After so long, how to blog now...

177 posts, published 30 April 2010.

So, from that, how do I write this post? The first in seven months?

It is a toughy.

I could write about Remembrance Sunday, which like every year I cry when watching the Cenotaph highlights, as they are called- almost making them a football game that everyone has a huge lure to watch- it both disturbs me and uplifts me. It also has the ability to make my tears seems heartfelt or just overemotional. I find, however, the ability to both remember with empathy versus the almost media-frenzy need to watch it cheapens it. I could also write about the enforced social obligation to wear a poppy. As an aside, I wear it because I feel I want to, not because I feel the social pressure to do so. I wore it on Thursday and Sunday (an accidentally Monday because I had forgotten to take it off- was reminded at 9:30am to take it off, so no biggy.) As yet another aside, I like working Remembrance Sunday at work- the soldiers on guard as living proof that there is continued need for the armed forces, which thereby means death of yet more people in war. I also like it (possibly in a morbid fascinated way) that the whole castle bar a few people (namely unaware Oriental people and also loud American teenagers calling it "that Poppy Thang" and saying, "Naw can't be bothered, let's find the toilet....") ground to a halt. That is the whole place on a Sunday (albeit at a quiet time of year) ground to a halt. People bowed their heads, people thought. There was no falseness to it. Just pure thought. AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT IT WAS MEANT TO BE ABOUT!!!

Well, I said what I would start my blog about and wondered whether it should be about that, and thus it has begun with a mini-rant.

It was unintentional, but obviously it has stuck in my mind.

There are many things to catch you up on. Hardly as important, nor significant, but news of some sort in the life of Not So Spotless Mind.

1) I found out five days ago I passed my Masters. I got a "good pass"- essentially 63% I think it was. It is the equivalent of a 2:1 at undergrad level. It would have been a merit had RHUL not continued with the 65+ rule, which means that is a merit rather than most university with 60+!! Still I am more than chuffed. I did become very disillusioned with academia and thought I would barely achieve above 50! Still hasn't made me want to contemplate a PhD after it though, I am glad to say!!

2) Today I dyed my hair black. I was not going to do it for a variety of reasons. Mainly I was too scared. Secondly, my mam would tell me off- 23 and yes, I am still scared of my mother. Thirdly, I have never dyed my hair before and thought I ought to give it a go and I always wanted jet black hair. It turned out alright. It went bright purple for a while in which case my initial fears were first confirmed, then after washing it out it has turned out alright. I told my dad, who hadn't noticed, though had looked at me funny for a while. My brother had not noticed, though asked if I was going out. Some five hours later, asked if I had sprayed my hair black with the can of Halloween stuff I had used (and had consequently taken me approx.45minutes to comb out.) My mother still has not noticed.

3) I have mixed feelings about something I did today. Some girl has been playing around with my brother and his mates for the last year and today she rocked up at our house unannounced with her lil baby boy. Now whilst I loved children, I made her stay outside the front door in the freezing fog whilst my brother come to deal with her. I had just woken up, was groggy, grumpy and definitely pissed off generally with her. Whilst being the complete boob he always is with her, he let her, apologised for me and in return she smirked and simpered at him. He ineptly flirted and I felt awkward whilst buttering my now cold toast.... still, I felt really bad because she did have a lil'un on her hands who was so unbelievably cute and whom I had left outside, yet at the same time, I am just fed up of my brother being the doormat, however willing he is to be one. ARGH- I am ranting again. However, I wish to divulge some of my guilt on the interneting-void out there. I am sorry for her baby boy, but not for her. I should have acted differently. But as my primary school headmaster say, like you can never scrap toothpaste back into a tube, you can never take back what you do or say once they have been squeezed from the tube. I have remembered that since I was 7. Still haven't learnt anything from it.

4) Will and Kate Middleton have announced their engagement. A work colleague and I were discussing this yesterday and we said we should put money on it being announced in the next week. We should have done it because we would have been rolling in it now!! Still, CONGRATS to the pair!! I am dead chuffed plus it means uber royalist trips to various royalist camps a la Britain!! Whoop whoop!

5) My sunroof is leaking. Not amazingly tragic news I know, but honest to God it is p*ssing down like a rain forest INSIDE my car!! I couldn't see where I was going and had to pull over to try and block it up with a pair of tights I always have spare in my handbag in case of an emergency and also a small beech towel I have carried in my car since someone left it at our house after a house party. I am unsure as to why I put in my car... Still the other day, it was cold and frozen outside. I spent ages scraping ice from my car windows with anti-freeze. I got into my car which should have been heating up nicely and discovered that it was still fairly chilly. After waiting ten minutes.... still nothing. Couldn't see out of my windscreen. I lent forwards to scratch the condensation to found half a centimetre thick ice on the inside of my windscreen. Ten minutes later and all five of my windows de-iced and my car smelling a lot like de-icer and now being some twenty minutes late for work, I left (slightly high from the de-icer fumes) for work! Lesson to be Learnt: Get up earlier on frostier days to de-ice both INSIDE AND OUTSIDE of my car. I bet Kate Middleton doesn't have to deal with these sorts of dilemmas!!

This blog has been a mixture of rants and thoughts. I hope to get this blogging ball rolling and not to leave it too long again.

Having watched Julie and Julia, or is it Julia and Julie? Well, either way the film with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in- it has galvinised me to blog, and also simultaneously give French cooking a go. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It is about a 21st century American woman cooking all the dishes from Julia Child's first cookbook within a year and blogging about it whilst trying to find herslef, whilst simultaneously storytelling Julia Child's life in post-World War Paris (etc). It made me inwardly chortle, giggle, laugh out loud and exclaim at the inanimate TV screen! It is an almost ChickFlick in parts, drama in others, modern historical drama in sections... It is definitely worth a watch. It is on Sky Movies now!!! Be there or be Square!!

So yes, a brief and almost definitely obscured and linear view of some aspects of my life since 30th April. Surely more will come thick and fast now I have got that stubborn fountain pen to flow with bootifully clouded dusk-blue ink....

Adieu for now...

PS. Song of choices of the moment:
a) The Writer- Ellie Goulding

b) Hit the Road Jack- Ray Charles- partly inspired by Strictly Come Dancing and Scott Maslen's (from Eastenders and The Bill) Jive on Saturday, which was amazing!! Great song choice and great dancing- made me place it higher on the playlist!!!

c) Anything by Skunk Anansie- anything sung my her can be amplified by fifty- she was wickedly amazing at V Fest 2010!!! I fell in love with her then!