19th April 2000

It's a beautiful sunny morning and its also the last day of term, and I'm one year older today. I suppose these are all the birthday presents I'll ever need. When was the last time someone gave me a birthday present I wonder. Not that I want one, just idle curiosity. The weather and end of term are gifts enough; thank you, God. I haven't celebrated my birthday in a long, long time now and it doesn't mean a whole lot to me anymore. I used to have a gaggle of real friends here who would remember my birthday for me and throw some subdued mini-event which I quite liked but didn't think was necessary, but now they've gone home and it's just me here surrounded by "friends" who need me when they hurt but don't remember me otherwise. "Friends" who are so ready to make you see the tears in their eyes but can't see anything in yours because they never look to your eyes.

I wrote that while I was in school waiting for teaching to begin, in a conference room sitting at a conference table on my little foolscap pad; the professor subsequently came in and his houseman began speaking we learnt all about rheumatoid lung much to his displeasure. Exotic and esoteric diagnoses I think was what he said.

After that I went walking in Regent's park with one of the other medics and had breakfast at a cafe there. London's a bit of a contradiction that way and I like that aspect of it, you can forget the city sitting in the perfection of Regent's park, drinking your (very good) coffee and eating your white-icing-sugar pastry (there didn't seem to be anything else in it) and it's so inconceivable that 10 minutes walk away the roads are bustling with cars and irate motorists and petrol fumes and forlorn Big Issue sellers and opportunistic car-cleaners armed with their pails of muddy water. It's so calm and clean and surreal, is sitting in the parks.

Went walking again in the evening, down the Thames. The weather was that good. I went without a jacket, ran home and dumped my bag then slung an oversized shirt around me (I got quite a few stares for wearing a scruffy oversized shirt over a white shirt and tie through the day) and shot back out to walk down the Thames. There are a couple of boats moored along the bank of the Thames that are floating pubs/bars/ restaurants. I dream of eating there one day with a true friend, but I have so few left in London that I'm not sure it'll ever happen. Perhaps one day if Anna comes over after all it'll materialise. There was once upon a time someone else I'd have specifically loved to go try that with, but that was a once upon a time ago when she was here, and that didn't happen.

So now it's the 20th of April and I'm a year older. Predictably enough the weather today is grey and rainey and I feel almost honoured that He held the rain away from London for a full day just so I could go walking down the Thames, from London Bridge to beyond Westminster Abbey. I was contemplating going all the way down to Chelsea embankment which I recall is beautiful, but I decided to run home to try and catch Buffy instead (I love the storyline, I think Sarah Michelle Geller isn't that fantastic, she's minute and has sunken eyes and straggly hair and I'm probably going to get sued by her for writing this, but I do think the character she plays is cute and funny and sort-of intelligent and oh-so-appealing, but on the looks scale Charisma Carpenter wins hands down) only to find it replaced by the world snooker championships. An exercise in logic, precision, calmness and mechanical perfection. I hate it. I think pool's so much better. You just bash the balls into the pockets and have done with it. Except when I play Dimitra who cunningly snooks me all the time and the only way to beat her is to snook her back. Needless to say my lack of guile has me trailing at 20-22 at the moment but I shall catch up nonetheless. I shall learn to be sneaky.

Perhaps tomorrow, if its sunny I'll see Chelsea embankment; I've lived here three years and walked the Thames more times than I can remember now but I've never gone beyond Big Ben before. Odd, that. I usually loop back the second I reach it, like a relay runner who's just passed on the baton. It's almost a knee-jerk reflex now. Instead, yesterday I started exploring, first I went in search of a phone on the off chance that Serling was at Tommies which unfortunately she wasn't so no free dinner for me, and then I wandered around the buildings near Big Ben, which are truly amazing, and contemplated going into Westminster Abbey for eucharist service for so long that by the time I decided to walk up to it it had turned into tourist-viewing instead and I had no wish to walk in amidst a crowd of camera crazy japanese girls. Then I walked past the abbey a bit (all the roads/buildings there are all "church" something or"faith" something, its amazing) and I was going to go the distance when I realised it was 6.20 pm.

It's so cold and grey today, my only option is to go borrow a book from the library and curl up on the sofa, else wander down to Borders for an orgasmic cup of Borders Chai. It's really that good, well maybe not orgasmic but fantastic anyhow. It's one of the few things that can calm me when my world seems to be coming apart around me, when nasty revelations are either hitting or re-hitting me or memories I've suppressed are trying to haunt me. And sometimes while I'm there someone plays on the piano and I'm reminded of my mother and it feels safe and secure, drinking my warm cup of Chai. Of course sometimes the american girls (I have no idea why but the staff seems to be made entirely of american students permanently on holiday) make the chai so insipid and cinammon-less that its like drinking a cup of lukewarm tap water, but most days its made just right. Another of the things I'd like to share with anyone I thought was a real friend, or could be. I've done it a few times now, both with true friends and people who proved not to be, but you know what? And here's the clincher - as Serling said (sometimes) it's the activity that counts and not the company. I do it for the tea. I love drinking the tea, and the friends are secondary there, I'd do it alone if I could and I do. :)

Woke up at 12 pm after an indulgent 10 hours sleep and I'm eating my coco pops with semi skimmed milk now. I love coco-pops and honey puffs or whatever you call them. Especially with full cream milk but I've stopped drinking that a while ago after realising I imbibe about 4 litres of milk a week and it can't possibly be good for my coronary arteries. So now I have to settle for chalky-coloured water that I can see through to the bottom of the bowl, but at least I have coco-pops to down it with. When I was little I loved those jack and jill apple loops, and fruit loops, but they seem to have gone extinct here. Another thing I really love is nutella on bread, I can go on eating that the whole day if I don't stop myself, I've sat down to 12 slices of bread before at one sitting just because. Yet strangely enough I'm still maddeningly thin and that makes yet more of the non-person that I am, just another wallflower in the background who's not really much more than a shadow of a person who once was.