Displacement activity

I am still writing my article.

Here are all the very clever things I have learned in the past month......

• Ant and Dec still rock
• Being in possession of a pair of silicone breasts does not necessarily mean that you are not smart, sassy and witty 
• Cheryl Cole is as genuine as she is gorgeous and really needs to come round to our house for tea
• Fat, bald men who can't dance make surprisingly good telly
• Lip gloss in Russian proportions is a difficult look to pull off
• Kerry Katona likes pastry

Excellent. Article coming on nicely then. 

am I getting old, or what....?

In 1992 I  was far too busy listening to  On-U Sound and marching with militant to take them seriously. 

in 1996 I was far too busy being post-natally depressed to give a monkeys about their disbanding, let alone call the help-line that was set up by the Samaritans to support their distressed fans.  

But in 2008 I can't help but notice how - like a cheesecake or a chili con carne - Take That are much better for having spent a short spell in the fridge. 

Wuthering Heights and all that....

People say strange things to you when you move to the back of beyond. 

What do you do with yourselves? (Answer: mostly we chase the sheep.)

Don't you get bored? (Answer: only when the sheep won't play out.)

Isn't it just really miserable when it rains?

I find this last one hard to understand. I have lived in various places around the country and none of them have attracted me because of the marvelous way they just come alive when it pisses down. Hackney, inner city Manchester and the suburbs of Bradford deserve a particular mention for their capacity to induce suicidal feelings after days of endless British drizzle.

 

Tonight it has been drizzling, or mizzling, as we say around these parts, which is a particularly persistent form of drizzling. I couldn't watch tele because we had no reception. I couldn't listen to the radio because we had no reception. I couldn't surf the web because we had no internet connection. I couldn't chase the sheep because they won't play in the rain. 

In the absence of any other amusement I sat on the balcony and watched the mist roll round the tops of the hills before meandering aimlessly down into the valley. The sheep were tucked sensibly behind the walls, and the mizzle was mizzling for Yorkshire. 

It was bleak. It was dour, grim, stark and forbidding all at the same time. It was positively Wuthering Heights, if Wuthering Heights were an adjective. I couldn't think of any place I would rather be. 

In a not-at-all-clunky-or-contrived link, there is plenty of Wuthering-Heights-induced excitement around these parts at the moment. 

The local news reported this week that George Clooney and Johnny Depp are in the area, for yet another remake. A quick google search indicates that La Jolie, Natalie Portman and/or Sienna Miller are also involved. That's the local B & B full up then, unless the girls decide to bunk up together in which case you might get a room if you book quickly. 

A film crew in the neighbouring village, however,  turned out to be filming the new ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I am fond of Sarah Lancashire, but Angelina Jolie she is not. 

Stray wouldn't let me ask the film crew if anyone famous was hanging around (Ms M, please, no....) or even what they were filming (I said no!) or if they needed any extras (at this point she started to rock.) She used to be on the tele-box, so is way cooler than me when it comes to meeting famous people.

I have, however, discovered that Jean-Luc Picard lives about five miles away. Don't tell Stray, but I think I can track him down. I have the sheep on the case. 

I would've called it a wasted weekend, had I not felt such a sense of achievement...

I am a psychotherapist, for those of you who don't keep up. Stray is an engineer*.

 

(That bit is relevant, honest.)

 

This weekend, Stray nicked took up my place at a workshop on neuroscience: a Jungian perspective on the mind-brain relationship and it's implications for clinical practice. 

Not to be outdone, I embarked upon an engineering project of some considerable challenge. **

Stray learnt lots and lots of clever things and is developing some rather complex ideas about how our neurobiology informs the wider socio-political development, as part of  her  book on Climate Change. I am guessing that she made an enthusiastic and knowledgeable participant, despite being the only non-clinician in the workshop. 

I am not impressed. That ain't nothing, I tell you,  compared to the skill it required to get my techno-balls a-rolling-baby. 

*and software developer/film-maker/writer......

**Techno-Balls: Hi-tech perpetual-motion power-driven marble run. Age 8 upwards. 

sometimes a big cigar is just a big cigar

I think I know myself pretty well. I have been therapied to within an inch of my life, after all.

Every now and again my unconscious throws me up a dream, just to remind me that I'm not quite as in charge as my rather smug observing self believes. It's the usual stuff - car brakes won't work/being chased by scary people/naked on toilet in lift...... 

(The 'naked on toilet in lift with doors about to open' is the mother of all anxiety dreams, and if you've never had it I suggest you have a long hard word with your psyche right now.  It's something that everyone should try at least once in their lives, rather like taking acid or going to a Kylie concert.)

Every now and again my unconscious throws me something entirely random - just to take the piss probably - which I then feel utterly compelled to make some sense of.  It's my job, innit?

So, to last night's offerings.........

I visit the local farmer, riding my giant dustbuster. Apparently it's a very green mode of transport and is surprisingly comfortable. It's just an added bonus that it cleans the roads as you ride. 

I park up my oversized but ecologically sound dustbuster,  to be greeted by his giant hamsters. I am pleased, for it is indeed the giant hamsters which have prompted my visit. We have a weasel problem, you see, and the giant hamsters provide excellent weasel control. 

Of course I can borrow them, he says, and whilst he sorts out the paperwork - which is all in Spanish - he tells me about the Blues band he plays in and when they are next gigging. I make a mental note. 

He harnesses up the hamsters - the last thing you want is these things running wild - and I ask for his phone number in case something goes wrong. He gives me it in Spanish, French and Italian and I mount my dustbuster, musing on how educated these farmers are.

Pure randomness. 

My sister once had a dream that she was riding a Netto carrier bag in the parents' carrier bag race at the school sports day. She won.  

Freud was right after all.....

The chasing sheep family are planning a long walk up a big hill in Scotland. It will involve an overnight camp, which requires us to carry all of our equipment. We are very well equipped, mostly courtesy of our local walking shop who, not surprisingly, rub their hands together whenever we walk in. There is only essential piece of kit that we lack.

Our local walking shop doesn't sell penises. Sadly, neither does the interwebulator although I am heartened to learn that once in possession of one you can get it extended for the bargain price of 99 dollars. 

You may wonder why the penis is an essential piece of walking kit? Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't endow you with the ability to read maps, use a compass or navigate your way back in the dark using only testosterone as a homing device. The one major benefit of the humble penis is that it allows you to pee outdoors in a relatively discrete manner, whilst us girls are destined to fumble around in a copse getting nettle stings on our arses and peeing on our boots. 

But no longer. Get thee behind me, penis envy, for I have discovered this.

 

The Shewee technically solves the peeing-outdoor dilemma. I say technically, because you first have to persuade your brain that it is absolutely ok to pee standing up without first removing all of your clothes. And I haven't managed that bit yet. My brain remains convinced that I am about to wet myself, and refuses utterly to relinquish bladder control.

I am practicing. 

 

When I was only twelve...

In an improbable wander through the performing arts, Scarlett Johansson is to record an album of Tom Waits' covers. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I can't quite picture her singing about Lucky Strikes, Mexican whorehouses or, for that matter, heart attacks (with or without the vine) with any real conviction. Which leads me to guess that she is making an album of Waits' ballads, not this stuff.....

There is a very fine line between emotionality and sentimentality, and I have never heard a cover of a Tom Waits' ballad that didn't make me want to weep with despair at the very awfulness of it. I am thinking Rod Stewart's drivelling attempt at Downtown Train (a song the NME described as 'the best song that Springsteen never wrote') or even Springsteen's ludicrously saccharine cover of Jersey Girl. Johannsson, step away from the project now, please, and save us all the embarrassment.

In an almost seamless link, this reminds me of a conversation Stray and I had recently about the best ever cover of Dylan's All Along The Watchtower. My favourite is undoubtedly this cover by XTC, circa 1978 when they were at the vanguard of post-punk pop. 

Which brings me, tangentially, to the point of this mostly meaningless post. Which is simply to say out loud that I discovered this on YouTube recently and it made me want to jump around like the 12 yr old that I was when I first heard it. If ever I am stranded on Roy Plumley's desert island, it would be a very close call between this and the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem as my number one choice. Both make me want to cry  (but not in the same way as a whole album dedicated to massacring  the back catalogue of one the twentieth century's best singer songwriters.)

Bloody fab, isn't it?

What makes you wish you were 12 again?

Six random things about me meme

I have been tagged by my old housemate Dr But Why? with a "six random things about me that aren't very important" meme. Meme rules and stuff are below.

I'm quite a random kind of dog so it wasn't very hard to think of six things. So ... in no particular order, here we go:

1. I am made of velvet and the top of my head smells just like Stray's blanket did when she was little.

2. I am higher up the pecking order than Wallaby-cat, she just doesn't know it. She picks on me loads, but I know I'm more important than her because I get the plate scraps at the end of every meal. Stray and Ms M share almost all their food with me, only saving for themselves the very special treats that they keep in the bin. Sometimes I help myself to the extra special food in Stray and Ms M's bin, and they get really cross!

3. When we all go out together for a big long walk, Stray and Ms M call it "going dogging". And then laugh loads.

4. I have celebrity friends. Helen Mirren used to pat me in the park when I lived in London.

5. I have had over 50 hours of psychotherapy.

6. I can't actually drive, I just like to pretend.

So ...  the rules are:

Rules on blog and links as appropriate. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself. Tag six random people and let them know they've been tagged.

And now for the tagging ... I tag: Anticant, Cas, Trousers, Miss Tickle, Badger and ... Wallaby-cat!