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I Wanna Be Yours

  Tue 17th September 2013

The errant lodger, who owes me £360, has moved out. I rang his exasperated Dad who said that he is constantly doing this. Dad said he'd send me a cheque; ten days later I am still waiting for it. A couple more phone calls, hinting at an action in the Small Claims Court, have been swallowed by the answering machine. This is more bluster than actual threat, since I have no records of the haphazard way in which he paid his rent.

On Thursday the new couple, from Cornwall, arrived. I had been anxious for a while about meeting them, as the whole thing has been arranged over the internet. They are amiably hippyish, likely to be tolerant of the house's failings.

We sat down to an Indian meal I'd made. I gave them the Rough Guide to 44 Acacia Avenue, about how the cold water inlet to the washing machine leaks and how you have to kick the back door shut sometimes before it will open again. Next morning they asked if they could use the bread knife to cut the memory foam mattress down a little, as it's a bit too big for the bed frame.


The Guardian has been inviting people to send in pictures of their breakfasts. This unleashed a sun-washed tide of mango, agave nectar and baked figs, served with lashings of self-love, which roused me to strip off, and do something to prick their bubble.

My contribution is entitled "Baked beans, placcy cider, and internet porn". The Guardian's section editor wrote back asking me I'd mind if it were displayed later this year at the Photographers' Gallery in London.


I told the new lodgers that I was going to a Soul and House weekender in St Annes. "You don't look the type," he said.

We danced for three days solid, and had a couple of drunken afternoons in the pubs of St Annes and Lytham, with a reader of this blog who comes up all the way from Hampshire every year, together with a bloke I met on place book when I suggested a pre-dance pint or four in a decent real ale pub, and Trina.

Dancing, drinking--and flirting, of course, mainly with a gorgeous woman in an equally beautiful dress which was flared from a high waistband and had a simple pattern of black circles on a white ground. The lasciviously hopeful should pay close attention to a few brief frames at 0.25 and 2.07.

She came up to me (yes, she came up to me) and I told her her dress was lovely. "Yes, I've had a few compliments about this one." I didn't tell her there's a photograph of me in my underpants on the Guardian's website.

6 comments

Well done on the breakfast pic! It made me laugh. Who took that?

I wonder what type you look like to them?

Tue 17th September 2013 @ 11:56
Comment from: [Member]

Me. I stuck the camera on the window frame with some blutack and fiddled about with it till I got the angle right.

What type? A looby, I hope: “a lout, a stupid, clownish person"; a coarse, vulgar, pisstaking fellow; and someone indifferent to the way that glossily-photographed food has become socially definitive.

Tue 17th September 2013 @ 13:00
Comment from: Chef Files [Visitor]

“The errant lodger, who owes me £360, has moved out…”

Can you see now why my own methods are fool proof?

Tue 17th September 2013 @ 18:01
Comment from: [Member]

Yes, and I wish you here now. Taking a leaf out of your book from now on.

Tue 17th September 2013 @ 22:22
Comment from: [Member]

i spent a few days in Cornwall. i have to believe that your current lodgers won’t stiff you. the people i encountered were absolutely delightful - despite their adoration of that thing called ’spotted dick with cream’. we giggled ourselves into fits over that…

the Guardian photo is spectacular! god knows if there were photos of me in my most private moments, i’d never send them out to the world for comment and review!

have to agree with you on the dress, too. it’s been a full 6 months since my last house dance party. i am restless. your video reminded me of the sheer joy of getting lost in the dancing - and drumming. off to chase down my local house DJ… girl needs to get her dance meditation on something fierce.

oh. and for what it’s worth? pissed outta my skull on a thursday night because it’s been THAT kind of week.

Fri 20th September 2013 @ 05:31
Comment from: [Member]

Spotted dick! Yes, a delicious thing to roll around your mouth :)

Thanks re the photo – it’ll be strange seeing it in London.

And yes, I couldn’t function without a regular dancing fix. There’s nothing I enjoy more. Fortunately there’s quite a soul / house scene here in the NW. And Trina likes it too so I don’t have to go like Johnny No Mates.

Extra points for using the word “pissed” correctly :)

Sat 21st September 2013 @ 12:11


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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person


M / 59 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.


There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

The Comfort of Strangers

23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
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