Sinister: 'Chu always rain on my parade

[Christina McDermott]

One should never wear a skirt if you intend to walk through Central London.
Maybe it's just a me thing here, but every time I decide to wear a skirt in
this city, I get funny looks from passers-by. I'll be sat on the Tube
reading my "Big Book of Early Modern Women" (Yes, I have one of these, and
a right scintillating read it is too) and the person across from me is
looking at me, or more to the point, they're looking at my legs in a really
interesting manner, like I've just stepped off some rare and exotic planet
where we all wear skirts with wiggly patterns and listen to the Lo-Fidelity
Allstars (Their first album I hasten to add, I rediscovered this little
lyrical gem whilst rooting around in my record collection, desperate for
soothing sounds to help me get through work and remembered what a damn fine
groove it had to it, and such astounding lyrics too, like "The disco bison
likes the disco music," much like that new pop-warbling songstress Shakira
whose lyrics in one of her songs goes apparently along the lines of "good
thing my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with
mountains. Sheer genius!) Or, I could just be walking down the road near
Uni, in my own blissful daydreams about me and the cute guy who sits next
to me in my History of Political Thought class and what I could do to him
using the newly learned Russian phrase of "strip to the waist" (it goes
along the lines of "padova ya padovnayen in case you're interested or if
you're ever in a compromising position with a Russian) when I catch someone
walking past me, looking at my skirt and then looking at me in an
interesting way. It never happens when my friend Mazda wears a skirt which
she does practically everyday, so why me I ask? It used to be if you didn't
wear a skirt in polite society you got funny looks. Maybe I just have
amazing legs, maybe I AM an alien from a distant exotic planet and I
haven't realised it yet. Or maybe I just look amazingly rough in a skirt.
Who knows?
Not that I've really had much of an excuse to go out looking good in a
skirt recently. This Cola-Cube has the end of term blues, stemming from the
fact that she's poor (yes, I know
it's my own bloody fault because I
decided to buy a Glastonbury ticket now to make sure that it didn't all
sell out on me instead of waiting until I had worked over Easter and
therefore could afford the damn thing. Oh well, I'm going now. Is anyone
else out of interest? Maybe we could all have a little Sinister Glastonbury
meet-up and have a picnic on the hills overlooking Sommerset and I could
eat noodles again like I do every time I go to a festival.), has too much
work (one 5,000 word essay on Religion in Latin America and another 2,500
one of Political philosophy both due in in two weeks time. Ick). 
I think it's just this time of year that's getting everybody down, we're
all tired and fed up of bad things swooping down on us like black clouds
when we're not expecting it, like ex boyfriends and phone bills. Part of me
wants to get into bed and sleep off the fatigue that I can't seem to get
rid of, no matter how long I sleep for. It just seems that the alarm clock
is always there on the periphery waiting to physically shake me quite hard
so I can't drift off into dreamy land for too long because just as things
start getting good, I'll hear that beep-beepy noise telling me I have to
get my foppish little Indie-girl ass out of bed and actually do things that
are worthy instead of sitting around and reading the trashy romance novels
that I found in my friend's kitchen the other night and drinking tea which
is what I really want to do. My little Sixteen year old baby brother is
coming to visit me next weekend because he, like me at that point, has
gotten fed up of Manchester and GCSE's and the muggy grey weather which
sticks to your clothes and you can smell in your hair (and oooh
my tape
player appears to want to be remixing Jeff Buckley. It sounds rather good,
but I'm sure it shouldn't be doing this). At least he's not avidly mixing
Atari Teenage Riot with his Belle and Sebastian which if I remember rightly
was what I was doing at his age, along with a great number of things that I
shouldn't really mention here
   
It's not too bad I suppose, I got my Belle and Sebastian ticket for
Manchester through the other day and I found out that my band have got more
recording time over Easter before our guitarist goes off travelling around
America (we were reviewed in both the Oxford and London student newspapers
if anyone's interested. The Oxford review compared us to Gorky's, before
labelling us "aural torture" (I was quite proud about that) but the London
one was lovely and said nice things, so maybe we're not all that terrible
really
we can but hope. And it's Track and Field next Friday too, a club
night where you can usually see me and my friends bouncing around the dance
floor like maniacs, running up and down the staircase to see which floor is
currently playing the best music (which afterwards makes you realise that
it's called Track and Field for a bloody good reason), and produces
pictures of you and your friend brandishing a shoe and neither of you can
remember why

Still, I send my love and commiserations to all of you whose parade is
being rained on at the moment. Especially Gordon
ooh, that's mighty rough
having your wallet stolen with your Belle and Sebastian ticket inside. I
saw the strangest thing today myself regarding interesting homeless people.
I was walking to Uni so that I could use the library (I know, I know...a
first year actively going into University on a Sunday so she can use the
library! Shocking, isn't it?) and I was walking up Tottenham Court Road
when I saw this old lady hanging off a lampost just pointing and screaming
abuse in her own made-up language at the passers-by. People just kept
looking at her strangely as they walked past and she screamed and ranted
about what I really couldn't say. I couldn't help wondering why she was
stood there on the Tottenham Court Road on a Sunday doing this instead of
being at home and what had led her to stand there, babbling and screaming
like a child. Did some immense tragedy shake her life and this was her
escape mechanism? Was she drunk, consumed by grief, or just in her own
little world where she felt like a trapped animal and lashing out at the
world was her only way to deal with the situation she found herself in? I
know how she felt and I sympathised because there are times when I just
want to stand and point at the world and scream at it too for making things
go wrong and hurting people I love and generally at times making me hurt
and ache with sadness all over. I wanted to go to the Accident and
Emergency department at UCH which wasn't too far away and get someone to
help her, but by the time I came out of the shop I was in, she had gone.
Strange how things like that make us stop and think for a while. After all,
there are multitudes of strange people in this city, but for some reason I
can't help wondering why she was screaming, and if she had children and if
they were thinking about their mum today. Who can say? Maybe it's not my
place to ask.  

If I can make the summer last longer if I stay up all night, that means
that for half of my Summer I'll be hyperactive through sleep deprivation
and the other half comatose as a result. What a heartening thought.

Love and amusing Russian phrases,
Cay Cola-Cube
XXx

P.S. Waves and hugs to lovely Michael my friend in the nursery who calls me
McDermott (which I find rather sweet in an endearingly old-fashioned kind
of way), and who will no doubt amaze you all with his linguistic prowess
once he's allowed out of there to wreak a path of havoc across the Sinister
world




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