2007 June « Billygean.co.uk

Archive for June, 2007

Yuppy

Published June 30, 2007 BoyNextDoor , photos 3 Comments

I have spent the last 2 days cleaning and packing and finding spiders and swearing, and making coffee in the MICROWAVE, oh readers, you know how this pains me, and eating ready meals and cleaning and packing. And mopping up ants, because I didn’t know what else to do with them. And, of course, listening to the BoyNextDoor’s reggae, which, in the total absence of TV, computer and music, was almost welcome. Almost.

The mayhem that usually surrounds the ridiculous house moving is made worse by the fact that my house contract does not start for a week. I am officially homeless. Unless you count the fact that I live at home anyway.

Pictures of beautiful, new (so new it’s UNFURNISHED as yet) house to follow. Obviously everyone wants the bedroom with the balcony. I am mostly still pleased that it has real, fluffy carpets and is 5 MINUTES from ballet, shopping, Mailbox and FutureLawFirm.

The units etc are being added hopefully before we move in…

About 1/10th of bedroom one – with balcony *pines*

Some of the garden

Wherein Harold Pinter makes sense 4 years too late

Published June 26, 2007 blonde moments , embarrassing 1 Comment

MindReader, FutureHousemate and I are in FutureHousemate’s living room.

I am aleady cooing over Grand Designs. Oh yes – houses and babies this week on Billygean.

“What’s that?” I say, looking at the strange contraption on the TV. It appears to be moving food from floor to floor. How cool!

“A dumb waiter,” MindReader says, raising a blond eyebrow.

I pause for a moment. I feel my face redden. I can’t even laugh.

“Oh,” I whisper.

“What?” FutureHousemate says, setting his tea down.

“I thought-” I say. “Oh God. I thought that the restaurant I worked at were calling me a dumb waiter.”

MindReader goes rather red.

It dawns on me further. “I never did get why I was putting the food in the wrong places. Oh God.”

MindReader stares at me for a moment.

I wish I had not spoken. Why can’t I just have these revelations privately?

“No wonder you were fired,” he says, eventually.

The single life, it does not suit

Published June 24, 2007 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I stand en pointe and stretch as high as I can for the cereal. The tannoy-lady in Asda is shouting about how the store will close in 3 minutes.

My hand flails uselessly along the top of the shelf.

“Can I help?” a voice says behind me.

I turn, smiling ruefully, and look down.

He is holding a baby, dressed entirely in yellow.

“Thanks. I can take her,” I say quickly.

He hands the baby over and she promptly sucks my finger. I coo in spite of my self, and she smiles at me, all crinkly eyes and baby powder.

I feel him staring at me and, quite frankly, ignore him. He puts the cereal in my trolley. I continue to coo.

“Er, can I have her back now?” he says.

I reluctantly hand her over.

And then buy myself a massive box of Roses to cheer myself up.

Too poignant not to blog

Published June 24, 2007 Uncategorized 4 Comments

I recognise him instantly, but look two or three times in case I’m wrong.

It’s definitely him, the tall, loping figure carrying his coat over his arm in that way he did.

He’s blond, and thinner, but it’s definitely him.

I cross the road quickly, for I am not sure I could take being ignored entirely.

This way, I think, as we walk past each other, we can both pretend we never saw the other.

Except he will read this and know, but this is fine, I think, because I deserve everything I get. Believe me reader, I do.

I fiddle with my phone, my ipod, look anywhere but across the road.

After a moment I can’t take it, and squint as his square frame retreats into the sunlight.

I watch him for the last time as he rounds the corner, watch the tips of his hair disappear below a flower-lined wall.

For this is what it has come to, and that, I suppose, is how it ended.

Did I say a distinction?

Published June 24, 2007 Dad , Home , blonde moments , embarrassing Leave a Comment

“They’re doing a 5km run at my new work,” Mad Father says, sipping his celebratory Billygean-is-not-thick-after-all-and-I-have-a-new-job pint.

“Ooh, are you going to do it?” I say, remembering when I tried to jog to the post office and genuinely thought I had an embolism.

“Maybe,” he says. “It’s to raise money for things like township in Africa and-”

“Township?” I say.

He looks at my face for a moment.

“Yes,” he says. “So they can get to work and reduce their carbon footprint.”

“Oh.”

I am silent for a few moments, sipping my wine, thinking it through. You can, according to MindReader, see the cogs.

“So, this boat…”

“Yes,” he says, fiddling with a beer mat. “Basically it takes a load of people to work. Since it has a sail it works on wind power so it’s better for the environment.”

“What if the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction?” I say.

“Well, then they use tacking,” he says, demonstrating the zig-zag movement with the beer mat.

“Oh, I see. What about people who need to get to town, but don’t live near the sea?”

“They’re all on wheels, none of these are waterboats. That’s why they’re called townships. They have sandyachts in flat beaches in Britain so you can still use the boats when the tide’s really far out,” he says.

“Ohhh,” I say. It all makes sense really. “Well, these townships are good then, aren’t they? A good idea,” I say, nodding wisely.

I have since wikipedia’d township.

There will be words in the morning.

One mark off a distinction incidentally

Published June 22, 2007 law 5 Comments

Plumes of smoke fill the club.

It is 2:30am and I am singing Bon Jovi at the top of my lungs. It is the night before results and everybody is out, raising their glasses and pushing their hair off their sweaty faces regardless of passes and fails.

There is a certain unity about all this. We asked legal questions at 2 in the morning, walked home bare feet from clubs, rolled our eyes in morning lectures. They carried me through some emotional trauma, towards a funny kind of independence, towards seeing what else is out there.

Giggling in the taxi on the way home, I knew a fail would be nonsensical, for this course united us in everything other sense.

I went to bed at six a.m last night, and, shaking, walked in the rain to get my results at nine.

I looked through the rain at my friends’ faces, those who passed and those who failed, raised my coffee to them all.

And for the record, I passed.

I get my results on Friday, for those of you who need it spelling out to you

Published June 21, 2007 law , paganism 1 Comment

My hair smells of coconut, dripping down my back as I sit in the candlelight.

I strike a match, squinting as it lights, illuminating the curls of incense smoke. I light the last candle for Midsummer, carefully, inhaling the smells of berries coming from the oil burner.

My feet warm against the carpet, I try to think of fruitfulness, fire, the wheel of the year. I think about strength and hope, surrounded by the circle of candles.

My mind begins to wander listlessly, unusually for me of late. I fruitlessly try and stop the empty, chasing thoughts, but eventually I stand, pace, sprawl on my bed. My eyes are wide open now, the scents and smells only teasing my racing mind. My stomach churns and hands wring, going over and over the pain and regrets since Ostara, through Beltane and now, Midsummer.

The sun is supposed to brighten lives, I think, remembering the nightmares, my father’s long, sad face, the unforgiving textbooks.

I stare into open window, the candles reflected in its smooth black surface, and my thoughts become prayers. For Friday, not to be too nervous, and for the aftermath, when it is a truer reality than I’d like to admit that I will have to deal with the terrible fallout of failing.

If I have failed, I think, I lose everything. I stand again, heart racing, and imagine it: calling my law firm, owing them £11,000,getting my job revoked. Not being able to be a lawyer. The thought thuds in my stomach and I sit down again.

It is a crying shame that no amount of spiritual perspective can change this.

I blink rapidly, and vow not to think about it again. I blow out the candles and stare into the night.

We consider these minutes golden

Published June 19, 2007 reminiscing 4 Comments

I feel as if a new Billygean is emerging from the ashes of some past life.

She says yes a lot more. She no longer favours nights in with a keyboard, roaming the cool house in the early hours.

She can sometimes be found up very early, showering before anyone else even stirs, pacing the kitchen waiting to tell her father her new last-minute plans, in train stations as the sun rises over the tracks.

She eats out a lot. Fingering new foods, breads dipped in oils, Moroccan spices, sweet, hot fruit. She drinks too, not in that old, urgent way but savouring the taste, the velvety wine smooth in the candlelit glass.

She has long talks with friends,at their houses, in cars at midnight, last-minute in rickety pubs.

Even when she sits still within her old life things feel different. Everything has a slightly decadent air. The baths are sweeter, the water darker and swirling. The candles glow brighter and even the walks she takes to those fields are somehow more savoured, more precious as the sun drenches the fields with the last of her beams.

It is almost as if this Billygean should be wrapped up and stored away, for this spontaneity, the explosive nature and heightened senses cannot last. It is as if life has slowed down to allow her to make these memories, squeezing them like fresh oranges out of each minute.

I think it’s actually for polishing

Published June 17, 2007 Dad Leave a Comment

“So it says in my contract that I need a better car,” my Dad says.

“I know,” I say, feeling smug. “I read the contract.”

“Hm,” he says. “Obviously I’m not just going to go and buy one so I bought these,” he says, holding up some wheel covers.

“You’re pimping it up then,” I say.

“Yep. And this,” he says, holding up a giant yellow mitt.

“Is that to distract them from your shitty car?”

“Yep, that’s what it’s for.”

On Pigeons

Published June 14, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment

“Right I’m off,” MindReader says to us. He sets his pint down and rubs his eyes. “I’m knackered, hope I stay awake in my car.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Have you ever fallen asleep at the wheel?” I say.

“No, but my sister’s bloke did.”

“What happened?”

“Crashed into the central reservation and wrote off his car.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Yep. He got it on the insurance though. He told them it was a pigeon.”

He pauses.

“That he hit. Not that a pigeon was driving.”

Dramatis Personae

MindReader - boyfriend, putter upper, always knows what I'm thinking. Laughs at me a lot
MadFather - my crazy Dad
DoctorSister - overachiever, receiver of my many hypochondriacle phone calls
OldestFriend - helps me with painting, wrapping Christmas presents, and anything remotely creative
BestFriend - talks for hours with me about religion, death, marriage and why our faces are sometimes red
Octopus - MadFather's lodger, so-called because he is lanky.
Mush - Octopus's very nice dog.

Billygean.co.uk

Archive for June, 2007

Yuppy

Wherein Harold Pinter makes sense 4 years too late

The single life, it does not suit

Too poignant not to blog

Did I say a distinction?

One mark off a distinction incidentally

I get my results on Friday, for those of you who need it spelling out to you

We consider these minutes golden

I think it’s actually for polishing

On Pigeons

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