Going To The Dogs

You may or may not have heard the one about the dyslexic atheist who lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog, but whatever the case, they always say start with a joke. I actually prefer the one about the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa, and should probably say I think both jokes rather misrepresent the problems of dyslexia sufferers, but my point, and I do have one, is that we went to the dogs on Friday night.

We went to the Wimbledon track, because Walthamstow (which is, incidentally, the first place in London I knew a postcode for – fans of early 90s boy bands should be able to figure out why) doesn’t do Friday nights. It was quite a walk from Tooting Broadway tube station, firstly because it was quite a walk, and secondly because it involved walking in Tooting. As we wandered tentatively past a breast scanning clinic on a deserted road, we remembered a very early date when Alec managed to mistake a VD clinic in Peckham for the Old Vic (a rather long and surreal story, but hey, he got the girl) and were starting to wonder if it was all going a bit pear-shaped.

But we finally got there, and got down to brass tacks. We didn’t win the first few races we bet on, but about four races in, we were starting to get the feel of things. After some discussion, we decided to bet on the trio of Beat Them Melv, Mustang Messiah and Call A Copper. I walked confidently to the counter, asked for a trio on tracks 2, 4 and 5, and was somewhat perturbed when the betting coupon named Ravilello Girl, Quick To Move and Baran Magic. It soon became clear that, tit-like, the pair of us had been scrutinizing the form for completely the wrong race. And of course, it turned out to be the closest we came to winning anything the whole evening.

I think I’m hooked.

Attempting Pollyanna

Well, Italy didn’t happen, due to snow. Bugger.

This was rather disappointing, given that we’d actually managed to do a fair bit of planning for this one, as opposed to our little jaunt to Spain, and actually most other holidays I’ve ever gone on. Add the fact that I’d been using the thought of the holiday to keep myself going over the past couple of weeks of essay hell, and am now hard pressed to find something similar to tide me over the next few months. Add the sharpening feeling that my time here is inexorably winding down and I haven’t done enough. Add the general malaise I’ve been feeling over the past month or two that I’m going through a “minging period” (my most recent haircut, which featured extreme fringe action, is now growing out, which means I no longer look like a quirky interesting person with a unique sense of style who cut my fringe that ridiculously short on purpose, I just look like someone who made a horrible mistake while running with scissors).

Add all this up and you have a rather depressed Michelle.

There are, however, Pollyanna moments in the gloom. Alec as SuperBoyfriend in aforementioned depression crisis. Loads of CDs arriving in the post, in bubble-wrapped packages. Schindler’s Ark (Thomas Keneally), which apart from being a great book in the pure literary sense, also unsurprisingly helps to put things in Michelle World back into perspective.

And, and, and, Justin Ruffles, as in way-funnier-than-me Justin Ruffles, thinks I rule! Or at least, he wrote it on his site, which I acknowledge can be a rather different thing. Apparently I have a “groovy urban boho life spent cruising bagel shops, watching films in Swahili and listening to music sung in ancient tribal click languages”.

This is, unfortunately, mostly wrong (well, maybe the bit about the cruising…) and should not be allowed to mislead people as to my coolness, or, as it were, ruleness. My closest contacts with Swahili have been watching The Gods Are Crazy about a million times when I was ten, and having an Irish boyfriend who mumbles. My most boho moments go no further than a preference for cider (oops, that’s “hobo”) and an occasional predilection for subtly incorporated tie-dye. While I’ll ‘fess up to a music collection I do think is fairly cool for the most part, I have just spent the last two hours watching the Michael Jackson interview on ITV, and writing an email about it to other members of the Michael Jackson mailing list I have been a member of since 1995.

Note To Self

Note to self: when one has managed to bruise one’s tailbone through falling on one’s arse while ice-skating on Friday, it is not particularly smart to commemorate this injury by going to a drum’n’bass club that very night, and it is even more stupid to throw caution to the wind and indulge in more booty-shaking at The Roots gig on Monday.

Notes to self, eh? Why don’t I ever listen to them?

Owwwww.

Bloomsbury In The Snow

There were all sorts of snowmen in Tavistock Square yesterday. One ambitious effort towered over me, wreathed with maple leaves. Another only came up to my knee, but with his glinting 5p eyes and mouth wide open in a silent wail he was as scary as knee-high snowmen can be. I got there late, when most of the activity had died down and the light was beginning to go. In the expanse of white and grey, Gandhi remained quietly hunched over the parched flowers in his lap, snow on his bald head and bare skin.

I moved on to Gordon Square, where I met Avril, and we built our own snowman. He looked comfortable on the park bench, although the legs we made to dangle off it were rather too spindly for his portly frame. When a group of guys initiated a snowball fight, I realized that I do, unfortunately, throw like a girl.

At UCL, one of the naked male statues on the facade was sharing his pedestal with a snowman. Another truly impressive (and unmistakably male) specimen lolled back on his bench and watched the goings-on with a broad, sculpted (no twigs involved!) smile.

By this time the light was dying fast. I took my last photograph, moulded my last snowball, and went slip-sliding all the way home.

Essays In Resentment

I’ve been reading and enjoying finestlittlespace every now and then for quite a while now, but somehow never got round to linking to it.

If, however, I manage to finally resign myself to getting a move on with that 5000 word comparative human rights paper, her blog will be a delightful source of schadenfreude in the midst of my misery, because she’s got to do a whole thesis! (Sorry, Nurul! Hang in there, and best of luck with it. You do really have all my sympathies!)

Like her, I too tried to make a list of tasks for this essay. It went something like:

  • Choose essay topic
  • Do the damn research
  • Photocopy the damn research
  • Read the bloody research
  • Make notes on the bloody research
  • Plan the fucking essay
  • Write the fucking essay
  • Shout “CHEE-BAI, it’s done!” and jet off to Venice

Perhaps the first seven items are overly negative, but the thought of the last one is keeping me going.

2003

Happy new year, everyone. The mayfly project asks people to sum up their year in 20 words. This is my entry:

First class honours degree, church music, debating, a life – juggled successfully. Some disappointments, many blessings. Treasure old friends. Love Alec.

* * *

2003 will be challenging. I have to return to Singapore (reluctantly), and deal with missing everything and everyone that London has been to me since 1999. (Warning: when it happens, there will be soppiness.) I have to find some way to convince myself that I can live and work there happily for the next 6 years, despite heat and humidity that renders me red-eyed, sneezy and itchy, societal and political culture which irritates me on many levels, and an arts and entertainment scene which will obviously fall far short of what London has to offer.

[Note: I haven’t become one of those people that returns to Singapore from a life overseas and can say nothing good about it. There is a lot I like about Singapore. The problem is that there is a lot I love about London.]

It won’t be easy, and given that I have led a charmed life with little or no contact with adversity or discouragements of any real significance, I’m frankly not confident I’ll manage this particularly well. I suppose the best attitude to adopt will be to seek solace in the things I love in Singapore – great food, green city, old friends, family life – and carpe the fucking diem for what remains of my life here.

Fun With US Constitutional Case Names!

Fun fact for the day: in the American constitutional rights saga that began with the miraculous “creation” of a general right to privacy and eventually led to the legalizing of abortion, a case along the way that extended this right of privacy to activities relating to marriage was called Loving v. Virginia.

Okay, so maybe it’s a thoroughly boring factoid and would amuse only the puerile, but when trying to research a comparative human rights essay on judicial discovery of unenumerated rights, one must look for these little joys.

Things I Want To Remember

I’m less than satisfied with the event-record ratio I’ve managed on this blog lately. For simple practical purposes, I can’t seem to remember what I do without writing it down any more. More significantly, there’s a backlog of things I do actually want to write about, and the neurotic symbolist in me wants to get them written down before the year ends.

I want to remember the frustrations that built up to an unhappy last Thursday, and also how prolonged ranting to a very patient Russ (over Berwick Street trawling

[conversational excerpt, paraphrased –

Me: Look, I know this sounds pathetic but I really know what will cheer me up right now will be buying an album. I really want to bring a new album home with me to listen to tonight or I’ll be really depressed.

Russ: Here, I’ll hold those you’re carrying already so it’ll be easier for you to flick through the racks],

jerk chicken at, er, Mr Jerk, and coffee in the smoke factory that is the basement of Costa on Old Compton Street) reminded me of that long-running question: what did I do to deserve him, and how do I bottle it?

I want to remember amazing crispy pancakes at Song Que with Alec, suddenly looking around stunned to see all the chairs upside down on all the other tables, the proprietors (and their kids) patiently waiting for us to finish, and cheerfully wishing us a Merry Christmas as we stumbled out a little embarrassed.

I want to remember a cozy Saturday afternoon finishing The Hours (wonderful), swaddled in a duvet while rain pattered on the skylight, alone but not lonely.

Christmas 2002

The bacon’s bubbling away in the Coke, Avril’s alternately wringing her hands and shouting “Big Willy!” at the TV, Alec and his brother are blowing raspberries and doing armpit farts, and I am calmly and detachedly taking it all in. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Useful Males

Okay, I admit it. I throw my hands up when dancing to the chorus of Independent Women, and have been known on occasion to shout “ALL MEN ARE BASTARDS!” But today I needed men.

John had to metamorphose from his usual lovable non-fleahurting self to protector of my virtue first in a Secret!Christmas!Mission! in dodgy bits of central London, and then from an equally dodgy plumber who seemed to travel by minicab, and his mate who was either very laid back or fairly stoned. This was admittedly not a difficult thing to do for a tall Geordie who survived two years in Finsbury Park and Hackney with hardly a scratch, but I’m still grateful.

We did manage some non-dodginess with a trip to Antony Gormley’s incredibly endearing Field For The British Isles, which has become a fixture of my regular pops through the British Museum on the way home (you don’t get many short-cuts more beautiful or soul-lifting), but that was cruelly cut short by my landlady calling and saying ceilings were about to collapse and I had to hot-foot it home or else.

When John had to leave from plumber-watching duty, Alec assumed the position, albeit in markedly different garb of yuppie suit, leather gloves, skinny umbrella and latest copy of The Chap. All the same, my virtue remains intact after a day of decidedly sleazy encounters, and for that I thank these two particular members of the male race. Without them I’d have felt decidedly vulnerable, whatever feminism may argue to the contrary.