Scum of the Earth (or: Hit and Run)

My parents, being from Cornwall, thought that a Bank Holiday Monday at 3pm was the perfect time to visit IKEA.

Their nearest IKEA is in Bristol, a fair old 2 hour trek from where they live, so a visit is still very much a novelty and as the heavens were all set to open again (because, of course, two weeks of constant rain just hasn't been quite enough, even though a good week ago we were easily achieving one of the wettest Mays on record) they thought it might be, well, not exactly fun but something to do that didn't involve getting incredibly wet (which even to me, who shudders at the mere thought of such an outing, was more appealing at that moment in time).

So I reluctantly negotiated a fairly unforgiving roundabout off the M62 (cutting someone up and terrifying my mum in the process) and joined the masses inching their way towards the signs pointing towards the warehouse that we assumed was somewhere in the vague distance, in pursuit of a television table.

They quickly realised their error. The traffic was making no real effort in productivity and we sat in a queue for another queue that we presumed led to a carpark, perhaps.

I began to tingle with fear.

Shopping itself used to fill me with irrational dread and I would break out into a hot sweat at the mere hint of a possible mention of the word. But since living with my SP I have developed a rather healthy/unhealthy obsession with the likes of supermarket and other such cheap clothing outlets, and I even mentioned off my own back on Friday that I wanted, not needed, wanted, to go into the centre of Leeds and go shoe shopping because TK Maxx just wasn't cutting it in that department (my disclaimer remains that I was half cut and I'd walked through the city when all the shops were closed so it seemed not quite so terrifying).

Despite having conquered my fear to an acceptable degree in order that I don't actually have to rely on people buying me clothes for birthdays and Christmas or lending me clothes that I can hold on to for as long as is comfortably possible (and usually a bit longer than that if I'm honest), I am still engulfed with terror when other members of the public are added to the equation in any volume.

Queuing to pay, once I have tried on an item, I will just about negotiate, if said item is deemed worthy of such time consumption. Queuing to try an item of clothing on is usually regarded as totally unacceptable (then I will usually debate on the impulse purchase, never a good idea for someone of 5'2", or dump all the clothes and rush out, in need of a large coffee to fuel my already fraying nerves).

And queuing to queue to get into a carpark: well, that I'd never experienced before. Because I'd never been so stupid enough to entertain the notion of visiting IKEA at 3pm on a Bank Holiday.

So, after a small debate on the merits of heading IKEAwards and bailing, I broke free from the QueueOfFear and turned around to head as far away from there as feasibly possible on a quarter of a tank of petrol.

In this genius decision, we ended up in the same queue for the very same reasonably priced Swedish furnishings store, just this time heading the other way. We inched miserably along, wishing of a happier place.

Then: We watched a white Astra, complete with Ugly Chav driver and gold hooped earring Chavette as standard, drive from the pub on our left, through the queue of traffic, and straight into the rear passenger door of a car in the filter lane next to us.

And then drive off.

Now this wasn't the sort of bump that you'd accidentally miss. This was a fair old whack. It was a fairly hefty impact that certainly left the victim with a sizeable dent in the side of his car and a healthy mechanic's bill to match.

I saw Ugly Chav's face Ugly Face on impact. I saw the easily preventable accident occur. His eyes widened, his Chavette girl's mouth fall open. And I saw the fucker drive off, at speed.

The stunned victim, a bloke in his late 40's I'm guessing (although the accuracy of that assumption should be treated with a little caution) stayed still for a while, I presume in shock. I beeped my horn furiously and put my hazards on trying to attract his attention, as my mum had remembered his number plate, but our efforts to attract his attention were in vain as eventually he pulled a u'ey and drove, presumably, after him (Rover horns sound not so much like 'Hia, I'm here!' more like 'Come here you little bastard and I'll give you what's coming to you' so I'm not entirely surprised he decided against acknowledging our existence).

We drove forwards eventually, all a little in shock.

The Ugly Chav, I assume, from his exit from the pub and the hasty getaway from his hit and run, had been drinking. If that was the case, it is clear that he was not going to hang around and exchange insurance details and offer some sort of apologise for the unnecessary damage he had caused from his lack of concentration. His crime was committed in front of a good 10 to 15 cars, all probably as shocked and confused as us (although this sort of thing really doesn't tend to happen in Cornwall; if you hit a tractor, you'll bloody know about it but they probably won't even notice, while a sheep will do a fair amount of damage to your bonnet but they tend to not be covered by valid insurance policies). I swore rather violently (words that even I wouldn't usually say in front of my mum) as we watched the 'stupid idiot' (or a more colourful phrase to that effect) drive off, unaware that we might have held the key to a valid insurance claim.

We debated what to do, whether to call the police and hand in the registration number, but we didn't really know where to report it or what to say. Enraged, as a result I drove through a red light (my mum only gently reminded me as opposed to her usual gripping onto the side of the car and shouting in panicked tones, so it was obvious she was aware of just how stressed I was).

In the end: we did nothing. Although if that man, who I've just insulted in insinuating that he may have been a 'stupid idiot', reads my blog: I've got Ugly Chav's reg and I'm willing to bring him down if you are.

I was, and remain, absolutely appalled and incredibly disappointed. I wonder, had it been someone of a more respectable social group than Chav, would they have stopped? Such behaviour certainly isn't exclusive of specific social groups and often the most awful behaviour results from who would normally be deemed as 'above' such actions.

But in this instance unfortunately he lived up to and beyond the stereotype, and has thus won the not exactly coveted title of Scum of the Earth.

Parking Pettiness

This morning, after quite an emotional phone call with my boyfriend who was reduced to skyping me from the carpark outside the accommodation (that he describes unaffectionately as 'the prison' and where, apparently, 2 showers and 1 microwave between 17 people is deemed perfectly acceptable by the management as adequate living arrangements) that he will be housed in for the next 5 weeks, I went outside to my car.

To put the situation into context, I was shaking during and after the phone call and had such a violent undercurrent running beneath my blank exterior that I actually told my SP not to bother being nice to me because I was in a foul mood, due to the situation that my boyfriend is having to currently endure.

I am truly beginning to understand how knowing someone you love is happy can ease your aching and sense of loss, even if they are a long way away from you, for a long time. When you don't have that happiness to cushion you, things become so, so much harder. I have an aggression inside me that I am unfamiliar with: I have never been faced with a partner struggling in an aspect of their life, not to this extent.

Usually my boyfriend has to endure my job whitterings, or hear me mumble about something that appears to everyone else as highly insignificant but to me, at the time, is extremely important and therefore I attempt to command an attentive audience (I have found introducing troubling personal topics that would have otherwise made him suddenly have something very important to do, a long way away from me, over dinner, where he can't run and where I usually cunningly opt to pay for before launching into my current whine, so he has to remain grateful).

I can't do anything about this. I can't do anything about his situation, other than listen, other than try to put together all the love I feel into a few cliched sentences in order to offer him some comfort and support. I am beginning to find, over a hug, over a kiss, how words can just fall limp and lack all the expression that I am unable to communicate. He can't see it in me, he can't feel it. He can only hear it and I wonder sometimes how deep that penetrates in his mind.

So, I went to my car with more than a little aggression bubbling within me.

There hadn't been enough space to park my car right outside the house yesterday, so I pulled into the parking area just before the house, in front of a row of houses. Where there was plenty of room. Even if every house had had two cars, there would be plenty of room.

I was blissfully unaware that my innocent actions had triggered an overwhelming anger within one of the residents of said houses.

My car was parked there for approximately 24 hours.

And on my windscreen this morning was a note, written in pink marker pen, put in a little plastic bag.

What I could make out from the note was that this parking was for residents only. The rest was unreadable because the incompetent idiots had clearly not sealed their waterproof bag effectively. I can only imagine it wasn't something particularly friendly.

I saw red. I was livid. I was, even to myself, a little scary.

The resident responsible for the note, I imagine, knew that I was not a fellow resident and, I can only presume, that I was not a guest of one either. I am guessing that, being the sort of people that reside in this area, they knew where I normally park and, I wouldn't put it passed them, when my birthday is and what my favourite food is (a quick glance in the rubbish would probably give away the latter).

When I drove off with my SP for a gym class a few minutes later, the door opened to the house opposite where my car had been parked and a figure hovered, the lace curtain covering the entrance twitching violently. I caught a glimpse of what I imagine to be the culprit, an older man who proceeded to open the door fully once I had driven away, swearing ferociously.

Obviously my temporary stay in their apparently private car park had stirred up deep unrest. Despite there being plenty of available parking, I had clearly enraged him as I had abused the unwritten parking rules, even for merely 24 hours.

I can feel myself begin to tense once again as I try to express how much I abide pettiness. I do understand how frustrating neighbours can be and how it is extremely difficult to broach sensitive topics such as parking, noise and borders. I've seen glimpses (when switching channels) of Neighbours from Hell. There are some hideous people out there, but I am inclined to think that on quite a few occasions it isn't actually the deemed offender that is actually the neighbour from hell.

From working in nursing and care homes, I am fully aware how age breeds pettiness. When the mind isn't occupied with important day to day goings on, any sort of intrusion by a neighbour in any way can germinate and grow, mutating into hatred and encompassing all rational thought with concern, worry and discontent. With nothing to do, people will often talk and think themselves into feeling aggression towards a person or incident, as something they are able to focus their energies on. This often becomes worse, multiplying and expanding, when discussed with another, similarly frustrated person.

I am also aware of how young girls/women are treated by older men in general (from my experience).

This resident will have seen me and know who I am. I imagine they would not have been so forthcoming with their note had it been on my SP's partner's car instead. Because he looks like he'd beat the living shit out of them.

And I, well, don't.

I look not unwholly like a young girl. I am twenty five, yet my appearance means that I am ID'd on a regular basis and was even queried on whether I was old enough to have a gym membership recently (yep, on occasions its flattering, on some its just plain humiliating and that was most certainly the latter).

I cannot abide pettiness. I have seen it evolve and mutate again and again. It can breed from nowhere into an uncontrollable monster. I am unable to quite express how extremely angry this event made me. I am struggling through one of the toughest times I have ever endured at the moment. And someone thought it was a good idea, after just a day of 'incorrect' parking, to tell me to remove my car. Because it was offending him that much.

Considering I have such a ready tongue when it comes to the gratuitous use of swear words, I rarely swear in my writing, because written the words appear harsh and unattractive.

But there are times when it is unavoidable.

Fuck him. The fucking petty bastard.

Right, now, that feels better. I think a trip to TK Maxx is in order to cheer myself up. I need to concentrate my fired energies into something productive.

Keeping it up

Since living with my SP, I have embarked on an exercise programme that is one of the most intense that I have ever endured (and I think the word 'endured' really is the key there).

I have found out that obliques is not a type of exercise and is in fact a muscle group that I apparently have underneath the dense layer of flesh that surrounds my midriff. I have learnt what a plank is and have gone so far as to vaguely master the technique (although gym instructors the world over would no doubt look at my technique and strongly disagree). I have developed an unconventional technique for my running, but its still a technique of sorts, and no longer have quite so much of a lollop associated with my strides.

I am mastering the art of whacking a punch bag with all my might and dodging its swing on the return journey. I can endure an astonishing amount of squats and lunges (although you'll have to take my word for that, only the members of our Wednesday Bums, Legs and Tums class are privy to such an unattractive sight and I tend to hide towards the back so my appearance isn't quite so offensive for other members).

I no longer eat upwards of 6 slices of bread a day (this from the girl who took Home Economics at A-level where she supposedly learnt the merits of a balanced diet, but I found out that you could get all 24 essential proteins from beans on toast and from that moment onwards, all other useful nutritional information was repelled by a wall of heated bread, which might explain why I didn't do as well as I'd hoped in my exams and can now only remember that the B group of vitamins are for energy and the rest do, err, other things...). Unfortunately I have had to considerably up my soya intake to counteract this dramatic loss of carbohydrate and now have beans for breakfast (in yoghurt form, oh the wonder of soya) but it tastes not wholly dissimilar to a breakfast related product so that's good enough for me.

I have been living with my SP for 5 weeks now. In the first few weeks, I noticed a pleasing alteration in my figure. The disappearance of back-fat may not have been noticeable to the naked eye, but the unsightly overhang that I tried to keep hidden from the general public (to varying degrees of success) has reduced and I have even developed muscles beneath the remaining wads of fat distributed around my midriff. All was going well. And then the weight loss gradually ground to a very definite halt. And with that, so has the reduction of my back-fat. I still have a very noticeable ring that I have to remain hidden under lengthy tops and have to continually tuck in behind the denim of my jeans.

My SP and I are toying with the idea in an increase of our toning exercises, to reach our desired figures. However we have both been expressing a caution which I can't quite seem to shake.

So we lose the weight. We tone up to our optimum figures.

And then what?

That's the thing isn't it. That's the real key point. Then we have to keep up that routine, that exercise class, that lack of bread, that consumption of apples instead of far more satisfying food groups, for however long we wish to attempt to retain our figures.

This realisation isn't sitting all too well with me. I have exercised in some form for specific weight loss purposes since being in school. I have attempted numerous exercise classes and activities. I even used to go to running classes on a Thursday evening (although the ratio of running to gossiping was extremely poor, but at that point I was still holding on to the whimsical thought that perhaps weight loss could be achieved through sheer volume of talking, come on there's got to be some calorie burning in that somewhere).

I have been utterly useless at the majority of exercise classes I have attempted. I have co-ordination and rhythm (although being nothing to write home about) but that's about where it ends. Speed, stamina and ability to perform any of these exercises effectively I never quite got. When it comes to sport, I have no competitive bone in my body. If they want to put the ball in that net and they have a sever amount of determination, well I'm not about to stand in their way. Even when I am Goal Keeper. If we lose...well, when I'm playing losing is usually a dead cert so I've no idea what winning feels like (although I did once win doubles at tennis in school, but then I was playing with one of the school tennis geniuses and I seem to remember standing still rather a lot).

But I have persevered regardless. I will attempt anything to burn a calorie or two (I manage to entice my body fairly easy, usually with the promise of alcohol).

This time I had a goal. I was determined to get off that plane in Auckland and (overlooking my flight addled appearance, unwashed body and crumpled clothing) look fit. But with the postponment of my trip, I am realising that I am going to have to keep up this regime for a little bit longer. I'm damned if I'm gaining back fat. My boyfriend will never believe I lost it (apart from the fact he's had to endure me whittering on about it in numerous emails).

I know several girls who have never exercised and weight just seems to avoid them like a repelling magnet. It just doesn't seem to be interested in settling down on their tiny hips. And, as is usually the case with such examples, they can eat whatever the hell they like. My boyfriend, while clearly not being a girl, is one such example and manages to burn off calories just through rotating his eyeballs. He burns calories just thinking, I swear. And he eats enough in a week that would probably keep me going through til Christmas.

My metabolism has lost the plot completely (if it ever had a grasp on it). It plods along idly, with no real awareness of its pleading, desperate owner. I bribe it with exercise, goad it into productivity, but it seems fairly unaware of my existence and assumes that it has no alternative speed other than backwards. I work with that, after battling against it for years, and pretty much eat as well as feasibly possible, and for someone who is most definitely not going to stop drinking copious amounts of wine.

So, I have a lifetime of intense exercise stretched out in front of me. For the immediate future, I have weeks upon weeks of exercise classes in order to prove that there really are the vague definition of muscles hidden in the dark recesses of my fatty tissue.

There has been another noticeable change in my body since this programme began. Last time I lost weight, when I decided that eating copious amounts of dairy really wasn't doing me any good any more (despite how damn good it tastes), my body, thoughtfully, gained stretch marks.

This time, because for some reason my physical appearance seems to really enjoy exploiting the vulnerability of my mind and manages to effortlessly rub me up the wrong way on numerous occasions, this time I have another little gem which is starting to make me truly doubt whether this is all worthwhile.

My chest has shrunk.

I guess I should be pleased that they've both shrunk together, to keep each other company, and I haven't been left considerably lopsided. But really, if my body had just asked, just questioned whether this was something I'd have been interested in, I'd have been giving a firm no to the goahead on that decision.

Misconceptions of productivity

There are days when I think I enjoy web design. So, I suspect on those days, I do actually enjoy it.

And there are days, like when the words won't come, that I can't drag anything from inside of me.

There are days when I don't think it ever will come.

I have spent the day trying to coax any strand of creativity from wherever it may be hiding, crouched beneath some overwhelming emotion in my head. I wonder sometimes if it ever stands a chance, when it attempts to grow. There is always something overshadowing it, some pre-emtive criticism, a lack of time, and misunderstanding in communication.

I wonder where I would be at work without the restrictions of assets, the limitations of brand guidelines and the adaptation of print material. I wonder what I could produce.

Today: nothing.

I am attempting to redesign my portfolio. This happens once every few weeks or so, as my current portfolio is painfully out of date. This is for me, this is to express my abilities and skills, my experience, my knowledge.

I can create: Anything.

I have tried in vain to regurgitate a hint of a concept that germinates in my head. I try to get it out, out and I start and there are the beginnings of shapes and objects and movement and then oh oh its gone and I stare at it and wonder where things broke down. It is way back before there is any physical presence, way back where I've put heavy, loaded restrictions in place.

There are days when I wonder whether I hate web design with such intense passion because I just can't really design. I've seen them and worked with them, those people who grasp onto creativity and embrace it and exploit it, those who know the difference between good and bad design, those who care. I care, but I'm not sure I ever cared enough. I'm not sure what caring enough is, because I never get there, not quite.

I cannot design without limitation. I cannot design without leaching the essence of a feeling or emotion from someone else's conception. I cannot design alone, with my thoughts. I can see them, there, bits and pieces, scattered throughout but there's always something lost in translation, a keystone that can't be grasped, something that's misinterpreted.

That's the point usually that just give up and make everything bloody blue.

I suffer with a misconception of productivity. I am forever against the clock, and shroud my design shortcomings with time limitations. The continual excuse of the best I could do 'considering'. When they aren't there, I have no benchmark for the best I can do, the possibility stretches endlessly out in front of me.

But there is an end despite the possibility, there is an end to what I can achieve, and I hit up against it, never quite knowing where it will appear, an invisible barrier that I can see beyond, I can see what I could be, but I don't understand how to get there, or whether I should even try.

I know the theory of extracting ideas, the expression of everything in order to facilitate the extraction of that tiny valuable particle. I know that time must be wasted in monetary terms in order to explore, something inconceivable in the world of design agencies where I have learnt to embrace and hide behind restriction. I don't have time to create bad designs, I don't have time to make mistakes. So I don't grow. I know this. I know editing an idea before it is realised produces safety through average designs. They get signed off, the client is happy (or at least reasonably satisfied, but that is as good as it often gets and I've learnt to knowledgeably misinterpret one for the other in order to achieve a deadline), I get to leave work on time.

I think perhaps I have forgotten how to be creative. That or I'm just not drinking enough tea.

I wonder whether my self-imposed limitations, and the averageness that accompanies them, will seep their way into wherever I choose to turn to next.

I'm really beginning to wonder whether I should just go back into care work. There's very little creativity required in cleaning old people. In fact, its actively discouraged. And you get tea and biscuits (never particularly exciting ones mind, but I'm fine with a rich tea or two).

Fire

Yesterday afternoon UK time (middle of the night NZ time), my boyfriend's accommodation caught fire. Everyone escaped unhurt, but many of the student's rooms were trashed, their belongings beyond repair. Luckily, all his valuables remained undamaged but he is unable to return to his room, as the linking corridor has been destroyed. He is now staying in youth hostel-eqsue accommodation in a local Christian Commune, where alcohol is prohibited (which I imagine is not particularly helping) and hopes to be moved to temporary accommodation by the end of the week.

Today, I am a ghost of myself. Even choosing beans on toast for lunch instead of local-notaste soup in a vain attempt to cheer myself up fell flat and I'm now feeling a bit queasy. I'm now on my 5th or 6th cup of tea, I've lost count, and by body is deluding my mind into thinking that it is pre-caffeine. All my limbs feel incredibly heavy and I have spent a good deal of today staring at my computer, my arms draped unproductively over the keyboard and the tips of my fingers unusually still.

Last night, after an intense period of worry and a flurry of phone calls, I managed to happily consume a bottle of wine with my boyfriend's sister and my SP (that's each, by the way - we should have just opened one each and drunk it through a straw). I managed to not think about it too much and my boyfriend seemed to be in fairly good spirits considering the circumstances, he sent me a text message saying he was drinking beer, waiting for his breakfast at 5:15 am so while things were far from normal, at least he still had an appetite.

Today though the realisation has slowly seeped in and I have become more and more exhausted with every hour, despite my deep alcohol-drenched sleep last night. Some of his friends have lost pretty much everything they took out with them, from what I can gather.

I am wondering how the rest of the families are feeling back in the UK, whether they have barely thought about it as everyone's safe, or whether they are feeling like I am. I can barely type and my concentration span on a scale of 1 to 10 is winging its way speedily into negative figures.

Fire is terrifyingly unforgiving and incredibly fast moving. My boyfriend's belongings were only saved because he closed his door on his way out, those who didn't managed to salvage very little. They are having to leave a lot of their smoke-damaged property for the insurers to record.

Today I am feeling: useless. I have a lot of emotion that is circling continually inside myself, unable to vent apart from through the gratuitous abuse of a variety of colourful words at my poor laptop monitor (it has suffered greatly during its short lifespan, continually at the receiving end of The WebStress's vicious tongue) upon receiving yet another extremely frustrating email from a client who is, yet again, changing their forever unsatisfied minds about the positioning of a tiny graphical element that, of course, is in itself wholly responsible for the ineffective running of the company if it remains where it currently is (quite a responsibility for a 1px transparent gif, I'm sure you'll agree).

Events like this make you realise the importance of life and the unimportance of belongings. They endeavour to force my acknowledgment of an ever present physical divide between myself and my boyfriend. They make me know how truly far away he really is. And they make me miss him more than I ever thought I could.

And they make me really, really, really hate being a web designer. Because, while the client clearly really cares on positioning of said graphic, I really, really, really don't. And today I am having to use all my remaining energy resources, scraping the barrel to try and use its over tired remnants, to make sure I don't tell them that.

The Hefty Hand of Fate

On Friday I bought my ticket to go to New Zealand. I'd arrive at the start of July and my boyfriend would have to endure my presence for nearly 7 weeks (which he agreed to, I think he clearly has forgotten in his delusional state of what it is actually like to live with someone who routinely welds beans to the pan in the simplest of cooking tasks and, due to needing absolute silence to sleep, wears earplugs which inevitably fall out during the night and end up in the most unlikeliest and irritating of places).

I'd finally understood that I was going to have to part with a considerable amount of cash, and had agreed with my credit card that, in these circumstances, it was okay and I really would pay it off in a month or so. I'd found my ideal traveling dates.

My parents had even arranged their overnight accommodation so they could come and rescue their bedraggled and miserable daughter when I touched down in Heathrow after what would most likely be a fairly emotional farewell in Auckland and a bloody long journey in which to ponder it.

And, most bizarrely of all, I'd agreed to work out there.

In fact, and this is the bit that really stings, it was my idea. Just until the start of August, to finish a project that was 'my baby'. My justification was that my boyfriend was hardly in the position to entertain me and take me sightseeing when I was there, so I might as well earn some money instead of moping around waiting for him to return for the few hours a night we would spend together.

It was a perfect plan. I'd thought of all the possibilities, all the problems, all the issues. And, as far as I could see, I'd combated them all, I'd preempted all feasible possibilities, I was, in my own humble opinion, a genius organiser and really quite amazing.

But I hadn't considered everything.

I was sent an email from ebookers.com on Monday evening at 7pm telling me that I was required to pay an extra £20 in airline taxes or my ticket would be cancelled. And I had 23 hours in which to do this.

Due to my trip to London, I received this email, along with a rather brief email that had followed it precisely 23 hours later, on Wednesday morning at 7:30.

At first I thought it might have been spam or a hoax, a bizarre £20 ransom for my tickets or something equally as inexplicable (it was very early and I was PreTea so anything was possible in my sleep addled brain). After all, I had booked with TravelBag and not ebookers, and the reference numer was completely different.

I did my research, and put two and two together by a piece of Sherlock Holmes worthy investigative techniques: some of the email addresses on TravelBag actually went to ebookers.

I tearfully skyped my boyfriend and told him what had happened (at this point a mere rebooking was in the realms of logical thought, and I was not). He then said that he had received some news that day also.

He was being moved into new accommodation at the end of June. Which, as far as I can gather, hasn't been finished being built yet. This accommodation may, or may not, be complete by then, meaning he may be moving in or he may be housed in temporary accommodation until it is complete, as the company's current tenancy is coming to an end. This new accommodation may, or may not, have internet access at this point. And, from his experience so far, this was erring unhappily on the 'not' side of things.

For most visiting girlfriends, I'm sure this really isn't a concern. For The WebStress, who really kind of needs the internet to be a web designer, it is.

In approximately 20 minutes my whole trip was in tatters, as were my fragile nerves.

Now some people might have winged it, got out there and hoped for the best, been lucky. As I am not, by habit, a lucky person, therefore I take as few risks as feasibly possible, I am extremely reluctant to take the chance card. Mine would most likely say 'go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect £200, and you've no chance of an appeal, sucker' rather than 'wahey, 8mb wireless broadband, unlimited downloads and a flawless connection!'. There's a possible 99.8% chance all would be okay. But the .2% probability that everything would not had my name slapped unavoidably over it.

When the call ended, fate's hefty hand in things quickly became apparent. I had no ticket. But that's just as well because I couldn't work out there. However, fate was starting to piss me off a little. Because, yes I was minus a ticket and could therefore continue my work in the UK rather than being workless in NZ, I was still very much 'without boyfriend' and that wasn't a very fun state to be in.

So I got drunk. Slept on it. Woke up (with a headache). And awaited the receiving of fate's destiny card that would tell me exactly what to do, whether to abandon all work commitment and financial stability and certainly not get a reference, and follow my heart (costly but satisfying) or whether to stick out the end of the project, and a few more weeks without my boyfriend, and then go over for a holiday.

I hate letting people down, so much so that I will do over and above to ensure that I don't as much of the time as possible, or at least let them know how awful I feel if I donfulfillfil my intentions. If I leave work, I leave a project that I put blood sweat and tears (literally, although I'm not so sure about the blood thing) into getting approved. It was, not to put too much weight on it, the reason I stayed with the company. And I let people down.

And if I don't go, well then, I hurt. A lot.

A few extra weeks to those who haven't endured a separation may not seem like an awful lot. But I have managed 5 weeks so far, and I bloody know it. And, if I'm honest, without work to do, I'm going to get mightily bored waiting for my boyfriend to return on an evening. While I'd love to be an Indiana Jones esque explorer and roam all over New Zealand, well, that's not really seeing my boyfriend either and if I'm going to be so adventurous then I'd quite like to do it when its all hot and sunny, and not in the middle of winter.

I guess, really, I know what I'm going to do. But it really, really sucks.

16 hours in London in 3” heels

I don’t wear heels. I am a trainer girl through and through. I am more fluid in a hefty pair of wellies than I am in any shoe of the raised variety. I will occasionally don a pair of boots if the mood takes me, but two of the three pairs I own are very much ‘without heel’.

The other pair are Nine West, grey leather and the most beautiful footwear I have ever worn. They are the most expensive item of clothing I have ever owned (purchased in a terrifying abuse of my credit card that I never knew I was capable of in a heart palpitating shopping trip that Yorkshire Lass took me on during a period of severe grumpiness on my part and revision-distraction on hers, coaxing me into the doors of Top Shop on Oxford Street, unaware that I would emerge £270 poorer but a great deal happier).

Of late, I have been attempting to fulfil my delusions of womanliness and indulging in feminine wiles by purchasing a number of dresses (I haven’t yet gained the courage to replace my depleting make-up, having dismissed a replacement No.7 lipstick today after seeing a horrendous price tag of £9, but one step at a time) and generally trying to look a little bit like a lady and less like a lesbian dog walker (that now is reserved purely for dog-walking and house-bound times). I’d say I’m hitting somewhere vaguely near the mark about 6.7% out of ten (gym visits not included; I still have yet to replace my PE gear with clothes that have been specially bought for such occasions, rather than ones that have been relegated to exercise wear from being too poorly to be used in polite company).

So I thought, for a change, instead of wearing my leaking, muddy, and, lets be honest, past it trainers, I thought I’d dabble in what it really was like to be a lady in London (or as near to it as I was ever going to achieve, when my perspiration issue, lack of make-up application skills and bulky ‘I’ve got a laptop in here!’ backpack were heavily in place and those issues are certainly not going anywhere).

So, ignoring the fact that the bottoms of my jeans were so butchered I actually had to cut off a string of denim trailing from the bottom of one of them (the other was long gone), I left Leeds feeling that I’d scrubbed up pretty well really.

It didn’t really start to go wrong until late Monday night, when I arrived at my tube destination and, even with an alcohol haze gently comforting me, the pain was starting to creep through, little by little. Luckily my friend’s boyfriend arrived like a knight in shining armour and escorted me home, balanced precariously on the back of his push bike hurtling around the back streets of Kensington.

Tuesday morning, nervously, I pulled on my boots once again. If the night before is bad, the morning after really ensures any pain that was starting to be visible even through the most alcoholic of blankets is endured ten-fold to make up for it.

I learnt several things yesterday on what it is like to be a lady in London (apart from the disturbing realisation I have been walking to a fashion that has meant my left heel has worn down so considerably on the inside that I am surprised I haven’t started walking around in circles and I am now going to have to do something I have never even considered before let alone had the need to attempt: a re-heel).

For anyone who is thinking of attempting such madness in The Big Smoke for any prolonged period of time and is determined to conquer public transport or any other manner of walking/standing/swaying activities, here are my findings:

- Being tall(er) on the tube reduces claustrophobia considerably as you are able to see beyond sweat drenched armpits and copies of the Metro;
- It is impossible to go anywhere at more than 2 miles an hour so you need to leave 30 minutes earlier to get to your destination on time;
- Tube and train station floors are slippery and caution must be taken at all times (if in doubt, best avoid altogether and get a taxi);
- My boots are the noisiest shoes ever to be worn by anyone, ever;
- Heels, still, despite all my desperate attempts to be ladylike, make me walk like a transvestite;
- You can relieve the pain a little by hanging your heels off the back of an escalator step but beware when you get to the top you need to be in a situation to whip them up quickly so you don’t a. fall over or b. get trapped and then fall over;
- Legs can sweat, apparently (NB: this only applies to boot-wearing as far as I am aware, but better not be too hasty in that assumption);
- You have a lot further to fall;
- Stupidly tiny heels can, and will, get stuck in any nook, cranny and crevice that they come across (and will go out of their way to investigate other accident-inducing, humiliating ordeals;
- If you want to wear 3” heels in London, stay inside, with your feet up and make people bring you wine.

Phishing

I am incredibly busy today, with two hours to go until I need to leave to catch a train and a mountain of work that even thinking about is giving me vertigo.

But I am so enraged and utterly disgusted that I needed to vent to gain any reminance of productivity from my time left.

On Friday I received a phishing email to my work email account, which I never give out to anyone other than work colleagues and that I only receive work emails to (with the exception of the inevitable 'Friday Forward' from a client that shows their true colours).

The content read as follows:

While, helpfully, Thunderbird pointed out that this may be a piece of spam, I was one step ahead.

The reason?

I don't actually have an HSBC account.

Having only once received a phishing email before, that was so painfully blatant I was tempted to write back to them with a list of corrections and mistakes highlighted in red, I found this example quite intriguing.

The link, claiming to be to some obscure folder location on the HSBC account linked to some totally unrelated ip address (obviously). But other than that (and obviously that banks state over and over again that they never ever require you to enter your login details online in full at any time) to the inexperienced user the email will have looked pretty convincing.

I sighed, wondering what had become of yet another exploited channel of human trust and deleted this email.

Then, today, I received another, this time from Barclays:


I am terrible at filling out forms, returning slips, doing any thing, really, that I don't actually have to do involving stamps, tick boxes, post offices and 'free prize draws' (I wonder how many I-pods I really could have won by now...). Customer service forms have sat on my desk untouched for months until I finally realised that, yes, I am that hopeless and that poor man from Admiral (yes, I really am sorry, your customer service was outstanding and you were really very nice, but I can't remember your name and I don't have a stamp...) will never receive his acclaim.

Of course I ignore junk mail, but letter after letter from my university, for example, asking me about my career development have been binned (partly because I couldn't quite get the courage to put my job title down in print, I like maintaining an air of mystery regarding my career, to my conscious at least, its just a matter of convincing yourself of a non-truth...).

But I was incensed. I was a woman possessed. I was not going to let this pass. For once, I was going to do a good deed for my fellow online banker. Without my online bank facility I would have to trudge to my branch on a weekly basis (as I play ping-pong with my tax account and my current account) and even more so in the days leading up to pay-day. I was determined that I would help fight the good fight against these evil bastards that were attempting to exploit my fellow user.

So I scoured Barclays' website for some way of recording this email. Nothing was immediately obvious so I gave the first number a call.

Why they needed my name I don't know, but I humoured them, I was, after all, feeling generous and helpful. I explained the situation, sure my helpful assistant would be all too willing to divulge an email address for me to report this crime to.

After a few ummms and ahhhs and oooohs her advice was: pop into my local branch and give it to them.

Right.

Because, of course, I've that much time.

I wanted to point out that I wasn't doing this for fun, I wasn't the sort of person who spent their afternoons writing to Points of View and peeking out of the curtain at their next door neighbours then reporting their antics to all who would listen. I was doing a good deed, but lets not push it, I'm not a saint.

I did attempt to explain this, in a slightly more 'flowery' way. But that was all I was going to get out of her. I eventually found a spam email reporter embedded in the site but it wasn't easy.

Next, I thought, as I was on a very poor roll, I'd give HSBC the same generous treatment, as I didn't want to instill favouritism.

HSBC, to their credit, have a wealth of information on internet security on their website. But an email address to report such breaches?

Nope. Not a sausage. I ended up ringing the head office in London.

The Asian gentleman on the other end of the line at least has a spiel. Which he repeated again and again. That I was not to open the email, that I was not to put in my details (I interjected, fighting against his waffle, on several occasions that I was NOT an HSBC customer and had no details to put in but that wasn't going to stop him in full flow). I asked if there was an email address I could send it to. No. I wasn't allowed in case I passed on a virus. Nice. He said they'd already be aware of this, I argued that this may be a new case of phishing but, alas, my cries were met with a brick wall of words from someone who clearly had no idea what he was talking about. His closing phrase was that I should install anti virus software and a firewall.

Because, of course, I'm only web designer with a boyfriend who was a former ICT officer and, oh god, I didn't think of doing that.

So I got off the phone in nothing less than a rage. Not at the phishers, but at the complete incompetence of those trying to prevent such breaches of security and protect their loyal customers. I was treated, in my view, appallingly, and thus I will not be banking with them in the foreseeable future (I'd like to say forever but I'm a little weak and their mortgage interest rates may be favourable in a few years). This is no real loss to them, as I have a substantial overdraft that I will, on occasions, make good use of and a poorly looking sum in my savings account. But if I had a customer service form here right now it would be going in the post today with a first class stamp and all the 'totally unsatisfied' boxes angrily ticked.

I was totally shocked at the way I was dealt with and the complete lack of understanding that these people had. I have not yet received such spam 'from' my own bank, and can only hope when I report it I will be treated a little better.

I apologise greatly to all those users who may have been scammed by such emails (I have included the screenshots to hopefully prevent someone somewhere from accidentally clicking on a link that will result in a financial loss, and trust me, it can happen to the most net-savvy of us on an off day, or even in a momentary lack of concentration). I tried.

Now I am considerably behind on my work and will thus have to work on the train instead of writing to my boyfriend, which I apologise in advance for.

Right, rant over. Rollovers to attend to.

Puppy Training Class Lesson 2: You will fail.

Yesterday it was a month since my boyfriend left for New Zealand.

Whether that was a contributing factor, or my complete lack of sleep over the last few nights had destroyed any hint of self preservation and self control, or having not practiced any of the commands since my previous lesson, I don't know.

All I know is that the class didn't go, how do I put this, as well as I'd have liked.

I had the Devil Child this week, to give my SP a break. And (pre-class) I liked the challenge. No, I liked the idea of the challenge.

I dreamed of achieving the role of being the one teacher that could get through to their unruly pupil, that could grasp onto their ability and intelligence and energy and harness it. And, as that teacher, I would develop a bond beyond penetration by any other, I would receive praise for my natural ability and adept skills, I would help said pupil conquer their fears or anger or resentment and craft them into a glorification of their former selves.

But I seemed to have forgotten somewhere along the way that I was dealing with the Devil Child and, at the end of the day, she was going to do what she damn well wanted, and not a bit more.

I admit, I wasn't on form. Bouts of hysterics and the final opening of the floodgates, that I'd kept tightly under lock and key since my boyfriend's departure, earlier in the day (with only a brief buckling in the bleach-phone incident that has, sadly, still not been resolved and I am back to my old Nokia once again, with the piercingly cheerful Indiana-Jones-goes-midi-theme-tune) had left me exhausted, fragile and slightly unhinged.

I'd lost the plot a long time previous to this watery outburst if I'm honest. My emotions had been pounding on the damn wall (in retrospect, the sleepless nights were not only caused by this, but also broke the banks), just waiting for one small crack to appear, just wide enough so they could actually release themselves and stop making me be so bloody uptight.

But even this scenario had given me reason to think the session was going to be fine-and-dandy as the puppies, trying to silence the abominable racket that their dog-sitter was making, came over to lick my face, so I was unable to tell what was hound saliva and WebStress tears (yes, I did wash my face after). I thought: they know, they understand. There's no way they'd possibly want to humiliate and upset me, not after sensing my vulnerability.

Yep, that is of course exactly what they weren't thinking.

So, we set off, ham in pockets, dogs yanking enthusiastically on leads, glass of wine still in the wine box (yes we have reached the height of coupledom through the purchase of a large box of cheap Californian white) and a class to face.

There are mostly big dogs in our class. 'Our' two pups are accompanied in size by only one other cocker spaniel. The rest are mainly Alsatians, with a few collies and one big-black-scary dog. But, instead of attempting to scratch their eyes and bark at them offensively as she does to most mutts encountered on walks, the Devil Child greeted them all with a bit of a sniff and mild indifference (he however was on his back, displaying his belly in proud submission as usual).

I had no recollection of any commands, but I wasn't too concerned. In the previous class, we'd watched each group in turn perform the commands. Easy: I'd watch, learn and, fingers crossed, remember.

But, no.

This week, for a change because we were outside, we were all going to do the first lot of commands in one group. Because, of course, that was going to be a much better idea.

I didn't have time to panic: we were up and commands were being hurled. The Devil Child stared intently at me trying desperately to interpret what her owner was whittering on about. I battled my way through a series of commands (stay, sit-stay, wait, down-stay) that she did, bless her, exactly the same thing for every time. Because I had no idea what the bloody hell I was doing.

There was no remembrance flooding back, this was not like riding a bike. This was out of my comfort zone and into a fire, being yelled at by a poker-hot instructor and attempting to command a dog who really didn't know what I was getting at.

At the end of the final opening exercise, where the Devil Child had finally given up trying to interpret my vague and panic-ridden commands and was more interested in swallowing large clumps of grass instead of doing her 'down-stay' (which, ironically, up until this week she'd done in favour of every other exercise, regardless of command), the instructor bellowed 'that was rubbish'. And stared, long and hard. At me.

Now I am not wholly experienced with dealing with terrifying, commanding characters such as our instructor. She communicates with the dog owners with much the same and, occasionally, less regard than the dogs. On the whole, I am used to the nicely-nicely approach. If she'd have illustrated her phrases with 'maybes' and 'slight improvements' and 'just a bit of practices' then I'd have happily accepted her criticism. But she wasn't going to waste her breath trying to cushion the bruised ego of her tutee. She wasn't there to be nice. She was there to train dogs.

So, with my voice somewhere between shakey and hysterical, I continued the exercises, my eyes pleading with a dog who, by this point, had figured out that her 'owner' was collapsing into self-doubt and nursing her wounded pride, and was therefore not going to dream of being commanded by such a weak leader and someone who clearly had no idea what they were doing.

My SP, gently, tried to advise me of how to regain control of the Devil Child (and my dignity). Self-control and pride in tatters (and covered in ham/saliva) I snapped, to my great regret (I was rapidly shedding friends in the class, the instructor and the Devil Child already realising that I had very little backbone and needed to toughen the hell up), and she recoiled. But, after a quick and thorough review of my unbecoming character, I managed to continue through the class, even producing some wonderful praise-worthy results in the 'fetch' exercise (not that I had anything to do with it, she just acts naturally as a very effective boomerang).

We escaped finally back to several glasses of wine and I shared my self-criticism with my SP. She suggested that perhaps if I wasn't comfortable I didn't have to go next week. But the stubbornness within me, the aspiration to be the teacher I failed so spectacularly to be, the wondering of how close I was, the refusal to be beaten has developed and un-negotiable drive that I really don't have any choice to surpress means that I'll be back there, same time, same place, for round 3.

So, I have 6 days in which to become Dog Trainer extraordinaire. Or at least manage a down-stay.

Assisted Mobile Suicide or Accidental Murder?

I have a brand spanking new phone. It is a little over a month old, and it is beautiful. Having been too terrified and ignorant to take the all-too-brave step of swapping to Sony Ericsson and therefore following the path of the rest of my family, I had opted for yet another Nokia.

We were getting along just fine. I wasn't wonderfully happy that it seemed to resist learning any new words unlike my old phone (maybe it was opposed to gratuitous swearing and the consistent use of the words 'warm ribena' in text messages, maybe it felt it had a higher calling, it certainly refused point blank to help me out when I was attempting to spell a word but couldn't quite get it right, its tiny chips glaring at me from deep within the casing as if to say 'you don't know how to spell THAT?').

But other than that, we were going to be the best of friends.

With thanks to my boyfriend I'd mastered the art of bluetooth, and was swapping images and tunes beneath my phone and my laptop like there was no tomorrow. I even had an mp3 as my alarm. Bearing in mind this is coming from someone who is terrified of the mere thought of programming a video player (please kindly avoid that correlation and my fear of all things technical and my current career path), I was really rather impressed with myself. I'd filmed one (incredibly dull) video and even (accidentally) recorded some background noise with the sound recorder. I was a master at taking photos and was sending them to friends and family like there was no tomorrow.

And, most importantly, it was my lifeline between myself and my boyfriend.

Upgrading my phone was a commitment I had spent many an hour debating. So much so that by the time I came to upgrade my phone and take that big step into the world of modern technology, it was over a year past my original upgrade date.

I was so embracing of this upgrade and my move into new territory I even bought a bluetooth set for the car (which, thankfully, considering the circumstances, I have still yet to figure out. All I can make it do is the startup tune and then it just blinks at me expectantly).

But, alas, it was not to be. I don't know if it was me, whether it was bitterly disappointed by the misuse its owner, clearly an idiot, was going to endure it to over the coming 18 months of the contract she had stapled myself to.

Maybe this bitter accident was merely that: an accident.

But somehow I'm struggling to believe that it didn't help its exit a little (I could admit that I'm a clumsy fool but my anger has yet to subside and its best I aim it at the defenseless gadget that won't turn on to dignify me with any sort of response or explanation for its hasty departure than actually blame myself).

It had to happen while I was cleaning of all things. The amount of times my old phone resisted the toilet and precariously placed glasses of water was quite astounding. I really thought if it was going to go, it'd be one of them, at least. The law of averages seemed evident of that.

But no. When I came to drain the sink of bleach (oh yes, it was going out in style) after cleaning the bathroom, my beautiful new phone stared blankly up at me. I knew I was losing it then.

I carried it, whimpering and yelling to myself desperately, into my room and tried desperately to rip its cover off, all the time watching its poor screen filling up slowly with bleach infused water, feeling the drips come out of its case onto my hands. Eventually I wrenched it off and spread out its innards on the duvet. Everything was wet.

I should have known then it was gone. It had been under for a good few minutes. I realised I must have accidentally knocked it off at some point, but I thought the bang had just been a bottle of cleaning fluids onto the floor.

How wrong I'd been.

My SP rushed to my rescue, reassuring me that she had resurrected phones many times before from seemingly dire situations. We nursed it, wrapping it up in a blanket and placing it inside the airing cupboard, hoping.

Two days passed. I got on with things. My sim at least was salvaged and I am currently borrowing my SP's work handset (although I hadn't, until today, had the will to program any settings other than the default, while that tiny flicker of hope was alive). Then yesterday, feeling brave, I went to retrieve it, to see if a miracle had happened.

My phone wasn't there (this is unfolding to be some sort of bizarre modernisation of the Easter Story...). The towel it had been wrapped in was, but all the pieces were missing.

I spoke to my SP later that day. She looked at me sadly and I knew. She had tried the phone, bless her, to spare me of the disappointment. And: Absolutely bugger all.

Today, in one last ditch attempt, I tried the on button for the last time.

That little bugger. Absolutely bloody nothing. Not a sausage.

If I report this idiotic crime to Orange, they will charge me £5 a month insurance for the priviledge of replacing my phone, for the rest of my 18 month contract (thus paying for the phone itself in that time). So, I am awaiting the arrival of my old phone, that I'd packed away in a box, to gather dust for eternity (or until someone I knew did something stupid with their phone). At least I get the beautifully crafted rendition of the Indiana Jones theme tune back as my ring tone.

I am trying to deduce the moral of this story, and whether my phone had any influence over its destiny (maybe it will rise up again as some technological God or, perhaps, a very small Darth Vader. Now that's a thought.).

All I have managed to extract from this tale are two possible morals:

1. I should possibly stop being so clumsy and taking electrical items near water and/or bleach (that should apply to any form of liquid really but I don't want to impose too many restrictions);
2. I should never clean the bathroom again

While I feel that, perhaps, what intelligence I have (which is obviously limited as this post clearly demonstrates) is leaning more to point 1., I have a feeling I'd rather opt for the latter.

Home Sweet Home?

Last night, my boyfriend gently broke the news to me that yet another one of our couple friends have put a deposit down on a house. And, retrospectively, I didn't take the news too well.

This followed a night with some of my SP's friends, who are, at merely a year older than me, happily married and settled in domestic bliss, so far so that they have even begun to discuss holidays on top of their mortgages and have decking. Proper, banistered decking, with a few stairs down into the garden and two deckchairs spread out in expectancy, waiting for the Bradford sunshine and accompanying barbecues. And to top it off, a chiminea taking centre stage.

They all flooded towards me, the married, mortgaged couples, settling into their futures. There was even talk, and quite extensive talk at that, about...(now this is still way beyond me, if my boyfriend was trying to halt the countdown of the inner tickings of my biological clock and put an end to any urges of a maternal instinct all he had to do was present me with two puppies)...babies.

Several of my SP's friends now have a sprog or two in tow, and are considering seconds. Luckily, my friends have yet to pursue that route, which means that I'm carefully clutching onto another year where it doesn't matter if I don't remember anyone's birthday and noone calls me Auntie Webstress (apart from my SP when she's addressing the dogs, but I can cope with being an aunt of her two furry friends, the may not have got the nack of writing thank-you notes but then I don't have to supply thoughtful and entertaining gifts to warrant them - I have a feeling I'll be a 'Voucher Aunt').

But it won't be long before one or two of my friends are dreaming of the patter of tiny footprints. And I have to start noting dates and thinking that baby vomit on my shoulder and snot dribbling down their fat, overblown faces really is kind of cute (which it most certainly is not).

In London, I was able to justify my lack of stable home environment as no-one I knew had even thought of a mortgage, let alone realised that they were most likely to be laughed at crossing any Estate Agent's door with less than 250,000 in their back pocket (oddly, apart from us, but that was before we realised to the full extent that I was not, lets say, suited to London Life).

We trialled it for 6 months in a beautiful flat which had an antique oversized toilet seat and a bedroom so cold that I can only imagine it was set on a strategically positioned lay line, as the rest of the house was toasty-warm. Our neighbours were quiet, apart from the rather large woman beneath who used to have Sunday parties and my boyfriend and I were continually disgusted that someone wanted to stay up beyond 10pm on a Sunday night which resulted in us turning up David Attenborough to drown out the trance music below (we had, by this point, accepted our premature middleagedom with welcome arms and were beginning to give in to our continual exhaustedness, made worse by the London Commute). We had a beautiful view across the London rooftops from one view (the other window looked out onto a frequently bricked up block of unwelcoming council flats and occasionally the odd prostitute or two, but I just didn't look out of that one). I even had my own kitchen where I could prepare beans on toast to my heart's content (and frequently did) with my own clean utensils.

But this trial period in our 'home' was tainted in our closing months. Our boiler started spewing out gas, leaving us, due to appalling management, without central heating, cooking facilities and hot water for an entire week in January. I had more curt conversations with our letting agency than I have with the people at British Gas (which, over the years, has summounted to a fair few). To add fuel to the (non-existent) fire, a few days before Christmas, we had received a letter basically telling us to get the hell out of the house in two months as our landlady (who was, by all accounts, evil, and that was the description by one of the letting agency staff, we still remain spared of that terror) had decided to rent the property to her friends.

Those last two months in our flat, making up a total of 1/3rd of our time in our own home as a couple, were some of the most miserable times I've had in a while. It is difficult to see past the bleach-infused glasses to the happy times that we had together in that flat, as the closing days were spent swearing profusely about the terrible management, how our bond was to be slashed for various things that we had not done (its happened all too often before), and how it was clear that noone had ever given the flat a thorough clean before (which, obviously, included us but we were easily able to brush over that and concentrate our energies on slagging off previous tenants).

But I have now been without my own home for 2 months and am beginning to long for spaces that are mine, where I decide to put things, what I decide to do with things. I have been living with a few belongings for over 8 weeks and am consistently recycling the same few pieces of jewelry, re-stacking the same clothes (which are currently all winter clothes, but its just as well seeing as Bradford remembered briefly what Spring was about last week, and then promptly forgot, settling for sharp winds and battering rain instead, once I had just become acclimatised to not wearing socks in bed).

I will finally have a home of my own again in September 2007. I have no idea of where that will be in the country, or, possibly, the world, but it will be a home. I wonder how long it will be before I complain about its imperfections and its problems. I did too quickly with mine, perhaps. Although it was easier to leave a home we had ended up despising than one that still has your heart.

I have put down my foot with my boyfriend: I shall never rent again. While, amazingly, we received the entirety of our bond back, I don't hold out hopes for my previous accommodation (Yorkshire Lass's current house), and have previously lost, at least parts of, several previous bonds. I have been placed in accommodation that I tolerated at the time but in retrospect it should have been condemned (a fellow student's house actually was). I have dealt with my fair share of unscrupulous landlords and psychotic housemates and don't wish to relive these experiences ever, ever again.

One memorable occasion in Bradford, I woke at midnight to hear voices in the kitchen next to my bedroom. These voices turned out to be our landlord and several of his friends with a blowtorch (and an abandonment of all safety regulations) attempting to fix our boiler. This was around the time that he also thought it was a good idea to pull down our bathroom ceiling, meaning that we were without washing or cooking facilities for a month and became regulars at the swimming pool (for which, after threatening him with the small claims court, we managed to reduce our rent to half pay for the duration, although I don't think that really helped to cover our Wetherspoons meals).

This, incidentally, was the house that my housemate, attempting to get a piece of toast out of the toaster, produced half a mouse (its frazzled head followed shortly after). And I was eating toast at the time. This house also played host to 5 rats that regularly came out in the yard that my ground floor bedroom window looked out onto. And that I had to move out of a week early because a mouse had committed suicide under my bedroom floorboards. (These tales are, I should add, extremely tame in comparison to some Bradfordian student stories).

Not renting, for the next 18 months at least, is actually quite a realistic plan. Renting from your friends and parents isn't quite the same, they don't expect a bond for a start (well, at least, I hope they don't, I really should discuss that...). My boyfriend has, however, gently pointed out that a penniless writer and someone with a terrifying career development loan might not be a mortgage lender's idea of first time buyer heaven and that we may have to rent again. I am fiercely ignoring this possibility and have already planted imaginary daffodils (the only thing that remain hardy enough to suffer under my green fingers) in invisible window boxes in a place of my own.

I gave myself a severe talking to after I went to bed last night (not out loud, obviously. That would just be weird, it would disturb the dogs and my SP's partner might have discussions about evicting my monologging self). It is all too easy to compare the physicalities of what I have with my friends.

I have been given the opportunity to follow my dream that in another life my mortgaged arse would never have been able to contemplate. I can spend my wage in TK Maxx (and that's a lot of clothes) without having to assign money for leaking pipes. I have never in my life spent a day tile shopping. I do not go to B & Q at the weekend to discuss the merits of various shower attachments (maybe I should rephrase that...).

I have never seen a bank holiday advert for half price sofas at DFS and thought 'that's worth a look...'. I have absolutely no commitments and, should I desire, I could take off tomorrow (although I wouldn't, lets not get carried away here, I'm not that adventurous, that sort of thing needs planning). I have two physically valuable items in my life. And my laptop is worth more than my car (that isn't saying a gread deal on my laptop's front but my dear car is soldiering valiantly on, even if she has cost me over a grand since my boyfriend fled the country).

It takes a while to remind myself that all these things will come, in time. I am not a particularly patient person and, while I do not want everything today, sometime tomorrow or by the end of the week would be quite nice.

At least, for the time being, while my boyfriend and I do what we need to do, my friends and my sister will humour me by letting me stay and cook beans on toast and make a cup of tea or twelve in their house.

Pupdate

I walked into the kitchen this morning, approximately 5 minutes after my alarm went off.

And I was faced with a sea of puppy excrement.

It wasn't in neat, copeable piles either. Oh no. Not only had they decided to relieve themselves right by the door, they had also clearly decided to dance through the resulting mess in gay abandon, making it oh-so-much-more difficult to clean up.

They are unimpressed with the general affairs of their lives at the moment. Both puppies are currently carrying around cumbersome plastic bonnets, in an effort to prevent them trying to attack their stitches which has worked to varying degrees, however they have already managed on several occasions to remove them and he has even found out that the chord that attaches the cone to her can be used as a useful strangling method during fighting and has begun to exploit this weakness deftly.

Their walks have been dramatically slashed and when they are allowed out it is on lead restriction only. Their playtime hindered through the unfriendly plastic headgear. They have to sleep in separate rooms to prevent them from aggravating each other's wounds. And, to really put the boot in, they've both lost their bits.

You can understand their frustration. Her wound is more severe, she has more stitches and hers was a more serious operation. But on the other side of the coin, he now has no balls. Neither are very impressed with the situation. Luckily he is hopefully young enough not to notice their absence and the impact of that on his randiness which I had witnessed the inklings of at training last week.

We have had some strange looks in the park. It is fairly unusual to see two such miserable, sorry looking puppies crashing into each other and various objects that they will go out of their way to put in their way (they seem to have not yet understood the correlation from their plastic cones to their poor spacial awareness and become frustrated and confused when they bang into things, much like my own terrible parallel and reverse parking where the reflections in the mirrors do not connect to any understanding within my own brain and I sit there in a flap or will reverse over curbs, apologising to my car profusely, in order to get out of the situation). They did, however, have the upper hand the other day when the heavens opened and left their hapless walkers drenched whilst they were protected with a handy portable umbrella (look, no paws!).

As a result of their restrictions, they are kept in relative confinement to protect themselves (although you try telling them its for their own good. He has developed an excruciating whine in which he is clearly attempting to communicate with the neighbours how much he is suffering (forgetting he is well fed and well loved, obviously, but then again, he has no testicles). She, the Devil Child, has quietened, rarely whimpering, an imploring look in her eyes, but take a look again, there, buried deep beneath the pools of unhappiness there it is: she's out for revenge once she's got the damn thing off. And most likely it will continue through her every waking moment until the end of her days.

So that's something to look forward to.

For the time being they utilise to great effect the only thing that they are armed with: the ability to piss and shit. Everywhere.

So this morning, bleary eyed and empty stomached (which was probably a good thing considering the circumstances) my SP and I set about cleaning up the mess and, as normal, she desposited what she could down the toilet.

Yesterday in the pub my SP and her mum were discussing basic bodily functions that they enjoy expressing with one another, and how my SP's sister goes even further in such displays.

I am incredibly prudish when faced with such topics and it is an openness that I have never been able to even contemplate, let alone grasp. Until recently, I didn't even know how to burp on demand (I was taught these particular expertise by my boyfriend's 7 year old cousin). I have never been able to talk about matters of expulsion and am easily embarrassed when discussing anything related to me.

However, I have the unsettling ability to deal with excrement on a really rather worrying level.

As a university student in Cornwall for the summer and faced with lengthy summers working in Ginsters, I opted for a route that would have left many running for the safety of those mass produced cheese and onion pasties. I decided that I would instead opt for working with one of the West Country's other successful industry (yep, that's the lot. That and garden centres, and I did my fair share of that pre-uni anyway).

Old people.

After two years' holiday work in nursing and residential care homes, I was prepared for everything that could be thrown at me. And that most certainly involves, luckily, puppy-poo. I don't enjoy it, and there are times that it flips the contents of my stomach like a pancake, leaving its insides straddled upside-down and clinging desperately to my stomach's unstable ceiling, waiting for the inevitable drop. But I can deal with an awful lot (apart from phlegm, that's just taking the piss).

The indignity and the terrible fragility, the loss of ability and the enforced reliance and dependence of aging was something that greatly shocked me on working in a home. There were those who accepted their lot, or who opted for madness and blissful ignorance (my personal favourite, if we get an option later in life). But there were those who hated every moment of their physical demise and their self-control over their collapsing bodies.

When I entered a care home, I was shocked at the black humour that came from the care assistants I worked alongside. The seeming disregard of the residents, talking about their bowel movements as if they really were conversational masterpieces. But, I learnt quickly, the majority of these assistants cared deeply for the residents and it was just how they dealt with the situation, the decay, the ending of life. And I became like that myself (my friends really rather loathed my post-work pub chat, and people rarely asked 'how was your day?' more than once).

We saw these residents at the end of their lives, whether that was a year or 20 years, and never had the difficulty of the association of who they were with who they had been, and who they still were inside. But it was incredibly difficult to see their children with them, not knowing where to look or what do to or how to think or feel when we came in to care for them.

Up until that point, I had no idea how or why people dealt with babies, those tiny little creatures that expelled fluids and solids from every available orifice, and didn't mind. But I learnt to understand. One memorable occasion when I was shat on from a great height on Christmas Eve when maneuvering someone into a bath with a hoist proved such patience and understanding (even though it was down a glowing white uniform).

It still, however, tries your temper a little bit, even for the most virtuous or cast iron stomached, when you step in it, as my poor SP did the other day.

After my SP had gone to work, things in the toilet began to go horribly wrong.

inadvertently those puppies had caused more of a disaster with their morning's antics than we could have possibly imagined. An almighty blockage. My SP's poor partner is currently trying to negotiate the mess that looks somewhat like a miniature Glastonbury sewage pit. On the 4th day. And the poor bloke isn't blessed with the cast iron stomach that my SP and I have developed through experience.

I should go and help him. My justification for not was that I had a post to write.