Last night: two parties. K's glamorous boat party (though kinda scary walking along the river path at Nine Elms at nine thirty); it's a very strange experience going to a party where you don't know anyone. I have to resist the temptation to reinvent myself in such circumstances.

On the way home, crossing Vauxhall Bridge, I collided with hundreds, nay thousands of moonwalkers - women of various shapes and sizes in various states of undress. It's the Playtex Moonwalk, apparently; hence the bras. For breast cancer charities. I was relieved/interested/bemused (you choose) to behold a cross section of women's bodies, in a truly out of context setting.

Really late, I went to J&A's studio party. Debbie just got back from India, sooo cool to see her again. Her and DJ played some folka-like thing that was pretty much the below-ship music from Titanic. Two thirds of The Strumpits, half of Los Desterrados and a bunch of other people strutted their talented stuff. I decided against it, partly becuase I was (glamourously) over dressed, and partly cos I just wasn't in the mood. Sometimes - a lot of the time - it's better to just listen to other people. I'm trying to tame the performer within.

Set aside today to write. Write, dammit. But kinda pissed that T has tickets to Pat Metheny in Brighton tomorrow and didn't invite me.

Got home threeish last night/this morning (more, later). Was lying in bed thinking "must go the the gym, must go to the gym", when the phone rang. It was J, he met someone in a club last Sunday, exchanged phone numbers, went on a date Thursday, spent the day together yesterday. "Did you sleep together, yet?" I asked. No news. "Any ETA?" (I like to get the details. And he likes to share them). "I'm standing on a platform and there's no announcements." This is definitely a phrase I'm going to use.

Just got back from lunch. Guess that's what you call a long lunch. My friends F&D made a fab vegetarian spread (S is also veggie), and J, an old college friend was there, who I haven't seen in like forever. Someone asked me for my earl. There's a lot of phrases I might runtogetherlikethat but URL isn't one of them.

For a reason I can't remember, we started talking about old people. When I was a kid, my life was regimented by my parents old-people responsibilities (two grandmothers, one (childless) great aunt, and an ageing, ailing, (childless) second cousin of my mother's). We spent every Sunday afternoon visiting these largely ibberbottle (senile, yiddish) women. No one could call after ten o-clock; someone might have died. We couldn't go on long holidays (we might have to, God forbid, come back for a funeral). And if we didn't visit, we had to feel guilty.

I remember about five years ago, getting a call on Saturday from my Mum, saying that Auntie Tess "really wasn't well". I knew this was code for imminently leaving us. It was up to me if I wanted to come and visit her tomorrow, they were all going. "What if I don't come, Mum?". "Well, it's up to your conscience. But if she dies..." There was a subtle perfected guilt in the conversation.

Sunday morning saw me on a 9am train to Manchester, picked up at Piccadilly, straight over to the nursing home en famille, no time to waste. And of course Auntie Tess was more lucid than she'd been for years (the past ten years had generally been having the same conversation about where her books had gone, over and over again). "What are you doing here, Sasha?" she enquired. What was I supposed to answer? Heard you were dying. We had a wonderful day, and she talked about her childhood in lots of detail, and I was glad I went. And she didn't die for... oh, another eighteen months or so.

Feeling sad about not having any old people in my life, I decided to be a volunteer befriender, and visited an old lady across the road from me for about two years. She couldn't remember my name, and just called me "ze gurl", insisted that she read German poetry to me, despite the fact that I don't speak it, and was generally bitter. And 93. The way I expect old people to be. The first time I met her, she said to me (in a thick, mittel european accent): "Tell me, are you one of zose modern gurls? Do you go viz men?" I said I'd tell her when she was older. The next time I visited her, forearmed with the knowledge that she'd not opened a window since 1976, and it was like a cross between the Bahamas and an unwashed sauna in her flat, I wore shorts. As we sipped coffee, she slapped my thighs, and said: "such polkes (literally, thighs, but has an implication of fat thighs, really), you shouldn't vear ze shorts."

I'm wittering. We had a mellow afternoon, and everyone was very taken by my pointy, rose-printed fifties shoes, and seemed to think I was terribly glamorous.

Which is good, becuase I'm going to Katy's party tonight and I'm supposed to look glamorous. Must go wash my hair, daaahling.

A friend told me about facade.com, and I just discovered that according to my biorythms, I am 80% compatible with Denzel Washington. In my dreams.


Oh, and sadly, only 42% compatible with Lenny Kravitz.

I wonder if your biorythms have anything to do with your metabolic rate? It's times like this I wish I hadn't run a charts sweepstake in biology and got kicked out for writing Fuck's Bizz.

Blogging about blogging. P-u-leese. But memeticlife sent me this and this.

Phrase of the moment: emotional labour. I was worried yesterday that there were a finite number of word combinations, but now I'm not so sure. Remember when everyone started talking about mass customisation and the experience economy? That went out of fashion about as quick as the new black. It's my stress portfolio I'm worried about.

It's good to know that even if I'm not (openly) obsessing about dieting and body image, someone else is.

Through years of training, I'm - believe me - acutely aware of my imperfections. (You want to know what they are? One eyelid lower than the other. A birthmark on my forehead. And... some other things I probably wouldn't discuss here.) I look around at other people who clearly have imperfections but don't seem to mind, and wonder how they do it. Yesterday I forgot about my imperfections for a couple of hours, and it was a an Experience. Like a Look, but better.

One of the joys of being self-employed: no IT department. Anyone know where you get those little gadgets for hoovering your keyboard?

Books. My friend Abe worked out that if you read 45 books a year and have 55 "reading years" in your life, you read a total of 2,475 books in your lifetime. I tend to read more than one a week, but it depends how much I'm writing. The Book Limit Theory just depresses me; I prefer the feeling of infinite wisdom waiting for me somewhere out there... Z keeps a notebook of all the books she's read, whereas I just try and remember. Badly.

Right now I'm reading Killing Time by Frank Tallis (after reading his second novel, Sensing Others, first). Sensing others was incredibly written, and set against a backdrop of Kilburn, which made me feel right at home, and covered issues ranging from psychotherapeutic drugs, eco-warriors, rock music and S&M. So that's me then.

Just had a book binge this morning in WH Smith at London Bridge: The Rotters Club/Jonathan Coe (I loved What A Carve Up, though not so taken by The House of Sleep, which smacked of first-novel-self consciousness) Still She Haunts Me by proto-feminist/model-a-like Katie Roiphe (a novel based on the Lewis Carrol/Alice Liddell story), and Thin Skin by Emma Forrest (I think in the chick-lit vein, though I never really got into her Namedropper).

So that's me staying in for the next...

Thinking more about Burn Rate.. wanted to list the other netwebby books that played with my mind at the time:
Nudist on the Late Shift - Po Bronson
The First Twenty Million is Always the Hardest - Po Bronson
Bull - Doug Rushkoff (you can also read this online, as an open source novel, called Exit Strategy)

Is it a list if there's only three things on it?

Remember the book that captured the zeitgeist of the internet? Burn Rate , Michael Wolff's 1999 book was a searingly insightful walk on the wildside of the boom and bust of the internet era. And now... Burn Rate the diet. The DIET. Apparently it's all about your metabolic rate (isn't everything). I'm dissapointed to realise that there's a finite number of new ideas/witty phrases out there, and now they have to get recycled, in a slightly out of context way.

I know the world and her wife will link to this, but it looks like an interesting comment on the, er, blogging revolution, and I want to go back and read it sometime. Promise.

In more mundane news, I went to Tesco's 1130ish last night (I'd been out, honest), and fell into an easy conversation with two guys by the checkout. We talked about football (they had Manchester accents) and other stuff.
They were buying like 200 Tesco Value glasses. I asked them if they were having a party. They replied "how much do you think it costs to hire a glass?" I reckoned 20p. I was right. They said you could buy them for 20p. I said, sure, but you have to get an extension on your house to keep them in. That's what's good about hiring them; you use them, then they go away and you never have to see them again. I guess we had a difference of opinion when it comes to consumerism and party products.

They did look strangely familiar, in the way that people in North London often do, and then one of them said to me "ever hurt your back?" And I realised he was my osteopath five years ago. The guy on the checkout was convinced it was some kind of chat up line. Yeah, that would really work.


And I watched a hot-off-the-press chat-up line in action; a skinny tightly be-jeaned girlie, goes up to a guy and says "do you work here?". He sneers, and says no. She walks off, ensuring that he gets a fabulous view of her behind. He runs after her....

There's been a lot of debate since Sunday about the rally. You know what they say; 55,000 Jews, 63,500 opinions (OK, they say two Jews, three opinions).

My (new) friend J (to distinguish him from my long standing cycling-friend, J) sent me this from the BBC. Note that Abu , the Palestinian militant, says:
"We would accept a transitional agreement or initiative under which there is a ceasefire between us and an Israeli entity, but we do not accept a two state solution as the basis for lasting peace. As a combatant, I would accept a ceasefire in return for Israel giving up Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but we can never recognise the state of Israel."

Unlike most Israelis, who do accept a two-sate solution. That's pretty much what Barak offered and Arafat turned down.

And Andrew sent me this (totally unedited) email, entitled J'accuse

I suspect that like me you received innumerable e-mails in the last couple of weeks informing you of the rally which took place last Monday and like me agonised over whether to go.

I have been saddened by the whole series of events. The rally will make little or no impact on British policy (it barely made the BBC six o'clock news that evening before the news of the assassination of Pim Fortuyn). However, it is a godsend for Bibi Netanyahu's next bid for the Prime Ministership of Israel - you can see the campaign ad now - first he does the Washington rally, compares Arafat to Hitler etc, then does the London rally and does the same (cue shots of 30,000 cheering Jews at Trafalgar Square).

Here are some questions:-

Who were the people who organised it? - what political views did they represent and why were we never told?

Why were we told the rally was apolitical at a time that invitations must have been going out to Israeli politicians?

Did anyone tell Bibi that the rally was to be apolitical?

If they did, why did they think that he would follow "apoliticism" given that he had compared Arafat to Hitler in Washington and was unlikely to do anything else in London?

Why did so many Jewish organisations feel obliged to publicise this rally over which they had no control?

What have we become that Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, who has a long record of friendship to Jews and Israel, gets booed when he tells us, out of friendship, things that we find painful and may not agree with? Have we become so paranoid that we only want friends who always tell us we are right?

Are we surprised that the message from sensible speeches gets drowned out when appeals to the basest fears of a crowd always bring the loudest cheer?

-------------------

Please show solidarity with Israelis at this difficult time. If you have friends there, keep in contact. If you have reason to go, visit.

But please, please do not again fall for the blandishments of peer pressure without asking why.

Jews ask questions and demand answers from their texts - perhaps in future we should do the same from our leaders.

Sha'alu sh'lom yerushalyim

Andrew

How do I feel about this? Part of me agrees with Andrew; Jews ask questions and demand answers from our texts. And part of me doesn't; I didn't agomise over whether to go, I was ready to stand up and be counted. Was it totally apolitical - no. Do I stand by what I said Monday - yes. Who oraganised the rally - people who care about the longevity of Israel. For me, it was just as much about combatting media bias as anything else, and the fact that it "barely made the six o'clock news" isn't accurate; I saw wide, if biased coverage, and frankly, 55,000 (mostly) Jews eat bagels in Trafalgar Square is not a news story.

Like, you really want to know which Nokia handset you are.
[via g.r.i.e.v.e.r]

PowerBook update: P from the National Theatre box office, when I asked him why the preview had been cancelled, said to me "you've never worked with Deborah Warner, then." Obviously not, I'm not a theatre director. Anyway, I've re-booked for Tuesday with S.

This on email stalking is both scary and reassuring at the same time.
[via Luke]

I can't believe that the National Theatre have cancelled the first night preview of The Power Book tonight. A charmingly apologetic fellow called me from their call centre at 7pm last night. No explanation, just terribly sorry.

An extremely vivid dream: I'm in T's sports car, and we go to his office, only his law firm has merged with about four others (it was called Cameron XXXXX Chance), but when we got there, the office was a building exactly like my school building, but with the name over the front, and fourteen year olds doing some kind of security duty. Then T has to do negotiate a deal with one of the security people, and drops me off with all my bags. I ask for directions to my office, which turns out to be right behind (it's an office I worked in four years ago on Mortimer Street).


When I go inside, it's extremely dingy, like a victorian workhouse or something, and people have shit light and crap desks and are beavering away scared. It looks exactly like a place I interviewed in three weeks ago. I run into all the people I don't want to, and eventually hide in the toilet with my bags (small handbag, two large bags of... I don't know, and my sony vaio in a squashy canvas PC case). When I leave, I go and have a sleep on a bed on Mortimer Street. I put on a very short t-shirt (don't ask me why, I usually sleep nekkid), and am conscious of people in the cafe next door (which doesn't exist) trying to see up my t-shirt. I get into bed, it's the middle of day, and know I've left my bags on the opposite side of the street, and keep thinking to myself "I'll get them in a minute." I'm conscious that T said he would be an hour, and it feels like mcuh longer. When I get out of bed, I'm momentarily distracted by cafe dwellers commenting on the shortness of my t-shirt, and even though I've had my eye on my bags the whole time, they're all gone, apart from my Vaio. I don't lose it, but I am stressed; my cards, cash, phone, clothes have gone, and I have no way of calling T to see when he's coming.


As if my magic (as Mr Benn would say) Jane, a girl I went to nursery school with, and haven't seen for ten years (apart from when I ran into her in the Muswell Hill Odeon a couple of weeks back) appears. I'm tearful, and explain my predicament, and that I can't walk around Oxford Circus with a short T-shirt and no knickers. She's very practical, and says I should buy some new clothes, and when I explain that my cash and cards have gone, she says she'll get some. She asks me which shop to go to, and I tell her, and say that I just want leggings and a sweat-shirt, and as she walks off, I yell "don't forget I'm a size sixteen!" and the whole of Oxford Circus turns round and stares.
Inexplicably, I go off to buy some smoked salmon (I'm pretty much a vegetarian) in an Oxford Circus smoked salmon shop that doesn't exist. I'm in my t-shirt, and buy £1 worth of salmon, paying for it from loose change at the bottom of my computer bag. The man in the shop tries to organise a whip-round for me, but I refuse. I just want to get home and cancel my cards. I don't know where T is. I wake up.


Anyone have any idea at all what this means? I'm just surprised by the level of detail I remember.