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.

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, but 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.)

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)]

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.

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.

Chutzpah!

On Saturday night I thought we were being courageous by braving Finsbury Park (we went bowling, trendy hipsters that we are), given its reputation for street and violent crime, and recently, fomenting terrorism. And then these Orthodox Jews strolled in and signed up for a lane. Respect.

Action!Michelle Upstaged

In conversation with John, I unveiled the new and improved Action!Michelle, proudly brandishing this week’s lindy-hopping and yesterday’s swim as evidence of her diminishing slackerdom. So what have you been up to then, I asked. Oh, was in London last weekend for the anti-war protest and am surfing in Devon this weekend, Thunder-Stealing!John said blithely. Arse. I must now go and do something like spelunking in the sewers of Hackney or rappelling off the erotic gherkin to maintain Action!Michelle’s market share.

Lindy Time Again

In halcyon days when I updated regularly, I once explained why I love lindy-hopping madly and therefore why one of my biggest regrets about how I’ve chosen to spend my time in London was that I’d let that lapse.

Until NOW! In a recent surge of dynamism I marched down to the London Swing Dance Society’s Tuesday night class, and have since rediscovered the meaning of addiction. Everything is coming back, the sudden sinking feeling in the chest when I realize the hour is over, the little private skip of joy when I realize there’s still the next class to go (I attend both Beginner and Intermediate), the dopey grin I try to suppress in front of the stranger that is my partner as we both move to the music and wait to start the dance in earnest, the somewhat challenging exercise of trying to mentally rehearse my newly-learnt steps on the way home while trying not to give any outward signs of the “triple step, step step, ba di ba da” inner monologue that accompanies my walking.

I’m going to see Amon Tobin DJ at Electrowerkz tomorrow, and am confronted with the strange reality that despite my long-standing admiration, nay, adulation of his work, the night may still pale in comparison to my future Tuesdays in a musky studio dancing to the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Galloping Update

Have done lots. Fell asleep in Metropolis. Blissed out at Sigur Ros. Romped wild-eyed through Atonement. Improvised a tutorial. And am off to the Cotswolds tomorrow for cheesy romantic weekend.

Some worries: possible possibility of random suicide bomber at train station tomorrow, for example. Russ’s safety in New York. Family in Singapore, way too near Bali.

Might say a prayer tonight. In thanks. In worry. Ultimately, I suppose though, in His hands.