The Oldest Job in the World

I haven’t written a blog for some time and there are many reasons for this. Perhaps it’s the fact that life has been rather stressful for some time or the fact that I have been completing my degree and therefore all available time up until 2 weeks ago was devoted to exploring the psychoanalytic aspects of fear, desire and death etc, or it could simply have been that last year’s Glasto experience was simply a tough act to follow. Whatever the truth, I have been away too long and may or may not redeem myself with a flurry of witty entries starting now.

SO, what’s new? Well, I’m a proper person now, I have a degree and of course this causes me to have a more mature and learned outlook on the world. For example, now when I watch Spongebob, I think to myself “How has his childhood affected his adult life? Is Mr Krabs a father substitute? And perhaps his apparent gender diasporia is caused by his sexless form.” Quite clearly such considerations give me much food for thought. But Spongebob is not alone in deserving my more educated attention; these days I often feel the need to wear my glasses when watching The Simpsons. After all there is nothing more guaranteed to make me feel academic than peering over the top of my specs whilst contemplating the complex moral and social issues that Lisa tackles on a weekly basis.

Of course these pursuits are vital but I also have a sneaky suspicion that it may in some small way be some kind of delaying tactic. I remember writing a blog about procrastination and I have been feeling that nasty slug creep thither once more. And what might I be evading in such a determined manner? Well I have to get a job! I have no money whatsoever and have been living off my credit card (with something of a natural flair for denial) for some weeks now and surely I can’t think that’s a good idea. I had ‘ideas’ about signing on but I didn’t want to get used to it (not that you get very much as it happens) so I indulged in a spot of leisure under the reasonable assertion that I needed a break. Now though, my dire financial state has lost it's quirky appeal and the truth must be faced by your truly……….I NEED A JOB. I am not really sure what I might like to do, or what I’d be any good at, so I may have to watch some more cartoons for inspiration.

I could always go on the game.

Seize the donut

I appear to be recovering, at a reasonable pace, from my Glasto’ exploits. You may wonder why it is that I need such a lengthy recovery period. The only answer that I can offer is that I am far too unfit and out of practice to take part in such antics without dire consequences (or at least, lingering doziness, stubbornly matted hair and a prolonged bout of trench-foot). But it’s not as though I’m ancient or infirm and I often feel that action MUST be taken. Indeed, I felt driven to healthiness the very afternoon of my return. I purchased strawberries, roquette and tomatoes and vowed to never again taste the vile burger (even the veggie kind). Despite having had very little to eat at the fest, what I did have was not of the vitamin infused variety and I was absolutely certain that I would be exceptionally wise in the food aisle at Tesco from here on in.

After all, it’s not as though I dislike the veggies and the fruits; indeed I am a big fan and have been known to eat an alarming number of carrots and several punnets of berry-type things in a single sitting. In fact, there’s no real reason why I’m not incredibly healthy; I don’t like cream, I’m not fond of pastry, I’ve cut down on that mouth-watering and really quite delicious personal favourite of mine - vintage cheddar and I’m capable of putting off chocolate binges for hours at a time. Of course, I become severely weakened by even the most fleeting suggestion of a glass of wine and I have absolutely no defence against really good chips. Rum and I have a co-dependent relationship and I could never turn gin away (not after all we’ve been through together). Even so, my four days of festival food have made me feel somewhat different about these things. I shall go, immediately, and share my good intentions with Clare. We’ve agreed to meet for trough of cheesy chips and a bout of Bombay Sapphire at the pub in a few short minutes...............

...............................bugger!

There's nothing quite like it.......

I’d decided that we had to leave early, as early as we could manage. I didn’t want to be stuck in a baking, heat haze of immobile cars for half the day, so I suggested that we get up at 5am and leave by 5.45. Our frenzied attempts to get ready the night before trailed on and on, it turned out I finally made it to bed by 1.30am, which would have been fine, except that what followed was a Christmas Eve type of excitement which meant I failed to get any real sleep at all. I watched the second half of a horror film and then the second half of ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’, by which time it was 4am and I fitfully dozed for an hour.

I made giant mugs o’ coffee and Aron and I got ourselves going on schedule. We collected our dear friend Clare and off we went. We got there at about 6.40am, the air warming up already, our backpacks attached and we were ready climb. I knew that our friends Wesz & Cat had arrived a day early and had kindly put up our tent for us. I also knew that they had decided to camp at the highest point and therefore knew a lengthy walk with many breaks in which the unfit (me) could recover.

We arrived at the tent at about 7.45am and unceremoniously awoke Wesz with our relieved yells of arrival. Cat turned up with Vegetarian breakfast baps, which was exceptionally welcome but rather difficult to eat since it was SO packed full and I lost a considerable amount of filling out the sides. This didn’t matter though and I ate as though starved for some months, not 12 hours. We sat in the sun and talked and drank and burned quite nicely for sometime. Then Clare and I went for a stroll and I bought an inordinate number of blankets (I felt sure we’d need them). We glanced at the floor length waterproof ponchos, and then at the sky, the blistering sun convinced us to ignore them, so we did.

After a few hours of wandering we decided we had sun-stroke (headaches and the need to sit down before falling down) which lead us to the ice-cold smoothie stand where a four berry smoothie with crushed ice sorted us out good and proper. We headed back to the tent to await the arrival of another bunch of mates who were arriving that evening. They arrived to much jollity and we had a few turns with the celebratory rum.

We were formulating our plans for the evening when Aron said he had spotted some flickers in the sky, right on the horizon in a south easterly direction. We thought it might be fireworks. Aron kept pointing out flashes until we all agreed we could see something, although very far away and silent. Not even remotely phased by such distant flickering, a few of us headed to the Jazz Field at about 11pm. We met more friends, we drank an unmentionable quantity of Pear Cider (legendary and mind-bending, apparently), laughed an awful lot and bonded a great-deal too.

I hadn’t even noticed that it was almost light. We looked around (we'd been sitting in a rather exclusive circle) to find the place deserted and covered in green cider bottles. There was a rather funny colour in the sky and we decided to get back to the tent. For discretion’s sake I won’t mention the reason that none of us had noticed the time and daylight, but more importantly we hadn’t noticed that the flickering had been getting brighter but now we were jolted into sobriety but a deafening crack of thunder. It was right overhead and we pegged our way back to the tend, bringing everyone with us.

I have never heard such thunder, it lasted almost 12 hours in total and when the rain came…….? We had 4 weeks rain fall in 2 hours. And it was flooded. We got back to the tent and sat there listening to this almighty storm, thinking…….’Bugger’. Lightning struck several things on site and the power went out. The tents at the bottom of the hill were the target of the flash-flood and tent occupants were given minutes to get out of their tents before they were washed away or filled with water and mud. If you’ve seen the pictures, then you’ll know that some tents were completely submerged, some had just a few inches above water and many people lost all the stuff they had with them. The acoustic tent became an impromptu shelter for those with nowhere to sleep or even sit to avoid the rain.

That day the market area flooded and many of the stages became thick with knee deep mud and when the first batch of wellies arrived on site there was something of a riot, the Police were called in but wound up helping out and selling the boots to the amassed crowds to help the stall-holders.

But you know the thing about Glastonbury?? Rain, mud in mind-boggling quantities, flooding, no power, no clothes, no bed.........? It simply didn’t dampen the spirits. People just put on bin-liners and swam to the beer tents. They sailed to the burger stands in canoes and air-beds. They leapt around to their favourite bands even though falling over and becoming smothered in glue-consistency mud was inevitable if you tried to move. We cheered, we built mud sculptures and when the sun came back out and 90’000 people watched Brian Wilson on Sunday afternoon, every single person sang to Surfin’ USA and the atmosphere was so upbeat, I felt rather watery in the eye region.

Of course I complained though; my legs hurt from walking up hills in 2 sizes too big boots, my bottom hurt because there was nothing but uneven or wet ground to sit on, apart from the breakfast bap I barely ate for 4 days, I didn’t sleep the whole time, I got sun-burn, sun-stroke and blisters......................................

I’ll see you back there in 2007.

I find your lack of faith disturbing

I did my duty (and I wanted to.....) and went to see the preview screening of Episode III in the middle of Wednesday night. There we all were, lightsabres aloft, awaiting the last chance to see a decent Star Wars prequel and drinking rum and coke (smuggled in obviously). We all felt a strange sense of solidarity as the fans piled in; relieved to note we were not the only ones with lightsabres, although costumes were at a minumum (glad I resisted the gold bikini urge then) signalling a rather sober crowd.

The cinema had decided to arrange usher/ettes for this special occasion (there usually aren’t any at this cinema), who wandered around selling ice creams, or rather trying to, the room being full of people requesting coffee instead. There were many shouts for caffeine in order to facilitate the staying awake. I suddenly realised as I scanned the room that of course we needed coffee, this wasn’t a young vibrant crowd, this was a bunch of grumpy, jaded thirtysomethings, who’d been there the first time round. All feeling the strain of being up ‘til 4am on a school night. The majority of these adults had left their own kids with neighbours/parents and taken the next morning off work, all for this film that had been growing in significance in our minds for past 3 years.

A rather odd experience I thought it was, not for the film itself which I thought was a dramatic improvement (time will tell whether or not that opinion is simply Star Wars blindness in action again – the mistaking of the next episode for good just because it was better than the last – definition courtesy of Simon Pegg). There was some improved acting (towards the end anyway) and I think we enjoyed it for what it was.

But the oddness came from the scenario of sitting in a room full of people covering this tiny age-range, all ready to cheer at the credits (which we did, by the way) and it was strange and fun and unlikely to occur again. After all the age of the cinema is being challenged by the DVD (I am all for this, I love home film viewing), and the next cinematic event that covers 30 years (if there is one), I shall clearly be far too old to be involved in. So for the finality of this event and the shared knowledge of that truth, if nothing else, I am glad I stayed up all night cheering and waving bits of plastic.

I’m not growing up or anything though!!

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.

I quite clearly haven’t written for ages and there are a number of extremely good reasons for this. Mainly that Uni is causing me excessive stress and grumpiness. Although I am quite good at grumpiness anyway, recently I’ve been an expert. I have a lot of work to do and have felt a larger than usual challenge over what has to be done. I however, shall sort it out, overcome and no doubt get a truly fantastic grade, which shall ensure my future as a person with a job. I hope. I still have absolutely no idea what I might plan to do with my degree, assuming I get it that is. Although, I’ve been watching far, far too many Japanese films recently and now rather fancy applying for a job as Samurai warrior. However since they don’t appear to be advertising and I’m not agile enough to get out of the car without tripping over, I fear my chances are slim.

I have endeavoured to do some fun stuff this weekend in order to take my mind off it and then I’ll promise to get back to it on Monday. I even bought a light-sabre at the Comic Convention in Bristol, it has realistic sounds (yay!) and my friend Clare and I had a wee battle on Saturday night, which was greatly amusing. We thought we might take them along to the preview showing of Episode III on Wednesday night and fight while we queue, since I understand that we could be waiting for sometime. We’ll also fit in with all the Star Wars fanatics who’ll be there. Notice I haven’t included myself in that group even though I just bought a light-sabre with sound-effects, I love Star Wars, own all the films and am not above watching the original trilogy in one sitting.

In recording my weekend activities and that fact that I pre-booked for the Preview of Episode III and various other confessions, I realise that I have unwittingly revealed that I am actually a complete geek and no amount of denying it will change this fact. Never mind, I have come to terms with this long ago and of course it means that me and my man get on like a house on fire. Never a dull moment!

About to watch Run Lola, Run, so I’m off. The books are stacked awaiting my eager return to them tomorrow morning.

I think I’d like a large glass of vino.

Teacher, mother, secret lover.

I watch too much TV. The problem is that I both love and hate it (that makes our relationship sound way more complicated than in fact it is). It’s hugely entertaining and very often I’ll sit down to watch the Simpsons and find myself still gazing adoringly at it 3 hours later; sometimes with no recollection of the intervening time. It is of course possible that I haven’t actually been sitting there drooling away with a head full of fluff, but I have in fact been abducted by some pesky Greys who have been thoughtful enough to erase all traces of their visit. I fear though that the brain-dead addiction to an electrical entertainment device is the most likely cause of all this loss of time and usefulness. I just don’t know what to do about it.

I suspect that I have employed the box more enthusiastically of late as part of my previously outlined plan to put off writing my essays for Uni for as long as possible. I can then become increasingly stressed by deadlines and feel certain that I have no idea how to start, which as we all know results in panic, insomnia and caffeine addiction.

Of course TV also affects the attention span and this might be a further explanation for why I only get 3 sentences into a text book before the eyes start to drift away from the page and over to something all shiny and flickering in the corner of the room.

I like to think that it’s all a tragic result of being at the tail end of generation X, or some such culturally enticing justification. Am I Gen X? I’m not sure that I am, but I’d really like to be. I think it sounds like it explains an awful lot and will be yet another opportunity to defer responsibility without actually being a teenager.

It’s So unfair.

Me fail English? That's unpossible.

I still can’t sleep properly and my eye baggage grows ever more luxurious. I realise that the pop-psych explanation would be that the longer one goes without sleeping properly, the more anxious one becomes about it and the more anxious one is the less likely you are to get any sleep. One then starts to think of oneself as an insomniac and then once you’re one of those; of course you can’t sleep. What kind of insomniac gets a good night’s sleep and awakes feeling refreshed? I did have one of those nights once and I suddenly realised that there was a whole level of consciousness that existed above the one I usually shuffle around in.

Of course I do get some sleep and I do function, so it can’t be that bad. I got a few hours last night (with many bouts of wakefulness) which was filled with extremely odd dreams. The kind that you wake from feeling thoroughly confused. Why did I dream of someone I haven’t given even a passing consideration to since I left school 16 years ago? And why had she developed cheek whiskers? The brain is mystery.

I’m assuming that part of my problem is this rather stressful year. It’s been a nasty one so far and added to that, I now I have about 10,000 words to write before the end of the semester and should probably have got going some time ago. As you will now be aware, I have procrastination tendencies and I always think that every word printed will be laughed of campus. I have a theory that at the end of term, I shall suddenly relax so violently that I shall slip into a coma for a good 3 weeks. Upon waking I shall be a new woman who can actually remember what her name is and how to tie shoelaces. I’ll have energy, coordination and the ability to speak whole sentences without having to stop halfway through to recap and work out what I was trying to say.

Which will be nice.