To abstinent friends

Let us put our regrets to bed now and wake up innocent and free on the morning of the new year.

"With a little time, and a little more insight, we begin to see both ourselves and our enemies in humbler profiles. We are not really as innocent as we felt when we were first hurt. And we do not usually have a gigantic monster to forgive; we have a weak, needy, and somewhat stupid human being. When you see your enemy and yourself in the weakness and silliness of the humanity you share, you will make the miracle of forgiving a little easier."
Lewis B. Smedes

Predictions

This year better be better than last.

We are gathered here today

Please will some one buy me all the Rick Owens spring summer collection? I am enjoying my last two days of carbs before my new year attempt at the high pro food plan.

Bored

When I used to say to my mum 'I'm bored' she used to reply 'well, you must be boring then!'. The great thing about being an adult is that you can tell people to F*ck Off with out being in danger of a slap (if you are reasonably circumspect). This is a truly dull time of year - Christmas is at best like a row of Sundays and I have no energy or inspiration to motivate myself. I will try and do a new moon / new year spell later this evening to rustle up a little glamour and excitement. The one thing that cheers me up about this season is that it is an excellent to create wish lists for the new year.

Wake up and smell the .........

I was just thinking about falling asleep and I suddenly became really excited about the fact that in only 7 hours I can have coffee! Hurray - it really is my second thought of each day, the first is, 'Damn it, I lived through the night!' and then I think 'but what almost makes up for that is now I can have coffee - brilliant!'

Fair warning

Winter solstice is nearly upon us - apparently more babies are concieved during the solstice and immediatley after than at any other time of year. It is also a time of depression and despair - feelings of emptiness and futility are common (all year round in my case) but fear not the shortest day is due after which things are going to get better.. well after christmas and new year which is always a bind and then January is normally a washout. I always think my new (post resolution) life will begin in January but it never does... but you know just hang on in there ..

End of an era

Betty Page dies of a heart attack at 85. The finest pinup girl ever to pose has gone to the great centre fold in the sky.

It’s raining on my house and non of the others

These antidepressants aren’t working! Its my last day of work today at least until January and instead of feeling joy, relief or even (god forbid) a sense of achievement I feel apathy, darkness and despair. It might be the full moon or old demons tempting me back. I’d like to lie here figuring myself out but fortunately or unfortunately I have a dog to walk.

My hands are tied

I saw this guy who used to go out with a woman I knew – he was a jerk (creepily tall) and she (creepily short) deserved him. He bought her over the elbow Prada leather gloves. He liked to tie her up with black ribbon when they had sex and get this – he couldn’t come unless she had stilettos on! So there he was in the Liberty Christmas sale this evening trawling around ladies’s wear with this woman who had identical straw coloured hair to my acquaintance. I thought it was her for a minute but actually she was even more worn out looking when she turned around. I had this urge though to run over to her and tell her that she was one of many, that his routines were transferable and that she might consider kicking him to the kerb while she still had a little dignity left in tacked. That he is hung up with his mother and can’t get over his x-wife and that her ‘dear jane’ letter was in the post. Two things this world does not lack though – complete wanker’s and women that will go out with them.

Where are they now?

Mostly in jail actually, I found this amazing Manson Family reunion episode of some hideous talk show on you tube though. The thing is if I had to choose between the audience and the family .......well all I can say is you can see how it happened.

In the bleak midwinter

Damn it's gloomy, alongside a bad attitude and glass half empty demeanour I also fear that I suffer from that SAD complex. The cold is one thing - I am quite capable of putting on an APC cardy and a bit of Eve Lomb kissmix but the grey skies are killing me. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't know the overcast is gonna last - till mid March.

There will be blood

Despite last nights musings on activism I awoke today in the real world of Liberty bed clothes and petty bourgeois concerns like chipped nail varnish and ingrowing hairs. Call me old fashioned but I will not pay some one £45 to humiliate me with a tub of hot wax. Thanks to Nair stripless hot wax, patience and my fundamentally cheap nature I have learnt to do my own bikini wax. Its only £6 a tub which equals about 10 Brazilians or 8 Hollywood’s depending on my mood, either way it adds up to huge savings in my beauty budget.

I love the New York Korean nail salons in the lower east side where it is possible to get a manicure and pedicure for $20! Even poor people have pedicures in the US – over here it means that you have either come up trumps on a scratchcard or you are getting married. I did once make the mistake of letting one of these Korean salons have a go at more than my nails and that was a once only mistake! I decided and even while I was saying it, part of me was yelling ‘shut the fuck up’ to have a full on porno bikini wax because it was like $20 or some kind of a price that should have raised the alarm. I can’t quite piece together too many of the details but basically this evil bitch who I realised way to late had probably been a hench woman for some Korean dictator back in the day, ripped out every single public hair I owned all at once with some filthy rag. Then (it gets worse) as I was loosing consciousness with the pain, she started plucking out bits she had missed from my bloodied pubis with some rusty tweezers. It was the Guantanamo Bay of New York City Beauty Salons. I couldn't even look down for a week – the weight of a gaze would have been too much to bear. So fingers and toes only from now on. The point of this post was actually to share with you all that I have found a fabulous cheap nail salon in Soho where you can have a manicure from as little as £10. Its a cute salon called Glams of Soho, 30 Windmill Street opposite the clip joints.

Before and after

Just reading up on the Red Army Faction post movie and I came across this incredible article. As well as suggesting that the 'organised suicide' of the three imprisoned members of the group in Stammheim the top security jail where they were being held and tried was infact state authorised murder the author Richard Huffman discusses the following discovery.

'Late in 2002 it was discovered that Dr. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist from at the University of Madgeburg, had been keeping Ulrike Meinhof’s brain in a jar in the corner of his office. Bogerts had been studying the brain off and on for five years trying to determine why a young, well-off, successful mother of two would throw away all vestiges of her happy life and sink into a morass of violence.' The Gun Speaks The Baader-Meinhof at the Dawn of Terror

A good idea poorly executed

Baader –Mienhof Complex :This movie was so good I can’t remember if it was subtitled or not. Very interesting story about the group of activists in 1970’s Germany who spearheaded a revolutionary movement against all manner of political injustice. As with many revolutions it did go tits up pretty early on . Incredible food for thought though – I think we should all protest a little bit more. Click here to see the trailer. I have always been interested in women who get caught up in this kind of thing, Patti Hurst, the Manson women and so on – there is a moment in the movie where Ulrike Mienhof crosses the line and joins the RAF (not that RAF) and although part of me just wanted her to walk away I could really see why she chose to take her chances.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

When I didn’t have a job I was really worried about money, I had too much time on my hands and no real sense of purpose. Now I have a job I am anxious, short tempered and resentful. I am on week 7 of a 10 week contract – it’s the first time in my life since I was 5 that I have actually looked forward to Christmas!

Christmas cake

Like wedding cake only cheaper! Actually I didn’t have a wedding cake at my Last Vegas wedding, strange because I love cake more than I loved him. However, I have made up for that sorry Bruce Springsteen inspired tragedy in three ways, divorce, staying single and buying my own wedding cake one slice at a time from Fortnum’s. Christmas cake – proper Christmas cake, not those dodgy chocolate logs with little plastic Robbins on them is exactly the same thing as wedding cake and I love it. As a child I always adored it although I could never be bothered with the actual cake I just liked the marzipan and royal icing. Now I am mature I eat the whole thing. Its fantastic and so many calories in just one slice you don’t have to go to the trouble of eating again all day.

Insanity

The triumph of hope over experience

Dark Cherry Mocha

Yuk

Sunday morning, brings the dawn in

My Chihuahua and I spend our Sunday mornings taking our favourite stroll around Mayfair. We walk down Jermyn Street and enter the plague pit latterly known as Green Park via a secret passage in front of the Stamford Hotel. We march all the way up to Hyde Park corner then follow the path to the Piccadilly entrance carefully averting our eyes away from the vulgar paintings displayed there. We cross Piccadilly and enter Shepherds Market via Down Street with its old disused underground station. Passing through the market we go east to Berkeley Square stopping at Starbucks on the way. Sitting on a bench in the square we feed pigeons, taking special care to give extra to any particularly scruffy or sick looking birds (we love an underdog) and share a muffin. The dog doesn’t drink skinny latte but occasionally has an espresso cup of tap for hydration. Later we cross Berkeley Square and enter Mount Street, there we divert into the Farm Street gardens and re-emerge on Mount Street pretty much opposite Marc Jacobs. We look in the window at Marc, then Balenciaga, then Louboutin. I read the menu at Scott’s every week to see if they have improved their vegetarian options at all. Every week I shriek YUK at the Stargazzy Pie (little fish heads set in pastry staring upwards – fuck that!) We march back over the north end of Berkeley Square to Bruton Place which even on a Sunday when Margiela is closed still smells of the patchouli perfume they pump onto the street. We end up on the corner of Bond Street by Hermes who today were fixing enormous silver trees to the facade of the shop. Most of Bond Street was filled with commercial decorators attaching Christmas decorations to the front of the expensive stores in the drizzle this morning. By next Sunday it will look beautiful.

Halleluiah

Christmas has come early this year ladies (and gentlemen) David Duchovny is single! No woman deserves to have a man that sexy all to herself – not that Tea did – hence the divorce. It would appear that she is now getting the measure of Billy Bob Thornton – wishing you great success elsewhere Tea. She will be in rehab soon carrying a copy of ‘women who love too much’. It may be that she is attracted to the wrong type of men, I know I am. Once I asked a friend ‘Will I ever stop being attracted to sadistic sex addicts?’ his reply ‘Unlikely, but you may stop giving them your phone number.’

Take me back to Kansas : Part 1

Argg the grossest thing happened on the tube today – this creepy guy opposite was sitting pretty much on top of the woman next to him. All the length of his stubby leg was pressed all the way down hers in an other wise empty carriage. He was staring at me so I gave him a Paddington hard stare back and he screwed up his eyes and grabbed his crotch – Yuk. Then, when I got off the tube he followed me. Meaning he wasn’t with the woman that he had been pressing against and that dope had put up with it! He followed me to the ticket barrier and imagine his surprise when I yelled at the attendant ‘Hey that guy just grabbed his crotch on the tube’ he bolted of course. So long creep! I gave the attendant a sharp lecture on how since the Victorian Era was like so over , women must no longer be seen as targets for such impropriety and should be able to travel alone undisturbed.

Dr Foster

Its official summer is over (oh how we laughed) and the bad weather is here. The heating is on and Starbucks will be serving lattes in disturbing red holiday cups from the end of the month. On the top of my list of wants is a pair of platform YSL boots (£600 from Liberty) on the top of my list of needs, pair of Hunter wellies £50 from Post Mistress. One look in my wallet tells me that needs will prevail ........

Perchance to dream

Sleep is my favourite thing of all; I am yet to have a waking experience that compares to the blissful absent abandon of sleep. Staying asleep is no problem for me but falling asleep is another matter. Last night exhausted I hopped into bed, pulled down my sleep mask and...............buzz -buzz, busy, pointless, repetitive thoughts started to tap on my mind. I tried to chloroform myself with lavender oil on a Liberty handkerchief to no avail. Eventually I had to take a Melatonin which is a herbal (well its legal in 34 states) sleeping med that I always request when friends are visiting America. The pill is supposed to activate a dream hormone that gets you off to sleep and it does definitely work for me. I dreamt about my friend’s boyfriend who is so lack lustre I don’t even consider her to be a friend anymore. I intend to learn how to have extraordinary magical dreams – Karl Lagerfeld says he has dreamt up entire collections while he slept! I want to tap into my inner creative spirit effortlessly and at least wake up with this weeks lottery draw embeded in my conscious mind.

Dress for success

New job starting on Monday hurray, being unemployed was getting to me, the hours are fabulous but the money sucks. Problem is that mooching around the house and walking the dog as an occupation has made me lazy in terms of dressing. Now I have to look professional and no, I do not mean like a night stalker. I need to appear business like and reliable. I am looking for something fashionable yet demure, long sleeves to cover the track marks and cut wrists will be a starting point. Revealing a predisposition to self harm can sometimes be a real ice breaker but it rarely inspires confidence in an employer....

Paris, je t'aime

I have watched Dans Paris twenty times this week and I think I have fallen in love with actor Romain Duris who plays a depressed photographer that mopes around in Balenciaga (would that we could – right?). Today I got the most beautiful A.P.C dress from the Autumn/ Winter collection which is pretty much all fabulous and best of all I am actually going to Paris in 13 (unlucky for some but not for me ) days time. I knew that the recent tunnel fire would bring ticket prices right down.

The lovely Miss Lazareanu

Divine Irina was no where to be seen in New York, London and Milan. Her agent was overheard telling the people at Chanel ‘I don’t know where she is, call her yourself’. I knew she’d show up in Paris, drugs are expensive after all. She did of course for Rick Owens and Yamamoto. But for the men and narcotics Irina has excellent taste.

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

Bien que mon amour soit fou,
Ma raison calme les trop vives douleurs de mon coeur,
Lui disantde patienter et d’esperer...............

Une erotomanc internee pendant plus cinquante ans

Though my love is insane
My reason calms the pain in my heart,
It tells me be patient and keep hoping ..........

An erotomaniac after 50 years of confinement

Fact is better than fiction

My ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others has seen me through some dark times thus far and it doesn’t fail me now. I just love that David Duchovny is as sleezy a sex addict in real life as his divine Californication character Hank. It somehow improves my chances of fucking him if only by a proton. Can’t wait for the new series to start in September.

I don’t normally do bald guys but........

I thought I might discuss religion this evening as the only programme on TV is ‘ Beauty queens gone wrong’. Personally, I think that these chicks had ‘gone wrong’ the minute they decided to parade about in little more than a spray tan discussing charitable works. Its Sunday tomorrow and I was thinking about maybe becoming religious, channelling Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene in the Passion of Christ. Ambiguity stepped in and I thought I would discuss Satanism and googled Anton LaVey instead. I found this great quote from him ‘its too bad stupidity isn’t painful’ which made me laugh but you know Anton was wrong about a few things including this, stupidity is just about the most painful thing of all.

Come on over to my place

This picture is the cover of the Playboy magazine published the month and year of my birth. God I hope the print is too small for the date to be read. They did actually have photography then but for some reason this cover is a painting. I love porn mags - not for the dodgy centrefolds but for their stand alone immorality and the flack the publishers took in regards to the censorship laws of the sixties which benefitted us all. I hate nudity personally – I think the human body is always a disappointment, even my precious Keanu goes to fat in between movies! I do love to watch Girls of the Playboy Mansion on Sunday nights. My favourite girl is Holly because she is desperately ambitious and has a dog that looks just like mine. I heard the following gossip from a freind in LA, Hef is a total pill head, yes they do all have to fuck him and one time they all got ass tightening ops for xmas! Its a strange set up that they have in the mansion but I think it will turn out like this in the end: Holly will marry Hef who will have a cast iron pre nup entitling her to around $50 when it goes tits up which it will in less than a year. All the girls will be thrown out during the drama and replaced by younger blonds. Bridget will have a successful TV and radio career and Kendra will be back on a street corner or earning dimes filming hardcore.

You just can't keep a good woman down

Well you can actually especially if you get them addicted to Crystal Meth. Perhaps this post should be entitled ‘you can’t keep a bad woman quiet’. I am just desperate to see this new HBO documentary Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal. The 2008 Los Angeles Film Festival – Official Selection documentary looks at what happened to Heidi once she completed 21 months of a 37 month jail sentence for pandering and tax evasion. Once at the top of her game providing $10,000.00 dates for the Hollywood elite, a radically downsized Heidi is now living in Nevada where brothels are legal working on her new projects, a brothel for women (with men in it methinks) and a laundromat called ‘Dirty Laundry’. If this woman gets off drugs she could run for office but by the look of things that won’t be anytime soon.

Todays meditation

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. Chuck Palihnuik

Most games are lost, not won.

I am steadfastly not watching the Olympics, sports bores the f*ck out of me frankly but human rights do not. How can our government and countless others turn a blind eye to Chinas atrocious political record. What about Tianamen Square ,what about Tibet and the world's highest number of executions? I know that Britain is less than squeaky clean but we ought to maintain some basic principles. Sport is supposed to be about fairplay afterall and you could write what the Chinese government knows about that on the back of a grain of rice.

In solitude where we are least alone

Lord Byron was so right with this one particularly when it comes to the cinema. One of my favourite treats is to go to the movies alone during the day. I love to sit in the darkness communing with the celluloid with out fidgety friends near by or worse people munching expensive popcorn and pick & mix. Why do people do that – eat food in cinema? My idea of a treat is to catch a movie – with maybe a diet coke to sip on and then take myself off to Maison B for tea and cake. I don’t want to recreate the darkness of childhood midnight snacks – sucking chocolate fingers with 25 teddies cowering against the night under flannelette bedding. Food in cinemas ought to be banned along with all talking and sitting directly in front of people except when absolutely necessary and then only if the perpetrator is short.

Women who love too much: Part 1

Marla Singer - chain smoking, suicidal, self help group addict, owner of nothing, wearer of vintage, lover of Tyler Durden. Helena Bonham Carters finest acting role although the best of her lines, ‘ I wanna have your abortion ‘ after shagging the Brad Pitt Tyler was changed to the less punchy, ‘ I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school ‘.

In death at last she sleeps alone

Said of Morgan le Fay upon her demise in the legend of Merlin and King Arthur. I love the story with all the Witches and their doomed magical children . I just watched the made for TV movie Merlin which is wonderful. The legend pretty much goes like this – Queen Mab makes Merlin who turns out to be good, she wants a pagan king - Merlin being a bore, wants a Christian king. Merlin contrives to make a good heir to the throne. Mab makes a bad one, born of the ever lovely Morgan. Bit of distraction re – Excalibur every one dies – typically mediocrity prevails. I might even go to Avalon at the weekend if it stops raining.

Cash is queen

I hate worrying about money it gets me down – if I ever do drag a blade across my own throat it will no doubt be as a result of financial despair. However this Dorothy Parker quote on cash cheered me up a bit ‘ If you want to know what god thinks about money just look at the people he gave it to.’

Lets get one thing straight

A drug addict friend of mine always says he can remember very little about the eighties, he goes on to say that he wishes he remembered less. If you think that you might have got married in Las Vegas one drunken weekend but you can’t quite remember then allow me to direct you to this fantastic site, sayitisn’ttrue.com. If you type in your name or someone else’s name into this page any marriages that took place in Nevada will come up. Bloody brilliant we should have this system worldwide– book mark the page on our i-phones and save ourselves a lot of bother. Of course its a bit of a bugger if the person who got married was you.

And then the angels forget to pray for us

I am so over it today. I was praying this morning ‘god, please give me a break, and stop me from being such a c*nt because it’s not helping’. I wonder how many people pray these days ... I think I know quiet a lot of people who do for reasons I won’t go into here but it seems like a kind of underground activity on the whole. Being a fear based individual I like it, I often sit in front of my little alter that is actually a plant holder and light an incense stick and a candle and try to make a connection. I have a loose interpretation of what it is I am praying to though, my god is like a greatest hits CD of what I consider to be the best bits of many faiths. I have a statue of Buddha – slim young Buddha not the fat smiley one. I have Kabala cards and a couple of other articles of faith. Some times I go to the Catholic Church on Leicester Square to light candles under the statue of Jesus. I love doing that it always reminds me of two things, Madonna in the Like a Prayer video and the nun rape scene in Bad Lieutenant.

Personality crisis

A man telephoned on Sunday evening. ‘I am in a psychiatric hospital’ he announced ‘will you visit me?’
‘Which one are you in?’
‘Between SW1 & SW5’
‘If you can find out the name of the hospital and the visiting hours, then perhaps I can visit’
‘I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE PHONED YOU!’

Men I used to love

I spent the evening playing around on Youtube, checking out all the men I used to love... all the black haired musicians that I desperately tried to get my teenage claws into. I really and truly thought I loved them at the time although in most cases I never knew them at all. I googled a few of them and most of the them are bald now – perhaps partly due to all that black hair dying that went on back in the gothic seventies. I can’t actually love bald men, if that makes me a bad shallow person then I am but it makes me think I probably never really loved them at all.

Critical thinking

By some bizarre twist of fate I am currently lecturing at a London University on the subject of Critical Thinking. How did this happen? – I ask myself every morning when I awake soaking in the sweat of my own inadequacy. In short some one offered me a job I wasn’t qualified to do on a day I was too broke to admit it. The upside of it all is that I am in fact a natural born critical thinker; I have always operated under the assumption that one should trust no one and question everything. What many have understood simply to be a disagreeable disposition is apparently a highly honed academic skill. Condensing a life time of eye rolling and eyebrow raising into 11 lectures has been a bit of a challenge but ‘ Constructing an argument ‘ was the module I was born to write.

Cecil Court

The other day walking my Chihuahua home from her after lunch stroll around the St Martins Hotel, we spotted a large speckled bird walking along the pavement near our home. I picked up my dog since she can be somewhat xenophobic and followed the bird as he marched confidently down the alley past the book shops, print shops and antiques. Despite his cheerful demeanour I was concerned that a feathery young man like him could very soon become the victim of misfortune in ‘the heart of London’s theatre district’. I over took him and called out to a friend from Brett’s bookshop on the corner. Richard a self confessed bird fancier sprung out of the shop and observed the bird who was now surrounded by Japanese tourists blinding him with their camera flashes. “Its a baby Seagull” he observed. The bird displeased with his sudden celebrity took off hastily towards Charing Cross Road. “We had better save him” I said fixing Richard with a hard stare. Richard stubbed out his roll up and took off after the Seagull who had dashed around the corner pursued by the happy snappers. I heard an angry squawk and Richard reappeared with the large bird under his arm. He was put in a box and a few hours later collected by the RSPCA and taken to a bird sanctuary in North London where he can complete his adolescence in safety. We called him Cecil naturally; so far he has neither written nor called.

Dangerous Liaisons

Saw this wonderful film on DVD the other day – the male lead character says of his young lover ‘ I have taught her to perform naturally services one would hesitate to ask of a professional ‘

Distress code

I woke up on Sunday morning after 4 hours sleep and remembered that I had a breakfast appointment at Claridges. Dress code ‘smart casual’ so help me god. My first thought was to quickly type out a text to the woman I was meeting ‘have to cancel, terribly ill, perhaps next week?’ but I couldn’t she’s my best friend and the subtext of the message would read so clearly ‘ I’m exhausted, can’t face it , fuck you, leave me alone, I’m staying in bed’. I really wished we were going to Starbucks like we usually do, at least they don't have a bloody dress code and I can look a fright in peace. I had to pack myself into dress and high heels before nine am, untangle my curly hair a bit so it looked er, bohemian which has always been a euphemism for ‘frankly, I can not be bothered’. My personal style has always been less Carrie Bradshaw and more Carrie the movie. I got there resentfully in the end and I do love walking up Bond Street on a Sunday morning when no one else is around. At Claridges I always order the same thing but I like to read the menu and pretend I might have something different, some of the prices make me laugh though, one item, porridge made with water £8 ! Its seems like a typo to me, such a random price and that they point out that they make the porridge with water (corporation pop as they used to call it in Lancashire )and not milk makes it even more emperors new clothes. Part of the fun of going to posh places is laughing at the absurdity of it all. As we entered the art deco ladies room my friend commented that she liked the flower arrangement ‘should have brought a bigger bag’ we laughed in unison.

Claridges

“I’m broke, I’m miserable I want to go to Claridges” so says my best friend. I love when people tell me they are broke, I earn less than a fifth of what she does and I am rarely flustered. Broke is a state of mind and so is denial - needless to say we have a table for two on Sunday morning. Breakfast at Claridges is a real treat. Served in the divine foyer underneath the Dale Chihully chandelier, that reminds me of Medusas snake hair. The chairs are huge and comfortable, the china is beautiful and the service is pleasant and not overly posh. I always have Pancakes with double cream and fruit (healthy option) and rose tea. I like looking at the other guests – divine little gilded children in Ralph Lauren outfits. Out of town, skinny bleached girlfriends with their fat bald boyfriends. I saw Marc Jacobs there once eating a sandwich studiously reading as if to deliberately ignore his boyfriend. I love that ridiculous hag Courtney Love is apparently banned after starting a small fire in her suite – money can’t buy you forgiveness at Claridges but it could get you a few weeks in the Betty Ford.

Sex & The City

Its official now I really don’t have anything to look forward to, I have finally seen the SATC movie. I was probably the last among my friends to see this movie but I nipped over to the Odeon West End this morning for the 10 AM screening and I loved it. People told me it was a bit too long but not for me, it could have lasted another hour and I would have still been glued. I love everything about the show, the hair styles, the clothes - I mean Carries hairstyles and clothes – lets face it she got the budget. I love the city, the apartments, the life style, there is nothing on that show I do not love and desire except all the men excluding Big and the Malibu neighbour and the ugly kids. Sadly it will be at least another two years till the next one – if there is a next one – we could be heading for a Golden Girls of New York in twenty years with any luck.

More dash than cash

I did a really bad thing – it was so bad I may well do it again. I purchased a dress to attend a wedding then I wore it extremely carefully to the event (if you can call it that) and this morning I sniffed it, pressed it, wrapped it and took it back! What a buzz! And although I feel bad – I feel much better than I did when I had an expensive dress that I didn’t want & couldn’t afford in my wardrobe and a couple of hundred quid missing from my account. I am not suggesting that we all make a habit of this; however, if you are tempted it is important to follow a few rules. Do not ‘borrow’ anything you cannot afford to buy. Don’t risk your rent to have some idiot pour red wine over a cream Chanel Jackie O suit. For best results, no smoking, drinking or eating, during your loan - wear perfume on your hair and ankles only. Give pale items a complete miss. If it helps with the guilt, know this – department stores let celebrities, photographers, stylists and magazines take items to wear for functions and shoots and then they put back the price tags and hang them out on the shop floor often with out so much as a dry clean. It’s how they treat us so why wouldn’t it be how we treat them?

I always cry at weddings

I am going to a wedding tomorrow, its a strange thing really, marriage like all other institutions is to me a place people end up in when life has spun out of control like a 28 day detox or a short spell in jail. It seems to be about giving up, settling for less, throwing in your chips. I got married once in Las Vegas – I booked the ceremony online one night drunk (I don’t drink anymore funnily enough) it cost about $132 to get married at the Little Church of the West. I choose the church because Angelina Jolie had recently divorced Billy Bob Thornton sighting ‘a change in priorities’ and they had been married there the year before. Noel Gallagher got married there as well and he had just gotten a divorce – I think when he sobered up and realised she was a bloke. So I chose a chapel with a high incident of divorce near the Mandalay Bay Hotel because I wanted to see the shark reef right after. My husband to be was someone I had been trying to leave for the previous three and half years, we stayed with my son who was the best man by miles in the Hilton hotel because he was a ‘Hilton Honours Member’ and it was free. When we queued up for the licence I started to cry – I was watching the idiot in front of me shadow boxing, while his pregnant bride to be and her truck stop hooker mother stared into middle distance beside him. ‘These are my people now’ I thought as the tears rolled down my face. A couple of nights later again sobbing – gulping down Vodka and Redbull I got dressed and we took a cab to the chapel at 8pm. The women who ran the chapel tried to give me a loan of a bunch of carnations which I declined, never too upset to have bad taste. No guests, no wedding dress it was pure Bruce Springsteen. The priest ( or whatever he was) had drunk as much as me but he could speak and I couldn’t – I remember seeing his lips move but I had no idea he was talking to me or that I was suppose to be saying ‘ I do’ instead of ‘whaaaat?’ It was a holy mess but the best thing was the tan lines lasted longer than the marriage. Six months later I was free of it all I got away and stayed away. In feeling so trapped I learnt that freedom is my most precious gift.