Category: Guest Weeks

(Posted by Fi)

Oh dear I’ve made it to the final hurdle and run out of steam. You’ve probably all gone home for the week already anyway, so I’ll just talk about shoes.

I love shoes. Not in a fetishistic way, just in that way that one woman can love her shoes. Don’t understand what I mean? Go stand in a shoe shop and watch women fight over the final pair of suede boots with the kitten heel and tasseled edgings around the top that have been reduced to sell.

My favorite shoes are my most comfortable ones. I heard someone say that in life you need comfortable shoes and a comfortable mattress cause if you’re not in one you’re on the other. I’d have added a couch in there myself but it would have thrown the “one/other” format off. They’re made by a company that does far too much sponsorship so I won’t add to it here. Rhymes with “dyke” though. They’re also the least feminine shoes I own.

After the running shoes there’s a myriad of flats, sandals and flip-flops before we get to kitten heels. Kitten heels are called that because they were discovered by kittens, specifically Puss in Boots, whilst accompanying Dick Whittington to London noticed that high heels caused her boots to sink into the ground and flat soles were just not stylish enough.

I have boots with Cuban heels too. Cuban heels are special because in the early sixties JFK had to threaten Castro with nuclear retaliation if he didn’t stop the propagation of Cuban heels across the USSR, they were putting the US kitten heel industry in danger of extinction. The gambit paid off and ever since Cuban and kitten heels have been in a carefully balanced eco-system.

Platforms however are entirely different. For one thing I hate having trains stop beside them when I wear them. Very inconvenient. People stand on your toes, nudge towards the front and just cramp your style underneath the arches. They do however turn you into one tall b*tch that nobody is likely to f*ck with.

Probably my best pair of shoes, albeit the most uncomfortable are a pair of YSL Rive Gauche black leather sandals with leather laces that tie up to the top of the calf muscle and 4 inch metal spiked heels. They’re lethal. I came close to killing three people including myself with them one evening in an incident I try not to think about involving a bannister, a very short dress and a desire to relive the thrill of sliding down said bannister.

When we think about heels, what do we actually conclude? Were they designed by men to make women easier to catch? Were they favored by women because they countered the height difference? Are they merely useful tools for stamping on people’s feet? Do they really accentuate the legs, tighten the calf and thigh muscles and flatter the female form or are they merely a way of warning people you’re coming up behind them with that endless click-clack noise… I don’t know, I just like shoes.

(Posted by Buni)

Do you ever get to the end of a relationship, be it for a night or a for a much longer period, and through all the upset of it finishing / ending you have to think to yourself, “Was That All It Was?” – just a way to pass the time?

The former, where you’ve been out for the night with mates or perhaps on a date, you’ve had a few drinks and the beer / wine goggles are kicking into action. Though, for that night and that night only, the other person was the most important, beautiful and interesting person in the room; they meant absolutely everything to you, or so you thought.

The next day, the sun rises, the milk and postie comes and goes. You wake with that realisation that, there is someone else in the bed with you. Then it all comes flooding back, the flowing drinks, the flirtatious attention, the dancefloor, the taxi (the shocked taxi-driver), the hall, the bedroom……..here, to now. You then have to admit to yourself that it wasn’t such a bad night after all, you had a good time didn’t you? In fact thinking about it, it was a damn good night. You take a glance over your shoulder to check out the bedmate for some reassurance. They stir; NOT YET! Actually they’re not at all bad. It’s at this point that you have a choice; more of the same, a repeat performance or tea / toilet / polite conversation. You decide on the first option, just to make sure that you did have a good night. After – much delayed – polite conversation you ask if they’d like to get together again, perhaps their phone number? While they’re putting on their clothes, you’re politely told that they think your both old enough to realise you’re not going to call each other. “Let’s be grown up about this, eh? We had some fun, that’s all.”

Was That All It Was?

The latter is more involved. It may or may not start like the above but the ending is different, you both realise that you are old enough and mature enough to call them / them calling you. You begin to see each other and grow fond of each other. Time passes and your lives become interwoven into a neat tapestry of commitment. The initial insecurity about letting your barriers down about certain things has been overcome, you know they’re not going to hurt you. Don’t you. You enjoy a period of happiness and then at some point, something happens, for whatever reason there has been a short circuit somewhere in the relationship and it all starts to falter. It all starts to go terribly, horribly wrong; before you know it you’re back to square one (see above). You feel bitter and betrayed. It wasn’t your fault it was theirs, they >>ADD YOUR REASON HERE<< and they didn’t see your point of view. We’ve given up x amount of our lives for each other and that’s it, over, done, finito.

Was That All It Was?

(Posted by Mark)

Advertisers like to state about their products that they are ‘the thing you can rely on’ or comment that ‘if only everything in life was as reliable as Brand X’. It’s part of the way that they play upon the unreliability of so many aspects of our life, feeding into our insecurities about dependability and inconstancy, hoping that we will recognise their product as a way of enhancing our otherwise topsy-turvy, late again, broken down humdrum. Of course, Troubled Diva readers are far too canny to be duped by such messages, but issues of inconsistency and reliability are why we spend time (or waste time, depending on your particular viewpoint) on the science of second-guessing.

Is it true?
Interpreting what people say and what people mean is, to put an honest face on it, bloody difficult. Firstly, you need to establish whether they are wilfully lying to you, whether they are lying to you by omission, or whether they have dressed up the message in obscure, arcane or masked language. If they are outright lying to you then you have the option of corroboration, unless they are expressing a personal opinion. The old “it’s not you, it’s me” line is particularly apposite here, for the varying shades of meaning and duplicity it can cover. Translating what the other is saying is akin to revealing a Potemkin village.

When Catherine the Great toured her empire, she wished to see things in the best possible light, despite her advancing years and failing eyesight. In order to ensure that the Empress was presented with a positive view of her domain, her chief minister Potemkin ordered that elaborately constructed and beautifully crafted fake villages be built in the Ukraine and Crimea for the Imperial visit. Thus, when Catherine toured these places she was shielded from the poverty, drudgery and desperation of the average peasant, instead seeing happy, clean and well-dressed subjects outside their warm, safe homes. Once the tour was over, these villages, like film sets, were struck and normal life was resumed. Seeing past the façade of guarded conversation is very much like taking a closer look at the Potemkin village to reveal the stagecraft behind.

Body language considerations come into play as well. The most interesting time to interpret body language is when you believe that someone is lying. And, as with all good things, the best way to interpret this is through the use of monkeys. The ‘speak no evil’ monkey tells us that when someone is speaking with their fingers to their mouth, or using their hand to block the sounds, they are lying. The ‘hear no evil’ monkey tells us that the liar will somehow protect their ears, by covering them with the hand or directly blocking the earhole with their finger. The ‘see no evil’ monkey tells us that when lying, the person will rub their eyes when talking. There are a lot of other characteristics, but we don’t have enough monkeys for them.

Is it sure?
Of course, second-guessing at a meaning is not only necessary when the other person is lying. They may well be truthful, but unclear in their own mind as to what message they are trying to convey and by speaking their unorganised or unstructured thoughts, they will help themselves to decide. In this case, you are attempting to get to the root of their feelings, not necessarily their words: opening a small window into their minds to work out the real meaning rather than how they are expressing it. This is extremely intricate because you are sifting through a disorganisation of potentially conflicting or self-contradictory opinions and statements, as well as emotions which ebb and shift while they are trying to form a coherent, unified approach to the situation. To get to the determinate point may well take many narrow, bending roads.

Perhaps this is why an oft-repeated phrase in arguments or when having the dreaded ‘deep and meaningful’ conversation is “I don’t know”. The questions which you ask or are asked may well be ones you can prepare for or ones which directly address the thinking you have done on the issue, but there are always those particular posers which leave you answerless. Then it is the turn of the questioner to second-guess whether you are answerless because you haven’t thought about it, because you are trying to work out a way of making it sound better, or whether you are devising a way to leave certain things out.

Is it complete?
Whether they are telling you the truth or not, they are probably not telling you everything, so you’ll need to be alert to omissions. “This is pretty much everything,” you will be told. What this means is that it is not everything. There is the possibility that this is a stylistic tic of spoken language which this person has adopted and that they do mean everything, in fact. There is also the possibility that they are covering themselves in case certain factors or consequences occur, in which case they will legitimately be able to point back at the conversation to defend themselves with “Well, I did say ‘pretty much’, I didn’t mean everything”. You’ll have to decide which of the two you believe.

There are also situations where you can only hear half the story. When A splits up with B and you only hear one viewpoint, it’s fairly safe to say that you can second-guess some of what really went on, but until you’ve heard about or directly spoken to the other side to get their perspective, you are still a long way from completing the picture. Even when you have both sides, the variety in how certain incidents are recalled, how they each expressed themselves, what actions took place in what order may all be wildly changed. Whether this is done for self-serving or self-protecting reasons is what you have to work out for yourself, as well as trying to adopt a middle view and then seeing what they’re missing out and why.

Also, you can second-guess meanings through the detail of the language: the more vague the wording, the more likely that real reasons and key motivations are missing. You can probably make your own list, but ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, ‘partly’, ‘appears to’ are all genuine contenders for a Top Ten of words and phrases which mask the deeper, underlying meaning, and getting past them appears to be sort of partly tricky. You see what I did there? Second-guess me, go on.

Is it them?
What you believe and what you want to believe are two completely separate things and you should be careful not to colour your second-guessing with wishful thinking, as this is likely to lead you into areas that the other person hasn’t even mentioned. What you thought was the case and what you wanted the situation to be should not be merged because then you are speaking to the other person on completely different levels and your estimates of what they really mean will be way, way off. Such conversational disconnects provide us with the basis for most sitcoms where, along with mistaken identity, amusing consequences tend to follow. In real life, these disconnects are not often as funny, more often they are disappointing and emotionally charged.

These are just a few of the elements in the science of second-guessing, which resembles an elaborately choreographed verbal dance between people, occuping many different strata of meaning: emotional, social, familial, financial, rational. I’ve deliberately avoided mention of solutions and results in second-guessing because they vary depending on what you are trying to get at, and also because your second-guessing may well have no fixed results. Trying to calculate the motivations of others is frustrating precisely because some statements or actions are motiveless. Even when there are motives, the chances are that you will only second-guess correctly a small percentage of the real reasons. But it’s still better than taking everything at face value, right?

(Posted by Buni)

I’ve always questioned how some people can just flit from one relationship to another; one relationship ends, another starts; or a relationship hasn’t quite ended, and the other is starting already. How? How is this so and how do they do that?

Take ‘X’, they’ve been seeing ‘Y’ for the last year and a half. Things haven’t been easy for a while and they have been drifting apart. One day, Y says to X that they should split (NO chromosome jokes please), which they do. Then, before you know it, X is seen out and about in town with Z. Barely a few weeks have gone by and they’re at it again.

At this point I should point out that I’m all for picking yourself up and getting on with life, but it just seems so……..disposable. What about depth of feeling, do they have depth of feeling or are they just going along for the ride? Are they just settling into taking second best (i.e. pretty much anyone) as it’s a much more appealing option than being single. I have no idea.

I have absolutely no qualms about being single. I’m not desperate for anything, maybe that’s why I can’t see the above perspective. If I go out or go clubbing, I rarely if ever go looking for anything, I go to have a good laugh, spend time with friends and relax. If I meet someone then that’s just a bonus. I like to meet guys, there is no denying that, but I’m not one for flitting about. I like to bide my time, meet a guy I genuinely like and then go for it. I’m a typical Taurean, once stirred I go at it like a bull.

(posted by Buni)

It must be terribly difficult for a director to come up with decent plot lines, cinematography and direction each and every time they release a film. This must be especially so when the said director happens to be Quentin Tarantino who, with such iconic films to his name as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (amongst others), happens to have quite successfully pulled it off this time too.

Kill Bill is an all round action movie that is pleasing to the eye as well as the ears. With the former, you can clearly see where his influences are; there is traditional Japanese and U.S. cinematography that switches to some of the best Manga out there. With the latter, Tarantino has cleverly spliced together tracks as diverse as Nancy Sinatra, Luis Bacalov, Isaac Hayes, Bernard Hermann, Tomoyasu Hotei and many others to create a soundtrack that is both exciting and inspiring.

Many have commented on the level of violence within the film and the graphic way it is portrayed. The violence within this film is however, well within context. It is a Samurai film about Samurai Assassins, they’re not going to be doing crochet or ‘pearl one’ for 110 minutes are they? At the end of the day, we know what level of violence we are going to get with Tarantino anyway, if you don’t know by now, where on earth have you been? I’ll give him dues in this area; he switches from contemporary colour in the goriest parts to the more traditional black and white Japanese Samurai films of the 60’s and 70’s, just to save us from the level of red out there.

I said earlier that Tarantino manages to pull off cool, iconic film after cool, iconic film. I’ve though long and hard over the last 24 hours to try and attempt to work out how he manages this. The only conclusion I can come to is that he flies in the face of critics and not only avoids but also uses clichés in the areas of the that it matters most; he’s not afraid to use clichés from his own films either. His advantage is that they are his own; he created them so he will bloody well use them.

Finally, I’d like to comment on the totally obvious way he has created a serial film. Wednesday nights viewing was only Part I, we still have Part II to go yet. I’m not so sure I like this idea or the fact that the film ends just at the point where you start to think that you’re getting into it. I’m not going to ruin the ending for anyone so all I’ll say on the matter is that my point about films is that I find them more interesting and enjoyable when they just leave you wondering if there is going to be another.

(Posted by Fi, after Mark and Zena)

How often have you heard the phrase “I know what I like and I like what I see”? How meaningless and subjective can that statement appear to people who have a different frame of reference to the observer. One man’s spam is another man’s steak. So what if I think that modern art is a load of old Pollocks. What really Lichtenstein’s my Klimt and makes my Gaugin Gogh is a nice Seurat or Monet. I can’t explain what it is about those 19th century French painters that makes my Botticelli all warm inside.

What does all this have to do with Science? Well, if we are to believe Robert Pirsig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the unifying value behind art, science and religion is quality: a judgement brought by the observer to the object being observed and not just a street made of chocolate.

With science we postulate theories, make logical progressions through experimentation and draw conclusions that support our original theory. With art… with art… well… we sort of dab paint on canvases and step back and hope it doesn’t look too crap. Or we cut out square blocks and put them one atop the other and sell them for millions of pounds.

Science has its foundations in art of course, undocumented unfortunately, but true nonetheless. The famous caveman scientist Ug-ugog used stick-figure cave paintings to develop his first invention “fire”. Fire was such an immediate success that the cave was turned into an art gallery with nice lizard canapés served hourly and freshly fermented mammoth pee lager available at the bar.

Conversely art’s roots can be traced back to science. Across the other side of the super-continent Pangea another caveman known as Og-ogug was attempting to determine the origins of a particular species of spineless fish by pinning it up on the wall and rummaging around through the internal organs. The resultant cross of biology and art was also turned into a science museum where tour guides refused to tell you where the nearest dunny was and small pamphlets for coming attractions were handed out.

This conflict and chicken/egg-style paradox lead to the emergence of the first two true religions: The Church of the Fish and the Flowchart Appreciation Society. Suddenly the continent was in turmoil, split right down the middle. Whole tribes went to war to defend the premise that reading the fish innards revealed the future against the blasphemous idea that the flowchart predicted the way. Thousands died clutching small keychains of fishguts or postcards depicting the best panels from the flowchart.

Unsurprisingly, it all ended in tears when the true messiah, Mastadon Smith, left his tall black obsidian obelisk in the middle of the monkey enclosure…

(Posted by Mark)

Giving up
First up, let’s establish the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a quitter. If you’re not winning, and you’re not cheating well enough either, then give up. Persistence doesn’t always pay off, and though few people like a loser, even fewer people like someone who just doesn’t know when to let go. As Zena so correctly points out, failing and then quitting immediately gives you more time to go and fail somewhere else. Spread the failure around, don’t keep it all to yourself.

Yielding when you know that you can no longer win represents a realistic and honest attitude, rather than a bloodyminded insistence that however bad the situation gets, you will continue until the bitter end. For some reason, though, society regards the fact that a captain will go down with the sinking ship as somehow heroic and noble rather than really moronic; though I can see the point that this would serve.

If the ship is sinking, then it must be the captain’s responsibility and he can’t be a very good captain if his ship is scuppered, therefore letting him perish along with the vessel allows you to get rid of an inept mariner. Now that’s good thinking, but still not very heroic. And I’m sure that rats aren’t too chuffed that they’ve been given a bad name simply because they had the sense to desert the sinking ship. Which in turn raises the question: if a ship of rats is sinking, would the rat captain desert or go down with the boat? I think we should be told.

There are, as always, a few minor exceptions to the rule that capitulation is often a sensible course of action. If you have swum halfway across the Atlantic, it seems foolish to give up, turn around and swim all the way back. You should just radio for a cruise ship instead. Also, you should recognise when it is a good time to give up: a split-second after the aircraft has taken off is a bad time to realise that you aren’t yet ready to face your fear of flying. For the best example of when not to quit, watch Lloyd Bridges’ attempts in Airplane and you will see what I mean. Otherwise, though, feel free to give up immediately.

Giving gifts
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis. Quite true, especially if the gift is a bloody big horse made of wood with armed warriors inside. However, as the construction of such an animal is time-consuming at best and pointless at worst, most of us make do with making something smaller, or just selecting and buying pre-manufactured balsa mares gifts. Though I run the risk of being accused of hubris, I would aver that I am quite a good gift-giver, provided that I have remembered the occasion and that I am in the unlikely position of having any money at all. When memory and wealth collide, though, profligacy surely follows.

It’s a great feeling when you see something and immediately think to yourself, “I know exactly who would love that!”. The only better feeling is being there to watch them open it and, hopefully, dance a little jig in celebration at having received a perfectly chosen present. Last birthday, I was on the receiving end of the perfect present. My friends all clubbed together and bought me 12 Bond DVDs, in a box which they had made and decorated with pictures of Bond girls cut out from newspapers and magazines which also contained little tins of caviar, some crispbreads and a bottle of vodka. I recall being speechless with gratitude (and, ahem, booze), though there was no jig-dancing. There was chin-cutting and blood-letting, but no jig-dancing.

Giving money
I would refer you to Messrs Kiedis et al and their previous statement to “give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now”.

Giving directions
As referred to many, many times before, I am an absolutely hopeless navigator, preferring instead to work out my route through ‘zen navigation’: wherever you end up is where you were meant to be. I am, however, quite good at giving people directions. Not directing them in the “1.5km north-north-east” sense, mainly because I never know where north is, wherever I am. I give people real-life directions, though occasionally putting in a bit too much detail:

“Right, go to the end of the street, where the coffee shop is, take a right and walk down just as far as the HMV. Stand with your back to the HMV window display and on your right, across the road, you’ll see a small alleyway. Go down there until the second wheelie-bin, turn left then right and you should be about 20 seconds away. Got that?”

I’m also good at drawing little maps, which is pretty necessary when directing people from my flat to, well, anywhere, but mainly to the tube station. Wiggly lines means the canal, little pint glasses shaded three-quarters black mean pubs, little five pound notes mean banks, shopping baskets mean supermarkets … you get the drift. Camden being Camden, I was wondering whether I should put in other little symbols to denote some of the more ‘local’ attributes: little needles could represent either piercing studios or drug dealers, outstretched palms could mean beggars, and little black inverted crucifixes could indicate goths. It would give the map a bit more of a community flavour, I think.

The two pre-eminent experts at giving directions are my flatmate Mike and my father. Knowing London intricately well, most probably better than either the front or the back of their hand, they seem capable of instructing people through all the back streets, byways, alleyways, one-way streets and short cuts. Whereas I tend to know some areas very well and others hardly at all, Dad and Mike have a knowledge to rival The Knowledge. This is significantly better than most of the minicab drivers who stand by Camden Town station and whose knowledge of Camden itself is rather bad, never mind the rest of London. Half the time, I end up giving them directions – perhaps I should give them a copy of my local map.

Giving as good as you get
Although I am not one to advocate retaliation, it’s vital in the cut and thrust of conversation to be able to stand one’s ground and refuse to be intimidated, cowed or bullied. And it’s even more important that you manage to get at least one cheap gag into a conversation before you’re shot down. Parrying and blocking another person’s verbal barbs is tricky, and is often easier when you’ve never met them before because you have a licence to be as rude or intentionally offensive as you like. It’s especially fun to watch and listen to other people when they are duelling with their wits, mainly because they will probably reveal some secret or some gossip that they weren’t supposed to let slip. Either that or you can learn new put-downs.

It would be perfectly possible to enter into the ‘an eye for an eye’ versus ‘turn the other cheek’ debate here, but I’m certainly bored of it and I imagine you are too. I say that you’re entitled to riposte when someone is deliberately and nastily attempting to belittle or humiliate you. Those who would patronise and humble others in order to make themselves feel good, look good in front of their friends or provide themselves with a way to pass the time, those people should prepare themselves for some equally vituperative and forceful comebacks. I really hate it when people talk down to me, so I see no reason why I should do it to anyone else, and would hope that this is a common view. But then the real measure of a heated conversation is whether the person who’s dishing it out can take it, so you might as well test them.

Giving yourself to the moment
Carefree abandonment. Even the words sound fun, never mind whichever actions or inactions they represent for each person. Surrendering into what you really want to do has to be the most exciting part of the science of giving, without any doubt.

(posted by Zena, after that talented bloke Mark)

Some people think Failing is an art – imprecise, open to the vagaries of colourful creative types – but I’ve got it off to a science. If that is indeed a phrase. I suspect not. But hey, no editor, so bugger you.

Failed
The thing about having failed is it’s on your CV (resumee, honey) for ever. Done deal. So I’ve failed at a couple of jobs, more than a fair handful of relationships, and at small every day tasks, numerous times. No, really. But then my refugee antecedents give me naturally high standards. Standards I can only fail by. Imagine, a big red stamp over your life: FAILED.

Failing
This is like “failing math” in a John Hughes movie circa 1987. Failing math has baggage like being dressed up as Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, and wearing too many bangles and too much eye makeup.

The upside of failing is that you can change course mid-fail (seri-fail?). You can see the eyeliner on the wall, and the accessories piling up and think to yourself “how did I get here?” like you’re in a Talking Heads song, and then get into Failers Anonymous and you’re only twelve steps away from being new and improved like washing powder or gunpowder or even talcum powder.

Failer
I made this up. I have no idea what a failer is. Someone who is currently in the process of failing: someone who has the characteristics of failing hardwired into their personality; a person who never passes, only fails. This is getting depressing, non?

Alternatively, it could be Fayla: the latest North London hip hop diva (have you noticed how all those words end in -a?), and then of course you’re a massive success. Or a showgirl. One or the other.

Failee
I think you can be the victim of someone else’s failure. So my parents are moderately middle-class people – my dad’s a lawyer – who haven’t quite had the life they expected. My Dad’s judgement led to him mistiming and mis-judging a couple of crucial deals that would have meant he could retire at thirty. So I guess that makes my mother a failee: she’s living a certain degree of failure, as a result of the actions of someone else. It’s a good reason not to get married, too, methinks.

I’m just “writing with the door closed” as they say on all those annoying creative-goddess within weekends that I have paid oh-so-much money to have my creative-genes attuned. I’ll stop now. Must go fail at something else.

(Posted by Melodrama)

I do not own a car and rely on cabs to ferry me all around Calcutta. I favour cabs because:
(i) I just do not have the patience to wait for a bus or a tram or the metro.
(ii) I hate crowds.
(iii) I have started enjoying the thrills and heart-stopping moments involving rides in Calcutta cabs.
(iv) I am lazy.

Calcutta cabbies fall under two categories, the bengalis or the non-bengalis. If you have hailed a bengali cabbie, the probability of having an interesting conversation is high. In the past, I have discussed Rabindranath Tagore (I knew next to nothing about Tagore, but after the ride I felt I was equipped with enough trivia to put any self-respecting, cultured bengali to shame), the communist state government in Bengal, the decline of the jute industry, why Dalhousie square was renamed BBD bag, the Goethe Institute and the Calcutta Film festival. Most bengali cabbies are inquisitive and over-helpful and will ply you with advice until you are ready to yell “Tagore” in exasperation.

The non-bengali cabbie is another ball game. You will never need to visit an amusement park as long as you take rides in cabs in Calcutta. The cabbie often harbours the misconception that he is Schumacher and your heart will be in your mouth as you see him weave and twist in the traffic. No self-respecting Calcutta driver drives in a lane, so how can our cabbie? You open your eyes and just when you think the bus charging into your cab will flatten you and you start whispering your final prayers, the cab will lurch and you will bang your head against the cab top and will find that the cabbie is cheek to cheek with the lorry that was along your cab and the driver has stuck half his torso out of the cab to abuse the bus driver who dared to take over his right of way. When you reach your destination the cabbie will have no change and you will often find his meter tampered and spiked. A long argument will ensue between you and the cabbie and will result in you resolving never to take a cab again. Then when you need to return home, you hail a cab and breeze into it and forget all your resolves until your next encounter with a non-bengali cabbie.

(Posted by Mark)

There’ll always be something on your mind you’ll never quite find
Won’t you ever make your mind up?

I find it possible to worry about almost anything at any given moment, despite the fact that I lead what is, in comparison to a lot of the world’s population, a rather worriless and pleasant life. So why worry? Although not quite at the “did I leave the gas on?” level of ill-remembered fretting, many of the things I worry about are embarrassingly trivial. It’s quite similar to sitting around thinking about whether you could ever train cats to play football when someone asks, “What are you thinking?” to which you have to lie “Er, reconstruction in Iraq”, otherwise you sound pathetically shallow (and not a little crazy). With some of the topics for my worrying, such shallowness abounds.

Tasks
This is the most understandable of worries: Did I do X? Have I called Y? Will I get to my location on time? Have I taken the right turning? Will they remember who I am? Did he leave the tickets/keys where he said he would? What’s my name?

Speed-fretting such as this is fairly low grade and can be dispensed with quite quickly. If you are worrying about being lost, then stop being English for a second and just ask a bypasser for directions. You can check your mobile phone to see whether you called someone or whether you are running late. And if you get to your destination and things aren’t entirely perfect, there will probably be either a good explanation or a way of fixing things so it all turns out well. That’s the optimist in me talking. For advanced worriers, the consequence tree has many branches and each different aspect of an outcome will produce another mini-worry chain.

No, the real problem with speed-fretting is when you are worrying about so many different things at the same time that you fall into a kind of shutdown mode. Combining multiple worries can send you into a catatonic state whereby you are incapable of any form of remedial action to resolve your panic. Here’s an example worry chain: Lack of money + delayed train + missed call + not sure of directions + meeting for the first time = a very nervy worrier who is about to go into a state of mental breakdown. And there’s no real solution to this one, other than to stop. You could try the ‘go to your happy place’ trick, but I’m not sure that works and it sounds a bit hippie-ish for my liking.

Work is another area where worrying takes hold. This is usually because you have too much to do and too little time to achieve it. Here again the shutdown mode is evident, because while you are trying frantically to finish off as much as you can, you’re also thinking about what’s next, what can be shelved, what can be delayed and what you can make excuses for. Your mind is not focused on the one thing you are supposed to be doing at that time, and so you make a botched job of it, meaning that the remedy work which will eventually come back to you will add to your overall burden. Don’t you just love vicious circles? For this kind of worrying, there are really only two cures: cigarettes and coffee. If you don’t smoke, take it up. If you don’t like coffee, learn. You’ll need all the nicotine and caffeine you can get to work your way through nightmare days.

People
You shouldn’t, you know, but it’s terribly easy to. It ought not to make a difference, but it really does. Yes, it’s the old worry: what people think. I am 100% positive that I have inherited this trait from my mother, who has an incredibly bad case of “what will the neighbours think” syndrome. WWTNT syndrome is particularly severe in the particular leafy corner of tube zone 4 where our family house is located, with net curtains going all aflutter when strange cars drive down the road and curiously coincidental bumping-into-by-accident meetings whenever I was bringing someone home back in the days I still lived there.

I went to pieces when I should have shouted and screamed instead
So sorry, I said

To be more accurate, I don’t worry about what people think about me in isolation; I manage to feel this while simultaneous thinking that if they have a problem, they can go to hell. This combination of low self-confidence and misplaced belligerence is hardly a sign of good mental health and yet I know that other people get this as well. First impressions are always a worrying time because although everyone knows that the best way to make a good impression on someone is to be yourself and be relaxed, the situation in which you are meeting someone for the first time is probably going to be a bit stressful, to say the least. Also, the most annoying way of ensuring that you have worried yourself into a gibbering frenzy is to keep thinking about it; sod’s law, really.

A good example of worry paralysis is when meeting up with people you have never met; for example, taking a random situation from nowhere in particular, at blogmeets. Turning up at the right place and at the right time is a good starting point. And then you just sit there, trying desperately to remember people’s faces from the photos you quickly checked out the day before when you realised that you were just about to go off and meet a whole bunch of people about whom you know incredible amounts of information yet whose faces are completely unknown. Occasionally, you might glance over at another table and think “well, they look like they might be bloggers” but then quickly dismiss it because anybody could be a blogger. You recall that one of the people you are due to meet wears glasses. Well done, that narrows it down to half the UK population.

Then you realise that you have no idea what one or two of the prospective attendees are called; oh, you know their site name, but their real name? Nope, no idea. So you either stay seated, firmly in the grip of worry paralysis, or you start to wander around the place in the vague hope that you might recognise someone or that someone might recognise you – this is known as worrywalking: you’re not actually going to anywhere definite, but the act of moving is a displacement activity while your mind roams through myriad possibilities.

If you are eventually lucky enough to find or be found (thanks Hg), then you have to worry about the fact that people might be talking technical things (uh-oh) or just that they’re all a lot funnier and have better social lives than you. At the beginning, you stay very quiet, trying to work out what the hell terms like RSS, A-list and MT mean so that you don’t make a fool of yourself. Eventually, the worry will pass and you will slip seamlessly into conversation, so for anyone worrying right now: fear not, there is hope. (Top tip: keep hammering on about being Z-list so no-one realises that you actually have no idea what you’re doing; it’s worked for me so far. Fingers crossed.)

Insane
Some of your worries will have foundation. There is a chance that you might miss the beginning of a film, your partner could be having an affair, your friends may be talking about you behind your back – however likely or not, these are all within the realms of possibility. Some other worries, however, will be entirely groundless and quite fantastic. This is generally the time when you should stop worrying about alien invasion and begin considering the distinct possibility that you are clinically insane.

While sitting on the steps outside my work building a while ago, enjoying an elevenses cigarette, I looked up at the building site diagonally across from where I was sat. The construction work was still in an early phase and the building’s skeleton was the only completed part. Looking up at the girders and beams criss-crossing up and up, I wondered to myself whether a sniper sat on one of the beams would be able to shoot me from that distance. I then wondered whether, if a sniper starting shooting into the crowd, I would be able to find adequate cover from the fusillade of bullets which would be raining down upon the commuters and workers crossing the road. While I was trying to work this out, I realised that I probably would be able to find cover, but not in time, and this started to worry me.

I should point out that this is paranoia of the highest level and I have (a) laughed it off since then, and (b) seriously considered getting professional help. However the momentary worry I had, before realising that this was entirely the fault of an overactive imagination, a slightly warped approach to urban planning and probably a bit too much coffee, was definitely real. It is annoying, though, that I had not only to deal with some of my real worries, but that I was also inventing new and implausible ones to further send myself into a nervous breakdown. Fortunately, I managed to stop myself worrying about my worrying, because that’s just taking it a bit too far.

(Posted by Buni)

Ok, I have two minutes to place this entry before I have MISSED A DAY guesting. So you’re gonna get 5 words of wisdom about the above film:

Manga

Violence

Cliche

Serial

Tired

Night, night.

(Posted by Mark)

As a child, I remember being told that ‘I want’ never gets. As a lesson in manners, it was extremely effective and is probably the root cause behind my overwhelming compulsion to say thank you far too many times in shops, thereby alerting the sales assistant to the fact that I am a twit. As a lesson in life, however, it is not strictly accurate. ‘I want’ often does get.

Possession
We live in a material world, and I am a material girl erm, bloke. Acquisition and immediacy are highly important in our everyday comings and goings as chattels and goods have become status symbols and brands have developed to be instantly recognisable. Truly, we want it all, and we want it now (or next-day delivery at the very least). Previously, conversations might go:

“Nice shoes.”
“Thank you, I’ve only recently bought them.”

Now it is far more likely to be:

“Nice shoes”
“Yes. They’re the new Nike Dunk Low Pro B hoops shoes.”

For some reason that I have never fully understood, trainers are very, very important. It is essential to have the correct trainers and to make sure that you are wearing the latest footwear fashions and brands the moment they are released to the slavering, drooling masses. It is the equivalent of having a large sticker on your feet stating that street credibility may go down as well as up. And I don’t agree with it. I may not know much about co-ordinating my own ragtag clothing ensembles (especially not if I’m only going to work; why dress up for them?), but I have to disagree with ‘the street’ on the issue of trainers. Wanting the latest fashions and trends every fifteen seconds is simply unreasonable, it makes me mad as hell and I won’t take it any more.

Come the catastrophic, nay apocalyptic, day when I become a father to a Master or a Miss Londonmark, I hope to be able to sidestep the whole ‘new trainers every day’ issue by presenting my child and heir with a simple choice: you can have the trainers, Mark II/Marcia, and you can buy new ones as often as you like. However, you will have to work for them. I’ve signed you up with a temp agency and although you’re only seven, they’ve waived the whole underage working restrictions thing. You start 9.00am on Monday as a legal secretary, and don’t forget to put some overtime in if you want to pay for this week’s board and lodging. Harsh, you may cry. Get to work, I say.

Although we always want things, childhood is the time when we are most insistent. “Want, want, want” cries the child as he/she/it points at an ice cream or a balloon and, in order to avert wailing and tears, the child is pretty likely to get the object of his/her/its desire. This does not work when you are a twenty-six year old standing outside Micro Anvika on Tottenham Court Road pointing at the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Apple 23″ cinema display screen, because it is unlikely that anyone will care whether you start screaming and crying, unless they decide to have you sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Otherwise the similarity between childhood wants and adult wants are reasonably similar: food and toys.

When denied the ice cream which they want, want, want, a child may sulk or holler but then, like I did when I was a child, they will make a promise with themselves: “When I grow up, I’m going to eat ice cream every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m not going to eat horrid vegetables, I’ll eat tubs and tubs and tubs of ice cream instead”. It’s when we get to adulthood that the thought of an ‘ice cream only’ diet may sound appealing but we know it to be impractical. We bound our wishes with realities, in this case the realities of nutrition, body shape and balanced eating.

Perhaps we also lose the singlemindedness of our childhood: for a brief moment, the ice cream is the most important thing to have in the world and we strain in our efforts to get it. After the denial of gratification, and the tantrum it brings, however, the desire has passed and we focus on something else, this time needing the new item with the same blaze of intensity. Adulthood brings with it an ability to rationalise away snap decisions and impulses, and to moderate our monomania. Which is, I think, a little bit of a shame.

You
When we say “I want you”, we are neatly combining many differing and possibly self-contradictory things we would like to say, but either lack the words or lack the courage to say them: I want you to be around me, I want to you to agree with me, I want you to support me, I want you to affirm me, I want you to have sex with me, I want you to live with me, I want you to laugh at my jokes, I want you to take care of me, I want you so I’m not alone, I want you to change me, I want you to change for me, I want you so I’m not scared any more, I want you to stay with me, I want you.

The title song of the latest Rufus Wainwright album expresses want wonderfully:

I just want to know
If something’s coming for to get me
Tell me, will you make me sad or happy
And will you settle for love
Will you settle for love?

Of course, the wants we have for others may rarely, if ever, be fulfilled. An entire artistic subject has been based around concepts and examples of unrequited love; I believe some dead bloke called Shakespeare may have written the odd poem about it, even. Our childhood monomania for ice cream/balloons may well have developed during our transition to adulthood into a more narrow focus away from transitory pleasures and towards … well, love.

Of course, in the process of wanting others, we may well be found wanting by them. Our capacities for reciprocation, generosity, care, tactility, expression, thoughtfulness and all the other attributes which light up our eyes may well not be enough for another. You can want someone too much; one person’s detachment is smothering to someone else. Whether wanting is measured in quality or quantity depends entirely on the individuals concerned. Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast guidelines for us to follow – we just have to muddle through, minds fogged by desire.

Is it the pursuit of perfection, a realisation of pragmatism, the search for the divine or perhaps baser instincts which drive us into wanting someone? Or, more likely, is it a combination of these? I’ve always felt ever so slightly envious of couples who have known that they were meant for one another from the first moment they saw each other. I don’t begrudge them their happiness by any means, but the romantic deep within me still gives a nearly imperceptible sigh. It’s probably because we were force-fed all those fairy tales from infancy, where everyone lives happily ever after at the end, but I don’t see why the world can’t work that way simply because it doesn’t at the moment. Starry-eyed nonsense, I know, I know.

But if you’re allowed to want a new car, want peace on earth, want an ice cream, want to be loved, or whatever it is you want, then I’m allowed to want as well. And that’s the beauty of the science of wanting.

(posted by Fi)

The exit ramp from the motorway took me down to a set of lights, sadly however it took everyone else down too and a queue of vehicles was waiting to get through the lights. Only half a dozen cars were getting through each time and the starting and stopping became automatic to me as my mind wandered and I found myself looking forwards into the car in front.

Inside the blue Renault Clio there was only the driver, her long dirty blonde hair falling below her shoulders, I could see her dark roots showing through, she looks about my age and she… she’s watching me in her rear-view mirror. Start, move forward, and stop.

Looking again, I can see her playing with something with her teeth, nibbling her fingers or something. Is she watching me? Yes, she’s watching again, to see if I’m still looking. Against her back windshield a plump orange soft-toy playing a furry blue guitar is also watching me. I suddenly feel embarrassed at appearing intrusive and nosy and I hook my own hair behind my ears and look away.

Her car is so much cleaner than mine, and just as it isn’t until you see how good someone else’s haircut is, or how nice someone’s new clothes appear that you feel bad about your own. First thing this weekend I swear I’ll wash this hunk of junk and make it shine. God, I hope she doesn’t think I’m some sort of slob because I have a dirty car. Start, move forward, and stop.

What is she doing with her fingers? I keep angling my head to one side to try and see past her headrest but each time she leans to one side too. I find myself wondering what music she’s listening to, where is she coming from, where is she going? I find my mind inventing all sorts of scenarios; she’s on her way home from work in her boyfriend’s car. She’s single and the back seat is full of bags of shopping. She’s going to see her parents to tell them she’s moving out to stay with her lesbian lover.

For a few minutes this woman has become an obsession for me, she consumes my thoughts, is she thinking about me? I can see her eyes, the mirror makes them appear darker and tilted forward seductively, ocean blue, which probably means she’s just a dark blonde who lightened her hair colour, rather than a brunette trying to be a blonde. Ha, I smooth a hand through my own blonde hair, how does she like those apples? Start, move forward, and stop.

I thought she had time to get through the lights, maybe she was just too slow, a voice inside me says she did it on purpose to stay here at the lights and draw this affair out a minute longer. She’s now first in line, with me directly behind her. After this change we’re likely to head our separate ways. Is she thinking what I’m thinking? What would happen if I got out and walked up to her window? Would she deny that she was watching me? Would she accuse me of staring at her? Maybe she’s not even bothered by it and feels quite flattered by the attention. And maybe I’d just be left standing there at the side of the road like a lemon.

It can only be a few seconds now until the lights change, already I notice the flow of through-traffic is lessening and the boy-racer in the Ford Escort beside me is like a horse champing at the bit, he grins and I turn away with, what is hopefully a disdainful look. One last look forward before I release the hand brake.

The dirty blonde winks one of her azure eyes at me, turns to one side and spits her gum out; it sails in a wide arc and lands in the grass at the side of the road. The fantasy scenarios are put back into the mental filing cabinet and reality takes hold again as the lights change and she pulls away to whatever life awaits her. It was probably never meant to be, anyway.

(Posted by Melodrama)

This week of being a guest blogger does not seem to please the fates or the forces or whatever it is that makes life go tickety-tock where I am. First I was looking forward to blogging heaven over here. What? Another blog to post my deep, profound words on? Yeah! Sadly, I have been besieged by work this week. Today morning while stapling a sheaf of papers, I forgot that my finger was below and I was in such a fit of caffeine-induced working enthusiasm, I stapled my finger along with the papers. Actually a little flap of skin. Now, I have a tiny loose flap of skin exposing some pink flesh and the said report was sadly splattered with blood and my cabin, with choice expletives. Nice beginning to a day.

La familie, well, the progenitors if you really need to know, compounded my misery by ringing me up right in the middle of the morning and telling me all the details of the vacation they are taking next month and rubbing it in by sighing about how sad it was I couldn’t join them. Then, I fell out of my chair after lunch. I hate chairs with wheels. I am not normally so accident prone or so angsty, I think it has something to do with this troubled diva guest blogging. I am almost convinced.

On asides, my brother is back from college for Diwali (if you guys don’t know what that is with the number of punjabis you have in the UK, then you ought to feel ashamed of yourselves.) and its Diwali time once again which means having to meet people I don’t want to meet, namely relatives and my parents’ friends and forcing myself to be nice to them so that I am not branded ‘that rude spinster daughter of the Singhs’ and forcing myself not to snap back when asked about my marriage plans. Why am I celebrating Diwali at my parents again? I think I need to go shopping today evening to cheer myself up and to post a cheery post for once on TD.

(Posted by Mark)

As any professional comedian will tell you, timing is an essential weapon in their armoury, as to be able to deliver the coup de grâce on cue will determine their on-stage success or failure. Timing is important in other professions as well: one would hope that a bomb disposal expert has a keen sense of timing, for example. Likewise a clockmaker, a neurosurgeon, a referee, someone who times things for a living (sorry); all must be aware of the perfect moment, the ticking of seconds into minutes and deadlines approaching.

Timing pressures are not confined to professions, however. In our personal lives, timings are crucial also: our lives are run by wristwatches, alarm clocks, the beep-beep-beep of reminders on mobile phones. We make arrangements at specific times and get irritated if we have to wait. Our time is running out. How did it come to this?

Timing a joke
I feel inclined to argue on behalf of nature rather than nurture when it comes to comic timing – some people are just hopeless at telling jokes. Often it’s not the actual timing but instead the sequence of the various constituent parts of the joke (assuming that the narrator has remembered them all successfully, another pitfall for the wannabe stand-up comedian) which eludes the storyteller. However, let’s assume that the joke has been remembered, and remembered in the right order. Now it’s no use just gabbling the whole thing in one go. You need to build a sense of anticipation.

The old music hall adage still holds true: make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait. It is the first and third of these which are most vital (unless they are crying with laughter, in which case the second element is good too) as they focus you on timing the joke well enough to make them actually laugh. So, don’t just trot out the whole shaggy dog story at once, take your time. Ad-libbing is helpful here, as is irrelevant and potentially misleading detail: by padding out the tale for a little bit longer, you pique the listener’s interest. And, for God’s sake, get the punchline right.

Timing journeys
Damn, I’m late. Again. What’s it to be then? I can walk, I can run, I can hop onto a bus, I can try the Tube, I could hail a taxi, I can see if there’s a train. What’s it to be then? Being someone who, paradoxically, hates other people being late but am mostly late myself, I am constantly looking for new and inventive ways of cutting a few minutes from any particular journey time. As a point of pride, I consult the Underground journey planner and then scoff at their suggestions, preferring instead to follow my own route based on not only a knowledge of tube lines but also the most easily navigable stations, the correct doors to use when alighting from the train and trying to get to another platform as speedily as possible, which places have lifts rather than escalators and, of course, which places are just bloody well closed due to the ineptitude of the people who run the Underground.

We’re always looking for the quick route, the short cut, the way to avoid the traffic. One of the signs of getting older is when discussions of bands or films or books mutate over the years into discussions about the best way to get from A to B while dodging bottlenecks and, preferably, also dodging the congestion charge zone. Rather than smile and change the subject when someone tells you about their journey to meet you, instead you launch into a long conversation about how,precisely, they got there; what route, were the traffic lights working, how are those roadworks affecting the contraflow, etc, etc. Or perhaps that’s just the British obsession with all things car-related.

Also, whinging about public and private transport has never been brought closer to an artform that in the British Isles. After years of poor planning, mismanagement, delays and ‘essential engineering works’, the transport infrastructure of this island is amazing not due to breadth of coverage nor the services it provides, but rather it’s incredible that it even works. There are plenty of things wrong with the system and if you’re taking a twenty-minute journey, it’s wise to leave a good hour beforehand to take into account the inevitable mishaps which will occur, yet somehow you can pretty much always get to your destination. You just get there a little bit late, or at least that’s my excuse.

Timing criticism
The human animal is a sensitive creature, capable of perceiving slights and withdrawing into itself at the merest hint of criticism, justified or otherwise. To get a point across to someone, it’s necessary to be diplomatic, tactful and most of all, borrowing a phrase which Evelyn Waugh regarded as essential for schoolmasters, to “temper discretion with deceit”. You should also time your ‘we need to talk’ moment very carefully indeed. Manipulation is a demanding enterprise and not to be taken lightly: I wait until Spurs have won before approaching my flatmate about getting him to repay money, for example.

It’s not just about getting your own way, although obviously that’s always gratifying. Knowing when and where to pick a fight or to have a serious, emotion-laded conversation can often be the make-or-break point in a friendship or relationship. It’s often hard to find the ‘right time’ to approach someone about a delicate issue, as well as being difficult to say the words you need to say. At times it’s also difficult to wait for the right moment, rather than unload your heart right here, right now. You have to be able to get the time with someone first before you can say your piece, confess to your worries or your concerns, and then try to get them to engage.

Just because you’ve picked the perfect time doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed for them to answer, either; you’re just giving them every opportunity to be in the right frame of mind to hear your opinion. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a response. If not, then you’re just going to have to wait. The science of timing is more precise that some of the others I’ve written about but it’s also one of the more demanding. When thoughts are getting muddled in your mind, allowing contradictions and doubts to counteract what you previously held true, it’s helpful to talk them out with the person concerned or with a good friend, but you have to find or make the time, and then be sure that they are receptive. For all the timing in the world, it’s the arrival that matters.

(posted by Zena)

My flatmate is having sex with more people than I actually know.

(posted by Buni)

Now that I’ve finished insulting the Welsh and scaring the bejeesus out of everyone with my Carrie moment, I’ll continue.

I have to admit that I’ve never owned a wild horse, nor do I care to, and if I did I’m sure my flat would begin to look even worse than it does now . Also, I don’t think my lease allows me to have un-caged pets. I’ve always enjoyed riding horses though, some friends in Portugal owned a couple and as it happens they weren’t wild either. They were light-tan and dark, something breed.

The only time I’ve ever come into regular contact with these animals was about 1973 / 74. We used to live in a village called Aldbury in Hertfordshire. As you can see form the map, it’s a very small place with a tiny little population. We used to live just off Stocks Road (which is on the map) at a place called Little Stocks which, in the 19th century, used to be the guest house of Stocks Country House.

About the time that we were living there, Stocks had been purchased and redeveloped by Victor Lownes, who co-owned Playboy with Hugh Hefner. I would have been about 3 at the time and my sister would have been 5 so she would have gone to school. My mother, who had been a keen rider in her youth, had a part-time job exercising Victor Lownes’ horses. He’d taken it upon himself to become a bit of a ‘Lord of the Manor’ in those days, having lavish weekend parties and him and his guests would be riding his horses all over the estate.

The only problem with this set up was that my mother had to leave me with people while she worked. Firstly, there was her best-friend Karen, who was the mother of my best friend Lincoln, she was a total hippy girl and introduced my mother to doing hot knives on Ivanhoe Beacon one solstice and as Stocks was being used as Victor’s home / Bunny-school, there were of course the Bunny Girls.

My recollection of this period is really quite clear, I can even draw a floor plan of our home and memories I relive to my mother are received with surprise though, I have no recollection of the Bunny-Girls. However, stories told to me by my mother usually entail me being smothered by the Girls and told how cute I was. There is one story of where I walked down the steps of the pool outside and just carried on under the water, I was saved by being dragged out of the water by my shirt collar by a Bunny. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me bring this story around to who is going to ‘Ride My Wild Horses’ as I’ve been rambling. I have a good idea who I’d like to but won’t mention it on here.

So, there you have it, that’s how Buni got to be ‘part’ raised by Bunny-Girls.

(Posted by Fi)

An eccentric Japanese girlfriend invited me to one of her famous “Super Happy Fun Dinner Parties” as she calls them. Usually it’s just an excuse for her to put her hair up in buns and wear her Cheongsam and play the doting mistress of the house. The only problem is that she comes across more like a B-list celebrity in Widow Twanky drag. It’s a shame but as her friend I just can’t bring myself to tell her that there’s a panto somewhere with her name on it.

After the original stir-fry evening she diversified to sushi, fondue and nouveau cuisine before trying to host a murder mystery dinner. The dinner was something of a failure due to my reluctance to play dead when there were such fine wines to be sampled that evening. I waved people away telling them that I was an alcoholic zombie and that they should pay me no attention, but if they could pass me the Russian Cigarettes I’d refrain from mauling them and eating their brains.

“This time diff’rent” she told me “You like this time. You wear something sexy.”

So I showed up in a cocktail dress with ruffles down the back and my hair up in a chignon. This turned out to be a monumental mistake. My definition of sultry sexy didn’t match her definition of trashy sexy. My friend had organised a spanking party.

The light bulbs had been replaced for red bulbs and a girl in a bikini covered in various finger foods and nibbles had replaced the dining table. I was surprised not to see cocktail sticks with pineapple and cheese cubes protruding from anywhere. My friend who was more bubbly than usual on these occasions handed me a carnival mask at the door. Everything was going so well apparently and everyone was having a very naughty good time, she assured me. It looked a lot like a budget version of Eyes Wide Shut.

My friend had enlisted the help of someone she’d met over the Internet who ran these sorts of parties in a similar vein to Tupperware parties, only with less plastic and more rubber. An assortment of canes and whips dangled from her hat stand and people kept brandishing paddles and looking for a willing bottom to practice on. I immediately felt a surge of anger when I realised that all the women were masked and all the men carried paddles.

The paddles turned out to be harmless slapsticks, with holes through the actual paddle part so they could cause a loud slapping noise without hurting. I found this out after I was struck with one as I dipped a carrot stick into the thousand-island-dressing in a dish on the bikini-girl’s hip as I gave her a polite smile that said “rather you than me”. The offending male was rather sheepish when I glared at him through my cat-mask and asked him what exactly he thought he was doing.

For some reason I couldn’t get the mental image of Michael Palin in Castle Anthrax out of my head as the eight score young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen-and-a-half, cut off in the castle with no one to protect them begged for a spanking, a spanking! And then the oral… no, hang on a moment. I spent most of the evening either sitting in a chair or standing against a wall to prevent anyone getting any ideas and left early. I’m adventurous, but not desperate.

(Posted by Mark)

Play is an important part of our daily lives, as evidenced by the old advertising slogan “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play”. Of course, many people prefer to substitute words such as ‘coffee’ or ‘non-prescription drugs’ rather than ‘Mars’, but that’s really their own business. It’s the other elements in the slogan that are important, especially ‘work’: play is a key factor in the work/life balance. Whenever an employer tells you that they encourage a healthy work/life balance, don’t assume that this means 50/50. They actually mean 95/5. After all, they’re not paying you to have a life, are they? (If they actually are, then tell me where you work.)

That said, work can afford some opportunities for play as well. Playing air guitar while sitting in an office swivel chair can be pretty fun, provided no-one has noticed you. The only trouble is if you put a bit too much gusto into the power chords, as this accidentally pushes your chair across your little area of open plan, knocking you straight into the recycling bin, as well as ripping your headphones out, thereby opening up your music to the entire floor. Not that I know this personally, you understand. (Whistles nonchalantly.)

Playing up
There’s nothing quite like a good hands pounding on the table, bawling your eyes out, toddler-style tantrum, is there? So cathartic and so immature at the same time. I regret the fact that because we have grown up, started jobs and relationships, incurred financial and social responsibilities and are just so fran-tic-a-lly busy, we don’t get to have a loud, no-holds-barred tantrum any more. Or at least, we’re not supposed to, despite the fact that the pressures on us are greater. It seems very inequitable that when we are young enough to jump up and down legitimately, howling in anger, there is actually very little for us to shout and scream about, yet when we are old enough to have job, money or personal worries, it is not really acceptable to sit in the middle of an office, legs crossed, screaming to high heaven and crying like a baby.

Well, I think that we should bring tantrums and playing up back into adult life. If we get all the horrible things like bills to pay and meetings to attend, then I think we should be allowed some of the decent things as well, starting off with the inalienable right to holler and launch hissy fits as and when we deem necessary. Further items on this Regression Manifesto will include the right to sulk, the right to claim “you just don’t understand me” and then stomp off to our bedrooms, the right to do our homework in front of the television, and the right to wear whatever damn underwear we want when we get run over in the street.

Playing hard to get
If you are coy, then you’ll already know. If you’re not, then I’m not telling.

Playing into their hands
It’s that particular moment when you realise, “I’ve been had” accompanied by a slight sinking feeling in your stomach and generally also partnered by the beginning of laughter from others. Walking straight into a trap, be it verbal or a practical joke, or even just being set up to supply an answer that had already been predicted; these are just a few ways of playing straight into somebody’s hands. They have you where they want you, you have swallowed the bait and they are now reeling you in. However, unless you are prepared to take the radical step of never saying anything and never going anywhere ever again, there isn’t an awful lot you can do about playing into people’s hands, I’m afraid. Vigilance is your best option. Oh, and a very low gullibility level will help no end also.

Playing away
Don’t ever think you won’t get caught. You will. Don’t ever think you won’t hurt people. You will. Don’t ever think it won’t haunt you. It will. Don’t ever think that it’s not a bad idea. It is. Don’t ever think that you won’t lose friends. You will. Don’t ever think that it’s worth it. It isn’t. Don’t think you’ll keep it secret. You won’t. Don’t ever think that tears won’t be cried. They will. Don’t ever think that it’s just the way you are. It isn’t. Don’t ever think that you’re being clever. You’re not. Don’t think you won’t feel ashamed when you look back. You will.

Playing for keeps
There is a time when playing stops being fun and suddenly gets very, very serious. Whether it’s a ‘friendly’ game of pool, a kickabout in the park or even a poker night at a friend’s house, however much you are enjoying simply playing, a competitive edge enters the game at some point and remains there, under the skin. I remember that playing Trivial Pursuits at college was possibly one of the most competitive things I have ever done: out of the players, two were graduate students who already had their Firsts, two of the others would go on to get Double Firsts, the another player got a 2:i and then there was me. Oh dear. As they were predominantly English Lit students, the Art & Literature category of questions quickly became a bloodbath, as you might imagine, and it was arguably the quickest game I have ever played (and lost quite badly).

Although it’s not quite the same as the ‘win at all costs’ strategy of game-playing, when you switch from a gentle, well-isn’t-this-fun mode into a destroy-destroy-destroy mode, playing for keeps isn’t all that easy to conceal. In a ‘friendly’ game of pool, for example, the sudden and insistent snookering of your opponent will be pretty obvious and very likely to push them into an equal tactic of attrition. Chess, despite stalemates, has never been anything other than playing for keeps and so neatly avoids the courteous first few moves before the deluge. Of the more physical sports, you know things are going badly when a little game of three or four people playing keepy-uppy descends into a mélee of twelve or so people performing sliding tackles, grabbing shirts and making sure that they foul everybody bar that big bloke who spent some time inside, so don’t mess.

Playing by the book
No matter where you are, what you are doing, or who you are with, one of the people around you will be the rules person. You know what they’re like: all events must be played out according to his/her little book. The type of person who whips out a calculator when the bill for dinner arrives, the person who insists on making an entire cinema row move because they have to sit in “their” seat, the person who doesn’t believe in tipping because it isn’t in their rule book. This level of formal, constricted thought is liable to get more relaxed people whipped up into a frenzied rage. “Can’t we just go out and see what happens?” is the lament, while the response is invariably something along the lines of “But what’s the plan?” Although this person will be invaluable when the car breaks down, when someone gets ill or when the fate of the world is at stake, while you’re just going out for a few beers, they will be massively irritating. There are times when the book should be shelved and left at the library.

So, play up! Play up! And play the game. If you’re not winning, you’re not cheating well enough.