Somewhere in my mind, I have this one little day dream, that seems to help me through the daily grind and toil of work. It's one of those daydreams that you have kept stored in your head, and it gets you through. Becuase when things start to get too much, you can retreat there, and think "well, this can be hell now, but I'll get what I really deserve soon". Its rather soothing. My daydreams can be wonderful places to live, although occasionally they get too carried away, and I have to remember that I am not really an anonymous eccentric millionaire who gives to the needy, and is secretly hoarding away millions of pounds and could easily jack the job in - and I'm not doing it just to give me something to do. Alas, I'm not there yet. Sometimes, my dreams are tragic, and I'll end up in tears at my own imaginary life. But it gets me through the day. The days have indeed been getting longer, since autumn. They drag on, and I'm not particularly enjoying them at the moment. In a way, it reminds me of those skipping rope games at school. I was inevitably, shit at them. The one where two people hold the rope and whip it round and you have to jump into the middle. I could only do arcs, not full circles. I would wait too long, moving in rythmn to the rope whipping the playground tarmac, before hestitating and then stumbling into the middle. Inevitably, the rope would get caught around a stray ankle of mine. I feel like that now. I'm waiting for the rythmn of the rope, I'm waiting to get the timing right, and again, I'm trying to avoid getting tangled up in a mess because I rushed in at the wrong moment becuase I felt I had to. My friend was telling me the other day, about a summer in Spain. She would sleep on the beach, or somewhere in the woods under the stars, and occasionally stop at a campsite to freshen up. The perfect idylic bohemian summer. That sort of thing never appealed to me particularly. Maybe when I was 15, it appealed, partly spurred on by reading too much Just 17 about getting a sunkissed beach babe look without make up. But back then, in m imagination, there were no bitey insects, or bad hair days, my thighs were thin (thinner than they were even at 15) and I had a warm sunkissed make up beach babe glow. And Johnny Depp was on the beach with me. The truth is, I still look like I've appeared from a sleepness night in the morgue. I did then, and I do now. The sort of thing that appealed to me in later years, was the idea of cosmopolitian cities, those gorgeous street cafes in France with cobbles and flowers dripping from every window and terrace and balcony. And cafes, with chocolate cakes, that were decorated with intricate laces of chocolate, and sprinkles of icing sugar and drizzles of raspberry syrup. Wandering around streets in towns and cities. But when my friend told me about her holiday, I became aware that was something I quite liked the idea of. Bitey insects and everything. Getting so filthy, so disgustingly dirty, having greasy knotted hair, and the scent of sea water, suntan lotion and sweat stuck to my skin. My clothes hanging off me in only the way that crumpled lazy cotton t shirts can, rather than crisp white shirts with collars and cuffs. The idea of getting disgustingly dirty, and yet not giving a damn about it. And then going for a shower, and feeling every drop of water like it is the very first. The sheer feeling of cleanliness after days of filth. I felt like that once, a few years ago. I'd returned from a hot sticky weekend at T In The Park. I hadn't washed for days, I'd tucked my wild hair under a headscarf, wiped my face with baby wipes and applied deodorant as liberally as possible every morning. And Mark and I went home to his house, the car windows rolled down along the motorway to try and get some air into the oven of the car. And his mum had run a bath for me. Sinking into that bath was one of the best baths I'd ever had. It was certainly the most relaxing, the most refreshing, and the most peaceful. Now with my nine-to-five, sitting in the office, getting hot when the sun shines on my back, and my eyes getting lazy and tired from the glare of the computer monitor and the cold persistant blaze of the electric strip of light above me -trying to overpower the light of the sun- and I'm sitting there typing in stupid meaningless words into a screen. I'm sitting there, and I realise how much of the world is ruled by numbers and digits - time; currency; files; size; everything is determined, somehow, by a meaningless series of digits. And words, words that won't mean anything to anyone in 100 years time. Yet I sit there doing this to make things run efficiently. It doesn't make me feel as good as it used to. I don't feel as appreciated as I was. I feel that something has slipped, and all the time, its pulling me along with it. There was a cartoon strip in the Metro newspaper a few weeks ago. It had all of these people wandering towards the grey concrete city, and one guy turning round saying "hey! we're going the wrong way!". In the other direction, there was sunshine, and trees, and flowers and parks. And that is how I feel. I keep walking away from the sunshine. I keep walking towards the merciless world, every morning. Maybe for a day or two, I could walk away, towards the sunshine. But I doubt it would last long. Those numbers, that little issue of money, would come back sooner or later, and I'd have to do something about it. I'd have to earn some again, so I could buy food and gain accomodation, and travel, and generally live. I'm taking a few days off soon, and I'm going off to see my boyfriend, down south. And I am looking forward to it, not only to see him, but to indulge in a few days of escapism. It might not be a beach in Spain, or an exotic beach, but it is just far away enough from the world I see every day. And thats why I keep dreaming about the effortless millions, where I can do what I like becuase I have that luxury. Yours dreamily, idleberry x ===== <a href="http://retrosec.blogspot.com/">http://retrosec.blogspot.com/</a> thoughts __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+