Testing Times

Searching the internet for info is great. Unless you search for any symptom, even the mildest. Essentially, what you do – after a few minutes, that’s all it takes – wonder why you are still alive. Or ever lived. Yes, Google, the Reaper. The taker away of peace of mind. I have to hand it to certain American websites who should definitely be avoided. Say, you have had some vague symptom for a little while; not given to hypochondria and/or panic you (that’s me) will be quite happy and certain that it’s nothing.

NOTHING? American websites will tell you to see a doctor IMMEDIATELY lest dire damage will maim you for life, death not necessarily imminent but don’t bank on it. Which is a great pity (the “immediately” bit) when you have already had that teensy weensy symptom for some days. So, as if that isn’t bad enough, you can now (ca 2022 hrs BST – no surgery other than A&E open for business) add another worry to the worrying symptom. The prospect of GUILT. That most sinister invention to mess with the human psyche (animals don’t feel guilt – unless they are dogs and even then I doubt it perturbs them much even when put in the doghouse for minor dismeanour).

GUILT at the fact you were NEGLIGENT. Short of apologizing to yourself, hoping you won’t see fit to sue yourself for damages, you swear yourself to secrecy. No one, not even your closest and dearest (particularly not them), must know that you should have gone to the doctor YESTERDAY. Not even your doctor. “No, no, doctor, I came running to you straight away just in case.” In case of what? Well, in case I should have  come to you earlier and now I (I in bold letter) AM to blame for my imminent misery – misery as yet undiagnosed (other than by google).  So not only are you down the route of guilt, you have little choice but lie – just a little. No, lets not call it lying (mustn’t add to aforementioned GUILT); let’s call it white. Self defense.

What brought on this post? Latent hysteria, possibly. And, naturally, google.

I read a blog entry, and it was very informative and most certainly well intended, but I came away wondering whether I’d still be alive in five weeks’ time. Why? Because some conditions don’t even carry symptoms till it’s too late. Well, at least I won’t need to blame myself for that which I didn’t know needs to be investigated. All is good. I’ll be dead guilt free.

Don’t worry, don’t send chocolate, sunflowers will do to keep me happy (whilst alive – later they won’t make any difference),

U

 

Directions

What’s vexing, and few people get it, is that a decision can be the right one at the time, yet turn out the wrong one in the long run.

U

Mad dogs, Englishmen, Sun

I live in a green city. Very green. Parks. Huge, weathered, amazing trees – their trunks  and canopy making you feel secure, giving you happiness and shelter should you seek it. Those parks’ existence and maintenance – and most charming bobbies on the beat – the main reason I am reconciled to paying an ouch amount of council tax.

The other day, walking back from town, a stone throw – depending how far you can throw – from where I live I came across someone I vaguely know. Nice lady. Probably in her mid sixties. Smokes whilst wheezing but then all of us are heading exit by various means if only age or accident. On approach I thought she may have lost the plot because it appeared as if she was talking to one of our stylish black metal with golden inscriptions municipal park bins. As it turned out she’d taken her daughter’s tortoise for a walk. Think beautiful tabby cat, only in a hard shell.

“I can’t understand why she [the tortoise] keeps seeking out the bin”,  she said. Well, one reason, not that I said it out loud, that that bin’s vicinity offered the only shade on a hot summer’s midday. It’s all sorts of things – sad, funny, ridiculous, ludicrous, outrageous, who cares – it ain’t easy to put people right on their misconceptions. She thought the tortoise craved sun. By all evidence it didn’t. Never mind. Sometimes one has to weigh voicing common sense against upsetting someone by showing them the errors of their ways. Yes, poor tortoise. A victim of polite society.

U

 

Calling

Before I get back to the Sculptor and pronouncements on my compromised mental state and lack of humour, here is a thought. Maybe something you’ll recognize. And it touches on many areas in life but one in particular, namely how you earn(ed) your living.

It appears many”fall” into a profession/job/career; little choice being exercised. It just happens. I dare say that way a great deal of potential unhappiness and dissatisfaction lies.

How many times, when you are a child, do you hear some visitor, making your eyes roll, “And what do want to be when you grow up”? I shall refrain from imagining the Sculptor’s answer: “Rude. Lacking in imagination, manners, charm. Not being affable”. That’s not a job, Tom. “Ok then, I’ll take out my frustrations on stone and metal, with my chisel, forging any material into submission, imposing my will. That’ll show them.”

The thought that inspired this post’s subject was something I have heard often in reply to someone voicing how much they dislike their day job. It has a whiff of tragic about it:

“Yes, BUT (!) you are so GOOD at it”. It’s almost like the ultimate trap. Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you like it. Ask the Sculptor. According to him I am scrubbing toilets at Chambers*. Which I am very very very good at. Do I like it? Sure … I am good at it.

Did you plan, did you fall [into], did you have a calling you followed or had to abandon, are you happy with your choice – in hindsight, at the time?

U

*The Sculptor will deny all knowledge that he said that. But then, as his self confessed pisshead will confirm, the length of a glass is as short as an addled brain’s recall.

Nerve Centre

Sometimes I wish I were given to headaches. They are a marvellous excuse to retreat from life when it gets heavy. You just lie in a darkened room. Come to think of it that’s probably why I don’t have headaches. The thought of lying in a darkened room with nothing to do not appealing to me.

My first mother’s-in-law choice of weapon to shut up her brood and her husband were sudden, if predictable, onsets of migraine. Not that I doubted her migraines. I didn’t. I have seen migraines in action, not least one of my colleagues (I was her sidekick) working in her darkened office, tears involuntarily streaming down her face with the pain of it.

Alas I am not [given to headaches]. I remember two; what’s called tension headaches, in my early twenties, in quick succession. They were amazing. My head in some sort of crushing my skull vice grip. Nearly pushing me over the edge. I’d have killed (a fly) for some morphine.

What brought on this sudden thought of headaches? Maybe my quest for eighty days in the desert. After serving life in blogland. If only I weren’t such a people person I’d love a silent retreat. But then, I suppose, being self employed, leading a nine to five solitary life, solitude which I have cherished from my earliest childhood, I engage with people more than people who are drowned in people.

Tell me about your headaches. Real, imagined, metaphorical ones. In absence of any of the above, toothache will do. Backache. Pain in the neck. Stubbed toe.  Pulled muscle. Which reminds me: Last night, bloody hell, one of my calves took it upon itself to remind me of its existence. What a cramp!

U

 

794 words

The last few days haven’t been good. I shouldn’t admit to it since those who are less than well disposed towards me will make good use of it.

Still, shame is mine, so admitting to having made a mega mistake serves me right.

The Angel thinks blogging isn’t good for me, isn’t my medium. He was pretty pissed off seeing me under the weather because of some blogging fockers making me into something I am not. What the Angel doesn’t understand is that I don’t mind the fockers. Let them gorge themselves on my innards. What’s it to me? I can go without. The prospect of forty days in the desert amounting to bliss. Make it eighty.

No, what pisses me off big time and put me out of sorts the last few days that people in blogland can make up any old story about you. Well, I suppose even that is digestible. What upset me the most how one Rachel turned on me, again, just as I thought she and I had turned a corner. It was good while it lasted.

Over the years I got to know her, via her blog and comments she left on others, I often thought her vaguely unhinged; so are many people. Doesn’t make them lepers to be avoided. But to actually, on the strength of one post of mine nothing to do with her (now deleted), to get her claws out again, her throwing my offer of friendship aside,  is unsettling. And yes, upsetting. I replied something to the effect that she isn’t the center of my universe and that that post was actually addressing someone else. Didn’t wash. It’s incredible that someone thinks all revolves around them. I suppose a psychologist would have field day. Which reminds me … oh dear, now I am laughing. Why I am laughing is for that circle to never find out (I am sworn to silence) and for me … well, laugh, I suppose. Yes, Circle Sweethearts, you don’t know the half of it. In the meantime stick to Chloe.

Yes, Chloe. She is an interesting character. I am not saying that because John and Rachel have decreed that I am Chloe.

Chloe is a character in her own right. She is a thorn in some sides. To the tune that some call her a troll. As we all know any self respecting blogger does have to have a troll. A bit like the Sculptor who – beast that he is – grabbed me, in despair and absence of anyone else, to be able to claim that he has a stalker. Stalkers (ask Nick – he reads all the right papers and magazines) are the latest fashion accessory. If you can’t claim you are being stalked you amount to nothing, nada, zilch. In absence of a real life stalker just make one up, a bit like what sculptors do. Making it up. With their chisel.

Back to Chloe. Whilst often I don’t get her point (say, when she mentions that Rachel, Cro and John are old – what’s that got to do with the price of cheese?), she also delivers some absolute pearls. Laugh out loud pearls. And she appears to be well read, intelligent. Yesterday, she recommended Rosa von Praunheim to John. John who doesn’t know whether he or his bulldog Winnie has farted, can’t differentiate one bit of snot from another, immediately dismissed her suggestion to google RvP. That’s what he does. Dismiss. Think again, John. Rosa (not his real name, his assumed name) did make films. Acclaimed films. Maybe that is what brought him to Chloe’s mind considering that your blog is called “Disasterfilm”. Or maybe the fact that Rosa is gay.  Which influenced material matter of his films. What the hell am I doing? Next I know Chloe will berate me for second guessing her intentions. Never mind. I am getting it from all sides. One more won’t matter.

Lost my thread there. Yes, Rachel. I am upset that dinghy overturned. Wonder what would have happened, as has many times in my life on account of my father’s career us moving every five minutes, if I had come up to her, on my first break in my new school, never shy being forward: “Would you like to be my friend?” She’d probably spat at me.  Her being full of fear, suspicion. Always seeing the bad instead of giving the good a chance. Fast forward a few decades and something that never happened to me has happened to me. Rejected outright. Maybe Chloe will have me.

I’ll shed one more tear on behalf of Rachel gone wrong and then put her – between John and Nick – into my hall of shame. The key is under the mat.

Hugs, hisses and general disenchantment,

U

Primal

My trusted lot, I need your help.

I have just come across a blog post that is so wrong about gender on so many levels if I don’t watch it I’ll turn into one known Canadian who has most forceful, convincing and obvious views on that subject (and many others) – and let rip.

So what do I do? Do I use my full arsenal (Alternative Comment Box) on my own turf and put my argument, or do I just slink away in the firm knowledge that whatever I’ll say, no matter how well reasoned,  will make no difference on the blogger’s-in-question outlook on life?

Question Number Two: Do you think there is a cut-off-point in terms of age when you leave the older generation and their blogs/opinions just to it? Is it kind or is it cruel to keep shtum, not challenge them and bite on a piece of well seasoned driftwood in order to stifle your screams instead?

U

 

The Alternative Comment Box, Short Term – Consideration

John left me a comment to my last post yesterday and it reads “You are upsetting me Ursula, I don’t need this”.

I took note of it, did not – as promised – release the awfully long, and rather awful, post I had penned yesterday morning and referred to, left pending to ponder on. Just as, late in the day, I was returning to my desk, John’s comment stopped me in my tracks. I like to think things over when other people are hurting. So I slept on it.

Yes, when other people are hurting. Look at John’s sentiment again: I am upsetting HIM. HE doesn’t need IT.

What I find staggering that John does not address the fact that I too, maybe, made abundantly clear, am upset by his/the trio’s (in)action. For Pete’s sake, is everything just about you John, Joy and the Sculptor? Do you actually ever fucking (falling into Rachel speak) care about anyone else but you?

Last night, in wake of your plea, I nearly softened. Poor John, I thought to myself. Mustn’t upset him. Luckily, sleep tends to act like a windscreen wiper. All becomes clear in the morning – what has become clear that you don’t give a shit about me. Nothing of what I have said over the last two or so weeks (and before) has sunk in. All you see, all that counts, is that YOU are upset. That YOU don’t need “it”, whatever IT is.

Sorry, John, you should have thought about that before. Before you edited me even the Angel wouldn’t recognize his mother by the way the three of you have managed to depict me.

Actions do have consequences, John: You can’t spit at someone as the three of you did and then demand that I don’t wipe your spit off my face. 

U

 

The Alternative Comment Box, 11 – Regret

Let me give some satisfaction to John the Samaritan, miserable Joy and charmless Sculptor. The last thirty six hours of my life have not been good. You managed the unthinkable: Reducing me to tears.

I am NOT crying because of all the shit you offload at me NOT at MY doorstep but your own blogs and comment boxes. Heavily edited. Every which way.

I am crying at my failure. My failure being that I so misjudged all of you. Crying at the idiot (Cro’s idea not mine) I truly am that I thought you worthy of my attention. That I actually liked all three of you. Well, John is easy to like; neither did he ever claim to be an intellectual. Joy I liked because she is a lost soul; the Sculptor I liked I don’t know why … maybe because he reminded my of Sisyphus.

Crying that I was fool enough to try again and again and again and again to mend bridges. To no avail. If you want to define “failure” try “to no avail”.

I am crying having allowed to be abused to an extent I didn’t think possible. Who am I kidding? “Allowed”, as if I were in control? I just was [abused].

I am crying at the shameful fact that (apart from John’s feeble attempts) none of you will address me on my blog, stand by your slander. You were so vocal (on your own blogs, so trigger happy) – Now? Now nothing.

Who are you people? Do you actually have any feelings other than for yourselves (this question mainly addressed at Joy and Sculptor)? Do you actually ever consider the impact your (in)actions have on others? Does your world center on your navels, your navels only? Are other people just dummies to furnish your self centered habitat?

Anyway, be happy at having achieved nothing more than a grown woman cry at her own foolishness. Congrats. Rejoice.

U

Doing and stalling

Why is it that even a “doer” (someone who gets things done) stalls on occasion?

Remember, the French can’t pronounce aitch (“h”) so if you book a room you book it in an otel. Which is why I love French because instead of saying “I hate” (the drama of it) you find yourself saying “I ate it, I ate it, I ate it!” May indigestion be ours.

And that is, so I believe, where the crux lies. You stall because you, maybe not so much as “ate” it, but you sure don’t want to eat it. Which, neatly, brings us to one of my pet subjects, no not pet “ates” – just an inconvenience, namely self sabotage.

Why oh why oh why, wise ones?

U