The SKEKSIS

Goodness me, that bitch knows what buttons to press. I've been sat at my desk today like a type 4 Chernobyl reactor, circa 1986.

Now, being the master of discretion, I won’t name names, well at least not until I’ve had a glass or three of vino, (hence the sad realisation a career in the Ministry of Intelligence was not on the cards for me), anyway I digress, let’s just call her Skeksis. A playfully accurate moniker a photographer friend of mine coined (who I must say got the ‘Dark Crystal’ likeness bang on, it must be the eye for detail or something).

And let’s just say she works in my department, albeit in a position she's wholly unworthy of (let's throw in a healthy dose of backstabbing, brown-nosing and being a mercurial bitch for good measure).

Now don’t get me wrong, on day-to-day basis, I merely mask my contempt for her with simple nods of the head, the polite offer of coffee and well-timed, gay trills of artificial laughter, not forgetting of course, a smattering of feigned ‘’no....really?’ interest. (No..really... I’m actually not interested. Ha!)

I often find myself looking at her, as a mother might her child playing in the garden, or an artist taking in a serene sunset and think to myself “you know... you're the kind of person I would denounce to the Gestapo for not actually doing anything.

Except she does,

every day.

and she deserves to be punished.

Being frightfully middle class, I of course, don’t voice my concerns, ‘airing one’s dirty laundry in public’ is after all, a middle England faux-pas (the participants in any Jeremy Kyle ‘show’ will affirm this statement).

I used to opt for the very British ‘under your breath comment’ to express my displeasure. You know, when someone pushes past you in the queue at the post office, and you think loud enough for them hear ‘there’s actually a queue, my impatient friend’. Or someone (I’m certainly not saying it’s tourists... but it is) decides to walk in front of you at a glacial pace along the underground, and you make that little 'your robbing valuable seconds of my life' tut.

But I thought, what would my favourite Mean Girl, Gretchen say? Resolutely, it would be "let it all out in the book, honey", and I thought you know what, I will. I'm going to let it all out on the blog. It is 2010 after all.

Venting: done!! Glass of merlot to hand. Tuesday evening is looking up!

Ate: Endorphin enriched Chinese takeaway + 1 glass of Cab Sav (and counting..) fags don't count, naturally.

Paid: £8, fag's don't count, naturally.

Lived: Aside from the Skeksis' notable evilness, just about. Dodged inspectors at Potter's Bar followed by defective trains at Finsbury and a rammed tube from Kings X to LB. Shudder.

Things just got out of hand. . .

George Michael's Careless Whisper was number 1, Margaret Thatcher was regretfully living it up in Number 10, and on a late August afternoon in 1984, after a 36 hour labour, my mother gave birth to her first born. Me. Over due by nearly three weeks, my poor timekeeping is a flaw which has undoubtedly dogged me and everyone that knows me my life thus long.

If I arrange to meet you at 6pm for after work drinks, know that you can safely assume this to mean between 6.30 and 7pm. Because at 6pm I'll still be in the office, furiously applying blusher and backcombing some volume into my locks which are currently begging to be coloured and trimmed.

Friday night was no different and I made it to our favourite Soho haunt, LVPO at 7 just in time for a round of free cocktails. Despite the fact I'd issued a plea earlier in the week, imploring my friends not to let me touch the gin, I soon found myself slurping at that bitch Bombay and her slutty friend Sapphire; telling myself without conviction that it would be a quiet night. FAIL.

Shortly after I arrived, the scots joined us. Never be fooled by their petite frames or their distinct lack of height. Between the two of them they pack more punch than Ricky Hatton on a charlie binge. So when that short, leery, no gooder thought he'd attempt to mug Wee Wallace, he picked the wrong girl.

After snatching her iPhone, he promptly found himself smacked in the face and the iPhone snatched back. Not content with the humiliation of a public beating for being a thief, he went a step further on his shameful road to ruin and slapped her back. A thief and a woman beater; I believe that's what one sarcastically calls a catch. And caught he was - by the second scot who gave chase believing the bastard to have made off with her kinswoman's bag.

Now we've all seen Braveheart, so you know not to fuck with a Scot as they'll likely set Mel Gibson to give you menacing phone calls. But throw in a bloke with a sense of chivalry and slightly buoyed by the booze and you're in even more trouble.

Though there were no kilts lifted, no glorious charge of cavalry and not a smidgen of blue face paint in sight, the vision of those two heroically sprinting down the street, while the robber fled like a Dickensian villain, was poetry and the subsequent blow to the face that took him down was finer than a Raging Bull montage.

Oh how we laughed, how we cackled those deep, throaty, filthy laughs. The whole affair could not have been funnier less it had bam, pow and och aye comic style speech bubbles written all over it.

The relentless temptation of Happy Hour combined with the fact I'm 20 lbs lighter than when I moved here, mean that so far this month I've thrown up in a Wetherspoons, instigated a cake fight in a perfectly respectable watering hole, walked barefoot around the East end on my own at 3am, and found amusement in an attempted mugging of a friend.

At 26 none of these things are terribly clever, they're frankly little short of tragic. But since moving here I've found that things get out of hand. Things get out of hand, often. But all you can do is live, learn and laugh a lot, preferably over a decent breakfast and a Turkish apple tea on a blissfully sunny Saturday morning in North London.

Ate: pizza express at midnight
Paid: A measly £19 for pizza and cocktails thanks to free bar tab courtesy of our friends at LVPO
Lived: Just about. Survived attempted mugging, two night buses solo and a bad case of the gin blues yesterday evening

Does the cruelty of the pre-payday week know no boundaries?

Today, I can safely say was spent productively wallowing in self-pity. The office was so cold, I was layered like a transient* wrapped in his Sunday finery, our long awaited sample sale (the shining beacon of this week's diary) was rescheduled and to top it off, several of my favourite retailers decided to launch mid-season sales and from what can I tell, solely as a form of fiscal torture.

Not only do they know that I am sans funds, but items I kindly paid full price for last week, have been given a jolly 25% off, meaning I will now be given those dreaded 'Oo I think he got those in the sale' second glances. To add insult to injury, they also decided to throw in a couple of things I REALLY wanted, at a frankly disrespectful price, which left me with the only option but to put them in my 'shopping bag' and pray that by some means of electronic miracle/ screw up, the items were paid for and delivered to me first class, just in time for a weekend on the bread line.

We can live in hope...

*don't get me started on transients. Walking through London bridge yesterday (a scene of several of my encounters with vagrants, notably the infamous strawberry frapuccino incident) I walked past a guy with a sign saying 'any change will help'.

Now, I'm not one to begrudge someone of 20p, but the guy was sitting there listening to a NEW ipod nano AND he had highlights. I almost felt like taking a spot next to him and start pleading my case.