Metal Up Your Ass!!!

Thousands. Packed in tighter than a used tent. Wriggling like a queue to the Ladies. As far back as the eye can see. A horizon of heads. You’re near the front. You’ve been waiting for hours. The smell around you is hot and stale and you stand on tiptoes in an attempt to suck some fresh air, to feel a breeze, to see what’s in front of you. The sun beats down on the top of your head, fighting through the grime to burn a red line in your parting. A spray gives light heavenly relief, short lived as you see the cup of piss flying overhead. Then your knees start to ache and you bend down, surrounded by a forest of legs – bare, jeaned, tattooed – holding on to a friendly calf for support (a technique that can also be adopted while watching rugby in Walkabout). Bending down staring at crushed plastic cups and fag ends. Thinking you can’t go on much longer, thinking that jumping to System of a Down’s ‘Bounce’ took it all out of you (and you daren’t stop bouncing for fear of being sucked under). But suddenly there is a stirring in the crowd, a rumble that slowly rises to a cheer. You jump to see over the heads and realise it’s just a techy/roadie/bloke who’s not in the band doing a sound check. He hits the drums and you carry on with your pain. Nothing new. You’ve been hearing drums all day.

Then he hits the bass drum.

Shit.

It’s incredibly loud and indescribably deep. Not a bang or a boom, not just a noise, but a feeling. Calling it a feeling makes it sound like a twinge or an emotion, this is more of a punch. A giant punch to your chest that trickles down to your toes. It’s followed by a droning sound that you realise is coming from you. Every time he hits the peddle he thumps you. You look at those around you who feel it too. Each hit sends shockwaves through the crowd like a Mexican wave. You hear them. Thousands of people groaning as they feel like their insides are going to explode. Groaning with joy, excited for the prospect of their chests being ripped open by some extremely loud fast music. The crowd vibrates. Awakened by the deep throb of the bass drum. Awakened by the knowledge that at any moment, Metallica will be on stage.

Then ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ starts playing and you almost lose bladder control.

That was my first experience of seeing Metallica live. The next time I nearly did get my chest ripped open by a full two litre bottle of coke.

You might suspect I’m interrupting our usual broadcast for a bit of Fan Lit. I’m not even sure if ‘Fan Lit’ is a proper term, I googled it and just got a lot of information about overhead lighting. This is my American Psycho moment where I spend a chapter talking about a band I love, except that my knowledge on Metallica isn’t half what it used to be, and due to my lack of interest in research I wouldn’t expect too much from this post. It only came to me after playing a CD in the car with the bass on 6 and remembering that feeling. That bloke stepping on the bass drum and me thinking ‘What the frickin-dickin was that? What the hell is going to happen here? Do I need to ring my mother?’

I haven’t always been a metal fan. The first album I owned was Abba Gold and the last album I bought was Mumford & Sons. But at the age of 15, with an intense love for Axl Rose, I was slipped a tape and told ‘listen to this’. I was eased in gently with S&M and listened to it so much then when I got round to buying the actual albums I found the original versions strange, yet raw and exciting. Then I bought Kill ‘Em All for a fiver in a music shop in Maesteg. I hadn’t heard these songs before and remembered hearing ‘Whiplash’ and knowing that things would never be the same again, the world was not what I thought it was… well I was a teenager and highly dramatic. WE’LL NEVER STOP, WE’LL NEVER QUIT, COS WE’RE METALLICAAAAA!!! I was hooked. I got all their albums, drove my mother wild with Master Of Puppets, which to this day I think is one of the best albums of all time, and my teenage hormones quickly shifted to James Hetfield. I drew pictures of James and imagined having Metallica tattoos… luckily I never did, opting for a pretty shitty daffodil instead. Rock on.

I was only two years old when Cliff Burton died and was even too late to see Jason Newsted who I also loved, even though I don’t think he was ever fully accepted by the band. I’m not one of those fans who won’t admit when something is bad or wrong. I don’t laugh at every one of Billy Connolly’s jokes and I don’t like every flavour Ben and Jerry’s. To be honest I only really listen to a few Metallica albums and these are all pre-Bon-Jovi-bloke ones. As we grow we learn that even our idols are human. But then it doesn’t really matter because that night, at the Carling Festival, Leeds in 2003 they were gods. You don’t worship something for years expecting it to appear right in front of you. I spent the whole of the first song (shit knows if I remember what it was) repeating ‘It’s them, it’s really them.’ Kirk Hammett played a guitar solo that didn’t seem humanly possible, Lars was like a demon – especially with his facial expressions, and James Hetfield just looked heavenly in his tight black jeans (I was still a teenager remember). At the end James flicked plectrums and I thought how lucky all those people were who got one, even those who got one in the eye.

I walked back to the tent feeling at peace. Aching and with a ear-ringing that would last for 24 hours, but utterly satisfied and content. Silent and smiling. This was also my first festival. I didn’t look very ‘metally’ with my three-quarter trousers from Matalan and a bum bag under a baggy black t-shirt. This was before festivals were fashionable. No boho chic here. Just mud, pee and stale warm lager. Cries in the night of ‘Some bastards nicked my Orangeboom!’

Without Metallica I might never have felt the warm sting of pee on my shoulders, might never have seen a vast bottle pit, might never have screamed ‘Master!’ so much that it shredded my throat, and I might never have heard a sound so powerful that it could resonate through a sea of people and make me fear for my spleen with a smile on my face.

I AM A FEMINIST! (again)

It’s hard to describe how Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch changed my world, or at least changed my perception of the world around me. Things I had taken for granted, as a given, as tradition were revealed to be tricks and tactics of the patriarch. I felt angry, well, teenage hormones could have added to the mix but the despair and frustration was so great I spent the next few years reading a Buddhist Saying of the Day book just to try and calm the hell down. I look at my copy of Greer’s book now and see that sections have been underlined furiously, with big stars in the margins, IN BIRO.

Before we go on, I just want to let you know that this isn’t going to be a rant, it’s not about burning bras, armpit hair or making Greggs call their man-shaped treats ‘gingerbread people’. It’s just about people being treated as people. As Caitlin Moran puts it, we’re all ‘The Guys.’

Cailtlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman did what only The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has ever done before, made me laugh out loud. I started off hiding the cover in public in case anyone thought I was reading a self-help book on sitting elegantly and accessorising, I started off biting my lip to hide the laughter, but all this delicacy and secrecy wore off with a great shout of I AM A FEMINIST! LOL!

It’s good time to be a feminist. To be a female in the know. 71 years ago tomorrow, the brilliant Virginia Woolf, knowing and feeling the confines of society, put rocks in her pocket and walked into a river. Then in 1934 our very own (Welsh I mean) Dorothy Edwards – not a relation of mine, which kind of disappointed me – committed suicide on a Cardiff Railway line with a note in her pocket which read,

‘I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.’

But maybe Edwards saw this as a human flaw, rather than a female one. People should be affectionate and loving and appreciative and generous. But would a man suffer such guilt over this? Would he feel it as deeply? Or is it a woman who is meant to be generous to a point of going without so that others can benefit? Isn’t a woman supposed to be a creature driven by love and romance? Isn’t a woman meant to be eternally grateful? But what if we’re not the things we’re told we’re meant to be? Well, we’re not even told, we just take it as fact – This is how a woman is meant to be.

After a couple more plastic pints I was more like Lady Blah Blah

Greer spoke of the ‘female impersonator.’ This blew my bloody mind. Especially since I always felt unnatural in my femininity, I constantly felt awkward in the act. However, sometimes, in an attempt to shun female impersonation we can become male impersonators. I’ve done it myself with the Premiership Sticker Album, but then I was about nine years-old and I’m not sure if the patriarch was the driving force behind that one. There are women who genuinely love sport, fast cars, the pub, thrash metal and Will Ferrell comedies (I’m with you on the last three), simply because that’s what they love. Then there are women who talk to only male football fans about the wonders of Balotelli, King Kenny and Blackburn Rovers (I dunno) while their Twitter pic is of a pair of tits covered by two Dairylea triangles or an arse wrapped in a Cheesestring. And of course the men go ‘Wow a girl who wears a thong and loves football!’ If a bloke tweeted me about strappy sandals and his picture was of his cockles I’d run a mile. Whereas a man would have a nice little chat about Messi with a vulva.

Fancy dress, fantasy, imagination are all great creative things, but I don’t think anyone will find happiness by pretending to be something they’re not. Feminism isn’t a case of ‘if you can’t beat them join them.’

Of course this could all be explained as a result of envy. After all I do have saggy boobs and a spotty arse. Every argument can be cut down with those three simple words, ‘You’re just jealous.’ And I believed it for a while, when I felt annoyed with ‘lad mags’ and quadruple page spreads in ‘celeb’ magazines of women who have done faff all except gained minor fame and then catapulted themselves by giving the media access to everything in their lives, including the corner of the kitchen cabinet where the mysterious box of mixed herbs live (mysterious because you can’t remember buying them, or why you’d ever need them, but you daren’t throw them away for fear of a mixed herb crisis) I also tried to ignore the annoyance I felt at seeing senseless articles about female celebrities eating. How dare they eat, especially in public! And look how messy they are! Frickin hell let her have her lunch! I’d get mayo on my chin if someone stuck a lens in my face.

You might not agree with me about all this and that’s cool! You have to have your opinion. Reading Caitlin Moran I realised that I’m no longer a teenage sponge, taking word for gospel truth and living by it. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the book because I want you to go read it – men and women – but I’m not sure if I agree with Moran’s idea of death being a motivator (Feminism, suicide, death and only one picture! If you’re still with me I applaud you). Like I’ve mentioned in a post before, I have the fear, but I don’t know if waking up every morning and reminding myself that ‘Life is Not a Rehearsal’ would do a great deal of good. I just wouldn’t bother. I wouldn’t bother finding that matching sock, or worrying about a shortage in letterheaded paper, or limiting myself to three chocolate digestives a day. But then maybe I’d be a lot more interesting if I wore odd socks, had a total disregard for stationary and a cracking biscuit belly. But what if the world did it? There’d be odd socks drifting through the streets like tumbleweeds, letters sent on PLAIN PAPER and a lot of disappointed people opening empty biscuit tins. Or maybe there’d be no socks, no paper and no Hob Nobs, because who could be arsed to spend the day making them?

As Moran wrote about Lady Ga Ga (and gave me a whole new respect for the woman whose wardrobe is a collection of meat and Muppets) I think my female music icon has to be Alanis Morissette. Lady Ga Ga wages a very grand, fabulous and twisted war by challenging and subverting everything that society believes of a woman, her threat is so great that the media hinted that she had a penis, got the idea out there for it to grow, so to speak. Maybe the idea that a woman was being so forceful, powerful and unapologetic scared them. I hope it did.

Alanis Morrissette on the other hand was more, I don’t know, natural and simplistic. A woman with a guitar and hair that had never seen a can off Bristows. I’m not saying what she’s better, she’s just different, she’s to the point without the show of making a point, as if making the point is the most natural thing to do. Do you get my point? Saying that though, there’s quite a lot of anger in Jagged Little Pill, anyone who’s ever sung ‘Outta Know’ in karaoke can testify that, or singing ‘Right Through You’ in the car,

You took me for a joke
You took me for a child
You took a long hard look at my ass
And then played golf for a while

It’s empowering, but fun. I want to feel good about the struggle. Like a salmon swimming upstream, rather than a mouse in a maze.

I’ve always been a feminist but haven’t always known it. After taming my first angry wave of it, I used to make the joke of being a part-time feminist. Of course I can see that’s pretty ridiculous now as why would I only want to be equal half the time (unless my boat was sinking and someone shouted ‘Women and children first!’) but at least I was making a joke, because if we don’t treat all this with humour it’ll be like rocks in our pockets.

Greer taught me about the patriarch. Moran taught me to point and laugh at him.

And one more thing before I go. If women are so good at cleaning, how come they only clean cars while wearing bikinis? There’s a point there somewhere. I’ll leave it with you.

Chocolate hearts and chums (not as sickly as it sounds)

In the last post I wrote about January and now it’s nearly March! How time flies when you’re having fun, except that January and February are about as much fun as having your hair combed by a cat. I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been working on the second draft of a novel I’m no longer in control of, but mainly because faff all has happened. Well, except Valentine’s Day but what is there to say about Valentine’s that hasn’t already been said and milked like a Cristal producing cow. There are two ways to approach Valentine’s Day, the it’s-all-commercialised-nonsense response, which is part of the I-don’t-need-a-day-to-tell-my-loved-one-how-I-feel response and then there’s the loving, romantic, gushy, cupid-riddled response. I’ve got to be honest, I’d probably fall into the first category. It’s just that I’ve never been very good at public displays of affection. I don’t even use my blokey’s name in my blogs! The PDAs don’t come natural to me as I never know how to express love without sounding like a Clinton card smothered in cheese and topped, I dunno, with something else that’s vomit-inducing. Michael Ball. Topped with Michael Ball. I also think that as long as I show him how I feel that’s all that matters. This year I showed Gareth (that’s right) how much I love him by buying him boxershorts from McArthur Glen Outlet and two packs of Premiere League Football stickers. I, in return, was spoilt with many lovely thoughtful gifts.

I’ve always been terrible with gifts, not really terrible, more practical. It’s not that I’m not thoughtful or caring, I do try, I just can’t blinking remember what people say. Have I told you about my goldfish memory? That’s not a joke, I just can’t remember. My memory is awful, and I can never take a hint. I’ve been known to stand in a shop with my mother while she looks at a pair of earring and repeats ‘They’re nice, they’re nice, they’re nice,’ and I agree, then buy her the boxset of Downton Abbey for Christmas.

Anyway, while scouring for a Valentine’s card (so this post is about Valentine’s after all?) I noticed that you can get many types now – for parents, children, pets and friends. I wouldn’t get my friends one but it did get me thinking about how there isn’t a Friend’s Day or a day for other people in your life…

Friend
Pal, chum, bud, mate
Classmate
Housemate
Flat mate
Get a round in mate
The double date mate
The one who’s always late mate
Special friend, Forever friends
Best Bud
Bosom buddy
Drinking buddy, pub bud
Shoulders try cry on, ears to listen, hands to hold
your hair back.
Friends Reunited
Followers
The Facebook friend
The pending friend request
Drive you round the bend friend
The lend of a fiver friend
The been there since your first birthday friend
Commute companions
Friends from work
Friend with benefits
The nice old lady down the road
The smiley man in the chip shop
The teacher you remember
The friend of the family you thought was your aunty.
Upside, downside, Mr Brightside friends
Sitting on the settee til the sun comes up friends
Road trip friends

Roses are red
Violets are blue
As it says in the theme tune
I’ll be there for you

Black Fridays and January Blues

New Year's Eve... I think we should wear these outfits back to work.

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while I’ve been on holidays. Not that I think anyone missed me (this is me feeling sorry for myself). I didn’t need to buy any clothes for this holidays mind, no parrot playsuits this time. I mainly wore my pyjamas and a new fleecy Barbie pink dressing gown. Yep the leopard-print one has finally been taken away to a lab for the investigation of new life-forms. After finishing the first draft of the novel I thought I’d take a little break… like the rest of the year. My holidays have mainly consisted of indulgent lie-ins, pate and cheese  feasts and approximately 50 hours worth of films and I still never got round to watching It’s A Wonderful Life. All this has been sprinkled with celebration and the occasional hangover, although that also involves pyjamas, fleecy dressing gowns and film marathons. As you can imagine, none of this left any time to write. But with January it’s back to work, and also ‘back to work’ with the writing.

I don’t really understand our way of thinking when it comes to January. Fun is banished. We obviously had way too much in December and must be punished. Maybe it’s an innate need to pay for our brandy-based sins, or it’s the theory that pleasure should be followed by pain. You have a thoroughly good time with the finger foods, the warming alcohol, the glittery attire, the belly laughing, and then it’s ‘Happy New Year! Put down that glass, spit out that Quality Street, take down those colourful lights and put something beige on’. Is it just me or are the end of the festivities hard enough without all these resolutions, telling you what you’re not allowed to do? January is the end of fun and the arrival of guilt. WHY DID I HAVE THAT MINCE PIE AND CREAM GODDAMIT?! Even the TV has turned against us. Gone is the jolly fat man, replaced by some antelope in Lycra. Gone are the Christmas hampers and silky chocolate puds, replaced by light yoghurts and Rivita. Sorry, nothing depresses me more that the thought of sitting at my desk and washing down a piece of cardboard with some water.

So, my New Year’s resolutions aren’t going to be the usual no crisps, no chocolate, no worrying (I’ve had that one every year for about 20 years) but a list of things to do. This year I will (hopefully as I never have much faith in myself):

• Finish the novel.
• Move out and finally give my mother the freedom she deserves after 27 years, and also free me from being woken at 7am on a Saturday morning to be asked to tidy my room.
• Watch The Godfather to see what all the fuss is about.
• Boil an egg (I’m not shitting you.)
• Do more creative things – like sketching, painting and using Pritt Stick (as I write this an avert has come up on TV for a Quilting magazine – a sign? Everyone could have quilts for Christmas! – ok, now I’m shitting you)

Happy New Year!

Carrie Bradshaw inspired me to write…

You think this is a joke? Well it isn’t. It’s not even a clever, sarcastic knife in the Bradshaw’s back. The truth needs to be told, the demons need to be let out, the pain needs to stop. I wasn’t encouraged by Enid Blyton, or Judy Blume, or Lewis Carroll or whoever wrote those Goosebumps books (the Goosebumps books inspired me to never stay home alone… or join a cheerleading squad… or trust a babysitter, including grandparents.) My inspiration is the whiny one off of Sex and the City.

Where would I be, without SJP?

I’ve always written, ever since I could write, and even before I could write I can remember scrawling with crayon on a My Little Pony Annual and wondering if my scrawls made words (funny how I remember that but can’t remember what the hell I went upstairs for). I used to write stories and illustrate them. Stories about rabbits and badgers, and college kids named Lewis and Saffron. I used to write poems. I even took my poetry into ‘Show and Tell’ (God the more I remember, the more I remember what a geek I was). My earliest poem was for my mother. She has it somewhere, written in writing not much worse than mine is today. I can’t remember it all but it said something about emerald eyes shining as she looks to the skies, and hair blowing like palm trees. Ending with a rhyming couplet of:

            And there is no other
            Because you’re my mother.

Awwww don’t you just want to squish my rosy cheeks, wrap me up in a little ball and kick me over the fence? Anyway I think I’ve made my point, except that my real point is that even though I’d always written, it never clicked that it could be something worth pursuing. I pursued Art and when that seemed like a lost cause I resorted to my first best subject. English. I hated English. My mother made me take it in college. And I hated that I was pretty blinkin good at it when I’d worked my arse off making that Egyptian book cover in Graphics.

So during the summer of 2003, while waiting to start uni to study bloody English, I worked twilight shift at a cosmetics factory which meant that in the day I had no-one except Fern and Phillip and the Loose Women. We didn’t have Jeremy Kyle in those days! After my shift everyone would be in bed so I’d wind down by watching Sex and the City on Paramount (other channels are available). I got pretty into it and one day I thought, wait for it because it’s excruciating, ‘I want to be like Carrie Bradshaw!’ But what I meant of course was that I wanted to write for a living (Lies. I wanted Manolo Blahniks and a boyfriend like Aiden). I called the university straight away and asked if I could change my course from English to English with Creative Writing. And I did. And that was that. Of course you don’t need qualifications to write, but having to write to get the qualification bloody helped things.

And here I am, still writing (still unpublished) and so I thought I would write a nice little poem dedicated to the writers who raised me:

A. A. Milne would tuck me into bed
Lewis’s Wonderland floating round my head
With Blyton’s folk of the Faraway Tree
The Maycomb County of Harper Lee

The period pains of Judy Bloom
The revelation of Virginia’s Room
With Tolkien I’d be gripped by fear
Then curse all men with Germaine Greer

Cucumber sandwiches with Oscar Wilde
Snail Upon the Wall stayed with this child
Me and Bryson would pack our bags and walk
With a towel thanks to Douglas Adams’s talk

But all of these are a little shade darker
Outshined by the brilliance of
Sarah
Jessica
Parker.

‘A banana makes a better imaginary phone than a carrot’

Remember when I said I was writing a novel? When I started a blog to help me along the way? Well, I’ve finished the first draft (pause for applause). I suppose it’s kind of autobiographical, in that the protagonist is kind of like me, and there are some of my childhood memories in there. The only real differences are our gender and parents. The protagonist is male and I’m (kind of) female, and while he lives at home with his miserable and unhinged parents, mine are happily separated. Setting is a big similarity, the valley boy moving to a Welsh town, with his Welsh accent and well, Welshness.

The creators... and a bit of my blanket.

 I never wanted to be a Welsh writer writing about Wales (Ok, I’m not a published writer but just humour me). All Welsh writers seemed to be doing it and I didn’t understand. Why didn’t they want to escape the boundaries and head for the neon lights and sunshine states? But if we didn’t write about Wales who would? And the great thing about writing about Wales is that you can create Wales! Wales is a fiction (bear with me now). A lot of the things we celebrate about Welsh identity – rugby, singing, daffodils – are creations of the colonisers. Rugby was introduced by English middle-class men and leeks were brought over by the Romans. We’re created by stereotypes. Wild Wales had to be tamed, the unknown had to be labelled. So it was plopped on a daffodil covered hillside and made to sing.

 We yearn for the good old days, for tradition, but it’s a tradition of an invented Wales. Did you know that before the colonisers came and, well, colonised, we had a tradition called ‘bundling’ which was when people courted each other by being wrapped up in bed? (Google it, it’s also some kind of business sales thing but ignore that bit) I bet a few of you might yearn for that one. But of course it was abolished, as they tried with the language.

One of the troublemakers

 The playwright Ed Thomas believes that ‘Any person can be the author of his or her own Welshness.’ (I hope I don’t lose points for not referencing the book, or for writing this post). Wales has been written by many hands, it now has to be imagined and created by its own people. Imagination is key, like the Night-Porter says in Thomas’s play Song from a Forgotten City, ‘A BANANA MAKES A BETTER IMAGINARY PHONE THAN A CARROT.’

If we didn’t write Wales then it would be absorbed into other nations, like in 1910 with the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry “For Wales, see England” (see, us women never let things go). When you think about what’s been created by the colonisers (and the tourist board) you have to wonder what’s real.

The Night-Porter is a bit of a genius, he also asks, ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, A FUCKING FICTION?’

If we’re not real, and if we don’t create ourselves, we end up clinging onto someone else’s identity. We wouldn’t turn our heads east towards England for inspiration so we look to our neighbours in the West. No wonder there’s a bloody Hollywood Park on Aberavon seafront!

Anyway, of course it’s all an excuse. Another reason why I’m writing about Wales, apart from my apparent mission to create and imagine a nation, is because I’m too bloody lazy to do research. I’m writing about what I know. That’s why the novel is kind of autobiographical, because I didn’t have to stray too far from my own head.

Anyway, here’s a poem I once wrote which is a little bit about all this:

The terrible daff tatt.

On writing about what you know

Cwtched up in bed, the morning light

streaks over me, feels strange.

Strange because it’s cool and the shadow hot

and I want to write.

 

I don’t want to write about hills but I can see them,

filling the gaps in my blinds. And sheep.

Oh no, not sheep! But I can hear them

on a Saturday morning.

Not like a choir, not like rugby fans,

just farm animals.

 

I don’t want to write about the smell

of bacon for breakfast,

but I can smell it.

Pulling back the covers I spy

the daffodil tattoo on my stomach

(a sixteen year olds idea of patriotism).

 

I don’t want to write about singing but I can hear her.

Too high and toneless, pausing between sips of coffee.

 

I don’t want to write about the valley but it’s here

in all my senses

I am here.

If I were a boy… I’d be in the pub.

It was too cold to be wearing shorts. She examined the Spam patterns on her legs and got distracted by her new Reebok trainers. Honeycomb airbubble. Fecking awesome. She looked up towards the wire fence of the schoolyard, sucked in the clear crisp air as she scanned the mountains that surrounded them, and…

SMACK!!!

I choir of ‘Ooohs’ spread across the yard. She shook it off but her cold cheek burned and her right eye watered. She knew it had left a red mark, but it didn’t matter because the ball was at her feet. It was time to show Mrs Brothers just how far and how hard she could kick. She booted the ball and it skidded to the left like a skipping stone, right into the legs of an opponent. Maybe next time. Desperate for a next time she ran up and down the yard with no knowledge of the offside rule. Up and down constantly, claiming only the tiniest tap of the ball. And then the whistle was blown. Maybe not a whistle, maybe just a shout from one of the teachers. They lined up and the names were called. Lee, Nicky, Matthew, Gemma, Lindsay… so many names and then, ‘Rachel. Since you tried so hard.’ She was picked out of pity, but she had been picked. As a sub, but still picked. On Thursday they would be going to the Upper Afan Valley football tournament in Cymmer. Maybe it wasn’t called a tournament but it involved teams from all the local schools playing football against one another. She skipped home from school that day, with her shirt collar up, just like Eric Cantona.

Still got this CD if anyone wants a lend?

By Wednesday the first flakes of snow started, there were whispers of it being cancelled. Each falling flake was like a shred of torn up dreams.

On Thursday morning Croeserw looked like a Christmas card. She got her kit ready. Her kit being shiny black shorts and a red Coca Cola t-shirt. She went to school still with hope in her heart, hope that today she would play football for Croeserw Primary. She heard the words before entering the gates. Whispers grown into shouts.

            ‘Called-off!’

And by the time she got to class she realised that it wasn’t even going to be arranged for another day. That was it. She knew that would be her last chance, her first and last chance. And it stuck with her for years.

I never liked football anyway.

I remember watching Manchester United play Barcelona (on TV of course), I remember the final score was 4-0 to Barcelona and I remember trying to stay awake and trying to quell the painful boredom in my chest. But I liked the idea of being a football fan, I liked the passion, the community, the shiny Man U sticker.

Yep, I had the stickerbook, about fifteen Tim Flowers doublers and a Man U framed picture on my wall. This was before I changed my alliance to Norwich City because I liked the colour of their kit.

I think I just wanted to be one of the boys, and even though I still can’t watch a football game without writhing in pain, a part of me still envies the boys. I want to be part of a team, I want to go on tour, and I want to be able to go to the pub at any time without having to arrange it or meet anyone, but just turn up. You know what, sometimes I want to go (sing with me now!) where everybody knows my na-a-ame. I do like a pint, I’m not a ladette, I’m just lazy. What’s the point of getting two grandes when all you want is a venti?

Enjoying a pint, while the ghost of of ladies past looks on reproachingly.

I love my girl friends and girly nights, I like my dresses and heels and Brad Pitts, so maybe it’s not even about being a bit of a boy, maybe it’s just about the team thing and never being any blinking good at sport. I earned the nickname ‘Pingu’ from playing football; a teacher (Mrs Boyle) once told me I play tennis like I’m stuck in cement; I was never fast enough for Sports’ Day, and rounders just set off my asthma. So I’ve never had a huddle, or celebrated scoring, or received a trophy, and I never will. And I blame the bloody snow.

Hmmm, anyone want to start a Sunday Scrabble team?

The Sound of Silence (don’t sue me Simon)

Lying on a bed, in a minibus, with a bearded bloke holding a needle in my arm, he asks, ‘So, you been anywhere this year?’ I told him I hadn’t been far and asked him if he had. ‘Here and there,’ he replied. And that was the end of that. I pumped my hand to make the flow quicker. The silence was much more painful than giving a pint of blood. I think a lot of us fear silence. Silence is the reason why we ask the taxi driver if he’s had a busy night, why we pretend to shiver and say, ‘cold isn’t it?’ to the biddy in the bus-stop, when it’s summer. And of course, at the hairdressers. I remember once having my hair washed by a young trainee, he asked me, ‘You going out tonight?’ I gave him a full description of my plans for the evening, the time I was meeting my friends, the occasion, the location, I might have told him what I was wearing! Half an hour later he was called over to straighten my hair.

            ‘So,’ he says, ‘doing anything nice this evening?’

            ‘No,’ I replied.

The awkward silence is a killer. We’ll fill it with white noise to stop it. But isn’t the saying ‘Silence is golden’? I never understood it like I’ve never really understood ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ If that was the case we’d never strive for anything, never risk anything, and Tiger Woods might still be married (cheap shot?). Saying that though, taking a risk for me is driving to work with the petrol light on, or having hazelnut syrup in my coffee.

How can Silence be Golden? If we have something to say we should say it, not keep it in to keep the peace. Right? But maybe that’s the thing, a lot of the time we’re talking, but not actually saying anything at all.

Forgive me, for I have Paint

Yesterday at 11am on 11/11/11 (that gives me the shivers, I’ll bore you about my obsession with 111 another time) staff and students congregated for the two-minute silence. It’s quite an experience, all those people together, people with timetables and desires and caffeine, all silent apart from the flapping of the Student Union banner, which I’d never noticed before, and the ringing of a mobile which was quickly scrambled for. The bells chimed. I’ve worked there for four years and even though the bells chime on the hour, every hour, I’ve probably heard them about three times. It was nice to be silent, to be still. Even now, sitting on my own with no noise but the tapping of the keys and the traffic outside, I’m not silent, I’m not still, my mind is racing with words and thoughts, with writing and needing to get ready and going to get something to wear. Stop and breathe. It’s good for you!

And of course, it’s good to remember. Putting aside opinions for a couple of minutes and acknowledging the things that have happened, things that still happen. Not just remembering the past but remembering that behind the scenes of our daily life, the tropical shower gel, the carpet that needs hoovering, the dress that needs buying, other things are happening everywhere. A silence can be filled with so much more than chatter.

And on that note, I’m going to shut the hell up…

 

 

Mothballs!

Awkward. If I had to use one word to describe myself it would be the word ‘awkward.’ I’m not graceful, or agile, or sexy, and I’m not looking for the sympathy vote – I’m not a contestant, or a housemate, or Kerry Katona. But let’s not focus on what I’m not, let’s focus on what I am. And that’s awkward.

I’ve always felt it but I’ve never really accepted it. Not until last week when I went shopping on my own and realised that I was unable to hold a conversation, pay for a bobble hat, or walk down the street without doing something clumsy, laughing goofily and then turning my embarrassed eyes away from the unimpressed coolite before me.

I never really know how to be and what to say. For someone who writes, I’m not really one with the words. My friends know how to greet, how to converse, they know the right questions, and the right answers! I’m the one hovering in the corner like a pubescent wallflower.

I used to be alright as a kid, I would sing and dance in front of a hall full of people, talk to anyone and everyone and know exactly what to say. My school reports all said I talked too much! I remember one saying that I was a ‘persistent chatterbox,’ I remember because I remember not having a clue what persistent meant, and then when I found out I was slightly proud of my achievement. I could blame the teachers for my communication skills, being one who likes to blame others (I was once told that I’m ‘such a victim’ during a stress management course) but I can’t blame the teachers. I blame the teenagers. Or at least the teenage years. That’s when it started. When I turned thirteen, had a growth spurt, a perm, a monobrow and a brace. All at the same time. I had a school picture taken like that. My gran had one made into a keyring! I think it’s still on her housekeys. That’s too much for anyone to handle. But it happens to everyone doesn’t it? At least it did in the 90s. These days kids turn into the beautiful people overnight. What happened to squeaky voices and fluffy moustaches – and that was just us girls! Bu-boom-tish! But even the most successful, handsome man can sit in a swivel chair, at his pine desk, in his office, with the city below him and still feel the pang of the kid who cut Samantha Perkins’s ear with his brace.

I forgot to mention that I was a chav. And I'm wearing a bum bag. You can't make this shit up.

The brace wasn’t too bad mind, I missed it when it went. We had a lot of good times together. Like when I ate a chicken Korma and turned the elastics illuminous yellow, or when I ate a toffee apple in Maesteg fair and had to tell the dentist I buckled it eating a pasty. The perm wasn’t good, or the eyebrows that looked like Tom Selleck’s moustache but hey it’s a transition, a process we all have to come out of. Metamorphosing into a butterfly. Except I think I’ve come out the other end as one of those moths who keeps bashing into the light-bulb.

I’d rather be a moth than a butterfly anyway! I bet all the moths say that, like pigeons say about doves, or tabbies say about tigers, or guppies say about great whites. But I’m happy, I accept it, now if you excuse me I’ve got a date with a desklamp.

Worry Warts an’ all

As a kid, the worst thing in the world, worse than worms, worse than being on it in Hide and Seek, worse than bedtime, worse than Dundarunt (The My Pet Monster my uncle Lyndon used to scare me with. Dun-da-runt-dun-daaaaa! Get it? I know, cruel) the worst thing in the world was having to take medicine. I’m not talking about your average Calpol, I mean the thick black cough medicine, or the devil of all medicines -The Yellow One. When I mentioned The Yellow One to my gran the other day she said it’s liquid penicillin, but I thought penicillin was something taken by the Victorians along with leeches and cocaine, which apparently they gave their babies for teething – the cocaine, they didn’t chew on a leech. Of course I’m joking about my ignorance of penicillin *embarrassed cough*.  I remember the dread as the bottle came out of the chemist’s paper bag, please not yellow, please not yellow. And there is was, The Yellow One. Dread was quickly followed by despair, the ground-shaking, stomach-churning, end of the world kind. The white plastic spoon coming towards me was more frightening than any monster, ghost or macaroni cheese. The big white plastic spoon with sharp edges containing medicine the colour of bile. This is it, this is it…

I wasn’t dramatic. I was a kid!

Me, Uncle Lyndon, and thankfully no Dundarunt!

It would be all over after one shuddering moment and a gulp of juice. But then the worry would creep in, how long until the next spoonful? How long until I would have to endure such punishment again? I was a lucky kid, I never had any real problems or worries,except that I always had problems and worries. I’d worry about Jacky-long-legs (and her daddy) I’d worry about whether Edd the Duck got lonely in the Broom Cupboard when Andi Peters went home, I’d worry that I was colourblind (which to me meant that what I saw as pink would be green to everyone else), I’d worry about the rainforest and Tamarin monkeys, thanks to Mrs Boyle and Sting. These were real worries, not like the worries we have as adults which tend to revolve around our hearts and bank accounts. Remember when we all worried about the Millenium Bug, and mobile phone induce brain tumours? Speaking of phones, remember when people who were constantly on their phones were comic figures, workaholics who couldn’t enjoy quality friend and family time. Remember Chuckie’s mother in Rugrats? #JustSaying.

What’s a bit ironic though is that as a kid I worried a lot more about dying, (I just sensed the change in tone, don’t worry, I’m not getting serious) I was always aware of my own mortality. Yep, I was a strange one. I used to try and imagine that blank space, the nothingness, because even as a kid, and even when Pasta in Supergang told me I should love God more than my parents (which I worried about for three days) I could never quite believe. These days I only think of death to motivate me to get up off my arse!

So I’ve always been what people used to call, a Worry Wart.  And of course I’ve always been lucky enough to never really need to worry. But I have to have one and if I don’t, I’ll create one. It’s like a piece of chewing gum. I chew it over in my head, sometimes tuck it at the back of my mind, and when it gets stale, I’ll replace it with a fresh one. I think I need to mix it up by having some silly ones, no not silly, but imaginative, raspberry and apple flavoured ones, like when we were told as kids, ‘If you can’t curl your tongue your eyebrows will fall off.’ (That’s what we thought had happened to all the ladies with drawn on eyebrows!) I’m not worrying about anything at the moment but it’s going to creep up on me so maybe I should catch it first, spin around and take it by surprise. I know, I can worry about the fact that at the age of 27 I still use the bunny-ears-technique to tie a bow. Thank God (or Shoe Zone) for slip-ons.

Have a worry-free weekend everybody!