A very long entry

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote my blog, as I can’t do it at home, not having broadband and all that. And I haven’t been at work, it being Christmas and all that. So right now- it’s Monday 2nd January 2006- I’m at home writing this, and I plan to cut and paste it onto my blog in the morning. So if anyone wonders why I haven’t written in so long, this is why. I can hardly type at the moment, it’s been a while since I used my computer for anything other than listening to music and playing DVD’s. For added interest, I can’t actually see the screen. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse, so I’m sitting on my bed typing. I mainly watch DVD’s on this computer- as I said- so it’s the perfect distance for that. However, it’s not really the optimum distance for typing.

I feel like writing all my thoughts down today. My internal monologue is making a bid for freedom.

So where do I start?

Back in 2005… that’d be the 21st December… I was completely enamoured with the beautiful boy. I probably still would be was it not for the fact that he’s moved back to Australia. We went out for lunch at Tas, and had some of the strangest soup ever. It was meant to Leek and Potato, but I didn’t find any leek, and only a little potato. It was nice, but a little too much lemon. Afterwards, we cam back to the office, and larked about in his room for a while.

Then I did something really stupid. I emailed him, telling him that I liked him. Afterwards I could hardly sit still with nerves and I even climbed onto my desk, apparently to rearrange the posters, but in reality just to get rid of some of my nervous energy. He emailed back after what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was more like 20 minutes. He said that he was very flattered but that he was going away on Saturday and so nothing could happen. This of course prompted me to go for a cigarette break. I was quite gutted, but not really surprised. I emailed back asking him if he wanted to make the most of the few days he did have left in the UK. He sent back one of the oddest replies, in what- to me- seemed one of the most cack-handed brush-offs ever.

That night I went out for a curry with some friends from uni- the Wolf, the Legend and his girlfriend. Two of them were also in my halls, until they got thrown out anyway. When I was with my ex I didn’t see all that much of them as he didn’t like me being friends with them. The Wolf couldn’t stand him anyway. We went to the pub afterwards and made some prank calls- to the Jeremy Kyle show, and also to a man trying to sell his car, which was parked outside the pub. He was actually in the pub, but because we were laughing s much, he noticed us and told us to piss off. Wolf offered me a charity shag now that I’m single, saying that a friend in need was a friend indeed. I declined, unsurprisingly. I have heard from numerous sources that he is possibly the worst shag ever in the history of the world. Also, I’ve seen him naked on many occasions, and it’s not a pretty sight. On the way home I started to get quite a sore throat. I thought that if I got straight to bed it would be better, but when I woke in the morning I had a fever and swollen glands, along with a very sore throat. I took the day off and lay in bed feeling quite miserable. In the end I got up and went into Brixton to get some pic’n’mix from Woolies, then went home, got back into my pyjamas and watched Peep Show, eating the pic’n’mix. Good stuff.

The next day- 23rd December- I went back to work, it being the last day and everything. I’d brought in a big bag of Lebkuchen which I took round to everyone. I’d also made cards for T and K, and written one for the boy. It took me three drafts, but I was happy in the end, and I left it on his desk like the sad little stalker that I am. We all thought it would be a half day, but 12:30 came and went and went, and we were still there. It was eventually decided that we could go at 15:00, though by then lots of people had already left, and those who were there hadn’t done any work. We all went to the pub and had quite an odd anti-climatic evening. The beautiful one had said that he was going to come to the pub, but then he rang me in the early evening to tell me that he was doing some last minutes shopping for his travels the next day. That was the last time I heard from him. He’s got my email address, but I don’t know if I’ll ever hear from him again. I don’t see any reason why he would think of me when he’s travelling around India, or even when he’s at his family’s house in Tasmania. I guess it will always be one of those “I wonder what might have happened?” things. Not that I don’t have other things on my mind, as I shall detail below…

So, Christmas. I went back to my parents for the good old festive season, as that’s what is done by children all across the world. I guess it’s like in the Nativity Play; Joseph has to go to Bethlehem because he is from the house of David. Thankfully I didn’t have to ride a donkey, or have a pregnant virgin with me. Instead, I caught the train up to the fens, where my parents (foolishly, in my opinion, but who am I to say?) live. One thing I always forget, but am getting better at remembering, is that it’s bloody freezing in the countryside. It had been cold in London, but it was icy and everything when I stepped off the train. That kind of stuff always bodes well for a great holiday, although of course you know that it won’t actually snow on Christmas day. I don’t understand the fascination people have with a white Christmas. It’s just snow. I’d rather have it in January, when there’s nothing else happening. January could do with cheering up with some snowball fights and the such like. Christmas already has trees and carols and baby Jesus and all that.

On Christmas day itself I was forced out of bed at some ungodly hour, as is tradition. I’d asked my mum the night before what time we had to get up and she’d said that we could have a lie in… until 9:00!! Now that, to me, is not a lie in. Bah humbug. Anyway, Father Christmas obviously realised that negotiating the stairs would be too much on Christmas morning so the presents were under the tree in the upstairs living room. When we were little we used to leave sherry and mince pies out for Father Christmas, and we’d make dad open the chimney so he’d be able to get in. Then we’d put straw out in the yard for the reindeers, with a carrot on top. Looking back, that’s kind of stupid. Why would the reindeers land in the yard, only for Father Christmas to scale up the side of the house and climb down the chimney? Why not just use the back door? I always wondered what happened if you didn’t have a chimney, like my friend who lived in a bungalow. She told me that they used to leave the back door open. To be fair, they probably did. Growing up in the countryside there wasn’t really any danger, except for maybe the road that runs through the village. I remember the most dangerous things in the village when I was growing up were the geese in the pond, which pecked my friends’ leg and made it bleed. Oh, and foxes, but they were only dangerous for the chickens.

Anyway, I completely digress. At 10:00 we went to church. The village church is quite old and it’s always cold. They have some antiquated heaters that I always worry are a health risk (they stink of gas), but I invariably position myself close to them as I don’t want to risk frostbite. Or chilblains. I haven’t had one of those since I was a kid, when I used to get them all the time. If you’ve never had one, you’re lucky. They’re unbelievably itchy. The church service was alright. I was worried that it would drag on for ages, but it was quite short. I didn’t sing most of the songs or join in with all the “amen” stuff as I’m not religious. I certainly didn’t go up for a blessing- I’m not a complete hypocrite. There were a few people at the church that I knew. To be fair, there weren’t all that many people there- it is a small village after all. My mum’s best friends family were there or some of them anyway). There was another family there who I knew, but none of us like them. The mum is morbidly obese. I mean MORBIDLY. She looks like a giant Christmas pudding. There’s nothing worse than the obese. I know it sounds really mean and judgmental, but there’s nothing worse than obese people. That is actually a little hypocritical as I have a bit of a belly nowadays, but I don’t have a BMI of over 40, like that woman in my village no doubt has. Her husband is a pain in the arse too. He has a really terrible moustache. I guess he probably doesn’t feel the need to make an effort, if his wife is going to walk around like that and everything. Their daughters are completely devoid of any talents whatsoever, and he younger one in particular is intensely irritating.

I’m not going to bother describing what I was given for Christmas, as I really can’t be bothered, but I did get some nice presents, and overall, I was very pleased.

My family have huge problems with me being a vegetarian. They don’t seem to understand it at all. My dad keeps asking me if I eat fish, and pretended to be confused as to why I wasn’t going to have any turkey. My mum actually made me my own special food- a chestnut and courgette pie, which was surprisingly nice. I say surprisingly not because I doubt the quality of my mum’s cooking, but because I didn’t think I liked chestnuts. I still don’t think I’d choose them, given a choice, but at least I can eat them. They all ate the normal turkey and such like.

Later on I decided to get drunk. My mum and dad were watching “The Importance of Being Earnest” so I went downstairs to where they were to drink wine. I started getting quite sarcastic, as I often do when I’ve had a glass of wine. When “Jerry Maguire” cam on, it was the final straw. I can not take that amount of poorly acted schmaltz. My youngest brother had come downstairs by this point, and we decided to get pissed. Mum and dad went to bed and I dragged my brother outside so I could have a cigarette, which he started preaching about, sanctimonious little brat!! We talked for hours, ate all the sweets in the untouched advent calendar and drank all the red wine in the house. By the end I was so drunk I could hardly see, but I still managed to send quite a pissed text message to one of my ex boyfriends. He sent me back a message the next day, laughing at me. I finally dragged myself to bed at about seven in the morning, and did wake up until four the next day. Even then, it was only because I was hungry that I got out of bed, and I went back to bed an hour later, waking up at about midnight to read the copy of F1 Racing I’d been saving for exactly this sort of occasion.

On the Tuesday- that must have been the 27th- I was woken up and told that we were going shopping as a big family outing. I told my mum that I needed to have a shower, and that it would take me half an hour or so before I was ready, but when I ran downstairs, I was greeted with my mum screaming like a banshee at me:

“We can’t go now! You knew your dad needed to be back this afternoon and now there’s not enough time to go and come back!”

I told her that I didn’t know that, as I’d been asleep all the previous day.

She shouted: “You’re so selfish!! When are you going to grow up and stop being late for everything? You always do this, all the time!”

I got pretty annoyed- I was outside with wet hair in the bloody snow, for fuck’s sake. I told her, “How would I be able to do this ‘all the time’? I don’t live here!! I live in London, not with you. How often do I come back here for you to call ‘always’?”

She wasn’t best pleased, but after my parents having a bit of a shouting match (I could hear it, sitting in the car, and they were upstairs, inside) my mum got in the car and we went shopping as planned. I think it was my dad she was mad at more than me. Neither of us apologised. Well, I did at the time, but I didn’t really mean it- how can you mean that you’re sorry for having a shower, and not being able to get straight out of bed and into a car? I think they expect the impossible from me and my brothers. It can only ever lead to disappointment. That sounds pretty harsh, and my mum’s not really like that. My dad is, and he’s the one that gets angry the most. He doesn’t quite so much now that there’s only one of us at home for most of the time. It was a nice day in the end, though I worry about my mum spending so much. Especially as we’re not always- or maybe ever- the nicest kids to have. In the evening we went out for a meal, apparently for my middle brothers birthday, some eleven days previously. Still, it was nice, though dad got quite drunk and mum had to drive.

I’m getting so bored of writing about everything I’ve done. I don’t think anyone would be in any way interested in anything I’ve just written. I thought 2006 would be ‘new year, new me’, but instead it’s just the same old chicky, fucked up as ever. I’m having a real crisis of confidence. This is meant to be the year we take over the world. Instead it might just be the year I stay in bed.

I’m going to make an effort to finish this, as if there’s one thing I really fucking hate, is quitting. There’s nothing better than finishing a task, accomplishing something, even if it’s something quite small, or inconsequential. I think that the best thing to do is think positive thoughts and trick myself into feeling happy. I know I can do it. I’m just having a real down moment. When I think about my life it seems very boring, but maybe to some people it sounds interesting. Having said that, they’d probably need to be living in completely blank room for that to happen. I need to snap out of this. Maybe it’s time for another ciggie out the bedroom window…

On Wednesday I made my way into Cambridge. That’s quite a mission from my parents’ house. First I had to take a tin little bus, driven by this guy who does this same route six days a week. There are only four buses a day from my parents’ village to the nearest market town. Clearly my parents never intended for any of their children to have any semblance of a social life! Then after sitting in the freezing cold at the bus station, a bus to Cambridge finally turned up. They’ve got remarkably pricy. I remember the good old days when it was only 70p to Cambridge. I had to pay £2.50 for that same journey last week. Rip off merchants. They’d take your blood if they could. Anyway, finally I got to Cambridge. I’d bought some new headphones for my mp3 player the day before, so I was finally able to listen to music in two ears, which made a bloody change. I met some friends and we went to the King’s Street Run.

For those who don’t know Cambridge, you’re really missing out on a treat. Well, not really. King Street used to have lots of pubs on it, something like ten, and you had to go from one end to the other and have a pint in each, and this was called the King Street run., hence the name of the pub. Now there’s only three, I think. There’s the Rattle and Hum, more commonly known as the Scum (which has changed names now to something quite anodyne). Then there’s a pub next to the noodle bar, which I think I’ve been to but can’t really remember. Then further up the street there’s the Run, and there’s another on the corner, where I once had sex in the toilets. So that makes four, which is hardly a run, more like a crawl. Anyway, we went to the Run, which is the “alternative” pub. I quite like it there, even though it’s full of pretentious wannabe punks. The music was far too loud and they played Atari Teenage Riot, which I wasn’t particularly pleased about. Thankfully it was only one song and then something more palatable came on, which doesn’t really narrow the field. A couple of pints there, and we headed off to M’s for supper.

Let me just get a couple of things out of the way first of all. I love M. I love M’s house. I love M’s mum. I love M’s dad. I love his sister. I love his cat. I love literally everything about everything to do with M. I therefore loved having supper there, and chatting to M’s slightly bonkers dad about suitable insane topics. M thinks that they (i.e. his family) are highly embarrassing- his dad at least. I can see why, but I have fun! I’m not going to gush about that family anymore, it sickens even me.

We headed off to the pub once we’d eaten. There’s a pub in Cambridge that used to be called the Hogshead. Then someone got abducted and killed from outside it, and the next day they changed the name to the Avery. Coincidence or what. There’s nothing like national notoriety to initiate a quick change of plan. Anyway, many drinks there. Then many drinks at another pub, where I threw beer mats at people and saw I guy who I nearly went out with when I was about 16. At some point I managed to nearly kiss one of my friends (he’s wanted to kiss me since I was 13, so full marks for trying I suppose) and another friend... Eventually I ended up at one of my ex’s friend’s house, via someone else’s house, and nearly crashing on the dark fen roads. A, the friend of my ex, is quite a nice guy though he is possibly the laziest person in the world. That really is something, as I know a lot of extremely lazy people. He spends weeks- literally weeks- in bed. I met him years ago, before I met my ex. He was in one of his not-so-lazy moments, which involves sitting around in a coffee house. I was at college, which means sitting around in coffee houses and skiving my lessons, learning about completely unrelated things to anything I was meant to be studying. The place I always went to was a place called Clowns, also on King Street. It’s owned by this crazy Italian man, who always hugs and kisses the girls. I think it’s changed a lot now, but when I was there, you could sit and smoke and drink tea, and there were huge tables, so you could really spread your work out. I used to meet a lot of very interesting people in there, and this one time, I met A. He told me how he’d been at a club and a girl had licked his eyeball. When I met him again, about six months later, with my then-boyfriend, it was quite funny, as my ex had no idea how we knew each other. Anyhow, A and I spent the next 18 hours in bed, alternately sleeping and shagging. It was good sex, as you’d expect from someone who spends so much time in bed. There was just one thing that was really really weird- he was completely silent, all the way through. Now, I’m not expecting- or even wanting- some sort of song and dance, but complete silence is quite unnerving. I felt like shouting things out, and blaming it on Tourettes. I didn’t of course, as I’m far too much of a lady. I’m not sure what kind of lady that would be, having random sex with yet another person she doesn’t fancy. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

When I got home, my mum asked me if I’d had a nice time, and where had I been, etc. I muttered something about a friend and asked for a lift to the train station.

I’m getting tired, and I’ve only just got to the good bit.

On the 30th I felt quite rough all day, and had an upset stomach. In the evening the first guy to ever break my heart came round my house. He was driving from Cambridge to Bristol, but detoured to London to see me. It was completely surreal.

New Year. Legend had a party, and I had already asked him to put in a good word for me to his brother, who is really really lovely. I met him when I went to stay at the Legend's one summer, and of course he tells me about him. It was a fun party, despite there only being three girls, including me. Legend and his brother, S, share a flat near Euston. The Wolf was there, and Legend's girlfriend, and I brought a friend (who the Wolf decided he was in love with, and proceeded to letch all over). At about 1 in the morning, S kissed me. I stayed the night. I don’t think I could have been forced out. Then we spent the next day hanging out at their flat. The four of us went to a Nepalese restaurant, and watched “Chicago”, and the whole time I felt like I was on fire, I just wanted to touch S and kiss him. I stayed another night.

I don’t want to think about it feels when he kisses me. I don’t want to think about how sweet he is, or how he makes sure my arm is around him when he’s sleeping. And I don’t want to think about how soft his hair is, and the way he’s funny, kind, musical… I really don’t want to think about any of this because I don’t know if he’ll ever call me.

I’m sure anyone reading this thinks I’m fickle. I mean, how can someone who jumps from one bed to another actually say she really likes someone? But I do really like him. He’s actually a nice guy, unlike most of the men in my life. But I don’t want to think about this because I don’t want to get hurt for the millionth time.