I've @dopted Mr Tom Cox, MP for Tooting!
April 1999

26th

Blurgh…..

1.37am Sunday night.

New job starts tomorrow. (Hence 1.37 on Sunday night).

Thursday night the dinner with Carl et al came and went. He was looking remarkably well for someone who was not exactly a happy bunny not long ago. Not only that, but he was behaving like… well, like someone who is happy right now. He seemed on great form. There again, it could be my perception of the situation. Last year when he came over, everyone was being a bit wary and "Who's this alien?" Whereas now no one has anything to prove, and everyone's been yacking on ICQ/mail for the last year. So it's nice when your friends from 12,000 miles away come over, and you basically carry on a conversation you were having a couple of days ago. Unfortunately for me we began to have one of those conversations where you want to say "Hold on, can I take notes?" (not unfortunate in itself, you understand) thinking about the new job, but we got waylaid by talk of, oh I can't remember, gigs or medicine or something. So I missed out on the pearls of wisdom. Ach, well, you don't get things for free. Except supper, as it tuned out, since lovely Sean paid for me for some reason I foeget. I think I'm supposed to pay him back though. Bloody nuisance.

Unfortunately Soho Spice kept us waiting for bloody ages. Pain in the arse, plus I had to feed Sean half my starter (hmm, chicken and er, I dunno, some sort of beef or lamb or something, I have no idea) which has said it was veggie on the menu. However, my main course was ridiculously lovely. How dare they. Fuckers. I don't want to know that I'm missing great food by not having enough money to spend at places like that.

Anyway.

My e-mail doesn't work currently, which is a joy, since I know the nitwit internal systems engineer at V/Net won't have taken me off all the support lists yet, despite me having asked him (last thing Friday: "Oh, I didn't see that e-mail". So when I *eventually* get it going at some point tomorrow, I'm going to have to content with fucking 5,000 e-mails or something from over the weekend (of which, only 4,800 will be for me, naturally).

Kai played the patented Mad Professor routine on live TV this morning. On "This Morning" in fact - "TMWRNJ". As Dan pointed out, Rich has successfully managed to keep a programme title going that doesn't actually mention Stu at all. I like it. Kai was excellent, poor bunny scared as hell (hardly surprisingly). Me n big D went in to the audience, sat in a place that would be highly visible to Kai to make sure we could smile encouragement his way. He didn't need it though. I was proud, unsurprisingly. More of it, that's what we need. At least, that's what our bank balance needs. I managed to get him to agree that he might/should look for an agent again. You have no idea what an incredible step forward that is in itself. Now, all I need is to make him actually do it. Ah.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

21th

Jaysus I feel like shite. Not exactly hung over, more as if all my lifeblood has been drained and replaced by porridge. Zero blood sugar, zero hand/eye co-ordination, and this, at 15.31 in the afternoon. Sheeet.

It was the launch of the "Car Free London" exhibition last night, at which of course I missed out supper altogether, and of course just kept drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking….

So this is what I remember:

First part of evening: very lovely, lots of friends, see the exhibition, all jolly good stuff
Second part of evening: OXO tower top bar. Very nice, relaxed, excellent chats with friends, including Moira, who I haven't seen for about forty years
Third part of evening: Not exactly blank, but a number of isolated incidents, that munge together in to a sort of impressionistic whole. The "impression" in question being one of "Jesus woman - what the fuck were you doing?"

Sit down in chair, chair nearly falls over at some point or other as I'm trying to lean forward. Something about a long cigarette in an ash tray, Danny's taking the piss out of me for some reason and OH MY GOD DID I REALLY TELL HIM THAT WHAT THE FUCK WAS I DOING, later on, Cherie's snogging that woman from OM, everyone is discussing my love life (more on this later), I punch Danny or something? Somehow we're at the Embankment tube, but who though… me, Anno, who the fuck else? Accompany Anno to Victoria so she can get the train (uh? I mean, I know it was the decent thing to do and everything, but I was at The Embankment? the Northern Line, yet instead I toddled off to Victoria? My brain must have been like a cabbage), manage to get on a tube, apparently because now I can see the Balham station name from a window… I must have changed tubes at some point… er… dimly remember putting food out for the cats (a whole tin, it transpired this morning!!!!) and definitely remember getting into bed and passing out.

Only to wake up this morning and gradually start remembering things and wincing. What the hell was I doing, staggering around on my own in Victoria station, so drunk I don't know what the hell I was doing? Jesus. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

On the "my love life" front… actually this is quite depressing. I don't think I can talk about things like that on here any more. I only ever expect friends to look at this once, go "Blimey" and then forget about it. I'm not looking for… well. I don't know. I couldn't explain what I meant last night, because I was a little amazed at them taking something very specifically in a context on here, and asking me about it publicly in front of a crowd of other people.

Oh fuck all this. I'm feeling really drained and miserable, and I haven't got time to argue the toss right now. All I really feel like doing is going home and having a hug, but I've got to stay here at work.

In other words I'm looking for sympathy and feel rotten oh GOD I want all this nonsense to be over with!!!!!!! Please, next phase - move a-fucking-long-now thank you.

20th

Body moaning ahoy:

Hormones. Who'd have 'em.

Two days late. I presume because of all the stress at the moment. I was remarking to Julie at lunch that it seems absolutely INSANE that I'm not smoking at the moment. So, anyway, any days late seem to add a quotient of pain on to the whole experience so I cycle toto see Mr. B about the work yesterday, and as always, ended up quite surprised by how erudite I can be about web user interest, in a way that obviously hardly anyone else is. To explain thatincredibly wanky sentence - what I mean is, well... you know... you just don't realise how much it is that you know instinctively after a while, until you talk to someone else who at the very least assumes that you do know something or other about your job.

Owen's birthday today.

Been scanning photos. I told you I'd get round to it. The ones with all the forest are pretty obvious. The TV tower is about 500 feet high, and all the statues look that peculiar. Look at your leisure. There'll be more in whenever. Took me ages to do those, so don't expect miracles.

More April '99
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