Hello, rather neglected diary. Sorry. I haven't really felt like writing. To be honest, I don't really feel like writing now, but I had a Thursday night in and it seemed wrong to not at least try. Besides, I have something to record:

I have made a pact with myself to not nag Fish for a week. I swear that, until this time (20.30) next Thursday, I'm going to stop the reproaches and stop expecting anything from him. We are pretty awful at the moment, and finally nearly did break up, but both decided that we don't want to. But I'm now very scared simply by how much it was on the table. Seriously thinking again about your relationship makes you have to face how much of yourself is defined by it. And it was more than I had thought. Bit like having the rug pulled out from beneath you - the world suddenly looks different when you're on your arse. And now our house makes me cry, because I keep seeing all the stuff we collected and how safe I used to feel in it and instead I feel wretched and angry and scared. I really, really loved the fact that I felt he saw the best in me, that in spite of my lack of general effort and irritating qualities he saw me as someone desirable and I miss taking that for granted so much. And now I watch myself tip-toeing around, alternating between nervousness and spiky little comments and I don't find that person loveable either. Hard to blame him if he's lost the spark in his eyes when he looks at me. Though of course I do. I blame him for making me less as a person, for knocking down my confidence by seeing me as smaller, but I blame me more for fitting myself into the person he sees me as. It just seems like such a waste not to love each other with more freedom than that. It's like it's gone sour and I don't know how to get it back. I feel so stupid. 

Eugh. Cheerful stuff, this. Sorry, internet, there's probably more than enough of this at the moment. I'd write a bestselling novel instead, but there's enough of them around as well. Besides, currently it would have to be a Mills & Boon in bondage-style hiding and no one wants to see that. 

Let's think of some other news. I am currently doing/failing to actually do and pretty much just reading Course RA https://www.coursera.org/, which is an awesome, free thing where lecturers post courses and set essays - it's incredible. My course is on Science Fiction and Fantasy, and as I was watching a video lecture, the lecturer recommended a particular edition of Grimm's Fairytales. While listing to the lecture, I opened up another tab and downloaded it, all the while thinking: it's happened! I'm actually in the future! It was very exciting.

And shit. That went all to hell. Just had a row with him on the phone. He rung to say he was going to an art installation. Not to invite me. I thought he was and got excited but he wasn't. And then I got upset. It's just so strange. I would never be able to get him to go to an art installation - to be frank, who is he going for? It increasingly feels as though I'm not welcome in his new Guardian life. Which is bizarre, as ironically I'd have thought I would like them very much. If we ever met, of course. Oh dear, satsumas and black tea. He's now coming home instead and I'm horribly afraid he will officially want to break up. The thing is, that is better if he doesn't want to be with me. I'm so messed up and needy and desperate at the moment that I can't even take the step back to look at what I actually feel for him. Ah, the joys of relationships. 

what to cook?

So, I'm still half-reading a manuscript (not bad, might get bought!), but really I've been thinking for the last hour about what I'm going to eat. We're going skiing tomorrow (well, Sat morning at 4am, but that's basically tomorrow), and so I'm trying to use up everything I've got. This is:

- fresh Basil, in a half pint glass, drooping
- Carrots, slightly bendy
- Four radishes (3 - 2 - have eaten the radishes, so never mind about them)
- Two celery stalks
- possibly mice (keep seeing little whirrs of movement)
- Three peppers, one orange, one red, one yellow (they might last)
- An opened Camembert (mmmm)

I also possess a craving for comforting, not too fatty soup. The obvious soup to go for is the carrot, apple and celery soup that is obligingly sitting in my basic soup book - to be extra annoyingly perfect, it even requires a tablespoon of fresh basil. But it's cold and dark - I want something more velvety and obliging, not shouty and zingy. Am therefore going for Tom Conran's White bean and carrot soup from my posh, utterly delicious soup book, and adding celery (meh - it doesn't taste of that much anyway, if we're honest). I am therefore off to the shops and let's see how it goes...

All delicious looking so far - bubbling away...about to attempt pesto to use up the basil leaves. Hold onto your seats, people, clearly, this Thursday night's going to be a wild one... (it's actually amazing what I will do to avoid reading a manuscript)

Hello world

Happy New Year, oh blog of mine. It has been a fraught Christmas, to say the least. Tricky family issues leading directly to boyfriend's depression leading on equally directly to me drunkenly dumping him on New Year's. We're still together now, and I have apologised, he's apologised, yada yada, but it's all still rather tense, to be honest. It's not easy to forgive somebody not being there for you when you need them, especially when that person is your boyfriend, well partner really, who you have been considering buying a house with. It does raise fears for the future, considering I'm only likely to need more support, rather than less. Anyway. Think we've reached a point where either he goes to get help, or we will break up, but since I do love him very much that isn't an ultimatum, just a prediction. I can't deal with the fact that when something really bad happens, there's a chance he won't be able to be there for me. Equally, can't deal with his total inability to consider my feelings as being affected by his own. On the other hand, we still get on really well, the sex is ok, but feels like he's in total denial and like I'm making all of the emotional running. Meh.

 you are in every textured moment
 feels like I'm woven into you so the idea of
parting seems impossible
 perhaps what we made was always fragile
easily breakable and with sharp edges
bad enough to lose years of work
worse still to believe it was always flawed
all those hours of creation... not worth finishing

 Anyway, I'm currently making this: , and have been accidentally not doing work at some points on my work at home day (hence the fact I'm still going now), and it is almost unimaginably delicious so far. Am very excited indeed. I love sitting on the sofa when something is simmering. :) Also, I'm learning to code! It's this brilliant little project :. Since my publishing career is going precisely nowhere, it seemed a good idea to learn some more relevant skills than what exactly makes a good alpha hero...

EPIC, pain, nice breakfast and feast

I am Very Tired today after a very heavy weekend, which has made me realise how far short of hardcore I actually fall. I've taken Friday and Monday off, as the weekend began with a Thursday night Thanksgiving meal at the astonishingly inept Bodean's. We went there last year as well, and after a memorable meal involving a two hour delay on our table, tin foil in the soup, absolutely no available waiters, no apple cobbler (leading to one very sad American man), we recieved a big discount off the bill and left slightly less annoyed than we would have been otherwise. This year, I gave in to my fear of being left out of anything, no matter how little I may actually wish to go, and for some reason agreed to pay the evil crones at Bodean's another £30 for mediocre, microwaved food, bad house wine, unbelievably appalling organisation (another two hour wait for our table in spite of having paid a deposit of around £100), more missing apple cobbler (poor, poor American Adam), a charge of £1.40 per portion of cake that we'd bought as it was our friend's birthday and as a final touch, such slow service that Fish and I missed the last train home. To anyone reading this - avoid it. Pay more, go elsewhere, make your own Thanksgiving dinner if you too happen to have an American friend who flies over once a year. Or simply wait for Christmas. On the good side, I've now got a few ham bones with which to make stock, and from there potentially some yellow split pea soup.

Anyway, to continue with my weekend of epically drunken proportions, the next day I met my lovely friend Adam for lunch at a great little Turkish restaurant in St Christopher's Square, which after googling I've just discovered is a secret chain (alas) - Sofra, where we had two very nice bottles of wine and then wandered off, very late, to our evening things. I missed the 'Suprise!' bit of my surprise celebration drinks, while he missed meeting his work friends at the event he'd organised. Still, it was yummy, and worth it (lamb and hummous...mmm...). Several drinks down (the surprise drinks were in a rum bar), and I found myself in some roof gardens, which were pretty. Adam had returned....then it's hazy, but there were burritos. It was a great night actually, until I woke up when Fish got back from his Friday night gig at 7am (he is more hardcore than me) and realised I was about to die. Fast forward to that evening when the Thanksgiving group (more Fish's friends than mine, for the most part and I'm always slightly nervous around them, however they are really fun so once I do manage to relax it's usually worth it!), and Fish and I were both feeling pretty horrendous. It's now Sunday, and we got back at 6.30am this morning. Suffice it to say, I'm too old for this. The club night was called EPIC, and though it was pretty, it also felt mostly like an excuse for taking drugs. I'm uncomfortable with the drugs world. The effects might be lovely, but I hate the language, all the secrecy and the self-conscious, faintly icky 'waiting' for it to kick in. It always feels to me like a tacit admittance that it's not possible to survive the night while straight. Of course alcohol is exactly the same, it just often feels more sociable and less pretentious. Maybe that's not the case if you're a teetotaller though! Anyway, by the end of last night it looked like there'd been some sort of natural disaster. Everything was quite quiet apart from the thumping bass and all around Alexandra Palace were casualities, head in hands. It was sort of cool actually. I wandered through it at 6am, feeling like an explorer on a new, strange planet, floating a bit ( ;) ) and with a great sense of pride at being a survivor!

I do realise, looking at the above outings, that I have a rather lovely life, even if I'm living miles beyond my means, there's never going to be a better time to do that. :) Last weekend we had a George R.R. Martin feast, in honour of his Game of Thrones series - if you like fantasy at all and haven't read them.... well, then, you are silly and I suspect your fantasy-loving credentials, so please correct this immediately - he's a beautiful writer who loves food. After being made hungry by his books for six years, I came across this beautiful, beautiful website. Immediately, we had to have a feast. I'll do a proper blog about it with pictures, but it was absolutely delicious. Quails drowned in butter got my vote, though the duck with orange, chilli and honey sauce was a strong contender, as were Lucy's brilliant Elizabethan Smallcakes. Mmm....

Finally, looking back at my last entry, I'm rather ashamed. Fish and I are now much better, as is our wont (though he's not able to sleep after his weekend of clubbing and so is currently staring red eyed at Assassin's Creed. He's punching out very bad Minstrels at the moment - it's an odd game), however we talked a bit and I'm withholding judgement. He's pretty nice really, I suppose, even if we do keep having rows about the electric bills. The current plan is to look at buying houses in about a year, so we're being adults and everything. However, I feel much meaner about my dad, and might need to go back and edit that a bit, except that it feels like cheating. One of the things I've learned, writing over the years, is that you can almost never tell which bits of your writing you will look back on and shudder at and which bits suddenly stand out as natural, honest and elegant. It's as though my voice wheels through various pretensions before settling down and ringing true for a moment, but I can't do that on purpose. Meh.

Now, I'm both running out of battery on this lap top and pretty near falling asleep, so will leave you with a delicious, really simple breakfast that I had for my last Work At Home day (love this editorial perk!), that's also a great hangover cure, if, hypothetically speaking, you knew you were working at home so had lots of wine when you went out for dinner the night before...

Peri peri eggs

You'll need:

• Two very fresh duck eggs (just try to buy them from anywhere other than a supermarket. Come to Finsbury park and visit the Eggman in Nags Head market on the Saturday. You'll never go back to Tesco. Unless you want eggs some other time than a Saturday. *sigh. Hen eggs will do fine, they're just less creamy)
• Two slices of Tiger bread (or other yummy, firm bread with some taste to it)
• Mature cheddar cheese, enough slices to cover both bits of bread
• Extra hot peri peri sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Smoked paprika
• Salt & Pepper

How to make your eggs

• Preheat your grill to about 180 degrees. Pop in your two slices of bread in a grill pan/baking tray/whatever's to hand
• Boil the kettle and pour boiling water into a saucepan big enough to take two poaching eggs. Add a touch of vinegar if the eggs aren't that fresh and bring to just below simmer
• By then one side of the bread should be brown. Turn it over and layer with the cheese. Put back under the grill
• Crack your eggs separately into two small container of some kind (whatever is to hand - it's just to give you more control as you put them into the water).
• Very gently slip one egg then the other into the water. If it's not bubbling, they shouldn't spread too much. Leave them alone for a couple of minutes.
• Meanwhile, check your cheese - it's probably melted. On top of the cheese, spoon peri peri sauce (spread with a knife for more even coverage), then add several drops of Worcestershire sauce. Put them back under the grill (if they are already looking very done then turn the grill down
• Once your eggs are cooked to your liking (about 2 and a half minutes usually leaves the whites done while the yolks will be beautifully liquid), take out the cheese on toast and put on a plate, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place on top
• Season to your taste with salt and pepper (remember both the peri peri and the cheese are already quite salty), and sprinkle on some smoked paprika. You might want some extra peri peri sauce to dip the bread into.
• Eat immediately and feel the (hypothetical) hangover recede...

How to be Jane Eyre

I've just got back from an editorial outing to Jane Eyre (yes, really - we're stretching 'relevance training' to its limits, and boldly leaving the office where no team has before) and now have a beer in hand as I've successfully resisted the pub, so a beer is thoroughly earned. In the RUN is a spicy tomato sauce of the 'let's cook something really innovative! Oops, I've ended up with tomatoes, onions and sausages again...' type. It's nice having the house to myself. As ever, Fish and I continue to get on each others' nerves a fair amount, so some space is a good thing.

The problem is, oh gloriously empty blog, that recently my dad (who has Parkinson's) has taken a step (a wobbly one) for the worse. I love him very much, however there's no denying that the Parkinson's sufferer can be difficult to be around. It's a sneaky, non-committal kind of disease which so far dodges any specific set of symptoms. Rather like a particularly evil fairground, or an inventive-yet-unskilled one night stander, it's a different, crappy ride for everyone. Dad's 'executive planning' appears to be affected, leading to difficulties in performing tasks which require thought and planning. Sadly, this is the case for most very useful tasks, which makes this particular symptom a bit of a bugger, particularly for one of the most intelligent, reliable men I know. Suddenly, my mum is having to take on responsibilities which she outsourced to Dad around 30 years ago, and no longer has that much of an idea how to do. This has led to a fair amount of resentment, of the 'I'd be shouting right now in the middle of this restaurant if you weren't ill, but since you are, I'll wait until we're alone and shout at you for not organizing the booking of the table and lying about it' type. Mum, let it be placed on record, is doing amazingly, but it can't be easy and she's not to be blamed for letting her anger show on occasion. To put it bluntly, home is no longer the idyllic refuge I now realise it once was. I am aware of how lucky I am for the almost absurdly idyllic childhood enjoyed by my brother and I, but sadly this doesn't seem to stop my resentment that it's over! Soon, it is clear, my brother and I will need to grow up properly and start looking after Dad along with Mum. This is hardly the end of the world - they are both pretty wonderful people, even a Parkinsonian Dad beats 90% of the world's population hands down, however it has made me start thinking about my choices, and my relationship. So, now we're comfortably back at the beginning of this original diversion, which was of course, ME. And my feelings. Hello again. :) So, I've been suddenly looking at Fish, in all his weird, cute, funny, frustrating, delicious, infuriating, distant, mood-swinging, selfish glory, and as you can probably tell by the order of those adjectives, I've been worrying. It's one thing to have a relationship based on staying together while you are making each other happy, but rather a different thing when you need support; unqualified, unresentful and loving, even when you're being a bit of a bitch. A man who sulks if he's not wearing the right shoes to cross grass, or if you buy the wrong type of soil is fine, just so long as a) you can cope without smacking him with your beautiful RUN pan and b) you're not looking for support during those times when his carefully controlled world isn't as he would like it. Oh, and c) that you have enough energy to dance round the various limits which allow a Fish to survive the rough and tumble of an illogical world. So, I'm worrying. Sadly, one of Fish's limits is a failure to understand the idea of offering unqualified, hypothetical support. For him, everything has limitations because otherwise he might make a promise he can't keep. The upside here is that he'll never promise anything he doesn't commit to (unless he's drunk), the downside is a complete inability to say the right things to halt someone needing reassurance as they slowly slide down the slope marked, 'Fuuuuuck, this is going nowhere....' Anyway, I'm going to make an effort to not pre-judge him, but to see what happens when I do need him, and if he's there. The problem is, one doesn't always want to ask, and a lack of empathy when his own feelings are in any way involved means that I always have to. Meh. We'll see how it goes. Let's give it a month, and on the 10th of November (when it's about time for my monthly blog post anyway) I'll attempt to reappear and look at this again.

Jane Eyre, of course, wouldn't expect anything, and so would receive everything. Jane Eyre would never dare to ask for help, but would deal with it in such a way that she seems ever more intriguing and delicious, until Rochester is begging to be involved. Over the last 15 years I have come to the sad, yet accurate conclusion that I will never be Jane Eyre.

Junk Food

After about four years of increasing food snobbery I appear to be having a small regression, foodwise. Yesterday, I bought (whisper it) frankfurters from (even quieter) Tesco's. They were amazing. I miss them again even thinking about them. I bought a can of Tesco Tuscan bean soup, chopped up the frankfurters and microwaved the hell out of the whole lot. Afterwards I felt replete, filled with meat flavoured water. Yum. To make matters worse, on the way home last night (I'd been out cocktailing with one of my friends who's just got engaged - she won't read this but yay Helen!), I stopped into Akdeniz (awesome, ever-open Finsbury park place) and bought a cuppasoup. Admittedly, was a Tom Yum cuppasoup, so potentially a little classier, but I had it for lunch today and upon checking the ingredients found them reassuringly heavy on MSG. In an attempt to make up for this, I've currently got a vegetarian (plus a bit of chicken since surely that doesn't really count as meat...) curry simmering on the stove (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364/spicy-root-and-lentil-casserole, sort of, but with extra cumin seeds, fresh chilli, mango chutney, tomato paste, coconut cream, cardamom pods, coriander seeds and East End jalfrezi powder - I sometimes suspect that my general success in cooking is really just a result of an excess of ingredients. Half of them cancel each other out but some of them are bound to hit the mark). Not only is this Made From Scratch but it's simmering evenly and softly on my unreliable, always a bit too hot gas hob, courtesy of my mother's birthday present to me - an amazing RUN pan. It's big, black and beautiful, and I've spent a bit too long polishing it with vegetable oil (I was working at home today and avoiding a particularly repellent bit of work - there are so many more options for distraction at home, it's dangerous). So, posh pan, good ingredients - what more can you ask? Well, my redemption continues - I have no real idea what one of the vegetables in here is! My cousin and I bought it from the Vegetable Shop of Joy (I've ranted http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364/spicy-root-and-lentil-casseroleabout it before, but please visit it on Seven Sister's Road, is called Frank's + something in Turkish). It's something like an Enoch, but not. Edin, maybe? Anyway, it's white inside and very starchy when you peel it - as slippery as soap on the inside. On the outside it looks a bit like a wizened coconut, with a hairy yet peelable skin. Ah - some googling reveals that it might be an Edo. Anyway, I've just tried a piece and can reveal that it tastes like a very sticky potato - it's actually quite nice, and will definitely use in curry again. To go with my Edo (or whatever it's called), I have celeriac, lentils and carrots, so is a pleasingly unconventional curry. For interesting descriptions of weird vegetables - take a look at this article: http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/features/2186.html. Just remembered my pan goes in the oven as well as on the hob!! *Runs off to switch oven on and put it in there, just because I CAN.


It occurs to me, looking back in this blog, that I totally missed the riots. I spent a blog being upset about feeling left out, but didn't feel the urge to document something as depressing, timely and revealing as the riots. Oh well. Clearly this just isn't the kind of blog that covers important world events, and it would be a shame to confuse my profile now. I will just say that I'm planning on volunteering, but still trying to figure out where a slightly confused English student who's irredeemably middle class can best be useful, rather than irritating.

Something rather strange and sad happened to me today. Since my promotion kicked in, I now have an enforced work at home day each week. In theory, this is a time to read manuscripts away from all the distractions my colleagues (who are both lovely and chatty) present. When it's as hot as today, it seems in practice to consist of my staring out of the window and wishing I were in France. The upshot of this (and a ridiculous amount of 'ooh, there's my fridge, I should eat some more cheese') is that I went out in Finsbury Park not wearing enough clothes. As a young(ish) woman in Finsbury park, generally a short skirt means that all your vegetables from the shop are free, but also that all the men in scary restaurant A will cheer when you go past, all the men pouring out of potentially BNP pub B will go silent and stare at you until you feel like you might as well be completely naked and at least four vans will beep. Honestly, if you're feeling unattractive, and you're under 40, come and give it a go - you'll leave with a smile, but potentially also mere metres ahead of a sexually frustrated throng.

Anyway, so I went to try out an intriguing Tagine place that I've lived next to for three years and never quite gone to (was ok - but very pre-made indeed, and suspect he microwaved it in the Tagine pot to reheat), sat outside, and carried on reading my manuscript (god bless the kindle and the boyfriend who bought it for me). About ten minutes later, a man appeared on the other side of the restaurant railing. He was white, about 50-60, oddly twitchy and something about him was just a bit off. He hailed me with the words, 'Are you...ENGLISH?' I admitted that yes, I was, and he launched into a story beginning with his brain damage after a piece of grain found its way into his eye (he was a builder). I couldn't hear all of it because of the traffic (I explained he couldn't join me owing to the manuscript/work/because I'm a bit worried you'd pull a knife and somehow you seem like you have a basement I'd never want to visit, so he was shouting over lorries), however the upshot was he wanted to learn to read. He asked if I could help him and I said no. I said no because he was a bit scary, and because some lady on a bus had given him an organisation to google. But after he slumped away, I felt awful. Yes, he was a bit weird, but he could have been telling the truth and isn't it horrible that I felt so unable to even consider giving him the help he wanted? A few years ago, I might have done it, but now all I could see was basement/knife/he keeps using my name in every sentence (oddly disconcerting when said in a very gentle way over lorries). So, well, I don't know what I should have done. Wouldn't have hurt me to sit with him over coffee in a public place for goodness sake.

I felt a bit better because he came back and asked a lot of involved (and extremely strange) questions about my Kindle, which allowed me to put him more safely in the "definitely strange, potentially mad" box which is so comforting to all us normal people. The thing is, after he'd gone for the second time, I realised (I think) what was going on - he was lonely. As simple and horrible as that - he was reduced to creating conversations out of nothing for some human contact. I get a bit wittery after a day of working at home alone - I dread to think what would happen after a month. London is a lonely, mad place for those without friends.