the things that happen, autumn '11

Stuart turned thirty on 6th October and we had a house party involving giant gold 3 and 0 balloons as well as a lot of cake which never got eaten!

Then it was my birthday on 3rd November, we went to xscape and Jamie won a whole load of tickets on the arcade games which we pooled and I bought prizes to share with people.

The cats have been as playful as ever.

Many hats and scarves have ascended from their shoe boxes on the floor of our wardrobe back into circulation as the weather gets, well... wetter, if not colder.

Yesterday we went to the Fort where the coca-cola truck was visiting and they were playing "Holidays are Coming...!" which was fun despite the insane rain.
This evening the skinny moon said hello. I love winter!

change

I'm going to be changing this blog a bit soon. It seems that all the words have fallen out of me. I used them all up writing a masters dissertation and with a PhD thesis to come they will be a scarcity. I started this blog because I used to write things, especially when there was no-one to tell them to. Now I have all the listening I could ask for and though I harked for the past in the form of this blog, I find I am forcing myself to be in some way poetic. I don't want to be false. Yet I don't want this blog to go to waste. I post a lot on tumblr which I love and many people comment on it's ability to keep those at a distance close to my life. I sometimes say it enables friendships where nobody gets hurt and that is true though it sounds a bit ruthless. Sometimes though, the things I post get lost in the mess and sometimes these things mean little to my life. I'm trying to lay myself out on a page for anyone who wants in and as words will no longer deliver alternative means will have to hold out in the form of images. I'll post soon.

Oftentimes it surprises me how few people you can rely on. I'm never disappointed in that reality. People love to tell you how they are 'there for you' but that only applies when it matches their own wants. Doesn't it feel good to see a friend struggling and be able to say "I'm here if you need me"? Doesn't it make you feel like a noble and magnanimous person? How often do you ask them if they need you though? How often do you take the time to contact them and say that you've not heard from them in a while, and that you are interested in how they are. Good, bad or otherwise. Not often I'm betting.

I get it, there are important things in life and there are things central to your being which you need to dedicate time to. I understand, I have the same thing. People spread themselves too thin nowadays. Friends doesn't mean anything, it's a worthless title. And the last time you went through something awful, it took for you to show this to another before you got support.

People love to be there for you and they love to portray themselves as a shoulder to cry on but that's only one part of it. How can you have a relationship with someone if they will never contact you? I don't run after people anymore, I stopped that a long time ago now. It's apparent that there are few people in life who you can actually rely on noticing if you need help or not without you having to ask for it; the last thing you'll want to do is ask for it. I can count on one hand the number of people outside my family who I would rely on.

To those I can rely on, thank you. Thanks for actually taking the time to ask, you are a tiny minority of those that I know and I truly am grateful to know you. You'll know if you are one of these people because you'll have initiated talking to me, and me to you.

image

Have you ever considered the extent to which you are based purely on the image you wish to protray? That you do things based on what you think other people will view you as? Do you do things because you want to - things that you like - or because these things will characterise you in a way which you want others to see you?

I've been thinking about this quite a lot lately. I've been trying very hard to be myself, the core essence of my personality as shaped by my physiological nature and the imprint life has made on me thus far. When I was younger I would make all decisions based upon how these things would make me seem to my counterparts and it pretty much made my life troublesome and myself a conflicted shell of who I should have been. I've been working towards dropping this continual need to be viewed well as I have continued my life and though I will never be able to say I am truly unaltered by the perspectives of other people - as, let's face it, that would be unworkable and less than admirable - I believe I am currently far more honest with my character than most.

Last year was a turning point where I met a girl who I thought was individual, unique and interesting. She seemed to have very clear ideas about who she was, what she wanted to look and act like and what she did and did not like. At first this was refreshing and encouraging but it became quite quickly obvious that her own insecurities were shaping how she acted, and that she was a very restricted person. It's obvious with hindsight but in many instances people have a great knack for turning a lack of character into a very convincing façade. Needless to say it doesn't take much time to get beneath the outer layer and see the conflict within. It turns out that I am no longer friends with this girl as I didn't embody an image close enough to her own in order for her to be seen with me. That's a shame.

It's tough being yourself, it's not mean to be, but it is. Recently I've been trying to align my mind and my actions as closely as possible without being hurtful. I think that is a good barometer for sensible day to day life. For example, the other day at work I told everyone that I wasn't a people person, that I don't tend to get along well with others. I told my friend that I think that most people in the world are stupid. I criticised mainstream television programmes I find futile and moronic in front of people who I knew possibly watched them. You might think this pointlessly antagonistic and sometimes I would agree with you. But that in itself is a trend of society brought about directly by the inability of people to act like themselves in public. It is polite to go to your hairdresser and respond to the question, "Do you watch the X Factor" by saying "No, I've never caught it". It is not polite to say "No I find this programmes to be irritating and the content at very best mediocre", but you know what, it is truthful. I suppose the happy medium is to say, "No, I don't like pop music, nor do I like reality/competition television programmes". Either way, you run the risk of being thought either rude or elitist. Why can't you just be thought of as having one of a plurality of views on the subject? Why can't we just accept that not everyone likes the same thing.

It's so tempting to be so brutally and honestly myself that I say everything I think. Being truthful is so enjoyable and refreshing that it is hard not to get carried away. On the whole so far I have found positive results, more people describe me as original, or odd "in a good way". Most people find it endearing, and why not? How often do you really get to see right inside a person, to witness the functioning of their true character on a day-to-day basis. Let me tell you this, normality, fence-sitting and inoffensive middle-of-the-roadness are not appealing qualities in the slightest, they are boring. Hey, if you don't get a positive response at least you will get one.

The point is that this has caused me to constantly be thinking of why people are doing things or why people like things. More and more I see people doing things that everyone else does. Why? Surely with all the different types of people in the world, the multitudes of different traits and talents, then people should like different things? Surely some people are going to stand out and dislike things? Is it just that I am abnormal, or unique? I'd love to flatter myself but I doubt I am all that original. It seems more likely that people do the same things because they are too timid to not follow the trend if they think it pointless. I suppose for many it is easier to not put a skirt over those leggings than to explain why you think seeing the outline of someone else's crotch as specified by everyone else is ridiculous. I've been turning this analysis to myself now considering if I tend to do things in the opposite vein, turning my attentions to things off the beaten path because I detest to be associated with the masses. Honestly, I am sure that I do, and I am sure that I hate that this is the case. I know I find more ease liking things other people don't like than things they do. Despite this though I'll still like all these things that appeal to me, it's just how I feel about liking it in the first place that changes. I'm trying really hard to be myself right now and I'm going to keep doing that. So, in this spirit of honesty I've decided that I am going to start a Truthful Tuesday section of my tumblog where each week I outline one truth I would be less than inclined to reveal normally. To start this off I will go with a simple and honest one which is this: I don't think that Kurt Cobain was the incredible genius people beleive him to be. I think he was good at what he did and certainly relevent, but his work just doesn't strike me as on a par with other music legends which could be be named. This is personal - much like my Mum disliking Bob Dylan - it just doesn't get me in the way other music does.

Moving On

I've been working as an administrative assistant in an office at University for the past few months. It's a temporary position and finishes a week today. The girl who is going to be filling the vacancy permanently started today and shadowed me. It's really odd how much I'm going to miss it and more unusual still how I will miss them when I don't even really know why. I suppose it reveals a lot about me when I note that it's probably the camaraderie of being part of the team. And it is a team not just one forced upon people by situation. I've never worked anywhere where politics has featured less than there. Granted I've not worked in many offices before but I am led to believe it is a common scenario. I'm never part of a team. I'm the lone wolf. If you want something done right you smother yourself in all consuming loneliness and get it done better than you could even have imagined. It's incredibly hard to be included in much if you are willing to uphold honesty and good morals, especially if it involves a lot of social interaction. That's why I find it hard to be part of a group of friends. It always boils down to misunderstandings, lies and people getting hurt. It always results in winners and losers and the winners write the history. Staying away from that means I can write my own history, but it is altogether less action packed. The thing is, being part of a team in a professional capacity allows one to form friendships which are never taken too far, and in-jokes that never cut close to the bone, relationships you know won't falter, and trust which impinges on regulation. It's a sad state of affairs but for me friendship is 1% compatibility and 99% reliability, and that's why it never works out. So I'm going to miss seeing people at the times specified in an outlook calendar and I'm going to miss people noticing when I do something helpful or nice for them. Despite the clinical nature of my analysis I will miss these people because when it comes down to it they are decent and I enjoy their company. They are the kind of people who home bake a cake for your birthday and all of a sudden I don't really know why I would choose to give that up. In light of recent events I can't help but feel like moving on is stepping onto a ledge and it's a long way down if I fall after climbing this far.

I went to a meeting today and it was not good. It was obvious that he had been caught out and he knew it. He saw my face when he told me to come back later and he saw what he'd done and he went on the defensive and I was cold. I came back an hour and a half later and he was harsh. I sat and I knew what the outcome would be so I didn't even bother to take of my jacket and my head became so hot and I felt my face burning as my body temperature bounced off the limiter and I was too set in stone to care. I stopped giving him the time of day. What he said hurt. The intent was to ridicule and deride and it worked. There is no way you can win when it feels as though you are living at home with your parents again so I became monosyllabic and shot darts of poison wherever I looked. Someone put their head around the door and I smiled a vicious smile as he suggested they meet for a pint. As I left I knew it was time for the post game review and I went off without a care for dignity or winning or social interaction itself. The cool air outside helped my warm head and I felt stuffed in a bubble of air. On the street they were painting lines on the road and the noise made my hearing numb and my inner ear crackle; a weakness I blame on spending nights in clubs for a month in my first year of university. I bought a drink I didn't want and avoided the man asking for adoptions of guide dog puppies even though he didn't want to ask me. I must not have been his target market. As I walked the rain was like mist and the cold bit me and I was glad for the heat I had endured in the name of obstinacy. I was in a blur of hatred for all and myself. I imagined what I could say what I should say and how I should relay such dictations. I spoke viciously in length and I spoke without care as I left the room. I wrote emails in short hand and letters in long. Doctor's notes and complaints flurried in my mind as tiny particles of water soaked into my clothing. I didn't notice the strange men hanging about under the bridge and they didn't notice me and I swore to be better and to be worse and to resist and then I succumbed and the words formulated in my mind. I think I that I may have made a mistake in choosing to do this. I do not have the intellect, or the common sense, or the general knowledge, or the endurance. Into my vision came a two pound coin on the ground which I picked up quickly and kept walking. I held it in my hand until I reached the garage and as I walked up the hill I let the anger and the hurt seep out of me and the sweat and my heart rate burned and bitter tiny tears singed the rims of my eyes. I gave the coin significance and I told myself of the obvious problems other people had and convinced myself of my strength. I told myself that bridges have been burned but that this is for me. Later Stuart confirmed it. I re-enacted the entire meeting and I raged, but quietly, and I seethed, but softly. I placed the coin on my bedside table and I thought of the draft in my bag and I shuddered and I knew that the next few weeks would be sickening but manageable. Then we prepared dinner and talked of the important things and smiled, calm in the satisfaction of our own entirety being enough for each of us always.

patience my dear

I'm an impatient person. I don't like to wait. It's the way I was brought up. Really, it's about knowledge. I will not wait in the dark to find out about something. Part of this is about personal insecurities and part of it is about the high-functioning character of my brain. If you keep something from me it either won't be for long or it will be forever. Right now my mother is keeping what my husband's 30th brithday present is from me and I hate it. I know fine well the reason for this is that it will be something exciting for me too, but I hate to be kept out of the loop. Tell me the day and time something is happening and I'll be patient and plan it but tell me there is something you can't tell me and all hell will break loose. I can't wait, it's as simple as that. Of course this characteristic didn't seem out of place when I was growing up, surrounded by people who imprinted their personalities onto me. It did become apparent though when I met Stuart and started to interact with him and his family's way of doing things. For Findlays, everything good should be a surprise, a way of making something exciting even more special. A nice notion I think you'll agree? I think most people would. Except me. Don't get me wrong, I like the sentiment and I would even like to be able to savour surprises like my lovely family-in-law. But I can't. Stuart tells me, he and those like him are natural queue-ers. Waiting is their game, and they do it so well. If Stuart is anticipating the fun of the rides at the back of the two hour queue at Disneyland, I'm definitely the girl making a point of not lining up at the departure gate in the airport. I'm making the effort for Stuart's birthday, I'm planning some things and I'm not telling him, but I've already gone to great lengths to tell him not to make surprises for me on mine. Maybe it's weird but I can't seem to help it. I have tried to be more spontaneous, and I've tried to enjoy anticipation but I can't shift the feeling of being irritable at my lack of knowledge, and, ultimately, my lack of control.

Sometimes though, things are completely out of your control. Sometimes things just happen or don't happen and you find yourself grasping onto straws in the vague hope that you've elicited some actual meaning and sense. You find yourself torn between searching for logic and reason and proof, and painting meaning in where prior there was just a void. Waiting is an incredibly hard task and I fail at it every time. I'm considering the notion of things being 'worth the wait' and I find that invariably they are. Invariably they will always be.

The Other Side

Something that always surprises me about myself as I am now is the stark contrast to my younger self. The main difference that strikes me currently is that when I was younger and I was feeling in anyway down, lacklustre or anxious I would write. I look back over journals kept then and I am surprised that there is actually minimal amounts of teenage angst therein, and reality lying for all to see. Words epitomise the true feelings as they then existed and the proof of that lies in the flush of heat in my chest when these memories are awoken with such vivacity that it overwhelms me. Contrast this to the me of now and you will notice gaping holes in my writing and you are now to be informed that these chasms represent emotional difficulties and times of unease. Times when the immensity of incomprehension and discomfort render one unable to articulate things that seem at that moment to be the most profoundly unwanted conditions imaginable. This makes it incredibly hard to write about the times when things are most hard, and consequently the times at which writing would be most welcome for. The most vivid and truthful writing emerges as a result of negative experiences, they enlighten and teach, and I am useful at relaying them. My writing in these times is stuttering, and simple and straight to the point. The words seem childlike. They are the words in bold in the thesaurus lonely, stark and obvious and I can't bring myself to write them. Writing of painful truth is hard enough to do poetically, but I am too complex as an adult to let such things emerge in the way they ought to. I suppose I am worried that the reality of how you feel in dark moments will shock those who read them, or that admitting their existence to yourself will cause circles of revelation that are dangerous to one's sanity. There is a process we go through in times of trouble, and for me this involves a difficult mixture of denial and panic. Creating discourse is not in the order of play.

Thus, my writing this passage currently will signify that the worst may yet be passed and the actuality of better times to come acknowledged. I am very rarely completely open about how I am coping with life on a day to day basis, even with people who are close to me. Brave faces come easily and I don't even publish this blog on other interfaces where people I know will see it any more. But I will be truthful. This summer has been hard. And as is always the case with the most troubling emotional intricacies, there is little reason for it. At best I could classify it as change, inconsistency and continual fluctuation's effect on a person over a prolonged period. At worst, I would say that I am never at ease in summer. Now it is full autumn as far as I am concerned and I'm easing back into normality. It is selfish to say as I know there is a lot worse - indeed, I have known it myself - but I feel happy again. Today I visited Summerlee Industrial Museum with Stuart and we took photographs and wandered around the canal in silence and fresh air that bit like winter. At the tram lines in the utopian created street I crouched over the cobbles to take a picture. The sun was hitting the roofs of the houses and tram and I felt a swell of happiness that seemed quite remote, quite unknown, like a far removed acquaintance. I felt myself going 'Oh' in recognition and I smiled. I told Stuart. Suddenly things that felt like the end of the earth a few days ago felt manageable, even mistaken. Coping is dripping back in slowly. It's been a long slog through times when things were not great, but equally not bad. I honestly don't know if short, sharp periods of dire circumstances are favourable to long dragging days of banality that wear you down with time, or not. All I know is that now I am on the other side and I can write again because I feel once more like there is a point to it, and that I will look back and be glad to have these words. I'm going to make big decisions, now that I finally feel able to surmount the daunting once more.

On Feminism

Picture this scene: I am at a go-karting track in Tenerife. I am with my husband. We are shown to the go-karts which sit in a line in the middle of the pit lane. There are two girls, myself, my husband, and five other men. I sit in the kart I come to first, it is the last one in the row. The two girls are in their late teens and thus go into the smaller karts which sit at the side of the pits. They go off first. We await the start.

This is the point at which a face appears in front of me. He asks, “have you done this before?”. I reply “no”, indeed, I have never raced a go-kart here before. He looks at me very directly and points to the pedal underneath my right foot. “This…is to go”. I look up at him, frowning and smiling. “This…” He continues, pointing to the pedal under my left foot, “is to stop”. I nod very slowly, smiling in irritation. “Not at the same time” He mouths each word obviously and waves his hands across each other to fully convey the message. “Ohh-kayyy” I reply, rolling my eyes. At this point I expect him to move to the kart in front of me, containing Stuart, to repeat the ridiculous exhibit of just how dense people can be. I imagine us laughing about it together on the relay bus back to our hotel. Laughing and smiling. Suffice to say, he does not move on and tell Stuart.

When I realise this I am angered. My first thought is, “why me?”. My Second thought is “well, duh”. As I fester with tingling waves of irritation they start the kart at the top of the row and off he drives. The second kart is now started, and the third, until they are starting Stuart’s in front of me. As the man who starts the karts comes to mine he looks at me and asks, “have you done this before?”. I give him a quizzical look, “Yes, I have driven a go-kart at home.” He points to my right foot and I stare at him in the same way I stare at approaching charity muggers back home, but unlike them this one does not take the hint. “This foot… is go” He nods emphatically, I feel like a child. “This foot” my left “is stop”. I feel like I have the intelligence of a marble. “Not at the same time” he stresses, speaking to me the way idiots speak to foreigners on situation comedies. I look at him incredulously, “I know how to drive a car” I implore. “Go slow your first lap” He says. “Yes, I KNOW” I say through clenched teeth. Whilst saying this my kart has been started and the first one to explain to me about how to flex muscles in my feet is behind me saying “go… go…gooooo…” in the same tone that children use to taunt each other. I put my right foot down and fly out of the pits in a haze of fury and humiliation. I don’t know if it is just that I am good at driving or if the red mist came down but somehow I managed it. It doesn’t matter but for what it’s worth I was fourth fastest, beating four of those unassailable entities who can do no wrong, also known as men.



I am no feminist. I care not for stereotypes of bra burning and rejected chivalry. A girl at university once told me she was an “anti-feminist” and I was impressed by her… balls. I think of it now and then I remember the rigours of go-karting and I feel as though that god-damned piece of wire and fabric is choking the life out of me. Despite this, I still can’t get around the fact that I like men. What’s more, I admire men. All my idols are men. All items in my life that do not have a very obviously pre-assigned sex (i.e. if they are pink or have long eyelashes) are men. I would not do very well with languages where nouns are gendered. Blame me, blame my upbringing, I am the antithesis of a pink princess. I want to do everything men do and unlike many who would call themselves feminists, I don’t want to flaunt my femininity whilst in the middle of a rugby scrum. I don’t know that you can really want gender equality when all you want is for gender to not be noticed at all. I find it very hard to place myself when I know that I am unable to be a woman in the perceived way that I would be able to convey this. For me, being a woman is having inconvenient periods and a lower level of physical ability than men and that is it. All the rest is society and that is it. I’m fed up of feeling inferior because everyone wants to champion the woman who uses her feminine charms to work her way to the top. To me, that, and all the rest of it, is sexist.

For some there are key criteria for discerning when being discriminated against based on sex is over. For example, when women and men are paid equally. For me, the issue won’t be over until nobody thinks of it again. If a woman is paid equally to a man it won’t matter that she has the same amount of money, she’ll still be treated based on sex, not on competency. Until people stop thinking in terms of sex, only then will it not be an issue. This is so complicated I can only imagine the sheer number of problems that there are for people of mixed gender.

Here’s the thing for me. You may think to tell me that those go-kart people were obtuse sexist morons who should be reprimanded. You may tell me that even if they were there are a whole host of them out there and that I personally can’t fight them all. You may tell me that I should use my sexuality to the best of my ability and embrace exactly who I am. I am woman, hear me roar.

This is who I am. I am a person. I am not someone who deserves to be judged based on their sex. I like to wear clothing that doesn’t sexualise me. I can’t do the whole girls at their sleepover talking solidarity sister bit. I like “male” activities but there is no way in earth I will participate in them if I feel like people notice me because of my sex. For them to notice me because of me; that is all I want.

I suppose to cut to the chase I am a feminist inasmuch as I find discrimination against women, and sexism unacceptable. I hate being patronised because of how I look. Imagine in that go-kart a black individual is singled out and patronised due to their being different to the other people participating, I cannot begin to imagine the amount of shit that would hit the fan if that went down. Yet, oh dear me, here I am, a stupid woman who can’t drive a go-kart, let alone a car, let’s make her feel like she has the worth of a peanut and send her on her way. I hate that this happens and I don’t know what you can call it but there is no way it can be sexism if I am just swapping being singled out in a negative way to being singled out in a positive way. I’m fed up of playing the game. I’m out. I’m no feminist, I am nothing; and I hope you’ll treat me that way.

your wife of 363 days

i can’t do the talk like they talk on tv

and i can’t do a love song like the way it’s meant to be

i can’t do everything but i’d do anything for you

i can’t do anything except be in love with you

this played at some point during our wedding day. i have gypsophila in the house; all i need now are white roses. this time a year ago i was waiting for indian food, depending on the way you judge a year. it's funny how time flies and it's funny how everyone always says that but it does and it feels like i've not given you enough yet. everytime i hear these songs it makes me ache with the heaviness of the day, the great weight of significance and the knowledge that it will never happen again. all i can see now are deep red lights and you, and white, and circles. i've never felt as tired as i did that evening as the nerves turned to exhaustion.

i've been married for almost a year now and there is gypsophila in the house. today you came home and you called me your wife of 636 days. in the garden it smelled wet and warm and comfortable; stark contrast to the week in my memory. our olive bush, i thought long dead, has burst into life again. we can suffer through anything my dear, any thing at all. i won't say i believe in any superstition, but i will say that there was hope in those new shoots. of whatever there is that doesn't go on, i know it won't be us.

it's all yours, as you know

1% autumn

A friend of mine got married the other day and it rained. I don't know if that changes anything. Perhaps it wasn't something so tenuous. I find myself constantly theorising - as is my way of living - and making life quantifiable. I'm cataloguing days and events into boxes; tidy rows of visibly sensible information. Sometimes there is so much going on that it's easy to take the things you want out of life and show a pattern. Such persuasiveness lies behind numbers. Then again, sometimes I can't help but think that there must be no reality to assumptions of fate and right and occurances. Isn't it all just immeasurable? Every little detail of every single life can't possibly follow a track. Saying that, if you mix every colour it always becomes brown so is everything brown? You'd say no, but I'm guessing it's not so visually apparent.

The seasons changed the other day. I just wanted to note it because no-one ever does. People always disagree with me when I tell them we are moving to a new front and they do this because they are unwilling to change so soon. They don't understand that it is a progression. It just went from 100% summer to 1% autumn, that's all. It's a change nonetheless and it was combined with my having the cold and it made me feel so very cool; chilled right through at the thought. I can always tell the change in the season by the change in myself and my pinings and last week I thought of fires and warmth and the first christmas eve alone with Stuart and the stillness of it all like such a voyage was never made before. I thought of the start of university in 2005 when everything was changing and I relished change then. Every time I go back to those mornings at five to ten, walking through frosty campus in a black duffle coat, what you would call 'hungover' but I would call at ease. I'd walk up through the part of campus with the fake stream and the grass and the trees with the leaves falling and the water clogged with shades of brown. The sun is always shining, and my face is cold. Sometimes I try to recreate these feelings when I walk out now but all I can get is the memory and it is unchanged. I'm not the same person now and I know I'll never feel that way again.

Today I woke up from under the blanket but ontop of the duvet and it was cool and I walked to the living room finding it odd that I didn't go straight to the kitchen (straight to doing) and the room was so chilled that I knew my cold hadn't served to alter my perceptions and autumn was welcoming me in the pale light of this morning. It was as if it was being persuasive just for me, it knew I needed this.

On Sunday we are going to Tenerife and I've never been on a 'summer' holiday so late in the year. I'm a bit worried about the schism of it being autumn here but I've vowed to act like it's a reprive and I am on pause so it will be alright. Once I'm back I think I will feel at ease with myself once more. Summer is like that bad friend at school and you want to feel daring but once you've had it you know you need to go back to your own. The winter months are my own, I'm a child of November and it's all I really know.

illness

Having the cold always reminds me of Christmas. It makes me think of a double duvet cover folded in half on the sofa like an unzipped sleeping bag, a cocoon of heat and initial comfort. Those beds were always so fresh and welcoming after a long sticky night of tossing and turning, unable to breathe lying down. My Mum always used to put lavender water on the sheets and pillows which made it seem as if nothing as reviving as this had ever existed. Then several hours later that bed seemed like a cage of discomfort and uneasiness. Covers rumpled and clumping beneath your restless body making creases jut into your aching feverish skin. The lavender smell was long gone and instead that constant dirty, tangy taste of illness and catarrh is all that remains. When I moved from home and in with my now husband my bouts of seasonal illness would see me replicate this event and add my own take by gathering on a foot stool beside the sofa an array of carefully arranged medicinal products and otherwise. Neatly stacked boxes of paracetamol, decongestant, cough syrup and throat lozenges stood next to a cup of hot orange or tea, a banana to accompany the pills, tissues in a package, vicks vapour rub and a menthol inhaler. A book, tv remotes, work if applicable, all this gathered on the stool, a protest to having to leave a seated position. By the time the lavender smell has faded these products are in disarray, a mass of opened boxes of pills and scattered remedies. Sticky spoons and cold half drunk drinks in pecariously sitting mugs. Sodden tissues on the stool, dried and used ones on the floor, books disregarded, remotes dropped, banana peel straddling the inhaler disgustingly. The pain killers have worn off but its hours before you get more and the fever has returned and you kick sheets with restlessness and anger that cant be exhumed as strength has abandoned you. Whatever's on the television becomes a haunting nightmare as you doze and you are too hot and too cold all at once, forehead clamy and hair sticking to your face in disgusting clumps. There is such little dignity in illness. To right this wrong you peel yourself from the sheets which duely stick to your leg and aim to trip your pathetic creeping walk and you climb into the shower, weary already. The normal water is too hot and it stings your prickled and achey limbs and the good feeling of being clean is overwhelmed by the faint feeling you get from standing up so long. Brushing your teeth tastes like rubbing peppermint into stomach acid and you are so tired after it all that drying your hair depletes the last ounce of strength available. But by the time you are finished, shivering, diminished in bed clothes that seem too large all of a sudden, the cocoon is remade and the freshness restored and the products rearranged neatly on the stool, pain killers administered and a familiar comfort returned shortly.

Being ill isn't something I take kindly too, yet there is something that sparks a security and homeliness that creates a hollow schism in me. These beds in my mind are often accompanied by dark nights and cosy rooms, often fairy lights. Smells of delicious family meals that I was too nauseaus to take part in. Always crispy duck. I find it very odd that the smell of menthol now takes me back to festivities and december but in some ways it is like its my brain making it easier on me. Having a cold in summer is such an awful paradox that it throws off my sense of seasons and makes me wish for a change. I always have this thing where I pine for summer, or winter, and when it arrives I take my fill quickly, or am dissappointed by a lack of snow/sun, and start to crave the alternative. Recently I've been considering christmas and winter and snow. I know I shouldn't, I always jump too quickly. Last year it snowed in late Novemeber and when christmas came it seemed like celebrating in Janurary, or like cleaning on new years day. I won't do that this year. I'm going on holiday to tenerife in two weeks to get some sun and I'm retaking summer after this short interlude to illness ridden nostalgia. That's just me though, impatient.

moving

yesterday i spent time in the west end of glasgow. and by time i mean like one hour. when i first moved here, to glasgow, i would envy the west end. where i live - high street, which could be classed as either merchant city, university of strathclyde or city centre really - seemed so barren. it's not that i expect a lot but coming from relative country and clean housed streets where the worst act of crime was melting the bus stop with a lighter, the tribulations of living in the east of the city centre were uncomfortable. first there was the whole issue of security because our flat, though on the first floor from the front, was on the ground floor at the back due to a raised back court and the hill upon which all of the north east of the city centre is situated. our windows overlook a tarmac-ed court of red brick walls and flimsy, unspiked railings. the day we moved in to the flat was the day of the large orange order parade - a procession hitherto unknown to me in terms of origin or reason, that involved copious drinking; urinating; flighting; and skinheads. it also involved burly men climbing into the back court and attempting to defecate in our bins. i think it was probably this troubling start that worried us about security in the beginning. that and our colourful neighbour whose real name was ellen but we called queenie. she didn't seem that old, i'd venture no older than 75 but looks can be decieving as all the best lower working class old glasgow town types who think of the barras as tesco look about 60 after the age of 16, and time ceases to effect them. you wouls hear a knock on your door around nine in the evening and know exactly who it was as queenie would stoat about our door and once opened regaile you with tales of neighbours that probably didn't exist being broken into from the same row of tenements that we lived in. she tottered about at the door, continually appearing to retreat to her home and then coming back to you time and again with "aye, an...". aye an two blocks up was burgled last week. aye an i saw people outside last night and they were looking in my windy. and so it went on, her appearing drunk on gin and tonics she drank in who knows where telling us of the latest acts of violence and us adding lock after lock to the door; half from this fear of glasgow and half from fear of her. once we settled and became sure that, contrary to her belief, no-one in these blocks had been broken into in a long while, we relaxed. she still told her stories to us though and we took it in turns to have to go and listen to her. this close, she would say, used to be so clean i could eat my dinner off it, but look at it now. them above me, they're pigs, they flooded my bathroom again, and they are fags, you know, not that it matters, but they are, right above me. one time she appeared particularly enebriated, up in arms. unfortunatley it was me answering the door and she came right up, eyes swilling, why did you write that on the wall downstairs? that's awful, why would you do that? she was referring to a small pencil written name beside the buzzer on the wall downstairs, which i had not written, and was not even situated beside our flat numbers buzzer. despite this she conceded we were good neighbours but it softened her to do it when all she wanted to do was hark back to when times were 'better' as a way of regaining control. i can understand why, but not understand that she did. i didn't realise that whole time that she was dying, perhaps the drinking masked it all. haggared as she was, she still never seemed a day over 60. once she was gone her place was taken by her grand daughter and what happened was learned in part and i had ceased to feel a child playing home. my brother had moved in for a while and then moved to a flat in the west end where i would sometimes go and where i had other friends. at one point i had several friends there which i no longer have and i would marvel at their vintage shops, craft fairs, greengrocers and the lack of dubious looking people parading the streets. it was like being back where i used to live and byres road was like a little town on market day, willow basketed bicycles carting organic produce with women in full length floral dresses and floppy sun hats, and children with pudding bowl hair cuts wearing hand knitted scarves. as i walked about looking into shops selling clothing that seemed spun of gold and costing as much i took this view with me of people at ease with themselves, who had friends and neighbours and community meetings. a communal theme ran through and every man seemed to be his own boss and every perfect figured woman parent to perfect blonde children, shopping for shitake mushrooms and samphire. i don't know that it was even that i wanted these things or this lifestyle, perhaps i just admired the ability to do it if you chose to. i compared it to my own bit where bicycles were mangled three seater buggies and greengrocers were pawn shops. they had victoria wine and peckhams selling imported french beers while we lived above an offsales promoting tennents special in the window, and the remnents of these purchases lay dirtily in our close, in a puddle of piss. i think that perhaps the way that this has changed for me is indicative of my own view of myself, my own confidence and personality. looking back i see that the west end was the same as it always was and where i live is often similar, though improving on a grander scale. here waste land has become new perfect buildings in the space of a year and the din of workmen and construction a disruptive reminder of progress as it is happening. new shops have emerged, and failed, but it is in the attempt that i can feel secure. i lay in bed last night and listened to a slanging match between two reprobates on the street below and considered that it has been a very long time since i last heard this. when things are bad you notice them all the time but as they ease off you begin to think they never occur at all. i realised recently that i have been in glasgow for six years now, the equivalent to the entire time i was at high school, and on this street for five, which is equivalent to all the time i have been with stuart bar six months. i feel i have, if not grown up, then at least grown here. i'm a different person to who i was when i first came. in the west end yesterday a new colour took place as i looked at the places, the people, the shops. it seemed the same as here and the buildings not much different. the streets were the same and the trees were the same. the shops were overpriced and affected and the idea that a post office selling yankee candles was better than mine seemed an idea far removed from reality; when was the last time i bought a yankee candle? in a newsagent we waited at the counter and the man was unpacking boxes and he said, give me two minutes, and we waited still. everyone in the west end thinks they are something, it's like little edinburgh or what i imagine st. andrews it like, only with less english people. i looked at them all, people in brogues and pointed shoes, with teddy boy hair cuts wearing waist coats and trousers perpetually a little too short. it was as if chinos were just invented, and not that marks and spencers had been selling them the whole time. it seems odd now that i though of these people as somehow better, or aspirational. i look at them and they are hipsters and they pretend to be twee and they are all the same, sitting in kelvingrove park, looking the same, being the same, the same pain white basketed bicycle at their feet. i look at myself and i see a person still so divergent from their image, only now i know it is a good thing and i return to the east of the city centre and i feel at home and i feel secure.

we are thinking of moving shortly, out of the city, and though since i've moved here all i have wanted is a garden and some quiet and the country life once more, i think i will miss this place far more than anything i've ever missed before.

the weight

At Seamill Hydro, a few days away, a holiday. I thought I would feel supremely relaxed there and return home revived but I should have known no-one ever earns a quick fix, no matter how good they try to be. I carried troubles about with me like being at the supermarket with no baskets and too few hands. I thought every night that I would put on pyjamas and sit up, relaxed, and worries would melt away, but how could they when I didn't even know what they were?

We booked for three but took four and the weekend was spent theorising how to evade notice. A friend who lives nearby, visiting for dinner. And for breakfast. The continual moving of bedding and straightening up of areas where numerous bodies had been. The idea that the maids would happen upon four wash bags and actually care, never mind notice. The number 3 on a sheet while four towels appeared on the counter. Honestly I think it was very clear to everyone that there were four people ambling about the premises each day, and such worries were pointless. It's funny observing people so rigid in learned goodness that the smallest infringements set them off kilter so quickly. You talk of Catholic guilt and that is definately that because of the hypocricy and the ignorance inherent in the application of morals. Everyone else has learned to live with the multiple personalities. You flip through the photographs and go one too far, it appears a mistake but I can tell you are happy, wanting to share the illicitness and the debaucherie with someone else. Someone impressionable. Someone already on their path. I'm becoming very good at putting my head in the sand too and I hate it, I hate it with every fibre of my being. I use my favourite analogy, the man standing up to thugs and getting stabbed from it. The two schools of thought: he's a hero, a martyr, standing up in the face of it; or an idiot, who could be safe in his house, sand to his neck, rather than dead, and cold, and finished. Some say it's over-exaggeration but to me it is black and white and grey is non-existant. Things happen everyday and I always want to stand but then I feel a parody of myself. I talked it over at breakfast on the last day and it all seemed so clear as things tend to in the bright, hopeful light of morning. Later in the evening I talked to the one person I trust and it seemed much more muddy and by the time night was emerging I was backing myself through a doorway and the unease was creeping past. Sometimes I think this means it's better for me not to always be making a scence over issues of rights and morals and indignations. Other times I feel like I am failing the very core of my being.

We walked on the beach and the sea could be in and it could be out but we were all there and I felt my separation so clearly that it may as well have been written in the sand. I don't understand why I am still surprised by it even when I have accepted it. I followed the three of them and took photographs and felt sad that such things come so easily to me and that I still have to tone down my skills to preserve others. They walked in lines and trailed eachother in age and I took pictures choreographed and mimicing the ones taken now of siblings in impromptu studios in shopping centres, blown up onto canvases, giant headlines of pride in oneself. There was another person taking pictures with a camera like Stuart's and I took a picture of him only because I felt some affinity by vitue of us both holding a similar device. No-one waited for me and no-one ever would as though I was intended as a lone wolf forever. They go at eachother's pace and I am consistently syncopated.

We walked down the stairs of the familiar exit to the apartment blocks and I pulled my phone out my back pocket once again, knowing to them I seemed a teenager hooked on other people. I didn't care; it's been a long time since I cared if I come across as young. A single message indicated that I had recieved phd funding at the last hurdle and I told them and they were happy and the grinned and I had to call people but I don't know where my own happiness was. They all wanted to recreate the moment later but I wanted the feeling and there hadn't been any to recreate so I sat with a smile like a shell and hollow and dark, dark brown. She said, 'you seem quite calm' and she was right but it wasn't calm it was searching and desperate and she said, 'it must be a huge weight off you' and she was wrong and I felt the weight of not knowing weigh heavier than ever. I ordered us prosecco to celebrate and I drank a glass and it made no effect and I hoped that one day there would be a different beverage used to celebrate events; one that chimed with my being and not with my anomolies.

When I was home I managed to identify some roots and it was painful all over again but in a dull, aching way that seemed peverse. I woke this morning with a mouth like a snowball and when I opened my mouth it cracked and ached and epitomised what my brain couldn't envisage, like it was protecting myself from vicious circles of doubt and unease. I imagined my jaw, dislocated, relocated, injections and plans washed out as and more plans piled on unsafely. I diagnosed online and it eased off and I realised it was jaw clenching from stress and it made such sense that it was like a slap in the face.

At the gym I listened to favourite songs and ran in the large empty room and I ran far faster than usual and I visualised things and I tried to tap into the fear and if I did then that's good but I'm not even sure what it is and trying to describe the invisible is the only way I think I can surmise what being offbalance for no reason is like. Stress sits on you, a burden, waiting and weighing and hoping your concentration will waver and it will be able to declare itself once more. On one of the seldom occassions where I happened to be in a church when I was young the minister talked of the holding of a grudge as a literal thing. He placed a toy bird of my friend Imogen on his shoulder and told us that holding a grudge was carrying around this bird and that it was no fun to carry around a bird like that all day. We all agreed. He was right, we should shift what we are carrying around like weights. But he never told us how.

wasting away

I'm feeling very tired right now, like someone has pulled the strength out of me. It's part physical, part emotional. It's like things just aren't in rhythm right now. I don't deal well with change and that's undoubtedly part of it; especially when it's not just my change but his too, and everybody's. Part of me feels I just need a few days to bring it all back, some strength, some solid material to prop up the weary frame. When away we drove back home one evening and the hour journey took four and it's hard to deal with that but for no good reason at all. You feel as though you are losing your mind to the small things that typify the situation. I took my shoes off, put my feet out of the window as if to prove there still was air outside this vehicle that wasn't really moving, but that we couldn't get out of. That's the worst kind of traffic, where freedom is visible but unattainable. When I tried to put my shoes back on they wouldn't fit it was as if my feet had absorbed the liquid in the rest of my body and puffed up, leaving me scraped thin and coagulating on the seat. I hurt my thumbs trying to get the shoes on. I walked on top of them like a bad attempt in heels and I didn't even care though I should have. It rained as if to prove the mood. In the toilets someone had managed to get themselves all over the seat and I couldn't understand how people like this exist, that they can't replicate their personal hygeine standards outside the home. There was no toilet roll. I looked at myself in the mirror and it seemed like a younger, less secure me looking back and I hated her. Stuart was outside and I knew he would be and I told him all my woes and he knew what I needed because he is me. I told the car too but realised it was stupid because they no longer care for me like he does. It's changed and I'm only to be soothed if it fits their aged idea of family and that's okay. It was silent, I felt nauseaus. Counted down the miles on the sat nav and hoped that the end was near but it was just a keep right on the m6. It's okay, I'm just sitting still so how arduous can it be? When we got back the tightness was released but not much and we got to the car park. A woman in a car drove close, awkward and we waited, watching her actions in regards to our attempt to park. She pulled away and the small car clipped the kerb, bouncing off as she drove. We all laughed, in unison again. The car next door had a giant plush spotty dog in the back seat, larger than a human. We laughed the kinds of laughs that are tired and strained and hysterical, so close to tears that your not sure it was even a good thing. The other day my brother asked me if I remembered the time my Dad was angry at me for not being ready to go on holiday with him and I couldn't. He told me it was because we were to leave at 5 and I wasn't ready and he went ballistic at me, as was the trend back then. I didn't know what he was talking about and then a moment later the memory resurged with full colour, when the time told was half 5 and Dad confused it for 5, full anger at me sitting with half an hour of prep still to go when we were meant to be leaving. I hated those incidences because no-one was right and one person was wrong and no-one ever won. I'd blocked that memory out and the description didn't raise the vision of it at first but then it did and when it came it was full of the infamous, horrible glory of being out of those scences now. It's funny how we manage to block these events from our minds after they are gone, uncomfortable and awkward scences of self-hatred and division. But apparently the worst things stick the longest, so I guess it's just how well your brain can fool itself. Part of me wants my brain to fool this whole time right now, because though there are good things, the insecurity and volatility of life and of me is something I deign to hold on to.

summer

Today was a warm, summer day. These days are few and far between here. You wouldn't think it if you were from England, or Wales... that summer was yet to come, or that April was summer this year, but it was. Since the start of May we have had three warm, sunny days. All the rest have been warm and dull or cool and wet. No hot water on the pavement; no streets warmer than shops. It makes me glad to be going abroad for a week, it's like I need the stupor of endless summer days to charge for the rest of the year. Summer in my mind's eye is always pale, warm yellow... and hazy. Hazy sky like one cloud has been dissolved across it all. Water from the tap not run. Residue. Squinting up at the glowing orb, everything else is like a shillouette. Without days like these it seems like life is one endless procession of similarity, days sliding into each other and nothing ever getting done. I'm aware that this is potentially my last summer where I am free to do nothing. I'm not enjoying it but I know I should be. It's funny how the best times just come upon us without warning, and those planned are startled and uncouth. Today I lay outside letting the heat come down like my body was being ripped apart then reinstated, upgraded. There are few feelings better than roasted skin oily with suncream, washed in a shower you can only manage cool. Cleansing the new model. I want more days like this, I want a run of them, but all I'm given is one. It's unfair, taunting like this.

I haven't done any work for a month. I've felt numb to it. Like I can't work with any vigour if I don't feel it's worth it. Right now it's not worth it. I keep on saying, I will work once I know what I'm working to, or what I'm no longer going to attain. I feel guilty. No-one knows of progress except me. I don't know who to tell because it all seems so suddenly pointless. Runs of cool rainy days wash the passion right out of me and the warm ones take all my energy to suck up. Summer is a funny time, I always long it and my imagination runs away with images of tents on remote beaches and stone ringed fires; bare legs and bare feet and grounds too hot to walk on. The images and reality never correlate. Never. It's like Christmas never being as good as when you are young, except its always never been as good. It's disappointing, but every year there is hope. Hope from the shoots of spring and the ice breakers and day time. I feel as though midsummer comes and it's all downhill from there on. Midsummer was when I was in London. I promised to do something special; we ate burgers in a hotel room. I want so much to feel like I live in the world as its elements but I know I live in the social world and that of entities. It would just be nice to live that dream for a little while.

taking back control/resolutions update

Hello. Have you noticed that I put entries to this blog in so many different ways that you can probably never tell which me I am being? I'm like Anna in The Golden Notebook sectioning my blog life into catagories. I imagine that black is for discussions of practicalities (like why I have no funding), red is for rants, blue is like this one (a conglomerate of thoughts because I have no cohesive idea for this entry only a mess of thoughts) and yellow for my literary emotional posts which I think are the only ones really worth their salt being the most honest.

Sometimes I think that I am Saul Green too, because I switch so readily from these stances. I sometimes think I am borderline bi-polar. The day effects me so much that I'll jump from confident and happy to insecure and skittishly anxious at the drop of a hat. It's the time I'm living in.

I just wanted to say that I have taken back control. I don't know if it is better or worse truthfully but it is there and that's all I can hope for right now. I went and booked a holiday to Tenerife for Stuart and I half way through August. Warm weather, swimming pools, beaches, the sea and water parks. Stuart needs a break; I'm worried that if he doesn't get one he will start to disintegrate. He said to me the other day "I never thought of myself as the sort of person who needs a holiday". His GP said he's on the way up. I'm on the way down. Taking back control also manifested itself in trying to find a job. I am currently rather bitter and I feel as though led on. It isn't fun to be told for a year that you are the best and everything you want will come to you, no questions asked, and then when that time comes it all seems to slip through the cracks. My career floating away by incompetence and nepotism and flimsy promises. I applied for a full time job and I'm sending CVs. A month ago it was "this is not the end of the road by any means". A week later "apply for everything, we have a good chance". Now it's "an outside chance" and "a good chance for St Andrews next year". What changed in this month? I certainly didn't. And if things that were certain can slide down such a scale now I doubt I want to hang around for next years lies. I'm going to get a job and leave such dreams behind. I've been living it too long and you they all had their chance to secure me. I know if I get a good job now I'll never look back.

The other matter of business I want to share is the half year update on my New year's resolutions. I said I would update more often but I never thought it interesting enough to do so. Anyway:

1. ride mary-anne more - mary-anne has been sold so now this doesn't apply.
2. save up for a deposit - this was going well. I had to save £5k total in the 4 years, I saved up £2k and then this wholw funding scenario happened and I decided to sort out the holiday. I still have savings, they just can't be applied in that manner at the moment. This is one to wait for December.
3.Save up cat 'instead of insurance' fund - £10 per month per cat being saved for them.
4. Keep running regularly - rodger wilco. done and done.
5. Don't Succumb to Politeness if Ever Faced with the Former Bridesmaid Again - No opportunity as of yet
6. Get a masters, get funding for 3 years and start my phd - hahahahaha, I'll manage the first part. I really shouldn't have made something I couldn't control a resolution. If this all fails, it wont be because of me.
7. Learn Something New: Latin - yea I have not done this. yet. But if I'm not doing the phd theres no way. Plus I learned leater Dutch would be more useful.
8. Don't Rely on the TV to Get to Sleep - this failed. may try again.
9. Bake Something, Once a Month, in the Shape of Gingerbread Men, and Share it with my Brother, Jamie - we did it a few times but Jamie's final year got in the way.
10. Never Buy Bread From a Shop - the one I am most proud to say I have thus far achieved, albiet we eat less bread than we did before.
11. Grow My Vegetables More Efficiently - mid way through this one
12. Once a Month, with Stuart, Cook a Home-Made, Joint Three-Course Meal - yes pretty much done, we decided to do it based on a place in the world by taking my hug a world toy/cushion, whirling it about and blindly pointing to a location.

time and waiting

Recently when I've been waking up in the morning I feel like I can't be bothered. For most people I expect that this is a routine feeling and I used to get it any time I had to wake up and go to work or awful tutorials when I was an undergraduate. But since I have been doing this masters I have had no reason to feel like that and for a long time I didn't. Getting up for classes was fine because it was interesting and the people were intelligent. My job was so good that I actually miss that it is over until September. If I had work for university to do I looked forward to it, like I was taking a step in the right direction and what I was doing had an end point and a reason that made me want to put in the effort. Somehow that has gradually dissolved and I awake feeling like I just want the new day to shut up. Stuart will always come and sit with me for a few minutes before he goes to work while I start to wake up. I love that he does that. But now these feelings of pointlessness are so strong that I begin to associate them with the whole experience.

I said to him the other day that maybe I'm not as happy as I make out. I feel like a manic depressive, but I don't know if it'd just that I have too much time on my hands. I've stopped feeling guilty if I don't do any work for my thesis for a week. I've stopped worrying that all I have done thus far isn't good enough. I've stopped putting myself down because I know my modesty is for others, not for me. I'm really fed up of being told just how good I am, how I'm the best degree in history in thirty years, and yet I have no funding. No-one wants to continue my career. I am rational and I know that I will probably get external funding but it's the fact that I know that the only reason I will is because my supervisors are creating a shit storm to do so. I hate that there are people in that university sitting in some meeting room discussing applicants and deciding that I don't get any. They are deciding to give the funding to their own students because that's what they want. I am not naive. I know of nepotism and favouritism and self-interest. But how can life be the way that you work as hard as you possibly can, you put in your all, every little bit that you have, and it's the best, you are told so, yet it is still just not enough. Why should I have to wait for another year. Another year. Another fucking year of my life wasted. And that truely is what it is, it wouldn't be a choice and opportunity and travel. I would have no money, I would have to get a job, I would be overqualified, I would work in some dead end retail pit of self-loathing and I would have to postpone all my plans, all of our plans. Another year in the city, another year of waiting for security and the ability to start everything. Call me selfish. Tell me there are people out there doing so much worse with much bigger problems. People in debt, people without jobs. I don't care. I worked as hard as I could and I always have. I've always put everything I had into this and picked up the slack for the countless morons who lazed and stopped and now it's all come to this, that still I won't be given it. Because of select individuals and because of administrative monopolies of influence. The worst thing though, the worst of all is that I know I am a pawn. I know I am playing piece to use for influence and faction within an institution that is changing. I know I represent control for other people and I am being used, tempted with career and academia. Why did I never hear back about that prize? Why is my dissertation article not published? Where are last semester's marks? What about Sicily? And why do you conspire to keep me at arms length. I'm not a fucking toy. You can't switch me off.

It's not the things that are happening that make me not want to get up, I'm no coward, I can deal with harsh realities. It's that you wont tell me. And like a child, I wait.

I feel so disconnected right now. I have no structure in my life. Apart from my brother's graduation, the three-day trip to London and a session to get my eyebrows waxed, I have literally nothing in my diary. And it's not because I can't keep a diary. This week for example, I have nothing I need to do. Not a single thing. I await news of a sort of friend who may come down. And even then I don't know the day. I went onto facebook this morning and saw a post from a friend. She's been in Copenhgen. I didn't even know that she was going. And she was my bridesmaid.

Life has become a choice between living it in people and living it in myself. If I live in people I have to brace myself for constant emotional turmoil. Being let down and stood upon like some piece of shit lying in the street. If I live in myself I choose solitude and career and I await my fate with nothing but my own time to keep me company. I am an innovative person, but filling all this time is hard. I know the idea of all this time off seems like a heaven to you. It always does when you don't have it.

six years

We drove for an hour and a half to get there, taking red country roads rarely travelled because I no longer trusted my knowledge of the country; I’ve been away for six years. I said that you don’t get red roads anymore but how would I know. The weather was changeable and by the time we came off the motorway fairly sunny, though windy. I felt safer driving his car off the motorway and decided this was due to the six years not having changed me. I told him about when I went up to move Mary-anne’s things a week past when the wind was so strong that the car chased the shadows of clouds which made moving panels on the road surface. The same thing happened to us moments later, first on the hills, then on the road and we marvelled. We played the game we play with a joint playlist, counting the score of how many of each persons songs had been played. We always forget to keep count and then work it out thinking backwards in the trip. 6-6. We arrived after an hour and a half tight from the journey and ready. I had made a lot out of it, I thought this would solve problems, I thought it would heal us. I took Kendal mint cake. The yellow sign declared gardens closed due to high winds. I can’t describe the feeling but I suppose it is somewhat akin to being petulant and let down and disappointed and it manifests itself in your stomach. We would take a walk down a nearby road instead. Private road. Two slaps too many. I am overdramatic, I love to decide to give up. It wasn’t that the gardens were closed or that the road was private, it was that I couldn’t deal with the stress and the trauma of the night before and this was to be the thing that saved me from it all, the thing to make him himself again. People think that I am strong but it scares me so much that I don’t have the strength to look after anyone but myself. I told him the night before, I wish it was just me, because when you have anyone else in your life that you care about you just have to worry so often. You and the cats and the fish. It’s okay with the pets, if the cats aren’t well you take them to the vet and you know one day they will die and it will be awful and it will hurt but you will be there for them and there is only so much you can do and it’ll be done, but with you… The truth is I have no idea how to help another person. He said we shouldn’t let it be a wasted trip, we should have fun. We headed to Peebles. I was resentful because now I was the one needing help, and it should have been me helping him. The roads were familiar and it still felt okay driving his car. Yet I felt this drag the further away we got from Glasgow, the west, from home. We got to Peebles and I drove towards the high street and I went for the car park but missed the junction and I couldn’t tell him because I hadn’t spoken for so long that it felt like my voice wasn’t even there anymore. I drove up another street remembering the driving test and stopped to parallel park because I wanted not to be driving anymore. I messed up the first attempt and lost my temper internally. I can’t park your car and I pushed it in first and took it back around. As we waited at the junction that was never clear I just stared up the road. As we drove back around the high street he said you’re not having any fun are you? but it didn’t sound accusing. I shook my head and drove to the roundabout. I needed to stop driving so I took it left across the bridge and saw a big car park and I whirled it in and stopped and just sat. He tried to convince me it wasn’t a wasted journey but I was too stubborn to even reply. I didn’t want to speak; I knew my voice would break me up. He asked if I wanted to eat and I said I wasn’t hungry but he could eat. He said we should go for a walk and get out of the car and I got out. We walked along the river and I stared at the water and the blown bits of tree. I couldn’t help feeling so desperate. It felt as though the day, that bleakness and simultaneous roughness in the weather, was made for us then. The wind gusted so hard and I imagined it blowing me into the water and wanted it to. I asked myself would I be thinking this way if I had fallen in the river, would I still be thinking these thoughts. He remarked on a large branch that had been stripped from a tree by the wind and I barely responded. If there were tears it didn’t matter because it was the atmosphere. We rounded the path and I slowed knowing the alternate direction took us directly back to the car. He turned to me and looked and I just slid to his chest and we stood together and I knew that all the upset and the pain would be gone soon, as though we had reached the summit finally. We walked back to the car and it rained. He put up his hood but I let it rain on my head and my hair get wet. When we drove home I had a fever of my own creation and we blew cool air to my forehead. We were going to make marshmallows, was I still okay for doing that? He remembered and I told him it didn’t matter it was only an idea but this time he really did want to. We compliment each other by taking turns at being hopeless. The motorway was backing up at Parkhead and we drove home through Dennistoun and the red sandstone blocks of tenements made me feel safe. Six years is a long time and old problems still remain. The problems of four years ago made me wish for where I used to be so deeply that it made me ache and this city seemed too hostile. Now it is the motorway lanes and the streetlights that soothe me and I don’t know if I should ever go back. Things will be okay as they always are and I don’t think you should read too much into this. Such is the way of the mind that it races with awfulness while it can hold onto it, but just as quickly ease and comfort return and you look back on your actions in such states regretfully. I told him I will be strong for him and I will be; it’s only fair and I vowed it, I would be ashamed of myself for less.

old people

i love old people. read it back now. that is the kind of statement that only comes from someone when they have been at least 12 hours out of the company of old people. it's not the old people's fault really, it's a lack of coordination in pace of living. i spent yesterday at seamill hydro hotel in ayrshire. we used to go there each year in october - and subsequently around easter - with the family en masse. and for my family, en masse at its fullest only ever amounted to ten people, and mostly just eight. as my grandad likes to remind me every time we go, they've been attending holidays there since my mum was [hand at knee] high.
this time we only went for one night and i didn't even stay over. one of my aunts and i took my grandparents over in two cars. driving alone because of my cold and a disinclination to put any eighty-one year old person in a sealed capsule with a sicky i considered living in each of the towns we passed through on the way. considered myself and stuart and children there. we drove through places with big sandstone houses with green trimmed hedges, white stones on drives and bay windows. beautiful views of lush meadows and small woods, trees of all variants and a multitude of greens made it seem untouched; it's funny how the sun can do that. and then i would drive for a further thirty seconds to find the obligatory area of scottish social housing, lumped onto the edge of a parish town like a reattached and infected limb. places where the grass is never cut and everything gone to seed; pieces of wood and children's obligatory plastic playthings scattered in the road. i'm all for inclusion but it seems that such efforts at assimilation between both ends of the scale have failed, all they succeeded in doing was placing a pocket of depravity right where it would feel the most disparity.
upon arrival at seamill everyone was desperate to get to their rooms despite it being hours before check in. there was no reason for it yet. grandad was standing upright at the counter disputing the name under which it would be booked with fran. i talked to my gran but she was too preoccupied with five things at once despite capacity for only one at a time. we had lunch in the pladda bar which i still lovingly change to bladder as a gesture to old times with my brother. it's funny with the old, the cauliflower cheese sauce was too runny and spoons required but once received it was delicious. what one would have ordered year after year became forgotten and the lack of alternatives a shock. look grandad, roast beef sandwiches, remember? there's no coronation chicken. oh dear, why not? where's the coronation chicken? they slip from misplaced nostalgia to being put out by lack of understanding so quickly. as is common place for this family food for thought is the theme of the day. how is your cauliflower cheese? what did you order again? how much meat is in those sandwiches? oh your chips look nice! did you have enough? do you want some of mine? helen would you like a chip? no thanks. helen, how about some of my cucumber? i'm ok, i have cucumber with my meal actually. helen, please have some of mine, just try it, take it. i'll take it all then okay (good humoured). confused looks arise. i eat my sandwiches and drink my tea. there was barely enough room on the table.
marjorie and jeer discuss the runniness of the cauliflower cheese again. it's nice isn't it? i'm glad i got the spoon. yes, it is nice, mmm. oh jean, you have some on your shirt. oh do i? yes, it's probably because it's runny, it runs under the spoon. yes, yes. i just wanted to tell you so you could get it out quickly. okay, thank you marjorie. my diary only cost one pound (grandad). yes, well thats all i tend to pay for diaries too (marjorie). fran looks at me with her tense smile and stricken eyes which makes her look simultaneously ecstatic and manic. i smile back. more tea please.
old people are trying. it is hard to slow your brain down enough to not get frustrated. you need to expect everything to be hard to understand and everything you say to be either misheard or mistaken. i always find myself thinking when i sit alone how i love my family, my elder family, and how i think of myself as patient and willing to listen and help and do what they want. they've made it that far, they deserve to do what they want. the only problem is that what they want they can't quite tell and most things you try seem to fail. such thoughts of how brilliant a grandchild you will be when you see them vapourise as soon as you get there as what you expect to go down a treat will always flop and the smallest little thing you didn't think mattered is the most perfect and wonderful delight of the day.
we walked on the beach and i held my gran's arm so she wouldn't fall; she's been known to fall. i realised that i wished someone else was holding her up because my hope and constant advocation that she is better than we think and coddled and underestimated didn't seen so accurate as she neglected to watch where she stood. she stumbled over rocks and walked on sinking sand and only commented on it a long time after we got there. what surprised me was how easy it was to hold her up. we walked for about 500m in total and how tiring that was made me vow to myself to walk every day when i am old. people will always say things like 'best intentions' in tone that conveys mixture of disbelief and a lack of conviction. i will follow through though. i know i will.
i drove home after dinner and thought of them all as the sun set, heading straight to bed with tea. i thought of tomorrow and the next day and the rest of the year. i had talked with fran about having children in the pool earlier and how stuart and i were going a year married already. we worked out that my mum's golden wedding anniversary would coincide with our 20th wedding anniversary, only a month out. we could have a joint party. i remarked that my mum, and fran, would be about 70. we were shocked, a little silent. as i drove home i felt so young by comparison. the idea that they were going to bed each night in a mindset of being at the end of life, that thinking forward was pointless, scared me. the whir of the loose bearing in the car as i coasted downhill was so prounounced as my head was silent, filled only with that dread. i considered then that being my age and imagining old age were meant be clash. i wonder how long it will be before the idea of death does not scare me? people often say that they are not scared of dying, that it is natural and a progression. for me it is naked fear because this is it. for me, this is everything and regardless of your view of what comes after (which i will tell you for me is probably nothing) once you've gone there's no return. the idea that you are barred from doing anything ever again is one of the most scary things i can think about. it's selfish and it's not emotional but to avoid dying it is the ultimate point of living. because that is the end, and that is all there is.

envy

I never know what to put as the title for each thing I type. The box should be under this one, because thoughts just seem to be dammed up, only ready to flow after I can make a hole and have it burst.

I'm looking at a rainbow light streaking across our television. It is violet, blue, green and yellow. If you move your head left or right the colours continue and repeat. It is endless, until your eye and your television are in line with each other and you can't be sure what you are seeing at all anymore.

There are bluebells in a vase on my windowsill. I picked them on May Day at Glasgow Necropolis with Stuart. It felt like how a May Day should be, like in a book. I'm always wanting to be so romantic and at one with the world, but my world keeps inhibiting such actions and the realism of others threatens to bring me back down to earth forever. The bluebells looked so beautiful. A carpet of them, but not all blue. Some deep blue, some pale violet and lavender, some altogether white. In Rebecca Maxim says he believes bluebells shouldn't be picked as they look worse in a vase. I thought this as I stooped down to pick them, feet crackling on the emaciated, crumpled leaves of last autumn, but I picked them all the same. I wanted them near to me, so I could safely rest my head in the clouds once more. They still smell beautiful, but they are slightly listless and lank. I couldn't make an arrangement out of them, they wouldn't allow. They hang horizontally.

People make me world weary. Sometimes I think people only exist to make other people feel worse about their lives. Sometimes people want to pick you apart just because they can, and sometimes they do it because they are jealous. A lot of people have been saying to me things such as 'how do you manage to be such a domestic godess?' or 'did you make that?' or 'where do you get the time to do all this stuff' and I reply in turn. Oh it's nothing, not important, I'm a student I have too much free time. I smile bashfully. You would think to be pleased by people's approval and admiration but it's really not that. It's jealousy. And it's scorn, feelings of anger and resentment generated by thier own awareness of their failings. They use the people in the world they contact as a yard stick to meausure their own sucess or lack thereof. I skimmed an article in a magazine about women brushing off compliments because they don't want other women to be jealous or feel bad compared to their own accomplishments. The article argued it to be a method of sparing people's feelings. I argue it to be lies brought on by the effect other people's complexes have on the person who is doing well. Because these little comments and enqiries on how you could be so talented or how long it takes you to do something aren't simply verbal mentions or interested questions, they are challenges. 'did you make that' is 'I couldn't make that, so how come you can'; 'where do you get the time to do all this stuff' is 'I am too lazy to make time to do this stuff so I don't think it's fair that you do make the time'; their questions are ways of shaming ability and success and creation. I'm fed up of feeling as though I should hide my accomplishments. And actually, I put a lot of effort into doing the things I do because I believe laziness to be an ugly quality in a person and I demand more of myself. People talk about living life while you still can, yet my version of this somehow seems to fail. It's ok to live your life by undertaking back packing tours of unappealling Eastern European countries and to go skydiving for charity but to live your life by being quietly successful, aiming to be good at the little things before the big? That can't be stomached.

Jealousy is an ugly quality and people try to hide it. They manage it from most because nobody looks deeper than the facade. People are too confused and their intelligences repressed too far to consider the awful realities of social interaction. I get hurt by social situations far easier than others not because I am soft or tender to such but because I am able read the subtle inaccuracies and flickering changes of characters others don't bother to. So when you next see me and you put on your impressed and unbelieving exterior to something I have spent a lot of time doing, don't think that I can't see the envy and the mild hatred bubbling underneath. Your sense of failure is your own and you can't hide it half as well as you think.

The Internet

I find myself often having to watch myself on the internet. It's a funny phenomenon isn't it? In general for example, what is it? Where is it? I'm not trying to be philosophical or anything but I remember when first introduced to it being mildly confused as to the intangibility of the internet. Is it a concept or an entity? Please don't say a bit of both! But that's nothing to do with why I have to watch myself on the internet.

The internet has been good to me. It gave me inclusion and friendship and conversation when I couldn't find it in the real world, it has given me some friends, a wider view of the world, and most importantly my husband. Yes, it's a modern love story for the internet-age. No-one I have met on/from the internet has been a peadophile; much to my grandmother's dissapointment. I remember her coming to me when I was at my most gauky and awkward and standoffish, saying 'Now I don't want to offend you, but you are being careful on the computer, because some people are not who they say they are...'. The next thing she said was 'Oh dear, I have offended you' probably because I made an expression somewhere between shock and repulsion at the idea of my seventy year old gran advising me on something I thought of as my own. Indeed, the internet was my generation's tool, and all those older were foreigners, even if schooled in it they would never speak it like a local. I am pretty sure I was on the cusp of being a little too old to be completely indoctrinated, but I managed to be fairly drawn by it nonetheless. No, what is dangerous about the internet is not to do with peadophiles or '14/M/UK' 49 year old men with moustaches. To be honest you have to be excessivley naive, complacent or stupid to fall prey to such on-goings, and I was never any of those things with regards to the internet.

What it is that scares me about the internet is the idea that it will become the same as real life. The best thing about online interaction is the disposable nature of it. You may think it callous and I'm sure it is if I know myself at all, but I like that there is always a red box with a cross in it. It's myself that's the problem really. I have this blog and I have a tumblr. Based on past revalations I like to pride myself on being truthful and honest and completely myself online. In real life social situations require acting and falseness too often and I try my best to shun it or just not care. But there is only so much disgust and so little acception that one can take in a day. The problem is that I find myself slipping sometimes, putting things up for an audience, looking at the 'followers' figure and having that little sinking feeling when it has decreased, the same one that follows being publicly disregarded. Why did that one person choose not to follow my blog any more? What picture was it that I put up, or opinion I spouted? I've had a lot of cat pictures recently, maybe I should do that less...

It's a dangerous thing, popularity. In both the real world and online. I was talking to my friend Kirsty yesterday about it all. She is one of the only people I still see from High School, and we didn't see eachother for a few years. I like to think it was a time apart that allowed us to develop our characters and grow, but I'm fairly sure it was just me being obstinate. She told me she wished she hadn't bothered herself over the tiny things, the trivial details of which shirt or trainers you had to have, or who you followed around like a puppy just to be glimpsed near and associated with. I told my Mum the other day that I wish I had had some confidence to be myself and do what I liked in school. She told me she's glad I didn't; that being kept down is character building and the pain of it all then becomes something far more worthy later on. Perhaps she is right. And if that's the case surely I'm too secure in myself now to be dragged back into the realms of social competition in my online world.

It's hard to know how much to allow all that in. Should I be happy with no-one reading my blogs, and doing it for me, or should I revel in the affirmation of other humans passivley approving of my thoughts and my life?

Either way, what I do know is that not letting people's disapproval hurt you is hard. Being snubbed in real life is horrible, leaving doubts and anxiety festering away on your insides. This can be the same online. I made an 8tracks playlist of my favourite running songs. Someone commented 'omg this sucks'. Interesting how one annonymous person can use three words - or six if you must - to tear a person down in such a way. Of course I sit here now and say to myself that it doesn't matter, that that person just disagreed, each to their own and similar breezy comments. But that doesn't hide the sinking feeling I got having smiled at an email saying someone commented, only to find a pathetic, passive criticism waiting for me. I can never decide if this sort of thing is legitimate and free expression of opinion or unnecessary and hurtful targeting of meanness. I'm never going to be impervious so slights, that is one thing I can accept, and it probably makes me a better person because of it.

People are always quick to say 'if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all' when someone rebels against their viewpoint. As soon as the tables are turned though they feel free to spout out over-exaggerated tirades about something they believe in, with no concern to the people around or the context. I find more and more I can't function in the real world for too long, it drains away a little bit of my soul everytime I have to endure tactless people with illusions of granduer and dazzlingly low IQs. Call me elite, call me intolerant, or just call me impossible, but I like being able to block, close and cancel online. Maybe not being able to do so is the greatest fear.

Treatise on Friendship

I probably bore in many ways and specifically in my constant writings of friends and friendships, and the trials and tribulations therein. However, it is one of those topics that I just can't get past. I like to think that unlike a lot of other people I spend inordinate amounts of time observing - and indeed criticising - human interaction; the forms it takes, where it manifests itself, and the end point of such endeavours. This is probably because I am not a particularly sociable creature. I've always been a loner rather than a team player. I don't mix well because I find it very trying to pretend to be someone I am not to make other people like and accept me. I'm not so arrogant to have never tried, in fact I tried all through my teenage years, being different versions of myself or different people altogether to try and have and keep friends. But in the end it all works out to being alone because even if others can live with your lie, you can't go each day pretending to be someone you are not. That skism that lies underneath the skin is too uncomfortable to wear day in day out. That is also the reason I find working in any form of customer service so appauling.

Anyway, I have gradually stopped all that nonsense and have just been myself and been honest. Perhaps I am not a nice person, perhaps I am impossible to get along with, and for a long time I thought this to be the case, maybe I still do. But I have been thinking of these issues and the idea of friends and friendship and why people interact with each other (outside of being family, which I seperate on the basis of its unconditionality) for a while now. A few things have emerged that I want to illustrate.

Firstly, I was engaging with the question 'why do people have friends?'. If you consider this I assume you will come up with similar though processes as follows. You have friends so that you have company in which to do the things you like. Friends are for sharing experiences, both good and bad. Friends are people you can talk to and people who can rely on each other. Friends will introduce you to new experiences and keep old experiences interesting. Friends are there so you do not feel lonely, and to keep yourself interacting with other humans. Friends are people you like and admire and therefore want to spend time with. I assume most people would agree with this as the basis of the reasoning behind people having friends. Indeed I have no doubts that for some people this is true. It was probably true a long time ago. But this is very much contrary to what I observe in everyday life.

Interest in human interaction today reveals an explanation for friends and friendships that is far less well intentioned, and be cause of this I believe friendship to be a false institution and utlimatley a lie. People have friends in order to validate their own views of the world. Is it a surprise that at school cliques are formed? People are friends with people who share their interests or images of themselves not because they want to engage in things together or talk of their joint interests, but because they want to paint themselves with their friends brush. They want to look like other people so that they can be in a group and have people think, yes they all are similar, therefore that consensus must be worthy. In a similar vein, have you ever known someone who befriends someone so they will look better? A thin person with a fat friend or a successful person with an unsuccessful friend? This is the reversal of the clique in that they look idealised by comparison. Two different manifestations of the same wish, to promote an image of themeselves that others - who will judge them - find admirable. People wish other people to think that they are great, and it really seems that friends are just the stepping stone on the road to popularity. Thus, friends are not only dispensable, but ultimalely breakable for other peoples purposes.

Secondly then, it is apparent that people who are friends with each other do not care about each other. This comes down to one of my favourite topics of discussion; loyalty and reliablilty. When watching television programmes you get the idea that friends are people who will be there for you no matter what. If you have problems they will support you, if you are sad they will console you and if you need them right away they will be there as fast as they can run. People are meant to make friends and invest in that friendship to build a connection between people that transcends all other factors. Ok yes, disputes will be had and people may change, but by virtue of the fact that you have known each other so long and care for each other's lives, you will be there for them, no matter what. This is a lie. A complete fallacy. It is something that is idealised. People are led into life now to be dissapointed. They are spoilt by the warmth and care of the family and led with false expecation of good and lasting friendships to follow. They are led though into a world where friendship is as consumable as food or fashion trends. If you protray the ideal image for a person now you will be a friend, likely a great one, but as that person's views alter and you remain you, you will be dumped at the side of the road like a puppy after christmas. People are not loyal. They do not like you for your personality, your character, your company or your own sense of loyalty. All they want you for is their own selfish ends. Hence this is why people who change with fashions and try to be cool and liked and aspire to such keep friends. But I am willing to bet that all these friends can't be relied on, and that these people probably have hundreds of friends, all of whom they know or care little for. Thus again friendship fails, when you have that crisis situation you will find that suddenly you are not the fun and cool person they knew when they met you but somoene with a problem, focussing on that rather than whats happening socially, and you will be shrugged off as fast as imaginable. Trust me.

Thirdly and finally, friendship is something that does not survive disruption. You always assume that friends will have fall outs. That's acceptable, and it's fine. You expect to be on the rocks for a little while, and then subsequently making up and friendship renewed. I must say that this never happens. It's different at school because there is a limited number of new people to be friends with. In school if there are others you may well be ditched upon disagreement, but more likely you will be viewed as better than the other people and then kept. In real life there are hundreds and thousands of other hopefuls, walking on the street, in the places you hang out and bumping into people left right and centre. In fact, they even make places themed in order that people with similar interests are housed in specific venues. Clubs, pubs, cafes, shops.. they all are associated with specific age groups, music choices, fashion trends so that there are an inordinate number of people you could indeed like. So when you and your friend have an argument it is far easier for your self-important friend to quickly latch to a new pal - as friendship is not hard in the making these days either - and build a swift relationship than swallow their pride and agree to disagree or even apologise.

This is the view of friendship I see as I observe people I know get let down by their so called friends. People pull out of plans at the last minute, people leave you for more desirable mates, people ditch you once the boyfriend arrives, people say oh yeah let's meet up but never call you, expecting you to once again do all the running, and for what? The grace of their ever so precious company? That startling hour where perhaps one day you will realise that you have very little of actual meaning to talk about? Maybe people should realise that friends are just a disposable substitute for family or sexual relationships. Once a person gets their boyfriend and grows wise enough to cherish their family for what they are, you will be forgotten. True friendship doesn't exist anymore. If you have friends I'm willing to bet you don't talk about what's important to you. I'm willing to bet that something very significant has happened and no-one even noticed or cared to ask. I'm willing to bet that they don't know the real you, your secrets, your fears, your aspirations. And I'm willing to bet that when it comes down to it and you are on the brink of something, that you know deep down that you couldn't rely on them, that you would call into the darkness and hear no reply. I just hope you wouldn't call back if the tables were turned.