Below are the most recent 10 friends' journal entries.

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
perfectlyvague	12:55p	A lot of people have taken to reading out and performing their juvenilia...every time I see the diaries of people from the mid 80s I wonder why I keep considering throwing mine away. Of course 15 year old me is me...I still dress relatively similarly...but reading diaries from back in those days is weird for me because when you're 15 you should just be caring about your friends and boys and I don't ever really remember writing that much about the boys at school because I was so terrified that someone would find the diaries and read them. Turns out that only my mother would stoop so low. So I do wonder what I must have written in them. I know there was a lot on my deep concerns about South Africa and Amnesty International's work, and trying to work out how I would ever get to go out with John Taylor. I was primarily a Liberal humanitarian slightly obsessed with anything over 6ft with floppy hair. I just flicked open my 1992 diary which I eventually used the back of for taking notes on Gramsci at Uni, I notice, and for drafting valentines cards to someone. I remained 15 years old until I was way past 21, it would appear. AGGGGGGGH, I've just found my poetry. If it wasn't so far from the Sarah you all know and wince at, I'd totally type some out....oh god - this is the bit where I'm trying to reconcile Christianity with sex. Ohhhhh dear lorrrrrd. Woah - I had forgotten I had a jealous crush on someone called Phil. I really really want to show you these but I'm afraid you'd take them seriously - it's just me when I was 17 and kissing a boy for the first time. I'll post the only one of them (from the autumn of 1991 when I was wearing kate bush dresses and tricorn hats, had hair down to my waist and struggling with my first winter of SAD) this is the one that I actually edited into something that won me prizes the following year. In fact you might even see evidence of my adult turn of phrase in it...I just like that in this version even back then I knew I'd witnessed something huge but had no idea what to say about it...the reason I am embarrassed by the other poems are they are the words of a silly little girl trying to swathe herself in big adult words before she can possibly have a clue - this one I have mainly just written without trying to sound grown-up. I think. Anyway - I wrote this at 1am on the 1st November 1990. (Mrs D, the subject of the poem, was the grandmother of a primary school friend who was at our local old people's home - my best mate and I, being massive Baptists at the time spent a few hours each week doing community service there, she always got the sweet old men, I always got the creepy attic room where Mrs D looked out over the spooky cedars of Old Down) A woman with yellow flaky skin And January hair Sat opposite me Her last utterance of coherent quality About to escape her Guinness-soaked lips I had a dog once But they took him away I nodded in absolute disinterest And waited for lunchtime I keep on remembering a song... The wind howling through those trees Reminds me of Miss Otis The hung her you know I looked at those trees And for a moment the chant of insanity Washed over my eyes And Miss Otis was swinging by her neck from the cedar. I smirked at the atrocities of my bored imagination She had decided to speak before she was silenced By a hand unseen, unheard And famous for its indiscretion If it wants you It'll have you So she spoke Her glass shook with the passion of her words I don't want to be like this I suppose you think I'm batty Well I know I'm not all there any more I don't want to be like this What could I do I nodded and took her down to the dining room I went back to school and had my lunch And a laugh with my mates. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 20th, 2009
perfectlyvague	7:41p	I've watched you dance with danger still wanting more, add another number to the score You know sometimes how a song's meaning eludes you as a teenager and somehow you retain a figment of that innocence and just hum the tune and think it's just some words and a tune and you'll happily sing and listen to the song without realising anything and then you listen to it when you're older and a whole lot wiser...it was only in the car today that I realised what the chorus and title of Domino Dancing actually means *smacks forehead* if it's any consolation I was never that sweet and innocent, I always assumed it referred to clones...I just hadn't joined up all the dots. Also, have any of you guys had an email from Boris about swine flu today? How does he know my mac email address and none of my others??? I don't use it to sign up for anything. I mean I'm rather relieved that the government know my actual proper personal email as it means I won't miss out on INFORMATION. BUT HOW DO THEY KNOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW???? I've just realised, I won't get my Silver BA card this year, my next event is in Paris, so I don't get to fly enough to make it and then I'll lose all of this year's points and have to start again. In other news - due to VagueBerry dying tragically after THE GREAT STORM it looks like in about 3 weeks I'll be the owner of a shiny new 32GB iPhone 3G S. Just have to work out the best deal. Bye bye Orange. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
perfectlyvague	2:35p	I just don't get it (the dance remix) Well, as usual with all festivals, many triumphs and not so many failures, and the ones there were were beyond my control, thank you once again to Orange for leaving me up poo creek without any hand sanitiser when my phone gave up the ghost on the Friday morning. Second time that's happened, and sorry if any of you have texted me. I'm not by the Lake Stage any more. But hopefully you guessed that. For the first time ever, I totally succeeded in bring precisely the right amount of everything, even the extraneous packing like Minotaur head (I must tell you this story later - Dan has alluded to it, but it was probably my highlight of the festival) and the digital radio was worth it...I wasn't carrying too much, I had the right amount of clothes and waterproofs, the correct amount of food...y'know - organised. Laahvley. One thing I feel a bit guilty about is that although my free pass to the festival was made possible by Book Club (for which I feel eternally grateful - there is something immensely rock n roll about driving into the production entrance of a festival and - well there was a lovely drive through a secret wood), I was deeply disappointed the Literary tent this year...I know it's a tough schedule and it must be exhausting keeping it all together, but last year I felt like it was my own little place I could return to and escape. This year it felt weird and I was pushed outside. Okay so that was mainly the weather. Oh I dunno - I should probably try to edit this into something more summative...the best festival I ever went to was one of the Phoenixes...can't quite remember which - am such an old lady now...Latitude was the first time since I'd kind of felt that vibe - but there was such a weird thing going on with the lineup this year, it felt wrong and the good stuff was too tucked away in the increasingly more confusing than ever novel of a programme. Datarock should have been festival openers, Slow Club should have been a Saturday afternoon band not singing their glorious bittersweet hearts out against the thudding bass and angry menace of Magazine. There was either too much choice in one hour and nothing for several...had I not trawled the line-up and franctically downloaded Passion Pit, Datarock and Slow Club I wouldn't have had a clue about most of the acts. What I love about Latitude is the stumbling and discovery, round the corner there might be your newest favouritest band film or author...not so this time. The other main failure was exhaustion and stress. Latitude is a very relaxing place, but after Bestival and two of the bad Glastonburys, festival weather sets me in a terribly frame of mind, not least because having to wear my hiking boots for 15 hours a day for 4 days is galling. This was terrible weather because you had to carry all sorts of clothing with you at all times because you Just Didn't Know what was going to happen. I pointed out to one of my single friends that it was unlikely that it would be possible to meet any hot boys whilst wearing our deeply gorgeous giant waterproofs. And right I was. I wasn't every good at any sort of sleeping for the first couple of nights, in fact I had the craziest delusional insomnia on the Thursday night. I can't possibly share with you what thoughts I had racing through my mind on a loop, but race they did and they were not good. So I spent the entire festival slightly out of my ideal zone. That I get back to find that the minute I'm out of the office one of my bosses has been doing her usual trick of looking at all of the files my job role covers and finding what's missing and sending me emails asking me why stuff from before the time I joined isn't there. Not my fault AT ALL, but the fact that she chooses to do this whilst I am out of the office is frustrating. She only bothers to look at my event files when I am away (don't worry, I made sure those were all perfect before I left, but GRRRR) So I have a day and a half left of holidays - I am tired, but I should probably just try and sleep at normal o' clock... The best thing about Latitude? My friends. The other best thing - it reminded me that with perseverance and and awful lot of application, I could be one of the people who makes magical things happen at Latitude. I do hope so. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
perfectlyvague	11:35p	deluge Dear London...it is quite bad here. But we are warm and dry in a lovely enormous tent of lovely dry. We haven't been outside since the rain came down, and thank you metcheck for predicting the downpour to the hour. Sorry we didn't make it to bookclub or beautiful and the damned...it'll be a lovely day tomorrow. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
perfectlyvague	11:28p	Go to sleep Sarah. I mean it. (Comment on this)
perfectlyvague	8:15p	I need a favour doing because I am MP3 incompetent - there is an...wait for it...Elbow song I really want to put on a mix CD, but because it's an album track it has an ending that makes noooooo sense... Can anyone with the technology and ability chop the track up for me? Like tonight? Yours hopefully... The Vague (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 13th, 2009
perfectlyvague	7:23a	From time to time I find I've lost some need Sometimes you just need the worst thing you think could possibly happen for everything to feel okay again. Funny, that. I'd been rather grumpy recently, sort of felt like a spare part, and whilst I'm not saying that everything's peachy - god the last two months have been SURREAL, things might just turn out okay. I have to stop taking it all so seriously, okay so I'm fragile, but I have good kind friends all over the place and I'll be okay. And so much fun to come now! It came as something of a shock after a debauched weekend...dressing up, flirting with boys (who WAS that charming boy I was winking at all day? He was lovely) drinking gin, taking Martinis far too seriously, dragging everyone off to one of my strategically located secret pubs (don't tell anyone about it, it's the only way to get a seat near Soho on a Friday night, that pub) and then just drinking and playing cards until the larger of the small hours. I'm not quite sure how I functioned at all well during the next day, but play reading Cyrano de Bergerac in the middle of Hampstead heath was on the agenda, so I took myself off to my secret field which wasn't very secret yesterday. I was an hour early because I JUST WANTED TO LIE DOWN and so I just lay down and watched the clouds forming and swirling and moving and Kate Bush came on my iPod singing The Big Sky - and The Guillemots with Little Bear, which could have been written for watching clouds. Reading Cyrano was odd, he is a funny old bugger really. I guess in our reading we had missed how awful it is that he can't tell Roxane how he feels and were sort of playing it as usual for laughs so he came across as a twat - Gerard Depardieu we were not, however, it was fun even if there were less outrageous French accents than I hoped for. By the end of it all I was that sort of tired where I couldn't actually speak any more, so I came home and was asleep when my head hit the pillow. Now here's the thing - as we were walking for the bus, I was reminded that it is 4 days until Latitude. Wow! 4 days?! How can I cope with another weekend of MORE FUN? and then after that another weekend of MORE FUN AGAIN. Oh - and then after that I think there's a weekend off from fun followed by going out with my parallel universe London friends (just like us only further East) and back home for the Baloon Fiesta and my babysitting charge's immense 21st birthday party. How can I have babysat someone who is now 21? Rather relieved that it's time to go to work really. A girl can have far too much fun. But it's me having the fun, so that's okay. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
perfectlyvague	10:09a	What ho! Off to get some brekker then set off for the Chap Olympiad. I adore getting properly ready. I think it only took an hour and a quarter...bingo! (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
perfectlyvague	1:39p	Pretty much the only bit of Adrian Mole I ever liked was the obligatory timetabled by minutes day in each book, in The Secret Diary it's the school trip to London. I did this for my trip to Israel and have never done it since. I guess tweeting is an idea, but I don't want to very much, instead will try to keep a notebook in which I shall be 'bleating' with me every step of the way. After all the road trip to latitude begins with sofa delivery up 5 flights of stairs and dan is involved so there's bound to be an hilarious disaster. So yes, at Latitude, if you see me, please ask to sign my book of bleats and maybe even you know, write something. I've also decided to try our (team rosamicula at Shoot London that is) award winning slogan placards. I really need to post a picture of that little social experiment. People love a good placard. Does this mean I'm finally looking forward to something? Reader, maybe I am, but I dursn't say so. Current Mood: enthralled (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
perfectlyvague	3:18p	Urgenttt!! Lazyweb! Is there any major sporting event taking place in London tonight? I have an american I need to entertain. Cost not an issue. Alas, I can't get him to cardiff, stupid ashes being in wales this week. (4 Comments |Comment on this)