late night lashings of tra la la

There's no real purpose to this one, I'm afraid. But hey, let's see - maybe a purpose will arrive.

I went to Peebles today and met with a speech therapist. She was very nice, smiley, brunette, pregnant. She talked a fair amount, but her voice was pleasant so I didn't mind too much. If I lacked other vocabulary and awareness and felt like slacking I'd call her "bubbly". But she certainly possessed more intelligence than that word would ever credit her with.

It was a sunny day, and partly warm. I was wearing my charity shop tweed jacket, some jeans, a shirt and jumper and my little black boots. I bought some Applewood cheese, some Brussels pate and bread. I ate some cheese on the bus from Peebles back to Galashiels. I wasn't going to, fearing that someone would judge me for eating cheese straight out of its little packaging, but then I realised that my hunger and desire for cheese trumped any paranoia.

I think that's a good quality in a person.

If any of my friends - across the spectrum - are reading this, I hope you are all ok and still enjoying the little day to day stuff you do without me. I've got a certain level of regret floating round me regarding the lack of contact I've been having with some of you. But don't worry, I haven't forgotten you (especially not you) and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon for baby-sized updates surrounded by cheerful pleasantries.

There have been too many sentences starting with "I" in this blog and it is starting to make me look self-obsessed, which is very rarely true. In fact, lately, I've been thinking about homeless people a lot and they have been causing me some troubles in my head. For instance, recently I was getting some money out of the bank on the corner of George IV bridge and the Royal Mile and there were two homeless people sitting there. It was seethingly uncomfortable as I drew that note out and they asked for change. I had change. And  a note. But something in me didn't want to give them any. Why? Well this has troubled me for a long time. Sometimes I do want to give someone some money, or a sandwich, or a coffee or something, but then I think: well, what difference would that even make? I can't take them into my house, or give them my job, or provide them with a weekly stipend. It won't solve anything completely. But is that my responsibility anyway? Some people will say that it is. I have some change, I have the ability to help someone a little bit, but I choose regularly not to.
Perhaps part of the reason is the sheer number of homeless people in the city. If I gave every homeless person I saw £1 a day (the minimum I'd consider, as anything less is not really of any practical use) I'd be giving basically £50-£70 a week to people I don't know, with no idea what they are spending it on or whether it makes an actual difference to their lives.

And what if they are all chancers anyway? There was a woman in Galashiels who regularly trawled the streets collecting money (there aren't that many homeless people there) and often made a fair amount of dosh. She was caught several times thereafter laden with bags of shopping, catching the bus to Edinburgh and bragging on her iPhone about how much money she'd collected. Eventually she was found out and charged with something.. fraud I assume.

The whole thing is just rather dubious. I suppose I should make more of an effort to help people on the streets out now and again, but I can't help thinking my efforts are wasted. Perhaps it's because of an assumption of how they ended up there. I mean, obviously I have no idea what their story is, but I find it hard to believe that many of their lives couldn't have been changed by some small detail earlier on. Perhaps more effort towards education, more support from their families, a greater confidence and desire to better themselves. The ambiguity of the thing can seem threatening.

I've been developing my interest in communication through customer service via the route of language, and I know now more than ever how important information and the communication of such things can help someone feel more at ease. The fact I don't know where these misfortuned (and occasionally belligerent) people came from is unsettling, and in all honesty it is simply easier for me not to find out. So, to contradict my earlier statement that I have not simply been thinking about myself - I have been thinking about others, but obviously not with enough zeal to learn their story. But surely I'm simply a victim of society's teachings then? The British nurture? I've not been brought up in the social environment where we delve into every tragic life story and sympathise. It's human survival. It's dog eat dog. But then my morals have to cope with this?! How do I continue to provide for myself and yet calm the guilt of walking past someone with matted hair, a rare smell, a dark tongue, and a blanket for company as a few pound coins jangle in my purse? Is there someone to blame? Should I be making more of an effort to find that person and shake a fist?

I'm a terrible liar. They know I have money. The know I don't want to give it to them. How would I feel if that were me sitting there? What would I do? How would I approach another human being with more to live on for a share of what they earned?

Then there's the chancers again. I've heard stories of friends making the effort to provide some food or whatever, and had it refused due to taste. How is that not supposed to confuse you?!


I guess I can thank them now for providing a theme for my blog, but I can't see any clear conclusions or solutions being found tonight. Maybe I'll never solve it. What do you do? Do you give homeless people your change or food?

Robert Louis Stevenson is quoted as saying "Take care of each other." And I've always enjoyed it as a concept and mantra: but if I took care of everyone but myself, I would end up in poverty and could no longer help anyone? There must be an equilibrium... somewhere...

Losing count

I'm losing count of the number of identity crises I've had already. I don't tend to put things down to starsigns when it comes to my personality, but apparently Capricorns such as myself really struggle with change and well, being a young adult worming her way into stability, there is an inevitably high level of flux. Which, for someone who struggles with change, sux.

I could kind of deal with it when it was prescription education and I had someone else to blame for being annoyed with what I was doing; suppressed and bloated with curricula - but now it's all my fault. Well, not fault exactly, just... responsibility. I actually am expected to make some kind of an effort now, or it all really goes to pot. Part of me would like it go to pot. As nice as it is having money to spend, it also is a massive burden to use it properly and spend it on things like paying back overdrafts and bills and bus fares and shit. And shit is what it is.

The council tax things hasn't hit me yet because I'm not earning enough to pay it, but it looms. In the background it looms there like a cat staring at you as you take out the moist pink ham for your afternoon sandwich and I'm just like, FECK OFF, CAT.

I dunno.

The identity crisis thing fits in there neatly actually. I don't mind stumbling along and not being attached to something (it makes the flux easier to deal with), but when something starts to draw me in, or makes me feel like I have to be more interested in it than I am, well, I hate that. It makes me want to run away. But then I don't have the energy to run away either. This is where it gets tricky. It's easy for me at the moment to stay where I am, in the job I'm in, make some money, be afraid every now and again, make mistakes etc etc, but at the same time I am absolutely despising this feeling of lack of control. I have got to be in control of my own life.. ser protagonista, no ser victima! I just don't really know how to get it back.

Everyone keeps telling me how grateful I should be to have a full-time job in this "climate" and yada yada. Actually you know what, that is another thing I hate. Chatting. Small talk. Bla bla, fuckity bla. It's a key part of my job at the moment (customer service) and it makes me feel sick and bored and I just want someone to know more about me than my hair colour. That's the hard part about the job - trying to act like you care and you really, really, don't. And nobody cares about you either.

There's a blog tendency of mine where I enjoy ending them on a high, as if I'm going to make changes, have come to some great conclusion which will spur me or others on, and well, the answer is simple: find a social hobby with flexibility and that I can commit to without it leaving me. I just want something to enjoy. And I'm not 100% sure how to go about that yet, or what it is.

I'm missing my friends, too.

I just wish I knew how temporary this whole part was, and I wish it didn't suck as much as it does right now.
But I'm the only one who can change it.
Dammit.
Responsibility.
Choices.
Ugh.

Adulthood.

Melrose Book Festival: 2 Things

Last week, in my poverty-line-dance and sloth-paced lifestyle, my grandma very kindly stumped up the tickets to a few events at the Melrose Book Festival for me. It was a drizzly day, but the ebb and flow of bodies (mostly pensioners) was freeing - one can get complacent if surrounded by youth all the time. I have chosen therefore to write a short review of the two 'shows' that I saw, wherewith you can decide yourself if you wish to buy their books or not. Of course actually purchasing one of the books by one of the authors would be the publisher's ultimate outcome and I ought to receive some sort of commission, but my personal ultimate outcome is that, through this out-splurge of word and constructive criticism I will have found a way to vaguely constructively occupy the morning. (NB: Dearest Morning, it is good to see you again, it has been a while.)

6.10pm. I step out of my Grandma's car and walk past a small group of people roughly my age chatting outside Harmony House. It's a beautiful old house that I regret not knowing all that much about apart from its occupation as ground for the Melrose Book Festival. I'm late but to maintain a collected appearance I speed up the pace, without actually indelicately running, to collect my tickets and find out where my first event is. The atmosphere is icky. But... sort of, nice icky, with an air of literature and prosecco. Literalicky.

I find the tent and join a queue of mostly tall, cagouled, welly-booted, grey haired couples chatting and nodding with that regal shadow many Melrosians have - a rural politeness. I look rather out of place in my own head, standing alone in my Converse and charity shop Tweed jacket, but nobody else is in there so that's fine. We follow each other in a neat file into this little tent and sit about for a wee while. People are shifting, chatting, changing seats, complaining about the noise of the fan, rustling raincoats. Eventually we are introduced to Allan Massie, who is here to discuss his book number 2/3.

It's apparently a detective novel set in Vichy France in 1940 or so. He addresses the first two questions as a chance to practice his skills as a tangentier: there is very little in the way of coherent argument and a lot in the way of NBs and whichincidentallys and infacts and indeeds. He is a short man, late 50s or so, with a distractedness, a disconnectedness that is most likely emphasised by his proper English, which has always sounded to me as a language with such a sureness of consonant one can forego vowel and the pressure of being in the room. I don't recall what he was wearing other than it was either dark green or brown, but that probably stands to reason as it took all the concentration I had to listen to what seemed the entire history of Vichy, other parts of France and French colonies. I'll say this, that man had researched well. I would say, though, that it was unexpected when he let out that he didn't even really like crime writing that much, and the actual details of police investigation or whatever weren't what interested him. So, to sum up. He came to promote a book he wrote in a genre he doesn't actually like that much and talked about something else in considerable detail. Cheers, Allan.

7.45pm. I'm hoping for something better from Ed Smith's interview by Rory Bremner. Allan just wasn't really bounding in charisma, despite his impressive knowledge of wartime France. Ed Smith is already winning though, as his picture in his book I flicked through at the shop is not displeasing to the eye. I was later to find it was also probably taken about 10 years ago. What is that?! So misleading.

Nevertheless I have found myself a neat little seat to the right of the action. Ed Smith used to be a cricketer, but then he broke his ankle and never played professionally again. I wasn't too bothered about that though, because I don't like cricket. ( - I love it! ... sorry, had to!) The book is called "Luck" and it is his fourth one. Now, some stuff he said was interesting, and Rory Bremner did a really good job of interviewing him, but all the while I couldn't help feeling slightly uncomfortable with some of the things Smith was saying, and I couldn't work out why until afterwards. Admittedly he had a certain energy about him. He had an infectious confidence and enthusiasm and affectionately used the word 'hubris' on a few occasions, which did genuinely fit in well amongst his very eloquently formed sentences. But between the bedsheets of the spark and guile of his countenance and word choice, I became confused and felt as if I was trying to jam two pieces of jigsaw together which should work because the colours were right, but didn't slot into the big picture, and it didn't matter if a bigger picture didn't even exist. Then I realised that it wasn't me who was jamming the pieces, but Ed Smith.

He talked about luck (both good and bad), and its relationship with chance, serendipity, fate and coincidence, as if they were brothers and sisters, and in many cases did provide charming individual definitions, often with neat little quotes from people or example situations. But he forgot to see the entire fold. He didn't see how all of these things were just total human constructs. In my opinion, these concepts all stem from the inbuilt human approach to life that it is hard, and we must make effort to get what we want, and chance events and the 'universe' don't generally work to a high positive degree in our favour. Therefore, when something truly advantageous happens to us, something that we had no control in creating, then we give it one of these names: luck, serendipity etc. (The chance and coincidence ones are certainly more neutral). And the greater the deep chambre of darkness we find ourselves in, the greater the nightlight of luck will seem, even if it's source is rather minuscule. You could place luck on the same steed of argument as Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, saddled neatly upon the train analogy, which appears faster or slower depending on where you are standing.

So I did consider buying the book (my sister was working there and could have got me a 40% discount), but I will probably find it by chance in a second hand bookshop sometime in the future, and for much less than retail price. If not, then not. But how lucky would it be if I did?

I also saw Iain Banks ramble on for a wee while too, who writes very well and talks quite well, but I doubt I could spend more than an hour or so actually engaged in one on one conversation with him. My MBF highlight was however, being less than a foot away for Alistair Darling and his mighty eyebrows.

And that's it. My little review slice of the Melrose Book Festival 2012. Well done if you made it through this post!

swear words

Swearing is commonplace among my friends and I. I swear every day. We swear together, cursing the trials and tribulations of our rather cushty lives; eating and drinking and learning in the government's cosy bosom. "This fucking essay", "That bastard of a prick of a tutor"; "That slut that told that arsehole I was a slut"; "The fucking massive checkout at Tesco"; "That motherfucking tuna sandwich" etc, etc. But there's a major distinction between my use of swearing among my friends and among my family. There is also a progressive nature to my use of swear words with my family. Not forgetting the small matter of swearing in a foreign language. Let's start with a few years ago...

"Sugar", said my mum, trying to find that impossible parking space one October afternoon. We had driven around town about three times by now, and someone had just nipped into a parking slot very near our flat. But my mum wouldn't swear, even though she definitely wanted to. I was about 13.

2012. "!Jolin!", said Marta, casually, doing whatever Spanish people do. There was something involving shock. But this wasn't quite as strong as the "!Joder!" I'd become used to. I guess she fluctuates between the two. The former being more fitting for my mother, had she understood a word. Later in the day I use jolin, and she corrects me, telling me to say joder instead. A pinch confused.

It's really fascinating how a certain collection of consonants and vowels can help to relieve a certain feeling. I mean, obviously language is our most powerful tool, and it is what separates us from all other life, but to have it as a true expression of our frustration or fear or moment of brilliance is something that has an affect. Swearing plays a major part in our lives. An affective part (not a misspelling of 'effective' - I genuinely mean affective). Like socks.

Socks are those time-honoured hidden things (unless you are one of those who enjoy socks + sandals, in which case, cease doing so immediately), that still have a function. We all know they are there, that they exist, but we don't necessarily expose them all the time. Like swear words.

Let me turn up my trousers.

My uncle recently said the word "shite" in front of me. Twice. In a car. There was no escape from this language, and despite him only being 19 years my senior, I felt like a border had been breached. I was stuck in this car, windows closed, doors locked, while he just blatantly broke the rules. Adults don't swear?! Uncles definitely don't. Mothers least of all. And yet, there I was, hearing this, this word. From a foreign place, a place I connect with comradeship and youth and frustration. What is going on? My uncle doesn't even swear in front of my mum. Since when did I become eligible to swear in front of? I felt like I was starring in my own 'coming-of-age' film and I'd just met eyes with Patrick Swayze who was about to tell me he ate a watermelon once. I mean... what?

Then the world went topsy turvy. My Dad said "crap", closely followed by "bullshit". What. Is. Going. On?!

I'm sure there are families out there who commonly use such language in front of each other (most likely around Christmas time or at frowned-upon weddings or on changing the television programme without warning or consultation) but this is incredibly uncommon for me to hear. These people are people I have a certain level of respect for and assume a higher level of experience and/or education of, and yet here they are, saying my words, using my language. Another moment comes. My Dad tells me how he only recently learned the word "dystopia". I read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" two years ago. When did these superior beings start jogging in the relay? Really, when did that happen? Did I miss it? Was I on holiday? Was I pairing socks?

Fuck.