It was one of those days, as it invariably is.

The realisation had hit me the night before, smack bang in the middle of what should have been cosying down time of night, that life is real. Now, I say this in full knowledge that it sounds ridiculous. But from time to time, really in all honesty too infrequently for it to make any impact whatsoever on me, I am struck by this complete clarity - questions get their answers, I firmly chastise many of my foibles and Dorothy is set free once more to skip down the yellow brick road in full technicolour. The skipping phase however, is always about an hour before I have to get up. After a snooze the real day begins and in the still, shrill of the alarm clock I realise my ‘clarity’ was infact tiredness induced insanity and I now have to lurch into my day in full knowledge that I have tricked myself into one hours sleep. Crafty, devilish, foolish old me.

Well, the next point to set this scene is, the culmination of a number of spurious plans have brought me to Cheltenham for a couple of months before I career into an MA. Specifically these plans have brought me back to the room I grew up in as a child, made white-washed and ’guest-room friendly’ at some point, when my optimistic parents assumed their 26 year daughter might..just might…not move home again. ’Errr room for a little one there Mum and Dad’?! It has also led me down the old familiar path of looking for ‘a little Summer job’ (as my Mum calls it) to keep me honest and solvent etc. So, we come to the morning after my night of fake clarity - I was dashing off to my interview…at Marks and Spencers.

Now, I don’t know if you have ever applied for a job there but the process is lengthy. I am vaguely confident that we have MI6 agents who have been less thoroughly screened than Customer Service Assistants at M&S. The upshot of this being, I had endless paperwork to bring to my interview. I’ll leave out vast swathes of detail here, but the last thing I had to do was get a passport photo: 2 machines in shops very far apart were BOTH broken; finally found a machine; my cash card had been stopped for some sort of endlessly confusing and infuriating fraud thing;couldn’t get money;emptied my handbag out to see if I had change….I didn’t;some random man bought me a passport photo (it was hideous, he was lovely) and I ran to my interview. So I got there (on time somehow) limping in shoes a size too small, hair in a mad bush about my face, one hour sleep, wildly clutching my HIDEOUS and frankly mental looking passport photo, thinking murderous thoughts about everyone and everything to be told I had to do…. a role play. Thankfully I think the automatron who informed me of this information had so little concept of human emotion that it didn’t register with her that I was about to scream and punch things. I nodded ‘calmly’ and took a seat to wait for my interviewer.

It was while trapped firmly in this furious doom and despondency, that I first met Jim (interviewer) and without me fully realising the cloud began to lift. Jim put simply is wonderful. He is a shuffling, 40 something, highly strung, Supervisor in a Simply Foods store near where I grew up - though I hate to say it Jim has obviously used and very much enjoyed his food store discount. The store in question is mainly frequented by slow moving people of leisure, resulting in a slight Stepford Wives quality as people glide perfectly perpendicularly down the aisles. This calm has not affected Jim or his ability to burn through every sentence though. He crashed head-on with my ferocity at high speed:

-I know what you’re thinking. Off the record, I needed 25 minutes to compose myself when I heard I had to do a role play. Do you need 25 minutes, or longer! Just say if you need longer. Now we’re on the record, are you willing to do a role play?

- um, yeah sure. Thanks. I’ll give it a go.

- Right, I am walking out of this room as Jim and when I walk in, I will be my alter-ego. My alter-ego is called Bradley.

Thankfully, I realised quickly that Jim wasn’t joking. His deft two hand air swipe did really mark the on the record/off the record parameters and also Jim very seriously has an alter-ego called Bradley. As he left the room with the solemnity of one of the greats about to embark on his pivotal sililoquy, I was left to unpick this ridiculously complicated scenario (seriously, MI6).

In walks ‘Bradley’. I start role playing:

-I’m very sorry sir, I’ve had a word with my manager and we are not going to be able to sell you the standard love seat with or without the footstool today.

-No Annie. No. I’m not Bradley yet. I can’t do it until I know you’re comfortable.

-I’m comfortable Jim.

-Right. I’m Bradley in 3-2-1 NOW

Role play ensues and comes to an end.

-Right Annie. I am now Jim again. Off the record, you did not mention the reduction in delivery costs if you buy online. That is ok though. I don’t think you are supposed to in the role play I have given you. On the record, I think you did very well. Off the record, I will be offering you a job. On the record, I now need to mark your role play to see if we can give you a job (wink). If you wait outside please.

I could go on. I don’t know why he appealed to me so much, but every word he spoke as he bubbled along was like a little drop of seratonin dripping in those dark, cynical, cross parts of my brain. Each sentence was like another hour cuddled up in bed oblivious to thoughts of fake clarity and anything other than pure comfort. I wanted to bear hug him and box him to have with me always - dear, sweet, strange Jim. I left feeling wildly better (even though my shoes were still a size too small) and it made me really consider how our chance encounters with one another can actually make us feel better about ourselves and things in general - even if the feeling is as transient as the meeting, it is better than not feeling anything at all. I’ll blame London, but it is my fault I have become so jaded that I forgot that.

So that was that really, as I hobbled off down the dual carriageway (not a glimpse of yellow in sight) I had a wee technicolour moment of clarity. On the record, see you on Monday Jim! (Off the record, I can’t bloody wait) xx

THE ONE(S) THAT GOT AWAY….

This picture does not capture this magical moment. As I made my own waddling way to work this morning, waddling right back towards me were these beauties down the middle of the normally desolate road that my work is tucked away on. A family of ducks (maybe?! Are they ducks?!) with two little ones in tow. They were quack barking impatiently as they ran - talking to one another like an irate family in a massive rush to do the school run. After discussion in the office, we like to think they were on the run from the butchers/on their way to Duck School, xxx

I’m in my bad books - well sort of. I have shovelled enough Hobnobs in me today to embarrass a ten tonne man. Unsupervised in the office, there has been no-one here to judge me… and I let myself off pretty easily for things. Mid-morning whilst I wondered just how snakes unhook their jaws like that to fit more in, I remembered… it must be Ash Wednesday, since I had (really nice) pancakes last night.

This realisation, with mouth full of hobnob, has thrown up a sepia tinged memory of the church going days of my childhood. On this day, 20/19/18/17/16/15/14 years ago, in my Catholic Primary school (and beyond into Secondary School) I would have spent the morning snaking up in pairs to the church at the top of the road for Mass, to get a cross in ash painted on my head. I remember watching with the type of boredom so intense that I’m still fairly sure it could kill you as streams and streams of good Catholic boys and girls went up to get theirs. Some wore the ash like a badge of honour with piety to please the priest, others made sick faces and frantically scrubbed their foreheads on the way back to their seats ( we got detention). This week, every year, for years when I was a child seemed endless. Usually I’d go to mass on Sunday but then would have a whole 6 days ’no mass’ before I’d have to go again. This week was a bad week because you would only get 2 days ‘no mass’, then Ash Wednesday, then only three days ‘no mass’ until Sunday all over again…and don’t even get me started on Easter Week! There is a limit how much entertainment you can get from kicking a church pew as a child (or adult for that matter, I assume).Pancakes=Ash Wednesday=….LENT. As if mass that felt like a 10 stretch wasn’t enough it then had to be topped off with 40 days of no fun. These were dark days indeed…!!I would like to think my attitude has matured a bit. I’m sure those Masses were only an hour long and now I seem to have grown out of what must have been undiagnosed ADHD I’m sure I could muster something other than exaggerated whispering and covert ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ if I ever go to a church again.

These days, my awareness of this time of year has become more accidental -  it could just as easily pass me by.  When it came to mind though today and conjured up all that sepia I found myself getting a touch nostalgic. For the first year in a long time, I did pause to consider today whether I was going to give anything up for Lent…

When I think of Lents of old my resounding impression is a flashback to me as an 8 year old - eyes watering, mouth brimming with stolen chocolate trying to convince my Mum non-verbally that I hadn’t broken my promise (she always found me out). I fought against Lent with all my little might and yet this year I debated imposing it on myself (my 8 year old self would struggle to see why)…

You could argue that there is little point telling anyone to do anything, free will probably prevails in the end. In this case, Easter Sunday (and all the E numbers that brings) inevitably comes around, so what would be the point? - well, in part I would agree with you. But maybe a little Lenten Promise begs a comparison to life in a wider sense. Now I can pick my bedtimes, my friends and what I watch on TV (regrettably life has thrown up a few more things to consider) it has left quite a lot open to my very forgiving interpretation. If I pause to think about it, life isn’t punctuated by anything very constant anymore, except perhaps a cyclical reminder of how easily I fall prey to ‘the famine or the feast’ - the pull of the excess and push of the pitifully little that life has to offer. Perhaps if I had learnt and retained a little of the discipline needed (even one year) to honestly do my Lenten Promise, things would chug along on a little more of an even keel?! Though I can’t honestly say that equlibrium wholly appeals, at very least, I have to concede… it was good sometimes to know what the rules were.  

What do these musings amount to? Well, after so much thought, this year, I will be giving up….well, actually, still nothing. I can see that self restraint is something to be coveted, a challenge in life should be accepted, it is good in a time of feast to remember a famine etc. That much makes sense. But Lent and I are old adversaries. I won’t stick to it - I couldn’t do that to my 8 year old self (BFF). Plus, even if I only managed half of Lent for 21 years, that is 20x21 days worth of chocolate Lent owes me. I still shouldn’t have had the Hobnobs. xx  

theonlymagicleftisart:

(Ian Jones)

 Well this is a beaut…

I have never really understood children. For the first 25 years and let’s say two months that I’ve lived life, trying to enjoy it, children (N.B. the general public, not cute kids or friend’s kids or anyone else who has a kid I love/should love) would be akin to something like V.A.T. This VAT is on top of what I’ve already paid to have a screaming child beside me while I pay to be in a cinema, restaurant etc. My reasons? Well, they don’t as far as I know actually add me any value necessarily, they can be taxing and they always catch me unawares because I’ve never fully accounted for the fact they exist until I’m confronted with them head on. That feels like a Les Dawson joke, wow…great start.

Recently though - we’ll say the last 5 months, there’s been a strangeness…my approach is on the turn. I would describe myself more now like a spoilt child trying to remain indifferent to a new toy they are being given to coax them out of a strop. It’s hard to back down once you’ve made a fuss. We could now chime in unison - spoilt child and I - to ask, still reticently, ‘what does it do?’. Turns out, now I’ve stopped being a dick, kids are pretty fascinating (I imagine people knew this). Maybe it’s a small clunk of a biological clock - just one clunk to get the cogs of the clock in synch before any ticking needs to go on.

Anyway, now I’m all pro-kids and that (yeah, alright I’m still a dick) it is with this spirit that I come to my point:

Picture the scene…long story short… after trying three times to go and see at play, I finally get in. I am in my seat! All systems are go! It is an adult play for adults. It’s ok for those adults to have kids, but they need to have a babysitter preferably A CAR RIDE AWAY. It’s a one woman play (written by my friend Tim for his company ‘Made in China’ - they are brilliant) so when the very clever actress creates silences in the audience they are there for a reason. The pauses are pregnant, the audience is hooked. Said brilliant one woman show actress (Jess) makes a joke, it’s a good joke…so the audience laughs. A voice, directly behind me, suddenly floats sweetly, but oh so clearly above our heads:

‘Why are they laughing Mummy?’

My head convulses like the Grand High Witch - ‘I smell children’.

The child (I saw when I did my 3/4 turn of disapproval) was a blonde haired, sweet faced angel…her mother was….well, put it this way…not a blonde haired, sweet faced angel. I decided to not be too irate, ‘kids are fascinating, you’re watching the play’ all fine, fine, fine. Even when the mother whispered in that ‘schwwewewewewewe’ way to her THREE YEAR OLD child what the root of the joke from the adult play was over the flipping play, I thought ‘kids are fascinating etc etc’.

Time passed….play, still amazing, still just for adults. Next thing;

‘Why is she crying Mummy?’

More schwwwewewewewewe-ing, actually quite alot more as being a child she doesn’t understand how the lady who she was laughing along with, pretending she got the joke with all the adults in the room, is in the space of 20 minutes crying her eyes out. If possible the schwwewewe-ing got even more patronising in tone at this point- an aside.

Anyway, the play comes to a climax. The little girl, perplexed by many things up until this point, realises suddenly that the lady on stage is saying the word ‘fuck’ - adults are happy enough about this, the word inevitably will not have passed them by. 

Again, loud, clear, sweet and angelic the little blonde haired girl starts saying over and over again (worryingly like it was the only thing that made sense to her by this point)

‘she said fuck….fuck Mummy….fuck….fuck….’  - you get it.

The woman/anti-angel started cooing with the delicacy of a mother soothing her newly borne baby to sleep for the very first time….

‘Yes, darling. The lady did say fuck’.

No longer the covert glance round for me, in genuine shock my head snapped around and through the darkness of the theatre stalls I glared at her with all I could muster. My glare was supposed to show her in one flash of inspiration what my mother’s hearty stews looked and tasted like as we sat round for dinner as a family together each night. It was supposed to show her that I wasn’t allowed to go to mixed slumber parties and still, as far as I am aware anyway, wouldn’t be allowed to share a bed with a boyfriend if I brought one home. Most of all, it was supposed to show how I still get a weary look at the age of 25 if so much as a ‘shit’ passes my lips in front of my lovely, reliable, beautiful parents. As it goes, she was probably too wrapped up proudly cooing ‘fuck’ at her daughter to notice. C’est La Vie…apparently!?

I realised (something else you all knew) it really, really, REALLY is not kids that are the cause of ANY problem. The solution…? Well, I’m working on my glare.

The first post, on the first blog I have ever had will be this….. a vow:

I solemnly declare that this blog will never, under any circumstances, in any state of disrepair, in brain addled or sane, in hardships foul or friendships fair become a load of emo shite. besos. xx