It is about time I wrote a new post, isn’t it?

Is it just me, or does time move through you in the city?  In the country, each day seems to be filled with an unlimited number of hours in which to do whatever you please.  Digging spuds, for example, or driving tractors.  I never really engaged in either of these activities, you understand, but thousands did.  My days were far more likely to be filled with blank paper, leaking pens, and episodes of Countdown.  I don’t think any of these things have really done me any harm, as I am now an expert at the Countdown Conundrum.  However, when I am in Belfast, I have little time for Countdown or blank sheets of paper.  My days are much more likely to be filled with social engagements, long conversations over junk food, or procrastination in its most basic form: sleeping.

This is the first time I’ve ever spent the weekend in Belfast.  I have been on my own for approximately one hour now, and my room is unnaturally tidy.  My calender of forgotten English is, for a change, displaying today’s date, although its “word of the day” is confusing me slightly, as it is clearly not one word, but two.  “Firm Asleep”, it announces.  “Fast asleep is never used.  Vale of Gloucestershire.”  Is it just me, or does that make impossibly little sense?  Not only does it not explain the phrase at all, but it also purports to be forgotten English, when it most certainly is not.  Or perhaps language in Ballymena is just underdeveloped.  Now, there’s a scary thought.  Perhaps that’s why I liked middle English so much.

I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, and I hope Ian and Nic will forgive me, but tomorrow evening, I am going to go to Bangor.  What’s more, I am doing to stay there until the next day.  Now, I know I’ve always been an enthusiastic member of the rest of the world’s petition against North Down in general, but the fact is that, since I’ve come to Uni, a startling majority of my friends seem to be from there.  I’m even starting to speak like them, so I am.  This is really a pity, as I do quite value my glottal stop; but, alas.  I am an English student, and must therefore take on the mantle of a crazy language prescriptivist.  So, from now on, I will be asking for “a boTTle of waTer”, rather than “a bo-il a’ wa-er”.  This should, at least, prevent Scott from correcting every second word I say.

This blog post is really quite random, being comprised entirely of whatever words are in my head at a given moment, without much of a subject or even a connecting theme.  Sorry about that, Mr W.  I know it’s not the kind of flowing prose you would expect from someone who trained at your own hand.  But NikNak, at least, should enjoy reading it, and Joanne will probably fall off her chair laughing at the fact that I’ve been bold enough to mention a teacher in my blog.  Of course, if things had gone to plan, she would be here right now and I wouldn’t be writing nonsense at all.  But things, as usual, didn’t go to plan, and now she is at home, typing up codes for an audit at her mother’s workplace.  Sigh.  At least I’ll see her tomorrow.  Perhaps I could just spend tonight doing my essay and being ahead of schedule  – but it wouldn’t be me, and it’s unlikely to happen.  No, I think I’ll be more likely to read a crappy novel and pass out from boredom.  Which, if you’ve got to this stage of this blog entry, you are probably about to do anyway.

Fin.

Because I’m Too Tired To Write A Real Post…

I don’t think I thought about university life enough before it actually began for me.  Some of the things I have learned so far have been quite shocking.  Here’s the shortlist, for your enjoyment.

1) The washing machines cost £1.60 to use, but don’t take 10p coins.  How ridiculous is that?

2) My sense of humour is not shared by, erm, anyone.

3) They say people aren’t allowed to sleep on your bedroom floor, but they don’t really mean it.

4) It does, in fact, take more than one pot to cook a meal.

5) It’s actually relatively easy to go to bed at 3am and get up for 9am…but, why bother, when you could just stay awake all night?

6) What Mr B said all those months ago was true.  Making friends at uni is easy. 

7) Everyone now thinks I’m an arrogant student, no matter how many times I tell them that I know as little now as I did a month ago.  I think I’ll just start playing to this stereotype, you know.

Fresher’s week is totally pointless…and the word “freshers” is really annoying.  When somebody asks me, “Are you a fresher?”, I make a voodoo doll with their face on it, and stick pins in its eyes.

9) Be careful when crossing the road in Belfast.  It’s not like being in the country, you know.

10) City lights make it difficult to sleep.  I need black-out curtains.

And so, it starts all over again…

Billybrid is back, baby!!

1984

‘At the time when it happens,’ she had said, ‘you do mean it.’ He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over to the –

Something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came into it. And then — perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound — a voice was singing:

‘Under the spreading chestnut tree

I sold you and you sold me –’

The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.

Joel (amos ob-la-dee ob-la-daa) Does A Guest Post

Hello. I’m Joel, fictional character created by Brid to live in her stories on this blog (often referred to as Joel Amos Obadiah, or, my preferred moniker, Joel Almost Obi-Wan). I’m doing a guest article. You may notice the lack of flowing prose, vivid metaphors, crystal-clear imagery and overly obsessive grammar nit-picking you would usually expect from this blog, but I’m sure we’ll get on just fine.

In general, I haven’t got much to say, and what I do have to say is of little consequence and little bearing on reality. Which, you could say, would mark me out as a poor blog-writer. And, I say in return, you’re probably right. But I’m all up for new things, unless the new thing in question is a nudist colony, or a lifetime’s kazoo tuition, or something silly like that. And so, in the name of ‘new things’, I took Brid’s password and began my First Ever Blog Post. If it works out, who knows, I might start one of my own. If it doesn’t, I’ll just keep vandalising Brid’s. After all, her password is pretty guessable.

Guess it.

Go on…

 

Guess.

I’ll give you a clue.

 It almost rhymes with ‘condensed vegetable oil’ and it’s not my name.

 

Anyway, I suppose it’s about time I started the blog proper, so here goes.

 

Parakeets. Who the hell do they think they are? I mean, I don’t own one or anything, but my granny does, and I tell you, they are a pretty low form of life. You might have heard of the recent floods in Ballymena, and my granny’s house was badly hit. And her parakeet, which had done nothing but fray my granny’s aging nerves, and anyone who came within twenty metres of the house, with it’s incessant noise and flinging birdseed through the bars of its cage, sat there and expected someone to rescue it as the floodwater rose perilously close. I mean it has wings. The thing has wings, and it knows how to unhook the door of its cage. Nevertheless, someone did the deed, and prolonged its wretched life by placing it on a floating raft and pushing it out of the house. And how did it repay this gracious gift? Birdseed. 

The parakeet, however, is just one of the many creatures whose existence on earth is at best unwanted. The wasp, the mosquito, the pigeon. All three creatures seem deeply, deeply angry about something, and take it out on us poor humans with venomous stings, deadly malarial diseases, and projectile faeces. And what reason do they have to be so angry? I mean, they are blessed with the power of flight. They could soar above us lowly ground-based hominids, but instead they take their fight to us and crap on our heads and get stuck in our beer cans.

 

That’s what I think about them.

 

So anyway, I think I’m getting the hang of this blogging venture. Think of something that makes you angry, then write about it on an obscure little section of the web for the Whole Wide World (and Mr Weir) to read.

I can do that. 

Look.

Here I go again.

Nightmares. What’s the deal, eh? They aren’t very nice, and surely shouldn’t happen, logically. Whether you believe your body is designed by God, evolved, or sneezed out of a celestial tortoise, surely nightmares go against all of the respective principles of those beliefs. Your mind shouldn’t actively try to scare you. Maybe they only happen if you spend too much time thinking, or blogging late at night. Hmm.

Theologically speaking, and I’m going to get dark here for a second, maybe Hell is the culmination of all your nightmares. Nasty. Still, I suppose for me it wouldn’t seem so bad, from another person’s point of view. I mean it would just involve Satan relieving me of my clothes and directing me to a room of nude kazoo players.

 

fin.

 

“The kazoo is every bit as dignified as the person playing it”  - Barbara Stewart

Post-It Protest.

Head Girl Hannah, Joel Amos Obadiah and Joanne just got back from a mission trip to Zambia.  Before he left, Joel Amos Obadiah instructed me to mention him in a blog entry while he was gone.  I didn’t do it, but if I know him, he’s forgotten that he ever said that.  Anyway, I’ve done it now – he, oddly enough, is a key character in the story I’m about to tell.

Before The Whole World Except For Billy (who was too stupid to apply for the trip) set off to Zambia, the team organised a pub quiz to raise funds.  Joel asked me to be on his team, and I agreed, even though I knew he would insist on calling the team “Janet”, a name which has never, in my experience, brought us success.

I arrived at the Bowling Club on the evening of the quiz, having digested the whole of “The Book of General Ignorance” that afternoon.  Joel, of course, was nowhere to be seen, but I approached Joanne, and she said that I could sit with her family until such time Joel should arrive.  When he hadn’t appeared by the end of the first round, I gave my lookout up as a lost cause.  Joanne’s family and friends made an awesome team, anyway.  If I hadn’t joined them, they would probably have won. 

We were discussing team tactics before the commencement of the last round, when a slight commotion towards the front of the hall caused me to look up.  There was Joel, looking harassed, wearing a heavy outdoors coat.  I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself, so I waited until the quiz was finished before I confronted him.

“Where on earth have you been!?” I shouted. I almost added “I’ve been worried sick!”, but dismissed that comment on the grounds that a) it wasn’t true and b) I didn’t want to sound like my mother.  I was actually quite keen to hear his excuse, because I was sure it’d be hilarious.

“I was in Belfast,” he started.  I said “huh”, and he continued.  “I missed the bus home.  I was up there because…well, because I was protesting against George Bush!  He’s a maniac, you know.  I definitely think he got the message.  I made a banner – look…” and with that, he pulled the “banner” out of his pocket.  For a second, I thought he was being serious.  Then I remembered who I was talking to.  What he was holding in his hand was a yellow post-it note.  It was hard enough for me to see that without my glasses, nevermind to read what was written on it. 

“The war on terror wasn’t very nice,” I read aloud.  Joel nodded proudly  and turned the Post-It over.  On the back were the words “Please don’t do another one”.

You know, sometimes I think the people in my life sit right on the line between “Genius” and “Insane”.  I’m not quite sure which this was, but it certainly made me laugh.  The memory of it, even now, almost has me in stitches.  I really hope George Bush read that Post-It note.

I’m Sorry, Hails, But Coffee Does Not Help.

Hails is my favourite blogger.  As well as being the most talented writer I know, she’s also the funniest person I have ever met.  Back in the good old days, when she lived in NI, she and I would occasionally go on adventures together, which usually ended up with one or both of us laughing so hard that we couldn’t breathe.  However, despite being Practically Perfect In Every Other Way, Hails suffers from a serious error in judgement.  She truly, sincerely, and most irrationally, believes that Coffee Helps.  My experience has shown me that the exact opposite is true.

You know how, when you know you’ve got an exam the following morning, you just can’t sleep?  Such was the case the night before my RE exam.  This is why, at 7am the next morning, I was dozing over my breakfast at the kitchen table.  I needed a cup of tea – or, perhaps, several gallons of the stuff.  I almost cried when I opened the tea caddy and found it empty.  There was only one thing to do in a situation like this: pray.  So, I got down on my knees, bowed my head, and prayed, “Dear God.  I know you think it’s funny to hide the tea from me, but I really, really need it back.  I’ve got my RE exam today, and I’m about to fall asleep.  When I get up, I know you’ll have put the tea back into the caddy.  Otherwise, I am going to cry.  Thanking you, Lord, for your kind attention to this matter.”

Of course, when I looked in the tea caddy again, it was empty.  I bravely held back the tears.  Perhaps, I thought, if I threw myself in front of a car, I’d get my predicted grades.  I pushed the thought from my mind, when I realised that I probably wouldn’t be out of hospital in time to do my Psychology exams, and I really needed to beat my predicted grades in that (Richard, I hope you’re reading and feeling guilty).  A glint of silver caught my eye: the coffee caddy.  Why hadn’t I thought of this before?  It was brilliant.  I chucked some of the dark brown power into a mug and poured boiling water on top.  The putrid smell of instant coffee filled the room.  I almost passed out.

After a quick stir, the water had turned a murky brown colour.  I could hardly bring myself to contemplate that I was, very soon, going to drink this concoction.  Distracted, I poured about half a pint of milk into the cup, making it flow over onto the granite work surface.  Argh.  The liquid was now the exact colour of a shirt that had been washed through too many times – a disgusting, depressing grey.  Unable to delay for any longer, I held my nose and swallowed the coffee in one, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth in the process.  I waited for the buzz.  A minute passed, then two.  Nothing happened.  I think I actually fell asleep while standing up.  When I opened my eyes, ten minutes had passed, and I still felt as groggy as when I had woken up.  A sneaking suspicion began to work its way into my mind.  It couldn’t be true, though.  The fates would not be so cruel.  The taste of coffee was still strong in my mouth, a reminder of my latest sacrifice for the sake of my education.  Unable to bear the thought of being hoodwinked in such a way, I rifled through the cupboard and found the offending coffee jar.  At once, my worst fears were confirmed.

The label on the jar read : Nescafé Gold Blend: Decaf.

My life is a farce.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Having been absent for so long, I feel it’s worth going back a few months to tell you about some of the hilarious goings-on at good old Slemish.

I suppose it was quite some time ago that Head Girl Hannah and I arrived in the sixth-form centre to find that the dividing wall was gone.  Staring at the space where it had once been, I felt a range of emotions.  On one hand, this was a glorious, glorious day – possibly equal to when the Berlin wall came down.  On the other, the room was now freezing.  Head Girl Hannah raised an eyebrow.

“What do you think this is?” She asked.  I thought about it for a second before answering.

“Well, it looks like the invisible barrier onto platform nine and three-quarters.” I said, blushing slightly.

“You,” She replied, “are a ridiculous individual.  How on earth can anything look like something that’s invisible?  C’mon, let’s go.  Assembly’s about to start.”

“Just a second,” I begged. “C’mon…I want to try it out!”  And before she could say another word, I had grabbed my invisible trolley and charged through the barrier.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite as smooth or as funny as I had hoped it would be.  Being eternally clumsy, I tripped over my own foot, and landed, headfirst, onto platform nine and three-quarters.

For a second, I really could see a red steam train.  I could hear hooting owls and the chatter of hundreds of students.  It was difficult to see, because the train was creating so much steam, but I could have sworn I saw somebody wearing black robes and carrying a broomstick.  Then my head started to pound, and I realised that the chattering I could hear was Head Girl Hannah giggling, and the steam I thought I saw was dust rising up from the carpet.  The workmen, apparently, were not handy with a Hoover.

Of course, the whole school knows about this event, thanks to some gormless lower-sixths who watched the whole thing with mildly amused expressions on their faces.  NikNak, in particular, is very fond of grabbing me when I least expect it and throwing me through the barrier, yelling, “Best to take it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous, dear!”, in a passable impression of Mrs Weasley’s voice.  You might not be too surprised to know that I have stopped imagining steam trains and Hogwarts students in our sixth-form centre.

Tales of Brave Ulysses

Gemma and I were bored.  Our psychology exam had ended an hour previously, but there was still another hour to go before we could get the bus home.  That’s why we were sitting in the upstairs foodcourt in the Tower Centre, counting the number of orange stripy hoodies that passed below.  We’d already exhausted our primary source of entertainment (going through our psychology textbooks to find out how badly we’d failed), and were now craving something slightly naughty to do, since our exams were over and we were finally free of the burden of study (well, I was.  I very much doubt that Gemma’s ever felt “the burden of study”).  It was with half a mind of finding something bizarre to read that I suggested we go to the library. 

On the way there, though, we started talking about culture.  Gemma, being Greek, obviously feels like she is slightly more hard-done by than me in this respect, since I only have one God, and she’s expected to remember the names of about six dozen.  “Make up a song,” I suggested. “Then you might remember them.”  She looked at me beseechingly.  For goodness’ sake.  “Okay,” I said. “Fine.  I’ll make it up.  Just don’t forget where to send the royalty cheque.”

When we finally got to the library, I approached the woman at the service desk.  She looked rather like she was attempting to morph into a large monarch butterfly; her hair was blond until just below her ears, and bright red to its frizzy ends.  A look of extreme concentration was etched onto her bony face.  When she saw me approaching, she started to scrabble around the desk in quite a frantic manner, muttering “Glasses…glasses…glasses…”, seemingly unaware of the fact that the multi-coloured spectacles were dangling from a golden chain around her neck.   I cleared my throat.

“One second, love.” she said. 

“Your glasses are here.” I pointed out.  “They’re around your neck.” 

“Oh! Of course, dear.  How silly of me.  Now, how can I help you?”

I was a little put off by being addressed as “love” and “dear” by a woman who had clearly evolved from some kind of moth, but I spoke to her politely enough. 

“Errmm…I need a copy of the Iliad, for a project I’m…”  I trailed off, for she was staring at me blankly.

“‘Illiad’, did you say?  Can you spell that for me?”  I spelled the word I-L-I-A-D about four bloody times before she typed it into the computer properly.

“What exactly is this Iliad thing?” she asked, when the computer returned no results.

“An epic poem,” I explained.  “It’s…y’know…ancient, and stuff…”

A great snort of laughter suddenly sounded from behind the bookcase Gemma had been exploring only seconds before.  The Woman looked at me with some concern, apparently under the impression that I had made the noise.

“A poem?  I thought you said it was a book?”

Now, I usually have a lot of patience for people who would rather keep the world of literature at a distance.  I really do.  I may find it enjoyable, but some people are just better at knitting, and other such activities.  But this, I told myself, was really taking the biscuit.  I mean, she was a librarian, for pity’s sake.  If she’d been in a lute band, I mightn’t have expected her to have known about the longest-surviving and most influential piece of literature of all time, but this was supposed to be her forté.  Surely anyone who wanted to spend all day, every day working with books, would at least trouble themselves to learn a little bit about them?

“It is,” I said, through clenched teeth. “It’s just a really long poem.”

“I see,” she said, looking at me as if I had just said something very, very stupid. “And who wrote this…this…’really long poem’?”

“Homer.” Surely, surely she’d understand now.

“Homer?  Right…” She typed the name into the computer.  “And what’s Homer’s first name?”

I actually grabbed a fistful of my own hair at this point.  I could hear Gemma giggling manically from behind the bookcase.  I wanted to tell her that this was not funny.  Either the woman was being deliberately infuriating, or she really had no idea who Homer was.  Homer.

The computer beeped.

“Is that the Iliad -slash – odyssey?” asked The Woman.

“Yeah.” I was relieved that we’d finally got somewhere.

“Okay.  Are you sure this is a poem?  There are a lot of volumes.  It’s really long.”

Hadn’t I just told her it was a really long poem?  Hadn’t I made myself perfectly clear?

“When was this written, did you say?”

“About four hundred BC.  I told you – it’s ancient.”

“Oh!” She slapped herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand.  “No wonder we don’t have it, love!  Do you really think it’ll still be in print after all this time?  Of course not, darling.  These things get lost and damaged…and, anyway…why would you want to read something that old?  Wouldn’t it be in a funny language?”

I emerged from the library twenty minutes later, slapping myself gently on the forehead and carrying a copy of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.

“It wasn’t that bad,” said Gemma.

I gave her my most patronising look, and walked away without another word.

The Return Of Billybrid

The exams are over, the notes have been burned carefully stored away, and my summer holidays have started. I know I haven’t written in a few months, but now that I’ve got the time, Billybrid is, once again, live.  Keep dropping in to see what’s new.  Peace out, dudes.