Symbolic Forest

Talking about pets: the cat has vanished. Not near home, either.

The mother was taking him to the vet, on Monday, in his cat box. She was a few paces away from the surgery – a mile or so from home – and the cat box, in her words, “fell apart”. It’s a plastic affair, with a removable lid, and it’s picked up by the lid too; so if you haven’t done up the catches right, it will fall apart. And The Mother has never shown any ability to be able to do up the catches right. I have shown her how to do it many, many times, but she still refuses to learn.

The cat immediately scarpered, and hasn’t been seen since. Since then we’ve had thunderstorms and constant rain, and The Mother – when she isn’t out looking for him – keeps saying things like “oh the poor dear, I hope he’s found shelter somewhere.” Which makes me think: no, you’re not allowed to say that. You would be allowed to say that if the whole thing wasn’t completely your own fault.

More than anything, I’m angry. I’m always angry with my parents at some level, because they are intensely annoying people. This, though, has left me angrier than normal. My mother has always been annoyingly semi-competant, being able to grasp 90% of an idea, but missing out the 10% that actually gives it its shape and flavour.^* Most of the time it isn’t a big problem, but occasionally, it matters.

* Like the time she saw “Thai curry sauce” in the supermarket, the sort that you add to stir-fried vegetables, and thought “Ooh, I’ll make a Thai curry.” So she cooked some mince, heated it up in a pan with some tinned kidney beans, and added the stir-fry sauce to it. Ta-daa, “Thai curry”. It wasn’t inedible, but she didn’t seem to understand that she’d actually made something entirely different.

Keyword noise: The Cat, cooking, disappeared, lost, missing, pets, The Mother.

I’ve been thinking about having a new feature on the site: Readers’ Letters. I get you to write in with questions that aren’t suitable for a normal comment-box entry, and I answer them. I was thinking of doing it today, in fact, but I couldn’t be bothered to make all the questions up as well as the answers. So, if you have anything you want to ask, email my usual address: feedback at symbolicforest.com

I also should get around to rearranging the post categories. As time goes by I find myself referring back to previous posts more and more often; and spending more and more time searching for previous posts that I know are in the archive somewhere. Better categorisation should mean less searching, hopefully. After all, all categorisation systems change over time – look at how libraries work.

Big Dave has a new car. Not new new, but new to him – he bought it off his dad at a bargain price. “You know what,” he said, “it does 140mph, and it still had some power left in it. And that was just up the London Road – I haven’t tried it on a motorway yet.” I’m going to be staying indoors more from now on. I’m happy to trundle along at the speed limit myself. If I want to drive something that can do that speed, I’ll try and get a job as a train driver.

Listening to people chatting about What Was On The Telly Last Night, I suddenly realised – I haven’t watched a thing all week. Instead I’ve been listening to music, largely because I’ve been playing with Last.fm, the website that shows everyone else what you’re listening to. In my case, it largely shows the world what a twee indiekid I am, but that’s because my record collection is heavily biased. There’s an awful lot of music that I like but don’t own, because I don’t know enough to know what to get.

Anyway, that’s enough nonsense for this week – there is a cup of tea cooling in the kitchen, and I need waking up.

Keyword noise: bad driving, Big Dave, blogging, driving, Readers' Letters, speeding.

There are little routines you get practised in. Little things you do automatically. Taking things in and out of the oven, for example. Oven glove on one hand, open door with the other, stand back from blast of heat, pick up tray in gloved hand and shift it.

So then, why, making dinner last night, did I manage to get it wrong? Open door with ungloved hand,^* pick up hot tray with same hand. OWWWWWW. And it was my writing hand, too. I can still type, but it might be a few days before handwriting is on the menu again.

* the handle on our oven door is too small to open if you’re wearing an oven glove; you can’t get a grip on it. Which is silly in itself.

Keyword noise: burn, cooking, ergonomics, kitchen, oven.

Big Dave’s latest plan for self-improvement has been under way for a few weeks now. He’s decided to study the martial^* arts, and has been going to ju-jitsu classes on a Monday night. Which means that every Tuesday, when we come in to open up, he’s groaning at every aching muscle.

To be fair, he’s getting better. After the first night, he was groaning with every tiny movement he had to make. Now, after a few weeks, he’s mostly quiet but for the odd pained expression on his face.

From all the stories he tells, Big Dave can already look after himself. Most of the tales he tells of nights out end up with him coming out on top whenever a fight breaks out. Of course, maybe he’s being selective about which tales he tells us, and maybe they end up embroidered in the telling. Clearly, though, he’s not that confident; or at least he feels like he needs an extra edge when it comes to fights in the street on a Saturday night. Or maybe he’s just concerned about the size of his waistline; the classes are billed as “ju-jitsu and self-defence”, but that doesn’t have to be the only reason for going. Maybe he’s planning on a definitive wrestle with the management when he finally leaves.

* Yes, I did double-check that I’d spelled that correctly.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, exercise, ju-jitsu, martial arts, self-defence.

Sometimes, in life, I feel a little out of place. It feels – to coin a metaphor – like I’m the only indiekid in the middle of a goth club.

Sometimes, like on Saturday night, that’s because I’m the only indiekid in the middle of a goth club.

Sometimes, though, you just have to go out, have a few drinks, and make a complete fool of yourself on the dancefloor. I do it far too infrequently, so Saturday night was a whole lot of fun. I made new friends, I bounced around a lot, and I discovered a whole new talent.^*

Afterwards, we were in the takeaway over the road; and two men were already waiting there. They looked uber-indie – messy hair, beige t-shirts with witty slogans, and thick-rimmed glasses. “Are you students?” said one of the people I was with.

“Um, no,” they said. “We work over there,” pointing back at the club, “we’ve been watching you lot getting drunk all night.”

“You do look a bit … indie,” I said, rather drunkenly. I wanted to say: I’m one of YOU, really! I might be dressed in black, but I’m not one of these goth types! I’ve got Belle And Sebastian records and everything! I kept quiet, though. I didn’t really care what music I’d just been dancing to, because I’d just had a damn good night.

* Giving neck and shoulder rubs. Apparently I’m very good at it even though I have no idea at all what I’m doing.

Keyword noise: culture, goths, indie, music, students, subculture.

Happy birthday to regular reader Miranda! She’s no doubt far too busy celebrating to be on the internet today, so I can get away with posting embarrassing photos of her without fear of comeback or retribution.

Keyword noise: birthday, celebration, photography.

You can see, now, why I wanted to end the London post series early – I didn’t want yesterday’s post to merge into it. Yesterday’s post was prepared some time ago, and the last of the London series was written nearly a week early too – see, there is planning involved in some of this.

Not many people at work observed the two minutes silence yesterday, as far as I could tell. I found a quiet part of the building, where I wasn’t on the security cameras and wasn’t likely to be interrupted, so I could spend a few minutes with my own thoughts. From what other people have said, it seems that most of the people I know who were personally affected did something similar – rather than join in some sort of group silence, they found somewhere quiet to sit and think on their own.^*

It’s been a bit stressful at work, coming back from a week away and trying to catch up on everything. “That’s nothing,” said Big Dave, “I was working 12-hour days while you were off. And I’ve been told I can’t take any holidays until the end of the month.” Fortunately noone has said anything like that to me since I returned.

Scanning got so boring that I’ve given in and bought an expensive digital camera. I’ve signed up for a Flickr account too, to try to avoid running out of disk space on this site; when there’s more on it than just daft test-shots of myself in the mirror, I’ll link to it.

(and with that, I’m going off out for the weekend. See you next week)

* and eat cake, which is the best way to remember someone who loved baking.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, camera, July 7th, London, photography, remembrance, terrorism.

Keyword noise: July 7th.

Two random people on the tube, a boy and a girl.

She is tickling him fiercely, and enjoying it. He is curled up, unable to move, shrieking and giggling loudly. The other passengers are moving away slightly.

“You scream like a GIRL!” she says, as he gets back upright.

“Bitch!” he says, affectionately, looking in her eyes.

“Tosser.” And they kiss, gently, on the lips.

I can’t tell how long they’re going to be together. A day? A week? Who knows? They certainly don’t know themselves. But I hope they stay friends afterwards, because there’s definitely a spark between them. Sometimes all you can do is enjoy the moment while it lasts.

* This was written whilst I was still in London, and was always going to be the final post in this block. There are still lots of photos I haven’t shown you, and lots I haven’t written about – the band Montoya, for one thing, or the Kandinsky exhibition, or some excellent cups of coffee. I wanted to be able to get on to other things, though, so this is being posted now, and tomorrow we’ll return to the normal non-specific rambling.

Keyword noise: holiday, holiday romance, London.

I walked around London a lot last week. Wednesday, for example.

I started in Islington, along the canal, and wandered downwards. Past the remains of City Road underground station, through Clerkenwell and Farringdon to Smithfield, along Charterhouse Street and Grand Avenue. I walked under the restored Temple Bar to St Pauls. Then across the Millennium Bridge.

Some sort of film shoot was going on on the Millennium Bridge. A Bollywood movie, maybe, or a dance video. I lurked about with my camera, trying to work out what was going on.

Keyword noise: canal, cathedral, City Road, disused, Grand Avenue, Islington, London, London Underground, Northern Line, Millennium Bridge, Regent's Canal, Smithfield, St Pauls, St Pauls Cathedral, station, Tate Modern, Temple Bar, underground.