Saturday

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 chasing another faceless man in a top hat. I drank pear cider, brandy and tequila, talked Big Brother and wobbled home on my bike in the early hours. It's forecast storms for 40 days and nights or something like that, and we may well be in Noah's Ark by the end of the month if we go on this rate, or in some other equally technicoloured Biblical disaster epic.

So what's new pussycat? I'm grumpy. Have written at least five beginnings of songs, none of which have proceeded past that point before I've given up. I've considered doing many things, done none, lay down, got up again, lay down, got up and trawled YouTube, felt depressed because I'm a girl, not a boy, because I'm unknown, not famous and because people say I'm powerful and I feel weak. I thought about how come female singer/songwriters with beautiful voices and pretty lyrics about the confusions of being a sensitive woman full of longings make me want to gag, and I tried to write a song about it but didn't get past the fourth line. Hoped to God that at least if all else fails and ruins in my life, I shall at least not end up singing songs like that.

I lay on my bed this afternoon, looked back at my life and saw nothing of value, nothing at all. For a few minutes I regretted all of it, saw nothing in the future because it felt like all that I am is nothing compared to all that I'm not. Oh that terrible place, the one we all strive so hard to stay out of falling, where there is only blackness coming in.

I feel better for it though - for the descent, for that sacred act of despair. I actually feel quite cheerful now. I can see the lovely joke of it all again and feel plugged into a bright source of electricity. When I love how messed up it is, life becomes a shining, brilliant thing. Still keeping up a grumpy front but am not really, I've got a cup of tea in my hand and am happy to remember such things in life as cake, penguins and disability carts, and that songs such as this exist, and that they always, always, make me smile.