apiphile, posts by tag: books - LiveJournal

So last night I didn't sleep until I knocked myself with a sleeping pill and even then it took an abhorrently long time, when GUESS WHAT, I couldn't get out of bed again in the morning early enough to go to the gym (this is probably just as well as I am INCREDIBLY FUCKING SORE), and took myself off to, as mentioned on Tumblr, pay a man £200 (plus the deposit which was that again) to put me in a series of stress positions, inflict quite significant pain on the back of my knee and front of my shin in particular, and make me listen to the fucking Hodge twins and a video about a guy getting shot in the chest. And my internal organs tried to destroy me from within for no apparent reason and the only thing that would stop the pain was... alcohol! (A very small quantity, don't worry)

On the plus:
+ free chicken dinner
+ he's actually decent company
+ introduced him (and myself) to A Tribe Called Red (even if YouTube then decided that we also wanted to listen to other and ... not as electronica/sample-based ... First-Nations-hip-hop)
+ discovered that being shot in the chest with a shotgun and surviving leaves a man with a scar very similar to a mastectomy scar, in case i need other stories besides "shark bite", "heart surgery", and my favourite method of dealing with all intrusive inquiries, the "long hard stare and mind your own fucking business".
+ making Biko listen to "it came from the 80s: Dark Synthwave Mix" (which I have discovered is good to do art to and which he agrees) reminded him of the existence of Kung Fury, which is terrible but also hilarious
+ I finished reading Downriver and, having been Stockholmed into coping with Sinclair's prose style (it is... idiosyncratic), started Lights Out For The Territory, which is both easier to read (and less savage), and has also provided me with an absolute wealth of information about areas my bus route passes through and road names with which I am already very familiar (on Amhurst Road, people suspected of being members of the Angry Brigade holed up in the 80s. True story. The man who started what later became Cope Goliard press also lived there. True story). And Sinclair had the exact thought about Stoke Newington Police Station's architectural intent as I did, probably because it's ballachingly fucking obvious and obnoxiously simple.
+ I mean. A lot of tattoo also got done.

Then, after 9+ hours of blissful ignorance of the news, I came home and was greeted by "multiple people set on young man in Croydon [South London] after learning he is an asylum seeker", so thanks once again to the red tops for nurturing and validating these particular fucking demons in human form who've made my city one where it's TOTES OKAY to attack people for... not wanting to die. Maybe they could attack me. I definitely want to die.

[Semantically, the Cronx - as it insists on calling itself - isn't quite part of London, except parts of it claim to be. Anyway, it's a national joke, but it still has no business beating up asylum-seekers desperate enough to be in Croydon, and I hope their insides fucking rot]

And so far, I still not only cannot sleep but am not even PHYSICALLY tired, which at least kept me pinned to the bed while my brain just endlessly screeched on the last two nights. Sometimes bleating about The Bad Things and the total absence of future and hey did you know all your plans are bullshit and you should DIE DIE DIE NOW WHILE YOU CAN STILL DO IT WITH ANY KIND OF DIGNITY, sometimes literally just farting endless word noise at me like some kind of radio terrified of the off-switch. The relaxing music JUST ABOUT drowns out Jess's relentless snoring and can do NOTHING about my brain.

I mean, it slows down my heart-rate and helps my breathing but nothing short of a chemical sledgehammer will make my actual brain SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SLEEP.

I'm not blaming Brexit for this apart from the fact that this pretty much started When The Bad Thing.

UGH UGH UGH (I know I'm ill and stuff but I am really fucking tempted just to get drunk)

Gym: I am never getting near the Smith machine ever again no matter how early I drag myself out of bed (sleep patterns still wanked, brain still thinks 1am-4am is for BEING AWAKE FOR NO REASON), crunch coughing fits, totally owned by bicep fucking curls but otoh tried a new thing (hip adduction) and it's a piece of of piss. Maybe I'll just do that until my crotch has muscles.

Editing: my fucking Surface Pro is being a pissbaby about ever charging. Solutions to the problem just drained more battery power. After emailing whatever edits I could to myself, I found the following on my other computer -
+ microsoft office not validated
+ microsoft office won't let me sign in with my microsoft id online because "gmail.com doesn't real"
+ finally open document for editing: it has saved LITERALLY NONE OF MY EDITS from today! NONE! 100% NOT SAVED ANY OF THEM despite regularly fucking saving! Thanks.
+ plans for going and enjoying the sunshine in Holland Park while working on book outline a bit therefore stymied by not being able to fucking do the fucking editing (and also by the sunshine disappearing).

despite breaking rank on calories yesterday due to illness (which is hilarious because i have no fucking appetite) i am once again IDIOTICALLY HUNGRY.

and it's st fucking padraig's fucking day and i live upstairs from an irish pub which is boisterous on the best of fridays...

blogs

therefore buy my book

(and then I went dancing).

Despite my best efforts to be on time I arrived at Rotherhithe half an hour early, and sat in the sun reading Downriver with some gross protein milkshake and meditating on the difference not only in racial demographics from area to area in London (Rotherhithe, from what little I saw, seemed to be predominantly white and working class, very different from where I live) but also body type (short, uneven men proliferate in South East London, becoming lumpy and asymmetrical in face & body, what I'd refer to as "quintessentially English" if I wanted to be mean).

This gave me time to work out which direction the entrance to the mouth of the tunnel was, so not an entire waste of time.

rotherhithe station is tiny and has railway pillars.

The tunnel itself was built in 1908 and the chief engineer revelled in the improbable name of "Maurice Fitzmaurice". It is a single bore tunnel extending just under a mile (0.9196 of a mile, in fact, or 1.48km) although if you include the terrifying traffic funnel at each end in which high tiled walls increase the sense of a descent into Hades rather effectively then it's pretty much bang on a mile.

The ominous tunnel mouth swallowed us, hankerchiefed and pollution-masked, and we wandered down along the narrow - though not as narrow as Sinclair made it sound - strip of pavement.

composite image.

Sinclair didn't make it all the way through, travelling alone, and was overcome by a case of existential claustrophobia; he bolted up one of the exit shafts and got horribly lost in Rotherhithe. In our day, some 30 years later, the exit shafts are all closed. The knobbly vestibules where the staircases (Edwardian, probably Listed) reside are now adorned with plaques telling you not to "linger" because of "exhaust fumes". We found a Wimpy box. Who the fuck was eating in a tunnel like this? Where is there still a Wimpy? Had we travelled back in time?

possibly we had.

A cyclist passed on the opposite side of the road, maskless, with a basket on his bike. Madness. Somewhere around the centre of the tunnel the ceiling and walls began to close in on me and I began to feel as if I had always been in the tunnel. I'd been born there, I'd die there, the tunnel was enternal and all-encompassing and frankly hellish. I made a joke of it to Charlie and the dizziness started to pass; this is why you take people down into places with you. Less in case you fall and break your neck and more so that there's someone to share the dread.

video of the Important Moment when we found the Light At The End Of The Tunnel.

We cheated the last leg, turning up the steps into a small park rather than funnelling back out with the aromatic traffic. I hacked up a lung onto the spring grass: we found an anenome, and later a whole bank covered in them.

Limehouse station was practically on top of us. We took to the tracks towards Greenwich, a cup of tea, and the strange seaside-town feel of somewhere that is still very much technically part of London. I can still taste cars in my sinuses.

The bus to Eltham from Greenwich takes ten million billion years, by the by. Eltham isn't really in London. Worth it for this spectacular display:

spring came on sudden.

At the top of what I think is Shooters Hill is Severndroog Castle, which is technically a watchtower and not a castle and also wasn't built in the medieval period so why the fuck would it be a castle (much like "Castle" Drogo in this respect); a castle, as any fule kno, is a combination of a smallholding and a military fort and an administrative centre. This place, otoh, had a tiny tiny cafe whose afternoon teas were on a Londonist List, Charlie and I shared some breand-and-butter-pudding (food of the GODS) and were accosted by an ownerless Puggle trailing its lead and eager to make our acquaintance and eat ALL the cake.

Also the castle door made the floor go gay

After a short break to a) pee and b) be mental about having touched two or three dogs already [Derek: happily eats shit off the mouse-infested kitchen floor but needs to alcohol sanitise his hands after touching living mammals, EXCEPT for cats and people he knows? Strangers & dogs = germs. Don't ask.], we went for a proper explore of Oxleas Woods, which are far larger than I was expecting, well-stocked with more dogs (Charlie made the acquaintance of a couple of girls with Yorkies and promptly lost their shit on being invited to hold one of said dogs).

composite including a second cafe we couldn't eat in because no cash. Not even for the £1 cups of tea. Includes at least one instance of two idiots (us) running down the side of Shooters Hill while yelling joyously because Sun! Running! No one allowed to tell you off for doing that when you're a grown-ass adult! Whee! And also one instance of gazing out over the panoramic view of South East London stretching on for absolutely fucking miles, and commenting, "This makes me feel very arrogant. Yes, I have conquered it."

(Plans hatched to attack the Green Chain walk in future, emphasis on Crystal Palace, Eltham Palace & Tudor Barn, Charlton House, and the Thames Barrier; some of these because I read about them in Brewers, some because I already knew about them and meant to visit, and the Barrier because of Sinclair but also because Josie Long used to do a bit about being sexually attracted to/romantically involved with the Thames Barrier [she's from Kent].)

bus to north greenwich took me both along a fucking motorway and also through what felt like an entirely different country. Still London, but looks like the suburbs of Paris mated with an American city and produced a terrifying architectural nightmare. No doubt it's filling up fast, people can't buy property in London quickly enough atm, but it's an eerie, fake-looking place.

Safely back in the welcoming embrace of normality/Shoreditch: tea in one place, matcha latte in another (but i really must remember that Shoreditch Grind's matcha lattes are gross), Downriver in both. Thought: remember seeing a Tumblr post about how the delineation of "species" is a human concept (meaning: the real world is more wishy-washy than that, categories are invented so that humans can make sense of stuff); it was on a specific blog and therefore the conclusion was "angry shouting about the oppressiveness of science in imposing order upon the chaotic systems of the world, something something white people", rather than on a different specific blog where I suspect the conclusion would have been "and that's why it's okay for me to fuck dogs". Although I'm sure the same argument could and probably has been made.

Then I went to a basement and injured myself repeatedly at the behest of a small Italian man who was trying very hard to look like the late George Michael, and on several occasions just flatly refused to do certain things because a) my back won't do that b) my knees won't do that and c) the person I have ended up partnered with for this bit physically cannot hold me up, she is half my size and I am heavy. It was not anything like as awkward as it could have been and I was not as embarrassed by it as me of ten years or even five years ago would have been, but parts of my body don't work, my reflexes are slow, and I am really ill. So it could have gone better.

Things I am looking for in a dance class:
+ beginners
+ instructor I can understand
+ not to have to touch people
+ not to have to bend over backwards since my back has some "fused vertebrae" flexibility issues
+ not banging my knees on the floor repeatedly, given that I still only have 3/4 of a kneecap between both knees as no amount of weight loss and working out will make my knee grow back
Things that have led to me making this list:
+ the absolute beginners introduction to contemporary dance class which very much did not fulfill any of those criteria, although it DOES get a weird cookie for being the only dance class I have ever been to where the men outnumbered the women.

NB majority of those men appeared to be straight and were universally very awkward. two had come with female friends, two had come in work clothes (jeans and shirts), three (including those two) volunteered the information that they worked in IT, one was clearly on-spectrum, and one more was very very muscular and very very awkward (he also had total alopecia, and braces, and was clearly very young). Also there was me, largely failing to remember to put anything together in a coherent manner and stridently not wanting to do things like "just let them take your weight! Lean back!"]

Conclusion after discussion on FB: Bhangra or Belly dancing might be good for me. Crawled along late to meet Jess, who was disappointed to discover that, despite having said the day before that I'd already made dinner for the day and thus entered it into the Robot Punishment Machine, I actually MEANT it and was therefore planning on going home (er, via the purchase of a large frozen fish) rather than going out for dinner with her. More or less collapsed on getting in and have now waved two fingers at my alarm around 7.30am and declared today to be a rest day as getting out of bed is making me make NOISES:

crunchy, wet, chest noises

and my entire self hurts.

my protein box arrived and tomorrow the announcement of THE NEXT NOVEL ON SALE shall go out like a shot around the world, or more probably sink without a trace into people's Friday lunches, but I suppose I can keep up a steady stream of nagging if I can stay awake.

I've done absolutely fuck all today besides have nightmares but this came out of quarantine so:

Il Pompinaro's Apprentice and the Witchcraft of Instant Paint

Gym: I managed! The run! With the magic of New Trainers and porridge for breakfast and a good night's sleep and BOILING HATRED! And then! TWICE! I failed to complete the requisite sets! And my entire workout was a disordered mess! But at least some of it GOT DONE. And I dragged myself through more rowing and more cross-trainering and at least, AT LEAST, LJ/DW, I managed to do a five-set of bicep curls at 32kg. Got called BOSS again by the EXTREMELY HENCH dude who usually turns up to take the bench after me.

Slog: Blah blah edit notes blah blah typing up essay. (Still to do: editing in links, sending it to Dali; outline fiddling, finish the goddamn stupid Kapoople fic especially since Liza has started making noises about doing a Wank Yourself Clever short story about Mike Bently and Freud's theory of the Anal Stage).

World: Bodily forced Jess, who returned from the ENT specialist complaining that he hadn't listened to a single thing she said about her tonsils and also bearing gifts from the charity shop (I am now the proud possessor of a bandana "specifically for flagging" and some green cut-off Levi's), to come out of the flat and into London with me for Pleasantness. In practical terms it means we went to Whole Foods and she ate a chia pudding and swore at me about being hungry while I tried and failed to drink a cup of matcha in the cold, then went to the Japan Centre as promised and was sworn at some more because I wanted to look around before committing to eating anything - she eventually sat down to eat and left me to it, although the last laugh is evidently on me because they were out of plain steamed rice and my RAGE about Wasabi's failure to provide normal portion sizes instead of RICE BUCKETS continues - anyway blah blah purchases (and a server who played "let us compare piercings" with me, thus cementing my dental-nurse experience-bred theory that piercings exist so we can make unassuming small talk) and also the little JPC bookshop.

After some coaxing and more swearing I persuaded Jess that she wanted to go to Foyles for coffee, which was in hindsight a bad move as this culminated in a) protracted bitching in a very crowded cafe about subjects unsuited to public places, and b) buying books. I wasn't going to, but I found a copy of Shigeru Mizuki's Showa (the first volume) and liked the look of it and was BOILING WITH ANGER about self-inflicted problems ("I would like to be able to read! Just indulge myself in reading a lot! Instead of CONSTANTLY FEELING GUILTY because I ought to be writing or researching or reading something different or more relevant or more intelligent or worrying about how much I will remember, and tl;dr I really envy the woman from my old workplace who used to tear through 3-5 crappy crappy photoshop-covered fantasy romances a week because SHE WAS REALLY ENJOYING HERSELF AND I'M FUCKING NOT"), and then it was rush hour, so I bullied Jess towards Laduree to wait until the storm had passed...

(She decided she wanted to look in Fopp for YET MORE music biographies, as this is Jess's drug of choice, along with First Order slash fic, Supernatural things that do not bear speaking about, and James Herriot stories - and *I* fell over and bought a copy of The First Men On The Moon by HG Wells because it was £3 and I'd been primed by its inclusion in a beautiful hardcover in Foyles and also I haven't read that one and I *know* I like HG Wells even if I still haven't managed to finish When the Sleeper Wakes)

Laduree continues to be very nice, very pretty, very comfortable, and very expensive, with very polite staff and appalling service (last time: I hope you enjoy waiting ten years for a bill. This time: Oh right we're supposed to bring you EVERYTHING you ordered). Anyway, I had an orange blossom macaron and they're good. And started reading the introduction to Showa (1923-1939) to Jess; part of the way through this I realised I'd acquired an additional audience member in the form of a small girl with a sparkly butterfly brooch on her hat, who was standing at the next table eating sugar cubes from the bowl and watching with rather more rapt attention than Jess was.

Uhhhhh oh yeah also:

1. Boy in owl beanie allegedly checking me out in JPC (or just phenomenally awkward)
2. Horrible blump of a man made a weird fucking noise behind us both on the Tube platform then, having passed to stand further down, conspicuously rubbing his dick in a very much not just "rearranging the nuisance" manner. Jess convinced he was aiming this gesture at me, me largely convinced it was probably aimed at her.

Thanks, My Gender, I would like to rewind back to this morning and just have the Big Hench Man call me BOSS again tbh. That's about the level of interaction I can take on that front. Achilles Tendon has hurt ALL DAY and is hurting now, woohoo, and there's no date on when this is actually being released in the UK, if ever: http://variety.com/2017/film/revie…

BUT IT EXISTS, AND THAT IS THE MAIN THING.

Everything is very frustrating. After two days of basically doing very little but sleep (Friday evening I went to Kaspa's, on the bus, and read some of my book; Saturday afternoon I went to the train station cafe and to the pub, both just around the corner from me, and ditto) I then couldn't sleep particularly well Saturday night but was still fucking exhausted; now I'm still goddamn tired, haven't been to the gym for five days, feel angry as well as sick and worn out from doing NOTHING (today I walked to the other side of the park and back, with a break for breakfast in the middle. This wiped me out so badly that I had to take a fucking nap. Then I went for lunch in the pub and read the book. Ditto), haven't written, haven't done anything productive, am roiling in self-loathing and hatred of absolutely everyone else and want to set myself on fire.

Also I'm still BASTARD WELL ILL.

(It's failing to have the decency to manifest in symptoms I can really get to grips with beyond a painful face, occasional UNEXPECTED LUMPS OF LUNG FLYING OUT OF MY MOUTH, and being completely and utterly fucking exhausted all the fucking time. Naturally the "can't sleep" episode meant I was faking the entire thing and being self-pitying and should walk/gym but I couldn't actually stand up for long enough to do that).

On the plus side while my fucking PAOM vest still hasn't shown up (I've been woken up every day by H&M and ASOS deliveries for Jess though!) the new John Connolly book is, as proven, absorbing. I won't say "good", because it's fucking garbage, but it scratches a particular itch, which is apparently "increasingly didactic private detective pursues demons through Maine". That's ... pretty much the entire series, with breaks for "through Louisiana", "through the Czech Republic" (that was a trip) and "IDK some other part of the US, possibly the Mass. one with too many Sessesesesese in the name". As witnessed on every occasion I can be kept occupied with anything that's filed under Murder Mystery no matter how fucking bad it is.

NOW MAKE ME GET BETTER I'M BORED AND ANGRY AND I'VE RUN OUT OF PORNOGRPAHY*

* this is a lie the internet is infinite and so is the porn

Last night: after writing for a bit in one cafe, met up with Jess for coffee (having to explain repeatedly that I was in the food store literally visible from her workplace which she had somehow never noticed existing despite me talking about it on several occasions) dressed like this:


(https://www.instagram.com/p/BQA4i4… for other)

Which involved Lindsay "mothering" me (his own words) about the lie of said suit. It's his shirt, not that he ever wears it.

Following a coffee break and further updates on the ongoing relationship dramas of one of Jess's co-workers (she has the unfortunate characteristic of being a magnet for shitty, Shitty men, one presumes because she is - by Jess's account, I haven't seen her - extremely pretty, meaning shitty, shitty men feel entitled to her, and reasonably accommodating up to the point where she isn't any more, which she has apparently now been pushed to), I marched off to Broadgate to meet lanyon for dinner.

Shoryu was, foodwise, as pleasant as ever - voici (https://www.instagram.com/p/BQBUmN…) and ici (https://www.instagram.com/p/BQBfdk…) - and we totally failed to avoid talking about The Awfulness, although at this point we were mostly fantasising about dying, I bribed L with chocolate ("If you're going to leave the country please remember you promised I could have an Exit Kit from the hospital pharmacy"), L accused me of making things happen by writing about them ("you did this with ebola! Now you're doing it with post-nuclear - CAN'T YOU WRITE SOMETHING A BIT MORE POSITIVE, I know it's not exactly your comfort zone--"), I admitted I was in actual fact planning to basically destroy reality entirely this year. Which really doesn't differentiate me much from most politicians at the moment.

But at least dinner was nice; I tried to persuade L that she wants to at least come to dance classes or something likewise FUN! And NOT ON THE INTERNET! before she is burnt out by the demands of work and the hell that is current politics in a country that is behaving almost as fucking dementedly as America and with even less excuse. Tramped back the way I'd come in order to buy some Pointless Health Nonsense from the place I'd been hanging around in before, and arrived home too late to really type up any of my writing.

I'm not sleeping particularly well at the moment - I've extended myself to buying a copy of "Weightless" so that I can listen to it when I'm not able to stream it - and last night hit wonderful new lows:

1. middle-of-the-night me managed to convince himself that the reason the internet wasn't working was because cutting off a means of communication between people was a necessary step in the fascist overthrow of society, and then my rational brain had a very hard slog convincing me that this wasn't happening yet, never mind that it wasn't going to happen at all.
2. on and off sleep featuring the usual cacophony of Shitty Dreams
3. hypnogogic hallucinations; my brain thought it could hear people's voices in the (entirely instrumental) music playing while I slept, that they were discussing something which was a danger to me (this is a common dream theme simply because of school dorm/shitty ex experiences where "people speaking in low voices near where I'm sleeping" DID presage acts of violence/vandalism aimed at me, so I tend to be Overly Likely to attribute it to that when I'm not operating with 100% of my brain; while I was struggling with sleep paralysis and trying to remove my headphones so I could listen for the people speaking and hear what they were saying more clearly, something heavy started to press on my chest (logic suggests this was probably just Jess's arm) at which point my brain went bananas and tried very hard to get my body to move enough to shout for help or throw off the thing that was trying to stop me getting away, which in real life translated to some frantic mumbling until I was sympathetically informed that I was having a bad dream. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

Surprisingly after all this I had a fairly good gym. The signs were not great at first; while running went okay it took until I'd finished lats and triceps AND biceps (the latter of which was a real fucking struggle for no apparent reason, even more strange considering the first two had been very good) before the pulley barbells became free, and then the guy who'd been hogging them (and mostly just sitting on the end of the bench) insisted on being helpful and clearing his weights away and putting the bench back down and being Friendly instead of fucking off. AND I couldn't find the weights I wanted because no one ELSE ever puts things back where they found them so was reduced to asking someone if anyone was using the correct ones when I finally located them - he was perfectly nice and friendly despite being built like he'd eaten two of me and then repeatedly deadlifted a further two of me for many years, and I got angry with myself for being affected by that (STUPID SOCIAL MONKEY WHY DOES THE REMOVAL OF A PERCEIVED THREAT MAKE YOU HAPPY YOU'RE PATHETIC) and THEN post barbells someone else who seems to more or less live in the damn gym was ALSO polite and cheerful (it's sunny. That's why) and I had to go away and row things until my brain stopped being a mess.

Speaking of messy brains: I continue to skip my way merrily through The Mint while doing my cool-down cycling and more than ever I want to pick up Lawrence by the shoulders and shake him repeatedly while shouting YOU ARE SERIOUSLY MENTALLY ILL AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE ALLOWED YOU TO DEAL WITH IT IN THIS WAY BECAUSE IT IS NOT HELPING YOU. [And it is too familiar].

It is Setsubun today. I plan to go into town when I've finished my edit notes. Gonna lob beans at Jess later, and Lindsay, if he's still here when she gets back from work.

Monday:

Gym - I manage to get to the barbells despite the late hour. SUCCESS. New run pattern surprisingly OK. Entire business surprisingly OK.

Social - Slightly late due to failure to fit cutting hair, showering, making dinner and eating dinner into the "somewhat less time than I realised" that I'd allotted; but turns out not to matter as the screening of Moonlight - which they hadn't bothered to mention on the website - was for Unlimited ticket holders only. As I don't cinema enough to make that kind of investment worthwhile, I don't have one, neither did Ruthi; I dragged us down to Kaspa's (via H&B to pick up more protein filth/see what was available) and was stymied in my attempt to have a smoothie + whey protein and ended up with an ice cream float. We passed the time mostly by dissecting the relationships & characters and writing style of The Charioteer, which is nice as most of the conversations I have had about that book recently either fall in the "incoherent emotional burbling", "set Andrew up with Bunny" - whyyyyy, and "i couldn't really get into that book [strong hinting for you to shut up about it]" camps.

Tuesday:

Always tired on Tuesdays. Gym'd - bad temper because I couldn't get to the barbells & there was a frumpy old man sitting on my favoured bike for like, the whole of time. Some progress made regardless but anger remained. Tonight is Ersatz Birthday; I have succeeded in transferring more edit notes but need to actually get somewhere in my attempts to write something for Dali re: social/psychological/personal observations on masochism.

Saturday:

(A lot of my friends went to protest marches and I'm really proud of them all)

Gym'd mightily. The new running pattern is too long and I have to add more time to the treadmill to do it and that's fiddly and annoying, this is meant to be FITNESS not A FUCKING MATHS TEST.

Then I went to be tattooed for several hours, to finish reading The Devil's Paintbrush (there's a sort of inevitability to the ending which I am finding in a lot of Jake Arnott's work now but it was satisfying in its predictability) and start reading The London Monster (which, for all that it's real life, is hysterically funny and quite awful at the same time), in between playing 2048 (I won twice) and reading The Mint (which gave me a craving for jam sandwiches) and being forced to watch FLAT EARTHER CONSPIRACY VIDEOS until I'd shouted myself horse in angry rationalist protest, and then rewarded with Ren & Stimpy (which is funnier and less disturbing now that I'm an adult).

A progress shot of the tattoo will be forthcoming at some point.

Sunday:

THE DAY OF REST/SELF-CARE. I did not gym. I also satisfied my JAM CRAVING with brunch: JAM. Then FINALLY got to go to the conservatory at the Barbican Centre (and also have several arguments with Lindsay, although we did also bond over a video of Richard Spencer being PUNCHED IN THE HEAD). Conservatory here, here, here, here, here, here (contained taro roots and two women bitching about what a boring film La La Land is), here (I must go for afternoon tea sometime? It's only open on Sunday), also contained lots of people doing small-scale fashion-shoots and illustration practice.

IT was sunny. and freezing. The only point of the lake that wasn't frozen was the bit directly under the fountains. Madness. It's not been this cold in at least four or five years. A selection of London Gods I couldn't leave offerings for because my boyfriend makes fun of me. (Saint Sepulchure's, the Holborn dragons, the Fleet, and some river gods).

We popped into an exhibition of SEAsian shadow puppets here, here, and here at the British Museum, but a combination of being tired and hungry and the bad Wifi on the top floor made me too irritated to concentrate, so we adjourned for late lunch/early dinner:

At Hiba Express, a Lesbanese/Palestinian place which is staffed by GRANNIES in the kitchen. The smoothie is called a Pimlico (they're all named after parts of London), also there's a Hiba Kalaj and whatever the grill of the day was (there was mutabal, that's broadly all I care about).

I took us to Laduree, where Lindsay proceeded to sulk off after a short fight - he later explained he was ill and wanted to be at home but instead of MENTIONING THIS AT THE TIME just decided to be disagreeable. So I went by myself. It was great. I sat on the balcony over Covent Garden and watched the remainder of the sunset, dipping mini viennoiseries into hot chocolate and eating that pink confection there, which contained raspberries and custard cream in the bottom and rose cream in the top.

Went to look at the Chinatown decorations ahead of CNY this weekend, and finished up in Tsujiri, where they were nice enough to bring me over my matcha latte with a bear in it!.

(Other places visited, in passing, include Postman's Park and the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, which I am using as a divination device - today's is "Died of exhaustion after saving many lives" - and Thomas Farthing, where I failed to find a single hat that fits because I am a medium in every single aspect except ME DICK WHICH IS TINY, and they only had a large [59] or a small [55], and later Prowler, where I discovered that they only have the specific Daddy Issues t-shirt in large, please see previous complaint, and for £30 I am not buying a t-shirt which ain't fit).

Speaking of which, my trousers seem to be getting bigger again. One in the eye for the "you won't lose weight doing cardio" naysayers, I feel.

I had a four-hour depression nap this morning so I haven't been to the gym or had the time to do anything useful (... I went to the pub with Jess and sat around talking about vegetables and writing angry gay Florentines fighting about paint because dear GOD I do not want to be on the internet). I finished reading London Under (very good, strongly recommended, quite poetic, move me into the tunnels at once), started reading The Devil's Paintbrush by Jake Arnott (so far so good: Aleister Crowley is a pretentious and ridiculous shit and his friends keep making fun of him, and the other protagonist is a repressed gay Scottish general from a humble background who likes being in wars because it stops him being anxious about being gay, which means SOMEONE BASICALLY WROTE HIM FOR ME? "oh thank god a fight i can be in" = me).

Oh and we went to see Doug down in the wilds of the South of London and it was freezing fucking cold. It continues to be freezing fucking cold. I really. Don't. Want to internet at all.

(New jumper and heat pad arrived in the post. OK, ok ok ok.)