Someone has to start the ball rolling on this blog-sitting lark and so, I will. Taking my prompt from PPQ’s last post, I’ll give you the five songs that mean the most to me... but hopefully, and maybe more importantly why. I ask your forgiveness in advance for a fair amount of lyrics quoting.

The Last CD I Bought Was:
Kings Of Convenience - Riot On An Empty Street
Song Playing Right Now:
Kings Of Convenience - Sorry or Please

Tanita Tikaram – Valentine Heart
If I was a Londoner, rich with complaint
Would you take me back to your house
Which is sainted with lust and the listless shade
If I could have held you once more with that light
It's nothing to you, but it keeps me alive
Like a valentines day, it's a valentines heart, anyway…

Built around a very simple and repeating piano rift, the fist minute of this piece is weaves Tanita’s voice with four or five melancholy notes, repeating yet ever changing in weight and pace, even without her voice the tune is enough to move me. After over a minute the piano is joined by both violin and double bass, pulling against each other. Violins lifting me with hope and promises of better things while the bass pulls you down; wan, wanting, moody. I can be in almost any mood and this song will drag me down, introverted, longing for things I’ve lost and maybe never even had. My relationship to this song is almost fantasy in nature; it encompasses every unrequited love, and every daydream romance.

Aimee Mann – Wise Up
It's not, What you thought
When you first began it
You got, What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

Another incredibly simple song; similar in many ways to Valetine Heart opening with a three or four cords repeating unaccompanied on piano with Aimee’s voice ringing clearly over the top. Yet despite the similarities this song takes me in another direction. Where Valentine Heart pushes me deeper into the fantasy and encourages a rose tinted view of the world, this song pulls me out, like smelling salts to the unconscious; Wise Up slaps me around the face and forces me to look around me. Pulling my head from the sand… “No, it's not going to stop, so just...give up”

Ani Difranco - You Had Time
how can I go home
with nothing to say
I know you're going to look at me that way
and say what did you do out there
and what did you decide
you said you needed time
and you had time

As I write this I’m starting to see themes; strong female vocals, strong piano, clear, uncluttered. This song is no exception; starting with a breathtakingly beautiful piano solo which mesmerises me and full two and half minutes before any lyrics are sung. Where the others were simple, this is anything but; the song evolves, slowly emerging into its final form taking the shape slowly almost randomly, discordantly, distracted, stumbling and unsure. Which, to my untrained ear is finally mirrored by the lyrics, lovers; confused, uncertain; I can find almost every doubt from every relationship in this song.

Cruiser - Red House Painters
So drive down Beverly Drive
Where my room's lit up all night
I've been so lonely in this bed
It's good to sleep with you instead
It's good to talk all night instead
Morning pours the ocean deep
Into the hollow of my sleep
But the ocean can't be mine
Your perfection can't be mine

At over eight minutes long; this song as its name suggests cruises casually along, again fairly simple but with a raw and low production sort of quality, full of fingers sliding on strings, short draws of breath and even the occasional cough or sniff. All these elements, combined with effortless guitar work and an easy laidback singing style provide a completely natural and honest overtone to the song. You feel it in his voice, he loved her, he lovers her still, she is unique, exotic, erotic… but ultimately it didn’t work out. They separate and he leaves, it hurts but beyond it all this song fills me with joy and hope.

Gorecki - Symphony No. 3
I’m not a huge classical music fan, I only own a handful of CD’s and honestly I really need to be a rare mood to dust them out and relax. However, this is one piece of music that never fails to send shivers down my spine. When I close my eyes, I find myself transported to where I first heard it. Staying at a friend’s house in South Africa, a huge lightning storm had blown out the electrics in the house, so we dug out old battery powered ghetto blaster and the first tape to hand. I sat in the bath, the house lit only by candles and frequent flashes of lighting, the storm rolled on; the drumming of rain on the tin roof only broken by the howling of dogs and long rumbled of thunder. And through all that, a haunting voice of soprano Dawn Upshaw; sings a lament of such sorrowful beauty that I am chilled to the bone, sitting in a piping hot bath.

With the most humble, and abject apologies in advance to the gorgeous Ysengrin for nicking her blog-post-stylee (I like to think of it as an homage!) - I hope you can forgive me!

1. It's my birthday. I am a very HappyPromQueen today. I woke up to find that my scrummy housemates, Red & Bubs had bought me a framed Alfred Waterhouse print of the entrance of the Natural History Museum (one of my most favourite places in the world). I've been wanting this for years. What makes it more special is that it's out of print and somehow, Red managed to convince them to sell her the display copy! I also received a gorgeous pair of bona fide Australian Uggs (none of those pretend US Uggs that all the stars wear) all the way from Oz.

2. People I love will be drinking with me tonight and eating burnt meat from a barbie tomorrow.

3. I got my very first meme the other day from The Long Lost Lovely One...hurrrah....here it is...
The Last CD I Bought Was:
Forever Faithless
Song Playing Right Now:
Everywhere - Fleetwood Mac
Five Songs I Listen To A Lot, Or That Mean A Lot To Me:
The Cure - Just like heaven
Tori Amos - Tear in your hand
KT Tunstall - Universe & U
Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke
The Bluetones - Putting out fires

Pass this onto five bloggers;
As LLO said, you don't have to if you don't want to, but would Neil, Boy, Mr Love (if he hasn't already), Backroads and HOLT please stand up?

4. On Monday, Mr B Love and I are off camping in St Mawes. Wheeeeeee!

5. In my absence, a friendly rabble of gorgeous peeps (bloggers and non bloggers alike) will be looking after my gaff. Thank you in advance to all of them...and to you my lovely readers, I have no doubt that they will all keep you entertained in their inimitable styles.

Right I'm outta here. Keep well folks.
x

I see her again, running to catch the bus, all lovely, lithe limbs and blonde tresses. And here begins the usual spiral of thoughts tinged with cynicism...okay so she's a stunner, I bet she's a meanie, bet she's shallow and arrogant, bet her friends are fair weather, bet she's rude and selfish and uses her looks to get what she wants, bet she doesn't know the meaning of rejection, or failure. I'm utterly staggered to see that she's perfectly polite as she lets someone in front of her, and thanks the bus driver.

I believe that beauty is subjective. Personally, I never found Brad Pitt attractive *gasp* and my idea of a beautiful woman is Helena Christensen but I know that some people find her not so attractive. For Chrissake, screen goddess Uma Thurman suffers from Body dysmorphic disorder.

I believe that personality can concentrate or dilute a person's outward beauty. All of my friends are beautiful to me, and as the years go on and I see more and more evidence of their kind hearts, they become more so. Likewise, when I was a teenager, a couple of so-called friends (stunning girls who would turn grown men's heads as they sashayed down the street), burned me and let me down and when I've bumped into them years later, their appearance has dulled, uglified.

I believe that experiences make you who you are, and my fear of beauty is intrinsically tangled up in my adolescent past.

The younger, less jaded me always used to believe that I would rather be plain looking but a good, kind person. That I was happy the way I am. This older, more worn me thinks that, every now and then, if only for a day, I'd love to be tall and slim and beautiful, to see what it's like, to see if life is somehow different.

I realise as I get older that my own prejudice against beautiful people is borne of a deep seated conviction that I myself am not beautiful. Call it sour grapes, call it jealousy, call it what you will. At least now I can be honest about it. Who knows, now that I know what it is, maybe I'll even
cure myself of it?

We got the flat!

We're moving in today. I am soooooo excited!

Keep well everyone...I'll be incommunicado until our phoneline is sorted out.

We're moving!

Woooo hoooo!

There’s something about hearing one of your favourite performers sing live that just knocks you off your feet. But even more so when they are a gazillion times better than you could ever hope for.

Oh, merde (excuse my French) I’m gibbering aren’t I? Sorry, but I’m sat at my laptop fresh from a KT Tunstall gig and I am blown away.

I read a post over at Long Lost Lagomorph’s the other day about the shitness of Joss Stone, and while I have to admit that way back when hardly anyone had heard of the Soul Sessions, I bought it on the strength of Fell in Love with a Boy, these days I can’t help but grimace when I hear her grating, whining voice.

So there I was, sat at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire marvelling at the sheer, genuine, gritty talent of KT, making a mental note that I should let LLO know that I know exactly what he meant, and Joss was shit. Because here was a woman, KT, the same age as me, who played her guitar with such expertise and in such ways that she managed to produce sounds as if from five different instruments, singing from her gut and her soul, wowing and moving the audience.

God I love that feeling of being at a gig, the vibrations thumping through your diaphragm, singing along to the words and feeling the adrenaline pumping away.

And I apologise that this is such a shit post that I will no doubt delete, but forgive me, because her brilliance has resulted in my complete inability to string a decent sentence together. My ghast is flabbered.

All I can say now, is that if you haven’t discovered her yet…you really should.

It occurred to me the other day that ever since Bonobo and I started seeing each other a few months back, we have managed to cultivate gorgeous his and hers food bellies. For those not in the know food bellies are basically the same as a beer belly, but more rotund and achieved with a diet of rich, indulgent, tasty food, and lots of it. Bless the monkey, Bonobo seems rather taken by his (and mine) but I just feel like a fat pig and wouldn't mind being able to bend over and do my shoes up without having heaving rolls of lard in the way.

Whenever I've found myself on the fat side of thin (which is most of my adult life), and I've needed to lose weight I've avoided diets at all costs. I don't believe in diets you see, I've seen too many friends go on them, torturing themselves only to reach their ideal weight and then yo-yo up and down whilst trying to find the ideal diet/weight. Diets depress me, make me crabby and prone to binges. I'd rather contort myself into a series of unpronounceable asanas with a bout of yoga. Or go for a swim. Problem is, these days my belly is so huge that most yoga postures are proving nigh on impossible.

I know I have an unhealthy relationship with food and so getting rid of this globed stomach is going to be a hard slog. See, I think about food all the time, I even dream about it, and when I'm eating a meal I'm usually wondering what to have for my next meal. I eat when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm bored, lonely, loved up.

It's no wonder then that one of my all time favourite books is this, and my favourite sunday activity is catching up with friends and family in Chinatown at our regular restaurant for a chat, a drink and plenty of delicious dim sum (if you haven't tried it yet, you must!).

I've promised myself that once we've settled into the new place, my half hearted attempts at 'healthy eating' (not a diet you understand?) and going back to yoga will go full swing. There is no excuse left. I must get trim and slim. I have no one to blame but myself.

So, that is my new home resolution. Healthy food, more exercise and a sleek and sexy PPQ.

But right now, I have other things on my mind...like hey, what's for dinner?

Recently, I've experienced the following;

1) Men passing by, checking me up and down whilst saying "Baby I luuuurrrve you"
2) Men passing by (this one's Nepal based) pursing their lips and making an odd 'chuh chuh chuh chuch' noise
3) Man in white van, driving past me and shouting "Yeah baby" reminiscent of Austin Powers but in a slightly more lecherous manner
4) Man in club repeatedly stroking my head and squeezing my head, even after several rebuttals from me

Am I missing something here? Has there been some sort of shift in evolution and mating rituals in homo sapiens that I wasn't aware of? Am I supposed to find this sort of behaviour attractive, and subsequently fall at these men's feet in a swoon whilst screaming "take me, I'm yours forever, do with me what you will."

?????

I can't pin point another time prior to that when I'd felt so high and so happy. Everything seemed so right, so real.

We delved and burrowed and dug deep, making sure we found out all about each other, as the sparks flew about. I remember the headiness of it all, making the most of every minute we had together, hoarding time like greedy, little candy-obsessed children. The dinners in intimate restaurants, the surprise visits, e-mails, texts. I remember salacious phonecalls and steamy cab rides home and racing each other to the shower to cool off together. Lying wrapped up in each other, his softly whispered words in my ear sending shivers down my spine, my willing, wishing for him to love me as much as I loved him. I couldn't really be blamed for thinking this was it, that we were perfect for each other.

But it wasn't and we weren't.

And when he broke it off I was devestated. A period of such intense mourning followed that I felt as though I'd lost all my hopes and dreams, my faith. Even the everyday tasks like eating and showering became too difficult to do without crying and I would sit in a heap as the salt and shower mingled, weeping and wondering why he couldn't love me.

It took me over a year to get over him, longer than any other.

But when he said he wanted us to be friends, he had meant it. They weren't the vacant words that most people utter to absolve themselves of their own feelings of helplessness, of guilt, they were real.

He stayed true to his word, he kept caring, he kept in touch and while I used to regret that we never 'ended up together', I have no regrets now. Some say that when you're looking for a partner, the best relationships are borne of a steady, established friendship. I think that in this case, we evolved into something far greater, something that can never be broken.

Yesterday I nearly brought my boss to tears. I'd wrestled all weekend with my consicence, battled my misplaced sense of loyalty and finally convinced myself that I had to put myself first for once. I'd given the company nearly six years of my life, damn near worked myself into a nervous breakdown on more than one occasion.

We sat there in a meeting room and as I handed her my letter of resignation, explaining that it was a tough decision, that I'd been worried and shaken all weekend, she turned ashen and teary. See, I love the people I work with, my team is like a little pseudo family, a work family if you will, and I can honestly say that we all care about each other. So it was a wrench when she turned to me, big doe eyes glistening, and said 'I don't know what I'll do without you. I mean, it's not just the work you do, I'll miss having you around.'

I felt so goddamn awful.

But folks, as touching as that was, and as guilty and sad as I feel, I realise I have to move on. That no one can make any changes in my life except me.

It's been long overdue. It's time for a change.

A big change.

I'm off to pastures new, because blogsville...I got the job.

I have an uncanny sense of smell. I can detect smells before others can, and out of all of my senses it is the strongest and the most able to transport me to another time and another place. Sure, photos and memoirs have some affect on me, sounds and songs, sights even, but the slightest whiff of an aroma, a note of a particular fragrance seems to have the utmost power to evoke memories, to take me on journeys of reminiscence. Back in time, back to certain events, back to people.

Recently I switched moisturisers for the umpteenth time. Always a slave to advertising I had been changing brands whenever a new one came out promising smoother, softer, younger, flawless skin. This time round my moisturiser costs less than a fiver, comes in an unassuming pot and every night when I slather the heavenly pink stuff on to my face, I take a deep breath and I am hurled 6000 miles away to a land of snow peaked mountains. A land where the night sky is black velvet and peppered with the brightest stars, where the rain smells fresh and pure. Every night, that pink stuff, my gorgeous moisturiser transports me all that way back to Kathmandu so that I am next to my tiny Ma as she kisses me goodnight, her cheeks smooth from the very same moisturiser that I had unintentionally started using, brushing past mine and her soft lips planting juicy kisses on my face, “Mummy loves you. Good night sweetheart.” It doesn't matter how old I get, I still and always will love that nightly ritual of hers. And the older I get the more I seem to miss my folks, the more that 6000 mile divide throbs and aches, reminding me of just how far away they are.

Thank God for my sense of smell, for memories, for Oil of Olay.

I don't think I'm going to change my moisturiser anymore.

Strolling through Soho after a delicious dinner the other night, passing a notorious gay bar with beautifully groomed Adonis-like creatures checking each other out, Bonobo asked me if I could ever be a lesbian. I laughed. See, a few months before I met Bonobo I was going through that phase again. I’m not entirely sure if all women go through it but I know that I have at several points in my life…you know...men suck….they’re bastards…I don’t understand them…would my life be any easier if I were a lesbian? Yeah, that phase.

Joking aside, this time round I found myself really questioning my sexuality, because this time I had developed a debilitating crush on another woman and I was distracted. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her and it really knocked me for six. Christ, I’m a straight girl with straight dreams of settling down, getting married and having kids. And even without those ambitions of mine, good, little, dutiful asian girls get married, have kids and look after all of their family. Good, little asian girls are not gay.

For some reason instead of dismissing this as a phase, I thought about things a great deal. Recently, more and more of my female friends had been admitting that they had had lesbian encounters and everyone had agreed that it was natural. Of course, this only gave me another reason to feel that there was yet another thing that was utterly wrong with me. Christ, why hadn’t I had a lesbian encounter, was there something wrong with me? Am I abnormal, broken, a freak?!

Out of curiosity, one night I asked Big Brother Senior what he would do if I came out.

“Well that depends,” he said
“On what?” I probed
“On what your girlfriend was like.”

Open to interpretation perhaps, but that teeny conversation made me realise that nothing was wrong with me at all. That I have to make my own decisions, and that ultimately, the person who is right for me is the person who loves me, treats me with respect and who I love and treat with respect, together we make each other happy and healthy, regardless of our sex. That there's nothing wrong with me if I'm hetero and there's snothing wrong with me if I'm gay.

Boy and I used to talk about the theory of how people are always attracted to others regardless of their sexual orientation, that everyone has degrees of homosexuality to their personality. Hell, he even has a theory of percentages on the matter! And you know what? These days, I can’t help but think that perhaps there is an element of truth in all of that.

I'll try not to sound patronising, promise myself that I won't utter the words 'when I was your age' and instead try to articulate myself in other ways. I reach into the dark depths of my adolescence, searching the dusty archives of my mind in order to tap into how I felt back then. The quiet desperation, the helplessness, the utter and ineffable sadness. The guilt that ensued...What right did I have to feel like that? I had my health, a home, food to eat, a loving family. What right?

It was inexplicable. But it just was. And I had to deal with it as best I knew how. I know what it's like to use all of your might to resist that temptation, to inflict in order to numb the darkness that descends. Wanting to feel something else, something other than this. Oh yes, I've looked that particular evil in the eye and I'll tell you this secret, I didn't always win - sometimes I succumbed. But I fought it mostly, and I banished it from my life.

But that was then and this is now, and I'm not trying to compare my past affliction with what you are going through now, I can see how terrible you feel and I know that mostly I was consumed by a feeling of hopelessness and that I found ways of coping. Whereas your situation is still so raw.

I found escape by hiding, by carefully concealing the truth, locking it away as it began to drip and congeal like tar. I'd find solace in words; writing words, reading words, as long as I could avoid dealing with my own feelings.

That was another me in another time.

Okay, I know that on occasion, when I am at my most vulnerable, I will be touched by a smattering of that sadness and it will trip me up, causing me to falter temporarily. But the more I learn and the more I feel, the more I realise that I am me and people are people, the more I realise that things can get better.

They can.

I promised to lend you some of my happy songs to listen to, so here's my starter for ten...stop listening to those sad songs, if only for a while, and try and be nice to yourself...and if anyone else in blogsville wants to lend some happy songs, please leave your answers in the usual comment box. Thank you.

Just like heaven - The Cure
Mamma Mia - Abba
Sometimes - James
Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder
Sweetest Feeling - Jackie Wilson
Concrete Jungle - Jurassic 5
Tread Water - De La Soul
Turnipfish - Sultans of Ping FC
Live as You Dream - Beth Orton
A Minha Menina - The Bees


And hey...feel better soon okay?

We walk straight past Jeremy who is sat straddled across a Triumph love machine and continue down the leafy road. I immediately know that this is just the sort of place that I want to live. The sort of place where I imagine young, late twenties professional women should live, and before we've even got to the place I have made up mymind.

"This must be it. We're meant to wait outside for Jeremy and he'll show us round." I say
"Hi" says Jeremy and we are stunned for a moment by the fact that this laid back, suit-less groovester is an estate agent, "let's go in shall we?"

Jeremy doesn't make any effort to sell the place and instead plonks himself down on a chair. "Have a look around."

Stepping inside only further confirms my feelings for this place. All three rooms are doubles, the sitting room is big and the kitchen leads onto a bigger garden. I immediately get visions of pottering about in the garden, growing things, having BBQs in the summer. It's somewhere I could call home.

We ask Jeremy the usual questions about leases, furniture, bills, landlords and then broach the subject of whether anyone else has seen the property, shown any interest. This place is a little over our budget see, and we'll have to do sums, and then more sums to work out whether we can afford to live here.

"Someone came to see it last night," he says.
"Did they like it?" we ask in unison, fearing the potential competition.
"No." He answers without pausing. Could this be the only honest estate agent in the world? I mean, where's all the spiel about how they were really interested, that we won't find another property like this for this price, that we'll have to move fast?
"Well if it's okay we're going to think about it tonight and we'll call you first thing tomorrow."

We clamber back into the car having already started decorating the place in our minds. And I leave my heart behind in that cute three double bedroom, basement garden flat.

The next day I call Jeremy with trepidation and an offer. "Well it's certainly not laughable," he says "Let me talk to the Landlord and get back to you." He does and they counter offer. We do more sums and then throw the sums out of the window when we realise that we just want to live there. I call back and leave a message but Jeremy is out showing the flat.

Now blogsville, all we can do is sit and wait.