I feel like summer is wasted on the city, that this heat is wasted on the urban population. Like all good Brits, I like to talk about the weather, whether it’s hot, cold, dull, wet, warm, whatever. We have to talk about it. It’s part of our culture, to talk about the weather I think. Something ingrained since we were made up of Celts, before the Saxons came and took over.
Anyway. Having living in a city, the country, then finding myself back in the city again, I do feel like it’s wasted. Maybe it’s just wasted on me.
In Wales, when it was warm, when we were kids, we would go to the beach after school. Just to sit or paddle, just to be there. We had a massive garden and a beautiful, enhanced by the sunshine. A clear sky meant you can see a long way from my mum’s house. A clear day here means I can see across the road. Same as a rainy day, or even a foggy day.
I only like the view of a city during one particular point. When it’s raning at night. Street lamps and car headlights reflect off the raindrops and it looks gorgeous.
During the summer, in this heat and sun, it looks a little better than when it’s raining, certainly less depressing, but to be honest, it’s not like being in the country. And I don’t just mean being by the sea, because, you could go to Benidorm. By the sea and still shit. And I don’t just mean Wales, I mean anywhere but the cities. The countryside. There is still some left in England, though, sometimes I forget that some of it can be found in the Midlands. I don’t drive, so I’m confined to buses or friends cars if I need to go a little further.
It’s there though. And it doesn’t smell like sweat and hot tarmac. Petrol or ice cream.
The heat causes more stress than the cold, the dull. Everyone is ratty because they’re too hot, but no one can relax, because while there are parks, everyone else is in the park. It still smeels the same, you’re still surrounded by people, children who are too hot, mothers who are too hot to deal with the kids, people who’ve been in an office all day, wearing a shirt and tie and melting. Just now you can sit on the grass instead of the concrete.
The heat cuases heat stroke and sun stroke (I’ve had both and neither are fun). Headaches, and no one wears sun scream when they should, or sunglasses, so no one can see where they’re walking.
I am coming to love the sun, the heat, I don’t like the amount of sweating I’m doing, but I can deal with it. I would prefer to be in Wales, at my mums. Down the beach in the afternoon, or the evening when the sun goes down. In the garden for lunch, sunbathing, watching the dogs tire themselves out and panting. Looking over hills instead the roads.
Wasted.
Maybe it is just me. Maybe I just miss Wales.
I suffer from segaitis (sega-itis). It’s probably a very common affliction that people don’t know what to call. I call it segaitis.
Segaitis is basically that nausea feeling when you play certain video games. We (my ex and I) started calling it segaitis because I used to get really ill whenever I played games made by Sega. It’s not just games by Sega, no, but it started with that correlation. I couldn’t even watch a Sega game without feeling horribley sick.
It’s a bit like like travel sickness, which I also suffer from. But without the car journey, the fact that your bladder is suddenly the size of a pea and you have to pay 80p for a bag of crisps.
It’s horrible, currently striking me down is Lego Star Wars on the Wii. If I play if for too long, I get that nausus feeling starting at the top of my head working it’s way down to my stomach. I like to stop before it gets anywhere near my stomach. It’s not all games, just certain ones. I played MySims Kingdom solidly over the weekend, and the weekend before without a problem. Yesterday I played Lego Star Wars for just an hour and I needed to lie down.
It doesn’t help that I need new glasses, need a new prescription. Maybe when I get my new glasses next week, then I can seriously get into. I say seriously get into it, I’ve already finished Episode One. Well, not completed 100%, but done all the levels. Of course I have to do them in order, I want to get straight onto A New Hope etc, but I can’t. Cause I’m weird like that and I am sure I’m not the only one.
I’m indifferent.
I was before he died and I am now, after he died. I had no opinion on anything he did really, outside of his music. No opinion on his “plastic surgery” or the allegations of indecency with children. I tend not to believe what I read in the media or see on the tv. Until someone actually shows me x-rays and medical records, I won’t believe he did or didn’t have plastic surgery. Until I am able to go back in time and turn into a fly and actually see what happened with the kids, or read minds (neither likely) I won’t believe he did or didn’t do anything.
Though, I do believe we need to have some faith in the justice system.
Anyway. he’s dead, whatever happened to his, has done and obsessing over new reports isn’t really going to change much of my life. or any of my life.
I liked his music. The Jackson 5, his Bad years. I must’ve listened to the Dangerous album so many times my mum threw the tape out. It would explain why I lost it.
Overall, Micheal Jackson, very sad, poor kids (though, they may lead a slightly more normal life now).
Imagine living right next to crazy person central.
A place like this exists, in Leicester.
Cities have different areas, in the UK it’s as simple as nice areas, posh areas, dodgy areas and so on. I didn’t consider crazy area one before, but I go to therapy there. It’s a bit surreal actually when I think about, and I do, most mornings as I walk through ‘crazy district‘.
I go to therapy in the Personality Disorders service at Francis Dixon Lodge, upstairs is the Jasmine Centre who have different part time therapeutic services. On the other side of our garden is the child and adolescent mental health unit (an acute ward for kids is another post entirely). Down the road is a ward for offenders, a garden centre/project for people with learning difficulties (I think, I’ve never been there). We’re very close to the hospital where all the acute wards are (the adult ones).
Imagine living near all of this. You’re gonna be glad there is a police station not far away aren’t you. I know I am. Joke.
Imagine it though, it’s a nice area at the top of the hill (at the bottom it’s not so good), and you have a nice car, decent job in an office, and you don’t actually know much about mental health beyond what those adverts kept telling us a few years ago, that one in every four people suffer from mental health problems.
I never did get those adverts, really, I think I missed the point, because that may be true, but a percentage of those one’s in four are going through phases of depression due to unusual stresses and not suffering from a serious long term problem. Which isn’t to take away any serverity of their problems, but still, it doesn’t give you much information about what these ‘problems‘ are. So Joe Sane Public probably didn’t learn anything. I know I didn’t. Although everyone knows the bleedin’ statistic and uses it every time their mate, sister, nan, uncle gets a case of the blues.
This is beside the point though, and my point is what I think in the morning, passing those nice Barrett homes on my way to FDL (cutting through the Child and Adolescent Unit on the way), and wondering exactly which of the people wandering past your front window is crazy. And how crazy. Must put you off Eastenders. Cause the wondering is probably more interesting than Eastenders.
Down by the uni. I need to take better pictures of them, these were on my phone.
Stop shouting please,
I’m already begging
for silence in disaster,
and never mind what
catastrophe occurred
I was on my knees
at the first tremor.
Have you heard the words
I’ve sobbed to you?
Unclear and unintelligible,
but the feelings well conveyed.
I will crawl away
before I’m drained
and left in a puddle
or a chalk outline
on your bedroom floor.
I never did manage
to sleep sound in your bed.
r.l.w
I’m starting to write about FDL as some sort of ex lover.
I sleep with a cushion on my head.
Not all the time, not every night, but most of the time, I’ll fall asleep with a cushion covering my face.
It makes some sense during the day, I have a lie in, I have cream coloured blinds that do nothing to block out the pesky daylight, so a cushion over my eyes does the job nicely in recreating the dark. I don’t like to hide all the way under my duvet unless it’s cold, and even then it’s a fuss because I need to create air holes for myself. I get too claustrophobic.
It’s comforting as well, for reasons I can’t fathom.
I’ve been nocturnal a few times, had a few periods where I’m only sleeping in the day. I had times when I didn’t sleep at all when I was staying at my dads, and slept in the morning. Our tiny box room had a thin grey curtain from the eighties for a long time, then a cream/yellow blind later on. Neither hid the daylight.
I was used to street lamps until I moved to Wales, then we had navy curtains over our windows in the slanted roof of our room but there was nothing to cover up in Wales. The odd car from the B-road across the field, the full moon once a month but little else. They were good at hiding daylight but that didn’t matter because the big window halfway down the stairs to our room had big curtains that were never closed (we didn’t have a door or anything). I spent so much time adjusting to the lack of light and noise, and moved back to the city to have to try and readjust again. The noise I’ve started to enjoy again, the hum of traffic and shouting is a comfort again. The street lights, not so much.
I’ve never lived in houses with particularly good, dark, curtains or blinds and I like to sleep in at the weekends (and any other day I can get away with), so the cushion serves it’s purpose.
I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel safe in the house though, but then if I didn’t feel safe I wouldn’t sleep much at all, and would have make shift weaponry either side of my bed. I used to sleep with a pair of scissors on one side and a pool cue on the other when I was a teenager. Just in case.
Anyway.
What I See
You don’t see what I see,
but people rarely do.
There’s no rose tint
or protection from the sun,
there’s some truth to it
I’d like to think.
It’s always to convince you
other wise
of what the mirror is saying,
bias long forgotten
with a wisp of loose hair
and wide blue eyes.
I try to keep level
but it’s hard not to drift,
look longer at you,
you don’t see why.
I don’t see why not.
r.l.w
It’s easier to write a poem than what’s going on. Awful title, I want something a bit more abstract. Biased Mirror maybe.
Sex Inequality
There’s thoughts of loss
but that may be melodrama,
I’d rather not be involved in either.
I’ve nothing to offer
except my flip-switch gender.
I kept trying for a while,
lessons are learnt slowly
my mind traipses quietly
thinking long over situations
that present themselves to my heart.
I’m unsure of the truths,
whether they be hers or mine
and I never learn what to do
where to change my heart’s
way of feeling,
my minds way of thinking.
There is really little to do
that I am willing,
little change beyond the extreme,
there is comfort in familiarity,
even familiar heartache.
r.l.w
I’m not sure if I get across what I’m trying to say. I know what I’m trying to say, I can spell it out to you but that’s not nearly as poetic is it? The title says a lot more than the poem I think.
