Seven weeks of River walkways

I watched a play last night. It was called Floating. I watched it in Liverpool, where I live. I laughed so much I cried, and then afterwards I cried again.

The play had come down from the Edinburgh Fringe festival (and will be at the Barbican soon). Huw Hughes, the protagonist, tells a tale of when Anglesey (a small island off the coast of Wales), through a geological miracle, became dislodged from its postition and started a voyage around the Arctic, to then get caught in the Gulf Stream to return to its original position back next to Wales. If it sounds preposterous - it is. But as the play is like a big long hug, it doesn't matter. The laughter it generates is the pure childlike laughter borne from a silliness, which ripples through the audience and draws everyone together.

The themes of the play are family, connection and friendship. It centres that decision to leave your childhood town and go off to become an adult on your own. It engages the audience and transports them at once back to their childhood innocence, but with the pathos that being an adult brings to such a regressive transportation. Memory is questioned, as the story becomes more fantastical and the aspects of small town life more exagerated. The audience is left with the simple but poignant message: go and explore the world, but don't forget what you have left behind.

I have spent more time in my home town in the past few months than I have since I was eighteen. My mother is ill and suddenly all my reservations about the insular little village seem superfluous. I spend my days walking with her and the dogs around the small village, an old smuggler's cove, to the park, to the riverside and say hello to all the familiar faces that pass us on the street. My Mum reminds me how we used to go and sit in the park during school Summer Holidays, and she would listen to me read stories I had written, passages from books that I love and we would read entire novels together - to be discussed over this six weeks of Summer. My school was 6 miles away in the nearby town, where most of my friends lived, and buses ran every two and a half hours through our village.

By the time I was 17, I hated this place and had long forgotten all these halcyon days of summertime. I got in with the wrong crowd. It was my single ambition to leave this place and never look back. When I was 18 and had willfully blown my A-levels, I bought a van with my then boyfriend and set off to travel around Europe for three months. I came back for three weeks in three years, and had, in my mind, completely demonised this sleepy village into a grotesque parody of itself. Today, I am about to go back home again, to my home town. My memory is returning. I remember sitting by the pond in the park and vehemently proclaiming my hatred for Marianne in Sense and Sensibility or declaring The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch to be the best book ever written. Developing unquestionable beliefs and independent opinions that would soon take me away from there.

It has made me remember - at a time when the future is too frightening - this was the place I returned to when life got too hard. It was the love of Literature, developed by my mother, that sees me still in education and still with passion for what I do. It is her and this place that has shaped me through my childhood into the adult I am now. For a long time, I have easily attributed the negative aspects of myself to my past and the limits of an isolated upbringing; I am beginning to see how much of the positive was bred on these rocky shores.

Shit happens

I'll be back in a bit.

There are a few too many things to do at the moment.

xx

Naming the Dead

I have just finished reading Maya Anne Evans self published book 'Naming the Dead'. Having met Maya a couple of times through friends who we both went to Uni with and at protests, both her story and her self are truly remarkable. I'm sure I remember her far more clearly than she remembers me - although I did beat her at Scrabble.

On the 25 October 2005, Maya read out the names of the dead British servicemen by the Cenotaph, facing Downing Street. She was arrested under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005). On the 7th December 2005, Maya became the first person in Britain to be convicted of the new offence of 'participating in an unauthorised demonstration' in the vicinity of Parliament. As a result, she now has a criminal record, and was fined £300, which she refuses to pay.

Maya has had a further charge brought against her, as she is now held in Contempt of Court for refusing to tell the court her Date of Birth. For me, she is an inspiration: no matter how apathetic the world around her is, with it's dinner party mumblings of an unjust war, Maya has not given up, and continues to protest - even when it can have serious consequences to herself.

She is part of Justice Not War. You can purchase the book from the Website. Well, if you are worried that the Hobbesian balance between Security and Privacy is increasingly unequal then read her book. She's actually trying to change it - it's a shame more people aren't (myself included).

Spitting my dummy out...

Well the only good thing that has happened this week is that I staggered into a sale at Fopp. Sick to death of listening to Joanna Newsom and Joan as the Police Woman, I have bought myself some excellent musical reprieves in the form of the Kate Bush-styled 'Bat for Lashes', the incredibly upbeat 'The Aliens' and the unspeakably fantastic 'Bright Eyes' album Cassadaga. All great music and is offering some degree of comfort in the face of the rubbishness of everything else.

Flatmate is an arse. Over the last couple of months he has written me a song, slept with me, given me the song, then slept with my (ex?) friend and then declared his impunity from responsibility for his actions by saying that I have been messing him about. True, I slept with him and then ended my relationship with the Doc, but not once have I ever promised him we would at any point get together. I wanted time and space to decide things, rather than feel pressurised into a doomed relationship. It would be a doomed relationship. And I've realised he was the catalyst for the end of the doctor and I, but in no way the cause. He's just a boy.
(There is more to this story, but it's all too rubbish to go into - I'm sorry, I'm a crap and lazy blogger - that's why there is no links to other superior sites on here).

My course is a farce. It is only good for eye rolling and sardonic stories in the pub. I might become a teacher, but I really hate kids. The four week placement I did in a school wasn't too great either: the teacher treated me like an unruly Sixth Former, remarking how young I look and he was surprised I had a degree. This was after I pointed out politely that when teaching the Slave Trade shouldn't it be "black people" rather than "white people and the blacks"? Same way saying "the gays" is a little offensive? He called me "Girly" - I really fucking hated him. He didn't have a degree, let alone two. Shit head.

The doctor has a new girl friend. She is really nice, clever, pretty, young, successful, rich, stylish, fit, sporty, done a bit of am-dram at RADA, was captain of the debating society and turned down Oxford as she felt it wouldn't be best suited to her needs. I'm sure she also loves kids, can cook, produces art that she auctions off for disabled kids, volunteered in some far flung place in an orphanage and has single handedly circumnavigated the globe twice on a pogo stick to alert people to the threat of climate change whilst raising money for the Polar Bears or whatever other zeitgeisty thing needs saving at the moment... But she didn't have time to tell me when I bumped into them at the pub - though if I hadn't wasted so much time telling her my name and she had paused for even less breaths, she probably could have. FYI: I wasn't wearing makeup, had on my beloved 'Belle and Sebastian' tee shirt on (that has discoloured underarms from a red jumper in the washer incident), my weird jeans that don't quite sit right and my hair was still a bit damp. I was in the Local under duress, rather than with glamorised intent... Perfect. I could see in the Doctor's eyes a bit of a smirk - it was justified, I was/am seething.

My parents. Where do I begin? I have spent the Easter Break with them. They are really maddening. I'm from a very small town in North Lancashire, but still my parents insist on having a country retreat. How decadent? How bourgeois? But the truth is my parents aren't that wealthy... My father works in local government, and my mother thinks work is what other people do: she has never even applied for a job. They live beyond there means, and my father has an evening job as a Taxi Driver, or goes on week long, paid medical trials. They stopped buying my sister and I anything other than food/ shelter etc when I was 14 and she was 15. Any clothes, outings etc were paid through washing dishes at the local nursing home. I left home when I was 17 years old, because I was just used to having my independence and had a boyfriend with a flat that was easier to live at than catch two buses to get to. They have contributed no money to my travelling or further education. They have never seen me graduate - as they were late to my under grad ceremony and I never invited them again. They are great people though, very good fun, if they aren't your parents. This weekend, my mother asked if I was okay for money, and when would I be paying them back? For what? I asked. My Dad told her that I had borrowed £900 from them? He has in the past also told her that he paid £3000 a year tuition fees for me (for the last 5 years) - also not true as I have always had fee paying bursaries (when questioned about it I said, I'll get you a refund then shall I?). He is again lying, the £900 it transpires is a fucking library fine from three years ago and subsequent court fines. BTW Mama, no I'm never okay for money, but none of this is exactly news.

All in all. I'm really angry at the moment. Stupidly angry. I feel like having a public tantrum. And I haven't even told you about my sister... Or about drunkenly kissing my gay female best friend... I'm staying in and listening to CDs from now on...

Dream a little dream of me?

Other people's dreams are dull, but, as this is my blog and nobody really reads it, I'm going to be (extra) self indulgent.

I have a recurring dream that Libby Kennedy from Neighbours and I are best friends. For anybody who needs a gentle refresher as to who she is, Libby is the journo daughter of Karl and Susan Kennedy, brother of Billy and Mal, widow of Drew and mother of his child. I found her an incredibly annoying character, having been addicted to the soap from the age of four to about eighteen (when I went travelling for three years). However, subconsciously, on a regular basis she would be my night time companion and we would do everything that best friends would do together. We have been on holiday, nights out, discussed relationships and have dealt with the time Lucy Robinson got trapped in the well at Lassiters, then went blind - twice.

Last night, we were both backing dancers at a Kylie concert. It was incredibly vivid. The pint-sized pixie kicked off the concert with a crowd rousing rendition of 'I Should be so Lucky'. It started off as an instrumental and then was sung entirely by the backing singers (probably some perverse copyrighting in my mind). Kylie cavorted around with flame swallowers and various scantily clad, muscular men, whilst Libby tried to teach me the dance steps that we were performing. My feet were uncooperative and the dream ended with Kylie stopping the concert in front of the stadium crowd and yelling at me and Libby.

Does anybody else have dreams in which they are friends with a TV/ Literature/ film character?

I am Charlotte Simmons

University is appalling at the moment. I didn't submit a proposal, as my supervisor is just a bit rubbish. She went through the motions of helping and when then when I submitted it was told I hadn't adhered to the basic guidelines that she should have told me about.

Thanks. The deadline passed, and she just continued being chummy, as always.

I am meant to have a meeting on Thursday, but can think of nothing to say to her, and feel about as despondent and unsure of my research as it possible to be.

Let's not talk about it.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

My new flatmates are nut cases.

Two girls: one Slovakian and the other is French. They sit in the kitchen all day and discuss how disgustingly unclean the house is.

One boy: English guy, a bit posh and escaped UCL with a fleet of toff friends, who say ridiculous things like " I don't know why our good friend John doesn't just go for a 10 mile run." Erm... He has M.E., you insensitive buffoon. However, James's an alright bloke and we often sit in the lounge drinking tea and chatting, not about cleaning. We do however both agree this is the cleanest house we have both ever lived in.

In the course of their chatting they have developed a cleaning plan. They have divided the rooms each week between us, and spend each Sunday scrubbing their allocated room for over four hours.

This makes it sound like James and I are messy oafs, who don't clean after ourselves - we do. But still every week they expect us to adhere to the four hour allocation of cleaning time. this includes removing everything from all the cupboards in the house and cleaning the inside of the cupboard.

James and I simply do not have time for such a time wasting exercise, as we both work and study. This has meant that neither one of us can return home but to find purse lipped flatmates in the kitchen and a note pinned to the door, regarding something we have failled to do in obeyance with their stric guidelines... It's a bit like living in a mini Totalitarian state.

Inbetween Days

Sometimes the cure is also the poison.

I have lost and won, but what I can no longer really see. This is all a little criptic and not entirely helpful - so facts...

I am now emphatically single.

The Doctor has cut contact with me - for the foreseeable future - which is really sad, but I guess a necessary part of breaking up. I still maintain he is the greatest guy, and any girl would be lucky to be with him (just not me). In my quieter moments, when reflection is possible, and solipsism beckons, then I miss him to within a hair's breadth of picking the 'phone up and suggesting we try again. I always emerge from this mindset glad that the status quo remains and, to be honest, know that he has more much about him than to allow himself to be the victim of my whims.

Flatmate...

Well, you kiss a few Princes and you kiss a few frogs, and it's not always possible to know which is which... I am still not too sure... We met again the week before last. We had a great matey night chatting, taking the piss out of each other, grumpily discussing how life was one huge confidence trick, talking about bands we both loved - later, drunkenly, booking tickets to Wilko and The National in London in May back at my new flat- And, well, just being generally great together... He left, without any funny business and said, how he understood I just needed a friend and he was fine about that - it was just bad timing. When he left, I sat drinking a cup of tea on my own and thought about how much emptier the room felt without him.

The next time I saw him was St Patrick's Day: I am English, my father is Scottish and my mother was born in Cork, but would always describe herself as English - I have no right to celebrate this, apart from being a pisshead. We got very drunk in a large group - I invited a friend of mine from Liverpool, and it was a great night. Well, apart from the fact he didn't speak to me all night, got absolutely rotten drunk, kissed my friend from Liverpool in front of me, and took her home with him.


He slurred at me, as they left, that I had no right to be angry with him as I had made my feelings clear and didn't want him. Idiot. Him and me.

The following day, his angel of the morning slunk back to my flat to pick up her stuff before she got the train back to Scouseland - she told me they had both passed out and woke up glad that nothing more had happened. Much as I want to, I can't believe her that nothing happened, but do believe that I woke up with the worst hangover I've ever had.

Kate, the Liverpool friend, is well not a big hit with guys - she's a little overweight, quite short, poor complexion and, well, a bit mousey looking. I'm not Kate Moss, but I am always described as non-conventionally alright/good looking, have very pale green eyes, long goldish blond hair, high cheek bones, crap pale skin, teeth that look like they enjoy to hang out together at an interesting party and a shy smile. We did the same course at University together, and our friendship was always built on (I'm sorry, it's arrogant but true) that she had a mini girl crush on me. Four years younger not as able academically, she used to ask me why I was her friend and look to me for reassurance. It was a win-win situation, we enjoy each others company, and (this is going to show me as an egotistical arse) I kind of understand why she went to bed with Flatmate. The morning after, there was even a little light of triumph in her eyes that she had been with the guy I wanted - she had been somehow validated by the source that I had sought validation from.

So where does it go from here?
I don't know, I keep getting suckered into this confidence trick of life.

Time (The Revelator)

I have been avoiding flat mate, after the one single most romantic thing anybody has ever done for me. I sent him a text saying thanks for the song; it was lovely. Ended with an extravagant three kisses... There was no reply. This was a couple of weeks ago, so maybe he's avoiding me instead, and I have convinced myself of the opposite.

There has also been the matter of me falling off the social radar for a while, due to work rubbish, but still a reassuring text wouldn't go amiss. True, some of the invites I've declined have been offered accompanied with the words Flatmate wants to know if you are coming - It's a bit like 'going out' at school, but with less contact; well, except I slept with him, which wouldn't have happened at school and involved quite a lot of physical contact. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I?

It's all a bit shameful and a while ago now. It was before I finished with the Doctor and involved vast quantities of wine, and bucket loads of regret in the morning.