“For last year's words belong to last year's language, And next year's words await another voice.”

My new year's resolution is, as ever, to be a nicer person.

It speaks volumes that I don't want to readily admit that to anyone, particularly my mother, lest she think that I don't mean any of my sarcastic or brutally blunt comments. The truth is, I quite enjoy being a bitch.

I am starting a bitch-tin. It's a creation of my own which derives from the classic swear-jar. Every time I make a purposefully harsh comment or joke, I have to add to the tin.

Now, I'm not a bitch in the sense that I gossip especially, or say unpleasantries about people I pretend to like. I don't say mean things about the way people look. Unless they are rude. It's more a case of saying whichever blunt things come into my head. I refuse to pander about being artificially nice. I don't tend to express feelings and I do not have the ability to sympathise. Particularly with illness. There is no such thing as flu. Colds are for the weak. Don't get me started on pregnancy.

Nevertheless, I am going to attempt to reign it in a little. Smile a bit more. Fake some sympathy. New year, new attitude and all that.

Here is summary of my year in angsty tweets: 

7 Jan
"@British_Airways How dare you suspend all your flights from Havana and not offer me a full refund? Who the hell do you think you are?"

24 Jan
"Orphans or not, the thing is... I just don't like children. And I have an irrational phobia of frothy toothpaste. So when the 2 collide…"

4 Apr
"The bad news is I've had Dengue Fever. From a mosquito. I also have a black eye.From walking into a window. 1of these things is not my fault"

1 July
"Angry power eating has reached a new level- just chipped a tooth from violent mastication. When will I be able to eat in a calm environment?"

23 July
"There is a baby living on this street who always cries at 12.30am. I hate it."

27 July
"It's 3am. I'm cleaning my shoes. The woman who lives above me is snoring- sounds like a motorbike. Too many cheap cocktails, too many slugs."

12 Aug
"so how did you break your engine?" "well I asked my friend to punch it with a shoe…"

30 Aug
"When I get stuck in purgatory, Alicia Keyes will be there screeching out "New Yaaaarrrk" until I subside and confess to everything #dyingcat"

4 Sep
"Disabled man "nearly" hit by bus. This is not news, Ipswich!! http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_disabled_man_nearly_crushed_by_bus_in_frightening_accident_1_2365625 …"
"Incidentally, neither is this. A lift broke down for 20 mins. A baby was in it. And everyone was fine. http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_baby_rescue_drama_as_marks_spencer_lift_breaks_down_in_high_street_1_2366971 …"

13 Oct
"A week of scary deadlines,appointments I am in no way prepared for,yet the thought keeping me awake is the potential threat of clothes moths"

31 Oct
"Shocked by child-demons knocking on my door after 24 year of living within an expanse of fields deserted by human interaction and humour"
"I had nothing to give them but a cereal bar."
"Considered giving up an avocado or a grapefruit, but I knew not what bad omens those little shits were capable of conjuring. #halloween"

16 Nov
"Oh my goodness. There is fake snow and Dick and Dom are singing a song about bogies. I think I'm in purgatory #westfieldstratford

25 Nov
"Parents with Children: Aren't you wonderful, taking little Hugo to the museums? WALK ON THE LEFT."

27 Dec
"@firstgreatwestern I have been stuck on this train for 2 hours now and I hate you. And there's NO WATER!!"
"@greateranglia And I hate you and all."
"@FGW sorry I got your hip abbreviated name wrong. Character saving so you can reply more to complainants, I assume"
"And you, @TFL. You are also on my hitlist."

"There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns"

History repeats itself.

Last October, I was the last person to move out of our student house in Oxford. This meant that I somehow ended up with the brunt of the job- cleaning, lugging to charity shops, handing in keys etc. etc. It was exhausting and emotional, which may account for my absence of mind on the final evening when I managed to lock myself out.

Everything was spotless. My bags were packed by the front door and my car was loaded like freight train. I went to take the last of the bin bags out and… slam. The front door closed behind me. All keys and worldly possessions inside.

This morning, I moved out from my temporary room in Queen's Park. Having finished term on Friday and spent every hour since working and/or drinking, I'm a bit out of it. My body hates me, my voice sounds like a broken goat. I had a 13 hour shift at the gallery yesterday and got back very late. Set my alarm for 7 to make time to clean and get my stuff together.

Of course, I overslept. Still managed to wash, clean, eat, pack in a flurry of j-cloths, tights and weetabix. Everything was spotless. My bags were packed by the front door ready to load myself up like a pack-horse. I went to take the bin bags out and… slam. the front door closed behind me. All keys and worldly possessions inside.

In Oxford, I resolved the situation by going out to meet a friend for dinner, before climbing upon said friend's shoulders to break into a bathroom window with a little dutch courage. In Oxford, my neighbours were later found guilty of organising a sex-trafficking ring and the sight of some drunk girl throwing herself through a top floor window would not have raised any eyebrows. In Queen's Park, however, my neighbours have nannies, dog-walkers and high security systems for their million pound wine-cellars.

I am happy to report that this did not stop me from climbing over a fence and attempting to scale the side of the building… but the landlady will be happy to know that her house is not very easy to burgle. With palms full of mud and a cut wrist, I surrendered. Happy that I had at least made the choice to get dressed properly before taking the bins out, I went to work. Perhaps I will live at work until the landlady returns to London.

I have come so far in one year… and yet learned nothing.

Other stupid things I have done this week:

• Somehow lodged a piece of plastic in my finger. No time to deal with that shit. Decided to leave it there for a couple of days. Mistake.

• Coming in from the pub on Friday, I snuck in with the stealth of a cat-burglar (somewhat more stealthily than the aforementioned hurling myself through a bathroom door.) Ran to the loo. Flushed the chain. Something exploded. With water shooting in all directions, I decided to stand on the cistern and reach to turn the stopcock off. I think I broke the pipe. Landlady wakes up to find me soaked and swearing. Turns off the water in the road. Neighbours stir. Much commotion.   No water for the next 24 hours.

• Vodka with red wine. Again- I have come so far since Oxford and learning nothing.

The week before the week that was

5 Things I did during the week before last:

1) Experienced extreme rush-hour squash (rush-crush)
I can accept that playing sardines on a daily basis is a factor of London life, but I think I reached breaking point a few days ago when I found myself WAY too close a middle-aged man's jowls.

You know the scenario: a lone, desperate commuter sprints to catch the tube as the doors are already closing; dead-set refusal to wait another 2 minutes for the next one, lest the delay to his journey cause the stock exchange to crash. Some guy narrowly avoided crushing his skull as the doors closed, but in the effort pushed the rest of us heavily in the same manner in which one might jerk a frying pan of onions in danger of caramelising too soon. The result was a carriage full of muttered irritation, my body pressed chest to chest and my neck forced into the face of the aforementioned middle-aged business-man.

The worst part was that I couldn't help but laugh, something which he had to experience through my neck vibrations. He took the whole thing fairly well, asking in a bemused manner if I was alright. I spent the next 4 stops with my face turned awkwardly away from his, thinking of dead cats in an attempt not to laugh.

2) Experienced 1 slight emotional break-down
A combination of some unwanted Facebook "news" and not nearly enough hours sleep.

…And so I abandoned the newsroom, blanked out somewhat and before knowing what was happening found myself walking out of Zara with a sense of achievement.

3) Joined the gym

I'd put it off for a long time, but the guilt came in waves every time I walked out of my house- the gym is metres away from my doorstep.

It was a bright, Saturday morning when I joined- the kind of day one might wake up bright-eyed thinking "Yes! Today I will ACHIEVE!" - a rarity. Which is probably why when the woman behind the desk suggested I get straight to it and go to a "toning fun" class which was starting, I did without question.

Now, I like to think I'm not a terribly unfit person but dear God the angels wept. I nearly wept after the first ten minutes of squats to the backing of hyper-go-faster music combined with an over-keen class leader shouting at me to "Give it all you've GOT!!"

The next morning when I got the tube to work, a man helped me get up from my seat because I was in so much pain I couldn't do it myself without looking physically disabled.

3) Went to cover a Texan-themed business lunch run by the council 
I went to the so called Texan "love-in" to cover it for a news story. After another unplanned night at the pub without dinner, I was horribly hungover, but figured it would be an easy day: attend the event, take some photos and then retreat for the weekend. Sure.

Having written a rather long feature on it over the course of several days, I'm still not entirely sure what the event was about. The celebration of a business partnership with Hackney, with suitably apt business jargon thrown at the walls and floor, but under the slightly surreal covering theme of a Texan BBQ.

There was indeed a BBQ (admittedly hosted by an Austrian man), very loud country music and the unforgettable stetson hats. I had one placed firmly on my head by the organiser- a man very friendly and enthusiastic but whom I expected might be on the brink of a mid-life crisis… what with all the stetsons and that.

I spent an hour or so taking photos of awkward looking entrepreneurial tech-people posing through cardboard photo-sets, had a chat with the head councillor and wandered back towards the tube, hat still in tact. Then I got a phone call and I...

4) Ran to catch a train [in said cowboy hat] to hunt down and interview Peter Andre.

In Croydon. For the opening of a Kung-fu school. Surreal… and I fear this is only the beginning.

It's starting again

I miss blogging.

I’ve pulled together a rather excellent travel blog over the past year, but since I am no longer globe-trotting, don’t feel that I can cling onto that any longer. It’s been put to rest until I escape in a year or so.

My day to day travels have morphed from volcano trekking and chicken buses across Central America, to the clammy commute from North-West to South-East London, where I have started an MA in Journalism. Fortunately or unfortunately for followers of my past blogs, my burning desire to write about my adventures still prevails. Only now, the topics include the feeling of being pressed up against rush-hour tube windows and collecting up paper cups to save pennies on tea.

Bear with me.

“Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.”

-T.S Eliot, The Wasteland