NEW BOYFRIEND

I get my kicks from the 65-year-old newspaper vendor at the end of my road these days.

He started out as an amiable old grump, telling me I was the only person in the locale who bought the 20p ‘i’ and taking the mickey out of me for not buying a “proper newspaper”.

As my visits for the ‘i’ started to become a daily occurrence, his mood lightened and he started wishing me a nice day as I disappeared through the mouth of the Tube station directly opposite his box.

And then he started getting psychic. Last week, newspaper man sensed my arrival at his boxy stall before I even came “into shot”. As I approached, scrummaging around in my bag for 20p, an arm suddenly appeared from within wielding my ‘i’.

However, then I realised the Tube man who was standing at the counter must have told newspaper man I was coming as newspaper man then asked Tube man: “So what do you think close-up?”

“Not bad,” replied Tube man. “Not bad? I’ve seen your missus, ,mate. My girlfriend beats her hands-down.” Looking at my head, clapped down on the iPhone balancing precariously on my right shoulder, newspaper man added: “Dunno what’s wrong with her neck, but I’m not complaining.”

At the weekend, 65-year-old newspaper vendor asked me where I’d been the previous week. At home in Birmingham, I told him. He shook his head and said “Poor you”, before adding: “But I bet you come from the posh part.”

Yesterday he greeted my arrival with: “Ahhh, my Birmingham beauty.” Needless to say – being pathetic, and with compliments thin on the ground, of late – I waltzed into the Tube with a smug grin on my face.

Today, there was a different Tube man standing at newspaper man’s stall. As I approached, newspaper man smiled and told his mate: “My girlfriend. She’s the reason I get up in the morning.”

“If she was my girlfriend,” the Tube man laughed lustily, “I wouldn’t be getting up in the morning.”

Cue: lots of old man pervy laughter.

I loved it.

SMALL THINGS

The government are putting together some kind of happiness survey to monitor the nation’s general well-being right now. Ugh, please don’t.

They say the results will be published regularly in the same way as crime rates. Yeah, makes sense.

Anyway, in light of this there have been lots of little segments on the news about the small things in life that make people happy. So I tried to think of some.

Charlie from BBC Breakfast named a bacon sandwich on fresh bread and a strong coffee as one of his pleasures. Charlie from BBC Breakfast, you are one of mine. There’s something about you. I wonder what lies under that neatly knotted tie of yours.

Here are three things that have made me do a mental Dick Van Dyke jumpy heel-click, today:

My daily caffeinated hot beverage in RED CUP, thus indicating Christmas is on its way.

Large skinny latte, please.

And my beloved WORD WHEEL (see, how I got the nine-letter word and how apt it is… Today I did it in record time, too. I had the nine-letter lovely by Turnpike Lane, two Tube stops from mine.)

This is telling me to get on with my novel

And finally, my new work computer screen saver. See how I moved documents from Don Draper’s face to give me a full view of his beauty. My new screen saver also has the handy side effect of making me look as though I am engrossed in my work when really I am only engrossed in Don Draper’s face.

Feel like I'm in the bar with them...

Come and get me now, David Cameron.

NINE-LETTER SUCCESS

I gingerly picked up a copy of the ‘i’ today and despite trying to focus on the news stories at the front of the paper, I watched helplessly as my fingers began flicking to the back where the “word wheel” lies.

I felt a little sick, wondering if it would again defeat me – last week’s failure having caused the onset of a series of miserable events (yes, I’m aware I have OCD. But just because I know I have it, doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen if I don’t get the nine-letter word wheel puzzle.)

Oh, and the miserable events were punctuated by nice events, of course – which I’m trying to focus on.

Some of these nice events included:

* Getting tipsy with my writing class colleagues.

* Watching my petite wife-to-be, T, attempting to get us both a Pot Noodle from the toppest of top shelves of my local shop, at 2 am on Sunday morning. This saw T balancing on a jar of Polish pickled eggs while trying to bat the noodles down with an extra long packet of dried wholemeal spaghetti.

* Watching the manager of the shop approaching T as she toppled from the pickled eggs, picking her up and hoisting her on to his shoulder to reach the Pot Noodles.

* Going to my local pub and having a Sunday roast and a blow-your-brains-out Bloody Mary.

* Listening to the pianist, who’s a new Sunday afternoon fixture of said local, play modern hits in a classical style. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and a piano-y bootleg of Andy Williams’ Music To Watch Girls By mashed up with Blur’s Boys And Girls were severe highlights.

* Watching Any Human Heart on Channel 4 – lots of tasteful nakedness.

And anyway, there’s good news. I did it. Take that, you puzzle-bugger, I cracked you in record time, today. Probably about 20 minutes.

My nine-letter word was “muttering” which came to me as I ascended the escalators in St Paul’s Tube station. Appropriate seeing as I was “muttering” under my breath like a drunk as I ascended the escalators in St Paul’s Tube station.

And that’s that. As I said, my life is all about the crossword and the cat these days.

I miss David Miliband.

CROSSWORDS AND CATS

I’m not writing about men anymore.

I have no men to write about which helps.

Writing about men I have any kind of a dalliance with is a sure-fire way of ensuring it never happens again. See in particular: the HOT Irish man who snogged my face off and caused me to giddily blog about it, while in the early throes of a death-hangover, the next day.

And others.

If by any chance I meet someone nice one day, I can never write about him on here. Or maybe I can get around it in some kind of coded way. I will look into this if I ever meet anyone nice. I know I have a bit of time on my hands.

From now on, I’m going to concentrate on the other main areas of my life: my cat. And the crosswords.

I have discovered that the foor-footed furry ball of fluffiness and I are utterly codependent, like a couple. We might even be in danger of morphing into the same person: a catson.

The other morning I was slurping on my blueberry-studded porridge when I looked over to see my clawful wedded wife in the kitchen, doing the same with her Tuna Felix.

After my breakfast I went to the loo and she followed, shuffled into her litter tray and had a wee while I was having a wee.

I turned the shower on, then went into my room to retrieve yesterday’s damp towel from the floor, and saw my furry partner having her own version of a shower on my bed (leg cocked behind ear, tongue deep in nether regions).

When I do my makeup in the living room mirror, she watches me intently from her rug. Probably to check I get my ’60s black eyeliner flicks just right. Milli naturally has said feline eyeliner thanks to the luck of her colouring. She is black and white and I have been dying my hair darker of late, almost to the point of blackness. See: we are turning into the same person and I didn’t even realise.

So then we come to the crossword bit: I am obsessed with the “word wheel” puzzle in the new ‘i’ newspaper.

I have developed mild OCD as a result: I have to get the nine-letter word hidden in the “word wheel” otherwise something bad will happen. Or I’ll just get really annoyed with myself.

Last Thursday, for the first time in three whole weeks, the unthinkable happened: I didn’t get the nine-letter word.

I had to look it up in the answers section after raking my brain for almost a day. Ironically, the word was: authoring.

I completed my creative writing course yesterday and felt quite emotional about it. I’ve enjoyed going to the Groucho Club on a Saturday afternoon and “creating”. But my classmates and I have all swapped emails.

In fact, I ended up in the pub with two of them last night. Not the sloaney girl and the boy with curtains I predicted would be, against all odds, my best friends by the end of the course, but a boy and a girl I always thought were nice and had potential to be friends with. We’d not had more than ten minutes’ weekly conversation before last night but somehow we ended up being the last ones in the bar, talking complete hilarious filth about our esteemed writing teachers (who are also successful published authors.)

In the meantime, I have agreed to enter into a civil partnership with one of my bezzies, T, if we are still single at 40. Our first dance is either going to be Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing (this has a strong emotional resonance for us both) or Only You by the Flying Pickets.

I am leaning towards the latter because we have agreed our relationship will not be of a sexual nature – Marvin is just going to confuse us. We’re going to have the perfect marriage: the weeks will be spent watching Miranda, Mad Men and eating pasta. The weekends will be filled with wine and young boy-snogging.

T has decided to put her body forward for the production of a child. She is going to use a turkey baster and one of her best gay friends, but the child will be ALL ours. However, she told me she doesn’t want me there at the actual birth as she might feel a bit weird. I have told her it is essential that I’m there, thank you – and that it will only deepen my love for her.

We have 6/7 years to play with, but something tells me I’ll be in that delivery room one day watching T scream her little eyeballs out while the Flying Pickets play on a loop in my brain.

BUGGER OFF, S.A.D.!

Many people – including me – are looking Gordon grey-faced and sounding down-in-the-dumps at the moment.

Bloody Seasonal Affective Disorder.

If only God – or whoever it is who decides these things – would listen to all those economist-type people who say leaving the clocks just as they are would increase business and productivity levels and lower depression.

Why does God insist on us pushing that hour hand back and plunging us all into the doldrums?

I knew there was a reason I didn’t believe in her.

It is essential in November, if you suffer from the seasonal blues, to come out fighting, I find. Before Winter drags you into its neck-breaking icy depths where all you see looming ahead of you is a black frost-bitten hell.

I am combatting this by:

* Not getting up until 8.05

* Eating a Multibionta every morning and singing “Multibionta” to the tune of Dirty Diana each time.

* Drinking a Berocca on the day after drinking.

* Attempting to be creative. Mine and the sis’s play – with a topical nod to the current “swingeing” government cuts – is coming on in leaps and bounds. Sort of.

* Saying “swingeing” a lot.

* Doing a ballet class on Thursday nights. (And looking like one of the hippos from Fantasia in the process).

* Attending my writing class with as little hangover left from Friday as possible (with the help of Nurofen, a Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle and 1.5l bottle of fizzy water on Friday at 11.53 pm). In Saturday’s class we had to describe the strawberry – look, taste, smell – sitting in front of us on the table, in as much detail as possible. I used words such as ‘slimey’, ‘acrid’, ‘bitter’ and ‘greasy’. Then I had to incorporate that description into a narrative. The class told me my description of the strawberry would lend itself excellently to a story about sexual disappointment. It’s like they were staring through the window of my very soul without permission.

* Rejoicing the fact I’ve shaken off the Sophisticated Aussie – (see above).

* Going to bars and clubs with ’90s-tastic garage basslines.

* And, er, that’s it for now.

Oh, and in other news, it’s the three-date-fling-sexual-pervert’s birthday today. Feeling kindly, I sent him a text saying: ‘Happy Birthday, you x’, to which he replied with a question after my schedule. I made a joke about us falling out over naked-text-just-don’t-show-your-face-gate and he seemed quite worried that I was serious. The text rally ended with him telling me: “I love you!! X”

Maybe he does…

DIDN’T TAKE HIM LONG…

Yesterday I tried to make sense of my life.

First stop: mopping my floors and washing my gym kit to eradicate the stench of cat wee in my flat.

Then I went on to my old friend, the dating site, to delete my profile. I am not subscribed to the site anymore but up until last night, my face was still peering longingly from its pages.

It was the first time I’d logged on since the end of August and, as you do, I had a little peruse to see who’d looked at my profile in the intervening months. Answer: two freaks.

However, while scrolling through my Fan page to get to the “hide your profile” bit of the site, I was greeted by the face of Sophisticated Aussie. With a whole new profile and the words “Online now” blinking beneath his new picture.

My initial reaction was to feel a little winded/gutted. My second reaction was to feel vindicated.

If he were ever that into me he would have followed up on my “Let’s maybe discuss us over a drink when I’m back from my folks’ house?” text, last week. He surely would have given it one last shot, at least? I know I did with my snowy holiday boyfriend all those months back (sob. Blub.)

Instead, he just ran back online. Which I think is the best place for him. I think a virtual world is maybe where he feels most at home. He gets to be wry, witty and sexy there, instead of nervous, nerdy and backward-in-coming-forward.

It made me think of the time I went to his house for that first snog and he ordered me a taxi home, online, instead of calling a cab office and “having to speak to someone”.

The world of internet dating is not based in ultimate reality. Many of the “hook-ups” aren’t 100% genuine. Surely if Sophisticated Aussie and I had met at work or in a bar, seen each other for a few months and then split up, it would be different. Wouldn’t we both lick our wounds a bit before moving on?

But in SA’s case, he’s just headed straight back to his Argos catalogue of girls. He didn’t even give me a week to get in touch!

At least I can stop worrying that I broke his poor, little butternut squashy heart.

I hope he and his bike, his lentils and his limericks, are very happy…

WHIRLWIND WEEK

Sometimes life can go a bit mental and feel like it’s on Fast Forward.

This past week has been like that: filled with double work shifts, boy stuff, unplanned drinking sessions, wedding receptions, heavy metal gigs (hardcore D&B, if we’re picking hairs), scary cinema jaunts and a trip home to the folks’ (filled with pizza, Mad Men and niece-munching.)

The catalyst for much of the above (particularly the boy stuff – which has centered around flirting with 18-year-old boys, texts from pop stars, and other, erm, boy stuff) is that the Sophisticated Aussie is now out of the picture.

A flying visit home last week helped me come to my decision to just end it. Stepdad and friends – girl G and boy G – were instrumental in the decision process. The word “anorak” was bandied about. Similarly, when I saw my friend K and her boyf P on Saturday, similar descriptions were issued. “Why was he texting you, while you were on holiday, about lentils?” asked P incredulously. “Why wasn’t he making flirtatious comments about your tan lines?”

Yup, so…

I sent him a text message to end things. Lame, you might think, but that was the only way we had communicated over the long two and a bit months we’d been dating.

I was honest: said the chemistry wasn’t right even though we were great on paper (I took half of the blame, you see) and that we could always have a phone chat if he wanted.

He sent a nice-ish text back saying he certainly liked me and thought things were going well but that schedules hadn’t been kind and that we could talk “if I liked”.

Where was the passion, the fire?

Since the text message (which wasn’t followed up with a call), I’ve had a few short-lived flirtations with a few boys (Austin Powers must have slipped me his Mojo when I wasn’t looking), all of which have only served to stress how incompatible me and the Sophisticated Aussie were.

So that’s that.

In other news: my sis and I are writing a play, inspired by things such as the above, and it’s going to be ace. Well, we’ll definitely go and see it, and we’ll probably be able to drag a few other family members along if they’re not busy that day.

And in other news, I think I may be warming to the irritating idiot girl in my creative writing class.

Knew it.

In other news: I really miss David Miliband.

A PLEASANT EXCHANGE WITH A PERV

If any two people could be at more opposite ends of the scale than Sophisticated Aussie and Exotically Named Three-Date-Fling, I’ll eat my new boots.

A couple of nights ago, in amidst fielding texts from the refined Antipodean, I received one from the other one. (NB: The one who has pestered me regularly, since May, in the pursuit of “sexy pictures”, despite my constant sarcastic rebuffs.)

Not to be thwarted until at least the 306th attempt, ENTDF sent me this: “I finally have an iPhone so if you want to send a sexy pic, please, by all means do so.”

“Thanks for the kind offer, but think I’ll pass,” I replied.

“Don’t be shy, you can hide your face,” he swiftly suggested in response.

ERM? What the…? Why doesn’t he just get some DVDs in? Trawl the net? Where does he get off? (In fact, don’t answer that.)

“Charming!” I replied. “All your needs can be catered for on the internet, dear.”

I got a stroppy little SMS back an hour later: “I meant so no-one knows it’s you! Okay, I won’t ask you again.” I particularly love the element of emotional blackmail in this one.

And that was that.

I think if I were to put ENTDF and SA in a man version of a food blender and whizz them all up it might just result in the perfect man.

Either that or a disgusting, sludgy pool of sick.

LORD CHATTERLY’S LOVER

I think I am Lord Chatterly’s lover, minus the rampant rogering.

I’m talking about the sophisticated Aussie.

I saw him last night for the first time in a couple of weeks. He took me to a restaurant, which has just been voted in the Top 3 in London.

Seeing how my cold had taken me up in the snottiest of grips, he prescribed a red wine that came from a vineyard close to his hometown in Canberra. (Fortunately, I felt too rough to mourn the lack of Pinot Grigio tonight.)

He told me a bit about the history of the wine and when it turned up at the table – thank faaaack – the waitress offered it to him to try first.

Needless to say, he took the glass by the bottom of its stem, swirled the contents and dipped his nose in for a sniff before drinking.

I felt the need to turn away in case he spat it on the floor. But he swallowed.

Once the waitress was off, we cheersed (gingerly, on my part) and took a big slurp. Well, I took a big slurp. He placed his glass back down on the table because it needed more time to breathe.

Christ.

I wanted to tell him it was bad luck to do a toast and then place your glass down without taking a sip. I also think it’s bad manners in some cases. But that wine needed to breathe.

What does he see in me? I am his bit of rough.

Or maybe he thinks of me as a rough diamond whose edges he can file down via a rigorous regime of fine dining and talk of wine, cooking (butternut squash and lentils factor high in his daily diet) and being in the open air on a bike.

I showed him a picture of the bikes my cous and I hired in Lanzarotte and he smiled encouragingly at me.

I really wanted to tell him that after our first cycling escapade, my cousin – whose seat was raised uncomfortably much higher than mine – told me her “vagina was shot”. But I stopped myself.

Maybe I should find someone I can laugh about vaginas with.

After our meal, SA hailed me a cab, walked me across the road, gave me a kiss and told me to get better. Then he texted while I was still in the cab, telling me he’d had a lovely night.

What to do next…

BACK TO SCHOOL

This time last week it was 30 degrees (in Lanzagrotty). This time this week, brown leaves are crumpling into dust on the pavements, weather forecasters are looking sheepish and my nose is running faster than Usain Bolt.

There’s a real back-to-school feeling in the air, or is it just me? I even have the new coat, new bag and new boots.

It probably also has something to do with the fact I started my six-week writing course yesterday. As I approached the Groucho Club, I felt like an awkward adolescant kid on her first day of term at a new secondary school. If the new school was a notorious private members’ club in London.

On slightly shaky legs, I made my way upstairs to the Nelson Room (it began with an ‘N’ but not sure it was the Nelson room) and sat around a big oval table (in a room that looked like Roger Sterling from Mad Men’s office) with 16 strangers in communal awkward silence until the lesson began.

You could tell we were all weighing up whether or not to introduce ourselves, spark up small talk, or whether to just wait for the teachers to do it all for us. I was concerned that no sooner had my voice broken out of my mouth at an attempt at chit-chat with the girl next to me than the lesson would begin and I’d be rendered mute again. So I kept it buttoned.

The woman next-door-but-one from me braved it though, mumbling self-consciously to the guy next to her that she liked his moleskin notebook. “Thanks,” said the guy. “My girlfriend bought it for me.” And that was that. I could tell they were both mentally mortified by the exchange. Her: “I wasn’t coming on to you.” Him: “I didn’t mean that I thought you were coming on to me.”

As is the way with a coming-together of a big, random group of people, there were those you can imagine liking and those that make your toes curl in irritation.

There was one guy – a “poet” with poker-straight, mid-length hair curtains- who was so posh he either sounded South African or was South African. And there was a typical Kensington gal who told the room she studied “English Lit and Lang at ‘King’s'” and then proceded to patronise anyone she could lay her tonsils on by telling them how “greeeeeeeeeeeeat” their efforts were. (They will probably be my favourites by the end of the course. It’s been known to happen.)

Twenty minutes into the lesson, we were given our first exercise. “Write down: ‘S/he opened the cupboard,'” said teacher Sean, who looks and sounds like a Scandanavian Salmon Rushdie. Then: “Now, write whatever comes into your head for the next 7 minutes and we will read them out to the class afterwards.”

AAAAAARGH.

My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of my mouth when I read my ‘piece’. “She opened the cupboard and the smell knocked her backwards…” it began. I read a Sophie Hannah book on holiday so I was in psychological thriller mode. Only I’m glad I didn’t get to finish my mini story because for some reason the smell in my mind’s eye (nose?) was created by a dead pet snake who’d disappeared three months ago, and not from a dead body.

My story all happened in a kitchen cupboard rather than a coat cupboard, too, so it was inherently confused.

I have homework to be getting on with now: re-reading a book I read recently and noting style, structure, dialogue etc, and writing a character sketch based on anyone I want.

I kind of want to do the posh South African poet but I’d better not.

I’d better go now too as my nose is dribbling all over my keyboard and it’s been at least six hours since my last Lemsip Max.