Tag: Los Angeles

Categories
art

Preparation X

I should have called this post: Pre-Existing Condition.

I have always been embarrassed by my piles.  Hemorrhoids.  I have always had them.  Ever since I can remember.  Thank God I was never a bottom.

Whilst the rest of the world looks on in horror at the inevitable nuclear meltdown in northern Japan, the brutal attacks on protestors by the Bahrainian police force, the Libyan civil war I spent this evening with a complete stranger from the internet who arrived at my home with a bag of groceries and cooked me dinner.

Whilst he did that:  I fainted.  Very, very Jayne Eyre of me.

The upshot being that I badly bruised my back on the fucking chair Michael Temple made for me.  The chair looks nice but it’s a FUCKING DEATH TRAP.

That’s what we do in LA.  Strangers come to our mountain top mansions and prepare Penne Carbonara.   I served coffee in delicate Sevres coffee cups.   The dog was FREAKED OUT when I fell over.  He ran away from me when I tried to placate him.

This morning Charles left in his neat black suit and freshly pressed shirt and tie.   He looked so sweet.  I had film stuff to do after he left.  After a few film related conversations on the telephone I walked to the PCH.  All the way there and all the way back.   He chased many ground squirrels.

I sold some art.

This afternoon I watched Sophia Coppola‘s film Somewhere.  I really enjoyed it.  The language and locations of our Hollywood lives.  Too many afternoons floating on the pool, too many hasty hook ups.  Too many facile conversations.  Too many text messages from people who either want to fuck you or fuck you over.  Not enough substance.  Set against a back drop of elegant hotels with fancy toys to play with.

I once lived in the Chateau Marmont for a month.   I moved there when the mountain burned.  I have spent many hours there making new friends.

I remain isolated.

Most of us are isolated here.  However successful we are or we are not.  However many parties we are/are not attending, however ‘connected’ we are.

Sitting around.

Waiting for a great idea.

So now the next great idea has come upon me and I have convinced others to work with to make a dream come true.  Suddenly this town makes sense.

Los Angeles, oh you strange and terrible place.

The christian twins are coming to stay.  The beautiful, twenty-year-old twins are coming to live with me at the house, live at the house whilst I am in NYC.   When they return from Utah.   My born again beauties.

I ate the pasta/caprese salad/garlic bread and he left soon after we finished our coffee to my strange, secluded mountain top life.

He was perfectly nice.

The bruise on my back is worth photographing.

just part of the bruise
Categories
Death

LOUD AND DIM

Gary Winick (Tadpole 2002) died.  He was 49-years-old.

Gary once introduced me to Mark Ruffalo.  Mark wouldn’t remember me, Gary would.

Gary was one of the forward thinking guys who set up the ground breaking film production company InDigEnt.  He was a really, really sweet man.  No news as to how he died but I think, from what I can remember, he may have had a serious illness that he kept quiet about.

He was very discreet.

Crikey, so many deaths!  I just diligently report them.  It’s rewarding to find something nice to say about the recently departed like poor Wally in Whitstable.

In Jean’s case, it was quite hard.  We hadn’t spoken for ages because we had a money issue that neither of us wanted to resolve.  He was a terrible drain on his friends and family.  Let’s put it this way: it was very hard for Jean to enjoy his gifted life without endlessly complaining or taking drugs.

People die.  I just put on my bombazine shift and write the bleeding obituary.

Perhaps I should try writing my own?

I would entitle it:  WEAK TEA  or  LOUD AND DIM or NOTHING REMARKABLE.

To be run in the Whitstable Times in the event of my death:

Surly Duncan Roy (65) found dead in his Swalecliffe bed sitting room.  Former Lord of The Lies refused medication for obvious mental illness and made unremarkable films.   Campaigned for the Red Spider Cafe.  He will not be missed.

I have not written a last will and testament so the fuckers can squabble over what is left.   I may leave it all to that little girl or to a bat charity or Jake’s ex-girl friend.  That would be funny.

Watched Oscars.  Was James Franco stoned?  No!  He’s been sober for YEARS.  He just looked a bit unprepared.  I would have preferred if Social Network had won best film.  It deserved to.  The Kings Speech is constipated TV tosh.   Tom Hooper is a director of no importance.  Why does Colin Firth KEEP telling the world how important Tom Ford is to him and how he wouldn’t be receiving these awards without having met him?  I thought that Firth had a rather long and distinguished career before meeting Ford?  Are they or have they been…fucking?

It occurred to me why Portman trumped Benning…Portman has more mileage in her and will generate more cash for CAA.  Poor Annette Bening so obviously deserved that Best Actress Academy Award but she’s an old mare and who writes great roles for old mares that Meryl Streep isn’t getting first refusal?

Clip Clop Annette.

Categories
Death Whitstable

Tudor Tea Rooms Whitstable

You know how much I love Whitstable?  That would be one of my ‘weak tea‘ successes:  my relationship with Whitstable.

I love it there.  I know everyone.  We really know each other.  For good and for bad.

Well, today I received some very, very sad news.  My Mother‘s friend Carol who owns the Tudor Tea Rooms on Harbour Street…well..and this is terrible…her son Tony died.

Known affectionately as Wally to everyone who knew him, he was only 40 years old, tall, gentle, ran his mother’s business with aplomb.

When you order a pot of tea at The Tudor Tea Rooms you get a pot of tea made with loose tea and a strainer.  Quality.

We used to say that they served school dinners at the Tudor but we loved going in there.  Fire burning in the hearth all winter.  Closed on a Wednesday.  Real steak and kidney pudding with a thick suet crust.

Wally was killed during the day on the train tracks at the end of Glebe Way.  Struck by the coast-bound 11.22am Victoria to Ramsgate train just before 1pm.  I have no idea if he committed suicide or not.  That’s what people are saying but I really don’t want to believe it.

He was such a nice man.  Wally and his sister Sue had run that Tudor Tea Room since they were kids.  Since we were all kids.  Serving Steak and Kidney Pudding…opening the tea garden.  He was the sort of bloke you’d see in Prezzo Pizza Place with his young family.

As every Whitstable pub and every other shop front became yet another super chic gastro pub or seasonal/organic eaterie…the Tudor kept the same decor, the same menu, serving the same Whitstable us who didn’t want the bother of seared scallops or poached samphire.

My Mother and I saw Wally just a few weeks ago when I was home for Christmas.  He served us a good old-fashioned English roast.   My mother mocked me for drinking tea with my lunch…like ‘some one from a council house‘ she said.

He stood at the till and asked after my life in LA.  I felt embarrassed to tell him what my life was like in California.  What he didn’t know…what he could never have known…was what I was thinking that cold December day a week before Christmas:  that I would have quite easily traded my life in Malibu for a chance at running the Tudor Tea Rooms.

From where I was standing…his life looked perfect.

When I was a kid we would sit in the Tudor Tea Rooms and spy on Peter Cushing eating his poached eggs.

Poached eggs on toast.  Every day.

My mother accidentally pushed Peter Cushing off his bike one day when she was getting off the bus from Canterbury.

Anyway, Wally was killed on the railway lines.  The third person killed in the same spot in less than two months.  What’s happening?  What a waste of a good life, a sweet family man.  I feel for his wife and children, his sister Sue and his lovely mum Carol.

If you get the chance listen to this Jellybotty’s track, Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable.

It mentions the Tudor Tea Rooms.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wpGPqWrjeQ].

Goodbye Wally.

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Categories
art Gay Money Rant

How do you Solve a Problem like Amanda Eliasch?

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Amanda Eliasch is very, very rich.  She is the ex-wife of Johann Eliasch, owner of tennis racket and sports wear company Head.  Currently Amanda is trying to get me to remove a blog reference made last week after she posted some nastiness about me on Facebook.

Sadly, as Jake found to his dismay, even if I removed any or all evidence… the blog will remain in the virtual ether forever and ever. FOREVER.  Then, she persuaded some weird friend of hers to say that I only have 3 readers a day…that’s like telling a man he has a very small penis.

Let me remind you how I know this woman Amanda Eliasch…she was/is going out/hooking up/in confused hyper emotional ‘relationship’ with my old friend the genuine article… writer Tim Willis.  Poor Tim, the first time I was summoned to her house he was a quaking, smoking, drinking wreck. Exiled to the tennis court at her architecturally significant, now recently sold Beverly Hills house. His already weakened body covered in welts from Amanda’s sharp little tongue.

The 1st and least problematic of the litany of problems with Amanda: she is a bully.  In some lame attempt to stop me from posting anything about her on my blog she reminded me that she had let me visit her home. OK. So? I reminded her (pompous hag) that I let her visit mine. The next barrage of emails, no doubt, will include reminders that she paid for a couple of lunches.

The emails after that will include homophobic slurs.

Well known to architects, and interior decorators as a person who loathes paying her bills, (I know two personally) She is currently working with ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard who told me he went to Eton… does anyone know if this is true? I met ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard with Chris “The King” Cortazzo the  realtor.  Why will ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard definitely get paid for renovating Amanda’s new home in LA? The simple fact is: ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is far too well-connected not to get paid.

As well as converting Amanda’s brown Wimpy home (ex Janet Leigh) into a white clad Wimpy home ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is also converting a small apartment in Sierra Towers Los Angeles as something ‘nice’ for Elton’s Nanny and child.

I really did not want to start the year slagging an old slag but hey, at least I’m not writing about Jake, eh?

The most perplexing problem with Amanda: she is totally bonkers… and not in a good way. She has no style, no friends and leaves a nasty taste in one’s mouth whenever one chances upon her.  Her conversation is limited and punctuated with barking noises… is this some sort of tick?  I have never once been able to get a reasonable opinion or for that matter ANY opinion out of the woman who wasn’t cribbed from some Daily Mail commentator/op ed…consequently her politics are slightly right of Hitler’s.  Amanda once complained to me, like many of her ilk, that there wasn’t a decent right-wing newspaper in Britain.

Now, I know that she will take issue with the ‘no friends’ claim but after her $500k fiasco of a birthday party last year where half her Facebook friends didn’t turn up… and, like an eastern European traveler, she tangoed for her startled guests then… to their growing horror played a sycophantic film ‘produced’ by her friends waxing ’bout how wonderful Amanda is. I wonder how she manages to keep the friends she has!

Good God! You can’t make this stuff up!

Amanda is surrounded by a certain type of woman, the ball breaking Aliai, Lady Forte, the ball breaking Tracy Emin and the drunk most of the time but harmless… unless sober when she too becomes a bone fide ball breaker… Kay Saatchi.  Throw a few insignificant men into the black lacquered pot and bob’s your uncle: Amanda’s World.

The unforgivably huge problem with Amanda (and British social-climbing women like her) she is ever so slightly homophobic. She likes to remind gays that in Amanda’s World they have no right to demand rights or equality ‘what ever that is?’… that we have no place in the army or in sport and she questions our integrity in the school room.  She tells us that we are of ‘no use’ to her… unless we are ‘decorating’ or ‘making things look pretty’.

Amanda, like her ball breaking friends, is also a low-grade racist and treats her black chef with imperial disdain.  Amusingly she has a desire to be close to film stars and celebrities but they are not eager to be seen with her.  Her life interminably chasing yet another film festival, film opening, red carpet event… is pathetic at best… tragic at worst.

Amanda, if she doesn’t mend her ways, will end up like Wallis Simpson who, though remarkably chic, died isolated and miserable. At Wallis’s funeral the bulk of the wreaths came from vendors all over Paris who, without doubt, missed her very generous patronage.

[wpvideo VQbtXQgL]

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Categories
Health

Ear Bar

Joe and I would go get dinner (usually steak) and very drunk in the Ear Bar on Spring Street.

Originally called the Bear bar..renamed when the B fell off.  One of the oldest existing taverns in the United States and one of the few existing examples of Federal architecture in New York.

I have wanted to get very drunk these past few nights.  I have wanted to blot out everything in my fucking pea brain with a huge amount of wine and beer.

Marc bought a bottle of Montepulciano to drink with the pheasant.  It smelt divine.

Woke up feeling so sad.

I am in Whitstable until Thursday then I have to get up and make a move.  Must go stately home hopping.   Must see the insides of huge and beautiful homes smelling of nutmeg and fir.  Must sit by roaring fires.  Must flay myself socially once again.

I am so disappointed.  So sad.  even though I know he isn’t sometimes I think I can hear him calling out to me in the night and I wake up and I think I can’t ignore him..he might need me.

Everything is just fine in Los Angeles CA.  Ashley called yesterday after her jaunt with Christina Aguilera’s husband in Miami.   I can’t wait to see her, speak with her properly about everything.

Up and down on this fucking roller coaster.  Up and down.

Categories
Gay Malibu

Paid in Full

It rained steadily all night.  This morning the sun is shining.

Yesterday stayed in almost all day.

Dinner at Frank’s Whitley Heights apartment.   Very little traffic on the 10.  There were ghastly British people who Frank had met randomly at another party.  I left early.   Food was good though.  He made some sort of Brazilian coconut chicken with rice.

Parking in Hollywood is shit.

I like Frank..even though his slimy British friends just wouldn’t stop talking about how much they had drunk the night before.  “So Duncan, why did you come to LA?”  I told them that Los Angeles had more AA meetings than any other city in the USA.  They looked baffled.  After a difficult moment of silent processing the Brit said, “Each to his own old chap.”   He really did call me old chap.

Before dinner this black kid from the deep south sang/warbled/yodeled a prayer.  I looked at my feet in HORROR.

Met JA at Soho House.  Drank espresso.   Miles arrived looking very dashing.  Saw Eugenio Lopez and told him about Steve Martin‘s book.  He was DELIGHTED and reported this to his friends.  “Steve Martin has written pages in his book about meee…tell them Duncan..tell them.”  I told them the Getty story.  Eugenio was with an older gentleman and a slobby boy whore who he scolded for putting his feet on the furniture.  Eugenio was wearing a black sequined jacket.  Seemed delighted that Martin had written about him.  Who wouldn’t?

I was going to hook up with some random dude from Grindr but he didn’t turn up on time so I left and we all (dogs) curled up alone in my big white bed.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Jerome (my next door neighbor) rented his house this weekend to a young couple who threw a huge, ornate wedding…could almost be described as baroque.   The ceremony took place in the garden.   You could hear the dreary, clichéd classical music…a good third of a mile away.  All the obvious shit mixed in with random film scores.  They probably couldn’t tell the difference between Ennio Morricone and Pergolesi.   Idiots.  A disparate group of badly dressed men and women gazing admiringly at this bride and this groom about to be locked in matrimony.

The dogs started barking during their vows.  I didn’t do much to stop them.  I didn’t want to hear their fucking vows broadcast over my quiet valley.  Obnoxious white, straight people.  A coalition of the entitled.

The party continues there today.  A simpering European party/events planner slimed around to the house like a huge slug..apologizing in advance for the noise.  Thank God this is a random event.  Events planners btw are always the worst kind of gay and always the dullest human beings on earth.  Who the fuck would ever find an events planner interesting?  Oh yeah, I remember.

JB sent the money he owed me.  Deal done.  Goodbye JB.

A fit black guy contacted me on Manhunt.  He wanted to fuck.  He asked if I was good.  I replied..does it matter?  Do I care if you think I am good at fucking?  I cum you leave.  I won’t be reading the reviews.

Categories
Malibu

14 Years Sober Today

There were many times when I was with him that I wanted to drink.  Not because I wanted to get drunk but because I wanted to be where he was.

I didn’t want to feel apart from him.  I wanted to share his experience.  Our experience as he experienced it.  Making love after a couple of glasses of wine.

Wanting so much to feel that warm glow that I remember being ever so slightly tipsy affords me.

So glad I didn’t.  Could you imagine giving up sobriety for him?  For anyone?  I shudder when I think about it.

The desire to fit in never really goes away.

So, yet again, fate has been kind.  I’m lucky to have escaped without totally ruining my life.  I’m telling you if I was drinking now I would never be able to deal with half of what is being thrown at me.

Even though we have been estranged.  My relationship with AA has really been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Even though I don’t want to believe it.

My relationship with LA AA has been particularly beneficial.

Going back to my 7am meeting in the Palisades.   That’s why I’ve been waking at 5am, write this blog then schlepping down the mountain to that little room.  It was the men in that room that persuaded me to move here to California.  After a couple of years of getting involved I stopped going.  The personalities there started to annoy me.  I stopped listening.  So, this time, I have been pretending I don’t know anyone.  Like it’s my first time.  Listening for the similarities, going back to basics.  Relearning the language of AA.

It has been a time of great reflection.  AA birthdays always make one think of how life might have been if I hadn’t stopped drinking.   Good God.   I was always so angry.  Every day.

My anger is so destructive.  I wonder if it has anything to do with that massive head injury I suffered when I was a kid?

Even though you might not believe it, I really hate me when I am angry (really hate me) and as you have seen these past few months I am not well served when I get angry.  Letting myself down like that.  Love, it seems, not only brings me sorrow but makes me very angry.  Angry is not the man I want to be.

My real father was a very angry man.  Not my step-father.  My real father was pathologically angry.  My step-father was just frustrated by me. If I hadn’t been around he would have been much calmer.  Probably.  There I go again, letting him off the hook.

So, I shall be off in a minute.  Making my entrance again with my usual flair.

I had my Manhunt date Number Seven last night.  It was lovely.  Let’s see what happens.  I told him about the blog and (you wont believe this) I decided that after this entry I wouldn’t write about what happens between us.  Do I wish I hadn’t written about Jake?  No, he deserved it.  To be written about.  But, I may have learned my lesson.  Some things just need to be not written about.

I’ll tell you this before I keep my mouth shut:

We walked up Abbot Kinney in Venice.  We ate at all the food trucks.  It was really, really sweet.

The house is now officially on the market.  First viewing today.  I am in two minds.  Part of me doesn’t want to sell.  Part of me is desperate to.  I will never have the opportunity to own such a gorgeous house ever again but buying a small place in NYC is perhaps a better idea.

Jerome popped by yesterday and said, “You have too much stuff.”

He’s right.

I spent a great part of yesterday getting rid of half of my books.  I now have a much leaner library.  Dictionaries gone.  Thanks internet.  Thanks Kindle.  Thanks new technology.  Thanks spell-check.

I am not the sort of person who hoards crap.  Everything I have is beautiful and could probably sell for exactly or even more than I bought it.

I love heavy, white linen.  When the house is rented I put colored sheets on the bed.  Now I live here full-time I have stripped off the dark green sheets and remade the bed with my freshly laundered, white Irish linen.

It is still dark.  Waiting for the dawn.  The light on my desk attracts moths.  Tiny little moths.  I crush them and put them in the bin.

A HUGE cricket just landed on my desk.

Categories
Hollywood Malibu

Manhunt Date No. 6

The Manhunt assignation is proving more interesting than not.  For others it seems mostly about sex but for me it’s all about the people one can meet, the stories they tell and the places they take you.

This evening I met a young man right at very end of Wilshire Blvd at Takami, a rather grand sushi bar on the 21st floor of a building overlooking LA’s great success story:  Down Town.

In all of LA this is the most like a recognisable big city, complete with tall buildings, pedestrians, store fronts and a huge film crew shooting LA for NYC.

All the lights in all of the high rises seem to be left on all night to delight people like me hankering for a world city.   The city streets teaming with city people.  I can quite understand why so many young people want to live there.

I rather wish I did..but by November I will be in a real big city.

The young man I met this evening was a deaf, thirty-year-old graphic designer from Mexico City.  He asked for a seat in a quieter part of the restaurant.  The hostess put us under a speaker blaring very loud music.  When I asked to be moved she looked at me pityingly and told me that this was the ‘brightest part of the restaurant’  I snapped back that he was deaf not blind.  He was delighted.  She was not.

Dinner wasn’t nearly as challenging as it threatened to be until the internet date told me that six years ago he was kidnapped.

Well, if someone tells you that they have been kidnapped you might want to know why and how.  I asked a few careful questions but apparently that was the wrong thing to do as he promptly burst into tears.

We left the expensive lobster rolls uneaten.

He very kindly paid for dinner.  Phew.

As he tearfully relived the details of his kidnapping my mind wandered.  I looked out over the city scape and thought about how intriguing this internet connecting phenomena is.  I mean, I wouldn’t usually get to meet half the men I meet on-line and the best thing is I never have to meet them again.

Could you imagine how fruitful it would be if I liked having sex with strangers?

After dinner we wandered the streets and then I drove 30 miles home.

Good to get home.

What else happened today?  Walked the dogs down to the sea.  Returned emails and calls.  Met Frank over at SHLA, Frank is a darling.   Spent an hour or so at the Hollywood house and packed more stuff in the car.

Slowly, slowly making progress with the move.  So much kitchen stuff.  Christ, can I chuck it out?  This evening I will get on my knees and pray:  Please God..let me have the strength to chuck this junk.

The mouse in the house is not dead despite poison and traps.

By the way…have not looked in the mirror recently and enjoyed what I have seen but today I did.  It’s as if the corner really has been turned.

Must buy shoe trees.  My shoes all look crushed after the move.

Categories
art

Too Much Stuff

I have complained before about owning too much stuff.  Unable to throw things away.  Yesterday was no exception.  I moved more stuff into the Malibu house from Hollywood and find it impossible to let things go.  Throw things out.  Dump the junk that in some cases I have dragged twice around the world.

It amazes me that I have now sold over thirty works of art and you really would not notice the difference.  Every spare space on every spare wall is covered with art.

I have just one small box of knickknacks that I have left on the drive waiting to be sold when in fact they need to be thrown away.  I need that TV intervention show where kindly looking therapists gently pull ‘precious’ things away from me and throw them into a dumpster/skip.  I am not, obviously, a 3rd degree hoarder but my inability to let things go one might use, at this crucial time with Jake,  as a metaphor.

What’s the difference between shame and embarrassment?  I am embarrassed by the things crammed into my cupboards, closets and wardrobes.   Under the stairs I keep an archive of every film and theatre project I ever worked including two 35mm prints of AKA.  I attempted to donate this thorough personal collection to the Outfest Film and Television Archive but at the last moment did not get around to.

I have a shelve, a rather deep shelve, in the kitchen where I have put things that I know need to be thrown away.  Every time I open the cupboard door these things look at me pathetically, ‘please don’t throw us out’ they plead.

All this stuff from Hollywood fucks up the aesthetic.  Cluttered, overwhelming and all the wrong colors.  I am trying for less and all the time have to deal with more.

Yesterday Ashley and I cooked dinner for Frank and Stephen.  Delicious. Both Frank and Stephen didn’t know what St Tropez was.  I was mildly shocked. The Architect text messaged me asking, in lieu of dating, if he could be my slave.  I am considering my options.

I am so happy that Ashley lives here.  She brings such verve and life to the house.  This Sunday she is inviting friends over for lunch, it’s going to be a great deal of fun.

Yesterday I realized that in the post Malibu Hill Billy from last December was the first time I heard from Jake.  Compare the lightness and optimism of those early posts.  I wish I could reclaim that mood.  I will eventually.

I have a date for my operation.

Categories
art Malibu

Room Mate

Marine Layer at Night

My friend Ashley moved in last night.  She arrived with Thai food and a pillow.

Almost immediately felt a trillion times better about everything.  Being on my own is not good for me.  Just me and my head.  We lit a huge fire, watched interesting film clips on my computer and life felt a great deal better.

The marine layer shrouded the house all night so everything this morning is wet and sparkling.  The gray light, as I have said a million times, suits all the colours here in the house.

I get my watch back today, the big gold one I broke last year but forgot to pick up.  I should fetch my grandfather’s ring that is still in repair.

I bought a family box of food from my friend Jennifer’s company Out of the Box Collective which arrives Saturday week.  She has sourced the best of what is available from local farms including organic meats, vegetables and raw milk/yogurt etc.  I am really excited about this!

Three of us living up here cooking great food, making art and doing what humans do..supporting one another..and I don’t mean through bad times but supporting one another to do the best of what we can possibly do.

The great thing about Ashley is her connection to everything happening in the new arts here in LA.  Performance, film etc.  We watched clips of things on YouTube that inspire us.  She showed me a really interesting animation/performance that I loved.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPWjA8nAmuo]

I understood that I had not just isolated myself from people but from my life blood..art.  I simply stopped going to anything.  I stopped turning up.  To have a life in the arts you have to be present.  For nine long months I have been a dead man.  Jake became my life and the poor lamb head just couldn’t be my life.

Manhunt date number 4 was a funny latino boy. 27 years old and HIV positive.  Hmmm.  We didn’t have much to say so he left. He was a bit pissed that he had driven all this way and didn’t get any.

I feel so much better about everything.

Suddenly all of my anxiety, obsession and resentment has slipped away…at least for the time being.

This morning I thought about writing which I have not thought about for a long, long time.  Just having someone around keeps me focused.

Let him have his life and I will have mine.  I wish we could have had a kind goodbye.

You see, I went from having a dear, dear friend to having nothing…whilst he was surrounded by his family.  Never on his own.  A family to fall back on.  I had nothing.  When I lived in Whitstable the people there, they were my family for good and for bad.  I just had to step outside of my front door and I would engage with people who had known me all my life.

Lily

I saw a property for sale today in England that I can’t stop thinking about.  Hastings is a small British seaside town.  I have always really loved it.  There’s a house there that looks amazing.  Huge.  Lots of space.

You see!  Already my head is in a different, more positive place.  Just wait until Anna arrives and we will be cooking, as they say, with gas.

At 8 this morning Jason popped by with Lily (my god-daughter) and her brother Max for breakfast.  Hot chocolate.  I think this maybe a regular event as they have an hour to kill most mornings between dropping the kids off at their various schools.

Somebody asked me what I seek in a man.  I think he wanted to know about sex but I replied:  intelligence, wit, kindness, fortitude, patience.

Have a great day everybody!