Answer to the not eating question

Location Amidst piles of unpacked camera equipment at home | Mood Beginning to get excited. Just remembered I always wanted to go to New Orleans (for the music, but still). | Date 2 June 2006
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
Amidst piles of unpacked camera equipment at home
Mood: 
Beginning to get excited. Just remembered I always wanted to go to New Orleans (for the music, but still).
Soundtrack: 
New Pet Shop Boys album, 'Fundamental'. Only medium good so far. Like meeting distant relatives every couple of years. Such high hopes, usually dashed.
Ailments: 
Fear butterflies
Date: 
2 June 2006
Current crisis: 
Taxi arriving in two hours, chaos all around
Current silver lining: 
Found a cat-sitter

Lizzie had a late night brainwave, which was executed by 8.30 this morning (the pace is speeding up - something I'd have said was impossible even two weeks ago).

Went round her friend Fenella's house - former lawyer, one of the Crude funders - and raided her wardrobe of corporate-but-funky outfits. Took only 20 mins to get a couple of shirts and a jacket each and come away new people. Also had a very brief tour of their newly eco'd house, which never fails to encourage.

Then by 9 we'd finished an enormous breakfast (oh yeah, got the answer to my where-does-the-energy-come-from question. You use up all your reserves, lose tonnes of weight and then turn into a ravished eating monster. Am having cravings for specific foods, so have obviously lost various essential nutrients).

Then The Boy spontaneously (without knowing my doubts from yesterday) said on email and drunken phone message how proud he is of me. Aw shucks. Reminds me of years ago when I read about the Narmada villagers behind the dam deciding to stay and drown rather than leave their ancestral land, I said to my dad and Long-Term, bought-house-together, set-up-spanner, joint-custody-of-cats boyfriend that I was leaving tomorrow to make a film about it. They both said how proud they were of me. I felt great. Then the next day the fear kicked in and I was really tempted not to do it. Seeing as I'd already made them proud, what was the point of going through all the difficulties? What more could I hope to achieve?

Long Term was pretty damn smart come to think of it (and smart, well dressed, too - he'd have been able to solve the dressing-up problem, for sure). I developed a big fear of flying around the time I started going off to do scary films. After a few years he suggested that maybe I'd just made it up, subconsciously, to transfer the fear of something really worth being scared of - life in Indian jail, for example - to the flying part in order to trick myself into doing the really scary bit. Soon as he said that I wasn't scared of flying anymore. But more scared of the scary stuff.

Anyhow, now we've solved the outfits problem, all I have to do before the 3.30am taxi is de-flea the cats, backup 14 hours of tapes (oops), water the plants, re-pot an escapee cactus, wash & pack clothes, finish this diary, call my Granny and Great Uncle, tidy the house, meet Best Pal for dinner and motivation, have a quick sing-along with Sister, search recycling box for missing legal papers, clean cat's teeth and pick out some songbooks in case we stumble into a New Orleans music session.