I though I was going to have the chance to boast about this at length, but I’m not, so I shall boast about it in brief.

Bong! On Tuesday evening, I went to see Sky Captain and the Masters of the Universe, or whatever it’s called, at some kind of screening thing.

Bong! I liked it. I don’t care what anyone else says, I thought it was ace. If a bit loud. As in spent the first half hour thinking I was going to puke loud.

Bong! Really, I liked it a lot. I like a script where people can say ‘Ah, doctor, we meet again’ and look like they’re enjoying it. I thought it was beautiful, and well-thought-out, and camp as all hell, and I didn’t want to punch Gwyneth Paltrow for once, which was surprising.

Bong! I thought it had plot inconsistencies, but that they were intentional - part of the whole thing. It knew what it was trying to be, I think. It gently poked fun at its genre and at comic book narrative and character culture without ever turning mean or spoofy.

Bong I don’t care what anyone else says

Bong! Not my kind of film at all.

Bong! Liked it. Lot.

Bong! Nothing more to say really. I just realised the only point of going to see a screening of something three days before it was out was to boast about it. Boast boast boast, etc.

Bong! I’ll shut up now.

Oh… I went to see I heart Huckabees the night before.
Now I’ll shut up.

Is needed. Because I’m running a competition.
Not really. I just need your help. Please. I need a strapline for this site.

I don’t know why I do, I just do.

Until this morning is was ‘adrift in a sea of commuters’, but I don’t feel adrift anymore, so I’ve changed it, but I’m not sure if ‘bobbing for fun-apples in a sea of office-worker juice’ isn’t bordering on repellent.

Please. I need a strapline to go under the boat. That one over there. On the right hand side of the site. The little red one. Can anyone help?

Best suggestion wins a Surprise Prize prize.

Thusday midday:

Is everyone going to be mad with me if I don’t pick theirs, and stop reading?

Thursday, 12.47:

Alright, well, to be fair, I can’t decide. There were a lot of bloody good suggestions and now I’m going to have to discover the technical way of making a random one appear every time someone opens the page.

I like particularly:

D: All your communist bouyancy needs catered to

m@: Anna knows fuckall and wants to share it with you
(and also ‘fuckity is a verb and a noun’ - although I might have to change that to ‘cunty’)

mike: dropping ankers in a sea of wanchors

but perversely also

saffron: No anchor in life

which is annoying because logically they make no sense. Anyway. Also

Fraz, with ‘Proving that swearing is both bog and clever (sorry mum)’

and Toby, who emailed me at work with his suggestion “Like the ark, but with no mice” - a fabulous suggsetion which, delivered through such a brown-nose route, won’t be winning any prizes (comments not good enough for some people, eh…)

I very much liked Peter’s suggestions, almost without exception, but particularly ‘Captain Birdseye was once a cabin boy, you know’, ‘The truth, the whole truth, and whatever I want to call the truth’ and I cannot possibly use, but love: ‘The one top bloggers read’. heeheehee. I don’t know if that says more about me or you.

Prize for the most disturbing, that I really like but don’t know why -
claypot Little Red Boat: Beacon of Light in a World of Thumbless Tormentors.
Wah.

I liked Adrian’s ‘Where there are no leaves on the track, Gordon’s Sailing the sea of hyperbole and the fact that Spunky monkey knows way too much about this site. I liked…

Oh hell, I have to go to lunch. Ooh, hang on, the Shipping forecast one - chillicheese - loved that - damn - I’ll link it when I get back…. I liked the pooh flavoured ones (euw), I cannot believe that anyone went to the trouble of doing anagrams, even in an anagram generator, I like the fact that someone used the term ‘ideological baggage’, I think you’re all lovely.

Look. I will send you surprises if you give me your address - postal or email -
send it to my name at yahoo.co.uk

They won’t be very big surprises or expensive ones - to be honest if you send me your email address I’ll probably just send you bad taste email postcards. Which are free.

Thank you for commenting and leaving things though.
i think you’re all lovely. No exceptions.

My only solace is that I will not be at home this evening to watch this abhoration of all that is right and good.

“The celebrity awards”. Seriously. I despair. Awards awarded to celebrities for no other feat than being a celebrity. I’m stunned. The top award, I imagine, will be something like ‘celebrity of the year’, awarded to the celebrity who’s been more celebrity-ey than all the other celebrities. If the deafening sound of egos thumping against each other as they battle for the attention of the camera, sashaying single file into the ceremony because no two heads can get through a doorway at once.

I wait impatiently for the Award Ceremony Awards, at which will be presented (I can only hope) The ‘best award statuette’ award statuette, and most probably this award will be presented by whichever celebrity won the ‘best celebrity award presentation’ award of the previous year.

At this point ‘British entertainment culture’ (and I use the term very lightly indeed) will disappear up it’s own bumhole - Live on ITV! - and I will not have to leave the country after all. Until that point, I am forced to start looking into possible emmigration, nay, evacuation destinations. Maybe Easter Island.

Although I’ve heard they too may have some big-headed people.

Do Seagulls have thumbs?

What about spiders?

Cows don’t have thumbs, do they? Because otherwise they would open gates and things.

I have a nagging feeling that not many things have thumbs apart from apes and monkeys and chimps (which may, or may not, be the same thing, I do not know, I find it hard to think, as I am very tired. I continue to suffer from bad dreams) and maybe dolphins.

I do not know much about dolphins. I know that they are grey, ish, and swim around a lot without porpoise. Purpose. I know that Dolphins have sex for pleasure and also have aural sex. No, that is sex in the ear. Or perhaps phone sex. Dolphins do not have conventional ears and rarely use phones that I know of, therefore they may have oral sex instead, to make up for it. To make them feel better. I know that sometimes they hang about in pods, which sounds like a euphemism or an acronym, but it isn’t. It’s just a pod. I think. Now that I’ve said it so much, I worry that I have chosen the wrong word, and they do not hang about in pods at all. Do not feel obliged to inform me, I am tired and simply enjoying typing. As soon as I stop thinking about it, it is likely I will remember the word again. By then I will have forgotten why I wanted to remember it, because I am tired, so the sudden joyful arrival of a contextless word will confuse me a great deal.

But do not inform me, it is no big thing. No factual thing is, really.

Pigs apparently produce up to one pint of sperm when they ejaculate, which is more than human people. Luckily. I’ve dropped a milk bottle before, and that produces an enormous wet patch, I can tell you.

Can mice hold
a) scissors or
b) keys?

I don’t really think they can. It would be horrible if they could. But I don’t think they could, on their own. I mean, I have no doubt that a group of them (a pack of them? a herd?) could support the weight of either keys or sissors, but they would have to be glued together. The mice, I mean, so as to be collectively strong. Like the tortoise thing that the roman soldiers used to do.. You know, when they walked around in a bunch with their sheilds on the outside so as to be stronger in numbers. Scissors could still kill them though. Also keys. The mice, I mean. The keys could still crush the mouse they were placed on, I think. If they were placed on them from an adequate height.

I am tired. Tired in quite a nice way. But I do not want to open my mouth, as I fear I would not stop talking, am not sure, in fact, how to stop typing. I think this is the effect of the not enough sleep plus the coffee I am and have been drinking. The outside is wilting but my mind is doing some bouncing. Maybe I should do some bouncing instead. I am now thinking of lots of things that do bouncing. Kangeroos, for example, although some would argue that to be hopping, and space hoppers - although I suppose the hopping argument could also be made there, it being in the name.

I may go and wibble streamofconsciousnessly somewhere else, at someone else. This is the way of things, you know. I’ve quite often been told that it might be nice if I was one of those people who went a bit pale and subdued and quiet when they were overtired. Or maybe I’ve quite often thought that, and never been told it. No idea.

I’ve always wanted to be pale and enigmatic and interesting, like the Lady of Shallot (not sure if that spelling is the poem or the onion spelling) (Although the ‘Lady of Shallot’ may be a woman who has won an onion marketing board beauty contest, which would be fun) or a woman in a pre-raphelite painting (very quiet - being 2d) or something, but I’m not. Slightest hint of overtiredness or nerves and the first thing to go is the flimsy gate between my brain and my mouth. Or fingers, I suppose, when typing.

I often think of that brain/mouth gate as the kind of gate that you put at the top of stairs to stop toddlers from accidenting. And, if that is the case, I think a whole lot of infant ideas may have just fallen down the stairs and landed in a crumpled heap in this post. Don’t worry, they’ll be fine. They have landed on a metaphor, things well known for being fluffy. Fluffy or vague, or something. I think vague things are soft. I am both today.

Turkeys have been known to drown in the rain, you know.
They look up at the sky and get hypnotised, the rain pours down their throat and drowns them.

That’s why I don’t eat turkeys. Too stupid. Not me. The turkeys. The turkeys are too stupid. Although, to be fair, I’m pretty stupid today. I hope it doesn’t rain.

I always tell that story at dinner parties, which must get dull. And it’s true. The drowning thing. I’m sure it is. I read it in a newspaper, or perhaps on the internet, so it must be true.

I’m tired.

Because at the same time as running a ‘we sell healthy food, you know! That’s right, come to Maccy D’s and buy healthy food!’, they’re also running a ‘Whatever you buy, we’ll also give you a free Hamburger! That’s right, a big yummy fat-fat Maccy-HAMburger!’ campaign.

So, watching the two adverts together, one recieves the message that Macdonalds is good for buying healthy food, but if you try to do so, they’ll also give you a free hamburger.

What?

It’s sad but true. Take it from me, I think about these things. A lot.
I think about them a lot.

Three things you should know before I start to explain my dreams over the last week.

1) Our bedroom and bathroom (not one room, two) are underneath the neighbours bathroom and kitchen (not one room)(I don’t think)(that would be horrible).

b) I have a non-negotiable paranoid borderline-obsessive fear of mice.

• For the last few months, we have had an on off problem with water from their bathroom soaking through the ceiling of our bedroom.

5) Combining beautifully with these facts, in this week of fevered sleeping and general head fuzziness, we have the fact that

g) The neighbours are away - and while the neighbours are away, apparently, the mice will play. I have heard one, I think only one, in the middle of the night, running above my head, on what - I think - is their kitchen floor.

So, to recap.

Fevered sleep +
fear of mice +
mouse in flat above+
things occasionally soaking through our ceiling from flat above =
?
…

Yes, that’s right. This week, I have been mainly dreaming about mice soaking through the ceiling.

It’s horrible.

Picture it, if you can. I can. A small brown stain on the ceiling, and drops of thick brown water soak through the stain, and gather together into what, at first, looks like a drip - but then it just gets longer, and you realise it’s not forming a drip, but a tail, and then it gets bulbous at the bottom, and the drips keep coming, and stick to the outside of the shape, like an icicle - but drops turn outward and build, like twigs, into legs.

And the matter keeps soaking through, and turns from liquid, as it comes through the ceiling, to solid, as it pours down the tail droplet and wraps around the body. And the legs form, and lastly a little twitching nose forms and with the mouse springs into motion, feet scuttling on air, straining on the tail still holding it to the ceiling, and then it drops, and tiny scratchy feet scuttle across the bed, but I’m fixed staring at the ceiling, and matter continues to soak through the ceiling, and another droplet starts to form.

This is not a very nice dream for me to have.

When I wake up, I can’t stop thinking about it. I know that if they are in the flat above, soon enough, they will be in my flat. Their being four feet above my head is already too close.
I do not know how, exactly, the mouse, or mice, will get into the flat. As I drift in and out of sleep it seems perfectly reasonable that they might abseil down the exterior walls and do the SAS/Die Hard kicky thing to get through the bedroom window, or perhaps find some way to ring the doorbell. I know they live in walls, and get up and down and in and out through holes, but we have checked the flat today, and could not find any holes. In the wall.

I am tired. But, as a result of having this dream several times, I am not too keen to go to bed. However I think, I hope, by writing about it, I now may not dream it again. Also, by thinking up the term mousture.

Now if, when I dream, I dream I am in bed, and turn over and see a wet stain on the ceiling with matter soaking through, I will simply turn to my beloved - asleep or awake - and say “Oh no. There is a patch of mousture on the ceiling.” And then it will be funny, and therefore not scare me. I hope. Maybe.

Monday. Cough cough splutter sneeze, etc, and so on and so on on Tuesday, also, now we mention it, some of Wednesday similarly, sneeze filled cough coughing fuzzy headed muggied-thinking funness.

Thursday I was fine.
I keep reminding myself that. If nothing else, Thursday, I was fine. Woo Thursday, etc.

Sometime around lunchtime on Friday, however, someone set my bottom on fire.

I’m not sure who set my bottom on fire, and how, or why, but I wasn’t best pleased at the time. And if I find out who it was, I shall punch them in the knees, because I’m still not that happy about their malicious fanny-pyromania.

I thought I must be allergic to to fabric softener on my *ahem*, so I took them off and threw them away. A move I regretted a couple of hours later, when I decided I wasn’t allergic to anything at all, and now had no pants.

How did I know that I wasn’t allergic to my underwear? Well, it was when the fire spread to the rest of my body.

Not all at once you understand - I would say it was creeping, but it wasn’t. It was running. Like heat-rash, scorchingly hot to the touch, swollen, some tiny spots, some patches the size of a handprint.

It would be on my stomach and lower back for ten minutes, and then the welts would go down (did I say there were welts? There were welts) and reappear on my lower arms - in exactly the same places on both arms, or on my legs, or my knees would suddenly be ablaze, but the rest of me would get some relief for ten minutes. It moved up and down, in bands - only hit my face once, thank christ - but every other part of me combusted once, twice, three times; no lady - I wanted to scratch until my fingers wore down to the stumps.

So, well, that was Friday and, unfortunately, most of Saturday as well, and no, I haven’t written anything - mainly because I couldn’t sit in one place for more than five minutes without crying - forgive me.

It’s gone now. My beloved bought me some pink lotion. It said it should be applied three to four times a day, and that there should be enough in the bottle for lots and lots of applications. Well, that may be fine if you’ve a little patch of rash that needs covering. I would happily have bathed in the stuff. And almost did. I practically rolled in the stuff, and because the damn thing was moving about so much, it hardly helped at all.

I don’t know what my rash was, I don’t know what I ate, drank, inhaled or ingested to make myself spontaneously combust one little bit at a time, but the important thing to remember is this surely must be Someone Else’s Fault. And if I find out who, I’m going to Punch them In The Knees.

That is all.

My mission today is to sit in the house and open the door occcasionally.

It’s going quite well so far, I’ve opened the door twice. I wouldn’t say it was physically or emotionally draining On the contrary, it’s gone without a hitch. Although not without a hinge. A ha ha ha. The door had a hinge, you see. A ha ha ha ha ha.

So, at the first opening of the door 10 boxes and sundry furniture items came in, at the second door-opening one little box went out. This is not a fair exchange between anna and the world, say I, and my case is proved by the piles of possessions I sit among, bookses and diarieses and all of my preciousest things.

Slowly, it has happened, after years of moving around and travelling light, all my stuff is pooling in the same place again. “How nice”, I think “What fun”, I think, “It’s like settling”, I think, “Where in the name of All That Is Holy am I going to put all these piles of crap? Where?”, I wail.

And it takes forever to unpack anything because I keep coming across diaries and reading them. I was thinking of serialising, but believe me, you have no idea how little you want me to do that.

I’ll give you a taster.

30th October 1992

The real bugger is, I don’t know if he likes me or not. Some things kinda signified he did, usually body language and stuff, but he didn’t say anything about phoning me, or seeing me again and he talked about how lovely and pretty Rosie[best friend at the time] is, and he didn’t kiss me goodnight.

Apart from that the evening went swimingly, I was so nervous about being on a date that i threw up, twice, and while prepoccupied with hoisting myself onto a stool at calzone, my hand brushed against something of his; his cigarette. The burn’s starting to really hurt now. Shit. He doesn’t like me anymore, and what’s more my indigo girls tape is deteriorating.
Shit
Yours (and not his…)
Jo
p.s And also thanks to some facial scrub I used today I was as pink as a pink-bottomed Orang utans pink bottom. Not using it again. I hate it.

Shit!

And apart from that, I said, it went swimmingly.

I remember that date. Nigel, the chap I was desperately trying to foist myself upon (who, yes, it turned out, actually fancied my best friend) had grown up in Texas. I remember sitting in Pizza Hut (after throwing up once, and before throwing up again) and being regaled with tales of his ‘homies’ in down home Austin.

Nigel: I’m a little worried, my friend was in a drive-by the other day
anna: mm-hm?
Nigel: Yeah, it’s pretty bad.
anna: Is it? Why?
Nigel: Yeah. He was in a DRIVE -BY. Of course it’s pretty bad. It was a drive-by.
anna: What, like Macdonalds?

Apparently I was thinking of a drive-thru.

These days, of course, it’s widely accepted that going to Macdonalds is at least as dangerous as being shot at from a moving car. At the time, however, it wasn’t, and the conversation floundered.

God.
What do I do with 5 years worth of diaries? Do you keep them? Is it really something I’ll want my children to read? 5 years of frustrated, confusing urges and ‘nobody-understands-me’ rants?

But I can’t, I just can’t throw them away. I won’t foist any more on the site, though. Well, probably not, anyway…

In the meantime, I have to go and open the door again.

He was hacking away for two weeks.
Hack hack hack, he went. Sneezy sneezy sneezy Hack. Etc.

A hahaha. Said I. You are sick, and I am not. Oh poor lamb, my honey, my sweet, my love etc. But hahahaha, you are sick and I am not.

As any fool could have predicted, this was the wrong thing to say.

I am quietly sick. I ache, everywhere. Coughing and dizzy, fuzzy in head and with concrete filled sinus cavities last night I lay awake for hour upon hour staring at the ceiling. At about 3.20 there was a noise upstairs. It could have been the floorboards expanding, it could have been the pipes doing pipish things, it could have been many things, but at 3.20 this morning it was, with a shadow of no doubt, a mouse. And if I dropped my guard, it would quite plausibly eat my face.

That’s what mice do.

At around 4.40, my beloved awoke to discover me reading. I had forgotten about the mouse by then, but remembered when I told him. He scotched the mouse-myth. At 5.30 he found me still reading. We coughed together or a while - it’s what passes for quality time at the moment - and then, light off once more, he went back to sleep and I went back to staring at the ceiling.

Luckily, by soon after six, it was edging towards dawn, and I didn’t need the light on to read any more.

At that point I went to sleep.

Two hours later the council came to cut the tree back, outside.

I have not slept. I am awake, because I still cannot sleep. If I could sleep, I would be better, I keep telling myself. The more I tell myself this, the more I cannot sleep.

Bugger.

Listen up, little punctuaty-poos, listen up!

All you full-stops, stop giggling and bouncing around, I can’t keep track of you. Well if there aren’t enough seats, squeeze up, in threes if you can, I like you even better that way… Everyone settling in? Question marks? Stop leaping on the others, not everyone likes surprises as much as you. What was that? No, little semi colon, I love you just as much as the proper colons, yes, more so even than my own colon, go and get a hug from the brackets. And all the commas? Come sit by me, my little darlings, my babies, my own. I bloody love you. Yes, partly because of my sentence-length problem, yes, but I would love you anyway. Anyway…

Welcome one, welcome all, come in, sit down, make yourselves at home, all of you.
Apart from you - you should just leave. Yes, you, the tall skinny one with the little round bottom. If you’re thinking of appearing at the end of sentences like I think you’re thinking at the end of sentences, then turn around and toodle-pip, because…

There is no room in my heart for the exclamtion mark. Or my site. Or my bookshelf. Or my text messages, my IM conversations or my emails. I hate them. Hate them hate them hate them.
I don’t want to have another rant, that’s all I seem to come in here and do nowadays. And, actually, I don’t hate them all, I’ve misled you already, because…

Well, I hate a certain use of them. The dear pedants who read this site wll have already nipped down to the comment box and pointed out that I started the post with one of of the fuckers. That was different That was a correct usage.

I won’t deny it, I’m an exclamation facist. I bought four books when I went away on holiday. I abandoned one of them after the preface because the author had used an objectionable exclamation mark. I keep picking it up and trying to read it again, but I can’t, I just can’t forgive him for the !.
God, it sounds stupid, and I well know it sounds petty, but please take my word on this one. It was a very badly placed exclamation mark. Really bad. God, I get disappointed in him just thinking about it. Anyway.

What’s the right usage? To me? If you actually make an exclamation, as in speech, then use an exclamation mark - Listen up! etc, as I may or may not have said at the beginning of this post, I can’t be arsed to look.
A reported exclamation, yes, this is also fine.
“Oy!”
For example. You can’t say that without. If someone is shouting, should someone exclaim, this needs an exclamation mark.

You know what I hate?

When then exclamation mark means ‘laugh now!’.
When it ends a sentence that is supposed to funny, and is there solely to instruct the reader that the sentence in front of it was supposed to be funny and that now is the time the reader should find themself helpless with mirth.
Honey, if I wasn’t going to find it funny before you told me I should, I’m certainly not now.

“You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!”

That’s what all exclamation marks make me feel like.

I can’t shake the feeling that people who use them think that their friends would describe them as “Whacky!” “Crazy!” “Bonkers!”, whereas their friends would, most likely, describe them as ‘loyal, stable, loving, sensible, financially cautious and dependable’ (and, actually, they would like being described like this, very much). Putting a piece of punctuation at the end of the sentence does not make it funny. Your punchline cannot depend on a line and a dot. Can it? If it’s funny, you don’t need a flag to say so. Am I wrong? I just find that quite contrary to making me laugh, exclamation marks used in this way make me violent. Really quite, quite violent.

Now I’m not saying I am funny, and that I’m funny because I don’t use exclamation marks.

That would be ridiculous!

What I’m saying is that I like them used properly.
As an exclamation, rather then a punchline. That’s all.

Oh. I do have one other exception. I admit this. I will use an exclamation mark to describe - when people cannot see my face (in an email, text or IM) - the fact that I am sitting with my mouth agape, unable to find a word to say. I have an example. I’ll tell you later in the week, if you’re all very good.

But, really, and I’m sorry to have made you not like me if exclamations are your fullstop, and I realise that there are going to be multiple published examples of my writing on the web which gone make me look like a foo.

But you know what?
I don’t care.
I hate them
Don’t you? Come on, tell me.

Tell me!

Anyone would think I was seeking out the things. I’m honestly not.

No, going to google and typing in ‘Nauseating Pooh products from the fiery depths of hell‘ would be seeking them out.
I just, bored, wanted to follow up my pooh post a little, just to reassure myself I was right.

I was right.

I can picture it now.

“Oh - doctor! Thank you for coming so quickly! He’s through here, in his crib… oh, doctor - he hasn’t stopped being sick all week! Just vomit, vomit, vomit, constantly, ever since his birthday. No, he stops whenever we take him out of the bedroom. Yes, really. His birthday? Oh, it was lovely. Auntie Hilda came round and bought him this lovely bedding set and - oh? Oh! Gosh, really?! Dysnipepsia? Is that a thing?

“Oh, no it is, you’re right, I think I read about it. Some bogger went down with it. Blogger, yes, that’s right. She suffered someting awful…

“Anyway, well, yes, thank you for coming, ever so much, we’ll redecorate immediately doctor, and yes, of course we’ll… what? Payment? Oh, I’m sorry doctor, we’ve had to spend all our money on Really Stupidly Expensive Videos. Yes, they were shit, as well. Cowboy Pooh, yes. It was bollocks, wasn’t it Timmy. Say ‘yes mummy, it was complete wank’… Good boy.

“Goodnight then doctor. We’ll be in tomorrow for his MMR shot - his ‘anti-Mickey, Minnie, Rubelle and the candlestick’ injection, yes. Night night, doctor, night night…”

Or the more heinous:

“Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. Again.”

“Oh, son, what now, what now?! Surely doze four hundred Hail Marys should have filled your spare time well enough, for thu love of her name’s sake, son, did dey not and other unconvincing Oirish accent-isms?”

“Yes, but Father, father, I had to go online for something and I was sucked in by…”

“By tha porn, son? W’s it tha luvely ladies with der bouncy tits again, son? Was it? Was dere licking involved?”

“No, Father, no! It was bears. There was licking, yes. But it was bears. A bear and a tiger, to be exact, Father. Buttered.”

“Buttered!? By god, child, was it oop the erse?”

“No, Padre, no. Well, not at first. But Father, father, forgive me. I have broken the fifth disnae commandment.”

“Hang on, let me tink… From the Glaswegian book of John, you mean? ‘A good man disnae commit murder… a good man disnae covet his neighbour’s arse… and fifth, yes, hang on… A good man disnae do disney. Oh Jesus feckin Christ, son, whatuv ye dun?”

“I bought this”

“May God have mercy on yur soul, son, there’s nothing I can do fer ye now..”

[With sincere apologies to anyone actually Irish. My accent in that post was abysmal.]

It’s geeky as all hell, but sometimes when your boyfriend’s nice about you behind your back, it makes you smile like a tickled simpleton.

I’ll shut up now.

How many blogs are there?
Are there a million?
Why do I keep coming across ones I’ve never read before?
Why can I never remember where they were if I liked them?
Who are these people?
Are there a million people writing a million blogs, or are there four people writing A LOT?
Will it all implode? Will the four people explode because their hands are hot from typing too hard?
How many are there? Why?

Each one of us, a great person once said, don’t know who, possibly me, is a true individual, hand moulded by the gods in all of our splendour, each of us with our strengths, our similarities, our differences, our shiny bits and dull patches, our own secret powers.
We should all be proud, because each of us is a beautiful creature, an angel, unique.

But that’s just not good enough for some people now, is it?
No. No, it isn’t.

Meh they are saying We all may be unique, but that’s not fair! I don’t want to be unique like everyone else! I want to be uniquer! I want to be the Uniquest! Meh meh meh! Etc! You’re NOT LISTENING TO ME! I said ETC! I’m the uniqueyest!

And how I wish, like a little child tantrumming, you could ignore them, or put them into timeout, or something. But you can’t, because the people doing it are supposed to be grown ups. Because sometimes they’re 6ft3 and built like a brick shithouse. And sometimes they’re your boss.

Let’s get this clear. Affection is a beautiful thing. Be as affectionate as you like. Affection is lovely. Affectation isn’t.

Affectation is walking with an odd limp that suggests you have pooed in your pants, seemingly popular in ‘hard men’ who think it makes it look like they’re ‘packing a large concealed piece’, which I suppose is true, if ‘packing a large concealed piece’ is a euphemism for having poo in your pants.

Affectation is talking like a baby when you want something. Especially if you are a woman, and especially if you are talking to a man. H was a competant female manager who would suddenly turn into a three-year-old lolita when she wanted something done. ‘Couldoo do an ickew tiny weeny bitoff photocopying for ickle me? Pweasy weasy?’ ‘oooooooooooh! fankoooo!’

Affectation is… well, I must make a distinction before I go on here. Because I personally will make an exception to this rant for a little bit of camp. A little bit of camp can be a very good thing. A little bit of camp, let’s be fair, can be comic genius. If I were to decry little bits of camp, I would lose a lot of friends, awfully quickly.

I like a little bit of camp.

A LOT of camp, however, is something other. It is affectation taken to the extreme, a punchable offence, a pain in the arse, a squirmable, prisonable, niggling tinnitus that no-one, surely, can stand for any long period.

I have met, I believe, the two most affectedly camp people in the country, and I have the mental scars to prove it.

‘N’ was an assistant in a box office that I worked in. It wasn’t the Marilyn Monroe wiggle, I minded, although it hardly sat well on his 24-stone over-6-foot frame. Nor the over-extended head tilt and ridiculous squeaky highpitched EMphasis he chose to PUT on CERTAIN WORDS.

‘AN-naaaaaaaaaaa!? Would you LIKE to do THE fi-LING?‘

‘No’

Or that was how it usually went, anyway.
But the thing that got to me most was his abysmal habit of talking about himself, in third person. Third person feminine.

‘N? Would you like a maltezer?’
‘Ooooooh, I don’t THINK so Dahling, she’s not eating chocolate, remember?..‘

‘Call for you, N…’
‘ Take-a-message-for-her-dahling-shhh, she’s not taking calls from just ANYONE, didn’t she say?‘

After a couple of months I could have killed her - shit! - him. So I left her to her box office, and left.

A while later, a came across what was - to my young innocent mind - the very apex of camp.

R, a director, gave inanimate objects a feminine personal prefix. Simply? - everything had a girl’s name.

“Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight everyone! Gather round, gather round, cuddle up! Now! If you’ll all just get out your daisy-diaries and polly-pens, then we’ll make a doris-date for the next rachel-rehearsal!”

This was truly impressive. Even in moments of crisis you wouldn’t think he would

“Ooooooooooooh! Can someone run to the katy-cupboard and get the fifi-first-aid-box? We need a big old pippa-plaster for this naughty broken nicola-nose! It’s bleeding all over the philippa-floor!”

But still, no matter how long the rehearsal - sorry, rachel-rehearsal - no matter how fraught the process, R would always make time to

“Well, we’ll take three maureen-minutes to have a cup of teresa-tea, then straight back in here, hear me?! No doreen-dilly-doris-dallying-around, you naughty thespians!”

Impressive it may have been.
But I can truly say I have Never met a more annoying man in my life.

Emily Ever.

Met a more annoying woman though.