Dear Reader. I’ve settled down with a good strong cup of earl grey to write to you. And it’s high time that I did. I had been writing under a real name rather sporadically and, due to the embarassment and guilt that ensues from writing honestly under one’s real name, I have decided to pack it in. That way of blogging never really suited me anyway. I prefer to casually reinvent myself now and then, and blogging under one’s real name doesn’t really allow for such a pasttime. And all young women, with any creative sense, like to reinvent themselves – clothing the most elementary form. Sometimes I go to work as a young maiden, a flower pattern somewhere adorning my waisted attire, my hair in curls and brought up to the crown at the front. Sometimes I prefer to assert my femininity with more authority than ballet shoes will allow. Cue the knee high leather boots. These allow for my darker interests to emerge, every woman needs to engage with her gothic from time to time. The thrust of this introduction is quickly waning, back to the point, the point.
Importantly, this will be a weave of fact and fiction. Let me, dear reader, run away imaginatively at times and twist my characters into new and more colourful realms. But I shan’t tell you when the fact ends and the fiction begins. That would be absurd.
I don’t care for themes or focussing on topics much. I’m a generalist. A master of all and jack of none, when I wake up in a particularly confident mood that is. So, apologies to the irritating journalists and branding consultants, but I shan’t be marketing this blog with any fervour or tenacity. It will be whimsical and all over the place. But hell, it will not be sporadic.
If it is, then message me and call me a satsuma.
One that is half-eaten, forgotten about and begun to dry out a little. Rather unpleasant.
It’s the 31st of December 2009 and I have high hopes for the new year. And it shall be full of bright things. I’m currently listening to ballet music, some tchaikovsky and prokoviev, and I am hoping that the coming year will be as bouyant in it’s ability to surprise and delight me as a dancer.
I should say, I have three main objectives and two secret and not so secret objectives. a. meet new people and b. attend more parties and c. have fun at those parties without ever saying so. If us young things are ever to follow the superb example of the vile bodies of Waugh, Mitford and Fitzgerald, we must continue to seek out ’splendid occasions’, go on adventures and drink a great deal. Yes? Tonight I’m packing a bottle of martini and some mixers firmly into my handbag to share later on with girlfriends, as a prelude to a houseparty of some sort. Always best to leave these things in the air, plans nice and open and spontaneous. If only I knew that when I was 18 and too desperate to have grown-up fun. If only. I might have avoided the anti-climax that ensues from ‘planned fun’. Deary me.
The two secret objectives are of course very predictable. New job and new man. This could also take the form of a promotion and a lover. To be frank, I’d take either.Either that is, not all four. The problem is, and of course there is a problem, that I am too ambitious and too choosy for my own good. I know. So keen to re-invent myself that I fear a job and a man could, dare I say it, define me. Oh! It’s my own darned fault.
Since moving to the Great London Town, I have certainly been meeting more of the opposite sex but they tend to appear in a rather sad state. They are all in the mid/late twenty range where youthful hopes and dreams are waning, and they think a steady woman and drink are the answer to this sad realisation. I’m a bit tired of being the saving grace, the angel to heal the broken man. I want someone who’s fixed thank you, or believes he is and then at least I could tease him about it.
Moving on. I’ve just finished reading Evenlyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies today which was raucous romp of a read. Just divine, as those vile bodies would say. Favourite quotation:
“Darkness fell during the drive back. It took an hour to reach the town. Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert did not talk much. The effects of their drinks had now entered on that secondary stage, vivdly described in termperance handbooks, when the momentary illusion of well-being and exhileration gives place to melancholy, indegestion and moral decay”.
Quite. I imagine I’ll reach that secondary stage at some point in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, and I won’t be chuckling then as I am now.
With love,
Violet
The snow event of the decade has sent Christmas shoppers retreating to the safety of their homes. My husband and 13-year old daughter could not resist the steep snowy slope outside, now covered with a foot of new-fallen snow. I’ve chosen to retire to the couch with my laptop, bible, and warm steaming cup of coffee (with Belgian Toffee creamer …ahh!)
This sort of thing drives me mad. To give you a brief description of what I mean, I’m talking about the practice of society in which we declare “They’re not a mailman, they’re a postal worker!“
