Fergus

Tomorrow I'm going to visit my brother in Galway and take pictures of his beard. Because that's what I always end up doing when I see Ferg: smoke rollies, listen to country, and take many, many pictures of his beard. "It's because I'm so photogenic," he says. Yes Fergy, it is.

The whole American West thing

After leaving the doctor's last week, swinging down the street to the rhythm of Stayin' Alive and trying not to click my fingers in public, I decided there is only one thing for it: I have to go to America. This job I'm doing will be over in a month — BANG! — and then what am I going to do? Stay in Ireland? Go back to Iceland? Ring up my parents and see if they'll have me home in Wales? No. I'm going to have to pull on my cowboy boots and head on over to the American West for a couple of months. Uh, wherever that is.

"Have you ever done the whole American West thing?" I ask my American friend Joel, over-excitedly over cocktails on Saturday night.

"What's the whole American West thing?" he frowns, perplexed.

"Oh, y'know, wearing cowboy boots, wandering around... wandering around the... the West..." I trail off. I'm not entirely sure what it is either. But I'm hoping it involves freedom.

"Well," says Joel. "Let me ask you something. When you came to Dublin did you wear a white tracksuit?"

Eh? I guess not.

Apocalypse

The end of the world is going to look exactly as you've always expected it to look.

A simple mathematical equation

How long were you together? he asks, pressing a stethoscope against my back. Two and three-quarter years, I say. And how long is it since you split up? he asks. Two and three-quarter months, I say. Everyone always asks the same two questions, and I wonder if there's some kind of mathematical equation that I'm unaware of going on here.

I am back at the doctor, just making sure this small pain I still have in my chest isn't pneumonia. No, it's not pneumonia, he says. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it could be my heart? He wonders why a healthy young woman thinks it could possibly be her heart.

There's nothing wrong with your heart, he says, putting the stethoscope away. But I'd like to do a chest X-Ray, anyway. There may have been some damage to your ego.

My ego? My ego is in my chest? I never knew that! I never knew that, I say. I never knew my ego was located in my chest.

No, says the doctor. Not many people do.

--

Later, as I wait for the results, I notice a framed photograph on his desk: two small children running along a beach, a dog, and a pretty woman in a dress. He must have used his surgical scissors to carefully cut it out of a catalogue one afternoon.

Like I thought, he says, striding back into the room. Bruising all down one side.

I've never seen an ego before. It's like a jelly-fish up there on the lightbox, caught mid-squirm in my upper rib-cage. I can see a face in it, if I squint. My ego looks like Jack Nicholson, I think.

Is it a particularly big ego? I ask, wide-eyed.

He shrugs. It's a little on the large side.

And the bruising? I whisper, almost afraid to ask. How much longer is this terrible bruising going to last?

It's been two and three-quarter months now, Annie, he whispers back, leaning in to tell me exactly what I want to hear. This will all be over by midnight tonight. A simple mathematical equation: a month for every year.

Four different towns

I'm going to Galway tomorrow, but for now here is Krakow, San Francisco, Dublin, and Venice. Have a good weekend, blonkettes.

I seem to have become what they call a "product slut"

Even though I am obviously never, ever blogging again, I went along to the girly photoshoot for the Times anyway, where I met Aisling and Kirstie from Beaut, Redmum, Zee, Grannymar, and the Gaelicks, and we all rolled around on the floor for an hour or so before going for a very long, very boozy lunch. I just love drinking on Saturday afternoons — I find it's the most fun time to tell strangers off the internet things you really should be keeping to yourself.

"So I still haven't had any rebound-sex," I confide to Aisling, the beauty expert, hoping she'll recommend some kind of face-cream that'll get me laid. Because the overpriced cosmetics I've already invested in don't seem to be working. What is the point of smelling like almonds every Saturday night if some rugged cowboy isn't going to bite into your neck and growl Grrr, you smell good. You smell like... you smell like... hey! You smell like almond and apple velvet-concentrate fondant-textured cream by L'Occitane!

"Perhaps you're just not ready yet," says Aisling gently, which I appreciate, as I hadn't considered that. Yes, maybe it's me who's not ready for rebound-sex, and not the rugged cowboys of the world.

"Or perhaps," she says, a little less gently this time, "Perhaps it's a bit of a waste saving all your cosmetics for The Stag's Head when you work with some of the most desirable men in the world. There are some of us here who would kill to spend five days a week with those guys!"

I look back at her blankly. God, I never really thought about it like that. Most days I just scrape my hair into a ponytail and wear a tracksuit and runners to work — so I don't end up with super-glue all over my snakeskin boots, I suppose. I can't bring myself to tell Aisling that though, not now, not after she's just paid for 17 bottles of wine and carefully shown me how to apply blusher; it wouldn't seem right. So I tell her I'll show her around the set one day, and she is so appreciative of this that she whips out a shiny compact of green eyeshadow by Yves Saint Laurent that "isn't even in the shops yet" and tells me I can keep it. And then she orders another bottle of wine, and I look around at these women who I would never have met if it hadn't have been for blogging, and I look at the green eyeshadow thing that Aisling has pressed into my hand, even though it isn't even in the shops yet, and I feel this warm fuzzy glow and some kind of sense of belonging, which I rarely feel in Dublin, and I swear that I will never, ever threaten to give up blogging ever, ever again.

Thanks for a great day, ladies.

There are too many exclamation marks and italics in this post, I do realise that.

I had a bloggy crisis last week when the inevitable happened and I found my ex-boyfriend's new bird's blog by mistake. Ugh, could there be a worse blogging nightmare? I know I shouldn't have looked, I know, but it was the happiest and most excited blog I had ever read, and so of course I spent the whole night with a glass pressed up against her bedroom wall. Why do I have to hear this?! I thought, berating myself for not being able to tear my ear away. If only the internet had never been invented! If only this was, like, the seventies or something! And then I vowed never, ever to blog again. Pow! Take that, internet! You just lost one of your biggest fans!

But then Aisling from Beaut got in touch asking if I'd like to be on the cover of the Irish Times magazine, and I thought grumpily that yes, I would quite like to be on the cover of the Irish Times Magazine, even if it is an article about blogging, which I now hate with all my heart. Why does nobody ever want to interview me about my art? Oh, because I stopped making any art. And then I thought oh my god, maybe this is my art. And then I thought oh my god, I better take some photographs or edit that film I keep going on about to cancel all this out.

And then I ate another pop-tart and settled down to watch Extras on DVD.

The Pneumonic Plague

After spending the weekend in the pub, my chest infection has come back with a vengeance. But I thought I was better! I whimper, kicking myself as I think about all the things I did this weekend that I shouldn't have and knowing full well that my imminent pneumonic death is totally my own fault.

Luckily it's a bank holiday, and so I can spend the morning sweating and coughing in bed, having an upsetting yet somehow enjoyable fantasy in which I end up in hospital, taking my last raspy breath just seconds before all my friends and family rush in through the ward doors. If only she'd looked after herself! they say to each other at my lavish but ultimately hopeless funeral, tears rolling down their grief-stricken cheeks. God, I am making myself cry just thinking about it. This is fun for a while, but then starts to get a bit depressing, and so I imagine "Bootylicious" being played over the graveyard speakers, as all my friends and family start bumping and grinding around the hole in the ground because there's just something about that song, really, isn't there.

But the fantasy gets boring after I write myself out of it, and so I get up out of bed and down to the chemist to buy some medicine and some magazines, just in case today is the day that I finish reading the internet. I can't decide between the Guardian, which has a very good crossword and the amusing headline: "Archbishop blames liberals for church rift", or a magazine with a picture of a glowing Angelina Jolie on the cover, looking super-trim after her effortless pregnancy with twins. I quite like Angelina, even though — having also once been left for a sexier, more intelligent woman — deep down I've always been Team Anniston.

In the end I buy both the Guardian and the glossy, and some oranges, and a microwaveable shepherds' pie, and then I climb back into bed and blonk about my thoroughly eventful and fascinating day even though it's not even 12 o'clock yet.

Sensible shoes

My Londoner friend, Rowan, is coming over to Dublin for the weekend. The last time I saw her was three years ago when she visited me in Reykjavik. "Bring sensible shoes," I'd warned her. "We're going to hitch-hike up to the north of Iceland and camp out on a deserted beach!"

Rowan turned up with a suitcase on wheels, wearing a pair of baby pink ballet slippers. "What?!" she'd said. "They're flat!". Later, as I helped her shuffle down the edge of a rockface, I was reminded of the time she helped me wobble down Oxford Street in a pair of her heels. "Don't let go of my hand!" I'd screeched.

I just can't wait to see her again.