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Default Position

My default position has been Table for One for so long, I worry that I'm not able to make the leap to a Table for Two. How do you go from being single to being with someone? I know, I know, there are whole books, movies and dodgy articles in Cosmo devoted to this one topic. But I'm serious. Is being willing to embrace the idea enough? Or will I, heaven forbid, have to be proactive? I'd really much rather sit here and wait.

Foxy

"Am I beng flirted with by a psychotic rat?"
Mrs Fox, Fantastic Mr Fox

Queue Idea

I think that the popcorn queues in cinemas would do better to be arranged in order of how late you are for a given movie.

Queue 1: T-15 minutes

Queue 2: T-5 minutes

Queue 3: The movie has started but you have 20 minutes of trailers to get through so you're probably still ok for time.

Queue 4: The trailers are about to end, grab your popcorn and run.

The Golden Age

After an evening spent watching Roman Holiday and The Shop Around the Corner, I just want to dwell in the world of black and white movies. Surround myself with handsome men wearing hats, and witty quips at the ready. Be swept away by the swelling music, and moved by the passionate kiss at the end. And the happy ending - even though Roman Holiday doesn't actually have one. Movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s are just irresistable. As are Gregory Peck and James Stewart. I've lost my heart to them in particular.

Getting Old

I was sitting in TGI Fridays (the best of a bad bunch of restaurants, I assure you, the centre of Milton Keynes tends to cater hamburgers or Chinese food and that's about it) and I was mostly zoned out with my book (I wouldn't even notice the apocalypse if I have a good book to read and in this case I had two) and then I looked up and thought: "This place is loud" Blaring music, loud chatter, plates and glasses being dropped on the floor, happy birthday being sung with applause and sparklers. I mentally clutched my pearls in horror. "I'm getting old," I thought. And then I went back to my book.

Too Much Information

"We can't sit over there anymore," I told my Zen-like friend in the park at lunch today.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because someone has written 'We had sex here!' on it," I answered.

"Ohhhhh," he said.

A Bad Day

You know it's a bad day when you'd rather sit in a dodgy smelling bathroom than go back to your desk and deal with numbskulls who can't spell, punctuate, or apparantly think for themselves in any way.

A favoured few are excluded from this list of course.

Eternal conundrum

If I had kids, I would be totally screwed. How do you teach kids anything, when you spend your entire time on the fence? How can you show kids where the line is, when you can't even decide on a line?

For instance.

We all present a face to the world. How you dress and how you act affects how people see you. You should bear this in mind when you decide what you're going to wear and how you're going to act.

But.

It's wrong to judge people by their appearances. It's wrong to judge people full stop. People are all different, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad. But you can't decide you don't like someone based on the way they dress.

Hmmm, maybe the take away here is, judge people by how they act? But by judgement I mean guage in a sensible manner, not deride for your own amusement?

Maybe I need to write all these arguments down for the future.

Don't even get me started on liberalism and the death penalty.

Sneaky Sainsbury's

Do you know why Sainsbury's can sell a Basics range DVD player For £19.99?

Because they don't include any cables!

Grrrrrrr.

Dear Idiot Bus Driver

The reason I am carrying a walking stick is because my balance is not so hot. You saw me struggle onto the bus and juggle my stick and my bag and then use my stick to manouver towards a seat. So why would you pull out like the devil himself was behind you, causing me to lurch like a maniac? Why would you do that? Like I don't already hate MKMetro.

love and kisses

Liz

Meme

1. Three best movies you've watched recently.
Julie/Julia
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Mullholland Drive
2. Three favourite songs at the moment.
The Shins - New Slang
Belle and Sebastian - Take Your Carriage Clock and Stuff It
Layla - Eric Clapton
3. Favourite dessert.
Creme Brulee
4.(a) Two physical characteristics you like about yourself.
My eyes and my freckles
4.(b) Two physical characteristics you like in a significant other.
Bare feet and collar bones.
5. The most unforgiveable thing anyone could do is:
Pretend to be my friend.
6. If your were to dress someone up as yourself they would be wearing...
A black coat and a frown.
7. Three favourite magazines:
Time, National Geographic and Empire.
8. A new favourite bad habit:
Putting a pillow on either side of me so it feels like I'm sleeping in a tiny box
9. Dream house:
Farm house among trees, with an orchard and a stream nearby.
10. Which five people would you have with you on a desert island and why?
Jane Austen, Dorothy Parker, Enid Blyton and Lindsay Davies - just to see what would happen.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

A brilliant example of a great movie, ruined utterly by one of the last lines. "Is it still raining, I hadn't noticed."

Bleeeeeccchhhhh.

Defining dickhead

The Sister: [referring to housemate] Cock!

Me: He is a cock. Cock is a good word.

The Sister: A really good word.

Me: Much better than dickhead.

The Sister: I don't know why, but when ever I picture the word dickhead, I see a penis wearing a cowboy hat.

Me: And now that's what I'm going to see when I hear the word dickhead. Thanks very much.

The Sister: I'm not sure why it's wearing a stetson.

Three Billy Goats Gruff

Lost

"There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world." Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffeneger

Meeting of minds

There's something about someone vocalising what you're thinking, just as you're thinking it, that makes you feel warm inside.

Life, or something like it

I was in London for the weekend. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but it culminated in a shopping spree in Canary Wharf. It feels like a lifetime ago that I worked there, and wandered that mall everyday, took the tube to work everyday. Muscle memory took my feet to the eastbound Jubilee line to Canning Town, before I remembered I was heading in the opposite direction. It's actually only been three months since I left, and it feels like a year, and a split second, all at the same time.

I remember myself three months ago, and I'm not sure what I was doing. I was making ends meet, seeing my friends, hoping for the best, making elaborate plans. But always standing still.

Now I'm living through my unexpected deviation. And I'm making ends meet, and seeng my friends, hoping for the best and making elaborate plans. But I'm still standing still. Always with the standing still.

I'm not sure when, if ever, I was properly living. Sometime I feel like every day since I left university was a day of elaborate plans and standing still. That can't be living can it?

I'm not being unhappy here, or even morose. I'm just wondering if that cheesy Hallmark saying is true: "Life happens while you're making other plans." I don't want it to happen without me noticing. I don't want to be reading a guide book while the sites go by.

It's just that in Cape Town I was living half a life, working to come over to the UK. In London I was living half a life, trying to make things work in a badly paid job in the most expensive city in the world. Now I'm living another half life, in a boarding house populated with a bad tempered English guy, his bland girlfriend, a bemused Frenchman and a dispossessed Vietnamese chick.

Unexpected good has come out of my unexpected diversion. Things have worked out better than they could have. And yet. And yet. And yet.

I would like to get on with my real life now, please.

Jealousy...

...makes you nasty,

Nasty makes you fat,

Fat makes you ugly,

But you're already that.

Blogging on the move

I'm sitting on a train going to London. Needless to say, we're stuck, probably to let all the Virgin trains go streaking past. Bastards. MK itself is horrible, a concrete monstrosity punctuated with horrific traffic circles. But the countryside around is quite lovely - very green and hilly and ye olde England. I'm spotting all kinds of houses that in another life I would have as my very own. I woke up this morning with a horrible case of The Yearns (it's the crisp wintry weather that does it). This sojourn is not helping.

What we talk about when we talk about love

I think, theoretically anyway, that the best part of being in love, would be the sure knowledge, the absolute certainty, that you're loved back.

Theoretically.

Happy