No Joe for this mo

Had an after-work meeting with my number one lady friend the other day and as I finished work earlier than her, I hotfooted it over to her Soho ad agency to meet her. I got there a little sooner than I should, so I mooched around in the super-white reception area trying not to look too much like I didn’t belong.

While I was feigning interest in all the reading literature, an especially dashing young chap with good hair and a nice smile came striding out of the office, past me and out of the building. He was one of those men who makes you forget your own name for a brief moment because all you can think about is how much he looks like walking sex.

Just as I picked myself up off the floor, my number one lady friend arrived and we headed off together for a night of debauched drinkery. While we were out I described the office hunk to her to see if she knew who he was, what his status was and when I would be able to go on a blind date with him.

‘Oh my God, do you mean the bloke in the blue shirt?’ she squealed. ‘That’s Joe. I’ve been meaning to tell you about him for months. I knew you’d fancy him. I only found out today through the grapevine that he is in fact a mo.’

‘Tell me everything,’ I said.

We discussed Joe for most of the evening and I bullied her into agreeing to send him an email the following morning along the lines of ‘my friend fancies you’. Playground tactics maybe, but they barely know each other and the chances of me being there just as he finished again were fairly slim. She wasn’t particularly keen on the Cilla Black idea, but I rightly pointed out that he was too delicious an opportunity to miss.

The next morning, luckily as it turns out, their email server was down, so she had to wait until she bumped into him for a face-to-face chat.

‘Joe,’ she asked tentatively. ‘Do you live in Hampstead?’ Now this might not sound like a genius chat-up line, but she has used this approach to many men and it always gives you an opening to a discussion.

‘No,’ he replied.

‘Oh, it’s just my friend who came to meet me last night was sure he knew you and thought maybe he had seen you in Hampstead as that’s where he lives.’

‘No, I haven’t been to Hampstead for a while,’ he said (still not jumping in with ‘but I remember him from last night and fell in love with him instantly’.)

‘But,’ he added, ‘my boyfriend does live in Belsize Park, which is close, so maybe he has seen me around there.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

And with that crushing defeat, her matchmaking career was over before it had even begun.

Fired by the end of the day?

OK, this no-blogging lark is really getting tiresome.

The Mac at home won't allow internet access and as both my flatmates have their own laptops (mainly for Gaydar and Manjam usage), they're in no great rush to fix it.

Up until this very moment I had been too scared to blog while at work, but I have decided to throw caution to the wind and just go for it.

Of course, someone in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit is probably monitoring me as I type and will check this blog out when I'm done and throw me out onto the street. Should that be the case, I would like to point out for the record that the time is 1:50pm and I am on my lunch break.

I have much to mention, including BAFTAs, saunas, meeting and stalking celebrities and various Bank Holiday horror stories, so I aim to get some of them up as soon as possible.

I miss the blogging life.

I miss not having to work at work even more, though.

Do you have a Walking Licence?

The top of this blog says that London is the greatest city in the world.

But there are many, many occasions when I don't actually feel this way and those times are any days when I have to walk through Central London during rush hour. So, basically every poxy morning and evening.

When I was 17 I wanted to learn to drive, so I took up driving lessons. I had to read the Highway Code to familiarise myself with the rules of the road and then I took a test, after which I was allowed to be set free on the road.

Well, where is the code to familiarise people with the rules of the pavement? Why do pedestrians think that they have the freedom to walk at any speed and in any direction with no thought for others using the walkways?

Central London is exceptionally busy, full of people rushing back and forth all trying to get somewhere in the shortest possible time. So why do so many do this journey with absolutely no awareness of those around them?

If it's not people reading a newspaper when they're walking along (have you ever heard anything like it?), it's people walking out of shops and offices onto a busy pavement and then stopping in the middle. If it's not people walking really slowly, it's people in twos or threes walking together down a two-man deep path so that no one can get passed in either direction.

The only thing more irritating than a pedestrian is a pedestrian with an umbrella, especially one intended for a golf course rather than Threadneedle Street. Having been absent-minded enough to lose three umbrellas on trains in the last month, I was already in a foul mood when I saw the rain this morning and the last thing I wanted was to have to duck and dive to avoid getting my eyes poked out by all the nutters with wandering brollies. And at six foot two, that's no simple feat.

I think laws should be brought in to bring some kind of order to the pavements of London. I remember hearing a rumour once that Oxford Street was going to have lanes introduced for slower walkers allowing faster ones to go about their business without the need for tripping people up.

This would be a lifesaver and should be brought in across the city. Millennium Bridge, for example, should be split into two lanes: one for people with somewhere to go and the other for the cuntish tourists who clog it up on a regular basis.

If there was some order introduced, I'd be able to get to work without wanting to throw myself in the Thames with rocks in my pockets.

The situation has got so bad that I've picked up a dangerous habit. Each time someone gets in my way or walks in front of me or fails to give me the right of way when they ought to, I mutter "cunt" under my breath.

This is fine while no one hears, but one day some burly bloke is going to get wind of it and, as opinionated as I am, I'm not overly keen on confrontation, so I should try and curb it.

In the end I had to nip to Pret to get a hot chocolate and a ham and cheese croissant. Just to take the edge off.

Friday: Time to moan

They say that there's no prude like a reformed whore.

And that whore was me this morning.

A scabby, blotchy-faced bloke sat in front of me on the train this morning.

He made me feel sick. I knew what he'd been doing. He reeked of it.

Smoke.

He must've just finished a cigarette and as soon as he sat down, the stale stench hung in the air like a cloud of shit.

On 21 April it will be one year to the day since I gave up smoking. I won't call myself a non-smoker until that day; instead I'll label myself a 'recovering smoker'.

I don't want to jinx it, but I still have no desire to start up again and when I smell someone like him, it makes me deeply ashamed that I ever smoked.

It means that every morning when I got on the train, other people could smell it on me. The same thing goes for people unfortunate enough to share a lift with me in my building.

Well, now I don't smell and those that do make me sick to the pit of my stomach. I wanted to ask him to sit somewhere else, but that might have been too much so early in the morning.

I'd hoped when I got to work that I wouldn't have to endure any more unpleasant odours, but I have discovered that one of the people who sits behind me has personal hygiene issues of his own: he clearly doesn't brush his teeth as his breath stinks like pig shit.

Couple that with Chip Fat John who sits on the other side of the office, and I have a day full of stench to look forward to.

He's known as Chip Fat John because he smells like chip fat. And his name is John. He also smells of dirty towels. You know when you wash a towel and for some reason it gets left lying around indoors and ends up smelling like stale sweat, feet and cabbage? That's what he smells like all day, every day.

And he seems to think that as we are the only two gayers who work in my office anymore, I will enjoy talking to him all day about the fact that Rupert Everett saw him and his boyfriend snogging, that Jeremy Sheffield propositioned him in a 'leather club' and which male Gladiator I used to fancy.

I enjoy none of these conversations.

(But I fancied Trojan.)

(And Rupert Everett and Jeremy Sheffield, if you want to get technical.)

I can't stop moaning

I don't know whether it's the festive music that's now being pumped from the otherwise redundant speakers in my local Tesco, or the hourly questioning about what I'm going to do at Christmas and who I'm going to see and blah, blah, blah, but now that I've started moaning, I can't stop and I seem to get annoyed by every little thing.

The journey to work this morning was rife with annoyances and I am going to list them now in the hope that I don't fester over them for the rest of the day.

People who don't sit by the window on the train: When I am the first person to sit in a certain section of a train, I sit next to the window so all further people who plonk down near me can fill in around me. It's bad train etiquette to sit on the outside seat first as that means the next person in has to squeeze past you. This is especially relevant if the offender is a six foot tall man, or a very large person.

Teenagers who listen to music on their phones on the speaker rather than headphones: I don't want to hear a tinny version of 'Smack That' by Akon, and I'm sure in their hearts they don't want to either.

Couples who kiss on the train: It's 8:05am and I can't even picture a slice of wholemeal toast without wanting to puke, so the last thing I want to see is Mr and Mrs Boring of Alexandra Palace get on, sit opposite me and start sucking each other's faces off. There's a time and a place for that depravity and this is neither.

People who read and walk: You're walking from Liverpool Street to Bank. It's the pedestrian equivalent of the M25. Reading this morning's Metro is dangerous. You need to have your wits about you otherwise when you get in my way, I will 'accidentally' catch the back of your ankle with my winkle picker and you won't be happy.

People who text and walk: See above. Check your phone when you get to work, or move aside and let people get past, you selfish prick.

Jagged Toothed Office Snides: He didn't do anything to annoy me this morning per se, but I walked past his desk and that was enough.

There. I feel much better now. Time for that slice of toast.

Quick whinge

People say some really annoying things.

Two of the things that really bug me have already been uttered in my earshot this morning, and I ain't happy!

* Annoyance #1: 'Random'. This word is perfectly relevant when talking about 'random number generators', or mathematical patterns or other such boring topics. But I find it most annoying when people use this word as an adjective to describe other people. A girl on the train this morning was telling the listener on her phone of her weekend 'kissing some random bloke'. I know what she's saying, but please, don't speak like that in public. It's very irritating.

* Annoyance #2: 'Blatantly': This word shares the top spot of my hate list of words and today's offender was a co-worker. Now if she had been talking about her failure to conceal an act, such as 'blatantly shoplifting', I would've accepted that with no problem. But what she was actually talking about was how she was 'blatantly going to get hammered at the party'. I don't know for definite, but I'd imagine she's the sort of girl who uses excessive exclamation marks and finishes most emails with 'LOL'.

The cretin!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please call me The Grinch

It started slightly later than it usually does. I got my first Christmas card yesterday. Surprisingly, it wasn't from a super keen co-worker or distant relative, but it came from the hand of Dame Saskia of Pinkdom, who really ought to know better.

I have acquired a reputation for being quite Scrooge-like around the Noel period and many people who know me well enough fully expect me to be screaming 'Bah Humbug!' at the top of my voice.

What riled me about this particular card is that Dame Saskia, while meaning well, put this in her card: "Don't be The Grinch like you usually are: look at the positives and have fun."

Perhaps I've got her wrong and she doesn't get me at all, but I thought she knew where my Grinch factor came from. I don’t feel down about myself or my life or anything like that (even though it is all toil and trouble and no double bubble), I just hate Christmas. It’s pointless. It’s frustrating. It's commercial. It's meaningless. And it forces people into doing things they think they should do rather than because they want to.

This evening, for example, I have to go on a specific shopping trip after work just to get a present for a co-worker I've never spoken to for the Secret Santa as our work party is next Monday. And as the inevitable cards have now started going round, I'm faced with that whole ‘do I get people cards and go against everything I believe in, or do I refuse to join in and get called names by everyone else who hates Christmas as much as I do but doesn’t have the courage to admit it’ question.

I might take neither option, crawl into a cardboard box under my desk and refuse to get out until mid-January. (Taking with me a box of 12 mince pie doughnuts!)

Clothes maketh the man

The best evenings are always the impromptu ones. I'd planned to pop to the shops after work to get an eye-catching new outfit for the dreaded party season, and as I was marching up Oxford Street, knocking dreary Christmas shoppers left, right and centre with my brolly, I was tapped on the shoulder by none other than Dame Saskia of Pinkdom.

This bolt of glittery pinkness was a joy in the otherwise monochrome throng of retail Hell and while we had a natter outside HMV (she was telling me how The Devoted Husband has been signed off work for a week with terrible 'flu), who did we spy? Well, if it wasn't Sophia wandering into Urban Outfitter. Another injection of fabulousness into the quagmire!

The three of us decided it would be nice to go for something to eat after nipping into Topshop/Topman. I was expecting to get a whole outfit and I did pick some bits to buy - skinny-fitting moleskin trousers, blue slim-fit checked shirt and skinny black and white tie, all to wear with my grey winkle pickers - but Saskia vetoed the entire look, telling me that I had become a 'generic gay'.

After a tense moment where I thought about grabbing her by her honey-blonde hair, dragging her through the shop and throwing her head-first down the escalators for daring to suggest that I was dressing like everyone else, I agreed that every homo in town was in fact wearing skinny this and skinny that and vowed not to darken the door of the drainpipe jeans again.

We then mosied on over to Cafe Emm and had a delightfully pleasant meal and gossip and I managed to get in at a respectable 10:30pm.

Now though, I need to focus all my attention on evolving my look. Heaven forbid I should carry on looking generic.

Who says Beta is Better?

The weeks of prompting me every time I logged in have finally done my head in, so I caved - I switched to Beta Blogger.

If you don't know what that means, then join the club. They tell you that if you switch your blog over, nothing will change, only when I did, everything was different.

Aside from the fact I have chosen the most boring colour scheme imaginable, I lost all my links and other gadgets that had allowed me to convince myself I actually knew how to use a computer.

I have literally spent all morning fiddling around with stuff, trying to get it to look the way it did before I made the change.

This just proves my mum right: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!