Alistair Campbell has gone!! Whether or not he resigned or was sacked is irrelevant, he is no more. Sweepstakes are forming on how long Tony Blair can survive without him. I’m personally waiting to see if Mr Bleurgh can actually speak at all without his chief “press secretary” (read: spin doctor). I’m sure Alistair Campbell was actually a ventriloquist, and Blair is just the puppet, his mouth flapping about while Campbell lies for him. It was Campbell who actually made the decisions, ran the country, he just had to hide behind Blair because of course, Campbell was never actually elected.

Don’t go. There, I said it. And now I’ve rendered myself incredibly hypocritical. One rule for me, one for you. I am well aware of how unfair I am being. But you and I are different. What you can cope with easily, is hell for me. I asked you if you minded me going. Had you said yes, I wouldn’t have gone. But you never even asked me, so I have to tell you now. I don’t want you to go. I can’t go through that again. Yes, its Me, Me, Me, But Me is 50% of this relationship, right?

Tired, upset, worrying. Am I feeling this bad because the only person I felt I could turn to, is telling me stuff I don’t want to hear? For years now, I’ve loved and admired her for her honesty and practicality. Except of course, when it is turned on me. It hurts, because I know she’s right. I am being unfair. However, that reaffirmation doesn’t actually help a lot right now. What I want is someone to cheer me up, to reassure me that I do have a point. To wallow with, basically. In some situations practicality is just not practical.

Oh, who am I kidding, she’s brilliant. Yes, practical, yes, does not let me feel sorry for myself, but always, tirelessly There, when I need her most. Somehow writing long over-emotional letters to her sorts my own head out, just thinking about what she would say in the times when I can’t talk to her properly. Vic, THANK YOU. Thank you for caring, even when I’m being ridiculous. For forgiving me everything. Thank you for being the only person guaranteed to be awake at 1am. I hope I am as good a friend to you as you are to me.

Some situations prove that Fate has a sense of humour. The scariest argument Carl and I have ever had, days before we have to go get our Notice of Marriage. What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would still stick thorns in you…. Do I want to assert my individuality and retain Terrill? Or do I want to start afresh, symbolise this life-changing experience and take Carl’s name? Am I forever going to define myself through my parents, or do I renounce feminism and become Mrs Townsend? Nowadays, do I feel closer to Carl, or my parents?

Chester-Le-Street W.MC. Working Men’s Club? Naaah, for one thing, they aren’t all Men, the Wives have invaded too nowadays, just to be PC. Working they certainly aren’t either, most are way past retirement age (you hope) So, it has now been re-christened the Wrinkly Midgets Consortium. And I am not a bartender, I am a Slave to the Beer Guts. Perfect, perfect field for a budding anthropologist, a concentration of odd characters, or rather outlandish caricatures, all consuming vast amounts of Real Ale and consequently exaggerating their peculiarity. Do you think this is a good example of Real Englishness, Twill?

Another nothingy day. Something I forgot to post the other day: 2nd September = The first singing dancing plastic Santa Clauses appear in the Pound Shop and Kwiksave. I know British summers are short, but bloody hell!!

In my vain and bored little way, I've spent the afternoon searching for my Completely Pointless website on Google, just to see if it's listed. It doesn't appear if I search for my name, only my reviews and comments on Question Time come up then. However, if I search randomly for the words "Completely" "Pointless" and "Annabel", the results are very peculiar…..

Top 5 search results for Annabel's Completely Pointless website on Google:

communications would sometimes break up, completely by accident... bigboard which seemed fairly pointless, truth be... replaced by tennis-player Annabel...

...Bob was helpless, completely at Bertha's mercy ... Fighting for good, it's all so pointless, she muttered... Annabel's car phone buzzed and she nervously picked it up...

Who is Annabel's mysterious superior? ...clouds of tiny, pointless flies hovered... trilbies or dark glasses because it's completely impractical...

If one were to leave them out completely... in the absence of photos it all seems a bit pointless... there are spaces between Annabel's sentences.

Bel’s Definitive Guide to Things That Should Never Have Been Invented

1. The Pixie Shoe
2. Mosquitos
3. So Solid Crew
4. Chimp Chariots (by which I mean “sports” cars that non-evolved Neanderthals “drive” around in.)
5. Roast dinners (But only in reference to the amount of washing up they create)
6. The Parcan 64
7. University tuition fees
8. The Snakebite Pint
9. Credit cards, and all the small print surrounding any bank transaction
10. Gold earrings, gold clowns, in fact any huge gold jewellery.
11. Privatised “public” transport
12. Kitchen sinks without draining boards attached.
13. “New” Labour

As soon as I worry about my life, everyone else seem to have dramas at the same time. Someyyeh is getting forced back to Iran because The-Powers-That-Be have realised that her visa expired ages ago, so she’s going just in time for the next war. Hilary’s sister is pregnant at seventeen. Vic’s brother is already a Dad and it sounds like her whole family is collapsing around her. Minna is also pregnant for the second time, and actually got married back in February without telling anyone, so her Thai boyfriend could stay in Finland. Suddenly my life pales in comparison.

Today is supposedly a day when you remember exactly where you were at The Time. Well, I had- luckily- just arrived back from Peru. I was staying at the parents’ house, when it was all new and the carpet still smelt plasticy. Then Jeff rang up in a panic saying the Twin Towers had been hit by planes, and they’d evacuated Canary Wharfe and there was going to be a war and I had to put the TV on right NOW…..
So I did. And I sat there watching thinking, Oh God, please keep Bush away from the Middle East….pleeeease.

I think I love him because he looks like an alien. Something strange about his face delights me. Symmetrical faces are supposed to be the most attractive, but as usual I am more drawn towards Oddities. One eye has blonde lashes and he other has brown. The corresponding side of The Eyebrow is blonde, darkening to brown as it crosses his face. Like me, he has more hair on one side of his head than the other. Even his grin is lopsided. Quite a thin face, with a lovely high cheekbones, making his whole face appear angular and “spiky heart-shaped!”

“Mariposa” is in my head again. Johanna loved this song. Misunderstanding, she chose to believe is was hopelessly romantic. “Mariposa, mi amor” I admit it does sound beautiful, but in translation, it is practically venomous.
“Yo soy un raton de tu ratonera
Trumfa que no matar pero no livera”
I’m a mouse to your mouse-trapper
Triumphing in not killing but not setting me free
And yet he is singing so sweetly and cheerfully:
“Ay mujer, que facil eres?”
Woman, how easy are you?
I think this guy has issues. And I agree with Johanna that somethings are better left untranslated.

Writing 100words a day is not enough, given current levels of inactivity. For some vaguely masochistic reason, I’ve volunteered to write between 5000 and 7000 words on anthropological views of power. My chosen subject is exploring what right the World Bank has to inflict its education policies on Latin America. This is for a competition. The winning paper will be published in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review, and the author gets $300 and a trip to New York to collect the prize. Last year, there were 11 entries from around the world, so I stand a pretty good chance!

Today’s news informed me that the position you sleep in is supposed to reveal your personality. By definition, doesn’t everything you do? My handwriting says I’m pessimistically forward-looking. (?!) You are what you eat, etc. Are you what you drink too? My fellow barslave, Claire, drinks sweet cider with blackcurrant. Eeeeeeeeuuuurgh. Is she sickly-sweet then? In turn, I drink lager (cost-effective, easy-to-find, therefore making me a student?). Or red wine. (Sophisticated? Romantic? Or just wishing I was in Chile?) Recently addicted to dark rum with lime, which I know is a Nicaraguan withdrawal symptom, or an effort to appear exotic.

Need trousers due to favourite jeans giving up the ghost and disintegrating. I am being discriminated against. “New Look”, you shall be named and shamed. Why have an “everything £10 or under” sale when your “plus size” range (as in 16-upwards, UK sizing) is not included in the damn sale?? Why should all the ironing-board-with-two-peas-on style girls pay £10 for jeans when us well-upholstered people have to pay £27.99? For pity’s sake, it’s an extra few square inches of fabric, that’s all! And while we’re on the subject, can you please make the changing rooms in a size 16 too?

Baloom-bleem baloom-bleem baloom-bleem (trar-tar-trar-ta-trartrartra-ta)
baloom-bleem baloom-bleeeeem
(ba-baaarrziong trartrartraaaaaaaa baziong) baloom-bleem baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiir baaaaaaaaaaaahhhhr.
Meep.
This repeats continuously until seventeen pages of El Proyecto are printed successfully. The ‘Meep’ at the end is almost apologetic. “Done, sorry sir.” Listen to it long enough, you can hear the words. It’s almost like its chanting motivating slogans to itself. “Get it done! Get it done! Get it done!” At the same time, the paper-winder is grumbling in the background, “boring, not again, boring, not again” or maybe even “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Oh god, my printer is talking to me.

Been hanging out with the revolutionary communists again. Apparently I'm too liberal. I'm not a communist because I prefer to think of myself as an individual rather than a number. I am not a capitalist either, because I don't think the world should be ruled by big businesses. Extremes of either worldview are dangerous, the far right and the far left end up pretty much the same in any case. I'm slightly wonkily aligned left of centre. The problem is that this position does not lend itself to radicalism. Tom's favourite phrase is "Get off the fence, you'll get splinters!"

A bad night, full of CRAFT moments. For those not in the know, a CRAFT moment is when the person concerned is quite happily going about their business, in this case, serving drinks, quietly confident in their set task, even enjoying themselves before It strikes. Aforementioned person approaches the till and is rendered incompetant for no reason. CRAFT = Can't Remember A Fucking Thing. Add to this, subliminal messaging - a bloke drinking beer starts humming "Red Red Wine". Bel goes to the till, and instead of ringing in his pint, starts searching hopelessly for the red wine button. Doh.

For long and complicated reasons, I am going down to London next week, and staying with Hilary and D in their new flat. Exciting. To make things even groovier, Vic is also coming up one evening. It has occurred to me that it is September 2003. This has significance. In September 1993, Little Annabel, Little Hilary and Little Vicky, all nervously started Highworth Grammar School for Girls, in Ashford, Kent. Ten years later, and Bel, Hilzo and Vic will still be sitting around nattering til the early hours, still just as good friends as we were a decade ago. Scary.

Work experience. Experience of Work, a taster of the real world, of earning a living, having some form of responsibility and commitment towards your chosen career. Well, theoretically at least. I am doing work experience at Journeyman Pictures next week, somewhere in Zone 6 of London. They are a film production company, specializing in political documentaries, which they sell to the likes of Channel 4 and National Geographic and so on. Broadcasting, filmmaking and/or political journalism does sound appealing, I was lucky to find it, so two weeks there may aid the dreaded career decision I’ve got to face soon.

Work experience. Experience of Work. Well, funny definition of work, but this is showbiz daaaaarlings. Unfortunately, given the international stereotype of the Student On Work Experience, I am being doled out the showbiz equivalent of photocopying and making tea. I am “digitising”. “Digitising” is the new buzzword for cutting and pasting bits of film and transferring the clips from the video to the computer. Then I get to write a synopsis for the website. So far, I’m not learning anything I haven’t done before on my own little website! But hey, we’ll stick it out for a week at least.

Confuscious say, Man smoke the weed, Man going to get stoned. …. Wise words. Suddenly we are not in a new flat in Northolt (its grim up North London…) The room is all that exists, detached from reality, time drags out, Our brains have slowed down, the air is thick, quite literally. But of course, this is the perfect opportunity to put the world to rights! We know everything and we are the only ones left in this miserable little planet capable of seeing sense!! What a responsibility to put on us! But wait! Intellectual musings are interrupted by munchies.

She smells nice. This is the overriding conclusion to the evening. Cuddling up to her, absorbing her as she tries to sleep on me, her personal unique little smell knocks me back into the depths of the past with a jolt. No memories of specific events, just vague recollections of that time, unfocussed but more real than anything else in that moment.
She fidgets, she’s not comfy. Neither am I, but I could quite happily stay there forever, nothing else matters.
I watch her doze, she’s beautiful.
And now she’s moaning cos my heart is beating too fast and loud.

Yo no puedo escribir en publico sobre usted y nuestra adventuritas recientemente. Esta demasiado peligroso y la cosa mas importante en este situacion es que no a causar mas dolor a nuestra amores. Mi problema es este: estas en mi cabeza, siempre. Eres mi primero piensament en las mananas, mi ultimo sueno cada noche. Es impossible por mi a continuar como este. Quiero, necessito una escapada, una respuesta, una solucion, a hacer una decision. Ayudame, carina, explicame el razon por esos emociones, digame, que voy hacer? No puedo sobrevivir sintigo, pero al mismo tiempo, tengo miedo que estoy enamorando contigo.

She is completely intoxicating As with all intoxicants, I think I got addicted a long time ago, and now I’m suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms. Still, the first step is admitting the problem. But I’m no quitter. I’d be happy to surrender to this intoxication for the rest of my life. I’d love to say this delirious state does not produce a hangover, but I think that is just about to kick in. I need therapy. Don’t think I can extend this metaphor any further other than to say the non-rational side of my brain is high as a kite.

I’ve decided wandering round London in the early evening does not do much to bring me back down to earth. I think London is almost designed for this sort of weather, very cold and crisp, but beautifully sunny still. My train pulls in with a view across the cityscape tinted slightly pink in the sun. I am at Waterloo station, and amid the chaos of the 5.30pm rush hour, a busker sits in his personal little corner, strumming ‘Waterloo Sunset’ totally carefree. I think I see Terry and Julie over there too. Suddenly I’m feeling blissfully happy for no reason.

I GOT TO PLAY AROUND AT THE BBC!!! YAY! YAY! YAY! D snuck me in as a visitor, but not only showed me the “Green tea room” and the Top of the Pops bar, which visitors are allowed to see, but we nosed around Studio One, which hosts such Beeb classics as Question Time and Blue Peter. MASSIVE massive lights!! The biggest lamp we have in the theatre is a measley 1kw. These were 6 or 7kw, HUUUUGE! Having been suitably awed by Studio One, I then got to watch D being Visual Operator on the Sunday Chart Show…. Fun!

Hilary and D are so funny. Recently engaged, apparently D did the whole romantic proposal in Trafalgar Square with a specially-made ring and so on. Hard to believe, considering he is now sprawled on the sofa, smoking and reading FHM. They bicker constantly, teasing each other, play fighting, then D turns round and wonders what would happen if any of their neighbours ever thought they were being serious! Good to know, really, though it did unnerve me. Hilary seems to have developed a remarkably high tolerance level in recent years, but if anything, they could have been married for years!

Happiness is a shop called BRAVISSIMO!! It’s amazing what having new, sexy and above all, comfy, underwear does for a girl. Finally, a shop that caters for the well-endowed girl. The bras there start at a D cup and go right up to a JJ. We were in lingerie luxury! Wearing the correctly-sized bra for once really does make a difference, I didn’t want to put the old one back on! We spent faaaar too much money, but I feel great. And I’m going to flaunt what I’ve got, even if it’s only a case of strutting around Hilzo’s flat!