Wishful thinking...

Well, old loves, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

You may have noticed I've been a little on the quiet side recently.  I've been preparing to move the blog over to somewhere a bit more versatile.  This has now happened.

Rather sadly, I shan't be updating here any more.  It's been a lovely few years, but the new one looks better.  It may be several years behind everyone else, but it's still pretty, and a little bit pretentious, and will probably have similarly opinionated incidents where I manage to contradict myself three or four times in a paragraph.  Therefore I invite you to peruse it now.

Have a good one, chaps.

For the first time in a good year, I've come up with an Idea for a short story that might actually work.  I might actually keep going with it.  It might get finished.  And it... might... be something interesting for me to do at work tomorrow when as per bleeding usual nothing else happens.

Maybe it's because I see quite a bit of them, or because I like to think I'm in some way well-read and therefore take these things more personally, but I know nobody like English students for giving me an inferiority complex.  I'm reading a particular book at the moment, and I haven't got very far because in all honesty it really doesn't appeal to me.  I can't get excited about the concept, the characters, the writing, anything.  But I almost feel dirty for not liking this book - say what you will about having preferences for types of literature, there are conventions about these things.  Some things it is the done thing to like; some things it is the done thing to dislike.

For instance, you have to have a very strong belief in the validity of your own ideas (lawyer, oops) to argue with an English student about the merits as a concept of the Richard and Judy Book List.  It seems to be that to turn to it for your ordinary reading material is equivalent to turning to Grazia for your ordinary news update.  And while the RAJB is a mere drop in the ocean of a lot of fantastic literature out there, it takes some fantastic authors and some fantastic books and gives them a lot more coverage than they would otherwise have had.

I think I am not a student of literature.  I think I have never been a proper student of literature.  I think I like a good yarn, well-told, with at least one character that I like and can relate to, and the occasional well-crafted turn of phrase.  I think that is what a good book is, and what it is for.  I think JK Rowling has been good for literature, because she has got people reading who otherwise wouldn't have done, and I think Alexander McCall Smith has been the same, and Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer and the others who may or, ah, may not be particularly good writers but have done a hell of a lot for popular literature.  I am not a student of the finer points of beautiful writing, even though I'm sure it's as worthwhile a thing as anything that makes me excited.  Therefore, as I can't read everything or enjoy everything or have an opinion on everything, and I have no specific preference for any respected or idiosyncratically off-the-wall sub-genre, and because there is simply not enough time or money in the world for me to give it all to Penguin or OUP, I am reaching a turning point.  This is to say: Symbolism, My Arse, reading is for the joy of it, and go back to my Minette Walters books.

Bitter, suffering from writer's block and lamenting the loss of something else I could have found so goddamned interesting but seem to have missed the boat on?  I should bloody think so.  Inferiority complexes (complices?) only come from my own shortcomings, after all, and you know what, I would have loved to have been an Eton-schooled Cambridge-going double-barrel-surnamed boy as well.  There's no use crying over spilt milk but between you and me I would have bloody loved it.

...and it made me smile a lot.

http://www.xkcd.com/614/

"And in some ways, God is a bit like a Black and Decker..."

I've spent the last few weeks so tired that two consecutive days, yesterday and the day before, at work, practically finished me off.  I can't really do today.  I'm doing my best, but I'm so tired I can't think, and I just feel like I'm aching all over.  Don't know really what to add to that.  Add it to my list of dreads.

In the meantime, have a look at this:


(I call it "Glorious yet time-consuming blanket on badly-made bed".  It's a masterpiece, I swear.) Why is it folded over?  Well, sadly, once again it's got too big for the needles it's on, of which there are now 1.8 metres' worth.  They're underneath.  How close is it to finished?  So close I'm salivating.  Don't ask me how much the wool costs.  Let's just say it could get close to paying for a family of four's weekly shop.  Eighteen balls of wool - I kid you not.  Three months in the making and I can almost smell the beautiful finishedness of it.  In the mean time, because it's so easy to get bored of black and white...



Sock!  Heel freshly turned, foot in the making,  Beautiful colours done very little justice and clashing magnificently with such a fabulous bedspread.  Mmmhmm.

I know I haven't written often recently.  But you haven't missed much, I swear.

This afternoon, I got my act together and decided that now, after five years of not having been really that bothered, I ought to go for another bra fitting.  I say not that bothered - I don't like shopping for underwear.  I do not like it in the slightest.  I don't like looking at myself not wearing much, and I do not like the idea that other people might be picturing it.  I have also worked in the underwear department of a shop, and having worked both there and in the shoe department I can assure you neither of them is very pleasant - but I know which of the two I infinitely prefer.  Sorry to give any women reading this any of my own complexes, but I'm afraid the helpful and professional ladies in the lingerie deparment are looking, they did notice, and they do judge.  Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me; hell, I'm never going to see these people again never mind remember them, but... I am a lady from a lingerie department.  So I'm doing it too.  And suddenly there's no more cameraderie.

Anyway, wherever you go in Southampton during the holidays, there is no way in hell you're going to get a fitting in the next hour and a half, and that includes any possibility of them lending you a tape measure for ten minutes, so you might as well forget it.  So there was I, reduced to a boiling hot changing room trying on four different sizes and do you know, I don't think I'm any of them.  I don't know.

The upshot of this whole matter is that I know one place that will be fine, have time, space, and mildly attractive stock - but I do not want my colleagues at work to know my bra size.  Sorry.  It's just one of those things.

So I thought fuck it.  And went across the road to Borders and bought a book on sock knitting.  Happy ending.  Hurrah.

At the train station on the way back from work today, I bumped into two of my old Scouts, N and D.  Not that I was ever a Scout, or that I ever particularly considered many of them 'mine', but I've watched these two grow up from the very young (N's elder brother and I were Mummy and Daddy Pigeon in a school play once, I think), and at countless Scout/Guide camps I've ended up with one, other or both of them in my patrol, and they've always been fantastic.  (They never trusted me with anything at school but for some reason, when it comes to Guiding, my mothering instinct always came out and I was given a bodyguard of Sensible Ones and allowed to look after the little oddities you always seemed to find, who piss off the leaders no end but always seemed to do as they were told around me.  I always wanted N and D, given the choice, because I knew they were strong enough to help out, clever enough not to set anything too idiotic on fire and wouldn't argue about the washing up.  That's why, in the same way I think of the Guides I mentored, to myself I call them my Scouts.)  They must be in my sister's year now, or the one below, so there's a good four or five academic years between us, but I always had a lot of time for them when I saw them every few weeks, and now I don't, I had no idea what really had happened to them.

I walked straight past them without recognising N at all, and only vaguely thinking I knew who D was.  And then they waved, and came over, and asked how I was.  Their friends were getting pissed in the park, but it was raining and they couldn't be bothered, so they were going home.

These boys are fourteen, maybe fifteen.  I am so damned proud of them.  I am so proud of them because they're fourteen or fifteen-year-old boys, and they came up to someone they don't know that well any more, and know as a leader at any rate, and because I remember when they were seven and little terrors and look at them now, they're brilliant.  Sat across from me on the train gossiping like old women about the idiot who thinks he's cool because he's wandering round town drinking cider out of a Lucozade bottle and the friend of theirs who only dropped two marks on his Maths SATs.  And I am here bursting with pride even though I haven't spoken to them or even seen them in ages, because they were always bloody brilliant to me and I had always prepared, like I did with all the kids I went to primary school with, to realise that nobody is that good when they're older, always the ones you think will be spectacular and magnetic and put the world to rights discover teenage anarchy and swearing and being obnoxious.  Maybe they have discovered alcohol and girls, maybe they have, that's no bad thing, they're fifteen, you do that.  But I can still see the little boys they used to be, and the possibility that they might be magnificent that they used to have.  It hasn't all been screwed up and chucked away in an effort to act older than they are.  I know, I saw them once on a train this afternoon, but I'm still prouder of them than I can tell you.

Got out of the habit of blogging a bit recently.  I'm looking (when I sit down near a computer) for somewhere with a bit more manouvreability than Spaces that I can import the past few years' worth of blog to.  Wordpress doesn't seem to have the ability.  If anyone knows how it might be done, please give me a prod.  I want to have a bit more freedom to muck about with my settings, but at the moment I still value four and a half years' worth of history more highly.  Utter shite though some of it may have been.

I won't have the internet for a week, I'm going to Devon tomorrow morning.  It's going to be refreshing and I'm so, so looking forward to it.  I have the house to myself tonight.  There is most of a bottle of wine in the fridge.  It won't keep, of course.  (Getting drunk alone, very occasionally, isn't sad.  It's not worrying.  It's safe, in that nobody else is going to judge my behaviour, and it's interesting, and at the moment it's very welcome indeed.  Plus I'm about to go back into a shared room, this time with my sister, and there are a lot of things inside me that I'd rather were outside and therefore YES I am going to get drunk by myself in an empty house and cry.  What're you going to do?)

This was going to be a very philosophical, probably quite self-critical entry.  I'll spare you it.

When poetry hits you square between the eyes and you think by God, that's how I think, how did you know that? I occasionally wonder how much of it is by chance.

Anyway, this is TS Eliot, with potentially the most beautiful, human poem I have ever read.  Every so often I come back to it and just have my breath taken away.  Don't read it in your head.  Shut the door.  Read it out loud.  Listen to it in your own voice.  Even if you don't like poetry.  That's all I can recommend.

I'm not in this situation.  Let's not take this too literally.  However.  This is my blog entry for today.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

S`io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, `` What is it? ''
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ``Do I dare?'' and, ``Do I dare?''
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
        So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
        And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
        And should I then presume?
        And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: `` I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all''--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
        Should say: ``That is not what I meant at all.
        That is not it, at all.''

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
        ``That is not it at all,
        That is not what I meant, at all.''

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall  wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

As if I don't routinely have enough of them.  But I have a bedroom to prepare for leaving to go home, and for decorating.  Therefore I am so going to procrastinate, by writing a list of things I want to do in my life.  I'm not a decimal person.  It's going to be twelve things.

1. Publish a collection of short stories.
2. Earn £60,000 in a year (or equivalent of £60k at today's rates)
3. Have children.
4. Own a vegetable patch or allotment.
5. Spin and dye my own wool.
6. Have a tall, thin house with three floors and a library, and people round for mealtimes several times a week.
7. Spend a month straight in France or northern Spain, visiting churches, drinking the local beverages and writing poetry.
8. Distribute aid for a charity at least once.
9. Set up and successfully run my own business.  I don't care if it's just a small one, as a sole trader, selling the things I knit in my spare time.  Obviously I'd like to make some money out of it; I'd like it to be bigger scale than that.  But more than I ever thought I would, I think I'd like to be self-employed at some point in my career.
10. Win an argument with a qualified barrister.  (Ohplease... the ego boost...)
11. Learn to sail.
12. Go back and do another degree later in life, in something I consider a hobby.  Maths.  Literature.  Textiles.  Physics.

I used to think I never really wanted to leave the British Isles.  There's too much to do here as it is.  I'd also like to do the Great North Run (to prove my old gym teacher wrong), and go to the Scilly Isles without a phone for a week, but travelling isn't really my bag.  I also want to design a hemp tote bag with 'Astonishingly, logic-defyingly good for the environment' printed on one side, and 'Yay me' on the other.  Hmm.

Probably ought to get on with this packing business, I suppose.

Sorry for not being in touch for ages.  I'd written a really good explanation of the last entry, with everything I wanted to say in it, but Spaces deleted it.  It wasn't me, honest.  But the point is it was about one in the morning, had taken me a good half hour, and I really could not be bothered to do it again.  At some point I will.

I then wrote a good half of an entry (which I'm currently adapting because again, it's a bit too late at night for me to start from scratch) and then... I don't remember.  Maybe I was packing.  A good lot has happened in the last few weeks.  By tomorrow morning, in the last week I will have slept in four different beds.

The last few weeks have been so busy.  I should not have stayed up til survivors' photo at five after the Phoenix ball (Grey's annual big summer do) - and then, starting from the next afternoon, go to a week's worth of 9 til 6 rehearsals, then have the D'Oscars (student theatre's awards ceremony - gloriously pretentious and sparkly, and consequently unmissable, then three thirteen plus hour days in the theatre setting up for Mack and Mabel, and five shows and two dress rehearsals in five days, and then straight into props for another show... which would have been all well and good.  I could have got by on coffee and stress for a week, and then crashed.  I could have done it.  (It seems so odd rereading this bit, this was two or three weeks ago.  Happy birthday Fiona.  After eighteen, they all pass without comment.)

About an hour after curtain went down on the opening night of Mack and Mabel, I got a phone call from my mum.  My gran has died.  The funeral was last week.  It has not been a good week - and more about keeping myself together than anything else.  Term finished a few days ago and I went to stay at K's house for a few days.  They gave me the spare room and the first day I was there I didn't emerge until two in the afternoon.  I wasn't asleep.  I hadn't been asleep for a good three hours.  I just haven't had a moment to myself in nearly a month, and there's been so much that I just haven't had time to think about.  I was sat in the second pew at the funeral, which was very small, sadly I think Gran must have outlived most of her friends.  I knew at the time I wasn't doing it justice.  A funeral is about saying goodbye, about having something final that you can use to draw a line at the end of a chapter.  I hadn't had time to even think about it beforehand.  As far as I'm still concerned, my paternal grandmother is as irrelevant and removed from me as she ever was and that's not going to change.

As I write, I'm sat surrounded by boxes in a new bedroom in a new house in Durham.  This is a new chapter, but it doesn't relate to any of my relatives.  There was a thunderstorm earlier and we arrived drenched to the skin.  There are midget gems on my desk, I don't have a bedside lamp and I feel sticky with the humidity, but that's just England at the moment.  I don't know how people manage to connect so many different places or parts of themselves together and make it make sense.  I was in Lincolnshire this morning.  Last week I was in Birmingham.  Next week I'm going to Hampshire, the week after I'll be in Devon.  K's talking about Paris, Poitiers.  Egypt.  My head is spinning, and that's only the Geography.  I'm stuck here in this tiny, hot room with all my things in no semblance of order and I can't connect the last three weeks in my own head, never mind the next three.

And now I've run out of steam and I don't think there's much else I can say.  Apologies that this is a bit of a whine and/or history lesson but I really have nowhere else to put it.

I went to see the Vagina Monologues tonight.  They were very good.  Afterwards we sat on the stage and chatted about the next shows we're all doing and locked up.  I love that theatre and all the people in it, including the ones that occasionally make me very, very upset.

I would like to make a serious point, however, and one that rarely gets aired, because it is not really a very chic thing to say.

What I would like to do is to reclaim the taboo of the c-word.  You know the one I mean.  The one Germaine Greer did the programme on saying it shouldn't be a taboo.  Well I think it should.

Can we get it straight, before I go any further, that I am not a prude.  If you know me you will know that I am liberal and open about these things, occasionally too much for my own good, but that's how I am.  I swear - not too often because the less said the greater the punch, to an extent, so my objection to the c-word is not that I don't like talking about these things; nor is it that I think it will offend people.  Clearly it does offend people.  Before you quote Stephen Fry at me saying that people usually get offended on behalf of other people as opposed to themselves, I know people who are offended by the c-word.  Personally.  For their own sake.  Because they don't like it.  They, also, are reasonable, forward-thinking people.

The reason I want to reclaim the taboo of the c-word is that it is an expression that is not clinical or amusing, and if it enters common, acceptable usage then I don't think it'll retain that.  The c-word, say what you will about it, is taken seriously.  When you say it, you don't usually say it lightly.  When you hear it, you know that it is not meant to be clinical, and it is not the sort of thing you ordinarily snigger at.

It's not a terribly good analogy, but take the colloquial use of 'harsh'.  If you tell someone they are being harsh, that's something that you have to consider, something that's maybe breaking the rules, something that's important.  It's not formal, but it is serious.  It's not a joke.  It's an almost universal signal among a generation that what is being said should be considered seriously but not threateningly.  The way it has retained this is by not being over-used.

The same I think is true of the c-word, at the moment.  It's a serious word, used sparingly but forcefully, and I think in the way that there is a certain nuance to the meaning of 'harsh' that seems to be recognised, there's a nuance to the c-word that it can be used in that sense.  Yes, it's an insult.  Anything that's sparsely used can be an insult.  I honestly don't see a problem with that.  Horrendously fearful expletives come in and out of fashion.  It's how it is.  (Edit: upon rereading, not a clue what I was trying to say first time round.  Think this should make sense now.)

The reason that I like that the c-word is like this is because it makes me feel like I have a choice.  (Here's where the Vagina Monologues come in...)  With the gentleman's anatomy, you have penis, which is frankly clinical (I'm sorry.  It has a Latin ending.  In no possible way is that arousing.), or you have the variations summarised in verse format by Monty Python.  There is no serious word.  Surely everyone wants to be taken seriously, at least to some degree?  That's not a feminist thing.  I thought it was universal.  I thought nobody wanted to be laughed at or reduced to a clipboard observation.  I thought if you wanted to be taken seriously, language would be a good way to do it.

I'm aware that this misses out a lot of the subtleties but it's been a long day.  I just like that something is still private, still up to me to talk about if I want to, or not as the case may be and there's an excuse for that, and if I do want to, it's still capable of being taken seriously because there is a term that is little-used enough and taken seriously enough to have the right effect.

I've deliberately avoided writing the word in this blog because I don't know who reads it and if I were to offend you I'd rather it was intentional.  (This also makes sense if you think about it.)  If I read this when I next have a moment it might get revised fairly drastically.  I can hardly type at the moment, let alone form a coherent and exhaustive argument.

This would be a serious, election-related post, but I've discovered (to my utter surprise, of course) that when I get started on politics I tend to get a bit carried away.  (Sorry, J.)  So I will assume you've thought about it, applaud you for doing so, and direct you to Washminster in my blogroll if you're at all interested in anything political but don't think you know that much about it.  I found it a month or so ago.  It's a gem.

So, aside with the world-changing events; bring on the frivolity.  Hurrah.

Yesterday evening, a friend of mine told me I was diplomatic.  This made me very happy for a number of reasons: firstly, it's a very lovely thing for anyone to be told, secondly, it's something I would like to be seen as, and thirdly, it means that at least for some time, in some people's eyes, I've beaten my own nature.  This cheers me up.

But the swag!  Yesterday, I went back to York to meet up with M for coffee and bounty-hunting.  We were successful on both counts.  I know I've mentioned before my quest for the button shop of glory and finally, third time lucky, the shop and I reached an understanding.  To the tune of this:



A veritable mountain of buttons!  Yes!  So everything I make for months on end (probably years, she says with undisguised glee) will have at least one of these sewn onto it.  For posterity like.  Top marks to you if you can see the one with the car on it.  That one makes me happiest.

Oh.  And of course.  I was in York.  It is practically sacrilege to return without spending a fortune in my favourite shop in the whole city...



The colours are in no way done justice.  I have already decided on patterns for them.  They're going to be beautiful. (And thank you, they are gorgeous fingerless mitts I'm wearing, now you mention it.  Wonder where I've seen those before...)

In the meantime, the theatrical whatnot is building up in my room, as is the panic, so I shall leave you to whatever you were doing (distractions, tsk!) and go and play with the shinies.  Yes.  It's one of those days.