HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Thursday, 16 September 2010
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!
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!
Monday, 6 September 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
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.
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.
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