musings and knee jerk reactions

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”.