oh take me back to the start

No matter how many times I tell myself I don't regret anything, sometimes I wish we could go back to the time when it was all simple.

But there's the thing... it wasn't, really. I just hadn't been fully sucked into the complications. I keep thinking about the first few weeks of last term, and what I was thinking, and how it wasn't really a reflection of what was actually going on.

I almost think that by going back to when it was simple I want to go back to the time when I didn't care as much, when everything was safe. I sometimes suspect that at least one of the reasons I've avoided getting as close to anyone as I have now is because the idea of caring so much scares the hell out of me.

It's just... I don't know, weird. Like, in three weeks Neverwhere will all be over - which is a fucking scary thought in itself given that we've only had one week of rehearsals - and I keep thinking about the day we had the first meeting last summer. It doesn't seem any time at all, but everything's changed since then. Or maybe it's just that then I knew absolutely nothing of the complications. All I wanted was something in my life that wasn't SCAN.

And at the start of last term anything Neverwhere-related made me happy because it wasn't SCAN, or Liam, and I could forget about that. And now... it still isn't, but it's so much more complicated. When I was happy and enjoying myself last term I suspect sometimes other people weren't. And now I wonder, when we're all together, how much pretending we're all doing.

I pretend, because I have to. I might not want to, but if those are the terms on which I can have what I want I'll go along with it.

Then, of course, there's the fact that I seem to be stuck between SCAN and Theatre Group - two sets of people who seem to loathe each other and who both have claims on my time and my loyalty. (I'll never forget Liam bawling about Theatre Group down the phone to Ben 'Who is in charge of this crackpot organisation?!?' when he thought a Theatre Group commitment would stop Ben doing something he, Liam, wanted him to do for SCAN. I was having hysterics on the SCAN office sofa.)

On an organisational level, if it ever came to a choice, I would go with SCAN without a second thought.

On a personal level... I don't know.

And when they're not pulling me in separate directions they're horribly interconnected. Liam, for some reason I cannot possibly imagine, seems to take an intense interest in my relationship status and, on one recent occasion, started discussing it when he would perhaps have been better to remain silent. I was not actually there, though I almost wish I had been just to see the resulting awkwardness.

And yeah, I know, this doesn't make much sense, but it's about the only chance I've had to write any of it down lately. Sometimes writing stuff down helps me work out what I feel about it. I gave up my diary in December when I couldn't bring myself to write down that the guy I'd been seeing had finished with me, or why. And I've never got back into it (mainly because at the moment when I get into bed I am so tired all I want to do is go to sleep). So... yeah, pointless ramble ;-)

- I wish life was simple.

- I wish I wasn't a mathematician who tried to quantify things like emotions and feelings, because life isn't simple and you can't quantify things like that.

- I wish I wasn't needy and insecure and jealous, and that my prediction that getting into a relationship would make it worse not better was wrong, because it's a fucking horrible character trait.

- I wish I could have what I want without hurting anyone else.

- I wish there was something I could do to make everything alright.

- I wish I'd learned my lesson about prowling round the Internet looking for stuff I shouldn't, because if it's never made me feel any better before why should now be any different?

- I wish I knew how the hell it turned out that I ended up here, now, feeling like this, and if it was really as inevitable as I sometimes suspect.

- I wish my mum was wrong, or that she had kept her thoughts to herself, because it wasn't until she said No, this is different that I realised it was. Because if it's not different - if it's not serious - then when the day comes it won't hurt as much.

- Love is probably the most frightening word in the English language.

- I wish I had more time.

- I wish that if I went to bed now like I ought to there was an actual chance I would sleep and not keep thinking about all this stuff. Seriously, what the hell happened to my ability to sleep for hours longer than I ought to?

- I wish that I could use London as an escape route like I used to, but I can't, and I never will until I can get on the Tube without thinking of Neverwhere.

- I wish I had the energy - or the ability - to pretend when I'm feeling tired and crabby and depressed and could put a good face on it instead of wanting to curl up somewhere and not speak to anyone.

- I wish I didn't feel so useless sometimes. I wish I knew what to do and say to help.

- I wish I'd known what was going to happen instead of it creeping up on me and catching me unawares.

- I wish I could rip someone's head off without consequently depriving the SCAN and Neverwhere teams of my presence through being incarcerated in jail. It most likely wouldn't solve any problems but it'd make me feel an awful lot better.

- I wish I didn't have to do maths. Sometimes the negatives of doing a PhD - such as doing maths, for example - seriously outweigh the positives.

I still don't regret any of it, though. If I had my time over I'd be there walking into the press room on Sabb Results Night when I did.

(And that's the scariest thought. It was almost someone else. If another person had been free that night, none of this would ever have happened.)

This post was brought to you by extreme PMS, sexual frustration and, as mentioned, a desire to kill someone who's really, really pissed me off.

A few months back, I volunteered - as if I didn't have enough to do - to write blogs about the postgraduate experience for Prospects.ac.uk. Because my postgraduate experience consists of doing as little work towards my degree as I can possibly get away with, my blogs tend to be about things I have done for SCAN or Neverwhere, which are far more interesting and exciting than anything maths-related.

Sometimes, though, I can't quite work out the style I want to go for. I try and aim to write stuff like I write on here - which has been nothing for the last few months, so not the best level to aim at ;-) - but can't always manage to pull it off in the same way. So in an attempt to get it done quickly and thereby go to bed sooner I am fooling my brain into thinking it isn't writing a Prospects blog after all ;-)

( Neverwhere auditions )

That's that done... though it took me longer than I would have liked.

As for the rest of my life during the last few months, it's gone something like this: SCAN, Neverwhere, Chocolate Eclairs, mayonnaise, Firefly, too much sugar, not enough sleep, no work at all, vodka, deathlist, complications of the relationship variety.

But I look back to Sabb Results Night, the moment not perhaps at which it all started but at which the events that led up to here and now began, and I ask myself if I'd have done anything differently, and I wouldn't. Things don't turn out how you expect them to. I wouldn't have foreseen any of this ten months ago. But there's part of me - and whatever happens I hope there's always part of me - that is very glad Sabb Results Night turned out the way it did.

I think something is going to change this weekend. I can feel it in my knees and my knuckles and the tips of my fingers, and in the way I can't sit still or concentrate for any length of time.

I think it might happen tonight.

I feel like Professor Trelawny in Harry Potter. You know, 'the thing you have been dreading will happen... whenever it happened.' Because I've been dreading it ever since I first began to suspect it was going to happen. At least when it's happened I'll know.

And given that my skills at surmising the states of people's relationships from Facebook appear to be incredibly sharp at the moment, it's going to happen sooner or later.

On which subject - but no. I won't go there, not now.

Not ever, if I've any sense.

SCAN has eaten my life. That is all there is to say about the last few weeks.

If I've learned anything in the past - oh, eighteen months or so, it's that things never turn out the way you expect them to. Like for example, this time last year I wouldn't have imagined for one minute that I would be appointed news editor. I have a maths degree and no experience writing news; not an ideal combination. But I was.

And I wouldn't have thought that, having been appointed, it'd take over my life to the extent it has - though there's the issue of how much I have allowed it to take over my life (comparing the way I am so insistent that other things - such as Guiding, for example - do not take over my life).

Because despite my best intentions - and things not turning out the way you expect them to - I spent a lot of time this summer doing SCAN stuff. Far more than I had imagined, or intended. I ask myself, if things had been different, would I still have done it? Would I still have wanted to do it? But the fact is that there are a lot of things that have happened to me since I made the decision to go back to university that led up to me writing for SCAN. It's hard to say that if something had been different I wouldn't have ended up getting as involved as I did.

And anyway, if your editor rings you up at half-nine in the evening, bouncing off his chair in excitement, to tell you that he's just got hold of the biggest story SCAN has had in years and you're the only person who can write it, you're not about to turn him down and tell him to go find someone else to do it. Not even if it means you spending an entire night in the office writing the damned thing.

I can only ever remember once spending an entire night without sleep - when I went to the Lord of the Rings trilogy showing. Even when I went to Disneyland I got some sleep. My experience has shown me that it isn't something I'm good at. I wasn't good at it on Thursday, either. I managed to stay awake and functioning till 5.00, when I finished the story, but then had to collapse onto the settee for a couple of hours whilst everyone else carried on working.

To make it worse - well, a few things made it worse. One was that we ended up missing the print deadline. Around 7.30 we decided - or Lizzie decided, having had more experience of such things than any of the rest of us thanks to doing it all last year with Dan - that if we did make it we wouldn't be doing ourselves justice. No-one was really in a position to put up a good argument. In fact, I could not argue at all, as I couldn't actually speak by then. I could just stare at my computer screen like a zombie and think what a stupid thing it was that I had done.

And then on Friday night it was the SCAN social. I did get a few hours' sleep on Friday afternoon but not enough to make me feel like socialising. I was quite looking forward to the chance to meet lots of new people - it was joint with the radio and TV people - but in the event was fit for absolutely nothing. Not impressed.

We finished up at the Sugarhouse, where they were having some weird wireless disco. Instead of music playing you put on headphones and listened to it through those. It was good because you could actually talk as well as dance, but it just looked so weird to see people dancing to no music. So weird. I was glad I saw it, because it was just surreal, but by about 12.30 I'd had enough. I had to go home because if I hadn't I'd just have ended up killing someone - possibly some drunk randomer who bumped into me (it was odd the way people seemed to lose their sense of direction with headphones on) but more likely someone more directly responsible for me not going to bed on Thursday night, which wouldn't have done us any good ;-)

And then I went and sat in the car park and cried for about ten minutes, which I know was at least 85% down to having no sleep. But the thing is, I've never cared about anything like this before. Till now I've sort of drifted through life, doing things because they were easy and didn't take a lot of effort. Anything bad I had to cope with - I didn't. I just wandered off into my own little world. Even last year that was how I dealt with everything, but now - I can't. I've tried.

And in a way I think all this is incredibly positive. To find something that I really, really enjoy doing and I'm good at - to get to a stage where I'm told I have to write a story because I'm the only one who can - it's very positive after spending five years studying a subject I find vaguely interesting at best. And I know that's my own fault, and that I'm a lot better off doing a PhD than a lot of other things, but still.

But I've promised myself - and this time I really, really mean it - that I'm never spending another night in the SCAN office ;-)

( Wimbledon Photos. Lots of photos )
Goes without saying Joanna took any good ones ;-) And uploading those photos was a lot less painful than I remember it being before... though still pretty tedious.

( The Book Meme )

Why do these things always take so long to fill in?

Stupid Photobucket keeps crashing and won't let me sort out my Wimbledon pictures. Perhaps I killed it trying to upload all 79 at once... though I managed to put them on to Facebook quickly enough.

And it took it long enough to upload them - must have been doing it an hour and a half! I just let it get on with it whilst Mum and I were sorting out a barbeque rota. The barbeque is on Tuesday and for the last few days we've been all OH SHIT WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING. We sent out letters so late we'll get hardly any donations, and at least two local schools have events on the same night so that'll decrease our numbers. So I don't think it'll be our best event... it doesn't help that neither me nor Mum can really summon much enthusiasm for it at the minute. Think we've just got tired/pissed off/burned out with Guiding and have had enough for a bit. Usually I enjoy the barbeque but this year... not really.

Can't really find enthusiasm for much at the minute, apart from sitting and feeling sorry for myself. This is a PAIN IN THE ARSE because I have loads of stuff I need to be doing. I need to catch up with work I didn't do through spending two weeks glued to Wimbledon, there's all this BBQ stuff and other Brownie stuff as well, I need to look into the holiday Joanna and I are supposed to be having in September and, if you can believe it, I've got a story to write for SCAN! And there's me thinking I wouldn't have to do any of that till October.

So yeah, I need my backside kicking, really, cause I haven't got time to sit and be miserable. It's not even like it's a one-off. I did the exact same thing four months ago, but over a different guy. It serves me right for being fickle in my affections ;-) At least that time I snapped out of it pretty quickly.

Though for the Random Amusement Factor, Joanna was telling me today about someone she works with who is a huge Star Trek slasher! They were talking about something, I don't know what, and Joanna - why I don't know - said 'It's like slash!' to which this other woman responded 'You know about slash?!?' Because of course you don't often come across people who know about slash in your daily life, and even if you do you don't necessarily recognise them as such. Joanna, of course, was quick to confess that it was her sister who was the slasher, but had quite a chat about it. She said it was really embarrassing. I thought it sounded really funny! I'm hoping there'll be a work party or something I can go to and get to meet this woman ;-)

I shall be glad when it's summer and I have a break from Guiding for a bit. One of the leaders at our unit wants to run a pack holiday next year. Luckily she does not expect me to go on it, and of course I am more than happy to just let her get on with organising it. However, when inviting other leaders to participate she does not do just that - invite them to participate - she decides who she wants and then asks them. And even that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that she'd quite happily not tell anyone she isn't inviting and just let them find out when it's all up and running. I refuse to let that happen; I am not having anyone on the team thinking things have been planned without them knowing exactly what's going on. So we're going to talk about it at the planning meeting then everyone knows ;-)

As you may have gathered, I do not like it when Guiders make plans and then don't share them with everyone.

Though also, I would never remember it was supposed to be secret, so if I wasn't going to mention it at the meeting I would give the game away anyway. I am useless at remembering what I can talk about and what I can't in situations like this - I'd either forget it was supposed to be secret and start talking about it to someone who shouldn't know or tell a lie and then forget the lie so contradict myself.

Like our Christmas holiday - we have booked to go to Portugal for five days after Christmas. However, we haven't told Grandad yet. Partly because it's Christmas and partly because... long and tedious story... we booked it with some stupid point system of Grandma P's. It happens that Joanna and Paul recently went to stay in the same town we're going to, and when she was telling about it the other week I had to keep stopping myself saying things like 'I'd like to go to the cocktail bar at Christmas' and so on.

Stupid people.

On which happy note, I shall go and send a few emails... see if I can get my act together a bit ;-)

Went to Wimbledon on Friday! Despite various visits in the past for Davis Cup/tours/general Wimbledon appreciation this was the first time I had ever been during the championships to watch tennis, and it was brilliant.

( I Go To Wimbledon )

And now it's all over for another year, which is really sad! The final today was great, though it somehow didn't capture my imagination the way last year's did. I was on the edge of my seat towards the end of the fifth set though!

Hadn't been to London since the end of April, when I went to the Women in Maths day and modelled for Joanna's landlady. It was the longest I'd been without going since the end of last August, and I'd missed it. I even missed Chiswick.

That was the good stuff; other stuff has gone on which is less good. Though after almost twelve months (almost exactly twelve months) it represents me embracing reality for possibly the first time in my life, which I suppose is a positive thing... And I guess it's good I found out now rather than several months down the line, so I've got time to get myself together over the summer, but I'm still sad about all the things I wanted to do that, having worked out the truth in the early hours of this morning, I know I won't be doing.

I think it'll take more than a week and a half, a trip to London and a pair of expensive sunglasses to get over this :-(

To Whom It May Concern

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill today because they got on my nerves...*

Help me to deal with Guiders who piss me off for operating a faulty line of communication, but stop me taking this out on other people whose fault it isn't that I'm up to my neck in Guiding.

Get rid of my PMS, or at least remind me to take evening primrose oil every single day as opposed to just when I remember (which clearly isn't often enough), so I'm no longer a quivering hormonal wreck who's liable to take issues out on people whose fault it isn't etc

Try not to let a combination of extreme heat and an hour of my supervisor's voice send my brain into meltdown so I am unfit to do anything else for the rest of the day.

Help me sort out my love life, especially as regards a certain dense young man who apparently doesn't want to get the hint - you know the one I mean - and stop me being jealous of other girls, especially the ones I know have boyfriends.

Amen Whatever

PS: And if it could be hot at Wimbledon tomorrow that would be great. As I've said before it's always been ridiculously and unseasonably warm when I've been there not to watch tennis; I don't want it to rain when that's what I am there for.

*See A Prayer For The Stressed. It's hilarious.

I am way too PMSsed for Guiders at the minute.

Nearly killed some at the District Meeting this evening. Come the revolution, there's going to be a mass culling ;-)

But seriously, why do they have to take so long discussing things? Why do they have to talk to each other when we're trying to get on and thereby hold the meeting up even more? And why do they have to organise so many fucking events?

Oh yeah, and why am I the only person who seems to be able to operate a line of communication? I tried to make my point about the flower tubs but unfortunately was too pissed off by then to be able to do it in a reasonable manner. When I am slightly less pissed off I am going to email the worst offenders with my issues. I am sorry but this point needs to be made.

I shall just pretend I'm writing a comment piece on a break-down in communication. Then I can be properly scathing without being offensive, which I fear I did not manage tonight. It is not the way to get your points made.