Dance & Drink & Screw

In honour of the approaching NaNoWriMo, I'm going to start writing one hour a day. I don't mean necessarily write for one hour, but have that time and space dedicated to it. I may just stare at a screen or a paper journal for 60mins.

What I want is routine. I already have one with exercise, and even with my little cafe excursions on Monday mornings before work, so why can't I have an hour a day for writing? And for days when I absolutely can't get an hour to myself, I could add it to the weekend so - say - on a Sunday when I'm at home, I can write for three hours and catch up on the hours I owe (though that sounds like a cop out already, doesn't it?)

So I'm here, sitting in the living room listening to Jarvis Cocker's show on BBC Radio 6 (<3), the wind rattling the windows (bring it on Super Storm of the Decade About to Hit Britain), only a few minutes gone by in my allocated hour.

Can I write on LJ during my allocated hour? Yes I can. Can I write on Twitter or Facebook? No, I can't - those networks don't count.

I wish we had a cat. It would nestle against me when I was focused, then sprint away when I tried to pet it.

My mouth tastes faintly of chai tea. And a little bit of the cheese and onion Ruffle crisps I had for lunch with a salmon and cream cheese bagel, on a bench in Victoria Park.

I went to the gym first thing this morning - it's always empty on Sundays, which I love. I took a bath in the afternoon, with a candle for company (a scented one that one of the Sissies gave me for my birthday.) I listened to songs from my iPhone while I soaked - 100 randomly selected songs from my iTunes.

I have a brasilian friend in town who I met for drinks and a play at Soho Theatre last night. (A very good feminist play that was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe - highly recommend you see it you have a chance: Bryony Kimmings: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model.) We were meant to go to Columbia Road's flower market today... I'm still waiting for their phone call.

Last Tuesday my boyfriend and I marked 15 years together. Fifteen years ago we went on a date in Montreal, to see Bride of Chucky. I gave him David Sedaris' latest book, which I bought at Gay's the Word (one of London's best bookshops). He gave me a collection of short stories written by bloggers, edited by Dennis Cooper.

He's now in his cupboard office, going through his bills. We just watched the final episode of The Killing III. I'd been under the impression that it was the last series ever, but the ending has left a door open and a return more than likely. This makes me happy even though the Scandinavia portrayed in the series is as bleak as fuck.

A few weeks ago I toyed with the idea of doing a fanfiction NaNoWriMo - a thriller based on One Direction. Here's my pitch: girls from all over the world adore the boys and want to meet them at all costs. But little do they know that... One Direction have a bloodlust for their fans! They enjoy hunting and killing them for sport. (There's some subplot about One Directioners disappearing and a cop who wears ugly knitted sweaters investigating these cases.) The opening scene is a One Direction bus pulling out of the stadium, with blacked windows - girls screaming their heads off around it and begging the boys to come out. Little do they know that inside its soundproof walls, Harry Styles is wielding a chainsaw and advancing on a terrified Directioner... and so on. My heroine in this fanfiction comes from Nottingham and survives a night in One Direction's hotel after her friend is killed. She turns into prey as the band hunt for her, even going so far to track down her family's home (they announce to the world that they are bringing their arena tour to - surprise surprise - Nottingham!)

I may have Moussaka for dinner tonight. I bought some at M&S during the week and put it in the freezer. Oh, I forgot to mention: we didn't have Pancake Saturday yesterday! I don't know if the boyfriend has been reading my journal but it suddenly became French Toast Saturday and I was in charge. (I make some mean french toasts I'll have you know.) I'm determined to have Pancake Saturday return next weekend.

Harsh beat, stress down my spine and fingers.

Sitting in the spare room, early Thursday morning in London, about to slip on some socks and head to work.

Bjork so hard, drilling a hole in my head.

09
Everytime I go to my local community garden, I buy a Lotto ticket at the WH Smith inside Stratford Shopping Centre. I have more chance of shagging David Beckham while Posh Spice looks on with a grin on her face but still I persist.

12
Our Garden Club leader is on holiday in the West Counties, so there was only weeding and watering to be done today. I learnt to "dead head" flowers and that people who use our garden during the week (it's open to the public) have no qualms about leaving behind their cigarette butts and energy drinks. Fuckers.

14
Rails have been set up across Mile End Road as you approach Grove Road. This is to stop drunk young ones from running into traffic when they stumble drunk/high out of Lovebox this weekend. Girls in hot pants, boys in black wife beaters. A lot of dodgy tattoos. Up on the double-decker bus I feel more than ever exiled from the land of youth.

21
Descale the shower head and get into lukewarm water. A cool breeze runs through the apartment. Plug my laptop, turn off the lights and watch trailers for upcoming films. Boyfriend returns home from his solitary studio.

30
iTunes on shuffle plays my brother's favourite song when he was a pre-teen, Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years". It's his birthday today.

49
These are not my lucky numbers.

Last weekend we had a friend from Canada visiting us - one of my boyfriend's oldest friends. He'd left behind his wife and three kids in Canada to spend a week with us (a surprise gift from his wife for his 40th birthday.) He'd never been to Europe before.

The weather was grim throughout his visit. On Saturday, I walked with him down Regent's Canal to Broadway Market and we perused the books in a new barge/bookshop that popped up in the area. The market itself was unusually empty - we had no trouble finding seats inside L'eau à la Bouche. [1]

Later, I spotted Michael Fassbender with a friend walking through the market. They were both wearing hoodies and battered jeans - very dressed down and non-descript. Then they walked past us again holding hot dogs.

We wandered down to Brick Lane and just near Rough Trade East I spotted Marianne Elliot with a friend. I turned to him and said "that's the director of the original War Horse! One of the best british stage directors!" He gave me a blank look that stopped any further conversation.

My boyfriend was sick throughout his visit, with a fever that soaked his clothes at night and a weakness that left him tired throughout the day.

I've run twice this week in Victoria Park, breaking a personal record by achieving over 5K in both runs. I love what my iTunes coughs up during these runs - one morning it was the Cocteau Twins and I swear the trees looked like they could speak.

Life is mostly work and home, work and home. Reading books in between, watching the occasional film, listening to a lot of music.

I heard the new David Bowie yesterday - twice - and I really like it. It's beautifully produced and reminiscent of different epochs in his career. I also like that Yoko Ono turned 80 and feels like she hasn't done enough. It's a weird inspiration for myself, especially as I see older people in my family falling apart due to illness and depression. And so I run more and more, chasing the endorphins that will keep me afloat...

[1] He found the experience cool but strange: in Canada (at least in suburban Ottawa), he says that this sort of market is attended mostly by the elderly. Sitting inside delis and drinking coffees is apparently not for the young in that part of Canada.

I'm alone in the flat, in my new office (the spare room.) I've just eaten a tuna sandwich and drank a cup of tea (while surfing Tumblr and YouTube for company). I have my headphones on and I'm listening to a mix that includes songs from Grimes, Zola Jesus and Hercules and Love Affair. I'm about to do some writing.

I woke up early today with my boyfriend's alarm clock. He needed to leave the house early to cross London and join his sister for a yoga class. He whispered to me just before he left that there were some pancakes and blueberries in a tuperware for me. I ate them for breakfast with butter, maple syrup and coffee.

Around 10am I left the flat for my local gym. It was blissfully empty (as it always is during mornings.) Afterwards, I bought some groceries at Sainsbury's and took a bus back because of the rain.

I've started a new writing routine: on Mondays, I have my breakfast at a nearby cafe and do one of Linda Barry's image exercises. Last Monday I pulled out of the envelope one of Henry Darger's images - a small girl leaning against a tomb-like stone in the middle of a field, surrounded by two ethereal, snake-like flying creatures. I wrote a short story based on that image which I plan on finishing up today.

Tomorrow morning, another local cafe, another randomly-selected image, another writing exercise. And so on for the rest of the year.

Later today I'll play Xenoblade Chronicles (because I intend to finish it in my lifetime) then cook a stir fry for dinner. There's a bottle of white wine chilling in the fridge and Derek Jarman's "The Tempest" lying by the DVD player.

Just before bed, I'll read a chapter of George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords. Only a month and a half until Game of Thrones' Season 3 starts.

I was on my way to the gym this morning when a young man stepped out of a house ahead of me, also on his morning commute (I assumed.) Tall, skinny and very soon with a lit cigarette in his hands. I felt a little sad for him, like I always do when I see young people smoking.

Old Ford Road runs past Victoria Park. He crossed the street and took the path by the pond. I assumed he was heading towards the canal or north of the park. Then he swerved out of the park, back onto my sidewalk. It reminded me of when I was a smoker and I liked having a cigarette while playing a favourite song. I wonder what that brief walk by the pond as he smoked his cigarette brought to his day.

I think I'm gonna have to give up NaNoWriMo: the good ol' RSI in both hands has returned. I need them hands. I need them for applying to jobs and recruitment agencies.

A few months ago I bought a ticket to see Hurts at the Brixton Academy. I was really looking forward to this gig and even penciled the date into my iCalendar. Except that I put down yesterday instead of Friday, the correct date. I found out my mistake yesterday morning.

In the afternoon, I took the No.8 bus downtown to meet loveinsuburbia for a coffee. The bus now detours around St Paul's Cathedral, giving you a privileged view of the Occupy London campsite. It looks realy well organised and put together, with information and university tents, posters with info on all pillars and small groups of people having conversations every few feet. It also has a lot of tourists snapping pictures and the feel of a prominent tourist attraction if it stays there longer than a year. I'm keen to drop by soon and visit.

This is the time of year when everyone in London starts looking pale and horrible, pulling their dark clothes out of the wardrobe. I'm still in denial that it's winter time: you can find me walking around London with my hands in my light summer jacket's pockets, shivering. During my wander with loveinsuburbia, we came across the #OLSX crowd again, this time marching down Tottenham Court Road; one of them was my upstairs neighbour, the one who sometimes stands outside Mile End Station handing out socialist flyers. She gave me a searing look because we were walking in the opposite direction.

Came back home and watched the frankly dreadful X Factor then an episode of The Wire season 4. During the night, I dreamt that Anne Wintour walked down a hallway - probably the most bizarre and pointless dream of my life.

I need to find a job soon, before this boredom and lack of money consumes me.

I rode the No.8 beside a sausage dog. I gave him my hand to sniff as I sat down; I wanted to pet him but his owner (young, bearded guy - is there any other sort in the EastEnd?!) didn't seem too keen to share the dog. It made me miss the ones living with my family in Brasil.

The bus went by the circus set up in Mile End Park. During the weekend, I saw families lining up to buy tickets and I was thoughtful of the chavy ones standing side by side with the muslim ones. It seemed like a good family activity to bring together all sorts of people from the community.

Today, though, there were protesters standing outside the circus with signs on animal cruelty. I thought all circuses now were like Cirque du Soleil!? They still use animals? Very sad...

Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that brings together a series of four 16mm works which exist somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction.

Continuing his exploration of curious and extraordinary environments, Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography - the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat - to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, creating hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies.

You arrive outside a gallery near Mile End, between the park's sports' field and Regent's Canal.  It's not yet 12 noon so you sit on nearby picnic table and wait.  You talk to shuffle81 and wink_martindale about the gorgeous weather. Three friends sitting nearby chat along the same lines and sip coffee. A girl chains her bike and stands by the gallery's door until it opens. 

It's dark inside and you can barely distinguish the girl who hands everyone high-tech headphones.  She shows where to adjust volume before another door is opened into a screening room.  A woman with a foreign accent speaks softly into your ears while the images on the screen move through an alien desert-like landscape.  It takes you a moment to realise that people are sitting on black leather bags on the floor.  You slowly inch forward and find one for yourself.  For the next forty five minutes you visit the post-apocalyptic societies of Eleven, Hiva (The Society Islands), Kansennashima and Somerset.

To me, this is true science fiction: it's our world viewed through an old camera but at the same time made strange and remote by the stories, facts and figures given by the narrator.  It's here and it's nowhere, it's ideas over action, it's completely devoid of clichés.  It's perfectly formed and delivered, from the gallery's setting to what's on screen.  True science fiction makes you look outside the window and shudder, makes you step out of your comfort zone, even if for a little while, and question the structures and lives around you.  It makes you look leave the screening room and see the outside through new eyes. 

Slow Action ends today.

A friend of mine is leaving London for New York; he got a well paid job in an arts centre over there. He asked wink_martindale and I if we'd like to buy his Wii and games. I asked how much he wanted for them? He understood that I wanted to buy everything and dropped on Wink's lap a box with the whole lot. We already had a borrowed Wii from my landlady so now we currently have an excess of video game consoles in the house. I'm starting to think I don't want any of them - it's just more distraction from the stuff I need to do (study horticulture, write Mills & Boons novels, become a millionaire).

We went for a walk this morning to find a café where we could sit, read the papers and write in our journals. We chose the Rich Mix because it's always empty, has nice big windows that give you a view of Bethnal Green road and nobody bothers you if your coffee mug is empty. I briefly left to buy today's Guardian from a corner shop and walked past Preston from The Ordinary Boys. He's tiny! He went into a new hipster café with three friends. The Rich Mix couldn't attract hipsters even if it tried, bless.

We then hit the local second-hand bookshops for Paul Auster's Timbuktu (for my bookclub) but couldn't find anything. Went to my gym, watched an episode of a new brasilian soap opera while eating toast with peanut butter and now I faff around online while Wink naps on the couch. He was meant to be making carrot cake for us. I might wake him up in a sec.