SAD, innit?

Yeah, I know. I kinda left without saying goodbye. (Done that before. Out of shame, too often.) Thing was, I was going to abandon blogging, ‘cos I reckoned I’d run out of inspiration, and, as you know if you’ve bothered to go back over some of this stuff, I can’t be doing with that ‘dear diary’ crap. Or telling you all about the latest angst. Like so many.

Well, I might. Just a bit. As you’ll also know if you were paying attention, I had a fair bit of shit from the drug experiment. It took a hell of a long time to shake that off. Jesus, if addicts go through that when they do stuff ‘recreationally’ I’m damned if I can see how it’s worth it. My GP was a bit sceptical, said my reaction to the muck was unusual, but strangely, GF’s older brother it turns out was given the same stuff in France recently, and had the same reaction I did. Though not ending up with such crazy, paranoid, unnecessary rows with his sister, thank god.

Anyway, I’ve been doing some work, more physical than anything else, ‘cos I was panicking a bit about the muscle wastage I mentioned before, too. Maybe tell you about it some time, but GF decided I needed looking after a bit, so took me off to their house in the south of France. Just got back. And, after a few weeks of mostly sun, it’s bloody raining here.

Sad, isn’t it? Or maybe that should be SAD. I’ve never been wildly keen on these cutesy acronyms that sometimes seem to me to be invented just so American psycho(logist)s can cream off more money from the gullible by persuading them they suffer from something nobody otherwise would have known existed, but I do wonder if there’s something in this
'Seasonal Affective Disorder' thing..

I mean, I was in England over last summer, and as a summer, well, they might as well have renamed all the months ‘March’ . . . But sure as hell, I was pretty mis last year, and even allowing for the druggy debacle, getting mis-er all through the early part of this year. Amazing how the sunny south cheered me up though. And I discovered that GF (born in a very sunny part of the Med) has been taking vitamins for ages ‘cos her doc said she needed the, er, Vitamin D is it? you get from sunshine.

So it must be the Italian half of me that gets desperate without sun, I suppose. Except, sunless and in cloud the Italian half obviously expands to cover my entire genome, by the look of it. Does sun-deprivation get worse as you get older? I was never keen on winter when I was a kid, either, but I hope not. I don’t think I could stand it. I’d have to emigrate, and I can’t afford to, I don’t think. Couldn’t afford d the medical bills for a start. GF sprained her foot, and had to fork out fifty quid cash to see a ‘foot specialist’, then more for X-rays, and another fifty to find out that he thought it wasn’t serious and would heal itself in time . . . I told her that, and suggested she saw a doc in the UK when she came . . . And she ain’t getting all that back from the medical insurance . . .

Anyway, to the point. Went out on Saturday night. Thought I’d go up to a gay bar and show my nice dark tan off. Actually, doing that’s a bit awkward. I only dare show parts of it off. I tan very fast, and in consequence of a boat trip just one hot afternoon my face, neck and arms are markedly browner than the rest of me. (Had to wear a sleeveless T and jeans, ‘cos we were going to eat at a posh-ish restaurant later.) Stripped off, I look a bit like a brown zebra. Got to even that out, somehow. Sun-lamp/tanning parlour here I come, unless the bloody weather brightens up here in London sharpish.) Strange thing, though. Nobody noticed . . .

It was only when I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar (something I usually avoid, even if you do think I’m vain after reading this blog) I realised I looked, apparently, almost as pale as all the others. (And omg, after being in the south of France, don’t the Brits here look weirdly pale? Positively unhealthy. Or Goth-like. Same thing?) Peculiar that. Must be the lighting. Perhaps they do it deliberately so they don’t stand out? On the night bus home, I had this feeling I was surrounded by wraiths.

The night out was a mistake, btw. Again. Same place I said I’d avoid months ago. Should have stuck to it, only there was nobody around to go with and I decided late on anyway. What is it these days about some gay bars in London? Why are some of them full of guys who have no more dress sense than a football fan on the lam in Ibiza? And none were anywhere as good-looking as Beckham, not by a long chalk. (Or by long chalky skin, for that matter.) And why are they all so burly and pushy? Makes me wish I’d grown a bit more. My nice Savile Row T got fucking soaked in crap fizzy lager . . . Ugh. (Bloody expensive crap lager, too. Gave me a hangover.) And the ‘security’ guys were just about the most obnoxious I’ve ever come across. You’d think homophobia would be the last bloody qualification to be ‘security’ in a gay bar, wouldn’t you? (There, you’d be wrong.) And, typically, when one totally pissed fat-arsed bastard fell over and flailed about on the floor spilling people’s drinks in all directions, where were they? Vanished into thin air, of course. But there’s nowhere else near home any more; all the gay bars and clubs out of town seem to have closed down. Oh, well. Have to start clubbing in town, I suppose, or give up altogether.

Might give up altogether, actually. I mean, I only saw too lookers last night and they were a couple. Everybody else looked just like, as an ex-boyfriend once described the inhabitants of a club we went to one Friday night, ‘East end barrer-boys just let out of Pentonville’. And the prettiest I’ve seen around near home since I’ve been back have been speaking Italian, Spanish or Portuguese . . . Maybe I’ve been spoilt by those trim, slim, tanned, dark-haired and brown-eyed boys in the south.

Well, spoilt by looking anyway. Daren’t do anything else: I stay in a small village, and people there know me by now. And, as you know, for some reason my gaydar is barely functional in England. Not sure it works at all in France, and I wouldn’t like to make any bad mistakes . . .not where lots of the men go hunting for wild boar and have shotguns. I don’t think I want to be married just yet. Assuming that’s the only use they’d find for the shotgun . . .