The Static In The Flow

Another 6am in front of the bathroom mirror. My skin has a bluish pallor. There is a red handprint on my stomach, the outline of his fingers clearly visible in the harsh bathroom light. He holds me tight while I sleep.

10am in bed, and he's mooching in his sleep. He lifts his head from my chest to roll over and I trace the perfect red impression his ear has left on my shoulder. I think about breakfast, and my worries evaporate in the fading seashell sworls.

Friday Afternoon

I'm waiting for a phonecall. It's no big deal. They'll tell me I got it. I'll pretend to be delighted. I might be delighted, I don't know. I'll be grateful. Then I'll puke into the small wastepaper bin under my desk.

Plus ça change

Selected quotes from my 6th year English essay copy:

Wonderfully, refreshingly alive! Very annoying - why oh why did it end so quickly?

Excellent work. I would like a longer essay, Rosie. That is the reason for the B grade: LENGTH.

I could clobber you with a blunt ice-pick! You write exquisite essays but like Wilde's cigarette you leave your reader unsatisfied - wanting MORE!

Some day you will write a full-length quality essay (I hope).

Brevity may be the soul of with but your essays are altogether too brief. You are a wonderful writer - extend yourself!

Then, I had a problem. Now, I am sitting at my desk trying to shove another 300 words up the arse of the short short story I've written for tomorrow night's class. I'm frustrated and bored, much like my teenage self was by titles such as The end of a friendship, Censorship should be abolished. Agree/Disagree, The ideal school and my personal favourite, A letter to God. Rereading the essays themselves, I am struck by how little I liked myself as a teenager, and how little I like my teenage self. And so, my múinteoir's closing comment made me smile.

You have reached the end of your copy. Please retain this anthology of wonderful work somewhere safe and reread it in ten years time! It will be like reading letters from a friend you have lost contact with.

Indeed.

A Slip And A Slide

"That'll be €9.10, please."

I pocket them and dodge the traffic, skidding across the slush on Aungier St. I'd spent so long thinking, sitting on that grimy grey couch thinking about the cigarettes that I won't have time to smoke one. So I peel off the cellophane and sniff them. Old socks.

Bás nádúrtha, a deir siad, and there is some cold comfort to be taken from that. I am a lady perpetually in search of succour. Of course, the end result is the same; he's gone. I hope that there might be reassurance for his mother in the manner of his loss. I think then of another mother, and wonder if it is any less natural to end your own life, searching for something that has remained resolutely just out of your reach.

I switch off, pocket the cigarettes and step inside.

It's snowing again when I leave work to walk home, fat flakes like the ones I've been picking from my psioratic scalp. It's been a picky day, and the thin skin behind my left ear is red raw. I remember sitting on the couch with the Leitrim Lady not so long ago. "Stop picking it!" she barked, and I paused, hand halfway to my hair. The Jaffa Cake took his finger from his nose, and she slapped her own hand away from the scab on her scar. Three guilty giggles.

I don't wonder fancifully if I am pretty as a postcard today, I just want to be home and dry. Still fingering the fags in my pocket, I nod to Oscar as I pass him on Merrion Square. A man walking towards me mistakes my nod for a greeting, and begins unbuttoning his coat. No, I think, please not today. He fumbles in his pockets, then asks through broken teeth if I might have a cigarette for him. I hand him the packet, relieved. Then continue on my way, a little motherfucking Teresa.

Gnéas Trí Thine

My fretting has borne fruit - a contract arrived in the post this morning. With a careful reading and a careless signature, I have secured my future here for another year.

Well. I have secured my job here for another year. Tá mí na meala thart. They dithered about keeping me on. I dunno if I want to stay. I grumbled all the way along the Grand Canal yesterday. Dreading the afternoon's performance, for which I was predictably under if not quite un prepared. Tick fucking tock, two o' clock. Sigh.

I stepped out of the grimy limelight at three, whooshed into the wings by a ripple of applause. "Please" I muttered "don't clap, there's no need". Please, I cringed, shut up with the false modesty. There's no need for that either. Martin let loose with a burst whine from the piano accordion and we breathed out in unison. Later, one of the Germans asks me to dance. I'm not quite sure if he means with him or for his amusement. Either way, I'm flattered, and though I don't dance with him, I twostep the short trip home. Sweet.

My eaten cake was long forgotten by the time Red Wine Hangover, Resentment and I arrived in the Axis this morning. I felt awkward as the only adult there without a troupe to marshal, so went about my business as perfunctorily as possible. Despite the bang of teenager in the air, the palpable excitement had piqued my interest. I delayed the taxi and took a seat by the door. I reddened when the eMCee announced my presence like I'm some kind of honoured guest but it was dark, and the students didn't give a fuck. They were there for the show... which kicked off with Sex On Fire as Gaeilge, belted out by five teenagers with a self-confidence I've only seen in Clearasil ads, followed by an a capella I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (as Gaeilge, natch) which brought more of tear to my eye than Benjamin the little bollix Button.

From The Archives #1

I've been rummaging around the knicker drawer of my drafts folder, looking to see how much of it still fits. I'm not sure if this one's grannypants or thong.

I Am Uspet

Because my i-pox has died and I am becoming a chattering shambles without music. Because I have failed one of my college assignments and don't know if I can compensate. Because The Happening was the worst film I have ever seen, and I've seen The Notebook and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! Because I don't know if there should be a full stop after that last exclamation mark. And because my brother is upset and I sometimes feel like Elliot to his E.T.
17 Meitheamh 2008

Through The Wringer

There are times when I would dearly love to pour my heart out onto these pages. To squeeze every last drop from it, like water from a sponge, so that I might watch it bounce back. It gets heavy, you see, sodden with every upset, mine and yours. It swells with every tear it sucks up. I am a sucker in the suckiest sense, as greedy for weltschmerz as I am for schadenfreude. I never know whether to laugh or cry. Skadeglädje är den enda sanna glädjen, but what does that make weltschmerz? Honey to this bee.

So lend me your troubles. I'd appreciate the distraction. I'm worried, and facing a worrisome week. This Wednesday I find out if I still have a job come February. Well, not a job, but my job. I don't want to be a victim of the current economic climate. I'm a gaeilgeoir, for fuck's sake. I can't emigrate.

On Thursday my favouritest doggle, The Blonde, is to have surgery to see if she has a tumour on her bowel. And that worries me so much that I can't even think about it.

Automatic, Systematic, Hydromatic

I decided to take her out for a spin, this impostor, this shiny replacement for the car I had loved like a pet. Like a pet who chews at your wallet and breaks your heart.

I was determined not to like her much. No, she wouldn't win me over with the warm embrace of her buckety seats or the tight, comforting hold of her functioning handbrake. Most of all, she would not impress me with her lack of gears. A glorified go-kart, I scoffed, she'll be dull as ditchwater.

So I took her out on the open road, and she was okay. Nothing special. I'm bored, I rambled unconvincingly to myself while I jabbed at the stereo. I had a leisurely flick through the stations, followed by a good root around the glovebox, and a browse through the CDs. I slapped on some Bowie, that Earthling album that I love and all other earthlings hate. Or at least ridicule.

All the while, motoring. And falling slowly for this accommodating new machine, this purring automatic.

We got as far as Baggot Street before she started to complain of thirst, so I pulled in to the petrol station. Sidled up to the pump, savoured the admiring glances from the guy at the next one over. She is pretty, with her sleek blue lines and soft top. I slip her into neutral, subtly adjust my knickers and step out to fill her up, and flirt with your man. Except that I don't, because the key is stuck in the ignition. So I fiddle with it, faking an exasperated smile as if to imply that this happens all the time. No big deal! Jiggle the steering wheel. Pull a little more insistently. I realise as my panic mounts that there is a queue of cars behind mine, snaking out onto Mespil Road and blocking traffic. So I start the engine and move forward to the conveniently vacated pump in front of me, then repeat the whole charade. This time with the shop assistant watching me intently through the window, and pointing me out to his customers.

Defeated, I pull out into the traffic, mortified but fucked if I'm going to let on that there's anything the matter. I just like cruising forecourts, is all... I am all but whistling a tune, trying to stem the panic as I drive the half mile home, reviewing my less than favourable options. I have no fuel. I have no idea how far this new toy will run on fumes. I have just made a monumental tit of myself at the only petrol station for miles. I cannot leave the car, because I cannot lock the car, because I cannot get the fucking bastard key out of the ignition. I will have to sleep in it overnight, I think, or at least for a few hours until one of my parents arrives to fix it. I have no idea how they might do this, but once they sit in to the driver's seat I plan to run away and hide. They decided to trade up, so technically, this is their fault.

I fell for her, and she has betrayed me.

I pull up outside the flat, resigned, and slip her into park. Kill the engine and give the key a lacklustre turn. It slides out easily.

Renovations

"I want to borrow their zuum zuum thingy!" He shouts when he gets excited, and I have to suppress a smile. He dashes past in his plaid jammies and comes back two seconds later, victorious. His grin has an almost manic edge. He's wielding the painters' cordless drill. Before I can say a thing he's up on the kitchen chair, making a beeline for the ratty slatted blind that hangs over the window. "What's this for?" he asks, pulling at an untidy but important looking cable hanging loose from the sill, his eyes lighting on the kitchen scissors (which he presumably plans to use to "fix" the wire) as he waves the drill around, for emphasis.

I close my eyes and for the briefest of seconds savour the visions of fried Swede. Then I open them again and ask him not to cut it. "There is just no logic" he mutters disappointedly.

How right you are, thinks his Pebble.

Bleach And Crayons

I woke in the wee smalls of last night to the clatter of a worrying crash, followed by those tinkly smashy breaky sounds that I find so pleasing in anyone's flat but mine. Fuck, I thought, I wonder...

*snore*

I'd been dreaming, for once, rather than crashing in a cower through another nightmare. I was at home, cleaning the flat as part of an audition to become a cleaning lady. A knock on the door announced a visit from the planets, who had come to advise me on my love life. There were three of them, beach ball sized and orange hued, and they followed me on my chores, floating at head height and amiably dispensing wisdom.

I can't remember a thing they told me.

Dangerous Minds

Like most if not all arts graduates, I had an absolute shit attack once I left college. I wasn't qualified to do anything in particular and I had no idea what I'd like to do, so I blundered head-first into teaching. Well, elbow first. I tried a stint as a corporate whore and it didn't really take, so in the spirit of altruism and service to the community I accepted a temporary post in my old alma mater. A nice school with excellent staff, where I would be paid a gazillion euro an hour to babysit teenagers. What could go wrong?

Mid afternoon on day one I had my first class with 6th year foundation level English. 9 boys who already looked like big strong men, and who were fully convinced that they were big strong men. Most had repeated a year during some stage of their academic careers, I'm sure some of them had learning difficulties and I'm very fucking sure that most of them had behavioural problems. We spent a difficult 40 minutes together, but I won.

Day two found them in fine fettle, almost personable in their efforts to impress the new teacher. We were still at the honeymoon getting-to-know-you stage, so I was happy to indulge them in amiable chat. I mooted the idea that we might do some work on day three and asked them what they'd covered in class the previous year, intending on doing some revision. But oh no. English class had been cancelled last year.

I should have known better than to ask, I suppose. They spent 40 minutes telling tales of the three unfortunates who had acted as substitute teachers the previous year. The first of them refused to teach them after flicking paper balls at her had enraged her to breaking point, whereupon one of them threw a metal pencil case at her and hit her in the face. A replacement was brought in, a stern disciplinarian. She had two of them suspended for sexual harassment after they repeatedly complained about being unable to study due to (their) erect nipples - the classroom was freezing because they'd smashed the window with the duster. How this might constitute sexual harassment was beyond them, as they hadn't so much as mentioned her nipples. I stifled a giggle under an immaculately stern poker face, and quietly nodded when they asked me if I'd like to know what happened to the third teacher. I should have said no, but I really did want to know. Turns out they'd started flicking paper balls at him too. Lighted ones. I believe them, because they showed me a video clip. Not to intimidate, but to impress.

I dreaded my classes with them. They took a serious shine to me though and soon proclaimed me their favourite teacher, getting more than a little upset that I wasn't planning on speaking for them at the parent-teacher meetings. We spent most days watching Strictly Ballroom (it's on the curriculum) where they pushed the tables back and waltzed one another around the room, while the guy with ADD coloured the blackboard in from corner to corner with chalk (cleaning it off before the bell went, out of consideration for me). We had tears one day when one of them regaled me with a tale of an injured pigeon he'd filled with bangers and blown to feathers, thinking I would be impressed by his ingenuity when it came to putting the creature out of its misery. I was not, and this upset him. Two of them asked me to be their date for the debutante ball and threatened to batter the shite out of each other in a row over which one had asked me first. I politely declined both. But we got along. I told my friends at home about them and I got voicemail messages with Coolio's Gangster's Paradise playing in the background. Because my friends are very, very funny.

Then one day I arrived in to find them sitting at their desks, with poetry textbooks. I had left them in the care of another young substitute teacher the previous day, as I had an interview for a lecturing job. They had decided on an early lunch, she had refused to let them leave and had threatened to call the principal. So they backed her into a corner and tried to grope her breasts.

I could never be a teacher.

Pulled Back From The Brink

She came home from a 5 hour lunch to find me still sitting at the kitchen table, unwashed and goggle eyed with grammar. "How's the study going?" I seethe silently, knowing that a polite answer is expected but will not be forthcoming. "Are you alright?" "Yes" I mutter distractedly. "Did you have lunch? Did you eat the chilli I left for you? Was it alright?" I grit my teeth and mumble something about brown bread and cheese, hunger suddenly gnawing at my insides and tears welling up in my eyes. If she notices she has the good grace not to mention it. She busies herself getting dinner underway, garlic potatoes, steak. Then she suggests that we go to see Indiana Jones; it opens in the local cinema tonight.

"It would give you an excuse to have a shower."

Teetering On The Edge

I'm glad my first exam is tomorrow, because I don't think I can take much more of this trying to balance study and sanity stuff. I found myself explaining to my mother over breakfast that no, I hadn't showered this morning because "I need to have something to look forward to later". Barring some cosmic, karmic outside influence or the interference of some kindly and determined soul, that shower will undoubtedly be the highlight of my day.

Three exams. Two days. By 5pm on Saturday afternoon I will be done. By 10pm on Saturday night I hope to be a little drunk and by midnight I hope to be nodding enthusiastically out of time to DJ Yoda*, who has kindly agreed to play the POD in celebration of my finishing my exams.

*Funny aside: a friend and I went to see DJ Yoda in Rogue on Dame St a few years ago, full of giddy enthusiasm. We were only fucking delighted when we got there to discover that it was only a fiver on the door, though we were a little disappointed that the turn out was so poor. It took us a good half hour to cop that we'd gotten the days of the week mixed up - Yoda wasn't due to play til the following night. Sensible as we are, we decided to keep our powder dry and head home for a few quiet beers chez him, vastly underestimating how mangled we already were. At 4am we were wandering around Clonskeagh looking for ice-cream, jabbering about how much fun we'd have at the gig the following night...

This was just a couple of months after I turned up a month too early for an Ocean Colour Scene gig in the Olympia. Now that's an embarrassing story.

The Road To Mental

This time last year I was sat right where I am now (at the dining table in the flat, surrounded if not yet swamped by study notes, dictionaries and half drunk cups of Earl Grey). I was dressed in scruffy pyjamas, hair like a madwoman's fanny, my outward appearance generally indicative of my mental health. I'm studying for a HDip, having already got my BA and MA behind me, and for the first time in my life I was worried to the point of distraction about how I would fare in my exams. I had been more conscientious in my study than I ever had when I was in full-time education (when I had attended lectures on a rota basis, left exams before I'd finished because I couldn't wait to get to the HorseShow House and generally regarded anything above 40% to be an indication that I wasn't having as much fun as I should). I don't know if being an almost-adult with a semi-serious job has made me feel like I should try a little harder, but something has changed and success in my exams is now a matter of diligence and pride rather than blind luck.

So with all of this weighing on my mind as I sat here last year, I had a panic attack. I knew what it was (a friend having described the feeling in frightening detail before) but that didn't mean that I thought I was having anything less than a heart attack, followed swiftly by a complete nervous breakdown (I had a similar reaction the one and only time I ever got heartburn - I thought I was going into cardiac arrest). I got over it (though it took all day) and spent the rest of the week before my exams (and the occasional moment since, truth be told) panicking quietly about having another one.

So here I am again, at home on study leave, a week before my exams. As prepared as I was last year and with the benefit of another year's learning behind me, more mature and more worldly-wise (stop sniggering). Determined not to have a panic attack. I am once again sat here at the dining table surrounded by the tools of my trade, but this time I'm sat here with blow-dried hair (my going-out hair, as GingerBeard calls it) in my prettiest summer dress, with a cup of tea and a bowl of fresh cherries. I'm pouring my heart out to my pretend friends (my blog is not yet a year old, so that's a comfort I didn't have then) and I'm going to put some music with words on (apparently if you feel you're edging towards panic, singing helps).

I'll let you know how it goes.

I Didn't Catch The Bouquet, But

Saturday morning saw me running around town in the pouring rain and a massive tantrum, trying in vain to find something to wear to the wedding. I'd bought a dress the week before only to try it on on Friday and discover that I'd need to magically grow breasts overnight to fit it - I ended up wearing it anyway with a vest, a high-waisted belt, a lot of safety pins, tall stiletto heels and my cherry earrings to distract from my dog's dinner of an outfit. I'm told it worked.

I was anxious about the day already. The friend who was to marry is the same friend who lost his brother a couple of months back, and the last time I had seen his family was the weekend that they brought Conor home to bury him. That Sunday afternoon I spent with them broke my heart, I have never seen such appalling, consuming grief. I spent most of the afternoon on their couch with my sister and their four grandkids, delighted with their easy affection, wide-eyed honesty and sticky fingered dexterity on the Nintendo DS. I was worried about seeing the family again, selfishly uncomfortable with their grief and feeling bizarrely guilty about my own. I had mourned Conor in my own small way here and I had lost my Crash Grandadicoot that same week - weddings make me cry anyway so how the fuck was I going to manage this one?

I managed it just dandy, taking my cue from everyone around me. The day went without a hitch (save for the obvious pun) and it was as a wedding should be - happy, celebratory, lán beocht agus croí. The bride looked beautiful and her husband (eek! he's married now!) spent the day looking like he couldn't believe his luck. His brother Conor was remembered as he will always be remembered in everything his family do and I learned that grief (whether your own or someone else's) is not something to be uncomfortable with or feel embarrassed about. That his family can still take the time to make me and everyone else who was there on Saturday feel special amazes me in a quiet, ordinary way. They're good people for me to take my cues from.

Study's Going Great, Thanks!

The kid next door is a creepy article. I was woken this morning by her screeching "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" in faux operatic style as she swung with what could only be described as a vengeance on her garden swing. She seems possessed of a violent energy, not youthful exuberance or anything like it but a barely contained malice - like that kid in the Exorcist right before her head spins and she pukes pea soup all over the shop. (I was going to include a picture but they were all too scary). Her treehouse conveniently overlooks our patio so an otherwise pleasant morning spent reading in the garden is ruined by the uneasy suspicion that there's an evil 9 year old lurking in the foliage above your head, reading your unhip science fiction novel study notes over your shoulder.

It's not off the ground she licks it. Her dad is so annoying that my siblings and I now have Ade-Alert, an alarm system* that triggers if he's lurking when one of us goes to leave the house, or if he's passing by and peering in the sitting room window. Which he does a lot. It took me a while to put my finger on who it was he reminds me of and then this morning as his rictus grin drifted past the window again it came to me - Ted, the robotic Bluebeard from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know - my pop culture references are impossibly cool.

It's been an sickeningly long bank holiday weekend; I've been on study leave from work since last Wednesday and am edging ever closer to panic and madness. One more hissed hellooooooo from the treehouse will tip me over and all they'll find of the child will be her shoes.

*When I say "system" I mean of course that one of us spots him and feigns panic, whispering "Ade-Alert" repeatedly until we've all ducked and run for cover. Because talking to him would result in a slow painful death, or a nasty rash at the very least. We're 27, 26 and 22.

Where Do I Sign?

My academic careen "career":

School's out, you say? Well fuck the real world for a game of soldiers. What kind of lessons can one learn in a university? I'll take three courses in nothing particularly useful, please (psychology - which I dropped like a hot snot, archaeology which I loved with a passion apart from the wet ditch with a spoon and a toothbrush lark, and modern Irish which turned out to be alarmingly useful).

Oh, those three years flew in! A masters? Why, I wasn't planning on getting an actual job anytime soon and it was very nice of you to ask, so why the hell not! [a year scurries by in the blink of an eye] What do you mean the thesis deadline has passed? My, time flies when you're in the bar having fun. Sure I may as well hang on here a bit, seeing as I'm enjoying myself. Six months more sound good to you? Lovely.

Fuck. Broke. Need a job. Am now overqualified in, well, Irish. Spelling still needs some work though, and grammar is a disgrace. Choices: pensionable state number or flaky college position. No contest. Free fees should I decide to pursue further study? Why not, it's not like I have a boyfriend to hang out with at weekends. A two year HDip in translation? Wonderful.

I'm sure there are bigger eejits out there, but fuck them, I'm the one who has 9 hours of grammar exams coming up [correction - 6 hours, 3 x 2. Good job it's grammar and not maths, eh?]. At least the end is in sight though. Or at least it was. On Friday morning I met with some interesting characters in another department of the venerable institution with which I am gainfully employed. They entertained me for a couple of hours and when I was leaving they jokingly suggested that I stay, or at the very least that I consider doing a PhD with them.

Hmm.

Picking Scabs

Other women (I'm told) daydream idly about meeting the man of their dreams and falling madly in love with him. The object of their affections is a shadowy figure, half imagined and eminently possible; being a man very much of the future. I, on the other hand, have an unhealthy tendency to find myself very much mired in the past. Mucked up to the oxters in coulda-woulda-shouldas, poring over every little thing I did or didn't do and generally assuming the blame for any and all of my failed romances (presuming that if it wasn't something I did or didn't do, then it must be something I am). I daydream about ex-lovers suddenly repenting and declaring their undying affection for me. As I've said, it's unhealthy.

I keep letters, emails, texts. I've maintained platonic relationships with some - or tried to - but what betrays my imagined feelings for them is the presence of their friendly messages in my various inboxes long after I've replied, when normally I would delete them. I don't reread them, that would make me feel worse. But there is comfort in knowing that they're there. Occasionally I will be tempted to follow one up, suss him out, revisit familiar territory, scratch at old wounds. It invariaby ends in disaster.

So today I decided upon a purge. Wiped the archives clean.

Midway through my deletathon I got a text from someone I haven't been in contact with for more than a year, someone I had had a brief affair with and (unusually for me) I decided that I didn't want to see him anymore. He was getting very involved very quickly and talking about making some pretty big decisions based on a three week casual affair and I just wasn't interested. I told him so in no uncertain terms; I was very nice about it, but firm. I balked at his suggestion that I forget about it and we go back to something casual ("if that's all you'll allow me, well it's better than nothing..."). When all I'd said seemed to be falling on deaf ears I broke all contact. And now an innocuous text a year later, to ask me how I am and to let me know he's in town. All I could think was seriously, fuck off, wouldya?

There is no surer sign that I should quit flogging my dead donkeys. I don't want to be anyone's seriously-fuck-off-wouldya.

One In Four

ONE in four people believe women who have been raped are partly to blame for the crime because of how they dressed, their sexual history or how much they had to drink. (link here)

I heard this on the radio last night and wondered this morning if my tired brain had made it up. I have very frequent and vivid nightmares; I wondered if the story was a fragment of last night's unpleasantness that had followed me into my Wednesday. My cursory reading of the paper this morning saw no mention of the poll, so I assumed that I'd made it up. Then I read Twenty's post.

The figures:

• 10% of people think the victim is entirely at fault if she has had a number of sexual partners.
• 37% think a woman who flirts extensively is at least complicit, if not completely in the wrong, if she is the victim of a sex crime.
• 33% think a woman is either partly or fully to blame if she wears revealing clothes.
• 38% believe a woman must share some of the blame if she walks through a deserted area.

Sam's comment over at Twenty's was one of the (very*) few considered efforts to respond to his understated post :

It is hard to know where to start with cretins like this. Attitudes like this bear some responsibility for some rape victims never reporting the crime done against them. They also betray a pretty pitiful view of men as lower order creatures who mustn’t be riled or stimulated in case they bite and wouldn’t that be your own fault too.

I have not been raped, but like many women I have had cause to be anxious on occasion (remember this bastard?). I didn't report him, I would not have known what to say. I would have been worried that my own actions that night would be called into question and that I would be made to feel worse for having made a fuss. Why didn't I ignore him when he first spoke to me? Why didn't I just get a taxi? What was I thinking going out drinking in the first place? I was wracked with guilt after that night, wondering if there was something about me that encouraged him, something I did, something I am.

I have had my share of lovers. I am an incorrigible flirt, albeit a clumsy one. I wear skirts to show off my legs. I like to walk home.

One in four think I'm asking for it?

I would imagine that some of these people are voicing their opinions on the subject of "date rape"** though I have nothing to say that the questionnaire was phrased in such a way as to imply date rape as opposed to gang rape, marital rape, prison rape, oral rape, anal rape or any other violation. I imagine this to be the case in a vain effort to get my head around the survey's conclusions, because I cannot believe that people can be so sanctimonious, so judgemental, so unforgiving in the face of something so awful. I'm disgusted at myself for wondering this at all, because it means that subconsciously I'm considering date rape as something that could be invited.

*The other cunts would put you off commenting on what is a very readable blog - like a load of smelly and ignorant arseholes would deter you from your favourite pub.

**"Date rape" is a term I very much take issue with. Blakkat has written an articulate piece on the subject, it's a long post but worth a read.

Rosie's Tired Brain Does A Disco Dance

I was tipping along the Grand Canal on my way to work this morning when I got an overwhelming urge to dance across the flagstones, like Michael Jackson in the Billie Jean video. But I am rhythmically dyslexic and the song I was listening to was Thom Yorke's Harrowdown Hill, so I think I must be going mad.