Disentangled

- trying to buy some oranges, except there was this awful noise - a continuous monotone filling my head so I couldn't even last long enough to grab the fruit and get out. I went to Customer Services and asked them what it was.

"Nnnts drr awck," replied the woman, drowned out by the awful noise.

"I can't hear you," I told her.

"ITS THE CLOCK!!!" she bellowed.

And indeed it was - 7:17am, end of the last snooze of the day. What a clever imaginary Tesco woman.

(Another day at college. We're discussing Looks-like-Draco-Malfoy's snake again. I can't believe we get paid for this, either)

Me: Was it born in captivity?

LLDM: Where's that?

*general smirking*

LLDM: What?!? Where's - what's it - "Captivity"?

Me: Next to Columbia.

Lecturer (to me): D'you ever feel like you're in the wrong class?

" - and, oh, when he cries, don't wipe his eyes - take the wine from the swine and remind him of his crimes."

I think they may have a point. And even if they don't, it's better than sobbing through Hey There Delilah.

Lecturer: "What's Rupert's last name?"

Kermit-boy: "Rupert who?"

- if you're feeling a wee bit sad & droopy, DON'T go on Youtube and watch Johnny Cash singing Rose Of My Heart just after June died. You'll be in bits, honest...

- it's impossible to stay in a bad mood when there's a rat reaching through its cage bars with its tiny wee hands, trying to pull your jumper close enough to munch and getting its head stuck in the process.

- with a doughnut for a brain"

Thank you, Ian Dury. Don't make 'em like that anymore. And thank you, Occasional Housemate, for scratching my CD ju-u-ust at "I wanna be straight" during the 24 hours it was in your car. It's not like I'll get another copy out of Himself; it was like pulling teeth to get that one. You're my best friend and I love living with you but why do you have to be SO FUCKING CARELESS with physical objects? Just cos something's of little monetary value doesn't make it worthless, y'know. It's that "respect" thing that you were telling me about a short while ago.

Grrrrrrr.

- a text comes through and it might be Green-eyed Fisherman, and my whole body jolts with anticipation... and it turns out to be Occasional Housemate asking me to feed the beasties, or Mum asking if I'm up yet, and my shoulders lead the downwards slump, right to the floor... pull your bloody self together, woman!!!

1. The phone rings, whats ur ringtone?
Dunno; a song, a woman going "Everybody look at me, me" (inherited all-singing, all-dancing phone recently; had to get a 7-year-old to explain the camera and video functions to me. Next time I see her I'll ask about changing the ringtone!)

2. When shopping at the grocery store,do you return your cart?
Always! I was brung up proper.

3. If you had to kiss the last person you kissed again, would you?
Yes, if I ever bloody well see him again!

4. Do you take compliments well?
If I think they're true.

5. Do you play Sudoku?
Only if I've finished all the word puzzles and I'm still waiting for whatever I was waiting for.

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness would you survive?
Mmmmm, dunno. Could veer off into sensible-capable-mode; could just as easily veer off into prize-fuckwit mode. Worrying, that.

7. If your house were on fire, what would be the first thing you would save?
The animals. Don't make me choose!

8. Who was the last person you slept in the bed with?
Discounting the dog, Green-eyed Fisherman on Friday 5 January, the last day of our holiday and the last time I'm gonna see him for aaaaaaaages...

9. Who do you text the most?
Probably Occasional Housemate now that we're "gym-buddies".

10. Favorite children's book?
Ohhhh, The Secret World of Polly Flint... or When Marnie Was There... or Archer's Goon... they just haven't dated in decades, those first two, it's amazing.

11. Eye color?
Blueish, the same as everybody else.

12. How tall are you?
5 foot 4.

13. If you could do it over again, start from scratch, would you?
No way; it's just starting to get good after the requisite shitty years. Life begins at 30, don'cha know?

14. Any secret admirers?
Personally, I suspect that that tanned and bemuscled teenage lifeguard can't take his eyes off my big white wobbly cellulitey legs. Yes, that'll be it...

15. Does the person u miss, miss u?
No... I miss Green-eyed Fisherman the way he was in the summer, before he started the medication and turned colder... technically, that person doesn't exist anymore, or at least is asleep, so he can't miss me.

16. Favorite ex..?
I'll always have a soft spot for Kev, he was good to me.

17. Where was the furthest place you went today?
The kitchen. But I have big plans for today!

18. Do you like mustard?
Mmmm, yum.

19. Do you prefer to sleep or eat?
Sleep.

20. Do you miss anyone?
Yeah - all my friends in their various corners of the world.

21. Can you do splits?
Ohhh, I doubt it!

22. What movie do you want to watch?
I Am Legend sounds quite good.

23. What did you do for New Year's Eve?
Went to the pub then went back to Green-eyed Fisherman's; people turned up, there was a party, some people got drunk and some didn't, it was weird and judgemental, then we got sick of it round about 6 and shut ourselves in the bedroom with the dog; people got the hint and left. Not the best.

24. Do you think The Grudge was creepy?
The what?

25. Do you own a camera phone?
Yes, and I even know how to use it now!

26. What's the last letter of your middle name?
I don't have one.

27 . What do you buy at the Movies?
I don't go unless somebody really really wants me to - have managed not to since 2003.

28. Do you know how to play poker?
Nope.

29. What do you wear to sleep?
fluffy jamas, socks, wolly jumper, ski hat and a collie (YOU try sleeping in a portakabin in midwinter!!!)

30. Anything big ever happen in your town/city?
I believe the jam-making club had its AGM a week last Thursday.

31. Is your tongue pierced?
Nooo, I'm too old for that kind of nonsense.

32. Do you like Liver and onions?
Dunno, never had the traditional British. Quite enjoyed grilled chicken livers in Asia, so I presume I would.

33. Do you like funny or serious people better?
Depends what kind - I find sparring-type "funny" people tiresome - you know, the ones where you have to have your guard up all the time during the simplest of conversations... prefer genuinely funny people to overly serious ones, though there's a time and a place for serious too.

34. Ever been to L.A.?
No.

35.Whats your fav. song at the moment?
"Hey There Delilah". Except when I'm drunk; it makes me cry then.

36. Are you a gullible person?
Depends whether my guard's up or not... so yeah, if I trust somebody. Suppose that means I'm only ever going to get screwed over by my friends. Hm.

37 . If you could have any job what would it be?
A plumber. With a van, with everything organised properly in the backof it, and my dog in the front with me, and radio 2 blaring... oh, if I can just hold on to this apprenticeship...

38. Are you easy to get along with?
If I want to be.

39. What is your favorite time of day?
Evening.

40. Are you generally a happy person?
Yeah, I'll do.

80%

My feets are cold; I'm going to bed with a nice cup of tea and my book. Creatively, of course. Night night.

30% Geek

But... I don't even know how to put pictures onto my blog, for goodness sake! Somebody out there has a skewed view of geekiness; I demand a re-count...

We're cooking Burns supper (a day early I know, but we're busy tonight), and it's nearly done. Occasional Housemate starts taking plates and stuff though.

"I'm taking the whisky," she informs me, waggling the decanter.

"Oh - can you take the ginge aswell?"

Wordlessly she puts her arm around her red-headed boyfriend and leads him from the room...

I'm sprawled on a desk nursing my hangover, still in my yellow waterproofs. Mad Sandy the electrical lecturer arrives:

"Look at that boys - mermaid on a rock. Quite good, eh?"

It rained last night, absolutely pissed it down, and it was brilliant. Not a sound from outside but the relentless hammering on the portakabin roof; not a sound from inside except the occasional sigh or gurgle from the dog. I lay in my bed feeling like a Moomin after it's filled its fat little belly with grass and retired for the winter. Spring round the corner, pitter-patter, yawn and smile.

Woke up today in plenty of time; drifted about the kitchen with my breakfast singing Abba's lesser-known "Thank you for the marmite" then beetled off to get my bus. Finished my lead model in Workshop this morning, have just escaped the claustrophobia of class for a wee while. Having Burns' supper tonight and a good glug of whisky.

So far, it's been a jolly good day.

Joined the gym last night. It was expensive and noisy and full of people on machines simulating activities that they could just as easily have been doing for real - very Red Dwarf. But no matter; the flab must go so into the pool I hopped and did something that could very loosely have been termed "swimming".

Felt quite chuffed and motivated as I headed for the changing rooms, gibbering at Occasional Housemate about badminton, climbing, weights... peeled off my swimming costume to reveal a lump of chewing-gum stuck to my pubes.

H'm.

Heath Ledger's dead!

Seem to have spent 4 hours solid fannying about on the computer, and now it's time for bed.

I'm sure I'd get loads more done if I was still channelling my addictive tendencies into smoking, excessive drinking and eating chips.

Funny that.

G'night.

Did you hear about the bell-ringer who got his knob caught in one of the ropes?

Apparently, he was told off...

(Apologies! Told yez it's a miracle I turned out this normal...)

- "Life is a waste of time; time is a waste of life. Get wasted all the time, and you'll have the time of your life"?

Have a sudden flashback to swaying about with a teapot chanting it on Sunday night. I wonder.

Generally I hate the warnings that get sent around, but I must admit this one is important.
If a man comes to your front door and says he is conducting a survey and asks you to show him your bum, do not show him your bum!
This is a scam - he only wants to see your bum.
I wish I had got this yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap!!

(unashamedly lifted from Aimee's Facebook wall-thingy, cheers m'dear!)

"I might not be a Christian, but I respect Jesus - he was a jolly nice chap!"

- Occasional Housemate, last night

A lull in the lecturing and we're all gabbing shite about cars, drinking, cars, pornrgraphy, cars and who's pinched Kyle's phone now. Oh, and cars. Me and Looks-Like-Draco-Malfoy are debating from opposite sides of the room whether my rat could take his snake in a scrap or not.

The noise level drops just in time for me to bellow:

"How big is your snake these days?"

Whoops.

It's that time of year when everybody's frantically counting calories and booze units and hauling their wobbly carcasses off to the gym.

I've decided not to.

What I'm gonna do, right, is work on my Inner Beauty instead. Forgo vanity and pride and all that, and work on peace and goodwill to all men.

On the subject of men, it won't be long before I'm repelling all but the deepest, meaningfullest types. Types who'll be only a positive influence on my Inner Beauty.

Before long, I'll be tranquil and Madonna-like (the holy one, not the one with the pointy bra), emenating love and happiness to whoever crosses my path.

Of course, it's nae that hard to emenate love and happiness when you've got a pie in either hand, pockets stuffed with chocolate and a 3-litre box of wine with a straw sticking out of the top.

G'night, anyway.

They still haven't enrolled us at college (be as well waiting till next bloody year at this rate, bitch humph moan etc.), so use of the "Learning Resource Centre" (that's the "Library" to those of us who aren't terrified at the idea of reading a bloody book) computers necessitates a visit to the friendly helpdesk chappies for a temporary ID. Today, my password is "drain".

I cannae mind his name, and I cannae mind how I ended up on his blog, but he goes by a picture of Victor Meldrew and I sat down for 5 minutes on Thursday night and ended up reading his blog for 2 hours and just about weeing myself laughing over a story about a caterpillar.

Who is he..?

- according to some wifies at college (whose level of jollity at this point in space and time is frankly both worrying and indicative of the use of prescription drugs), today is "National Hugging Day".

My arse.

They can bloody well try and hug me!

Hmph.

- that the sacred tradition of Builders' Bum is only practised by horrible, fat, pale, hairy, mottled, stretchmarked, mole-y and generally spew-worthy specimens of bum-hood?

Hmmmmm?

Tesco's ginger, ginkgo biloba (whatever that is) and ginseng tea - tastes like shit on its own, as herbal teas are wont to do, but add a spoonful of honey and mmmmmmm...

- in your house does it keep away spiders?
A Sutton, Warrington in Your Letters, The Daily Mirror

Tomorrow I shall haul my arse over the road to the garage and buy a real newspaper.

... Green-eyed Fisherman and I wake up and exchange mad dreams. I have them cos I'm on nicotene pacthes; he has them cos he's on tablets, so we both tend to wake up disorientated and dying to babble it all to somebody before we forget. And we've got an empathetic audience in each other, and we play about trying to interpret each other's, and nobody ever says "actually, there's nothing more boring than other people's dreams", and ohhhh I shall miss that if -

(I'm messing about with my phone at college, looking at a picture of me and Green-eyed Fisherman)

KC the Cool Kid: "Is that you and Captain Pugwash?"

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the traditional 7.30pm episode of Corrie has been replaced by something called "Dancing on Ice". I have no objections in principle to people dancing on ice, but when it disrupts my Sunday routine of fannying about on the net all day followed by half an hour's soap viewing... well, that's a different story. I'm not sure I like this at all. So disorientated I may go and do something useful while my brain recovers from the shock.

Boil some wholemeal pasta and steam loads of broccoli over it. Meanwhile, microwave some hot smoked trout. When it's ready, mix it all together and add natural yoghurt, loads of lemon juice and black pepper. Serve with cherry tomatoes.

Occasional Housemate's old friend from uni came to visit this weekend. I have never met anybody like him in my whole life, and presume I shan't again.

Clive has all the interpersonal skills of a dead walrus. We sat in the car for, oh, about an hour, during which we talked about his life and how terrible it's been. And yeah, he's had a couple of knocks career-wise, along similar-ish lines to my own - but oh no; nobody else in the world has been so unlucky. Ever.

Now here's the bit I don't understand: He's still ploughing on, trying to get where he wants to be. Very admirable, but why? Not because of some latent spark of optimism. Not because of a wee shred of hope hiding behind the martyrdom. Because he believes he's entitled to be there, and for no other reason.

Is there a point in the future where you say no more, this is doing me too much emotional damage, I ask him. He looks at me as if I've just dropped through the sun-roof in a very small banana boat.

And not a single reply to the few bits of information I volunteered about myself, let alone any questions.

Later over drinks we're discussing employment law (I'm sorry I didn't invite you all over; I had no idea it'd be such a party). Clive is bemoaning the fact that grievance-procedure legislation doesn't apply during an initial trial period, when it "should".

Well whether it "should" or not, it DOESN'T! I got laid-off from my dream job this time last year because the bosses wife was worried he'd have an affair with me, then told some crock of shit about them not being able to afford an apprentice... of course that's not legal and certainly not ethical, but was there a damn thing I could do about it? No, because I was still on my 3 month trial and there's no way I would've beaten them in a tribunal anyway. Truth is relative. So I opted to devote my energy to getting another apprenticeship instead of whining about it not being fair and what "should" be happening instead.

I told Clive this and was treated to a second banana-boat look. At this point I made an executive decision to get very, very drunk.

Several large voddys later, Clive continued to drone about how the world has wronged him. I tried again, in a slighly drunken, over-animated way: " - but don't you see, if you just accept things you can't change, whether they should or shouldn't be like that, then you might just be happy - " third banana-boat look, capped with a wee sneer " - I mean, ahve you ever been happy?"

Clive informed me that because we have no common frame of reference it would be pointless for him to answer that question. Undaunted, I proffered my own definition of happy - to feel lucky; blessed, if you like; to feel like you've got something worth having, whether you deserve it or not.

Clive paused for thought. Then he said, in his joyless monotone, "No, I've never felt like that. Oh, except for my cats". 38 years old and needing to be told what happy means, then deciding you've never felt it. That made me sad, and I told him so. Evidently he thought I meant his finding happiness in his cats made me sad, as he suggested I never came to his house or they would scratch my eyes out.

At that point I disengaged myself from the conversation and reached for the vodka bottle.

***************

Woke up this morning still in awe of the gloom and pessimism that Clive filled the room with. "I think he's kind of missed the point of being alive," I told Occasional Housemate. "A waste of sperm," she agreed. She looked thoroughly depressed; she's more sensitive than me and the weekend had really got to her.

As for me, it's made me realise how bloody lucky I am. All the best thing in my life are transient - I could lose my perfect job tomorrow; my mum's going to die one of these days; my friends might not be my friends forever; ditto for boyfriend; ditto for living in this mad wee shed with all the animals... but I know how to appreciate them all while I've still got them. And just the word "happy" conjures up thousands upon thousands of memories, and even more dreams for the future... so sorry, Clive; you have completely failed to depress me. So there.

For all of my nearly 3 years at the good old Invershitty Institue of not-doing-a-hell-of-a-lot, I've had funny eyes and a couple of mild seizure-type thingies. I used to get them when I was tiny; wee enough to belive that it was cos I was actually a magician's child, a changeling, and if I told anybody it'd kill my magic... anyway, no such romance left in my soul in my late 20s, and I've been wondering what it is.

First I thought it was stress; just come home from Japan with a severely head-injured husband and embarked on a totally new career amidst a peer group who hated me. But then life got better; got used to Scotland all over again, restored hubby to health and got rid (as per the plan pre-accident), got the hang of college-style learning and got the little fuckers off my case with a wee bit of controlled violence. But the funny eyes persisted.

Then I thought it was my specs. Got my eyes tested and re-tested, filled the optician in on the whole thing, and got new specs that were definitely, definitely right. But the funny eyes persisted.

Then I thought it was the computer. One of the things about hour-and-a-half lunchbreaks with the option of joining in conversations about phones, car crashes and wanking is, you spend a hell of a lot of time on the internet. But then I moved in with Cathy, and got the internet at home, and spent literally days on it with no worse ill-effects than a sense of fiddling while Rome burns. But the funny eyes at college persisted.

When I came back to college on Monday and within an hour was polishing my glasses and squinting in vain at the board, I though it was my nicotene patch. But logically, I've been wearing it at home, at work, on the bus, and this never happens anywhere but college.

Then I figured it out: It's the lights. Striplights that flicker but so fast you can only tell because it looks like you're looking at them through smoke. An epileptic's nightmare, I'm sure. And that's what it is.

Now, I know there's something not hooked up right in my brain for it to be happening at all, and I'll probably never know what it is as I've been waiting for an MRI appointment for over a year now, but I do sort of wonder why none of the doctors, opticians or mental health people I spoke to suggested it might be the lighting.

Worrying.

Top a garlic and parsley flatbread (or somethin like that) with chopped peppers, quartered cherry tomatoes, shredded basil, sundried tomatoes, black olives and lumps of goats' cheese. Bake at 200 celcius till Corrie starts. Wash down with red wine. Feel slightly pissed and rather smug. Go to bed.

As days go, I've had better. And worse, of course. Staggered into college in a state of physical and mental shock at having to get up to the alarm clock for the first time this year... spent the day rubbing my nicotene patch and having the usual blurry vision and extreme iritation... remembered abruptly how unwelcome I am amongst my so-called peers (although to be fair that could've been the patches)... caught sight of myself in the mirror looking like absolute shit, complete with pudgy flushed face, spots and manic post-party eyes... walked home from the bus through the pitch-dark, deserted industrial estate, heart in my mouth thinking about the local guard dogs and despising myself for it... meant to be having wine and girl-talk with Occasional Housemate tonight but she's not appeared yet... but fuckit!!! I did it all and now I've sooo earned a few glasses of red, some leftover choccys, a full hour of Corrie and my lovely bed with the only auld mannie I've got around (yeah, the dog) - so aye! Tomorrow's another day, but in the meantime let's slob...

Looks-like-Spoilt-Bastard-from-Viz-boy at college has a new apprentice just started with his company. Apparently, the poor wee thing was sent to the stores for a ten-metre roll of fallopian tube.

(Overheard in the ATM queue outside college): "Here, Steve! Challenge you to a beard-off; whoever's got the biggest beard by the end of this block wins, eh?"

(We're discussing Feng Shui and the idea of positive energy escaping via the toilet and basin whilst you're having a bath)

Murdo: " - yes, I gather the toilet lid should always be down - " *lengthy pause and deeply contemplative look* " - unless you're sitting on it, of course"