I love Paris. Unabashedly. Went with work friends to rip up the town and it was great fun to take Robert who hadn't been in almost 10 years, and had never been on the Eurostar. We stayed in a lovely boutique hotel in the 8th arrondissement. Robert bought a suit for his sister's wedding and I managed to muddle through with my elementary French.







It was a glorious Spring weekend -- sun and warmth and clear blue skies. We had dinner at the Georges on top of the Pompidou and learnt that "le tigre qui pleure" despite sounding like tiger meat, was acutally oxtail. Is oxtail really ox? We didn't know. Robert and I hit the bars in the Marais where he was quite the flirt, apparently. You can see more of the pictures here.

Did you know? It's cheap to travel to Paris right now. I'm off for the weekend soon, so bon weekend everyone. Going to revel in unpopular francophilia drink French wine, flirt with French men, eat French food, buy French petit choses.



Did you also know that England experienced a brief time of queer acceptability in the 18th Century? Channel 4 did a rather brilliant show about Georgian England's excesses and forgivenesses last night. From Mother Clap's Molly House to the rather indescribable fashion fetish of molly men pretending to give birth to wooden toys and doll, it seemed gay men and women (especially aristocratic ones) had a certain amount of freedom--as long as they appeared to be straight and respectable.



Ah well, I'm celebrating my queerness with a trip to gay Paris. Au revoir!

Before you start I know not everything is working. But I'm crawling there. And I'm crawling towards finishing the images page. But I was almost crawling on Sunday after an afternoon drinking wine in Kirsten's garden, then going out. So I couldn't face crawling to the computer yesterday. Oh, and I am crawling back to South Kensington -- to rent the flat upstairs from the flat I used to live in. They've agreed to replace the nausea-inducing furniture that was there and I've agreed to pay too much money for a year. Oh well.



Finally watched Withnail and I, that infamous 1980s uni-arthouse favourite. Paul McGann was a stunner and the dialogue is a bit brilliant, if not shrill. Even though it's Britain in the 80s doing Britain in the 60s it reminded me of the grey cold and general downtroddedness that I remember of Britain in the 80s -- and the clothing. I had silver-rimmed round sunglasses then as well.



Can someone please explain "I'm a twat (celebrity), get me out of here!" I know the idea is to choose and vote for your favourite c-list celebrity, but I'm considering voting for the snakes and spiders instead.

Unsettling; Staring forward and looking back I've got to finish this bloody page. Look at up. That will soon be an image and a name and something more than grey words and orange links. It's not that I've been ambivalent, but there's a lot of computer jockeying that's happened to make HTML and images and get it hoisted up onto the page.



Yesterday, whilst crossing Edgware Road to lunch I saw a hearse with a casket and a pile of flowers. Mortality on display, there to suck up one's distractions and preoccupations and spit them back with a "I'm being buried today" procession through the streets. It's a sad, lonely, unceremonial moment when you realise we do actually all die alone (unless you die with others of course, then you don't die alone, but you're buried alone.)



Then I notice the driver was singing along to the radio. Actually full out singing. I'd like to think he was singing Amazing Grace or something, but he was probably singing Justin Timberlake or some old Oasis songs. Singing like he hadn't a care in the world, or actually a dead person in his backseat.



Shouldn't that be disallowed? Respect for the dead, and all that. What if the deceased hated Oasis? What if they once said, "I'd rather be dead than listen to Oasis" and now they're dead and having to listen to it?



In other preoccuptions. I'm flathunting. I hate it. Too many poorly lighted, badly furnished overpriced flats that letting agents are happy to say are "modern, light, and really fantastic value." By far the best flat I've seen just happens to be upstairs from the flat I lived in when I first moved here. I'm thinking about renting it, but wondering, is that terribly regressive?

Grounded. Me. That pigeon. The statues in baghdad. And now, the Concorde. The anxiety's gone. What happened (or actually what isn't going to happen) happened. Or didn't. And now I can laugh about the pigeon incidence with a relatively light heart.



I was home yesterday with a cold and watching the news from Baghdad. Watching them pull down the statue of Saddam from the city centre. It was anti-climatic. It took a very long time. Several variations of ropes and chains kept breaking and shifting. And the embarrassing moment when some soldier draped the American flag over the head of the statue like one might drape a sack over a hanged man. Then it toppled, and no one was certain what's next. Looting, chaos, faction in-fighting.



British Airways and Air France announced today that the Concorde will no longer fly its sleek, needle-nosed jet on transatlantic flights. Another human ambition (and the last of the romantic aeronautic notions) grounded. I'm not sure I would have ever done it, but am sorry to see it go.

Poor judgment? American troops opened fire on the international press' hotel killing five, including a Reuters journalist. They claim they were fired on first, but it's been denied. I wonder if US troops aren't showing shocking judgement what with the recent spat of "friendly fire."

Today when walking up Seymour Street a pigeon flew into a plate glass window, bounced, and hit me in the head. We both stopped, stunned, before it hobbled off and before I broke out into a stream of profanities whilst wiping the side of my head.



People walked past staring. I think the pigeon stared.



I was aware I looked insane. I'm sure the pigeon thought so.



I felt insane. Barely in control. Wanting to kick the pigeon's ass. Or break the window. Or just generally have a fit in the middle of the street. To raise my fist and scream into the sky "haven't I been the butt of enough of your jokes lately?" To let go of the anxiety pressing against my chest. But I couldn't. You see, crazy people don't rant in London. They mutter, they hide, they learn how to drive little white delivery vans or to present children's television, or to just generally disappear.



An out-of-control-cursing-American-pigeon-target is an unusual sight in London.



Once and only once did a crazy person confront me. I was on the Tube and a man pointed at me and screamed, "they'll kill you if you set foot in Jamaica." I stared back and said, "I wasn't planning to." That shut him up and he neither pointed nor screamed again. He just muttered, "kill you dead, they would".



I live entirely too much in my head. I know that. I have elaborate fantasies that have their own physical, chronological, and psychological dimensions. They are rich in detail and plot and characterisation and can occupy big chunks of time -- whether I'm sitting on a bus, walking down Edgware Road, or working.



I have entire relationships in my head. I plot the initial meeting, the seduction, the emotional arc, the demise, the aftermath. I know where we met, what we did that first morning after, what his friends thought of me, what I wore when we met his parents, what I wanted to keep when he moved out, what his next boyfriend would look like.



I know what happens after I win an £11.5 million lottery. How much I give to whom. How i quit my job.



I know what it feels like at the end of my life. When I'm alone, without family, out of touch with people, friends, reality. When the scenes in my head are larger and more important than reality. When I'm facing mortality and looking back at respectable, yet unremarkable, achievements.



What brought this on? I was HIT BY A BOUNCING PIGEON today. It was a cruel disruption. And my only response to it was to swear in shock. Because, you see, I know how much I can live in my head. How I can stand at the intersection of "life" and "romance" and not see the lights changing. Not see when to cross ... whether to face or follow the traffic ... where there might be left or right or even, yes it happens, u-turns.



But dammit, I'm blaming the pigeon.