Well, tonight I thought I would use my new found connecting ability and go out and about. It's half eleven and a certain someone is in a taxi somewhere between here and Brixton, meaning I just have to stay in. Shame. He phoned and I saw myself snuggling up to him and couldn't resist. I feel this is very BLT, but I am not sober enough to care. Oh by the way here's a real blog thing It made me laugh - hey I need more friends who send me silly links like they have on all the other blogs.

Great sense of connection with my class this evening - it will be a great shame to have to give up teaching as I intend to do this year. God knows how I will contribute £150 to my pension as well as cutting my income - the Cambozola fund as it used to be known (back in the day when i used to eat cheese, I once told Dan that the reason I had a second job was so that I could afford to buy aforesaid cheese). In the meeting I attended today I felt quite at ease too - and my resentment was hardly in evidence at all. I did half a clearing at the beginning of the staff meeting yesterday on my pissed offness with LT. I didn't get to finish it because - like last week - someone wanted to chat. But whatever, I seem to have shifted the hold my feelings of resentment were exerting. I might even start tommorow with a mirror process like old times (2 weeks ago now) - if nothing else it helps to remind me to put my bloody moisturiser on. Oh yes, went to the Black Horse on Mile End Road tonight for first time - Dan off to fete Mish's birthday, not invited (smirk). Well dishy East End boys aplenty - and I even managed a smile at one, which was good progress. Thought of the state of my flat (dire) and then retreated to a sofa to read the Guardian. Well, I paid for the bloody thing - might as well read it. I will go down there on a Friday or Saturday without props - and I will clean flat first!

Much better day today - it is interesting how one knows in the first seconds of waking what sort of day it is going to be. Had lunch in a noodle cafe on Amhurst Road with Simon - it has a great atmosphere, it is the kind of place that will never get into the Time Out Guide due to the fact that the people in it were there for lunch, not for some poncy gourmet kick. Bought ingredients for 'garlic chick peas with cumin-fried fish' - Donna Hay's Off the Shelf. Felt like making a special effort for me tonight. Drank half a bottle of something white and cold - and had enough food for two. Now isn't that ironic. How nice not to have to be self developing. That's right, I am not self developing tonight, tonight, Malcolm, I am me.

Had a very connecting conversation with Dan in the pub, despite having felt totally disconnected all day, not interested in work, I just wanted to sit at home and look out of the window. But 2 pints of Landlord changes things, and we ended up having a very animated discussion about religious urges and how these related to sexual ones and my relationship with my father - yes, it was mainly me that connected all those things up. Or actually all me. Was observed at college and felt none of the usual panics associated with that - very post LT. What's interesting is that I can have these feelings about LT and yet still get the benefit of the weekend. And i do feel a shift in my relationship with Dan - I don't feel the usual resentment, but a real feeling of love for him. Oh yes siree, what LT has done for me !!!

Interestingly, went to mastery class today but felt very disconnected. I didn't much want to go but have discovered before that one can go with that attitude and notice it change. Tonight it didn't and I had my old let's fuck this up kind of thoughts, taking the piss with Tessa who I did the weekend with and who refused to keep to any of the disciplines. I will have to take the steps I have chosen - find out what they do with all the money and why they only recruit by word of mouth. I am also noticing a sort of fundementalism about the proceedures which I don't like. What is rather disconcerting is that these thoughts have created a flip over in my feelings - when I was talking to one of the new trainees this evening about the changes in my life, I was pissed off that I could no longer feel really excited about them. I've said I won't be back for the last one which I am entitled to do. And yet .... I would still love Ann to do the weekend, I am sure it would do her good. It's just that I seem to have a need to believe in something - maybe my parents have created this need in me. Given how much I hate fundamentalism, I am now wondering whether I am actually just deeply attached to it. I know the christians would say it is a religious instinct. Of course, I would counter by saying it is obviously an evolutionary neccessity that we believe deeply in things, and this has produced religions. God, what a tedious thing to have an arguement about. I'm going to bed - inspection at college tomorrow !!! (like I care - one of the best things the weekend has given me is the relief from stress over such things)

Rather drunken blog yesterday - today spent much time in pub: Inn on the Park, Vicky Park, in pursuit of our monthly creation of community: first Sunday of the month, all invited. Went back to Dan's and spent rest of time examining Ann's fear of flying and consequent inability to come to Greece with us at Easter. She decided she would come ... by train. Dan and I had already decided we were going anyway independently. Our intense attempts at therapy opened up perhaps more than we or she could really handle. We hit on the nub though, I reckon, the need to be in control. Wish we could take that further, but really it's up to her from now on. At least we'll all get to have a holiday together. Perhaps we can pick the subject up again then.

No this is not a blog, it is a journal, and a not terribly good one at that, since it is some time since I last wrote. I had a fab weekend. On Thursday I spent quite a bit of time reading stuff such as this Point being (after several resonant (or rather frantic) breaths), I am not a Life Training evangelist anymore. It was good for me, but I now see it as a particularly clever pyramid selling operation. I will still go to the mastery classes, but I don't think I will be on team next time. I was thinking how I could replace Life Training in my life and I realised I should just go to church - it's free, it's local and it gives one the opportunity to practice love. My parents have won after all. EEEEEEEK !!!

Last night was the birthday. 43 on 42 - great location. Then we caught the 149 to the Vietnamese Canteen. £9 for a cocktail and £13.50 for the set menu (with beer supplied by me) and it was a grand night out. I walked into the bar and saw the lights of London stretching out into the darkness of the surrounding countryside and my vertigo was almost completely smothered by awe. After one cocktail I was leaning against the outer glass wall, picking out ant-like indivduals walking through corridors of local offices. At the restaurant, Dan chatted about the Holocaust to Joanna and James chatted about drawing with Andy. I tried to meld the rest into an all including conversation, but Henry came up trumps with tales of an experiment on the relative pyrotechnic qualities of vegetables. Shame noone wanted to go clubbing - I just have to accept that as I don't have any active (in the main sense of the word) gay friends (Armand's clubbing days are over, and Dan hardly qualifies as gay), I have to be gay on my own. I made up for it by being very gay this afternoon, at a certain establishment with a dress code which emphasises minimalism, with several gentlemen. Who'd be straight ... !!!