Oh Mr Shakespeare, What Have You Done?

It’s my standard, (all too standard these days) Friday night, and the decision is Moulin Rouge or Shakespeare in Love. Due to the inevitability of me singing the Elephant Medley loudly and badly for the next few days we went with Shakespeare. I've always loved Shakespeare; it's the beauty of words combined with love, fantasy, comedy or tragedy that makes me feel all warm and misty-eyed. Midsummer Night’s Dream was always my favourite; it has fairies, ancient Greeks and a dog - what's not to love? But, Romeo and Juliet has that essence of passion and wonder that makes my throat constrict.
I couldn’t help thinking, ‘if only romance like this still existed.’ This thought confused me and ended up confusing me for days. It danced repeatedly round my head as I tried to make sense of it.

Romance is defined as a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, or 'love' when sentimental or idealised. When most people think of ‘romance’ it probably involves candles, sunsets, mighty gestures and gazing into each other's eyes. “Ick” some people would think of this and say instead that it’s the little, personal, unexpected moments that show a romantic side. But I can’t agree with either of these descriptions. Sunsets, I grant you, have a mystifying effect, but candles are more likely to cause a house fire, especially if you’re both so busy gazing you don’t notice. And the little moments? Surely that comes under thoughtfulness and the kindness you would expect in a tender relationship anyway? To me, romance means something bigger.

The problem is that so many of us think we know what romance is and therefore, expect it. In the modern day we’ve been brought up on rom-coms and have been led to believe that this is romance; it has it in the title. We see the men of our dreams run in slow motion through an airport and think yes, that is romantic, that is what I want. But isn’t that just sentimentality? We copy what we see in the films because that is what we have got used to believing is romantic. This actually completely defeats the point. We’re not supposed to know something is romantic, at least not at the time, otherwise where is the mystery and the excitement?

These days we are so much more practical about love. We have careers and irritating distance issues to think about, not to mention a much greater choice of partner than the Bennet sisters would have been blessed with. Now, if we meet someone we have the delightful option of analysing their texts, their Facebook page and a series of dates before we need even consider romance. Just look at the Amazon bestseller list for romance and see that it’s going under a variety of different names these days depending on what suits us. Perhaps it's just easier to type a reminder into our iPhones that we are due a romantic night out with our partner, and therefore believe we have everything sorted, than deal with the turbulence true romance is paired with.

If I think of examples of a true romantic story all of my examples come from classics. Shakespeare, who has us dying for love, Charlotte Bronte whose Jane Eyre and Rochester have hearts so entwined they hear each other’s cries across moors, and Jane Austen who would have us risk pneumonia to feel such passion. Can we write such romance in a modern age? Would the majority confuse it with cheesiness or foolishness? Find me a modern-day romance that is romantic and I will happily be proved wrong.

Romance doesn’t have to be a huge event but it should be something that sweeps you off your feet, that leaves you speechless and as though your heart will explode out of your chest. This could be by the smallest of gestures but it needs that intensity. My most romantic night, surprisingly enough, was hanging around London waiting to watch Batman at the IMAX at some ungodly hour. There was a sunset, there was a boy and there was the Millennium Bridge, water and London. By my own definition it shouldn’t have been romantic, it was exactly like a scene in a film, and yet it was romantic. Why? Because I totally didn’t see it coming. It’s the sudden rush of emotion that at the time feels like a glorious pressure that makes you smile endlessly and you look back at and realise it was something unusual. If I had planned it or even imagined it before hand it would never have felt so good.

Every relationship needs a level of romance, but think how exhausting it would be to live like that all the time. A relationship should be fuelled by love, by the little things, the thoughtful things and the kind things that you want and need for and from each other. But romance should be that mighty gust of wind that sweeps in now and again and reminds you of everything that is powerful in what you have. For that to work it has to be unexpected.

To make something romantic is to make it a mystery.

Fate And His Gang

Why is it, when you’ve noticed something annoys you it suddenly appears everywhere? This has happened with me and a particular phrase - "just wait and see what happens." It seems to have an uninvited and unsympathetic hold over my life and other people’s mouths at the moment. I should apologise in advance as if this phrase can be applied to anything in your life you will start to notice it creep in and nest in all conversations from now on.

I'm a planner; I like to know what I'm doing and if it's going to work. This doesn't seem a totally unrealistic ideal for life does it? Just hanging about and seeing what life throws at you seems an almost dangerous proposition if anything, it’s leaving an awful lot of responsibility up to the gods of Fate if you ask me. And if Sod is one of them, he and his law already don’t like me.

It’s an irritating fact of life that occasionally scenarios occur where our wonderful intellect and decision-making abilities are as useful as a chocolate teapot. You want to stick your tongue out at Fate and his gang and make things happen your way but you can’t. Some (horrible) times you can’t make decisions yet and you actually do have to wait for Time and Fate to have their fun until things work themselves out a bit. This is the part I don’t like. It’s not about being impatient, because I can deal with queues. I even enjoy the excitement of waiting for something to happen...as long as you know something is going to. And there’s the rub. That is what makes me fluster and bustle and want to box people’s ears, with “wait and see what happens” you don’t know what, if anything, is going to happen! 

I should possible explain some context here and why I am being plagued with this satanic phrase. Typically, and yet not typically at the same time, it’s to do with a boy. Yes Boy, I’m talking about you, who decided in his infinite wisdom that moving to Denmark would be a great idea (for reasons to do with architecture I believe, not because I’m so horrible that leaving the country is the only option...I hope). Now we both worked in an office which is effectively a microcosm of procrastination and gossip so since his emotional departure I, who still live in this bubble for three more weeks, have been inundated with “Are you Ok?s” and “What’s going to happen now?s”. These questions, I have noticed are actually completely pointless because really, people end up answering themselves. 

For example: 

Colleague (usually with sympathetic head tilt): “Are you OK?”

Me (feigning a sudden interest in whatever Olympic sport is currently being shown on the TV - it turns out to be discus throwing): “Yes, fine thanks.”

Colleague (ignoring the TV completely and staring at my eyes to see if I’ll cry): “What’s going to happen now then, with you two?”

Me (adding distracting gesticulations supposedly in my anger at the referee’s decision) “I don’t know really.”

Colleague (moving their chair in front of the TV): “Oh, so might you go and see him?”

Me (trying to subtly shuffle my chair away without taking my eyes off the flying discus): “I don’t know, we’ll have to...wait and see what happens,” (knuckles start to contract and turn white at this utterance.

Colleague (patting my tense rock of a hand) “I see.”

Me (in an odd, strained, squeaky voice that I hope comes across as excitement about the distance cleared by the cheering discus thrower and not due to the volcano brewing in my head) “What would you do?”

Colleague (staring wistfully out to the car park) “I don’t know, I guess you have to think about it, weigh up your options, see how you feel and...... WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS....I didn’t know you liked discus so much?”

They probably didn’t actually shout that bit but that’s how it echoes in my head. 

I know it’s not anyone’s fault and people are trying to be supportive etc and that there really isn’t anything else to say. Though one person did try to be ‘cruel to be kind’ and tell me his version of what actually was going to happen and his body can now be found floating down the Thames. Even if I do hate the phrase with a unnecessarily violent passion, hearing the ‘truth’ is even worse and to get the answers I want to hear would involve someone having impressive psychic powers. Unfortunately, in a scenario where control really does lie with Time and Fate, as much as it makes me want to implode, explode or simply sleep until it’s over, the only option may be to take a deep breath and...(dare I type it again)...wait and see what happens. 

Home Is Where You Lay Your Hat

I stood in the chaos that was once my bedroom, stared around at the complete lack of visible floor space and cried "I can't believe this is what I am!" This dramatic outburst of self misery that would normally be met with a fall to the knees, a sorrowful piano chord and a rain storm in any half-successful blockbuster film, was actually met with my house mate sticking her head round the door and chuckling at my tragic situation.

I'm sure some people have systems and colour codes and probably an itinerary when it comes to packing, but I do not. I make a big mess and then spend the next few hours trying to battle it into any form of container, may it be a suitcase, a Sainsbury's bag or a left wellington boot (to clarify the boot in question had been left behind, I can't remember if it was in fact the boot for the left foot). If this situation isn't stressful enough, you then find yourself surrounded by your now contained belongings and realise that this mismatch pile of stuff is everything you own. In 23 years I seem to have collected A LOT of stuff and actually, I found it rather depressing. I kept thinking that if there was a freak natural disaster and I was left frozen in the state I was then in, and some explorer thousands of years from now found me and had to make some conclusion about who I was based on the stuff that surrounded me…I would be irritatingly generic. Apart possibly from the large, metal, guitar-playing ant my friends bought me on my 18th birthday that was then unceremoniously shoved in an old-lady-wheelie shopping bag, I had clothes, shoes, jewellery, some books and my one file of organisation and then just stuff. So much stuff that there is no other word for it. I can't even remember what it was. It was stuff, and if I can't remember what it is it probably isn't that special. Our explorer friend would probably look at it with a raised eye-brow and declare me an insignificant find.

The thing I find the most interesting about moving house is the believe that it will solve all our problems. The phrase "once we've moved" was said so many times in our post-move week and more significantly, we had so much faith in those three little words. Dieting, detoxing, budgeting, working and organising were all things that we unquestionably believed would happen better "once we've moved." I grant you it makes sense in it in that the stress and mental capacity required for moving takes up so much of your brain that even thinking about anything else is a huge effort. But it's like New Year. It's the fresh new start, the beginning of a new chapter, that's what excites us. It's the possibility that by simply moving yourself to a new place you are wiping the slate clean and starting again. The idea of taking a new route to work and putting all your kitchen utensils in their new places is exciting, it's fun. You try and make your mark on a place, make it yours. You plan where you're going to put things, what bed sheets would look best; you have to make it feel like home. Then, just as by February you have slipped back into old habits, by the end of your first week in your new place the novelty begins to wear off. All of that stuff, the stuff that you wrapped up in bin bags and shoved into wellingtons, you brought all of it with you. Soon your fresh and hopeful new room is full of everything you have always had. You are actually the same person after all.

This is all sounding really depressing and originally I thought it was, but now I wonder if perhaps it's not the building and the new and snazzy living room that makes somewhere a home, maybe it is the stuff. The stuff that I feel makes me an insignificant find is actually what I use to make myself a home. Yes it's probably due to our consumerism driven lives blah blah blah and it may be generic but it's the stuff that I choose to keep and carry with me and that does define who I am, to an extent. Mr Future Explorer might not think me anyone special, but that's because he doesn't know all the things about me that I can't pack. Our friends, family, memories and adventures also define who we are. It just so happens they are a lot more difficult to fit into a wellington boot.

You Can Taste a Rainbow

"I'm feeling a bit beige today Mum."  This seemingly off-the-cuff remark sparked a whole rainbow of colour-orientated thoughts about how much colour seeps its way into our lives. Looking around my slightly untidy and Sunday-a-fied living room I can see colour everywhere and even on the greyest of London days you can not turn around without taking in a variety of hues, tones and shades (even if they are shades of watery and depressing).  There is colour in our environment, we use colours in our speech and I would argue that our relationship with colour affects our choices and moods in a much more emotional way than most of us are aware of.

There are people who think in colour. That is to say, they think of one thing like a number or letter and automatically associate it with a colour: it's called synesthesia. There's an excellent book called Painting Ruby Tuesday by Jane Yardley which is about a girl who can do just this. I don’t have synesthesia, but I do feel colour has a lot more impact on me that I’ve ever thought about before. The colours I choose to wear for instance; is it because I simply like the colour? Is it that I like the look of the colour on me? Or, is it because the colour represents something to me, subliminally or conscientiously? I’m not sure whether I’ve ever been green with envy, and I don’t think even my angriest of faces could be described as a black look (mainly due to my unfortunate habit of looking like a meerkat when I try to look angry). Do I associate red with salvation because of that shiny red beacon that finally trundles round the corner just when I’m about to give up and take the underground? Are my teenage memories tinged in purple because of those purple stripes I thought looked really good painted on my bedroom wall?

On the day these questions were born I was feeling beige. The idea of feeling a colour was not something I had been dwelling on for a while, it was not a comment that had been carefully structured and planned in advance, it was just the only thing I could think to say that could describe how I felt on that particular day. It was a Tuesday, which in my view are always the worst of days and not ruby at all, but it was also a day when I could have walked naked through the office with sparklers coming out my ears and no one would have noticed. Do you recognise the feeling? You can't say anything interesting, do anything note-worthy and you feel so boring you should be employed in a sleep clinic. (I would like to make you aware out at this point I am not boring and everything I do is interesting and note worthy and I am exceptionably employable and rarely naked in public. It was just a Tuesday). 

I wanted to know if I was being unusual in letting colour enter my head to this level so I went to the newly introduced minions of knowledge - The Secretaries. "What colour are you feeling today?" Two responses of yellow - optimistic and at ease with the world. I had one green - she was hung-over, one brown - she's taken to the ridiculous habit of running around the park at lunch times and so is smelly and in need of washing. I received a very carefully thought of pastel orange - quite happy but having her vibrancy sucked out of her through sheer boredom. Most depressing was grey - mainly because it was raining but also because she only wears black and white, what does this say about her I wonder? I even had fluorescent beige, which I believe is a reference to a 90s comedy film…

What was interesting is that it was a very easy question to answer. Feeling a colour seems to be the sort of thing you are not aware of at all but when someone asks you an answer springs to mind immediately. Perhaps it's a way of organising feelings. Occasionally, there are so many emotions rushing around like spinning tops that trying to get them to stay still and arrange themselves carefully into something you can understand is impossible. But label them a colour and it's easier. For example, this very minute I am tired (indigo) and full of hay fever (icky yellow) and a bit emotional from watching I Capture the Castle and crying at the bit when Bill Nighy cries (navy blue) but enjoying writing and feeling a tad inspired and productive for the first time today (light blue) and there is definitely some worry going on about various life decisions that are in the balance, (bizarrely a shimmering silver). So, if I need to shut my mind to everything going on in there to stop myself being totally overwhelmed, I can close the door and paint it in shades of blue, with a horrible yellow doorknob for the pollen and coat it all in a glitter of worry and then I feel emotionally organised. Of course you could be reading this thinking "golly, she's gone a bit philosophical and crazy and she should stop crying at films by herself on a Sunday night". All very good points and I'm definitely starting to think the same, and maybe you don't feel the need to organise your head as I do, but I bet at some point today you'll try and work out what colour you're feeling…and I bet it makes you feel better…as long as it's not beige. 

The Secretaries

I haven't blogged for a while. I think this maybe because trying to find ways to constantly improve yourself is harder than I thought. Especially when you're practically perfect in every way all ready. I'm 23, I have a lot of improving to-do in many directions, but I'm hoping this will happen naturally….

But, never fear, this is not my retirement from the blog world after 3 attempts. I am purely changing tack and going from an attempt at self-improvement to, well, talking about anything I want. (Selfishness? The process is reversing already).

During these periods of contemplation I may often refer to my gurus on life, my voices of reason and madness and my muses of South West London. Meet The Secretaries. Where I work we have a core group of efficient and dedicated administrators who have formed a friendship based on location, occupation and mutual despair of architects (as well as all being fabulous people). Mostly females, plus two Richards, our gathered opinions are a cornucopia of slightly mad and not always rational thought and we refer to each other for advice on the most challenging of life’s questions. “Should I go on a date with this guy?” “No, he shaves his head, obviously a weirdo!”

Hopefully, through these reflections I will continue to learn a little more about myself and those little improvements I’m still determined to make. You, dear readers, may learn the scary truth about the inner workings of the minds of various twenty-something-year-olds working in Battersea. It’s not all a walk in the park I can tell you.

So join me? Maybe leave a friendly comment? Go on, it’ll be fun.

Shiny Happy People Holding Hands

This next challenge has taken me a while to write; because I think it's impossible. I have a few other ideas up my sleeve but as these involved planning, expense and a house mate in an agreeable mood, I have been delaying them. Instead, for some barmy reason I haven't quite reached the bottom off, I have decided on this one: Thinking positively for 7 days.

You might not think it is that hard, I didn't think it would be. Generally, I'm quite a positive person. I have my strops and sulks but overall I prefer being optimistic. So I tried it for a day to see what happened...I've never realised how many things annoy me until I couldn't complain about them out loud. Architects that believe you should just know that the meeting's time, location and day has changed and who get angry when you explain your telepathic energies have been running low this morning. People who amble on their way to work while you bob and dance around behind them, other secretaries who are either so rude or lazy that they get bored saying your two syllable name and drift off half-way and not being able to find the sodding lid to your pen! It makes me want to purchase an irritatingly expensive hot chocolate and lock myself in the bathroom and sleep, or at least try to but the doors open the wrong way so you get jammed between the toilet and the wall and the horrible glaring, flickering lights make you think you're being attached by an aggressive but silent bluebottle. See? For a happy, sunny, shiny person this would be a challenge and as I'm only happy and sunny occasionally and very rarely shiny, it's going to be a woolly mammoth of a task.

Why then? Well, for one thing, I think this was suggested to stop me complaining as much. I hate it when other people wine and complain at me so I guess that's a pot, kettle and black sort of reason. Also, according to the Mayo Clinic http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/positive-thinking/SR00009 thinking positively can:

Increase life span

Lower rates of depression

Lower levels of distress

Greater resistance to the common cold

Better psychological and physical well-being

Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease

Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

And who wouldn't want that? I have a friend who is always in a good mood and I find it impossible to be in a bad mood around her. Isn't that such a nice thing to say about someone? It would be lovely if people said that about me instead of "oh dear, here she comes, she looks angry, maybe she got wedged in the bathroom again." Another friend of mine has introduced me to the phrase "1st world problems" which you're supposed to say with your eyes closed, a slight shake of your head and a sort of air-sweeping hand action, as if to cleanse yourself of these worries that don't involve starvation, disease and cruelty. It's a good phrase and makes a lot of sense and I feel will help me with my challenge.

Of course this might actually be impossible. My existence in the western world might have made complaining an integral part of my genetic make-up. Or it could go viral - I could come out of this so happy, shiny and new that I annoy everyone else so much that they have to take on the positive thinking challenge just to cope with me and eventually this spreads until the whole country is an army of happiness - psychiatrists would go out of business!

...or I continue complaining as usual but only in my head, until it explodes out of me in one mass attack of bitterness where I accuse everyone and anyone of stealing my pen lids.

Keep an eye on the news, there will either be reports of tree hugging and singing in Battersea Park or that the whole area has been roped off due to the crazy, ranting maniac contained in one of the buildings. Only time can tell.

Until the Cows Come Home

So my first attempt at bettering myself involves not eating meat for a week.

“Why?” I hear you, my stomach and various passes-by cry.

It’s not about being a vegetarian exactly, I don’t think vegetarians are amazing-should-be-praised-and-admired type people, and in fact I think there are many flaws in the arguments for being one. It’s about not eating meat for my own reasons.

Firstly, I don’t like the cruelty factor. In order to meet the rising demand for meat some farmers have turned to intensive methods. You know the horror stories; five chickens crammed in a cage big enough for one, male calves from dairy mums shot at birth or shipped off to veal farms, animals herded onto lorries and taken off across the world in horrible diseased and insufferable conditions. Apart from they aren’t horror stories half the time, they’re true.

The second reason is one that I don’t totally understand: the argument that meat farming uses and wastes too much energy and takes up too much land.

I’ve done some research, check out http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100520030732AAVvgHD for arguments for and against; you just need to skim past the ranty replies.  Being a country bumbkin it upsets me to think that more and more rural land will have to be used up to grow grain to feed the many more animals intensive farming accommodates. Especially when I though grazing animals, in the Summer at least, should be grazing, not eating grains…? So if more veg was eaten and less meat, would that mean less energy was used, more land could be saved for the environment, less demand for meat so intensive farming wouldn’t be necessary? That’s the gist that I was going with.

I’ve never believed people ‘shouldn’t’ eat meat, but I don’t think I can really preach any principles until I’ve tried it.

Challenge one: no meat for a week, and I shall report my findings.  Will vegetables be victorious? Will the meat be mighty? Who knows, I may discover an overpowering attraction to turnips and never eat anything else again.

Wish me luck.

Conclusion

This hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. It seriously decreased my chances at lunch satisfaction and a vegetable kebab on a Friday night wasn’t quite the same BUT, I’ve quite enjoyed testing the versatility of aubergines - very versatile as it turns out.

The conclusion I’ve come to, however, is that even though I could give up meat entirely (even if refusing a pork pie would break my heart), I don’t want to. I’ve decided to choose the life of the ‘happytarian’. The basic definition of this is that you can eat meat and other animal products, as long as they’ve been happy. By ‘happy’, I’m suggesting the animals have been free range, eaten the food they are supposed to eat and not transported or kept in cramped little cages, I’m not suggesting we should go and measure the size of a sheep’s smile.

This would mean no meat in restaurants, cafes or buying a meaty sandwich because you just can’t know where it comes from. I’m not going to ask in every establishment I go into, I think my friends would start refusing to go anywhere with me. But, it does mean if I do fancy a steak or a roast chicken I can indulge, as long as I’ve brought it from a local, organic, free range and happy-type farm shop or butcher. This might have to be a once-a-month treat but it’s definitely possible. Yes, I’m happy with this challenge and its conclusion. Metaphorical honey gathered for this week, onto challenge two. 

http://www.ciwf.org.uk/