Return of the Ramblings

Last time I wrote something for this blog was a looong time ago. You may or may not recall that I had a break from blogging a while back because I was being lame and everything’s crappy because of eternal unemployment so I have nothing to write about, so it’s really ironic that the reason I haven’t written for ages this time is because of the lack of time and energy left me by my new job... Apparently having a job actually requires effort, who knew? Well I guess most people know that but there’s knowing, and then there’s knowing. 

I am now almost three months into my shiny new job, so I have just about adjusted to the routine and am determined (again...) to not be lame with this anymore. I love writing silly things. Every time I think of a silly thing to write about, I get all excited, and then when I start writing I start rambling onto really random topics and end up with a sprawling mess of a blog post, but it’s so much fun that I don’t care how convoluted my sentences and stories end up being. And if you’re reading, then you probably don’t mind that much either...unless you’ve somehow been force-fed my blog, but that would be unfortunate and weird, and not in an everyday sense of weird, so....yeah. Not that.

Besides, I did a proactive thing (gasp!) and joined a writing group. Yeah, get me. So hopefully, they’ll keep me away from the valley of lame that I have twice now descended into, where I don’t write for very lame reasons (I think I need a new negative adjective...there’s only so many times you can get away with using the word lame...really). I went to my first ever writers’ group meeting yesterday, which funnily enough was on the topic of blogging, so I feel that that was a hefty enough prompt to make me sit down and write something, even if I seem to have written three paragraphs already without actually saying anything...to be honest, I don’t think any of us are particularly surprised by this. (That definitely made me sound like I was talking about myself in the plural, like me and the voices in my head or something, but it was meant to be me and you and that other peculiar person who for some reason reads my blog....oh well....unless you are voices in my head....oooo now I feel like I’m in the Matrix or something – that’s the thing with that film, you can never completely disprove it, and I do so hate déjà vu....meh)

If I haven’t yet bored you to tears or confused you with my nonsense, then I guess I could tell you a bit about this shiny new job. I mean, content-wise it’s not exactly fascinating because I work in sales, but I do have quite a lot of fun. I seem to have found myself in an office with people who enjoy some good sillinesses, which suits me down to the ground as you might imagine. Plus there’s also the added private entertainment in the fact that when I talk to or write to our clients, I have to behave like a real grown up, and generally speaking they believe me – there are people in this world, including some people who have had fairly regular contact with me, who think of me as a perfectly sensible sort of person. If that’s not funny, I don’t know what is.

Brain Fail

            Does your brain ever do that thing where it just completely goes off on one, usually about something so random or obscure or plain dull that you’re left wondering how on earth you managed to get on that train of thought, let alone stay on it for so long? No? Ok, well it usually happens to me when I’m particularly tired and my brain’s ability to process anything is a little lower than usual, but for some reason it’s unable to shut down so it just keeps bumbling along, trying to keep itself entertained or something. I don’t know. It’s like it wants to stop but can’t be bothered to hit the off switch so it carries on, starting to sound more and more like one of those myriad battery-operated toys which make a noise of some kind that just start to gradually slow down, decreasing in pitch and speed until the sound produced isn’t really recognisable, just a kind of jerky drone. It’s kind of pathetic.

A recent brain fail of mine as I was lying in bed trying to sleep, ended up with my brain having run on for about half an hour going on about car parks. I mean seriously, car parks? In fairness, I was pretty tired - in the past 48 hours I'd travelled to London and back, had a job interview, and then worked a 7 hour bar shift that finished at 02.00, so I should give my brain some slack for its lameitude, but still. Car parks?
            It was randomly fixated on a thought I'd had whilst in a car park in a city I was visiting a little while back - I'd had one of those horrid flash-moments of disorientation because I knew I wasn't in the city where I live, but my surroundings seemed exactly identical to places at home. And then I'd been like 'duh, you're on a car park roof top, how different can they be?' It was this particular exceedingly uninteresting thought which somehow managed to occupy my brain for a full thirty minutes. This is why I call it a brain fail. It's like my brain thought it had found some really deep and meaningful metaphor about things being so very similar whilst being minutely different. This is definitely a case of over-processing.
            It's also just very flawed because a few months ago my mother and I had a car park experience like no other (and yes this post just got to the exciting part - you must have wondered if there was going to be one in a post predominantly about car parks). We did that foolish thing of taking a car to the city centre in the evening (en route to the cinema, I think we saw Jane Eyre which was of course glorious), and then been frustrated by the lack of affordable parking. In the end we had to pay MILLIONS of monies to park because we wasted so much time driving around trying to find free parking that we had to park in the shopping centre car park by the cinema in order to not miss the film. Now this car park was evil. I'm serious, it was genuinely in-and-of-itself malevolent.
            It was one of those underground ones which are always a bit creepy anyway, especially when there are only about two cars down there in all of that vast, cavernous space. Plus we couldn’t find any pedestrian exits so we had to walk back up the ramp that we drove down and hope no-one came to run us over. So at this stage it was just ‘mildly creepy’, it could even have gotten away with just ‘atmospheric’. It was when we came back, at 22.30 or whatever time the film finished that it started acting out on us.
            First was the adventure in finding the car. Both mum and I had thought that we'd parked in the first section over to the left, so when we couldn't find our little Fiesta there it was a little unsettling. All was soon well though, because we have one of those keys that you can press a button on and it unlocks the car, causing the indicators to flash at you - very useful for finding cars in cavernous dark car parks (though I’m not sure that’s the designated purpose of these flashy lights… meh). So we thought we were ok: we'd found the car, ergo safety.
            But no. I mentioned that this car park was actively malevolent; it kept us in there for a long time. We drove off, following the exit signs as normal people would, but the exit just didn't appear. Now, in a car park with only a handful of cars throughout its halls, it's quite easy to tell when you're in a place you were in only five minutes ago, because you go past that exact same wonkily parked Corsa and that other green car that you saw back then. So either there's some secret society that leaves messages for it's members by parking their cars in particular patterns or you're going in circles. I'm fairly certain that the secret society thing isn't true, so that means that we were going in circles despite having followed the exit signs as though our lives depended on it. Evil-car-park was directing us in circles.
            Mum, isn't really one for panic but I, with my apparently overdeveloped imagination, was all 'Aaaahh, this is totally and utterly a scene from a horror movie! Aaaaah!!' So my eyes were getting wider and wider; the feeling of creepy was ever-increasing; I couldn't stop looking around wildly and everything was just fever-pitched.
             And then we found the exit.
            Talk about anti-climactic. I mean, yeah I was relieved and felt a little sheepish (as I should, plus yay for use of the word 'sheepish'), but at the same time it was disappointing. I think I'm going to at least partially lay the blame for my temporary insanity on having just seen Jane Eyre and witnessed the creepy of Bertha Mason, but there's definitely a large-ish part of me that says the car park itself is just evil. Seriously.

Of ironing boards and interviews

I love the random things in this world. I mean the just plain odd, like extreme ironing – who came up with that!? (and yes it is a real thing, there’s even a BBC article to prove it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2176024.stm) I actually had a fairly mild experience of extreme ironing recently, though by mild I mean that I’m fairly certain that it wouldn’t really qualify at all. It was, however, the telling of this story to a friend of mine that brought extreme ironing to my attention.

            As you know (well, if you read this blog/know me at all you know it anyway), I’m currently experiencing that glorious part of life where every day is filled with applications and rejections, there is job-hunt-drudgery to be found at every turn, and apparently there are no actual jobs in existence, only fake ones that they advertise just to string you along. Very occasionally however, there are these bright, shining moments of hope where you get job interviews, moments at once thrilling and terrifying (presumably until you are numbed to it by repeated exposure? I don’t know, but I can imagine it would happen like that…?).

            Anyway, this relates to ironing because custom dictates that when one has a job interview, all wrinkles, crinkles and creases must be banished forthwith from one’s apparel, so as not to mar one’s appearance. Or something along those lines. For some inexplicable reason, our landlord saw fit to ‘furnish’ our house with an iron, but no ironing board (the logic here eludes me), so when I had my first interview I was sent into a wild panic at how to overcome my lack of ironing board until I was reassured that I would manage perfectly well using our dining table and a tea towel as ironing board substitutes. I can now testify that attempting this is also known as ‘begging for epic failure’. (Now, I could tell you of my frustrated wailings as I ironed more and more creases into my shirt, but this isn’t even the ‘extreme’ bit yet, so I think I’ll move on because there probably is a limit to how much writing you can get away with when the topic is ironing…)

            With my limited finances, I searched high and low (or whatever the online equivalent of ‘high and low’ is) for a cheap ironing board, but apparently it’s quite hard to get your hands on a decent ironing board (i.e. it doesn’t fall over when you touch it) for less that £25 (thank you, oh dedicated reviewers – I think you must be a hardcore reviewing fiend if you even go so far as to review ironing boards). When my brain had run out of potential ironing board-appropriate cheap places to look, I turned in reluctant, sceptical desperation to John Lewis, not expecting to have any joy from the shop where grown up people with money buy things, but lo and behold! there it was. (I’m so excited about the fact that I just used the phrase ‘lo and behold!’ – I always thought it was kind of odd - what’s this ‘lo’ing about – isn’t that what cows do? Am I being dumb? Anyone explain?) A £15 ironing board with glowing reviews; I never thought those words could sound so delightful.

            My only problem now was getting it home; I could pay them more money to deliver it, waiting a few days and probably getting it after the interview or, I could act like a crazy person and attempt to carry it home on the bus. I think you know which one I went for. I ordered my John Lewis ironing board (feeling very grown up), checking the box that said I would pick it up from the store collection point in the car park. Because sensible people only pick up ironing boards from John Lewis when they have a car. I rocked up on foot in my skinny jeans and trainers, shuffling in and trying not to be too conspicuous.

            It’s a magical land in there. Everything is in exactly, precisely, unequivocally the correct place; there are warm colours and soothing background murmurs. I recently discovered that there’s even a haberdashery section, which is cool just because of that word. Haberdashery. Go on, say it out loud; haberdashery. Beautiful. I felt a little out of place.

            After hunting around for a little while, I discovered how to get down to the collection point from inside the shop (as opposed to from the car park…), and made my way downstairs, trepidation ever-increasing. I approached the collection desk, gave the guy my order reference code, and waited as he wandered off into ‘the back’ (that even more magical land, but shrouded in mystery rather than warmth and fuzziness) to find it. He returned bearing a cardboard box almost as tall as me, a rather sceptical expression on his face. He actually asked me if this was definitely what I ordered.

I then had to decide whether or not I wanted to leave the cardboard packaging there. This was a much more complex decision than it sounds: leave the box and my burden is slightly lighter and there’s the added entertainment value in the very idea of walking around like a doofus with an ironing board; take the box and it’s an easier shape to carry and there’s less humiliation from walking around like a doofus with an ironing board. I took the box.

Still, I felt pretty conspicuous lugging a massive, slightly crumpled cardboard box through the pristine corridors of John Lewis. It was particularly awkward because at this stage I was still trying to figure out the best way to carry it without being a cause of mass destruction (or even small amounts of destruction – let’s face it, even miniature destruction is still not ideal in John Lewis). Having made it outside and reached the bus stop, I called a détente with my ironing board in our war of repeatedly bashing each other and stood there on a really busy street with a ridiculously over-sized cardboard box leaning against me. Even concealed in cardboard, my ironing board was garnering more than its fair share of attention.

The bus came and I heaved my cardboard associate towards it. We squirmed past the bus driver, whose raised eyebrows concerned me for a moment but no major mishaps occurred. Together, my ironing board and I shuffled down the bus, making every attempt not to accidentally attack the other passengers. A surprisingly successful endeavour I’ll have you know. After many bemused/entertained/slightly-frightened-in-case-I-was-carrying-a-very-oddly-shaped-bomb/gun faces had been thrown my way, we made it to my stop and I hobbled off again. Now came the walk home.

Normally this journey flies by in minutes with visions of happy-fluffy things: blue skies, tweety birds, council estates and Bargain Booze; this time was different. I felt like Frodo Baggins on his journey to Mordor – my burden inexplicably increasing in weight a thousand fold with every step, and danger lurking around every corner. In fairness my danger was in unleashing the wroth of my ironing board rather than the wroth of the One Ring, but that’s just details. The parallels are there.

After much toil, I made it home. I practically collapsed through the door, but I collapsed victoriously atop my ironing board; home mostly unscathed, bar some achey upper-body parts. The ironic (and yes that is a horrible, horrible pun, but I can’t think of another word that means what I mean) part of all this is that since I bought said ironing board some time way back in October, yesterday was the first time I actually had to use it. Yet again I’m writing on the train, but this time it’s distraction technique as I try not to think too hard about the job interview I’m en route to….

The curative powers of kittens (and other things…)

This weekend I visited a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in an age and it was awesome. I mean, it was awesome on various levels – first and foremost because I got to see her which – duh – is always exciting, but there was also the awesome involved in seeing some of her new life since she got married in the summer. There’s the place – from city centre to her house and garden – getting a feel for where “home” is for her now. Then there’s getting to know her husband a bit better, as you’re bound to when you stay in someone’s house for a weekend. Then there’s seeing some of her work – she’s in publishing and I got to see some of the books she’d worked on. All of these things had their different nuances of awesome.

Then there were the kittens.

Since she’s now all married and settled down and no longer of the transient-student lifestyle, she’s gone and got two of the cutest and most eternally ridiculous bengal kittens in the world. They’re so curious about everything, so obviously as a new addition to the house, I was welcomed in with some intensive sniffing.

Now I don’t really need to state the fact that there was plenty of very blatant awesome floating around this weekend, but there was also some slightly more subtle awesome in the air. First of all, it was encouraging for me to see one of my uni friends who had graduated only a year before me working in the area of industry that she actually wants to. From my perspective as a person still flailing around in the dark seas of unemployment, this is a wondrous, miraculous thing. It gives me hope and a vast increase of any sense of positivity (i.e.YAY!).

There was also some relatively subtle awesome in that my rather prolonged absence from the world of blogging was at least largely due to the oppressive feeling of unemployment-is-depressing-so-I-have-nothing-fun-to-write-about, which is frankly ridiculous because the likelihood that I’d be writing about my job is relatively low anyway. (apologies for my lameness – there was warning in the blog title, but I know it’s not really an excuse) Anywho, the hidden awesome lies in the fact that my increased positivity appears to have spurred me on to start writing again (even here: on my notepad, on the train – yay notepads!) There was also the part where my friend has an entirely awesome blog documenting the insanity of her kittens which a) is entirely worth checking out (http://bengalsmeowings.blogspot.com/) and b) reminded me of how much fun writing about silliness is!

So basically this weekend has been brimming with all kinds of awesome. It’s unstopped the depresso-cork from my writing (hopefully with lasting effect) and has made me all squeaky and happy again, albeit a little sad to be on the train home.

Anywho, if you’ve been feeling your gloomy equivalent of depressy unemployment, then here’s a video which will surely, surely brighten your day. If not, there’s something wrong with you. (Sorry!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCGy2uaHhgE&feature=context&context=C34d6416UDOEgsToPDskI_jrw1HMD_L5aT33mR5DU5

p.s. there is also some odd awesome in that for about a month I’ve been annoying myself by vastly overusing the word ‘glorious’ – I know not why – but the first positive adjective to come to my mind while writing this was not ‘glorious’, but ‘awesome’, hence I have clung to it with such determination…..maybe I should find a thesaurus….