Gas and Electric

Of course its over. Took a while to die, though. He suddenly realised he wanted to try and win me back after the glitter of his holiday faded and he understood what a bastard he'd been. I agreed to go to dinner on Saturday and it was excruciating. I was angry, hurt and beligerent, he was uncomfortable, distant and jet-lagged. It was obvious things weren't working so we left on an uncertain note then I rang him on Monday night and ripped off the metaphorical plaster. He apparently realised over the weekend that I like him more than he likes me. Could have fooled me, seriously. Still, the chances of two people actually liking each other equally are slimmer than a gnat's wing so I shouldn't be surprised. I am upset, hollow and sad but not surprised.

So. What next?

Healing: Obviously, although addressing and dealing with another rejection feels like an insurmountable task right now.

Fun: Would be a good thing but I have to be careful not to slide down the slope of angry drinking which threatens every night.

Occupying myself with alternative activities: Well I move house in two weeks so that'll keep me busy, plus will provide a physical fresh start to go with my emotional one.

Learning: Hmmm, difficult this one. I'm not totally sure what lessons I can take away from that last dalliance. Never trust the Scottish? When a bloke quotes you song lyrics the chances are he'll dump you barely two weeks later? If a guy says he's sharing a hotel room with a girl under ANY circumstances, run for the hills and don't look back? Don't trust men if their mouths are moving because the chances are, they're lying? Don't let the bitterness eat you alive...actually, no. I'm not sure that last one is possible.

My flatmate, A, said something insightful to me the other night. Which was this:

"It's like gas cookers and electric cookers. Men are gas because they can suddenly flip on a flame, burn hot very quickly then extinguish it in an instant. Women are electric cookers. They take a while to get warmed up, when they are they get really hot but they can't just switch off the heat - it takes a lot longer for the electric cooker to cool down."

Beats Mars and Venus as an analogy anyway.

Heartbreak

R arrived home yesterday morning. Within four hours of his return, I learned that the girl he spent the week with in New York utterly blew him away, that they developed very strong feelings for each other, that they spent all their time together and he met her friends, that she cried when he left and that there was an occasion where they masturbated in front of each other. He claims they didn't touch or even kiss and certainly didn't fuck but I don't believe him. I don't believe a word. He is also now smoking again because of her and yet I've smoked in front of him for six weeks and never had that affect. He says he now has feelings for two girls at the same time. The worst thing, the unbelievable horror of it all is that he cannot see why I might be upset about this. He genuinely believes he's done nothing wrong and has asked me to 'give him credit' for not fucking her when he had the chance. Apparently if she lived over here it would be hard for him because he would have to choose between the two of us but since she doesn't - hooray - decision made, he picks me. He is going to keep in touch with her and also sees nothing wrong with that.

I am, at my best, insecure and easily threatened. If I was to try and stay with this person now, like he's asking me to, I'd give my sanity a week, maybe two, tops.

Yesterday I ate nothing through the sheer all-encompassing upset of the revelations and the fucking heartbreak of it all. I roped F into coming out with me and pounded cocktails and shots all night as though my life depended on it. I got home at 1am blasted out of my mind, and passed into blissful oblivion. So far today I've vomited four times at work and spent ten minutes sitting on the floor of the toilet, crying. I cannot eat because the minute the food enters my mouth it becomes a hard lump, impossible to swallow and I vomit again (admittedly I've only tried this with a piece of dry toast but it's enough).

This is after just one day of self-loathing, anger, bitterness, jealousy, heartbreak, disbelief and frantic confusion. How on earth will I remain alive if I keep this person in my life?

And yet...and yet the needy, insecure little girl inside me, the part that fell utterly in love with him can't seem to let go just yet. What, in the name of Christ, is wrong with me?

Headwreck

R leaves New York tonight, arriving back in London at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning. I have spent the last five days and nights (mainly the nights) worrying, obsessing and torturing myself about what he might have been getting up to. Various reactions from friends and family who have kindly put up with me boring the collective arse off them with my issues, have made me even more uncertain about what to expect.

For example, the issue of him sharing a room with this girl has garnered supportive, 'oh I'm sure nothing will happen' type responses from my girlfriends however my brother (a man) reacted by exclaiming 'What?!' then sucking the air in through his teeth like a plumber surveying a boiler that's rusted off the wall. The issue of him switching his phone off and telling me not to text him because 'it's too expensive' has also received mixed reactions. Again, the supportive collective I surround myself with have decided this is perfectly reasonable and doesn't mean he's been planning a New York based shagathon with this girl and doesn't want to be disturbed. On the other hand my friend K who travels all the time and never sugar-coats anything reckons that's a load of old tosh as it's not that expensive to text from the US any more.

Basically my brain is spinning. I keep telling myself not to expect the worst but then would he switch his phone off for a week if he really liked me and was missing me? Would he not move heaven, earth and line rental to drop me a line to let me know he was thinking of me? Would he not have tried to reassure me more before he left that he would miss me and couldn't wait to see me again? I know it's only been six weeks but they've been so intense I feel as though some kind of affirming declaration wouldn't be inappropriate.

My feelings are all over the place plus I'm PMSing like a bitch so my only recourse to give voice to my frustrations, is to quote Sex and the City which I'm sure I'll be mortified about when all this is over and my head is straight again. However, mired as I am in the depths of my current torment it seems to fit. This is what I want and I don't understand why it's so far proven impossible to find...

'Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, can't-live-without-each-other love...'

I don't know where this thing with R is going but needless to say I'm rapidly retreating from it, back to how I was a few months ago where casual sex was commonplace and I actually felt confident. This emotions lark is far, far too difficult.

Big Apple, Big Upset

"There's something I should tell you about my trip to New York," he fiddles with his wine glass stem and doesn't look at me.
"Right," I say cautiously, my stomach already twitching.
"Well, you know when I said I was meeting friends there from Washington? Well actually it's one person, a girl and I've never met her actually, she's a friend of a friend."
"Right," I say, with an edge to my voice I instantly regret. I seem to have run out of any alternative words so for safety's sake I stick with this one word. "Right."
He explains to me the reason he didn't tell me this initially is because it didn't seem relevant however now we've spent so much time together he felt increasingly like he was lying to me. Apparently a female friend of his over here, knows this girl and said she'd be in New York around the same time and suggested they sightsee together as both she and R would be out there alone.
"There's one more thing," he adds, looking up at me. "We're sharing a room."
YOU'RE DOING FUCKING WHAT??????? Screams my brain.
"Is she single?" Asks my mouth.
"Yes. Recently."

This is one of those pivotal moments. It is a golden opportunity to behave in a calm, rational fashion and prove that I am premium, Class A, fantastic girlfriend material. I need to remain utterly aloof and detached from emotion as though the whole thing has nothing to do with me.

I fail.

"Right. So, why exactly are you sharing a room with this person?" I demand, exaggerating the word 'exactly' and twisting my face into mock curiosity and confusion.
"We just thought it would save money. Look, it was all arranged ages before I met you and she's only going to be there for the first two or three days, after that I'm on my own..."
I'm barely listening. Across my mind's eye flash images of this girl and my boyfriend sightseeing all day, wrapped up in scarves and hats, warming their hands on take away coffees and taking silly pictures of each other. The two of them by night finding dark little bars and underground clubs to discover new drinks, new music and new memories, then stumbling back to their little hotel room to... I snap back to the moment and tune into what he's saying.
"...totally understand if you're jealous. I would be, I mean I'm not even comfortable with you having male friends for fuck's sake. Look, I'm really sorry about this but I wanted to be honest."

That was two weeks ago. He left yesterday. In that two weeks I have skirted the subject, acted extremely happy and interested whenever he's mentioned it, and spied on this girl on Myspace relentlessly. She's not exactly stunning but she's not a total dog and let's face it, when you're a bloke who is pissed and having fun it really doesn't matter how a girl looks. I am not naive; R and I have only been going out for just over a month and although it's been intense it is still early days. He could feasibly sleep with this girl - all the opportunity is there. The only thing I can do is endure this next five days with my imagination running riot and wait to see what happens when he gets back.
Of course, the gremlin in my head that pulverises my self-esteem and clobbers my self-worth is busy whispering nasty nothings all day, telling me he won't be back in touch and if he is it will be to dump me.
I reached a low point the night before he left. We had a 'goodbye' phone call and he was utterly unemotional ('talk to you in six days, then!'). I was feeling rubbish and just then one of my Myspace boys rang me for the first time in weeks and we ended up having phone sex. He asked to see me this weekend, for 'a drink' i.e. 'to fuck' and I said yes. Just now I emailed him and cancelled. Although it's tempting to put myself on an even footing for R's potential return announcement it would be a hollow victory. If he does sleep with this girl I want to be fucking Snow White. It's the only way I'll feel remotely good about myself. Nice to know I've got the opportunity though.

Once this is all over, I really should consider therapy.

2001 Pies: A Pastry Odyssey

This is not glamourous. It's not exciting and it's really not the sort of thing a city-dwelling girl who owns mostly nice shoes and has all her own hair should admit to but it's time to vocalise the passion because, after all, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

I absolutely love pies.

See? Now I've said that you're thinking 'Fatty Fatty Pie Eater' aren't you? You are, aren't you? It's OK, you needn't feel bad. It's simply a knee-jerk reaction rooted in playground mockery of the following sort:

Who ate all the pies?

Got hit with the ugly stick on the way out of the pie shop.

Likes a pie.

Hilarious though these erudite jibes are, they have inadvertently taken the focus away from the pavement-pulverisers amongst us and tarred the innocent pie with a lard-laden brush. Let's be honest, your average pie does contain a couple more calories than say, your average garden salad, this is an acknowledged nutritional fact backed up by pie scientists (pientists?). Pies are, like all comfort food-stuffs, essentially bad for you. No one finishes work on a Friday after a harrowing week and thinks 'Sod it all, I'm having a salad!' Salads are not comforting. They are cold and spikey and leafy whereas pies are crumbly and warm and satisfying. Anyway, I'm not advocating merrily troughing pies on a daily basis. Those would be the actions of a Mad.

So, back to my pie-passion. I wasn't raised in the kind of household where pies were regularly consumed. My mum used to make the occasional pie if people were coming round but it would generally be sweet and more often than not, open-topped. That's where I first learned about 'blind baking' which involves covering a pastry base in a dish with a layer of dried-out beans to weigh it down and protect it. I found those beans fascinating as a child. They would sit, hard and colourful in their jar until they were forced to endure extreme temperatures fulfilling their destiny as guardians of the sensitive layer of pastry, then cooled and poured back in the jar to await their next searing adventure. Mind you, I didn't have many friends then and there's only so long you can spend playing swingball with yourself.

My grandmother used to make amazing pies, mainly savoury ones. As a child I would have rather given away my entire Barbie collection to my brother and watch him decapitate each one of them than eat kidneys. However, granny could bung the pig-organ in a pastry casing along with some steak and gravy and I just yummed it up.

We used to take our summer holidays at the same farm in Cornwall every year. Enter, the variation on a theme: Pasty Obsession. The woman who ran the farm used to make pasties for dinner once a week. Her method was the traditional Cornish one, involving huge chunks of steak meat and potatoes and pastry the thickness and consistency of a house brick. There wasn't a straight line to be found on that woman, but you could have used her lips as a ruler when we had the gaul to ask for gravy. Admittedly I still adored these parcels of joy but by God they were dry. It would be been easier to chew your way out of a coal shed than eat one without gravy (unless you're a horny-handed son of toil eating one on a tractor, in which case pulling a small, portable gravy boat out of your barbour jacket pocket is just stupid).

Doris (or Mrs Pastry Hands as I wish I'd had the nous to call her at the time as they were always, always cold*) had a unique method of pasty-making. She would tailor them to each guest's shoe size. Fine for a dainty-footed nine year old like me but dashed challenging if you're a hefty size fourteen like my dad. His pasty used to hang over the sides of the plate. I was jealous.
It sounds obvious but it really is the pastry that makes it for me. I love the crumbliness of short, the flaky crispness of filo, the lightness of puff and the softness of choux. However, there are certain ground rules or, to be less totalitarian about it, observations I would like to set out regarding the word 'pie' and what it really means to me:

1) Shepherd's Pie, Cottage Pie, Fish Pie: OK, so technically these are pies in that they are a 'filling' covered by a 'lid'. But where is the excitement or satisfaction in a lid of mashed potato? Where's the craftsmanship? The investment of cold-handed time? The crisp, satisfying layer disguising the delicious mystery within? Boiled root vegetables smeared over mince with a fork does not constitue an honest-to-goodness pie. No matter what Delia Smith might say.

2) Dessert Pie (e.g. the flan, tart or tartlet): OK so the base is at least pastry, this is a step closer than the jokers listed above. However, without the lid to cut into, it's like opening what you think is a new jar of coffee, only to find that some bastard's got there before you and robbed you of the teaspoon-through-gold-foil pleasure. Another disappointment to add to the myriad of small disappointments that make up Life. Although on this note I should point out I am a huge fan of banoffee pie however the correct method of making it calls for a biscuit not pastry base. Another fallacy uncovered.

3) Lids Alone: Read your gastro-pub menu carefully, fellow pastry-lover or you may be caught out by this one. Does the menu describe the steak and ale pie as having a 'pastry lid'? If it does, order at your peril, for this loose-bottomed prankster is bound to ruin your luncheon. Is it a thrifty way of saving millions on expensive pastry ingredients? Are you actually supposed to eat/keep the ceramic dish? Or are you just in the establishment of a deceitful, pub-owning git? What's the point of pouring stew into a ceramic dish, slinging a layer of pastry down on top and serving it with peas next to it on a plate? What an absolute load of tossycock. Go for the fish and chips in beer batter. I would.

4) Fray Bentos Pie-in-a-Can: Just don't. Ever. Seriously.

5) The Australian 'Pie Floater': A perfectly good meat pie, needlessly immersed in pea soup and decorated with ketchup. I mean honestly, what the fuck?

6) Chip Shop Pies: God these are good. I mean, really good. My first job was working in a chip shop and I hated it. I hated the heat and the permeating smell and the fact that I had to scrape squashed chips out of the treads of my shoes every evening. But I loved the pies. They served a chicken and mushroom that could make a confirmed pie-obsessive weep vinegary tears. Complete buggers to wrap, especially with a portion of large chips but I could forgive them. Basically, your average chip shop pie or indeed any pie purchased in proper pie form from a supermarket or similar ticks all the boxes. Gorgeous, rich, oozing fillings encased in crumbly, slightly sweet, short pastry. Ultimate comfort food? Yes, my friend. Oh yes.

*You have to have cold hands to successfully make pastry or it goes all crumbly and sticks to your rolling pin, prompting you to fling the entire lot in the bin and sob behind a locked door while your dinner guests sip sherry in the front room and pretend not to notice.