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!

Stephen Fry flaying alive the Catholic Church: One Ex-Catholic's Views

You may have noticed that I beginning to get my flow back on the bloggingness and I have been checking out some new bloggers, and having found one and finding this YouTube clip on their site, I would still be feeling confused as to how I voice some of the intense despise I have for the faith I was so strongly brought up in.

I was brought up a strict Catholic. I went to church every Sunday- made to recite all the prayers by heart, kneel at the right parts, scorn those who were clear outsiders for not knowing when to stand-up/kneel/other... I went to a Catholic nursery, a Catholic primary school, a grammar Convent school and when I hit a Left-Wing almost socialist university, I guess it came to a head what I was really thinking.

WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?

I was uncomfortable with it long before this. It helped that my Dad's quiet Atheism counteracted the forcefulness of my Mam's faith, although I think she is not so strongly Catholic after divorcing my Dad and the reaction she got. But this counter-viewpoint always provided me with an axle with which I could step back and see two opposing viewpoints.

My Dad allowed by Mam to baptise both me and my brother a few months after we were born believing that perhaps it would instill in us some moral compass that perhaps had been lacking in his upbringing. (I have also been confirmed, and needless to say I have attended my Communion). I guess it did in some ways, and despite my sometimes intense dislike of organised religion, especially that of Catholicism, I won't regret it. I have an inbuilt system of right and wrong, almost- some may argue- to the point where I will argue the opposite of what I once believed in and to an extreme level. I am now very much a feminist, pro-life, pro-euthanasia and I often wonder what influence my education in Catholic institutions and within the Catholic faith had on me.

Taking a step back now, I can gain an open view and can understand how people can believe so devoutly. To the point on occasion that I can be jealous that I do not have the same hopes for my afterlife. (Of course, religion always crops up in death... curious, or as expected as that maybe...)

This clip of Stephen Fry on Catholicism, for the Intelligence Squared debate really got me thinking.

There is a lot inherently wrong with the Catholic faith but it hit the nail on the head for me.

I had a wild time once I reached university. Out of my homestead, away from most of my similarly educated friends and without such a strict force directing my moral compass, I "misbehaved". But Stephen really nails it on the head. The Catholic Church is NOT A FORCE OF GOOD. This is what he states. And with his usual clarity he states that the Catholic Church is obsessed with sex. Like an anorexic or the morbidly obese, this is the Catholic Church relationship with the Church in a "nutshell". Sex is "natural" and a "primary impulse" and to stop it is to deny the fundamental human nature. It is no different from saying that you deny yourself human contact, food or water. It would drive you mad or kill you.

NOTE: there is a great deal of historical literature beginning to emerge about the 'anorexic nun' and its connection to sex, self-denial, etc.

I would like to say that I never knew of any sexual abuse or anything whilst at school, but I can't deny that it doesn't go on. That aside, the money and wealth the Catholic church harbour, they do relatively little good with it. It isn't given away, they do not do earth-shatteringly religious or charitable deeds with it... They do not end world hunger... you know that they could probably begin to achieve that with their wealth...

And just as a closing point, Stephen pointed out how Thomas More, the torturer for what each Catholic now owns- a Bible in their own language- has now been made the patron saint of politicians by the current pope, I believe. What influence does history have on us? What sort of role model should More be to us? More accurately to politicians?

Just my deep philosophical thought of the day :) probably of the week :)

And this month's theme is "RETRENCHMENT"

Ok, I failed.

Not to sound defeatist but I kinda failed, didn't I, on the blogging front?

Hmm, my humblest apologies.

However I am setting out to remedy that!! Aha yes I sure am!

It is a depressing state to be beginning the month still with that most hated monetary symbol ever to grace the ATM's screen- that dratted minus sign. Yup. So apart from cussing rather loudly in Bury St. Edmunds' high street on Sunday and scaring one lil old lady with wheelie shopping trolley I think I have dealt with it in a positive manner since. This new positivity (and believe me its hard to be positive for too long- I find in Britain that the sarcasm in humour and that belittling inherent in English culture does make it hard to keep that firm upper lip) so anyway this new positivity is standing me in good stead! I am saying yes, shit you have got no money but you are the one that spent and it is you who is going to be tightening that already tight belt. So voila. I am.

Retrenchment.

Funny that when I posted this title as a statement on Facebook that people wouldn't necessarily know what 'retrenchment' means. I then realised that I did spend most of my teenage years in my bedroom reading- Jane Austen, history books about 19th century politics and random crap that has weird words no longer used these days. So it is unsurprising that the cooler souls of my generation would not know this word. It throws into light my quirky little life 15-18 years :) I liked it, but I do come out with some awful shite sometimes!!

So it is with a quote from Jane Austen that I end this blog, apt I think:

"They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt. But she [Lady Russell] was very anxious to have it done with the least possible pain to him [Sir Walter] and Elizabeth. She drew up plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and she did what nobody else thought of doing: she consulted Anne... 'If we can persuade your father to all this,' said Lady Russell, looking over her paper, 'much may be done. If he will adopt these regulations, in seven years he will be clear; and I hope we may be able to convince him and Elizabeth that Kellynch Hall has a respectability in itself which cannot be affected by reductions...'" (Persuasion)

OK, let's face it. It has been over a month of blogging absence.

I have started university (my Master of Arts degree), I have gone down to two days a week at work and all my friends have drifted back off to university or home etc. They only seem to come out in the summer. It happens every year, that sinking feeling. To be honest this year it was worse than last year and I am not sure why.

It didn't help that I don't like doing my Masters at the moment, well that is till today- I feel I made a breakthrough. I really enjoyed my "Body in the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe" course and followed it by lunch (or in my case carrot cake with a huge mug of tea :) yummy) with two of the girls in my course. It was good. We were all in the same boat. All from universities that are not Royal Holloway. We are all finding some of the other courses weird and not really suited to us. None of us necessarily want to be archivists or librarians we idealistically want to bring history to the masses.... make what we find fun and exciting fun and exciting for everyone else. In some ways I hold out for a female presenter on a documentary- they are still mostly male!! Though I do not think for one moment I shall be the face that launched a thousand documentaries, I shall hope to help someone do it. Historical research- research Jane Austen period clothing and eating habits, the Tudor sex life, the Flapper girls and Tommies, and the Romantic poets... oh the possibilities. Today is the first day I think I may have actually made the right decision to go back to university.

Yay!

On a plus note I am getting used to working all the time now (at work I mean). It has been tough. Work has been a huge part of my life for over a year and now it has taken a backseat. Now my brother works there and is getting into the whole thrall of it leaving me behind, or as I am starting to think of it, not behind just adjacent and not necessarily on the same course. This time last year I was unsure of what I was going to do. I was applying for jobs I didn't really want but I didn't really know what I wanted... a whole heap has happened since then. I am more settled. I know what I want, or perhaps more accurately what I don't want.

In short, the world is good now. Before the world was bad thus bloggeth I not.