Tuesday 13 September 2011

The Hazards of Health

            It was the Nottingham marathon the other day. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that it entered into my life in any great way, seeing as I am quite definitively not one of those people possessed with an ability or desire to run great distances, but it did lend me a few moments of confusion as the runners passed near my house. I was sat with a cup of tea and a book (that most sacred of combinations), when I heard a kind of distant drumming, accompanied by the occasional scream. Then came more yelling, and the drumming got louder, and louder. My mind is quite easily confused when I’m not concentrating, and it is most vulnerable to such attacks of bewilderment when it’s preoccupied by a good story (such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which I’m currently reading), so when such cacophonous sounds as these entered my awareness, you can probably imagine my reaction. Depending on how well you know me/how much of my blog you’ve trawled through, you may have picked up on the fact that my brain doesn’t always make the most logical of leaps (see, for example, radioactive super-power-inducing spider bites), so I did not think ‘marathon’, but ‘Balrog!’ (Please, please tell me I don’t have to direct you to The Lord of the Rings to find out what a Balrog is, or why drumming and screaming would make me think of one.)
            Anyway, the tenuous link I am making from this, is that once I had realised that it was the marathon, not the Balrog, the sound of sirens screaming which soon followed, reminded me of one of the reasons why I am no marathon runner: exercise leads to pain. Exercise, it can generally be agreed, is a good thing, to an extent. Now, I am by no means an exercise freak, but I have been prone to restlessness over the last months because, in the shortish periods of time when I haven’t been gallivanting around the country for weddings and such, I have instead been sat in my room filling out some thrilling job applications all day long. For days on end. With not much to show for it. Trust me, it’s not fun. This restlessness has, on various occasions, prompted me into random bouts of exercise. The first time it happened this summer was way back in June, and I got a little bit carried away. I learned the lesson that you shouldn’t abstain from exercise for extended periods of time and then surprise-attack your body with two matches of tennis and an hour’s swimming all in one day. It hurts.
            The pain of this experience was nothing, however, to when I got rather overenthusiastic about horse-riding in the uni Easter holidays (I think) in first year. I started horse-riding when I was six, having been allowed to ride a horse when on a camping holiday in Scotland and consequently fallen in love with it. None of my dad’s apprehension could withstand the force of six-year-old-me constantly haranguing him to ‘Let me ride the ponies! Let me ride the ponies! Let. Me. Ride. The. Ponies!!!’ And so it began and, give or take a few near misses and fairly terrified moments, I rode for twelve years loving every minute of it, and was thoroughly upset about not being able to afford it when I went to uni. I discovered that the place where I had been riding at home must be the world’s cheapest ever riding stables at about £36 for 6 lessons; where I am now, you could pay that for one lesson: sad times.
Anywho, contrary to popular (/ignorant) belief, horse-riding constitutes a full blown work out – you use muscles in pretty much every part of your body, including some which you don’t use for anything else. In a nostalgic moment when I was home for Easter, I booked myself in for a two hour ride at the stables; having not ridden in months and consequently having not used said muscles in months, I was booking myself in for a whole world of pain, and some not insignificant concern for my life.
I began to realise about 5 minutes into this 120 minute experience that my arms, torso, and especially my legs were not as equipped to deal with gripping, directing, and moving with a fairly hefty horse as they had used to be. This became increasingly worrying as the minutes ticked by and I tried to reconcile myself to the idea that I was going to have to spend the rest of my energies on just gripping and moving, and hope that my horse was feeling good-tempered enough to just follow the others. Particularly when we reached the part of the route where we were crossing a pretty busy A-road. Yay potential death scenarios! (If ever I have hoped for the transparency of my sarcasm even without an audible tone of voice, it is now.)
As you have probably gathered, I did make it through this rather gruelling experience, even if my dismount at the end of the ride was more of an exhausted flop onto the ground than an elegant, controlled motion. I survived. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated the staggering-wheezing-near-death, so I then had to cycle home, which as you can probably imagine was as miraculous in its success as the miracle of my technical non-death. I think when I actually did get home, I literally just lay on the floor in the hallway for a good little while. The floor became my good friend. My situation became even more farcical when I remembered that I had arranged to go for a walk with one of my friends that afternoon. I think we literally walked for about fifteen minutes (if that) before I casually suggested we sit on a random log on the side of the path. She helpfully pointed out that we hadn’t been walking for very long, had we? And of course figured out that I couldn’t actually walk any further. She didn’t laugh too much.
            Back to this summer; having revised the issues of inconsistency of exercise, I also learned (well, was forcibly reminded I guess) that when exercising outdoors, one should pay sufficient attention to one’s environment. Whilst I am about as far from being an advocate of the whole tanning thing that society seems to demand, or at least tries to demand from many people so unnecessarily and unnaturally, I do have at least one point on which I envy those whose skin is of a darker shade than mine: sunburn. I have the type of skin which is (well, rather charitably in my case) defended by those who describe it as milky or pale ivory, or whatever complimentary euphemism you’d like to substitute for blinding white. It is also described by me as irritatingly vulnerable. I’m the kind of person who has used factor 65 sunblock. In England. Yep, I’m that kind of cool. Anyway, this ramble on skin tones is really leading to a story about the most entertaining sunburn I’ve ever had, and yep you guessed it, I acquired this prize about a month ago while out exercising!
            Again, I was out playing tennis, though at this point had learned not to cram my month’s worth of tennis and swimming into one week, so didn’t wear myself out. My tennis partner and I even sat around and chatted for about forty minutes in between sets, so there was no possibility of exhaustion-death. However, when I had been applying sunblock that morning, I had for some reason forgotten to cover my face, which meant that the ensuing sun burn was entertaining on two levels. First was the more obvious part where there was a line around my neck where the white ended and the burning red began. Secondly, and this is the part which makes it my favourite sunburn ever, I had glasses marks. Not sunglasses marks – the traditional foe of those attempting a facial tan - but from my everyday glasses which happen to have bits at the sides which are really thick at one end but then taper toward the ear. I had speed stripes. Symmetrical narrowing lines of white on red either side of my face. Fantastic.
            Another of my favourite stories of exercise made more hazardous by the weather came from weather at the other end of the spectrum. This was back in sixth form (I think?) when one of my friends, Tammy, asked me and another of our friends, Jenny, to go jogging with her, because she needed to train for some event she was taking part in (I think it involved mountain climbing?) but she didn’t want to go alone. (Now Tammy gets a special shout out, because she gave me what is one of my favourite comedy-points birthday presents ever a few weeks ago: in response to what I wrote in the ‘Graduate Entry to the University of Life’ post from back then, she got me Edam cheese! Quality.) Anywho, we three went jogging a couple of nights a week for maybe a few months? I can’t remember; unimportant detail.
Now, I think that while some people are built to run, others are just not, and I definitely fall into the latter category. Those who are meant to run have this magical ability to bounce effortlessly along on the balls of their toes, you know, all majestic in their precise, powerful strides. Then you have the people like me, who kind of lollop along, red in the face and sucking air down their lungs and desperately just trying to land one foot in front of the other. This does also set runners of my ability up for a lot more falls than those who actually have control of their legs. Especially when you’re running down a fairly steep hill in the mud of winter. Yay.
You can picture the scene: it was only me and Tammy on that particular night and, unsurprisingly, I’d fallen behind a little and was trying to increase my speed so as to still at least resemble a jogger as I made my way down the hill. This resemblance completely disintegrated as I hit a particularly muddy spot which must have been some kind of water slide in a past life. I squealed as my foot slid underneath me, and Tammy, who thankfully was a fair way ahead, turned to see me surfing down the hill on one foot – apparently I travelled in this rather unconventional way for a few metres at least – until my balance gave out and I landed rather unceremoniously on my derriere. I’m told my facial expression was priceless. To be honest, even I kind of wish it had been caught on camera.
So, what can we conclude from all of this? The lazy bum in me wants to suggest that exercise in all its forms is just asking for trouble when one is as ‘challenged’ as I am (it seems kind of incongruent that lazy bum-me would describe ‘one’ as anything…meh). Nonetheless, both the supposed reasonable side of me and the easily over-excited child in me do suggest that as long as one takes the proper precautions it should be fine (use of the term ‘one’ seems less wrong from the reasonable-me) and that games and running around can be fun and sitting around all day is boring and can we go do stuff now!? (I hope you can work out which me that was.)

Huh; definitely the longest post ever. Blame the Balrog.

Friday 9 September 2011

See my cunning disguise…


I just got back from my first ever job interview. I think that certainly at least gets me points for effort on the ‘growing up’ thing. It was kind of strange; I sat waiting in the waiting room (as you do) chatting to the receptionist (as you do), and every now and then I’d remember that this was an actual job interview for an actual job which would pay me an actual salary with actual money. Woah.
I don’t know whether it’s just my brain being a little bit backward on this issue, or if it’s normal for the prospect of being paid to be this shocking for a first time employee. Hmmm. This stumbling block for my brain isn’t exactly helping me feel as grown up as I’m supposed to be acting though, which is a little unfortunate, but so far I seem to have been able to fool those who need to be fooled into thinking I’m very mature, sensible, and entirely capable of dealing with positions of responsibility.
            I think the actual interview went ok, though who ever knows really how these things have gone until after they’ve been told. I made a concerted effort to look the part of serious-business-Rachel which, if you know me, is pretty unheard of. I was fully suited and booted (well, skirted, bloused and high-heeled….doesn’t quite have the same ring does it?), and about as far from my norm as it’s possible to be, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. I even managed the entire twenty-five minute walk home in my heels, although I will admit to having walked there in flip flops, which I then proceeded to stash in my bag just before I arrived and substituted them for some more appropriate serious-business-footwear. That got me some odd looks from passers by. I think the comfort of something as familiar as odd looks from passers by may have actually helped calm me down from the point of nervous explosion. Thank you, o bemused passers by.
Well, the next interview is on Wednesday (unless I get called back by Capital One Promotions before then *eek*), so I think I can relax for a few days now before I must resume my cunning disguise….

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Just how far can I move a goal post?

            Wooaahh, it’s been a while since I posted. Woops. Life goes on.
            I had another repeat moment of realisation today about just how much easier it is to change the goalposts on ‘growing up’ than to actually go ahead and do it. I’ve been moving goalposts all summer, albeit with reasonably good reason. First was graduation, then my brother’s wedding, then getting back home after visiting my parents, then my 21st birthday, then moving house, then my friend’s wedding in St. Andrew’s…..and now all of that is past and I don’t have any more potential goalposts to try and pin it on. Which is a little disgruntling to be honest (is disgruntling even a word?).
            But in my defence, most of these goalposts were fairly major, and they all came so close together that as soon as one was over I had to prepare for the next. I’ll take some overwhelmed points if I can get them.
Moving house was an interesting one. Packing and unpacking all your worldly possessions really forces you to actually consider them. I uncovered an impressive amount of random crap which clearly had meaning at some point in my life but is from a time so long past that I actually can’t remember what that meaning was, which is also disgruntling (I’ve decided that it is a word, so now I’m going to use it, whether you like it or not. Besides, MS Word is on my side.). I think my favourite example was a chocolate wrapper which someone had written ‘pixxie destruction!!’ on. I have absolutely no idea what ‘pixxie destruction’ means, why it was written on a fairly unremarkable chocolate wrapper, or even what it could vaguely relate to. I can’t even recognise the handwriting. (If that was written by anyone reading this, please explain!)
Less mysterious, but still full of a lot of random, was my high school yearbook, signed with such awesome random by my school friends. Reading through the messages often made me smile, but also wonder at how some things have so epically changed since then – some friendships blossomed, some pretty much disappeared. Strangely, the thing that freaked me out most was when I tried to read a message that my English teacher had written – his handwriting was notoriously bad, and I couldn’t actually read his name. And I couldn’t remember what it was. This was rather disconcerting considering he taught me for four years, only just over three years ago. It took me at least ten full minutes to remember, and the panic I felt in my momentary amnesia was shocking in its magnitude. It was full blown heart-racing, blood-draining-from-my-face, gouging-my-eyes-out-in-fear-and-dread panic (well, give or take a few eye gouges). Who knew it would freak me out so much not being able to remember details like that? But then who knew my memory was so crap as to forget details like that in only three years?….well actually, that would be most people who know me…
It is a little distressing though, because at the time the idea that you could forget things like that seems about on the same level of likely as, well I don’t know, how about the random acquisition of super powers. Clearly, however, my ability to forget things is higher than I thought, and the things which seem so ingrained in my mind, can be erased from it with relative ease. Hmmm, I wonder how far I can stretch the consequent implications for the random acquisition of super powers from that….if I’m honest (and I’m a little ashamed/proud of myself for this), my first thought on noticing a mysterious red swelling on the back of my right hand a couple of weeks back was, ‘Oooo, that could be a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!’. Yeah, I know.
Anyway, I feel like I may have lost the original thread of this post. Oh yeah: the continual moving of goalposts before actually growing up. Ooo, I know – if I make the random acquisition of super powers the next goalpost, then I should be safe from growing up for a good while yet….unless it was a radioactive super-power-inducing spider bite!

Tuesday 16 August 2011

The Actual It


            Today was awesome. Insane, but awesome. My brother now has a wife. Who is awesome. And comes with awesome family.
            I don’t really think much more can be said, other than today was just one of those days that can’t really be categorised with any others because it just so entirely outranks any sense of awesome that I’ve ever before experienced. Which is pretty impressive really. Everything from the almost military operation at the hairdressers’ this morning, to the repeated realisation that this is how my hair will actually look for my brother’s wedding, this time of trying on my dress isn’t just trying it on, but me actually wearing it for my brothers wedding, this is the actual it, all the way through to seeing everybody at the church, the service where the preacher lost a page of his notes, but made it through ok anyway, and then on to the reception in the evening, and hearing the speeches and trying not to burst with pride for my family.
            I really couldn’t ask for anything better. Except perhaps to also be given an ability to put that into a sentence that doesn’t splurge across eight lines of the page...

Brothers, sisters-in-law, and sisters-in-law squared?


I’ve already kind of covered the part where this wedding feels weird because it’s my sibling being decidedly grown up, and that’s just a little unsettling, but I haven’t covered the part where, because he’s my sibling, not just a friend, I now get a whole load of extra family. Which is awesome, because I love family (awwwww). Obviously I recognise that some families function differently to others, and that some aren’t exactly brimming with happiness, fluffiness and goodwill for all, but I seem to have been blessed with a rather sweet deal, family-wise. And I’m increasingly discovering that this extends to the new family that I’m gaining tomorrow as well.
As today was the day before the day, there was a pretty full schedule of things that needed doing, from cleaning the church to decorating cupcakes. But unlike most things involving my family, it was really well organised, with us all split into teams with a list of tasks so we all knew what we needed to do and how to do it. Amazing. Even more amazing though was how welcomed into the home of our new family we all felt. You hear nightmare stories of monstrously problematic in-laws and such things, but there was nothing even vaguely resembling such a figure. Only warmth and welcome.
To be honest, I was probably the most problematic person by a long shot, because I managed to be rather ill this morning, which sucked for me, but meant that my team, consisting of me and the bride’s sister, Cat, was reduced from two to one, and Cat’s workload was doubled. But they refused to let me feel as if I was letting the side down (despite the fact that I clearly was), and Cat soldiered on while Laura, the bride, set me up in her own bed upstairs with a sick bucket. Not exactly bridezilla and the terrifying in-laws.
And the story gets better. Having slept for most of the morning, I was feeling a little better, and was well enough by the afternoon to go with Cat to a friend’s house whom she was going to be pet-sitting for over the next week so she needed to pick up the house-key. And we’re not just talking about your standard pets; this friend has not only a cat, two guinea pigs and some fish, but a pair of ridiculously cute tortoises. As Cat drove us to their house, my excitement about a pair of pet tortoises grew to levels probably higher than is rational, but it fit with the day and with the joy of not feeling so sick anymore.
We spent about an hour or so at the friend’s house, just hanging out, chatting, and of course being introduced to all the animals; happy times. We also managed to forget to collect the key that we went to collect in the first place, so Cat’s friend had to drop it round later, but hey - there’s only so many things you can remember in the presence of tortoises. After having spent some good, relaxing time with the tortoises, I felt pretty much completely better and was able to contribute to the work of our team again in the evening. The conclusion I came to from this was that tortoises have magical healing powers.
Before long, my brothers and my parents went back to the house that they were staying at and left me here as part of the bridal party. It was strange saying ‘bye’ to them, knowing that the next time I would see them would be at the actual wedding. I remember thinking, ‘I’m glad he’s marrying into this family’.
We all got takeaway pizza and Laura, Cat and I practiced make-up for the big day. Well, Cat practiced putting it on me because, as I may have mentioned, I’m not exactly an expert with the stuff. We tried to work out what the terms of our relationship are: clearly Laura and I will be sisters-in-law, and obviously Laura and Cat are already sisters, so Cat and I are…..sisters-in-law squared? That’s what we decided, anyway.
A good day; mental, but good. And now to try and sleep before what will, no doubt be an absolutely manic but awesome day tomorrow. Hah.

Truth Universally Acknowledged


            I was out in the city centre this afternoon doing last minute, pre-wedding shopping with mum and dad: for me, a flower for my hair; for dad, a tie (it’s a very good job I was there when he was looking for a decent tie, because the ones he was looking at, well….just not the right colours…and yes that’s ‘colours’ in the plural because it was spotty….). I also wanted to buy a simple silver ring, because I always wear rings but none of mine are exactly bridesmaid material, so I wanted to buy one or two so that my fingers wouldn’t feel lonely and empty all day…. Don’t worry, I’m aware that this is weird.
            Anyway, I was hanging around in the jewellery section of Debenhams (I actually had to look up how to spell that….how odd), waiting to meet up with my parents again and increasingly coming to the conclusion that Debenhams is waaaaay out of my financial league (the cheapest rings there were around £50; I ended up buying mine from Hennie’s, where you could buy 10 for about £3…). As I stood there, obviously looking dazed and confused by the finery around me, I was pounced on by one of those make-up-sales-people that hang out in places like Debenhams.
            To say that I’m not a person who wears make-up regularly would be a bit of an understatement. I don’t own any, and I probably have only marginally more skill at applying it than my spotty-tie-for-his-son’s-wedding father does. Well, ok, I’ve probably got a lot more skill at make-up application than dad does, but that’s more a reflection on dad than any suggestion that I know how to use that stuff that many girls (and I guess some guys?) spend quality time poking themselves in the face with for fun and frolics. This is all just explanation for why I literally burst out laughing when the make-up sales woman approached me, a hopeful glimmer in her eye.
            My excuse for what happened next is that it’d been a pretty surreal day already, what with my ridiculous early morning for no reason, the repeated realisation that the wedding is the day after tomorrow, and then of course having my hair cut at the quite-posh-hairdresser’s where the bridal party is going on the morning of the actual wedding. This combination left me feeling very-slightly-rather insane, and kind of how I imagine being high feels like. So, when the make-up sales woman approached me, I decided to just go with it. I gave her fair warning that I was pretty much a hopeless case and she wouldn’t be particularly successful in her attempts to make a customer out of me (as if my explosive laughter and disbelief weren’t warning enough), but it turned out that she was bored and just wanted something to do, so she didn’t really mind.
            She led me away, still vaguely protesting and with the occasional maniacal giggle (is that a thing? I know you can have maniacal laughs, but can you giggle maniacally? Let’s go with yes, yes you can), toward her little stall thingy, and got me to sit on one of those funky stool things. She talked me through what she was going to do (you know, so that I could replicate the effect myself at a later date…should I so wish….I don’t need to say anything, do I?), you know: moisturising and skin-invigorating and all that jazz. She then proceeded to enthusiastically stroke my face with her make-up brush which was filled with an orange-ish cream which, I won’t lie, did distress me a little – I may not care enough about my face to put make up on it, but I’d rather not look orange (don’t worry though, it turned out alright – she knew what she was doing…phew!...).
Then came the bit which made her give up on me altogether. She asked me how that made my skin feel. Fresh? Invigorated? Vaguely damp? Oh, no wait, that last one was what I answered with. Her face kind of fell, and before she could master her features again I saw a kind of bewildered pity cross them. Apparently no one had ever described their skin, post-swabbing by this amazing moisturise-y invigorate-y stuff, as ‘vaguely damp’ before. She tried to laugh it off, but I think deep down her heart was breaking for me.
I was reminded of so many instances in my smallish-person days, when I wanted to be like my brothers so I had ‘boy’s haircuts’ and wore ‘boy’s clothes’ and did ‘boy things’. I had in fact been looking at photos of those days with my middle brother, Michael (not the one getting married, that’s Stephen) only the night before as we searched for pictures of the groom in his smallish-person years. How many times in my life have I earned those looks of slightly awed pity from my female friends as they try to comprehend my lack of desire for covering my face in strange chemicals or fighting the battle to control my hair. It appears that I still have the power to earn them; some things will never change. One of these things which will never change is that I frequently agree with Jane Austen, but rarely with Mrs. Bennet: it is often much more fun to buck a trend than to bow to it.

Good morning, Sunshine!


            *Author’s note (is that phrase appropriate here?....it doesn’t really matter that much does it…): because of such awesome things as the wedding, there have been many blog-worthy musings while I’ve been away from the computer, so I wrote them on paper (a strange concept I know) so now they’re all going up at once….this probably doesn’t make much difference to your life, but that tiny bit of OCD in me (don’t deny, we all have one, it just comes out in different ways and measures) compels me to tell you…*

Don’t you hate it when your body wakes you up at 05.40 for no particular reason. Especially when you have nothing planned for that day until 13.00. There’s something endlessly frustrating about knowing that your tired body could be sleeping. Right now. It’s only awake just to spite you. And then you’re on to the potentially insane, just-woken-up argument with and/or suspicion of yourself: your own body is against you. Ooo-ooo-ooo.
            But thankfully, after enough frustration and random tossing and turning, you get slapped in the face by full-awakeness, and the temporary insanity fades away in the echoes of that slap. You tell yourself, ‘Hey, this just means I’ll have more hours in my day’, and proceed to bustle through your morning routine, trying to inject a little extra energy and enthusiasm into washing and dressing because you realise that you have a real opportunity to be productive (which we all know is every recent graduate’s favourite thing…).
            But here comes the part that’s really annoying: I’m not home at the moment. I’m in a different city, staying in a friend’s friend’s house for my brother’s wedding, so I didn’t really bring things to be productive with. I don’t even have my laptop. In fact, that which I’m writing now is only in a notebook which happened to be shoved in my bag. So the closest to productive that I can get to with my 6 or so hours of extra time is writing a draft version of a random blog entry, made even more ridiculous by the fact that I don’t exactly do draft versions of stuff I write for fun…. Wow.
            *15 minutes down, 5hrs 45mins to go….where’s that book?*

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Borrowed, blue, old.....?

            My eldest brother’s getting married on Saturday. How about that for a sense of the surreal!? So, the little boy who’s in the photo holding me while I scream as a baby, the boy who stole some of those breaded chicken wings we had as kids (which probably were not wings, now that I think about it…should I be outraged by that particular deception?) from my plate causing absolute uproar, the boy who I went on strike against as we waged war over how much he should pay me to help him with his paper round, the boy who made speeches full of righteous indignation about the evils of dog poo or of unbuttered bread in the presence of buttered bread….he’s going to be someone’s husband. The boy who frequently freaked me out by doing that-grown-up-thing, be it learning to drive, getting a job, going to uni…he’s apparently going to carry on to be a man who does the same thing by getting married. Freaky.
            But very, very awesomely cool. It’s hard to describe quite why or how it makes me this happy that he’s going to be this happy, but it does. Which is also pretty cool. What else is awesome, is that this is probably going to be the most exciting event of my year, and in a year that includes graduating from university, turning 21, and hopefully *really, really hopefully* getting my first paid job, that’s fairly impressive.
            It does build the pressure a little though – I’ve just been packing because I’m being picked up to go to the wedding rehearsal later this afternoon and then we’re all going to stay at a friend’s house nearby, so I need to have everything that I’m going to need for my role as a bridesmaid. Now, I have been known to forget things that I really need before, so there’s a sound in the back of my mind, reminiscent of an annoying high pitched whurrry thing, that I think is the mental-me running around in circles screaming ‘Don’t forget anything! Don’t forget anything! Don’t forget anything!’, which unsurprisingly isn’t actually very helpful.
            But I think I’ve got everything….

Graduate Entry to the University of Life

I just graduated from university the other week, and I feel that this must be one of the strangest stages of life. Period. I mean the sheer quantity of oh-crap-this-means-I’m-supposed-to-be-a-real-adult-now moments that I’m experiencing currently certainly make this feel pretty surreal. One of these ‘moments’ happened in Sainsbury’s supermarket just after graduation. My parents had come to visit for the graduation ceremony, so mum, presumably out of sheer pity for the bewilderment that was on my face as a result of having been officially released from uni into the wild, came and did my week’s grocery shopping with me.
As we meandered through the aisles, I was struck by a flash-back of traipsing after her through, what had seemed to me, the wondrous and yet slightly terrifying maze of Safeway’s (man, does that age me now? Should I be worried about being aged by things when I’m only 20?!) when I was little. I used to drag mum to the huge cheese counter (I don’t think they even have those anymore….huh) and beg her to load up on Edam cheese, which in my world was something like the greatest, most delectable delicacy known to man. Not only was its gentle flavour delicious, and its texture just on the right line of firmness, but it also came in massive balls wrapped in awesome, bright red wax. What’s not to love?! Especially when you’re a three year old whose favourite colour is red.
In fact, the extent to which I loved Edam cheese is something of a legend at home. Rumour has it (do you call the stories your mother tells you about your own childhood ‘rumours’? hmmm), that my passion for Edam brought me to commit crimes most foul on a regular basis. I would sneak into the kitchen, grab the Edam from the fridge, take as humungous a bite as a very-small-person can and put back the remains. I know: shocking. It got so bad that my parents were forced to install a lock on the fridge in order to keep their little marauder out. My need for cheese was so great, however, that I bent all of my very-small-person passionate determination, cunning and ingenuity on overcoming this obstacle until I managed to break the lock. I wish I could give details of said cunning, but these events predate my actual memory and my parents never told me, so it remains a mystery.
Anyway, waaaay off track. Present day, in Sainsbury’s, flashing back to being in Safeway’s. I was shopping for sensible I’m-a-grown-up-doing-grocery-shopping things, like mushrooms (not those ones – I’m pretty sure you don’t get them in Sainsbury’s anyway). Three year old me would have recoiled in disgust, no doubt pulling a very elegant, lady-like face to show her distaste at the mere thought of choosing to ingest mushrooms (which were clearly the devil’s work). Three year old me apparently also took great pleasure in embarrassing my mother by bellowing ‘Helloooo!’ to everybody else in the shop, as we made the rounds of Safeway’s, all the way to the Edam. How the tables have turned. In Sainsbury’s, mum delighted to publicly laugh at me about how grown up I am now compared to the wee scamp I was before. And yes I may have exaggerated a little there – I don’t think my mum has ever used the phrase ‘wee scamp’ in her entire life, but I’m trying to convey a level of embarrassment here, so I think we can allow a little ‘artistic license’.
I’m not going to lie, there is a massive part of me that longs for a time when the biggest challenge of my week was to try and increase the quantity of Edam that I could persuade mum to buy, and subsequently the quantity available for stealing from the fridge. The joy of seeing the employee at the cheese counter slicing off a huge segment of Edam and then handing it to mum was immense; the knowledge that our Edam supply was replenished brought me the satisfaction of a job well done. Mission accomplished. Unfortunately, it takes a bit more than massive slabs of Edam to achieve similar job-satisfaction when you live in the world of the grown-ups.
So apparently now I’m a grown-up. I’m a graduate; I’m nearly 21; I not only eat, but voluntarily buy mushrooms (still not those ones). Now I just have to find the equivalent of yesteryear’s Edam-thrill.

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Rachel’s House of Attempted Humour and Probable Lameness


            Blogging. If I’m going to be 100% honest, I’ve always thought it was a bit of a weird thing to do – it definitely at least suggests that you think your own thoughts are unique enough, interesting enough for random strangers across the world to find them worth reading. But here I am. I’ll quite happily make my excuses, that various people among my acquaintances have suggested to me that I should blog (genuinely with reasoning from ‘I think you have an interesting perspective on life’ to ‘you, ya know, talk funny’. You know who you are.), but I guess deep down I must be arrogant enough to believe them. Either that or I’m just bored, which is definitely possible as the vast stretches of unemployment open up before me.
Yay.
Besides, what I hear from friends who’ve been at this job-hunting malarkey a lot longer than I have is that there are going to be some potentially entertaining stories in my near future, so hey I might as well share them with the other bored people out there who are looking for blogs to read. More to the point, the process of writing a blog might remind me how to write outside of science, which would be nice. (I’m taking things such as the fact that the first adjective to come to mind just there was ‘nice’ as definitive proof that I need reminding of how to write) So, consider yourselves warned. I will do all that’s in my conscious power to make this entertaining, even humorous, but it could all go (how to put this and keep it family friendly?) inappropriate-body-parts up.