4 days

... of smoking. Who came up with that crap?

the good life

So I finally find the time for an update. The irony is: The only time that I feel I have the opportunity to write is at work. It’s not as if I was just faffing about and not doing anything; it’s more like it’s my job to faff about and not do anything.

Alright, so I’ve prepared and initiated the media contacts for the Dublin event, I’ve done the odd bits and bobs, and now everyone has miraculously disappeared and I sit here and got nothing to do. Oh dear, even sorting invoices by date seems an inspiring activity now.

I am eating a cheese sandwich.

To recap shortly what’s happened over the past two weeks: Nothing. Well, ok, my boyfriend was here and someone else is coming over today, but hell – you can’t even go dancing in this city.

Last Saturday we ended up in 5th Avenue, a nightclub which would easily win a prize in the category Ugliest Venue North of Nuneaton. It’s advertised as “Your No.1 Indie Experience” – and a No.1 experience it was indeed. Just what it was to do with Indie music I didn’t quite understand. The DJs clearly didn’t have the time to pack their CD case and had hurriedly grabbed Crossing All Over compilations no. 1 to 45. They ended up playing everything from ‘this one song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Smells Like Teen Spirit) via Linking We’re-Oh-So-Fucking- Depressed-Kids-And-Have-No-Future-But-Just-Can’t-Resolve-To-Draw-
The-Right-Consequences Park and 2003 Kerrang singalongs to ‘this other song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Come As You Are). The kids (aka the clubbers) were having fun, but I guess that was more because of the alcohol.

I felt too old and out of place and the music reminded me of my dreadful teenage days. It left me wondering what it made them feel like – most of them were a little too young to remember the Stone Roses and Oasis songs they were shouting. They probably still watched Batman and sang the Ninja Turtles Title Theme. (Not that I had my head screwed on the right way when the Stone Roses where still around.) What can I say? It was embarrassing and dreadful at the same time. The fact that I paid four quid to get in didn’t make it any better.

What else? In a few weeks time, the good times will be over. No more smoking indoors, no more flicking your butts carelessly on the streets. Cigarettes will once and for all become associated with the cold and a slight drizzle, with getting up, leaving your drink behind (at least no one will want to drug-rape me, I guess) and being – quite literally – an outsider. Ok, so cigarette smoke smells and damages your health. But people, let me tell you: This fricking health craze, this overbearing nanny attitude and this sense of smug non-smoking superiority are so the antithesis to cool that I’ll rather be wet and cold and have my drink spiked.

I wouldn’t mind giving up – if I could, that is – but all this hoo-ha has really put me off. I know well enough that I am damaging both my purse and my health (and yours, but who says I care?), but so far that’s never deterred me. The only reason for giving up is the knowledge and very real experience of actually being hooked on the stuff. In the face of all this anti-smoker talk, however, I am beginning to take pride in it.

Talking health and smugness, by the way, I’d like to suggest that the next thing the state should be cracking down is Muesli. The shit is full of sugar and fat but people still think it’s not only not damaging their bodies and fostering obesity, but believe it’s actually doing them good. Still, there no high taxes on Muesli. There’s no legal age. Heavens, people are feeding it to their kids! Every day. Give or take a few years, the little’uns won’t want to live without the stuff. Oh, and greenhouse-grown lamb’s lettuce. Could someone please pass a law requiring me to carry a voucher with enables to obtain that only once a year?

Yes, I know – it’s not about cracking down on the smokers. It’s about the smoke. Because it’s damaging. To others. My environment. My loved ones. Or whatever.

It’s like not poisoning the pigeons but simply forbidding them to shit on the monuments. By decree. Good job.

I try my best to look busy. I think I manage well enough. No one’s paying me any attention. Monk is preaching on the phone. Flower is.. well, wherever he is now. One never knows. Kasparov is contemplating studying in Germany, for fun, not for a degree – but doesn’t speak any German. Blue is surfing on myspace, or summink like that.

By the way, I don’t mean to sound disdainful. I love the work (if there is any) and I quite like this lot. They’re fun and generally good and welcoming people. To be frank, if I had the choice I’d just stay here and work. We might need to put on a few more festivals in order for me not to be bored, or I might do three days a week and some freelancing (Me, Shakespeare) or washing the dishes (Me, Rig to Ratches) – anything really. Just no more German universities. It is hard to be loyal and enthusiastic, it is hard to stay motivated when every time you go abroad you’re being reminded that in your own country you’re but a parasite stealing the taxpayer’s money. A lazy leech clinging to the hydrocephalic head of the administration, sucking them out, sucking them off, sucking up. A fly living off the by-products of the cerebral digestion process of your professors – they eat knowledge and sometimes they discharge the unnecessary remnants and then we feast on them. Feast on the dumbed-down version of Foucault – with the ‘ouc’ still in their bellies.

Fucking Shakespeare Me. Twenty minutes and I’ll call it a day.

doggish

Saturdays spent in the kitchen. There is something in English houses that always makes me end up in the kitchen, sitting at the table and waiting for the time to pass.

First of all, I’d like to set a few things straight. I am not homesick. As far as I am aware, homesickness means wanting to go back to a familiar place - desperately so. I am not looking for familiarity, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy other people's company. People, with whom a decent conversation is possible - not some girlish, i-am-so-kind-nice-and-middle-class person, that is. People like this are nice, indeed, but I find them hard to talk to or to take them seriously. I mean, where's your brain? No one's going to respect you for being nice, but everyone's going to have a great time at you expense. Not for me, thanks.

So, I need people. The thing is, though, that as long as you're alone, you'll never get to know anyone. If you have friends already, you'll always find more. So task 1 is: Find that first person that sets off the rest. It's just game, but knowing the rules doesn't make it any easier. Defying the rules by not drinking and not being all-smiles-and-pink-icing-nice does not further your cause, either. Anyway, task 2 is far more challenging: Once you got enough people, get rid of those that don't fit into your life or that don't share your outlook on life. Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't do that or that I am being cynical. It's the way to go, people. This is a hire-and-fire society, we're being made redundant left and right - so why not do the same in private life? At least it allows to focus on and stay with the people that are worth it. And believe me, a lot are not.

Yesterday evening was... liquid, sort of. Very. Flower wanted to go for a quick drink and then head off; Dazed just came cause I gave her a pleading look and had been complaining about being utterly bored, and there was some guy with us (Let's call him Buscemi) and he was all the penitent petty criminal, slightly thuggish but in a good kind of way. Buscemi. Anyway, one drink turned into two into three into... you get the gist. We were joined by two other guys - I can't recall their names, but that doesn't really matter here, so let's say they were TheLad and Dal. I got chatting to Dal - he's ten years older than I am, has been to India for two years or something and speaks Dutch. The latter was a fact that received repeated attention throughout the evening, the knowledge of foreign languages being deemed exotic. And if there is a truly exotic language, it has to be Dutch. Clearly. It's right on par with Xhosa and some Dari dialect. Oh, well.

Anyway, I had fun and ended up armwrestling with Dal. He challenged me and then wouldn't play fair, out of deference to me being female. It is kind of boring if a man thinks he's doing you a favour by first challenging you on his own territory and then not even giving you a fair chance to lose. Fair is foul and foul is fair? Not so, I should think.

I am a little sick of being patronised throughout. For my language, for my sex, for anything. As long as you don't give me a chance to lose, I can never win, either. But that's ultimately what they're scared of, isn't it. Because: What would have happened if I had really beat him? Weakness is shame - just not in a woman. It's nice to know we're weak but to allow us to lend ourselves to the illusion that we weren't. The knowledge and ensuing sense of superiority must be overpowering. After all, I am subject to your mercy, aren't I?

Armwrestling, however, is not the most vivid memory of last evening. Partly, because I was shitfaced by then, partly because what struck me far more was that at some point Dal commented on my intelligence (I guess I said something like 'I am not stupid, you know' to get across some weird point I was trying to prove) and me, always the curteous and humble person that I am, remarked that I was well aware that I was intelligent. Honestly, I think so (when I am drunk), though I try not to say it in public. Why? If you had seen the face Dal made, you would know. It's the face you always get for stating those obvious things about yourself that you're just not supposed to say. After all, knowing your own worth is not the best of qualities - it makes your opposite aware of the fact that you're a scrutinising, criticising, upfront bitch who is probably expecting you to be convinced of your own worth, too. You know what? You're right.

There isn't much I can think of that I find more despicable than someone behaving like a beaten dog. I guess if I were a proper woman (You know, this creature from 1950s television), I should feel pity and nurse the poor thing back to life and joy. Instead, I have the urge to beat it some more; I can't say whether in order to put it out of its misery or add to it. I want a t-shirt saying "I was told that boys don't cry, so why the fuck do you have to?"