I spent most of last week with my parents, who visited from Australia, and we went to Greece for a few days. That was very depressing, because my parents are (i) clinically insane, (ii) very annoying, and (iii) insist on treating me like the five-year-old boy I once was. The highlight of the trip to Greece was my father's erratic driving, at 200km/h (around 80km/h above the speed limit), with his radar detector on (so he won't get caught), passing cars with 5 or 6 feet to spare, observing the landscape (read: not looking at the road), and crossing himself 3 times whenever we passed a church or an iconostasis. As I was in the front passenger seat (the death seat), I was not very happy, but my complaints fell on deaf ears.

My osteo-arthritic mother sat in the back seat, also crossing herself madly. Her ill health is relevant to the story, because a minor car crash might be sufficient to kill her... leaving aside a high-speed head-on collision that might pulverise her oh-so-slight frame. My mother, who is mad, did not seem concerned by my father taking one hand off the wheel to cross himself. Apparently, according to my mad mother, Dad's deference to God is enough to protect us from his bad driving. I suggested that God had left our car, but that only served to make my Mum very angry for different reasons.

Anyhow, perhaps because of the come-down of dealing with exhausting parents, or perhaps because the sun has begun to hibernate in London, or perhaps because I am having a total breakdown, I had the worst Thursday for a long time, yesterday. The nadir was when I retreated to the lavatory to cry like a baby for about ten minutes. The trouble is, I just don't know why. All I can say is that I feel doomed that this is about as good as my life is going to get. That I can go to the gym all I want, put as much effort into my work as I wish, and study my heart out, and be sociable and nice and whatever else I think will work to fix me... but at the end of the day, I'm stuck with the person I am. And that is a person I don't like. Queue the violins.

I talked it over with M, my counsellor, last night (fortunately Thursday is my regularly scheduled crazy-hour appointment) and felt immensely better, but still, my low-level melancholic depression is what it is, and it's not going to change.

I am still depressed today, yet strangely feeling a lot better since I visited the newsagents at lunch time. I went to have a look at the current issue of fag-rags, and happened upon the current issue of DNA (an Australian magazine). The cover had me weak at the knees; I almost collapsed. I don't know anything about this man, but my love-at-first-sight obsession caused me to rush back to office to Google him. Apparentlly, Dennis Batbayli won a DNA underwear contest
earlier this year. He is also, in my humble opinion, sex-on-legs. If God divides, Mr Batbayli has slid off the bell curve into perfect heaven. He may even get to replace Marco Dapper as my imaginary life partner.

The highlight of yesterday was reading that Jodie Foster has come out of the closet, finally. Shock, horror. I hope the newly-proud Jodie will get a new agent to celebrate, and start working
on good films again (eg Silence of the Lambs, The Accused) instead of bad films (eg Flight Plan, Panic Room). That would make me very happy.

I am invited to two parties this Friday evening, which makes me feel more in-the-loop than I actually feel. The first party is a friend's birthday, which is a must-attend of course, and the second is QX's Christmas party. (QX being a street press fag-rag here in London.) My friend's party will be fun, and I'll know everyone there, and I will be relaxed, and laughing and enjoying myself. The QX party will likely be filled with people I don't really know, and I'll feel invisible, and I'll pretend to enjoy myself, but won't really. Of course, the QX party is a must-attend too, because there is more chance of hotness there, than at my friend's party (where everyone will be coupled up, or female). Debrief, tomorrow.