Notes from my attic bedroom

Up here, at the breezy altitude of the chimney pots, it could be one hundred years ago. I love the perspective from my attic bedroom. The skylight, at eye height, can be opened to stick your head out and inhale the night air. The road and houses extend out before me, with assorted rooftop paraphernalia from all eras. I like to imagine I am one of the first residents of this late Victorian abode, breathing in the darkness in just the same way, with smoke blooming out of those chimneys and a tin bath and a mangle downstairs.

But I can also see beyond. This house sits on the edge of the city. When I open the window and look out nostalgically amongst the rooftops, the shimmering, beating heart of Oxford sits to my right. I can see the hospital and it's big, reassuring modern lights, and I can imagine the people scurrying about their city business like ants, talking authoritatively in mortar boards and making BMWs. In front of me is a mysterious meadow where wildlife must roam and from whence we hear the occasional blood-curdling scream of a mating fox. And to my left is the ring road, snaking with streams of red and white lights, and making its presence known through the never-ending hum. I am liminal - somewhere between urban and expansive, between teeming historic civilisation and rampant green grass. There's something epic about it that I love.

And from above, on those all-too-frequent occasions when it's not balmy and romantic but wintry and wet, rain pounds on the flat roof above like pattering on a tent. In my more positive moments I think of it as a special kind of glamping, like I'm in a remote camp, or a den made out of the curtain round the back of the armchair in the living room.

It's the place where my dreams unfold, where books are read in atmospheric darkness. A place to do nothing and hear the cool breeze swish through the treetops. A place where cats come to flop in over-indulgent luxury. Where weather is observed from an indoor cocoon that protects and encloses. My own little magical palace-cum-enveloping womb, top of the house and queen of my own little planet.

Pervy plumbers and the low hum of inaction

A putting the world to rights session recently with my dear friend Sargles made me reflect on how and whether I personally experience sexism in my everyday life. We were musing on equality of opportunity over doughnuts, and I mentioned this video, where Leah Green acts out stories taken from the Everyday Sexism blog, but turns the tables by inflicting street harassment women have reported experiencing on men, such as shouting “Alright sexy” out of a white van, or staring unerringly at a bystander. Whatever you think of the approach (two wrongs don’t make a right?), the bewildered reactions of the innocent men in the film do make it a humorous way of thinking about the pervasiveness of this behaviour and the preposterousness of our mild acceptance of it. As if to illustrate this point, I then belatedly realised that I had that very day experienced some similar behaviour. Having all but forgotten it already, we started to ponder the mechanics of it, how I reacted to it (or not) and why.

The incident came about because of a very boring series of problems with my bog. The loo in the ensuite needs a Saniflow pump to whoosh our stinky effluence out of the house and into the drains where it belongs. Said pump was broken, and needed a series of increasingly incompetent engineers and plumbers to come and fix bits of it, blame each other for the fact that it still didn’t work, and make lots of sharp intakes of breath at considerable inconvenience. However much I accept that I might have to work from home for a few afternoons to facilitate all this, I never expected for that home-alone experience to become discomfiting.

But that it did, when cock-a-hoop Brummie engineer Dean decided to make an appearance. It wasn’t the first time I’d met Dean – he’d been round in the early Saniflow fixing attempt days, and made a few flirty comments about going into a girl’s bedroom and making a mess on her floor. I just laughed nervously then went back to a client phone call I had to make, forcing him to be professional. The second time didn’t hold anything much more sinister, but I was struck by the barrage of innuendo that pervaded pretty much every raised-eyebrow-style comment he made. “You’re looking nice today” “Ooh yes I’ll have a cuppa if you’ll bring it up and serve it to me” “So where’s your fella today then? Will he mind me being in your bedroom?” “I bet you’re just staying up here so you can check out my cheeks as I bend down” “I bet your plumber isn’t as good looking as me” “So you’re on your own today then?” “Let me just show off my muscles as I pull myself up into this attic” “Bet you got an eyeful there love” ad nauseam. Disarmed, increasingly aware of being on my own, and moving rapidly from nervous laughter to sweaty shuffling away, why did I let myself feel threatened by this inane, faintly aggressive pervy verbal diarrhoea? Why not instead feel angry and revolted? Why nervous shuffling and not an immediate phone call to his bosses to complain? Why was I LETTING some random ignorant womaniser make me feel uncomfortable in my own home?

Perhaps it’s because Leah Green is right. For women, being spoken to this way is part of ordinary life. For men, it’s shocking or worrying or bewildering. But are women just quietly accepting of this low hum of sexist threat in their everyday?

I thought about other times I’ve felt threatened more overtly. The time I was bending over a pool table in the West End Working Men’s Club aged 16 and got tapped on the arse by a 70-year-old snooker player. The time in Jordan when Lucy and I were pursued down a back alley by the handsiest letch ever, who responded to our swearing, indignant responses with a shrug. The time I was walking home alone down a Paris street and got called a fucking whore because I overtook a man on the pavement. The time I was walking home alone down a Paris street and got curb-crawled by two blokes in a car, and couldn’t hold myself back from giving them the bras d’honneur when they eventually got bored and drove away, resulting in them swerving back towards me, leaping out and berating me for ten minutes, calling me a slut because I was walking alone outside in the dark. The time I got followed from the metro in Paris because I accidentally made eye contact with a man in the window reflection. The time all my male Parisian friends told me these experiences were my fault because I looked English and wore tight clothes.

Why do we shy away and avoid eye contact or confrontation? Do the men doing this know it’s because we fear being raped by them?

This stuff is real, but we don’t hear proportionate reports of it. A recent report found that 77 women were killed by their partners in a 12-month period between 2012 and 2013. Why don’t I remember hearing about that in the news? Is it really just a low hum in the background of other, more glamorous tragedies?

This is when I think things seem to be getting worse in terms of equality, not better. Women are judged on how they look not what they do, and bound by hackneyed stereotypes that make both sexes look stupid. We’re told that how we dress affects how well we’ll do in the workplace (the person that peddled this pile of misogynist crap needs castrating, regardless of gender). Girls have to have pink everything and all they are encouraged to be is a fucking useless unemployed ‘princess’.

So I’m deciding to amplify the low hum in my life. I won’t accept being poked up the arse with a snooker cue or cat-called by a curb crawler. Instead of forgetting those things have happened during my day, I will indignantly broadcast them. I’m going to capitalise on my abilities and achieve what I want. And I’m emailing the Saniflow people about Dean right now.

The wording of the new Guide promise is nobody's business but ours

So. Last week at Guides, some of the girls at last made the new promise. You know, the one that's been in the news because it has been changed to remove the reference to God. The one that people, including that well known authority on women's issues and young people Victoria Coren, have been sneering at because it now asks us Guiding members to "be true to myself and develop my beliefs". The one that the General Synod of the Church of England are now wading in to "take action" against.

Coren takes issue with the wording that has been chosen, dubbing it a "lame, weak, hollow clump of Californian couch jargon". I realise that she is being tongue in cheek by lumping it in with modern slang terms that she scorns such as "vino" for wine and "a couple of jars" for beer (her disdain for which seems to have little basis other than contempt for normal people and the way they speak about their lives) - but I find her overall disparaging tone self-promoting, ignorant and frankly unpleasant. It seems like everyone's got an opinion about the new promise, but no-one bothers to ask anyone in Guiding what they think (eg some Guides). Unsurprisingly, rather than imposing an eminently sneerable change on the young people that form the body of the guiding organisation, the committee tasked with looking at the new wording decided to do just that - so they asked all 550,000 members what they thought, and the majority said they would prefer a promise that has more inclusive wording. They also overwhelmingly said that they wanted everyone to make the same promise - because this pledge is about something that we do together, as a community.

I notice that VC doesn't attempt to suggest a better wording that makes everyone welcome into the Guiding organisation. One that is simple enough to appeal to girls of all ages, but complex enough to replace the nebulous notion of religious belief. And why should she? She's not in the organisation, she doesn't have kids who are... Really what is her article other than another opportunity to look down her nose at people she knows nothing about?

None of the commentators on the promise seem to be from the Guiding world, so I kind of wonder what gives them the right to go about mocking an organisation that they don't bother to have anything to do with otherwise. Other coverage of recent events in the Guiding world seems to be dominated by haughty columnists who last had any contact with guiding when they were haughty kids, and is punctuated by old photographs of Guides looking geeky and outdated. Where is the journalism with integrity that looks to speak to those who are from the world they are commenting on? Why don't they try and make genuine contact with an organisation that is diverse, outspoken, modern and full of inspiring young people? It boils my piss, it really does.

I've spoken to real Guides about what the promise wording means to them. We spent a whole evening dedicated to finding out what they believed in, what making this new promise would mean for them, and encouraging them to think about it in an open-minded way. I mind-mapped their discussions - feel free to take a look at the photo VC, if you want a quick view from coal face. As you can see here, for my Guides the notion of "being true to myself" means to have integrity, to be free to live their lives in a way that isn't judged by others, and to be tolerant towards others trying to be true to themselves. I thought that was pretty mature and enlightened of them.

The girls unanimously thought that the edit to the promise to remove the overt reference to God was a positive thing. They talked very frankly about their beliefs - and even those who did believe in a god felt better making the same promise as all their friends, and knowing that nobody felt uncomfortable doing it. As someone who has crossed their fingers metaphorically every time I have made the promise throughout my 25-year involvement in Guiding, this made me feel elated, and relieved that I could finally make a pledge I believed in. Had the wording not changed in this respect, I would have started to reconsider my position as a guiding volunteer, and so would others I have spoken to. Those in the General Synod crying "discrimination" against those believers who now don't get to say in this forum that they love their god have missed the point - we all pledge to "develop our beliefs", whatever those beliefs are. When significant numbers of girls and leaders either find God an irrelevant abstraction or something they actively don't believe in, but have to promise to love it anyway, THAT is discrimination.

I also find the argument that "being true to yourself" could mean that a horrible person is encouraged to be more horrible is pessimistic, unrealistic and purely theoretical. As if we won't actually talk to the girls about what they think it means for them. And as if having a non-existent, intolerant and excluding paranormal body in the promise as something to pledge your allegiance to is any better. Saying that changing the wording of that one line now means the promise is entirely self-centred is just plain wrong - the rest of the promise gets us to say we will serve our community and help other people! It's lazy and mean-spirited and assumes the worst of people - but perhaps predictable from those who comment without insight, just to delight in empty scoffing.

"To thine own self be true" is what Polonius says to his son Laertes in Hamlet. Polonius' character might be a blustering whittler, but he's not a bad person and sincerely wants the best for his son. His character's use of the wording certainly gives the lie to Coren's dismissing of it as 20th century psychobabble. She deems this phrase "stubborn, self-important and faintly aggressive", which is a very interesting description... To me it seems to better describe the tone of her article than it does the quality of the girls I meet and talk to every week. Perhaps those who love to stridently advertise their own opinions might condescend to do the same.

Weird dream no 6

Last night’s dream was fuzzy round the edges. There were waves of panic and vague hidden messages. “Look!” I said to dream Bryn. “Look on the wall over there – that is the answer!” Somehow smudgily written on the wall was a word that was the key – I knew it because it appeared mysteriously on the wall, and the rules of Harry Potter-style filmic ritual mean that it was significant. It was a scruffy, browned wall in a derelict sort of room, the kind you might see in a seedy motel on a bleak American highway. We were tossing and turning and trying to figure out what the answer was. The letters of this secret word blurred gradually into view, painfully obscure, agonisingly sketchy. Dream Bryn was asleep and wouldn’t wake up to hear my insistence. I could see it but he wanted to envelop me in warmth and comfort, for me not to be agitated like this. But I knew that if only we could make out the word, we would know the truth.

There was a C, a double MM... an S? Commas? Bishop Cranmer returning dyslexically to send us a creepy message from the hereafter? However important it seemed at the time, I can’t remember the word, or I don’t know if I was ever able to read it. A less Poe-like ending than I would have liked – just an unsettling sense of striving, and the yearning for a simple one-word answer to a question that has many words, moods and emotions, to the extent that I don’t even know what the question is, either.

Why busy busy busy is a boring boast

A few months ago, I was chatting to a contact of mine  in the Guiding world. "Ooh, I've been wanting to ask you about blah blah blah", she said (it wasn't boring, I just can't remember it). "But I'd heard how busy you were, so I didn't want to bother you." My heart fell at this, and it's been gnawing away at me ever since.

Had I jabbered on so much about how busy I was that not only were people saying "I know you're busy" to me, but they were also saying it ABOUT me?! Had I become so bad at managing my own time that I was starting to get a reputation as a flakey, unapproachable blusterer? Of all the things people could say about me when I'm not there, I was mortified to think that their lasting impression of me was that I was BUSY, and not that I was kind, generous, helpful, someone to look up to or any of the other things I aspire to or would like to be.

I'm sure many will have already seen Tim Kreider's brilliant article 'The Busy Trap' in the New York Times (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/ if you haven't). I can't help but agree with him that "It is, quite obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint". Look how important I am, you're saying. Look how much I have in my life. Look at all the things that would come crashing down around our ears if I wasn't here, the indispensable martyr giving up my time for the good of humanity. Bow down before me, ye mortals with enough free time to spontaneously visit the local ale house. You are no match for my mighty sense of self-approbation. What a total dick.

I have definitely fallen into this trap. I've shown people my pen-covered diary with a forlorn look on my face. I've moaned to friends that I feel trapped by my schedule. I've complained that people don't realise that a guide leader's job is voluntary and neverending, not paid by the hour. I've felt smug about myself because of this. And deep down, I've felt scared that although my diary is backed up with meetings and engagements, my urge (or ability?) to sit on the sofa eating Pringles and watching endless reruns of Friends means I'm actually fundamentally rather lazy.

Some of it is fraudulent. I am usually the last person in my office, and the security guard constantly gives me the knowing-but-patronising "Another late one for you then?!" routine, commiserating with empathy as he nods how busy he is too, implying "we know each other don't we, fellow martyrs". Sometimes I feel like shouting "YOU DON'T KNOW ME! I'm not like this really! I rolled in this morning at 9.45 and I spent two hours at lunch reading The Vagenda! I'm just making up my hours! I'm going to the pub after this!" I start to resent the implication that life has taken me over, that I don't have control over my time and that an outside force is deciding what time I leave, not me.

Even my dad said to me recently "I know you're really busy", so I said "No I'm not! I just decided not to look at my emails!"

The growing sense that voicing busyness somehow says the wrong thing about me has made me realise two things. 1. These conversations are not interesting for others. And 2. It's all my choice. I have control over my own existence. I decide to do all the things I do, and if I don't like them, I can stop. I have therefore resolved to do two things differently. 1. Not to bore other people with my busy boasts. Enjoy the moment. Embrace their company. Make sure they know that time spent with them, for whatever reason, is something I will give with pleasure and without expecting sympathetic tilts of the head in return. And 2. To take control. If I don't want to spend every evening out and about, don't. Don't make wall-to-wall plans unless I am willing to own them, to vigorously and dynamically embrace them.  Indulgently enjoy moments of pointless downtime. The point is that they're pointless. "The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightening strikes of inspiration", says Kreider so eloquently.

Now that the clocks have changed and its light when I leave the office, even at half past seven, I notice as I do every spring a palpable sense of difference - opportunity and optimism. Somehow idleness, time and inspiration all seem more abundant. And if the seasons can make my consciousness shift like this, I don't see why I can't shift it myself.

I love my life. I believe in the things in it. Simple as that.

This is why I am a Guide leader‏

There’s been a lot in the news recently about the Girl Guides. Our newly appointed CEO, Julie Bentley, has controversially proclaimed in a press release that Girlguiding UK is “the ultimate feminist organisation”. This has provoked a mixture of reactions, both from Guide leaders themselves, many of whom take it for granted that this is the case (whilst others seem inexplicably repelled by the label, as if it means we’ll be offering a Bra Burner badge any day soon), to the press, some of whom have published some frankly ignorant, lazy and offensive journalism on the subject that made my blood boil rather (this fluff piece from the Torygraph is the main offender, replete with a geeky-looking photo of a Guide that I can guarantee is at least 20 years out of date). And now there’s the promise consultation – the start of a process that may lead to some of the stuff about God and the Queen being taken out of the promise we all make as Guiding members – or at least reworded to make the promise more inclusive for atheists and republicans.

Unfortunately the image of Guiding as a tally-ho, middle class sort of institution is the one that is prevalent – as well as its rep amongst those ignorant of GGUK’s branding, messaging, PR and actual work as a bunch of gimpy God-squadders. The media persists in portraying us as a place where girls are sent to learn to be good housewives and mothers, doing nothing but sew and bake cakes, whilst wearing a pseudo-military get-up and parading around with flags, all of it with a vague implication of hairy-legged lesbianism perpetuated by seedy journos. I also sometimes hear women boast that they were Brownies, but got chucked out of Guides for being too naughty – as if Guiding was about trying to quash their free-spiritedness and individuality. When I wanted to join the Guides as a kid, my mum was worried that I would be indoctrinated into some kind of secty, old-fashioned dogma that would do just that.

As someone who spends an awful lot of time volunteering within Girlguiding, I find it difficult to reconcile these stereotypes with the work I do. Each week before Guides, I feel the burden of responsibility; I don’t want to run a session on domestic violence or challenge the girls to a Ready Steady Cook-a-thon – I can’t be bothered to teach them how to wire a plug because I’ve had a long day in the office and I want to go home and veg out in front of the telly and not think about anyone else’s needs. Then I get there, and experience the enthusiasm and vitality, surreal sense of humour and thoughtfulness of the girls – it cheers and refreshes me, and I remember what it’s all about.

What it’s not about is self-important trumpeting about God or housework or the monarchy. What it is about is getting girls to see that they are not ‘just girls’ – about counteracting the wimpy, simpering girliness that so shocks me when I see it in women of my own generation who think they need men to do DIY and light barbecues and get their Apple products to work. It’s about giving girls and the women they will become the confidence to realise they can do anything if they just put their minds to it – whether that’s getting up a climbing tower, surviving in sheets of unending British rain or becoming prime minister.

To do this, I think real girls need to be encouraged to be who they are, without being embarrassed or retiring about it, or feeling scrutinised or shouted over. That’s why, at least for now, Guides needs to be a girl-only space, without the presence of boys. I don’t believe in single sex schools, but I do believe in Guiding’s philosophy that a boy-free environment is essential to nurture girls and women with guts, and with fire in their bellies and passion in their convictions – girls and women who can use their intelligence to become something amazing.

The thing that motivates me to put in all this free work as a Guide leader is seeing this really happen in my Guides. The Guide age (between 10 and 14) is a crucial time in a woman’s life, and the transformation between a girl’s arrival at Guides fresh out of cute little Brownies to the end of her Guides career is remarkable. Possibly my favourite thing is camp. Camp is actually where we do the more traditional Guidey things (and I love the idea that even traditional within Guiding means feisty, physical outdoorsiness of the type described in How the Girl Guides Won the War) – pitching tents, making fires, grubbing around in the woods and getting thoroughly filthy.

The best thing about camp is that development process in action – seeing girls becoming strong and confident over a week and over the years they take part in camp. To start with, you ask them to bang in a wooden tent peg and they can’t hit it on the head, the peg flops around pathetically in the ground and is completely useless. After a few camps, they’re bashing it assertively on the head like it’s their worst enemy, confidently striding round the tent identifying weak spots where the rain might get in and efficiently dispatching the required peggage with gusto. A novice camper will flap disheartenedly at their groundsheet, unable to grip it or get all their bedding to stay inside it. After a week at camp, they’re wielding their authority over that bedding bundle, rolling an airtight package secured with sturdy rope that would survive a dip in a lake if we ever carried out our threat to test it. New Guides shy away from the wood fires we teach them to cook on; experienced Guides jostle over who gets to feed the fire, knowing instinctively the right balance between control over and respect for the flames.

The point is, they start to realise their strength and ability. They start to realise they can influence the world around them. The girl who flourishes in Guides knows her world is her dominion – she’ll shove her incompetent dad off the barbecue and she won’t let anyone push her around. She’ll assert her place in the world in a way that is confident but compassionate, assertive but sisterly; she’ll be equipped to be the best she can be.

And this is why, in my opinion, Girlguiding IS the ultimate feminist organisation – and this is why I am a Guide leader.

Weird dream no 5

I dreamt that all punctuation had been banned. There was a huge task to complete to remove every hyphen, inverted comma and apostrophe from all text everywhere. Missing something was a dangerous business and led to some serious reprimand by murky, invisible authority figures at the best. Editors were responsible for implementing this reign of punctuational terror, but removing the marks that signpost people's way through words was a heartbreaking endeavour for us.

Over time, tinker types would collect the unused punctuation marks and repurpose them into weapons. En dash daggers were a big thing on the post-apocalyptic black market. More sophisticated contraptions could be fashioned from semi-colons, with buttons and levers, but no-one used them for good - only to perpetrate acts of violence in an increasingly sinister state.

Words and people's faces became haggard and tired without the guiding principles of punctuation to show us the way through the opacity of language and our existences. Whispered factions reminisced about the golden days of the Oxford comma. We all lost a bit of our selves and the whole world lost hope.

The constant piling up of things

How much of our everyday is compiled of piles? Piles of bills to pay, piles of recipe cards never consulted, 'to do' piles in every corner, piles of versions of to do piles... Wodges of old log books and lost paper counterparts. A diary and real time stacked with appointments and engagements, a planned pile of timed commitments, of enthusiastic nodding and improvised inspirational talks. Allocated slots for pint-drinking and gin intake, mental schedules of things to do before work. A pile of this is who I am and a pile of self-importance.

I am gathering piles of materialism, iPhone notes of desired interior decor, Post It notes of taste piling up statements to the world about who I am through my aesthetic. Piles of dust gather on my piled-up jewellery, listlessly listing how much I like it but never wear it. A pile of existing somehow more in the world through stuff.

Acquisitively I pile up friends and acquaintances, we must do lunches and sorry I haven't been in touches. I cram my emotional space and make piles of memories recorded and forgotten. I pile on long squeezy hugs and unbridled kisses to a pile of people in closest proximity. A pile of the best stuff where none of the other shit really matters.

And as the years and the wrinkles and the grey hairs pile up, and the wisdom of piles somehow eludes me, somehow it surprises me that time passes and change happens; I look at a photo of myself at 21 and don't feel any different, despite the experiences and friends and things I knew once come and gone. And someone says "Bloody hell, you look so young, I don't even recognise you!", forgetting that beneath the palimpsest of piled up memories, possessions, diary slots and old flames, the fresh-faced Kate is still there, along with painfully introverted Kate, stick-her-hand-down-the-drain-cos-she's-no-girl Kate and vulgar Kate of pub fame.

She's there, being confident and revelling in the fact that she grew her fringe out and learnt to make jokes in public.

Prosaic thoughts interspersed with Lucy

Must get through these emails. Doing so will make me feel more in control of life, aware of my actions, able to prioritise the important tasks according to time urgency and overall importance. It seems a little bit like procrastinating sometimes but there’s some thing satisfying about responding, filing away, flagging and deleting: efficient, officious inbox reduction exercises. I will appear competent and caring.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

The cat is chasing her tail. She looks like a complete nutter. How they brighten up my life these little creatures, with their puzzled faces and their wide eyes, and their total dependence on you. With their mini personalities and their simple pleasedness. I adore them.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Why does that bloke in the office talk to people like that? He is a bundle of mocking laughter, aggressive criticism, macho lack of self-awareness. He writes emails that read like a stream of consciousness of a computer salesman throwback from Thatcher’s Eighties. He tries to make me laugh along with him at the inconceivable stupidity of everyone who worked here up til now. I want to punch him in the face.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Somebody has driven into the back of my car and written it off. The guy said straight away it was his fault, and you could see from one look at my vehicle that it was – the boot was all caved in and wouldn’t shut. Anyway he went into the back of me so it’s always going to be his fault. His insurance are giving me the value of my old car but if I get a new one now I don’t want an older one, so I’m going to be out of pocket even though it wasn’t my fault. I think I may have a bit of whiplash but I don’t believe in a claim-blame culture so I’m not going to try and screw him or anything. It’s just really inconvenient because I’m always so busy. I have to give the courtesy car back on Wednesday.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I went on a date with a bloke who told me “I fancy you but I don’t think we’ve got any chemistry”. He was right. I always thought they were the same thing but they’re not – there are plenty of people I’ve had amazing chemistry with, but never fancied them (which can get you into trouble if they’re a bloke). It made me realise that when you’re looking for a partner, you need three things – chemistry, attraction and timing (CAT!). How the hell do you find this?!

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I can’t stand food pansies – people who throw stuff out after it’s been out of the fridge for a couple of hours, or stick rigidly and naively to use-by dates. Somehow they’re removed from nature, they have a warped view of it. 

Lucy Bowen is dead.

Someone at work sent me some social media guidelines. One of them made me feel sad about the world: “Chat with 3 people you already know. This will help you maintain relationships and keep you top of mind.” I said @davidblowers thanks for the mention! #thisisallbullshit. I thought it was quite witty. I get Facebook for photos and people far away; I get blogs (obv), but Twitter is too self-absorbed and covered in irritating little symbols that look like maths equations. Not pretty.

Lucy Bowen is dead.

I went on Facebook, as I thought of my friend Lucy Bowen, who I went on my gap year with in Jordan in 1999. I knew she was very ill with lung cancer. We had been in touch again before Christmas when I found this out via Facebook. We’d both written each other long letters updating the other on what had happened in our lives since we’d last been in touch ten years ago. How our paths had differed so much, but because we both remembered what pivotal characters we were for each other when we were 18, in a very foreign country, and desperately homesick. I was shy and I had a fringe. Lucy was unbelievably cool and fabulous, confident, glossy-haired, full of herself and adored universally. I grew from being intimidated by this person with whom I didn’t deserve to be friends, from being a retiring shadow trying to get to grips with doing everything with this out-of-my-league surfer chick who wore Tevas, to being her partner in crime, and me being hers. I saw her flaws and fears and vulnerabilities played out in the stark, carpetless bedroom we shared.

We smoked shisha together on our balcony and watched the sprawling, dry city teem below us, with the call to prayer our soundtrack.

We made up stories about people’s lives based on the washing on their line on the roof.

We mopped the floor to the rhythm of Belle and Sebastian.

We went to English pubs underneath hotels and drank ourselves silly, stayed out all night then went into school next day wearing each other’s clothes so that we didn’t look like dirty stop-outs.

We got drunk on beer from the local shop, only to find it was non-alcoholic.

We got addicted to cheese puffs.

We read a Chekhov play to each other in our room. We dressed up as hippies. Every time I put on eyeliner now, I think of Lucy Bowen.

We saw King Hussein’s coffin processed through the streets. We were shocked by the intrusiveness of the foreign media. We met Queen Noor and the royal princesses to pay our respects, having stood in queue of Jordanian women that turned into a crush to get through a tiny door. Christian women and Muslim women chanted at each other angrily. A Bedouin woman with a tattoo on her face showed us a picture of herself with King Hussein.

The ex-pat rugby players chucked us into the swimming pool at the British Embassy. We hung out with the Red Arrows. We were the toast of the ex-pat clique. We looked like we were from an episode of Friends.

We shared tastes and strengths and weaknesses. I cried in the mornings when she was strong and she cried in the evenings when I was strong. We both said we were turning into each other. I grew my fringe out and became tanned.

I went to university and I was Lucy Bowen. I was confident, occasionally crude, cool, wise, popular, well dressed, attractive. Lucy went to university and made friends with a girl with a fringe. I went to visit and watched her rehearse Waiting for Godot under a tree.

I looked on Facebook to see how Lucy was. I found out she was dead.

My morning alarm goes off. I remember afresh that Lucy Bowen is dead.

I walk into a new room.

I remember afresh that Lucy Bowen is dead.

I can’t get my head round it at all.

The view from my eyes this morning

Through the French window, a white apple blossom is backdropped by vivid blue sky, reminiscent of some Japanese tableau. Signs of burgeoning spring are sprouting in the garden; clematis plants casting languishing shadows over the wall as delicious sunlight peppers the outside with its optimism. My fingers smell like eggy bread and music I love reverberates round my walls and the inside of my head. I sink into a crook I am nurturing in the new sofa and experience the curious effect of the blossom image coming to me through a distorting heat mirage, just as fresh, cold, crisp air cools my extremities and nose. I am a panther, or a sloth, or an animal without obligations, away from the emails planning timings perfectionist hum drum rat race corporate bullshit impression managing diarised responsibility fest.

A half hour to just exist, and not live.

Woking: another place, another life

Recently my mate Chappers posted a clip about my hometown, Woking, on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns4J0cpBLDo&sns=fb. Anyone who grew up in a provincial, culturally devoid backwater like Woking will no doubt recognise the jubilant ironic pride with which comedian Rufus Hound advertises modest little Woks as “a place the train goes through” and “where people who can’t afford a house with a garden in London come to rub shoulders with the thick”.

I often think about places and what they mean in the repertoire of locations that form the backdrop to your life. Do people who grew up in places with interesting landscapes – hills and coastlines and big rocks – have a different cognitive functioning to people who spent hours looking at vast expanses of East Anglian sky and flat lines? Which one stimulates the imagination more? What effect does landscape have on your aesthetic sense? How much is the place you became you still in you somewhere?

Although I adored the friends and family that were in my life in Woking, lots of my memories of that place centre around it being a bit of a dive. I spent an amazing gap year in the Middle East, mind being blown by the deafening silence of the desert, whose thick quietude reverberated in my consciousness, and discovering ornate temples and camels and sun-bleached palm trees. But actually, it wasn’t a gap year at all, but a gap six months – the first three of which I spent feeling horridly homesick for mundane Woking, for the dodgy village characters in the Hare and Hounds and the tidy domestication of the Peacocks Shopping Centre. And before I went to Amman, Jordan, I worked in Burger King, Woking for six months – a full-time till drone selling flame-grilled burgers and greasy fries to Woking’s tired shoppers, screaming brats and disillusioned office workers.

I realised during a recent conversation with my colleagues that my Burger King days were rather amusing. One of my managers was a scary lesbian with a mullet who had a bit of a soft spot for me, and would give me my choice of shifts (I didn’t work one Sunday the whole time I was there). On a busy day she’d pair up with me, putting the orders on the tray as I put them through the till and took the cash (I don’t think it was just her who called this set-up “backing”…). On one particularly cringe-worthy occasion, a customer asked for a blueberry muffin, which I will remember for the rest of my life cost 69p. This is because, just after I smilingly said to the customer “That’s 69p please!”, my manager leant over and whispered in my ear “That’s my favourite number”. I hope you are shuddering in horror just as I do every time I remember this.

Burger King was in fact one of the first times I felt professionally competent. It was my first paid job. I had to wear a baseball cap and two badges on each of my bosoms that said “GO LARGE FOR ONLY 30P” and “BIG KING: 100% EXTRA BEEF”. But I was also really good. It doesn’t seem like much to say, but actually learning where every menu item is on a huge till and pressing the keys in the right combination was surprisingly difficult (I had several restless, sweaty dreams about how to put through a chicken royale meal with extra cheese). Once I had this mastered, I was awesome. I felt like a robot, sliding around the tiled floor in fluid, mechanical movements, knowing exactly how far to stretch my arm to reach the coke button and which order to pick things up in to make the transaction fast and perfect. I was a stalwart of till 4 – the one in the middle that needed somebody efficient to clear the queue quickly. And even now I get annoyed when I go into a Burger King and they put the food on the tray in wrong order (drink first, and fries shouldn’t be placed on the tray until the burger is ready. Fries have a larger surface area than a burger so go cold more quickly. I’m serious).

It was also the first time I got loads of male attention. There were a couple a geeky blokes who came in every day and ordered the same thing for lunch. It got to the stage where they’d only let me serve them and I’d say “usual?” as if they were regulars in a pub with their own personal tankard. Then one of them gave me a teddy bear with his phone number written on the label! I even got chatted up by Father Christmas. He sent one of his elves in from his grotto (in the bandstand outside BK) with a card from him with a Polaroid of himself on the front, his beard pulled down and waving, with his number inside. Funny how desperate people assume you must be if you work full time in a fast-food place.

I also got a series of love letters in French from a Moroccan guy I befriended who worked in the kitchen (if you can call it that). They were beautifully written, which was a shame because I had no interest in him whatsoever.

How could someone with a reasonable brain get enjoyment out of such a job, I hear you ask? Well, it proved to me that if a job’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing properly, no matter how ‘beneath’ you it might seem. To me, there is no point in doing a bad job of anything. And doing a full-time job that involved scooping solid lumps of white lard from a metal trolley into a chip fryer, counting the number of wasted burgers each day from the bin, and dealing with customers who bring food back an hour and a half after buying it to complain that it is cold means that you get a proper sense of perspective about what you don’t want to do and where you don’t want to be. It allows you to passionately embrace all the wonderful things about life and relish your more prestigious successes. It reminds you that you don’t want to hang around outside the Firkin smoking weed or hear stories about people committing suicide by jumping off the Toys-R-Us multi-story car park.

Nonetheless, a few years and a first-class degree later, I took a temp job at NRS Direct Care, a company that delivered mobility equipment to disabled and elderly people in their homes. I think I thought I’d be living by my values and helping people. Little did I know that NRS was the most depressing, useless and negligent corner of the Sheerwater Business Park. The company was so bafflingly incompetent at providing a decent service to the most vulnerable people in our area that it made us all bad at our jobs. We’d bullshit and let people down at every turn. The only form of escape was Thursday nights out with colleagues in the eponymous Woking, getting shitfaced in whichever hideous club was popular that month (there aren’t enough people in Woking to keep more than one seedy after-hours joint going at a time). Then we’d all come into the office on Friday hungover to shit, and take turns napping on the Airwave mattress in the showroom downstairs (usually for people with severe bedsores).

Thankfully after six months of genuine stuck-in-a-ruttedness, I realised that this wasn’t ME, and got a job selling books in Waterstones. And Waterstones is in Guildford, a town I could passably associate myself with. A pleasing feeling of being surrounded by knowledge and enlightenment. A pretence that even though it was a retail job, existence could not be vacuous in a bookshop. Creeping away from the bleakness of small town Woking. Just like BK, NRS gave me the impulsion to do something else, to grab life and appreciate it – and that’s when I did my Masters degree, became a part-time editor, and the rest is history.

And now I live in Oxford. A place that feels intellectual and cultural and that I am so proud to call home. Even though I still sometimes call Woking “home”! You can take the girl out of Woking, but…?

So what is ‘home’ anyway? Just a concept of a place, and how you feel you belong or not to it. Not the solid walls and architecture and street furniture and bandstands and Ashmoleans. It’s the life you create for yourself and the things you do to make yourself feel fulfilled. It’s the prospect of a better life. It’s the hope that some day soon, you will do something great that will justify your parasitical existence on this earth. It’s your own imagining of home. It’s created by you.

Lantern moon over Port Meadow

I’ve just seen the Northern Lights. And I’m sorry to say, it was a bit shit. There were no Joanna Lumley moments (I will admit to never having seen whatever programme Joanna Lumley was in gasping in awe at the Aurora Borealis, but it does always seem to come up when I tell people I saw it). It didn’t look anything like the coloured swirls on Windows Media Player. I’ve just found a wallpaper for my laptop depicting this natural phenomenon in all its glory – one of those stunning, unreal images that can be held responsible for nature never looking quite as stunning as we hoped, as human eyes do not view the world through filters and PhotoShop. It didn’t look like that either.

We searched for the Lights on two occasions during our (brilliant) trip to Iceland. Two coachloads of hyped-up tourists trailing around darkened scenery, imagining what the snowy hills must be like in the light, and stealing frequent, improbably hopeful glances up at the sky every few seconds. Coiffed 18-30s Aussies in North Face rubbed shoulders with Bob and Carol from Bognor, and the Tripod Brigade carted their expensive equipment around seriously. The first night’s light-seeking was unsuccessful, and we spent all evening stood in a layby in sub-zero temperatures, walking round and round the coach making up songs and male alter-egos and ideas for Backstreet’s Back flashmobs.

Attempt no 2 seemed more promising, and we headed out this time much further from the light pollution of Reykjavik and the seaside towns, towards Þingvellir National Park. Here we were greeted by stunning moon-on-snow blueness, a clear and expansive view of all the Northern hemisphere’s constellations, and the jagged rift caused by the epic leg-spreading of the American and European tectonic plates that Iceland straddles. This seemed the perfect setting for the aurora to put on its show – to curl and swirl gracefully across the pristine black canvas of the sky.

But alas, it was not to be. The crestfallen tripodists hoiked their equipment back into the coach and the Aussies reprised their analysis of the previous evening’s piss-up. Then, just as we thought all was lost, the driver swerved into a side road and we disembarked, blinking dazedly at the sky that was being pointed out enthusiastically before us.

I resisted a strong urge to yell “Is that IT?!” when I finally was able to make out the greyey-greenish smudges that were The Northern Lights, figment of imaginations, legend of literature and folklore. They built up in the sky so gently you could almost be imagining them into existence; they could easily be mistaken for clouds if you didn’t know what they were. The worst thing was, they moved and swished a bit in what would have been quite a cool way, had it not been for the mawkish, gaspingly exaggerated exclamations of the coach trippers. “WOW. It was soooo worth it wasn’t it?!” I heard Carol exclaim to Bob. “NOT REALLY!!” I wanted to yell into her completely deluded face. You can tell yourself that, that it wasn’t a waste of time and that you couldn’t have been having a delicious meal out in the city instead, that your feet being fully numb is a good return on investment once you have borne witness to this greyish smudge in the midnight sky. You can tell yourself that.

And the Tripod Brigade came out in full force, excitedly erecting their equipment and pointing it paparazzi style at the modest site ahead. Everyone started pushing and shoving and flapping around like flies round shit, as camera flashes did their utmost to fade out the waning view of the lights. I don’t know much about photography (or about a science book, or the French I took – okay scrub that last one), but surely pointing a flash at a black sky hoping to capture an ethereal, non-physical light phenomenon is not a winner? Haughtily annoyed by the almost tangibly self-aware delusion of the other tourists, I retreated out of minus 12 into the coach with a bah and a humbug.

A few weeks ago we took the Guides out onto Port Meadow in the dark. It was cold and misty, the kind of night where you can imagine a be-cloaked highwayman appearing out of nowhere and demanding that you part with your most treasured sapphire necklace. Icy swans floated across creepy-looking lakes formed from flooding either side of the footpath, and the edges of the meadow stretched out into the darkness with Haywain-esque charm. In the distance, the city shimmered and hummed, electric lights blinking magically through the night haze, and an eerie orangeness hued the girls’ faces as they scurried about excitedly. Then suddenly, I noticed a huge, round, yellow lantern balanced on the top of a house to the edge of the field. It looked completely unreal, like a paper lamp imported from an eighties kid’s TV programme with puppets. It took me a few seconds to realise that it was the moon, standing over us and radiating close-up magnificence.

As the heated coach transported us back to the Hotel Björk, I chortled at how much more beautiful I had found that Port Meadow scene than the famous aurora borealis, and realised that unexpected beauty right on your doorstep is much more memorable than beauty you hunt down and dull because you’ve treated it like a celebrity being hounded by Heat magazine.

Weird dream no 4

There were zombies. Lots of them. A dream very obviously inspired by Sunday evening's episode of Misfits. Except in my version, instead of having to thwack them over the head with a cricket bat in order to smash their brains in and stop them eliminating humankind, you had to placate them with one of three zombie solutions: intellectual stimulation, high amusement or death (no 3 being the conventional method of zombie dispatch I suppose).

So in some very odd fitful moments between wake and sleep, I found my imaginary dream self performing stand-up routines and pontificating on the meaning of life in front of a bunch of sceptical zombies, teetering on a knife-edge between succeeding in the demanding task of keeping them entertained and failing to amuse them, which would result in a blood-curdling fight to the death (theirs or mine). I'm not sure the narrative ever got as far as this violence, but the promise of it in return for a lacklustre performance was enough to make me wake up feeling highly unsettled, like I hadn't really been asleep at all.

Why I can’t stop watching ‘Made in Chelsea’

We have developed a bad habit in our house: watching shit TV programmes that should not be condescended with a look through one of your eyes, let alone both of them. Anyone who has lived with me before will know what a snob I am about these things; I shrink from Big Brother and its shrill shoutiness, am too busy having fun on a Saturday night to be watching manufactured pop crap on X-Factor, and am proud that only one copy of Heat magazine has ever made it into my house (and obviously I didn’t buy it). Predictably for a middle-class left-wing educated girl from Surrey, I think most reality TV et al is a load of vacuous corporate bullshit that only serves to fuel the meaningless cult of celebrity and downgrade the quotient of genuinely edifying culture.

Happily, I also took no enjoyment from any of the above vacuous shit, meaning that I never felt like I was missing out on anything, edifying or not. But now I appear to have succumbed to that now-clichéd idea of a guilty pleasure. The quite unbelievably awful ‘Made in Chelsea’.

This Guardian article sums up my reaction to the programme more eloquently than I could: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/may/07/grace-dent-tv-od-made-in-chelsea?INTCMP=SRCH. On a basic level, it’s a pretty standard response to really really posh rich 20-somethings swanning around Chelsea being twats, in “structured reality soap” format (read: people who can’t act acting like they are not acting). But what is it about this most exaggerated example of awfulness that makes me keep tuning in?

It’s so bad it’s captivating – you can’t quite believe anyone would be so lacking in self-respect to be part of it (participants and programme-makers – and me??). The worst thing about it is the fact that it is the pure embodiment of the word “stilted”. Whilst I realise that it is not designed to be a documentary, but rather sets out to be a crude rendering of a type of person you love to hate and who can’t possibly exist in the real world, I can’t help myself: I’m sucked into wallowing in the feelings of self-righteous indignation that the programme-makers have deliberately fostered in me by portraying the dickish antics of people with impossibly Etonian names.

Rarely does this wilful submission to being manipulated by a programme-maker jar on me quite so much… I wonder what their ulterior motive is… I know that when I watch True Blood I am a bit turned on and intrigued by the relationships, just as the writers want; but I can’t stand the idea that with this could-it-be-real-really grotesqueness someone is deliberately playing to my own stereotypes and disgust. I don’t like reacting in the way someone expects so predictably. You are supposed to hate the vacuous characters and pity their small-minded, shit-for-brains life – that’s the whole point. So if that’s the point, feeling outraged by them is a meaningless act and is just one-dimensional – you’re just playing into someone’s hands, which is tantamount to being told what to do – or even what to think (horror of horrors).

Also, it’s interesting(?) to see the in-built artifice of it all – the awkwardly long silent stares, contrived pouting and flouncing. It’s almost as if they’re trying to make some awfully clever comment on the form itself – a postmodern trick that forces you to confront the artifice of all forms of entertainment by slapping you in the face with it. This is the only way I can see someone wanting to make such a programme, because they can’t just be stupidly admiring and capturing these people.

So how real are the people? Maybe it’s the blurred line between real and fake that keeps me engrossed. It’s more comfortable to think that what you’re participating in by watching is layer upon layer of self-reflexive irony. But actually, it’s more likely that by watching these affected caricatures, who think they are better than everyone else, ponce about on your screen, you gain a sense of enjoyment and validation from knowing that you are more intelligent and self-aware than they are – better than them.

Cunningly, this turns back on you all the things you purport to hate about them. Neat.

PS Oh Lord, I have just read this quite sincere-sounding article by Made in Chelsea's creator: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2011-09-19/made-in-chelsea-they're-not-fakes. In the RADIO TIMES. There is no hope for any of us.

Self-righteous arse

Yesterday I stumbled upon this email (at the end), which I sent to all staff in 2008. What has become of this impassioned, outraged, inappropriate individual? I wondered if I would do such a thing these days. I think I thought I was funny and that that would excuse me from being dubbed The Green Nazi. Or I didn't care what people thought about me, because I cared about my cause more.

I know we are supposed to become less radical as we get older, but aren't we also supposed to develop into higher functioning versions of ourselves, ones who might be able to aspire towards living out our values in a healthy, productive kind of way? I feel a bit like I have lost sight of some of mine - have contented myself with being a good person on some fronts, and working hard at those... but then what happens to those beliefs that provoked such strident militancy in the past? Somehow I still think they are vitally important, but in a vague, sign-an-online petition, make-a-monthly-donation-to-charity kind of way.

Another thing that strikes me hugely reading the below is the idea of self-concept. That person's idea of herself had environmental values running as a definitive streak through her middle, like a stick of rock. What's the value that defines me now? As I type this I know what it is: it's people. But in a much less abstract sense than the notion that we need to save the planet for the sake of the people living on it, now and in the future (which I still believe by the way). It's a more concrete sense, of being someone who is warm and generous to all people she comes into contact with.

And in that I feel steadfast. I hear myself say "community" a lot. I adore having people round and cooking for them and being hospitable and lending them stuff and being a shoulder to cry on and the person you call when you've fallen over and need frozen peas from the shop. I love thinking of presents and throwing myself into celebrations and writing long newsy letters and not going home until the bitter end. It's almost like I have become more eager to please others - and that's why I wouldn't send the thing below nowadays. It must have pissed everyone off.

But, but... which one's the person I want to be? How, over the course of my life, can I fuse together the person I was born as and the person I aspire to becoming? For all of those of us in our thirties: this is our time! This is my rallying cry: now is the time to become that person you imagined you would be! The one who looks at an empty field and sees it teeming with life and poetry. Scary stuff but if we don't do it, nobody will do it for us.

And I know that always, my friends and family will be there to share it, scoffing food and laughing in pools of ambient light.

From: Kate Parrinder
Sent: 03 September 2008 16:07
To: _Client Support; _Consultancy Operations; _European Offices; _Finance; _Innovation and Publishing; _Learning Design and Delivery Team; _Legal & Company Secretarial; _Marketing; _IT Dept; _HR; _Learning Operations
Subject: Have you turned off your monitor?!

DID YOU KNOW that almost a third of UK office workers frequently leave their PCs running overnight or over the weekend when they go home, resulting in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions equivalent to the output of 120,000 4x4 cars (source: Energy Saving Trust)?

TURN OFF YOUR MONITOR before you leave – it’s not hard, it won’t give you RSI in your index finger, and quite frankly it GETS ON MY NERVES when I walk round your empty offices and see your screens flashing with their incriminating little orange lights, spewing increments of unnecessary energy into nothing in a chorus of wastefulness. You have to shut down your computer AND turn the screen off separately.

Thank you kindly,

Kate

Kate Parrinder

Project Editor

Weird dream no 3

I turned the heating on for the first time last night. The retained warmth this brought to the flimsy walls of my house was probably limited but nonetheless precluded the need for the double duvet arrangement I had nested on my bed and the wearing of thermal underwear whilst asleep. Instead of being cocooned in the weighty warmth of princess-and-the-pea-style layers, I was sweaty and fretty and the smell of burnt toast pervaded my nostrils – effects that probably conspired to produce the latest foray into imaginative weirdness that my brain had to offer.

I think I gave birth in this dream to a little gremlin figure – a twisted, gnarly-looking assembly of reddish limbs reminiscent of early photos of me as a newborn. Then somehow the little creature, still recognizable as a human lifeform, did some kind of undefined body swap with a shrunken version of a human adult. The fact of what had happened did not dawn on me at first, and I was quietly freaked out by the sudden animation of my offspring as it detailed articulately for me all of the physical miseries of inhabiting this undeveloped body, the inhuman indignity of not being able to control its own bodily functions, or walk about. Trapped in its very own infantile locked-in syndrome, the anguished soul seemed to embody the very essence of the human condition.

As I realised that the sci-fi-inspired body swap had occurred and found the explanation for my weird-out, there was the vague feeling that in the corner of the room, the husk of this adult was writhing, occupied with the ill-formed soul of my baby.

And before you ask, no I am not pregnant.

The inconsolable feeling of loss that comes with a momentarily defunct brain

On a hazy Saturday morning, when the promise of rain hung in the air and the fact of the weekend put a spring in my step, I set off for my parents' house jauntily carrying my carefully put together peasant salad and revelling in all things clean and middle class. I knew my timings were optimistic at best, but still didn't realistically think I was going to be actual late. As the seconds and minutes reeled away I filled up the car with family party paraphanalia in the same methodical, robotic way I used to serve up milkshakes at Burger King, ticking things off lists mental and paper-based and peering through the window to will the sun to come back out, holding on to my weekend morning.

As the minutes grew into half hours the truth of my lateness began to truly dawn on me, and it is that realisation that I think has the capacity to turn a person from a rational, laid back human being to a hysterical, swearing wreck. It starts with the jittery anxiety (the clock hand moving on relentlessly, ticking away the minutes of freedom and turning them into a slow march towards your inevitable death), the lists turning into roll calls of the people you are letting down by your incompetence, the slow creeping of self-loathing gradually enveloping you. But it's still salvagable, just get the hell on with it and get out of the front door and all of the perfectionist car packing will not matter. Panic starts to set in though - surely you can't have brought everything? You always leave something behind, everyone knows you have a reputation for leaving important medication and phones and little trails of kirby grips behind you, must have forgotten phone, where is it?? Can't see it, look upstairs, ring the bugger, oh no there it is in the bag the whole time! Panic over, now I just need to get the car keys and drive off.

Keys. Where are the keys? Not here, not there, not in any of the usual places, places I put things because I know I lose them, places that can be relied upon to prevent this inane mindlessness about personal belongings having any real impact. Places that are defaults in the everyday autopilot of opening and closing doors, making things safe and making things move. They must be here somewhere, this is ridiculous! I had them in my hand literally a few seconds before. Already late, the creeping feeling comes back, the panic and the self-loathing escalating into a furious, door-banging rage that erupts out via venomous invectives of irrational self-flagellation. At this moment there is no-one I hate more than myself, my incompetent, sham of a person, going through the world masquerading as a plausible adult who can lock and unlock things. Layer upon layer of disbelief, retracing of steps and maniacal emptying of bags and drawers comes to nothing and the anger piques me and reaches its horrifying crescendo as a whack myself on the head trying to reboot the fucking hideous shell of a brain that appears to be resident in my useless skull.

Thank goodness for Tim, who finds the keys in an innocuous paper bag containing a birthday present for my mum, ingeniously hidden away inside the car. Embarrassed and still shaking, I thank him shamefacedly and start the engine, a burnt-out shell of a brain in charge of one-and-a-half tonnes of moving metal.

Wordle of the blog so far!

Friday night in the pub

Any Friday, 5.30pm: you’ve crossed off the last thing on your oh-so-anally-retentive to-do list; the orifice is already a deserted place, the buzz of bullshit conversation, macho corporate posturing and echoing ringtones pleasingly absent as the laptop-wielding sentries have left their posts and you can finally breeze through the tasks that involve headspace and quiet; those with families return to their identities as fun-loving parents, shedding their veils of colleague-ness as they whizz away down the M40 towards the weekend. And with others, the parting greeting is “See you in a bit”, not “Have a lovely weekend”.

Ideally within this tableau the sun is shining unguardedly and the pub invites you to sup a crisp cool pint to cut through the muggy oppressiveness of your officey existence. But it’s not the setting or the drinks that spark the little bit of excitement about Friday night boozing. It’s the mouth-watering anticipation of being free, relaxed, unguarded, witty and unprofessional. The exhilarating contrast between your sober assertions of competence in the workplace and your revelation of who you really are in the magical realm of the pub.

Sometimes I wonder what it is about being a bit drunk that I like so much. Why I and people I know aspire to getting shitfaced and why those stories of drunken idiocy are the funniest of all. Is it our culture influencing us relentlessly, outside what it really feels like to be pissed? Society that dictates that it is cool and fun and invites us to talk about it, every time ignoring the inevitable hangover that will ensue? Some kind of strange machismo of youth that says drinking makes you strong and belong? Maybe that’s what makes you start it, but I’m old enough now to realise that I wouldn’t carry on doing it if it wasn’t enjoyable – and Friday night in the pub really typifies what is most enjoyable about it.

Starting out with relief at the fact of Friday, and the catharsis of saying what you really mean about the day’s events, the cool beery nectar loosens your tongue and your energy is released again. Sparking off your friends you set out to shock them with frankness and tickle them with vulgarity. Laughter erupts and the volume increases, and the whole thing becomes entrancing and addictive. The beer garden is covered with an energetic duvet of Friday flirtiness and excited conversation, until the surface is pierced by one overly drunken individual who likes the sound of his own voice a bit too much. Apart from that guy we all become more likeable and full of beans.

Some slip off early and return to families and boyfriends and bed, and I can’t help thinking they are missing out on being part of the witching hour, the time of night when only the hard core are left, those that amuse each other the most. We become fond and everyone goes back to mine, anxious to spend more time in the company of people they like so much. It’s smily and silly and it makes me feel warm and cushioned and I suppose it’s what it’s all about really. People and laughter.

Weird dream no 2

First I dreamt that I was sitting at my desk at work, and a helicopter silently, calmly crashed through the ceiling, killing all of my colleagues - not violently or gruesomely, they kind of just went to sleep. I went into a panic and ran downstairs to tell IT (?!), but after ascertaining that my issue was not IT-related and that I did not have an issue number for it, they proceeded to ignore me and continue tapping away at their keyboards.

Then last night I dreamt that I was on board a big jet, like a 747; in the hold there were tubes that appeared to be filled with empty air, but I knew that they in fact held the conceptual, abstract Truth. There was some scrabble to access the hold, and a feeling of disappointment, before the whole structure came crashing down and I was no longer a passenger but a bystander, watching the smoke curling out of the broken wreckage.

I suppose these dreams are not so much weird but obvious allegories of a confused state of mind that feels a little out of control.