Ahhh, you're here...lovely!
Welcome....was it easy to find?
Come in, come in, make yourself at home.
The crumble's in the oven but have some tea and cake in the meantime.

I'M MOVING!

Oh yes, I have a new cyber gaff and will be moving today if all goes well.

So for those of you lovelies who'd like to keep me on your blogroll, please would you be so very kind and update with my new address...and for those who'd like to put me on your blogroll, please do so!

Lovely!

Now, everyone round to my place for a cuppa and some home made PPQ apple & sultana crumble. Mmmmm!

www.paranoidpromqueen.com

My mate GlitterGirl is beautiful.

Boys pass GG on the road and sigh audibly. They sigh so loudly that the sheer volume threatens to split ear drums. They are so taken by her that they risk life and limb by crossing main roads unabashedly and without checking left and right as the green cross code stipulates.

Some people may see her and make a split judgement, marvel at her good looks and assume they know the type of person she is. They'll assume that she is high maintenance. They may even wish (to make themselves feel better) that she's pretty but not that nice...but I tell you what...that's not the truth.

Because while I believe that someone who is ordinarily quite plain looking can become more and more beautiful the more you get to know them, and that someone who is very attractive can become less so the more you know them...while i believe in all of that, I also believe that you can be beautiful and lovely, and frankly she is just that because she is quite something. Caring and loving and loyal and just about the damn besterest.

And that's all I have to say on the matter.

Sharon was given a spanking new BMX for her ninth birthday and I was jealous. For the last few months I had lain in bed for at least an hour every night, every muscle taut and clenched in my own wishing ritual. My eyes were squeezed shut so tight that when I eventually opened them I could barely see and the dimness ahead of me was peppered with pin pricks of the brightest light. Please, please, please…let me have a shiny red BMX. One without stabilisers. A proper, grown up BMX.

Turns out my wishing ritual had been misguided and Sharon got the BMX I had wished so hard for.

Of course I was green with envy but when she offered me a backie I couldn’t refuse. I clambered on the back with abandon and she rode around the compound where we lived. Round and round we went, for at least ten minutes, but we soon got bored. We craved adventure, and being the tomboys we were, decided the only thing for it was to walk the bike to the top of the hill and then free-wheel it down. We justified it…it wasn’t a main road... plenty of speed bumps. We looked up at the hill, eyes gleaming and made the journey up the hill, all thoughts of safety, all the lectures from our respective mothers flung aside.

Once at the top, we looked down, looked at each other, and WHOOSH.

WHOOSH…heads thrown back, laughing into the wind, the shimmering new BMX sped down the hill, gathering speed, causing us to laugh more…WHOOSH.

And then, THUD.

We hit the speed bump at the bottom of the hill and I went flying off, gathering a mouthful of concrete as my body scraped across the ground. I screeched with the pain, but startled by the noise I’d made I blinked away empty tears, too stunned to cry yet.

I picked myself up and trudged up to our fifth floor flat, filled with utter terror. Ma would kill me. She had forbidden me from riding a backie, told me never to try that hill. What would she say when she saw my shredded face and mangled knees?

As soon as I opened the door and saw her standing there I burst into tears. Huge globed droplets splashing onto the floor, threatening to cause a flood where we stood.

“What happened?" She covered me with hugs and kisses, her voice soft and smooth as she cooed like a dove.

The tears continued to flow as the pain hit me all of a sudden. I realised that I couldn’t admit to her that I had disobeyed her. Couldn’t disappoint her like that. So I did the next worst thing. I lied.

“A big Chinese man tripped me up down the stairs,” I gibbered. It was the first thing that came into my mind, it seemed plausible (the Chinese man bit anyway – we lived in Hong Kong after all). Of course I regretted it the moment those words escaped my treacherous lips.

“What man? What did he look like? Why did he do it? We’re going after him.” Big Brother Senior and Big Brother Junior were already half out the front door, incensed that anyone could do this to a child, to their little sister.

In all of ten seconds my little white lie had spiralled out of control in a terrible way. My mind reeled and I thought of how when they got downstairs they wouldn’t find a mean, Chinese man who got pleasure out of tripping up children, but instead they would find an ashen Sharon clutching guiltily onto a shiny new BMX.

I looked at their faces, my brothers in protective mode, ready to find the man who hurt their baby sister intentionally and give him a piece of their mind, and my Ma, concern practically worn into her face.

I couldn’t lie to them anymore.

“I LIED,” I bawled. “SHARON GAVE ME A BACKIE AND I FELL OFF.”


Of course the best punishment for a misdemeanour like this is humiliation. With scabby wounds on my face and knees for a fair few weeks afterwards, people would stop and ask me what had happened and my family would make me recount the whole sorry story, lies and all.

And you know what? To this day I find it next to impossible to lie.

PPQ to no one in particular after a gruelling six hours of tests and presentations: There, that wasn’t so bad was it? You didn’t do too badly at all. Okay so the numeracy test was a minor catastrophe, but the presentations were coherent and fit the briefs, and they seemed receptive of your ideas. Not too bad at all.

Dirty demon on PPQ's right shoulder: Not bad? Not bad? That’s never going to be good enough. The other interviewees probably aced their tests and got approving oohs and ahs during their presentation. They would have known that they had performed brilliantly. Not bad? Pshaw.

PPQ: Oh…right. Yes. Well…I suspect that the other interviewees don’t have exactly the same experience I have. This is the job I do now. It’s my area of expertise, this role and I are perfectly suited. I would thrive at this job. I’d love it, feel satisfied, I‘d be brilliant.

Dirty demon: Perfectly suited? You and a hundred other people. I suspect the other interviewees have formal qualifications and training AND experience on the job, while you merely have the latter.

PPQ, pouting slightly now: Oh yes, you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that. Shit. But I would be so brilliant. And they seemed to like me…um…a little bit, maybe a teeny bit…um…at least I think they did…but then I didn’t say x, y and z and maybe I should’ve mentioned blah blah blah and…oh bugger…what a lousy effort.

Dirty demon: You forgot…under-prepared, waffling, good-for-nothing fraud.

PPQ: Shit. Bugger. Yes, you’re right, I don’t think I did very well at all. In fact it was an utter shambles. They probably thought I was lying through my back teeth.

Dirty demon: Oh well back to the job you’re growing to hate on a daily basis - everyone knows you’re an expert at it, but you’re not taken seriously and you’re under paid. What more could you ask for? Look at the bright side, you can pay your rent every month and you have a teeny bit left over.

PPQ: Fuck.What was I thinking? That was an awful interview – bet they couldn’t wait to see the back of me. The other candidates will be so much better. I haven’t a snowball's chance in hell of getting that job. I guess it’s back to waking up and feeling like pulling a sickie every morning. *SIGH*

Dirty demon cackling: There there PPQ. You know it’s all you’re good for. And you are after all good at it. Dirty demon slinks away as the plush, blood red velvet curtains fall.

I guess it's just a case of 'let's just wait and see'.

I refer you to this.

And pray that it explains any lack of activity round these parts.

*Crawls back under her desk*

I see now that people like you do not change. You are the leopards of the human race, hiding behind your unchangeable spots and feeble protestations, your claims of ‘I’m not like that and I hate people who are’.

I wasted so much time and emotion on you in the past, before I decided to cut loose from your exhausting demands and your ridiculous notions. Before I realised that this is not what friendship is.

I’m done.

And I feel better for it.

I am broken.

A shattered shell of my former usually bouncy self.

But for once this is not a black turn, or a fit of melancholy. No, this is self-inflicted. It has been over a year since my sparkly buddy and loyal yoga partner left me for sunnier shores, and at least eight months since I last braved yoga class by myself. It is no one's fault but my own that I am so out of shape.

I decided this week that I couldn’t bear the middle aged spread that has sprouted in the form of an unsightly and unruly tyre of flesh around my middle, making me look like a beginner swimmer with a flesh-coloured rubber ring. I’m only 28 for chrissake, I have a fair few years before I am middle aged. Dammit, this has got to stop.

So I packed my gym kit and headed off to yoga.

I loved it, remembered why I loved it and kept coming back previously. Remembered how much calmer, and how much more contended I felt.

The asanas (or postures) came back to me like a second nature and my teacher’s voice was soothing and serene. But it was the camel that broke the straw’s back.

Today I have been hobbling around like an old woman with aching sides and strained glutes.

Bugger. Is it really worth it?


Oh hell yes…I’m going back for more on Thursday!

I’ve always had this dream of owning a house one day and in that house there would be a huge room with floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves, crammed to the hilt with books, books, books.

Because I love books. And I love reading.

Like a train spotter, I keep a reading list of all the books I’ve read and every time I finish a book I list it with a mark out of ten and a couple of lines about it. Mostly I forget to update the list, but it’s there for when I do remember. At any one time when I have a book on the go I know which book I’m going to read next.

Sometimes I’ll find myself desperate to talk to a perfect stranger while I’m on the bus or the tube, risk them thinking that I’m some freak, because they are reading a book that I love. “Isn’t that book superb?” I want to pant “So different, so real, so gripping…and the characters…so…blah blah blah yadee yadee yadah.”

But recently things have changed a little. You see, one of the very few perks of my job is that I get free books, and whereas before I had a rule that every book I started was ALWAYS to be finished, these days it’s not the case. These days I have so many books stacked up waiting to be read, crying out for my attention, that if a book doesn’t hold my attention after the first hundred pages, I ditch it and give it to charity.

And so these days I suffer more and more from reading funks, when a general malaise hangs about me and no book sparks, let alone ignites my imagination. I huff and huff like a spotty teenager, “It’s not fair, I can’t find anything good to read.” I sulk. I read untold quantities of celebrity gossip magazines. Flick petulantly through piles of books with a pout on. And when nothing even tickles my fancy I give up and stop reading for a few months, until one day when some glittering book catches my eye like a silver bauble enticing a magpie, and I devour the book carrying it everywhere, living it and breathing it. And when it is over I feel empty and inconsolable because it is as though I have lost a dear friend.

This time round that book was Anthropology and a hundred other stories. This little gem was my buoy in a vast ocean of mindless crap – one hundred and one short stories, each told in one hundred and one words, on life and love and relationships. Surreal and hilarious and bittersweet. Genius.

And on reading the reviews in Amazon I recognised a name from blogsville and wanted to bash out an e-mail (in the cyber equivalent to tapping the shoulder of a stranger on a bus and telling them how much I loved the book they were clasping in their hands), with all my yadee yadee yadahs. All my exultations about this lovely little book.

This enthusiasm made me realise that my most recent reading funk is at an end.

So come now…who here has a juicy recommendation for me eh? Because I want to read everything. Everything.

Unrequited love SUCKS.

Is it just me or do you sometimes look in the mirror and find that you don't recognise the person staring back at you? That they're fatter/slimmer/prettier/uglier, different to what you thought you looked like?

And then you start thinking that it's weird how other people must percieve the way you look very differently to how you do.

Cripes, I'm all confused now.

Life here is the same old doldrums of city delights...I say this in a deeply sarcastic manner of course...dunno what's wrong with me, I was all content and enjoying London life, but ever since my week off I have had a killer attack of itchy feet syndrome. Loads of people I know are embarking on exciting things – training to be yacht skippers, working in New York, working on luxury yachts in Cannes, travelling South East Asia – and I’m here doing a bog standard 9-5 job, being constantly skint, going home, and getting drunk every now and then...I want more...

I want sunsets
I want to walk along sandy beaches while the sea breeze billows through my hair, trailing it behind me and marking my existence
I want to immerse myself in new cultures
I want to saturate my senses with new sights, sounds and smells
I want to throw my head back and taste the tropical rain as the warm droplets hit my tongue
I want to scrunch my nose up and smile as I feel the heat of the sun beating down on my freckly face

Is this too much to ask for?

I think I may have to look into working holidays or something. Me going away for a few months is only feasible if I can earn enough to pay my graduate loan every month...and I don't know if this is a passing phase or if it's something I really want to do...

I've never felt like this before - I’ve always thought that I would find a good job, earn some money, and go travelling later, but thinking about it, isn't that the wrong way round? Shouldn't I be doing these things now when I’m young and mobile, and relatively responsibility free?

What's happening to me? I've always been sensible, homely, cuddly PPQ, and now I want more...I want adventure.

**********************************************************************************

I wrote that nearly four years ago.

Funny then that I’m still working for the same company and that I haven’t done any of the above.

I wonder, is this what’s called inertia?

Blogsville, I need some help.

I have blogwriter's block.

I can't even think of the next Things what I have learned on my own (but then again maybe I've only learned ten things in my life)! I need inspiration, I need more lessons in life and I need help.

While I'm off rampaging my flat and my brain for something to write about, I leave you with the wisdom of one Mr Love. He's lovely and he knows a thing or two, and he's always on standby with a monster hug...so here it is, Things what I have learned #11...

It's never too late to become what you always dreamed of being.

*(Any contributions to the Things what I have learned series gratefully received at the usual promqueen e-mail or via the comments box!)*

Back in September I was blogsitting with a gang of bloggers for a certain Miss Jones...
September 9, 2004
I know a wise man.

He is unassuming and funny and clever.

I'd like to carry a bit of him around in my pocket so that I can remember his wise words thoughout the day and in times of need.

Like all wise men, sometimes he talks a load of bollocks.
He'll say stuff and I'll think 'what the arse is he talking about?'

But sometimes he arms me with ammunition to defend myself against my demons.

A few days ago he said to me, "Think of compliments as a gift...a present...if someone gave you a present you wouldn't give it back to them would you?"
He's right you know?

Today, someone paid me a compliment.
Remembering what my wise man said, I didn't look at them as if they were a freak or an inmate from the local lunatic asylum.
Instead, I smiled and said "thank you".
And I felt good.

So tell me peeps, what pocket pearls of wisdom would you dispense....?
***********************************************************************************

I know resurrecting an old post seems a little cheeky, but it seemed very apt today because while I was making a cup of tea at work this morning, one of my colleagues popped into the kitchen to pay me a compliment. Unlike the me of past, I smiled, said 'thank you, that's really kind of you' and felt positively great.

Hell I still feel great.

And that's the power of a genuine, heart-felt compliment and a genuine heart-felt reaction to a compliment.

And so I've decided that I am going to make sure that every day, I pay some compliments myself...

She has been deep in thought for quite some time now. Something she saw or heard earlier reminded her of her early childhood when she used to love scribbling away with her crayons. Tongue peeping out from the corner of her mouth, concentration etched all over her face, crayons in chubby hands, she’d labour over fantastical scenes of princesses and castles, dragons and heroic princes. She remembers how she would save her favourite purple crayola and only use it in her most special creations. She was terrified of over-using it - knew that using it too much was akin to letting it fade out and the thought of her beloved purple crayola running out completely mortified her. His warm, honeyed voice snaps her back to reality, to today. "You okay honey?" He asks, looking a little concerned. "Uh huh – sorry I was off with the fairies," she smiles. He looks her directly in the eyes, and slowly his words form, "I love you." Suddenly, she is a child again, clasping her beloved purple crayola to her heart, worrying, petrified that it will run out. Her adult self is panicked, is that what’s going on here? Am I wearing it out every time I say it? She looks up at his face, studies every line, the contours, his smiling eyes, he reaches out and touches her face and strokes her cheek with a feather-light touch of love. A touch that astounds her, practically knocking her off her feet and almost makes her want to cry. And she realises in that tiniest of moments that she’s not wearing it out at all, because you only wear it out if you say it without meaning it. If it's empty and hollow. But that's not the case here. She means it, she feels it. And she knows that he does too. So as long as they're only saying it because they mean it, as long as they show it, then they'll be just fine. And what would be the point of having such a beautiful purple crayon if you didn't use it to create beautiful pictiures?

Previously the shortest time in which I’d managed to have a guy break up with me was five weeks, but with Ex # 8 I managed to beat my own personal best.

In the beginning it was all laughs and innocent flirting and dewy-eyed looks but the chemistry soon morphed causing us to sample a fuck buddy relationship. It worked really well. The sex was great as well as plentiful, we still laughed and joked and we even managed a 5am booty call, of which we were both extremely proud, being that it was a first for both of us.

We had been fuck buddies for a few weeks (and with hindsight we perhaps should have just stayed that way), but hell, the endorphins and the serotonin from all that sex must have interfered with our ability to think rationally and we decided to give ‘it’ a shot.

‘It’ lasted all of a week before he called it off. Yup, one week.

Still, we both had a great time.

Short but sweet eh?

Some things in life are worth waiting for.

Fellow bloggers, lurkers, Daaaahlinks...please forgive my lack of regular postings this past week. I just don't know what I'm thinking...but here, as promised is a little ditty for a darling boy who some of you may know...fair dues...

I'll tell you a thing or two
about a blogger I know, who
goes by the name of Crumb
and has a very nice bum.
How do I know about his posterior
(one which makes others feel rather inferior?)
Because he mooched round all day in my lovely flat
In his pants and nowt else and that's that.
But let me tell you as it's really quite clear
he's a diamond, a gem, a joker, a dear.
And now the nitty gritty
the purpose of this ditty...
his praises I must sing
for dear Crumb did bring,
Bonobo and I together
(along with very fine weather).
Yes we love this fine figure, with the lovely pert bum
Who needs Cilla, when you can have Crumb?