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
Labels: BoyNextDoor, photos
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.
Labels: blonde moments, embarrassing
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.
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.
"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.
Labels: blonde moments, Dad, embarrassing, Home
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.
Labels: law
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.
Labels: law, paganism
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.
Labels: reminiscing
"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."
Labels: Dad
"Right I'm off," A 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."
"I've read it," I say, pushing my Dad's contract of employment across the table.
"Anything I should know?"
"Ideally you should read the whole thing," I say. "But in the meantime look at these two. This one," I say, indicating the last page, "stops you from-"
"It's just bollocks, isn't it?" he says, slamming it down on the table. "And like, it's just common sense."
"Did you just damn my career in one sentence?"
"Yep."
Labels: How to
"Good morning," my Dad says, poking his head around my door. "How was your night?"
"Good," I say, stretching and taking the coffee from him. Honestly I have grown to
love being at home. "After I got in I tried, but couldn't sleep again so watched a film."
"Oh," he says pouting. "All on your own?"
"Yep," I say. "It felt
very grown up."
I have indeed reverted to being a child at home.
"Although," I say, sipping my coffee and trying to control my bed hair. "I didn't really watch the film because there was a spider on my chest halfway through."
"Which coin?" Dad says, for this is how we measure spiders.
"Only 5p but right on my pyjamas!"
He smiles at me somewhat disdainfully.
"So," I say, "I spent most of the film flapping around the living room. And then went to bed but woke up twice on the other side of the room, frantically brushing down where the spider had been."
"Yes," he says. "Very grown up."
Labels: Dad, Home
I am in the taxi and his dark eyes are drunk and fiery.
"There is no soul in law," he says. His accent has the Oxford twang of someone who's spent only the most important years of his life there.
"But English," I say, grimacing. "I never knew what I was
doing."
"That's the
point," he says, his eyes flashing. "When you're hunched over your desk, re-reading and re-reading the same line of
The Waste Land, you realise that's the
point."
He clenches his fist and rests it on his forehead.
"Life is
hard and nobody understands. You're there in the library, the gardens, your head in your hands, on
Margate sands, in my heart there was a kind of fighting. It's fucking difficult this life, and nobody can figure it out."
He looks at me.
"
That's all Eliot's about."
I sat breathless in the taxi for a few moments.
Yesterday, I went to Oxford. I ran my hands along rugged brick and poked my head around wrought iron gates.
I felt the weight of the history there, the literature, the
art. I suddenly knew what they were writing about, Byron, Wilde, even Hardy and Jude the Obscure who saw Oxford from the cold exterior.
For it is a different world. One I wish I had studied in, English, History, even the soulless nuts and bolts of the law. You could immerse yourself in it, learn not only about the Greats who walked along these cobbled paths, but make that part of who you
are.
I think it would have made my choices quite different.
Labels: reminiscing
"You heard this yet?" Kellie says, holding up a copy of the new
Linkin Park.
"Not yet," I say. "I was leaving it til after exams because I knew I'd analyse it obsessively."
She smiles, for she
understands.
I slam the door of her new Audi, admiring the interior.
She slips the CD into the drive.
It's dark as we zip along the motorway. The steely exterior of the car glints in the moonlight. She turns the stereo up, for we both know a long drive is the best way of listening to new music.
I lean back.
It opens with beautiful guitars. It is not very
Linkin Park. It is, if everything were stripped away, a ballad. The rap starts earlier than I expect. It makes me listen to the urgency of what he is saying.
I listen intently for a few moments, staring into my lap.
I smile at the lyrics. It's about song writing, the importance of music, politics, war, all in one, and how similar those messages are. Messages of unity, realism, opening people's eyes.
The swear words are perfectly placed. They punctuate the verses with their bite.
Verse one ends and the chorus, which is almost instrumental, slows it down, with almost choral singing standing melodic against the background of the structured rap.
In verse two the rhythm is syncopated; the words fill in the gaps rather than falling directly on the beat. He begins to use shorter words, bike, fuck, bus, and they shock and pierce the fabric of the smooth rap.
He talks about the war, Bush, Iraq. I feel goosebumps all over my skin. He articulates my political views so perfectly, using a couple of verses and a drumbeat.
How these words must unite people.
The track ends and I am almost breathless, not yet ready to commit to a new song.
If only music really did unite people in this way.
HandsHeldHigh.m4aLabels: reminiscing
I take a sip out of my latte. Me and fellow English degree survivors Lucy and Rachel are in Starbucks. I am still revelling in not revising, although I noticed a woman reading a book by Linda
Newbury and could not help thinking about both
R v Newbury and Jones and
Revel v Newbury. THAT'S HOW MANY CASES THERE ARE.
Moving on...
"Ooh are those pigeons kissing?" I say.
Rachel looks out of the window and laughs. I think one was trying to get the other's food out of its mouth but whatever.
Suddenly one pigeon gets on top of the other.
It is truly disgusting.
He humps away as I avert my eyes.
"They're MATING," I say.
Lucy turns around. "
Ew," she says wrinkling her nose.
"And on a LEDGE," I say. "Living dangerously."
Rachel looks at me for a moment. "
Billygean they have WINGS."
"Oh yes," I say.
Labels: blonde moments, embarrassing
It is 9.30pm and I am in the kitchen.
My jeans stink of barbeques, my bair feet are dusty from all the walking in flip flops across gardens and parks.
My hair is matted from smoke and my skin tinted pink, and sore from all the sun. My top has grass stains on from all the lounging around with good friends and good conversation.
My head is absolutely killing. For some unknown reason my back aches. I am full of cold and I have utterly lost my voice. I help myself to a paracetamol and down it with a pint of water.
"Film's starting," my Dad calls.
Watching a
film. With
no guilt.
I look at the sunset across from my garden and smile.
Oh shit, I think.
It is 11:20am and I have only just realised what the question is about. I flick through my booklet and cross out everything I had written on the
Alcock principle. Since when is high blood pressure psychiatric harm
Billygean? When?
I pick up my pen and frantically start rambling about
Page v Smith and how they might want to claim using remoteness. I can hear the ticking of the clock as I try and fudge together a 40% answer. I can hear
someone's shoes shuffling. I glare at them and tap my pen and flick uselessly through my statute book.
I start to feel the rising panic. I know the rest of the paper is good but this question could totally fail me. I write fast until my hand burns, large scrawling letters, dropping case names every other word for extra marks. My pen scratches across the paper.
"You may now stop writing," the invigilator booms.
I pick up my stuff and leave.
And then.
Bliss.
Labels: law
More nosebleeds.
Oh my God my body is BREAKING
Got up at 8 this morning having had a mild panic last night and revised remoteness until two. Could not sleep because was panicking. This is not good!
Woke up this morning and has typical day before exam feelings.
Looked down at pad of paper this morning and practically fainted. Whenever I look down I feel dizzy.
Seriously I actually cannot afford not to cram today, this exam is tough and I do not yet know my stuff. ANY tips of how to throw off a fluey thing because I absolutely need to be able to look at my paper tomorrow without nearly throwing up.
Q. The decision of Hunter v Canary Wharf is of enormous significance to the law of private nuisance. Discuss.
A. Is it?
How can you just pluck a case out of thin air and base 33% of my grade on it? Do you KNOW how many cases there are?
Q. (part of it) Alfi is negligently carrying a wardrobe strapped to the back of his van. He has to brake suddenly and it falls onto Eddie's car, crushing Eddie and runining the special edition bentley. Eddie's wife needs the Bentley for her work as a wedding chauffer and will lose some important contracts without it.
A. What what what? Have we covered this? I don't know. The only case I know on remoteness of damages is one about a boy who fell down a hole. This does not help. *pours wine*
Q. Something something hallowed principle, claimant's impecuniosity, shipping cases, stevedores, something something?
A. *sips wine* something something indeed.
Labels: law
Just had massive nosebleed in bed. All over contributory negligence textbook.
I am not best pleased.
Labels: grumbles
The human mind is an amazing thing. When I think how many words I know, memories, sounds, smells, and how many of my friends speak about 5 languages, it is unremarkable that cramming about 2000 cases in a month is relatively doable.
But I am tired now. I am actually fantastising about Monday, and how guilt-free and amazing it will feel. I no longer care what I actually write in tort on Monday, I am just cramming. Again.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night saying Heslington v Dow, and I had to look it up because I couldn't remember where it was from. Turns out it was about an occupier not being liable because his lift broke and someone died. As I was drifting back to sleep, I said "Just imagine Michael Heseltine in a lift".
I have also developed the requisite sore throat. Please explain to my body I do not have time to be ill.
48 hours and counting.
Labels: grumbles, law
