Anybody? And if you get that one will you get this?
‘Your purple prose just gives you away’.
I drove past my old sixth form college on Friday and pointed it out to Davies and Scarlett. Now I can’t pretend for one moment that I did the whole sixth form thing properly, like so many things in life it was all a bit of an anticlimax really. But the promise, oh the promise of it was huge. I was going from an all girls school with very strict uniform, teachers and halls and classrooms I was tired of to a mixed sixth form, to wear whatever I liked, study exciting subjects like Sociology and Politics and reinvent myself to whomever I decided to be. I had a part time job which I loved and brought me in plenty of cash for buying DMs and little skirts, snakebite and black and for a few short months I utterly revelled in being 17, skinny, loud, interesting, opinionated and a very different person. It didn’t last of course, but that year or so that I toyed with what being a ‘proper student’ might have been about remains a treasured memory of my past. I did all sorts of crazy things, some of which had long lasting far reaching effects into my life still today but it was my first real taste of freedom and the very chance to cock it all up was what mattered most I reckon.
I had a very definite style, it was fairly deliberate and possibly not a million miles away from the rest of the crowd but it felt individual, I wore my jeans ripped – all the way up to the thigh, I wouldn’t do that now but I’m kinda glad I once had the thighs to do such things :lol:, my eyeliner thick, my jumpers big and baggy, my DMs clumpy and my bags and folders clutched under my arm were decorated with my own colourful artwork. I drove a bright yellow mini with a stereo that was not fixed to the dashboard and had to be held onto when I went round a corner otherwise it would come unwired! It used to regularly stop at traffic lights and I was dead proud that I knew how to open the boot and get it started again.
Today I happened to be wearing ripped jeans (this time they are ripped becuase I have genuinely worn a hole in one knee and show very little flesh, none of it deliberately), my green DMs and a very big baggy jumper, I caught a glimpse of myself in the shop window at Tescos where I went food shopping and thought ‘blimey I look young’ and I felt young, a bit like I shouldn’t really be out doing something as grown up as food shopping all by myself. And then on the way home the song which the post title lyrics came from was on the radio, so I turned it up super loud, sang along at the top of my voice and reminded myself of a very Happy Christmas filled with college parties, drinking my snakebite, blowing the train fare home from Brighton on another pint of it and ringing my Dad to get him out of bed to come fetch me and my mate instead. Ah, the glorious irresponsibility of it all!
Anyway. 🙂
Today, when I have not been locked in past memories of a time long since gone by, we have had a Very Nice Sunday. It was my turn to get up this morning and Tarly was on top form awake by 6am ish. We did sofa snuggling and watched Little Bear together (I like Little Bear, it reminds me of innocent cartoons of my childhood) and then Davies got up. Tarly spent ages playing on the Barbie website on Ady’s laptop. She’d been playing it yesterday and is actually very proficient at all sorts of computer-y type stuff. She needed to keep typing her name in at the start of each game so I wrote her name out for her in capitals and by the end of it she was barely looking at the bit of paper – and was (rightfully) very proud of that. 🙂 Davies really made me laugh by saying to her ‘but you could just hit a few random keys and press enter if you wanted’ to which she made me laugh even more with her reply ‘No Davies, they need to know EXACTLY who is playing the game. If I did that then they wouldn’t know it was me!’. I set Davies up on my old laptop with his animation software and they both spent most of the day playing on the laptops. Davies graduated to Cat in the Hat (which I have the xbox version of for him for Christmas) and then Zoombinis – he has totally cracked Zoombinis now, the logic and everything is within his grasp and Scarlett loves to sit and watch. He is continuing to play with numbers a lot and getting progressively larger in the numbers he is playing with so that is great. 🙂
I knew todays food shop for the month was going to be a mammoth one so I set off early and arrived at Tescos shortly after it opened. Our local Tesco is having a massive refurbishment and must be getting on for two and a half times it’s previous size. It is still not finished but is already vastly improved in the range of food it is selling. We eat a lot of Chinese and Indian style food and they now have a fab range of authentic (and cheap!) bits and bobs to go with that. 🙂 I realised when I was not even half way round that I simply wasn’t going to fit everything in one trolley so I did half the store, went through the till and paid, loaded it all into the car and then went back in again and did the second half! We’re totally fooded up now and I got a few more bits and pieces for Christmas and birthday collected together too. 🙂 I also carried out our vow made watching Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s latest show to go organic / free range wherever possible for meat. It clearly added a few quid to the bill, which on one hand we can’t really afford but as it probably was only the equivalent of a couple of bottles of wine each month I reckon we can go without that instead. I am not remotely fussed about organic vegetables but I did come to the conclusion that while I am always going to eat meat I would rather feel it had not been quite such a shite life for the animal before it died so I could eat it. I’m still faintly dubious about the real difference guaranteed other than paying double but chicken particularly is one of our staple foods and some of the footage on the Hugh show was enough to convince me to go for free range organic, so we have. 🙂
When I got home (with comedy loaded up car with shopping filling the boot, the back seats and the passenger seat too) Mum was there having been dropped over by Frazer to collect her car from last night. Ady and I took the best part of an hour to unload the car and put all the shopping away so she entertained the children while we did so. She left.
Davies was occupied with Zoombinis so Tarly and I got out the plastic glasses for her party. I had this idea that it would be nice to have plastic goblets to drink from and that we could decorate them so I wrote each child’s name on one with a gold pen and Tarly stuck fake jewels and glitter on them. I think they look fab :). I also showed her some of the activities I’ve got planned for the party and we talked again about who is coming. She is so looking forward to it and actually so am I – can’t believe my baby is going to be FOUR!
Ady was cooking roast beef so we had that around 2pm altogether then had a lazy afternoon. I listed a few more bits and pieces on ebay after a very successful auction of various outgrown kids dvds ended yesterday netting me about 4 times what I’d hoped for in total. The stuff I listed today could go either way really, but at least it is less clutter round the house again which can only be a good thing.
I’m gearing up for a last week of freedom this week. I have plans every day and then next week will be manic with me starting work on Tuesday, Tarly’s birthday Wednesday, working Thursday and her party on Saturday -can’t wait. 🙂
I always struggle with this ‘give the animal a nice life’ before slitting its throat business. Not against organic / free range though. Tastes nicer…..mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Comment by Chris — 27 November 2006 @ 9:36 am
And the song……a nano-second to get. Must have seen them live about 10 times…..
Comment by Chris — 27 November 2006 @ 10:17 am
which one C? Or both?
And secretly I was sort of hoping it would taste nicer too 😉 along with trying to impress all my new vegan and vegetarian friends 😆
Comment by Nic — 27 November 2006 @ 10:25 am
I agree tastes MUCH nicer, particularly if you get from a small farm rather than a supermarket….but one step at a time hey.
And yes nano seconds on the songs, tho for me rather than conjouring up those heady years between adulthood and teendom, they bring back school discos, and being one of about only 3 even slightly alternative people in my year, and that was as alternative as any of our school discos got!!
Comment by Em — 27 November 2006 @ 11:56 am
Well I don’t know who the song lyrics are from but I am quite an old fogey …
Good decision on the meat though as far as I am concerned – I took a vow quite some while ago again inspired by HFW to only ever have free-range chicken & eggs although i confess I sometimes totally forget if I am buying a chicken sandwich out somewhere!
Comment by Joanna — 27 November 2006 @ 5:07 pm
*is very impressed and happy for the animals and unsure why Chris is struggling with it*
Nice to hear of other people doing similar too!
And I hope it does taste better for you.
I love Chinese and Indian ‘bits and bobs’ – you just reminded me I have samosas in the fridge…
Comment by Ali — 27 November 2006 @ 8:25 pm
Well I can never quite resolve why one bothers to make the existence nicer if you are going to slit its throat anyway. Either you treat them with respect (which I would suggest doesn’t involve killing) or not bother at all is kind of what I struggle to get away from. If one accepts animals can be bred to be killed than why can’t one accept that animals can be bred and kept in dark little cages and then killed. The dark little cages kind of seems trivial in comparison to killing them. I have yet to find anyone that shares my view I should add.
Comment by Chris — 27 November 2006 @ 11:12 pm
clearly cos they taste nicer when allowed to roam free I guess! 😆 Up until I’d watched HFW I would totally share your view Chris but I’m trying to have a conscience so bear with me.
Oh and your wife just pulled up outside 🙂
Comment by Nic — 27 November 2006 @ 11:17 pm
LOL – Surely the least you can do if you’re going to be responsible for them being killed is to also take the responsibility for making their lives a bit nicer and less unnatural instead of adding to the misery?
I can’t see why you can’t aim for treating them with compassion (or ‘respect’) but if you can’t manage 100% it’s still worth doing what you can.
If I knew I was going to meet a violent and early death one day in the future, I wouldn’t really want to just sit in a dark cage and wait.
Comment by Ali — 28 November 2006 @ 1:08 pm