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Saturday 20 2003
Has it ever dawned on you the extent of your own naïvité?
When I decided I wanted to go into healthcare, become a nurse, I was hoping I would be able to specialise in sexual health education: I knew this would entail 4 years of study to gain my Bachelor of Nursing degree, plus a few years on-ward experience, where I would hopefully specialise in genitourinary or gynecological nursing. During this time I would work towards additional qualifications in sexual health education whereby I would be skilled in the advice and dissemination of education and information pertaining to our womanly crevices.
When I speak of my naïvité it is nothing to do with this though - it is to do with the structure on which my job will rest: the NHS. I know it is chronically underfunded - money going from patient-care to pay for managers. For some reason I imagined that the NHS will be different to the poor standard of management I have seen already in my short life - that because the 'things' the managers are managing are real human lives, the standard will be high. Reading the constant headlines, I know this to be untrue, and that frequently it is the front line workers - the nurses, who take the blame for poor service arising from badly-run hospitals.
I am naïve because I believed that in nursing I would find a career where I could excel and find fulfillment while my contribution is valued by those managing my work. It seems however that in nursing I am seeking to join in a culture of excess (...) - where the
rot is a feminist orthodoxy which says nurses must no longer be the 'handmaidens' of male chauvinist doctors, but instead must be their equals.
Being a nurse it would seem, is about as shameful as any Conservative organisation (The Centre for Policy Studies) could think.
Meanwhile, work for me seems to be dominated by management putting The Peter Principle into extreme effect. I have the feeling that it will be a long time before I can escape that phenomenon. As a front-line worker - ie, one of the persons doing the basic work rather than a member of management, I and my colleagues are ripe for abuse and blame when those promoted beyond their skills are incapable of doing their jobs.
Sigh.
Wednesday 17 2003
Liking to be prepared, I have made my contributions to my office's in-house christmas party which will happen on friday: cheese & chive thins (stamped out in the shape of angels, for that festive touch) and some orange & spice carrot muffins with a bowl of cinnamon mascarpone frosting. This icing is a Delia-disaster: I trust her judgement implicitly, but she said nowhere in her recipe for Ultimate Carrot Cake that the effing icing wouldn't set firm. Now I shall have to lug in a pyrex bowl of pleasantly-flavoured goo which resembles more denture fixative than delicate and aromatic cake frosting. The muffins I would imagine had I actually tried them (ha!) are divine, as are the cheese & chive angels.
Monday 15 2003
perhaps a trailing cursor is really irritating...and perhaps a page with falling snow is seethingly annoying. TOUGH TITTY!!!
Sunday 14 2003
I can't reconcile the fuzzy-beared elderly man, pupils narrowing at the bright lights, with the oiled and medal-clad dictator we were to fear. Found in a hole in the ground, Saddam Hussein has been re-born into a world where his chief persecutors, Tony & Georgie, need votes and good polls. Seems Mr. Hussein was somewhat more of a bumbling oaf than we knew: he managed to murder millions, but couldn't find himself a good lead-lined evil underground ante-chamber in which to hide himself for all these months.
Onto a subject more me - the sartorial sense of the elder generation.
When I was young, it was great fun to dress up like an 'old wifie' - that is, in my granny's maroon coat (mid calf length), headscarf (tied under chin), mittens and a walking stick (my granny never needed one - she just had loads like all good grannies). We - me and cousins or chums - would teeter around the garden with our outfits, confident that by virtue of the headscarf and stick, we were instantly transformed into old wifies. Sometimes a couple of pink rollers would be wound round our fringes for that 'just left the salon' look.
But it occured to me today - what will the next generation of 'old wifies' wear? These women will have grown up in the 1940s - will they automatically assume the uniform of the classic Scottish Old Wifie? - the headscarf, perm and long coat? Women of my mother's generation, growing up in the 1950s and 1960s certainly aren't going to let go of their Goretex gear in favour of bri-nylon and drip-dry pre-creased elasticated skirts and trousers. While I would be shocked if I were to meet my mother looking like that, I shall miss theglow of the Old Wifey's snow-white perm, protected by a Paisley-print headscarf. Long live headscarves!!
oh - have added a contact form as I'm getting soo many email tempting me to incerase my penis size while boosting my boobs AND getting a diploma - use it!!
Thursday 11 2003
Stan took this beautiful picture this afternoon: the crisp winterness shimmers off the swans' backs, the glitter of the sun in the water like the Snow Queen's trail of ice.
Tomorrow we are off to Edinburgh, where we are to peruse the stalls of the German Market, buy random ginger and cinnamon things, have lunch in Jenners, stroll through Princes Street Gardens like a carefree couple in love, notice architechtural delights, kick leaves, smile in the glow of the Castle, meet friends for drinks and come home. I am minded to draw up a timetable for all this tonight which I can print off at work, making a pocket-sized life-style guide for Stan & I.
- 14.26 finger ginger-snap house while stroking authentic Bavarian embroidery
- 14.31 tut at Stan for whistling Edelweiss
- 14.36 unfurl socks from under heels, where they will have gathered like the folds of an accordian
- 14.42 tut at Stan for re-enacting Fawtly Towers' German episode
- 14.55 lose ear muffs
This is a sketch of the person who made the dastardly Caesar Salad wrap I ate last friday which made sick.
Wednesday 10 2003
background jazzing-up going on...in the mean time, here's a picture.
Sunday 07 2003
Oh cosy flat! How I have longed for you these past days of vomit and spin...
It is Sunday night, and after a few spoons of celeriac soup and some ungodly-heavy oat bread (so awful recipe will never appear again in daylight) the lovely Stan and I are recovering from our trip to Aberdeen.
It began unusually: it is normal for me to prepare a vast spread of foodstuffs for any journey over one hour. Thus, like the Famous Five, we set out with out picnic rations ready for a jolly good adventure. This time, I decided to forgo the food and get some sandwiches in Boots - a fine purveyor of cheap lunch-time fayre: a sandwich, a big bottle of water plus a chocolate bar/bag of crips/bag of dried apicots for £2.99. My sandwich, a chicken caesar salad was odd: but this I put down to the excitement of going to Aberdeen - the glittering grey granite city. By the next morning though I wasill: two duvets and two hot water bottles: clamy brows and sore skin. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I could fall prey to pesky food poisoning when generally I am well-constitutioned. However as we were taking Stan's Ma to the pantomine, I sludged on some makeup & wodged my trotters in my elegant pointy boots & swayed off to the theatre.
The auditorium in question is His Majesty's Theatre, and it is a grand,old-world kind of place: ornate mouldings and sculptures decorate theswags forming the various balconies that float upwards likeorders of angels. As the show began my forehead grew colder and all around me the faces swam. My only means of not being sick on to the lovely lilttle french girl in front of me was to slump with my eyes shut. There could never be a surrounding more suited to the damp sweats of food poisoning, when sound and vision become less to the perpetual watering of the mouth and the shivering of the body. I felt as if I were beamed into a hallucinatory dream: the bright colours, vibrant music and laughter of the audience all were nightmarish.
Today, I am practising being healthy again - like a freshly born gazelle legging it around the plains. Well - not quite, but no strong flavours for me for a while! Remembering my rant about mechanically recovered meat from october though - I brought it all on myself: if you go round eating lip tits and eyelids, you gotta expect some throwup?
Thursday 04 2003
After a fringe-trim (free - with forced charitable donation) my elegant forehead cover looked just grand: today, once my blow-dry skills were let loose on my rich lustrous locks, my fringe is curled and high: this recalcitrant tube of hair is going to be my undoing...
We're off to Aberdeen tomorrow: it's pantomime time - the lovely Cameron from little Stromness is some character who wears headscarves and tights in Peter Pan. Pantomimes are very strange things: did you know that
"tradition" says that the Pantomime villain should be the first to enter, from the "dark side", stage left, followed by his adversary the good fairy from stage right. This echoes the tradition in medieval times when the entrances to heaven and hell were placed on these sides (...)
I've not been to a pantomine in years: the last one I remember going to was Babes in the Wood - an odd tale of abandoned kids merged with elements of Robin Hood. I went with the Girl Guides - a clan-like troups of girls who were meant to spend their days perfecting reef knots and papering and re-papering the box where the pencils were kept. I detested Guides and prefered to spend the two hours furtively playing chasing round the snooker tables on the ground floor of the community centre. Thankfully I didn't have to chase myself round the green baize: two friends were always willing to escape so three of us could choke with laughter running round a room. Thanks to you, Ingrid and Dawn, Guides was a fun night. Maybe we'll all get to do it again some time.
I'm making Lebkuchen...mmmmm. My mum & I always made them for Christmas - why don't you?
60g (2 oz) butter
2/3 cup golden syrup
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon cocoa
1 tablespoon milk 30g
(1 oz) mixed peel
2 tablespoons plain flour,
extra raspberry jam
125g (4 oz) dark chocolate
Melt butter over low heat in medium-sized saucepan, add golden syrup, bring to boil,
remove from heat; stand ten minutes. Add sifted dry ingredients, milk and finely chopped
peel, stir with a wooden spoon until smooth, cover, stand at room temperature for
1 1/2 hours. Mixture will become thicker.
Turn the mixture onto surface which has been dusted with extra flour. Knead lightly,
working in only enough of this flour until the mixture loses its stickiness.
Roll out to 8mm (about 1/2 in) thickness. Cut out with a heart shaped or any other cutter,
about 5cm (2 in) diameter. Place on lightly greased oven trays.
Using the end of a wooden spoon, gently push indentation into centre of biscuit; don't
push right through. Fill with about 1/2 teaspoon of jam.
Bake in moderate oven 8 to 10 minutes or until golden. Leave on trays until completely
cold. Melt chocolate in top of double saucepan over simmering water. Spoon on to saucer
for easier handling. Dip bases of biscuits into chocolate; smooth excess chocolate off with
a knife. Place jam-side down on foil lined trays, refrigerate until chocolate is firm.
Makes about 40.
Monday 01 2003
Bloody hell!!!!
I am so pissed off having realised someone has bought www.polkadotmittens.com - the sort of action which indicates a blazing lack of imagination: similar thought process - "duh...someone in Britain has www.turnipfucktard.co.uk - so I'll buy www.turnipfucktard.com".
Humph.
As you know, I never get worked up over small things...oh no! not me...a master of my emotions: never one to fume over nothing: so, the last five days prior to tonight's exam I certainly wasn't to be found weeping down the phone to a certain friend, or gnashing my teeth at collegues. I have crammed in so much knowledge over the last few days - for nothing: all the phases of meiosis: I could document all the movements of the chromasomes as they are mixed up and reduced to 4 hapliod gametes. Did you know we were all once zygotes? Sex cells, baby - sex cells: that's what meiosis is all about.
Unforch I wasn't asked to provide details on prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase or telophase. Nor was I asked to comment on the net gain of ATP molecules during glycolysis. No need for sloshing all the Bach Rescue Remedy down my neck (to much 'eughing'). In February when I have my next exam, I will remember not to get so worried. Will I?!
Blogday...that once-spoke-of thing: it shall be broadcast on Friday the 5th, at 11.30 am and 10.30pm on Radio Scotland (follow link for listen again after friday: think it's available for 1 week). Listen for the creaky voice - that's me. Dear God....have just read the producer of the programmes site: a trailer with me on it?! That'll be an arctic lorry then...?
I found the reading-out of what I'd written all that time ago traumatic: when I type away at my pinewood table I hear a witty voice, filled with flowing Orcadian cadence: what materialised was less George Mackay Brown and more Roy Chubby Brown with a strangulated central-belt gutteral twang and paler skin.
This was my first website.
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