I'M (someone with a mashed up) BACK!

hey y'all, I'm back, i wish i could say the same for my back. 

So the procedure happened, with slight shock and trauma, and a certain element of accidental blood pouring from my hand and lots of electricity zapping my nerves, and a sweet oxygen pipe to keep me awake.

I'm experiencing sensations of electric pain and lots of other crazy pain. I'm gonna go to the Mr. Dr tomorrow and see if i can wangle some Valium from him... ;)

The grogginess of the pills is the worst thing, like when you're typing and you look down at your hands and you don't recognise that you are instructing them to move, like they're someone else's hands...hmmm

On the plus side, you feel slightly pissed so you care about stuff a bit less! Plus I think my haggard, pain filled, old lady demeanour is scaring the kids a bit, i only needed to growl at them to cease their card game today and they scurried off with barely a word, only about 5 swearwords... 

There was a brilliant bit on this week's Orang-utan diaries (I hope you're all watching it, it's on iplayer if not) where an Orang-utan picks up a big stick and brings it down over his head to smack a makak monkey who's giving him jip. I can't stop thinking about it! The poetry of it.

I went for a walk in the park yesterday (see pics), it was periodically sunny and I thought I should test my walking out, after being bedridden for  a few days. I was listening to The Mayor of Casterbridge, from my superb penguin audio books series that I won offa ebay (bloody great).

I fed the ducks, 2 brown ends of a stale loaf, then two white (for pudding) despite the ever present dog contingent who are always yapping all around the water with their stupid owners, scaring the ducks. 

Then I mulled about walking slowly cause of my bad back, in my red wellies, listening to my storybook, occasionally even sitting down and closing my eyes,  it was that pure pleasure that you feel very rarely in life, of being entirely unselfconscious. 

How nice it would be to work less, and to have the drive to make more of free time. One problem is that the pleasure factor that can be derived from a day off when everyone else is at work/school, is so much higher than at the weekend. For example, going to the cinema, alone, during a weekday afternoon is near to the top of my list of favourite pastimes. It is far more enjoyable than going in the evening or at the weekend. 

Another problem is that by the evening, after a day at work, you are invariably far to shagged out to want to do ANYTHING. Even when I have a long standing arrangement that I'm looking forward to, by the time it comes around, whatever it is, meeting someone for a drink, going away, cinema, anything, I am desperate not to go, it converts itself to dread, I'll do anything just to go home as normal and go to bed. That is the curse of working. It steals the day and it saps the night too. It ain't right. Even the weekend is riddled with the guilt of 'oh I've been in bed all day', and 'i should really ra ra ra' when actually your body is going ' you need at least 20 hours of sleep, harry hill's tv burp, pizza and not to talk to ANYONE!' but at the same time, I want to see lots of exhibitions, I want to do lots of drawing, there's people that I want to visit, I want to go on a walk and to the cinema to see about 4 different film, then when I don't do ANY of them I feel guilty, and also I'm annoyed cause i do want to do them, so WHEEENN WHEN CAN I DO THEse things, when can i enjoy these pleasures that make life worth living?when when when?

Isn't it ridiculous?

Future generations will laugh at us for putting work so high up our agendas, rather than enjoying our lives more. I'm already laughing at myself! hahaha! you're an arse.

See, I shouldn't have been let outside for a stagger around the park on a school day, I've had a taste of sweet freedom, of sun when I normally only see fluorescent, and of flowers where I always see chewing gum, watch out the system, my brainwashed state has been shaken up, I'm feeling revolutionary...

Thursday.

I have been moaning a lot recently, and for that, I apologise. No one wants to read someone elses moans...I have had a tough 2 weeks, my crazy medicine does nae help, it makes me dead sleepy like.
Today I want to talk about something unbelievably happy. Now what shall that be...something happy....
It's too hard.
Tomorrow's the denervation http://www.wsh.nhs.uk/documents/PatientLeaflets/5358-1.pdf
I am slightly nervous, mainly because I have just noticed that your pain INCREASES for 3 f-ing months after!! what's the blinking point?

had more swearing in my face today, this time it was simply in the native chinese tongue, and he spat that I didn't understand it, just to confirm that, at least the other boy swore in english, so i had some concept of what was going on, chinese swearing just ain't fair. and he was looking me directly in the eye, so it may have been a curse.
I'm gonna start putting curses on people I think. Imagine the power, the mystery. I'll be 'that' old lady that puts curses on you, they'll mock me and jeer, but my god they'll be scared...

It is astounding how un-seriously they take exams here, there's blatant cheating, people literally come and go as they please, 25 minutes late, half an hour late, didn't make it cause i forgot what room it was in, you name it, anyting washes with them. How different from our exams. I'd be mighty pissed off if I was a student here who did give a bit of a shit, and maybe had done some revision, and then people were banging in and out all through the exam, and obviously cheating with teeny notelets and all the people were shouting and smoking out in the courtyard below.

anyway i'm off now. gotta get me strength for the electrocution tomorrow, and for the usual embarrassment of having ten men looking at my naked arse.
hopefully the blog will return to strength next week. i know it's been pretty poor lately, but so have my wits. soooozzz

let's end with a joke, c/o C.M. Harries:


what are the only type of bees that you can milk?





Boo-Bees!

FURY

Well, what's new? I hear you say, rose is filled with fury.

Well, this is new, in a word, it's a new level of fury, and it's only 10:15.

Ok, so now it's 10:29 and I am crying. that's what I have come to expect from my job.

Ok, now it's 10:58. I am not crying anymore which is good, but I am still breathing funny, like how you breathe when you are going to cry...

I hereby make a solemn pledge, I Rose Gaia Harries, shall never, ever work in a school again. I fucking hate teenagers. I hate these teenagers, they are badly raised and that is a fact.

I have found an ally here, who also hates this place and the lack of support that we receive. She recommends that I use the word harrassment when talking about the way the children behave toward me, she is right, it's a good word.

It's funny, cause if asked to describe why this job is so stressful, it would be hard to articulate it effectively, it is very strange to be so constantly treated with no respect whatsoever. To be sworn at and patronised and flatly ignored and to come beneath the people that you are supposed to be in charge of in terms of respect and power. You basically have to let someone shit all over you and then thank them, and apologise to them in front of a room of people. It's degrading.

I can not relate to these kids, they are rich, and they have no manners at all. Some of them do, but it really is the minority. Yes, lots of them don't speak great English, but I'm sure it's normal to learn the word 'thankyou' before the word 'shit' ? And they do live in England I mean it is kind of their duty to learn some basic polite word, 'please' 'hello', rather than stride up to the desk and stare at the floor and shout " CHESS! CHESS!" I mean, surely that's rude in every country?

I'm mature AND good at sport.

5th July 1995:

  '***** came in and goes to Alex and Claire 'Rose's sister reckons she's well hard' but she didn't say it to me cause she's scared I'll get my sister on her, I can tell.'

11th July 1995;

  'I HATE ***** SHES A bitch, dog, slag, slut, hoe, tart, minger, prozzy, punter ect. yesterday in science she thought she was hard by saying to me 'How bigs your weener then Rose?' I told her to 'fuck off' and David said I was better at sport and easily more mature than her. SO GUTTED YOU SAD TART! She goes 'no way' but no-one cares, ha! I went to play tennis again better go bye.'

(um, how did i learn the word 'punter' as an insult?!I definitely didn't know what it meant, either that or I'm accusing said person of a very dark, abstract cycle of being both a 'prozzy' and a 'punter', also, I am sure i made up that someone said 'rose is better at sport and more mature' who would say that?! what a weird response that'd be?!)

Bloody hell work is shit at the moment. gotta leave, it's shitter every day. Got so much abuse off another student today, they are so volatile, you ask them something, usually to stop doing something, and they respond so caustically, then you get eggy and it all spirals into something needless. gotta leave...

i know what i'll do, i have in mind to make a stew, i'm off to do that right now!

ps. i apologise for the recent shitness of the blog, i shall spend some proper time on it tomorrow, i'm too hungry now, and i get paid tomorrow s the misery may lift for 2 days!

more conspiracy theories...

Gosh, sorry about the rude diary entries, I made a jail break from work at 5pm on Friday with Marie and consumed some pints, it was great fun!
Went to Carluccio's for dinner on Saturday with this voucher that Marie kindly gave me, had a sweet meal, pretty crazy at the end though, there are three separate cubicle toilets for ladies, downstairs, one of which i was in, when i heard someone shouting, 'why are they locked? they're all f***ing locked??!!' which i dismissed to be two unfunny middle aged women who were all wine-d up, when i ascended the stairs though, the familiar shouty voice was there confronting the manageress and two Italian waiters, it was a lone-lady, clearly pissed and incredibly angry, she was shouting 'It's the Sicilian mafia!that's what it is! All the toilets, locked, it's the f***ing Sicilian MAFIA!' obviously I was gawping at it all, she then turned on her heel and rushed over to her table, and her companion, picked up her red wine and continued drinking, absolutely fuming.
This was in CAMBRIDGE, in CARLUCCIO's. What is wrong with everyone?I spend my whole time worrying that these kind of establishments won't take me seriously, then I am always the most well-behaved person in any one place! At least I am yet to formulate any wild conspiracy theories, the first sure sign of egomania/ narcissism/ mental disturbance.
(oh there is the theory that i carefully honed about all men being gay, but i only espouse that when I'm drunk, and it's not really a conspiracy theory.)

Anyway. Here I am at work, I have terrible backache and crazy doziness from the gabapentin, I have a £1650 overdraft or else I would be handing in my notice today. I have truly reached my limit here, but needs must. It'd be nice to do something with my 2 degrees, like utilise them at all in any way, rather than this policing/babysitting job that I am currently doing. On Friday I could feel all day that i was breathing like a scared mouse. I'm sure that's not good?

Had a mental day on Friday when our wishes were basically completely overridden and undermined by the boys group who call themselves the management. There's something funny going on with them, a particular student's father seems to have them by the nuts but it's not clear why. It's so pathetic the way that they pander to these naughty students, I think that it is a syndrome of men, cause my dad has it, that you pay attention to naughty behaviour and ignore good behaviour, but here it's just insane. This particular student boasts to us that he can't be expelled cause the head loves him, they've tried to expell him 5 times. He is a total pisstaker, and when we try to put our foot down and have him removed from the library, on the grounds that he takes up all of our time, the management type a PATHETIC letter 'from' him which he signs, apologising to us, and they declare that he's allowed back in, we get no say in the matter.
I just received such a patronising pep talk as well cause I'm so clearly pissed off, I couldn't even pretend to give a shit. I've totally given up here now. I'm gonna go through the motions till summer then I'm outta here.
They're fucking idiots to behave this way, I'm really really good at my job, and with the students, and now I won't do it properly cause they've shown me that it all means nothing.

Anyway, just a normal Monday, tired, in pain, cross and bitter. At least I've got some marmite crisps for lunch...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...................

nothing's changed...

hello, I'm slightly drunk, here are some more old entries, did you enjoy how unbelievably repetitive and boring my life was aged 13?

i'm doing this to avoid thinking about work, which is so turd that i could talk about it forever...

12 July 1995:

' Hi, it's 5:27 and I thought I'd tell you that X is a git, girl, goss, gross, groper, greasy, grim ect. (sic) i no way fancy him, he wants me to dance with him at the disco, GRIM NO WAY oh I can't bear the thought of him he's a girl. '

2nd August 1995

  ' We called on X and he was sitting on the step and his **** + ***** were hanging out of his boxers he didn't notice atall, they are **DELETED DUE TO RUDENESS** we had a right laugh about it we are not going to tell anyone (I told my sister Chloe, no one else though). Watched 'Chances Are' with sexy Robert Downey Jr.'

6th August 1995

  ' It's midnight, didn't really do anything today, had a row about eggs with mum and dad, had a conversation about fridges with mum, watched tv. had lunch watched 'Parent Trap' (SAD) watched more tv, had a bath, watched more tv, watched 'BILL +TEDS EXCELLENT ADVENTURE' Its COOL I LOOOOOOOVE Keanu Reeves, hes GORGE read Gaby about 20 books now I'm here so BYE'

9th August 1995

  ' I didn't do much today watched 'forrest Gump' twice, 'Ace Venture Pet detective' once and 'flintstones' once and loads of morning tv, Neighbours twice, castles the omnibus (1 hour), Coronation Street, 'Romancing the Stone' + HMS Brilliant. Thats it. finito. BYE.'

some tiny excerpts...

2nd July 1995:

   "Sat- went to town with Anika bought a shoulder bag from the army shop and spur of the moment went to see Congo! It was brilliant, all their eyeballs were ripped out, and their stomachs ect by killer apes it was so excellent."

7th July 1995:

   "...I'm probably going to town with Ewan and Stefan tomorrow, I might see Congo again. I'm going to watch Drop the Dead Donkey at 10:30, my sister (Chloe) is at a sleepover so I've got her room (+her tapes) all night!"

8th July 1995:

   " ...waited around for Ewan to call he said they weren't going to be going into town cause he was busy, I watched DAVE which is quite good, Anika called at 3:40+ we went to hers + played table tennis in her garden + tried a weegee board but it didn't work...I watched Dave again but with Gaby, mum + dad instead of just lally."

9th July 1995

"...just watched DAVE again...I went to see First Knight at the cinema..."

Unbelievable. I have come across a couple of posts that are hilarious but unprintable in the public domain due to libel. You can e mail me for them secretly if you like!

BEHOLD!

...For today I was lucky enough to discover the single greatest book ever conceived, written, and published.... and here, you lucky bastards, it is:

Here you can see Thomas Pitkin of Swanbourne in his smock:

This is a book about smocks. Who wore smocks and why? How were they made? And other such questions are answered therein. (Actually, those are all the questions addressed). 

I have learned things such as, another word for smock is 'slop', another is 'cow gown' (my personal favourite i might add).

Most commonly  it was a smock, or a smock frock, or in it's earliest reference from 1741, 'Hee wears a white ffrock when hee rubs his horses down'.

and from 1787, where a man requests some smocks for one of his workers:

 "... some strong clothing for Bartholomew Walbroke who is an ideot, such as a round frock, a strong waistcoat and a pair of leather breeches as he is grown a great unruly boy and wears his clothes out very fast."

Then there's just loads and loads of stuff about gathering and stitching on the bias and how they are made which is boring. We are told that smocks were worn by those who worked outside, and as protective clothing... And by pig farmers so that their pigs didn't run through their legs when they caught them for market. 

I must make it abundantly clear here that i LOVE smocks. They are truly a noble, everyman garment, and staggeringly beautifully made, really detailed. Much as i laughed at this book, I ended up genuinely respecting the smock as a great leveller, an incredible practical garment, and the techniques used to make them are actually brilliant. 

Still, they look pretty funny though! To me they're are just always the village idiot on Monty Python depositing his earnings of soil and leaves into the bank.

moody slags

I can't express how much it's cheered me to start seeing blossom and flowers everywhere. It's the crocuses that I like best, they are so beautiful, always different colours together, always in weird places, and totally fragile, you can't pick them, they just disappear after a couple of weeks and you forget that they were ever there. Obviously daffodils are brill too. I don't think it's any coincidence that the first flowers of the year are the brightest, and the most abundant and resilient, nature knows how much we need them after winter, they're a signal, 'don't worry, just hold off doing anything drastic for a bit longer! It'll all be fine soon! Look at my sweet trumpet head!'

So after seeing Richard Herring, I had this idea that I would revisit my diaries from the 90's and find some funny stuff. Unfortunatley, it was like taking a walk into the dark recesses of a cave, realising that you were lost and then slipping on a mossy rock and breaking both of your ankles. I always remembered being pretty unhappy between years 7 and 9, but it's easy to say that 'ooh i hated school' but bloody hell, never find out why that was if you can avoid it, I mean, don't read a specific itinerary of exactly all of the bad things that took place, when and where and who. To be honest i think most people find those years the hardest simply cause you are scrutinised so hard by everyone, and you have no personality to speak of so you constantly get batted about by other kids who mistook being a total fucking idiot with having a strong character (probably because that's what their mums told them).

The most common word that appears in my diary is probably 'moody'. It is used to refer to everyone 'she's so moody', 'he's being moody' it was like the most damning thing you could say about someone, even though people going through puberty are gonna be moody, that's just a fact.

Alex, there's a few entries in the early diaries about you, the diaries of 95, one in fact where i say, 'Alex is being moody lately, but she says it's cause of the weather, i think she's right.'
I'm not sure what it means? At least it appears we got to the bottom of such things!
The daily entries always culminate in a 'top 5' ALWAYS. Which changes dramatically from day to day, I can HATE someone one day and they'll be number one the next, I think it was based on a complex system of whether or not i had spoken to them and if they had been nice to me. that was about it.
I'm also really mean about some people who i'm sure didn't deserve it. Especially teachers!
The ongoing saga of me and my best friend A is the most consistent theme, and the thing that clearly causes me the greatest turmoil as we drifted apart, and I felt left behind. I was really very lonely all that time, but I think that nearly everyone was, it's just a hard, hard time to feel at all content in any way. It co-incided with very difficult times for my family, which obviously you keep to yourself at that age, so I think that the misery was compounded into a compact form, like heart-coal.
I displayed such a resistance to succumb to any sort of girly characteristic, I frequently call people 'slags' cause they wear platforms-?! or make-up, like some sort of feminist stasi!
I was just clueless and scared, I feel really sorry for myself actually! But I also hate the way i come across in the diary, I'm angry that I cared about all that shit! There was really nothing wrong with me, bar my haircuts, but I now blame you for that mum, you allowed me to have the 'ramp' you allowed me to bleach it piss-orange, you should have locked me in my room and said 'you'll thank me one day!'.

Anyway, enough of that, there are some pretty funny bits, I shall recount those that are worthy of it. The scariest bit is how crystal clear I remember it all. Reading it just leads to hundreds more things shooting into my head. I can't believe it was nearly 15 years ago. I'm almost exactly the same! Just rounder, crosser, and devoid of lovely basic child-like hope.

Down with Women!

I'm just reading these heartening statistics in 'The Week':
14% of Britons say it is 'acceptable' for a man to hit his wife or girlfriend if she is 'wearing revealing or sexy clothes in public', the same percentile agree that it is acceptable for a man to hit his partner if she is ' nagging or constantly moaning at him'.
21% of women and 18% of men say that rape victims (sorry i just almost puked there with disgust) should be held partly responsible if they are attacked while wearing revealing clothes.
33% of men and women would hold a rape victim partly responsible if she had previously flirted with her attacker.
It makes you understand why the trial of that cabby a) took so long to take place, despite numerous complaints against him reported to the police, and b) his bullshit stories were taken to be true by the police until they found his 'rape kit' including a selection of little bits of paper in which he had written out scenarios whereby he was being challenged about his activities and made up little responses in defence, you couldn't make up that someone could be that stupid? and yet, up against a young professional woman who has the bloody GALL to go out on a friday night and expect to be driven home without being molested, he was repeatedly taken at face-value. Many of the reports to police were outright dismissed because until a new law introduced last year(in which rape allegations have to be accepted as true unless proven otherwise), the policemen who interviewed a woman making charges of rape, had the authority to decide whether they believed her or not, and usually, it is not.
It's like a rapist's playground out there. Imagine that a rapist can do what they like, with almost guaranteed assurance that they will get away with it. Especially where drugging is concerened as with the taxi berk, as if the victim can't remember the rape, they are almost unanimously dismissed.
I know you might hear about the taxi prick and think 'why the hell did they take champagne off him?' but that is not the point. You do not EXPECT some docile looking middle-aged man to be a serial rapist, you put a level of trust into licensed taxi drivers, you just do, you say to your family and friends 'get a taxi won't you?', or 'don't worry i'm getting a taxi' as a byword for taking the safest option, and if the driver was saying they'd won the lottery and all that bollocks and not taking no for an answer about giving you some champagne, i can imagine you might just feel sorry for him, or even pleased for him, and have a sip to be polite, it's not hard to imagine.
These women should NOT have to justify themselves. People should be prostrate at their feet begging forgiveness from them for not acting sooner and directly endangering the 100+ women they think he has molested since he was first arrested and bailed. He told the police, and the court that HE was raped by one of the women, and it all happened cause he's too nice, after all, all his mates say he is. UNBELIEVABLE.
clearly there's too much anger to express here. As for the hitting a woman if she's dressed sexily, what does that even mean? a miniskirt? a vest? who determines it? It's so meaningless and ridiculous, it says so much about people and their jealousy, and fear, and their daily mail anger at women in general, out there, working and being independent, it still makes lots of people scared and angry. The daily mail had a headline on Friday about recession madness, obviously one was to do with asylum seekers, you've gotta squeeze that in, the other was the FURY that there are talks of a raise in maternity pay, from the government min of £117 a week. IT'S MADNEEESSSSS!!!!!!! These women, they just LOVE getting pregnant! They do it FOR the money, it's not in any way difficult to look after a new born baby, and live off a less-than part-time wage! The whole time getting no sleep, and worrying about needing the money of full-time work and not wanting to leave you tiny baby at home. And from the sounds of it, wearing a bhurka and being constantly charming, in case your husband/partner needs to give you a bit of a slap.
Today in the Guardian they were saying that the ongoing proposition of raising womens' salaries closer to the 21% average pay gap between them and men, (37.5% for part time jobs) and this being immediately batted down on the grounds that we shouldn't talk about such things during a recession... isn't it the exact time we should talk about these things?? when we're all poor and we're all in the same boat, where unemployment and tensions are running high, isn't equality the only thing we have left, pulling together and making stuff better, giving women a go at making a decent wage and having a good job, after the men have fucked it all up?

Maaaaaaan, monday ra-a-n-t, that's what reading the paper cover to cover before 9 o clock does for you. Had crazy dreams all night, Joe I dreamed that you lived in a hutch?! I was talking to you and you were replying from inside the hutch, it must be cause i haven't seen you in ages, and my brain can't remember you so it converted you into a hutch!! (Or it may be an old memory of Joe in a jar?!)

Saw Herring at the weekend, it's inspired me to share some of my old diaries with you on this very blog! Don't get too excited! I'm sure they are shit, and pretty depressing, if that's the case I will pretend i never said this, but i know there are some funny lists in them, of various things... like reasons why i hate people and stuff... just like nowadays all in all!

tears of a clown.

hoo heee hahahahaaa hoo haa, it's red nose day today, ha ha ha hee, that's me just laughing there from the crazy things people at work are doing, the secretary has got really GIANT sunglasses on, hee hee hoo, someone was wearing a red afro wig! hee hee ha haaaa, oooh my sides, what's this now? someone dressed as a clown? ha haaaaa HAhaha!



why does this school manage to ruin everything?

They're hardly even bothering to collect money, just shitting themselves about the entire concept of red nose day. I struggled to find a recepticle to put my carefully saved £6 (i know, I'm very kind) in, and when i did it was a plastic pot with a screw lid, and frankly I have very little confidence of it making it to the actual charity. I feel like asking for it back, I want to see an official recepticle...I don't trust these bastards.

yes, i know, red nose day is meant to be fun and crazy, and people wear their pyjamas to work and spray their hair red, it raises a hell of a lot of money, so i am not being cynical about that, my only cynicism relates to this school, and that is cause i know them to be the single least charitable bunch of c*^ts in the history of the universe. It is the school as a business that I am referring to, not the children, the children are all rich and spend a million pounds a day on clothes and other crap, so yes, you'd imagine that we'd raise an unusually massive sum, but come on, teenagers are selfish, they all are.

The staff are the ones giving me the creeps today. I've never seen such a display of sheer pant-wetting excitement at the prospect of wearing a some red face-paint on the end of your nose! The person that triggered my suspicions was the man known as the 'activities co-ordinator' we'll call him Ronan for the sake of data protection...Ronan has been getting the hairy eyeball off me for a while now, I don't trust him oooooonnee bit... I see him two or three times a day, he is always in the canteen and he's always with young girls, I often mistake him for a student, and I have twice heard him lean in to, and whisper angry retorts to, my friend who serves coffee in the canteen... I think he might be thick as well... he's using the opportunity of red nose day no doubt, to set up a communal unisex changing area and help the young ladies get changed.... I gave him my money for his suspect pot earlier to which he said 'oh, you must be rich' hardly the point is it? on red nose day? and hardly likely considering i work here.

So anyway, that's the hilarity of my day, I am wearing my red nose day t shirt with morcambe and wise on, like a good giRL.

me and marie spent much of the morning complaining to the Press Complaints Commission about an article in the fucking Daily Mail( i know, you're shocked), which still arrives here every day and we still refuse to put it out every day, today there was a full page of "jokes" about the french, really really offensive ones about the war, and an amazingly racist headline. Of course, on the website there were loads of comments saying " you've brightened up my day with these racist jokes" and " Brilliant jokes, or is it even illegal for us Brits to laugh now?!" that one is signed 'traditional British housewife'. When we phoned they said they'd already received lots of complaints about it, so at least that was heartening.

Anyway, i shall finish with a joke, as it's ha ha hee red nose day hoo haa! This comes courtesy of Chloe Harries:



How do you tittilate an Ocelot?







Oscillate its tits a lot!




Thank you, thank you very much, you've been a wonderful audience, i love you all, i'll be here, for more laughs, same time next week...

moomin love

I am giving up on my quest for moomin, having barely begun. This is because the nice things moomin that you can buy are from finland and cost about £20 for a MUG which I don't really want and I will break, and all the other stuff is from hong kong and is creepy crust and a rip off; it all looks like when i saw some Homer Simpson rizla at glastonbury about 11 years ago, a drawing of Homer made to look stoned with all bloodshot eyes, or like when people have t shirts with Mickey and Minnie having sex or something, you can recognise it as being the lovely childhood character, but then it distorts in front of your eyes and makes your knees weak and makes you want to cry! They call them Moomin HIPPOS as well, on the Hong Kong websites, IDIOTS! Moomins are TROLLS, the whole thing would take on a completely different angle if they were African Hippos living in Finland but made white! COme OONN CAn'T YOU SEe I'm ANnnnNGRYYYYYY!!!

I shall stick to collecting the books. After all, it is the stories which give pleasure and not the stuff.

Shall I tell you about Moomin? You really should read it, it is brilliant, I'm not just saying that, it's so amazingly drawn as well, Tove Jansson is some kind of genius.

So, Moomin is the crux of the moomin books, we meet him first, he is a boy moomin who lives alone and is too sweet to kick out his relatives when they come and take over his house, (his relatives look like wobbly sticks with eyes and hands and there's thousands of them, they're called Hattifatteners and they become electric in a storm) in the end he gets Stinky to move in who is like a hairy black brush with antennae, he is so stinky that they all leave, the drawback being that he eats moomin's house, with salt and pepper, slowly, starting in the attic.

Snorkmaiden is the love interest, she has a fringe and wears an anklet, her and moomin fall in love, but she is very shallow, so this love is by no means constant, she leaves for rich men sometimes and she is very vain.

Moominmama and Moominpapa arrive one day on a boat and are reunited with Moomin who they haven't seen since he was a baby. Moominmama is a good mama, she looks after everyone but is really quite vacant and goes along with everything rather than putting her foot down. She has quiet control though.

Moominpapa is a maniac. He wears a top hat and he craves adventure, he is constantly heading off on crazy excursions as he bores really easily, he is very self involved and puts his desire for pleasure over everything. This cause Moomin and Moominmama to worry. It is usually Moominpapa and Snorkmaiden who unite in this drive for adventure.

There are loads of other characters, Mymble and Little My are human-ish little girls with buns on their heads. Mymble falls in love a lot and competes with Snorkmaiden for affections of ski instructors and so on, Little My is incredibly scampish and is always doing very naughty things.

There's also a human-ish man with a green outfit and hat and a clay pipe called Snufkin, he's Moomin's best friend, he is a drifter, always travelling about and carefree. Sniff looks a bit like a kangaroo or a giant dog, he's a bit of a spiv and is always trying to make a bt of dosh but he's nice really. Stinky is the baddie, who comes up with bad schemes and gets Sniff involved.

There's loads more.... the main thing is that they are REALLY well written, they aren't like childrens' books, they have such an adult level. I Love LOVE them.

pounds of pleasure

ooh eee oohh aaa aaa ting tang walla walla bing bang

this, and other, less important thoughts are going through my head this morning.
What a slow bloody week.

I think that I'm becoming more materialistic as I get older, just in a totally different way... Whereas I've always loved clothes and cds, the usual old crap, now I desire functionless objects for complete adoration, and when I see said object my desire for it is insatiable...
I think my late discovery of ebay has something to do with this disorder, it's opened up the possibility of owning so many things that in a normal lifetime you would look out for for years and years and finally find on a random day in a place you never go, now you feel resentful even paying £5 for such an object on ebay, when in real life, the pleasure of discovery would prompt you to empty your wallet on the table and hand over the clothes on your back as a guarantee...

The new flood-the-market culture does make me sad, it gives me pangs of sadness, but at the same time, it gives me pleasure as it enables me to own things that I shouldn't really be able to afford, mainly lots of dvds.
In fact, I take this back, the only aspect that I get pleasure from is the sudden cheapness of dvds. It makes me feel funny when I go to Fopp and dvds are £3, £2 and even £1, it feels wrong that you can buy, for example, Peter Cook's and Dudley Moore's Bedazzled for £2, it makes it seem like an object of pathetically minor value, when to me growing up it was like a golden acorn of pleasure, and a dvd version, well that is heaven!£2! It should be £20, then people will think about it and buy it and treasure it, rather than get it and never watch it... BUT of course this is rubbish cause what if lots of people get it CAUSE it's £2 and then love it and treasure it anyway... also, I get lots of films now, I get films cause they're cheap all the time, so I can't complain.

Cheap clothes, on the other hand, do depress me. They depress me because they aren't a social uniter, they don't help those who can't afford to go to topshop, they do the opposite, they create a furious cycle of consumerism, like that old adage about if you build more roads, they'll build more cars, if you sell £2 tops, people will buy one every single week, they feel worthless to wear, badly made and uncomfortable, and they feel disposable. I noticed about a year ago that in leeds and wakefield practically the only thing you can buy in charity shops are Primark throw-offs, it made me sad and gave me the creeps, this stuff is not good enough to survive being second-hand, it only made it through a few weeks of first-hand before the owner replaced it. Shoes that cost £2, £3, £5, I mean can you actually buy them with any degree of comfort? how can they be that cheap??? it's impossible. There's a credit crunch, everyone's broke, it doesn't mean you should close your eyes and shit on someone halfway across the world who's being paid £3 a week to make this crap, it's the opposite, you should stand up for them more than ever before.

God, my blog always turns into a tirade. I don't intend it. I just have started to find shopping depressing. my new ethos is just to live by sales, I get French Connection clothes, but when they cost as much as New Look clothes, and I've started to see the value in repairing clothes and in having clothes that you wear till they wear out, it's characterful! And with decent clothes, it should be possible to do that. I have so many jumpers that were my mum's and my sisters', shoes I've had for absolutely yeaarrrs I have a pair of Primark shoes that I was looking at this morning making a bag of stuff for charity shop and they are made of cardboard, the whole insides fell out of them the first time I wore them.

Anyway, I'll finish as I started, I originally meant to talk about my new love of trinkets, as devloped from looking on ebay. I also collect books now, often ones that I have no intention of reading, but with excellent covers. I am currently in desperate desire of moomins. Stupid crap with moomins on that I can shove on my desk and adore. If you haven't read moomins lately I recommend it very very highly, man, that is some well written crazy stuff. It's really brill.
There's a 1957 moomin troll book on amazon for £295 and i want it painfully, desperately, I glanced it last night and woke up thinking about it, then it struck me how materialistic I was, as there is an intense in me desire to hold it, it's quite scary.

berk

i must add on reflection, that i didn't want to sound like a berk, i'm not trying to sound like i believe that i suffer more than anyone else, so many people have awful AwFUL health problems, inconceivable to me in their awfulness,  i was just talking about my own one, which is the only one i know about. Also it's my blog, and it's something which has occupied me a lot lately, so maybe things don't make sense without conveying that. now i sound like more of a berk... :C

painful things

When you suffer from a chronic pain, you tend not to really talk about it. If i acquire a temporary pain somewhere, ie. headache, or a massive papercut (quite frequent in my job) i tend to moan about it quite a lot. The reason for this is not modesty, it is simply because if you suffer from a constant pain, that you are used to adapting your life around, it becomes completely yours. When you think about something absolutely constantly, the desire to mention it is completely removed. This begins because you feel stifled by it, like you can't explain the impact it's having on you, or how it makes you feel so there's absolutely no point in trying, what i mean by that is that, to convey the different feelings and effects pain has on you, you'd have to talk about it constantly, as it effects you constantly, so obviously you aren't going to do that. This is followed by a very British feeling that i have in absolute abundance of not wanting to sound like a moaning twat, no one likes a complainer, and also the feeling that people don't believe you anyway.
Sometimes it really gets on top of you, although i find it does less the longer it goes on. The frustration overwhelms you and you cry very loudly and very hard, shouting a bit in order to get it all out in one go! This will happen usually at the weekend to me, as it's the encroachment of pain on your leisure time that really, really upsets you. It's easier to handle when you're at work cause you're busy, and distracted, and you don't like it there anyway.
It upsets me that I can't go to the gym, that i find it very difficult to swim, although i am assured it's good for me to do these things, i physically can't. It's easy to tell someone what will help their pain, but truthfully the only thing i have ever found that alleviates it is alcohol, and that's because i don't take drugs, and i very, very rarely drink at all now, partly cause i take so much medicine.
Medicine is perhaps the thing that upsets me most about the whole thing. I can feel that i fill my body with it, with opiates, i feel sick, dizzy, and the relief is not enough to warrant the effect on my liver i'm sure! But you carry on taking medicine cause it's all that you can do!
The Pain Clinic at Addenbrokes are brilliant, easily the best clinic that I've attended, I think that this is partly cause it's a dumping ground for people who don't have an easily diagnosible problem, so it feels like a last chance saloon, the dr's and nurses there rarely see dramatic results, they just help you live a bit easier, and they are very kind because of this. I am by far the youngest person that I have ever seen there, i feel sometimes that the older people don't take me seriously, especially in the 'Pain Seminar' s that we attend to talk about pain management, but really it's me who resents them, they've had 60 years of life, often more, without pain, i had 20 before mine started, it's not fair i think, then i stop myself because that is most definitely NOT the point and we're all in it together, it makes me even sadder to see an old person in pain, they need the mobility more, and anyway, as my mum pointed out, it's all about quality of life, and everyone deserves that. It makes me passionately love the NHS, and feel very thankful for it, despite its many faults.
Anyway, the 'Denervation' op is booked in for the 27th march now. I am a bit nervous, they are going to kill my nerves with an electric current. It's the hollow needle that I'm scared of! BUT I am very, very thankful that they are trying for me and helping me, it's very humbling.

There's a scene in one of our favourite childhood films, Little Nezha defeats the dragon kings, where Nezha, a cheeky Chinese mythological being, removes the spine from one of the dragons and then uses it to whip him and tame him. My constant fantasy is for someone to do the same to me, remove my spine and my fat leg nerves, but not whip me with them.

On another note, I finished my book, about the Road Hill murder, bloody f ing hell, it was pretty scary, i had to pull the covers over my ears the night before last in order to sleep. It's pretty interesting and exciting right up to the last page where you find out a mental secret...woooo!
Those Victorians, they were so f ing mental, so clever and so SOOO thick at the same time. Constantly held back from progress by the class system. Not wanting to rummage in a gentleman's drawers for fear of scandal, even if they think he's a murderer. There's one bit where two policemen allow the owner of the house to LOCK THEM IN THE KITCHEN all night the day after the murder!! They don't even complain! There's been a murder and they let the suspect lock them in the kitchen to keep an eye on things, leaving said suspect to go about doing whatever they like, hiding things, cleaning things, cause the local police are locked in THEIR kitchen! idiots...

nagging and napping

A very relaxing weekend was enjoyed by myself and Lord Rowe of Wakefield. We awoke to discover that there was no milk to be had in the house and so pounced upon our bikes and headed for Mill Road, where, like some sort of crazy students, we enjoyed a giant plate of scrambled eggs and beans for the honest price of £3.25. We escalated the cost by going completely nuts and having an array of expensive drinks including Perrier (?!)
Engergized by a belly full of eggs we then set out in the wind and sun and went to the Scott Polar institute, mainly to look at the 100year old ship's biscuits, cause I love them. A quick amble around the Fitzwilliam, taking in an amazing selection of Japanese drawings, and we headed home. My back was very bad all weekend, mostly my sciatica, so I had a hot bath and then the usual effect of this took hold and I fell asleep.
In the evening we opened a milkshake bar and created: penguin and creme egg, creme egg shot, milky way, crunchie, and penguin and milky way. Simon went into the future from a milk O.D. so we put the bar away and watched a programme about Salman Rushdie during the Fatwah on him, was pretty unbelievable, I really hope something could never get to that level of insanity again. Also, he's really really annoying, so it must have been well frustrating to defend his rights to the death, even though, of course, you absolutely must, cause he is pretty annoying.
More illicit napping took place on Sunday, I always feel so guilty after I spend hours of my weekend napping, but really, that is what it's for, surely? It is the single most pleasurable activity I can possible think of, sleeping in the day, getting under the duvet and succumbing to the warmth until your eyes go droopy, then waking up and realising you don't have anything to do anyway! I wish I could enjoy it without the guilt. Stupid over-critical Super-ego...

An urgent word here, for those of you who for some INSANE reason are not watching
Orang-utan Diaries, Wed, 8pm BBC2, get ON IT! It's the best programme on telly and will make you all happy. You can get series 1 on dvd, which I also recommend thoroughly. If you look on iplayer you can catch the first 2 episodes so you're all up-to-date. In episode one they showed how the babies have to be tickled for half an hour each day!! Watch it, it's brilliant, and really interesting.

one in the nuts.

Friday again. This has been a very long week. I expect that this is because of the exhibition opening, as that feels like ages ago but it was only tuesday. We've had it all at work this week, fights, stink bombs, chess-wars, exams, constant aggro day in day out.

They are going to move us into a new building in June which is spiffing cause it means I can pretty much stop working in summer when they pack up the books, we may even avoid summer school!!woop!march, april, may, june, then holiday.

I had a heartbreaking nostalgia dream, me and chloe were at my grandma and grandpa's, we were the age that we are now, daring each other to swim in the pool, but it was warm (definitely a dream). It took me a very long while as I awoke to remember that they no longer live there. I haven't seen their house since my cousin bought it from them, but i know he has completely re-built it. It makes you want the brain-surgery in eternal sunshine of the spotless mind....it's pretty unbearable.

Enough of that on a Freitag...soz bags.

So I have calculated that I have £1.66 a day until I'm paid. BUT on the plus side, I have shown remarkable restraint (for me) and closed my student bank account, having paid it off by creating a massive overdraft on my bastard halifax account.

Despite my loathing of people who love to read about murder, I am finding that I can not put down my book about a true Victorian murder, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher I only like it cause it's Victorian, it's all so crazy the way that they do their detecting, and the background and stuff, it's pretty interesting, it's like a courtroom drama, piecing together evidence and unravelling family secrets, this is what i tell myself, cause i do feel morbid reading about a murder, but that's that. I'm obviously a pervert. The way that women are treated and construed is also fascinating, lots of them killed their own children in those days, simply cause they couldn't afford them, also interesting is the constant fascination with sex, using it to explain any crime, everything is, 'she obviously had a lover', 'ah ha, they must have been lovers', 'it seems a secret lover must have been here, that's the only explanation for this violence'. There are lots of letters written in by the public who all had the absolute audacity to try and solve the murder themselves simply by reading about it in the paper! They write to the detective via scotland yard and say unbelievable patronising stuff like:

' excuse me, but had it even occured to you to interview the local villagers? as i have a deep feeling that the butcher must be responsible on account of his dealing with meat and access to knives. please follow my advice and apprehend him immediately. good day to you sir.'

not quite that bad, but pretty close. There's even some that say you must look at the dead person's eyes, as the last thing they saw will be on them like a photo??!! terrifying. People must have had such high opinions of their rights as a member of the British Empire, that they believed that their spurious advice, living 500 miles away from the murder, will be read and taken completely into account. Lots of people demand that certain people mentioned in the papers be locked up as they are making them feel uneasy?! 'can you please keep a certain Mr Jones under lock and key as from my reading of him in the papers he seems like a treacherous swine. poor people are prone to acts of violence, if only we could cull them all, but then who would clean our houses? good day to you sir.'

I like Mr Whicher as well, he's nice and fat and clever.

Anyhoo. i'm exhausted and absolutely desperate for the weekend. i intend to sleep a lot. being so poor leaves me with little choice, i can't nip over to St. Tropez, eat some canapes washed down with 2 bottles of champagne, meet an eccentric millionaire, dance all night on his yacht then leap into the sea at dawn and swim to shore before sleeping a few hours at my hotel and drinking cocktails, ending up at a casino, winning and losing it all again and apprehending a speed boat which i sail to monte carlo, so i'll prob have a Dr Oetker frozen pizza and count the hours until 'let's dance for comic relief' tomorrow night, after which i'll fall asleep on the sofa, have a fight with my brother, wonder why i can't lose weight and then eat everything in the cupboard closest to the fridge that contains the secret treats. Then it'll be monday again.

private view private shmoo

There's definitely something in the air this week, and it ain't just the stink bomb... there's an ill wind a blowin'... Things are unusually weird at work. There's lots of tension around the school, people fighting, apparently the Russians and Germans are planning a gang war...(fucking YAAWWNN). There's loads of grief doing the rounds and you get all caught up in it, mostly cause the staff come in and drop little comments at you all the time that make your blood boil like a cartoon when characters fill up red like a thermometer.

I slept really lightly last night, i think that explains my dour mood, i had maybe 3 or 4 glasses of wine and it was enough to really affect my sleep quality!Had the private view of our show last night. It was very weird. I felt quite uncomfortable as i always do around people i don't know, and i felt that the reactions to our work were muted, certainly not one person said anything to me, which was sad i guess. Liv appeared at 8 pm and disappeared this morning at 7 which was completely surreal! But she has to get back to some crates of taxidermy, so needs must...

Anyway...I don't know what this ill wind will bring, but I am slightly apprehensive...

The ongoing fight with the bank doesn't help, I got an incredibly condescending letter from the bank telling me to manage my affairs better, which in the current climate is SO SO hypocritical that I think I must respond. I have therefore printed out a few newspaper articles to send to the dick-face who wrote my letter, a) about the court throwing out the appeal of the banks to be able to set their own charges, on the grounds that they make more than £2 bn PROFIT in charges every year, and b) detailing the gross incompetence of HBOS, to whom my beloved Halifax belong, in practically single-handedly causing a recession, so telling me not to go £8 over or I will be punished ten-fold seems a bit rich considering I technically OWN part of their bank due to their total cretinous inability not to be relentlessly FUCKING GREEDY.

stink bomb

stink bomb, you're a stink bomb...



Someone's set off a stink bomb in the library today, by cripes it really really does stink.

monday=trud day

dad's b day today, i bought him some corduroy slippers! i'm so imaginative!!
Hanging the exhibition took a long time on sunday, it literally gave me a heart-attack! my heart started palpatating when i got home for ages, it's such a strange sensation, you can't walk or stand up cause it hurts so much and you feel like you're going to faint, and your ribs absolutely kill, you can see your jugular pumping in your neck... it's horrid, i'm sure it's stress related, i felt ill all weekend, i'm not cut out for doing things like this i don't think, you know, life and all that old crap.
On the plus side, I managed to make an indian pudding of carrot halva, which was delicious, so I was pretty pleased with myself.
I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely a person of too-low standards to be an exhibiting artist. I just do not have the patience to do things properly, it's that simple. Easy and shit, or slightly harder and good, I always take the easy option. Then cause it's shit I go round and round doing it again and shitting it up more, so it turns into the really hard and shit option. it's awful when you have a characteristic that you really don't like like, get so anoyed with myself and how ridiculously careless I am with things like this. I'll put a picture I've done down in a pool of water, or put it on the floor then tread on it, or cut it free-hand without a ruler cause I can't be bothered to go upstairs and get one, ruining it every time, it's truly pathetic! It's like revising at school or uni, I just never, ever, ever did it, and it annoyed me, but I just couldn't bring myself to, or to write an essay at uni before the night before it was due in, the endless routine that I would end up in of all nighters churning out crap. I wonder where it comes from, this characteristic, it's not in line with some of my other, more anal traits, but it's very deeply ingrained in me.
Anyway enough navel gazing.
We had the first fight here since I've worked here, and it happened just outside the library, a Russian student and a Chinese student, both of whom have absolutely masses of attitude and always come in and swing their feet up onto the table, glaring round the room like rich-kid rebels without a cause, it's very funny now I'm older to see these tiny, skinny 16 year olds who walk like gangsters and shake hands every time they run into each other like mafia members, they are hilarious. The Chinese boy in question wears a billowing shirt undone to his waist with his unbelievably skinny chest out every day, like a pirate, the Russian boy I have my eye on cause I think he bullies some of the younger ones, and I had a run-in with him cause he wanted to borrow an 18 dvd (see, my life is literally wild.) SO anyway, they had a fight, JUST outside the library, maybe the tension of the library got to them? I'd happily fight just about anyone outside the library by about 10 o' clock each morning. Although obviously some people are higher on my shit-list than others.
Anyway. I'm going to go soon cause it's NIGHT TIME and I'm still here. Only 6 more months of my contract left and I am OFF. Like a puff of smoke, Wakey, get ready, I'm small, I'm southern, I'm apologetic to everyone who works in a shop, and I'm coming. woop!