Friend-adultery

Goodness me, how the days whizz past without me updating this. I have been musing idly on the reasons, and the most significant ones are:

1. I lead a very boring life on the whole
2. I am very lazy
3. Over the last couple of months, I have started to get a bit guilty about the time I spend on the internet and with my lovely internet friends, and whether it makes me neglect my old, real life friends. I hope not. But just sometimes, if I am owning up to having spent time with the internet ones, I feel distinctly guilty if I haven't also spent a lot of time with the others. What with that and needing to spend huge tracts of time on my own, I don't know how I ever manage to squeeze in any work, and I certainly can't think where I'd fit in a relationship (Stop sniggering, you at the back).

I'm very blessed, in that I have a group of close friends. We have known each other for 20 years this year, and most of us still live within a couple of miles of each other. I see at least one, usually more, of them at least once a week, and if we haven't met up for a couple of weeks en masse, someone will suggest a meal out or a trip to the cinema or something. I have this niggling feeling that I haven't been pulling my weight recently in the matter of organising things, or, indeed, putting in the hours. Hmmm. I think most people underestimate how time-consuming it is to maintain a really good friendship.

I expect the Germans have a big long word for it. They do for most things.

The elixir of youth

I had a lovely evening last night. Sitting with friends drinking Pimms in a beautiful place and laughing and laughing. I got back and caught sight of myself in the mirror and I was startled how much more energetic and alive I looked than I often do. Ergo, sitting drinking Pimms with friends is better than any moisturiser.

I pass this tip on for the benefit of humanity. See you at happy hour.

Beauty Schmooty

I'm reading a book about Diana Mosley at the moment, and musing vaguely on how different her life would have been if she had been born plain.

Being born beautiful, as she undoubtedly was, is no more worthy of any particular reaction than being born clever. But somehow, it's more acceptable to be jealous of beauty than of brains. Or maybe it's just that people are more inclined to be content with their level of brains. Or it's easier to screw people up about beauty because there's more you can do to fix it.

I'm not a particularly vain person (I think) but I find it rather alarming how much stuff I carry around with me to make me look - not beautiful, but better. But I do wonder, sometimes, what it's like to be beautiful. I can't help thinking it must be different.

What I Have Been Up To

It has been suggested to me, in the nicest (or rather, drunkest) possible way, that I ought to update this a bit more often. Nourish it. Pay it some attention, that sort of thing. And I have been thinking about this and thinking that the reason I don't is probably because I have a very very dull interior life.

Still, here we go. In common with the other blogs in this set, I've had a very drunken weekend in the company of many many posters from the sparkly thread. I am looking speculatively at random passers-by and wondering if there will ever be a remote tissue-type service so that you can identify and run over your own liver donor. In my gym, lots of people have t-shirts that say "If you gave your body to medical science, would they accept it?": in my case, the answer is probably Yes, but only for entertainment value.

Before that, I spent some time working in Greece, which was very hot, great fun and fairly annoying. I experienced The Greek Meeting (and have had it confirmed as archetypal): three hours long, everyone at least half an hour late, everyone shouting and rubbishing each other's ideas (apart from the people who were loudly on their mobiles throughout), everyone smoking, finishing more than an hour late, and only two items on an eight-item agenda covered. My lasting memento of the trip is a huge amount of extremely cheap gin and vodka.

In other news, I met up with my ex-boyfriend who tried to persuade me to shag him (annoying and gratifying in roughly equal measure): looked at some flats but failed to find anywhere I like more than this one: tried Ocado, who are amazing needy for a delivery service.

This is all about the things I've done, not the things I think and feel. I'm not sure if that is due to a paucity of thought and feeling (see above). Still, it's been fun. And might stop certain people ticking me off, temporarily.