Reasons Not To Live With Your Girlfriend

Well, that may be a tad unfair. This is another story about Jacqui and Damian and one of the many anecdotes that dad likes to tell horrified looking guests at BBQs. Really this post should be titled “reasons not to live with Jacqui” but it didn’t sound quite as catchy.

In the first few months of moving in to a new place with your partner, many couples fall into excited delirium about extremely important such as purchasing “their first” spatula, hanging “their first” picture of a duck on a rock in the bathroom. For my parents it was a case of getting skirting boards hung upside down and choosing to call it an eccentricity. Couples will fall into giggles as they come home and greet each other with “how was your day honey?” and “Shall I pop the kettle on?”, parallels drawn to their parents too quaint to go unnoticed. Jacqui chooses to greet my dad with a mild heart attacks.

Damian had been working part time at the tax office while studying in the evenings for his accountancy degree. Tired and head full of numbers he opened his front door with the rest of his energy spent on forming the words “Honey, I’m home” which echoed through the corridors to no reply.
“Jacqui?” He walked through the house questioning empty living rooms and kitchens. He saw the light on in the bathroom and pushed the door open with an unnecessary polite knock. While at first the room looked empty, the quiet splash of water against the tub took him in a step closer. He stopped breathing as he took in the sight of his girlfriend, eyes open and hair waving lying motionless at the bottom of the bath. Unaware of his actions now, he found himself pressed up against the bathroom wall clutching his chest and trying to breathe to no avail. As he began to slump to the floor, paralysed in panic, Jacqui burst from the water spraying my dad and laughing heavily having expended all her breathe holding it for more than a minute.

“Oh my God Mum!” Back around the kitchen table my brothers and I looked over in shock at Jacqui, who was trying to hide a half smile. “Poor Dad! What were you thinking?”

The other half of the smile emerged. “I didn’t really”

And that’s who raised me.

YouTube Mash-Ups

These are works of genius, that is all I can say.

Kutiman Mixes YouTube

Oh Metro...

You didn't think that one through did you?

The thing about Jacqui

As far as mothers go, you can’t do much better than Jacqui. If you can’t base at least a novella on the relationship with your mother, her chablis drinking tendencies and inability to sensor what she says to your nearest and dearest then you haven’t really got a mother at all as far as I’m concerned. I mentally started this blog the moment I walked down the stairs in time to over hear her telling my English rose, butter wouldn’t melt friend Ali that she didn’t understand why these girls (waving a hand towards the rolling credits of Embarrassing Bodies on the kitchen televsion) think it’s ok to appear to the nation with their labia’s hanging down to their knees. “It is like they thought they could get away with just swinging it over their shoulder up until this point”. There was a look of pure ecstatic joy in Ali’s eye. It could have been distress.

It was the same look I had caught once before in a rear view mirror of mum’s car years earlier. At the end of my first year of university Jacqui offered to drive my fresh out of the university oven friend Vince and I back down to London. Having moments earlier warned him to lock up his profanities for the five hour trip, his eyes were watering with material as Jacqui hit the M1 and announced that we would be listening to The Vagina Monologues on CD for the entire journey back. For Vince, it was love.

There is something about Jacqui, and perhaps this hasn’t been the most rounded introduction to the woman who granted me life but this is the woman who just lifted up her top to flash my dad on Skpe in the kitchen in front of a now very horrified looking eighteen year old brother. “Oooooh la la” Dad’s voice rattles out of the speakers “but Jacqui, best not, I’m in the office”.

What do you make a typographer for his birthday?

Last Night

Last night I dreamt that I turned up at a pizza place, on my own, to discover my ex boyfriend sharing a pepperoni pizza with our friends. In spirit of being on friendly grounds I chose to sit with them. We laughed and joked and were generally having a Hallmark moment until a guy I had been recently dating turned up and put his arm around me. Next thing I knew we were outside watching the pizza place burn to the ground while ex boyfriend shouted at me for being too distracted by new boyfriend to put out the candle on our table.

I have spent my entire morning interpreting my night time fantasy, analysing the meanings behind the key symbols present.

I have come to the conclusion that I really fancy a pepperoni pizza.

A brother's birthday

Any excuse for a cake. Plus I'm strapped for cash. A cake is a suitable 21st birthday present right? Right? Good I'm glad you agree. There is a bit of an in-joke here, Mac tells anyone that listens that he is Spiderman. Why? "Because I am".

I didn't say it was a funny in-joke.

Prelude

Let me start by telling you that I am a terrible storyteller. I have many friends that will back this up. I have a tendency to start at the beginning, skip quickly to the end before filling in all the details in-between in order for the story to make sense. In fact a date recently pointed this out. Apparently I give the false impression of being quite eloquent in messages, only to spoil the illusion in real life. So is the beauty of editing. “Maybe you should try taking a deep breathe and thinking through what you’re about to say”. He didn’t last very long.

So here is the start of my story, and the end. The middle bits are a story for another day.

Twenty three years, seven months and twenty one days ago a young man of short stature stood on a pavement somewhere between his home in Mosman and Paddington Hospital in Sydney. He stood with his feet firmly rooted to the spot, his round face turning a shade of beetroot as he continued to scream at the bus driver who had moments ago torn down the side of his BMW at the traffic lights.

During this exchange the passengers of the bus began to shuffle off to get a better view of the commotion, or possibly to seek alternative forms of transport, who knows. Perhaps some of the more observant of the crowd even noticed a young woman in the midst of labour calmly climbing out of the BMW, reaching back in to collect her suitcase and signalling for a taxi.

Twenty three years, seven month and twenty one days later I sit cross legged on a chair at my desk at my family home in London, sipping tea and quietly contemplating everything that happened in between these moments. It is part of a pre-life crisis. “Another one?” my ex-boyfriend exclaimed wearily over drinks recently. He had the pleasure of talking me off the window ledge during the run up to my graduation. I thought a moment. “No, I’m pretty sure it is the same one, I think I just took a sabbatical”. I just haven’t decided who I am yet.

So here it is. A piece of online space made up by thousands of zeros and ones that placed together make up the story of all the irrelevant moments that fill in the story in between. Oh and cake. It is part of how I cope.