I think I am slowly turning into Jo from A Taste Of Honey. Although to be fair, she had a whole lot more on her plate. I'm not pregnant with a random man's baby and I am not currently fighting any social taboos. That I'm aware of, anyway. Is it strange to relate so strongly to someone with whom you really don't have a lot in common? I don't think so.
Oh to live in a time when a loft apartment cost you £30 a week, though....
Writing this makes me feel so cliched....It's an age-old problem of art versus getting a 'proper' job which has never reached a solution. I have been on this planet for almost 30 years and yet I am still stumped as to whether there is a happy medium for being happy and modestly well-off. I dont think this exists. I don't believe in the middle classes.
I was raised in a well-to-do family- middle class bordering on upper I suppose. I had jobs from the age of 16. Spending my earnings on clothes and records mostly. I was proud - I felt self-sufficient and I sailed through academia. On the surface I was a model child in a model family. If only things had stayed that way...
I remember a friend of mine sending me an article a few years ago when I was in my first job since graduating. The title screamed something about mid-life crises hitting people in their mid-20s and not like in their 40s as before. Our lives now were bigger, better and faster than the yuppie generation of the 80s and hence we burnt out and crashed out much earlier than they did.
My friend was sent the article by his dad who was livid that he dropped out of law school to pursue a career in media. As for me, I was happily perched in what was my chosen career and so I read the article thinking of my friend but never once related it to myself.
2 and a half years later the unthinkable happened - being badly bullied at work and realising that I had spent all my time studying for a career which was money obsessed sent me into dark depression. The young city prodigy was earning more than her father now but was suicidal.
What happened next? I started a band. I pursued the teenage dream which I had try to ignore for so many years. I worked harder for this than I have for any exam I've ever sat in my life. I achieved success in a relatively short amount of time and reeled of all the idols I never thought I would meet in the space of a lifetime let alone in the space of a year...Everything was perfect...or so it seemed.
Then the frantic sleepless nights began...Worrying about money and bills 24 hours a day. As accumulation of debt began to build, my dreams began to tumble. At what cost was I pursuing this dream? Why did my dream not boost my reality?
I sit here after yet another sleepless night and counting down the hours before the next one begins. I've been looking for jobs - part-time menial work that won't even be worth my time or energy versus high-flying city jobs which will destroy all my time but will theoretically help pay me bills.
PLEASE. SOMEONE.
Tell me there is a middle way. A way I can be happy and not have to keep thinking of escape routes out of my life....
Whenever I am asked who my favourite bands are, I always spout off the same familiar names. About five of them, actually. I have never been able to pick just one. For some reason, though, I always seem to skip over one particular artist. I think it could be because he was such a staple in my life at a time when things couldn't have been any worse. I know there are songs, albums even, that could sum up a moment in time for everyone. There has always been background noise suited to whatever is going on. May it be teenage melodrama like break ups or better times like birthday parties. To be honest, there was another band at that time in my life that I could probably name as a bigger influence over all. That would be the easy answer, anyway. The group I had plastered all over my walls and could sob along to just because some dude in school didn't like me back. Like-like, of course. This man in particular was sort of my safety net. It wasn't like my fondness of him was secret or anything, I just don't think people understood just how attached I was to his work. It wasn't a fangirl sort of thing by any means. I just got it, and most people had no idea I had any reason to know what "it" was. I wore a brave face a lot of the time. I don't know if I ever came close to reaching a point as low as this man eventually did, In fact, I think he sort of helped me from staying as far from that as possible. I remember the day I read of him taking his life. That was the first time I had been so effected by someone I had never even met. In all honesty, I can never understand how someone is able to do this. It hit me so hard. At one point he was one of the only voices I could trust, and he took that away. I remember being really angry. Being young, I had that warped idea that if I had met him, maybe things could have been different. Maybe I could have turned the tables and been the one to make him see that it's not all bad in the world. It wasn't to be though. It's been almost six years since that day. Admittedly, I don't listen to him as much as I used to. I got a bit older, things got better. That's not to say the music isn't still completely perfect. It doesn't bring me back to bad memories, but rather it is a reminder of how much he meant to me. He might be kept in the back of my head these days, but I won't forget him.
"To vanish into oblivion is easy to do. And I try to be, but you know me. I come back when you want me to."
I knew there was a reason why I have more guy friends than girls
I was passing two girls who work on Chanel and this is a snippet of conversation I overheard:
"....Y'know She was so Ugly I couldn't look her in the face when she was talking to me." Girl 1
"Hahahaha" Girl 2 (Guffaws un-ladylike)
Who is so ugly they don't even deserve to be looked in the eye whilst in conversation? She made me sick thinking she was so superior, looks don't last forever. Being genuine and showing humility is a much more attractive quality than being artificial and trying to impress friends.
“True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.” Ralph W. Sockman
I want you to be sitting there reading this wearing a dress, shortish so you can run a finger along your thigh, starting from your knee slowly up to the inside of your thigh, slowly tracing down to your lips now starting to glisten and then all the way back up. You imagining my lips softly kissing your lips, making my way up to your clit, gently being massaged by my tongue, your finger lingering on your clit slowly and discretely teasing yourself. With your other hand you run your fingers through your hair, down the back of your neck with your nails digging in slightly applying more pressure as you run your nail down over your chest, missing your nipples deliberately... while you are doing this I want you to picture that you sitting on my lap on a chair, lips and tongue still playing faster with your clit, your breathing speeding up. I pull your legs apart despite your resistance, you gently slip your finger inside you while you are sitting there imagining you are pushing yourself hard onto my cock, slowly enjoying every single inch of me inside you. you push two fingers inside you as you picture my hands grabbing you by the waist and pushing my self further and harder inside you, tongue still playing with your clit, your other hand up inside your t-shirt, slowly tracing your belly, running your nails across your stomach, up along the side and cupping your chest. tongue and lips faster on your clit. You are still grinding hard and faster on my cock, more lips where your fingers are kissing round your stomach, lips kissing up between your chest brushing against your nipples, my hands still pulling you by your hips harder onto me, you pushing harder and harder grinding on my cock, you can feel waves and waves of anticipation with lips and tongue tantalising and teasing your lips and clit, more lips are teasing your nipples chest making their way up to your neck. another hand then starts to pull your hair again and scratch down your arched back, the hand scratching down your back digs their nails into your buttocks, pulling your cheeks apart and with a wet finger ringing you while gently slipping a finger inside in time to you now really fucking my cock. your hands are now behind your head pulling my hair encouraging me to be rougher... i release your hips and pull your thighs even further apart trying to get impossibly deep. there are still lips and tongues enjoying you, speeding up and slowing down as the waves of pleasure swell and excite every inch of you. I now drag my hands up your thighs and grab your breasts, my nails digging into you scratching your nipples. you are now really fucking my hard cock, your thighs and cheeks banging against me moaning loader and loader, as the other set of hands grab your arse trying to keep up with your thrusts while sucking and licking your clit... you look down at her and grab her by the hair force her to lick my cock and your clit as you are fucking me. her nails digg harder into your arse, her finger sliding further in... you are now shouting for me to fuck you and i am holding you at your waist helping fuck you harder and harder... you can feel every inch you getting ready to explode, the girl comes up and bites your nipples, scratches your thighs. She trys to put her fingers in your mouth and to start with, you lick them hungrily. You dig one set of nails into me as we start to speed up again, fucking harder and faster, waves building up again quickly you are just on the edge of exploding when you grab the girls hands and get her to ring you then you grab her hair and force her to play with your clit again... you are getting closer and building up more and more as you moan louder and louder shouting fuck me quicker and quicker. You turn to look at me and kiss me hard on the mouth. You look me straight in the eyes just moan, louder and louder, your eyes flick back and lips wrap tight around my cock as you fuck it harder and harder, more waves quicker and quicker and quicker before you scream enjoying every thrust, every lick and scratch in one moment of release. We slow down and the girl traces her tongue up along your stomach, chest neck and onto your lips... you release my cock and push me down on the bed kissing down my chest and stomach. You teasing my cock with your lips and tongue. you get the girl to come over and position her clit on my tongue, running your hand over her back and then her hair pulling her head down towards my cock. as she pushes her self against my tongue you take my cock and play with it deliciously in your mouth, it's not long after all the fucking before i am twitching keen to cum. You slow down and stop, kiss the girl and push her off of me, sit me up and stare me straight in the eyes as you take my cock in your divine mouth and make me cum harder than i have ever cum before...
That thunderous bassline walks, the white noise snare snaps, and silken vocals glide over possibly the most famous disco track ever created. The song in question would be Donna Summer's I Feel Love. I first heard this song as child, but it wouldnt be much later, until drunkenly dancing around a night club, that the 15 minute long synthesiser orgy that is the Patrick Cowley remix was blasted at me. The bass rumbled the floor, and the sounds move through your body like a virus, until you can't control your movement. Never had adding 12 minutes onto an already classic piece of music history proved so succesful. I'd like to see someone not get the urge to dance to this. Patrick Cowley created an electronic marvel when he re-worked this song, from that single Moog Modular along with the voice of a Disco Siren songstress, it guaranteed this track to become a milestone in electronic music, on a par with Kraftwerk's Autobahn, as truly groundbreaking. It is a gem that has been dusted off from the bottom of the DJ box, as every electronic club-night in London has been playing it, but for me, it never grows old.
Network Rail is first into room 101, followed closely by our miserable fuckin excuses for a summer, or even proper winters, our joke of a substitute prime minister, the beaucracy applied to everything from busking to incarcerating real criminals, the social snobbery I see in London every fuckin day I force myself to pretend it's still my home. Rupert Murdoch, Conde´Nast and Philip Green for capatalising on the talentless blow-up dolls and initiating them as gods of good looks to the congregation of potentially intelligent sheep that hand over their plastic pound to feel like their truly apart of this skin deep religion.
Ok these are small things and I am overlooking the blessings that come with being an English citizen, having a key to The Kingdom. Credit to the greater things, free health, education and social care, freedom of speech and our liberally advanced social laws.
But I also have some questions about the greater fuck-ups. Why do so many people I know feel like they're being screwed every time they move, expensed by high taxes and the daily cost of living? Why are those lucky enough to have a job and earn a salary which would stretch twice as far in any other first world country, and keep a village in a third world country, still find themselves turning to banks for extended overdrafts and credit cards? And why have the banks given them to us and expected us to keep up with payments when we clearly didn't have any money in the first place? Why do we continue to feign power over poorer countries for their natural resources and cheap labour when we are also now in a £2 Trillion debt?
The good things about Britain today are product of lessons learnt with recent World Wars.
"Look after our people and we'll have a powerful country worth fighting for in the future!"
Which begs the question if all it comes down to is humanity's neolithic age old struggle for money and control and thats not enough to motivate those peaceful and honest 21st century souls, then why should we play the game and more worryingly where do we evolve from here?
