Hello Sunshine

HI SUNSHINE!! Where have you been?? I thought you had deserted the UK. Oh well, better late than never. I may have found a bright side to being a grown-up or adult or whatever. After a hard day’s work (yeah, that’s not the bright side) having your phone light up with a text from a friend expressing your exact thoughts, “Beer Garden?? 8ish??” I don’t think I have ever really appreciated a beer garden until now. I have decided that the luxury of driving to a wonderful pub or bar, finding that last table in the garden you can laden with drinks and surrounding it with excellent friends, was something worth waiting for.

Since the sun has finally decided to show its face this is an indulgence that is worth working all day for, worth finding those sunglasses that have been gathering dust and worth dragging yourself out in a hot and suffocating car to find somewhere where you can sit outside and let the world pass you by but for a few hours. I don’t think  many things in life that is more delightful that, settling down on a warm evening watching the night roll in with sounding yourself some choice friends and a first-rate drink. It is where lazy conversation, nostalgia and gentle laugher runs rampant. It is where friendships are cemented, love is found, places like this is where things happen lethargicly when you are not paying attention. Someone should have told me I could do this when I got older; I may have, possible, perhaps complained a little less or disliked the idea slightly less.

Haunting presence

I’ve had an odd day, I mean really odd. You know that feeling, when without having heard or seen a person, you know someone is standing very close to you; you can just sense their presence. It’s an intolerable feeling that makes you whirl around desperate to relieve the abhorrent feeling of uncertainly, to know who is there. That is how I have felt all day like there is someone horrible haunting my right shoulder, their head hovering just behind my right ear. It is an insufferable feeling; someone is almost breathing down my neck and ruffling my hair, but when I turn around there is nothing just indecipherable air.

This morning, lying contentedly in bed, I floated between dreams and consciousness; I was mundanely playing with the idea of getting up. The edge of my bed sank as someone gently sat on the mattress, for a moment I assumed my Mother had come in to my room to talk to me. She remained silent and I didn’t move, hoping to achieve a few more winks of the doze I was enjoying. The burden slowly rose from my bed and I decided I was dreaming and so could remained lying on my front with my head buried in my pillow a little longer. The weight then returned and this time oppressively clung and clung to the air around me. Something/someone lent over me from the left side of my bed, over my body to hang its head between mine and the wall. I immediately lurched up bewildered by anyone doing this to me; I struggled up frantically the atmosphere around me pushing down. There was no one there, I was met with a nonexistent presence, I was alone in my room lit by pale morning light and my own heavy breathing.

I spent the rest of the day being followed. My every move watched intently, every action and stride manically observed and met invisibly and silently. At work, several times I spun around, certain that if I moved fast enough I would see…. something. I could not alleviate the harsh impression that there was something haunting my day. Every sense seems to betray me because I felt there was something lingering I just couldn’t see or hear or touch. It’s just there, only it exists in the corner of my eye when it thinks I’m not looking and it thinks is safe.

I am completely rattled, disturbed by this absent company. I am preoccupied by the troubling sense of an angel, ghost, imagined spectre has taken to squandering time in my presence, just beyond appearance. It is finding a foul amusement agitating my nerves and unsettling me in the twilight of my cold room. I can feel it just behind me, toying with the wind chime in my window, with long blacken nails, on a twisted mottled hand. It is tinkling leisurely with the slender metal, waiting and watching for something, I just don’t know what. I think it wants to teach me that you are never too old to be frightened by nothing.

Occationally you watch something and it’s just like: yeah, that just works. It just fits in with your life, and where you are in the world. It speaks to you but also amuses you, makes you smile and feel a little bit better even if your weren’t especially down to start with.

So I thought I would share it. Enjoy

The perfect couple.

I told my friends that is they would let me take a photo of their shoes I would blog about them. I love these this pair and they are a wonderful couple and fab individuals. As people they are very different but they are a perfect compliment to one another and they make each other very happy which I’m pretty sure is the whole point. I sware there shoes speak volumes about there relationship, different colours, different sizies, different styles but they look great together, they feel great together and they work great together. They are just great together.

When am I too old to……?

I’m wondering at what age does it become unacceptable to sleep on your friend’s floor? This is a genuine concern for me as I do it lot, visiting people, nights out, going to gigs and other things. I always stay on someone’s floor, but I, er, get the impression that you proper adults/grown ups don’t do that. Soooo I kind of want I want to know at what age is it, you know, ‘improper’ for me to sleep on my friends floors?

Seriously, I mean my parents don’t slumber in sleeping bags on a mate’s carpet; so at what age do I have to start… I don’t know shelling out for hotel rooms or making other arrangements? (I have no idea what these other arrangements are.) Or is that they don’t stop snoozing on mates floors but rather that they have fewer reasons to? Do ‘adults’ stop going to gigs, stop going on nights out and getting too inebriated to drive home and stop visiting friends ? Is that why they no longer catch Zzzzzzz on floorboards?  I suppose that adults stay with other adults and adults have spare rooms, is that it?

This is just one of the many, many questions I have about being an ‘adult’; for example my friend who I went ‘white dress’ shopping with at the weekend, still goes out for coffee, orders a coke and slurps it. She getting married in 4 months and still doesn’t drink coffee and still slurps her drinks. How is she grown up enough to be married? I went to a gig on Monday; now am I allowed to go to a gig on a week night if I have work the next day or am I meant to be responsible and not go? This gig was for a band I have loved since I was 14 and my friends and I went along with every intention of re living our youth in a big way. Does that mean we are adults now because we can relive bits of our youth?  Am I too old to like cartoons, Disney Parks and teddies? If so I am definitely not adult enough to have the child that would provide the ‘permission’ for me to be seen enjoying these again.

I never used to care about these things or what other people thought about these things. Is that a sign that I’m more adult or grown up or whatever? Sod it, I really just want to know when I’ll stop getting back ache from the all that contorting as a result of sleeping on those hard floors!

If I could make a speech to the world at 17.

Question 778

When I was about 17 this was the speech I wanted to make to the world, well Western society at least. I doubt it would be the one I would make today but when I read the question it got me thinking about this speech and how much it meant to me. I still believe a lot of the points I made and the anger and feeling behind it are valid.

Childhood has never been straight forward and in resent years there is a growing consensus that it is in a peculiarly parlous state. What is this so-called parlous state? Academics and children’s experts say that a deadly cocktail of junk food and electronic entertainment, combined with the sinister effects of over-competitive schooling and marketing are poisoning our childhoods. I would like to put it to you that this consensus is fuelled by adults who have all too quickly forgotten childhood and its true form. These adults look back on their childhood through rose-tinted glasses to see an adult imagined world of what they believe it was like.

Is electronic entertainment driving children in doors such a bad thing? Adults would have you believe that children spend hours in darkened rooms in front of a box that sends out images of violence. The fact that there has always been violence in the play ground, in cartoons and in fairy tales doesn’t come in to the argument. Research carried out by the BBC state that children are more likely to be disturbed by violence seen on the news than in fictional media. Adults complain that children no longer go out to see their friends instead they turn on a computer and chat with them without having to make the laborious effort of having to see them face to face. I personally believe that not enough is time given to research that suggest that computer games can assist children’s social and educational development. Young people are using technology to make music, learn and connect with friends across the globe.

Adults insist that children’s childhoods are becoming shorter and that we are growing up far to fast. This could be because never before has there been such a relentless barrage of marketing aimed at children. That there are more and more images of adults present as an aspiration for children, with the perfect make-up and hair, dressed from head to toe in height of fashion. Yet this marketing is a mirror image of that aimed at adults. Children are merely following in their parents foot steps.

Are children really growing up faster? Children may smoke and have mobile phones but this does not mean they have the ability to leave home or get a job. Economic independence is harder to reach by children today unlike forty years ago when it was not unusual for children to be working by the age of sixteen. This illustrates how difficult it is for children to reach the traditional milestones of adulthood: owning your own home, having a job and getting married with children is being push further back in life.

These however I believe to a cover of a greater embarrassment to adults not children and that is with all our advance in technology and understanding; and all their knowledge teachers and parents are still facing the same problems they did a millennium ago when it comes to children. There has always been great pressure on children, yet adults are still no closer to understanding how to deal with them. We all know what childhood is, but what defines a good childhood and when does it end. The last of course is that all gown ups know what it is like to be a child but there greatest fear is that they will not understand their own children.

If you could make a speech to the world what would it be??

Leave me alone I want to go on WordPress.

I feel like I haven’t been on WordPress properly in a horrific amount of time and that feeling is pretty representative of the reality. I’m thinking about just declaring the whole of tomorrow night as a dedication to WordPress. No, I take that back, I’m not thinking about it, I am most definitely doing it. I intend to do nothing else other than sit at my desk, no wait sit on in bed, with a huge cup of coffee and a brownie and just read. I’m looking forward to it; I can’t remember the last time I looked at the Reader tabby thing, let alone Freshly Pressed or Topics. I haven’t even written anything properly since, o hell I can’t remember when.

I have a WordPress itch, I spend my day at work thinking about the next time I’m going to get to scratch my itch but it never seems to happen. The problem is things keep getting in the way, (either my head or other people’s heads think they have a better plan for my time, in truth none of these heads actually have better plans,) and apparently “go away I want to play on WordPress” is just not satisfactory to get these other things to leave me alone. I suppose I should have turned into a gremlin duvet monster (this is my secret super power, it doesn’t really help the world, only me) and stayed in bed until I’d had my WordPress fix, I’ve been pretty grouchy recently and I’m 100% sure it’s because I miss WordPress. What can the world really do if I just hide in bed and refuse to function as a human pending my WordPress therapy?

Things “getting in the way” isn’t even a good excuse, I’m making myself grumpy out of an inability to find 15 minutes to do some reading on the internet of things I actually like. I swear my head makes no sense sometimes, well a lot of the time. Here’s the plan Blogosphere: go on WordPress more, plain and simple.

Too hot for sleep.

My wonderful Mother received this text message from me.

“What do you do if a boy is too hot in bed to sleep but otherwise perfectly fine?? Xx”

Yeah, okay, you like my mum can get you minds out the gutter right now!! This text message was about one of the boys I was babysitting last night, not about a man that was simply too exciting for sleep. I eventually did get the 7 year old boy to slip off back to sleep but apparently texting your mum at 11:30 at night, when she can’t remember where you are will lead her to assume all sorts of smutty things. My mum assumed that my enthralling text had been sent to her by mistake and had to spend some time remembering where her first daughter was.  It seems once she remembered I had several little boys in my care the text made so much more sense. I did eventually get a response to my child care issue but by then, the minimal maternal instinct I have, finally kicked in and my issue was resolved.

Since last night my mum has taken to showing my text message to everyone, my siblings, my cousin, our neighbours and her friends and everyone laughs. I missed the joke; at no point could I see the unintentional crude innuendo in my text. I am utterly ashamed, not that I sent a perhaps embarrassing text, I am embarrassed that I missed the humour. I was a student only a year ago how can I have lost that vulgar sense of humour that is integral to all students, I refuse to be that old already. My mum thinks it’s hysterical and she is much older than me; please never inform her I said that ever.

I love the fact my mum thinks I would ask this question and that she is imaginative enough to paint the wrong picture but completely disappointed that she thinks I’d ask anyone other than her. Why would I bother asking anyone else?? As far as I am concerned my mother is the all seeing all knowing oracle of my world. Who laughs at me, because she can ……because she knows I’ll always ask for whatever I need. I love how everyone I know has such a rude mind, it’s nice to know that apparently you never grow up from being 19; where everything can have a smutty but humorous spin on it if you don’t take things too seriously.

Anyway, I figure that not getting a reply from my mum is a good thing, I know I can handle a boy no matter how hot he is in bed….. and you can take that anyway you like

Totally lost for words

I got half way through writing a post yesterday before giving up, because it got waaaaayy to complicated and I couldn’t stop it from being word vomit and blugh. The more I thought about what I was writing the more I found there was to write about. The more I found to write about the more I wanted to put ideas into my post and the more…. wiggly, wobbly, messy and befuddled it became.

Honestly it was just spiralling out of my control and has left me with the dilemma of what to write about instead. The pressure is on. I must think of something else, DUN DUN DUN. I really need to be struck with an idea before anxiety sets in and I start to feel unproductive and begin to wallow in my lack of inspirational……. wonderful the clock is tick, tick, ticking.

I could tell you about total triumph today when someone declared within my hearing that all women were indecisive. I said that it wasn’t that we couldn’t make decisions; it was more that we felt we shouldn’t have to choose between things we want ed. Why? Because women are amazing and deserve everything they desire. Alternatively I could tell you that Britain only gets one week of summer a year and this year it’s come early, this week to be precise. So I’ve spent the week getting an unseasonal tan. Or I could tell you about my mum being so desperate for a wee that she was doing the toilet dance in the car while I’m doubled up with laughter …. and being shouted at. I could tell you that I completely unsatisfied with my job, that I’m bored and miserable and that I prepared to do absolutely anything to get away from it. I could tell that my biggest problem right now is that I’m going to be 22 and have no idea what I’m going to do to celebrate it and this is a huge problem as I’m am legendary for birthdays and making them last for a lifetime.

Orrrrr I could just post this ramble and run off to the beer and enjoy what little summer I going to get on this rainy-side of the pond….. Yep doing that.

Driving away.

Driving away on a new adventure

Have you ever had the urge to climb in your car and drive?? That’s all, drive and keep driving on and on. I get it all the time; I want to see how far I can get on a tank of petrol. I wonder where I’ll end up, what far off place I could reach, what will be there and if I’ll stay. It’s not even to run away or get away from my current life, I’m just curious to see what else there is, what else is beyond my current world. On a sunny day when I fill up my car or sit in traffic every fibre within threatens to tear apart my skin as it vibrates with the desire to turn up the radio, wind down the window and leave nothing but dust as I race on to something at the edge of some unknown map.

I get itchy feet, I always have. Even when I was young I would complain of being bored but not knowing what I was bored of. It would feel like I was drowning, the impulse weighing down on me and feel terrible because it wasn’t that I was ungrateful of the life I had I just wanted to see what else there could be. I still haven’t squared that guilt. I have to be busy and doing something new just so the old doesn’t lose its shine. There was always a new school, a new place to inhabit and new people to gather. Life is interesting chasing the next adventure. My world is wonderful but sometimes I want to see what is over there and bring a bit back, just a little bit.

I wanna run, I wanna skip infinitely on, searching for something unique, I wanna feel new rough grass, smell scrumptious recipes I’ve never tried, be caressed by a fresh breeze and taste different air. I wanna hear a strange city boogie to its individual tune and the country waltz to a beat of its own and I wanna dance with them. I used to sit on trains with buoyant friends and jump off at a stop, any stop and see where we were, if we didn’t like the place we jumped back on the train to a new stop. I will never drive the same route twice; I’ll see what a different road has to offer, what treasure it has for me to find. There is always something new to see, people to meet, things to do.

The older I get the greater the urge to drive; it’s like fear, a fear that if I don’t do it now I never will and miss something, something incredible just beyond the edge of my world. Maybe I should listen to the nagging because I never do just drive away, I can always think of one good reason not to drop everything, frustratingly there is always a reason to stay. I don’t even think I would stay on the edge of the map when I’m done driving, I love the people in my life too much and without them it wouldn’t be the thrilling experience it could be. But that is the beauty of driving away, I could always fill up the tank and drive back.