I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.
Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.
Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle.
"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked.
"What?"
"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."
In what can be viewed as both a positive and a negative of the Age of White Noise, social media has given us the opportunity to invent new selves - sometimes, it seems, a hundred of them, to be used for different people, situations, even moods. It has given us the chance to smile when we are crying on the inside, if we aren't feeling very brave, or if we feel like we need to put on one of those hundred different selves. It has allowed us to share our despair, our wonderful happiness, our big thinking, and our dreams.
But what it has also done is laid us bare to criticism and a lack of care, both in our own actions and those of others. We cannot hide from hurtful situations. We cannot hide from what we say and do, and sometimes - achingly, angrily, and agonisingly - we cannot hide from what others say and do to and about us.
John Lennon was a wise man by the time he died, and he knew what was what when he said the words 'instant karma's gonna get you'. The Buddha had his own time of mortification - imagine what it would have been like if it had been fed back to him on Instagram, and Facebook, and Twitter?
Today is my 44th birthday. As stated by the woman I dearly wish I could have had the opportunity to drink under the table at the Algonquin, Ms Dorothy Parker herself:
“Time doth flit; oh shit.”
Sound a bit dismal and non-fizzy for a girl who loves shoes, champagne, rugby and books on her FORTY SECOND (remember this, people) birthday?
Perhaps.
But it's my birthday, and I'll chastise myself if I want to.
To anyone celebrating a birthday today, or anytime soon, I have some things to say to you, imbued with my heartfelt love, appreciation, gratitude, and infinite wonder at the people who continue to love me, not least of all the Man Who Vaguely Resembles David Tennant.
Last night I had the pleasure of having people to dinner for the first time in my new home - yay!
To dinner, not for dinner; despite my love of quoting Dr Hannibal Lecter, I am not inclined towards cannibalism. Although I must admit, the thought of boiling a few politicians' heads is extremely appealing at present.
The reason I mention this is whenever I am talking to someone and they say 'Oh, I'm having X and Y for dinner' - well, all I can envisage is a big pile of fava beans and some fairly unpleasant screams.
And they ain't coming from little lambykins.
Not quite sure how I got onto Dr Lecter then - a need to fire up grammatically and a hangover from the desire to seriously injure a flight attendant on Thursday I think (see My House post for reference).
I must admit, I was a bit excited about the whole dinner shebang. Because I love cooking. Absolutely adore it. I love the whole process associated with putting great food on the table; I find it extremely calming and it means a lot to me that everything is (hopefully) perfect. But for quite some time I haven't been doing much cooking at all, which for a chick who used to regularly hold four course dinner parties for twelve people without blinking an eye has been - well, pretty blah.
So yesterday afternoon it was a case of dancing around the kitchen to extremely dorky music as I caked it up and threw garlic around like a vampire hunter gone wild; and naturally, being me, cut myself on one of my samurai-sharp knives just for that added touch of cheffy messed-up fingers authenticity.
It was ace.
And it made me wonder something.
Is cooking - or more to the point, being taught to cook - a lost art?
Much like the practice of writing (writing, not texting) thank you notes and other antiquated notions which Gen 'Y Do I Have To Listen To This Old Bag Blather On At Me' look at me blankly about when I mention them, is learning to cook slowly becoming a dinosaur?
I'd love to say 'Nope, everyone loves cooking' but the reality is, how many 25 year olds now would know how to make - oh, I don't know - gravy? And yes, I realise you don't need to know how to make gravy, because all you have to do is walk into Woollies and pick up a pouch of said substance and zap the hell out of it, but that's not the point. There is something hugely satisfying in creating something very simple and delicious from scratch. I'm not saying everyone should be spending their weekends boiling up huge pots of chicken bones and making stock, but taking the time - just occasionally - to not take the plastic fantastic option is massively rewarding.
And tastes even sweeter.
Because you know in yourself - even if nobody else at the table realises - that what you are eating was made by you. Not by someone in a pair of plastic gloves and a hair net somewhere.
And definitely not while dancing around to Vogue.
How could it not taste amazing?
Finger slicing good. Those knives are really, really sharp. Ouch.
