january: cheers for hanging around like a bad smell

oh hi january! good to see you're still here. have you not left yet?

january? or shall i say banuary? the month where all things fun, exciting, tasty and beer inspired...have been banned. all of which have not been darked out of choice but out of force. pure brutal, cold and unsympathetic force. and i'm trying to figure out where it all went wrong as i'm sat here, after yet another night in and after yet another bleak dinner of crinkle cut chips, peas from a bag that never seems to decrease in size and some form of frozen 'meat' substitute. yeah i'm talking chicken dippers, yeah i'm talking birdseye classic 'chargrilled' lookalike chicken.

i'm going back to that fateful day. payday. friday the 21st december 2012. aaaaaallll that time ago. waaaaaay back when in 2012. the day that i'd decided that even though we were getting paid early, i was going to be sensible and make it last...spread out my spending evenly so that i wasn't left up shit creek without a paddle come mid jan aka the first week of jan. it was the day that instead of keeping to my consistent packed lunch routine that i'd been doing really well at throughout the whole of december, i was going to bosh out my card like money ain't no thing and treat myself to a slap up lunch down the pub, leaving me down 15 quid plus a cheeky pint no less. this, all of course, took place just a mere 4 days before christmas and equally the same 4 days left for me to actually buy the remaining 80% of my christmas presents. come the 24th, i'd knackered myself out doing a last minute spurt around the shops, picked things up way over budget and kicked myself that i should have bought most of that shit online. and i don't even like christmas.

i managed a relatively cheap new years. i was 40 notes down from the ticket i bought early december (even though that was paid for time ago so doesn't reeeaaaallllyyyy count anymore) and i had a little cash at hand to spend at the troxy in shadwell with oneman, jackmaster and a special guest bunch of obey cap bussin, new balance wearing 19 year olds who were blitzing their student loans on drugs and £2 glasses, yes glasses, of tap water. but then shit turned sour when my purse got jacked from my bag and the dickhead that nicked said purse took pleasure in pocketing my remaining evening's cash, cards and even had the cheek to check in my coat ticket at the cloakroom and make tracks with my relatively new vintage leather jacket... on new years eve... at around 5am. leaving me to walk home in a invisible coat of disbelief and a scarf, feebly wrapped around my shoulders in the minus degree weather. HAPPY NEW YEAR to you too troxy, happy new year. i mean, i personally couldn't have asked for a better way to start 2013.

and so it was back to work on the 3rd of jan. back to the darkness making an appearance at the ungodly time of about 3pm so you feel like its time for bed and a mug of horlicks. but most worryingly, it was back to the time where you make that stupid mistake of checking your online banking to find that you are more broke than ever and spend the rest of the afternoon reeling at the ridiculous amount of 'cash withdrawal at 1.30am' and 'paid by debit card' notifications on your account, realising that all those times you've pressed 'cash and absolutely NO receipt' have now come back to bite you in the arse. repeatedly.

now here i am, having to endure another 5 whole days of this horrendous month. i've stayed in all week, had a groundhog night situation come dinner time for five nights straight and have watched everything under the sun on 4od and iplayer from the latest jungle scuffle on 'Africa' to yet another baffling channel 4 documentary, this time about american kids in the deep south who genuinely believed they were either a werewolf OR a vampire. sure you are. sure you are definitely one or the other. stupid fucking pricks.

so bring another fun filled weekend without cash monies and another 3 days of channelling what some may call 'hermit chic', which simply consists of finding comfort in the bottom of a cold tin of beans whilst wearing a onesie that hasn't been washed since christmas. but fear not! i'm glad that come payday on monday, i've definitely not got to pay rent, bills, deposits on two holidays and finally, after 5 years, pay the tv license after receiving what i can essentially call blood written death threats. nope. haven't got to pay out for any of that at all...

girls girls girls girls...'girls' i do adore.

so who isn’t a fan of the tv show ‘girls’?? boys maybe? Carrie Bradshaw obsessives who still believe writing a column for one magazine in New York really can pay for shelf upon shelf of Louboutins, fancy pants breakfasts with the girls and racks of couture chanel suitable only for walking the dog… or maybe people who just haven’t seen it yet. so for those folk...



i don’t know what it is that makes it so good, but theres something. or some things shall i say. its the rawness of it all. the straight up and down rawness. the swearing, the crudeness, the early on touches on STI’s, abortions and golden showers, the mugging marnie gets at the gig (SO DEEEEEEP) and the feeling that you can almost smell Adam’s musty scent when he’s sat around in his scabby boxers watching porn… yeah. gross. but most noticeably, its Lena Dunham, the creative genius behind it all, who seems to have grasped the nearly tangible realness behind how girls think, act and say things off the cuff, the complicated friendships that sometimes seem fucked up but you accept those parts of your mates’ personalities regardless and just the plain funkiness of relationships (not so much the exploitative, verging on violating, but kind of funny, role play, sofa sex scene Hannah has with Adam) but she grasps it nonetheless.

i wouldn’t even go as far as to say that i relate to one of the girls or that my best friend is just a mirror image of another of the girls. its not about the ‘sex and the city’ type comparisons and the ‘oh em geeeee, that was just such a Shoshanna thing to say’. its just that every episode seemed to touch a nerve, bring back a memory or made me revisit a feeling that i’ve experienced before…be it the back and forth or ‘grass is greener’ drama of Marnie and Charlie’s relationship, the make up or break up sex that you genuinely thought could change things or remembering a crazy night you’ve had with friends probably involving loads of booze, some randoms you’ve met at a house party and an open mind to see where the night may take you all (ok that sounds a tad dodge and like a nightmare night if read wrong) but you catch my drift.

i’m not touching any new ground here, i realise that. and i say i don’t make comparisons to the characters but i guess in some aspects i do. but i just thoroughly enjoyed the whole series. in the space of 10 episodes i went from finding Shoshanna ridiculously irritating to then experiencing an overwhelming feeling of endearment and empathy towards her, from being in awe of “face like Brigitte Bardot but with an ass like Rihanna” Jessa to then realising that she is just extremely fucked up and to feeling elated when Marnie goes nuts at the end in the season fianle and has the cake fight with the fat guy, finally unravelling from her uptightness and letting her prim and proper hair down.

(not the physical act of letting her hair down though cos that crimped, perm look she had going on in the last episode was NOT the one)

so i’m looking forward to the next series. i’m looking forward to watching it on my own with no girly sleepovers, face masks and nail painting, talking to my mates about it the next day and cringing with embarrassment at something i never thought could be shown on tv… but loving the fact that it was.