Dreadful Nonsense

I was robbed today. I think it's the first time in my life I've ever been robbed. Having just realised that, you'd think I'd be sitting here thinking how I'm the luckiest little girl to ever stalk this planet, but you'd be wrong. Very wrong. I want to seek bloody, painful vengeance on the sod who robbed me today, such is my level of sulking wrath.

What was taken doesn't seem like much: my iPod cover (but not my iPod), a bar of chocolate and, most worryingly, a handful of valium. My wallet was searched through, and discarded when they didn't find any cash (happily, they left my credit cards and massive debt behind), my handbag was also rifled but they similarly didn't find anything (I have virtually nothing of value) and THANK THE BABY XENU AND ALL THE LITTLE CHILDREN they didn't take my laptop.

I'm guessing, from the pathetic list of stolen items above, that it's an opportunistic idiot who took these things, someone who is actually the clinical definition of a kleptomaniac, someone who is stealing for the thrill rather than for the profit, because the ridiculous thing is that THE IDIOT GOT INTO MY ROOM WITH A KEY, AND THEN HELPFULLY LOCKED THE DOOR BEHIND THEM AGAIN, which means it can only be one of the cleaners or a member of the university staff and, obviously, shouldn't be very difficult to find if anyone actually tries looking for them.

But I'm not sure anyone is going to.

The thing is, the Uni are being particularly unhelpful in light of all of it. Initially I was accused of leaving my door unlocked, and then they said that it was a very unusual thing to have happened, and in the next breath said "and anyway, it can't be the cleaning staff, because the last robbery was on Saturday, and they aren't here at the weekends".

The last robbery?

Equally when I went to the OU office to report it, they said, oh my goodness, not again.

Not Again?

Mother fuckers have had petty thieving like this going on for the last two weeks and they've done nothing about it up until now. Nothing at all, including not telling anyone about it, not informing the police, not getting the uni staff involved, not making a paper trail and basically sitting on their hands making sympathetic faces and giving the "but what can you do?" eyes to everyone who has been reporting their lack of chocolate over the last fourteen days.

Honestly, you'd think that when I mentioned the valium going missing they might have paused for a moment, but no, one of the ladies piped up from the back, "Isn't that weird, because yesterday that other man reported that his medication was stolen too..."

Yesterday? Other man? Medication?

Honestly, university staff is universally retarded.

This has ruined my day, and also looks like it's going to ruin my week here. I'm trying to think of how much worse it could have been, how they could have taken Mr Pipps (my iPod) or Eggers (my laptop) or - horror of horrors - my Tigger Pillow that I got from the Disney Store, but I really can't see past the idea that some fucker stood in my room appraising all of my belongings, and just picked out which one suited them best. The bastard even had the audacity to unplug my iPod from the speakers, take off the iPod cover and then plug the iPod back in again which I think shows such a brazen attitude that I might have to peel their skin right from their face if I ever get the chance.

*The title refers to a google search that led someone to this site. I hope they found their answer.

I'm at Open University Summer School. It's the end of the first full day, and I am exhausted. I've been exhausted for the past five weeks. Last night, I went to bed at 10.30pm. Today, I had to nap from 5.00pm to 6.00pm just to have the energy to go to dinner. This is all because, five weeks ago, He Who Only... and I became parents.

I haven't written in this blog for a long time. Initially, it was because I didn't have the time, the ten minutes or so, in a day to sit and purge my brain of whatever inanities I usually find to type about. And then the long stretch of time between my last post and the next time I found myself with the 10 minutes to type seemed to make it more difficult, because I felt like my silence required explanation. People started to email me and to facebook me, asking for new posts or whether or not I had completely given up on blogging. I have no idea. Probably not. Finishing things frightens me. I don't like endings. I like long, messy goodbyes, regular denials if possible, and lengthy post mortems which are perversely really just to keep the dead thing alive in some way.

(In October I go into therapy.)

One of the problems is that I have got so many things that I could be blogging about, but so many of them are completely inappropriate. I would love to write about work, but obviously that's a massive no-no, and I'm stupid but I'm not that stupid. I really long to blog about my voluntary work, but confidentiality is such a large part of what I do that I don't know the last names of the people I work with, and they don't know mine, and if anyone accidentally came across any entries relating to what I do there, and put two and two together, I would lose my place in that wonderful charity, and a really important part of my life. I would adore to be able to blog about my relationship, and detail all of the things that happen in my head and compare them to what is actually happening in the room between us, but that's the quickest route to singleness, plus a lot of his friends used to read this, and that would just be embarrassing at the next one of the MANY THOUSANDS of weddings we'll be attending.

And to do all or any of these things would also mean me finding a 10 minute gap in a schedule that simply doesn't have 10 minute gaps. Talk to me five years ago, and I would never have believed that I was (a) the member of a gym; (b) the member of a gym in North London; (c) struggling to find time to attend said gym; and (d) actually missing my trips to the gym.

My life at the moment revolves around four things. These four things take precedent over all others, and all four of these things irritate and delight me in turn. These four things, in no particular order of importance are my boyfriend, our skinny dog, my job and my studies.



I'm starting my Masters in October. This is the Masters that I applied for, told everyone I was doing, then decided I wasn't going to do, told everyone in my life that I wasn't going to do this Masters after all, then went to the interview anyway, then got offered a place, and then accepted, deciding I'd probably turn it down later down the line, and now I'm starting in October and have had to tell everyone that I told I wasn't doing it that I am, in fact, now doing it. I'm doing a Masters in Counselling because I enjoy listening to my little sister whining so much that I decided I'd like to do it full time and actually get paid for it. Plus, I like to feel important, and obviously listening to people's tragic tales will give me a lot more to blog about and will fill up the chapters of my inevitable book version of this blog when the fucking publishers finally find me and offer me the book deal.

Some of that isn't true.

I'm so terrified about doing the course, I can't even begin to consider what it would be like to be an actual grown-up counsellor out there in the world with clients and everything. It seems really perverse to be spending so much money, so much time and so much energy doing something I'm not entirely happy or confident about, but there is also a part of me sure that this is the thing that I should be doing, that I should definitely give it a go. And, you know, otherwise I'd have spare time in which to relax and sit down and some spare cash for food and luxuries like socks and fresh fruit and pay the television licence and who really wants to live like that anyway?

And just to make sure that I go completely insane before I even start the course fully and say goodbye to the last of my nerves, we got a small, skinny, abused and abandoned dog from a rescue centre five weeks ago, and said dog has been ruling our lives ever since.



Her name is Claudia Jean, CJ for short. We named her after the press secretary in The West Wing, because she is also long and thin, and to be honest she really does look a little like Alison Janney. CJ eats everything she can get into her mouth – sticks, poo, vomit, grass, dandelion heads, pebbles. She especially likes pebbles. She tries to crunch them down, and then when we ask her to drop them, she defiantly looks up at us and swallows them whole. We then get to pick them back up the next day, when they appear in one of the five different times she poos every day.

CJ's metabolism is something that we're obsessed with. She's very underweight and even though we feed her enough to floor a Doberman, she doesn't seem to have put on any weight in the five weeks that we've had her. This could be due to the fact that she never stops moving. She is never tired, until the moment when she collapses on the floor in front of us, or on the sofa behind us, and then won't move again until 5.00am the next morning when she's up on the bed licking He Who Only... on the face and wondering why the heck we're not up already, because there are balls to throw and joggers to try and bite. We are now feeding her puppy food in an effort to bulk her up a bit, which she is given three or four times a day (and probably more than that, because me and He Who Only... are currently engaged in a bidding war for her affection, a war that we have not spoken about but which we are both all too aware of. He thinks he has the upper hand because he eats meat, and therefore gets to slip her some little meaty treats off his dinner plate when he thinks I'm not looking, but he doesn't realise that because our dog is an undiscerning retard who, last week, lapped at a slimy pool of dog diarrhoea like it was the most delicious delicacy she had ever been offered, she doesn't care if it's tofu or bacon).

The little skittle never stops moving, and it's difficult for her to settle in the evenings when me and He Who Only... try to sit down to watch some West Wing (the scenes in the press room endlessly entertain us now, with all of the journalists urgently yelling our dog's name in unison from the television). He Who Only... has devised this fantastic game where he hides one tennis ball while throwing another tennis ball as far as he can throw it (which is impressively far). CJ takes off after the first ball and joyously brings it back, at which point He Who Only... produces the second just before CJ comes skidding to a halt in front of him. She drops the first ball as if she never cared for it in the first place, and takes off after the second which He Who Only... will have hurled off over the horizon, and so the game continues until CJ is barely crawling towards the balls. This means that she is then tired enough to go to sleep when we get into the flat, and we can watch telly in silence rather than with her proving her importance every three minutes by dashing over to the door to bark at imaginary nothing. This also means that any of the calories that we've managed to get into her during the day have been well and truly worked off, and she is still so skinny that you can see every bone and every muscle in her tiny, incredibly buff looking body.

I'll be honest with you, ladies and gents, since I don't think anyone is reading this right now anyway, I didn't really like her when we got her. Or rather, I didn't like what she brought to our Nest'O'Love, which had previously and wonderfully just been the two of us, with nothing to distract our attention from each other and how we could make each other laugh. All of a sudden, our lives were about trips outside, regardless of weather conditions, regardless of time of day or night, every 90 minutes or so, all of our conversations were about what she had eaten, the consistency of her poo, whether she was happy or content or nervous or worried. Our sleep was distressingly interrupted by barking fits, by her crawling up on the bed between us, and then lying down horizontally and kicking in her sleep. Morning wake up time is now any time from 5.00am when CJ decides she can't hold it in any longer, and absolutely nothing will persuade her to pee on the very expensive puppy pads that I bought off the internet that promised they were infused with such a pungent aroma the dog would be desperate to urinate all of them. (We had even talked about it before buying them, worried that she wouldn't want to wee anywhere any more but on these pads, as some of the posters on the internet forum I read warned. The little madam just sits on the pad at the front door and whines to be let outside.) After the first 10 days of dog ownership, with broken sleep and arms hurting from being pulled on the lead, legs aching from walking outside all hours of the day and night in the rain and the sun, and mind desperate for another topic of conversation other than how many times the dog had pooed that day, I consider whispering to He Who Only... what the voices in my head were increasingly urgently whispering to me. That we should give the dog back. Give her back to the rescue centre, because this one thing that I had been wanting since forever just wasn't working out the way that I wanted it to.



And I didn't like that He Who Only...'s attention was diverted from me, and that he was shooting those gooey looks that used to go towards me onto a skinny, furry animal just because she had decided to wrap herself around his neck and fall asleep breathing right into his ear. That's what I used to do. That was my rightful place.

But now, it's all changed. I haven't seen CJ since Thursday (it is now Sunday as I write this). He Who Only... took her up to his parents, since both of us were going to be away for the weekend, and we didn't have anyone in London that could look after her. On Thursday and Friday night, staying in our Nest'O'Love on my own, it wasn't He Who Only... that I looked for in the middle of the night when I woke with a start, but CJ. I spent this afternoon in the class in which I was supposed to be exploring how to use the online resources that the course is offering us looking through photos of our holiday in Galway two weeks ago and going all gooey eyed at the photos of my tiny hairy baby. I really miss the way that she smells when she's all curled up and sleepy, and I'm even missing her standing in my head in the morning, shoving a pair of He Who Only...'s socks into my nose as a morning greeting and way of getting me to get up and throw sticks for her before I go to work.

It's a very weird lifestyle change, a complete turnaround from the carefree, footloose way that we used to live and that I don't think either of us really gave serious thought to giving up. Now one or both of us have to be at home without fail within about 6 hours of leaving the house. We can't go away for the weekend, or out for the evening, without precision planning and packing an extra bag full of chew bones and rubber toys and her trusty little Liverpool FC food bowl. Windows must be checked and double checked in case she hurls herself out of one in a fit of rage at the sighting of a cat or another dog or – her worst enemy, besides horses – a cyclist.



Cyclists drive her crazy. Joggers she doesn't like – she wants to chase after them, and will bite their ankles and calves if she can – but that is nothing compared to her feelings about cyclists. Cyclists make her so demented that she tries to hurl her tiny body into the front wheel of the bike, presumably so that she can stop them mid-spin, throwing the rider over the handlebars to land in front of her in a crumpled, bloody mess that she can then climb up on top of and use as a launchpad off which to propel herself at the next passing cyclists. It is terrifying walking with her, because you have to anticipate the appearance of a cyclist from around the corner of the winding tow-path we live right beside, and reel her in on her extender lead before she gets a chance to put her Bike Revenge Plan into action. Stunted on the end of the lead, all she can then do is rise up like a meercat, rearing up on her back legs, held back by the lead, and stare with rage at the cyclist as they go past. I swear, at least two cyclists have almost ended up in the canal, so distracted have they been by this tiny form sending out waves of wrath.

I won't pretend that I don't still get twinges of jealousy when He Who Only... is too busy telling CJ about the everything he is doing while cooking dinner in the kitchen – she will not allow anyone in the kitchen without her, in case they accidentally leave the door of the cupboard that houses her food open and she can, like her wildest dreams allow her to imagine – crawl right inside that bag and eat her way back out. I can't say that I'm starting to enjoy being rudely woken every morning and forced to hurl on whatever clothes are on the ground on the alternate mornings it's my turn to do the “early shift” and take her outside. But I do love to throw things and have her bring them back, and I realise already that we wouldn't be without her now, neither of us, even if it means a lot of things have to change.

In fact, I found it a lot easier travelling on my own than when I'm travelling with anyone else. I actually find it incredibly stressful travelling with He Who Only..., and last night I worked out why: I'm an idiot. A crazy, irrational, possibly borderline-actual-insane idiot. Last night on the plane, I walked around, I lay down (the flight was pretty empty and I had all three seats to myself), I looked out the window (London at night is AMAZING during take off. I never knew that. Why has no one ever told me that?). I read my book. I listened to my iPod. I went to the toilet. I didn't cry. I kind of (but not really) almost (but actually really not) enjoyed (but I didn't) the flight.

It was a pretty positive experience for all of us. So now I'm left in a quandary. If we're ever going anywhere ever again, do I need to book us both onto separate flights from now, just so that I don't drive myself, He Who Only... and everyone else in the known universe insane with the crying and the rocking and the impending doom? Or was this just a fluke, a once-off, something that may not be repeated on the flight back? The test will be the flight back on Sunday afternoon. After that there are some tough decisions to be made, like making He Who Only... travel ahead of me, like some kind of advance party.

Actually, that'd be pretty cool. Cos then wherever I go, there would always be someone there at the airport, waiting for me. I'd be like the Queen, or Madonna, or the Pope or someone. I'd make him hold up a sign and everything. Cool.

[In the interests of full disclosure, I took a full 4mg of valium before the flight last night, which is exactly 2 more mgs of valium than I usually take. That might have had a lot to do with it.]

I'm flying today. On my own. It's very frightening for me, and for all the other passengers, when I start screaming and pulling my own hair out and crying and throwing up and praying and rocking.

And that'll just be at the check-in desk.

Ha. That's not even funny. And I've already checked in on-line. Get with the 21st century, daddio.

Anyway. He Who Only... said I needed to put my flight details on line, cos that way the plane won't crash. He also confessed to me this morning that, when he flies, he has one piece of superstitious crazy behaviour which means that on the day that he is flying, he has to act all good and proper and kindly to his fellow man so that if the plane does actually crash and God does a quick background check, he can at least on that one day be mistaken for a Christian and let into heaven.

This morning, I deliberately hit three school children on the shins with my bag as I was getting off the tube, because they were all too young and thin and full of hope.

Anyway. Flight details below. Posts next week about how cute my nephew is to follow.


ITINERARY:
=====================================
AER LINGUS EI 183 Z/ECONOMY CLASS CONFIRMED
DEP LONDON/HEATHROW THU 3APR08 9.10PM
LHR -TERMINAL 1 - TERMINAL 1
ARR DUBLIN THU 3APR08 10.20PM

AER LINGUS EI 168 Z/ECONOMY CLASS CONFIRMED
DEP DUBLIN SUN 6APR08 2.40PM
ARR LONDON/HEATHROW SUN 6APR08 3.55PM
LHR -TERMINAL 1 - TERMINAL 1
=====================================

Whipping through my photo archives, I've taken a lot of photos of pub interiors in my time. They are shadowed only by photos of (a) pints of beer; (b) He Who Only... looking a bit bored; (c) pictures of myself in mirrors in public toilets when I've been drinking that never look good the next morning; and (d) photos of graffiti.


All of the below are various pubs in the locality. I like them all, for a variety of different reasons. But I am not going to talk about them at all. Instead, I am going to tell you the tale of what happened to me almost a week to the day.




The morning started off well, in that I got out of bed in time, managed not to immediately burst into hot, angry tears at the thought of yet another tedious fucking day alive and breathing and having to go to work, think about money, contemplate my future, do some more study, contemplate my own navel and also answer someone else's phone calls for seven and a half hours a day. No, that morning I even managed to sing along to Dusty Springfield in the shower and raise half a smile at poor He Who Only... who has become accustomed to having to hide under the duvet for fear of missiles flying on his head most mornings. He was even brave enough to declare that today would be a good day and that "nothing bad would happen". We've had some bad days recently, you see, and it seemed like we deserved a better day, and why wouldn't it be today? It surely must be today.


I decided against wearing my brand new boots, because I've not quite got the hang of walking in them yet and by the end of the day I'm walking like someone with two ankles on each foot, and a right dose of rickets. I decided instead on my runners that have stars on them, which look like something Avril Lavigne would wear (and secretly that's why I like them). I left in good time to catch the train in, and had plans to pop into the New Look to buy something cheap and made by 6 year olds in sweat shops on the way to work to cheer up my miserable life.


So that's where my mind was at just after 8.15am when I crossed the road across from the train station that I have been crossing for over two years now, and the next thing I knew, I was thinking to myself "Oh, I seem to be falling" and then I fell and kept falling for what felt like about five long, falling minutes.

I cannot tell you in words the pain in my knee. I cannot describe for you the feeling of my knee. I can't explain to you anything at all about my knee, other than the fact that I had really, really hurt my knee and now the world needs to end because dear God, the feeling in my knee is too much. It really hurt, is what I'm saying.

But not as much as the pain in my hand. Oh, the pain in my hand. And there was blood and bleeding and the pain in my hand and my knee, and I can't even stand up. I can't even stand up, so now I'm sitting on the pavement by the edge of the road and I'm laughing because the pain in my knee is so intense that it is actually comical and the pain in my hand and it's bleeding and oh I really should have stayed in bed this morning.

The gloriously nice thing about this experience is what happened next. A man walked past me and towards the train. A second man walked past me in the other direction. And a young, black teenager, all hoody and mobile phone with tinny shitarse music playing out loud, all attitude and chewing gum and inappropriately bulky trainers, he stopped and asked me if I was okay. And I was laughing, still laughing and I said yeah, and he said, are you sure, and I said, yeah, and so he kept walking. And I wanted to hug him so badly, and tell him that I was always sure those little hoodies wanted to stab me in the face and run off with my iPod, but he had changed my mind, but I couldn't tell him that because I was still laughing and the pain in my knee was getting better and worse at the same time.

Another lady came over and knelt down beside me and asked me if I needed some help getting back up and I said I didn't, but I just needed to get my breath back, and she said she'd wait for me, and so she did, and I stopped laughing finally and she helped me back up and then asked me if I was okay, and I said yes, and then she crossed the road behind me and I limped onwards towards my train, sat on the train for 10 minutes examining the bleeding cut on my hand, realised that I was starting to shake and my teeth were chattering, and I turned around and came home again and then burst into tears in He Who Only...'s arms.

The long and short of it all is that my right knee is completely black and blue and fabulously interesting looking, and only today is it able to go up and down stairs in any comfort. My left knee, which was also left cut and bleeding, has been a lot better in comparison to it's brother knee, and is merely blue, green and yellow at this point. My right hand, when it stopped bleeding, has healed up nicely and we'll say no more about it. My left hand, however, only started being trouble the following day and a week later, I am now convinced I may have broken a bone in it.

And this is why I keep complaining about everything. And this is why I haven't been blogging recently. It's all just whining and complaining and broken bones and bruises. But some lovely illustrations, I think you'll agree.

And with this kind of backward thinking comes a tremendous amount of forward planning. I've talked a lot recently about moving away from Hackney. But why, I hear you all screaming so loudly that you're scraping your throats red raw, why in Jebus's sweet, sweet name would you want to move away from Hackney, your home of the last nearly three, long years? Well, dear lovely people, sometimes you've got to think to yourself that enough is enough. This past weekend, we were visiting He Who Only...'s kind parents who were polite enough to put us up for the Easter weekend even if I do insist on being covered in tattoos and don't even eat meat, I mean, what is all that about anyway? And we spent the time building snowmen and sitting drinking tea and reading newspapers and going for walks in the country side, and there on the news spoiling all of our fun was the story of the man stabbed to death in Hackney simply because some people wanted some of his money, and he was too slow to hand it over.

Hackney is fun sometimes. I mean, look at this -

This is more graffiti that I found in the locality. This one stretches underneath a railway arch and goes all the way from here...


right the way round to here -


And since I took that, it's been embellished even more. Giant graffiti punks. I love them. This kind of anti-social behaviour I can really get behind. I love graffiti. If I stay in London much longer, I'll be the next one to publish one of those twee little books about the walking tours you can take around the rough ends of nowhere just to look at some Banksy piece of shit.

(I say that now, but when my bus went past the latest Banksy, which is the one with the kids pledging allegiance to the Tesco carrier bag, I nearly got off the bus to take a photo and lick the wall in appreciation.)

But it's the stabbing, the spitting, the traffic noise, the lack of social cohesion, the sense that, if I carry on living around here for much longer, my luck's going to run out and I'll be stabbed through the chops by some little tike who wants my iPod (and then this blog will be found, and that last sentence will be reprinted in The Fucking Daily Mail along with my MySpaz photo and the word "Tragic" printed in bold beside my name in the photo caption).

But we can't decide where to move to. We're trapped in London, we really have to stay within an hour of the centre, we need good transport links, and I want a dog more than most women want children, so we need a garden and an understanding landlord, and every time I contemplate leaving my comfortable little mouse-infested Nest'O'Love I get more panic attacks than I know what to do with. But then again, I felt the same way moving from Dublin, and I'm ever so glad I did that too.

Hey ho. Nothing ventured, and all that.

No, in answer to Lorraine's comment on the post below: this is not my way of weaning y'all off my blog, but my way of explaining the lack of posts, both to you good people and to myself. It's not that it's been a rough few months, or that I've had nothing to tell you. I've got tons to tell you all, absolute belters of stories, many, many photographs that need to come off my phone and into your computer screens, but the thing of it all is that I find myself constantly with neither the time nor the inclination to blog it all up.

For example, there was an astonishing sunset about a month ago that I dashed to a window to take photos of. I wanted to blog it immediately. I didn't. So here now are some photos of the view from my work building of a sunset over London Town, about a month ago. I will use these to illustrate a long whinge about why it's so difficult to blog these days.

For a start, I'm spending more of my time studying at the moment for a course that I'm rapidly losing interest in, but having told so many people of my life-changing career decision, I feel kind of trapped into following it through, even though I no longer feel capable of doing it. Or even willing to do it at all. I'm loving the theory, I'm loving the regular and fresh insights into my own actions and decisions, and being able to look back at other things I've done in the past and seeing the long line that flows from decision to decision that extends all the way back to THAT ONE TIME MY MOTHER DIDN'T COME RUNNING QUICK ENOUGH WHEN I FELL OVER IN THE SUPERMARKET, YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, SHE MESSED ME UP GOOD. So I'm reading, and I'm learning, and every day I'm thinking, I can't do this. There's no way I can do this. I don't even want to do this.

But every time I see someone who I've already told that I'm going to do this, this is the thing that I'm going to do with the rest of my life, they ask me how it's all going, and I don't want to burst into tears and sob "I can't do this..." into their jumpers, so I tell them it's going really well, I've applied for 6 places in 6 different universities and have already saved up one year's fees for the three year course, and I'm still thinking in my head I CAN'T DO THIS, I CAN'T DO THIS but smiling and telling them how, really, it's the course in this one university that I want the most, but if that one doesn't happen, then I'll settle for either of these two ones, because they're the most prestigious, and yes, I'll probably work in the NHS when I qualify, and it'll be a blast but I CAN'T DO THIS is still rattling around in my head so loudly that it must be leaking out of my ears, can't you hear that? The sound of someone shrieking with fear? That's me.

So I haven't really found a way to tell people that, actually, I CAN'T DO THIS and so I won't be doing it, because when I do tell people that, you know, I've been thinking that perhaps this might not be the way for me after all, you know, maybe I need to reconsider what I've been planning to do up until now, they tell me that of course I should still give it a go, though, no point in going this far and giving up and you'll only regret it in a few years time if you don't, and it's best to regret the things that you do do, rather than the things that you don't do, and then the I CAN'T DO THIS monster starts running around behind my eyes and I feel really tired and like I can't stand up any more, and so I tell them that, yeah, the studies are going well, and really let's just keep plodding down the same road because I CAN ALWAYS JUMP OFF A BRIDGE IF IT ALL GETS TOO MUCH.

The I CAN'T DO THIS monster has been joined, you'll have noticed, by the creeping slug called I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS which is making the I CAN'T DO THIS monster jumpy and hyperactive. It was okay when I could think to myself that it was just cold feet, just jitters or nerves, because it's right to have doubts about big decisions, it proves that you're giving it some real thought, that you're not blindly leaping down alleyways because it seems like a good idea at the time and damn the consequences, because, really, it's right to think that you're not always supernaturally capable of everything, and over confidence killed the cat - well, okay, not the cat, but I'm sure over confidence has killed a lot of things. So, when I get the right training, with some experience, with my own client base and supervisor, with three more years of training under my belt, of course the I CAN'T DO THIS monster will have gone away, to be replaced by the LOOK AT ME, I'M DOING THIS! fairy.

But the I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS slug has arrived and has slimed all over my brains, leaving me a mess who arrives home from work and sits sobbing on the sofa more times in the last couple of weeks than is right or even hormonally justifiable.

I'm running out of sunset photos.

A trillion years ago, I made some kind of ridiculous promise to myself, and thankfully not to you people, that I would start updating my blog on a regular basis again. This obviously hasn't happened. My problems are many and varied, but a short selection of them include:

1. I don't have time.
2. I don't have interesting stories.
3. My nails are too long to type.
4. I've been too drunk.

I will try. I do worry about what you all do without my interesting stories to brighten up your lives. Really, I do. Honestly. I wonder what you think about on the bus on the way to or from your pointless jobs, when you don't have my latest opinions to ponder or pass off as your own to the poor idiots that are sitting beside you.

This post is illustrated by some of the things that I saw in Tate Britain that I liked. Some of them are just bits of pictures. I don't know which ones, I'm afraid. I wasn't taking notes.


Please take this, therefore, as a long and boring, but well illustrated, apology for the silence that you've been listening to on this website for so long. I can't honestly tell you if it's ever going to come back to the way it was. I doubt it. I've kind of fallen out of love with the internet, and all of its big promises that come to nothing. I've started cancelling my accounts with all of the social networking sites. The only one now left for me is F*c*book, and I've even started trimming down on my "friends" on that site, which has led to some difficult situations at work where I've had to explain to people I don't know very well why I don't want to be virtual friends with them. Jesus, that's awkward.

A slight interlude to talk about the above photo because I loved these sculptures SO MUCH I took about six photos of them. I love these ladies. These ladies are very crudely made, quite scrappy around the edges, wonderfully illdefined, standing on massively chunky and clunky feet and bit of behind and hair. Their facial features are almost non-existant, I love that their chests are not at all the focus of attention or even have any attention particularly paid to them. I love these ladies. I love that they are striking and strong, and recognisably women and female and feminine, but with the lines being blurred. I loved them.

My dinner has just arrived. I'm going to eat it now. I might post more later.

My two favourite things about being Irish today:

1. The Sublime -



(Honestly, I just watched this again, this and the acceptance speech, and actually started crying a little. I freaking love this song, this film and these people. There, I've said it.)

2. The Ridiculous -

I love a good telephone-photograph-self-portrait picture. Nothing makes my chin look longer and pointier than when I hold a telephone up above my head and force a smile. It's great.

Myself and Little Sister Edel (that one, up there, on the right) now have the same F*c*book profile photo, which is making the thread in which me and other members of my extended family shout insults at each other very difficult to follow, because some sections of it now look like I'm shouting at myself and calling myself retarded.

But that's beside the point. It also struck me that many other people on F*c*book have these same style of self-portrait photos as their ID photos and this is of course because nobody likes photos of themselves as taken by anyone else.

Either that, or the F*c*book ID photos fall roughly into two other categories:
1. Pictures of you and your boy/girlfriend, both of you grinning like morons; or
2. Pictures of you in fancy dress and/or pulling a face.

And that's it. I think in the summer there may be a spate of ID photos where people are standing in front of somewhere identifiably foreign, but these will fade away just as quickly as their disgusting flakey tanned skin.

I'm interested in why people choose particular photos for their F*c*book pages. What are they trying to say?

With the self-portrait, I think that just happens because you're simply not happy with any other photo posted by anyone else of you on the site, and so you have to take matters into your own hands, and keep snapping away until you get something which makes you look at least bareably human, if not at all like the person you imagine yourself to be. I never look like what I think I look like in photos. I have yet to take a picture in which my face isn't (in my opinion) contorted into the same kind of grimace race horses pull just after falling over a fence and giving themselves a break in the leg that they know in their heart spells the end for them.

The Couples Photo sends out another signal entirely. That one screams WE ARE SO HAPPY LOOK AT US WE ARE SO HAPPY, which of course makes me suspect that they are not. I have been guilty of this photo ID before, which happened coincidentally shortly after He Who Only... because F*c*book friends with one of his ex-girlfriends. I sobered up a few days later and removed it, of course, but then it made a reappearence when I in turn became friends with one of my ex-boyfriends (who is now married) and I needed stress HOW VERY HAPPY AND IN LOVE I AM, LOOK AT US, WE'RE SO GOOD TOGETHER.

The Kooky Photo is, of course, the last resort - you can't find a good photo of yourself, you either don't have a significant other (not that there's anything wrong with that) or your significant other is too ugly to photograph, you're balding and you don't want your school friends to find out, or you just want everyone to know that you're still as fun and fun loving and fun fun fun as you were 10 years ago when you were the life and soul of uni, and having a job, mortgage, kid and wife has done nothing to dampen your party spirit. And wearing an Elvis wig in a photo while winking and curling your lip will hide the pain of your haemorrhaging soul.

Or, you know, it's the only picture you have on your computer, and it's better than one of those stupid silhouettes with a question mark in it.

It's pretty, innit?

We went to see Cloverfield for Valentines Day.


I'm not sure if it was the power of suggestion, but even walking towards the cinema had me feeling a little wobbly of stomach. Picking up the tickets, there are more of the same signs, and then these lovely notices stuck to the door of the cinema. Equipped with the smallest size popcorn and the biggest sized diet cola, I thought I could probably power through it. I don't get sea sick, I reasoned, and it's not like being on a boat - at least this way, when you start feeling a bit ill, you can just look away for a moment, centre yourself back in the room and you're good to go once more.

How very, very wrong I was.

The first 20 minutes are no problem. This will not spoil a darned thing, plot-wise, and don't worry, I'm not going to give away any secrets or even explain the title of the film, but the first 20 minutes are just some slightly unlikeable but very pretty to look at 20-somethings (kind of like Hollyoaks, but with acting and without the sheen of Primark) talking into a video camera about someone you don't care about called Rob. When the first explosion happened, me and He Who Only... turned to each other and whispered "thank fuck for that" because the tedium of 20-something relationship politics was starting to exhaust us. Quite soon after that, the actual travel sickness set in.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE the film. It's tremendous. It would be wrong to say that it's the Best Film Ever, simply because I've not seen every other film. However, it would be right to say that it's one of the best films I've ever seen, even allowing for the fact that I had to leave the cinema for three minutes to stand in the coridoor outside shaking and trying not to puke before heading back inside.

I didn't even know about all the websites connected to it, all the back-stories and side-characters and sub-plots. I've been looking at all the sites since seeing it, starting with the Wiki entry and moving on from there, and it's needlessly and additionally entertaining, but even without all that crap, I would wholeheartedly recommend this film to everyone, even those not particularly interested in big monsters or screaming teenagers or buildings falling down. It's simply great.

I will however never again see it in the cinema. The day it's released on DVD, it'll be mine, but until then I'm going to have to console myself with the viral marketing videos and nonsense conspiracy theory websites and the fake MySpaz pages for the characters. But holy hell, I was sick as a parrot in the cinema and I shan't be doing that again.

Totally worth it, though.

Tonight: a massive update. Photos and everything.

In the meantime, this is one of the best articles about dieting I've ever read. If you're a boy, and you don't understand why girls announce that they're fat and miserable and want to cry (which I do about twice a month, on average), then read this. It very eloquently explains it all. I'm really looking forward to reading her columns.

It's difficult to find things to do at the weekend. Having spent all week being incredibly time efficient: doing my shopping on-line while at work; studying in my lunch breaks; reading improving literature on the bus to and from work; helping the poor and needy orphans in the evenings... By the time it comes to Sunday afternoon, I've done everything I'm required to do, and I find myself increasingly lost for options. I've been to the gym, I've tidied the Nest'O'Love, I've found the cure for AIDS, I've watched two hours of House, it's 2.00pm and I've got nothing left to do. I could, of course, get the hoover out again and give it a quick twice-over, but He Who Only... says that OCD isn't sexy, and I've had to restrict the hand washing and light switch flicking to when he's not in the room.

Today I hit on another brilliant scheme in which to occupy myself and He Who Only...'s wandering eye: baking. I decided today was the day in which to start learning how to make scones.

The first batch turned out like this:


The second batch turned out like this:



One batch involved me working on my own, without interruption. The other batch included the special assistance of He Who Only... hurling flour everywhere, knocking sultanas to the floor, giving me lectures on the best way to sieve and spending longer than is decent squishing butter between his fingers.

If it helps, there they are side by side:



The difference, I think you'll agree, is striking. Them on the left there, those ones are scones as I understood scones to be. The second lot (on the right as you face them)... Well, there's something wrong with them. Something to do with... um... the general flatness.

It might help to see them side-on:



You see what I mean? They're like scones, but flat. They're like scones, but scones that have gone terribly wrong. They're also like biscuits, but biscuits that have gone terribly wrong. They're like someone tried baking, but it all went terribly wrong.

Those ones, you'll have already guessed, were mine.

He Who Only's baking extravaganza looked more like this:



Easier to cut in half and get the cream and jam on. We've named the other ones "Stink Biscuits". Hey, he might be able to cook, but I'm the one that invented a new form of food. Not bad for an idle Sunday afternoon's work.