I was going to...

I was going to start a new blog. It was going to run next to this blog and be more of a diary, travel journey thing. But I was immediately technologically flawed. The interface had changed and was quite frankly beyond me, I couldn't up load photos, it looked crap and so I have decided that one blog will do me! 

Now... the reason why I am starting a new blog (or not). 

If you had asked me on New Years Eve 2013/2014 what this year would hold I would have fairly confidently replied ‘More of the same’. I certainly wouldn’t have said that by July I would have jacked in a job that I loved, rented out my house (which I was also fairly attached to) and been about to head off for five months to a country I last visited eight years ago, where I know a few people and with under 4 weeks to go.. have nowhere to live. But here I am and hopefully I'll report here how it goes. Along with any other stuff I write about.

So why did I do it? I don’t know is the short answer. The longer answer makes slightly more sense. So January I was happy, I had a very good job in a lovely company and some of the best work colleagues you could ask for. I had (have) lovely friends, great family and was fine. But I was kind of hoping for change. The good kind. I had begun to feel that I wasn’t really living my own life. I had kind of slipped in to a supporting role. I was living in relation to other people rather than living my own life. Obviously we all have to do this to an extent but I felt I wanted to be the main player in my own life.

What I’ve really wanted to do for as long as I can remember is write. I’ve made some inroads over the years but never quite got there. Once again life got in the way. Life trundled on, I did nice things, I celebrated birthdays (34- bloody hell) but I still wanted for, prayed for (I’m Christian) change. I was bored. Not with anything in particular but with everything.  It became very clear that if you want change then you have to change things. But I didn’t really want to do that – where would I get a better job? What would I do with my house? How could I afford to live? There was nothing so wrong with my life that I needed to walk away from it.

Then May happened – this was the month from hell. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I’m not going to go in to details but when on the last day of May I found myself in tears again I knew that I had reached the point where I could walk away from everything. It wasn’t a knee jerk reaction to a bad couple of weeks, it wasn’t putting two fingers up, I think it was a way (in my mind God’s way) of getting me to a point where I could move on. I’d burned down the farm. Leaving work was hard, it’s difficult to explain why you’ve walked away from something you enjoyed, could do and liked! But it felt like the right decision. And things began to fall in to place. I rented my house out to someone I trusted, I got a really good deal on flights, my first novel is going on kindle in the next few weeks.

So here I am. A stunning bit of planning means I moved out of my house 6 weeks before I left the country, so I am free wheeling between various houses. I’m off to Australia in 4 weeks and we’ll see what happens. This may be the best or worst idea of my life but I think I am just going to see where it goes. I don’t really have much other choice.

 Oh and I've also started taking really crap amateur photography on my phone. 

Peaches

You will be shocked to hear that I didn’t know Peaches Geldof. We didn’t really move in the same circles. But I was shocked when my friend messaged me to tell me she had died. It was so out of the blue, so strange and it really seemed to resonate with people. Twenty something women just don’t drop dead out of the blue and so people took to social media and expressed their shock, their sadness. People expressed their sadness for her two boys, for her husband, for Bob Geldof. A family that had suffered so much already were going through it again. Then it came out that her death was linked to drug usage and the sympathy stopped.

It wasn’t that her death stopped being sad; it was more that people didn’t think that she was now deserving of sympathy. Then the other comments started: how her death was selfish, how could a mother do that to her children? But the manner of her death doesn’t make it less sad, or tragic or a waste. If anything it makes it sadder; she didn’t get the help she needed and her death was preventable.

I think the problem was this: now Peaches was a mother she was no longer allowed to be human. It was no longer just about her. She had responsibilities.  In short – her children should have saved her from addiction.

No pressure kids.

Now first let’s deal with the obvious. Children are many things but they are not a cure for addiction. If they were then rehabs would go out of business, methodone wouldn’t exist. There would be no AA meetings. People would simply go to the doctor and be handed a small child. Cured. Well women would be cured. Men would probably stick to the conventional methods as they are not completely defined by their reproductive ability. Addiction is an illness not a choice. She didn’t love heroin more than her children, she probably hated heroin, loathed it and it’s role in her life but she was overwhelmed by addiction and she happened to have children.

Motherhood is not a super power. It’s a state. Any problems that were there before are more than likely going to be there afterwards – with less sleep. Motherhood doesn’t make you untouchable. If you had a gammy leg and a short temper before, then chances are you will afterwards. Horrifically self righteous before? Add a child and well… I’ll see you in a few years. The point is that the child may spur you on to want to be a better person, give you a reason to change yourself, make you want to be a role model but somethings are just overwhelming and innate.

Peaches didn’t fail her children. She was failed. We boxed her in to a corner where she wasn’t allowed to have faults. It didn’t help that she gave many interviews where she pretty much said that motherhood had saved her and her life was perfect (addicts lie – who knew) but we all went along with it. What would have happened if she’d told the truth? That she was struggling? That she was out of her depth and having two small people totally relying on her wasn’t pulling her through her demons? Let’s face it – we would have thought that she didn’t love her kids enough.

Which is bollocks. Of course she loved them. She loved them so much that she lived furtively and perhaps didn’t get the help that she needed for fear that they would be taken away from her. If she had been allowed to be openly flawed perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps if we had looked as her as human first? It was a lack of love that killed Peaches but her love for kids was never in doubt. 

Kindling

Well the resolution to write more didn't last long. Is it any defence that January is an appalling month and I didn't get paid till the end of the month so I haven't actually done anything? No I suppose not. I've got a few more rejections for the book so that's confidence boosting, perhaps I shouldn't have written it in crayon and included a word search. You live and learn. 

I am going to my brother's tonight and I go with some trepidation. We were there twice over the Christmas period and each time a chair was destroyed fairly dramatically. I am wondering if I'll go for the hat trick tonight. The first occasion was during lunch. A small child was told off for wriggling and made to swap chairs. It soon became clear why he was wriggling, the catch had come loose on the fold away stool, the result of which was to send my sister in law chin first in to the table. She was fine but seeing someone suddenly plummet to the ground like they're on a ducking stool is quite distracting. 

The second incident was on Boxing Day when my mum lent out of rocking chair to get something and just carried on going, accompanied by the sound of wood breaking. It turns out the chair had broken before and had been mended with copydex or something similar.  After the second incident we all became enormously fond of sitting on the floor. 

I have never broken a chair but I've destroyed my fair share of furniture. When attempting to switch wardrobes I utterly over estimated how much is achievable in a night and by the fourth trip to my parents my brother and I had lost the plot and turned in to the Chuckle Brothers. We dropped a many section in the middle of the road (fortunately there was no traffic) and I got to the point, which I get to so quickly, of telling people to leave it and go home and I'll sort it in the morning. Thankfully I was ignored and some sort of order was restored. Something similar happened with the magically growing bookcase. A set of shelves (all in one piece) that had got in to my bedroom but when I tried to get it out was too big for the door way. My idea was to smash it with an axe but I was over ruled and sent to stand in the bathroom whilst they did mysterious things. I think it went over the bannisters. 

However my most spectacular incident was with a bed. I was living in Sydney and had recently moved flats. I had assembled my bed and it didn't look quite right. I realised that I had put the sides on upside down. So instead of the slats resting in a deep well they were instead balanced on a ledge of around a millimetre. I couldn't be arsed to sort it out so I heaved the mattress on top and made the bed. It worked quite well for a few months. Then one night I got in quite early in the morning and crept in so as not to wake my flatmate. That is until I got to my bedroom and for reasons unknown decided to leap from the door way in to my bed. The slats fell off their narrow home and fell in the middle taking the mattress, bedding and me with it. Once again lethargy took over and I slept in the rubble. The next morning my flatmate helped me to pull the mattress out and I slept on the floor for longer than I care to admit until I sorted the mess out. 

It is worth noting that my flatmate didn't wake up during the leap and the recurring sort out. But on the day he moved in he went to the bathroom, locked the door and fell asleep on the toilet until morning. I was probably quite safe to go to bed the normal way

Will you bother?

Well I completely failed to do much of anything except work towards the end of last year. Let alone update the blog. I suppose a new years resolution of sorts is to write more. Without sounding too horendously wanky I am happier when I write. Therefore it makes sense to do more of it. I've started writing a second novel. I'm not really too sure where I am going with it but it's nice to get stuff down on paper. And it's always nice to have a good excuse to go to Paperchase. I think actually Paperchase is becoming a serious addiction - I went to a drawer the other day to get some writing paper to write my thank you letters for Christmas presents and discovered a whole pack of note paper I have absolutely no recollection of buying. Therefore the only logical conclusion is that I went in to some form of trance when I was in there. Which I can well believe. 

2012 was, for me, a good year. By comparison to 2011 (which was a pile of utter dog shit) it was practically a golden age. Therefore I reach the New Year without really wanting to or needing to make any resolutions, I'd just like some more of the same and to keep on trucking. However I would like to change some things about other people, although I doubt resolutions work like that. The main thing that needs to change is that when people come to your house in the run up to Christmas and they see that you have put decorations up they don't say 'Oh you are good, I'm not sure I'd bother if I were on my own'. 

Firstly; calling someone good just sounds astonishingly patronising and manages to make you feel about 5. Secondly; calling someone good for performing a fairly basic traditional ritual is a bit odd. Thirdly; how many people have to live in your house before actions become worthwhile? If I live on my own is having pictures on the wall 'good' or should I not bother as they are only for my benefit? Should I have carpet? Or should I not enjoy Christmas as I really should be living in a ditch as to live like everyone else isn't worth the bother? If actions and behaviours have no audience is it worth doing them? 

There is I suppose, the belief that Christmas is really 'for the children'. But whilst it is true that children are probably the most excited about the season and seeing them excited is sweet but are they truly the only ones that matter? We live in a child centric society, they don't really do badly the rest of the year (although there are obvious exceptions).  It's my belief that when people say 'Christmas is for children really' then they are talking about gifts and perhaps in that respect it is true. Few adults are genuinely excited about their presents, pleased and touched to have been thought of but not desperately, can't sleep excited. Kids are and that in itself is lovely to watch. But as you get older Christmas becomes more about the day, the meal (Man, I love eating), the games and the company. In this way Christmas is for everyone and should be about people who don't have that the rest of the year. The elderly, the vulnerable, those unable to do the Christmas that society expects. For many, particularly the isolated (I'd like to stress this is not me, I just can't think of a better way to phrase it!) it's seeing the pleasure of others, especially children, that makes the day. Therefore to assume a festival is just for one section of society does us all a disservice because it excludes and if anything Christmas is an inclusive holiday. 

Personally I 'bother' with Christmas decorations because I like them. Until about 27th December when I am itching to get them down and hoover the corner of the room that's been inaccessible for so long. Pre-Christmas the decorations are a sign of preparation and building excitement. Post Christmas you can't help thinking, as you sit on the sofa; 'Why the hell is there a tree in the corner of the room?'

I will

I will write.
I will post
I will think about things and share them
I will buy a new duvet cover
I will put the hoover round
I will attempt to make head or tail of my to-do list
I will be a good friend
I will see my family
I will go to the gym
I will be informed on the news of the day
I will do so many things
But right now. I am going to work for another hour and then watch Homeland.
Because Damian Lewis is hot despite his incredibly small mouth and although I should find him unattractive (on the infalliable law of nature that two gingers should repel) I find him devastatingly alluring.
But words will follow

Bonfire Night

I love autumn. If I had a proper job then I'd book  some leave and spend it taking nice walks and sitting in front of an open fire (I'd have to burn the recycling in a bucket, I don't have a fireplace) and generally just enjoying the cold. However I don't have a proper job. If I take a week off I don't get paid and that takes the shine off somewhat. So instead I am trying to cram the beauty in. Mainly by walking a lot, this also helps 'Operation fat thighs'. And fat calves. Why, no matter how thin I am, do knee high boots refuse to do up?

But the culmination of Autumn is Bonfire Night. What's not to love? Standing outside watching lights in the sky. It's like the Northern Lights on a budget. I couldn't go to my favourite display this year as I was at a party (which was very good) so instead I went to a display last night. Which was very good. I particularly enjoyed the glittery gold ones and the display was incredibly impressive. The best part however was a small child next to me who I am pretty sure was faking his enjoyment.

As the first firework went off he started going 'Oh wow'. In a voice that came straight from a school play. "Oh wow. Purple". I started off finding it amusing but it gradually became pretty irritating. "Wow" "Wow" "Wow". In a high pitched monotone. It was as though he had dragged his parents along and was now trying to ensure they thought it was worth it. However right at the end he won me over with a cry of "Blows my mind!"

Now they were good, but my mind wasn't blown. Actually it was slightly blown by a sign on one of the rides that said 'This ride may not be suitable for all body dimensions". Which is certainly better than 'stand down fatty'.

I have decided that if ever I am a millionaire and have time on my hands then I am going to learn how to make fireworks. How you get them to do different things, the planning, how a tube of stuff can make different patterns in the sky. Blows my mind

Fancy Dress

I think we can all agree that the Jimmy Savile revolations have left us all feeling slightly unsettled (I was going to put 'left a nasty taste in everyone's mouths'. I bet you're relieved I only put it in brackets). It's grim, it's unpleasant, it's worrying but I don't really feel the need to discuss it. Not least because, well, what's the point? Who on earth is going to come out and argue in favour of his actions? It's like starting a discussion with the radical standpoint 'Hitler wasn't very nice' or 'setting fire to dogs is wrong', the argument is going to last about twenty seconds and that's allowing for my killer argumentative point that 'he did always look a bit rapey'.

However the outpouring of confessions and revelations (300 official victims so far - how much power did this man have?) have had a knock on effect. Will we ever be able to watch the clip of the Scouts eating their lunch on a roller coaster again, or will it have to be played in slow mo with sad music over the top? Decades of Top of the Pops performancces will be lost in case a white haired weirdo bops in to shot. It will have definitely affected the fancy dress market. Asda has withdrawn their official costume so we are already relying on home made. Ten years ago my friend went as Jimmy Savile to a party. Quite funny, mainly because she was a woman (still is). Now it wouldn't be the wisest costume choice. There's probably a brief window, ending I would imagine Feb 2013, where it will be considered satire. After that you're just dressing up as a paedo really and no one goes to a party dressed in a mac with a puppy. Unless your Inspector Gadget costume has gone horribly wrong.

I like fancy dress. Although I do like quite a narrow theme. I find things like 'the 80s' or 'the letter L' give people too many options to just drop out. Or put a scrunchie in their hair and bang on all night about their 'costume' whilst you're stood there dressed as Vince from Erasure and beginning to really regret the swimming hat/bald head look. My go to fancy dress costume is Bridget Jones. Wear your pyjamas and carry a diary. If a Christmas Party I would recommend Noddy Holder (tartan pyjama trousers, blazer and top hat). Basically if you can wear your pyjamas then it's a good costume.

It is a shame that although I have such a love of fancy dress I couldn't care less about Hallowean. As far as I'm concerned it's not a festival and it shouldn't be encouraged. If you are American I'll let you get away with it, you've been fooled in to thinking it's important. But if you're British, give it up. It's just begging and upsetting old people. It also raises the rather unsavoury notion of the undead rising and walking the earth. Not really my cup of tea. And the choice of costumes is crap. Not really a range.

As a child we weren't allowed to celebrate Hallowean (we were however regulars at a local Saints and Sausages), instead our costume making glory came at the annual Methodist Market. A church event where there were tatt stalls galore (another favourite of mine), various games and then a wonderful fancy dress parade/competition. My brother won it one year as a Morris Dancer (the way he skipped in apparenty clinched it), another brother won it when my Mother - oh this is going to take some explaining, in brief: the Methodist Church newspaper is called The Methodist Recorder, there's a copy in every Methodist Church. My Mum dressed my brother as a recorder and hung a sign round his neck saying 'I'm a Methodist'. I never won. Possibly because I was allowed to pick my own costumes and my Mum managed to rustle them up. I think my ideas are summed up by the year I went as a fried egg. I can still remember thinking this was the best costume idea ever, I was deeply proud. I didn't win. And I spent the day in a sheet with a hole cut out of it with a yellow circle drawn on the front. I like to think I was ahead of my time, there is an argument to suggest I was stupid.

On the plus side though the poncho effect of it means that it would probably still fit now. Perhaps I could bring it back for the Christmas season.