I'll be finished with it by tonight. Chocolates, coffee with dollops of Bailey's and a chicken pie also featured. We have run out of milk and I need to think of a way to trick Kevin into going to the cornerstore. He's a Leo so it's all reverse psychology when I want something done.

I took the stereo into the bathroom with The 6ths' "Hyacinths and Thistles", poured some Muji milk bath salts in the hot water, lit a rose and sandalwood candle, turned off the lights, stripped, made sure my half-mug of Bailey's and ice wouldn't tip in the bath, and luxuriantly slid in. I like listening to music in the bathtub. I like the way it echoes and seems played just for myself, recorded in an echoeing chamber. Nothing gets lost, like it so often does in a London living room invaded by the street's constant sounds.

Other great suggestions for the bathtub: Lou Reed's "Transformer", The Raveonette's "Lust Lust Lust", The Moody Bitch Mix and The Magnetic Fields' "69 Love Songs vol.3". Strangelove's "Time For The Rest of Your Life" is too intense for such a small space and will depress you. The second time I read Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was in the tub (two lie ins); and I've also watched Scream 3 in the tub (this was in Kevin's uni apartment; I moved the TV until it snuggly fit the bathroom's entrance.)

I want to be buried in a bathtub. But I don't want to be drowned in one, or electrocuted (as Kevin seems to think is my fate everytime I sneak the stereo in there.)

X-post to bathtubz, the best community in Livejournal, natch <--- sooo 2003.

+ Had 1st Book Club meeting today, at lunch time. Everyone hated Will Self's The Book of Dave; I was the only one who managed to finish it. The next chosen book is Zadie Smith's On Beauty.

+ Induction this Saturday at Mile End Park Leisure Centre. Plan is to visit the gym three times a week with my landlady.

+ Shopping for a wedding suit this weekend.

+ Feeling blah about writing in general

+ Playing Tales of Symphonia or watching Dalziel and Pascoe in the evening.

+ Almost at the end of LOST's second season. Have a theory about what's going on (saved for a post after the double-bill finale).

+ Trapped somewhere between Chapterhouse's "Pearl" and Dead Can Dance's "Rakim".

My holidays have started. It feels so good that I'm kinda confused. I'm going through the motions -- doing my laundry, listending to the Eurythmics, contemplating a glass of orange & grapefruit juice -- because I don't know what to do with my freedom. There is no rain falling down on London, so I can't say the rain fell on my head like a memory, like a new holiday emotion. If Kevin were here, I'd talk to him like lovers do, dive into the bathtub as if it were an ocean, breeze in the open kitchen wind, and write on Livejournal: "TALK TO ME, WALK WITH ME."

I'm buying Kevin's xmas gift tomorrow: a book, most definetly. I'll pay my respects to the local pool, sleep in, shower with complete strangers and play Gamecube (but not in that order.) Lots of xmas cards have been arriving, so a big smooch to all the wonderful people across the globe (and the Big Smoke) who took their time. If I didn't manage to send you a card, I'll write a postcard or letter soon. I've been generally asking people not to send me cards because I didn't have that many to mail out this year (nor did I want to get too caught up with hundreds of post office runs -- I leave that for Animal Crossing alone.)

On Saturday, Natalia and I are going to see Woody Harrelson in a version of The Night of the Iguana. The critics haven't said too many good things about this play, but I couldn't miss out on seeing Woody (for free) on stage. At night, I'm waiting for Jingles to show up and give me my gifts. I'll probably do some snow shovelling too and weed-pulling too. There's a lot that needs to be done in Cushidal.

FILTH KISS here I come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!