In which I get A SHINY TOY.

In the form of a MacBook.

Pro.

I am excited!

But I do not know how to use it.

I will learn my very best, but I do not like not knowing all the shortcuts. It is a pain in the bottom.

So. I am in Birmingham, England, in the home of my parents. (I have come to do the training for my new yoof job; the company is based in the middle lands of the England). They are not here. (My parents. We are back-to-the-story.) They are in Scilly. The home of my parents is for sale.

It used to be my home, and it is the first time I have returned here since they put it up for sale.

I wept.

A lot.

On entering the house.

And in fact for the fifteen minutes prior to entering the house. And if I'm honest, the fifteen minutes afterwards too.

I may document it. With my new toys. (I also got a digital camera, a video camera and an ipod. Do not come and rob me. Please.) I will take photos and video footage of me in my house in which someone else will soon be coming to live.

*sniff*

Damn them.

PS. Woo! A MacBook! Pro!

My brain.

I have been considering. And I have come to a conclusion.

I feel I should have further exploited the beach security alert for witty and whimsical blog purposes.

I have missed a trick.

It is rather reflective of my slightly woolly and non-creative current state of brain.

I can only apologise.

I assume it's because at some unconscious level my brain is in fact feverishly compiling Important and Detailed Lists of Things To Do Before We Move.

It could be happening right now.

And a bit like a computer with its RAM, I am running on about 3. (I do not know much about RAM, except that the puter hub so cleverly built has about 1,500 RAM, and when we are doing too much computery goodness, it drops and goes red and says "Three left! Only three!" And stuff.)

So. My RAM is low and this accunts for the poor quality of recent posts and indeed the trick that I missed.

In connected but slightly tangential news, hub is afraid that he is getting stupider.

(I have known this for some time but did not wish to upset him.)

On Monday night, being the groovy and rock 'n roll couple that we are, we did the test the nation IQ test.

Yep.

Anyway. The point is, that his IQ had gone down by 23 points from when he last did the test the nation IQ test.

Yep.

And a mighty 58 points from when he once did one on the interweb.

All of which has led him to conclude that being a maker of furniture is good for the brawn but bad for the brain.

When we move to Brighton we shall be rectifying this.

I do not yet know how.

But we shall begin by compiling a list of Possible Security Alerts Facing a Kentish Beach and take it from there!

Join in!

1) Suicide shrimps
2) A suspicious looking limpet
3) Marines

Invading crabs? What? WHAT?

I had a rubbish bank holiday.

I will not lie.

I was meant to go to Cornwall to see my little-middle sister (It is not that she is little around the middle, although she is, but rather than I have two little sisters of which she is the middle one. If that makes sense. You know it does.) before she embarks on a six-month-round-the-world adventure. But on Thursday night, just as I was excitedly warming up to pack (knee-bends, finger-flexes and so forth) she informed me that it was "not great timing".

Her boy (who is a bit errant) had recently volunteered to go to Swaziland for a charity. And had been suddenly posted. (Not in an envelope. I don't think. Although to be entirely honest, I don't actually know.) So they had only three days left together. Which they obviously wanted to spend in a flurry of intense love-activity.

Without me.

I cannot understand it.

In an effort to save a little of my woo-woo-three-day-holiday spirit, hub and I carefully and time-consumingly selected a portion of your best British coast to visit on Saturday.

I drove for many hours. We arrived at the coast. There was an old man with a hat and a toll booth. He told us the aforementioned portion of coast was closed.

For security reasons.

I wept, dear readers, I did. Shamelessly and in the car.

I had so been looking forward to an afternoon frolicking with my hub by the sea.

After I had recovered (a bit) we drove some more and ended up at a slightly grotty seaside town.

But.

There was a beach.

And there was the sea.

And even though it was VERY late in the day, the sun was still out.

So we had an ice-cream and paddled a bit (up to our knees) before clambering back in the Tickle-mobile and setting off home.

I know we will be moving to the sea in almost no time at all, but still.

It was a bit of a damp squib.

Humph.

There is little worse than a Grumpy Tickle.

The last romance

Hub and I didn't have a first dance. It wasn't really that sort of wedding. (It was in a field.)

But if it had been that sort of wedding, I think it would have been Don't Ask Me To Dance by Arab Strap.

You know I've felt like this before
I know you have felt it too
But maybe I don't want to dance
Cause I've not had as much as you

Our lives did not begin
The very moment that we met
I don't want to hold your hand
There is so much that I'll forget

You're no angel from above
You're the last girl I will love

Possibly a little too ironic for our own good, but still the most romantic song that almost exists I think.

Listen a bit (I don't know how to do listen a lot.)

PS. I realise I am posting a lot at the moment. I wonder if I should consider more deeply the old adage "quality not quantity", but frankly, I can't be buggered.

La crise!

I am having an existential crisis!

I did not know, until I read the existential section of the book I am reading about different kinds of therapy (kindly recommended by la bobo).

It is dreadful!

I am going to smoke cigarettes in cafes and wander the streets in the rain wearing a trenchcoat.

I might grow a moustache.

I am finding all of this reading about the different approaches to therapy completely fascinating. And with every one I think "Yes, that's it, that's definitely the one! The one for me!"

I am rather impulsive.

What is rather heartening, and rather wonderful, is that it has made me realise just how much I believe in people, in how precious we are, and in our ability to grow and change for the better.

There is one exercise (I am not sure if this is the right terminology. And I am used to working in theatre, where we do exercises all the time. Actually, I call them games, but important people call them exercises. They are not to do with starjumps. Anyway.) which is from the constructivist section (get me!) in which the therapist asks the client to write a description of herself as if she were the main character in a play.

It is called self-characterisation.

Now I am sure that this is to do with all my drama training, but I have been thinking about it a lot.

The idea is for the therapist to get a real picture of the way the person sees themself, to understand more clearly inside where the person lives. It provides a window into the way we invent and create ourselves.

The next step is that the therapist writes an alternative version, which is then worked on with the person until it gets to a description of someone that the person feels it would be possible to be.

Then they try it out for a week. Or so. And see.

See how they are in this new skin. How others react. How things change.

See it is possible to change.

I think this is A Good.

I am sure that from my naive standpoint, there is a great deal more to it than this, and there are many associated complications. But the point is, that it gave me hope.

Which is A Good.

As I said.

Path #2

I have enrolled on a counselling course.

It is big news, I know. I would be surprised if any of you are still on your chairs.

This whole theatre thing you see, has been getting me down. I have done the theatrical career equivalent of falling down the back of the sofa. The thing is, I quite like it down here. It is warm and cosy and there are lots of other exciting lost things to play with.

I may have stretched the metaphor too far.

The point is that I don't know if I am happy with the way things are going. Career-wise.

I couldn't be happier about moving by the sea. That is ace.

But I think I might have to face up to the fact that I will never be Peter Hall. And more importantly, that I am not really sure I want to be Peter Hall. His plays are boring.

Anyway. So for a while now I have been thinking what else I might be able to do.

And I thought about being a therapist. This is partly to do with my overwhelming positive experience over the past year or so, but also it was that other path that I didn't take when I was 18.

Does anyone else have one of those?

When we were about 15 at school, they made us write a list of the jobs we would like to do (I think the idea was to help us choose which A levels to take) and mine said actress and psychologist.

And I find, some considerable years later, that I am still interested in it.

So I am going to do a counselling course alongside my new job with the yoof, and see how it and I rub along together.

See how my other path actually pans out.

Maybe.

Miss T

You might have noticed, those of you who are kind and indeed committed enough to have returned here I hesitate to say repeatedly, but certainly more than twice, that I like tea.

I like tea a lot.

I consider a day in which under five cups of tea have been let us say enjoyed, to be an abject failure.

*takes a sip of tea* (fourth cup)

I sometimes consider that I should perhaps drink more water. Like those magazines and programmes and all tell you to do.

But, can I be frank?

It's not tea.

It's just not.

I worry about my hydration levels.

So I have some more tea.

Sometimes I wonder if I will turn into a cup of tea.

I think I would like it.