7.30 pm - pub with recently dumped friend. She cries. A lot. I tell her she has lost fourteen stones of Snappy Wanker. She cries some more. I decide that 'Snappy Wanker' sounds like something you could order in Yo Sushi. "I'll have two tuna rolls, some sweet shrimp and a grilled snappy wanker." She says it's like having a drink with Billy Crystal. I ask her whether it's the beard. She buys a double vodka.

10pm - we play Bullseye on the quiz machine. I laugh mockingly at how ridiculously easy the questions are and then promptly get one wrong. Incensed, I call the machine a "cheating twat". We decide to go elsewhere. A place without swindling electronic devices.


10.30pm - "Remember, I have to be at work in the morning." I say, as I buy another round of drinks. She nods; "i'll have you home by midnight."


12.10 am - we both shuffle uncomfortably to the terrible R&B music of the club we appear to have paid three quid to get into. All around us, white men in tracksuits dance like they have ferrets in their very baggy pants. "I need something to make this bearable" pleads my friend. "An uzi and some quicklime?" I offer. Instead we plump for black sambuca. And lots of it.

2am ish. very ish - "Ahahahahaha. Slack bambuca testslike slomasses. Molasses! Like treacle. Smell my tongue. Haha. Ha. Tongue. Ha. Let's get some chicken! CHICKEN!"

2.30 am - Suddenly finding chicken is the only thing that makes sense in the whole world. All wars would be over, all poverty wiped out, all diseases cured if only we find sweet sweet chicken. And eat it stood next to a dustbin outside a grotty bar.

2.40am - We eat chicken, stood next to a dustbin outside a grotty bar.

2.50am - The Power of Sambuca instills in us the ability to dance like that bird out of Saturday Night Fever. We strut, we wiggle, we bop like we've never bopped before. Using our phones, we make incredibly arty films of ourselves spinning and dancing like goddesses. People are understandably agog.

3.30am - The grotty bar, somewhat rudely, decides to close. I lean my head against the brick. Mmmm, cold brick. Mmmm. My friend decides we need a taxi immediately. I put my hands against the brick to stop it melting.

3.33am - 6am - your guess is as good as mine.

6.01am - I wake in my bed, fully clothed. Including shoes. Dizzy. Dehydrated. Decide to get up. Must shower. Must wash. Must take dead badger out of mouth.

8.30am - Incredibly smug. Lalalalaaaa. No hangover. No hangover. I am the supreme drinking champion! I will be given the keys to the city! I will keep them in a satin pouch! I am using way too many exclamation marks!!!! I rock. I am GOD.

10.15am - Charlton Heston arrives with the Ben-Hur of all hangovers. There are romans and chariots and extras wearing wristwatches. Fuck you, Moses. Fuck you and your dodgy rug.

11am - Thick yogurty vomit coats all of my vital organs. And some of my not so vital ones. It moistens my eyeballs. It flows through my veins. Envelopes my brain. Snakes its way around my tonsils.

12pm - Urgh.

12.30pm - Some drunken skanks seem to have used my phone to make a video of themselves dancing like utter, utter twats. How incredibly undignified.

1pm - Ack.

1.10pm - Sudden, intense hunger. The sandwich shop is hot and smells of egg. The only sandwich left in the entire shop is a coronation chicken, carrot and egg noodle wrap. That's not even a sandwich. It's an insult. An INSULT. Angry, I leave it in the chiller and instead buy four packets of crisps. Mmmm, salt.

1.30pm - Urgh. Ack. And also ick.

2.30pm - Cannot be sick during meeting. Cannot be sick during meeting. Cannot be sick during meeting.

2.32pm - sick during meeting.

3.50pm - switch on phone and find a text message from an unknown number asking "Is Josh with you?" I do not know of any Josh. Wibble.

4.50pm - home. Argument with vegetarian boyfriend over my alleged attempt to forcefeed him chicken at 4am. "Man cannot live by leeks alone!", apparently.

5pm - sleep. Sweet sweet sleep. Sweeter than chicken. Sweeter than cuddly vegetarians. Certainly sweeter than tracksuited men who are to rhythm what Gary Glitter is to babysitting.





Oh, and Unknown Texter - I wasn't with Josh. But as of ten minutes ago, I know who was. Looks like she's found herself another fourteen stones of Snappy Wanker. I wonder if she got sticky rice with that?

Dear Shakespeare Garry,

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best." -
Woody Allen.


It pains me to start this with a quote. No, really it does. I hate people who think using the words of truly funny people somehow makes them witty. In fact, I hate anyone who uses quotes in general which, as you can imagine, made history lectures something of an experience. What is particularly galling is if they accompany them with the use of air quotation marks. I have never in my life felt the need to use an air full stop. Or a floating comma, for that matter. I've never even succumbed to air guitar - not even during Bohemian Rapsody. Yes, even to that headbanging bit. Never mind the argument of inate promiscuity, surely holding aloft an imaginary Fender and rocking the fuck out is the act which truly separates the sexes?
So just where did this horrible affectation originate? A genius i'm not but I think I know enough to realise that you - a balding, somewhat stinky fiftysomething taxi driver are not the first person to use the expression "it's all Greek to me" so your addition of finger-punctuation wasn't strictly necessary. That isn't even the correct quote, a fact I might just have pointed out was I not mentally plucking the floating quotation points out of the air and embedding them deep in your eyeballs.

So what was it, Oh Whiffy One, that was all Greek to you? Rocket science maybe? I imagine that can be bloody hard to understand. Not for me, obviously - I am of course incredibly knowledgable when it comes to sprockets, meteors and, erm, y'know, screwdrivers and weevils and stuff. If not something of a scientific slant, perhaps it was more literary? Do you have something of a mental gap when it comes to deciphering the socioeconomic metaphors littered within Peer Gynt? You and me both, mate - to be honest I always thought Ibsen was a make of fountain pen. Ah - maybe you meant it was literally Greek to you. It's got to be taramasalata, hasn't it? Don't let the fish roe put you off, dude - give it a whirl.

Oh. Not taramasalata then? Right.

Not rocket science. Not Ibsen. Not even fishy pink goo. No.

"Blokes sleeping around is in their blood but birds doing the same is just goppin', innit? Bunch of slappers. Can't understand what they get from it puttin' it about. It's all Greek to me."

I've agonised over a possible reaction for hours. Checked off a mental tick chart of all possible angles for and against your learned argument. Gone through many an emotion trying to sum up an intellectual, fiercely impassioned response.

And then I thought, nah. Let's level the playing field.

.
.
.

"Fuck off, cuntbubble"

And, Garry baby, I even used floating quotations - just for you.


Lots of love,
Vic xx

I met her last February. On a Tuesday. I disliked her almost instantly; rolling my eyes as she waxed lyrical about a recent argument with her husband, I decided she was brusque and mouthy. I briefly contemplated asking her if she'd like a coffee but decided against it, preferring instead to imagine repeatedly slamming her head in the photocopier. Two birds with one stone: an act of mindless violence with the added bonus of a warm, satisfying stack of keepsake copies of the attack to thumb through at my leisure.

It appeared the feeling was mutual, she later told me she originally had me down as "an uptight, foul-mouthed ice queen". I don't know how on earth she came to that conclusion and fully intended to tell the bitch to fucking well fuck right off only there were people watching and, y'know, I didn't want to lose control in public or anything. They might have stared at me.

It's funny how wrong a person can be. Meaning me, obviously. Forget mouthy, she instead proved herself to be warm, funny and welcoming; taking this uptight, foul-mouthed ice queen under her wing.

Eighteen months isn't that long a period of time. At least it isn't in the grand scale of things. True, it's about three times the length of the average boy band career. And I suppose if the hairs on my legs were left to cultivate for a year and a half....well, let's just say The Hendersons would be filling up their petrol tank with glee and excitedly revving their engine in the prospect of running me over. But, for a friendship, eighteen months isn't all that long is it? You don't have the 'we've known each other since we were kids' element or that 'remember that night during Freshers Week when you vomited into a fishtank? You killed an eel' factor.

No real sense of reminiscence. No vast shared history. No 'remember that?' or 'where are they now'? And maybe that's what was so lovely about it. Maybe the newness, the freshness, the recency of it all refreshed us both.



It was ten months ago that she found out she was ill. On a Tuesday.

Four months ago when it was confirmed that she would die. I can't remember what day it was she told me. Just the static sound of the phone. And a metallic taste in my mouth.

My role, especially since things became serious - ironically, was of the clown. She had so many serious conversations ith her husband, her son, her parents, her doctors. So many things to put into place. So I was summonsed occasionally to tell her her new hairdo was less Mia Farrow and more Charles Hawtrey. To tell her to stop being such a malingerer. To ask whether MRSA was a division of the Russian military. Or just to generally gawp at doctor's bottoms. Those women should really wear longer skirts, especially with so many weak-hearted blokes cluttering up the place.

See. Clowning I can do.

And then it stopped being funny.


I said goodbye on a Wednesday. Yesterday. Although neither of us acknowledged it, we knew this would be The Last Time. The last time we would speak. The last time we would spend together.

There's a danger of painting a dying person as saintly. Celestial. An angel.

Well, she isn't.She's as fucked up as the rest of us. Always talking instead of listening. Usually late. Occasionally surly. And, my god, I will miss all that more than I can ever say.

I will miss her.

I don't want to have to refer to her in the past tense.



Her name is Tania. She's 29. And I met her on a Tuesday

Dear Beso,



You never quite managed succinct, did you? In your hands, a brief summary somehow becomes more autumnal. "Shorthand" can only ever be the punchline to a Jeremy Beadle joke. Concise is for dictionaries and, let's face it, for someone who for many years thought "meme" meant nothing more than a handy, eager response to the question "anyone for another sambuca?", there's no danger of you knocking old Collins off his perch quite yet. Instead you prefer to hover somewhere between "wordy" and "gobshite". Therefore, as is your wont, you're the kind of girl to call a spade a sturdy digging implement comprising a heavy, flat blade and thick wooden handle.

And yet, suddenly and without warning, you find yourself at a loss for words. Not all words, of course. You still somehow summon up at least thirty three expletives a day. Still manage to find the words to convey just how very certain you are that you're now doomed to spend all eternity in the fiery pits of Hell after laughing uproariously at a television programme featuring someone getting stung in the eye by a jellyfish (followed by a very real feeling of disappointment that nobody had to compound the victim's humiliation by pissing on their face). Still utter a confused "eh?" when finding one of your stripy slingbacks in the shower (I refer you back to the "meme" comment. Listen to Zammo; just say no)

You've definitely lost some words though. Somewhere, somehow; they slipped through your fingers. Evaporated from your soupy brain. Legged it while you were looking the other way. While your head was turned.

And, fuck me, has it been turned.

That - right there - that is why the words have gone. There's no need to embellish quite so ornately when everything is just as beautiful without it.

But - just in case - you should keep this place to declutter your brain every now and again. It's not quite My Space (and thank the lord for that; neon yellow eyeshadow? Have a fucking word with yourself, Lily Allen) but it's your space. And maybe space is just what you need, you wordy little gobshite.

Lots of love,

Vic xx