so lets not get into all the reasons why single people are supposed to hate valentine's day: all the sitting around in your two- headed snuggie and towel turban, weeping into your armpit because no- one wants to worshipfully fondle your special area and call you their very own gently palpating schnookiepicklepocalypse whilst dusting your face with eskimo kisses. so i am single: i manage that knowledge pretty damn well for 365 days a year (okay, 358... maybe 342 in a bad year)-  i see no reason to be brought to my knees for 24 hours because The Man says i should be. fuck the capitalist assertion of hegemonic coupledom. i have no time for that noise.

some notable valentine's days i have had, in no particular order:

1. woke up at three. ate a couple of hot cross buns. went back to bed, read some love poems. (not including this one: http://mysticchildz.blogspot.com/2007/12/great-advantage-of-being-alive.html. this is my valentine's love poem for this year). listened to radio 4. pottered about a bit, singing. didnt slob around in jimjams, but didnt do any 'im going to wear my bestest party frock and light myself a scented candle because im worth it and i deserve it' self- care- y stuff either. spoke to my mum. ate a pieminister pie- probably a heidi, but possibly a thai chook- and then watched annie hall. most of my happiest valentine's days have involved annie hall- its pretty much a ritual now. (last year i flirted with watching punch drunk love but in the end just plumped for annie hall instead. i am a creature of habit, fearful of change, which is possibly part of the reason i've spent the last six valentine's days watching annie hall and pottering rather than sitting in bella vista pushing an insalate tricolore around my plate in a haze of pheromones/ passive aggression/ insert as applicable).

2. so there was this one time when i started seeing someone but not really in about january. it got to february the 10th and i started thinking 'oh fuuuuck' because i knew it was too early to be expecting any valentinesery but i sort of wanted it but sort of didnt and i didnt know how much i liked this dude or how much we liked me but we had fun every now and again but we never went out in public he just came to my house and we made out like ghostbusters- gangbusters! i meant gangbusters! but making out like ghostbusters would be good, especially if it was spengler; LOVE YOU SPENGLER NOW AND ALWAYS!!!- and maybe valentine's day would take things to the next level but what if... jesus its all so ENERVATING.

i spoke to this dude on the 12th, and he said nothing about valentine's day,and i said nothing about valentine's day, it may as well have been june, so *there you had it*. in the end i just pretended it wasnt valentine's day and hung out at my bar job with all my other similarly single friends, watching desperate people trying to get into the pants of other desperate people. every half an hour or so i would go and check my mobile to see if he had texted me to say 'OH HAI I FORGOT ITS TOTALLY VALENTINE'S DAY HA HA HA I DONT LOVE YOU BUT I THINK YOUR BREASTS ARE A CANONICAL WORK OF ART BYE XXXX' but of course he didnt, and it is a mark of how utterly idiotic we are rendered by our hormones that i even kept looking. in the end i drank like, half a bottle of sambuca after work with my gay manager and we sat and looked at a small selection of his truly epic collection of porn, watched the video for 'dirty' by christina aguilera about nine times and talked at great length about fisting. it was way more fun than valentine's day with the dude would have been, and, feasibly, more fun than the entire relationship that the dude and i went on to have, although please dont tell him i said that. 

3. my first ever valentines as an attached person! i was nearly 22. i was a late starter. until then i had never even received a valentines card that wasnt from my step- dad (who made awesome valentine's cards, obviously, and in the early days of his relationship with my mother made an 11 x 7 foot fabric and wood valentine's card envelope costume, with my mother's name and address on it in gold sellotape, and turned up on our doorstep at 2am wearing it. OH HEY STEP- FATHER THANKS FOR RUINING ME FOR ALL PEOPLE WITH YOUR ASTONISHING MASTERY OF ROMANTIC ACTS). so i was very hyped up for valentine's day- my boyfriend at the time was my actual boyfriend, not a teeange four- weeks- three- fingerbangs- and- an- awkward- ending facsimile, he had met my parents, we were still at the grotesque public displays of affection stage... i was expecting great things of my first valentine's day. enormous, world- shaking- 'now voyager' style scenes of romantic abandon. 

my first boyfriend was a category A valentine's denier. and yes, i knew that valentine's day was a hallmark holiday, a capitalist assertion of hegemonic coupledom, i knew that. but seriously! for real, for once! could i not just have my due? no, apparently i could not. he wasnt doing it. he was a man of beliefs and principles! 

FUUUUUUCK THAT. he wasnt gettting away with that shit lightly. so i invited him round to my house. we ate some food, and watched some tv, and then i gave him his valentine's gift: a hand- drawn, hand- written, hand- bound book. the story of our love, our love as it had been to that point, and our love yet to come. you could fit it in the palm of your hand, but it was probably the greatest, most heart- wrenchingly beautiful thing i have ever written, illustrated with multicoloured stick drawings of us running around in parks, of him stealing flowers for me, and holding my hair back when i threw up after one too many tequilas. i am a terrible artist but i can write like a bandit and that shit *worked*. i gave it to him, and then left the room, ostensibly to have a wee. when i returned, he was sitting on my bed, crying. i mean, *really* crying. he apologised snottily for not doing valentine's day, and i forgave him, and every valentine's day we had after that was an absolute dream. from this we can glean one valuable fact: i am, in my pomp, the world's most manipulative bitch, and if you decide to have a relationship with me you may need to watch yourself for banjaxings. 

4. the year before that i was single, as was my best friend at the time. we decided we were going to make valentine's day cards for all our friends- all of whom were single- and then deliver them in the dead of night. so we did. we sat and listened to nina simone and joni mitchell, drew massive love- hearts on glitter bestrewn sugar paper, pencilled injokes, and drank a six pack of cheap beer each. the friend in question and i had bonded over this dude who split up with her and then started seeing me the same night, and then after splitting up with me moved onto another friend that same night, the fucker (they stayed together for years though so it was fine), and the night of the valentine's cards was the first time i really thought 'oh man, i love this chick. she is the BEST'. 

 we drunkenly tottered around to our friend's houses, pushing the cards through letterboxes and doing that brilliant conspiratorial 'shhh... SHHHHH!' thing you do when you're drunk and trying to be secretive. the next morning she and i met up in the bar after lectures for a pint. slightly hungover, and slightly underslept, we sat and drank our pints, enjoying that early- afternoon- hair- of- the- dog revivifying feeling. after ten minutes of comfortable silence i took a sip of my beer and said 'oh my god, i love beer. charlie- next year, lets send beer a valentine's card'. she choked on her fag, and laughed, and high -fived me. but by god, i meant it.

this year i am planning a valentine's day karaoke outing. sixteen years ago i sent beer a valentine's card; we had a long, and sometimes profitable, but generally unfulfilling relationship. i loved beer, but in the final analysis beer just Wasn't That Into Me. this year its all about karaoke. im gonna send karaoke a valentine's card. i am going to a karaoke venue, where i will eat pizza, and drink diet pop, and bellow 'all by myself' at the top of my lungs, in a manner that conveys the fact that i dont mean a single word of it. 

so i was pottering about in my socks today, listening to radio 4, as one does. the programme was about the DWP's new rules aimed at ushering single parents back into work after long periods on benefits. i was only half listening, maybe only quarter- listening (pottering is SRS BZNZ, f'rizzle f'real) but then i heard something about some of these single parents being left in debt due to a gap between their income support claim being closed and being migrated onto jobseeker's, and i thought 'oh. i've had my last income support payment, and my claim is closed, and i haven't heard anything about when i'm due to sign on. they should have told me that by now, surely?' and then it occurred to me that JSA is paid in arrears, and that there would therefore be a gap, and i panicked.

i received the phonecall telling me that i'd failed my ATOS interview and wouldn't be transferred onto Employment Support allowance some time before Christmas (we can talk about how under the new and bafflingly rigorous measures of eligibility, despite some quite substantial periods of struggling to look after myself in the most basic of ways, i would never have been granted sickness benefits at all at some other time when I'm less likely to punch things at random with my tiny wrinkled monkey- like fists in response to the blatant fuckery of it all). i remember now being told it was up to me to open a claim for JSA, but in the meantime I'd forgotten that. i guess i was too busy thinking about Christmas and being all 'I'll think about that tomorrow at Tara' about the whole thing. but also, i was being 'migrated' from one benefit to another- I think in my head, the 'being migrated' bit translated into 'we'll do this all for you, that's the way it works'. don't ask me why, i dont know; maybe im just your common or garden variety of numbnut. and in the interim time, i've been a bit low, and been having to look after myself on a day- to- day basis and all that so as not to spiral into the slough of despond, limbs flailing. 

so anyway. there was some mild freaking out. i rung the DWP, and they confirmed i needed to open a claim, which i did online, toute suite. then i thought a bit about the fact that i was going to have to survive on no money for at least three weeks until my first JSA payment, and i freaked out a bit more. having filled in the JSA form that asked me to confirm that i'd been looking for work for the period for which i was claiming ( i have), i decided i needed to do some more very intensive job- seeking. so i went to some job sites, and there were apparently no jobs i was qualified for, and a huge number of jobs that i was unwilling to consider applying for because the effect they'd have on my mental health (i cannot work nights and i cannot do anything involving sales- there's a shitload of sales jobs out there, but i couldnt sell ice in the seventh circle of hades, and i suspect very strongly that trying to do so might break me in some fundamental way). so then i did some more freakling out, this time involving shuddering and something approaching if not actually qualifying for the full dictionary description of a panic attack.

im gonna be okay. ive stopped some direct debits in order to ensure that i'll be able to stock the cupboard with dried pulses and rice, and i'll have help from someone soon- please, the universe- when it comes to looking at job ads and being able to tease out some sort of evidence that i am in any way qualified to apply for the job in question, rather than going 'i dont have that experience, or that skillset, so therefore they'll stick my CV on the office notice board covered in red- pen capital letter comments alluding to what a magnificently deluded loser i am' and weeping into my sleeve on a daily basis. when i applied for my last casual, temporary job at the end of last summer (which turned out *marvellously* for reasons we dont need to go into here, LOL), there was no jeopardy- i was just wanting to get back into the workplace, doing permitted hours at an unchallenging job, with the security of my benefits if it turned out badly for some reason. generally that was the way it worked out, and all said and done it was a good experience. but i dont feel like its going to be of any use when it comes to finding something i can do for a living in the long term which wont batter me in the heid. im really scared, and i dont know if im going to get anything like the help i need to be unscared about it. im having to trust that i will, but on what basis? 

worst of all, this whole experience is making me question whether i am actually well enough to return to work. if i could forget something as basic as being told i needed to open my own JSA claim in order to prevent myself having NOTHING TO LIVE ON for upwards of a fortnight, what else might i forget? might i forget to, you know, put on any clothes below the waist before leaving the house one morning? 

i want to go back to work. i want to pay income tax, to make some attempt to reimburse the welfare state for the enormous privilege of having been given the time and space to mend myself over the last six years. but we're in a recession, and people who haven't been on a six- year sabbatical are struggling to find work. this sounds whinge- y, maybe, but i am scared shitless. im scared that the process of trying to find a job is going to leave me unable to do one effectively. i feel like i should have had more help with this stuff. i've had no help. maybe its massively entitled of me to have expected it, but still- i've had no help. i feel like, without some help, and soon, this process is going to endanger my recovery. and that's frightening.

wrote a thing for the guardian about body image. it was originally going to be based on this, but then i realised i couldnt get this down to 300 words without losing all my favourite jokes, so i wrote something else entirely for the guardian. but i like this, so here you go: have it). 

i am, and always have been, a very insecure person. i could talk at length about how i believe that came about, but i don’t think i’d have anything very much original to say- suffice to say it’s a combination of the usual sad and toxic and soul- rotting messages from the usual sources. millions of people, mostly women, share these experiences- the experience of hating yourself when you’re thin because you think you’re fat, and have been repeatedly misinformed from all directions that being fat is inherently bad; being fat, and hating yourself because of it, because you’ve been repeatedly misinformed from all directions that being fat is inherently bad; of thinking you’re ugly, when all you are is perfectly average- looking; of thinking that whether you’re ugly or beautiful or perfectly average- looking is a matter of greater consequence than whether you are a good person, or a kind person, or are good at putting people at their ease in socially demanding situations, or know kung- fu/ play the harmonica/ speak four languages, three of them fluently, etc. *; of seeking validation in love and sex and attention from whichever gender(s) you prefer, rather than from the above or similar achievements; of a combination of all of these factors leading to periods of dull, deadening depression. tra- la! ain’t life grand. all part of life’s rich patisserie. no- one ever promised any of us a rose garden.  

 i’m 36 now. i’ve spent too long feeling insecure and (re-)enacting all this bullshit. i’m trying to change. it’s not easy, but i’m doing it, because being insecure is just immensely tedious. it’s prevented me having a satisfying career, it’s got in the way of relationships, it’s just been an almighty pain in the arse, and in the end i metaphorically ran out of soothing balm for my benighted buttocks and decided to do something different. i want to live and i want to like myself and i’m doing what i need to do in order to change. here’s what that is, for me (YMMV):

1. lots of therapy, lots of self- help, some cheesy paperbacks, a fair amount of time spent swallowing perfectly common- or- garden anti- depressants. lots of what a more cynical, more insecure version of me used to call embracing the growthfulness.

2. stopping drinking. this is how a short sketch of how drinking worked for me, mostly: yay, a mojito! that will give me self- confidence> yay, i am feeling more self- confident! witty, sophisticated, enchanting! i will have another mojito!> yay, i am feeling like the empress of all known and explored universes! i will have another three mojitos!> oh, i feel sick> oh, i’ve been sick on my shoes> oh, here’s a man who doesn’t mind sleeping with drunk girls in sicky shoes. (next morning)… oh dear. i want to die a little bit. hence… no more mojitos for you, little lady! not ever!

3. eating more than one meal a day and more than one portion of fruit or vegetable per three days. not eating so much sugar that i want to be sick but can’t. not, however, rabidly body- swerving anything that is more than 3% white flour or 3% fat or generally 3% tasty. trying to learn how to eat intuitively. (this is all longhand for ‘treating long- standing shape- shifting eating disorder’, by the way).

4. having substantially fewer people in my life who are similarly riven with self- loathing but unprepared to do anything about it. if you’re doing something about it, you’re my tribe, i love you, high- five, lets have a roller- blading party. if you’re not, i still love you, but… no). conversely, having more people in my life who say the same encouraging things to me that i want to be able to say to myself. 

5. dancing. always dancing. dancing in my bedroom, dancing on my own in clubs, learning to do new dances, dancing with strangers, being forced to interact with strangers once the dance is over, having strangers in my personal space, having dancers very obviously not enjoy the experience of dancing with me because i wasn’t very good yet, and learning to laugh about it rather than give up dancing because FUCK THAT. 

6. buddhism/ meditation. this is a big one. too big to talk about in detail. but it’s a big one.

7. NAKED FUCKING PING- PONG. 

8. noticing, every now and again, that as i repeat the above actions over and over again i become more and more indistinguishable from a fucking warrior.

that is my list of things i have done and am doing to get more Uninsecure. they are working. i am happier now than i’ve ever been. i am still more of a shivering puppy than i would like to be, but i’m getting there. it is a process, and i am engaged in it wholeheartedly. as a result i fully anticipate that in roughly forty years time i will be one of those old women wearing an enormous hat and ridiculous shiny shoes and loads of eye makeup who you look at and think ‘oh wow. you don’t give a fuck, do you?’ 

here is what never worked for me: telling myself to get over it. having other people tell me to get over it. not having compassion for myself or listening to people who had no compassion for me. those things never worked, and will never work, and i will not engage in them again. that is a promise i am making to myself, right here, right now. 

*(i score a hefty ‘no’ on the later four, and seriously want to rectify the harmonica thing because when was the last time you saw a woman playing the harmonica? i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a woman playing the harmonica! that is some  massive bullshit! fuck you, The Patriachy!)

cheering me all the way the fuck up this weekend:

not the video- the video is seventeen different kinds of laughable hipster ricockulousness. but right now the song has a very special place in my palsied heart. it makes me imagine a version of myself in a nightclub, ten years younger, 'oh- HEEEEYYY- BITCHES- someone- set- the- controls- for- planet- ROCK!' level drizunk on tizequila and Rized Bizull, wearing a very special blouse, chairdancing with my best girl homechickens. as i am in actuality Well Old And Shit, i will just chairdance on my own in my living room, in my jim- jams with the glittery buttons and cartoon owls on, drizunk on way too much of the 2litres of pizepsi mizax my housemate gave me after her xmas party.

i love hennessey youngman. i love what he has to say about damien hurst, i love what he has to say about louise bourgeois, i love what he has to say about joseph beuys and jay- z. but i especially superduperbonerlove what he has to say about post- structuralism. i will have to stop here before i start doing that really irritating thing that people do on youtube where they just quote all the best lines from the video before you even watch it. 

http://www.blinkbox.com/Free/Movie/14684/Paris-Is-Burning

look, everyfucker! paris is burning! on the internet! for free! 

so i first heard this song on benway's AMAZING now thats what i call hungover spotify playlist and it is still to my knowledge the only yo la tengo song ive ever heard. i kind of love it so much i dont want to listen to anything else theyve ever done in case i hate it and it ruins 'our way to fall' for me. am i wrong? should i bother listening to other yo la tengo stuff? I NEED ANSWERS PEOPLE.

www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons">

this painting. more specifically, thinking about what i am going to write about this painting in relation to the gendering of art production and interpretation. im not quite sure what i WILL write but im almost sure that at some point in the essay- writing process i will have to check whether i have actually used the words 'CONTESTING PATRIACHAL OPPRESSION' in every paragraph, in massive purple 20 point letters. i am loving my gender and art module so much, i feel a bit like my niece clementine feels towards her animatronic penguin, the one that wears sunglasses and sings 'ice ice baby' when you squeeze its wing. if my gender and art module was an animatronic penguin i would be hugging it to my bosom, stumbling and making gutteral noises because i didnt have the words to express my love for it, just like clementine. <3 U, feminism! <3 U so damn much! 

when its 2am in the morning and the question i ask myself is 'should i go to bed immediately, OR listen to 8bit remixes on youtube for another hour?', the sensible answer is always the former. the right answer is always the latter. 

so i just deactivated facebook for a little while. i do this every now and again, for the usual reasons- mainly because it's an evil timesucking device put solely on this earth to divest us of the ability to give ourselves fully to more life-enhancing endeavours, like saving puppies, or writing magnus opi, or washing our bottoms. occasionally, however, i deactivate facebook explicitly because it is good for my mental health to do so. this is one of those times. its january, a month i have historically found difficult for all the usual SAD sort of reasons, and in january it is better for me to make an overt effort to connect with people via old- skool methods than it is to foster the illusion that 'likes' on a funny status update equal actual human contact. in addition, a funny little not- quite- relationship- dont- know- what- youd- call- it thing took place at the end of last year, and today it seems like the easiest way to negotiate all of the blocking/ unfriending/ definitely needing not to profile- stalk dilemmas is just to take facebook out of the equation as a platform until my force- field is back up and running at 100% again. maybe not the grown- ass woman thing to do, but i've decided to fuck my pride and go for the nuclear option.

 i've often thought that social networking is a double- edged sword for people with mental health issues. it can very definitely have its uses, i'm sure, but there are times when it seems accidentally designed to completely fuck with the head. this time last year i was in a proper medication- worthy slump, and found my twitter timeline completely enervating; being someone who likes to pretend that they are in some way politically engaged, it seemed half my followees were posting endless screeds about how roundly benefits claimants were going to be butt- fucked in the spending review. being a benefit claimant for whom this was not just a subject for (entirely sincere and well- meaning) outrage, but of direct relevance to my actual everyday life and the living of it, i found that pretty cripplingly anxiety- producing. at the same time, only five percent of the rest of my followees were posting silly and joyful pictures of tapirs dancing in waterfalls or slowed- down doomcore versions of nyan cat, and the imbalance did not work to my favour. i was then in short succession followed and unfollowed by someone i used, way back in the day, to consider an almost friend, and my brain capsized a little bit.

 i started an account which only followed people who posted cheery apolitical stuff, and logged on to that instead for a week or so, excising all the stuff that was fucking with my equilibirium. it worked remarkably well. i don't really like the idea that on occasions it is better for those of us with sometimes delicate emotional constitutions to avoid what is happening in the real world- i would prefer to be able to engage with what is happening, to know what's going on, to be able, as a silly shouty ginger man once exhorted, to convert anger into energy. its important at least to care.

but just as i've had to admit that i'm not really built for the kind of energetic investment required by direct political activism, i've also had to get to grips with the fact that there are times when i can't even engage from my armchair without feeling some sort of psychic pinch. and that's okay. it is what it is. most of the time it isnt, and i can read about the state of the world without feeling completely disarmed- but just because there are times when i can't do that, that doesn't mean i'm a lesser sort of person. it certainly doesn't mean i don't care; actually, quite the opposite.

 facebook and twitter do serve a purpose, but in my experience they do need to be used with caution if you are (and i use this term advisedly and in a very reclaim- y 'i can because i am one but if you're not you might want to think twice about it' sort of way) a Mental Elf. there are things that need to be learnt, inwardly digested and remembered about social networking if you are living with mental health issues, and while they are really obvious, and probably of relevance to people who aren't roaring mentalists (again with the reclaiming), its especially important for me to remember them when i am feeling discombob. these are they:

1. i don't do moderation very well. i understand it as a concept; as a practical lifeskill, it is beyond my ken. its news to no- one at this stage in proceedings that facebook is TOTAL CRACKPIE with regards to its addictive tendencies. when im feeling addict- y around facebook, usually around about the seventh hour of uninterrupted connection, it's important to ask myself: what is it you're after here? human connection? affirmation? yet another passing comment from someone you barely know in real life about how witty your facebook statuses are, which somehow never converts into an actual conversation about either of your actual lives? it's fine if any of these things are what i'm after, but when it comes to human connection and affirmation, facebook can work agin rather than for. not just because...

2. it is impossible to judge how happy someone is purely on the basis of their facebook updates. almost everybody presents a version of themselves on facebook that is the one they would wish others to see (with the exception of some of my very admirable fb cohort, who are able to use it to say 'i am not feeling great and, without bitching or moaning or being drama- queen-y and self- piteous about it, would like to ask you guys for help'- that shit is awesome and i aspire to it). it is possible that people who dont know me all that well read my status updates and think, 'alice is always so cheerful and funny. i bet she never spends upwards of three hours looking at the ceiling and wondering why life is such an endless sham. i wish my life was more like hers', before posting another album's worth of photos of themselves looking carefree and tousled at an underground rollerskating jam and blowjay party. its not impossible, anyway.

3. the act of being unfriended/followed is meaningless. it doesn't mean the person who unfriended/ followed you thinks you're a loser and that everything you have to say is complete bottom- oil, and evn if they do, well, fuck them. they're wrong, and so is your head when it tells you that they're right. i have only once unfriended someone because i found what they posted totally objectionable and judge- worthy, and i've unfriended a lot of people. mostly its because we just didn't have that much in common. it doesnt have to be anything more reject- y than that, and usually isn't.

thats pretty much it. okay, see you all soon! maybe on facebook, in as short a time as, oh, three days or so!!!?lolweep!

every time i watch a dvd commentary i think, hmm, i really must post about dvd commentaries on my blog one day. then i wake up the next morning and i forget. TODAY, TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT.

has anyone here ever seen/ listened to a dvd commentary that was any cop whatsoever? whilst watching the dvd commentary for 'pine barrens', the sopranos episode directed by steve buscemi i was reminded that basically, all dvd commentaries are essentially the same. they are a person involved in the production at some level saying variations on the same basic theme:

1. ' it was really great to work with this cast and/ or crew; they're all really extraordinarily talented and it was just a huge privilege to see them at their craft'

2. 'that thing that the characters just did whilst i was talking? i'm just going to describe to you what that thing was that they did, even though you know, because i'm basically trying to think of something to say that isn't about how much i enjoyed working with them and watching them at their craft'

last night i invented a new drinking game: drink a shot of sambucca every time steve buscemi says 'it was really great to see so- and- so; we worked together on trees lounge'. i'm not quite sure why they even bother to pay an actor or producer or director to come in and do these things because they could just as well ask the person who made the coleslaw on the catering van and their experience and insight would usually be pretty much the same. i think the only really interesting thing i've ever heard anyone say on a dvd commentary was when drew barrymore said about the marl hoodies everyone wears to the party scene in donnie darko and i was like, i was right! it was an ET reference! but that leads me to believe that the observation in question must have been hugely banal and unoriginal on my part, because basically noone ever says anything on a dvd commentary that isn't hugely banal or unoriginal. paddy considine gets one point for singing 5, 6, 7, 8 by steps at the end of either a room for romeo brass or dead mans shoes, but if that's the most interesting thing anyones ever done on a dvd commentary ive ever heard you can see just how low the bar has been set.

how about you? do you have any experiences of the dvd commentary that would directly contradict my thesis here? my suspicion: you don't. it's totally redundant as a form.

note to self: you have done very well not to mention the fabulous awfulness of joel schumacher's director's commentary on st elmos fire, which is similtaneously the absolute distillation of the problems you outline above and somehow manages to spectacularly transcend the limitations thereof; mainly because joel schumacher is transparently (and very entertainingly) convinced that st elmos fire is A Work Of Art, and not A Really Terrible Film Of Which Many People Are Nonetheless Unaccountably Fond Despite Themselves And Their Better Instincts.

...Or 'do not go gentle into that good night', as I am calling it, due to it being inspired by a conversation with a Welsh poetry fan about OH MY GOD HOW AWESOME IS CHEESE YES IT IS AWESOME.

 This will be a fuller running commentary than that i am giving on my Facebook page. It's pretty self- explanatory: I will eat cheese before bedtime, and then give a truncated summary of the dreams which ensue. Yeah, I've pretty much stolen the concept from Vice, but fuck them, because [insert all of the very many reasons to fuck Vice magazine here.] *

anyway: DAY 1.

Cheese intake: one halloumi wrap, 20.30

                       half a tub of cottage cheese, 23.30

Bedtime: 00.15

Physical/ emotional state prior to sleep: pretty bilious to be perfectly honest

Content of dream: some stuff about going to a festival and maybe taking some sort of new hallucinogenic drug but that section of the dream was hazy. Immediately before awaking I had a dream where a friend and I were being chased round an art college by an angry man with irritable bowels who wanted to hurt us. By pooing at us. It was like being chased by a very cross, nay borderline homicidal verson of Le Petomaine.

Atmosphere of dream: oppressive, fearful, disturbing.

Emotional state on waking: Bewildered. Not all that excited about this experiment Going Forward.

I am taking suggestions for which cheese I should try next; tonight's suggestion is GORGONZOLA. Gorgonfuckinzola! From which it can be deduced that I maybe have friends who don't like me all that much.

*(I still haven't written the blog post about the time I was walking down Stokes Croft wearing paint- splattered jeans, a t- shirt and my manga sailor jacket, and carrying a 1950s breadbin, and some hipster chick with a very swishy camera asked to take my photo for a 'project about the local community'. Obviously I submitted, because she seemed polite enough, but then half an hour later it occurred to me that were Vice to be doing a shoot for Dos/ Don'ts in Bristol then obviously they would do it outside the Canteen, and my heart sank, because where my core self- esteem should be you will find instead a vacuum. thereafter I checked Dos/ Don'ts for like a month; one time I thought I saw a photo of someone that showed the Canteen bike- racks, and I wanted to cry because obviously they were going to be mean about me in some way in the future and I couldn't bear it. It never happened, although I still check the Vice website every now and again because I am a masochist and have marshmallow for brains. No need to write the blogpost now, and frankly, that's probably for the best.)

i went to a party tonight. i wasn't really in the mood for dizzy socialising; PMT has left me feeling bulgy and peevish, as is its wont. but at the same time, i knew that this particular party would serve a purpose, and it did. within ten minutes of walking in i had thrown my jacket on a chair, left my diet coke on the presents table, and taken to the dancefloor. there i threw various shapes to old techno tunes, surrounded by a dozen or so middle- aged ravers, the vast majority of whom used to throw similar shapes to similar tunes 15 years or so ago. you could tell that we dozen were ageing ravers, because of the amount of self- deprecating choppy hand movements, but also the width of the smiles, beaming grins of nostalgia. we laughed about wishing we had glowsticks, about how one particular record made us all wish we were on a beach, dancing in our bikinis, waving our fists at the stars.

the amusing thing was that most of us were obviously a little bit surprised to be dancing to old techno tracks, fuelled by nothing stronger than pop or red bull (strictly for the headstrong). i haven't always done so since i reduced my drink and drug intake to precisely nil, but i go out raving quite a lot nowadays- maybe once a month, which i can tell you is more than my knees would have me do, because i'm 36 and used to go out raving substantially more than once a month, often on unsprung floors, and my knees HATE me for it. but fuck 'em. besides being single and having very little better to do on a saturday night, if i don't dance fairly regularly i go a bit mental. but i know that, amongst my social circle of people whose drink and drug intake is precisely nil, for one reason or another i'm a bit of a rarity.

so i'm pretty used to dancing to 15 year old techno tunes in a state of clear and mindful non- intoxicated awareness. but like i say, i'm not sure everybody on that dancefloor was similarly used to it. and it never stops amazing me when i watch people whose intake of drink and drugs has been reduced to precisely nil by serious (often life- or- death) necessity realise that you don't have to be twatted to dance to techno, or drum and bass, or 'come on eileen' for that matter. i love watching their hips loosen, and their arms float into the air, and their feet stomp harder and harder. it's a really, really beautiful thing. i've seen a room full of clean and sober people pogo- ing to 'lust for life' by iggy pop, high- fiving each other when the ig sings 'no more beating my brain/ with liquor and drugs', faces stupid with glee; one of my most treasured memories, a moment of clearest joy.

and the reason i needed to see that is... oh, you know, amy winehouse. yeah, eveyone's sad about amy winehouse (except those who seem to be taking the greatest of pleasure in not being sad about amy winehouse, and jesus, fuck *those* arseholes). i was thinking earlier today about glastonbury 2008, standing in the pyramid stage field, waiting for amy to come on. wondering if she'd be okay, cogent and mobile and in passable voice; sort of knowing she probably wasn't going to be, but hoping that somehow something extraordinary might have happened. when she did arrive, her ink and pencil limbs sticking out of a tiny, shiny blue dress, for the first few songs it looked as if she might be okay. she was upright, shimmying a little bit, and her voice held out. she seemed present, and it was such a surprise, so against the odds, that i cried.

it didn't last. by song four her phrasing got gappier, and her knees knockier, and she started brushing the back of her hand against her face distractedly. the audience had seemed to have her back for while, but as she missed notes and her between- song repartee got more rackety it became obvious that for some of them, the show was just getting started. they hadn't been enjoying watching her hold on nearly as much as they were going to enjoy watching her drift away. five songs in i left, because it was painful. it felt too inevitable.

and its the perceived inevitability that breaks my heart today, and why i needed to go out and see people dancing clean and sober, clean and sober people dancing. i needed to be reminded that, despite what the (regularly idiotic) popular consensus on the internet might say, what happened to amy winehouse wasn't a fait accompli. in the same way that you can never truly know what's happening in another person's relationship, you can never really know what's happening in someone else's addiction; none of us can know why she was unable to save her own life, except that she was horribly ill, and way past the point where any sort of choice about her actions was even vaguely feasible. it was inevitable for amy, for reasons we can't know- but it's not inevitable for every single person who uses drink and drugs the way she did. its not the only ending to a narrative like hers.

it would be absurd of me to compare my drinking and drug- taking to amy winehouse's (mainly because, oh god, *crack*: i thank the stars). but its not so absurd for me to compare the drinking or drug- taking of some of my friends and acquaintances to amy winehouse's drinking or drug- taking. details may be different, contexts may be different, but when it comes down to it, it's not absurd at all. and they're not dead. they're not dead. some of them are dancing.

Inconsequentiality, repetition, deja vu. No plot, no resolution, characters exist to no end, for no reason other than to exist. Here's the Pinky Ponk! What's he doing? Nothing. The Pinky Ponk never *does* anything. 'The Pinky Ponk goes up one side of the tree... and then he comes down another. Silly Pinky Ponk!'. No reason to go up the tree, no alternative but to come down again.

'What fun!'. Yes, what fun? Where?

 The Tomblyboos brush their teeth. This happened last week, and it will happen again in three weeks' time. Three weeks ago it was an action that took place in isolation and unrelated to anything else. This week it may appear to have relevance to something unexplained, but eventually it will not. It will be an act in and of itself. The Tomblyboos explicitly do not brush their teeth in order to have cleaner teeth; the Tomblyboos clean their teeth because if they weren't cleaning their teeth they would just have to do something else; perhaps swapping their trousers because they have put on the wrong ones, for example. But if the Tomblyboos wore the wrong trousers, and Derek Jacobi did not tell us they were wearing the wrong trousers, how would we know the wrong trousers were being worn? For in the end it doesn't matter which trousers the Tomblyboos have on- they are interchangeable, differentiated solely by the clothes they wear. They are a deindividuated mass, a mindmelded colony; there is no such thing as 'a Tomblyboo', just as there is no such thing as 'a Pontypine'- there is only le corps de Tomblyboo, Pontypine plural, Wattinger collectivised. The Wattingers, existing solely to wave silently across a fence at the Pontypines, awaiting acknowledgment, needing nothing else: once the Wattingers are acknowledged qua Wattinger, they disappear, entirely fullfilled.

The night garden ia roaring vortex of meaning, a locus of anomie.

Here is Upsy- daisy! Now Upsy- daisy is here, something will happen. Nothing happens. Here is Iggle Piggle! Iggle Piggle, iggle onk. Now Iggle Piggle is here, he will do something, and thereupon an arching narrative will be embarked. Iggle Piggle does nothing. We embark upon no arching narrative. (We thought we might; we hoped we might. We have yet to learn not to hope).

Makka Pakka! Surely, now Makka Pakka is here, after all this waiting- and we are so excited, so relieved to see him, and have said so- to ourselves, to each other, and also to the screen, to *him*, have exclaimed, 'it's Makka Pakka, look! Look who it is! It's Makka Pakka!' He's here! He has arrived! Makka Pakka has arrived, and now Makka Pakka is here, with his scooter- surely, something will happen? Something of weight, something lasting, something of duration and heft, something with the power to change things? He has a scooter! Surely that means something? Surely? Some of it must mean something? Anything?

Makka Pakka does nothing. He has a scooter. He  does nothing with it. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. Nothing anyone does relates to anything anyone else does. None of it means anything. None of it.

Who is still awake? Upsy- daisy sleeps. The Pontypines sleep. The Pinky Ponk sleeps. Soon we all will sleep. We are all in the Night Garden. If we are not sleeping, it is because we are doing something else. We have noone to ask what we should be doing. We have Derek Jacobi, but all he ever says is 'what a pip!'. And it is a pip. What a pip it is.

songs:

Jay-Z – Empire State Of Mind [Jay-Z + Alicia Keys] - Explicit Album Version

obviously. in the immediate run- up to my holiday in new york i could only listen to about thirty seconds of this song before my throat swelled up and i started weeping with excitement, which became awkward as it was on the radio about seven times day. on the first morning after i arrived i was walking- pacing, bouncing, almost jogging- down 6th avenue and a car drove past, alicia keys bellowing 'THESE STREETS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BRAND NEW'. my eyes pricked and i laughed. i looked up and there was the empire state building. it was PERFECT.

Prince – Mountains

back in june i bought 'parade' for what must be the fourth time in the last twenty years. every time i rediscover this album i fall hopelessly in smit with a different track, even though by rights i should know them all inside out by now.

Gil Scott-Heron – New York Is Killing Me

i still feel bad about buying all that tango back in 1993.

Fletcher Henderson – Take Me Away From The River (03-10-32)

you have to imagine this played on an old 78 in the back room of a beautiful victorian pub in north london, really loud, really woozy and distorted, being danced to by freshfaced young men in plus fours and women with enormously complex hair. i had to go and ask the dj who it was, just like i used to back in the days of my youth. this is the first time i have ever trainspotted a song that is older than my mother and i think the dj enjoyed my enthusiasm enormously, because he said a nice thing about my blouse.

Caribou – Sun

this was on my 'songs to play on friday' playlist. you know that playlist. you loved the shit out of that playlist. its still a really good song to listen to on fridays. if new years eve was on a wednesday this song probably wouldnt be on this list.

Fela Ransome Kuti – Whore You? - Original 45 Version

i promised the man in rebel rebel records on bleecker street that i would come back and buy the nigerian afrobeat special album this is taken from, which he recommended very highly. i believed him- i did not get the impression he was telling me it was a good album just so i would fork out $15. his eyes were smiling and he just seemed like a man of integrity. i lied to the man in rebel rebel records. i didnt go back and buy the nigerian afrobeat special album. it was really hot, and my feet were pummelled to mince from pounding pavements, and i needed to get to the upper west side as a matter of urgency. i hope he can find it in his heart to forgive me.

Broken Bells – Mongrel Heart

ive been cleaning to this song a lot recently. during the vaguely mariachi middle bit i like to sway from side to side on tiptoes, waving my swiffer in woozy circles. cleaning is stupid and boring and you have to liven it up somehow.

Sly & The Family Stone – Sing A Simple Song

yeah. pretty 3 minutes worth of selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor in musical form if you ask me.

Janelle Monáe – Tightrope - Feat. Big Boi

BEST. SONG. OF THE YEAR.DONT ARGUE. I WILL BEAT YOU.

TLC – Waterfalls

me and my best mate nina went to williamsburg to hang out with the hipsters and the deejay played this. there was an almost unanimous loss of everybody's shit, from north to south of the dancefloor area and encompassing all points inbetween. it was extremely funny. i was kind of expecting williamsburg to be way more painfully to- the- very-minute- and- no- later than it was; for serious they played 'build me up buttercup' about ten minutes later and the response was exactly the same.

Blackstreet – No Diggity

just because it got mugged by that shitspoon corden and its such a ridiculously great tune.

Bangles – Hazy Shade Of Winter

on nina's hen night i was having a cigarette and struck up conversation with this total dreamboat who refused to believe that this was one of the greatest cover versions of all time. okay, so id had two and half red bulls by this point and was wearing a fancy beaded fascinator so i may have done a better job of convincing myself of this fact than reality deserves, but whatever. he was cute, we had a giggle, he promised to spotify it, i felt a bit more sparkling than i have done for some while. it was, all said, a very good night.

John Grant – Sigourney Weaver

i do feel a bit like sigourney weaver today, when she had to kill all those aliens. the lyrics to this song are probably the only LOL ive had in response to a song all year so it wins on that basis alone.

Loudon Wainwright III – White Winos

i honestly think the words to this song are my favourite poem of the year. its just an astonishing piece of writing, and every time i listen to it i get a little bit more verklempt and table- punchingly jealous.