She never missed a boat
Why dreadlocks are filth and appearances are trickery. And a hearing deaf dog.
I can read your mind
"She's having the time of her life"
There in her glittering prime
The lights refract sequined stars off her silhouette every night
I can show you lies (one, two, three, four)
'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit
They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did
Lights, camera, bitch smile, even when you wanna die
He said he'd love me all his life
But that life was too short
Breaking down, I hit the floor
All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, "More"
I was grinning like I'm winning, I was hitting my marks
'Cause I can do it with a broken heart (one, two, three, four)
I'm so depressed, I act like it's my birthday every day
I'm so obsessed with him but he avoids me like the plague
I cry a lot but I am so productive, it's an art
You know you're good when you can even do it
With a broken heart
I can hold my breath
I've been doing it since he left
I keep finding his things in drawers
Crucial evidence, I didn't imagine the whole thing
I'm sure I can pass this test (one, two, three, four)
'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit
They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did
Lights, camera, bitch smile, in stilettos for miles
He said he'd love me for all time
But that time was quite short
Breaking down, I hit the floor
All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, "More"
I was grinning like I'm winning, I was hitting my marks
'Cause I can do it with a broken heart (one, two, three)
I'm so depressed, I act like it's my birthday every day
I'm so obsessed with him but he avoids me like the plague (he avoids me)
I cry a lot but I am so productive, it's an art
You know you're good when you can even do it
With a broken heart
You know you're good when you can even do it
With a broken heart
You know you're good, I'm good
'Cause I'm miserable
And nobody even knows
Try and come for my job
©Jack Michael Antonoff / Taylor Alison Swift
Thank you, Taylor. I’m not a Swiftie. In fact these days it seems the only thing to comfort me is hip hop country music, a genre I am glad has been invented as I don’t like shouty hip hop and I don’t like droning country but the blend of the two works really well. Country gets less dull and hip hip gets less shouty. Shaboozey is in my head because the song is as good as his dreadlocks are awful (I feel like an 80-year-old Telegraph reader when I write this but dreadlocks are just mucky hair) along with Old Town Road. Weird. But thank you, Taylor, Lil Nas X and Collins Obinna Chibueze. Suggestions for other earworm hip hop country below please.
People like sad people who manage to put on a happy show. People like to think you are OK when if they thought about it and about the passage of time they would know you are not and that you can’t be, not yet. It’s easier to assume the best. I get that. But ask me how I am and I will continue to say “I’m not OK” for as long as that is true. And that is still very, very true.
Reading corner
A war you never heard of where they serve blue cocktails.
A pharmacist is very very unhappy.
I believe that I qualify currently as being a “beautiful mess,” (because I just got my hair done and coloured and now I have a wavy bob coloured like a badger) and that clever David Robson has written a whole book about it and here is a Big Idea piece extracted from the book.
A man saved a park.
Rent my house!
Why? Because I have spent 15 years renovating it and it is very nice. Huge rooms, big skies, a serene and friendly village (make friends with your French neighbours and they will give you tomatoes). It’s perfect cycling country, with endless roads where drivers, astonishingly, do not try to kill you, plus cols all around, plus an 80km converted railway line called the Voie Verte which means you can cycle or run from my front door to the Canal du Midi, if you fancy. There’s no garden (not yet: roof terrace plans are afoot), but there is a small terrace for an evening apéritif plus green hills all around, and two gorgeous swimming lakes nearby, neither of which allow motorised craft. Also it’s SO CHEAP.
The animal bit : Patsy Ann
Patsy Ann was a bull terrier who lived in Juneau Alaska. And now I am going to divert and tell you a story about Alaska. I recently attended an event at Cutty Sark. It’s the second time I’ve been to an event there (the first time is when I met the man who ended up giving me a consultancy contract with Lloyds Register Foundation so I’m fond of the tea clipper even though standing under a massive looming hull never not feels weird). This was for an evening to celebrate Big Lil, Lilian Bilocca and the other Headscarf Revolutionaries of Hull, who massively improved trawler safety in the 1960s despite equally massive misogyny and abuse. Brian Lavery, the most Scottish man in Hull, has written a fine book about it and I’ve written about fishwives, and Big Lil, in my book. The evening featured a performance of 12 Silk Handkerchiefs by Reg Meuross and Sam Martyn. Anyroad, the audience consisted of everyone who matters, more or less, in the British fishing industry, and I sat myself next to a man who works at CHIRP, the Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme. He told me that they had hired a data analyst to analyse their huge database. The analyst had no background in maritime safety, and came back and said, “Wow, Alaska is really dangerous, isn’t it?” For a minute, I didn’t get it and then I did. Oh, I said, everything happens at Anchorage? Except it’s “anchorage” and not “Anchorage.”
Well it made me laugh and as my soul is still hovering around my boots, I was grateful for it.
Patsy Ann was born in Oregon in 1929 and died in Juneau in 1942.
Patsy Ann was stone deaf (from birth), but she somehow “heard” the whistles of approaching ships — long before they came into sight — and headed at a fast trot for the wharf. She was never wrong. In fact, on one memorable occasion, a crowd was given erroneous information and gathered at the wrong dock. Patsy Ann gazed at the crowd for a long moment, then turned and trotted to the correct dock.
Between her official ship-greeting, she would visit local shops and businesses for treats. She always got treats. She was, write the authors of www.patsyann.com, the most famous dog west of the Mississippi.
Patsy Ann's activities were recorded by Juneau's daily newspaper: she wandered up and down the aisles of the Coliseum Theater during musical performances, she stopped by local shops for bits of food and her favorite candy bars, and she left her paw prints on a newly paved sidewalk on South Seward Street.
But no-one adopted her. She slept most nights in the Longshoreman’s Hall. She became known as the Official Greeter of Juneau. (If you are Scottish, this does not mean she cried a lot.) She became postcards.
And after she died, “gently”, according to this account, she became a statue too.
There’s a whole one-minute video about her. She’s still there, greeting ships. Let’s all try to die gently, eh?
This is the bit where I politely urge you with Yorkshire grit to a) subscribe or b) upgrade to a paid subscription or c) click on the like button so I know you’ve read and maybe liked this. Needy? Yes. Wallowing? Probably. And?