My town got hit by an earthquake this morning. Earthquakes in the UK are big events, afterwards a large amount of people gather round on the streets to talk about the trauma over tea and biscuits using terminology such as ‘awfully frightening’ and ‘Biggest scare since the hurricane of ‘85 by golly’.
Ok I will remove my tongue from my cheek now but seriously, what annoys me is the news coverage and how it swings so dramatically between the two ends of the spectrum. Over here we don’t really get a million different stations covering it from every conceivable angle using the highly emotive phrases that you get on the news elsewhere in the world, we leave that for the papers. It’s really just the BBC and Sky, first it is the steady old BBC with their stone faced reporting and headlines like ‘moderate’ and a ‘little shaking’ and then they move on. The BBC find it hard to break a sweat over news.
You turn over to Sky News however and there is a BIG RED BREAKING NEWS OMG WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!! ticker running across the screen, the same graph measuring seismic activity is flashed up every few frames, people are being interviewed from the disaster management teams issuing advice in case of aftershocks, urban rescue has been called in (probably to save Mittens from a tree where she happened to land after the ‘earth rocking’ had sent her flying). Generally they take the ‘end of days’ theme and run with it until they can no longer stand.
The programming format runs a little like this:
Red ticker flashing .
Graph of seismic activity.
Phone interview with a scared local.
Red ticker flashing.
The graph again.
Another phone interview, this time to the disaster peoples.
More tickers.
Graph.
Cut to presenter who interjects every other word with um and err and talks about the TRAUMA!!
Tickers.
Graph.
More about the TRAUMA!! incase you forgot in those few seconds.
Ad infinitum
I don’t mean to make light of it but within the first few seconds of switching on your hoping the death toll is low because this looks awful, but then as you listen you realise a few cracks in the walls, a broken garden gnome who fell to his death and a fallen chimney is about the extent of the damage.
It is then you begin to realise that this will probably be forever known as the ‘Big One of ‘07 and how we survived’ and you get a little embarrassed thinking about how things like this probably happen on a weekly basis in other places and no one even bats an eyelid.
Me? I didn’t feel a thing because I was too busy playing tennis.
Let it be said that despite the summer weather we have been receiving it is still FAR too cold to go swimming in the UK.
By swimming I mean forcefully dumped in the water fully clothed..
Bastards.
Still, I got to eat ice cream in a cone and fly a kite and I haven’t done that in many years so the soaking wet jeans, t-shirt and long walk back to the car was worth it.
If there is one thing I have learned about myself over the recent years it’s that I *always* need a goal to work towards, oh and supply of chocolate in my desk drawer but I digress..
Every year at the end of the uni term and facing several months of free time I always enlist myself on new courses, give myself little tasks, take on a big job just to make sure that I keep my brain working and the days busy.
If I find myself bored it will turn me into someone I detest, I get incredibly bad tempered and take it out on those around me. I know even when I am doing it that I am being irrational and a complete bitch but yet I wallow around in the misery that boredom creates for me and inflict it on everyone else, almost as if it were giving me something to do.
Traveling would be a brilliant way to kill the time gaps I find myself with because not only would it satisfy my curiosity to explore and do stupid things it would also allow to me to take photographs which serve no other purpose than to entertain myself with on days when I feel my brain isn’t working on overdrive and also as reminders not to sit down for longer than 20 minutes for the fear of the ‘Oh my god I have nothing to do’ feeling setting in (yes I am aware I have issues lol). Unfortunately I am too scared of increasing the nice government debt over my head by spending my grants and things on travel and am waiting for the day I have the rather expensive piece of paper in my hand (soon!) before I take the final dregs of the grants and blow it all on a one way ticket to somewhere that isn’t here.
No, I satisfied myself with another goal this summer which came to me in the shower (all the best singing and thinking is done in there thanks). I had previously read about a challenge to climb/hike the 3 biggest mountains in the UK (Ben Nevis in Scotland which has some of the best climbing this country has to offer, Scafell Pike in England, and Snowdon in Wales) in a mere 24 hours for charity and thought it would be one of the best things I could do this year. The original challenge is already full up so along came the idea to assemble my own team, make our way there and complete our own version of the challenge in the 24 hours, just without the checkpoints and the safety precautions they have for you (oh and the small matter of the minimum £5000 sponsorship money you have to raise). Our version will also be done for charity, just one of our choosing, fewer criteria to be met beforehand and sexier team shirts heh.
My only slight problem now is finding the people to make up the team. I am faced with lots of raised eyebrows and ‘what would you want to do that for?’ statements (Um..for fun and for charity fool). Trying to organise some sections of my friends is rather like trying to run along the bottom of the sea bed…verrry slow and completely tiring. So, any takers? The best positon going is the ‘wait in hotel bar just incase help needs to be alerted’ vacancy but I have a feeling that one might go quickly lol
As a kid I would spend hour after hour reading and so one of the natural choices for me growing up was to study literature to a higher level. I did the usual analysing of poems, plays and famous books and during that time I learned to love (and hate) many a famous name. I was never that big on poetry thanks mainly to the likes of John Betjeman and Phillip Larkin but I had my favorites and among one of those was Wordsworth’s best known piece ‘I Wondered Lonely As A Cloud’.
While I was watching Have I got News For you this evening I heard them talk about the ‘updated’ rap version of this poem which was created thanks to the likes of ‘Mc Nuts’ and a man dressed as a squirrel frolicking around the banks of Lake Ullswater. I was neither high or drunk but I kind of wish I had of been because it made me sad..wtf do kids need these modern updates things for? It just makes it easier for them to be lazy really.
I had to go online to find it for myself and you can watch it here
Check out the lyrical genius..
10,000 I saw in my retina, no more than a glance then I registerd they were beautiful et cetera
I guess I could try to understand wanting to make it more appealing to the younger ‘MySpaz’ teens by doing it in this hip hop style but you have to ask yourself..what self-respecting teenager is ever going to be caught dead listening to a hip-hopped up version of a poem with a 6ft squirrel skipping through flowers and break dancing around the lakes? Instant social ostracism awaits I am guessing.
Oh and to quote ‘The modern re-working manages to stay true to the original sentiment but with some slight variation of the lyrics.’
Uh. Ok then.
*sigh* I am sounding more like my mother every day lol.
I have a football team currently tap dancing their way over my brain (thank you nintendo wii and alcohol, thank you muchly) so please forgive me if the post borders on the incoherent lol.
Last night my sister was telling me that this little old lady came knocking at her house having noticed the for sale sign outside, she inquired as to whether they would be needing a new home for the cat (MY cat) if they are moving. She talked of how much she loved it when he comes over to see her (yes he is very much an attention whore, he sells himself out to anyone with a warm lap and some food, he takes after me in that respect) and how he loves spending time with her and she with him because she is all lonely and shit.
My sister posed the question of whether I would like to give the lady my cat or prefer to keep him so I can have him back when I finish up at Uni. My response was that the bitch better keep her hands of my damn cat which of course makes me feel like I am on the fast track to a nice warm seat in hell.
That is one of the main things I hate about myself, that I get guilt trips like you wouldn’t believe and right now I am trying to squish out of my head the image of a lonely little old lady who is all sad because her only furry friend moved away and I am attemping to replace it with one of her rocking back and forth, giggling manically and flinging cats at passers-by because yes I am 100% convinced that is why she wants my cat*.
So, I have a question for you, if someone came knocking with a similar story would you consider giving up your pet?
Oh and also, a note to whoever hit fast forward on my week you can stop now. No really, I am getting confused.
*Read: Not at all.
