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British Museum (Africa Galleries)

I will slowly conquer the British Museum, bit by bit. I will. I can't leave here saying I lived a stone's throw from the British Museum for four years and didn't.

The first problem was that every time I used to go in, I'd get sucked into the Egyptian or Greek sections, and get absolutely exhausted by these alone. The second problem was that they had to go and make that wondrous Great Court, and I started wandering in simply for that, cutting through the museum on my way home but not actually seeing exhibits other than by Norman Foster. The third problem, well, there is no third problem. I've just taken it for granted all these years. (No doubt because it's free. When I went to the Louvre I was determined to get my money's worth, and nearly had to be carried out.)

So on Friday I headed to the Africa galleries with Russ (just one part of another happy leisurely indulgent-yet-frugal afternoon. We had lunch, went to one of the greatest museums in the world, and spent hours reading in the Borders cafe. I think we spent about £5). Apart from the incredibly beautiful artefacts on display or the fact that I learnt a lot, what really struck me was how appealingly everything was laid out and presented. Throwing-knives encased in a wall of glass. Shark masks used in traditional masquerade ceremonies suspended in the air, as if in water. Brassworked panels dominating one side of a room, the stark, simple blocks of shadows they cast on the walls only emphasizing their intricacy. Everything meticulously labelled and explained.

Duly wowed. Next stop: the Orient.

Hat People

So Ireland may have lost the Six Nations rugby final and given England its first Grand Slam for years in the bargain as well, but to comfort the team and country in their defeat, let it be known that there was a (very, very, very) small corner of central London this afternoon that was forever Ireland. Namely Alec and me (me being proudly Singaporean of course, well, most of the time anyway, but honorarily Irish for an afternoon), sitting at a table in ULU wearing silly (green) hats.

Alec's hat was especially fun. It's so big that when I wear it, it drops to rest on my shoulders, thereby hiding my whole head, which is useful if you're supporting Ireland in a room full of English people.

Female Prayer/Male Prayer

Female Prayer:
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray for a man, who's not a creep,
One who's handsome, smart and strong,
One who loves to listen long,
One who thinks before he speaks.
When he says he'll call, he won't wait weeks.
I pray that he is gainfully employed
And when I spend his cash, won't be annoyed.
Pulls out my chair and opens my door.
Massages my back and begs to do more. Oh!
Send me a man who'll make love to my mind,
Knows what to answer to "How big is my behind?"
I pray that this man will love me to no end,
And never attempt to hit on my friend. Amen.

Male Prayer:
I pray for a deaf-mute nymphomaniac with huge boobs who owns a liquor store.

Newcastle: Fun Amidst Shittiness

[I didn't go to Newcastle to enjoy myself. I went because John said he needed me. The fact that we ended up having a good two days is what I'm going to concentrate on writing about, despite the sad circumstances surrounding my visit. So a lot will necessarily be left out.]

On my first day in Newcastle we walked through Jesmond (which, in John's words, is like a bit of Hampstead that wandered out of London and got very lost), Georgian Grainger Town, down the elegant curved Grey Street to the Quayside with all its lovely bridges especially the Millennium Bridge that opens and closes like an eyelid to let ships through, and lounged in chairs like big embracing egg-whites in the very cool Stereo bar. John was getting concerned - I was thinking Newcastle was lovely, despite his strenuous efforts to persuade me to the contrary.

So the next day he took me to see the Gateshead multi-storey car park. I was suitably cowed by this, but then we went to the fabulous Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (lots of pictures of it here), and watched life-size plaster casts of people being worked on for Antony Gormley's new work Domain Field, and saw the Cobra exhibition described as too good for the North, and before long there I was going on again about how I would go back to London and become a Newcastle crusader.

Right then, said John, we're going to Hebburn. We walked out of the Metro and gazed upon an industrial wasteland. Down the road was "Upper Crust", an optimistically-named sandwich shop. Next to it was Jeanette's Hair Design & Greeting Cards, where I hope Jeanette was aware of a synergy between the two products that eluded me. In the town centre we got Saveloy Dips, which were basically sausages, pease pudding and stuffing, in a bun. Apparently this Northern specialty is getting harder to find in shops, so I guess I was just lucky to be with someone who knew where to go. On the door of the town library, a poster proclaimed "The Internet has arrived!"

In the park, we read graffitti. John likes to keep himself informed on what's been going down in the neighbourhood. Apparently Tino went to jail and got off with a lad. And I started feeling nervous about the Hebburn Hash Heads, a ubiquitious and most certainly menacing collective which left their mark everywhere. We climbed a hill, and I said "Nice hill." "Oh, it used to be a slag heap," John said. Bede's Well was once revered as a source of miraculous cures. On Tuesday it was a trough in the ground clogged with beercans. One suspects the Bede's Well Guest House nearby in Jarrow has been having permanent low season for a while.

In the corner store, a nice old lady gave John a big hug and said how sorry she was to hear about his mother. While making him a sandwich she chatted to me, asking me where I was from and little pleasantries like that. In hindsight I'd agree that she did say "And you're going back" as more of a pointed comment than friendly question, but I didn't pick up on it until we left and John mentioned that this nice old lady once told him how she thought the National Front was damn right.

In John's house, we told his sister and her boyfriend about everything I'd seen. She pointed out that I hadn't seen the River Don yet, and when all 3 of them burst out laughing I knew we were on to something. We got in the car and drove there past morose young men and angry teenage girls, all in tracksuits. The River Don didn't reflect the sky the way water usually does. We walked along it, breathing in its bouquet of sewage and decay, and stopped on a bridge that led to some boarded-up derelict warehouses. "I wonder what's in the River Don today," John said cheerfully, and we peered over. There was a cooker, a microwave, and a shopping trolley.

I Hate You, Dan Rhodes (A Timoleon Vieta Come Home Review)

I read Timoleon Vieta Come Home (Dan Rhodes) in the train on the way to Newcastle, also listening to Roxette's greatest hits album (laugh all you like, I'm secure in my music obsessiveness. For the record, the other albums I listened to on the way were Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights and Extra Yard: The Bouncement Revolution, a Big Dada compilation) at the same time.

I really, really liked the book. It was extremely funny, written in the sort of effortlessly readable prose that I tend to be too indisciplined in my writing to manage, and packed a hell of an emotional wallop while actively resisting cliché. But it left me in bits, and I need someone to blame. Read on.

Timoleon Vieta (a mongrel with beautiful eyes) was trying to find his way home after being abandoned in Rome by his owner (Cockroft, a former pops orchestra conductor, now a sad has-been living in Tuscany), under the influence of a manipulative object of infatuation (a mysterious figure known as the Bosnian). Timoleon Vieta was living on rats and bin scavengings, slinking along barely noticed, his skinny belly close to the ground, tired and hungry and sad, and then Roxette sang "I guess loneliness found a new friend", and my heart almost broke.

I went on through the book, through instance after instance of how our imaginations eagerly build up hopes for happy and meaningful futures, through the slow agonizing creep of disbelief when those hopes start to be eroded or are destroyed in one fell swoop, through Cockroft's desperation for some company, any company, that won't eventually leave him without a backward glance, through Timoleon Vieta's aching paw pads on his long journey home, and then I came to the ending, where my imagination's hope for a heartwarming resolution to all this pain was cruelly dashed in exactly the same way it had happened to almost everyone else in the book.

I closed the book and sat back destroyed, watching the countryside race heartlessly past, and then I Don't Wanna Get Hurt started up.

I hate you, Dan Rhodes. I hate you, Roxette. And I'm not even a dog person.

Sweet Dreams Indeed

And then there was Friday, where the comparative refinement of a Malaysian lunch and leisurely wander through the Citibank Photography Prize 2003 exhibition with Benny gave way to a debauched night with Mark at the annual UCL Debating Society Foundation Dinner, where we skipped the dinner and most of the debating bits, and concentrated our efforts on getting, as Mark often so colourfully observes, "off our nipples". I hazily remember spilling Guinness on Alec and getting all teary on the way home remembering how fond I still am of many old UCL debating hacks.

Because of Friday, I was fairly useless on Saturday, although the effects of the hangover thankfully confined themselves to my mental faculties rather than my stomach lining. This wasn't a problem during the day when I lounged around, finished English Passengers and wasted time on the Internet, but rendered me extremely boring at Nick's birthday do at Cargo that night. So I clutched my cider (yes, I like cider, you wannamakesomethinuvit?) and stood around desperately trying to think of something to say other than observations on how boring I was being. Not much came, until the music changed from dub-electronica-Arabian-folk to Work It (Missy's), and I sought relief in silent gesticulating on the dancefloor.

On Sunday I was lured to Spitalfields Market, where I talked myself out of buying a £20 orange bag, explained to a girl from China selling bracelets (I bought one, orange) that yes I could speak Mandarin but no I couldn't speak it very well and no not everyone in Singapore was quite as lousy, and marvelled at how flatteringly the dress on the cross-dresser manning the organic veggie stall hugged his very considerable curves. On Brick Lane, a car slouched by blasting Still Dre. On Commercial Street a car slouched by blasting Mundian To Bach Ke. On Bishopsgate a car slouched by blasting Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These.

Gym/Tate Britain/Timoleon Vieta Book Launch

[We are at war. Two of my friends in Singapore have SARS. A dear friend here has suddenly lost his mother. It would be flippant if not downright disrespectful if I started writing about my week without clarifying that behind the breeziness I am actually trying to take all this in my stride.]

Here's what went into Thursday:

Continuing gym membership saga

My relationship with my gym membership got even more complicated on Thursday morning. I arrived at the gym too late to go into the Pilates class I'd been aiming for. This was far from devastating, and I was all ready to go cheerily and sweatlessly back to my comfy flat and sprawl on the couch with English Passengers (so good) and tea, but then the girl at reception suggested I use the gym instead. I laughed this off, explaining I'd never used one before. "Oh, but we can book you in for a free induction!" she trilled brightly, and unable to think up another excuse fast enough, I had to reluctantly agree. Friends, I feel myself slowly losing the battle against fitness. What is to be done?

Conversation, culture and closeness

The afternoon was a lesson in how to have a wonderful time in London with very little money. All you need is a beautiful day, a Marks & Spencer's pasta lunch, a bench outside the Tate Britain, and a best friend you haven't seen in a long time. At about 3 we decided we should probably fulfil the original purpose of the outing and actually enter the museum, which was a good call given that without some discipline we would have been entirely capable of obliviously talking the afternoon away till the museum closed at 6.

The quantity and range of art you can see for free in London museums never fails to overwhelm me, and this museum is no exception. We'd had a vague plan of seeing some Turner, Days Like These (a triennial exhibition of contemporary British art), and Constable to Delacroix: British Art And The French Romantics, but could only manage the first two in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed Days Like These - I found almost every exhibit visually and conceptually interesting (which doesn't always happen for me and modern art) and came out with an impressively low number of I-don't-get-its. The latter comment would perhaps attract sneers from some arty types, but getting it, or at least having some vague sort of clue, is what makes modern art worthwhile for me.

Book launch, dah-ling

It was for a new book by Dan Rhodes, writer of Anthropology (one of my favourite books), and pleasant email surprise every now and then ever since he found this site one day.

Dinner beforehand was the terrible mistake of Ken Hom's Yellow River Cafe, where I had some of the worst Oriental food I've had in this country since I once tried a Budgens chicken in black bean sauce ready meal, but execrable food was soon forgotten when we got to the venue for the book launch and found there was a free bar. I was, however, hoping not to meet Dan in person for the first time by telling him how fanchashtic it wash to vinally meech him, and so I was only delicately sipping at my Smirnoff Ice when Roxette's Fading Like A Flower filled the room. (At this point I should probably explain that apart from the fact that he wrote a book I like very much, the other connection revealed by our email exchanges was a common love for Roxette and other very uncool pop music.) So I was hopping around telling Alec how much I loved the song, and Alec was trying to look as if he wasn't with me, and then Dan came over and said hello, he'd seen my face light up at the Roxette, and was I Michelle?

I managed to avoid any embarrassing conversational gaffes, the reading was hilarious and ended with Dan sucking on some helium and leading us all in a rousing nasal sing-a-long to I Want To Know What Love Is, so an evening well spent, I think. Of course, I left with a signed copy of his new book, Timeleon Vieta Come Home, which you must all go and buy too.

Philip Appleman

A few hours before the bombing started, Garrison Keillor read Philip Appleman's poem Last-Minute Message For A Time Capsule on National Public Radio. I've had a number of poems by Philip Appleman on this site for quite a while, and instead of suing me for copyright infringement as he has every right to, he was kind enough to email me this poem himself. His New And Selected Poems is pretty much impossible to find in bookstores here and Amazon UK doesn't even stock it, but if you like what you've read on this site, I highly recommend you try getting your hands on a copy.

23 And Less Angsty

I'm sorry it's been a while. I was busy turning 23.

It didn't involve anything spectacular, but it all added up to a rather happy me this week nonetheless. Some friends reading this will be aware of my birthday neurosis, previously described here. That was luckily kept under control this year, thanks to a very understanding Alec who decided to start calling my friends himself rather than wait for me to chicken out of organizing anything and then get depressed like last year.

On Saturday afternoon, after lunch with Alec, Brian and Esther at good ol' Mr Jerk, I hit Berwick Street:

• The Notwist: Neon Golden (£7.99)
• Múm: Finally We Are No One (£7.99)
• Lambchop: What Another Man Spills (£7.99)
• Tori Amos: Scarlett's Walk (£4.99)
• (On Sunday, I also found Common's Electric Circus in Music Zone for £6, yay.)
• [Something else I'm also enjoying is the self-titled album by Mark Hollis (formerly of Talk Talk), my present from Benny, who is one of the few people around who would have the balls and self-confidence (deservedly so, I might add!) to give me any music I hadn't already said I wanted, snob that I am. Thanks Benny!]

Then to Shoreditch for dinner at Song Que, which struggled a little with our party of 14, but did their best to remain smiley. I, on the other hand, wildly tried to move around the table, talk to people, and apologize for the various things my various offensive friends managed to say to each other, all at the same time. The life of a socialite is clearly not for me. After dinner we headed to Bar Kick, where I failed to acquit myself particularly well in our table football challenges, but I blame the cocktails. I think it all went okay. I haven't really tried mixing different friends together since I was 8 and mixed 10 girls from school with my poor neighbour Roy, but I hope they sort of enjoyed themselves this time, and am ultimately very thankful they even bothered to come.

On Monday (my real birthday), Alec brought me lilies and the paper in bed, which made for many happy hours curled up reading all about how we were, er, headed for war. Oh well. So much for being able to celebrate my birth in a spirit of optimism. In the evening I got 5 seconds of fame at a law faculty prizegiving ceremony, but the other 89 minutes 55 seconds were extremely dull. Then dinner at Hunan, where being expected to trust the maitre d's choice rather than order from a menu was a little difficult for control freak me, but it worked out lovely. When he found out it was my birthday, he asked if I had any favourite dishes they could make me. Given that Hunan is one of the very few Chinese restaurants in London that isn't Cantonese, it is probably a good thing I stifled my response of "mat chap chi pa" (I can't translate it exactly, but it's something like "honey-cooked pork" I think - it's yummy, anyway. Order it the next time you go to very Cantonese Chinatown). We managed to stagger out forgetting Alec's scarf and my prize certificate (such is life with Alec and Michelle), but remembered before we'd gotten too far away, so all was well.

So I celebrated some of my birthday in Shoreditch and some of it in Sloane Square. I would pride myself on having social range, but must unfortunately admit I fit in much better in Shoreditch. (Quick note for non-Londoners: Sloane Square is where very rich people hang out. Shoreditch is near where Jack The Ripper used to kill prostitutes.)

The "Gym Membership"

Consider this a watershed: I attended my first ever fitness class yesterday.

My recollections of school PE classes are never particularly bad, except that I hated running. In Katong Convent, the perhaps prosaic exercise of training for the 2.4 km run portion of the physical fitness test was enhanced by the fact that we didn't run around a track, but along the roads surrounding the school, and Cikgu R (Cikgu is Malay for "teacher") had a habit of cycling along behind us shouting threats that she'd sit on us if we stopped running. This was no laughing matter. She was huge. Raffles Junior College PE was less idiosyncratic, and had the additional benefits of a rock wall, and sometimes a good view of the male sportspeople of the school training on the rugby pitch encircled by the running track as I panted by longing for death.

But institutionalized exercise aside, the idea of voluntarily subjecting myself to pain and perspiration has never been appealing, not at least until I came to London and discovered that in the context of a drum'n'bass club there is a strange satisfaction you can get from the suffering. And after a while here, I started to miss swimming, which I did do a lot in Singapore (much less sweat involved, or at least it all washes off in the water).

So the next step was the gym membership, which till now I can only refer to in conversation as "gym membership", with my tone of voice incorporating the inverted commas. After a couple of swims, my pathological Singaporean need for value-for-money started to assert itself. Insidiously, it whispered suggestions of trying out a fitness class or two. After all, they were free with the membership. My vanity also started reminding me that frequent swimming screws my hair up, but I needed to visit the gym more than 5 times a month to break even on the membership fee.

This is why I found myself in yesterday's women-only Legs, Bums and Tums class, lying on my back with my legs in the air with a rolled-up gym mat between my knees as the instructress ran around the room exhorting us to "SQUEEZE!!!" while a rap song with the insistent refrain of "I got sex on my mind, yeah I got sex on my mind" pounded in the background.

It was pretty good. I think I'll go back.

If Soliciting Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right

A long time ago, I decided that when this site got an average of 50 hits a day, I'd try the comments thing. It's been getting those numbers for a while now (thank you Google sex perverts), so I decided what the hell, I have only my sense of self-worth to lose.

Therefore please note the additional linky thing in the bottom left corner of each post, and do comment if the spirit moves you to. If those brackets keep telling me zero, I'll get all insecure, and cry. And then I'll start posting really offensive contentious stuff, like "You readers suck buffalo cock!" (hello again, Google sex perverts), or "Postmodernism is crap. Discuss," and we really don't want anything like that to happen, do we?

[Note: This was posted when I was still using Blogger, and hosted my comments on enetation. The original post, and the comments made in response to it, can be found here at my old site.]

Dear Morpheus

Dear Morpheus,

I'm getting rather tired of this. Every night I flop around restlessly in bed until about three. I wake up at seven, but because I know I haven't had enough sleep, I try to go back to sleep till nine. I inevitably wake up at noon, feeling absolutely wasted.

That last stretch of sleep between nine and noon forms the bulk of my complaint. Somehow during that time I'm plunged into incredibly stressful dreams, and it's really not much fun.

I no longer want to dream about Shu-pei (old, much-loved school friend) inexplicably chasing me mercilessly and murderously around a shopping centre until I am forced to fly to evade her. When I had fled through the aisles of a supermarket and finally got cornered by high shelves in the frozen food section, you will not believe the cruel cold hand of terror that gripped my heart when, as I hovered fearfully in the air above her growling below, she concentrated hard for a moment and started rising into the air too. She wasn't as good at flying as me, and floated down again, but she was learning. I woke up soon after sweating and shaking.

I no longer want to dream about it apparently being the day before my WEDDING (look, I REALLY have no explanation for these fucking dreams, I do find this particular dream setting disturbingly weird too), which I have somehow forgotten to invite any of my friends to, and I am frantically trying to call them up and tell them because I don't want to spend one of the most important days of my life without them, but no one by that name ever existed at all the numbers I try.

I no longer want the losing-all-my-teeth dream which I must have had more than five times before already, but somehow every time I dream it, even though I tell myself it has to be a dream just like before, I can feel the teeth wrenching themselves out of my mouth one by one and taste the blood, and this time, oh my God, this time it's not a dream, I really have lost all my teeth, how will I go on with no teeth at the age of twenty-two (dentures don't occur to me okay smart-arse, it's a dream) and ow ow OW MY JAW IS BREAKING ITSELF and then I wake up.

I know they sound damn funny in hindsight. They're probably funny to you too because you're, like, immortal, and tend not to be plunged into existential insecurity. They're not very funny to me at the time though. Please make them stop.

Yours hopefully,
Michelle

P.S. Have I ever told you you're totally the sexiest fictional immortal two-dimensional entity ever?

[To anyone who clicked on the above link and has decided I'm crazy, you kind of have to read Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics to get the whole picture (how apt)]

The Idler's Crappest Towns List

The Idler magazine has embarked on efforts most noble in finding the crappest town in the British Isles, and the results are a romp. I've always found the self-deprecating nature of most English (and Welsh and Scottish and Irish of course; geez these national sensitivities are tiresome) humour immensely endearing (this is especially so after smiling politely at American exchange students who don't understand irony) and the contributors to this feature have it in spades. Here are some randomly chosen gems, but rest assured that any town you click on will be hilariously torn down.

On Portsmouth - "When you are able for one moment to get the stench of deep fried reconstituted chicken guts from the far too numerous fast food eateries from your nostrils, and quite probably the taste of your own blood and smashed teeth from your mouth, you are greeted by the rancid odour of the thousands of gallons of effluent that is pumped mercilessly into the sea on a daily basis."

On Bath - "In the summer it fills to the brim with loud American and European tourists who clog the narrow streets like the coagulated grease in a Scotsman's arteries. In the winter the only escape is incest and the insistent call of the bong."

On Stockport - "The overiding 'look' for Stockport's locals is a shaven head with optional Fila cap / visor perched on top, a Reebok shell suit the legs of which are tucked into a pair of overpowering patterned socks and a pair of Rockport, Timberland or Kicker boots. Gold jewellry is popular, usually incorporating sovereigns and / or Marijuana leaf motifs. The male uniform is fairly similar."

Cheerleader/Corrigan (Water Rats, London)

I'd never heard of any of the bands playing at the Water Rats on Thursday night, but decided that for £4 and a jaunt just around the corner, I'd take the risk and believe Time Out, where Cheerleader were described as "Buzzcocks and Pixies-styled noise" and Corrigan as "zinging post-punk and cinematic post-rock...variously recalls Magazine, Slint, Joy Division and Shellac."

Cheerleader put on a show that deserved a much bigger audience than the 20 or so people watching it. Good songs that were catchy but not samey, occasional Frank Black-esque screaming from the guy, strong charismatic lead vocals, and both vocalists sounded great together; in general a solidly competent performance head and shoulders above some of the crap I have found myself watching in disbelief in the past (Mull Historical Society, this means you).

Corrigan was...intriguing. I've never seen a band that seemed so disconnected from its lead singer. The rest of the band looked the indie-rock part, shaved heads, spiked hair, cool faded T-shirts etc. As for the lead singer, I have difficulty describing what he was like without being probably rather offensive, but if you've ever watched Will And Grace, picture Jack in an rock band.

None of the band ever seemed to look at each other, and completely ignored the antics of the lead singer and his attempts to commune with them. I didn't quite see the influences of Slint or Joy Division that Time Out saw, but must admit ignorance with regard to Magazine and Shellac, who are still on my long list of Canonical Bands I Should Probably Get Around To Listening To At Some Point For The Sake Of My Own Indie Cred. All the same, the band played cohesively if non-interactively, and I mostly liked what I heard. My problem was that I didn't think the lead singer's vocals (kind of like Billy Corgan but without the edge) went with the band's type of sound, which, come to think of it, would have worked well with an Ian Curtis type of voice (so maybe Time Out was right to use "post-punk" after all).

So I think what I'm left with for this band is that I won't personally be keen on them unless they change their lead singer, but they do deserve to go on to bigger things. (If you think about it, I'm sure a lot of people watching the Smashing Pumpkins starting out could have said exactly the same thing.)

Four quid well spent.

Discrete little chunks of Thursday,

Discrete little chunks of Thursday, that weren't goo-worthy in themselves, seem to have joined forces in the night and put the goo whammy on me this morning:

A beautiful day.

The frivolous yet immensely happiness-boosting pleasure of wearing a new belt with an outfit it looks really good with.

Lunch with Alec (on study leave) at Ikkyu and half-pints afterwards at the Duck And Dive. Realising how rare this otherwise mundane pleasure was - being with him in sunlight, in the middle of the week.

Good progress on immensely boring essay (the concept of technical content in determining patentability of inventions) in the afternoon despite the stealthy beginning of a goo onslaught of distraction (which finally culminated today).

A breathtakingly efficient visit to the law library, photocopying journal articles and cases like a maniac, but organized!

Gig at the Water Rats pub on Gray's Inn Road, which I have somehow managed not to find out about during four years in this area, a feat for which I deserve much indie derision. Great venue, and damn good performances (to be described in further detail later along with how I managed to fit most of my LEG into my mouth while talking to one of the bands). Slight attack of grouchiness before the gig due to hunger and annoyance at our joint indecisiveness, but that disappeared once I was in there with loud raucous music and a Snakebite in my hand. It's easy to make me happy provided you can stand the things that do the job. Somehow, despite hating most of these things, Alec still manages.

Late dinner in cheap cheerful Chinese on my road.

Bed.

Breakfast.

And there you have it.

Parentheses Before Sleeping

I was lying in bed the other night waiting to fall asleep, and the Sigur Ros () album was playing softly as it often does at these times. The first three songs of the album always seem to me to convey a sense of deep, unutterable yearning (I can see the movie soundtrack producers lining up already). A gentle tension starts to build when track 3 introduces that repeating (but not repetitive) sequence of notes on the piano; they ascend and descend over and over again, and even though the notes are always the same you get the feel of wafting slowly upwards, maybe following a loosely spiralling path, and when the piano finally comes in several octaves higher with the same sequence of notes I find myself imagining fireworks underwater, clarity found, and quiet contentment.

[Posterity music-geekness note: Strange. I was writing this, and also remembering how, at the time, my anticipation of that pivotal moment was affecting my ability to enjoy the music as it happened. This also happens with Orbital's In Sides album, when I'm waiting for The Box Part 1 to segue into The Box Part 2.]

Rastaporean

People who have independently, and without prompting, insisted that I am from the Caribbean, despite my strenuous arguments to the contrary:

• The guy behind the enquiries desk at NatWest the day I walked in to sign up for a student account in 1999. He was from the West Indies, and assured me I was too.
• A guy who came up to me after I had spoken in one of the UCL Debating Society's weekly debates. He was cute, and I was mildly disappointed that he didn't profess interest in more than my accent. "Hey, good speech. Where are you from, by the way? You sound like a Rasta." Somewhere later on in the conversation, he asked if I smoked (I had a feeling he wasn't referring to Marlboros), and left soon after I said I didn't.
• A guy in a hiking group in Cappadocia, Turkey. He spoke with Received Pronunciation and had coincidentally done his Masters at UCL. He narrowed it down to Trinidad.
• My Jamaican landlady. She laughed uproariously at everything I said (this was before she recently informed me I was the most difficult tenant in the entire building. There is now little love lost between us, mostly because she is a confrontational, defensive - those two words seem like opposites, don't they? Not with her - unreasonable cow with selective amnesia and deliberately adopted attention deficit disorder, in that she refuses to listen to you when you are trying to recount the detailed conversation you had with her in the past but which she now denies ever happened) and repeated it, highlighting my apparently unmistakable Caribbean lilt. She also went with Trinidad.
• A guy behind the counter in Jessops, on Wednesday. No prizes for guessing where he was sure I had been born or at least lived a sizeable part of my life. He kept trying to guess where I was really from. I gave him the following clues: Not North or South America, not Europe, not Africa, not Antarctica, not Australia; the biggest continent (at which point he finally guessed Asia); not Malaysia, but a place very nearby; very small, very high-tech; starts with Ssssssssiiiiinnnnngggggg, at which point he finally managed Singapore. For some reason we briefly got into conversation about hip-hop clubs. He likes Subterania.

I am a small yellow girl. I lived in Singapore for the first 18 years of my life, and have been in London since. I have never been to the Caribbean, but apparently I'll fit in if I do.

Meet Mr Ass

The culprit has been apprehended: none other than the boyfriend formerly known as Alec, now to be referred to here as Mr Ass for the near future.

The shameful facts emerged over dinner at Viet Hoa (the crispy pancakes fall miserably short of Song Que's dizzy heights, but the rest of the food was fine).

Harsh retribution was swiftly dealt out by demanding that he buy me my favourite cocktail (it involves creme de menthe, Bailey's, Kahlua and something else I can't remember) at Bar Kick, after which I defeated him with relish at table football.

Last night I slept the sleep of the just.