I’ve come back to thinking about blogging after basically a year’s hiatus.
I think I may start it up again.
All the signs seem to be telling me to do so and if you can’t trust the convenient interpretation of random coincidences to tell you to do something that you already wanted to do then what can you trust?!
But I don’t want to lose what I’ve already written so I’ll check the back up first and then I’ll delete.
In the meantime, though I’m not sure if anyone will read this, I just wanted to say thank you very much to anyone that’s commented and/or told me you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written.
I don’t generally blog about politics for a few reasons - it’s too close to work for one thing. But I will today because I am so overwhelmed with incredulity that I am living in a country where the Government has a political opponent arrested. Particularly by the counter-terrorism unit.
There’s different sides from different media and all sorts of rumours so I’m not going to link to any of them because I don’t know which is most accurate. But whatever the ‘whole truth’ of it is, it stinks. And I can’t get that out of my head.
Probably a good time to skip the country, if only for a few days.
For example today I am work. I am averaging ten-hour days at the moment and a lot of it’s quite dull. It’s cold, the heating in our office’s broken and this morning was the first day in ages that I didn’t hurt from cold while waiting for the train - thanks to the extra thick trousers, extra thick long socks, vest, top, zip-up fleece, thick long winter coat, hat, scarf and gloves I was wrapped up in. (Yes I know I’m pathetic but I have below normal resting body temperature so get very cold standing still).
All in all, not a great day. So I remember where I was this time last year - in the south island of New Zealand, touring the Marlborough vineyards in the back of a van driven by a random Aussie bloke my friends met in the pub the day before. Steadily getting pissed and basking in sunshine. Admiring the views of miles of green, stretching towards the mountains. Giggling as Dave the Aussie hurtled round corners and the five of us in the back tried not to fall on top of one another.
Briefly it makes me feel better. For longer it makes me feel worse.
So I did get to complete my lovely play fest, I just didn’t get to blog about the last two and now it’s been three weeks and the memories have faded slightly.
I’ll wrestle them from the back of my brain sometime very soon though. Work monster be damned.
Spyski is a spoof spy story with Oscar Wilde overtones as the story is acted by actors who were originally intending to put on the Importance of Being Earnest and instead perform the real life international espionage they have been inadvertantly caught up in - complete with babies in rucksacks left in left luggage, Ronnie Corbett killing someone with a golf ball, a super spy improvising a radio from an IV drip, and some even more ridiculously farcical events.
I avoided the critics beforehand but it got some good reviews. Although
Time Out’s six stars might’ve been a bit biased since the magazine featured prominently as a murder weapon!Fortunately I don’t set as high a bar for a Monday night as for a Friday. There was no excuse for the high bar on the drinks prices though - at £11.60 for two glasses of wine, my companion and I had spent more than the price of the tickets by the time we’d each bought a round.
The play itself was a bit… well… ho hum. The actors all seemed very competent but it was as if they weren’t actually that involved in the plot. The only really enthusiastic performance came from an understudy.
But it was ok. The only bits I really could’ve done without were the drunken/drugged ramblings from the main character’s wife at the end of each act. As my companion said during the interval: drunken ramblings are pretty boring in real life - they don’t magically become interesting on stage.
Anyway the play closed on Saturday after only a month when it had been scheduled til January. Whether this was the result of the malaise or the cause I have no idea but either way, it has departed. I hope that isn’t a bad sign for plays in the west end again - I’ve received notices that two more musicals are opening soon.
I didn’t want it to seem like I was wilfully partying on a work night so I explained that he he lives in New York and is only back in London for one night so I really wanted to drop in and say hi.
“Oh!” said my boss and there was a slightly odd tone in her voice.
I suddenly realised that I had said almost exactly the same thing about meeting a friend for lunch on Monday. It wasn’t a great time to take a long lunch break but I explained that it was the first chance I’d had to see her in a few months, since she works in Kiev and we keep missing each other on her weekends home.
Both of these meetings were exactly what I said they were, but the coincidence of timing made it odd. I wondered if my boss thought I was fabricating, perhaps trying to make my social life sound more exciting than it actually is…
Add to this that I told her that my aunt and uncle had come over from Spain the other week and Russian Gal came up in conversation the other day - so of course I described her as ”the one who’s moved to Moscow” - and I wouldn’t be surprised if my boss thought I was a fantasist, or at the very least, rather pretentious. And I was slightly worried that I might actually be rather pretentious - why else mention all these far-flung places?
Later we moved on to talking about plans for Friday and I said I was meeting a friend after work who was coming to stay. “The one who lives near Reading?” she asked. “No,” I replied, “the one from Doncaster”.
So perhaps the Geography thing’s not exactly pretentious. I think maybe it just happens to be the easiest way to distinguish my friends in casual description.
Now I just need to work out a way to make sure my boss knows that!
I have two more instalments of my play fest to mention yet but I’ll have to come to them another time - I haven’t yet had a good long train stint to catch up with proper thoughts.
This morning has been a bit weird. Waking up at my sister’s for starters, although that’s getting more common, but waking up again at Charing Cross was strange. Fortunately it’s the end of the line and my stop but I must have slept for a few minutes after the train arrived because the carriage was empty, the platform was empty and I couldn’t even see a crowd of people leaving the station as I came through the barriers. Oops.
Then I had a rather fruitless conversation with one of the girls at a nearby sandwich shop. I ordered my egg and bacon sandwich (Friday breakfast treat) and she rang it on the till as £2.16. I paid, got my change and then asked if there was a discount operating today because it said on the board it would be £2.80. (They do operate quite a few random discounts which I hardly ever know about in advance so I thought it would be worth asking.)
Neither of the two on duty speaks English very well at all and they looked at each other blankly. I repeated what I’d said and then assured them it didn’t matter, it wasn’t important, not to worry. But the girl suddenly started apologising and rang something on the till.
I thought this meant she had rung up the wrong amount and needed me to pay more so I got my purse back out, only to have 20p thrust at me. “Very sorry” she said several times.
I tried to explain and give it back but she just kept saying sorry and shoving it back at me. In the end I took the money, slightly bemused by what had just happened.
They don’t have the tips bowl out in the mornings because there’s no table service but I’ll sneak the 20p in there next time I’m in around lunchtime.
I’m not convinced it does either.
I know of people who have definitely had all the standard sex ed classes, been taught all the same stuff as I remember hearing and still fall for the ridiculous lines like “Oh but it doesn’t feel as good with a condom” or “If I pull out then you can’t get pregnant.” or “No, there’s no way I could have any diseases.” (the last coming from the same guy who also said the first and boasted that he’d slept around a lot, for fuck’s sake).
It just makes me want to smack them round the head - the one who got pregnant becuase she didn’t want to get fat from taking the pill (jeez - how slim do you reckon you looked at 9 months gone?) the one who thought her boyfriend couldn’t give her any STIs because he always washed before they had sex, the one who (apparently) thought a crisp packet was an adequate substitute for a condom…
Not the result of a lack of teaching, just a lack of learning. More lessons just aren’t going to cut it with those that don’t want to learn. And that doesn’t just apply to sex ed - Maths teachers have known it for years.
I hope it does work though. Particularly because I find it harder to keep my temper as I get older so sooner or later I’m going to be arrested for assaulting some young idiot. I’ll be carted away still screaming “How could you be so stupid?!! Why didn’t you pay attention? It’s not like it’s calculus* - this is something you actually need to know in real life!!”
* As much as I loved calculus at school, the only time I’ve used it since uni was helping someone else with their maths homework.
