Uneventful tube journey

I took my seat on the southbound Northern Line train at Stockwell station. As I fished around in my man-bag to retrieve my book (finished Flaubert - am now reading "Will in the World - How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare". This is all payment to my brain for excessive Dan Brown-ing) I noticed that I had spilt some of this morning's Pret coffee down the front of my favourite pink sweater.

*relieved sigh*

And everything was right in the world.

Ok...

...this is becoming less and less funny...

This evening, on the tube, again, a man four seats down from me stood up and punched the woman, who had been stood above him, in the face. He just freaking punched her in the face! She hadn't done anything to him from what I could tell - she was just quietly reading a book. And until that moment the guy had just looked like a regular guy in his 30s.

No one hit the passenger alarm, or went to the woman's aide. I was really ashamed of myself afterwards for not doing anything. Clearly very scared and shocked the woman just scrambled down the carriage, through the people, while the man stayed where he was and just glared at her.

At the next station she got off the train. Then the doors closed, the train moved away and the guy sat down. As if nothing had happened. Gradually people started getting up and moving away from him, obviously scared for their own safety.

It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. And it was definitely scary. And crazy. Animals do that kind of thing, just going for each other - but not humans. Not like that, do they? He didn't even look drunk. Just kind of wild eyed for only a few moments. And then normal.

I don't know what the hell is going on in this town...

Happy Day, Mom!

I was a good son and took my Mom for lunch. When she offered to pay for the bill I let her. What? She wanted to, ok? Who am I to deny my Mom anything she wants to do on Mother's Day?

A cruel irony

It's just been realised for me that if a hot guy appears in a gay lifestyle magazine, it more than likely means that he's straight.

Throat Update

“Oh my God! What are all those lines in my throat? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?” I mock-exclaimed as the doctor handed me this printout.

With grave seriousness he responded, “Our printer isn’t working very well at the moment.”

Some of you are aware that I have a partially paralysed set of vocal chords. Yesterday I finally got to see the throat surgeon who is going to correct the problem. But before I go into the outcome of the appointment, would you like a little anatomy lesson? Well regardless, you’re going to get one anyway.

Observe:

(a) A healthy pair of vocal chords (shaded areas)


(b) A partially paralysed pair of vocal chords


Vocal chords perform two functions. Despite their name, our vocal chords raison d’etre is actually not to help us speak. That’s an unexpected bonus. Their most important function is to stop food and drink going down into our lungs. When you swallow those shaded areas (the white bits in the top right of my photo) close together, sealing off your windpipe.

The problem with my vocal chords is not that they don’t close together, but that they don’t fully open up after I have swallowed and move fully when I speak. This lack of movement has resulted in two problems. The first is that my airway is restricted by almost three quarters. This means that I get out of breath really quickly when I do anything aerobic (including walking) or when I talk for too long. The second is that my vocal range is really limited. My voice is very deep and gravelly and I certainly can’t reach the notes required to sing (not that I could before anyway). As I mentioned before, this has been the only positive thing, as I get lots of comments now on how sexy my voice sounds.

The surgeon told me that in order to alleviate these problems he has to laser away part of the vocal chord with the least amount of movement, which is the one on the right. This will give me more breathing capacity. But take too much away and it could mean that not only does my voice change again (it would become more “whispery”) but that also there would be a greater likelihood of my coughing and spluttering when I eat and drink.

Because the procedure is irreversible he wants to do it a bit at a time. This way we can see how I heal, how my breathing improves, ensure that my voice doesn’t change too much again. It also means that we can limit the chance of the coughing / spluttering thing.

(c) This is how my vocal chords will look after the procedures:


The only problem with this is that I will have to have at least three separate surgeries, under general anesthetic, to fix it over the course of this year. Looks like 2005 is going to have as many hospital visits for me as last year did! The first op is on April 22.

I’m not going to say that I’m not disappointed that the procedure isn’t going to be quite as straight forward and risk free as I was hoping it would be. Yesterday I was pretty pissed off and upset. But after thinking about it I have to concede to one important thing:

Had I not taken the overdose last March I would not have had to have the emergency intubation procedure that caused the damage to my vocal chords. While that procedure may have provided me with a lot of grief and hassle over the last year, it saved my life. It's a small price to pay for my still being here to tell the tale.

The tube passenger from Hell

What with news stand splatting and viciously mean old women, my journeys to and from work have become more and more bizarre. Perhaps they should form the crux of a new comedy skit show:

(Radio Times listings)

Thursday, March 3, 2005
BBC3 – 10.00pm
In which our hero even manages to screw up selecting a seat on a tube carriage.

This evening I went to a magazine party. It was crap. The champagne was warm, the canapés were stale and there was a live band, the type of which you would hire for a wedding reception (“That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh…") And absolutely zero cute boys. By 9pm I’d totally worked the room, at least twice, and decided that it was safe for me to chip off home in time to watch ER and Fool Around With My Boyfriend.

The tube wasn’t that packed. But for some stupid reason, I unconsciously sat next to some guy (not a hottie), despite the fact that there were plenty of solitary seat choices.

So, I was buried deep in my book (“Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?”) when the guy next to me coughed. It was a cough so deep, hacking and penetrating that it forced me to abandon my reading and vividly imagine viscous phlegm slowly slipping down a pinky-white mottled windpipe.

After a moment or so I’d managed to erase that nasty vision from my mind and was back in Flaubert’s world of high romance, voracious spending and wicked adultery. But only for a few moments as my neighbour decided to spark up a Malboro red.

On the tube.

By this point I’d totally abandoned all hope of discovering whether Emma Bovary would get a good seeing to by the Viscount d’Andervilliers as a result of “accidentally” dropping her fan on the ballroom floor. Instead all I could consider was that my fellow commuters (who were all averting their gaze in a way that said that they were 100% focused on what was happening to my right) might think that the issue sat next to me was my boyfriend. Because, despite the fact that there were many vacant seats left, right and opposite us we were indeed sat together.

Fortunately the excruciating “I can’t believe this is happening 30cm away from me”-ness was short lived as, after only a few puffs, the-most-hateful-fellow-Underground-traveler-ever decided he’d had enough of his cigarette and dropped it on the floor, treading it out with his Reebok classics.

And the rancid fog (literal and otherwise) that I had been immersed in for the past few moments began to lift.

That was until he pulled a small brown bottle from his jacket pocket, unscrewed it and bought it up to his nose, drawing a couple of powerful inhalations through both of his nostrils.

Oh God, I thought. He’s actually sniffing poppers on a tube train.

By this point I'd experienced about as much as I could handle. I closed my book, picked up my bag and strode off, disgustedly, to the end of the carriage.

Ok, I’ll admit that I shouldn't be too sanctimonious about such things. But there is a time and a place, for crying out loud!

For example, 5.30am on a Sunday morning in some randoms bedroom in Acton. Er...

Grrrr! (Ouch!)

This morning I was walking down the King's Road, listening to the brilliant Nightmares on Wax (why, why am I always the last to know?), when I spotted this Benetton model on the side of a bus:



"For heaven's sake!" I thought to myself. "How can one person have such perfect hair? I want my hair to look like that! Gianni Versace model circa 1985. Oh, and I want to have sex with him."

As I thought these things I was not aware, as the bus slowly ambled past me with the direction of my gaze and head following, that I was about to walk into an object. Of course, me being me, I couldn't just walk into any old pavement object like a lamp post or a phone box. No, no, no. I walked into a news stand. A freaking 6 x 5 ft RED news stand. And it really hurt! The part of my body that took the hardest blow was my right ear. This pushed my earphones in so hard that my ear began to bleed from inside.

(It's not entirely irrelevant for me to point out that, weirdly, the exact same thing happened to me last year, only it was a lamp post I walked into cause I'd been looking at an overflowing drain or something boring like that)

The icing on the cake was that Rob, the drop-dead-gorgeous account exec from the company's fashion department, who I have fancied pretty much from day one, was walking a few yards behind me and saw the whole thing - the lusting after the Benetton model and his hair as well as the slapstick splaying against the side of the news stand. At the time he was really sweet and actually quite concerned when he saw that I was bleeding slightly profusely.

However, once my ear had scabbed up I really just wanted to forget the whole sorry episode. But apparently I wasn't allowed to as the Gods had deemed that every time I ventured out onto the stairs Rob would also be there to not so subtly draw everyone's attention to the fact that I am a clutz with a gammy ear.

I don't fancy him anymore.

But I do fancy Benetton boy. Look! He lost his shirt!

Fired!

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I might get flamed for saying this...

...but I feel more than a little sympathy for Maxine Carr.

Because of what I do, every morning I read each newspaper front-to-back (not counting sports pages, of course!) Actually, that’s a lie - I don't technically "read" the tabloids. I scan them. I do even less with the Daily Mail. I do a kind of sideways glance while barely touching it, even though I'm donning those white, latex gloves that Amanda Burton wears in Silent Witness. The two newspapers that I actually read for objective reporting are The Guardian and The Independent.

If I only read the tabloid press I would most likely be of the mind that Maxine Carr's mortal soul is doomed to burn in the eternal fires of Hades, but not before she is ripped apart, limb by limb, by some blood-thirsty, soccer-mum lynch mob. I know this, because on Thursday and Friday I had three separate conversations with friends and family who pretty much are of that mind - all of whom are devout Sun / Mirror / Mail readers.

This isn’t supposed to sound like some sort of stuffy intellectual snobbery - it really isn't supposed to come across like that. But had they read something with a few less pictures and a few more nouns and adjectives they would be a little more enlightened to certain facts. Such as, at the time of lying to the police for her lover, Carr was herself a genuinely sad, beaten down and mentally unstable victim. She was not a hideous child-killing or abusing monster the gutter press have and still are painting her as. She was never even close to a Myra Hindley or a Rose West. But these not so subtle comparisons have indeed been made, on countless occasions and, for the most part, have remained largely unchallenged.

It's also struck me that Huntley got off quite lightly really, considering that he was infact the soul homicidal maniac. I guess this is another example of a very complicated form of sexism - for what is worse than a monster, but a female monster? In fact so desperate was the media to have a reprise of the Hindley and West scenarios that at the time of the whole furor around the case it would make several completely unsupported claims which included suggesting that she concealed evidence and that it was actually her who suggested to Huntley that he should burn the girls bodies. The courts later established that these claims were wholly untrue and, at the time of lying for Huntley, that Carr was also unaware of the real extent of his crimes.

But then when has the truth ever been a valuable commodity for shifting papers?

On Friday I coaxed myself into reading the Daily Mail’s coverage of the story. I had to deal with the very real threat that I might vomit at any moment, but I got through the ordeal in the end. The news feature that I read was based on some really dubious claim that the false identity protection that Carr is being provided with will cost British tax payers at least £50million. It goes without saying that this illogical figure was not backed up or explained in any detail. But it doesn't make a lot of difference anyway, because had the press done what they are supposed to do (at least in Christopher's rosy tinted view of the world) they would have covered the whole issue with some degree of respect, objectivity and compassion. And the cost for Carr's official protection would have been minimised.

I hope this is not true, but I think I might belong to a minority who believe that Maxine Carr's only real crime was to lie for the man she loved. From what I have read and understand, that was all she did. Perhaps it was stupid, misguided, whatever, but each of us is capable of doing incredibly dumb things for love.

But this is what I hope the most - I hope that I’m not the only person who can see that the real monsters in this whole sorry mess are the cretin writers who have sunk the journalistic profession to previously unrealised depths of soul-selling idiocy by encouraging such vitriolic public hatred.

Paris - dans les mots et imagine...

Me and my host, Frederic (note to self - must not dip head back, producing unnattractive double chin)


A distant Arc de Triomphe from a Louvre window


Sadly, sometime back in 1984, I was one of these kids


The Louvre pyramid


Eric and Neil at Le Queen


Les garçons de Le Queen


A Canaletto dog


London's competition


Louvre stairwell


A painting of some chick. Or dude. Or both.


"Dirty baby-cupid things! Stop that right now!"


And look! Divine hand crafted miniature gold and platinum objets d’art , lovingly adorned with sublime depictions of the French royal family. And, er, stuff.

Off to Paris!

Ce soir je monterai le 18.40 Eurostar afin de commencer ma balade de weekend gaie dans Paris gai. Je suis très excité. Lequel est pourquoi j'écris cette poste en français.

Ne pas beaucoup plus rapporter vraiment, seulement que je serai arrière lundi pour classer un rapport plein.

Le weekend heureux tout le monde!

Note: Apologies for the poor quality of the French in this post

Help the aged? Pah!

This morning, at about 7am, I was walking off the escalator at Clapham South tube station looking tres handsome, if I do say so myself, in a black Helmut Lang suit and black Costume Nationale shirt undone to *there*. I will admit that I was a tad cold as I stepped outside my front door but I rarely get to wear a suit in my line of work so when I do I feel, in every way, the uber professional, suave businessman. Of course, had anyone been aware that I was listening to Irene Cara’s “Flashdance” on my iPod the overall vision may have been slightly skewed.

As I sweep round the corner to the northbound platform I see that the train has already pulled up and the doors are open. I’m feeling way to cool to make a run for it, so instead I pick up the pace so that I can hop on before the doors close.

The doors start to beep and I’m literally about to step up into the carriage when all of a sudden, from absolutely nowhere, this tiny and seemingly frail grey haired old lady appears at my side. Using her entire upper body and with the strength of a thousand elephants she literally shoves me out of the way. As I stagger and try to regain my balance this ancient-powerful-Yoda-like woman nimbly hops up into the carriage a fraction of a second before the doors slide shut.

As the train begins to inch away from the platform she turns around, looks straight at me through the glass and smiles. The cow uses the very same smile used by my Grandma at Christmas after receiving Radox bath salts from me for the umpteenth year running.

And then she was gone.

The humiliation I felt was palpable. In an instant I had been cruelly transformed from afore mentioned suave businessman and into the bitch of a tiny, wrinkly octogenarian.

The theatre, again

Tonight Kate and I went to see “Whose Life is it Anyway”, the play starring Kim Cattrall. It's the story of a woman, who after being paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident, decides that she wants to be allowed to die.

The play, technically, is not about euthanasia, but about the character Claire's right to be discharged from hospital. Without the medical care, her body will start to shut down. At one point in the play she says something like, "I just want you to take me some place and leave me there."

The play was really, really great and I didn't fidget at all. You know a newspaper should use me as a kind of yardstick for movies and plays. It could be a regular Friday feature entitled "Christopherfidgetometer" and it would be all about how good or bad the production was based on how much I moved and shifted around.

Anyway, there is something I want to say about the theme of the play, but it's kind of personal, and I have to think about what I want to say otherwise it won't make a lot of sense. And it's late now.

So, in other news:

I really HATE that Toilet Duck advert. You know, the one with the woman actually cleaning the toilet with the brush? It makes me feel queasy. I like to believe that the bathroom toilet is cleaned by my flatmate self-cleaning.

Q. When is snow not snow?

A. When there is no snow.

I have experienced two long, harsh, arctic New York winters. Winters when the snow would fall so hard and fast that within just a couple of hours cars would be completely submerged in the stuff for days on end. There would be so much snow that people would actually ski through Times Square. So much snow, in fact, that people were physically trapped in their buildings and you could not see your hand before your face! Airports would close, trains would stop running and old people would die. But, somehow, us gainfully employed would still manage to get to work without complaining too much. We would even still have enough good humour, when we arrived, bedraggled and tired, to look out of our skyscraper office windows and take in the view. The snow would melt our hearts and we would say, "Aw! It's quite pretty really!"

So, dear Londoners, let me reliably inform you that barely, barely, an inch of snow on the ground does not represent a catastrophic Act of God. It does not constitute a citywide emergency. And there is most certainly no earthly reason why it should make you almost twenty minutes late to pick me up this morning, Mr Thoroughly Annoying Chatty Taxi Driver.

I had to be up by 6am this morning to get a 7am taxi to get to Waterloo train station to get an 8am train to Havant to get to a 10am new business pitch. I had a very specific time line to adhere to in order to get to this meeting by the designated time. And not lose my job. Because a new business pitch that you are leading is one meeting you cannot be late for. Lateness will not cut it and will not win you the business.

Despite the lateness of the taxi, I manage to get on the train on time. Once seated, all around me, all I can hear, are comments such as:

"I could barely open my front door!"

"It took me two whole minutes to wipe it off my windshield!"

"I thought that the tube might not be running!"

Ok, can we take a reality check, please? First, as I stated, there was hardly an inch of snow. Secondly, most of the snow melted - there was no slush or ice on either the pavements or on the roads. I will concede that there were a few puddles. So actually the most dangerous thing that could have happened is that you could have stepped in a deep puddle and made your shoes wet (a phenomenon you should not be too unfamiliar with given that you live in London, you strange little idiots). In fact by morning, the only place where there was any snow was in the parks and in the fields that I passed while I was on the train.

Back to the train - eventually people shut up about all the wetness snow and I could finally read through the pitch document and make notes without being supremely irritated. Then, all of a sudden, the train grinds to a halt and the conductor makes an announcement...

"Sorry for the delay ladies and gentlemen. It seems that there are some problems with the snow on the tracks this morning. We should be moving again in a few minutes."

AN INCH!!! AN INCH OF SNOW!!!

I know you're all very concerned that I may not have got to the pitch in time. Well somehow, by the grace of God, I did. With ten minutes to spare I victoriously and purposely stride up to the reception desk of the company that I’ve come to visit.

"Christopher from [London PR agency], here to see [Marketing Director] please."

"Oh yes. Christopher. [Marketing Director] just called in. She's running late and apologises. It's just that she's had problems with the snow."

I think the heat from my burning and unbridled anger melted any remaining snow within a 26-mile radius.

(Incase you were wondering, it snowed in the South of England last night.)

Sell out!

I’ve always found it quite brilliant the way that us gayers cleverly shroud our numerous naughty doings behind the guise of something innocent and lovely. For example, one of my friends keeps his obscenely massive modeled-on-a-Falcon-porn-star dildo wrapped in a swathe of beautiful, orange, embroidered, raw silk fabric that he purchased from a peasant woman in Sri Lanka. A couple of years ago my buddies Angela and Matt gave me a set of anal beads, various condoms and flavours of lube and some gay porn playing cards packaged neatly within an exquisite Chinese, hand-carved, wooden box.

As a marketing person, if you get what all of this means, then you will know that in order to promote your bland, generic, ultimately hetero products in a way that will appeal to us intelligent, discerning, savvy gays you'll have to be prepared to create a clever spin that is both a little sexy and a little racy. Semi-naked, oiled up men will not go amiss (just as long as they are intelligent, discerning and savvy semi-naked, oiled up men.)

One of my clients makes very expensive, mock antique, miniature boxes (we call them objets d'art) made out of precious metals, featuring little renditions of famous works of art. During a meeting to discuss the campaign media strategy I was informed by my client that he had read an article in a newspaper about the power of the pink pound and that he thought perhaps we should be attempting to get the boxes in the gay press.

Now, this guy is about 60, most likely has a huge country pile somewhere in Nottinghamshire, a farty old Labrador called Hugo and a wife called Felicity who is on first name terms with Princess Michael of Kent (I wonder if she is ever called Mike?) Despite this, the way that he said "pink pound" spoke volumes to me about how he probably wants to be seen as "trendy", as I'm sure he would put it, and in touch with the "playas" without, of course, literally having to touch us.

With what I thought was immensely staggering logic I suggested that the best route to achieve this objective would be to subtly appeal to the type of gay man (of whom within London there are many) who takes weekend recreational drugs. Of the kind that might be stored in a little box. Now, obviously you wouldn't distribute a press release that read:

"...divine hand crafted miniature gold and platinum objets d’art , lovingly adorned with a sublime depiction of the Venus de Milo. Discreet enough to hide your stash of Ecstasy in without setting off metal detectors or raising unwanted suspicion while being frisked at Beyond."

...however you could distribute a press release that read:

"...divine hand crafted miniature gold boxes, lovingly adorned with a sublime depiction of the Venus de Milo. The perfect gift for the gayer who likes to get the most out of his weekend."

The client just tilted his glasses and mumbled something incoherent. With lightening speed I tried to turn my apparently unfortuitous suggestion around.

"Well how about some kind of cause related marketing initiative? You could extol the virtues of the product to HIV+ gay men who have strict meds regimes and donate a proportion of the profits from certain sales to an HIV/AIDS related charity? The gay press would love it."

Silence. I can feel my profit related bonus slipping through my fingers.

So what did I do? I saved my ass by scraping the bottom of the barrel, selling out both myself and my fellow homos:

"Or...we could do a press mailing about the box which features the Andy Warhol painting of James Dean? Gay men love Andy Warhol and James Dean."

He looks up, considers this option for a second and then nods.

"Yes. I like that idea. Let's do it."

Three odd things

1) At the end of an incredibly relaxing facial at The Refinery the technician asks how my skin feels. I reach to touch it and she yells at me "No! I just cleaned it!"

2) A man on the tube using a CD Walkman, but with iPod headphones. I figured he either had an iPod but somehow managed to lose it but not the headphones, or he had bought just the headphones to fool people into thinking he has an iPod when in fact he doesn't. Sad, whatever way you want to look at it.

3) While watching Smallville, my flatmate turns to me and says, "You know, now that your hair is longer you look a bit like Tom Welling." I don't see it myself, but I'm going to make out with her for saying that, right now.

Saturday afternoon theatre trip

Yesterday afternoon Louise and I went to see the Mamet play, A Life in the Theatre, starring Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson.

First, both Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson get almost all of their kit off at several points throughout the play. I can reliably report back that Patrick Stewart most definitely still has it going on while Joshua Jackson has shed the Dawson’s Creek puppy fat and is sporting a very respectable six pack.

Now I've got the primary reason I went to see the play out of the way...

I think David Mamet is an awesome talent. In my career I have been lucky enough to meet some very famous people and yet there are few who have acually floored me (although Jack Nicholson was a close call). But if I was, let's say, at dinner with David Mamet at the table I would definitely be quieter than my normal self. He probably knows the acting profession in all its guises better than most and he has written or adapted several of my favourite plays or movies including Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Speed-The-Plow and the movies Hannibal and State & Main (which he also directed).

A Life in the Theatre is a two man set piece about two actors, one younger and one older, both working in an unnamed theatre production in New York. We see them interacting both behind the scenes and actually "on-stage" in various skits involving amusing costume changes. We are told very little about the play. In fact most of the scenes seem intentionally random and entirely different from the previous one - a scene from WW1 trenches, a modern hospital operating theatre, a private detectives office. It's the botched lines, unreliable stage hands and missed cues that make up most of the play's guffaws. At one point Patrick Stewart's character's character is waiting for a phone to ring and it doesn't so he picks it up and says "I told you not to interrupt me with any calls!" at which point the phone starts ringing. It’s a silly joke – the kind of thing that French & Saunders would do – but it is deeply funny when an actor of the stature of Patrick Stewart is pretending to fluff his cues and lines.

After I settled into the play the first thing that began to annoy me was that I was being told very little about these characters lives off of the stage, but after a while it became evident to me that that was not really relevant to the story. Because while, on the surface, the play seems to be just an amusing pastiche on the life of the "real" working actor - the type that literally spends a life in the theatre - it is actually about what it is these types of people are made up of. So while you don't get the character's back history, you do get to see their insecurities, paranoias, foibles, etc, in all their raw glory.

Anyway, when I got home I did a Google search on Mamet and I found this quote from him. I think it sums up the play much better than I can here:

"A life in the theatre. That is what acting is. Doing the play for the audience. The rest is just practice. And I see that the life of the academy, the graduate school, the studio, while charming and comfortable, are as removed from the life (and the job) of the actor as aerobics are from boxing..."

Now I would be lying if I said that I really enjoyed the experience. I actually did enjoy the play. What I didn't enjoy was that our seats were all the way up in the upper circle and the incline was very, very steep. This, coupled with the fact that I am not good with indoor heights (to the point that I practically have to crouch on the floor and shuffle to get to my chair), made me feel very on edge (literally and figuratively) the whole time.

But that's the price you pay for £15 tickets.

It's been a while

I want to put this down in writing, not because I want to boast or show off, but because I feel like I should. For posterity or something. We're so vocal when things aren't that great, but not so vocal when things are good.

I keep finding myself smiling for no apparent reason. When I catch myself doing it part of me asks just what it is I think I'm doing. But I carry on smiling. Have you ever noticed how rare it is to see someone walking down the street, by themselves, smiling? Just. Smiling.

Maybe it's having a job. Not sure. All I know is, I get up every day at 6.30am. I have some breakfast, I shower, I get changed. I read my book on the tube, I buy some coffee from Pret, I get to work and I settle in. I'm usually the first in so I can listen to classical music on the stereo. I fire off some emails and I write my action list.

Other stuff - press lunches, meetings, pitching. The usual. But for the first time in a long time I'm enjoying it. I'm staying late if I need to, to tie up any loose ends from the day. Then I go to the gym or meet friends for dinner or a few drinks. The day ends and I feel content. Contentment is an emotion I've never really had much to do with. Ok, I've only been in this job for two weeks, but you know when you get a feeling for something?

Anyway, some things I am excited about right now:

- Going to the theatre with Louise tomorrow afternoon
- Getting a facial at The Refinery on Sunday
- Going to the theatre with Kate on Wednesday evening
- Going to Paris next Friday
- Lunch at Claridges with the editor of Wallpaper* in two weeks
- One of my favourite people coming home in April
- Seeing my friends when I go back to NYC for a week in May
- Spending Christmas on a beach in Thailand with Tim
- Winning my first piece of new business at work
- My hair, my body and my weight

On the surface these things might not appear to be the stuff of legend, but isn't there some adage about life being in the details?

Expensive dental work

When I broke my jaw last August I really managed to bugger up my teeth. Such a shame, cause after much orthodontic work as a kid I had a rather lovely set of gnashers.

Cosmetically, I still do. When I smile, you can't tell that I have *runs tongue around mouth to count* four major fractures (where almost half the tooth is missing) and three chips. But you can see that my front lower tooth has moved back, as a result of the metal plate screwed onto the bone, inside my chin, to mend one of the three breaks on my jaw itself.

To have all of the fractures and chips repaired I have to have three root canal surgeries, four crowns and three fillings. If I have this work done on the NHS I will have to contribute towards a co-pay, a figure somewhere in the sum of £300. But if I go for the NHS option the crowns won't be camouflaged, they will be silver. Ergo, I will look like James Bond's arch nemesis, Jaws. Clearly not a look I'm particularly eager to covet. So, to have the camouflaged dental work, I will have to pay almost £600.

And if I want the tooth at the front moved back to it's previous position, I will have to have a retainer placed by an orthodontist. Guess how much this will cost? Hazard a guess?

Approximately £1,000.

The tooth that moved is cosmetic. I can live with it being slightly misaligned. But the other dental work is a different matter. The teeth are damaged so much that if I don't have them fixed then they will eventually die and fall out. But not before I get severe gum disease and most likely an attractive case of halitosis.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because my condular processes (the arms that hook your lower jaw onto your upper jaw) both got crushed, my front top and bottom teeth are misaligned by a couple of millimeters and don’t bite together. Instead I am biting down on my back molars and my dentist thinks that I am grinding them during my sleep. So I may have to wear a protector when I sleep.

There is a moral to this story. Never go to the Shadow Lounge, never drink too much, never take a sleeping pill when you get home, never stand up too fast from sitting on the toilet. Had I not done any of these things in succession I may well be sat here with me pearly whites still in their former glorious state.

And £1,600 better off.

Striking fear into the heart of your mortal enemy...

At the weekend I watched "Meet Joe Black", a very underrated movie in my opinion. Primarily because Brad Pitt has never looked so handsome:



Sweet Jesus.

Anyway, there is this sublime scene at the end of the movie where a very calm and softly spoken Joe tells Bill's errant business partner, in no uncertain terms, that he needs to tread very, very carefully from now on:

"Should you choose to test my resolve in this matter, you will be facing a finality beyond your comprehension, and you will not be counting days, or months, or years, but millenniums in a place with no doors."

I want just one perfect opportunity in my lifetime to be able to say that to someone who is pissing me off, preferably someone who hasn't seen the movie.

Of course, the overall effect would be strengthened if I could back up my words with the unspoken threat that I am, indeed, the Grim Reaper himself.