I've moved

I have started anew...fresh page, fresh year, calmer less rant-y thoughts.

http://lifeofalabyrinth.blogspot.com/

Facebook and Twitter

In my very humble opinion, facebook seems to be a social networking site that enables you to talk to people you know or at least you know of, so seems quite socially stressful, you can’t say what you are really doing, you can’t say what your really thinking, because you don’t want to upset/annoy/inform the people you have to live with, day in and day out, what is honestly going on in your life, in your head. Whereas, in my humble opinion, twitter seems to be a social networking site where you tell strangers, sometimes hundreds or thousands of strangers, exactly what you are doing and exactly what you are thinking, without stress, without harm, without destroying the social facade we all have, so not to upset/annoy/inform the people you have to live with, day in and day out, what is honestly going on in your life and in your head.

I like twitter.

Mafia humour would be misunderstood by most

I like this plate, problem is, if you put this on your car, you could never sure how many people would take it seriously, and the next thing you know you’ve got Mr. Police Man knocking on your door, or the real mafia...Why is it that the funniest things offend/confuse the most people? It simply isn’t fair for those of us with a sense of humour.

The lying weather

There are often days in the Winter/Spring era of the year when I awake to the sun shining ridiculously brightly (to the point of causing human blindness) and therefore I quite rightly assume that the weather today shall be classed as warm. Not hot, or summer warm, but springish luke-warm. But of course as always the elements are playing some huge practical joke and of course the actual temperature still reflects the time of year...fricking freezing.

As a hater of all things warm, these days please me. As a hater of bright lights, these days aggravate me. Although as my hate for heat is stronger than that of my hate of sun light, overall, these days please me. Not my favourite of days however.

Very photogenic light though...

...shame there is little but trees to take photographs of at this time of year, especially if your only going as far as your back garden.

Why boarding school WOULD have killed me

I just this moment finished watching a channel 4 documentary following 4 eight-year-old girls as they begin their lives at boarding school. It was interesting. It was obviously a big shock and change at first but eventually all of them seemed to take to it and it ended with the most initially homesick girl saying what a wonderful time she had at her new school. I was rather pleased for them if I’m honest, hell of a lot stronger than I am or was, because I seriously wouldn’t have coped in quiet the same way.

I had severe problems with school. The whole concept of going to a children farm to be bullied, socially categorized and kept to a strict derivative schedule was difficult for me to get my head around. I simply didn’t understand: why people enjoyed it, why people did it, why I was made to do it. I was/have and always will be an extremely abnormal person and found very quickly that the social inventory had very little space for a person like me.

Oh don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t picked out for special terrorization by the others, I didn’t sit alone, silent at the front of the class, I had those communal moments of laughter, dissatisfaction and aggression as with all school lives, but they were filled with huge amounts of unnecessary fear and stress, that the others just didn’t seem to feel in the same way. I just fear people. I just see interaction as too complex to come naturally, often accompanied with enormous pressure, pressures that I just couldn’t seem to take in all at once.

And so I lived for the straightforward clear-cut quiet moments alone in-between the demoralizing, soul crushing drudgery of being in the company of other people, (and in that aspect I haven’t changed at all). On school nights I would cry myself to sleep in the knowledge that it would all begin again tomorrow, and on weekends I would weep in relief in the knowledge that I was safe and all was well, even if it was just for a short while. This unremitting suffering inevitably ended with mental breakdown, sickness and eventually my complete and utter isolation from the social world. I cannot put into words the sheer liberating relief I felt when I first stopped attending school. I knew what I was doing would ultimately lead to serious problems in my later life, but at 14 I was already too emotionally broken to care. I wanted to be alone. I couldn’t do society, I wasn’t made for it. There was something wrong with me, I wasn’t an average case of teen anxiety/bulling, people WERE nice to me, people LIKED me, people WANTED to be my friend, they just didn’t understand their communications were frightening me, that I was scared...

My point is, on this documentary they were saying how hard it was for the parents and children to separate, for the children to cope with life AT school, and I think they should have featured a child like me on their little documentary to give the whole thing some perspective. I am telling you now if my family had sent me away to boarding school, with that agonising social fear 24/7, I WOULD have just snapped and killed myself. I’m sad to say, I kid you not. And with these kids it seemed it took a few tears, some phone calls and a little time and boom...they were fine. It really didn’t reflect on how sending your kid to boarding school could end. How it really could go wrong. And that annoyed me especially knowing from personal experience how hard life at a normal school can be, let alone a boarding school. But then, I thought to myself a little while later, the documentary drew on the lives of 4 NORMAL children, and going insane and committing suicide hardly reflects on how an average student would act in a situation like that now does it?

The great hunt begins

Speaking of (evil roman schemes) searching for frogspawn way too early, I went outside today, (shock horror!) in search of said creatures and this supposed early spring... This is all I could find that was of any interest...

a pair of emotionally detached ducks...

a rather handsome evil tree...

and a pretty old rock hanging in the sky.

Meanwhile my froggy house-friends seem to be doing a little better at this spring mating stuff...

The Romans had the last laugh

The minions of Britain have recently been informed by the BBC that spring has come early this year, which given that only last month we were under at least a foot in snow, is understandably causing somewhat of a slight confusion.

But that is certainly not what has been the object of my confusion recently. Every year it has become, to some extent, a tradition for us to go out across the commons and examine the yearly frog spawn situation, (I say it like that not to sound like a curious child but more like an aspirant herpetologist...but I suspect it’s not working) and every single year I get way ahead of myself. I assume that after Christmas, the new year and January will follow, trailed not too distantly by spring and therefore frog spawning.

(So in my head it works like this: January = frogspawn)

Even though I’m well aware that spring begins in late march and subsequently so does the mating of creatures, when January lurks just round the corner I still direct my attention to the coming of tadpoles, and then get a shock when I have to wait over two months for them to appear.

Spring is taught as the first season of the four. It’s spring, summer, autumn, winter and if you type seasons into Google images you will be plagued with images featuring spring as the first season of the year. But it’s not. Not really. Winter frequently continues to brutally freeze our most private of bodily areas from the first day of the year long into the month of March...

So who invented this ridiculous illogical calendar? The Romans apparently. It seems that giving us many of the tools to construct the underrated incredibly complex and advanced civilized world which we live in today wasn’t enough for them, they decided it would be best to gift us with their calendar designs, which was clearly, created with the intent to cause maximum frustration, confusion and upset. (Of which I’m now certain was all directed at me and my love of amphibian related stuffs.) Bastards. Complete and utter bastards. Romani ite domum.