A Diet of Happiness

Lettuce and cucumber today. Not even any cheese for this sandwich. Not even any bread for this sandwich.

The thought of meat makes me crazy these days. I feel like there is a wailing banshee trapped in my head and all she wants is a Macdonald’s.

It won’t be long now, I keep telling myself; won’t be long until the big day comes around. Won’t be long until I waste away and die more like.

I had never realised that dieting was so anti-social. Everything I want to do seems to involve eating: let’s go for a meal, why don’t we watch a movie with some popcorn, better have some sweets for the journey. It seems I can’t do anything because of this bloody diet.

I sit on the couch with a book half open in my hands. Reading would be so much easier if I could have a bag of crisps, something to nibble on. But they say if I don’t do it now I never will: you’re not getting any younger dear.

“Got any plans, love?” Asks James, his coat under his arm. He is off to the pub.
“Just relaxing and having a read. Might go for a run later.” Might chop the ends of my own fingers off and fry them in a little butter. Mmm.
“Enjoy that. I won’t be late.”

It’s not his fault he seems so inconsiderate. I haven’t told him what it’s like.

I flick the page unconsciously and glance at the words. I can make them look like a cheeseburger if I squint my eyes.

Perhaps I’ll just have a little digestive biscuit. It won’t hurt. I sigh deeply and shift, eyeing the kitchen door. No. no. no. Something to look forward to, think of that.

I slam the book shut and get up. I don’t care about the big bloody day. I don’t care if I’ll look so much better and feel so much happier. I won’t. I won’t because I’ll look back on the six months I spent sitting in a world of lettuce and cucumber and I’ll wish I’d had some chips! This is not life! This is food prison, torture by dieting. I mean, I even thought about going to the shop, buying a cake and disposing of the evidence in someone else’s bin. This is sad.

Fuck it. I’ve had enough.

Feet first I head for the kitchen. I feel a sudden weight lift from my shoulders as I begin to rummage through the cupboards. Cheese, bread, olives; a feast, I’m going to have a feast!

***

“Ginny? Where are you?”
“Mmm?”
“Hey love, how was your evening?”
“Great. Just great.”

I looked up at John, still blissfully full and warm. He looked down and smiled.

“I never wanted you to lose any weight in the first place.”

Three Boys Wait

"Go on, push it."
"I don't know what it is. It might be a switch for the alarm, my mum'll kill me."
"He said it was harmless. He said you couldn't get it wrong. why would he say that if there was any danger?"

The boys stood in front of the main switch board of the office block and stared at the blinking lights.

"Why did your mum want you to meet her here anyway? She should of finished work hours ago."
"She had a late client. I'm not allowed to stay in the house on my own, she says I'm not old enough yet. But she said if I had you guys with me I could wait in here until she was finished."
"Who was that other bloke then? Was he with your mum too?"
"Nah. He was just the security guy. Doesn't like people touching his stuff. But I think he likes me. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to work this stuff out...here, this one changes the camera and this one sets off the alarm."
"Careful! Last thing I want is your mum to catch me here. Your mum might have asked you here, but mine didn't. She'd blow her top if she thought I wasn't at your house now. An alarm that calls the police direct? Can you imagine being taken down to the station in one of their cars with the bullet proof glass and the sniffer dogs?"
"They don't bring them on things like that. Only serious drug stuff gets the sniffer dogs."
"So what? You want your dad to have to bail you out for wasting police time? I'm out."

The boys stared at the screens some more. Nothing was moving. The cameras flicked from one image to the next, all just empty hallways and offices.

"How long's she gonna be anyway? I gotta be home before they notice. I'm not meant to be out at all."
"Stop moaning. I'll tell your mum you been at mine. She likes me."
"Mum'll be coming soon. She said about half an hour."
"What's the time then?"
"Dunno."
"Oi! What was that? I saw something! Wait! Bring that camera back on!"
"Just my mum I guess. Stop being a drama queen."
"Wasn't! Was big and weird looking. Hang on!"
"Shut up for god's sake, will you? If she's coming, we 'd better be as far away from this stuff as possible."
"I saw it! Wasn't your mum, I swear!"
"Give it a rest, jerk."
"LOOK! There it is again!"
"What? Nothing there, chicken!"
"No...wait. I saw it too. Like a big bulk in the office, moving around. Not a man really, but shaped like one. Let's get a better look. Put the screen back to where it was."
"Shut up! There's nothing there!"
"Then move it back so that we can check. If there's nothing there, we'll get back to waiting. Nothing to worry about."

He flicked a switch and the screen glowed a dismal green. Night vision.

The boys gasped.

"See! I told you. Nothing bloody there!"
"Wait.There was. I swear it. It was there."
"What was that? What's that noise?"
"The generator probably. Kicking in for the night. Stop being such a freak."

The noise got louder and higher. Like the sudder of an old car engine as it struggles to start. Louder and louder. Deafening.

"WHAT'S GOING ON??!"

Ther lights went out then and they could not distinguish between the humming sound that reverbarated from every wall and the movement of their own bodies in the blindness. The room shook steadily as the pitch of the sound grew into a scream of momumental proportions, bursting their ear drums and shattering the nerves in their brains.
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light in which they saw each other as they really were: bleeding from the ears, eyes bursting out of their sockets like golf balls and bodies writhing in agony, backs arched and muscles tense to breaking point. The light left a halo on their eyes. The shadows of what they had seen, in an eerie green negative, reversed the images and imprinted them on their minds.
As their bodies froze, looks of horror were etched on their faces. A horror they could never describe, a fear that had taken even the imagination of a ten year old boy utterly by surprise. Hair stood on end on arms and legs and their joints were rigid as if set in concrete. Skin white and grey, as if to exaggerate the blood trickling down the neck.

Halos still etched on their eyelids, their frozen statues were buried with looks of horror on their faces and arm and leg hair stuck straight up in the air.

The One Thought

There are only ever three thoughts in my mind at any one time: what I am doing right now, what I will be doing next and you. Always you.
Right now I'm thinking about driving this car, turning the wheel, changing the gears, gently pressing the brake as red lights flash on in front of me. I'm also thinking about what to do when I get home. I might go for a run, write in my diary or just relax in a hot bath; sounds good to me. Then there is you. Always you.
I want it to be soft, all the time. Soft music, gentle touch, sweet tastes. But the world is hard and solid like a gobstopper that cracks against your teeth as you move it around your mouth. A rough, lumpy gobstopper. One that has chunks taken out of it and slashes running through it. The world is rough and jilting. I slam on my brakes, not gently this time, a jerky movement that surprises me, brings me back to the jagged edges of the world.
I screw my eyes up tight and open them again quickly. Dry and rough just like the world. But I want it to be soft like feathers and warm water droplets. You make me feel soft. I wish I could only think of you, only you and not the doing; not the acting, not the moving, not the seeing. If you could reach me I would never have to touch the jagged edges of the world, I would never have to slap my foot against the brakes, tensing my neck muscles and straining my spine. I could float through life on a cloud of emptiness.
There is no space in the world for this kind of love. No space in the world for nothing but you. They always want me to make a plan, decide what to do, take action. I don't want to act I just want to think about you.
I indicate and turn the corner carefully, just as they taught me to. Hands at ten to two and feed the wheel through. I don't want to follow the rules, but the stars are staring down at me, judging me, burning holes into my skin. I could live without stars if I had you. We never really see them as they are now. We only see an echo of what they have been, light years ago. I never get to see you, not even the shadow of your past and it feels like a knife edge scraping across the surface of my skin.
I glance up at the sky and all the stars disappear. A cloud is suffocating them now. Eyes on the road, careful, careful.
I can't concentrate for much longer. You are taking over my mind; drowning me in warm watery softness. My heart is thumping in my chest, but it sounds soft, muffled, pink. The world drifts out of focus, becomes blurry and soft. It is better that way. It takes away the jagged edges and everything blends into a mass of water coloured blots. I can still see the road, still follow the red lights in front of me, but the other thoughts in my head are fading now. It is beautiful. I have never been able to take away the other two thoughts before. The movement of the car makes me feel weightless and stationary, just you rocking me gently from side to side. I close my eyes and a warmth strokes my skin, tickling my face and smoothing my hair. Gently moving from side to side my muscles relax just a little and my breathing slows. My heart is caressing my lungs and my body is in perfect harmony as you drift closer to me until there is just you. Only you. You and the softness of the new world, a world of pink and blue and green. There are no shapes now, only colours and warmth, warmth and colours. My fingers begin to tingle and my legs are swinging loose. Free. Free from the sharp corners and blade-like sides of the world. There is only you, you , you.
I feel a jolt and the car seat becomes real again just for a second, bouncing me up and down until I don't land, only float again. But it's nothing to worry about, I can still follow the lights in front of me, even through the haze.
Another jolt. A scrape. It quickly fades from my hearing as the warmth surrounds me, hugging me safe and close. I will never be alone again. The world can not hurt me now. I wanted it to be soft and so it is. Soft like honey. Sticky. You are all around me, you are everything there is. I drift again and the world is yellow, I never thought it could be...

"She's dead sir. Sorry." The policeman had forgotten to remove his helmet when he entered the house.
The man just stared at his hands as they removed the hat, fixing on it even as he lay it in his lap.
"I...do you understand what I am saying sir? We have no idea what happened, just lost control I guess. Can happen to anyone. You are her next of kin aren't you? Sir? You are Mr Wayde, aren't you? Sir can you hear me? I know you have had a shock, but there are things we need to know. Did she suffer with depression? Was she taking any medication? For the record sir."
The man raised his hand slowly as if requesting to speak. His eyes never left the hat, but his voice was strong and clear.
"No. She was happy. I know it."

What We Read and Why

I have just been looking at a very interesting blog about our reading habits. Well, I guess it was more a transcript of the author's reading habits than an analysis - such a shame, promised the objective world and given a subjective dissection.
I think our reading habits are simple to analyse really. This blog said 'we read to relate' and that really sums it up for me. Ever had the experience of starting a book and having to give up on it for its inaccessibility, only to find in a year's time to pick it up and relish it like a gormet meal? Our reading habits almost always relate to what is going on in our life at the time; when my life is rosy and stress free I can read heavy non fiction on the great poets and their lives, but when I'm bogged under and exhausted all the time, a trashy novel is all I can manage. So the level we read at could be an indicator of the levels of complexity our life course is experiencing.
Some people don't read anything heavy. Does this mean that they are under mountains of stress all the time? Things are never as simple as that. Our reading habits are not just connected to the activities in our life, in order to get a full understanding of why we read the way we do you would need to look at the whole person: their upbringing, needs, wants, education, lifestyle and whole host of other aspects. Really the only person who can analyse your reading habits is yourself; you would need to know the truth about far more than most people are willing to tell and some things that people don't even know about themselves.
So we can't analyse the reading habits of any person but the one we know the most about. How is this useful? The understanding of your own reading habits may be able to tell you things about yourself that you had no idea about. For example, you may find that reading a lot of crime or mystery novels satisfies your need to have all the answers to everything. Or role play games give you the power to be in control all the time. Usually you can see the traits attributed to a genre without a great deal of difficulty. This may sound like a generalisation and of course your analysis can be wrong, but quite often, even if you think it is wrong in some way it's just something you didn't know about yourself.
It is not impossible to second guess a person's reading habits with a small amount of information; this also works the other way around. By looking at a person's book as you sit opposite them on the train you can have a lot of fun creating the person behind that book. The better you get at understanding various genres and what they tell us, the easier you will find the analysis. It is even possible - for the hardened analyst - to differentiate between various authors or styles within a genre; if a certain novelist does not allow all the crimes to be solved in their murder mystery, where is the satisfaction in reading the story? The must be another motive.
I am fascinated by my own reading habits at the moment, beginning to understand that I still have a lot to prove to the word through my reading habits - high brow literature and heavy duty non fiction. Being aware of this doesn't make me want to change my habits, but it does make me read the books in a different way; I can enjoy them now without having to worry about what I'm not reading, what I should have read or why I am not a genius yet. Well I think that's where I'd like to be...I understand it, I've just got to get my head around it!

Not a Nine to Five

The class is silent. Finally. I sigh inside as I walk over to my desk and sit staring at my papers. Have I pushed it too far this time? Will they all think I'm a joke, a drama queen? Stopping the clock like this is pretty easy to do these days; perhaps I snap too easily. Really it's only a few, not all of them. But it's amazing how much control one kid can have over the whole class; far more than me, that's for sure. Once one gets away with it you can't blame the rest for feelinglike they should get their turn too.
I shuffle the papers and glance around the room. Astonishing. Silent and waiting for me to do something. Get up and start all over I expect. Why on earth would I do that? Perhaps two or three years ago I might have let it pass, but as time has gone by I have become more and more cruel. I'm never nasty and I never cross the boundary line; but I'm pretty certain I push it almost every lesson. On the other hand, who is doing the pushing? I mean really? Am I pushed to the point of no return or is it me taking out my own frustrations on them? Sometimes I feel frustrated at the world, but not often. Mostly I feel frustrated by them.
I won't start again, not now, there hasn't been enough punishment. But I've got to do something. I might lose them otherwise. I can see eyes starting to wander, pens tiptoeing back to paper or the skin on the back of a hand. So I get up and look around. Mostly they are still looking at me, waiting for me to start on Romeo and Juliet for the fourth time in twenty minutes. I won't. I lecture them instead.
"How do you expect me to teach, when everytime I start to say something, a voice is talking over me? Who is not doing their job here? Is it me? Or is it you?"
The influx of rhetorical questions confuses them. They are in the habit of answering questions, but they're being told off for talking out of turn. They stay silent. Better not to risk it. A pen clicks; my head snaps round. Wide eyes glare at me, still defiant, always defiant. I can almost feel their thoughts, pulsing out across the sound waves. Wasn't me. I didn't do it. Ain't fair, this. School is a waste of time. If I switch my eyes on and my brain off, I can get away with this for hours. I'm sorry, I hope I haven't upset you!
Finally the table at the front chatches my eye. The four boys stare up at me, waiting patiently for the storm to clear; it is turbulent weather they know they don't belong in. Too bright, too nice, too studious. It is them that finally force my hand. If they could ever force anything that is. With a careful consideration they have their pans raised, ready for the first instruction, ears pricked to do exactly what I ask. The pressure is almost too much for me; I can't teach them with all these others around! They don't deserve it! But boiling point is just avoided and I sigh again.
By this point I don't care about Romeo and Juliet anymore, only about lunchtime and the bell that will finally signal the end of another painful hour. The passion I had is slowly dying as I talk about the language of the play and the best way to write a formal paragraph. Still they stare with defiant eyes, stony and dead. It is as if they really have mastered the art of switching off to the point just before no return - they will be able to do the task when I ask it of them, but until then they are noncommittal, stand-offish and scornful. Staring at those thirty pairs of eyes squarely is a hard task. Set them the activity as quickly as possible. The eys are burning holes in my skin.
Fickle as ever they are infinitely needy in their work: can you look at this Miss? Is it alright Miss? What shold I do next Miss? So I help them again, repeat the advice again, slowly fry my brain, again. The bustle of work for a few minutes eases the pressure and I begin to smile and joke with them. I actually begin to believe they aren't all that bad. I'm getting somewhere, I'm really making a difference to these kids.
The bell rings loud and chaos ensues. I let them go all at once, too exhausted to keep the terrors behind. As they dump their books in a mess on the desk I realise that really I was just fooling myself; I'm not making a difference and these kids don't care about any of this. Times have changed and we don't know how to keep up.
They whoop and spit down the corridor, intimidating with their hoods and stony stares. I tidy my papers and collect in the books. Ready for the next hour to begin.

The Capitalist Trap

Boxed in by our own walls we tremble at the pressure we put on ourselves. Trapped inside objects we can never really own, money that never really exists. The others smile in at us from the outside; those with enough to get by in this capitalist world. The divide is only there if you're on the inside - mounting debts, pointless symbols and too many toys.
Why did I want all of this crap?
Becuase it's so beautiful! They shout from the outside. It makes you who you are!
Smart enough finally to see their trick, we bang our fists on the walls, to no avail. They only smile placidly in, they know there is nothing we can do. The spiral closes in and we know what happens when we reach the centre - madness; diminished responsibility - it almost appeals to the panicked mind. Hypnotised by the shiny baubles and flashing lights we we have dug our own graves in the metropolis cemetery of plastic and LED.
I don't want it anymore! I changed my mind! We scream.
But they wave their contracts at us like a wagging finger at a sulking child.
Legally binding, they sing smugly as the next ten years pan out in front of us - work, bills, work, bills - GET ME OUT!

We created the trap for ourselves. Or at the very least we allowed ourselves to be lead into it. An animal lead to the cage by treats, our ingorance has allowed them to treat us like animals.
So like animals we should break free. Tear down the walls. Screw their responsibility that holds us back. Fight them with our claws and teeth, gnashing and slashing until they let us go, wild into the wilderness. Where we will never sign another contract, agree to pay on finance or allow them to tell us the world is not worth being in unless you're rich. We will live like kings on our freedom, do jobs that we love, spend time being awake and alive instead of exhausted and stressed.
Let the system work for us for a change!

The Puppeteer

WHIRR, CLICK.
WHIRR, CLICK.

Solid gold bar face.
Still. Silent. Straight.
Tin foil ruffled dress.
Crushing, crumbling, crinkling.

WHIRR, CLICK.
WHIRR, CLICK.

The people stare strangely at the figure,
Hypnotised by the jerks of arm and head.

He is one time puppeteer, one time puppet
Pulling the strings of his audience
Making them squeal,
Just as they pull on his strings, to help him sleep safe at night.

It is the ultimate relationship.
The interchangeable master and toy,
No Pinocchio here my boy.

He views it all with his eyes wide open
Though on the other side are eyes wide in fear,
Without the sense to understand the concept of the dichotomy
His audience are simply lambs to the slaughter,
Torm limb from limb into a world of steel.

WHIRR, CLICK.
WHIRR, CLICK.

He pulls their strings until they tire of him,
When they yawn and lazily retreat behind doors of red, blue and green,
And they ask each other:
'What can he want to do that for?'

That's what friends are for

I stood in the throbbing room full of jumping, swirling bodies; arms flying, laughter rising over the tin beat of the vibrating bass. Lights flashed like a plethora of emotions spinning around the room - rage, joy, elation, peace. The walls pulsed and sang as the music faded not so perfectly from one track to the next. Disco balls rotated, shattering the emotions into timy fragments of light that hit the crowd like a snow storm.

I felt the chaos freeze as my mind became an open space. The silence overwhelmed me with its unexpected screaming and the people became statues in some surreal modern artistry. Suddenly the world was different, just for a moment, the world was mine.
I smiled a rare smile; the smile of one utterly at peace, utterly proud and satisfied; utterly complete.
The moment was as perfect as a carpet of newly fallen snow; mine was an untainted, childlike happiness.  

I am in the world. The world is mine to conquer. I can do anything, be anything. I will never run from the world, the world loves me. I am in it and I am of it, devoid of faults, removed of all worry and shame. I can leap from the shadows and grab all worldly offerings. No one can stop me. I am the world.

And for that moment I was whole; a being with worth, a being with pride. The One and Only. I wanted nothing, I needed nothing. Only my heart and my mind.
I felt I could burst into a million shining stars and float down, covering the room with the intensity of my emotion. I wanted to throw my arms in the air to catch the lightening bolt charging down to meet me from above; I knew I would be saved. Nothing would defeat me, I was The Almighty, the power holding the room in snapshot of living finality. I had control. My breath would shatter mirrors; my touch would singe the wood from the dance floor. I was everything.
In that split second I realised: all that I am, all that I ever was, all that I will be, is here with me now. A humming of pent up possibility vibrating inside of me. I was completely in love, besotted with my own being, my past, my present, my future.

I felt a touch and the spell was broken, torn from me and snatched away to smash into the wall in a million mirrored stars of colourful emotion. I looked around as if for the first time and my rebirth was complete. I saw smiling faces, eyes full of adoration and life as I had never seen them before. I gasped and jumped into the group of jumping pushing hugging limbs and I found that the moment had not passed. I was The Almighty, I was powerful and wonderful. I belonged in the world. I deserved to be there.
I felt pride swell in my chest as my heart thumped in time with the world's rhythm. Never would I look back to the person I was, never would I be that person again. I was in the world. I was a part of something miraculous and magical. The wonder of life was right there in front of me, working its power on the dance floor of Reckless...and I was a part of it. I felt that I was it, that we all were. That we were drowning in the most perfect sea of diamond love, pulled this way and that by the current; always drifting but never lost, always drowning but never breathless.

It has never left me, the feeling of weightlessness from that blissful night. And although the mirror ball isn't always a lighthouse, like the moon it waxes and wanes, a constant in the tumultuous ocean of life.

The Vampire Lestat - An Honest Review

When I bought The Vampire Lestat I was so excited about the prospect of reading it, I rushed through the 8 or so books I still had waiting in line to read. I shouldn't have bothered. I spent more time trying to get the book finished than I did enjoying what I was reading.
Having adored Interview with the Vampire on many occasions, I was surprised to find the second novel in The Vampure Chronicles dry and full of uninteresting history.
It began promisingly enough, Lestat risen after many years in the earth to find a new technological age that brought an interesting twist to the blood sucking tradition, but as I journeyed back to the very beginning of Lestat's vampiric life I began to have my suspicions. This did not seem at all like the Lestat I had known in IWTV! Now being fully aware that Louis' version of the story may have sounded very different to the real Lestat, I gave him the benefit of the doubt - I tried, I really did.
Unfortunately after the fifth digression into someone elses history - history spanning the entire existence of vampires on the earth - I began to feel a little weary. Anne Rice was dragging me around centuries and continents in a desperate attempt to tell the story of a life that had not in fact beeen all that interesting. It seems she began by telling a life story and proceeded to let the story take her over; no sooner had Lestat met his oldest vampire, than it seemed Rice was possessed by the desire to tell the complete and unabridged story of vampires in 200 or so pages.
I wanted the story of Lestat's life, what I got was a potted history of vampires in a fiction novel. The novel should have called itself 'Where Vampires Began' and it possibly would have sold more copies; it might even have had a film made of it.
I found the characters so two dimensional that I could have pushed them over with my little finger. Much as I wanted - and believe me I did - to believe in the world Rice was creating for me, I couldn't quite allow myself to enter into it without losing my grip on reality as we know it. The leap was too large, from my comfy sofa to blood suckers that transform their mothers and take her as a lover because apparently 'that's ok now.'.
To top it all off, Marius destroying vampires in balls of flame? Well really! I like my vampires to be believable. Often we read vampiric stories to allay the fears we all have of the unknown, the alien, the uncanny and the sublime; in this novel all my worst fears were realised when I couldn't even trust in what I was reading!

Anne Rice has started a novel and allowed it to turn in to an epic dynasty that eventually got out of control. A bitterly disappointing couple of weeks and I finish it with my faith in all things strange dangerously shaken.
Bring on Queen of the Dammned!

When I Grow Up

When I grow up
I want to be a writer,
of big and important things.

I will change the world, with what I have to say.

When I grow up
I will make the world a better place,
with my metaphors about the human race.

I will challenge the world, with what I have to say.

When I grow up
I will give the nation a second chance,
to make things better than ever before.

I will embrace the world, with what I have to say.

But until I grow up
there's nothing much I can do,
about all the problems the world has to face.

So I will sit just outside the world, saying nothing at all.


A 28 year old apathetic

Sorry, what was the question?

It's at times like these that I find my concentration lacking. It's been a horrifically long day - over 12 hours of work in fact - and all I want to do is stare vacantly at the television for a couple of hours before I fall into a dead weight sleep. But is it all just a little too easy when we think it is so hard?
I wish I had lived a couple of hundred years ago. When everything was so much darker and so much quieter. I could have read myself to sleep in the candle light with only the sound of the wind to accompany my snores. Life wasn't easy in the past either, but for such different reasons. I wouldn't have been doing 95% of the things I do now - the other 5% amount to my base bodily functions, so we can assume life was pretty different. No less hard though, oh no.
I lose track of myself...sorry, what was the question?
Do we actually have harder lives now or do we just waste most of our time with unnecessary brainwashing and mind numbing? If I were to spend less time feeling tired and more time being active, would I actually become more lively?
There are so many distractions in the world; so many variations on priority that these days we can never be sure we are doing what we should be doing for the best. Wasn't life simple when we didn't have so many questions? When there wasn't a moral high ground for working out or watching too much TV. I have never felt bad for reading too many books, or studying too hard.
Times change; life becomes less meaningful. Or does it?
Such metaphysical questions for my small slitty eyes. Oh look, that show is on the TV. You know the one...

Are we all just being jobsworths?

How important is your job to your social status? Or anything else for that matter? How much does your father's job matter to you in adulthood?
Well it would appear the answer is frequently; rather a lot actually.
Recent events in my life have led me to realise that more people than I had imagined need to know what my father does for a living. The registrar at my wedding, for example, needed my father's occupation stated on a document before she would marry me. If I had said, "criminal" or "budding terrorist" would she have declined to host the ceremony? I took instant offence that an act of my own free will, an act of the highest order of emotion, needed to be sanctioned by the documentation of my father's status of employment.
But this is not the only example of 'jobsworth' conditioning I have come across recently; my podcast today played me a clip from a new television series on which I heard a man described - for no good reason - as black, middle aged and a factory manager. By a policeman! Unless of course this man was being questioned regarding the investigation of illegal activity out of said factory, I find the mention of his employment completely unnecessary. The man in question was being discussed as the father of a road accident victim. What possible connection can there be between his job status and the fact that his son has been killed in a terrible car crash?
The need to state our current profession whenever questioned allows such information to be used as a judgement tool by those still in the business of judging. I have no desire to be labelled as a 'teacher' wherever I go, just as I'm sure the toilet cleaner has no desire to be known as such during recreation time. The fixation with occupation and status circulates the fixation with occupation and status. We do not live in a Communist state where each is labelled as worker one and all, so where does my employment come in to my ability to drive a car, or my right to health care on the NHS?
My marriage contract gave me the option to keep my own name if I so desired, but it did not give me the option of being a singular human being in my own right, define by myself and myself only. I will forever look at my marriage certificate as - I hope - the last symbol of an archaic set of traditions I will never have to encounter again. Unfortunately I am just about to carry out a survey on my favourite shampoo; can I escape the 'jobsworths' even when I am in the shower? Is my choice of preferred shampoo less valuable because I work for the council? Do I have more of a voice because I work in performing arts?
I feel suddenly less jobsworthy than I ever have before.

Look mum, no hands!!

With my arms up in the air, screaming like one of those girls I really despise, the ride begins faster than I could ever have expected.
This is my first attempt at writing a blog and after an hour of punching the keyboard and yelling at the screen of my computer I am finally here, writing it. I had never even considered blogging until this morning, when during my weekly blues at 'Monday morning being just around the corner' I realised I couldn't take it anymore. There has to be more to life than marking books and setting targets for GCSE exams. There has to be more to my mind than this!
Feeling trapped by my conditioning I found myself doing what I thought I should do rather than what I wanted to do. My mind was going to sleep in the cosy area of my head usually reserved for really hard math problems or the bit that has the ability to learn Japanese. I was stuck inside a mental life of dumbing down literary classics that I adored and reading poetry to unimpressed teenagers 'far too cool for school'.
So feeling like a very stupid bear in a very small cage I requested the help of a very kind person to give me some advice on how I could motivate my brain into doing something it might find remotely challenging. The answer came back to me - through the very kind person - and made me feel like a slightly larger bear in an even smaller cage.
"Why don't you write?" Said the very kind person, stroking my fur from behind the safety of the bars. "You have the talent, you have the brains, why don't you do it instead of teaching it?"
Weeell, mostly because it's too hard. I wouldn't know where to start, let alone what to write about.
So the very kind person opened the cage, picked me up (a very strong person for such a big bear) and shoved me onto the rollercoaster, saying, "Just put your arms up in the air..."
"Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!"
Here I am still riding, sometimes hanging upside down, sometimes frightened, sometimes hoping a screw doesn't come loose, but I haven't crapped myself yet.

I don't know where this blog is leading me, but I hope that in the coming months there will be many different rides - although I don't like the spinny ones - and that I will be able to keep my arms up in the air and shout proudly:
"Look mum, no hands!!"