t minus two days

I'm involved in a project at work which will either make me famous or get me fired. It's also top secret so this is the only thing I'm allowed to say about it.

Halloween is looming. I love Halloween more than Christmas but it's harder to get people into the whole scene. I'm making themed cupcakes and dressing as a Zombie Gun Shot Wound Chav (Sexy Version). I'm so goddamn excited. Two of my party guests (it's not my party) cancelled on me already which bodes marvellously.

I've got the day off tomorrow to track down a tiny black lycra skirt with fake chinese lettering embroidered onto it in white cotton and a shiny red kappa jacket. Then I'm going to buy some wax and a litre of fake blood and create a massive gunshot wound right in the middle of my chest. Afterwards I'm going to pile on as much plastic gold jewellery as I can carry and swagger across town like a goddamn princess.

I'm just slightly worried that certain establishments won't understand and will issue a Citizen's Asbo on the spot. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Then I'll burn it down.

Boffinses

I read Our Mutual Friend whilst on "holiday". I picked it up cheap thinking it was Bleak House and kept wondering where that that girl with smallpox was. Any page now, I thought. Soon I cottoned on to the fact that I'm an idiot, but I enjoyed the novel nonetheless, because I love Dickens. I wish it was still ok to write like that, or wear top hats.

Anyway, in the book, Golden Dustman Mr Boffin goes a bit barking and starts buying hundreds of books about misers, about men and women who forewent every conceivable expenditure in order to die alone and naked, dressed in a sack.

Something about this appeals massively to me. It's the same part of me that likes TV shows about horrific foreign prisons, or turn-of-the-century serial killers. It probably wouldn't stand me in good stead were I ever to run for office, but this is the sort of quirky shit I'm into these days.

However, back in the real world, despite being seized by a burning desire to read about this sort of thing for myself, I am foiled at every turn. Google doesn't know anything about books about misers (except for a play by Molière and some sort of Arabic compendium) and I don't remember a world before Google, so how am I to track these books of misery all by myself?! Some people don't like to be alone in the world, as in without a significant other. I don't like to be alone in the world, as in without answers at my fingertips. I can cope with being single as long as I can sate my curiousity in less than fifty keystrokes.

Misers, I know you're out there. I'll never be able to learn to save any money without you and I can't track you down without Google. Ergo, Google owes me some savings.

ready for the floor

So some people are selfish. Go figure.

This year I am definitely, 100% getting on board NaNoWriMo. I chuffing hate the winter (cold, inconvenient, causes my car severe depression) so it's unlikely I'll be leaving the house unless I absolutely have to (work, supplies, jaunts down to London when I deem it suitable), so I might as well have something to do to prevent me teaching the cat to juggle.

I don't know if I think I could be a writer or if I just think I'd like to be a writer. I think I'm more 'situational comment' than 'imaginative novelist'. Still, I'm game if you are.

I always think maybe I'm not very imaginative, until I catch myself right in the middle of a long and elaborate lie involving the police, twelve ski poles and the state of Arizona. The commentary between me and my brother in our Facebook 'How We Met' section is shining, singing praise of my (our) combined brilliance. So I think I can knock out 50,000 words about a girl with a scar on her nose who goes to live somewhere unfamiliar to her, falls in with the wrong people, then falls in with the right people, undergoes some trials and tribulations and finally finds out that it's ok to be whatever it is she already happens to be. I'm going to incorporate the themes of 'song', 'magic' and 'talking animals'. Maybe it will be set in the future, or an parallel universe, or an alternate history. Maybe it won't be set anywhere. Maybe I'll re-type Catch-22 and claim it is an homage to Joseph Heller.

In the meanwhile, I'm allowing myself to read Joey Comeau's installment-Halloween-horror, even though every time I read anything he writes I end up unconsciously aping him for weeks afterwards.

results

So I'm back from Lanzarote.

I'd love to tell tall tales about the wonderful larks and hi-jinks I got up to, and in truth I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy any of it.

But it was not everything it could have been. Holidays that are intensely boring and nauseatingly awkward are, in my newly-created opinion, to be avoided. I would have had more fun staying at work. Holidays which also force one to question the basis of friendships and indeed one's own outlook on life are not worth any number of pristine sea-view apartments.

I'm really, really sad that my overall outlook on the last week and a half is almost completely negative, and I'd like to be able to put a positive spin on things and just pick out the good bits to relate. But that feels dishonest and frankly why should I not tell the truth to people who care enough to ask?

Halloween, birthdays and tanning

My friend Vik is moving to a new house with her boyfriend who now works on my team.

She's having a joint Halloween and housewarming party and me and my friends are either going as pregnant sexy nuns, or Death Eaters, or chavs.

We're leaning towards chavs now because I want an excuse to wear the bright pink skinny jeans I saw in Primark last week. They don't adhere to my current office-chic penchant.

On Thursday I'm going to Lanzarote! I'm going to get so brown.