Passion Play

I think I’d been crying for a good five minutes before I realised. I wiped away a stray tickle on my cheek, and the sleeve of my jumper came away damp. I looked down to see my friend’s hand on my arm. Are you okay? she whispered. I shook my head. I wasn’t.

I felt sick, and dizzy. She took me by the wrist to lead me up the stairs as I kept my head bowed low, eyes fixed to the ground, tears now freely gushing. We pushed past the crowds and crossed the road, nearly walking into the path of a black cab in our hurry. In an alleyway I threw my coat and bag and glasses down onto a plant pot, and let out a yelp, a huge gasp for air, for relief. My friend rubbed my back and told me I’d be okay as I stared at the sky and willed myself to stop sobbing. It didn’t work.

Dramatic is my middle name- after verbose and attention-hungry- and I know how it sounds to say that this, but the sobbing and the hiccups and the inability to breathe? It happened at the theatre. 

A Little on Knowing Your Motherloving Worth

Folks keep asking me how the new job is going. And every time they do I get shy. Embarrassed. Tongue-tied and flustered. “How’s work?” is one of those questions we ask each that’s mostly formality, salutation even. How’s work? You alright? Are your boobs real?

I get timid at the question because where I know I’m supposed to smile politely and say great thanks, yes. Still getting used to it all- haven’t buggered up yet, though! Ha, ha! I never have been a very good liar. Or adept at being polite.

An internal alarm goes off when I open my mouth to answer. Don’t seem too smug. Don’t exaggerate. Find something bad to balance out the good. For godssake don’t mention the manicures.

I’m not sure when it became A Thing to play down being so effin’ content. It’s like being coaxed into orgasm by Shia Labeouf after he invites you lie down on a bed of French lavender and hand-feeds you brie, only to then tell your girlfriends, oh dat? Dat ain’t no thang but a chicken wing. So Imma just go on ahead and say it: I’M FEELING PREEEEEETY AWESOME.

You like me less for saying that, don’t you? See! HOW IS THAT A THING? 

Darby & Joan: May 2013

Darby & Joan are the quintessential middle-aged British couple, characterised by knitwear, hours of scrabble, and a penchant for staying in on Saturday nights. Darby and Joan are, in fact, @calummcswiggan and me. Read the Darby and Joan back catalogue here.

Dear Darby,

This past six weeks is the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking, and it’s killing me softly.

You called me almost a year back, when I lived in Rome- which is to say a lifetime ago- and said, Hiya, will you be a reference on my application to work at a tiger sanctuary run by monks in Thailand? Sure, I said. What do I have to do? Just say that it’s true I’ve helped birth lambs on rural Derbyshire farms for the past six seasons, you responded. You know. If they ask.

Now you’re out there, hidden away in Thai hills and bottle-feeding cubs, and there’s probably some really pissed off shaven-haired man swathed in orange, wondering who on earth vouched for your ability to deal with amniotic fluids. To him I say: HI, DUDE! Nice sandals.

My favourite part of your adventure so far has been the picture you emailed of me of you walking a tiger. In a park. On a lead. The caption underneath said simply, I don’t think Thailand care about health and safety. 

Dickhead

I’m terrified that I’m a dickhead. That I’m hurtling towards absolute confirmation that I’m beyond a simple bit of a nob. I’m feeling anxious, because I’ve made a declaration to those closest to me, and now you, Internet, that will possibly remove all doubt as to where, exactly, I place on the international scale of all right to Kayne West.

I’ve given up drinking. Like, forever.

I KNOW. I just… I know. I know how it sounds. First I kicked the fags, then I dabbled in celibacy, and then I went to Atheist Church. Is it any coincidence, I ask myself, that now I’m looking to ditch the booze? I know not the answer.

(probably not.) 

In Which I Go to Church. Atheist Church.

At 11 o’clock yesterday morning I stood in a dusty but sunny hall with 300 strangers and my brother, screaming the words to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with a live band. A man who looked not dissimilar to Jesus, but with a fiercer beard, pranced about in a vintage, jewelled red jumper, encouraging us to clap and foot tap to the beat whilst commanding in the lyric lulls to sing ‘louder! LOUDER, PEOPLE!’

It’s funny how sometimes the universe allows you to find the most perfect Sunday solution to Life As We Know It, right when you’ve been trying to figure out what all this being human malarkey is all about.

WHAT THIS HUMAN MALARKEY IS ALL ABOUT. God, I really did just type that. But sod it; I’m not sorry. You’re either into this kind of shit, or you’re not. Unsurprisingly I totally am, because I live for angels, and Whitney Houston, and being nice and cake and fun and purposefulness and shut up, okay? Shut up.

I don’t mean it in an eat-brown-rice-and-wear-socks-with-your-sandals kind of a way, I just mean I’m pretty sure it’s important that we don’t wait for our real lives to begin at some unspecified point in the future when everything is how we once imagined it would be, and that we live deliberately and with gusto every single day starting rightnowthissecond.

Cue crashing crescendos of dramatic Suite No.1 in G Major for cello or similar, as we all eat vegan ice-cream and smell like dreadlocks. I’m disgusting.   

I Need to Talk About Cocaine

‘I need to talk about cocaine,’ I said.

It was Saturday morning. I was lay out on my sofa, friend at my feet in a similarly dishevelled ball, nursing the kind of migraine that only the cheapest of red wine can give hospice to.

‘You need to talk about cocaine?’

‘Yes.’ I rubbed my temples. I said, ‘Last night I saw people do coke for the first time ever, and it made me want to cry.’

‘It made you want to cry?’

‘I feel really weird about it.’

‘Well, why do you feel weird about it?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I need to talk about it.’

‘What do you want to say?’

‘I. DON’T. KNOW.’

We sat in more silence for a while. Eventually I said, ‘Isn’t it bad people who do coke?’

My friend laughed. ‘You’re cleverer than that, LJ. You’ve been in London six months now. Londoners do coke.’

I Quit

I quit my job.

I quit my job because I wasn’t happy.

I’d been thinking about it for ages. In fact, when the internship became a full-time position, which became day-to-day oh, I guess this is my life now, I knew, the whole time, that it wouldn’t be long before I left.

I’ve never been good at casual, never mastered we’ll see. I’m all or nothing, totally obsessed or utterly disinterested. If I hold your hand it’s because I want to give you my heart, if I get out of bed for you at 7 a.m. it can only ever be because I adore you.

I did not adore this job.

That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. Oh dear Lord, I’m so grateful. To land in London six months ago and get the one internship I applied for, round the corner from my house, and to have my boss at that internship say, after four weeks- Laura, the jig is up. Come on the payroll. That’s magic, right there. 

I'm Fat (and still get laid)

I’ve written an eBook, and it’s called I’m Fat (and still get laid), and it just went live. If you want to buy it, you can. Just click here.

Spoiler: I totally just wrote and re-wrote those sentences eleventy million times. This simultaneously feels like absolutely no-big-deal-whatever-I-don’t-even-give-a-shit, and HOLY FUCK.

Either/or there’s a lot of profanity happening in my imagination about it all. I know- shock you, right?

Remember that time I met with Penguin about My Heart Beats Only For You (and a few dozen other people) and afterwards I was all, yeah- so I think I’m just gonna publish all the things myself, to which everyone in the world was a bit, yeah but you’re just saying that, aren’t you?

Well welcome to the house of fun, where I’m going balls to the wall in seeing what goes down if I do just that. Over the course of this year I’ll be launching four mini eBooks based on the themes of this here blog: vagina, a surprising foray into spiritualism and being brave. Also: food. I’ve gotta have a Fat Bitch book.

I’m Fat (and still get laid) is a short collection of what I talk about with my girlfriends like, all the time. From relationships to work stuff, from how to take over the world to biological clocks and getting laid, these five mini-essays are my declaration of womanhood as per what I dissect and examine in excruciating detail when I’m down the pub. That’s how I get my kicks- asking the why about everything Girl in the history of the world, whilst simultaneously eyeing up the barman.

Dinner, Day After

If you want a litmus test for your level of bonkers, may I recommend an analysis of your thought process in the wine aisle of Sainsbury’s as you try to select what bottles to get for those strangers you’re having over for dinner:

"But if I buy the Shiraz on offer, they'll know I only chose that one because it was cheap. Maybe I should get fewer of the more expensive ones... But I just want everyone to have fun. We'll have fun if we're drunk. I'll get the stuff on offer. And one of the posh ones with the fancy label for when they arrive."

Friday saw me reach new levels of crazy as I cleaned my skirting boards- of course I couldn’t entertain guests if I hadn’t. In my imagination it was unfathomable to not fashion a pyramid design on the back of the loo out of all the extra toilet paper I’d bought, and at lunchtime it became inexplicably important to pick juuuuust the right books for the coffee table.

Two weeks ago I had friends over for dinner and served wine out of jam jars in lieu of doing the washing up, but suddenly, as I didn’t know the surnames of my dinner attendees, I decided to POLISH THE CUTLERY BEFORE I SET THE TABLE BECAUSE FUCK, MAN, THE JUDGEMENT. 

It's my dinner party, and I'll drink if I want to

Tomorrow night I’m meeting up with five total strangers. In my apartment. And I’m cooking them a multiple-course dinner.

This is a fact that has been slow on me to dawn, even though the date has been set in my Moleskine for over a month. I remember writing it in: “7.30 p.m. Dinner at Mine”. Back in those heady days of denial I wasn’t anticipating it to actually happen. Four weeks ago, when I hit send on my electronic invitations, I was an expectant mother simply enjoying eating for two and abusing my belly’s size to always nab a seat on the bus; reality didn’t apply for me. Now I’m in the delivery room being offered an epidural, asking my birthing coach would she mind just pulling the car around, because I think I’ll do this another time, if it’s all the same to everybody else.

My dinner party baby is already crowning and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It was a cold and drizzly January afternoon when I saw a Facebook friend-of-a-friend post about about a sort of scheme that had launched in London, one that involved eating food and meeting new people. And I mean, HI WHAT’S YOUR NAME MY NAME’S LAURA I LIKE YOUR SHOES WHAT DO YOU DREAM ABOUT? Eating food and meeting new people are My All Time Favourite Things Ever.