Merry Christmas

From California. Contrary to the picture, the sun hasn't been shining while I've been here - yesterday was the first day we had, and it ended oh so soon. But I took advantage of the weather to drive through Golden Gate Park and see the new De Young museum which recently opened. A Meuron-deHerzog building, it's a copper-clad moden building where there was once a neo-classic pillared (and dangerously unstable) museum. It's an interesting building, but with too many awkward corners inside and they've not yet figured out how to elegantly use the big open spaces.

It's a bittersweet holiday. Lovely to be home, visiting friends and family, shopping, relaxing, eating, eating, drinking, and eating. But my grandmother's been slowly dying and my mum flew back for the last week to see her. We're now waiting for her to slip away, hoping she's comfortable. We know my grandmother's ready, and my mum says that she's prepared as well - I can't imagine it's easy and I hope she's not being brave for our sakes. Last year we lost my uncle at Christmas so it's all a bit sad, really.

To help out, I'm doing all of the cooking. A standing rib roast, cioppino, mash, asparagus and cherry pie for dessert. Hopefully it will all come off well.

Not much more to do at the moment, but to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season.

An old-fashioned wedding?

Today same sex unions became legal in the UK. Same sex couples now have the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples over next of kin, inheritance, tax benefits, etc. It's a joyous day - I just need to find a man ...

Lunched yesterday with Jana who, despite battling cancer, remains sharp, gossipy, insightful and great fun. I drank too much wine, however and feel sluggish and unwilling to get on with the work I have to do.

The freelancing continues. I'm working at Agency for a few days this week and meeting with headhunters and a couple of agencies. Hopefully will have more work lined up for January before I leave on hols!

Left hanging?

Sorry about that.

As most of you know, I was made redundant (laid off) from Agency.com last month. It wasn't a complete surprise as we'd had a duplicated creative structure for more than a year, but it's always a blow to one's pride to be told one isn't wanted anymore. Still, it's all very amicable. They were very fair and I'm likely to be doing some freelance work for them. In the meantime, I've been meeting with agencies and other people about freelancing. It's a bit scary, but something I think I should try. And it's an interesting experience to market oneself after marketing others for so long.

So if anyone needs a experience designer / strategist, let me know. Please. No really, please!

All in all, I'm actually upbeat about it. And I've had a good break from work for the first time in my life. People I speak to are very optimistic about me finding something else - it's a very buoyant marketplace. So hopefully I won't be hocking my possessions anytime soon.

Kelly's right. This is a big ball of suck ...

Perilous times ahead

Tuesday morning I make a potentially life-changing presentation. Can't say more than though, and not just because of the cloud of tequila I've been under ever since finding out. But Tuesday all will be revealed - as either high drama or low comedy.

Why Maxine's smelled of cheese

Every week someone on my team presents something they think is a 'great idea'. We do this to look outside the medium for inspiration and to give each of the team experience in presenting. Recently, Miranda chose to present the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman. In her early work, Sherman used herself as a subject to create an implied cinematic moment that didn't really exist. In other words, she dressed like Marilyn Monroe, but wasn't impersonating her. As an exercise, we took some of the Sherman's photography and made up a 'background story'. It's neither a critique of Sherman's work nor an attempt to guess what she was doing, rather it was inspiration for a narrative that each of the team would invent.

This is mine:

Maxine’s smelled of cheese.

Rumour was that before the war, Maxine’s, the notorious meeting place of Paris’ rich, pseudo-intellectual and bored, was a cheese shop. And on the nights when the air wasn’t thick with smoke or cheap perfume or vomit, one could trace the faint ancient smell of whey and moldy curd. Newcomers to the salon would involuntarily sniff the air, unsure if the source of the moldy smell was the aging building or the aging Maxine.

It was unlikely Maxine noticed their reaction. She’d long been in the habit of graciously but dismissively greeting the ever-changing crowd, unless they were young, handsome or vaguely interested. For Maxine, her salon was less the heart of artistic Paris and more a marketplace for a stream of endless, inexperienced lovers who shared her bed but who fled when the morning light revealed the thick smear of makeup on the pillowcases, the wild frizz of her chemically black hair, the undeniable age imprinted on her naked body and the discernable smell of fromage.

And so the evenings flew by, and the crowds, invited first to distract her from the pain of losing her beloved Claude (a man who though being a gifted and generous lover had the gall to die in his own wife’s bed) stayed so long that she scarcely remembered what it was like to be alone. Except in those first hours of the day when she would get up and wash the memory and smell of last night’s lover away, tame her frizz into the stiff helmet of bobbed hair, and reapply the war mask of powder, paint and perfume.

It wasn’t until she was finished with her ritual rearmament that she noticed the shocking and curious sight of the young man sleeping, half wrapped in her sheets, spread territorially across her bed.

“Who the hell is that?”, she thought and finished her cigarette.

Deep thought for the day

'What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?'
Karen Blixen

To celebrate my downhill slide to 40 I bought a 6.1 megapixel fuck-off digital SLR camera with a 18-70mm lens, the Nikon D70.

Still learning how to use it, and I'll post evidence soon, but it feels mightly impressive.

Currently ...

Listening to the Star's Set yourself on fire. Reading Umberto Eco's The mysterious flame of Queen Loana. And Beyond Disruption. And Alex Ross' blog. Waiting for The complete New Yorker on DVD. And Alison Moyet's One blue voice DVD. Grappling with Metta meditation. And thoroughly enjoying the new season of Spooks.

The Ashes

England are likely to win the Ashes for the first time since 1987.

No I don't understand Cricket, and neither do most of my English friends - but we're going to celebrate tonight anyway.

There's a quite brilliant experiment on Radio 4 in which a Frenchman tries to explain the rules of cricket to an American. You can listen to it here (it starts 15 minutes in.)

It's heartbreaking to see what happened to the once proud Southern Gulf states and sickening to see the President's response. In a sharp article mocking the president's attempts to rally patriotism to squash debate, Simon Schama digs the dagger in deep.

As does Steven Johnson.

Back to before

Pictures from my trip to Strasbourg now. Words soon.

Ooops

Ananova.com report of the end of the press blackout of the Prime Minister's holiday.

Help me decide ...

I'm going on holiday and am trying to decide between:

Paris and then Strasbourg, the northernly capital of the Alsace Lorraine region.

and

Paris and then Nice, the glamorous beachfront Côte d'Azur hotspot.

I've always wanted to visit Strasbourg ever since I was offered an art history post-grad scholarship I couldn't afford to take. It's mix of Germanic and French influence, it's location in the Alsace Wine Reqion and it's proximity to the Rhine are inviting.

Nice, on the other hand is beachy, warm, mediterranean, expensive and glamorous. Located on the famous Côte d'Azur it's likely to be touristy, but Cannes and Monte Carlo are nearby.

Cast your votes now ...

Get geeky

Great blog for keeping with new tech gadgets.

www.gizmodo.com

My horoscope for tomorrow

From Swoon.com:

Did you order an extra-large side of fun to go? Even if you didn't, the stars went ahead and threw it in -- on the house. You might end up liking it so much you put it on your daily menu.

So I'm either dating Dom Deluise or a porn star, or someone's taking me to Legoland.
Either way, I can't wait for tomorrow.

Mazel tov!

My mate Kelly gave birth to Holden last Thursday. All are well, except possibly for little Sophie who's probably wondering who this creature stealing her spotlight is...

It's babies, babies everywhere.

A day at the races

Last Thursday our office spent the afternoon in the sun at the Sandown Race Track in Esher, Surrey (25 minutes southwest of London). I'd never been to a horse races and got a quick education on betting, odds and horse racing etiquette. We were in the 'Premier enclosure' and it was lovely to see so many people dressed for an afternoon at the races even if one could be sure there was some fairly dodgy dealing going on.

To cap an afternoon drinking at the racetrack we spent the evening on the Queen Mary , moored on the Thames where yours truly drank too much rosé and didn't get home until after 3. I didn't recover until Sunday.

Pictures are here.

I'm too old ...

I'm five ...

Just noticed that last month was this blog's fifth anniversary.

What a remarkable thing to have a spotty diary of my time in England. I'm going to re-read every post today.

More Geneva

New images, including some shots of the Noga Hilton, lovingly decorated by the set designers of the Love Boat in orange and mirror.

Breathing easy

Done with waking up with sinuses full of snot I bought an air purifier that claims to remove 99% of pollutants from the air. What pollutants? The dust and grime that floats in windows from living in the middle of Paddington and its flyovers and its train stations and cars and building sites.

That, and a date, were the highlights of my weekends. Blimey, I'm dull.

Weekend in Geneva

Spent last weekend in Geneva to have a weekend near some water and mountains and away from bombs and shootings. It's a beautiful city, but one oh so terribly 70s - smoked mirrored ceilings and gold. One kept expecting Joan Collins to pop up in a Furstenberg wrap. It's more disco Parisian grand boulevard than retro Swiss chalet.

It's also shockingly expensive. A small bottle of Evian was £2 and the chinese meal I had with lobster and wine was almost £100. So, I mostly ate sandwiches from small delis to compensate.

Saturday, I spent a day walking around the charming old town. Didn't meet a millionaire to whisk me away from the stress of living in London but that's probably for the best, I would never find a Furstenberg wrap in my size...

On Sunday, I boarded a small 'mouette' filled with tourists and their uncontrollable children (I swear one child was trying to pitch itself over the edge) for a boat tour of Lake Geneva (locally, Lac Léman).

Le jet d'eau, the geyser-like fountain that pumps water from the lake 140 m into the air at 200 km/hr, is a stunning sight. I spent a good hour sitting in the Jardin Anglais admiring it. It was originally built to help control clean manufacturing equipment from the factories on the lake, and to control the water levels of the lake (Geneva sits right at lake level and could easily flood) but is now more ostentatious show than anything else, one suspects.

Restaurant recommendation
Tse Yang on the quai du Mont Blanc. Gorgeous carved wood and chinese silk interiors with a grand view of the lake and the jet d'eau. The lobster with szechuan sauce was extravagant, as were the 'délices', small balls of ice cream dipped into honey and sesame seeds and cooled in a bowl of ice at the table by the waspy-waisted waitress.

Here we go again ...

... and it's because today was the first time I didn't think about riding the Tube when I rode the Tube. It may be nothing more than senseless pranks, but we're waiting to see if they shut the buses and Tube ...

Always on alert ... except for tomorrow, when I'll be on my way to Geneva.

Panic and uncoordinated drivers

One of the unreported, and potentially hazardous, consequences of the 7 July bombings was the rise of people on mopeds, motorcycles and bikes. There was a reported 400% surge in sales of the two-wheeled variety and a certain Keystone Cops quality to road traffic lately. Please, look both ways ...

Chilling

Saturday afternoon, after a boozy lunch, we got caught up in the traffic from the removal of the London bus that was bombed. Carried on a flat bed truck and covered in a blue tarp, one could clearly see the outline of the destroyed section of the bus. Chilling.

In memoriam

Europe observed a two minute silence at noon today in memory of those who died or were injured in last week's bombing. Hundreds of people poured out onto the Strand. Traffic stopped. People looked sincerely moved. It was a very emotional two minutes when London went quiet.

It turns out I know two people who were on trains that exploded. They're ok, but obviously shaken.

Disturbingly, whenever I've been past the bombing sites there were 'Scientology ministers' in t-shirts passing out pamphlets. And at Edgware Road they seem to have propped flowers in front of all of the other (genuine) bouquets with L. Ron Hubbard quotations. What a sick and insensitive thing to do - plug your cult in the middle of this horror.

Next we'll have Tom Cruise telling those traumatised by the events to just jog it off.

And other strange things ...

When leaving the Baker Street station, I saw this strange sight - a clocktower left standing while the building underneath was demolished. Precarious.

I figure I must have been on the train around 8.45 on Thursday morning. The only sign that something was wrong was the usual event of one of the lifts at Edgware Road being out of service. There are two different Edgware Road stations. One, to the south of the flyover holds the Circle and District lines. the one to the north holds the Bakerloo line - the line I take to get to work.

We were stopped after Marylebone station, but anyone who commutes on the Tube knows that stopping between stations is a common event on the aging and dilapidated rail lines. When the train was held at Baker Street we all groaned. And when we were told to leave the train I briefly thought to myself, 'and you idiots think this will get fixed for the Olympics?'. The station was evcuated very calmly. There was a power problem and the entire network would be shut down. Hundreds of people made their way up the stairs of the multi-level Baker Street tube. Up on the street, and safely out of the building, I rang into the office to tell people I was delayed. That was when i first heard of an explosion at Liverpool Street. I still didn't think anything about it. I would simply go home, make coffee, and get back into work when the network opened again. Ten minutes later when I got back to Edgware Road I realised something was wrong. There were police and ambulances everywhere. Edgware Road was closed off at Chapel Street. Emergency services swarmed Praed Street.

I went back to the flat and switched on the television. At the time we only knew there were explosions in the Tube, still claimed to be power surges. I had a feeling it was more than that. Minutes later, a bus blew up at Tavistock Square and it was clear that London was being bombed.

Four bombs, more explosions, uncertainty and fear and an eerie calm.

It was then that I first learned of the bombing at Edgware Road. It was at the other station, and on a different train that I take, but still alarming that five minutes earlier I had left Edgware Road in an opposite direction. And it was then we first heard there were likely fatalities. I rang work again, to check that we had heard from everyone and sat and watched the BBC. All around me were the sounds of sirens and helicopters. A city under siege, and my flat somehow in the middle of it.

The sirens continued all day.

London has long been prepared for this. And it's not the first bombing since I moved here - a madman bombed Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho attempting to start race riots. And the IRA bombed the BBC and Blackfriars Bridge. After 9/11 London accepted that it was a likely target and we spent a few nights over pints wondering how it might happen - Parliament, Oxford Street, Canary Wharf, the Tube. We worried about poison gases, contaminated water and bombs. London raised its alert level, and messages to watch out for unattended bags became more frequent.

Unlike 9/11, there isn't a crystal clear, chilling repeatable video of the event. There is no equivalent of the plane flying into the second tower, there are only 'after' photos of the bus and grainy, choppy, ghostly mobile phone videos. We won't live with it in our visual memory, but in stories and feelings and glimpses. It won't cut deep into the psyche because London won't let it, and because it's image isn't sharp enough.

i always thought it would be safer to be near Edgware Road, home to a visible and sizable Muslim community. Surely, it wouldn't happen there. Now, we're not so sure. it's possible the train was meant to be at Paddington when it was bombed, but even so, one can't really ever be off their guard.

So, the next day, I got up early and took the Tube to work.

Life goes on - sad, cautious, and a bit weary - but on.

Dear John

I read your site. Umm, are those pot plants in the header?

Damn

Now that Cutting it have killed off Sarah Parrish, there's nothing to watch on television anymore.

Maybe I'll start reading ...

Untethered

Kirsten's gone. Packed up and flown out and down under and gone. It's hard to believe it, admit it, imagine it or accept it. Both the physical absence and the idea of it.

Our friendship was forged fast and forged strong. That first night out, drinking champagne at Home House, drafted to play the boyfriend to ward off some City midget creep from hitting on her. Subsequent days of work and nights of rowdy drinking at the Montrose. A true compadre with enough patience to share work and social time. A profound mutual respect with a mix of awe on my part.

Then years, a dance in the forests of Fontainebleau, a boyfriend (hers) found on the other side of the world, Organic London closing, an engagement (the recurring theme of champagne), a 48-hour sprint to New Mexico for a wedding, a baby. Her life evolving and revolving. My life stagnating and changing. Towards the end I wasn't sure there was room in her life for the randomness and dissimilarity that a single gay friend can bring.

Yet, I knew we were made life friends. If nothing more than by a memory of a golden time in London, or the fact that she never not got the cultural reference or inside joke.

Gone. A little family I adored. A best friend who never judged a repetitively tiresome two-year infatuation. Who shared a love of fine things. Who could be a voice of reason. Sharp enough to get the Economist. Smart enough to figure people out. Lovely enough to have lovely people adore here. Gone to Perth, with its faraway farawayness. I now feel positively untethered here in London. A bedrock has shifted and migrated, and unsettled feelings follow.

I miss my blond, beautiful friend. You always deserved a life of sunshine, but I'm glad you stayed for a short time of cold, dark, grey and me.

Tim points out ...

... that the word 'facetious' has all of the vowels in correct alphabetical order, which I never realised before.

I won't tell you what I was being facetious about, as that would be naughty. And I'm never naughty :)

Turner prize shortlist announced

Interesting list, although I'm not generally a fan of sculpture, and almost never a fan of 'glitter and coloured tape'

Useful fact of the day

The British use the word 'tetchy' instead of 'touchy'.

Now you know.

Back like a rash

I could have sworn I've posted since March, but maybe not. Ok, so here's the lowdown:

Moved.
To a tiny pied a terre in a swanky new development in Paddington Basin. Still getting used to not living in South Kensington, but oh my I'm loving having Sky satellite television, a dishwasher and air conditioning (especially as they're predicting a scorching summer.)

Devastated.
My best mate Kirsten's packed up her family and are immigrating to Perth, Australia on Sunday. Our big 'sex and the city' night out was pre-empted by her husband's clashing plans and we had to make due with a takeaway and a bottle (or three) of wine 'round hers. It's beyond sad. They're like family - we spend holidays together. Now, I'm devastated I won't get to see her children grow up, won't have K to drag to nice bars and restaurants, won't have someone in London I always knew I could call if I needed someone. I'm going to miss her tremendously.

Prepared.
Robert's coming to London on Sunday. I'm preparing my liver for the onslaught now. It's bank holiday weekend here and the clubs are open all hours and I've no doubt we'll be embarrassing ourselves somewhere.

Intrigued.
The Economist has launched a lifestyle magazine, Intelligent Life. Anyone read it yet?

Sad.
Ismail Merchant died yesterday.

Annoyed.
Big Brother 6 starts. But happily I have Sky and hope to avoid it.

In another world ...

Wondertoonel, the paintings of Mark Ryden. only just less bizarre than Henry Darger.

Moving on

Last week, annoyed that my landlord had ripped out the tiles in the shower without notice, because of a leak, and rendering it useless (it still isn't fixed) I gave notice on my flat. So after four years in South Kensington, I'm moving on. Now, I've got to find a place to live. I've never lived any further east than South Kensington (which isn't east at all) so I'm thinking Clerkenwell, or the newly fashionable Borough, home of the glorious weekend food market. Something more urban, something bigger, something new.

A month ago, exactly, I decided I needed to face up to some delusions, scatter some fantasies and find a way forward that wasn't mired in 'what ifs' and 'maybes' and 'if onlys'. So I confronted T. about my feelings for him and in the process broke my own heart. I knew the probable outcome. Despite the many (and non-imaginary) signs that we were developing an intimacy, I had to face up to the fact that even I couldn't imagine us actually being together. So ends a two-year torch-bearing marathon. I've sung the sad songs, and cried into my beer and railed against the fates, but in truth I'm proud of myself for moving on and giving myself some room to be real.

T. handled it graciously (which is in turn annoying and gratifying) and once I'm over the resentment of finally having met someone handsome, smart and so bloody seemingly compatible but for naught, we'll continue to be great friends. In the meantime, I'm free and single boys so, bring it on. Or not. For the good news is I've decided to stop being selfish and let someone else break my heart next time.

To R. on his birthday

You've been drinking vodka, no? And in your 37th year discovering you're actually a poet ...

7 is my lucky number. So as a present, I'm sharing that luck with you. So 37's going to be big for you in some way. You'll discover a course, an inner resource, a passion you never knew.

And it will shake things, and it will be scary, and it will be exciting. But it won't include time to sit and be sad for a past that can't be re-lived or for a future that seems impossible. Wild things will be possible.

Because now, you've got 37 on loan. For a whole year. It even points forward, 37 does. See it? ...

Wake up groggy head. Your year is starting ....

And if you're wondering what to do:

Penguin has a new series of books, Great Ideas. Little beautiful, designed reprints of thoughts and essays by the world's greatest thinkers Seneca, de Montaigne, Schopenauer, Woolf. They're cheap and portable and insightful. Maybe it will waken a hunger for things bigger than your imagination and more beautifully worded than your fears.

Jem's new cd, Finally Woken, is gorgeous and other worldly and hip-swivellingly good. It's as if Dido was talented or the streets of Italy were made melody. They make one feel sexy. They make one want to flirt and lick someone's neck.

And you're 37. 7. It looks like tented trousers. So it must be the year of good sex too. Bonus.

And we shed baggage. Things that inhibit 20 year olds and friends that proved to have no endurance and the blinders that made us think we had to find one path when the fields were open for running.

And we take things on. Years of experience. Things people told us. Better understanding of the world. Distance. The dust of travels and sights and Paris and Prague and London and Eureka on your ankles. We share the sky and the universal language of a smile even if every 12 hours or so we have to send the sun back the other way.

Seneca says that a life well lived isn't short. It's rich. So remember that next time you're tempted to lay in bed and think too much. You could be out dirtying your feet and finding new experiences. The Flaneur knows that the walk unplanned can show as much about a place as one that's planned and will show something new and unexplored. Secret passages lie around the corner. Some of them take you places and some of them take you back where you were, but very few go nowhere at all.

You're 37. Your year is started. Go.

Phew

Agency.com have finally rebranded. And it's pretty cool.

Being negative

Things are going mightily well. I'm almost frightened. Pitches and speeches going ok. I'm finally over that illness I brought back from California. I got my tax refund check in the mail. The chicken little inside of me is wondering when the sky's going to come falling down.



In truth, I was terribly worried something was wrong. I had for a while not been feeling well, then I got some sort of strange infection. I went to the doctors who insisted I have blood tests done, syphilis, chlamydia, Hepatitis, and the first HIV test I've had in four years! I sort of knew it would be ok - my sex life is hardly prolific and seldom seedy. Mostly vanilla, although I'm happy to note that in at least one case it was French vanilla. But waiting for HIV results are perhaps some of the strangest times one will ever spend. I was alternately surprised how easy it was to forget about it, and how easily it crept up behind me to shake and rattle my nerves.



After two weeks of not being able to get out of work to follow up with the doctors, I decided to ring and see what the test results were. I stood in the stairwell of the office, my voice audibly shaking, to find out if the sometimes seemingly impending storm was going to engulf me. It was a brave / stupid moment. Was I really going to have to break down in the stairwell of the office if something really was wrong?



Luckily, it wasn't. Not perhaps just luckily, but maybe reassuringly, yet probably more realistically lucky. Everything was negative.



Negative.



I was surprised at how surprising the words and the feeling of surprise were.



Had I somehow been resigned to the possibility of becoming HIV positive -- though, not likely given my sex life of pillow hugging and daydreaming -- even though I hadn't had unsafe sex, or shared needles or had a blood transfusion? Would it have been less scary a verdict than in the early years of my so-called gay life in San Francisco when AIDS was still cutting a wide swathe through the gay community and the papers were filled with pictures of those who fell victim to it? I remember the chillling habit of skipping the second-half of the Bay Area Times for fear of what? Knowing there was a human face to the epidemic? Wondering if one of them was a former lover? It's most likely that someone in my sexual past is and was HIV positive.



That should be chilling. But now that people I know live with the virus was it somehow less ominous than it was? Was some irrational inner self surprised that one could be gay and 36 and HIV-negative?



And is it that irrational inner self that sets one on the road to complacency? That's more scary sometimes than the eventuality itself. Why resign oneself to the surrender when simple acts of vigilance can pre-empt the battle?



So I'm going to be relieved and celebrate for a moment. Then I'm going to realise that whilst I've been lucky, others haven't been. It's still an epidemic of shocking violence and strength, and we let it fester and rage in quiet corners of our social consciousness. Has AIDS become the quiet secret, or the troubles of a continent 'over there'? Do we still know that it has a very human face? Had I succumbed to the American habit of belittling disease and disdaining the weakness it brought? When did I actually start to think the storm was retreating? Because people stopped dying or just because there weren't pictures in the back of the gay papers filled with the dead?



So now, and hopefully for a time, I live. And I'm going to be positively grateful for being negative but I'm going to try to remember not to forget the power of being negative.

Nice one ...

We won the pitch and the talk went well, so regardless of the weather it's going to be a lovely weekend.

I'm giving a speech at a Bima event tonight and I've not yet finished it and I'm, instead, emailing and having coffee and whatnot. We finished a big pitch for BT yesterday and I'm knackered and not feeling either clever or insightful so it's a struggle. I really want to go home and nap for the day and not be preparing to trade bon mots with a panel of people likely to rip apart the proposed talk that my predecessor created and which I'm obligated to defend.



The nice thing about it, however, is that it's historical in perspective so I've had a good root through some of my very earliest websites. They're so simple and innocent and uncomplicated and still somehow smart and effective. They also remind me of the heady days of the Web (when my friends, by the way, were embarrassed of my job) and when somehow a motley crew of people created an industry out of a medium. Pure stupid luck that I was there and that Doris and Clancy and Organic thought it made sense for me to be part of it. It didn't make me rich. Never made me famous. Probably made me fat, bald, and permanently stressed, but it made a decent living for an art history major and got me to London so I should be, and am, grateful.

Noteworthy

The Guardian publishes the list of 50 must-see events this Spring. Yes, I know it includes Coldplay, but it's still interesting. I'm most interested in Kauzo Ishiguro's new novel and Caravaggio: The Final Years at the National Gallery.



PVRBlog reviews the new products at the Consumer Electronics Show.



Addictive: I normally despise Big Brother, but the rather genius move of putting Germaine Greer into the house with a bunch of youngsters who don't know who she is and a rather misognyst Horse Racing announcer makes Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother interesting watching. Last night's competition of being spun on a merry-go-round and made to crawl through filth for food made Germaine barf. Great television. And there's the delightful Jeremy Edwards who once smiled at me in the queue for the loo at Selfridges.

The roads I DID take

Happy new year.



Hope the holidays were fruitful and happy. And that the suffering of so many give us pause to consider how lucky we are to be alive.



Back to work after two weeks in California.



I drove to San Diego to see Kelly, Michael and little Sophie. She's an angel: curly hair and big brown eyes and a giggle everytime someone laughs. And it's clear she's very loved. Kelly and I had a date at a seaside restaurant while Michael worked. I was a bit nervous as we hadn't seen each other in years, but they fly by as moments when Kelly and I reconnect. She's a very important person in my life, and they're a lovely family. Her mother's dog, however, was the only animal I've ever wanted to kick hard. Yapping little hell dog it was.



Then to Palm Springs to be the only guest in a usually popular gay resort. It was creepily quiet, and my dreams of naked gods sunning themselves by the pool were dashed. I excited myself, instead, by a gorgeous drive through Joshua Tree National Park.



After that, three days in San Francisco seeing friends, shopping, eating more sushi than I should. Robert threw a cocktail party where I drank far too much vodka and vaguely remember how I got home (apologies to anyone I insulted, groped or mimicked.)



In Los Gatos after that, staying with my glamorous mother. Fit from working out and looking fabulous, she put me to shame, but is a glorious hostess. We ate dungeness crab and prime rib and enjoyed each other's company. Got chastised by my gran for living for so far away, but hope my mum knows I live here despite the distance, not because of it.



My father gave me a scanner for Christmas so I spent two days scanning over 400 family photos to preserve on CD and to share with my brother. There are comical photos of big hair, sideburns, bell bottoms and dear memories of what really was a happy childhood. I'll post the best (and worst) of these soon.



More importantly, I realised that I was a gorgeous child, and that somewhere under the fat and wrinkles is good bone structure.



Sadly, my uncle Emanuel passed away on Christmas Day. He was 90. I remember him as a very kind and charming man. Impeccable manners, always smiling. We shared a star sign and our birthdays were always celebrated together. We spent that week helping my aunt with funeral arrangements and I went to the vigil on my last night there. It meant I got to see a lot of my family I don't always see, but it also meant our family lost a very lovely member.



I flew back, arriving in New Year's and spent New Year's Eve in bed, but not before deciding:



To get healthy: use the gym and lose the weight, drink plenty of water, moisturise.



To achieve work / life balance and excel at both.



To organise my life and stop living in clutter and disorder. Organise my finances to start saving for a place to buy.



To publish something this year, and indulge Andy's conviction in my writing abilities.



To take better advantage of living in London.



To figure out how to be ready for and deserving of a relationship.



That's all. Nothing big.