Monday, September 19, 2005

I would like my future husband, whoever the sorry bastard is, to be:
  1. Anally retentive about having clean bed linen on the bed at all times.
  2. Really diligent about opening mail as it arrives.
You may have already guessed that I am completely rubbish at both of these things. This weekend I actually undertook three major tasks, two of which relate to the above. The third I will discuss in tomorrow's post. But for now:

For some reason I can sleep in the same bed linen for up to three months (disgusting, yes, but it has been known) and after that time it neither smells nor sticks. This is good, because I HATE HATE HATE changing bed clothes - to the extent that I will do almost anything to avoid doing it. You know, you have to picture it: Christopher, standing on his bed, violently shaking his duvet into a cover which refuses to fit. It's an absurd image, isn't it? Yes, it is.

Yesterday I changed my bed linen. It took only five minutes, but those moments felt like an eternity and were the most intolerable since, well, the last time I changed my bed linen. And I'm not telling you when that was. Anyway, to recap, I changed my bed linen. Round of applause, please.

For the past six months I have been placing all of my mail in a neat pile in the corner of the living room. I really hate opening mail. It's not like I get bills that need to be paid. All of my debts and bills are paid by Direct Debit or standing order and utilities are covered in my rent which, again, is paid by s/o. My problem, and this is a general problem, is that boring things get me down. Especially glossy leaflets from my bank featuring pictures of heterosexual couples, all happy and smiley, standing in the rain, underneath a huge umbrella, basically glorifying fixed-term mortgage schemes with a free ISA / PEP / Unit Trust. They make me want to kill myself.

Today, over lunch, my friend Louise told me a horror story about her boyfriend and a pile of mail which he had "filed" in the back of his wardrobe and she had found while snooping through his stuff. As he is currently in Barcelona for work she decided to organise his life in the UK, in preparedness for his return. While sorting his mail she happened to discover that a debt collection agency had become so infuriated by his non-compliance at offering payments to a loan of like 50p or something ridiculous, that they were about to send around the bailiffs.

The idea of bailiffs arriving at my front door freaked me out more than the idea of, you know, opening my mail. So this evening I sat down infront of the mountain of post and started to plough through it.

Now, as there was six months worth of correspondence to go through this was never going to be an easy task. So I applied a bit of logic. I figured that as my credit cards and bank cards were still working (for the most part) I could assume that there was nothing in any bank correspondence that needed addressing. This effectively culled at least 50% of the mail, which made the job much more manageable. The rest of the mail was just random receipts for internet purchases, hospital appointment notes that I had already diarised, etc, etc.

Then something brilliant / potentially horrible happened. I opened a plainly addressed letter from my bank, returning a State of New York cheque for last year's tax return, amounting to $490 (about 250 sterling!) The reason for the bank returning the cheque (or check for you Americans) was unclear, but I do know that banks, from time-to-time, do send foreign cheques back unpaid, so ultimately I could still cash it and get the money.

The potentially horrible thing is that the cheque is dated May 2004, which could mean that it is so out of date that it can't be cashed anyway. This is bad for two reasons:
  1. It means I cannot fund the purchase of additional items to my new A/W 2005-06 wardrobe.
  2. It further illustrate to me that it is WRONG to open mail.
If you are an American with expert knowledge on cheque expiry dates, especially those written by tax executives for the State of New York, I would be most appreciative if you could let me know if I might still be able to go shopping next weekend. Your payment will be a nice pair of winter socks from Marks & Spencer (maybe.)

Saturday, September 17, 2005

This evening I went to the movies to see Annie Hall. I forgot how much I love that movie. And I'd never noticed that neither Alvy nor Annie actually say "I love you." (I just read the trivia section on iMDB.)

I don't consciously consider myself to be a Woody Allen fan, but I must be, because Annie Hall, Sleeper and Manhattan are three of my all-time favourite movies. I also really like Everyone Says I Love You. The scene where Goldie Hawn jumps and majestically sails up into the air, right next to the Seine, is one of my favourite scenes in a film.

Anyway, on the way home I decided upon something: I think I am a male Diane Keaton. I seriously think that she subconsicuosly inspired me to buy that waistcost a few weeks back. And the car that I often drive like a maniac is a VW. Proof, surely?

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Just because I'm a PR extraordinaire with my finger on the pulse of popular culture doesn't mean that I'm not, from time to time, completely infallible.

Six months after it broke as a news story this morning I noticed that Smarties have stopped being sold in their traditional round tubes.

I agree with Val Oliver from England:

"Smarties in a box? Yet a further erosion of our national identity. What next, white Marmite?"

The apocalypse is surely upon us.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

CIMG1687

Last Wednesday night I met up with my friends Lara and Jon. We met each other in 1991, when I was studying at Swindon College of Art, the year before I went off to university.

As can be expected, much has happened to the three of us over the years. These days Lara lives just outside London with her boyfriend of 10 years, Toby, and works in a law firm. Jon did live in London for a long time, but now lives in Marlborough with his boyfriend, James and is a PA at an environment agency.

We each have remarkably different lives from each other now than we did in the days when we were at college and we would skip class, drive out to a remote hill overlooking Bath, listen to The Smiths on my car stereo and get really, really mashed from smoking cheap weed sold to us by Stoner Leo in life drawing. These days Jon likes nothing better than potting orchids and walking his dog, Moshi, over Wiltshire fields while Lara DJ's for fun once a week after transvestite bingo nights at her local S&M club.

And me? Well, you know. I do my thing.

But despite all of this, however much we've each moved on, however much water has gone under the bridge, however infrequently we see each other, all of those things ... within four hours of meeting up in Soho Square the three of us had got really drunk, been complained about by fellow customers for being too loud in a posh restaurant, tried on hooker shoes in a sex shop, looked at kinky sex pictures in an Erotic book cafe and taken stealthy pictures of cute boys in a gay bar.

I was nineteen when I met Lara and Jon and I'll be 33 at the end of this month. I've met a lot of people and made a lot of other very good friends since meeting the two of them. And I still have a lot of fun, a lot of the time. But every so often it's good to have 19 year-old fun. And to be reminded that while, yes, you are a bit older, you're not always a lot wiser.

Because who wants to be old and wise if it means that you can't accept your friends sticking paper napkins up your nose without seeing it as a sign of affection?

CIMG1683

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Yesterday afternoon I was trawling through the IMDb message boards for Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction (I feel that I should point out that I wrote my university thesis on film noir and how the genre had evolved from its hey-day in the 1940s and its revival in the 1990s, using Double Indemnity and Basic Instinct as examples. That's the only reason I was interested and not because I wanted to see any more gratuitous leg-uncrossings.)

On my travels I happened to come across what must surely be the most hilarious plot translation in history. If this film is anywhere near as good as this translation it is going to be a critically acclaimed blockbuster of massive proportions!

(If there are plot-spoilers in this then they surely went over my head.)

I quote:

"You minds on whichever thing, on your erections, yours want matta to sweep to me. When tasks to fottermi, like the images? I know that you cannot answer to me, but thinks to us. As you would want to sweep to me."

Thursday, September 08, 2005

There is some statistic in existence that says that after the age of 25 you are 75% likely to meet your life partner through your place of work. What with being asked out by lesbians and the like, it would appear that I am amongst the remaining 25%.

For a while now (two and a half weeks) I have known that Paul, the breathtakingly cute, pocket-sized account manager who sits opposite me, is straight. But this has not stopped me having un platonic crush on him: i.e. whenever he asks me something I, ever so slightly, lose my professional cool. Also, he is incredibly private and never ever talks about anything aside from work. This is good because it has allowed me to elaborate upon the notion that he is single and therefore desperately lonely and could very well be tempted over to the dark side.

My delusions were shattered this morning when, in an unprompted and spiteful manner, he practically vomited forth the information that yesterday his girlfriend had some hair extensions put in. His girlfriend.

I hate her. Hair-obsessed bitch.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Upon further reflection (and after having watched three more episodes of The OC) I realised that being asked out for a drink by a lesbian is exactly the kind of thing that might happen to Seth Cohen, which made me feel much better.

And then I remembered that I had been asked out for a drink by a lesbian and I felt depressed again.
Last week I bleached my hair to within an inch of its life, but, as is the usual story, I soon decided that punky-blonde probably wasn't befitting of a soon to be 33 year-old, professional publicist. So last night I dyed it back to its usual dark brown colour.

This (coupled with the fact that I watched six episodes, back-to-back, of The OC on Sunday night) encouraged me to try out a new look, which I am sporting today - cute / intellectual / preppy. Basically an older Seth Cohen. I'm wearing old scuffed-up, white Adidas Superstar trainers, faded blue jeans, a fitted white cotton shirt and a navy-blue pinstriped waistcoat. I did try accessorising with a neck scarf, but decided that it was a bit too dandy and opted to just wear my specs instead (usually only worn in front of the computer or when I'm watching TV.)

I think that the effect is really quite devastating and my new, shiny mop of chocolate brown totally hits the mark. The result is that I have already been asked out for a drink by someone I work with.

Unfortunately that person is a 22 year-old lesbian called Grace.

I'm so depressed.

Monday, September 05, 2005

This weekend, in the changing room of my gym, I unfortunately bore witness to a pale, unattractive, naked man lift his leg up onto a bench and apply a stick deodorant to the whole of his undercarriage. He was not being discreet.

The only logical reason that I could think of as to why he was doing this was that he was expecting someone to be paying a "visit". Obviously I had to think about this some more and I couldn't decide which would be the worse - Sure 24 Hour stick deodorant, or the general funk of, er ... well, you know ... the other.

So, when I got home I licked my roll-on deodorant on decided it would be the former.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Yesterday I received a group email from a friend in NYC, giving instructions on how to help out with Hurricane Katrina relief effort at the American Red Cross Centre. Given that I now live a few miles out of town I found myself limited as to how much help I could provide. This morning, after having read more horrifying newspaper reports of the situation, I made a donation.

I'm ashamed to say that making charitable donations is not something I do very often. I generally mean to, but I never quite get around to actually doing it.

However, there was a time when your favourite, superficial and vacuous PR luvvie was a tad more conscientious. As a university student I started spending time with my friend Clare, this woman and their other female university buddies. Any of them will provide expert witness that prior to knowing them I was shockingly ignorant about, well, pretty much everything. I would often be harshly berated for making various un-pc comments, such as, "I think Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct is a positive depiction of bisexuality." Clare would actually dub my visits "PC training."

Clare and her friends encouraged me to read the newspaper and to stop reading The Sun (even though I do still scan it for work purposes. Er, um ...) For many years my newspapers of choice have been The Guardian and The Observer: the two publications at the furthest-left of British newspaper reporting and social commentary.

As I began to understand issues such as the world domination by *copies from PC dictionary of 1992* capitalist societies through rampant consumerism (Ann shopping at Liberty) Clare and Co. began to invite me to political street marches. Soon after I took their lead and joined Amnesty International and wrote letters to the leaders of oppressive regimes on behalf of prisoners of conscience such as Aung Sang Su Chi. I even sold Socialist Worker newspapers. Once. For an hour on a rainy Saturday afternoon. In fact all I really did was just stand next to the guy selliung them. Although I did once carry aloft a Socialist Worker banner that Ann and I found on the side of the road during the Criminal Justice Bill march of 1992. We thought it would make cute male demonstrators notice us more (they didn't.)

But I think my fondest memory of personal charity was when I was a final year university student. I lived in the red-light district of Southampton with my gay friend Anthony and my girls of the time, Nikki, Vei and Karen. During the infamously harsh winter of 1994 we would often make cups of tea for the hookers working on the pavement just outside our front door. They were always very nice and very appreciative (not too appreciative) and would tell us shockingly salacious stories involving their dirty-old-man clients. I remember there was one hooker though who was rather tight-lipped (to coin a phrase) and would never disclose anything interesting at all. We didn't make tea for her for very long.

An sad indication, perhaps, that true altruism doesn't really exist.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Last night I drove to the supermarket to buy a whole host of healthy foodstuffs for consumption over the course of the next week. I spent a good forty five minutes working the aisles, being seduced by everything from pineapple and coconut juice, bramley apple pork sausages and chilled rose Zinfandel.

While I was loading my groceries onto the conveyor belt I overheard the assistant inform the customer in front of me that her bank card had been declined. The customer, looking rather embarrassed, turned to her partner and meekly asked him if he would pay for the bill on his credit card, which he did and without complaint, but not before planting a gentle kiss on the top of the woman's head.

Despite the man's obvious affection towards his girlfriend / wife, I couldn't help but feel slightly smug over the fact that I really didn't need a partner to foot my bill.

That was until about five minutes later, when my bank card was also declined.

I have never felt lonelier in my entire life.
On Sunday, because I was going clubbing later that evening, I decided to buy myself a session on the tanning bed at my gym.

On the way to the gym I stopped by the pharmacy and got distracted by the vast array of tanning products on the shelf in one of the aisles. One product that particularly caught my eye was called Solarimax. It was a smallish sized pump spray containing an attractive mixture of orange and yellow coloured oils that promised to "provide a supplement to the effects of an artificial tanning session - for a long-lasting, healthy looking glow."

When I got to the gym I went to the tanning room, locked the door, disrobed and sprayed the Solarimax all over my body before lying down on the sunbed and pulling the top down. Twenty minutes later I admired myself in the mirror - I did indeed look browner than I normally look after a regular tanning session. Solarimax was indeed a miracle. I couldn't wait to tell my friends all about my discovery.

Two hours later (and three hours before my friend was due to come to collect me to go to The Fridge) I began to realise that my skin colour was gradually turning from "long-lasting, healthy looking glow" to one-shade-off-tomato. I didn't even need to look at my face in the mirror to know that this was happening. I knew because my skin was prickling like I had been stabbed all over with a hundred small, but extremely spiky, cactuses.

Panicking, I retrieved the bottle of Solarimax from my gym bag to read the instructions, in detail (for the first time.) I was especially concerned that the label read "good for ten applications", especially as I had used almost the entire bottle in one.

So I did what any calm, rational, disintegrating homosexual would do, three hours before he was about to go to a club where the chances of him taking his top off were greater that 99%. I emailed my ex-boyfriend who is an ER nurse at a large uptown Manhattan hospital, telling him what had happened without, er, telling what had actually happened, i.e.:

"I fell asleep in the sun and now I'm sunburned and I'm going clubbing this evening. How do I stop being burned?"

Fortunately he was at work and happened to be near a computer so I got a reply within a matter of minutes.

"Girl, break out the Covergirl Matte Finish foundation."

Not the surgical answer I was hoping for. And anyway, I only own a Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male concealer pen and there was no way that was going to paint down my entire torso, shoulders, arms and face. So I Googled "sunburn remedy".

One of the websites I found suggested using everything from cold tea poultices to aloe, direct from the leaves. I didn't have time to chill some tea and my housemate doesn't grow aloe plants so in the end, with time seriously running out, I broke down and did a face and body mask using fresh Greek yoghurt straight from the refridgerator.

And believe it or not, it actually worked. It really did. And I even had enough left to have a small snack before my friend arrived.

Of course, what I hadn't actually considered during this fiasco, was that it is so dark in the club that I was going to I could have been a fluorescent shade of beetroot and still no one would have noticed.

The important thing, of course, is that I experienced this so that I could pass this knowledge onto y'all. Greek yoghurt, kids! Miracle cure, I'm telling you.

Next week on Everything is Not Real: cure herpes with raw egg yolks (and make a tasty, high-protein omelet with the leftovers!)

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

As you know I'm not exactly a huge fan of Tom Cruise. I was absolutely delighted when I read about Tom's marriage proposal to Katie Holmes in the Evening Standard for the simple fact that it gave the editors the chance to run the headline, "Tom Proposes to Katie in Gay Paree!" Ya' gotta love a clever, yet subtle, non-litigious character inferance.

I have just spent the best part of two and a half hours watching Mission Impossible: MI2. Previously I'd only seen it once when it came out at the cinema. This was during the days when I had little opinion of Tom one way or the other.

What struck me watching it again, is that, yes, while Thandie Newton is undeniably very, very beautiful, the main crux of the movie is not actually to entertain the viewers at all, but create as many opportunities as humanly possible, within a 180 minute window, to make Tom look as virile and handsome and clever and sultry, all in slow motion, than you could possibly begin to fathom. On second view all that this epic vanity project served to do was to irritate me beyond belief and I even *gasp* even began to hate Tom more than I did prior to switching on the TV. I mean I really, really hate him! And it also made me hate the fact that he is, in all likelihood, a fellow 'mo. He makes me want to become an anti-gay, right-wing Christian fundamentalist.

Now you might argue that it could be considered slightly odd that I have this opinion when I admit that I would certainly not pass up the opportunity to have le gay sex with him.

But I am, after all, a bit of a slut with very few morals, so it doesn't actually mean anything.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Ok, so it's a few weeks after the fact, but would you like to see some pics from the trip I took to Rome with my Mum? Yes? No?

Well you're going to see them anyway.

To set the scene, here is a picture of me and my Mum, so you know what she looks like:


Almost every time we got someone to take a picture of the two of us she would only remember after the picture had been taken that she hadn't removed her sunglasses. Almost*.

This is a picture of me in a Christopher-has-a-halo thang goin' on, with the occulus of the Pantheon above me:


Directly below the occulus, which is literally a hole in the dome, is a hole in the floor, presumably for the rainwater to drain away through.

Mum: "Hmmm ..."

Christopher: "What?"

Mum: "Why don't they just put in a proper stainless steel plughole?"

Christopher: "What?"

This is a picture of a traditional Italian ice-cream:


We ate a lot of these. Now, if you ever visit a Roman ice-cream parlour you are more than likely to be completely befuddled by the vast selection of every flavour and colour under the Sun and in the rainbow, respectively. I mention colour, because regardless of the fact that the flavour might actually be prawn, the pinky colour can be deeply seductive. Anyhoo, I can reliably inform you that the perennial pistachio flavour is still the best. Despite the fact that the colour looks like mould.

One time, while we were eating something like our twenty ninth ice-cream, my Mum turned and said to me, "Do you think Italians really eat ice-creams? Do you really think they eat pizza and pasta?"

Christopher: "Er, well ... I don't know. I imagine so, because they're Italian, aren't they."

Mum: "Well, do you think they're just for the tourists? I mean the British don't all eat fish and chips, but that's what we're famous** for."

Christopher: " ... "

This is a picture of my Mum and I inside the coliseum:


* Almost every time.

After looking around for about twenty minutes my Mum turned to me and said, "The Romans ... they were a lot like the Greeks really."

Christopher: "Why do you say that?"

Mum: "Well, you know. Because of Hercules."

Christopher: "I don't think you've really thought this through properly."

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a horrible person. I love my Mummy very, very much. Hell, on Friday she put £200 in my bank account! But sometimes, just sometimes, I really question my parental / genetic authenticity.

But I will give her this. As a nurse / hairdresser, she may well have missed her vocation, because it was she who was responsible for taking this awesome picture of me sitting on the base of a column (!) at the front of the Pantheon. Marvel at the long-exposure setting! The composition! How cute I look!!!


** Someone please tell me that us Brits are not only famous for our fish and chips.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

I'm not particularly into comic books, but I'm really into Superman. It was the first movie I ever saw at the cinema. So I'm highly anticipating the new Bryan Singer Superman movie, which is coming out on June 30th 2006.

This is a link to one of his video blogs - I think it features CGI prep for the flying sequences in the actual movie, but I guess it might also be for the video game. Not sure. Either way I have goosebumps.

But seriously, how HOT is Brandon Routh?

He's *this* hot .

Or maybe he's *tttthhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiissssss* hot?

Mercy.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

This morning, at approximately 9.30am, I began to receive wafts of what seemed to be the most putrid case of halitosis, ever, in the history of history.

Now usually it's not possible to smell your own breath (unless you do that "lick forearm, wait ten seconds and sniff" thing.) However, because the team were all out at meetings and the nearest person was sat over 20 feet away from me, I could only deduce that it was indeed I who was responsible for manufacturing this revolting odor.

For the next two hours, as I ploughed through a beautifully prepared, 80-page document featuring statistical information garnered from an omnibus survey company, I felt mortified that I, the freaking self-appointed arbiter of good grooming, had developed a case of bad breath that would no doubt be sought after study fodder by the British Dental Association.

After I had completed my analysis of the survey information I closed the document and lifted it up to put it on the opposite side of my desk. As I passed it underneath my nose I received a great torrent of the afore mentioned foul-smelling effluvium and I instantly discovered that it was not myself who was emitting the breath-smell of a doddery, 80 year-old vicar, but the heavily lacquered document! You can only begin to imagine my relief.

Nonetheless (and because I always like to err on the side of caution), the incident has prompted me to book an emergency appointment to see my dental hygienist. It has also prompted me to make a mental note to never, ever use that particular survey company again, for no other reason than they actually made me doubt my grooming skills.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Yesterday that man and myself were sat in Soho square, with another friend, having lunch.

At one point he offered me a [insert name of round confectionery made by international chocolate conglomerate] which I readily accepted and chowed down on with much satisfaction.

However, after I had thoroughly enjoyed the small chocolate treat, I felt that it was both important and necessary for me to harshly berate him and make him feel guilty for buying the confectionery in the first place, as everyone knows that its parent company promotes and sells its powdered baby milk to mothers in poverty stricken countries for extortionately high prices. By the time that these mothers have run out of money to buy the product, it is too late for them to breast-feed their babies which, as a result, often die.

Of course my decision not to disclose the fact that this company is currently a client of mine was very important. Had he been aware of this information my argument would surely have fallen flat on its face.
Two weeks ago I bought my third iPod. I lost the first one in a fairly gay manner: I left it underneath a copy of Vogue that I discarded on a plane. Oh how I cursed Anna Wintour for not making that edition a collectors issue.

The second iPod, which I replaced last week (not enough room for my vastly-expanding music collection), did not receive such a odd fate (being found by some American Airlines cabin cleaner who will, no doubt, by now be singing along badly to Busted's What I Go to School For.) Well, perhaps it did. I don't know yet. With pure benevolence I gave it to my friend, this man (but not before discovering that I was not going to make more than twenty pounds by selling it on eBay.)

Before I continue it is important that you understand that prior to my bestowing upon him the afore-mentioned second-hand illustrious tune-playing gadget, he had always rolled his eyes any time I ever happened to drop it into conversation (which was, admittedly, fairly often) and had firmly resisted any attempt on my part to get him into the Apple store to, you know, check out the graceful, industrially-designed interior (not to get him to buy one, you understand.)

Of course, like so many people who have always declared loudly and proudly that they "never want children", he has taken to "parenthood" like Michael Jackson to [insert inappropriate analogy here]. Just the other day he proudly informed me that he had memorised the track numbers for a variety of Coldplay and Damien Rice ballads, and I admit to having felt slightly proud. (I also admit to having felt slightly smug over the fact that he had been so easily seduced by the iPod's sleek, shiny white facade.)

In addition to this I can now rely on him to email me, first thing in the morning, with the latest iPod news or hot tip. I'm sure you'll all think that this is quite sweet, which it is. But it also forces me to think something else ...

iPods have so had their day.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Anyone who visits my little blog with any regularity will know that I'm not very good at picking up threads from previous posts. From now on I'm going to try to be a bit better at doing that.

I haven't posted yet about my Grandma's funeral because I haven't really known what to write. After all, it's was a funeral. Unlike celebrations funerals are only ever, overarchingly sad. I managed to read that section from The House at Pooh Corner without sobbing, although my voice did falter on a number of occasions when I happened to glance over at my family for a just moment.

Anyway ... it was a funeral. 'Nuff said.

Over the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of thinking about Grandma. The main thing I can't get my head around (and I guess that this is true for everyone who is left behind) is the fact that for as long as I live I will never, ever see her or speak to her again. It's so obvious, but when someone has been a part of your life for over 30 years it's really quite hard to get your head around.

We all know that death is the only certain thing about life. So why is it almost always come as such a surprise?

Friday, August 19, 2005



















At last ... it's official! Mark Feehily, the gay one from Westlife, is officially gay! I'm so glad because I always fancied him and clearly now that he is definitely a 'mo I am in a much better position to have a long-term relationship with him.

A question though ... is it "brave" to come out just as your star is irretrievably dipping out of sight on the horizon? In the meantime, I'm off to listen to "Against All Odds" and imagine that he's crooning to me.