Freewriting

I thought I'd make it easy on myself, and I wrote the whole blog piece on the piccadilly line - I've got a steady hand...lol. I'm feeling ok! I might get flashes of erm, bad things, ahem, but they're push-away-able for now.

Before the day is lost to meaning, I shall state it quite simply: everything went according to plan.

Woke up early, got dressed, looked OK! The RYL site wasn;t connecting but I had printed out the directions anyway. Before I went off to Old Street, i had two hours at Oxfam which went by pretty quickly. My partner Carole had found some diamonds - diamonds! in the mud. She's a hit and run victim so she walks funny and has to watch the ground all the time, so she found the diamonds. They're dazzling, but I told her to drop them in water to see if they float or not. Hopefully, they'll be worth thousands cos she deserves it. The two hours went busily but quietly, selling watches, speakers, vinyl, vintage Donald Duck comic books and knocked the window presentation in the process. It took all my beginner yoga whiles to put everything back. I also found an album by this band called Tenderfoot who I heard on Xfm like three years ago when I met Nik and I'd been pining for them since, so of course I reserved them, it had to be done. Even better news is that I'm finally seeing Alice next week!! You have no idea how much I miss her. It's like butterflies are having a food fight in your stomach. I miss her so much it pains.

Now, getting to Old Street was tricky. From Ealing Broadway to Ealing Common on the district line, then the piccadilly to Kings Cross, and the northern line to Old Street. 8 bloody exits! But I got there ok. It was quite scary really, at that point. Strange, with the massive beautiful eye hospital, the famous gherkin in the background. It was as if the London Eye and the Tate Modern building was plopped next to the Chicken House on Ealing Road. The eye hospital dominated and all of the laundrettes and cornershops just trailed behind. I think thats what made the air fresher, the streets cleaner. Sky so blue Bob Marley must miss it. The architecture there was gorgeous, though, and I found it eventually, but I was five minutes early, so I sat on the cement stoop, waiting. After all, I was in a strange place, waiting for strange people to talk about strange, taboo things. Those were five arduous, doubtful, lonely, disturbing minutes, and everyone came. We went into the building and I had hot chocolate, two sugars, a piss and I loved the office. It was the kind of place you could live in.

So we began to talk and I had too much pizza (I felt aware of my unsuitably baggy jeans.) We talked about ideas for the programme - crazy excuses for scars which included squirrel fighting and bread armbands in the proximity of seagulls. It was hilarious, and just crazy. And we talked about cycles of calmness and cutting, what healing scars feel like, 'triggering' things - which is anything, even the Tweenies if you hate it enough. Is it a sad world where people find the Tweenies so hateful they are triggered into cutting?

Psychiatrists, ideas for mini clips - reconstructions of RYL meets, 'seagulls and squirrels', doing It. We watched bits of Harley's interview and we howled with real laughter, laughing with honesty. Knowing that we all hurt/used to hurt ourselves, that we hate ourselves, made us all very nervous. But it was funny to be able to laugh about it. It was nice to be surrounded by long sleeves. I loved it. We also talked about parents and friends and 'coming out' on National television which I just can't do - it's just not fair on my family. We talked about Harley lots, and the old ruinyourlife of which I know nothing...

Nicola (the director) is 31, prefers intimate filmmaking and is shy, quiet and friendly. There were these two other 15 year old girls, one of whom had the one of the nicest smiles I had ever seen. She reminded me of Ella from CE and I wanted...I wanted...to keep talking. Cos Ella is so cool and so quintessentially Ella, and I wanted to keep laughing and sharing pizza all day. One guy was there. He studies politics at LSE - london school of economics (!!) and he's a treasurer for his constituency in the labour party. There was this lass called Irene who was just confident and sassy, I hope I recover to be like her. I think what got us all was talk about attention cutters, because you can never really tell. Are they just punks who inherit all the sterotypes to be all 'alternative' or are they crying out for help? It's such a thin line, and we all started tugging on our scars and scratching our arms/thighs. I left at five and I've been home for a bit now...

A Good Day. Best laid plans held firm, and there's a true smile mastered on my face.