Day 79: I Have Lost Control Of My Faculties

At what point, exactly, do you accept that you have a facial tic and undergo minor neurological surgery?

I can't stop winking. Wink wink wink. Like an idiot. Winky-wink-wink-wink. Winketty-wink. The whole time, ceaselessly and without end. I make sure I only do it when I shouldn't, because I enjoy looking like a lascivious Bedlamite. Wink wink. Oh, winky wink-wink.


Times At Which It Is Acceptable To Wink

1. If you are Sid James, Leslie Phillips, Bob Monkhouse or Bruce Forsyth (Foreign Readers - no, you won't understand, but you're not missing much)
2. If you are trying to communicate without words with someone on the other side of the room (but not in a saucy way)
3. If you have something in your eye, e.g. Marmite (me, yesterday morning)
4. If you have just stuck your mascara wand in your eye
5. If someone has poked you in the eye with their finger
6. If you are drunk and showing people what you can do with your face
7. If you are in a meeting and have Done Something Manipulative and they've fallen for it.

Times At Which It Is Not Acceptable To Wink

1. When having parking ticket punched in Sainsbury's in Camden
2. Upon entering the gymnasium, every day
3. When buying petrol in Tesco Express on Brixton Road from a man with one eye
4. When looking at people you do not know in other cars
5. Upon completion of unmentionable cosmetic medical procedures
6. Upon leaving hotels
7. When buying Pork Scratchings in pubs
8. When trying to be saucy.

Wink wink. Aaargh.

Day 79: I Demand An Immediate Ban On Exclamation Marks!

No more. I insist. I can't bear it anymore. This is entirely subjective: I hate exclamation marks in the same way that I hate celery, cucumber, that idiot Jeff who went out with Jade Goody, and the word "pardon".

I know it's illogical. I know they're greatly loved. In Spain you get two, even if one is upside down. I know they're on everything, from packets of food ("Eat Well!"), to pieces of correspondence from the local council ("You may be wondering about the new parking restrictions in your area!"), but it has to stop. Exclamation marks don't even get a mention in The Economist Style Guide which means The Economist doesn't use them, or think they're even worthy of a mention. People who work with copy a lot (journalists and copywriters, for example), call them 'screamers'. Although a lot of those types talk bollocks quite a lot of the time, they're right about that: exclamation marks are the written equivalent of raising your voice at the end of a sentence, shouting, or laughing at your own jokes (which I do a lot, mind you, so I'm hardly one to judge).

They're OK when you're being ironic, but even then their success isn't guaranteed. I know I'm a snob. I know I've probably offended half the people who comment on this blog (and please don't stop). And I'm sorry. But if I see another exclamation mark, I'm going to kill someone! And I'm not joking.

Day 79: I Have A Second Unfortunate Encounter With Chewing Gum

"Lightning doesn't strike twice", they say. That isn't true, as we all know: take, for example, of the case of Roy Cleveland Sullivan (1912 – 1983), a forest ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, who was struck by lightning seven times.

Some years ago, I was taking my weekly shower and tentatively soaping my ladygarden. "What is this?", I thought. Something was wrong. Something sticky, dense and minty fresh, embedded where it should not have been. Some minutes and a pair of scissors later, I extracted a lump of chewing gum. How it got there I will never know.

I know for a fact that I haven't chewed any gum in the house for a few days. I know for a fact that I haven't been lolling around naked smoking a pipe and wriggling around in my speshul typing chair. I haven't been driving naked, or dragging my arse along the pavement like a dog with worms. I haven't been rolling around in bed with a gum-chewing gentleman callers for - well, ever. (If they forget to take their socks off, they usually remember to spit the gum out at least). If there's any gum in my bedroom, it's loose and unchewed in the bottom of a dusty handbag I haven't used for five years. So how come I've just found chewing gum embedded in my ladygarden for the second time?

It's just as well I'm not entertaining gentleman callers at the moment, otherwise I'd be muttering vaguely about pubic topiary being on-trend for Autumn/Winter 2006.

Day 78: I Review My Friends Reunited Profile

I really don't get the point of Friends Reunited. I look at it about once every 3 months, usually when I've had one absinthe too many and think I'm Napoleon. I know all the people I want to know from the olden days, and I there's no-one I wish I'd slept with in 1991, so I'm not angling for a reunion. (In fact I'm definitely not angling for a reunion. The thought makes me feel faint and fumble for my pipe. There's a reason why we didn't keep in touch, although I do wonder what happened to Wendy Platt. She was nice.)

When I still did internet dating, I could weed out the knobbers by a) whether or not they looked me up on Friends Reunited; and b) whether they believed it or not. I actually and literally went on a date once with someone who asked me how the tablecloth business was going. (A knobber, naturellement.) I had no idea what he was talking about, but you will if you read this, the profile that is still loitering on Friends Reunited.

(As I hinted at in the previous piss-poor post, it is still attracting communication from people I wouldn't recognise if they were wearing a sandwich board saying "I am Paul Davies, and we were at university together. I'm the one who you sent an anonymous note to saying 'Deodorant is good, Best wishes, A Friend.'")

"Following my breakdown after leaving York, (1991 - 1992), I left London for Prague and worked for an animation company. We won the 1993 Grand Prix for Best Animation Short at Cannes, which opened up a lot of opportunities for us.

Sadly, however, Paul and I divorced late in the summer of 1993 and I felt it would be better for everyone if I moved back to London. I then met Matt and although we've had a bumpy ride, we've both agreed that an open marriage is possibly the only way we can keep our relationship together - after all, fidelity isn't just about sex.

I spent 1993 - 1998 in Lincoln with Matt where he set up his own animation company. He's now perfected a real-time stop-animation technique that's about to snapped up by a certain Oscar-winning Animator whose first name starts with an N, and who isn't entirely unfamiliar with Wensleydale Cheese. Whilst Matt was setting up Starburst, I worked for Lincolnshire Countrywide, a small advertising agency based about 2 minutes from our house, and ran a number of accounts, mainly those of locally-based businessmen.

In early 1998 Matt left me for a while and I moved back to London, where I am now in deep psychotherapy and working 'behind the scenes' at a local amateur dramatic group - currently working on 'HMS Pinafore' for June 2004, set in pre-Stalinist Russia with costumes by George of Streatham. Matt comes down every other weekend and gets on well with Tim.

Our kids, Leilandii and Durcan, are 5 and 2 and the apple of our eye, although they're currently living with my mother in Fulham. We also have 2 dogs, Curses and Transplant.

Would be great to hear from anyone from the old days. I am running a small business on the side making laminated tablecloths, so would love to hear from any budding (or existing!) textile designers.

Be safe and Happy !!!!!"

Naah. It's as perfect today as it was four years ago. I'll leave it as it is. I'm only in contact about five people who are on it and they all know the dogs are really called Curses and Dialysis, so it's not like I'm being deliberately deceitful.

Day 78: I Find A Long Lost Relative

You know how it is not working. Most days are spent in Woolworths trying to buy wooden spoons, reading Take A Break, going to the gymnasium (I am considerably thinner now, since you don't ask), making soup, thinking about crisps, thinking about Iceland, failing to finish the Guardian quick crossword for the 78th consecutive day, and trying (vaguely) to get a job. Oh, and thinking about playing the Lottery, what with the chance of getting a massive wedge that I wouldn't have to lift a finger to get (other than putting six little lines in some boxes and trying to remember Monkeymother's birthday).

I also spend witless amounts of time roaming around the magical world of the online. I amuse myself by trying to pick up my neighbours' wireless superhighwaynet: my AirPort is either broken or isn't compatible with the BT Broadband box thing and it makes my head hurt thinking about it, so I'm trying to nick someone else's so I can email people from the cellar. (I have 'JoJo' and 'BigBoy' to choose from, with an occasional appearance by 'KittyGirl'. I think KittyGirl and BigBoy should 'get it on' , and JoJo should take pictures.)

I am increasingly entertained by looking up people I haven't seen for 20 years on Friendsreunited ("I am a physiotherapist living in Richmond with my husband David and our two beautiful children, Melody and Skye", x 30), and then further enhancing my own entirely-made-up profile, which elicits increasingly strange emails from people I was apparently at university with, but can't remember. ("Dear NWM, I was interested to hear your news; are your dogs really called Curses and Transplant?".)

Naturally, I waste astonishing amounts of time putting random things in Google like "Marmite in my eye", "cat ill take him to vet or let him die", "squirrel control" and "ha ha Nelson noise m-peg". And happily, it seems I have no need for those 'trace your ancestor' thingies, for Google Has The Answer.


















Today I searched myself (not my self-self, my Non-workingmonkey self), and found that I have a Japanese relative, who is pictured here. What is he doing with his mouth, I hear you cry, and LOOK at his unfeasibly long eyelashes! And doesn't he get chilly in the foothills of Mount Fuji with nowhere to live? Both of these questions are answered if you look at his little Monkey House: an attractive presentation case which explains that he exists to blow bubbles.

















Now, you may be wondering why it is that I believe I am related to this particular monkey. The answer is simple. Created to spend an eternity of Monkeydom blowing bubbles (as I was created to smoke a small clay pipe and drink absinthe), he is now Broken, and unable to blow bubbles. Nor do his eyes flash and roll as they should, or his little arms move up and down. He is therefore on the market for only $25.99, and described as nonworking. I'd give him a home if I had a heart, but unfortunately I haven't. And anyway, he's scary.