christmas time

my phone is repeatedly freezing too cold to work. It first happened on a day a few weeks ago when i got snowed on to the max, now i have to sit on it or leave it on the radiator for ages, it's getting pretty annoying...
to be fair, a contingent of the buttons are stuck on with blu tac.  i moved my contract to the shittest one there is basically, then about 2 days later my phone broke and i had lost all my perks from being a customer for about ten years and was on the shitheap with all the other £10 per month shitmunchers so now i have to BUY  a phone which i have never needed to cause of upgrades so that's never going to happen, i'll never afford one as nice as the one i have (had it 4 years nearly) so that's the beef.


So here's the big question, anyone get an email THIS cheery into their work inbox today:

Wishing you a merry xmas and best wishes for 2011.

Grief Kit and Terminal Illness products

Just to let you know that we currently have an offer on our grief kit. For more information, please contact me.

nope, didn't think so! certainly warmed my cockles this morning, wishing you a merry christmas and a great year despite/full of terminal illness and mostly grief :)

what does a grief kit consist of you wonder? tissues? bit obvious. phil collins album? brandy?i imagine it in  a box like a first aid box... emergency grief kit valium and 'fuck off and leave me alone i'm grieving' t-shirt within.

my 2 month battle with the council to get paid has finally finished. from nowhere after all the crazy stories i was suddenly paid. not sure what to do with myself now...i mean, i am owed other money but that chase hasn't taken off yet... maybe in the New Year...who knows...

Been assessing the train sitch, doesn't look great for my dash back to Cambridge on Xmas eve... everything has gone serious tits up today and i do have 'planes trains and automobiles' fears inside me of hitchhiking and sleeping in a train and spending Christmas day having ribena and flapjack from trolley for dinner and we'd all cheer each other along and remember it laughingly in a few years but staring the idea in the face i can't think of anything more depressing.

Where the page was uploading disruptions and trying to say 'amending  updates' or something it crashed on my computer and just said "Amen" which was pretty fitting really.

not much else to report. very excited about xmas as always. the bunnies are staying with mum and dad and have moved into my BED which is very cheeky of them and not sure whether they are going to like me and chloe descending on it! Flat is seriously weird without them! I miss them!!! i miss their indifferent looks! dad is so bunny-centric now i don't know what he's up to, will probably be making bunny christmas dinner (FOR them, not with).

saw Frankie Boyle's poster for his new live dvd, 'if i could reach through the tv and strangle you i would' that is really what it's called!!!! it's like something off The Day Today!! It's so Nathan Barley it's almost unreal, real comedy has become a total parody of itself! 

What an arsehole he is! he'll be so embarrassed one day when he wakes up from this dazed fame trip he is on, seriously, he's showing up how thick his audiences are by trying to be all offensive and over their head and shocking, but then doing it so far it goes back on him and just makes him look like a desperate wanker! his offensive gag's are not even worth being offended about, it'd be great if everyone just didn't care, or mention it it'd be the only thing that would truly upset him, there's a mitchell and webb sketch which is like watercolour challenge that totally reminds me of this WATCH IT .

anyway, def not worth the comedy debate that's going on, is it offensive;yes of course, that is its intention. is it funny; no because it is to no purpose, there is no context or build up or intelligent thought there.

anyway crew faces. my hands are freezing on the keyboard, try and catch you pre-xmas otherwise have a real sweet one. remember, eat the choc orange before breakfast, it sets you up for the day's fighting and makes sure no one gets their's confused with yours.

call me elf

ey up freakazoids, my mouth is watering loads at the anticipation of heading off the to German market after work for potato cakes! they are real delish...
lally staying this week, starting to feel christmassy, got the little tree branches wedged into a pot up, got the advent candle on the go, yup, preeety christmassy all round...
still endlessly frustrated as i chase people for money they owe me, really holding everything up and adding to the stress of december. This is what I hate about email, it's so easy for people to fob you off loads and disappear, they can ignnore you for ages and never face your furious screaming face, sure i would have been paid months ago if the girl dealing with me had had to see my fury head on...

my serious curse with keys continues as the key to my studio has broken in the lock... starting to wonder if i have a uri geller style melting metal fingers syndrome? probably...

heading back to cambridge on friday for an appointment in addenbrookes oral surgery dept as my 3rd wisdom is forcing a contingent of my teeth from my mouth which is very annoying and I bloody wish they had taken them all out in the first place... i hate the tooth app. the most as you have to put this HUGE plastic plate vertically into your mouth for the xray for ages and ages all over your gob and it really really kills, they always go 'oh you have a tiny mouth' so why don't they have different sized ones? i am not the tiny-mouthed girl of east anglia, there must be more like me? children for example? something pointing into the soft flesh in yuor mouth (got that sounds disgusting, shut up Joe!) is one of the most painful things, when you get an injection in the roof of your mouth it hurts loads longer than the tooth that's been pulled...well, the flesh it's been pulled from, the tooth doesn't hurt obviously...

anyway, going to a party on sat in the flying pig, the whole pub hired which'll be an experience! the theme is 'when i was little i wanted to be...' i wanted to be an illustrator, but a successful one obviously, so really i should go as myself only happier, better dressed and richer, but that is too depressing so i am going as one of the myriad of people who i wanted to be when i was little, although i decided against Nigel Kennedy much to my sadness, as that would have been pretty great...

Chloe's bunny Dotty had an operation last week so much of the weekend gone was spent worry about her and having a lovely lazy cambrdge weekend with my new ROSEANNE box set!!! :) which is BETTER than i remember and i was well scared it'd have aged awfully!

also mum's b'day on sat so there'll be much merrymaking i am sure. Leeds and wakey are meant to have heavy snow this weekend, hope i can get back to the bridge ok on xmas eve... not sure how busy the library will  be (i AM sure, it will be empty.that was sarcasm).

okey dokey that's that, sad not to be doing much christmassy stuff out and about, really want to see my old friends so i hope that can happen at some point.
Off to Wales first week jan to Portmeirion like a French Duke :) very very happy about that, i always prefer to go away after new year as that's when the slump hits and you start staring into space and dribbling and going 'wwwhhhhhhhhyyyyy?' or is that just me? don't lie, you do it too.

hello fans

ow do?

can't believe i haven't bothered writing the blog, there's been so much to write and i am always thinking of new stuff...especially since....................the SNOW!! da  da daaaaaaaa!

since the snow started last monday i have:been thrown out of a taxi and shouted at for being a timewaster :)
had a fight with a bus driver cause i banged the door so he'd let me on-he was a coccckk
experimented with 3 pairs of boots for grip (not at the same time)
eaten 2 life-giving stews including the best meal i have ever made.
been stranded 5 miles from Leeds and had to walk back
made a lot of jokes (kind-of) on this walk about dying in the snow-to people i didn't really know
worn 2 pairs of trousers and still been cold (that's a new one one me)
cleaned the ice out of the INSIDE of simon's car (also new)
seen an igloo (someone built a really good one near my house)
had potato cakes at the German market-nicest things i've ever eaten
stopped caring what i look like as long as i am warm :)
become Northern-ist and tasty at the bias of the news coverage of the snow
looked after the bunnies more than EVER as if that were possible!
done xmas origami wrong, i can't do origami
created a christmas tree from offcuts as a proper one was too expensive (it's brilliant too!!)
spent about 20 hours either on transport or waiting for it.
been having very cosy evenings
become a hermit crab
missed 1 day of work after a 4 1/2 hr trip home last weds
discovered the amazingness of 'Farmfoods' frozen shop!!
not been to the supermarket ONCE
been laughing about the fact that the private school kids stopped school when it snowed, even though their parents block the road every day with off-road 4x4's-!! pointlessness confirmed.
totally lost the magic feeling associated with snow and become fricking fed up with the fucking stuff.

only thing worse-now it's 2 inch ice.

So, I watched that brilliant panda doc last night, anyone else? how can an animal BE that cute?they said that cuteness is directly related to have a small willy, and also makes it harder for you to survive!
the sexy bits were a bit horrid, seems degrading to this amazing animal that it's being filmed unconscious having its sperm removed...:( it didn't mind though really i don't think... what they are doing there is really amazing...they have to do it like that cause they want to stop inbreeding...maaybe they should have done that with the royal family, darted them and rolled them over on film and extracted semen, i'm going to be sick why did i try and do some obvious satire there...!i am a twat!

well, i am meant to be heading home at 2pm on xmas eve, although today's weather says it's going to be impossible to travel, we'll see... may have to go to burton with simon!

frantically looking for jobs and feeling the need to actually get a career or something, being nearly 30.
anyone sees anything let me know!!

plants

once again all my plants are dying in front of my eyes, i always notice a few leaves on the ground and suddenly every time the door closes 40 leaves fall off in one go :( i feel like i have failed the poor things, reminds me of a terrible situation involving my old fish which i can't bear  to recount as it is literally still too painful.

well, me and simon have last night completed our annual Leeds Film Festival frenzy, 5 films last year, up on last year, down on the year before.
It is getting noticeably busier and also more jazzy, one of the venues was the town hall this year, last year we watched one on a telly in the leeds met classroom in the carriageworks.
saw a seriously great batch this year, quick run through:

Kawasaki's Rose- (went to see this as the director made 'Divided we fall' which is one of my favourite films off all time and MUST be seen by all.compulsory) This was about the continuing fall out from communism in Czechoslovakia, set in Czech republic. There's lots of films about this stuff now, as more and more truth emerges about what really went on.
The premise of this is that a woman's angry husband decides to investigate the real past of her 'hero' father who is lauded for helping people escape Czechslovakia . Unfortunately the character of the husband was utterly unbelievable, he's like a cartoon baddie, but otherwise this was absolutely excellent.

'A Taste of Tea' was a Japanese film we saw, not a new one but one back having been popular at a previous festival. This was totally mad and absolutely brilliant. i loved it. It follows a family in Japan who all live their different lives each with their own problem, beautiful Japanese countryside and house and tea makes you desperate to live there. The little girl is so bloody adorable that it's unbelievable, also comes complete with mad grandpa, which always swings it for me.

'A town called panic' is the one i would tell you all to get as it is on dvd and easy to get and is totally enjoyable, it's an animation made with models, a cowboy, a horse and an indian live in a little village, there is a brilliant farmer called 'stephen' who really steals the show by only being able to shout.
anyway, just watch it, you won't regret it i guarantee. total suspension of reality guaranteed (what more could you want?)

'Elling' was my runaway favourite. This film was basically faultless, the characters were totally absorbing and sympathetic, i absolutely loved it and was actively enjoying it all the way through which is weird as i nearly always get a 'it must be near the end' gaze at some point.
Anyway, it is about 2 men who share a room in a mental facility, the film opens with them being given their own government-funded flat to make it alone. it is beautiful and hilariously funny as well.

finally, last night, the rudest of them, 'Zonad'  went to see this as it's an Irish comedy and I know that i bloody love that bleeding irish humour.
a family in a tiny village in Ireland come home to find an alien in their house and take him in totally naively, very funny and rude, definitely taking that one home for Christmas viewing with the family.

TODAY'S ZOO BORNS:

look at those sea horses!! dontcha just love them??
sorry for this boring review based blog, i am too hungry to concentrate and the rabbits are bounding about in confusion as i have cleaned up all their shit which totally throws them-don't worry there's more where that came from...

anyhoo catcha later

hey hey

it's Tuesday, formerly known as Booze-day in the days of carefree student loans.

today i will introduce you to Zooborns, my new interest at work, as i get older and my teeth and brain get softer.
http://www.zooborns.com/
otters are the sweetest by far! although simon prefers the chimps, i can't like chimps because i know their trick (face removal) and will never recover from seeing this trick on Davey Att'brough.

here you can see teeny baby animals which is very fun, and some are gross which is even better.
this is what i do now because i have lost my 'edge' if i ever had one and have become decrepit.

been going to the leeds film fest, seen 2 so far, Kawasaki's Rose and A Taste of Tea ( during which someone turned the subtitles off and I got all edgy and said to Simon that i was going to tell someone, which he forbade, everyone sat like lemons then they came on 2 minutes later with the projector person simultaneeously skipping a whole scene-there was a round of applause fot that incident! i was furious!!!)

got one tonight that looks brill, 'a town called panic' which is an animation and we're seeing it at the town hall which is sweet.

anyways, the rabbits are becoming tamer by the day and follow me around now, literally between my feet and often into the bathroom which is pretty weird when you're trying to have a wee and are being stared at by a tiny grey furry piglet faced creature with an indignant expression...and i'm not just talking about Simon hahaha!!

working xmas eve and NYeve as well which seems mental as we will no doubt be utterly quiet the whole time...anyway, get first week Jan off which is more important as that's when things get really depressing...

off to cam this weekend to see the dentist, can't find one here so really don't see point of changing, I'm still NHS in cambridge, that ain't gonna happen again!! worried they may want my other 2 wisdom teeth out which'll be  a pain in the chops, literally, most pain i have ever experienced is the infection after my wisdom teeth coming out, genuinely.

Moved into a new studio in leeds, it's very basic but i think it'll do for a while, major downside is it;s in a very run down area and now it's getting dark i am not over the moon about walking to and from it, but anyway, like i say, it'll be ok for now i hope.

anyway better go, i started this too late, will be back soon!!
look at this bunny!!!

simon says it's not even sweet!! LOOK AT ITS HANDS!!!! it couldn't BE any sweeter!
tomorrow...UGLY animals!!

look at this

I found online:

"The night has been celebrated for over 10 years in the ocean community of Westerly in the state of Rhode Island, U.S.A." "The night is begun with a musical comedy based on the events of Guy Fawkes' capture, written in the style of an English Monty Python comedy sketch." "Every year, it is slightly rewritten by a dedicated team of locals who also provide the acting and musical arrangements which include Beatles and Rolling Stones covers." "Finally, the night is rounded out with a Guy Fawkes bonfire, weather permitting." "The event is always held on the beach, and in the fall the New England coastline is a bit windy and cold so the event is always different depending greatly on the weather and the number of people in the audience." www.guyfawkesusa.com is the website to the event, held each October (due to weather) and directed by Caswell Cooke.

it's about a guy fawkes celebration in USA, can you BELIEVE it?! a monty python type musical (so awful it's making me cringe-it gets worse) with the MUSIC of the beatles and rolling stones??!! you couldn't make it up?! 

i'm looking at the website....

yep, look at this...

BUcky walsh as the Archbishop of caNterbury!!! and "Z" Leach as the KING! there's also a Duke of Earl. Last years show featured Paint it Black and Norweigan wood during the trial.

you can watch the video of it on the website, and yes, they are doing it in iiiinnnggeelllliiiissh accents!

and they have it in October, and all Americans call these things english holidays but of course they never are holidays here, the costumes are interesting too, in all the pictures on the slideshow there is one person in a kilt, medieval maidens and swords and someone in a 19th century vicar's frock coat and someone else as a Napoleonic admiral...!!

it's quite sweet actually, sweet aaahhh not sweet sweeet, they all look freezing! except the accents. oh and the only bit i saw is just a bit from Holy Grail.

we went to york today and on a Guy Fawkes night walk, i am sorry to say that the walk was pretty rubbish, the guy was late and really just drove home the same point again and again for 2 hours with very little information at all... mostly he was concerned about the 'guy fawkes pub' and what a bunch of bastards he thought they were... we like the guy fawkes pub, we always go there! live the myth i say!!

anyway, it'scold, there's endless fireworks, i can't find a coat i like anywhere. bloody winter.

catch you in the week. 

tuesday

well, lots has been happening in my little world lately...

most significantly, the studios are closing which has left me slightly in limbo as to what to do. i need to get a creepy storage facility for all the stuff that i have deliberately hoarded due to having a massive studio...

we had the last ever art walk there last week which was very weird and a bit sad, everyone got a tad pissed due to there being a beer pump there for charity... i witnessed two large bearded men fall on their backs taking a picnic bench with them...

i am not sure what i will do now...it ranges from nothing to something mental. it'll probably be nothing...

i gave blood yesterday for the first time. it was very easy actually giving it, i have extremely fast pumping blood and it took 6 minutes instead of 15, a couple of the nurses were standing around my blood bag cheering me on as a squeezed my hand and pumped the blood from my body, very surreal!
i sat next to the vast array of treats that you are given after and i must confess, despite trying to be really hard, i did have a sudden funny turn and stagger over to the nurse and lie down for 5 minutes, i was overcome with the feeling that i was going to be sick and faint and i couldn't decide which. I was fine after that, although the walk home took it out of me...
speaking to mum after, who's a blood donor PRO, she revealed that her blood is now 4 minutes!! that's the time to beat! she also said that in cambridge it's just digestives afterwards!! in leeds we had soup, crisps, chocolate, yoghurt coated things, squash, everything! you could easily have lunch there!!

shit, i just poured water all over my top by mistake while attempting to drink from a bottle. and i'm wearing a white top. bollocks.

i am doing a workshop at the museum on saturday for the big draw, i am slightly apprehensive but also looking forward to it, i just hope that people come, there's been no advertising whatsoever as far as i can see...who knows...

can't believe winter is closing in already...at least things are better than this time last year, working in waterstones, it feels like it never happened now! oh, but it did, it did!

reading 'The Audacity of Hype' by Armando Iannucci, my god, is extremely funny and has me laughing out loud on the way to work, some of his 'ways things could possible get worse for gordon brown' (this is before the election mind):

3) a decimal point has been in the wrong place at the Treasury for the past  twenty-three years and we're actually a third-world economy

5) Jack Straw is spotted lying drunk and dace down in a wedding cake at a reception to which he was not invited

11) David Miliband once had a pet hamster called 'Little Allah'


anyways, see you thurs, will have interesting and important information then. probably.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

in cambridge

I am in cambridge in the kitchen listening to women's hour on radio 4, calming down from my fury at the man who was just on saying that women should just get over men making lewd remarks to them no matter how aggressive they are, he was such an almighty wanker i was sitting with my jaw hanging down!
had a very surreal couple of days for a few reasons.
my job description is altering by the minute and i now spend the majority of the week in central leeds rather than out in armley which i am a bit sad about.

headed straight to the station after work on tuesday, the shoes that i had bought with such complete delight on saturday in Scope for £8 both broke on the way to work!!! luckily had my wee chinese slippers, the weather has been very strange this week, definitely adds to the feeling of surrealism, heavy rain and then sun, very strong wind all the time shaking the trees. I am anxious and agitated all the time at the moment and feel that my body and mind are working in overdrive, propelling me faster than i can keep up, my legs constantly twitching and my mind racing.
got the train to cambridge, the rain started to come down in sheets, i didn't enjoy the journey as much as i do normally, maybe due to the nature of a mid-week 2 days off.
Once in cambridge the usual strong feelings come over me immediately: jealousy, that other people are here in my city, and i am now a visitor, sadness that it is changing so fast that it is becoming unrecognisable, feelings of being old mostly, everything reminds me of being young and of biking about, there is hardly one cranny in cambridge that i don't have an associative memory with, it's amazing how powerful these feelings are once you get distance from a place, you start seeing it as a separate entity, like an old relative who you don't see enough but who you also aren't sure you get on with as much as you thought.


had a quiet evening with mum and dad, very restless. slept very well and woke up feeling completely refreshed at 8am which was a strange feeling. headed into town at 9 with mum as she went to work, went around the shops, beautiful day, also the weather that is the most synonimous with cambridge for me: sunny but bracing, this IS cambridge weather and autumn is arguably when the city is at its most beautiful.

Visited Marie in the CATS library where I used to work, is so much improved and was quiet and orderly, polar opposite of when i worked there, marie came out for a coffee, totally revitalising me with her energy, she always looks simultaneously wise and very young, like a child, it's an amazing quality, i wish i could see her more, she's like a life force! i am so lucky to have met her.

Had the memorial service from 6pm. drove into london, dad overjoyed at his genius of paying th congestion charge ONLINE!! then paid for parking in a bay that became free art 6:30, paid it to 6:29 which was SUch an infuriating dad thing to do! the venue had moved without any prior warning to Tavistock Square. It was quite disorganised, the room was a terrible shape, 2 rooms with a wall knocked through so no one was going to be able to hear it seemed. the chairs were crammed in so no one could move, but there still were far from enough, they had supplied some wine but only about 10 cups and no corkscrew. The room filled up fast with lots of mysterious people. Mum spoke second after the children. Her speech was utterly beautiful, i could see that most of the room was reduced to tears.i cried for Grace for the first time, and found it quite hard to stop, it is something that i have deliberately avoided thinking about, and not digested at all. it is still very strange, and very very sad.

The great thing about the evening was meeting the other people that had known Grace, people who knew her before she changed her name and her life, lovers, people who knew her only through her poetry and had never met her.
Lots of poems were read out which was wonderful to hear and also an utter eye-opener for me,i am going to investigate her poetry deeply now and can't wait to do so.
to reconnect with her children was great, i will be in touch with them, we are connected now very definitely, in such a strange way, but also quite naturally.

left finally around 10, lots of people wanted to talk to mum and were very grateful for her speaking and for the things that she shared.


got home around 12. i was definitely to melancholy to sleep and don't feel great today, very tired.
back to work tomorrow which i am not relishing as i was contacted incessantly by my colleague yesterday which i am really pretty angry about.

newcastle at the weekend, looking forward to some light relief.

gonna do the blog twice a week now, a realistic goal!

end of tether

hi that us what i am at, end of tether, my tether that is.

I've lost my travel pass. It cost £80. I used it for 2 days. I blame work for this which is making me very resentful.
I can't afford a new one.

I deleted all my photos by mistake. this may seem trvial but it isn't.
I took some very special ones in a particular way for the first time. I feel like it was all set up deliberately. which makes me sound (and feel) mad.

went to london on the coach on friday. drank 3 pints on an empty stomach. slept badly. spent saturday with Olivia and Yasuko going to the tower of london which was lovely. they are certainly too nice for me. I behaved badly I think. very distracted and anxious. went to afternoon tea and I basically started on the waiter really quite aggressively (this even involved the phrase 'are you calling me a liar?-!!) because he was being smug. couldn't quite believe i had done it...made me feel even more mad. very very sad and in denial about yasuko leaving. went out for more beer. injured myself on a chair. spent all of sunday inside, slept with Dot running back and forth over me which was very surreal. Chloe found a mouse in its house in a box where she'd accidentally created a mouse equivalent of the Ritz with loose rabbit food and a soft comfy bed. it ran across the room. watched every episode of 'horrible histories' on iplayer. chloe said she's give me a pedicure, she seems to have gone to town on my right big toe, it feels really sore today and the skin has been reduced to raw flesh in parts...

came home on the bus last night from London, got on at 7, crawled all the way to leeds, got in 1 1/2 hours late about 12:30 Simon was really not too happy about that. asked the driver if i could sit in the front seat where his stuff was becuase i was feeling a bit queasy. very different in the front, i was hearing all his phone calls and watching the mystery of the fact that the driver's seat bounces as he drives which seemed a bad idea... also noted that he was texting which was terrifying. he had a skin condition too which was mesmerising me... very flaky... when the other driver got on i listened to them talking about people getting fired and swearing about different customers that they'd had lately and about cars that they'd deliberately bumped into in the bus lane to teach them a lesson.

spent the morning frantically trying to plead with people about my railcard. no dice. absolutely knackered and feeling totally numb with post-anxiety slump of despair.
no money for the whole month now, it's only the 5th. god i am a moron. oh well.quite tempted to drink myself to death?
oh yeah, can't afford it.

guess who's back?back again?shady me is back.

EY UP!!!

OW DO?

so i am back from my jaunt to the deep south, bookended by trips to the flat hills of my homeland, cambridge town (it IS technically a town after all).

Had a long and lovely week with Grandma, lots of trips to see Grandpa and all the usual fun of the Cerne Abbas care home ensuing, including sing-a-longs and escapee residents(Chloe compared it to Jurassic Park which is so accurate, whenever you approach the door Ted suddenly lumbers toward you at great speed from the other side of the room and you need to get out before he reaches you!), lots and lots of apple scrumdiddilyumping, tea drinking and listening to outbursts of swearing from certain characters...namely Ron who is always catching a train, he was interested in the word 'bastard' during our attempts to block him out with music-hall songs like 'Daisy Daisy' and Ted who likes to say 'ooohh Fuuuuckiinn heelll!' when you try to stop him following you through the coded door and out into the world.

It rained like CRAZY the first few days, lots of our activities were abandoned as a result, but there was lots of nice laziness too, plus the absoulte GLUT of ripe fruit at the care home and of blackberries in the fields led to some seriously magnifique crumbles made by my fair hand...
Grandma has a new dog, Goldie, who I keep calling Sandy cause she looks like her old old dog, Goldie is wonderful, even if she does reverse into you and park herself onto you. we took her on a lot of runs as she is somewhat flabby, Grandma wants to get her some corsets, may be a good idea in fact...trust Grandma to arrive at a solution that involves no alteration of diet and a human style outfit!

Mum and dad came, then Chloe, then Lally then Ricky, it was a mega full house alright... went to Tyneham, a village which was evacuated so that the MOD could use the valley that it lay in as a firing range during the second world war, the villagers were promised they could return but this was overturned and they never went back, is a sad place really, however i fulfilled my promise to swim in the sea and did so there, was very nice indeed. Other than Simon's birthday on the Sunday and a hilarious outing to a country fete to watch historical dancing on monday, little else of much note...Grandpa's 90th on the 9th October so I shall be whizzing down for that for sure.

Had a stark return to the real world yesterday, began the day at the newly-built and opened Pinderfields hospital in Wakey yesterday, finally had an ENT appointment, 2 years after first getting this throat problem I have.
The hospital is like something from the Jetsons, you all wait in 1 waiting area then your name appears on a screen and tells you which 'gate' to go to like in an airport, the lifts and corridors all say 'gates 20-40' etc. is mental!The pharmacy freaked me out the most although no one else seems to find it weird, there's a tube full of suction, they get your prescription, put it in a pod(!) and then the tube sucks it up and after a while your medicine is sent down in another pod!!!! I was looking around at everyone trying to exchange 'WOW!!' face but no one gave a crap (to be fair the wow wore off after half an hour of no medicine whats0-fucking ever coming down that bastard tube...

anyway, still covering at work as no one at all is here this week except me so i'm in leeds centre instead of my little library in Armley.
Off to London tomorrow on the coach (bollocks.) as Yasuko my lovely friend is going back to Japan. got some fun lined up, big shame about 9hrs worth of coach travel though...can't be helped, is so bloody cheap.

laters potaters.

so long suckas!

hey hey i am just finishing work and getting ready for the sweet taste of freedom as of 5 mins!!

heading to cam tomoz for a hosp appt then gonna mooch about and relax, then the big push down to Dorset on Sunday, cannae wait!

Dreamed that I had TB last night, well, i kept coughing fine mists of blood onto everything, (although i can't guarantee i wasn't doing that in my sleep) i was showing everyone like look look! no one was too bothered...
just looked on the shit dream dictionary, to dream of a disease means i may have a disease...thanks dream DICKtionary. I dreamed that I was feeding my rabbits lightbulbs off a string of fairy lights the other week, does it mean that the nutrition my bunnies crave is lights? oh that doesn't mean anything balls BALLS!
I sometimes have those hallucenogenic dreams where you wake up and you're doing something, the worst one i ever had was dreaming i was totally coated in flies and i was rubbing my arms trying to get them off and screaming and i woke up sitting up doing it it was well scary, brains are so powerful, i still vividly remember dreams i had as a child. I am really jealous of people who don't dream though because dreaming can actually be knackering, not to mention really distressing, when you dream of someone dead that you know or even worse of someone dying, or when your brain scrapes stressful situations out of your memories or people you don't want to think about, it can be well depressing and unsettling.
The worst is when you start on the happy pills, god, i had SUCH lucid, long, brightly coloured and totally exhausting dreams, and if i woke up and fell asleep for 5 secons i would have another, other people I've spoken to had the same thing, it's why i have never been interested in drugs, the idea of delving into my subconscious and hallucinating not only doesn't appeal to me, it terrifies me! why would anyone want to?! i don't get it. it's not the bloody 60's we know everything is bad now so stop pretending, I agree with mark on peep show, i want to put on radio 4 and have some toast and a little pill with a chicken on it isn't going change how things are!!!


anyway who cares about this you chumps, I am off to taste sweet freedom!!! WOOOOOOO


Back on Sep 1st when the blogs will become better and full of intrugue and will they/won't they and whodunnit and long lost relatives and foreign travel and fame and fortune and rehab and giant taxis and limos and cigars rolled on a virgins thighs and all that, but it'll mostly be more of the same old bollocks. :)

right

bored in a library?is it possible?!

ey up buddies!
ow do?
I am sitting at the mental health library. alone. even my little library is busier than this one! at least you can hear everyone going back and forth in the corridor and laughing and shouting, this is like a cocoon of silence...

went back to the Bridge this weekend (that reminds me joe, you are definitely still on my shit list because you didn't even reply when i gave you the chance to get back on the good list)haven't been back in AGES. unfortunately i was inflicted by some sort of face allergy so my face was burning and it but me in a well shitty mood all weekend. We took the bunnies which was pretty experimental, although a lot lot easier than i feared it would be. BUT now they hate me because they think i am going to pick them up all the time. God it was satisfying to comb that ball of afro off marie's back, she's been hauling it round like a rucksack for 2 weeks!!
Chloe also had Dot staying downstairs so mum and dad were inundated with bunnies! they'd had dotty for a week!! she is SO different from my refined ladies, she does poos like cannon balls and electric yellow wee which mum kept saying had burned her foot!!! she is very very sweet though, i sometimes wish our bunnies would be more mental like dot, but then, they haev each other so it's swings and roundabouts.
OH but chloe did make the mistake of giving dot a shower! for no reason other than that she's bought the shampoo!!it was a pretty heartbreaking sight!! her totally soaked wrapped in a towel in chloe's arms with her eyes shut, chloe saying 'i'll never wash you again!!! forgive me dot!' over and over again!!

saw our friends Helen, and Alex who got engaged last week so that was very exciting. Me and Chloe were already planning things cause we couldn't help it!

Was weird to be in Cam actually, haven't been there since May which is actually the longest period of my LIFE that I have been away from Cambridge!! how mental is that!
there are loads of things I miss about it when I am here, but I must say I was relieved to discover that when I was there I was pretty much missing Yorkshire the whole time! it's so bloody crowded that's why! and so many poshos! and nobbers.

GOD I AM BORED.
the other girl i work with is away so i have to keep moving around the libraries. I am so bored of this one! it's rub a dub compared to mine! no canteen either! I miss the canteen! At my work canteen you can get pretty much any lunch you can think of for less than £2, normally lots less. and yu can get breakfast in the morning like toast and shiz. aaahh it's greeeet.

anyways, mum was on top form this weekend, rude as you like, she even called dad a virgin which was pretty much the funniest thing ever!!

Off to Dorset this weekend for 7 days, can't WAIT. seriously. What a good idea to make your holiday at your granny's house? it's gonna be so mega sweet!gonna go fossil hunting and swim at durdle door and watch all the rude boys tomb-stoning and eat ice cream and have a cream tea and go and look at the hens who look like they're wearing trousers and saunter around Poundbury...just 2 days left of work and i am OFFski!
Grandma has a new dog, Goldie, who sounds pretty amazing although she says that the great big thing keeps tryoing to clamber onto her lap and bark in her face for a chat which is slightly worrying...ho hum, at least she loves tea and biscuits, that's tha main thing for a dog, so i am told...
Helen from Wakey (i must distinguish all my helens) is very kindly looking after Marie and Frida and has promised to leave them on a roundabout if they scratch the carpet again. :) well, she hasn't promised yet, but I'm sure I can talk her round!
Grandma asked me yesterday tentatively if they were coming with me to Dorset, I said no and she said, oh good cause i'm aure the dog would eat them. Obviously it was a risk she was willing to take then...?suspicious character....

anyways. catch you on the flipside, i could write this non stop because i am SO SO BORED!!!

PS

CAN'T BELIEVE i didn't mention Mel Gibson's dad calling the Pope a 'Slippery Gay'!!!
yeah, thanks dad, my career will definitely get aboost from that! so funny coffee came out of my nose reading the Metro today!!

rock n' rolls of flab

yo yo,

I'm back after my moderatly nihilistic blog from monday (sorry about that-uh oh)

Was reading an article in 'stylist' or whatever the other free magazine is,do you get them in london? i don't know, the 2 free magazines every weds? you get em at the train station? they're pretty good. Oh, Shortlist, that's the one for men, stylist for ladies-gotta keep em separate.

anyway, i was reading this article about the old thing of '27' being the age that all great rock stars die. Perhaps reading it with more interest than usual, as it is such an old hat theory, as i, some of you may know, am 27 years old. WELll apparently there's actually this scientific evidence now that something happens in your brain when you are between 25-27, the final stage of nerve thickening or something, so you are likely to be really mental at this time, then if you take upper or downer substances while your nerves are undergoing this change,you basically go totally mental compared to normal-hence, shit hangovers, sudden depression, masses of booze/drug guzzling, inability to control your behaviour(i am not talking about me, i'm talking in general, okay) SOO anyway, this is the discovery that late 20's is a time for a massive life crisis, and I must say, practically everyone I know has had one or is on the verge of it (i'm talking to you) and it's when everyone really questions their life for the first time, the realisation of which may well turn you to more drugs and booze (again, i am talking generally and anyone who says i am not is a bloody liar!)

SO, all the excuses i've been waiting for lie in science, finally! I must say that 25 was definitely the first birthday I had where i felt actually different, immediately, like i had finished teetering on the peak of the hill and now i was on the descent! We went to 'feeling gloomy' a club in london that only plays gloomy music and i made some bizarrely doom-laden requests until chloe levered me home with a fixed but terrified grin (and an extension cable that we'd found on the floor i seem to remember!)
So, I'm hoping that I make it through 27, got about 6 weeks to go, I am, of course, as you all know, very Rock Star, so as you'll imagine, I am pretty worried...
yup...i've led the rock n' roll life alright...i've kissed red square...i've smoked a cigarette with a russian soldier with a machine gun on an overnight sleeper (and then been sick), i've swam in the mediterranean at dawn...i've been to an illegal underground jazz club in amsterdam, yeah! skibedibaa! i've had a fight in Paris then leapt into a taxi and said 'DRIVE'! I've fallen asleep while cycling...(does that count?) I've run away from the Albanian mafia(kind of), I've gone 3 days without sleep, I've taken LOADS of valium (that is rock n' roll), I've climbed a roof in the rain wearing stilettos, i've gone to the beach in Italy at 6.am with nothing but a bottle of limoncello, Olivia, and my pyjamas and sat half a mmile out to sea on a precarious wooden walkway, come on, i was at Knebworth in 1996! I was only 13! give me that at leat, that's seminal! and i was at Glastonbury when it was good, 1998-2004when the tickets still came from HMV and you didn't need a passport to walk around there!!

no, it's true, I have no tattoos, i hate drugs, if i drink a pint now i have a pint's worth of hangover. I'm definitely in mourning for my carefree days of all night fun and crazy people and weird booze and nothing to do except sleep it off... despite all the moderately shit reasons i give here, i actually think i have had quite a wild youth...
no far-reached or prolonged travelling, which is sad, and which is what everyone always says is the best thing, but then, there's been no money, and youth-travellers normally have the good fortune to have rich parents/rich&dead grandparents so that wasn't my avenue.
yup, tell you what though, being older is great because you don't have to do all that wild stuff anymore and no one will judge you for it, also, i think lots of it wasn't as fun as I remember...? What it is is that at this age I KNOW what I enjoy, and my brain tells me to do that more, rather than not really knowing and going with instinct, experience teaches you what kind of nights out or activities are going to be shit or tedious and you have the nouse to avoid them, now that is nice. Also the number 1 thing that you learn is how to enjoy yourself when you're alone. Coming from my big family I found that the hardest for years and years.

sooooooooooooo
better get back yto work, got a 28+38 article search to do, 66 that is, is it? yes, that.

Bunny update: marie has developed a bizarre hump of hair so she looks like a mental hunchback, frida still has dreadlocks. One/ both of them is/are doing mental poo which i need to clear up before simon clocks it, haven't managed it so far, he has bat ears when it comes to the sound of poo being cleared up.
I need to catch them tomorrow to take them to cambridge for the weekend, not looking forward to it! it makes them fear me!!

brace yourself

I'm feeling depressed!
The funny thing (although probably the only one) about having depression is that you can feel it coming on, like a cold. I have that at the moment.
You use up a lot of concentration trying hard to stop it getting hold of you when the creeping itch begins.
Albert Camus, who is one of my biggest heroes, said something like 'it's amazing how much energy some people expend every day just to be normal' i often think about this, although i think it applies to almost everyone except for a few very well balanced people. But then again, he also said 'every man is responsible for his own face' as well so you can choose to ignore his 'wisdom' if you like!

The double fold problem with depression is that there is so much properly awful shit going on all over the place that you feel guilty for being depressed as well.
I went out for a heavy rampage at the weekend with my friend lightning who I haven't seen in 3 1/2 years and i always know before hand that alcohol makes me really depressed but it's so good at allaying my constant anxiety jitters that once i pop i really can't stop. Now i have all sorts of guilt, booze guilt, knackered body, wasted most of sunday, came home very late and worried simon...oh dear. I am a bad person, that is the conclusion that i have had to come to.

What makes you a bad person anyway? Is everything that we do to do with our circumstances? I dunno, I feel like a bad person so maybe that means that I am one? after all, when we do nice things, do they come totally naturally, or because we want people to like us? I like making people happy but is thta just because i want them to appreciate me? i don't know i can't work out how much of anything is natural today. I do a lot of stuff for people but that's because i am propelled by an inborn state of utter anxiety, i mean, that doesn't make me nice does it?

Bloody hell i don't know. I think i need a long chat and a good cry, then i'll be okay.
it's funny churchill coined the phrase 'black dog' for depression, i think of it more like a blanket, because there is an element of comfort in it. A lot of people say that you mourn for your actual depresson as it leaves because it becomes such a way of life for you that it's less scary that facing the real world without it, you know like how people over-complicate their lives because accepting that their life is just how it is is just too fucking scary.
I certainly can't imagine that mine will ever go away, it's been with me so long, it's part of me, it's like a whole other set of organs and brain cells which fight with the healthy parts and it'a addictive, a tiny seed appears for no reason, or cause someone says something to you that's a bit close to the bone, or you see an old photo, or hear about someone you used to know and then you use all the strength of your thoiughts concentrating on this seed of insecurity and misery and BOOM it grows into a massive plant that pushes on the edges of your head and in your lungs and stomach and suddenly moving about and doing things and talkig to people becomes much, much harder, and your own brain and body weighs you down and tells you to give up. and that's that.

anyway. that's me for today.

'dem bones

ok i need to talk about something, smoething which has gone unmentioned for too long but which has distracted me for a year in that way that things do when you notice them with that part of your brain that doesn't simultaneously register them?
You know like when you watch an advert, you might have seen it 100 times but only on the 101st time will you actually watch it and realise what it's for/about, then it takes on a new meaning?
well this problem of mine is CHICKEN BONES.
I am constantly distracted by chicken bones.
There are chicken bones EVERYWHERE. Has anyone else noticed this?
I have been absorbing the fact that their are chicken bones everywhere for so long that I don't know how long it is. Only recently when I was in a slightly differening state from usual-can't remember if i was very tired or a bit hungover or spaced out from weird medicine- but I caught sight of a chicken bone on the floor on the corner of the road near my house, and for the first time i thought to myself 'yuck, a BONE. why am i not more disgusted? oh yes, it's because i see them everywhere.'
and now when i see chicken bones i actually see them and think 'rank'.

Now is this weird? that i find the haphazard presence of BONES casually tossed aside throughout town so totally and utterly vile?
There's something so unsettling and revolting about it that it's starting to really creep me out. The fact that I am walking around, with the general publicc, in society, ina a 'civilized' society and at any given moment I may slip on a BONE, on a rotting bit of carcas, with human teeth marks dragged through the remnants of old flesh?! This isn't something that I signed up for when I decided to live in the world rather than outside it feral, this activity of stripping the animal meat from bones and then flinging them over your shoulder seems remarkably out of place, in fact, in the world of packaged, consumerist meat that we live in, and frankly you can't have your fucking battery chicken and eat it too is what i say!

Either rush into the countryside and throttle a chicken, strip it(s feathers) and eat it, thus reducing all the terrible mass farming and transportation and pretence about meat that is ruining the world, THEN fling the bones over your shoulder with satisfaction at a job well done, OR meekly eat your disgusting water-injected battery-farmed Vietnamese chicken from 'yankee fried chick balls' or wherever you favour, put them neatly back into their oily box(which are also quite widely scattered but remain less offensive) and place then in a waste recepticle thus sparing me the act of tiptoeing around your old sucked bones, you have FOREFITTED the right to growl like a caveman and litter the streets with them!

There's just something so symbolic of the whole world not giving a shit about anything anymore about the bones of a small animal with varying amounts of flesh knawed from them, dropped in the street.
Then again, you may not see it like this. I appreciate that I am prone to the dramatic (although believe me, i genuinely don't think i am being dramatic)!

On a chicken bone-aside, there's an episode of 'snog, marry, avoid' with a gothy boy who buys fried chicken every day, eats it, then boils the bones to make into jewelry.
This is more offensive to me. It's so embarrassing!
You know how you look back at things you did and wore when you were younger and you're all embarrassed? imagine that poor bastard?! he was on TELLY defending it too!


Went to a talk at the Hepworth last night, the new art gallery in Wakey, like the wakey version of the Tate, was good, although uncomfortably hot, and there was some debate at the end whether it's a good or bad thing to build a fuck-off huge gallery in quite a deprived area, especially one where there are amazing old mill buildings and stuff, one woman in particular was quite angry about it. I think it's a shame that people can't listen without reacting so suddenly and I felt uncomfortable that the room was 'ganging up' on this woman, she wasn't making her point well, and was certainly talking slightly too aggressively, however, when the reaction is quite childish it simply makes the listeners look like they won't hear anything negative or critical which is mega lame.
It's sad that they can't utilise the old buildings, they are very beautiful, however to go over the top about the good old days is very dangerous, and it's important to remember that they weren't good for everyone, and the things that were worse were probably MUCH worse so it's important to think about how thigs will benefit people living in wakey NOW people who need the money to come in here NOW, and i hope the hepworth will bring some of that, however sad it is that it takes that to make people care about wakey, sometimes it just is. Also, it's all very well harping on about wakey's untouched charm but would i walk around the canal area alone in the evening? no is the answer to that, so of course it would be good if it became an area that was more used in a positive way, and the hepworth should bring that if nothing else.

SO, that's me crew.
have a sweet weekend, i intend to.
mmwwwwaaaahh!(that's mwah like a kiss not mwah like mwaaahh hahaha, actually, i like the second one more, make it that one.)

covert

hello all, i am writing to you 'undercover' from the other library where i have once again been summoned in order to do menial jobs such as folding leaflets...
i am currently entering names into a list like a trained monkey, i hope the change in typing noises won't summon one of my colleagues and provoke another task such as cleaning the skirting or checking the books to see if any words are missing from them...I'm like an alert nighttime creature at the moment, poised and with alternative screen ready to be flipped up over my true crime!

getting up is becoming harder and harder and i actually feel genuine anger towards people going abroad such is my resentment toward them.

I was very tempted to head off to the big chill with liv this weekend but it's the same price as a holiday so i can't pay for it. i do miss festivals a bit, but then, as we all know, i am very partial to a bender...

that reminds me, joe peacock if you're reading this, you're on my shitlist by the way.

nice to see the coalition government have got rid of the british film council,
and they're planning on getting rid of free museums, one of the single greatest things about this country,god the lib dems are starting to look sick, what a bunch of snivelling creeps. Plus cameron is marching about cussing Pakistan, the country who lose the most lives through terrorism and who have just been hit by devastating floods. What a fucking prick.


anyway. i'm hungry but i don't know what for. I am being very greedy these days, i want some hot weather so i can eat salad and run around, this is ridiculous frankly. i put all my coats and stuff away (well, rolled them in a ball and pushed them into a compact shape on top of the wardrobe) now they're all out again. rarara the weather rarara aren't i interesting?

Going to the Hepworth later as I have heard it is a beauty and I want to check it out.
Called the West Yorks medical appointment number yesterday as the minimum time for my throat nodules appt has long since lapsed, they informed me that i had been discharged on the grounds that i had missed two appointments, i was utterly gobsmacked by this, after lots of wrangling and a new appointment being made it turned out from my scrutiny that they had veen sending things to ROse Harries, st john's mews, so basically to my name and my ROAD but not flat number, so all my personal details are drifing about somewhere and meanwhile i have waited 2 extra months for an app which would not have happened if i hadn't tracked them down.
bloody bastards.NOT bastards.bastards.

well, better go, my key tapping is so clearly not data entry i am sure i'll be razzed soon.....

reckon the book's hotting up, who knows, i may make a living from my drawing, if my drawing had doesn't shrivel up more than it is already...

laters potaters!

not much

I just found a book on the shelves called 'helping survivors of satanic abuse' -!

for a library with so few books that seems a little specific doesn't it?
maybe not? i dunno! there's also a book on eugenics, when i saw it my blood turned cold, but it counts as historical so i am assured that i must leave it where it is...

just saw one of the consultants sitting at his desk for a lunch of smoked salmon, you couldn't make it up could you?!

anyway, little to report once again as i have left it too late and don't want to stay at work past finish just to write a blog, then my blog is a job and i don't want more job.
Simon's birthday at the end of august, i don't know what to get him, he has written about 10 wish lists on amazon and keeps returning to them to alter them, simon loves his birthday and he loves presents, i'm not used to that sort of upbeat attitude, we used to hide from my dad on his birthday, i thought all men were like that..?

the bunnies still hate me, they've started pissing all over the rug in protest against me, it's starting to piss me right off!! how would they like it if i pissed in their plastic house? yeah? well they can't piss in my plastic house then.

well, like i said not much to report, someone is coughing down the corridor and shouting 'COUGH!' every time they do.once again i am already worried about money and it is the 3rd of august. why do i do it to myself? why did i spend a million pound on the first weekend of payday?
oh well, toodlepip, i am aware that the blog is shit at the mo. i will remedy this by writing it earlier in the day and not when i am desperate to leave work :)

tired all over

ey up buddies, back from the castle, totally knackered, we crammed so much into 2 days it was insane, all froclicks and fun! went out on fri dancing the night away, after a long, long period on the quizzy playing beat the landlord, that bloody landlord, he always got the better of us... THEN to this brill club in the castle which is a combination of sweet music and a love of david attenborough and darwin, what could be better?!
sat there was lots of watching kath and kim followed by a quick soiree over to a very lovely little wedding, including legomen on the cake, then off to see richard Herring followed by dinner and a swift passing out with tiredness as soon as we entered the house.
Liv's house is a sprawling mansion which her and her flatmate live in a wing of, the crazy millionaire with loads of classic cars that he tinkers with all day and a boat that he never takes to the sea, it's the kind of place someone would live in a novel but never really does, but liv really does! There's a 12 seater dining table and the most beautiful kitchen ever seen hawaaaaaayyyythe lads!(i'm a geordie diventcha naa?)

sunday we went to the beach and walked along in the rain, very british summertime, creepily hot but soaking, anyway, was a lovely weekend but i suffer for it now with creaky eyes.
Simon had turned into the ideal househusband when i returned and having never tidied for a year was cleaning all over the place and berating my careless messiness! it was great! The bunnies are still acting weird, i think they may be suffering from hair ingestion but i don't know what to do as they hate me now from picking them up...hmmmm bunnies, no one ever said it'd be this hard....

summer is ticking on apace and no hot weather. 3 weeks till my holiday to dorset cannae wait, christ i'm tired, laters foos

thirdday

Hi blog fans, I am BLIND tired, was out for about 200 hours yesterday doing art walk which was mentally and physically exhausting, got some good feedback though and sold about 30 cards which ain't too bad, and some old sock toys, pretty much had enough of the studios for a few days though, some of the people(men) there make mw want to SPIT (as my mum would say).

Got tomorrow off, heading up to newcastle on a coach to see liv, can not WAIT! it's gonna be a riot alright!

s as this is friday for me, i will leave you with some pictures (also i am too tired to write, been walking all over leeds after being summoned to the other library basically to do the dogsbody work no one else wants to do)

so HERE ARE PICS OF: the whoopee pie me and rowey had in harvey nicks today, my studio , chloe's INSANE birthday cake, Dot, thinking chloe's new slippers are her brother's and sisters...pretty sweet! BON WEEKEND!!!

PAYday hooray hoorah!

ey up, iam completely distracted cause it's payday and i am trying to repress the uncontrollable urge to spend all my money in one day. It's like 'brewster's millions' for me every payday, i feel like i'm against the clock and it's all gotta go (and it always does).
On the bright side, i received a free double decker at the train station today, in the last month i have had: 3 free muffins, 6 free bottles of irn bru, free disgusting crisps, and the opportunity for free toothpaste, wine and ice cream.
it's the recession! get the free stuff!!
anyhoo, not much time today, been working too hard to write much.

got an open studio tomorrow, pretty nervous about it as usual, things have been tense to say the least at the studios but i thought i'd better open as it's a big night and we have a hepworth sculpture for the night which is pretty exciting, it's coming with its own bouncer!


Did anyone watch the Amish in the UK programme? I was suprised that actually I quite fancy becoming an Amish...
I am a bit of a luddite, i hate all modern stuff cause the big wide world scares me a bit, and also the global village thing just makes me feel so insignificant that my insides all fold up and i wanna die, so yeah, Amish is the life for me.
Big garden, big house, big swing on a tree, barn, hmmm, Horse and cart. Yeah, i reckon i can give up modern stuff, all modern stuff is crap (except podcasts, mars planets, elastic and women's lib) so i am off to be an amish, although i don't know if i'm allowed cause they don't recruit i don't think...unlike the bloody mormons they're everywhere at the moment....

ok well, i have a bit of shopping to do after work (tell me not to!!! HELP this is a cry for HELP)
the bunnies are shedding like crazy so i have to keep catching them to brush them which has really destroyed the small trust we'd built up! Problem is, bunnies have no gag reflex so if they eat hair and get a hairball they can die, they're physically incapable of being sick, how sweet is that?! wow, that would have saved me SO many wasted days....'no mum and dad i only had one pint, i must have eaten something funny, see you tomorrow i better go to bed'.

I was nearly sick on the bus yesterday from the combination of being blocked into my seat, the heat and the variety of disgusting smells, namely, poo. :(


anyway, promised simon a nando's to celebrate payday so that's something to look forward to! although my period pains are so bad i'm walking like a hairpin! :( YES i did need to tell you that, grow up!
love you!

here i am...stuck in the middle with you.

hey blog chums,

i can smell fish from the canteen, the sun has come out, my outfit is totally bizarre cause everything's dirty...it must be friiiddaay!! HOOP HOOP!


what are your plans? hmmm. yeah. uh huh. interesting. nice to hear.

mine are: do nothing.
i have 29p.
going to Opera in the park tomorrow in leeds (if it doesn't piss it down) a free opera event...
contemplating making bolognaise...
yup. that's really about it.
I LOVE having nothing to do now though. When I was a teenager there was such trauma if people cancelled on you or if people couldn'tcome out, i used to be so wretched staying in, now when i have plans i dread them, regardless of how fun they are or anything.

Was reading that story in the Metro about the guy who was pushed over by a policeman. The ruling makes no sense to me, they say that the first autopsy has to be admitted as evidence therefore there's no case, but can't they admit all the autopsies and let the jury decide???it's such a BLATANT cover up. it's really really terrible. Also, if you see the footage, the policeman's actions are just totally bizarre, he just lurches forward and knocks the man over, they're all just standing around, it's utterly mental.
It said underneath it about Jean Charles de Menezes, it's 5 years yesterday since he was killed. Unbelievable to think. I remember that time SO SO clearly. I was staying with Chloe at her flat in Barnet,we were meant to be going to stay with my grandma and grandpa by coach from victoria. Me and chloe got on a bus to victoria, still wary of the train and were totally terrified with suspicion, looking at everyones bags, it was horrible, then suddenly the bus pulled over and evacuated us, gradually rumours were filtering over of this attempted bombing all over london, we walked all the way home, everything felt awful, like a horrible dystopia, it was really weird.
i think we took the next day as a day off, the attempted bombings had shut stuff down and we didn't risk it, plus they were all on the run in their pants, i remember clearly that one of them had detonted their bomb and stuff had come oozing from his bag in front of all the passengers on the tube.
the day after we attempted the tube, headed down to high barnet and got on, then we all got told to get off again, Jean Charles had been shot at Stockwell that minute, on the tube line which we were boarding. We went home again, totally miserable, thinking things would never be normal, especially once the news of the shooting emergedit was SO tragic and SO unbearable, and it was the point at which everyone stopped feeling safe.
Finally we embarked on the 24th for Dorset, 3 days late, got on the tube, constantly terrified, staring at everyone, literally having thoughts that you never, ever thought you were capable of about who looked suspicious and stuff. halfway to victoria people started running into our end of the carriage, two guys were shouting 'bomb'it was not clear what was going on so everyone was panicking madly, chloe was hugging me, after a few seconds it became clear that these men were pissed (at 11am) and were basically assaulting a middle-aged Indian man with a black briefcase, knocking him to the floor and accusing him of being a terrorist.

The tube pulled to a halt and we gave statements to the police on behalf of the man who was shaken up and also pretty pissed off, understandably. we decided not to get back on the tube (obviously) and walked to victoria instead. On the was we saw HUNDREDS of police vans, parked in big clusters, it was like 1984, it was like london of the future, horrible, but mostly, really scary. You see that many police and it makes you feel scared, not safe, you don't know why they're there?
got to victoria for a coffee and chloe totally snapped at this point (understandably) she'd lived in london for 5 years and was worried it had changed for good, she was totally frazzled by the recent events, it was her tube that she took every day to college that was bombed at king's cross, she'd taken a later one that day for some reason, we didn't hear from her till the late afternoon, even my graduation had been lined with armed police as they were knocking down all the doors in leeds and dewsbury that day for the 7/7 bombers, well, their stuff, and their relatives.
We finally boarded the coach to Dorset, utterly relieved to be leaving london, almost elated in fact.
about half an hour into the journey the coach pulled in, pretty normal, yes, then we were bloody evacuated as a passanger had complained about a mystery bag. it was of course nothing, a slightly dusky man had left a carrier or something, but this woman was alive with suspicious eyeballing so off we all went. Although i think the coach driver just went and foraged about on his own which was a refreshingly coach-driver thing to do.

We FINALLY arrived in dorset, crying with relief to see grandma and grandpa and to go from future dystopia to past idyll so fast.
Suddenly we were in village life, rolling hills, everyone just getting on with stuff, unlike london where the terrorism was hanging in the air, everywhere.

Later sitting with grandpa he asked chloe how she was, 'oh, really bad with all the terrorist attacks, it's everywhere in london, we've had 3 weeks of it and it's affecting everything, travelling, relations with people, it's terrible'

My grandpa (who at that point read the daily mail every day then said:
'what terrorist attacks?'
He had no interest in it whatsoever. But i suppose he has fought in a few wars so maybe it seems like small fry to people his age?

ps.

how funny was that that after ALL his casual boasting and going on telly to talk about it and stuff that nick i beg your pardon dick griffin WAS banned from the Queen's house after all! for telling everyone why he wasn't!

REALLY embarrassing!


he would prob have got on real well with prince pip though, so i bet he's annoyed about it.

steve mcqueen bunny

bloody hell, my house is like the great escape, and i am definitely the Nazis in that scenario! Only the 'nice' nazi who just wants to get some respect then lashes out when they don't.
every time i go into the living room the bunnies do the equivalent of putting their hands in their pockets and whistling!
WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME?!
i thought that this scenario would be like an orphanage, where i was mother Theresa, and the bunnies curled up on my lap, finally happy from the love of a benevolent stranger, me, looking down pityingly at their sleeping faces in the firelight, thinking about all they'd gone through, and about how they'd die before me(i hope) and how sad life all was but worth it if you could feel truly safe and truly loved, even just for one second.

but no.
it's like an orphanage where you leave the food out and the children grab it and retreat and if you reach out towards them they flinch into a ball and run away. whenever your back is turned, say, you need a break from running this orphanage, pouring all your love and time into it, worrying what's best for the orphans, buying them their favourite treats (kale) and worrying about them, when your back is turned such is their frenzy to leave after their weeks of plan-hatching that they DIG UP THE FUCKING CARPET.
thus meaning you have to turn away all the other orphans on the grounds that you don't BLOODY TRUST THEM anymore. and you can't afford to keep repairing stuff.

that analogy didn't work did it?
basically, my bunnies are PLOTTING and i am SUSPICIOUS of them. i have taken to peeking around doorframes to see what they're up to.
like i do with the orphans down the road.

ooh er it went all soppy at the end!

i am slightly firey and cross today so don't get in my way.
the day began with a man on the train pushing my fragile mind to breaking point, he was flicking his train ticket on his stubble, over and over again, i turned around and he took great satisfaction in seeing that it was annoying me and continued to do it in a more and more frenzied way, i pretended i didn;t care and read the paper but my eyes were fixed on the back of the chair and a smile broke out on my face in incrediluity that he was being such a child! we battled like this ALL the way to leeds. I wanted to be able to stand up and say 'Did you enjoy that? flicking your train ticket?' so he could say 'yes i did, anyway it's a free country' and i could silently take out a samurai sword and cut off his arm, then see the look on his smug face as i said 'no more flicking for you'.

so yeah, that's the mood i am in.

saw toy story 3 last night, it was brill but i still think the other one was better (with the bad cowboy man) also there were parts that were seriously dark! there's a baby with a baby voice that is well well creepsters!

It was my first 3D film and was pretty exciting, here were the problems:

I wear glasses at the cinema, the 3D glasses just about fit over but slip off all the time.
the 3D adverts are more amazing than the 3D effects in the film.
3D is dark cause the shades are dark, when i peeped out of my glasses the colour was loads better.

there you go.
also, a 3D tV? that is lame,wearing 3D glasses to watch telly? your life is very empty my friend.


well, off to the studio, need a long draw, m&d got me cambridge lib books that are AMAZING so i am gonna get stuck in. meeting my avon lady tomorrow, told her i wasn't gonna do it, it isn't for me. no way. what was i thinking? i am still gonna buy it though, that's probably all i ever wanted to do!

can't wait to head down to dorset for my holiday..., a month to go or some such thing...
i used to always wonder why everyone had their weekends booked up so far in advance but now i see it's just in CAMBRIDge that you never have your weekends booked up cause you always want a chance to leave at the drop of a hat!
i do miss cambridge though. most of all i miss cycling. seriously, i miss it a LOT.
i was trying to think if i have a love/hate relationship with the bridge but it doesn't quite sum it up, it's more protective/disdainful/joined forever feeling, it's so much part of me that it will never not be important, it's like a 3rd parent, but one who keeps having step-children that are richer than you.
cambridge means so much to people who go there and live there for a time that i feel lucky it is my place and i grew up in it and i know it so intimately.
I will leave you with a beautiful poem about cambridge by Xu Zhimo a Chinese student there from 1920 who died in a plane crash in 1931. I love this poem because when i think about the bits of cambridge that i love, it is all quiet, by the river, moments i've had alone just with the city, cycling along or reading or lying down.

Very quietly I take my leave
As quietly as I came here;
Quietly I wave good-bye
To the rosy clouds in the western sky.

The golden willows by the riverside
Are young brides in the setting sun;
Their reflections on the shimmering waves
Always linger in the depth of my heart.

The floating heart growing in the sludge
Sways leisurely under the water;
In the gentle waves of Cambridge
I would be a water plant!

That pool under the shade of elm trees
Holds not water but the rainbow from the sky;
Shattered to pieces among the duckweeds
Is the sediment of a rainbow-like dream?

To seek a dream?
Just to pole a boat upstream
To where the green grass is more verdant;
Or to have the boat fully loaded with starlight

And sing aloud in the splendor of starlight.
But I cannot sing aloud
Quietness is my farewell music;
Even summer insects heap silence for me

Silent is Cambridge tonight!
Very quietly I take my leave
As quietly as I came here;
Gently I flick my sleeves
Not even a wisp of cloud will I bring away