"I'm so different and unusual"

This is one of those things that doesn't need to be said. When people write in their descriptions of themselves on their 'About' pages for Facebook or something, "I'm really wacky and random," I just don't believe them.

If you really were so unusual and wacky and different and cool and funny, surely it wouldn't need to be said? It's not as though I'd be chatting away to you, thinking how normal you are, and then you'd suddenly say to me, "Omygoodness, I'm really wacky," and I'd suddenly think, 'O yes, yes you are. Now that you've said it I can see it.' If you have to point it out, it's not actually that noticeable, so it's not really true.

I went to university with a girl who I got on really well with. We stayed in touch a little afterwards. I moved to a different university to start a new course after one year, she left to go and live with a guy she met on the internet. I got a friend request from her on one of these social networking sites, it was before Facebook was really big so I don't know what site it was. I went on her page....




Awfulness. There was a photo of her doing slightly shocked eyes and jazz hands with a bit of a mad hairstyle and her description of herself went something like this:

"I love making jewellery, I live in Ireland with the best boyfriend in the world, I have the best friends ever, I'm totally wacky and I love being quirky. Take me or leave me!"

Now, this is not only annoying in the way that I have already explained. It is annoying on two more levels. One is that she is the furthest thing from 'wacky' I could describe when I knew her. She was just down to earth and normal. A little bit mumsy, if anything. She wore a sturdy but unfashionable backpack and long, heavy, war-time-ish skirts. She was lovely. I loved killing a few hours in the cafe chatting to her. I never noticed how she looked really. And then I got this silly friend request about how 'craaaaazy' she is and I thought about her and thought how definitely un-craaaaazy she is. And I just didn't believe her. I didn't believe her description of herself and I didn't really want to be friends with her anymore.

It reminded me of going to secondary school and getting all excited because I'd moved up a year so there were younger ones to boss around. You know, you suddenly get really full of yourself and think you're extremely cool and everyone else is thinking about how irritating you are.

It's like Danda says, "If you have to try for even one second to be cool, you ain't cool."

The second reason this statement is annoying is this whole 'best in the world' thing. This is so silly. Birthday cards that say, 'To the best sister in the world,' for example, are ridiculous. How can anyone possibly know that? Unless they have had every sister in the entire world and concluded this one to be the best. Yes, they might be great and kind and lovely but 'the best in the world'? Did they donate a kidney? Did they die trying to rescue you from a treacherous river? Did they carry you single-handedly across a desert to save you from thirst? Did they? Unless you know what every sister in the world has ever done done for their sibling, it's a statement you can't make. People say it on Facebook when it's Valentine's or something. So-and-so has got the 'best girl/boyfriend in the world.' As though we're all sitting there going, 'O well, I thought my boy/girlfriend was amazing but now I realise that person's actually is. I'm so jealous. I only have the second best boy/girlfriend ever.'

The end of freedom

It's the last in the series on freedom from my regular guest blogger...


We now come to the 6th & final instalment of the series on Freedom. There is obviously a lot of ground we haven’t been able to cover but if you’re still with me thank you for persevering. What I want to do is try and bring the series to a close by drawing lessons from the first five parts but also by giving you some further food for thought.

I hope you’ve seen that each of the areas we have looked at (music, art, literature, internet) has its own problems with regard to freedom. However there will always be those who want more freedom than they have. What I’m about to say now may strike you as being a bit odd: total freedom equals total chaos! How so? Let’s look at a couple of examples from real life. Take the network of roads across whichever country you live in. Ask yourself what will happen if drivers have complete freedom? They can drive on whichever side of the road they want at whatever speed they want, they can ignore road signs and traffic lights particularly if they’re in a hurry and so on. What is the result? - Probably lots of accidents, no claims because everyone can do what they want so no-one is responsible, and therefore general mayhem. Roads & drivers, and indeed all road users (cyclists, pedestrians etc), need rules otherwise the system breaks down.

Now think of sports or athletics. In a game of football, baseball or whatever - what happens if you allow all the players to do whatever they want? What happens if runners on an athletics track can deliberately trip up other runners or ignore the lane they have been given to run in? - Once again chaos because there is no order to what is going on. Imagine watching a game or an athletics event with no rules! How long would you stay? Rules are needed for there to be a meaningful competition between opposing teams. It just doesn’t make sense to have no rules.

Try this one - Draw a circle or rectangle on a piece of paper. Put the point of your pen inside the line(s). Now move your pen wherever you want to within the boundary of the figure you drew. You can go wherever you want; you have complete freedom inside the lines, you could draw, sketch, paint, crayon or whatever. If I gave you a piece of canvas 77cm x 53cm (30in x 21in) what could you do? I would probably just have a mass of lines and colours not looking like much. (However, looking at some of the pictures in recent exhibitions featured in the news, I think I might have a chance!) Perhaps you would do better. Not many could produce a picture like the one of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo – (Mona Lisa, in case you were wondering.) Da Vinci, in the early 16th century, did. The painting had to have boundaries and within those boundaries he produced a fantastic piece of work.

Transfer these analogies to real life and let’s ask the question again. How can society function if everybody does whatever they want because they want the freedom to do that? They do not want you or me or some authority telling them what to do. They don’t want boundaries on their behaviour. Why should the idea of rules be any different for a society of human beings than for any other activity they engage in. We must have rules otherwise we and our society can’t function. The real problem arises when we try to specify what those rules are or should be. Who is going to make them up? Who is going to police them? And who is going to apprehend & prosecute those who do not obey them? In a democracy we give that responsibility to the elected government & its law enforcement agencies – they are the law makers and enforcers.

Do you think it’s best to live in a democracy because that gives the most or the fairest rights to those living under it? Most will agree it’s better than say a dictatorship. We tend to believe that democracy equals good, non-democracy equals “not as good” or even potentially bad. Would you consider the following example and seriously ask yourself if you still agree after reading it? Suppose you’re on a ship and the ship is sinking. The alarm goes out to “man the lifeboats” and the crew begins loading people in and lowering the boats into the water. Let’s say each boat is built for say 10 people and has emergency food rations for that number. Once the boat is launched and has been rowed or drifted away from the sinking ship you find that there are 11 people in the boat. The boat is unstable with 11 (6 one side, 5 on the other), it’s too low in the water and there are not enough rations to support 11. A vote is taken on who the people think should be thrown out of the boat. It’s democratic and it’s fair and YOU are picked. Are you still a big supporter of democracy? Or are you now frantically trying to state your case? – Why you should be kept in the boat and someone else, who in your estimation, is less worthy should be thrown out. Do you see the problem? Democracy is great until it’s you that has to leave or be sacrificed for the greater good. This is not a “balloon debate” – this is real life. What gives them the right to throw you out? Errr..Democracy actually!

Another quite serious example from the TV last Sunday - would you or your town/area want nuclear waste dumped underground there (in safe containers of course)? In the area of Cumbria, where the Sellafield Nuclear Plant is located, in a survey, 68% of people (just over two-thirds) agreed with the proposal to use their area. A democratic result but those who oppose it simply won’t accept that. In other words, in a democracy when a vote is taken, you want (and probably have) the right to object to it. So a democracy which produces a majority decision must allow those in the minority to oppose that decision which means a democracy may not produce a democratic outcome. Or at least only a democratic outcome in certain areas because some people don’t like the result of the democratic vote. Hmmm….

Bring it, literally, nearer home – suppose the people in your street decide they don’t like you and don’t want you living in their street. You have to move. What gives them the right to force you to move on? Democracy again. It’s not as easy as you thought is it?

This is not a new problem. Almost 2,400 years ago Plato was considering exactly the same sort of issues in his work The Republic. Philosophers and thinkers down the ages have wrestled with the same problem. Plato believed the best way for a just society to function was to divide everyone into one of the following groups: producers (those who literally make stuff: food, objects, etc), auxiliaries (warriors or upholders of rulers wishes and making producers obey) and guardians or philosopher kings (rulers). (Social mobility is not allowed; once you’re in one group or class you stay there because that is your function. Seems like a precursor of the caste system perhaps? Also with the restriction of medical care to certain classes we see a worryingly early form of eugenics. Not a freedom, I hope, any would espouse. You might be surprised at some of the supporters of “The First International Congress of Eugenics” in 1912 which included our own Prime Minister at the time!) When the three groups, in The Republic are in the right relationships with each other, and the people in them understand and perform their functions, everything will be fine. Interestingly, personal freedom isn’t considered important and is subject to the good of society which comes first. He also believes poets need to be banished from this proposed ideal society (Book X). If you want to know why and the answer to other questions you might have but don’t fancy reading the whole treatise there is an excellent summary on the Sparknotes Website at:

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/republic/summary.html

So we can say quite clearly freedom has to have boundaries, has to have limits beyond which we cannot go. What that means is that you can do whatever you want within the boundaries – in a sport for example that’s where we can see the skill of a player. One person can do things another person can’t because they don’t have that ability. Look at footballers with their ball-controlling skills, watch them as they dribble around other players in a match because of their superior skill and applaud the goal or home run or whatever is achieved within the rules. A referee decides on penalties for those breaking the rules. The admiration comes from recognising their abilities working within the rules of whatever sport is involved. And so it is with society. It is just a fact that things will work better and people will feel safer if there are rules and people keep to them. Those who want to push the boundaries have a big problem – how far? And who says how far? And once one boundary is pushed are we then waiting for the next person to come along and push even further? Again, I have to ask, “but how far?” Each new level simply proves that people are never satisfied because they want always to push a little harder, to go one step further. (In the newspapers, a couple of days ago, we read of the fastest selling paperback since records began (beating Harry Potter & the DaVinci Code!). It is described as an explicit novel and last week alone sold over 100,000 copies. Another boundary pushed! I hope you can see the inevitable consequences of this pushing. They’re actually all around us in the state of our societies.

Plato had an idea that the values a society needs to live by could come from someone or somewhere outside the people living in that society. Now there’s a thought – what happens if we don’t really know best? Who’s going to admit that - musicians, artists, writers, bloggers? What happens if freedom really does exist only within the rules not outside of them?

That’s the end of our look at Freedom in various fields and in society as a whole. Whilst it has only been brief I do hope you’ve asked yourself some important questions and perhaps found some answers or at least the road to some. I’d like to finish with the proposition of Democritus who said that a life of contentment cannot be achieved through either idleness or pursuing worldly pleasures but only by being satisfied with what you have, giving little thought to envy or admiration. So there you have it – the freedom to be content! Or not? It’s up to you. More to it than you thought? Of course there is!

Evidence of a misspent youth

I still know all the words to the ‘rap’ in Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre.

My Barbies and Kens had specially made (by me) paper underwear.

I know all the words to 99% of Backstreet Boys songs and can still do the dances that my cousin and I made up to about four of the songs from the album, Backstreet’s Back.

There are hours of video tape of me doing a ‘chat show’ on the camcorder.

My friend and I spent two weeks waiting anxiously for a reply to a letter we had written to PJ and Duncan (AKA Ant and Dec) saying we were going to their concert soon and were really good dancers and did they need backing dancers because we were obviously the people for the job. We had even made up some routines ourselves.

I have a drawer FULL of hair straightening products in my old bedroom… My hair has always been, and will always be, wavy/curly.

I have another drawer FULL of different coloured pens. I was extremely religious about what colour I underlined the date with, and whether it was a double underline or a squiggly line or a cloudy bubble thing.

There are hundreds of pieces of novelty wrapping paper dotted around my old bedroom. I never wrapped anything with them. I just kept them.

I have an exercise book full of ‘song lyrics’ I wrote (!). They were full of unrequited love and grand statements about life….. I was 14.

The vast amount of make-up I owned and the hours I spent in front of the mirror, with a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine, learning how to apply it… It always looked ridiculous and now I can’t remember the last time I wore any.

I spent at least 50% of my entire teenage years watching/re-watching/discussing/quoting from Friends.

I am now a Tetris demon.

I must have tried 5000 times to get past the big baddie at the end of the Starlight Zone on Sonic The Hedgehog and could never do it.

I spent a significant portion of my time wishing I was George from the Famous Five and pretending to be tomboyish. I even joined the girl’s football team at school and played half a match. Once.

I used to write and re-write (in different colour pens, with different underlining, in swirly writing or bubble writing) a list of the names I liked for my future children…. What a ridiculous idea!

The big 100!

Can you believe it? This is blog post number 100! It has been an interesting learning experience. I originally started it because I was having one of those days. We've all had them. I went for a little walk. I had a huge essay to write and I thought I'd take a little walk and stretch my legs before I started. I walked to the river, intending to potter to the next bridge, cross it, then return. And I walked. And I walked....

And I walked...

And walked....

And kept walking a little bit more.

And I couldn't see any bridges. I had been out for hours. And my brain got ticking. I thought about my essay. I panicked. I'd never get it finished in time. I had no idea what to write. There was no way I'd get 4000 words out of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2006.

I had thought it'd be right up my street when I chose the question. Then I read the Act. It was not juicy and interesting. There was no gossip to be had. It was rules and regulations. Wordy ones. I worried about not finding it interesting as it meant my 'life plan' might be in danger. I was worried that my back-up life plan consisted of coffee making and that I'd one day be really old and grey, with rollers in my hair, and a Zimmerframe, standing behind a coffee machine, steaming milk. Forever.

I had a bit of a panic. How can I be approaching thirty and not be in charge of the world already?! I was slacking.

So, for the three and a half hours it took me to get to the next bridge (!) and the hour it took to get to a town centre on the other side, I felt pretty annoyed at myself. I couldn't believe I'd been trundling along doing 'not much' for so long. And I went into a bookshop because that always makes me feel better and somehow found myself holding a book called The Happiness Project.

The author talks about being honest with yourself about the things you find fun (having a book and free time, for example) and doing things you enjoy. She is a writer and enjoys writing so she starts a blog. I thought that I'd start one aswell as I enjoy writing, although I hadn't done any in years. I'd sort of been contemplating doing one for ages too but couldn't think what I'd write about. And that's how this came about.

There have been highs (getting to read Chat magazine and call it 'research'), the have been lows (eating everything in sight during revision). There have been silly moments (the invention of the catterpony), there have been serious moments (...wait a minute.... have there?). There have been various themes (freedom, the alphabet, Chat magazine, the way we speak).

But mostly, there has been.... lots of words.... and a high proportion of nonsense.

I am proud of my nonsense. The Happiness Project book introduced me to the idea of being honest with yourself about what you're good at and what you enjoy. And as much as I wish it were the opposite, making social commentary on the current political climate is not what I want to write about at the moment.

So, here's to the next 100 posts! I wonder what I'll be saying then???

One likes to play croquet, don't you know?

So we had a croquet match yesterday, us ladies. Yes, a croquet match. On the lawn. Not just any lawn. The Croquet Lawn.





We each chose a ball and had the rules explained to us. My first few shots were played incorrectly so I was obviously messing around at the back of the class when we were having our Croquet Lesson.

Beige stepped up first, a seasoned croquetter and played a beautiful shot through the first hoop.

Yellow went next and played a rubbish shot which just sat next to the hoop.

Black sailed through and on to the next hoop.

Then it was my turn. I crashed straight into Yellow, who was next to the hoop. So I got two extra turns. I took two more turns and crashed into Yellow each time. Bloody Yellow. I got irritated. Yellow became my enemy.

Blue played last and kind of trundled through the hoop, not very spectacularly.

It continued this way for much of the game, Beige sailing effortlessly round and, ultimately, beating us all, and us trying to remember which hoop to aim for next and trying to find our balls in the bushes surrounding the Croquet Lawn.

Apparently you have to go through this hoop first, then this one, then that one then back through this one and that one.... And when you hit someone else's ball you get an extra turn and when you go through a hoop you get an extra turn and....

When this all started to hurt my brain and us amateurs had been trying to get through the same hoop for hours, we decided it the proper way, with a race around the trees.

Blue and I arrived back within milliseconds of each other, me panting heavily, Blue looking calm and unaffected.

And that's how it was decided. Blue and I came joint last. The Croquet Queen came first. Black and Yellow came second and third, I don't remember which way round as I was probably off in the undergrowth, trying to locate my ball....

I'd like to say we all went inside and lunched like ladies and discussed knitting. But that's not true. We got fish and chips and sat round the TV talking nonsense.

So all in all, a good time was had by everyone. What, what!

Disappointing

So far, this holiday has been quite disappointing.





Yes, dinner was lovely, but where was the burglary from the till at gun point?

Yes, the garden is huge and very impressive but where was the old war hero, hiding out in the disused chicken coop because he'd been rejected by society?

Yes, there's a lamppost at the end of the garden path which is EXACTLY like the one in the forest in Narnia and I got really excited, but where's the old wardrobe that transports you there?

And yes, the weather was quite nice and sunny, but where was the exciting thunderstorm that we could all be a bit scared of?

And ok, the drive here was great fun and we all sung very loudly to silly pop songs from our childhoods but that is beside the point! Where was high speed car chase and the lorry crash?

Yes! I am in book heaven and there are more books than I can count in this lovely house, but where are the strange voodoo dolls and torture equipment?

There have been no crimes, no mysteries to solve, no forays into another world and no inexplicable natural phenomena.

So unfortunately, thus far, it's just been loads of fun and really nice.

Lots to get excited about!

Ok, I've been making a point to be more excited about things recently. I found some good stuff too. Joan Rivers' birthday, Donald Duck's TV debut, the Jubilee....

And today I have yet more to be excited about. This morning I went swimming. Again? I hear you all say, in admiration. Well yes, again. That's three times in a swimming pool in the past few weeks. If I keep going at this rate, I'll need to get some silly goggles and one of those tight caps in a loud colour, like yellow or red. O wait, there's more. Not only did I go swimming, but I went in the outdoor pool today! How hardcore am I? Actually it's lovely there because it's got lovely trees all round it and the sky was blue and the sun was shining on my face and I could almost pretend I was on holiday. I also did a few more lengths than last time so am thinking of letting the Olympic Games committee know to count me in for next time around.

So after a fabulous start to the day I came home and baked some muffins.... Well at least it's even stevens now. If I hadn't been swimming then it would have just been the muffins and I think it's generally frowned upon to just bake batches of muffins every day without at least pretending to do some exercise to have earned them.

They are banana bread muffins but I made them chocolate flavoured and put lots of cherries in them.

Another reason to be excited is because one of my other post-exam goals was to be more sociable and this weekend I have got that covered too. I am channeling my inner country bumpkin and spending the weekend in wellies with some uni friends.

Now the 'lazy' part of my username betrays itself a lot in my friendships. I am unfortunately quite a lazy friend. I've worked since I moved to London. Even around my full time undergraduate course, I was also working full time and volunteering part time. And when I was at uni, it was easy to see my friends because we were all in the same place. Then we all left, and my schedule didn't get any less busy, and I didn't make up for it by ensuring I kept in touch with everyone. So I'm very very guilty of having friendships that I don't invest as much time in as I should. I will dedicate some time soon to seeing people more often.

That's partly why this weekend will be so great. The main reason is of course that I'll get to spend it hanging out in a tractor in wellies. That's obviously the MAIN reason. But it will also be lovely to see friends again.

Double excitement then! Swimming and weekend away. Woop! I'm off to pack my going-away bag. Lots of waterproofs and warm jumpers! I love an adventure!

Omg, we could solve a mystery or something and then it really WOULD be adventure! I could live out one of my many childhood dreams, to be George from The Famous Five. Hopefully there's a crime this evening when we arrive!