<< september 2004 >>

back to school

I've decided to move to using titles rather than dates: having a time stamp on each entry makes it very clear I've not bothered my arse for weeks to do anything polkadotmitteny for so long.

I am now a fully matriculated student of Glasgow University, perhaps with more eye lines than some other students, but education is a life-long odyssey, a journey this time I'm clearheadedly taking. It was scary, oddly, meeting my future class mates, in a flurry of 'where are you from' and 'which highers did you take' and 'which halls are you staying'. I replied 'I live in Partick' to one question, which drew blank looks. What can I say - I was almost 21 before I found out Glasgow was more than a city centre with shops and a west end with students, joined by rows of tenements.

'a penis

I listened to a great programme on radio 4 yesterday, on 'the burden of choice' we have in this age and how we see many privileges as rights: travel, divorce. Having the ability to chose makes us stutter and not know quite what to do...'choice can remove the appetite of the most voracious person' said the presenter of the show. So many magazines and bloody newspaper supplements have 'lifestyle gurus', who give us a few lines of advice on how to make ourselves more happy (for the full transcript, phone this premium-rate number and press the buttons corresponding to your own life management plan) that we, or at least I until recently, believe being happy is an eternal chase. Get this, that, those and then tell yourself three times a day you're happy and you will be. It's such a responsibility -

BE HAPPY OR YOU ARE A FAILURE.

We've so much choice: once I made up my mind try to train as a nurse I became aware of how much choice I actually had. For months I'd felt stuck forever in my job and life, but in making one small move to look around away from 'my self' and towards 'another self' there were lots of potential new mes available to pick up & try on. Maybe I just liked the idea of a nurses uniform most.

Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken sums up our modern concept of choice dictating happiness as it pertains to our lives.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Thinking about all that one could have done, but didn't, creates an immense pressure of 'what could've been'. Crivens, I could've been a mother to 12 year old had I not been so feart of boys, and a bit of a minger as a teenager. So I feel no pressure from that...but years ago maybe, thinking about what I could've done had I not rushed off to University at 18, that consumed me as I did feel a failure. These days I tend to the belief that 'what's for you won't go by you'. Yes, folks, I was aye meant to be a nurse.

Anyhoo, back to my title....the radio programme mentioned a 'no doubt apocryphal tale' of Madame de Gaulle at dinner with the British Prime Minister and his wife. Asked by the latter what she hoped most for the future, Madame de Gaulle replied 'a penis'. Her husband interjected amidst the shocked silence, 'my dear, it is pronounced 'appiness' .

Saturday 11 September 2004

Ocht mercy me - it's been a long time since I've sat down to tend my polka dot mittens. Poor things.

Life is so busy just now and I've only one week left of work. Happy/sad this one: sad to leave good friends, happy to leave a place I found draining in its love of arse-lickery.

I can't remember feeling this excited and positive about going to university this time nine years ago, back in 1995. Back then I went with the consensus: I wasn't good at thinking for myself, and truly, the notion of not being surrounded by the folk I kent or not doing what they were doing, was unthinkable. This wasn't me being easy-going: it was me being a right neurotic paranoid young thing, so scared of missing out. I have no regrets: I wouldn'tve met the folk I did had I not dashed off to Glasgow at 18. When that age, I prided myself on being 'grown up': I was mature and clever I thought. Looking back though, I was young for my years in terms of inter-personal relations, self-management and self-awareness. That really sounds like a load of pseudo-psycho-shit, but alas, it's true! Hell, I wasn't all bad: I was pretty good at cutting my own hair and cultivating a careful boho-look (rather at odds with actually being bohemian though). "We're so Left Bank", Cat & I used to intone to each other, slightly not joking. I look back with an affectionate cringe.

Affectionate cringing is best done really when with a group of friends, preferably of different ages. This's so that comparisons can be made of outfits worn over the years. It almost gets competitive for the most embarrassing.

Stan, with his tight purple checked shirt which fastened diagonally across his chest, worn with grey jodhpurs (very tight at the bottom, with very baggy pointy thigh area) & really shiny pointy black shoes, may win.

• Or Pervase with his leg warmers.
  
• Or Pamela with her perm and coordinating orange plastic jewellery and basket.
  
• Or Debbie with her tights and shorts and hooded top.
  
• Or Dawn with her bright green shell suit.
  
• Or Helena with her diagonal two-tone hair.
  
• Or Alison with her chiffon scarves.
  
• Or me at age 15, who despite my sturdy tubby frame, thought I could run along a beach in a royal blue bikini, with a pink silk scarf trailing behind me as if I were in a Bodyform sanitary towel advert. On a church trip.
  

Talking of Bodyform, I have recently got a hankering for roller skates. Not like these though:

Wednesday 01 September 2004