She sells sea shells

Does anyone else have hobbies that never progress?

Every few months I pick up my guitar and try to teach myself the chords to Radiohead's 'High and Dry.'

Mostly because I want to play it at cool house parties at 3am, having nonchalantly picked up the hosts guitar in front of a crowd of eager, wet eyed spectators.

And in the morning people will be like, 'Do you remember that girl who played us amazing music?'

And I will shrug and be like, 'Yeah, that was me, no big deal.'

And my whole life will be altered from that point.

There are however instances, where revealing something about yourself at a house party at 3am, is not the best decision.

Like when a guy sat down next to me on the sofa once and said, 'I have six toes on one foot.' And everyone got involved, and they had to turn the lights on and stop the music. And the horror basically ruined the party.

I'd like to say it was a safe place for difference, but I think he'd of been better off contacting 'Embarrassing bodies' and not mistaking it for a great relationship icebreaker.

ANYWAY

The point is, I don't think I'll ever be able to play a song on my guitar.

This is why Gingerbeard resents the space it takes up in our tiny bedroom. Sometimes this happens:

Ginger: Can we please sell your guitar?

Me: No we cannot. I'm learning to play it.

Ginger: No you're not. You never play it. In fact, I can hardly make it out for the dust.

Me: *Unzips bag, strums one dust laden string, re zips bag* There, see.

TOLD

Besides which, I think my half finished patchwork cushion, half-finished photo mobile, fifty unread books, and four pairs of unrealistically heeled (and thus unwearable) boots would be lonely without that guitar.

He doesn't really GET me guys. Seven years, and I am still so unknown.

It almost makes me want to listen to that boxset of 'Learn French' CD's that I bought, and like, learn French.

But I don't think I will.

Not just yet.

God, I could deliver one hell of a top notch carboot some day. You lucky buggers.

Liar, Liar

Sooooo...

I'm finding it tremendously difficult to remember important things.

Please consider this your one and only apology for when I miss:

*Your wedding
*Your birthday
*The speech where you tell me how upset you are that I missed something.

MY BAD

Someone told me today that I'm not allowed to use the phrase 'ball ache' because I don't understand what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty confident that my imagination is vast enough for me to imagine having a ball or two, and then imagine that, that ball or two is aching.

Is that weird? I think I just made things weird.

Anyway, the point I was making (stop distracting me) is that I'm pretty much just setting fire to huge wads of cash by purchasing tickets to events that I don't show up at, and for trains I never needed. My current theory is split personality disorder. Where one of my personalities wants to travel to Bristol for an Osmond Brothers Reunion concert, and my second personality is like, 'Woah, I don't fucking think so sunshine.'

Between the two of them, (wait, the two of me? The two of us). Between us, we ain't going nowhere, but we are managing to spend all our money in the process. NICE WORK GEMMAS.

I've been playing my sick card daily to try and reap some of it back. It's a great card. I just didn't create it with this kind of regularity in mind. For you to truly understand, we must go back, way way back, to the birth of the sick card.

A now ex-employer had paid for me to get a train to Birmingham. I was late to the station, probably for an exceptionally valid reason. So I queued up in the hapless queue (for those who are afraid of machines) and psyched myself up to influence my way into a free, later ticket.

That did not happen. What did happen (and this really lends itself to the split personality discussion we had earlier) is this.

Me: "Hi," *Eyes fill with tears* "I'm so sorry. I've missed my train, because I had to get off the tube."

Lady: "How come?"

Me: "To throw up. To violently throw up."

Lady: "Oh dear."

Me: "Yes, I know, all over the platform."

Lady: "Wow."

Me: "Can I please have a new ticket?"

I got a ticket.

Thinking about it, there was this other time in my early twenties where I was late to work, again for a top notch reason, and so I sat on a wall down the road and tried to feel sick. It worked. When I got into the shop they made me lie down and couldn't believe how pale I was. It worked so well, that an hour later, I had to go home sick.

You know, I auditioned for drama school and got rejected.

IDIOTS.

Does anyone else believe their own lies? Talk to me; it's a completely private space. I promise.

Birthday Blog!

So....

I've been thinking.

And yes, that's a rare and (in my opinion) wonderful thing.

We've got 'Baby on Board' badges for the tube. Sure we have. Necessary. Nice idea.

But picture this, it's your birthday, you live in London. You're commuting. You're standing.

Well, not anymore, because you can slap on your 'BIRTHDAY ON BOARD' badge.

That's right people.

This fucking birthday, is on board.

Sorry for the swearing again Mum, I got overexcited at the thought.

There are a few hiccups in this plan to work out before it's launched by the Government:

1) Who is more entitled to a seat, should it come to it - Baby on Board or Birthday on Board. They have nine months of priority sitting, you have 1 blimin day. But over a lifetime, you could have, like, 80 days of sitting, but then they could have shit loads of children. It's tough. Opinions welcome.

2) Regulation. Who will police this? I suggest that we hire someone to police both badges, seeking out passports to confirm birthdays and performing ultrasounds to confirm pregnancies.

3) I think if someone sits opposite you, they should have to say 'Happy birthday to you!' or they get fined. The same person who checks passports and performs ultrasounds can issue fines. All in all, it's a full time position, which is supporting the economy.

THEN I THOUGHT (And this is where it gets deep), hang on just a teeny weeny second here. Birthday rewards from society.

Let's say that every five years or so, from 18, the Government rewards you for being a good little sheep, for going along with it all. If you've not, you know, robbed a bank, stabbed a stranger, or microwaved a cat, David Cameron recognises your commitment to helping society chug along nicely. Maybe a floral vase, M&S vouchers. Ooooohh money.

AND THEN I THOUGHT, Wow, I should really sleep more.

That's deep, man.

The worst thing that can happen to you on a train journey, is an aisle table seat. You can't look at the person opposite, to the side, or diagonal to yourself. It's one of the rules of being British. You also can't look at the reflections of everyone in the window.

So, if like me, you get travel sick when attempting any activity, you look at the table in question. But then I think, do I look weird, like this? Having a staring contest with an inanimate object? Do I? So I look up. Oh no! Right into the eyes of the man across the way! So I look to the right, argh! More Eyes. And on it goes. Until everyone is thinking the same thing, 'look at that poor girl and her epilepsy.'

ALSO

I would like to share my revelations for the New Year:

As I get older I find that I have more questions, but am less bothered by how elusive the answers always are (stick that on a coaster). I'm learning to accept my own clumsiness, and the inevitability of a lifetime apologising for it. I know that I will lose approximately four pairs of gloves a year. I'm starting to discover that I'm not always right, which is as illuminating as it is gutting. Oh, and I can't predict the future, but I can learn not to think on it so much, and let it unravel in it's own time.

Oh, and resolutions...drink more water blah blah blah....don't be as fat yada yada yada. Write more. Much More, you lazy sod. World peace via one sub standard story at a time. Find out how to get a tan. Is this possible due to Casperitous? Research. Stay loose. Have already been quite loose. And I don't mean loose about the pants.

Erica Jong is still the best female writer. Ever. Admittedly closely stalked by Margaret Atwood, Nicole Krauss and Jeanette Winterson. (Sorry Mum) but she writes about sex, and disaster, and coping with loss, and enduring who you are with the most exhilarating clarity. I like that in 1995 'Fear of Flying' was labelled pornography. But is my modern day bible, which continues to support me more than any religion ever could. (Sorry God).

Regrets - achieving a friction burn in my sleep from a plane seat

-Dislocating thumbs whilst brushing teeth (stop doing this to me you rogue thumb bastards.)

-Forcep scar, which although inflicted on me more than 24 years ago, still remains a point of great sadness.

-Not fully heating that chicken pie.

-Spending small fortune on Berocca. Is not me on a good day, is me on a normal day, only now, with a lot less money. THANKS.

To be continued......I find myself awfully reflective....

Gymtastic

So I went to the gym last night (I know, I know you can't improve on perfection), and I was attacked, that's right, attacked, by the ghost of Michael Jackson.

Firstly, I'll set the scene. The gym at work is in the basement. It is a place set up purely as a murder location. There is a box of white chalk ready for CSI. There's hardly ever anyone there but me. Which makes me really angry when anyone does think of turning up. It's pretty much my private gym, so stay out of my private gym you bastard!

In my own, private gym , if you want to run on a treadmill, you run at the wall. It's very nice. You have to jerk your neck around every five minutes to make sure you're not about to be murdered, because it could happen at any time. There's a lot of old, dusty machines, the whir of the air con, and you, practically murdered.

So, I went into the changing room last night, and there was a pile of ladies clothes, and some neatly folded pants. I was like, 'Who the frick is using my gym, and why have they removed their pants?!' I got ready, and walked into the gym. There was no one in the gym! Theory one - Shape shifter. (Documentaries like True Blood show that Shape shifters remove their clothes before shifting). Theory two - Invisible woman. No other theories at present time.

I was having an enjoyable bike ride, when 15mins in, all the lights go off. Complete darkness. And what song comes on at that exact second? I'll tell you - it was a Michael Jackson song. I pretended that everything would be okay, and continued to pedal. But then I realise, that even beyond the desperate plea of the room, I was now, technically requesting to be murdered.

Adding insult to injury, many people came in and out of the changing room (which I could only hear). Now, they are either having a quiet shit in the toilet of MY PRIVATE GYM, which means they are all dirty, shitty scum. Or, they are playing clothes swap. If it's the latter, whose clothes does the first woman wear? I was also very concerned that they thought my clothes were involved. Luckily, this was not the case.

I did some very stressful sit ups, and after each one, sprawled out on the carpet exhausted. I kept adjusting my shorts. And I sang along to a lot of Brit-ney. I then realised, after three weeks of this ritual, there are security cameras. Security have always been very friendly to me. Now, I know why.

I am currently developing a new, organic language for everyone. These words have very naturally occurred in conversations and you may utilise them:

Minggyner (pron Ming-gyn-er) (Meaning - that is disgusting)
Use: That is minggyner!

Minggyne (pron Ming-gyne) (Meaning - that's worse than disgusting)
Use: That is 100% minggyne

Piscuit (pron Piss-kit) (Can only be used in phrase: That takes the piscuit! Something which takes the piss, and also the biscuit.

Horrendie (pron whore-end-I) (Meaning - totally horrendous)
Use: What you're wearing is horrendie!

Thanks for listening.

'To die would be a great adventure' - Captain Hook

The highlight of my life for the last few mornings has been the giant rabbit on Wellington Street. Tis true, this vision may be a sign of my rapidly declining mental state, but it's very vivid. The bunny is hopping about the road as I approach, paws (paws?) full of leaflets, and then a very timid, female voice says, 'Morning.' And I think, finally, after years of attempted meditation and botched daisy chains, I am at one with nature.

I've also started to sleep with gloves on, after a beautician grabbed my hands with horror, and we looked upon there poor withered state. The whole thing is much to Ginger Beard's delight, as he got a photo of me, tucked up in bed, white, cotton gloves plump with moisturiser. Yes, while other girlfriends are refraining from shaving their legs and tash, and burping with relish, I'm keeping the good ol' love alive. He said, 'Great one for Facebook'. But he doesn't have facebook. Who does he think I am? Some schmuck who would fall for anything? I wagged my hot finger at him. 'I think not son, I think not.'

For those wishing to follow me around (for surely I have reached A-list celebrity status. I can be found most Monday evenings, semi-drowning my way to fifty laps at the Morley Gym pool. The more people that join in, the less we look like Olympic swimmers and the more we appear as traffic congestion on the M1, catching limbs, arching our backs to avoid contact, growling and splashing away. The Government are desperate to have us all touching one another. Be it on the sardine commuter train, or the thin lanes of the pool, they are eager to see brushes of skin, scratches and shared breath. Is the world shrinking? There doesn't seem enough room for us all even now. I'd have more room paddling in my bath.

In more exciting news, one is off to Thailand for a ruddy good adventure. My suicidal plan is to leave it as flights booked to Bangkok and nothing else, wing it, que sera, sera. The known has become too known. I know how to live in a nice flat, and drive a clio, and wear gloves to bed, but I want to know about Ping Pong shows, and floating markets, and the golden Buddha, and diarrhoea after buying lunch from street sellers. *Sigh*. Tis time to take a risk. After all, better to die in Thailand, than in Butlins.

My relationship with Erica.

Erica Jong is a bad influence. She is the embodiment of carpe diem, at its most desperate. Reading her words will find you sabotaging everything for the smallest chance of discovering something better. Addictive. potentially threatening to a stable state of mind. I am drawn to 'Fear of flying' often. It is my bible, and my cocaine. It deserves to be re-read, to have its chapters plucked at random, to end up dog eared and bent, to be gasped at on the train, and lovingly stroked, and slapped to the floor.

She is my favourite female writer. I adore and loathe her. I will never write as well. I hold her books and I despair. The sheer brilliance of Erica, is that she tells the bone-deep truth. The kind of secrets we can't even admit to ourselves, she brazenly exhibits and languorously entertains for pages. I blush through this book, realising myself, realising that this is what it sounds like when you denounce fear.

I need to bottle it, and drink it.

Each chapter is a different dare. You will start to over-analyse yourself. You will think endlessly on all the things you're not doing, the adventures you're not having, and crave them all the more. And therein lies the itch, the restless twitch. In 'Fear of Flying' Isadora (who is Erica, shrouding her real life under the term 'fiction'), gives in to hers. She is a dramatic mess, but dancing on the knife edge of life throughout. What if we began to give into our every whim, no matter the consequence, no regard for the moral compass in the moment, only instantly after to be terrorised by guilt, regret, despair. Erica risks for me, and I feel the pull. To live with such disregard, all for those few seconds of adrenaline, and then have reality bleed in and burn.

Her perspective is striking, her perils humiliating. She has time to share the gory details, and you have not heard it told this way before.

I could read this book and forget myself entirely. Escapism at its most corrupt.

I can't even categorise this as a book review. It's a way of life. I despise her for polluting my mind with possibility. I blame her. And now I have to go and read something I don't believe in, just to balance it out.

Rock and/or Roll

Thank you for all of your imaginary comments. It's really coming across; this overwhelming desire that my readers have, to be like me. I thought I'd provide you with an essential checklist, a checklist which should you choose to loyally follow, will create you anew in my image. Yet a warning young, impressionable reader: this is not a quest for the faint hearted.


1. Subconsciously be tricked by your mother into being a fat child. Have her sing you a lullaby most nights, including the line 'I will bake a cake, for my Gemma dear, when she does awake.' Always wake up wanting cake. Find cake. Destroy that cake.

2. Get your nose pierced by a stoned man in the back of a dodgy jewellers when you're fourteen. You will forever have a bumpy scar from the mess he made of your face. Your nose will hate you, and in apt revenge, always have a cold.

3. Your first thought when the sun's out - 'Great, I can get loads of washing done.'

4. Get a black eye the cool way. Have a conversation walking backwards in a leisure centre. Decide to turn around just in time to meet the metal gym bar. Congratulate your street self.

5. Steal some sweets and get chucked out of brownies. For reasons why see 'Cake Lullaby'.

6. Dislocate jaw. Terrify everyone in A&E with your disfigured facial bones, and inability to swallow.

7. Try to kill your examiner on every driving test, at least once.

8. Be a tomato at the gym, and try to wear a pink crop top - the combination is dashing.

9. Realise that your mother is one of your best friends. And that this is not because of a shortage of friends, but because of your mother.

10. Realise that this is starting to sound like Baz Luhrmann's 'Sunscreen' song. DANCE.

11. Dye your hair fluorescent pink. Let it fade to orange. It goes with your acne.

12. Get a perm at thirteen. It really is as bad as you remember.

13. Find a wild Gingerbeard in the woods. Train it. Educate it. Let it pretend to be a doctor.

Sort yourself out love

Oh the delightful month of January, where we are forced into a kind of reluctant ambitiousness; I will drink more water, and keep in touch with old friends, and I will spend less. I say start with the small things and work backwards; I will retain all four of my limbs, get in a good eight hours every night with my television, and I will spend a disproportionate amount of mirror time working on my photo face. Step it up in February, stop biting people. By March you'll have learnt to use coasters, arranged the DVDs alphabetically, and even turned off the odd light in a room you're not using! Well done you!

I've yet to achieve a resolution, yes, not a single one of the slimy buggers. And that's because we're pressured to make a whole list, a blabbering, bullet-pointed, badgering list of improvements. This year, I'm going for one, so that their pestering voices aren't competing for room, and I can focus. And that's to keep this blog going for the entire year. Even though, I know, it's basically a self-indulgent diary, which leaves Ginger Beard waiting for the day our personal life slowly seeps in and he has to go into Witness Protection.

I urge you to do the same, and something, you know, like remotely attainable. Or else we're all just a bunch of unrealistic wishful thinkers who never change much of much. And don't let the cheeky ones bludgeon their way in as the months drag on, where you think, might as well achieve world peace and feed the hungry while I'm at it. One clear, reasonable goal. Then you can have yourself a smug, victory party in December, because for a whole twelve months, you have managed to wear clean underwear. (Aimed at no one in particular. You know who you are.)

So go forth my thrill seeking, hormonal little readers, and at least for this year - sort yourself out love.

xx

For the adventurous.....

I'll tell you what I've been doing instead of writing; calling my parents because I miss them, drinking a lot of banana milkshake, reading Erica Jong's sexually charged poetry, listening to Laura Marling, fighting to fall asleep, developing my relationship with Play.com, enjoying my winter morning walk, thinking about Anne Frank again, trying to decide what I want to do with my life afterall.

Nanowrimo is reluctant awakening. Tim Minchin read in a book somewhere that if you're too open minded, your brain will fall out. There is a definate loosening in this whole process, and you become suddenly suseptible to more than just an onslaught of written words. I also think that having a plan for once, a goal, an ambition, can make you realise that for the past year you've been casually exisiting, without so much as a shiver in any direction. And it's encouraging that anything else is produced, alongside paying bills, and shots at the bar, and matching socks. I don't want to get up one morning and realise that my whole life was just a series of eventful Novemeber's. That's why I'm going to keep this blog up, into December, and onwards through the New Year.

2011 is the year I try. Short stories, poetry, my lonely left behind Novel of 08. It's always best to catch your regrets before they catch up with you. I urge everyone to remember that one thing they used to be desperate to do, and do it. No more excuses. I think by now, most of us have realised that easy was never going to be an option. It's not retail, or teaching, or printing lottery tickets, or car finance. I want to write. So I'm going to start by finishing Nanowrimo, despite being so behind, and end up with a pile of manuscripts. And so are you, with whatever you once wanted. I dare you.