a real conversation I heard

him: in his mid 50s, probably, sort of dad age, but did not necessarily appear to be an actual dad. not the kind of dad you would want, anyway. he looked like he used to have a ponytail until very very recently. his whole bearing and the way he even moved his head and shoulders seemed like he used to have a ponytail. he had a "peruvian" shirt (blue and purple stripes) on, and Black Jeans, and closed shoes, thanks god (he seemed like he would have clammy white feet with horrible toenails). i couldnt at all tell where he was from, sort of american but also south african. he looked like a visiting sociology lecturer at UKZN, a lot.
her: sort of early thirties, the bad kind of curly hair made even worse by mousse. lots of crisp curls brushing the face. lime green vest. bootleg jeans and a long bum.

they didnt seem to know each other very well. they didnt know anything at all about each other's lives. at first i thought maybe life coach (her) and coachee, but she talked so much NONSENSE about HERSELF that I realised it couldnt be that. I don't know what they were. If they are pals from work then I don't know how the hell they would ever be able to look each other in the face at meetings and things.

her: I'm never having sex outside of a committed relationship again.
him: i really admire you for that
her: it's been eighteen days
him: EIGHTEEN DAYS!
her: eighteen days not having sex with self or others
him: truly, i admire you for that

(slight pause where I went deaf with embarrassment)

her: the last guy I was with wasn't attractive enough for me

(slight pause where I went deaf because I was thinking WELL HE MUST HAVE BEEN A REAL DOG THEN BECAUSE JUST LOOK AT YOU so loudly)

her: my biggest thing is how you reject people in a nice way. like this guy, i know he's into me, how do i reject him in way that leaves him feeling good about himself? that's my biggest challenge. but how do i do that when i just don't find him attractive?
him: well, you could just not tell him that bit. you don't have to tell him that it's because you don't find him attractive.
her: why not? why can't i tell him that? that's dishonest. i just want to be honest.

(slight pause where i went deaf because jesus christ)

her: his name's dan. danny. danny mills. his sister is heather mills. not THE heather mills though.

(slight pause where I remembered that joke that goes "what's got three legs and lives on a farm?" "heather mills and paul mccartney")

him: you know, my soulmates profile says that i crave the moment of connectedness. I've had more than one woman write to me and say that I've reaffirmed her faith in the male sex.
her: uh huh. uh huh. see this (pulls shirt tight over tummy. it does look weirdly fat)? this is why I'm going to see my GP. I'm not digesting my food properly.

there was other stuff as well but these were the highlights.

they were both terrible, but she was so infinitely worse. i wanted to lean over to him and clarify that we were both aware that she was the worst person he had ever talked to in his life.

YESTERDAY WAS ONE MONTH OF NO SMOKINGS

ONE MONTH!
here are some things i wish i had been told when i decided to stop:
1. you will get a bit fatter. you just will. you are not the exception to this rule and oh come on you have been eating popcorn and gummy sweets for a month what did you expect.
2. the worst part is, when you realise this, you won't be able to have a million cigarettes in order to calm yourself down. you won't be able even to have ONE.
3. you'll eat so many gummy sweets you'll give yourself a hole in your back tooth.
4. you'll get so grumps you will be able to flick through the march issue of american vogue and say a terrible cutting thing about every single person on every single page.
5. you'll get into such a feverish state about not being able to smoke when you're done eating that you'll chew like a pack of gum a day.
6. you'll become a real expert on different kinds of gum .
7. you'll go through jars and jars of horrible instant decaf coffee.
8. despite all the CRAP you are eating, and despite the fact that you are so ratty you are basically poisoned from the inside, your skin will GLOW. you will become a person of glowing skin.
9. this will only make you realise how terrible your skin was before, which will send you into another decline, and another session of just rubbishing every model in the same issue of american vogue, except really going for it this time and making other people look at how HIDEOUS THEY ALL ARE.
10. you'll just stop getting hangovers. they just go away. this will be totally pointless, because having drinks and then not being able to smoke sucks so much that you will basically have quit drinking as well.
11. you'll realise that your terrible circulation wasn't just because your constitution is shit. your terrible circulation was from smoking all the time, and now it's amazing.
12. it's totally worth it, as long as you don't ever ever think about how much you miss it, because you're just going to miss it all the time.
13. it is worth it though.

we nearly missed the train

in what I must say was a real turn up for the books, I was an hour early at the station, and roms just, just, just made it. He had the tickets so if he didn't get there in time, I couldn't have gone either. conventional wisdom says that out of me and rom, he would be the person more likely to print out the tickets efficiently and then be on time at the station. but it's not true! conventional wisdom lied! would his excuses were:
1. he missed his train
2. oh and he missed his bus also

Here are how his smses went (our train was at 8:50):
1. 7:13 am - "I'm awake!"
2. 8:40 am - "I'm so fucking anxious. K go there and I'll try and run. But still no sign of a train so I dunno"
3. 8:43 am - "Oh my god. The train is getting here in one minute. This is some kind of ridiculous movie."

By this point i had given up and was sitting on the floor reading my book, feeling very disappointed because I had even bought nice sweets for out train journey.
But then he made it! he came screeching round the corner very flustered indeed, and i jumped up with my bags and my sweets and my books and we hopped on to the train JUST as it was leaving.
it was VERY EXCITING.
you can see how excited i am in these pictures. those things on my fingers are rings, from our giant bag of Train Sweets.

i look really old in both of these photos. i hope its just the lighting otherwise what did i stop smoking for then?

simon's pictures are of a very slightly higher quality than mine

on saturday me and rom went to oxford to see simon

we were standing in this poster shop called blackwell's looking at which pictures i would buy to put on my wall if i had any money at all, and there was one banksy one, and i said, "oh jesus i *hate* banksy", and rom said, "it's just Typical that you would hate banksy. that is a Typical Rosie move."
i dont think that's true at all, but what is actually true is that here is a Typical Rom move.
number of years i have known roms: i think probably three
number of times i have seen him make this exact face: one million

NO ONE WAS GOING TO LOOK AT IT ANYWAY

but rom has insisted i do this

and meanwhile we continue to be more confused than anything else

this is the face he made when everyone went "awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww". rom found it for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFRGGLRszOY

socks

everyone in south africa seems like they're having so much fun, even people that i had previously thought were Robots.  it really does seem like the whole country is very happy and into it, which is so nice. football is such a different thing here. people take it desperately seriously, especially where I live, and you sort of worry much more about how badly they will take it if england doesnt win. which of course they won't. 

on saturday we went to go watch england and america at this pub called the abbey down the road from my house. the abbey is about as Cool as it gets in north london, which is not very, but still there were loads of vibey people with haircuts and pants and bags and things. in other words, it was packed with the kind of people that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be REALLY SERIOUSLY into football.

well.

at the beginning of the match there was a vague crowd shot and the camera lingered a bit lovingly on David Beckham's excited little face, and everyone in the abbey clapped and clapped and clapped. just at the sight of his face. he wasn't even playing, just sitting there in his little suit and watching. and they weren't doing it in a way of cool clapping. they were doing it in a way of let's all give this great man the respect he deserves. and then when america scored a goal and DB jumped to his feet in horror looking very sad, the entire crowd again clapped and went "awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."

that's how into it they were. they lost it at the mere sight of david beckham. I'm very interested to see what happens when the country's hopes are dashed yet again. 

if i was writing a letter now i would say

"and meanwhile i continue to feel like i am missing out a bit by not being there, and hope that everyone keeps having such a sweet time.

Yours as ever,

Rosie"

and meanwhile we continue to live like () and have ()

there is a bit at the end of one of kingsley amis's letters where he is talking about his ex-wife and he says "and meanwhile i continue to live a charmed life, and have not once clapped eyes on the bitch."

which is of course a terrible thing to say, but i like how it sort of looks. 

and then the other day i was reading the newspaper and there was this review of a book of letters by someone, and in one bit of the letters this man says "and meanwhile we continue to live like the most contemptible wastrels, and (something something else Dissipated)."

which is of course lame and Bohemian, but still i like how it looks.

and then yesterday i was reading the papers again and there was a very boring interview with someone where they said that their best superpower would be being invisible. 

and i said oh jesus i hate it when people say that, because as if being invisible wouldn't be the worst thing ever. you would definitely hear terrible things, and also it would be very boring and frightening. and then we were talking about what really we would like to be able to do.

and i said time travel. and dan said that he would like to be able to learn and remember everything. and mae said she would like to be able to open her mouth and have money pour out. and dan said oh jesus yes that would be the best, I'm tired of us living like fucking mice in a box.

which i thought was really a great thing to say.

So if i was writing a letter now i would end by saying:

"and meanwhile we continue to live like mice in a box, and are unable to even think of buying anything at all.

Yours as ever,

Rosie"

really i am so broke. these are Lean Times.

actually it's more likely that I would end the letter like this:

"and meanwhile we continue to live like mice in a box, and the problem is that I'm having such a nice time that this doesn't worry me at all.

Yours as ever,

Rosie

PS SEND MONEY"

mae and dan can't think of a name for their baby yet

So there has been a lot of me sitting around looking at baby name books and reading out the dumbest names and saying, "Why don't you call it Duff? Why don't you call it Boone? Why don't you just call it Gary?"

and then Mae will say, "Well why don't YOU just call it that?" and so it goes back and hilariously forth.

the other day i said, "Listen, why don't you just call it Bart?" which made me laugh for ages, and then dan told me how his dad has this pal called Bart Simpson, ("The Simpsons wasnt a thing when he was born") which made me laugh for ages and ages more. Here's mae on the heath. If you look not even very closely at all, you'll see an old topless woman sitting behind her. This is typical. Everyone at the women's pond is sort of my age or younger, or else old like this lady. No one is middle aged. It gives you quite a warped idea of The Different Ages Of Woman.

What we ate for lunch that day: apples and peanut butter sandwiches and tea in a flask

a big thing on the news today was a Near Fatal fox attack in a house near where rom lives

This fox came came into these people's house and had a pretty good go at eating up their babies. it all seems a bit red riding hood-ish and made up to me, but really it is true. Me and simon and rom saw a huge dog sized fox eating something out the bin a while ago. Apparently they are the scourge of hackney. they're okay now, the babies. the mum seems quite upset. she said:

“I think they are just vermin. They’re always there in the garden. You can hear them at night fighting or making love."

it's so amazing that she calls it that.

Here are some pictures of the canal quite near the scene of the crime. We went for a walk there yesterday evening. 

number of fox sightings: zero

number of houses i would like to live in sightings: one million

obviously everyone at the women's pond would be very proud to announce that they arrived here by bike

This is what it looks like as you walk in

I could just go on and on like this

This is the men's bathing pond at hampstead heath. me and mae have been going to the women's one a lot. The differences between the two are all the ones you would think of, I spose. The men's one is fulled of tanned and smoking gays, and there is a strong sense of We Might Just All Be Here To Have Sex. The women's one is not at all like that. it's not that there aren't a lot of lesbians (there really are), it's just that it's much more earnest and sincere and We Are DEFINITELY Here To Go Swimming. Everyone is reading. 

Things I have seen people reading:

1. A textbook from the Royal Veterinary College

2. Sarah Waters 

3. 100 Outdoor Swims in Great Britain

4. Wolf Hall

5. Healing Through Cranial Osteopathy

5. A Karen Armstrong book about Buddha

7. Jeanette Winterson

8. A book from the Royal Homeopathic Hospital

9. A biography of vita sackville west

There is a woman there every day called The Tinnitus Lady (reading: 100 outdoor swims). She is like something out of an irritating play. You can see that she has decided to become an eccentric in her old age. She wears an adorable straw hat and adorable little plimsolls and a black dress from whistles. Every day at the same time she drinks a teeny little bottle of champagne with lots of smacking of lips and satisfied faces. Basically she is just visibly enjoying being a rich bonkers old woman in a way that gets me down.

She objects strenuously to anyone using their phones in the meadow ("I have tinnitus") or smoking ("I'm extremely irritating"). She does quite stretchy yoga right smack in the middle of where everyone sits. This is terrible to say, but you can sort of see she is one of those people who is much too into the sort of quirks narrative of their lives. lots of doing stuff so she can tell people what a sweetly dotty and yet still flinty intellectual she is ("i said to her, i said, you simply cannot smoke here. and then i drank my champagne and lay with my face to the sun"). 

the other day she whinged for about ten minutes about some girl waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down from her using her cellphone, and then to show everyone what a nice person she really was, she "engaged" this black girl (reading: the homeopathy book) in conversation and told her IN A VERY LOUD VOICE how much she looked like corrine bailey rae ("you must get that all the time" "...not really").

But despite all the hardships, we soldier on. The main thing about the women's pond is that it is really really great.

maybe this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen

every attempt to take a picture of my street just ends up looking like a car advert

I don't really know why. You don't at all notice the cars when you are taking the picture, and then you take it and it's just some blurry trees and an extremely clear image of a moving Volkswagen. be that as it may, this is the flash end of my street. i live on the very not flash end.

It just goes on like this for ages and ages

a not great picture of a really great guy

he was smoking like a train. and he had three dogs, and no shirt. he is one of those people that i hope has a nice girlfriend.

today we went to hampstead heath

the young one's dog was called Ernie. The old one's dog was called Napoleon. I find that very telling.