I dream of a black smeg

Henry Miller once said, “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware”.

Ben sent me a card with that quote on, today, completely out of the blue. It made me cry, because it was the sweetest thing that anyone has done for me in a long long time, and because it contained more love than I could ever feel I deserve. I read what he said to my mum over the phone, and her response was as emotional as mine. He’s lovely, and I know that he will be there for me through all of the stress of exams, all of the feeling like I can’t handle it, and all of the time to come, good or bad.

I also love him because he sends me texts like the one he just has - “I am a fish. Specifically a sardine”. I can only presume he’s squashed in tight on the train coming to visit me, being as he is traveling at rush hour. It’s great to know that I am not the only one who will say the most random sentences, pieced together of scraps of thought in my head. It is reassuring I can be as weird as I want and know that he’s just as peculiar!

What a pair of oddballs!

I am a beetroot. Specifically a beta vulgaris (Now hows that for random, eh?!)

What an odd collection of things in the title of this post, you may think. Storage items, a legendary (and FANTASTIC) food writer, and words that can make some cry, others laugh, and even more utterly perplexed. To do you a favour, and not confuse you, I’ll go through them one at a time.

Nigel Slater

First of all, Nigel Slater. When I was just a wee ‘un I used to read Nigel slaters recipes in the Observer magazine, salavating to descriptions of food that you just wanted to pick up in your hands, sticky and laden with sweet syrup, food that you wanted to crumble into your mouth and feel slide down your throat like silk. He wrote about food like it was better than sex - an orgasmic multiplicity of flavour, colours and textures, combining to bring your taste buds to maximum stimulation. I own two of his books, and regularly take them down to flick through the pages - food porn if you will. An hour set aside to assault your tingling sense with dreams of food that could be, meals you could make, tastes you could taste. Of course, the simple tastes are great too - I had a highly fantastic moment with a twirl the other day, which hit all the right buttons and left me floundering in a see of “Oh… my… God”. Sometimes chocolate gets it just right. I reccommend Nigel Slater’s books, “The Kitchen Diaries” and “Real Food”.

Cardboard boxes and Poetry.

I feel sometimes like people don’t use there imaginations any more. Children spend their days tucked up indoors playing computer games and fighting to get to the next level of the latest trend. The TV is always on, with kids sat comatose in from of it, flickering colours reflecting onto their pudgy, unstimulated faces. When I was young we spent our time outdoors - running around on the street, clambering up into the stratosphere using branches and tree-trunks as our ladders. We could play anywhere we wanted - on the surface of the moon, on a ship exploring desert islands, deep in an underground lair with monsters growling at us from the shadows. The kids on my street used cushions and discarded items our parents genrously bestowed on us. We’d build our ship, I’d be the monkey, and we’d explore those ilses we might not ever see in real life.

A cardboard box was the best toy we could ever wish for. Particularly refrigerator boxes - the biggest most amazing spaceships the world has ever seen. They could be houses, boats, spaceships or submarines. I spent afternoons crouched inside boxes keeping house, with windows and doors cut out and leading to wherever my imagination wanted to go. My child is going to have a plethora of boxes. They will e encouraged to traipse around the woods, and even eat a little wholesome dirt. They will only have computer games etc when they are old enough to ask for themselves.

Don’t Forget.

Sometimes I feel those days are gone,

Of running around, of having fun.

That playing games has been and passed,

With getting old, and growing fast.

And cardboard boxes have lost their spark,

Used for filling up and taking apart.

Gone are the days of sailing the seas,

Of dreaming the dream, and traveling the breeze.

Is imagination no longer cool?

Just like yoyos, pogs, and loving school.

Remember then, from whence you came,

That imagination was THE game.

Best love poem! That is silly, anyway!

I wanna Be Yours…

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion

copywright john cooper clarke.

So it’s been a tough couple of days.

Yesterday was a blur of reading notes on developmental psychology, and I had 40 names and dates to completely memorise in just four pages, not to mention all the rest of the notes that I had to get stuck in my brain on children’s eyewitness memory. Easily the most difficult exam I have EVER done, I had 8 pages of handwritten notes transposing down only two of the topics we could have been revising. In actuality we studied 5, but would only answer two questions in the exam, one on each topic. So I picked my two, simply because I didn’t have enough brain space for the recommended three (in case you can’t answer on of the questions. In case you are particularly intrigued, I picked infant social development (a complete bastard) and eyewitness memory.

So I sat down and learnt it all, and half way through I encountered a phenomena I had never encountered before - no more information would enter my already crowded and stress out brain. It felt like a metre high wall had gone up, and my brain was having none of it. Any facts I tried to push in came dancing merrily out the other side. I was being mocked by a list of names, dates and experimental findings - and it wasn’t feeling good.

Needless to say, I was a complete stress ball. I was worked up and knotted into a bunch of worries, paranoia and hysteria. By the time the evening came I was wearing my glasses because my eyes hurt so much, was drugged on on copious amounts of brain relieving paracetamol (am I terrible that occasionally I take pain killers to slow my brain down?) and sobbing down the phone to Ben. Well, sobbing down the phone when not refusing to let him ring me due to the fact I was “Disturbing his television time” - I was completely paranoid that focring him to listen to yet more of my problems would cause him to hate me because he’d rather be watching “The apprentice”. Where I got that from, I will never know.

Anyway, the exam was this morning, and it was somewhat reassuring to wake up to find I knew more than I thought. I still wasn’t confident, but I was no longer a petrified mess. I went to the exam, sat through two average questions that I might have scraped a 2:2 in, and came out. Still feeling like I was gearing up for an exam. An hour later, however, being sat out in the quad with a bunch of 3rd years and chatting eagerly about everything under the sun, I finally relaxed!

And I spent the rest of the afternoon lying comatose on the field, drained beyond all recognition and reading nothing more mentally challenging than the latest copy of more. Life was good.

I have work now, my last ever session calling past alumni.It’s a shame, because although I have been prioritising my study this term, I have made some excellent friends there, and it will be sad. Time to sign off now though, although I’ll come back on later no doubt.

Time to work!!

Sorry about the poor photo quality - I couldn’t crop it, oddly! So you have to see all the rubbish of my untidy room!

Laura got her prom dress from eBay - she’s currently swirling around my room in a blur of tartan, my black scarf (for some reason) tied turban-style on her head, giggling hysterically about how wide she gets when it spins out around her…. and planning to capture a boy to be her date and wear a kilt! It’s vintage (she doesn’t want me to suggest it’s 90’s…) monsoon, and we had no idea whether it would look great or absolutely appalling! Luckily it fitted like a dream and is gorgeous - real silk.

As for my dress - also from eBay, But technically (I discovered) from George at ASDA (!!) - is gorgeous too, all summery and blue. My skin looks really pale in the photo (and I had to change in my cupboard to avoid flashing poor laura) but it’s really brown from the sun. I think its so cute!

Go me!!!!

Those who care will be glad to know I passed the two sets of numeracy tests I had to do for two jobs. And I now have one interview on the 19th, and one hour-long telephone interview on the 20th! Very exciting!

Being that I was in tears believing I couldn’t do it all through the test I did last night, and that I get soo angry when forced to things I beleive I’d be bad at (sorry Ben!), I was quite impressed.

It has made me discover a couple of things about myself - firstly that I’m clearly better at maths than I thought I was (or I’m a really good guesser!), and secondly that I am remarkably bad at trying new things that I don’t want to do. Any whiff of a stressful situation and I’m running for the hills, completely convinced that I will be the worst ever, that people will mock me, and that I will fail. I hate failing. So I have decided I will be braver in the future and believe in myself.

I know and love psychology - I should have been able to see this coming!

A year or two ago I could write quite happily. I don’t mean blog type things, I mean short stories with twists at the ends, poetry with subtle imagery and chock full of meaning. I even won a prize (see here), and like to think that I could have written more stuff to the same standard, and might even achieved my dream of writing a book. I have two dreams - I want to publish a book (I have some ideas…), and I want to work in advertising, one day in the future. But then for, no reason at all, I seemed to get a form of writers block. Whilst I have been told by some that I’m (and quote) “Simply not trying hard enough”, it seems to me that forcing words that don’t really work is as bad as writing nothing at all. I would think about words and dictionary’s would come to mind - no flash of colour of moment of “wow”. I never seemed to have ideas any more, and for a while I even stopped dreaming, which terrified me. My dreams are the weirdest I have EVER come across, and I didn’t know what to do without them. Luckily they returned, but for the writing I knew that I simply had to sit back and wait for inspiration to dawn once again.

And now guess what? I think it’s starting to happen. I haven’t had any flashes of emotion, but I’m starting to feel more part of the words again. Like they understand me as they once did, and I understand them. Hopefully one day words will once again stream forth.

I’ve put some of my poems on the new “Poetry” page - keep checking it for updates.

We went out on the field this evening, and my friend Laura was really kind to take a bunch of photo’s of me prancing around for absolutely no reason. We had to make the most of the sunshine and her beautiful new camera. Everyone was having bonfires and the smoke (full of tantalising BBQ smells) was drifting through the trees - I managed to capture the photo I’m quite proud of above. All the other photo’s (barring the leaves, they were mine) we taken by Laura Poxon, and I think there were some nice one among them. Plus, my pink shoes are divine, and I was pretty chuffed with my outfit.

I just wish I was outside in the evening sun now. But once exams are over I will be!

(I missed a patch on my leg shaving, lol)

Spinning!!

Smelling my b-e-a-u-tiful daffodil!

My favourite photo (Sending Laura lots of hugs).

Me!!!

Purity.

The flight of a bird,

Across sunlit sky,

With earth so far beneath.

And rivers winding,

Between the rise and fall

Of hills and dales.

With clusters of trees,

Reaching up from the blueness,

From thin white roots.

And the cloud,

That touches its feathers,

Like a blast of life.

I just spent the morning sat in a small cramped exam room, writing about how people can survive disasters and the psychological processes that mean quite often they don’t. There I was, sat in this room surrounded by the scratching of pencils, and all I could think was how fascinating it all was - and how I wanted to get back here and write this blog! Indeed, the events in Burma this past couple of weeks have brought to the fore the issue of human survival - in the same way that unfortunately Bangladesh does every year, and also the Tsunami of Boxing day fame (among many!).

Around the world every day disasters are happening. Whether cyclones killing thousands of people, or a skier skiing into the wrong part of the woods, people are facing conditions and situations that the vast majority of use would flinch at the very mention of. Crashing through the ice on a pond and plunging into the freezing water below. Wandering lonely though the desert, craving water and seeing oases shimmering in the distance. Clinging to your roof and your children as thousands of tons of flood water rip away your belongings. What it all comes down to is survival. Who, once the immediate incidents has passed, will be the one to survive?

People talk fuzzily of the will to live and “survival instinct”. Fluffy nondescript terms that conjure images of the brave sailor facing the sea monsters, or intrepid explorers kidnapped by cannibals. A stupid idea. We all want to survive - and braveness/cowardice has nothing to do with it. What does matter is your ability to adapt to situations - to consolidate the new situations and apply new information to it. You will be more likely to survive if you have had training - such as helicopter crash training, armed forces training, or hostage negotiation lessons (also among many). What you do before the incident has even happened (if it ever does) is of vital importance. The course has made me more wary - I read the safety notice now, and I check to see that my life jacket is under my seat. We all believe it will never happen to us - but just in case it does, training will make us able to deal with life much better.

The problem is, you see, that your brain doesn’t work to well under pressure. A little pressure is fine, I’m sure we all know times when being a little stressed has done wonders for our achievements. But big massive “we’re all going to die” stress is a different matter altogether. It knocks out parts of you pre-frontal cortex. Sometimes it stops you choosing plans of action, and you run around like a headless chicken trying to do everything at once. Sometimes your “Trigger database” is blown out of the water, and you find yourself totally inactive, seemingly unable to make any responce at all - let alone save yourself. In captivity, some people find themselves illogically antagonizing their captors, constantly pushing and pushing until… the captors snap. This is London syndrome - and if you are ever in a hostage situation, be careful to remain unnoticed and compliant, and also to maintain some sort of schedule (so you are in control of your own mind) - even if it’s just checking for escape routes, or remembering to eat.

Essentially, it all looks pretty bleak - we’re all potential victims of heatstroke, of cold shock. Most of us break under nasty circumstances and wobble hysterically in a corner - and yes, that includes the brave among us.

So for this reason I would like to extend a warning. Read the safety handouts on airplanes and trains - just in case. Make sure you have equipment with you if you are going anywhere unsafe. Even just thinking about what you would do can place a template or “script” in your mind - which will come in handy when you seem unable to generate plans of your own!

Be safe people!