Happy Anniversary

It is over a bloody year since I started this blog.

A year on, I'm drinking wine at my new desk, thinking about the weekend. At least I was when I began this post. That's how low on my list of priorities this has become. It's because there are no deadlines, no boss - except myself and I'm a slacker at heart. There's no charges if I fail to post, no disappointed faces if I fail to show up. No one to sheepishly text if i'm bailing, no one to worry if I come home drunk and disgraced - or not show up at all.

The addition of a blog to my life has meant i have another thing to feel guilty about not doing. And, in the same way it must irritate my boys that 'everyone's a DJ', the fact that everyone has a blog means that no matter where I look there is another writer brandishing a more industrious diligance to their art, and a URL with updated content to boot.

Well, S, J and B - this one's for you. You've all helped me remember how it can be to have a new friend - breathless, inspiring and life-giving. You're all fucking awesome. And I appreciate the urging, the nagging, the cherished requests for my words more than I can ever describe. And I am stating here and now that I will document what's currently occurring in the freakish heart of Bow - because it's too special not to and really, I don't think it will ever repeat.

In other news, the fickle torchlight of my attentions is currently fluttering over the shiny surface of swing dance, my home life remains a schizophrenic haven of tranquility and wildness and we all know we may be kicked out at any time but still secretly believe it will go on forever.

Life. Goes. On.

Tramp Party

So, smelling my way to work - from the overflowing drain in the yard past the bacon sarnies of the factory workers opposite, through the Olympic stadium where they are seemingly building the foundations with manure and onto the stinking canal, I smell the party before I see it.

Now, one of the benches along the Union Canal has been inhabited by two tramps for a while. Every morning I pass them, worried about waking them up with my bell as I alert the other cyclists to my presence in the tunnel. They hunch, coats zipped tightly over heads, sleeping upright - or more probably not sleeping upright. I wonder about the feeling they have when their situation dawns on them. When they stop dreaming and realise they are outside on a bench in North London.

Anyway, yesterday as I rode home there were three of them. All awake and drinking - seemingly in high spirits.

This morning, there were about seven, all smokes and jokes in the orange light. Safety in numbers.

Today Is

Butterflies are flying round a big, echoey, fluttery expanse of bubbling excitement.

Quite nervous today as well as being mega-excited.

It's my 28th birthday. This day everyone must unsurely recount what has gone before? Chart the incline away from youth...

(It must be said before you continue reading that this post is of a vastly personal nature and you will not know WTF I'm talking about unless you know me. If you don't then I rejoice, for someone who does not know me has had the immense good fortune to stumble across my blog. If you do, then lucky you, you've been chosen as one of the few who I let in to the secrets of Foxy Loxy.)

Onwards with the quest to remember....Last year, The Boy and The Cubs cooked me dinner. Then I had a big dinner party with some of my favourite friends.

The year before it was a beach party in that weird bar on Boscombe front followed by an after-party in a big, empty house. Before that, there was a BIG ol' beach party followed by mini-golf.

Previous to that, a garden party at the beautiful Chine, a Summer Ball, followed by a beach party and sunny sex in an ants nest on the edge of a cliff. No jokes.

The year before that was The Bays in Consortium I think....hundreds of frisbies on the beach, Hawaiian blues from King Bong. Uh-oh.

Before that I've lost count. Can't think of any besides a garden party BBQ in Wales, and before that (my 17th) a drunken, 2 day free party near Shrewsbury with Brendan by my side.

For the record, I realise that all of them have been completely and utterly debauched. That, as I've come to say far too regularly, is evidently how I roll...

Maybe this year will be the last year of lashing myself quite so heavily. Who knows? Something in me is vaguely twitching for change, or at least a cleaner way of life. But the excitable techno-loving dancefloor part - which will always be alive and kicking it somewhere - keeps me wanting more and more.

As I approach 30 I'm getting more jittery. Less stable? There is nothing calm about the life I lead. And there is certainly a craving going on deep down to retreat to the country, to a house with a big garden and ivy on the walls and wild roses and maybe a baby or two....

Live in the now has always been my motto - so why can't I take my own advice?

Tomorrow Maybe, Today IS.