Ill. Ill and babysitting. Misha is currently "playing karate", thankfully with a pillow and not with me, while blasting an old CD he found called HUGE HITS 2003, which contains some delightful songs I'd completely forgotten about (What's Your Flava by Craig David, The Cheeky Girls, Holly Valance's pop career etc.). I'm having a pointless and confusing argument with Dom about...I don't even know what. On bloody Facebook. And drinking tea with raspberries and lemons and honey. It is disGUSTing. I'm like the world's worst sick person - other people just get on with it, drink their tea and take their antibiotics and slob around happily, but I turn into this crazy, miserable moron. Who yells at her brother when he tries to get her to dance to Liberty X.
The last time I was ill (phantom feverishness during exams doesn't count) was during Arvon actually, when I had bronchitis and kept furtively taking painkillers and steaming my face three times a day. And worrying that everyone there thought I was weird for doing so. I remember at one point Paul Farley said, "Why is she ALWAYS under that towel??" Also the 2-year-old daughter of the centre directors was terrified of me because she thought I was a ghost, and I had to poke my head out from under the towel to reassure her that no, I wasn't a ghost, just a silly girl who goes slightly manic when ill.
Anyway, currently I'm sort of trying to decide which essay to send to Pembroke - the pretty good Ovid one from last year or the godawful Virgil one from last week? And reading Ovid's Art Of Love again. I LOVE him - he's such an arrogant, hilarious, stingy ("Guys, try to AVOID giving girls presents, there's no point...Girls, DON'T ask poets for presents, you know we're all poor anyway..."), flirtatious bastard. Is it wrong to have a crush on someone who a) has been dead for just under two thousand years and b) is a complete wanker?
Friday 26 October 2007
Wednesday 24 October 2007
The Girl With All The Hairy Poems
My lasting memories of doing live radio:
not being able to find the building, walking up and down Marylebone High Street in despair and having to have a cup of tea in a cafe called Marco Polo to calm down;
realising the building was, er, right next door to Marco Polo;
being offered about ten million glasses of water once inside;
meeting Amy Blakemore again, being incredibly nervous together but both grateful to have someone to be nervous with;
Mr Gee, Russell Brand's resident poet on his Radio 2 show (I didn't know Russell Brand had a resident poet...) giving us handy tips such as, "Don't EVER pause. Even if you can't think of anything to say just keep talking and think of something to say WHILE YOU'RE SPEAKING" which sounded impossible;
Mr Gee also being annoyingly snide about FYP: "So this FOYLES thing, what was the prize? Book tokens, was it?";
once inside the recording room place, wearing silly headphones and Tessa Dunlop running around with apparently no idea what was going on;
TD's first question, to me: "Would you vote for a politician with GREY hair or BROWN hair?" and me thinking, "What??" and continuing to think, "What??" while saying something stupid which my brain has happily forgotten;
having to answer questions about what it's like to be a teenager and universities and parents and boyfriends and that kind of thing, which was kind of tedious but TD was being all chatty and funny and hyper so it didn't seem so bad;
Amy reading out her (fantastic) poems;
reading Labyrinths and then being asked to read it again because I hadn't explained it before I read it, so they wanted to hear it twice to be able to understand it (that was a bit weird); realising halfway through reading Strawberry Blonde that both my poems were about hair - complete accident; thinking that if anyone remembered me from this it would be as Hair Poem Girl or The Girl With All The Hairy Poems or something similar;
doing my usual thing of raving about Foyle/Arvon/the others and them looking slightly terrified at my enthusiasm;
afterwards everyone running around being all, "Yes yes that was fantastic you MUST contact us if you ever need anything look here's my email write to me anytime you need anything darling" - bollocks, obviously - and Tessa Dunlop as I was walking out the door saying, "And look darling, don't worry if you don't get into Cambridge, Oxford was the worst three years of my life, those places compLETEly fuck you up, you know - WRITE to me! Cheerio!" which I took as an interesting piece of advice. (Incidentally, I have an offer from Manchester - ABB. Which is doable.);
looking for Dad, who was supposed to be giving me a lift home, outside and finding him with a massive red weeping eye and screaming, "Oh my God, have you been mugged???" - he just had conjunctivitis. Which I now have.
not being able to find the building, walking up and down Marylebone High Street in despair and having to have a cup of tea in a cafe called Marco Polo to calm down;
realising the building was, er, right next door to Marco Polo;
being offered about ten million glasses of water once inside;
meeting Amy Blakemore again, being incredibly nervous together but both grateful to have someone to be nervous with;
Mr Gee, Russell Brand's resident poet on his Radio 2 show (I didn't know Russell Brand had a resident poet...) giving us handy tips such as, "Don't EVER pause. Even if you can't think of anything to say just keep talking and think of something to say WHILE YOU'RE SPEAKING" which sounded impossible;
Mr Gee also being annoyingly snide about FYP: "So this FOYLES thing, what was the prize? Book tokens, was it?";
once inside the recording room place, wearing silly headphones and Tessa Dunlop running around with apparently no idea what was going on;
TD's first question, to me: "Would you vote for a politician with GREY hair or BROWN hair?" and me thinking, "What??" and continuing to think, "What??" while saying something stupid which my brain has happily forgotten;
having to answer questions about what it's like to be a teenager and universities and parents and boyfriends and that kind of thing, which was kind of tedious but TD was being all chatty and funny and hyper so it didn't seem so bad;
Amy reading out her (fantastic) poems;
reading Labyrinths and then being asked to read it again because I hadn't explained it before I read it, so they wanted to hear it twice to be able to understand it (that was a bit weird); realising halfway through reading Strawberry Blonde that both my poems were about hair - complete accident; thinking that if anyone remembered me from this it would be as Hair Poem Girl or The Girl With All The Hairy Poems or something similar;
doing my usual thing of raving about Foyle/Arvon/the others and them looking slightly terrified at my enthusiasm;
afterwards everyone running around being all, "Yes yes that was fantastic you MUST contact us if you ever need anything look here's my email write to me anytime you need anything darling" - bollocks, obviously - and Tessa Dunlop as I was walking out the door saying, "And look darling, don't worry if you don't get into Cambridge, Oxford was the worst three years of my life, those places compLETEly fuck you up, you know - WRITE to me! Cheerio!" which I took as an interesting piece of advice. (Incidentally, I have an offer from Manchester - ABB. Which is doable.);
looking for Dad, who was supposed to be giving me a lift home, outside and finding him with a massive red weeping eye and screaming, "Oh my God, have you been mugged???" - he just had conjunctivitis. Which I now have.
Monday 15 October 2007
If you approach me at a bus stop...
Half-term holiday drifting by in a jumble of guacamole, shoes and unfinished books. Guacamole might just be one of my favourite words ever, although Sunday's enchiladas were quite literally (well, not literally) death-by-green-stuff, so I've had enough of it for a while. I've also spent too much time in shoe shops recently, only to buy shoes for school. No one really knows this, but I have kind of a dormant shoe fetish that tends to be unleashed the minute I walk into a shoe shop; the downside is that because my feet are so insane I can't wear about 2/3 of women's shoes. This can be quite distressing when half of me is whizzing around Office inwardly squealing "OMG PURPLE SHOES!!" and the other (sensible, boring) half is remembering that I'd rather be able to walk. Sigh.
Anyway, trivia, trivia. So one half-term came and went, my grades were OK: A1s in Latin, A2s in English (understandable, English tends to be my sleep-time these days), an A2 in History from BRETT and a B3 in History from Glavshit. Also UCAS is done. I never want to go through that again. (My choices in the end, by the way, were Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester. Let's see what happens.)
And I also have about ten books to read (which makes today's planned trip to the Poetry Library a bit nonsensical). Because there are only two people in my Latin class, when Hannah's ill I basically have "Loner Latin". It makes Mr L's lessons a bit rubbish because he goes all awkward, gives me some work and then calls off the lesson and skedaddles, but Chadders is great: we either do a HUGE amount of work, which being a complete nerd I really like, or we just talk about random stuff. On Friday we talked about random stuff, specifically linguistics, which I wanted to know more about and he turned out to be an expert on. It was really interesting, but then fast forward to the end of the lesson and suddenly I'm being given photocopied notes that he took in his postgrad years and a book called Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton, AS WELL AS some history textbooks I asked for earlier. I had to get a lift home, otherwise I would definitely have looked like a (muggable) idiot staggering through Catford.
So all those books are now in a big book tower next to my desk. They make me feel all intellectual - well, they would if I was actually reading them. The Literary Theory book is actually really good though - better than Chadders' notes, which are so illegible that I can only make out random phrases here and there - "the prison-house of language" "ILLNESS IS THE FRACTURE OF MYTH" etc. - but the book is really well-written and actually quite funny. Well, it has this sentence in it -
"If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur 'Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary."
I mean, a) I just love that that would be his initial reaction, and b) doesn't it give you the urge to approach someone at the bus stop and murmur that?
Anyway, off to the Poetry Library now to waste time I don't have getting poetry books I don't need. It's all good. On Friday, by the way, I'm on BBC London at 11.15pm with Amy Blakemore, talking about...er, poetry shizz, I suppose. Foyle, Arvon, that stupid question "What poets do you like?" which I can never answer properly. I don't really know, but hopefully this will be easier than the BBC Russian thing because at least here I can actually speak English, so there won't be any chance of having to stop and whisper, "Errrr...how do you say 'sestina' again?"
Anyway, trivia, trivia. So one half-term came and went, my grades were OK: A1s in Latin, A2s in English (understandable, English tends to be my sleep-time these days), an A2 in History from BRETT and a B3 in History from Glavshit. Also UCAS is done. I never want to go through that again. (My choices in the end, by the way, were Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester. Let's see what happens.)
And I also have about ten books to read (which makes today's planned trip to the Poetry Library a bit nonsensical). Because there are only two people in my Latin class, when Hannah's ill I basically have "Loner Latin". It makes Mr L's lessons a bit rubbish because he goes all awkward, gives me some work and then calls off the lesson and skedaddles, but Chadders is great: we either do a HUGE amount of work, which being a complete nerd I really like, or we just talk about random stuff. On Friday we talked about random stuff, specifically linguistics, which I wanted to know more about and he turned out to be an expert on. It was really interesting, but then fast forward to the end of the lesson and suddenly I'm being given photocopied notes that he took in his postgrad years and a book called Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton, AS WELL AS some history textbooks I asked for earlier. I had to get a lift home, otherwise I would definitely have looked like a (muggable) idiot staggering through Catford.
So all those books are now in a big book tower next to my desk. They make me feel all intellectual - well, they would if I was actually reading them. The Literary Theory book is actually really good though - better than Chadders' notes, which are so illegible that I can only make out random phrases here and there - "the prison-house of language" "ILLNESS IS THE FRACTURE OF MYTH" etc. - but the book is really well-written and actually quite funny. Well, it has this sentence in it -
"If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur 'Thou still unravished bride of quietness,' then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary."
I mean, a) I just love that that would be his initial reaction, and b) doesn't it give you the urge to approach someone at the bus stop and murmur that?
Anyway, off to the Poetry Library now to waste time I don't have getting poetry books I don't need. It's all good. On Friday, by the way, I'm on BBC London at 11.15pm with Amy Blakemore, talking about...er, poetry shizz, I suppose. Foyle, Arvon, that stupid question "What poets do you like?" which I can never answer properly. I don't really know, but hopefully this will be easier than the BBC Russian thing because at least here I can actually speak English, so there won't be any chance of having to stop and whisper, "Errrr...how do you say 'sestina' again?"
Sunday 7 October 2007
Some thoughts for Sunday afternoon.
It is possible to write an entire English coursework in five hours as long as you are prepared to accept that it will be shit.
*
Excess cheese sandwich consumption is probably the reason why I keep having nightmares about being broken into little pieces.
*
When a Brazilian guy chats you up on the bus to Waterloo the natural reaction is to be flattered. The natural reaction is not to become confused and scared and weird and spend the rest of the day quietly hating yourself.
*
If I was a Russian Orthodox Christian in 1666, I like to think I would be one of those who defied Nikon's reforms, became an Old Believer and moved to the Urals. In reality though I'd probably just accept that now everyone had to make the sign of the cross with three fingers, not two, because at the end of the day does it really matter that much?
*
The above explains why I'm not religious.
*
Girls who totter about everywhere in stupidly high heels that SHOULD kill their feet and leave them crippled with achilles tendonitis and yet are somehow fine? I hate them.
*
When I'm upset I generally can't stand talking to people, in fact all I can do then is mope around and make lists and write bad poems and sit there going all melancholy over beans on toast and see how long I can go without saying anything. Basically I like to just avoid people.
*
This makes me a crap girlfriend.
*
Injury is dull.
*
The BBC show is on Tuesday and yet - whisper it! - I don't actually know anything about Russian poetry.
*
Rest? Please? Soon?
*
Excess cheese sandwich consumption is probably the reason why I keep having nightmares about being broken into little pieces.
*
When a Brazilian guy chats you up on the bus to Waterloo the natural reaction is to be flattered. The natural reaction is not to become confused and scared and weird and spend the rest of the day quietly hating yourself.
*
If I was a Russian Orthodox Christian in 1666, I like to think I would be one of those who defied Nikon's reforms, became an Old Believer and moved to the Urals. In reality though I'd probably just accept that now everyone had to make the sign of the cross with three fingers, not two, because at the end of the day does it really matter that much?
*
The above explains why I'm not religious.
*
Girls who totter about everywhere in stupidly high heels that SHOULD kill their feet and leave them crippled with achilles tendonitis and yet are somehow fine? I hate them.
*
When I'm upset I generally can't stand talking to people, in fact all I can do then is mope around and make lists and write bad poems and sit there going all melancholy over beans on toast and see how long I can go without saying anything. Basically I like to just avoid people.
*
This makes me a crap girlfriend.
*
Injury is dull.
*
The BBC show is on Tuesday and yet - whisper it! - I don't actually know anything about Russian poetry.
*
Rest? Please? Soon?
Friday 5 October 2007
Cutting onions into moons
Having someone else read your poem out loud is very surreal. I still don't know the name of the guy who did it last night, but I liked the way they did it - even though at the time it was EXCRUCIATINGLY embarrassing and I was tugging at my hair so hard it almost fell out. Anyway, he read it well, although - and I suppose this is natural - it sounded different in my head. He read it quite slowly, for a start, and in my head it was always meant to be read really really really fast, like some frenetic advert. This isn't me complaining: it's just different interpretations or something, I don't know.
Yesterday also proved that I'm not very good at the whole canapes-and-mingling thing. My tactic is basically: Drink. Eat. Babble. ("Tiny banoffee pies you probably wouldn't touch in any other context? Why thank you, I'll have SIX!") So at one point Daljit Nagra asked me which poets I liked and all I could think to say was "ERRRRRRRRRRRR I really like YOU, actually!" Cringe, cringe, cringe. And then when I tried to plug Pomegranate to Helen Mort, I spent ages circling her trying to work up the courage and then finally just went, "Are you Helen Mort????" ("Yes.") "Have you heard of Pomegranate? No? Er (brain turns into banoffee pie) it's like...for YOUNG POETS...and like...anyone can submit and like...will you? I mean would you? I mean are you interested? Erm. Have a flyer!" Only we'd run out of flyers, so what I actually gave her was a piece of paper with www.pomegranate.me.uk written on it in Adham's gel pen. And what I didn't realise was that she was standing with another girl who was also a poet, and I didn't offer her a flyer, so basically I insulted her.
Awesome PR, Annie, just awesome. (Charly gave the other girl - Bridget Collins - a flyer later, and we talked and she was really nice. So that's OK, but also aaarggh.)
There was also the podcast, which had me going yada-yada-yada at the speed of light due to sheer nerves, and then reading out my poem badly. But it was really good to see all the other winners and they all seemed like pretty fantastic people, and their poems are brilliant - it took an hour to get home and I spent the whole time buried in the anthology (well, the stapled-together sheets of winning poems). Also - free books! Tobias Hill's Nocturne In Chrome & Sunset Yellow, which I was actually planning to get, so score - it's got this amazing sequence called A Year In London in it. And a selection of Shakespeare's verse selected by Ted Hughes, and Two Barks by Julie O'Callaghan which to be honest I'm a bit confused by - they're basically children's poems? Not that I'm against children's poetry, but...well, anyway.
All in all, an interesting evening.
It made today's extravaganza of UCAS finalising, English coursework, Tsar Nicolas II, cold rice salad and helping the classics department set up for Open Day incredibly dull and depressing, not to mention the impending weekend of - oh, let's see - work, work, work, work, work, work...
Yesterday also proved that I'm not very good at the whole canapes-and-mingling thing. My tactic is basically: Drink. Eat. Babble. ("Tiny banoffee pies you probably wouldn't touch in any other context? Why thank you, I'll have SIX!") So at one point Daljit Nagra asked me which poets I liked and all I could think to say was "ERRRRRRRRRRRR I really like YOU, actually!" Cringe, cringe, cringe. And then when I tried to plug Pomegranate to Helen Mort, I spent ages circling her trying to work up the courage and then finally just went, "Are you Helen Mort????" ("Yes.") "Have you heard of Pomegranate? No? Er (brain turns into banoffee pie) it's like...for YOUNG POETS...and like...anyone can submit and like...will you? I mean would you? I mean are you interested? Erm. Have a flyer!" Only we'd run out of flyers, so what I actually gave her was a piece of paper with www.pomegranate.me.uk written on it in Adham's gel pen. And what I didn't realise was that she was standing with another girl who was also a poet, and I didn't offer her a flyer, so basically I insulted her.
Awesome PR, Annie, just awesome. (Charly gave the other girl - Bridget Collins - a flyer later, and we talked and she was really nice. So that's OK, but also aaarggh.)
There was also the podcast, which had me going yada-yada-yada at the speed of light due to sheer nerves, and then reading out my poem badly. But it was really good to see all the other winners and they all seemed like pretty fantastic people, and their poems are brilliant - it took an hour to get home and I spent the whole time buried in the anthology (well, the stapled-together sheets of winning poems). Also - free books! Tobias Hill's Nocturne In Chrome & Sunset Yellow, which I was actually planning to get, so score - it's got this amazing sequence called A Year In London in it. And a selection of Shakespeare's verse selected by Ted Hughes, and Two Barks by Julie O'Callaghan which to be honest I'm a bit confused by - they're basically children's poems? Not that I'm against children's poetry, but...well, anyway.
All in all, an interesting evening.
It made today's extravaganza of UCAS finalising, English coursework, Tsar Nicolas II, cold rice salad and helping the classics department set up for Open Day incredibly dull and depressing, not to mention the impending weekend of - oh, let's see - work, work, work, work, work, work...
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