Current mood:	distressed
Current music:	Minkus - La Bayadere

Books, Blues and Ballet Shoes
A lot of things to report, really. Been putting it off because not much of it is good.
Niccie lost his job.
As it was, he was getting paid £4.50 an hour to deal with all the wages, accounts, invoices etc, something he wasn't trained to do. And his boss kept telling him to do it one way, then changing his mind, and finally sacked him. It sucks hard.
I don't know how we're going to cope. We're already behind on the rent and don't have the money to pay and new bills drop on our doorstep every day.
If it wasn't for Niccie's parents coming up this weekend then we wouldn't even have food to eat or petrol in the car past Sunday.
I'm sure we'll manage somehow. It just seems sometimes that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
I've been trying to write, trying to get my collection finished, it's been really, really hard work.
I don't know why, I'm just really struggling.
Still, it's getting there, slowly but surely.
Maira is finished. Only now it's not called Maria (I told you it would change), it's called Sancta Maria. It has also taken my page count up to 200. Now all I have to do is finish the three remaining stories and I'm in business.
Anyway, suppose I better prove I have something to show for it.

Sancta Maria Message received at 12:59PM on Tuesday 27th February 2001 "The carnival is nearly over. "And you're not here. "Your little bird is gone. "Drowned. "My mask is cracking and my clothes don't smell of incense any more. "I keep working on this new idea of mine, but I don't know how much longer I can go on with it without you here. "My hands are cold. "I feel numb. "I wish people would stop asking me all these questions. I keep screaming at them but they just won't go away. "They never go away. "They're never going to go away. "Maria . . . Maria . . . What's wrong with you? "Why are you doing this? "Why are you doing this to me? "I thought we could be together. "I thought that if I just played this game of yours then we could be happy. "The water looks so cold, Maria. So cold. "Were you cold? "I don't know . . . I need to know . . . "Soon I'll know. "Soon I'll come and find you. And then you're not getting away. You got away from me once, but never again. "Carnival is over. It's almost time for Lent. "It won't be long now, Maria. It won't be long now . . ."

I don't know what's happening to all my friends these days.
Jade's busy, and I rarely see her, and I worry this thing with Adrian has driven a wedge between us that isn't going away any time soon.
Steve spends weeks on end ignoring me, not messaging me, and when I message him being the least conversational man on the planet, then when he does finally message me, does it to tell me what a wonderful time he's been having in London when he knows damned well how broke I am and doesn't even stop to ask how I am.
Ayesha was the same, but I talked to her and we sorted it out. I guess we're just both having a hard time. But she's never around any more. I never see her.
Amariah's moving so I haven't seen her in weeks, and when I do talk to her, I can't stop feeling like there's some kind of space between us, and we're just being polite and ignoring it.
Niccie's being really mean today. I don't know what the hell's up with him.
Lou's just, I dunno, failing to be supportive. Like when I try to talk to her about Niccie losing his job suggest we go and apply to Marks & Spencer. It wouldn't be so bad but I've tried so hard to be there for her in the past.
I feel like I've done that with a lot of people. I don't know where they all are now.
I don't know what's happened to all these people that used to care about me, they just seem to have drifted away.

I've decided that five is a good number.
What I really want is a circle of five people to share art and opinions and everything with.
Like that great circle in Geneva in 1816, but there are loads of others. Rosettii had one, and so did Stravinsky.
I need my own little circle of artistic friends. It'd be great. I'm going to go out during Fresher's Week and meet some people, see if I can't find some more people to replace all these so called friends that I seem to have lost.
I'm never going to find anyone if I don't look.
I thought for a long time that Jade was the beginnings of this little circle of mine. Niccie, Jade and I.
But these days she's so busy, and she's changed, she's changed a lot.
She's not as driven as she used to be.

I'm reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and Niccie's been reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. The idea is that when we're done, we swap over, and when we've read both books, sit down and have a chat about them. It's good because we haven't read in ages.
The only problem is that Rebecca is absolutely huge, so Niccie finished his book, then read Ted Hughes' Crow and is now well into reading A Clockwork Orange while I'm not even half way through mine.
It wouldn't be so bad, but I'm a faster reader than he is!

I have other things I'm working on, but I'm going to move them to a seperate post for now.
Hopefully things will pick up soon.
Here's hoping anyway.