We went to a local pub, The Belle Vue, last night, which was really nice; it's up beyond the station and has a pretty impressive view accross town; unfortunately we only had time for one drink but it was very nice. After everyone helped us move in on Saturday V, Andrew and I went to The Yeoman, a favourite pub of ours, and had some food. The Yeoman - amongst other treats - has a blackboard and chalk suspended above the urinals in the men's lavatory. I know, a bit silly - but after a drink or two it sounds like the best idea in the world. The other night I wrote 'As of 3.20pm on the 5/10/02, this pub is my new local'. The Belle Vue might have made that a premature claim.

Little else to add - watched the final part of the C4 dramatisation of 'White Teeth' last night. It made a book notable for it's tremendous ending seem almost entirely incomprehensible. A missed opportunity, and I can't imagine how anyone who hadn't read the book would have been able to keep up with events, much less appreciate Archie's cry of 'Go on my son!' at the close. Ah.

By the way, Michael Moore's wonderful book 'Stupid White Men' deserves to be read by you as soon as possible. Make sure you buy it.

It feels frighteningly late in the week considering it's only Tuesday, but the main reason for that is that I've barely stopped in about ten days; still, no complaints - with the week of hell pretty much behind me I can conclude... 1. Am now 25 - passed off without any major hitches*, 2. Have moved flat at last, with much help from Andrew, Pete and Ali (thank you, thank you, thank you). We now live in a beautiful, spacious flat which we can ill afford and which, in Victoria's words, we ill deserve. Nevertheless it is lovely, a pale yellow and cream delight - like a tasteful Thorntons chocolate. 3. Gah - have argued terribly with Vic these last few days, and been a complete loon - am very mood-swingy at the moment. Must try to calm down and relax. Still, shouldn't be hard - our new abode couldn't be more comfortable.

*"without any major hitches", hey? - hmm, that all depends on your definition. What do you call being stuck on a train journey home for 5 hours after work...?
ah well.

okay, so some pretty drastic repair work to my reputation is going to be needed if I'm to persuade anyone that I'm even the slightest bit interested in maintaining this diary - much has changed though. If I'm to write it it'll have to be for different reasons, because my original reason (an excess of time and a fondness for idle writing) no longer apply. Has this been the busiest week of the last year or so? Not far off. Can I explain why, well...

1. work. much busier, much better
2. birthday. mine, today. I'm 25
3. house. as in I'm moving, this saturday morning, from Kemptown to central Brighton. Which means imposing order on a flat and a glut of pocessions which are nothing if they are not splendidly, suddenly infuriatingly chaotic. There is much to be done.
4. um - there feels like there shld be more. sometimes it just feels busy, and that's enough.

Best news is that Andrew has moved to Brighton. Of which more later (I hope)...

does inertia count if you still feel you're getting yr head down. occupied - I feel it, and I've been too busy to write. And yet I'm also lazy

we went to the zoo. I'll come back to this.

Haven't written for ages. We're about to go and stay with Chris for the bank holiday. We stayed up last night making him a CD. I realised I own practically nothing he'd want but hasn't already got so we ended up cramming random songs onto a 74 minute disc. The style kinda veered with my mood - at times I was feeling generous, putting Nick Drake and rubbish like that on it. At other times I must have been feeling more hostile because I see this moring that it also has Polygon Window, the good Cap'n Beefheart and Steve Reich on towards the end. Chris made me a whole bunch of CDs last week, some really good. One by the Polyphonic Spree is particularly excellent - Mercury Rev with the Flaming Lips' joyfulness. And it, too, ends with washes of noise, like Sonic Youth doing Terry Riley's In C, and is fucking fabulous for it. They wear white robes on stage and there's like, 30 of them. Whatever.

So we're getting ready to go now - at least, we were, until I started writing this and Thomas the cat arrived to make friends with Vic. As usual, he rooted out the catnip toy as soon as he arrived and is currently on the carpet beside me, twisting and turning over it, rubbing it against his little head. He has such a lovely white belly. Anyway, I didn't start this post so that I could write about cats.

What did I start it for then?

um....

Have been on a nice long walk -something I never did in London. Actually something I still catch myself shying from here, but when the weather is this good and the sea so near it's - in the end - impossible to resist. So we walked down the beach-front past the old pier and the market, which was full of nice bags and clothes (V bought a cloth bracelet) and bought some food at Waitrose, which we ate on the beach. The seafront becomes much more civilised the further you walk into Hove - before long everyone was buttoned up to the collar and accompanied by (a) an elderly relative or (b) a small dog. I liked the small dogs best.

La Nouvelle Vague

The heat remains, but thankfully it's Friday at last.
The week hasn't, in fairness, gone that slowly. But I feel duty bound to make some sort of a complaint. I am, afterall, stuck inside while others frolic in the rare sunshine.

Went to see Alan Ayckbourn's Flatspin last night at the Theatre Royal, a very entertaining play involving "deception, surveillance and Bridgit Jones style romance" (not my words - V's). It was very good, funny and engaging. We got tickets from Pete, who had a couple kicking round at his office - lucky because theatre (we said, aloof and superior) remains prohibitively expensive.

The audience were very much of a type, which is to say middle class, middle aged and (sometimes seeming) rather dotty. An old lady sitting behind us insisted on cooing, muttering "oh dear" and asides like "look at all those keys!" throughout. At one point the lead character, Rosie, left the otherwise empty set (the interior of a flat) via one of the doors and our lady exclaimed "she's locked herself out!". Victoria pointed out afterwards that that wouldn't have done much for the stage dynamic - a character getting locked out of her own play.

When the characters came out to bow and take their applause I, as always, felt like crying. Vic assured me that that isn't so unusual. I find it irresistable though, that moment, when the actors can finally acknowledge the audience's existence and be congratulated for their efforts. We saw Romeo and Juliet in the Pavillion Gardens last month, a fairly limp production with dubious casting, and found the whole (nevertheless enjoyable) experience wholly justified by the joy with which Juliet (played by Rebecca Ritters, Hannah from Neighbours) accepted her applause - dashing back centre stage, tripping, and skidding (rather less elegantly than Shakespeare might have liked) to the floor. She - along with everyone else - laughed it off.

It's unfeasibly hot here in Chichester - at lunch I went out for a walk alongside the canal and watched the swans and the family boating (they were American, and nice looking. The family, not the swans). The swans were amazing. I found myself wondering whether I'd actually stopped and looked at a swan before. They were beautiful - their wingspan immense, their feet folded away like pedals on a folding bicycle and their necks unfurling like a giant snake awaking. One noticed me and pecked his way over. I thought "you're huge", and left them to it.

Of the bands, Motel were tremendous. Bangs, the headline act, didn't show. There was a mood of annoyance clearly hanging in the hair - in the end they had neglected to buy their plane tickets, so their UK tour was cancelled. It didn't matter, although Kirby weren't that great - Bikini Kill with a rockabilly beat. No-one occupied the space in front of the stage, so the singer/guitarist stepped down from the stage and played out front for a while. We went round the corner for a beer and looked at the flyers, laughing at the terrible band names. The FreeButt seems to put on gigs there every day, almost. Assistant should be able to get a gig there, no problem. Andrew was thinking up band names all weekend - I liked Captain Klap. I'm guessing that no-one is going to see that and use it; I'm sorry, Andrew, if anyone does.

Motel are as good a band as I've seen in a long time. Their keyboardist wore a sailer's hat and made fantastic noises. Their singer stood awkwardly, one of her feet twisted onto its side, and together they sounded kinda like Stereolab, Neu! and Electrelane. They were really good. Did I feel a twinge of jealousy, thinking perhaps they were better than my band? Perhaps a little. Sadly I can't find out anything about them, or at least, I haven't so far, except that they performed as part of the STRANGE FRUIT tour. Their club night in London looks good. Further info on MOtel to come if I can get it.

We kinda drank our way through Saturday. Actually we didn't, we did loads of stuff before we even started drinking, but we drank for so long I can't believe it wasn't a full day in itself. Beforehand we went to Pride, which was fun when it was hot and then wet when the thunderstorm broke. It didn't feel like a gay festival, though - in Brighton almost everyone takes part in some way, and it felt as much like a gay event as Graham Norton's TV show feels like a gay programme. Which is to say, a bit.

Afterwards we went to The Windmill and met P. We drank a real lot, and then came back here, and drank still more, going through my records and talking about anger, and Brighton, and The Fall. Much texting to Chris through the night too, getting details. He's been on a date. That's Andrew's website, by the way. This morning we were/are just shattered - tired and hungover. Andrew's gone back to London and V is next door. Today has felt like a really long day too. It's only 4.16 as I write this.

For days it has looked like raining here but never quite managed it - over at the library at lunch it suddenly started, shortly before I returned to the office. I stood and watched it for a while, waiting to pick out a lull in which to dash back. But when it did thin out and presented an opportunity, I found myself walking back slowly and quite calmly, enjoying the fine rain. Consequently I'm sodden, sitting back at my desk. It was nice though.

When I was about 12 I remember being unexpectedly mesmerised by the details of the Gulf War. Although I had no idea why it had really happened, the war itself fascinated me far more than I expected. I remember waking early and listening to the reports filtering through on Radio 4 before I had to go to school. I never felt that way again - any other armed combat that has taken place these last ten years ago has made me feel faintly ill, aware that I need to know what's going on but reluctant to know the detail. This was even true of the US response to the terrorist attack on New York. I still wonder if I have the desire to follow a war again that closely. But the build up to this mooted war on Iraq has taken me very very much by surprise. This time I need all the details I can find - and with each new detail I'm more convinced that it is wrong. The link goes a long way to explaining why.

This should be a nice weekend coming - V's brother is coming down to stay and we aim to go and see a gig (Bangs / Motel / Kirby? No, me neither, but it's nearby and cheap) and see what is happening at Pride. And drinks with P on Saturday afternoon, which should be nice, as I haven't seen him in ages.

Okay, it seems to. I know already that I shall never be able to decide on a template, however. Still, both that (and, thankfully, by the looks of things) my entries can be edited - so I can come back and change things when I say too much, make mistakes, receive death-threats from those implicated.

Not quite sure where to start, actually. What I won't do, is introduce myself, because I don't know how this will work, how much I will want to tell. Whether I'll even use this more than once, or once a month. So I'm .... , I live with ...... , I ........... and sometimes I .......

I don't know if anyone will ever see this.

okay. first, does this work?
that would be a start.