I am a grudge-keeping person, and I have to live with it.  I don't hold them often, but when I do, they stay, no matter how hard I try to get rid of them.  Please notice the difference between keeping a grudge and acting upon it; they're very different things, and I think I've all but managed to kick the habit of the latter, which is good.

The first grudge I kept was at primary school.  One girl told me she was my friend, fed me stories and generally made me feel like an idiot.  When I moved schools I never spoke to her again, which was no big deal for either of us.  When I went to college I saw her on the bus most days and could hardly control the seething anger I felt every time I saw her.  Still didn't speak to her.  Didn't trust myself not to insult her for a reason she would never have remembered.  But we never crossed each other's paths.

I nearly failed my History GCSE because of a grudge - instead I got an A, having done nothing for the best part of two years, screwed up all my coursework and then worked like a dog in the last month, just to show I could do it on my own.

And then there was the glorious character assassination at the age of sixteen.  I set my friends on him and, again, our paths never crossed again.

Until this morning, when I got an e-mail saying he was sorry.  It's a great world, really, isn't it?  And after the first moment of triumph (ha!) I'm not such a bitch that I'll keep feeling poisoned after someone else makes a concession.

Got a book of Sean O'Brien poetry the other day and I love it.  I absolutely do.

'The Thing' - Sean O'Brien

The ring of fire in Act Three should actually
Evoke the SS chapel at Schloss Wewelsberg,
i.e. not Johnny Cash.  The 'problem with Mephisto'

Is not in fact a problem with Mephisto, but with you,
'My friend', and while I'm not at all inflexible
Or precious where the script's concerned, the 'difference

It will make' if Mephisto is played as though
From Hartleypool is that you will be dead.
Apart from that I think we're up to speed.

On another note, I think I've screwed something fairly important up by saying too much too fast.  It's all a bit complicated at the moment.  There's a lot of detangling to do.  But while this is going on: please.  A bit of spirit.  Have your two penneth.  If you think I'm wrong or overreacting or getting the wrong end of the stick bloody say so.  You give enough.  Take a bit.  Don't let me walk all over you, because I worry that at the moment that's what I'm doing, and that's both unhealthy and wrong.

Apart from which, I've spent £25 on wool today (denim cotton, silk-wool mix, and a lovely gold-brown sockweight wool that was in the sale, on a whim) and another £10 on needles and pretty stitch markers.  This isn't a hobby any more, it's a habit.  Gooooorgeous things likely to be finished in the near future.  Pictures to be posted as soon as this is the case.

Fiona what are you talking about you only write what you think don't you you cast yourself in a strictly true light warts and all everything there.  If you don't like it you've only got yourself to blame.  Now shut up, man up, and get on with something useful.

Look what I found.  Blast from the past.  Saw a guy in Waterstones wearing a t-shirt with "What's your story?" printed across it - if you remember, the competition they did last year.  Look what I found.  Hope it's legible.


(c) Wishful Thinking 2008

(This is me, showing off a bit.  Maybe.  This is my thought process when I'm writing a story, which usually aren't of this nature, and this is the finished result on one occasion.  This is also me showing you my handwriting.  Now if I'm not mistaken that means something.  Incidentally - and for my own amusement - I'm interested to know how old you think each of the protagonists is.)

Case in point: I've been sat here with Tubular Bells II going round and round for a good three quarters of an hour now, at my newly-cleared desk (it just stinks of procrastinating, doesn't it?), memory stick in drive, failing to work.  This doesn't usually happen; the work in question is paid work, I'm usually fairly good at getting on with that.  Whatever that says about me.

This stinks.

What does?  Do share.  Let us let our misery join in one clichéd mass of internet-based gut-spewing, or else let us compete for who's had the time of it.  I tell you what, I'll just shut up and listen, obviously I'm in a bad mood and I have no right to be, it's been a bloody good term all things considered, and I'm enjoying being at home, although how much that'll continue over the summer holidays is to be debated.  I've yet to go back to work, which is cause for celebration.  It's all been happiness for a week, a large proportion of which has been spent in various coffee shops of the South, drinking caffeinated concoctions, either by myself just collecting myself into some semblance of order, or with other people almost invariably doing the same to them.  I like coffee shops.  They are wonderful places to be on neutral ground with other people, or just with yourself.  A good proportion of my growing up has occurred in coffee shops.  That and my recovering.  It just seems to happen that way.  I think it must be this shuttling up and down the country when I've got myself settled - I've been a constant, and so has people-watching, when I've had time for it.  The latter being always interesting, but also in some respects not changing.  But the point of this paragraph is that I'm not happy at the moment, to mix my metaphors I feel a bit like I'm caged, but that's nothing to do with being at home or with my family, and I have the strangest sensation of treading water.  My theory is that it's a gap after spending a month straight being so busy.  It does something to your priorities - I happen to think they've got a lot clearer but maybe that's not as useful as one might expect it to be, because just because something is clear does not make it right.

Do you know what's worse than procrastination?  When you know you've got something difficult to do and you psyche yourself up about it so that to all intents and purposes you're ready to get on and do it, and then you find you can't yet.  This applies to exams - although in no possible way am I ready for those yet, conversations, bills, hours spent sat down working.

Anyway, seeing as that's impossible, and it's now been an hour of being sat here, I'd better get on.  I want to do something.  Get out of the house.  Sit in a coffee shop and think.

Last essay went in this morning, after most of last night and the morning being spent at it.  My anally retentive record says I've spent a good twenty-five hours essaying this week.  I can feel it all over.

But I'm home tomorrow!  A whole, six-and-three-quarter hours of train journey all to myself.  As per usual, I'm getting from A to B, anything else is a nice extra, so I'm going to finish and bind off this sock seeing as rather irritatingly the denim yarn I ordered nearly two weeks ago for a new project hasn't come through.  I feel a trip to John Lewis coming on.

I feel strangely empty after I've finished working, like something isn't there that should be - it isn't a loss of weight on my shoulders, or a calmness, more like a gap.  Which leads me where I've been going before - to the conclusion that working is my natural state.  It is what gives me the go.  I was built to write essays, and all that entails, including the mountains of useless knowledge, the ability to find things other people might not spot or know where to look for, a vocabulary that makes its presence known and a certain enthusiasm for odd things and associated social ineptitude.  (This is why I get on with props, too, incidentally.)

This is that stage after the marathon when someone sticks a blanket round you and offers you a drink.  I'm looking forward to the bit where you go home afterwards and have a bath and try and work out if everything is still in the place you thought it was.  Well.  We'll see how it goes.

I would add some political commentary here but I've really not been keeping up with it this week.  So in lieu of something pithy and observant (hah!), have this, it made me smile.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7946565.stm

Update to follow when I have anything useful to say.

My head feels like it's in a vice, I can barely keep my eyes open, my stomach is in some small amount of pain still and I just want to sleep.

I have 400 words of this essay left to do for tomorrow morning, no excuses, that's it.  They are going to be done tonight.  Earlier in the term I would have gone to bed and woken up at six and then finished it.  But after all this, I don't trust myself to do it any more.  I don't pay any attention to alarms when I'm this tired.

But I honestly wouldn't change the situation - this is paying for the last few weeks.  It's just head down and run and right now I don't have any energy left to move.  I would have coffee but I didn't sleep last night and I'm not making anything any worse.

This is the low.  Generally, I've found I'm not near a computer for the high any more.

Another week, another play...  So that makes it five this term: Guys and Dolls, The Pillowman, Carmen, Wyrd Sisters and HMS Pinafore.  Bit of a selection, really!  And a lot of really interesting new things learned too.  Props for three out of the five and the finding of more firearms than you can shake a stick at, and the use of more fake blood than you can shake a stick at, and then my first two outings with a set of cans.

'Cans' is short for Canford, the manufacturer of headsets that allow you to communicate with other people backstage - there's normally one stage left, one stage right, the DSM (who calls all the lighting, sound and flying cues) has one, everyone in the fly tower has a set and everyone who's in the box doing lighting and sound has one.  (Usually!)  So in a technically quite boring play like The Pillowman, Cans banter reigns supreme.  Especially when your light op is IW, who in his infinite wisdom brought a Trivial Persuit book with him and occasionally dished out useless facts.  So that was quite exciting, especially as I'd never done it before - there's a long time before the novelty of the important black headphones and belt pack wears off.

So there was that, and then I agreed to stage crew HMS Pinafore.

Rather conveniently, HMS Pinafore has no scene changes.

On the other hand, Collingwood College had taken all our cans sets, except for two - one up in the box, and one on stage.  So we had the DSM up in the box so he could cue IW with the lights without them, and in fact see what was going on, and yours truly on cans behind the stage so I could cue the stage manager to do the curtains, fly in a flag at the finale, that sort of thing.  On Saturday, there was a matinee - so the DSM and I swapped places.

I could almost burst with the fact that I've called a show now, and the first show I've ever called was a Gilbert and Sullivan.

On the other hand, it's all over now, I've had my fill for the term, and there's nothing left for me to do but these essays, all three remaining of them, and to start on revision.  Five shows in a term is a lot, and it's taken over so much so far that I really do want to prove that it hasn't ruined my degree.  Being busy, and learning new things, and being organised and having friends and a certain quantity of culture - hasn't ruined my degree.

After the get-out last night, a few of us went to the pub.  I was in no mood for it, and left when they, as is their usual standby, gave up and headed off to the one in the middle of town that's open til one.  Went to bed at midnight.  It's now midday, I've been up for half an hour.  I ache.

Part of me says that if you push your limits, they shift outwards and you can get more done.  Part of me now wants to go home and see my mum and dad and sister, and sleep in my own bed that nobody is going to kick me out of at the end of term.  The former being the far more important - Guys and Dolls at the beginning of term meant I bypassed homesickness for quite a few weeks, and now I miss them.

So I've been getting back into the knitting again, looking for the exciting yarns and patterns and whatnot - planning on a denim cotton tote bag as soon as the wool comes through.  I'm so impatient.  But there are all kinds of lovely things out there, I wish I had the time to do all of them.  Beautiful beautiful socks and even more glorious and overcomplicated shawls that would take forever but are just glorious...

If anyone in the world ever feels particularly generous, I absolutely have my eye on these (the top ones, six sets of six needles, I could make hundreds of socks! and all really complicated and cabled too! I could make cables on cables! cables on cables on cables!) - otherwise I am saving up.  Who doesn't want multicoloured and gorgeous bamboo needles, if one wants needles at all?  There is cheerful knitting if ever I saw it.

Frivolities.  What would we do without them?

Well, I've successfully sent myself from bad to wobbly over something that in truth will probably be quite interesting... were of course it not to mean that I've only got a week and a half in my lovely room, with its poetry walls and clothes on the floor and fake blood making implements all over the sink.  Yes, ladies and gents, Grey College has requested, the democracy of an emergency meeting in the kitchen yesterday evening and names out of a hat has spoken, I'm sharing a room next term.

With a girl who is lovely.  Absolutely lovely.  I can say not a word against her.  She's sweet, and accomodating, and has a fantastic sense of humour, obviously actually human, we get on pretty well (we're not that close but who am I to complain).  She has a lot of common sense, goes to bed at a reasonable time and doesn't really drink, but she's not boring.  She's a physicist so she actually works at her degree, and it'll be over the exams, so I'll have to be a bit more accomodating about when I actually get up and work, but perhaps that'll be a good thing in the end.  And I've never seen her stressed.

But then, she's never seen me stressed.  Or come home from the theatre at one in the morning in tears, or forcing myself to get up at half past six to do some work.  Or playing Riverdance on loud so as not to have to think.  I've got through the last two terms by having somewhere to retreat, away from absolutely everyone where my room is small, and cosy, and entirely reflecting upon me, and I don't have to interact or think about anyone else at all.  I get stressed, and I do it with fireworks.  If you saw me last year you can attest to that.  I turn into a viper when I PMS and the way I've been dealing with it the last year is to come back to my room, stick my head under a pillow and do my utmost to bring my heart rate back down.  Why should anyone have to deal with that?  Least of all someone so lovely and undeserving of it.

The fact that it's exam period... well, it could be worse, it could be this term.  But I can't see it doing anything but exacerbate matters.

And M.  It's Grey Day just before my birthday.  I wanted M to come up, I wanted to spend less than two months at a stretch without seeing him, I wanted to see Durham in the summer with him.  It's been two years, as of yesterday.  Two years.  I'm shocked.  And when we don't see each other for a while... bad things happen (but where are they going to happen? I want my space to choose) and everything goes a bit topsy-turvy.  I miss him like someone's reached into my stomach and pulled it out by the cords and is twisting it in front of my face.  It's painful.

I rang home last night, to tell my mum.  She was out.  My sister answered the phone.  I was in tears in the loo at the theatre - this is what lack of sleep does to me.  She was obviously in a bad mood and when L is in a bad mood nobody else in the world matters and their problems are just pissing about and vastly inferior to hers.  Which, obviously, made me feel a hell of a lot better.  So I hung up and sat on the toilet floor and cried because I was panicking, but only for a minute because I had to go and teach the kid they've got in to do props - because I didn't want to do it, I might add - exactly what a props table is and what one does with it.

But all these conditionals and hypotheticals mean nothing: that's how it is.  For better or for worse.  A and R share now, but then they've known each other for years, and when R has his girlfriend round A goes and stays at A and B's house.  IW said he'd had to in his first year and not looked forward to it but had found it great fun.  I hope he's right.

I'm sure it'll be fine.  There are all kinds of ways of finishing this and they all start with I Just.

This is the mood where I just head for the Mike Oldfield and sit there and concentrate on tubular bells and whatever I have to think about.  Of which there is, as ever, a lot.  I'm running on caffeine at the moment.  I've had about eight or nine hours sleep in the last three days.

Had a foxtrot lesson yesterday afternoon, which was fantastic and exactly what I needed - slow-ish music, concentrating on posture and footwork and rise and fall.  Details - all the big things like speed and direction are someone else's problem.  Something where I could see the results, just looking in the mirror, and feel them instantly.  I was a bit surprised, though, to discover that the reason my posture is so erratic is that, "You can tell you're not really used to showing off."  As reasons go, it's a lot better than it could be, but it's another case of self-consciousness thwarting me at every turn.  I've got out of the knack of wanting to look graceful.

Do you ever look at yourself and realise you've spent however long fitting yourself into certain boxes?  I'm quiet, I'm not loud.  I'm controlled, I'm not ostentatious.  I'm straight-talking, I don't beat about the bush.  I like company, I don't like physical contact.  I facilitate, I don't perform.  I care about what I do, not how I look.  I am refined, not energetic.  That sort of thing.  (They apply to varying extents, adapt as appropriate.)  Occasionally something knocks you out of the blue and you realise the boxes you've chosen have changed, or that they don't exist any more - this is why I'm so surprised, if that makes sense, in this case.  I had myself down as someone who didn't like being watched particularly, I also had myself down as a ballroom dancer who is focused on the technicalities as much as, if not more than, the social side.  And when you think about it, these are not as compatible as you might think they could be.  So let's avoid the Disney Sing-Along School of Being Yourself and just say that the boxes obviously aren't what I thought they were, and while they are still there, because that's how I get comfortable with myself, they're going to need renaming a bit.  It happens, every so often.  I wonder how long it'll be before my vocabulary isn't up to it.  After all, I'm a boxes sort of person.

Here. You'll like this.

If you're ever wondering about my motivation, which some people seem to be, then... well.  Maybe Pink Floyd got some of it right:

"Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."

During my GCSEs, way back when, I felt completely trapped because nothing seemed to qualify as living.  Nothing was the actual event, everything was preparation for something else.  One day you have to put your foot down and decide that NOW is the time, now I am not preparing, I am going out and doing everything I want to do, otherwise it will be future or conditional tense forever.  I am not going to procrastinate any more.  And when I've done everything I want to do, then I'll stop running to try and do them.  Oh yes, planning my retirement.  All you wannabe psychoanalysts out there, go on, tell me that I'm scared of my own mortality, go on tell me the technical term for it, because it's a load of rubbish, I'm just chronically impatient and incapable of sitting still for ten minutes.

'Workaholic' is a terrible word and bandied about like 'geek' in the formative years of secondary school.  There may well be some small pride, for some people, in the label - but that's all it is and anyone for whom the sum of their parts is workaholic needs looking after.  I'm generally of the opinion that concentration should be of secondary priority to enthusiasm, and enthusiasm you get by chucking yourself about the place and getting into things.

(I love you and I wonder if that answers your question.)