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

 The 12 letter prompt of 'housewarming' today brings me to 'm'. After hesitating for half a week I've decided to go for 'me' and essentially update my 'intro' post from 3 years ago.

I am [about to turn] 36. I work in a 'prestigious' university in the south of England. I put prestigious in inverted commas because I am deeply critical of the system of university rankings, and things like 'Russell Group' which ensure money and resources flow around a ring fenced group of already over-funded institutions who select students from selective schools and...it's a pyramid scheme. I have worked at less prestigious universities which do better, more exciting research with less money, and make an objectively bigger impact in the lives of their non-elite students than this one does. I work here because they hired me for a permanent role and the lookout for careers in academia right now is terrible. I like my colleagues, I like many of my students, I work hard (sometimes too hard) for the community I am part of but I am never going to toe the party line on being 'world-leading' simply because of what some dodgy metrics say about the institution as a whole.

I am a cis woman. I think gender is a trap. I have always, as long as I can remember asking questions, been baffled by binary conceptualisations of gender and I have never easily fit either 'girl' or 'woman'. Woman, right now, is a word I choose. But more often I like to roll my descriptors of gender and sexuality into one and use 'queer'. I like the indeterminacy of queer. I like the history of that word and how it still needles at the norm, how it says 'I am against and across and strange and uncomfortable and making you uncomfortable'. I find it fascinating how and when I get misgendered and I find it fascinating when I get called "lady". The latter makes me more unhappy than the former.

I also use bisexual to describe my sexuality. A word which I painfully tore out of me and presented to the world when I was about 15 and which I clung to in the face of all the horribleness that can attend coming out. For a number of years I dropped bisexual because I had internalised too many negative stereotypes and associations with that word. Recently, after an inspiring keynote address entitled 'lesbian nation' by Campbell X at a conference, I claimed 'lesbian' as a word I had a right to. I mix my words all the time. Did I mention I like indeterminacy? I don't owe anyone a box to put me in. The words I use are expression, not definition.

My work mixes my life. I do research about LGBTQ people, families, childhood, gender, relationships. I don't write about that in much detail as I try to maintain some division of my professional and personal online existence.

One of the roles I have in my job involves supporting students who encounter a range of difficulties during their studies; I am determined to do all I can to kick open the door to Higher Education and use my entire body to stop it slamming shut on people. On some occasions this is harder to acheive than at others. I am continually learning about doors I didn't even know existed and how they exclude people.

I have a long term mental health issue. I write about it in more detail on my wordpress blog. I write about it here too, but typically in less detail. It's a useful background piece of information to have if you're coming to read. I am, as mentioned above, hitting my late 30s. I've been told that this stage of life often includes a worsening of bipolar spectrum disorders, that's something I've been wrestling for a while now. I've also been told that it kind of shakes out by the time you're 40 and you can just get on with it - whatever level you end up at. I hope that's true. I work hard to be well. My success on this front is, predictably, variable.

I am fortunate to have a huge range of people in my life. I have a biological family who live far away and who I have limited contact with, this includes three brothers, and two parents. I have a chosen family of friends who live much closer and who fill me up with love and kindess and sometimes beer. I am [recently] poly after being single for a decade. I got to poly through a lot of reflection on what I can and can't do in relationships and how I want to be able to build relationships with people. I am finding the space, communication, and conscious choice of commitment which poly centres incredibly positive and freeing. At the time of writing, I am in one relationship of note and that's with 'Teddy'. They are on dreamwidth as well and next-to-no-sleuthing will reveal their dw username to anyone who wishes to put together such a puzzle.

I am a nerd for pop culture and a deep love of sci-fi (especially Star Trek) has been a constant in my life. I am a lifer fan of Manic Street Preachers, even though I haven't liked any music they've released for nearly a decade. I have a soul deep love for David Bowie and our bond will never be broken. 

I read the journal of everyone I subscribe to but I am an inconsistent commenter. 

Totally normal week stopped being totally normal on Friday when shit got realz. 

Spent the day not on the pickets (because they were cancelled) and not really on strike (although I sitll declared it as a strike day). Just glued to my professional twitter watching University closures roll in after mine was the third in the country to annouce immediate end to face-to-face teaching.

It feels a lifetime ago already, things are moving so fast. 

Today I've mostly spent explaining to some of the lesbians that yes, you really do have to cancel that trip, no you really can't just go to the pub, and no, it's not a conspiracy. 

Also, glued to social media and newsfeeds. 

Also also sticking my neck out to try and protect the pay of most precarious members of staff in my department (with immediate success in short term and no hard commitment on the long term) and butting heads with my HoD over that.

And then, there's family. Text brothers, chatted on phone to parents.

My parents are both over 70 and my Dad has asthma. My middle brother is officially immuno-suppressed by his psych meds, his wife has MS. My eldest brother has somehow got into debt with the council over his rent/benefits/bedroom tax and my parents have been buying him groceries each week (but not handing him cash because he spends it on fags). So he's both high risk because of how much he smokes, and potentially isn't going to have any food. And I had to explain to parents no, social distancing doesn't mean you can go into town to go to the supermarket and then drop stuff off at brother's house and then go home. I know they're not going to listen until it's legally enforced - they won't take people up on genuine offers to get them shopping, they (understandably) don't want to see themselves as 'old' - they aren't old. But they are statistically vulnerable. 

And of course, you can't book a fucking online grocery delivery for love nor money. 

Have been compiling a list of stuff I need to bring home from my office tomorrow before the uni gets shut down entirely. Concerned, stupidly, about getting all my fucking plants home so they don't die...

It's going to be a hard few months ahead.

 I have submitted my PhD thesis.

It seems to have been such a long time coming.  Hard to remind myself that, with all the faults I can already see in my thesis. this is a huge achievement.  There were times I didn't think I would ever finish writing my thesis, times I was ready to quit, there are times I did not believe I could complete.  But I'm here.  Compared to where I was in January 2012 - sitting on my bed in my room at my parents house where I was living to save money for a PhD, writing an application for funding, dreaming of being able to go back to University - the me from then would be over the moon at what I've done.  The goalposts move as you go through and I'm trying to force myself to judge the achievement I have *right now* by the standards of 4 years ago.

Last night I went out with a large number of friends from uni, and with another PhD student who I share an office with and who submitted on the same day as me, for cocktails.  It was a lovely evening and a really wonderful atmosphere.  I had put a picture of my thesis acknowledgements page on Facebook and tagged a number of friends who were mentioned in it.  A lot of people commented on and liked it, which was lovely, but on the way home from the pub at 1am last night, another PhD student told me that reading it (specifically, seeing that I had thanked David Bowie and Manic Street Preachers for contributing to my ambition, self-belief, and for inspiring me) had inspired him and reinvigorated his own sense of connection to various pop-cultural figures as something which matters.  It was about the best compliment I could have.  My little risk (I was anxious it was inappropriate to thank celebs/idols) to include those people in my acknowledgements paid off, in that it inspired someone else to celebrate their own sources of inspiration and talk about the 'low culture' of pop and rock in the high-culture world of academia.  

My terms.  That's what I feel like - I wrote my thesis and my acknowledgements on my terms.

Things are challenging with my family right now.  My 99 year old Nan died 3 weeks ago - she was my Dad's Mum and had dementia which had got progressively worse over the last 3 years.  In the end, she stopped eating and drinking and died within a week.  It was sad but not unexpected.  My Dad has taken it very badly - which is sort of inexplicable.  His brothers and sisters have not been hard hit, she was very old and had had a long independent life (to 94) before she became unwell.  My Dad has withdrawn and is not talking to my Mum or anyone else, really.  The funeral was on Thursday and we expected that would move him on but it seems to have made him worse.  I phoned him yesterday to share with him my delight at having just submitted my thesis.  He said "oh?" and when I said "that's all you can say?" he asked me to repeat what I was saying, which I did.  And then he said "yes?".  I nearly burst into tears at his apathy and said "thanks a lot, bye" and hung up.  He text me several hours later saying he had been waiting for a call from the bank to sort of my Nan's bank account and was not concentrating and...I don't care.  This is the most important thing in my entire life.  This is wonderful, happy, celebratory news.  The world does not stop when you lose someone and the only way to get through it is to grab hold of good things when you can.

I spoke to my Mum today - he had not mentioned to her that I had called so I told her about the above.  She said she is becoming increasingly angry and frustrated with him.  He will not talk about how he is feeling, barely speaks at all, and when he does all he talks about is his Mum and his childhood and his brothers and sister.  My Mum says she feels like he doesn't care about us (her, my brothers, me) anymore, she said "it's like none of us, none of this, matter to him".  

My Mum (due to various reasons) had two Mums.  Both of them died many years ago.  Her Dad died when she was still a teenager.  She has lost all her parents.  She has been through this.  And she was widowed when she was in her 20s.  She knows what grief is like.  And she will listen and help my Dad.  But he seems to not want any of us and not be willing to look outside himself or accept that people die.  And we all have to die eventually and 99 is an amazing age.  My Mum asked him to remember how lucky he had been to have his Mum all this time (he's 71). He didn't respond.

I'm angry.  And I'm sad that he can't even muster two words - "well done!" - for something so huge for me.  

And I'm sad for my Mum, for her having to live with him when he's like this.  She's angry and frustrated and worried there's something seriously wrong with him.

And, at the end of all this, I'm just tired and sad and feeling kind of empty now the thesis is gone and the viva is far off in the future - perhaps very far off depending on whether my external examiner is participating in the UCU industrial action - and I need to muster energy to apply for jobs and write some journal articles.

This isn't how I thought I would feel at the [almost] end of the PhD.  Bit of an anti-climax. 

 I've been reflecting on my relationship with my brothers in the last few days.  

For those of you who need catching up... I have three half-brothers, all older than me. The eldest two are my Mum's sons and the youngest is my Dad's son. From the top down they are 44, 41, and 39 (and I am 29, if you are also missing that piece of information). I haven't spoken to the youngest of my older brothers (often called "3 of 3" in this journal) for about 2 years since I decided that his bigotry - most explicit in his uneducated views on 'immigration' and abhorrent racism - was not something I would accept from anyone else, so why should I continue to associate with him.  Brother 1 of 3 has a 16 year old son and has been unemployed on disability for about 14 years now after having a breakdown when his marriage ended, he is diagnosed as having schizo-affective personality disorder, I'm sceptical of that diagnosis but I won't get into that now.  Brother 2 of 3 has recently got engaged to the woman he met 9 years ago whilst in mental hospital.  He has been in and out of mental hospitals since 1995 when he had a total schizophrenic breakdown. He has been declared 'in remission' from paranoid schizophrenia for some years now and is stable as long as he keeps taking his pills.

I maintain an amicable relationship with brother 1 of 3 and 2 of 3.  I have a lot in common in terms of world view, music and film taste with brother 1 of 3, unfortunately because he now sits in his flat all day everyday, has almost no human contact, and has given up on himself, he's more or less impossible to hold a conversation with him beyond pleasantries and me telling him what I have done that day/week/month.  I have less in common with brother 2 of 3, although he is the glue who keeps up to date on everyone in our family, phones round, organises family events, etc etc.  I spoke to him the other week, after he and his new-fiancée returned from a holiday and we talked about how he proposed to her and what he got for his birthday from other people.  He asked me what I was doing and I said I had marking to do.  He asked me what I was marking, I said "essays" he asked "your essays?" and I explained that no, I don't write essays, I'm doing a PhD, I'm marking the essays of students I have taught this year. "oh yes," he said "you've been lecturing this year".  I didn't bother to correct him, I've explained - in the simplest terms - what doing a PhD involves several times over, and explained that I am a seminar tutor not a lecturer as many times again.  Try as I might I cannot communicate anything about my life to him in a way he finds intelligible.

Last night I lamented to my Mum that I have nothing in common with my brothers (implicitly, she understands that when I say 'brothers' I only mean 1 of 3 and 2 of 3, I truly have cut 3 of 3 out of my life even though I technically now have 4 nephews and nieces thanks to his rabbit-like breeding with his girlfriend)  She replied that 1 and 2 have never had anything in common, I replied that they spend quite a lot of time together now and that 2 told me that when 1 went mad they began to have a more-typically brotherly relationship.  She laughed and said she supposed it gave them a point of commonality.

I went on to say I can't even get 2 of 3 to understand what I do for a living.  She said she thinks his memory is no good now, and went on to tell me about the last time he was in hospital.  

In some ways, every time 2 of 3 went mad it was the same, in other ways, it was very different.  The first time - when I was 11 - was the scariest.  If you have never seen someone totally lose their mind you can't understand what it was like.  If you are thinking "oh yes, I've known people with depression/OCD/anxiety/anorexia" then nope, you can't know it either. Schizophrenia and psychosis associated with type 1 bipolar disorder are unlike any other mental illness.  They are absolute.  They gradually creep and take away the person you knew.  You are left with a mess of a human, unable to hold a conversation, follow short logical steps, living, functioning on a completely different and entirely inaccessible (to you) plain.  My brother was never violent, but he still scared 11 year old me.

Imagine being 11 and your big brother, the man who has been a hero to you ever since you can remember, the man who looked after you and played with you and teased you and laughed with you, imagine him stepping out and a stranger being in his place.  

When he went mad in 2003 until 2004 it was the hardest, which is perhaps surprising as I was 200 miles away from him and my family at university and didn't have to deal with the day to day interactions with him, just the phone calls.  He was mad, raving, absolutely on a different planet mad, and it was the 5th or 6th time he was hospitalised since that first time in 1995.  My parents were exhausted as they'd had to fight to get him sectioned, and it just went on and on.  That last time, I think all of us thought at some point that maybe he wouldn't come back.  He was gone for so, so long.

My Mum told me, last night, that his doctor told her, that last time, that 3 of 3 was so ill he'd never be the same.  He said that once you go that mad, for that long, a part of your brain is damaged and it never recovers.  It just shuts down. My Mum hypothesised this was part of the reason for my brother's inability to understand what I'm doing, and retain that information.

I had an argument with my brother at Christmas. It was all from him, thinking I was attacking or undermining him when in fact I was confirming what he knew was correct and offering additional information.  My Mum tried to tell me, when we discussed it in February, that there is no point arguing with him if he has decided something is a certain way, and I should give way to him rather than arguing.  I couldn't understand why I had to give way and back down from every misunderstanding and he didn't - why should I always cave?  I suppose this is the reason.

One way or another, my brothers have gone a long way away from me and if I want closeness, and a relationship with either 1 or 2, I have to work out how to do it on their terms, on their level, at their pace, with their needs first.

I'm the youngest, the baby of the family.  It's very strange to have to re-conceptualise my entire relationship with them around their new, their current cognitive capacity.

It makes me sad.

67Threnody just posted a list of what she had bought people for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it as, for me, the lead up to Christmas, buying and wrapping presents and anticipating everyone's responses is the best part of Christmas.

Feeling in a thoroughly festive mood after going to see It's A Wonderful Life at my local independent cinema (it was the first time I'd ever seen it, and it elicited a round of applause from the sold out auditorium at the end of film!) I thought I'd share with you the things I made for Christmas this year - in a bid to give as much as I ever do but on a much limited budget (£30 per person this year instead of the usual £50 I allow/have been able to afford previously)

First up three stockings which are for, left to right, my brother's girlfriend, my eldest brother, and my middle brother (whose girlfriend the first one is for);
( Pics and more under cut )( Pics and more under cut )( Pics and more under cut )

 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.

You sit, in a worn down but well loved, lived in living room, you shout from there to the kitchen down the corridor.  The soul you feel most drawn to and most forgiven by shouts back to you; you laugh till you cry.

Text messages buzz, the doorbell rings, the landline dings; "I think I'm standing outside?"

The temperature rises as bodies pack into the insufficient but perfectly workable space.  The thrum of laughter, and smiles - smiling has a sound - and conversation drifts from the floor upwards, filling the whole room with a pleasant din, like a fog which envelops but also multiplies as it spreads.

It is tactile, and comfortable, and it is home.  

It is home.  Far more than 'home' was ever home.

All those idiosyncrasies which were shameful and hidden are jokes - shouted across the room.  All those insecurities which were poured over cease to exist.  Home.  This is what home feels like.

It's a knowledge that happens in the core of the bones and spreads outwards.  And then, suddenly and gradually, there has never been any doubt about where here is.

You catch yourself: just once in a while, standing there, amongst the din, smiling and feeling, even for a few precious moments, perfect contentment.

Home.




It is 11 days until I get to go home.  It is too long, and my retreat will be too short.

 David Tennant returns to all screens showing the BBC next month in 'Single Father'  As a David Tennant fan, I am jolly excited about this.

I turn to my Mum and announce to her the screening date (Sunday 10th October according to the David Tennant page on twitter) and she asks what it is about...

"I don't know...a single father, I suspect"
"Oh......but he's not a single father is he? He doesn't even have kids"
"No, but he wasn't a Time Lord either"
".....Yes he was!"

Hmmm.

Friday, June 4, 2010
What's the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of your father? 

It strikes me that lately I have been thinking a lot about where I come from, I thought it didn't matter.  Who I was, I was quite sure, was contained in who I am now.

More and more I am reflecting on what it means to be part of my family, to have grown up in the little village I'm from...

It struck me the other day how absolutely unique to country kids my childhood was - from stomping about in the river all summer long, to peeing in the bushes of the nearest field when our ancient school bus broke down for the hundredth time that month in the middle of nowhere.  And when I thought about this, as I sat on a Brighton and Hove bus filled with school kids, I felt glad in the deepest parts of my being.

And where all of that came from, that uniqueness of experience, is tied completely and absolutely to my family.  On the most basic level my parents are to thank for my country upbringing as they decided to up sticks - and in my Dad's case, transfer his job - and move to the country so that I could grow up, as they had done, in a village.

For years I put pretty much everyone I was close to ahead of my family - my friends, partners, even the parents of partners and friends.  But quite suddenly, after me and Ali split, I found they were more important to my happiness than I had ever imagined.

Most vital in this discovery was my Father's role in the weeks and months following my breakup.  I found I was more like him than I knew. I found our lives were taking eerily similar paths at the same respective points.  I found him to be wise in the ways of people and the world - a well of untapped wisdom just waiting for to turn the constant presence in my life and recognise both what I needed to acknowledge and where I could find all the things I needed to form a sense of who I was in the world and start forming an identity as who I was now.

I never thought that at 25 I would be reevaluating my identity and starting to add new explanations to my mental image of who I am and how I became that person but here I am.  The biggest prompt to this...soul searching is the wrong word, it implies too much angst, but something like that...has been thinking about the people who made me who I am, the place that made me who I am and the ways in which all these factors continue to shape me.

So what comes to mind? Stability, warmth and helping me find a way to start all over again but do it in a new way. Someone who made me the person I am, and continue to discover.

Oh, and the man who subjected me to about 4 times the amount of his music taste as my Mum did (the first song I learnt was Yellow Submarine, taught to me by my Mum, the first singer I ever imitated was Crystal Gayle, go figure) which, after about 20 years of loudly rejecting, (but being quietly influenced by - my music tastes are guitar based indie, folk...)  I suddenly realised I both loved and missed it.  Which is why, tonight, I'm watching 'Queens of Country' on BBC4, singing along to every single song with an almost innate knowledge of the lyrics.

So, in what can only be described as a predictable development, I have been signed off work with 'stress exhaustion'. As I remarked to a friend on Friday, I can and have continued to work whilst this stressed but it does not end well, and why make myself ill over a job I hate?

I've just begun reading Moby Dick and, like Ishmael, when I feel the hopeless melancholy and pervasive paranoia descend my greatest wish is to flee the soulless city for the wild and absolute anonymity of nature. I find myself in my parents house where the question of how I've come to have a week off work remains prominently unasked.

I'm finding some sort of comfort in the silence which envelops this house, only the birds break the silence morning or night. In the void left by city bustle, of course, rests my frantic thoughts. A lifetime of listening to the anxious nonsense which spills forth provides no help in trying, as I am now, to quieten that hysterical rambling.

On Saturday night I attended a family gathering for my Mother's brother's 70th birthday, it's been around 8 years since I have seen that side of the family and once again I was misrecognised as my brother's girlfriend; a peculiar and embarrassing mistake. My Mother's other brother asked me if I still wanted to do a PhD, I told him I was desperate to, he told me he anticipated it's completion so that he could boast about having a Doctor in the family. I smiled. I am the first person on both sides of my not unsubstantial family to go to University, an honour which seems to leave me irrevocably distanced from a family of the terminally unemployable and the lifelong incapacitated. It's odd to regret your success in that sense and harder still to sense the weight of pride which urges me on to gain appropriate employment and fulfil that most loaded of words, my 'potential'.

Which all leaves me firmly where I started, laying in bed at my parents house, reading a book by torch light wondering just how much the protagonist and I have in common. Am I, like Ishmael, fated to go down this disasterous road too blind to change course, too weak in the face of hopeless destiny to break out an original course?