Theological Think Tank no. 1

For some unknown reasons, the gods above have decided to punish me. Is it not enough that they have infected the good earth with Lindsay Lohan, Jana Pitman and the Hewitt-Cartwrights, that they have now gone and taken away my only morning joy (other than that other morning joy I receive daily courtesy of my new delivery of educational material from California).

The bastards have gone and removed the AMT coffee cart from Victoria station.

Apart from the fact that the coffee is the most decent cup available within a 10 mile radius, (in this big international city, who would think?) the coffee is made with ethical beans, meaning that communities haven't suffered because of the despicable plot by starbucks to take over the world with jugs of tepid lattes. (Barry Humphries refers to it not as coffee, but as 'brown drink').

So based on this argument, I propose that the gods really don't give a toss about us, if, in fact they exist at all.

Amen

What are friends for?

I don't think anyone has been as shocked as me at the difficulty I seem to be having here in London in making new friends.

Far from this being a total 'termsofendearment' style misery fest, no, I think its important for me to express my frustration at the few things that have made me the pshychotic mess that I seem to have become. And because all you loving caring friends that I do have in Cyber Space care so much about me, well, you're going to have to endure a little bit of cyber therapy.

So here goes.

1. I work too hard, and I'm totally terrified that they're going to soon discover that I havn't got a clue what I'm doing.

This occupies way too much of my energy, which, when I do get the chance to socialise, I find myself not particularly engaged in anything or anyone.

2. I miss my friends in Australia too much - they're a hard act to follow, and at my age, I figure, what's the use anyway?

3. I have tried to make friends on Gaydar, much to the fella's amusement and ridicule, and although I have made inroads into some lovely peoples lives, these relationships are still very infant, and I'm acutely aware that we met, well, on gaydar.

4. The fella is having a great time and making new friends, socialising having quiet dinners with new friends without me etc...and there's nothing worse than being miserable for a reason that the nearest person to you doesn't really understand.

5. I drink too much, which, on top of all this shit doesn't make anything any better.

All I know, Is I'm pretty miserable right now, which i dont think even my trip to the USA next week will fix.

SO I'm thinking of taking myself off to the shrink for some lessons in social behaviour 101. Who knows, perhaps I might come away with some pretty pink pills.

A load of old rubbish

It seems that our enlightened government here in great Britain want to do away with the weekly rubbish collection and collect fornightly instead. Their argument; to force people to recycle more.

What better way to divert ones attention from war in Iraq, the headscarf debarcle in schools, the Burqha, soaring gang violence in inner London and the impending resignation of the Prime Minister than to plunge us all head first into our own filth.

But to Tony's credit, he is defending the weekly collection as an important cultural institution that should be preserved.

Well, Tony, thats right. But don't, please think that it's the pathos of culturul whimsy that keeps us neat and sanitory. Lest we forget the plague, the filth of Georgean England before the mighty sewer, and those years under Thatcher. No ideed, Tony, most of the civilized, and even uncivilized earth places the sanitation of it's cities pretty high up on the list of critical services. Even the Faveals of Rio de Janeiro have sanitation.

What irks me the most about this debate is the fact that we're being forced to recycle more. I'm all for recycling, hell, I would recycle everything and just about everyone around me given half the chance. But really, when the council only collects newspaper and glass bottles, what options are there? In OZ, you can recucle just about everything, and the big mighty truck comes around once a week and even sorts it for you. And this is just a standard council service. Can you imagine what they would charge here for that?

The recycling truck comes around once a fortnight here in Brent Council. we have one small plastic bucket that services the recycling needs of 6 people in our 2 apartments.

You do the math.

Mum, if I die of Botulism or tetanus or dyptheria or dengue fever, because our overpaid and underworked whining council idiots stop collecting our potato peelings and used tea bags, you have my permission to write a VERY STERN LETTER.

X

Never smile at a crocodile

I just read the most disturbing story in the Times.

It involved a nine year old boy who broke into a crocodile enclosure in a Chinese zoo, and tormented the animals by bashing them with sticks.

Quite surprisingly, the crocodiles dragged the boy into the water where he was eaten by the hungry and very agitated pack.

Like, in the iPod MTV redbulldrink.com era we live in, does anyone teach common sense to children anymore?

But don't think that I'm sympathising for the child at all. I'm upset that the actions of this imbecile has now cost the lives of these animals, who were then killed, to serve the autopsy. It would be awful enough to have to live in a chinese zoo. Probably a blessing for the poor creatures anyway.

Man this world is a bizarre place sometimes.

Pretty flowers everywhere.

I have noticed recently, whilst bustling myself about in my busy daily jobs, like, clipping my toenails, dusting my bedside lamp, fluffing the feathers on my fairy wings, polishing my wand....pause....that the usually quite mild and predictable London weather has taken a particularly queer turn.

I use the term QUEER in it's literal sense also, dear reader. I am in no way suggesting that the clouds have turned pink and it has started raining glitter and hello kitty stickers.

No really, today I was COLD. For really the first time since I have been here have I felt either completely under dressed (not a huge surprise if it's that one) or that the weather has dirty danced it's way back to December.

But it's the daffodils I feel sorry for. They have been lulled into a false sense of security and now have fully blossomed everywhere. And this week it snowed twice. I mean WHAT?

The tulips have a better idea. They have been hiding. Where I come from, the tulips always come up first. Here, they are smart, the little fuckers. No tulips anywhere in the parks, though I can't say that I have been out tulip spotting lately. I just know that I havn't seen any yet, so there.

I'm a sucker for flowers. I really like them. They're my princess accoutrements. In my job, I like to plant pretty flowers everywhere, because I'm a princess at heart and I wish for the world to be full of princess love.

Now I just sound like an idiot.

Recently I saw Bambi for the first time. I know, tragic that I never saw it. I really loved the little skunk, Flower. My new friend Robin, who works at Disney, calls me Flower and I just love it. It's nice that at least SOMEONE thinks of me as a skunk.

Need a fresh look?

A few months ago I went on some demented rant about how much money I was spending on clothes. Not that I'm regretting spending the equivalent of a small fortune of some former eastern republic on Spanish designed pret a porter, not for one minute.

It's just that, I kind of forgot to get myself a nice new coat. And now that it's getting chillier than Jade Goody's BB exit, or Danielle Lloyd's telephone for that matter, I'm left in a kind of strange position where I am desperately looking around for a particular item of clothing, and I can't, for the life of me, find it.

You would think, wouldn't you, in the city that so spectacularly celebrates the coming of the frost, that there would be an abundance of well priced, qualiity merchandise designed to keep snowflakes off the Armani, whilst decreeing to the world that the wearer has almost enough style to teach those Wags a little thing or two.

But no, I just cant find what i'm looking for.

I have tried Selfridges, every big chain including Zara, even spent a good couple of hours in every boutique in the Marais in Gay old Paris on the weekend. Even they don't make coats any more apparently.

So last night I buried my hatchet of hatred against Harvey Nichols and everything Knightsbridge and took a stroll through the overpriced, over cologned and uber rude collonnades of the most overrated shopping strip on the planet.

OK, so I just don't like Havey Nicks, the ceilings are too low. And the fact that every pooflette you'd find at GAY on a thursday night works there and thinks that their shit dont stink because they work there, just makes me see red and pink spots.

And then they didn't even have any coats either. So they suck double.

Then I went into Zara, which, as far as Zara stores go, is a pretty good one. The whole first and second floors are the womens lable, and HARK! racks racks and racks and racks of funky winter coats.

Up on the third floor however, the marvellous groovy wintercoat song went a little off key. One floor of men's label, sharing half the space with the Zara CASA and not a SINGLE coat anywhere. I actually walked around the floor 3 times, just in case my contact lenses weren't working for some reason leaving me with a white out where that fawn coloured wool coat was meant to hang, but I just kept bumping into the glass display and knocking wicker candle holders onto the floor (bad idea anyways..)

Strike two.

So then there was Harrod's. (Dramatic Pause) I HATE HARROD'S even MORE than I hate HN's. It's always CHOCKER BLOCK packed full of ageing women with hundreds of bags wandering aimlessly through halls that have absolultely NO logic as to what they're selling in them, thereby confusing the old ducks even more.

It's like Mr Al Fayid has just organised the whole store alphabetically, or around the shrine to Diana or something. I dont know. Who can explain how you can go from the Lanvin counter to the Lamb butcher in six steps? And there's this incipid stench of women's perfulme that permeates into everything. I smelled of it for hours afterwards, even after I had showered in Domestos. Seriously.. I woke up this morning, and when i went for my morning toilette, it smelled like Chanel no 5.

Anyhow, once I found menswear after having walked all over the ground, first and second floors, I actually DID find the coat that i wanted.

It was £800.

FUCK.

What? Am I Invisible?

Um, Hello, can you see me?

You know, I dont normally expect, as I'm swanning elegantly through the busy streets of London, that people will just naturally get out of my way because I'm the damned Queen of the Universe or anything;

BUT I'M THE DAMNED QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE SO GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY.

Today about 5 or 6 people physically shoved me out of the way to either get before me in a queue, push me out of the way on an escalator, shove me to get into an ELEVATOR before me (um hi, I'm getting in after you and you're not going to get to your damned dictaphone any quicker) shove before me getting OUT of the elevator then dawdle in front of me accros the whole foyer whilst TEXTING !! ?? There was even a tour bus operator who was conducting a transaction with a client and thereby blocking the whole footpath and wouldn't even move when I politely said excuse me.... you see what I mean.

My favourite little tick off, is how people in this town actually walk into you because they dont look where they're going. In most cities I have been to, people have a fairly good understanding of the trajectories of at least the nearest 5 or 6 people around them so they dont end up wearing each other's Natural Glow or Simply Luscious Mascara. Nah uh, not here. Nobody dont wanna know about any damned trajectory. No sir. No forward trajectory planning goin' on no place, no time.

So from now on, BACK OFF and LOOK OUT coz I've got Natural Glow AND Luscious Mascara on and I'm making a line right for you and your cheap, white, blouse.


Mrs PTC

Millionaire 911 widows

I'm watching television with the husband and I just cant believe what I'm seeing.

It's hard enough to sit here and watch the whole grizzly 911 event again, and even to see footage I never hoped to have ever witnessed - LEST WE FORGET. But to see a bunch of obviously highly distressed women relate how they were offered "blood money" and to see their struggle with the "system" is actually something I have become really angry and passionate about in my post Chicken Jalfrezzi haze...

In a nutshell...

The government and all the superduperstars (including Goldie) of the world managed to raise about 10 BILLION dollars for compensation within about a few weeks - certainly 2 billion in the first week. The compensation was dished out on a BY EARNINGS basis - ie, the rich got more, the janitors got a few thousand, because they aren't obviously as American, nor did their families suffer as much; or their Bollinger bills weren't as high.

So the trust fund for compensation tells everyone that they will get so much (however American they are) on the condition that they wont sue the airlines or the World Trade Centre. Because it was - so like the WTC's fault for being so high, and like having offices in it.

So when one woman decides to SUE (yes mam, the favourite American pastime) the fund for discriminating on the compensation, what does the fund's spokesperson say?

something like:

Compensation couldn't all be equal, that's just not American.

And there we have it.

Kathy Trent got 7 million and spent 5 million on "stuff" after losing her husband. I acknowledge that no amount of compensation money could ever give this woman back her life or her husband, so was it fair that she got a right rogering in the press? At least she didn't wrap her freshly liposucked thighs around one of the "firefighters who left their wives for their friend's millionaire widows". tsk.

Some families actually !!shock horror!! Didn't access the fund because they had a shred of dignity and realised that no money could compensate their loss. I bet they're all a lot more at peace with the world than the others, who knows. They were probably smart enough to realise that some insurance fat cat was going to place some value on their loved one which was proportionate to his/her predeath income. But, tell me...Aren't we all equal in the eyes of your big fat GOD? Hmmmmmmmm?

I could go on but its actually boring even me right now.

What I want to know is how America, Gods own country, could raise so much money (probably close to 10 billion) so quickly for its worst act of terror, but sat and watched its people drown and starve to death in appalling conditions only a couple of years later in New Orleans in its worst natural disaster.

Of course we all know the answer to that.

God Bless America.