"I'm going to be mature this year. I'm not going to blonde this year. Or make animal noises."
"Yeah that won't work," Mike says, lying on my bed, his dark eyes glinting in the candlelight.
I look down at the card he got me. It's a dog wearing a sunhat.
"I'd LOVE to be a dog wearing a sunhat," I say.
"That's one down.
"Woof."
"Two."
"What was the other thing I said I wouldn't do? I've forgotten already!"
"Er, be blonde."It's my birthday today, so I thought I would tell you a little about me.
I have no sense of direction. I also don't look out of car windows. Today I got a lift to the Bristol Road so walked into uni alone. I ended up and the outer ringroad (whatever this is) and had to ask for directions.
I will mither you about music, and I will look at you distastefully if you tell me you like only "american emo rock". I will make you listen to Eminem, because he is actually a poet. Yes, a poet.
You will hear about my dad within two hours of meeting me. Nobody else has influenced my life so greatly. If you're lucky, I'll reveal my more boyish sides and tell you how a motherboard works and how it's put together. I learnt this while my dad made me listen to Dylan, REM, Neil Young, Eminem.
I will create Drama. I don't mean to, although it looks like I do. I can't help but overreact, and shriek loudly, and swear. Also things just
happen to me.
I will regale you with stories of Blonde Moments. This is not so you think I'm stupid, but just so you laugh, because I want to make you laugh.
I don't know anything about films.
I will rise to political arguments, and you will be surprised by how unreasonably liberal I can be, but I will not agree that you're right. Sometimes, I purposefully bait Tories.
I will criticse any legal drama seen on TV. I will stomp and say they're not naming the right offences, or they called the judge by the wrong name.
I will bore you with law-talk. I can't help it.
Around the house, when I'm carrying things, I will open doors with my feet.
I have baths every day.
I will talk to you about Shakespeare, if you let me. I will probably start with King Lear. My Dad will also crop up in this conversation, because that's really what King Lear's about isn't it?
If you let me, I'll move on to Woolf next, and I will make some love-hate remark about Harry Potter before defaming The Faerie Queene and possibly Seamus Heaney too.
If you talk about sport, I will stop listening. I'm sorry but it's what I do.
I will write about you. You will crop up in some abandoned novel somewhere, and you will read things about yourself you didn't know I ever thought, or noticed. At least, I hope you will.
I will not let you watch me write. I will squeal. Nobody even really knows I write.
I will probably lament about ballet, and how I used to be half-decent. I will blush when I tell you I have a screw in my foot and go quiet as think about how painful a hobby it is to have, as you can never do it fully, but never let it go.
I have the appearance of a tidy person. But I shove things in drawers. If you ever want me to do anything, watch that I don't put it in my desk.
I don't sleep much. 5 hours max. I will not react well if you compare me to margaret Thatcher in this respect. I spend more time making a nest of pillows.
I can't take photos. They're always blurry.
If you know me really well, I'll tell you about the summer before uni in which I was evil. That will crop up in some novel somewhere, the glow of headlights on my drive, the smell of pine trees, the secluded midnight wanderings where I finally got to know you.
You will think I'm a drama queen. I know I am doing this. It's mostly just playing. I am often quiet, and introspective. I like to be alone a lot.
"I feel hot," I say to Mike when he comes into my room.
I am in bed. I am not normally in bed on a Thursday evening. I am normally, and should be, slaving away over fictional problems about people sueing other people for ridiculous things.
Mike steps over the bulges of the duvet and lies down next to me.
"I feel feverish," I say, trying to ignore my folder on the floor which was talking to me earlier. "Moist and fever..."
"What?" Mike says.
"Moist and fever dew? She has a flower on her.... brow?"
"What are you on about?"
"KEATS. I can't remember it."
Mike puts his arms around me and hushes. "You don't need to remember poems now darling, you do law now."
"I can't remember the last line of Keats. I always know Keats."
This is the last thing I remember. I suspect Mike was rather frightened and left the room. Can you blame him?
Labels: Mike
Mike picks up a chocolate caramel square out of the packet and moves it towards my mouth. I nibble at the corners, trying to get the most caramel and the least biscuit.
He takes a bite (well, half the square). I smile at him, sat in his coat on the kitchen stool before lectures.
He puts the rest of the square in his mouth and moves his mouth towards me, rather like in Lady and the Tramp. I panic a bit. How can sharing food whilst trying to kiss ever be romantic. The caramel square is approaching. I smile into his eyes and open my mouth.
I glance down at the square. I bite it, trying to avoid the bits that are wet (oh come on, you know it happens). Some of the biscuit's fallen into my mouth. I try and collect it on my bottom lip whilst the caramel becomes stringy. All this, whilst being 2cm away from Mike's lips.
I see one green eye open and stare at me.
He suddenly shifts backwards.
"Gilly," he says, smiling. "I try and be romantic doing this and I open my eyes and you're BEARING YOUR TEETH AT ME and wresting with the chocolate."
Oops.
"So I have to give the College of Law £350 for my LPC," I say to my Dad.
"Don't Law Firm do that?"
"They say they'll reimburse me. They are paying the £11,000, I don't want to push."
"Ah."
"And I don't want to say I've spent their grant on pretty dresses and am almost at my overdraft."
"Aaah," he says. "Don't worry, I will transfer you the money."
"Are you sure? I'll transfer it back when they reimburse me."
My Dad sighs. "Can't you just go on the game?"
I pause.
"Thanks, I didn't have any blog material until now."
Labels: Dad
Dear Microsoft Word,
Firstly I do not need your assistance. I am not writing a letter. Nor does it look like I am. I am writing an essay, very late on a Saturday night, so leave me alone.
Secondly, must you always butt in with your numbering systems? I am trying to number my paragraphs 1. a) (i). You clearly have no comprehension of how to do this therefore inisting that I'm on number 2. when I am actually on b) (ii) is only going to irritate me. If you're not sure, ask someone, or stop doing it.
Thirdly, please stop underlining everything. You really have no idea what a fragment is, nor when the passive voice is appropriate or not. Please stop underlining legal words or telling me I mean expressed when I wrote express. I don't. Please stop asking me about Latin words. I don't like them either, but telling me they don't exist isn't going to help. Also, it would be really good if you asked me before changing them. I don't like my essays coming back with "it's donatio mortis causa not donation mortar cause" scrawled across them. I know, I should proofread, but I don't expect to have to proofread for a non-assessed essay because I didn't expect a WORD DEMON TO HAVE ALTERED MY WORK WITHOUT TELLING ME.
Finally, I have told you a hundred times I AM ENGLISH. I have told both control panel and youself. You should have grasped this. English means causation not cauzation. It means burnt not burned. It means EXTRA U'S IN THE WORDS. WHERE THEY BELONG.It means GOTTEN ISN'T A FUCKING WORD AND DON'T YOU
DARE SUGGEST I WRITE IT INSTEAD OF GOT.
Now if you could kindly fuck off I have work to do. On notepad.
Billygean
The rats and cats of Birmingham revealed
And finally some more arty photos. Turned this:
To this:
Labels: law, photos
It is sunday afternoon. Lunchtime cheese on toast, sunlit living room, Mike in his bike clothes making tea.
"Oh oh oh," I say. The chimpanzees on TV are roaming. They're so fuzzy.
"I would love to give one a cuddle," I say. "I think they'd cuddle back, too".
"They would," Mike says.
The chimps walk in a long line, one after the other, winding through the jungle.
"God they're so human," I say, as one hands one an apple*. "And I love their faces. Oh and look at that one's eyes, they're sooo big..."
"You can see their bollocks," Mike says. I'm shocked.
"Dad!"
"Er?" Mike says. I am horribly embarrassed. And probably have a father-complex.
"Sorry," I say. "It's just. Well, it's just the kind of thing he'd say."
*Okay, it was actually the carcas of a rival baby chimp they killed, but whatever. I'll go with apple.Labels: embarrassing, Mike
Yay, catness!
It's been a while since I saw Merry and Pippin (and bored you all with photos of them). So here you are again - complete with hair in frighteningly non-straightened state. My hair that is. Their hair was very straight.
Suzanne and Rob were rather shifty. My birthday is coming up, and I think this is why. Mike has also been delighting in minimising emails and smirking, so something is definitely going on.
I'm hoping they got me Pippin.
Anyway, Rob managed to distract me with MENTHOL lemsip (er, no, I don't have a cold, just a drug problem), and milky way magic stars. They were on 10p for 50 bags. So many stars :)
Labels: addictions, Home
I close my criminal law book and pad into the bathroom. It's one in the morning.
I splash my face with boiling water and rub
vigorously under my eyes where the eyeliner always appears in dark circles.
I look up into the mirror, a drop of water hanging off my nose. I smile slightly at my own reflection. I have forgotten to study it for some time. Doing your hair and checking your clothes match seem only fleeting meetings with your reflection. I feel we need to spend days catching up.
She smiles too. The lines around her eyes are slightly deeper than before. She looks different to in her photos, slightly worn, but happier. I can see what she will look like when older, deeper wrinkles and frown lines, thinner lips maybe. Her eyes look tired but a little wiser. I think she likes working 'til midnight really, pretending they're important clients whose liberties depend on her. I think the early mornings suit her, the pressure of deadlines and too much coffee. She looks like she's finally got opinions, albeit slightly radical. Direction. Maybe hope.
She looks so different to how I remember. I wonder how that happened?
Labels: reminiscing
Ok, I admit it, I have writers' block. A combination of having no stories to tell and not being able to tell them. And forgetting them. *sigh*.
On the upside, I am going to Africa :) this summer. Dad and I are going to Nairobi and the
Serengeti. I have to have about 14 injections during my exams and will probably come back with a tapeworm, but at least I'll have a tan.
I know, I know. But I have just worked a 36 hour week. And it's only Wednesday.
Here - go perve (I am quite sure 90% of my readers are female. What? You can just tell from the IP addresses):
Yes. I know. It's HARRY POTTER.
I think I just bypassed "he's a little young," into TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE.
