monster mash

Fastest week ever?

I was off work Monday and Tuesday, firstly because I have alot of annual leave to take up before the end of the year, and secondly because its a good way to save a precious five pounds of travel money the week before pay day. Sigh. Im 29. When WILL i get my shit together? I stayed home and did nothing productive other than relive my childhood with this

Are You Afraid Of The Dark was one of my favourite  shows as a kid on nickelodeon ( along with the obvious favourites - kenan and kel, sabrina the teenage with, sister sister, moesha!) and I swear, I probably watched a good 18 episodes over two days. Standard.

Twice in the last week a magpie has thrown itself at my window. Im super superstitious about magpies along with my sister; if I see one magpie in the street, I have to do a little salute, despite strangers looking at me. So this one magpie at the window is of great concern. is bad luck throwing itself at my door?

 very creepy!

I will skip the parts about how wednesday to friday i did nothing but drown in work and eat 20p crisps for dinner (again, im 29.....) And then my favourite (read: only sensible) shoes just gave up on me. One minute they were fine,and the next the sole just...fell off. At work. And I had no money, obviously. So i wore them for two days until i replaced them with the exact same pair. I kind of like that about myself....i curled my hair, applied fake eyelashes and red lipstick, put on a dress, and also wore it with a pair of utterly destroyed shoes.

spot the difference?

After work Friday, Erica, Brucie and I hopskipped it around soho for last minute halloween bidness. WHO KNEW THERE WAS A POUND SHOP IN SOHO!? The queue into the fancy dress shop was actualy out the door on a one in one out basis. Gathering all my willpower to not have a panic attack shit fit in the middle of an overcrowded shop, I managed to grab the essentialist: fake blood, black wig. candles.

For the fifth Friday in a row we plodded off towards Gem Bar and general fatigue meant after one drink, Erica and I were ready to hot foot it home. But then more free wine presented itself and somehow I ended up an hour late than i intended to, however its free, so it doesnt count. right?

I hot footed it to Bow to meet The Irish at the Coburn Arms where he snuck in a surprise bar of chocolate into my pocket and a great time was had by all, even though he finally got to see me wasted doing Wuthering Heights,

Which goes like this!

Because of the amount of alcohol i consumed friday night i woke up with the most awful hangover saturday morning which was an epic fail I had said i would try and avoid all week because i had to be productiuve saturday morning! i scraped my sorry ass out of bed, surveyed the damage inflicted to my room ( oh, chinese food? dont remember that happening) before taking a cycle to whitechapel to gets food for the evening.

I was able to squeeze a quick hour nap in before meeting Erica and Dean and taking them to, where else, The Half Moon Spoons for a spot of lunch and the first of what felt like many many drinks that night, before being joined by Brucie and Steph. I normally have more fun getting ready for a night out than I do on the actual night out ( last halloween i spent four hours partying at home, one hour at the actual party) - however this year was to be different. We piled into a cab with our booze and the best of 90s club classics and made our way to an indie club in Islington where I was most pleased to walk in to the maccabre sounds of Nick Caves ' Red Right Hand.' There we met up with Mark, Liam, Bex and her friends, where I swilled cherry sourz and coke, danced like a fool and my ribs ached from laughing so hard. There was a point where I realised, after I had taken off my shitty wig, that technically i was no longer in costume. So..maybe I look like a dead doll more than I think?

Four hours later we are standing on City Road, freezing, with an hour wait for ANY cab. I couldnnt believe it. And the night bus was also nowhere to be found.  Moods dropped pretty quickly as we assessed our very limited options as to how to actually get home. Half an hour later we managed to finally flag (by flag, i mean we all ran screaming down the road) a taxi and make it home to sit on the kitchen floor destroying anything edible before passing out at a not unreasonable three am.


Of course, I woke up ridiculously early and decided to start pestering erica and dean to get up so we could go for breakfast which did not go down very well as expected.  we trudged our weary old bodies to The Half Moon for bacon eggs and pancakes and alot of coffee and cola.

Friends made their way home, and I got into bed, and ate some leftover slutty brownie that Erica and I had made. Il post a proper blog up with the recipe shortly! to.die.FOR.

(un)fortunately The Irish had his gig cancelled sunday night so i stayed in with pie and mash in the warm while he wrote new songs including one for me. Thats right. I am officially a muse. And the song is pretty great, even if I do say so myself!

Monday felt pretty desolate and cold after such a fun weekend. I was cheered up by The Irish buying me a mexican burger and chips and wine and beer. Which is pretty good going for Monday night, I feel.

This week looks pretty jam packed so I dont anticipate any time to recover before I go home for the weekend. Multiple coffee was needed just to get this crappy entry out. WAH!

You want sympathy? It's in the dictionary between shit and syphillis

Boy, have I been in a stinker of a mood this week. Its hormones, hormones I beseech thee! hormones and rain and work and general wahness. I am disappointed to learn that actually I am not that good at hiding my bad mood and thus have been constantly apologising all week to friends after what feels like every sentence i say in case i snapped it or it came out grumpy. i blame my low browline for making me look sterner than  maybe I am. Every day after work I have come home, shut my bedroom door and at one point, went to bed at seven thirty pm.

And although I love my time alone, my private time, the fact that I didnt go out sunday - thursday - it just made me sit at home stewing in my bad moods when i probably should have gone out, but thus funding did not allow with any of us.

My sister is also going back to New York shortly with her boyfriend and I guess thats made me feel sad too. I really miss New York.  I miss the air. And then I snap myself out of it and remind myself of how lucky I am to witness my favourite season in London.

my street

morning apocolypse

What probably hasnt helped is that ive been listening to jeff buckley this week. ALOT. at one point i sat in my room, in the dark, eating this while crying to his music. in a way its quite enjoyable, i felt 15 again!

Friday afternoon saw us work lot head to Ronnie Scotts for our quarterly 'arent we awesome' speeches from the directors while we sit poking at bits of sweaty cheese and cured meats with wooden sticks in a room with no air con whilst trying to drink as much free booze as I can without throwing up. 

We headed off to our local for what as always meant to be one drink which turned into.....more. damn you happy hour prices!

Spending some QT with some of my favourite people cheered me up no end and thanks to tina i had my first gin and lemonade. maybe it was where i was already drunk but...how could I have hated that my whole adult life?! It was delicious! or maybe thats another sign that i am getting really old, as gin is a nanas drink.

On Saturday I bravely cycled to whitechapel alone for food and was intent on going home and continuing to wallow in both hangover and hormones before Felicity persuaded me to go to the East London Thrift Shop which is a ten minute walk from my house. they had a pick and mix sale: you can buy a carrier bag for ten pounds or a larger one for twenty and you get to shove as much as humanly possible in the bag! oh dear lord. i go five dresses, two tops and a skirt. for ten pounds. really nice vintage stuff too! felicity is a pro at pick and mix sales and taught me how to fold everything down to make as much space as possible in the bag. we felt quite naughty still and asked the ( really hot) sales assistant if we were taking the piss,to which he replied ' dudes...keep on sticking stuff in that bag!' 

 i love this, it doesnt go with my general look of crazy Victorian nana however it appears to be a real waitress outfit from america!

to celebrate i stayed in and ate hot chocolate cake with custurd. BOOM!

sunday was going to be spent actually cleaning my room (which is impossible as the hoover has broken and no matter how much i tidy, i cant see carpet through crumbs so..) until the irish told me he was curating a theatre event later in dalston at the arcola theatre and he would put my name on the door and see me there at five.

I was understandably nervous about attending; from experience when a friend curates a night they are very busy and have to talk to lots of different people. and as i wouldnt know anyone else there but him i got the most awlful social anxiety at the thought of being left standing alone or worse, trying to converse with theatre types and looking like an idiot.

of course i was being silly and underestimating his ability to not be a perfect gent. i got to watch five very interesting short plays - my favourite being one about two brothers at their fathers funeral.

we continued to run to the shop several times for supplies and five hours few by in a haze of crisps, nuts, beer and ridiculously bad jokes that not even the soggy weather could dampen. 

not even the charm of the irish could stop another black hormonal mood descending though on the way home. i have never willed myself onto a period more. i am literally a prisoner to my own hormones and even i am getting tired of my own grumpyness!

hopefully this week will be better for all involved especially as i have so many nice new dresses to wear!!

and a ridiculously large lasagne to get through.

challenge accepted!!!

Rain rain go away come again another day

Boy am I finding it difficult to switch to the dark and cold - despite enjoying these new sensations of cold tingly fingers and darkened walks home and how great the air smells - by god it is hard to get up in the morning. My alarm goes off and i lean over to plug my heater in and stay in bed for the maximum amount of time possible until it is warm enough for me to rise. I have however been enjoying the mighty fine views of east london from bed

 

 



On Monday Felicity and I decided to throw a surprise tea party for Lois who celebrated her 24th birthday at the weekend ( I am officially the old lady of the house at 29. fuck.) We had a jaunt around sainsburys before cycling home where we invented a lethal game where she would hold out an onion ring at arms length and i have to cycle towards it and grab it with just my mouth. a surefire way for me to get hit my a car and die,all in the pursuit of carbs.

 

 

so because it has been so hard to get up this week, the plan was of course to stay home every night thus reserving funds and energy, OF COURSE that didnt happen! I was talking to friends at work about my general exhaustion and poverty when I was reminded that I had said on my 29th birthday this would be the year where i lives as selfish and irresponsibly as possible without getting arrested or a veneral disease. so, who gives a hoot? next year i swear i will start to behave.

With this in mind, tuesday night i headed off to kennington with The Irish to see The Ones Who Kill Shooting Stars at The White Bear. The Irish is a judge in some theatrey thing where he gets to go see plays and they decide if they are good enough to be put forward for some theatre awards. this is good for me because i get to go watch up and coming fringe theatre,

The writing I thought flowed well and the jokes were great! However much bickering was done afterwards around the plotline and I soon gave up and carried on drinking my wine while the theatre bods discussed theatre things. I love theatre, I studied it in school, but I am definately not qualified to argue about technical aspects with people who do it for a living!

. I of course had too much to drink for a school night.

And did this stop me again the next night going out with Erica and Dean to the bar around teh corner from work who gave us a bottle of wine and a bucket of beers. BURP.

Thursday was to be my day of rest. There were sugary treats and of COURSE it rained and o COURSE i did not have an umbrella and for some reason rain turns rush hour into deadlock and my not unreasonable 40 minute bus ride became an hour and a half of sitting in traffic with wet feet. I got home, made sausage and mash and had my heat hanging off the radiator all night.

 

Work has pretty much blown chunks this week and so on Friday, with an exhausting queue of work ahead of me and my eyelids heavy, i really did not expect to go out that night.

 

Of course, 5pm rolls around and I have the willpower of a smack addict hooker from Glasgow and therefore out I was. Again. For ONE drink I said. And somehow the good humour of my friends meant that I stayed out - there were shots, there was rough housing, there was a chance i accidentally chucked a photo cube against the wall thinking itw as rubbish when in fact it was the leaving present of a manager from work. WHOOPS.  By that point me and matty did a runner to macdonalds and had some drunken insightful chats on the number 8 home complete with flatulance. from him not me.

 

 

i asked them to both look normally at the camera

 

productive saturday was on hiatus this week owing to generally productive weekdays, hangovers and people in search for places to live, so i caught up on some much needed rest before cycling to the irishes with beer, soup and chocolate and indulged in some documetaries and good company.

 

before i knew it it was three am and i jumped on my bike for the five minute cycle home. however i got a bit over confident as i whizzed down mile end road and made the mistake of thinking my boris bike was in fact a bmx and i tried to curb jump. ERROR. i flew clear of my bike alongw oth my bag which is omehow also managed to run over and smash a good deal of stuff up. east london humiliation. of COURSE there still had to be people about to witness this.

 

I parked my bike and walked home alongside the city foxes and stayed up til 5am chatting with my friend Anja, reminising about our new york days before drifting off, only to be awoken at 8am. curses!

 

And i bet an early wake up does NOT happen tomorrow.

 

Sunday has been sent blissfully lounging, listening to music including a ditty the irish wrote about me laying in a bath for a month. That was, until the little street rats appeared and started smashing te bikes up at the front. i lost my temper and called the police, despite the barrage of abuse as they called up to my window. fuck off. this is my home now and im settled. even the man in the local shop knows my usual purchases. whoever thought that could happen in this day and age in london?

 

 

 

 

 

I am starting to question if I am going out too much of late. It has taken me a week to realise my favourite black fur trimmed cloak has gone missing, and I am assuming it is the victim of one of my wine fuelled exercusions around the city and is now laying forlorn in some lost and found. BUT WHERE?! I cant remember. My mind blurs all the drunken walks home.

Last Saturday, 'Productive Saturday' became lay around in bed until around five pm when its then acceptable to roll out and think about cheese based products for dinner. I can now add ' goats cheese and red onion tart' to my repetoire and I was keen to taste test it on a few of my friends. I was planning on staying in and doing something,ANYTHING creative while I had the flat to myself, but I lured out The Irish for one/ten drinks. I wasnt even hyper drunk. I was the kind of drunk where my teeth turn blue from the wine, and my cheeks and take on the ruddy complextion of an old lush. But, the drinks are cheap and the conversation is good, so who cares if I negate to wear some eyeliner?

Gross.

 

Not gross. Delicious!

I was pleased to awake with a surprisingly fresh head, and enough energy to get up , do chores and haul ass back to Essex for some overdue family time. I figured if I was going to spend money on myself, it may as well be payday weekend before it all gets spunked up the wall on alcohol. I dragged my sister around town on the promise of a coffee and purchased a new dress which is far too short for my sturdy five nine frame, and a yankee candle to assist with my winter nesting.

Tuesday I was rained upon with gifts by the good grace of my friends. I was given a record player by Matty, and a guitar case and some plectrums by The Irish. I am keen to add another string to my bow and I now have my eye on a Fender Mustang although I probably need to pick up an acoustic first.

Friday saw the departure party of our very own 60s throwback kiwi, Lisa Brown. Rather than go to our standard haunt at Gem, we went to The Intrepid Fox at the bottom of Denmark Street. The pub is the polar oppisite of gem - its glam rock goth and heavy metallers. I of course adore any kind of dive bar despite the aromatic odours from the bathroom. My work colleagues did not and scarpered back to the corporate slickness of Gem. More fool them. And more fool me, When our money ran out we knew we had a free 75 quid bar tab there and off we tredged in the rain, but my nervous system and tolerance level was lowered alresdy by alcohol. I did however, enjoy my interpretive dance, in my purple clock, surrounded by glossy lipped women in short dresses, to ' Call Me Maybe.'

I spend much of Saturday morning deathly ill with a hangover ( wine after beer! wine after beer!) which only a cooked breakfast at the local cafe and huge amounts of autumn sunlight could cure.

As I mentioned earlier, I am now in a bit of a nesting phase where I want to prepare myself for winter. Its already dusk when I arrive home and I need to make sure there is maximum amount of light in my room. This involved me hauling my wardrobe and pretty much gutting out my room yesterday afternoon, however I am more than pleased with the results however it is still a work in progress. As we do not have a shared living area in my flat, my bedroom is important to me.

I am actually gutted that I have only learnt on its last week that The Queen Of Hoxton has been running roof top cinema viewings all summer. I was kindly invited to join Bex and Erica and their friends for a saturday viewing of Clueless. I could also kick myself that I didnt know what a great rooftop terrace the QOH has, as a magpie, anything with fairy lights gets my enthusastic thumbs up.

A 90s notalge complete with popcorn and alcohol over rode the frostbite that started to creep up my shins which left me and erica lamenting how we would cope with socialising once the tempreture drops below 10 degrees. Not very well, is what I am assuming.

And here is maybe the most beautiful thing I have read for a while, snapped yesterday in Shoreditch.

And finally, in honour of the halloween season, I now turn my bathwater a nice witchy purple colour.I dont know how, as my hair is pink. Spooky!