Midnight Margaritas and Pigtails

We’re having what Cosmopolitan magazine would call ‘A Girly Night In’.

Earlier in the day, I tell Alice that I’m making vegan ginger brownies and a cinnamon loaf.  She asks if she needs to bring anything – drink, nail polish, pyjamas, a feather pillow?  No, I reply, whilst wondering if she’s only ever hung out with other girls in the imaginations of teenage boys.

We’re telling horror stories, but not the torch-under-your-chin and all-the-lights-out type urban legends you told when you were a kid.  These are true horror stories – mainly grim anecdotes of medical terror or the sexual exploits of our absent friends, which tend to dip into medical terror too.

‘Betty loves squeezing spots…’ volunteers Alice after one of Rox’s stories about vomit in A & E.  Cue a lengthy chat about pus and cysts and smells that make most of us queasy and wishing we hadn’t eaten so much cake and drunk so much wine.  But for Rox and Betty, it’s a conversation topic made for mining.

Betty is only too happy to list the top 3 spots she’s ever squeezed, one of which was disappointing at first glance – ‘It looked a bit past it’s best’ – but turned out to be unexpectedly enjoyable by producing  ‘a really forceful spray’ when put under more pressure.

Is that what you had in mind, Cosmo?  Probably not, but this is what I wanted.

I’m giving away clothes and shoes and scarves and bags because it’s gotten out of hand.  It’s mostly a depressing experience – going through dresses, tops, skirts that used to fit, but no longer do.  A different kind of horror story – this is the narrative of skinny to fat. 

‘You’re not fat!’ my friends scream reproachfully and they’re right.  I’m a healthy weight, I’ve weighed myself and done all the BMI stuff and I walk everywhere because I can’t drive and I hate public transport.  But it’s all relative to where you came from.  Five years ago I weighed about 6 stone, at 5 foot 3 (I’m taller than Alice Duke).  Comparatively, I’m fat now, and there’s nothing like a marker for that than going through clothes that stretch and strain in protest if I try to wrestle them over my hips. 

It’s true that in lots of ways, fashion is trite and meaningless – the autumn trends pass by like auburn leaves on the wind, the new spring collections wash over us like April showers.  And for many people, what you wear isn’t who you are. 

When I tell Pete via text that I’m getting rid of clothes, and text a photo of me wearing the ‘Selected Popcorn’ dress – the dress she wore for the opening of our club night in Edinburgh 10 years ago, she sends a list of demands.  Not of clothes she wants for herself – of clothes I’m not permitted to get rid of.  Regardless of the fact that they fit neither of us right now.

The so-called popcorn dress fits at the bust but is too big at the waist and hips.  The vintage white-shift-with-yellow-polka-dots hanging in my hall hasn’t been worn for about seven years, and is too big for me.  The vintage peach mini-dress with the green piping and puff sleeves was last worn while drinking rum cocktails at a housewarming party three years ago and would burst at the seams if I attempted to haul it over my bust these days.

I try not to drink a whole bottle of Sailor Jerry in a night these days too.  Some changes are for the better, I suppose.

I tell Pete it’s okay – I wouldn’t dream of giving those away. 

Putting on that popcorn dress is the equivalent of listening to Junior Senior’s Move Your Feet – I can’t help but remember a dingy nightclub with dodgy electric wiring and a grumpy Irish bar manager. 

In the same way that listening to Alligator by The National takes me back to a tenement flat above a fancy dress shop in Edinburgh, ignoring my dissertation to play with my pet rats and a fireplace so stacked with books, it’s easy to accidentally pick up your high school year book and hand it in to the university library – just looking at that polka dot dress drowns me in nostalgia for living with my best friend and my final years as a student. 

And although it never leaves the hanger these days, that peach dress is an eternal reminder of a party I can’t remember – both an advocacy and a warning of drinking entire bottles of rum by yourself.

As the girls paw through the garments that are up for grabs, I narrate my life.

‘Those are the heels I wore to my first ever Soap Awards’

‘This horsey shirt was my leaving present from my friends in Demijohn.  They gave it to me in The Bow Bar, and I put it on straight away.  Then I drank cherry brandy while lying on the floor under one of the Demijohns and got it all over me...  It was amazing’

‘I got those shoes in a wardrobe sale at work but never wore them – they used to belong to Louise/Hannah/Zoe’

‘I got that dress when I was in Cambridge and wore it to a fancy dress party that night where a boy tried to chat me up in the queue for the toilet’

‘I wore those shoes to my interview for Lush in the Arndale – I’d fractured my foot, strained my back and had an eye infection – I looked like Quasimodo’

‘This blouse went over my dress at my first High School Leavers dance.  That’s the dress I wore to the second one…’

‘That’s the dress I wore to my first Hollyoaks Christmas party’

‘I got that skirt in Urban Outfitters in Toronto, and wore it out for Pete’s birthday and we got into a fight with a waitress.  I wore it with her pink short sleeved sweater from H & M, with the pussy bow tie at the neck.  We were really into pussy bows back then’

‘Those are the heels that made a hole in the dancefloor at my work’s Christmas party, when I wore that red vintage dress and fell over…’

‘My ex-boyfriend’s Mum bought me that and told me not to worry about showing off my boobs’

Bex pulls out a blue dress from New Look – a floral geometric pattern.

‘Noooo, Niki,’ she says.  ‘Not this.’

It’s not just my memories…

‘Isn’t that the dress from Indietracks?’ asks Ellen – who didn’t even go to Indietracks.

I laugh and point to a photo from Indietracks 2009 – framed, a gift that year for my 25^th birthday from Gordon, of me, him, Bex, Nick and Pete – we’re smiling and drinking beer and I am wearing that dress.  It has been rated as my best weekend ever numerous times in my life.

‘It’s splitting at the seams’ I explain.  I do not have the skills to fix this. 

‘I’ll sort it for you’ says Bex. 

It’s not an offer, it’s an order.  This is not a dress I can afford to lose.

The girls take what they want and leave behind what they don’t.  Dresses, shoes and accessories go off to create new memories for new owners.  I suppose it wasn’t really a horror story after all – it was a biography. 

Fashion is trite and meaningless. 

But clothes and shoes can possess a value that won’t appear on a price tag.

'cause you know I've got an awful lot of big dreams

‘They’re going to come back on.  All the reviews I’ve read say they wait ‘til the room clears out then they come back on.  We should stay.  Look at all those people down the front who think the same thing…’

Brint is determined we’re not going to leave the venue.  I go off to buy some pink knickers with a dog on them and ‘eels’ emblazoned on the butt.  And a tote bag.  With a dog on it.

Because I like dogs.

I’m also pretty certain that for once in his sorry existence, Richard Brint is actually right.

When they take to the stage for the…  third…  fourth?...  encore, the eight of us split up.  I see Mike ahead of me, running, and catch up with him.  I don’t even glance back to see if my boyfriend is following, or where the others have gone. 

It was just hugely important for me to be as close as I possibly could.

I’ve written about my eels sob story before.  You can reread in full here if you’d like, but for those of you in a hurry, here are the crib notes.  When I was 15 I got a free ticket for the eels in Glasgow, and was thrilled.  My well-meaning parents booked us on a holiday to Cyprus, which meant I couldn’t go.  I have resented them for this even more than I’ve resented them for never buying me a pony.  I could never bring myself to go see eels whenever they toured after that.  I was so afraid it wouldn’t live up to my expectations.

How many years do you have to do something before it can become a tradition?  Is three acceptable?  Yes?  Okay, so over the last three years I’ve developed a tradition of buying a small group of Liverpool friends tickets for a concert as their Christmas present.  I choose something in the first few months of the year, and the point of it is – to guarantee one night where we’ll all be together, doing something fun. 

The first year, it was Les Savy Fav at The Kazimier – easily one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to.  The next, Jonathan Richman, also at The Kazimier, and then this year, for some intangible reason, it felt right it should be eels at The Academy in Manchester.  Every one of them has made Richard Brint incredibly happy, which gives me something new to resent in life, while poor Christopher is developing his own tradition of having to work on the night of the gig and missing out. 

In my flat, we gather, waiting for James and Ellen to rock up.

‘Awwww he looks so sad!’ says Bex, pointing to my pony doorstop.

‘What is it?’ asks Brint.

‘It’s my pony doorstop.  My parents bought me it for Christmas, presumably to make up for the fact they’ve never bought me the real pony that I deserve,’ I explain, dripping with resentment.

‘We should take him with us!’ says Bex.  ‘Cheer him up.’

‘I don’t think an eels gig is the best place to take him if you want to cheer him up’ chimes in Mike.

We all laugh.  But secretly, I think he’s wrong.

To me, eels are not depressing.  I think they’re one of the most uplifting, life-affirming bands I’ve ever loved.

Mark Oliver Everett makes me laugh – he and the band come on stage in matching tracksuits and wear shades for the entire gig – and he makes me think – every line of Things The Grandchildren Should Know reads as a life lesson I should be learning – and he makes me cry – Dead of Winter is one of the saddest songs ever written yet somehow, miraculously, is hopeful too.

On stage, he’s having a fucking great time.  And we all are too.  That they never take their sunglasses off really entertains me, and I don’t know why.  They look ridiculous and cool.  Between songs, Mark hugs the other band members, exclaiming ‘Oh man, when that amp cut out, I got really scared, man!  Gimme a hug! Or ‘Man – when you were playing that guitar solo, it was so amazing, I just got really scared.  Gimme a hug!’

I realise what the intangible reason was – why I felt ready, that this year should be the year that I go see eels, and why it had to be with these people.

When I was a teenager, I listened to eels when I felt down, because it felt like someone else understood how it felt to feel so bad.  In my late twenties, I listen to the eels when I need some hope.  He promises struggles and pain, he’s sure of those things.  But he always gives us a glimmer of the good that will come if you stick it out – the sunshine glistening through the cracks. 

He’s all about expectations and dreams, ambitions and disappointments, regret and celebration.  He’s all about smiling in the face of terror.  He’s all about loving the thing you love.  I heard the echoes of fifteen year old me that night – everything she was dreaming of and I did a quick look around my life and realised I had achieved a lot of unexpected things that were never on my list. 

But I also realised I’d fallen off the track somehow.

I guess all I ever wanted to do in life was write a story equivalent of an eels song.  Something brave and bold, about tenacity and desire.  Something hopeful, something truthful, something fucking funny. 

And what I saw in Mark with his band…  the camaraderie, the friendship and the silliness…  Maybe that’s what’s got him through.  Maybe that’s why he’s still got hope, why he can still giggle like a big kid, how he can live through the pain.

That’s what makes me think it might be possible.  The thing that the socially awkward fifteen year old me never expected was the friends I would make.  The ones who when you call them up and tell them you’ve just done something ridiculous proclaim without hesitation ‘this will be the making of you’ and suggest you watch a live action animation about the Easter bunny or buy you a cup of tea or give you an almond cookie or leave computer games on your desk or just simply tell you it’s okay to be scared.

And then they hang around, waiting and waiting and waiting, ‘cos they’re convinced you’ve still got another encore left in you.   Even if you doubted it yourself.

Car Snacks

‘Me and Ellen saw a cyclist get hit by a car here on our way to see Wilco’ I tell everyone, as we pull up to that junction in Salford, by the Campanile. 

‘I’d just said to Ellen ‘I keep thinking about learning to drive then I get scared I might run someone over.  I might get a bike instead…’’

And then bam.  Car hits bike.  Cyclist goes over bonnet.

Then he got up, walked back to his bike, picked it up.

‘Me and Ellen weren’t sure what to do…  Do you stop or just drive away?’

‘If a cyclist goes over a bonnet and gets up, I think the etiquette is to applaud.’ says Rob.

‘And what if he doesn’t get up?’ I ask. 

‘Different etiquette…’ says Rob.

‘Slow clap?’ I ask.

We laugh.

But we know it wouldn’t be funny.

We’re on our way to see Desaparecidos.  This is a milestone.  One I wish I’d achieved when I was a teenager, when it really, really, really would’ve meant so much.

Laura arrived before the doors even opened.   From all accounts, they did a drive by and she leaped out the window.  I really wish I still cared about things that much.  Laura – you are my aspiration.

En route, Daniel thinks Conor might be a scientologist.  Some phone-googles confirm my suspicion that he is not.  We are surprised to learn that he is a Rastafarian, though, according to the reliable fact-finder, Wiki.

We all know that Beck definitely IS.

Daniel arrived at mine with a plain blue carrier bag.  I know this means trouble.

‘Brought car snacks’ he tells me.

I don’t need to open the bag to know that I’m not going to eat anything inside it.

I investigate anyway, always curious to see what he’s chosen.

Some people pick the best things, when it comes to food and drink.  My boyfriend is a proud champion of mediocrity. 

A bottle of ‘Caribbean Crush’ – ‘It’ll be a bit like Lilt…’ he says.

A non-branded bag of roasted and salted pistachios – ‘You can’t go wrong with pistachios’ he says.

A packet of Millions – ‘New flavours!’ he says.

And two packs of SNAPS, tomato flavour – ‘I got two bags, one’s for you’ he says.

We’re not even on the motorway yet when he cracks out the Snaps.  They smell revolting.  He tries to convince first me, then the front of the car to try them.  He insists they’re really good.  We all decline.

Shortly after that, the ‘pop’ comes out.  Nick braves it first.

‘What did you say it tastes like?’ he asks Daniel.

‘Like a more grapefruity Lilt’ he answers.

‘Yes, it definitely does taste like that’ grimaces Nick.  Rob takes a swig next, passes it back without comment but from the look on his face, he concurs.  It is not Lilt.

Nobody wants any pistachios but Daniel swiftly learns that his lifelong adage is incorrect.  ‘They’re all duds!’ he cries, exasperated.

Then out come the Millions. 

‘They taste like make-up’ gags Rob, mouth full.

‘And a bit like rabbit hutches at first’ adds Nick.

‘Have you got a tissue?’ asks Rob.

‘Yeah, under the seat there…’ says Nick.

‘Is it that bad?!’ asks Daniel dolefully.

My lovely boyfriend.  If I’m not enough to confirm his appalling taste, this little episode of car snacks is.

His only success on the way home is when he produces the second pack of Snaps.  Nick and Rob approve of those.  I still can’t get past the smell.

On the way home, the main topic of conversation is height.

‘Did you see how tall that guitarist who looked like Thor was?  And their guitar tech…  He was the tallest man in the world!’

‘Was he though?  Or were the rest of them really small?’

‘How tall is Conor?’

‘I think he might be kinda small’

‘I opened a door for him once – I didn’t think he was that small’

‘He’s 5 foot 9’ says Rob authoratively.

More phone-googles.

‘How tall is Prince?  I bet he’s 5 foot!’ says Daniel.

After a few moments, Rob has informed us that Prince is 5 foot 2. 

‘I’m taller than Prince!’ I cry triumphantly.  ‘Although he probably wears higher heels than me, so you’d never know.  I am taller than Alice Duke though, in case anyone cares to know…’

We don’t say much about the gig.

When we came out, we met up with Will and Laura.  We all agree on the following:

1. It was ace.

2. Conor’s a dick.

3. Racism is, indeed, bad.  Thanks for that, Conor – we had been unsure.

4. The sound was really bad, even though the music was really good.  They sounded like they were playing in a different room.

5. Sometimes it was daylight indoors.

6. We are all really, really, really sad that John couldn’t make it due to work and a cancelled train.

As we get close to IKEA on the way home, we pass one of those electronic road signs.

IS YOUR VEHICLE READY FOR WINTER?

I hope so, I think.  It’s February.

Nick gets us safely home, despite the driving rain, so his vehicle was clearly appropriately prepared.

I think about how much I enjoyed the predictability of it all.  Sometimes things are exactly as good as they should be.  It was so worth the ten year wait.

The only other conversation I enjoyed as much recently was this…

Me:  The prettier a girl is, the crazier she is.

Daniel:  Yeah.

Me:  There is no way for you to come out of this conversation well.

And that is where it stopped.

Bread makes you fat? (Bread makes me fat...)

I like social networking.  A lot.  It's useful.  It's sharing.  It's contact.

Contact is important.  They tell me...

But I abuse it.  We all do.  And if you don't you're either lying or you don't know how to use social networking properly.

I started thinking about what would happen if I stopped magically ejecting my fleeting thoughts into the inconsequential riot of chatter that is the Internet...  If instead I wrote them all down on scraps of paper instead.

I realised how quickly I would drown in slain trees.

So I stepped back from the noise - that was strangling me anyway - and with no big sense of surprise, I found it was a lot quieter.  Not only that, but those fleeting thoughts were doing me no harm by floating around their natural habitat - my head.  I sometimes found that one might even be worth keeping, and that's when I'd choose to swoop in with an axe to fell a tree.*

And I briefly, smugly, thought - if everybody did the same, there was a small chance the world might be a better place.  Wouldn't it feel wonderful and clever if you knew that someday you would be attributed the success of making the world a better place!

Hey - you won't.

And you'll go back.  You'll contribute those 'thoughts' again.  Perhaps this is your new substitute...

Hey - it's not.

You'll go back.

I've been thinking a lot about things that I hate.  That I deep down, really, sorely, fully hate.  The sort of thing that makes you want to peel your own skin off, and flop around flayed, until the sun dries your insides out.

I hate failure.  I hate anyone telling me what I 'should' do while I'm cooking.  I hate the wheedling tone of a sympathetic ear when I know it's an insincere one.  I hate men and women who cheat on their partners.  I especially hate 'the other woman' because hey girls - men have been fucking us over for a long time - why are you helping them?  I hate my jealousy of other women's success.  I hate that it helps men fuck us over.  I hate ladybirds and scorpions.  I hate - as I have said before - the notion of 'guilty pleasures'.  I hate seeing the qualities I dislike in me reflected in other people because I then have to hate them for it on more levels than I can be bothered working out.  I hate emos hugging those hugs that go on too long because the emo boy is worried this is the last time he'll ever get to touch a girl again (but I don't hate emos - just those fucking hugs).  I hate snow - FUCKING HELL I HATE SNOW.  I hate that bread makes me fat.

I don't hate The Beatles.  I'm entirely indifferent to them.  They may as well not have existed.  This is not a popular opinion.  I try not to say it out loud too often because people act like you kicked their child in the face.  You should also not kick children in the face - this is not popular either.  Or joke about it.  Parents get really offended.  Also try to avoid referring to people's children as 'IT'.  This also is not popular.

Every so often, I get worried that there's something really wrong with me.  In the head.  So then I start making a list of all the things that are wrong with me.  This is the sort of thing that keeps me up all night.  But then once I've got my list, I feel relieved.  Because at least it wasn't all in my head. 

I'm up all night quite often.  This has been the case since I was very small.  My Mum would wake up and find me hovering at the end of her bed in a white nightgown, doing an uncanny impression of a ghost.  I have always had bad dreams.  Although I suspect when I was little, the frequency of this was greatly exaggerated.  I think when I was little, I probably just wanted some contact.

Now I'm not so little (damn you bread... ha!), and I still end up staying up all night quite often, and I still have bad dreams, thankfully not as frequently as I claimed when I was small, I was using social networking as my contact.  There is one thing that writing and insomnia has in common, possibly more, but I haven't thought of them.  The one thing is loneliness.  It's a real struggle to share either experience with someone else, even if they do one or both of those things themselves too. 

Without the contact, and the noise, I feel the loneliness more keenly but I spend my time more meaningfully.

You know, like making lists of things that I hate and wearing my hair in a ponytail 'cos there's no one to see.  I like watching the lights go on and off in the student house across the road - they are now my contact.  My unknowing contact. 

Hey - you'll crack.

I'll go back.

Maybe when I do, I'll be able to work some sort of transference onto carbohydrates.  If I take up social networking again, I can take an absence from bread instead.

Hey - no you won't.

I'll always eat bread.

*I try to use recycled paper.  And recycle what I've used and don't need anymore.  It's important to try to make the world a better place, even if you don't succeed.  Gives you something to hate - failure.  You can never have too much fuel...  But you can have too much bread.

To lead todays to tomorrows

For some reason it amuses you to leave a pink bra on the radiator in the bathroom.  If this were a film, it would be a statement about your protagonist.  You suspect it would probably be a rom-com but you feel more like a horror.

Is that partly because it’s not the dainty one you’d like it to be?  Your credentials are far too monumental to be restrained by something as flimsy as a thin strap or a balconette.  Your ‘underwiring’ is armour.  Instead of keeping enemies out, it’s keeping you contained.

You’re not reading the right sort of literature for a rom-com.  You hate it when people confess ‘guilty pleasures’ when it comes to books and television and films.  It seems as foolish to you as the idea of Catholic Guilt, which you regard mockingly yet with no small amount of fascination. 

You always thought there were plenty of equally intangible things to make yourself feel bad about.

And those all have payoffs in this lifetime that you can condemn yourself to!

Your fraudulent activities for example.

There are so many to choose from.

Another kind of armour – but more delicate.  It wouldn’t take a lot of pushing or pulling to tear it. 

Actually, that is a rom-com.  That’s exactly what a rom-com is about – man or woman unpicks the stitches of some fragile bulletproof vest that belongs to another.  Often they do it to each other at the same time.  A 'Meg Ryan' and a 'Tom Hanks'; they stick their greedy, needy fingers inside and swirl them around, and if it’s a happy ending, they exchange what they each need to sew themselves back up as better people.

If it’s not a happy ending, we’re probably left wondering where the laughs were.  Where was the ‘–com’? 

And there are some guts left on the floor.

As you write that, you remember how much you *wish* so hard that 500 Days of Summer had ended about five or ten minutes before it actually did.

Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to have your guts out on the floor.