19/02/2007

Loud + clear

Findy-term of the day - you are an idiot dancing rabbit. Surprising number of people arriving here with variations on 'I have waited for you all my life'. I bet they're disappointed.

Weekend of pleasant and unpleasant surprises, which still weren't quite proper surprises in that I could have figured them out or extrapolated, projected, or wotnot. Sad stuff and happy stuff in dizzying proximity. Terribly melancholy Saturday rescued in its final hours, followed by pretty fucking good Sunday which lasted about three days - although it didn't involve Chinese New Year, because evidently I'm destined never to experience it. I think it has been Written that I shall be trampled by an over-enthusiastic dragon or something, so the universe is trying to keep me from it, at least until 'my' book comes out.

The sad stuff is a rotten deal out of which I have got lightly, which always makes for Guilt. But it can't be helped. Being a control freak, of course, I resent this enormously. At least it was preceded by nice things, even if there aren't going to be more of them. Shows the very serious and pressing need to appreciate people and situations and all while you are fortunate enough to have 'em in yer orbit. And a bit of Coleridgey melancholy never hurt anyone. Much. As long as it doesn't descend into Keats, obviously.

Woman From Upstairs is continuing to be a bit batshit. I've got on OK with her previously, although she is a cantankerous, kvetching, self-centred sort of an annoying neighbour. But she will complain about me and the dog with relation to the garden to neighbours outside within my earshot (alright, so I had to stop eating my cereal so the crunching didn't obscure the poisonous gossip, but that still qualifies as earshot). And then she will proceed to dump some junk at the bottom of the garden, which is arguably worse in petty terms than a stray bit of poop. She has pedantically divided our shared garden into two halves, with a flimsy fence ensuring the dog gets 50% less gambolling/mooching space - part of the fence is fine netting, in which a squirrel nearly met a harrowing dolphinesque end the other day. (I would have presented its contorted corpse to her and made her think, as they say in the north, on.) But the junk - bits of old bed and wood and stuff - are in 'my' half. Which begs the question - why doesn't she just fuck off?

I can't grumble though really - it's a lot less bad when it's someone you know and have spoken to and can get on with who's being obnoxious. I've generally been lucky with my neighbours, and just as I don't think WFU has any real reason to complain about me considering how awful and selfish and abusive and evil neighbours can be, I don't have much reason to whine about her. She occasionally crashes about upstairs swearing and being industrious, but then I crash about downstairs getting the dog to leap over my legs (fun and good exercise) and getting annoyed about the lack of hot water or telling the dog to stop savaging his toys when the post comes. (In fact most of my crashing about is by proxy, or at least assisted.) So we're probably even. And my other neighbours I know by name and they are proper, good neighbours, the kind everybody needs but usually has to suck up not having. Their benign presence makes me very happy, because I know how rotten it is to have nasty tensions or just massive indifference from people you hear, if not see, every day. It's sad. I want to start some sort of Scheme. Cakes and tea and little considerate notes and trust and engendering of the sort of minor fondness that is unique to neighbours, who will never see each other again once one moves.

Oh! I will never see Lovely Woman Next Door and her boy again when I split, and there will be no one to be the keeper of my spare keys. I must try and appreciate them while I have them, and I do try. With whatever new ones I have it will be charm offensive ago-go, which is the minimum necessary when you have a giant lumbering creature with the canine equivalent of the 'TOXIC' symbol on his head in your care.

Two - count 'em - instances of inverted-comma-ownership in this post. And also the neighbours aren't really mine, and nor are the spare keys, or the main ones either. Alas! Nothing is quite mine. I just lent out a book, one of my favourites, which I half-inched from my first London flatmate, so it's never really been mine. If I ever see it again, it means karma has not been correctly installed in this supposedly improved but actually quite rubbish version of the cosmos. But this all prepares me for the bizarre concept of house 'ownership', which still seems like a hilarious misnoma. Latest figures show that only five people in the UK actually own their property, and are blissfully mortgage-free, and are so posh that you need a translator. I find the whole thing quite daft, but as long as things don't start to own me, I suppose it's not a big deal.

I have a new project to start on, which isn't mine either. Once you start to think of things in these terms, you realise that the only thing you can actually lay full and permanent claim to is a small pot sheep with one chipped ear. It's quite liberating, although I suspect all that clutter that doesn't quite belong to me is still going to require sorting out soon. Bah!

Incidentally, did anyone else immediately think of this when this was shown everywhere? Oh, and whatever she's done and however much of a fuck-up she may be, headlines like 'Grab a front-row seat for Britney breakdown' are not cool, asshole.

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28/12/2006

Ding dong mmkay

Because it is my first time being tagged, and because it's Rachel, I'll do it now before I realise it's a rotten old racket that should be slain (by Chicken Yoghurt).

Rabbit Strike's Best Seven Stuff Of 2006 Things

1) Having a proper actual foreeen holiday for the first time in years and years.

2) That counts twice cos it was also a dead fantastic holiday.

3) Getting a nice magaziney gig and a radio gig to make up for two lost.

4) Getting finagled into doing some of a book. (It will be a good thing once I finish fretting about it.)

5) Staying actual proper friends with an ex.

6) Smashing birthday with lots of drinking and silliness.

7) Um... people, who are great. And dog.

That was actually a bit of a struggle, shamefully. I want to make a list of 14 horrible or crapulent or generally a bit lame things about this year now (why isn't Torchwood better? Why? It deserves a list of its own - and I'm afraid I shall watch the much-puffed finale but that's only because I am a glutton for punishment, and for John Barrowman) but! that's not the spirit. I am looking forward to the new year. Without too much of that glutinous optimism that never bears fruit, or if it does it's kind of bashed leaky fruit that you wouldn't really want unless you were making jam.

Yes! I should say something about the lovely warm response to my witterings here which were catapulted into some sort of blogospheric attention when I used them for good and not for annoying self-centredness, but that might be annoyingly self-centred. Oh well. Call that number 8) just to bugger things up.

Now I suppose I'm obliged to inflict this on seven others, but I'll buck the trend by only bothering Paul, Abby, Salvadore and JonnyB.

Perhaps it's easier to make a list of Seven Things That Were Good By Default.

1) Not having an actual flea infestation after all. Just a few fleas. Which have fled.

2) Not despising short hair too much and managing to disguise badness of pre-short hair with sexy hat.

3) Boiler not breaking touch wood touch wood and then thermostat also.

4) Not getting arrested in Parliament Square or anywhere else for that matter.

5) Only having to file one small claim.

6) Being ill or germy only very infrequently and not for long.

7) Only getting one Christmas present that I already had and being able to go "Gah! I already have this" and for present-giver to go "Gah! I knew that would happen" and all to roll eyes and giggle and so none of that awkwardness when you get something you've already got.

That's better.

It's lovely to look at your blog after Christmas and find what people have been typing into search engines to happen upon you. I've had 'over 50 nude women', 'pot sexy russian woman', and my personal favourite to date, 'picture of a one spot fox faced rabbit fish'.

If I'd thought about it I could have written up The Poo Bag Saga, which might have been the new Bathmatwatch, but that is for another day when I haven't got mad post-Christmas crazywork to do. Alas.

Kissy.

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