5th June
The fun that I have in London is a very particular type of fun. And what I mean by this is, it is experienced and felt as if I am a bear.
Listen, a bear is not to be mistaken with creatures who hibernate solidly for up to 7 months like the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (shout out to those guys). No, obviously a bear is a light hibernator. This means: Entering variable periods of torpor, but waking often to continue life as normal (as a bear) before slipping back to reduced physiological state of total inertia.
That is how I experience life in London.
Days, weeks go by with me sitting ordering the same meal from Pho in ill-fitting shorts and stained top peering round front door when buzzer goes scurrying back to sofa to inhale before placing takeaway rubbish next to bin with fresh promise that someday soon I’ll cross the frontier and take bins out.
Someday soon, bins.
my torpor state is then punctuated throughout the year with very brief, very intense moments of fun. Moments I document to hell. The trick is to take enough pictures, gather enough anecdotes, tell enough people, to see you through the next stage of Sofa-Pho-Bin-Overflow without plummeting into a depressive state / death – top tip! You can rot anywhere if you know you lived relatively recently.
Conversely, you can rot anywhere if you know you are about to live someday soon. And I am on the precipice of some living. A friend’s wedding weekend followed by 5 days at Glastonbury. I am gonna live so much that it is vital I lean heavily into not living right now. Remember – the better you torpor, the better you tipple.
10th June
updates from torpor. shifted my tv to a 45 degree angle so I can watch what Netflix tells me to watch while I sit at my dining table and buy an entire new glastonbury-personality online.
Netflix pushing the Arnold Schwarzenager doc on me. I’ve only made it through part of the first ep but am pretty 100% confident in my conclusion that: Arnold Schwarzenager thinks he’s a witch.
“I had visions - visions - of being a massive bodybuilder and everybody shouting my name in America and then” – (after 7 years of bodybuilding three rounds of steroids leaving Austria for America to ingratiate himself into the bodybuilding scene) – “it came true.”
in the wrong hands, the type of self-belief he subscribes to is low key sinister, an ideology not far removed from that of a Andrew Tate Fan Boi – “if you can THINK it, you DESERVE it.” Are you toxic? Then, 10/10 highly recommend this docco. If not, 5/10, good to watch while you work out what to actually watch… Valeria!!!
Valeria is either a masterpiece or piece of trash I just don’t know. It’s about a writer who self-publishes an erotic novel and it takes the world by storm and from that point on she seemingly never has to work a day in her life THAT’S HOW GOOD HER EROTIC BOOK IS. I’m obviously obsessed with this storyline.
Aside from being a successful writer, she only has hot, not-awkward sex with very rich & successful men who look like Paco Rabanne models. Her routine consists of writing one word a day and then spending the rest of it lying on her sofa Fuck-WhatsApping these men. It was only in episode 4 when there’s a flashback to her teenage self with the exact same haircut as present day that I started to doubt the show’s believability. Nobody has a fringe for 15 years. That’s just bad writing.
12th June
Torpor state coming to a close. Living is just around the corner. Excited. Afraid.
Have paid for: tent, mattress, orthopaedic cushion, cool box, torch, numerous anoraks, protein bars, sequined dresses x 4, t shirts that say I have a personality, shorts that say I’m a cool chill gal, special shoes that are like wellies but are not wellies because I have thin ankles to flaunt, hydration tablets, hats, bumbags, iPhone lanyard oh countless other shit…
14th June
What I have not bought is: The actual ticket to get me into the festival.
It was this morning when I whatsapped my glasto-pal that I realised my assumption she had just paid and sorted everything for me like my mummy was gravely mistaken. Apparently you have to, like, be a grown up and pay for your own ticket and do your own admin? was on the lizzie line as this news broke staring bleakly at my face in the black windows thinking - my god I am not a real human.
how did this happen. I’m the type of person who writes so many to do lists I write “make another to do list” on my to do list and yet I didn’t think to write pay for ticket to the festival I have been mentally and physically preparing for… for the last five months?
I have enforced torpor, enforced sofa-pho-bin-overflow, for what? FOR WHAT.
To be continued.
FULLY resonated my love ♥️ keep writing!
In that nonsense show's defence, my fringe is nearing its fifteenth birthday. Which I hadn't realised until I read this, and now I feel truly decrepit and ancient...as well as mightily under-adventurous, hair-wise.