April 2008 Archives

When it comes to things like "weight loss" I generall heave a sigh of discontent at how pathetic people are. Good on me I say - I just cannot put on any weight, which is pretty much true, I've weighed the same for years even though I shovel a good amount of shite, no, I don't eat shite, but junk food into my gob. And, my reasoning for not doing much any exercise is two fold - I must be fairly careful, having had M.E. for a decade, and secondly, I had a problem with my joints and late last year was banned from every form of exercise except for swimming.

Early this year we managed to get a Wii. I noticed a couple of months ago that Amazon were listing Wii Fit. I signed up to receive an e-mail when it was available to pre-order. About ten minutes after the e-mail arrived I pre-ordered it. Six weeks later it arrived - that was yesterday. What joy!

And today was the first time that I used it properly. I did all of the available exercises and felt a little worse for wear afterwards - to be expected I suppose. I will continue to do them every day, every week day at least as my afternoons are fairly free and easy.

Here, have a photo that makes my arse look huge. I will assure you though - it is only the exercise friendly clothing that is creating that look.

*Cough*.

I think I'll stop there.

The only reason that I write today is to say that we finally got tickets for QI. Whoop!

It only took two requests (for different dates), one e-mail and two phone calls.

At least it now confirms that the hotel was not booked in vain. While seats in the recording are not guaranteed, if we get there early enough, we hope to get a seat, and therefore we will be happy. Of course have no idea who the three other panelists are. I am quietly hoping that it may be Sessions. Yeah, now that would be great.

All this excitement, and during term time too.

You live dangerously girl.

As I've finally started ripping this DVD clip, I need something to do. Thought I would write something worthwhile here.

This morning, in the few moments before going to work I decided to turn on the computer. I then decided to have a quick look at my OU Student area, just in case my latest TMA had been returned. I was pleased to see that it had. I then went to collect it, and was mighty surprised by the mark.

90%

Yes, that is correct. 90 Fucking Per Cent.

I wish I could understand just how I keep on doing this. The previous two assignments have been on subjects that I haven't been terribly interested in, yet I got pretty high scores in both. 80% previously, and now 90% in the latest one. Maybe it's more a case of my tutor going mad?

This was TMA 04 on DD100. The question was something like "The emergence of a single global culture will benefit humankind. Discuss". I discussed it in 1,503 words and got 90% for it. Not so bad. I did use some pretty strong language in it, including at one point the phrase "rape and pillage".

A while ago I believe that I wrote an entry saying that I still felt pretty inadequate even though I was getting scores of 80% in my essays. I recall saying that I was a little more bothered by what I missed in that remaining 20%, than the fact that I got 80%. Well, this time round, I do not really feel like that. Not so much anyway. I feel as though, I have got 90%. Woo! Good for me. I must have tried a little harder than I realised. I'm still a little miffed as to what I missed in that remaining 10%, but the feeling of 90% is a little more encompassing.

I really have to get rid of this idea that I'm not doing well enough because I quite blatantly am. With two final TMAs to go, I do not think that I will have much chance of failing this course. The coming TMA, which is TMA05 and is regarding knowledge/philosophy seems a little more interesting and a subject that I am more likely to enjoy tackling, especially as I have the choice of Medical, Environmental, and Religious knowledge. I have already chosen the Medical route - what with having spent a good proportion of the past decade in and out of hospitals a huge amount, I think that I am fairly well versed in what it is like to have more or less choice in things.

Oh well. Clip is done. Phone call over. And I guess that this entry is over, as I have little other to say than what I have already said. 90% isn't bad at all. Let us hope that I can keep that up.

According to Movable Type it has been four days since I last wrote here. I suppose so, that would have been Friday. And here I am today, not really wanting to write anything, not that I have anything to write about, however I thought that I would write anyway. I am sure that the entire world realises that the truth is my busy schedule that prevents me from writing here more often. You see, between my appointments of drinking a pot of tea, and staring out of the windows, I am able to come here and write. You can understand just how hectic it is being a part time worker and a part time student, and also a part time lazy bitch.

This kind of thought leads me on to what I am to do with the rest of my afternoon. Should I start scouring the three Stella Street DVDs for one particular tiny clip that I am after? Perhaps I should start reading the next book on my list? Maybe I should go with disc four of my audiobook? Maybe I should piss away my time on the internet? Maybe I should spend the next couple of hours using the xBox? I'm inclined to go with the latter.

Today I have worked, studied, looked for wrapping paper, admired the weather, had a pot of tea. Sounds like a cracking day to me. I'm not really sure that I can be arsed to trawl through all of the Stella Street DVDs this late in the day. If I can slam through the rest of my studying tomorrow, then maybe tomorrow or Thursday would be a better bet for that one. I wish to give the audiobook a miss today because tomorrow is going to be duller, therefore better for lying in the dark and listening to it. I'm going to start reading my next book sometime this week, but not now. There's nothing I wish to look at online. There's stuff I'd like to do on the xBox.

That's decided then, the xBox360 it is.

Wow. I'm insipid.

I feel very much like that today. I rejected reality by leaving work early. It's been a hard week. I am rejecting more of reality by not bothering to do any more studying of this chapter.

I am attempting to reject some more reality by putting off doing something or another with a digital photoframe for the Mother In Law. Pfft. I suppose I better do it really. That way it is over and done with.

I had been rejecting the reality of clothes needing washing but plain and simply ignoring them for the past 10 days. Now they're in the washing machine. Had to be done I suppose. Bleh. It's the bit afterwards that I don't like.

Now that leaves me wondering...what am I going to do this afternoon? Well once I have fucked around with the photoframe a bit, I shall...get back to my Pensées. I only have it on loan until Tuesday and I don't want to take out an extension on it - I would rather read it quickly so that I can move on to another book. Mother has left me Brick Lane by Monica Ali, which I think that I will read. After that, I plan on a little bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Le Carré, Virginia Woolf and then in a twist I was going to read The Godfather.

Why am I reading Blaise Pascal's Pensée? Why? Why? Why? I truly wish I knew. I heard about it somewhere and decided to read it. For those who know the french, they will realise that "Pensée" means thought, and is apparently where the word "Pansy" comes from. Well yes, thoughts indeed. It is truly just 300 pages of one man's thoughts of all of the elements of the world. Some of them, from what I have read thus far, actually seem to still stand today. As he was around in the 17th Century, that's pretty good going. I am yet to get to his Wager of Faith.

I suppose it was an early form of a blog. Most blog writers, my shite self included there, write about their thoughts on things. The philosophise about the world based upon their experiences, beliefs or what they think is correct. Pascal's Pensées is no different. It is just a fairly young man theorising on the world based upon his beliefs. Good on him I say. They must be good as they are still being read almost 400 years later.

And then, in a complete turn around from my philosophising there, I am going to play on the xBox. I'm not sure if I shall listen to any more of Broken Skin this week. I might save it for a night that I cannot get to sleep, or an afternoon next week when I need an hour or so doing nothing, and entirely to myself. However, before that I have to actually get the next lot on the bloody thing. It's more difficult than it sounds.

Right well...I shall march on with my Pensées before I get put off.

Well, maybe not one hundred years I suppose. Three work days though. Since Monday I have been virtually entirely alone at work, and you know what? It's been fucking lovely.

My parents returned at 05:30 yesterday morning. That was the time that I woke up, but I do not remember hearing them arriving. I couldn't get back to sleep after that. I read for a while before getting up, then I got into work on time, I worked rather hard for the morning, came home, saw my parents for the first time in two months, had something to eat. We then went out so that I could get some new headphones.

Yes indeedy. I think I mentioned a while ago whether I could truly justify spending £80 on a pair of in-ear headphones. Yesterday, after the second day of having earphones in, my ears were agonisingly painful. I made a snap decision that I really should get some new ones. Some Bose ones. Am I glad or what? I had them in for three or so hours this morning and not a single bit of pain. It was almost as though they weren't there. Oh the joy.

By the time I got home from work yesterday I could barely stand up with both pain and exhaustion, but I went out to get those headphones, and then I went to a tutorial. Dear me, I haven't felt this shite in months, if not years. Today, I thought that I might be over it a bit. No, I surmise not. I found it very difficult to get up this morning. I couldn't do a single thing before returning to "The Box", I just sat around in the building like a vegetable. Now that I am home I am relieved and pleased.

I tried to study when I got home. I managed a couple of pages, and I think that I might forfeit the rest of the chapter as I've already decided it is unnecessary for the essay. My head is pounding. All I want to do is sleep for about three days straight. My parents left this morning - not sure when we will see them again, but I'm sure it will be within about a month.

Oh man. I long for proper sleep. You know the stuff, where you really are unconscious and then, when you wake up, you feel refreshed but also surprised that those eight or so hours have gone so quickly. I haven't had sleep like that for about a decade. I haven't felt this shite in years.

Bed is calling me. Hmm. I think that I will just lay down with the next disc of the audiobook and actually enjoy it. Especially with those new headphones.

*Clutches Head*
Ugh.

*No, I haven't read the Gabriel Garcia Marquez book of the same name. However it is on my list to be read within the next few weeks.

Hello indeed. It has been a little while. According to my Movable Type panel, it's been four days since my last entry. What Ho! I've been a little busy.

The weekend I was coerced into playing Bioshock, for some of it at least. I'm only on the second "level" if you can call it that. It scares me a little. Very atmospheric. I'll keep on trying.

Yesterday I went to work, and those four hours flew by, which is quite a surprise considering I didn't exactly do much. Last night my parents called. They are coming back. Bally well time too. Anyone would think that they had emigrated. I think this time of year is when it starts to get a little too hot for them. They are coming back to a Britain that has had some horrid weather recently, but it seems to be settling down now. The sun is shining, there is a little breeze, the washing is out, it's not too warm but warm enough to walk around without a coat.

They should be landing in Luton after midnight, and not getting here until I believe after 5am. What joy. They say they will be very quiet, that they won't go upstairs until after we're up. We tell them that they are silly because in all likelihood it either won't wake us up, or we'll already be awake. The latter I suspect as I sleep rather lightly. That will definately give me a chance to finish up the Fry book I'm reading. I'm almost at the end, and as I took Pascal's Pensées out of the library today, I could do with finishing The Liar.

What else is happening? I've been attempting to tidy up a little. I think I will just make the excuse that both studying, work and tiredness have been inthe way of me tidying properly. Indeed. It is more a case of me really not caring. At least we can see the floor, and the dining room table isn't too bad. That's all that matters.

I worked today. Oh did I work. I was charged with a kind of untangling job. In truth it was taking patch leads out of the slots at the side and hanging them down the front of the cabinet. Tomorrow I have to change all of the patch leads for some special new type that we have. Thank the powers that be for MP3 players. Oh the joy. Four hours of swapping cables about in silence, or rather with the heavy drone of the air conditioner, would have been tortuous. I cut my hands and left arm to ribbons mind you, while scraping them along the rough edges of some unterminated cables. Ah well. Shit happens.

Instead of the air conditioner, I had a couple of hours of music, good shit that I like, and then half an hour or so of the latest audio book. You know, the one I alluded to in the last entry. Broken Skin. The voice acting is fucking brilliant. Beyond brilliant almost. I only had one issue - that one of my headphones, the left one to be exact, is completely fucked. Doesn't work at all now. I mean, what do I do with that? New earphones, and the Bose in ear ones look good, but they're about £70. What if I don't like them, or, even on their smallest size, they still hurt? Maybe it's worth the punt?

Now that all is said and done, and I've done pretty much all of the tidying/cleaning that I can be bothered to do, I shall go and listen in silence to the rest of the first disc of this audiobook. What a nice way to spend an hour. That way I can listen properly.

Toodle-oo!

Yesterday I tackled, or started to tackle a rather difficult subject. For me anyway. It would appear that it petered out towards the end there, which is poor. My rather lacklustre mind was in charge yesterday. The two issues that I am going to tackle today are two things which put fear in both my heart and my mind. They keep me awake at night. I shall begin.

Periods

Yeah, they're not good - we don't need some stupid scientific research paper to tell us that. What is the point in them anyway? I don't want children, therefore, why can't my womb just shrivel up and die like it does in old women? No more periods, yay! It's never that fucking simple is it? I have two main fears when my period starts. One is "is it going to hurt?" Invariably the answer is "no", well, it does hurt, but I think that I'm being a pathetic bitch and only the pain of death is truly painful. The other is "Will I stain the bedsheets tonight?" The answer, invariably is...yes. And I did just that last night. Bollocks. What's more fucking annoying is that I had one of the good, deep and bloody expensive sheets on. Thankfully we also had a mattress protector on. Now the whole lot is in the washing machine, desperately hoping that the stains will come out. Arse.

That's the biggest thing I hate about periods - staining things. I can't use tampons over night because I sleep for too long, or rather I'm in bed for too long. I ain't getting up for no-one and nothing. Because of that, there is a fairly high risk of me staining something as I cannot control the way I lie when I'm in deep sleep. Double arse.

Then we have to couple that with my next issue.

Dreams

You may recall that recently, I wrote about an odd, or perhaps somewhat scary dream that I had? In fact, I wrote about it not once, but twice. (If those links don't take you directly to the articles, scroll down).

Well, last night I had another somewhat nasty dream. I feel as though it was going on for far longer than the tiny snippit that I remember. I woke up sweating, and tossed and turned at least three or four times. I just wished that it would all end. I vaguely recall looking at the clock once at something after 5am. All that I remember from this dream is a tiny part that could not have lasted more than a few seconds.

I was sat in our bedroom on a bed, I was fully aware that it was our bedroom, however it looked like one of the rooms in my parent's house. I was not alone. Just outside the room was someone that looked like a Police Officer. An American Police Officer at that, you know the Law and Order type. I was not in this bedroom for sleep or pleasure, I was working. Sat on the bed nonetheless though. I got up, wandered around and then called to the guy outside the door. I believe I said:
"Hey. There's a creaky floorboard here".

What a fucking wonderful observation there dear. Wow, you smack of sheer genius even in your dreams, you absolute dumb-fuck.

The Dude came in and looked between me and the floor. I then added:
"Think there might be a body here?" I received a rather curt reply, as though I just suggested something absolute preposterous.
"I don't fucking care." However, having said that, he started to pull the carpet back. But he did it in such a way that it appeared to be a complete chore and utterly below him. He began to rip up the floorboard.
"Yeah. There sure is." He added, putting his hand over his mouth. By this point, I was back sat on the bed. I didn't bother to get up to inspect. I just squealed something.
"You mean I've been sleeping here all these years, and there's been a body underneath the floor? Not that it bothers me you understand. I'm not that shallow. But how? How did no - one notice?"

And there it ended. I mean please, where the fuck did that come from? I know that we have a squeaky floorboard on my side of the bed, but that means nothing. I haven't seen Law and Order for at least a week, and I certainly haven't seen an episode where they've found a body under the floor of a bedroom, I'm not sure I've even seen that in CSI. Please. Where did that come from?

Could it be anything to do with the Audiobook that I ordered yesterday? It's all about murder, most horrid I believe. Could it have anything to do with the rather grim image on the front cover? Or is it more to do with the synopsis?

Couple a bad dream that was waking me up sweating at regular intervals, and making me toss and turn, with a period that normally fairly heavy on the first night, and you get a recipe for a staining disaster. My heart sank a little this morning when I saw it. Ah well. It's just fabric I suppose. I can always hope that my saliva did truly help in removing it.

Now please, no more disturbing dreams. I don't like them, I don't need them, and I certainly don't want them.

One of the most boring things in life is having to wait for someone or something to turn up. I missed the electricity meter reader yesterday afternoon, the note in the door said that he would come this morning. I got up before 8am. He hasn't been yet, although it is barely beyond 9:30am. I thought that, as I was waiting around I would muse on a few of life's issues.

Getting older scares me.
I had a mini discussion about this the other day with the Boss. I asked him what age he would like to be if he could be one age forever. His answer was the age that he is now, which is 24. I concurred and said that I would like to perpetually be 22. It's a nice age. I'm not yet "getting old" as I'm not near 30, but I'm not so young that I'm still excluded from doing things. I am a proper fully-fledged adult. It's a nice age. However, later this year I turn 23. Next year I turn 24. In 2010 I turn 25. In 2015 I turn 30. Ugh. Just the thought of being 30 strikes fear into my heart. And to think, this is coming from someone who, mentally, feels about 40.

At the age of 22, I know that I have another 40 years worth of work in me. At the age of 30, I still have another 30 odd years of work in me. By the time we get to what is considered "retirement age" now, I am sure that the retirement age will have been changed to..."never". You retire when you die. That would solve a pensions crisis.

Underneath this rough, and rather sharp exterior is really someone who is quite worried about getting older. Uncertainty worries me. Wow. That's coming from a person who doesn't give a flying fuck about decisions being laid down. It's not uncertainty in terms of "oh, what am I going to have for dinner tonight?" That kind of thing I don't care about. It's not me being worried about how much I will be earning aged 30, or where we will be living, or who we will know, or whether members of my family will still be alive. No no. Nothing like that.

It's the uncertainty of what I am going to do. As ever the student does, I do not know what I want to do with my life. I never have, not truly. I've theorised many a time about what I might like to do, but I do not truly know. I don't think that anyone ever does. They may think that they know what they want to do, they may get that "dream job", and then realise that they hate it - therefore they did not know.

[Slight pause while I make myself a pot of tea...]

What possibly makes it more difficult is that the Boss reminds me on a regular basis that it is a soft, bit of a Mickey Mouse, "arty" degree. Heh. Yeah. Says he, the one who is always asking me on correct English usage!

A large proportion of people who take an English degree end up in secretarial or administrative roles. No thank you. Been there, done that, it made me lose any faith I once had in humanity, and made me realise that a majority of the great British public are a little on the dim side. I'll give that one a miss thanks. But where does it leave me? A good degree in English generally proves that one is good at research. I enjoy research.

Would I take up a research role? Well, there are research roles, and then there are research roles.

There are research roles for large companies, whether that be in their production, testing or marketing departments. The kind of thing where you are researching the same thing, day in, day out. Can you imagine me working in a marketing department? Meh. I don't believe in anything - I certainly wouldn't believe in a "product". Except maybe Twinings Teas. But what research can you do about that? Tea is good. Tea is wonderful. Drink Tea. There you go, research done.

And then there are research roles. The interesting research roles. The ones for television production companies, whether that be the Discovery Channel or the BBC. That would rock my rainbow toe socks. Many different subjects over time. Good shit. And there's another type of research role that falls into the interesting category. That of research in a University. Heh, that would generally require me to take a PhD. Yeah, any PhD that I took would be a crock, lined with 200 pages of bullshit. It would be an absolute crock of shit.

And then when I think about where this degree might lead me, and I become ever more confused and uncertain about the whole thing, I start to wonder if that's the only reason that I'm taking it - to get a job. Of course it's not.

A very shallow part of me is taking this degree in the hope that it will turn me into some cultured, learned, well read, literate polymath. Will it? Will it change the way I think? The way I speak? My sense of humour? My social (in)abilities? Who knows.

I want to do something of consequence in life. I want to read Pascal's Pensees, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and other frightfully pretentious sounding authors. I want to appear well read. I want to think that I am fairly well read. To look at my collection of books at the moment would just appear a joke. Full of Fry, Wodehouse, Sociology, and Wilde. To some, insipid up to the hilt. Oh well. I can hope that this year, my bookcase (when I finally bother to get one) will start to fill up with the likes of Blaise Pascal, John Le Carré, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ernest Hemingway. Now let me chuck a few poets in there too, Philip Larkin, John Clare and of course Wilde.

But why do I want to do this? The answer to life, the Universe and everything does not lie in good books. No of course it doesn't you bloody fool, it's 42. You see, I must have learnt from this bloody sociology course, because I have come to what feels like the end and I am no bloody closer to an answer, I am merely getting more fucking questions. Arse.

Perhaps I'm not really meant to know what I want to do? Perhaps I need to do a whole load of things and see what fits? Perhaps I need to make a huge amount of mistakes before I realise what is for me? Then again, perhaps somewhere out of the blue something will fall into my lap which is just perfect? Hmm. I don't hold my breath. I'll keep trying and searching for something and see if anything does just drop. Until then I shall get back to my pretentious authors.

Written by one of Britain's greatest poets (he was voted so - it must be true). Philip Larkin wrote this poem entitled "This Be The Verse". Oh how true it rings.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

"The Family", what a Mafia-esq phrase. Anyway...

It would appear that my brother is trying to have a kid. Woah there. It didn't come as much of a surprise to me because his other half had spoken to me about it in the past, however, the longer it goes on since finding out, the more I find myself thinking about it. And so, here I am, fairly early in the morning musing upon this rather strange occurance.

Why is it strange? My Brother is not particularly child-friendly. In fact, he doesn't really like children that much. He doesn't stretch to the same kind of lengths of hate that I do, but he very often grumbles about them. Why would anyone who doesn't particularly like children want to have one? I hate the little shites and abstain from the rather shallow process of thinking that just because I'm married I must have a kid as people continue to ask me when I'm going to have one.

My Brother is in his late thirties - just for the record, and now I'm going to list the reasons why he should not have a kid, and why he wouldn't be a great Father.

He works too much - well, I almost put that he works too hard. In truth he just works a long way from home and doesn't get back until very late. That's no good if you've got a kid. He would bloody well know that too because we have the same Father. The very same Father that we could go weeks without seeing, who would come home late, or we'd get another call to tell us that he was in hospital having been beaten yet again. I had therapy to get over the resentment that I had towards my Father - I cannot imagine that my Brother is totally resentment free towards our Father. Therefore, I cannot understand why he would want to perpetuate an awkward situation that just hurts children.

He has no control over his money. Like so many people he spends beyond his means. Why? He was never brought up like this, I am not like this. And for as long as he keeps getting bailed out he will never learn. He cannot sustain the kind of lifestyle that he has now, how would he sustain it with a child in tow? In short, he wouldn't.

He is lazy and an utter mess. He is the epitome of lazy and messy when it comes to organisation and his house. He makes my house look like Mary Whitehouse's mind. They have not been able to see the floor in parts of their house for years because it's a mess. They cannot always sit down on the sofa because there are piles of clothes in the way. I am sure that most parents, new or otherwise, would agree that with a kid your house gets a whole lot messier. I'm not sure that is physically possible in their house, the next step on is total annihilation by nuclear bomb, only that could make the place look worse. Or maybe that would be an improvement?

And finally...he is so selfish, he's not alone in that, is partner is pretty selfish too. I think that I'm selfish, yeah, I am a selfish bitch, to a degree I'm only here for me. But these two completely surpass that. When you talk with them individually it is as though it's two people in a relationship that they were unaware they were part of. They really are poles apart. Both of them are entirely focussed on themselves and what they can get, for themselves. How would a kid fit into that? I cannot see that it would, I can only see that a kid would become somewhat of an annoyance. A responsibility that they did not think through entirely. A decision driven by age, and quite possibly by jealousy relating to the fact that even being some 15 years younger than my Brother, I got married before him. He is the kind of person that would need to show selflessness in stages, starting by getting married rather than jumping into having a kid. If he is so selfish that he cannot bring himself to get married, what is he doing considering having a child? Marriage is far more than just making things "official". It's about sharing, giving part of yourself and your life up and over to someone else, in a selfless fashion. He cannot do that for another adult, how could he do that for another adult and a very demanding child?

This kind of rash decision ranks high up in my annoyance scale next to people who have lots of children without even being able to afford one because neither of them have jobs, and those who have children because they've never had any aspirations in life.

He needs to think about whether this is really want he wants or if it's just pressure from other camps. The saddest fact is that I don't think he has ever really thought for himself, not even once in life if his attachment to our parents is anything to go by. Undoubtedly in a few years time when it falls apart it would be up to us, The Family, to fix it all and bear some of the responsibility for something that should solely be his own.

You know what the most worrying thing about this entry is? That it's being posted before 8am. Yeah, early eh? I must be bored.

Sometimes I sit, in my lonliness and ennui and feel as though time is sliding by veeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy sssssllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyyyyyy. Today is one of those times, probably because I spent the morning reading about the theories of knowledge, especially medical knowledge, for the latest part of DD100. What a way to waste a morning. Time does not fly when you are not having fun. Time in general goes really slowly.

I stand rebuked.

One whole year ago...366 days ago...on this day, 7th April 2007...I was standing on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Fuck me. ONE WHOLE YEAR AGO. Where has that year gone? What have I done in the year since? What mistake have I made? What achievements have I made? What have I done that is of importance? What interesting events have occured in my family? Do I know people now that I did not know then? How have my opinions changed? How have my perceptions of the world change? How have my tastes in music, television and movies changed?

If anyone thinks for a single second (I just wrote "sectioned" there, instead of second. Freudian Slip?) that I am actually going to answer those questions right now, then they are out of their mind. Truly. I may be bored as fuck at this moment, but with my own personal new xBox Live account, I won't be bored for long. I wish to highlight again, the fact that I was in New York City a year ago. How fucked up is that? I truly cannot believe it has been a year.

A year since caught a glimpse of Fifth Avenue. A year since I stood on the 35th floor of the hotel we were staying in and realised it was a looooong way down. A year since we went out onto the streets of New York City and realised that we had brought the wrong clothes because it was freezing. A year since I took in a little bit of American culture that felt almost exactly the same as the London culture. A year since I fell in love with a city 3,500 miles away.

The song, "Moving to New York" which talks about moving to New York because he has issues with his sleep is quite interesting. I slept better in New York than I do at home. Who knows whether that was to do with the higher level of noise (silence makes me go physically and mentally insane), or just because I was doing more?

I adored New York, and I still cannot believe that it is a year since we were there. That means that it is also a year since it was Easter 2007. How time flies when you can't really tell whether you're having fun. A whole god damn motherfucking year.

And from exactly a year ago, here is an image, taken on Fifth Avenue. Click on it to make it larger. Ah the humour of the New Yorkers.

I kid you not. That bloody dream is still bothering me quite a bit.

I have since overcome the initial issues that I had with dealing with the emotions that I experienced upon waking, the emotions being linked to the loss of our jobs and our home. That part I seem to have accepted. However, the part about the whole episode that bothers me now is somewhat more shallow.

I'm still haunted by what I looked like. Fuck me - it's not a good look.

Tom Baker as The Doctor




John Hurt as played by Johnny Sessions




You know, I get the strange feeling that it wouldn't suit me.

I had a horrible night in bed. Really, really hot, tossing and turning, kept waking up every hour.

But the worst part...oh yes, the worst part was the dream. It was quite truly a horrible dream and left me feeling rather unwell and drained when I was awoken at 8am. I dreamt that for some rather unknown reason, we were thrown out of our house, and we had nowhere to live.

Ugh. It was truly a horrible dream. I knew, in the dream, why we were thrown out, but I cannot remember now. The main differences between the dream and reality seemed to be that the house was in an open field, rather than almost directly on a street, as it really is. The village and rest of the setting was exactly the same however. But I had a strange feeling that we were actually in Cambridge, near the university. Meh.

I would like to try to work out where all of this came from. What real life events relate to the occurances in my dream?

We recently had a bit of a change in our rental agreement. Could that be where the fear of being turfed out comes from? It shouldn't, because the change actually means the exact opposite. Could it be an underlying subconscious fear about the new overall head that we are getting later this year? I suppose it could be. What if he wants to get rid of one or both of us? Surely he wouldn't get rid of the Boss - the place would be fucked without him. As for me, I'd just have to get a proper job.

The setting of the house, being in a field. There didn't appear to be a driveway, and we had no vehicles. We seemed to walk everywhere. We walk most places in the village anyway in reality, but there wasn't even a space for a car. How strange. And when we were walking around the outside of the house after being thrown out it was just green grass, like a playing field. It was the playing field that I walk across on the way to work, but nothing about it has changed. I don't get that one.

The larger picture, of where the village was. It seemed to be in Cambridge, almost amongst the university buildings. I might be able to answer this one. A little while back I had a crazy idea that maybe I'd be capable of doing a PhD in English. This fable rang around my mind for quite a while. Stupidly. I know, I'm an absolute dumb-fuck. Well, yesterday I eventually realised that it really was a stupid idea, and thought that any thesis that I could produce would just be 200 pages of rubbish and in all likelihood I would become rather depressed about the whole thing, even if I were to be studying at Cambridge. It would be a waste of money, and I would feel like an absolute failure. That answers that one.

I looked like a bag lady. Actually no, I looked like a cross between Tom Baker as The Doctor, and John Hurt in Stella Street. The long coat, the long slightly messy hair, and a scarf. I was carrying a few bags on my back, I suppose all of the stuff that I could carry out of the house in one go. Where did this come from? We were talking about the new tax banding last night. Yet again the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Also, it probably relates to too much TV I'm sure, and my ideas of what I may look like if I stumbled upon hard times.

It was a horrible dream. A bit mum and dad eh? Waking up feeling really hot, sweating and in pain only to go back to sleep and resume a really nasty dream is not what I call a good night. A million fucking miles from a good night actually. Ugh. Just, uber, double, triple Ugh. Roll on a good, dreamless night, please.

And, did you know, that there is a species of Penguin that can fly?