What a drag

Last night I went to a friend's stag party so, naturally, I dragged up and affixed a fairly realistic handlebar moustache to my face with liberal quantities of eyelash glue. Now, I walk around the streets of London in all kinds of fancy dress outfits, so I'm used to getting odd looks, but no previous ensemble has ever attracted as much attention as this simple tweeded, pinstriped, facial-haired combo. So many people stared at me; some of them with genuine looks of alarm or distaste. A nutjob preacher outside Oxford Circus tube station screamed out that I was going to Hell. Most unnerving though, were the ones who tried to pretend not to look, while their eyes surreptitiously flicked over me. You could see the thought processes as they looked from the men's clothes to the long hair, to the moustache, to the figure and tried to work out whether I was male or female, or en-route from one to the other. It actually made me quite uncomfortable, and gave me a strong feeling of sympathy for trans people, who must attract this blatant assessment of their appearance on a regular basis.

Then this afternoon as I was coming home, still in the chap outfit but sans soup strainer, a smiling old man put out his hand to stop me as I passed.
"I saw you yesterday. Where's your moustache?" he asked.
"Oh, I took it off" I replied, "It was itchy".
"I'm Samir. I see you a lot. You're very different, aren't you?"
"I guess so", I answered, starting to feel slightly uneasy.
"I like it. And you walk with such confidence. Me and my wife, you make us smile when we see you. I lift my hat to you. Bless you."

And with that he shook my hand and was gone. I know my mad-magnet causes me a fair bit of hassle, but I think the times when it pulls in the lovely crazy people more than make up for the bad ones. I don't mind if street preachers think I'm going to burn for all eternity, so long as Samir and his missus are getting a kick out of the strange girl with all the outfits.

You've been swell, but I'm not getting married

Most nights I go to bed with a song in my head - 'Not Getting Married' from Stephen Sondheim's Company, in case you're interested. It's not a song I'm particularly familiar with. I only know a handful of the words, and I don't even like it very much. And yet, almost every night, it plays over and over in my mind.

Last night I finally realised why. The last thing I do before I switch off the light is check my emails and Facebook  just to make sure the internet has nothing fascinating to share with me before I turn in. Then I turn off my laptop. I can't believe it took me until last night to realise that the two little bing-bong notes it plays as it turns off are the first two notes of that song. And now a question for the tech-heads - Can I stop it playing a sound when it goes to sleep? Or even switch those notes for better ones? Sondheim is not restful.

Confusion

The last couple of months have been full of some fairly dramatic highs and lows. First a holiday, which was great but left me with some rather burning questions about my life and my attitude to myself. Then, on the last day of that holiday, I shattered my coccyx into a million pieces, leaving me housebound for the best part of a month, which is way too much time to spend dwelling on such questions. Just days after my return to work, and with only a couple more days until my birthday, I lost my grandfather, then felt horribly guilty for being able to enjoy what was a really wonderful birthday despite my bereavement. Top all that off with another intense trip to Burning Man, and the eternal disappointment of coming back down to earth afterwards and, honestly, I just don't know where I stand right now. I think the overwhelming impression I'm left with from the last couple of months is that there are a lot of people out there doing some really amazing things with their lives, regardless of what anybody else has to say about that. Also that life is just too fucking short to be spent doing things that don't make you happy.

I need to make some changes, but I don't know which or how. There are little things: I want to learn some kind of hands-on skill that'll make me useful to my camp at Burning Man, like carpentry or metalwork. I want to learn a new language. Being impressionable and, yes, ever so slightly mad, I want to take lessons in everything from circus skills to taxidermy. Unfortunately, the problem with learning new things is that you usually have to pay someone to teach you, and I can't. And then there's the big stuff. The eternal balancing acts between security and risk, the humdrum and the exciting. Do I continue to plod along in the same safe, ordinary manner forever, or do I put myself out there and take a risk which, knowing my built-in bad luck, would probably end in disaster, but which maybe, just maybe, in my most unlikely and most cherished hopes, could be my greatest triumph?

I'm rambling, I know. I did say I was confused. Turmoil is the order of the day. I'll shut up now.

Washing Machine Repair for Dummies with Back Injuries

Chapter one - things to remember

• Righty tighty, lefty loosey.
• Your back is injured.

Chapter two - shit not to do

• The Internet will suggest pulling out and tipping the machine. Do not attempt this.
• Do not pull the cap off the drainage hose with your teeth.
• Do not underestimate the volume of water the machine contains or the stagnant rankness of it when you subsequently get a mouthful.
• Do not overestimate a) the capacity of a dish or b) the absorbency of a towel.
• Do not ever leave a draining washing machine unattended (see above).
• Do not assume the cat will not attempt to drink filthy filter water even though her water bowl is mere inches away.

Chapter three - things you will find in the filter

• Fluff
• Playa dust
• Diamantes
• Lollipop stick
• Glowstick connectors
• Donkey finger puppet

Chapter four - post-draining

• Return clean filter to position (with difficulty).
• Switch on machine.
• Discover machine still doesn't work.
• Cry.
• Desert feminism and wish you had a boyfriend or butch girlfriend to fix this for you.
• Give up and pour a gin.

*UPDATE*

Chapter five - twenty minutes later

• Return to machine and press 'on' again in the vain hope that it will have miraculously fixed itself.
• Discover miracles really do happen!
• Pour another gin.

Cushioning the blow

I'm hoping to be back at work next week. I'm going crazy sitting around on my own all day, so I'm determined to return to normal life, rather than having my sick note extended. Unfortunately I'm still in rather a lot of pain so, to ease the transition back to sitting on a broken bone for eight hours straight, I have purchased a coccyx cushion. This is basically just a big, square pad with a hole cut out of the back where your tailbone goes. Sadly, it bears an unfortunate resemblance (i.e. is identical) to a pile cushion. I'm feeling a vague urge to embroider 'I do not have haemorrhoids' on it. If only I knew how to embroider.

I'm still here

I haven't disappeared again, I promise. It's just that I've been signed off work for a while with this whole broken coccyx thing, so I'm stuck at home all day. Nothing happens here, so I have nothing to write about. Although, I did get a fabulous delivery today. The Chameleon sent it to cheer me up.

 Good huh?

Actually, while we're on the topic of deliveries, my grocery shop came today. I ordered six loose yoghurts because they were on offer. One of them was unavailable, so they gave me a six-pack which contained that flavour.....plus the five loose yoghurts I originally ordered. Why not just replace the unavailable flavour with another flavour? Now I have eleven yoghurts. Nobody can eat that much yoghurt!!!!!

Oh, I really need to get back out into the world. I'm clearly going stir crazy if I'm utilising multiple exclamation marks just to bemoan a yoghurt glut.

Really?

Inappropriate Pharmacist: That's a lot of painkillers. What have you done to yourself?
Me: I fractured my coccyx.
Inappropriate Pharmacist: Ouch! Well [winks], if that little lot doesn't sort it out, come back and we'll kiss it better.

To labour the point

Today I travelled into work on the tube, as usual. Less usually, I was perched bolt upright in my seat, trying to protect my fractured coccyx, and occasionally letting out an involuntary whimper or yelp as I was jolted by the movement of the train. After a couple of stops the woman opposite me leaned across the aisle, put her hand on my knee and said the only thing which could have made me more miserable at that moment in time........."Are you OK? Are you in labour?".

It's not just the crazies.....

.......even otherwise normal and pleasant people feel the need to insult me.

Girl: Hi, I'm ******
Me: Oh, we've met. At such-and-such a workshop.
Girl: Oh, well, there were lots of hot people there, so I didn't remember you.

When you wish the ground would swallow you up

Today I walked into the little shop around the corner from work, merrily chatting away to my friend, who was close behind me. "Where would they put the tampons....hmm.....I don't think they sell tampons here.....oh well......I have one in my bag, that'll do until I get home". Then I turned round to my friend, only to discover that she had, in fact, opted to wait for me outside, and that the girl behind me was a complete stranger, smiling awkwardly as I wittered away about feminine hygiene products.

Injuries for Guardian readers

I just cut myself while peeling a celeriac. Could I be a)more clumsy? or b)more middle-class?

This is where I talk about underwear

A while ago I bought some underwear from a certain department store, renowned for reliable examples of such items. When putting my purchases in my bag, the sales lady somehow managed to add a multipack of knickers, several sizes too small for me. On discovering this when I got home, I chucked them to the back of a drawer, intending to pass them on to a slimmer friend at some point. I never got around to this but, yesterday, finding myself very behind on laundry and entirely sans knickers, I decided that too-small pants were a better option than a) no pants, or b) dirty pants. This turned out to be an error of judgement which would lead to me spending the day squirming in my seat as unforgiving, size ten elastic cut into my size sixteen flesh. I confided my discomfort to a colleague/friend, but sadly never quite found the time to take up her suggestion and smuggle a pair of scissors to the ladies to make some swift tailoring alterations. Even more sadly, I still haven't had time to put any washing on, so will most likely be forced to fish out another pair tomorrow. Sad times.

Ssssshhhh!

Random pervy men on the street should be forced to check who I'm on the phone to before they make inappropriate comments. The last thing I need is for my Grandma to hear some guy's loud, profanity-laden remarks on the size of my rack.

St Valentine he aint!

A mad old man sitting on a bench in the cold with a can of some dubiously branded beer just yelled at me "You know why you not haulin any flowers? Cos you ugly through and through!". And they say romance is dead!

Ticket lottery blues

This week saw the draw for the new Burning Man ticket lottery and, I think it's safe to say, it was not a success. I have heard estimates that say 1/3 of people got the tickets they requested, but I suspect it's lower than that. I know many dozens of people who applied and, at last count, I'm only aware of six who got tickets. Many theme camps and projects are concerned that they will not be able to attend the event. Alongside that is the fact that this new process was supposed to discourage scalpers, but there are already numerous overpriced tickets on various resale websites.

Now, I'm not a ticketing or event management expert, and offered no advice to BMorg on the system prior to its inception, so I don't have the kind of anger and frustration endemic to those who attempted to tell them that this would happen. I can understand why they feel that way though, and I myself have expressed my bitter disappointment at not being among the chosen few. None of this surprises me. What has surprised me is the response of others to that disappointment and anger. We have been told we are whingers, we are self-entitled, we need to grow up. And all this by people I consider to be reasonable adults and, sometimes, by people I consider to be friends.

What I'm wondering is, when exactly did it become such a bad thing to express negative emotions? If we're disappointed, why should we not say so? If we're hurt or distressed, why is it socially unacceptable for us to cry? I've seen two distinct groups of people expressing similar views this week, in this situation and others. One group is the idealists; those who state that the negativity isn't productive, that we should continue to hope, to believe, to have faith. The other group holds true to the classic stiff-upper-lip philosophy, and encourages us to bottle up our feelings and not let anybody see them, for fear of betraying weakness.

What stuns me about both groups is the lack of honesty. Human beings are not automata, capable of being subjected to any amount of emotional abuse without response. Neither are we happy little pixies, cheerful all the time, immune to any feeling other than joy. To claim otherwise is to lie to ourselves and others. We are subject to a whole range of emotions; some positive, some negative, but none 'good' or 'bad'. It bemuses me that people are so determined to shut down any expression of what they consider to be 'bad' feelings. As one of my friends succinctly put it: "People are talking about how they *feel* about the way they have been treated. You are in no position to take that away from them - feelings are personal, the interpretation of action against one is personal". For myself, I can't help wondering why one person's feelings of disappointment, sadness or hurt are perceived as a weakness in their character, or why, if these feelings are indeed a sign of weakness, they are so threatening to the people around them.

Is that a scowl, a frown or a grimace?

Today has been a pisser of a day. One of those days that leave you wondering just how low you need to set the bar in order not to be disappointed.

To start it all off, I emerged from my bedroom this morning to hear distressed mewing from the next room. Yep. You've guessed it. She did it again. Is this some sort of cry for help? If so, then I am decidedly unimpressed. And I've noticed that the kebab shop up the road looks like it could be dodgy enough to take her off my hands. They might even give me a bag of chips for my troubles.

The rescue effort caused me to be late for work, but I quickly wished it had made me even later. Why is it that things never go catastrophically tits up months in advance of a deadline, when I have plenty of time to fix them? Instead, some higher power has deemed that the last minute is the ideal time to throw a few well-chosen spanners into the works, just to keep me on my toes. I don't need to be kept on my toes. I live in a perpetual state of fretfulness and anxiety. If I spent any more time on my toes, I'd have to buy pointe shoes.

To top it all off I tripped over a kerb on the way home, ripped my tights (and my knee) and landed with both hands in a filthy puddle. A man watched this happen and, instead of expressing concern or helping me up, stood there and laughed at me as I knelt on the pavement bleeding and wiping my mucky hands on my ruined tights.

Oh, and I dropped my last sausage in a glass of diet coke. No, I don't know how I managed it either, but if that's not the ultimate postmonition of the day from hell, I don't know what is.

I'm going to bed.

Just how long is that?

There is a range of time that is defined by being longer than a cat is capable of controlling its bladder, but not so long that it is incapable of controlling its bowels. Somewhere within that range is the precise length of time for which Molly was stuck behind a bookcase prior to my getting home.

The case is in a fairly tight alcove, so the only way she can have possibly got behind it is by falling the six feet or so from the top, to end up wedged in the scarce couple of inches between furniture and wall. Unsurprisingly, she was fairly distressed by the predicament in which she found herself, however I didn't feel it was entirely necessary to viciously attack me as I attempted to extricate her. I did not enjoy that.

For the record, I also did not enjoy unloading all the books from the case, wriggling the case out of the alcove, mopping up the puddle of piss behind the case, wriggling the case back into the alcove or getting struck on the shoulder by the heavy wooden pig which I'd forgotten was perched on top of the case.

Does anybody want a cat? Free to a good home, a bad home or a dodgy kebab shop.

Special report

The cat-induced marble jar crash of 16/01 was one of the most catastrophic events of the last fortnight, and its effects are still being felt to this day. In the aftermath of the tragedy, minute fragments of broken glass were spread throughout the surrounding environs. The likelihood is that the full extent of the damage will not be known for some time but, already, it is becoming clear that there will be tough times ahead. Just yesterday, small slivers were located within a sealed tube of moisturiser, through the high-tech detection method of inadvertently grinding them into my forehead.

Shattered

Ten minutes ago I had a jar full of marbles on my headboard and a cat on my pillow. Now I have neither. What I do have is vast quantities of broken glass, bare feet and a blantantly unapologetic cat playing with marbles under the bed.

Bulbous

I have recently been attempting to sprout hyacinth bulbs in a set of bulb vases. Of the three, one is beginning to put out shoots, one has grown mould on its bottom (oo-er!) and the third has fallen through the narrow neck of the vase and sunk. By the official Meat Loaf rating of success (two out of three aint bad), I am deeming this a failure to coax Spring into being.