Yesterday, after waking up fully clothed at 4am with my TV blaring, I felt the onset of inertia and stayed in bed until I had finished Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal (it’s a brave concept but one which, I think anyway, ultimately fails) and ploughed halfway through The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. This book was recommended to me last year after I had crowed at length about Revolutionary Road. And it is so compelling that I wouldn’t have left bed at all if I hadn’t had the awe inspiring Ms Spiers to meet for a Moroccon lunch and then to watch, the pair of us wide-eyed, as the gentleman next to us proposed to his girlfriend.

As the white ribbon slipped off and the box snapped open to reveal at least $50,000 worth of Princess cut diamond, I could not take my eyes of the proposer. He remained seated throughout and, something I thought bizarre, had ordered only 2 glasses of champagne as opposed to a bottle. But the expression on his face lacked any semblance of façade or composure and as he gazed at his girlfriend, his eyes shone with overwhelming love and naked naked hope. All that exposure, how could he have possibly gone on living if she had said no? Which she didn’t by the way, although Ms Spiers and I both remarked at how unexcited she appeared to be about anything. His tenderness suggested he would have expected nothing more.

Ahahhahahahhaha.

And then I went back to bed and finished The Easter Parade, the plot being way too close to home to grant me any comfort, I slipped into a suitable depression. Why should I try to do anything more since I know already the middle aged fate of madness awaiting every spinster aunt? Delusion is where it is at.

Oh dear God

I don't think I have been this angry in a long time. Jane Kramer, you have NO idea of what you speak. I would advise against coming near me if I have a bottle within arms reach. In amongst her ludicrous ludicrous article on foxhunting, I found this gem:

But Old Labour keeps track of the history of discrimination, and it has bred a furious resentment. For many working-class Britons, the ban on foxhunting is their revenge Some go all the way back to the royal hunt that trampled Oliver Cromwell’s uncle’s farm. Most of them simply call the ban their “payback for the miners”—by which they mean that Margaret Thatcher, in the early eighties abandoned the country’s foundering collieries and did it without shedding a tear of pity for the communities where thousands of coal miners and their families lived. The miners clung to their pit villages, however miserable, out of an attachment to home that had no place in the “get up, go South, find yourself a new job ethos in Mrs. Thatcher’s vision of reform. They struck for a year. Their demands were outrageous, their desperation clear—and their defeat a given. Most of the mines closed.

There is so much in that one paragraph that makes my eyes water and brings the metallic taste of blood into my mouth. Do you have any understanding of the Labour movement in the UK beyond the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? You cretinous simplistic simpleton cretin.

I would seriously doubt if there is even a preponderence against fox hunting in the North East. I grew up in the North East during the miners strike. My local MP for a long while was a Tory. Does that make any sense to you, Jane? I suggest against hanging out in country pubs for your lame statements which you report as general consensus. Your titled friends (ooo aren't you well-connected) don't know a rat's arse about how us Northern scum feel about anything in our miserable villages. And neither do you. I'd like to give you a bit of payback for the miners, dearie. Ooo, how I can dream. Payback for the miners. Payback. For. The. Miners.


Why I may have to cancel my subscription

Ben Brantley what on earth are you on?

Why the sycophancy? It was pants.

True, the ravaging winter of the play's first half blossoms into a loving and forgiving spring in its second part, as is the way in Shakespeare's comedies. But I have also never seen a production of "As You Like It" that so insists on keeping in mind how harsh and capricious the world can be. Which, strangely enough, is precisely what makes this traveling production from the Theater Royal Bath of England so exhilarating. It's as if the whole spectrum of human nature had been crammed into a fast-footed three hours

Maybe you need to get out more.

Three hours of my life I can’t get back: Nepotism kills art

“As You Like It” last night was just not very good. In fact, I very well may just go so far as to say bloody awful. I could tell from the extreme pretensions of Sir Peter Hall's note in the programme that I was about to get robbed of $38 for the ticket. Where’s the plot summary you moron? I don’t know Shakespeare off by heart, if at all, and I didn’t have time yesterday to look it up on the lovely interweb. Just as well then that I completely understand Shakespearean English then, isn’t it.

Funny really when checking out Ms Hall’s biography that everything she’s ever been in appears to have been directed by Daddy. How, well, completely unsurprising. Her performance last night was dire. Badly enunciated, ridiculously swooning and ghastly gasping all over the place. As the Boyf remarked, “She’s breathing from the wrong place.” She’s also one of the hammiest actresses I have seen in a long time. The other classic one liner was “Is Audrey supposed to have Downs Syndrome?”

Michel Siberry as Touchstone was the only character that wasn’t embarrassing. For some reason I thought he was the bartender in Only Fools and Horses, but apparently he’s not. The usually excitable crowd at BAM exited as fast as you can say Jack Robinson, with a very light applause. No encore even though the big guy was in the house. Maybe Sir Pete should try King Lear if he wants to do any more Shakespeare (I couldn’t be arsed to trawl through the 50,000 word biography in the programme to check). He’s obviously now got a heads up on legacies being ruined by female offspring.

Lorraine Bobbit eat your heart out

She yanked off his left testicle, which was later handed to him by a friend with the words: "That's yours."

I think that in this instance, friend should have read "friend".

The cult makes money selling my email and home address. Today I received a brochure from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. IT"S ORANGE! You can't fool me oh musically chalenged ones! I am also keenly aware of your catch phrases: Curriculum, Education Theory, Community and Support, Vibrant Happiness, Elevate Your Life. Also the pictures of lakes and mountains and yoga postures sell you up crap creek my friends.

My personal favourite though is the quote from a ridiculous woman called Judith Duerk:

"How might it have been diferent for you if on your first menstrual day, your mother had given you a bouquet of flowers and taken you to lunch?"

Judith, you insipid middle class wench, our Mam went out and worked. Lunch was what she gave us in the morning before she left.

Shramming it: Last ashram post because even I am bored shitless now

So where were we? Ah yes. Freak boy in my shed. For way too long. I didn’t care because when I eventually got back into the shed all I could think of was toast and saunas. It was wonderful. I was warm and it had been so long. One of the problems, and only one, believe me, of being on a tightly-scheduled ashram is the lack of time available for personal grooming, otherwise known as scraping the grime of my frozen limbs. The bath huts, alas, had no heating at all. A squirty tap came out of the wall and blasted you with luke warm water for three seconds. You then had to punch to button underneath to repeat the process, which was, I found, especially conducive to hair washing.

Thing is, this lack of luxury is not unfamiliar to me. From mid 1992 until 1995, I traveled all over the world, sleeping in flea-infested beds, crashing on floors and eating only rice with soy sauce for days on end so that I wouldn’t spend all my money and could stay away form the UK for longer. It’s just that I had never done it in the cold. I hate the cold more than I hate bedbugs. It’s just so miserable, miserable, miserable.

I was well underway in my mission to ostracize myself from the orange peoples. I had already managed to insult the swarmis on whose table I found myself for veggie curry number 3 trillion. They had been playing an aggressive game of intellectual oneupmanship called “Who said what?”

It went like this.

Swarmi One: OK who said, “O joy of the Kurus, there is but a single one pointed determination; many branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.”

Swarmi Two: The Blessed Lord to Arjuna in the Second Discourse of the Bhagavad Gita.

Swarmi One: Correct!
You get the picture right? So after forty rounds of this I am finding it all a bit tedious and sincere and, well, orange. So next one comes up.

Swarmi Three: [Some crap I can’t remember now about apparitions and delusions and are we all apparitions and how can we ever know and yes we are all apparitions and we are delusions as well which sounded like a watered down version of Let’s Get Drunk and Screw. Which would have made the answer Jimmy Buffet, which would have amused me. Which, now that I think about it, would have been an infinitely better answer than the inevitable that escaped out of my mouth faster than you can say Jack Robinson.]

Maccers: Kurt Vonnegut.

All Swarmis in unison: [Evil unHare Krishna type silent staring. Po faced.]

I felt like David Brent. I slunk off backwards and sat on the toilet for thirty minutes. It was freezing in there as well.

Argh dissed by the orangies. I am the weirdo amongst the weirdies.

Carlisle reels from flood chaos

"Flooding in Carlisle has left schools, roads and the police headquarters closed, and the city's court and hospital are running skeleton services. "

One of the first photographs I can remember was of my grandfather standing in front of his house on Brompton Terrace with his trousers rolled up and the water up to his knees.

Carlisle, it's got a castle.

TV Appeal by Richard Gere Perplexes Palestinians

"'I don't even know who the candidates are other than Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), let alone this Gere,' Gaza soap factory worker Manar an-Najar told Reuters Wednesday.
'We don't need the Americans' intervention. We know who to elect. Not like them -- they elected a moron.' "

Cult for Christmas? Anyone?

Before I go on, one thing about the Hare Krishna and that is that they are all absolutely wonderfully nice to me. So nice. These people secrete the milk of human kindness. Most of them. More than a few of the people here are fairly obviously candidates for prescription drugs. Like any organization, there are the politics and the backstabbing. Wrap this up with mindless chanting and living together 24/7 makes for an interesting ashramic time.

Last night we were all encouraged to talk about our moment of “Awakening” and when we became open to the “teachings”. Holy crap, I thought. What do I do? Do I just make shit up? I listened seemingly without an end as the others trawled through the details of their nervous breakdowns, suicidal thoughts or struggles with addiction. Where are the people who were really happy with life and had a great fucking family? Where are those types? Shouldn't they be here too if this stuff transcends all? Was it Jesus who said "Bring me your destitute, blah dee blah blah?" [I actually don't know this because I was brought up heathen. We just worshipped dripping.] He certainly didn't say bring me all the happy, healthy people because he knew they would just have told him to fuck off and rightly so. When my turn came, I said into the microphone, “My name is Maccers and I haven’t had an awakening.” “Why are you here then, Maccers?” the Swarmi asked me. “Err, because I like yoga?” I lied. The real answer was “Because I am a total fucking lunatic.” My answer, however, seemed to placate them, thankfully.

I find the chanting a lot easier to master in the morning, I am not gripped by the panic to burst out laughing which I was the day before. Perhaps I have just come to terms with the fact that no one else here thinks that this is hysterical. Whichever, once again I refuse to take a tambourine. I am wondering how long I can get away with this defiance. I have also figured out how to place the cushions and the prayer blankets so that I don’t get a dead lower torso after an hour in that position. I can go to an hour and a half before both legs are contorting in agony. I have also figured out that prayer blankets are there to cover your position so you can do some handy bits of changing your legs around unnoticed.

What is strange is that prior to the yoga class I had convinced myself that I was just going to leave – make up some shit and smash the rental’s accelerator down to the metal. Something about the yoga though makes me stay. The people in orange are seriously good at this shit. I am actually quite happy, my mind is clear and I find I can actually switch off and appreciate the breathing exercises.

I don’t have to guess what is for my Christmas brunch since it is exactly the same as dinner the night before – Christ no wonder everyone has gas in yoga class. Not surprising then that after 24 hours I have forgotten about food all together until I see the bell ringing and the mats on the floor. The floor. Comfort is not an issue here. You are supposed to transcend comfort or something like that. And cold. And the lack of booze or irony. And the desire to murder sincere people. Sincere kind people who use phrases like “life coach” when I ask them what they do.

As with everywhere else, in the ashram, all the fun is to be had in the kitchen. It is my turn for karma yoga – selfless service – and I get kitchen duty with the Kitchen Nazi.

I had noticed Kitchen Nazi staring at me during the Satsang the night before. And when I say staring I mean staring with the look that made me instantly feel chastised and not like a virgin. I had been laughing, or more to the point, trying not to.

“So” he looks straight at me. “What’s you name?”
“Maccers.”
“Ah Maccers. My name is KN and Maccers, I am here to help you.”

I doubt this very much. His pupils zoom in and out as he pokes his pudgy face into mine. I’m guessing he is at least eight years younger than me. And off his medication.

“Don’t listen to EK,” he snears, “EK is very slow, he hasn’t got it all up here.” He points stubby nail bitten fingers at his forehead. “We just let him pretend he is in charge of kitchen cleaning to help him. You know. To boost his self esteem.”

For the record, I had pegged EK as merely shy until now.

KN then humiliates EK about his kitchen cleaning skills all the while informing me that he is doing this for my benefit.

KN then turns to me. “What did you think of the satsang last night?”
“Um a little different. I haven’t done any chanting before.”
“I saw you laughing.”
“Well yes I guess I thought it was funny – but am I not allowed to ever laugh?”
“Satsang is my favorite thing. I love the chanting.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes.” KN had truly been the most fervent of tambourine bangers last night.

“You are the best kitchen helper I have ever had.” He informs me as hang up the tea towel. “But everything else I think about you, I will keep in my head and believe me those are all in my head.”

Up there with the voices no doubt.

Unfortunately KN is in charge of fixing the heater in my room.

“Haven’t left any lingerie lying around? Have you?”

Oh god. I am locked out of the only refuge I have on the refuge and the Kitchen Nazi is doing god knows what with my underwear.

Fantastic.


More to come. Maybe. Who gives a shit?

Tales from the Ashram

I think I could possibly be in my own personal hell. And it is the personal hell in which I chose to place myself for Christmas, so it’s all completely my fault. I’d like to blame someone else but I actually can’t and anyway I think that is against the rules here, the blaming bit. As indeed is everything else which does not involve beating the soles of your feet with hot things that hurt you at 5.30 in the morning.

It’s 7.15pm on Christmas Eve and since 3.30pm I’ve been at a “Yoga Farm” in Grass Valley. This particular yoga farm is one of eight which was founded by Swami Vishnu-Devanada for the practice of Yoga and Vedana, which means yoga philosophy or positive thinking. And then there is me, the ultimate tool. For some reason I decided to have a different Christmas this year. No trips home or staying with friends. A retreat was required. Somewhere to clear my head and to try something on my own that was a bit different. I show up on Christmas Eve, just too late to take part in selfless service but I am rushed into the second of the day’s yoga classes.

The day is carefully scheduled on the ashram. Scheduled with the same thing every day. And with a military precision previously known only to Swiss railway workers. Wake up call is 5.30am for a 6.00am compulsory Satsang class, being 30 minutes of meditation, chanting and a talk or reading. There are also 2 compulsory yoga classes a day, known as Asanas and Pranayama, meaning posture and breathing respectively. The other compulsory session is called Karma Yoga or selfless service. This is performed from 11am to 12pm and as yet I have no idea what this will entail for me. I’m just praying to god I don’t have to clean toilets or rake leaves. My 2 least favorite things to do. Vacuuming or a nice bit of light dusting would work well for me I decide. Or just being a happy smiley person and doing fuck all, which is what I work best at.

No meat, fish, fowl, eggs, garlic, onions, narcotics, alcohol or smoking are allowed on the ashram. Because they are EVIL. I immediately start to panic as the trunk of my hire car contains six bottles of wine I picked up in Napa prior to this retreat. I decide to keep quiet about these. I need to keep them after all. They are the only things in my life that I currently give a shit about, since my Blahniks seem so far away from Grass Valley at this precise moment I can hardly believe I even own some.

On arrival, I am asked to complete registration documentation. First, last and spiritual name. Spiritual name? What the fuck does that mean? I must also check off a list of interests, over which I had initially I had drawn a blank since I am not normally so keen on astrology, fasting or children’s activities. Then before I can change my mind about the tool shed I am staying in, I am ushered into the two hour yoga class which had just begun.

The quality of instruction on the ashram is excellent. Emphasis is placed on relaxation and breathing and there is no pressure or inter-class competition that I have found in yoga classes in New York. Throughout the 2 hour class we repeatedly come back to the “dead man” pose, lying on your back, legs apart and palms facing upwards. I knew there was a reason that I was attracted to yoga. How can you not appreciate a practice that requires this constant reclining? Still, the classes at the ashram are intensive and in just two sessions I have noticed a dramatic improvement in my concentration and flexibility.

Since the ashram is not full over the Christmas period I have a 2 person cabin to myself, for tonight anyway. Christmas Eve and it’s fucking freezing. The temperature will go below freezing tonight and the electric heater that I have in the cabin doesn’t seem to be taking the edge off the chill. There are three electric bars which are trying to fight the icy winds coming through the two inch gaps under the door and around the windows. Two other things which have been filling me with a sense of foreboding are the large baskets filled with tambourines (tambourines!) I spied in the meditation hall and the hand holding Hare Krishna chanting we have to do before dinner. All of us in the kitchen. Singing over the vegetable curry. If I have to do that again, I very well might be fasting during my entire stay.

It’s now 12.30am and I am running silent-screaming across the frosted lawn towards my tool shed, appropriate really, and away from the people dressed in orange. The screaming is silent because my voice box is frozen and because I am terrified of appearing anything other than happy clappy. Four hours of sitting on the floor chanting and then singing Christmas carols with the harmonium, tambourines and enforced frivolity have left me at the edge of desperation. And then pushed over it with a great big footprint on my arse. The fact that right now I could be tucked up in Frette sheets at Gaige House in Napa is doing nothing to ease my madness. One of the yoga instructors had dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out presents to the ashram – I got a tongue scraper and a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. I leave on my clothes and get in to bed. I sleep despite the cold and the plastic undersheet. But I can’t shake the doom I feel for tomorrow. Thank god the Apple Mac G-5 Powerbook gets really hot or I think I would have probably perished in my socks. I wonder whether my family would have even been informed…….

More to come....like Christmas Day...whenever I can be arsed.....

Brainy women face handicap in marriage stakes: British survey:

"'Women in their late 30s who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation are finding that men are just not interesting enough,' said psychologist and professor at Nottingham University Paul Brown in The Sunday Times. "

Thank you, thank you, Mr Brown, for giving me an excuse that feeds my ego.