At work we three kick ass.

Vee, vicar's daughter - teeny, feisty, not really the touchy-feely type, and sometimes brusque enough to make even me look cosy, and Em -  a Kiwi who doesn't take any prisoners so don't be fooled by that hair-twirly thing she does and the little-girl leg entwining.  Then me.  Mme Whiplash. Depending on the day.

I run the office, Em runs the editorial department and is generally the acknowledged power behind the throne, Vee runs me,  as well as rights, digital and probably the Home Office.  And we're in Covent Garden.  Drinking cocktails in a New Zealand restaurant.

They have mojitos, I have a vodka and slimline tonic - because I'm back in the Dukan Gulag and trying to remain within the spirit - as it were - if not the letter of the law.

We have a table outside.  I nipped into it the second the people already there got up to leave, much to the dismay of the girl from Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model (and yes, I am sad to actually know that) who stood up a second after me and sort of 'Ahh' ed.  Like a false start, though it was more of a late start, because I got in there first.  Olympic Table Vaulting Gold goes to Mme Whiplash...

I'm settling everyone's bags and coats around me as I race for victory while Vee has gone to get fags and Em is at the bar - it's a team sport...

I'm extremely pleased with myself.  We can eat supper here - it's the first warm night in weeks. Then BNTM girl says: 'excuse me, but you know the reason I was sitting here on this bench (three yards away from the table) was because I was waiting for that table...'

'I'm sorry, but we were also sitting on the bench (one yard away from the table - I mean, tactics, girlie, tactics) and I didn't know you were waiting, you didn't mention it, and there wasn't, like, a line or anything...'  No I didn't say, like, and act black, and in your face, with the head wobbling finger waggling thing going on, but it was implied.  Instead I smiled, apologetically and ignored her sulking. You snooze you loose - time and tables wait for no man, etc. etc. etc.

'And you're not really sorry are you?'  She added, accusingly.

What could I say?  'No, not at all,' I replied.  And shrugged.  She didn't know who she was up against. After the day, week, months we've had at work, we three are like a tag team of the very pissed off.  No way she was getting this table with her pouty little dummy spit.  No wonder she was in the bottom two this week.

Another round of drinks.  A cosmo, a sparkle, and a vodka martini, straight up with a twist - so cold, please, that it takes the enamel of my teeth...  We're all there with our little martini glasses in various pastel shades - pink, yellow, and mine clear, which I realise as I sip it, is actually exactly what I had the first time round but without the slimline tonic.  Even closer to the spirit of Dukan.

Michael arrives.  He might own the restaurant.  He might manage the restaurant.  He might be partners in the restaurant.  I'm not sure.  I'm not sure I feel my lips.  I'm sure he was taller.  More recognisable the last time I saw him.   We have pedrone peppers, drenched in salt.  We decide on some wine, and some 'small dishes'.  Restaurants are so clever, tempting you with 'small dishes' for prices that seem, if not reasonable, at least not frightening, and then they leave you to drink, letting you get drunker before they arrive with them so that you're on the second bottle of wine before the scallops arrive and you find that 'small' means microscopic and numbers one each, and the duck is arranged on a saucer, and the salad is in a soup bowl, and the squid is in a ramekin...  Delicious though.

'Fairly Dukan...' Vee says since, even though both the prawns and squid are battered wearing ice crystals with more salt than Salar di Uyuni and the duck is melting with fat, and there's creme fraiche with the scallops which I'm now spooning into my mouth like it's dessert, there is, undoubtably and indisputably, protein on the table.

We've put the Company fully to rights by the time we're on the peanut butter parfait (oh drop dead Dukan) when I mention a book I've been reading that's set in New Zealand and very evocative.

'I wonder why we don't all just live there - it sounds so beautiful...' I say, swooning on about the birds and the scenery and the landscape.

'It is amazing, stunning and empty - you just can't believe how beautiful it is,' said Em and Vee agrees as I continue to gush about horses and surfing beaches and rainforests and mountains - she who fears horses, hates to swim out of her depth, and couldn't trek if her life depended on it...

'But it's provincial,' says Em.

'Yes, it's like a 1957 country fair,' agrees Vee.

'No theatre to speak off,'  adds Em who hasn't been to the theatre as long as I've known her, and whose weekends seem to revolve around sitting in a beach hut in Whitstable with her two kids and no TV, like something out of Enid Blyton.

'Food and wine's good though, mind you it's not London..,'  says Vee, my fellow Dukaner who gets through most of the week on cottage cheese and wafer-thin, probably mechanicall recovered, pressed ham from Waitrose essentials range.

'And there's no culture,' Em says.

'Absolutely no culture,' echoes Vee, who - I remind you had a drink called a sparkle - and had been regaling us with tales of her forthcoming weekend on the lam in Spain with her gay hairdresser - about whom I know one fact - that he's also  been on Dukan for a month and lost a stone.

Britain's Next Top Sulky model has been looking at her phone for the last twenty minutes, jabbing it with an angry finger, as we leave.  Vee goes to that well known intellectual haven Colliers Wood where she admits the next day, she had another can of lager with the last fag, before she turned in, while I went home underneath the Westway on the No 7 to suburbia, too drunk to even read my text messages.  Em went North and can't remember actually getting home.

Yep.  God forbid that we ever lived somewhere without any culture.

Publishing is one of the few industries left where being drunk at work is still tolerated.  Even if it's first thing in the morning, as in, not yet sobered up from the night before.

I mean, I knew I felt terrible when I woke up clinging to the side of the bed at 3am with only the vaguest memory of getting into it.  There was the usual trail of shame, clothes scattered from the door to the bed in which, thankfully, I was at least alone.  I did have to check though.

I got out of bed gingerly, showered, dressed, at least partially, in reverse - swaying downstairs in my smalls, or Bridget Jones' larges, picking up a clean dress from the cupboard I use as a wardrobe, retrieving my cardigan from the bannister, my handbag from the stairwell, and my flip-flops at the door, and walked to the tube, slightly listing to the right and navigated my way to the tube, as though struggling against a strong wind in a small dinghy.

I then breathed my way to Holborn where I shuddered at the thought of coffee, tentatively tried and recoiled from the notion of a bacon sandwich, and let myself in to the blessedly quiet office, where I sat  in a hunched position, at my desk, until my boss arrived an hour later and found me there, glassy eyed, unmoving, staring at my in-box. 

He brought me water and a fist full of codeine.

An hour later my colleague arrived, rolled into the office, swooned into the chair beside me, and got the same treatment.

I'm fairly sure the CEO of most businesses doesn't administer hangover drugs to his staff as part of the morning ritual...

Another hour passed and the Macho Chairman of our parent company arrived.

Now I quite like the Chairman of our parent company.  He's a fan of my book.  Read it on a long haul flight and sings my praises to all who'll listen, and he's kind of cute in that craggy, lean, walks-with-a-swagger bushman way that's appealing to we gals, romantically weaned on characters from - what I've since learned is a whole genre called 'Farm Romance' featuring strong, manly, cowboys in the Australian Outback who don't say much, but can throw you over their shoulder and carry you to the waterhole on the back of their horse when your ballet career is tragically cut short after you're kicked by a kangaroo whilst saving a child from a dingo...  or whatever.

So I would have preened, squeezed my cleavage, etc, had I been able to sit fully upright, but as it was, I just dwindled further into my chair.  He gave me his twinkly smile, corks on his hat bobbing, leather chaps slapping against each other on the muscled thighs, and strode up to my desk and, not seeming to notice that I was still, effectively (or rather ineffectively) drunk - I mean do I look this bad the rest of the time?  I do usually brush my hair most days...

'Well,'  He began.  As I said, not the greatest conversationalist these bushmen.

I'm thinking, typical, typical, this will be the day he asks me to lunch...  but no  'Have you ever been to the Olympia Beer Festival?'  He asked.

Obviously the lederhosen I usually wear on Monday's had given him a false impression.

I shook my head weakly.  In fact I didn't shake my head as it made the room spin.  I just imagined shaking my head.

'Oh it's fabulous, he went on,' and then continued to outline, in detail the many different beers he'd tried on the previous evening.  

I groaned.

Big Giant Head Editor popped out of his office and joined us at that moment, being able to hear the word 'beer' from as far as five hundred yards away.  He isn't against a few sherbets after work himself.

The two then sang jingles from Double Diamond adverts of the 1960s. 

A Double Diamond works wonders,
Works wonders, works wonders,
A Double Diamond works wonders,
So drink one today!

[Tune: “There’s a hole in my bucket”] 

No.  NO.  They don't do this in Farm Romance.  Definitely no singing...

'Then we went on for a curry,' Chairman said, and we drank lots of red wine...  

'A shame for the curry, and the red wine,' opined Big Giant Head Editor .

The two had a two-minutes silence for the red wine.

'Remember that wine tasting we went to in Sydney?'  He added and they began a fond reminiscence of the various grapes they'd tasted, culminating in the $1000 bottle that was uncorked as a finale...

I groaned again.

'Speaking of which,' said the Chairman, as he turned to me with another of his bushman twinkles. 'I wouldn't mind a glass of water...'

---

'see - that's bushmen for you,' said my partner-in-codeine colleague when I recounted this later...

it's all  -my aren’t you interesting and gosh what a wonderful writer you are - then before you know it they’re scratching their nuts in front of the telly in a string wife-beater, telling you to pass them another tinny...

too true, Sheila, too true...

I went on a blind date yesterday.

With a girl.

And I made a great impression.

We had sushi and while I was popping an edamame bean it shot down the front of my dress and nestled nicely in my cleavage, luckily inside the frock.  I don't think she noticed, so I just ignored it.

Found it later when I was disrobing...

And no, I didn't eat it.

words and music

The book club?  What book club?  So passé, darling – nobody reads anymore.  God no...   (Well except, apparently for a bit of Mummy Porn.  On the tube.   I mean, who reads porn on the tube?  Who reads porn?  It’s all so sweetly tame and retro compared to the blatancy that pops up – as it were - on the most innocently seeming Google search. For instance, I still, trustingly, though Gonzo was a purple Muppet.  Well, purple… yes, but there the similarity ends.)

[Step back Parentheses police – I know it’s too long to be an aside…]  

So no book club.  Nowadays we Stitch and bitch, or have Theatre Groups.  I kinda hate the theatre; but I should pretend more.  It would probably take five friends and supper afterwards to force me to spend £50 to sit, uncomfortably, for three hours watching people pretending to do the same thing night after night.  It's too much like marriage.  Though maybe once a month and five minutes would be more accurate.

Anyway, I digress, I digress.  Last night, instead of the book club I tried recently to set up and failed, I had the choir round.  We love the choir.  We treasure the choir.  We pitch up once a week to a truly dismal school hall in Harlesden (you can call it College Park if you like) and sing in the room where they usually corral the after-school kids which only makes your heart break for Tifni and Lorelle and Sancho and Brittan [sic] and Oscar and Fatima, the inmates.  It’s a little outbuilding, painted yellow and more like a prison camp than a school, despite the gay paintings and primary colours and boxes of toys.  Everywhere there are rules; Laminated A4s saying: Do not, Do not, Do not.  Primary Care Workers and Health & Safety Workers and Key Workers and Big Capital Letters about when the dosh is due and firm edicts on being late to pick up Bramley, who will presumably rot, - in this garish Lego hell if you’re a tad tardy.  God, god, god.  Nobody sends their kid to after school care from choice.  This much is clear.  Borstal for babies…

And we sing there.  Five basses on a good night, though now we’re down to three, one of whom has the memory and concentration of a stickle brick due to prolonged drug use.  Seven tenors on a good night – three of them women, one of whom is lonely girl here.  Tenor ladies.  Nothing to do with incontinence and everything to do with having a low voice and singing like a bloke.   However, I don’t sound like a bloke – if only, if only.  There’s Gav and Wiskey with their polished mahogany baritones, notes rolling off their tongues like melted caramel, and there’s me – home made castanet of gravel in a paper cup; scratchy paper lining the bottom of a budgie’s cage; growl of bear with a bad cold.  We sing low, we ladies, but it's not sweet.  The other two can get up as far as Alto – but there are already four or five of them, smugly singing away, secure in their harmonies. But me – no I’m firmly one-octave Annie and I admit, just as in life, sometimes I merely mouth the words, but nothing, nothing, meaningful comes out.  There’s a bunch of sopranos, too.  Bitches.  With the best hair.  Trilling away up there, never missing a chance to soar and swoop and show off their range and scale.  One is a little shrill, admittedly.  But old groaner here who still reads music at the All Cows Eat Grass level and couldn’t pick middle C out of two Ds on a report card is not one to criticize – people in glass houses and all that….

Supper, then.  The reason?  Well we all love the choir, love the people, love the conductor, love singing, would love some new recruits, aren’t keen on the venue, and mostly love the songs.  Mostly.  We thought it would be nice to kick around a few ideas, eat, and have a bit of a singsong.

‘Who says that?”  Says one of the Youth  as I stirred the pot of Spanish meatballs with chorizo to serve with the horseradish mashed sweet potatoes – unfamiliar with the language of the fair land of Planet Lonely.

‘What?’  I say, similarly bemused by the world of Youth.

‘Have-a-singsong?  Is that even a verb?’

I don’t think Youth would thank me, at this point, for a lesson in grammar and the difference between doing words and naming words – this Youth got a 2:1, after all in Latin American Studies and speaks three languages imperfectly.  ‘It’s a perfectly normal thing to say,’ I protest, instead.

‘Who has singsongs?’  He’s incredulous.

‘I do.  We do.  Scottish people for instance.  The Irish. The Welsh.  If you were true to your real Scottish roots instead of waving around that flag of your father, you’d be singing too.’ 

Youth is delighted, nay overjoyed that Arabs don’t sing socially.

And so later, when seven of us – three tenors, one soprano, two altos, no basses – are crushed around the kitchen table talking about things we like singing, and burst into an impromptu round of Stevie Wonder, sounding, it has to be said, very Scottish, as in authentic Scottish-on-the-way-home from the pub, plastered, tuneless, I can actually hear the eyes of Youth rolling back in their appalled head, in the room next door.

Then we sing summertime, in a three-part harmony and begin to sound more like ourselves:  a barrister, a cranial osteopath. a ceramicist, a painter and a graphic designer, a hypnotherapist and lonely girl  – but for the duration of the song, just a choir – pretty darn, melodiously, vocal group sex, good together.

Youth came into the kitchen momentarily, took a glass of water and left. 

Pointedly closing the door.

Planet suddenly-not-so-lonely has been over-run with an invading tribe called Youth.

Youth are mostly benign, friendly and amiable, though given to odd bursts of sullenness and disagreeableness, and an unwillingness, for thirty minutes after rising, to meet your eyes.   Dependent on gender, Youth wear boxer shorts and clashing baggy t-shirts, or something suspiciously similar to your own lingerie, as day-wear.  Youth's day begins at 3.30 - just as you come home from work.  Youth calls you, usually from bed, at 2.30 before you leave the office to ask:
why the hot water isn't working
if you'll make quesadillas
where the key to the back door is
if you can buy a mouse/keyboard/printer cartridge on the way home
if you've seen there's a good deal on groupon for a spa membership
if you have a box big enough for another of the the items of clothing you purchased, at full price, from - insert the name of a middle range designer here - which they've sold for a fiver on ebay
if there's milk
where the double sheets are because their friend is coming to stay for a week
if you'll drive them home from the supermarket when they go to get beer
if you've filled in the student finance form
how to make a cheese sauce

This outpouring of communication, though welcome, is dizzying after months of silence.  The previously silent kitchen with the red armchair of sorrow where you sit, every night on your return from work, and look at the shining order around you in various states of despair, is full of half-folded laundry, handbags, and assorted possessions that wash up there, like flotsam on the beach, brought in by the tide from the wreck of SS back-from-college, that has run adrift in the hall, the sitting room, and the car.  So you can't sit down.  Youth, even in the midst of summer, need light in the form of every single bulb in the house being switched on.  Youth, eager perhaps to escape Planet suddenly-not-so-lonely must have the television on, the laptop and the desktop on, all connected to the internet even when they are asleep in another room in the house.  Youth like curry.  Other members of the tribe like sushi, and order it, delivered to Planet suddenly-not-so-lonely, while simultaneously worrying that their currency does not go very far on the Planet.

Youth like parties and are fond of celebrating.  They inform you that the Planet is the ideal place for a farewell/welcome/birthday/early birthday/cat's birthday soiree and ask if they may invite members of nearby tribes to sail in to join them.  This you agree to because you can no longer sit on your red chair of despair and fret.

So on Saturday, when you are usually, post-despair, lolling in bed with lover, and wondering what to do with the hours in between coffee and wine o'clock, Youth decorate the kitchen with clothing and banners, fill the fridge with strong liquor, sprinkle corn chips across the table and urge you, as the host, to kill a couple of bags of quorn and make your famous vegechili, without the chili, before the doorbell rings and other Youth arrive.  Equipment is set up in the garden.  More strong liquor appears.  The ritual of tasting the strong liquor begins.  Many Youth with long hair and skimpy clothes arrive.  Within hours they are clustered around the table, smoking the peace pipe of Shisha.  Ex arrives to participate in the celebration.  Awkward moments ensue when Ex and Lover and I are only people over 25 in a huge tribe of Youth in which elders are excluded and banished to the end of the garden.  This is the first time the two have met.   The cat, equally perturbed by sudden flood of visitors, balances on the sunshade.



Ex looks at tribe of Youth smoking, drinking, eating and laughing.

'This is why we must hold on to Planet suddenly-not-do Lonely as long as we can...'  He says, fondly.

You agree.  You know the red chair of despair is waiting at the other end of summer, but for the moment, it's just where the cat sleeps.  Then you take, temporary leave of Planet suddenly-not-so-Lonely and paddle to a neighbouring fairly Lonely island, vacated for the summer while a fellow Loneliest returns to her native island of Overwhelmed-by-Family in Brazil.  At wine o'clock you and lover settle into bed and watch X-Men on Sky.

She has a huge, big grey sofa of despair.

But you don't sit on it.

A quiet Monday - no emails, no lonely people.  It's like the cruise ship sailed in and everyone got off, had a coke, took a picture, and then got back on the boat and sailed off again, leaving me waving, marooned again.

Every email I read made me cry; not because they were pathetic or particularly sad, but because they were nice - nice people (who knew it Daily Mail readers?) and they took a moment and reached out to tell me that though I was on planet lonely I was not alone.  And they all made me think - sometimes about things I'd rather not consider.

The one negative comment came by letter, a very determined letter that found me at home which began:  'I enjoyed your article and then I felt critical.'  He (I think it was male) then went on to tell me on two pages of single spaced typed A4, his criticisms.  I assume.  I'm afraid I didn't read it, but tore it up and put it in the dustbin - not even the recycling but the one with left over vegetarian stew in it so it quickly became too disgusting for me to recant, and get it back out.

Anyway, here's my answer to Mr Critical:  Fuck you.

I mean, you don't need everyone to empathize, and share their similar experiences, though it's very life-affirming when they do, but who the heck starts a letter with the word 'critical' in the first line?

So do, you wonderful, high-powered and creative, mostly married, fully-offsprung women who have odd moments of loneliness despite being busy and loved; do feel free to disembark any time at Planet Lonely for an excursion, to look at the view with me, before you cruise away; but the cross critical ones, sod off - your visa isn't valid.  We might be lonely but we still have border control.

I'm loving the zonked out side effects of my new, pharmaceutically approved Junkiedom -  but it also makes you somewhat uninhibited, so my eating has gone off the scale and it's 


RETURN OF THE THIGHS, damn it...  


Sigh.  


Really sad that lack of inhibition does not result in me flying from chandelier in monkey sexapades, but merely eating bread.