Manchester Part 2,

Now that Craptop is behaving itself I can finally get this written, but first, a couple of moans:

1. The transport system in Manchester is a pile of ___________ (insert favourite profanity)
2. I think I need a children's Snuggie, since the sleeves are too far apart in mine 
3. My laptop sucks 

Anyway...since I've been back in Manchester, I've been meeting up with a lot of my old friends, and also running into people I haven't seen in years, which has been pretty odd, but ultimately interesting. Yesterday, I saw one of my old friends who essentially looks like he has a whole new face (it has been AT LEAST a year and a half, probably more like two years, since I've seen him though) and it was like, oh, hello beautiful. Interestingly though, I feel like nothing has changed. We still play video games together, I still suck at them, and they still - very accommodatingly might I add - set up the game in a different way so that it's almost impossible for me to lose. By the way, I love you guys! 

Today then brought about my very geeky side. Since the destruction of the blanket I have been OBSESSIVELY knitting to try and replace the patches that were essentially mashed and had to go in the bin, but that does mean I do things like knitting on the bus to town or in the cinema or watching the TV (or all of the above....guilty) I also hang around comic book stores and spend too much money on graphic novels, but if you've ever seen how beautiful The Watchmen and Kingdom Come are, you'll have to understand. 

Even better, Josh and I both proved our age (in our heads, somewhere between 62 and 90~) by sitting through another film, verbally tearing it apart and then admitting to having thoroughly enjoyed it. Jack the Giant Slayer and Warm Bodies (it's really odd that both films we've chosen to see recently have the same male lead) have both received the same treatment, but as I said, we really enjoyed them. 

Now if only I could find some time to edit that blasted novel!!!

P.s. CELEBRATING THE 1500 views!!! :) 

Can You Spare a Room?

So, as of next month, the current administration is introducing a bedroom tax to council properties, which means that those considered to have a spare bedroom will have to pay an extra tax for the priviledge of. If haven't already read the guidelines, they're just HERE for you.

Now, the theory of this tax, I do completely agree with. I would use personal examples, but I'm not sure how certain people in my family would feel about that, so let's go with a hypothetical. If you have a couple living in a three bedroom or four bedroom home which is provided by the council, with council waiting lists so long, is it really acceptable for them to be wasting space that could house a whole family.

What I don't agree with is the government essentially prescribing to people where their children ought to sleep. I freely admit that I'm pretty priviledged, but at no point in my life - living at home anyway - have my brother and I had to share a bedroom. Under the rules of this tax, until the age of 10, my brother and I would have had to share a bedroom. If that had happened, only one of us would have reached age 10... The same rules state that until the age of 16, children of the same gender would have to share. I can't imagine anything worse than that really.

I remember what I was like in my early teenage years. I was a pain in the arse and I spent a long time in my room, on my own. At that age, being able to have time on your own, being able to have somewhere to go to that is private and that is your own can be very important, and yet we're essentially saying that's only okay if you're parents have the money to pay for it.

Before I start sounding a bit too left wing - come on, I don't want to mislead anyone around here - I would like to say that I do believe that if it's because parents are just on job seekers and always have been, then that's a little bit more understandable, but the issue I have is HERE. Cases like that of the Egglestone's.

It's just something to think about...

My Teddy Will Protect Me,

...and unfortunately I'm not talking about a tall, masculine hottie who accepts the wild things which go on in my imagination. Perhaps one day. 

Anyway, today my flatmate and I had a lengthy chat about the film The Woman in Black and which bits scare the living crap out of us. Since I was already scared of the dark, it was NOT a clever idea to watch such a creation, because ever since then I have been more on edge than ever. This is the reason I would probably struggle to live alone.

I'm going to define the terms of being scared of the dark. I'm not scared because there is a lack of light in the room - I'm scared because my spidey sense or whatever you want to call it likes to tell me something is there, or rather my imagination wills me to believe that something is. 

My peripheral vision is not the best. In an exam where a boy was kicking his orange trainers under his desk, I would have sworn on the Bible that there was a ginger cat walking around, because my over active imagination likes to go cloud watching (or rather, blur watching - making shapes out of the flashes of colour I see) and it's really annoying, and can freak the day lights out of me. 

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a night light on my landing, or I sleep with the backlight for my iPad or my laptop on. I very often have soft acoustic, classical or jazz music on too, just to keep me calm. 

After dark, I really have a problem with windows, mirrors and our bathroom's skylight - plus any funny noises that sound like banging or footsteps. Horror films NEVER FLIPPING HELP!, but some of them aren't really horror films. 

Anyway, after mutual admittance of still being nervous in our house after dark, I was putting away shoes in the hall closet, when I noticed our security light go on outside our front door - twice. 

The first time, I calmed myself saying it was just the fox/badger/mole thing which got into our rubbish last night (we still need to sort out the garden, so it would make sense that it came back, since the split bag is still there) but when it came on the second time, that was scary. 

Since we'd been watching a film, Eeyore and Teddy had been downstairs with us - there is nothing like being comfortable - so Stevie still had Teddy in her arms and the strawberry condom that we had just found at the bottom of our cleaning cupboard in the other hand. Slowly, she approached the door, making to open it. 

"STEVIE! Leave the chain on!" If there was someone behind there, or even a fox or something, I didn't want it in our house! "Wait, wait, I'll get a stick." After checking behind the cupboard door - because I had gotten paranoid by now - I grabbed the solid hose of the end of the hoover and readied it for hitting the fox or whatever came through the door! BUT THERE WAS NOTHING THERE! The looks on our faces were pretty priceless though. To be fair, we're the sort of people who have to have the curtains in our living room closed after dark and I tend to sit with my back to the wall or I get a little edge-y. 

Anyway, in all the panic, I've gone and left Eeyore and my blanket in the living room. A rescue mission would involve turning on all the lights in the house, but I'm not sure I can leave him down there alone...

Geekish Nerds and Why I Love the Kindle

Ever since I was a child, able to read, I've pretty much always carried a book with me, except for those early teenage years where you always reject the things of childhood and don't really know what to do with yourself, but you have to do something to stop being seen as that infant. 

Now, because of this and a heck of a lot of other factors, such as the fact that I act on curiosity and find out the answers to the questions I'm asking myself, oh, and the fact that Algebra has always made a lot of sense to me, I always earned myself the label of 'geek' or 'nerd' - I'm talking about the days when this was supposedly an insult, and not a cool thing to have emblazoned on the chest of your jumper.

The silly thing about this is, that most of the time that I'm reading, I've got another book next to me, or I'm screaming for my mum, because I either can't figure out what a word says - the amount of time it took me to learn the word cushion is somewhat embarrassing - although that only applies to the Anglicised versions of Greek words these days (but how many people would know that you say Iannis as 'Yan-is'?) or because I can read the word perfectly fine, but I haven't got the first clue as to what it means. The latest example of that was plutocracy. I knew that I should have known what it meant, but I couldn't remember for the life of me, stupid for a couple of reasons 1. I studied British and American Politics and 2. Arguably, Britain is still a plutocracy. For those who are equally confused, it means a society where power is in the hands of the wealthy. 

Anyway, this is one of the reasons why I love having a Kindle so much - because I'm really lazy. I just had to run up the stairs in my house to get the dictionary, in order to find the meaning of the word plutocracy. By the time that I get back to my book, I'll be quite out of the rhythm of reading it that I had got into, but with the Kindle I can simply hover on a word and it explains it to me instantly. Yes, I am that lazy.

It is also my intention that this month I will beat my current record for amount of posts in a month, which I believe is currently August last year and ten posts. Wish me luck?