It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

 ..."How drunk?"
"Good and drunk"
- Holiday (1938)

"Yes, I very much need a drink. Will you buy me one Fred darling?"
"Sure"
"Only promise me one thing. Don't take me home until I'm drunk. Until I'm very drunk indeed"
- Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Got a message tonight, from a girl I was friends with at school. It said "have you heard about Lucy? xx"

And I knew, immediately, that she had killed herself.

And she has, apparently.  I say apparently, I've managed to work out that it was somewhere between the 16th and 18th of December.  The funeral, Tumblr tells me, was on the 3rd of January. Nobody told me.  Told us.

I can't find an obituary. I can't find a mention of it on the facebook pages of mutual friends.  I have messaged her sister and her best friend. Begging them to tell me if I have misunderstood.  I sent those messages about 2 hours ago. As time goes by I realise that I haven't.

I knew she was having a hard time, she also has cyclothymia, but she'd had them before and she was posting on twitter again a bit at the beginning of December.  I thought just last week that I hadn't heard from her/seen her online for a while and maybe I should send a message. But I could only think of trite bollocks, so I didn't. Forgot about it.

We were close as close can be in school. She drifted away from me and the friend who messaged me tonight when we went to upper school.  She got into Wicca, we got into indie music.  But a couple years later we got in proper contact again. And then, after 4 years of uni we properly got back in touch and had a catch up.

Then I got a phone call from her about 6 months later; "can I come and visit you in Brighton?"
"of course!" I said, "when?"
"tomorrow?"
"......Yes! of course!"
And she came and told me she needed to run away. And we ate pancakes at Becky's house even though I don't like pancakes and we went out gay clubbing. And she drank Becky's absinthe and threw up in the sink.

A couple of years later, same phone call, same answer. And she came, and we drank and we saw and we did.  And it was good.

She was the only person I knew, for many years, who adored Spaced as much as I did. We used to quote it to each other all day at school the day after it was shown. It was always during Food Technology lessons that we got down to it.  Years later, I quoted Spaced to her again, and she got the reference immediately.

She wanted to be a medical illustrator.  She was turned down a little over a year ago.  I asked her not long ago - last month maybe? - if she was going to try again to get on the course and she said yes and that she felt she'd improved dramatically since then so it was for the best she had been turned down as it focused her on improving her drawing.

She turned into the adult I expected her to.  Free willed, spirited, vague and passionate in the same breath. A fashion butterfly, an artist in all the ways she told me she would be when we were kids, and we camped in her back garden. 

She is the reason I read Terry Pratchett.  At school on World Book Day we had to dress up as a character from a book. She dressed up as Magrat. She was the very embodiment of her.

Last time I properly spent time with her we went to Tate Modern. And then to the pub.  It was a good day.




I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding and she's just run away to Paris again.

What a year. What a life. What a world.

I feel the need to tidy away 2011, make room for 2012 but attempts to do so seem doomed to failure as a sense of hopelessness in front of 'fate' overwhelms me each time I try. The irony of course being that I don't believe in fate.

I've been trying to form in my mind the things I want for 2012 in the belief that determination is 90% of the route to realisation. 'Space' is right up at the top - I simply can't live in my parents house, if I want to be alone I have to sit in my bedroom. If I want to cook I have to squeeze in the kitchen in between them being in there and endure endless questions. I really value silence and solitude and time to myself and for the last year and a bit that has been completely absent. The main block on that road is not knowing where I want that space to be and whether I should rush for the short term pay off (very tempting) or play a longer game for savings and a place in September. Much of this is dependent on the current PhD application I have.

The PhD is second on the list; I am struggling to motivate myself to complete the application which has been further frustrated by my laptop killing itself this week so any work must be done in an environment I don't enjoy working in - namely on the family PC in the spare room. I am pushing myself to have the application in by today (which is difficult as yet again I can't get a second referee and have been told in fairly unequivocal terms by my first referee that this is the last reference he will write for me, which whilst fair given it is now 4 years since I started my MA, royally fucks me over for any future plans) and the funding application in by the end of next week. I am basically shooting in the dark though as have nowhere to turn to ask for assistance in writing the application and online guides only tell you how - not if what you've written is any good. I had a dream where the person I have asked to supervise me told me my application was a pile of shite and there was noway I would get a place. Thanks for that one subconscious.

Third and finally on the 2012 wish list is a relationship. This one really complicates the first wish the most - where I choose to live and perhaps buy a house, is going to impact on my potential love life. There do not seem to be any women my age in the area. There are older women (significantly older, I have no problem with 8 years or so difference) and there are teenagers who are just leaving for university or at university. There are no mid-late twenty somethings who have ended up somewhere they never intended to be and would quite like to meet someone and build a life. Buying a house in this area feels like condemning myself to singledom for the foreseeable future and I don't want to make a potential positive of owning my own home into a life sentence to loneliness. Unlike the above two where there are numerous routes and options available to me this 'wish' is the one which seems to pose the most insurmountable obstacle to my own happiness.

I feel more conflicted and lost now than I ever have before and that in and of itself is quite distressing. I'm at an age now where I thought I would have things straightened out and I'm angry at both myself and the world for not delivering on that - I feel I've let myself down. It struck me yesterday, as I walked past my University college graduation photo in the hall, that 2012 will be 6 years since I first graduated and whilst I would not claim for a moment those 6 years have been wasted - I travelled round the world and I lived in a great city and I got a good Masters degree - I still find it hard to understand how 6 years could have passed without me getting a clearer idea of not only where I was going but where I am now. Indeed, in that 6 years I've lost some of the things I thought were a sure thing - like the certainty of marriage and not returning to live with my parents.

I recognise of course that we live in difficult times; the economy is poor and both jobs and funding for educational opportunities are scarce. I am lucky enough to be in a stable, secure job with strong prospects; I regret that I cannot *feel* the meaning of that though, I simply acknowledge it to be true. I came across a Nietzsche quote last night which, whilst I do not know the context of the writing it was taken from, certainly seems to express the reason I cannot settle at this time for 'adequate'; Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

How true that is - something I feel all the more keenly since the death of my colleague in November.

Life is a thousand times too short to live without fulfilment and joy.

Richard James Edwards, 44 today.

I half love imagining he's gone the James Dean Bradfield-ageing route* and become decidedly rotund but there's every chance he, like Sean Moore, is blessed with Peter Pan genes and looks as though he hasn't aged a day.

Without Richey, the Manics would not be in the world right now.  His furious energy and attacks upon the media propelled them into the public eye and then he, and Nicky, captivated the country and indeed the world with their beauty and words, whilst James and Sean made sure we listened. 

His unflinching, uncompromising intellect created a brand that young, beautiful sluts flocked to.  He wrote a lyric about group sex in the Kremlin. He scared the bejesus out of Mark Lamaq with the now infamous 4REAL moment. He made bad, contradictory, stupid decisions. And he made beauty, in many, many ways; he understood the power of an image, and he understood the weight words can carry.

Would the O2 gig I attended on Saturday have happened if he were around for his 44th birthday? Maybe, maybe not.  But would I have got wasted on vodka beforehand were it not for Richey?! Would I have chuckled as I heard 16,000 people chant/sing "we are the useless sluts that they mould" had Richey (and indeed Nicky) not simultaneously brought such humour and gravitas to those lines? Would I read Camus and Nietzsche were it not for Richey? Would I always feel safe to wear short sleeves in the company of Manics fans were it not for Richey's articulate honesty on the subject of self harm and depression - would I have the words I do to describe and process those times in my life? It's a simple 'nope' in answer to all of those.

We 'young' fans feel the loss of Richey through Nicky, James and Sean.  We feel it in the absence of the dense lyrics that were his trademark. We feel it in the lightness and intensity of every moment of Manics fandom.  

And it is with that sense of melancholy I hope and wish with all my heart that wherever he is today, he is enjoying his birthday, with humour and happiness and intelligence.




* For reference, see impossibly beautiful young James and impossibly middle-aged current James.

You know how I bang on about the Manics all.the.fucking.time? Well, it's coming up to the release of the boxset of the last 21 years of singles and there's lots of publicity in various music magazines from various journalists and celebs.  Below is a memory of a track which, all in all, pretty much sums up everything I feel about them.  I particularly like "heroically ridiculous, serious/not serious/deadly seriousnessness" description of band and fans.

Wanted to write an entry about life, love and queer rage but somehow I can only find the word when the computer is turned off and I am reading/watching a film/sewing. It's as though I have to unfocus my mind in order to bring anything to coherent realisation and the moment I try to pin it down it slips away.

Suffice to say then, I feel hopeless and trapped but endeavour, every day, to try and lift that feeling through action. As the core reality of my situation never changes though, that is ultimately futile. Right now, on a Saturday night, I am worrying about work and my self-perceived feelings of failure in my role. I am single handedly responsible for administering the payroll for more than 200 people. That means deducting 9 kinds of pension payments, 8 kinds of union payments, childcare, student loans, National Insurance, PAYE and health insurance from people's pay - some of it is automatically calculated, some of it isn't, and the bits where it goes wrong, or I inherit it as being wrong from other payroll providers is all down to me to manually figure out. All that responsibility, a terrible wage and hundreds more small but 'vital' jobs to do? Add that to no formal training WHATSOEVER in the role I have been 'succesfully' fulfilling for the last year and you get a pissed off, overwhelmed and worn down Lizzie.

Whatever.

I got a cat, I called him Vincent. After Vincent Van Gogh who is my most recent love affair. He's proving to be, like all cats, very much his own person and we have moments of oneness and moments of exasperation. I hope to let him out of the house for the first time tomorrow and will be trying the age old tactic of buttering his paws so he comes home.

I'll leave you with photos. Because I've nothing else to give tonight, much as I strain to find it.

Thank you to jadedlibertine over on LJ for my 5 questions.  I believe the meme goes that if you reply asking for questions I wlll provide you with 5.  I make no guarantees on this front, but I might.

1) How many times have you seen the Manics and which was your favourite of those gigs?
I have now seen the Manics 12 times (helpfully listed here with links to setlists).  

It is phenomenally hard to pick a favourite but I think my favourite was at the Brighton Dome in 2009.  

It was the first time I had ever been on the barrier at a gig; I risked getting fired by closing the shop I was managing early in order to RUN the 5 minutes to the Dome; it was the first (and so far, only) gig I've been to alone - and I still don't have a single regret on that front. It was also the tour where they played the entire album, in order, followed by a short break, then the usual greatest hits set - which is a HUGE undertaking by any standards, but it also meant that Nicky sang William's Last Words, and, being positioned directly in front of him, I saw him fight tears, cry, and then flee the stage before the final note had died.  It was always going to be an emotional gig, but that did something to me that I can't describe and will never forget.

2) If you had £100,000 to give to a charity but you were only allowed to donate to a single charity which one would it be and why?
I thought about this question ever since it was posed a week or two ago, I think I would choose Amnesty International.  They do incredible work and whilst (at the moment) I don't support them with a monthly donation (currently I give to WSPA and on the next pay rise - if and when - I will be donating to Amnesty as well) I think they get forgotten too often in favour of other humanitarian charities who can easily put a face to their cause whilst Amnesty would struggle to put a universal face to their campaigns.  Their campaigns, in particular for freedom relating to sexual orientation and gender identity, outstrip any other organisation I know of and are obviously close to my heart - one cannot experience freedom from persecution for expressing a sexual identity and not be aware how lucky you are to live in a country which does not kill, rape and persecute you for it*.

3) Is there any country you would refuse to visit even if all expenses were paid and your safety guaranteed, if so which one and why?
There are actually quite a few, but the one which leaps readily to mind is Saudi Arabia.  For a [oil] rich country, their treatment of women is inexplicable; as the only country in the world which bans women from driving there is a nice neat way to judge how certain freedoms, no doubt enjoyed by some women in Saudi, are hollow when such a non-political activity is denied to them. 

4) Did you have a favourite toy growing up, if so what?
I had two toy dogs, one was called Spot and he was made for me by my Grandma.  I used to tie a bit of string around his neck and 'walk' him everywhere, as such his legs splayed out in a rather distressing fashion and his feet were all worn down.  I still have him in my wardrobe. My second toy dog was a pound Puppy called 'Rosenna' or, more commonly, 'Mother' because she had 3 puppies which could be stored away in a velcro-close pouch in her stomach (which, on reflection, is weird)   I bought her from Argos with my savings of 5ps, 10ps and 20ps.  I remember distinctly pouring all this out on the counter and a vaguely annoyed Argos employee slowly counting it out.  Any and all games could be played with these two so it did the job.

5) If you could wake up tomorrow with the ability to play any musical instrument perfectly which instrument would you choose?
Guitar! I love how guitar sounds.  I would love to fill gaps in my evenings by learning to play songs by bands I love and I adore the fact that, like piano, you only need one instrument to carry a recognisable tune that everyone will join in with whilst, unlike piano, it is very portable!  Also, I have owned a guitar for the last 10 years and still haven't learnt to playing the cocking thing!



* Yes, I know we have a long way to go, and yes all those things still happen as a result of persecution for sexuality in this country, but they are not defended, endorsed or encouraged by our laws and government.

As readers of my Tumblr will have worked out, I have been reading The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. I bought the book after I watched the stunning BBC drama Painted with Words. I read it on and off for a few months but in the last fortnight I've really committed to it and flown through the remaining 250 pages.

Throughout the letters, spanning 17 years, I found the most beautiful and honest descriptions of depression and mania I think I have ever read.  And I was moved by the sameness - the oneness - of human experience in this respect.  Vincent himself acknowledges, whilst in the asylum, that seeing others illnesses helps him understand his own and allows his fear of it to be calmed.  In this respect, and many others, I felt a deep affinity and emotional connection to him.  

I particularly enjoyed looking up paintings as he spoke about them to Theo and examining them through his eyes, instead of my own.  In particular I found the contrast between Entrance to a Quarry and The Reaper to be extraordinary; they were painted within a few weeks of each other and either side of, as VIncent terms it, 'an attack'.

The clarity of expression is astonishing and, appropriately enough, Vincent even provides a description for how I feel about reading his letters some 122 years later, when describing his reading of Shakespeare he says the following;

As I turned each page ever quicker as Vincent's quiet desperation and hopelessness begin to overwhelm him in the last 30 or so pages, I suddenly became aware what I was speeding towards; his end. It was at this point I began to cry. And then, as I read his last letter to his mother, wishing her 'happy days' with his brother Theo, Theo's wife Jo and their son, Vincent and speaking of his 'calmness' I cried more. Finally I read his business like final letter to Theo (to whom almost all the letters in this collection are addressed) which thanks him once again for some money sent and states that which he hints at in many letters - that Theo is also the creator of the paintings he has to his name and should also call himself an artist - I began to sob.

The postscript very nearly broke my heart as it stated what I knew of the circumstances of his death and told me something of Theo - whom I had come to 'know' through Vincent's warmth and love for him;

The love between Vincent and Theo is absolutely beautiful - that Theo died so soon after Vincent is both terrible and inevitable.  At the end of the collection I feel his loss as keenly as I feel the loss of Vincent.



Postscript.

The other day I was reading the letters in the conservatory in the late afternoon sunshine.  Without meaning to, I drifted off to sleep for about an hour and a half.  The last thing I had read was a particularly vivid description of the colours in the landscape around Vincent's house and for that hour and a half I slept lightly, dreaming not in words or sounds or solid objects, but in colours.

Thanks to the unspeakable, inexplicable, wondrous generosity of forthwritten I have some paid time, I thought it was only right to celebrate with a post.

The other night, much like tonight really, I drank a heroic amount of vodka, and finished reading Albert Camus' The Fall. The book I finished a day before that was Martin Power's Nailed to History: the story of Manic Street Preachers. Being a massive CoR, I cried as much as I laughed at the story of the Valley boys and found myself obsessed/intrigued with Richey all over again. In that sense, The Fall couldn't have been a better 'next read' - the protagonist's words and Richey's lyrics are a marriage made in heaven/plagiarism made in hell.

The combination of the tail end of mania, vodka and Camus resulted in me being able to 'understand' some of the lyrics on The Holy Bible in what I felt was a new way. Before I passed out into a semi-paralytic sleep, I recorded my thoughts on Open Office on my phone. I record them below for 'posterity' (aka 'what the fuck?).

Much needed explanations can be found for some of this in '[]' brackets.

( Dead eyed...fish? )

It's a lot like when I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth when I was drunk on rum to the point I couldn't remember my own name, but for the first time that film made sense.  Or when I go really stoned and understood 'Motown Junk' in a way no person ever had before and insisted everyone I knew listen to it *right now*.  A week of fucked up sleeping habits and a night of heavy drinking with a bit of mania thrown in for good measure makes for some entertaining reading.

I hope to contribute something intelligent to Dreamwidth in the next two weeks. although don't hold your breath as I'm currently reading 1984 and the last 249839 times I read that it gave me paranoia-based nightmares....

 ".....as we are told that this is the end..." Then the freaking confetti canons went off and the air was thick with red, white and green confetti.

And I felt something inside me go 'click' and I knew that it was the end.  Of what, I don't know; I just know I felt the most acute sense of loss in that moment.  I stood, singing, staring alternately at Nicky's exuberant final strut and the impossibly thick rain of confetti and mourning the end of I know not what.

When it finished, and we turned and laughed and exclaimed what an incredible gig it had been, I noticed I was shaking.  I was still shaking as we made our way out of the doors and into a frantic Cardiff evening.

It feels like a dream somehow, over 130 miles away and nearly 24 hours since the event, it very nearly is.  Except I'm still suffering a real, hard sense of loss.  I've heard that song a thousand times and at 11 gigs, what was different this time?

 When you clear your cache, cookies etc in google chrome the option you click reads "obliterate items from [drop down box] the beginning of time".  Wouldn't it be nice if life was that easy?

I have been toying with the idea of making this post for some time, but the day I've had today? 

Frequently, I dream about Ali.  The theme and end result is always the same although the circumstances change. We met or she tracks me down.  Apologises unreservedly, begs me to take her back, demonstrates she has changed and we reunite.  Indeed, these dreams have become so common I now reference them in my dreams, most recently I said to Ali, upon the moment of reconciliation "I thought there was something wrong with me because I kept having dreams we got back together and I thought it was because you were the only one for me that I couldn't get past them and everyone told me I was wrong but now we are back together it just proves everyone wrong and that the reason I had the dreams is because I knew it would end this way".  Imagine my feelings upon waking and finding that too was a dream.



A woman I work with, who I wrote about when she got her job at my work place back in December has cancer.  She is, as I lamented at the time, exactly a year older than me.  She found a lump.  A week later she was examined at the hospital.  A week after that they said it was cancer.  A week after that they started chemotherapy to try and shrink it so they could operate.  Now the cancer has spread to her liver.  Last I heard they were trying to work out if it was in a part of her liver they could remove.  Last I heard they were doing scans to see if the cancer was in her brain and her bones.  She is exactly a year older than me.  People our age aren't supposed to get this shit.  They are not supposed to be facing their own mortality like this.  I keep crying about it.  I barely know her, but she was nice, and friendly and seemed like someone I wanted to get to know and I made efforts to that ends.  I'm so angry about it, this is not fair.  She is 27 for gods sakes.



My friend S, the one who suffered a traumatic brain injury at the end of last year, text me tonight to ask if I was still looking for a place to live.  I said maybe, it was really down to price.  Turns out his girlfriend has been living at her parents for the last month "getting her head together" and tonight they decided to split up.  They bought a house together about 3 years ago? I feel a deep sadness for this ending.  I don't know the details about how things came apart.  I barely know her.



I had a massive argument with my Dad tonight.  There was an article on 'The One Show' by a woman from the Apprentice who said she went back to work 6 weeks after having a baby because it was the thing she wanted to do and then she spoke to other women who had kids who said her children would suffer.  My Dad said she was selfish and shouldn't have had children if she didn't want to stay home and 'bond' with it.  I said she was bonded with it and probably saw it every day.  My Mum chipped in that my cousin's wife went back to work soon after giving birth and her baby slept during the afternoon so it was awake during the evening when she got home, then my 'discussion' with my Dad intensified and my Mum went into another room and shut the door.  I asked him if it mattered, therefore, that the father went back to work after 6 weeks, he said it didn't matter, nor did it matter if the mother went back to work whilst the father stayed home because the bond with the mother was 'different'.  I asked him in what way it was different, he said "it just is". 

He said her priorities were all wrong if she wanted to work instead of stay home with a child. He said with priorities like those she should never have had kids because she clearly didn't want them.  I said thousands of people enjoy work and why shouldn't she continue to do the things she enjoys and have children, in effect, to have her cake and eat it.  He said he'd already said why; because babies need to bond with their mothers.  I said that was no argument or reason at all.  He said "I know more about this than you do" and then smiled smugly.

For the record, when I was little my Dad was a policeman.  He was angry all the time because he was either stressed or tired from a night shift or both.  My Mum was a housewife.  When I was older my Dad took early retirement from the police because he was suffering from severe stress and my Mum went to work and he set up a business doing people's gardens.  I remember the change that happened in our house - it was happier.  Tell me now that a woman not working is the most important aspect of parenting.

I know that motherhood isn't a magical valley where all roads are open and fulfilment lies at every turn.  I know that in essence, 'maternal instinct' is bullshit.  If it wasn't there wouldn't be thousands of books available on how to look after infants.  I know all this and so much more because I don't live next to women - mothers, I talk to women who are mothers.  I know that, for me, taking a year or more off work on maternity leave would leave me miserable.  I also know that for many women there could be nothing more wonderful than having that time to dedicate to their offspring.   know that parenthood changes your outlook on life.  I also know that changing your outlook on life is not automatically the same thing as no longer believing your work to be a central piece of who you are.  Most importantly, I know that neither of these positions is right or better than the other.  Rather, they are different ways of living which are adopted and practiced by different people.

The pressure to 'be' a mother upon giving birth is, as I understand from both my own mother and the accounts of many, many mothers I have read and spoken to, HUGE.  Pile onto that the insistence that leaving your baby in the care of relatives, childcare professionals or even it's father is a form of emotional neglect? You've got a big fat pile of sexism working away to stop women from making the choice they want - whether that be to take 1 years maternity or 1 month.  So yeah, I think I do know a bit about it too, Dad.


On an unrelated note, my brother's girlfriend had a c-section last week after 3 days of labour starting, being stopped, being started, stopping...and I have a new nephew.