February 2008 Archives

'Another runs away' - Audioslave, Be Yourself

Oh my god, I died and went to heaven. I had the best coffee I've had in a million years and the most absolutely fucking amazing sandwiches I think I've ever eaten.

Spicy salami, grilled courgette and taleggio on ciabatta. D had turkey breast, bacon and mayo on focaccia and we shared half each.

The staff there are fabulous, it's like walking into someone's house and chatting with a very old friend. The carrot cake and muffins looked amazingly attractive. Good thing I have such steadfast willpower.

Absolutely brilliant. Do yourself a favour. GO!

Small World is at Binnen Oranjestraat 14, off the Harlemmemerstraat.

'A long time ago we used to be friends, but I haven't thought of you lately at all.' - The Dandy Warhols, We Used to be Friends

Hitting the delete button seems so final doesn't it? When I first started using social networking applications I couldn't delete, couldn't get my mind around the idea of just sending a person (and all their stuff) to the recycle bin. It just seemed so mean.

Facebook is especially adamant when you hit delete:

'This action cannot be undone'.

Today I deleted a whole lot of people. People I don't talk to, people I added because they asked for an add and I felt bad saying no, people I don't really want poking their nose in my profile anymore, people I just think 'ok, I've read all about you and now I'm moving on'. 

It's not a personal thing, it's just more a 'why?' thing.

Why keep someone on your 'friends' list forever when you're actually not really friends?

Someone told me the other day, I think it was at book club (Dory moment here), that a study showed that you only really have 50 concurrent friends/good acquaintances. As one new one is made, one old one has to make way.

A huge part of it is the mobile culture we live in. No-one is where they grew up anymore really, and even if you are, perhaps your job or your lifestyle means you're different from the people around you. Online social networking let's you look into the lives of people you knew and compare yourself and see if you came out better or worse. But once you've compared your achievements and had a look at yourself through the eyes of people you knew 15 or 20 years ago, what other basis do you have for continuing an acquaintanceship?

Take a high school reunion for example. The only reason people go to those horrible things is to see whether they're better or worse off than their former peers. No-one really keeps in contact after a reunion unless there was some unresolved business from before or unless they already kept in contact before the reunion.

Then you have the random messaging type of online social networking friends. So you message a few times and then you get the 'let's be friends' and then you message a bit more and find out that really, no, you have nothing in common. Delete really seems the best option here.

It seems that every 30-something and 40-something is in a crisis of making new relationships and friendships. I've never had any trouble making acquaintances so I can't imagine what it must be like to struggle to do that. Apparently people do, and some canny investors saw the gap in the market and made off line social networking groups. They're springing up all over the place.

My one trainer, 30 something, single, female, not dating, at the gym directed me to this website :

Nieuwe Mensen Leren Kennen

Another acquaintance directed me here:

'takes me back to the place that I know.' - On the Beach, Chris Rea. (oh the cliche meter is running high today)

sunlight. blue skies. girl talk. gossip. relationship risk management advice. House & Grey's. hot chocolate with whipped cream. pancakes. walking against the wind with numb faces. salty skin. wind-whipped hair. happy kids. bags of sea shells. the tide coming in over our boots. naked kids in the car on the way home. bags of sandy clothes for washing. the drive home through Haarlem. bliss.

'I'll be there as soon as I can, but I'm busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before' - Muse, Unintended

Margaret Atwood writes poetry. Why did I not know this before? Actually, I did know because I know this poem, but my goldfish attention span and incredibly poor memory let me down. What caused this memory loss? Prozac? Or was I a crack addict somewhere in my previous life?

Anyway, this is one of my new favourites:

Is/Not

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.

--- Margaret Atwood, Is/Not

---------

Other, less ethereal activities than reading poetry yesterday included job interviews and playing dress-up..

I am moderately excited about one of the interviews, maybe even going so far as to say 'hopetimistic'! It's working as a PA for a director, one on one in a great environment. Pretty much everything I want in a job, except the hours, but everyone has to work, right?

The playing dress-up? The Biba boutique inside the V&D dept store has the best saleslady I think I've ever met. She's Bosnian and probably a little bit older than me. I first visited the store in December sometime and we got talking and had an immediate connection. She thought I was Eastern European at first. I don't look Dutch, just different really. Plus when I speak there's my accented Dutch. So we talked a whole lot about how we came to Holland etc, about how it feels to be a foreigner. There was a sale on then so I just stood in the change room and she brought armfuls of clothes for me to try on.

Yesterday I went in for a new coat, and tried pretty much the entire spring collection. Favourites were a white PVC-ish tight-waisted jacket with a tied waist, and layered underneath a sort of frilly orange printed blouse and a gorgeous gold-beige beaded blouse that falls from just under the breasts. Slinky! Alas, I need an income in line with my Biba addiction.

It was fun to try everything on, see what works, what doesn't. In comparison the Benetton top and shirts I tried were just... blah. I guess I really do like Biba.

I have to admit to really liking the saleslady though. Do you have a store that you go to just because you like the staff? Every single thing I do in terms of shopping is based on whether or not I like the staff in the shop. My car, flowers, bakery, butchery, clothing, hairdresser, gym, even the supermarket I go to is chosen because I like the staff.

In Amsterdam I popped into Cora Kemperman and Noon on the Leidsestraat. I found a new label in Noon that I really like, called Tiger, except I can't find it on the Internet? Anyone know it?

-----------

Oh, I was happy, neutral, slightly sad (4%) and angry, according to Glad or Sad. Thanks for voting for my picture. Just wondering where the angry came from? I mean, I am, but jesus - it shows that much?

This week I am actually happy. Not too obsessive, not freaked out, not gnashing my teeth about my future. Even a little bit contented. Yes, really! That means I haven't written anything because when I'm not in a deep pit of despair I don't write.

In 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' Lionel Shriver said something about how we dig ourselves into a hole a teaspoon at a time. So maybe I've been digging myself out a teaspoon at a time.

And then I read that maybe all that Prozac really did nothing for me after all?

-----------

Christine Kane is writing this week about the Law of Attraction and I finally get it. I get it I get it I get it.

Let's take an example. I am a good person to know because there is always a parking space free for me, (ok, so that's just one reason it's good to know me). But there is always a parking spot for me. Always.

So I'm all 'yeah, the universe loves me because it gives me a parking space right in front of where I need to be, every single time.' Then I congratulate myself on attracting good things (like parking spaces) but I sort of forgot that I'm also attracting bad shit (like when I broke the bumper on my car).

No more part time belief in the law of attraction for me.

I am the centre of my own universe.

------

Going to Zandvoort later with S and her kids and will break the no-kids-pics-on-the-blog rule tomorrow. Just this once.
 

'So please, return the love you took from me.' - Chris Isaak, Somebody's Crying

• number of close girlfriends  = 3
• number of close girlfriends who have three children = 3

three is clearly the new two.

(shhh, don't tell, 'cos it's a secret. but I am so glad I am done with babies. Done done done.)

(and remember this video.  And this one. No, I don't wanna fall in love... And don't make me dream about you. Chris Isaak, oh my.)

'When I feel down, I want you above me.' - The Diviynls, I Touch Myself.

Sitting around in my t-shirt and boy shorts at 1 pm here, browsing tees. (Yes, I'm cheating, this is written on Sunday and posted on Monday. But now it's Monday at 8 am and I'm still in t-shirt and boy shorts, so nothing really changed.)

This tee is for me. Just ask anyone.

This is always true. They should have one that says 'will fuck for shoes'. Gives a whole new meaning to the 'nice shoes, wanna fuck?' chat up routine.

Yes, she did.

Love this, wonder if I could wear it and get away with it. Hey, what's a change of orientation now and again between friends?

Because I am. We all are.

And finally.

Whatever.

'Do you remember the way that you touched me before?' - Natalie Merchant, My Skin (she's my crush this week)

For those who don't know (and until a few days ago I too did not know), there is this funky little function on youtube.

You can make playlists of videos you like. Then youtube just plays them one after another.

Under the video you're watching you'll see next to the favourite button, a button that says 'add to playlists'. Make a new playlist and then add randomly until you have a list to suit your mood.

Then listen and be happy.

Who needs itunes? Oh, if you want to liberate your itunes purchases, you have to get Doubletwist.

There's also a cool little widget, Twist Me for facebook.

And now it's time for a poem, because it's Sunday, I'm in a strange mood and it's been too, too long.

Today's choice is inspired by number 73 on Francine's list.

Text

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird.

We text, text, text
Our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

-- Carol Ann Duffy, from Rapture

'You make me make me make me hungry again.' - The Cure, Why Can't I Be You?

Guess who found Jezebel.com. Guess who has subsequently been feeding herself a steady diet of celebrity gossip? (I'll give you a hint here.. it's not you.)

-------------------

Glad I'm not alone with the unwashed hair. Yes, really. It's once every few days here, and I get the best results washing with very little of my John Frieda stuff for curls, slicking it full of a Garnier wash-out masque, which you don't wash out (very important, that) and then taking myself into the sauna where it dries into beautiful curls. Otherwise it's just limp and flat and blah. Especially if I wash it too often. Often I skip the shampoo and just put the other stuff in, then I relaaaaaax and the heat does all the work.

----------------------

Went out last night to somewhere new: Bazar. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Had a huge table upstairs and ordered plates to share.  Download the menu and take a look. The ambience was great and so was the company.

(Interruption to address a reader directly: Yes yes, I know you read this blog so there are no hidden meanings in that specific sentence! Thanks for inviting me!)

The food was good and the bill was even better (23 euros each).  Afterwards we wandered around a bit. First to an Irish pub, on the godknowswhere, then a brown cafe also on the godknowswhere, (hey, great sense of direction I have) and finally a taxi home at 1.30 am. This Friday night thing is becoming a habit.

-----------------------

No, I am not back in the gym, yet. This is making me bitchy, bitchy bitchy. Also I want to sleep all the time, unsure of the connection there?

I did a training on Tuesday with one of the trainers who is much stronger and fitter than me (and a man). Old style condition training it's called. You use the other person as your resistance and then you do all kinds of funky things like lift a bench while the other person walks up it. And do pull-ups with the other person applying counter-weight. Oh my. Up until today I couldn't move my shoulders without squealing. I'm just a little bit recovered now. Enough to go and do it all over again. All those little muscle fibres just re-knitted and I'm about to go un-knit them again. My right ankle (with the shinsplints) is so swollen, I have a cankle!

-----------------

Did you know that you can buy things from Zara Home here in the Netherlands? Neither did I. Now we both do. I have a jones for this bedlinen. Maybe one day when I grow up.

--------------

Chloe did six things. I think I need to do six things too, 'cos I'm such a follower of fashion.

So here are my six:

1. I put things in my mouth all the time. Coffee spoons, my hair, my fingers, your fingers... uh. I'll stop now.
   
   
2. If there are Marie biscuits in my house I shouldn't drink tea. The two go together far too well, then before I know it I've eaten a whole packet. Dipped of course. Then I think of my hips and I mourn.
   
   
3. I'm funny when I have an audience. Cynical funny. To the 'ouch' degree, but only with native English speakers. Sorry native Dutch speakers, you lose. I should do improv.
   
   
4. I worked as a waitress in a vegan restaurant. Our only salary was the tips we made. My girlfriend (who was it again who worked with me, my memory is terrible?) and I used to wear hotpants under our frilly strawberry printed aprons and bend over suggestively to get more tips. She had bigger boobs so she'd lean forward and I had the better bum so I'd sidle in from the side to put the plates in front of the customers. The restaurant was tiny, with an open kitchen.
   
   We'd walk out of it in pairs, one plate in each hand, held just high enough to push our tits out and really make a statement. We found that working the tables with a two-sided approach worked perfectly. Eventually we had tables of businessmen completely captivated and the 100 dollar tips were rolling in. I'm pretty sure the entire business district of Harare was in our restaurant at one point or another.
   
   The middle-aged man can be a wonderful thing, when you're a hot teenager. Actually, almost being middle-aged myself, I have to say that the almost middle-aged man is a wonderful thing at any time.
   
   
5. Chloe mentioned her pistachio and pink phases. I had a red winter and I'm having a black and white summer. Where is the grey? Why is everything always so delineated? Grey is in this spring. The shops are full of it.
   
   
6. I have been married twice. Failure is a noun, but also an emotion.
   

-----------------

It's spring break. Crocus vakantie. What will we do? Lie around a lot I suspect. Drive all over I suspect. Today we're starting off well with a party.

Next Friday the kids have daycare for the day and I'm off for the day. Millais is waiting. Who wants to come with?

'Nowhere man, can you see me at all?' - Natalie Merchant, after The Beatles, Nowhere Man

'In the middle of the night, you don't know what I'm thinking' - Garbage, Sleep

1. In a curious twist of fate I have realised that I cannot write and listen to music at the same time.
   
   How bloody awful is that?
   
   I get caught up in the music and then find myself typing in rhythm and all that comes out is the emotions of the song I'm listening to. All very well and good when it's Mika, but if I ever want to write anything other than blues, the music has to stop.
   
   So now I am in complete silence, relatively, while I write and the keyboard clicking is irritating me.
   
   
2. I didn't pay the Barclaycard on time so there will be a fine. Woe.
   
   
3. I need to start making lists. I am forgetting everything I need to do. Like pay the Barclaycard. It's amazing that I turn up at school on time. How did I get to be so scatter-brained?
   
   
4. Meeting new people is fun. Waiting for them to google you is not. Verschrikkelijk!
   
   
5. I'm a cheap drunk. One glass of wine and I'm all rosy.
   
   
6. Because frivolity is always becoming, I am in love with YSL's new perfume, Elle.
   
   
7. Reading poetry out loud is interesting. Try this one from Matthew Caley. Taken from The Poem.
   
   Cul-De-Sac

Apparently, I proceeded in an easterly direction, with no lack
of temerity. Saw the wild bayberry-blossom
of the sink-estate.
A stranger uprooted and said. 'Not that way, mate, it's a cul-de-sac'.

He placed great stress on the 'de'. There was now no turning back.
By then, we were headlong into each other
you, humbled below me, turned the other way, your shoulder-blades
                                      moving like skimmed slates over tawny water.

To sleep with anyone is risk,
—the virus of love, the virus of obligation— the fear of being opened to any
                                      turn
of events. Strange then that after, you formally donned a sleep-mask
as if not wanting to witness a burglar break suddenly into your home.

There are those who believe that, as it and us share swirling molecules,
                                      we can walk through solid matter.

D-d-d don't wait for me by the spider-web scintillations
of the broken kiosk. I won't be back.

And then read Spike Milligan.

Mirror Mirror

A young spring-tender girl
combed her joyous hair
'You are very ugly' said the mirror.
But,
on her lips hung
a smile of dove-secret loveliness,
for only that morning had not
the blind boy said,
'You are beautiful'?

See how they make you feel? Feel how they make you feel. I think I still like Spike Milligan more, just for the brevity of words, but Matthew Caley has something, don't you think?

Funny that, I love writing that captures emotion in the barest minimum of words, and yet when I write myself I run off at the mouth an awful lot. Paradox.

'My girl, my girl, where will ya go?' - Nirvana, Where did you sleep last night?

Today I've been thinking about the mechanics of leaving, the up-and-going of it all. The things that go with us and the things we leave behind. I've been thinking about the past a lot recently. The therapist I don't have would be proud.

Let's rewind a bit to 1995. I was married to K and lived in Mount Pleasant, Harare. We had a nanny for my daughter, a company car, both of us worked, life was pretty good. Friends, parties, social stuff. We were outwardly very happy, even down to the piano duets. You know how it is. We were married when I was 18 and we stayed married until the year I turned 21. They say big things happen to women each decade. I guess that's true, big things do happen to women each decade. But also, people make choices that perhaps seemed the right ones at the time, or perhaps we're not the same people we will be later.

Anyway, I was difficult to deal with, and I still am; over-emotional, insecure, chronically unable to trust, afraid of being left alone. He was laid-back, too much so; disinvested, laconic, unaffectionate; unwilling to get past the barriers that I threw up every time I suspected I might get hurt; unable to understand why, despite the confident exterior, that the interior was completely fucked up. He didn't do the things I wanted when I needed them and I didn't know how to communicate what I needed. By the time we split up the mountain between us was insurmountable and the past indelible.

So what happened then?

I just left one day. Just like that. Overnight. One day I was there, and the next I was gone and I left my whole life behind me and started over. I took only my books, my music and my paintings. I had no money, no home, nowhere to go, but at the time it seemed the right choice.

I wonder if it says something about me, that these things - books, music and art - are the only constants in what seems an ever-moving landscape for me?

I've been looking at my bookshelves today and although most of the books that travelled with me from Africa are in storage downstairs I have Kerouac's Big Sur on my bookshelf and Marguerite de Angeli's Skippack School and Elin's Amerika, both 1941 editions. I have somewhere, Allen Ginsberg's Howl and of course, the book of poetry that I've written about before.

When I open the de Angeli books I'm immediately transported to the floor of my grandmother's house, where I would wonder at St Lucia and schools where they wrote on slates and carried lunch in a pail. Ginsberg's Howl reminds me of my boyfriend N, and his friends who were so achingly intellectual, goth and hip that on Saturday nights we would smoke dope and read the beat poets to each other, in lieu of anything better to do.

K, my ex, introduced me to science fiction, for which I'm eternally grateful, especially when I can discuss Ender's Game or Fahrenheit 451 intelligently. He taught me to analyse science fiction and to enjoy it. Before I met him I was steeped in modern literature. He opened the door to a world where your imagination is only limited by the possibilities of what you can construct around it.

If I were to go downstairs and get Ray Bradbury's short stories collection, I'd remember K taking me to the library, extracting me from the modern literature shelves and walking me over to Sci Fi, where no-one ever went and saying 'here, read this, and this and this and this'. 'Meet Arthur C Clarke, this is Ray Bradbury and this is Philip K Dick who will remember it for you wholesale.' Vivid memories, and all around books.

So what do we take with us from our past? Are there memories concentrated in the dust between the pages of our old books?

When we open them and inhale, do we breathe in our past?

When we take these things with us, the books and the music and the paintings, is it because we know that years later, these things - the memories - are all that's left?

'Poetry is no place for a heart that's a whore
And I'm young & I'm strong
But I feel old & tired
Overfired'
- Martha Wainwright, BMFA

Forgive me, there are things that need saying, but I'm not saying them. Not today, anyway. Maybe later.

---------------

I've been running but I have shin splints, so I'm back in the horrible bloody mother fucking support socks 24/7 'til Friday and I can't run 'til at least Saturday and I need it, I need it, I need it soooo bad.

The DTs are setting in, I'm starting to shake and are those spiders I see coming out of the walls?

I won't get on the bike because I've been there done that and it just isn't the same. I need to feel my knees jar to get the endorphins rushing.

So the mother of gloom is standing over my bed with her hands in my head (listen to the song above). Playing with my hair, whispering in my ear, softly at first, then shrieking. I want to calm the roar but my antidepressants are not available. I'm all alone with this one, 'til Saturday. Unless I find some other way to work it out, work it out, work out, work out. (even my writing takes on a subliminal mind of its own)

Work through it dammit.

----------

Completely unrelated, well maybe not. My youngest son was back at swimming lessons today after a 4 month break. He forget which door to go through to get back to me after his lesson and when I found him he was chlorine soaked, red-eyed and inconsolable.

Anyone remember that feeling when you've lost your mom and you have no idea where she is? My mom was late a few times to fetch me from school when I was in kindergarten and I can remember sitting in a dejected heap on my brown school suitcase, under the big jacaranda tree at the entrance to the school. And feeling absolutely abandoned. 

Today with my son, while I towelled him off, gave him kisses and hugs and patted his head until he finally stopped crying, I thought about how much nicer it would have been if I could have delayed this moment for him.

The moment being that big moment.

The one where you realise that you are completely alone in the world, and that sometimes there is no-one on the other side of the door, and sometimes you have no idea where the freaking door even is. 

Couldn't he have been a little older? Couldn't I have been a little older?

------------------

Finished the book. Read the last bit in the swimming pool cafe. Laughed hysterically and out loud at the bits about how one's clitoris apparently disappears once you enter your sixties? How disappointing! Some of us are less emancipated than others and may have only just discovered ours, and then to get told it disappears as you get older? Dire. Absolutely dire.

26 years left ...

My next book is Over by Margaret Forster. No laughing here I'm afraid, no disappearing clitorises either. In fact, let me rethink that and choose another book for the next couple of days. I've been reading this one for a while and I keep putting it down because even though her writing is beautifully spare, the subject matter, a death in the family and the subsequent dissolution of the family, cuts a bit too keenly to be read with comfort.

Maybe I'll be spending some time with Charlaine Harris instead. Screw modern literature this week, give me vampire chick lit romance and loooooove (with fangs).

------------

And that, she said, was that.

'the answer better be, it pleases me.' - Nina Simone, Do I Move You

Yes yes, I know there are other, more important, life changing, breaking-news things to write about and here I am with books and fashion.

Books, books, books.

Today's book, 'No I don't want to join a Bookclub' by Virginia Ironside is hysterically funny.

It's so humorously engaging that lying in the quiet room at the sauna and reading it was not really an option for me. Not really an option due to the eruption of giggles and hysterical snorting and general inability to keep my good humour to myself.

Nothing like lying naked in a quiet room with a whole lot of other people and shaking with laughter to make the other people look at you funny. Never mind the jiggling when you try and keep the giggles in when giggles really will out, at all costs.

What I like about this book is that there are these moments of acute hilarity, interspersed with really astute views on how life is. It's written from the point of view of a 60 year old woman who starts a diary. Fascinating.

A funny excerpt (familiar with this feeling, anyone?):

'Woke feeling absolutely terrible, all the 1,001 muscles in my face still trapped in a rictus of insincerity. Knew, even worse, that I would have to suffer this cramped feeling till the following morning when the ghastly evening had finally drained from my body.
   
    To make matters worse, I looked terrible. Last night before I went to the party I saw in the mirror a raging beauty, with incredible olive skin, high cheekbones, a sensitive mouth, utterly ravishing. But when I glanced in the mirror this morning, I couldn't believe what started back at me - I looked grotesque; Charles Laughton in a dressing gown. My face was like an uncooked doughnut. Piggy eyes, small, pursed, pale-lipped mouth, deep frown-marks, all puff. Revolting. What is it that happens in the night? Clearly Something - God knows what - Collects. Or perhaps it was the Rioja. Or perhaps, more likely, the therapist, quite understandably, had put a curse on me.'

And this is one of the astute ones:

'I remember only recently realising that you could hold two feelings in yourself at the same time, that you could both like someone and dislike them in one go, that you could both want a cigarette and want to give up smoking.
   
    As one who sees life rather in black and white - strong hates and loves - I have always tried to compromise by seeing everything in a kind of grey. The trick is not to do that at all, but to manage to hold the contrasts in oneself at exactly the same time. That results in a much more lively and invigorating approach. Very late in the day to discover that thought, but it has made relationships with people far, far easier. And oddly, kinder.'

Haven't got even to the middle of the book yet but absolutely loving it.

I hope I'm just like this heroine at 60: eccentric, bloody-minded and outspoken.

In fact, I'll just start now, shall I?

'So what becomes of you my love, when they have finally stripped you of the handbags and the gladrags' - Stereophonics, Handbags and Gladrags

Let's talk fashion.

A couple of years ago I was the kind of girl who just took whatever was clean out of the cupboard and put it on.

I'm not that girl anymore.

I don't have many clothes now, but I suppose I've re-defined my style. Turning 33 was the moment for me. I realised I was getting older and that the torn jeans and baggy tee look wasn't really doing it for me anymore. Plus, nothing like aging to make you get yourself together real fast.

I'd say my style now is classic with a twist. I have great shoulders, from all that working out, so I wear sweaters and fitted shirts that show off my collarbones. I have an hourglass figure that lends itself to tops that are fitted in the waist. Conversely, I recently love babydoll tops that fall from just under the bust. This week I've been wearing what seems like only two things - my Biba hipster jeans with a babydoll dress from Sissy Boy. It has super-long sleeves that come right over my wrists and it's so tactile. I love it.

My other favourites this winter were a black wrap-dress from Sissy Boy with a Biba bright tanktop underneath, and a knit dress from s'Oliver, (sadly too big now). I can't find skirts that are right for me, they're all a little too short (very long legs here) but I had a couple from H&M, which, when worn with boots and tights were awesome.

This winter I had two coats, a pillarbox red classic coat from Principles, and a down-filled short jacket from Gap. I love red in winter, it gives a flash of colour against the endless grey.

For spring and summer I've settled on black and white. Black and white linen tailored wide leg trousers. Two short-sleeved silky tees, also black and white, and, rather frivolously, two tunics from SPS Superstar. One is babydoll and has cross over spaghetti straps in an African print and the other is sort of kaftan inspired and ties at the back in white with Delft blue. So, some colour for summer, and not a polo/golf shirt in sight. Polo shirts look so much better on men anyway.

Now I'm considering my summer coat. A classic trench, with a bit of a twist. I think in taupe, maybe like this?

And who should I thank for fashion inspiration? The Sartorialist and Mary Jo Matsumoto.

A new discovery via Dietgirl is What I Wore Today. For a glimpse of how to understand colour, visit Hue.

Links to my favourite brands: Biba, Promiss, Sissy Boy, Mexx, Esprit, Principles, SPS Superstar and for sports, Deha.

Girls, this is your turn to comment.

What have you been wearing this winter and what are your summer style plans?
 

'Why dream a dream that's tainted with trouble and less than it seems, why bother bothering, just for a poem or another sad song to sing' - Emilie Autumn, The Art of Suicide

I have nothing to say
I'm running away
take your place in the queue
someday, one day, I'll get to you

Emilie Autumn's poems and music here. Cover of Billie Holliday's Crazy, He Calls Me, here. Faces Like Mine here.

'I loved them 'til they loved me.' - Carla Bruni, after Dorothy Parker, Ballade at Thirty Five

Serendipitous, again.

On Wednesday I heard Carla Bruni for the first time, singing in French, her first album. Not in person, obviously.

I was captivated by her voice. Not a clue what she was singing, no French spoken here, but it sounded beautiful.

I bought No Promises when I got home. Love love love it. Poems read in that breathy voice to music. Dorothy Parker's Ballade at 35. Ok, I'm 34, but give me a year. 

Today, relaxing, I opened my Esta and there, in the back was an article written tongue in cheek about how if your man walked past Carla Bruni, sat with a coffee at a cafe, poetry book in hand, he'd be quoting Auden and thinking 'Carla Carla Carla' for the rest of his life. The shorts and the sneakers, and the hair and the poems, oh the poems.

Auden's The Secret is Out.  Christina Rosetti's Promises Like Pie Crust:

Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

The Observer and Cool Hunting had something to say about this album too, and it's all good.

------------------------------

Glad or sad. Emotion analysis of photos as part of a University of Amsterdam study. I submitted a photo, please go vote on mine so I can get the analysis. I want to see if I'm really happy! Just in case I need reminding in the future.

-----------------------------

New shoes really make you go faster. 5 km in 35 minutes today. This was serendipitous too. Last week three different people told me my shoes needed replacing. Then Wednesday I ran with them and hurt my shins. Yesterday I bought some new shoes, and these are them. And only 49 euros.

Last week I was running 4 km in 31 minutes. It's all the shoes, I tell you.

------------------------------

Son #1 told me today 'Mama, you put on weight.'

Hah. How to tell the boy that mama has pre-menstrual bloat and combined with PMS saying things like that might not be the best way to win favours?

Then he compounded the pain by saying 'Ja echt, mama, you look fatter around the middle'. Careful boy!

He turns 8 soon. We're going disco bowling, yeah babay! Mama gets to bowl too. For Amstelveen.

-------------------------------

Job interview on Monday. 2 days a week in Schiphol-Rijk. I could do that, right? 2 days a week and not go crazy?

-------------------------------

If you don't read Neil Gaiman's blog, you should. But, if you don't, you wouldn't know that there is a free download of Harlequin Valentine on Last.fm.

So now you do.

-------------------------------

Books bought yesterday:

India Knight's The Dirty Bits for Girls. I hesitate (and blush) to share that I read most of the books that have excerpts in this book. Notable though, in the Dirty Bits reading was Lace, which my mom caught me reading lying down by the side of her bed. Ooh la la. I was 11 and already naughty.

The New Granta Book of the American Short Story. I have a weakness for short stories. They're so cut and dried. A beginning, a middle and an end. Swift and succinct, short as a love affair, there is no time for disillusionment. My shelves are full of them.

Books I want:

Four Letter Word, New Love Letters and Francine Oomen's Gek van Liefde. Ben je gek van de liefde? Or is it all a matter of choice? Crazy not crazy crazy not crazy... Love is a conscious choice. Chemistry, ah, that's different.

A bit like this:

sitting across from him in the cafe
I thought for a minute that I could see
that brief moment of truth
of how it could be
the ins and outs, the shine
then just as quickly it went again.

Book club I joined:

One in Amsterdam, on Wednesday nights. Book being read right now, Andrea Levy's Small Island.

Book club I started, linked with the Dutch Word of the Day:

First book. Boudewijn Buch's de kleine, blonde dood. Grab a copy and come join us on facebook. We start in March.

Go read the Dutch Word of the Day too. Those guys do a fantastic job of making Dutch accessible.

--------------

I just realised I could have spun this blog post out into a whole week, but today I have so much to say. Funny how that happens sometimes.

'I suggest a reading of 'a lesson in tightropes',  or 'surfing your high hopes' or 'adios kansas'' - Rufus Wainwright, Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk

0 visits to the gym/coffees/lunches/lazing in saunas (enjoying oneself) achieved.
1 job application (for one hopefully more challenging) filled in.
2 pairs of linen pants (two sizes smaller) bought.
3 petit fours (remember the linen pants!) eaten.
4 bills (that had been procrastinated over) paid.
5 looks in the mirror, checking (to see if it was really me looking back)

and the kicker:

1500 euros for APK (roadworthy test) for my car, (oh my god oh my god, I am poor!) quoted.

Gasp.

'Oh, I must've been a dreamer, and I must've been someone else' - Steve Perry, Oh Sherry

Yesterday I drove to Gouda to visit a new baby! Thanks B, it was great to see you and your new darling.

The weather was perfect, the sun was shining, it was 16 degrees C, the A12 was empty both ways. I wore my sunglasses and wished I had a convertible. Now I'm expecting some speeding fines. Hmm.

I can remember being quite a careful driver when I first got my driver's licence.

Now I'm not. I'm quite aggressive and I speed. I accelerate incredibly fast and I can be driving at 160 km/h before I even notice.

I'm impatient and I swear at slow moving traffic. I take corners in 3rd gear and I listen to my music really loud.

How did your driving style change with experience? Better, worse, more blase?

Second topic.  Yes, I change focus like this in person too.

I delivered some flowers today for the florist where I seem to be working again. From an acquaintance (via the florist) to a slightly better acquaintance (my laser therapist). He's in love, so much in love/lust/whatever that he sent her an arrangement of three very expensive long stemmed red roses in a pretty vase with a heart shaped box of chocolates.

She's not. In love that is.

So he took a big risk.

When I gave her the flowers she was blushing from embarrassment and not from being over-the-moon. I felt sorry for him, then I was thinking 'actually he needs congratulating, he stepped outside his comfort zone!'

Nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

Are you taking a risk for Valentine's Day tomorrow? Did you ever take a risk like this guy did? Go on, tell. I want the details!

Today's six word memoir:

Life is interesting. More than usual.

''Time, it's possible time, can be my soldier and my king in the war for you' - Ida Maria, When it comes to you.

I'm in love again.

I know, I know, every week it's someone new, I'm a musical slut.

So who is it this week?

It's Ida Maria of course! Click for myspace, click to sign up for their newsletter and get a song for free.

Then listen and think 'wow'.

'Oh my god, oh you think I'm in control' - Ida Maria, Oh My God

Love love loving your six words.

In fact, so impressive, am speechless.

Would love you to write more.

Keep surprising me, I like surprises.

' A tell-tale sign, you don't know where to draw the line' - Keane, Nothing in my Way

This is so cool. What would your six word memoir be?

In my current phase my memoir is:

'Geographically re-situated, essentially nothing has changed.'

or

'Two marriages. Three children. Four countries.'

or

'Trying to re-write life at 34.'

Get over the comments hurdle and leave me a comment with your six word memoir. I know I have more than 30 regular readers, there has to be a comment in one of you, somewhere.

Go on, do it.

Or my next memoir may be:

'No blog comments, ended it all'*.

*Tongue firmly in cheek.

 

'And on the jukebox is your, is your only song & I, I have never remembered the words.' - Martha Wainwright, When the Day is Short

I have been reading Anais Nin's Henry and June. My initial impression was undecided, I suppose. I had to remind myself that these extracts were written in diary format, that these are her thoughts, that self-absorption is the basis of a diary, not written or intended for anyone else except the diarist.

Now that I'm finished the book I have more of a sense of who she was and what she was searching for. The search for self, for actualisation, for meaning. The desire to feel and feel anything. In the last entry that was included in this book she writes:

'Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. ...  I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.'

I can't pretend to be able to take apart the book and analyse it for its literary impact, but I can see the advantage that Nin had of being first, being the first one to write about these things, being the first one with an openly bohemian lifestyle. Now, in 2008, if the same work were published it would be old, no longer fresh, boring.

Which brings me to my own diary. This diary. I thought it might metamorphose into something else but no, it's a record of my thoughts and actions from day to day. So it's a diary. There are some stories, some recipes, some other stuff, but it's a collection, a collecting place for everything I don't know where to put, including my thoughts.

I am almost tempted to make it private, but something stops me, I can't say what. The thrill of writing a diary lies perhaps in the surreptitious reader, the opening of the window into another life, the questions that each answered question raises in reply.

Anonymity is such a double edged sword. You think it protects you, but it's nebulous really.

Yesterday I went to read the scent of water and found a year of ordinary. 

Beautiful writing about life, less ordinary.

'And I have left the warmth of the sun and a million adventures not yet begun.' - Paolo Nutini, Northern Skies

Photo taken in the Amsterdamse Bos on the Bosbaan, today in the sunshine.

' They're trying to make me go to rehab...' - Paulo Nutini covering Amy Winehouse, Rehab

Neil's been in therapy for a while. He wrote about his therapist shaving her legs, (for him he supposed), had a little bit of transference, as all good therapy patients should and wonders frequently on his blog whether he's adult enough.

I'm 34. Neil is a bit older. I was in therapy before. This is his first time.

I've had some therapists and then I've had some therapists. I had one when I was about 16 (for the anorexia/bulimia) who was so freaking hippie, purple scarves, indian jewellery and the smell of incense. She was short and fat and completely at ease with herself. I was charmed and I obligingly transferred. I'm sure she was polyamorous and I suspect she smoked dope before our sessions, because she was spaced all the time. (I think I might also have smoked dope before meeting with me, knowing what I know now.)

She also treated other family members of mine and you had to wonder at the confidentiality of the discussions we had in therapy. She was pretty helpful though. Her therapy was based on cognitive psychology so there were real solutions to problems discussed in the sessions. Like, 'You feel you can't control x, y, z? Try this.'

So pretty much a good therapy experience overall.

Later, when I met B, left my first marriage and we moved in together it was into a flat in the same building as her practice and that was freaky. Meeting her in the stairwell etc. How to be embarrassed simultaneously in a very small space, especially when she took me aside and asked how the sex was, while winking and gesturing.

Ahem.

A few years later in Cape Town I had a therapist who pissed me off intensely. She was a classical Freudian psychiatrist. She would sit opposite me in her beautiful, light filled, Oranjezicht office with its designer plants; never talk, say 'I see' and then at the end of the sessions tell me that I wasn't progressing while waving the DSMIV criteria at me and telling me that it was all because I intellectualized my feelings instead of acting on them.

Maybe I was intellectualizing but wasn't it her job to help me feel instead of allowing me to intellectualize? 

Years later I still intellectualize. Some things never change.

Here in the Netherlands I had a psychologist who was so sweet, but wanted me to talk about my paaaaaaast all the time. On the premise that talking about the past will fix the present.

Oh my. Oh my. I couldn't discuss my past, especially not in this particular present.

I had a few sessions with her, made her cry, cried in my fourth session, as expected, then ran away as fast as I could and I haven't been back. Talk about fear of facing one's feelings. Chicken. In fact, I usually run away from anything as soon as there is any kind of confrontation or anything that I feel I can't control.

Result = failure in therapy.

Now I go the informal therapy route. I write, and I publish what I write to the internet. That carries it's own set of weird possibilities, actually. How does it affect the people reading it, how many beans can you spill without hurting someone, how do other people feel when they read what you write, how does your writing skew other people's perceptions of who you are?

How fucked up can you be online? Actually I know how fucked up people can be online and that's pretty comforting.

It's a bit like group therapy I suppose - there is always someone worse off in the group. Someone you don't want to be. Then you can say to yourself, 'wow, imagine if it was as bad for me as that person has it' and feel somewhat smug.

Writing as therapy is free and I never really have to do anything I don't want to do, I can re-write my emotions from day to day and if I don't like them I can delete them.

Actually, the deleting thing might not be such a good idea. I admitted at lunch yesterday that I delete my written work wholesale (if you could see the hundreds of stories that no longer exist), and my lunch partner was shocked. He said 'ooooh, you can't do that, a writer keeps everything and rewrites.'

Maybe that's my fatal flaw. I never want to rewrite. I just want to start over.

Perfect therapy, though, the internet.

Don't you think?

'All summer long we sang a song and strolled on golden sand' - Madeleine Peyroux, The Summer Wind

Amsterdam was so beautiful today. Clear from morning to evening. Vapour trails across the rose-tinted blue this morning at sunrise, 11 degrees celsius, people on terraces, coats open. People smiling and flirting in the tram, happy.

I was in the Bakkerswinkel for lunch with another writer. We were talking about how there is just more time in the tropics. Maybe it's the longer, more constant days (his theory) or that there's some kind of compensatory lilt in the earth's motion that unfairly gives the tropics more of the wonderful stuff (my theory).

How else can you explain the languidity of endless afternoons waiting for the 5 o'clock cocktail hour? Lying in bed under a humid-damp sheet, turning the pages of a book and literally watching the seconds pause? Also of course, that having more time gives you more time to dream up mischief. Then we discussed how almost all possible mischief in the tropics involves booze, drugs and sex. Oh, and water.

After I ran my 4 km for today, I walked across the parking lot from the gym to pick up my kids from daycare. Behind me, the sunset reflected in the buildings across the polder creating myriads of red flashes along the horizon.

A hundred setting suns repeating over and over and over.

'You can be Henry Miller and I'll be Anais Nin' - Jewel, Morning Song

M is Zimbabwean and lived in Cologne, married to a German guy, R. We met five years ago on a flight from London to Harare, each alone with our two boys, her youngest the same age as my oldest and my youngest four weeks old and clamped to my breast for the twelve hour flight. We had the same layover in London Heathrow and got talking, as you do, when one of you has a baby clamped to your breast and one child running amok and the other of you has two children running amok.

A few months later she and R and their two boys were in Amsterdam en route to somewhere else and we stopped at the airport to see them. Then we lost touch. They had email, but she's a midwife and he's an academic and they're those kind of people that the wired world just passes by without comment. I tried to phone a few months ago and got someone else on the line, non-English speaking and so I just assumed that M & R had disappeared.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got a card at Christmas time from them and they're in Tanzania! Who knew? They're in the foothills of Kilimanjaro, their children play barefoot in the dirt and speak fluent English as well as German and they're happy being in the African sunshine. I am looking forward to catching up.

The meeting on the plane-talking-spending time together-meeting again-writing to each other-etc thing made me think though.

You pass so many people by every day. You interact with some, ignore some, like some, dislike others, and then just one interaction with somebody and it sticks, and you think 'wow, I really like this person.'

It all depends on time and place and the choices. I guess it's really all about the choices. You look at another person and immediately make a yes or no choice, consciously or subconsciously.

Yes, I will open up to this person or no, I will not.

Everything hinges on that choice.

What I wonder about though is how often we block out what could be some meaningful interaction because we're deafened by the ipod, distracted by the tv or deep in a book or just numb from life.

How much are we really paying attention to who's around us?

Sometimes we are paying attention and then when we do there's serendipity.

Like with me and M.