If we sleep together will you like me better?

Last night hit me with barrage of thoughts, too many, too real. I thought I was past this, I thought I was strong. I put the book down. I'll have to read it later when the sun burns too bright and exams loom. I can deal with the looming. Exams are dust, like this is dust and my thoughts are dust. We strive so hard for permanence. Scratching every word, breaking layers of skin to leave the scar we can look at fondly with a dash of embarrassment later. Sometimes I write something, a story or a paragraph, maybe just a sentence and I love it so much I want to write it again and again and again.

My third chapter is a mess. I like it and I know what needs to be done but I will almost certainly have to rewrite the whole thing upon completion. But this week I have an essay to do and books to read and films to see and people who need me. I used to love being needed. It gave me a purpose. Burned me with an identity. I was the one who solved problems. Who wasn't afraid to tell people when they needed to shut up and look at things logically. And I cared, I cared so hard I took on their problems. I was smug with it. I still have a pile of letters passed to me in classes that I read through in free periods. Analysed and prescribed. Ignored the fact I was a goddamn hypocrite and a liar.

I couldn't tell you the exact moment I switched off. It was probably around the time I called my best friend a daft cow and countered her pathetic attempts to get a rise out of me by thwarting her plans to fuck in the transport museum and telling others to think twice before borrowing her phone as she was too cheap to buy a real vibrator. I've watched people make stupid mistakes and bury themselves deeper into the sand and I've decided to let them.

I have an obsessive personality. Compulsive and addictive and all those other ives. You can almost track what was wrong with me through my life by what I was consumed by at the time. Only very recently did I realise I didn't need to throw myself into anything, I didn't need to fill every thought with a single idea or person. I like to think I've grown up but I think I just grew more selfish. In a good way. I don't want to be needed. I need to be wanted.

It's been such a long time since I could wake up with the sun on my face and smile in the mirror. I had the morning to myself and I took full advantage of this. I love Mondays. They're intrinsically mine.

It's been a long time, which agrees with this watch of mine

Unfairly what with losing an hour, last night I slept dreamless and much like the proverbial log. Although I never quite understood that one as logs don't sleep so I guess really I'm just as motionless as a log but when you think about it, it's a pretty shit cliché.

Early early morning I'm faced with half a poke of chips that didn't quite make it to someone's stomach and I think of anything else as I throw bucket after bucket down the steps. If they had just turned their drunken head the other way the council would be doing this instead of me.

I made a decision about something I've been flirting with a little while. A few minutes and some poor arithmetic tell me I need at least six months before I can afford to go all the way and preferably another job to embellish the event. Until then I've got to hold his interest with endless foreplay but it'll be all the better in the end for the wait. I might even invite someone else along, I haven't decided if our relationship will sustain a third party. Candidate lists must be drawn. Test tastes and how well our bodies fit together.

But for now I've committed myself, invested enough interest to make it work with a bit of luck. Just have to see how long I can sustain the excitement.

In other less cryptic news according to Kirsty's calendar today is Balderdash day. Balderdash! Great word.

Now I'm gonna curl up and watch Humphrey Bogart do that cool thing he does.

Coveting all you know see and hear

I rest my head on fat fluffy sheep in a grey grey world and I wonder if everyone thinks this city is grey or if it's just the restless. The ones who want to leave, want something substantial, meaningful and new. I slept in a bed that was not my own, which is unusual for more reasons than not making it home last night. I so rarely actually sleep anywhere else. Sometimes I think I'll wake up and everything will be wrong. Everything I think I know will have gone because I dared shut my eyes and relax a little. It's the same if I'm sleeping alone or if I'm sleeping next to someone I love or hate. It's for this reason I remember the places I can sleep in vividly.

When I was young my cousins lived in Fintry, back of beyond with a sprawling garden the likes I'd never seen before. There was a tyre swing and a wood and a friend on a farm with blind man's buff and a pony that was far, far too big. They still had the cat then, the puppies would come later, and the big sister taught us to make paper fortunetellers while we fed the old dog pringles and watched Hook. I had the big sister's bed, she slept on a camp bed. Worn out by running from a bull that never really acknowledged our presence and through adventure courses that wound through fields the younger cousin was pretty sure were hers I wrapped myself in pink blankets surrounded by shelves of junk that wasn't mine but could have been. I awoke every morning to the big sister's legs peeking over the end of my bed as she twisted her feet around and watched the muscles change shape.

There was a hotel room in Vermont. Pine trees and mountains dominating the windows. Expanses of white cloud duvets and pillows. A moment of clarity in a terrible year.

A futon in the spare room of a friend was more like an entire blanketed floor. I curled up between the computer and a prom dress with a notebook and a pen. Drunken scrawls trailed off the page onto my hands as my eyelids dropped suddenly.

A single bed before he upgraded to a double. He slept on a mattress on the floor under his cat and we both woke up early and built a fort, shutting ourselves in against time and practicalities and all common sense. Honey loops and flicks of the cat's tail against our cheeks. In the double I was always wide awake.

So tired this afternoon, but not really tired just muggy. I lean my head back against the back of the seat and shut my eyes against the glass on the sheep, hearing her voice though I didn't want to as she always announced the presence of the wooly animals back when we were inseparable and always awake. There's really not much to say today, I'm always quiet after a night full of too many words. Lying upside down against my wall, typing on my stomach there's nothing much to say and I like that.

I want to sing to you, my love

my only love and happiness
don't be so blue, so blue my love
this too shall pass

My dad's old typewriter in the box with the stickers, like my laptop with its stickers. It's the same and different, like we're the same but different and we're all the same but different. Objective I watch myself be a fool, always a fool. So critical, playing games and smiling, smiling, smiling. Go so abstract maybe nobody will understand. Hope they will but hide my secrets between words that mean nothing.

but tell me, what have I done to deserve you?
must have done something cause that's how it works
must have been kind to kittens and birds,
in a previous life must have thought happy thoughts

Bubbles flew out of a fountain as I drank coffee with a hangover, make believe I am grown. Spent so long pretending, grasping at things to identify what makes me. Tick the boxes of personality. Take the quiz, what kind of a friend are you? If you were a colour what would it be?

cause there, you were there right beside me
then somehow inside me while inside myself
books on the shelf thoughts on the shelf
hands to myself, I should definitely keep my hands to myself

Politics, I did not understand the words but I knew the tone and it swept everything away in a passion of action. I want to run away, always run away. Take my hand and we'll fly away. What are you so afraid of when I'm around? In a mess of high school tactics I made a den of indifference. Pull up a seat you're safe here.

But love is a dangerous pastime
caught between madness and gladness of flight
nothing is wrong and nothing is right
falling asleep in your arms every night

I have a mask for every occasion. Pretty painted little face. But I am not a complex being, I'm no more special than you. My secret is I am in love. I have been in love for never and ever.

don't be so blue my love
this too shall pass

Believe in neither but fear 'em as well

Cherry jelly may be the best thing ever. I mean, seriously, AWESOME.

Went shopping today with the vague lesbian. I haven't 'been shopping' for goddamn ages. Such a girly thing to go do. I mean I shop in that I buy things or try things on when I get bored between classes. We didn't buy anything today just wandered round laughing at extremely shiny bras and bondage kits talking drunken exploits and dwindling relationships. Until she got a craving for doughnuts and we walked down Buchanan street with the box in one hand and jam and sugar everywhere. By the time we were on Argyle Street we'd eaten 2 apiece and felt a little sick. She desperately wanted to meet someone we knew so we could pass on the unwanted baked treat but we met not a soul and her boyfriend merely suggested we hold on to it until he turned up for work at 5. Pfft to that says I and start looking through my list of people who would gladly take the food off our hands (considered just handing it to someone but doubted anyone would trust us) and was fairly successful much to her amusement.

"I love coming out with you. You're as insane as I am but you don't hide it."

The best compliments are the ones that are kinda insulting.

My sister tells the best stories

My sister's history teacher taught me in second year and once a week in sixth year. He's an old man, very jewish (he got very angry when we tried to make him sing because our other history teacher had sung the German national anthem to us) and really quite lovely despite the fact that we learnt nothing in his class and generally took the piss. He liked me though because I was pretty much the only one doing any work and that was really only because History was pretty much the only subject I was taking in sixth year. Utter waste of time and all that. Anyway in the midst of a conversation about how dumb her friends can be she said this:

The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
also btw mr gillis was all 'hooray for catherine or whatever her name was, she's great' today
...
I think I made you up inside my head says:
but tell me why mr gillis said these things
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
and mr gillis was like 'o julie, you will go far, how is your sister marie or whatever'
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
i said 'lol she b chillin'
I think I made you up inside my head says:
he called me marie?
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
yes
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
then he muttered old man things
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
like 'oh dearie me, i've taught too many smiths in my many years of being an old man'

Somedays aren't yours at all

All of the books I need to write my essay are not in the library. Do you hear that? That is the sound of me giving up. Instead of pondering prehistory and the meaning of, I am considering having hot dogs for lunch and how long I'd have to save up for to go to Paris. It may take a while mostly because I am awful at the whole finance thing. But I'll make it there at some point. I mean I have been there twice already but never for any length of time and always with the family and I want to see it myself. Plus it is the most fantastic city though it has the way of making you feel woefully uncool.

On a more immediate idea I could spend a week in Edinburgh for the film festival if I tried hard enough, got a change of scenery. Especially if my dad wangles whatever it is that he is wangling from his friend, who's involved in the organisation somehow. Sadly, still money involved and I haven't spoken to the girl who lives in our capital for far too long to suggest I crash at hers. And it is in June this year which is creeping up on me. I've got the two essays still to do, one more pointless practical in which I will do nothing you could call 'practical' and one day trip I'm sure I have to do something for.

Ack deadlines. I do so hate them.

Somewhere in between I'll have to get my hair cut before it explodes into some sort of fluffball, hilarious as that would be. But I'm still on holiday, nowhere near on top of things like I intended but I'm feeling relatively cheerful so let's not bother with anything boring.

Searching for a certain shade of blue

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

Stop frowning at the internet

My eyes are too tired for this hunk of electronic lights and whatevers that make this thing work. There is nothing new to say. I haven't ventured far since Tuesday night. I did things like begin to clean my room, only to be sidetracked by some extreme filing. I managed to convert a floorful of paper to a single folder. Feel that? That is pride beaming through my computer screen to yours. The pride only a stuffy librarian could understand. But alas, my floor is still polkadotted with fluff and paper and miscellaneous. That is tomorrow's task.

So, Catherine what have you been doing? Oh, I know you are all dying to know since I have neglected you for what? Days. Unthinkable! Outrageous! Well, duh, I have been writing and I don't want to sound conceited but I've been writing some pretty damn good stuff. Still I need a rewrite, redo, undo, edit edit edit. I still don't know where I'm going. I'm letting her lead me. I'm letting a fictional girl lead a fictional boy lead me down a path I can't quite see with the grand signpost of novel. What a novel idea, oh how I laugh at my word play. Hee hee hee.

There's a new crime, let's commit it.

Ah but there's a problem. She and he are pretty little figments with whimsical natures and fanciful notions. No bitterness here, miss kitty cat! Take your cynicism and your sarcasm someplace else. Oh dear. So it spills out onto your lap and I'm dreadfully sorry but you're a bore. Let's try something new for a change. Let's run away and pretend that nothing is as ridiculous as it appears. But you're happy staying someplace safe for now. That's ok too.

I stay up all night drinking coffee with too much sugar and wishing smoking didn't kill you with one hand holding open a map of Paris and another flipping through my philosophy notes. So much to do, plans to make, people to see, essays and essays and exams drawing a little closer, books to read, films to watch, music to listen to. Instead I lie here pen in hand and I watch my daffodils unfold.

Man did I tell you guys to listen to Broken Social Scene. Do eet. Do eet now. You've got the means, you've got the knowhow. I've got You forgot it in people in my cd player and let me tell you it's a goddamn audio orgasm.

Gah noo, don't steal my soul!

Clicked through my mum's photos this afternoon mostly because I haven't seen half of them especially the ones of my eighteenth in Paris. There's a wonderful group of five or six photos of me and the wind blew my hair in a different direction with each one. It was like an animal was slowly taking over my brain. Anyway I'm here to post a couple of finds.

Find number one was this gentleman lurking behind my sister somewhere in Paris. Apparently the photo was taken purely to include this man, something my mum likes to do. We have Julie in front of some nuns, in front of a monk and in front of a woman with some nice clothes. It's great!


Then I found my rabbit! With her pointless and ridiculous bunny leash which we used like twice before we found out that she was afraid of grass. She'd eat it but if you put her down on any large amount of green she'd run to the closest wall and huddle. I forgot to crop it but blogger takes a bloody ages to upload things so you can all admire my file organisation.


Taken at the same time is 14 year old me. Look at the highlights! They lasted like a week before they went mad and ruined my hair! Also: sandpit in the background!


The rest are just monuments and sky and lots and lots of 'if you keep sticking the camera in my face I will just continue to make funny faces'. Like ooh we're under a bridge! Exciting!

Rainbows and pots of gold

I'm practicing being female is what I think I declared to Joe and Mike last night as I muttered a sad ow with every step. Since I had not intended drinking very much and thus staying out any length of time I wore my ankle boots. It's that teeny extra height and the clomp they make and the fact that they are gorgeous and I found them at a ridiculously low price. I love them but I can't understand why someone had to invent shoes that hurt to walk in. As soon as I was safe in my own street I pulled them off and shuffled home in my socks like I did when I was wee and would dash round to my friend's house 2 doors down in bare feet. No time for shoes we're gonna climb up on the roof and make a den.

It was a weary walk home. There's the annoyance of having to get off the bus because the conversation always starts getting interesting as we move far too quickly into burnside and everything that was in my head floats off when I lose the curved roof above me. There's always something odd about walking down that road. It was part of an old route home from school so I could walk with people who lived further over this way. Distant memories of snow ball fights and secrets shared and secrets made up to have something to share and it's all airy fairy and blows away with a shake of my head.

I get home to read the pen that scrawls over the back of my neat rows of fanciful imagery just happy that somebody other than my mother took the time to break my words down. Julie does too, of course but in the past when I forced her to read my melodramatic tales she'd giggle and snort and draw comma sperm with smiley faces or U FANCY DEAD KIRA FACE LOLOLOL because that's the kinda awesome she is. This morning my email brought me another crit on a piece I've never been happy with but I was too cowardly to send in a piece I liked. This was by the same woman who gave me the positive rejection but this is not an acceptance, it's just letting me know that she liked it and she'd pass it on to someone else. The crit itself is encouraging. It's minor tense issues, a clumsy sentence and a suggestion of rewriting the whole thing in 3rd person but on the whole my work is untouched. And I'm happy just knowing somebody I don't know read something I wrote and didn't discard it. It's never been about bestseller lists and film adaptations, those dreams are distant. It's about reaching someone and worming my way into their subconscious.

And having my work studied alongside Salinger and Shakespeare naturally.

I have an excellent idea, let's change the subject

I have a green tshirt with a panda chasing a pint of guinness. That is perfect St Paddy's day attire. It was in the wash yesterday and as I sat in the union surrounded by green pixies all I could think was damn, why on earth did I wear it last week. For the most Irish of days my little sister eyed up her own Paddy at school (whose name is not Paddy but I decided it was one day because I thought he was irish, turns out he's just ginger?) but did not drag him round the back of the bin sheds (phah). I had a night of lighthearted bitching and alcohol and laughing at Rob's attempts to stuff ten pound notes down bras and pull men. And when I got home I wrote half-unconsciously but there's a fair amount down on paper (a little more on my fingers sadly).

So now I'm typing it all up and mentally riffling through my wardrobe as I think of something french whorish to wear tonight. I'm ditching a football match to socialise (a fact which will no doubt lead to my dad and Paddington to wind me up about my 'queer book club' since none of 'those boys' like football. S'all meant jovially of course because my father can't be a homophobe since 'his best man was gay'.) So typey typey typey and I looked up wikipedia for something, I forget exactly what now, and naturally once the free encyclopedia is fired up you gotta do the info hop. Learn a bunch of useless crap. Which is how I ended up on this page. Now with any luck it'll be unchanged by the time you click it but you never know so I'll put it here too. After discussing various kinds of highlighter the article goes on to say:

you are getting very very very sleepy. you are veryyy sleepy. on the count of 3 you will wake up and bake me some bluberry pancakes. 1 2 3 ... pancakesss. pancakess. chiliburgers. sexual confundity... pancakes.. pancakes!

I've never found vandalism on my own before. Aside from the brilliant let's vandalise the chicken page thing that led to many a cock joke.

Ah the internet. Even with the depravity and the whining and the drama! you can always make me giggle.

She came to my show just to hear about my day

Doom, doom, doom. Each step reverberates through my feet. Goddamn is it ever hard work being tall and frankly I'm still short in these heels. From such a dizzy height of five foot four I plummet a little harder, a little faster as I bemoan to my mother about life the universe and towels (the lack thereof this morning). Oh dear, thinks I, one day from my decision to be cheery and my smile has cracked already. Silly, silly little girl.

But there were strawberry tarts and coffee and jelly and ginger beer that burns my throat. No daisies though and since my last ones grew mould (oops) I am daisy-less. It is a sorry state to be in to be sure. My hair was a mess this morning but I found a scarf in the back of my wardrobe and tied it round my head because why not. Led to mutters of 'stupid gypsy don't go raising zombies' (I could explain this but it'll never be as funny retold) from Julie.

So first day of the holidays (har har everyone else) let's set some goals that I will systematically ignore:

1. Write archaeology essay and at least get some background stuff done for my classics essay
2. Get past that stupid bit with the swinging blades in tomb raider. It's so bloody simple and I keep dying in the most ridiculous ways. I WILL get through it, if it kills me.
3. Write french novel, make it less french so as to make sense
4. See the following films: Lars and the Real girl, The Orphange, I'm a cyborg, Persepolis, L'enfant, The maltese falcon, The Last King of Scotland, 21 grams, finish watching Arsenic and Old Lace, Angel-a, Kiss kiss bang bang, GRINDHOUSE and Metropolis (both of them)
5. Read the following books: On the nature of the universe, The aeneid (maybe only one of these depending on what essay I choose), Finnegan's Wake, Shirley, Paradise Lost, Eugene Onegin, Night and Day and finish Carol's Fitzgerald short stories.
6. Finish sewing all my half started projects
7. Finish writing all my half started projects
8. OMG JULIE TIME
9. Watch the remaining 2 and a half seasons of Angel so the comic will make (slightly) more sense and have that wonderful sense of television achievement
10. Make a conscious effort to watch Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell at night instead of rotting my brain watching utter rubbish and then remembering and turning over to watch the credits.
11. Go to the Hunterian Museum
12. Oh there's all those people I promised to have drinks with, ugh social commitments

Shame I'm so goddamn lazy.

I'm only happy when it rains

The sun is shining.

Fuck everything else the sun is shining. I wake up at eight to a text that makes me crack up laughing and I pull my window open and listen. Birds are nesting above my room, in a couple of months I'll see the constant darting back and forth of swallows. The traffic is a distant grumble. There was a moment the night before when the cars and the shouting and the clack of my heels melded with the quiet buzz in my mind into something tangible. I've been incredibly pissed off lately. Missed messages and hypocrisy prevails once more and my chin juts out in defiance. I had more right to be upset, more right to be messed up. What do you have? Picking a problem and working your feelings like plasticine to fit your new point of view. Oh for goodness sake, grow up. Deal with it. I want to shake you up. Shake the phony right out of you. I think I outgrew you, and it saddens me but I'll keep my smile pasted wide. You'll never know and that's the way it should be.

But today the sun is shining and the world is sleeping and you fade away for a moment. You and everyone else that pesters and annoys. So ridiculous. So melodramatic. I left high school a long time ago I wish you'd let it be. And I'm striding out with my head held high. I have been stupid, I have been weak but it will not happen again. And though I complain and sigh and pout I am happy alone, my own self. No one person consumes my thoughts and I'm growing proud in my tastes. Proud in my work. I've gathered all my scraps, the hurried thoughts I had to get out on various modes of transport. It's not all entirely legible but I remember the sentiments. Ideas, oh god the ideas, they dance in my head and I giggle in the morning sunshine because I am good. My french fairy tale is blooming into something I love though it's still too french. But I want to advance so once I'm far enough on I'll backtrack and take out all the extraneous linguistics.

There's a woman on tv with fire hair. I don't know how she did it. But the curls and the varying colour combined to make fire. It's little mermaid hair. I am entranced.

After I take me mam to ikea for my belated mother's day tomorrow I'm going to tidy my room and throw myself into notebooks. I've stolen enough pens to last me a few weeks and I'm determined to complete something.

The sun is shining and burns away this evil month. This dreaded time of year that twists and stabs and worries and I ignore until nullity washes away the weeks. This year I'm going for something brighter, something more than neutrality. And whether I find it in a dark cinema theatre or on a pounding dancefloor or in the bottom of a bottle is irrelevant just so long as I get by.

You must imagine a strong Greek accent for this

"A student lent me a film on dvd. Maybe you will know it. It was Transformers."
Smiles all round.
"But not the film I mean the cartoon. Have you seen the cartoon?" He directs this to the girl next to me. She hasn't.
"Tut tut. Not very educated. Well in this cartoon there was an evil robot. He was called Megatron. And there was a child. He was very very irritating and I wanted the robots to kill him. But they did not."

Sometimes Classics is just the best.

You read it, you can't unread it

Soil. Here is a picture of soil. Here's a picture of turf. Turf is like soil but with grass. Here's a landscape with no soil. Here's a picture of soil in Greece and here's a picture I took in Italy where they didn't cultivate with terraces. Very odd, don't know why they did that. End of class. Woo freakin hoo.

Talk, talk, talk. No facts, no figures. One minute science is dumbed down to the point that I'm insulted, the next there's a lot of words I'm not sure I could pronounce and he does not explain. That history degree is looking a lot more attractive. It's not that I balk at the very mention of science. I enjoyed chemistry even though it was forced upon me due to disastrous admin problems. There was some solace in the structure of it all and sheer exhilaration making something from smelly liquids. I still have my tiny piece of silver stuck in a blob of blue tack and I kept my slime for as long as possible but it gathered dust and went a bit icky. But I had to shut out half of my brain to do it. The part that didn't buy it. The part that didn't give a damn about how things worked. It was better than physics, physics almost broke me. Maths reduced me to a blanket clad miserable mess with a tub of ice cream surrounded by numbers I didn't get but it was a qualification I was determined to achieve. That same switched off floating through. You can't imagine the disappointment that dogs me twice a week in that cold, clanky lecture hall. There was hope last semester even when it was dull there was always something interesting and my lecturer had a sense of humour. This semester is killing me, sapping away my will to give a damn.

Plus side, s'almost holiday time and I spent my afternoon in the museum looking at the mummy. This is archaeology. Pah! to your soil samples.

Julie got a blog

Let's go pester her shall we


Oh let's do

Could we have the freedom with less arse flashing please

History we moved on from gender to race. And nobody had much to say and I tried not to rant too much about German nationalism in the nineteenth century but I did write it so damn much in 6th year. Only productive thing I did that year. And then one guy with the smuggest, shit-eating grin pipes up about nationalism being a load of crap and Alex Sammond being an "idiot who pandered to those who wanted England to lose and loved Braveheart" and I kind of lost it. I mean ok, independence is not that big of a deal these days and we're not being oppressed or anything but I'd call myself a nationalist and I couldn't give a shit if England won the world cup and I think our national anthem is a disgrace. I admit I voted SNP for a laugh, to shake things up. I want a revolution. Politics are getting stale. But he argued that nationalist was a movement away from a democratic government which is a fucking joke unless he voted in Gordon Brown because I certainly didn't nor did the rest of this dozy country. And the absolute best bit? He was wearing a Scotland rugby top and apologised in that awful way guys do when it comes to sport to the English guy next to him cause I dunno they lost? I don't watch rugby. I kind of lost it and just laughed at him.

Despite just ranting angrily and amusedly at the smug bastard and mouthy girl with badly dyed ginger hair I got murmurs of approval when I argued that it wasn't about England, it was about being Scottish and separate from Britain since, despite what mouthy told me, I have never called myself British. And these murmurs came from the quiet gothy girl with dreadlocks who would be quirkily gorgeous if her mouth wasn't quite so big and awkward looking and from the guy who isn't very subtle with the reading of my breasts (which is my own fault for wearing tshirts with writing on them and I made a point of stretching out when I caught his eye making him look rather uncomfortable).

The result of arguing so much? My tutor knows my name. Apart from the Polish girl's name (Marta, seems every girl I meet from Poland is called Marta) mine is the only one she remembers. It's petty but it's also pretty bloody awesome.

Possibly the only time I will talk about shoes

Crazy crazy dreams last night. I was chatting up a girl from Texas and Audrey Hepburn was in the corner giggling. Mum woke me up and I was still confused by the time I made it to Tesco and all of the fridges were broken so I had to kind of make do with a breakfast/lunch of a cheesecake thing that I ate with my fingers because I'll be damned if I'm doing dishes at work and a packet of crisps. Small wonder I'm losing weight el rapidomente.

Bummed around in Topshop because it was something to do. Man you should see what I look like today. You're not gonna but if you did you'd laugh. First off I couldn't find any clothes in the dark this morning so I'm wearing a red polo shirt. It's quite nice actually, dead comfy with Kronk on my left breast which I'm assuming is the make but makes me think of the Emperor's New Groove and the incredibly less funny Kronk's new groove that Julie puts on sometimes when Happy Feet ain't on. All my jeans that fit my slowly shrinking ass are in the wash so all I have are my man jeans. Hella comfy, amazing pockets but sadly don't do much for the figure. In that I kind of look like I have a cock. I have pulled in these jeans though? Good thing, bad thing, ain't sure. To top this off my hair was awful, and I don't mean comic or interesting or yeah I kinda slept in a hedge, I just mean really shoulda washed it last night. So I put on my oshit hair! hat. We all have one. Mine is a trucker hat, khaki with bunnies on it to make it less manly. Although most people don't notice the bunnies at first. Ironic part is I bought it like a couple of months after my boyfriend left me and trucker hats were the one item of clothing that he loved that I did not buy to wear for him. Never found one I liked enough. Point is I look like a lesbian or a guy who happened to have breasts and Topshop was full of girly shoppers and their incredibly bored boyfriends. After striking up a conversation with one of them, dancing about in a pair of shoes that were really cute but unnecessary and knocking over several pairs of ugly tights I found myself in Primark instead. Me and Primark get on ok. On the one hand children probably had to fight monkeys in the tacky nylon mines to bring us half of its stock on the other I once bought a Catholic school girl skirt for £3. Three. That's like cheap. And the skirt? Pretty damn awesome and not overtly catholic school girly that I can't wear it out which I do. Today child labour brought me shoes for 4 quid. Shoes which I attacked rather messily with markers. I'm quite proud of them. Gotta waterproof em and test em out though. Have an arty shoe pic with bonus hat.

A letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead

I wrote a letter last night. My best friend of old and I used to write each other letters all the time despite the fact that I practically lived in her house. It's the thrill of getting mail that isn't junk. I wrote a letter to my pregnant cousin but I'll never send it. She's a complete stranger. It's only blood that links us across the ocean and I know nothing about her other than she's pretty and silly and is going to have a baby at eighteen. But I wrote it anyway and tucked it inside an envelope before dropping it into my bin.

We should start a letter writing revolution. Whenever someone I knew was feeling really down I'd stuff an envelope full of things I had lying around and note down any thoughts I had about them floating around. But email killed the thrill of scribbling down all the things that sound stupid when I open my mouth. I need something tangible. Everything I write on this laptop I need to clean is fleeting. I click submit or send or publish and it's gone. You can read it unless I delete it but I forget what's here and if you bring it up there's a panic before I realise it's just overlap from my diary you're quoting, not it itself.

But these days there's no point in writing letters. I don't know most people's addresses and with the internet and mobile phones I can tell you what I'm thinking faster.

Plus the post office stole my package and I'm never getting my rock o'clock tshirt which sucks and I hiss at the postie now.

Bastards.

I've got a big mouth

Unrelated sources found whilst studying.

Russian folk belief: in order to obtain the object of your desire simply bathe in water or milk and making them drink the liquid afterwards. Tasty.

Satirical poem from Germany based on a folk tale: "the story of the nine skins of a bad wife, which holds the properties of certain animals, such as a bear, cat, fish, pig and dog. These must be beaten off her before her human skin can be reached. In the picture shown we see the man beating his wife with a chair.

Female homosexuality: sexuality did not exist without the presence of a penis. Luigi Maria Sinistrati defines a sexual condition called tribaldy, in which one woman was able to penetrate another by means of an exceptionally developed clitoris, and he enjoined careful examination to see if this had occurred. Oh, I bet he did.

Other tidbits of misinformation were the beliefs that women had male genitalia inside of them, the uterus was some separate entity that governs our fragile little minds and babies could only be made if she has an orgasm.

In other news Julie has a party to go to tomorrow and my mum pushed a mixing bowl of cookie dough into my hands before leaving me alone. Enjoying the solitude I turned up my music loud and had a bit of a kitchen dance. I was floating on, turning a square and waking up in my make up. The cookies kinda failed since there was no butter and she used margarine instead I played housewife for 2 hours twirling in my apron for nothing. They taste ok, nowhere near as good as my usual ones so I guess I'll just hand them out to people as I see them.

A girl ran past me at the bus stop this morning. She had a pretty leather jacket, long wind swept hair and an ass that was just a little too big. Not fat exactly, maybe it was her jeans. Anyway I watched that ass scurry to the bank, let my mind wander a little until she turned back and got close enough for my blurry eyes to make out that her face was the feminisation of my ex. Twas his sister. I had to hide behind the elderly seeing as I still have a skirt of hers that I have no intention of giving back and panic gripped me as I tried to see if her boyfriend was around. There's someone I don't want to see ever. Thankfully the bus arrived, crisis averted.

There are so many skirts under the table, none of these long legs are mine

Jazz and books. A little piece of heaven on Byre's Road. The shop is practically empty so I let my mind wander slowly along the shelves. There's a pretty little blue book by Stevenson. I haven't read him in ages. Treasure Island was one of my favourites as a kid. I consumed those children's penguin classics when I was in primary school. My gran gave me Kidnapped but I don't know where it is now and I know I never read past the first couple of chapters, and we only ever studied a tiny bit of Jekyll and Hyde and I can never find it when I have money in bookshops. Naturally there's a copy next to the pretty blue book today and I'm 2 quid short.

I found instead a gorgeous red book for £1.49. It was a bunch of short stories by an author I didn't recognise and fit snugly in my hands but a previous owner had mutilated it with a gaudy pink highlighter and scrawled notes in the margins. So I left with nothing.

Yesterday my head was too full. Too many ideas and I was watching everything too objectively. Forming paragraphs about the oddity of walking from one uni to the next. Weaving my way through a separate set of students. My classes this year are nowhere near as social as last year. A lot of the people are much older, look down on the little ones. There's always someone to talk to but few I'd bother seeing elsewhere. Friends from last year have different timetables, ones I know well but ditched. There's friends from high school and I love them dearly but they're reminders of all that ridiculousness. Talking about people I'd forgotten and, quite often, how much they hate me. Always like to hear that I left a mark. And then there's another set, the once a week lot mostly which is still more often than I see half of my friends these days. A set I didn't think I'd bother with since I hadn't written anything in over a year and the idea of drinking with a bunch of strangers every week didn't appeal.

My bag bumped off my ass as I picked my way through my familiar crowds. So much heavier than when I left my house the day before thanks to the addition of dead men's poetry and a hack's novel. There's the beginning of another novel safe in the back of my notebook. More paragraphs form in my head about the thrill of having someone else's writing in my bag, the very fact that my opinion would be sought. I stayed up too late last night pulling sentences apart and weighing up images in my mind. There's ink staining my fingers, my arms, the keys of my laptop, his work, my work. Thoughts flowing onto surfaces, any surface, it doesn't matter I make it my own with a sweep and a smudge with stolen ballpoints.

My diary finished last week and I have no suitable replacement or money for a suitable replacement. S'bad news.

A selection of poetry found in a pile of dirty clothes

Because I don't tidy often enough and my brain's been too frazzled to write anything substantial. This poetry lark is coming surprisingly easy which goes to show you shouldn't claim you can't do something in front of people because your brain may freak out and prove yourself wrong. 12 angry men are still out on this new form of expression for me though.

The slow walk homeward

Turn it up, turn me on
Louder I can still hear myself think
And I don't wanna think
Too much
Not enough
I've been over this countless times
In my head
You spoke eloquent
Words of comforting romance
But in reality
You are deafening silence.

It won't go any louder
Press the plastic closer
The sleeping houses
Lean in, archways of
Curtains and lawns and families
I can't see the stars past their
Slanting roofs, only streetlights

Flickering amber flames
A dog barks
I shouldn't be able to hear him
But the music won't go any louder
So I open my mouth and sing
Along with the voices in my ears
This song was made for me.

Hips swing the sandstone buildings
Back into place
Arms embrace the skies
As curious eyes of light peep
Through veils of cloud.
Melodies splutter to a halt
And I clap a hand over my mouth
Perch on the hood of a
Red Renault
This silence is not unlike your
silence.

I'm watching and waiting
Holding my breath to
Hear better
Some whisper on the wind
An answer
or a hint
Angry buzzing drowns
My epiphany
in vicious beeps
You fell up the stairs to
Your flat hope
I made it home safe
There's a ringing
I can't shake in my head
And all I hear is you.

Better to reign (incomplete)

One can’t help believing gentlemen with Roman noses
even if one hears the most remarkable nonsense
from the mouths lurking underneath such striking features
and Lucy was a particularly gullible one to start with.

She wore her long hair up loosely
bleached blonde waves;
a halo with a rechargeable battery
and wings of blue cotton.

Not since Eve was there such a Fall
no apple this time but a ring
in a smart black coffin
made a hell of heaven.

Noteworthy (incomplete)

Every Monday afternoon
Emily goes to the library
and picks a new book
working her way through the alphabet
Today she is on D.

Dahl, Dickens, Dumas;
she selects a thinnish volume
by an author she hasn't heard
of: Darling, F.
but he has been checked out
twice since September
The paper is violet this month
which complements the denim
blue of the cover and in
methodical print
Emily says hello.

Her note in Cann was removed
Bukowski had been ignored
but Austen held a reply
a thin sheet of yellow
with a tiny lion drawn in the corner
with an over-sized mane.

Taste You

Apathy
is lying on a beat up couch
all day watching
clouds drift by
and people bustle,
hustle, dawdle, laugh, cry, live
down
below
elongated legs on the windowsill.

Numb
is being still
for days waiting
until hair sticks
to the cushions
and slick stains
are left behind
in the shower.

It was raining when I met you;
grey, washed out city
colours clogging drains.
Group therapy
bullshitted behind me
psychobabble
my mother pushed me
too far
my father was never
proud
there was a boyfriend
who beat
a girlfriend
who ditched
I'm my own worst enemy
I have to open up to feel
Bored now, I asked for a light

Arrogant prick
stubbed your own cigarette out on
my arm.

I never knew there were men like you.
every one of my senses craves your attention
bite me
scratch me
pull me
break me
i am yours
lines on my hip
bruises on my thighs
welts on my arm
you made me a heart of burns
don't ever quit
but fill our lungs with
black treacle tar
strangling smoke
lingers forever
in my hair
in my bed
the shape of your mouth
blooms
bright on my marble breast

When you left you took with you my faithful friends:
apathy and nullity
so I ran a bath
steaming water meet shivering skin
scissors hang languidly
in my hand
carving your name in
yielding flesh
crimson swirls in the dirty
bathwater.
I only wish your name was longer

One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman noses

"What's geographical survey do you think?" Ignoring the giant holes in her lobes and the mess of plum hair, she's quite attractive really. And she's like me, hugely disappointed that all we ever talk about are hills and what they might contain. I smile and hope I don't look too ragged. I know I do, but it's nice to pretend nobody else can see. So I smile winningly and unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth: "s'like map looking"

Map Looking.

Oh the shame.

My mother gave me two pieces of advice when I started drinking: don't drink vodka with orange and don't drink so much that you make an arse of yourself. And I try to keep it in mind as I stare at the bottom of a bottle. I think I do ok. I talk shit and there's been a couple of silly moments and I always dance like a fool, not alcohol related I just always dance like a fool. I know I'm graceless enough to be so very far from sexy but that's what spirits, dimmed lighting and booming bass lines are for: ignoring obvious flaws.

I'm a mass of bruises. The triangle is gone. This morning in fact I noticed the last hints of yellow geometry had finally faded. I'll miss it, mostly because I couldn't show it off to anyone. Still mystified as to how it got there but I guess I'll never know. The rest of me is dotted with greyish green smudges. It's idle curiosity that consumes me these days. They don't hurt, not really, and they're just results of clumsiness. Doors, walls, tables, people. I don't pay enough attention. I'm too wrapped up inside my own head. I'm also a terrible fidget. And completely distracted by a dozen other things I caught the edge of my lip between my teeth and clamped down until my eyes watered. Sucking the blood away surreptitiously it struck me that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I mean seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me. I stayed out all night drinking away my money and grinding away my cares but I woke up the next morning with all the same shit. Same hang-ups, same regrets of things left unsaid and foolish mistakes I'm tired of learning from. And god, I'm bored. I switched off a little. Slumped down and listened rather than participated. I need shaking up but I'm too much of a coward to do it myself.

But it's not as bad as it's been before. There's a cosy casualness settling in my limbs, feeling secure in who I am, even if she's a liar and a fool. And I don't know if it'll last or if I'll end up driving people away again but it's a comfort for the moment. And the bump of angry healing on my bottom lip is another comfort. It's painful and it's annoying but it'll pass and it gives my mouth an occupation while I'm dreaming away time I should be spending doing something productive. It's a question of perspective, and on the whole I'm doing pretty alright.

The best thing about Glasgow Uni

It's not the education or the pride of actually being there. It's not the community or the pretty buildings or being able to say "yeah meet you in the cloisters at 2" or that ancient musty book smell that permeates University Gardens. It's not watching Neighbours in leather sofas with black coffee and bagels and adorable boys with unfortunate names who speak French almost apologetically.

No, my friend. It's ducks.

Some say I blog too much, I say not nearly enough

I'm just a girl living in captivity

I was there to seduce a prince, there were trials or some such fairy tale nonsense but they were either over or my mind was too lazy to bother with them. I was in a restaurant and they toasted my good work with wide smiles and red wine and he followed me into the bathroom. I don't know who he was in relation to me but he wasn't the prince and I wasn't supposed to be seeing him, that much I knew. He wrapped his arms around my waist and watched our reflection. He told me not to cut my hair, it was long again but curled which is not possible without rain when I'm awake. My dress was blue like his shirt and his stubble tickled my neck as he kissed me. Then the screams started. Ear splitting awful screams and he kicked the door of a cubicle down and I watched a beast of a man rape this girl who'd failed with the prince. Then the room was full of people and it was a bedroom with a cardboard box holding the bastard. The girl was dead, tidied away in a drawer and he was impatient to go. Nobody seemed to mind. I threw myself at him when he tried to leave and he crushed my hand in his before throwing me face first into the door. It was at this point my eyes must have opened because from this point on I had that awful feeling that there was something missing, that if I could just see properly everything would make sense. I never knew why this kept happening in my dreams until Julie and my mum told me I slept with my eyes open quite frequently and freaked them out.

Anyway he told me to go back to his house to keep me safe. I went back through to the restaurant and ended up on a train. There was a boy in a green blazer from the school my dad went to and he sat next to me placing a hand on my knee when I smiled at him. I shook my head when he asked my name, saying I was too old, don't be silly. But I was wearing an oversexed school uniform high pigtails, tight shirt, short skirt and socks that kept falling down. Everything was falling down and I spent the whole train journey trying to right my outfit while this boy tried to kiss me. I pulled a coat off a man behind us and wrapped myself up against the rain as we walked along the railroad tracks and I pushed the boy into a ditch before I made it to his house and his blue shirt engulfed me and I was safe. We slept on blankets on the floor with his brother and he gave me a book with a red cover and told me I was in it but I never had a chance to read because these girls pulled me to the bathroom and started having showers, first one then the other talking irritable nonsense about people I didn't know and there was something behind them I couldn't see. I kept pulling his shirt down to cover my ass as more and more people pushed in and I couldn't breathe. Then his arms were pulling me back to the make shift bed and he pressed his lips against my ear and I woke up.

On the plus side nobody was made of cats and all of my teeth stayed in my mouth.

Time exists but just on your wrist so don't panic

1480 words to go on a subject on which I have no opinion. I do not give a damn about the conspiracy, nor whose account is more useful. I've got little postit notes and highlighters. Pens and notepads. The barest sketch of a plan to a plan. Goddamn I should have started sooner. Instead there's been DIY films, peanut butter, pillow fights, feeling sorry for myself as I sniff into mugs of honeyed water, too many other things to write, I was supposed to link up the gamecube for Julie but I can't remember where I put that cable (please don't be in the cable bag, nothing ever gets found in the cable bag) this is going to be a drag. One full day left to get this done and at least I finished reading the texts. My fingers get distracted so easily. Cicero was a famous orator and could I make a dress out of that NYPD tshirt? I could use that long top pattern from my book of things to do with tshirts, extend it, got enough material to do that. Ideally it should be a shirt dress with the badge above my breast and pockets? In red? Goes with the navy. But it might be a little difficult to manage a collar. And by little I mean I'd definitely have to get my mum to help. But I do have shirt dresses so there's an instant pattern and sewing in front of my mum always makes her laugh. There's a lot of bum in the air, pins in my mouth and apparently a look of intense concentration as I try to cut in a straight line.

My hair actually looks nice today. You know those mornings when you wake up feeling pretty good, because essays and everything else that drags you down are still asleep. The sun is shining (where were you yesterday when I had to go outside?!) cold is abating and I look good. And I have to waste all of this on goddamn Romans. Bleh.

Coffee doesn't have enough sugar in it but I have so little left. Very nearly put castor sugar in instead, could have been interesting. Dad tuts at me, or he would if he was awake but he tuts every other time he watches me make coffee. Talks about how I should be taking care of my body or I'll regret it when I'm old. I point out I can lose weight on a diet of beer, rice, cheese, strawberries and bread and put it on when I actively try to eat properly, soberly and regularly. Sometimes I think my body does like me.

I'd rather be writing anything but this. Which is why I am here, whining at you, the internet. I figure it's a better way of wasting time than picking at the scab on my heel or watching my triangle fade or painting my nails with leftover polish. Oh, the glamour of my life.