musings and knee jerk reactions

Interviews are bloody hard. All that maintaining eye contact, but not too much, but how much is too much and before long you are not listening to anything that they are saying as you’re worried that you are looking at them like a crazy, boggle-eyed mental. They make me wince endlessly at their horridness as you have to appear like a perfect little work-oid and not like the imperfect little bundle of contradictions and stupidity that you are. So, when I was offered to an interview, to do a job that I was relatively interested in, I was a little reticent to accept: sometimes it seems a whole lot easier to just continue on in your boring, hum-drum little job than try and do something else. New jobs mean that you have to endure the pain of being a person so far removed from your real self for months, just to fit in that you forget who you are. I, on the other hand, have never had a problem with being the “odd” one in the office so that doesn’t worry me. I was more worried about my CV being something of a work of fiction, and more importantly, being found out.

Entering the interview, turning on a perma-grin which is extraordinarily hard to maintain for more than a couple of minutes and I set Phasers to stun. Unfortunately, my Phasers were having something of an off day.

Within ten minutes, the fire alarm sounded and we had to leave the building which brought with it two horrors: losing the two hours of mentally pumping those key phrases around my head, that make you sound like an utter twat outside an interview situation and the true horror of making small talk with people that you don’t know. As soon as we gathered outside, I tried being polite asking questions but all I could think was that I’ve brought my bag and coat out and maybe I could sneak off before I could inflict anymore damage on myself as the eye contact thing was throwing my brain into overdrive.

One of the many and important lessons learnt this week is: do not under any circumstance lie on your CV. A little white lie here and there about non-existent work experience may seem like a brilliant idea at the time to fill up a little blank space but those lies will haunt you. Who’d of thought that a little exaggeration about work experience that I didn’t do would have meant around five minutes of creating made up duties in my head, on which, I was asked detailed questions about. “So, where did you receive information for updates?” “Did you not get them from a website?” “How did you present this information?” “What ideas and things did you implement?” I was drowning under a sea of shit, and it was my own doing. I was increasingly despising myself and it was getting worse.

I lied so badly that my voice became intermittent. My body was screaming “Just shut the fuck up and leave with some dignity in tact” but I still proceeded to make up utter tosh to the point where eyebrows were raised. What made matters worse was that I was asked questions about their competitors and what they do and I completely made up the answers. I didn’t have a clue. I spent ten minutes critiquing other stations and their output as I didn’t have the bottle to just say “I’m sorry, I’m not aware of their output, however from research you seem to be a cut above them with your diverse programme output and understanding of your audience.” It would have been that easy.

I also made the fatal flaw- although to be honest, it was impossible not to do- of slagging off some well known personalities calling them “inane”, “dull” and “unbelievably stupid”. My interviewer then piped up that he would never “attack anything others were doing as everything is appealing to one audience or another” which not only made me feel a little foolish but also made me want to retaliate “Yeah, but I’d rather not work for a company that appeals to the stupid, loud and thick as pig shit demographic.” I was also asked about the personality that I’d be working with and it took all my strength not to call him an “egocentric dickhead who can’t get over the fact that his TV career is dead” and praise his ability to deliver to an audience in a “friendly, down to earth way”. Some days, I wish I wasn’t allowed the power of speech.

In addition to the general I was also asked what I found funny, and being the little smart arse that I am I said that “Schadenfreude” was my thing and that there is nothing funnier in the world than someone getting hit in the face. Interviewer then piped up with “So you take delight in other people’s misfortunes and pain then?” I nodded on saying “Yes” but it was only on my departure that I realised that the “Yes” wasn’t delivered with a knowing smile or a cheeky wink (which would have been also inappropriate). I must have appeared to be some masochistic freak and can only hope that he harbours some Secretary-esque desires in which he is the insipid Maggie Gyllenhaal and I am the masterful James Spader.

The worst thing was the job was doing something that I actually have an interest and more bloody importantly, an expensive qualification in, which crippled me financially for quite a while and demanded once I finished the bloody thing, I had to work seven days a week for six months to pay off the overdraft and extortionate course fees.

I got the ‘thanks but no thanks ’ look on my exit, that anyone who has ever been cruelly romantically re-buffed has had, and they said that they will contact me next week and let me know either way. I, personally, wouldn’t employ me; after all, I am after all a silly bloody liar, and a crap transparent one at that.

Afterwards, as I walked out the door pulling awkward, embarrassed faces I was trying to think of things that I would have preferred to have done for an hour rather than hang myself on my web of lies. The best, or worst (but still preferable) thing imagined was rigorously attacking my face with a cheese grater then burying my head in a sack of salt.

I commiserated by visiting both Camden and Clapham, as I only had a zone 1&2 ticket for the underground and wanted to make sure that I derived some value from the day. I spent the time walking down both high streets, with my shoes pinching my feet making me walk awkwardly (think Python’s Ministry, if Cleese wore heels and rested on the outer sides of his feet for balance and was considerably angered by himself). Apologies to anyone who saw a red coated man woman pull an array of faces like a schizophrenic witch on Thursday in the general vicinity of those areas. That was me: I am deeply sorry for any nightmares I might have given your children.

I hate myself this week. Why? Is it because I am temping again? Is it because I am a corporate sell out? No, it’s because I have charmed my way through the week with batting my eyelashes and giggling at pathetic jokes made by fellow employees. Someone makes a joke about some acronym – there is something called a TIT screen which I’m working with – and there I am, laughing and being all coquettish. If I had a fan, I would have fluttered it over zealously in the style of some over-heated Jane Austen character, flashing my come to bed eyes above it.

What makes matters worse is the fact that I wouldn’t want anyone in the office to come to bed with me. Most people in my office resemble the Adams Family on an off day.

Double entendre has also been the order of the week. When being talked through pension policies with a trainer, I dropped the “Bet you could give any women the hard sell, Dave”, when someone was assisting me with a technical query “Wow, you are really pushing my buttons right now” and the sheer awfulness of “Why is he called Big Steve?” pointing at the six foot giant in the corner, arching an eyebrow. I deserve to be impounded indefinitely in a place where no human would ever come into contact with me.

It is the twenty-first century and I have had to act like in a secretary in some 1950s B movie to get myself accepted in the office. I have gone a little short of wearing low cut tops, ‘accidently’ dropping things on the floor and bending over ever so suggestively and lasciviously sucking on biros this week.

I make myself sick sometimes.

After starting yet another painfully boring job, which is so impossibly dull, I would rather play darts with my own eyes as targets for fun. I have again taken my place in the Disenchanted Workers Union (DWU) and I am hating every moment. I’m back to being patronised beyond all recognition and espied with loathing and suspicion in equal measure. I am temp scum and for the foreseeable future I will be temp scum. I am scum.

Training has so far involved a series of computer based tests and the one thing that I am equipped for now is bomb threats. Want to know what to do? Call me in, I’m now an expert. Within the first two hours of said temp job, I had the threat of BOMBS spelled out very loudly. You see, the large multinational finance company apparently has quite a few embittered customers who regularly threaten staff with BOMB talk. We were given at least a two hour talk on what to do if we suspect that there is a BOMB on site and if we are on the receiving end of coded warning from a would be BOMBER. If am placed in one of those difficult situations, which lets face it I will be (when I worked in Makro a customer lobbed a Microwave at me) I have a three page questionnaire to fill out. Yes, after being asked questions like “What does it look like?”, “Where have you planted it?”, “Why?” I’m pretty sure a would-be BOMBER would detonate it there and then. There is also a page in which you have to circle what the person sounded like, if they were depressed, happy or malicious sounding and you could write down if the person sounded familiar and who the person was, I would be tempted to write Vernon Kaye, but hey, it seems that space is there for a multitude of embittered ex-staff, still seething with grudges long after they’ve left.

Training did provide some light relief in the afternoon however with the ‘Discrimination in the Workplace’ training. After being asked the question “Sue has been receiving rather a lot of inappropriate comments from Roger of late and she has caught him looking at pornographic websites whilst at work. She has asked him to refrain from this behaviour at work but he persists. At Christmas he bought her a chocolate novelty sex toy. Is this an infringement of ...some law or other?” I was nearly weeping at this question in all its poetic brilliance. Whoever made that piece of software is a complete and utter genius in my eyes and should win some award. I was hooting, thigh slapping and chortling at that amazing piece of work. I was desperate to know what comments Roger had made and what exactly he was looking at. That would have made the whole training experience so much more enriching and would have got quite an amazing answer from myself in return.

Another brilliant slice of genius was also another section in the aforementioned training in which you are given a picture of a desert island with the faces of 12 people above the trees. The programme requires you to pick the people who you want to stay with you on the island. Fair enough, who is the fittest? To be honest, after picking the best looking out of them, I then went on to the slightly more rotund people, using the notion that if we get hungry we can spit roast the porkies on the fire. I’m cruel, I know. Then a little pop up comes on screen saying that you have discriminated against three ethnic minorities or something and you have to pick again to infinitum.

I’m dreading starting proper work after training, but I can’t wait to meet Roger and Sue. I hope they are in my department.

The human brain is a wonderful thing: working out complex puzzles and making lightening quick decisions without you even realising. It is pretty frightening when you consider than blamonge in your bonce can fire off synapses in milliseconds and can mean the difference between you crossing the road successfully in the morning or being plastered all over the place. Just contemplate that a second. Pretty scary isn’t it when you consider some of the stupid things that you do, even when the old grey matter is supposedly on top form.

This morning, for instance, awoken by my alarm after a paltry four hours sleep , I instantly worked out that I could hit the snooze button a further two times before I REALLY had to get up. Even in my morning state (too terrifying for most people to comprehend) I was pretty amazed by those swift working synapses: working out that the snooze lasts for nine minutes and cross checking that with the time it takes to do the necessary - dressing, eating and plastering of slap in the morning and even factoring in that I’d be slightly quicker as there was no heating on, that old brain of mine allowed me to fall back asleep almost instantly. It was like that scene in Old School, in which Will Ferrell has to deliver a speech about American economic policy and is suddenly overcome with this awesome amount of brain power, like he’d been touched by the hand of God or something. That was just like me this morning.

When I woke up proper and contemplated what a sly little bastard my brain has been all these years, hiding away such a little talent like that, I was a little pissed off. All those years of taking me an age to do the simplest things because old grey up there couldn’t be arsed to process information that little bit quicker, all that time wasted: I felt cheated. I’m not sure if it was a case of the mind was willing and the body wasn’t, which explains the gargantuan grump I am most mornings, but still, I was a little overcome by my own self. You’ve heard of the term ‘flash of genius’, well I was privy to it, and it felt good.

I only wish my head would behave like this for the rest of the day. Maybe, if I could get even get a few flashes of genius in a day I would avoid doing all those embarrassing and stupid things that my day to day seem to be made of. It would be great. I wouldn’t have made the frankly disastrous choice to take a teaching a course six months ago, that provided enough stress and anxiety to make a nun ‘go postal’. I wouldn’t have wasted two and a bit hours of my life the other night on the ridiculous rental of The Illusionist, and would have spent that time doing something worthy and important...maybe. Such quick fire activity would have meant that in a particularly heavy rainstorm a couple of months ago, I would have hit the brakes on my car that bit sooner and wouldn’t have ploughed into the car in front. The absence in that moment of a speedy brain function meant that a few days later, I had to turn down the advances of the bloke that I hit, although I’m pretty sure that this particular gentleman used the ‘quick breaking/girl hitting car/girl distressed that she might have hurt someone’ as a pulling technique. When I inspected the damage he said that the other knocks had been from other accidents. Still I wouldn’t have had to receive a begging telephone call and a text message which went in to a bit too much detail on his life and being told that I ‘seem like a nice girl’: he obviously should meet me on a day that I don’t try to inflict GBH by whiplash on people. I also wouldn’t have been wracked with guilt when I made up some dross that I’m in a relationship and live with my boyfriend, which he probably saw through. Anyway, bumping into someone by accident does not mean they owe you anything. Not even a blowjob.

I need a brain to keep up with me. I need it to work doubly hard everyday to keep up with me. Hopefully that way I’d avoid accidents and all the stupid decisions which plague my life. I’d even settle for one flash of apparent speedy thought a day. It would save me from myself.

I made a solemn vow to myself when I was at uni, that I swore I would keep. It would be a vow which would aid my own mental wellbeing as well as the physical wellbeing of those around me. It would be a special vow to save my sanity. That vow was that I would never house-share again.

In my young and slightly naive brain, I believed as soon as I finished, I would land an impressive job and have the money to get my own place. It would be a shiny monument to cleanliness and hygiene and everything would have its own place. Oh, how wonderful it would be. I would no longer have the constant ordeal of unwashed plates, mouldy pans, hair clogged showers or have food disappear through the vortex in the fridge. Guests would be my guests and I could wander around in my pants if I wanted at anytime. I would choose what is on the TV and decide when the heating goes off and on. I would be the king, queen rather, of my only little country, and I would bloody love it. I probably would wear a crown and everything when no one was there, just to feel important. I would be, after all, the ruler of the land and what an amazing land it would be.

Four years later, I have broken that rule and am longing after those naive days again. When I moved into my house, sharing with three other girls, they were all adamant that it was a professional house, as we are all young and working, and that it wouldn’t succumb to such student levels of squalor. They lied and lied big time. Within the first couple of weeks, I was presented with enough muck and filth to keep Kim and Aggy busy for weeks. Night and day work, non-stop busy.

Although the house isn’t amazing by a long shot; we have an underground river permeating our basement which means the house is forever cold and have evidence of mice, although, thankfully, we have never seen them; the thing that really annoys me is the mess. I blame the neat-freakery that I’ve been brought up with which makes me such a horrible person to share a house with. I get tetchy when things aren’t a certain way and after I’ve made efforts to tidy, to have someone desecrate all my hard work is completely soul destroying. I get angry, never to their face, but wish I could rub faces in drops of gravy left on the work top or make them eat the chips they drop on the floor. It would be like dog training when you have to rub a dog’s face in its own shit to stop it dumping on the carpet. I probably would enjoy that. I’m probably a pyscho nutjob waiting to happen.

Coming back after Christmas, from a home which is perpetually warm and sparkles with a clean sheen, to a horribly messy house was distressing. I walked through the door, assessed the damage and contemplated driving 250 miles back down the M1, to get back to some state of cleanliness.

Sharing a house is pretty bloody hard work. When you are the only one who remembers when the bin has to be out and when the bills have to be paid, it can get frustrating. I am the only person in the house who seems to understand how to wash plates and no one else ever buys washing up liquid, bleach or any cleaning material. Although I don’t mind coughing up for these house essentials, I just wish that someone else would take the reigns for a bit. To be fair, whenever housemates in the past have tried to tidy, I’ve always gone back over their handiwork. The amount of times that I’ve re-washed plates and cups and re-wiped work surfaces to get all the crumbs of the surface (I’m trying not to encourage the mice to breed further) doesn’t bear thinking about.

But the worst thing by far has been listening to my housemate go at it hammer and tongs with her boyfriend. Her room is above mine and everything in my entire room shakes whilst they’re at it is just awful. I had to physically hold my lap top down the other day as it was vibrating off the table with the rhythm of their thrusting. I was half tempted to write an Olympic style score down and present it to them after their furious fuck session. I didn’t, but I really wanted to. One thing worse than going through man drought is listening to other people rutting.

Constantly brow beaten by muck, and the lack of sleep induced from my housemate’s mindless sex sessions has made me come to realise that, not only do I need a man to return the favour, but I need my own place, and that is a vow.

I've quit my teaching course because I a) didn't enjoy it and b) found it difficult not to slap really fucking annoying kids in the head. I thought that college kids would be better behaved but, alas, I was wrong. It was some little shit in my tutorial group, whose name I never bothered to learn, that said "Those who can do, those who can't teach". It took all my might not to grab the little fucker's headphone wires and garotte him on the spot for that one. I retorted back that I was educated, worldly and am a music writer in my spare time and he was just a lowly educated little prick sailing towards failure at the speed of light, but he came back, as all smart arsed teenagers do and said "But what did you want to be before you gave up on trying?". I walked away seething but knew the cheeky, twatty little bastard was right. I hate kids.

I'm soon to be heading back to the position of General in the Graduate Temp Army (GTA) and hope that my next mission will be a easy as the last until someone from some media institution looks at my CV and goes "By Christ, we have got a winner here" and employs me to do a job which involves sitting at home, in my pants, on the computer. A girl has got to dream.

I have the sneaky suspicion that I am too old for all this Myspace stuff as it seems to be the reserve of school kids and child bothering nutjobs after watching that Panorama thing the other night. Myspace is marginally better than Facebook as it doesn't suffer from all those fucking requests to be a werewolf or a ballerina or a spoon and all those horrid people that you went to school with desperate to be your friend now, just to see what you have done with your life and find out how many kids you have (answer: none. I know how contraception works). Anyways, all those tragic messages of "Hi, do you remember me? I used to be in your maths class" etc are only met with me not knowing who the fuck they are because I spent most of my time bored by the monotony of school with my head in the Melody Maker or the NME at the back of the class, daydreaming of shagging the lead singer of whatever indie band was in vogue at the time.

I've just had about 30 emails in my inbox this morning saying "John has just hit you with a fish" and "Kelly has just thrown a statue at you". By Christ, if they did, I'd be really out for blood. Those years on the rounders team and that baseball bat I found by the side of our fridge will have finally come to some use in the real world.

Sometimes I think I’m a really rubbish girl. Growing up I was a bit of a tomboy. I never had a Barbie and I used to crew cut the hair of any dolly or bear that I was given. I never really liked those freakish babies that used to cry and wet themselves as their eyes were then, and still are today, inherently evil to me. Whilst other girls in my road were playing with their My Little Ponies and Sylvanian Families, I was blasting the head off some mutant freak on the ZX Spectrum, something which I still own, treasure and do till this day. In the playground, whilst the girls were concerned with Skip-its and yo-yos, I was running around with the boys being Transformers and telling wimpish girls that the school toilets were haunted by a demon headmaster who hated blonde girls with a passion, and if you smelt hand soap, he was coming to get you.

Even now, I still am a rubbish girl. Don’t get me wrong, I have good personal hygiene, own perfume, have high heels and own a couple of dresses, but I am not one of the girl crowd and have never been. After primary school, I thought, in my pre-teenage head before all those hormones took control that I would benefit from going to a girls school and duly went off for five years and encountered the biggest bitch fest that you could ever encounter. I was never one of them and couldn’t have stood out from the crowd anymore unless I was blue skinned with purple hair. I was never concerned with the latest fashion accessories or haircuts; all I was interested in was if Oasis were going to stick together for another week or whether the local shop had the Melody Maker in on a Wednesday morning for the journey to school.

Today, I do wear make up everyday, well apart from those housebound days when I know no one will see me and I can lounge in trakkie bottoms and an old t-shirt and watch crap TV without the threat of anyone I know seeing me sans face. I will make an effort when I go out, unless I’m off to the newsagents on a Saturday/Sunday morning, which I’ll happy walk to in my pyjamas, but it is only about 100 yards away and I’ll go back to bed anyway with the paper anyway. I do, however, secretly envy men. You really are quite lucky in some ways, boyos. I know that is quite a blanket statement but girls are quite a bewildering species on the whole as they hardly ever say what they mean and constantly contradict themselves. Men, however, say what they mean and aren’t afraid of the consequences. They often have far witter things to say and usually have seen all the films that I’ve seen and enjoy the same TV programmes, so I like them instantly. More importantly, they are, 99% of the time, less shallow as friends. They couldn’t give a shit about the type of jeans you wear or who made the jacket you’re wearing, they usually like you for your interests and enthusiasm and are far easier to relate to because of it.

I do have more things in common with my men friends. We talk about films and music and computer games and crap television. We trade insults and I have been told that I am every bit as rude and crass and blokey as them. We go to gigs and go clubbing and go to the pub, and generally have an amazing time, with no real sexual tension between us. We make each other laugh at the most ridiculous things. When they tell potentially offensive jokes about women, I laugh along as I don’t feel part of and have never felt part of the ‘girl crowd’.

There was a definite boy/girl split with the last course that I took: girls one side of the room, boys the other, with me slap bang in between the boys. I once spent a lunch hour with the girls once, who did nothing but bitch about the boys, talk about handbags and the latest skirt length and at the end of the hour I was willing a giant meteor to drop from the sky and take me out. They themselves were ok as people, if you could get past the thinly veiled bitchy comments, but it was just the inanity of their conversations which drove me to complete and utter distraction.

I turned to one of my men friends a couple of weeks ago and said that I should have been a boy. His response: “There is always time, Kate. There is always time”. Cheers Nick.

Yes, unemployment makes me a bit more verbose than usual, so here is a selection of thoughts on the past week.

Shopping
Never ask people if they want anything from the shop. You do it out of social nicety and for a harmonious house-share but as soon as your housemate spills out a list of the heaviest shopping imaginable, you stand in front of them swearing like a one legged sailor in a storm, in your head of course, wondering why you are so bloody stupid. After the brief interlude of four lettered words, you duly make a mental note of what they want and leave the house. You brave the cold and wet and finally get into Tesco, buy the necessary stuff and leave. You get halfway home and realise that you’ve only bought said housemates shopping and not your own.

Apologies to anyone near Nonna’s on Thursday night who heard my potty mouth shrieking “Fuckingbastardcuntinghell”. I had to go back with earlier shopping, get what I wanted and then proceed struggle my nuts off to get ALL the shopping back home without losing several fingers to frost bite and the restriction of blood to the fingers.

Winter vomiting virus
Fuck me. Every paper you read has got some headline like “4 million people winter death virus” at the moment. Doctor Chris on This Morning said the other day that it is hugely infectious and with it you can “projectile vomit up to three feet”. I don’t know about you but I’ve never wanted to relive the moment in The Exorcist in which Linda Blair jets pea soup out of her gob. I hate being sick and I always end up distraught because I hate the sensation of chucking up my insides through my mouth. I’ll lie on the bathroom floor in tears because I hate it so much and I’ll do anything, ANYTHING, to avoid it. Therefore I have thought it sensible to review house hygiene levels as shared houses are a breeding ground of germs and spores and, I’ve got to stop there as this is making me dizzy. I have now turned into some Adrian Monk-like character who cannot stop washing their hands and sprays antibac on every surface imaginable and, more importantly, fears for public places. I may not leave the house again.

Michael Portillo
BBC2 will be airing a documentary next week presented by none other than Michael Portillo. Portillo will be discussing the death penalty in America and, by the advert running on BBC at the moment, it looks like they are going to lethal injection the bastard. I’m setting the video as I type. Fingers crossed that they get 0.1mg of death juice confused with 100mg. There is some great TV to be had there.

Rupert the Bear
Not the lovable bear from childhood, but some freak outside Blockbusters the other day. “Hello, it’s Rupert the Bear here. Could you get Mummy for me?” Overhearing that phone conversation from a man who looked like a cross between Rod Hull and Leo Sayer, I could only come to the conclusion that this was swinger code for "let's have wild monkey sex tonight". Just imagine that if you will. Picture it, come on use your imagination, there you go: hideous really.

When I heard that and was so stunned I nearly took my face out on concrete pillar.

British Gas Bills
Nearly £500 quid for six months power – you really are a bunch of money grabbing bastards aren’t you?

Darts
Oddly hypnotic and the only time you will see men with massive beer bellies play a sport.

Hot Water Bottles
They seem like an amazing idea when you can’t feel your feet and the house is tightening its collective purse strings, but when you wake up a four in the morning, feeling something warm in bed with you, you’d be forgiven for thinking that some pervert has crept into bed with you. Well, that’s what I’m going with after waking up and literally being unable to breathe until I realise it was a hot water bottle, not a freak.

With Facebook now allowing us a frighteningly close insight into the lives of all those forgotten school ‘friends’ allowing us a glance into every minutia of their lives, I’m pretty sure it won’t be long before they will install a bowel update monitor with some Gillian McKeith scale which will instantly inform all your friends of the exact, time, size, weight and colour of your movements.

It was nearly ten years ago that I finished school and I remember thinking to myself that I’d never have to hear from another one of them again. I felt liberated by the fact that I could mentally wipe their names from my head and go off into an environment where being a bit geeky and booky was a good thing. But if only I could have predicted the future back then, to see the state we are now in and I would have never foreseen the exponential growth in my popularity with said ‘friends’ in the past decade. The relentless comparing and contrasting of lives on the Myspaces, Facebooks and Friends Reuniteds of this world are forcing us to look at our own lives that little bit closer and by Christ, I just don’t like it.

Although I have long accepted most of the people that I went to school with are now married and with kids, I still find the whole thing very odd. It seems relatively alien to me that some of them now have kids of nine or ten. I probably find this so strange as I am still finding it a challenge looking after myself with bills and rent and food and all those basic survival techniques you need just to keep yourself going; looking after a human being that breathes and thinks and does stuff is almost unthinkable.

What I’m now finding even more bizarre, is that the people that I call my ‘contemporaries’ (although that sounds like a completely bullshit term, thought up by some pretentious twat, but I’ll use it anyway), the people that I went to university with, are following after those old school ‘friends’. At 25, I am the same age as my mother when she had me but I feel in no way ready to pop out any offspring anytime soon: likewise with marriage. I have a friend who relentlessly drops major hints about marriage; last week she emailed her boyfriend links for diamond ring websites and entitled the email “Only emerald cut will do”. I do feel intensely sorry for her boyfriend as he is always met by questions and interrogation from just about everyone on his plans and intentions, even sometimes from me, but it is really funny to watch him squirm about, not knowing where to look, like an owl on acid. But I can’t ever imagine insisting upon marriage. I can’t ever imagine trying on wedding dresses or working out the logistical nightmare of table settings or choosing a wedding cake that probably requires scaffolding to produce it.

I also have a few friends that are younger than myself and will believe themselves to be a failure unless they get married before 25. They are even desperately wanting kids to the point that they are literally humping potential partners in public to fulfil their need to create mini versions of themselves. Did I mention these friends are male? I, in their eyes, am a complete loser in this respect. No long term relationship, apathetic to the concept of reproduction (isn’t one of me enough?) and happy enough to keep on the way I’m going; I might as well stick my head in the oven now.

When I get asked about my car-crash of a love life, which isn’t so much of a car crash but a bloody great motorway pile up, or ask what I think of marriage and babies, I just shrug. With my relaxed attitude towards such things (you can be assured I’m not always that laid back), I am only met by unprecedented smugness and told that once I’m in a ‘proper relationship’ or once I get a bit older, my ideas will change and blah, blah, blah... It’s at this point my brain takes a rest and mentally wonders around for a bit thinking about what’s on the TV later, or did I lock the front door, or what should I have for tea?

Maybe I’m just too selfish to be like everyone else: I never did like sharing my toys as a child. It is just a matter of time before Facebook launch another application for all those ‘friends’ of yours to see “(insert name here) is still single, never been married, has no kids and you’ll probably still think they are a loser now, as you did when they were in school”.