WLTM

Some weeks ago, I was on a train leaving Victoria for Denmark Hill on one of those golden late-summer evenings when London feels like it might actually be everything you ever wanted it to be.

The train was just beginning to relax into its journey, and as the sunshine warmed us through the windows, another train, also freshly departed, drew up alongside ours. A man on board caught my eye and blew me a kiss over the top of his Metro. He wore a baseball cap and bore a strong resemblance to Jack Charlton circa the 1994 World Cup. He looked delighted by his own daring (or perhaps by something in The Metro – though this seems unlikely) and I laughed – Laugh 7a: 'Tsk! You!' (Amusement + Minor Admonishment) – as his train pulled away and over the river ahead of us.

Although my sexual magnetism is flatly irresistible to all creatures that draw breath and feel pain – and all inanimate objects who expressed a preference – I was confident this wasn't an expression of romantic intent. His was the giddy air of a grandparent showing off on a merry-go-round, not a public-transport sex predator.

Also, I'm not sure how predatory you can be if you're on a totally different train*.

We were still in a thick confluence of tracks, not yet spread out into the tributaries of zone two and beyond. And as my train and others seemed to speed and slow according to the caprices of the signalling system, I became increasingly anxious about just how I should respond were my train to catch up with his, and our eyes meet again. The thing about anxiety is it really keeps you busy.

The obvious solution was to avert my eyes and pretend it never happened, AKA the London Stranger Standard (incorporating the 2012 Olympics Dispensation), applied on buses, trains and pavements city wide ever since Dick Whittington realised being Lord Mayor of London was actually a total bloody headache, and he should have trusted his instincts and ignored those stupid bells trying to talk to him while he was just minding his own business.

And yet.

I don't know if regret is a uniquely human state. I don't know if cheetahs run, run, run far across the plains, just to outpace the guilt, just to put distance between themselves and the bare bones of that gazelle they wish they could maybe – for once – have left alone. One more pair of sad, scared brown eyes to haunt them as they lay down to sleep. Damn you, the food chain!

And I don't know if a dog trudges home from the park, wishing it could have grown a pair (back), gone right up to that lovely glossy chocolate labrador and sniffed its bottom, rather than acting like a total spaniel over a stupid, dirty, broken tennis ball.

But I know the homo sapiens of London and I've read their wistful attempts to claim back a little human contact after assiduously avoiding it on their journeys around the capital. 'Northern line, evening rush hour. I was reading How To Live In The Present Moment but was too shy to speak to you.' Suits and tracksuits and dapper macs and uniforms, all wishing they'd been a little bit bolder, believing they'd caught a glimpse of another life with this stranger where everything's at least 79% better and someone finally understands you. But, like, really, instead of just saying, 'God, yeah, no, I totally understand.'

I didn't want to smell this man's bottom. Let's be clear about that. This was no fledgling May to September romance. Or even August to late October, which would have more accurate. But in the gap between our generations, and in his cheek**, I did glimpse another life - it was familiar, and it spoke of bad jokes, and foolish dancing done purely to engender others' embarrassment, and a general knowledge arsenal gathered from a lifetime of listening to Radio 4 while driving.

I'm not sure there's a precedent for this kind of Missed Connection in the back pages of Time Out, but still:

'You: baseball cap, Metro, smile. Me: curly hair, Dickensian pallor, mid-brow comic novel. Would like to know you better. Come to my flat for ham sandwiches and Battenberg? Also, can you put up large pictures and shelves properly? Like with rawlplugs and everything? Could you attempt to teach me while you're doing it, so I will know how to do it myself, and I will pretend to listen while thinking about something else, then regret it [SO MUCH REGRET, HUMANS] later and forever? Can we listen to Elvis, or Ella and Louis? Would you like to play along with A Question Of Sport together, even though it is an empty facade of its former self,  I mean, it is barely an actual quiz at all these days. God!'

As will be inscribed on my headstone, I worried for nothing. The trains didn't pull together. I never saw him again.

But I really miss my dad.


*Quite, I suppose, if you're Mr Tickle, who has been known to get quite 'handy' with the Little Misses after a night out.
**As in sass, not nose-flanking facial areas.

When Your Zara Summer Sale Purchase Turns You Into A Character From An As-Yet Unwritten Sarah Waters Novel

No 67: the Victorian lady lumberjack.

Kit, an orphan, is forced to stow away on a ship from Liverpool to Canada following an unusual sequence of events that most significantly include: a) the death of her grandmother, b) a contemplative walk along the docks at twilight, c) a violent dispute over a crate of stolen oranges, which she unwittingly walks into. Arriving in Quebec, she disguises herself as a man in order to find work on a lumber farm. Her surprisingly light, agile build makes her the subject of much taunting by the other lumberjacks, but she can climb like a squirrel (/other, indigenous Canadian mammal), build excellent fires and speak surprisingly good French, thanks to her grandmother's wish that she receive a well-rounded education. But when the winter snow arrives and the ice forms, Kit starts to succumb to low spirits, frostbite and exhaustion. The lady wife of the farm's owner, beautiful yet listless, married to a stolid and unremarkable husband, has noticed Kit's unusual physical stature (and occasionally suspect French pronunciation) and understands her to be a young boy, far away from home for the first time (actually 75% correct). She has always yearned for a son. She invites Kit into the house to warm by the fire on one fiercely cold afternoon and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship. WHAT ON EARTH WILL HAPPEN NEXT, I WONDER?

Peer pressure

'So yeah, actually, mate... While it's quiet, I just wanted to check in with you. I know we're side by side every day – I mean, I spend more time with you than I do my own family. OK, I don't have any family, I'm an inanimate object – but you know how it is, it's busy, people are in and out all the time. We don't always get a proper chance to catch up.

What it is, is... Look, if it was up to me, there wouldn't be a problem, we've always been cool, you and me, yeah? It's just… is everything OK with you? Only some of the other seats have been talking and they just feel like, maybe, you're not really on top of your game lately. You're bringing the carriage down a little bit. You just seem a bit... off-colour. You're pale. You look tired. Are you sleeping OK? Also, sorry, but your whole kind of… head-rest area is just… I mean, what is that?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If I didn't care, I wouldn't say anything. But look, mate. We all know what it's like. We all have those days. Someone sprays Red Bull all over you. You're covered in crisp crumbs. And it's always cheese and onion, right? Right? Never salt and vinegar. God, I love salt and vinegar. Anyway, look. It's fried chicken bones, it's bad R&B through someone's phone speakers, it's a wet umbrella. It's dandruff and people's feet all over you every… single… day. It's hard, man, but we do it because we love it.

I know it's easy for me to say. I've got the window. I'm the window seat, everyone thinks it's so great being me. I see the blue sky. I feel the sun on my upholstery. But I've got stuff going on, just like everyone else. I've been pissed on on the 00.36. All these guys have.You just can't let it drag you down. You clean yourself up. You start again. We're a team. We're here to serve. You, me, the rest of the guys. We're carriage G. We're team G! We're G Force! High five! OK, no, forget that. We don't have arms. We're not those kind of seats.

I'm just saying, take a little time to look around you. See the kid with the tiger face paint, holding a balloon. The pregnant woman with the bunch of flowers. That old guy reading his book about the Second Punic War through a magnifying glass. These people need us. We're their stand-up guys. Their stand-up, sit-down guys. 

Sorry to be all heavy, but I'm just looking out for you. You're my brother. Are we cool? OK. I'm glad we've had this talk.'

Key Figures In British Engineering History Who May Or May Not Have Led A Secret Double Life. Part 1 In A Series Of 1

I was talking to my choir pal Simon at the end of our practice last Monday. I don't remember the exact route of the conversation, but we arrived at blogging – his many good reasons for not writing, my abject lack of them. He offered me some discipline, challenging me to write a post by the following Monday's practice, so here I am, too proud to fail him and sneaking in just ahead of deadline.

Naturally, I'm cheating a little. This post was conceived many months ago, when I was on a temporary secondment from London living and, for five days out of every seven, I would take a morning constitutional from my incoming train at Kings Cross to the offices of Soho, Covent Garden, Marble Arch and beyond.

I would pass through Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, and sometimes Marylebone, and I learnt that all these streets will force their stories on you, if you allow yourself to make eye contact with them.

From Kings Cross, passing through a small area of Dickensian theming, you will find yourself in Russell Square, where you will see the tiled green turret that serves as the only existing relic from London's time as a fairy-tale principality. 

Though the building of the Russell Hotel has engulfed the ancient structure, it's believed that a princess still lives inside, clinging on to an archaic lease agreement and intent on rescue. Her long, long hair is now quite grey, but she believes it still to have the necessary tensile strength for ropework, thanks to her assiduous application of V05 hot oil treatments (flown up to the windows by magpies who, I think everyone knows, will do anything for cash).

Cross the square and you pass the back door of the British Museum and its heavily secure employees' entrance where you may wonder, as I do, exactly how difficult it would be to gain access this way in order to pass yourself off as a member of staff, wrap yourself in toilet paper and hide in a sarcophagi to 'surprise' groups of nervy older ladies enjoying an improving guided tour.

And then in Bedford Square, you may see a blue plaque celebrating the birthplace of the engineer and charismatic swing-band leader Harry Ricardo.

Among many other achievements, Sir Harry designed the two-stroke engine, which, I think we can all agree, is at least twice as good as the one-stroke engine.

He also had a hand in the internal combustion engine. Not literally, I hope! Ouch!

It's really hard being this funny.

And he completed a further spectrum of crucial and groundbreaking work that I tried very hard to read about but kept getting distrac

His effortless command of a 20-piece musical ensemble is, of course, less well known. This is because I made it up. But surely, with a surname that's all Latin passion and a forename of raffish swagger, Harry Ricardo was born for more than just the careful formulas of physics.

By day, toiling at the coalface of a coalface, by night tearing up the ballrooms of Paris and Palermo, Harry engineered rhythms that people only recognised from their dreams, as he slashed through the air with his baton, like Zorro in slacks.

Leading a double life that John Le Carre would consider complicated, Harry Ricardo would feint and shimmy around the suspicions of his colleagues. Lengthy absences for touring and travel were blamed on vague suggestions of field research and an ongoing nervous condition. On two occasions, that 'field research' happened to be in Hollywood, where he was subjected to campaigns of outrageous flirtation by the young starlets of the day, many of whom called him 'Hank', which he hated. Harry never said anything, though, because he was still an engineer from Bloomsbury, and while his heart did indeed boom and swing with the band, it was studded with rivets from the finest in British engineering.

Once, memorably, Harry briskly pulled out his diagrams for the internal combustion engine from his briefcase only for a handwritten note from Zelda Fitzgerald to flutter out to the floor, in full view of his science brotherhood. Harry, his mind brighter than any diamond as big as the Ritz (where, incidentally, he played often), he managed to convince the chaps that Zelda Fitzgerald was an exotic florist on Gower Street where he liked to buy peonies for his mother on her birthday. 

When the business card of the concierge at the Beverly Hills Hotel was pulled absent-mindedly from a jacket pocket, it was blamed on a mix-up at his tailors.

People did notice that, for an English engineer, he had quite excellent suits. 

And they also remarked, behind his back, on his habit of turning any set of cogs or pipes into some kind of makeshift musical instrument. His mind was so brilliant, they said, that such eccentricities should be expected, and indulged.

Had his colleagues known that from Friday night to Sunday morning (and often for whole weeks inbetween), he was utterly enslaved to the rhythms of swing, they may have doubted his scientific rationale.

But they never did know.

Coming soon: Kenneth Williams, diarist, comic actor (plaque-honoured on Marchmont Street, London W1) and kayak specialist, who saw his dreams of glory at the 1952 Helskinki Olympics disappear down the river after a faux pas in front of selectors at a team-building boardgames night.

A Selection Of Marketing Pitches I Put Together To Exploit The Otherwise Uneventful Month Of January, Which Were Inexplicably Never Greenlit

Because 'Dry January' is boring and doesn't even rhyme.

Although it is for charity.

So that's OK.

1) BakeAFlanuary
Pies have ridden a wave of nostalgia to renewed relevance. Tarts never really went away. Whatever happened to flans, with their versatility and their pleasingly tidy presentation and their flantastic gift to cookery page headline writers? When will they have their moment in the sun?* During BakeAFlanuary, that is when, with its print, TV, radio and online recipe push. Vital to get either Bake Off or Hemsley + Hemsley on board.
Who makes the money? Manufacturers of ready-made pastry casings.

2) Panuary
The number of people in this country learning to play the pan pipes has dropped by 67% in the last 10 years**. It's unclear just what's responsible for this worrying drop-off, but if the hip young pan-pipes player had made it into the final cut of Richard Linklater's School Of Rock, it's unlikely we'd be here. Through workshops, concerts and free taster sessions, let us keep this ancient, breathy musical tradition alive. It's crucial that an influential global star takes up the cause and features pan pipes in their next work. Targets: Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Kanye. Or One Direction to use them in the 'unplugged' mid-section of their next arena show, to demonstrate their 'real music' credentials.
Who makes the money? The craftsmen of the Andes.

3) BarbaraAnnuary
The various members of The Beach Boys spend a month fighting it out (ideally just with music, but with weapons if further television bait is needed) to decide which of them really has the right to own the touring name The Beach Boys and celebratorily rerelease the 1965 surf-pop classic. It's The Hunger Games in Hawaiian shirts.
Who makes the money? Hopefully not Mike Love.

4) Caravanuary
Let's bring this great British holidaying institution to a new generation. Scandi decor. Marimekko soft furnishings. Fairy lights. Exterior paint jobs. Festivals. Encourage families and friends to see how many people they can squeeze into their caravan toilet and upload a picture to social media. Introduce the hashtag #CaravanOfLove. Ellie Goulding to rerecord the Housemartins' song***. Advertising campaign to carry the closing slogan 'Caravan holidays: are you ready for the time of your life?' (This only works if you know the lyrics to the song. Could be problematic.)
Who makes the money? Paul Heaton. People who are desperate to sell their caravans.

5) FancyDanuary
Similar in concept to Movember, this enables men to express themselves more flamboyantly in terms of their physical appearance without fear of censure or ridicule, under the carapace of charitable endeavour. The wearing of head-to-toe velvet, paisley, long flowing scarfs, winkle pickers, cuban heels and sock garters is all legitimised for one month only.
Who makes the money: The charities. Vintage clothing shops. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

6) EatMoreBranuary
Remember bran? It was yesterday's quinoa. And where is it now? Consigned to the breakfast buffet in lower-mid-budget chain hotels, dribbling out of plastic containers where you turn a handle and expect a plastic egg filled with a toy to plop into your bowl. Instead it is just All-Bran and it doesn't even go in the bowl, it just goes all over the table and you wonder whether you should do anything about clearing it up and in the end you don't.
Who makes the money? The farmers. I think. Is it farmed? I am an intelligent, well-educated woman and the fact I don't know exactly where bran comes from clearly illustrates the need for action.

7) I'mYourManuary This can go one of two ways. It's either a personal crusade by me to prove to the world that this is indeed the world's greatest Wham! song. Closely followed by Edge Of Heaven and Everything She Wants. Or, more selflessly, a charity single featuring a) George and Andrew finally reuniting in order to cover Leonard Cohen's song of the same name, and b) Leonard, in turn, singing the Wham! stormer.
Who makes the money? George and Leonard. Sorry, Andrew. Great to have you back though!

8) JudithHannuary
An initiative to boost the number of women in science broadcasting, inspired by the first lady of Tomorrow's World. BBC4 can make one of their docudramas, with Anita Dobson as the present day Judith, and Jessica Raine to perm up as the younger character. David Tennant first choice for Michael Rodd. Simon Amstell in a breakthrough acting role as Howard Stableford. Mark Gatiss to write the script, naturally.
Who makes the money? Currently, the Royal Mint, but in the future, we'll be relying purely on a digital system of currency. Here's Judith to explain more.

9) BigInJapanuary
A month-long UK music industry showcase for all those disposable pop bands you thought went down the dumper (© Smash Hits) until you saw them on a reality show speaking candidly about their struggles with life out of the limelight from the comfort of their inexplicably well-appointed and large home set in lush, rolling grounds, with stables. How was this sumptuous faux-Tudor mansion afforded? By phenomenal success in the Far East. Can the likes of A1 regain the levels of adulation in this country that they found overseas - in just 31 days?
Who makes the money? Loads of people who, contrary to expectations, don't appear to need it.

10) Can'tScanuary
A month-long amnesty for frustrated poets who struggle with metre to submit their unfinished verses to publishers and receive honest and constructive feedback.
Who makes the money? Realistically, no one.

*Flans can contain milk, eggs, cream, fish or meat, and should never be left directly in the sun. Always keep refrigerated.
**Probably.
*** Urgh, I have just done a search on YouTube and PIXIE LOTT HAS ALREADY GOT IN FIRST. It is for the Matalan charity scarves thing though. Matalanuary?

Here Is The News

Hi everyone. Thanks for coming. Sit down, I've got something to tell you.

Right here is a fork in the road.

Head over here for And Dave Arch Played On, a dedicated blog all about Strictly Come Dancing written by me and my most Olympic friend, the mighty Kate from Mind Tidying.

Stay here for non-Strictly-related rambling, which I am resolved to post far more frequently in the coming months.

Over and out.

x

Strictly Come Dancing, Week 1, Show 1: Let Claudia Be Claudia

Strictly is back. Blogging is back (well, for today). Brucie has been helped into a motorised golf cart and pointed towards the sunset. His BBC access pass has been deactivated, his dressing-room teasmade appropriated (prime suspect: John Humphreys).

So this points to a slicker, sharper Strictly Come Dancing, doesn't it?

Uh-oh.

Don't get me wrong, I'm nothing but relieved that Sir Bruce now gets to wear slippers full-time. It's just that I'm a fan of the show's particular old-fashioned charm, as well as its ability to get anything remotely cool ever so slightly wrong. Please don't let it become too... well... competent.

NO WORRIES ON THAT SCORE.

The new series opens with a reassuringly lame VT that spells out very clearly: 'BUSINESS AS USUAL. (OH, EXCEPT FOR JAMES JORDAN.) YOU'RE WELCOME.'

The judges (team sheet unchanged) take their seats by dancing their way across the set, which I enjoy. What would it be like, I wonder, if the X Factor judges similarly sang their way to their shiny desk. I hear Simon Cowell's flat, emotionless vocal style as somewhere between William Shatner and The Flying Lizards. In fact, let's imagine him 'singing', oh I don't know, maybe those Flying Lizards' most well-known hit, just to pluck something totally and utterly at random out of the part of my brain that is thinking really hard about his dead-eyed, imagination-free approach to the music industry.

Tess is wearing a jumpsuit, which I am emphatically pro. My Dress-Up Tess doll (£12.99 from the BBC shop, £10.99 from Argos, £1.99 come January) is always wearing trousers. Claudia has had what some celeb magazine will inevitably refer to as a makeunder. Less tan. Less eyeliner. Less hair over the face. Less Claudia. She looks pretty, but this better be her call, and not the result of some ludicrous BBC ruling that says fringes may not be worn longer than four inches during primetime  (also subsection 4(c)(iii) appendix (7): larky female sparkiness must be soberly contained). Let Claudia be Claudia.

(Having now watched Saturday's show, I see that Claudia has reverted to her more usual look, thus totally undermining the previous paragraph. THANKS CLAUDIA, I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS.)

First up are Caroline Flack and Pasha. Caroline is Ringer No 1 in this year's Bananarama of ringers (Pixie Lott no 2, Frankie Saturdays no 3). She serves Pasha's cha-cha choreography well, with just the right amount of subtle messing up to suggest 'Who, me? Ooh no, I'm not a dancer. Yes, I am remarkably good and assured, and, well, yes, since you mention it, I suppose I did study dance for some years, but it was nothing whatsoever like this.' Still, I like her, I like Pasha. He becomes the first pro choreographer to Deploy The Judges' Desk For The Making Of Sexy Shapes. He's gone too early with that, if you ask me. Save it for week 5 at the earliest, or Fern Britton On Borrowed Time, as I like to think of it.

Next up, Tim Wonnacott and Natalie Lowe. Natalie missed the 2013 series through injury. And she thought she was unlucky last year. Tim is sweet and trying hard, but his auction-themed cha-cha (such a natural pair-up, why has no one done it before?) makes me bite my hand. He's having a nice time, though, and enthusiastically trots around the floor led by Natalie in a way that reminds me of Training Dogs The Woodhouse Way. Afterwards, he stands in Claudia's 'area' with an arm clasped around each woman's waist like a man emerging triumphant from the conservatory at a suburban swingers' party. In his comments, Craig says Tim danced as though he was wearing a soiled nappy. I believe there is also a suburban party scene that would serve that situation.

Jake Wood and Jeanette are doing a soap-operatic tango, which begins with some fun intimations of domestic violence. It really is such a family-friendly show. Jake is strong and confident and doesn't make me have to avert my eyes through awkwardness. He was also once in Press Gang and went to college with my friend Speranza, all of which propels him into my 'like' pile.

Do you remember when Alesha Dixon was a judge and used to patronise the older female contestants? Tess does, because after Judi Murray's wobbly waltz, Tess tells her to 'walk those lovely legs upstairs'. WHAT, TESS? WHAT? Anton and Judi have employed some Scottish theming for their routine, but what with the tartan and Mull Of Kintyre and the Scots piper, it's so subtle you'd barely notice. Also, if you want to waltz to something dripping with Scotland, SUNSHINE OF LEITH, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE. During the Actual Dancing, Judi gets herself in a right old pickle, but Anton is as kind and constant to his older partner as ever. In this respect, he really is some sort of superhero emerging from the mist (rolling in from the hills my desire is always to be here oh mull of kintyre), with his cummerbund of power and his shield of Just For Men.

Let me lay my cards on the table and say that Scott Mills is not my kind of DJ. This is well-known among my friends and colleagues, one of whom secured me an on-air dedication from him on my 31st birthday. He quite admirably managed to get my job title and place of work wrong and play a terrible record afterwards. But despite this, I find myself liking him tonight. I like his no-fuss out-ness, with his boyfriend sitting next to his mum in the crowd. Of course, this shouldn't even merit comment, but it's pretty radical for Strictly. I am less keen on his cha-cha, and apparently so is he. His Dance Face is Someone Really Scared Trying To Be Really Brave, and the early-doors appearance-via-video-message of his Good Friend Robbie Williams suggests he's not thinking in terms of bloody well Blackpool. Len's comments are surprisingly hostile initially, but perhaps, like me, he has been forced to listen to too much daytime Radio 1 in the workplace and is wishing it was Marc Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie out there on the dance floor.

Last out this episode are Pixie Lott and Trent Newboy. Trent is the blond Duke Of Hazzard as played by Steve Buscemi. Pixie is the favourite to win, but not my favourite to win, even though she quite manipulatively tried to impress me by doing my favourite, the jive, in week one, and being quite good at it. Show me your rumba, Pixie, and we'll see how this is really going to shake down.

And that's your lot for programme one. It's a truncated first show - almost as though they know how long it takes me to write absolutely anything - and a somewhat underwhelming one. Are they saving the Tweet-grabbing big guns (like, erm, Gregg Wallace and Mark Wright) for the main Saturday-night ratings battle? Or are they just really bad at putting together a line-up? Make your own mind up, I'm exhausted.

No Saturday-night-show write-up from me this week, but I'll be back soon with my thoughts on the lack of a credible crush object for me in this year's cast. All the big issues! All the time!

Martin sees the peloton

Two things that young children find more exciting than the spectacle of the world's greatest cyclists passing by in a dizzying pageant of athleticism and colour:

1) A circling dragonfly.

2) High-fiving a police motorcyclist.

Fair enough. Both these things are excellent.

Still, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who think it's worth standing around for two hours in the burning sun (12 noon, Cambridge) or pissing rain (3.30pm, London) for a fleeting 30 seconds of partially obscured joy, and those who do not.

There's a silence after the peloton goes by - a sense of expectation that some further spectacle may yet present itself, which you absolutely should not miss out on; that perhaps Froome, Kittel and Contador are just a gentle curtain-raiser for the real event - a grand prix of dogs riding children's tricycles, perhaps. Yet no dogs came. And as the crowd eventually dispersed in Cambridge, I heard one 70-something man turn to another and say, 'Well, there you go then, Martin. Was it worth it?'

This companion of Martin's, I felt, was a person committed to seeking out the disappointment of others and dragging it into the open with some measure of triumph, like a cat with a dead bird.

(It was all in his tone of voice. I am very sensitive to these things.)

But Martin – casquette on his grey head, peak pushed reverentially upwards, a believer, a hoper – simply said, 'Oh yes… Absolutely wonderful.'

This is a test

Recently I was in Boots at Kings Cross station, buying the usual items of bathroom tedium on my way home from work. A women appeared beside me (not by magic – I'm pretty sure she just walked there from a different part of the shop) to be served by the adjacent cashier.

She was buying a pregnancy test.

Just that. Just a test. Just laid down right there on the counter, all alone. Not a universally unflattering palette of eyeshadow, grabbed in haste, alongside it. Not some corn plasters and a blood-sugar monitor with which to bury it at the bottom of a wire basket. Just a pregnancy test. Imagine! She didn't even want a bag. 'Would you like a bag?' was what the assistant asked her. 'No thanks,' is exactly what she said in response.

It's a long time since I studied any critical theory. Probably it could never be long enough. But this episode made me think about Barthes' Mythologies and Saussure and signs and signifiers. Luckily I wasn't thinking these things out loud, because I am really over-sibilant.

Maybe I haven't done enough pregnancy tests in my life to reduce them simply to piss and plastic. Maybe I haven't witnessed enough other people buying them. Because when I saw this small box lying on the counter, I didn't think, 'Oh, the circle of life turns one more notch. Just another everyday, £7.99 incidence of life-changing potentiality. Nothing to see.'

Instead I thought that my fellow customer must surely have slept with her infertile partner's brother following an argument and now nothing would ever be the same again. Or that the one-night stand with her boss at the end of the staff orienteering/orientation day had not been packed away with the cagoules and the clipboards after all. Or that the night when that large flying vessel landed in her back garden and the hatch opened and that creature she could not comprehend took her inside and led her to do things she didn't entirely comprehend either, but on the other hand didn't not enjoy, really did happen after all, it wasn't just the late-night brie talking.

And when she got home, she would almost certainly hide it in the laundry basket because everyone knows that's a really flawless hiding place, or possibly throw the empty box in the bathroom bin, where her boyfriend might find it and wonder which one of the four female housemates it belonged to.

You say pregnancy test. I say soap opera.

I blame soap operas.

Because it wasn't just the test. She was buying the test in a train station. The theatre of melodrama. (Or maybe that's Old Trafford.) Where people run alongside moving carriages to tell another that they love them. Where the lovehorn hurdle barriers and feint their way around guards to beg someone not to leave. Trains pull out of platforms to reveal passengers still standing there, wondering what they haven't just done. Where businessmen decide not to take their regular service to the suburbs, but instead pick a platform, any platform, and step right onto a train to Berwick or St Austell. I mean, this literally happens all the time, doesn't it? I've seen it with these two eyes. Only on the telly, mind you, but still.

Back in Boots, the cashier swiped the woman's loyalty card and said 'Are you using your points?'

Initially, I thought she said, 'Are you proving a point?' which somehow seemed slightly prescriptive, even for a pharmacist.*

*Sorry.

Bully for me

Some things I never did as a child:

I never took the school hamster home for the holidays.

I never had a limb in plaster.

I never played Mary in the school nativity. I was never in a nativity. We never did a nativity. Sometimes I wonder if it was really a school.

I never shoplifted high-currency teenage items (lipstick, cigarettes, Monster Munch). Or low ones (Woman's Weekly, bird feed, Dentufix).

I never escaped through a secret portal in my bedroom into a magical land of benign but fantastical wild beasts who greeted me as their queen and leader.

Also, I was never bullied.

Occasionally, over the years, I've wondered how I managed to escape it. I was brainy and a bit odd, with a whole buffet of physical eccentricities for the persecutory to pick over – deathly pale, sparrow-legged, jagged-toothed, sharp-featured, frequently unwell.

At the time, of course, I never gave it a moment's thought. 'Are you bully bait?' was never one of Just Seventeen's interactive quiz elements – unsurprising, given the infinite matrix of boy-related trauma to exploit. I sailed along on peaceful waters of unadventure. Once, I remember, I stumbled upon a girl I liked a lot – she was quiet, funny, a bit nervy – having her arms pulled hard in opposite directions by the scariest girls in the school and shamefully hurried past, on my way to play an urgent game of elastics, I imagine. She became very ill some time after – one of those crippling viral mysteries that may or may not propagate from emotional exhaustion – and was off school for months. Even in my youthful ignorance, I was shocked by how weak she was when she returned, as I watched her being helped around the playground like a pensioner.

Now I think about it, though, I realise I always had a gang. Not a big one, or a cool one. We weren't sniffing glue in darkened shopping precincts or setting light to waste bins. But we were a tight and loyal pack, united by the serendipitous fact that we all fancied different members of Duran Duran. I was rarely separated from those girls – I never grazed far from the herd, was never easy to isolate for the purposes of Chinese burns and bogwashing. You would not have found me drifting alone, 'asking for it' in the wrong coat and bad shoes – just one more oath of unspoken thanks I owe my parents. Also, during the years when I may have had to flee, gazelle-like, for my life  – or my lunch money – across the playing fields, I was one of the fastest runners in my school, however unlikely that may seem now. (Clue: really very unlikely.)

I don't know which god of the playground was watching over me. (I like to think it was the giant floating head of John Taylor, huge hair shimmying in the heavenly currents – distinguishable from the real John Taylor because his hair would never bend in the breeze.) Anyway, the fact is I escaped.

Until last summer.

Anniversaries are having a moment at the moment, aren't they? It's a year since the Olympics.  It's ten years since Breathe by Blu Cantrell featuring Sean Paul was Number One. Let the human race still be remembering both these things in a hundred more years. I'm pretty sure they will. And it's a little over a year since someone was systematically behaving with cruelty and vindictiveness towards me, in order to get something they wanted, which they weren't entitled to, and shouldn't have had. Ahh, balmy, gilded 2012 summer days.

I can't say exactly what happened or who was involved. Regular readers who are familiar with the thrill ride of my life will assume it's some matter of international espionage, drug running or high-level sexual power games. At the very least, they'd assume I'm bound by some kind of super-super-injunction. I'd applaud them in this, because the truth is incredibly mundane. Yet the feelings the experience produced in me were every bit as stressful and emotionally painful as anything I've known in my life. The kind of proper, lying awake at night, heart bumping, soul churning, unable-to-think-about-anything-else upset that persists until it is outrageously, complacently claiming a place in the top ten worst things that have ever happened to you, unseating important, precious things that are genuinely worth your distress – bereavement, the wrench of a break-up, deep sadness for a friend. What a waste of the terrible times, having to spunk them on some idiot misguidedly intent on ruining your life.

The polite among you may be saying, 'How did it start, Miss Jones?' The rest: 'GOD, is she EVER going to get on with it? Because, seriously, I've read shorter Tolstoys.'

How it started was with a series of light psychological punches – no big deal in isolation – which I attempted to parry with the following mental blocks:

'Oh!'

'That's a bit off.'

'I wonder why she would do that?'

'It will probably blow over.'

'Oh. It's really not blowing over. Oh well.'

'Hmm. She still seems to be doing that mean and very hurtful thing. How strange. She probably doesn't realise exactly what she's doing.'

And then, eventually:

'Oh. She does.'

All those little blows must have given me some kind of concussion because, for a few weeks, I couldn't see just what was going on. Instead, I doubted myself, thinking what was happening was probably my own stupid fault.

Of course, bullies love that shit. In the cold, clear light, I can see that's Bullying 101. It's Now That's What I Call Bullying. It's Bullying For Dummies (Although Bullies Are The Real Dummies, Which You Will Learn If You Buy Our Other Hit Book, How To Stop Being A Bully For Dummies).

But I'm nothing if not entirely British. My every cell loves tea and talking about trains and hates making any kind of a fuss. Even though being scared to open your email or answer the phone because of the repeated actions of one person probably does merit some kind of a fuss. I didn't feel that what was happening could possibly warrant the term 'bully' yet, by any definition (except those relating to the quiz show Bullseye), it absolutely did.

When confusion and surprise move out, hurt outrage moves in. Seriously, those guys can not share a living space. And it always unravels with the cleaning rota. I'm a nice person. Sometimes I tut at people on the tube and leave rubbish under my seat on the train, but I'm fundamentally a B+ at nice. Maybe even A-. And I consciously surround myself with other nice people. Yet somehow someone had breached this in order to target me. They had picked me out of all the people in the world to be horrible to. That is a shitty kind of a raffle.

As adults, we're rarely out of control unless we choose to be, with bungee rope, large amounts of alcohol, recreational drugs, or babies and young children. It's unlikely anyone will force us into a municipal swimming bath or over a gym horse, or order us to do any of the above in our underwear. There are acts of God and human tragedies, but most days we get to say no. Yet suddenly I was feeling powerless and frightened. This was not the adulthood I had been promised! Where was my sense of grown-up self-assurance and my wardrobe of cashmere?

And also this: before it all started, I was serenely independent and content (as Professor Higgins sings in I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face). Or, more technically, single. I had my own home, a career and a lot of friends. I walked tall. I ate alone in restaurants (I mean, not all the time, I'm not weird or anything). I was proud of all that. I depend on me (as Destiny's Child sing in Independent Woman Part 1). But I felt very strongly that none of this would have happened if I'd had a boyfriend or husband and wasn't plugging away at life alone. Or, in fact, if I were a boy (as Beyoncé sings in… oh, I've forgotten the name of it now). I can't tell you how much I hate that.

Still, through it all, she remained – assiduously, relentlessly turning the screw. Like Miss Trunchball's less forgiving sister, the one people don't like as much as Miss Trunchball. But, crucially, not, in the eyes of the law, doing anything wrong. Because it turns out that behaving like a total shit is not in itself illegal. Really? There are small people living in a slim box in my pocket who can play any music in the world through my headphones, yet no one's sorted that out yet?

And the awful consequence of that is that you end up becoming a little more like her – hardened and spiteful – in response. Soon I was sitting in middle-brow restaurants with my friends, eating our aspirational mezze and making unthinkably dark jokes about the ways in which I might kill her, in order to end all this. Then going home and lying awake and thinking what might happen if someone actually did kill her; imagining the police questioning my best girls, seeing their faces as the investigating officer said, 'How would you describe Miss Jones's relationship with the deceased? Did she ever display aggressive feelings towards her?' 

It ended eventually. It always does. I stayed strong and I saw it out. 'Strong' is not conventionally defined as wanting to cry, do a massive poo and start running and never stop ALL OF THE TIME, EVERY DAY, which was exactly how I felt. Strong was purely superficial in this instance. But it was enough. I always knew superficial would have its day. 

In a manner of speaking, I won. This absolutely does not mean that I killed her and got away with it. It means I escaped from the situation and she didn't get exactly what she wanted.

In another, more profound way, she won. She got a little of what she wanted and I am left, still, with the aftershocks. I still feel a shiver when I travel through a certain part of town. Still spend morning showers and train journeys wondering what I would do or say if I ran into her. I'm less trusting.

But what, I hear you asking, Terry*, was the real secret of my (small, semi-) success?

I had a gang. Not a big one, or a cool one, but five-star, rock-solid back-up. Metaphorically, they held my coat while I squared up to fight. Literally, every single day, one or more of them was patiently telling me to hold my nerve, be brave, not rise to it; that I was in the right, that I was better than this, that it would soon be over.

There are more of them in the world than there are of her.

*Little Commitments throwback for anyone excited about the new Roddy Doyle book

Miss Jones Is... Writing Without Authority About David Bowie

A quiz:

Consider the quotation 'Ultraviolence in Liberty fabrics.'

Does it describe:

a) A costume designed for the musician David Bowie during the Starman era?

b) My disposition, 45 minutes into the V&A exhibition celebrating the musician David Bowie, having moved a total of no more than three metres from the entrance, trapped between ever-encroaching human walls of ditherers, slow readers, the spatially unaware and David Bowie fans – and the Venn diagram which holds them all?

[The exhibition has been open for several months now, and it occurs to me that it's so good that no one may actually be leaving. They're just letting more and more people in.]

The answer is, of course, both. It was a trick question.

Still, during the three hours you spend carefully edging your way around David Bowie Is..., it is heartily reassuring to find something, anything, in common with the subject. The creativity, the eclecticism, the energy, the conviction on display, is simultaneously inspiring and totally demoralising. What have I achieved with my sorry life in comparison? Why have I wasted so many years? Should I have worn more jumpsuits when I was younger and a slim size 10?

Say what you like about Dave, but he certainly gets things done.

I like to imagine this kind of conversation between David and his neighbour as they both left their respective houses on any given Monday morning from the late 60s onwards.

'Hello there, David!'

'Hi Jeff. How was your weekend?'

'Oof, well, pretty busy actually. Mowed the lawn - that was well overdue. Took Maureen and her mother out for Sunday lunch, bled the radiators, watched Poldark. How about yourself?'

'Well, I wrote a few songs, went to my mime class, commissioned a set of asymmetric PVC stagewear from an unknown fashion student, storyboarded a new short film, made some flapjacks and read a really inspiring book about Dadaist theatre in the 1930s.'

'Right.'

David Bowie Is... a very sobering comparative exercise. Still, as my companion, Mr H, said to me over lunch afterwards, the gulf between our achievements exists because David Bowie is a one-off. There is him, he said, and then there is the rest of us.

The next day, I went to get my hair cut and noticed my hairdresser had bought exactly the same postcard from the exhibition as I had and stuck it to his mirror.

This is the kind of symbiotic thinking that can be achieved by shouting at each other over the noise of a hairdryer three times a year.

And since hairdressers are confidantes and counsellors, as well as being really good at not gagging when bits of other people's hair get everywhere, I discussed my feelings of Aladdinsecurity with him.

He, too, was philosophical. (Look at all the reassuring men I know! When I was floundering after the sudden death of my dad, a counsellor told me there wasn't enough positive male influence in my life. Well, look at me now! I'm a winner!)

'That's why he has an exhibition about him,' my hairdresser said. 'And we don't.'

If you are as self-involved as I am, here's what you take away from David Bowie Is...:

There will never be an exhibition all about me.

People will never queue patiently to look at faded photographs of me aged six dressed in a mum-sewn clown costume for a ballet recital and ponder how commedia del'arte had always had a profound influence on my work. 

My penetrating yet slyly humorous letters of complaint to Southwark Council will never find a home under a protective glass case as an example of an artist honing their gift before finding their true artform. This is a bloody shame because they were brilliant letters, actually.

Ernest curators will never write informative panels describing how my youthful brio and raw talent* shook the stuffy world of regional baking competitions to its very foundations.

All I could do to console myself was look for any other ways DB and I are alike. There are several:

We share a naturally/unnaturally high pallor.

We are both Capricorns, supposedly the dullest sign in the zodiac. (At this point, the V&A would probably whirl their endless white ribbon of Bowie-related till receipts around like a rhythmic gymnast and say that astrology is bullshit.)

Our dads have the same name. And I think we can all agree that 'John Jones' is pretty unusual.

Another thing: as I walked around the exhibition, I overheard a man trying to impress the woman he was with by telling her how the mention of 'the market square' in Five Years related to the market square in Bromley. He may have been making it up. I wouldn't know. I'm the first to admit I'm a Bowie-come-lately. But I have suffered my own harrowing torment in Bromley's market square, when a wooden skewer thrown on the ground became embedded in my foot, having found a path through the slats of my gladiator sandals (a grasp of footwear trends will tell you this happened some years ago).

Uncanny, no?

Um. OK. Everyone?

 I THINK I MIGHT ACTUALLY BE DAVID BOWIE.

Obviously I realise I'm nearly 40 and this has never occurred to me before, but if it's true, then I did take an awful lot of drugs in the 70s, so it's very likely this kind of thing could slip your mind. And Dave does love an image change.

I feel much better about things now.

Still. I should NEVER have turned down the Olympics.


*Not so much this really.

Commuter dominoes

Art is hard

I believe that creativity demands total emotional truth.

That's why I feel compelled to tell you that my latest found-art project, exploring the ways in which extraordinary musical talent is predestined to collide and collaborate organically, despite the synthetic constructs of the corporate machine – using the medium of the 'Share a Coke' venture and its random product placement – has not exactly got off to the dynamic start I had hoped.

No 1: The Bedingfields.

I am honestly starting to doubt whether Coke has even produced a 'Ringo'.

Blogging again! Strictly half-term report! Trumpets!

No explanation, no excuses, I am easing myself back into blogging with a half-term report on this series of Strictly Come Dancing. I'm not sure how it can be half-term when there are still 10 – 10! – contestants remaining, but from what I can tell nowadays, half-term seems to happen whenever anyone bloody well feels like it over a four-week period, so anything goes, right? If you're looking for quality weekly Strictly blogging, let me recommend my best Olympic buddy Mind Tidying, who is highly entertaining, with the kind of understanding and appreciation of dance skills that I brazenly lack.

My own personal Strictly viewing journey this series so far can be summarised thus:

1) Love: Louis, Kimberley, Richard. Falling for: Dani. Fingers crossed for: Lisa (£5 at 18-1). Want to love but can't quite: Fern, Victoria, Nicky. Don't love: Denise, Michael.
(Terms and conditions: Emotional investments can go down as well as up.)

2) No one should ever make Dave Arch wear a costume. Seeing him dressed up as Dracula at Halloween made me think of a giant bear that's been chained to a post and poked with sticks to make it dance.

3) Despite another duff partner/early exit for Anton, I have chosen to stop seeing him as an object of sympathy. This is a powerful psychological breakthrough for me. No longer do I picture him weeping the sad tears of a clown into a smart lambswool V-neck while other couples march on to Wembley and sodding Blackpool. Instead I think of him as liberated and free, having more time to do the things he loves, which I imagine to be: taking a special lady friend for a picnic in one of the greenhouses at Kew Gardens, 'motoring' down to a classic car rally at the Beaulieu Museum, or caddying for Ronnie Corbett and Bruce Forsyth at St Andrews in an attempt to further infiltrate the upper (well, up-ish) echelons of light entertainment.

4) I feel quite strongly that Strictly may be running out of songs. How can this be? There are more songs in the world than there are rats in London and insects in the rainforest. This is scientific fact.* Yet people must apparently STILL waltz to Kiss From A Rose.

ANYWAY. This week.

Bruce Forsyth and I share many similarities. We both enjoy our morning porridge with nuts and blueberries (I saw this on a documentary once). And he, too, is celebrating half-term. But I imagine Bruce's break – unlike most half-termers – amounts less to a trip to the Harry Potter Studios tour and a Burger King, or spending the whole day in Topshop eating Pick and Mix, and more to quality time with a tartan blanket, some crackers and Stilton, and a DVD of the Ryder Cup. And, awkwardly, I must report to Brucie and the writers of his 'jokes' that this is the first show in recent memory where I actually laughed out loud at something that was intentionally funny (and not just at Michael Vaughan's hair, for example).

Firstly, I love the opening montage. It's got Miranda in it, why wouldn't I? It would be easy for me to mock Su Pollard at this point, but she's the one apparently owning this season's gold brocade trend, not me, so I know which one of us is more likely to be invited to the Balmain Christmas party. (She's welcome to it. I reckon the buffet would be rubbish.) I also love Tess and Claudia back together. Tess no longer has to painfully perform a series of 'reaction' faces to Bruce's hi-jinks and can get on with the business of solidly competent presenting. Claudia can be demented in a safe, controlled environment while dressed as a sci-fi dentist. (Tess, by the way, has come as a bunny girl who's chosen to start dressing slightly more conservatively since having children.)

On with the dancing. First up are Denise and James. I'm not saying James was threatened by the reappearance of Ian Waite (who rehearsed with DVO while James was injured) but their paso seemed to be a lot about Le Jordan. 'Yes, Denise, first of all I have to spend AGES twirling a cape right in front of the camera while you stand behind me and can't be seen. No, a bit longer. No, you see I HAVE to, it's not a proper paso if I don't. And now I'm going to do a knee slide RIGHT INTO THE CAMERA for all my fans.' Their paso is brilliant, of course, and scores four 9s, but I think I speak for everyone who's ever watched Strictly when I say that I really, really miss Ian Waite.

We all love Richard, right? Funny, self-effacing, suitably deferential to Erin (who I like more and more when she's with him, a bit like Taylor Swift when she was dating Jake Gyllenhaal, only Erin and Richard's partnership has lasted longer). His and Erin's Charleston is no Hollins 'n' Ola, but it's great value, and for fans of dance faces, he has some of the all-time best ever. Also, fans of men in their 40s doing Penelope Pitstop runs won't have been disappointed by that either. Richard's little face (©CWinkleman) when he's awarded a string of 7s and 8s is one of my favourite Strictly things in history. I mean it's no Vincent trying to do a roly-poly, but come on...

Louis and Flavia are dancing the waltz. All the dancers, pro and celeb, have their individual crosses to bear – a partner who's too tall/too short/does 'impressions'/does 'jokes'/has no rhythm – and with Louis, I think it's important to remember how weird it must be to be 23, and have lived all your professional life with the discipline and routine of a sportsman, then suddenly have to be all intimate and expressive with an older lady. We can't all be totally down with it like Aaron Johnson-Taylor-Wood. Never mind, Louis's mum has come along to training to make sure no one's mean to him. Too bad she didn't save a mum smackdown for Craig in the studio, who unaccountably gives Louis a 6. He says it was a bit saccharine for him. It's a waltz, Craig. Surely you've seen one before. Entre nous, I think Craig is dismayed by the presence of the Strictly swing, a reappearance that's about as welcome as a coldsore, having propelled Matt Baker to the brink of a nervous collapse (in my own parallel Strictly narrative) almost exactly two years ago.

Fern and Artem are doing the salsa. Artem does have a shirt on again but it's open to the waist. He's put the chest out there now, he can't take it back. Craig immediately erases all my Louis-related bad feeling towards him with the look of utter contempt he gives to Fern coming at his face with a feather duster. Fern gives it some welly and has nice hair. It's the hair that Kimberley had a few weeks ago. I wonder who will have it next week? I'm hoping for Michael Vaughan and I think he is too. After a kindly round of judging, Claudia asks Artem if he's over the moon with their comments. Artem deadpans: 'I am very much so,' like a bored escort crossed with a really sexy Russian droid.

Now. Pendleton. Are we all agreed that the judges have received a memo ordering them not to upset her under any circumstances, in case the subsequent cascade of salty tears melts the studio floor and up from the dark oblivion below surges the angry vengeful figure of Chris Hoy, grown to the proportions of an ogre? Good. Yes, Sir Chris is lovely and charming and benign, AS FAR AS WE KNOW, but who can say how the golden god may react when forced to defend the honour of the queen of British cycling. It's either that or Sebastian Coe has made some dark and terrible pact with the IOC that the UK will only get to host the Olympics again if Victoria Pendleton wins Strictly Come Dancing. On a plinth in his turreted castle sits an eerily glowing GB Pendleton cycling helmet symbolising the pact. What we need, of course, is some young knight – Jason Kenny would do it, or Laura Trott for sexual parity – to battle their way inside on a magic wall-penetrating bicycle, smash the helmet with an axe, and thus break the spell.

It's just possible I've overthought this.

In summary, Brendan wheels (hahahahaha - she is a cyclist! I made a joke) Victoria around and the judges treat her like a frail endangered species. She's improving A LOT but not to the extent where Craig is justified in marking her higher than Louis.

Also important to note: Brendan falls over harder than Philip Hindes, at a similarly critical moment, but possibly with less deliberation. I love Brendan these days.

It's Danni and Vincent. I LOVE Vincent SO MUCH. I like Danni. That means that, on balance and using simultaneous equations, I love (Vincent + Danni). A note from me to the Strictly producers: please stop treating Vincent like a joke and forcing him to wear stupid blonde wigs. You're making us forget that he's awesome and used to date Flavia, who's really fit, and doesn't date just anyone... Oh. Well, anyway, she's really fit. (I'm just joking. She's been dating Jimi Mistry for at least three series). And the good news is that with the Fonzie Jive and the Phone Box Tango, Danni seems to be resuscitating Awesome Vincent. HE LIVES.

Next up, Nicky, who starts his foxtrot with a brilliant solo section which makes me 'Oooh!' out loud. Not as much as when Gethin did the salsa, but still, Nicky's really blossoming. It's as though he is, in the metaphorical language of Westlife, rising up off his stool and walking with purpose and a boyband air-grab to the front of the stage. He is living a key-change. He and Karen make great use of their microphone prop, although it's not turned on. Just like in the Westlife days. I'M TOTALLY JOKING, WESTLIFE FANS. AND ANYWAY, WE ALL KNOW YOU AND YOUR MOBILE PHONES ARE TAKING NICKY TO AT LEAST THE SEMI-FINALS.

During his judges' comments, Cheryl Cole heckles from the crowd. I'd prefer it if she was heckling at The X Factor. Everyone would pay money for that. 'Oi! Scherzinger! WHO ARE YA?'

Kimberley and Pasha are dancing the Viennese Waltz. Kimberley says they are dancing to a beautiful song, and this makes me worry for my potential friendship with Kimberley as I think it's one of the most boring things I've ever heard. Kimberley is clearly the sensible one in Girls Aloud, and I am the sensible one in any friendship group, which should make us so compatible, but now everything I thought I knew has been thrown into question. What would we play at our slumber parties where we have a chocolate fondue and tell Nicola Roberts she should always stick to her natural ginger? However, I do love Kimberley's 'yearning' expression at the top of the stairs, which should see her at least win a part in the next series of that ITV drama about military wives when this is all over and Girls Aloud have a massive bust-up on their reunion tour. It's all nice enough, but doesn't change my opinion that the world could live quite happily without the Viennese Waltz. Viennese Whirls, however = indispensable.

Michael Vaughan has found some good form in recent weeks. This seems to have woken the terrible kraken that is Natalie's competitive streak – a beast that had lain dormant during Michael's lovable but hopeless early weeks. We could see the warning signs earlier tonight when Natalie was caught on camera applauding Louis's waltz with gritted teeth and flashing eyes. It's like Vesuvius, ominously smoking, and primed to erupt. I am aware, by the way, that I am mixing my metaphors beyond salvation in this paragraph. Let's just say that salsa is not really for Michael and move on. Good lifts, though.

Lisa and Robin dance a fabulous razzle-dazzle foxtrot to This Will Be (An Everlasting Love), which is on the soundtrack to While You Were Sleeping, which I love. The film's premise would make a great concept for Romantic Comedy Week (planned for week 9, I believe**). Male dancer starts off lying on faux railway tracks. Female rolls him off and into a coma-themed rumba (all rumbas are coma-themed, albeit inadvertently, for me). In other falling over news, Robin takes a tumble just before the stairs.

Come the results show, it's time for the SHOCK! we all knew was on the cards after weeks of perfectly appropriate evictions. And it's Kimberley and Pasha in the dance-off, which I'm blaming on mid-table forgettability and bland song forgettability, and also Cheryl hanging around in the studio wearing black like a tiny beautiful doomy raven. But ultimately it's Fern who's going home. Artem went topless too early. Like I said, where could he go from that?

See you for the semi-finals! Maybe!

*It's not.
**It's not.

12 Things I Learnt From The Olympic And Paralympic Games

or 'Yes, I am still going on about this, but so are the weekend supplements, so I think it's kind of OK, especially considering this is not even my actual job.'

WARNING: Long! Really, really long.

Memories... light the corners of my mind. Those aren't my words. They're the words of Marilyn and Alan Bergman. To them I say, 'Alan, Maz, easy for you to say. My mind is jammed full of shopping lists and train times and the birthdays of the individual members of Duran Duran, all languishing under a huge billowing fog of worries, both generalised and specific. How can I possibly fit all those small but significant Olympic and Paralympic memories in there too? All the many things I've learned and the ways I've grown? What if some of them... I don't know... fall out? Because brain specialists tell me this can happen.

Alan and Maz have no answer for me on that. Perhaps it's because Maz doesn't really like being called Maz. She thinks it's disrespectful to abbreviate a triple Oscar-winner. To her, I say, 'You know what, MAZ? Some of the lyrics to Windmills Of Your Mind make NO SENSE AT ALL,' because I don't take rejection very well.

Since Burt Bacharach was no help either, I clearly had to sort this out myself. If only I had some sort of cyber dump where I could record all my favourite strange and inconsequential parts of the last couple of months, things that won't become part of the official Olympic DVD (I've pre-ordered, naturally), before they drift out of my ears and away into the ether? Where oh where could I write about those things and maybe post some photogra.... OH HANG ON.

So here, in no order of rank – which, by the way, isn't a reflection of my views on competitive sport in schools – are the things I learnt from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

1. Cardboard can make you cry.
Oh alright. Anything during the Olympics can make you cry. Or, more specifically, me. Anything at all during the Olympics can make me cry. Any mundane gesture becomes infused with meaning. Any waitress routinely wiping down your café table became a symbol of the clean start we are all making together, a new time of friendliness and warmth and national pride and OH GOD I'M CRYING; any pigeon eating some sick off the pavement somehow represents London's spirit of plucky, stubborn survival and OH GOD I'M CRYING AGAIN. The sign below, which I spotted on a merchandise stand at Eton Dornay, just after Great Britain won their first gold medal, seemed to mark a kind of turning point for me, from the nation feeling kind of indifferent about the Olympics to feeling really very different about them indeed.

OH THE TEARS, I CANNOT STOP THE TEARS.
 
2. Be careful what you wish for.
Having front-row seats at the velodrome is amazing! It's a dream come true! All it takes is a lot of cash and many hours spent poring over foreign ticket sites! Look! Show-off photo incoming!

And yet my precious cycling session was marred by nightmarish visions. As I leaned forward to take photos of our two-wheeling heroes, I kept seeing my iphone slipping out of my sweating hand (it is HOT in there), arcing over the barrier and sliding, in sickening slow motion, down the banked track and into the path of Sir Chris Hoy's bike, causing him to wobble, topple and surrender his long-cherished dream of record-breaking gold at his home Olympics, while I crouched down under my seat as the world's media attempted to capture the moron responsible. Oops, sorry, Sir Chris. Butter fingers! Never mind, you've got four other gold medals, right?

3. No One Is Really As Cool As You Think, Not Even Cyclists.
Oh cyclists. You think you're so special with your superhero skin suits and your space age curvy track and your what-is-better-in-the-world-really spectacle of team pursuiters powering along in perfect formation. Look, here they come...

And there they go...

Sometimes I wonder how I can be so amazing at photography.

Still, don't lose heart, mortals. Because my live cycling experience has taught me that the invincible athletes who ride team pursuit for GB like to sit there between rounds in their vests. I'm sure these are very special vests, engineered by scientists to nurture muscle, repel fatigue and, I don't know, do something that really helps with the cycling. But to the uneducated eye, Our Boys look like four elderly men on a hot day at Blackpool sea front, moaning about the sun or the quality of the battered sausages.

Incidentally, if the BBC ever decides to commission a sitcom entitled Last Of The Summer Cyclists, in which elderly characters loosely based on the post-retirement Hoy, Cavendish and Wiggins (or perhaps Clancy, Thomas and Burke in subsequent series) get into hilarious scrapes as they attempt to recreate the team pursuit while riding a tin bath or similar junk-shop find down a steep hill, I would totally watch it.

4. In case there was ever any doubt, I can now confirm that I am emphatically anti-fun.
If you, Olympic-venue public-address announcers, ask me if I'm having a good time, especially in that tone of voice that suggests you are the soul of an over-excited puppy planted into the body of a human, as if in a hilarious inter-species body-swap film comedy that, as far as I know, has never yet been made, but I am totally claiming the idea now if it hasn't because that's box office gold, I am immediately NOT having a good time. Did you never read Just Seventeen? Don't you know that desperation isn't attractive? And, in the five minutes between basketball quarters, I don't want to dance to The Macarena in the hope that a roaming camera may project my mad dance skillz onto the big screen. I just want to sit and talk about the game with my friend, have a drink and, perhaps, go to the toilet (I promise to leave my seat to do this). Similarly, I don't care for playing invisible bongos or even, if I may go so far, actual bongos. NO TO BONGOS OF ANY KIND. This is top-level competitive sport, not Agadoo. What is this obsession with hyping everyone up to the point of nervous and laryngeal collapse, inciting the crowd to cheer louder? No, louder than that. Ooh now, I think you can do better. Now this grandstand. Now that grandstand. Now which grandstand is loudest? NO ONE CARES. IT'S THE OLYMPICS. EVERYONE IS ALREADY PRETTY BLOODY WELL PSYCHED WITHOUT YOUR HELP. JUST LEAVE US ALONE, CAN'T YOU?

I can also personally attest to the awkwardness of sitting next to a male stranger, with whom you have been making pleasant but functional small talk, when 'Kiss Cam' starts roaming around. 'No, it's OK. I've just dropped something down here. Yes, it does look uncannily like I'm hiding under my seat, doesn't it? How funny!' Sodding Kiss Cam! Poor old Pierre de Coubertin must be spinning. (And by this I mean the grave-swivelling outrage, not the exercise class.) Higher, faster, stronger, CRINGIER.

5. You can be patriotic and totally unpatriotic at the same time. Human beings are a rich and confusing species.
Here is a mystery in my life. I, absolutely the least fly woman in Europe, if not the world, can give an impassioned 100% earnest rendition of Grandmaster Flash's White Lines without flinching. I can karaoke the heck out of the most cringeworthy lines of Olivia Newton John's Physical ('I took you to an intimate restaurant... to a suggestive movie') or The Divinyls I Touch Myself without a hint of self-consciousness. Yet I find it impossible to sing God Save The Queen without feeling very uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. At the same time, when I see a man dressed in this outfit, I want to give him a firm handshake and some kind of military salute.

This, like most things, worries me. I think I'm young enough, at 38, to still contest the following sports at Olympic level: golf, archery, fencing, sailing, shooting, equestrianing and triple jump (Yamile Aldama is 40). I will wear my team kit with huge pride. But what will I do on the podium when I inevitably win a gold medal? I will have to pretend that my lips are totally paralysed by Potent Victory Emotions. And does this anthem-aversion mean I am, like, the new Guy Fawkes or something? Probably not because I really like fireworks.

6. Long-distance mega-lens photos aren't always creepy and invasive.
Oh OK, they are. Having a friend in possesion of a swanky camera with a privacy-encroaching zoom is an absolute boon during the more pedestrian sections of the Closing Ceremony. Those cringey cover versions will simply fly past as you hunt down your favourite athletes and discover which international comrades they are having one final crack at before everyone goes home. In addition, it can transform your view of... oh I don't know, let's say Ryan Lochte, just for argument's sake, from this…

…to this

Photo courtesy of Mind Tidying

Technology truly is a wonderful thing.

7. The memories of merchandisers are short.
London 2012 Megastore! You can't reduce Daley Thompson, he's the greatest! Show some respect!

Mo Farah, some day you too will be in the bargain bin. Deal with it.

8. Volunteering is more like a proper job than any proper job I've ever actually had. 
 I mean, honestly, it was all pro-activity and initiative and concentration and application, and really hardly any sitting around having cups of teas and snacking and dicking around on the internet for hours at a time. Even though my role was a long way out of my comfort zone, Sir Alan, I truly loved being able to walk through the empty ExCel arenas after hours, feet sore, but spine tingling.

I loved being there when the corridors had turned from this…

…to this…

I loved sweet-talking the closing-up food concessions into selling me a late-night cup of tea, because – and I really can't stress this enough – the opportunities for idle tea-drinking were extremely limited, then smugly congratulating myself on my silky people skills, only to undermine any newly fostered goodwill by spilling milk all over their newly wiped down counter and having to slope off to the DLR feeling clumsy and sheepish.

And I'm fairly sure I loved going home so tired that I genuinely didn't know whether this particular sight was real or just a weary hallucination.

9. Always have your excuse handy.
If you are standing in the workforce toilets, wearing your volunteer uniform, attempting to take pictures of yourself in the mirror because you deludedly fancy that in your press bib, under the strip lightning, you bear a marked resemblance to Kate Adie in her flak jacket in a war-torn Middle Eastern country – but purple; really, really purple – it might be good to have some kind of sensible explanation ready in case someone walks in, instead of having to try and turn it into some elaborate hair-grooming ritual involving your iPhone.

I don't know what to do with my uniform now it's all over. Obviously I can't throw it away, or give it to charity or engineer any other parting. That would suggest I am something other than a sentimental, hoarding fool. But there is so much of it. And it's so synthetic (as one particularly maternal employee at the uniform pick-up said to me, in a voice that was pure Thora Hird, 'It doesn't breathe, but it washes like a dream'), it's surely a fire hazard to have it stacked up around the house. I'm hoping that if I put it into the oven, it might become like Shrinky Dinks and reduce dramatically in size until it's small enough that I can thread the individual pieces onto a charm bracelet.

10. It's OK to change your mind. Isn't it?
Not so long ago, the 2012 logo and cycloptic mascots were the worst things I had ever seen. Ugly. Unforgivable. An affront to this country's design industry. And now? Well, I seem to have bought this:

And this:

(As well as two Team GB rucksacks, a T-shirt, a set of Olympic-themed commemorative biscuit tins and two tea towels, but that's not important right now.) I can only attribute this about-turn in affection to what my friend Ms H one termed the Alan Hansen Effect, which dictates that given sufficiently intense exposure to a particular individual or object – say, during the endless TV coverage of a major international football tournament – one can develop profoundly warm feelings, possibly sexual, for them. (I loved Hansen from the start, by the way.)

11. The erotic potential of Greco-Roman wresling has been wildy under-estimated. By me, at least.
Here is what I learnt from watching the sport for the first time. I record my findings without comment.

If there has been no score after the second minute of a three-minute round, one of our two competitors gets to choose whether he goes 'top or bottom'. The wrestler who is 'bottom' gets down on all fours. The 'top' wrestler then mounts his opponent from behind and must attempt to 'turn' him while the crowd become increasingly enthused.

12. I am a pretty good bad photographer.
I love this picture.