moving house

Yes, that's right, I'm moving from these pastures old to pastures new. Pastures new being (whisper) wordpress, and a new name. Goodbye, Somewhere Boring, hello to absolute frankness, and the presser of words.

Just a little change. Mainly just because I prefer working on wordpress's sleek surfaces, and because I think it's finally time to move on from somewhere boring. Maybe time to move somewhere interesting for a while.

Of course, that might all change when I get into college for another year and find myself in a dull and edgeless place again. Then I might be coming back here, you never know.

But for now, I'm flitting off to a place of idle rants/lists/capital letters.

Au revoir, tchuss, tch, tch, tch, follow me at absolute frankness - shiny, new, beautiful.

xx

interjection/hlib!

Hello.

That's an interjection. An interjection is a word expressing emotion. Like this:

uh, eh....

or the aforementioned

Hello.

Grammar is fun. Back to this: a new word that is interjection-worthy because it's got an exclamation mark.

Take note: If you are talking to your chef about making a summer berry pie, chatting to you cat while tending blackberry hedges, having a fight at a family barbecue, giving out to the poor checkout girl for giving you $100 instead of two $50s (Jeez, it's all money, lady, calm down), being given out to for crocheting a sock wrong, muttering abuse while cleaning up after a concert, playing a tree in a play, or addressing parliament (that's for all my politician readers out there), let me Interject momentarily.

Thing is, I've been thinking about my current non-student existence, and I have realised something momentous. I have therefore decided to Interject on your life by declaring it to you.

You're welcome.

This is it:

Hlib!

(it means, Holiday Life Is Boring, condensed for your convenience into an interjection. Now that's what I call something.)

To back up this interjection, look at this. I watched Bridget Jones last night for the 400th time, ate my way through an entire packet of biscuits (almost), and drank like, a bottomless cup of tea. And then I went to bed before 12 because I had an early start. How drab. Also, am reading a book I've already read. Hlib indeed.

That's all. Have a bon something.

(Hey, interjections are meant to be short. I'm also in the middle of a delicious mint-hued sort of caramel confection. I'm a very busy person.)

in praise of boredom

Living too much of an exciting life? Time to unlock your inner potential and get boring

Not everyone leads an exciting life. Then again, exciting lives are not for everyone. Not everyone goes to glitzy 'bashes' (that's what exciting people call parties), or winters in the South Sea (exciting people often take nouns and verbify them up to make them more exciting, too), or flies out to exotic locations for a 'shoot' (exciting people are always doing this kind of thing, I'm told. I'm not 100% sure why). And not everyone wants that kind of excitement. After all, what have exciting people got on a cup of tea and an episode of Downton Abbey? Nothing, that's what.

not even a little bit exciting

 It's easy to be exciting and host dinner parties and work on 'projects' and 'travel' (cough, holiday) and 'winter' and 'do' things all the time. That's what exciting people are always at, whether they're posh and living in a silvery space house, or urban and trendy and living in some 'warehouse' making sculptures. They're always 'doing' things. I say, sod doing, and start doing nothing. 

It takes a special kind of skill to live a boring life. There can be dark days. Dark nights. Dark times when you don't know if you can go on, and are tempted to end your Boring Life by hosting a luncheon and wearing a cocktail suit. Boringness can be difficult to stomach. It can be hard. It is hard. But it's not a choice, rather a calling. To live a boring life is a big ask. But it's a challenge I, as a purveyor of the Boring Life, am willing to rise to.

Tumbleweed: a frequent visitor to somewhere boring

Take a look at some of the signs that you, too, are eligible for the dull/boring life of the do-nothing.

1 Every time you go out you go to the same place, with the same people, drink the same crappy wine, say the same mildly diverting things and go home at the same time. Who needs variation when you can have the same thing every week?

2 You watch the same movies over and over again because of a reluctance to get 'involved' in a storyline that you're not familiar with. That's why I've seen the same five movies way more than five times.

3 You would go to your lectures every week... but staying on the couch is just too much of a Yes.

4 You want to read a book... but magazines are just easier.

5 You look at your cat and envy her easy, warm, and (may I say) boring life. The life of a cat. What's not to like?

This is living

6 You've only got 10 hours a week at college, and already you're fearing the day you'll have to actually do some real work. Shudder. 

7 You go to sleep and look forward to breakfast. I don't know why, but it always strikes me as a clear indication that you are cut out for less-than-exciting times in your life if you look forward to eating cornflakes.

And yes, I do all of the above. It takes a certain kind of verve (I like to call it 'excellence', myself) to be a boring lifestylist. So, go on, embrace your boring side, and bon bore!

And now for another Mildly Interesting Thing You Might Like:

This artist, Oliver Jeffers, writes kids' books but also draws great random pictures which you can see on his website here. Lots of them have the sea and rain and little cute people in them. Well worth a wander over to!

child-lock caps and other irritating inventions

Think twice the next time you recline your seat in economy class while wearing a fringed sweater and clutching a maths trophy. You will feel my wrath. 

Hello loyal someones. During my search for cold cures the other day, I discovered a magical bottle of turquoise blue cough syrup that claimed to be a hybrid of peach and vanilla flavors that I think the entire world should be aware of. I know. A cough syrup that tastes like vanilla and sweet peach. Where has this been all my life? Humph. We shall soon find out.

I took the bottle from its box, set the plastic measuring cup on the tabletop, and twisted the cap. Of course, it was a child-lock cap. That's what this cold-cure confection had been hiding behind.

Which leads me to this list, one of those that goes under the heading of So Angry I Made A List. So here we are. Child-lock caps and Other Inventions I Hate.

trying to trick me by
being smartie-coloured

1. Child-Lock Caps
These are not child-lock caps. I am 19 years old, almost 20, and it takes me ten minutes to remove a 'child-proof' cap with the aid of a toothpick and a teacloth. I have a cousin who has been plucking those lids off Calpol bottles since she was eight. If you don't want your children to run around gulping down copious amounts of golden-tinged Benylin For Dry Cough syrup, then do what it says on the tin: KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. Child-proof bottle-stoppers are not child-proof. They work against certain people (e.g. me) and glide off effortlessly for others (who could easily be your 4-year-old niece). Whoever came up with this sucks. And besides, there are far more dangerous things that kids can get their hands on these days. Like knives (only a drawer handle away!), paperweights, and a copy of Miley Cyrus' latest album.

2. Reclining Seats in Economy Class
The inventor of these was clearly trying to do a good deed, and make Economy class more bearable for you and me and everyone we know (except for that person that we all know who flies first class and then moans about how long the flight was - we've got other things to contend with, lady. Like teeny television screens, people sleeping on top of us, and the fat guy in front of us who reclines his seat and squishes our legs for ten hours). However, he failed, and instead succeeded in making economy class A LIVING NIGHTMARE, where Daniel Radcliffe is right up in your face fighting ghosts.
On top of this, I can never get my seat to recline. Oh, cruel world.

3. School Prize Day
Who enjoys this? Every year on the 24th of May our school had possibly the longest prize day in the country. One one hand, it was the only day in the year when the nerds could finally be recognized. And when they were recognised, they drove us all crazy. Yes, you won a prize for maths. No, I don't particularly care. On the other, our prize day had the added fun of rewarding nobodies. People got prizes for manners. Prizes for neat uniforms. Prizes for shoe-tying. The principal talked about climate change. The RE teachers talked about the 'Living Community' (still unsure what this means. But am intrigued to know about the Dead Community which they never seemed to mention). Sixth years talked about God.
Whoever invented prizes for school should really be noted for being one of the worst inventors in modern history.

4. Fringe
This has been wrong ever since the days of the Wild West Texas Ranger. And it's still wrong. It will never be right. Dangling pieces of faux-suede tacked onto your handbag/jacket/shoe is just never going to be a good look. Ever. Same goes for wrap dresses on the overweight, leggings on the over-forties, and patterned tights on pretty much anyone.

5. 9am Lectures, 2pm Lectures and 5pm Lectures On The Same Day
Yes, I've only got ten hours a week. Yes, I know most people work from nine through two and until five, but that is arguably less irritating than coming in at nine and then either having to go home for half an hour before rushing out the door again, or sticking around and wasting away in some godforsaken corner of the Science Building. What can you do from eleven to two that's in any way productive? Go to the gym? And what are we supposed to do from three until five? Read?
Not cool, college, not cool.

And a Mildly Interesting Thing I found during the week:

This movie, which I saw last year at 2am on some godforsaken channel after an ill-advised night out: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, if you're being all art house), is being re-released this month (it's from 1972). It's a bit of a gem if you like swish European stuff (sort of), posh people (sort of), intrigue (sort of), missing dinner dates (sort of), hallucinations (sort of), 70s French fashion, and drug mix-ups (sort of). And who doesn't? Come on, it's old and it's French and it doesn't have Kristen Stewart in it.

no K-Stew over there... or over here... 

Check it out! And bon Blog!

bored? well, obviously

Really, what is so interesting about weather? And what weird things are going on now?

I've decided that it's That Time Of Year again - that time of year when the sun shines like a big bowling ball and it's finally warm and picnicky and happy tree weather.
I don't know why I've decided this, because:

1. It is never warm in Ireland. Ever. In June it rains and in July there is usually one day when you can go without a jacket. Maybe.
2. It is winter here. In fact, yesterday was the 2-degree-cold Winter Solstice. It was dark by five.

this is meant to be the winter solstice.
Come on, it's kind of cool.

So, I'm not exactly sure where I was going with the whole Summer thing. Maybe because, strangely enough, it looks like summer outside. And if you wake up at eleven and walk down to the shops, you can wear sunglasses and a shirt and you really don't need a jacket.

And, because of this Winter/Summer weather (wummer? sinter?), weird stuff's been GOING ON.
(Well, it's got something to do with it)
Like this:

1. have started watching reality TV (people who are housewives and like, love it, darling, people who live on Shores, people who date footballers, people who don't date footballers, people who live on farms, people who don't live on farms...)

2. am so confused about the (cold/not cold) weather situation that I've been wearing a conglomeration of weird long-sleeved layers and grandfather jumpers and Christmas socks. Then I heard that this winter only lasts, like, a month. A month! What! What am I going to do with all the ribbed socks I've bought? Throw them away? Save them for real winter?

superfluous socks...
the worst kind of sock

3. I'm drinking Lemsip. In June. I'm drinking Lemsip in June. That is something that is just wrong.

4. I've started running. No, wait, I've started waking up and going I Think I'd Like A Run Today. I'm becoming one of those exercise people I hate.

Maybe it's time to read a self-help book or something. Maybe all this is just me with nothing to do. Or maybe I've actually crossed over into a parallel universe where the weather is weathery, the TV is real, and it looks like summer when, goddammit, it just isn't.

Bon Blog!

And here are some Things That Might Be A Little Bit Interesting:

this cutesy homemade indie mag from Australia called Frankie - there are far worse ways of spending your time than reading about Benedict Cumberbatch and people who draw for a living!

annnndd... because I have been watching so much Australian telly, and because I have realised that said Australian telly is brimmed-full with ads, I have become friendly with some of these ads, such as the ones for Kia (now I can say iPod Connectivity and Big Boot Space and Seats Eight Comfortably in a pretty authentic accent) and the one for South Australia which has this song from Into The Wild called Rise by Eddie Vedder in it. Check it out, it's like going out to the beach and, I don't know, drawing your name in the sand or something.

ufos, veggies, and getting told off by 14-year-olds

since when was not knowing your vegetables a crime? 

stupid evil pear... I'll know your code someday and then YOU WILL BE SORRY

I know lots of things. I know how many times Roger Federer has won the French Open (once). I know what a mohair jumper looks like. I know how to cook a killer carbonara and I know how to order five slices of ham from a deli in German. I know what to do with a long division sum (barely), I know a Robert Frost poem off by heart, and I know what happened in the 2006 World Cup final.

What I don't know, however, is anything about vegetables. Or fruit. Or herbs, for that matter.

this is more like my kind of checkout

And why am I telling you this? Why am I admitting my deep, dark secret? Because it has been cruelly exposed in my current job as a supermarket cashier. Little old ladies with huge bags of some unidentified leafy thing smile at me and ask me how I am. I smile back and say EH, WHAT IS THIS? Their faces fall. What am I, a cave-dweller? A philistine? Or - worse - an American? No, I'm just someone who doesn't know the difference between a head of cabbage and a head of lettuce. Or between a turnip and a swede (that's a hard one, but there's no excuse for mixing up cabbages and lettuces, no excuse AT ALL). 

What all these people don't want to realise/don't actually realise is that they have help when they buy their vegetables. They have little digital signs that say Psst! Pink Ladies!, and I'm A Broccolini, and No, Not Over There, I'm The Fennel Root You Want, and even I'm A Sweetcorn Even Though I Look Like A Leek.
I don't get help like that. When it comes to veggies, I'm all alone. 

The other day I had a particularly vile experience. Two girls came to pay for their basket of Sweets and Other Crap 14-Year-Olds Buy When They're Left In The House For The Weekend. No problem. 14-year-olds aren't going to be buying herbs are they? Or difficult-looking asparagus/bean shoot cross-breeds? Not a bit of it. 14-year-olds like twizzlers (whatever they are), sugar, gum, and coke.

Safe in this knowledge, I was happily scanning through boiled sweets and rubbery dolphins and sugared fish and ready-made pizzas when I saw the unthinkable. I saw the UFOS.

Unidentifiable Fruity Objects. 

WHAT'S THIS? I ask, about a squashed, dry purple thing. 

The girls looked at one another before one said, in a, may I say, utterly disparaging tone, A PASSIONFRUIT?, barely hastening to add YOU IDIOT after it.
Then there were the weird-shaped lemons.
WHAT ARE THESE? I asked again, hoping for a somewhat warmer response.
Are you serious? IT'S A YELLOW SQUASH. Pan-faces. Expressionless, like little middle-school judges. For the record, I have NO IDEA what they were planning on doing to that 'yellow squash' (probably just some made-up Australian thing), but I fear for the poor thing.

is this the lettuce?

.... or is this? Not so easy now, eh?

 By the time they left, with their incorrectly scanned watermelon (stupid thing comes under WATERMELON and not, as I previously believed, MELON, WATER), the only thing going through their heads was, undoubtably, Who is this kid?

I was wondering the same thing. Who is this kid? Who am I? Well, before today, I was someone who thought they knew their parsnips from their peppers, their passionfruits from their beetroot (look the same! No kidding!), their star fruits from their yellow squashes.
Not anymore. Now I was just some rookie checkout girl. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good at all.

As if not recognising fruit and veg and herbs wasn't bad enough (smelling a bag to check that it really was basil raised more than a few eyebrows), I also don't know the codes. You know, the ones the suave checkout chick types in with her perfectly manicured finger when you plonk down a load of carrots (carrots: 24), bananas (17), or pears (66 or loads of other unknown numbers. I thought there was only one kind of pear. Wrong again, Shona). Endless sets of 57, 103 (broccoli? God I'm getting good!), 60, 218... (No! Broccoli 107! God DAMN IT! What's 103 then? Leeks?)

I think I should get back to enjoying my time off, to be honest. Next week I'll be back on till, failing to recognise coriander, mixing up ironbarks and butternuts, desperately looking for MELON, WATER, and charging someone $12 for two carrots just out of spite.

I have power too, you know.

OTHER MADE-UP NAMES FOR FRUIT-RELATED ITEMS
zucchini - what the hell happened to a good old courgette?
eggplant - this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with eggs, or indeed plants. At least aubergine is a colour
capsicum - ? pepper not good enough for you?
rock melon - why does a regular melon deserve a stupid name? Because it looks like a rock? Not buying it, Australia, not buying it
lebanese cucumber - otherwise known as a smallish cucumber
50 types of apple - can't they just all be the same price? No? Unfair world

Bon Blog! (non appetite!)

summer days: accomplishments (part one)

what I've actually been doing in these wintry-sunny climes

not so sunny June: it rained here yesterday... all day 

Since I've been here (a week and a half, now that you ask), I've discovered many things about myself. Not in an Eat, Pray, Love way, or even a Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants way (don't have shared pants/sisterhood, unless you count the pyjama bottoms my friend left in my other friend's flat that everyone wears. Especially me. Why bring pants when you can use pants FOR FREE?).

who doesn't want them?

Anyway. Here's a little bit of what I call What I Did For The First Time On My Working Holiday (bad title)
Behold!

1. went on a plane on my own! (twice)

2. cooked my first fried egg! (and it was good, too)

3. ate dinner with a fork and spoon! (Australians love their spoons, they do)

no room for knives at this table

5. worked at a till! (NOT my best work, dare I say. Turns out I'm not-so-adept at remembering codes for potatoes and runner beans, or packing bags with milk and sugar. But I am good at remembering the banana code: 17, and don't you forget it)

6. used Skype! ('used' = overstatement)

7. bought something in sports shop that wasn't for school! (it was for work)

8. blogged twice in one day! (sorry)

9. went to a Food and Wine festival where there wasn't any food! (but there was plenty of wine)

More updates on WIDFTFTOMWH (definitely need to rethink that) next week/whenever

Bon Blog!

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