I went to go to the gym last night. Realised that I didn't have my trousers and I'm no longer at school so I don't have to work out in my pants anymore! Instead Helen and I went for a swim but got distracted by the new stadium at Mile End (opening on the 13th Feb) and I ended buying a membership on the spot because the pool was so big and beautiful! Hopefully Helen and I will force each other into visiting enough to justify the membership (and go to the Turkish more often!)

Congratulations to Lucy, Kev and Grace. A new edition to the family - Billy!

Centre Parcs highlight (and lowlights):

• not being able to find the meet up car park in Richmond for over half an hour
• Babs Streisland in the car
• getting car sick
• flirting with Euro millions boys in the petrol station
• eating too many jelly sweets
• flumes and jungle river madness
• new pj's covered in glittery fairies
• rising early to watch the sun come up over the trees and spotting more nature in 3 hours than I have in 8 years in London
• nature trail walks
• crying because I'm jealous of all the happy families (with dads!)
• watching glitter from my pj's appear all over the villa
• 100 best videos on some random tv channel - Hels and I rocking out to Guns 'n' Roses and other out rock classics
• teaching barmen to make white russians (yummy!)
• a horrible chinese dinner but with a great gang of people (6 'welsh chavs' and 6 'middle class wankers'!)
• helium balloons
• Pancake House huge pancakes covered in ice cream and apples
• Aqua Sana Spa - wonderful experience - I chilled out in the meditation room, swam in the lovely outdoor pool, steamed in two different steam rooms, zen'd out in the zen garden, sweated in the sauna and refreshed by shivering in the ice fountain. Each room had it's own theme and it were decorated really well. The Indian Blossom steam room was my favourite I think
• goodbye dinner with the 'welsh chavs'

Brilliant time all in all, I whole heartedly recommend Centre Parcs for cheap fun holidays!

I'm going to Centre Parcs this weekend with Lornie, Hels, Jess, Richie and Chris K. We booked it ages ago because we're all usually miserable in January and now I'm really looking forward to it. You do have to pay extra for just about everything but I might treat myself to a few hours in the sauna and then a treatment (or two). It will also be a chance to say goodbye to Lorna as she's moving back home to Bournemouth next Tuesday. I've no doubt that we'll keep in touch and do lots of visits but it won't be the same as popping around after work to have a cup of tea with her!

It's a very changable time. I moved out of the 'rat house' in November, Lornie's moving out next week, Carla will move to Manchester in June/July and then Hels and Jess are going to terrorise the world after the summer (or the 'eat your heart out Thelma and Louise' epic). It's all bloody change everywhere. In some ways I feel like I'm going to be stuck in London forever, I have no idea about what I'm going to do next. Boyf and I are often bored of London but I really do like our little home. God knows what will happen. Also, with all 4 best friends leaving London this year I really should think about finding some new people to amuse me of an evening!

Is buying 10 books from a charity shop out of control behaviour?

I suddenly developed a frantic need for words. I'm clamboring for poems and stories and ideas. There's a lovely charity shop around the corner from my work and there's someone wonderful that hands in interesting books all the time. This week I've discovered Michèle Roberts' short stories about appitite and desire ("when asked the perennial question 'what do you write about?' Michèle Roberts, by her own account, likes to say 'food, sex and God'"), Carlo Gebler' Caught on a Train - 3 magical stories told to Irish youth and finally Michael Coleman's Tag. The last two are 'young adults' books but they are both written really well and both have wonderful, moving moments.

Last Saturday I enjoyed the latest Peter Ackroyd programme ‘The Romantics’ on BBC. Some parts were really crass - how many times do I need to see fake blood dropping onto cobbles to get that death was a big part of the French Revolution? For gods sake it literally rained blood during some footage. David Tennant as Rousseau and David Threlfall as Wordsworth were stand outs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 'The Ancient Mariner' always brings a lump to my throat. My dad tried to learn it off by heart once...so, I know the first part particularly well!

Alone, alone,—all, all alone;
Alone on a wide, wide sea.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iv.

On a completely different note, I went to my doctor about my depression and she gave me Seroxatine. However, after 3 days of taking it I had a massive reaction against it. I was a work and found that I was unbearably happy - I was grinning at my monitor and laughing to myself. I decided to go for lunchtime swim to calm down but by the time I'd got back I felt like I was coming up on the best pill I've ever had. I was clammy handed, nervous, excited and becoming manic. I left work and went to see Lornie for a cup of tea. I spent around 2 hours picking things up, smiling at them and being generally weird! I went home, the boyf came in and demanded that I call NHS direct immediatly. Those of you who know me personally will know that I'm not a 'happy' person persay, I have dark moods that last for ages. I'm one of those people that look glum even if I'm perfectly happy inside! NHS direct nurse was lovely and managed to talk sense to me although I was rabbiting on...the emergency doctor called me back and told me to stop taking the tablets and to come down to the local Walk In Centre. He took one look at me and gave me lots of diazepam. He told me to take 4 (!) and then take 2 more (!) before bed. However, we couldn't find an open chemist and so the boyf had to put up with me manically climbing in and out of bed around 20 x that night. The next day I spent vomiting and suffering from what felt like the worst come-down ever. On the good side, I've been taking the diazepam and am now sleeping which has improved my mood and my brain functions (I have been being a little odd recently - loosing things, forgetting things, missing meetings, putting things in stupid places). At least I'm just back to the normal level of scattiness now...

These are for my dad. It's a picture of his first orchids that he grew from bulb which he sent to me for my birthday a couple of years ago. The grief is sometimes overwhelming but I'm getting there. This has made me realise how important my boy/f and friends are to me. They've all been great through this putting up with my panic attacks, changeable moods, demands for indulgence and general rattiness. A big thank you to you all xxx.

Lunchtime distractions from the general realms of despair that are surrounding me include typing random words into search engines and linking to the websites they suggest.

Today I put in Goths and Vampires and this appeared:

"All people suspected of being goths should have their bloodcounts regularly measured. If there is a shortfall, clearly they must be participating in Vampiric and Goth-like behaviour, in which case they can be sent to a place of Christian re-education"

I love this rant so much, a great joke and look at all the outraged goths replying below. Bless 'em.

I'm barely able to function. Everything is taking twice as long as it should. I feel as though I'm walking in syrup. My throat keeps contracting so I can't breathe. I'm scared. I sob on public transport. I can't sleep. When I do finally get to sleep, I can't wake up. I'm angry. I feel like screaming. I laugh. I'm manic. I stamp my foot and shout "it's not fucking fair".

Apparently these are all natural reactions to death.

I just miss my dad so fucking much.

Paul Lee Foxall

29/05/1948 - 05/12/05

"As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent you asked for the latest party"
David Bowie, Diamond Dogs

Oh. My. God. I've actually done it. I've moved in with the boyf. We were helped by among others, Helski and House which was quite amusing due to the sexual tension between them. It's not often that your moving helpers are taking their tops off, doing handstands and flirting outrageously!

The last two days has been spent:

1. spending almost all the monetary gift that my mother gave us to help us move in tesco's.
2. amazing at the amount of crap that the boyf and I have collected over the years. Key things said include "I've had this for over 25 years, it's not going under the bed!", "why, why, why do I need 5 types of body moisturiser" and with a sweeping hand "but all this shit is yours".
3. Hearing the boyf yell around 100 times "how gay am I?" as he produces more bathroom goodies or clothes from boxes/bags and picks up tablecloths and kitchen goodies from the shelves at tesco.
4. missing the house rats like crazy.
5. marvelling at how quiet it is without the rats.
6. Going to Lucy, Kev and Grace's for pre- and post-firework dinner and drinks in their wonderful new flat.
7. Watching and laughing at beautiful little Grace sleeping through all the fireworks.
8. missing my rats....whaahhh!

Geek Love

Google has saved my life so many times...surely there can't be something better?

SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH
London-based Previewseek is a new search engine that hides nothing under a
bushel. It claims to be better than Google. First, say its founders, it's a
lot smarter. Type in "Java", for example, and if you are interested in the
island of Java, Google will make you click through 70 pages before showing
you anything relevant. Previewseek, on the other hand, will acknowledge that
the word has several meanings and provide definitions for each of them up
front. Did you mean Java the island, Java the coffee, Java the programming
language, or something else? Regardless of what you are looking for,
Previewseek also organises results based on related concepts to help you
further refine searches without the need to understand Boolean query syntax.
That said, Previewseek is a metasearcher at heart. It may have its own
patented set of exceedingly clever algorithms, but it applies them to
results gathered from other search engines, rather than spidering the Web
itself.
http://beta.previewseek.com

(cut and pasted from the Zen Internet monthly newsletter, Issue 57, November 1st 2005)

Everyone should sign up to the Pick Me Up weekly newsletter. It's a newsletter where people share ideas, events, advice which will make you very happy. The most fun things so far are what happens when:

you dress up as air hostesses and give out tea on the Tube

you send a love letter to someone you barely know

you turn off your mobile for a day

you put on your own festival

Love, love, love it.

Highlights - randoming bumping into friends that you haven't seen for ages in the street and the gym. Only Darian would be having 5mins on a sunbed before work!

Another low light: finding out your father has Liver Cancer

There are options all of which are pretty fucking horrible:

• a liver transplant
• chemotherapy
• radiotherapy

Blurgh, all in all a pretty shit afternoon.

Lowlights = temper tantrums, endless rain, grey clouds, the damn cold, the inability to rise in the mornings, a boss with a short fuse, accounts, house hunting, lack of money to move house, grandparents, cirrhosis of the liver, black hair dye that just turns your roots a dark brown, not being able to hold my drink anymore, vomiting copiously, feeling odd because I have no real desire to travel the world (the wildest trips I'm planning next year are Sherwood Forest and Newcastle Upon Tyne)

Highlights = Egyptian perfume, porridge readymade by boyfriends, decaff coffee, bbc radio player (8hrs of comedy a day - although methinks the boyf is boring of Lee and Herring jokes now), thinking about how our new home is going to look (nesting instinct!), TGI Fridays 2 '4' 1's, having tickets for 5 differents shows in November, Helski determed to go swimming and go to the gym (the envy will only spur me on!), giggling with friends, being able to say no to nitrous balloons at a party at the weekend (yay me!), bumping into old crushes, discovering that I'd like to learn how to scuba dive (better start going to the gym and swimming!)

I spent some Saturday lost in epping forest with the boyf but we rewarded ourselves with a couple of pints and a pub dinner (it was meant to be lunch but y'know when there are NO map boards anywhere in the forest it takes a while to get out of it!). It was wonderful to walk through the forest and only bump into the odd cyclist, horse rider and 40 bikers by a road side cafe - I still haven't quite worked out what they were doing there.

Note to self: next time take a map and a bottle of water (and also perhaps Kendall mint cake)

During all the being lost, we also came to a pretty major decision - we're going to move in together. We were planning to wait until after xmas but circumstances are right at the moment. It means no longer living with my ladies and I'm really upset about it but it's time to grow up and leave the nest. We are however, planning to move within the area so I'm sure they'll be lots of visiting!

Another weird thing in my life at the moment is the fact that I have developed a love of english folk music (I'm currently sticking to the young good looking boys - Seth Lakeman and Jim Moray but I can feel the love for the music increasing which is fills me with a wonderfully creepy dread!) Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The darkness is all around...actually I'm beginning to pull myself together a little. The last few weeks however have been terrible. I tend to shut down when I'm depressed and do and say very little (apart from "I'm going to my room to watch CSI" - comfort zones are very important, aren't they?). I have too much on my plate at the minute but I made a ridiculous over the top meal last night (prawn satay as a starter for goodness sakes!) and that always makes me feel a bit better. Also all those CD's that I ordered on ebay are turing up, which is fantastic. Maximo Park, Seth Lakeman and Jim Moray are all sending shivers down my spine. The others are rocking my world (apart from the Futureheads, which makes my head hurt - bloody shouty Mackems!)

Tuesday blues have extended into full on miserableness. No matter what I do things go wrong at the moment and people around me seem to having a bad time of it too. Feeling very down but sitting at the parents surrounded by dogs and watching The Simpsons so beginning to feel a little better...Also I'm spending too much money on ebay CD's. So far I have brought:

Bravery - The Bravery
Hot Fuss - The Killers
A Certain Trigger - Maximo Park
Futureheads - The Futureheads
Antics - Interpol

and bidding on:

Happiness in Magazines - Graham Coxon
Kitty Jay - Seth Lakeman
Sweet England - Jim Moray
Odyssey - Fischerspooner
Howl - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll - Art Brut

That should cheer me up!

Got the Tuesday blues like you wouldn't believe...Have you ever had one of those days where everything goes wrong, where you can't get through to anyone on the phone, your email buggers up, you can't fill out a basic VAT return, you have mega healthy snacks and lunch but still somehow remain hungry all day so go and ruin it all by eating crap on the way home, you can't do the IT homework because your computer's a cunt, you only have 2 weeks (and 3 units) to finish the IT course, you fail a basic bookkeeping entrance exam that you thought you had a good chance of passing, you piss of all you friends because you're a miserable cunt, you run a bath to try and cheer yourself up and there's no hot water, you sit in your room listen to miserable songs while the darkness descends around you, you consider running away from everything ("would anyone really notice" says the voice in your head)...I really had too much fun at the weekend methinks...Tuesday blues are awful...

What I did at the weekend:

Friday - my leaving do from the old job which was fun. Certain thank yous which meant a lot, a wonderful leaving speech from the nice boss, a bottle of champagne from the landlady and landlord (wonderful, wonderful people you all must go to The City Darts in Aldgate East - they are perfect!), going to the Pleasure Unit and no-one was there, more champagne, taxis home, lots of laughing!

Saturday - we went to a circus themed club in Bethnal Green Working Mens Club run by Oh my God! I miss you. We got all dressed up as show girls, it totally rocked.

Check out Jessies site for more pictures!

Other things that happened in the age since I last posted:

Jessie went to desert and came back all hippie (trying to steal my crown young lady! No really it's actually really refreshing being around someone actually trying to be positive about things, makes a difference from the darkness in my head today!)

I started my new job - too early I think to say much more about it. I'm getting settled in, trying to get used to how quiet it is working alone in an office some of the time (so different from the last place with 18 staff and millions of participants to deal with!).

Attempting to loose weight yet again (mainly need to sort my health out!). Carla has suggested Weight Watchers but I don't know if I could bring myself to pay to be humiliated (sorry weighed in front of other people!)

Endless bickering and making up with the boyf

Sea kayaking (in a wet suit goddamn!)

My whole family had food poisioning for 6 days because of the place that I took them to for lunch!

Festival season over and done with. I'm too old for that shit anymore, it's just not fun to work for that long if you don't get to enjoy breaks and go and see the bands!

Note to Carla: I promise I won't leave it so long to update next time!