John effing Green

Booked John Green Tickets for the Edinburgh international book festival today.

August 15th

Nerdfightergasm….

So excited!

Observations

I saw a couple in the park yesterday. If you were to put the volume of the couple on mute, they would look exactly like they were having a nice afternoon in the park. However, once you turn the volume back up, every five minutes one of their phones ring rather obnoxiously, and they answer it, then have a full blown converstation with the person on the phone while their partner is left to sit and listen. This is a scene unique to the present day culture. Forty/fifty years ago, they might actually have been able to enjoy each other’s company without interruption.

I’m not saying that I am entirely innocent of acknowledging my phone when I’m with my significant other at times when it is perhaps rude or innappropriate, I’m not. It just makes me sad that nowadays we are always distracted by our busy lives.

For example, this man answered his phone three seperate times to talk about “some wee fanny” who owes him money, and he couldn’t stop effing and blinding in every sentence. So much for a quiet day in the park.

Furthermore, I am in no position to judge these people because being the owner of a smartphone, I scarecly went ten minutes without checking sms, email, facebook, tumblr… etc.

It just makes me sad that we find it so impossible to relax, even for a few hours in the park in the sunshine, without having to know exactly what’s going on in the more hectic parts of our life.

Quotes

It is so hard to leave–until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

— Paper Towns

I’d forgotten all about the previous quote until I just came across it purusing Tumblr. I read Paper Towns for the first time about a year ago, and at the time, I hate to say it, but I didn’t really like Margo. I thought she was selfish, and reckless. And that, for the most part is still true.

However, it is only recently I’ve learned to commend her bravery.

I’d like to read Paper Towns again, I feel that now I will have a much deeper understanding for Margo than I had before.

Which is basically the reason I love books so much. I read books that were way too old for me when I was a young teenager, and it is only on revisiting the books I loved then, that I can develop an even deeper appreciation for the characters once I have shared even a little of their experiences, and therefore, love them even more.

I haven’t found any other medium, television, music or film (which is ironic, given my degree course) that can adapt and change with you as you grow up as much as a book can. A good boook is so multi faceted and deep that a first reading is only scratching the surface of the true meaning, or indeed, as books belong to their readers, the true meaning for you.

Sometimes

Sometimes

It’s days like this I feel like I’m wasting my life. There are people my age who are heading business empires, raising amazing amounts of money for charity, starring in movies and writing novels. What am I doing? I am sitting for the umpteenth day since I moved, watching re-runs of Friends, Scrubs and The Simpsons. The thing is, I don’t even like The Simpsons or Scrubs very much. While constantly refreshing facebook, waiting for updates from people I barely even like. 

In my defense, I’ve been going through some things lately, and it honestly felt at times that the only sure way I would get through my day would be to just sit, and be, and do the familiar, while my world collapsed around me. However, I’m doing better now, I can go out and function, and do things, I’m just not. 

I suppose the reason for this is that every time I go out I seem to spend far too much money on rubbish to make up for the fact that I still don’t have 90% of my belongings. However, I am truly sick and tired of sitting in the house, endlessly flicking my way through facebook, tumblr and waiting 15 minutes for my terrible mobile broadband connection to buffer a YouTube video. 

I am also sick of excuses. I’m sick of thinking “I would do this, but….”. Especially since the main reason is, “I just can’t be bothered”. 

My list

1. I would go and get a new print out of my birth certificate, but I’m scared I’m not going to the right place

2. I would get my provisional driver’s license, but I don’t have a birth certificate. 

3. I would work on my novel, but my brain is muddled, and my stuff is on my own laptop

4. I would use my own laptop, but it’s at home, where the rest of my stuff is. 

5. I would go out and have adventures, but I can’t think of any

6. I would go on holiday, but I have no passport (see numbers one and two).

7. I would lose weight, but there’s things that are going to go bad in the fridge. 

I disgust myself. 

10.45 Adventures

I live in a small town. A town so small that at 10.45 on a Saturday night, there is scarcely anything open but pubs and the odd restaurant that hasn’t quite managed to shift its last patrons yet. This is not good when I have just vacated one such restaurant, (my place of work), and I feel like I’m about of to keel over from some sort of amalgamation of swine flu, man flu, the common cold and some new fangled illness that makes you very sweaty. Of course, by the time I get home, there’s no loo roll or tissues left, no provisions of any kind for a cold in the cupboards or fridge, and I used my last two Solpadol getting through the last 3 hours of work in some of the hottest temperatures of the year. I’m dying, or at least I feel like I am. So, at this purportedly ungodly hour (according to Lanark), reserved only for drinking and dining, I muster my last reserves of energy and scramble on to facebook, hoping one of my two hundred or so contacts will know where to find cold medicine. No such luck. 

Darroch and I set off, determined to find a solution. 

Luckily, it comes in the form of the shell garage, which, upon close inspection, sell both Nurofen, AND Benylin! Jackpot! But no tissues, loo roll, or disposable wiping utensil of any kind…. Desperate, and sniffley, I soldier on, and sink to the lowest, scabby reaches of my being. I had no choice. I’m not proud of it. But I’m eighteen, and absolutely did not want to look like the skanky 5 year old, whose equally skanky mother has not yet taught him to blow or wipe her nose, and whose cuffs are crispy from dried bogeys. 

I shall set the scene, there is a public toilet just near our flat. One of the scary electric sliding door kind, that in your worst nightmares, you imagine you are sitting mid wee wee, when all of a sudden, the doors say “hmmmmmmmmm” and slowly open up to reveal you in all your glory to the drippy alcoholic waiting outside, and you would then have to wiggle, trousers round your ankles, to re-press the close door button. 

However, despite its many flaws, and the fact I’d probably never utilise it for its intended use, it is quite well kept and therefore holds within it the holy grail… Toilet roll! It may be the consistency of newspaper, but toilet roll it is, and I rolled about 20 metres of this paper gold and shoved it in my shell poly bag of treasure, for the bargain price of 20p. 

Happy times :)

 

Pretty Things

There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air
Stilled, silvered as water in a glass
Nothing is big or far.
The small shrew chitters from its wilderness
Of grassheads and is heard.
Each thumb-size bird
Flits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good colour.

Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows…




- Sylvia Plath