Where were the rapists when I was a child??

The big news of the weekend is that I got into my masters course. Wooooo!! So fuck working, I don’t give a toss what I work as between now and September as on 26th September I will officially be a student again. And oh my god, it’s going to be so cool. And I’ll make the very most of it and not be lame or shy and I’ll talk to people and have intellectual conversations and I’ll read so many books and have debates and smoke gauloises and join societies and be super geeky with N sitting at his study table together. Only a week or so ago I was feeling really shit about the fact that my life had no direction and that I was going nowhere and I was a failure and all this sort of stuff (for god’s sake, I nearly cried in Nando’s about it all), and now it all seems so alien because I’m being allowed to do the one thing I’ve wanted to do for over three years. SOAS will be so cool. I’m going to buy new folders and a bag and maybe wear my glasses every day and I can sense that really soon I’m going to piss everyone off by talking about this non stop. I’m not the first person to get into a masters or anything, so I should probably just shut up. Wow, I’ve managed to get self-depreciation into an otherwise celebratory paragraph. Maybe now you can’t say that what I write is boring (wink wink indeed). Actually, to be honest, I don’t care. If I bore you all about SOAS, so be it. I’m going to be an anthropologist and I’ve already started thinking about my dissertation (yes, I’m that geeky). Ideas so far include incorporating my love of sociolinguistics into the course somehow. Good lord, the idea alone makes me weak at the knees. One thing I won’t have to buy is a new pencil case (an otherwise essential part of the back-to-school kit) as I already have a perfect one. It’s bright pink and blue and has holograms of Chairman Mao. Mint.

My last whole week at this job and I am happy to confirm that a sense of nostalgia has not yet hit me. In a way it’s quite sad, this being what I’ve done since last August, first job after uni and everything. Plus there are some really lovely people here and I guess we’ve had quite a laugh. But everything comes to an end and all that, and the job hunt isn’t going as abysmally bad as I’d expected, with two phone calls this morning about positions I’ve applied for. In a way, I don’t want to do some shitty job and be bored out of my mind, as I’ve got a degree and all (Mickey Mouse or no Mickey Mouse) but really, seeing as it’s only going to be for a couple of months, I might as well just get a job so that I can pay the rent and maybe even buy some food that isn’t brown rice.

I had Friday off work, which was pretty good. I still have another two days of annual leave to use up before next Wednesday (and there’s a bank holiday as well). Anyway, I had an appointment with the most patronising nurse in the world, who bored me almost to tears. We sat in what looked like a corridor with huge locks on the door for an hour and I made the executive decision that I didn’t want to come back there again, so I lied and just made up everything. I know exactly what these people want to hear so I know exactly what to say. I used to say things to fuck up their patterns but now it’s all too boring, and anyway, that’s a bit too Six Feet Under. Then I came back home and chatted to #4, who was skiving work. He is refusing to use most of the mugs in our kitchen because “they either say ‘boys are stupid’ or they’re about periods”. Ha, boys and their period-angst. I then showered, blow dried my hair, put on my expensive skirt and got the tube into town for my interview. It seemed to go quite well. I had a computer test and a typing test and then the actual interview. My typing speed has gone up 10 wpm since I last had it tested, which I find astonishing as I normally type one handed. Though I suppose I always did that (at uni I used the free hand to smoke or stroke the cat; at work my spare hand is used for all manner of trivialities). Anyway, the woman who interviewed me seemed to like me and I think I came across reasonably well. She told me that I would have to wear a suit, and would that be a problem. “Oh no,” I said. She asked if I had a suit. “Yes,” I replied. I have never worn a suit in my life. What do suits for women even look like? I am going to have to beg/borrow/steal a suit, and pretty fucking pronto as I have a second interview for that position this week. I seriously don’t know what it would even look like. For goodness sake, today I am wearing skinny jeans and several skanky tshirts and plastic beads and no shoes and they want me to wear a SUIT??

After the interview I changed out of my smart shoes (the real reason for this is that they have a really cool picture on the soles of the shoes that I don’t want to wear off, lame I know) and nice shirt and I put my Primark shoes on and a dress (to cover my fat belly that I really need to do something about) and went for a wander around Soho. In a sudden rush of realisation, my stomach started making some proper foul noises, reminding me that I had not eaten since Thursday lunchtime, and I bought a £3 box from Tai. I really love Tai. Last year, for about two months, I used to go there like every day. Eventually the staff in the Islington branch knew me pretty well. Fun! Anyway, I ate that and sat in Soho Square for a while, trying to get hold of S. in the end I decided to just walk up to hers anyway, as I don’t mind the walk and it wasn’t cold or anything and you get to walk up the street where they shot one of the scenes from Peep Show (which, annoyingly, I think was filmed while I was living there, but me being me and me being shit, I didn’t see any of it, though I did once see that short guy who presents some of the Big Brother stuff on my road, so there). S did arrive in the end and told me some crazy story that made me feel bad for not being around more to help. S and D couldn’t shed any light on the whole suit problem but said that if I had to wear a suit, they would drag me around the LSE campus and that also, I would look hilarious next to N. S went to have a shower and I sat in D’s room and talked about comedy dogs and how not to answer first year history papers (tip numero uno: if you haven’t revised the Spanish Civil War, and in fact only know that it was a war in Spain with Franco somehow involved and Guernica is a painting and it was generally A BAD THING, don’t answer a question on it). S came back smelling absolutely beautiful and I inadvertently made her sad. She walked me to Euston and I amused her by telling her some shameful, shameful stories involving things I certainly won’t be writing here as I might spontaneously combust. needless to say, I don’t think she will ever look at me in the same way again but we’re actually not in the L Word after all, so it’s all good really (that was obscure, even for me- forgive my ramblings and constant in-jokes).

And then on to the Rocket. I hadn’t been in a Scream pub since The Night Of The Fight (I think it deserves capitalisation) but thankfully I was able to keep my fisticuffs to myself. I gave JA his card and his very own eyeliner and we all had drinks and were merry. N had been having drinks and being merry since one in the afternoon, so he was merrier than anyone else. Some girl came over to me and asked if she could buy a rollie from me. I said she could just have it, but she insisted on giving me 50p. then she told me how good I was at rolling, and did I smoke weed, and why did I smoke rollies, and oh yes they are far cheaper than cigarettes, and that I was a sweetheart, and then her boyfriend came over and she told me that she had to go because he was annoyed with her for talking to me. The whole thing was decidedly odd but hey, I got 50p out of it, so winner = me, oh yes. Also, plus points for managing to successfully avoid the camera that was sporadically waved in my face, and for managing to conduct a conversation with N about someone who was right in front of us. I maintain that learning sign language would have tremendous advantages, although the reasons I originally thought of were somewhat perverted and only fulfilling the stereotypes that people seem to have about me (ie that I write about sex all the time – a travesty if ever I heard one). Anyhow, we left and N got himself a burger and I tried to argue with the man in Burger King (I like arguing, I will admit that now) and then we took a cab home, although in saying that I would like to point out that I said we should get the tube but I was railroaded (note semi-pun) into a taxi, and then Peckham-wards, via a conversation about Tiananmen Square with the cabbie, much to N’s amazement, and then me rambling on about arm fat while N just wanted to sleep.

In the morning, I headed off home so that N could get cracking on his revision. I meandered back, via the shoppers paradise that is Camberwell Green (alas, the man with his bag was not there). On arriving home, I picked up the post to see whether there was anything, even though normally I get bugger all in the post. I think even the bank have stopped sending me things (unless the crack heads have been intercepting our post, which wouldn’t surprise me). And there it was. A letter from SOAS. I almost didn’t open it but in the end I decided to take it to my room, where I ripped it open and scanned the page, managing to miss the bold title saying ‘offer of admission’ and only really catching on when I saw the sentence ‘we are very pleased…’ Quite shamefully, but it’s okay because I’m a girl, I screamed. #1 came running to my room (she’d seen the letter and had been waiting nervously for me to get home) and was just as excited as me. I called N and he was super lovely about it, and then I called my parents and my little brother said “mmm” and my dad said well done, and in the process I managed to wake up #4 who was recovering from his Friday night. I spent the afternoon being very excited and chatting to #1 and calling my mum and listening to music and dancing about my room in my oh-so-mature way that just typifies the life of lamb.

After taking a typically horrendously long time to get ready, I headed for Peckham and N and I had a lovely meal at the Rye Hotel. It’s funny how parts of Peckham are really rubbish, like Rye Lane, which is always covered in fish guts and chicken blood and other awful things, and then there are places like Bellenden Road and the Rye Hotel, which are so middle class it’s not true. After some damn tasty food, including a banana/caramel/coconut/vanilla thing that was just absolutely fucking perfect, we went to London Bridge to watch Eurovision (not at the station, at a house near the station). We’d missed all the songs (unluck) so we only got to see the points, but if I’m honest, that was enough for me. It was hilarious. N saw this documentary about the UK entry and it was especially funny that a man who said that “you know, maybe I’m as good as McCartney… time will tell” came 19th out of 24th, garnering a final tally of something like 20 points. I hadn’t watched Eurovision in years, since I was about six years old and the babysitter let me stay up late to watch it. The Finns won it, for those that managed to miss the whole thing. They were monster rockers. Then we watched Green Wing, which has managed to become unfunny since I last watched it, and so home and sleep and so on.

On Sunday, we decided to go to Morrison’s in our pyjamas. N didn’t look too bad, but I have Superman pyjamas and they’re quite obviously pyjamas. I have no problem with wearing pyjamas to the shops (as mentioned last week, I’ve done this many a time) and amazingly we didn’t get any odd looks and I completely forgot that I looked like I’d been sleep walking. While shopping, I made loud comments about what some of these people choose to eat. Thankfully there were no frozen battered mars bars, but honestly, surely it’s obvious that eating crap will make you look like crap, and a fat one at that too? I’m not really healthy or anything. But nor do I subsist solely on a diet of lard and saturated fats. I don’t know. Anyway, Morrison’s is a funny place and has a far wider selection of brioche than, say Tesco or Sainsbury’s. I used to go to the Morrison’s in Stoke Newington but I stopped going after one time, I took my big camping rucksack so I could carry everything home without stealing the shopping trolley, and it was so heavy that the moment I put it on, I fell over backwards and was stuck, literally stuck, with my arms and legs flailing in the air, like a turtle on its back (or how I’d imagine a turtle on its back would look, I’ve never actually done that- and to think I used to have two pet terrapins), and no one helped me. “Well, that’s just dandy, Mr Morrison’s,” I thought to myself, “I won’t be gracing you with my custom again.” anyway, I’m sure that I sound really elitist and that you half expect me to say “ah, poor people, and their funny ways”, and in a way, yes I do say things like that, but you must remember that it’s mainly for comedy effect and I went to comprehensive school, you know, and anyway, I’m just as poor as any of these people, it’s just that I’ve got a degree and a chip on my shoulder. That and I don’t spend my money on computer games and designer trainers, and instead I buy organic fair-trade coffee and the Guardian because I am, after all, achingly middle class. Pardon is a worse word than fuck.

On returning from the shops, we cooked (I say we when what I mean is that N cooked a curry and I stirred some rice and generally made a nuisance of myself)a curry and then fell asleep for the rest of the day. Actually, what happened was that N fell asleep and I watched aeroplanes out of the window, before finally falling asleep. In any event, it was lovely. Eventually I went home and generally wasted time, and in the end #1 and I went to the shop and got some wine and got pissed and had a really in depth conversation and then got more pissed and had the most hilarious, filthy conversation and then drew pictures of lesbian porn (A-Level Art clearly did not go to waste) and OH MY GOD #2 IS GOING TO KILL US.