Teenage superpowers

So a couple of weeks ago I went to see the new Harry Potter film.

If I am entirely honest with you, which is important because I like to maintain a base line of respect and, well, dignity, round here, I went to see it on the first day it was out. I am so dignified.

It was 4pm. The cinema was full of yoof. Girl-flavoured yoof. Some of them were dressed in little outfits. One boy, who was surrounded by girls, all of whom seemed to be messing with him in a sort of acceptable touching type way, was wearing what looked an awful lot like a dressing gown, but I suspect was in fact a robe.

"Oh god," said hub as he met me. It is not so much the yoof that he finds stressful, as the squeaky noises they make.

We sat in the cinema. A billion adverts passed. The chattering around us was punctuated only by squeals and text message alerts.

I like the yoof. I find them endlessly fascinating and also ever so amusing. I love their unself-conscious and self-conscious ways. And on this day they made me grin with glee.

We were into the trailers. There was one for a film with chipmunks. And then there was one which was on for barely a second before the whole of the teenage-girl-type masses around us erupted in a glorious mixture of squeals and screams and sighs and cheers and clapping.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" asked and increasingly out-of-his-depth hub.

OBVIOUSLY what was going on was the trailer for the new Twilight film.

It was ace. Them girls was ace. But how the buggery bollocks did they know? It is like a special tuning-in to handsome earnest looking heart-throbs superpower.

I liked it a lot.

Friday

I have The Swine Flu.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuugh. And other words ending with "gh".

To be honest, it is not at all bad and in fact rather a lot like having Not Swine Flu.

In other news, hello! I have been not blogging. This is because I have been busying by doing two jobs, being a studing, and also doing a voluntary placement. But now, I am on my summer holiday, and so have time to have things like Swine Flu. And also, do baking.

You might be pleased to know that my garden has been shortlisted for a city-wide (city-wide I say!) gardening competition. To celebrate, here is a picture of my potatoes.

Pimping

I am breaking my literally many-months-long silence to do a wee spot of pimping.

I do like a bit of pimping. In the sense of "hey I found a nice thing", not so keen on the street corners and physical violence stuff. That's just my way.

ANYWAY.

Please do have a small look at What's In A Name. It is amusing and an ever-so-clever concept. I like it.

Also, it is possible that this summer I will be a little more forthcoming in the blogging stakes. Because I am ON HOLIDAY!

And it is good.

Woolliness

The fact of the matter is that I've been quite busy. And a little woo-woo in the brain.

Time seems to just melt away, like a prawn cracker in tea. Not that I have ever put a prawn cracker in tea. But there may have been a tea spillage on the side once, into which a prawn cracker made its final journey.

In any case. I have a weird arm. I got it from writing notes for the first essay for my course. And that was over a month ago now and the hurt is still hurty (like now with the typing for example) and I am having physio but since the diagnosis seems to be "hurty arm" it feels a little like guesswork. Helpful guesswork.

I have also been juggling some problems with my counselling placement, which has been very anxiety-making, but which seems be sorted out now. Or at least it will be in a couple of weeks.

So I've been a little wonky in the brain, feeling a little out of control, a little oh-my-gosh-I-can't-cope.

I've been eating a lot of cake.

Let's put it like that.

Today hub is doing a writing workshop, and I am doing some tea-drinking and some bed-lazing. (Although I should be doing some editing, but I can't seem to bring myself to actually engage with it.)

I suppose things are a bit split. I'm working two jobs, I'm doing my counselling diploma, I'm doing my placement, I'm trying to give hub the lurve and attention he deserves, and somewhere in all of that I get a bit confused and woolly. Like a tea cosy that wishes it were a bobble hat.

I am geek.

Watch Torchwood Series 2 Finale Upsets Even Hitler in Entertainment Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I just really really really love this.

(And also, I totally apologise.)

Also, for googling (because everyone should see this) Torchwood, Captain Jack, Joss Whedon, Russell T Davies, Doctor Who.

I am geek. I have no shame.

Displacement

I am writing an essay on infant development and parenting with reference to Winnicott, Bowlby, Klein, and Stern.

Or am I:

Doing the washing up
Making chicken soup
Organising my school timetable
Putting a wash on
Making tea
Eating Ferrero Rocher
Fiddling on Facebook with new Facebook friends
Thinking about first therapy session after Christmas
Blogging
Emailing the husband
Looking for books on the library system
Printing out photos
Calling work

What I like to think is that my unconscious has to have time to process and digest so it can come up with the incredible insight from which my essay will be formed.

And I think I'm largely totally right about that.

Now, anyone for a quick game of Scramble?

Now I do hope you all have a very very happy new year.

These are my new year's wishes to you.

WISHES!

So. 

I wish you lots of nice food and drink including fun nibbly things like Cheesey Footballs or Twiglets and alcoholic things like Gins and Tonics or Champagne. And if you do not drink, I wish you freshly squeezed orange juice, or whatever you would most like really.

I also wish you lots and lots of laughing, maybe generated by ridiculous games or ridiculous people or just lots of general hoo-hah and silliness.

I wish you Interesting Stuff. Stuff that you find Interesting. It might be archaeology or physics or kittens or soft furnishings. I quite like the yoof. They keep me on my toes.

And also I wish you curiosity, calm, joy, love and snoozing. 

And of course, tea.

On reflection, 2008 has been a teensy bit challenging. But right now, right this second, I feel kind of okay about that. 

It is probably because I am still in bed.

Do the thing! Do it!

There is a lovely thing!

It is here and it is made by the brilliantness that is Stray. She is making a film. She is often doing exciting stuff like that.

ANYWAY. Go! Look! It is about things that matter! Like puppies and tea and fields!

Also, I was 30 yesterday. And hub made me eggs benedict. And it was really very tasty.

Bye-eeee!

Whirlwind-ish.

BOTTOMS!

I am back.

Yes I bloody buggery am.

Unfortunately, I have little of substance to say. Other than we built the weird cat a ladder-plank sort of device to help her escape from our outdoor "patio" (small square of concrete) into the heavenly wilds of the wilderness beyond (flat above's garden).

She has not used it yet. It is disappointing.

Life continues apace. I have developed hysterical headaches as a clear message to myself to get some sleep and spend more time watching rubbish telly. Unfortunately this does not fit too well with two jobs, a post graduate studying doodah for which an essay is shortly due, and beginning a placement in which I (I!) must counsel youth.

As if I knew any stuff at all.

In the meantime I am reading books called things like "Working with Adolescents: a Contemporary Psychodynamic Approach", desperately browsing (can one browse desperately?) the internet for presents for hub's 30th birthday, closing my eyes and sticking my fingers in my ears about the approach of my 30th birthday (one week's time!) and trying to deal with my extreme pissed-offness at the increasingly hurtful behaviour of my sisters (including promised presence then sudden unexplained absence at aforementioned birthday frolics).

Oh I am nothing but a write-as-you-would-vomit dear little thing today, aren't I just!

PS. The funeral was, well, y'know, as funerals are. I did read. And I was glad of it.

Holding

Well.

It has been a strange week. Granny's funeral is this Friday and so all week I have had a sense of having to hold something. A big wodge of feeling. And it has been strange being away from home, from mum and dad while this big thing is happening. Everything is on hold until I go back.

I am trying to decide whether to read something at the funeral. My youngest sister is going to, and there was a suggestion that all three of us should. I would like to, but at the same time I am afraid that I won't do her justice, that I won't find the right thing to read, and that I will fall apart like a blubbing fool in front of the entire WI (the entire WI will be there. Oh yes they will. She was a stalwart of the Women's Institute, my granny).

So today I am mulling it over. Wondering what I could read. What I could say. How I could express just a tiny bit of who she was and what she meant to me.

It is crazy really.

In other news, I am making a casserole. And the weird cat is making very weird noises.

Feeling a teensy bit overwhelmed.

And very sad. My granny died you see. And she was lovely. A bit batty, but lovely.

She's been poorly for a while, she had had two heart attacks this year, and then had another yesterday. She slipped away this morning.

I am spending time floating around in my memories of her, and realising everything she gave me. This includes our shared sense of whimsy and an unwavering belief in the existence of fairies.

I feel lucky to have had a granny like her.

Updates

Hello peeps.

It's been a while, I know.

Things I have been doing include:

1. Frantically editing short films with yoof in them.
2. Reading Freud case studies.
3. Listening to neighbours arguing about scaffolding.
4. Wondering why the weird cat has started weeing in corners.
5. Fretting about Christmas and the mother-in-law situation.
6. Appreciating the Autumn sunshine.
7. Driving to the middle of the Bath countryside for a hen weekend.
8. Realising just how young people in nightclubs are.
9. Loving my therapy,
10. Browsing flats on the interweb.
11. Revelling in half term.
12. Fighting the horrible hormonal effects of a new pill.

So.

The landlord situation (if you could please read "situation" with a french accent, it would be most helpful, since that is how it is pronounced in my head). Although he has now increased the rent only by a tiny bit that actually won't kill us, I think we are still going to keep out eyes out for somewhere else. We don't feel quite safe here now, and also (with the encroaching winter darkness) it is becoming clear how very dim it is, being a basement flat and all. And Miss Tickles don't do terribly well with dimness.

The mother-in-law situation is the same. She is still outrageous in her claims and actions. But now her mum (hub's nana) is very ill so it's a bit more complicated. Really I think we are trying to work out ways we can keep her in our life without her being entirely draining and destructive. Hub is ace and strong and only very occasionally furious. I am proud of him.

I have had a tricky few weeks with the lady-hormones. I went to the doctor because I have started suffering from menstrual migraines, and she advised me to try the mini-pill. It was all okay until around period time and then I suddenly turned into a churning mass of anxiety and weird night sweats and not sleeping and head all strangely leapy. It is over now, thank heavens, and I am holding in mind that the doctor did say it would take a while to settle down.

Bloody buggery hope it does though, because it was really terribly yuck.

I am loving my course and finding it intense and challenging and thought-provoking and glorious. And also prone to inducing a peculiar variety of psychological hypochondria, whereby we learn about something and then immediately diagnose it in ourselves (it is a course-wide phenomenon, and not just me... We are all as sensitive and wonderfully loopy as each other). Anyway. It is good, and I am slowly feeling more confident with it all. Also discovered that telling people that one is training as a counsellor/therapist means that they immediately tell you their dreams.

What else....

The weird cat has started weeing in corners.

It is weird.

The Man

I like to think the best of people I come into contact with. I look for reasons that might cause people to behave in destructive or painful ways, I am interested in where they are coming from, I genuinely believe in human vulnerability and the bollocks we construct to help ourselves through that.

But sometimes, I wonder if I am wrong.

Sometimes, when hub is railing against the man (as he can often be found doing) and I am saying things like "Well maybe the man just hasn't had a very good day", or, "Maybe he had an argument with someone he cared about last night", sometimes, a little tiny shadow of doubt trips across my consciousness, scattering question-mark shaped confetti as it goes.

Sometimes I can't help but consider that maybe the man is doing really quite well actually. And can have chinese takeaway whenever he wants. And can afford to go to his friends' birthday parties. And has enough money to have, say, a dog.

Maybe the man is sitting comfortably on a sofa somewhere chuckling to himself.

The last week has been very odd. The landlord raised our rent by 10%, then when we said there was no way we would be able to stay, he lowered it a bit. Then when we said that actually we needed a bit more time because giving us a week to decide what we wanted to do felt a teensy bit like short notice, he lowered it again.

Which makes me think that everything he said last week about fixed rate mortgage coming to an end blah blah, cost of replacing the boiler blah blah, forced to do it blah blah, might not really have been entirely accurate.

I feel shaken by this. And we still don't know what to do. Because we have to let him know by 9am on Thursday otherwise he will "retract all offers" and while we can afford the rise in rent as it now stands, and we know we still want the flat, we're frankly not altogether sure we want the landlord.

I feel oddly naive.

A bit of a mug.

I just want to feel safe, y'know? Secure and settled for a bit without the fear that things are going to be pulled from under our feet at any second.

But I'm not sure I trust that man anymore.

Pubs. Gawd love 'em.

Hubling is writing a story.

At the heart of this story are men in a pub.

We have been chatting and talking and analysing what exactly it is that men like so much about pubs. And also people in general. Obviously. (Although his book does focus on a group of chaps).

So.

User generated content.

Web 2.0.

The technological future!

Let it help us with our discussion, in all its glory! In all your glory, dear generating users!

Tell me, what do you like about pubs? What do you think men like about pubs? Why are they so very important to us?

I await your answers with baited breath...

My kingdom for a house!

So.

More trouble at (the) sea(side).

It looks like we have to move. Again.

GRRRRRR.

We got an email from our landlord informing us that he is putting the rent up by 10%.

For goodness sake!

Hub and I are currently in discussions about what to do, since this would take our rent up to a figure we would find more than a little painful.

Should we stay or should we go?

We were both very angry given that we have only been here six months, and given our having-to-leave-the-last-flat experience. It seems we are suffering from some kind of bad flat karma.

So tomorrow we are off to look round a few flats, see what is out there, see what we can get for our money, as we have until Wednesday to let the landlord know what we're doing.

Is it too much to ask to stay in one place for more than seven months, is it? I mean, is it?!

It has been a crazy few weeks with horrible in-law drama, troubles with my own parentals, a training weekend meaning I am now on my twelfth consecutive working day, and now more annoying flat stuff.

Oh the urge to swear is upon me, dear readers.

Fortunately, I am a model of restraint.

Overheard morning conversation.

Radio 4: And it looks like John Terry will be unable to play this evening.

Hub: (To weird cat) Oh my god, what are they going to do without John Terry?

Weird Cat: Silence

Hub: I know, they don't stand a chance.

Weird Cat: Silence

Hub: He's solid in that line-up. Would you like a bit of ham?

Weird Cat: Myeaooooow.

The thing is, hub really hates football.

They were having an ironic conversation.

Drama and all sorts

It has been a little while, I know.

Things have been rather intense.

I started my counselling course last week (hoorah!) and in addition to the one day a week which will be usual, had a study weekend too, which was wonderful, but which now means I am well into my second week of no-day-off. So I'm a bit floopy and eyes-all-sleepy.

Plus we had all sorts of dramatic family crisis last week involving my mother-in-law going mad.

Frankly, and as I think I might even have mentioned, she has always been a wee bit potty. But has also always hidden it under the appearance of being an open and in-touch-with-her-emotions hippy-type who simply says how she feels, man.

But last week it all went a bit, well, dark, and it became clear that the over-emotional hippy no-boundaries stuff does in fact hide some rather more Serious Issues. And poor hub has been in the horrible place of his mother doing something truly unforgivable to his father (they are twenty years worth of divorced), but also constructing a fiction so complex that it is very difficult to confront her with what she has done.

So it was quite a busy week with backwards and forwards phone calls and discussions and emails to social services and all kinds of nasty things that he, or anyone really, just should not have to deal with.

I have been trying to be as supportive as I can, and to be honest, he is doing amazingly well. He is a strong chap, my hub, but nonetheless I have been ensuring he has regular and reliable cuddle access.

It will be ongoing, this situation, but we have at least got through the bit where immediate decisions had to be made.

And of course having just leapt with glee into the world of psychodynamics, the whole thing has given me endless fodder for pondering. And I'm sure hub appreciates my wild break-offs into enthusiastic introductions to psychodynamic theory in his own quiet way. I'm just sure of it.

The pity of it!

Our boiler is broken.

For some time it has been a little shall we say temperamental. Not the least of which eccentricities was a snapped off hot water thermostat, resulting in decidedly un-hot water.

In any case, on Sunday, it gave up the ghost. May it rest in peace.

Our landlord has been very good in arranging a plumber to come round and fix it. But not quite so good on the timings. The timings being two weeks' timings.

Two weeks with no hot water!

Now it is true, I am a little pre-menstrual. I will grant you that. I will grant anyone that. Probably with a great deal of sobbing "No, you're right, you're totally right.... *SNIFF*"

But the news of the lack of hot water has sent me into some kind of teary-melty-weepy puddlish lump.

All we have is a tiny sink.

A tiny and unfeasibly high sink. (I am, it is true, unfeasibly small. So it doesn't take an awful lot of height to make a sink unfeasible for me. If you know what I mean. And why shouldn't you? I have made it clear in a number of excellent sentences.)

And a kettle.

Anyway. I looked at tin baths on ebay.

It is a possibility.

Oh I am all of a nonsense!

Dear reader, oh!

*siiiiiiiiiigh*

And also,

*sniiiiiiiiff*

What's in a name?

Now look.

I have a name. Like an actual name. The one that most people call me.

I know you must be disappointed, after all this time. You must feel as though I have been pulling the wool over your eyes.

I'm so sorry.

Here is my quandary: I have an interesting and vaguely amusing post, but it is based on my actual name.

So.

I have come up with a plan, a plan of disguise and cunning to conceal my true identity.

Here goes.

Imagine my first name is the shortening of a name that can be shortened. As "Chris" is to "Christopher".

So if we work here with the name that you believe my name to be, I am "Miss". This is what I am called.

However, there are some people, in this hypothetical situation, whose name is in fact "Missifer", for example, and who occasionally shorten their name to "Miss".

(I was christened "Miss", but some people were christened the longer version "Missifer" and only use "Miss" as a shortened version.)

Are you following?

So.

Again.

Hub came back from work and told me that today he took a booking for a woman called "Missifer Tickle" (please try and keep up). I admit, I felt a little as though my identity had been threatened. And so obviously I googled her.

She is a delight! An author no less!

And here is a selection of her works:

First Cook Book
by Missifer Tickle

It's Fun to Cook!
by Missifer Tickle

Romance in Medieval England
by Missifer Tickle

The Seven Champions of Christendom (1596/7)
by Missifer Tickle

Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition
by Missifer Tickle

I realise that now, you could scurry off and do some extraordinary googling, and like the clever sausages you are, you could work out my name.

But I hope you don't.

Mostly because my parallel-y metaphor-ish smokescreen was ever so complicated to work out.

But I thought it was worth it for The Seven Champions of Christendom (1596/7).

LHC day.

Now. Hubling has been all of a fluster today. To be honest, he has been gaining in excitability over the past week. He can barely contain himself.

Is it that we are going away together for some couplish loving time? Could it be that he is entranced by the thought of spending a few days in the countryside writing his wondrous novel? Or is it that somewhere in the world, scientists are doing a thing?

Go on, take a guess.

So for many, many hours, more than perhaps I would care to remember, and exactly equal to the amount of time I have been trapped in a car with him, he has been telling me all about physics.

My gosh, he really loves physics.

In particular, he has been drilling into me the mechanics and properties of gravity.

I think you can probably make a wild stab in the dark as to Miss Tickle's Feeling on Physics.

Anyway. I was good and patient and I listened like a good and patient person. And slowly, I began to actually understand stuff. (Some of it.)

I would like to share the most significant bit of learning with you, my dear readers.

"So in conclusion, the force that gravity exerts is directly proportional to the mass of an object, which is why when people are in space, away from the earth, they float around."

"Yes, but they don't always though do they?"

"Yes they do, if they're in a rocket in space, they float around. You must have seen film of them shotting water pistols and stuff..."

"Yes but that's only the fun stuff for telly isn't it? They they get back to walking around and doing the work, like on Firefly."

Pause.

"What do you mean?"

"Well on Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and stuff they're all walking around aren't they?"

"But that's made up."

"What?'

"That's made up."

"So there isn't a gravity button or anything you can press in real life?"

"No."

"So those astronauts in space can't walk around, they really are floating about the whole time?"

"Yes."

Pause. I consider this.

"Oh."

So now I understand gravity. But I am a tiny bit less happy for it.

Only a tiny bit.

But still.