You're supposed to cry for days, I understand. Curled up in a duvet, sobbing and forgetting to shower. For me it's more like being on hard drugs. I'm up, overwhelmingly relieved to be free, then down, surrounded by the detritus of our life together and unable to believe the devastation we've wrought. It's my last night in the flat tonight before moving out to Maisie's spare room for a month. Fish and I finally split up. Four years of living together and such an entangled life. We were really miserable though, it was the right decision but god I miss him. He wasn't ultimately to give me what I need, nor I him, but I love him so much and right now, wrapped in a duvet that smells like him, there's nothing I want more than for him to suddenly come through the door and cuddle me and the whole horrible thing to have been a dream.

Logic tells me that he hasn't come through the door and cuddled me for a long time since we've been together. Frankly, tonight, last night and all, having been on lovely Flo's sofa for a week, logic can go fuck itself. And I'm going to have some of Fish's lovely whisky.

Chapter One

I remember learning about the shiny girls. They had strong, athletic brown legs, all the better for sweeping the netball high into the net. Also swingy hair (even the ones with short hair somehow swung it) and white teeth. They looked somehow brighter, more defined than me and my brown frizz and hated glasses. Even at eleven I was aware that they seemed to know who they were, seemed to embrace their personalities wholeheartedly, untroubled by my fears, totally without my secret worry that deep down, where a nice firm core of central 'me' should have been, sat a mound of colourless jelly, endlessly grasping at surrounding personalities in order to borrow something solid. Nothing stuck though. Not then, not now. I'd make a vague gesture at adopting a set of values, only to back away from the full statement - mine was an adolescence spent hovering palely at the edge, watching and jealous of the freedom the others seemed to have just to be themselves.

Now, from the outside I probably looked pretty sorted. Nice job in editorial, living with a boyfriend, lots of going out in London. Unfortunately, inside I still felt exactly the same - it took the Autumn of 2013 to make me realise why.

'Are you going to shut that cupboard?' I tensed slightly at my boyfriend's voice. Of course I was going to shut the cupboard. Bastard. Just... later. I got up and shut it with a controlled movement, meant to express my maturity and injured feelings that he might have ever thought I'd forgotten it.
Yes. Things were going great. I bit back a sarcastic 'hello, my love', aware that 1) it would be quite dickish and 2) it wouldn't help. He walked past me to the computer and switched it on, while I fought my fairly common urge to bash the computer brainless with my pestle and mortar. I never thought I'd ever live in a house with so many screens. Never thought I'd have so many conversations about smartphones either. Well, listen to so many conversations about smartphones, anyway. Somewhere, in a beautifully peaceful parallel universe, a stronger-willed, more decisive, cupboard-closing version of me lives in a small, internet free cottage in Wales. I write for a living, have a dark, intense, hunting sort of a boyfriend, who ravishes me on a daily basis and brings home venison, several alternative-style friends and remain blissfully unaware of Twitter. Probably there's a local pub too, with really good pies.
'Good day?' I ask instead. He turns, smiles and nods. Then turns back. I head to the sofa and sit down, a now familiar ache forming at the pit of my stomach. Too young for this only twenty-eight too young. Should be laughing and shagging and kissing and delighted with each other still. I stamp down on the Mills & Boon inside my head and try to remember that we've been with living with each other for four years now.

'You're asking too much,' said Sarah bluntly. 'That's what happens to relationships. You can't just keep staring googly-eyed at each other all the time - it'd be exhausting. Sometimes you just need to come home, nod at each other and be in the same room.'
I grunt, probably fairly unattractively and take another sip of my ill chosen chilli cocktail (sometimes my inability to choose the same thing on a menu twice has its downsides). 'I know it changes, but I just don't know if I can be happy with the way it is at the moment - I see him and I melt, because I find him adorable still, but it's like he looks straight through me. I could be doing salsa naked and he'd just shake his head indulgently before turning back to the computer.' I've had a couple of cocktails now and am aware that tears are hovering. Sternly, I tell myself to change the subject. Unfortunately, I've never responded particularly well to authority. I want Sarah to tell me what to do. She's far more logical than me, with a glorious lack of empathy that makes it possible for her to give ruthless, totally unintuitive solutions to even the messiest emotional outpourings. Even I'm not prepared this time though.
'How about a break up regime?'
'A what?'
'Get yourself fighting fit - it's a tough world out there in the single market - you've got big boobs but frankly otherwise you're just not ready to take it on. You should get yourself ready, then once you're prepared you can leave, but with a rock hard body, hobbies and all that other stuff that single people have to fill up the time that isn't taken up with ferociously resenting their partners.'
I had to admit, as an idea, it had merit. And so the break-up fitness training began.

Lukewarm

It's the 5th of November today and fireworks are exploding all over Finsbury Park. At least, I hope they're fireworks. It did cross my mind that there's never been a better time for a gang hit...

We are inside, in the warm(ish - I'm determined to leave the heating off til the very last moment). Fish is listening to his course videos, strange code-based things narrated by a very monotonous but reportedly brilliant German man, and I decided to come online and attempt to pick up my poor, discarded blog. We've just eaten delicious Cottage Pie, courtesy of Delia's new Waitrose recipe http://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/recipes/recipe_directory/d/delia_cottage_pie.html. Definitely worth a go, if anyone stumbles across it - though would consider adding some cheese to the mash.

Fish update (feel free to skip):
We remain horribly lukewarm, after many dramatic scenes. I veer between sadness at the idea of leaving, to anger, to fear of becoming a bitter, childless 35 yr old. However, we are chatting more and even occasionally (gasp!) having sex, so I suppose that's something. Still, for the first time I am really seeing the merit in tall, expressive Greek Tycoons with a Dark Past who Sweep a girl Off Her Feet, Out The Office and to a mansion somewhere hot. Somehow, cottage pies and monotonous German men don't quite have the swoon factor of a fictional Mediterranean principality. Especially when Fish tends to forget to actually kiss me. On the other hand, sometimes working in romance fiction can be dangerous and very few of those Greek Tycoons have a sense of humour. And Fish did buy me a balloon ride for my birthday. With champagne. So there's still romance, just less of it in everyday life. Meh. Anyway...
Boyfriend section over

November is National Novel Writing Month, where the aim is to write 50,000 words in one month. http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/regions/europe-england-london. I thought maybe I'd give it a go, shout it out to the nicely anonymous web and see if I can get to 50,000. However, that does make it fairly likely that a large percentage of the words will be gobbledegook (isn't that a lovely word - I'll do my best to use it as much as possible).

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...