Partriotism.

I read a story today, about a soldier doing something nice for a little girl on his way home from Afganistan or some such war torn hell hole, with the standard order to support our troops at the bottom, stressing if it affected you that it was the love of Britain and the adoration of your country.
It did affect me, and I've had to do a bit of thinking now, based on this reaction.
I'm not patriotic. I have no interest in being proud of my country, and keeping it unique and British, I find all that nationalistic wank extremely displeasing. I prefer the idea of a world united. These ridiculous barriers we've put in place to prevent this, based on race, (which doesn't exist, we're all the same race. The human race.) ethnicity(which is what most people think of as race, the differences that different climates give our skin and features), or where you were born, are complete bullshit. It means nothing at all. Why the hell does being born on this island make you better, or worse, than people born on another landmass? Are you insane? What possible difference can it make?
So pride in my country is not present, its a country, a system set in place by people who want to rule the world and can't, so they settle. I dont believe countries should exist. So why did it make me smile?
Because I do have pride in people. Not because they are MY people. Not because they are special. Because in being human and showing humanity you show you are more.
Now this guy is probably to my tastes a murderer. Anyone who shoots a guy on the other side just because he's on the other side, and his superior told him to, is a murderer. There is no grey area in wartime. It's still a person you just watched fall. To defend yourself, granted, there would be grey areas- if you were fighting to defend YOUR home. But I haven't seen any gunfire on our streets lately, so I'm guessing you were on his.
But the act of kindness to the small child is all I know of this young man, so I will hold that as what affected me. And that is the finer side of human nature. And it's beautiful.
I don't think invading random countries because you disagree with them is a good idea. I don't think following on to a war so as not to be called a chicken is either, but I'm not ranting about that now or I shall be here forever.
I'm a patriot of the world. I love people. They can be coarse, vulgar, violent, stupid, bigoted, and a million other things, but the thing I admire, that need to stop anothers pain, the need to help someone, is in all of them somewhere. Buried under piles of pain and bitterness, sometimes. So twisted that it is unrecogniseable sometimes. But it's always there. Without all this country shit it would be easier to see, too.
Don't be proud of your country...of your army.
Be proud of people. Individually.
Beautiful, kind, wise and gentle, even within the spiral of mayhem, death, fear and confusion.
Help people realise that first, they are people. Citizens of a planet, not a country.

Glowstick innards do not taste good.

I have discovered this very important peice of information and deems it worthy of sharing. It was my own fault for chewing it.
Well, what else. Not much, actually, for all my general business, my life has been courses that are infested with goblins and job interview oriented. Watching a smidge of Anime, which makes me sound ever so highbrow but actually its Spooky thats watching it and I'm just in the room.
Personally, I'm playing Bejeweled....silly, addictive gem game. I wish I could stop playing it, but I can't, it must be done!

I was going to jot a bit down, but I just can't even begin to think about today before an Avobath. I will explode into a plume of tired over-stressedness and just collapse into dust without the gently glittering green goddess.
~Two hours pass~
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I feel better now. Theres nothing like immersing you in scalding fizzy fruity glittery green liquid to burn away the stresses of the day. I'm so much better I may not even rant about my day, and only tell you the nice bits.
Well, I got a temporary job for the summer, which will be nice, a few weeks of cash are always welcome. I had the job before I went in apparently, cause we did so well last year. Got to dig my uniform out. I'm working with the young adults this year, the ones much nearer my age, which will be a new experience, I'm much more used to the younger ones. Maybe I'll get less wounds that way.
I finished my play and creativity course today! We saved the world from the goblins (yes, we did. Part of the teachers theory is to orchestrate play you must be able to play firsthand). So there are loads of games and activities and things all whooshing about in my head, like trying to build a giraffe out of newspaper blind fold.

The big reveal.

I know that somewhere in Nottingham, there is a young woman, who is feeling steadily more and more sick as every gossamer veil is lifted of a delightfully mysterious shape. It feels like a birthday, a valentine and a christmas apprehension all rolled into one, and their are a million veils to go through, and she paces herself and her curiosity as slowly, inorexably, the evanescent trails are lifted one, by one, by one. 

For years now, the shape has been becoming more and more defined, and so transfixed is she that her eyes pick out every detail, every sloping line, every graceful curve, and soon she feels she adores this gift, that she will treasure it always. Her life and friends slip by the wayside as she devotes herself to it as it is slowly defined, step by step. She misses appointments, lessons and life protecting it and in her own way, nurturing it.

She loves it so much, and she can't hear the outside world, she can't fathom the thought of much beyond this magical artefact, and she has a growing fear that someone will take it away. She defends it as passionately as she can, swathing it in her soul, in her very being. People glance at it and she readies herself for attacks, but they never come.

The veils are thin now, and dizzyingly they near the last shadow of all, and she will see it, the fantastic shape that has become her whole world, her very existence, the crux of all consciousness in her sphere, and she can barely think for the need for it, her eyes sting because she dare not even blink, hungrily drawing in the final shape, and how close it is....

The final one is here. What she has wept for, waited for, needed and lived for....

The curtain lifts.... and there stands something so deformed, so twisted...

The very vision of pain and betrayal.

And damn me to hell, I helped. Curse my eyes, and strike me from the sights of anyone pure.....

Along came a spider....

I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.

On rules.

That sounds dull, doesn't it, rules....but at least I'm not talking the don't run in corridors rules. I'm talking those sneaky, invisible rules, that are easier to notice, and are more problematic when ignored. Everyone has these unique rules, they are part of what makes them the person they are, and it invariably irritates me when a person has the rule for the rest of the world, but a different one for themselves.
Parents are always like that. I am a lot older now, and would argue, but I remember many times seeing these unspoken rules being broken...things like all being present for tea. Now though we were never told, me and my little sister Rosie knew full well at tea time we were to sit at the table. Sometimes we didn't, and we got the reproachful aura, the odd comment here and their about family and its values. Standard stuff. But when they wanted to eat in front of the TV or play their videogames...there was no problem there. Only a very basic example, as I would spend forever going through it otherwise, but you get the point.
Still I notice parents are the worst offenders. They will most heartily scream at a screaming child, or hit a child for hurting another child, without ever considering the fact they are condoning breaking these rules for themselves, but not for the child. Why is it so easy to do? My general access to children is to children that ask about this, if they notice it, perhaps that's why I try so hard not to do it. The kids I work with often operate on a purely logical set of assumptions, though of course that depends on the child and I can't make it a full generalisation. (Many don't see societies unspoken rules, and are thought to be naughty when in fact they are just existing as they see fit.)
The point I am considering is not actually involving a parent and child, but two friends that I have observed around another friend from a distance. The reproachful one is reproachful about things so completely unfair its actually hard to distinguish whether they know and are doing it anyway, or they really are so efficient at not seeing their own faults they just get on with it.

It annoys me, when it happens around me....why can they berate you for hurting their feelings, and then do the same thing after you've apologised and promised it will never happen again? I am torn between the paranoia that they are getting revenge on you, or the amazement that they just don't see the connection. I'm not sure which ones worse. I sometimes worry that I do it.

Anyway, enough with my bizzare annoyances, and back to collecting up all my CRB documents. Proof of address, proof of ID, proof of toenails, proof of name, proof of eyelashes... It's all quite endless. I think I've got it all together, but who knows? We'll see when I get there, and she gasps and tells me without a stool sample, I cannot possibly be adequate to get clawed by hyperactive children.

The rules surrounding childrens play are now completely ridiculous. No play fighting, no unnecessary contact, no holding hands unless by a busy road, if a child hugs you, you must make sure your hands are visible at all times, should you need to comfort a child, you must never hug front to front, or back to front, you must only touch side to side, you must never give out plasters without proper documentation, you must never be alone with a child for any reason, you should never joke with a child in a way that could be considered unappropriate or discriminatory, you must never tease, you must never do anything that could ever develop a link or a rapport with a child at anytime! Ever!

People are now so afraid of working with children that the children have begun to manipulate the power of the rules that are in place, its so stupid, it needs to be relaxed, and the terror of legal action should be removed.

If a child scrapes their knee, for gods sake, they scraped their knee, that doesn't mean that the bike they fell off should be condemned as unsafe, it means the child needs to learn to ride it better. Without that fall, their balance will never improve.

Even something as painful as a broken bone has its upsides, it shows you your limitations, and you know how sore or how surprisingly not sore things can be, you know the risks associated with trees, heights, steeps hills, whatever it is you were silly and fell off.

Kids are now thought to be unsafe out on the streets where my generation learnt to risk asess for themselves, and now you put them in care clubs that do all the risk asessment before they get there, and refuse to let them learn these skills for fear of being sued if it all goes a bit west. So they end up doing things like making collages, or cards, for all eternity. You think a kid would ever actually choose to make an undersea collage? Really?

When asked now, six year old children are afraid of molesters, rapists, murderers, burglars...when I was a child I was afraid of the Tomorrow People!

Can you imagine what the children today are going to be like as adults? Will they be able to stand on a chair to change a lightbulb? Will they dare even touch a lightbulb?

You survived broken arms, barked knees, concussions, getting stuck in trees, stung by jellyfish, scratched all to hell falling of bikes and skateboards...so will they.

Let the poor things have some fun.

Mutter mutter....

Well, I am up, and I wish I wasn't, I was rather looking forward to a decent nights sleep, but what with someone starting a game of Risk at about ten last night I didn't roll into bed until three, the sad casualty of to superpowers steamrollering my happy little continent. Apparently I am too passive, and comfortable with what I have- so the guy who was teaching me to play told me, after he'd beaten me to a pulp and taken the whole of Australasia in one turn, and was starting up against Europe the next. Alas for my small, peaceful empire.

Regardless, me in my ignorance did not realise it would take until after two to finish, and I thought 'no problem, I don't have to be up till ten or so anyway, it'll be fine'. All would have been too, if not for the fact that someone outside started making repetitive thudding noises in an out of sync way that made my brain focus on waiting for them and their next bloody bounce so I woke up. *hiss hiss* So now I am faced with an afternoon of spotting on the trampoline, clambering about on soft play, helping out with the art projects, and tripping over bikes and trikes on about five hours sleep. Add in that our usual coaches are absent and off gallivanting in Egypt, and Spooky is at work today so can't join us, and I fear by the end of all this, I may well explode.

Everyone seems to be starting new blogs at the moment. They are popping up all over the place, this one, theres the dreaded Mr. T's new one, Dans one...I'm not sure what has started this minor glut of people writing about their days and wondering why they are so dreary (I wonder why I'm so dreary. I doubt that others do the same...if they did, why would they write blogs?). I was wondering whether to write up some of my dreaded writing, I have to admit, as I am not up for just writing about my life, and thought maybe adding in some of one of my many characters lives might help the poor people who are going to try reading this survive. I'll start with...Annabelle, I think, though Annabelle is little more than a literary tool, she got me a few marks in my A Level...so you can see what you think of her.

Annabelle Simpson loved the Ilhariah Gallery from the moment she saw it. She had been walking, head down, eyes on the pavement, when she had been jostled, and knocked unceremoniously to the ground. The figure had not stopped to check on the roughed up young woman, like the rest of society far to taken up with getting to where he/she was going to carewhat was between A and B, especially if it was some skinny young thing like her. But unusually, a man had picked her up, a little, stout, strong-armed white haired man, and had guided her inside to dab gently at the blood on her barked knees. Her suspicion had faded at his genuine smile and she had cast surreptitious glances around her. Having seen the wood encompassed boxes on the walls she had asked about how the place had come about. It had been erected in the Spring of 2003, in a quieter corner of Chicago’s bustling city limits, he had told her proudly, and given her a brief tour, explaining the layout and point out some of his favourite pictures. Ever since, it had been a popular stop of hers on her frequent, restless wanderings. Open what seemed like twenty-four hours a day (she had never yet seen it closed) and seven days a week, the little doorway stood ajar, and you could just slip right through it, should you know it was there, and into the depths of the oddly constructed, twisting passages, the warm red on the walls inviting you to fall into one of the comfortable chairs and just gaze at the pictures dotting them.

And what pictures…such stories, lying there, locked in their own canvas worlds, just waiting for their stories to continue. Kings and knights of old staring down, aloof and pitying, waiting for a damsel to save and carry off into a sun drenched meadow, or furious gales, battering the cliffs of some part of the English coast, so intricately detailed they could be used as maps if the violent waves had not already forced the rock to succumb to their will and shaped them as they pleased. A man so sultry, peering from behind his burnt black locks, his soul etched on his eyes, and a woman so elegant, and so poised that she looked like a sudden movement could shatter her skin. On the floor, here and there, lurking in corners and peeking out were sculptures, some all flowing lines and pristine images, some weird, abstract shapes, showing hints of insight that few knew themselves or the world they were created within well enough to truly understand. This was Anna’s most recently discovered delight and she was now so often found staring at the displays, she was part of the furniture. So the security guards said to her, jokingly as she wandered in on her daily visits.

The staff were another wonder…so polite, so very friendly, always ready to offer a cup of tea, or a can of Coke. Never judging why she had so much time on her hands questioning her appearance, they simply seemed to enjoy her presence there, her appreciation of the wonders they protected. Sometimes she wondered how it had the money to continue running, before falling into some delightful scene or other. There was no admission to the place, and the clear plastic contribution box that stood to one side of the reception desk was always empty. Usually the gallery was too, when she entered it. That was how she liked it. Sometimes it was full of people, jostling and doing this odd but hugely infuriating shuffling walk as they peered at the pictures and the neat little plaques naming and explaining each one, muttering to their partners or yelling at their bored children, and if you sat in the chairs you couldn’t see the pictures to fall into them. She usually left, if it was all bustling like that, and returned much later, after the evenings fights and tears, to relax.

Here comes Anna’ now, her poor haggard face set and grim as she hurries through the grey, drizzling night, crying softly as the harsh orange of the streetlamps etch grooves under her bloodshot eyes and cast a garish highlight on her unwashed hair and painfully recent bruises. So slender you could lose her if she turned sideways, she uses the skill well, unnoticed and stealthy, skipping past the gangs of abrasive drunks like some sort of elfin creature. She is graceful, if stiff, in her movements, it seems she has something wrong with her right leg, maybe it is a twisted ankle. Whatever it is, it is hampering her usual gliding walk, turning it into more of a lopsided, limping scurry, as she heads through the all too familiar thick black door left slightly ajar, as if just for her. Her eyes glance to the left and to the right, the welcoming portraits calming her defensive hunch to a much more casual stance, her jumpy twitching at every noise stilling itself with a small slump of the shoulders. Her steps slow as she enters the quiet rooms, her uneven tapping footsteps echoing through the spaces as if to reassure her of her solitude. Even the security staff seem to see her need for peace and quiet and nothing but the light hum of the heating systems are audible. She can’t see herself, but if she could she would see her frown lifting and her features unclenching, like a recently pacified child. Even her rough, unkempt hair seems to settle under the gentle lighting and familiar atmosphere, with that all pervading aroma of drying paint and dust that had never really faded from when the pictures were first moved in. Such a homely smell, it reminds her dimly of her old classroom when she was a young child…maybe that is why she sighs quietly into the deserted room, no one but the people on the pictures looking down on her. So comfortable is this room, so welcome is the warmth, the sound of the door snicking shut doesn’t make any impact on her battered senses…she just wants so desperately to sit down safe for a while.

She collapses into a chair, more like a sofa really, and leaning awkwardly bends to unzip her right boot, as you would in a friends living room, wincing as she feels the swelling through the damp leather and letting out a tiny, breathy whimper. It felt spongy, and every touch made her stomach convulse violently and attempt to force its way up into her throat. She has had to walk some distance on the sprain and she fears for her ability to move to find somewhere dry to sleep later, as home is not an option. But the concern is even now fading from her mind as she gazes at a picture, a soothing and genteel landscape, and lets her eyes unfocus in such a way that removes the brushmarks, and makes the painting become, to her eyes, real.

But though she is alone in her thoughts, and she can see no one nearby, she is still not without company, and a tall, long-haired woman watches her from another chair a few feet behind, disturbed from her own in depth perusal by Anna’s swift entrance and now apparently interested in her newest neighbour in the tranquil surroundings. Unnaturally still now her focus has shifted, she could be a waxwork, or a doll of some kind, staring across the room. Her shrewd midnight eyes could easily have been glass, unblinking and fixed on the young woman’s injured form, and lined with slightly smudging smoky kohl, and a charcoal eye shadow, stand out from her other alternately stark white, varying grey and scorched black features, giving her the odd feel of a picture drained of all colour but one, a photo-shop portrait, making her airbrushed way through these historic masterpieces. Anyone watching this fascinating sculpture would have been startled when silently, or so, so quietly, she moves. Rising, strong limbed and smooth from her chair it appears she has made up her mind to speak to the small, slightly ragged individual, and the click of her booted feet on the polished floors is the first physical indication on her presence there. It doesn’t rouse Anna’ right away, so in depth was the girls concentration on the dreamlike state the picture she was looking at birthed in her, but the image does not seem to be at all concerned…perhaps such paintings did not rush. She falls to stillness once more, her perfectly proportioned hand resting delicately on the arm of Anna’s chosen seat, the nails on it a slick black. After a few minutes of patient waiting and a polite clearance of a trained throat, Annabelles eyes, which were still leaking the occasional crystalline tears, looks up into a smiling face of a walking painting…. And the game begins.

Jennavais had been watching the girl for a long time before she had risen tonight to approach her. Far longer than she knew, in fact, for it was Jenna’ who had sent the grizzled old guard to pick up the fallen girl and introduce her to the gallery. It was a game of hers, a risk, a chance. Sometimes it paid off and they returned over and over, becoming enraptured with the stories so carefully placed on her warm walls, and the promises of a refuge that the carefully maintained aroma promised. Jennavais never questioned the instinct to do this. She had always had the ways and the means to do exactly what her mind told her to, and she very rarely hesitated. No point in denying yourself the true pleasures in life, whatever you thought they were.

She was, she liked to think, like a cat, taken with the movement of some small bird and stalking it, not because it needs to, but because it wants to. A poised, dark, elegant thing, ready to create itself toys and amusements. Anna’ she watched now in that manner people who owned such pets were accustomed to, that intense, calculating stare, her senses picking up the girls distress, homing in on the wheeze of pain in her jagged breathing even after she had sat and rested her exhausted body, the hesitant way she tried to asses her own injuries, ensuring that she can’t run. Watching the tears running down her cheeks, another promise of weakness, another little advantage that she didn’t need, she didn’t have to wait for, but she had done anyway, with all the patience of an immortal biding its time. It was another chance, some would trust her and fall into her waiting embrace, and some would see her for what she was, some cold, uncaring predator, and scrabble mindlessly, until they escaped or she got bored of watching them, and ended the torments she so charitably bestowed. Only now had she moved to approach Annabelle, only now did she feel, with the poor lame thing trying to feel safe and protected in her gallery, that she wanted to begin her game.

In actuality, her fancies aside, Jenna’ was more like a spider, spinning her alluring webs and drawing poor, lost flies deep inside where she could keep them for her own. There was a beauty about the complexifications she created and the mazes she put her little experiments in, but this was no game to anyone but her. This was life. And she, toying with it, choosing, judging, sparing or taking, was God.

Feeling my way in.

Well, another year another blog, it would seem. Though it's not strictly accurate; my old blog, on Yahoo 360 has seen me through the last five years, and the one before that lasted three. But the interest wanes, after such time has passed, and they are summarily abandoned by all but me.
This one wasn't my fault, this one is Dans (http://danshenton.blogspot.com/) fault, he started one and the little thingy here did it's sneaky 'go on, you know you want to, you only have to write your name'...and here I am.

Well, what to say about myself today. I would describe my day, generally but as it was one of the few I had all to myself until my partner sauntered in thirty minutes ago it's been rather dull, all conducted on messenger and media player. So I will talk about myself, albeit briefly, and see if I can make a respectable length article.

I am short, rotund, and obsessed by the colour black. The children and teens I work with term this as a goth, though I tend to disagree with them. I was once a goth, and it was extremely expensive, having to buy period costumes and shedloads of make up all the time got very inconvenient, so when I moved out of my parents house I settled down into a more casual, grungy state with only the few old relics from the dark days of my youth. So more of a mosher, in short. Certainly I go to rock clubs and dance late into the night, play too many video games, read miserable poetry, write terrible stories, dye my hair odd colours and listen to some very, very loud music. So there, a brief catergorising of my place in the modern sub-cultures that make up my age group. I really should be growing out of belonging to such tribes, but it isn't so just yet.

I have a rather smashing family, there are rather a lot of them but thats good, theres always someone to talk to. There are the grandparents, both sets, both still married, all a little insane, but we can cope with that.
Parents, also still happily married, both not quite as insane but they do try for the title of crackpot occasionally.
Just the one sister, who is as nuts as I am, I suppose...
Lots of uncles and aunts all over the place, and a veritable profusion of cousins from them.
We are ver bohemian in attitude, all socialists or communists, (apart from the newest aunt who is a prat but can't be helped.) all anti capitalist march attending protest loving punky types. Most recent ones are the UAF (Unite Against Fascism) protests to the BNPs atrocious comments and attempts to get into European parliaments.

You know about the films and books I read, as I've written them on my little profiley bit, so I can gloss over all that, for now, and move onto other minor obsessions.

Video games. I love 'em. RPGs mainly, but I'll mess about on FPS's and stuff sometimes.

Roleplaying Games are a passion of mine too, I'm big on escapism. The one I know best would be Vampire the Masquerade, having played the Toreador Primogen of Chicago for about five years, I learned a lot pretty fast. I also play Dungeons and Dragons, Exhalted, and have tried my hand at Marvel Universe and so on.

I sing. Oddly enough I sing quite well, having been taught for some twelve years but a very good private tutor. I had to stop due to funds, but I can still hold a tune. I tend to sing without noticing, which makes me look a real prat when out and about.

I listed my job as non-profit, which it is, as I don't get paid for it in terms of cash, but I do get to have a lot of fun. I work for Blackpool Tiggers, a charity for children with autism, and spend most of my voluntary hours spotting for them on the trampoline, making sure when over excited they cannot cannon ball off into oblivion. This is my joy and I gladly give my time to such a worthy cause. I sometimes work in the office for them and am completing a play and creativity course to be able to help run arts sessions for them too. My newest feather in the tiggery cap is my shiny first aid badge, and the request to write their volunteer newsletter, huzzah!
Soon, over summer, I will be working for a disable childrens playscheme, called STARS too. Summer is going to be amazingly busy...expect irritability.

Well, I think that will do for a brief peek into my life, don't you?