Nicest of the Damned

Trying to Find Beauty

Still in my endeavour to find beauty in everyday things – instead of just complaining - I’m still striving to take a picture-a-day. Maybe what I really need to do is take arty pictures of the rubbish that accumulates in my garden to find the inner splendour of broken glass, half a sandwich, and a KFC napkin. Well here are the slightly more obvious lovely things I’ve encountered over the last few weeks.

Not Just Norfolk

Picture Norwich

They say a picture a day keeps the blues away...

A Picture-A-Day

It's been well over a month since I've blogged in words and the reason is pictures. I've been trying to complain less - which doesn't lead to interesting blogging necessarily, and I’ve been trying to enjoy things more – which does lead to looking around you which leads to photos. So for over a month I’ve been taking photos – one a day – here are some of the highlights:

I won't leave it so long next time and I hope to have highlights of photos here at least once a week. Extra points to anyone who recognizes where any of these are shot.

Name? Broody Eisenhower Wanderlust

I’m at that weird point in my life where I’m jealous of my friends who are doing things at opposite ends of the spectrum. Some of my friends are just off adventuring in the farthest reaches of the planet. Like my friend Joe who is living the dream of staring in a Japanese advert topless with star glasses and a yellow ball on his head and known only as Grapefruit man. That is just one of the greatest things ever – who wouldn’t want to do that? (Okay topless for him is different to topless for me … so maybe not topless.)

Then on the other side are my friends have beautiful babies and naming them Logan, London, Novella, or Avery. I want a baby I can name. I think it might just be a Spring thing but there is no doubt in my equal measures of broodiness and wanderlust.

So in my inbox last week I get the news of Joe’s cult statues in Japan and my friends Dan and Vicky’s new baby. I also get the news that my good friend Jon-boy is going to be having a baby girl. (Well his wife Heather is having the baby, he’s not the pregnant man from the States.) They decided on the name Avery but have yet to pick a middle name. Well this was my advice...

“Yeah a little Jon-girl! I like the name Avery a lot - very nice. Middle names are funny things, I like them because you can make it as crazy as you like (but still being aware of what disastrous initials you might be giving them like my good friend George Adam Yencho – unfortunate, or for example my parents couldn’t have given me the middle name Kristen.) I think your safe with A.D. unless the middle is D and she’s a hyper child.

If you don’t mind me throwing my two cents (about one pence pound sterling) can I suggest some good middle names I’ve heard: Summer, Autumn, Violet, (Any of the old fashion flora and foliage can be good your: Poppy, Daisy, Iris, Rose, Heather, Hazel, Lilly, Spider Plant, etc. Or there are the old fashion names after precious stones your: Ruby, Opal, Pearl, etc.)

Family names are nice like Chris’s middle name is Annis which is his Grandmother’s maiden name – for example if my parents did that my name would be Katherine McCullough K. which is not bad but I could never give my child the middle name Follis. Imagine Follis and Annis – shocking. Your parent’s first names work well too. I think boy’s names for little girls are cute, like George or Vinnie (not Vinnie.)

There is the popular naming of places like London, Brooklyn, Sydney, Mattoon. Or the popular naming after where they where conceived like Chris would be Christopher Malta K. and I’d be Katherine Probably-One-Eggnog-Too-Much-Christmas-Eve K. There is also the popular American thing of naming girls after dead presidents your: Madison, Kennedy, Tyler, Polk. I hope that helped (doubtful but I hope) I also hope you’re both well and I look forward to meeting Avery Eisenhower Dirksen in a few months.”

It's so hard to decide

* Special Thanks to Joe and Dan, Vicky, and Novella for appearing in this blog.

What is not rubbish...

I realize blogs often, mine included, have a tendency to rant. Well I’m bucking a trend, going out on a limb, and throwing caution to the wind while clinging on to said limb…I’ve decided to feel the love today and say what I like – yes like – about Norwich.

You can’t have a list of nice things o’ Norwich without the obvious inclusions of almost every building built before WWII. You have to have Elm Hill, the Cathedral Close, the castle, etc. But I want to branch out into the things that are great about Norwich that you only get to know from living here for a while; things not necessarily in the guidebooks. So here we go:

Chapelfield Garden. Chapelfield Garden? You may ask starting to wonder if I am in fact a teenager with a propensity to wear black and drink early on a Saturday morning. Why I’ve even criticized Chapelfield before claiming it at times populated by zombies judging by the amount of shuffling swaying done by the inhabitants. Yes Chapelfield Gardens – but certain aspects of Chapelfield. Pedro’s is an clear choice especially with my long rooted love of Mexican food, the way some English people say tay-co for taco, and the fact I would never dare make a chimichanga at home.

But like I said – past the guidebook stuff – I love in Chapelfield Gardens that tree. You know the tree I mean. It is a London Plane and is huge, lovely, perfectly tree shaped, sweet smelling, with it’s hangy seed balls, beautiful anytime of year, and has cool webbed rigging in it I imagine to stop a branch from falling off (it really does, look closer its on your right-hand side as you stand looking at it from the path.) But to be fair even that is in a guidebook ‘The Trees of Norwich’ – yes such a book of such minute detail does exist.

So a little less written about, but still in Chaplefield Garden is that one Blackbird with the white head – I love him. He’s got a great singing voice and looks a little like a Bald Eagle with that noble white head. He’s great, check him out, he hangs out between Pedro’s and the good tree.

I also like the quality of light you get; the subtle hues seem different than other skies.
The fact that you can be looking at sunny skies yet it is hailing on you.
The rabbits you see from the train where the lines branch apart at Trowse and there is a triangle of land – sometimes with horses, but often covered with bunnies.
All the baby bunnies at UEA in the spring – I can’t walk without squeaking like a little girl wanting to scoop them up and keep them in my pocket.
Earlham road in the spring with its trees freakishly identical and the crocuses in bloom.
The little house on Unthank road that looks like the living embodiment of a house a child would draw: it is one level, with a door in the middle, two windows either side, a perfect triangle roof, with the chimney in the middle. It is the sort of house all nice grandparents should live in.
The people of Norwich like the ever popular Puppet Man and the lesser known but still loved Stuart who is a very large man that loves to sing loudly along to the radio. Norwich has more characters then you can poke a stick at. Literally if you tried to using your poking stick just walking down Gentleman’s Walk on a Saturday it would be broken before you left the market.
Street names like Rampant Horse.
When Cow Tower gets covered in ladybugs, ladybirds, or bishy barnabees – what ever you’d like to call them.
The word bishy barnabees.
The cool cats I’ve hung out with in the Cathedral Close. Literally cats – especially the one that likes to lounge around Pull’s Ferry. I wonder how many people’s holiday snaps he’s been in.
The pond at Heigham Park is a work of genius – it’s like your own little nature program.
Doors. Yes doors. Sure the old buildings of Norwich are lovely but take a look at some of the doors they are just brilliant for their age, detail, or wonky-ness.
Malcolm in the Vauxhall Street Post Office.
The amount of pedestrianised places. I’m not good with cars – I’m glad when I can shop and they don’t hit me.
Not one, but two, T.K. Maxx’s.
All the little back lanes with there specialty shops.
The odd red posts that have gone up with faces and birds and odd such on them, that I have yet to find out why they are even there. They are good on their own but the mystery surrounding them might be what intrigues me most.
The fact that I can do all my daily shopping in skipping distance – which everyone knows due to the amount of energy it takes to skip it makes it closer then walking distance.
Thorns. The place is Tardis. I swear it defies space and time. It probably has a tunnel to the cathedral filled with different kinds of screws.
Waffle House. I mean EVERYTHIGN on a waffle, just brilliant.

Okay now I need breakfast, I can’t talk about waffles at nine in the morning and not need to break my fast so I’ll leave the list for now. Feel free to add some things you love about Norwich that might not be in the guidebooks to my burgeoning list.

Rubbish Bins and Other Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

Let’s play a game called ‘What’s in my Front Garden Now?’. If you’re an avid reader of this blog you’ll know it’s not a rubbish bin. Let’s see, did you guess… a bottle? A can of half drunk energy drink? Bank receipts? A Green Party newsletter? Vomit? Human urine? If you did then you are right! Oddly when the students were on break there were none of these things found in my garden. I can’t blame the green party newsletter on the students only on the universe having a deep sense of irony. I only know about the urine because I overheard students discussing their plan of bladder liberation, would you believe in loud drunken voices, while waiting for the bus. Before I could don more appropriate clothes for confrontation the bus, miracle of miracles, actually showed up and whisked them away. (Hopefully before they spent a penny watering my flowers.)

‘So how does my battle of the bin rage on?’, you might ask. Firstly let me say all this blogging is starting to sound as if I’m obsessed with it, I’m not. I’m more obsessed currently with this nasty viral infection I caught in my ear causing my balance to be as good as Lindsey Lohan taking a sobriety test. Also I’ve been in Chicago for Christmas – yes it was lovely, and snowy! (Insert paragraph of rambling prose about how I love lots of soft floating snow in sodium lights, then a side note about watching Field of Dreams and missing a friendly knock-up game of baseball on a Midwestern summer night and the wonderful hum of crickets and bugs.) Also taking a big chunk of brain space is how my brother needs help, so much so he has caused my parents to worry so much they are actually talking regularly to one another – something I had one friend explain as an occurrence so rare that surely it must be a doomsday sign. So my mind hasn’t been on litter so much as A. the students haven’t been back till recently. And B. I do actually have a life. So the bin… here’s the latest from Janet Bearman Green Party City Councillor for Town Close Ward:

Further to my previous e-mail I've finally had a response about the litter bin. It seems that the pathway is still not wide enough to accommodate one of the free standing litter bins as if one were installed, there would not be enough room for buggies/wheelchairs etc to pass it. However the Waste Officer I spoke to about it said that in view of the particular problems in that area, they are hoping to be able to install one on the bus stop post; but as the bus stops are the responsibility of the County Council (another of the reasons the Green Party are supporting Unitary Status for Norwich which would mean we could control our own transport needs and infrastructure) permission must be sought from them first. The officer appreciates the urgent need for a litter bin there, is doing her best and will let me know as soon as she has further information. I'm only sorry this is taking so long, I think I'm probably getting as frustrated about it as you are.

Best wishes.

Janet

So that’s where the bin stands (or doesn’t stand). Still even if I had a bin I don’t think it would stop the vomit. And as good as I am at writing moderately subversive letters of complaint I don’t think I (even with my un-holy love of root beer) could start a one girl temperance movement. And let’s face it I know personally probation didn’t work very well, I’m from Chicago where even my sweet Grandmother knew how to make bathtub gin. Uh, well, one community woe at a time.

Lastly a side note of what are the seven doomsday signs of the coming apocalypse:

1. My parents talking regularly in a friendly way.

2. The Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.

3. The World Series consisting of teams further a field then North America.

4. First Bus and/or One Railway running an efficient, friendly, and reasonably priced service.

5. Those few people you only find on Norfolk buses that insist on standing and blocking the bus door actually sitting down and taking one of the seats available.

6. The Queen deciding corgis are not giving her the street cred she desires and insists on having only rottweilers with studded collars.

7. Apparently a rubbish bin by the 25 bus stop on Unthank road.

Feel free to comment on what you think the encroaching signs of Armageddon are.

The Unthinkable Unthank

The Evening News asked only today, “What do you think of the changes to Unthank Road?” Well if you’re a normal reader you would know I think it could have used a rubbish bin, but other then that I would stick my neck out and say a controversial “Yeah it’s alright.”

Now I’m not a car owner so the driving conditions rarely affect me. I do like the larger almost luxuriantly big sidewalks, I feel I can properly strut or stroll with such widths. My dog loves it because it gives him even more opportunity to try and trip people up with his lead. The thing I really love is the puddle. How great are road improvements when they create a massive puddle that was never there before? It is the sort of puddle that soaks unaware people when a car goes by and its right by the bus stop! Now don’t think I’m the heartless fool that laughs at other people’s misery – I live right by the puddle and am at risk daily. Though there is something evolutionarily funny about a person – especially if they are really dressed up or look grumpy – being splashed by water. I love the puddle as we think it would be a great way for our girl-friendless friend to meet girls. Just have him wait by the bus stop on a rainy day with a large umbrella, a lovely girl in danger of splash, he jumps in saves her from certain drenching, they strike up conversation and it would be just like that Hollies song “Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows under my umbrella”. I mean come on who doesn’t love a good puddle?

As for the rest of the road ‘improvements’ I like the 20 mph speed limit – it’s just a shame people don’t actually adhere to it. Only yesterday, I was walking the dog, crossed the street at the pelican crossing, saw a car coming down the road, thought ‘Now they’re not doing 20. It’s going to be hard to brake at this here red light. She’s still going a bit fast. Um she’s not stopping. Right she just went through the red light doing at least 50mph. Don’t think she even saw the light. Yeah that’s not good. ’

The one thing I don’t get is they widened all the pavements except where the pavement is at it’s slightest by Trinity Street, where if two people meet walking someone almost always nearly has to step into the street. I’m not a city planner* so I couldn’t give you a comprehensive plan on how to fix it or make it worse which seems to be the 50/50 chance you get with city planners. (* If there are any city planners out there please do not take offence to my sad attempt at humour and assume that you are doing a wonderful job, and that people like puddles and sixties architecture. After all I’ve learned thanks to some of my comments on earlier blogs that apparently “a public internet forum” like my own blog is not the right place to express my views or even tell factual accounts of things that have happened to me. – who knew?)

So over all – yeah it’s alright. My ideal Unthank road would involve wider pavements the whole way through with large palatial trees, trucks having a special underground road for loading and unloading (like Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago) and if anyone is speeding or tries to go through the crossing light when it’s red they are hit by a harmless and ultimately funny giant wall of water that stops them dead and all the pedestrians have a good chuckle. Oh yeah, and a rubbish bin.

The City Speaks Back About Rubbish Students and Tesco

I’ve obviously touched a nerve with City Hall. In one morning I get an e-mail from ASB Officer Ms Spencer Fischer-Harrison kindly telling me that they will be passing my request for a rubbish bin onto EH department, that they sympathised with my situation, they will be flagging up this issue with the Police Safer Neighbour team and contacting First Bus Co., and is keeping me up dated. I was impressed and grateful. The other was, well, a bit unprofessional. I’ll just post the whole thing (without editing) and see what you think:

Dear Ms. K,

O.K., O.K. you want a dustbin, I have noted your request and will pass it on to the relevant department which takes action. I appreciate this issue is important to you but please appreciate that I have to prioritise my own duties so I can't attend to every request immediately and I don't as a Councillor have the authority to order a bin to be placed just like that.

I am well aware that a lot of people don't want Tesco on the Unthank Road. I am also aware that quite a few people do, only they feel too intimidated to speak up in public, people have spoken to me on the street and in private to say they want Tesco. However when the Planning Committee considers this we have to do so in the light of Planning law and guidelines. When Officers recommend acceptance as they have, the Committee has to think carefully before refusal to see if it could be justified at appeal.

It will be an extremely difficult decision for the Committee because although the strength of local feeling has to be an important factor we also to have to weigh up the rest of the facts in the case. When this issue first arose I remember advising that objections must be lodged not in terms of emotion but closely related to planning legislation and local plan guidelines and traffic issues because these ultimately provide the foundation for a defensible decision to refuse which you and the majority of my correspondents clearly want.

Regards

Cllr. Felicity Hartley

O.K., O.K. lets review the facts (I won’t even start on the patronizing tone of the letter.) I originally wrote to my councillors 7/10/07, only one (NOT Felicity Hartley) even responded a week later with a “see if anything can be done”. I heard nothing. I know for a fact that my neighbours have contacted councillors with the same request even before I had.

Last week after a blatant bit of littering then learning that the council looks to let the Tesco in, I wrote to them once again and made them aware of this blog. Suddenly I have a response! Funny that.

Let’s touch on the tone of this letter. Is Cllr. Hartley a bit touchy and defensive because I criticized the councillor’s ability to represent the people’s will? So in defence she comes up with this shady group of victimized Tesco lovers too afraid to speak their forbidden love of Tesco Value in the face of our organized, intimidating, anti-Tesco syndicate. Seeing that I live on Unthank Road I think I have more contact with the people that this store directly affects then Cllr. Hartley who lives two miles away. Let me tell you about the majority of the people I’ve talked to that wouldn’t mind the Tesco – they are apathetic. They don’t care. They think “Eh if there’s a Tesco maybe it will be open later, if not? Eh.”

No one in their right mind can be thinking “Oh Unthank Road! You don’t have enough convenient stores!” There are two that you can actually stand and see each other from and the Tesco would be across the street from one of them. Half the reason I’m fighting Tesco is not emotions but simple logic.

The people that want the Tesco want convenience. Convenience breeds apathy, apathy is a way for government to control, to say… start wars in our name – but let’s stay with local government for the moment.

So Cllr. Hartley is the brave solider trying to give a voice to those poor people too afraid to say “I like corporate conglomerates that cause negative and environmental and economic problems world wide as appose to a local Co-operative because they’ve got better beans.” (For example) It so nice to have a modern politician doing what they think the people want – not because it’s what the people loudly say they want but because what the only people only they met supposedly say. It’s that kind of listening that reminds me of my President.

Ok, Ok. I went off on a rant and I do realize that Cllr Hartley isn’t actually saying there should be a Tesco because she’s talked to some people that do; what she is really saying is that you can’t in government vote solely on emotion. But I say, why not? Isn’t government representing the people? Don’t people have emotions and logic, and when their logic is affronted they show their emotions? Shouldn’t the government vote for what the people want? Isn’t that why they are there? This is a bigger debate then I have the space for.

You see part of me at heart is apathetic. Its just after four years of living with drunk loud students littering, breaking glass, (then picking broken glass out of dog’s paw), and even pissing in my garden you get to the point where you have to do something. Something tells me that if Cllr. Hartley had to deal with what I do – or if I say gather the rubbish (which would consist of at least ten bottles, three cans, bus tickets, bank receipts, broken glass, a subway sandwich, and various detritus) from in front of my and my next door neighbours’ yards right now and put it in hers she might…do something. Something like writing a letter, or even, Lord Forbid, TWO letters! In TWO months! (THE SCANDLE!) And this kind of hippy, revolutionary, civil disobedient behaviour might get me a rather snippy reply but hell, it might even get me a rubbish bin.

If you are curious my reply e-mail to Cllr. Hartley went like this:

Dear Councillor,

I do actually have knowledge of rudimentary government thank you though for prioritizing your duties to explain them to me. Sorry I thought you would be interested in my views as my elected official. I apologize for trying to be an active citizen and I’m sorry if my two requests to better this neighbourhood with the monumental task of one litter bin took up your time or annoyed you.

Sincerely,

~Kate K

Rubbish Students

"So you’re not a child anymore, welcome to being an adult and thinking past your own selfish nose." That would be the long winded title of the class I would teach at UEA. I don’t know if the longer I’m no longer a student the more I dislike students or if they are actually getting worse.

Maybe I am having less tolerance for the naïve smugness of students that think they’ve got the world figured out but based on my evidence they are actually getting worse. My evidence is a bus stop. I live by a bus stop that goes to Uni and I am appalled by the current student body at UEA. (I mean beside the fact that they are all fatter – what happened to students being hot?) I've lived in this house for four years and never have I incurred such rude, loud, and filthy students. It’s the filth that bothers me. (That and Cheerleaders - Good God! Do you have to have thirty-odd abhorrent {and fat – when did cheerleaders get fat?} girls chanting at the tops of their lungs for twenty minutes past 10 o’clock at night at a bus stop on a week night?! I thought I escaped such tortures when I moved here from America.)

Anyways, every morning after an LCR, without fail, there are bottles, cans, and broken glass in front of my house. Broken glass I have to try and walk my dog through; only this morning when walking my dog I saw one of their ‘fine’ Rugby players crush a can of Diet Coke and leave it on my fence post. I've had UEA students pissing in my yard, throwing rubbish of all kinds (food wrappers, gum, books, bottles, half eaten sandwiches, cans, an open pint of milk, etc) in my garden, and not to mention the rudeness just because I want to get down the sidewalk when they are taking up the entirety. I realize this is their first time living on their own, but just because their Mummy is not there to pick up doesn't mean they have to treat this area like a garbage can or a toilet.

I’ve grown up on the South Side of Chicago which even popular music will tell you is the “meanest part of town”, I mean even Elvis who was from a hole like Memphis will call it a ghetto, and people there will treat their neighbourhood better then these students. (Or least Mayor Daley will get a hell of a lot more done – you won’t see graffiti or rubbish in downtown Chicago.) I mean I realize in Chicago your more likely to get shot (my Dad’s been shot twice) but at least they can keep the city looking nice and still work on the violence problem. I mean Norwich doesn’t even have the violence issues and they can’t pick up bottles, scrub a wall clean, or just put in a rubbish bin?

I think the real reason it gets under my skin is one: the inefficacy of simple governmental tasks, and secondly, and mostly, the disrespect, apathy, and narcissism of littering. It’s like saying – I don’t care about you, I don’t care about this neighbourhood, or this planet, I only care about myself and my immediate needs. And that people is the root of all evil. Not money, not power, but the lack of care and empathy. Littering is just a mild manifestation of a malignancy that is chocking out what could be good about this world.

We are teaching children to stay children. That there is a “happily ever after” you just have to buy it or be famous (not famous for doing anything – just ‘famous’) and you can get this by only looking after yourself – not even in a competitive way but in a way in which they think they just deserve it and other people don’t matter.

Well Mummy doesn’t live here, and Mummy won’t live forever, the world is a big scary place so think before you throw an open pint of milk in someone’s yard or you might just get it thrown back at you and you have to spend the LCR smelling like milk – but that is another story.

Slowing Down the Onslaught

England is missing out. It is one of the nicest seasons and in a rush of consumerism and greed England misses a chance to be thankful, thoughtful, and just full. This isn’t one of those articles complaining about Christmas music in September or Father Christmas in July; this is about what you’re missing because of wrapping paper and mince pies out in August.

Autumn is lovely! It is the time when the cold still feels exciting instead of gruelling. When you’re happy to pull out scarves and sweaters you had forgotten about. The leaves look alien in their colours and orange vegetables abound. I love fall (as we Americans call it). Just starting the fire, tons of apples, kicking leaves, it’s brilliant if you can see it under the fairy lights, jolly music, and impatient signs that insist we must book our party NOW! There are those sick people out there that LOVE Christmas SO much they have to have it nearly all year round. I bet they love Disney stuff too. I think it steams from this idea that you live in a happy cheerful dream of giddy elves and jolly kindly old men and it all appeals to this same love of fantasy. Well things die. That sounds a bit grim, but it is nature, so there are some rough edges. In their death there is a glorious rebirth in spring. People have been fed this idea of ‘happily ever after’ but through misery (like cold wet winters) it makes us appreciate and be thankful for the happy times. Regardless of what people try to sell you can’t have Christmas or summer all year round.

Autumn is about being thankful for what you’ve had. It is a shame you don’t work your Harvest Festival into secular aspects of English life. I mean I’ll give you big fires and fireworks are pretty cool, but what you need is something like Thanksgiving to slow down the Christmas onslaught.

Thanksgiving is wonderful! It is just about surrounding yourself with loved ones and eating yourself sick and being thankful for the fruits of your labours and your loved one. There are no gifts, no office parties, no catchy tunes, just love, thanks, and food.

And before I hear the cynical ‘it’s cool to pick on America’ people say, in there smug way, something about pilgrims taking the native American’s dinner and hospitality and giving them smallpox infested blankets, may I just remind you that the heart was in the right place for the first Thanksgiving and what happened latter in history is sad and wrong, but doesn’t detract from the sentiment from the first. Anyways British and native inhabitants of foreign cultures – yeah, pot-kettle. Anyways Thanksgiving was started as an official holiday by Abraham Lincoln to try and unite a split and hurting country. Again a nice sentiment, much nicer then we caught this guy trying to blow something up, let’s kill him in a really nasty way and burn stuff.

I spent two days baking and cooking and it was great. The house has smelled lovely and with the fire going it feels so homey. We had six people for dinner last night and a good time (and lots of sweet pies) where had by all. You are missing a treat. You get a four day weekend, you have an official starting date to the Christmas blitz (the Friday after Thanksgiving when you have the day off to start shopping, or hanging lights, or having pie for breakfast), and you have an excuse to eat lots of nice food. Never in a thousand years would a make my poor-man’s brûlée dish (sweet potatoes with butter, orange juice, brown sugar, and baked topped with marshmallows) except if it was Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s this sugar low I’m coming off, but I feel bad not everyone gets to slow down and celebrate this lovely time of year, we’re always in the rush to the next thing, its sad.

I’m just thankful that I go through all the effort so at least those around me get that warm happy feeling. Say what you will about America at least it has an entire day dedicated to be grateful for its abundance – and that is not such a bad thing. It is shame we don’t do it everyday. (The being thankful – not the eating, OHhhh I can’t eat any more pie!)

Did England Win Something?

If I see grown men playing in the park – I know England has won something. Last week I saw countless of normally un-athletic men and boys throwing dusty rugby ball back and forth all through out the city. It was as if their gallant effort round the park and that minute of practice is what makes England that great winning sporting country. I love the excitement people get from watching other people run into each other and kick pigskin around. (Is it pigskin? Or is that just American football?)

Don’t get me wrong I came from a city where a man famously and continuously put a ball in a hole. I mean Michael Jordan had movies, scents, books, shoes, anything with his mug on it and the man just put a ball in a hole, he did it very well, but still, ball…hole.

I’m not the sporty type you might have guessed. I like to play sports – but that is because I like to play but I don’t care about competition. That is what makes me a horrible sports fan. Technically coming from the South Side of Chicago I should be a White Soxs fan and a bit of me is – the bit of me that when I see English people wearing White Soxs baseball caps I want to talk to them, but when I do they don’t even realize the Soxs are from Chicago they just thought it looked nice. (Don’t get me started on wearing things that you don’t know what they mean – I mean 10 year olds wearing things that say Playboy – that’s PRONOGRAPHY {also from Chicago}.)

Anyways, I should be a Soxs fan but baseball died for me the day they knocked down historic Comiski Park to build U.S Cellular Field – money finally won over the game and sportsmanship. I do support the Chicago Cubs. I support them losing. I like traditions, and they have been successfully losing for 100 years next year. Still when ever you have the Cubs win one game those hopes soar and another baseball might be tossed back and forth reminding the kid inside that there is that chance for their side, and for them to win, they better practice.

Happy things that make you sad.

What do you do after the wedding? What do you do with this giant anti-climax? That’s what I find myself asking. It was eight years in the making, two years in the planning, and our wedding turned out perfect – now what? Now that I am a ‘wife’ and my birthday is soon upon me I am starting to feel old in the fact that I am already horribly nostalgic a bare three weeks after the wedding and I’m not even finished with the thank you cards.

One of the things you give up when you have a lovely September wedding to an English teacher is the honeymoon. So in a matter of a few days we went from ideal bliss and freedom surrounded by family and friends to Chris is back at school and I’m at home alone. Well almost alone but Cadfael Corgi is not the best conversationalist. Suddenly the days are taking up momentum and I’m finding the wedding is getting further and further in the past. It doesn’t help that my computer has almost completely given up the ghost so I can’t even write – though I wonder how much I’m just using that as an excuse to procrastinate.

Even less help is the fact I fell down the stairs. Nothing makes you feel like a fool like tripping down stairs and nothing makes you feel old like waking up the next day and feeling those aches that remind you don’t bounce like you used to. Why do happy things make people sad? It’s the stupidest thing in the human psyche. Every bride wants the perfect day, they strive for it, I was lucky (and it was luck and relaxing more than any amount of planning) that I had that perfect day – and now I’m sad that it’s over and thinking of happy things makes me sad. It reinforces my old theory of what I would do if I was God.

Firstly let me say I would make a crap God as I’m racked with indecision but this, this would be good. Everyone died only at the happiest moment of their life. Think how much easier life would be if you could always say at a funeral – it was their happiest moment and you knew it would never be any better than that. People would never be as sad when a child would die because you always had that knowledge that they lived up to their potential. It would also be reassuring to know that no matter how sad you are that things would have to get better – a lot better – because you’re still alive. It might be a bigger bummer at weddings if things went this way – like I said I’d make a crap God – but it would add a different dimension to life and the way people live. Would wars consist of who could tell the funnier joke or throw the best party? Okay I’m starting to think about this too much. Well at least it’s taking my mind off no longer being the bride.

My bad...

Who knew that after all these years of living in England I can still make basic British-to-American translation mistakes. A good example happened this morning when the fine people at my veterinary surgery thought I was calling to have my dog shot.

In America we say shots instead of jabs, we say throw pillows instead of scatter cushions, and are rather fond of the term ‘bite me’. So maybe America is a bit more violent with its shots for infants and throwing of pillows but I still prefer to say pet instead of stroke. I don’t think I’ll ever get use to the fact that saying “You can pet my dog, he’s friendly.’ is thought of as odd.

I made apparently a bit of a confusion a few weeks ago when I was sick – you see what I said was “I’m sick” and then was confused as to why people would tell me “oh, throwing-up is horrible”. I had no idea that ‘sick’ in England means only that you are vomiting – I just meant I was ill with a cold. Being ill and my brain on slow mode this took me a few weeks to figure out that I was using the wrong phrase and lead to people thinking I was pregnant as I kept on saying how constantly sick I was. I must admit it does shed a new distressing light onto the phrase of someone being ‘sick in the head’.

Air is in the air

I never understood smoking. I went to an arts school so I was always surrounded by it, and still I never got it. Your killing yourself, or at least causing damage, for something that makes you smell and get addicted to what can be an expensive habit. Yet in the papers right now are all these odes by the ‘hip’ people that never followed the rules. They say things like “look how cool Audrey Hepburn or Kate Moss is when she’s smoking.” Okay A. Hepburn is not cool because of the smoking and it’s the holder that looks cool not her sucking on a fag; and B. Am I the only one that thinks Kate Moss just looks like a strung out slapper? I really don’t see the appeal – she is a bit scrawny with all the wrong flaws. Maybe I’m not hip – I’ve never claimed to be and the fact that I’ll wear a jacket when it’s cold out is proof that I’m not a victim to fashion like so many British woman freezing on the Prince of Wales road.

They say that smokers are the rebels, the people on the fringe, the ones being different, not caring what other people think. What a load of toss. Smoking is almost always started because they want to fit in with a group of people. No one thinks ‘hmm, what is this smoking? I think I should try that, it will only benefit me.’ No someone gives it to them to try or something very *** in their life has just happened and they consciously or not decide to perform a slow suicide because they feel ***.

The real rebels are the ones who go to art college and don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. Rebel means to break from the mold and you don’t get a stiffer mold then artists smoking and etc.

Maybe I’m a bit smug with the ban coming in, but it’s just nice to see common sense finally prevail. I was tempted for a while to punch people in the face. You see I enjoy punching people in the face and it’s my right to do what I enjoy in public. Sure punching people in the face might have long term health effects for me or the people around me, but it’s my life and my choice. I was tempted to get sanction from the council and walk around with a sign that said I have the right to punch people in the face in perhaps certain zones, but with the smoking ban now coming into effect for some reason I don’t feel like punching people in the face so much.

Ahh, we all breathe a little easier with the loss of smoke and the threat of my fist.