Overtones of Inanity

I saw Nation at the National (oh the joys of alliteration, or whatever the hell that was). Tragically I'm one of those sad, depressive people that tend to foam at the mouth when faced with book adaptations - more so in the cinema than the theatre, but the point stands. Admittedly, however, I've been on a downer when it comes to Terry Pratchett's writing for a while now. While I'm aware that most people (and it really is most people, I've read the sales figures) worship the paper he writes on I found the book of Nation unfinishable - no doubt partly due to high expectations not being met.

With that in mind, this production was just so much better than the book that it's untrue. From the staging of the tsunami at the beginning, through the insane, moulting parrot to the gizzard-eating Grandfather Birds it carries the weaknesses of the story through on its strengths. This to the extent that I wonder why it was released as a book when it seems so clearly suited for the stage.

Seriously, if you're around London and have a tenner to spare then go see it.

Sooooooooo, does anyone want to explain to me about the Captain America - Iron Man subtext?

My neighbours are listening to Jon Bon Jovi and Crazy Frog,* on rotation, at a decibel level that, through the wall, is slightly higher than I can turn the TV. This makes me terribly, terribly sad.

*Seriously, what kind of person would choose to listen to those in combination? Tweenines? Devil Worshippers? Dental hygienists?

Also. I have five hundred words left to write and only one square of chocolate left.

This is not fair. How can I possibly be expected to assess a child's emotional and intellectual capabilities without the security blanket of Galaxy.

It simply cannot be. My assessment will doubtless label them all sociopaths and condemn them to a life of tri-part Numeracy Objectives and multiple choice Chemistry papers.

I must have sugar.

Won't somebody think of the children?

As part of my campaign to be a well-rounded individual who doesn't just sit at home on the internet I have been experiencing-Londontm. Today this was managed by wandering around the Harringay Green Lanes Food Festival. Experiencing Life is so much easier when Life insists on holding Street Parties right outside your front door.

I might just mention that I would be grateful if Life would refrain from handing sociopaths megaphones at any point before nine AM.

As a final note, just so that you know, you haven't lived until you've heard Billie Jean played on the steel drums.

Actually that is a bare-faced lie. My sister is training as an accountant. Last week they covered the entire undergraduate accountancy syllabus. This week they're learning everything you need to know about Ethics and Tort Law. Every night she comes home and does three hours of assessed online testing.

Me on the other hand? On Monday I started my PGCE. It has been a learning curve.

To start with, I was so nervous on Sunday night that, instead of placing my mobile phone/alarm clock on the sideboard, I place it in my water glass.

This went down about as well as you might imagine.

So, having made my sister promise to wake me up on Monday morning and spent the whole night awake in case she forgot, I made it into college.

I would like to take a moment to appreciate my constistent ability to search out the most left-field of educational establishments with the minimum of research.

My college doesn’t believe in the namby-pamby old system of discipline you might expect to find in the average inner-city school. Nope. We’re all about the Rights of the Child. In fact, I spent a large part of the first morning role playing Article 31 with the local Amnesty International representative. We got a nine out of ten for it as well.

Study has continued in this vein. Yesterday I made a stop-motion animation of Blake’s London using plasticene and today I played a small, fire-obsessed child in a tableau about Furries, started a witch-hunt in an imaginary market, play-acted a small child wondering why said Furry mother has bogged off into the sea and wrote an epic piece of free verse about a small child called Mavis who was being menaced by a hedgehog.

I do believe that I have found my level.

ETA:Just so that you know - my groups SMA of 'London' was totally the coolest. We had crying babies and everything. And a bleeding castle. In short, we rock.

Today I enrolled in Teacher Training.

Or rather, today I Epically Failed to enroll in Teacher Training.

It was one of those disastrous days that builds with the momentum of Sisyphus' boulder crashing back to Earth.

It was fun. I enjoyed it.

To start with I had an unconditional offer for the course. This wasn't so much a recognition of any natural teacher-like qualities on my part as it was an acceptance of the fact that I was quite happy to camp outside my former Professor's door wailing and gnashing my teeth until he handed over the sort of reference that would secure entry into any field. Never underestimate the benefits of being the most bloody-minded, persistent little shit in the workplace. It will get you far.

Anyway. This unconditional offer, with it's suggestion of unconditionality, confused me to the extent that I didn't take along any of my academic certifications to the Enrollment.

Neither did I take along my Passport.

I may also have neglected to pre-enroll. I'm not quite sure. Fortunately, no-one else was entirely certain either so the girl cheerfully gave me a queue number and bogged off to the tea room.

Anyway.

Once I passed Cerberus and his ticky-box of doom* I was told that I'd have to get my certificates before they could sign me up and would I mind terrible bringing them in?

Or course I wouldn't. For Helpfulness is my middle name.

So off I trotted back to my parents house** where I descended merrily upon the Filing Cabinet of Organisational Doomtm and retrieved my GCSE certificates.

The only problem is, on closer examination, they aren't actually my GCSE certificates at all. They are only my result transcripts. I don't have any GCSE certificates. They have ceased to be, if, indeed, they ever were.

This is proving to be something of a problem. I phoned the exam board. They told me that my school should have received my certificates within three months of my passing the exams. My school, which is located somewhere inside a Black Hole, are currently unreachable. To be frank, they weren't that much help whilst I was there so expecting some eleventh hour (ninth year?) restitution of aid is probably asking a bit much. Also, it turns out that, unless you can prove that your certificates were destroyed by Fire of Flood*** you cannot get replacements. At all. All you can buy are some signed copies of your results listings to wave at your new employers in a charmingly naive and hopeful fashion.

Oh. And these paw-marked Listings take twenty-eight days to arrive.

So. Here I stand among the wreckage of life, the universe, my career plans and the cat's dinner**** cheerfully bemoaning both my lot and my inability to pronounce the word "certificate" and taking wry amusement from the fact that I stole my journal tag from Clare. It's nice to know that Poetry will always have its application in the real world.

On the plus side. I joined three Unions today. Just let them try to get rid of me.


*"Have I committed any criminal offences that were not uncovered by a CRB check and have I received my GTCE certification in advance". Who or what is a GTCE and what precisely do they think I spend my spare time doing?
**Did I mention I moved out this week? Well, I moved out this week. I also went on holiday, celebrated my birthday, emptied my savings account, returned from holiday and entertained Aged Relatives. It's been real.
***only Fire or Flood. If your certificates were destroyed by Typhoon, Earthquake or Sudden Military Coup then you can go whistle for them.
****I kicked it over by accident when I walked through the door. I'm too busy slumping dramatically to do anything about it.

So. Anyone who's spent any amount of time with me is likely to know that i like scarves. They are floaty and flouncy and will be useful in case of sudden zombie apocalypse.

So far so decorative.

Except I am tidying my room and throwing out clothes and have therefore just counted them.

There are thirty-three. That's over a month's worth of scarves. I can go over a month wearing a different scarf each day and never repeat myself. There was a good period in China where i did just that. And that thirty-two isn't even taking into account sarongs or the patterned ones I use as curtains and wall-hangings. I would take a photo but I don't have a wide enough angle lens.

Truly I am blest.


They say that the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.

Executive decision: under no circumstances will I try to count up my gloves.

( EDIT: Actually. Bugger that. This is far too soul-soaring not to record for posterity. Oh god. )

http://kissedjewellery.com/

In a stroke of master cunning whilst you were all distracted by World Events and viral bacon I celebrated my five year livejournal anniversary.

My journal is old enough to attend State School and will shortly be required to learn its Times Tables.

With this in mind I'd like to take this opportunity to bow out gracefully.

Sadly, I want, as we know, does most certainly not get.

To paraphrase that which has been paraphrased before: Kings come and Kings go, but one thing remains the same. And that? Is Me.

Neither considerations or age nor dignity, hope nor fear, sparkle nor motion are shifting my vice-like grip from this computer. My tags and I are here until the earth crashes into the sun. And probably, considering the state of justice in this universe, for quite some time afterwards.

I do so hope that your next five years are as interesting as mine are about to be forced into being.

In conclusion, I would like to point you at the one to blame. She, however, has emigrated so you will simply have to take your frustrations out on whatever comes to hand.

Bonus points for children and OAPs.

I got kidnapped by a Gallifreyan and all I got...

I went to Lovebox and drank my own weight in cider and vodka and am now watching the room spin gently and thinking about how much it's going to suck in six hours when i have to get up and go to work.

Also the music was good, with the exception of Rodrigo y Gabriella, who were fucking spectacular. And then I was sad and woeful, but happy dancey guy was dancing happily, and suddenly I was at the barrier rather than the back and they were still playing away so I decided to jump up and down and shout gleefully instead.

So thank you to yellow shirted happy dancey guy, whoever and wherever you are, if more people stood in a crowd and danced like you then the world would be a far happier place.

Yis yis.

Apparently Garth Nix is writing at least two more novels in the Old Kingdom series.

This would be my glee!face.

Today, in the tiny garden outside our shop, there was a fox. He sat and watched me for a while.

Later, when I went outside to tidy he came back. I sat on the steps and watched him watch me watching him. Then he washed his tail, wandered around the bikeshed, and disappeared.

On the way past Alexandra Palace I saw a woodpecker in among the magpies.

The outhouse has been infested with giant spiders.

I have named the largest of them Jonquil and we are currently holding long, slightly one-sided, discussions on Philosophy.

I have done this in the hopes that, by anthropomorphising and insisting that I view him as a friend, he will refrain from descending on my head and devouring me.

To that end, I will not be introducing him to the concept of Nihilism.

I'm sorry but what the fuck?

More than anything else in the world I like finding out that I'm right.

Possibly it is a character flaw; but we must take our pleasures where we can find them.

I borrowed a book from work. It had a hideous cover, and a rubbish blurb and looked like the sort of book that would never use one adjective when four would do. I borrowed it nevertheless.

I borrowed it because on page two the hero was attacked by "an unkindness of ravens". Nobody drops that type of phrase into a novel by chance. That's the sort of line that insomniacs dedicate midnight hours to, composing epics around single trains of thought. Such single-minded dedication to the dissemination of collective nouns can only be admired.

But, let's face it, there's only one type of person who would go to the extent of writing a novel just in order to use one.

The main character is a fearfully attractive, deeply cynical young man who just happens to be a total psychopath. He keeps his favourite sword under the sink - or at least he did until it sprang a leak. He has a vaguely disturbing relationship with his skinny, bespectacled brother. He spends a fair amount of time grinding into the laps of his torture victims. He's permanently one step away from licking his favourite knife.

Let's be frank. I assumed one of you wrote it.

I was going to set up an online confessional to see if any of you would admit it but I looked the author up on BookData first.

I do so like being right. Only someone with a livejournal would have their hero summon demons through interpretive dance.

That gleeful giggling you might hear is me. Giggling gleefully.

One day I will stop writing about my family. Today is not that day.
( Read more... )

Is it Thursday? It must be Thursday. Because I'm bored and tired and have decided to go away.

Anyhow. I'm going to Paris in June, some time between the 21st and the 26th. If you'd like to come you're more than welcome. If you wouldn't you're more than welcome not to but I have decided to be gone!

If I had more money than sense (and I'm not saying I don't) then I would probably buy This dress and dance about in the nature reserve behind my house singing to the sparrows about how I Gave My Love To An Apple.

Sadly, whilst I do have more money than sense, I also have more signed first editions of Proust than sense, so am not getting very far.

The sparrows will never experience true joy. This makes me sad.