Dragged my friend W along to a Samizdat literature/music event last night, and I must admit my heart sank as I took in the familiar faces in the audience - the Brighton new media mafia out in Carhaarted, fauxhawked force. Some of the acts were pretty ropey too, but it was worth it all for Michael Donaghy who was... I think 'spellbinding' is the right word. Some magic was being worked, anyway. Even W, deeply sceptical of poetry in general, came out converted.

As for my own writing, I've bitten the bullet and enrolled on a poetry course starting in October. No doubt this blog will turn into a journal of frustration at little old ladies and their poems about apple orchards. But hopefully I will learn something too, and put some of the blether I've been spouting on Wordshare into practice.

11:59

. . .

Having noticed I can no longer fit into most of my clothes, I'm going to spend some of my time off work next week eating fruit and going for long walks on the beach and the Downs while staying with my parents. That this should be a relaxing prospect Matt finds an alien concept, as his parents are more of the breed that criticise the positioning of your bed and wonder why you don't have a mortgage yet. Bless them etc, ahem.

Maddie might be interested in this site (as mentioned by a certain Slithy Tove), although it doesn't look like they got Louise Brooks to pose for them. If she wanted a Rick Astley do she'd be sorted, though.

15:22

. . .

So much for a relaxing, if slightly sad, evening. What I hadn't realised was that S. would be there on Friday. S. was my best (though that's an inaccurate word) friend (also debatable) from age 7. When we changed schools aged 9, it was the two of us against the new scary world we found ourselves in. (I'm not sure how the Brighton Steiner School could ever have seemed scary, but it did.) We made dens, founded clubs, wrote stories, rode imaginary horses, and ate bread and jam in front of Casualty. S. was confident and exciting and imaginative and generous and I adored her. She was also overbearing, spiteful, fickle and cruel, and she knew how to make my life a misery. Looking back, it's hard to remember specific incidents, and I'm not sure whether that's because I have blocked them out, or because there really weren't any significant ones, only a slow eroding of my self-confidence. Anyway, after the age of about 12 we didn't really speak to each other. I had finally done what she had already done very obviously and definitively a year or so earlier: found new friends.

Although we briefly attended the same secondary school, and mutual friends would occasionally mention her, I pretty much ignored the existence of S. for the next 10 years. Until Friday. What a cliche, but all the fear, inadequacy and squirming love/hate came flooding back as soon as I saw her. Everything I thought was wiped out by years of happy well-adjusted existence was apparently only suppressed. Great. Of course, S. is now a perfectly ordinary, decent, friendly adult. But I don't think I could have had a normal conversation with her even if she'd morphed into Mother Teresa. All I could manage to do was mumble and put myself down, to the slight puzzlement of my other friends.

It's all just so Cat's Eye.

10:56

. . .