Could I just say...

... I fucking hate answerphones.

I got an email today, having given up hope, saying they would like to interview me for my dream job.

Also, could I call back as soon as possible.

So I called, and got an answerphone, it being after working hours in the UK. And so I left a message, in which I fell over my words because I was so nervous, forgot what I was going to say, and generally made a complete tit of myself.

wOOt.

Afterwards the trembling, then the tears. The first time I saw this job I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. Every time I read the advert again it set my mind racing. I sweated blood into the application. It is a complete one-off and it would be completely perfect for me. In short, I have never been so excited about a job opportunity. When I thought I hadn't been shortlisted I was pretty sad about it, but now that I know have a chance I am utterly terrified.

I never know what my answer would be to the question what's your biggest fear? but i think I've just realised: fucking up.

I shall now be spending the next few days telling myself how completely awesome I am. This does not come naturally.

Religious transport

No matter how terribly gloomy my mood, it may be improved by seeing a combi* full of nuns pass by.

*converted VW camper used as a bus

Stars

I discovered the band Stars yesterday and yet some of their songs already feel like a part of me, like I've known them a long time. I shan't try to say technical things, just that their sound is gorgeous.

These are my favourites:
Personal
Your Ex Lover Is Dead
Sleep Tonight

Close

Emotions too close to the surface when music playing in the street transports me for a moment onto the film set of my own life, just walking along but this moment is part of the story, and the song is my soundtrack unrolling how I feel. (Thank You by Dido. Laugh if you will.)

Emotions far, far too close to the surface when I pass an open church and for a moment the idea is in my mind that I might slip inside and there find solace.

(I am and always wish to be an unshakable atheist. I like exploring churches, for their peace and beauty and interest. But to hear a little cry for solace is slightly terrifying.)

bug-juice

Nosey colleague: So, do you have a boyfriend in Mexico?
Me: Um, no.
NC: You don't like Mexican men?
Me: No I do like Mexicans! They just don't like me...
NC: (Thoughtfully) If I worked in the United Kingdom, I would like to have a girlfriend from there.
Me: Well, I guess it just depends what happens...

This conversation for the win! Except not. Wound, meet salt.

Luckily, as I waited interminably for the cashier to be free, along came another colleague, originally from Zimbabwe. We are on friendly terms but I wish I had got to know him more, as he is about one of the loveliest people to talk to I have ever met. We chatted easily and pleasantly about things - my plans, how much he liked living in Colombia, buying a guitar for his small son who desperately wants to learn. His enthusiasm for whatever he's talking about is infectious - he is clearly a man glad to be alive - but he's interested in you too. You walk away in a good mood and with a smile on your face, thinking what a wonderful chat you've had. I wish I was more like that - it's both inspiring and chastening.

Also luckily, I retain the ability to laugh out loud at dictionary entries:
Christhood n. the condition of being a Christ
Obviously, it's not actually that funny, but it was. I don't suppose it's a condition many of us have to worry about.

My favourite new word of the day, however, is:
bug-juice n. Slang 1. an alcoholic beverage, esp. of an inferior quality. 2. an unusual or concocted drink.
This word is perfect for me, since alcohol-wise the only things I like are sweet and fruity (some might say sickly) cocktails. From now I shall only ever be drinking bug-juice. Go on, ask me what I'd like to drink...

A quiz

I need to be told in words. I can’t believe in a friendship, a love, an affection unless I hear it. Unless I can ask and be told yes. It’s not necessarily better or worse than being any other way, but it means that if I care about someone but they can’t or won’t reciprocate in words I am eaten away by doubt and misery.

So why, given this, do I tend to place great chunks of my battered heart in the hands of men who just do not communicate this way? Who don’t believe in trying to verbalise elusive emotions, or are afraid of direct questions, or don’t like talking about how they feel, or don’t know how, or believe in expressing it in actions, or whatever?

a) You are subconsciously attracted to that which will destroy you. Moth, meet flame.
b) You are subconsciously afraid of being happy, or don’t think you deserve it or something.
c) You’ve been unlucky. Your sample size is small.
d) Your expectations are too high. You are a bottomless pit for affection and will never be satisfied.
e) They are all like that. Give up now.
f) I do not care. Stop whinging.
g) All of the above.

The Boy is my best friend in Mexico. He is my confidante, the one I really trust. We talk, we laugh, we enjoy each other’s company. What I want – what I should want – is friendship, a real friendship that will last after I leave here. He is supremely undemonstrative and private, and I am trying very hard to deal with my doubts and demons and believe in our friendship. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that we’re more than just friends of circumstance, that I matter enough for something to survive the ravages of time and distance.

That’s what I want. But finding out he has a girlfriend hurts like a knife through the heart.

Glad mine's not

I happened to be having a bit of a read of a fairly recent New Scientist the other day. For those who are not aficionados, it has a section on the back page called The Last Word, where people send in questions about the whys and hows of everyday puzzles. This particular edition had a picture of a strange pattern that someone had found on their windowsill.

The patterns have been produced by snails grazing on algae. The snail scrapes off the algae with its radula - a sort of tongue with teeth. Hence the Cornish proverb Tavas medall ew howlsethas an bullhorn, which in English becomes "A smooth tongue is a snail's undoing".
- David Ridge

Possibly my favourite proverb EVER. Perfectly bizarre, but not at all nonsensical. Nicely lyrical, but biologically accurate.

I thought it was too good to be true and this bloke might be taking the piss and seeing if he could invent a proverb and pass it off as real. Howlsethas? Bullhorn? But I did some googling for Cornish dictionaries online and it turns out that "tavas" IS actually cornish for tongue (I couldn't find any of the other words). Hurray - I'd like it anyway, but being real makes it even more awesome!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to use it in casual conversation... I would quite like to use it to enigmatically put down some silver-tongued charmer - refusing to explain, of course. But actually I think maybe it means that sometimes what seems to be a negative trait is actually a good thing. Any ideas?

Difficult question

I have been looking at a lot of job adverts recently - more than I would, in an ideal world, choose - generally for jobs in communications and allied trades with NGOs. This is, as you might imagine, mind-numbing. However, there is one going the rounds at the moment, and which I have seen several times, that is clearly trying to stand out from the crowd. It opens:

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

At first blush, this seems like quite a brilliant approach: attention-grabbing, inspirational, and so on.

But the thing is, I apply for jobs if they sound interesting and I am more or less qualified to do them (and there are precious few of those). The motivational qualities of the advert don't really make any difference.

The effect it DOES have goes like this...

"Oh GOD, I don't KNOW! What AM I going to DO with my life? Oh GOD, I don't KNOW!..." etc, until I am in full blown existential panic, wondering what I really want, what (if anything) I am really good at, what (if anything) will really make me happy, and so on.

Works every time. I think I prefer mind-numbing.

Feria

It is good to have plans, constructive plans, like sorting out your finances and getting a good night's sleep. And sometimes it is good to tear up those plans altogether.

Like tonight, when I noticed stalls selling special, sweet breads in the next block to mine.

These are a sure sign of some kind of fair - usually the neighbourhood celebration of their church's saints day.

And so it proved. Tomorrow is the day of the Virgen del Carmen, and the street is closed to traffic for its little fair. People were wandering along visiting the stalls, but all was very tranquil - tomorrow will be the busy day.

And so I wandered, and took pictures. It is for this I really fucking love Mexico - this embarrassment of riches - its endless gifts of the fascinating, the delightful, the odd - its boundless aliveness. Give me any street in Mexico to walk along or to watch through the window and I'll never be bored.

I was fascinated by this ride, a wheel for turning you upside-down lots of times. Simple, old-fashioned, gorgeous in its bold paint, and, I suspect, pretty effective:


I took lots of pictures like these two:





A smell to make your mouth water - meat for tacos al pastor:


I ate one of these, because they are so pretty:


And just as I was heading home I got into conversation with Jymy, at the all-important stall selling sweets and nuts and little treats of all kinds.

I took a few pictures of him (at his instigation - for that I love people who play the clown and show off to their friends!) and we had a good chat. As a foreign woman there is an instinct to be wary of strange men, not so much out of fear of anything sinister, but because they will talk to you, and sometimes try it on, not because they actually like you or are interested in talking to you, but because you are some kind of a game or a trophy or a novelty.

But who cares? Sod caution. It stops you from taking interesting chances. We swapped numbers and if I like I can go with them to other fairs. It's an opportunity to get to know different people, potentially to take good pictures and get good interviews. And I love fairs.

I wish I had been this bold months ago, but - as every time I do more than scuttle away timidly - I am proud of myself for not being shy.

It's all in the definition

When I am editing a particularly frustrating, badly-written, badly-argued document, my comments can get quite short-tempered, or alternatively bitchy and passive-aggressive (NB employer-types: only under extreme duress, and I am never actually rude. I am a terribly good and constructive editor, really I am). The MOST frustrating thing is when authors don't actually respond to my comments in any meaningful way, or fail to recognise any need for clarification (this is my JOB, damnit, I MIGHT know what I'm talking about). I either have to leave the issue unresolved within the document and feel that that reflects badly on me as an editor, or I have to send it back again in a game of editing ping pong, finding some way to spell out the same question without coming across as either patronising or ignorant.

Mostly I do a lot of swearing, but sometimes these exchanges make me laugh:

- I don’t think this paragraph belongs in the “X” section.
- ITS OK IF WE ADOPT A BROAD DEFINITION OF X.

The spider of doom

I am not particularly afraid of the dark. I do not suffer from night terrors. Nor do I watch a lot of late-night TV (I don't even have one at the moment) or scary movies. So I think I must be losing my mind... or be even more tired than I thought.

Lying in bed last night, trying to fall asleep and maybe a third of the way there - note, not yet dreaming - I heard a small noise. I looked up towards the ceiling and saw some kind of unknown or alien creature, like an enormous spider (a foot or so across) but with many more than eight, very spindly, legs. I froze in terror and mentally prepared myself to slide the quilt very slowly over my head (I am aware this doesn't sound like a very proactive response, but my priority was to stop it from being able to touch me). I believe I may have begun to deliberate between fight and flight, and whether and how I could kill it.* There may even have been some speculation as to whether it was some kind of giant arthropod (probable), or whether it might be made of metal and wires and things and thus more sinister and less susceptible to squashing.

Then an instant later the logical part of my brain caught up and I squinted up - without my glasses - to see only shadows. So all well and good, except I was suddenly NOT SLEEPY AT ALL.

I sometimes think I should start using the tag function for the entries I write. If I ever do get round to it, this one will be tagged "warning signs".

*For future reference, I think the piñata stick (basically a big hefty baseball bat decorated with spongebob squarepants paper and blue foil - Mexicans take smashing their piñatas seriously) would probably do it.

Lullabies

My next door neighbours seem to be having a little get-together - just a few blokes. With guitars and singing. And beers, judging by the occasional splutters of laughter.

The low rumbles of traffic passing by. The quiet of the evening. Something on the edge of hearing that might be crickets or an electric buzz. Soulful, out-of-tune voices. Mournful love songs I understand even though the words wash over me.

I don't mind my neighbours being noisy, not one bit.

Murder must advertise

I probably shouldn't find this article hilarious:

Mexico probes online 'hitmen ads'
"Mexican police are investigating a number of classified ads on the internet which purport to be from hitmen offering their services."

One can't help wondering what kind of hitman advertises his or her services publically. Quite an incompetent one, surely? Or similarly, what kind of person advertises for an assassin in the Wanted section...? (Except perhaps one with an over-developed sense of irony*.)

But actually, it does make a lot of sense. There must be many of us who would like to get the odd person bumped off, but don't have the necessary murky underworld contacts to get in touch with a hitman in the normal fashion. How else to tap into this market? And in Mexico, the police and legal system being what they are, much can be done with impunity.

In that light, it shouldn't be so funny. But it sort of is.

Human activity doesn't fit on any kind of simple spectrums, but if it did, I'm pretty sure this story would be at the other end:

Suburban comfort for massive ram
"A huge ram has made himself at home in his rescuer's house after resisting all attempts to return him to farm life."

Another of those stories that fills me with fondness for my native land; I love everything about this article.

Possibly my favourite sentence:
Even though he now has his own bungalow in the garden with carpet and windows, he still likes to watch TV in the family living room, and take car trips.

To elaborate:
Mr Palmer said he had tried leaving Nick with farmers on two occasions, but the animal had refused to go near other sheep and would not settle.

Nick has become a hit with the neighbours in the Rhiwbina area, and Mr Palmer said the sheep knew which gardens he was allowed into.

"He's more intelligent than your average sheep that's stuck in a field. He's in the house and in the car and meeting people over the park and around the village.

"He's part of the family. He comes in every evening, head-butts the cushions off the settee and watches TV.

"If the biscuit barrel is out he'll butt it on the floor because he knows the lid will come off. Come 11pm he'll have a swede or an apple and then he's out for the night.

"It probably smells in here, but I'm used to it."

Sometimes it's the little things, as much that a family might have a biscuit barrel as that they might have an enormous pet sheep called Nick.

*Goes away, reads about irony to make sure isn't using it wrong, ends up even more confused.

Days I can count

Just now, preparing to leave my office after a spectacularly unproductive few hours, I realised how much I have to do before I leave work - and leave Mexico. Now, helpfully, midnight approaches and I am rigid with panic and wideawake terror and torturous self-reproach.

So, here are my lists.

Before I leave Mexico, I will:

1) Somehow, do a mountain of work things. Thinking about this makes me want to cry.
2) Stop being a baby and sit down and sort out my finances. Pretty damn soon, so I can make sure I get all the money I'm supposed to.
3) Get my useless arse in gear and send pictures and thankyous to all the people I have interviewed and photographed so far. Write a few emails to try to set up a few trips, meetings and things (sorry, that's horribly vague, but it's either that or horribly convoluted).
4) Go some interesting places and do some research for my 'book'.
5) Take lots of pictures of the ordinary details of the place where I live.
6) Go dancing.
7) Figure out how to ship my stuff home for less than my entire overdraft limit. Not all of it, obviously. Not tins of beans, sheets, my cheese grater, clothes with holes in, my mattress. But books, clothes without holes in, beloved blankets, my cardboard skeleton Zorro, my favourite saucepan with the flowers on, more books.
8) Look for jobs. Spend hours applying for jobs. Try not to lose the will to live when they don't even get back to me.
9) Beat my friend Jose Juan to 15 points at table tennis when he is neither ill nor letting me win. Just once.
10) Sort out a fraction of the crap that I need to sort out. Papers, thoughts, plans, photographs, unwritten emails, unsent post... you name it. Be judicious in not having random panics and spending hours trying to sort out the things that don't absolutely need sorting out before I go.
11) Finish painting a tree of life that I happen to be painting, on a someone's wall.
12) Figure out my friendship with the Boy, somehow make it something I am happy about, something that won't fade away, and not fuck it up.
13) Keep on functioning: buying food, washing up, cleaning my house (well, at least once), going to the laundry, going back to the laundry when they deign to be open, please please being in just sometimes when the binmen pass, not falling completely to pieces.

I will not:

1) Piss about on the internet wasting my fucking life.
2) Stay up ridiculously late and sleep the day away. Or have to get up and work, and waste the day feeling like death on a stick.
3) Stay at home doing nothing and feeling fuzzy and absent.
4) Let whole working days slip by without achieving anything.
5) Listen to detective stories or comedy or anything else on BBC7, no matter how comforting it is. I have heard them all BEFORE, for fucksake.
6) Accept invitations to do social things out of a feeling that I ought to be sociable, especially if they are in the middle of the day and will therefore eat the whole thing, or if they will go on very late - see (2). Unless I really want to.
7) Read anything not relevant to my 'book', especially fiction. I have a self-control problem with fiction: if I start, I can't stop until I finish. No matter the quality of the book or the hour of the morning - see (2).
8) In summary - waste any more of my precious time.

It is too late to:
1) Keep a diary.
2) Be a good blogger and write more about Mexico - both the little things that make me smile and all the dirty-faced glory of this mad, marvellous place.
As a result of (1) and (2), I've forgotten so much almost instantly, and there's more I'll forget - odd things I've seen, people I've passed in the street, the particular way things happen to be that seem ordinary now. Moulded jellies sold from little class cases on wheels. Painted shop-fronts. The goths selling waxed roses in every colour you could wish for, especially black. The jingle on the radio for the talent spot, with the man who can tell how many letters in any sentence. The midget in the metro station in cowboy hat and cream suit, who is apparently a TV star.
3) Make Mexican friends outside work. (I have one.)
4) Be bohemian and meet all kinds of interesting and intellectual and extraordinary Mexicans, and hang out and learn things and have adventures unimagined.
5) Read some of my bookshelful of books about Mexico, and be less ignorant while I actually live here.
6) Make more of an effort with my Spanish and get better than it is.
7) Go at all to all kinds of fascinating and beautiful and beautifully ordinary places.
8) Go back to lots of other fascinating and beautiful and beautifully ordinary places.

For some of these I console myself by telling myself that I will be back. For some there is no consolation.

Utterly awesome Wikipedia article of the day

I am all the more amused by this because I am rather fond of writing in green ink, and green biros cheer me up...

Green ink
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In journalism, Green Ink is (humorously) supposedly the major identifying characteristic of written correspondence from self-aggrandising pedants, cranks, charlatans and eccentrics.

Although no psychiatric equivalence with the preceding terms should be inferred, it is also used to refer to unusable correspondence originating with readers who are mentally ill.

Regardless of the colour of ink used, it is common to refer to correspondence of any kind (including email and webpages) as being in "green ink", so long as it broadly fits the following identifying characteristics:
- Stridency
- Impertinence
- Unreasonableness
- Unrealism
- Fancifulness
- Obsessiveness

Common comorbid characteristics include IRRELEVANT CAPITALISATION, overuse of exclamation marks!!!!!!!! and veiled threats or warnings directed at the recipient

Religious mania is a frequent characteristic of green ink communication.

Writers and correspondents who fit this general profile are referred to as Green Inkers or as members of the Green Ink Brigade (GIB). The term Green Biro Brigade is also used occasionally along with Green Biro referring to a popular source of green ink.

Reported encounters with the GIB
“THE "green ink brigade" is well-known to editors. It consists of people who send in copies of the paper, covered in scribblings and rantings. Every mistake, every contentious point, is ringed or underlined, more often than not in green ink.

Their letters go on for page after page in a tidal wave of green bile.

I once had a letter from a green ink regular, signed Paul the Apostle, telling me I was "the spawn of the horned devil and a wicked whore from hell".

I am, in fact, the spawn of an electrician and a postlady from Middlesbrough and I've thus far kept Paul the Apostle's letter from them for fear of causing a domestic incident.

Don't ask me why these people choose green ink. They just do.”

—Unnamed columnist, The Northern Echo, 2006

“Anyone who makes a living from broadcasting will get more than his share of GIB letters. Anyone who dares to write a book about the English language had better change his address if he’s not prepared to be swamped. Yes, it can be profoundly irritating. A Green Inker will always spot the mistake. So will many other readers but the GI will write to tell you about it. And if any GIs are reading, I know that the first edition of my last book awarded a distinguished academic the Noble Prize. What I don’t know is how it slipped past me, my editor, the proof reader and on into infinity. But it did. Thank you for pointing it out — but please, no more letters.”

—John Humphrys, 2006

Possible origins
"Green Inkers" are (in popular imagination) frequently obsessed with supposed conspiracies and plots, so it may be no coincidence that Sir Mansfield Cumming, the first chief of MI6, would only write memoranda and communcations in green ink - a tradition that has been continued by all subsequent placeholders.

There is a tradition the Royal Navy that Admirals use green ink.

In harmony with the frequent megalomania exhibited by green inkers, green ink was also the way in which the guardian of an underage Roman Emperor would sign his charge's correspondences.

See also
Color psychology
Crackpot
Crank (person)
Rant

That's Miss Bitch to you

So I just - finally - sent off my application for the unimaginably awesome dream job that I will never get. It seems to have taken days and days and a ridiculous amount of my life force. It's the best application I've ever written, so far, and it's painfully awful at the same time.

Oddly, for me, I am also at the moment a little involved with the other side of the process. We are currently advertising for an intern to do my old job, and the applications are trickling in. My boss on holiday and my email address is in his away message, so a few of the queries and applications are coming to me.

And I am terrifyingly judgemental about them - terrifying because I imagine unknown others taking a similar line with my applications. But, I feel quite justified in mentally spiking people who just don't cut the mustard. And it is, in a way, comforting: my applications might not be perfect, but I put time into them bother to send each employer what they're asking for, and in general, I hope, don't come across as an idiot from the word go.

It is sorely tempting to send these poor lost souls some advice...

• Your fancy CV design is poncy and unreadable. Random jargon does not endear you to me. But I could overlook all this if you had not sent me a completely generic cover letter, dated three months ago, banging on about your experience in a completely unrelated sector (honestly, imagine the least relevant thing to agriculture and you're probably there). You obviously don't want the job so I doubt you're bothered by my automatically shuffling you onto my mental reject pile. But you might want to reconsider that scattergun approach. It just wastes everyone's time, since the overwhelming majority of people won't even think about employing you if you don't show some rudimentary interest in the actual job they're offering. You are an idiot.
  
• You seem quite sweet, but if you send me an email saying you're interested in the job as advertised on our website and look forward to hearing from me, without making any attempt to actually apply for it (i.e. not so much as hinting at the covering letter, CV and writing samples we asked for)... well, I'll send you a nice email back suggesting that you do so. And I'll think you're an idiot.
  
• If you send me a bald, less-than-one-line email, not expressing your interest in the job but just asking how much you'll get paid... well, it's a fair question and you're not on the spike yet, but I already dislike you. You're kind of an idiot.

Come to think of it, I love these people. Being a bitch, the perfect way to feel better about yourself... w00t! Let's hope I get more tomorrow...

[Alternative entry: "Karma, please come and bite me on the arse, I need a few more things for which to reproach myself".]

dispirited

dis·pir·it·ed (dĭ-spĭr'ĭ-tĭd)

adj. working on an application for a job you really, really want, knowing you've almost no chance of actually getting it

secret plans

This a softer world (hover your pointer over it for the kick) perfectly captures how I feel about my plans. The less secret they are, the less real they feel.

Also, not that I am a creepy stalker-type or anything (just a very curious follower of links... does it come to the same thing?), I was reading Joey-the-writer's girlfriend's livejournal and on their anniversary she wrote:

"It has been 4 years of matching tattoos and knives, backing each other up in fights, shoving each other into snowbanks and this terrible, immodest, stupid love."

The world too often seems dull and difficult, full of complications and compromises to be lived with, borne, settled for, dealt with. And so it is, but if I ever forget that that isn't all there is, please remind me that there is terrible, immodest, stupid love.

Rainy afternoons

Being with the Boy makes me happy, whether it's minutes or hours. Something that is closed the rest of the time is opened. And at the same time I am starving to death on the crumbs of his affection. It is not his fault at all; it is just the way he is and things are.

And every time I walk away my heart breaks again, even though I know how ridiculous it is.

The endless rain falls.

Nausea comes and goes - the doctor says it is gastritis but I don't believe him, so there's not really anything more to be done.

There is a pretty siamese kitten in the petshop, and I can't help going in for a look. In the wire cages there are chickens with patches of bald pink flesh with the feathers pecked out. There are kittens with rumpled fur, climbing over each other to stare at me with wide eyes. There is a sickly little black one looking bowed and hopeless, gummy eyes oozing.

Suddenly it all seems unbearably sad.