Sinister: Part 4: People in Sinister have a world that's just that little bit.. sparklier...

[Dimitra]

Then on Friday, the 4th of January, I woke up at 6:51. I left Rachel's house
at a quarter past eight. I closed the door and looked up, above the firth
and the bridge, to find there were bright orange and pink clouds. Wow, I
said to myself. In Greece the sun rises early, and anyway it's never as
spectacular as that. Then I looked at the street -*left*, as I am supposed
to do over there. But it's hard, it took me twenty years to learn to look
right first, like you are supposed to do here, and now I have to do it the
other way round. Anyway I looked at the right direction and saw the bus
coming, and so I started running, and I never saw that sunrise again. I
tried to, but there where buildings between us, and then when the train left
the station it was surrounded by thick fog. Out of which it only got hours
later, somewhere north of Perth, I realised it was sunny, the light
reflecting on the snow covered slops with sheep. Sheep in the snow, I
thought to myself and giggled.

Half an hour before the train got to Inverness I realised what was happening
to me, and I got very excited. I couldn't concentrate on my book and was
grinning like a fool.
Welcome to the Highlands, said John. This is Inverness. It's like everywhere
else, only much smaller. Inverness is small indeed, in the six and a half
hours I was there we walked past everything at least three times. It was
another bright sunny day -while in Greece it was still snowing, in the South
this time. We had a picnic by the river, the grass was green and the sky was
blue beyond compare. I sang a song that says 'the sky is green, the grass is
blue, I'm pretty normal, just like you'; John stretched out his left arm and
said 'this is Johnsheepland'. Johnsheepland is the most sweet, magical and
safe place in my world. If I had three wishes, one of them would certainly
be to have a secret door that led to Inverness, so that I could sometimes
sneak in and then out and John would catch a bus from Dingwall and come to
meet me. And we could hide on the steps that lead to the river, somewhere
between the town and the water, and look at it float.
I cried a bit on the train back home. To Dundee, I mean, but by then Dundee
was home.

People also think that what happens through the internet is not real life
either... 'But then you take a plane to find it to be more real than
anything' I told a boy once, and I think he nodded in agreement. I don't
know though, I wasn't there.
I have been wondering, and I asked Will, when will there be books about
people like us, people who meet on a mailing list and travel halfway round
the world -some of us do that, though I only had to travel to the opposite
edge of the continent, and it's not even a big one- to actually meet, and
discover that... do I have words for what I discovered? Maybe, but certainly
not words that can finish that sentence. I asked Will, then I answered it
myself, 'when we grow up and write them, I guess...'. He probably nodded in
agreement, it was dark, I don't know.
I digress, and I am confusing myself. I wanted to say, what I did wasn't a
holiday, cause it was as real as something can get -as real as anything has
ever got. I just went over there to spend a month of my life.
And it was wonderful. People say things can never be as good as you imagine
them to be, but I found out they can be better.

What's next. I spent Saturday in Edinburgh, walking around with Will as
usual, and Sunday in Glasgow. Seven hours in the 13th Note Café, with a half
hour food break. And it was cold. Cafés are never cold where I come from!
That day was cloudy, I could see it out of the window. I could also see some
guys with guitars crossing the street. 'I bet these guys are in a band',
Sweetie said. A few hours later when the same guys walked in, Richard
pointed at one of them: that's my ex flatmate, he owes three months rent. I
got a bit more tipsy than usual so that I wouldn't realise I'm leaving and
get sad about it, it almost worked. I caught a train back to Dundee.

Monday was spent packing and reading and drinking wine with Rachel. In
between came thoughts of 'fuck, I'm leaving'. I had got used to being there.
On Thursday morning I took some more trains: Dundee, Edinburgh, change at
Manchester Piccadilly -running from the one platform to the other. After 7
hours I got in Milton Keynes and met Ken who looked impeccable in a suit. We
rushed to his house -'my car is making funny noises, but don't worry', and
some more Magnetic Fields- then to another station -'it's closer to my house
and to London'- and got another train to London. Then got the underground.
By that time I was saying that much as I love trains I don't want to be in
one again. For a while. We met Madeleine, Sir David, Stevie Trousers, Jeremy
and Marianna in a pub. It was fun, it really was. I lured Maddie back to
Milton Keynes with us. Another train ride. This one took an hour and a half.
On that day, I was in trains for ten hours. When we got back -and went on
#sinister- Ken sang she's loosing it for us; till the 'she keeps the
neighbours up all night' line -'actually', he said, 'that's a point, the
neighbours have complained about the noise'. And he has a lovely book with a
great story on his bedroom floor, he should call you all and read it to you.
Not just to Llaura.

The next day I took a taxi, a bus, then a plane, and I found myself back in
Greece.

So I found myself in a different timezone. The language was familiar, as
familiar as something can get. There were signs of the new currency
everywhere, which felt a bit weird. I took a taxi and the driver said 'If
there's snow I stop'. Oh what a feeling to be back. And very soon I
remembered something Stacey had said after flying back from London: 'I have
been in Greece less than an hour and already a cab driver is trying to rip
me off'. I tried not to get sad by stuff like that, and it worked. I found
everything funny. Having been back for 30 minutes or something -which means
it was half eight, I received a phonecall from a friend who wants to meet me
at 11. I'm tired and that of course, and an hour away from the center; but I
had this idea that I'd manage to see almost all my friends in ten days, no
matter how spread out across the continent they live, so I said yes. Athens
was cold, though not that much, and there was indeed snow in some places.
And I was so tired it felt like a dream. I sat on the floor of a bar, near
the door, and tried not to talk too much about how great it was, cause my
friend is in the navy and I didn't want to make him too jealous. And cause,
even though he believes me, it feels like he doesn't. When we said goodbye I
walked away saying to myself 'all this sadness, all this sadness. how do you
expect your life to get better if you don't smile.". See, for the past month
I had been with smiling people.

But my non-Sinister friend was just a brief interval. The next day I met up
with Stacey and we took a bus to Volos. The bus ride from Athens to Volos
took five and a half hours, instead of four and a half. The bus had to go
slower than usual cause something was wrong with the engine. Also, just
before we reached Volos, we were stuck behind a truck that was stuck behind
a police car that went very slowly -a man was walking next to it and he
didn't have to run. Me and Stacey interpreted this as a sign saying 'Stacey
don't go to Bulgaria'. And I think we were proved right.

The next day was the 11th of January and a Friday, and almost a month after
the day I arrived in Edinburgh. I woke up in Vel's house- me, Stacey Dahling
and Paul Field. Stacey cooked as breakfast and we sat eating it, staring at
the mess that the living was. The radiator leaked, and the wall-to-wall
carpet was *wet*, it went *pling* when you walked on it. Paul had inflated
lots of balloons for Vel's birthday, and even though we had been jumping on
them the previous night lots had survived and lied in the middle of the
floor, on the wet carpet. The carpet also had big chocolate stains, cause
Vel had started throwing pieces of birthday cake on us. It was *fun*. Paul
thought we should try and clean the room up, and I had the useful though
crazy idea that we should remove the carpet. And so we did, we spent the
afternoon moving furniture and stuff -lots of it- around and gradually
removing the carpet, and cleaning as we went along. This was fun too.
Honestly.

At some point I sat down and looked out of the window and thought of John,
who naturally was at school on a Friday afternoon, and I remembered when I
was still in school, how it made me suffer that I had to be at the same
place every day, and how it made me dream of all the different things people
where doing out there in the city, and how one day I could do different
things every day too. And I felt great I was doing something creative and
useful and fun -I thought that we could have just decided not to bother and
we would be sitting drinking coffee and being bored maybe? And at the same
time it made me think I certainly haven't been doing enough. I was too happy
to feel guilty, I just resolved to do more. The next time I moan to you
about being bored and finding my life uncreative, on #sinister or anywhere
else, remind me of this please.

So that evening Vel took us out -again: the previous night we went to a bar,
where there was the four of us, Aris (a very sweet friend of Vel's), the dj,
the waitress and another bloke; and since B&S fans outnumbered the non-B&S
fans (6-2), we listened to a lot of B&S and sang along. And some people
danced about a bit. Anyway on that night, which happened to be the last of
Paul's holiday, and of mine too, we went to a Mexican restaurant and Vel
bought us cocktails. I guess we were quite drunk by the time we decided to
walk back. They were more drunk than me, I think. That's not what prevented
me from singing along with them, it was the fact that they were singing
songs I didn't know. I think one of them was by the Sex Pistols though.

As we walked by the new hospital building -I wonder if it is used, it looked
completely empty- Vel pointed at the fire escape and said 'that's where
we're going!'. And so we did. It looked weird and it felt weird too, it made
me a bit dizzy, but I convinced myself it was safe and I kept climbing up,
Paul in front of me, Stacey and Vel behind me. Paul was the first one to
reach the top. He looked at the mountain opposite -it looks a bit weird: it'
s not very high, but it's too near the city, and there are two, maybe three
villages on it, of which the lights you can see hanging above the city. As
we ascended, the lights got a bit closer, but not a lot. It's beautiful,
Paul said, and I replied something -stupid- like I'm not impressed. All I
meant to say was it looked familiar, and I tried to remember why. It took me
a second: I used to live in that city. And I knew a girl who lived in a flat
on a rooftop quite near. It couldn't not be near anyway, Volos is small.
Which reminded me of how I felt then, in the spring of '99, when I
discovered Belle and Sebastian. I thought of all the things I did then;
then, I counted the cities I had been in the previous week: Inverness on
Friday, Edinburgh on Saturday, Glasgow on Sunday, Dundee on Monday, London
(and Milton Keynes) on Tuesday, Athens on Wednesday and Volos on Tuesday.
Wow, I said to myself. The world is so much bigger than I thought it was.
Than we thought it was. I felt thrilled. And I looked up; I saw some stars,
Volos is small and therefore doesn't have many lights, and between them and
us a crane, right above our heads. And then I remembered a line from a book;
it said something like 'and then the world got bigger, it was almost as big
as it ought to be'. When I had first read it -when I lived in Volos- I hadn'
t understood it. I wondered to myself, isn't the world *scary* cause it's
big? But them I suddenly knew. And suddenly I could give a name to what I
had been feeling for the last three years or so -the word sounds stupid or
an exaggeration or something, but I was feeling claustrophobic.

Now, the world is almost as big as it should be.

Cause for the past month, the world was getting bigger. It has been getting
bigger ever since I left school, but it generally happened slowly, and it
never was enough. But now I can say the world is almost as big as it should
be.


The next day was a Saturday, and one of those days that, were you here,
would make you think it's spring all year round in Greece. Me Stacey and
Paul got on a taxi back to Thessaloniki -posh! The idea, but not the taxi
itself: it broke down and Paul missed his flight. Soon enough though he had
another one -'I'm only doing this for you', the girl at the airline thing
said, and from that point on we decided to stop frowning and smile kindly at
her. It must have looked funny, three odd-looking kids, tired and panicky,
luggage spread all around them, smiling kindly to an air-stewardess. We
waved Paul off, then my parents and my dog came to meet us at the airport.
We went at the station, Stacey and me. 'There are buses to Bulgaria at 10 pm
every night', the man said, 'but not tonight that it's a Saturday'. So we
bought a ticket for the next morning and went back to my flat. I was feeling
tired, but useful and successful, and it was great. We watched the Virgin
Suicides and went to bed quite early. Stacey woke me up six hours later to
say goodbye, we hugged, and I went back to sleep. I woke up another six
hours later to find a text from Stacey -'of all the fucking fuck. I got
deported' or something like that- and my cousins in the next room. and the
sparkly world of my Sinister Holiday dissolved into the real. But not
entirely, you know.

Can I paste a paragraph from another post? I have written 9.086 words, I'm
sure it is enough more! Desmond Tropey said: "I couldn't think of a weirder
situation than a group of complete strangers meeting up in a park to drink
ribena with nothing in common except a band that they like...that's
perfectly normal in sinisterland though and that's what's so great about
it.. It's the real world.. but not quite.. people in sinister have a world
that's just that little bit.. sparklier.."

Phew!! I've said so much!!

As someone said, 'I'm not fucking twee!!!', but you're making the world a
better place. Keep up the good work, and keep the faith,

And love, and sparkles,

Dimitra

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