I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that my beauty role model is very far from deceased - don't listen to the internet, it's full of misinformation.
You know, something struck me as very familiar when watching Rosanna Arquette's new NBC series "MEDIUM."
Well, I'm really struggling for items of interest. It's 00.33 and upstairs neighbour seems to be disassembling a wardrobe [well it's sounds like it] in the communal halway, that's 1m x 2m. trying to get my attention d'ya think?
He's just stormed out of the house after treating me to some more wicked basslines. I only go out this time of night to get fags from the petrol station, maybe he needs condoms?
For the last few years he's been charm incarnate, but perhaps due to the usual effects of african medicine, he's been rather paranoid of late. I have had to accept recently, that I'm blind as a bat first thing in the morning, and after a suprise visit from X and his large hairy dog to my tiny flat, I just scooped up the post and followed my visitors in. Against the usual burble re X's hairy straight neighbour putting the make on him, and the hairy neighbour's siblings drugged meanderings via Gaydar, I realised that the manilla envelope I'd just ripped open wasn't a yet another bargain from ebay, but something from Custom and Excise for him upstairs.
A serious matter I know, but I wasn't prepared for the paranoic ranting I recieved when he finally deigned to check his post. The man leaves piles of his post unopened for weeks in the tiny communal hallway. [Picking up the tiny theme yet?] Don't get me started on how the heaps of junk mail are some how my sole responsibilty to remove.
After subletting it [illegally] for two years while he worked in the states, he returned to take forcible repossession of it one evening without warning. Before that I'd put up with an enormous Nigerian couple, who loved to get intoxicated, dance, and fall over. Unsuprisingly this brought down the victorian ceiling below, that turned out to have been repaired, after a near miss bombing during the war, with CONCRETE. I had only just left the room when it happened. V. September 11th. It toook an hour before the dust started to settle and I could see into the room.
Since he's moved back it'had been pretty quiet till the incident with the post, apart from the odd suggestion over the years that I swap flats with him so he could have the garden that comes with the flat I'm in.
All this sets my nerves on edge, as before I moved here I had had to move twice because of harassment. Having been in a therapeutic community in the naive belief there was such a thing as "getting my head sorted out," I was considered to vulnerable to be rehoused living on my own. [He's back.] The first place was a complete culture shock having just come from an Arts and Crafts mansion in the wilds of suburbia. Big Brother can seem very familiar.
The new house itself was pretty unremarkable, yuppies moving in either side to remove all traces of the previous Jamaican occupants. They obviously didn't catch the recent show at the Geffrye Museum. [Basslines back on] "The Jamaican Front Room." Next door had an extension obviously built on over the years, no straight angles, exposed beams all tacked onto a three storey Victorian terrace house. It wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of "Lord of the Rings." There were four other residents, a religous jamaican girl, and a very thin waynetta and me on the top floor. The next floor down had a mute black guy and a real East End gangster-type whose only sign of life was chuckling to himself.
It was all pretty quiet during the day when the staff occasionally visited, but the nights were when the joint was jumping. By now I was aware that alcohol would cut out the effects of the medication that most of these people were on. Evenings could be pretty sticky. There was a regular visitor, I nicknamed "buggered with a chairleg" after having been told countless times about the act that led him to be in prison for murder. I can't remember why I was threatened with having my face slashed, surely not for being a supercilious queen! This was the place I first met the worker who has since been threatening X with murder, and crying wolf to the police. This after coming out of rehab for heroin, where he met Anorexic Joanna Lumley, whose Yorkshire Terrier X and I looked after, and led me to my getting two of my own. It's a small world!
The next 7 months was spent in a private psychiatric clinic care of NHS overcrowding, in a rapidly emptying hospital in Hammersmith. It's cavernous lobby, and Art Deco architecture meant it was ideal for filming, and to pop to the shops meant negotiating various filming crews. One time I passed Hwyel Bennet consoling a tearful bride next to a tank full of rubber lobster, while extras wandered around in old fashioned stripey pajamas and flannel dressing gons, all clutching hot water bottles. I think they were filming "Sliding Doors at the same time, mostly filmed at night, so that you'd leave the building at 11.00pm to lighting outside bright enough for day. Apparently it's more consistent than actual daylight. The last weekend I spent there, they spent ALL DAY filming an ambulance brake suddenly in the car park with a patient on a gurney shooting through the windscreen. Think that was for Channel 5.
The next place was even hairier than the last. I'd taken the room recently vacated by the local psychopathic african medicine dealer. He'd really made the place party central. Wall to wall hot rock burns throughout. He wasn't able to let go of such a great venue, and it didn't help that he was shagging one of the workers. Things had obviously got too hot for waynetta from the last place, but this agoraphobic heroine discovered her retinue of elderly Irish alcoholics were no more welcome at the new gaff. I was already persona non grata, called "Cecil" for having been caught watching C4.
It's amazing how intolerant the completely anti-social can be. Can't tell you how little Pride was appreciated when it was held nearby that summer. What happened to the credo of excess and hedonism? I lost count of days I came downstairs to find the kitchen full of punters from the nigh before glaring at me, all v.posh and tickled by how far they were slumming it. I may sound naive, never having lived in student digs, but don't forget I was stuck there as being too vulnerable to live in my own place.
After nights having my doorframe and furniture vibrate from the volume of music coming through three fire doors, and three floors down, things came to ahead when psychopathic drug dealer informed waynetta that she was lowering the tone with her ancient alchies, and it could affect how long the ladies of the night he had brought over would be prepared to stay. Fisticuffs ensued.
The police proved as ineffectual as ever unless provided with extensive video footage, and self -incrimating written statements by everyone concerned. After being assaulted after the police left, I felt I had had enough of the encouragements to top myself and let someone who wasn't a pervert occupy the room, and departed.
They best they could come up with was a house for those with "learning difficulties." Not much to report, apart from a resident falling down the very steep stairs to his death, the one evening I wasn't there. I was in the top floor garret for the third time, and used to stare out at the Orient Express as it flew my window, the track being level with the roof line, and only as far as the end of the tiny garden. How much further down the hole was I going to follow the white rabbit?
Then I ended up here. But that's another story. A long way to explain why I'm such a nervous wreck at the moment. I did have to fight my initial response, to superglue his lock and set fire to my place. And no, I don't have a history of arson. No prior convictions me. I'm sorry if this all sounds so twee, I was certainly made to feel so, having any expectations of civilised behaviour, and not let's get competitive about how out to lunch any of us are. The whole situation started from me fleeing packs of passive aggresive anorexics in suburbia.
The drawing? I've cut all my hair off again, arranging my fringe to hide my rapidly rising hairline in a way approved of by X was just becoming too dispiriting. The drawing is of a photo taken the first time I cut it all off. don't know where I went wrong with the mouth.
"Note to Katherine's Uterus" Will this do? The only highlight of todaywas my mother demonstrating her chicken oufit for her next production. Thought of slightly fictionalising my forays into prostitution, but's that's such a cliche, isn't it girls?
Mute Maggot
Mad Michael
Petulant Pete
Poor Preston
Racy Rula
Traci Tease
"BRAND NEW TAGGED
SWIMWEAR
THESE ARE GOING TO BE TOO BIG FOR ME
I NEED THEM TIGHT FOR COMPETITIONS
FOR OBVIOUS REASONS
PLEASE ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS
DON'T BE SHY"
I am beginning to wonder if this is some bid to subvert ebay, at the prices these artefacts are going for, perhaps delivery is in person!
8.00am load washing machine - tick
9.00am walk dogs in autumn sunshine - tick
10.00am wash off the foul shit dogs rolled in - tick
11.00am start shopping - tick
Stop by printers to find that estimate for promotional material has nearly doubled - tick
2.00pm stop shopping/run out of money - tick
3.00pm shop for madame ex, who has cold - tick
Mad passionate sex - mission aborted
4.00pm offer to clear garden of single mother before pretentious neighbours have her evicted for jungle - tick
5.00pm train to old neighbourhood to visit friend too ill to cook, with packed epicurean dinner- tick
Call ahead to friend from payphone- mission aborted
Cigarette snatched from mouth by well dressed weirdo in street while trying to enter payphone - tick
Response from friend - no reply
Call police, 3 times before getting through - tick
Friend carted off in ambulance unconcious, reasons unknown - tick
Stand under streetlight, while glared by police in local red-light district - tick
Fuck off home with uneaten epicurean dinner - tick
Pull duvet under chin - tick
Ignore dogs smelling like musky vomit - tick
Cigarettes smoked - 37
I have to say I'm a little bemused at the interest in my "turbulent relationship." If only because Over the last 5 years I must have bored titless everyone I know about the whole matter. It was all a bit too queeny for my liking, and we did get a reputation as being the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of the area.I was going through a particularly trying time with my family a couple of years back, and was stressed out to the max. I had just got my first puppy, and ex was the green eyed monster. "Do you think you could look after him with all that you've got going just now?" My parents lost custody of their children at a very early stage , and it's an area I'm quite sensitive. I'd spent that weekend wrestling a distressed relative to the floor to prevent them discharging themselves, watched on by greek chorus of impassive medics, and as I tried to slip out for another very long day at the hospital I was acosted by ex. I'd already had to leave the puppy on it's own for most of the last few days. I had a mad moment and said I'd given the dog away, anything to get some peice. Ex burst into tears, very rare and completely unexpected on my part. I chase after him and caugth up at our very busy junction, where I'd been run over 6 months before. I tried to comfort him and try and salvage the situation by saying that the dog was still at home waiting to be collected. the crying stopped immediately and he wanted to go and get the dog there and then. I freaked at this point, at the selfishness of everyone I knew, probably including myself, and spent the next five minutes trying to get myself run over. At night times juggernauts hurtle through at top speed, but this was rush hour and standing in front of lorries wasn't going to cut it.
I'll tell you some day how making a cup of tea [an standard occupational test] got me my freedom
Ex and I are speaking a the moment and I was at his place touching up the paintwork today, mainly as a break from a website I am trying to put together. He came home from work with an old polaroid camera with a carton of even older film. As a figurative artist, I'm used to the naked human form, and have roped in friends and even acquaintances to model for various projects, ex included. He's always been a bit nervous of a series of polaroids I took of him a few years ago. "I think it's only fair that I have something on you!" Did feel a bit strange posing myself but what the hell. Well the results were a sort of 70's green sepia, I've lost a lot of weight recently and it all came out a bit Larry Clark.
U.K release date 13 January 2006.
This photograph - from amongst all my clutter - was taken in Whitechapel London in the 1870-80's.
Materials: 4 oz. Patons Beehive Fingering, 3-ply, for large size; 3 oz. for small size. A pair No. 13 "Beehive needles.
Measurements: Large size to fit 36-38 inch hips, 33 inch waist. Small size to fit 34-36 inch hips, 29 inch waist.
Tension: 9 stitches to an inch. N.B. - Instructions for small size in brackets.
Front. Cast on 114 (92) sts. very loosely and work 2 1/2 inches k. 1, p. 1 rib. Change to stocking-stitch and increase at each end of next and every following 4th row until there are 132 (124) sts. Work straight until front measures 10 1/4 (91/4) inches from start, ending with a purl row. Continue thus:- 1ST ROW: Kint to last 4 sts., turn. 2ND ROW: Purl to last 4 sts., turn. 5TH ROW: Knit to last 9 sts., turn. 6TH ROW: Purl to last 9 sts., turn.
7TH ROW: Knit to last 12 sts., turn. 8TH ROW: Purl to last 12 sts., turn. 9TH ROW: Knit to last 15 sts., turn. 10th ROW: Purl to last 15 sts., turn.
11TH ROW: Knit 51 (47) turn, leaving remaining sts. on a spare needle. 12TH ROW: Purl to last 3 sts., turn. 13TH ROW: Knit. 14TH ROW: Purl to last 6 sts., turn. 15TH ROW: Purl to last 9 sts., turn. 17TH ROW: Knit.
Continue thus, working 3 sts. less at end of every purl row until 3 (2) remain. Change to k. 1, p. 1 rib and work over all 66 (62) sts. for 12 (12) row. Cast off loosely in rib using double wool. Join wool to stitches with right side facing, working the 3 sts. less at end of every knit row until 3 (2) remain.
Back. Work rib as far front and continue thus :- 1ST ROW: k. 63 (52), turn. 2ND ROW: k.24 (20), turn. 4TH ROW: p. 30 (26), turn. 5TH ROW: k. 36 (32), turn. 6TH ROW: p 42 (38), turn.
Continue thus, working 6 more sts. on every row until all are in stocking-stitch. Now work exactly as for front, starting leg shapings when stocking-stitch measures 7 3/4 (6 3/4) inches at side edge.
GUSSET. Cast on 3 sts., work in stocking-stitch, increasing at each end of needle on every knit row until there are 53 (47) sts. Now decrease at each end of every alternate row until 3 remain. Cast off and make another piece the same.
TABS. Cast on 8 sts., and work 1 3/4 inches k. 2, p. 1 rib. Cast off and make 3 more the same.
TO MAKE UP. Press work lightly on wrong side under a damp cloth, avoiding rib, then join side seams. Sew together gusset pieces, back to back, then insert gusset so that bottom of fold comes just below top of rib. Turn down waist rib to make a hem and stitch, allowing for stretch. Run in a plait of thread elastic. Sew on tabs.
