brighton belle

real life

2006-08-08T15:35:00.000+01:00

So I finished university, I got a first, from supposedly the best university in the country for my subject (according to the Guardian, no surprise given the same simpering pseudo left wing sympathies they share) and can i get a decent job? Hell no. I earn more or less minimum wage and am having to scrape an existence on about £170 week. Shouldn't complain cos it isn't that bad, but I actually earned more before I went to university, and I'm beginning to wonder if it was all a waste of time and money, which is really encouraging as I'm meant to be going back for part-time post grad study. I've applied for all these jobs and haven't even had an interview - what am I doing wrong???
As I mainly work at night, and I can't adjust my sleep pattern to fit my new schedule, I sit around the house all day, half asleep, depressed and bored out my mind. I don't care leave the house - I have an awful compulsion to spend any money I have on me, and there are far too many things to spend your money on in brighton: coffee; food; beer; beautiful clothes; even more beautiful rent boys (joking about the last one). So basically I have had way too much time to myself, and whenever I spend all this time alone I get depressed. I think partly because it reminds me so much of being a teenager, sitting in my room, crying and crying and crying and gradually discovering that the only thing that would stop me from crying was to cut myself, so that I had a physical manifestation of my pain to focus on, a wound that could heal, that I could see and care for, rather than ones that I could never quite find, and kept on hurting, regardless of anything I did to try and cure it.
So basically, I’ve been more down these past couple of months than I have been in years. It’s fucking up my relationship more than I realised too. I never, ever, ever usually let myself lose my temper with people, but I yelled at my boyfriend the other day, really yelled, for no reason. That’s not the kind of person I want to be, because I have a filthy temper, and I am so terrifying when I’m angry. So to lose my rag, without even noticing that I’m doing it really scares me. After I shouted, he walked off, and (I feel so bad for this) it didn’t occur to me for about half an hour that I’d hurt him. I find it so hard to trust that people love me, and I don’t expect to be able to hurt anyone, because I can’t believe that anyone could care for me enough for me to be able to hurt them. It’s selfishness, caught up with self hatred, which is a bit of a Gordian knot of emotions to unravel. I talked to JG about this, and then I realised the enormity of what I’m doing to him; it’s abuse, of a kind that I’ve been subject to in relationships, and would now, having been through it once, wouldn’t put up with. I’d walk out on anyone who did it to me. So I asked him if he wanted to take some time apart from me, give me a few months to try and clear my head. I’m not sure if this is the hard option or the easy way out. When I think about my relationship, I’m sometimes so sure that this is it, that I want to be with him long term, have kids with him, tie my life to his, but I doubt it sometimes too, I was 20 when we met, and I’ve never been one for blind faith in anything.
I don’t know how I can change myself, I don’t think I really have the strength or the will power to drag myself out of depression. I threw a drink at my boyfriend and stormed out a pub the other day when he said that people choose to be unhappy. On the one hand, he is so, so wrong, I never chose this, I’ve been miserable since I was 13, but on the other, there’s a nagging seed of doubt in my mind about this. I’m at a cross-road, where perhaps I could choose to be happy, that if I work at it hard enough, that if I rake over all my bad memories and try and work out where this started, I might start to get better. Perhaps this niggling doubt in my previous conviction in the helplessness of my situation, could be the grain of sand, around which the oyster forms a pearl.
Just reread that last sentence, and whilst it makes me gag with its ‘poignancy’, I’ll let it stand, because I really do want it to be true.

The times that I have been really, really happy…

2006-06-08T23:47:00.000+01:00

The times that I have been really, really happy…
This feels way to open to write about, because it tells so much about me; more than I want anyone, except JG, to know…
In India, on the bus, going past the salt pans which the tsunami has now washed away, with the family who I will never, ever forget until I die. The feeling of independence, freedom and distance from everything I thought I knew was so intoxicating I can’t even describe it. I will never forget the people who shared that hot, dusty, bumpy journey with me - the man, with his slicked back hair, lacquered in place by dirt, his lunghi and striped shirt; the woman with her long nails, and the vivid pink, red and gold of her sari and the care that a woman who had so little had taken in dressing her hair; the beautiful little boy who sat between them, who seemed so loved and who they obviously gave the best of what they had to. I remember their loud, unashamed chatter, so different from the reservation and quiet embarrassment people where I came from, and the way that they saw me watching them, and how we shared in each other’s joy: their love for their son; and the pleasure that I was taking from living the moment and being so free……
The realisation of being truly lost, of knowing that absolutely no-one had the slightest idea of where I was, and that if I chose, I could disappear and never be found again. Pure anonymity and utter dereliction of my own making.
Being alone in the car at night, driving too fast on a bumpy road, singing my heart out safe in the knowledge that I couldn’t be heard, that I couldn’t be judged. ‘A moment to myself’ - completely personal, but something that I knew everyone had done. Something personal that made me feel like I was a part of something greater when I otherwise felt so isolated.

happy birthday

2006-02-28T19:55:00.000Z

My blog is a year old

You've changed

2006-02-21T15:52:00.000Z

I was looking back over some of my earlier postings recently, and I began to wonder if I was less bitter than I used to be. I don't seem to be as angry as I used to be, the vitriol isn't there...I don't yell at the news any more, I cry. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, I'm calmer and not so hard to be around now, but I feel ten times more powerless.
I look back and can't believe how cynical I was about my relationship, and I can't remember if I was putting it on or not (alcohol and drug abuse ruins your memory kids). We're still together, and I love him, maybe it's that that mellowed me....what a fucking cliche though, 'All she needed was the love of a good man'. I don't want that to be the case, it's like when you get to the end of a book with a really, really evil character, and the author tried to explain it away by saying it was becasue their parents never loved them as a child. Did Shakespeare tell us at the end of Othello that Iago did it 'cos his mother left him with the nanny? No, and that's why will still read it, for the mystery.
I digress, I'm not a Shakesperean villain. Maybe it's living in Brighton, apparently we have the one of the lowest levels of carbon emissions in the country, maybe that's why I've calmed down since I moved here, but then if you look at the state of West Street on a Saturday night thst little theory is disproved, it's like Gaza.
Maybe it's all the' love' in the air down here, I doubt it though, people in Brighton have to be the most emotionally dysfunctional and fucked up I've ever encountered. No one can make their relationships work, friendships don't seem to last and for all the pseudo-Buddhist, smash-EDO, vote Green bollocks that floats around down here most people's ultimate concern is for them selves. That makes me angry.
Perhaps I'm not as calm as I thought!

2006-02-17T13:10:00.000Z

big rabbit!

would it have been better if.....

2006-02-17T12:19:00.000Z

If man/womankind had never been outside the boundaries of their own nation, would the world be a better place?
Are boats more danderous than guns?
Are walls such a bad thing?
In a melancholy, reflective kind of mood, been studying the crusades and the slave trade, hence the questions.
Answers on a postcard please...persuade me that the world would be this bad even if Europeans had never made it off the continent.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

2006-02-17T12:10:00.000Z

On the subject of respect....
The proposed smoking ban in pubs and bars - would it be necessary if smokers had the courtesy to ask the people around them if they minded them smoking?

freedom of speech

2006-02-17T11:41:00.000Z

Jumping on board a bit late here I know (so what's new there?) but how crazy has this stuff about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed been?
Being a bleeding heart liberal like myself is a tricky thing in this situation - freedom of speech or defending a minority? Which way to turn? Our two big causes in conflict , it's almost enough to make us hit the organic, fairtrade, recycled bottle.....
Don't get me wrong, I think the fucker who drew those cartoons is a twat, how could have not known what would happen? The images he drew not only, by portraying the prophet of Islam as a terrorist, portrayed all Muslims as terrorists, but also went against one of the central beliefs of Islam, that men should not make 'graven images' of anything on earth or in heaven. (Yes, it's in the Koran and the Old Testament, but it's one of the many commandments that Christians seem to have decided to ignore, love thy neighbour being another.) People have died - and what was his point, that some Muslims have engaged in terrorist activity - well, duh, why not just write that, actually say it? There are hundreds of these images, which I'm not going to provide a link to, because I don't want to encourage anyone to bother looking at them, each as pointless as the last. They have no merit - they aren't satire, they have no real message or corrective impulse to them. All they make me think is - what was the point. The 'artist' will probably spend the rest of his life in hiding, and he's achieved noithing more than making the world a worse place.
BUT, 'behead those that insult islam' - ummm, no. The guy is a cunt, but let's not go that far. He insulted your religion, and he shouldn't have, and no newspaper of any integrity should ever have printed them, but encouraging violence against them? Islam is a relgion of peace and brotherhood, and it is being destroyed b y these more memorable images of exremism and viloence.
This is the ultimate case of 'It's not what you said but the way you said it' (How many times have boyfriends said that to me after a row?). Any religion should open for criticism, but that criticism should be constructed in the best possible way to get the message across, which in this case, in my humble position, was not to draw the Prophet with a bomb under his hat.
Freedom of speech is only viable when people have respoect for one another.....

Wasting my days...

2006-02-10T00:16:00.000Z

I was expecting to have a package delivered, and as our letterbox is too small for anything bigger than the stamp on the actual letter, and our next door neighbours are evil scum I had to wait in for it. Our door bell doesn’t work either (heads up to any brighton residents - DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT rent from Property Moves, they don’t understand the concept of maintenance and they will rob you blind at every opportunity) so you have to wait right by the door, just in case the delivery person has the intelligence to realise that when they ring the bell it doesn’t make any sound. I must have gone to the loo or something, I come downstairs and there’s a card saying they’d come, but no one was in and would I like to go and pick it up from the depot in Shoreham on fucking Sea.
After negotiations and threats worthy of Middle East peace brokering, I arranged to have it redelivered, between the hours of two and three today, and got the afternoon off work, so I was sure to be in. It got there at 6.30. Life is so short and this is how we all end up spending out days - why?

Rememberance Day

2005-11-11T21:33:00.000Z

I cried my eyes out for the whole one minute silence today - I've never done that before. World Wars 1 and 2 are events which I haven't had an emotional link with; my grandparents don't speak about it, but neither is theirs a revered, pained silence, they just don't have anything to say.
I don't know what it was that tapped such a well of emotion in me , maybe going to Bosnia made me think about war more, or maybe I just realised the magnitude of what that war overcame. For all the evils that there are in post-war Western society, and despite all the less honourable reasons that England went to war for, World War 2 was a moral victory against a politics too sickening to imagine.
I've always been against that kind of traditional flag waving 'we won the war' pride, and I still am, but I realise the importance of remeberance more than ever. I hope that we as a nation never forget those terrible images of the terrible machine of war, burning skin, ripping flesh, shattering bones, of the terrible absences where limbs should have been, and the rows and rows of gravestones, each one holding someone who was loved, who was hated, who was ignored, who existed, who should never have been there.
I had a lecture this week that glorified the Russian Revolution of October 1917 of its excess of feeling and the artistic acheivement it inspired in comparison with our postmodern 'hyper reality,' our shunning of grand narratives in favour of the new relgion of consumerism. The lecture was neatly wrapped up by saying that, of course, not all the consequences of the Revolution were as noble or as worthy of praise. Postmodernism might have made us apathetic, convictionless, impotent, little better than battery hens in the capitalist system, but surely rather that than those 'big ideas' of fascism, communism, Stalinism, Nazism in whose grasp so many perished.
I know that capitalism is just another of those grand narratives and that we are living under another kind of tyranny, and that we wage our wars in places we can't see. I like post-modernism, I like that it lets me be vague, lazy and contradictory with my opinions, and I want it not to be something that we are force fed 'for our own good', like veal on antibiotics. I want so much to believe that there is a better way, and the only way that I can see is if there is no 'big idea', if everything that doesn't hurt anyone is ok.

2005-10-13T21:50:00.000+01:00

stari most

Sarajevo to Split: Dicing with Death 21/9/05

2005-10-13T13:48:00.000+01:00

My time in Bosnia seemed to just fly by, but the bus from Sarajevo to Split on Croatia's Dalmatian coast was agonizingly slow and became more and more painfully tedious by the second. It shouldn't have been - looking out of the window occupied me for the first five hours with no problems. The road cuts down through the valleys, staying close to the Nevereta river, which is such a bewitching colour that I could never get tired of looking at it. You pass Roma men and women selling just about everything - thick, sticky honey, home pressed olive oil, bright rugs woven from the wool of their goats and big, fat bright red juicy tomatoes that you know have never been inside a greenhouse or been touched by pesticides. After Mostar, the landscapes start to subtley change, the velvet green of the forested montainsides fades out to rocky karste land, dotted with fennel and rosemary, leading up to limestone peaks that tower above you. Then you pass into the flat fertile plain that lie between Bosnia and Croatia. Sunflower fields broken up by bombed building and crumbling medieval forts that evidence the conflict of the recent and distant history. Definately not boring.
But then the airconditioning broke, and murmerings of rebellion began to break ou towards the back of the bus. The border control brought things to a fierce simmer, because it takes so fucking long. Initially, a guard gets on, and asks to see everyones passports, but naturally, the person who put their bag in the storage lockers under the bus first and as such is the most difficult to access has left their passport in their bag, and so the whole bus has to be unloaded, the bag emptied, the bag repacked, the bus repacked, the passport checked. You'd think that would be it, but then there's another check - our passports are taken into and office, and I'm imagining, given the time it took, crossreferenced with lists of every person wanted for any crime, in the world, from the middle ages to today. Then we get them back and they have to be handed back out to everyone - but the bus driver won't go till we've done it, in case one has been left behind. Only the Bosnian passports are given to a Japanese guy, the foreign ones to a Croatian woman so no one recognises the names being called out, because they have been maimed to the point of unintelligability by a foreign tongue.
I was so hot and fucked off by this point that I didn't have the will to be angry any more and just wanted to die, right there than have to endure the journey any more.
We finally moved on, and by the time we got back onto the Magistrala, the coastal road that runs high up, looking down along the Dalmatian coast, I was feeling rather chipper again, and decided to listen to a bit of music. One moment I'm singing along to the Supremes, wondering what it would be like to be as cool as Diana Ross (then, obviously not now), the next everyone is screaming, the brakes are making a noise they are not meant to before the bus grinds to a halt, facing out to sea, on the edge of a cliff, about 800m above the Adriatic.....
So in true Croatian style, the bus driver and the guys from the other car that was involved got out, yelled at each other a bit, then had a fag together. The police turned up, yelled a bit, they all stood and looked at the smashed up car and bus with their hands on their hips and nodded wisely, then had a fag. The policemen got a breathalizer out of the car, but the two drivers shrugged and waved them off, so the policeman decided to take their advice and not bother. Good job too, as the bus driver had had a cheeky Pelikovac to clam his nerves after the accident. Then they all had another ciggie and off we went, bumper trailing, leaving a trail of sparks behind us in the twilight.........................................

bosnia 15/9/05

2005-10-05T09:03:00.000+01:00

bosnia blew me away. I've just realised what an awful slip of the tongue (finger?) that was, but I won't rewrite it. I only spent about a week there but I was treated more kindly there than almost anywhere else i have ever been in my whole life. And the country itself just takes your breath away.....deep, wooded valleys, dramatic mountains, turquoise rivers and beautiful old Ottoman towns. Which makes it all the more difficult to stomach the fact that between 1992 and 1995, 250 000 of it's people died as a result of the war. I didn't meet a single person my age who hadn't lost either one or both of their parents. But I'm not going to talk about the war, I'm biased and underqualified, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get my head arond the concept of hating someone because of their ethnicity.
I met a guy on a bus (who lost his dad, his sister and his house in the war, but said that he 'couldn't imagine it any other way') and speaking with him provided me with one of the best insights into English culture and how we are seen abroad that I've ever had. He told me that the English are regarded as cold in Bosnia (an accusation I heard more than once there and in Croatia too) and I wanted so much to say that it wasn't true to him, but the more I thought about it, the more my defences stuck in my throat. All the questions he asked me made my lines of defence crumble 'Do you live with your parents?' No, I got out as soon as I can, even though I love them, because I felt like I needed to be independent. 'But you see them regularly?' Once every six weeks or so if I get the time. 'Do you really send your old people to institiutions?' Well, I wouldn't but it is the norm, yes. 'Did you and your family eat meals thogether when you did live with them?' No, my parents got home from work at nine, by which time I was in the pub. 'Where's your boyfriend?' I left him at home because he couldn't afford to come with me.
I can't defend my country, I can't even defend myself. The majority of us are isolated by the way we live, we get aour coffee to go, eat lunch out our desks, talk about how we have no time but spend our evenings in silence watching the TV. If we do go out the objective is to drink as much as we can, before 11. This might be a very negative take on life in England, that I know doesn't apply to everyone, but there is a truth in it. People seem to put themselves before everyone else, and realising that, and not being able to shake away that idea made me so sad that I didn't want to come back.
But then we spoke about the war. Sarajevo, Mostar, Srebrenica, Gorazde, words from news reports made real for me then and there. Call me naive, but it made me think that for all our faults in this country, people of different ethnicities co-exist, perhaps not in peace all the time, but we haven't had genocide like that on our soil.
We prefer to commit them elsewhere. But that's another story.

fucking tourists......shit I am one 9/9/05

2005-09-30T17:17:00.000+01:00

I stayed in Cavtat (pronounced tsavtat) about 15km (metric - how continental) from Dubrovnik (pronounced Dubrovnik)(no more bracktes)(I promise) in Croatia. It's obviously the first stop off for the thousands of coach tours that Dubrovnik vomits out each day. Even though it's the end of the season, in order that for there to be enough space in the city to actually breathe, they have to send all the fat, short shorted, Nikon weilding tourists out of the city for the day to 'places of local interest'.
I sat drinking coffee in one of the harbour cafes watching them take photos of the boats, the buildings, their lunch, the waiter etc etc and listening to them using the age old trick of if they aren't understood to speak louder and slower, bobbing the head with each syllable for emphasis. Strange how it doesn't work.....
I watched one American, the kind that dresses as if he was on safari, expensive clothes in khaki and beige with lots of pockets, huge bum bag, and a ruck sack with lots of straps to hold water bottle, camera, night vision goggles, ice pick and crampons. The kind that stands closest to the tour guide and asks lots of ridiculous questions, for example (whilst looking shiftily around him, perhaps on the look out for rampaging rhinos or a herd of wildebeest) (I know I said no more brackets, but hey, I like them) 'how do the people here survive?' as if he were in an incredibley impoverished and underdeveloped part of the world. The answer of fishing and tourism seemed to confuse him, well duh, you are a tourist, standing in a harbour full of fishing boats, what did you expect them to do? Hunt and gather and trade animal skins for tools? You are in a town populated by locals wearing expensive clothes, talking on expensive mobiles and driving expensive cars (the fact that most of them would have been bought on credit or with borrowed money is another matter ), why do you assume that beacuse it is in eastern europe it must be poor and primative?
Enough of that.
I went for a walk later on round the headland which was really beautiful except for the multitude of nudists. I have no problem with nudism, but naked old men in sandals aren't really my thing (any man naked bar for footwear is a thing so tragic and lacking in dignity that it makes me weep). To add insult to injury, I fell up some stairs later on and as I sat there nursing my grazed knees and palms and my bruised dignity, a herd of them filed past me, their withered genitalia dangling in my face. I'm scarred by the experience, and I don't know if I ever want to grow old with a man if it means I'd have to look at that on a regular basis. I'm not that keen on penises and testicles anyway.........

brighton summers.......

2005-09-30T17:10:00.000+01:00

brighton summer picked me up in a whirlwind of beer, pebbles and occasional sunshine and I've just been dropped, with a bump into brighton winter. Yuk.
This is the only explanaition I have for ignoring my blog for 4 months; in the summer brighton comes into it's own and i start to actually enjoy it and remember why the hell I stay here all winter when it's so bloody horrible.
I've also been away for a bit, so I'm going to pop a few bits of my travel diary up too, to make up for the negligence of the last few months.

love's a funny thing

2005-05-19T19:49:00.000+01:00

well, I solved my relationship problems in the most ridiculous way ever.
I asked him to live with me.
This from the girl who has never even felt comfortable enought to ask someone out 'because then he'd know I liked him'.
It's not actually as bad an idea as it sounds...... it was either take a step forward or end it, and as he's just about the only person in the world who doesn't make me spew venom, I couldn't really risk losing him. I told my best fdriend, and and she was excited, which is good, because most of my ideas make her go 'hmmmmm' in a doubtful, Marge Simpson kind of way. She's my conscience personifed.
JG and I sat down and were really, really honest with each other, we said that we didn't know if this was forever, and that we couldn't see what was coming, but that we'd give it our best shot anyway. It's quite amazing, but I've found someone who I think is worse the risking getting hurt for.
Jesus, I'm even making myself sick. Sorry.
He does piss me off sometimes too, he's given up smoking and now has this really annoying cough like a dog barking that he does every five minutes, his feet stink like no-one elses and he laughs too loud when he's drunk.

makes me laugh

2005-05-10T21:39:00.000+01:00

this is good for a laugh if you've got nothing better to do, I may have to rip it off and do a Brighton version........
http://www.themanwhofellasleep.com/gossip.html

what to do, what to do

2005-05-10T20:48:00.000+01:00

Part of the reason I got a blog was because I like writing, and if I thought I was good enough, it's what I'd want to do for a living. The main reason was because I'm a very angry, mean person and I need to get it out of my system, or I snap, and say incredibly cutting things to the wrong people and then hate myself for it. Like the other day, some waiter, bless him, he was really young and very earnest, obviously new to the job 'cos he'd ironed his shirt and was talking to every customer for a stupid amount of time. I just sat down, dying for a coffee, because I hadn't had one for about 4 hours, which is a lifetime to me. I'd just come off a very, very long and trying shift, my hands were shaking from lack of caffine and I had a bruise on my face from where some cunt pushed me over in the street as he tried to run away from the guy whose car he'd just smashed up. The little lad was waffling on to me about how he was tired and hungry, and needed a rest, to me, sitting there, a quivering, battered shell of a woman. In my head i was thinking 'Oh, my heart just bleeds for you, it must be so hard challenging for you, having been here for all of an hour and working so very hard'. Except I didn't think it, I said it. Whoops. He shut up and got me a coffee pretty fucking fast after that though, so it was quite useful.
But I digress.
I find writing the most painful process ever. I can't read what I've written without tearing it up and wanting to pull my eyeballs out as well, as akind of punishment for the derivative, boring and pretecious bullshit that I've just spewed out on to the page. I can't even try and avoid this type of thing by writing about what I know, because what the fuck do I know? I'm not even that passionate about anything anymore, except slagging people off, which, actually, there is a market for. Hmmmm, something to bear in mind.
But just as I can pick holes in othere people, I can pick more holes in myself than anything else. And doing an English Lit degree has taught me to do this in an academic way and justify it with appropriate critical theory. It feels like everything I write has been ripped off someone else and that all fall into every pothole of pretension and generalization and wankerdom that comes before me. It'd take me a lifetime to negotiate my way round them, and I don't have the patience or the motvation to do it.
Guess I'll be a barmaid forever.

Two horse race....

2005-05-09T20:25:00.000+01:00

Just as everyone has forgotten it, I thought I'd drag it up again 'cos I want to have my say too.
The election didn't really hold many surprises now did it? We all knew that Labour would win, because although the public has no faith in them, no-one can face the idea of that creepy, evil hypocritical twat Howard being in a position of power. He looks like the kind of guy who would use even a supervisor's position at McDonalds as a platform for him to launch an evil scheme for world domination.
But there, I've illustrated the exact thing that pissed me off about the last election. England is turning into a two party democracy, just like America (oooo, what a surprise), where opposing parties demonize each other to the extent that voters who are a bit more left or right wing than either of the main parties' policies allow for are so scared of the 'Other' that they don't dare vote for the candidate they really want.
Blair and Howard both based their campaigns on the idea that 'If you don't vote for me, you'll get that bad, bad man, and neither of us want that, do we?' The Lib Dems battle cry of 'The real alternative' sounded weak even to me, a person so misguided that I actually voted Green, and really thought the guy had a chance. (Although Keith Taylor did come pretty close, which is promising for the next time around, right? Right? God, I'm desparate)
It scares me, two party politics are so dangerous, especially as the policies really aren't that different are they? I'm not convinced by this idea of Labour and Conservative as opposites, to quote my mum, 'They're both as bad as each other'. I'm becoming increasingly convinced by the idea that both parties are actually the handpuppets of some big corporation, who are giving us he illusion of choice and autonomy so that we'll all spend more money on patio furniture. Or something.

I hate relationships

2005-05-05T09:51:00.000+01:00

I fucking hate relationships.
OK, the falling asleep curled up together and the sex is nice, but everything else is shit and far too much like hard work.
As an almost reformed commitment-phobic (eight months and counting without a single 'it's not you, it's me' or 'i just need some space') I'm finding all this relationship stuff a bit of a challenge. I love the old chap, but we're at a stage where we're really comfortable, some might say dull, we trust each other and that nervous stomach-churning excitement which freaked me out has died down. This has brought a new \problem with it though, the future. We can talk about everything, except the future, but I know that he's thinking about it. What really unnerves me is that I'm in a position where I could hurt the person I'm with, it's never happened before, cos no one has been able to peel away the layers of bitch and actually love me before. It's like i'm holding his little, quivering heart in my hand and I could crush it by accident. I keep thinking of Blondie's Heart of Glass.
He's older than me, which makes it worse, because i keep getting this incredibly arrogant feeling that if things don't work out between us down the line, I'll leave him with nothing but microwave meals and porn, forever stuck on the shelf. That does him a total disservice though, because he's a catch, and deserves far better than me, and he's not that old.
What makes me worry is that if he does want the long term commitment that I really don't think that I can offer him, then I can't see any reason for us to stay together, it's just a waste of voth our time. I love him more than ever, but it feels like we're splitting up.

you do read this!

2005-05-02T15:47:00.000+01:00

student politics seem to wind up everyone, not just me then..........
there are so many people to slag off at my university, that I'd run out of time, but probably not vitriol. So here follows, in no particular order, the top ten people I love to hate at university.....

The girl in one of my classes who is reading Emma Goldman's Living My Life (the diary of a nineteenth/early twentieth century anarchist feminist) because she 'really identifies with her struggle'
the whole fucking class who told me that I was racist when I suggested to them that perhaps not all black people thought the same way
the boy who said the three cultural concepts he identified with were 'communism, socialism and terrorism' whilst wearing brand new, £200 nike trainers.
everyone involved in the student media for turning it into a self-referencing cliquey piece of shit, only read by the people who write for it
every white guy with dreads and a poncho.
the girls who turn up for 9am lectures in january, wearing full make up, miniskirts, tits hanging out, bellys showing, but wearing a wooly scarf and hat, who then proceed to talk throughout the whole lecture.
the people who run the bar and have obviously never heard of line cleaner.
the people who write all over the desks in the library, 'shane was here, and bored', why? what is the fucking point? at least write something worth reading.
Gap year casualties, I know they kind of fit into the dreads and poncho group, but they are offensive for more then their appearance. To be identified by the copy of the bhagvad gita clasped in their hands, the smell of nag champa and the fact that they begin every sentence with 'When I was travelling in South-East Asia.....'. They like to think that they saw 'the real Asia' and go right off the beaten track, when in fact that got so fucked in their first week in Goa/Koh Samui on one pill/shroom/bhang lassi. that they spent the majority of their time glassy eyed and clinging on to the walls for dear life.
And last but not least, a certain, cynical bitch, who is a bit of a know-it-all, likes to say mean, possibly untrue (but probably true) things about anyone and everyone, and who rolls her eyes at everything......... ;/

it's been a while....

2005-04-27T09:24:00.000+01:00

I haven't written anything for a while, don't think it matters too much though because as far as I know, only two people have ever read this. Perhaps if I changed the name to 'Hot, SEXXXY girl on girl action' things would change...............just a thought.
Loads of stuff has been pissing me off recently though, so it's not like I'm out of material, just a bit short on time.
Student politics.....ah, my bete noir.
We had an open forum last week with the parliamentary candidates for Brighton Pavillion, who I won't get started on here, but the meeting was highjacked by some, ummm, well, I think THEY, thought they were anarchists, but I'm not sure if anyone else was convinced, who were not so much shocking in their politics but in their lack of knowledge about their professed politics. So just on the off chance that these people ever read this, here is what I would like to say to you:
I could say that it must be incredibly hard for you, coming from a white, middle class background and having your parents pay your way through university so that you can afford to opt out of capitalism, but I won't because I don't know you, and it's just a hunch of mine that could be completely wrong.However, what I will say is that if you're going to talk politics (which you did, and very loudly too) is to know what you're talking about and avoid hypocrisy at all costs, because otherwise what you've got to say isn't worth listening to.You were preaching at length about non-participation as a form of protest in the upcoming election, which is a totally valid and really interesting perspective, but if those are your politics then live them, don't fucking preach them. But here's my real problem with little twats like you, so read carefully and concentrate, because this might be a difficult concept for your narrow mind. An election is an elevated level of of national debate, right? And if you believe that that kind of debate is an exercise in futility then why the fuck did you turn up to a debate at this level? Surely by coming along you were just engaging with the system and the parliamentary process that you hate soooooo much? I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but you had nothing worthwhile to contribute, and if you really are the anarchists that you make out you were betraying your principle by engaging in the way you did. As one of you commented on the last election - 'the non voters won', (which is a dubious concept, the non-voters didn't win, they were labelled apathetic not politically radical, and how the fuck can you try and speak for every other non-voter in the country? I bet that they didn't voye beacuse they didn't care or couldn't be bothered, rather than because they had anarchist sympathies) why not stick to your principles by making your voice heard by not raising it, by making your presence felt by an absence? Basically what I want to say is that you whiney, pretentious, hypocritical, sanctimonious little gobshites need either start practicing what you preach or get over your crushingly tragic North London, private school middle class guilt and stop trying to make your opinions heard by shouting. I can see straight through you, all the way down to the M&S underpants that your mother bought you, and I;m not interested and I'm not impressed.

Restraint is no longer necessary

2005-03-04T22:30:00.000Z

Let me at her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The phone number in telephone box thing is soooooo on. I've been pushed to my absolute limit by her fucking hypocrisy.
The girl in question has been one of my best friends for almost two years now, so I'm actually really sad that I'm writing this, I don't ever really slag off my friends, but I'm not even sure that S. is my friend now.
The house we share was empty last night, so she was looking forward to some solitude, (eg she was going to wander round naked and use her vibrator), but my boyfriend came over to pick up something he'd left in my room. He didn't catch her naked or anything, but he did hear her listening to Christina Aguilera, which is probably why she's so pissed off. She's always insisting that she's into really dark d&b, but now we all know what she listens to in private..........
Anyway, now she doesn't want JG round here anymore, because it's a 'violation of her privacy'.
We live in a shared house, the only area that's private is her room, but I don't think she gets that she doesn't have a claim on the whole house the whole time. I think she would have been just as pissed off if I or one of my other house mates had come home.
The irony of it is is that it was her that gave my fella the set of keys, not me, I'm way too commitment phobic to do something like that.........
AND I came home from my trip in the summer to find two of her friends and their two cats living in my house, did she ask my permission? No. Did they contribute to the rent during the three months they stayed? No. Did they help out with the bills? No. Did their cats shit everywhere? Yes.
RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
it's on

Restraint?

2005-02-28T13:08:00.000Z

Someone has been pissing me off recently and i want revenge.
I need feed back here - do I print up flyers with the person's phone number on under a heading like 'Big boobed blonde eighteen year old, will do anything, your place or mine!' and put them in every single phone box in brighton?
Do I do it?

seafront shennagins II

2005-02-26T15:30:00.000Z

The hotel job was horrific, there's a lot that I could write about it, so expect more. For now I'll just tell you about one of my co-workers, I'll call her sunshine.
Sunshine was about 35, and to be honest, looking a little bit faded, her hair wasn't as blond as it used to be, her makeup was collecting in her wrinkles more than before and her boobs weren't quite as perky as they once had been. Sunshine did exactly the same job as me at the hotel, but took herself very seriously, she kissed the arses of the mangers, flashed cleavage at the male customers, talked about being 'proactive' and slagged of anyone who was out of earshot. She also liked to talk very loudly and at great length about her ex-husband who lived on a yacht in marbella and wanted her back so much that he said he'd support her and wouldn't even ask her to sleep with him as long as she came back to him. Sunshine liked telling people about this and would end this little section of her story by saying,"the money's great, but having affairs is such hard work, and there's no way I can be with him, he's just too ordinary for a girl like me" and tossing her not-quite so blonde hair.
Sunshine did not like me, I think bitches can sense other bitches sometimes, and would do whatever she could to make my job that little bit harder and more painful. After an incident involving her accidentally on purpose spilling really hot coffee all over me and then telling me that I was clumsy, I was about to turn round and speak my mind, and by speak my mind I mean launch a verbal attack of such nuclear proportions that even she would be left reeling in tis aftermath. But I didn't. I turned round, smiled and said, "whoops, silly me". That freaked her out, but I was filled with a sense of enormous smugness, I had been about to tell her that she was past her prime and fading fast, a failed marriage behind her that she had ruined, a shitty job that she actually took seriously and that no-one of her age with any self respect would actually do, that she still lived with her parents and probably always would, and more of the same and more of the same. But I didn't say any of this because I didn't actually want her to see what she was and how pathetic she was. I rather leave her blind to herself, washed up and decaying slowly on the seafront like a low-rent version of Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire.

Seafront shennagins

2005-02-26T14:55:00.000Z

The most worst job I've had since I've been in Brighton had to be at one of the big seafront hotel, the one that TS Eliot with good reason declared to be a den of iniquity. I was desperate for money and this was all I could get, so I just got on with it. I did conferences and banquets, corporate parties, room service, I served and cleared, served and cleared, was yelled at, had my arse pinched, by breasts commented upon, then I served and cleared some more; all for minimum wage and with no breaks, not even on the occasions when I was stupid enough to sign up for 12 hour shifts.
However, the guests provided me with quite a bit of entertainment, especially at their Christmas or end of year parties. The dancing was particularly interesting, and you can tell exactly what position a person occupies in the company by how they move their feet. Junior members of staff who don't care about their jobs, or people who have nothing to lose have generally drunk as much of the free booze laid on by the firm as possible, they will therefore be the first on the dancefloor, and in the greatest state of undress. Couple will be forming amongst this group to form the notorious 'dry hump' manouver. This is not restricted to male/female couples. Oh no. Whole groups of girls will get together in order to attract the maximum amount of attention, by creating what they hope will be recognized as a kind of lesbian frisson which will attract they attention of Gary from the Bracknell branch. Those amongst the higher ranks will be equally drunk and dancing with gay abandon and little regard for the safety of those in proximity to them. Arm and legs flailing, hips gyrating in a terrifying fashion, they don't care what anyone thinks, because they can't be sacked. And somewhere between these two factions is the most desperate and frightening move of all - the middle management shuffle. An aryhthmic sidestep, accompanied by the occasional head bob and nervous looks at the chardonnay fueled carnage going on around them, middle management are just trying to get through the evening with the minimum of personal embarrassment. Despite their shyness on the dancefloor, middle management man is by far the most likely to accidentally bring home a pre-op transsexual, and to find this out at the exact moment that room service (i.e. me) was knocking on the door with the cheap bottle of cava they'd ordered up.

a bit of romance

2005-02-24T10:12:00.000Z

i'm going to get uncharacteristically mushy here, and expose my soft, vulnerable underbelly here, but i think i'm a bit of a romantic at heart. Yes, yes, laugh away. But i am, so there, and i don't think i should be mocked for it.
Actually i do deserve to be mocked, it's so fucking pathetic of me that i hate myself.
I've got the perfect fella, JG, in most respects, he's really sweet, kind, attentive, i can talk to him about just about anything, we fix problems before they turn into arguments. Sickeningly mature isn't it? The thing is, he's not romantic, i think he feels guilty about it sometimes, like when one of his mates confessed to singing his girlfriend to sleep over the phone when she goes away (vomit) he said 'i never do anything like that do i?' with a sheepish look on his face. I think he, like everyone else, knows me as a bit of a hard-faced bitch, but with a small mine of softness which he's uncovered. However, there's also an untapped mine of hallmark style sentimentality that no-one knows about. Until now.
I met this guy in the summer, in prague, of all places, i had to meet him in a beautiful, fairytale city like that. We clicked, we just got on well, we made it each other laugh, we got pissed on a riverboat and then talked about deep things, like the world, and our relationships past and present. We watched the sunset on the Charles bridge and made wishes together, which was so fucking intimate it hurt. Bur nothing happened cos we were bith with people. There was this awareness too that it wouldn't just be a holiday shag, it would have gone on at home and we would have hurt other people. So we parted, and we kept saying that we'd meet up in budapest, or paics, or zagreb, but we didn't, we just missed each other every time. United by our interrail passes, divided by timetabling errors. Tragic, but probably for the best, we would have ended up having sex in a bunkbed in a hostel and falling out.

Portrait of a Wanker

2005-02-23T09:49:00.000Z

My feathers were somewhat ruffled, shall we say, yeaterday, by an encounter with my ex-flat mate. What a cock.

Before i tell everyone about him, i think it's worth mentioing that i DID NOT, i categorically DID NOT choose to live with him, we were thrown to gether by Fate, who clearly has a more warped sense of humour than i ever imagined.

I'll refer to him henceforth as S.S.

S.S. makes my blood boil like no-one else i've ever met, i'd rather scratch my eyes out with rusty nails than be in close proximity to him.
My hate affair with S.S. began the second i first glimpsed him across a dirty hallway, I've never known such physical and mental revulsion before. I knew that this was the start of something big.

He liked to think of himself as a bit of a working class hero, an easy image to pull off in brighton, where anyone with a northern accent sticks out like a sore thumb. Particularly on the sussex campus, where there are a hell of a lot of middle class kids from london who've never been north of watford, and are full of awe and respect for the har life anyone who grew up in the north must have had, even if he did go to an expensive boys public school and have wealthy parents.

We lived together for a year and in that time he used the washing machine 5 times, and didn't even manage to finish off the one bottle of shower gel that he had in the bathroom. The smell in his room was so bad that if he opened the door in the morning, the foul stench that seeped out was still there in the evening. The smell wasn't just because he didn't wash himself or his clothes or bedding, it was actually coming from inside him. His diet consisted of cans of corned beef, beans and microwave beef hotpot. Not a solitary vegetable to be seen, not even peas, he was quite literally rotting from the inside out.

My real problem with him was the fact that he claimed to have been a member of the nazi youth league and had some rather foul views about 'keeping england english'. His unsanitaryness pales into insignificane in comparison. However, when he ran for office in the student elections he superimposed his face onto a picture of che guvara, with the caption 'S.S. leading the revolution'. What a twat.

Add onto this the fact that he used to pretend to be gay to get girls to feel sorry for him and be friends with him, the fact that he was physically violent towards my female flatmate, the fact that all his ex-girlfriends were anorexic (did he drive them to it, or just pick the most vulnerable girls he could find, knowing that only someone with exceptionally low self-confidence would go out with him?) and the fact that he respects har mar superstar as an artist and i think you've got a portrait of wanker.

S.S. seems a hard person to work out, but he's quite simple you bear in mind the fact that he does everything for attention. He looks for things that will shock the most, because at a university like Sussex, shock value equals popularity. S.S. has managed to make everyone see him as this charismatic, sexually ambiguous, politically radical figure which impresses the sad little twats, who are too short sighted to recoginse the contradictions in the way he presents himself.

I could say a lot more, but you're probably bored by now.

the condition brightaine

2005-02-21T22:11:00.000Z

DON'T TALK DOWN TO ME DON'T BE POLITE TO ME.
DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL NICE.
DON'T RELAX. I'LL CUT THE SMILE OFF YOUR FACE.
YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON.
YOU THINK I'M AFRAID TO REACT.
THE JOKE'S ON YOU.
I'M BIDING MY TIME, LOOKING FOR THE SPOT.
YOU THINK NO ONE CAN REACH YOU, NO ONE CAN HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE.
I'VE BEEN PLANNING WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING.
I'VE BEEN SAVING WHILE YOU'RE SPENDING.
THE GAME IS ALMOST OVER
SO IT'S TIME
YOU WANT TO FALL NOT EVER KNOWING WHO TOOK YOU?

Jenny Holzer wrote these and pasted them all over new york in the late 1970s, early 1980s. I've wanted to stick them all over brighton ever since i moved here.
i love it here, but i hate it too, no the most original thing to say about brighton i know, but hey, i think everyone who lives here feels like this.
i love that people can live whatever lifestyle they choose here, but i hate how fucking cliquey it gets. Everyone is trying to outdo eachother in how 'alternative' they can be, but lets be honest, being 'alternative' in brighton hardly makes you stand out does it? especially as most people move here to find people just like them, and then there's the few who move here and than get pissed off that there are other people who look are a bit more different than them.
Take this girl i worked with over the summer. She was very vocal about the fact that she'd moved from south africa to brighton for the gay scene, and never tired of telling us about her lesbian flatshare in kemp town or the girl she'd pulled in the candy bar, she really was living the dream..........
My gay friend clare came into work one day, and my colleague didn't like it one little bit, oh no. Clare, to be blunt, looks gay, you can't mistake it, and this was obviously very threatening to the girl i worked with, who went round muttering about 'fake lesbians' and how 'not everyone who looked gay actually had the balls to live the lifestyle'. She refused to speak to clare when she served her for the rest of the evening.
The icing on the cake was that i caught her shagging Dan, the tall and rather hisute Australian chef, by the bins about a week later. Fake lesbians indeed.....