peace in my peaceweek

so i have enjoyed peaceweek so far
i went and did some meditation with a load of hilarious old west indian women at our lady's cathlic church in moss side. the hugged me and called me baby and practially ran me over when i was handing out the candles at the end..
i got very lost trying to find the prayer room in longsight, but it meant i walked around longsight for a long time, never finding the church but instead finding longsight, which i've never really done before.
the office is funny, its such a mess, peace fm is on all the time with some crazy guy either instructing people to never trust the police (helpful) or with annoucements for all kinds of wonderful projects and things happening in the area, or adverts each about ten minutes long, all fighting over being the best caribbean take away on the parkway....its funny, i like it. its so far outside of what i normally spend my time listening to, its really good.

so i am still struggling with the lawyer conundrum. you know those times when you have a decision to make, and people pray or whatever and they say oh i just feel like god says you can choose, that either way is good, you jsut decide and he'll give you the grace to do either thing..and you always go, oh no, that sucks, i'd rather he just told me outright what to do. thing is, i know now is one of the times when he will decide, but that's so much harder, because it means i have to be really listening. and i feel this huge pressure in me, that i am putting in myself, to have the best possible listening ears i have ever had, so that i can listen right and make good choices. and i don't, i haven't, i can't
but equally, its blantenly one of those times when he's not gonna tell anyone else.
dammit

sorry that was rambling.

so, my fast is done. forty days was up last night. i ate white chocolate mice. and this is why i am more confused, not the mice, but the fast, because i really prayed god would tell me what to do by the end of it....but then, some people seem to think it often all comes clear in the aftermath. either way i'm a bit scared i think that i might have somehow missed the boat. or maybe the point.....

with reference to the last post, i am still content. but what i have realised in the last couple of days, is that even while i am content, i am not at all satisfied. and (she says quietly) i'm not ever sure i want to be, but with it i just feel so frustrated and reading something in howie's last night about living the life you love.....it kinda made me cry in the bath. i want a job that i love. that's all. and a man, would be nice.

its the european dream

please don't misunderstand me dearest readers...i am not sad, or moaning (for once!)...am just frustrated at not feeling like i'm making progress finding my way. a helpful boy pointed out though that just loving jesus and saying thanks for a while with no questioning would probably be the best way to go.

so the peace parade is this evening. do come if you can.

drago dragonfly i love you

the march family..

i would just like to tell you about my house, and the family that god seems to be growing in it...
i have spent good time with kates the last couple of days, and the more i hang out with her the more i am amused and challenged and encouraged by her. the friendship we have is fast becoming something like those surrogate sisters that only jesus can form in two people, and we are helping one another and laughing together alot.
iain is the man of the house; as he is wont to point out he has been there the longest, and as he is also the self-appointed energy monitor, it kind of makes him the dad by default. the jazz debate seems to have subsided lately, and with him in the house there is always another interesting book half-read on the kitchen table when i come in.
john is the new boy, my anti-nme friend, and he is so funny. i will be sad when he goes away next week. i came down the other day to find him listening to the third or even fourth cake album...who the chuff knew there even were more after fashion nugget..?! so that was good..he humours us when he catches us talking about god, or praying or jeremiah or some such, and wryly smiles like he knows we might have a point but he's not ready to raise his objections to it all with us just yet.

sometimes, and more often lately, i think about haiwaii...or vancouver...or kampala..or matsumoto.......and barcelona, santiago, iceland, georgia, belarus, tarifa, salamanca, san sebastian, venezuela, los picos.....the places i always used to think were necessary to me, dreams that ended up kind of defining me..na who's going to spain...these places held my thoughts and daydreams for years..but now i think i just want to be where god wants me to be, no questions asked, no rueing the day, no what ifs or how comes they get to, no why didn't that work or how long will i have to stay here or shit i haven't been on a plane for nine months...

see even now i'm tempted to express to try and explain it away, or excuse it almost by saying oh i still don't think i'll be staying in manchester forever..i shan't say it...it wouldn't be strictly true, i don't know what i think anymore..i guess i'm learning how to be content...wierd heh.....

would still love to be in minsk right now though....

my name is luka

so i am at home, in the shire, and its lovely and warm in the house and lovely and oldly familiar outside
the new inn last night was fun, got mauled by the now-engaged rob and amy who it seems really do miss me when i'm away, had a lovely time not drinking, a really good time not smoking, and then did sober kareoke....and ended up singing luka as an encore and being thursday's grand finale

so my list of things i must not do last night
smoke
drink alcohol
fancy luke
i acheived not doing them entirely well
hurrah!
smug smug smug
not really
thanks god you are a wonder and a gem
i also laughed alot alot and then me and fi got home and stayed up talking about boys and me being a lawyer and her living by the sea and getting the best room

all in all, a triumph of an evening
loved it
and i would like to take this opportunity to say sal thanks thanks THANKS i love you, and jason mraz here we come baby!!! alright!

how very odd..

lst night, i received two text messages within about half an hour of eachother, saying that these two different people had just been - independently of eachother - waching the film of sense and sensibility, and that it had reminded them of me

i can't think about it for too long because its wierd, but it is wierd, isn't it..?!
needless to say, i shall now be picking up that wonderful book myself this evening to take on my train journey
for i am off to the shire later, to celebrate my irishness in style
and to not smoke
even when in the pub
my favourite pub
with my brother
eeeeek

i made a new friend who knows the nme is wrong

so i watched crash last night
i haven't been got by a film this much for a long time, i just loved it.
i loved everything about it
its certainly the first time that i have loved a film this much that has also won the best picture oscar.
i seem to have lost all sentence-forming ability here don't it?!
sorry
i am well anyway, apologies for my blogslack, thing is, some things are so muddled just now that not even blogging has appealed
muddled, yes
becoming a lawyer...not so sure
some of you may have heard on the eddie grapevine that i am considering with the lord the idea of training in human rights law, taking the bar and then rushing off to save the world.
i can assure you dear reader that my will in this direction has remained at a fairly stable 30% in favour for the last few weeks, without increment.
i have, however, had to learn certain things about myself while thinking about it all, and realised that am l quite a scardy cat, with alarmingly little faith in my own abilities. and, perhaps even sadder than that, surprisingly little faith in you aall, because i didn't want to blog about it cos i thought you would howl with laughter
howl away, my loves, its nowhere near a done deal and i need to be stopped in my tracks if it is, as i suspect, the most woeful carrer idea yet
however if you have anything sensible to add to the debate, that would also be lovely
i go
fyi its peaceweek in like two days' time, the prayer room is open as of sunday, 24 hours a day, at the nazarene church on plymouth grove...go pray good people, go pray
peace fm is 106.5
its interesting

the nicotine factor..

ok, i really do not want mine to become the blog that only ever goes on about smoking and how wierd it is to quit (wierd, more than difficult..) but seriously, check this out for an unprecedented gaunlet of events and experiences that i have run in the miraculous escape from smoking that has been my london experience so far this weekend..
1..a christian conference
2..seeing liv
3..seeing hattie, who, although she has never been a smoker, is every now and again, a very lovely and conspiratorial smoking companion
4..being in london
5..topshop
6..on oxford street
7..on a saturday afternoon
8..in half-term
9..the pimlico balcony
and yet, check me out..still minty and unsmoked..
may the lord be praised.
so i have enjoyed london, which is alarming in itself.....not only that, i have considered, without laughing, the possibility that i could live here one day......i have also realised that all my rage towards the place has been a strange but not unique mixture of fear, lostness, and sheer exhaustion at the speed and busy-ness of the place.....have thereby decided that none of these reasons are good or fully deserved, and that not a one of them proceeeds from grace or jesus rationality in any way...i here would like to say sorry to the old dear for slagging her for so many years and ask if we may from now on be friends..(..providing i can live in pimlico..).....
i would also like to say that manchester from here seems shabby and old...and ever so nice...in a well-worn sofe kind of way....am oddly (although, it is where my cds are, so i guess not..) looking forward to getting back...
the speak day of action is tomorrow...i cannot say i am looking forward to it...am looking forward to being on the A556 though...
loveanna x x x

day twelve in the no-smoking big brother house..

so i think i have past the worst of the rage...
monday was awful, i hated everyone..that was day nine..
tuesday was pretty bad too, i was snappish. all day.
this was my breaking of personal best day.....all previous records now broken..
today i am well and not at all angry with the world. last night at the lovely apollo was tricky, but only in the sense that, like sal says, "the smoke makes me feel sick, but i'd still have one.." its true, i would, but it is gross.
feasting on nuts and vegtables, snacking on fine greenbeans and drinking more water than i had previously thought helpful, the daniel fast is progressing nicely. i am learning a great deal about how incapable i am of being nice without food, unless god is nice for me.
i do not mean, dear reader, to alarm you at my sudden bout of pious behaviour, it will pass..
and no doubt more quickly than it should
but really, its more of an excuse than anything..to explain that i won't go to pub til this thing is done, and i may not even drink after my 21 days are up, if it means i'll want to smoke. so the osborne and i are no more for now, which means i havne't seen matt and fran for weeks it seems....i think northenden has piked my friends...
this week is one of those wierd ones where you're away one weekend and then the following one too, and so feel like you're jsut washing clothes to pack them again, and seeing people just to tell them you won't be seeing them....complexitated...but soundcheck beckons and as much as i am not a woolly-tights-wearing vegetarian, i do have a soft spot for speak, and in particular misses cohen watto and housman ...and, naturellement, mr and mrs brocklehurst.
all this means, though, that london and i, are about to face the very real test of me without smoking. london rage, as many of you know, is a severe and surprising condition who's rapid onset takes no prisoners and leaves behind it no friends..london, in advance, i offer you my apologies.
jason mraz last night was good. his bad songs are so, so bad, but the good ones....oh.....kind of like the 'crows in that respect....zero percent interest with the big black guy on his djembe and singing harmony...that was my anthem of last winter and then last night it was a hundred better even than before...so he was definitely worth even the james blunt episode that followed. having said that...no, don't panic, i'm not converted, but i do think he's a nice chap, with a lovely speaking voice, a (at times) dubious singing voice, but really with songwriting ability, on the days he really means what he's writing about, that is heart-scrapingly good. no bravery is in my opinion the finest anti-war song since dylan and while i know not many have tried it in the interim, it is just a wonderful song.
the whole evening was a winning event though in the category of...watch sal come alive....i enjoyed that the most
it is rainy today
it is in fact, one of those days when manchester is eZackly like people who have never been to manchester imagine that it is like.
well done there
must dash, soup to be had..
sorry for my blogging tardiness...liz don't get so cross, all in good time my girl..

crash landing..

ok so the hysteria of the last post has subsided, and i have emerged from the wreckage feeling a lot more loved and a lot more peaceful. there were more people in my house yesterday probably than there have been at any one time since oria's leaving party, and while i found it odd and rather unsettling, once the praying started, it was just clear that god was there and loving us and we made a bit more headway into being the living, moving, breathing body that we are meant to be together. and it felt like family too, and i've been missing that
i gave up smoking, not going to harp on about it, but i do feel like once again its the chance to start something over, to treat my body better and show it a bit more love.
as for grace, not worried now...i will learn, and in fact have learned more of it since last writing. i hope to carry on learning about it.
thank you for the emails etc, you guys are lush..x
dan, when a ticket is in my hand, i'll let you know..x

tell the truth as if it were lies

i don't know what that means..its the name of a song by kathryn williams
just been thinking about telling the truth.
and about how some people just know the truth about you, just know who you are....just know that you are not ok...
emma cowan came home yesterday...she's been gone three or four months.....she took one look at me and knew that i was not ok.
i talked to watto last night on the phone and before i knew it i was being more honest than i can remember being for years.
she already knew a lot of it i think
the people that really really know me aren't here any more. the people that know me here now, i love them, and they me, i think, but i don't feel very known....this is my fault.
a couple of weeks ago, i spent the evening with someone who i would class among my favourite people. turned out that my last year had almost entirely bypassed this person and they had no idea about what had bene going on since...well, since barcelona really.
the underneath truth of it is that facing up to how shit i feel and how shit things are in a lot of ways and how much i don't understand god and feel disappointed in him...its all so verging on self-pity, and also is horribly reminiscent of being depressed, which is something i have no desire to look into doing again...
the real truth is that i don't believe in god fixing or changing things. i know i believe it in theory, and i know that people have differing levels of believing this at different times....but i just don't. and as watto in all her wisdom cautiously asserted, maybe its a remnant from the catholic genes....? ..that strange mixture of self-reliance and self-doubt... that says - i made the mess, i have to clear it up...i spent the money, i have to pay the debts.....i screwed up the plans, i don't deserve any new ones...other people are always going to get things before you because they are nicer and holier....you'll always be watching people do what they want to do, from your desk with someone else's photocopying on it waiting to get done.
its quite a realisation for a thursday when half an hour before you were at book club with people from work at the rampant lion
i think that there must be a stage of life while in a cocoon, that hurts. where new limbs are growing and the cocoon isn't, or where there just isn't enough room to move around, and the wanting to get out gets worse and leaves the bug feeling suffocated and impatient.
i feel like that. i'm sorry this is all so dramatic, but i also think that wanting to not be emotional or intense so that certain people among my friends would still want to hang out with me, has helped to add to the months of not thinking honestly and clearly.
so....this is the truth for me right now. and god is near, he's at hand and ready to wade in and take over.....i think i just need to quit smoking

like a nineties noah..

i would like to register several pieces of news and or information with you this evening...
1..i am very very glad that emma is coming home in a couple of days' time
2...i am glad i do not live so near jimbo's as fran or i believe i should eat food from there more often than would be advisable
3...iain went for an interview today for a job that would mean he would move out of the house...i can't think of one reason why he wouldn't or shouldn't get it, and so am feeling somewhat glum in advance of his almost certain imminent departure from nuestro hogar
4...i miss cate and ozme alot these days
5...having a new housemate called katie is good. she's lovely and from the west country
6...the garden idea is still there....i've faced up to alot of rolling eyes and yeah na good ones and ok yeahs lately, since voicing the idea to those around me and i have come to realise they have a point and that the whole wanting to be steadfast thing could maybe start with seeing one idea through to some sort of conclusion. i would like some flowers and honeysuckle and nice grass to be this conclusion in a few months' time. people at my work have been practising standing behind doors and fences for when the groundforce people are all waiting for me to come back from the shops to find my garden all done up and lovely, with tommy walsh and all grinning
7...i went for a lovely walk with drago ben and ric on sunday afternoon...something about sunday afternoon walks in fields always makes me feel more settled or just more like i know what i'm about
8...i got the wardrobe into my room that matches everything else and well i just sorted it all out a lot more. i like my room.
9. i miss jorge. i got an email from him which is the first one in about a year or maybe two and well, now i really know i miss him
10...ok i think that's it
no wait
11...i can't believe liz gets hair that good from wash and go....who knew?!

if only there was a keyboard key with a small heart on it

see...i love simon amstell
he is my favourite tv presenter
and in this wonderful article about the sad, sad death of smash hits! magazine, finally, someone else makes the link between the humour found during the late 80's and early 90's in that wonderful publication, and this man who succeeds in making (what should be) one of the worst programmes on television, absolutely hilarious
read this article and then tell me popworld isn't the television equivalent of the rag of all our youths....
if it wasn't the rag of your youth.....ask yourself why...

i should have married tom goode..

i have almost lost friends over how much i love the good life
truth is, i love things that grow, and things that are green, and things that are fresh and that smell like god just that minute made them
there are so many community gardens in manchester....my little thing that i am organishing for peaceweek, my little project, is the idea of peace being gained and sought in community parks and gardens in the middle of stinky moss side and rusholme and longsight.......
i'm excited about it, but i kind of feel like i need to get my own hands dirty if i'm really going to get it myself, and then be even more excited about it. one of the coolest people i know is louise, who i work with at the blood bank. she is a trained horticulture type, who dug for years professionally, and a few months ago cried because her garden spade broke one weekend and she'd had it for about 20 years. i want to love a garden spade.
i know, i know, you all know me, and i won't do it, and i'll harp on about it for a while but then once the actual activity comes along, i will not bother and the idea and the excitement will slope off, entirely beaten by the legendary laziness of na......
please, please, if you love me at all, make me do it.....remind me to plant something, learn something, go, when they invite me to a meeting of the friends of platt fields park....campaign the council for some money and a man to fix up the sorry excuse for a bit of a community garden on my street....buy me a trowel....then i'll have to do it...
do it do it do it
and then maybe i'll give up smoking.....

sucked in..!

see how easy it is to get comments around here..!?
the smoking thing, gets em every time...

tea and cigarettes on doorsteps..

in the last week i have smoked on the following doorsteps..
my own
fran's
the saltshaker's
ben and drago's
john and lorna's
denno and rikes'
tim and russell's
its a mug's game, smoking...but i like it...

the oc: 3 x 1

oh..
the mew series.
it started yesterday.
what an episode.
sal scoffed all the way through, and i didn't even care! i maybe should have cared a bit, that she hated it, i mean i was at her house...
thanks sal..
but its just so nice to have some little weekly addiciton back in my life, since i finally seem to have kicked the bingo dream...weekly addicitons are just so much more rewarding..and less demanding, obviously, than all the daily ones i have on the go...
seth, summer, ryan, marissa....not to mention sandy.....hooray!

generally had a rather lovely weekend, actually...for a fuller summary of my saturday, see sally's blog..and yesterday i hung out with john and lorna (after the oc)...which was brilliant.....and last night i prayed....so a winning fin de semaine all round..
can't believe i forgot kirsten...! she's great too..
not so sure about jimmy any more...he did get lectured by sandy though, which was good...high time..
ok i'm going now..x

desiderata..

evening..
i re-read this poem today, and recalled how much i loved it and why
i return to manchester tomorrow
if you are there, i will hope to see you soon
if you are not, no doubt you have some plausible reason, and i hope that whatever ever it is, its going well with you
i am glad to be going back
thank you, the shire, my shire, for my lovely two weeks of you
come on then 2006, what you saying...?!

january sixth..

...is the holy feast of the epiphany
i'm afraid i may have promised too much
i believe now, in the safe, cold light of 2006 that i had no such thing on new years eve...it was merely a beastie boys-fuelled moment of nostalgic rebellion
am currently re-assessing whether rebellion or rather rebelliousness is a necessary or in any way profitable feature of my character
its under review
i'll keep you posted

btw i realise i'm a few minutes ahead of myself
its back-door smoking time, sorry...

treading the path of least resistance..

so i got a call this morning bidding me to reurn to the nbs for another round of eight to ten weeks...followed by a call from louise, giddy at the prospect of eight to ten weeks of na and louise running the show without carol....gotta say i'm not too unhappy about that part myself..!
so i'll be back in manchester at the weekend...ready to rock on down at the blood bank...
you know it makes sense...

bricking it...

so i'm going back to manchester tomorrow. and yet again i find myself feeling like a total loser. i don't want or need or deserve sympathy here, i feel sick, i'm so scared. two weeks ago i was happy enough there. now, i have no real job to speak of to go back to, and i feel shit. i'm sick of this. sick of feeling aimless and directionless. sick of looking around me and seeing plan after plan being successfully or at least gracefully executed by my friends, while i fuck up another one of my half-baked, juvenile plans and end up broke again.
its all rather familiar and tedious, isn't it?
i'm almost ready to tell you about the epiphany of nye
another glass of wine, and we'll see....

fyi..

if you are intrigued about the new profile picture, let me tell you a story..
this is the story i read about three years ago
*story*
and have wanted to go there ever since..
i just came across the picture again today, and thought i would share..
for further reading..

untitled..

i was playing harry potter top trumps just now, with fi, and my mum is standing there, usual position, half-sitting on the radiator, tea in hand...and out of nowhere, she says, na, when i was exactly the age you are now, i had two children.
i had snape on magic 85, fi had mcgonagall on magic 96...
what can you say to that...?

here goes..

and there goes another..
well last night was good. i laughed alot alot, drank aftershock for the first time, got groped by man called kinky ken who wears a lot of pvc and red heels that no woman could wear and live...met fabian the pirate boy, met someone called stretch..,..re-met the dancing boy, from crackers, not while i was in crackers, but after, in the cellar of cafe rene...not dancing...wierd...saw darren neeley, and none of you know who he is, but that was oddly nice, given that it was darren neeley...saw a girl that i used to babysit for..danced the ymca in crackers, along with several other eighties disco numbers, i think even the hokey-cokey....which was even wierder than seeing the neeley boy, since it was crackers, after all..we left town around six, and made a record of stretching the ten-minute walk home to forty-five, yes forty-five minutes...we couldn't find the monopoly car, see, and the giggles were too much for walking...i think one of my favourite parts of the evening was the beastie boys, no alas, not live, just on, in crackers...and as i shouted along, people all around me also shouting along..........fuck you i won't do what you tell me........over and over, i had something of an epiphany....i can't recall it just now, but i will, and i when i do, i'll tell you.
happy new year..x

my favourite things..

i think my emailed top fives of the year should, matt-like, also be recorded here..for prosperity's sake...or something...
ok, my top five moments, memories and well, favourite things of the year that was 2005..just as its about to end..

1...edinburgh on july 2nd, the white bands, the silent marching, the shame of finding oneself on said silent march holding a starbucks frappucino and wondering if the police themselves might turn on me for my traitorship to the cause..hanging out in the big dress, and winding up at the cottage..good times..
2...the cold of this winter...i am loving loving loving the cold. my purpose-made, ridiculously long scarf is doing me proud.
3...the first manchester family holiday in wales, in may, at the house with the scary lady, the barbeques, the beers, the "blast-furnace"(sal, 05/05) tans we earned, bh monday lunch, gettinglost EVERYTIME i tried to find my room, praying for the teachers, the drive there with sal, the drive home with russell, and especially tom's now much-used idea of "see you monday", watching garden state with our duvets, singing on the last morning to mrs p's legendary "let my people go" with more five-syllable words than even ric could get into song lyrics..with fin playing the drum..and emma with her purple ribbons..! all good..
4..my shire summer...lazy afternoons and evenings of heading straight from work to the lovely cafe rene, assured of company, cold beer, sunshine, crosswords and laughs...haven't had the early and best part of summer in the glos since i was 18 and hated the place, so it was a whole new time..
5..learning that loving means something like..being nicer to people than they are to you and not waiting to be liked before i like first.or something similar but with more order. or not...in fact, also learning that love isn't patterned or formluable, but earthy and vital, springy and terribly hard work sometimes. i think it laughs though: that satisfied, at-ease laugh that you only really let out when you're shot of fear. am enjoying seeing it at work in me and in my life and knowing its all straight from jesus and that he'll never run out, so neither will i....wowzers! how amazing is that!!
cheating
..6...claire and george's wedding..never did a girl look so at home inher wedding dress, or a boy look so unashamedly but quietly inlove..the rest of us had big fun on the bridge too..

it really was a good year. nothing spectacular, and not all that much real excitement or change. but god did say at its beginning that i was about to be divested of all my dreams. i can honestly say that it has taken him more or less the full twelve-month to accmmplish that. so now i have none. not a one. except of more snow.....

sitting on the toolbox..

so i am a fan of the jcb song..
i spent the last 24 hours out and about in the countryside of ours and a neighbouring shire..i saw tractors, watched a cat fight with a crazy fox, heard the rooster crow in the wee small hours as we were outside still drinking wine, playing in the snow and sneaking cigarettes..we practised our shire accents (owl: one syllable or two...?!), watched the chickens and listened to the quiet..
i do like it round here..
went out tonight for a bit of a warm-up beverage with my accomplices for tomorrow night.we've placed our bets on who may be found first crying in a corner somewhere, who might get up to no good, and have fully-laid plans for where to proceed to after crackers..
whochester? can't hear ya...

lola..

is my favourite kinks song..
the music-history syllabus is coming along nicely, although i am struggling to see how i can let the 80's in on the act..as ever..this really means that i am struggling to find the ways in which 80's music had an impact or influence on any subsequent music...surely, surely it was just a phase that ended as abruptly as it had begun, and was best quickly forgotten!? surely it was the mid-life crisis in the life of rock music..? surely its welcome termination was evidenced by the warmth with which the world received happy hardcore and take that, in the very early 90''s...?! we were all so tired of the bizarre and exhausting combination of melancholic drama and the intense "we must have fun, even if it kills us" attitude of the hideous 80's, that we had arms wide open waiting for something shit to appear, just so that so we could move on...i mean really, and i know this following quote has been used in part on this blog at least once before, but the 80's even proved the undoing of musicians that were once great...mighty, even...and jack black's barry in high fideilty once more find the words for me, as he asks...
"Top 5 musical crimes perpetutated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s? Go .... is it in fact fair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins? Is it better to burn out ... or fade away?"
some people should have just slept through the 80's and then they might have been alright. elton john: rocket man, tiny dancer, saturday night's alright...etc etc...then he hits the 80's..nightmare....
aretha franklin: oh my god.........all i need to get by, respect, think........pure anthems of the once-caged bird....and then......duets with george michael and something about who is zooming who.....
who let it happen?!
in fact, duets in general were an ongoing crime of the whole decade..janet jackson and cliff richard....!! please.
...so if anyone has any sensible suggestions that may help me fill an entire decade's worth of musical education, that won't wound my ears in the burning process, they would be much appreciated.
fyi u2 are a given, so don't think you're being smart there..