New theory.

Friendships, or relationships, whatever, should last either two days or forever.

It’s the ‘two days or forever’ theory, and it’s building the more I think on it.

If you don’t know them after two days, or two dates, whatever, then what more are you going to learn? If you have to learn to love someone, then the bits you don’t love will resurface and bite you at some point. So, Either you click or you don’t, surely?… In relationship terms, if you have to work for more than two days to try and make them love you, then is the love you achieve ever going to be whole-hearted? If you have to spend two days working out whether you want to be with this person or not, and you’ve only just met them, then surely the answer is no, no, not really.

the idea’s just forming.
And maybe would be dispelled by someone pointing out that i’m an old cynic. Or a hopeless romantic lost. But we’ll leave that be.

I’ll build on it later.

Oh God, but I need something more to do with my life.

I start work again on saturday, and not a second too soon.

Do you know what I did today? I woke up. I made coffee. I sewed things. And while I sewed I watched six episodes of er and two of sex in the city. I made carbonara. For just me. I said goodbye to a good friend in my own mawkish and reluctant way.

I’m So f******* bored.

Thank you for listening.

Incidentally. Last night I was having dinner with someone that almost bought Sir Jimmy Saville’s Camper van, once.

He didn’t actually buy it. But he did have a look around.

He said it was very nice, but a bit pricey.

We were talking, this evening, about airport announcements. Prompted by some thing or other. I’ve never heard a funny name. Not over a tannoy. I do know someone called ‘Dick Toy’ (let’s see how many search engine requests That gets me). But I’ve never heard his name over a tannoy.

But in Monastir airport, they do have the best tannoy in the world. Before every announcement, good or bad, it goes…bam bam baaahhhhh! In exactly the same way that a 50’s horror movie would every time Count Dracula came on. A serious, descending chord build-up, and then a nice-as-pie woman’s voice;
Bam bam Bahhhhhhh! ladies and gentlemen, your flight is delayed by an hour and a half…or
bam bam baahhhhh the duty free shop is open for all your consumer needs or
bam bam baahhhhhhhh the prince of darkness is coming for your soul! Succumb to him! You must! Nyeaa ha ha ha ha ha!

Except in french. Then Arabic.
But I don’t speak French. Or Arabic. So I have no idea what she was saying. It was probably something like that.

In a favourite moment recently, I was sitting in Bologne airport alone, at the gate, listening for my flight call.

The tannoy system flicked on;

‘hammana, hammani, hammila, pesto, lasagne!’she said. Ish. Vile stereotypes aside. I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian either. But my point, to continue…. hammana hammana hammana, linguini, risotto, anti-pasti, hammana’ she carried on. Long announcement? It seemed so…

hammana ah! Ah! Oooooh! Ah!Ah!Ah!!…. Ah!!!!

I’m sorry, I don’t like to be terribly British, but some woman seems to be ‘having her moment’ over the tannoy. Has no-one else noticed?

oooooooh! Ahhhh! Ciii! Ciiii! Mio Dio, ciiii!!!!!!

Colour me shocked.

aaaahhhhhhh!!!!!! ………(pause) …. Hammmana hammana, haamaani….

I was staring hard into my book. As a proper girl should.

and then I realised that the café staff were looking way over my shoulder.
and so was everyone else.
The TV was on in the corner of the room.

There weren’t people having sex over the tannoy after all.
Which is a shame. Because that sounds like a great job….

Another evening saying goodbye.

trying to fit all the conversations you haven’t finished, and the ones you haven’t had, into a couple of hours, the only couple of hours you’ll be only the two of you, is too hard.

I hate saying goodbye.

Being without electricity in a tent is expected. You don’t get electricity in a tent. Not unless you have a really posh tent. With electricity.

Being without electricity in a romantic hide-away is lovely. You have a roaring log fire, scented candles and it’s romantic. And lovely.

Being without electricity in a field is not uncomfortable. Especially if you’re a sheep. And don’t have the opposable thumbs necessary to operate most electrical equipment anyway.

Being without electricity when you’re alone in a not-yet familiar house, with a force 10 gale whipping against the walls, a phone that keeps threatening to cut out, and many heaters (but all electric…) isn’t so good.

It’s a bit scary.

You don’t quite realise how used to electricity you are.

-Every time you walk into a new room, you flick the switch. Then you flick it back again, cursing.

-You turn on the kettle. Turn it off again, and feel stupid.

-You feel it’s a bit quiet, so you turn on the radio. Then you turn it off. Then you throw it on the floor.

-You feel hungry. So you get the bacon out of the fridge. Then you put the bacon back in the fridge. Then you stick your head in the sink.

After twelve hours yesterday, after the storm, the power came back on. Hoorah!
But the television aerial was broken.
Hurroo.

(So if anyone watched the second part of the detective drama that was on on ITV on Sunday/Monday, ‘frost’ I think it was, can someone tell me whodunnit?)

So to sum up, the message is this;

love your lightbulb.
drink a toast to your toaster.
say ‘rah!’ for radio.
your fridge is your friend.

Having picked up my post as soon as I got back, I carried it around in my mouth while I did the rounds, saying hi to people, (or rather ‘hhhu.’ With three envelopes in the mouth) grabbing my bags and taking them to my flat.

Great.
I got my post.
And the really important application form in one of the envelopes now has bite marks on it.
Great

Okay, having said I’m going away, I can’t sleep. But I’d like to point out that;

a: I just really hurt myself trying to open a first aid box

and

b; I forgot, my mother, who refers to the food people cook by their name, and then the foodstuff - ‘would you like some lovely anna-pasta/some meg-cheesecake?’ - today offered me lunch cooked by the winter volunteer here. His name is Dick.

‘Anna? Can I get you a bowl? I know you’d hate to miss out on curried Dick-soup!’

I had to explain why I was laughing.

I’m now going away for a few thingies. days. I’ll get better, I hope.

Young as I am, I have a certain self-knowledge.
I know when seeing a lot of someone is good, and when it isn’t.

The thing is, when you’ve been shutting a certain feeling out of your life for some time, you notice all the more when you feel it again.

I’ve been watching too much television.

I wouldn’t notice but, in my break from television, working too much, spending too much time socialising, my knowledge of how television manipulates me and how I manipulate television have somehow been cemented in me.

Particularly detective things. I’ve been reading books, see. About detectives. And detective dramas. And I’m a grown-up woman and I won’t be manipulated anymore.

Or so it seems. Tonight, trying to calmly inhale a detective drama on the TV, not only was I struck by my usual reaction after 15 minutes – “Oh! Oh, I see! It’s ……! Because of the ……! And they did it this way, ………!” - (I swear, I could work with most of the script-writing teams of British Crime dramas. But then, so could 60% of the British TV watching population. They’re a little obvious. Anyway. Not only was I… Ooh, I’m still in brackets.)

–Not only was I struck by that, but by an impulse to phone ITV and say “Oh, come on, the body wouldn’t look like that! Not if it was lying in that position! Not after four days, ,with rigor mortis and movement of blood! And what was a coffin doing at the crime scene? That’s just silly!”

Surely this is too much knowledge for someone like me to think they know. Surely?

I’m moving away from television. We shouldn’t see each other for a while. Maybe, when it feels right, we’ll try again.
At a comfortable basis.
Softly.
Maybe Daytime TV.

I’ll be back in the middle of next week. I’ll test the water then.

There’s suddenly lots of weather again, so I can’t leave the island as planned, because the ferry’s gone back to bed.

It comes up so suddenly sometimes. The wind is whipping around the building, through the cracks in the doors and down the chimneys. There’s no where to get warm. The Atlantic ocean is being thrown against the windows, one bucket at a time, and from this desk I can see the waves crashing over and above the rocks on both sides of the Sound.

And it was so beautifully calm yesterday.

In a way, it’s a bit like being in a snow-dome. Everything’s plodding along, calm and serene and exceptionally beautiful in cold winter light, and then – bang – someone comes along and shakes everything up and it’s all churny and restless and wet.

But not with snow. So not a snow dome. Like a rain-dome.
If that exists. Which I don’t suppose it does. The water would just fall down, all of a sudden, almost as soon as you’d shaken it up, wouldn’t it?

Unless you put glycerine in it maybe. Is glycerine the word I’m looking for?
Gelatin? Silica? No, I think I mean Glycerine. Like a lava lamp.

But being here is not like being in a lava lamp. Not at all. Being here is a bit like a wind tunnel. But wet. Or a washing machine on spin. A cold washing machine. Or in a blender, if the blender was blending ice and rain and wind. A big, cosmic, wind blender.

Or like sitting under a hovercraft.

Or perhaps like being on the moon. If there was rain on the moon. And grass. And sheep.

I suppose in many ways, being here is like being on a really small island in the middle of winter.

Which is not entirely surprising.

I’ve just discovered that Steps broke up. In December.

How did I miss that? Did everyone else know? Did I have my head stuck in a christmas pudding at the time?

It may explain the behaviour of the man on the train.

I was sitting opposite this guy, all the way down from Oban to Glasgow, and after a while I realised that, even though I had my own walkman on, I could hear the beat of a different song.

It was coming from the seat opposite me. It was a slow, pop-like drumbeat, coming from the ears of the large, butch, rugby-playing type opposite me. A huge bloke, all sportswear and neanderthal expression, and the strains of young females straining their poor voices in some pap song about losing their boy to their best mate, he was listening to this song. Rapt expression on his face, staring sightlessly out of the window, eyes glazing over, and then one after another, fat teardrops started to roll down his face.

He was crying. I thought he was crying about the content of the song, but now it strikes me that he may have been crying for Steps.

Anyway, I felt duly sorry for him, and went back to my paper. Then, at the end of the song, he flicked back a track, on his fancy CD walkman, and played the song again. A bit louder. I felt a little sorry for him again, but straining to hear the jazz playing on my own walkman, I turned it up.

He finished the song. And played it again. Louder.
I turned my walkman up. ‘Nina Simone Shouts the Blues’.
He finished the song. He played it again. A little louder.
He finished the song. He played it again. Louder. Still crying.
I didn’t care anymore. I switched my tape to a spare Thrash Metal one I happened to have in my bag, and pressed play. And near blew my head off, the volume can be a bit wonky, and I hate Metal, but it seemed to work. I couldn’t hear him anymore, and he gave up.

And, not wanting to look like a combatant, I couldn’t take my walkman off, for fear of looking like I’d just been doing it to annoy (which of course, I had, but that’s not the point). So I was forced to listen to Heaving guitars all the way ‘til Glasgow. Or ‘til the tape ran out at least. I’ve never known a longer tape.

I think we both learned something that train journey.
I’m not sure what it was, I’ll get back to you on that.
But I think I’d like to start learning lessons from everything. Then my life would be like ‘The Wonder Years’.

And I would be like Fred Savage.

I want a trampoline.

Some day I think I might reach somewhere and just, maybe, stop.

Just unpack bags and hang pictures and throw away the boxes that hold all the stuff because they’re not going to be needed for a good long time.

I’m not sure when that time will be, it’s not this year, and almost certainly not next, but at some time. And for some time.

Having been staying in my mother’s new house since only the beginning of last week, off and on, I now have to run away from even there in a few more days.

To make room for ‘the woodworm people’. The woodworm people are coming.
I’m not entirely sure if that sounds more like a laughably ludicrous 70’s horror remake,
or absolutely terrifying television for toddlers.
“Hello Kiddies! It’s time for the woodworm people!
Ooh, I wonder what Papa Woodworm is doing today?
Look!
He’s burrowing into the head of your favorite doll!
And now he’s coming out of her eye socket!
Gosh! Papa Woodworm Does look funny doesn’t he?”….

My palms are covered in little pock marks and dried blood. I was going to wash it off, but I’m kind of proud.

I’ve spent the day learning how to make stained glass things. And I’m bad at it. Bad in a bad way. Not in the other way.

I really suck at it. A great deal. And that’s kind of interesting to know. Just when you start to think that you can do anyhthing if you try hard enough, it’s nice that something will come along to prove you inept again.

The one thing it demands, more than any other thing, you see, is patience. Patience and a certain meticulousness.
Two then. The two things it demands are patience, and a certain meticulousness. And a calm approach.
The three things… shit. I’ll come in again.

Sod it. Because, you see, patience I just don’t do. Nor any of those other wussy things. Not in art. I like things that you do fast, or at least with passion. None of this fiddly nonsense.

I don’t think my concentration span is long enough. I just get led off easily.

Sometimes,