Thursday, March 31, 2005

issues

I've discovered a whole new kind of post: current affairs posting. Prince Charles, abortion, Terry Schiavo, Zimbabwe, the government, Jerry Springer... The list goes on. I call these rants exactly what they are: opinionated, one-sided, expletive-ridden and furious. Sadly, due to technical issues, they ain't gonna make it onto this site for many days.

My computer is having some personal problems. Something to do with hard drive space, C drives, memory, excess files and stuff. We've been defraggling (defragmenting?) it for days now but it's just not feeling it.

So, seeing as Blogger is also misbehaving and keeps wiping my posts when I try to publish them, I'm gonna take a time out for a couple of days. Don't worry. I have far too many opinions to stop writing, you'll just have to get my various rants in retrospect.

Sit tight, now.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

supermarket think

Thinking on my till:

there's no one here. was it something i said? time's flying today. do heinz beans cost more than own brand? is it cheaper to buy a breadmaker and cheap ingredients?
i should call exeter uni.
i need to buy swimear. think a tankini and short would be more modest + make me look less fat.
should buy jam doughnut at lunch.
i should buy more clothes from here. they're proper cheap.
they sell wooden shelves here for 98p. gotta get me one to put over my bed. books and dvds. no more cd cases in my bed...
is there a co-op in egham?
living ethically is expensive, not possible at uni. no more organic food, fairtrade, additive frees, innocent drinks, ecover washing up stuff..
i never used to pick clothes based on modesty.
would i be able to put up the shelf myself? me, with a powerdrill?

thinking: i always think that i've never changed. the thought, the prayer, that i haven't changed a bit. why has it been eighteen months and i'm still exactly the same? sometimes it's more: ok, so it's been eighteen years and i'm still the same.
but no. the thing is that some stuff is still the same about me. i still talk too much, swear too often, attention seek. i still spend far too much of my time thinking about boys, still get crushes on authority figures. hah. still get insecure, still have those weird moods, 'down phases' where i cease to function for a day or two. sometimes, there's still this awful sadness, very familiar, as if it's always been there and i'm just rediscovering it.

said the exact same thing to tom last year in drama. did this weird lesson on artaudian theatre, scary stuff. exercises like making yourself hyperventilate, stream of consciousness writing, improvising this weird, primal kind of physical theatre. awesome, pretentious, pointless, terrifying. everyone thought it was weird. a couple of people took the piss but it affected me really badly. like catharsis, i guess. i let out a lot of emotion that lesson and i said to tom, doing that stuff brought that feeling, like a sadness that i'd forgotten.

gotta love stream of consciousness writing. if you can get fast enough, if you can scribble your thoughts so fast that you're barely even thinking them before they're on the page, you'll spell out things you didn't even know you were. sometimes great. sometimes freaky.

patrick savastano just walked past, holding hands with some girl. the girl he was with before was a stunner. this is a big step down. you can tell he thinks it, he's ignoring her. he's watching his ex-girlfriend as she's working on another till while the new girlfriend is reaching for his hand. nice little image there.

i wonder what customers think when they walk up to the till and i'm scribbling away? i shove the bit of paper underneath the screen and give them a giant "i'm not a slacker grin". hiya!

if i was going through the till and the person working was writing on some till roll, i'd be so curious. i'm nosy like that. i'd be thinking it was a note to another checkout worker, to be delivered via the greencoats. or a poem or something. maybe they're running away and writing and leaving a letter.

******

The end of the thought that I tried to write down was that I have changed. If I can look back at stuff I used to do and know that I don't do that anymore, then I've changed. It sounds so blindingly obvious, it's stupid that I'm making such a big deal of that one fact. The one prayer that always comes up, no matter where I am in life, is "Lord, change me". And everytime I pray it I'm expecting some kind of revolution. That's not the way it works, I guess. It's not about magically transforming overnight, it's about knowing that every day, I get a little bit closer to being where, and who, God wants me to be.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

change would do you good

There are now new sections, a heap full of links and some decidedly dodgy html. Goood. One thing, all ye bloggers, how do I put previous posts on different blogs? If I wanted to plop a post that I wrote that contained Idlewild lyrics onto my Quotings blog, is that even electronically possible? If so, how?

*****

In local news, I got shot down over the weekend. Not in the military, plane crashing down sense, in the putting myself on the line and being, however nicely, rejected. I declared my feelings for this guy. He replied that he thinks I'm lovely (not in so many words) but a friend is all I am.

It's liberating, in a way. I haven't been rejected like that for ages. I used to have great fun (fun!) with it, the whole getting a crush on someone, getting your best mate to ask them out, getting embarassed when they laughed and told the whole class... Mmm, tasty memories. But it's good, however humiliating, to know where I stand. Now I know, I can move on, forget aforementioned male of the species and stop mooning about like a lovesick hippo.

I went for some retail therapy, bought a book called "One no, many yeses" (the guide to the global resistance movement) and a "Very short introduction" to Christianity. Then I went for a coffee with Emilie, a pint (of coke) with Matt, Chris and Meffie. I watched Frasier and went to bed. Today I got up, had an MMR vaccination, did some college work, did some lessons, did some work, read some book, ordered a Reading ticket. Keeping busy is great. I barley thought about him at all today.

5 minutes ago, he came on MSN. My innards performed an interesting dance. Then he disappeared. Maybe he blocked me. I think I'm glad if he did. This whole being single thing... It's an adventure.

*****

The thing is, it's starting to sink in that I'll be leaving good ol' Farnborough 6th in a few weeks. I'm very sad, I love the place, it's gonna be a wrench to kiss it's sweet ass goodbye. I've had a shedload of good times there, some pretty bad times too... it's been a learning curve in every sense of the word. I'm leaving it a completely different person from when I entered it. I can't believe that two years, my first two years as a Christian, are slipping by so fast.

Looking back, evaluating, I realise that I've spent most of my time at Farnborough thinking about boys, relationships, blah blah blah. 2004 was a year in which all my spare time, every moment to myself was shared with my boyfriend. That's a lot of time. I can't help thinking, as much as I enjoyed that time, that that's a whole chunk of my life I gave away there. Time is precious. I'm incredibly busy these days and I value my time like money. But along comes some guy and suddenly every second, every minute is theirs for the taking. Really?

I only get a little bit of time on this here pretty earth. I think considerably less of it should be spent thinking about *insert name of nearest bloke*, maybe more on the people who matter.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

branching out

I confess, I know sweet Fanny Adams about the internet. I managed to set up this blog, and stick my funky 24-7prayer banner at the bottom.. once I even posted a picture on here, but that's the extent of it.

I want to make this blog more exciting. I want to put loads of pictures and links and different sections for, shock horror, poems and things like that. I know there's a help section on blogger, I figure I can wade through it and figure out some pesky html. A warning, dear readers, there is a strong possibility of self-combustion.

In local news, I have my last uni interview tomorrow. Birmingham, here I come!

Saturday, March 12, 2005

disciplined

Today I learnt two valuable lessons about how a young lady should conduct herself in matters of social and professional conduct.

I got a verbal warning at work today. I have not fulfilled the terms and conditions of my employment due to unsatisfactory attendance. I feel quite naughty, I haven't been in trouble for ages.

Speaking of trouble, I rediscovered alcohol last night. Beer, to me, smells like vomit. As does wine. But Baileys... Baileys smells like paradise.

I forgot one of the most important things about myself: I don't get very drunk, I get quite drunk and remain quite drunk for extraordinarily long stretches of time. On the Lit trip to the Battlefields of France and Belgium, I took advantage of the lowered drinking age and fell over the next morning whilst reaching for the butter.

Last night I sent some tipsy "i love you!" text messages to several mates. This morning, I woke up and sent some more, but this morning I no longer had the guise of alcohol and the wee hours to cover my indiscretions. I think, I think I might have said too much and ruined a beautiful friendship this morning.

I have this tendency to do bizarre things in my sleep. One morning I woke up and found that my phone had been tampered with. During the night I leaned out of bed, picked up my phone, unlocked it and methodically gone through sections A through C of my phonebook (excluding my friend Boom, for no apparent reason) and replaced every entry (name and number) with random patterns of 6s 0s and *#$ type phrases. Whilst asleep.

From this moment on, I will be at my till at 11am SHARP, every Saturday morning. I will not fall ill, I will not bunk, I will not skive. From this moment on, I will remain sober. I will not booze, I will not wreck and I will SWITCH MY PHONE OFF BEFORE I GO TO BED.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

news and reviews

There's been a lot going on recently...

My drama teacher, Dave, is now a father again. Go Dave, go Mrs Dave and, most importantly, GO ISOBEL ROSE HALLEN, THE NEWEST, CUTEST BABY IN THE WORLD.

****

My daddy's going to be in The Independent. Next Thursday there's gonna be an article about the budget and how it affects a sample of households in the financial supplement - we're one of those households!

I love that my dad has the same name as the leader of the Liberal Democrats, he gets asked to do all kinds of stuff. He was on TV once because of it. He hates it, because he's a dirty great Daily Mail (sss) reading fascist who thought that Thatcher was a left wing pinko. I love it because I'm a dirty great left wing pinko who uses the Daily Mail to dry my shoes and cuts out articles from The Independent to paper my walls.

Oh, the arguments we have!

Check out that paper, search for Charles Kennedy, he's the angry scottish one with the beard and the raging hatred of everything. I love my daddy. Lots.

*****

Phil's home! He's taller than I remember and appears to be having serious stomach rumbling issues (squeal!) but it's great to have him back.

*****

Got the results of my January modules back, A and B for Sociology, D for General studies. So I can't speak adequate Spanish and use words like 'Goggins' in inappropriate contexts, is that a reason to give me a D?

I need to get 100% in all three drama modules this year if I want to get an A. This is bad.

On the plus, I could not show up to my final sociology module and still get a B. This is very very good and a definite reason why Curriculum 2000 ROCKS.

*****

An offer from Kent - I need AB to get in there. Sweet.

*****

I watched Ocean's Twelve. It was good.

I watched Spanglish. It was better. It was wonderful - romantic, genuine, sincere, touching... Adam Sandler didn't annoy me for the first time ever, it was groovy.

*****

New Idlewild album. BUY IT. Listen to it. How beautiful.

*****

Sometimes, when I stand still long enough, my right knee starts aching really suddenly. My response to this - don't stand still. EVER.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

come on!

I'm at Farnborough Main, waiting for a train to Basingstoke, when I get this txt message from Nikkie:

Hey fi, hows u? Tried to ring but no answer.
ok. get ready...
we have an ok 4 24/7 starting maunday thurs - good fri OR midnite easter morn.

Yeah!

Now that the initial excitement has worn off, I'm starting to worry. A week of nonstop prayer is a massive thing to organise and... let's just say I couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Mind you, this wasn't my idea, this isn't my baby, this isn't about me. If big guy upstairs wants this to happen then it will happen, come rain shine or my appalling inability to carry out simple instructions.

I keep thinking, if this is something God wants us to do, why on earth did he give me the idea? I have these big ideas all the time that never go anywhere, I'm queen of the half-arsed, last minute plans that usually fall flat on their faces. It makes no sense to me. My reasoning is that I might have the attention span of a gnat, but I'm good at people. If we're gonna do 24/7, we're going to need to convince a lot of people that a very crazy idea is in fact a very good idea. Now THAT, I can do.

Or maybe God just wants me to get up off my arse and help do something productive for once.

We'll see.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

politik

Remind me to have a good, king-sized rant about the destruction of our basic human rights and the principles of democracy.

Remind me to bitchslap the next person who tells me they don't vote because politics have 'nothing to do with them'.

Remind me to stop watching Question Time before I go to bed.

It's like caffeine, but without the interesting breath.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

snow covered fields

A few days ago I slagged off snow. Today, snow got its revenge.

At 5:30 this morning, the world looked pretty bleak. In the winter, you get used to waking up in the dark, but this was different in that it was ACTUALLY dark. Can't see my hand in front of my face, gonna fall out of bed and tread on my disco ball dark.

At 7:15, hopping on a train to Waterloo, the world looked slightly better. Slightly. It was getting light, and there were commuters to look at and I just love looking at commuters. Then I got on the train, the world suddenly looked a lot smaller. I found myself squished rather scarily between two fat businessman (I named them Bruno and Sven, after two porn stars I'd seen in a similar situation), one reading the Daily Mail, one reading The Sun. I picked the lesser of two evils and shamelessly read the Mail over Bruno's shoulder until he reached the sports section. My daddy was squished in between two identical fat businessman who refused to budge up, causing my father to spend the entire journey in a kind of limbo, his back not even touching the seat on account of his wedged-ness.

The fat businessman on my daddy's left looked really sad. He closed his eyes as soon as we left Farnborough and stayed that way. He was probably sleeping, but when he relaxed his face it went into a frown automatically, he reverted to that expression when he switched off and it made me quite sad. It reminded me of a Siegfried Sassoon poem about a sleeping soldier, which finishes:
"You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead."
I got to wondering if anyone prays for commuters; they all look the same, they all dress the same but they're not, they can't be. They all look so pissed off, all the time. I love them and hate them all at once.

At 8:30am, when I found our train and got us on it just before it pulled out of the station even though my dad has NO faith in my board reading abilities, I was feeling pretty good. Off we bobbed, leaving the skank of the city behind and zooming out into clean white fields of thick snow. Oh how Christmassy, I thought, oh how bee-yootiful.
Oh how wrong.

I listened to Natasha Bedingfield, only because I've been listening to my Idlewild single for quite a while now, and it was getting old. And by it getting old I mean I was starting to feel pathetic so I changed the CD. It hurt.

Arriving in Canterbury, 45 minutes late because of the snow (warning bells anyone?) we were greeted by the world's arsiest coach driver.
"You can get on you know, you're allowed to sit on the coach, I'm not gonna wipe the floor for you." He announced to a crowd of people who had no idea if it was the right coach on account of him sneaking off to have a fag instead of, uh, I don't know TELLING US WHERE THE HELL THE COACH WAS GOING?
He then severely threatened the cultural fabric of Canterbury by driving into every single bit of it.
Pavement? Yeah.
Lamppost? Hell yeah.
Pensioner? Bring it on, this coach is my monster truck!

We arrived at Kent Uni with a sense of foreboding. We stepped off the coach, it disappeared in a puff of fag smoke and suddenly we (all twenty of us) were alone. Alone in a snow covered Uni, with no idea where we were on account of coloured maps being useless when the whole world is white.

We started to walk. We started to slip. I started having flashbacks to the part of the programme that said CAMPUS TOUR. I'm sure Kent Uni is a lovely campus, but I saw none of it because my eyes were glued to the icy floor like a tongue to a frosty pole. I became vaguely aware of a bar, a library, some accomodation and then my toes started to complain.
They said: "Fi, love, your boots are leaking."

I'm glad I got those boots for £15 in a sale, because if I'd paid full price £65 for leaky boots then someone at Debenhams would have been found dead in a pool of slush.

I can't tell you how fun audition workshops are when your group is twice as big as planned beacuse the staff need to save time so that people can get out of the campus before we all get snowed in and everyone has smelly, bare, wet feet and you're slipping because Dumb Ass Existing Student (C) is making everyone RUN on the wet floor and you eventually leave 45 minutes later than they said you would because that irritating girl in the blue hoodie just wouldn't shut up about Brecht in the group interview.

Luckily I kicked ass in the group interview. We each had to say 2 or 3 sentences about A Practitioner We Respect and A Recent Production We Enjoyed.
Antonin Artaud, revolutionary theatre, total theatre, agit-prop, David Hare, Samuel Beckett, absurdism, nihilism, Lee Evans, Michael Gambon, selling out and staying true to the text summed up in 30 seconds, BOOM BOOM. I might have wet, smelly feet but I know what lecturers mean when they say Get To The Point.

At 7:15 I was supposed to be in Frimley at a dress rehearsal for The House of Bernarda Alba. I was in Ashford station, waiting for our driver to decide if he felt like taking us all the way to London or just leaving us there. We said, if he wanted to, he could pay for us to take the Eurostar from Ashford International to Waterloo. He grinned.
We left soon after that.

I got to my dress rehearsal, late, and found that I'm the only member of the cast who has issues about walking around in a thong and a bra. Thank the Lord it's an all female cast this time. Apparently the pantomime Dame last year had a tattoo above his backside saying "Insert Here". Damn, I auditioned for the right production, nothing but the odd bit of cellulite and people who are skinnier than me in OUR changing rooms.

I'm listening to: Idlewild, Don't Let Me change (choon).
I'm feeling: So tired. Also a little disturbed at my reaction to the trust excercises we did in the workshop today. I freaked out a bit and had serious difficulty falling into people's arms. Maybe it was my wet feet.
I love: Commuters, Siegfried Sassoon, snow (from a distance and only cos it's listening). Bagels.