Happily ever after

Today I turned on my phone to find I had a message from a friend asking me to call her. So I did. She is a girl who I was at university with – she was at my college and did engineering like me, and is one of my three closest friends from university.

Her news was that she and her steady boyfriend of the last three years or so got engaged last week. Now this isn’t unexpected – the two of them have been going out for so long now and have never had problems and are two of the most level-headed people I know. Also she mentioned to me a few weeks ago at the ball I was at (her boyfriend is the reason I went to the ball – he was the officer commissioning) that they had discussed it, and how they’d cope with him being in the army and so on.

She is fantastically happy. As, of course, one would expect her to be. As she should be. But I have discovered that I am as bad at sharing people’s happiness as I am at sharing their grief. I dutifully congratulated muchly and questioned about the ring and so on. And I am happy for them…in a way…I would hate the thought of them breaking up. But I…I just can’t identify somehow. It’s partly the ‘other people’s relationship’ thing where you just don’t really understand how it works. But with Sarah and Sam I don’t have that half as much as with many couples. So I think it’s mostly me…that somehow I just do not envy them their married state. Which is ridiculous. I would love to find the love of my life and live happily ever after. But I think maybe I simply don’t believe it’s possible…or I don’t believe it’s possible for other real people…or something. Maybe I just don’t believe happily ever after is possible in real life…and yet I know that if I were in a relationship myself it would only be because I believed that it was The One. And I’m certainly not ruling out me ever being in a relationship again. Or not consciously. Gah. I don’t know what I think.

But something stopped me being as happy for her as I should be. And I hate it. I hate this ‘bystander to life’ feeling that I get so often – as though nothing that happens to other people really happens.

I feel old and bitter this evening. And Sarah, if for some reason you visit my lj and find the link here and find this, I’m sorry, mate. I really am happy for you. It’s just me being weird. You know me. :)

I just needed to get this out somewhere.

Sing a song of M6 bends

So this has been my first full week of being a proper little commuter. Pretty much doing 100 miles round-trip to work every day. Joy o joy.

But, I thought to myself, I shall not moan about it on my blog. For it is Friday and I am Cheery. (not the dwarf.) So instead I shall share with you the music that I have been listening to this week whilst on my 80mph excursions. A lyric or two from each cd, in the order that I listened to them this week, points (naturally - Hobblings need Incentives) to be handed out for getting the song/band/composer in each case. One band is doubled up because I listened to two of their albums. Some of these are significantly easier than others.

1. "I still have some do-oubts that yo-ou...are the reason"

2. "No, I'll save her, then I'll kill her"

3. "Nobody likes you, everyone left you, they're all out without you, having fun."

4. "The trouble with your brother - he's always sleeping...with your mother..."

5. "Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix"

6. "Leave the road and memorise this life that passed before my eyes"

7. "I suffer dreams of a world gone mad, I like it like that and I know it"

8. "Gang pack yer bags, ye English loons, gang tak' yer banners hame"

Bonus points for numbers 7 and 8. No points at all for number 2. Minus points for anyone who suggests that number 8 sounds like it should be sung by the Nac Mac Feegle...

Look up, what do you see...

Enough deep thought. Let's talk about the weather.

Today was gorgeous. Some truly perfect moments, weather-wise.

This morning was crisp and clear and bright and blue and all the things that summer mornings should be at 7am. Cold enough that the car steamed up when I got into it, and not a cloud in the sky.

At work this afternoon, we were suddenly surprised by a very loud crack of thunder, and then hail began pouring down outside so hard that we had to raise our voices to be heard in the office.
Driving home today was just fantastic. Still areas of bright blue, but half of the sky filled with those towering cumulonimbus that England can do so well - deepest, most louring grey on the bottom, billowing up to purest white catching the sun against the blue. Sharp, heavy showers of rain that I think Rob McKenna would have classified as 'blattering' beating on my windscreen. A fantastically flattened rainbow which was kind of behind me and to my right, and looking at it was not conducive to safe driving. A brisk and gusty wind.

Tonight, as I sit here with my window open and the last light having just faded from the sky, the chill air is creeping in round my toes. And another heavy shower just started - I'm listening to the white noise of it landing in the garden.

Changeable weather is the most fantastically exhilharating stuff.

Economy of Thought

Well, you were warned...here cometh the random meandering.

On Sunday I fancied getting out into a nice sunny day and doing something involving a little exertion. So I drove over to the Welsh border and climbed the first hill I came across. Which was all very nice. But the point is that, with the current price of petrol, the fact that Wales is an hour’s drive away, £1 for parking at the foot of the hill and the obvious need to buy a cup of hot chocolate and a cheese bap when I returned to the car, the whole expedition probably cost me in excess of £10.

Now this made me think. I have a couple of direct debits set up to charities. £10 would be about the average amount I give to a charity per month. So I just spent as much money as I feel, say, cancer research is worth per month...on climbing a hill, an exercise that is essentially free. This should make me feel a little guilty – and I’m not even taking into account the fact that petrol is ‘bad’ for more reasons than its cost – and yet I can’t seem to feel guilty because I do feel that having a few hours outside climbing a hill was a good thing to spend my money on.

Which led me, somewhat circuitously, to my question/dilemma of the day. Why does money feel like a cheat? I give money to charity but it doesn’t hurt me. I don’t really have to do anything actively. Yet that money goes to alleviate famine or whatever. I’m sure I would feel much more worthwhile in myself if I were actually out there doing the alleviation – but I’m not honestly sure it’d be any more use to the famine-stricken. Or, to put it another way, which lifestyle does the most ‘good’ in the world: someone who lives a subsistence lifestyle in an environmentally-friendly way; or someone who is an equally nice person but works in a high-powered business job and gives a large proportion of their salary to charity? I know which one feels like the ‘better’ choice – but is it? If you take the money aspect out, person number 2 is basically doing the work they do in exchange for the people who want the work done providing goods and services for those in need of them. Which sounds somehow better. And may do more good to those who need help than person number 1’s lifestyle.

I don’t think there’s an answer to this. I don’t think you could even quantitatively compare the benefits of a barter economy to a moneyed one. But why does money feel so unreal? And is that disconnect bad for us somehow?

Oh, every paragraph I write on this is sprouting another twenty unanswerable questions. I’ll stop.

Here a blog, there a blog, everywhere a blog blog.

Right.

Whilst attempting to mow the lawn this afternoon, I decided to get straight in my head what I'm going to use this for. I can blame jes for me having it, but now I've got it I quite fancy using it. The question is just how? And for what? Okay, the two questions...I'll stop here before I enter Spanish Inquisition territory.

But the point is I fear that this blog could go one of two depressing ways. Either I never use it - in which case it becomes just another thing I've started and never finish - or I use it to describe my everyday life - in which case my board posting and my emailing will decline, as I don't like telling the same stories over more than once. And I really don't want to enter posting or emailing apathy land.

So. I think I shall use this for occasional random meanderings that would (and should) go nowhere else. It's not going to be a history of my life, and it's not going to be a place to unload rants and misery like my lj became at times. It's definitely here for anyone else to read - I don't like writing just for me - but it will probably be extremely disjointed, and I will try to stay away from any expectations that people will actually comment on it. But if anyone is interested enough in my occasional thoughts to read it then it'll be here, and it will stop me forcing them on everybody in less appropriate places.

One thing I shall not attempt with this blog is to become less loquacious. I know a lost cause when I am one.

Moving, keep on moving...

And once again I succumb to peer pressure. Sigh.

But to be honest I was never fantastically fond of lj, and it was only really Hobblings I was there for...so I'm happy to be a sheep and follow.

And I bet this is the most original title for a blog anyone's ever come up with.