Sinister: Always crashing in the same car

[Christina McDermott]

I've been thinking recently about all the places that I've ever had
attachments to in my life. There are a lot of them, scattered about here
there and everywhere...not just in England, but also in Scotland (seen in
my much documented love affair with Glasgow) and also in the USA with my
grandmother's house in Florida that I remember going to with my family when
I was a kid. I've not been there in years, not since I was 12 but I will
forever remember the way it looked in the afternoon sunlight glimmering on
the water in the swimming pool, the colour of the condominium complex; a
hideous florescent mint green. Everytime I see it in my mind, all these
memories come flooding back of the time when I lived in Florida when I was
five...my mum teaching me how to tie my shoelaces although I was more
interested in watching Teddy Ruxpin on TV, my dad taking me to the local
swimming pool and my swimming lessons with my best friend Andrea with me
having to be coaxed into the water because I was deadly scared...sitting on
the windowsill of my front room and watching the most amazing Florida storm
out of the window...the same storm later on the next morning blowing the
electric in my house whilst me and my brother were watching "Scooby Doo."
Silly things that remind me of being a kid and lead me to sometimes wonder
if they really hapenned at all or were just the product of a rather
overactive imagination.
In Manchester, there always used to be places that I would go to so as to
sit and think about things, drink coffee and laugh lots with friends who
would look over my A-Level English Lit texts and add their own annotations
so that in the exam I would look at that really important part in Richard
3rd and see where my friend Martin had wrote "Innit tho?" next to a speech
by Elizabeth/Queen Anne/Add Shakesperean woman character here, they all
bloody sound the same in that play. I miss Manchester at timess so much
that it aches...and if you knew me, you would know how silly that is. The
thing with me is that I don't get homesick. I miss things, people,
places...but not so much that I want to grab a train ticket and run back to
them asap which is the feeling I've been getting over the past few days.
It's not just that I miss my family...I miss really silly feelings and
emotions, like getting out of college on a Wednesday afternoon, meeting
friends in Cafe Pop and going record shopping or catching a film at the
Cornerhouse...or the Northern Quarter on a Sunny day, with everyone sat on
the pavement drinking and chatting and LOUD music blaring from all the
assorted shops. 
Maybe this is a feeling which has eminated from being a student, maybe just
from being away from the familiar for so long that the novelty of the new
place has started to wear off (I doubt that the novelty of London will ever
completely wear off for me, its more that it's sheen has tarnished). At
first, going back home to Manchester to visit felt like such a chore. I
hated it when I went back there to visit during my first reading week. All
these old faces I'd attempted to eradicate by moving hundreds of miles away
from them all at my door bringing back the things I'd left behind so that I
may forget them. Even at Christmas to some extent it still felt that way. 
Then, a few weeks ago I found out that my dad was seriously ill and I
couldn't get home fast enough. It was such solace, so warm and
welcoming...I was with the people who understood me and needed me and so
Manchester was as comforting as warm arms wrapped around me. Coming back to
my other home was such a wrench. I didn't want to leave those who needed me
more than London did.
London needs me too. My dad is still ill and he will be for a long time to
come, but London shields me from the pain of homesickness. It makes me
laugh, it makes me forget, it makes me sit in a cafe with friends and look
out over rivers at the skyline and realise that I wouldn't be anywhere else
in the world. My parents are coming to visit me soon and I want to show
them that I'm doing the right thing being here and I'm still accessible to
all the people who need me and who I need to be there for me too. It's my
nomadic existence realising itself. Neither Manchester or London is truly
home, but we all have an agreement, they're different things, like the
different sides of me and they appeal to that. An old friend, a new
lover...with each place bringing back waves of memories like the words of
old love letters, and the smell of biscuits on rainy dawns.
Anyway, another week, another Cay epic about her life...apart from the
small fact that nothing really has hapenned this week, apart from a
shedload of essays and the EndlessCityLights coming second in some Oxford
Battle of the Bands thing (out of three bands...but at least we weren't
last! Even if one of the judges was very publicly and VERY loudly bitching
about us during our set which put me off no end). The band which came in
first everyone knew were going to win anyway as they knew all the judges,
the judges loved them and one of the guys in the band was something pretty
major in the University society putting on the show...bias anyone? But, as
the lovely Mr. Carsmile Steve told me afterwards, "It's not the winning
that counts, it's the bitching about the band that did win!" (They were
shoegazing, schizophrenic, monotone pap by the way..and we were much
prettier!) 
Oh, and RIGHT ON NEIL!!!! for his wonderful post on the Matador list about
the bands tour in America/Canada. Even in Britain it's a lot of money to
pay to see B&S, but I really don't mind. After all, there's enough of them
in the bloody band that my ticket wouldn't even give them enough for a
square meal each. And now I've got a wonderful new job as an usher for
sixth form History conferences (ok, not so wonderful when you think of all
the rampaging hormonal discrepancies...but it's MONEY!) I can buy a ticket
to see them in London too! *Woo-hoo!*
Someone also mentioned Oxford Interviews-when I had mine, not only did the
chair eat me (very hilarious for the people watching...not so for me being
eaten...), but I was caught hanging out of the window of my room having a
crafty fag by a tutor who was not amused at seeing some mad young eyeliner
clad-and-not-much-else-woman hanging out the window of a historical
building and sending it into disrepute:-
HIM-"Young lady, what do you think you're doing?"
ME:- "What does it look like? I'm having a cigarette!"
Upon closer deliberation, maybe that combined with my rampant drunkeness
and causing a riot being drunk and dragging another drunk person along with
me and making lots of noise when letting myself into the college at 3am was
the reason I didn't get in....hmmm....

Oh look, it's sunny outside...let's play hopscotch
Love and Marlboro lights,
Cay Cola-Cube
xXx

P.S. The ever lovely Archel talked of how perhaps she should have given up
ellipses for Lent...you and me both my girl! There are a frankly disgusting
amount of them in this post. Nice to see that A in A-Level English Lit
going to use then. 


"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your Revolution..."
-Emma Goldman
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