"Come round. I need to show you my pants."
Luckily, my mate Sarah is used to me and, rather than getting offended that I was making a crude attempt to lure her away from her lovely boyfriend by hinting (not exactly subtly) at Sapphic delights, she responded with a world-weary (or to be more precise, Emily-weary) "What have you done?"
And so I had to confess.
In a scale of magnitude, it's not exactly up there with the war-crimes everyone in every government seems to be up to nowadays to have gone all the way to Sheffield*** (10 hours round trip) to cover an event at a lingerie shop for a feature, only to spend more money than I'm getting paid for the feature on lingerie from said shop. Frivolous, yes. Consumerist, yes. Money that would have been much better given to charity, yes (albeit grudgingly, and said with one covetous eye on the big bag of small sexy pants that make me feel all smiley just for owning them) Sure, they weren't made in sweat shops, they technically count as 'office clothes' given the amount of features that I have to strip off for, and I did need some new pants, if not quite as many as I bought (but they were all so pretty). Nonetheless, I feel guilty - which is something of a recurring theme recently. Other reasons I've been feeling guilty include:
a) Not posting to my blog for long enough that friends have emailed me asking 'are you dead?' (In fervent over-justificiation for something that will have had an infinitessimally negligible impact on anyone's life, I will explain that I've been busy writing two books, the first of which is due in at the end of the month, the second of which is due in a month later, on top of doing all my usual freelance stuff and going off on various 'adventures' for Scarlet)
b) Having such an unhealthy lifestyle that on one of said adventures, going to circus school to learn flying trapeze, static trapeze, acrobatics and juggling, I almost ran away (OK, limped away) during the break because it was too damned tiring.
c)...and almost bursting into tears at circus school because I was utterly inept and, despite the loveliness of the instructors, was plunged back into the 'last to be picked at games' trauma of school (which I'd love to use as an excuse for the aforementioned unhealthy lifestyle but it was over 15 years ago so, frankly, I should be over it by now. And it doesn't excuse the 'drinking and chain-smoking my way through my 20s and 30s [to date]' which is probably more responsible for my wheezing lungs and failure to be able to run around for 15 minutes without getting a stitch. Turns out that it doesn't matter if you're naturally fairly thin. My fitness level appeared to be - no joke [really, no joke] -the same as that of the 40+ rather large gentleman on the course. Who became my new best friend because it meant I had someone to play catch with* when I failed to grasp the principles of juggling despite an hour's tutorial from someone clearly skilled at teaching, because everyone else in the class other than me and New Best Friend mastered three balls in as many minutes)
d) Getting so inebriated at the Look launch party that it seemed like a good idea to get a rickshaw back to my mate's house, dragging another (less inebriated) writer with me, despite it being a 20-minute plus ride for the poor sod cycling us along. In the rain. And then managing to give myself a rather lovely souvenir of a sprained ankle, 2mm wide, 1mm deep chunk carved out of the knuckle of my right thumb (my but the scab's attractive) two four-inch bruises/grazes on my knees, and a horrifying realisation that I really am too old for this kind of thing and if I'm not careful, I'm going to end up being the screeching nicotine-clawed bag lady in the corner of a pub scaring young men into buying her drinks in the vain hope that she might go away, courtesy of an accident involving heels, a pothole and the excesses of alcohol in my poor, long-suffering body
e) When said incident occured, rather than thinking anything sensible such as 'ooh, I should get a plaster' or even 'fuck, that hurts' opting for 'shit - that means doggy style's out for at least a fortnight'
f) Realising thumb injury means that I can't light a cigarette with my right hand and thus gives me a great excuse to give up smoking. And instead deciding to light my cigarettes left-handed (particularly tricky when I'm on the phone as it requires swapping the handset from left to right hand mid-conversation, no doubt missing the point when a friend tells me she's been dumped by her boyfriend, or has decided to move to Uraguay and become a nun because her life isn't worth living in this country any more, to which I'll respond with 'so anyway, did I tell you about my drunken thumb/knee injury?' because I was concentrating more on sucking poisonous smoke into my lungs than on the person who I apparently care about.**)
g) Not catching up with half my friends and most of my family for far too long because I've been too busy writing, having misadventures (as well as the circus, I also went on a date with this guy for Scarlet, and have been to various burlesque nights for fun) and sleeping. Sorry. Must. Try. Harder. I'll call you soon, really.
On the plus side, I do have some things to feel virtuous about: actually doing the flying trapeze (once) rather than bottling it when I saw how high up it was; being on word-count for my books; helping (but not enabling) a recovering alcoholic mate to get to 9 1/2 weeks off the booze (and counting); writing a 1,200 article for one of the women's mags in 3 hours because they had someone fall through with copy at the last minute; buying a skint mate a nice present. And, err, hmm, yeah, OK, I need to sort out the guilt/virtue ratio there. I guess some time (possibly the rest of my life) eating salads, avoiding alcohol and nicotine, drinking water, and going for bracing walks by the sea - or even doing proper exercise - is in order.
Oh, and Sarah never did come round to see my pants. I hope she feels guilty.
*This is not a joke. We really did play catch. It seemed better than bursting into tears, and by that stage we needed something, anything, to give us a sense of achievement.
** If I've actually done this to you, sorry. It is an addiction you know. But hell, guilt trip me about it and I'll probably send you flowers.
*** Re-reading through this, I guess I should feel guilty about travelling 370 miles to buy some pants