Oyster Card

I have oyster-card neurosis. For those of you non-Londoners who may jump to the logical conclusion that I have problems related to a card that acquires points when you purchase shelled sea-food, your conclusion is incorrect. The Oyster Card is a nifty piece of plastic that allows you to travel around the capital and its outskirts at a lower rate and with the clever pro that you can simply top it up pay-as-you-go or buy season tickets. I have a student one, gets me a third off season tickets. Happy days. But back to my problem. A problem shared is a problem halved.

I always think I will lose it, like it has a mind of its own and will surreptiously creep away from me as I glance over the Evening Standard, so I take many measures to make sure it can never be lost. I am so very, very paranoid about it that sometimes, I hold the card tightly in my hand, glancing down at it every few minutes just to check it hasn’t morphed into my student ID or another card of some variety. If it is in my pockets I frantically re-assess its whereabouts from time to time along my journey, and when finally get my fingers round it, mind and body in nervous turmoil, all my fears disappear and the world is bright and okay again. I feel a pang of sheer distilled fear when I am nearing my stop on the tube, if the card is not in the first place I look I assume I could have lost it and start a near cavity search. And so sometimes I keep it in my glove (which I like, because when going through barriers or getting on a bus, it makes me feel like I have the Force), that way my hand can always feel the hard, reassuring smoothness of the plastic and I don’t have to have a heart attack every time I move.

So some soul answer this. Why have I, of all people, lost it for the third time this year? Why, as the heavy weight of realization quickly settled in my stomach and the rain smiled as it ruined my suede shoes did it not just appear after my rigorous system of checking my person, so I could be free of the awful sick feeling that had arrived. Why me? After my nerves are already tied in all kinds of knots, why does the world have to hit me hard of the nose with the one thing I spend hours trying to prevent?

Sods Law, Sods Law.

I’ll get over it. I guess I have to be more careful…

I have another Blog

As of today, I have another Blog.

http://tearsoverspiltmilk.blogspot.com/

It's like a creative outlet I guess, whereas this is just an outlook on the world I inhabit. Well, actually so is tearsoverspiltmilk. I should have thought about what I was going to type before I typed this, really.

So, um, tearsoverspiltmilk is also an outlook on the world and all the spheres that word encompasses, just in a different sense to courageattheteaparty...More poemsy, artsy, prosey? Just go look if you want, there's a post up already.

x

Like a G6

I'm going to post this on the Facebook later. I think that when one feels like a G6 it is worthy for the blog also though. Even if the G-like feeling was momentary and not everlasting.

Hand Cream.

Today, it was statistically the most depressing day of the year and the weather lived up to that. I should have gone to the library, but didn't. And lost my oyster for 3 hours. I had to go to work because I couldn't get cover, when I could have been at the theatre, salsa dancing or at the Barbican Cinema. The tube was severely delayed on all three lines I had the choice of using. So I was late for the shift I did't want to be at anyway. Sad times meant a sad face. Then I used this cream that said on the tube that it 'smelled life a fragrant flower garden after it has rained'. It actually did. All the nasties of my day got cancelled out. It really is the small things.

Happy Belated New Year

I'm not making/I didn't make a New Year's resolution. Why do that when you can make a New Day resolution? I literally just though of that while hoping something would come to me for this Blog.

A lot easier to stick by, so you feel better about yourself if you do last the day without that fag or not eating a whole page of chocolate digestives. Exciting too, you can set a new challenge for yourself every day. And by the end of there year you won't have one big fat fail of a failed resolution and the concealed dread of making another big fat fail, you'll have 365 successes under your belt (or the best part of 365) and ready to add more small goals to your tally.

I am actually busting with pride at this very good idea, I can't lie.

Tomorrow, my New Day's Resolution is going to be...to leave on time. Maybe the next day it should be exercising modesty haha. What's yours?

Go get 'em tigers.

xxx

Crush

He's just not that into you...or maybe he is.

It's Boxing Day. Well, not really any more, it's 1:59 am, the day after Boxing Day. We're in that limbo bit between Xmas and New Year where no-one really knows quite what's going on or who they are. Probably something to do with all that stuffing and gravy and Turkey and....yeah, anyway. As I am also in this odd limbo between Jesus' birthday celebrations and the pointless New Years Resolutions, I thought I might as well wrench a few words from myself about something I have always known deep down. And so have you.

Do not listen to books that tell you how love and life work. Don't do it. It got me nowhere. It got you nowhere in the long run. We have just as much confusion and 'orribleness as we did before, we just think we don't. It just makes you think that every life and love situation can be inserted into a formula, and a neat and tidy answer will be shinily waiting for you to apply and fix it. Well, it doesn't work like that. I've even written stuff (hopefully buried deep under somewhat decent material) that makes me look like a right plonker, making my own rules based on books like He's Just Not That Into You and various other literature in the same vein. Embarrassed Central Station. I apologise.

The problem is, we all want to be in control. We don't want to be hurt. And we want everyone to know we are in control of a given situation, particularly in a relationship. We don't talk about things, we skirt around issues, because if it gets talked about, someone's gonna have to tell the whole truth and perhaps reveal their vulnerability. And it ain't gonna be us. So we apply rules and almost mathematical equations, not just simple guiders, to try to plough through what we think are insurmountable messes. Messes that we cannot possibly just overcome by having a little think or perhaps messes we won't overcome straight away, and we cannot accept that fact.

We've been hurt before, or we haven't, and we can't deal with the prospect of not knowing what the next day/week/month may bring, and it frustrates us. The thing is, we don't know anyway, even with a million and one step-by-step analysing books and informative TV shows. We assume we do, and we assume that Mrs. PhD Dmin MA Blah Blahs knows every minute detail of everyone's life in the whole wide world and can fit it all into her big big template, churn a few cogs and a nice tidy outcome is what we all gon get.

Sound's a tad silly now, doesn't it.

How about this:

Take the time to know people. I mean really know them. A book can't tell you about your friend of 15 years, your child, your mother, or anyone you've taken the time out to get to know properly any more than a doctor can tell you what's wrong without giving you the once over.

Don't worry when you're not in control of people, or when you don't have the power/upper hand over people. Who cares if they think you like them too much. Either you do or you don't. If you do, ah well, sussed. Worse things happen at sea. If you don't, well you don't, who cares what they think, you know what the deal is. They can get over themselves, and their massive head. Even when you think you're in control of things, it's usually an illusion induced by all the tosh you read or have been told. And even if it's not, a big gust of wind can come and change all that lovely controlledness. So just go with the flow.

If you can laugh at yourself, you can keep laughing through most stuff that comes your way.

Sure these books and films and magazines etc are right sometimes, and maybe a lot of the time, but then again, if you think about it, so are you. You just have to use that noggin, or your trusty gut, whichever you deem best.

Annoyingly, it seems as if I am making my own little rule list thing here. Precisely what I'm writing against. But you know what I mean. You don't have to listen to me. But you know I'm right :).

Seasons Greetings by the way. If you have toiled and read this far, you have the benefit of knowing that I love you collectively. Have a good limbo time until New Years, by which time I hope I have something fitting to write up on this thing.

Don't drink and drive, always wear good underwear you never know what detour that 86 bus might take.

xxx