There I sat, teacup to hand whilst I proceeded to fold my knickers and file away accordingly. In the end, I found myself with four piles of knickers. Well five if you include the ones bound for the bin.

The first pile contained knickers that I would willingly remove clothing for in order to be seen, i.e. when things are going well on a date. These are the fancy, sometimes frilly, sometimes not, knickers which usually belong to a matching bra somewhere.

The second lot consisted of stuff I wouldn’t mind being caught wearing if say, I was knocked over by a granny on her zimmer car and was rushed to hospital with a fractured pelvis. Thus the (hopefully!) cute doctor was then forced to remove my clothing to assess the damage.

You can see I’ve given this a lot of thought.

The third pile was home to knickers only suitable for that time of the month. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t purposely buy knickers just for that occasion, it’s just when my underwear become a little threadbare, or god-forbid –whispers- stained, they get relegated to pile three. It’s sort of like a hierarchy of pants.

One becomes two and two eventually becomes three. It’s just the order of things.

So what, must you be wondering, is in pile four?

Underwear that is too good to be used for that time of the month, but not good enough to show on a date or even to an unsuspecting doctor!

Do you see how complicated my life is? And this is only my underwear drawer.

Pile four contains, amongst other things, a Christmas themed pair of Miss Piggy and Kermit the frog knickers. The material is thick. They cover more skin than I’d like to admit to. Sometimes I wear them to bed under my equally hideous pyjamas.

I don’t like to wonder why I am single.

A few months ago I was dancing wildly under the full moon in the Sahara desert. Now I found myself in the sprawling metropolis that is New York City. They couldn’t have been more different.

Growing up in London I thought New York wouldn’t have that much of an effect on me. I was wrong.

Much like when I visited Rome last year, I spent my first night in the Big Apple exploring the city with nothing but a notebook and a bottle of water in my bag. I didn’t even have a map this time, not that I needed it; what with the streets being arranged by numbers: 5th Street was next to 6th Street and so on. I could count.

I remember coming out of my hotel on the first night and turning the corner… and squinting. I was greeted to the bright lights of Times Square. My face lit up. Not because I had a million worth of watts shining down on me but because I’d made it to New York City.

And I made it without managing to eat once on my eight-hour bus journey over from Montreal. My first port of call was to eat something. The sights and sounds of the city could bloody well wait for my stomach to stop growling, thank you very much.

I slipped down a quiet side street off of Times Square and rolled into the first dodgiest pizzeria I happened to come across.

They had slices of pizza in that joint wider than my arse, which let me tell you, is a feat you can’t even begin to imagine.

“Excuse me, what pizza do you recommend?” I asked the tiny, slightly greasy looking guy behind the counter.

He just looked at me for a moment, not quite understanding what it was I was saying. They do speak English in New York, right?

I tried again.

“What’s your favourite topping?”

He pointed over to a mozzarella, tomato and spinach slice.

It worked for me.

“I’ll take a slice of that one then, thanks.”

He nodded and put the slice in the oven. There was an awkward silence for a minute before he broke it by asking me where I was from.

“London,” I said.

“Not many people ask my opinion on pizza,” he told me.

I got a feeling not many people asked his opinion on anything – ever. So I took some time talking to him, long enough so that the mozzarella on my pizza was just the right of amount of gooey.

By the time my pizza was perfectly melted, I knew not only where this guy was from, I knew where his parents were from too (Ecuador in case you were wondering.) I knew his name, how old he was and I knew that he was available to take me on a tour of the city when his shift was through.

Sadly, I only wanted the pizza. But I thanked him kindly and asked him how much I owed him for the slice.

“You’re sweet, it’s nothing for you.”

Funny, that’s exactly what the Nurse at the hospital said to me last month when I asked her how much I owed her for my prescriptions.

I wondered if this meant I looked as ill as I did when I was in hospital. I remembered I did rush out of the hotel rather quickly, did I even bother to check what I looked like in the mirror before I left?

But then if looking rougher than an arse being wiped with recycled toilet paper gave me the ability to receive free things – I wasn’t about to complain.

All this wouldn’t have been possible without the use of of my brand new MacBook Pro.

Something which I succumbed to buying within the first two days of my time in Canada.

I knew Apple enabled creative types to reach the best of their potential, I just didn’t realise to what extent. My MacBook battery wasn’t even fully charged when I entered the said coffee shop nearly four hours ago and it tells me I still have three and a half hours left.

I fear the rest of my trip in Canada will be spent in other such caffeinated establishments and if I’m not careful this blog will be reduced to ramblings of the inner workings of such places rather than the beautiful landscapes of North America.

For instance, did you know there is such a thing called a suicide cake? I discovered this yesterday, when you guessed it, I was sat in another coffee shop. Imagine a normal sized slice of cake and then multiply the height of that by three and then a little bit more just for the hell of it. Next, take the calorie content of a normal slice and multiply that by a zillion.

It’s huge. The amount of calories in one mouthful alone would have me running off the edge of a cliff.

Which is why tomorrow I plan on having a slice and staying as far away from cliff faces as I possibly can. And a pair of scales too for that matter.

I’m not stupid.

Well, maybe just a little. After seeing far too many Apple based products during my time in Montreal, I admit I became a little green and decided I must have something with a big fat Apple logo on.

So after walking an hour and a half into the French/Canadian version of Oxford Street, I found an Apple store (Pomme store?)  and proceeded to stare and drool in unhealthy amounts at the shiny, overpriced machines.

I approached a sales assistant

“Please be gentle, this is my first time with a Mac.”

“Don’t worry Mam, we’ll be gentle with the machine.”

“No, I meant be gentle with me.”

I’m in love. I’m just not sure if it’s with the weird French speaking town, Montreal, or my brand new MacBook Pro.

Only time will tell.

The reality is much less glamorous than I’m making it out to be.

Sure it’s good to go out and date new people; good like chocolate starts out to be but after your third family size bar, all you end up feeling is sick.

And yet, once the sick feeling goes away, there I am reaching out for another slab of the good stuff.

It’s a vicious circle.

Dating is the act of putting yourself out there, showing off the best side of yourself in the hopes that the other person may like you enough to do something.

This may include but is certainly not limited to:

# Him laughing at your jokes.
# Him genuinely laughing at your jokes.
# Getting a kiss at the end of the night.
# Being asked out on a second date.
# Going back to his for a coffee.
# Rejecting the coffee and asking for a tea instead.
# Forgetting about the tea altogether and instead, having sex.
# Having sex followed by that a cup of tea afterwards.

Nobody does it like the British after all.

And yet even when you get to the final stage, then what? What’s the protocol? My past relationships have always gone from first dates to falling so deeply in love, I’ve very nearly drowned.

It’s a horrible thing to admit to; losing control all for the sake of a guy, but it’s what I’m used to.

So this year I promised myself I wouldn’t let it happen again. I wouldn’t get tied down and left for dead in yet another long term relationship. I’ve been on several dates with different guys so far this year already, some of which have wanted to see me again, others which haven’t. Or at least that’s what I’m led to believe due to the big-fat-zero amount of texts I’ve had from them in the aftermath of the date.

I don’t consider myself a bad date, I’m a lot better at them than I am in job interviews for instance, which perhaps isn’t saying a lot but it’s as good I’m going to get at being myself in such hostile conditions.

And by hostile I mean where I’m constantly at war with myself: shall I wear this, shall I say this, shall I do this, shall I text them, how long shall I wait until I text them… the list is endless.

With each date I go on, the fear of rejection becomes less; not because I’m getting rejected less, but because I simply end up becoming desensitised to the whole thing.

That’s what happens when you keep putting yourself in the same situation.

It works out great for casual dating, I’m just scared that when I do eventually find someone I like, I’d have forgotten how to care.

Dating is one big game, I just get the feeling I’m the one being played.

What the hell am I talking about?

You know when you meet someone amazing? Someone who completes you when you already feel whole? Someone who inspires you enough to end all sentences with a question mark, simply because using a full stop would mean putting a premature end to describing their awesomeness?

I’ve found that person in the most unexpected of places.

In between the bookshelves at work; with messy brown hair and glasses so officiously large, if they were to carry a wand around with them, they’d very well be mistaken for Harry Potter. Or a bit of twat.

No, I haven’t just discovered the literary delights of a certain JK Rowling. I did in fact discover those many years ago.

Instead, I have found something, or rather, someone, who I have decided is worth giving up my job for and eloping to Canada with. I won’t mention at this point that them kissing the place just behind my ear would induce me to act in similar, irrational ways. That’s just not important.

And yes, it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever agreed to do (except for maybe that perm I had about six years ago) but I know it’s the right thing to do, because even when the fear of giving up a perfectly reasonable job eats away at me like a bout of terminal cancer, I know that I’ll be okay.

I know that whatever absurd, embarrassing, I’m-going-to-die-of-shame moments that will undoubtedly come my way in the following weeks, I know they will be shared in the best possible company.

I know that when I find myself back in London, jobless and with no money having spent it all gallivanting around Northern America with nothing but someone else’s clothes on my back – I know it will all be okay.

And even if it won’t be, I’m sure I’ll have a hell of time getting to that point of: Where did it all go wrong?

My only concern will be, when can we do it again?

Well, they do say the best things in life are free.

Which does make me wonder why people actually pay for sex.

Anyway, during one of our table tennis conversations of non-stop jokes and innuendos, I randomly blurted out: I love you.

I say this quite a lot to people. It doesn’t mean I want to be with them forever and ever until we make lots of little (clay) babies and live in a big house. I mean a small house is just as good. I’m not picky. It just means I have an overwhelming urge to express to them how awesome I think they are.

And even though he’s used to me expressing my love for him on a weekly basis, when I blurted it out this time round, he lost his verbal balance and replied with, “Yes, thank you. I reciprocate.”

That’s a bad response. In fact you never want to hear those words.

I suppose it’s my fault. I did choose an inopportune moment to express my thoughts. He was after all in the middle of regaling to me a date he was on recently. And when I say ‘on’, I literally mean ON the date. I’m just surprised it took him so long; it was the fourth date after all.

It got me thinking: When is the best time to tell someone you love them? And what is considered a ‘good’ response?

Having been in a few LTR’s (long, trying, relationships) in the past, I can only base my advice on those experiences. Generally the “I love you’s” come about after we’ve already moved in with each other.

My theory is, when they finally realise they don’t feel the same way as me, they can’t make a quick escape as we’re already living together. Some people might call this entrapment. I prefer the term forward thinking.

I consider it a good response when the dirt trail they leave in their wake after running in the opposite direction from me only mildly chokes me.

Full on blindness is unacceptable though.

Perhaps that’s what inclined me to go there in the first place.

If I’m honest, the sort of honest you don’t want to admit to, I went into the desert with little understanding of what to expect. I had no idea of what I wanted out of the experience, and even less so of what I wanted to put in.

All I knew was that I needed to do something that was completely different to anything I’ve ever done before. I wanted to be pushed outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to be excited and scared. I wanted to learn but also to share.

I wasn’t disappointed.

At times I was completely isolated from what I liked to call “the real world”, because the barren land I was currently inhibiting couldn’t have been real, surely? It was far too magical and endless to be anything other than a dream. Standing atop the golden dunes filled my vision with an infinite view of the Sahara. If I closed my eyes and let the sound of the desert fill me completely, I could hear only the steady beat of my heart and the rushing waves of the wind.

Watching the heavens turn from day into night evoked a reaction in me so physical, I was momentarily blinded by the onslaught of tears that wouldn’t stop.

Clearly I didn’t deserve to witness such a wonder. Why else would I deny myself the chance of watching the sky darken from the setting sun, only then for it to be enlivened seconds later by the full moon rising?

I couldn’t stop my tears from falling any more than I could stop the moon from rising. Some things are just supposed to happen.

It’s true in a place so vast you can become lost, but what’s also true is that you can find.

And what I found was how to let go. The trials and expectations of my life thus far lay abandoned someplace on the horizon. They were still there of course, but I no longer had the burden of carrying them around. Instead, I was content to simply be.

And by simply being, I found myself. It turns out I was there all along, I was just looking for someone else.

But then it’s easy to find the time to do so when time doesn’t exist; the Sahara being a boundless sandglass with an indefinite trickle of sand.

I had all the time in the world.

Until I rejoined the real world, that is.

Once I’ve had a week to recover, I’ll be embarking on the trip of a lifetime to the Sahara desert for yet even more time out. Nothing is expected of me other than to absorb the local culture and the welcoming rays of the sun. Those twelve hour nightshifts I’ve been doing recently have left my skin alabaster white; funny how they didn’t mention that in the contract.

A few months ago I had a full time, albeit shitty job. To the detriment of my bank balance, I took on a temporary, part time job someplace else and said goodbye to working in an environment that was slowly eviscerating me to death; I think it got my brain first. I truly try and live my life without regrets (even when I had that dodgy perm some years back, I didn’t regret it – I just burned all photographic evidence it ever happened.) Yet even now, I can feel the beginnings of regret pulling at my consciousness. Or perhaps that’s just me pulling at my hair.

And after I’ve de-stressed in the desert, its back to – well, nothing. I took on my last job in the knowledge that come January, it’d could quite possibly be no more; it was. A Christmas temp is only useful for the Christmas period after all. For the first time in ten years I will have no reason to get up in the mornings other than to have breakfast. Or perhaps brunch if I so choose.

I’m fucking bricking it. I should visit a building site to offload.

Why did I do it? Give up my routine of working for a pittance when I have nothing to fall back on in case it all goes tits up? Rent still needs to be paid. Food still needs to be bought. Life still goes on.

There is no safety net. I have no other half and no sane members of family to fall back on unless I want to be sucked down with them.

Is this what it is to finally become an adult; to have the sudden realisation of finding yourself alone and knowing you only have yourself to rely on? I’ve been faking it all these years.

A reckless part of me wants to give up work entirely. Sell all my possessions and just head for the open road. I wouldn’t work for money – I’d work for food, for a roof over my head. I’d work not for a living but to live. And when I question these reckless thoughts further, they become rational.

Why do I need money? To live in a society I feel completely at odds with? For twelve hours every day, I’ve been replenishing over-priced crap that people feel compelled to buy with the money they’ve probably just earned working tooth and nail for. It’s a vicious circle. I don’t need money for any other reason than to exist.

And if I want to live, the only thing I need to work for is life. Money can go kiss my ass.

I suppose I’ll be seeing you all down the job centre then, yeah?

*The post originally read: “four days from now” but my ISP has decided to block me from accessing the server this site is hosted on, hence why I’ve only just been able to post it now after realising why nothing was loading for me. As it is I’m using a proxy to post this. Sigh.

But it’s a new year, and I can pray.
That I can and will, get through each day.
And thinking not, of the year gone by,
I will not miss you, I will not cry.

Goodbye 2010, I won’t miss you. You’ve been a trying year. I’m ready for 2011 and all it may bring.

The bags under my eyes have bags, fuck that, they have suitcases; the kind that expand.

What possessed me to work those ungodly hours I don’t know. Perhaps it was my childhood desire to be locked in a shopping centre over night that did it, or maybe it was my love of Dead Rising – you know, the zombie computer game.

Because walking through a deserted shopping centre resembling one of the living dead, and I’m pretty much there.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t healthy. Seven, sometimes eight o’clock in the morning I’d trudge home through the snow, exhausted beyond measure. Occasionally I’d catch my housemate leaving for work just as I was getting home.

Sometimes I had the sense to pop a vitamin C tablet in my mouth before collapsing into bed and sleeping until mid afternoon, only to then repeat the process a couple of hours later.

Or at least that was the plan.

About two hours every morning after going to sleep, I was awoken by the loud, obnoxious voice of my housemate downstairs, shouting on the phone.

Only he wasn’t shouting – his voice was just unnaturally loud and unnaturally fucking irritating. Me, who can sleep through a smoke alarm, me, who can sleep through a window banging shut in the room, me who can sleep through an earthquake – was awoken by THAT fucking voice.

Well that did it.

The following morning found me at my local 24 hour supermarket wandering around the store in a state of, well, just a state. I was in search of a particular item which would enable me to sleep in peace and quiet.

Don’t worry, I passed the DIY section by; although the jackhammer looked like it might do the trick, I was opting for a cheaper, and less messy solution.

I went to buy some ear plugs.

At seven in the morning, just after finishing a twelve hour shift on little sleep, I swear to you in that moment of delirium, to me, ear plugs were to be found down the baby aisle.

Well where else would they be? Who else would need them except exhausted, tired mothers?

Unfortunately I never did find the ear plugs down there, but I did happen to notice a supposed teething ring which looked suspiciously like anal beads.

My only hope is that the parents remembered to wash the beads thoroughly first before allowing their child to put it in their mouth.

Anyway, I eventually located the ear plugs down the makeup aisle and rushed home to try them out.

And when I say rushed, I mean that I managed to drag my feet enough times through the snow to get me home.

They worked a treat (the ear plugs, not my feet.) It was the best day’s sleep I’ve ever had. In fact, the best sleep ever. Trouble is, not only did they block out the obnoxious voice, they also blocked out the sound of my alarm going off…

Still, at least I didn’t feel tired as I was late getting into work.