25th November 2000

Well, I'm going to be away for a while.

3 weeks away in Basildon hospital. I hope they have semi-decent accomodation with non-asbestos sinks and potable drinking water, but i'm not getting my hopes up too high. I know the NHS too well.

So I'm sitting here picking bones out from between my teeth as I eat my fish-and-chips lunch. I hate bones. Normally I avoid fish like the plague unless it has been meticulously filleted. I hate the feeling of bones poking into my tongue, into my cheek, prodding insistently into my teeth. I harbour a secret horror of gagging on nasty sharp fish-bones, and so I don't eat fish. Until today I guess. Suddenly got hit by a perverse inclination to have some fish and chips on the way home from seeing my patient. And now I'm paying the consequences for my impulsiveness. Isn't fried fish and chips supposed to be filleted anyway. Grr.

It seems I'm running out of space on my "reading room" page. Ack, that means actually reformatting the page. Work. Well I'll just leave for tomorrow what I can do today, and I'm sure when I finally get around to doing something it will be the most energy efficient method I can devise.

I like chips. I like the way they crunch between my teeth and become soggy and juicy on the tongue as you munch on them. I like the taste they give off - no salt and vinegar for me, thank you (tomato ketchup optional depending on my mood) and I'm beginning to think of just eating the chips and throwing away the fish. Maybe next time I step into the shop I'll ask for a fish and chips please, with no fish.

There's so little going on in this life. I remember another life I led once when my answering machine was always bursting at the seams to talk to me when I got home, and my mailbox was flooded with emails from real people - and not just blonde bombshells who wanted to show it all to me, or to show us how to fit large men up their various orifices. I'm beginning to consider terminating my hotmail account which gets about a megabyte of crap a day. Or perhaps to activate my inbox protector, which, naturally will exclude the few friends who do email me from getting in touch with me. Decisions, decisions.

I've taken my daily pilgrimage over to Anna's page, only to find to my disappointment that she's still hanging in there. Anna's page is special. She doesn't need to write anything, but people go back there religiously anyway to make sure she hasn't. Then she writes something wonderful about her dreams, and presto! her guestbook is overflowing at the edges with compliments. Mine, well it doesn't matter if I do write, or not - it's turning into a little deserted graveyard frequented rarely by a few reluctant tenders. Perhaps its the thoughts I convey, too dark, too morose. Or perhaps it's simply because I'm male, and I have no pictures of myself here. Being a pretty female always seems to work, you don't need to write anything about what you think, just put a few pictures of yourself up, and voila! People aplenty flood to your page and lavish insincere compliments unto your guestbook, hoping, perhaps, somehow, someday to get into your pants.

I'm doing it again; I'm being cynical and morose.

I'll blame it on the weatherman. It's horrible out today. I remember thinking as a child how ludicrous it was that the strange white-skinned English people (oh, I harboured all the usual biases and stereotypes as a kid - I did after all grow up in the one great bastion of secret racism and prejudice of the entire World, Singapore) could strike up entire conversations about the weather... but considering how shite the weather usually is, and how grim, grey and wet - I can't believe it's 3.15 pm and the sun hasn't come up once today yet! And it's almost dusk now... well, the phrase "nice weather innit?" is such a welcome change, such a breath of fresh air, such an inspiration to goodwill and friendly conversation.

I watched Memento last night (shouldn't it be Momento?) on the big screen, followed by L.A. Confidential on the little screen. Both were brilliant, and Memento was just so... cerebral. A thinking man's movie - I bet it bombs in the USA. LA confidential was great too... any movie with Kim Basinger in it has to be great, but it was, surprise surprise, pretty much a thinking man's movie too, albeit with a lot more big guns and bullet holes than Memento. I also watched Grosse Point Blank, and that was nice and funny, and it reminded me of someone I once knew.

Anyhow, I've run out of things to write, and so I guess I'll leave you all for the next three weeks to continue with your little lives, and to gradually stop coming in here to read these messy ramblings :)

Remember, you heard it here first, on Hush Hush!