snow joke

jan 3rd 2006 (crumbs!)

Current level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: nul points
Hair day: risked all and got snipped in High Wycombe near dad's, emerging with el chav blonde-side-stripe which am just getting used to

Phew. Well, here we are, spat out blinking into 2006, wondering why the streets of Brixton look as scummy as ever and not chockablock with shiny dealer-robots that can craft any drug of choice with a couple of deft button-pressings whilst boom-boxed spacecars thump by overhead and everyone shouts into the transglobalaudiovisualmobilechip in ther heads (as long as it has Radio 4, I'm in). Still, the back door to 2005 was slammed shut with an almighty kerWALLOP as I threw a bangin' party chez Baytree Court, where we grooved to Zen cuts and FF and S Club (yes, well, all in the past) and Prince's 1999 (New Year will always be musically on the cusp of the millenium unless Robbie Williams or the Arctic Monkeys can come up with a catchy 'Bring On 2007' number) whilst stuffing our faces and spilling so much booze on the floor that I was standing ankle-deep in a champagne swamp come Big Ben's dolorous chimes.. Marvellous.

Of course, nothing has actually changed at all, and I'm still perpetually grumbling about my lack of creative opportunity whilst not doing quite as much as I could about it despite protestations about schoolwork (which am obviously dreading onslaught of come...when is it...tomorrow! AGGHH!) and dreaming of the great things to come. Not one but two chums of mine currently make their sole living from composition and also Have Bought Their Own Houses. How, pray, is this possible???? Perhaps I shall adopt February as my real new year, when the boyfriend-gem-that-is-Andy and I shall squeeze ourselves into our new basement flat, the jewel in the could-do-with-a-polish-crown of E1. Then I shall revolutionise myself into all-singing-
all-composing East London artistic whirlwind that I really should be by now.

Getting away from the city grime from Christmas was well worth it, particularly to venture even further north than mother's in Driffield to majestic Northumberland, where we made like Scott of the Antarctic, watching our fingers turn blue, black and then drop off as we braved -7 temperatures and slipslid our way through the snow. We covered Druridge Bay, a menacing blade of beach with waves as high as houses on the horizon, and trudged through England's most northernly town, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, where locals couldn't seem to decide whether they should be Geordies or Scots. We checked out Alnwick's phenomenally fab second-hand-bookshop, Barter Books, which fills a vast Victorian railway station, nestled into a gorgeous old Inn in Alnmouth for mussles and whisky as cheap as chips, and shivered in the spooky bay the next morning, with its alien-moon landscape of snow and sand, the village behind us huddled into the icy mist like the setting to a Steven King novel. Brrrrrrr.