Writing

You can tell when I've been writing poetry as it's usually when I'm in bed, around 10 - 11 at night (hence why I sleep with a pen and paper by my bed) and there will be scattered leaves of an A4 pad lying on the floor. It is true that I am actually addicted to stationery (along with chocolate) and am unable to pass a branch of Paperchase or Waterstones or even better, independent stationers, without investigating what they have on offer. However I would never dream of soiling any of my beautiful notebooks with my first attempts at poems in case it spoils them. For some reason I also have a different style of handwriting for writing rough poetry at night - a slanted and scrawly style which even I find hard to read. It is completely different from my neat and rather upright (uptight) every day handwriting but this can't be anything to do with speed writing as I use my every day handwriting for lecture notes at University on a weekly basis with no problems. It is just habit and it works for me.

Take this evening for example. I've managed a couple of poems and a couple which have the potential to either work or to be drivel - they could go either way. Hard to tell. There could definitely be something workable there. I'll have to put them away and maybe get them back out in a couple of days. Meanwhile I'm going to bed surrounded by sheets of cotton and sheets of paper.

Night all.

Ice Ice Baby

Lecture today from the British Library. Very interesting but slightly marred by the freezing air con which turned what had been an admittedly warm room into one of the lesser known regions of the North Pole. I would not have been surprised if a Polar Bear had wandered in at some point during the talk. That said, as the room was quite full, if one had done so there wouldn't have been anywhere for them to sit.

We got to hear all about the British Library's vision for the future, and given that I have visited it quite recently, I could envisage it quite well. It does look and sound like a lovely place to work but I understand there's a hiring freeze on. Appropriate given today's lecture room temperature.

Chameleon

I don't know whether it is to do with being deeply unfashionable in my teenage years (that said, isn't everyone?) but I tend to go for camouflage. I don't mean that I troll round wearing desert fatigues and combats in the Kent town where I current reside (though to be honest I'm not sure that would actually cause anyone's eyebrows to raise), but that I use my clothes to hide. When I can wear what amounts to a uniform, I will. For work this amounts to black trousers and a top of some description, for home, it's jeans. To think that I spent my formative years wearing my school uniform skirt short, my shirt untucked and my tie the wrong way round in an attempt (along with everyone else in my school) to stamp some personality on it. As the crowd in The Life of Brian shout "I'm an individual!"

Except... except that now I have lost weight I am rediscovering clothes. Kind of. I am not exactly rushing out and wearing mini skirts to the office (too draughty, too impractical and too difficult to sit with your legs curled up under the desk in what is frankly a DVT threat but oh so comfy). Yet I am now thinking more about what I wear and how I look. Yes, you will still find me in jeans, but sometimes, just sometimes, I'll maybe surprise you.

Jasper - a jewel worth queuing for

So today Kate and I went to hear Jasper Fforde talking about his new book 'One of our Thursdays is Missing'. As usual he was interesting and came across as the sort of person you would really like to have at a dinner party. It does make me vaguely wonder how much of this personality is an act 'JF the author' and what the real person is like - or if he is really as he seems. I never really question interviews with actors in papers, I just assume that they are as they portray themselves.

Anyway the excerpts that Jasper read sounded brilliant and I am looking forward to reading the new book (I am obviously not a complete JF addict as I haven't put down my current book to read it!). Could possibly have done without his comment when he was signing and stamping the books about being a frustrated librarian though...

Mr(s) Messy

There are many benefits to sharing a house but there are, however, equally many - or possibly more - drawbacks.

After sharing this house with these flatmates for some months, I was coming to the conclusion that perhaps I was an incredibly, scary neat freak - however yesterday I met up with a friend who I shared a house with at university for several years and she pointed out that I wasn't. She'd lived with me and while I was quite tidy, I wasn't anywhere near as tidy as she was. She also didn't think I was mad. Then I described the house to her.

The living room is permanently covered in the wet washing of one flatmate (everyone else manages to get their stuff to dry in their bedrooms, despite their rooms being smaller than hers). It gives the place such a lived in touch, having the living room resembling a laundry. There's that, the fact that all her work is always strewn across the dining room table so you always have to move her stuff to eat there. Admittedly she says that's fine, just shove her stuff out of the way but tbh I think it's kind of missing the point. Surely if it ever occurred to her to clear up after herself then I wouldn't find myself daily clearing a path for myself in order to use a work surface in the kitchen, trying to ignore the mountainous pile of washing up (and if she actually does that, she ignores the towering pile on the draining board as she has never cleared that - I think she believes that fairies do that), emptying the washing machine so I can use it because her washing has been in it for two days, moving her stuff so I can use the table..

However this is all my problem because no-one in the house is bothered. I have been labelled as a neat freak by her and my other flatmates who just accept and add to the mess. Even my ex who isn't the tidiest guy in the world was shocked by the state of the place.

I think I will need to either find a place where I share with someone normal or live alone...

Fame

Recently I have joined an amateur dramatic society. In doing so, I have discovered several things. It is very different being a mover than it is being a dancer, being a singer is different to being a mover and it is extremely frustrating joining the cast late when everyone knows everyone else and all the parts have been given out. I was already aware from years of hiding my (lack of) dancing prowess in large groups of fellow females that I wasn't going to be a star dancer. These dancers are always at the front of the stage in any appropriate (and not so appropriate) song showing off their moves. The movers on the other hand are allowed to bumble along at the back doing simple repetitive actions as long as they don't get in the way of the dancers. Oh and everyone has to sing at the same time. Now singing and dancing (or rather moving) has never been a problem for me before - at clubs, in my room, whatever, but when I realised I actually had to do the same movements at the same time as everyone else I came to a grinding halt. Which is where I currently am.

Learning the songs isn't really a problem - I have the music (yes, I know I technically can't read music but I can feel where it goes if you see what I mean) and I also have the Broadway musical soundtrack, which is the version we are doing. So that's fine - or at least it would be, if people made a final decision on whether we were singing something, or if it was going to just be the dancers singing it, or the principal cast members...and so it goes on.

Hopefully by the end of all this we should have a great show. I really hope so as it's on for several days, including a matinee.

The day afterwards I'm singing Faure's Requiem.

Always was a glutton for punishment

Six months on

Well I have been sadly neglecting this blog. Sorry. Not intentional but I've been doing other stuff (assignments and reading for my Masters, reading for fun, and rehearsals for the amateur dramatic society I decided to join in a moment of pure insanity). So six months on is everything in the flat all lovely?

Since my last posting, nothing has really changed in the flat (things that didn't work still don't, things that might have been working now probably don't). I've gone from writing cross emails about it to being resigned about the situation. There are only so many times that you can ask for someone stop water coming through the living room wall. However I have said on Twitter and to people I know that are thinking of renting, not to use our lettings agent and mentioned the treatment (or lack of) we've had. So yet again I will be looking for somewhere to live this summer, me and my bookcases.

In the meantime I'll be working on my dissertation. My plan is to write one on libraries and librarians in contemporary fiction - although at present I am still working on my proposal. I have never had to write a dissertation before and am feeling more than slightly intimidated. When I was in the first year of my Masters the dissertation was aeons away - I could barely see it, and so it didn't worry me at all. Now it is here and the final term finishes in six weeks. It is only after the end of term that the proposal is due - and although we will have supervisory meetings, we won't actually have that much contact with anyone. I am already nervous and I know that I am not the only one. I am not sure if this is a comfort or not tbh.

So think of me, writing these two final assignments, then facing the monumental dissertation. It'll be fine, I know it will, but atm my brain is having a problem accepting it.