Friday, August 26, 2005

August 27

Back in the library transcribing away at thirty seconds of breathlessly boring 'intimate conversation' : I had always thought intimate conversation might be something that I'd like to hear but now I suspect that what I wanted was the selected highlights which probably crop up once every millennium. Perhaps I should watch television instead. Or is it television that has made me an event junkie? Last night I watched 'Spooks' and cried when the beautiful star of MI5 is sentenced to ten years jail for causing the death of an evil Turk (which by the way she did for the greater good of the human race, since she is not only beautiful and composed but also deeply compassionate). Luckily this is television and she doesn't have to serve ten years ( they swapped her for a smackie) but something even more heartrending occurs when the young black spy who has loved her since he first set eyes on her but can't have her because it's television and miscegenation is forbidden has to convince her to take her fake passport and leave for Chile. Actually that was probably the part where I cried.

A brief flash of excitement sometime last week when I realised that there were four comments on one of my posts. Here are the 'people' who love my work:

anonymous 1: Wedding Photographers UK
anonymous 2: Free software downloads site
anonymous 3: car loans related site
anonymous 4: cheap ceiling fan blog and website. ' I have a cheap ceiling fan website. It pretty much covers cheap ceiling fan related stuff.'

I'd just like to thank you all for your support: thank you and goodnight.


Tuesday, August 16, 2005

August 17

Marcin, forgetting his Slavic pragmatism and resorting to near metaphor (admittedly plagiarised) told me once that a translation is like a woman- either it's beautiful, or it's faithful. This week the news has been of terrorist suspects in dressing gowns peering through their night googels and fondling rocket lunchers by a mosque where the light minaret is zodiac and has ceramic. It reads like a cross between a transvestite shooting outing and a science fiction novel and I have decided that the translated lady of Appen Speech Technologies is neither beautiful nor faithful, but very funny.

As for Marcin I'm currently deeply charmed by him and feeling the sort of pathological tenderness usually reserved for babies and puppies. I am reading Women Hormones and the Menstrual Cycle surreptitiously on the train and hoping that it will provide me with an explanation for this unnatural affection. Or is it enough to say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Trying to rent out Cameron's room which has been a bit of a fiasco. One man called on behalf of his Thai girlfriend and rejected the room out of hand when he found that it was a seven minute walk from the station. Another came round and ranted for an hour about his days at a Scottish hunting lodge owned by the Swedish Tetrapak millionaire. Most candidates turned up their noses at the dwarf dunny in the back yard but eventually we found one nice normal girl who appeared interested. We will see tomorrow when she has to put her money where her mouth is.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

August 13

Cameron is moving out of the house this weekend and has spent the last few days immured in papers lamenting the fact that no matter how much he throws away, the amount of crap around him never reduces. He is trying to get rid of his porn collection so I inherited White Trash Whore 17- the next night he had a dream that he was killing mice by feeding them poisoned Tim Tams and then wrapping them in the pages of dirty magazines, then burying them in the compost where they were (in a shocking twist) discovered by his father.

Looking again for a housemate: hoping for a somebody with two X chromosomes, a functioning bank account and a brain. I feel annoyed about having to look again but as Marcinski says homies have to help themselves.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

August 8

A weekend in Newcastle with Phoebe and her lover Bruce- walking on the dog beach, Bruce regaling us with tales of canine passion- labrador meets golden retriever, schnauser meets doberman, chihuahua meets rottweiler. The beach is long and terminates with a red outcrop of soft rock at one end and a cluster of smokestacks at the other: in the middle Bruce and Phoebe stopped and I kept walking until I had worked myself into a state of low grade ecstasy where every touch of my feet on the sand produced the female equivalent of an erection. Driving back Phoebe told us about her grandmother who had advised her from a young age to 'keep herself nice' ('I thought she meant I had to brush my hair'), but wondered frequently in her cups why young women were ever homeless when they could pull out the furry chequebook in exchange for a roof over their heads.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

August 3

Lunch with Jack in a Chinatown food court which left me -as always- feeling disturbed. Why did I think that I wanted to have a relationship with such a joyless creature? I listed his flaws all the way back to the university: unhappiness, a complex about being persecuted because of his swarthiness and dress sense, unhappiness, unhappiness, unhappiness. Is it a flaw? Then I realised that the reason these meetings bother me is because I have abandoned him so completely and can't (or won't) feel anything for him at all, when once I would have sold my soul to be loved by him. I find it hard to meet his eyes and I know that it's because I'm scared that he wants something from me, that he will ask me for something I'm entirely unable and unwilling to give. Ah guilt. That's what it is.

Later: I have just been to a yoga class at the university- the teacher is named Erin and she has a cavity where other women have stomachs. Here I discovered the shocking truth that I like to chant ommmm. I also spoke to Klaus Masannek last night (with much trepidation) and was surprised to find him a) available (Marcin's theory being that he was skiing in Bavaria) and b) civil. I will have to find a new demon for my romantic and other kinds of trauma.