I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t know it was in the house, there was a meeting going on in the front room, and it must have been brought in with someone there.

Anyway, because of this meeting, I was sneaked up the stairs to fetch something, rootled around, found what I was looking for;
a photo album, big A4 thing, pictures of the Sahara.

And quietly, softly, I padded downstairs, with album spread out in front of me, looking for pictures of camels.
At the bottom of the stairs my toe bumped into something soft.

Damn cat, I thought, and lifted the album to see one of the biggest babies I’d ever seen, staring up at me with enormous cow-like eyes.
And I’d just kicked it.
Not punted it, just nudged it softly on the bum with my bare toe.
Thank god I wasn’t coming down the stairs at my normal pace, that’s all I can say.

The baby was 14months old, and the size of a teenage hippoputomus.
This isn’t one of the kids that lives here, just some random kid.

Huge though.

I was going to tell this story on the audioblog, but had nightmares of hearing it back in a courtroom.

Still, me kicking the baby was the least that could have happened.
The baby wandered around the house, flicking plug sockets on and off, rifling through drawers pulling out whole boxes of ibruprofen.

From not being in a babysitting position at all, I found myself plodding around the house, removing the baby from the jaws of death every 20 seconds.

But, I swear to you, it was huge - Huge.
In a fight, this baby could take on Death and win.
Death and all his little bunnies of doom.

Huge
(shakes head.)
Really fucking huge.

Following the fine examples of Meg, Mike, D, and no doubt countless others…

I spent half an hour trying to think of the perfect thing to read, and then got in such a flap trying to work out the phone system while knowing that I had to get back to work, that my performance art piece for Vaughan Entitled ‘Woman adrift/little girl lost‘ can be found here, and is composed of one woman reviewing her best intentions in the name of post-neo-feminism.

And I couldn’t afford to stay on the phone long enough to rerecord it…
(These are all my excuses.)

audblog audio post

Just before I left University the first time round I had the same feeling, I could go anywhere, do anything, and I was asking myself the same question - where to go to do what I wanted to do.

So I drew myself a map, because I realised that for the first time in my life I didn’t Have to be somewhere the next September, I could just chose a place and be in it.
There would be no term starting, no school to decide that for me.

And here I am again, deciding for my very own self, wondering whether I should draw myself another map, but a much bigger one;

Last time it was just a map of Britain, I drew a rough outline, as far as I could remember it, along with the lumps and bumps on either side and that bit of Scotland that looks like a willy.

And then, from memories, I drew spots where I remembered particular towns to be, and wrote next to the the first pluses or minuses that came to mind;
e.g.
(dot) Aberdeen. Scotland. Cold. Riggers. Do not understand wierdy accent.
(dot) Hull. Never been. May smell of fish. Utterly fantastic accent. Not sure could hold conversation though without laughing too much.
(dot) London. Life. Houses. Big. Expensive. Been. Done. T-shirt.
(dot) Aberystwyth. Wales. Hills.

Some of which were of course good points, some bad.

I don’t know where the map is now, although I think I’ll draw a new one.
It’ll be a world map, I think, just so I can feel more potentially travelly, even if I do actually end up in Birmingham. Or Stockport or Luton or….
Well, not Hemel Hempstead, anyway.
I do try and learn something from my comment boxes…

And some days are good, but yet you get nothing done.
But they’re still good.

I just had a cheese sandwich.

I live in Glasgow, but just for now….
The world’s my erster, young, free and single…

Where should I live next?
Where would you recommend?…

I’ve revised an earlier, strongly held, belief.

I used to think that Bobbins was the stupidest cat in the whole world.
I was wrong.

I was wrong, but then, my new cats weren’t born when Bobbins held the title, so…

Bremas and Finn don’t understand doors.
Or windows.

Even bobbins understood doors.
If they’re closed, push against them with paws.
If they’re slightly open, and you’re on the non-hinges side, you can always get a paw behind the door and pull it open.
Bobbins knew that, and he had the brain of a budweiser cap.

Our cats don’t even have that.
But we love them,
for being inbred;
for not being able to join mensa, not even with all their 17 siblings combined;
for being cute, and soft, with no brains to get in the way;
for not minding how many time they’re picked up and roughly cuddled by small people (and me) each day.

But doors?
Come on.
Even bacteria know how to open doors…

You turn your back for a second, and suddenly, they’re everywhere.
Like midges.
Like moths.
Like goths.

Like mess in a kitchen in a shared house, or like pubic hairs on a tap -
they just appeared, and I don’t know where they came from.

But suddenly they were everywhere. All these people, and I wanted to go up to them, and ask them;
“Where the fuck are you the rest of the time?
When I want to find you…
where do you hang out?
Where?!?
Can you draw me a map?”

But I didn’t.
After all, I was working, and they were hanging out being cool, I couldn’t get close.
I was wearing a badge and carrying trays of empty glasses.

But at least I know they’re there.
Somewhere.
But nowhere near me.

And when they are, they’re entirely unobtainable - and it’s hard to convince a man that you’re the girl of his dreams while tearing his ticket…

I’m not annoyed with you, I’m annoyed with Mr Internet.

I was going to write a short post about Kinder Surprise toys, and how much I like them, not the chocolate, and not the figurines, but the little makey toys, aeroplanes, cars, things ike that.

Anyway, on Easter Monday, my friends and I drove around mull, celebrating the resurrected bunny rabbit of god by buying kinder eggs and rejoycing in the toys.

“Hallelujah!” We would cry, “I’ve got a weasel pushing a wheelbarrow”.

Except I didn’t.
The others got cool things; a laughing monkey, a fire engine, a flowerpot, a glider, and what did I get?

Two bins.
Two of the same thing, from different shops, different eggs, and not even two of the same cool things, but two of those green dumpers you find down alleyways with dead bodies and rats in.

It was rubbish.

Anyway, I was looking around the interwebnet for sites to illustrate my story, and all I found were a truckload of kinder-obsessives who listed their toys without posting pictures.

And this site.
What has some fantastic selling points.
And some annoying eggs that you just can’t run away from…

Hypothetically…
How would you know if you had a broken rib?
And if the bottom one, on, say the right hand side, was broken, what would that puncture?
And how long would that take, internally-bleeding-wise to make you ill or dead?
I’m just wondering.
It’s for a friend.

If I didn’t like Sunday mornings so much, I wouldn’t have been up for quite such a long time before having to go in for a 9 hour shift at four pm.
If I hadn’t been up quite such a long time, I wouldn’t have been so tired when I got home.
If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have remembered to fill up the bottle of water next to my bed.
If I’d filled up the water bottle, I wouldn’t have had to take a tablet without liquid.
If I hadn’t taken a tablet without liquid I wouldn’t have got indigestion.
If I hadn’t got indigestion I wouldn’t have gone rootling around in my bedside drawer for that indigestion tablet that i never knew why I had in the first place.
If I hadn’t had rootled around in my bedside drawer, I wouldn’t have found my keys.
Which I thought I’d lost utterly.

So there we are.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
It’s just a shame that every silver lining’s got to have a cloud.

If Monday morning were a monster, it would be small and greasy, with pointy teeth and smelly breath, long pokey fingers and a headache that made it permanently grumpy.

If, however, Sunday morning were a monster, it would be big and cuddly, and sort of warm purplish in colour with large soft paws and a wide goofy smile.

I like Sunday mornings. Always have, always, in fact since that moment in my teens when I stopped going to church.
Because, growing up, dad a minister, mum a preacher and that, it was bred into me that that was what sunday mornings were for - for, you know, sitting around in cold buildings mumbling at God - so every Sunday morning that I’m *Not* at church has consequently had the delightful air of a day off.

More than that, I feel like I’m skiving.
I feel like really I Should be somewhere else, and I’m not.
And it feels great.

I’ve no idea how Sunday mornings feel without that delicious edge of residual guilt, and I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that anyone take up going to church for 14 years just to see how it feels without, but I tell you, it’s fucking marvellous.

So what does my Sunday morning look like (apart from purple and fluffy)?
Well, sometimes they look a bit hazy and hungover. But that’s ok, because they’re otherwise empty, and a hangover’s easier to cope with if you know there’s no pressing need to get out of your pajamas before mid-afternoon at least.

Otherwise they start around nine or nine thirty, when I’m woken up by the kids that I live with tearing around the house and shouting.
And then they go to church, and I lie in my bed, and smile.

Then I turn the computer on, check e-mail (there’s never any) and go to the BBC radio website, and connect up to Sunday Morning Love Songs.
Why, so resolutely single, I’ve formed a habit of listening to up to two hours of sickly crud, I’ve no idea.

There’s something about the stodgy, unimaginative tunes and sweet-as-a-bucket-of-syrup lyrics that somehow feel like being served an enormous hot breakfast.
Like a lot of jam on toast, or something.

After dozing a while, reading a while, and finally caving in and fetching some real jam on toast, the newspaper and some coffee, I’ll plonk myself at the computer and carry on doing whatever it was I was doing before I tumbled into bed the night before.

The radio carries on, soothing voices and big band jazz and here I am, tapping away until I get bored or actually need to do something with my day…

Dear god, I love Sunday mornings.
Because of where I am, and where I’m not.
I may just be faffing about, but at least I’m not at church.
No offence intended, like.
Amen.

If a bottle of fancy expensive gin had been consumed nefariously and then refilled with much cheaper gin, shortly before a dinner party at which said fancy expensive bottle is brought out, tasted, and talked about extensively…
‘Ah, yes, you can tell by the smell that it’s a much better class of Gin…’
‘It really does make a difference to the taste, doesn’t it, this small refinery technique’
‘Vastly superior to [name of much cheaper brand actually in the bottle]‘

if that were to happen, and only one person at the table was aware of the truth, it’s probably not going to be very funny to say anything, is it?
And it’s probably not a good idea to giggle.
Right?

I’m trying desperately to find a song.

It’s Scottish I think, could be Irish, I doubt it’s English, it’s traditional(ish)
And is about a young man arriving beneath the window of a young woman, begging to be let in to spend the night and promising to be faithful and true forever more, being let in, spending the night, and then buggering off, joyfully announcing his intention to be single for ever more.

The chorus goes something like;
‘Let me in, the young man cried,
and [something something] moon and sky [or stars]
Let me in, the young man cried
And I’ll never go home again…‘

Please, someone, this is driving me insane.

Two days later

Alright, yes, they all sound like the right songs. Mr D’s sounds like the closest, but the problem is that I think the version I want, or the version going around in my head is by one of these new traditional upstart bands, I heard them at the Celtic Connections festival, and it’s a much more jiggy version, much more raucus.

But I can’t remember what the band was called.

Oh forget it.

Bollocks