I can’t remember the last time someone said that to me….or when I last said that to someone

What?

“Give me a boost”

Oh. Yeah. Me neither.

Yep. Just goes to show.

What?

We’re old.

Just before Christmas a decent vintage store opened up opposite our office. I felt relieved.I miss going through racks of old clothing. I miss buying things that need a 60 degree wash before I can wear them. I miss the self involved bitching about how everything I want only comes in a size four-man-tent (call it the thrill of the hunt).

For the past year or so, it’s been the high street for me. Or my own appallingly made clothing. I think a small part of me dies every time I try to make a skirt. And then I’ll insist on wearing it just because it almost resembles what I wanted. And in many ways, in my mind, its still better than wearing one of 20 million of the same garment sold all over Europe.

Today, in my lunch break, I finally got another chance to have a look around the store. The bonus is that the shop spreads over two floors, which is substantial compared to what was available prior to its opening. The pitfall is that over those two floors, in Newcastle, there’s one single halogen heater.

Nothing has size labels, so trying on the clothing is necessary. So your nipples curling up and dropping right off your body is high risk.

Between glaring at my own image and trying to get my clothes off (and back on) as fast as possible, I was lucky to have peered inside a pair or red trousers before climbing into them. I suppose I only did it because what caught my eye was a small grey satin slip dangling over the crotch-bum seam. The edges curled underneath itself, making it look very much like wrinkled fish skin.

Without touching it, I decided to inpsect the limp thing. To my horror, there were absurdly bright yellow stains all over it.

They had formed the same way dried salt water leaves an outline of where all the wet was.

I quickly lost interest in everything (even the things that didn’t have gussets) and left.

Boy said “nothing nice?”
I said “no, let’s go to Topshop”

We did. And I bought two sealed pairs of pantyhose with gleaming, clean, unsullied crotch bits.

I suddenly remembered that I made Lyndall a vandal by wheat-pasting a drawing of hers on a wall. I was drunk. With glue and Lyndall-O’s drawing of Bob in my unsteady reach.

Things are busy around here. Even the things that I can do nothing about, I’m excitedly sweating over.
Happy Friday.

I found this lying on Grey Street on one of my lunch breaks last week.

I sort of hovered over it for a bit, feeling like a bit of a creep. It couldn’t have been on the ground for too long since it shows no sign of being caught in the rain.

Somebody has definitely been carrying it around in their wallet for a long time. It didn’t seem fair that it ended up sharing the gutter with puke, piss and cigarette buts.

She sits on my desk now. Next to all my other useless-but-sweet things.

I could do with an extra five or so hours in each day.