Cathy Condensed!

Faith, Hugging and Dolly Parton!

Hello people of the internet!

I’m sitting here with two cats fighting over my lap and purring so loudly it’s difficult to concentrate, but I’ll give it a go!

So what to write about? What minutiae of my life have I not bored you with yet?! Hmmm, let me think!!  Well actually, those of you that know me will already be aware of this, but I got to meet Dolly Parton recently, it’s all a bit of a blur, it lasted about 30 seconds and I’m not sure I managed to actually speak words…out loud…but still it happened.  I told a few people I had won the competition before it happened (but not many as I was scared of jinxing it somehow) and I got the same responses from a few of them ‘OMG you are the luckiest person alive’ ‘You win everything’ etc etc.  Now admittedly, there are some people in the world who have a misconception about the amount of things I ‘win’, people who for their own good, don’t need to know that ‘won’ in some instances means ‘paid silly amounts of money for’ (!!) but still generally, I do win quite a few things and I am, I guess, what some people would call ‘lucky’.  However what the people who congratulated me on my luck didn’t know is that every night for the past 7 months I’ve been writing ‘I will meet Dolly Parton’ in a notebook on my nightstand.  I try to do it every year – set myself a list of goals to achieve, things I dream of happening.  I try not to think about the logistics of how they will happen or the realistic chances of them happening, that’s not for me to sort out, I just have to believe they will occur.

That’s my personal belief system – that we create our own lives through our beliefs about life and about ourselves.  I believe thought is creative and if we honestly believe something will happen and we don’t waiver on that belief, then it will,….maybe not in the way we imagined, but it will happen.

My belief system stems primarily from a series of books called ‘Conversations with God’ which changed my view of life when I first read them a lot of years ago.  I remember a couple of books from my childhood, a big bound volume of fairytales that I would make my Mum read the same story from over and over (‘The Little Match Girl’) and a tattered copy of ‘The Little Mermaid’ that went everywhere with me, but strangely I also remember, with the most perfect clarity, standing in a bookshop in Penzance fingering this big hardback book called ‘Conversations with God’. I don’t know how old I was, but I know I was young and I remember asking my Mum to buy it for me and I remember her telling me it was too expensive (we didn’t buy hardback books!) and to wait for the paperback.  Strange then to think that years later I would still remember that book and that eventually one day it would come back into my life and change my view of everything.

Now, before we get too spiritual and start lighting incense and reading each others auras, let me be honest.  I absolutely consider myself a spiritual person, but most experiences I’ve had with other ‘spiritual’ people have been a nightmare!  I’ve attended talks and classes and been on retreats and at every one of them I have met the same types of people…they speak softly and gently and never have normal jobs!  They are always spiritual healers or Reiki therapists or something of that ilk and they always want to hug me for no particular reason (well I have had suspicions that some of the men that attend these things have very particular reasons!!).  They don’t put anything into their bodies that isn’t squashed from some kind of vegetable and every conversation is about the profound nature of the universe!  And there I sit, an office administrator with my packet of chocolate buttons for lunch and a copy of ‘Heat’ magazine in my bag that I feel too guilty to take out and read!  I don’t fit in…but mostly I don’t want to fit in.  I like my job and my chocolate and my trashy magazines.  And yes sometimes I like indulging in a bit of gossip or bitchiness, it’s fun! I went to a Buddhist retreat once where we sat in the garden eating lunch (a bowl of vegetables!) and flies started coming near the food.  I waved away the flies and got a lecture about the nature of a fly and how I shouldn’t interfere with it!  If that’s enlightenment I’m never gonna get there…I like my dinner free of fly faeces thanks! ;)

But still, flippant as I am, the things I believe impact every moment of my life and my attitude to every experience that passes my way.  I believe the universe is on my side, is on everyone’s side, that positive thoughts create a positive life. I don’t mean by this blind positivity, ignoring problems, assuming they will go away or refusing to acknowledge the genuine hardships and difficulties of life, but my faith in the universe allows me to believe, whatever the situation, that I will get through it, and whatever my dream is, that it is possible.

I find it very difficult to explain what it is exactly I believe, my words get jumbled and I get embarrassed because faith these days, in this country, is something to be suspicious about.  But suffice to say I don’t believe in a God of judgement or a God who requires anything of us or a God that punishes us, I believe we are the universe made manifest in order to experience the delights of physical life and that ultimately we and God, we and the universe, we are all the same thing, the same elements and we all have the same power to create for ourselves the life we believe we deserve.

All this being said however, I acknowledge absolutely that this belief system is one that I hold because I live with all the opportunities and luxuries of the western world. The suffering of people across this globe is too great to try and justify with some spiritual niceties.  I remember when I visited Cambodia, a country where the reality of genocide is impossible to escape.  I remember standing by a tree beside a pit in The Killing Fields and I remember the nail in that tree that had been put there so the skulls of children would break more easily when the soldiers swung their small, helpless bodies against it and I remember for that moment feeling like everything I had ever believed about the love and beauty of the universe was meaningless, that it was superficial, unrealistic nonsense and no God, no greater power could exist if this kind of pain and cruelty existed in the world.  How many people who died there called out to God? How many of them would have believed that you can achieve anything in life with the right state of mind?  That experience (and others since) sits side by side with my faith, it rests there, in my mind, a reminder always of doubt, of the possibility that I’m wrong.  And personally I think that’s a good thing, it’s dangerous in almost any circumstances to think you are 100% right - ‘mine is not the right path, mine is just one path of many’. 

I don’t feel I’ve been very eloquent here, it’s very difficult to put a feeling or a sense of knowing into words and harder yet to summarise a complex theology, but what I guess I want to say is, I believe luck is something we create and that life is something that happens because of us not something that happens to us and if you want the same ‘luck’ I sometimes seem to experience then maybe try to change your mind about the way the universe works. But similarly, if you think everything I have just said is complete nonsense, I too acknowledge that possibility….and I look forward to having a good, deep discussion about it….just don’t ask to hug me!! ;)

The Beauty Myth...

So I have an appointment to get my nails done tomorrow, like I do every few weeks, an hour or so dedicated to covering my nails in plastic and some combination of glitter and flowers/stars. I guess they look kinda crazy...and yes probably kinda chavy, I acknowledge they aren't the classiest look, but without them, I feel, in an unexplainable way, less of myself.

Psychologies magazine  has just published their new Positive Beauty Manifesto which aims to make women appreciate their own individual beauty and challenge society's narrow definition of what is appealing to the eye. This got me thinking about the subject of beauty, about what it is, how you get it and how society defines it. 

I don't go around thinking 'I'm beautiful, oh wow, I look so amazing today' but neither do I think of myself as not beautiful. When I catch sight of myself in a window cycling in a ridiculous helmet with a puffy red face I feel as far from beautiful as you can get....but still, looking that way bedraggled and uncoiffered, unglamourous and unfeminine I'd still disagree with anyone's right to say that I was anything other than beautiful.  I hate, hate, hate that we as a society feel we have the right to comment on other people's beauty or perceived lack of it. Sure, I might look at a gossip magazine and say 'why is she wearing that god-awful dress?!' but I would never look at someone in a magazine and say 'she's so ugly'.  Perhaps because I've lived my life in a body that society deems unattractive I have an instinctual opposition to the word 'ugly' or to anyone who is arrogant enough to think they have the right to rate someone else's beauty. 

I use the word beauty here rather than attractiveness.  We all have certain looks that appeal to us, I can recognise that Brad Pitt is conventionally attractive, but he does nothing for me (well maybe in that Irish film where he had the floppy fringe!!) and that's not a negative comment towards him, it's just personal preference.  I don't think there is anything insulting about not finding someone attractive, because everyone is attractive to someone, everyone.  I have learnt this through the internet and the annoying amount of men who contact me because they are into BBW (big beautiful women).  Personally I don't think it's appealing for a bloke to be entirely focused on your appearance, regardless of whether it's for your long slim legs or your fat butt, but anyway I'm going off on a tangent, what I'm trying to say is that attractiveness is not the same as beauty, one can be part of the other of course, but they aren't dependent upon each other.

But after all this rambling I haven't got any closer to defining what beauty actually is!  I read a book back in my rampant feminist days (I'm still a feminist, but I don't use it as reason to hate anymore!) called 'The Face of Love: Feminism and the Beauty Question' which concluded:

'To see beauty as the face of love rather than the arbitrary gift of fortune is to enlarge our sense of life's possibilities.'

It basically argued that women become beautiful when they act out of love, love for the world and love for themselves and when who they are on the inside is reflected on the outside.  It was a very long book that posed a lot of other theories and I don't remember any of them, but that one description has always stuck with me, the idea that beauty comes from an attitude, a sense of peace with oneself and love for the experience of life.  I've tried to find other definitions but none of them seem as true to me as this one.

I don't promote obesity, but in one regard I think being the shape that I am has been a blessing.  When the world says you are ugly, you have 3 options: crawl into a ball and cry, spend your life trying to become a version of beautiful the world accepts, or decide the world is wrong and work hard to develop a sense of your own worth that isn't determined by outside opinion.  I'm not going to claim that I feel beautiful every day or that I look in the mirror and go 'wow look at you', but I do try to be gentle on myself.  I have so many friends who are are incredibly cruel to themselves, who use words to describe their own amazing, individual bodies that I would never utter about my worst enemy.  I find it so, so sad.  In a world where we as women fight for the right to not be judged on our appearance, we judge ourselves in the worst possible ways.  Why? What have our bodies ever done to deserve such hatred?  In some ways my body is more amazing than one belonging to a person who stays in shape, because my body still keeps going, after all that's thrown at it, the junk that's put into it, the struggles I force upon it, it still keeps going....it defies belief really and I am not about to hate it.

So back to beauty and love! As I've got older (in my 30's now, time for my pension soon...although when I retire the pension age will probably be 75!) , I feel I've become more myself, I feel I've come to accept who I am and to understand that the judgements of others are not worth more than my own judgement (we shouldn't ignore criticism, there can be valid points in it, but I think we know instinctually if there is truth in the criticism being made).  The clothes I choose to wear, the flat shoes I choose to walk through life in, the ridiculously glittery nails I choose to have painted, I don't choose them because they are beautiful, I choose them because they feel like 'me'.  I didn't have my nails done for several years because of backpacking and finances but the day I walked back into the nail salon to get them reapplied, the smell of the acrylic, the whirring of the electric files, it felt un-explainably right, like home, like me.  And when I look at myself in the mirror now, that's what I feel, I feel I look like myself -  big rings and purple glasses, wrist tattoos and a Jane Seymour necklace, troll bead bracelet and Birkenstocks, no make-up and some small wisps of hair, big smile and lips a beautician once told me women would kill for ('Um OK!') and that's fine with me, because I think 'me' is an OK person, a work in progress sure, but nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hate.  So really, truly, please let's stop hating ourselves, or trying in vain to become a inferior version of conventional beauty, when we could be an outstanding version of our own beauty, our own selves.  Take a photograph of someone laughing, really, truly, laughing, uncontrollably, uninhibited, free, they can't fail to look beautiful, full of life, full of joy.  Beauty is the face of love, love of who you are, love of life, love of others....without question it's a struggle to embody that love, but lets be gentle with ourselves, and each other, in the process.

Me n Mum

OK argh so it's obviously Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday if you want to be all traditional about it!) and so logically I thought I should write something about my Mum and I and how much she means to me blah blah blah! I was reading quotes earlier and there are so many about 'a mother knows her daughters heart, lives in her eyes, resides in her very soul' type stuff that to me, personally, just doesn't feel real.  I adore my Mum, she probably doesn't feel that that is true a lot of the time, but I do, I love her in a way that is really beyond sitting here and putting into words on a blog and I love her in a way that is real and honest and takes account of who we are, how we've changed and all the ways we will never change.

My memories of my childhood and exact years and dates of what happened are fuzzy either through selective memory or through dementia but at some point, I think between the ages of 8 and 11 my Dad moved out of our home and there was just my Mum and I.  My Dad still visited and was a very real presence in my life but essentially it was just us, figuring stuff out....and really, I was just a child so most of the time it was just her.  Just my Mum making sure we ate and that the bills were paid and that I felt safe and happy and loved.  As a kid you never appreciate it and she probably doesn't think I ever have, but I know it was tough, I know she sacrificed things for me and worked overtime and counted every penny and I know she never let me know how difficult things were, I remember her crying over a telephone bill once because I wouldn't stay off the bloody internet (yeah back when surfing the net on dial-up got charged at 5p a minute!) and realising just how tight things must be.

I feel like I should point out here that my Mum never wanted kids, I was a surprise, shall we say and that makes me appreciate more the efforts she made to be a good Mum or to try and raise me to be a good person.  She taught me to read before I ever stepped foot in school, I was always the top reader in my class (although some of my teachers confiscated my reading materials, especially when I went through a True Crime phase around age 8!!) and reading has been one of the most valuable things in my life.  30 odd years later I have an English Degree and several English awards along the way....sometimes you sow a seed in a child and it impacts them forever.

So yeah, she was a good Mum to me, and we are incredibly close because for most of my teenage and young adult years there were just the two of us.  I wasn't a big rebellious teenager, I wore strange clothes and dyed my hair pink and decided that I wanted my room painted black, but nothing major, we didn't have those typical big teen-parent arguments, although I'm sure I was moody for a fair while, in the same way I can be now! She gave me a lot of freedom really, when I think about it, I never had a bedtime or rules or chores to do (although I did have a paper round), she never smacked me or sent me to my room.  The years blur now so I'm not sure how we got through them so smoothly, or maybe we didn't and she'll put me right, but here we are now, two people, older, a bit wiser maybe, still as close, I'd say, although no longer geographically so.

Our relationship continues to change I think, both of us now, I hope, have moved to a place where what we really want for the other is happiness.  I don't know if it's maturity, I think it's possibly just letting go of things, of the belief that I'll outgrow my odd obsessions, that I'll run the world or lose 8 stone, my Mum letting go of the things that she wants for me and accepting that I live the life that I want for myself.   As a parent I think you will always ask, is my child overweight because of me? Is my child single because of something I did or taught her? Firstly I think that once a child becomes an adult they are responsible for their own lives, their own weight and relationships, parents can't be blamed forever and secondly I think it's the wrong question, more important questions are 'Is my child happy?' 'Is my child confident?' 'Is my child a good person?' and if the answer is yes (at least the majority of the time!) then you did an amazing job and you succeeded where many, many fail.

So yes, here we are, we still argue, except now every argument is one we've already had before! I invariably get annoyed when she wants to get to the train station 3 hours before the train actually arrives and she is often subject to my random mood swings that occur for reasons she isn't privy to, but she ends up apologising anyway! I'm pretty much only moody with my Mum, I think you can tell when you truly trust someone loves you by your willingness to be a complete cow towards them and even know whilst you are doing whatever it is that you are doing, that you are being a complete cow and doing it anyway, because you know they'll be there and you know that their first response will be to try and help....that's love, helping someone whilst they are being a complete bitch!

So, to get back to my original point, if I had one, I don't think love between a mother and daughter is summed up in words about beautiful eyes and tender lillies! Love is holding a birthday party for your daughter when you hate every moment of it, but want her to be more social than you have been, love is accompanying your daughter to science fiction conventions you don't understand, love is accompanying your Mum to Elvis tributes that don't include any of his famous songs! Love isn't saying 'why are you travelling 1ooo's of miles to see two people off the TV?', love is saying 'I'll come with you'.  Love is sitting in a library going through hundreds of slides to find random ancestors because your Mum is genealogy obsessed! Love is walking around a graveyard in the freezing wind to help her find one name.  Love is acceptance of another, love is allowing another to feel that who they are is all they need to be.

My Mum always says I was supposed to do something great with my life.  The doctor told her she wasn't pregnant when she was and by the time she knew she was actually having me it was too late to look at other options and on top of that she'd spent the previous months slapping her stomach against some piece of equipment at the gym to make it flatter (which might explain a lot!), so she thinks the universe wanted me to be born for a greater good.  The fact that I'm not Prime Minister yet then is a source of disappointment, but I think she looks at it the wrong way, I think the universe did want me to be born for important things, I think it wanted me to be born so that the two of us temperamental, closed off souls could understand what it is to love another person, without fear or agenda, or even particular reason, I think it wanted to teach us to love and if it achieved that then I think there isn't really a greater good to be found.

Happy Mothers Day :)

 

No more Gillian….

 ….well on here anyway!

I've been posting a few Gillian pics and other bits and bobs on here recently because when I post new pics to Facebook or on a messageboard they just get saved and re-posted multiple times to the extent that I get asked if I've seen a particular pic when I posted the bloody thing in the first place!!  This is not a moan about that, I've re-posted pics myself and I think I need to practice what I preach and accept that if you post pictures online they become public property (except if I am in them - yes that's directed at you people who have reposted pics of me and Gillian and edited me out - um, that's not on!!), but the purpose of this post really is to say I won't be posting any more G news type stuff on this blog.  From the beginning this page has been for my protracted, rambling, navel gazing diatribes about life and it has been the only place I have online that is relatively free of Gillian news.  My friends and family visit this page and I already swamp their facebook/twitter feeds with Gillian news, so I want to keep this blog free of all that ;)

I've started another blog that's specifically G bits and pieces , it's not a news site cause there are already a million and one places to find that stuff, it's just  somewhere for me to post publicly anything I have (which is mostly stuff from the British press) which isn't already out there.

So yes, my apologies if you have subscribed to my RSS feed as a Gillian fan (I assume there are quite a few of you because my page views have gone crazily sky high!), I've moved most stuff to my Gillian blog and I highly recommend joining haven for the latest news .

To everyone else, normal service has resumed, thanks for your patience! :)

No Guarantees.....

Oh my goodness it's been forever since I blogged, I know I always say that but this time it really has!  So long in fact that when I logged on I had a message saying my account had been suspended as they couldn't collect payment from my card!  I make a habit of losing my debit card every couple of months or so (I keep leaving it in the damn PIN machines) and the details Typepad had were several cards ago!  Thankfully the UK is more forgiving than Italy - my Italian officemate had to fly back to Italy to request a new bank card in person when she lost hers!  Anyway, that was a total tangent, I don't write for months and then I bore everyone to death with ramblings about credit cards! 

I thought the break warranted  a bit of a redesign, but I'm still sticking to the classic pink and purple of course! ;) Since I assume (perhaps wrongly?!) that most people who read my blog know me, at least online if not offline, I won't go into some great description about what I've been up to over the past 8 months. In summary form, I went on a tour of Colorado and New Mexico, climbed Pikes Peak (like Dr Quinn…except by train!), went to LA for a few days, went to New York for a few more days (touched David Duchovny while I was there - he is thin and warm!), bought a new sofa, redecorated the kitchen (well paid someone else too….well my Mum paid someone else too…yeah I'm still working on the independent living thing!), got kissed (twice!) by Gillian Anderson, hosted Christmas without killing anyone and got some fish…they're called Spooky and Starbuck!

So that's it really, see you in another 8 months.....

OK maybe I should write something a bit more substantial, so hmm…I guess what I've been pondering a bit this year, since I have reached my third decade (yikes!) is the path of my life.  Not in a big spiritual, what does it all mean,  type way, but more in a 'what do I want to do' type way!  It feels like the first 20 years of life are for you to be young and relaxed and for you to think you know who you are…then the 20's are for you to realise who you actually are and then the thirties, well maybe they are when you are supposed to decide what to do about it!!  I know certain things about myself - I like my own space, I like a laid back life, I love theatre and Dolly Parton and G and my pain in the arse cats (well one is a pain in the arse, the other one is a darling!).  I love my family and my friends and my new sofa!!  But I guess the question is is it enough to sustain a life?  I have an incredibly small family - 2 parents and an uncle - and much as I never want to think about it, they won't be here forever, one day there will just be…….me.  Most people I guess build a new family, partner, children etc and I guess the commitments of that type of life, I must be honest, are things I have always struggled with.  It's never really mattered before, it was always a decision to be made in the future and although I'm hardly applying for my free bus pass yet,  time is ticking away and in not that many years the choice, especially the children part, will cease to exist (via the traditional route anyway!).  Children scare me, the almighty commitment of them….the fact you can't give them back if you think 'hey this isn't really for me'!!  The fact that every decision you will ever make for the rest of your life (or at least the next 18 years) has to take them into consideration!  Visiting the theatre several times a week would be replaced by ballet class and attempting to help with homework (would I need to re-learn Trigonometry?  That's got to be reason enough not to do it!!).  You can also see that I have totally assumed that any child of mine would be a girl, because what on earth would I do with a  boy?! I would have to have a bedroom in my house that was neither pink nor purple! Also, in all seriousness, should I have a child and pass on the same neurosis?  Isn't any child I have likely to have issues with food and weight?  Could I watch my daughter (!) go through the same things I have, knowing that she has those battles because of me and my inability to control my own addictions?  Or really, in the end, am  I just over thinking the whole bloody thing?! 

Elizabeth Gilbert says 'Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit' but really can you ever be 100% certain that you want to be a mother? My Mum sure as hell wasn't, she was certain she didn't want to be, and yet she's all I could ask for in a Mum and for most of my youth she did it alone, and I don't think she would change things, maybe certain aspects of life and choices etc but not becoming a mother…but then she was lucky enough to have a daughter as awesome as me, very few people are blessed in that way!!! ;)  I guess what I'm saying is maybe motherhood, if you are going to do it, is just something you have to leap into with faith because there's no other way.

Also we seemed to have skipped the whole partner part….it's probably best to have one of them too!!  Again, I find that tough, the loss of independence, to a certain extent, compromise and surrender of the remote control, but when there is ultimately just me, maybe those things won't seem so important anymore….it's difficult, it's difficult because I am happy now and don't see the need to change things but I am concerned that once I reach a point when these things are not enough any more I will have passed the age when it's possible to do much about it.  I guess I am just being overdramatic and over thinking things, but anyway, that's the concerns my 30's bring along with them.  I'm not going to start seriously worrying yet though, it's now becoming common to have children in your 40's so I guess I have another decade that I can devote to idleness before deciding whether to tattoo my face ;)

 

Location, Location, Location!

Before you begin to worry I am not about to start blogging about that Channel 4 show and the great Phil and Kirstie flirtation and dear Kirstie's love of giant buttons (though I do find that a fascinating subject of conversation!), I thought I'd write a little bit about location, my location, and no I am not talking about the next trip I'm making, I'm talking about 'home'.

I took a little trip to see a flat in London yesterday, I'd seen it in the paper and it looked, well, affordable for London, which is almost unheard of so I thought I'd check it out.  I haven't really been seriously thinking about moving, the effort is almost too huge, but still I went to see it.  I really shouldn't have bothered because it appears these days that people purchase homes costing hundreds of thousands of pounds based on nothing more than the sketch of a floor-plan!  They only had one two bedroom apartment they could show me, which is hardly likely to bare much resemblance to the teeny 1 bedroom/almost studio one that I wanted to see.  I said I'd like to come back and look when they had a studio to view and the estate agent told me they'd all be gone by then, and if they weren't the price would go up once you could actually look around one!!  I don't know if I could ever quite bring myself to sign away my wages for the next 30 years based upon a floor-plan!

So, I didn't sign on any dotted line, I came away with a catalogue and a rude awakening to the housing market and started thinking.  Even if the flat were tiny, even if you had to walk through the bedroom to get to the living room, even if it was probably cheap because it's on the ground floor next to the cycle shed....it's in London....in the city I love, that makes me feel alive and happy and like my life, in some way, somehow, has purpose.  There was a park near the flat and a canal, Oxford street was a bus ride away, and oh how I love to sit on a London bus!  I could pop home after the theatre, it would take half an hour instead of an hour and a half.  I could get the bus to my front door and not a tube, then a train, then (hopefully!) a taxi.  I could meet friends spontaneously, and stay out without looking at my watch every 10 minutes for the last train home.  I could be, just be, in London.  London would be home.

And still....and still....I don't know. Gillingham is not the place most people would choose to live.  This is evidenced by the fact that most of my friends have slowly moved away, I have to visit them now in nicer places where they express their disbelief at the fact they stayed in Medway so long, when other prettier, quieter, more exciting, less violence ridden, less yob filled places existed! Well I've been a lot of places, in this country and others and I've found 100 nicer towns, cites and villages than Gillingham.....but none of them are my home.  There is something to be said for knowing a place and knowing it inside out.  Gillingham has the nail salon where my manicurist knows my name, Gillingham has my old schools and the cafe where I used to eat every day when we would sneak out at lunch time.  It has the park where we used to feed the birds and then sit on the swings sharing secrets and gossip and the contents of our lunch boxes.  It has the cafe that I've gone in since I was a child, where when I was young I learnt to play fruit machines and beg my mum for another 20p!  Gillingham doesn't have a Starbucks or a Costa Coffee, Gillingham doesn't have anywhere that is too snobby to serve me a Diet Coke!  Gillingham doesn't care whether I put on clothes that look nice, or whether I wear a vest top with giant arms and tattoos on show, everyone does, it's Gillingham!  The very fact I have a job in London means the average person in my town thinks I'm hugely successful.  In London I'm an Administrator with no real ambition or career path, in Gillingham I have a degree and a job in the city - I've achieved huge things! 

I worry I guess that London would never feel like home, because it's so busy, because it's never really somewhere you live for life.  Everyone is going somewhere or trying to get somewhere, no one is just settled and happy and where they want to be.  I worry that it would be lonely, true I know more people there now, than here, but I don't think loneliness just comes from not having people around, it comes from missing what is familiar and cherished and your own.  Of course it takes time when you move somewhere new, I guess it becomes home in time, but what if I never feel as happy there as I do here?  Why give up the contentment I have in search of the possibility of greater contentment?  Does that exist?  I'm not sure.

And still....and still...maybe once in a while you have to take that chance.  I've lived in the same house my whole life, true it's just me now, I have my own place, but still life has never changed that much, through school, college, uni and work I have lived the same life, I've just left to go to different places each day.  Sometimes I worry that I've never made one of those difficult life defining, adult choices - to move out, to move away, to change job or home or lifestyle.  Maybe sometimes you need to throw everything up in the air, just to, if nothing else, get rid of the dust. 

Anyway enough bad metaphors, I'm not moving house anytime soon, for a start I have 2 little cats who don't want to be locked in a tiny London apartment, but for the first time I seriously thought about the possibility....and thoughts sometimes lead, further in the future, to action :)

Overexposed?!

Wow it's been a long time since I updated my blog!  I guess when I started this, although I was on facebook (twitter didn't even exist!), it didn't have the features it does now and in all honesty I wasn't on it as much as I am now.  I guess I feel that when everyone knows the minutiae of my life (probably far more than they want or need to know) day to day via facebook they are unlikely to want to read a whole page of rambling about stuff they probably already knew happened weeks ago!! 

Lots and lots of things have happened since the end of January, I turned 30 for one, which wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be, although I still don't like ticking that particular box on information forms! I went to Athens, which was wonderful, as much for the people I went with as for the beauty of the city.  I love the friends I have made through fandom, but it is a sad fact that we get to spend very little time together and I feel like I constantly say goodbye to people I would like to know more, to understand more, to spend more general time with.  There are people dotted all over the globe that I have spent treasured days with and then never seen again, although I have intentions to see them all again one day :)

But actually, wonderful as those memories are, I'm not actually going to blog about them today.  I wanted to blog about my non fan friends.  Those people who have no particular love of Gillian, X-Files, Dolly Parton or anything else I obsess about!

There have been several people I have spoken to recently that have told me how little effort their friends make to understand their interest in fandom....or simply don't understand it and judge them based upon it.  I feel strangely lucky that I have never experienced those problems.  I don't know why,  I don't hide my love of all things XF/Gillian from anyone, although I do make a conscious effort not to talk to my non fan friends about it as though they were fans, I can think of nothing more boring for them than me rambling on about Gillian's latest dress or the complex politics of fan groups!  Sometimes I am so excited about something that has happened or is going to happen that I have to  share it with them, and they, bless them, know that it is important to me so they are happy for me and they listen and sometimes they even ask questions!

My parents also have always been great about it.  I'm not saying they necessarily understand it, but they have never made me feel like it is something strange that I should be ashamed of.  My Mum came with me to my first ever sci fi convention in Blackpool because I was too young to go alone!  4 days of everything Babylon 5 related, she even wore a B5 t-shirt to blend in....although this did lead to people accosting her and trying to talk to her in detail about a show she had probably only seen 2 or 3 episodes of!!  My Dad came with me to get my Superman tattoo and he would get up at 5am to drive me to Bromley so I could catch the coach to Birmingham for the twice yearly Sci Fi show.  My Mum has seen all 3 of Gillian's plays and most of her movies, she came to San Francisco with me on my 6000 mile trip to see David and Gillian at WonderCon and when we were in Vancouver and thought we couldn't take the XF tour (which we ultimately could) she helped me take out the map and try and locate the places so we could find them ourselves.  It's important to her because it's important to me and I think that's what real love, real friendship is.  It doesn't matter whether you share the same passions, interests etc, it matters that you have that person in your life and that you want them to be happy. 

I remember walking along Sydney harbor for the first time on my own.  To stand by Sydney Opera House and just look at it, as the sun was going down, to be there, when that had always seemed like an impossible dream was an amazing moment in my life, but I also remember being for one short moment, desperately sad because there were so many people in my life I wanted to share this with.  I wanted them all with me, to say 'look at this, isn't it just the most incredible thing you ever saw, isn't this like a dream?'.  I stood there wanting more than anything to call my Mum, but it was like 4am at home and common sense takes over so I didn't, but I did realise in that moment that amazing things, trips, achievements, although beautiful in and of themselves, are so much better shared.  Sometimes an experience is so emotional, either through joy or excitement or great sadness that you feel like if you don't share it with the people who are important to you, that you will burst and I am eternally grateful to all my friends and family who continue to listen.

This update has a been a bit all over the place, but I just want to end with a little anecdote.  When I was working in my previous job, I covered the little desk divider things we had with XF and Gillian pictures!  We had a new boss start and she was sitting at the desk next to mine.  When she came in the first time I saw her look at my desk and shake her head, in her eyes I could see that she had already marked me as 'odd'.   Over time though we grew to know each other and we got on well.  For some dumb reason a while later they introduced a policy of only allowing people to have 3 personal items on their desk, I knew this before anyone else because she took me into a room and told me.  She said she knew it might be extra difficult for me to take things off my desk and she hoped I would feel OK about it and suggested I keep some of the pictures in my desk drawer to look at if I couldn't have them in front of me!  I said I was OK with it, I would pick my favourite 3 pics and live with it, but that I thought it was a stupid policy.  She just looked at me and said 'I don't care if you come to work in a Superman outfit Cathy you are great at your job and I value you in this team'.  It meant a lot to me, that someone who clearly didn't understand my motivations respected that they meant something to me. All my friends do that on a regular basis, some get it, some don't, but that's not what's important to them, I am important to them, and they to me,  I don't know how I got lucky, but I did, and I'm more thankful than you know :)

Boring.........

So I'm sitting here on a Sunday night at the end of January with my laptop, my two cats, one eye on a dumb movie I've seen 10 times already and a Pizza in the oven!  Today I lay in till late-ish, did laundry, hung it on the line (bad idea in this weather, it came back in standing up on it's own!), cleaned the house somewhat, went and bought some shopping, got a few flowers to brighten up the place, read some of my book ('Flying without Fear'), skimmed through  few pages of  'Oprah' magazine, helped Rose and Nina take away my old telly, started a new toothbrush, you know, all the exciting stuff that makes up life!  Why am I telling you this?  Why do you care?  You probably don't, but I am telling you because this is what my (and likely your!) life is like the majority of the time!

This is a blog and I normally write about some subject that means a lot to me or a holiday I've been on or some celebrity I've managed to spend 5 seconds with, but this is January, the month of nothingness, the month of boring, normal life!I'm not complaining you understand, after the craziness of Christmas and New Year, I think this downtime is necessary, comforting even and really do I want to be out somewhere in this weather freezing my butt off when there is a warm living room and cupcakes waiting at home?! 

This is not only about January though, I guess in general I often feel that my life, to other people, may well seem boring.  Not that I don't do things or go to lots of different places, just that things don't change much.  A lot of my friends, if I don't see them for a week, they have more news than I have in a year!  Normally about jobs, boyfriends, family fallings-out, problems, dilemmas, decisions to be made.  After we've discussed these many issues they'l normally ask how I am, what's happening with me?  And the answer always seems to be the same 'Yeah I'm good thanks' and sometimes I feel like I'm disappointing them, where is my drama? Where is my news?

I have problems, of course I do, I have stresses and worries and things that need to be sorted out, but they exist, I guess, somewhere in the background of my life.  I deal with them when they happen but I am not really the sort of person that enjoys drama, the ups and downs, I like my life, I like to be content.  I like getting my nails done and finding a new book.  I like going to the theatre, catching a movie, taking the long bus home through the streets of London. I like gentleness and relaxation, the pace of life shouldn't be too quick!  I like me time, quite a lot of it, and time with friends, lunch somewhere posh on the Southbank or lunch in a Gillingham greasy spoon cafe, they both make me happy.  I like taking photographs and listening to music, buying clothes and wearing them straight away, I like chatting online with friends and walking to the cinema with my Mum.  These are the small things, these are life and personally, I feel, if you don't have enough ordinary things, everyday moments that make you happy, your pleasure will always be short lived.  I love this poem 'Being Boring' by Wendy Cope:

If you ask me 'What's new?',

I have nothing to say

Except that the garden is growing.

I had a slight cold but it's better today.

I'm content with the way things are going.

Yes, he is the same as he usually is,

Still eating and sleeping and snoring.

I get on with my work.

He gets on with his.

I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:

Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.

No news is good news, and long may it last,

If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.

A happier cabbage you never did see,

My vegetable spirits are soaring.

If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.

I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties.

Well, what are they for,

If you don't need to find a new lover?

You drink and you listen and drink a bit more

And you take the next day to recover.

Someone to stay home with was all my desire

And, now that I've found a safe mooring,

I've just one ambition in life: I aspire

To go on and on being boring.

I guess I don't have the person to stay home with yet, but I'm building the life that makes me happy anyway, if he exists somewhere I hope some day he'l join me in my boringness, but until then I'll get up tomorrow and go to work, the other commuters will annoy me, but I'll listen to my ipod to block them out, I'll get to my desk and smile at all my X-Files pictures and I'll check in with the people I work with, chat about the weekend, and likely moan about the weather!  I'll grab lunch with my friend Cathy (yes the same name thing causes confusion!) and laugh and moan and gossip.  I'll sneakily check facebook every hour or so on my phone and keep in contact with my friends who will make me smile.  I'll catch the train home and read the newspaper, cook dinner and watch tv while one cat tries to flatten my lap with it's feet and the other ignores me in disdain!  I'll read before bed and set my alarm and dream good dreams, but I won't have any news for anyone next time we meet, I'll just be 'good, thanks', but I don't mind, I'm sure as soon as a problem arises, a dilemma presents itself or a loss is suffered, I will long for this ordinaryness, for the simple pleasures of a 'boring' life :)

Body Art & Fan Adventures!

Hey again.  Before I start my usual rambling, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who responded to my previous blog post on here, on facebook, or in person, it's appreciated more than you know ;)So this time I'm gonna talk a bit about my penchant for tattoos and then give a little report about my LA trip (anyone who knows me has probably heard it 20 times over already!!), it's been an exhausting couple of weeks, but now I am back and ready for all the Christmas preparations (I'm hosting it this year so I need to you know....learn how to cook!!) and the lights and the trees and the general loveliness that is the festive period!!

So first body art.  As you will likely be aware I got another tattoo recently ;) and I just wanted to take an attempt at explaining what it is that makes me mark things permanently on my skin, rather than say...put up a picture of it on my wall!  Firstly I should say that I personalize everything!  As soon as I get a new mobile phone, an ipod, a laptop etc etc I have to personalize it!  I have to seek out a skin to turn it pink, or cover it in Dolly Parton's logo or plaster Mulder and Scully's face all over it!  That's just me, I don't want stuff to look like everyone else's, it's so boring, I want to look at the things I carry everywhere with me and smile and feel attached to them because they are unique (or less common at least!).  I think this may be part of the reason I love tattoo's, they are the ultimate form of personalisation!  You can get a beautiful design on your body which is only limited by the artists imagination and it is with you always and forever.

That is another thing that appeals to me about body art -it's permanence.  I realise that this is likely the very thing that turns most people off it, but I like that my tattoos are mine and that nobody can take them away from me, that me and my tattoos will be together until I no longer exist (in this form anyway) and I actually find that comforting.  So few things are permanent, I think it's understandable to want some things of beauty that are.  Of course, a lot of people don't find them beautiful at all, they find them ugly, tacky, or a sign of a lower class person! I think this idea is changing, I think it's tied to the attitudes of the past and not the actual reality of the situation.  That's not to say that there isn't part of that attitude that I like as well!  I guess I am fairly straight laced and it's quite funny that people tend to find the fact that I have tattoos surprising!  I like to surprise them, my tattoos sometimes transmit the message, 'perhaps there is more to this person than meets the eye' and I have no problem with that!  I am sure to other people they transmit the message 'common silly girl who is going to regret doing that in a few years'  but I got my first tattoo 11 years ago and I haven't regretted any yet, so I don't expect to start doing so any time soon.

I do think you have to have a certain attitude to get tattooed though, I would never try to encourage someone who was unsure, it isn't something to do if you are in any way unsure, and if you have ever said to yourself, what if I regret it?  Then don't do because you probably will!  You need to be able to accept changes to your body fairly easily and to accept your tattoo as a new and permanent part of your body as naturally as you would a scar or a (big!) freckle!

I'll admit to having a few unusual tattoos that people regularly think I will regret, usually their comments are along the lines of 'But what about when you're 80, will you still want it then and it will look all wrinkly?!' or 'What about when you get bored of that show/person and you still have the tattoo?'  Well I personally don't spend much time thinking about how I will feel when I am 80 but if I manage to get to that age it's likely my whole body will be wrinkly and I will have either found someone along the line who loves me wrinkles, tattoos and all, or accepted my single status and my imperfect body....I don't think I am going to spend too long worrying about a blurry black mark on my ankle, hopefully I'll look at it and remember the times I loved and lived and all the reasons I got it.  As for what if I stop loving 'The X-Files' or Buddhism or whatever it may be?  That's OK, I have the Superman symbol tattooed on my ankle and I am not obsessed with that character in the same way I once was, in fact I got the tattoo quite a while after my obsession died down, because my body didn't feel right without it.  I had intended to get a Superman tattoo on my 18th birthday but it all went a bit wrong and I ended up without one.....yet still 9 years later, I felt that I should have one, that that part of my life deserved recognition and so I got it and I love it for all the memories associated with my love of Supes, although I've moved on somewhat I feel that a tattoo says - this had meaning, this was important to me, this was significant in my life :) 

There is one other way that I use my tattoos - as help in times of challenge.  I have Sanskrit words on my foot and on my wrist to help remind me of what is important in my life.  In moments when things are tough, I look at my wrist and I take a deep breath and I find a bit more peace than I had before, I reconnect with what matters and with me and I can't explain how much that helps...just that it really, truthfully does.I don't think I am going to go on and on getting tattooed, I don't believe I'll have sleeves and hugely obvious tattoos, I think I am almost done.  I want Dolly's logo on my foot and then that's it, for now anyway, but I won't be getting that one anytime soon, I like to wait at least a year between tattoos (except when circumstances mean that isn't possible ;)), to get used to them, to appreciate them, to value each one for the memories, the pain, the period of my life and the joy they represent :)

 Talking of joy, as you probably know, I took a little trip to LA to spend time with friends and to attend 'Believe Again' an X-Files charity event.  I had an amazing time, meeting old friends and new ones, geeking out, worshiping (!) Gillian, sightseeing and having crazy fun! It was wonderful break....still I'm glad to be home now the winter nights are kicking in, there is peace to be found in the simple pleasures of a warm home on a cold evening, two cuddly cats and reading by candlelight...I realise I'm blessed to be able to experience the exciting and the relaxing, the extreme highs and the gentle contentment.  Bring on Christmas :)

My least favourite subject!

Hello world!  I'm typing this on my new netbook, which I'm loving, but as the keyboard is slightly smaller than a standard one, I keep hitting all the wrong keys! There are therefore likely to be even more misspelt words than usual in my post, you have been forewarned!

So what's been happening of any interest? Hmm, not huge amounts! I've seen some good plays ('Many Roads to Paradise') and I've seen some terrible ones ('Endgame' what was that about?!). I'm trying to be a bit more financially prudent with so many expensive outings coming up, which isn't proving easy, but I have realised how much I spend on everyday living - my eating out bills are like £200 a month...scary, but least they're are obvious places I can cut back!

I guess my food bills leads quite smoothly into what I wanted to ramble on about in my blog today - diet and weight!

So recently my best friend of 22 years has lost weight - lots and lots of weight, and I'm so proud of her and her commitment to it.  I, more than anyone else, know how incredibly tough that must have been for her and still is, I'm sure.  But this isn't really about that, she's my friend big or small, tall or short, whatever, in a way in it is unimportant to me as long as she is happy with where she is in her life.  I mention it as it has caused some people to imply that I should do the same thing!  If R can do, what don't/can't I etc and then the other day I heard my neighbor talking about me to a friend saying 'oh yes she's always been a big girl'!!  It made me think about other people's perceptions of me, of assumptions and misconceptions, so I thought i'd address my weight this once and be done with it!

So firstly, I know I am overweight and I know why - I eat too damn much!  I'm not big boned (well maybe I am, I've never been able to get past the flesh to feel the size of them!!), it's not hereditary, I don't have a slow metabolism or any other health issue that causes me to be big or eat too much.  I've discussed what I eat and why I eat my whole life with parents, with dietitians, with friends and with therapists .  I think the school first sent me to talk to the health visitor about what I ate when I was around 9, I went to weight watchers for the first time at a similar age.  There has never been a point in my life when everyone else has not been interested in everything I eat or when eating food could be a normal, guilt free thing.  One of the dietitians assigned to me by the school once told me to go away and come back when I wanted to lose weight, because I would never be able to do it for other people.  My eating disorder therapist, after 2 years of talking, finally said she thought I seemed happy and didn't have the motivation to lose weight (I do however credit her with turning me from someone who ate in a dangerous, uncontrolled way into someone who just eats unhealthily and though for many people that wouldn't seem like much of any achievement, believe me it is!  I sometimes think, I feel bad for eating a bar of chocolate where once I would have eaten 4, in a row, in a certain order, with crisps and sweets, several times a day). 

When I look back at it now, I realise that I, myself never really hated my weight, other people did, because they were kids and they teased anyone who was different or because they were adults and they didn't want a fat daughter who made them look bad or because they were genuinely concerned about my health.  The strange thing is it always surprises me when someone comments on my weight because I guess, to me, it's not the first thing I think of in relation to myself, because to me it's normal and I feel normal!  I have been blessed to have friends in my life who have never made me feel like my size had any significance and I certainly don't walk into a room thinking that all anyone will see is a fat girl!  I've been told i'll have difficulties getting a job because fat people are perceived as lazy, it's been implied I could get myself a bloke if I just lost some weight, because I'm really pretty underneath!!! 

Firstly I'm not lazy, I've worked since the age of 11, I get up every day at 6am and get home at 7pm, I don't drive so I walk everywhere.  I'll walk as far as you want me to if there's something I want to see at the end of the road, I just won't walk 5 miles on a treadmill going nowhere! I don't go to the gym, I find it monumentally boring and I've always had this notion that I don't want to spend my life doing things I don't enjoy, but I've climbed mountains in Canada, I've done day long hikes in China, I'm not a lazy person.  And oh God, the lose weight, get a bloke thing, that's such rubbish!  I honestly don't see the difficulty in getting a partner, I've met loads of men who like plus sized women and I've never lacked men showing an interest in me....normally it's too much of an interest!  I don't have a partner because at this point in my life, I can't make the compromises you have to make to keep a relationship going.  Maybe that will change, maybe it won't, but that's up to me and it has nothing to do with my dress size!!

I guess the message/conclusion of this diatribe is really that, look I'm OK, I'm happy with me, it's my choice and my decision.  I like me, I have less body image issues than most of my thin friends, I think I look nice sometimes and rough at others, like every other woman on earth!  I acknowledge here and now that my family and friends have legitimate concerns about my health, but it's also true that I don't drink or smoke, something which most people I know do one or the other of, often to excess and who really knows how life will turn out?  I got hit by a car when I was 16 and the doctor said my weight may have saved my life because of the barrier it created between my organs and the car (unfortunately my head wasn't fat so that went straight through the windscreen!!).  My weight should mean I'm unhealthy but I haven't had a day off work sick in 8 years.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, life is a funny, funny thing, full of unexpected twists and turns.

I've been this weight/size for over 6 years now, I've plateaued!  If I were getting bigger and bigger I might be more concerned, it's not my desire to end up on the Jerry Springer Show getting hoisted from my bed by a crane  - there are limits - and I know that as I get older it's something I need to pay more attention to, the human body only puts up with so much abuse!  Who knows, maybe one day I will lose it all, maybe it'l be when I'm 60 and I'll start wearing utterly inappropriate clothes just because I never had the opportunity in my youth!! Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but I do know that I can't, that I won't, live my life to someone else's schedule, or to fit in with someone else's perception of who I should be, or to make someone else more comfortable, or to make me supposedly more lovable.  I'll make my decisions about my body and I choose to love it, because it carrys me everywhere I want to go and it helps me comfort people, and love people...it's a magnificent thing....it's not perfect, but who of us is?  It's a work in progress, I'm a work in progress, but I'll decide the pace and I'll decide the path and I'll haul my fat butt along it ;)

'It's okay to be fat.  So you're fat.  Just be fat and shut up about it.  - Roseanne