Dancing Lavender

The day that I got the offer on the house, i came home from work and went straight to the garden. It had been another gorgeous hot and sunny day.
I was saying goodbye to the house and especially the garden. I have a lavender hedge that i planted as soon as we moved in, and it was full of bees and butterflies- there were too many to count. Some of the butterflies were brown like moths and the others had white wings with just one spot on each side. It was so amazingly beautiful. The collective movement was activating the scent of the flowers and i really wished i had a video camera so i could have recorded that moment. A photograph wouldn't have done it justice.
I've been trying to think of a word to describe it: it was humming; it was buzzing; it was vibrating-it was dancing.

Drum and Bass

Last night i was listening to LTJ Bukem's Logical Progression. It reminds me of living in London, although that's the kind of Drum and Bass i used to listen to at home rather than when we were out; at the Blue Note or somewhere. At home I listened to that or Goldie Timeless or Alex Reece So Far. That was the kind of Drum and Bass that you listened to after you'd been out. It retains that repetitive hyperactive undercurrent that your body needs when you've danced a lot, but over that it has a trippy upper layer that contains sound clips and electronica that smooth the whole thing out and prepare your brain for the fact that you've got a whole five days to go before you can do this again.
Today i was listening to Marvin Gaye What's Going On, and i got that feeling that i sometimes get spontaneously from music. It was during the sax intro just before, 'Mother, mother..' I had my right leg crossed over my left, and it felt like someone brushed their fingers really lightly all the way from my ankle up to my thigh. If I get up and dance when i get that feeling i can make it spread through my whole body and keep it coming back in waves.
There was a time when i couldn't get to sleep without listening to music. My going to sleep CD was Black Secret Technology by A Guy called Gerald. This used to really annoy my sister. We only had a really thin partition door between our bedrooms, and she wasn't into that kind of thing at all.

Christening

D's dad made me cry. It was a completely leftfield occurrence.
He hadn't recognised me, but when he did, he was really taken aback: I haven't seen him for maybe twenty years. He kept saying, 'I can't believe it. Now I recognise you, you haven't changed a bit. You look exactly the same. You look really beautiful. You've really shocked me.'
He told me all about him and D's mum splitting up-some of which i knew but i pretended I didn't. Then he started talking about D's wife-most of which i knew but i pretended i didn't. He kept shaking his head and saying that he couldn't believe it was me.
He was shaking his head and looking at me, and then shaking his head again. My eyes filled up with tears. I was sure he was either going to say something about D's accident or he was going to say that he wished we had been able to stay together. But he just looked at me and said, 'You know what I'm going to say, don't you.'
Of course this induced a more substantial flow of salt water (although i was crying discreetly, not wanting to ruin anyone elses party). He apologised for making me cry, 'But you were such a big part of our lives.' And I didn't know that at the time, it was just me and D as far as I was concerned. It wasn't just the unexpected sadness of having to think about things that happened all that time ago. It was also that he reminded me of what it was about D that I had loved. It was that ability to communicate a massive ammount without saying a great deal. He obviously got that from his dad.

Curls

I'm trying to sell my house. A couple of weeks ago I had a viewing on a Sunday morning. I was invited to a Christening that day also, so I'd asked for an accompanied viewing.
I wore a strapless sundress- white background with large bright pink flowers on it-really cool. My hair was freshly curled. The ringlets were all shiny and perfectly spiralled (the bit before they loosen up and look more natural). I'm a bit tanned at the moment and I was looking really, really nice.
Of course, it turned out that I was running late and the viewers knocked on the door just as I was finishing getting ready. I was expecting the usual estate agent female -all nails and too much makeup-but opened the door to this gorgeous guy with those kind of short, thick, surfy dreadlocks wearing a really stylish suit. I was abit taken aback, wondering wether he was in fact one of the potential buyers rather than an estate agent. Anyway, they looked round (I apologised for this room being a bit of a mess). He hung back after they'd gone and said 'Don't apologise this is a realy nice house, it just takes the right person to put an offer in.'
I rambled on about original features and character properties. Then he said that he might see me again as he did a lot of the weekend viewings. And then he went.

Single White Female

* is really starting to scare me. She has recently purchased two items of clothing that are EXACTLY like items that I own. The first is a pair of black linen trousers, and the second is a green combat dress that I bought to go to Glasgow at New Year. In February she told me she was going to buy a hat, "I know what I want, I want a black skull cap like that one you've got" - also worn to Glasgow at New Year- but as she didn't turn up wearing one, I forgot all about it.
Anyway, on Friday she asked me if i thought she should buy some ceramic curlers. (I have recently purchased some curlers after long discussing the staightness of my hair and my desire to experience ringletty tresses).
This is the wierd thing- you can't say anything about people stealing your look for two reasons: one- she probably doesn't even know she's doing it, and two (as if you need any more excuses to seethe in silence) it would make you look ridiculously vain.
My problem is that I can't fucking bear being copied. This was the single most common cause of bad feeling between me and my sister when we were teenagers. Being two years older i was copied mercilessly. Every band I was into, every hair-style I discovered: none of it was to be my own.
I have long since renounced the idea of artistic originality. In fact, the more everyday the better as far as I'm concerned. The stuff that everybody does that's the same is where it's at if you ask me.
Just dont come in wearing the same clothes as me because it doesn't fucking suit you.