Jess

I’ve always wanted a dog. Don’t get me wrong, I love my cats, but a dog has always been the holy grail. Unfortunately it was never going to happen – with all of us being out of the house all day, it was no environment to bring a dog into so I grew up settling for draping myself all over friends’ dogs and running after random dogs on the street.

I know a few people with dogs now. My sister has Rowan the Irish Setter who is totally nuts. I love her but she isn’t half a handful at times.There’s Frank, my Auntie’s Dachshund, who is very lovely but kind of yappy and a little too small for me. I don’t particularly mind small dogs but I need them to be bigger than the size of Fred and Lily.

Jess in January this year

And then there was Jess. Jess arrived in my life at a kind of awkward moment. After 4 years of not speaking to my father, we were attempting to cobble together some kind of relationship. And as well as fashioning a father/daughter bond, I also had to find a way to make room for the woman my father was in a relationship with. Although none of this was easy, I can’t deny that the transition was made a little smoother after I was introduced to Jess, my future Step-Mum’s dog.

Jess was the perfect combination – she was not too big and not too small. Not too excitable but puppy-ish in a way that belied her 14 years. She was the most obedient dog I’ve ever come across, no need for the lead, she would pad along beside you and stop at the road and wait for you to tell her to cross.

Jess in France 2010

Her absolute, ultimate, best of the best, favourite pastime was playing fetch – she would run and run and run for a ball until you gave in and begged for peace, I never knew her to tire before the person who was throwing the ball for her did.

I have dog-sat for her on many occasion when Dad and Step-Mum have been away in France at their house and I was actually kind of sad when they eventually sorted out a doggy passport for her to come away with them.

Jess models the patchwork blanket, France 2010

I feel like she’s been around forever – she has played fetch with The Americans when they came to over to Hull for a visit when we were all at uni. She was there when I finally worked out how to crochet. She was there when I was in France last summer and she was there (literally beside me) when I woke up from my blackout last Christmas.

It really never occurred to me that there might come a point when she wasn’t there.

Dad's back garden, summer 2009 (taken with Fisheye)

So when I got a call last Thursday to say that she had suddenly died, playing fetch in the park with my Step-Mum I found it hard to keep a grip on things. My voice was wobbling when I spoke to my Dad and I shed more than a few tears that evening as I sat on the settee. I felt thankful that I had gone round on the Sunday before and been greeted at the front door by her as usual. I felt thankful that she hadn’t suffered a long and drawn out illness like some animals. I felt thankful that she died literally doing what she loved.

But mostly I just felt beyond sad. The hugest of holes has been left. I won’t get to laugh at her holding a yoghurt pot between her front paws as she licks out the dregs. I won’t have her trying to get in the bath with me because a firework has gone off and I happen to be in her usual hiding spot. I won’t get to sit on the floor and give her tummy a good ol’ scratch.

Sometimes I love that I love animals so much and other times I wish I could be a little more heartless because this royally sucks.

RIP J-dog.

Me and the J-dog, 2007

Not quite Edinburgh

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’ve really annoyed someone somewhere in the universe for an unknown reason and I’m being roundly punished for my actions.

Last weekend I should have been in Edinburgh with The Person. Someone he knew offered us a flat so we didn’t have to pay accommodation costs and he had managed to find pretty cheap tickets (Return from Hull to Edinburgh normally is £90. Yes really.) for us to travel up by train. It was exciting and something to look forward to. When you only get to see each other once a month if you’re lucky and you don’t have many pennies to spend the idea of a cheap weekend somewhere is pretty exciting.

And then...

I got a call to say that I was invited to interview for a job in Lancaster.* I asked if I could be interviewed on another date but unfortunately potential employers hold all the cards at the moment and can afford to say no. Edinburgh was officially cancelled. (And we couldn’t get refunds on the tickets because they were advance purchases. Nice.)

After a few minor meltdowns at this news we decided to make the best of it. Lancaster’s only 20 minutes away from Preston by train (part of the reason for applying for the job in the first place) so I would go there after my interview and we’d have a weekend in Preston instead.

We figured that as we were going to spend money doing Edinburgh things like go to the castle we would spend the money on (another) train ticket and travel into Manchester for the day and be tourists there instead. Even though we’ve both lived there...you know what I mean.

So we did what all good tourists do and went to a museum, specifically the Museum of Science & Industry, which I have to hold my hand up and say I never went to in the whole time I lived there. That could be because I’m allergic to science though.

It is full of science things you know. And industry things. The main thing that excited me was finding out that there was actually a reason the place I lived in was called Whitworth Park – he was a real-life person! Hurrah.

I won’t lie. There’s a reason I did an arts degree. I can’t get excited about science. I CAN however get excited about it when it’s interactive. Aaah it’s a magical word – and MOSI uses it to the max with the whole 2nd floor devoted to hands on science. I can’t get enough of that to be honest – you just have to be prepared to shove some children out of the way. Cretins.

Also. There is a whole hall that’s devoted to the textile industry with looms and all sorts of stuff in it. I like that bit. (Apologies for conforming to stereotype.) But I definitely wasn’t enthralled by the hall with the engines in it. I did get momentarily excited when I thought I could climb into an old railway carriage but it turns out that you couldn’t, you could just look in it. At the engine. Boo.

I might not love science but I do love food and after some productive window shopping and real life shopping (frame reduced in Habitat from £9 to £2 yes please thank you very much) we were seduced by the smells coming from the market in Piccadilly Gardens and got us some chicken tikka and kebab wraps. I declare it the best £7 The Person has ever spent on food.

A quick trip to the Northern Quarter was in order after that for drinks with a friend. Trof was rammed to the rafters but we managed to squeeze in to Apotheca to have a drink and a catch up before we took our tired little bodies back to Preston for the evening.

Evening activities included going to The Olive Press for food. The verdict? Meh. Alright but nothing to write home about. However you can get two cocktails for £6 all day every day and that most definitely is something to write home about. We sat on big comfy armchairs in candlelight and got to be a real life couple, instead of the part-timers we usually are. We cocktailed our way out of there and on to another bar, before stocking up on crisps and Toblerone and heading home to watch The Hangover (where have I been? That film was amazeballs.)

The Person is kind enough to let me watch the Hollyoaks Omnibus every Sunday morning, against his better judgement and despite all his whining. He likes it really, he just won’t admit it. And then there was the familiar onset of depression as the day drew to a close and I realised that I’d be going home and won’t get to see him again until the end of March.

Not quite Edinburgh, but not too shabby either.

More photos can be found with one little click of the mouse here

*Yeah. Waste of time. I didn’t get the job. Apparently I’m awesome but was up against someone with a PhD. Which begs the question....why invite me to interview in the first bloody place?!

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

I’m a bit of a sucker for the Booker Prize you know. Actually I’m a sucker for anything that brings new books to my attention – TV Book Club, Richard and Judy, Costa Book Award – I lap them all up, eagerly read the synopsis on the back of all the books and add them to my ever growing list of books I want to read. The Booker Prize has come up with some gems for me (step forward last year’s winner The Finkler Question) but occasionally it throws the occasional nightmare into my path (do I need to mention the unreadable Wolf Hall again? Anyone else bored with me saying how much I hated that book? No? Excellent.).


Midnight’s Children will haunt me, I fear, for the rest of my days on earth.

When I pledged to read 12 classics in a year, this was one of the first ones that I picked up – it’s been awarded the Booker of Bookers. That’s like....Booker Squared. Definitely in the ‘Modern Classic’ category and definitely on the list to be read. I dutifully started it at the beginning of January and what followed was the longest month of my life until I could finally close its pages at the beginning of February.

I have this thing where I don’t read the Introductions that are invariably included when you pick up newer editions of classics. I understand that they’re there to provide you with some background and context to the tale you’re about to read but all I think they do is imprint someone else’s interpretation of what the book is about onto your brain. I prefer to draw my own conclusions.

In this case I wish I had read the Introduction to this one (written by Salman Rushdie himself) because then I’d have been prepared for the character of Saleem Sinai. I don’t need my heroes to be bare chested paragons of virtue but I do need them to be vaguely likeable and Saleem is just a pompous jumped up little twerp, irritating and annoying and grating and someone that you just want to slap in the face. Once I’d read the Introduction I'm afraid I was having similar feelings about Mr Rushdie.

The book is supposed to chart Saleem’s life and that of a newly independent India (Saleem is born at the moment of India’s independence). This book is not short. It comes in at over 900 pages and is split into three sections. He isn’t even born until the end of the first section so I reckon we can get rid of that one. The last section is pretty much incomprehensible so I would recommend getting rid of that one.

That leaves us with the second section and actually the part of the book which I genuinely enjoyed. I struggled through the first book, and upon entering the second, felt a calm release that reassured me the effort had been worth it. I wanted to read it, I felt absorbed by it, heck I liked it so much I even did a bit of illegal reading at work of it. Then I entered the third book and it lost the plot entirely and I felt all the worse for it after the high of enjoying the middle section, I felt cheated.

So anyway. Saleem is born at the stroke of midnight on the day of India’s independence. At the age of 9 he discovers that he can hear the thoughts of those around them and later on discovers that he can willingly connect with the 1,001 other children who were also born on the first day of independence.

Now here’s the problem and I think some of the cause of my trials with this book. You need to know the basic background before you can even think about reading it. My knowledge of India’s independence and then the partition of it? Zero. Absolute zero. This is kind of major problem when you’re reading a book where the main character is supposed to be the personification of the country in question. It’s impossible to keep track and make connections between the two if you haven’t completed a short history course beforehand.

(And as an aside. This is why people don’t like books that win the Booker Prize. They think they’re going to be pretentious and in cases like this they are absolutely bang on. A good book shouldn’t be dependent on you having a degree in history to enjoy them , the writing should be good enough to carry the story on its own, without the need for the reader to have a library to hand.)

I think my lack of knowledge was a serious issue here. I couldn’t follow what was going on. I didn’t know what was happening and once war broke out and you’re with Saleem in the jungle in Book III I had completely lost the will to live.

What was even more annoying was that I felt the book had potential – there really were parts of it that I thought were beautifully written and sharply observant – my favourite?

“This behaviour...was the direct result of a confusion in his mind, which invariably muddled up morality – the desire to do what is right – with popularity – the rather more dubious desire to do what is approved of.”

The New York Times reckons Midnight’s Children is “One of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation”.

I just wish I could understand why they think that. I’m afraid this is one of those times when I have to hold my hands up and say “I didn’t get it.”

Sorry Mr Rushdie.

----------------------------

On to the next classic!

(It's Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone if you wanted to know)

Not quite where I thought I'd be: Revisited

I wrote this post back at the beginning of November last year and was surprised by the number of comments it generated. It appeared that I wasn’t alone in feeling like I was losing the race of life. And I have tried oh so very hard to practice what I preached in that post, desperately repeating to myself “You are happy, you are happy”, in a bid to stop myself from throwing myself in front of the next wedding car that crosses my path.


I think the problem is my ridiculous levels of competitiveness. Who knows where it came from but I was born with an unfortunate desire to WIN. This led to many a board of snakes and ladders being thrown across the room when I hit just one snake too many and countless hours standing in the corner because of the tantrums I invariably threw when people didn’t let me win. This inbuilt rocket ship has come in handy at times – you wouldn’t have recognised me on a hockey/netball/rounders pitch at school (but not running remember?). And the only reason that I got decent results at GCSE and A-level and got into university was because I thrived under the intensely competitive atmosphere that private schooling seems to produce (we were regularly told that we had to try and beat last year’s grade performance and that we were in competition with one another. A tactic which worked well for some but most definitely had a destructive edge to it.).

When you consider this quite frankly bizarre behaviour then it’s no wonder I’m feeling the burn as everyone around me buys houses, move in with boyfriends, get good jobs, have amazing life experiences, get married, have children. I am losing the ultimate game. That of life. I think of how incredibly rageful I can get over a quiet game of Monopoly, of course I’m throwing a fit about the way my life is turning out – this is just my ugly competitive edge coming out.

This is what happens when we feel the need to conform. I can sit here and repeat “I am happy” until I’m blue in the face but the awful fact is that we still judge a person’s success in life by whether they;

1. Own a house
2. Have a decent job

3. Are married (children optional)

Anyone outside of this we might admire, but we admire them because they stand out and you can admire someone all you like but it doesn’t mean you want to be like them. I’m happy to conform to be honest, box me up and ship me out with the rest of the clones – instead I feel like a square peg in a round hole.

I can’t even say I have any great life experiences to fall back on – look at The Curious Cat. I love that girl you know. She’s gone and done some travelling and experienced wonderful things. The furthest I’ve gone is to the other side of Hull unaccompanied (clearly I’m exaggerating but you have to allow me that at this moment in time I’m afraid). If marriage and houses and job that I love never happen to me then at least I could have had the option of saying “Ah yes, but this one time when I was trekking up the Andes something rather marvellous happened...”. Nope. Not for me.

I repeat “I am happy” and I do believe it deep down inside. But the mantra only works if I don’t think about the things that I want and don’t have – then I become unhappy. And I’m pretty sure the mantra “I am happy, apart from the fact that I suck at life” isn’t one you should be repeating 20 times a day in the mirror. I guess that’s the thing about inner peace – it isn’t just bestowed upon you, you have to really put the effort in. I have to really really believe that I’m happy for me to be happy and although I’m pleased with my efforts so far, I have to be honest and say that I’m failing.

I was doing a pretty good job until 2011 dawned. In 2011 I will be attending five hen dos and two weddings (if that ratio seems a bit off it’s because one wedding is in Israel, one is in Thailand and one is in Italy. I love my friends but unfortunately friendship can’t buy plane tickets or book hotel rooms). In the face of all of the joy and happiness of other people, I am struggling to keep hold of my own.

One of the first of my group of friends here in Hull got married at the end of November last year. I have been roundly mocked for my total inability to keep my emotions in check at her wedding. It’s no wonder people found it funny, I’m not known for my overly emotional side, I’m the one making inappropriate jokes and laughing in the face of mush, yet here I was completely unable to stop the tears from streaming down my face. I had no idea at the time what was the cause of it and put it down to my extreme happiness for her. She has just announced that she’s pregnant with their first child. The tears came again.

But I have to be honest. I don’t think I was crying because I was happy for her. I think I was crying for myself and the fact that life as I knew it, with my group of friends, was about to irreversibly change (married people, you may not know it but you do change when you get married, who knows why, but that gold/platinum band seems to make the world of difference. Protest all you want, I’m telling you the truth) and I feel like I’m getting left behind, watching everybody climb up the ladders whilst my throw of the dice never seems to come up with the right number.

This is a disgustingly unpleasant and selfish side of me that I feel ashamed to reveal to you but I say it in the spirit of honesty. Standing and watching people get what I would like in life is hard and deep down I know that it’s not a race and I know it’s not a competition but it’s easy to say that when you’re winning said game.

I’m sure everything will all work out, some people aren’t as lucky as others, and for whatever reason I have not been chosen to win this game as quickly as others. It could be that I’m the unlucky person who never gets to go up the ladders, but instead rolls and rolls the dice and avoids the snakes and gets there in the end.

So I carry on repeating to myself “I am happy” and try not to worry about the milestones that I’m not (and may never) reach and eventually I am sure I will find my inner peace.

But you might just have to bear with me for a while.

Hiatus

Don't worry, you didn't all scare me off with your responses to my When is a Classic, not a Classic? post.

It turned out that the cold that I was determined to sweat out of my system, didn't want to sweated out and I was struck down in the prime of life for a few days. (No it really wasn't that dramatic, it was just a wee cold, was sorted out with a couple of days sleep.)

Then life got a bit crazy and I just don't have time to blog at the moment.

There is lots to talk about though, I just need to wait until next week until all the craziness has died down.

So bear with me 'kay!?

Laters.

When is a Classic not a Classic?

Hello blog readers. I need your help.


So as you may know I made it part of my New Year’s Not Really Resolutions to read 12 classics this year.

I just felt that I wasn’t really challenging myself with my reading very much. Although I’m not exactly reaching for the See Jane Run books, there are times when I feel I could benefit from some heavyweights in there.

Plus I was sick of having to say “I’ve not read it” whenever somebody brought up certain famous novels.

(Do you know how many classics there are out there? Kind of a lot.)

So I made my sweeping statement that I was going to read 12 “Classics” this year and got on with it. Only now I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. Maybe I should have been clearer on what I define as a classic?

This all centred around a discussion I had with my Dad at the weekend. I took him back his copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and mentioned that I had rushed out to buy The Daily Telegraph on Saturday purely because I saw that it was giving away a copy of a collection of three of F Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories.

Dad disputed that this counted as a Classic, saying that although F Scott Fitzgerald was a classic author, he didn’t think these particular short stories counted as a “classic”. The Great Gatsby however, would be considered a classic.

We got further into debate when I announced that I was also planning to read Gone with the Wind as part of my 12. He said that although the film was a classic, the book wasn’t that famous.

So this left me reeling a little bit. Am I not setting out what I achieved to? I’ve read Midnight’s Children (still digesting that one before I feel strong enough to attempt a review) and I feel that although that’s fairly contemporary, it can be judged a classic because it was named the Booker of Bookers. But then again – is it? Am I confusing the term “classic” with “books you should read”?

But then I argued that One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich might not be deemed a classic because I’d certainly never heard of it. Should I only be reading “acceptable classics” and if so then what the hell are they?!

You see the tangled web I’m getting myself into?

So I thought I’d turn to you guys (some people call it co-dependency, I call it blogging) and ask for your opinions...

1. Does the collection of F Scott Fitzgerald stories count as a classic?

2. Does Gone with the Wind count as a classic?

3. What do you think constitutes a classic?

(I'm not asking you if you think Midnight's Children is a classic because if you say no and that means I've read that book for nothing I might never read again. Can you guess how the review is going to go?)

And then finally I would like you to name a classic that you think I should read. All titles will be put into a hat (as long as I haven’t already read them, I’m not really bad you know, I have read some) and I will draw out a winner and that will be the next classic that I read.

So you know I think we both get something out of this bargain – you know?

Fighting back

My goodness. I’ve been in a post-Superbowl coma for the past couple of days.


Or at least I think I’ve been. I have never been so tired in my whole life as I was on Monday. I’m not somebody who needs their 8 hours sleep a day, I can get by on 5-6 but clearly I’m totally incapable of coping on less than 3. I came home and went straight to bed and slept for over 2 hours, I don’t think I’ve ever done that, I’m not a napping kind of gal. I’ve felt pretty chipper since then but last night started to feel a bit ropey. That feeling has continued through today and I’m now wondering if it possibly isn’t Superbowl Coma I’m suffering from but Common Cold instead.

I hope not, I’ve had a pretty brilliant sickness record so far. No colds in 2010. Nothing since having flu in 2009, that sucker made my white blood cells superhuman (just not so superhuman that they could stop blood clots. But whatever). I crept through November and December, while everyone was dropping around me, praying to whatever or whoever might be out there to spare me the germs and it really did work.

I have also decided that the way to get rid of a cold or to at least not to give in to one is to beat it to within an inch of its life out of your body.

Back in November I was pretty sure I was getting a cold. This happened to be the same night that I was planning on Zumba-ing my troubles away. Now the old me would have swooped on this cold like a vulture on a carcass and celebrated the fact that I had a legitimate excuse to not go to the gym. But the new me decided that I would not be lazy and I would not succumb and would go and dance it out of my system.

It totally worked. I’m serious. Maybe that cold would never have taken hold and would have disappeared on its own but the gym certainly didn’t hurt it. I was brought up in a school of “Do not give in” which applied to illness, school work and entering Blue Peter competitions in the vain hope of winning a stupid badge.

As if to verify my feelings, this report appeared on the BBC website, the day or so after I had combated germs with Latin dance exercise. Proof, I say, proof! I can’t believe that it’s a coincidence that since I’ve been healthier and going to the gym more I’ve suddenly stopped being struck down with so many coughs and colds, previously I’d been quite the hotbed for them. As the lbs have disappeared, my germ-fighting spirit appears to have grown.

And so I’m about to put my theory to the test again. I feel pretty crappy at the moment. Headache, what appears to be a phlegm factory in my lungs and an all-pervasive tiredness which is making me want to put my head on my desk and drift off to sleep. It would be very easy for me to cancel the gym tonight. But I’m going to be brave, I’m going to march into that place and Spin this cold out of my system.

Failing that, I’m probably going to need some cold remedies. And some sleep.