I will hopefully soon be moving to www.standingonthebrink.co.uk which a friend just found for me. There are some Complicated Things I have to do (or rather, get said friend to do) first in order to organise the move, but yes, I has a piece of the internets and it’s All Mine. I’ll keep you posted.
Oh, meanwhile, this diagram was found by the same friend on a blog that he reads. I don’t like the blog but the diagram is wonderful. Slightly XKCD, methinks.
Hello, and sorry about recent absence. Thanks to the brilliant scheduling tool I feel like I’ve been away longer than I have.
Anyway, my laptop is currently getting fixed and I won’t have it for a few days, possibly upwards of a week. Very inconvenient, but that is the way it is. Furthermore I’ll not necessarily be in Uni Town because I may be going to visit P (I hope). This all depends on the successfulness of the jobhunt and possible ensuing chaos.
I seem to have a million things to do and very little time in which to do them, and despite the brilliance of my Filofax I still can’t seem to get my head around everything that may or may not have to happen, how my stuff is going to make its way back to Uni Town, or when I’m meant to be where. Today I am going up to Uni Town with the cello and minimal other stuff and possibly my mother; with the hope that heavy stuff will follow in the car within the next few weeks.
There, an exciting entry for all of yers. Now…packing. Oh, hell.
Incidentally I am nervous about going back. This is ridiculous. I am going back to a city I love, to a house filled with people I love, to friends and places familiar and wonderful. I am still doing the same course, I am looking forward to getting a job and joining the orchestra and the choir and getting out in the Peaks and so many millions of things, but as ever I’m a nervous wreck. I hate packing, I’m convinced it’s all going to go hideously wrong, and yes, I’m nervous. Wish me luck.
Reading Marcus’s recent blog entry, which you can find here, I had a few thoughts, which are actually not really any different from wot ‘e said, but nonetheless I’m going to shout them at you all because I am truly wonderful like that. Or not.
So, England. In reference to various local shows and such, or the whole folk festival thing, and as usual the fact that it’s summer turning to autumn and everything is just beautiful – I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot of late. Not, as Marcus said, the whole ‘bloody forriners and immigrants stealing all our jobs’ flag-waving BNP false nostalgia politicised insanity thing, but literally, an appreciation for a time when most of us lived in the countryside rather than the city, a love for how bloody beautiful this country is, honestly, look out of your window, drive out of your city, get into the Peaks or the South Downs or Dorset or Devon or the Fens and tell me this isn’t heartbreakingly beautiful, rain or shine, dark or light.
And the whole thing. The traditions, the Sunday roast thing, the fairs and the markets and the regional accents and the superstitions and the characteristics which define us as a group of people (not always necessarily positive but ours nonetheless), the strange regional surnames and foods and things, the weather, terribly English manners, all of it. The kinds of women that still run the fete, man the choir stalls, do the flowers at Church, set up choirs and orchestras and amateur dramatics and local music festivals in town halls, that invite underpriveleged city children to their country piles because everyone needs a holiday from time to time. Plums and damsons and oh! Jam! made from all these things. Blackberries. The smallest, newest allotment potatoes. It’s all still there, England, the way we idealise it, at least in bits: the carol service I go to every year (and no I am not going to tell you about it, it’s too special, I don’t want all of you showing up and ruining it for me). Get on a train or a bus to anywhere and just look out the window, seriously. I love this country, always have, and yes, I’m a dirty Guardian-reading liberal, but I want my flag back, I want to be able to call myself a patriot, and mean only good things by that.
And The Collapse. In other words, what happens when the world ends? Some kind of environmental crisis. All the bees die, the world heats up too much, we run out of oil, and suddenly, that’s it, civilisation is over, and only a smattering of survivors pick through the ruins. This idea terrifies me. I partly want to be there to see how I’d cope, but in the main I am terrified, and I want no part in it except to try and stop that from happening. And stop it won’t. Here is George Monbiot debating with Paul Kingsnorth on the matter. One way or another, things are going to change, and it will be change for the worse.
What really, really scares me, and what makes me feel pre-emptively pretty guilty, is actually the idea that one day I’ll have children, and first of all, I’m bringing them into a world that is ending, and secondly, what if they live to see that end? Either way it’s not much to give them, is it – a world in chaos, or a world that has collapsed altogether? How can I possibly live with myself bringing children into such a world? But of course I’m a human being, it’s the genetic imperative, and the idea that the world might end in their lifetime somehow makes that even stronger – I want to have children who, as adults, will make it through, will start to build a new civilisation, and who will hopefully do it far better than our ancestors managed.
Better still I’d rather that they didn’t have to do any of those things, that they would grow up to go to nice schools ,wear nice clothes, have nice bicycles, eat tea and teacakes, play football, do ballet, ride horses, learn to grow things they can eat, and cook the things they grow, and bring their own children up in time playing cricket and listening to the songs you only really hear now in village halls on a Monday evening lisped out by six-year-olds, ancient songs of love and longing and journeys and deaths and lives, I imagine them singing those songs at parties at dusk with a bonfire and good ale, a simpler, more sustainable life; I want the world to be somehow sorted out for them so that they live in a way that can be kept going for centuries, that is beautiful.
Oh hell, I’m emotional today. Apologies.
Hello you. I know you’re going to read this soon, at least, so you say, so hello. I’m terrified you won’t like what you say, you’ll think I say too much, that I’m too outspoken, I don’t know. I’ve just re-read a few of my more recent entries, and actually, it’s not as if I talk about you or us all that much, so actually that’s fine. I just panicked when you said you were planning on getting around to reading it one of these days and I suddenly thought, but I talk about you practically every other entry. And actually that isn’t true, as such. You may get mentioned, like anyone I regularly encounter, but I’m not crazy, and I don’t go splashing things around the internet which are about us and no-one else, it’s neither right nor fair.
So, welcome to my blog. Wanting you to respect my intelligence and awareness and interestingness and individuality and such, it suddenly strikes me that nothing I say here is that interesting, partly because out loud I’ve said so much of it before and partly because I’m just not the most original of people (I know that partly bewrays my surprisingly low self-esteem, and I hope that lack of self-esteem never seems like an insult to you, it makes all the difference in the world that you see in me the things I don’t necessarily see myself. Just thought I’d throw that in now just for a scary moment of visceral honesty, and yes, I do mean ‘visceral’. And anyway, sometimes I believe I am all the things I sometimes believe I’m not. I think I just devised a sort of verbal pseudo-Mobius strip there). Anyway clearly I have some confidence in myself otherwise this blog would never have been set up, and ditto many things in my life. The other thing I wanted to say out loud was that no, you’re right, you’re not like other guys, and I love that. I love the respect you show me and our relationship, I love that you stand up for me, I love your strong and decent sense of what is right and what is proper. All that and intelligent and funny and interesting and good-looking too. So, since I’m usually pretty honest with you and on here, of course I wonder, why me. But I also learnt today that, well, most people wonder why their partner chose them of all people.
And hell, I’m interesting and funny and clever and gorgeous too. Shame that I’m just a bit more articulate on screen than I am to your face, because if I haven’t said all or most of this before I probably meant to do so. I particularly like the phrase ‘verbal pseudo-Mobius strip’ but that’s not usually relevant.
CVs have been sent out everywhere. The Great CV Spamming Mission continues when I go back to Uni Town. And then I merely wait, and hope, and pray. Without a job to occupy me and support me in all manner of ways, this year will be truly awful, because I simply won’t have the money to do all the things which, right now, seem crucial to my happiness and such. And I would like to work. I’ll enjoy it. And, I think, I’m good at it. I’ll be more organised and more responsible and more grown-up and this year could be just what the doctor ordered if it all turns out OK. Let’s hope.
Promise – soon I’ll write something genuinely worth reading, rather than all this angsty drivel and planning and such. This currently reads like a cross between my Filofax and my journal; you’ll know it’s bad when my packing list appears up here cross-referenced with What I Have Eaten Today And How I Feel in another parallel itemised list. Look forward to it.
Oh, yes, and talking of eating, well, apparently I am Completely Mad and perfectly slender, but I just feel guilty for eating, for not eating, for drinking, for worrying you all, for hating the body people tell me I should love, but that’s just how it is. I shouldn’t still be thinking like this at the grand old age of 20.
Now for that packing list… .
From Towersey. Image by Tasha Cartwright and all credit and such is due to her, so please don’t go stealing it nor nuffink, OK? Enjoy.
…don’t know where I stand on anything today.
…have a million things to get done.
…really don’t know how I’m going to get everything sorted in time for the year to start.
…haven’t a clue how all my belongings are getting to Uni-Town.
…have just discovered that my father reads my blog.
…don’t know how I feel about this.
…am kind of complimented by him on my writing style, ‘but you shouldn’t write so often or get so angry about the university, Jenny, someone will see’.
…think he could be right.
…have been encouraged to wonder about going into some kind of scientific journalism.
…simply no longer have the time left in my life to become a wife, mother and doctor.
…have to sacrifice the doctor dream once and for all, probably.
…don’t know how I feel about this yet.
…am confused by my own moral compass.
…am confusing my moral compass.
…am utterly unsure of myself and my body and my mind and my soul sometimes.
…am in a really peculiar mood today.
I am.
…I am visiting my grandmother. I am probably redrafting my CV. I am hoping the weather stays good and that we get out in it. I am hoping for damsons. I want to make jam at some point. I am hoping to see P. I am hopeful in general. I am planning on drinking lots of tea, and having a wonderful, relaxing time, possibly doing some knitting. I am enjoying the autumn, and the freedom, and ignoring the fact that if I get a job I won’t be able to take much in the way of holiday, so Christmas could get interesting. I want to be home to see people, but I don’t want to take too much of my holiday so that I still have plenty to take in the summer, so that I can still come home for weekends and odd days and the occasional edition of the pub quiz whenever I want to. I am hoping. I am planning. I am enjoying, I am relaxing, and I am waiting. I am wondering. I am praying. And I am moving on. I am not stopping, because if I stop I might forget how to breathe.
Have spent most of the morning cooped up in the study with my father and both of us phoning what seemed at times like every staff member at the university. Spoke in the end to my head of year, twice, a lovely man named M, who made it clear that without a decent record of more recent extenuating circumstances I have no right to resit before the second years go back and thus that I have to go back into first year as a part time student and retake these modules over the course of the year. So the plan is now to get a part time job and meanwhile to go to all the lectures for these modules and bloody ace them. This also means that I’ll be in lectures with freshers fully two years younger than me and they’re bound to be all squeaky clean and annoying but never mind, I have other friends, it’s all OK. And then I’ll be thrown back into the fray, into second year, assuming I pass this time round, and suddenly have four times as much work to do in 2010/11 as I will in 2009/10 but hopefully I can deal with that.
Now to register for these courses and write a CV. Perhaps this year will be good for me.
Doesn’t mean I like it, though.
Well, actually, I don’t have a clue where I’m going, or who’s going with me, who I love or not is a little irrelevent, and nor do I have a clue who I’ll marry, so the old song is a not terribly pertinent, but very pretty if you know it. Sadly I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s an Irish folk song and rather wonderful.
Anyway. Tonight I am going to a party in the middle of nowhere, a beautiful house, all rambling gables and tree-surrounded leafy huge garden, and then leaving terribly early having not drunk a drop and having also done some fire poi. I am then going home on the train and will be arriving home horribly late – take a book and hold on tight to your bag, think I. Then tomorrow I am ringing my tutor to Discuss My Options, and possibly then going up to Uni Town to Discuss My Options Further.
I was rather looking forward to my last few days at home, sadly – I would have passed all those exams and, stress-free, would have spent the time with P and his friends relaxing, there would have been a reasonable amount of beer and pubbing and sunshine and autumn and things. I was going to have a fire evening, it was going to be beautiful. Then I was hoping to go and say with P in P’s Uni Town Elsewhere which would have been wonderful – several long days together with no responsibilities and no reason to get up or go to bed early or late or anything, a chance to experience a whole new city, and a lot of fun, really, before going back to my Uni Town for the new year; now it half looks like I’ll be in Uni Town or Home Town and I’ll have a million things to sort out and it’s all going to be rather stressful. It’s not that I don’t deserve it, I do, entirely, I’ll admit that. I was ill, yes, but I’m also lazy and arrogant.
Right now I just want to curl up in P’s arms and forget about all of this just for a little while.
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