tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-186720202011-12-03T11:34:36.482ZClarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.comBlogger2081100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-57218697444761844082011-11-01T08:47:00.000Z2011-11-06T09:15:37.672Z

Tweet I've launched another blog 'dedicated to the sea, beaches. shipwrecks, old seaside towns, public baths and my favourite obsession - wild swimming!' Check it out at: Sink or Swim

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-5342482282424270192011-09-27T19:29:00.001+01:002011-11-02T20:14:46.564Z

Tweet I keep thinking this is it. I do my sad little wave, a quick bow. Goodbye, au revoir. Then I turn in my flip-flops and start my brief walk home.     Of course the following day I return to the water’s edge. Since autumn has arrived it happens less, but this game isn’t over. I refuse to leave the sea alone; I refuse to commit to King Alfred’s chlorine depths: the stinky changing rooms;

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-36541607951818008482011-07-17T22:07:00.003+01:002011-10-16T12:38:24.830+01:00

Tweet The golden chaise longue wouldn’t fit through my door. It didn’t matter how often I uncoiled my tape measure or how many fags Hev smoked on the front step, it was too big - or my doorway was too small. I was stuck with an already paid for sofa in the hallway of my block of flats. Fellow tenants circled the chaise longue,  prodding it with fingers, offering up solutions, but we all knew

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-65190506131427058692011-07-12T19:06:00.002+01:002011-10-16T12:37:00.333+01:00

Tweet Today in my bathroom, after I'd arranged shampoos and beauty products according to their  exact colour shade, after I'd scoured and sluiced my bathtub, sink, and toilet, after I'd painted the walls in Morning Mist and ummed and ahhed about what pictures to  hang, after I'd scrubbed the grouting with a toothbrush, I realised I might be avoiding a few things. What I felt most sad about

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-32682016274602709082011-03-02T17:21:00.004Z2011-10-16T12:36:28.236+01:00

Tweet I thought all I had left of him was a beige cashmere M&S scarf. This scarf is soft as cat fur. It goes everywhere with me.  A gift, one Christmas, he’d left it in a flat box, slipped between two others, on my Mum’s front step. He’d left gifts for several years after I stopped seeing him. We threw all the others away – on principle, you know? But I couldn’t bring myself to part with the

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-45918696097244756722010-11-19T21:57:00.006Z2011-10-16T12:35:08.960+01:00

Tweet Sunday, I came back from London. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Things didn’t make sense. On the train home I read the spiral bound diary of a relative I couldn’t place – no name on the cover, only a date: Aug 6th 1938. I wasn’t even sure if the author was a man or a woman. They’d taken a train from London to Basle in Switzerland, (‘Train reservations wrong… terrific electric

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-64811297596783134182010-11-17T20:14:00.013Z2011-10-16T12:49:29.114+01:00

Tweet I was in the upstairs spare bedroom singing along to Mary Coughlan's Under The Influence - Fifteen or Ice Cream Man, I don't remember which. It was my sister's LP, dragged from a dusty blue case beneath the dresser; slipped from its case and onto my old Rotel turntable. After twenty years, it still had hardly a scratch on it. I've been sneaking Under The Influence in and out of my

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-25239453043055479722010-10-17T21:27:00.023+01:002011-10-13T14:26:05.489+01:00

Tweet It’s almost November. Soon the season will turn to grief, as it does every year. This year it will be more so. December used to be the one winter month I actually liked, now it's diseased with bad memories – fluttering snow, a chilled top deck of a Greenwich bus, that phone call. And for all I’ve achieved this year despite ill health, despite the hard times, I regret my failure to deal

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-36362190005156530362010-10-16T22:16:00.005+01:002011-10-13T14:30:44.733+01:00

Tweet For weeks now I’ve had hulking great ‘writer’s block’. Each morning has been the same: my fingers hover over my keyboard, sentences in my head unraveling themselves, the passion in my belly shrinking to nothing. No metaphors spring from the black pit of my brain. No imagery dances across my tired eyes. I am null and void. Kaput. Bring out your dead! I want to shout from my living room

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-30225756176735879722010-06-12T17:43:00.010+01:002011-09-23T16:35:18.294+01:00

The younger I was, the more I investigated my body’s secrets. I explored each tiny place with curiosity: palms against soft, white skin, fingers poked in ears, bitten nails skating the dip of my throat. My body was not just familiar territory – it was my very own erratic, unkempt kingdom. Until puberty, I didn’t judge the merits or defects of the blood and bones that kept me alive, I only

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-32425312211267951822010-05-21T18:36:00.025+01:002011-09-23T16:36:11.292+01:00

To those who know me well, it won’t exactly be news to read this. They’ve heard it all before. They even love me for it. However, for those who don’t, here it is.       I, Clare D, don’t fit in. Anywhere. Never have done; never will. The only place where I feel remotely at home is with other people equally as estranged as myself. Even then as some kind of group gradually forms, I never fully

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-58916224253094546232010-05-20T21:12:00.003+01:002011-09-23T16:37:55.863+01:00

I’d known I wasn’t completely straight from that time (aged eight) when a cropped-haired girl whose name I didn't know came to pedal my plastic Police car around our back yard. Later that afternoon, we sat in my Dad’s brown leather armchair stroking each other’s forearms. She looked like a boy, sounded like a boy and even acted like a boy – but I knew different. And it's been that confusion/

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-52256602217807599762010-05-19T21:13:00.001+01:002011-09-23T16:46:08.977+01:00

I’m a North Welsh woman who grew up on the border with England. I’m from a rich family but my parents came from poor working-class backgrounds. My Dad never gave me a penny of his money and my mother’s last job was as a cleaner but I went to a private girls' school. I’m intelligent but rubbish at pretending to be clever. I’m pretty but getting old. I am disappointed by men, and fear women. I am

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-21944616576260187552010-05-06T09:21:00.003+01:002010-05-06T09:28:07.228+01:00

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-33694112598959854942010-04-18T21:15:00.007+01:002011-10-13T14:47:28.815+01:00

I remember my trip to New York in 2005. Over the winter months, I’d been emailing with a young writer from North Carolina (whom I shall call C), who’d recently lost his father. One evening, in a long email quoting Richard Siken, he invited me to meet him in New York and explore the city together. I didn’t need asking twice. I'd dreamed of New York since I was twelve, and in particular, The

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-16812296370347505122010-04-10T20:41:00.002+01:002011-10-13T14:54:23.493+01:00

Anyone who has been to Beachy Head knows the vertigo that peering over that chalky-white cliff to the rocks below can induce. It’s the kind of thing that either thrills you or makes you nauseous, depending on your temperament. And neither the lighthouse - that striped pepperpot sticking out into the ocean - nor the horizon where blue meets blue, can soften the fact that this is a place where

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-26853787469603534772010-04-01T17:42:00.005+01:002011-09-23T16:39:30.280+01:00

 Keep going through self-doubt, criticism, a sore back, rejection, ridicule and terror. Honour that tiny light that sparks sometimes when I touch keyboard or grip a pen. Let go of pride, decency, even ambition. Make that stab in the dark. Dwell in uncertainty and make friends with insecurity. Be hungry. Leap for that goal. Turn into a rainbow shoal of fish as I do it. Or a dead man in a

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-24718404268093030922010-01-14T10:56:00.021Z2011-10-13T14:59:10.658+01:00

I opened my curtain this morning and peeped out, expecting to see a white river spreading across the streets and rooftops of Hove. But the road below me was grey, dry and hard, as though no snow had fallen at all over Sussex these last weeks.      Yet yesterday as we spilled out onto a London pavement, clutching flowers, coconuts; two packets of butter, handbags and a brightly painted Ganesh

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-15735295347282783372009-11-20T23:26:00.000Z2011-09-23T16:46:47.639+01:00

I’m a North Welsh woman who grew up on the border with England. I’m from a rich family but my parents came from poor working-class backgrounds. My Dad never gave me a penny of his money and my mother’s last job was as a cleaner but I went to a private girls' school. I’m intelligent but rubbish at pretending to be clever. I’m pretty but getting old. I am disappointed by men, and fear women. I am

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-25872169804021741812009-11-08T21:58:00.020Z2011-09-23T16:47:12.005+01:00

  I lift my finger and sniff. There’s no smell, no evidence of it at all. It doesn’t linger on my fingertip as it does in hair or cardigans.      I look at the cigarette fallen carelessly from the ashtray, grey speckles spreading across the table like a distant constellation of stars. I rub my finger in it again; make a smiley face.      Cigarettes reminds me of my family: of my mother

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-63420979882229874972009-11-02T11:53:00.012Z2011-09-27T23:48:58.234+01:00

I spent that summer dragging my blue and white dinghy to the seafront, eating hot pizza from the diner, rubbing salt into my skin. It had become almost a minor celebrity amongst my friends. We’d hold beach parties where the dinghy was wrenched across pebbles as guest of honour. We went racing up the Adur and huddled on Hove beach in the breezy evenings, comparing seafaring stories and

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-19244214853346680032009-10-19T22:49:00.010+01:002011-09-29T09:39:53.718+01:00

I'm up late, trying to figure things out. Stuff that can't be figured. Hooray! Let's hear it for the stuff that can't be figured.      My mind hasn't made much sense of late, the epileptic fits getting worse since my last post. However, to my intrigue, my mind has become radically more interesting to me. Like a film I never understood before, now I watch it not even caring that the script is

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-43157705124007212442009-10-01T11:45:00.004+01:002011-09-23T16:41:58.667+01:00

I’m angry. Hacked-off. Galled. I’m banging my fist on the desk, making pens and paperclips jump with terror. And why? I’ll tell you why. Because, according to a clever man with a stethoscope who sent me off like a milk carton on Tesco’s conveyor belt into a funny looking white machine that bleeps, I have epilepsy. I therefore take tablets for epilepsy. I therefore try to resign myself to a life

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-92137284933763653332009-09-18T00:09:00.011+01:002011-09-23T16:42:19.751+01:00

... the best you ever had, the best you ever had is just a memory. And those dreams - not as daft as they seem, not as daft as they seem, my love, when you dream them up... I did my life back to front. I’m convinced of this. If my theory is right, then I am steadily regressing towards old age. By the time I’m eighty, I shall be happily hot-wiring disability carts and mixing crystal meth in

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-48437253461549630992009-08-29T17:41:00.010+01:002011-09-29T09:40:52.811+01:00

It's warm but blustery today, the kind of day I sit on the beach, but end up shivering. I woke at an ungodly hour this morning, to a small child patting my face and demanding Big Barn Farm videos. In the main, I’ve enjoyed waking up too early these last few weeks – it’s at these times I sometimes catch a whiff of inspiration that makes me crawl to my desk and write.      It's unbelievable to

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-54486653417895211382009-08-03T20:51:00.009+01:002011-09-23T16:42:40.240+01:00

Seattle. Full of wide fridges and parking lots; lacking decent tea and rain. I wander down 34th avenue, not daring to cross. I still don't get this rule about jaywalking, or how come everybody in this city seems so well-adjusted. The waitress tells me her life story. I cross my arms and feel my upper lip stiffen. I guess I'm a true Brit, after all. I love the tall wooden houses, painted grey

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-37063294976746046802009-04-06T18:56:00.017+01:002011-09-23T16:40:24.629+01:00

Sun's out; the wind is fresh. A near perfect day for this time of year. A near perfect time for a cold-blooded examination of love. It's been a while since I teased out its feathers as I dip my toes in the icy river.      From time to time I do wonder about falling in love again - the Big-ee, a romantic dream fulfilled, end of story, credits gliding down the screen. But I've been wondering

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-11357165765386746062009-04-05T23:21:00.015+01:002010-06-12T21:33:37.424+01:00

It’s the first heat of the year, all orange on my shoulders, glowing in my cheeks. Grass is soft under my hands; the hill is cows and lambs chewing on their mother's soft underbelly. We pass ponies, bumble bees, a shrew in the undergrowth. Skylarks. Kites bent high in turquoise. My back is hot, my face whipped cool by spring wind. I can see my breath.     It's majestic up on the hill, the yellow

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-72535131900683967382009-03-12T11:48:00.007Z2011-09-29T09:44:54.861+01:00

I had three ideas I was sure would work. First, I could barricade her into my flat. Second, I could barricade her out of my flat. Third, I could hide her Green Card. Once I realised that I'd not quite got the heart or the neurosis to put any of these plans into practice, I knew I'd have to resort to other tactics.      Jo was of course leaving for Seattle in the early hours of this morning

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-76188091701138610432009-02-22T12:42:00.014Z2011-09-23T16:41:40.066+01:00

Well, I can't even call this morning. It's lunchtime, and I've been at my computer for almost three hours. I've reached stalemate with the story I'm writing, which always happens around about now. If I'm not careful, I'll be propelled into a round of meaningless www.nonsense, and then it'll be five o clock before I've blinked an eye.      And I need to be at least halfway through my story by

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-5664966718299436752009-02-19T16:27:00.014Z2009-09-18T11:09:35.482+01:00

I post this brilliant video in recollection of what was one of the only notable thing to ever happen at The Brit Awards (perhaps apart from the KLF machine-gunning the audience)... Thankyou Jarvis Cocker. Click the side bar, top video if this one doesn't work

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-80662237664020310932009-02-13T14:15:00.005Z2009-03-27T19:54:33.720Z

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-82562176159139649962009-02-12T09:30:00.016Z2011-09-29T09:45:50.958+01:00

I'll say one word. Duffy. Now some of you will have heard of her, and some of you won't. If you listen to the charts, watch TV, I'm sure you will have. She's been a scourge in my brain now for some time, and I'd hoped I could make her go away like a bad dream, but I see she's up for nomination at the Brits and no doubt she'll sweep the board there.      Duffy. She's Amy Winehouse with the

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-60786185488229535542009-02-01T10:34:00.010Z2011-09-23T16:43:25.638+01:00

Two things recently have made me realise I am getting older. When watching the corny What Women Want with Mel Gibson in it (the fact that I was watching it in the first place is somewhat unusual), I saw him and actually thought mmm, you're quite fit.      I have also started listening to Annie Lennox. Now she is someone who's always bored me shitless with her 'meaningful' lyrics, her

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-17770004567807808792009-01-23T21:40:00.014Z2011-09-29T09:53:10.616+01:00

There are still some secrets about Brighton I'm only just being let into. After ten years since my arrival into this strange and eccentric city by the sea, this greatly excites me.      Today, I learned about Count Eric Von Stenbock, "Scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men," as WB Yeats called him. He was also remembered with affection by Aubrey Beardsley, Symons

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-52139840007305293592008-11-17T12:45:00.009Z2011-09-29T09:52:51.701+01:00

So I’ve just looked here and noticed that my last post was the end of September. Oops.      I'm hungover today and haven't managed to do anything constructive yet apart from a few hundred words of writing homework. Mainly, I've been tidying up my recently returned computer, hula-hooping and watching repeats of Project Runway on TV Shack.       I'm surprised how rubbish I feel today, when I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-81286494810734399482008-09-23T17:17:00.009+01:002010-05-27T17:15:37.958+01:00

I'm on the train, having just left Birmingham Moor Street, heading for London Marlebone. After several days of balmy Indian summer, I pass through a rain soaked Birmingham, drizzle sketching out its streets, a familiar greyness suspended in the ether. I can feel my mood shifting as I edge nearer to Brighton; a heavy feeling in my arms and legs, a sinking inside my stomach. I look in my

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-60308610940991579142008-09-22T17:50:00.005+01:002009-07-05T23:40:15.296+01:00

I sit up in bed on a cold autumn morning, and I can see that the sun is shining, the clouds are moving. This is the first morning in a couple of weeks that I've woken up feeling even vaguely like a human being, with a still beating heart, and perhaps even a future and a purpose. It's a feeble flicker of it, but it's there.Mum has stabilised, at least for now. The doctors still aren't sure that it

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-63205291038293661332008-09-15T23:36:00.007+01:002011-09-29T09:46:11.060+01:00

This morning, as I inhaled a cloud of pain and breathed it out again and said No, I will change my life, I will not let the cloaks of recent events take me down, and I rang the electricity board, and I unpacked my new mini laptop and prepared for the launderette, I got a phone call. It was the phone call. The one I’ve waited for two years. Perhaps.      Mum has been rushed into hospital again

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-43074344990148457542008-09-11T10:32:00.012+01:002011-09-29T09:44:03.501+01:00

I woke up too early, after little sleep, to the smell of sea salt coming through my open window. I stirred, felt my skin against the sheet and a small stab of wonder in my belly. It surprised me to find some joy on this too early a morning, when life hasn’t been too kind and I really should still be fast asleep.      Maybe it was something to do with the weather, or feeling the sea so close at

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-23366579463696823442008-08-06T13:30:00.015+01:002011-09-29T09:58:57.539+01:00

I went out and bought white flowers. Brought them back. Sat them on my table. I resolved: I no longer want to live in somewhere with an air of mild depression, where the carpet crinkles under my foot, constantly shedding anxiety. I said: I have built a pretty fortress, a sanctuary of steel and concrete, where I can rest away from harm, but where I am always alone.      These flowers make me

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-11664106007075453512008-07-26T12:32:00.018+01:002011-09-29T09:54:23.848+01:00

I'm good, if not somewhat vulnerable this morning. I was in London last night to see one of my biggest musical heroes of recent times, Daniel Johnston. It was a bit of a dream line-up, with support from Jad Fair, Mark Linkhous (of Sparklehorse), Scout Niblett and James Mcnew (of Yo La Tengo).      After short sets of their own, and Daniel coming on briefly for two songs alone, they all all

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-57251512638533959842008-07-24T21:05:00.008+01:002011-09-29T09:43:04.710+01:00

It's been sweltering all day today. Now, the sun's finally gone down, but a heat remains, sinking into the walls of my building, blowing warm through my open windows, caressing my back.      I'm home after almost a week away at Buddhafield Festival. I've returned to the computer several times today trying to begin to describe my time there, and each time I've gone away silent, empty-handed, a

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-8319087712709372852008-07-13T02:06:00.002+01:002009-07-06T00:04:37.340+01:00

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-85086856167314360632008-07-11T18:34:00.015+01:002009-09-19T18:26:28.864+01:00

So I survived a somewhat crazy weekend in London. Loosely speaking, it involved London Pride, lots of dancing and sweating too much, Neil Young and a psychopath threatening to throw me out of a car. Nice. And I didn't even have a cup of tea all weekend to steady my nerves. Now I'm back in Brighton dossing about since work has hit a sudden drought. can't really enjoy this time off as I'm

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-77086620317309844542008-07-04T23:54:00.013+01:002009-07-06T00:08:34.561+01:00

My street's ablaze with colour at the moment. The hydrangeas two doors up have sat, crisp and mottled for months, like old maids perched by the side of the road. Now, suddenly they've erupted into pink, purple and blue life, turning into something resembling a mild acid trip. Seeing hydrangeas seems to short circuit something in my brain, sending me into a peculiar kind of rapture. They remind me

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-75226594064092849912008-06-16T13:22:00.011+01:002011-09-29T09:51:54.827+01:00

Monday is my new writing day, and naturally, I've spent the morning making pea soup, washing-up, re-vamping blogs, going to the doctors... anything but writing. Even writing here is a bit of a cheat, but I'm telling myself it's a way of easing myself into the avalanche of imagery that's waiting in the backseat of my mind, and that on some level, I do not want to face.      Often I feel caught

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-89688336172654347112008-06-08T20:41:00.011+01:002011-09-29T10:03:28.220+01:00

I'm a little hyper tonight. It's taken two episodes of The L-Word to calm me down. Given things at the moment, that isn't perhaps the most obvious TV choice for calming down to. However, last night I watched Kes in an attempt to cheer myself up. Who watches Ken Loach films to cheer themselves up? Weirdly though, despite the squashed hawk and the coal-mines (or in fact, because of them), it

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-82382604615357166752008-06-05T11:30:00.005+01:002009-09-19T18:34:53.226+01:00

I'm back from the doctors. I think I can trust him. He's taking my 'funny turns' seriously, which is more than the neurologist did, refusing to dismiss them as panic attacks. He is referring me back to both cardiologist and neurologist. He's not convinced it's heart related though, but that it's neurological-based, which is what I've always felt.He tentatively said he thought it might be migraine

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-27292045021395386252008-05-31T22:56:00.008+01:002011-09-29T10:00:18.077+01:00

One of these mornings, you're going to rise up singing. You'll spread your wings and take to the sky.Until that morning, nothing's going to harm youwith your daddy and mommy standing by... It's eleven o'clock and my chest's tight with a series of toxins. My body is trying to rid itself of a virus that's creeping unseen through my lungs, throat, lower belly and back. I am fighting off

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-70042738102358954502008-05-26T23:36:00.009+01:002009-07-06T00:19:43.644+01:00

Twenty to midnight. This is the last thing I should be doing. But I'm here, at this screen, fingers fumbling over buttons. So this is the crux - I find myself at that place, the place of no return, where I am scattered to the wind a thousand times over, waiting for the pieces to blow back into a self again. I tried to hold it, and I couldn't. I tried to keep it in a shape that still looked

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-89126266691888439822008-05-21T21:54:00.009+01:002009-07-06T00:20:48.545+01:00

Get up, walk about, sit back down, sit back down. Get up. Sit back down. Sip rum. Rub the soreness in my temple. Get up. Walk over to the window. Watch the street running like treacle below. Don't feel regret. Don't feel anything. Not yet. I dreamt of chasing Noel Fielding up dead-ends and through back-streets because he said he'd sell me a T-shirt. Ended up in a cellar with a fat man. I watch

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-81433065141921291762008-05-20T20:04:00.008+01:002011-09-29T09:56:34.549+01:00

I am calmer today, but not much. The sun is behind me, trickling through the back of my skull, past my retina, into what I see. And I see a shiny screen pretending it is my life, a mass of letters and symbols making out they are me.       It's so soft, this sunlight. It's casting gold onto the wall, nudging against a shadow of purple flowers and green stalks, against my pink curtains. Curtains

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-76791812386561043062008-05-07T13:47:00.009+01:002009-07-06T00:22:21.641+01:00

It was back to work yesterday after a gorgeous Bank Holiday break. Happily, however, I'm taking a couple of days 'off' again to finish these dreaded MA application forms. I turned 35 on Sunday, and my birthday was one of the happiest I've known in years, stretching over three days. Saturday night turned into a joyful return to the Spiegeltent for the end of Guilty Pleasures, where we danced

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-77284029347576245002008-04-28T19:11:00.010+01:002009-07-06T13:28:40.007+01:00

I went to Oxford this weekend. That means spires, cobbled lanes, book shops and lots of clever sods cycling about in loafers and mismatched shirts. It's elegant, rich with history and tradition. And packed with posh people.I felt clever just meandering through its streets, as though the brilliance of the sunlight bouncing off church windows was enough for my IQ to soar by at least 20 percent.

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-2660455579762240412008-04-22T01:05:00.003+01:002009-07-06T13:30:44.908+01:00

I've just cycled home from town. It's the first time in a long time that I've cycled home at night along the seafront. Being there felt like I'd left the television on low-volume for weeks, and finally just realised and switched it off. The fuzzy static in my head stopped - it was just my humming wheels, the breaking waves and the night all around me. I put Kurt Wagner on my headphones. His

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-37575034500857307902008-04-13T17:52:00.008+01:002009-07-06T13:35:58.986+01:00

I watch a film without sound through a sheer net curtain in a dimly lit restaurant. The Moroccan boy's face on the screen is a mixture of pain, ecstasy and conviction, as the film veers from colour to black & white then back again. There is violence, dancing.I’m thinking about Jacques Derrida - Algerian, teaching in Paris, deconstructing his own identity and life. I look at the painting on the

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-36819879018510383912008-04-12T11:40:00.007+01:002009-07-06T13:36:56.117+01:00

The sun is quietly setting behind the hill. We arrived in Pampeneira this afternoon, my soul feeling like it was plunging into dead seas. Still, the music on my headphones was enough to make anyone laugh (I would dance on NBC and say 'George Bush shook hands with me', then I'd go and choke on a cock). Such a perverse contrast to one of the most exquisite landscapes in Europe.Climbing steadily up

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-79463193522606209962008-04-12T10:51:00.010+01:002009-07-06T13:37:53.872+01:00

It's at times such as this she'd be tempted to spitIf she wasnt so ladylikeShe imagines how she might have livedBack when legends and history collideSo she looks to her prince finding he's so charminglySlumped at her sideThose days are recalled on the gallery wallAnd shes waiting for passion or humour to strikeWhat shall we do, what shall we do with all this useless beauty? All this useless

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-62679015052024977182008-03-29T21:42:00.007Z2009-07-06T13:39:50.078+01:00

I'm off to Andalucia tonight. Thanks to the clocks going forward, looks like I'm not going to sleep at all tonight as the bus to the airport effectively leaves at 2.15am. Packing a bag and taking off always leaves me in a queer state of excitement, nerves and restlessness, liberated at leaving everything behind. It feels bit like breaking up with someone - in between all the grimness, I see this

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-16621011062160717902008-03-21T18:48:00.006Z2009-07-06T13:42:11.534+01:00

I got soaked coming home on my bike today. I was tired, grumpy and cold, and I didn't want freezing rain seeping into my clothes and brain. But when I finally stopped fighting it and pulled onto the final stretch of pathway by my road, it was bliss. It can have a humbling effect, rain, washing away all the rotten muck, inside and out. It leaves you soggy and humbled, wide-eyed, eyelashes dripping

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-31160334494884813472008-03-12T19:09:00.014Z2009-07-06T13:45:06.644+01:00

I'm just back from work, The Libertines full blast on the stereo. Sometimes ear-bleedingly loud music is the only antidote to being nice and accommodating to annoying customers all day. It's either that or go and brick a few windows. Now that's a pleasing thought - Charlie and I in full Clockwork Orange mode, bouncing bricks out of his car window at unsuspecting people in their living rooms,

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-24749469601291624692008-02-26T11:22:00.006Z2009-07-06T13:45:30.850+01:00

In my last post I misjudged the power of Mrs Fillyjonk's prophecy.We got a phonecall yesterday to inform us that, despite telling us that the flat in Bevendean was ours to rent, giving us the forms, and most importantly, making us put £300 deposit down on it, the agents had given it to someone else. Fuckers. So our little dream place has vanished as quickly as it came.Oh Mrs Fillyjonk. I bow down

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-90056867292306713622008-02-24T18:02:00.026Z2009-07-06T13:49:48.569+01:00

It was a mild and motionless summer day, exactly right for washing carpets. Slow and sleepy swells came rolling in to help her with the rinsing, and around her red cap a few bumblebees were humming: they took her for a flower. Don't you pretend, the Fillyjonk thought grimly. I know how things are. Everything's always peaceful like this just before a disaster... Bob and I have been taking it in

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-20819252285649550262008-02-20T14:58:00.012Z2009-07-06T13:50:54.879+01:00

Yes, I thought I could lure you in with my karate-chopping nun picture; it never fails. Of course, this was a deliberate ploy - my thinking is that by showing you a picture from my new Nuns Having Fun calendar, somehow it'll make up to my more avid readers for the fact that I haven't written in over two weeks. Secondly, I'm doing what I do every few months - and trying to convince readers that

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-26245103516844334692008-02-07T16:53:00.003Z2009-07-06T13:53:06.615+01:00

I've been grateful, of late, to notice small slivers of daylight still hanging in the air as I walk up Church Road, even though the clock has already struck five thirty. These tiny shards of optimism, breaking through the winter chill, warm me, and offset the heavy feeling I've had of late, the feeling of dark birds clustering at every street corner, following me home. I can't quite separate out

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-72961267304903552302008-01-21T10:15:00.002Z2009-07-06T13:56:24.065+01:00

There are days that begin with a strange hue, that open their curtains to a light never seen before. Today began in smoky greys that crept under my eyelids like ghosts from the sea. I'd been dreaming about a ship off the coast of Morocco. I was staying on it, taking breaks from it to visit this little village on the Moroccan coast. It was always tricky getting back out to the ship, so sometimes I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-27472617321632951562008-01-15T15:11:00.002Z2009-07-06T13:58:38.863+01:00

I'm back in Brighton after four days at home in Wales. I saw my sister, I saw my Mum. I even visited the nuns at Poor Clares. And I went to a wedding.I usually tend to subscribe to this commonly held misconception: the present is what's here now, the future is yet to come and does not yet exist, and the past, well, is in the past. All that sails into it is gobbled forever. This weekend I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-65986309255253998132008-01-04T12:40:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:02:57.638+01:00

Yesterday, I did two decorating estimates. The first was for an older couple. As I entered their rather posh house, both immediately apologised for the amount of sneezing and coughing they were doing, stricken as they were by wretched colds. "Don't come near me!" the man cried, waving his tissue in the air. During the second estimate, the guy happily announced how he was just over 'it', and how

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-83821227096265685602007-12-22T10:38:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:08:49.301+01:00

It is quite possible to find something awful and beautiful at the same time, to feel love and joy and some terrible, irredeemable loss all rolled up into one tiny ball. Thursday was like that, an exhausting, endurance test of a day that shone with life and connection and even some smiles.The funeral was a good funeral, a fitting farewell to my friend, not glossing over the loss, not remaining

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-57630167197636706672007-12-15T13:02:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:09:16.020+01:00

and even like... but mainly, it's been...

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-66328464434467602142007-12-09T14:00:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:10:08.733+01:00

It has been a queer and blustery week. The wind and rain have been relentless, ferociously banging on my window, demanding to be let in. I've stolen precious moments of my days snatching at my copy of Wuthering Heights, wrapped up in the book's bleak pages while the storms raged outside, happy and content amid the ravages of Emily Bronte's violent narrative. Then on Thursday I received some

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-35642333663049713032007-11-30T12:16:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:13:50.040+01:00

I went up to London last weekend. The trip left me simultaneously drained and exhilerated at the same time, as it usually does. There's something inherently exhausting about London; even whilst I am still on the train I can feel a certain kind of tiredness descend as soon as I see the rooftops peeping back at me, the Thames blinking into view. I feel a wonderful adrenalin comedown just at the

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-24238182304402959362007-11-20T17:43:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:17:08.376+01:00

I wake up, stretch. I make tea, cross the room, I move back again. Turn on the computer, turn it off again, shut the door behind me, check it's closed tight. Down the stairs, out on the street, through the rain, passing windows with the lamps just coming on in them, past windows with sticky signs in them selling flights to New York, Paris and the Costa Brava. I am happy. I'm on the move. There is

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-23662529808044647072007-11-07T23:39:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:18:46.031+01:00

It's late, and I really, really, should be in bed. I'm sat up in the dark in my pink hooded top, my comfy jeans, and the room is chilly. I'm wondering again, wondering, wondering where it all will end - this mind of mine and this beating chest, these legs of mine that just want to run. Running away from; running towards. My legs go, fast as summer, like a young girl racing to catch the ball that

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-41355170957087592432007-11-04T18:44:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:20:16.199+01:00

I am announcing my attempt to keep a pledge I've made to myself to write on This Beautiful Hunger more frequently. Announcements are a good thing because then if I start slipping into the old 'once a month' styley postings, someone will hopefully notice and give me a kick up my pretty backside. I've also recently been pondering the nature of this blog following a comment from the lovely and

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-6266960628249667202007-10-31T19:10:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:24:11.249+01:00

My friend sent me this the other day, and I have to say I'm well on my way to believing that it could be the remedy for all my dog-longings. Like many of my friends, my desire to have a canine companion has been foreshadowed by the fact that I live in a distinctly bijou attic flat, three floors up. So that means a major trek whenever they wanted the loo, and anything but a drugged, ancient or

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-75117554063273125722007-10-31T17:11:00.002Z2009-07-06T14:38:26.160+01:00

Last night I went and spent money that I didn't have on an evening dedicated to the great Spanish poet and dramatist, Garcia Lorca. I commited this rash act (being, as I am, savagely broke), because Lorca happens to be among a handful of artists who have changed my life, and for whom I would, as they say, lay down on the tracks. So parting with my money to go and see it seemed like a relatively

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-24439056722610930772007-10-23T22:24:00.002+01:002009-07-06T14:38:54.069+01:00

Though I'm pretty sure she doesn't know it, it is Mum's birthday today. She is 72. This is a picture of her with my sister and Aunty before her last stroke, looking happy in the sunshine. by e.e. cummingsif there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) haveone. It will not be a pansy heaven nora fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley butit will be a heaven of blackred rosesmy father will

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-52829953313373574542007-10-23T22:08:00.002+01:002009-07-06T14:40:16.146+01:00

I've cut my hair again. Happily (and somewhat unusually) for me, I am experiencing absolutely no post-haircut regret. In fact tonight I'm loving it and am, as a result, rather smug. I'm also thinking again about what is going on underneath all this compulsive haircutting. I seem to be trimming and pruning almost weekly, my hairdo creeping shorter and shorter, its style wavering about, curling and

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-58568290224139805462007-10-01T11:09:00.002+01:002009-07-06T14:42:41.246+01:00

This weekend I went to 500 Acre Wood, near Tunbridge Wells. Bob and I set off there in the car, attracted by its name which reminded us of those endearing creatures from a Hundred Acre Wood in the AA Milne stories. Place names are so interesting; they can be so evocative, and so unlike the place they are actually describing. As we passed through Crowborough, staring at a map I discovered there

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-39378056274721329242007-09-25T23:00:00.002+01:002009-07-06T14:44:18.274+01:00

Tonight I think I need to confess how I'm feeling. Well, I probably don't need to, but I want to; so forgive me for using you as a kind of therapist's couch this evening. For I am confessing to being a mess.In fact, it was last night when I realised what a mess I was, as I struggled out into town to band rehearsal, full of some strange flu-like illness, and sat wobbling on a high black stool

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-41937711248978499082007-09-25T17:03:00.002+01:002009-07-06T14:44:53.845+01:00

After having spent my day putting ads in papers and formulating ingenious plans to procure work in as short a time as possible, I finally found the answer ...

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-30224585546764497152007-09-19T21:36:00.004+01:002009-07-06T17:19:48.475+01:00

Looking in from the outside, you might say tonight that I am lucklustre in presence and partially absent of heart, a sleek shadow skulking about the flat whilst the wind gently rattles the windows. But from the inside, I can definitely tell you that the lights are still on and I am definitely home. I just don't want to do any kind of entertaining this evening. I am pyjama-ed and bed-socked.

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-83812304537891744062007-09-16T22:21:00.004+01:002009-07-06T14:48:40.469+01:00

Since I cut my hair, it no longer gets in my eyes the way it used to; it no longer falls down my back in straight lines or spreads across my pillow in the morning. These days, I'm not sure who it is I look like, or who I thought I was before. A new dress, a different pair of shoes, a pair of trousers; a grey felt hat cocked at the perfect angle, and a person can be changed forever. These clothes,

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-78705287307911724712007-09-06T16:38:00.003+01:002009-07-06T17:15:58.021+01:00

I've been flailing about lately, as perhap you may have discerned from my recent posts. I could also say I've been a bit in the wilderness, a place without borders or signposts, without a nice cup of tea waiting at home for me, with a few wild animals tracking my footsteps and a distinct lack of fresh water.I am tempted, as is easy to do, to assume that this is a problem, that something is wrong

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-80553678547933597642007-08-31T02:09:00.003+01:002009-07-06T17:20:13.058+01:00

Tonight I cycled along the seafront. It was late and the air felt still, the sea was dense. There was a pressure in my head which made me speed up on the concrete and my mind feel like it was richocetting off the balustrade. That's alcohol for you. Inhibitions left to the wind. Thought processes unsteady and darting, like a hundred shoals of tiny fish; full with fleeting feeling, reason empty.I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-47147995159359066652007-08-28T19:16:00.002+01:002009-07-06T17:25:24.684+01:00

We made a routine out of sitting by that cliff edge. We nipped back and forth from our tent as though the cliff, the seamless sky and the sea below it were simply the corner shop or the loo. I lay back and looked. He was constantly naming stars and constellations, happiest to sit and gaze up. I was constantly discovering all the things I still feel I need to do in my life, things that I probably

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-77984979019195550582007-08-23T12:53:00.003+01:002009-07-06T17:27:38.861+01:00

Enough is enough. That's something, ironically, I often have to say to myself a number of times before I finally believe it myself. Today, as I pulled the lid from the old pan of pea soup that's been lying in wait in the corner of my kitchen and I swear I saw something move in there, I realised, enough is enough. The stench of it was an amalgam of shit and vomit. It fizzed and spluttered as I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-16893553946676840682007-08-13T11:25:00.001+01:002009-07-06T17:28:25.876+01:00

I've been having email contact with the Poor Clare Colletine Community lately, whom I spent almost twenty years growing up next to in North Wales. I initially emailed them because I visited their Convent earlier this year when I was home to see Mum in the nursing home, and the experience affected me deeply; it was very healing. It's been lovely to have the contact with them, and keep up my

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-86487975136978158302007-07-29T16:53:00.003+01:002009-09-19T18:52:13.659+01:00

The Smiths have influenced me more than possibly any other band I've listened to in my life, and Morrissey has been a muse of mine since before I was even in my teens. I never got to see them live, which is a significant regret, considering the force and elegance of Morrissey's performances and the almost maniacal fervour of their audiences. There's a violence, a bravery about Morrissey, and

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-45854088403977955392007-07-24T14:33:00.002+01:002009-07-06T17:46:36.506+01:00

She's gone! Five weeks to America and who's knows all that shall come of it. The dearest, sweetest Jo in all of England has embarked on the biggest journey of her life in years, and is now, I imagine, gracing the folk of Seattle with her loveliness as I write.Let it be known, she shall be sorely missed! And I expect photos of pancake stacks and gas stations and those long, long roads ..I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-33936141906286637262007-07-18T17:10:00.002+01:002009-07-06T17:48:12.333+01:00

Chocolate pie with whipped cream. Oh my sweet Lord, it is all I can think about today. As soon as a free moment enters my day, there it is, its gooey, chocolatey, whiteness gleaming back at me in full, sensual, naked glory. You may think I'm dramatising my craving a little for effect. I wish. I've been stuck at my computer all day, writing advertorials and restaurant reviews, the kind that

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-46787231401450087302007-07-04T18:52:00.003+01:002009-07-06T17:50:31.913+01:00

In my new and recent bid for healthy living, I have not only purchased a video, The Crunch - The Latest, Most Effective Way To Flatten Your Stomach for 59p from Barnardos, and almost severed both my knee joints and done temporary damage to my nether regions by cycling at top speed just about everywhere on my new friend, Jeopardy, but I have also been making healthy, vitamin packed soup. In fact,

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-43744897474178597772007-06-30T18:24:00.002+01:002009-07-06T17:52:16.656+01:00

The fucking rain does not stop raining and the fucking streets do not stop streaming with all this dirty water. It's British Summertime and the umbrellas are out, I'm sitting inside my flat with a hangover, with a comedown. Saw a couple of unmemorable folky/indiey musical acts last night in the most uncomely surroundings, improved only by black and white wall paintings that depicted a blind man

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-11217203723510790672007-06-26T13:27:00.002+01:002009-07-06T20:02:40.388+01:00

These days are dark days, or perhaps light days with the curtains half-open, semi-shut. These days I am leaping from a tower into blackness, or I am rolled up in bed, clutching sheets and blankets. I'm not sure where I begin or where this story is going, my life's ebbing away and only just beginning. I'm on the right road, but quite lost. I have achieved, and the future spreads out in front of me

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-38690919764715584862007-06-13T17:15:00.002+01:002009-07-06T20:03:47.700+01:00

I cycled into town today, mist billowing towards me. I have had a complicated relationship with my bicycle, Jeopardy. It has been fraught, to say the least. I am feeling now, however, that we are finally beginning to understand each other, rather than simply tolerating each other, or at worst, forming what can only be described as a dysfunctional bond, based on mutual dislike and mistrust. I

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-26488105504256284912007-06-08T15:32:00.002+01:002009-07-06T20:04:32.704+01:00

I finally have a Myspace! In fact, I now have two, one for my songs and my band, which I have in fact named after this very weblog, and one for my poetry. So do check them out! www.myspace.com/thisbeautifulhungerwww.myspace.com/clarefdavies

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-19785901358040332222007-06-03T13:00:00.002+01:002009-07-06T20:12:23.244+01:00

First of all, apologies to all who are still reading my blog for the ridiculously long time since I last posted. I've been caught up in other things, mainly making music. I seem to find it hard to keep up both music and writing equally, so either one or the other tends to suffer.I'm just back from Mary Magdelen's church. It's an eccentric church, so it doesn't surprise me that I was drawn, via

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18672020.post-82211436379200382042007-05-10T20:41:00.002+01:002009-07-06T20:12:40.872+01:00

Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14796173741404934467noreply@blogger.com0