He was a hero of mine, a beautiful, ranting, despairing troubadour...but I can't take any more shameful acts from the man. Living the dream, fuck forever, searching for Albion...no, no, NO, you will not find Albion in a grotty, heroin and crack soaked flat in east london, you wanker.

Now fuck off out of my sight you useless twat!

Today has descended into finance nightmare...I need to get some bloody confidence with the accounts. I am actually quite bright (if I do say so myself) and I'm the only person I know that keeps a spreadsheet of my own personal finances - why oh why can't I cope with business ones?

From a fuck up, no money, oh fuck what are we going to do to a it's ok, we're ok, in the space of an hour and a half - man, am I looking forward to the long, bank holiday weekend. My heart and stomach acid wasn't made for this!

I'm meant to be in the gym but I'm still at work...got caught up in updating the webs*ite. Might have to force myself to get up early and go then instead. I'm also hoping to do an aqua class in the gym by work on Friday (which I'll have to pay for but my gym membership doesn't have any aqua classes - the buggers!).

I was at counselling last night and I realised that I'm still really angry about my dad dying. Angry at him for leaving me, angry at how we were dealt with at the hospital, angry that we didn't have longer with a sober dad, angry that we had so long with a drunk dad, just plain angry at everything it seems! It feels like it all hurts much more at the moment because the mist of numbness and shock is only just lifting and I'm getting back to 'normal' me. I'm also swinging from thinking that I'm being ridiculously self indulgent to feel this way to screaming inside that 'my dad's fucking dead, what the fuck am I going to do!'.

Just venting is all...

At least when I went to the counsellor she let me know that a lot of my reactions are perfectly normal reactions to the death of a close relation. Bloody hell, it's been almost 5 months of craziness, I just want to get through this year.

I'm glad that our office will be closed for all of December as it means that I don't have to be working on the 'anniversary', I really don't think that I could take that.

My specialist bitching subjects at the weekend were men, chocolate, the DLR, work, computers, DVDs, crap music, annoying spam emails, hair dye, cold sores, coffee judders, fags, deodorant, my space, hand cream, pens that always run out of ink, race equality action plans for ACE which are 3 days late, xfm presenters, weight watchers yogurt and snack a jacks for snacks, ISAN members, periods, lack of sleep, sheets that don't fit mattresses, breakfast cereals, damp towels left on floors, having no clean clothes, headaches, plasterers, decorators that won't do a job for £80 (cash in hand!), intimidating decorators that think because you're a woman you have no idea what they are talking about, broken teeth, ladies magazines, diet magazines, being late for everything, spending too much time in bed playing backgammon on your phone because you can't sleep (and loosing!), the thirst for wine, teeth grinding, bosses (who are quite nice but sometimes useless - if you want me to do something, just ask me to do it - I can't read your mind!), ACE financial reports, website designers who you're paying £7.5K coming up with ideas that I could have pulled out of my arse....*breathe* *breathe* did I miss anything? Oh yes, Paul Weller emails that start 'Exciting News!' no it isn't, you're Paul Weller you haven't done anything exciting since the Jam (apart from the Wild Wood album but I'm not going to let that get in the way of a rant!)

I felt suprisingly better after getting a wee bit drunk on Friday night (a quiet drink in a local pub that ended up with me forcing people to drink absinth and tequila!). Saturday night I felt almost human again and popped around to the rat house to catch up on some bitching and wine drinking. Lovely Julie 'popped in' for a couple of hours (after a 24hr shift!) from Oxford to join in too, hurrah!

I was meant to do sensible stuff like go to the Tate this weekend but I just stayed in bed (only leaving to stock up on food from the corner shop) and watching Sharpe. Second part this evening - I will be rushing back from my counselling session for it (nevermind about my mental stability, I want some Sean Bean hero worship!)

I was told at the weekend to release my ego...I think it may have gone too far!

You Are 86% Evil

You're the most evil person you know. The devil is even a little scared of you!

How Evil Are You?

Went to see the Mighty Boosh last night - really enjoyable (and removed me from my woes for 3 hrs!). I now have an even bigger crush on the lovely Howard TJ Moon (AKA Julian Barrett). Here, see, a picture of him sucking a lolly:

Julian: "Are you aware of the music known as jazz?"
Noel: "Jazz, what's that, 1984, Matt Bianco (sings badly) What is lo-o-o-ove anywa-a-a-y, does anybody love anybody anyway?"
Julian: "No, jazz. You fear jazz. You fear the lack of rules, the lack of boundaries. Oh look, it's a fence. But, no, it's soft."

and here's a picture for all you Noel fans:

I improved last night - worked out in the gym for ages, vented my anger then went to see the ladies and met Carla's mum and saw Jessie's wedding dress but then I went and spoilt it all by eating 1/2 a chocolate egg for breakfast and 3 chocolate bars and 2 bags of crisps for lunch today...arses.

The irony! What? It made me laugh. Ok, if I'm honest it made me laugh a hard, hollow, bitter laugh as I thought about the futility of life...god, I'm in a fucking bad mood. Yesterday I was happy and full of life and today I was late for work (30 mins late for work, WTF?) and I can't get anything finished (some things I can't even start), I'm eating too much and I feel like shit. When and how did I get so lazy and unmotivated?

What is the music world coming to?

Simon Amstell and Miquita Oliver are leaving Popworld

Rapper Proof is shot dead

Jack White sells his soul for Coke

I now have a coldsore...I woke this morning to a tell tale tingle on my top lip. Cue manic searching for Blistex Relief Cream. Loaded a huge amount on there but I'm too late, the dreaded blisters have gain strength over the day and now I'm looking like a plague victim.

And, I'm still croaking.

Went a bit crazed on books again. The boyf has mentioned that there are too many books in our home and that he doesn't want to live in a library!

Currently reading Perfume, The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind and The Poems of Rowan Williams. Both are amazing, I'm really enjoying them.

Sore throat and cough is still with me. I've taken to drinking purdeys , wearing a scarf, sucking halls max strength lozenges, wiping myself in Vicks VapoRub and swigging cough medicine at all times. The heating has also stopped working in our office so I'm regularly putting my coat on too. I look like a bum...

I also wrote up all my to do things in a new notepad in a hope that it would make me feel more motivated. It only made me motivated to go to the shop and buy chocolate and more cold and flu painkillers.

...and now Creep by Radiohead is playing on the radio. Joy.

Boyf will only let me go away for Easter if I'm better. If I don't go away, I will sulk in my room eating all the Easter Eggs by myself.

The weekend was fantastic fun, the boyf and I arrived in Oxford on Friday evening and had dinner out with Eddy and Julie where we all laughed too much and then we all got an earlish night. This didn't however stop my throat becoming razor blades and sneezing maniacally.

Saturday was spent having lovely breakfast and waiting for the latecomers (the first was meant to arrive between 11am - 12noon but didn't get there until 4pm). Once we'd got most people together, a gang of us went into Oxford betted on the grand national and ate lunch at the Buttery...afterwards we ended up in pub (surprise) and waited for everyone to join us. We popped back to Julies to get ready to go out. The went for an Indian up the road and the popped back to Julies for Big Al's cocktails and champagne. We went onto a club and caused havoc - beer fights, dancing like twats and trying to avoid fights with goths! Went back to Julies for an extension of naughtiness during which I was force fed vitamin C tablets by Jess, became an agony aunt for a while, drank too much and then went and passed out in bed.

Sunday was spent recovering, eating full English breakfasts and taking the piss out of each other for bad behaviour the previous night. Sent boyf to pick up my winnings from the Grand National - a whole £2.25!

We'd all recovered enough by around 8pm so we went to eat very slowly served Sushi.

Then we had to go back to London. Journey home was lovely - George our driver was lovely and me, the Boyf, Hels, Jess and Turtle put the world to rights and we were driven through a wonderful snow storm (which had, of course, turned to cold horrible rain by the time we got back to London).

Back home to our new matress (28 cm wide deep- very cosy indeed) and tried not to die during the night. Today I have bought meltus for chesty coughs, nurofen cold and flu and halls max strength lozenges - if that doesn't get rid of my illness I don't know what will...

This week has been full of fun outings.

Seth Lakeman played at Carling Islington Academy on Tuesday. It was a pretty good evening although the audience were pretty awful - odd mix of crazy folk women (you know the type - dancing off the beat, waving hand about their heads, shaking there long henna'd hair in your face), posh totty and loud drunks. Trying to ignore the people around us, I tried to concentrate on the music. Really enjoyable but felt a little 'too polished'...when you see folk music it's usually in the pub and is played by rough old men! To see a lovely looking young man playing so beautifully was odd however, I really enjoyed it (bought the new album there and have had it on constant play since!)




Graham Coxon played at the Hammersmith Apollo on Wednesday. What can I say apart from he was absolutely bloody marvelous. Wonderful songs ranging from manic energy ones to quiet completative ones. Boy can he play guitar. The happy, bouncy energy that you get after a good gig lasted me and boyf all the way home on the district line...




Then for something a little different: Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo at the Peacock Theatre yesterday with Hels and Richie (both of whom were in very silly moods, me? I'm never silly!). Fantastic show, men in frock exploring the comedy in trad, modern ballet. What makes it so great is that they can actually dance (and en pointe which is amazing to behold). I don't think that I've laughed as much before at Swan Lake Act 2 and the dying swan (white feathers everywhere!). They are performing the UK again in September and you must buy tickets.

This weekend I'm going to Oxford for Julie's b/day celebrations. There will be 11 plus guests all squeezed together - it's a bloody good job we all know each other!

I don't often remember my dreams, possibly due to the weird religious/horror dreams I had when I was younger. Recently, some have been sticking in my mind including one where I'm with Jess and we are going to see Richie in his attic room. We're blocked on top of the stairs by a small toy-sized tank that starts barking at us that we can't pass, we step around it and it starts to fire bullets at us...they feel like sharp stones on my legs as I pass. We fall into Richie's room and he's packing all his stuff to move away, he says that he's got everything except his boat. We look into the middle of the room and there's a pond. He dives in and swims out to the boat in the middle of the pond. He gets smaller and smaller and then starts to drag the boat back in to shore. As it comes to the edge, we realise that it's actually the size of a real boat and Richie is dragging it towards us. We start screaming and all goes black.

There was also the one where it turned out that my dad had fathered another child that he didn't know about and his mum was saying that we (my brother and I) couldn't ever see our little brother. I woke up so bloody angry at the mum (even though in actual fact she's a family friend and their is no way that her son is my dads!)

Shall I, as my boyf suggests, contact the priory now?

This weekend I have mainly done:

• A gym/swim visit that lastest 2hrs
• Ran away from a child in the pool who was spraying Hels and I with water
• Done 20 sit ups in a row (whoo-hoo *rambo music plays*)
• Failed to do any push ups (even in the girl stylie)
• Had a lovely grown up lunch with boyf and Helski
• Fucked about for a whole day with friends
• Showed a dead rat to teenage girls in the street
• Carla, Hels, Leo and I buried said rat in Tower Hamlets cemetery Park (not a pet rat you understand, a real life dirty bin rat...it had made it's home in the ladies house only to die the other night, Hels insisted that we give it a proper send off)
• Got locked in Tower Hamlets cemetery Park
• Had a massive Chinese/Thai dinner at the ladies
• Tidied up the flat with boyf on Sunday
• Tried to go out on Sunday to a club - didn't make it
• Baked a loaf of bread, ate loaf of bread

Woke up this morning quite happy and determined to get on with things. This week is busy at work and play...Seth Lakeman, Graham Coxon and Les Ballets Trockadero. Followed by a weekend in Oxford for lovely Julie's birthday. Hurrah!