You ask where I have been lately and forget those times that I have attempted contact. Ignored once, twice, it doesn’t matter. They are still ignored. Or acknowledged slightly and that hint of communication exists momentarily but you break it once more and come to me later asking ‘where have you been?’

Paranoid faces and empty spaces where our words should have been. It makes me wonder why you ignore me so and then start believing that our roles have been reversed now. They haven’t. But I think I have given up for while as I am not sure what else I am supposed to do.

Tomorrow I have an exam and though it is only two hours of my life in which I will write approximately 8 to 9 pages of ideas, I cannot help but feel apprehensive. Which is unusual for me. A weighty expectation that exists in nobody but me. An attempt at ‘revision’ has been already been made, and failed tremendously today, though it is only 13 minutes to midday.

What do you do when you realise that you used the wrong word entirely? It may undo everything I have worked for, just one word. Miscegnation. How did I manage to get it so wrong? I wonder ifthey will notice? They are supposed to notice, in which case I may experience my first fail this coming July when those ominous scores are posted online. Counting words as well, how did she manage to screw us all up and get awayw ith it? 1000, or 500 more, it makes a difference you know. Get it right you pretentious, right-wing, ignorant snob. next year get it right, for their sakes.

The skin on the back of my legs is considerably darker than the skin on the front of my legs.

I am swaddled in towels and have half a mind to keep it this way. For the rest of my life, in this bed. Hair hidden, body on show a little bit with nobody to see. Just me. Wrapped loosely in cotton and smelling of Jasmine. All of my life and my hair will forever be wet.

Everything we do and think is a direct result of other peoples actions.

Discuss.

On Friday night I watched David Tennant predict the future with the aid of the weird and abrasive Derren Brown. It was quite freaky but I did really wish that I could ‘relax’ in a pool for an hour before being taken out and told to scribble what shoud be words on paper while being asked a hundred remedial questions. And see if my subconscious scribbles contained stories from a newspaper in one weeks time. That was what I would call Freaky. I will perhaps do it with my trees very soon. If my bath constitutes as a very very small swimming pool that is.

I am feeling at a loss right now. There are so many things happening but nothing is ‘happening’ at all. I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense. I have places to go, sit, things to talk about and do, food to eat and films to watch, books to read and a place to work, but now that Uni is over I have felt that time has stopped. Well, not time, but things. Maybe it is just because it is the weekend and at the weekend I do nothing but sit on my bed all day wondering why I have nothing to do. maybe tomorrow I can see my trees somewhere and I can make them watch films that are like magic. I know that next Saturday I may be at home with my entire noonan family and I am rather scared about that prospect.

I also know that I had a horrendous dreams last night and I cannot wait to see Sara and baby Maddison so that I know that in real life they are actually okay and completely safe.

I watched Mystic River last night. Well, I got too sleepy so fell up to bed half way through and watched the rest of it just now with the sun shining through my window. Maybe it was that shiny sun that made the film better than it actually was. I don’t know. It had the potential to be brilliant, but it semed to veer off in an entirely unnecessary direction in the most important last ten minutes f the film. Those ten minutes can make or break a film I think. Mystic River entirely lacked focus on the characters we had become so deeply involved with and instead misdirected its attention onto three women we don’t give two shits about. That is it. The film was crap because of it, I have just decided.

If you are wondering why my review is so primitive, containing on expletives for description, well that is just because today I feel lazy and the film has annoyed me too much to bother at the moment with a proper assessment.

I should end this with something interesting, but I’m not too interesting and find it difficult to do these things so I shall leave it here ))<>(( instead.

I really should be writing an important essay or two, but I’m not. I am just staring at something that isn’t there. You know, those vacant spaces that contain nothing, look like nothing, but are still there for you to look at, despite their nothingness. I am contemplating the last week or two and it makes me a little giddy. I have just had a wonderful few weeks spending time with wonderful new people. I feel inspired and they are obviously the reason otherwise I would never have even considered getting up and reading my poetry to a group of strangers. But they did it, and they were brave and they were beautiful and they did it. So I did too. I don’t know if I could do it again, but at least I tried.

I hate the size of the world. I hate that there is a distance that exists between people, that separates them, that keeps them away from one another. I hate that the distance can become short momentarily and time becomes amazing, something to be treasured forever. The sun is shining and we are laughing and everything seems perfect but then the footsteps take us in different directions and all of a sudden there are roads, paths, buildings, hills, rivers and sometimes even oceans that get in the way.

I want to cry over Laura I think. I mis her so much, every single day. She is the better part of me and more and I miss her so much. i don’t think she realises anymore, but I do. I want her to be here on my bed but she isn’t and won’t be for a very long time.

I want Amber to be here for a very long time but she won’t be.

In 2 or 3 or 4 years time we will all be so far apart and I miss us all already.

I am happy that over the summer there are some people I will be able to get to know better and spend more time with. If they would want me to that is. I am glad that Hull is finally beginning to mean something to me and make me see what I potentially have to offer, and what it has already had to offer me. Great things. I never thought I would say that but I have. This next month is going to be the happiest in a very long time and will undoubtedly be full of amazing fun and conversation and activity tinged (though not detrimentally) with infinite melancholy.

I want to live in this tree forever:

But it gets to live on me instead.

Today I am cold even though the sun is shining and everybody is wearing small shorts, sunglasses and vest tops. I am wearing black jeans, a dark grey, long t-shirt and a black jacket that has a hood. I feel like black feels. They way everybody assumes black feels so therefore that is how id does. Feel. Black.

My head is empty right now and there is a latent taste of chocolate at the back of my throat. My Right eye has bloodshot and the bruise on my leg has gone yellow. There is a distant beat behind both of my eyes, and my nose and the beat is telling me that I feel nothing just now. There are more grey pavement slabs on the ground than there were yesterday. And less sand. If i could blink my eyes and take a picture for you, I would.

It feels like I have 9 more hours of feeling nothing ahead of me. Because that is how many hours I do have ahead of me in which I shall feel nothing. Maybe not nothing. Maybe empty isn’t the right word. My mind has shut down into a state of complete nonchalance. I don’t care about what I am supposed to be doing because I care too much about it. That is why I don’t care. I never thought I would let myself get into such a predicament but I have.

Yesterday was a day that was green. It was yellow and green and full of blossom and I felt the grass between my toes and my muscles laugh when I cartwheeled across the floor. 2 + 2 = 5. I am now staring in between places. That minute stretch of something that comes before the sky but after the blocks and trees and points and bricks and metal. I wonder what is there. And I wonder if I can go.

The Larkin Building reminds me of a hamster cage when I look at it. A little labyrinth of rooms and tunnels for all of the little rodents to roam around in and find their place and sit and read and laugh. And sometimes cry

That chimney looks like the end of my pen.

I can see a huge pile of dirt and I am wondering what it would be like to be sitting in it having the dry and soft buts run through my hand with more resistance than sand would. I wonder what kind of stones I would find in there that could sit on my shelf with the others and be proud that they are not just insignificant stones anymore?

I wish that I was curled up somewhere soft and warm, with my stones by my side and my cat at my head and I was watching Hook or The Neverending Story and that it never ended.

and another Library user who won’t sit at his desk (which, coincidentally, actually has a socket, that he is using) for more than 3 minutes without leaving for stretches of twenty minutes or more….
Leaves Heather a very angry girl.

Why on earth does a University Library only have around 10 plug sockets per floor? There are about 100 seats on each floor I would imagine. That is 1 socket for every ten people (I’m almost as good at plussing as Matty is) and we are all paying £3000 a year to be here. The International students are playing a  hefty lot more too. And yet our money appears to be mislaid in the pockets of the Dean and the Science Labs and paying for ridiculous Balls that nobody wants to go to. I demand more plug sockets. I now have 13 minutes left on my Macbook and have another 8 hours of study/essay time. Lets hope the idiot behind me goes home soon so I can use the plug that he is hogging for no reason.

Library Rage!!!!

And yet the rain still falls. As does the hail. The leaves are not growing properly and it makes me very sad. The sun has been shining sporadically hip hip hip hip hooray. He puts his hat and mac on as the rain falls down again.

A little ditty for you there.

When he does decide to show his face for more than five minutes and without the ominous clouds looming behind and around him ready to pounce on his happy beams, I shall be armed with my picnic blanket, cloudy lemonade and my Mr Kipling favourites.

They are discussing the political climate of Britain on Channel 4 right now. Who  ever thought that Gordon ‘my-face-is-messier-than-my-politics’ Brown could do a better job than Tony Blair? Oh yes. Only he did. Who gave him the right to rule our country? Yes, only he did. Surely there have been some illegal doings here. Why couldn’t Blair have just completed his run. Another ten months or so before the election. I shall say no more other than it has been a complete farce.

I am still in my pyjamas, but that is okay as I am curled up on the uncomfortable sofa wrapped in a comfortable blanket reading Nabokov’s Lolita and whirring my Hitchcock ideas around my head at the same time. Do you sometimes feel that you can think two things at once. Perhaps it is something to do with the two hemispheres of the brain. Working and thinking and talking simultaneously yet separately from one another. I just had pins and needles in my feet. It is funny that that is the term used for the strange sensation. It feels exactly as it is described. There was an Enid Blyton short story I read as a child that was about pins and needles. And Faeries. I can’t remember how it went.

I adored Enid Blyton. I was thinking about her before. The Enchanted Wood with Moonface and his wonderful toffees that grew and grew in your mouth, or the hot and cold cakes. Amazing. Or The Children on Cherrytree Farm with the wonderful old tramp who lived in a cave. Amelia Jane or the Naughty Schoolgirl (I imagine a certain movie industry may have capitalised on this title a thousand times over).

Enid Blyton was fabulous. She took me to magical worlds and I met magical people and animals and creatures. All because of her.

< This was the same copy I had as a child. I coloured in the black print pictures with my felt tip pen. I think I gave Fanny (a character, before you ask) a purple face.

One day I will buy them all and read them to my children before they go to bed. i will let them colour the pictures in with felt tip pens too.

(who, by the way, is a Womble.)

Korean baby singing Hey Jude

-ade.

On Tuesday I had a wonderful evening at a little bar place called Zest where Adam Foulds read some of his work. I had never been to a reading before and I found it odd that I would drift in and out of listening to what he was saying. When a story is read aloud it is often difficult to get thoroughly involved but there were some bits that impressed me greatly, even if there are others that I have forgotten completely. I also met some brilliant minds that evening. Like Amber. Fate would have it that she is going back home to America in a month and I have only just had the privilege to meet her. Hopefully next week she will have lunch with me and Hep. There was also Mike, from Hull, who chatted with me at length about accents and other various things. And two Chris’s. One Chris looks like Dave. The other Chris made an impressive analogy likening writing poetry with wrestling. A fakery. A good one, I presume.

And the murmurs never cease,
And no, they never stop.
Like the tides are never still, beaten by
A Lunar light: roaming recklessly, perpetually
And the leaves entertain our mud-shy paths
As the rain induces hankered laughs
Yes, plants forever trying, and the farmers dully sighing
And fires slowly burning, licking skin that’s softly yearning, for
Wine forever flowing, its lust-filled grapes are knowing, of
The groans, they never halt as they dampen crumpled sheets

And though I’m never
living,
And though we’re always
dying
My body walks, gladly breathing sin
My mind is wrought, encased within
Four white washed walls,
Water slowly falls,
weeping gently down
the tiles.

So, sometimes I wonder why I grew up to be as un-funny as the un-funniest thing one could possibly ever conceive. I tell a joke, but half way through give the ending away, because I stumble over my words and spend too much time explaining WHY the joke is supposed to be funny, rather than letting the joke make people laugh by itself. Most of the time, I can’t even tell jokes as I literally have the memory of a Goldfish; or a brownfish, or a catfish or whatever no-memory brain fish there are or may be.

How funny are you?

I am around some extremely funny people everyday. Wit is something that I did not inherit from the rest of my family. As I sit there scratching my head in confusion at peoples super fast quips, ricocheting back and forth between one another. I don’t mind being the laugher rather than the laugh. But I do sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I could make people laugh without having to be laughed AT. You know, the whole laugh WITH me and not AT me.

Okay, I am rambling too much here.

My body is refusing to warm up after being sat in the cold library all day. Today there was an interesting seminar/lecture on the Queerness of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (how could that ever be disreputable? I mean, Tim Curry wears lipstick and suspenders for godsake. Of course it is gay, do we really need to discuss how and why it is bloody gay??!!) and the Lesbian dilemma of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (we shall ignore the gayness of the Lion, because that is almost as obvious as Tim Curry’s rather shapely legs). I now have to ponder the topic of my next Hollywood Musical essay. Race or Sexuality? You choose.

I would love to watch and rewatch Moulin Rouge under the pretense that I am educating myself, but Moulin Rouge doesn’t really fit into the sub categories of the essay question. So, I shall have to be content with secretly listening to the soundtrack on my Itunes, and sneakily watching Ewan McGregor: in tickled delight, on my days off while Scott is at work, blissfully unaware of the heinous crime against any ounce of respectability he thinks I have left, in my living room.

After my lecture I snacked on Sushi (the vegetarian kind, I am not yet brave enough for uncooked poisson) and visited the library to expand the mind and soul with a little research into Frenzy, the 1972 Hitchcock film. It was his second to last film and follows (typically) the story of a man on the run after being falsely accused of the rape and murders of various women around London. “The Neck-Tie Murderer”…but, he  definitely didn’t do it, yet somehow, his ex-wife and his current girlfriend manage to fall prey to the REAL “neck-tie murderer” and he, of course, is left to try and defend his innocence.

My essay for this has me asserting whether this was a late flourish in his extensive career, or a final falling-off. I haven’t quite figured out whether the dank, garish attitude taken in this film sits well with me. Its attempt at black humour verges on the grotesque yet it does provide a startling insight into the human condition and how much we are capable of coping with. It began to remind me a little of the case of John Reginald Christie, an infamous homicidal serial killer who was convicted in 1953. Some of you may know of him through Richard Attenborough’s harrowing performance in 10 Rillington Place, alongside William Hurt (who plays the wrongly accused blue collar male, Evans, who is hanged for the murder of his daughter and Wife, whose ends were actually brought about by Christie.)

Unsurprisingly, this case gets a mention within Frenzy, as two pub-goers comment on the neck-tie murderer. It makes sense that Hitchcock will have recognised the similarities between the two stories; though one was disturbingly real and the other, merely a gratuitous fabrication.

I forget where my initial direction with this blog post was heading and it is at this point that I should perhaps close-up and give only my recommendation to whomever may be reading this - watch both Frenzy and 10 Rillington Place. They are both quite frightful. And you will never watch the Miracle on 34th Street (1992) in quite the same light again.