Many years ago, Weasel and I went shopping in Camden Town. We had a lovely day out, she got a fancy leather coat and we both got new bags and all was well. My bag is dead. One side of the shoulder strap broke last summer, I sewed it back on, the other side it coming off now and it took the zipper with it. I cannot get my limited sewing skills to fix it. I’m so distraught. It has been so perfect, it sort of looks nice and small when it is empty and it can take sooo much crap. I’m talking books, mobiles, wallet, travel tickets, lotion, water bottle, tee-shirt, chap stick, mints, pens, pencils… and so much more, all at once. It has been abroad with me, all over the UK, to innumerable gigs and shopping trips.

I have tried to find something similar online, with minimal success. I found something that would work on eBay, but the bidding war got too rich for me. I’m trying to decide if I ought to just settle for something I found that might work, or if I should hold off and look around Leeds while I’m there next month. They have the most amazing shopping district of any city I’ve ever been to. Markets, elite boutiques and department stores all right next to each other.

I just wish my bag wasn’t dead.

A has had some issues with his girlfriend and I’ve been sort of helping him sort them out. And he keeps saying I should be a counsellor, and the thing is, I really wanted to be when I was a teenager, but everyone around me told me I was too fucked up myself to even begin to think I could help anyone else. Adam isn’t the only person telling me this. Every single friend I’ve ever had has at some point said I should. I’ve tried looking into it, find out what one has to do to get qualifications etc. but the problem I keep running into is time/money. I thought I could volunteer for the Samaritans, but they will only take you if you can work at night too. I really can’t. While I was in the shower today [best place for thinking] I did ponder the idea of quitting work and going into full time education to become qualified. But the implications and knock-on effects are far reaching and very scary in some ways. So I shall continue to vaguely think that one day it would be nice to do something I’d be really good at and continue to do nothing about it.

W has been lending me books lately, all of Paul Gallico’s works [sooo do not recommend him, is completely misguided as to how rape effects people and has some lousy opinions of the human race as a whole] and the Travis McGee series by John D MacDonald, which I am thoroughly enjoying. The characters are rich and colourful and the plots are well thought out and the writing is entertaining. Excellent stuff. Anyway, today I started my third book in the series, The Dreadful Lemon Sky and on page 16, there was an amusing conversation which I must share:

‘You ought to run a little,’ I told him.

“Would that I could. When the beach people see you running, they know at a glance that it is exercise. There you are, all sinew and brown hide, and you wear that earnest, dumb, strained expression of the old jock keeping in shape. You have the style. Knees high, arms swinging just right, head up. But suppose I came running down this beach? They would look at me, and then look again. I look so little like a runner or a jock that the only possible guess as to what would make me run is terror. So they look way down the beach to see what is chasing me. They can’t see anything, but to be on the safe side, they start walking swiftly in the same direction I’m running. First just a few, then a dozen, then a score. All going faster and faster. Looking back. Breaking into a run. And soon you would have two or three thousand people thundering along the beach, eyes popping out of the sockets, cords in their necks standing out. A huge stamped, stomping everything and everybody in their path into the sand. You wouldn’t want me to cause a catastrophe like that, would you?’

‘Oh, boy.’

‘It might not happen, but I can’t take the chance.’

The ‘I’ is Travis, and the other person is his associate Meyer. He is sort of a highly intelligent side-kick. I’ve already read The Green Reaper and The Scarlet Ruse. So need to keep track of what I’ve read, I may well need to buy the whole series myself one day. And while I’m quoting books at you, I’ve been saving this one for some time:

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were. All the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras), and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made up of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world words, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.

Neil Gaiman – Anasi Boys, page 256

Today was a rough, long day and I’m all tired. When I told Weasel I wanted a surprise to cheer me up, she hung up the laundry and ordered pizza. That helped.