My Madder Fatter Diary (18 page)

They aren’t together amymore. Haddock is apparently having a whale of a time. Perhaps he has woken up to what the rest of us have known for ages. HE IS THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF HORN.

Anyway I told her he’d come round. Honestly I don’t know if he will or not. I miss him everyday but I’ve just learnt to live with it like I learnt to live with everything else. His mood ring is black and rusting but I keep it on.

Why must I pray and hit myself in order to reach that security? It’s an awful killing feeling. Repeat and repeat like a washing machine on spin – around and around. It’s the only way to obliterate the pain.

That’s what I am. A really crap washing machine that doesn’t get anything clean but just goes round and round making a fucking big noise.

Saturday 13.10.90

7.45 p.m.

The truth is I’m waiting for someone to save me. I’m waiting for someone to come along with this amazing big wand, wave it over my life and make me skinny and normal. I want a way out. AN ANSWER. Not therapy sessions or clay or painting or sodding group sessions. I WANT AN ANSWER. Why can’t someone just save me from me?

And why can’t someone save me from Saturday night television? Surely every animal ever has had every disease ever on
All Creatures Great and Small
?! Can’t they get an interesting animal on like a tapir instead of a bloody poodle or a Friesian EVERY WEEK?!

Sunday 14.10.90

10.24 a.m.

SLEEPING UGLY

I’ve looked in the best mirror,

My hair is down, unrestrained

My skin is pure, angelic, untouched.

I’ll just check the gas for the seventeenth time,

And switch off the discussion about the recession.

The front door shuts it all behind

I throw the key to the grass

And feel the fruit in my hand

My gown has attracted a thousand stares,

So misplaced amongst the Saturday shoppers,

I ignore the gasps, the glares,

I take a bite of my apple

And I lie down.

I can feel a thousand eyes over me

My hands are clasped to my chest

My eyes tightly closed

Don’t try to push me into the recovery position

I have fainted, read my note

Until this piece of apple is removed from my fat throat,

By him

This pedestrian precinct will be my home

I will sleep here till he arrives

So walk around me

He will come to know

Just make sure he comes before the police arrest me for obstruction,

Or the psychiatrists take me for therapy

Or the hire company come for their dress back

Or his lover comes baying for my blood

I know he’ll come

Because he bloody loves me.

He whispered that to me in jest

But I know he meant it.

Monday 15.10.90

9.02 a.m.

Yes Mum, I will go down the Jobcentre after
Kilroy
.

Do I want a job at Morrisons? Er. NO! American tan tights, zip up dresses and my mum watching my every move whilst people ask me where the Jif and Persil is ten times a day – NO THANK YOU!!

The Body Shop will be different because people actually want to be there and buy nice shampoo.

Tuesday 16.10.90

10.52 a.m.

POSTCARD FROM LEEDS

Dear Rae,

Colchester is just full of pissed Essex girls anyway.

Love Haddock X

And you wonder why I can’t get him out of my head and why he’ll probably be there FOREVER.

Wednesday 17.10.90

9.25 p.m.

I wish I could be that totally together happy person I am sometimes ALL of the time. Then I could actually be useful.

I’ve met hundreds of blokes and no-one sparks my soul the way that he does. I know I’ve put him way too high. He’s only a man!

Thursday 18.10.90

10.35 a.m.

Just got a letter – I HAVE THE BODY SHOP JOB! I GOT THE FIRST JOB I WENT FOR! STICK THAT UP YOURSELF MUM!

6.45 p.m.

Mum’s reaction was ‘Well done. You’ve got a job in retail.’

Oh sod off!

I start in November. EVEN MORE TIME OFF!!

9.35 p.m.

Did all my applying today. So in the end it’s unis – Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Sheffield.

Polys – Manchester, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield.

Top of the Pops
had the Happy Mondays on tonight but it also had this bizarre woman in a kaftan and a hat from Canada singing something that should be on Radio 2. There’s no need for that shit Rita MacNeil – get back to feeding your beavers.

If Battered Sausage was here he would have a field day at me even mentioning the word beaver as he is mentally 12.

Friday 19.10.90

7.28 p.m.

1 candle makes such a difference to a room compared to a harsh light.

1 tape brings back memories of the person who made it and gave it to me. Every song is a memory. It’s a time. It’s us sitting there listening to ‘Function at the Junction’ by Shorty Long and throwing beer mats at each other.

I see so much bad in me. In the mirror I see a thing not cared for.

Equally sometimes, and I feel big headed even writing this, I see something that could be beautiful both inside and out. Something I could really grow to love.

I think that his love could cure this. But then I realise that he can’t cure this. No other man could solve my loneliness either.

If I don’t love myself nothing will cure my loneliness. So I have GOT to learn to love myself before I can enter anything.

BUT HOW? You go into Stamford Library – there are books on great orgasms, orchid growing, how to do the Rubik’s cube (does anyone care anymore?! – just take the stickers off!!) THERE’S EVEN BOOKS ABOUT LULU! But there’s nothing on HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF.

If somebody wrote a book called
How To Stop Being a Twat
it would sell a MILLION copies – especially to me.

But I’m sure to make it all add up I need someone to build me up a bit. The thought of him just chases all the bad away.

No Mum – this candle will not burn the house down and I am not ‘navel gazing’ again.

Saturday 20.10.90

8.34 p.m.

Status Quo – please fuck off with your Anniversary Waltz. You should not be celebrating.

This is now a Saturday night in Stamford. Shouting at Quo. Perhaps leaving university was the wrong thing to do.

Sunday 21.10.90

9.45 p.m.

Feel lonely, lost, confused and disorientated.

I so desperately want to be reborn to get rid of all the compulsions, the obsessions and to love myself. I’d be better use to everyone if I could just sort myself out.

Mum has bought the Rita MacNeil record. Of course she has. It’s about a ‘Working Man’. Endangered species here love – Thatcher has killed all that.

Monday 22.10.90

11.29 p.m.

I wish I could just hibernate through all this.

Mum is certainly nicer to hedgehogs and blue tits than me.

Tuesday 23.10.90

8.34 p.m.

Mum puts out fatballs and filled coconut shells for the birds. Yet when I eat anything these days she basically offers me the bill.

Bloody hell, things are bad when you want to be a robin more than yourself.

Wednesday 24.10.90

11.05 p.m.

Do nothing all day then wonder why I can’t sleep at night. Feel grotty tired yet can’t sleep. Bad thoughts.

11.53 p.m.

I just coughed up blood. I’ve probably got TB or something terrible from cows. I spend more time with farm animals than with real people.

My chest is so tight. It could be the 3 cigarettes. Thank GOD for Tiger Balm which I have smeared all over my chest. I AM SO SEXY! I smell like Boots. Not the perfume section. The pharmacy.

Thursday 25.10.90

8.45 p.m.

What really worries me is that music is ending or heading to some sort of crisis. Tonight’s
Top of the Pops
– ‘Unchained Melody’ by The Righteous Brothers AGAIN. ‘Take My Breath Away’ by Berlin AGAIN. It’s like people have run out of ideas. I saw this film once called The
Seventh Sign
with Demi Moore where it said that Jewish people believe that there is something called the Guf. All souls of people come from the Guf and when the Guf is empty the world will end. I think the pop Guf is nearly empty. Perhaps everything has been done and it’s only backwards now. The Roses were the end. Now it’ll just be Sonia destroying Motown.

I think I do need to go and see someone but it can’t be prompted by Sonia.

Friday 26.10.90

8.45 p.m.

First of all, let me give you an example, diary, of my unique screwed up mess! I am convinced that I have killed someone today by looking at them. When I write it I know it sounds mental but I had to go and pray in the fucking toilets at Peterborough station to reverse my evil. I had to kneel in a cubicle. It was vile but felt I HAD to do it. How can I tell a psychiatrist that?!

Then I had soggy disinfectant knees from kneeling and praying.

Mum told me to stop wallowing in self pity today. She never tells me how though. How you can stop being mental? So I come to my bedroom and I write and I listen to music and I look out my window at people queuing at the chip van. Billy Bragg and ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ by Brook Benton go well with people queuing up for kebabs.

Saturday 27.10.90

1.35 a.m.

The James Whale radio show
proves that a man can be gobby and ugly and everyone loves them.

When will I be sorted?

Sunday 28.10.90

10.25 p.m.

Haddock’s girlfriend has just been round. God she’s lovely and I’m actually the biggest bitch ever. In my head I have slept with her on/off boyfriend about 5 million times and not just in beds either – On fucking trains!! In fields!! EVERYWHERE! I have done it with Haddock in my head in every country in the world. Except in war zones or potential war zones like Kuwait. I have the time. Have the fantasy. Will travel.

But I’ve done nothing and wouldn’t do anything anyway so I listen to her.

Actually, would doing it in a war zone make things even more erotic? Perhaps in a combat situation you think could be dead in the next hour so let’s have really HOT WILD sex because we might as well?!

I have a feeling that’s how my actual mum was produced in 1942. That was not a good thing. Not my mum being born. The circumstances. It was not good that when my Gran’s husband came back from war after 2 years my mum was in the cot. My mum paid a terrible price for that.

Sex in Kuwait, even with Haddock, is officially OFF.

Monday 29.10.90

10.47 a.m.

I have an interview in Hull on Thursday!! I CANNOT MESS THIS UP. This is the ONE place I just think I could be OK at. I don’t know why, I just have a feeling that it’s RIGHT. I feel like it’s meant to be. The Housemartins were from Hull. I LOVE the Housemartins. The Beautiful South are from Hull. I LOVE them too. There was NEVER a famous band from Colchester. NEVER. It’s not a music city. That’s why the University of Essex was never going to work. Nothing musically good will ever come from Colchester except from a military marching band thing that my dad will love.

Tuesday 30.10.90

9.35 p.m.

I told Mum about the Hull interview as I need some money to actually get there on the train. I told her I thought that Hull was my destiny. She wet herself and said that she thought that was the first time she’d ever heard anyone say that.

Wednesday 31.10.90

6.02 a.m.

I think that the basic problem I have, on top of being mad, is that fundamentally I am a lazy bitch. I wish somebody would pay me to lie in a field and listen to ‘The Boy with the Thorn in his Side’ and dream of Haddock. My CV for that is PERFECT.

University of Hull tomorrow. Rituals mad today. Please, please don’t let me mess it up.

Thursday 1.11.90

10.36 p.m.

I have had the most
MAD day in history. I think I’ve been offered a place at the University of Hull. It was as simple as that even with my grades. I think but I’m not sure because it all went like a dream and I had to meet different people. And weird stuff happened – I’ll write tomorrow. Mum has made me Super Noodles.