Oceans apart

An email

My day is multi-coloured yellow

Could

Would

Should

write back 

Fly a plane in the clouds above 

Puffs of white ‘I love you’ fluff

But

I swim in his words

Until they grow distant

Until I feel the Ocean between each consonant

Until the music fades

Until

Stubborn?

Proud

Refused him 

Ignored him

Denied him

When he is clearly the only man I could contemplate

Loving

To save myself?

Diving in

I refuse

to lose myself

I refuse

to follow 

I refused

to even meet him half-way

His apology

Not mine

When it was my fault

Befuddled

People criticise

But they don’t realise

That he is perhaps

The sweetest gentleman there is

There ever was

a 1950s movie

Next scene

We’ll meet again

Don’t know where

Dont know when

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day

My dreams

His dreams

Together….

Lazy-cat

Im late

Which once would have affected me

I would have picked up my pace

Slightly

Rushed even

But now

When the work I do isnt the work I DO

I can choose to languidly cat-stretch away my morning

In my own good time

Stride up-hill

No guilt

No shame

Easy-living

I have to say though

I would rather be GO-GO

Anyday…

Gypsy kings

Today I feel weirdy woo…

woke up without a breath…

ghastly trip bound up my lungs choking me with its grime…

I’m in the wrong place… I can feel it…

Call it snobbery but I was born for 5*s not the caravan park…

It goes against the princess grain…

It takes me a long time to put back the pieces after humpty dumpty falls off the wall.

Yoga: first port of call…

writing…

walking…

immersion…

translation… 

girlfriends…

coffee…

more coffee…

MORE COFFEEEEEEEEE…..

running…

tidying…(more like pretend tidying – tridying) 

The hilariously hideous trip pipped Croatia off the tripometer.

In Croatia it rained, I was gassed in my ‘hotel’/ ex-gym room and consequently found myself not being able to wake up, sleeping for at least 14 hours a day, there were cobbled beaches 1 metre squared, 2 fat lesbians who put a big brother camera in our ’shmotel’ room, creepy crawlies, arguments, strange Italian men, and lost friendships forever….

In Le Marche… Well … where do I begin. I was shaken about like a kitsch snow globe wanting to vom  the whole way there.

We arrived at the beach which looked frighteningly like Eastanglia: pebbles, grey sea, old people… But there were no pretty pastel beach houses dotted along the sea-wall… No, No, Instead a nice industrial park, with ring ring ringing RINGING flag-holders bbbbbbbbrrrringing in my ears for 2 days solid…….

So, I was at the beach and felt I may as well make the most of the ’shmoliday’ … So I put on my bikini and hopped over the wall… But as we had a dog with us we couldn’t pitch our towels outside the caravan – we had to walk as far as the eye could see to the horizon, crossing a NO GO ZONE – a shooting ground! I felt like I was crossing the front line. Almost had a heart attack as I ducked the shots. And as we had a dog we had to pitch up ON THE FRONT LINE. I have never been so unrelaxed on a beach- it kind of defeats the purpose! So to escape near death I decided to take a swim. The shpebbles (sand mixed with pebbles) were strewn with rubbish… I tried to ignore it and imagine I was in Jamaica even though the water was icy cold… I took a walk across the NO GO barrier to safety and plunged into the what-seemed warmer water. It was quite enjoyable. The current was strong but at least it was warm – and ‘oooowhat a pretty stream running into the water, divine nature…. Oh and the green stuff floating from the river to the sea, it must be local plant life’. I looked beyond to where the stream began: A GIANT FACTORY!!!! And you can guess what the ‘green stuff was’!!!!!!! Urrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhh I felt utterly contaminated…. No more swimming. I needed to shower immediately … but our caravan had no running water. So I was a salty haired, waste-covered sea-monster…. Then an angry black cloud conveniently placed itself over our caravan and rained in a typically English fashion for the rest of the day!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The sea-monster’s only hope was going for a long beach-front walk! I felt like a bored child and made up games along the 2km hike. At every signpost I had a ‘challenge Annika’. I was so haggard I really didn’t care what the staring Italians thought of me!!! We passed some really funky looking restaurants and I perked up. There were ones with seats in the swimming pool… how very chic looking - and pirate-themed restaurants… But we came to ours… A tin shed looking / air-hanger of a restaurant!!!!!!!!!!!!!……..

Thank god I went out afterwards. I laughed and laughed: we were two to a bicycle. But it came at a price as I got 1 knee kicked (I was the backside of the horse) and now have a black bruised lumpy knee!!!!! It was my bad one too… But I did laugh sooooooooooo much. Got to meet half the town in the bar…… cute drummer with dreads….. mmm….. rock concert then a reggae one…. but 4am-7am sleep was not enough…. and today’s freak weather GALE-FORCE winds!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to scrape my dirty salty hair into a hat, I wash bashed about in the rubbish filled sea and got sand in my knickers and bra… Then… oh… the trip back was most enjoyable: I got to lie down with a whining dog in my ear being sick and piercing my eardrums for an hour….

At least I got a quick tan!!!

Also….

I hate Italian men…. I told him that he needed to cool it… the 100000000000 phone calls and silent brooding because I wouldn’t give him ‘what he wants’ really scared me… I had a tight-chest in his company… 

Now he knows that I’m not that easy he has disappeared.

Its kinda sad but true…

They are blockheads…

They can only talk about food, sex and football…

They are a 3rd world country dressed up in Armani with cheap hair gel…

A bunch of robotic clones.

They only talk to you for the first date because they think they can get their leg over. Then they stop. Just like that. Yer they invite you out again, but they are aggressive and call you a nun!

They only put in a little bit of effort to tell you all the things they ‘will do for you’ if you give them what they want! Pure bribery!…

You are ‘married’ after the first date…

But you have to suffer because they don’t want to talk to you or find out who you are. They just wanna….You know…

Well… I love Americans, Englishmen, Estonians anything slightly Nordic!!!!!!

Italians make me wanna vom…. Well, I guess I did us both a favour.

Oh, and I shouldn’t take defense classes he says coz at the end of the day I am a weak woman and if a guy wants to rape me he will do it anyway!!!!!!!!! So he tells me!!!!!!!!!! What kind of a chauvinistic place is this?

I love men – but I hate these pigs … they aren’t men… they are barbie doll kens with mushy peas for brains… Ugh….

I’m outta here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

En français – coiffeur

So I am considering a new hair flick.

Ive had the playboy bunny curls for long enough. Its time for something a little more sleek:

Buon Ferragosto!

This time four years ago I was recovering in hospital after appendicitis… playing the damsel in distress

This time last year I was in London with my ex… playing the worn-out tour guide

This time this year…I’ll be having a Sex in The City pjyama party…playing Carrie

This time next year… who knows? …playing who knows?…

London taaaaannn….

In 24 hours I will be touching down in London taaaannn… How very odd… How very odd indeed!

I havent been back for quite a few months. Its definately been the longest stretch of British absence. I cant remember what a roast dinner tastes like, what the cold wet grass feels like under my squelching toes, what Mum and Dad look like, what Minx’s purr sounds like, what the grey streets of London look like…. 

And last time I went back there I was a mess… Living in a druggie squat of a filth-bucket house in Rome with the Molls and the junkies spilling into my bedroom. The dog barking ‘Au Au Au’ of the Roman scum seeping through my triple glass windows. A ’donna finita’ on my last spindly legs… I wanted to chain myself to the railings at Stanstead Airport. I couldnt bear the thought of going back to Italy. It had betrayed me. I was too in love with it! It walked all over me, chewed me up, leaving just a scrag of bones and spat me in a messy puddle on the cobbled streets.

But since Ive come back I said ‘STOP ITS BEF TIME!’… And have mangaged to turn it all around.

I can cope with the extreme summer heat. I can run up ’black run’ hills. The constant ‘morti di fame’ men undressing me with their eyes are like water off a ducks back to me now. My work has gone up to A WHOLE NEW LEVEL … Im super fit. Writing. Laughing … and well… just full of optimism, love and energy.

So now, can I really imagine myself intergrating back into British society. Just today an English man ‘got on my tits’!! But last week an Italian man ‘ha rotto le palle’ ! Oh what a fickle madam I am.

Ok. I am going to get myself into the London mood: listening to Estelle, talking about ‘the good old days’, hey I get to speak freely and without stumbling for a whole week! I get to go back to class, I get to go SHOPPING and rinse the credit card dry on beautiful PRIMARNI bargains. I get to celebrate my birthday and go to the NU-Jazz festival… It will be fun.

FREAKS & CREEPS!!!

I put an add in the local newspaper advertising English conversation lessons. I get one response from a fairly normal woman (she does ask me my whole life story on the phone which I dont think is quite necessary but the lesson goes well and she pays me at the end of it. Then I get another call from a company saying they saw my add in Cerco e Trovo and they are looking for an interpreter for their boss who wants to fly to England for a couple of days to have a business meeting. They invite me in that Saturday (strange day for an interview) and I dont even catch the name of the company. Im a bit suspicious and tell my friends to call me an hour after the interview just to check Im still alive. I want to check it out though.

I arrive there and there is a couple of other girls that go in before me (dressed like they’re going for a run and there’s me in my smart black dresss) and this gruff male voice that shouts ‘avanti’ after about 1 minute-slot interviews… I could have sworn that the woman on the phone said ‘direttrice’ femminine! I am called in and sit down in front of a suited man.

‘Ok so are you here for the receptionist job’ …

‘Um… No…?!?’ I say, slightly confused. ‘I was called about an interpreting job’….

That seems to click with him and he jumps up and puts condoms and lubricant on the table!! I am about to run out of the door or burst out laughing in shock but I cant move. I’m frozen like a rabbit in headlights.

‘We are a pharmacautical company that sells a viagra like product’ he continues… ‘and I am planning on going to England to hit the English market.’

He literally talks at me about this sordid stuff for about 10 minutes, doesnt ask me any questions apart from ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ and then asks me to give him a ‘friends price – or for free….’ He asks me when I can get back to him and not wanting to cause a scene or scream INDECENCY, I say,

‘Um… by Monday’….  as I scarper out the door, knees trembling…

I feel like I want to have a shower.

I call my friends and tell them all about the horrid affair. They say I shouldnt have put an ad in the local newspaper. But how was I to know that it would attract the scum of society!

I then get a strange phone call on Monday from a witheld number, I have a feeling it is the perv, but I pick up just in case its someone important.

I can tell its him by the voice as he says, without presenting himself ‘Im calling coz I want the information’ – in a rude and ill-mannered way.

I hang up.

I am pestered by about 10 phone calls until 11pm at night by the same withheld number and as I walk home there is a car hanging around outside my house with a man sitting alone in the car. I run up to the door quickly and pray it closes fast behind me. My phone goes when I get into the house and, damn, I havent put it on silent and my window is open – if its him he knows what floor I live on.

I lock my door to go to sleep that night and keeping the windows shut I sweat through 40 degree-hallucinogenic dreams…

The next day at University I get about 5 missed calls from his mobile. This guy just doesnt give up. And then decide to email the ignoranous when I get in saying I will not be able to work for him! Lets hope thats the end of Viagra man!!!

Boys

Boys play football inside my head.

They tackle and score and kick me in the net.

The ying is that they wake me up.

The yang is that they just wanna f***

That Mouth

That Mouth 

Licks a choopa choop in a circular motion, chewing at the straw.

Swear words roll off the tongue dripping onto the floor with the melting ice-cream

Beers fizz, swig, knock-out to forget.

Those unsaid words choking.

Gulping.

Whimpering. 

Lies pattering out P.P.P.P.P.p.p.p.p.p gunshots.

Humming with the summer bees.

Flesh and lips and salty licking and sucking and biting – you wild scavanger.

Please don’t eat me: No Cannibalism Allowed.

Inhale the smoke.

Speak the truth.

 

 

 

 

No

NO

The power that word possesses.

To lift you up to the empyrian.

To firm anyhandshake.

Steely blocks trunking into the warm baked earth.

An ascension of tall plural boscage.

Swinging canopies of laughter.

The dearth of wantonness.

Stranglehold.  

Laugh you twitter-ball.

Chinese lamp-smile for the boys and the girls.

The tears wont flood the seas of anguish anymore.

Self-respect.

Love.

Pure paradise will flood the seas of life evermore.

The golden shower of inner stimulation.