Midsommar Madness

I'm too tired to write much after getting to Stockholm and finding myself on stage on a boat/gay bar singing 'I Will Survive' with Irina and Jack, and then last night meeting pretty much everyone in Stockholm for successive beers.

So here's a small sample of the craziness that ensued on Midsommar courtesy of the lovely Angelica.

Nora

Nora, my six year old surrogate daughter - her choice - wants me to call this blog entry 'Nora'. So I did. That's us on a night time flower hunt over a small island in Sweden trying to find seven different flowers to put under our pillows (because we are at sea-captain Papa Pelle's place, we had to do this properly with torches strapped to our heads). We are then supposed to dream of our future husbands, as I mentioned last year. However, I have now been told that not only did I get the wrong day (again!) but you are also supposed to jump over seven fences, and various other far too physically exerting things. After meeting the lovely Mads in Copenhagen for a decadent beer yesterday then making the trek over to Sweden, I think I'll leave my fate to serendipity rather than attempt outdoor athletics. Nora may have dreamt of her future husband but if so I think it may be a small cat named Starboard. I have already been in trouble for feeding Nora Nutella for breakfast, so I guess I'm not the best person to guide her in nutritional OR romantic choices.

Anyway the preparations for Midsommar Madness have been somewhat stalled by the rain so we are all cooped up inside like a mini Glastonbury festival. It's just so good to be 'home'. Christian offered me 5 quid to drink a bottle of gin before 12 then retired to bed himself, so I might go and set Nora onto something productive and send her off in Christian's direction. Ludvig only just woke up and Hansi hasn't even appeared yet. More when the midsommar party is over and the incriminating photos have arrived...

Johnny Gash

Andy and Ben have released a special Father's Day song from Andy's alter-ego, Johnny Gash, and this is probably a world exclusive ...or something.

Dad I know you never really liked Johnny Cash, well you sure as hell aren't going to like Johnny Gash. But this is for you (open in iTunes).

The Farter's Day Song

'If you want something to happen to you...'

Another weird day at the Corporation. Today I finally found out what the Secret TV Controller was referring to. In my attempt to move careers away from the desk and into production I discovered (despite being offered a role as a humble runner at the Princess Diana Memorial Concert and imminently on Doctor Who.... maybe...at least as a Dalek mechanic) I had to do a Production and TV Studio safety course. And oh my God. Look what happened to the last person (Anthea Turner) who obviously didn't pay attention.

"Are you alright love?"

...I'm scared.

This was seriously in the video training. Twice.

The Dalek's ear

In a weird moment of synchronicity, not only is Doctor Who my neighbour, but today, someone gave me a Dalek's ear (that's him in the picture - the Dalek that is, not the good Doctor).

We have a pet Dalek in one of the cafe areas downstairs. Recently, it suffered a horrific tragedy when someone ripped one of its 'ears' off and took it home as a souvenir. Today as I was innocently working away, a guy from the IT team came up to my desk. 'I hear we're missing a Dalek's ear?' he said. I stared at him as he placed what looks like the tail-light from a Morris Minor on my desk. 'I found it at a garage sale on the weekend,' he explained. 'The guy who sold it to me asked me what kind of car it was for. I told him it was for a space robot. He was not impressed'.

I went downstairs before to see if I could fix the Dalek (or have a great excuse for phoning David Tennant). Unfortunately, the ear I have is red, and the one the Dalek needs is white - although considering how much he scared me as a kid, he's lucky to have any ears at all right now.

So for the foreseeable future I am in possession of one Dalek ear, unused, free to a good home (preferably a home not focused on the annihilation of the planet). Any takers?

Fame, fortune, lack thereof, and Queens Park

"This one's a goner". That was the remark Andy, our Mancurian friend, made last night as he carved up the lifeless body of Ben's carefully roasted chook.*

Happily he was not referring to the snot-faced, sobbing American girl we had to rescue at 2.00 in the morning. Andy, Ben and I were having a glass of wine or three in the living room when we heard someone crying uncontrollably downstairs, on a mobile saying 'I don't know where I am' over and over again. Racing downstairs heroically, we then attempted to call her a cab. She just kept swearing at us and spilling great deals of cash into the road. "I just want to go home, why is that so fucking difficult!" she said. The taxi driver was distinctly unimpressed by the time he did turn up, as were we (largely because we suffered abuse for twenty minutes with no cash reward). Andy woke up early this morning in the hope that a stretch limousine would be outside and a large Texan with a Stetson would be knocking on our door saying 'Thanks for saving mah daughter. Y'all get $10,000 each.' I noted that the girl was hardly in a state to recall where we lived. Andy was extremely disappointed.

Meanwhile summer in Queen's Park rolls on with Pimms and G&T all round. Yesterday we discovered that David 'Doctor Who' Tennant lives around the corner, a piece of news I was incredibly excited about. But despite my strolling about the park alluringly in skinny jeans, aviators, Scottish-radio rock star tshirt (he's Scottish, guess he can't help that) and messy hair... he has failed to materialise.

I have also embarked upon OPERATION: CAREER CHANGE and am eagerly awaiting a rejection notice for my application to work as an Assistant Producer on BBC drama 'Waking the Dead', which would be an exceptionally appropriate project for me (and my career). If that fails, I will study filmmaking in the autumn with the Monty Python filmmakers (no seriously, they support young Londoners, particularly those suffering at the hands of a boss who is deluded that he works at The Times and phones at 6.30am to ask why The Guardian has beaten us to a story -- something the Guardian journos think is quite funny), and my world domination or at least, Hollywood superstardom, will proceed from there.

Meanwhile it's back to Sweden this week (thank God), and I celebrated today by meeting Sven for a huge smorgåsbord brunch, whereupon we managed to meet the King of Sweden's former drinking buddy and hear lots of gossip from 1965 about all his model girlfriends. Unfortunately I don't think the King will be attending Pelle's midsommar party in Sweden but you know, the way fate is treating me lately I wouldn't be entirely surprised.



*Chook - noun - Australian for chicken, also used to affectionately describe a female as in 'Cheer up you silly old chook'.

Madame Z

:(

The grapevine doesn't lie. I guess now I have to answer annoying soul-searching questions about babies. And did I want his babies?? I could do what my friend did and buy two dogs. Yep, that'll do the trick. I don't think I actually even want babies, at least not for a good couple of years...maybe not even then (although I remember my cousin said the same thing about being too selfish and now she has several). So why has this made me so uncomfortable? Maybe because Erin and Mia have been hitting the microdermabrasion creams this week to stave off wrinkles- neither of them need to.

I know that there are some of my friends who would be incredulous that I even care what my ex does. I know that some would be heading straight for the Eurostar with a large stick to beat some sense into me with. But it's ok, there is no need to instigate an emergency rescue operation (Team Sweden, you can put the rescue-horse-costume away)...Operation Oslo made me realise I probably still love him somewhere - but it was pretty clear I was still below pool, blondes and lads on the priority list. Which is fair enough, I know, I'm not his girlfriend any more. Still kind of bites somewhere though. So instead of doing anything stupid, I went and got my hair cut - Erin and I actually are both lovely blondes now.

Anyway, this is all getting a tad bit personal for a blog that 100 people a month now read! (Who ARE you all?? Especially you at the University of Oslo... I now have traffic from Canada to Germany via China and even a mysterious return visitor in Sri Lanka or somewhere. Sweden is on the top of the league table though. I suspect a lot of readers are just Crowded House fans looking for the webcast. It's not here people!!)

Yesterday I was edging towards stupid and wrote a letter that I should have written back in January, but my friend and colleague known as Madame Z physically put it through the office shredder, pranced past my desk and dropped the pieces in front of me saying 'PROOF!', kidnapped my phone (for my own good, apparently) and then proceeded to get me exremely drunk. (She has also kindly offered to lend me 'He's just not that into you', a book which I have actually bought once, had given to me once, and had someone lend to me once. What does THAT say?!) Weirdly, we discovered that our benevolent workplace has drivers who will take you where you need to go at night, which in our case was a nightclub in Shepherd's Bush with copious amounts of reasonably priced wine.

Madame Z is right. I REFUSE to be Duckface from Four Weddings and a Funeral...no hang on, it wasn't Duckface, it was Kristin Scott Thomas. Didn't she end up with Prince Charles in the end of the film? Lord save me...

Jake Gyllenhaal movie tally: 53, with a few Tim Tams thrown in for good measure.

Unexpected (first) life

That's Blix there in the picture. She's my alterego in Second Life, which, due to the fact my first life is so boring yet confusing at the same time, I've become quite addicted to (Ludvig will you please sign in for once!!). Blix, whose hair I am extremely jealous of, has even applied for a job at the Swedish Embassy (that's where she is in the postcard). But then today some very weird things happened, some good some bad, that reminded me that life can take some unexpected turns.

First the bad news... I heard on the grapevine that my ex-boyfriend is pregnant. Well not him personally of course, but most likely that girl who was bringing over IKEA furniture in Oslo. Looks like she had a backup plan. For some reason, this has quite upset me, and I was sneaking down to the Tesco's to get a very illicit packet of cigarettes which I have not touched since Sweden, when I saw a familiar face in the foyer from the misty depths of yesteryear (no Jonathan, it was NOT Stephen Merchant. Dammit. It was a girl for starters.).

I stared at her. She smiled politely at me. I kept staring. A look of recognition dawned on her face slowly. We both felt like we were in some kind of surreal reality tv show. Sally, my flatmate from nearly ten years ago on the other side of the planet, is working in the same building as me. In fact, directly above me in the department where I was loitering yesterday and yet we still managed to be completely oblivious to each other's existence.

I've known Sally since my days as an actress when I was an innocent young sixteen year old constantly subjected to curfews who would attempt to hide at Sally's parent-less house and hang out with the thespian Goths who frequented the local arty venues.

Who knows what this random meeting will bring, but hopefully it's a little signpost that London doesn't have to be quite so empty from now on.

Jake Gyllenhaal movie tally: 2

Insulting Jimmy Nesbitt

Another misguided foray into the world of celebrity. I was feeling a little worse for wear this morning after attending the press screening of new BBC drama Jekyll at the incredibly swanky Mayfair Hotel last night - and the inevitable free wine and canapes that accompanied it.

I'm no tv critic, but I made the mistake of freely offering my production advice over canapes (incidentally, they were mini packages of chips whose fat content probably made this morning far more bearable for many of us than it otherwise would be). I boldly commented to my new journalist friends that the main change I would make to the program would be not to show the 'Hyde' character's vampiric teeth - even going so far as to say 'it's a bit tacky'. Heresy! And they'd given us free wine and everything! Unfortunately, this came back to bite me in the... well let's just say I regretted it.

At the end of the night after probably one too many glasses of said wine my new friends from a certain women's magazine and I went to chat to the cast. As the journalist introduced me to the star James Nesbitt (who Irina and I used to watch in an Irish detective show all the time), the journo's mind went blank (she told me later). 'She doesn't like your teeth,' she blurted to him. He took it hard. 'My teeth?' he said, looking extremely crestfallen. I protested that I had meant Hyde's teeth, not Nesbitt's personally, but he was having no excuses. 'I have to text my wife now,' he said and the conversation was clearly over. I was hoping he was one of the group that a little birdie tells me was drinking at Soho House until 3.30am, so he won't remember - or will at least have drowned his sorrows. But alas the birdie has updated me and told me he left shortly after we did. Oh dear. Well he was a bit wobbly, perhaps he won't remember anyway. I am officially the worst celebrity liasion person ever. Thank God I never got that interview with Stephen Merchant.

The real star of the night was veteran executive producer Beryl Vertue - my new hero. She was what I believe can only be called The Consummate Professional - even chatting and introducing herself to nobodies like me. She worked the room with the assistance of a much-coveted Chanel handbag (judging by much younger women's envious glances...not mine though, those handbags always remind me of bed linen) and you felt you could ask her pretty much anything and get a straight answer.

I was too shy to ask her advice on how to break into the industry (my current job doesn't count). But at least I wasn't stupid enough to share my toothy opinions with her.

Alex Lloyd, fat. b*stard.

A few weeks ago, on my way to the shops in Queens Park, I saw a familiar face. A guy who looked uncannily like Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lloyd was talking loudly to a builder about the renovations on his house. I stopped and stared - could it be Alex Lloyd? Could he have followed me from Sydney where last I heard (from a glossy Sydney Morning Herald magazine) he was happily ensconced in an expensive house with a wife and kids? There *are* an unprecedented amount of Australians in Queens Park, comprising of about 97.3% of the clientele of the war-zone Sainsburys but this was getting ridiculous.

A long time ago in a university household far away I used to know a lot of bands, and manage a lovely singer. I was at a gig once where Alex Lloyd was playing, and my very English friend Andrew was commenting on the lineup. The first in his sights was a techno band called Sonic Animation. He scoffed at the musical talent on offer. 'Sonic Animation - knob twiddlers, Alex Lloyd - fat. Bastard' is how he summed up the entire show. Someone in front of Andrew turned around. 'What did you say?' he asked - it was Alex Lloyd, reducing us to fits of giggles and meaning that no-one could ever call him anything other than Alex Lloyd Fat Bastard from then on. My only other encounter with him was when my friend's band was supporting him and Mr Lloyd was singularly unconcerned with whether or not I could find said friend after the gig, looking at me as if I was a groupie. So he only earned a more persistent use of the ALFB nickname.

Anyway, this Lloyd-a-like was wearing a horrendously British tracksuit - you know, matching blue polyester Adidas a la Del Boy in 'Only Fools and Horses'. I rang Erin. 'Erin, I think I just saw Alex Lloyd in Queens Park,' I said. 'But he was wearing this horrendous polyester tracksuit... could it be him?' 'It's weird you say that,' Erin replied. Apparently she had started singing an Alex Lloyd song to herself for no reason while walking down Salusbury Road and realised now it was because she'd seen a Lloyd-a-like too.

We forgot about this, but yesterday I was at local jazz joint Hugo's having a vino or two with an Australian friend Mia and, like some kind of scary clone, the Lloyd-a-like complete with blue tracksuit walked out of Hugo's with a cold beer - despite the fact he didn't seem to have walked in at at any point - and besides, who* goes to a restaurant to get a cold beer when they sell it at the corner shop, I ask you! Smacks of rockstar lifestyle. This time I had a witness. After paying our bill we set off around the corner to see if we could gather more evidence, but like the Terminator, Lloyd had melted into the urban landscape. 'He moves pretty fast for a fat bastard,' remarked Mia.

So we repaired to Ben and Erin's where we did a bit of google stalking. The headline on his personal site was 'Look out London'. Yes, it turns out - Alex Lloyd has moved to London. It seems you can run but you can't hide, Sydney is following me around the world.

BoBAR

Bored. Beyond All Recognition. Why haven't I written for weeks, oh demanding readers? Because I have absolutely nothing to report. Nothing. And I'm not one of those people that says nothing and in reality just means 'nothing that is scandalous enough to make Heat magazine'. I MEAN nothing. I'm starting to doubt the whole meaning of my existence.

I have not been this bored since the International Whaling Commission meeting at 11pm on a Friday night last year, where I had to sit in the office (or rather, outside the door smoking and looking melancholy in the hope that Mr Unrequited would take pity and stay - he didn't, but he did give me a cigarette to while away the next three hours) waiting until some godforsaken hour so I could post the results on the Greenpeace website. I remember that night looking ahead to the same empty calendar, seemingly for the next twenty years. Funnily enough, that was pretty much exactly a year ago - hopefully it's cyclical.

I miss my heady days of flitting off to Tokyo on a romantic whim or booking trips to New York to see horrendous cheap daytime tv filmed (oh yes and attend the MoMA of course), or even getting bundled off to a toxic waste dump in Korea. I miss Stockholm summers with a variety of friends to call on for brunch, impromptu wine, or an inevitable thousand beers, usually starting in the sun after work and ending in the sun in the early hours of the next morning, probably with a midnight swim on the way. I miss having my life socially engineered by Team Sweden. Irina was right - how long do you want to be on the way to somewhere else? she asked. Good bloody question.

But since leaving Sweden, and despite the best efforts of Team London (I rather suspect that Team London's stamina is not quite up to Team Sweden's especially after a rather unfortunate evening of drunkenness and debauchery involving a bank holiday weekend, kebabs and 'shenanigans,' as Jonathan would say), I have struggled to do anything more exciting than eat, work and sleep (in my tiny tiny room). Too much of my own company is actually starting to drive me a little bit crazy - I'm afraid I'm going to start muttering to myself on the tube and hanging out at the local Sainsburys (the one that makes you feel like you're in a war zone...more about that later) yelling at the kids.

Sure - I could go to the all-night Alien-fest at the British Film Institute, I could go to see Swedish band The Concretes or The Sounds next week, or I could even go get yelled at by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay at his new gastropub - but... I would have to do all those things alone.

This is the worst thing about moving cities/countries, and even worse when you know you left something good behind and just can't see how to build it again. I have a feeling I'm going to be watching a lot of Jake Gyllenhaal movies and single-handedly keeping the manufacturers of Green & Black's vanilla bourbon ice-cream racking up a healthy profit for quite a while yet.