Goddamn Right

Here I am again, after yet another extended absence. (Sorry.)

Some things:

I survived being in a musical. In fact we rocked. I went home and read Bernice Bobs her Hair, and reveled in the knowledge that out of the 20 or so people in this musical about high jinx in the 20s, I was the only one with a bob. Raise your skirts and bob your hair.

(I doubt I will do it again. Although, Jules, tapdancing next term is ON.)

I am so insanely bored I could eat my own elbow. I have been driven to the low low depths of experimenting a la the Bulldogs (a notorious sporty drinking society) – I tried licking my own nipple, which indeed is possible. (I did not, a la the Bulldogs’ (re-re-re-)initiations, go the whole hog with tabasco sauce and whipped cream in a can.) This boredom is good. This is good boredom. This is reading-almost-one-Greek-tragedy-a-day boredom. This is red-hair-dying-experiments boredom. This boredom has driven me to complete my first freelance editing/proof-reading mammoth job. It is John Irving-friendly boredom, and finally, finally learning to drive boredom. (Will not lie, I terrified myself and my unflappable father with my behind-the-wheel shennanigans – almost drove into a lamp-post and a man, rolled backwards down a hill, forgot how to break and steer and turn the ignition on, etc.)

The downside to this boredom is that it is the unfortunate couple of loneliness, a crippling, crippling infliction. I am not one of those people who relishes having their own space. I am not sure what to do with it. So, too much space, despite the claustrophobic attic. My partner in boredom, usually (the lovely sister), has entirely moved out, to Berlin. She has turned to the student dream of cheap boho flat-sharing with almost nightly real-russian-vodka quaffing. As I write she is in Serbia on holiday, propably quaffing Serbian vodka. She has enrolled for a university course. She has gone.

The boy is in India for two months for a documentary-making internship. Schnuuuvlen. Sniffle. He will be back, tanned and wise(r) and itching even more than he already was to get away from the UK as soon as he graduates. He is very much a lover of own space, and thus his having to share a double bed with his new acquaintance and documenting partner in crime, strikes me as somewhat of an ironic injustice. (But also a little bit funny.)

Everyone else has forsaken my humble home town. Maybe it has something to do with the emergence of the two in one new superstructure on the roundabout – the Travel Lodge sits smugly atop a harshly lit, sparsely-aisled Lidl. Together they now rule the town. There is only so much depressing a person can take. At seven pm, my mother forced me to face the world beyond my doorstep for the first time in 24 hours. Let’s go to Lidl! she suggested jubilantly. So we went to Lidl. I left it with a strong desire to weep, to bury my head in the large green crate of enormous shiny genetically modified aubergines. All the children were obese. J has given up on Newcastle-under-Lyme completely, and now lives in Liverpool. Against all odds she has a boyfriend, the same adoring puppy who has followed her loyally since we were 15. Running perfectly in line with the odds, her main topic of conversation continues to be drugs. Everyone else I know is scattered around the country, interning (making jellies for famous cooks, manning box offices, being lawyers, reviewing things for weekend supplements).

Thankfully I too will soon join these ranks, playing slave-girl to literary agents. (Joke. I will be repaid in experience and CV-props.) I will be living in London, in the house of the boy, minus the boy. I am as yet still uncertain as to whether/how I will manage a month of being the model perfect-potential-daughter-in-law-ish material. His parents are lovely, but will I do it? Will I break the washing machine? Will I step on the cat? Will I use the wrong towel, at the wrong time? Will I allow The Awkward Silence to reign at the dinner table? Will I be carelessly naked again, in the wrong time and bathroom, about to take a shower when the boy’s father walks in to use the toilet ? Will I commit countless other faux pas? Yes, probably. To intensify the potential cringiness of this living arrangement, for one night only the remains of my family are dining chez the boy, with the boy’s family, minus the boy. The first meeting of parents. Surely the boy ought to be there. My father is a potential minefield. His father is a potential minefield. My mother’s orange flower-power tights are a potential minefield. My brother, the teenager, is probably the only one of this family who will behave. Anyway, watch this space for tales of woe.

After the month of tenterhooks and leaving the house at ungodly hours and hopefully writing at least one book report, the boy’s return is imminent. To stave off loneliness+boredom blues, I may go visit the Norwegian queen of my heart. Until then, and whilst I am here, I will continue my ‘driving’ experiments, and of course will execute the Master Plan (spending large chunks of the day panting and watching my forearms sweat (!) in (the slightly stale air-conditioning of) the gym, and thus achieve, as a direct result of my boredom, a Killer Bod.)

In other news, of late a gigantic collection of music has appeared, as if by magic, in my computer’s music library. Some of it is the music of my past. Some of it is entirely new. Some of it is recordings by faculty members of Paradise Lost So here are a few things which made my night.