Sheridan’s Blog

Well I’ve just arrived back from the top area of the country, and might I take this opportunity to say what a magical place it is. Even the train ride there was worth its ticketed price. It was a great day for sitting and overlooking the ocean and the cliffs and massive bridges on the way to Edinburgh. It was an even better journey from Edinburgh – Stirling-Inverness, with massive hills, craggy mountains and all of these little rocky streams running all over the place (see picutre gallery for visuals).

I arrived on Tuesday, meeting up with Tim and his mother, who had been in Scotland for a bit already. They had hired a car (if you could call it that) and we proceeded to drive all around the place. Under the flimsy veil of some insurance fine-print, Tim flatly refused to allow anyone else to drive. Which worked out fine until the last day, when ‘Stress-Management 101′ would have been of value to him perhaps.

Anyway – what struck me most about Scotland was the music. Now I’ve heard bagpipes before (cue ‘You’re the Voice’, John Farnham…) so it was no surprise to hear this noise fairly frequently. I could have just as easily not noticed it was going on, but it infuriated Tim so much that he had to berate it at almost every opportunity. I have found that sometimes the best way to deal with annoying and irksome objects and noises is to embrace them. Or work in a supermarket for the better years of your life so that bad music no longer has any affect on you. Either way. Scots are into the bagpipes. And the pan pipes as well I think. And they seem to have a whole opus of songs written about Scotland (The Skye Boat Song, Scotland the Brave, Auld Lang Syne (?), etc). In Australia, we don’t seem to have as many songs, maybe because we’re a fairly young country and haven’t had time to write songs about ourselves and our culture, since we’re busy toiling in the field or something. (Except for ‘Great Southern Land’, ‘I Come From a ‘Land Down Under’, ‘It’s a Marsupial’, ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’…) Point is – they appear to have a lot of songs, which they seem to be playing the majority of the time. It might even be the same two or three songs just played over and over. I don’t know – it becomes quite hypnotic after a while and you just kind of zone out.
Another highlight was the mega-ace B&B we stayed at in Inverness. I can’t remember what it’s called (but I’ll definitely find it if you’re going to Scotland), but the hosts were magnificent, the room/s were massive and luxuriously appointed, location was geat and the breakfast was the best I have ever had. In fact, I could scarcely sleep in the evenings for the excitement I harboured for breakfast the next morning. On the last day I lashed out and tried the kipper, which was a triumph. Except for the bones, which were not, but apart from that, a triumph it was.

We did a whole pile of touristy-type activities, including Loch Ness. Unfortunately we did not see any monsters, but the weather was poor and this might be why. I have read in many a scientific journal that bad weather offers the least encouraging conditions for monsters to surface. Never mind.

There will be some more pictures once I work out how to get them into the computer. They don’t like to go easily. They seem very happy to stay in the camera, but I shall coax them out over the next few days.

I hate being apart from my boyfriend
Tim’s in Scotland. It’s been 2 days.

There’s something oddly comforting about ‘Bootylicious’ on the radio before 9am on a Saturday.  Kind of sets the tone for the entire day. 

Today I’m working on what to do/where to go when we finish up here in London.  And holy crap airfares are expensive around the holiday period.  Not that it came as much of a surprise, but I tend to want to plan these things well in advance, since I don’t have mega earning power and would prefer not to pay double when it’s not absolutely necessary.  Others (who earn more) seem happy to just wait until the last moment but I simply don’t have that luxury.  Mind you, that means decisions need to be made ASAP.  It’s much harder to operate as a couple than as an individual, and that fact could not be more glaringly obvious than right now.  It’s worth the effort or I simply wouldn’t do it – but I’m lazy and self-centered by nature (everyone is – I’m just not ashamed of it), and sometimes it feels like a big effort.  Of course, there are several benefits that off-set the difficulties…mocking tv personalities, making beard puppets, not having to worry if something breaks (because he can fix it), feeling like you don’t have to worry about lots of stuff because someone else has it all under control, etc. 

 

Print it out, use a hi-lighter. Then put it on the fridge.  I’ll be looking for it when I next come over.

Thursday really is the day when things go: horribly wrong/bump in the night/mmmm.  Last night I realised that I had left my keys: at home/in the dog/for another man, so I had to knock on my own front door like a salesperson.  Luckily someone answered and let me in.  Tim’s mum had made her way to London from Australia, and came bearing many gifts, much like Father Christmas (a slimmer and more easy-on-the-eyes feminine version, anyway…)  All was marvellous.  I was hoping to ride this: wave of good fortune/3-legged donkey/wild palamino into the next day, but it simply was not to be.

The morning began like: Beethoven’s 5th symphony/chocolate melting on a marshmallow/many others – with coffee and baked beans on toast.  It all went: downhill/into the bunker/off like a frog in a sock from then-on in.  Things tend to break a lot around me.  Or I just happen to be in the immediate vicinity when objects break.  That might be why I’m excellent in: an emergency/Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess/lashings of whipped cream.  Anyway, several devices bit the dust, all at different times, yet all linked inexplicably to the previous breakdown.  First to go was the special robot machine that provides images of scans.  Kind of necessary that this works.  Then the computers stopped talking to one another, or perhaps were having other communication issues, a process vaguely similar to: ordering coffee in English in a foreign country/arguing with a drunk person/arguing with a man.  Meanwhile, I’m out in the reception area swanning about like: Liza Minelli/someone who works at a place where nothing is broken/a swan.  The rest of the day is a blur of telling different people the same thing and watching them express: themselves/their extreme disappointment/milk.  It’s never fun apologising repeatedly for something that is neither anyone’s fault nor can be rectified immediately.  Around 6pm, one of the more theatrical/virile/sane radiographers came out and entertained the patients with his: Shakesperean sonnet/theory of relativity/genital origami.  It brought the house down, and he has now run off with the: circus/fairies/nurse from next door.  How many people can inform someone who has already waited for over an hour that they will need to wait another two hours before we can even begin their procedure?  And make them seem almost delighted about it?  The man’s a: comic genius/Mel Gibson impersonator/long way from home.  The 8pm finish time soon came and went, and no one moved (except for the patient, who was the only person we needed to STAY STILL!)  By this stage, I had decided to seek out: refreshment/roadside assistance/a beef and cashew casserole, so I wandered to the off-licence in search of said item.  I was aiming for a can of Coke, so I made the purchase and headed back:  in time/to the office/to black.  There’s nothing quite like the sound of opening: a chest cavity/the Myer stocktake sale/a tinny.  I allowed myself the indulgence of effervescence, and took a swig of the beverage, only to discover I had been deceived.  It was Cherry Coke (insert appropriate trademarks as necessary).  Who would drink that?  I’m sure there’s a market for it, otherwise Coke simply wouldn’t bother, but now I’m beginning to think they intentionally package it similar to the normal Coke to trick you into trying it, in the hope that you’ll become addicted.  Well – not me.  There’s only one response when you drink the stuff:  aaauuuggghhh/aaauuuggghhh/aaauuuggghhh.

 

Just weeks ago we were tackling the mammoth task of deciding what the hell to do: whether to stay in London or to go home. Or to travel. Or to call it quits. My chances of obtaining a visa were only ok, whereas Tim was virtually guaranteed.

However, time has unravelled (as it frequently does) and made the decision a bit easier for us. He finishes work here around mid-August, and I wind up sometime mid-November. Stupidly, I thought I could breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of going home and not having to make any more tough decisions. Turns out, I’m a fool for believing this to be the case. It’s quickly becoming a case of a race against time to save money for the trip home, which may well be via some other locations. Which, in effect, means further travel around Europe is probably out of the question. Boyfriend has already done Europe and would probably not really benefit from doing it again. So I really need to decide:

a) whether I actually want to travel on the way home; or

b) uh…or not.

And if a), I will probably have to decide where.

It all seems to hinge on $$ (exactly where is the pound sign on this thing?  ah – that’s the one!  £££) I can either save wildly from now on and hope to have enough to get by, or have a good time while I’m here and not regret not taking advantage of all the opportunities before me. I lean towards saving at the moment, but that means no gym, no going out and basically doing nothing but working and then going home. Meanwhile, boyfriend will continue to do his thing (which on occasion involves going out) and I won’t be able to go. As a consequence, I will be a snappy cow and will be hell to be around. It’s not his fault – he works hard, he should be able to go out and have a good time without me whining on and on about it. But I can tell you that’s not going to happen. So whilst I might be up for the saving, I suspect it might be a different story when it’s put to the test. It’s simply not going to work.

I also have to consider that when I get home, if I don’t have any money I will have to live in my car. It’s a really nice car, though.

It might simply come down to a combination of both saving and trying to live (without submitting myself to chronic depression). So I guess it might mean a stint in Asia, just not as long as we/I had hoped. Or, as a worse case scenario (which actually sounds great to me), a bit of a trip somewhere in Australia (ie – QLD, since I’ve never been). At this stage, I have no idea what it is that I want to do, or where I want to go. I’m too clouded by everyone else, unfortunately.
I just don’t know how many times you need to chase someone around the world.

I vividly remember arriving in London, and my boyfriend handing me this blue plastic card-type object which would apparently enable me to traverse the London public transport system with efficiency and ease. Who thought of such a marvellous invention? You just touch your card on the special ‘reader-type-device’, it emits a ‘beep’, then the gates swing open and permit you entry or exit (whilst ravaging your bank account of available funds, of course). It’s so much fun you could almost classify it erotic. Really – it’s the equivalent of: ‘rub your thing on me and I’ll let you in’. Public transport porn.
Anyway, just when I was about to submit my application to become the first spokesperson for the Oyster card (why the hell it’s called Oyster, I’ll never know), my debut card just ‘stopped working’. I went up to the special ‘reader’ and tried to rub my card against it and no beep was emitted. No matter how suggestively I did it. With a fair degree of pain and betrayal burdening me, I had to go and actually talk to a station attendant and ask for help. About half an hour later, I had a brand new card. What joys abound.

But not for long. Seems me and the Oyster have some kind of on again, off again relationship. I think I’m now onto number 7 or something ridiculous. I’ve only been here 9 months, and it’s not like it gets heavy use or anything. I’m not banging it down with a flourish at the readers, or submitting it to magnetic fields or harmful rays (or am I?) I once made the mistake of putting it into my back pocket, only to have it snap in half when I took my pants off. Clearly, the power generated by my butt is much stronger than most people’s.

Yesterday, I jumped onto the bus, heading towards Clapham, trying to perform my good deed for the decade, and donating some old clothing and books to the 2nd hand shop. What an ideal time for the Oyster to pack it in. That’s right – wait until I’m carrying my body weight in books. So I had to get off the bus and walk to a newsagent to get a bus ticket so I could get to the tube station to have my ticket fixed. Thank goodness it was only 500m or so. When I got to the tube station, I knew the guy was going to make me fill out forms again, and I had no ID with my current address (or my previous address for that matter). He waved the form over at me. I then remembered that my Oyster account is inexplicably linked to Tim’s, and I had little to no chance of being able to fill in his details correctly, let alone his password. At that precise moment, my respect and awe for the Oyster card system evaporated; my belief in tfl as the greatest supplier of fun-to-use products crumbled, leaving only a residue similar to calcified bone dust.

I waved the form back at the guy.

Life has officially gone insane. The end if humanity is nigh. Two men in my life have confessed an enjoyment in grocery shopping.

Not only that, they seem to have been discussing (amongst themselves – with no female interaction or encouragement), and comparing supermarkets in our general region. Since then, Asda has been represented as the supermarket with a ‘party’ atmosphere; with a naturally good ‘vibe’, and seems to be where the cool people hang out. Now, one man has left (possibly to gauge said ‘party-ness’ of the German supermarkets), yet the other voluntarily visits Asda, frequently returning with items useful for making meals. It’s astonishing. No complaints are coming from my quarter – in fact if all men wish to partake in shopping and the paying for groceries (and then profess to actually enjoying doing so), who am I to stand in the way of such progress?

In other groundbreaking news, I am now writing in this space instead of another one. There are things on this page that I don’t know how to use. I really look forward to the day when I can just sit down and start talking about whatever topic I like and somehow it’s all magically transmitted to everyone’s heads, interrupting whatever they’re doing at that particualr time. This has probably already been invented, I’m just not IT enough to understand what it is. And no it’s not the same as a telephone. Although there’s no substitute for talking until your larynx bleeds and then deteriorates, leaving you rasping like a 68-year-old full-time smoker, I suppose this will suffice.