“guess he won’t be down on Wall Street anymore”

I’m reading Bonfire of the Vanities and it’s provided definitive proof, as if proof were needed, that I was simply born too late.  The fact of my being born in the wrong country and possibly continent have been well-documented before now, so we won’t dwell on my unsatisfied longing for New York.

But man, the eighties.  Being born in the middle of the decade is just poor timing as far as I’m concerned, and one I must remember to berate my parents for.   How could someone like me in my super-capitalist, poor fashion sense and usually selfish ways have wasted the eighties learning to walk and talk, such mundane things?

Greed is good.  Well, maybe it’s not, but I would have had a fabulous time in the booming markets with my beloved Mrs T running the show.  Although, there was no internet and the striking coal miners would really have irritated me, so perhaps it’s for the best.

“his bow tie is really a camera”

So my dear friend L no longer lives with us, and has set up a happy home with her girlfriend E, just a minute’s walk from our old shared house.  I’ve been to visit a couple of times thus far, mostly to pick up things of mine that I left behind and she rescued for me.

Sunday before work, I ran round in the pouring rain only to end up sitting on her well-covered balcony as she smoked.  Smokers being as they are, we were out there a couple of times in a relatively short visit.  I innocently remarked about the guy in the silver car who had been parked all this time in the rain.  We just thought he was overly patient to wait for anyone this long.  His face was obscured by the tint at the top of the windscreen, and catching a glimpse of his hand in his lap meant nothing to either of us.

But he was back yesterday evening, in the full glare of the weak-ass sunshine.  And any movements were less innocent and more in the ham-shank variety, if you catch my drift.  In the middle of this quiet suburban street, and in plain view if anyone bothered to peer down from their balcony, as we did.

So E was dispatched, in her official capacity, to give him a telling off and call in the boys in blue if necessary.  The peanut gallery of myself, L and Cat were chattering in outraged feminist ways, fuelled by righteous indignation and a large dose of being creeped out.

But he broke down and confessed to E that he didn’t know what he was up to, he was just so extremely lonely, living alone and with nobody to talk to.  It’s not an excuse, and she could have had him nicked there and then (he really did pick the wrong flat to do that in front of).  I’m sure E sees her fair share of chancers, weirdos and flimsy excuses in an average day, and so I deferred to her judgement.

It really upset me though, I was fighting back tears in the cold, guitar slung across my back like a bad Johnny Cash impersonation (yeah, I left it behind, but on purpose).  To think that someone could be reduced to that, to be so desperate for human contact, to approximate that with a real interaction, it really saddens me.  Teetering on the brink of another depressive (yawn) episode, it threatened to push me over.  It should make me reevaluate, count my own blessings.  Instead I’m morose and hoping that we haven’t inadvertently let some perv loose on society, all the while pitying him with an intensity that isn’t necessary for a stranger.  Weird, no?

And on the flip side, Ikea now deliver to our postcode.  No more timeloss shopping in their rabbit warrens.  Click and buy, baby!

“you think that you are strong, but you are weak”

I am, most of the time, a hard-faced bitch.  That’s not bravado, nor am I putting myself down.  It’s fact.  I have been described (by someone needing a slap) as a “busty Glasgow hardticket”.

I can’t cry when I should, only when it’s quiet and thoroughly inconvenient.  I rarely tell people how I feel, and lately I find myself sort of coasting along in a nice protective bubble, free from any emotion other than abjection irritation (the downside of dealing with the public).

But were any nemesis of mine trying to find an easy weak spot to exploit, they need look no further than my two adorable balls of fluff – otherwise known as Franklin and Orlando.

I’ve been climbing the walls, as it turns out that Franklin’s recent whining hasn’t just been a childish strop after moving house, in fact he’s back in the kitty carrier and making an emergency trip to the V.E.T.  Seems nothing major, he’s had it before and it’s easily treated with a jab and some follow-up pills.

But Gawd, if this is what having kids is like, I think I remain at a considerable distance from ready.  I worry about him, the very thought of anything serious happening to him is accompanied by stabbing pains where my heart allegedly is and a welling of tears that’s incredibly hard to suppress.  They’re just pets, right?  Oh, but how can anyone think that when they both have these wee personalities, and when they wake you up at 4am with cold noses and purrs?  I shouldn’t get so attached, I manage to avoid it in almost every other part of life. 

I know, I know, I’m such a lezzzbian; but damn, I love my cats.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKL2241479720070522?feedType=RSS

 See my previous comments about over-extended responsibility.  Our own health service is falling apart, shouldn’t we perhaps sort out the funding for that before sending even more money overseas?  At least it’s not an official government notion…. yet.

“we’ll set our watches forward like we’re just arriving here”

Things that I could not care less about include:

• Life on Mars
• The new Pirates film, or in fact, any Pirates film
• See above re: Spiderman 3.
• Gordon Brown
• And the rest of the Labour Party
• Chelsea and their ‘victory’ in the ‘final’ on Saturday.
• The Midlands, Yorkshire, and pretty much everywhere that isn’t London or Scotland.
• The Chelsea Flower Show
• Cricket. Oh the eye-rolling monotony of it.  It’s a ’sport’ where half the spectators are nodding off after lunch.  This is not entertainment, people.

“my land’s only borders lie around my heart”

Oh dear, see what happens when politicians say something that my mother might?  Unfortunately, this is one of those times when I agree with what was said, and usually when I start getting bricks thrown at my head for being an unrelenting Tory etc.

It ties in with something I’ve been wanting to write since the weekend (though unpacking put paid to more than a perfunctory checking of email).  This notion of a wider responsibility, which in liberal terms seems to have no end.  We have to feed the starving in other countries, which is noble, but wouldn’t it be more helpful to remove the causes of famine and deprivation, i.e. corrupt governments?  Throwing money at a problem rarely solves it (try telling that to the overspending Labour governments of old) and there has to be some imposition of restraint and building a workable infrastructure.

Anyway, gripes about Make Poverty History aside, social housing (what happened to it being called council housing?) is a fantastic concept, one that we should be proud of, and one that should be as widely available as necessary.

However, why exactly should this facility be extended to economic migrants?  I know this country is appealing in many ways, but a large part of that is how easy it is to get everything for free when you first arrive.  And this has nothing to do with genuine asylum seekers, carry on with helping out there please, but it’s not unreasonable to actually check the veracity of claims.

It is sad that the working class in this country will miss out.  It’s not so bad in places like Lanarkshire where there is still some housing available, albeit it only in rougher areas.  But in London Boroughs like Barking they can’t offer you housing even if you’re pregnant, even if you have problems with addiction, but that’s only the case if you’re born and raised here.  If you were to pitch up at Gatwick or Heathrow, new to the country with no money, and never having contributed tax or National Insurance, you would stroll directly to the head of the queue.   I’m not talking about withholding all services, I’m just saying isn’t there an element of looking after our own first?

Not that I’m a rampant xenophobe, I have the same objection to English expats overstretching public services in the south of Spain etc while only paying taxes at home in Blighty.  Hmph.

“we meet here for our dress rehearsal to say, I wanted it this way”

I’m feeling rather old today.

Whenever I say something like that it’s met with a flurry of derision and cries of “nonsense” because, as always, there are many people in my life older than I am.  24 may not confer coffin dodger status, but it has given me an odd moment to ring the changes.

My own mother was married with a baby on the way at this age.  For six years I’ve been living in a state of occasionally blissful independence.   The bills to pay, the arrangements to make: all of these are my responsibility and when I haven’t done it right I’ve borne the consequences.  I read a book this week about people who meet up after many years with the kids they went to primary school with.  After an initial readjustment to my own native culture, I found myself slightly sceptical that any of these people would still remember each other after such a long time; then I realised how long it’s been since I left primary and yet how much of it is perfectly preserved in my memory.

I seem to have settled so quickly, into domesticity and stability: things I thought I would never achieve regardless of how many years I spent pursuing them.  My address book now, a paper relic held over from the days before I even saw a real computer, is beginning to fill not with single names at parents’ addresses, but with couples in sort of trendy city apartments.  Work numbers and extensions mingle with the personal and work emails, and in people I’ve known for some years, the changes are either astounding or nonexistent.  Stalled or flying, very few in between.

I worry the routine, the good behaviour, is making me older than I should be.  I once remarked in a darkened living room that I’d been acting 35 since I was 15.  Too many decisions, perhaps too soon, and I’ve never really been able to relinquish my grip on control since.  The good news in all of this is that I’ve stopped blaming other people for forcing this life upon me, when I know that I’m the only one truly responsible for getting me here.

Maybe tonight or maybe this weekend I’ll remember what it’s like to be in your twenties, in the greatest city in the world, and having nobody to answer to but a loving partner and two demented cats.  Then again, maybe I won’t.

“give him the moment in the sun he needs right now, Charlie”

Dear assorted family members of the poor guy who got shot: I think the moment has passed.  Mistakes were made, in more than extraordinary circumstances.  You may not like the decision, but let’s just take a moment to appreciate that we live in a society here where one can question the police openly.  Where shooting of people in the streets always warrants an investigation, and where this kind of incident is so thankfully rare that it can dominate the news cycles for as long as it has.

But seriously, I think now is the time to let it drop.  Independent commissions and various powers-that-be have looked at the case and said that there is no case to answer.  Do you think those police officers will ever forget what happened, that they’ll ever pull a trigger again without thinking at least twice?  Plus, all the leftie slogan-brains who jump on this as an example of the “fascist police state” we have in Britain, probably the same people who say “B-liar” without any sense of shame, can you please go back to patronising the poor or whatever it is you do when you should be working?  Ta.

“this house is not for sale”

Letting agents are the parasitic scum of the earth, and our particular EVERTONIAN wankburst deserves his own special circle of hell.  Having told us in jubilant tones to “Pack your things and get ready to move, all the references check out”, he informed me today when I called him that in fact, they do not have either our employer or landlord references.  So he is a grade A eejit, and I hope his balls fall off.

It’s not impossible to get it all sorted by Tuesday, it’s just unnecessary stress when I have two more exams to freak out over and it was supposed to all be sorted by now.

I know they say it’s stressful, but I would like for once to not be flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to moving house.  I would also like to never, ever move house again after this time.  But seriously, is there some law of nature dictating we should all turn into gibbering wrecks with a postcode change?  I’m beginning to warm to Marx and Rousseau’s stances on the evils of private property.  Not that it stopped me demolishing both of them in my exam yesterday.

“you wanted me to write you letters, but I’d rather lose your address”

We interrupt this marathon bout of last-minute Politics cramming to post mindless fluff on the internet.

What a strange week it has been – the life of a de facto single girl with none of the excitement. Chelsea got dropped out of Europe and from winning the Premiership, which makes me (almost) ecstatic. Work has encouraged my football love out into the open, instead of its usual muttered tones as I argue with myself in front of the TV. Speaking of work, there are people with actual personalities! Thoroughly necessary, because any job involving communication with the unwashed masses is likely to push even sanity much less tenuous than my own.

I may be making some serious changes in the coming weeks, beyond even the nightmare of moving house and buying furniture on eBay, yadda yadda. I have so much I need to talk about, not least the shame of nominally being from a country that elects the SNP as the (very slim) majority party. Just because they hate the English instead of actual foreigners, doesn’t make them any less xenophobic. Or stupid. Or remarkably unqualified to lead. Just as well Westminster didn’t trust us with a real parliament, eh? I blame proportional representation. With the traditional first-past-the-post system, it squeezes out all those grey areas, and sparse populations (yes, youse above the Central Belt) are largely unable to affect the political landscape. Who gave power to the teuchters, I ask you? These are people who spend a little too much time talking to sheep, if you see my point. Meh.

Still, I live in a real city in a proper country, the one that still actually runs the show. So bite me, Holyrood.