SOCIAL ANXIETY PART ONE

Sometimes there is a disproportionate amount of men in the cafe where I asked for a flick knife. Most of them are playing cards or watching the football and they leave me alone but from time to time one of them starts saying stuff to me. The day after the flick knife episode I did something out of character. In an attempt to assimilate and get over an occasional social anxiety I reached over the counter in a really pushy, selfish way towards what looked like a delicious sponge cake and the man next to me started to get a bit miffed and asked me if I would like him to move as it was clear I had no regard for him. I told him the Spanish equivalent of 'no, you're alright mate', and then he started to interrogate me using verbs and nouns that were a bit too colloquial for my liking so I had no idea what he was going on about. Don't ask me why but I said the first thing to get rid of him and answered, 'not until nine o'clock', to whatever he was enquiring about and left, sponge cake in hand, leaving him scratching his head. I'm wondering what it was he asked. Maybe it was whether I am legally resident here and do I have all my papers in order or whether I was going to give him a bite of that cake or else. I will never be able to go there again.

Mack the Knife

I sometimes wonder what I am on. When you have a snack or a cake in Spain you are always offered cutlery and a napkin. The waitress in my cafe asked me if I would like said utensils and forgetting the word at that moment I said, 'oh, a flick-knife will do'.

So much has happened recently that I was too busy living it to comment but one thing I thought I'd share was over the Christmas period I found myself in Liberty's in Regent Street and at one point I thought we would never get out as I felt I was being sucked into some sort of neurological experiment that only occurs when I enter big cities. Mr van de Ven announced he needed the loo and off he went leaving me to entertain myself with men's silk dressing gowns in the style of William Morris. He was gone awhile and I felt an awful existential angst that something might have happened to him once fifteen minutes had passed. That English side of me didn't want anyone to know I might be perturbed so pretended I was interested in the old photos and history of Liberty's that adorn the walls outside said lavs. I comforted myself while looking at them that things used to be, well, what exactly? I don't know, somewhat neater, ordered. It didn't take me long to admit that things were probably much shittier than now but anyway. While waiting outside the loos grumpy fathers with their kids and faces like thunder were heard muttering on passing, 'this is why there should be MEN's and WOMEN'S loos'. Then an American man, quite tall but someone who, despite his height, you might feel you could mess with,  came out with his young kid and told his wife that said kid was OK now but some 'guy' in the loo was berating him that the kid had a digestive problem and on seeing him spending twenty minutes in the loo said, and I quote ,' I know you Americans have a shit diet but you should in fact take the kid to A and E and he ought to be given an enema', or words to that effect. As soon as I heard these words I just knew who said them and obviously hung around to hear what was coming next. The supposed wife then exploded and asked, ' and what did YOU say??', to which the supposed husband grew a few inches and said, ' well I TOLD HIM our son was only seven!'. The wife then asked what the 'guy' said and the husband said confidently , 'well of course he just shrank and shut up!' I tried to stifle a laugh but at the same time felt a frisson as I knew that it was Mr van de Ven and that there was no way he would have shrank in such a situation and if anything would have preferred a massive punch up. Just then yer man exits stage left and says to me ' Jesus, twenty minutes to have a slash, THAT kid needs an enema!' 

It has been a tough old day. One of those heavy-hearted ones that you think you won't get through. So it was a blessing when I found a twenty one year old diary amongst the rubble that inhabits the study at the moment. On reading it I am not sure whether I ought to burn the bloody thing or tear bits out and frame them. Maybe send them to the people I was writing about? Half of London seems to be in there. Quite a few people are written with a lot of affection while others don't come out in one piece. I hardly recognise myself when I write such nonsense as ....'I must maintain a low profile if I am to get through the Christmas period'..... 'My God, he really thinks he can still do that VOODOO SHIT on me?'..... L came to see me. We went to the Blue Posts. I had a stout she drank a Whiskey Mack. She had to pick up her DAT tape from a Guy Called Gerald'..........'Last night I couldn't sleep. H asked me why and I told him it was because I had a song going round in my head. He asked which one and I told him, 'We Built this City on Rock and Roll'. 

My late father never went to a gym. Instead he would read the Daily Mail to get his cardio vascular exercise. Likewise, I read the Telegraph headlines just to put a few revs in the old ticker. You can be delighted or sufficiently wound up when reading them depending how class conscious you are which if you are British will mean more than you would like to admit. You can all sleep well tonight or sit bolt upright knowing that Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson's girlfriend is referred to as his consort which is a word usually reserved for the spouse of a monarch but then we all know Mr Johnson only ever wanted to be king of the world. Just below this screamer is a headline that says it is going to reveal how Carrie's sixty nine pound coat will reinforce Johnson's 'people's government' message. You have to pay to read the premium bits of the Telegraph online which is pretty much all of it. Regretfully the EU budget for Ministry of Keeping an Eye on the Brits has been cut so we will never know but I can tell you that Ms Symonds is referred to in the continental press as First Lady, Lady Brexit, and Boris Johnson's feminist girlfriend. Oh well, keep on trucking because there's going to be a lot more of this shite.

DON'T GET DONE BY BREXIT

Brexit is like the housework. It never f#cking ends!

It might be a long shot but maybe those Labour voters in Labour strongholds have taken a leaf out of Boris Johnson's book and are lying when they say they are going to vote Tory.