Spring.
This desire for renewal has taken place on the first day of Spring .. a coincidence ... who knows? And my daughter rang this morning and said that she had been brooding about my 'situation' ever since Panc@k3 Day. As .. for the first time ever .. my husband had come home early to the flat and found my daughters and a couple of their friends having a panc@ke evening. And had sat down with them .. and as she looked round the table she had felt .. this is all wrong .. why are you here cosily eating panc@kes and laughing and Mummy is away in the middle of nowhere .. alone.

I am NOT moaning about this. I am remarking on the fact that something seems to have changed in my perception and now in hers.

The obvious answer is just to go to London more but when I am there I have nothing particular to do. I can always go out in the evenings to somewhere that we own which provides social life on tap but that means invariably drinking some vast amount and usually not having a wildly interesting time anyway. Spending hours in my flat is pretty boring and also .. as I once wrote .. the area has become filled with incredibly selfish, loud richer people who drive me mad with blasting music and endless parties and general 'noise nuisance'. I am not insane here .. I have recently been called in as a witness in a court case between two of my neighbours over noise. So reading or writing at home is interspersed with constant inner rantings about how I want to kill. As well as often lying awake into the early hours waiting for some f.ckers party to end.

I don't enjoy the theatre here that much. It seems to be rehashing of things that I saw years ago and don't want to see again or rather stupid musicals or worthy plays with some guilt-inducing simplistic message that I don't care about. Except ... a dot of pleasure on the horizon ... after a horrible experience of queuing in freezing wind ... my daughter managed to get tickets for us all for 'Sp@mal0t' AND at the time when Tim yrruC* will be in it. This isn't until next October so I have plenty of time to savour it. I will just repeat here that I love him and it is sad that his career never really took off in America. I first saw him a billion years ago when a friend of ours had a small part in a new play called 'The R0cky rorroH Sh0w' and begged us to come and see it as the (tiny) theatre was half empty. So I saw it in its first week .. and was struck by the huge talent and brilliant singing voice of T1m. Later he had the P1rate K1ng role in the 'P1r@tes of P3nzanc3' musical .. done in America by K3vin Kl1ne .. and was perfect again. Then it was all downhill .. in terms of ordinaryness.

The art world is a bit close to home and combines .. in my view .. very dreary collectors and (mostly) maddeningly mediocre artists who I often long to punch in the face. As I am meant to be revealing more of myself I will say here that if I could press a button so that Tr@cy Em1n would be wiped off the face of the earth .. then I would do it this minute.

Almost all my old friends have moved out of London now or spend huge amounts of time travelling abroad. Many of them are a bit irritating to me now anyway as our lives have diverged. Lunch once a year is plenty to keep a friendly vestige ticking over. My one constant pleasure is being with my children but when we are all in the flat .. they are not in the flat .. as they seem to be out all day working and then out all the evening socially. So they have to give up their own things to spend time with me and that is okay occasionally .. but not as a way of life.

Also .. London has changed horribly in the last ten years and it makes me really upset. 'My' part of it particularly which I have known since I was a teenager .. and is filled with a thousand memories .. has also filled with a thousand foreigners. I can't believe that anyone .. however liberal and 'inclusive' .. can actually welcome the fact that a place that they loved has been taken over by strangers and its old charming character totally ruined. I don't want to get on a full bus and be the only person speaking English .. to turn the corner out of my street and be surrounded by women in flowing robes and face masks .. to sit in the historic local park and then have to leave because of harrassment from endless slimy assh0les with impenetrable accents. .... So there you are.
- posted by Iris @ 3/02/2006 09:57:00 AM comment