The news, at the moment, is no good for people like me, who have limited tolerance for dead people and polititians, and much prefer stories about pigs stuck up trees.

However, I’m discovering that Internet news, because of the selective reading aspect, suits me much better.

The headlines of the news in my head today are as follows -

Red wine good for smokers
Fucking wicked.
There is just nothing bad about this headline.
I don’t care what the story actually says, but I’ll be getting that printed on a t-shirt.

Boy summoned to court for falling off his bike
A little harsh, maybe?
I don’t know. Maybe.

Americans appear to be making a film about the only football achievment they’ve ever had.
It was 53 years ago, and the selling point seems to be that they beat the British in a world cup game.
That’s it.
Big whoop.
And it’s not soccer, it’s football.

What do you mean?
Well, where did Sunday go?

Damn, dude.

Six days I’ve been sitting in rehearsal eight hours, and then wandering off to do stuff that I actually get paid for.

And then going out in the evening, although that’s not really a strain, since I mainly seem to be hanging out with actors at the moment, and there’s no strain to come up with witty political insight or cultural or social deconstruction, since you’re only going to end up talking about their present show or haircut anyway.

That sounds awful.
It’s not.
It’s just true.

I’m not quiet because I’m busy

I’m quiet because it’s all so fucking dull.

If the answer to this question is ‘yes!’ then I suggest we’ve probably just been hit over the head with an anvil, or by one of those ironing boards that falls down out of the wall.

The same applies if our head is surrounded by chirping birdies.
Unless we’re a Disney character, in which case they just do that, for little reason.
Peep peep peep.
They also may help us put on our clothes, which is horrible.

I can’t remember my point now.

Oh yes. Weddings.

Huge bunches of them. Weddings abound. Suddenly, everyone I know is getting married.
No, hang on, two people.
Well, four.
I mean, two people are marrying another two people (who are in turn, I suppose, also reciprocally marrying the first two)

I’m sorry, I appear to be thinking in a wavy line.
I cannot appear to put my metaphorical typing fingers on my nose of meaningfullness.
I am failing the breathalyser of sense.

I will go away and come back later.
And the ironical thing is, I couldn’t be soberer if I tried.
And, I suspect, I couldn’t sound more drunky.

Wow, all the effect with none of the effort or expeniture.
Cheap date.

14 differences between happy and sad

1. One involves more facial muscles than the other, although I can never remember which.
2. Good things are happy, that they stop is sad.
3. Realising that you’ve run out of nutritional breakfast bars is sad.
4. Noting this by singing loudly “Bob! You’ve eaten all the Special K bars! You’ve eaten all the special K bars! You’ve eaten all the special K Bars, K bars K bars….” to an obvious tune
   Is happy.
5. Having shoes is happy, but them being wet shoes is sad.
6. A letter on the doormat is happy, realising that that letter is in a white envelope with a window is sad.
7. A clown and an undertaker.
   Clowns - apparently, are usually sad, whereas undertakers make a lot of money.
8. Finding a job is happy, unless you can only find a job as the person who stuffs messages up the bums of secret agent chickens, which might be sad.
9. Recieving a cheque is happy, forgetting your account number is sad.
10. The opening bars that go ‘dum dum dum dubbadumdum, dum dum dum dum dubbadumdum‘ are happy, the realisation that they are not leading to the Vanilla Ice classic, however, are sad.
11. The difference between happy and sad is remembering that there’s something that you really want to eat and getting home to realise that it’s two days out of date or someone’s already eaten it.
12. The difference between happy and sad is whether the newsagent you meet everyday smiles at you or not.
13. The difference between happy and sad is a soft or hard centre.
14. The difference between happy and sad is about 23 seconds, depending on how slowly the taxi pulls away.

sometimes

You realise that you’re really actually happy.

There’a someone over there, sleeping, and in a second you’ll be curled up in his arms, yes, certainly, he’s over there and you here because you’re an insomniac and he’s knackered, but still…

Thinking about all the times you’ve been happy before, the times you’ve been loved up and all.

And suddenly, you realise that you’ve reached a stage of life that needs a new classification altogether.

It’s work, and therefore annoying, but I think I’ll make the effort, I mean, I just have to go into desktop
And create a New Folder.
And Label it “It. The one. It”

One of them lists

People under seven have it good because

It’s Friday

yay.

You have to be cruel to be rhymed

After a very silly conversation, a dose of insomnia had me trying to write poetry til silly o’clock in the morning.
I cannot, now, remember anything, apart from;

The palpable difference ‘tween Ceaucescu and Lulu
Is that only the one of them sang with Take That
As to which do look better in chaps, well, Lulu do,
For Lulu is short, but Ceaucescu was fat.

We had been talking about celebrities that rhymed with dictators, with a view to writing an epic comparitive poem, or perhaps a song, or, you know, a rap. Home boy.

Idi Amin?
Tintin, Squirrel Nutkin, Rin tin tin and Huck Finn, Michael Palin, Tracey Emin, Dusty Bin, Michael Owen.

Unless you pronounce it ‘correctly’, in which case the only real rhyme is ‘Mr Bean’, and if I had one bullet, I know who I’d use it on in that monstrous pairing.

Pol Pot - Russ Abbot, a guillimot, I can’t remember anymore right now.

Saddam Hussain and Paige, Elaine.
Also John Wayne, and the Kids from Fame.
Kind of.

There was some argument as to whether ‘Stalin‘ rhymed with ‘Michael Palin’, since to all intents and purposes it doesn’t, in the slightest, but really made me laugh.

No-one rhymes with Hitler, which was poor planning.

Apart, perhaps, from Bette Midler

Damn.
I’m going to be thinking about this all day.

Starting my final placement tomorrow,
scared and unsure, but know deep down it will be fine…
Deep deep deep deep down.

Combing the job pages, but seem to keep missing the brightly coloured ad that says;
“Wanted, Anna Pickard, to do all the things she bestest at, for lots of money, or even some”

Trying to figure out how to get a girls-worth of stuff from here to London.

Life is big, and fluffy, but scary as some big fluffy things are.

Anyone with any job offers, or anything reassuring to say, please speak after the beep.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Playing catch up.

No hang on. Hang on! I’m limping here!

So for anyone that missed why my foot was hurty, this was why my foot was hurty;

We went to the pub [on Iona], and on the way home, there’s this ruined nunnery,
and of course it’s pitch black, apart from the moon, there being no
streetlights, and the path home runs directly between the ruined
walls and the nun’s gravestones, and if you leave the pub in time,
it’s quite easy to scare the bejeezus out of large groups of people
by hiding behind a wall and jumping out at the appropriate moment and
going;
‘WOOOGLYWOOOGLYWOOOGLY!’
or something like.

What do you mean immature?
I blow rasberries at you.

So that, I admit, is how I fucked my foot.
Jumping over a wall in a ruined nunnery at half-past midnight, half-
cut and giggling like a crazy lady in order to take a few moments off
someone’s life.

So no sympathy, thank you, I honestly don’t deserve it.

Anyway, I’ve just been chatting to an A&E consultant, and it looks like I’ve torn a ligament.

I thought it was hurty.

Well, now I know why I thought it was.

Because it was.

‘ffichally. Doctor said.

Shortest attention span in the world

Three days unemployed, and I’m bored already.
Two days to go with nothing to do, and I’m kicking the kerb.
Metaphorically.
Not *actually*.
I can’t actually kick a kerb.
I have a hurty foot.
Still.

How do you know f you have broken a little bone on the side of your foot?
What if there’s a big hurty lump?
What if you’re limping?

How do you know?

And if anyone says ‘go to a doctor’ I’ve thought of that - but what’s the point of wasting their time if there’s nothing actually *wrong* with it, d’you see?

By far the best thing I saw at Edinburgh.
By Far

A street performer on the Royal Mile, one afternoon when I had time to kill.

He must have spent only 8 minutes of an hour’s set jugging, the rest was filled with banter, jokes, heckling, and I have never seen anyone more adept at handling a crowd.

So after about 40 minutes, he had about 500 people standing around him in an enormous square, with room for people walking on either side, up and down the royal mile.

He had taken a young girl from the crowd, to help with a trick, and after she’d finished that, he announced that he was going to try something that he’d only known to work in Edinburgh.

The Old Town, Any Evening of the festival.
Saturdays Worst

Performed by a cast of thousands, The Streets near t’Castle

Edinburgh is a high city.
In terms of contour lines rather than little white lines, I mean.
Although that too, to be sure.

But it’s high. High up, on lots of hills.

Too high, I would have thought, for flooding.

But, as I walked away from dinner - fast (incidentally, should anyone wish to know where to get the worst nachos in Edinburgh, just ask, I know) - as I walked away from dinner in the early evening, I started to notice a running, a rising on the streets.

At first I was only conscious of the tapping of sticks and a faint smell of boiled sweets.
But then, from seemingly nowhere, the ground was suddenly bubbling, a soft covering, rising from around corners, up stairwells (slowly), through doorways, babbling, an unstoppable torrent, a swirling mass of grey hair, jackets protecting from nippy summer breezes and sensible, sensible shoes.

Old people.

A deluge.

And all of them, pouring off tour buses, bound to see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

So, I hear you ask, “What is the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Anna?”
Well, dear reader, it’s an inked impression on the upper or lower arm, depicting an anchor and the word ‘mammy’.

No, hang on, that’s the Edinburgh Naval Tattoo.
I’m sorry.

The Edinburgh Tattoo is a collection of men in skirts kilts, torturing cats playing bagpipes and shooting blanks performing military salutes.
This is military presented as cabaret, cuddly plaything armies.

But why the flood?
And why the restricted age range?
Is there a guidance sticker on the poster that says;
GP; only for those aged 80 or over, or otherwise grandparents?

Is it specific to the current generation? Will the spectacle of the Tattoo die away with those who remember Armies fondly, to whom war is a ‘real thing’?

Or is the need for bagpipes and men who specialise in walking in rhythm something we all grow into eventually?

Will we all like the Tattoo one day?
Do we have to? Is it compulsory?