I work too much. I live alone. I have a few friends. I live 16950.69 kilometres away from the person I love most in the world. I am a little bit insane, really, not just melodramatically and I have a co-dependant relationship with wine.
When your life is the sum of so many things that are so very effective at making you feel effing shite, one creates an ecosystem of stuff that makes you feel deliriously happy. My father was bipolar, his Wicked-y wife told me I was too. Spending so much time bouncing around the ceilings to forget the days that drag on in the sludge of misery sounds like a pretty good case for saying I am.
But rather than bore you with tales of woe and misery and everythingbutthecatsinglewomansadness (my cousin has told me to stop) here is the list, a list of stuff that sends me soaring into joy, delirium, utopia and glee.
So let’s start with Glee.
I wake up early on a normal day, usually around 6am, or I could say with the poetic lyricism of Australian, sparrow’s fart. Even if I’ve been out on the Jamba Juice until 4am, I still can’t sleep past 9…I’ve been waking up early since I was a teenager commuting to a far, far away private high school. In 2012, thanks to the wonders of broadband Internet, I can use those extra dark early morning hours, no longer spent on a train, to some useful means; watching television. On a Friday, from my bedroom, as the rest of Paris snores to the rhythm of it’s own self-importance, I am sitting cross legged, wrapped in a quilt, nursing a mug of coffee. My eyes are wide, my grinning lips even wider, I giggle, I laugh, and at regular intervals, I throw off my quilt like a Championship Boxer throws down his robe and belt out a show tune. Or as was the case this week, a fully choreographed rendition of the Hand Jive, a song I learnt many moons ago, a song that features in Grease, a song they sang this week on Glee.
Glee is the kind of jazz hands-y, spirit finger-y fun that has come to flourish in the modern age of Simon Cowell. He of the dodgy hairdo, man-nipple-exposing white T-shirt, sly grin and exceptional arrogance is one of the smartest bastards on earth. Apart from being ridiculously rich, Simon invented the second thing on my list, The X Factor.
They can’t always sing, they are usually barely literate, the gays-on-a-float choreography is the spangliest kind of cheese and the judges have no discernable talent earning them the credibility to critique anything more complicated than a three legged race. Except of course for Gary. Gary Barlow OBE, my all-singing, all-dancing Christian Grey is the highlight of my week. His syrupy Cheshire brogue, his only out of one side of his mouth smile, the piercing blue eyes and the granddaddy suits with matching wartime haircut are all compliments to a smart-arsey witty repartee that makes Simon’s open harassment just plain mean. Gary might be mean, but at least he’s mean in a Tom Ford Tux. And that makes it Fifty Shades of fine by me.
If Gary is the Spice, then Rylan is the Sugar. If you haven’t seen it for yourself, I am not going to tell you. Google it. Only in the United Kingdom could someone so camp, so orange and so helmet-coiffed be voted for by the public, every week, for over a month, and continue to be so bloody entertaining. The costume designer deserves an Oscar.
When I am not stuffing myself with really bad television, I enjoy stuffing myself with really good food and even better wine. I have a tendency to overindulge, so I eat/drink/smoke only three days a week and then drink soup and coffee for the other four. A recently acquired uncomfortable pain in the abdomen might put paid this bipolar regimen, but for now, I can still fit into the third thing on the list, my Burberry Trench.
Louis XIV, my trusty sidekick in my superhero movie life, a movie that would be called The Fast and The Luxurious, has left the safety of employment in France for only 35 hours per week minus the 7 weeks holiday and lunch vouchers and free boat lessons, to join the bastion of everything British, Burberry. Since I was about 15 I have dreamed of being Posh enough to buy, and then actually wear, a Burberry Trench. I am not yet Posh enough to buy, so Louis helped out with 75% off. I am definitely not Posh enough to wear, I have a bad habit of flipping up the collar to reveal the signature plaid underneath. But I love that the rain runs off it, the little metal clips all over it and that when it is all done up, I look like a detective; a detective with lots of fuzzy hair and worn out Doc Martens, but secretive and James Bondette all the same.
That would be the next thing on the list, I love going to the movies.
I queued for 2 hours to see Skyfall. I saw it at Leicester Square and I cried before the movie even started. I laughed out loud at the touchy-feely Javier scene, I gasped when Bond jumped off the bridge, I thought Q was rather sexy; I bloody loved every one of the 143 minutes of it. And I cried because I saw the extended trailer for Les Miserables; Russell sings, Hugh sings, all that busty baritone, my lungs expanded as I swallowed back the tears, but they fell across my cheeks anyway. Just like they do at least 3-4 times a week.
I cry at Glee, I cry sometimes when I sing a song I really love, I cry when the Two Minis over in Sydney sing me nursery rhymes on Skype, I cry when I wake up in the night because that bastard still occupies my subconscious, I cry as often in happiness as I do when I am sad. That is the last thing on my list, being someone who truly loves feeling.
I have been travelling a lot these past few days; I’ve been fortunate enough to see some really breathtaking bucket list stuff. You’ll be able to read about that soon, but suffice to say I stood in the middle of a square, surrounded by tourists and was overwhelmed by absolute beauty. I cried, I put on my sunglasses, and I kept crying.
Two weeks ago, wizzed under the channel by the high-speed train that I sleep in more often than I do my own bed, I went to the V&A. More specifically, I went to the Hollywood Costume Exhibition. You’ve just read the list above, she loves singing, dancing, sparkles, fancy jackets, jazz hands and movies*. For me, this was like a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.
Wandering through the hundreds of costumes, the first time I cried was the Green Curtain dress from Gone with the Wind. A lifetime obsessive of the story of Rhett, the first celluloid arsehole I fell in love with, the tears rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t believe how little she was. I was stunned into shock and then I saw the splendid royal dresses.
There were mantuas from Marie Antoinette, there were three different Elizabeth 1st’s and there was a dress worn by Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon. I cried then because I was reminded that I am named after her in that movie. Motherbear heard the radio advertising the film as she lay in bed just after I was born. That time I cried because I wished Motherbear was at the exhibition with me…I cried when I just typed that bit too.
I walked into the next room, another Scarlett O’Hara dress, more tears. Darth Vader, 7 feet tall, those large eyes with no eyes staring down at me, the fear of a little girl watching that first time when he strangles the other guy without actually touching his throat flooded my memory… I cried.
Robert de Niro’s coat from Frankenstein, tears. Meryl Streep’s sparkly finale outfit from Mamma Mia, I wept. I wept that time because I remembered that I wasn’t married to Colin Firth. Then I came into the last room.
There is just so much, so many icons, so many moments in film I remembered so vividly, I could no longer hold myself together. Han Solo, Moulin Rouge, Atonement, James Bond, Batman, Spiderman, Superman (special tears for poor Christophe Reeve at that one) Black Swan, Marilyn’s White Dress and then I came to my very own macguffin.
These eyes, wide with joy and haloed by tears for an entire life, eyes that have seen babies born, fathers die and even Madonna’s left boob; these eyes have now seen the Ruby Slippers.
The shoes that started it all, still sequinned, still topped with little bows, still bottomed with very sensible heels (are you listening Posh?), are everything I expected but for one minor disappointment, at almost 100 years old, having outlived their owner, they were no longer red.
Well I still am.
The little girl who loved watching that movie, who danced and sang and imitated the Munchkins, has become the woman who dances and sings in her own Ruby Slippers..to her own tune…whenever she likes…
…like this morning as I walked the platform at St Pancras.
*I know what you are thinking; the only thing missing is being a gay man. The greatest travesty of my life is that so much Gay was stuffed into a very hot-blooded heterosexual woman.
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