There was a time, not so long ago, when I was sat on the upstairs bench infront of the Genius Bar in the Apple Store on Regent Street feeling as cool as fuck.

A few minutes after writing yesterday's blog post my iBook spontaneously expired infront of the technician and I was instantly down £180 and over a year's worth of photos, documents and really, really good porn, Godamnit.

Today I am sat in a a dingy, basement internet cafe in Soho, which smells like catpiss and furniture polish. I am wearing a pair of jeans which are too long and keep getting caught underneath my trainers and a T-shirt with a hole under the armpit. I am sipping from a lukewarm bottle of Volvic. I am writing my blog on an ancient "blueberry" iMac, which is, no doubt, secretly laughing at the fact that it has outlived my sleek, white iBook, by several years.

I want to kill someone.

* Not retrievable, unless I am prepared to pay £1,500 to have my old hard drive broken open and cloned.**

** If anyone would like to do this in exchange for sex, email me.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of sitting and waiting for my computer to be checked over by a techno-geek would fill me with intense feelings of dread and uncool paranoia.

This morning I am sat on the upstairs bench infront of the Genius Bar in the Apple Store on Regent Street. I am wearing a vintage purple T-shirt, camouflage Abercrombie combats and Calvin Klein flip-flops. I am leisurely sipping a Starbucks mocha. I am writing my blog on my iBook, using the store's free wireless broadband.

I feel as cool as fuck.

My Mum and Dad were very young when I was born and didn't have an awful lot of money, so both often had to work during the day: my Dad as an engineer and my Mum as a hairdresser. Subsequently, Grandma, from only eight weeks after I was born, used to look after me, and a couple of years later, my brother a great deal.

When I was very young (you'll see what I did there in a moment!) one of my favourite things was to be read to, and one of the books I would always take to Grandma's house to be read to from was The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne.

At Grandma's funeral on Tuesday I am going to do a reading. At my Granddad's funeral, a few months ago, I chose to read a chapter relating to death from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, which, as an adult, is one of my favourite books. Obviously I can't read the same section out again and I really don't want to read out one of those Hallmark-sentiment, copyright protected standard funeral readings, either.

So this week, while I was at home, I dug out my old copy of The House at Pooh Corner. The very last page is what I have decided to read on Tuesday. It seems kind of appropriate for more than a couple of reasons.

********

Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out, "Pooh!"
"Yes?" said Pooh.
"When I'm, er ... when I'm ..."
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
"I'm not going to do Nothing any more, Pooh."
"Never again?" said Pooh.
"Well, not so much. They don't let you, you see."
Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again.
"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully.
"Pooh, when I'm ... you know ... when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?"
"Just me?"
"Yes, Pooh."
"Will you be here too?"
"Yes, Pooh, I will be, really. I promise I will be, Pooh."
"That's good," said Pooh.
There was a short pause and then Christopher Robin said, "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me. Ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."
Pooh thought for a little while.
"How old shall I be then?"
"Ninety-nine," said Christopher Robin.
Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said.
Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw.
"Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "If I ... if I'm not quite ..." He stopped and tried again, "Pooh, whatever happens to me, you will understand, won't you?"
"Understand what?"
"Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
"Where are we going?" said Pooh.
"Anywhere," said Christopher Robin.

So they went off together. But wherever they go and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

Just a quick post to say thank you for the messages and emails you have sent to me over the past couple of days. They have been very much appreciated.

I will admit that it's slightly surreal to think that, during times like these, there are people, all over the world, who are thinking about you. But it really means a lot to me and I am really touched.

Despite having been blessed with a healthy dollop of intelligence, I am not always the sharpest tool in the box.

For instance, you might think that because I have been sunburned on a number of occasions in my life, one of those occasions being so severe that I had to go to hospital, that I might be more than just a bit clued up on sun-protection.

But, no ...

Today my friend Helen and I went to Studland Beach (real name - even has a gay nudist beach!) to catch some rays, except that our plan was thwarted by an overcast sky that did not diminish as the day wore on. Regardless of the fact that I knew from first-hand experience that you can still be burned through cloud, I rebuffed Helen's lotion-ed advances and chose to lie out, au naturel, as it were.

Several hours later and I am forced to sit upright, cross legged, in the middle of the floor because I can't bear for the skin on my back to touch anything.

The only fortuitous thing about all of this is that I have just finished watching the pilot of Lost and I would have been on the edge of my seat anyway.

What's that expression? Something about not raining, but pouring?

I actually had, for the most part, a really lovely weekend in Rome with my Mum, but my relaxed mood was kinda ruined the moment I stepped off the plane. Shortly after switching my cellphone back on I got two calls.

The first was from one of my recruitment agents. I haven't blogged about this yet, but last week I accepted a job with a PR company which, for all intents and purposes, offered a working environment and a position that seemed to be the perfect match for me and my experience. The call from the recruitment agent was to tell me that the company had retracted the offer. It turns out that when the managing director informed the rest of the company that I had been hired one of the members of staff enquired why they hadn't been given the opportunity to apply. The long and short of it is that they ended up placing the internal candidate in the role and dropped me.

To say that I am mad is an understatement. On the one hand I am angry because I turned down second interview opportunities with a couple of other potential "suiters" as well as a couple of interim freelance placements. I was supposed to start work with this company on Monday. I am now without any kind of work for at least the next two weeks. And cash is not exactly abundant at present.

On the other hand I am relieved that I am not going to work for a company that does not understand basic professionalism, such as being really sure about the situation your company and your staff are in before offering someone a permanent job.

The second call I received was from my Dad telling me that my Grandma had died earlier in the day. It turns out that she had taken a turn for the worst over the weekend and what with everything that has happened to her over the last three weeks her body just couldn't handle it anymore and shut down.

I had pretty much already accepted that this would happen the last time I saw her. She was really, really not very well and I knew with 100% certainty that she wasn't going to make it. You know when you just know? So Dad's news wasn't as shocking as it might otherwise have been. The really sad thing is that because she died as a result of an accident, from falling over and hitting her head, there has to be a post-mortem examination, which means that the funeral can't held until next week sometime.

The good thing in all of this is that because I had accepted that job I was never supposed to be working this week, which means that I can spend a bit of time with my family.

Small mercies and all that.

I won't be blogging for a few days because I'm off to Rome tomorrow morning for a long weekend.

It should be an interesting trip, primarily for the reason that I'm going there with my Mum. When she received her inheritance from my Granddad I originally agreed to go on a two week holiday with her, to someplace exotic (I had my eye on Rio - no prizes for guessing why.)

However, I soon came to realise that two weeks in my mothers company would lead to either one of two eventualities: a) the murder of my mother at my own hands, or b) me, going insane.

So as a compromise I agreed to go on a mini-break with her. I'd like to say that we mutually decided upon Rome because I have had a life-long interest in the ancient Etruscan empire and because my mother would like to see, firsthand, where ecclesiastical bureaucracy bought about la Rinascimento.

But the real reason is that we have both read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons and we want to see the alcove in the Vatican where the anti-matter was placed.

As you know, a couple of weeks ago my Grandma had a nasty fall and had to have brain surgery.

In the subsequent 16 days since she had her accident, we, her family, are as much in the dark with regards to her overall prognosis as we were at the very beginning. Now clearly where brain injuries are concerned you have to allow for a greater degree of overall uncertainty than you do with other injuries or illnesses.

Admittedly, the fact that Grandma now has MRSA complicates things. Infections are not conducive to great lucidity at the best of times, especially in an 85 year old woman who has recently encountered major head injuries.

That said, I simply do not buy the "we don't know what is going on" spiel that the doctors are feeding us. But the most annoying thing is that we only receive that spiel after we have asked several times to speak to someone. In the past two and a half weeks we have only been able to speak to the doctors on only three individual occasions.

I feel really guilty for dissing them because I do genuinely think that they do a good job, but the doctors really need to be more forthcoming with information, especially when the patient concerned is not able to ask the pertinent questions. In their professional opinions there must be a number of avenues they can expect Grandma to go down, each with their own varying degrees of recovery / deterioration. All we want to know is what those avenues are, so that we are just a little bit prepared. My Grandpa especially needs to be prepared. He is currently deluding himself that she is going to make a full recovery and it is clear to the rest of the family, even with our lack of medical knowledge, that this is not going to happen.

One of the things about being gay is that you tend to forget that it's not out of the question that the opposite sex might find you attractive.

This afternoon, while I was working out at the gym, I happened to notice that the very attractive tall, blonde woman, doing bicep curls on the adjacent Swiss Ball, was checking me out. (Seriously! I was as surprised as you are!)

I have to admit that while I was most definitely flattered, the notion that she may have been having even the mildest of lewd thoughts about me did bring on a feeling of slight awkwardness.

Is this how straight men feel when they catch us gayers checking them out in the changing room? I guess the difference is that an advance on my part is coupled with the risk of being messed up real bad.

Whereas the worst the afore mentioned attractive woman could have expected to get from me would have been a slight knock-back, but accompanied by the feel-good factor of my telling her that she looked fierce in her hot pink Baby Phat velveteen track pants and white Calvin Klein sports vest.

The other day my housemate told me that the previous weekend she had plucked up the courage to tell her boyfriend that she was in love with him. However, she quickly added that she wasn't ready yet to say "I love you."

This confused me greatly. I asked her what exactly it was she had told him.

"I said to him, "I'm madly in love with you.""

"Not, "I love you"?"

"God, no! I'm not ready to say that yet!"

What followed was a very lengthy and annoying conversation about the differences between saying "I love you" and "I'm in love with you". Apparently all my life I have been completely oblivious to the fact that the latter is much less intense.

I'm still not entirely convinced that there is a difference between the two at all, but it's hard to argue the semantics of amour with an opponent who thought she was Pippi Longstocking as a child and as an adult models herself on Ann of Green Gables.

It makes me realise how lucky I've been ...

Ever since I failed one following a job interview I have not really believed in psychometric evaluations. I mean, how do you "fail" a psychometric evaluation?! Just because I'm a raging sociopath doesn't mean that I'm necessarily a lesser person.

That was until yesterday when I got the results from another psychometric evaluation from yet another job interview.

I particularly agree with these strengths:

• Exhibits poise
• Highly competitive
• Diplomatic and sensitive to other's points of view
• Highly intellectual and investigative
• Accomplished verbal communicator

I do not like the following weaknesses:

• Energy often wasted by too much personal involvement
• May be too critical and fault finding
• May over-estimate his own abilities from time to time
• Sets too high standards
• Prone to procrastination

[One of the weaknesses was inability to accept criticism, but I left that off, because it is so very clearly complete nonsense.]

I only realised that I had a mojo about seven years ago. I was at Popstarz with some friends and my friend, Ann, asked me who in the club I thought was attractive. I looked around and pointed at some impossibly good looking, ripped guy at the end of the bar.

"Him," I said. "But he is SO out of my league."

"No he's not! Don't be stupid. You're really good looking!" Ann replied, completely oblivious to the secret gay code that decrees that one must not deem to step outside one's own genetic pool.

Later on in the evening, after quite a lot of drinks and with a bit of dutch courage, I managed to brush myself up against him on the dancefloor. Unbelievably, one thing led to another and it wasn't long before I was in a cab with him, heading back to his place.

Fortunately for me, it didn't turn out to be a one night stand and a few days later we went on our first date. I already knew this (obviously, or not obviously) but for your sake, his name was Phillipe. He was French and for some years had worked as a model, before becoming an actor. I've already said it, but he was handsome in that way that you are just forced to think to yourself, "What are you doing with me?"

During dinner we asked each other a few innocuous questions. One of them, from me, was "What's your star sign." A stupid question coming from me, as you faithful readers will know, because I don't really care.

"Well, when do you think I was born?" said Phillipe.

I looked away for a second, as if deep in thought, and took a guess.

"December 17."

A pause, and then, with the most serious of expressions, "How did you know that?"

All the blood drained from my face. "Oh. Er, seriously. I didn't. I just guessed."

That was all it took. From then on he wouldn't return my calls. And that is the story of Phillipe and I. And possibly of the worst date I have ever been on.

Yesterday lunchtime I was in Boots with my flatmate, Vix, buying grooming products. I went up to the counter to pay for my goodies while Vix went outside to call her boyfriend.

While I was at the counter I decided to ask the assistant if she could recommend a product that would minimise and dull any T-zone shine. She told me that she did sell something like that, but that it was in the stock room. While she was more than happy to go and grab some, I told her not to worry as I couldn't really wait.

"Why? Do you have a train to catch?"

"No, I just have a meeting to attend," I explained.

"Oh, that's ok. Because you know there have been some more bombs on the tube. They've closed down a load of the stations again."

I looked at her, aghast. "No! Seriously? That's awful! Has anyone been hurt?"

"I'm not sure. I guess so," and we both shook our heads, mournfully.

After a respectful pause the shop assistant said, "You know I can give you some samples of the product I was telling you about?"

"Great!" I replied.

I left the shop and gleefully showed my twelve, free, mini-sachets of Clinique Oil Control Hydrator to Vix.

Later on I was forced to consider that I am either shallow beyond belief, or that the terrorists have completely and utterly failed to inspire any real feelings of terror within me.

An email exchange with my friend Zach (a fellow iBook owner):

Christopher:
I REALLY need your help. Please respond to this email as soon as you can! I have hardcore gay porn stuck in the CD drive on my iBook and I am using it at work and the computer guy is due to come in to do something to it at 4pm!!! Usually there is a little hole you can stick a paperclip in and it ejects the disc, but I can't find it! I tried the Apple support website, but to no avail. Help me Zach! You're my only hope! (Note that I could have asked you to "help me find my hole" but am far too mature.)

Zach:
Oh gosh ... I don't really know. Did you try turning off the computer and restarting it? I had that happen to me once and that seemed to work. I think I was hitting the eject button before the computer was fully re-booted and it ejected. Good luck! If that doesnt work, just blame it on an intern...

Christopher:
No! I tried that! IT DOESN'T WORK!!! Rudy (IT guy) is going to learn that I like watching DVDs called "Anal Intruder 5".

Zach:
Tell him that it's from a new client of yours ... that you're doing the PR for Bel Ami.

Christopher:
I'm going to have to call Apple Support. This is too humiliating for words. Not least for the fact that I can't work out how to eject a DVD, regardless of the fact that it's bum-porn.

Zach:
Oh Christopher. You've done it again!

Christopher:
Shut up.

I'm sorry for not having written about my Grandma sooner. Forgive me if I don't go into too much detail here. It's not that I find it particularly upsetting, per se. It's just that I have dissected every minutiae of her condition with almost every member of my family over the past week and I am starting to get a little tired of the subject. That sounds awful, but you don't know my family (although I'm sure there are enough of you with your own dysfunctional families to be able to sympathise.)

Grandma is 85 years old, but in excellent health. She takes two walks a day, doesn't drink or smoke, eats incredibly healthily. She even rides a bike from time to time.

Last Monday she went to the beach with my Aunt and Grandpa. She walked along the beach, paddled in the sea. Apparently she had a nice day. When the three of them got back home, Grandma went around to the back of the car and as she was pulling something out of the boot she fainted and fell backwards, hitting the back of her head, apparently very, very hard.

A brain scan at the hospital confirmed that she had three hemorrhages: one between her skull and her brain, one on the surface of her brain and one in her brain. Initially the surgeons didn't want to operate on her because of her age, but because she is so healthy they eventually decided to go ahead.

They removed the first two hemorrhages, but because of it's depth, left the third with the hope that it would not get any bigger. A scan conducted a couple of days after the surgery revealed that it had indeed not grown, which was good news.

However, she is not out of the woods. Because of the head injury Grandma is required to be resting horizontally, or almost horizontally, so that excess blood can be drained from her head. This means that there is a likelihood that fluid will build up on her lungs. If this happens she will more than likely develop pneumonia. Once again, because of her age, there is a possibility that she will not pull through that. That said, if anyone can pull through at her age, Grandma can.

In terms of how she is in herself, she sleeps most of the time, which is normal after brain surgery. When she is awake, she is still very dopey, but for the most part she makes sense. She does lapse into occasional dementia, but again, this is normal for someone who has recently had brain surgery. The other day she kept talking about a little black boy standing at the end of the bed. I was a little bit concerned that she was being politically incorrect and that I would have to berate her, but then I realised that a black gas cylinder was confusing her (she hasn't been wearing her glasses.)

The weird thing about all of this, from my perspective, is how well I am dealing with the whole situation. When I first heard the news from my Dad last Tuesday I was really tearful and upset. But then when I saw her and spoke to the doctors and felt a lot more philosophical. She may pull through and she may not. If this is her time to go, then we can all feel good about the fact that she has a good life, with great family and fabulous (fabulous!!!!) grandchildren. If it's not her time to go, then she will get through this and she will have more days on the beach and chats with friends and relatives over cups of Earl Grey tea.

I hope it will be the latter.

However, through all of this, I have been struck by the complete randomness of life. All of us know that we will "end" at some point. For some of us that end will be sooner than for others and will come about in a variety of different ways. In Grandma's case the doctors think that it is possible she fainted because it was a hot day and she was dehydrated. That could have happened to anyone, regardless of their age. I mean, people jump into swimming pools and emerge paralysed from the neck down.

In particular I recalled a Phoebe-ism from Friends:

"Yeah, it's just so strange. I mean, she probably woke up today and thought, 'Ok, I'll have some breakfast, and then I'll take a little walk, and then I'll have my massage.' Little did she know God was thinking, 'Ok, but that's it.'"

For me, anyway, it re-illustrates the age-old phrase, "Live each day as if it were your last."

After the events of the past week I needed to start this week off on the right foot. Arguably, dancing into the first early hour of the morning with Drew at Horsemeat Disco probably wasn't the best way to bring this about, but miraculously I woke up this morning feeling as fresh as a daisy and as chipper as Chip the chipmunk.

Things felt good as I walked out of the tube station at Old Street. I felt at one. I had just finished a "fiendish" Su Doku puzzle on the train, cute Hoxton-y guys and girls walked by, glugging from bottles of Evian and giggling into their mobile phones. The sun was beating down and for once I wasn't evaporating.

And Nina Simone sung "Here Comes The Sun" on my iPod.

Perfection.

I haven't posted for a couple of days because I have been back at home in Wiltshire. My Grandma had a really nasty fall on Monday evening and as a result had three brain hemorrhages. She had surgery to remove two of the three bleeds early on Tuesday morning, but we do not yet know if the operation has been successful.

I may post infrequently over the coming days, just so you all know. We'll see how things pan out. Fingers crossed that she gets better.

Christopher
xxx

Books

Jef tagged me with this book meme:

1. How many books do you own?
I'd estimate on about two to three hundred, the majority of which are at my Mum's house in Wiltshire, where I stored them before I moved to NYC. That figure counts for every book I've ever owned. While I may have loaned books out, I've never thrown any away.

2. Last book read?
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. There are only three books that I have read that have actually made me cry (shut up, Drew) and this is one of them (one of the other two is listed below). It's a story about a man called Henry who suffers from a rare disorder where his genetic clock occasionally resets itself, flinging him from the present, back and forth through time. On his journeys he encounters Clare, his wife in the present, at various points in her life. On the surface the premise might seem rather fantastical, but the author makes it entirely believable. This is an old fashioned romance that had me hooked from the first page and literally sobbing by the end.

3. Last book purchased?
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I don't really know what it is about. I know it's based on a true story and that one of my friends read it and greatly enjoyed it. I'm also very intrigued by a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. All I'll say is that it had better be just that, or I'll be consulting the Trading Standards website.

4. Name five books that mean a lot to you.
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland. There are so many reasons why I love this book (it was one of the three that have made me cry). The first is that Douglas Coupland is my favourite author in the whole world and I've read all his books. He could write an obituary and I would love it. The second is that it contains one of the most moving scenes I've ever read in a book. I can't tell you any more about that point, because it would ruin a surprise. The third is that it includes some really clever references to huge cultural landmarks from the late 90s - the kind that give you goosebumps. I frikkin love this book! Go out and buy it now!

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I'm probably hearing a bunch of you distantly yelling "Why?! Why?!" at me right now. Well, on the surface it's a pretty formulaic tale of conspiracy and the like, written in an absorbing, non-boundary pushing manner. I don't care for all that backlash nonsense - it's a bloody good read. And to question whether or not the "fact" is, indeed, fact is to thoroughly miss the point. For me the "fact" is that the Christian church is built on a fundamental lie. This realisation encouraged me to ask myself some really important and fairly profound questions about my faith and as a result I do not believe that the God I was taught about in school really exists. So while I wouldn't say I'm now an atheist, I'm definitely agnostic. That might seem rubbish - that Dan Brown made me question God. But then we can find truths in the most unlikely of places.

Alexander and the Magic Mouse by Martha Sanders. This is my favourite book from when I was a kid. An old lady lives on a hill with various animals that she has collected on her travels around the world: a yak from Tibet, a Brindle London Squatting cat, an alligator called Alexander and a magical mouse. The mouse has a premonition that the local town will be washed away by a terrible storm so the old lady sends Alexander to the town to deliver a letter to the mayor so that he can warn everyone of the impending danger. After his efforts Alexander catches flu and is deeply depressed that everyone in the town was scared of him. In the end the magical mouse gives him a tiny pink cake and overnight he gets better. Shortly after they learn that his mission was successful and the whole town comes up the hill to thank Alexander.

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster. I initially read it because I loved the movie - Rupert Graves, Julian Sands and, er, Simon Callow, naked and wrestling in a bathing pond. Sadly the book was less homoerotic than the movie, but I still enjoyed it very much. In fact it encouraged me to read all of Forster's other books, including a Passage to India, which I was supposed to have read for A Level English, but didn't. Still, better late than never.

Untitled by this man. I haven't read it yet because it's yet to be published, but as long as I get expensive Christmas and birthday presents as a result of his handsome royalties, it will forever be a book that will mean a lot to me.

5. Tag five more people.
I have had bad experiences of tagging people, so I'm going to leave it up to those who have not done this to decide if they want to do it.

Christopher hurts himself (again)

When something truly awful happens there is this inclination to just sit in front of the TV and absorb, absorb, absorb until you're as much of an expert on the goings-on as the anchorperson you've recently become best friends with. This was very much the case in my office yesterday, as the TV was on all day and no one was really doing anything apart from congregating around it.

At lunchtime I decided not to eat my low-carb, home-prepared bean and tuna salad at my desk and instead ventured down into Wimbledon town centre to meet Lindsay for lunch.

Because Lindsay didn't have much time to spare we decided to grab a quick bite and a drink at Coffee Republic, next to Wimbledon tube station. As Lindsay ordered our beverages at the front of the shop, I located an area at the back for us to sit down. As I reclined into my leather armchair, the back of my head connected heavily with the extremely sharp edge of the counter behind me. You know when you hit your head so hard that it doesn't actually hurt? That's how hard I hit my head.

As I pretended that I was actually completely fine to the cute guy sat adjacent to me I reached my hand behind my head to check out the damage and was quite shocked to discover that I was actually bleeding quite profusely. Without trying to draw too much attention to myself I got up and went to the counter to tell Lindsay what had happened and to grab some napkins from one of the baristas.

The manager of the shop, who was at this point standing behind the till, saw my bloodied hand and swiftly went into lifesaver overdrive. "Oh my God! Did you just come out of the station?!" he asked, hurriedly, grabbing a dishcloth. "Do you need some ice? Don't worry, it's ok!"

Realising that the manager had thought that I was walking wounded from the events that occurred earlier in the day, I felt a brand new rush of blood sweep through me , this time depositing itself firmly onto my cheeks. "Erm, no. I just hit my head on your counter."

Of course, Lindsay thought that it was extremely amusing that I had to include myself, however unintentionally, in amongst the overall melee.