Jungle Barbie and empty coffee cups

I was sitting at a table in Café Nero, staring at the coffee cup opposite me. Two minutes before Adrian had been sitting behind it, gulping down his three shot cappuccino before racing off to catch his train. Strange, I thought, how he’s gone but there’s still steam rising from his cup. I became a little fixated with it, truth to tell, couldn’t take my eyes off it, wondering at which precise moment it would stop steaming. When he would really be gone. My thoughts turned morbid, as they are wont to do. What if this was all that was left of him? What if the train crashed or a suicide bomber hurtled into Old Street? Adrian, just a bit of steam.

I’ve always had a gothic turn of thought. When I was young – and I mean very young – I used to pore over Bosch paintings, fascinated by scenes of torture. Poor Barbie got it something rotten. While my friends primped and pampered their dolls, mine had to battle through jungles, getting her hair snagged out by the roots and her clothes ripped. I drew scars on her cheeks and hauled her through mud. I even poked pins in her on one occasion when she was being pursued by hostile natives. Barbie wasn’t remotely Lara Croft though – she didn’t kickbox her way out or blast three shades of hell out of everyone. She just submitted in a totally craven and rather pathetic fashion. She annoyed me so much that I decided her life in the jungle was really too exciting so I built her a croft in the remote Highlands (otherwise known as the rockery in our Sutton garden). She got a few scraps of tweed to wrap around her pneumatic breasts and a plastic horse for company. There she stayed, gazing mournfully out over the remains of the lavender, picking at her mascara, until she became green with mould. When each of her babies inevitably died, she hauled herself to their funerals and threw herself onto their graves with fits of sobbing, wiping dirt over her (already filthy) face. OK, so the babies were frogs (having managed to get them from spawn to four legs, they sort of gave up the effort – but this could have been something to do with my home-made bin-bag pond). Anyhow they died, in rapid succession and were buried, with elaborate ceremony and arcane ritual, in padded matchboxes to a backdrop of Barbie’s wailing, interspersed with the odd hacking cough (the poor creature probably had pneumonia).

Sorry, that was a long diversion but it is pertinent. I think my main problem is that I’m having a problem with the fact that – unless some medical miracle occurs – my life is more than half over. I’ve never been very good at the second half of things. Holidays are a case in point. I love the first week, all is promise, hope, excitement, new things to try, taste, smell. Then the halfway point is reached and the gloom settles in. Homeward stretch. I start thinking about the return. Have even been known to start packing. There seems no point in making huge plans, chatting to new people because, well, it’ll all be over soon. Same with everything really. I just sort of wilt after the halfway point, want it all over. Can’t be bothered.
Not a good attitude really when it’s one’s own life in question.

I know this is a common theme and I moan on about it far too much but I’m still feeling washed up. Finding it hard to summon the energy for anything really. Ye gods, I’m turning into bloody misery-guts Barbie.

Back in Café Nero, I suddenly realised I couldn’t bear to see the actual moment when the coffee stopped steaming so I jumped up, threw on my coat and hurtled out without a backwards glance in case seeing the moment of death could, by sympathetic magic, cause it. Is that a bit odd? Yes, thought so.
Still, I pulled myself together and went off into town. I haven’t been shopping, as in proper shopping in a town, for about half a year and I thought I’d lost the knack yet I managed to do all my chores in about forty minutes flat. Then, with two hours still on the parking meter, I thought I’d get my annual spot of total degradation over and done with. This is the moment when I decide I should Make An Effort and buy something shimmery or glittery for all the parties I will try to make excuses not to go to. Last year, you may recall, it was the Only Gay in the Village sequinned t-shirt. This year, I decided, it would be a dress. I know. Don’t laugh. I don’t actually have a dress (no, not one - seriously) so this was a challenge.

Why do we do it to ourselves? Maybe there are women who can sliver into something slinky and smile at themselves in the mirror but those women are not me. OK, so I was trying them on over jeans and pointy cowboy boots, with a white (ish) bra – but still. I looked like a home-made Christmas decoration, overstuffed and straining at the seams. Like Barbie I have out of proportion tits and very long legs. Unlike Barbie I go out at the waist rather than in. It’s not a good look. One dress flattened out my boobs into one enormous shelf – the size and shape of a Wii Fit. Another sort of caught them and tossed them out towards the mirror - two vast flashing white orbs intent on world domination. In the end, after half an hour of vehement self-loathing and self-pity, I settled for something vaguely shapeless with spaghetti straps (so it’ll be a large shawl or coat over that then – truly what’s the point?). It’s still too snug (despite being diaphanous) – so that’ll be a diet then (yes, another one).

Ah heck. Maybe I’ll just forget Christmas and go and hole up in a croft and feel sorry for myself there…watching the steam rise from an empty coffee cup.