...Eve was a peculiar one. I was introduced to my Doppelgänger. I was roundly lambasted for not wearing fancy dress. Hell, my Mr T impersonation last year was sufficient effort for two years, I thought.

And I didn't get too drunk until an Irish chap started feeding me with moonshine that he had smuggled into the pub; and the decline was rapid.

Earlier in the evening, I had met a rather lovely young lady. In one of our first conversations, she went into some depth as to how much she appreciated Sally Phillips - to the extent that her performance as Cinderella in the recent 'Jam and Jersusalem' had left her awash with drool. 'Hmmm,' thought I.

Just after midnight we hugged. A little while later still, I was talking to Irish chap, and the sapphic stunner pushed her way between us mid-conversation, to steal an unexpected snog. Carumba!

After a protracted bout of rather shameless public passion, it suddenly became time for a serious chat. Blee!

"Now. You are very lovely. But it's important that you know that I'm gay."

"Yes; I can tell."

"No, seriously... I am gay. Gay with a capital 'G'."

"Ok."

"But you are very lovely."

"Thank you!"

"But I am gay."

"Are you trying to tell me something ?"

I reassured her that I wasn't about to get hung up or stalkerish, and that I understood that we stray from the path sometimes. Blame drunken high spirits. I wasn't about to be too pushy. This is possibly where I'm going wrong. There, and everywhere else.

I texted my chum Busty Farm Girl, and told her that - amongst other things - I'd kissed a lebannon. Or rather, she'd kissed me. Her response :
Well, one finds love in the most unlikely of places. Maybe she was attracted to your moobs? Maybe it was your secret fanny? Maybe it was your girlish walk?

I think 2007 will herald a new confidence.

...the holiday period :

Lemonbrother bought his wife a book on etiquette for Christmas.

Lemonbrother : Have you started reading your book yet ?
Lemonbrotherwife : No I haven't, you fucking cunt.

...subideal in many respects. I haven't got a definite place sorted out in The Metropolis yet, so now all my admin stuff (bank details, car registration, subscription to 'Wabs') is addressed to Chez Walrus. The upshot of this is that I live with my parents OFFICIALLY. Gnaa! Sproo! Flee!

But, in this shiny new virgin year, I have decided to always be POSITIVE. So rather than dwell on the cessation of adventure and death of my soul that all this would normally bring; or look wistfully through the window, wondering wot all my friends are doing (probably at work); I am going to list the GOOD POINTS of living with Mr and Mrs Walrus :

• They are nice, and only nag me about what the hell I plan to do with my life when I'm awake.
• I am taking over the role of chef from my mother, which I enjoy. Not in the least because now I have twice as many ingredients to choose from ('Shall I make this pasta sauce with basil OR oregano ? The choices are ENDLESS!').
• I don't normally watch TV, so doing so here is novel. I delighted in watching the response of my folks to the gay snog on 'Torchwood' last night - my mother giggled hysterically, and The Walrus peeped at it gingerly through his fingers.
• I get to blog.

Actually, I am finding the respite from the real world mildly relaxing. So I think I shall put off dusting my armour and polishing my arsenal until tomorrow. There'll still be a world to take on then.

...Busty Farm Girl's house, and her brother pays a visit. He has not long been a father.

Farm Brother : The boy has started making this face a lot - [makes spazz face].
Lemonsquash : What does it mean ?
Farm Brother : It means 'Auntie [Farm Girl]'.
[Busty Farm Girl stares daggers at her brother]
Farm Brother : I say 'a lot'. He's only done it the once so far.

...The Walrus to his favourite hostelry last week, and stopped for a drink when I picked him back up. He was sat in the part of the pub that is known as 'The Departure Lounge', where all the real oldies sit. So I was the youngest in the group by an entire score. I wanted to offer to light this one fellow's pipe, so shaky were his hands - but I'm sure that would have seemed rude. The gents were all as sharp as tacks, mind. Despite being hilarious wise-crackin' ole sorts, I realised that I missed my own friends. So I went back to my home town for the weekend.

The degeneration of the weekend is another story entirely. But a few bits and bobs jump out at me :

• One of my best chums from school got engaged over the Christmas period. I have since been badgering him about being best man. I think he is torn between chosing me and another mutual friend (plus Busty Farm Girl is also petitioning; but I'm not sure how closely they plan to stick to the traditional interpretation of the word 'man'). We worked out that the problem could be solved if I got ordained as a minister, and married them myself. I have thought about this before. But now I HAVE PURPOSE. I want to be able to marry people. That would be fun. So that's wot I'm gonna do.
• Myself and a buddy decided to see how many different pitchers of cocktail we could get through on the Wetherspoons menu before falling over. All I can say is - bison grass vodka and apple juice. Oh my god. It's like apple pie IN BOOZE FORM. Double lush!
• I found myself in a busy town pub. I used to know every face there. That was about a decade ago. This time, I knew none. Ho hum.
• Why do people wear ALL WHITE tracksuity outfits, with white caps and white trainers ? Fucking WHY ?

That'll do, I think.

...attention by a good chum, look at this :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6244153.stm

She also requested Smiths/Morrissey-based potential headlines. So far we have :

• The Integrity Is Dead
• Frankly Mr Wogan
• Smiths Fans In A Coma
• There Is A Light That Never Comes On
• Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Voted For Me

Any thoughts ?

...the spirit vacuum of job hunting :

• Make an 'Out Of Order' cover for your grandfather's doorbell out of an inversed printer cartridge box.
• Print out low GI recipes for your parents.
• Learn how to play 'You Could Be Mine' by Guns N' Roses on the geetar.
• Decorate your new blog on Vox.
• Reorder your temporary room.
• Put a bunch of stuff in the loft. Search the loft. Take even more useless crap back out.
• Decide that taking a photo representing of all of the above and posting them will be Blog Gold.
• Search for the USB cable for your camera for half an hour, knowing full well you aren't going to find it.
• Curse the fact that the blog entry is CONSIDERABLY LESS INTERESTING without photos. Realise you have created not Blog Gold, but Blog Lead. You are The AntiAlchemist.
• Consider going back to bed. 

...Busty Farm Girl :

Lemonsquash : I am watching King Kong after a heavy weekend. It is certain that I will cry like a sissy girl x

Busty Farm Girl : The monkey dies x

Wot was the last film that made you blub ?

...a selection of moments from the weekend :

• On Saturday, I hauled ass to my home town to go to a cancer benefit gig in what used to be my first ever local (it has since become an O'Neill's). Despite the sombre undertone of the gig, myself and pals spent the afternoon weak with laughter. Always a sign of a good time. Although the compere managed to rub several of the punters up the wrong way when he singled out smokers in his introductory 'serious speech'. "If you want to get pious about smokers, don't host your gig in a pub - host it in a fucking church hall," declared Busty Farm Girl, just before sparking up in protest.
• We retired to a buddy's house, where things degenerated. One chum said something extemely sacreligious, and spilt his red wine over himself immediately afterwards. "I'm man enough to know when I've been smote by The Lord," quoth he.
• I woke up with a load of seeds having mysteriously found their way into my hair. "Good thing I just checked my shoes," said the host; "They're full of grapes."
• When discussing the elder generation's use of the word 'nigger' as a descriptive term (someone's mother had described an object as "nigger brown", and defended her use by saying that - in this particular instance - it had no racial overtones), a good friend of mine said "It used to be commonplace for 'Nigger' to be used as a pet name. For example, Douglas Bader had a dog called Nigger. And they had to censor it from that film. You know the one. It was called... Er... Not 'I Don't Have Any Of My Legs Anymore'..."

All in all, a turboskill weekend. Today, however, I will be mostly shaking slightly, and staying out of trouble.

...writing about leaving The Edge Of The World. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Maybe it's because the last time I displaced, it was a bit more dramatic. This latest move seems wholly anticlimactic. Plus, I'm not relocating as far. You don't really say goodbye to friends that you're only moving a couple of hours away from.

Or possibly I'm unwilling to fully accept that I've moved to yet another place for a significant period of my life, and that things simply haven't worked out. I had the closest thing to an ideal job for a while, but it couldn't be sustained. I didn't find love. Or, arguably, I did - just with the wrong person. I am leaving no richer, no more fulfilled - just a little older and slower.

Perhaps I am being harsh. I have made some great friends. I have learned to fish. I have spent a whole lot of time doing nothing in a place that is pretty sleepy and stress-free. I have slipped into a comfort zone. At times, it was almost like having some of my eventual retirement on loan.

On the last weekend of officially living at The Edge Of The World, I got back very late one night. It was wild outside, and the windows in our living room had blown wide open in the wind. I decided to join the seafront for a constitutional nightcap. It was five in the morning, the waves were thrashing against the sea wall, and the throb of the sea was illuminated by an almost full moon. It was eerie and enchanting. Rocks and water were being hurled across the orange road at certain points. It was putting on a show, seemingly all for me.

At high tide, you occasionally observe a phenomenon where waves rebound, causing a backwash. So you get waves going both in and out. Some of these rebounding waves slip away under the radar without incident. Some of them collide with incoming waves, causing water to jet into the air. Some such collisions that evening were causing splashes that must have leapt up a good twenty-five foot. A friend of mine told me that this effect is called a clypotis; although I have uncovered no evidence that this is in fact so. However, I would like it to be.

I have tried to slip away unnoticed to a certain degree. But a decent amount of folk have fondly teased me that I will never get away from The Edge Of The World. I get a feeling they don't want me to. I even got a hug from a woman working in the local Londis. It feels like I am missed. Which is consolation, I guess. Although things haven't concluded in the way I might have hoped, at least sometimes in our comings and goings we collide spectacularly for fleeting moments, before breaking apart and subsiding anonymously once more into the sea.

...drag this blog back down to the level where it belongs.

Dictionary.com's Word Of The Day today is 'foofaraw'. Now, it doesn't mean anything like wot I expected.

...happened recently :

• Myself and Blonde Curly Physio were invited to a 'Pub Quiz' evening at The Odd Couple's house. A friend phoned shortly before we went, and I told her I was afraid that I was likely to be obnoxious, as I was already a little soused. "I shouldn't worry. People are used to that - it's your party piece," came her response. Blonde Curly Physio, despite claiming that the best way to get through the evening was to be mischievous, was her usual charming self; so it was entirely up to me to misbehave terribly in front of a room of straight-laced teachers. I sincerely doubt I'll ever be invited back.
• Myself and The Friendly Fisherman (Blonde Curly Physio's boyfriend) decided that the best fancy dress costume in the world would be the milk carton from Blur's 'Coffee and TV' video. However, neither eBay nor Google furnished us with a ready to buy one; so I guess I'm gonna have to make one. Wot would be your ideal fancy dress costume ?
• I've been smurfing quite a bit. Yesterday, I was riding a wave in and thinking to myself 'Yay! Surfing is fun!' (I am comfortable with not being in the least bit cool), when I was met by a rebounded wave (or clapotis) coming in the other direction. The effect of this was to send me flying arse over moob. To wit, I was clapottled.
• I asked a girl out on a date. She blew me out. Boo!
• I watched 'Little Miss Sunshine'. Yay!
• I may finally move out of my folks' on the ninth of Feb. Überw00t!

There's probably more, but I'm off to make some porridge.