the humble local freak

8AM Text.

IX: Hi are you still ok to come to [CLOTHING OUTLET PLACE SOME MILES AWAY] today?
Me: (Oh shit, they've misunderstood a conversation we had earlier in the week) I'm so sorry, I didn't realise you meant for me to come and I've got plans (I really need to study)
IX: Ok don't worry about it

SILENCE

Some hours later

Mum: I'm going out
Me: Oh, okay where are you going
Mum: To walk [Ix's] the dog
Me: Oh. Why did she go out anyway then?
Mum: IT WOULD APPEAR SO
Me: Oh, have you spoken to Nan then? I didn't hear the phone.
Mum: Obviously.
Me: *SCREAMING INSIDE*

Five minutes later

Mum: I'm going now, do you want me to lock the door?
Me: No thanks, I'll listen out I'm just studying
Mum: Well if you go out just lock it
Me: Okay, I'm not likely to go out
Mum: If you go out lock it because I've got keys
Me: Okay, I will. I'm not going to get to go meet my friends though I think, I've still got so much studying to do
Mum: When you go, take a bag and buy [THINGS FROM THE PLACE]

Me: *SCREAMING INSIDE AGAIN*

FOR FUCKS BASTARDING SAKE WHAT OF "I WOULD LOVE TO GO OUT BUT I'M ALSO GOING TO FAIL THIS FUCKING DEGREE IF I DON'T GET THIS WRITTEN" IS FUCKING UNCLEAR.

Now of course I am SO ANGRY I want to just say fuck it to everything and go out anyway. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Aaand cue pre-Christmas turmoil.

This morning I ended up going out with mum and we bought an excessively large number of oranges and some sultanas and took them home to make Christingles. I also, whilst mum was at church setting out the costumes, managed to wrap some of her presents on the sly so that was good.

We then put some Christmas music on and sat getting increasingly sticky from orange juice and threading nuts and sulatnas on cocktail sticks. This will be the last Christingle and Nativity Paegent at our church but I have to say, as depressing as the thought is, I will NOT MISS making bloody Christingles at all. I do hate getting my hands dirty.

In the meantime Auntie Maura and Uncle Paul were battling the plumbing at my Nanny's trying to install new things in the bathroom. Things went wrong, I understand, so the next thing I know I was called to walk the dog and have subsequently had several rows and conversations in which everyone told Nanny to come and stay with us for the night as she has no running water and she adamantly refused citing a thousand reasons and basically just refusing to be swayed. After trying telephone negotiations I gave her an hour (during which Mum got upset feeling like no one actually likes to visit us in our family and are we really so horrible that they wouldn't come and stay? and I got upset because I hate rows and stubborness and the pressure was on now that all my Aunties and Uncles were expecting me to enforce what they had decreed, which I knew that if Nanny was being stubborn there wasn't anything I could really do and so I mostly made tea and cried in the kitchen). I then went round to try a face to face debate including using the "I know you'll be fine but please would you just do this for me and my sake because none of my Aunties will ever speak to me again if you don't comply they'll all blame me and hate me forever?" tack to no avail and I was forced into a retreat.

Tomorrow will be: Mass in the morning, followed by making a quick dinner for Nanny and anyone else who is around, iron the costumes, set up the church, check the music and then NATIVITY PAEGENT. It is lovely but it is increasingly stressful as I don't even know if our usual Wardrobe Mistress will be coming and so it might just be me and Mum and I do a lot of the setting up these days, including compering, ushering, booklets, music and sound tech etc but I really REALLY don't to getting the kids into their costumes. I leave that to those more talented than I.

I thought that, since August, I hadn't written any poetry. Or, at least, not any poetry fit to share with anyone ever, only dark half-dressed scribbles in the way that sometimes your brain disconnects and writing might help put the pieces less painfully together. But I've found at least one poem which, whilst unsmiling, is not unusable so that's something. It is poetry group later this week and the Mayor is coming, so I've tried to hammer something out tonight about home.

A friend of mine picked up a poetry book for me, recently. I tried to read it last night but it is absolutely terrible. I mean really, truly terrible. It clunks. I managed to read about six poems, with my pencil in hand making pained scribbles but I think I'm going to have to admit defeat. William McGonagall, eat your heart out, in the age of self-publishing there are some things far worse than your Tay Bridge out there for public consumption. Reading the book had a dual action for me, in the first I think perhaps I have learned something from it - learned to trust ear over all else, learned that really, truly, I can actually identify BAD poetry on occasion, and heard for perhaps the first time in a long time, the awkwardness of the forced rhythm or forced rhyme. I rhyme a lot, it comes to me that way and I like poems generally that rhyme (I like poems that don't rhyme too, also). They please me in their rhythm, balance and bounce and that always made me somewhat concerned when people far more learned than I would lecture about the dangers of the 'forced rhyme' the 'clunky turn of phrase'. I worried that perhaps I forced my rhymes and didn't realise it.

Now that I have read truly abominable forced rhyme, I feel somewhat comforted that I have not, at least not knowingly, pulled some of the trite tricks employed by that writer.

I hope I don't sound like a poetry snob. I try not to be, in fact I often feel far more of a poetry prole (The Waste Land continues to pass me by, unmoved, but Macavity is far more fun), but I promise you it isn't just me, I read a few verses aloud to share the pain and really, tin ear or no, the clunking was very, very present. Even more embarrasingly the author on his blub had commented that the poems 'were written down as they came to [him], barring a few edits for grammar'. The grammar was DREADFUL. There are wayward apostrophes, typos and whole sentences that simply do even less than scan, they make no sense, indeed, some had their sense altered in order to Make The Words Rhyme.

And that rant over I'm dashing now to watch The Dresden Files.

There really are some unutterable wankers in the world. The other day I put a message to someone on facebook.

Me: Hi, just wondered if you & [blah] wanted to come out for lunch after your hospital appointment?
XYZ: I won't have time as I have to go back to work
Me: Oh sorry, I thought you had the day off.


There's nothing wrong with that conversation is there? And yet somebody who works with XYZ saw that on their facebook and told them "I'm going to report you to the boss. Going out for lunch when you're meant to be having doctors' appointments."

Now I know that that person, whoever they may be (and I don't know them, have never met them etc) has no leg to stand on- XYZ hasn't and wasn't doing anything wrong: I had mistakenly thought they had booked the day off work that they were having the appointment, as they have a long commute.

But I am revolted beyond reasonable language that some vile, insignificant weasel should look at that conversation and do the "adult" equivalent of the infant school cry "OMMmmmm! I'm tellin' I'm tellin'.". It is sick. Absolutely sick. What business of it was theirs? Why would they ever go up to someone they work with, whether they get on with them or not, and actively seek to cause trouble or upset for them? What if the hospital appointment was going to be incredibly upsetting for them? Surely anyone deserves a fortifying cup of tea and a cake after a troubling appointment? They weren't even going to come to lunch anyway, so it's all academic but...

sometimes I think at least the wankers ON the internet are open about it rather than basically cyberstalking a work-colleague who must, at least once, have been a friend because XYZ and myself both have locked friends-only profiles.

I always thought that when people became 'grown-ups' there would be less bullies, posturers, power-grabbers, hair-pullers, less people who delighted in attempting to make trouble for others, less 'grasses', less 'stirrers'.

But it looks a lot like infants school from where I'm sitting.

Mum and I were going to go the pictures this evening to see Ruby Sparks but when I got in she'd forgotten about it and had already started cooking tea. So I finished my Nationalism work instead and now my wrist is killing and my hands have lost most of their circulation (so forgive any excessive typos). I'm thinking we might go tomorrow or Friday and I was going to treat her to a meal. The only issue with going on Friday is that our meals are limited now that the Church has gone back to specifying the old Fish Rule. There is a Frankie and Bennys, A Carvery and a Nandos near to the pictures - I haven't been in either Frankie and Bennys or a Nandos but I thoroughly expect a great deal of meat-based items on the menu.

I wanted to treat her because Parish Politics went mental in the last couple of weeks and she is now giving up volunteeing and doing the Newsletter and the Mass Intention Lists and everything. I'm not going to go into huge amounts of detail why because it is long, complicated and probably very boring for anyone not directly involved but basically it comes down to the fact that Ole Punch is a wanker, and was rude and horrible and quite frankly people should know better than to be evil and hurtful to people who volunteer to help you. The past week has been a huge faith-test really (actually the faith in God isn't the problem, just in people particularly those who should be fucking better representatives). I've had this before with the odd priest and it really isn't new in that sense (when I was about ten or eleven one old lady who didn't approve of the way one of the priests spoke to his servers- me included- told me her Mum had said to her 'if you can't like the man then dislike the man, respect the cloth' and I take that as some comfort. This is the first time that any priest though has every actually caused hurt to One of Mine. Me? Yeah I'm a wimp, I've had a few moments in the past- even with Ole Punch himself once or twice now, but my mum? No way. So I'm still very very angry about it, and obviously she's upset still so I want to try take her mind off it. Doesn't help of course that between people dying and now this means that her social calendar's going a bit bare and I'm going to have to be creative I think in coming up way to help fix this.

Anyway so that's that. I met up with C from Uni at the weekend too and we went for a meal then at Patisserie Valerie in Liverpool, which was very nice and so I also think that maybe going out for a nice meal is just a generally good idea. We are not a family who often do this ever and I find I do actually quite enjoy it; it feels decadent and luxurious and hopefully other people will feel the same way.

Slowly I am coming to terms with my new phone- I definitely like being able to text people when I like without worrying about whether I've enough credit on which is a major plus, but it's just trying to work out different apps and things (any reccomendations on fun apps would be much appreciated by the way, hint hint) I took the above picture on instragram (provided it comes out when I click post) but I still am not 100% I get how it works so it's all very new. And All Tony Stark's Fault- don't forget.

I don't talk much these days about gender identity/queer stuff. Or maybe I do, but I don't necessarily feel I do, partially because yeah as much as I queer therefore I am a lot of the time I feel like other people, the really loud, brave, dynamic people like Stephen or the people on genderfork or twitter have more of a right to that kind of soap-box than people like me, the localfreak.

However sometimes it is really striking how ignorance just continues. I am used to, even blind to, the heteronormativity and binary genders in television advertising, in conversations at work (both jobs) and so on. At Pride a couple of people did ask me what I identified as but to say 'genderqueer' basically got blank looks, and that's quite the shame (especially considering one of the people asking me was a rotund gay bloke who got talking to us because one of the ladies we were with initially thought he was a lesbian...it was an easy mistake to make).

But it's the internet stuff that really gets me. The insidious, cold, insitutionalised bits like this particular nugget.

Okay, for those who don't know, whily anyone in the UK as far as I'm aware can access BBC Iplayer to catch up on programmes, you can also create an account on there where you can save favourite programmes and so on. Fine. On Channel 4's 4oD you can do much the same thing...ONLY if you register you can also watch various seasons and series' of programmes that were broadcast a long time ago. If you sign up.

On trying to sign up, however, this happens:

( Image under a cut because of size )

Yes. And THEN in order to contact them online to give feedback? The Title fieldis mandatory and offers only 'Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms'

Is this really the same broadcasting service that showed me Make Me A Man and the films like Boys Don't Cry?

The thing is, I know it's ridiculous. I'm not even that interested in much of their programming- a DIY programme and if they show it Big Bang Theory which I still haven't really watched despite everyone telling me I should. But it's like a punch to the gut. I am good at being insidious, casual about my personal genderqueeryness (to be honest, if it wasn't for the fact that it annoys me as a mandatory field I would just put male in- I identify as male regardless of how I present generally) I'm good at ignoring those boxes and skimming through them with a casual 'NOYB' (None of Your Business), but here The System says I can't.

Frustrating.

Okay now that rant is out I can go back to what I SHOULD be doing which is checking train times for a trip to Liverpool tomorrow- no wild parties this time, I'm taking the mother out to the Art Gallery.