Playing House

Reduce yourself to nothing. Boil yourself down until you are nothing but eyes and ears. And a heart. And then re-assess the importance of things.

Meaning and value are what's important here. They say lessons repeat until they're learned. Well this is my daily lesson:

Here is as good as there.

I've played at being a housewife. A domestic goddess, a grown-up who sweeps the kitchen floor. Living alone allows for this kind of reinvention. I've played at being a well-heeled drunk. Luckily I was only playing. I enjoyed the pose of the lush: sleeping late, staggering up and down the stairs to stock up on Tesco discounted wine. Knocking back 2am mint tea, lukewarm and pointless, missing the yoga sessions which I always miss anyway, sobriety aside.

I flirted with drug abuse. But too many waking hours made me depressed. Being awake when all others are sleeping and I can obsess alone over the missing screw on my mailbox does little for my sense of worth. Couldn't a human hand fit in there? Couldn't they then easily turn the latch? Doesn't the postman know very well that it's loose and know very well that a single white female lives here alone, slightly saner and less tough than Jodie Foster. What's that? Oh, a pigeon fluttering busily on my roof. But what's that? It's the ventilation being rattled by the wind... isn't it? Given enough time in the dark and I will beat myself up so no one else has to.

Give myself a kicking for not renewing my driving licence photograph since it expired in 2009. Trip myself up with my lack of an NHS number. Oh God. Must register with a doctor. Must get a GP to discuss a few things. And what about this definitely-chipped bone in my elbow which should surely be more painful? Look at this stack of unread newspapers, building up along with the tidemark of my own guilt. I really should read up on what's happening in Libya. And what about Japan? Everyone's forgotten about them. And my Amnesty membership has lapsed. Must phone them and donate. And get internet. And fix the fucking washing machine so I can stop hand-washing or just buying new clothes whenever I run out – which I never will because I cant stop buying new clothes on a daily basis. At least the profits are going to charity. So prattles my inner monologue. While the other half goes 'Hmmm another cuppa tea/piece of chocolate/chicken/beer/line/cigarette/shag? Of course'.

Which is why it's better when I'm on a bicycle. Or a dancefloor. Or in a book. I can hypnotise myself with another activity, distract the child in my head for 5 minutes of peace.

Like most 21st century females, I have settled into an uncomfortable obsession with looking 'hot' or 'stylish' or 'cool' or 'clever'. When really, none of those things are related to how I look. I should be spending time nurturing feeling all of those things for good reason – like just having completed a really amazing short story.

So here it is...

The Journey From The Door to the Edge of Sanity.

'A trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three on the teeth.'

I am continually searching for meaning. Of course I am. Aren't you? And I cannot find it on a screen. Who cares if 'Kylie Goes 3d!' who cares about 'hot girls in tights?'

Too much information. Absolute Information Fucking Overload. My mind freezes like a PC when I just click click click refresh. Anything but refreshed. Click through rates, traffic, but the traffic is actually a sedentary person looking for meaning, sitting frozen in a chair looking for meaning. They will not find it here. Leave! You will not find it here.

Check out my own lack of meaning. Check out my unbridled confusion. I want to return to the 70s when everything was on vinyl and you had to go to a library to look up a fact. Really. I am not joking.

And the fact that this is the first uninterrupted 26 minutes I have spent all day is proof of the scourge of the internet. The erosion of my concentration is proportionate to the amount of windows I have open, multiplied by my number of facebook friends and cubed according to how near a Friday (or Monday) my current situ actually is.

Fucking heck – life with your face in a book and a honeyed tea on your table is so much sweeter. So much slower.

A return. A hark back. I'm off. Off to the country hopefully to slow things down a little.

I wonder what I would have been like if I'd never encountered the internet. Or hair dye. Or rizlas.

If I'd been a 70s child would I have grown my pit hair because it was a political statement?

If I had a clue.

Life Is Like A Song

Dazed by the bomb blast, ears ringing, head a shuffled deck of snapshots atop a suddenly 30 year old body. Oh my aching bones.

Desperate to be involved but shut out of proceedings by the very fact of it being my birthday, I listen for snippets. My own excitement has been mounting month by month until it's all I can think about. I glimpse updates over hunched shoulders. I cock my ear for spilled surprises. But really I know nothing. The sheer scale of it is all a complete shock.

And as I touch down on the Welsh hill which is a good 10 degrees colder than London, (sorry - I forgot about this) I see the site. Oh the dance tent, the Low-Lav, the tippee, the frame over the trampoline. Freak on a leash. I twinkle around the site, unsure of where to put myself. Talking too fast, running to show people round, to repeat the tour, to make the endless, rolling introductions.

A superfast summation from where I was standing:

Silver body paint, spandex, smiles till we ache, a scrum of people round my family table tucking into my dads pasta sauce, selected party heads coming to see my mum in the kitchen for tea and sympathy at various points throughout the weekend ('the things I know...'), the Low-Lav, the dancefloor knows no rest, a certain person leaning into the heart with a fork, digging for gold, the trampoline, the frame, the fat-suits, the headbuts, the unwise lack of sleep on Friday, a lowdown dirty lack of shame on Saturday, a Bloody-Mary Sunday, pass the parcel, the Madonna power-up, the punch, the campsite, the quad, the lamb stuffed with chickens, my mum and dad having it to Your Niece, hay-bales on fire, the many toasts, the biggest, shiniest, heaviest birthday card in the world (***HICKS***), the party reigniting for a 25 minute electro smash at 23:35 on Sunday, the endless tippee session, the daisy-chained block rockers, the U-turns, the purple book, the elation....

Guys I didn't know what to say when I was handed a BIKE. Words failed me. I'm sure it was obvious. THANK YOU SO MUCH. I was overwhelmed. And then, seeing that I was lost for words, I was surrounded by my favourite people, utterly crammed against the people I love most, all touching each other and consequently touching me as we slow danced to my favourite song in the world and sang at the tops of our voices while a I sobbed like a babe.

At Last. My love has come along. My lonely days are over. And life is like a song.

Yes it fucking is.

Thanks to all the people who came all the way to Wales.

Thanks to the Low-Fest Crew. You're the best in the west.

Thanks to all the DJs who rocked it.

Thanks for the bike. (The very bike I have been salivating over all year.)

Thanks for all the amazing presents.

Thanks Rina and Tim for being the best.

Thanks Rhys and Siw for being the best.

Thanks Carmen for making me the very best outfit.

Thanks to you all for making it the best birthday ever.

Andy Ellis. You rule.

So. Very. Lucky.