A Dastardly Plan

So I've decided I'm going to solve all my problems by teaching English as a foreign language. I'm just going to do an online TEFL course, which the TEFL website tells me is so easy I can 'even do at home in my pyjamas', and then I'll take down our ancient old globe that still has Yugoslavia marked on the map, spin it around, close my eyes, and go wherever my finger falls (and as it happens I don't want to go to any of the places formerly known as Yugoslavia, so that dodges that particular landmine). I'll teach in an off-handed yet zestful manner for a couple of hours a day, then perhaps wander the cobbled streets of the town I'm in (in my head the town has cobbled streets), chancing upon curious little shops, having encounters with the locals when I go to buy fish at the market (there will also be a market, naturally), communicating through broken tongues and a mutual understanding of good-naturedness in eachother. At home in my quaint, slightly tumbledown accomodation, maybe a bungalow, I'll write stories and blogs and letters home, and sketch little cartoons which will cover the walls. I'll eat well on the local cuisine. I'll cycle to the beach at the weekend and go swimming, or take photos of the coastline which I will later paint at home. I'll strike up unlikely friendships with my garrulous foreign neighbours, who will have me over for dinner regularly, and they will always spill wine on the floor because they're so animated and foreign. I'll fix up the little patch of garden I have, and repaint the cracked outside wall of the house, and I'll get a good tan from working outdoors. My whole life will be a combination of sun and sea, ancient local history, lesiurely unfinished works of art, and simple pleasures of food and drink.

Oh but it's all just a dream really.... For now I'll just go to school in the rain, and learn everything ever, and order dominos, and hang out with the same friends, and be tired all the time, and sit inside watching Friends and Scrubs every single day at the same time.

But I'll be dreaming all the while.

Updates

Sorry for the lack of blogs lately. I'm not best pleased with my blog at the moment... Reading over some of my more recent ones (I always seem to be doing that... how desperate am I) I've noticed there to be a distinct lack of continuity to them. I know there's nothing exactly wrong with a lack of continuity; as with everyone, the only constant factor in the events of my life is me being in them. But what bothers me is that I seem to construct settings in my blog whereby follow-ups are promised or would be necessary to complete the 'story' of a particular blog and I never deliver. I suppose its not a big deal because a) nobody reads this and b) if I meticulously followed up every subplot of my life alluded to here for the sake of it, I'd probably be writing because I felt some obligation to do so and not because I had anything interesting to say, and I'd probably lose interest in writing them altogether if I did that. But I still think I should answer a few things, just to finish the stories.

Remember Cian McLoughlin the artist guy? He eventually did turn up at school. He gave a very interesting talk about his work and what gives him inspiration. His commitment to his work astounded me, he said he usually paints 8 hours a day. If anything it put me off a career in art because I don't think I have rigour and the passion necessary to do it well. And the choir thing? I got my CD! I am very pleased with it, the sound is good, but most of all I love just having it, being able to put it in a CD player and think 'I wrote that'. It's pretty cool, but I can't play it too often because it's not good enough to warrant playing over and over without it getting a tad annoying.

Did I even mention Midterm was coming up? That's another thing I seem to leave out of my blog a lot, the lead up to things that seem like they deserve a lead up. Well at this stage it's almost come and gone: we're back to the grind on Monday (mock French oral on Wednesday, fuck ye...). I'll fill you in on what I've been up to. Though that's not very much, as you'll see.

I jetted off to the beautiful city of Rome for five days with my Latin class, a group of people none of whom I have any problem with, which considering how judgmental I am is quite something. That's not 'not very much', I hear you pout, quite jealous that I was in Rome and you were at home wasting your life away in the grey landfill site that is this city. Be patient... the story's not finished yet.

So we arrived in Rome on Monday at about 9am, having got up at a disgusting hour of the morning to catch our typically school tour 'first plane out of the airport' flight. Before our flight had landed I knew I wasn't feeling too hot. Get some panadol, I thought. So I looked for shops in the airport at Rome, asked around everyone. I only got any after we had reached our hotel (3 hours after landing). So I had that. Nothing. Had some more later. Seemed to be getting worse.

By the time we were halfway through our tour of the colosseum I was shivering, feverous, barely able to stand up because my headache was so bad, all my energy was sapped. I was so bad I had to retire to the hotel, curl up in the dark and drink water all day while the others continued with the tour. At night I didn't sleep at all, and I must not have drank enough water through the day because I was having delusions about some sort of cloning factory in the room, the blue light by the door was part of some machine and the pictures on the walls were kind of boxes stationary on a conveyer belt. Sounds lovely and trippy, but really it was horrible, the night seemed endless. By morning I was even worse, and I ended up dragging my sorry ass down to reception after the guys were gone off for the day to ask them to summon a doctor. He came; it turned out I had really bad strepthroat, whatever that is. All I know is it's hell.

I won't bore you with more details. Spent the next 2 days imprisoned in the hotel room, the only notable points of that time being when I kept vommiting up the contents of my stomach - water, and antibiotics - in reaction to my drugs, the battle with the doctor to convince him to prescribe me something else, his extortionate fees, and the hotel maid coming into my room and not realising I was there for a full minute or two, then running off when she realised.

There was a slight consolation on the final day as I was well enough to go outside again, though my symptoms were all still threatening me. Despite them I had a reasonably pleasant day seeing Pompeii (actually very, very impressive). But of course, now that I was starting to get better it was time to go back home, though not before a 12 hour wait in the airport on account of delays. You go Ryanair.

So now I'm back. Upcoming news will include mocks, orals, music practicals, and possibly the end of the world.

Spring Cleaning

Just a quickie:

I spent the entire day finishing the sorting of my room (I don't care if I'm a loser - it feels GRR8! (already I regret saying that)...). All of the crap I never used has been thrown away, all my notes for school and my sheet music are in reasonable order, and for the first time in about 8 years I have desk-space. To tell the truth it's pretty bare and depressing at the moment, but I've always thought it was sort of bland and cold (the heating has never worked so this is literally true) anyway. I've decided I'm going to make the best of it though - when I get the chance I'm going to paint it, knock up some shelves, buy a beanbag/reasonably soft chair, and acquire an assortment of alternative posters which make it look like I have an interest in art house cinema and old rock bands. Of course, 'when I get the chance' means after the Leaving... So I suppose, since there's nothing left to be organised, I'm going to have to actually start studying there now.

Parting thought: whenever you feel like things couldn't be worse, remember that you are not a naked mole rat:

Unofficial Snow Day

I've taken the day off from school on account of all this snow, though as far as I'm aware we're not officially allowed to... I've just kind of got the idea in my head that this particular form of precipitation exempts me from all obligations. It's the school's fault really; they sent us home from school early yesterday 'because of the snow', though no logical reason could be given, planting the seed in my brain. I took it to mean that all bets we're off, that I could go into hibernation mode until the 'harsh weather' and 'dense snowfall' subsided.

As soon as I got home I knew that I wouldn't be leaving the house for some time. I closed the curtains in the sitting room, so that I could pretend it was a harsh Winter's night, naturally, and prepared myself a stack of choice dvds, set myself up on the couch with a blanket and a packet of mini muffins. I put on the fire. It was all 'luvly juvly'.

About 15 minutes into House of Flying Daggers I was disturbed from a knock at the door, but I had barely enough time to mumble 'go away' before the door opened. It was one of my piano students M. Ah yes, she does have a lesson around now. Hopefully she didn't see the beetroot colour of my face in the darkness. What I do know is that she saw me there curled up in a purple blankey covered in muffin crumbs, half asleep, any sort of mystique she might have ever attached to me was utterly gone.

It just didn't occur to me that the world would continue turning in spite of the rapidly melting half inch or so of snow. And rather than learning from that experience, I'm taking the day off to watch House of Flying Daggers in it's entirety (this time with figrolls because I ate all the muffins), and you know what, maybe I'll venture up to the shop to get new batteries for my alarm clock, I don't know. God Bless Snow Days...

A Bedroom

The lonesome Texas Sun was setting low
And in the rear-view mirror I watched it go

Lying on the floor looking up at the half-blank walls dotted with blobs of blue-tack, which stayed stuck there on the white expanse when all the colourful posters were ripped off, rolled up, and sealed in boxes.
When it gets late like this the cold half-light makes it look like it was someone else's room,
a room no longer in use;
the pile of books is a shadow toppling over against the skirting boards and the little bits of crinkled paper everywhere and the unmade bed are not the signs of lively clutter,
but of a sudden abandonment.

I can still see the wind in her golden hair
I close my eyes for a moment I'm still there

Shadows of trees glide across the walls stained orange in the descending city night,
without a sound, back and forth,
and everything else is completely
still.
But you can almost hear the echo of the door being shut for the last time with a short, sharp, weighted sound, deliberate as a full stop on an old typewriter or a hammer driving home a nail.

I wanted to plaster these walls with memories and little projects, maybe get the heating fixed and sit up here just because I wanted to, listening to CDs; wanted to:
it seems childish now. I'd feel like a vandal scratching the mural of cartoon strips whose idea had
so excited me when I was smaller, like someone engraving their initials in a wooden school desk for a legacy.

It's too late now.
The floor's cold with my back on it.
(why wasn't the heating ever fixed?)
The colourful posters are all ripped from the walls, leaving them patched with plaster where the blue-tack took the paint with it, awful-looking. The toppled pile of books is a splaying
of envelopes under the front door of a house where someone used to live.

The bluest eyes in Texas are haunting me tonight
Like the stars that fill the midnight sky her memory fills my mind

A siren swells in the distance.
Everything outside the window is deep purple except for one lonely orange street lamp.

I don't live here anymore.