Personal ad

I'm taking a page out of the amazing and inspirational Havi, and writing a personal ad for something that I really want in my life: a bike.

Tired of the Tube

Outgoing, energetic woman looking for a bicycle to form a lasting mutually beneficial partnership with.

Me? I'll take care of you, make sure you have regular check-ups with someone who knows way more than me about the way you work, I'll keep you in a safe indoor place at night and while I'm at work, take you out at least three days a week, and I'll continue to take you out in all weathers and year-round. You won't languish through the winter with me!

You: High enough for me (I'm quite tall), in perfect or near perfect working order. Not too expensive, hopefully under £100 - but I'm willing to spend a bit more to find the perfect match.

Ideally you'll be located near my flat or my office, so that I don't have to go to far to meet you for the first time. And hopefully you're already on the radar of someone that I know, who just hasn't told me about you yet. I'd love if you were the old-fashioned kind that lets me sit more upright, but I know that whatever you look like, being the right one for me is the most important thing.

No drama please - this includes chains that for some reason don't want to stay in place, wonky pedals or seats, and brakes that are, at best, iffy. Also, it would be helpful if your frame was quite sturdy or of very good quality. I'd like to have you around for a while, and this will really help.

If this is you, please have someone get in touch! I can't wait to meet you.

The things we love

It's pretty impressive, sometimes, that we forget to listen to ourselves.

I think that most people, by the time they're in their mid-twenties, probably know themselves fairly well - or rather, they know what they like, some of the things they don't, and a bit of what makes them happy. So why, knowing these things, would someone just stop doing something that makes them happy?

I barely touched my knitting needles between the end of March and the beginning of June. I didn't finish a single project, I started a project I could care less about and still need to frog, and somehow - somehow I forgot about why I did this incredible thing with sticks and string.

Knitting grounds me. The familiar feel of needles in my hands and the slight friction of yarn over my left index finger relaxes me like nothing else. I can't even remember what I did before I started knitting, to have down time at the end of the day. To compose my thoughts and sort out the thoughts in my head. How did I forget this thing that makes me a calm and reasonable person? That means I can face my day without going mad?

I picked up my needles again on the 6th of June, and started the Luna Moth Shawl from Elann.com using some beautiful fingering weight 100 percent alpaca in a gorgeous grey-brown that one of my younger sisters had gotten me for last Christmas. As I watched the repeats get longer and the bulk of the yarn go from the centre-pull ball into the mess that is lace, I could feel myself finding my centre again.

The shawl is drying next door, on the spare bed in my flat.

Moth wings, drying on the bed

It's beautiful, and better pictures will follow to show just how lovely; the yarn is perfect for showcasing the pattern, and I'm really proud of this one. It's for me, to wrap myself in on cold winter nights and to keep the chill off in the changeable English summer. It's to remind myself not to forget the things I know keep me sane.

I couldn't leave if I wanted to

When a song captures my attention, if it's the right kind of song, I'll listen to it over and over and over again. The first time I heard 405 by Death Cab for Cutie, I think I listened to it on repeat my entire way to work. Which was about 45 minutes at the time. As the song is only about three minutes long...well. That's a lot of the same song back to back.

It's like I've got to absorb the music, take it into my blood and indelibly sketch the lyrics into my memory so that I can instantly conjure up the melody at will. Sometimes it's because the song means something to me, like Alien by Bush. I can't even count the number of times I lay in the dark, listening to that song with my heart breaking. Or Best of What's Around, by Dave Matthews Band - a song which will forever send me straight back to MarketSpice and mopping floors, with Chelsea yelling at me to turn the damn cd off already, we've listened to it three times today and for the love of god put something else on or she's going to kill me and Si and Ryan laughing like idiots.

A few days ago, California by Stroke 9 (version off Rip it Off) came on while I was on the Tube to work. Sometimes, it's the feel of a song. Sometimes it's the way the vocalist sings, sometimes it's the way a bridge is played, and sometimes it's a single line or two.

'I was raised and I was born here, couldn't leave California if I tried to.'

No matter where I go or how old I get, I think that I will always expect to live in a green city, surrounded by mountains with the skyscrapers caught in cloud most of the year. Anywhere else is just a substitute.

8am assult course

I woke up late this morning, which is fairly unusual. Normally, I'm awake the second my alarm goes off, if not before. I think my new-found ability to sleep through the incessant beeping might just have something to do with sleeping in a bed for more than one consecutive night for the first time in two months.

However, I woke up late. I'd done a load of washing last night and took full advantage of the balcony with the clothesline at my new flat (rarely do you have a tumble dryer over here, for those of you State-side). I happily hung up my clothes and went to bed with the expectation of being able to wear some of them to work this morning.

So at about 7.07 (I usually leave around 7.20), I bolted out of bed, threw myself into the shower and furiously did everything necessary. I ran around, dropping things, managed to get moisturiser everywhere, and ran to the door to the balcony.

Which was locked.

Spotting a key in the bowl that holds the clothespins, I put in into the keyhole. It fits! Awesome!

I turn the key. Nothing happens.

Jiggle the handle. Nothing happens. Try turning while lifting the handle. Nothing. I then proceed to, for the next several minutes try everything I can think of to get the door open.

Nothing.

I'm swearing under by breath in despair - I wore the only thing that I didn't wash that I can wear to work yesterday, and there's no way that I can wear it two days in a row. I glance around.

There's a window. A window that might open enough despite the shelf on the wall outside that might allow me to get out.

So this morning, I started my day by climbing out a window in my flat in my fuzzy maroon bathrobe to get my clothes.

How do these things happen to me?!

A few spares would be nice

On one of the that I’ve recently started reading, the author posted a link to a heart factory.

A little factory that makes hearts.

Something about the creator’s description, “If you are lacking a heart or tired of your heart being broken it would be wise to invest in your own tiny heart factory”, just. Well.

I’m certainly not lacking a heart, but somehow, in the past 27 years, I haven’t figured out how to protect mine enough. Yes, of course, you can’t entirely protect yourself – but when you build the big stone walls, with towers on four sides and archers stationed along the parapets, and then the deep moat with spikes at the bottom and man-eating sharks swimming around, and you even remembered to put a guard on the secret entrance because you’ve read too many books to be unaware that that’s the way they always get in… You at least expect something.

So a heart factory. I think I could use one of those, these days.

Mov'ed

I recently moved house, both to in order to save money (I had ignored that what I was paying at my old flat was ludicrous for entirely too long) and because, frankly, my old flatmate, as lovely as she was, was sending me down the line of poking a pencil in my eye to escape.

So, a new place. I’m living with friends, which is great – it’s been a very long time since I actively looked forward to going home in addition to hoping that people would be there instead of out for the evening – but it’s also a very interesting situation as there are, essentially, four people currently living in a two-bedroom flat. (The story behind this is long and arduous, and not entirely bloggable.)

There are some things I’ve noticed though:

1. My roommate’s alarm clock goes off sometime after 6am and sometime before 6.15am. I’m not sure when, exactly, because the clock is running on time of its own imagining. The alarm clock has the intended effect…on me. Being terrified out of sleep by the radio coming on halfway through ACDC’s Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock and Roll) actually turns out to be a fantastic way to start your day. Although I could do with less terror. It’s also nice to have a radio station playing music I like, instead of music I want to throttle to make cease, playing in the morning. It has, however, had the effect of making songs stick in my head all day. All day.

2. I’ve never properly lived with people who smokes in their house. I’ve dated smokers, but they always smoked outside. I’ve been at parties where people smoked inside, and I used to go to nightclubs where the air was full of smoke. I even smoked for a while (although never in the house/flat/room I was living in).

I do not like it. I think that I can handle it for a while – hopefully it won’t be long until we move to a house like we’d planned, and at that point the smoking inside will cease. If we’re where we are for more than a month though, I’m going to have to say something. I am the minority, as out of the four of us I am the only one who doesn’t smoke, but don’t know how long I can live in perpetual smog. And smelling of said smog.

All together though, I’m much happier sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in a room I’m sharing with someone than I was before – which is always a good thing.

...

It's surprising, sometimes, how quickly someone can integrate themselves into your life. You're just swimming along, perfectly fine, and suddenly you're thinking that you really need to tell x about that funny thing you saw earlier on your way to work, and wanting to hear about the inconsequentialities of their days. They've managed to slot in, quietly, while you weren't looking, and you realise one day that you don't want to not have that.

And then they tell you that they're going away. And you won't get to see them before they go. No, they're not sure when they're coming back. Yes, you understand that it's a brilliant opportunity, and you really are genuinely happy for them. Of course, it's early days and it's not an earth-shattering thing. We'll obviously keep in touch.

So you hang up the phone. Set it down gently. Go into your room, shut the door, and cry into a pillow. You don't want to have to explain to your flatmate why you sound like your heart's been broken.

A single moment

I'm standing at the edge of the Victoria line (northbound) platform at Kings Cross, precisely aligned so that when the second-to-last set of doors open I will be just enough to the left of the doors that I shouldn't have to step back to let people off the train but obviously in the way enough to be the first on. (This is a journey that I have taken quite possibly over a thousand times, and I know where to stand on each platform on this particular journey to minimise the time it takes to get between lines.) People are queuing up either side of me - I walked on to the platform just as the previous train was pulling away, so I got the good spot - and they, too, know where to stand.

Shortly before the train arrives in the station, you can feel the wind blowing down the tunnel. Turning my head towards the direction the wind is blowing from, I narrow my eyes slightly. There is an astounding amount of dust on the Tube system. Right before the train rounds the bend to the platform, you can see the headlights reflected against the wall.

The train rounds the bend, and I close my eyes as my hair flies back from my face and the sound hits me.

For just a moment, I want to turn around and walk away. Get on to any other train, go in any other direction, and to disappear into this city and these millions of people and see where I end up. Go to the airport and get on the first plane going to any destination, anywhere in the world. Leave everything I know, and simply...disappear.

The train stops, the doors open, and I open my eyes.

I'll be home in about 20 minutes. I think pick up a bottle of wine at that Oddbins across the road to go with dinner.

Blogging is hard

Dudes, seriously. Blogging is hard work. There are so many days where I don't feel like I've got anything interesting to say at all, nothing that anyone would be interested in is happening in my strange little life.

I mean, really. So yet again, you're going to get a list of random things.

1. I'm sorry, but what? You, someone who dumped my ass, really think that a) I am tempted to come round for a booty call? Really? and b) that you get to have any opinion about who I date? I am now tempted to jump him in front of you just to prove a point.

2. Why do crap things always happen together? I have to stay late at work and all my lines are running with delays, so I have to punch people out of the way to get on.

3. Veganomicon arrived. I want to hug it to my chest and grin for several hours. Now all I have to do is be able to afford something other than just the vegetables for the recipes.

Once

Just once:

I would like blink - you're the most amazing thing in the world to happen at the same time.

For the same song to be in both our heads.

For you to realise what it is you're saying no to.

To not wonder what you're doing right now.

To walk away from an evening knowing that it was more than great.


To know that, once, would be enough.

Not a snow day

As I walked out my front door this morning, it was snowing. Hard. Really, properly snowing. As my bus inched down Crouch Hill towards Finsbury Park station, I contemplated - admittedly with a fair amount of excitement - that if the snow continued for more than an hour or so I'd really have to go home from work because who knew if my bus would continue to run.

Go home after an hour's work on a Friday. That would really have sucked.

Alas, it didn't happen. The snow turned to rain, then nothing, and then as I was making my way home from the office to snow once more.

So instead of having a day at home surfing the net, I spent a day at work surfing the net. Home is more comfortable, with better clothes and tea.

----------------------------------

In honour of the seasonal insanity next weekend in the shapes of little red hearts, I present you with the following:

Nihilist Love Poem
Alamir

You looked pleasing like girls often do,
Does it matter why I approached you?
It could have been the weather
or just the way I grew up.
But if our personalities can be tolerated
...And you're on the pill
We should both have sex
Before we both end up dead,
and regret not doing so.

Random Wednesday

1. There are men drilling up the pavement outside my office. They have been doing this for several weeks. I’m finally beginning to get a headache.

2. I am slowly becoming addicted to the spicy peas with peanuts from Tescos. However, both my boss and I agree that some weeks (sadly, we go through at least two bags of these a week if not more) the peas are spicier than others. We always agree when they are spicy or not as spicy on a given week and really can’t figure out why. Our current theory is different batches, but because it’s a mass produced product it should always taste the same.

3. I have become addicted to Stumble Upon, and have been ‘stumbling’ around for two days now. I am not yet bored of this.

4. I recently started a new pair of socks, the Hourglass socks in some absolutely gorgeous 50/50 silk/merino my sister got me from Lambspun of Colorado. It’s a lovely semi-solid pink, and I’m hoping that the socks are going to look very nice indeed in it. Actually, I know they are – I started them on 2.5mm circs, but then decided after about three inches that I really needed to go down a size as 70 stitches around is simply way too big for me on 2.5mm. I’m now using 2mm, and the needles feel positively tiny in my hands.

5. I recently did a ’25 Things about Yourself’ meme on Facebook, and now keep thinking of more things to add.

6. The net brings a whole new aspect to the relationships that you have with others. For instance, when you like someone you can now read all the back entries on their blog and look at their Flickr photostream to stave off the desire to call/text/email them. It’s a bit strange.

An unexpected extension to the weekend

Well now.




This is what it looks like outside my bedroom window at the moment.


This is outside the kitchen.


Since all the buses in London have been shut down, the second of the two Underground lines that I take to work is completely not running, I think that this:


Pretty much sums up what I'm going to be doing with my day today.

Reading in public

On London’s transport network, you read over people’s shoulders. Everyone does it, you’re packed too closely together not to read the interesting-looking story about the two criminals who were escaping while hand-cuffed together, went either side of a pole and then slammed face-first into eachother (not the smartest tools in the shed). Or you’re trying to figure out name and author of the book you’ve now read four pages of between Kings Cross and Edgeware Road because you now care what happens to one of the characters. Or there are the other things. Reports, someone’s email about dinner off their Blackberry (because you don’t really want to read it, but can’t look away because there is no where else to look unless you’re staring at someone, and that’s not allowed).

And then, then there are mornings like this one, where you casually sweep your eyes across what the guy in front of you is reading, and realise that it’s a letter.

It’s at least several pages long, as the woman (and you know it’s a woman, the handwriting has loops and just looks feminine) has considerately numbered the pages, at the top, with each number in a small circle so it is clearly visible and so that the reader can easily keep them in order. Because this isn’t just any letter, it’s one of those letters.

The letter where you’re saying all the things that you can’t say in person, that hurt too much, or you simply can’t get out, or you think that saying it in writing will somehow make what you’re saying easier to bear for the person reading it. Or maybe you’ve just written it in a letter because you can’t watch the face of the person you wrote the letter for crumble or morph into fury or remain indifferent one more time.

It’s like a train wreck. I know that it’s intensely personal, as he turns the pages his hand is visibly beginning to shake (or maybe that’s because I’ve been watching him for a while now), but I’m now caught up and can’t look away. There are phrases like ‘I’ve tried to explain’, ‘I’m sorry, but’, and ‘I just can’t do this anymore’.

He’s reading this on the Tube. Surrounded by hundreds of people. He’s got to know that someone is reading it as well as him, he can’t have lived in this city and taken the Tube every day and not know that someone around him is reading this letter along with him. Maybe he’s doing it because if he reads it in public he won’t allow himself to fall apart, and he has a whole work day to get through before he can do that. Or maybe he just needs to not feel completely alone at the end, where she says that she’s not going to be there any more. I keep glancing from the letter to the sliver I can see of his face, straining to see his reflection in the window of the carriage.

He reaches the end, carefully reorders the pages, and painstakingly folds it and gently puts it back into the envelope it came in before tucking it into his bag. Then he leans his head against the window, for just a second, and it’s like in that one second he’s trying to shove it all down inside him, because when you get a letter like that you simply can’t leave it until later – and that’s really why he was reading it on the Tube. His entire body is tense. Then his shoulders slump, his head comes back up, he’s blinking furiously, and he disappears into the crowds at Kings Cross.

Ugggg.

Things I dislike about this Monday:

1. I have not had a weekend where I was not busy in almost two full months. Last weekend was no exception.
2. It was dark out when I got up this morning. It is almost Imbolc, I feel like it should be spring. I know it's coming but...
3. ...my flatmate has a job now, and has a habit of turning off lights that I am still using. This is even worse when I'm used to having the mornings quiet and to myself, without anyone getting in my way, turning off my lights or humming.
4. I did not get paid last Friday (because payday is not until this Friday).
5. I had to work instead of knit on either my no purl monkeys or my Mrs. Darcy cardigan. Either way, it would have had a better day.
6. I am having a bit of a throwback to my teenage years, and angsting over something. I'm not used to it, and I'm irritated at myself.

Stupidness

Have you ever noticed that, on the one day that you’d like your hair to actually listen to you and look nice in a week, it instead acts like an angsty teenager that’s just discovered Rage Against The Machine and walks around screaming ‘Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me?’

Yeah. That sucks.

The most depressing day of the year

Today is, apparently, the most depressing day of the year. Admittedly, it didn't start out well - I woke up to pissing down rain thrashing wildly against my window. However...

Reasons to be cheerful:

1. We've passed the Solstice, the days are getting longer and soon it will not be dark both to and from my way to work.

2. I got to go for long walks on the beach this last weekend, and there is nothing to make you feel serene like listening to the waves break on the shore.

3. I don't think I've ever felt more optimistic going into a new year.

4. My knitting is going wonderfully, and I have yarn I want to snuggle up to and call pet names.

5. This month, I'll have gotten to see almost all of my favourite people - something fantastically difficult when half of them are on different continents. This is amazing, and I want it to happen more often.

6. I don't know how else to say it, but I'm just... happy. Generally happy. Overall.

Random Wednesday, a day late.

Random things, following a theme. Except the last one.

1. I always read the ‘missing connections’ bit in the London Paper, when I get one (they don’t hand them out by my Tube stop, so it’s a hit-and-miss thing), just on the chance that one will be about me. I also write them, but never send them in. I don’t know what I’d do if one actually was about me, but I read them just in case.

2. This is currently my favourite comic. Right now, this particular strip has been giving me food for thought, and now I have the urge to go up to random people and ask if they like flying kites. Alternatively, and much more in keeping with the taboo of talking to strangers in public, I was thinking of making two buttons to stick on my bag. One that says ‘xkcd’ and the second saying ‘Do you like kites?’

3. One minute, three seconds.

Pumpkin soup for world travellers

If you ever (as I have this morning) find yourself awake at 3.44 am due to not being able to sleep after an international flight, I highly recommend the following:

1. Search desperately in your cupboards, trying to find something you can cook out of a truly bizarre combination of ingredient that will also not a) wake your flatmate, and b) require too much effort on your part. After all, it's 3.44 am.

2. Resign yourself to popcorn and likely waking your flatmate.

3. Notice that the tins of pumpkin you bought to make pumpkin pie last year, thinking that they were pumpkin pie mix, are actually just tinned pumpkin. Pause.

4. Realise you also have a tin of coconut milk. Become very excited. Begin searching frantically for the Bart's Red Thai Curry Paste you think you have. Find three jars of green curry paste, but no red. (Really? Why three? When was the last time you actually made Thai green curry?)

5. Finally find it, buried at the back of your deceptively empty refrigerator. Attempt to remember when you opened it. Decide it doesn't matter.

6. Combine the tinned pumpkin, remainder of the red curry paste, the coconut milk and a mug of vegetable stock on the stove, staring impatiently at it until it's actually hot enough to eat.

7. Eat in sitting room, while playing Viva Pinata on your 360 until your controller dies and you realise that you have no more batteries.

The disconnect

Whenever I come home, one of the things that strikes me about America is the massive disconnect the average American seems to have from the rest of the world. The lack of international news coverage is striking - the Metro (a free daily magazine distributed on London's transport network) has more international coverage than most American newspapers.

I'd woken up at 5.30 am this morning (jetlag is always so much fun) and was sitting in my parent's sitting room watching the morning 'news'.

It's currently snowing in Seattle and the surrounding area. They kept going on about something called a 'convergence zone' and how this was causing the snow. Now, it doesn't snow very often in Seattle, and when it does, I'll agree that everything tends to go to hell. People can't drive, cars slide off the road, everything shuts down.

However.

For two and a half hours, all the news talked about was the snow.

After an hour, I was getting a bit pissed listening to people talk about TEH SNO. Which was the worst snow ever. Ever to exist. The maw of hell was opening, and it was happening in Seattle, in the form of TEH SNO.

After another hour of TEH SNO (which clearly signaled the end of the world), a little bit of rage was developing. So far, we had covered TEH SNO, a guy getting married for the fifth time, and about thirty seconds of the conviction of one of the men behind the Rwandian genocide in 1994. But mostly we were covering TEH SNO.

It really worries me, this total lack of coverage of things happening in the rest of the world. I'd imagine that the 'average' American has no idea about what's happening with the Canadian parliment, the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, or anything other than their own back yard.

This can't be healthy for a country that, simply, thinks they have a righteous fight to wage in this world. I don't know how to change it, fix it, or try to focus more of America's attention outward, but it needs to happen.

Otherwise, I think the world is going to be in trouble.