caffers’ blog

I feel like I am in a weird version of groundhog day - you know, that inspired film where bill murray keeps living the same day over and over and over, at first he is horrified and even commits suicide several times, but keeps waking up again.  then he realises he's just gotta deal with it and he starts living the day better and better until he falls in love and can continue with the rest of his life.  unfortunately, i seem to be still stuck in the resentful stage - every day feels the same and I am so bored I really feel like throwing myself off somehting high just to releive the tedium.  its a constant cycle of work, college, home, etc etc always the same.....so i decided to shake things up a bit last night - with horrific consequences..........

I am cursed with a short span of attention, almost no threshold for boredom and a dangerous lust for alcohol (I am cursed with a lot of other things too but they dont pertain to this story).  Part of the reason I was bored, I decided, was due to my self imposed sobriety over the last couple of weeks.  After getting royally trollied twice in one week I felt i needed to lay off the sauce for a bit and catch up with college work - which i did, and I got a 1st for my essay on phenomenology so I guess it was productive, even if it did drive me stir crazy.

ANYWAY - what better way to reward oneself for a successful period of abstinence and academic endeavor than to have a drinkie or seven.  I was due to meet up with some friends at a lovely pub in Angel, it was going to be so perfect...but I had spent the day in the library, so hadn't had anything to eat - apart from half a flapjack, (i managed to tip water into my bag thus destroying the other half of the flapjack, and my phone).  So when I got to the pub I was hungry, and a very small but persistant voice in my head was saying - drinking on an empty stomach is a bad bad bad bad bad idea.  but when beloved suggested sharing a bottle of wine a very loud voice (my own) said "yeah, great idea" and it was at that moment that my fate was sealed.

For having struggled with anorexic tendencies and alcohol misuse in the past I am no stranger to the perils of drinking on an empty stomach, and especially the dark and slippery path to insanity and mass destruction that is a dissatisfied woman who hasnt eaten all day hitting the white wine.

the next thing I know I am waking up (in my own bed - praise be) I am comlpetey disorientated, I have a raging thirst and I am in significant pain.  after a little while the world spins slower, and I can open my eyes and start to fully digest the situation - I am in bed, I have no clothes on, and the clothes I had on the night before are all over the floor, apart from my jeans which are in a scrunchled ball at the foot of my bed.  My mouth feels like I have been eating rotting dog shit and I have vertigo - I feel like I have been punched in the head and I can practically see stars.

So the physical stuff is taking most of my attention - I feel rough - thats established, now I try and work out how I got into this predicament and why I have an increasingly oppressive impression that something bad happened, that i did something bad... I cast my mind back to the previous evening - working in reverse - I kind of remember getting into bed, but not getting into the house, I know we went to the chippie but I cant remember it, I cant remember being on the bus, I cant even remember leaving the pub - but wait - leaving the pub....leaving the pub....something happened as I was leaving.....and then it hits me - like a smack in the solar plexus with a large fish - the Very Bad Thing.

It is a very fuzzy flashback - but it turns my blood cold - I got off with my friend Alex.

This doesn't seem like a very bad thing - but the issues I have with it are multiple - for one, everyone else saw, and I have a thing about PDA's at the best of times.  for two, I take pride in my sensual prowess, and to snog when I was that drunk was probably a bit of an ordeal for poor Alex.  but worst of all, even worse than dents in my pride, is the fact that I found out recently that Alex kinda liked me "like that" and I knew that although I think he is one of the toppest blokes I know, I wasnt into him in that way, so now I have new reasons to hate myself -  I must be some kind of twisted bitch to lunge at a guy I know likes me just to get a freakin ego boost, also It might hurt his feelings - and make his friends hate me - and make things akward between us. 

So I feel really bad.  and whats worse is that I dragged myself into college for a meeting, only for it to be called off due to me being too spaced out to be coherent...oops.  then I had a lecture, of which I absorbed nada, and then I gave up and came home again.  and now I am going back to bed.

So the moral of the story is, when you think that your life is boring because it is just trundling along - do not attempt to shake things up by getting smashed and falling face first, open mouthed, onto your friends. 

Have you ever recycled an old computer or laptop?  Where did you take it, and what steps did you take to protect your personal information?

Yeah - Since the mid nineties my family have been accumulating computers at a rate of one every two years or so - we have bought two, been donated one or two and have been "looking after" one or two for emigrated friends....this resulted in the singularly unenviable position of having no less than 5 VERY LARGE monitors sitting gathering dust in our garage.  I have hated these computers since i first met one - I am not what one might call a "technophile" and I am a minimalist.  So when I was at me mams in the summer I bullied her into letting me fill up the car with all these computers, monitors and keyboards and drove to the local dump where I heaved them all into a large metal thing so thay could be recycled.  It was heartily satisfying to finally see the back of them and I dont give a monkeys about personal information because I dont believe in all this stuff.  I think the more you try and hide something the more it will attract unwanted attention.  I place my trust, not in security, but in karma.  and anyway - no one with an ounce of criminal intelligence would WANT my identity, or be able to do much with it.  Sooooooooo yeah, I think it is a load of .

zzzzzz I am so freakin bored of the world right now - one of my friends once posited that only boring people get bored which I heartily disagree with - if you are boring you probably wouldnt notice you are bored - whereas if you are highly intelligent and voraciously curious - a lack of stimulation is painful to say the least.

I have had the busiest week - starting with my return from the homeland - i went straight to see the lover and then reluctantly left the comfort of his pad to return to the big smoke.

straight to a party full of old faces and welcome catch ups, then home to fall into my long lost bed and up early the next day to return to work.  from then on there was to be not a minutes peace for me.  my flatmate had dropped on me the double whammy of having not only managed not to do a speck of housewoprk while i was away, but also (it being her birthdya weekend) invited a load of people to hang out at the flat over the weekend.  the timing wasnt great.  i was exhausted, stressed out and quite blue from the tantalising joy of seeing my family for four days and then being whisked away from then, then to see my lovely boy for just 24hours before having to leave him also to go and be a grumpy fusion of cinderella and keith floyd (i could have chosen a more flattering celeb chef alter ego but fuck it, floyd rocks).  when all i really wanted to do was hide in bed.

this week has been similarly hectic, work college travel rain social engagements etc.  now, i have been bitching to pals about this - but have ten minutes to kill before a lecture so will cyber bitch about it too - ok, so i have made a pretty solid lifestyle choice to remain single.  I love men, I think they are great and I usually have at least one lover on the go at any one time, but it would take a LOT to tie this swinger down.  I know it works for a lot of people, and i have friends in couples whom it warms my heart to see, but that kind of thing just isnt my bag baby.  I'm a lone wolf ya know.

SO - it has given me great consternation to find that my flatmate's behaviour toward me has been increasingly needy and "wife-like" of late.  She is a very good friend and i love her and our co-habitation is usually of great satisfaction to me, however, recently she has taken to ringing me several times to ask "where are you?" "when are you coming home?" "what sheall we have for dinner?" etc etc.

This has had a similar effect on me as it maybe would on a man.....I have taken to not answering my phone, to purposefully seeking activities that will occupy my evenings so I dont have to go hame and to being extremely vague and dismissive of queries as to my whereabouts and plans.  unfortunately this has made the old ball and chain even more tenaciously determined to track me down and chart my movements. 

I will have to up the ante.  perhaps adopt a disguise, get a new phone number or even move house one day while she is at work......

hmmm its been a long time since i posted a blog - mainly because only one person in the world - apart from me - reads my blogs but also because I am a busy busy lady.

It is only when I am faced with other commitments, namely essay writing, that I suddenly become seized with the compulsion to proliferate my ideas on the web, instead of organising them into a coherent structure to hand in and get marked on - YAAAWN.  I would much rather someone told me they chuckled over my facebook post on their wall than have my tutor telling me his philosophical tenets had been shaken to their core by my incisive and spectacular disection of husserls phenomenology.  (in my dreams).

so lately I have been up to all kinds of stuff - seems like I have spent the majority of my time on the tube getting trodden on by tourists or harrassed by - er - tourists.  and getting homicidally enraged by people walking slowly - but thats another blogspot.  I managed to get overground for long enough to go to two "leaving for south america" parties this weekend, thrown by two separate friends, and stayed up til 6am at both of them - it was like being on superfun night shifts! 

the first one was a humanitarian hippy affair in an artists studio in south london - wicked fun, vodka lychee cocktails, very exciting and inspiring conversation, lotsa bob dylan and patti smith on the stereo, lots of alternative people with interesting things to say about how we should deal with mental health patients, the role of feminism in the 21st century, the development of holistic centres in barcelona and so on.  felt like a proper grown up, a professional and a comerade in the revolution!

the second one was a massive degenerate mash up house party at my good pal's pad.  there were papier mache animals and jungle vines, a load of good time hippies dressed in alarmingly creative fancy dress, there was laods of beer and even some magic mushrooms, super funky hip hop ruled the roost, old school breaker beats and drunk boys in dresses.  arm wrestles, simulated sex on a beer swilled floor, and spliff hazed conversations about how waynes world was, like, the best movie ever.

yeah man - it was like being 16 again ya know?!

I am still recovering and am off to the wilds of scotland tomorrow at the crack of dawn for a super time with all my siblings. ssssssslaters.

Show us a book that scared you as a child.

What's your best tax tip?

Don't work.

When skimming a magazine (or book or newspaper) do you flip through the pages from front to back or back to front?
Submitted by enSue.

front to back man i am not chinese

ugh - so as a born Londoner, albeit one who hasn't actually lived within London for very long, I feel in a position to comment on the horrific manners of my fellow capital dwellers.

So - I was given tickets to go and see the Buena Vista Social club at the Hammersmith Apollo, very exciting as the band seriously rock - I saw them in bristol and it was life changing!  the horn section is three little old men - expertly playing trumpet, saxophone, trombone while performing the cutest little side steps in time to fantastic cuban groove.

Now, not only have I been brought up to appreiciate the gift a skilled performer gives when they share their talents, but also very much to respect my elders.  When I was growing up my Mother, although short of cash, felt that culture and the Arts were vitally important to a developing mind and would have an eye out for any opportunity to go to the Theatre on the cheap.  My siblings and I, as natural peformers ourselves (some say show off's but they're just jealous), lapped up all of the theatre that we could.

Anyway - I digress - that was to provide background to my severe indignation that at the gig the other day almost everyone in the circle where we were sitting behaved as if they were in a dingy bar - talking ALL THE WAY THORUGH, and no one seemed to stay in their seat for longer than 5 minutes at a time!! 

I was so upset - my enjoyment of this incredible band was completely marred.  to make matters worse - I could unfortunately hear a few of the conversations going on around me  -  and they were all completley INANE!  for jesus sake!  if your conversatin is so vapid and pointless surely you would be glad of the distraction of wonderful live music - not only to shut you up for an hour but maybe give you somehting to talk about afterwards.

but no - I heard two teenage posh gaaahls, skinny and toothy and completely taken with themselves and their pathetic social lifes - wittering about gawd knows what - I managed ot block them out after a while.

But seriously - have people lost the ability to just sit and appreciate a great art - have they lost even the common courtesy of sitting still and keeping quiet while an artist performs? 

I left the Theatre beleiving they have - and it depressed the hell out of me.

I HATE YOUNG MIDDLE CLASS SOUTH EAST ENGLISH SELF SATISFIED BORING UGLY PLUMP AND IGNORANT PEOPLE.

in an attempt at redemption - lest i appear a vapid alcoholic partywhore - i shall give an account of a very random, but much more high brow soire i attended recently.  through various familial connections my presence was requested at a 'do' at the home of an eminent neuro-physicist, one who was instrumental in the design and proliferation of the MRI scanner now an indispensible tool for neurologists.

the house was heaving, and there was naturally a glut of middle aged men, top names in the fields of neurology, science, physics and - slightly incongrously - music.

I had a very interesting and informative conversation with a man who taught ethics to medical students - i was able to expunge some venom over the fact that fundamental knowledge and skills needed for working in a clinical environment, i.e. ethical considerations, effective communication, constructive documentation etc are not only taught to medical students and student nurses in different ways,  but also that these two groups are never even given an inkling as to what the other group might be learning about, despite the fact they will end up working together and confering on matters central to patient care (small thing called a TEAM), and yes, i like to have sauce with that chip on my shoulder.

anyway - said guy is also a concert violinist, and treated the assembled guests to a 16minute virtuoso performance of schubert.  it was breath taking.

later, as i tried to make my escape i was accosted by an old friend of my father's, who demanded I fill him in on the happenings in my life since he had last seen me (which was when i was 10) - as i adore talking about myself, and as he is a very lovely man, I duly obliged.  resulting in me missing my train - but bringing back many good memories - and also being informed that he had been struck, at the time of my family's last visit to his home, by how wilfully disobedient and mischeivous I had been as a child, and he was greatly amused when i told him i was still exactly the same. 

I let him carry on thinking i was joking.

why is it that instead of writing my essay - which i should have been studying for over the last two months, and instead have left myself two days to do - i am scouring the internet for pictures of people with three legs, and smoking too much and checking my myspace obsessively for new comments, even though all my friends unfortunately have, like, lives and jobs and better things to do with their time, bastards.