Day 85: I Am Afraid To Drive

I have just seen more couture frockery gathered together in one room than I thought was possible. It was good. Dear Friend adorning her lovely self in wedding attire, whilst I lolled on the bed and kept a strange animal out of the tissue paper. A dodgy moment with £800 worth of Miu Miu and a stiff zip, but otherwise we came out of it well and went for dinner in what I believe is commonly known as a 'gastropub'.

But the journey back! My dears!

Kingsland Road

I go up and down Kingsland Road a lot. I have three friends who live near or off it, and some journeys to the North cannot be undertaken without going up it. Of all the roads in London, Kingsland Road is the most dangerous. More people wander randomly into the street without looking than they do anywhere else. I will kill someone soon, and not be sorry about it. Add to this people changing lanes without indicating and shooting out of side roads without looking, and I will be dead too.

New Trick By Cyclists

Be a knob. Have a stupid hat on, and a cretinous friend. Then stand at a pedestrian crossing and push your front wheel out like you're going to cross the road. Do this repeatedly, making sure that everyone brakes suddenly and has a minor stroke. Then laugh when someone drives into the back of someone else. Then stop laughing when I get out of my car and bludgeon you to death with four miniature bottles of Evian that I happen to have in my boot. (That and a Daily Telegraph golf umbrella, some books, some unlabelled CDs, an old pair of trainers and - by the smell of things - some salmon that I 'lost' about a week ago.)

Drive A Porsche Cayenne

You are a knob before we start, but just to add to your knobbery, make sure you change lanes without indicating, start moving in whilst I am driving without indicating and suddenly overtake me, turn off suddenly without indicating, brake suddenly and for no apparent reason, and listen to fucking 50 Cent so loudly it makes my clutch reverberate.

But first of all, make sure that I am behind you from Dalston Station, over London Bridge, down Blackfriars Road, through Kennington and all the way to the Oval. Then and only then will you die when I get out of my car, pick it up (as possessed by superhuman angerstrength), and drop it on your head. But to be honest, that won't make much of a difference, as you are already so patently fucking stupid that removing half your brain will make no difference whatsoever.

Drive A Blue Van

What you must do is this. Drive into the back of a parked car (a not posh car; a car that belongs to a normal person living a normal life), then drive off fast. You must also then underestimate the power of my memory when I am Truly Fucked Off, for I have remembered your registration number, and your cockery will be found out.

I hear the underground in London is very efficient this time of year.

Day 85: I Wish I Could Say Some Things

(Second time round for this today. I somehow managed to publish the first one twice, then delete it twice. I have also broken my television; I was scanning the channels, or whatever it's called, and now the box thing is tuned, but no pictures or words come up. What do I do now? Read a book?)

Yes sirree bob!

Who is Bob, and what does this mean? No matter. I shall say it anyway.

There is no 'I' in team, but there is a 'u' in 'cunt'.

Old, but good.

Why are you talking?

Very strong.

You know him? When they held a competition for cunts, he came second. And do you know why? Because he is such a cunt.

Speaks for itself, I think.

Are you an only child?

Ditto.

See you next Tuesday!

Only works if you say it as you are leaving a roomful of twats, having just discussed the fact that you will see each other again on Friday.

Got to say. I looked like one HELLUVA cunt.

I find this very amusing, for reasons that aren't quite clear.


I think most of these require having a job and accepting that everyone will hate you. Oh well.

Day 85: I Think You Should Buy This Book

This is a book written by my new internet friend, Dave Roberts. (Not that sort of friend. Internet Friend. Anyway, he's married and lives in New Zealand and that's too far for even me).

It is very good, as it goes. It is particularly funny if you have ever done internet dating, or been on a chat room and that. (I haven't, but it's not for want of trying; I just couldn't make the thing work.) Also, he is poor and has a mortgage to pay, and you can get it for 20% off on the Amazon thing.

I do not carry advertising and never will. (If I wanted to make money out of advertising, I would be working.) I will however tell you about things that are good and that you should buy, and things that are not good and that you shouldn't buy:

Things that are good and that you should buy

1. E-Luv by Dave Roberts
2. A Vicious Circle by Amanda Craig
3. Staying Alive and Being Alive which is poetry and that but not wanky, published by Bloodaxe
4. Janey Dry Spot Remover (a miraculous product that sucks greasy stains out of clothes)
5. Body Shaper opaque tights from M&S (hold you in and take a stone off for only £3.99)
6. Bras from Rigby and Peller (very expensive but make you look thinner and nice when naked, so worth it)
7. Cava and Prosecco instead of champagne (cheaper and nicer I think. Lidl do a Prosecco in a blue bottle for £2.99)
8. Laura Mercier tinted moisturiser (expensive, but lasts for months)
9. Rimmel black liquid eyeliner (cheap AND brilliant)
10. Lipstick from Elizabeth Arden (really, it's the best - and it lasts for ages on your mouth and ages generally)
11. Own-brand in-wash stain removers (the white powder stuff - it works)
12. Vogel's bread (I like the one with linseed in)
13. Thom Yorke's record
14. Expensive socks
15. Limelite bath cleaning stuff, that makes the caked on calcium stuff fizz and drop off (worth a go just to watch)
16. Train tickets off the GNER site, which offers weirdly cheap tickets to all over the United Kingdom at perfectly reasonable times of day.

Things that are not good, and that you should not buy

1. Cillit Bang
2. Tights from Boots
3. Oatibix
4. Records by twats
5. Pepper grinders from supermarkets
6. Socks in packs of 10 from H&M
7. G-strings in your size. Get the next size up. Then they don't cut in. Not that I wear them; I look like a twat in them. I buy pants like mens' pants, but for ladies.
8. Ladies' shaving foam for your legs and that. Use cheap conditioner instead.
9. Waxing, electrolysis, etc. Laser hair removal a) works; and b) is expensive but works out cheaper. But only do it at the Harley Medical Clinic. They've got Powerful Lasers that render you hair-free in seconds and it doesn't hurt at all.
10. Cheap chocolate. I have had the same bar of dark chocolate in my fridge for 2 weeks. You only need one square. After one square you can't face it again for days.
11. Books by Celia Aherne, who actually and literally cannot write
12. Porsche Cayennes
13. Nuts to give to squirrels
14. Jamie Oliver-branded kitchen implements
15. Food with a face on it (e.g. Ainsley Harriott, Loyd Grossman).


COMING SOON: Non-workingmonkey's Handy Household Hints. No. 1: All you really need is a bottle of washing up liquid: any greasy stains will be magically removed by a light application on the troublesome spot in question before insertion in the washing machine. It's true.

Day 85: I Have Been Mortally Wounded By A Brassica

On Friday night I roasted a bit of salmon (organic, pale pink: not luminous orange and streaked with Evil Salmonfat). I boiled some water, and put some purple sprouting broccoli in it. After a bit, I took a bit of broccoli out and bit it to see if it was cooked enough to stir about in some garlic and that. And it spurted the hottest water I have ever come across (seven times hotter than boiling; so hot it didn't even hurt) on my bottom lip. I didn't feel anything, and then I did. And now I have a strange patch of dried out weird skin on the bottom of my bottom lip.

I'd put a picture up for you to see but a) I'm not into self-portraiture; and b) you'd want to kiss me, and then you might pull the scab off with your own lips and swallow it, and that would be disgusting.

Day 84: I Love Croydon

Ooh, don't ask me if I've travelled. I've been all over recently. Canterbury. Notting Hill. Stoke Newington. Dalston. The whole of North London, endlessly and without cease. (Not West London. I don't go there unless my parents are in their London residence and there's chat to be had about the will.) I have lived in Paris and New York, and nearly lived in Singapore and Belgium, but didn't.

Next week I'm going to - no, really - Glasgow and Newcastle, ON A TRAIN (First Class to Newcastle £8? And First Class to Glasgow £23? How? It's true!), but coming back on a PLANE (£56). In Glasgow I will see the oldest of my Dear Friends, who I have known for 33 years, an animal called Pepe who will apparently chew my earlobes, and her two small children. The week after that, I will go to Bedford and see the two doctors and their daughter, my god-daughter. At some point in the next three months, I will almost certainly go to France, and maybe even further than that.

But of all these places I have been and may go, I like Croydon the best. I like Croydon because everyone thinks it's rubbish. You can say, "yeah, and he lived in Croydon" if you are trying to explain something about someone, and leave it at that. But it's magical, is Croydon. Magical.

Now, it helps that One Of The Dearest Of My Dear Friends has been working there for a while, writing about what you can do with a Photo-Me booth and a bath of home made chemicals. This Dear Friend is Magical in his own way; he sees beauty where there is none (this is why, perhaps, he is my Friend), and knows of a magical shop in Hastings called "The 50p Shop", where we often go and buy rulers, books called "I Am An Artist", and buttons. Sometimes afterwards we have fish and chips, and sit next to ladies with red shaven hair who then send me emails about unicorns and driftwood. (One day in the 50p shop he found the exact replica of my mother's pepper grinder, which she acquired some time in the late 60s, and remains unsurpassed for its ability to grind pepper. I have its twin now, and use it every day. And every time I use it, I think of my Dear Friend, and of my mother wearing Ozzie Clark.)

He showed me sights, did my Dear Friend. (He saw Jesus in a root formation once. Yes. THAT'S how good.) He showed me that if you just look, a place that looks like it is somewhere you would only go if you were very much in love, or in need of a reminder of how lucky you really are, is full of Joy.

We had a delicious luncheon of ham and cheese omelette (me) and chicken and chips (him), both accompanied by beetroot in vinegar, in a restaurant made in the 1950s that believes Paris and Florence are Magical. (They are right, as it goes, but not in the way they thought.)

We had ice-cream made of pigfat and sugar with wafers in, and my Dear Friend reminded me of the Ketchup-with-white-worms-in story, which put me off my coffee.

But the shops. My dears, the shops! Such beauty to be seen at every turn. Items that pull at my heart, and remind me of Who I Really Am.

Across the shopping mall (est. 1973) from our restaurant was this shop which sells - amongst other things - "saucy novelties". I am too frightened to go in at the moment, but am assured that it's Quite Safe, so might go next time.















When I fall in love again (and I will, for my heart cannot ever have been entirely broken: it always mends itself eventually), I want to feel like this: a tiny golden lady held in the enormous paw of my Paramour (but without the fox showing her thighs off in the background).





And should I doubt that I have the ability to be Powerfully Moved, I need only think of my reaction to this poor, poor wounded elephant. My Dear Friend alerted me to his presence and wanted to shield my eyes - but no. I looked, and I saw Him, The Poor Wounded Elephant, and my heart Swelled, and tears sprang to my eyes.



I am going to Croydon again. Despite the extravaganza I am currently planning in celebration of my birthday (another Dear Friend helped me decide today on sausages in buns AND tarts, but not too eggy), at which I will see Dear Friend and his Lady (also a Dear Friend), the magical unveiling of Croydon will remain a joy we can both share for months to come. And because of this, I will always think of Croydon, the South London suburb off the A23, as a place I love.