Soap shmope.

Taking inspiration from Jaywalker, I am in confessional mode. Lets talk about the moderate level of self-neglect that has take place over the festive period. Not showering? Check! Not washing hair? Check! Brushing teeth sporadically (and I'm about to get those invisible plastic braces and I'm scared of what the orthodontist will say)? Yup. And also: living in pyjamas, wearing socks more than once, and then also wearing them to bed, and... but perhaps I should draw a veil over the rest. I have spent a significant chunk of time stewing in my own juices. I have a theory* that it's an extension of agoraphobia, and I remember doing this very same thing when I was 8 and I had my first bout of this desire to get and stay inside a thick layer of comforting warm nesty padding. Which I then wear for days. Padding which, admittedly, smells a little.

I am not inconsiderate. I deodorise. I wash (selectively). I am still reasonably civilised in my appearance. I am merely harking back to an earlier age, when being squeaky clean and befragranced was more for special occasions rather than every day. (Shut up, yes I am.)

But also, there is the relentless cold. I am wearing a vest, two long-sleeved cotton knit tops, a pair of leggings, a cotton knit skirt, a huge Muji smock**, a cashmere cardigan, two pairs of socks and a pair of tall leather boots. I am still freezing cold. Taking a shower feels like an insurmountable challenge. I am igloo-frozen, and the idea of taking my many layers of clothes off and then getting wet... It's just unthinkable.

Just to be clear, I have spent time with people who are seriously self-neglecting, and this is not the same thing. The long-suffering one with whom I live still buries his nose in my hair and says You smell nice. I say, Really? Because I'm pretty dirty. And he says You smell like you. Yesterday he said I smelled like digestive biscuits. I had by then showered and washed my hair and also cooked a curry, so... bit of a mystery that.

*I have a theory about pretty much everything, but that's a different story.


**...which I'm sure makes me look heavily pregnant. Meh, so what. Two fingers to Trinny and Susannah.

So I said...

- ...I fancy something sweet. Is there anything sweet?

- There's Christmas cake.

- Yeah. I don't like Christmas cake.

- You could put some jam on it.

- And how would that make it better?

- .  ...well, I was just thinking about how you could make it different. Because you don't like Christmas cake.

Homely.

Lovely sunshine yesterday. I took a walk down to the semi-derelict waterfront and had a wander. Pepys spent some time here doncha know.

It probably didn't look like this.

Soon I fear they'll knock it all down and build thousands of flats like they have everywhere else and there will be loads of boxes to sit in and nowhere to go when you leave.

On doit souffrir...

We blagged a coveted invitation to the neighbourhood NYE party this year, which was really great. I managed to glue on a great number of fabulously glamorous eyelashes - the kind that come in little clumps - and scratched my eyeball trying to remove them the next day. The glue is like the stuff you use to make model planes, and it dries to a scratchy, pointy crust. Where are all those overprotective nanny-state health and safety rules and regulations now that my cornea has been abraded I ask you?

I felt a bit bad when I saw the aftermath ready for recycling. We might have stayed to help clean up. But instead we came home and listened to loud (well, suburban politeness levels of loud) 80s music and for once we didn't carry on drinking, which was a great mercy for all concerned. Hurrah!

Happy New Year.

My head is alive with the sound of morons.

Is it just me, or is there also music in your head every chuffing day? Today it's Santa Bring My Baby Back (to Me) by Elvis. (Is there any other version? I can't imagine Doris Day doing it. Or Bono, despite his odd Elvis "poem." Maybe Tony Bennett. Or Crystal Gayle.)


Elvis is not the worst thing to have in your head. I like Elvis, and the song is a perfect carbon copy. All the uh-uh-huhs and chunky stuttery phrasing are as they should be. The UB40 phase was a problem. It was playing in a shop with a particularly attractive sale so I was exposed to it for far longer than one might ordinarily expect and it hung around for weeks, like catarrh.


I wake up with a musical phrase on repeat and it is there all day on and off like some sort of gnawing tinnitus, though I am clear it is in my head, not my ears. If Queen is occurring in my vicinity it will seep into my brain like some sort of toxic industrial pollution, which is unfortunate as I would rather fill my ears with petrol and set my head on fire than have that crap on a loop for days on end.

The policemen are looking younger too.

The Cramps* are playing in the kitchen as a radiator cover is being assembled by the less fortunate resident of this lover's paradise, and I'm thinking, as I do when I see old footage of the Sex Pistols, that it's a bit quaint and old fashioned that people were shocked by their music and swearing and generally disruptive antics.


So John Lydon's gone all sincere and stuff.


Not that it's any business of mine. No one should remain a gobbing, gurning teenager forever (though I seem to have held on to my crippling self-consciousness and nagging sensation that I will never be old enough to have to achieve or commit to anything).


The thing that I found surprising was the bit about the butter ad. Nicola Stanbridge is just a nipper has never heard of the Sex Pistols didn't do her research and... er no, never mind, she apparently ran a student radio station and should know better. Nicola, your question about selling out is not big and it's not clever. You're not interviewing Bob Dylan.** How is the concept of selling out relevant in any way to John Lydon, hater of earnest middle-class longhair types, devotee of himself and only himself, whose last Sex Pistols tour was entitled Filthy Lucre? Selling out what?


So aside from the cheap question about selling out, I was disappointed that Lydon addressed it as if it was a real question, but then he went on to lament the end of all things British in the same tone as the old buffers who decried the Sex Pistols as the end of all civilised society in the 70s, which was quite fun. Bless.


The radiator cover looks okay.

*Now it's The Stranglers. Ditto.

**I got a little stuck on this. Bob Dylan came to mind because of the Judas thing, but who else would fit? Bono? Raving Tory Phil Collins, who was in a little prog rock combo but took it to the next level commercially and had to move to Switzerland because he didn't want to pay tax? Then recorded a sad song about a homeless woman? I don't know if that makes him a sellout; isn't he just a tosser? If you're a professional musician, making a living selling music, an accusation of selling out seems a bit, well, hollow.

Heartwarming.

It's good to say sorry.

Is it wrong that I find this story so, well, warming of the cockles? I have in the past felt a little cynical about the belated municipal apology that comes years or maybe hundreds of years later from a completely different generation of people with only a tangential connection with the original event(s). What is the value or validity of this gesture? In this case it seems that it was quite cathartic for all involved.