sly smile of a terrier.

The fury is at dangerously high levels today.
I began to get a sore throat during the apprentice, no doubt from choking on bile at the sight of Philip and Ben, the twin wankers, then I awoke at 6:30 am feeling as though i had lego stuck in my throat. Bloody horrible. Now I am at work feeling as ill as anything, nose running, throat burning and head full of sand. My eyelids are drooping and I can't be bothered to interact whatsoever with anyone. I 100% blame working here on my frequent and varied illnesses, the outward coughing projection of the students, combined with the powerful air conditioning is like a germ playground, my lungs are like a germ party and every germ's invited.
So that's the sitch, ill just in time for it to really be in full flow by tomorrow evening, so my weekend can be overtaken by tissue-carrying worry and head like a bowling ball syndrome.

ALL THIS and the pea-head arse face has been talking to me in the most annoying way EVER today!! I've never been so close to his face as I was today when he leaned into my computer to talk to me, but he has the most disgusting facial hair ever, I was mesmerised by it, he basically has a line of coarse pale hairs protruding from just above his upper lip, but not like a moustache, like about 10 or 12 hairs sticking out like little needles, stright out, horizontally, like he's had his head in a bale of hay. The Portuguese cleaner told me a couple of weeks ago that they looked like how the dog groomer does her terrier's eyebrows, i didn't know what she meant, but now I've been up-close, that's exactly what his little 'tash' (believe me, it's deliberate, it's not an accidental tragedy, it's a deliberate one) looks like, a terrier's eyebrow.
Anyway, with the terrier's eyebrow flapping up and down, he leant in and proceeded to patronise me so much that I almost passed out. "I'm banning people" he said " Oh,well we tried that before but we were told it wasn't allowed", "Yes,well you don't have the authority to do that, if you want it done then come to me and I will authorise it", "right." _____________pause, "They're good kids, they've just been allowed to get into bad habits" (by us he means) and so on and so on. By now I wasn't responding, just staring. Moments later a boy comes in on his phone, pea head has wandered off, " Take your phone outside calvin" I say, a familiar routine, "I will" says he, " DONt worry rose, i'll handle it later" says pea head. I then feel like I'm going to cry for about ten minutes, that's cause I'm ill, it's weakened me, it always converts things into depression rather than healthy anger. SO now I am in the back office having made a concerted decision to not speak to anyone or get involved with anything whatsoever. What is so infuriating is the arrogance of this man, we spend 9 months fighting to get some disciplinary measures installed, to keep some kind of order, to get facebook banned, to ban problem students, we have tried everything, and either been utterly ignored, or actively prohibited from doing anything. he moves his desk in and cruises about chucking orders around like some kind of library god, he eggs the students that he likes on, flirts with them, laughs with them, then he picks on the ones he doesn't like and disciplines them. He talks to me as itf it is my job to stare into the room and report people to him, the big man. I hate him. I hate his pea head, and his teenage wardrobe, his big squeaky basketball trainers and his 'baggy' jeans. He is thick. I hate his face most of all. His beady eyes like little mouse turds, his pointy lips with their hologram-effect encircling hairs, and his stupid, stupid voice, which is so effected that he must have to eat 2000 extra calories to have the actual energy to keep it up.
so that's me!On the plus side, I have lemon and ginger tea, which is lovely. and i am leaving in 6 weeks, which is even lovelier. Although, I keep skirting very close to doing something fucking mental, like pushing the broken filing cabinet down the stairs (this was a genuine thought) setting fire to a student (also genuine) or posting a message on the blog calling everyone a bunch of cunts and singling out the few who aren't and urging them to start an uprizing (most frequent of the thoughts).
But I can't do that, because I want to maintain my dignity, I refuse to pander to their 'mad woman' conception of anyone who is assertive.
I will definitely do the last one though.

crazzzyy nights and laaazzy days....

The Filing cabinet in our office is jammed shut for the third day in a row and I really would like some of the things inside it... I hate this system of dependence, my computer was broken on monday morning so i submit an online service request, then another yesterday, finally an angry IT man gives it a temporary fix, furious that I'd bothered him, even though I couldn't do any work the whole time it was down. Now the filing cabinet's been locked shut since monday, he's fixed it once but it's broken so obviously it re-shut within ten minutes, now he's clearly too pissed off to fix it again, as if we do it for our own amusement, his new thing is to come and inspect how much paper we have when we ask for more and make his own decisions about whether we should get more or not, as if it's not being gobbled up by the students, as if we get boxes and boxes of it and set it on fire or use it as building material. Bloody idiots.
the £1400 wallet girl just cruised by, she's so dopey, should have whet me whistle... eeejit.
the levels of work hatred are high as ever, as is the relentless head cold, making me sleepy and moody, and also quite sick.

sorry, sorry for my eggy outburst there, like i said before, having a finite time on work seems to actually be making it shitter? I think a lot of this is money worries, I find that I am slotting remainders of scraps of money around in my head constantly like some impossible and frustrating game of tetris. It's like trying to push a big foot into a little shoe, it's not going to happen with any stability, and looking at it, it probably won't happen at all. this is the finite aspect that's really playing on my mind. I have no job in Wakey, and so far despite hours of looking, can't see anything likely, to the point where I'm clicking on those 'earn £500-£3000 a WEEK from HOME without even getting up!' adverts
:( idiot.
So everything I need to pay for (which is a LOt of things. Needs to come from my May and June salaries. Leaving me no money for summer, no leftover to live off and no money for any extravagancies like pants and bras, which I need. So 50% of me is going 'shiiiiiiiiiitttttt!!!!! Literally what will I do?' and 50% of me is going 'I am going to be doing what I want, i am actually being brave, (which I never am!) and no amount of money makes this job enjoyable anyway so surely I won't be more unhappy?' Truth is I don't expect to be unhappy, I expect to be far more happy soon. But I am still fighting a powerful beast of fear and anxiety which wraps around my heart and lungs a couple of times a day before I push any thoughts of anything out of my mind and concentrate on making labels for dvds or some other such interesting thing.
The truth is, and I can hardly admit it to myself, I want to be an illustrator, really badly, but realistically, do i think I will be one? probably not. I hope I am wrong, but at the moment I am too worried about what I'll do when i walk into my studio, what do you do when you're self-employed, sel-motivating, and uncommissioned? where do you start? I am quite good at motivating myself in this manner, i think I will get up and go to the studio, I think, I just don't know where to begin, how do you structure your life? do you get days off? Will I feel guilty when I'm not working? (yes) Most importantly of ALL, how can I convince myself that I am good enough and valid enough the be an illustrator. This is the key question and one that I can not answer at the moment. I was so ravaged by the Art A-Level, ten years ago, that I was convinced back then that I'd never do art again. I got so much courage up during my degree, and most of all, there were so many times when I felt comfortable that I was right all along, and this was what I was meant to do with my life. One cuntish man almost ruined that again for me at uni, shitting all over months of my work with a casual brutalness and pushing me to the limit in some sort of sadistic game. I can see what is right in my head, but as always I can't get there. I can't feel that this is really a job that anyone can be lucky enough to have. life has to be harder than that? so i will continue to make my own life hard, and ensure that I fritter my best years away through needless worry, the usual stuff.
sorry for this soul-searching, it was quite unplanned! But hey, it is my blog, all about me, so if you don't like it go and read something else, like Stephen Fry's twitter or some other thing like full of jaunty anecdotes and celebrity encounters.

stress relief.

Blimey, I just remembered, James I had a dream that you were an actor and i was showing someone a dvd with you on the front? is it true?are you an actor now, in Settle?

Bloody hell, I just found a Gucci wallet with £1,340 inside, in £20's, casually left by the photocopier! I have never seen that much money in my whole life! It's more than a month's salary after tax, I'm very tempted to run away. I could have a studio for 13 months with that. or a small one for 26...or a new moped, or a holiday in the seychelles or something. can you believe it? she's clearly not in any panic to retreive it, no one has come running in hysterical or anything, it's been an hour now.she should give me a reward, maybe 340, to round it down. You get no satisfaction from returning things to these students, not like when you find something in the street and you imagine as you hand it in that it belongs to an old lady or something, or a single muvva, i will keep you updated on the reaction... i expect it will involve a casual 'did you find my wallet?' then me going 'yes!yes! here it is, now be careful! are you okay? put it in a safe!' and her wandering over to the dvds and leaving it on a shelf or something.

Ok she came, with a friend just now, 'have you maybe found a wallet?' me: 'yes, you MUST be more careful! that's a lot of money!' by then they were nearly gone and had erupted in giggles...

see???they would no way have noticed £340. damnit!

so things are in preparation for my big move north. I must say it is cheering me to plan these things, my little studio and sticking things on the walls, arranging my lovely books. aaahhhh!

(my king penguin collection is continuing all the time i shall do an update on that tomorrow.)

I have also been enjoying reading and getting back in touch with the literature that I studied while in Leeds, all of which was so fantastic. I am definitely of the school of thought that the classics must be taught at a secondary level. You can't fully understand Shakespeare without Ovid or even so many films without Greek and Roman epic poetry. More important than that though, they are incredible pleasurable to read, and still modern in so many ways.

Epicureanism philosophy says that the way to achieve ataraxia (freedom from fear) is to work at removing pain and living simply. These are two things that i am very eager to achieve! I have pain, and i live complicatedly, but i want to live simply, and i am pretty dominated by fear too... I have decided that i want to make my own cosmetics cause i'm starting to become freaked out by the smell of chemicals! it's not OCD before you say it is!maybe my sense of smell is getting really freakishly good, like that person in 'the man who mistook his wife for a hat' by Oliver Sacks who developed a mental illness where they developed the senses of a dog? ANYWAY, amongst other hippy-ish things, i feel strong tendencies toward homemade clothes and freecycled stuff and everything natural these days, must be age. Although my anger is always riled by how much of an elitist life it is, natural shampoo and stuff is £10 a bottle...the health food shop is a disgrace. it's full of old ladies with loads of money.

The battle of the Daily Mail continues here at work, having subsided without a trace for nearly a month, maybe longer, it has reared its ugly head once again. How could something so so minor ce capable of causing so much anger? Well it bloody is, is my answer to that.

Having successfully achieved the replacing of the Mail with the Guardian, people have complained that they want the Guardian in the staff room and we are mysteriously back to the Mail. I sent an email explaining that it wasn't appropriate for a multinational school to have a paper in the library (not just a paper but one of the only 2 papers, the other being the TIMES!!)

that is against abortion, foreign workers and asylum seekers. I then had the pea-head prick come and say to me 'ooh you seem angry?' because when a woman is assertive, it's read as OOHH shee's eggy! must be on the blob or something ararar! T-W-A-T-S. if they are too stupid to engage in dialogue (they are by the way) then I won't lower myself to their level. 3/4 of the men here just spend all day flirting with the students, i see them, it's bloody rank and totally creepy. i feel sorry for the students, their parents have chosen the school that professionalism forgot, it's all just played by ear, it utterly patheic, and there are no boundaries cause the men who work here have not developed the level of maturity to understand how any of it works, they look in the mirror and think that they're 18. AAAAAARRRGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i just had to talk to the twatface again! he maaaakeeessss meeee MAAAAAAADDDD!!!!


hhhhhheeeeeeeYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

TTaaaaKKKEE THHAAAATTT!!!

aaannnddd thhhaatttt!!! heeeeeyaaaaaaaaa!!

aaaannnnnnnnddd thattttttttt!!! pea-headed CRETIN!!

that's better :)

rubbish blog

well well well everybody.
I am counting the minutes until i leave this DUMP and the cretins therein.

Had a crazy weekend, saw Steelers on Friday, fighting through the usual crowds of Cambridge wanksticks and trying to ignore their annoying faces and laughs and voices.not for much longer eh! Wakey folk for me now...
It was Gaby's 21st on Sat, I went off with Liv and Di to Norfolk, to draw and chillax.
The weather was beautiful all weekend, and apart from an 'incident' with a shoe-stealing BASTARD dog, all was well and dandy...
We stayed in a youth hostel, they've changed so much since i were small and used to go to them with Woodcraft... you get bedding and breakfast now, bloody great!

me and Olivia found ourselves completely frenzied in the arcade...we spent about a fiver trying to win a fiver on a 2p machine, then we discovered the claw-toy machine which featured a nun-duck and a rasta-duck, as you can imagine, lots of money was lost on this futility...although Di won a devil-duck on her SECOND 20p!!!INCROYABLE!
we drove off to beautiful Blakeney, where the locals are in a conspiracy to drown you by making you park in a carpark that becomes secretly completely submerged in water in a ten-minute tidal surge. We managed to leave before it got too bad but did have to take off our shoes and wade knee-deep to the path, any longer and we would have been truly fucked.
Overall it was a fine break, although it has left me very tired and today I don't feel well. I think i have some lurgy...probably swine fever...if anyone's gonna get it, i expect I will working here, where kids from all over the world sneeze into my face and cough all day.
so anyway...my groggy illness is forcing me to retire this rubbish blog prematurely...
i'm going to run away from here now, laters!

smiling like an axolotl.

sorry, I haven't kept up the old blogging at all this week... i had an unprovoked bout of spewing last night...didn't seem fair.

so what's up?

Going to see my future husband Mark Steel tonight, then off to Sheringham tomorrow morning for a night in a Youth Hostel and hopefully some drawing...

Yesterday was Shakespeare's birth and death day, even though it also was probably neither. I fall down on the side of the argument that he definitely did write everthing attributed to him, and people who profess otherwise are boarding school snobs who refuse to believe that a grammar school boy could have been clever and driven, when in fact, he was the most likely person to have been, having met a wide variety of people and with an intimate kowledge of theatre, a writer from the nobility would have had no such insight.

It was also St. George's day, i was hassled to put up a display about him on the grounds that i'd done one for Shakespeare(it is a library, Shakespeare is apparently quite a significant literary figure?) and put up a scrap of paper emphsising not only the fact that he was Turkish, but also that he's the patron saint of about 20 countries, lots of cities, and syphillis, as if anyone cares anyway, although there does seem to be a dribble of attempting to revive a St George's day thing...unsuccessfully, the attitude is so defensive, there are always pissed up people on the news going 'the irish get st patrick's why can't we celebrate too?' The simple fact is, you can do what you like doesn't mean that anyone wants to join in! You can't force people to put on a georges cross foam hat and get wasted during the day if they really don't give a shit.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, Dr Johnson was definitely right on that one. It causes nothing but grief and is really completely pointless. In the end, when you are born English you have not achieved anything, the circumstance of your birth is completely out of your control, so why congratulate yourself on it?I understand that you want to make your country a better place to live in and to improve on the things about it that are good. You can be glad that you live somewhere, sometimes even proud of it, but patriotism is not about that, it's competitive and harmful, and whether people want to accept it or not, it's an excellent excuse to be racist, that's why so many racists wear the georges cross, it's not just a coincidence, and that's why the sight of it makes me, and most people that I know, uneasy. Once you are simply sitting about congratulating youself on the fact that you are english/scottish/irish, the country would surely come to a standstill? There must be no room for improvement? I have had nights and nights of torturous arguments where I was insulted and berated by a little crew of Scots at a pub I used to go to, the whole thing was so pathetic and frustrating, and most of all it was embarrasingly self-pitying, grown people so obssessed and stuck in this unquestioning cycle of patriotism that creates a total lack of progression, or development, furiously angry about nothing, it was a very confusing thing for me, trying to convey that i didn't really care about any of it, and being waved off as being just a fucking english person, like that was a massive indicator of my entire character. All this and the entire British Isles pays for the Scottish to have free University, subsidised medicine and soon free prescriptions, I wish I was bloody Scottish! Sweet deal!

enough of my borderline racism.

so the big NOOs is that my notice has been handed forth and i am off in 6 weeks. Off to a studio in Wakefield to see if I can actually be an Illustrator (not liiikeelly!) put my moolah where my fat mouth is.

If anything, work is actually more unbearable when you have a leaving date, there's no incentive to make it bearable, I'm constantly on the verge of shouting FUCK YOUUUU or stabbing someone with a pen or something and then being like 'IiiiiiiIIIII QQQQqqquuuiiiTT'

or 'what you gonna do, fire me? HAHAHAHAAA' or just going mad and laughing like a maniac.

Can't wait to watch 'Who Killed the Honeybee?' later on Iplayer!

Already watched the apprentice twice this week as it was so unbelievable that I had to show mum!...that Durham WANKER absolutely has to go!!it was probably the most agonising hour of telly I've ever watched! The American was rubbish though...plus we have to put our trust in S'rallen, even though the winner he chose last year was a dud. I've got my money on the woman with black hair and glassy eyes and the tall one, I think he's called James? getting through to the end...I could be srallen's apprentice, this batch are all brain dead. You can't make it in business without creativity, my dad has always told me, and i can see that clearly in this series, they have no imaginations...

man, this blog's all over the place. I'll come back proper next week, promise.

here's a picture of an axolotl to cheer you up:

look at this little fellow!

they can live for 15 years you know? and regenerate lost body parts! and they can morph into a salamander if you gradually reduce the water in their habitat, they adapt to living on land instead and morph into an entirly different species! WTF!!! i hear you say...i know...it's amazing.

Maybe we should all try to be a bit more like an axolotl yeah? by morphing to adapt to our environment, and then the world would be a better place, yeah? peace.

Some nice things of late.

I have been greatly enjoying spring this year, I may have mentioned already. I feel this winter was harder than normal, perhaps that is directly linked to full-time employment, but the spring is delighting me from all angles!

I failed to mention what a wonderful time I had in Dorset, mainly because it really is so beautiful there, it's such an overlooked county that people drive through to get to Devon and Cornwall, which is good I guess cause it remains less commercial and touristy, and still packed full of total weirdos and quirky gents and things shut on Sunday and the biggest export is still probably cheese or something. We went to the most beautiful village I've proabably ever seen, it has the casket of a saint and some holes for you to poke your ailing parts through to ask for healing. Me and grandma did that. The graveyard was carpeted with primroses, it was beautiful. Living there must truly be like living in the past. It was so quiet and so idyllic it is hard to imagine why anyone goes to work and has the internet when you could have an allotment and walk in fields. We went on the GHOST WALK, with the aforementioned town crier, we got special treatment of course cause he knows our uncle, everyone does, and our granny. I've gotta say, it was a fine way to spend an evening, dressed in crazy Victorian garb, our host was very amusing... down by the river was really scary as well, there was a full moon, and there were BATS! we went to the old hangmans gallows, just above the river bank, where Thomas Hardy had watched a hanging aged 16, which had then disturbed him all of his life. There is also the story of the emaciated child caught for stealing bread and sentenced to death, he had to have weights tied to him in order for him to hang, these have 'Mercy' written on them, and are in the museum, pretty gruesome...

Went to London for a night after Dorset, saw the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery, was really great, and full of pictures I had never seen before anywhere, unfortunately every fucker in the world was there as well, and they ALL had audioFUCKINGguides on like a bunch of deranged children, so you do have to shuffle shuffle along and constantly breathe deeply and ignore the secondary murmuring coming from everyone's earphones... the shop was rubbish too, they never make a postcard of the one I want... and 'arty' people really are the scum of the earth, they shove and push and nudge you all over the place. They were even selling a BERET! in the shop!! so cringemaking we all nearly imploded! A Picasso Beret!! ARGH! I like Picasso the best, look at my French-style beret!

A jaunt around Fortnums followed, where ice cream was partaken, but standards are slipping a tad. Chloe was reprimanded while we tried on all the hats! It was so infuriating! She was all but calling us scumsuckers to our faces! All was made up for in the Japan Centre where we came across the Totoro cake above, which we enjoyed later with tea! Best thing ever in the world? It's a strong contender...

Other things I've been enjoying:

The 'Toys' exhibition at the Wakefield Museum.

Here's a toy that I was struck by as it reminded me of me.

It's certainly an odd choice for a child's toy! It looks knackered out and world-weary, maybe it's meant to be a child with cholera or something? You never know with Victorians...

Here's a supersweet tin toy! I definitely love tin toys the best of all, if i had any money whatsoever then I'd collect them...They are so satisfying to look at. Compare this lovely lady to that cholera doll! No wonder Scandinavians are so calm.

And here, care bears. I still have the pink third from right on my desk at home. I was worried about putting this up in case there was residual trauma from my sister at the memory of her leaving ShareBear at Lammas Land in Newnham... we did LOVE Carebears... We even had the cloud car. It was my equivalent of Santa Claus when I learned that you can't walk on clouds, a bit of me died that day...

The token Star Wars toys of course. We had some friends who had all of them, including the ATAT and the Millenium Falcon. Sometimes we played with them, but i can't say I ever cared for them myself... I do now appreciate the mentalness of the Ewoks though...I wouldn't mind a few of those! I like that fat one behind him with elephant trunk and long ears too.

Been thoroughly enjoying the park near Simon's flat, it has 3 of the most beautiful blossom trees EVER in it and is carpeted with forget-me-nots, my favourite flower, like a meadow. I bloody love wild flowers. How they fall naturally is always so much more beautiful than planted. It's all so romantic...!

So that's pretty much me for now. Enjoying stuff how and where possible. Constantly living on less than a pound, but laughing at the capitalists cause I am winning by nourishing my soul with the world around me FOR FREE!! AHAHAHAAA!!

Sale of the century!!

Ok, so as the week draws to a close, there really is only one event that has been at the forefront of my mind this week, the most stupendous part of the year so far, or maybe of my life. You all know what I'm talking about yeah??? It's only the Michael Jackson AUCTION!!!

For any poor sap that has failed to witness the auction catalogue of Neverland, I shall lead you through a few highlights. I must stress, however, that the entire thing is highlights, so don't miss out...

Above, you can see Michael painted as 'a king', not based on any historic figure, or period, in particular, no fussy research here, just 'a king'.

Continuing in this theme, there is Michael's faux-ermine trimmed robe. This is something which features frequently when you look at his stuff, is what awful quality the components are, no real jewels for him, always fake, and nylon clothes and fake fur, it's hard to understand? Why make yourself a KINGS ROBE if you make it like a pretend costume from a shitty costume shop? defeats the point a bit doesn't it?

Here to my left, a little too small to be fully appreciated, is a motorised cart with an incredibly beautiful painting of Michael as Peter Pan. Here is another theme within the lots, as well as the 'a king' theme, that of portraiture of Michael, again, slightly confusing for a man who was once so wealthy to only hire the man who painted the bent swan in 'The Swan' pub to paint all of these cock-eyed masterpieces. Perhaps I'm not being fair though, they may have been painted by his male companions while they were doing their GCSE art.

Below lies my absolute piece de resistance of the auction. Yes, I can sense you're confused, don't worry, that's okay, I think everyone involved in producing this masterpiece was confused throughout the process. Here you can see Michael, and five seminal figures of historic value, chosen by the great man himself we can assume, these are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, see the trend there, great American Presidents, declaration of Independence and abolition of slavery, close to Michael's heart both, yeah this is fine, this makes sense...now we can almost continue on the trend with Einstein, a pacifist, a cultural icon, especially in America where he settled, a maverick, like Michael, he admires him, that's fine, then it starts to fall apart really as far as sanity and reason go, E.T., he is fictional, I am assured of that, he's an outsider though, so I can see that the Wackster would relate to him, also he spends a lot of time with children (oooohhhhhhhh!)and is the star of a children's film, we know Mikey loves kids stuff like Disney, this links in, okay. Here is the one that I can not understand, the MONA LISA?????!! WHYY??

why. whhhyyyyy....I sob.

Obviously we have overlooked the key element of this piece and the part that provokes such untold and uncontainable joy, these figures have all been 'Jacko-ed' can you see? Did you notice?? Look closer....seee, the Mona Lisa isn't nooorrmally wearing aviators is she? yeah, see, I don't remember seeing Einstein in a single rhinestone glove either! UH OH! See what the artist has done here? CHEEKY! It's obvious once it's pointed out I know! But you could have looked for hours before you noticed! Bloody Genius.

(ps. don't you find the hesitant mixing of black and white and colour particularly powerful here and not at all repellent?)

The most depressing thing about this auction, apart from the stuff in it, and the owner, is just how little money it's all going for. A lot of the things are valued cheaper than if you bought them new. The furniture and cars for example, are less money now than they would be from a garden centre or a car showroom, being handled by Mikey J has actually devalued lots of the stuff!! I mean that is sad no matter how you look at it.

Confusingly as well, Jacko's debts are supposedly in the millions, or even tens of millions, if he sold all of this for it's highest estimate, he wouldn't even make a dent in it. It's like watching the last desperate act of a bankrupt. Like when people spend all day busking and you look at them and think 'how can you get up to earn that little?' but that's not the point, when you need it you take anything. I could afford some of this stuff. I'm considering it. Then I can have surgery to look like him like that woman from Liverpool.

Anyway. Here are the websites, go and look at it, I've got my eyes on the swing seat though so leave that for me yeah?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2009/feb/15/michael-jackson-auction?picture=343232869

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2009/mar/11/michael-jackson-auction?picture=344461897

"I'm picking out a thermos, for youuu"

So the great swim plan '09 has progressed in one area, namely, I bought a swimming costume, but unfortunately this has cause immediate halt in other areas, namely, I have spent all of my money so I can't afford to go swimming. BUT no fear, I have an assured benefactor who has promised to lend me the £25 until next Friday when I shall be paid. Although I have simultaneously as I typed that, realised that the great swimathon '09 still can't begin till next Wednesday, as I am going to Wakey tomorrow, and return straight to work on Monday, then the swimming pool closes at 4 on Tuesday, so I can't go then, not finishing work until 5pm...however, I shall go and enrol on Tuesday lunchtime...yes.that's what i'll do...sorry for the inner monologue there. sorting out my stuff yeah?

I considered buying a swimming costume off ebay, inspired by my sister who bought a great one for £2 or something, but I just was too suspicious in the end...it's like buying pants or something that someone else might have worn...I just can't be sure enough that no one elses bits have been in it. In the end I went for a really expensive one from a real sports shop, I felt like a right faker in there, it was half of a hundred quid.............. BUT it was a body sculpting one with all panels and little leg bits to cover my wobbles, and best of all, a shelf to compact my chest into a flattened mass. SO I decided to go for it, even though the one i couldn't decide between with it was £30 less, I just figured, maybe being strapped into these blackened panels with give me the confidence to actually do my swim plan, so the money will be worth it.

AAANNNDD, Chloe has today introduced me to the concept of waterproof MP3 players!!! Which I am DEF going to get when I am paid! How wonderful this modern world is. I may even just buy a little waterproof bag with waterproof earphones sticking out, you just zip your normal ipod in and it keeps it waterproof.... heaven...I can listen to my audiobooks while i swim along...rather than the usual thing of listening to myself wheeze or to other people coughing up phlegm which makes me want to scramble out of the pool. Now i can remain ignorant.aaahh....

Did anyone watch the programme last night about teenage pregnancy? Jeezy Creezy...that is a good way to put you off ever having a baby... sometimes i feel a bit sad that it's too late for me to be a young mother...I always thought I'd have a baby quite young, like my mum did, and be one of those people who took it to glasters and stuff, now i'm already past my prime and as of yet i have done nothing whatsoever with my life, so a baby is completely out of the question...i also often think in moments of long thought, that I might not have one anyway, what with there being a global water-shortage war round the corner (my current fear).

ANNNyyway, they focussed on about 3 girls who were in the very late stages of their pregnancy in Birmingham, one of them who was 15, was really beligerent and listened to NOTHING that the medical staff told her, she didn't stop smoking, or even cut down, and refused to have a natural birth, insisting not only on a caesarean but on being under general anaesthetic, which is really dangerous, especially if you're overweight, which she was, very. Her refusal to be awake stemmed from her 'fear of needles' but as the interviewer pointed out to her, she had facial piercings and a tongue piercing, it turned out she had acquired all of her fears second-hand from her mum and her mum's friends who had filled her with dread. her mum was an idiot, she encouraged the pregnancy cause she wanted a grandchild. You really ended up feeling for the girl, she was so mouthy, but it was clear that she was just shit-scared, she wanted to be asleep cause she was far too scared to give birth awake, after all, she was 15! At the end she advised other girls not to have a baby. She wanted to leave and be alone with her child, away from her family and her life, she was clearly really desperate for something else...it was sad. One of the girls was very cool, very intelligent and savvy and I really liked her, she was funny about her situation and just funny in general. What really fucked me off was the lack of any focus, as always on the fact that these girls were all impregnated by someone, lots of the time i'm sure men who are technically committing rape, the 18+ year olds who prey on these vulnerable, drunk teenage girls then fuck off when they're pregnant. Only one of all the girls interviewed at the centre was still with her boyfriend, the others had all been told by the men concerned that they weren't interested in helping. Some of the men had asked to try for a baby, then fucked off anyway! and it's these girls who get all the filthy looks and the scorn poured on them, the thought that someone else is even involved doesn't even enter your head for a long time...Evolution's going to have to develop a better system soon for impregnation. it's just too easy at the moment... Either that, or men who impregnate women then fuck off can be castrated/branded/both?

that seems reasonable.

sorry, do i sound angry? i have coffee jitters, i'm slurping from my excellent flask, it's 16:15 and it's still warm! the flask may be the single most amazing invention ever?!

The classic tartan remains my dream thermos... I'm still seeking one...

I really want a picnic set too. I want to go on a picnic with a thermos. Not Just a thermos, not me and a thermos chatting or anything, but take a thermos somewhere cold, like the beach or some windswept moors and have a hot ribena...oooohh yeeeaahhhh...

that's my afternoon sorted, i'm going to look at thermoses (pl.thermi?) on ebay.

finally, I understand the Thermos song in The Jerk, he wants to buy her a thermos cause he loves her so much. Whaddda guy....

I'm egg-shaped

Well, having emerged from my week off, stuffed to the gills with chocolate, as if i've been participating in a week-long contest to test the physical limits of how much a very small woman can actually eat, now that I am back in the real world this is having its inevitable consequences and I am suffering from the self-loathing, guilt, and general shock, at the size of my body bulging from my small skeleton in its unnatural way. SO, I think to myself, what can be done about this? My relatively recent struggle with my weight began in 2007, when I suddenly and dramatically piled on 2 stones in the 6 months following my beginning taking anti-depressants. At first I merely put it down to being happier which was causing me to eat more, after all, at the lowest point in my depression during 2006, I was eating fairly infrequently, often not at all at the weekend if I was with my boyfriend, and when I started to break down, in May 2006, I lost my appetite completely and was utterly unable to eat except when completely desperate. I lost lots of weight in this time, went down to a size 6-8 and to about 8 stone, so the initial piling on of weight was really not of much concern and actually, of some relief.
Unfortunately, it hasn't really stopped since...I am now a size 14, something which is of constant suprise to me!! As if it's a mistake and I can think myself back to a size 10, the size I have always been, since school, and before all the madness. A massive obstacle has been my back pain. In my last two years at Leeds I started to go to the gym about 3 or 4 times a week, which I continued for the first year or so of my degree in Cambridge, the worsening of my back completely put a stop to that. It's unimaginable to me now, the thought of a rowing machine (my old favourite of the gym machines, ARGH!!) or a running machine, often the sight of people exercising on telly, actually makes me wince with the idea of how painful I would find such an activity... there are of course TWO massive buts, which are 1) gentle exercise is very likely to help my pain in the long-term, 2) I'm scared. which is really the bottom line.
The irony of the gym being, that now that i have put on weight, now that I need to go to the gym, I am too embarrassed to because I am flabby. I HATE the gym environment, I always have, it is perhaps the environment where I feel the least comfortable, I can not go there now. I am paralysed by fear of people looking at me and judging me!! arghhhhhh!! It's ridiculous really, I don't respect people who spend ungodly amounts of time in a gym, or who prize peak physical fitness above all else as a reflection of character and worth, and yet i am scared of them judging me?! or even just looking at me! Maybe I am just feeling too vulnerable I think.
SO, today I went to H&M on my lunchbreak and had an epiphany, (I Hope) whilst catching sight of my chubby little self in the mirrors, despite having averted my eyes as best I could. I must do something, cause I am not happy. here is what I shall do, I suddenly realised, I must SWIM!!
Swim myself thin. I love swimming, I am a slow, steady swimmer, like an old lady, it hurts my back, but nothing like the way that running does, or rowing (cycling is okay, I still cycle an hour a day, to and from work). I've always LOVED the feeling of satisfaction that you have when you are showered and dressed having had a swim, ever since I was little and Parkside pool used to have that cafe bit overlooking the pool that you'd all congregate in for chocolate milk and stuff...
It was also always the only bit I liked about the gym, the amazing post-swim satisfaction factor, in fact, the desire for the post-swim factor was often what drove me to go to the gym in the first place.
So I returned to work, called the pool, asked about a monthly pass and it is £25 which I believe to be extremely excellent value, SO tomorrow the swimming plan begins. I shall keep you posted.
Anyway. It is a horrid thing to be back at work, especially now, in the holidays, when there is no one about and my head is nodding with sleep and my body is not used to sitting here all day, upright. Holidays always make me question my life, which i have been trying to prevent myself from doing too much, work has a genius ability to put you into autopilot, where your entire person is simply driven toward lunch break, then end of the day, then weekend, and you never think about other stuff, like how you always get ill on your holiday cause the autopilot shuts off and everything rushes to the fore. Anyway I'm talking arse now. I'm delirious with sleep, better get onto my horrible canteen coffee.

Even Thomas Hardy would be delighted!

Hiiii everybody! (in the voice of Dr Nick Riviera).
It's fr-i-i-day!
Spring Break WOO!
SO tomorrow faithful followers, I am off to Poundbury, in Dorchester, the model village of Lord Sir Prince Charles(look it up if you don't believe me), to stay with my Grandmama. There I shall be indulging in the following activities (in order of frequency):
*Going to Poundbury Garden Centre
*Going to Waitrose (it's the main supermarket in Dorchester-! I KNow!)
*Watching telly
*Going to The Octagon, it's the cafe in Poundbury, my dad goes there for bacon sandwiches, it's also where my uncle Tim can usually be found, he stops off there between jobs (he's a cabbie- purveyor of 'Hackney Harries' cabs!) and his wife Anita, she takes photos for the Dorset Echo, if anyone watched the programme last night about the ex-Wooolworth's manager in Dorchester who's turned Woolies into a new shop 'Well-worth's', you may have seen Anita on it. But you wouldn't have cause you don't know who she is, but she was on it. I saw her.
* This leads me to my next activity-Visiting 'Well-worth's' and trying to spot the people off the programme! It was a BRILL programme, although, maybe only if you know Dorchester and how mental it is there! It was probably the funniest thing i've seen in years! Mainly to see how they behave cause the camera is on them, the Town Crier was the funniest! I don't know who pays him, no one i think, we always always see him everywhere in Dorchester, outside a sandwich shop, wandering about, whatever, ringing his bell and shouting, on this he kept turning up and playing up to the camera SO much!! "Hello, hello, I'm here to lend a hand, what can I do?" the whole time looking at the camera from the corner of his eye, and making his way into every single shot, even when Chris Evans is there opening the shop his face is obscured by the point of the Town Crier's hat!! hahahahaaaa!!
* We always stop off to have a laugh at our favourite tea shop, it's very 70's and on the front it says "Even Thomas Hardy would be delighted!" I'm laughing out loud now just from thinking about it! I'll upload a photo for your enjoyment. Talk about any way to try and use the name of the only famous person from Dorchester! Thomas Hardy would have been delighted by a cheese and pickle toastie! We're sure of it!
* Going to Goulds, the old ladies shop in town, it always has cheap bras.
* Charity shops, it's cynical, but where there be lots of old people, there be well-stocked charity shops.
* I also intend to drink a moderate amount. I haven't had a drink for a long time, as my grandma always says, gin is a good clean drink. So i will drink lots of gin.

So that's it i reckon...no blog for a while my friends. I just learned that I have to work on Easter Monday for literally no reason whatsoever. Also, there's a new signing-in system cause people have been being too liberal with their hours (I can't imagine who? certainly not me Mrs) so all of my plans about nipping in and out and calling it a day's work have been dashed right in front of my stupid face. >:(
It's so weird how very quickly my life has become void of booze and of social activity. I can't drink if I have to go to work, it can not be done. Also, everyone's up and bloody left me. I do miss doing the quiz. And I miss boozeday Tuesday, but then maybe I just miss being a student (I do) cause I still have no money ever, which is confusing to e and all around me, at least there was time for cooking and for making fudge and for going for a pint at half midnight in the student days...I don't miss the booze, but I miss the mayhem.
Cripes it'll be nice to get away from work, this place is unbelievable, someone just got fired today for swearing at a student, they can swear as much as they like at us, with no consequences whatsoever. everyone's on the verge of a nervous breakdown, it can't last forever...

Anyways, off I pop, have a sweet easter. I'll be writing to you from my desk at 9 am on Easter Monday. From the only job in the world where you get no extra pay to work bank holidays.
I'm gonna suck in as much countryside as i can for 4 days until i'm literally saturated with it, i'm gonna stick my face into the grass and rub mud into my eyes and breathe in sea air until my lungs are all salty fresh and my brain is wiped clean for a few days.

i don't want your money honey i want your love

Jeez, I complain about the weather when it's shit, but I'd forgotten that the worst thing is when it's nice and you have to look at it all day from indoors! Like I have all week! that's the worst! When I worked at the Spread Eagle, that summer, I think it was 2006, Was the hottest hottest summer ever and I watched the whole thing go by through the tunnel of dark wood that was the pub. It was unbearable!! Then on the ONLY afternoon that I had off, after having my friends drop by everyday fresh from Jesus Green outdoor pool, refreshed and full of life, I went off to the pool, DESPERATE for a refreshing swim, got changed, noticed the skies were now grey, and ignored it through determination, then before my toenail was even fully submerged, there was a bolt of LIGHTNING! A LIGHTNING STORM! ONLY over the exact area of the pool!!!unbelievable.
It ended up ok, as I recall we went to the Maypole and played on the Quiz machine, while indulging in daytime pints. (Alex, I think this is when we discovered the hardest (and most addictive) quizzy game in the world: Hex!!!)
(can you put brackets inside brackets (like i just did up there?))

Oh my good gravy, did anyone watch the Apprentice??? Frigging hell, I mean I know the producers have to choose thick people in order to make it funny and all 'uh oh' and so Nick and Margaret can roll their eyes when someone say something unbelievably thick, but OH MY GOD THEY ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THICK! they are literally all so thick that it's like there was a competition to get the thickest people that they could! I was actually on all fours trying to push my head into the sofa watching last nights one!!
Q. How hard is it to make a sandwich?
A. It's famously the easiest thing to make in the world.

Q. How big is a canape?
A. It's small. You eat it standing up, with one hand.

Q. How thick are the people on the Apprentice?
A. They need to be removed from society, they are dangerously thick.

I already hate the blonde girl and the girl with black hair and dimples who looks like a doll. When the man said, 'can we get blinis?' and the blonde girl goes, ' mmm, i've heeard of them...'
ARGH!! The boys are as bad, and christ, the spot on the one who got fired!! His lasting legacy will always be the giant camera close-ups of his massive spot for about ten minutes! poor bastard.

I love the Apprentice though, it's actually the only reality TV programme I watch, I find it totally compulsive, I love Sralen, (Sir Allen) and I love Nick, he's my absolute favourite, and I pretty much love Margaret too!
The reason I love it is because these people deserve to be exposed for what they are, they need to be publically humiliated, and taken down a peg. Unlike people on Big Brother and stuff like that, who are often vulnerable to humiliation due to self-delusion, ignorance and stuff, and bullying, which is NOT fun to watch, these people have no excuse: They have all made money, they all think that they are superhumanly intelligent, and they all love to shit on people to get what they want, they mistake it for having a strong character, when actually they are simply
a) very very greedy b) show-offs and c) incredibly confused about what is important in life.
People who want to make it in business are my worst people. I know i say that about lots of people, but they are my worst. I can not even empathise 1% with the people on the Apprentice, what do they care about? what do they want? Anything? Any job whatsoever, so long as they get money and they have people below them to boss about? How could such an ambition actually create any drive in you at all?? They all have such a lack of creativity, that's what gets me, they just flatline through life, 'i love business', ' i always get what i want', 'success' is the main thing they say, and they say stuff like ' there's no such thing as second place' and stuff.
Can you imagine them in any life situation, reading a book? going to the cinema? even sitting next to you a dinner, talking about themselves, talking about how much they love to win, cripes, what a bunch of boring bastards.

i know i will always be poor, i don't care about money, it doesn't interest me, how can it, it's money? It's a thing that causes constant tension and sadness to 98% of the world. Being a cleaner, or a train driver, or working in a newsagent or in a bloody library, all of these things are more important and more interesting than sitting in a massive office every day worrying about imaginary money, which you want really badly, even though you don't really know why.

I HATE HIPPIES!

Does anyone ever see the magazine 'Selvedge'? Have a look through it, it's really nice.

It's a good thing about working in a library, reading loads of magazines and journals that you'd never buy.

I want to subscribe to something. (Apart from Viz!) Something that I look forward to receiving. It might be Selvedge I think, once I leave here and I can't read it for free. Plus it only comes 6 times a year, so it has a real novelty value. It's a textiles magazine, and it's square-shaped which makes it more desirable!

I'm obsessed with textiles at the moment, I'm in awe of people who work with them, they're really hard to do, and how satisfying is it when you make something from material?! very bloody satisfying is the answer. I am going to get a sewing machine and make all my own things from now on. I have a very clear idea in my head of becoming a kind-of Scandinavian, all-natural fabric, exuding-calmness, person, you know the type, all wide hipped and wearing a headscarf, with bushy hair and no make-up and drinking tea, that's what I aspire to. sandals with socks in winter, I've always loved sandals with socks, really, i seriously have, cause i really like socks, and sometimes i feel it's a waste when i put on some of my really brilliant socks and i know that no one will see them...! Anyway, I'm sure I won't become this person. I'm far too angry and I'm far to dependent on stupid modern shoes and I hate people like that anyway.

These 'No Tesco' people have been annoying me, isn't it funny how animal rights protestors and stuff always get violent, the no tesco people smacked an old woman in the head last week, I mean fucking hell. I understand that the shopkeepers don't want a Tesco, and yes, I think it would be best if there weren't one, but jeezus, people are devoting their lives to it, it's stopped being about what it was about in the first place, it's just about a fight now. As my friend Di pointed out, no one protested when they announced that they were closing the hospice down the road.

 I happen to have once been acquainted with two of the leaders of the protest and they are genuine nobwanglers. They live in a flat paid for by their parents, spend their money on weed and make unbelievably cringe-making music, more embarrassing than I could ever relate here. They're protesting for a) something to do and b) more importantly, for self-gratification, because they are people who exist off a feeling of self-righteous smugness that only exists in a certain type of middle-class mid-20's-mid-30's person, these people go to sleep with a smirk on their faces, you know the type. 

We were talking about 'professional protesters' today, in the wake of this G20 stuff. It does throw up a really hard question, in the end, if the thing they're fighting for is good, then I guess who cares who is fighting, but again, are these educated people who live off the dole and daddy's money, the people who should be so angry? and also, how can the question of them being the most annoying people in the whole world ever be overcome? even if what they want is essentially right?

god i'm a bitch! don't take it to heart! I am only really thinking of a particular breed of person! this blog is too personal i fear!!!!