Dear Justin

Dear Justin,

I’ve been listening to your new album 20/20 Experience and I absolutely love it. Your studio’s eclectic range of synths and your new blow dry really come through in the tracks. I’m sure you get loads of fan mail so I’m not expecting a reply, but I have to ask – is the opening line of Suit and Tie really “I be on my suit and tie, shit tied, shit”? Did you write that? Did Jay Z write that?

Emily

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Hey Emily,

Thanks for writing. Contrary to what you might expect I actually get no fan mail. At all. I’m glad you like the synths. We have 9,486,003 synthetic sounds available in the studio, you’re right! Can you hear them all? I hope so. We tried to get at least one beat of each synth onto the album.

That opening line was written by both Jay Z and I – a result of a game of consequences, if you must know. Write one word, fold the top of the paper over, pass it to the next person, and then back again. You know the game?

Justin

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JT,

Thanks for getting back to me. That is fascinating about how you wrote the lyrics. Since I sent you that email I have listened to 20/20 Experience over and over and it gets better each time. How do you do that?

Emily

p.s. Tesco have an excellent deal on Lurpak Spreadable at the mo. Looked like half price.

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Emily,

What is Lurpak Spreadable?

JT

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JT,

It’s butter that you can spread. You usually have to slice butter when it’s cold, like cheese. You then eat way too much, put on 18lbs every month and die of heart disease. It is a terrible state of affairs but Lurpak Spreadable allows you to get it real thin on the bread. It is dairy’s contribution to helping man live forever.

Emily

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Emily,

I told Timbaland about Lurpak Spreadable and he already knew what it was! I said it was half price and he was out the door and halfway down the road before I could say no.1 hit. And you were right, it’s great. Super smooth and mellow, befitting my new happily married demeanour.

JT

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JT,

That’s great news about the butter and your sickening demeanour. I can’t help noticing you didn’t answer my earlier question about how 20/20 Experience improves on repeat listening though?

Emily

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Justin?

Emily

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It’s a Funny Old World

Amusingly for me and annoyingly for everyone else, I have taken to saying “It’s a funny old world” after pretty much every sentence I hear. I thought if I wrote out some more reasons why I find the phrase relentlessly appropriate, it might get it out my system and I might never have to say it again.

I just really think this world is funny.

It’s a funny old world where Frankee’s F U Right Back is the first track on a two disk Ultimate Hip Hop Collection.

It’s a funny old world where no matter how strong the desire, or intense the boredom at a service station, most of us do not by a chewable toothbrush.

It’s an astonishing world where Rimmel sell nail varnish that dries in 60 seconds.

It’s a funny old world where humans, who have minds that are able to ask the question “is there more to life than this?” and, “what’s the meaning of life?”, are the same humans who settle on an answer of “nah”, and, “it’s probably nothing”.

It’s a funny old world where, by law, a bed may not be hung out of a window, yet it is perfectly legal to fake tan a baby.

Shit, I’ve got to stop. This isn’t helping, this is fun.

And I was going to say it’s a funny old world where over 8 million people tune in to The Voice every week, but that’s really not funny at all.

Die Zauberflöte

Today my theory, that the only words you need to know in any foreign language are ‘how lovely’ and ‘goaaaal!’, ought to have been disproved. However, thanks to my knowledge of the storyline and some cunningly placed surtitles, I have arrived back home from The Magic Flute performed at the Royal Opera House in German, with my theory still intact.

So, rewind a few hours and I am off to see Die Zauberflöte (did you need me to explain that is The Magic Flute in German?) with my Dad. We arrived at the train station on the understanding that we weren’t going to be doing much talking today. Dad had a cough and so couldn’t speak. A cough that, for authenticity’s sake, he began demonstrating last night and, indeed, carried on throughout the opera today. Well played, Dad. Or perhaps he really did have a sore throat and wasn’t merely trying to swerve conversation with his favourite* daughter. I guess the bit where he went and bought cough sweets and cold and flu capsules was pretty convincing.

The Royal Opera House is one of my favourite places to be and the house’s red velvet seats are my favourite seats to sit on. The stunning gold-plated ceiling design makes me feel dizzy as hell to look up at but is gorgeous. And then you’re sat there enjoying it all, propped between a man reading Private Eye to your left, and a man reading The Programme to your right, and, because you are busy taking in your beautiful surroundings, you forget it’s about to get a whole lot better and BAM the orchestra starts.

It’s hard to describe a physical reaction to music – of any sort – but, when talking about Mozart’s The Magic Flute, I hope you know what I mean if I say the music moves right through your whole body, from the ends of your hairs, through a mess of blood cells and neurotransmitters before thrashing about against the inner linings of your flesh. The violins and violas chip in at first before being joined by the cellos and then my favourite (I am wildly biased), the double bass. The flute plays a huge part in the show, obviously, and after an hour or two sat in seat L5 plus a coffee break, the Queen of the Night comes on stage and shows you what it’s really about. If you haven’t seen The Magic Flute, or don’t know the Queen of the Night’s infamous singing part in it, then it is one worth sticking in Youtube. It will sound like absolute crap after hearing the real thing but you’ll then be transported, via links on the right hand side, to various renditions by young boys and girls singing it, perhaps lacking some of the skill on stage today, but performing with arguably more ‘cuteness’. And judging by the hits on the Youtube videos I’ve just watched, cute is popular.

If you ever get a chance to see The Magic Flute at the Opera House, or any opera for that matter, take it!

*probably

Berocca

I have just resurfaced after two days squirming around in my own bed, ruffling up sheets while simultaneously – some may say skilfully – soaking them in my salty, virus enriched sweat. I could see no end to this. Food didn’t pass my lips but I was prepared with numerous bottles of water that I drank over the 48hour period – water which proceeded to seep out of me at the same rate that it entered. If this is too gross for you, perhaps now would be a good time to tell you there is a happy end to this story. In fact I will just skip to the end of the story and introduce the orange, effervescent light at the end of the tunnel – meet Berocca. After nearly two days of violent virus reaction, the contents of my room began to turn from a multi-coloured blur of all things queasy, into a background of blur and some foreground objects coming into focus. I could now pinpoint a leather jacket hanging off the side of my chair that hadn’t quite made it to the hanger when I crash landed into my room 48 hours ago; there was the novel I had been reading, The Clicking of Cuthbert, now a novel with soggy corners; one black Sharpie, unused; a train ticket; and a tube of Berocca. I reached out of my bed and clasped the tube in my hand, using all of my strength to pull the white plastic lid from the green plastic tube. I then snapped one in half, dropped it in the bottle and let it fizz. Apparently you can’t overdose on vitamin C so I went wild and over the next few hours ate loads. It took me back to The Sambuca Days, when rumour surfaced that it is impossible to drink too much Sambuca which I took as gospel and drank accordingly for a good few years. (The origins of this rumour have often been placed on me, but I do not care for origins.) I keep finding new reasons to prefer Berocca over Sammy B. There is no stigma around being up with a glass of Berocca in your hand when your alarm goes off at 7am. And there is very little questioning when you pronounce the work of Berocca as the road to wellness and light. And so, although nothing will ever quite compare to the sticky, sweet liquid of hope that is Sambuca, my days does Berocca come close.

@emilykimber

My Tips for the New Year

The best way to learn is from mistakes and so this year I am hoping to make some more. The following are some of the things I have picked up by living over the last twelve months -

The green stuff is parsley, don’t eat it.

The answer to ‘should I cut a fringe?’ is ‘no’.

Don’t believe anything that you read.

Stick up for yourself ruthlessly.

Forgive others unconditionally.

Auto-correct doesn’t always know best.

Have your own opinions. Your brain works just as well as any Guardian reviewer’s.

Give up everything (books, clothes, collectable items, your smile, your wit). The notion of ‘mine’ is laughed at in both Heaven and Hell.

There is such thing as Heaven and Hell. There is more to this world than what’s going on on this planet. Don’t be dumb.

It is never, ever too early for whiskey.

Regardless of how often you see people, your best friend is the one that knows how thick you spread the Marmite on your toast.

It is to your benefit to accept that there are some things in this world you may never understand – e.g. Harry Hill, decaf coffee, the incessant use of the word ‘literally’ to describe something that is not literal, and fancy dress.

Getting drunk is not the only way to fall asleep. A bottle of Calpol will sometimes do the trick just as well.

Cycling up The Alps on drugs has always been impressive. Cycling up them sober is mind blowing.

By all means try to be good this year. You find out how bad you are when you try really hard to be good.

And finally,

Shit Happens.

P.s. This is a result of personal experience over the past twelve months, so will no doubt be wildly irrelevant to you, and in which case please ignore.

@emilykimber

What(ch)?!

I haven’t worn a watch for years. I haven’t needed to. Not since buying my first time-displaying Nokia 3310, circa 2001. I have now, however, started wearing one again and have been doing so since meeting the stranger of my dreams – a man who I will never see again and who, amongst a little irony, was not wearing a watch himself…

…My phone was at the bottom of my bag where my phone regularly lies if I have any inkling that it might start ringing, or something as equally terrifying as that. So, due to laziness and the stone cold fear of discovering a ringing mobile, I often find myself asking strangers the time.
‘excuse me, do you have the time?’
He pulled back his jacket sleeve, looked purposefully down at his bare wrist, then back up at me and replied in all lying certainty,
’11.45′
It wasn’t. It was about a quarter past four and I was in love.

Buying the watch actually came a little while later. A week perhaps. I was wondering around the shops, contemplating doing some Christmas shopping but, with six days still to go, lacking any proper motivation. I saw a watch that I really liked and quite fancied having it on my wrist. Embarrassingly for me I have oddly thin wrists and so always have to try things on.
‘excuse me, can I try that nice watch on?’
‘no problem’
I put it on. It was way too big. However, it was also £3.50, so I reassured Mark (or whatever men who work in shops are called) that I was going to buy the watch anyway and, on the presumption that it wasn’t really leather, would be happy to shove a Biro through the strap when I got home to add a new hole or two. His response was a simple look of Bemused Acceptance – possibly because the watch had since fallen off over my hand and onto the floor. To be fair to Mark, or the manufacturer that employs him, the hole-making actually required a sharp knife in the end.

I love wearing a watch again. Sometimes I even remember that I’m wearing it, too. And I am nearly over the trauma of being asked the time when I’d only had it on for a mere five days:
‘excuse me, do you have the time?’
‘yes yes, let me just check’, I said, scrabbling around in the bottom of my bag for my – please don’t let it be ringing – phone. After a few minutes of this bizarre human interaction, human 2 said,
‘sorry, isn’t that a watch you are wearing?’
‘oh, err’ (mortified) ‘no, that’s just for decoration’
I had forgotten I was wearing a watch, but “for decoration”?!
How can the man of my dreams make me gawp in awe at the confidence with which he passed on made-up information, while I can manage nothing but the most gauche fumbling and, frankly, weird lies. In hindsight, saying anything else would have been better than saying that. Maybe him and I are not meant to be together after all.

@emilykimber

Road Trip

It would be hard to call the M25 the scenic route. Nevertheless we took our time on it. Five hours of our time to be exact – four hours of which were spent covering a mere eleven miles of the shitting grey arse M25.

One hour in and with two miles of M25 tarmac under our wheels, Ellie Golding comes on the radio at which point it becomes really hard to see how this will end and sympathy for whoever crashed at junction 31 is gone. After some radio issues, a CD copy of the Black Eyed Peas’ album stopped us from killing ourselves. Their old album. Before they were shit. Before Fergie. (Fergie: it is by coincidence only, that they got shit when you joined).

Two hours and six miles covered.
We played the animal game. Me somewhat more reluctantly than Anna, on the basis that I think all games suck. I agreed to play when Anna explained that you end up imagining penguins with really long necks, such is the way your brain and the question answers combine. The game was simpler than I could admit which caused me to lose said game. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is required for each question about your imagined animal but I couldn’t manage that. And so “is your animal bigger than a cat?” was answered with “no. But it’s bigger than a kitten!!!” thus giving away more information than necessary and putting Anna at a constant advantage.

Three hours later and eight miles along.
We were alternately passing and being passed by Fit Guy in the red transit which was covered in stickers that read Lambert Brothers Limited. [note to self: google Lambert Brothers Ltd.] The traffic moved a tiny bit and we lost him. I screamed and whacked the roof. Anna said she wished she was at Sarah’s already but it came out like “I can’t sit in here with you any longer”.

Hour four, mile ten.
The Darkness came on. I don’t think he’s slept with kids so we turned it up. Anna turned the engine off on the fast lane of the M25 and put her makeup on while I tried to guess what drivers where reading at their wheel in the accident(al) ‘jam. The Sun proved most popular. And only one novel was spotted – at the wheel of an Ecomotive Leon. I spent a long time trying to find meaning between the book and the make of car. But only concluded that I may have got the make of the car wrong.

Happy Christmas.

Santas, plural

For extremely boring reasons involving trains and their times, I sat for twenty minutes on a metal chair with a Nero coffee (a loose term) yesterday, while upwards of forty-five Santas passed by.

I was going to brush my bad feelings toward fancy dress aside, but I suspect said feelings may have played a notable part in my doomed discovery. Judge me accordingly.

I saw girl Santas and boy Santas, tipsy Santas and bald Santas and I am sure a few Father Christmases, too. Amongst the Santas were children, parents, John Lewis bags, UGGs and an icy wind coming in from outside.

My problem with this world is not that people walk through train stations dressed as Santa. Okay, that might be half my problem. But my real problem is the nervousness with which these particular Santas behaved. If you are going to go out in public on a Saturday dressed up as Santa to meet up with lots of other Santas you cannot be fucking unsure about it.

It was 4pm and groups of Santas seemed wary as to which other Santas they ought to stand with. Some shuffled their feet. Some checked with their mate, Santa, whether he definitely knew the way. Their ‘chanting’ was barely audible. And one Santa placed a Strongbow can on the floor then gently kicked it to the side, out of the way. They were annoying me but only being half-heartedly annoying.

If you are going to be a chump, be a chump properly. Like the man who dropped his pasty on the floor, flicked the remains from his hand onto my leg, then strode off, leaving the pasty by my feet along with a purposeful, lingering smell.

Ouch

I am being Mr Hyde today a.k.a. a twat. At least I was, earlier. That’s better. It’s in the past. But that doesn’t mean I’m forgiven. Nor, unfortunately does it mean it won’t happen again. I knew it was going to happen today because I woke up and my first thought wasn’t: “I wonder what time it is, peace on Earth, I’m alive”, it was: “I think I forgot to put my bookmark in, and why the fuck is it still dark”.
I got up anyway. Tried to wash the disastrous mood away with Head & Shoulders in the shower, then went downstairs, did everyone else’s washing up and began contemplating Buddhism.
That was 9am. It lasted until midday and could have gone on a lot longer than it did. However, and I know this from a lot of practice, the trick for getting out of a bad mood is to snap out. In fact a quick turn is perhaps the only way to change my mood. No amount of slowly trying to make things better will work. You cannot drink, smoke or snort your way to gradual happiness. (Shame, I know.) Recognising the mood is the first step to snapping out of it but often this can just add guilt and little else. Laughing has definitely been known to work, as has seeing a particular person but there a few of these ‘persons’. A fail-safe method, though, is music. I often forget that it works but it is magic when it does. I am practiced in this method and if you would like to benefit from my misery just ask, I’ll send you my top five tracks.
I am going to end on a bad note, though. It will probably sound like E minor. Because there are some days when none of it works. Not laughter, music or people. And those are the days where you mix bad thoughts with both guilt and stubbornness and it feels like being ill. I have no advice for those days. People really are bastards and Made In Chelsea really is shit.

London Buses

I’ve been Up North for a month or so now and have already become fond of most things here, but there is one thing I really miss. I miss London’s buses.

I would start with the visual – bells, seat covers and letters (I once had to get on 34a) – all of which are superior in London, but I don’t want you to know that I am superficial so I will start somewhere else… with a joke made by a bus driver when I counted out not enough change:
“how far’s that going to get you, love?”
“erm, the roundabout just before the school?”
Oh. It was a joke. Bus drivers don’t make jokes in London and I miss that.

But perhaps more bizarre Up Here, is that no-one puts their bag on the seat next to them. What sort of lonesome life does a desperate bid such as leaving the seat next to you empty suggest? In London it is just about to be taken to the next level. Talking to Courtney about it in the summer, I learnt that the best way to keep the seat next to you empty is not, in fact, to put your bag on it, but to rub the seat suggestively as you look up into the offending sitter’s eyes. I thought this new technique sounded brilliant but it will catch on in Australia before it catches on Up North.

There is so much more about London’s buses that I miss. The occasional pigeon hitching a ride and the guaranteed pandemonium to ensue; the patches of grease on the window to show where someone has lain their head; and the bus drivers who get off at traffic lights to buy things like ginger beer. But most of all I miss the rare sense of community that is shown. For what greater bond can be felt than the collective sigh as someone “can’t be arsed, man” to pay their fare, the whole bus lowering a few inches as the driver switches the engine off. A few insults are offered from both up and down stairs, and a lady in a suit and trainers offers to pay.

It is nothing short of beautiful, and I miss it.

@emilykimber