I came home for Christmas. I saw old friends and shopped and ate and wrapped presents and wore silly hats and ate some more and lounged on the recliner sofas my parents have acquired all of a sudden and drank whisky and introduced my father to whisky and laughed at the stupidest things and was loved more than any human has a right to be.
Tomorrow I'm going home, so tonight I have to pack. Turns out Christmas presents take up quite a lot of space.
I packed and repacked. I transferred things from bag to bag. I called in my little brother to weigh in on the "it is better to have a wheely suitcase, one shoulder bag and one carrier bag, or a wheely suitcase plus two shoulder bags to keep one hand free?" dilemma. I got it just about done and then realised I hadn't packed about nine of my presents, so I took everything out again. I was starting to get backache.
In the end, I came to the snap and surprising decision to abandon my handbag.
My handbag, like all the handbags that came before it, is a monster thing. I've always been of the opinion that if my handbag cannot carry all my wallet-keys-phone essentials plus an umbrella, a compact camera, two reusable shopping bags, a pair of gloves, a bottle of water, a packet of mints, a pair of dance shoes, a fan, two bottles of body spray and a make-up bag, it's got no right to call itself my handbag. I take most of this stuff, except the shoes, everywhere. Just in case. Who knows when you're going to need body spray in two different scents, right?
My dance teacher pointed out to me ages ago that I carry a lot of extra tension in that shoulder. If I go a few days without taking the bag anywhere, it's immediately obvious to me when I pick it up again that it's heavy and uncomfortable and sometimes physically painful to carry. Sometimes I have so much stuff that I end up walking lopsided. I noticed all these things, but decided that I'd just have to live with them. Because I need all that stuff. I need the six pens and the broken bits of another four pens, the handful of loose change, the packets of paracetamol, the hair ties (my hair has been too short to tie back for four months now), the myriad packs of gum, the screwed-up receipts and cinema tickets and bits of paper with my name on (dance debris is not like normal debris), the cocktail stirrers and flowery hair grips and broken sunglasses. It's necessary.
In trying to find a way to get everything back home with me, I realised that the stuff I actually need, the things I use day to day, will fit in a bag the size of an A5 paperback, and it's possible that the emotional security I get from carrying around 10lb worth of mementoes and precautions is maybe not worth permanent shoulder damage. So I took the essentials out, discarded the bag and everything else in it.
I'd like to write about how freeing it is, how nice it feels not to have to take that weight with me everywhere, how much better I feel now. But tomorrow I still have to lug a wheely suitcase and two shoulder bags from west to east, and I have a sense that my shoulders will be feeling substantially worse until I put everything down again at the other end.
Sorry, shoulders. I'm trying.
Sunday, 28 December 2014
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
on chivalry
Throughout my online dating history, I have talked to, been on dates with, and had full-blown relationships with various men I met that way. Some of them were great and even though they're no longer in my life, I appreciate that I got to meet them. A lot of them, though, fell into very definite archetypes. The guy who was just a nice guy. The insufferable intellectual. The awkward semi-hermit. The pick-up-artist-in-training. The guy who had a long list of problems that would definitely all be solved if I would just sleep with him please. The guy who had a long list of all his excellent qualities that would definitely solve all my problems if I would just sleep with him please.
Occasionally I would encounter Chivalrous Dude. Chivalrous Dude would be polite to a fault, deliver all manner of compliments all on the right side of appropriate and listen very, very attentively (often without actually hearing anything that was being said). Chivalrous Dude was definitely happy to see that I was a feminist, and he was very committed to treating women right, and wasn't that great? Chivalrous Dude had many Thoughts and Feelings that he was keen to share, and eventually some Traditional Gender Roles that he thought we could perhaps partake of together. My interactions with the Chivalrous Dudes rarely ended well, and I soon learned to steer well clear of them if at all possible.
It's often in response to these guys that I am urged to "cut him some slack". I think I've made my feelings on this phrase quite clear, but let me just say: I get it. I get why people like this chivalry thing, and I get where these guys are coming from. They (mostly) have the absolute best of intentions. They've seen some truly unpleasant behaviour exhibited by men towards women and are appalled by it; they want to be better than that. They are going to be Nice to Women, because they are Nice Men trying to do Nice Things. I understand that.
I also understand that we can't apply a blanket rule of "treat everyone exactly the same" because that just isn't how the world works. We haven't fully corrected the power disparities between genders/races/orientations/whatever else that have existed as long as society has, and we may never do. Treating people with absolute rules-lawyer equality when that isn't what the rest of the world is doing doesn't make things better, particularly not if you are refusing to acknowledge that the behaviour of the rest of the world puts certain people at a disadvantage. So we can't just say "complete equality of treatment, end of discussion." Things are a little too sticky and complicated for that.
However, in terms of basic social interaction, I really do not want to be operating under a Code of How Men Should Treat Women as opposed to a Code of How to Treat Other People. It's weird. If someone holds a door open for me, I will assume they're doing so because I am a person and it is not pleasant to slam a door in the face of a person. If a man in a mixed group holds the door open for women only, I will side-eye him a little bit. If a group of men standing near the door form two groups (or for maximum weird, lines) either side of it, wave me through the door that one of them is holding open and watch me walk through it, I will feel seriously uncomfortable because this is a weird thing to do (if you do this thing? Stop doing this thing, it is a creepy thing).
And in terms of someone I'm dating? I don't want to be treated like Woman as Concept, I want to be treated like me. In my younger and stupider days I dated a couple of men who told me that "the man walks on the outside of the pavement to protect the woman" and "the man walks the woman home to make sure she's safe". What exactly he was going to protect me from by standing on that side of the road, and what dangers he was going to avert that never occurred when I walked home by myself every single other day, was never made clear. If you're going to walk me home, do it because you want to talk to me some more, not because of some unstated Lady Boogeyman.
Mostly the stated position of Chivalrous Dude is less "women are weak and cannot do things for themselves" and more "women are special and magical creatures who must be treated in a special way". Many of the ones I've personally come across have told me that women are amazing, women are worth more than men, women deserve special treatment, men are rubbish and must prove themselves worthy. This is as icky as "women are lesser" and ultimately leads to the same place - these men treat the women around them as if they're not quite human, and as if they're all basically the same.
My major, major bugbear with Chivalrous Dude is this one: there is no way to live up to his expectation of Womanhood. He has a pedestal with Woman on it, casts whoever he's being chivalrous at as Woman, and proceeds to act out his strange code of behaviour until she accidentally reveals herself to be human (by having a past, or a flaw, or on occasion by being a horrible person acting out of outright malice). At this, Chivalrous Dude feels betrayed, upset, maybe angry. Sometimes this is directed at the woman he cast as Woman, feeling that she has let down Womanhood with her unexpected behaviour. Sometimes he doesn't make this distinction between woman and Woman, and her behaviour reflects upon Woman as a whole. If the behaviour is transgressive enough, it breaks his pedestal entirely (you know that guy who got dumped or cheated on or couldn't get that girl to go out with him by hanging around looking hopeful and then spent the next eight years complaining that all women were bitches and whores? He was probably Chivalrous Dude Type 2 once).
You cannot do chivalry, in the modern sense of the word, without bringing in some gender essentialist assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and frankly I'd rather not. I don't like the behaviours that are coded chivalrous, and I don't like the way I'm expected to perform in response (be quiet, be polite, be gracious, don't make a fuss, don't contradict). Some people do like it, and this is why talking to each other is a thing that people should do more. Then the men that like to behave this way can do so to women who like this behaviour, and I don't have to get called a "lovely lady" ever again.
Occasionally I would encounter Chivalrous Dude. Chivalrous Dude would be polite to a fault, deliver all manner of compliments all on the right side of appropriate and listen very, very attentively (often without actually hearing anything that was being said). Chivalrous Dude was definitely happy to see that I was a feminist, and he was very committed to treating women right, and wasn't that great? Chivalrous Dude had many Thoughts and Feelings that he was keen to share, and eventually some Traditional Gender Roles that he thought we could perhaps partake of together. My interactions with the Chivalrous Dudes rarely ended well, and I soon learned to steer well clear of them if at all possible.
It's often in response to these guys that I am urged to "cut him some slack". I think I've made my feelings on this phrase quite clear, but let me just say: I get it. I get why people like this chivalry thing, and I get where these guys are coming from. They (mostly) have the absolute best of intentions. They've seen some truly unpleasant behaviour exhibited by men towards women and are appalled by it; they want to be better than that. They are going to be Nice to Women, because they are Nice Men trying to do Nice Things. I understand that.
I also understand that we can't apply a blanket rule of "treat everyone exactly the same" because that just isn't how the world works. We haven't fully corrected the power disparities between genders/races/orientations/whatever else that have existed as long as society has, and we may never do. Treating people with absolute rules-lawyer equality when that isn't what the rest of the world is doing doesn't make things better, particularly not if you are refusing to acknowledge that the behaviour of the rest of the world puts certain people at a disadvantage. So we can't just say "complete equality of treatment, end of discussion." Things are a little too sticky and complicated for that.
However, in terms of basic social interaction, I really do not want to be operating under a Code of How Men Should Treat Women as opposed to a Code of How to Treat Other People. It's weird. If someone holds a door open for me, I will assume they're doing so because I am a person and it is not pleasant to slam a door in the face of a person. If a man in a mixed group holds the door open for women only, I will side-eye him a little bit. If a group of men standing near the door form two groups (or for maximum weird, lines) either side of it, wave me through the door that one of them is holding open and watch me walk through it, I will feel seriously uncomfortable because this is a weird thing to do (if you do this thing? Stop doing this thing, it is a creepy thing).
And in terms of someone I'm dating? I don't want to be treated like Woman as Concept, I want to be treated like me. In my younger and stupider days I dated a couple of men who told me that "the man walks on the outside of the pavement to protect the woman" and "the man walks the woman home to make sure she's safe". What exactly he was going to protect me from by standing on that side of the road, and what dangers he was going to avert that never occurred when I walked home by myself every single other day, was never made clear. If you're going to walk me home, do it because you want to talk to me some more, not because of some unstated Lady Boogeyman.
Mostly the stated position of Chivalrous Dude is less "women are weak and cannot do things for themselves" and more "women are special and magical creatures who must be treated in a special way". Many of the ones I've personally come across have told me that women are amazing, women are worth more than men, women deserve special treatment, men are rubbish and must prove themselves worthy. This is as icky as "women are lesser" and ultimately leads to the same place - these men treat the women around them as if they're not quite human, and as if they're all basically the same.
My major, major bugbear with Chivalrous Dude is this one: there is no way to live up to his expectation of Womanhood. He has a pedestal with Woman on it, casts whoever he's being chivalrous at as Woman, and proceeds to act out his strange code of behaviour until she accidentally reveals herself to be human (by having a past, or a flaw, or on occasion by being a horrible person acting out of outright malice). At this, Chivalrous Dude feels betrayed, upset, maybe angry. Sometimes this is directed at the woman he cast as Woman, feeling that she has let down Womanhood with her unexpected behaviour. Sometimes he doesn't make this distinction between woman and Woman, and her behaviour reflects upon Woman as a whole. If the behaviour is transgressive enough, it breaks his pedestal entirely (you know that guy who got dumped or cheated on or couldn't get that girl to go out with him by hanging around looking hopeful and then spent the next eight years complaining that all women were bitches and whores? He was probably Chivalrous Dude Type 2 once).
You cannot do chivalry, in the modern sense of the word, without bringing in some gender essentialist assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and frankly I'd rather not. I don't like the behaviours that are coded chivalrous, and I don't like the way I'm expected to perform in response (be quiet, be polite, be gracious, don't make a fuss, don't contradict). Some people do like it, and this is why talking to each other is a thing that people should do more. Then the men that like to behave this way can do so to women who like this behaviour, and I don't have to get called a "lovely lady" ever again.
Thursday, 4 December 2014
slack
Today I am going to complain about the phrase "cut him some slack" in order to a) get a grievance out of my head so it doesn't trample all over another post I'm trying to write, and b) stop myself getting involved in an online argument I would surely regret getting involved in. You're welcome.
(Note: "he" in the following list refers to whatever guy I was dealing with at the time rather than this whole post being about one very weird man. Just for clarity's sake.)
Times when I have been asked to "cut a guy some slack" because he is a guy and doesn't know any better/that's just the way they are/was trying to be nice and that's what counts:
When he shouted at me to "smile" from across the street
When he made a nasty joke that upset me
When he ignored everything I was saying only to readily accept the exact same points when made in the exact same way by a man
When he DANCED HIS CROTCH INTO ME FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES ARGHHH
When he objected to me talking to a male colleague whilst at work
When he, as the head of the company I worked for, congratulated me on my weight loss and warned me not to get fat again
When he phoned for advice and asked to be put through to a man
When he told me it was completely reasonable to refuse to hire any woman of childbearing age
When he ran up to me on the street, smacked me on the ass hard enough to bruise, then ran away again
When he sent me sixty text messages in two days
When he complained that women as a gender had really gone downhill in the last twenty years
When he locked me in the car and screamed at me for an hour
When he explained to me that I didn't actually want the things I thought I wanted and in fact wanted these other things instead
When he tried to carry my shopping for me, which consisted of one birthday card in an A5 size carrier bag, and got very upset when I told him I could probably handle the weight myself
When he told me that women were all whores but that I was special
When he tried to follow me home
When he continued to call me by a nickname I hate after I specifically and repeatedly asked him not to
When he laughed for twenty minutes about how indecisive women are whilst trying to sell me a mobile phone
When he made creepy-ass remarks in my ear every time he danced with me
When he tried to teach me to do something I had a qualification in
When he refused to let me make the three-minute walk from the pub to my house by myself EVER IN FOUR YEARS
I have many more, but I'm going to end it there for everyone's sake.
I am nearly thirty years old, and I have had enough of being told that I should assume the best of intentions on the part of any man who annoys me or makes me uncomfortable. I've had enough of being told that I've misinterpreted a thing that happened to me by people who weren't even fucking there, or that I may not have misinterpreted it but that my feelings about it are still wrong. I've had enough of people prioritising the intentions of a man they often don't know at all above the judgement of a woman they do know. It's insulting, and it's especially insulting to have this framed as the position of reason and logic.
Also, look at that list. "Cut him some slack" has become completely fucking meaningless. People say it to me when I'm mildly annoyed in the exact same way as they say it when I'm genuinely scared or hurt. They say "cut him some slack" when I'm griping about a mild sexist stereotype and they say "cut him some slack" when I've sustained actual physical injury from the man in question. So now the phrase means nothing, and it annoys me that much more when applied to the gripe because I remember it being applied to the bruises.
So I say to you, no. I will not cut that man some slack. I made a judgement call. I had this experience and I decided that this man did a shitty thing, or that I don't want to date this man, or that I'm taking my business to a different company. I get to be annoyed or uncomfortable if that's how I'm feeling, and you don't get to tell me my feelings are wrong. I am allowed to not like any given man for whatever frivolous reason (and in turn, people are free to not like me if that's what my frivolous reason inspires in them). I am a grown-ass woman and I am pig sick of having my opinions and boundaries and judgement ignored or disrespected just in case I hurt some poor man's feelings slightly. That man might mean well, in some cases. I fully accept that. But his meaning well does not compel me to accept or enjoy his behaviour, to date him or dance with him or otherwise spend time with him, to knowingly put myself in a situation I know I'm going to hate. Why should I? He wouldn't. It's more important for me to trust myself than to be nice to you, and no, I'm not sorry about it. I'm going to stop twisting myself into knots trying to work out how to not offend anyone and cut myself some slack for a goddamn change.
(Note: "he" in the following list refers to whatever guy I was dealing with at the time rather than this whole post being about one very weird man. Just for clarity's sake.)
Times when I have been asked to "cut a guy some slack" because he is a guy and doesn't know any better/that's just the way they are/was trying to be nice and that's what counts:
When he shouted at me to "smile" from across the street
When he made a nasty joke that upset me
When he ignored everything I was saying only to readily accept the exact same points when made in the exact same way by a man
When he DANCED HIS CROTCH INTO ME FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES ARGHHH
When he objected to me talking to a male colleague whilst at work
When he, as the head of the company I worked for, congratulated me on my weight loss and warned me not to get fat again
When he phoned for advice and asked to be put through to a man
When he told me it was completely reasonable to refuse to hire any woman of childbearing age
When he ran up to me on the street, smacked me on the ass hard enough to bruise, then ran away again
When he sent me sixty text messages in two days
When he complained that women as a gender had really gone downhill in the last twenty years
When he locked me in the car and screamed at me for an hour
When he explained to me that I didn't actually want the things I thought I wanted and in fact wanted these other things instead
When he tried to carry my shopping for me, which consisted of one birthday card in an A5 size carrier bag, and got very upset when I told him I could probably handle the weight myself
When he told me that women were all whores but that I was special
When he tried to follow me home
When he continued to call me by a nickname I hate after I specifically and repeatedly asked him not to
When he laughed for twenty minutes about how indecisive women are whilst trying to sell me a mobile phone
When he made creepy-ass remarks in my ear every time he danced with me
When he tried to teach me to do something I had a qualification in
When he refused to let me make the three-minute walk from the pub to my house by myself EVER IN FOUR YEARS
I have many more, but I'm going to end it there for everyone's sake.
I am nearly thirty years old, and I have had enough of being told that I should assume the best of intentions on the part of any man who annoys me or makes me uncomfortable. I've had enough of being told that I've misinterpreted a thing that happened to me by people who weren't even fucking there, or that I may not have misinterpreted it but that my feelings about it are still wrong. I've had enough of people prioritising the intentions of a man they often don't know at all above the judgement of a woman they do know. It's insulting, and it's especially insulting to have this framed as the position of reason and logic.
Also, look at that list. "Cut him some slack" has become completely fucking meaningless. People say it to me when I'm mildly annoyed in the exact same way as they say it when I'm genuinely scared or hurt. They say "cut him some slack" when I'm griping about a mild sexist stereotype and they say "cut him some slack" when I've sustained actual physical injury from the man in question. So now the phrase means nothing, and it annoys me that much more when applied to the gripe because I remember it being applied to the bruises.
So I say to you, no. I will not cut that man some slack. I made a judgement call. I had this experience and I decided that this man did a shitty thing, or that I don't want to date this man, or that I'm taking my business to a different company. I get to be annoyed or uncomfortable if that's how I'm feeling, and you don't get to tell me my feelings are wrong. I am allowed to not like any given man for whatever frivolous reason (and in turn, people are free to not like me if that's what my frivolous reason inspires in them). I am a grown-ass woman and I am pig sick of having my opinions and boundaries and judgement ignored or disrespected just in case I hurt some poor man's feelings slightly. That man might mean well, in some cases. I fully accept that. But his meaning well does not compel me to accept or enjoy his behaviour, to date him or dance with him or otherwise spend time with him, to knowingly put myself in a situation I know I'm going to hate. Why should I? He wouldn't. It's more important for me to trust myself than to be nice to you, and no, I'm not sorry about it. I'm going to stop twisting myself into knots trying to work out how to not offend anyone and cut myself some slack for a goddamn change.
Monday, 24 November 2014
adventures in housing, part four
[previously in this series: spurious reasons for keeping a deposit, sleeping on floors and a possible Murder House]
At this point, I'd been homeless for nearly a month and I'd exhausted all my offers of longer-term crash space in London. I would spend one night in a cheap hotel, the next on a friend's sofa, the next on my dance teachers' floor, the next on the floor of someone I barely knew at all. At the weekend I decamped to my little brother's place (oh, the 23-year-old with his mortgage and his spare room and his parking space and his two bathrooms in a two-bedroom flat). I was carrying my massive suitcase into work and back on the tube during rush hour every day. I was gradually taking over more and more cabinets at work to lock away things I wasn't going to need that night and lighten my load slightly. Most mornings I would wake up with no idea where I'd be sleeping that night. Nobody was responding to my messages online. The potential flatmates I'd found disappeared. All my muscles hurt, sleep had long since stopped being restful, and any time someone made a well-meaning joke about my situation I almost burst into tears. I needed a break. Just a few nights where I didn't have to do this.
It occurred to me that I could check into a guest house for a few days. It would be cheaper than a hotel, I could still have a room to myself, and I could get a bit of rest. I found somewhere a little way out and booked myself in for the best part of a week.
I left my brother's place on Sunday afternoon, got the train back to London, went dancing (because priorities) and trekked out to the further reaches of East London to get to the guest house, which was labelled as such by an almost imperceptible sign next to the door. There was no doorbell. I knocked, and a few minutes later a woman answered.
"Hi," I said. "I'm booked in for four nights."
"Oh." She laughed. "I don't work here. I'm staying here. You need to phone this guy's mobile and he comes round and gives you the keys."
"Um. OK then."
"Yeah, I know. I don't understand it either."
I made the call, and a man showed up with the keys. He showed me where the bathroom was, gave me the WiFi password, and told me I was free to make use of the kitchen. He showed me my room, which was huge and warm and nicely decorated. The internet worked. I dropped everything in a heap on the floor, collapsed into bed and slept for ten hours straight.
The next morning, I was woken up by one of the other residents knocking on my door. "Hi," she said, "I'm really sorry about this, but these guys from the electric company have shown up and I can't hang around to deal with them, I'm really late as it is. Would you mind?"
"Sure," I said and came out of my room.
On the doorstep were two men, one of them holding a search warrant. I ordered the small alarm going off in the back of my mind to shut up, everything was fine, there was no way that everything wasn't fine.
"We have a warrant to come in and have a look at your meter," said the man with the warrant. "We cut the electric to this property due to non-payment of bills, and we have reason to believe that it's now being accessed illegally. This your place?"
"No, I'm just renting a room for a few nights."
He gave me the most sceptical look I've ever seen in my entire life. "Renting a room."
"It's a guest house."
"It's not licensed to be a guest house."
Oh, for fuck's sake. "I didn't check. I just booked a room on the internet."
"Hmmm."
I let the other man, the engineer, into the house to look at the meter, while I stood on the doorstep trying to convince the first guy I wasn't running a shady guest house that was at least three types of illegal and lying brazenly about it to his face. After offers to show multiple forms of ID, booking confirmations, the original online listing, and the contact information of the people who actually were running a shady operation, he decided to trust me. He took the phone numbers I offered and was about to make a call when the engineer came up out of the basement where the meter was. He looked ever so slightly shaken.
"Nothing we can do," he said to the first guy. "I am not touching that."
"What is it?"
"They've rigged it to get free electric like we thought, but the way they've done it... there's exposed wires everywhere, it looks like it might blow up any minute. I'm not touching it, it's not safe." He cast a glance at me.
"She doesn't live here," said the guy with the warrant.
"Get out," said the engineer. "I'm not kidding. That thing's a death trap."
As the engineer pulled out a phone to call his boss, the guy with the warrant took me to one side. "You need somewhere else to go. That guy's a qualified engineer, he's been doing the job ten years. If he won't touch it, it's dangerous. Legitimately this place might explode. You can't stay here, it's not safe."
Oh, for FUCK'S sake. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
"Find somewhere," he snapped.
They left, and I called the owners, wondering what on earth I could have done to invite this level of exhausting over-the-top stupidity into my life. "Hi, I'm renting a room from you at the moment. Um. The electric company showed up and said you're not a licensed guest house and you're accessing your electric illegally and that the house might explode."
"Oh," she said.
"So, obviously, I can't stay here."
"Why not?"
"Because the people who know about electricity said the house was going to explode?"
"Oh, that." She laughed. "No, it's fine."
"No, it's not fine. They said the house was going to explode!"
"No, it's fine."
"Look, I can't stay here. I've been told it's not safe."
"You can leave if you want to, but the place is fine, so you won't get a refund."
"You can't rent an exploding guest house!"
"It's not going to explode. No refunds."
I phoned the electric company.
"Hi. One of your engineers just came by the place I'm staying and said it was about to explode. Can I get that in writing so I can get a refund?"
"Uh... what?"
"Can you provide a written statement saying that this place is about to explode?"
"...I'm going to be honest, I've never been asked this question before. Can I get someone to call you back?"
I phoned my manager.
"Hi. So an engineer just showed up at the place I'm staying and said it might be about to explode and now I need to find somewhere else to live and am possibly having a mild panic attack."
I wish I could have seen his expression. I bet he would have beaten the guy with the warrant for Most Sceptical Look Ever on a Human Face. "So you're not coming in then."
"I would be of very little use, unless you need someone to sit under a desk and cry for five hours."
He sighed. "Fine."
I phoned my mother.
"Hi, Mum. This guest house is illegal and the engineer said it was going to explode and the people won't give me my money back and I don't know what to do."
"WHAT."
"What do I do?"
"YOU GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW WE WILL GET YOU A HOTEL BUT YOU NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT THIS SECOND YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO GET BLOWN UP."
"...okay."
My parents paid for two nights at a hotel, and my aching muscles gave me a talking-to. The chances of finding anywhere to stay in London within the next few days are slim to none, they told me, and you clearly, clearly cannot do this anymore. Stop it. My friends had been offering me their spare room for ages, but I'd kept turning it down because it was in Southend (and honestly, who lives in Southend? I know you're reading this, you're both ridiculous). I didn't want to have to commute into London every day, and I didn't want to be so far away from my social life, but I couldn't prioritise that anymore. The longer commute had to be better than lugging all of my things up and down escalators twice a day. A bed had to be better than a floor. Comfort and security had to be better than blindly hoping for somewhere to stay in zone 2. Staying with people I knew and liked and who probably weren't going to hate me after two weeks had to be worth leaving a few dances earlier than I'd have liked.
I took them up on their offer, and two days later my suitcase and I left London.
[in part five: the joys of commuting and a possible actual place to live]
At this point, I'd been homeless for nearly a month and I'd exhausted all my offers of longer-term crash space in London. I would spend one night in a cheap hotel, the next on a friend's sofa, the next on my dance teachers' floor, the next on the floor of someone I barely knew at all. At the weekend I decamped to my little brother's place (oh, the 23-year-old with his mortgage and his spare room and his parking space and his two bathrooms in a two-bedroom flat). I was carrying my massive suitcase into work and back on the tube during rush hour every day. I was gradually taking over more and more cabinets at work to lock away things I wasn't going to need that night and lighten my load slightly. Most mornings I would wake up with no idea where I'd be sleeping that night. Nobody was responding to my messages online. The potential flatmates I'd found disappeared. All my muscles hurt, sleep had long since stopped being restful, and any time someone made a well-meaning joke about my situation I almost burst into tears. I needed a break. Just a few nights where I didn't have to do this.
It occurred to me that I could check into a guest house for a few days. It would be cheaper than a hotel, I could still have a room to myself, and I could get a bit of rest. I found somewhere a little way out and booked myself in for the best part of a week.
I left my brother's place on Sunday afternoon, got the train back to London, went dancing (because priorities) and trekked out to the further reaches of East London to get to the guest house, which was labelled as such by an almost imperceptible sign next to the door. There was no doorbell. I knocked, and a few minutes later a woman answered.
"Hi," I said. "I'm booked in for four nights."
"Oh." She laughed. "I don't work here. I'm staying here. You need to phone this guy's mobile and he comes round and gives you the keys."
"Um. OK then."
"Yeah, I know. I don't understand it either."
I made the call, and a man showed up with the keys. He showed me where the bathroom was, gave me the WiFi password, and told me I was free to make use of the kitchen. He showed me my room, which was huge and warm and nicely decorated. The internet worked. I dropped everything in a heap on the floor, collapsed into bed and slept for ten hours straight.
The next morning, I was woken up by one of the other residents knocking on my door. "Hi," she said, "I'm really sorry about this, but these guys from the electric company have shown up and I can't hang around to deal with them, I'm really late as it is. Would you mind?"
"Sure," I said and came out of my room.
On the doorstep were two men, one of them holding a search warrant. I ordered the small alarm going off in the back of my mind to shut up, everything was fine, there was no way that everything wasn't fine.
"We have a warrant to come in and have a look at your meter," said the man with the warrant. "We cut the electric to this property due to non-payment of bills, and we have reason to believe that it's now being accessed illegally. This your place?"
"No, I'm just renting a room for a few nights."
He gave me the most sceptical look I've ever seen in my entire life. "Renting a room."
"It's a guest house."
"It's not licensed to be a guest house."
Oh, for fuck's sake. "I didn't check. I just booked a room on the internet."
"Hmmm."
I let the other man, the engineer, into the house to look at the meter, while I stood on the doorstep trying to convince the first guy I wasn't running a shady guest house that was at least three types of illegal and lying brazenly about it to his face. After offers to show multiple forms of ID, booking confirmations, the original online listing, and the contact information of the people who actually were running a shady operation, he decided to trust me. He took the phone numbers I offered and was about to make a call when the engineer came up out of the basement where the meter was. He looked ever so slightly shaken.
"Nothing we can do," he said to the first guy. "I am not touching that."
"What is it?"
"They've rigged it to get free electric like we thought, but the way they've done it... there's exposed wires everywhere, it looks like it might blow up any minute. I'm not touching it, it's not safe." He cast a glance at me.
"She doesn't live here," said the guy with the warrant.
"Get out," said the engineer. "I'm not kidding. That thing's a death trap."
As the engineer pulled out a phone to call his boss, the guy with the warrant took me to one side. "You need somewhere else to go. That guy's a qualified engineer, he's been doing the job ten years. If he won't touch it, it's dangerous. Legitimately this place might explode. You can't stay here, it's not safe."
Oh, for FUCK'S sake. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
"Find somewhere," he snapped.
They left, and I called the owners, wondering what on earth I could have done to invite this level of exhausting over-the-top stupidity into my life. "Hi, I'm renting a room from you at the moment. Um. The electric company showed up and said you're not a licensed guest house and you're accessing your electric illegally and that the house might explode."
"Oh," she said.
"So, obviously, I can't stay here."
"Why not?"
"Because the people who know about electricity said the house was going to explode?"
"Oh, that." She laughed. "No, it's fine."
"No, it's not fine. They said the house was going to explode!"
"No, it's fine."
"Look, I can't stay here. I've been told it's not safe."
"You can leave if you want to, but the place is fine, so you won't get a refund."
"You can't rent an exploding guest house!"
"It's not going to explode. No refunds."
I phoned the electric company.
"Hi. One of your engineers just came by the place I'm staying and said it was about to explode. Can I get that in writing so I can get a refund?"
"Uh... what?"
"Can you provide a written statement saying that this place is about to explode?"
"...I'm going to be honest, I've never been asked this question before. Can I get someone to call you back?"
I phoned my manager.
"Hi. So an engineer just showed up at the place I'm staying and said it might be about to explode and now I need to find somewhere else to live and am possibly having a mild panic attack."
I wish I could have seen his expression. I bet he would have beaten the guy with the warrant for Most Sceptical Look Ever on a Human Face. "So you're not coming in then."
"I would be of very little use, unless you need someone to sit under a desk and cry for five hours."
He sighed. "Fine."
I phoned my mother.
"Hi, Mum. This guest house is illegal and the engineer said it was going to explode and the people won't give me my money back and I don't know what to do."
"WHAT."
"What do I do?"
"YOU GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW WE WILL GET YOU A HOTEL BUT YOU NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT THIS SECOND YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO GET BLOWN UP."
"...okay."
My parents paid for two nights at a hotel, and my aching muscles gave me a talking-to. The chances of finding anywhere to stay in London within the next few days are slim to none, they told me, and you clearly, clearly cannot do this anymore. Stop it. My friends had been offering me their spare room for ages, but I'd kept turning it down because it was in Southend (and honestly, who lives in Southend? I know you're reading this, you're both ridiculous). I didn't want to have to commute into London every day, and I didn't want to be so far away from my social life, but I couldn't prioritise that anymore. The longer commute had to be better than lugging all of my things up and down escalators twice a day. A bed had to be better than a floor. Comfort and security had to be better than blindly hoping for somewhere to stay in zone 2. Staying with people I knew and liked and who probably weren't going to hate me after two weeks had to be worth leaving a few dances earlier than I'd have liked.
I took them up on their offer, and two days later my suitcase and I left London.
[in part five: the joys of commuting and a possible actual place to live]
Sunday, 23 November 2014
new
So NaNoWriMo didn't work. I'm not sure why. I got just about to my word count on the first day, skipped the second day, wrote 4,000 words on day three, and then got stuck. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to say. I didn't have a character I felt connected to, I didn't have a plot point I wanted to get to, I didn't have a setting I wanted to describe, I didn't even have a snarky conversation that amused me enough to write down (I pretty much always have snarky conversations. Whatever else my story might be about, you can always count on snarky conversations at completely inappropriate moments). I gave up trying ages ago, but I wasn't going to come back here until November was over because blogging in November rather than writing a novel would be an admission of... something. I have no idea how my brain works. But I've decided to work on the basis that writing stuff gets me closer to being a writer than sitting around thinking about how I can't write a novel.
I've been thinking for a little while that I need something new to learn. I've stagnated. The things that were new to me aren't new anymore, they're just an accepted part of my life. Which is great, I love these things. But the highest points of my adult life have come when I'm discovering a passion I didn't know I had. It makes me happier, it makes me braver, it makes me friendlier, and because of that other good things start happening to me at the same time.
The first time this happened to me was with the camera. I'd hated cameras throughout my entire childhood and would run away and cry when I saw one. I got used to taking silly photos of my friends in the pub after I left school, but I couldn't understand why anyone would bother taking photos of things. It just seemed like a waste of film. (Yep, film.) I hung on to my crap film camera way after most people had switched to digital. I even tracked down another crap film camera after my original one broke, and that was not an easy thing to do in 2007. I'd taken maybe two rolls of film with it before I acknowledged that no, this really was a crap camera and all the photos looked terrible and maybe I should admit defeat and look into this digital nonsense.
I bought a digital camera and took it to the zoo. After about 20 minutes photographing seals and being increasingly thrilled and delighted with what was happening, I decided my new camera was the best thing ever and started carting it round with me everywhere. Everything was a photo opportunity and I loved it. I photographed everything in sight for about eight months, but I don't remember any photos I took until this one:
It's nothing much. But at the time, I genuinely thought this was the most impressive fucking thing I'd ever done in my life. It's not just a photo of a thing I saw, there's forethought and viewpoint and some measure of artistic fucking merit in that thing. I got myself a Flickr account for the express purpose of putting that picture on the internet, and though I've deleted a fair few of my older photos, that one is there for good. First photo on Flickr. It means something to me.
I started researching. For the next year or so, the internet was composed of three things: photography tutorials and advice; other people's photography; and diary sites where I could blither on about photography and how amazing it was. I quickly came up against the limits of my camera, which was on the fancy end of point-and-shoot, and when my parents offered me a graduation present I asked for a DSLR. My mother asked if I was sure I wouldn't prefer a piano (an instrument I'd had one lesson on and hadn't touched since), but they gave me what I asked for.
I got my D60 in June 2008 and it's probably still my favourite thing that I own. We still go on walkabouts together, and my photos get better as I sharpen my understanding of my camera and its relationship to the world. Over the last six and a half years, my D60 and I have taken photos of friends, of family, of fireworks, of woodlands, of weddings, christenings and graduations, of Rome and Venice and Prague and Cancun and Las Vegas and New York, of beaches and zoos and cemeteries and mountaintops and of me doing stupid things in any or all of these places. My love of photography is still one of the most important things in my life.
But it's not new anymore. I don't have the rush that I got when I first started learning photography (or dance, or practical employment law). Coming to a new skill with zero background knowledge means that literally everything there is to know about that thing is sitting there waiting and I try to take in as much of it at once because of course I do. Then once I have very basic knowledge I start discovering all the other interconnected spheres and I start studying fashion photography (or spending hours on end amassing an enormous collection of blues music, or reading all the unnecessary case law I can get my hands on). I don't have time for anxiety or to second-guess myself, because I need every spare brain cell to learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. But the point comes where I basically know how it works, and now I have to get good at it. And that doesn't feel like a world full of barely-tapped possibilities; it's a slog. An enjoyable slog, but still a slog. Progress slows down to the point where I can't see it for myself anymore, and I start to see my own intrinsic limitations - things which I could work on, but probably never get over to the degree I'd like. I have no intention of abandoning the things I've learned at the point where it gets difficult, but I miss the newness. And I feel that if anything's going to pull me out of a stagnant patch, it's the newness that'll do it.
So now I need something new, completely new, to learn. I'm taking suggestions.
I've been thinking for a little while that I need something new to learn. I've stagnated. The things that were new to me aren't new anymore, they're just an accepted part of my life. Which is great, I love these things. But the highest points of my adult life have come when I'm discovering a passion I didn't know I had. It makes me happier, it makes me braver, it makes me friendlier, and because of that other good things start happening to me at the same time.
The first time this happened to me was with the camera. I'd hated cameras throughout my entire childhood and would run away and cry when I saw one. I got used to taking silly photos of my friends in the pub after I left school, but I couldn't understand why anyone would bother taking photos of things. It just seemed like a waste of film. (Yep, film.) I hung on to my crap film camera way after most people had switched to digital. I even tracked down another crap film camera after my original one broke, and that was not an easy thing to do in 2007. I'd taken maybe two rolls of film with it before I acknowledged that no, this really was a crap camera and all the photos looked terrible and maybe I should admit defeat and look into this digital nonsense.
I bought a digital camera and took it to the zoo. After about 20 minutes photographing seals and being increasingly thrilled and delighted with what was happening, I decided my new camera was the best thing ever and started carting it round with me everywhere. Everything was a photo opportunity and I loved it. I photographed everything in sight for about eight months, but I don't remember any photos I took until this one:
It's nothing much. But at the time, I genuinely thought this was the most impressive fucking thing I'd ever done in my life. It's not just a photo of a thing I saw, there's forethought and viewpoint and some measure of artistic fucking merit in that thing. I got myself a Flickr account for the express purpose of putting that picture on the internet, and though I've deleted a fair few of my older photos, that one is there for good. First photo on Flickr. It means something to me.
I started researching. For the next year or so, the internet was composed of three things: photography tutorials and advice; other people's photography; and diary sites where I could blither on about photography and how amazing it was. I quickly came up against the limits of my camera, which was on the fancy end of point-and-shoot, and when my parents offered me a graduation present I asked for a DSLR. My mother asked if I was sure I wouldn't prefer a piano (an instrument I'd had one lesson on and hadn't touched since), but they gave me what I asked for.
I got my D60 in June 2008 and it's probably still my favourite thing that I own. We still go on walkabouts together, and my photos get better as I sharpen my understanding of my camera and its relationship to the world. Over the last six and a half years, my D60 and I have taken photos of friends, of family, of fireworks, of woodlands, of weddings, christenings and graduations, of Rome and Venice and Prague and Cancun and Las Vegas and New York, of beaches and zoos and cemeteries and mountaintops and of me doing stupid things in any or all of these places. My love of photography is still one of the most important things in my life.
But it's not new anymore. I don't have the rush that I got when I first started learning photography (or dance, or practical employment law). Coming to a new skill with zero background knowledge means that literally everything there is to know about that thing is sitting there waiting and I try to take in as much of it at once because of course I do. Then once I have very basic knowledge I start discovering all the other interconnected spheres and I start studying fashion photography (or spending hours on end amassing an enormous collection of blues music, or reading all the unnecessary case law I can get my hands on). I don't have time for anxiety or to second-guess myself, because I need every spare brain cell to learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. But the point comes where I basically know how it works, and now I have to get good at it. And that doesn't feel like a world full of barely-tapped possibilities; it's a slog. An enjoyable slog, but still a slog. Progress slows down to the point where I can't see it for myself anymore, and I start to see my own intrinsic limitations - things which I could work on, but probably never get over to the degree I'd like. I have no intention of abandoning the things I've learned at the point where it gets difficult, but I miss the newness. And I feel that if anything's going to pull me out of a stagnant patch, it's the newness that'll do it.
So now I need something new, completely new, to learn. I'm taking suggestions.
Monday, 20 October 2014
adventures in housing, part three
[Previously in the saga: unhinged landlord explains things, more Monologuing Through Doors, and finally moving out]
So then I was homeless.
After that one moment of doubt in the hotel on the first night, I never for a moment questioned whether I was right to move out of the House of Diluted Wine (there is a house in Pimlico, they caaaalll Diluted Wine, and it's been the ruin of many a young life, but God, it won't be mine...) (stupid rewritten song lyrics for every occasion, thank you very much). I didn't have a home, but I'd take that over a home with That Guy in it.
For the first few weeks, things weren't so bad. I stayed in some dancer friends' spare room for a week, then on another dancer friend's floor for two. It wasn't even close to ideal, but I knew where I'd be sleeping every night. I mostly coasted through on a sense of sheer amazement that I had people who'd take me in. Six months ago I'd had almost no support system in London at all, and now I was being offered spare beds and sofas and floors, sent likely-looking roommate ads that people had seen, and contacted by friends of friends who had been told that I would be an excellent person to fill their spare room. I'm not sure I'd have exchanged all that for secure housing.
There was still unfinished business with my newly ex-landlord. I'd sent him a message asking him to get in touch if there were any issues with the return of my deposit, and he had told me (in possibly the world's longest ever text message) that yes, there were issues with the return of my deposit, the issue being that he thought he should get to keep it. He gave me three reasons:
One, that I had given my month's notice at a time he found extremely inconvenient;
Two, that I hadn't bought enough loo roll and cleaning supplies;
Three, that I hadn't been cleaning to his satisfaction whilst I'd been living there.
These hardships, he thought, entitled him to keep nearly a thousand pounds of my money. I rather disagreed. I told him that none of those things were things you get compensation for, especially when you haven't at any point said, "hey, housemate, you're not buying enough loo roll", and that if these were his only issues then I expected all of my money back. We had a tedious and stressful back-and-forth where we fought, then he would say something nasty, then I would stop responding, then he would apologise. Eventually he suggested we "work something out that's fair to both of us", and I asked him to break down exactly what material losses he felt he had suffered and how much of my deposit he was proposing to keep for each of said losses, thinking that maybe it would be easier to negotiate with him if I could just get him to write the words "compensation for inconvenient timing of notice: £500" and read it back to himself a couple of times.
He didn't. A few days later, via email that radiated martyrdom, he told me that he'd returned my deposit in full, because it just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I gave him a forwarding address (my parents') for any mail, and never heard from him again.
It felt like one of my greatest triumphs. I'd got my money back, without having to involve any professionals, and I didn't have to deal with That Guy anymore. But I still had nowhere to live. I was running out of options that would give me a place to sleep for more than two nights and dancer goodwill was drying up rapidly.
I redoubled my efforts to find somewhere and went to a speed flatmating event. Everyone with a room going wanted over £1000 a month for it, but I found a couple of potential flatmates to team up with. We viewed one place, which was in Clapham but also somehow in the middle of a wood, had a pitch-dark stairwell, contained only severely water-damaged furnishings, but was, we were assured, completely safe because "anybody looking to start trouble usually goes to one of the other flats."
I checked into a hotel.
[in part four: exhaustion and the exploding guest house]
So then I was homeless.
After that one moment of doubt in the hotel on the first night, I never for a moment questioned whether I was right to move out of the House of Diluted Wine (there is a house in Pimlico, they caaaalll Diluted Wine, and it's been the ruin of many a young life, but God, it won't be mine...) (stupid rewritten song lyrics for every occasion, thank you very much). I didn't have a home, but I'd take that over a home with That Guy in it.
For the first few weeks, things weren't so bad. I stayed in some dancer friends' spare room for a week, then on another dancer friend's floor for two. It wasn't even close to ideal, but I knew where I'd be sleeping every night. I mostly coasted through on a sense of sheer amazement that I had people who'd take me in. Six months ago I'd had almost no support system in London at all, and now I was being offered spare beds and sofas and floors, sent likely-looking roommate ads that people had seen, and contacted by friends of friends who had been told that I would be an excellent person to fill their spare room. I'm not sure I'd have exchanged all that for secure housing.
There was still unfinished business with my newly ex-landlord. I'd sent him a message asking him to get in touch if there were any issues with the return of my deposit, and he had told me (in possibly the world's longest ever text message) that yes, there were issues with the return of my deposit, the issue being that he thought he should get to keep it. He gave me three reasons:
One, that I had given my month's notice at a time he found extremely inconvenient;
Two, that I hadn't bought enough loo roll and cleaning supplies;
Three, that I hadn't been cleaning to his satisfaction whilst I'd been living there.
These hardships, he thought, entitled him to keep nearly a thousand pounds of my money. I rather disagreed. I told him that none of those things were things you get compensation for, especially when you haven't at any point said, "hey, housemate, you're not buying enough loo roll", and that if these were his only issues then I expected all of my money back. We had a tedious and stressful back-and-forth where we fought, then he would say something nasty, then I would stop responding, then he would apologise. Eventually he suggested we "work something out that's fair to both of us", and I asked him to break down exactly what material losses he felt he had suffered and how much of my deposit he was proposing to keep for each of said losses, thinking that maybe it would be easier to negotiate with him if I could just get him to write the words "compensation for inconvenient timing of notice: £500" and read it back to himself a couple of times.
He didn't. A few days later, via email that radiated martyrdom, he told me that he'd returned my deposit in full, because it just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I gave him a forwarding address (my parents') for any mail, and never heard from him again.
It felt like one of my greatest triumphs. I'd got my money back, without having to involve any professionals, and I didn't have to deal with That Guy anymore. But I still had nowhere to live. I was running out of options that would give me a place to sleep for more than two nights and dancer goodwill was drying up rapidly.
I redoubled my efforts to find somewhere and went to a speed flatmating event. Everyone with a room going wanted over £1000 a month for it, but I found a couple of potential flatmates to team up with. We viewed one place, which was in Clapham but also somehow in the middle of a wood, had a pitch-dark stairwell, contained only severely water-damaged furnishings, but was, we were assured, completely safe because "anybody looking to start trouble usually goes to one of the other flats."
I checked into a hotel.
[in part four: exhaustion and the exploding guest house]
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
adventures in housing, part two
[Previously in this story: a break-up, a new landlord, diluted wine, and the first instance of Monologuing Through Doors]
I knew within the first week of moving to this place that it wasn't a long-term option, but I thought I could probably stick it out for six months. My post-break-up social life had taken off in a way I'd never expected, so I wasn't in very much and he didn't try to communicate with me that often, so I just wouldn't go in the communal areas and we could ignore each other until Christmas. I could handle that, I told myself.
Six weeks later, I told everyone else that I was handing in my notice at the end of the month. I had nowhere else lined up, but I didn't care. I couldn't hang on til Christmas, I couldn't hang on til I had another option secured. I had to get out and get out now, before I woke up to find him in my room, draining my blood into a recycling bin because he was worried about the mess I might make on his carpets if I ever happened to cut myself. I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand living with someone who panicked so hard whenever anything was out of place. I couldn't stand being spoken to like a fourteen-year-old girl who knew nothing about the world. I couldn't stand having him repeatedly condescend to me about my own areas of expertise. I couldn't stand having any more basic concepts or household items being explained to me in ridiculous detail.
"Now, I'll show you something that's really useful. These are excellent." [produces a roll of paper towels] "And all you do is tear off a sheet, like this - see? - and then you use it to wipe up any stain on the counter top..."
"Yes, I bought those."
Once he heard me singing and thought it was the radio. He argued with me for five straight minutes that I couldn't possibly have been singing, and finally walked away confused as to how he'd been unable to make me understand that I hadn't been making that noise. Every interaction I had with him was stressful, and I came to dread the mere sound of his voice or his footsteps, even his breathing.
When my fainting problem started to get worse, I was off sick and stuck in the flat more often than I'd like. My tolerance for the man reduced to essentially zero, and I tried harder than ever to keep out of his way. Once when I was off sick, he asked me what the matter was. I explained it - I faint, it's a long term problem, it's my blood pressure, it's a pain but there's not much that can be done about it.
He said, "Maybe it's epilepsy."
"No, it's not epilepsy. They know what it is."
"But if it was epilepsy," he said, "that would be great, because then you could be cured. Maybe you should test for epilepsy."
I struggled past the sheer volume of wrong in those two sentences and told him that no, it wasn't epilepsy, I'd seen specialists, the problem had been diagnosed, and I'd appreciate him not trying to diagnose me.
"Oh no," he said, "I'll still keep thinking of things, and coming to you with ideas." He gave me a satisfied smile. "I'm a journalist, you see."
DUDE. YOU FREELANCE FOR CANMAKERS MONTHLY.
"Yeah. Please don't," I said, and scuttled back to my room.
I sat around running through a list of excuses for moving out, trying to find the one that might cause the least amount of drama. I've lost my job. I'm emigrating. I'm dying. I've been accepted onto a reality show. I've converted to a niche religion which requires me to live in a commune. The one thing I really didn't want to have to do was tell him I was leaving because of him and have him explain to me why it was wrong of me to not be compatible with his personality.
In the end, I told him I was leaving because I couldn't afford to live there, and because I was ill. He suggested that both problems could be solved if I just stopped dancing, which is very much the wrong thing to suggest to me. He fought me on my decision to leave for a little while, and eventually I lied, appealed to his perception of me as an irresponsible child, and told him I was moving back home. From then on he stopped trying to convince me to stay, and communicated with me pretty much solely by Monologuing Through Doors from that point on, or by sending me text messages that said nothing except "PLEASE REPLY TO THIS TEXT MESSAGE." He would kick me out of the house whenever he was conducting a viewing no matter how sick I was and complain (Through Doors) about what terrible timing all of this was.
Finding somewhere else to live would be easy enough, I was sure. After all, there were hundreds of places last time. I just needed to find one that was slightly cheaper and preferably not owner-occupier and I'd be set. I fairly quickly discovered the actual truth about the London rental market: at any given time, there are approximately four habitable places for rent, and eighty-six thousand people applying for each one. Almost everything was extortionate, or infectious, or not in London at all. None of the semi-decent places I wrote to replied to me. None of my friends knew of anybody looking for a flatmate. My notice ran out and I still had nowhere to go and no leads at all.
I booked into a hotel for the night after moving day. My father came to help me move out, and to take most of my belongings back home. When he got out of the car I could see he was judging me; he thought I was being melodramatic and that I probably could have stuck this out a bit longer, at least until I'd found somewhere else to live. After all, the guy had seemed perfectly nice before. An hour or so later, Through Doors, he got to experience the landlord I'd been living with.
"Jen. I'm very concerned because I don't know when you'll be moving out."
"We'll be gone by 6.30 at the latest."
"Because I have other things to do and it's very difficult not to know when you'll be going."
"It'll be 6.30 at the latest."
"This whole thing has been very difficult for me, you know, with you giving notice and leaving when I'm having a very stressful time with my work and when I don't know when you're leaving - "
"Yeah. 6.30."
"Because I'm not able to plan the rest of my day, not knowing when you're - "
"I have said THREE. TIMES. We're leaving at 6.30."
"...oh. OK."
My dad, who asssesses everything and everybody on a scale of "not bad, actually" to "not quite the thing, really" looked at the door, then at me, then back at the door. "Yeah, he is a bit of a funny bugger, isn't he?"
As we drove away from the flat for the last time, he said, "Jesus Christ. No wonder his wife left him."
He dropped me off at my hotel with a suitcase and a laptop bag and left with everything else that I owned. I had a bed for the night, but no idea at all where I'd be going tomorrow. Maybe all the sensible people were right, and I should have stuck it out a bit longer. Maybe I should have waited until I knew I had somewhere else to go.
That night as I slept, my brain registered a clattering from the hotel kitchen and I sat bolt upright and shaking in the bed, terrified that I'd just dreamed the part where I moved out and I was actually still living in the flat. I looked down at the hotel bedsheets, at my suitcase on the floor, at my keycard on the table next to me, and fell into the most comfortable sleep I'd had in months.
No, they weren't right.
[in part three: dancers' floors and the fight for the deposit]
I knew within the first week of moving to this place that it wasn't a long-term option, but I thought I could probably stick it out for six months. My post-break-up social life had taken off in a way I'd never expected, so I wasn't in very much and he didn't try to communicate with me that often, so I just wouldn't go in the communal areas and we could ignore each other until Christmas. I could handle that, I told myself.
Six weeks later, I told everyone else that I was handing in my notice at the end of the month. I had nowhere else lined up, but I didn't care. I couldn't hang on til Christmas, I couldn't hang on til I had another option secured. I had to get out and get out now, before I woke up to find him in my room, draining my blood into a recycling bin because he was worried about the mess I might make on his carpets if I ever happened to cut myself. I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand living with someone who panicked so hard whenever anything was out of place. I couldn't stand being spoken to like a fourteen-year-old girl who knew nothing about the world. I couldn't stand having him repeatedly condescend to me about my own areas of expertise. I couldn't stand having any more basic concepts or household items being explained to me in ridiculous detail.
"Now, I'll show you something that's really useful. These are excellent." [produces a roll of paper towels] "And all you do is tear off a sheet, like this - see? - and then you use it to wipe up any stain on the counter top..."
"Yes, I bought those."
Once he heard me singing and thought it was the radio. He argued with me for five straight minutes that I couldn't possibly have been singing, and finally walked away confused as to how he'd been unable to make me understand that I hadn't been making that noise. Every interaction I had with him was stressful, and I came to dread the mere sound of his voice or his footsteps, even his breathing.
When my fainting problem started to get worse, I was off sick and stuck in the flat more often than I'd like. My tolerance for the man reduced to essentially zero, and I tried harder than ever to keep out of his way. Once when I was off sick, he asked me what the matter was. I explained it - I faint, it's a long term problem, it's my blood pressure, it's a pain but there's not much that can be done about it.
He said, "Maybe it's epilepsy."
"No, it's not epilepsy. They know what it is."
"But if it was epilepsy," he said, "that would be great, because then you could be cured. Maybe you should test for epilepsy."
I struggled past the sheer volume of wrong in those two sentences and told him that no, it wasn't epilepsy, I'd seen specialists, the problem had been diagnosed, and I'd appreciate him not trying to diagnose me.
"Oh no," he said, "I'll still keep thinking of things, and coming to you with ideas." He gave me a satisfied smile. "I'm a journalist, you see."
DUDE. YOU FREELANCE FOR CANMAKERS MONTHLY.
"Yeah. Please don't," I said, and scuttled back to my room.
I sat around running through a list of excuses for moving out, trying to find the one that might cause the least amount of drama. I've lost my job. I'm emigrating. I'm dying. I've been accepted onto a reality show. I've converted to a niche religion which requires me to live in a commune. The one thing I really didn't want to have to do was tell him I was leaving because of him and have him explain to me why it was wrong of me to not be compatible with his personality.
In the end, I told him I was leaving because I couldn't afford to live there, and because I was ill. He suggested that both problems could be solved if I just stopped dancing, which is very much the wrong thing to suggest to me. He fought me on my decision to leave for a little while, and eventually I lied, appealed to his perception of me as an irresponsible child, and told him I was moving back home. From then on he stopped trying to convince me to stay, and communicated with me pretty much solely by Monologuing Through Doors from that point on, or by sending me text messages that said nothing except "PLEASE REPLY TO THIS TEXT MESSAGE." He would kick me out of the house whenever he was conducting a viewing no matter how sick I was and complain (Through Doors) about what terrible timing all of this was.
Finding somewhere else to live would be easy enough, I was sure. After all, there were hundreds of places last time. I just needed to find one that was slightly cheaper and preferably not owner-occupier and I'd be set. I fairly quickly discovered the actual truth about the London rental market: at any given time, there are approximately four habitable places for rent, and eighty-six thousand people applying for each one. Almost everything was extortionate, or infectious, or not in London at all. None of the semi-decent places I wrote to replied to me. None of my friends knew of anybody looking for a flatmate. My notice ran out and I still had nowhere to go and no leads at all.
I booked into a hotel for the night after moving day. My father came to help me move out, and to take most of my belongings back home. When he got out of the car I could see he was judging me; he thought I was being melodramatic and that I probably could have stuck this out a bit longer, at least until I'd found somewhere else to live. After all, the guy had seemed perfectly nice before. An hour or so later, Through Doors, he got to experience the landlord I'd been living with.
"Jen. I'm very concerned because I don't know when you'll be moving out."
"We'll be gone by 6.30 at the latest."
"Because I have other things to do and it's very difficult not to know when you'll be going."
"It'll be 6.30 at the latest."
"This whole thing has been very difficult for me, you know, with you giving notice and leaving when I'm having a very stressful time with my work and when I don't know when you're leaving - "
"Yeah. 6.30."
"Because I'm not able to plan the rest of my day, not knowing when you're - "
"I have said THREE. TIMES. We're leaving at 6.30."
"...oh. OK."
My dad, who asssesses everything and everybody on a scale of "not bad, actually" to "not quite the thing, really" looked at the door, then at me, then back at the door. "Yeah, he is a bit of a funny bugger, isn't he?"
As we drove away from the flat for the last time, he said, "Jesus Christ. No wonder his wife left him."
He dropped me off at my hotel with a suitcase and a laptop bag and left with everything else that I owned. I had a bed for the night, but no idea at all where I'd be going tomorrow. Maybe all the sensible people were right, and I should have stuck it out a bit longer. Maybe I should have waited until I knew I had somewhere else to go.
That night as I slept, my brain registered a clattering from the hotel kitchen and I sat bolt upright and shaking in the bed, terrified that I'd just dreamed the part where I moved out and I was actually still living in the flat. I looked down at the hotel bedsheets, at my suitcase on the floor, at my keycard on the table next to me, and fell into the most comfortable sleep I'd had in months.
No, they weren't right.
[in part three: dancers' floors and the fight for the deposit]
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
adventures in housing, part one
[People have been suggesting for some time that I write about this, because it is completely ridiculous, so I'm having a go. This will be a saga in several parts. Everything in this story is true; names have been omitted for the sake of plausible deniability]
For my first two years in London, I lived with my partner. We had a slightly scruffy flat that I loved fiercely. I loved the chipped tiles on the front step. I loved the awkwardly positioned bathroom. I loved the garden we could never get anything to grow in. I loved the living room that could comfortably sleep my whole family, I loved the loo roll holder that fell off the wall literally any time anybody touched it, I loved the needlessly complicated back door, I loved the kitchen that just felt like mine. I loved the six-minute walk to the tube, I loved the Saturday farmer's market, I loved the cooked breakfasts at the café across the road. I loved our landlords, who rarely bothered us but would sort out any problems as soon as we asked (I miss them. Oh God, I miss them).
But living together got harder. We fought, and I hid, and he would ask me what the problem was and I would tell him and he would try to fix it by explaining to me why that thing wasn't actually a problem, and then we would fight and I would hide some more. When we split up he seemed surprised; like he hadn't seen it coming.
We had a big flat in zone 2 with a cellar and a garden, and I was the well-paid one (which is saying something). There was only one bedroom. Neither of us could keep it. We gave notice to our regretful but understanding landlords, and lived in a state of incredibly confused normalcy for a month, where it took two weeks for us to realise we shouldn't be sharing a bed anymore, because we'd been lying next to each other and not touching for six months already. I set up an ad and started looking for a room.
I was spoilt by that first flat hunt. Everywhere I viewed was at least decent. Everyone I met seemed nice. There must have been an unusual shortage of people looking for rooms that month, because I got dozens of messages every week from people wanting me to come and live with them (spoilers: you will not be reading that again). I found somewhere without too much hassle: not the prettiest but incredibly well-located, with two guys: the landlord, who seemed perfectly nice and easy-going, and another man who was in London maybe three nights a month at most. It seemed fine.
I had my first clue that things weren't fine on my first night there. He suggested we have dinner together, and offered me a glass of wine. When I accepted, he poured half an inch of wine into two tumblers and walked over to the sink.
"Do you want yours diluted?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you want your wine diluted?"
"Diluted? ...no thanks."
"Oh. I'm having mine diluted. It's how the Romans drank it."
"No thanks."
So he handed me the glass with half an inch of liquid in it and sipped, slightly defensively, at his strange alcoholic squash drink. I knew that a man who a) dilutes his wine and b) is quite comfortable giving someone half an inch of drink to show his disapproval of her excessive ways was not likely to be a soulmate of mine. (He then told me that he'd "observed that some of our greatest literature... is about change" and I think I deserve some kind of award for not telling him that yes, essentially, that is what a plot is.)
He told me he worked in PR. My next clue that this was not my forever home came during my first week in the flat, when he went out to a launch of some unspecified thing and returned with tales of free alcohol and a really interesting bar. "I've been telling everyone all night, 'My flatmate's a novelist'," he told me, with the air of a fully satisfied man. "I think that bar would be a great place for your book launch. I know exactly how I'm going to organise it."
I am a novelist, in the sense that there are half a dozen or so first draft novels sitting on my hard drive. I am not a novelist in the sense of having published anything, or having anything about to be published, or having an agent, or having sent anything off to anybody ever. I am certainly not a novelist in the sense of appointing a PR guy to do my launch party. It was a small incident, and not really enough to point to any conclusions - either that he liked to bullshit, and might have been doing so during the viewing, or he really thought this was reasonable, and maybe his grip on reality wasn't quite what it could be - and so I let it go. By the time I noticed that he hadn't left the house for anything besides food shopping in the month since that launch, and was possibly both bullshitting and delusional, other signs had begun to pop up all over the place.
It had become clear pretty quickly that he didn't want anyone, least of all me, in his house. He was used to the other guy paying him silly money for a barely-used room, and every time he saw me in the kitchen in the morning it was an unpleasant surprise. He wanted to talk about the things he'd heard on the radio or seen on the internet, but he couldn't bring himself to have a conversation about them. He regarded me as though I was a friend's teenage daughter that he'd taken in as a favour, and couldn't comprehend that I'd have anything to contribute to anything.
Once I came home late, had a pizza, and left the box on the table. The next morning I came into the kitchen to find him staring at it with an expression of sheer despair on his face.
"You left this on the table," he said.
"I came in late. I was going to - "
"You see," he said desperately, "it's best - it really is best - if you fold it up immediately and put it in the recycling. It's best to do it immediately. You see, if you fold it up like this - " as he demonstrated exactly how best to fold up a cardboard box " - and put it away in the recycling immediately, that really is best, if that's OK. Is that OK? Because it really is best - "
"I have to get to work."
We repeated this any time I left evidence of my existence out. If I left a cup in the living room, if there was a fingernail-sized blob of tomato sauce next to the stove, if I had a shower and prioritised drying myself above giving the bathroom an immediate and thorough clean. Because I'd just come out of the shower, was lacking in clothes and therefore keeping my bedroom door shut, he developed one of his weirder habits, Monologuing Through Doors.
"Ah, hah, Jen, you are going to clean the bath, aren't you?"
"Yes, when I'm dry."
"Because it's a mess, you know, it's a mess. I can see - there's shampoo - I can see a blob of shampoo in the bath. And I know - I know it's you, because you're the only one in the house with any hair..."
"I'll clean the bath when I've dried my hair."
"Because I can see it, you know, the shampoo, and I don't mind cleaning the bath, I don't mind it, but I think really if you could clean the bath when you've used it, if we could all clean the bath when we've used it, I think we - we should all clean the bath... there's shampoo."
"When. I'm. Dry."
"Shampoo... in the bath."
"I'm turning my hairdryer on now."
"...shampoo..."
[in part two: "if you had epilepsy, they could cure it", and how to leave your scary shut-in landlord]
For my first two years in London, I lived with my partner. We had a slightly scruffy flat that I loved fiercely. I loved the chipped tiles on the front step. I loved the awkwardly positioned bathroom. I loved the garden we could never get anything to grow in. I loved the living room that could comfortably sleep my whole family, I loved the loo roll holder that fell off the wall literally any time anybody touched it, I loved the needlessly complicated back door, I loved the kitchen that just felt like mine. I loved the six-minute walk to the tube, I loved the Saturday farmer's market, I loved the cooked breakfasts at the café across the road. I loved our landlords, who rarely bothered us but would sort out any problems as soon as we asked (I miss them. Oh God, I miss them).
But living together got harder. We fought, and I hid, and he would ask me what the problem was and I would tell him and he would try to fix it by explaining to me why that thing wasn't actually a problem, and then we would fight and I would hide some more. When we split up he seemed surprised; like he hadn't seen it coming.
We had a big flat in zone 2 with a cellar and a garden, and I was the well-paid one (which is saying something). There was only one bedroom. Neither of us could keep it. We gave notice to our regretful but understanding landlords, and lived in a state of incredibly confused normalcy for a month, where it took two weeks for us to realise we shouldn't be sharing a bed anymore, because we'd been lying next to each other and not touching for six months already. I set up an ad and started looking for a room.
I was spoilt by that first flat hunt. Everywhere I viewed was at least decent. Everyone I met seemed nice. There must have been an unusual shortage of people looking for rooms that month, because I got dozens of messages every week from people wanting me to come and live with them (spoilers: you will not be reading that again). I found somewhere without too much hassle: not the prettiest but incredibly well-located, with two guys: the landlord, who seemed perfectly nice and easy-going, and another man who was in London maybe three nights a month at most. It seemed fine.
I had my first clue that things weren't fine on my first night there. He suggested we have dinner together, and offered me a glass of wine. When I accepted, he poured half an inch of wine into two tumblers and walked over to the sink.
"Do you want yours diluted?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you want your wine diluted?"
"Diluted? ...no thanks."
"Oh. I'm having mine diluted. It's how the Romans drank it."
"No thanks."
So he handed me the glass with half an inch of liquid in it and sipped, slightly defensively, at his strange alcoholic squash drink. I knew that a man who a) dilutes his wine and b) is quite comfortable giving someone half an inch of drink to show his disapproval of her excessive ways was not likely to be a soulmate of mine. (He then told me that he'd "observed that some of our greatest literature... is about change" and I think I deserve some kind of award for not telling him that yes, essentially, that is what a plot is.)
He told me he worked in PR. My next clue that this was not my forever home came during my first week in the flat, when he went out to a launch of some unspecified thing and returned with tales of free alcohol and a really interesting bar. "I've been telling everyone all night, 'My flatmate's a novelist'," he told me, with the air of a fully satisfied man. "I think that bar would be a great place for your book launch. I know exactly how I'm going to organise it."
I am a novelist, in the sense that there are half a dozen or so first draft novels sitting on my hard drive. I am not a novelist in the sense of having published anything, or having anything about to be published, or having an agent, or having sent anything off to anybody ever. I am certainly not a novelist in the sense of appointing a PR guy to do my launch party. It was a small incident, and not really enough to point to any conclusions - either that he liked to bullshit, and might have been doing so during the viewing, or he really thought this was reasonable, and maybe his grip on reality wasn't quite what it could be - and so I let it go. By the time I noticed that he hadn't left the house for anything besides food shopping in the month since that launch, and was possibly both bullshitting and delusional, other signs had begun to pop up all over the place.
It had become clear pretty quickly that he didn't want anyone, least of all me, in his house. He was used to the other guy paying him silly money for a barely-used room, and every time he saw me in the kitchen in the morning it was an unpleasant surprise. He wanted to talk about the things he'd heard on the radio or seen on the internet, but he couldn't bring himself to have a conversation about them. He regarded me as though I was a friend's teenage daughter that he'd taken in as a favour, and couldn't comprehend that I'd have anything to contribute to anything.
Once I came home late, had a pizza, and left the box on the table. The next morning I came into the kitchen to find him staring at it with an expression of sheer despair on his face.
"You left this on the table," he said.
"I came in late. I was going to - "
"You see," he said desperately, "it's best - it really is best - if you fold it up immediately and put it in the recycling. It's best to do it immediately. You see, if you fold it up like this - " as he demonstrated exactly how best to fold up a cardboard box " - and put it away in the recycling immediately, that really is best, if that's OK. Is that OK? Because it really is best - "
"I have to get to work."
We repeated this any time I left evidence of my existence out. If I left a cup in the living room, if there was a fingernail-sized blob of tomato sauce next to the stove, if I had a shower and prioritised drying myself above giving the bathroom an immediate and thorough clean. Because I'd just come out of the shower, was lacking in clothes and therefore keeping my bedroom door shut, he developed one of his weirder habits, Monologuing Through Doors.
"Ah, hah, Jen, you are going to clean the bath, aren't you?"
"Yes, when I'm dry."
"Because it's a mess, you know, it's a mess. I can see - there's shampoo - I can see a blob of shampoo in the bath. And I know - I know it's you, because you're the only one in the house with any hair..."
"I'll clean the bath when I've dried my hair."
"Because I can see it, you know, the shampoo, and I don't mind cleaning the bath, I don't mind it, but I think really if you could clean the bath when you've used it, if we could all clean the bath when we've used it, I think we - we should all clean the bath... there's shampoo."
"When. I'm. Dry."
"Shampoo... in the bath."
"I'm turning my hairdryer on now."
"...shampoo..."
[in part two: "if you had epilepsy, they could cure it", and how to leave your scary shut-in landlord]
Friday, 3 October 2014
call centre
Caller: [explains problem]
Worker: That's not something we deal with here, you'll need to speak to [relevant people].
Caller: But I phoned YOU.
Caller: [explains problem] I'm thinking I might sue. Should I sue?
Worker: Well, that would be your decision to make.
Caller: So I should sue! Would I win?
Worker: There's no way for me to know that.
Caller: Fantastic! [away from phone] Honey, she says we should sue!
Worker: I didn't say that.
Caller: It's so great that you said that.
Caller: Don't tell anyone I said this. I don't want it attached to my name.
Worker: That's OK, you haven't given me your name.
Caller: YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT I KNOW YOU
Caller: Last time I called I spoke to Trevor. Can I speak to Trevor this time?
Worker: I'm afraid we're not set up to direct people to specific advisors.
Caller: [pouts audibly] I liked Trevor.
Worker: I'm sure I'll be able to help you.
Caller: Is Trevor there?
Worker: Not in this office.
Caller: Fine. I'll keep trying until I get Trevor.
Worker: OK, so you have four options here. [explains options]
Caller: So you're saying there's nothing I can do about this?
Worker: Well, there are the four options...
Caller: So, nothing, then.
Caller: Thank you so much for your help, Jezebel.
Worker. My name's Jane.
Caller: Yep! Bye, Jezebel!
Worker: So that's all you need to do, and you'll be set.
Caller: Why can't you do it?
Worker: ...
Caller: I phoned you for HELP.
Caller: So I called before, and you guys told me to use a filter to get rid of my junk mail, and I got drunk and punched a guy in the pub, and now everything's got worse. I'd like to complain about your service.
Worker: [call centre], may I help you?
Caller: Trevor?
Worker: ... no, this is -
Caller: [hangs up]
Worker: That's not something we deal with here, you'll need to speak to [relevant people].
Caller: But I phoned YOU.
Caller: [explains problem] I'm thinking I might sue. Should I sue?
Worker: Well, that would be your decision to make.
Caller: So I should sue! Would I win?
Worker: There's no way for me to know that.
Caller: Fantastic! [away from phone] Honey, she says we should sue!
Worker: I didn't say that.
Caller: It's so great that you said that.
Caller: Don't tell anyone I said this. I don't want it attached to my name.
Worker: That's OK, you haven't given me your name.
Caller: YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT I KNOW YOU
Caller: Last time I called I spoke to Trevor. Can I speak to Trevor this time?
Worker: I'm afraid we're not set up to direct people to specific advisors.
Caller: [pouts audibly] I liked Trevor.
Worker: I'm sure I'll be able to help you.
Caller: Is Trevor there?
Worker: Not in this office.
Caller: Fine. I'll keep trying until I get Trevor.
Worker: OK, so you have four options here. [explains options]
Caller: So you're saying there's nothing I can do about this?
Worker: Well, there are the four options...
Caller: So, nothing, then.
Caller: Thank you so much for your help, Jezebel.
Worker. My name's Jane.
Caller: Yep! Bye, Jezebel!
Worker: So that's all you need to do, and you'll be set.
Caller: Why can't you do it?
Worker: ...
Caller: I phoned you for HELP.
Caller: So I called before, and you guys told me to use a filter to get rid of my junk mail, and I got drunk and punched a guy in the pub, and now everything's got worse. I'd like to complain about your service.
Worker: [call centre], may I help you?
Caller: Trevor?
Worker: ... no, this is -
Caller: [hangs up]
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
silence
The other night I went dancing. The scene is still small and I'm pretty much always there, so I generally recognise most people I see when I enter a venue. People I know well, people I know by face but not by name, people I love to dance with, people who are in massive demand that I have to fight to dance with. Then there are the people I will not dance with again under any circumstances.
This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:
Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.
Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.
Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.
This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.
I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."
Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.
We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).
The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.
In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.
Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.
This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.
I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.
This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:
Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.
Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.
Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.
This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.
I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."
Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.
We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).
The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.
In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.
Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.
This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.
I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.
Thursday, 11 September 2014
inspiration
So I allowed myself the weekend off to do important things (read: murder ALL OF MY MUSCLES at a two-day dance workshop), with the full intention of starting again all bright-eyed and fresh on Monday. At this point it appears to be Thursday. Note to self: make more effort.
It's September. The days have started to shrink but it's not quite autumn yet. When I sit in the office and look out of the window, I can feel the next four months coming up on me. I can feel the leaves drop. I can feel the shift from green to orange to grey, from bare arms to layers, from long evenings outside to leaving the office in the dark. It all feels quite nice until this thought path inevitably leads me on to Christmas, and then I have to stop for the sake of my sanity.
Before I get to Christmas, I get to NaNoWriMo.
My experience over the last ten years of attempting to produce 50,000 words of at least semi-readable prose every November is that either I get my idea now, or I don't get it at all. In the years where I've known what I'm going to write before the month starts, it's come from an image or two that I got in September. A child in a swimming pool, an argument in a bathroom, a woman sitting on a table in a bookshop, a motorbike accident, a man with a camera, two people sitting on a bench in the dark. That's usually all I need. With the image comes a mood, a feeling that I can access when I'm writing, and as I turn the image over in my mind, trying different directions and characters, the feeling tells me whether or not the story is working. Then when November comes, I have two or three scenes mapped out in my head, at least one character relationship that I understand, and a sense of the story's voice. These are the years when I like what I write.
More often than not, I don't get the image I connect to, and I greet November in a flailing panic.
Friend: You're doing NaNo again?
Me: Yep.
Friend: What's it about?
Me: I DON'T KNOW there's a mystery and there's a lot of yoghurt involved for some reason and my main characters are a bear and a fireman and France.
Friend: Your main character is France?
Me: Yes.
Friend: How?
Me: I DON'T KNOW it just happened please help.
Given all this, and given that I failed spectacularly last year (mostly due to homelessness), it would be nice to start November with a plan. But making a plan happen is next to impossible. I can't make myself connect to an idea. I've tried a few times to go into the NaNoWriMo forums and adopt a plot or a scene or a character that someone else has thought of and can't find a use for, and it just doesn't work, because I don't care about it. Even if the idea is amazing, if I don't know how I'm supposed to feel when I write it, it won't happen. I'll end up with a few forced and disjointed pages which are either so bad as to make me give up entirely, or so dull that I end up wandering off the point and my characters get stuck in a fish market for three chapters or start arguing about yoghurt or all put on robes and snipe at each other about the nature of questionhood or an iguana shows up in a yacht or someone loses a foot (all of these have happened. The yoghurt and foot things are apparently recurring themes in my work).
Friend: Don't worry about how good it is, just write.
Me: Yeah, I've tried that, and what I end up with is a mystery I don't understand and inexplicable threatening flamingos.
Friend: But you can edit that.
Me: If I edit out all the bad bits, there will be no remaining bits. It'll just be a list of names I thought were funny.
Writer's block, for me, isn't necessarily an inability to write anything at all. It's an inability to care about what I'm writing. There is nothing that comes close to the exhilaration I get when I understand the feeling in my head enough to wrap it up in words and put it onto a page, when I can see my setting clearly enough to recreate it for someone else using as few words as possible, when I stop thinking about sentences and structures because I'm not trying to make a story anymore, the story is there and it's real and I can feel it. It's been a long time since writing fiction felt that natural.
All I can really do is be receptive, explore the unformed ideas that fly around just outside my head, and hope for something to settle. I miss it, and I'm ready for it. I'm ready to feel it, I'm ready to work at it, I'm ready to be absorbed so far into that I really get on my friends' nerves. I'm ready to write, dammit. I just need my story to find me in September.
It's September. The days have started to shrink but it's not quite autumn yet. When I sit in the office and look out of the window, I can feel the next four months coming up on me. I can feel the leaves drop. I can feel the shift from green to orange to grey, from bare arms to layers, from long evenings outside to leaving the office in the dark. It all feels quite nice until this thought path inevitably leads me on to Christmas, and then I have to stop for the sake of my sanity.
Before I get to Christmas, I get to NaNoWriMo.
My experience over the last ten years of attempting to produce 50,000 words of at least semi-readable prose every November is that either I get my idea now, or I don't get it at all. In the years where I've known what I'm going to write before the month starts, it's come from an image or two that I got in September. A child in a swimming pool, an argument in a bathroom, a woman sitting on a table in a bookshop, a motorbike accident, a man with a camera, two people sitting on a bench in the dark. That's usually all I need. With the image comes a mood, a feeling that I can access when I'm writing, and as I turn the image over in my mind, trying different directions and characters, the feeling tells me whether or not the story is working. Then when November comes, I have two or three scenes mapped out in my head, at least one character relationship that I understand, and a sense of the story's voice. These are the years when I like what I write.
More often than not, I don't get the image I connect to, and I greet November in a flailing panic.
Friend: You're doing NaNo again?
Me: Yep.
Friend: What's it about?
Me: I DON'T KNOW there's a mystery and there's a lot of yoghurt involved for some reason and my main characters are a bear and a fireman and France.
Friend: Your main character is France?
Me: Yes.
Friend: How?
Me: I DON'T KNOW it just happened please help.
Given all this, and given that I failed spectacularly last year (mostly due to homelessness), it would be nice to start November with a plan. But making a plan happen is next to impossible. I can't make myself connect to an idea. I've tried a few times to go into the NaNoWriMo forums and adopt a plot or a scene or a character that someone else has thought of and can't find a use for, and it just doesn't work, because I don't care about it. Even if the idea is amazing, if I don't know how I'm supposed to feel when I write it, it won't happen. I'll end up with a few forced and disjointed pages which are either so bad as to make me give up entirely, or so dull that I end up wandering off the point and my characters get stuck in a fish market for three chapters or start arguing about yoghurt or all put on robes and snipe at each other about the nature of questionhood or an iguana shows up in a yacht or someone loses a foot (all of these have happened. The yoghurt and foot things are apparently recurring themes in my work).
Friend: Don't worry about how good it is, just write.
Me: Yeah, I've tried that, and what I end up with is a mystery I don't understand and inexplicable threatening flamingos.
Friend: But you can edit that.
Me: If I edit out all the bad bits, there will be no remaining bits. It'll just be a list of names I thought were funny.
Writer's block, for me, isn't necessarily an inability to write anything at all. It's an inability to care about what I'm writing. There is nothing that comes close to the exhilaration I get when I understand the feeling in my head enough to wrap it up in words and put it onto a page, when I can see my setting clearly enough to recreate it for someone else using as few words as possible, when I stop thinking about sentences and structures because I'm not trying to make a story anymore, the story is there and it's real and I can feel it. It's been a long time since writing fiction felt that natural.
All I can really do is be receptive, explore the unformed ideas that fly around just outside my head, and hope for something to settle. I miss it, and I'm ready for it. I'm ready to feel it, I'm ready to work at it, I'm ready to be absorbed so far into that I really get on my friends' nerves. I'm ready to write, dammit. I just need my story to find me in September.
Thursday, 4 September 2014
fake
My former landlady has readvertised my room. She's put up the rent, glossed over the fact that the lounge is a box and neglected to mention that she actually lives there. I say neglected to mention; she explicitly claims that she doesn't live there.
We could report her. We will.
But first, we want to make fake profiles and ask her questions.
When I lived in her house, she knew me as an awkward, pedantic, legalistic bitch. I wanted everything in writing, took nothing on trust, and didn't ever seem to be in the house when she showed up unannounced (at first this was coincidence, but I will admit to hiding in my room on a couple of occasions because it amused me to be the Phantom Housemate). When it came time to leave, the others said, "You write the notice email. She's scared of you."
So when a naive young girl contacts her about the superawesome room in her superawesome house, she'll never see it coming.
I have my character all planned out. She'll be 22, fresh out of university, just got her first ever adult job in the big city, and wanting to move somewhere that's close to her boyfriend. She'll never have dealt with tenancies before; she won't know anything about deposits, or the protections she doesn't have if the landlord lives in the house. She'll be excited about the move, and not ask too many awkward questions. The only thing she'll want to know is whether other people are already in the house. She won't mind what the answer is, she can just feel that this is the place for her. But she'll ask the question.
Also, I'm going to spell everything badly. That'll be a challenge.
We could report her. We will.
But first, we want to make fake profiles and ask her questions.
When I lived in her house, she knew me as an awkward, pedantic, legalistic bitch. I wanted everything in writing, took nothing on trust, and didn't ever seem to be in the house when she showed up unannounced (at first this was coincidence, but I will admit to hiding in my room on a couple of occasions because it amused me to be the Phantom Housemate). When it came time to leave, the others said, "You write the notice email. She's scared of you."
So when a naive young girl contacts her about the superawesome room in her superawesome house, she'll never see it coming.
I have my character all planned out. She'll be 22, fresh out of university, just got her first ever adult job in the big city, and wanting to move somewhere that's close to her boyfriend. She'll never have dealt with tenancies before; she won't know anything about deposits, or the protections she doesn't have if the landlord lives in the house. She'll be excited about the move, and not ask too many awkward questions. The only thing she'll want to know is whether other people are already in the house. She won't mind what the answer is, she can just feel that this is the place for her. But she'll ask the question.
Also, I'm going to spell everything badly. That'll be a challenge.
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
poetry
I've often wished that I liked poetry.
It seems like the sort of thing I ought to like. I ought to like to write it, or read it, or analyse it, or share it. I love to write in almost any other form, even if I'm not very good at it. When I accept I'm not good at writing a certain way, I still enjoy other people's rather more successful attempts at it; in fact I admire it more, as a skill I understand but don't possess. I ought to feel that way about poetry too. I ought to want to study it, to see underneath language, find the nuances, construct my own interpretation of the narrative. I've seen people on Facebook and on blogs I frequent post their favourite poems, poems that perfectly express their mood right now, poems that give the most amazing life advice. I ought to enjoy that.
But I don't. It just irritates me. It irritates me as a concept, and every single example I read irritates me on its own specific merits. I don't understand why this is. I've tried to come up with explanations before, when upset poets ask me what, exactly, is wrong with the medium they love so much. And since my degree was based around creative writing, there have been a lot of upset poets.
This happened more than once at uni:
Fellow student: Hey, if you've got some time, would you mind critiquing this poem I wrote?
Me: Really? Me?
Fellow student: Please. I really think it needs another set of eyes.
Me: I mean, I can do, but my critique is almost certainly going to be "is there any way to make this not a poem?"
Usually what I end up telling people is that I don't like what poetry does to language. The rhyme schemes feel tortured, the structures feel forced, the words feel out of place, and I find myself wishing that they'd just tell the fucking story already instead of trying to make it into a pretty shape and losing half the content in the process. Then this happens:
Them: Read this one. It's my very favourite poem. You cannot possibly read this beautiful thing and still hate poetry.
Me: Look, I can see that it's good in terms of what a poem is, but I still really wish it would go away.
I don't really have reasons for hating poetry. I couldn't provide you with an empirical argument for its being a bad or unworthy art form. I would probably argue that most of the world's poetry is objectively bad, but then most of the world's writing is objectively bad, and something being of objectively terrible quality has never precluded the possibility of it being enjoyable. I just don't like it, in much the same way I don't like cabbage or Sex on Fire or comedies for which the word 'excruciating' is deployed as a compliment. It just upsets me, and there is no good reason for it.
I've been told I'm missing out on so much. I've been told that I'm blinkered, that I have no romance in my soul. Once I was told that it was no wonder I didn't like it since English is a horrible language and I might learn to understand poetry if only I could become fluent in French. I turned the lack of romance into a point of pride for a while. Yes, I am unromantic. I am the most unromantic person ever. I hate poetry with all of my cold, stony, untouchable heart.
Perhaps there is hope for me. Perhaps when my midlife crisis hits I'll suddenly fall in love with poetry in all its glorious forms. Perhaps when I become a little well-known for writing, it'll be my poetry that people respond to. Perhaps the word 'poet' will precede my name wherever it goes. Perhaps.
But I doubt it, because frankly, poetry is bollocks.
It seems like the sort of thing I ought to like. I ought to like to write it, or read it, or analyse it, or share it. I love to write in almost any other form, even if I'm not very good at it. When I accept I'm not good at writing a certain way, I still enjoy other people's rather more successful attempts at it; in fact I admire it more, as a skill I understand but don't possess. I ought to feel that way about poetry too. I ought to want to study it, to see underneath language, find the nuances, construct my own interpretation of the narrative. I've seen people on Facebook and on blogs I frequent post their favourite poems, poems that perfectly express their mood right now, poems that give the most amazing life advice. I ought to enjoy that.
But I don't. It just irritates me. It irritates me as a concept, and every single example I read irritates me on its own specific merits. I don't understand why this is. I've tried to come up with explanations before, when upset poets ask me what, exactly, is wrong with the medium they love so much. And since my degree was based around creative writing, there have been a lot of upset poets.
This happened more than once at uni:
Fellow student: Hey, if you've got some time, would you mind critiquing this poem I wrote?
Me: Really? Me?
Fellow student: Please. I really think it needs another set of eyes.
Me: I mean, I can do, but my critique is almost certainly going to be "is there any way to make this not a poem?"
Usually what I end up telling people is that I don't like what poetry does to language. The rhyme schemes feel tortured, the structures feel forced, the words feel out of place, and I find myself wishing that they'd just tell the fucking story already instead of trying to make it into a pretty shape and losing half the content in the process. Then this happens:
Them: Read this one. It's my very favourite poem. You cannot possibly read this beautiful thing and still hate poetry.
Me: Look, I can see that it's good in terms of what a poem is, but I still really wish it would go away.
I don't really have reasons for hating poetry. I couldn't provide you with an empirical argument for its being a bad or unworthy art form. I would probably argue that most of the world's poetry is objectively bad, but then most of the world's writing is objectively bad, and something being of objectively terrible quality has never precluded the possibility of it being enjoyable. I just don't like it, in much the same way I don't like cabbage or Sex on Fire or comedies for which the word 'excruciating' is deployed as a compliment. It just upsets me, and there is no good reason for it.
I've been told I'm missing out on so much. I've been told that I'm blinkered, that I have no romance in my soul. Once I was told that it was no wonder I didn't like it since English is a horrible language and I might learn to understand poetry if only I could become fluent in French. I turned the lack of romance into a point of pride for a while. Yes, I am unromantic. I am the most unromantic person ever. I hate poetry with all of my cold, stony, untouchable heart.
Perhaps there is hope for me. Perhaps when my midlife crisis hits I'll suddenly fall in love with poetry in all its glorious forms. Perhaps when I become a little well-known for writing, it'll be my poetry that people respond to. Perhaps the word 'poet' will precede my name wherever it goes. Perhaps.
But I doubt it, because frankly, poetry is bollocks.
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
loss
I’m finding starting again a challenge, so I went back to the writer’s block prompts.
"What have you lost?"
I know what kind of post is supposed to come from a prompt like that. Tales of regret, of aching, of an emptiness that’s bittersweet because you know that really, things are better now. People who drifted away, dreams that couldn’t survive a lifestyle change. Loss of innocence, loss of optimism, loss of naïveté, loss of the old self while trying to discover a new one.
What came to my mind instead was, "I can never remember where I put anything."
I lose earrings. I lose paperwork. I lose cables. I lose socks. I lose books. I lose memory cards. I have bought Abre los Ojos on DVD four times, and each time I’ve managed to lose it before I’ve been able to watch it. Once I lost a printer. It was in my room for six months and I couldn’t find it. I say once; I’ve lost that printer twice. In the same room. Eventually I just gave up and got rid of it.
It’s the kind of problem I really don’t know how to correct. My memory for things that aren’t "what did I do with that T-shirt?" is so good that it’s actually a huge pain in the neck. I can’t just put things back in the same place every time because I usually lose things before they get a place. Or, sometimes, I put the thing back in its place, and when I return to the place the thing is no longer in it. The thing then turns up somewhere entirely logical, like inside a flowerpot or attached to the underside of a curtain or wrapped in an empty chocolate wrapper and shoved between the oven and the washing machine. I don’t have the techniques to fight this kind of Possession Gremlin.
On the other hand, sometimes I find things. When I moved house, I found two books I hadn’t read, an unopened bottle of truffle oil, three eyeliners, a Czech phrase book, a raspberry beret and a swizzle stick with a watermelon on it. I’m not saying all this is quality stuff. Some of it is the exact opposite of quality. But since I’m clearly stuck being the person that loses everything, I may as well take a small amount of joy in regarding my bedroom as a really shit treasure hunt. Ill-fitting camera lens filters! Fridge magnets shaped like aubergines! Every colour of Revlon Lip Butter in the world (literally. I went to California and bought all the ones they don’t sell here)! A golf tee, for some inexplicable reason! Half a bag of Viennese truffles!
So there are worse problems I could have. But still rather a pain in the bum.
Monday, 1 September 2014
September
I only wrote once in August. A combination of the stress of moving house, lacking access to internet and then lacking access to computers entirely seems like a pretty good excuse, but while it certainly made things more difficult, I could have posted if I’d really been committed to it. I just... didn’t. It’s alarming how easy it is to just not write, and I need to put in more of an effort to form better habits.
So, September daily blogging is going to be a thing (except this weekend, when I am legitimately quite busy learning things and using my body to do things that aren’t sit in front of a screen and complain). And probably October daily blogging will be a thing too. Then November will roll around and I'll be writing frantic posts multiple times a day to distract myself from the shitness of, or possibly complete lack of, my novel. Probably from under the bed, even though I no longer have a bed with space under it.
So, September daily blogging is going to be a thing (except this weekend, when I am legitimately quite busy learning things and using my body to do things that aren’t sit in front of a screen and complain). And probably October daily blogging will be a thing too. Then November will roll around and I'll be writing frantic posts multiple times a day to distract myself from the shitness of, or possibly complete lack of, my novel. Probably from under the bed, even though I no longer have a bed with space under it.
Tuesday, 5 August 2014
stuff
I'm about to move house. This will be my fifth move since last year, not including the two months I spent couch-surfing (another nine places). I've become notorious for it. People are either sick of hearing it or want to make jokes about how I must be cursed, which was funny until about two moves ago, when I started to wonder if it might actually be true. We agreed this new tenancy with three days to go on the current place, which hasn't helped my mental state or my writer's block in the slightest.
Back in the autumn I lived out of a suitcase for two months. I sent most of my possessions back to my parents and learned to live more minimally than I thought possible. I'm in no hurry to do that again, but looking around my room eight months later and seeing the amount of packing I'm going to have to do is a little intimidating. I moved into my last place with the suitcase and moved out having acquired bedding, sundries like cushions and mirrors that our landlord didn't want, and a sackful of clothes from my former housemate's periodic clearouts. In the six months I've lived here, I've accumulated a bewildering amount of stuff. I'm not even sure what most of it is, but I can see that it fills the room. And I have the big room.
Some stuff is understandable. A second set of bedding, extra towels. I bought a sleeping bag to go away with. A laundry bin and a desktop fan. None of this explains why my cupboards and drawers are full to bursting and the floor is covered in god knows what. There's no space under my bed. What is it? It can't all be clothes. I didn't think I even had that many clothes. Ripped tights and worn-through shoes, dancer casualties, that I haven't got round to throwing away? That's part of it, but how much space do tights take up? Hair paraphernalia, beauty products? I have a lot of that, but not a room's worth.
Most of it will probably turn out to be uncategorisable. Paperwork that seemed too important to throw out but not important enough to file away. Empty bottles that I thought were pretty. The tub of mini chocolate pumpkins that I've been carting about with me for ages. Things I acquired while drunk that I have no earthly use for but make me smile when I look at them. Small unidentified pieces of rubber or metal that look like they were part of something once, daring me to throw them out before I work out where they came from.
It's easy to build up this kind of collection when it sits quietly in your bedroom, not obviously worthless enough to spur on a decision to throw it away. It's one thing just to leave it where it lies, but it's quite another to pack it all up and lug it over to the other side of London, and I'm determined not to do that. I don't want to move into a new home and have it feel like a mess from the off, because on the basis of past experience I will look around, go, "Hey look, mess!" and proceed to throw junk food wrappers on the floor and sleep on a pile of clothes. I want to be able to make it look and feel like my space, and while I suppose cramming every surface with crap and leaving piles of clothes everywhere is a reasonably accurate representation of me, I'd like to have the option to do something else this time.
So my challenge is to throw things out. Not send it to be stored in someone else's house, actually get rid of it.
I know I have clothes I don't wear. Books I'll never read again. Mostly empty bottles. Shoes that hurt my feet. Information leaflets from old dance festivals that I have electronic copies of anyway. Boxes of Celebrations with just the Bounty bars left. Broken hair grips. Cables for products I don't even own anymore. I know I have things I don't even know I have. There are so many things in this room that I wouldn't miss if they vanished. I probably wouldn't even notice. But actively throwing it out feels different, like I'm callously rejecting that potential future situation when I will be in desperate need of a pair of awkwardly low-riding jeans with diamante on the back pockets (why on earth do I have these? Good grief). It's a block I'm going to have to get over, because this stuff really can't come with me.
This'll be interesting.
Back in the autumn I lived out of a suitcase for two months. I sent most of my possessions back to my parents and learned to live more minimally than I thought possible. I'm in no hurry to do that again, but looking around my room eight months later and seeing the amount of packing I'm going to have to do is a little intimidating. I moved into my last place with the suitcase and moved out having acquired bedding, sundries like cushions and mirrors that our landlord didn't want, and a sackful of clothes from my former housemate's periodic clearouts. In the six months I've lived here, I've accumulated a bewildering amount of stuff. I'm not even sure what most of it is, but I can see that it fills the room. And I have the big room.
Some stuff is understandable. A second set of bedding, extra towels. I bought a sleeping bag to go away with. A laundry bin and a desktop fan. None of this explains why my cupboards and drawers are full to bursting and the floor is covered in god knows what. There's no space under my bed. What is it? It can't all be clothes. I didn't think I even had that many clothes. Ripped tights and worn-through shoes, dancer casualties, that I haven't got round to throwing away? That's part of it, but how much space do tights take up? Hair paraphernalia, beauty products? I have a lot of that, but not a room's worth.
Most of it will probably turn out to be uncategorisable. Paperwork that seemed too important to throw out but not important enough to file away. Empty bottles that I thought were pretty. The tub of mini chocolate pumpkins that I've been carting about with me for ages. Things I acquired while drunk that I have no earthly use for but make me smile when I look at them. Small unidentified pieces of rubber or metal that look like they were part of something once, daring me to throw them out before I work out where they came from.
It's easy to build up this kind of collection when it sits quietly in your bedroom, not obviously worthless enough to spur on a decision to throw it away. It's one thing just to leave it where it lies, but it's quite another to pack it all up and lug it over to the other side of London, and I'm determined not to do that. I don't want to move into a new home and have it feel like a mess from the off, because on the basis of past experience I will look around, go, "Hey look, mess!" and proceed to throw junk food wrappers on the floor and sleep on a pile of clothes. I want to be able to make it look and feel like my space, and while I suppose cramming every surface with crap and leaving piles of clothes everywhere is a reasonably accurate representation of me, I'd like to have the option to do something else this time.
So my challenge is to throw things out. Not send it to be stored in someone else's house, actually get rid of it.
I know I have clothes I don't wear. Books I'll never read again. Mostly empty bottles. Shoes that hurt my feet. Information leaflets from old dance festivals that I have electronic copies of anyway. Boxes of Celebrations with just the Bounty bars left. Broken hair grips. Cables for products I don't even own anymore. I know I have things I don't even know I have. There are so many things in this room that I wouldn't miss if they vanished. I probably wouldn't even notice. But actively throwing it out feels different, like I'm callously rejecting that potential future situation when I will be in desperate need of a pair of awkwardly low-riding jeans with diamante on the back pockets (why on earth do I have these? Good grief). It's a block I'm going to have to get over, because this stuff really can't come with me.
This'll be interesting.
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
about my mother
I haven’t posted for the past few days, mostly because I spent nine hours traipsing around London in the heat on Saturday and haven’t fully recovered. I’ve written half an essay on something, but it needs a lot more work before it’s shareable.
Looking to be inspired, I found a writer’s block prompt generator.
It asked me, “What do you like best about your mother?”
It’s a tough question. I like a lot of things about my mother. I like that she knows when to offer advice, when to listen and make non-committal noises, and when to unleash a stream of creative invective at whoever it is that’s upset me. I like that she’s proud of anything I accomplish, however inconsequential it might be. She’s proud of me when I get a new job, she’s proud of me when I perform, she’s proud of me when I get myself out of difficult situations. She’s also proud of my ability to write joke advice leaflets and open bottles of prosecco.
My mother makes me laugh. My mother has a strength I’m in awe of. My mother is wise. My mother skives off important things she’s meant to being doing and spends the time lying around triumphantly. My mother does a note-perfect impression of Janet Street-Porter. My mother is empathetic and compassionate to the last. I fail to see how anyone could manage to not like her.
The thing that I’m most grateful to my mother for is that she makes no assumptions about me. She doesn’t compare me to society’s model of successful and happy, or to any ideas she may or may not have had before I was born about what I ought to be like or the direction my life ought to take. She’s never seen me as a reflection on her, a vessel for her hopes and dreams, an extension of or an accessory to her life. I’ve never felt like I was competing with some abstract idea of a daughter; my mother has always treated me like a person. She’s taught me and cared for me and got me out of any number of scrapes, but at the same time she’s excited to learn from me and comfortable asking for my help. She treats me like an equal.
The best gift my parents have given me (besides question everything question everything QUESTION ALL THE THINGS) is that not only have I never doubted their love for me, I’ve always been completely secure in the knowledge that they like and respect me. I’ve never wondered if I’m a disappointment to them, or if they were expecting something better out of parenthood.
If I had to give one single answer, the thing I like most about my mother is that she’s also my friend, and it’s a friendship I’ve never questioned.
Friday, 25 July 2014
focus
For the last couple of days I've really been having to force myself to write here. Partly because life has decided to throw a lot of things at me, and partly because I've been writing a lot to myself, or to one specific person or another. My energies are not focused here.
But I won't stop, because I promised, dammit.
I am going dancing tonight. I hope I get to dance to this:
But I won't stop, because I promised, dammit.
I am going dancing tonight. I hope I get to dance to this:
Thursday, 24 July 2014
OK
What I would really like right now is for somebody to tell me that's OK not to know, it's OK to be unsure, it's OK not to be OK with things the way they are right now, and for that somebody to sound like they actually meant it.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
filler
Once again, it's too hot to think. Here are some things:
London is big and getting across it takes ages.
I have two weeks left in this house and no idea where I'm going to go next.
The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was WEIRD.
Tomorrow I will have the very great personal challenge of leaving the pub before the last train goes.
Sleep should have a higher priority than the one I've been giving it.
For the last three days, I have had a variety of Chas and Dave songs stuck in my head.
Given the heat, the concentration of penguins in my life currently is much higher than it should reasonably be.
London is big and getting across it takes ages.
I have two weeks left in this house and no idea where I'm going to go next.
The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was WEIRD.
Tomorrow I will have the very great personal challenge of leaving the pub before the last train goes.
Sleep should have a higher priority than the one I've been giving it.
For the last three days, I have had a variety of Chas and Dave songs stuck in my head.
Given the heat, the concentration of penguins in my life currently is much higher than it should reasonably be.
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
a stupid thing to say
"Do you remember we were going to run away together? Find some distant bit of countryside somewhere in Europe where nobody would ever think to look for us, get some animals, plant some fruit trees. We'd go and see our nearest neighbours, two miles away, and swap milk for wine, beef for chicken, apples for peaches. Our phones would stop working and eventually, everyone would forget we'd ever existed at all."
"It never would have worked. We like civilisation too much."
"I know. We'd have fought all the time. But I think I might have preferred fighting with you in the middle of nowhere to being happy here."
"That's a really stupid thing to say."
"I know that."
"...I would still go, you know. If you wanted to."
"It never would have worked. We like civilisation too much."
"I know. We'd have fought all the time. But I think I might have preferred fighting with you in the middle of nowhere to being happy here."
"That's a really stupid thing to say."
"I know that."
"...I would still go, you know. If you wanted to."
Monday, 21 July 2014
teen goth
I had a teen Goth phase. Given that I’m 29 years old and engaged in confessional blogging, you could probably have guessed that I had a teen Goth phase. It lasted about four years, during which I was depressed and angsty, slightly unpleasant to strangers and authority figures, and constantly plugged into terrible music that I pretended to like more than I did.
I was an unpolished Goth. I was fat. I was sullen rather than sultry. I didn’t have the steady hands to apply eyeliner, so I just smeared it along my lower waterline and nowhere else. I also had some singularly unattractive purple lipstick that I wasn’t very good at applying either. I had fingers full of cheap rings, arms full of cheap bracelets, and a wardrobe full of clothes that didn’t go together. I was naturally the colour of milk that had seen a ghost (a ghost that had seen some milk? I don’t know) and I hid from the sun like it was out to get me personally.
At this point, I haven’t been a Goth for well over ten years. But for some reason, the voice of my teenage Goth self has always refused to go away entirely. If I want to get in touch with her, all I need to do is go into a shop and try on a dress that’s white, or pastel, or ruffly, or covered in bows. As soon as I look in the mirror my fifteen-year-old self is looking back at me.
"You have got to be kidding."
"It’s not that bad."
"You have GOT to be kidding. What even is this thing? Take it off now."
"But I need - "
"OFF. NOW."
And she stays until I take it off. If I try to buy it anyway, she emerges every time I put it on. If I wear excessively pretty or girly clothes, I look like an angry child forced into something her grandmother will find acceptable for a family outing. I’ve long since given up even trying these clothes on, unless I’m trying to demonstrate conclusively to someone why I don’t wear those things.
Teen Goth Jen has made a lot of allowances for the adult body she finds herself in. I can wear bright pink, or orange, or lime green. I can wear flowers in my hair. The other week she even let me buy a jumpsuit. Teen Goth Jen is actually rather pleased about what she’s grown into, and she wants to keep me sweet so that she can use me for wish fulfilment.
A couple of months ago, I went to Camden Market to get the final bits of a fancy dress costume. Teen Goth Jen was thrilled.
"Oh my God, look at that! Look! Can we get those boots?"
"No, we can’t. They’re £300."
"Aww. Oh look, piercings! Can we get a piercing?"
"We don’t want a piercing."
"Well, then, can we get that giant floppy purple hat?"
"No."
"Awww."
[walk along for five minutes]
"So can we try that dress on? We don’t have to buy it, I just want to look."
"…fine."
And then we try it on and Teen Goth Jen gets all excited and sometimes she’s excited enough that I buy it anyway, despite having absolutely no occasion to wear it.
The Teen Goth Jen that now lives in my head isn’t very much like my actual fifteen-year-old self. My actual fifteen-year-old self was thoroughly miserable, terrified of everything, and having to deal with things that fifteen-year-olds really shouldn’t have to deal with. Carrying her around with me everywhere would have been well beyond the limits of my strength. Teen Goth Jen, as I know her these days, is very firmly committed to the same aesthetic as my teenage self, but has none of the insecurities or fears I had because that was half a lifetime ago and she can see that none of the things she was worried about actually happened, or that they did happen and we handled them pretty well, all things considered. Instead she celebrates my every success with immature enthusiasm, especially the superficial, petty things that my adult self is embarrassed to take pleasure in. She boosts me, not because she’s trying to help, but because she’s genuinely thrilled that this is the way life turned out. It helps, especially when things get overwhelming. If I have to give up white dresses and ruffles in exchange, I think I'm OK with that.
Sunday, 20 July 2014
heat
This weekend has been the most uncomfortable one I can remember for some time. Still, sticky heat surrounded by thunderstorms, where you can't go out because it might rain (and rain hard) at any moment, and also the heat isn't summer sunshine, it's aggressive. Stand out in it and you feel like it's hurting you, like it's ripping at your skin. I've stayed inside, by my little electric fan, sweating into my bedsheets and feeling like the fluid is being slowly wrung out of my brain.
So I haven't had much inspiration to write. I cannot get into a place where I can sit down and work. Circumstance distracts me and there's no way to concentrate on anything but sweat and dehydration.
But I got to a new place in my photography project. I haven't written anything of substance this weekend, but this picture makes me feel like things haven't been a total loss, creatively speaking.
So I haven't had much inspiration to write. I cannot get into a place where I can sit down and work. Circumstance distracts me and there's no way to concentrate on anything but sweat and dehydration.
But I got to a new place in my photography project. I haven't written anything of substance this weekend, but this picture makes me feel like things haven't been a total loss, creatively speaking.
Saturday, 19 July 2014
skipping
So I missed a day.
I did actually write yesterday. I wrote quite a lot. But out of all that, there were maybe two sentences at most I could post publicly without triggering an "overshare overshare holy SHIT overshare back away from the blog now" in the readers I know I now have since I posted a link on my Facebook the other day (and people actually read it. They told me so. Some of them read literally all of it. I genuinely didn't know this was a thing other people did). I often worry that the things I post are too personal. That was definitely too personal. It was almost too personal to write, never mind show to people who don't live in my head.
However, I needed to do it. Those words needed to come out and I needed to look at them. Having done that, things make a little more sense to me now.
(Yes, today's post is just an excuse for not writing yesterday's post. Won't happen again, honest.)
I did actually write yesterday. I wrote quite a lot. But out of all that, there were maybe two sentences at most I could post publicly without triggering an "overshare overshare holy SHIT overshare back away from the blog now" in the readers I know I now have since I posted a link on my Facebook the other day (and people actually read it. They told me so. Some of them read literally all of it. I genuinely didn't know this was a thing other people did). I often worry that the things I post are too personal. That was definitely too personal. It was almost too personal to write, never mind show to people who don't live in my head.
However, I needed to do it. Those words needed to come out and I needed to look at them. Having done that, things make a little more sense to me now.
(Yes, today's post is just an excuse for not writing yesterday's post. Won't happen again, honest.)
Thursday, 17 July 2014
dealbreakers
[note: all of these are actual things I've seen in the last year]
OK, so you're conducting viewings and you decided to show this room with the bed upended against the wall, wood shavings everywhere and a six inch-high pile of cigarette butts in the middle of the floor. "Oh, no, don't worry, there's no smoking in here."
This is a very nice two bedroom flat. Thing is, there are three of us. Oh, that thing the size of a toilet cubicle with no bed in it is a single bedroom? Maybe if our flatmate was a Jack Russell, sure.
What exactly is this growing on the wall? Oh, I'm glad to hear it's not deadly, very reassuring.
One-bedroom flat with a converted living room. Total number of flatmates: five.
Total number of people physically able to fit in the kitchen at once: one. At a push.
Things the flat does not have: a working sink.
Things the flat does not have: windows that open.
Things the flat does not have: a lift. Place the flat is located: 23rd floor.
Place the flat is located: half an hour further away from the tube than the ad said.
Place the flat is located: at the end of an enclosed alleyway with no lighting whatsoever.
Place the flat is located: along a road full of people offering a wide selection of drugs. At 2pm on a Wednesday.
Landlord status: pushy and frightening.
Landlord status: obsessively rambling about all the terrible tenants he's had.
Landlord status: obnoxious posh boy who has nothing but contempt for everyone living on his property.
"Is this place safe?"
"Oh, sure, there's a security camera right by the door."
"Is that necessary?"
"Oh, no, not really. We're on the top floor and the furthest away from the lift, so anyone looking to cause trouble would probably go to one of the other flats first."
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
progress
This post takes me over the halfway point of my self-imposed challenge. I've managed to write and post something every day for sixteen days so far, even when I've been crazy busy or sick or apathetic. Even if it's just a couple of lines, something's gone up.
I think... I think... it's working.
I started doing this because inspiration has been so fleeting and elusive lately. I've just found myself staring at empty pages or half-formed sentences or bare ghosts of an idea going, "No. Everything in my head is bad right now. I'm just going to put this away and come back to it." And then I come back to it and it looks even worse and I give up on the idea altogether.
Last week, keeping this going was really, really tough. Most days I just posted a few placeholder sentences to stop the project dying. Sometimes that was because I was ridiculously busy and didn't have time to write anything longer or more in-depth, but mostly the placeholder posts followed hours of trying to come up with something interesting, writing and deleting the same sentence half a dozen times, having ideas and rejecting them, looking around my room or my office or my memories for anything that I might be able to wrap up in a nice little word package and drop into Blogger.
Suddenly I had no stories. Everything was too dull, or too personal, or couldn't stand on its own without fourteen pages of back history. I had one thought that I couldn't expand, or hundreds of thoughts that I couldn't cut down. The blank page and I were stuck in psychological warfare. I would try to trick it by writing three different posts at once, and it would mock me every time I pressed the backspace key and then give me a migraine.
Something changed at the weekend. I have no great revelations to share, no moment where I understood what the problem was, and I'm certainly not claiming the quality is any better. But for some reason, it got easier to think in stories. I didn't have to stare at the blank page because I already knew what I was planning to write before I got to it.
It's more than that, though. I've remembered what it feels like to want to write. For some time now "wanting to write" has meant "I wish I could remember how the fuck I used to do this" rather than having a story to tell or anything specific to say, but for the last few days I've been actually excited about it. I sit in front of a computer and instead of listlessly clicking through page after page of time-consuming nothing online, I think, "Hey, I could write!" And then I do, and it's easy, and I like it. I've stopped pre-judging my ideas based on how other people might react to the subject matter; people will either like the thoughts in my head or they won't, and I think I'm just about comfortable with that again. I'm just writing because that's what I do, because that's who I am and how I work and when I can't do it I just don't feel right.
I'm not quite there yet. I know that if I stopped doing the challenge it would still be really hard to motivate myself, and for that reason I might carry this thing on past July. I have a lot of work to do before I really feel comfortable communicating with a lot of people publicly, or before I'm able to write fiction again. That's OK. Right now I'm just struck by how amazingly fucking good it feels to see myself writing and think, Hey, I remember you.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
mouse
We have a mouse living in our walls.
We don't quite know what to do about it. We heard it scuffling around between the bedrooms at 4am, but we don't know how or where it got in. We don't know where we would put a trap, or who would deal with a trap full of dead mouse. Between us we have most things covered - we can get rid of spiders and slugs, do most bits of incidental DIY, and deal with any potentially awkward legal issues that might come up, but present us with a dead rodent and we really are a house full of girls.
"Why don't you just get one of those traps you can throw out?"
"Why did you think we were going to manhandle a dead mouse just because we'd caught it in a reusable trap?"
"Does anyone know any men?"
"Nope, none of us know any men. Not a one."
"I know a man, but he's in Canada."
In the meantime, the mouse is in the walls. And once, possibly in my bedroom. There was squeaking and scurrying and things rolling out from under my bed one night last week, and now I'm sleeping with the light on until I can work out how it got in and find a way to make it stop doing that.
My brain, being the jerk it occasionally is, has observed that a) there is most definitely a mouse and b) the mouse has been able to get into my room, and twisted this until EVERY SINGLE SOUND made when I'm trying to go to sleep is somehow mouse-related. I heard a noise. There was definitely a noise. OK, now there's no noise. No noise no noise no noise OH GOD A NOISE I heard it again there's definitely a mouse in here and then I have to remind myself that mice don't actually work that way, Jen. The mouse isn't trying to sneak its way into the room, playing The Pink Panther in its head, standing on its tiptoes and pressing its back up against the wall. If it was in here, it would be running around and squeaking and disturbing everything, like that time when there actually was a mouse. And then it's hard to sleep because I'm preoccupied with feeling like a dumbass.
It feels like the kind of thing that shouldn't bother me. In most ways I'm a semi-competent adult these days. I can cook, I can clean a toilet, I can fix minor problems with my laptop, I can handle even the most stone mental of landlords. I'm not lacking in life skills. A small pest should not be a problem, and it usually isn't. But when it is, I turn into an avoidant child. A few years ago my friend and I went to Mexico and found the most enormous cockroach in our hotel bathroom. Rather than get rid of it, we just named it Bob and spent the next week taking very nervous showers and ordering it to stay away (until one night I woke up to find it had got out of the bathroom and was crawling over my duvet, at which point I scooped it up on a book and flung it out through the patio doors. Too far, Bob. Too far).
Part of me feels like I should declare war on the mouse, get over my own silliness and get rid of it. But it's entirely possible that, since we're about to move out, the mouse will get rid of us rather than the other way round. Maybe I should name it.
Monday, 14 July 2014
Scenes from the middle class
[There has been a years-long running joke between me and my brother which takes the form of:]
Him: So I bought a selection of jams.
Me: You are so middle-class.
[and]
Him: I brought the Sunday Times, Private Eye, and a spare pair of socks.
Me: You are so middle-class.
[and]
Him: I wanted to make crème brulee for after the poker game, but it’s really hard to do without a crème brulee torch.
Me: Oh my God, you are SO middle-class!
[Some years after this starts, I bring my brother to a lindy hop event at which I am performing]
Him: You don’t get to call me middle-class anymore. This is the most middle-class thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Me: Yeah, I know.
[a few months later]
Me: So, how was your skiing holiday?
Him: It was excellent. I was with a really good group of mates…
[there is a half-proud, half-ashamed pause]
…I nicknamed us ‘The Piste-y Boys’.
Me: OK, now you’re just a toff.
Him: Yeah, I know.
Sunday, 13 July 2014
goals
I used to have what
most people would refer to as a bucket list. I didn't call it that,
just in case the continued reminder of my own mortality rendered me
incapable of actually accomplishing anything (I understand and accept
that this is probably not normal). I called it “Things To Do” and
it was a strange mish-mash of lofty goals, places I wanted to see,
vague self-improvement koans, a hundred things starting with the word
“learn” and twice as many stupid little nothings that would make
no discernible difference to my life but I thought might be funny.
3. Become fluent in
another language.
53. Go to Machu
Picchu.
84. Learn to dance.
134. Be in a really
shit low-budget musical.
151. Relax.
190. Go to an
outdoor fair, eat too much candy floss, and win some kind of plastic
duck or something.
I started the list when
I was depressed and looking to not be depressed anymore. I couldn't
think of any goals I had or anything I wanted to do, so I started
reading other people's lists and stealing things I liked the sound
of. Mostly what other people wanted to do was: visit a lot of
different countries; have some kind of family; meet various famous
people; do very mundane things “in the rain” or “under the
stars” (this last one is my fault for trying to find inspiration on
LiveJournal). When I'd got enough of a spark back to start thinking
of things on my own, I decided I wanted this list to be as specific
to me as possible and not just a stream of things that sounded nice.
24. Meet a really
crap celebrity, like Neil Buchanan or one of the original Gladiators.
32. Meet someone
hugely famous and legendary and be less impressed by them than I was
by Neil Buchanan/Gladiator.
(I did meet Neil
Buchanan. He was playing in a heavy metal band. I was very excited
about it.)
My list didn't include
a lot of the more popular goals I'd seen.
Save a life
Get married
“Save a life” is a
horrible goal. “Become a doctor” or “become an aid worker”,
sure. But generically wishing someone into mortal danger just so you
can feel you're a big hero type seems a little gross to me. And “get
married” isn't the goal, not really. The goal is “find someone I
want to get married to”, and that's not really within my control. I
didn't want to put it on a list and then sit around hopelessly
watching it not happen.
(I often think that
maybe I won't find someone I really want to marry. The thought
occasionally makes me a little sad, but fundamentally I'm OK with
true love being a thing that doesn't happen, if that's the way things
happen to play out. I am happy and busy and not prepared to clear any
space to accommodate mediocrity.)
I used my list as an
active motivation tool for years. I set myself a goal to cross off an
average of one per month. It didn't matter if the goals I
accomplished were serious or stupid, just as long as I was
identifying things I wanted to do and making them happen.
64. See Skunk
Anansie live.
101. Take a trip on
a gondola in Venice.
129. Learn a
selection of classical arias.
141. [from my call
centre days] Get a lyric from “Once More, With Feeling” into one
of my calls.
171. Go back to
college and get another qualification.
Over the last year or
so, my list has fallen into disuse. I haven't crossed anything off
and I haven't really accomplished any of my old goals without
realising it, either. This isn't to say I'm doing less; quite the
opposite. My life just isn't set up to work this way anymore. What
happens now is more along the lines of:
[thing comes up in
passing]
Me: We should do that.
Whichever of my
ridiculous friends I happen to be speaking to: OMG YES.
And then we go to Italy
or dance in the street or go and see Frozen in full costume or drink
gin and tonic out of a freezer bag with a pink grapefruit goldfish in
it or bring cheese to the pub or enter competitions or spend the
entire night in the cinema or force people to have house parties or
drink far too much wine three nights on the trot or play dance bingo
or just laugh hysterically and collapse in a big pile on the sofa or
the floor or wherever can accommodate us.
I still want to do some
of things on my old list. I still want to finish the novel and live
abroad for a while and buy a cinema and go to Mardi Gras and be in
that really shit musical. I just don't have time to aim for them,
because so many other things are happening right now
and I don't want to miss a single one of them.
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