Monday 3 December 2012

How to Build a Christmas Tree

Ladies and Gentleberries, Happy Advent. This means I can no longer tut and scorn when you play Christmas music or prematurely put up decorations.

Oh God, she's overdone it on the footnotes this time.

Today the office across the corridor from ours went mental with the tinsel and shiny stuff. 4 trees, one a good 6-footer to boot. Tinsel everywhere, advent calendars, that freaky stretchy bunting stuff. It looks awesome, and I doubt any of them did any work this morning. Our office has a singing hamster, which still hasn't been let out of it's filing cabinet for more than a single round of Jingle Bells. We'll catch up eventually*.

Back at home after the 9-5, I live in a small house with too much furniture with a lovely but slightly eccentric Landlord. Last year we drove to the forest in out small, but lovely set of wheels, chose a Norwegian Spruce, 'cos it looked friendly, lugged it home and then didn't water it quite enough. In June we moved out, and I spent a long time picking needles out of the carpet. This year we have no wheels to get to the forest, and the bad needle-picking memories remain. Yet, somehow an artificial thing from Tesco didn't seem to be the thing for us. Chiefly, because we've absolutely nowhere to put it, but after my single foray in to the world of seasonal deforestation, I'm not feeling the plastic vibe.

So we (me and the aforementioned lovely ** Landlord) built our own.

We built a tree that suits exactly our own specifications and priorities, which I think are:

  • It's 2-dimensional, to accommodate our lack of 3-dimensional space***. 
  • Real, in that in there somewhere is something that was once a tree. 
  • Made from stuff we already had or could half-inch from the Outsides. 
  • A little bit shonky.
It looks like this.

Is the present always the present? Is the present actually the future, or the past? Unless you open the present, and then it's socks, at which point your argument is invalid.

Here's how you do it. 

Step 1: Go to a forest. 

This forest has waterfalls. This is not necessary, but is very nice if you can manage it.
We chose the Birks of Aberfeldy, a stronghold of Rabbie Burns-loving lycra-clad hill runners.  It's a good forest, but please don't tell them that it was the one we went to, because of Step Two. 

Step 2: Steal a tree. 

Try not to look too pleased with yourself. Ecological terrorism is not funny.

Instead, go for the ninja/pirate look and no-one will notice the stolen tree you are carrying. 


Step 3: Return from the forest, saw up your ill-gotten tree in to hire-car-sized chunks and take it home. The woodsaw thingimy on a Swiss Army knife is really rather good. Let your sticks dry out a little.

Step 4: Line up sticks. Do not be tempted to Pick Up Sticks, that is another game. Aim for Artfully Asymmetrical. Lay some fairly butch shiny ribbon over these sticks to form the trunk of your tree. With an old freebie newspaper at hand to avoid making holes in the laminate floor, use a hammer to bash some tacks through the ribbon in to the sticks. Add some glue as well for good measure. Belt and braces time.

Art.

Step 5: Hang it on the wall. This is hanging from a screw that was already there, in a clever effort-saving fashion. Some of the weight is being taken on the ribbon down the middle, and some by the smaller ribbon looped around the end of each stick.

Step 6: Add drawing pins. At random. Try to add them to the tree-thing you are making. Pin the Thing, do not pin your friends. No Stabbin'.

There are more pins behind holding the silver ribbon still.
Step 7: Add shinies! First you may need to wrestle with the lights in that traditional untangling ceremony that is as much a part of Christmas as overeating and watching out for Jesus****.

A warning to first-time Landlords everywhere. Think about your clothing/wallpaper co-ordination. 


Step 8: Add more shinies. You thought that was Step 7, don't be so silly. Embrace the wonky. There is plenty of room more more shiny stuff. Cut a pot shape out of the amazon.co.uk packaging that arrived today and affix to the end of the ribbon with anything sticky you have to hand. This is finishing touches time. Also add presents.

Ta-Daaaa! All done. Bring on the sherry.
So there we have it, our very own sort-off Christmas tree. In eight steps of varying complexity. Blogging about your experiences along the way, and how they make you feel, is not compulsory but does round off the whole emotional experience rather nicely.

Happy Christmas!

Still to come in this unusually jovial series, before I get grumpy and release the Bah Humbugs*****, How To Make Your Own Christmas Jumper From Only The Shapes You Already Know How To Crochet******.

Callanish.



*In our own special way. I'm new, so I don't know how we do Christmas yet, and am only allowed to rock the boat a little bit.

** Also bonkers.

***We're quite shallow people, really.

****Always behind the sofa, unless that's where you look first.

*****Like those stripy minty sweeties, but also quite like sheep. I'll draw you a picture sometime. Strangely tasty.

******Title is still at the draft stage. 

Sunday 4 November 2012

Happy Things

I have a job. Yay me.

I will be doing secretarial, administrative things at the University. Nothing ground-breaking (yet!), but it'll do me just fine. A year or two of saving and planning and I'll get on with doing something much more exciting.

Here goes!

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Sad Things

Today I am sad, so I will tell you of my sads and then write about some happy things. And then I'll hit "Publish" for extra catharsis value.

This post has no pictures. Sorry 'bout that. Is cos I'm brain-dumping my thoughts in to type so I can sleep tonight. 

Right now there are 5 working days remaining on my contract at my current job. After that, zilcho. Two of those days are the rest of this week. On day 3 (Monday) my Supervisor returns from holiday and may have some answers, on day 4 I have an interview for the job I'm doing right now (temporarily) and on day 5 I may have to say thanks for the shitz and giggles and at 5pm promptly f**k off* home.

Last night I discovered that my bank have helped themselves to £80 of my money with no notice, and filling that hole left me with £6.12 left this month without going overdrawn or touching savings. Now I'll get paid soon, but I'm not sure when, or how much.

A week ago some toss-pot with a brand new pair of bolt-cutters nicked off with the very shiny and most likely rather ouch-ping-expensive bike that I've had on long term loan from a very good friend, and I haven't summoned up the guts to tell her.

Those are my sads. Oh, and my parents are coming to stay, which is lovely but it does mean that this weekend is going to involve housework and getting a haircut**, and I'm slightly scared of people who are more socially-adept than me, which is why I go Scottish Dancing and avoid hairdressers.

I have good things around me too. I have a place to stay, and it's lovely. I have half an amazeballs*** tent that I went to stay in last weekend and didn't die or get frostbite or anything. I have a job, for now, and I'm not doing that crappy shop job any more. I've a gig this coming weekend with the band and a calling gig in two weeks time, so I can afford to eat. I've also got a good-to-fair chance of getting the job I interview for, but I sneezed**** three times today and my colleague said, "one's a wish, two's a kiss, three's a disappointment". Please pray that I DO NOT have a prophetic nose.

And I have plans.

Eventually I will put them together in a blog-friendly form and tell you all, or at least mostly, about them.

I will have a campsite. Possibly a cute wee hostel. Cheap and cute and exciting and individual and comfy places to go on holiday. Most likely with an option for food. B&B but cheaper and with much, much more soul. And prettier.

Somewhere that will let me live in the sticks and look after people for a little while and make my own rules and hopefully just enough money to live on. Something exciting, and physical, and creative. And yes, bloody hard work, but work where I can see some sort of progress. So I'm saving, and planning, and dreaming. Next month I may even go to some free business classes.






*Still can't quite bring myself to swear in writing. Jesus is watching, and he can read. 

**I have an interview on the same day as my Mother gets in to town. I think the universe is telling me to go get a haircut.

***This is a silly word that I don't believe in.

****Sneezed/Snoze? Answers on a postcard?

Monday 17 September 2012

Bravery

Evening All,

Today I quit my job.

One of them, anyway. I will soon no longer be an employee of the shop I've been working at since October. It's been a very useful wee job, got it just soon enough to get me back into earning some money when I returned to the real world from Nethy Bridge. It put enough pennies in my pocket for me and my pocket to enter the heady world of financial independence.

So I walked in, said hello and asked the manager for a word (not really sure if I had a particular word in mind*) and said that here's my notice because I've got a full time job now. Which is true, though I do wish it was set in stone for a little longer. In true anticlimactic fashion my dear (nearly-ex-)boss didn't seem to care either way. Yeah, that's fine, I'll get that sorted out, see you. So flippin' appreciated. My knees still cracked out their jelly impression just for the occasion. Thankfully most of my life's big nervous moments have been on a stage wearing dance shoes** and I've learned to hide jelly knees quite well.

Then I bravely ran away.

All the while I had this beautiful song playing on the old metal jukebox.



Now I'm down to a single job, an office job, that I'm taking a bit of a gamble on, and praying it will prove to have been a wise decision. I'll be employed full time there for the short term, and then praying and hoping that I can do a good enough job that they'll keep me on for a while longer.

For now I'm looking forward to when I've seen out my notice period at the shop and I get my next day off (only 11 days to go now!).

Tonight I'm feeling a bit quiet and still and not all here. I've watched two episodes of House, which is almost definitely what's put me in a funny mood, that and this being the second job I've resigned from this year.

I bought a tent last week (ok, half of one) and test-pitched it this past weekend. It will be the subject of a much more exciting blog post, so thanks for reading this fairly mundane one, and please do come back for a more interesting story about a big pretentious tent.



*But there are many amusing words in the great English language. Today's word is "picnic", which thinking about it now, would have been a very strange thing for my boss to say in that given moment.

**Never just dance shoes, usually lots of tartan and white cotton. 

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Ducks on a Treadmill

Today I stumbled across this article.

All because I now have a staff ID card. This ID card gives me free access to soem gym facilities, including a swimming pool. On the website search box I entered "swimming". This was the fourth result. I couldn't resist.

Heart rate and oxygen uptake in exercising eider ducks

Oh yeah.



Here's a photo of an Eider Duck. Because blog posts should have pictures*.

Take some ducklings, convince them that you're their Mother, feed them, love them, implant litttle scientific things in them, and ... teach them to use a treadmill.

Which gives us such informative snippets as:
  • "Maximum sustainable running speeds ranged from 0.72 to 0.82ms-1 in all six ducks apart from duck 4**, who would not run at speeds above 0.6ms-1."
  • "The ducks were trained to run on a variable-speed treadmill (Powerjog EV2, Sports Engineering)."

I'm in the wrong field. Someone get me a duck and a treadmill, I'm having a career change.


*I tried a google image search for "eider duck treadmill", strangely it didn't do much. Maybe I may have been the only person in a while to google that exact combination of words? Who knows. What have you googled today?
** Duck # 4, not the Usain Bolt of the waterfowl world.

Monday 27 August 2012

How to Move a Mountain

One box at a time.

Ladies and Jellybabies, this is my new, improved Box Mountain. A vast improvement on the original Box Chaos Room.

Possibly more of a Box Climbing Wall. The knees belong to the lovely man who put up the new wallpaper, which I have not yet had the good sense to take a picture of.
The last nine days have been a whirlwind of DIY. I have been playing with all sorts of new toys. My trusty Hex Key has never left my side.

We moved everything apart from the front room furniture in to Bedroom 1, the location of the above Box Mountain. At points the room was only accessible using ropes and crampons, and a fair level of acrobatic ability. Bit by bit, we've moved things out, and bit by bit this coming week we'll start to open up and unpack more boxes. 

I think I'll plan to give a proper Blog Grand Tour of the whole place fairly soon, for today I'll post all the assorted photographs on the I have on my phone. 

The Engineer Manny comes in about a month's time to put the phone line back in, so I'll be on fairly limited internet access for the foreseeable future. Right now I'm slowly drinking a cup of tea in a cafe with free wireless, before I go to work. What I meant to be doing is tidying up my CV and emailing it to the right places. 

PICTURES! More to come.

Bye Bye Thomas, Hello funky cool "Pebble Shore" paint.

Stripe!

Bedroom 1 pre-invasion of Box Mountain

Front Room before the stripping of the paper, brutal removal of TV mount bolts, and hanging of Funky New Orange Paper,.
You may mentally strip off the brown+white and replace with THIS! It'll be much easier than doing it for real, I promise you.

Bathroom, Duh. 


Friday 3 August 2012

10 Things To Do When You Move House

Apparently blog posts are much more popular if they start with "X Things To Do When" or "How To" or "Why I". I'm holding the latter two in reserve for when things get really dire. Today I spent four hours playing with mediocre children's toys in public in the name of earning money and raising money for charity. Then I cycled a little bit and was bought a Fab. All fairly tiring. I self-medicated with folk music and the last of the bottle of port.



I was bought a Fab as a strange form of celebration. My friend, previous flatmate and soon-to-be-Landlord bought a house. Moving date is in 5 day time. 5 days!

A little context for you; right now I'm house sitting for some friends who are jammy enough to be having a very long holiday in Australia right now. I'm left behind in lovely ol' Scotland with a nice big house, garden, fish and a dog to look after. It's a handful. It is also a most welcome rent break.

The vast majority of my belongings are boxed up and scattered (carefully) around the city and shire - distributed amongst friends of mine who meet to dual criteria of having free space and gullibility. I think I can count 5 places. I'm living out of a suitcase of clothes which I am rapidly growing tired of wearing. They're lovely clothes, I'm not knocking them. I'm sure there are people in the world who would be very happy to call my capsule wardrobe their own. Anyway.

In 5 days (I may have mentioned this, I'm a little excited) Ex-Flatmate will become Landlord and I will become Tennant as we both move in to yet another residence. And there are some things I am looking forward to doing really rather a lot. For your reading pleasure:


  • Hire a van, and play at being Van Men. I'm female, but I can still play. The rules are rather fluid but I think points are achieved by the following. 1) Carrying big things, wearing a facial expression that says "this is very heavy but I'm man enough to handle it" even if the big box is full of feathers or packing peanuts, for example. 2) Carrying multiple things, precariously balanced. Extra points for restricting your own vision even if you didn't need to. 3) Parking on double-yellows. Wearing painting jeans, even if you plan to do no painting at all. 4) Driving with the windows open, with an elbow on the edge. 5) Eating Mars bars. 
  • Re-assembling flat-pack. This is a thing I rather enjoy, possibly because it's a thing that Men ought to do, and women ought to let the men do, but I can do fairly well. Another ex-flat mate is currently in a pickle because I assembled her furniture for her when it arrived and dis-assembled it all years later before the move, and now she has all the bits in her new flat but doesn't know how to turn them back in to night-tables and drawers and stuff. I have promised to exchange me flat-pack-building services for pizza, but only if there is dip. Putting up my own curtains comes in here too. I'll feel like I live somewhere once I've got my own bed and my own furniture and my own curtains up. 
  • Pictures. Photographs of my friends, to prove to other people that I am liked and capable of social contact. Pictures of me doing cool stuff, to prove to myself that I am young and active and not yet past-it. Pictures I have drawn, just to fill space. And then there's the inevitable wall of slightly incongruous cross-stitch that has to be hung up, because cross stitch is the most time-consuming, expensive way to recreate a very pixelated version of someone else's artwork, and therefore must be appreciated at all costs. 
  • Unpacking my clothes; rediscovering things I had forgotten, finding them homes in the newly-assembled furniture, wearing my biggest scruffiest university hoodies. These are things that a previous flatmate once banned me from wearing in public. Rightly so, but they are so, so snuggly. 
  • Painting. My soon-to-be room is blue and green and has a Thomas The Tank Engine border. It will get painted this colour. For the sole reason that it's called Mushroom, and I quite like mushrooms.
Tasty, huh?
  • Give back to dog and get an extra half hour in bed in the morning. Lovely dog, far too hard to tire out for my liking. The exercise is probably doing me good, but I much prefer the idea of more available sleeping time. 
  • Set up the wireless network. Give it a silly name. Connecting to BTHomeHub27735987324 is just so boring. Witty suggestions on a postcard.

And finally...

  • Throw a house-warming party! (Please, dear Landlord?!) Invite all your friends round. Hope they bring tasty things. Give the Grand Tour lots of times. Drink nice things, eat nice things. Barbecue, just to "housewarm" the garden. Guests of honour will be all the poor sods who've stored my stuff and helped me shift it. Thankyou you lot!


Ten things, eight things. Pah, you didn't even count em. 

Sunday 22 July 2012

When I grow up.

Last summer I lived in a caravan for three months whilst lending both hands at one of the world's cutest small campsites and hostels, in Nethy Bridge in the Cairngorms.

It's so funky it's even in this book.
Gets three smiley faces as well. 
Little campsite, 4 small tents max, self-catering cottage sleeping about 5, 6-8 bed hostel, and (last summer's building project) a small, wooden and very cosy hut. The campers get a little bit of shelter, a chiminea campfire, use of a toilet at the back of the main house and an outdoor shower.

I really rather liked the idea. It's the starting blocks from which my imagination has somewhat ran away with itself.

A little OTT, but feel free to drool over the pretty bell tent.

I want one. Or something not quite the same but like it. 

I have a silly little dream that might just be, God willing, achievable. 

What I lack is money and know-how, but those things exist in this world, and I have time. What I also lack is a proper, structured, grown-up, convincing plan. I'm working on it, albeit slowly. For now, here are my silly ideas.

Think, discuss, comment (I like comments). Please don't be too mean, I'm only little. 

Ideas hereafter will be presented in through the medium of the academic's friend; the trusty* bullet point. 

  • Christian Retreat Centre. Bring your alpha course, your small group, your leadership team, a small-medium sized bundle of your congregation. I'll pitch and set up enough comfy, stove-heated, classy looking tents (big cheer for bell tents, even bigger cheer for yurts) to keep you all dry at night. I'll make you breakfast in the morning and find you a big space to use for worship and group sessions. Heck, I'll even ship in someone to do the talk for you if it helps. I'll fix up some outdoorsy activities to tire you out in the afternoon and turn out a good-looking spread of food at teatime. Campfires, God songs, space to think, walks in the country, time for chillin' with the big guy. Good for the soul - woodsmoke and marshmallows. 
I have a very large woolly jumper that I try very hard to maintain a good log fire smell in. 
  • Outward bound team-building. Same deal but with more mud and a bit less Jesus**.

  • Campsite. Open space, little cute shower block, composting toilets, stuff for kids to fall off (sorry, play on) firepits, camper's shelter. Wildlife, open water, peace and tranquillity. Just need somewhere both scenic and accessible, funds to get a business off and running and a roof over my head. Water and leccy help too. Cute little pitches. Breakfast in the morning if you want it. 
  • Further variation would be to offer a pre-pitched and ready-to-roll bell or ridge tent or similar. Apparently it's becoming a thing, and there are presumably worse bandwagons I could jump on.

  • One of these. Well set-up, candlelit and comfy, rented out by the night for families and little groups. Water, leccy, toilets and showers need not be built in if nearby. 
please?

  • Camping in ruins. Take the shell of an old croft cottage, make it stable, clean out the fireplace. Put up a big sturdy pole just outside either end and stretch a bit of canvas shelter over half or all of it. You now have somewhere dry and sheltered in which to pitch your tent. It's also atmospheric and a little bit bonkers.
Ahh...


Ideas are wonderful things, aren't they folks? Mental pictures of these keep me entertained through my tedious spreadsheet-facing working day. Hope they do a little to help with yours. 


Footnotes to avoid complete and utter derailing:

*Trusty? We named these useful black splodges after things you shoot out of a gun with the intention of putting a terminal hole in some poor bloke's head! This is surely the most violent form of not-quite-punctuation. If the comma had a more testosterone-fuelled, aggressive name would our schoolboys be more keen to use it? Why bullet? Yes, I get the small round dots, but that's as far as the analogy goes before it falls on its knees. 1) How small are these bullets please? 2) How long did it take to train the mouse with the tiny gun (for the tiny bullets) to shoot them at points on a page equally spaced and completely in line? ... and ... 3) After all that training, isn't there a much better use that highly-skilled mouse could be put to? Sure G4S would love it. 


**Jesus is, of course, free to come and go as he feels but plays a less pivotal role in the morning's entertainment. 

Sunday 15 July 2012

Out with the old...

Why hello dear blog? It's been a while. How are we today?

So yes, I've been quiet on the blogging front yet again for quite a wee while. What excuses will I pull out of the bag this time? Too busy, too tired, more important stuff going on. Blogging being less productive than going to work, or packing a box, or putting the oven on (the oven is on and warming and there will soon be quiche and duck spring rolls for tea tonight ... mmm, happy tummy.), or even (yes, really) walking the dog. Yes it is less productive than those things, and mostly they come first, but it is time that I remembered that I am me, and shoehorning one or two more things in to each day seems to just be what I do.

I'm perhaps guilty, and I'll admit this in a very small voice and we'll not mention it again, of feeling that this blog while providing light entertainment and possible writing catharsis for me, lacks either purpose or a particularly wide audience. Nothing's changed in those respects whatsoever, but today I was blessed with a loving reminder that there is at least one soul out there who likes to know what I'm up to.  'Nuf said.


For your viewing pleasure, a photo of a quiche to keep you happy whilst I nip off and put mine in the oven. May I point out that this is not the actual quiche I am about to eat, mine being much plainer, less home made and having come from the co-op with a yellow sticker on it reminding me that it passed its date yesterday (Pah, I say!) and that therefore I ought to be taking a telling off from my Grandad right now. Fret not, my Grandad knows little of the interwebs and nothing of the Water Barrel or the Rowan Tree.
Quiche and oven have now been introduced and are getting on like something much smaller than a house with is very warm but not (one can only hope) on fire. Here begins the catch up.

The real deal, if you felt like a look. 

My problem here is that I sit down to write and want to tell you absolutely everything, all at once, with order or form completely lacking. There may be two more posts to follow this tonight. Not a sustainable way to blog. Ho hum.

Job in hand here. What have I done. I quick looksee tells me that when last I popped up on your screens I was being a secret agent and it was May Day. I suck at this regular thing. Since then many things have changed and others haven't. I may need to resort to bullet points. Order plays little part here.


  • The gorgeous and very chilled-out baby I stole and cuddled this morning at Church was born, has been dedicated (in a very girly frock for such an already beefy burpy manly baby boy) and is fast growing into a thing that gets quite heavy after a few minutes. 
  • My smartypants flatmate graduated, wore a very short skirt, and isn't actually my flatmate any more. I unmade her flat-pack furniture in next to no time, only attacked it with a screwdriver when completely necessary and felt very proud of myself. Anyone want a wardrobe?
  • I moved out of the flat! We all moved out of the flat. It was busy and slightly stressful and a complete work-out designed for someone of much greater stamina and upper body strength than me. All of my material possessions have been boxed up (or binned or charity shopped) and strewn around the city in the garages, cellars and spare rooms of my most generous friends. Furniture included. Beds and sofas got moved with the help of a lovely man and a (probably lovely) trailer. All else got moved in the gallant little Percy with some TARDIS-like fitting in of stuff. One run saw the back window on one side get rolled down, a large chunk of wardrobe slid in atop numerous boxes, not quite fit by a few centimetres (I am young and hip and blog in metric), and be secured using some highly structural gaffer tape. On my final run I managed to fit two bikes, two upright hoover-type things, a chair, four Mexican hat plants and a good few boxes. That final run was at midnight on our second incredibly long day of clearing and cleaning. 
Mexican Hat Plant.

Mexican Hat. Different.
  • I still have the shop job and the office job. The cleaning job is no more. At very long last. I became progressively more frustrated by it, put out by the crazy hours and unsettled by the empty dark buildings as the end drew nearer. I think my successor  will be more methodical, rigorous and therefore far better at it than me. I'll miss some aspects, pretty early mornings and a decent hourly rate. I won't miss the cold early starts in this northern land where sunshine takes a winter holiday.
  • I live in a big pretty house. There is a TV with a digital thing box, two bathrooms, a huge bath, a proper kitchen with gas and a garden. A proper big garden with a greenhouse and vegetable rows and a trampoline that the dog likes. Oh yes, the dog. She's a rather energetic border collie who we're struggling to tire out quite as much as she'd like. Walks morning and night are tiring me out something rotten, but when pushed I'd probably admit that it's quite fun. 
  • We've another move on the cards, but that'll be another story for when it happens. 
  • I've applied for a few jobs that I'm almost qualified for. All long shots and all would involve a move to another city, but it's probably about time I started to do something profitable. 
  • I have ideas, and a notion to get moving with them as soon as I absolutely can!
  • Percy has gone to the great scrapheap in the sky. We are wheel-less and I am sad. 
That'll do you for today, I'm afraid. I'm off to finish a job application before I call in for the night before an early dog walk and a day at el officio. Apologies for teasers. Hopefully this week I'll get to writing a bit about my plans for my life and my plans for this poor little neglected blog. 

Tuesday 1 May 2012

How To Be a Secret Agent

This is an attempt at yet another educational blog post, thinly veiling the fact that I'm just telling you what I did today. This post contains not one but two educational guides, please read both, they come as a bizarre sort of spots-and-strips double act.

Today I have achieved many things - enough to be broken into multiple separate educational blog posts - a series, if you will and elaborated upon at length until you've either learned a little something or gone off me altogether.  However, today is to be closely followed by Tomorrow, another jam-packed, funwork-filled monster of a day, and this morning started not nearly long enough after the end of the creature that was Yesterday. The result of this is that today will be jammed in to one small jumbled blog post, like gymnasts in a phone box.

If my day we're a phonebox, and things were people... 
This is therefore a number of different How To.. guides , but you have to imagine them all in a certain tall, red, communicative box.

Guide #1 How To Fix A Small, Old South-Korean Car. Again. 


In my last post, Boys and Girls, we learned how to change a lightbulb whilst retaining a very tiny shred of self-respect and having an uplifting spiritual experience. Today we scored to more things of the List of Things That Are Buggered In This Car.
This first of these is that the fan belt was loose. And getting looser. Driving at low enough speeds to negotiate junctions and stuff is automatically accompanied by a high-pitched blood-curdling squeak. You're all picturing killer mice now, aren't you. Thanks, that's me sleeping with the light on. Using headlights further complicated matters. EEEEEEK! Yesterday we drove to a town 2 hours away with every seatbelt in use. Drove there in daylight, using none of the things that require battery. Once on the open road we cautiously attempted radio. Driving back - less simple. Colder, wetter, and dark. Headlights needed = EEEEEK. Poor residents. I'm loathe to identify the town in question in case someone who lives there reads this, thinks "It was YOU!" and feeds me magnetic cake before giving me a large (spiky) knife as a belated birthday present.

He wasn't happy, put it that way. The root of the problem was a bolt that had lost half of itself (probably in an all-night poker game that didn't go to plan) and therefore left the alternator and the belt hanging on in there on a single bolt. A Man drew me a picture and it all made sense. He said (in so many words) "this is what's wrong, you need a more Manly Mechanical Man to fix it." And I listened carefully to the big words he used.

#1 Break car. Done.

#2 Find time to get to a Manly Mechanical Man. Thankfully we have the benefit of hindsight to assist at the juncture. Driving a car that's old enough to have qualifications means you've probably needed to get stuff fixed before. We now know that the natural environment for the magical fixey people is a garage.

#3 Dispense with telephone sophistication. Get out of bed too early, exchange jammies for clothing (see previous post for guidelines on this matter and get in the car. At this point it helps to have an amenable Flatmate around with the keys to the Hire Car that was needed for yesterday's adventure.

#4 Drive to the garage, arrive unannounced. Park car on double-yellows. Remove embarrassing or useful objects from the car. I do not wish to be judged for my taste in golf umbrellas. Wander in to garage.

#5 Address Mechanic by name (usually Colin, Dave or Steve - a guess may be worth it here) and explain that you brought it down to see if he could take a look at it. Repeat the big words heard earlier praying you get them in the right order and don't come across as insufficiently knowledgeable.

#6 Hand over keys, and mobile number. Ignore the classy artwork in the office. Silently (momentarily) marvel on quite what people will put on a calendar these days, and all the different uses of silicon.

#7 Cadge a lift home and pray it doesn't cost too much. #8 Await phonecall and collect later.

#9 When collecting, say "While you're free, there's another thing. Won't take more than ten seconds." And pop the bonnet. At this point the Man will complain that nothing takes only ten seconds. Point to the rattly big, prod it to demonstrate the annoying rattle and say, "This thing does this, it's a pain in the arse". The Man grunts, reaches over, pulls off the whole rattly thing and throws it in a skip. Over his head. Backwards. Job's a good 'un. No more rattle. Still don't know what the ex-rattly bit did, and whether it was akin to an Appendix or more crucial than that. We'll find out!

In short, he's healthy again to the tune of half an hour's labour costs. Nice one Mr Mechanic Man.

Guide #2 How to be a Secret Agent (psst, don't tell anyone)


16:45 Arrive home from Car fixing experience. Stop to send a text. Recieve text asking for Train Station Taxi Service.

16:50 Collect passenger and head for station, taking clever corner-cuts to avoid traffic lights. 16:55 passenger declares "Crap, I've forgotten a Small Crucial Thing. Whatever shall we do?" TRAIN LEAVES at 17:30!

17:00 Due to proximity at time of Passenger Memory Catchup, deliver Passenger to Train Station. Engage full Secret Agent Mode.

17:06 Get out of the Station Again, due to being screwed by a Traffic Light with anger issues, probably as a direct result of not being hugged enough as a mini traffic light. Drive to Flatmate's workplace. Possibly stretch small sections of speed limit. Listen to Classical music on the radio to cancel this out. Cobbles, side streets, traffic-avoiding zig-zags all earn Secret Agent Points. Collisions, injuries, accidental deaths all lose points.

17:15 Park without paying outside Flatmate's workplace. Run! Enter Flatmate's office, explain quickly (not at all out of breath from running. You are young and fit.) that you are Flatmate's Flatmate, and that Flatmate may be a Numpty and has forgotten Small Crucial Item. Collect Small Crucial Item, and stow in pocket. RUN!

17:17 Drive, dammit drive. One-way Streets, forward thinking. When faced with an uncooperative traffic lights, think pantomime-style "Oh no you (bloody-well) won't" thoughts. This actually works and has been proven, with science and stuff, like. Curse town planners. Curse the fact you're driving in a city where to get from a place very near the station to the actual station you have to traverse 17 sides of a square, each corner with a traffic light. Whisper Hallelujahs when all 17 lights (ok, 4) miraculously stay green.

17:29 Enter multi-story Carp-Ark (sorry, wrong story) car park, take tickets. Drive round looking for space, watching out for the fish (sorry, there I go again). Park, remember to take the keys with you. Overlook the fact one door is still open.

17:30 Run. Run some more. Phone Flatmate whilst running.

17:31:39 (exactly) Arrive at wrong side of ticket barriers, train is still on platform, doors closing with Flatmate aboard. Wave Small Crucial Object at Men in High Vis, quickly explain importance of completing Secret Agent delivery to Flatmate on train. Use flattery, high concentration flattery at that due to the obvious time constraints. Blag your way through the barriers.

Run, using phone to locate Flatmate. Deliver Small Crucial Object. Award Secret Agent Points for a job well done. Go to Sainsbury's to buy groceries to fool any passers by witnessing the scene with the running that you are in fact not a Certified Nutter but a normal citizen and neither are you World's Greatest Secret Agent.

This was a long post. I hope you have learned something. Or been amused. Both is aiming too high.

Friday 20 April 2012

How to Change a Lightbulb.

This is an instructional blog post. It tells you how to do stuff. It has 3 whole pictures.

This is Percy.

Isn't he lovely? Well this was him when he was new (to us) and was still fairly clean and worked properly and stuff. He's been working fairly hard for his keep since then. He's had some new belts and a new wheel bearing and is still going. For both of these things I took him (with company and moral support) to a overall-wearing Mechanic in a Garage and tried to look knowledgeable and not like an idiot girl who doesn't really know how a car works. 

I understand the basics, but cars are currently beyond the range of things I'll happily tinker with. Too much can go bad if you tinker incorrectly. I'll change the wiper blades, top up the oil and tape things back down again. That's about the limit. When I find a ramp to get him on I'll probably get in there and attempt to fix the little tube that goes from the screenwash to the scooshers on the front windscreen. After that I give in and go find a Boy. 

He has a list of small "boo-boos" that'll need seeing to fairly soon, and most definitely before he starts thinking about an MOT. I'm going with the baby-steps approach of dealing with one of these things at a time. Today I found myself finishing work an hour early and being sent to Halfords on an errand. Shopping for distilled water, no less. For tiny shrimp that we'll be selling at the shop that is one of my jobs. I live a varied and unpredictable life. 


Where was I? At Halfords. 5L of distilled water. Check. Ooh, Percy needs a lightbulb. I secretly quite like the way that Halfords has small flip charts where you can find the make and age of your car and know what item you need to buy without having to ask and look dumb. So here I am in the lightbulb section, having identified the lightbulb I need, yet thinking to myself "How in heck do I change the lightbulb in the car headlight?" 

So this is how I did it. My idiot's guide to changing a lightbulb. 

#1 Pay for your heavy pointless purchases and then bamboozle the bloke behind the till by asking if you can leave it behind and come back for it in an hour or so. 

#2 Walk home, not carrying heavy pointless purchase. 

#3 Make tea, drink tea (insert optional Terry Pratchet reading here). 

#4 Change. This bit is important. Female drivers have a statistically inaccurate reputation for being bad drivers, bad parkers and being more concerned with fluffy steering wheel covers and not having to walk too far in high heels than about keeping the car running. I don't want to ever be mentally placed in this box by anyone. I can park (I drive possibly the smallest 5-seater car there is these days, I really can't get away with not being able to park it). I feel at this point it's important to look a bit scruffy. Not too manly, just capable-looking. For this I went for hoody, jacket, and a pair of fairly baggy jeans made baggier by being at least a size to big. Not the most attractive look, but it works in this one scenario. In fact, these are my go-to jeans whenever I need to go ask someone else to fix something I can't quite manage. 

#5 Now having achieved the Look, you can drive to Halfords. Park, and pull the bonnet-opening thingy so it'll be ready to open once you've found a bloke and a light-bulb. 

#6 Wander in looking collected and look for someone in the right uniform. "I'd like a lightbulb and someone to change it". When asked what the car is, say it quickly, pronouncing everything right as if it's just one of your fleet of Mechanical Things That You Know All About.

#7 Find a bloke in a high-vis vest and take him to the car. Open the bonnet without having to feel around for the catch for too long, or ask him how to. Apologise for the rust. Explain that this is Important Structural Rust. Turn on the light so he can see that it's not on, and turn it back off again so you don't fry him. It's generally seen as impolite, and they possibly charge extra. 

#8 Find some form of fruit, I went for little oranges, and discuss brake pads, and alternators and your car's entire service history, whilst eating aforementioned fruit and looking not too interested (but paying enough attention that you'll be able to do it yourself the next time). Fruit is essential in the car. I once carried an apple around in the car for a number of weeks, intending to eat it and never did. My argument was that the presence of the fruit made the general environment slightly healthier and therefore did a little to counteract the universal unhealthiness of driving somewhere that you could probably get to by other means if you tried hard enough and had all day. 

#9 Listen to the high-vis man sing a few verses of Kumbyah for your listening pleasure. 

#10 Make generic "Thank you, I'd have done it myself, but I'm so busy. I'm totally capable of this, really" noises. "Cheers" may sound suitable at this point.

#11 Cough up the £3 for the pack of two lightbulbs (and take a mental note to stow the spare away in the glove compartment with the emergency biscuits and the manly car stuff) and £4 for the man to change it. Remember your pointless distilled water and feel momentarily grumpy about having to carry an extra 5 kilos to work on Monday morning. 

#12 Tell no-one. Drive home with the window open and announce that you have come home victorious having changed the lightbulb in the car. Mention nothing of the Kumbyah-ing high-vis man. Resolve to bloody-well do it yourself next time. 

  • Did you know that Haynes don't make a Manual for a Daewoo Matiz but they do have one for the U.S.S. Enterprise? Like that's any good to me. 



Wednesday 11 April 2012

Home

I'm home. It was lovely. The return to Real Life starts bright and early tomorrow morning. I've been doing a fair amount of writing and thinking and suchlike whilst I've had the time and space to do so, and at least some of it will eventually wander it's way in to type and spring up on here for your reading pleasure. 

Maybe even pictures. 

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Directions. And very small knitted things.

Listen up you ugly lot! This one's for you. I want your brains (in the least zombie-like fashion).

To get things moving, here's a picture of a very tiny green teddy bear with a purple moustache. Thought you might like it.

I had to pay that hand model so much for this. 

Did you like it? Go on, you know you did. Don't see one of them every day now, do you? No. I am indeed good to you.

Which is what I want to blog about today. I am not cool, or hip, or trendy or any of these things which one might secretly aspire to be (although never publicly acknowledge for in doing so would topple the façade of coolness). Following the same bizarre logic, a lack of desire to be cool, may indirectly make me so but I seriously doubt it. Enough of this teenage nonsense anyway. I pay my own (share of the) council tax and once bought salad dressing. I am well on the way to becoming that terrible thing of which I don't often like to speak - an adult. Thankfully it has not happened yet. Either because I keep moving the bar or because I am still an idiot kid.

Not long ago, a driving license and car ownership were criteria for entry to the adult hood, but now I skirt dangerously close to these things, they are no longer suitable milestones. Maybe I'll go for getting married, or having babies as sensible adulthood detection devices? Those things seem suitable woolly and distant. Yes, safety, that'll do.

I wandered again. I was meant to be telling you about my lack of cool and desire to remain so. I do however (you may have noticed this) have a blog. Once upon a time this may have been trespassing on the boundaries of cool, but everyone and their Mum is blogging now (the verb "to blog" still strikes a small amount of fear in me, but I've never fathomed why) so I'll probably get away with it.
I started the blog to recount my culture shock of a summer in a caravan and all the country things I got up to. I'll confess life, exhaustion, laziness and a poor internet connection conspired against me and I delivered rather weakly on this one.

Then I came home and got all jobless on you. Temporarily (thank God) so. I got busy - I blogged less. I ran a festival - I blogged not at all. Now I am busy but ever so slightly less so. I seem to be giving you fairly sporadic updates on whatever happens to come out of my fingertips when I sit down to type.

What are you getting at, Kid? Ok, so the deal is this. I will blog at random, offloading whatever happens to have been onloaded on to my poor underworked brain on any one day... unless ... you suggest otherwise.

Ideas on a post card! (or, you know, comment on the blog post like a normal person). Or talk to me.
And tell your friends. Tell them to read me. Read me, read me please!

Here's another tiny teddy. Enjoy.

So flippin' teeny!

Scroll down for spoilers.


And then some.



Ok. I give in.


Today it is snowing. In precisely one week I will be back in my precious summer caravan (well, one of them) - and I'll be sleeping there!

Monday 2 April 2012

Stickmen

Exactly a month ago it was not indeed Monday, as it is today. Due to the nature of March being a 31 day month (remember the rhyme, people?) and the number 31 not dividing equally by seven, exactly a month ago it was a Friday. It's now 9:44 am in my particular time zone and on the Friday in question I was sitting at a desk - my second ever day at the office job. I sneaked off at lunchtime and spent the afternoon sweeping and shifting furniture. That evening hundreds of funny-lookin' people descended on our campus area and we put on a three day nigh-on non-stop folk dance festival to keep them entertained. It was mental: great fun, great stress and a great feeling of accomplishment. What was the point - to give a bunch of people a whole weekend of intense fun and complete real-life escapism, and to do it because you knew it was a thing that would be appreciated.

I won an award for my part of the organising caboodle. I found out about the award the day after the dinner at which I ought to have received it. Such is my current level of personal organisation. Collecting the award it's an A6 piece of card with some cool studenty graphics and "Kings Commendation" writing in cool slanty capitals. It looks pretty disappointing but I won't mention that when I use it to bulk up my c.v.

So, we put all the furniture back, kicked the last few people out of the building, played A+E taxi for our one and only injured participant (frankly, a miraculous number given the dancing:injury ratio) and opened a bottle of very good wine, bought at the vineyard no less. We've paid most of the bills and recovered for the exhaustion and post-festival lurgies. Next year, we'll jump in a bus and go enjoy what someone else has organised for us.

But before then. One last spin-off.
Part of our corporate image, and our t-shirt and merch designs featured scenes of happy little stick figures trying their sticky hands at a variety of folk dance forms. After a while they got bored and tried to take up folky instruments. In the end they ran out of inspiration and just stood around helping people differentiate between the make and female toilets.
We printed one heck of a lot of the critters and I'll find them following me around for the rest of my days I imagine. But the punters seemed to like them.

So... we've gone mainstream. Internet companies like spreadshirt take my humble design, we choose what products we want to plaster the design on the the front of and ... Hey Presto, we're in business.
T-shirts! Lots of em. Big ones.


Little teeny ones. 

Bags. Babygrows. Blankets. Basically t-shirts and stuff beginning with B. 

Seriously, this baby model is wearing lip gloss. Can't be right. 

All on a happy little website. You buy stuff then you'll have exciting stuff and I'll get about 10p for my trouble. I'll try not to spend it all at once. Happiness all round. 

Here it is, boys and girls. Share the stick-man-merchandise love. 



Saturday 31 March 2012

Birthdays

I had a birthday last week.

Three separate friends bought me a box of Pop Tarts. I should take out shares in Kelloggs.

I have good friends. Amen.

Not yet, Kiddo

I'll cut to the chase - I "failed to meet requirements" - but I reckon you ought to know how it all went, after all this terrible suspense I've been leaving you with. Yeah, that.


This is a photograph of a hammock and a picnic bench. There's not really any point to this apart from to work out how to post pictures to this blog, because Flatmate, who writes this blog, told me that my blog should have more pictures. She also says I should write more about femidoms and lesbian hairstyles.

Lovely random tangent there. Woop, pictures.

So I had a day at the police station being assessed. For this I committed myself to working on a Saturday to get the Friday free to go be assessed. Show up at 8am, it said. I did, suited and conservatively made up, prepared with gym kit and emergency creme egg. The suit belongs to the aforementioned flatmate, bought in a fit of wanting smart clothes. Although we're a similar size, I found myself in a skirt that wanted to fall down and a jacket that I that could just about fasten. Still, only I knew.

Round 1. Exams. Fairly simple school stuff - passed easily. So far we've proved that I have a decent grasp of the English language, I can add up a list of numbers and read a graph and tell you what it says.

Round 2. Fitness test. We all change in silence and re-appear in shorts and trainers. Blue-floored concrete gym, green lines painted at either end and a tall skinny Geordie man who seems to like the sound of his own voice with the volume turned right up. We're split in to three groups - I get to go second. It was one of those shuttle run bleep tests that everyone dreaded in school. I quite liked them at school and two weeks ago I went for a run. Passed that bit too.

Round 3. Free lunch and awkward small talk. All in hand.

Round 4. Interview. Less good here. Half an hour of very very broad questions - "tell us all you know about x", "how would you make a difference to the police force?" Big, big unanswerable questions. Not saying I didn't try. I made the best hash at it as I could, but got the feeling I was coming across as somewhat mediocre.

Try again in six months is the official line. If they're still recruiting that is. Six months is September. I figure if I'm in town in August and I still want it then I'll try again. Last night I was out in town with my Street Pastor coat on, talking to two of the beat cops about the whole process. One of them was a Special and one was a "proper" cop. It was cold and raining and people just kept giving them hassle. This lady was something special - she was a single parent with a full time job, studying for a degree and she was out in the rain being a Police officer out of the goodness of her heart. There till 4am, but probably more like 5. Her and I wound up later on helping out a girl who was in a bit of a state. I was tired and cold and grumpy by about half 2, and ready to go home, never mind talk to numpties. There is a distinct chance that I'm just not nice enough to make it as a copper.

Which leaves me filling time and trying to work out what I want. Three part-time but equally soul-destroying jobs will make ends meet for the next two months, maybe a little longer. Time to don that Thinking Cap.

Next week I'm off for a wee holiday. I've squeezed things about a bit so I can have a few days together to go away. There's going to be a road trip, and my parents, and Flatmate and I will pray that Percy (the car) makes it all the way across the country and back again without mishap. On the way home I'll even get to spend a couple of nights back in one of my precious old caravans from last summer. That's where today's blog-picture-test photo was taken from. Good times. If I take enough jumpers and blankets I may even get to spend some quality time in that hammock once again.

Thursday 8 March 2012

Pop Tarts

People, people, gather round. Here be more announcements. I know, I know, how could I do this to you. Weeks of silence and now I blog like it's going out of fashion (which, as it happens, I'd never do, having little to no regard for fashion (as I hope you'll remember from my Haircut Fairydust experience about a dozen posts below this one)). I've been fixing excel formulas all afternoon, and now double brackets seem to me like a sensible way to comunicate.

Order, Kid, you have announcing to do. Yes, breathe, remember.

Lets start with what I'd like to be announcing, and then not announce it. What I'm not announcing right now is what I've been dreaming the past two, possibly three nights. I can never really tell - sometimes I dream about 4 days in one night and subsequently can't remember when I did which bit of dreaming. My imagination is wasted on my wakeful self. I keep dreaming that the couple who run the Lazy Duck Hostel and Campsite in Nethy Bridge where I spent three months of this summer living and helping out (and I'm still not on their website (humph))*, phone me up, declare that they're leaving the country to retire/run from the law/tax dodge/take over Russia (delete as you see fit), and ask me to come run the place. I get very excited, get all worried about the loneliness and then wake up. No announcements here. Move along, nothing to see.

Next up, announcements...

wait for it...

I'm so mean...

Ok then.

I'm eating Pop Tarts! Ta-Daa!

Why yes, this is the announcement. You see, I'm only allowed to eat Pop Tarts if it's been a really good day or a really bad day. Today may have been both, so I'm allowed.
Today itself was a bit crappy. I went to work (office job), felt funny, did boring stuff, didn't really know anyone and desperately tried not to keel over or fall asleep. Not amazing as far as days go. Last night is more interesting. I got a phone call. Oh yes I did. In two weeks (two weeks tomorrow to be precise) I've been invited along to a police station where I'll do the first parts of the entrance test. Woot! Now I have two weeks to determine whether or not I'm capable of running 1.5 miles comfortably in less than 14 minutes, and if I can't then make it so that I can. Frankly, I probably can, so I'll just keep dancing as much as is available to me between now and then.

And then (there's more!) if I pass the first tests - information skills and reading and numbers alongside the fitness test - then I get a free lunch. And then I get to stay and sit some more tests. Isn't that exciting.

It's mostly exciting because it means that they haven't forgotten about me and now I get to do something active about getting a few more baby steps along the application process.

The phone call was last night, but it wasn't till today that I realised I was excited about it. So I came home, made tea and pop tarts and changed in to my most oversized jeans (fresh and crunchy out of the wash) and my softest folk festival tshirt (from a folk festival I didn't even go to) and collapsed on the sofa to tell you, dear bloggies, all about it.

So there.   :P


*Hey, stop with the multiple brackets, will you!

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Next up: Three jobs, no more Folk Festival

It occurs to me I told you about my three jobs and Folk Festival life balance, but very little about what job number 3 entails.

To recap.
Job number 1: 8-20 hours shop work in town. Normally more like 12 hours but in small annoying chunks. Nice people though. Mind-numbingly-boring stuff.

Job number 2: 6 hours cleaning out of town. Lonely and usually involving a far-too-early start. Good pay.

And to announce (fanfare!) ...
Job number 3: 16-20 hours office work at the University. This is new and scary but so far I seem to be capable of it. I play with excel. I get to sit on my bum and stare at a computer and use a small, neglected "spreadsheet" corner of my brain. The people seem nice and the pay should be better than the shop job.

Total: 30-46 hours per week, depending on shifts and how nice each employer is feeling. This is probably going to involve either an early morning or a bit of weekend work each week, probably both. The pay-cheque will be the silver lining. Just need to think of something worthwhile to do with it.

Here on in, I get to concentrate my efforts on doing my job(s) well, with no Folk Festival Distraction to fuzz things up. Wish me luck!

The List

I'm addicted to lists, it's true. Does it make an addiction better if I own up to it and share my lists with you? This is my list of Things I Will Do After IVFDF. It's been sitting in my phone getting gradually longer for some time now. Here it is for your viewing pleasure. I may even be open to sensible (clean) suggestions for items to add to the list. Judgement reserved.

In no order whatsoever:
Find a gym, go swimming, build up a bit of strength.
Watch TV, occasionally go to the cinema.
Socialise! - Invite people I've missed over for dinner.
Buy myself a sushi kit from ASDA and learn to make sushi.
Do more cooking and more baking - eat more cake and less rubbish.
Spend time with my flatmates - this is allowed to involve eating rubbish, especially if it is Chinese Take-away rubbish.
Plan my dance teaching - bring on new teachers.
Practise music - join a ceilidh band. This weekend I'm expecting a new toy, which I will tell you all about when I get it.
Put myself through a First Aid at Work course (having first saved up the money for it!)
Sell t-shirts!
Converse
Chill
Read stuff
Go to the beach more often
Use my Historic Scotland membership

So there.
K x

IVFDF's over: The Return to Real Life

Hi Folks,

The next couple of blog posts are going to be catching up with myself after this past weekend.

For those of you who weren't there (and you should have been) or are unaware of this phenomenon, this past weekend was the 61st Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival, hosted for the first time in Aberdeen by myself and the rest of the amazing committee. Three days of lots and lots of folk dance and music. Early mornings, late nights and a very large amount of organisation and stress. Well, I was stressed at any rate. A more balanced, experienced organiser may have taken it entirely in their stride.

Anyway, it's been a long time in the organising, and for the past 6 months or so, more and more parts of my life have been put on hold "till after IVFDF".

And we did it. We pulled it off. Lots of people. They seemed to be happy most of the time and only a small number of people moaned about small pointless things. I imagine there will be criticisms out there but I also figure a lot of them won't make it all the way back to me - they're a polite bunch, and I'm unlikely to do it again ever again, most definitely not in the next decade.

It's over. I'm still remembering small snippets of it as I begin to reflect. Some things happened so fast and so frantically that I'm not sure how much detail I'll have remembered. Either way. I'll come up with my own verdict of it yet. Just not right now.

Today I went back to work (one of my "work"s) after yesterday off. I've now got a few spare minutes before I go back to my Church Housegroup after many weeks' IVFDF-related truancy to hope they'll still remember who I am. I'm blogging. and it's great. The passing of the One Huge Thing I've been hard at work on for so long has given me back a fair amount of my own time and energy. Now I just want to use it wisely. I'll maybe even tell you about it.

Thursday 23 February 2012

Three jobs and Folk Festival

Oh, and an all-night volunteering shift and a road trip to Glasgow and back.

I do enjoy my life - it is not boring. Newton's First Law: A body at motion will remain at motion unless acted on by an external force. A body at rest will remain at rest. I am attempting to be the first, the "body in motion" remaining so. Keep runnin', Kiddo.

Yes, news. Fanfare, do-do-do-dooo! I have a new job. Sat on my bum playing with a telephone and an excel spreadsheet somewhere in the bowels on University admin. 16-20 hours a week paying better than the shop job but not as well as the cleaning job. And... they're happy with me keeping hold of two other jobs and fitting this one around them. Dear Lord, Thank You. I start Wednesday. Today is a Thursday, there's a few minutes left of it as a write.

This weekend, if I count Friday features;  a lot of dressmaking, a cleaning shift, a birthday party, an important meeting with our final sleeping venue, a Street Pastor volunteering shift 10pm-4am, a drive from Aberdeen to Glasgow, an afternoon in Glasgow, a formal ball and afterparty, a night on a floor somewhere, a Cluedo party, a drive back to Aberdeen from Glasgow, a run-through-the-battle-plan committee meeting and a fair amount of caffeine. Wish me luck. Monday and Tuesday I'm at the shop job, Monday night I'm off to see a scary movie because I want to see the persons who wants to see it, early Tuesday I'm cleaning. Wednesday I start the new job, 7:30am on Thursday I'll drive to the train station and come home with an accordion belonging to someone I don't really know, then flyer everyone I can get to. On Friday starts the craziest three days of my little life. And there's lots still to do!

What are you up to?

Sunday 12 February 2012

Policewoman Officer

Advance warning: this post features some God stuff. They don't all, but God is a character in the story, so I will include him in my recounting of it. So there.

In my last post I got all excited about a possible job offer. I shouldn't. I should learn not to get excited because people suck, but it seems that somewhere fairly inaccessible I'm a bit optimistic, or if not optimistic then at least excitable. It also proved to me how naive I still am. If someone sits across a table from me and says they'll do a fairly simple thing by a certain date then I tend to believe them. I generalise unnecessarily, but I tend to believe people a lot at the time. Any doubt I have in their honesty or intentions usually arises afterwards. Especially so when the person concerned is someone I've just met and know little about. People you know have track records - you learn how reliable they are, and how much weight their promises carry.

New people - I stupidly trust. In that instance the new person was the restaurant Manager and she said, "we'll phone you either way by Friday, or Monday at the latest". Paraphrasing yes, but that middle bit was there - either way by date x. We will do a certain thing by this date. I expected a phone call. I got excited and waited by the phone. I blogged about my excitement. I told people I'd had an interview. Now I come creeping back to the blog feeling slightly embarrassed by my own naivety. No phonecall, no notin'. No restaurant job to tell you about. Ho Hum.

Up. Go again. Learn, kid, learn. This is the big mean world and you are but a fraction of a grain of sand (aside: still sand in my hair from yesterday, but that'll have to wait for another post) to the rest of the world. I don't always matter. People don't call when they promise. Rule, empirically proven.

God, empirically proven, also knows I am but a fraction of a grain of sand, but unlike the rest of us, has the capacity to take note of something so small and numerous. And if I am to be any sort of faithful, I have to accept that, whether or not I can get my head around it. I'm rambling here, but my point is that I have to trust, as flimsy as my trust may be, that the Big Guy had it planned out better. There are a number of other questions to insert here, but I'll not try to answer them. Why did God give me the interview if he wasn't going to give me the job? Why did he not prod the people to phone me? And this is only concerning a tiny little thing that did me no real damage. God lets us get disappointed, and lets us get hurt.

Deep, Kid, deep.

There's probably a whole bunch of different answers, and many of them are probably valid in most/some scenarios. Right now we're going to go with the easiest, most saccharine answer: He's got something else up his Godly sleeve. Yes, God has sleeves. Yes they're pretty funky sleeves.

God has better fashion sense than you: discuss.

End tangent. God. Sleeve. Next Thing. This autumn I went to stay in a cottage near Killiecrankie, and on the Sunday, visited the world's most welcoming church in Pitlochry. I pay more attention when at a new Church, and this guy was good. His point, abridged, was that a Godly life sometimes just means doing The Next Thing, whatever it may be, with all of the effort and vigour God has given us, and to do it as best we can, and to do it gladly because it is God's work. I liked that. Just do the next thing, and not begrudge what it takes out of you. My late Grannie had a thing about not begrudging things you give. Simple enough in theory. Clean, sensible, logical. Trust God to put the next part of the path before me feet and get on with it gladly.

And the next path may be.... Joining the Police. I thought about it good and hard. I'm not an idiot, I have a brain and I'd like to use it. I've tried the academic thing and I can do it fairly well but I don't excel. And I go crazy at a desk. There's a balance I think we all need to strike in different places between exercising brain and body. I need a fairly even mix, it seems. I know this world is broken, and if I'm not careful it won't be too long before I wind up so jaded and disappointed with it that I'll give up believing it can get better. I have to start trying now, while I'm still naive enough to think that almost everyone is innately good, just screwed up to different extents. I am going to try to be a grain of sand that makes a tiny little difference, hopefully to the good.

I asked a good friend to pray about it, and a week or so later his wife decided it was a great idea. And I trust her judgement.

This week I finished the forms and posted them. Recorded delivery and everything. £1.88. I could get 6 cream eggs for that and still get change. Better be worth it.

It'll probably we a long wait to hear, and I don't think the odds are on my side. Let's hope the Big Guy is. Please pray if that's your thing. If it's not, it's not.

Over and out.