detox

Another month down and only one to go before Fartford becomes a vision of my past. Between a manic stretch of back to back day and night on-calls coupled with the miracle that is the capacity for human adaptation, the time has passed faster than a libidinous politician could disgrace his own reputation. 

Further to this, I have received my first gifts from a fan! As a side, I implore any of you who read this blog and benefit either by laughter or engendered gratitude knowing that by comparative analysis your home life is really actually very nice and mine is really actually very shitty(!) to please also send presents. I just love presents! In this month I have received a very decadent memory foam pillow to support a situation that put into question my heart health. I also received an American-sized jug of bleach to detox my dormitory, and a container of melatonin gummies that are so delicious I can't stop ingesting 1.5mg a pop artificially flavored grape somnolence buttons and then snoozing in inappropriate places and times. I also received some wine and Prosecco to keep me entertained in my own company, because those who know me know that to enjoy my own company my brain must be maximally silenced. Oh, I even got a spray painted skull of some unknown wild animal with tiny horns. Not sure what to make of that one. 

I did another mandatory load of laundry. Turning underwear inside out to avoid a wash cannot be applied to bath towels. So I threw them all in, closed the door and hit start. This was met with immediate regret, and whilst I rushed to abort the mission and remove my dirty but soulfully untarnished towels, the machine was resolute in holding my items hostage until the cycle had been completed. And when it was, three hours later, I retrieved my items smelling this time not of fried potatoes, but of fresh human excrement. 

I finished my last long stretch of on calls on Wednesday at 11pm, and had an early morning flight out of London on Thursday, for which I had to pack the morning of because the suitcase I use for travel is also the device I use as a makeshift set of drawers to contain the items that cannot fit in my "closet". The suitcase occupies 85 percent of my floor space which means I also can't fully open the door to my room, turning micturition into a creative display of me sucking in and shimmying through the crack in the door to access the bog. This also means I have to empty the suitcase of the things unnecessary for travel and store them on my bed. Hence I can't pack in advance. Well I could, but then I'd have to sleep in my suitcase. But this is all just to say that I have now fekked off to Milan and carted straight up to Switzerland, into the arms of the ones I love, the pine trees, the mountains, and the smell of bovine excrement, which I can say from experience is far superior to the human equivalent. 

home is where your underwear smells like fried potatoes

It's been one month since I moved into my new space where it's christmas year-round and mini ponies shit on the sidewalk to my doorstep, and I'm pleased to say it's already starting to feel like home! Today the eminently terrifying Romanian girl with whom i share a kitchen not only leant me two onions but also insisted I try an entire cutlet of the pork she made for dinner. Maybe it doesn't seem like a tale worth telling but this is the same girl who on day 3 of my tenancy I was certain would have decked me for very stupidly having used one of her plastic bowls which I thought was communal. Imagine that! A flapping piece of piggy flesh acting as a metaphorical olive branch! Putting money down that by next month we'll be braiding each other's hair and slamming bubblegum daiquiris at the local TGI Friday's. Watch this space. 

Train home from dads today. Got lost and ended up in some terrifying suburb where you definitely wouldn't want to stay for longer than absolutely necessary. But I'll tell you what, I found this little gem that seems  to shamelessly recall one of my great loves and suppliers of Kentucky Fried popcorn Chicken.  This one advertises "a unique taste" and offers not only burgers but also indian cuisine so I'm thinking about going back.

I digress. 

One of my first orders of business moving to Dartford (or as my black operations pocket telephone coincidentally autocorrects "Fartford") was joining a gym. Physical activity is the only way I can combat my natural tendency toward a very bad attitude. I found a no frills spot where I can push around iron slabs for £20.99 a month.  No poser males sporting armpit cutout tank tops to their waist apparently unintentionally revealing pepperoni sized nip slips to other patrons while admiring their own reflection. One of the reasons I suppose it's so cheap is that there's minimal staffing. Instead of someone manning the desk, there are two "pods" separating the outside from the inside of the premises: 

You enter a personal code to get in, the small cylindrical pod opens up from one side, you step in, the sliding pod door closes behind you, and then the sliding door opens permissibly in front of you allowing you to walk out. So basically for a fraction of time the capsule holds you captive in that space designed to be tight so people don't sneak in twos.  It's enough to make a claustrophobe poop his pants which I guess is what happened the other day when I found myself trapped in said vessel and obliged to the stench of the last person's fermented colon contents. It was so pervasive my eyes are still watering. 

Fartford. 

Did you ever suffer that recurring nightmare during childhood where you showed up to school fully unclothed? I have been having a biweekly nocturnal scare where I am roused to find my bare ass poking out from underneath the duvet, on full display for my bosses to see. The grossly unsettling thing about this is that moments later I actually wake to find my actual arse (not just my dreamed one) poking out from beneath the covers and facing west toward the hospital only a few hundred meters away where my bosses COULD be. Like, if there were no walls my bosses would actually be able to see my butt. It's like a totally fucked up merging of my subconscious with reality. 

I sleep on a twin bed with an unstable headboard that gives way to the pressure of my back against it merely from sitting up to read a book. You can't imagine how annoying this is. Like, you are a headboard and you have ONE JOB. The hospital pillow gives no neck support which means tossing and turning against its synthetic fibers that squeak to the pattern of my shiftiness.  I’m so flat in bed I can’t breathe and wonder whether I may be cardiopathic????? I have to stuff my Hungarian down duvet (which I obviously supplied myself) under my neck to use it as a pillow and sleep in my robe for survival.  

I did my first load of laundry here - a typically enjoyable activity - that now makes me cringe with anticipatory dread. I did a 14 minute power boil of my clothes so as to minimize the chance of infection by cross contamination of strangers' pubic hair. I mean, can you imagine how many people must have washed their sticky unmentionables in this drum? Only worse,  I hung my own out to dry just outside the communal kitchen and all my panties ended up smelling like fried potatoes. I blame the romanian. I hope she doesn't read this. 

metaphorical car crash

It's been four months and a lot has happened. 

I spent much of it in a daze, doing things like putting the nespresso capsule straight into the mug and pouring boiling water over the top of it.

My life also turned into a metaphorical car crash. 

Speaking of which, I walked past this vehicle in Peckham recently. Probs not the best advertising for your Premier Driving School.  

Do you remember that tiny hand to hold? There have been further episodes to corroborate my feeling that these walls have eyes. Volume on:

(my inclination was that with two tiny pieces of tape on that cabinet, whatever was in there would have remained in there.)

In January I went on a ski trip with friends to Austria which turned out to be a complete disaster save for these Biggie Smalls snowboarding socks. 

But praise the celestial bodies for this absolute gem of a human who intercepted me in Tulum in February:

Between the green juice, tacos, bike rides, beach walks, mayan ruins, cenotes, tequila boom booms, sandy naps, questionable cacao and coconut "happy balls" and a mayan energy healer who exorcised me physically and emotionally, I returned to London with a levity and joy I hadn't known since my teenage years. 

I came back to London for just enough time to work a hectic stretch of night shifts, only to fly back across the atlantic home to california to celebrate my mother's 70th birthday in march. She is not only an engineer, but also the most resourceful person I know. When I lamented not having a reclining lawn chair in the backyard, she brought a chair out from the garage and built me this not so beautiful but highly functional sunbathing contraption:  

But the joy ride was over soon enough as upon my return to London I had to pack up my belongings for the seventh time in 2.5 years and move out. Though you'll have to read the tell-all for the details on that, my lovely fiancé NUMERO DOS and I decided to go our separate ways, which, heartache aside was a massive pain in the ass. We remain friends however in the course of the move had a few mutual fits of rage that resulted in myself manically packing up all my books into heavily sealed boxes, such that I now have nothing to do with my spare time other than refresh instagram every 37 seconds or make another piece of toast with jam. The first set of assets divided was the alcohol, and you bet your ass I took all the tequila. Other than a consortium of failed relationships, the only things i've collected over the years seems to be tequila and some art, which are now all living in a storage unit until I find a more permanent place to call home once I finish my residency early August.

In the meanwhile, I am living here: 

So cry for me, pray for me. Do whatever you have to do. I am 34 and living in a hospital dormitory  that smells like a charity shop and is too small to contain even my tiniest g-string. 

I share a bathroom with one other person who doesn't exist, so on a positive note one could say I have my own en suite. On the other hand, I didn't have anyone to ask for help when I couldn't figure out how to switch the tap from bath to shower so had to spend the earliest days shaped like a tripod, splashing my butt aimed at the faucet with water as if I were a bird in a bath, and sort my hair out with entire cans of dry shampoo. The dormitory is so small that the whole thing turns into a steam room when you bathe and as such I had to crack the window (LITERALLY CRACK the window, which i guess they limit the opening of out of fear we'd jump from height given the chance). Anyway, within seconds this thing crawled in:

I mean, there is no other way to say it than 

FUCK THAT SHIT>

I don't mean to be a scrooge, but there is a common area which- considering it's now May  - is perhaps overly festive when it comes to symbols of Christmas:

There are not one but TWO Christmas trees. See if you can spot them! 

The kitchen was marketed as "fully stocked" which is why I left my gold leaf pink champagne saucers in storage. Unfortunately the only option for drinking wine is out of a mug, bowl, or plastic picnic champagne glass. So that's what I do these days.

I have to admit I found a glimmer of joy when I went for a run around the new neighborhood and found these meadows and this mini pony just around the corner. Meadows and mini ponies are the personification of my ideals on love which is why i'm accepting this as a positive omen. 

While all my friends are buying houses, I'm buying bleach for the community toilet. But I have found a pub that sells pints of Guinness for only 2.50, so while the car might appear crashed on the outside, the engine's still running a full tank of diesel and I still have no plans to call the Premier Driving School.