Random #62
Added at 6:02pm and filed under Random Thoughts
I got ‘sssshed’ by my boss today at a conference. (Halfway through I think he thought better of it and tried to turn it into a sigh but as someone who’s been ‘ssshed’ by many people in a variety of ways throughout a long and talkative life, I know the difference.) I made no apology. My colleague had just informed me that he was so cold he felt like “fucking Pingu“. I mean, really, how often to you hear the word ‘Pingu’ when sat in a room full of a hundred education managers and their staff? Not fucking many, I promise you.
[Edit:] Hmmm. I’m not certain, but I don’t think that he was referring to actually physically fucking Pingu but was instead using a similie to equate how cold he was. At least I hope so. If he was talking about having sex with a penguin, I’m slightly concerned. Am I getting old and unadventurous in my old age? Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never had that urge.
V xx
Comments: (7)
The Day I Was Low-Brow Trash and Finally Didn’t Care
Added at 8:47pm and filed under Offline, Random Thoughts
There was a time when I was actually kind of embarrassed that I read horror books. Okay, so that admission isn’t as bad as admitting to reading contemporary romance – and yes, I read those, too – but as I was never the oh-so-stereotypical teenage girl who shopped and partied and went on dates, I was so terrified of being ostracised further that I fought to conceal anything about me that would further label me as ‘different’. An original Generation Xer sinking in a sea of grunge and apathy, a love of romance and fantasy would have done nothing to further secure my sensitive teenage soul a boyfriend.
My love of books and writing fiction were the first casualties of my desire to fit in. Music came next. (I remember dropping my Walkman once in the Woodwork room and being ridiculed mercilessly when Pink Floyd’s The Wall fall out onto the sawdust. Oh, how I want to wrap my arms around my thirteen-year-old self and tell her how COOL that actually was!) I used to think that it wouldn’t be so bad if I loved to read Milton or Keats or fucking Shakespeare; at least they were so un-cool that they were kinda interesting. Horror and romance were – and still are – the poor cousins of the literary world and I know of some critics who’d rather wipe their arses with the latest Jane Green than pull their heads out of said arses long enough to read it.
Add to that my love of writing contemporary romance and a subsequent and unexpected passion for the online world, you can see my dilemma. Let’s face it: I was and still am a fucking freak. I blame growing up in a house of game and gadget crazy men for the latter and my mother for the rest . . . Ah, I kid, I kid! I blame no-one. Now. I did for a long time – who chooses to be different? – but now I’m finally comfortable with who I am and stopped being ashamed of my geeky self a little while back. My Dad and brother still tease (poor M’s made his unhappy peace with it) but I think it’s now with love rather than malice.
Still, I always feel vaguely trashy when I pull out a horror book in the staffroom. Uneducated. Low brow. And that’s usually better than when I pull out Nick Hornby or Marian Keyes.
But do you know what it is that I love about these books? They’re about life. And relationships and connections and love – yes, even the horror books. Just look at King; everything he writes about is driven by love and need and want. He writes about people at their core, their innermost desires and fears. His stories are driven by his characters and what they do, what they say, how they react. In short, they’re about people. As a complete and obsessive spectator of the species, is it any wonder that I’m drawn to novels that focus so on how people affect and effect the world around them?
V xx
p.s. Has anyone read ‘Cell’ yet? Finished it on the weekend. The story had me gripped from the offset and I deavoured it as quickly as I could, but I felt the characters strangely (and ironically, considering this post) lacking. Anyone else feel the same?
Comments: (15)
The Day It Was Sunday Already
Added at 4:43pm and filed under Oh Mama
Jesus. Is it Sunday evening already?
Honestly, I have no idea where the days go. It’s the end of fucking March: where did February and January go? I hate typing stuff like this as it always makes me feel – and sound – incredibly old, but it’s true. My life is wasting away and the older I get, the faster it’s dripping away. Fuck me, that’s depressing. If I keep thinking stuff like this as a hurtle towards that big Three-Oh I’m going to be hanging from a rafter way before my birthday hits.
Anyway.
As always, my weekend was busier than my entire working week combined. Yesterday I finished off some work for two clients (and got paid – yay), then this morning I spent about two hours at SHHF going through my PMs, deleting the old and replying to the new, then sorted out the email accounts for my uber lovely SHHF subscribers. Then I worked through some emails, did our accounts (it’s a late New Year Resolution; I’m trying to keep running accounts of my sole, my joint and my business bank accounts so that – theoretically – I always know how much (or how little, as the case may be) money we have) and then took my little man out for a couple of hours Soft Play with some of my friends and their kids. As usual, I ended up paying three quid for him to sit on my bloody lap as he refused to go off and play on the gigantic soft-play climbing frame and slides etc. and only warmed up to the whole idea of the place when I was putting on his shoes to leave. Pft. Typical.
He’s a funny little tyke, my S. Funny and sociable, he’s a gregarious kid with a big heart who has loads of friends in creche. He loves watching other people, having conversations, feeling part of the gang, yet he can be so clingy sometimes. I don’t know if it’s because he’s an only child, but he really seems to hate crowds and noise; he always cries more when left in a noisy/busy nursery than when it’s quieter, and would have happily spent the whole of this morning clamped to my neck than mix with the kids running about. Yet on his own turf, he’s so confident – loud and bright and curious. He’ll sit for hours talking to himself and his trains, reading books or watching TV – completely and utterly at ease with himself and being in his own company. I see so many traits of myself in him sometimes that it makes me stop and stare; these behaviours can’t possibly be learnt, so somewhere along the line, I must’ve wired him up precisely the same way as me, along with also ensuring that he chews his fingers and furrows his brow when he’s pissed off exactly as I do. It’s bizarre, and not necessarily in a good or cute way. Whilst I’m not medically lacking in any of my faculities, I’m certainly not the sanest person I know, either. He’d have done much better to have followed his father than his crazy bloggin’ Mama.
V xx
Comments: (4)
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