Iceland, I love you

It doesn't seem all that long ago that Bjarni and I didn't bring books or magazines onto aeroplanes because we knew we'd be busy snogging for the whole journey. Not so anymore, as Bjarni spent the entire flight buried in his book, looking up only once to ponder why, if there is economy class and business class, nobody has invented "porn class" yet. Um... whatever that is?

We're back in Iceland for ten days, which has been top secret as I was the surprise guest at my old company's annual party. Now, the trouble with an advertising agency promising a surprise guest is that people's imaginations tend to run away with them, and before you know it they're hoping for somebody really special, like Hemmi Gunn, for example — the Icelandic Bruce Forsyth.

Still, nobody looked too disappointed to see it was me, and we had a fantastic night eating and drinking too much in a remote hotel in a beautiful fjörd just north of Reykjavík. I got very emotional very quickly at seeing all my peeps again — I don't think I'd realised how much I miss them. Oh dear... I think I may even have "given a speech".

Usually at work parties I end up getting naked way too early, or I'm the one telling Oscar from marketing that I want his baby — or sometimes I might even get drunk or something like that. So this time, although I technically don't work there anymore, I was trying to be on my best behaviour, and even managed to keep my swimsuit on in the hot-tub.

No need to have been so prudish, it turns out, as nothing — but nothing — could come close to taking out your glass eye, rolling it under the foreskin of your penis, and entertaining your colleagues with your "one eyed snake".

Iceland, I love you.

Cat Shit is Gay

There's a piece of graffiti in Kwiksave carpark, in the small Welsh town that I went to school in, that says in massive capital letters: CAT SHIT IS GAY. This was written long before the term gay meant "a bit rubbish", and could only mean either "happy" or "homosexual" — though if you were growing up in Llanrwst it was unlikely that you could be both.

This graffiti troubled me greatly as a child as I couldn't figure out how something like cat shit could possibly be gay, in any sense of the word. It wasn't until I started going to the pub and happened to bump into Craig Catshit one night that I figured it out — he was an actual person.

In Wales you usually get nick-named after what you do or where you live, depending on what's most relevant to your community at the time. Hence our local milkman "Wyn the Milk", our local chiropodist "Jane the Feet", and our neighbour John "John Up The Back".

But some people — like Craig Catshit — are less fortunate, and get named after what they smell like, instead. Not that he ever seemed to mind all that much; it was how he'd introduce himself, after all. Although he always swore he wasn't gay.

Even worse though, I think, is to be named after what you're like in the sack. The last I heard of Dylan Crapshag was that he was getting married. Who would've thought?

Stand and Deliver

I actually Went Out this weekend, with Bjarni, of course, seems I haven't made any friends yet. He coaxed me out of the house in an attempt to cure my brush with depression. I think it might've worked — I was so excited to be going to the pub that I wore all my jewellery at once. I don't know how fashionable this is, but seems it all came from a very exclusive store in London (called "Accessorize") I reckon I was onto a winner.

I also wore the very high-heeled lace-up fuck-me-boots that I chose in a moment of madness back when the Edwardian style made its comeback. Do you remember, a couple of years ago, when all the women teetered around dressed up like Dick Turpin on heels? It was ridick then and no less ridick in Dublin on a Friday night, I can tell you.

I'm out of practise in heels. I haven't had much use for them recently, as I've skulked around my apartment eating bread from the bag and crying. So I was a bit wobbly in them, to say the least. Even standing still I had to hold my arms out either side of me like an aeroplane, just to keep my balance. It's unfortunate that the one night of the year that I don't wear comfortable shoes, I end up in a lesbian bar. But at least I looked like an over-accessorised highwayman, even if I couldn't walk like one, which was the main thing.

My Imaginary Award-Winning Screenplay

I’ve given up on my imaginary award-winning screenplay and turned it into a book instead. An imaginary award-winning book, probably. The trouble is that I don’t have the first clue how to write a screenplay and I found the whole thing a bit tedious:

INT. DUBLIN APARTMENT, DAY
Puts down pen, stomps out door.

Zzzz. The interesting thing about turning it into a book is that now I can explain what people are thinking – which I'm finding very, very exciting. And I can always adapt it later on when I’m back in film school with experienced tutors to advise me / tear it all to pieces etc.

Of course, I don’t have the first clue how to write a book, either. I have most of the plot figured out, minus the ending, but apart from that I’m just making it up as I go along, toiling over random chapters here and there in no particular order.

I’m hoping this is the professional way to go about it. I fear it isn't.

Fire

A massive fire burnt down the whole of Reykjavik yesterday, I'm sad to report. Well, when I say "the whole of Reykjavik", what I mean is a shop, a bar, and a nightclub — so close enough.

It's a real shame that the destroyed buildings are the beautiful old 19th century ones. Why couldn't the flames have taken those big ugly concrete things from the 1980s instead?

I Love Mum

I'm not a fan of tattoos and don't have any of my own. I think seeing my brother get Tintin & Snowy inked onto his upper left arm put me off for life.

As a teenager I briefly considered some stylish Chinese typography, but the urban myths were too ridick. I wonder, are there people in Asia with "FISH N CHIPS" tattooed in Arial Bold on the smalls of their backs?

If I was ever to get a tattoo, however, then it'd be an anchor, or a swallow, or "I love Mum". Because I believe in tradition. And I do really, really love my mum.

The Smoking Ban

The good thing about Wales bringing in the smoking ban is that nobody is allowed to smoke in the pub anymore. The bad thing about Wales bringing in the smoking ban is that now we all have to have exactly the same conversations that we had in Ireland three years ago — how many walls make a "room" and the definition of "smirting" etc. Imagine the fun when the English finally "invent" it this summer...

So, I won't bang on about it. Oh, alright then, I will. I was a smoker for ten years. I started when I was 15 because it was cool (it was!). I remember my mother pleading with me to give up before I got "addicted", which I sneered at. As if! I could give up any time I liked — so I carried on.

At the height of my addiction I was getting through 40 roll-ups a day. I smoked so much it was like a part of my personality. I let smoking define me: the colour of my Rizla packets, or the way I roached each fag; they'd become indelible characteristics. But by November '05 I'd smoked 54,750 cigarettes and enough was enough. Don't believe the hype surrounding quitting; if you want to stop you'll stop. Really, if I can do it then anyone can.

I don't get why England dragged its feet on the ban for so long. The sooner they do it the sooner they can have incredulous conversations about the old days when everybody smoked in the pub, only Richard Gere in Pretty Woman had a mobile phone, and the internet was something you only used for "looking things up".

Eh?

What was it that Meat Loaf wouldn't do?

And while we're on the subject of crap American popstars... Shania Twain. She don't impress me much.

Dolwyddelan am byth

I feel all nostalgic all of a sudden, having spent quite a bit of time back in my tiny hometown in Snowdonia recently. All those mountains and hills, forests and rivers, and the little village pubs.

I survived growing up in a place like this the same way any other normal, healthy teenager did. I smoked hash, I fucked any guy who showed the slightest bit of interest in me, and I played a lot of pool — which I was always really good at. But, as my brother pointed out to me, being good at pool isn't a sign of great sportsmanship, it's just a sign of too much time in the pub.

The biggest problem with growing up in the sticks is getting to the pub in the first place. The local in your own village is bound to be shit, plus your parents will be in there waving at you and offering to buy you some crisps. Public transport stopped at 7pm, and Glyn Gin's taxi service was unreliable at best. "Dolwyddelan?!" he once screeched when I called to book his cab. "I've been to Dolwyddelan once already this week, I'm not going again!"

So the only way to get anywhere was to hitchhike. Hitching was always dangerous, especially in our village, which had the road to bleak slate-mining town Blaenau Ffestiniog running through it, but so what? Spending the evening pretending to be 18 with your friends in the next valley was well worth the risk of being abducted by some desperate nutcase along the way.

This was all back in the days before sugar-flavoured alcopops, of course, so as a child I had no choice but to drink Stella Artois. At 5.2% ABV I liked how hard it made me feel when I ordered it. My friend Jo always drank Guinness and my friend Sally always drank Strongbow and I knew that when they ordered their pints they felt just as hard as I did. It didn't matter that a couple of hours later we'd be staggering over Betws-y-Coed's village green throwing it all back up again.

I'm not sure that I'll ever live in Wales again, but it was fun growing up there.

Rhiannon Towers

Now that I've tricked Bjarni into moving in with me I suppose it's okay to put a stop to all this "sex" nonsense. It's just that I actually quite liked sex, funnily enough — I just seem to have lost all interest in it.

My doctor says this is a "completely normal" reaction to stress. Things went a bit crazy at Rhiannon Towers for a while — starting with leaving Iceland, I suppose. Some people say that, in terms of stress, moving is "right up there with divorce or a death in the family". But then there really was a death in the family, which made moving country seem like the happy, exciting thing that it actually is. After that, all kinds of other things happened, things that I'm not going to publish — but let's just leave it by saying that the next person to compare moving house to a family falling apart is going to get the sharp edge of my tongue.

Of course, Bjarni is patient and claims not to mind my missing libido. But I'm hoping things are going to get back to normal at Rhiannon Towers soon enough. There's only so much of all this a girl can take.

Blonktastic

Uh-oh, you turn your back on blonking for two weeks and the whole blonkosphere goes mental.

Some dude called Kathy Siesta got her knickers in a twist over some arsey comments and now her blonkchums are writing up a Code of Conduct to make sure it never, ever happens again.

Pfft. I'd love an arsey comment on my blonk. I think that's why scary commenters stay away from me — they can tell it'd make me feel important.