Sinister: I'll be known as the girl who's always working

[Madeleine McNeil]

Work is treating me well. After so many years of unemployment, I find myself 
leaving the house at 9 in the morning, flapping around all day, pausing only 
for a diet coke/fag/email/chip cob break, then arriving back home at 9 pm, 
knowing that I have to do it all the next day.

In the time that I was not working, when I was sitting on the sofa watching 
daytime TV, while the mad (now ex) boyfriend sat smoking spliffs and 
pontificating about the sins of the middle classes, I found that I was prone 
to procrastination and over-analysis to the point of self indulgence. I 
found that, without outside stimulation, my brain starting stimulating 
itself, without anything else to chew on, it began eating itself, chasing 
its own tail. I saw problems where they didn't exist, or maybe they did 
exist but they weren't *really* important, were they? My brain needed 
something outside myself and outside the smoke filled council flat to get 
its teeth into. Otherwise I'd be left feeling so confused and crackers that 
I'd feel like I needed to take my brain out and rinse it under the tap.

And now I have it. And it's grand. I think. Well, it's tiring and dull and 
irritating because I'd rather be at home smoking fags and trying out new 
hair-dos, but at least it's not self-indulgent wallowing.

My job is note taking for disabled students at my university, but the loved 
one says I'm a "learning facilitator". You can see why the loved one is so 
loved, can't you, saying things like that?

This talk of love recently has been interesting. I used to think that love 
was something that hit you like a flash of lightning, changed your life 
forever, made you, somehow, something that you weren't. You'd meld with 
someone and become so much like them that you couldn't breathe unless they 
were sitting next to you. That no one in the world had ever felt a love like 
this. Then I threw up on his feet at a Suede gig and he dumped me.

Now I think that love is something that creeps up, silently, when you're not 
looking. When you're walking down the street, debating this pub or that 
cinema and you look at them and a huge tenderness falls over you and you 
think "I might be in love with you". And then you kick around together a 
while longer and it seems silly not to say it, so you do, and then you carry 
on saying it and saying it makes you as happy as hearing it. And sometimes 
you finish each others' sentences, but sometimes you don't understand what 
the hell the other one is on about. And it just feels like the pieces of the 
jigsaw have finally fit, or not even that, but that you've managed to do the 
sky and the edges of the jigsaw, and now you can finish the middle bit 
yourself.

Actually, here's the thing that I meant to post about. I was in uni today 
talking to a girl I had just met and she said "So, what music are you into?"

Me: Well, I really like Belle and Sebastian. I went to see them this summer.
Her (hysterical laughter): Really? That must have been brilliant!
Me: Yes, errrr, it was good.
Her: U G L Y, you aint got no alibi! You ugly!
Me (baffled): What?
Her: Belle and Sebastian? They did that, right?
Me: Um, I think that was Daphne and Celeste.
Her: Oh yeah..... I don't think I know much about music.....

Well, I thought it was funny.

Air strikes. Want to say something, but I can't, really. All I know is that 
the first time I hear someone mention "collateral damage" (they may have 
done already, I haven't had much chance to watch the news) I will scream and 
vomit with rage and disbelief.

Sorry I've gone on a bit.

Love
Madeleine
xxx

PS Shouts out to Sir David Stankin. He gives good email.

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