Symbolic Forest

Of course, in the end we didn’t discuss Festival stuff at all, just drank ate and gossipped. After that, we wandered round the New Town looking for ideal places for our next Picnic (next Saturday), and looking in people’s front windows.

Notes on Thai food: if you see small purple chili-shaped things, that is what they are. Do not chew them, or your mouth will be irradiated.

As we walked around the New Town in the dusk, it started to rain. That part of the city in the rain always makes me think of Clientele songs, so as we walked I was humming softly to myself. The rain got heavier, fluming down the gutters of the steeper streets. At the corner of Queen Street and Dublin Street, the gutters were overflowing and pouring over the pavement and downhill in a rippled sheet.

We popped into a late-opening bookshop to think up cunning incentives to get people to come to the picnic. We went to a bar and dripped on the floor. Everyone else looked too stylish for me to feel comfortable in my sensible outdoor raincoat.

Keyword noise: Edinburgh, The Clientele, rain, weather.

So tonight, I’m off out for a meal with people (woo!) and we’re going to talk about what we want to go and see at the various Edinburgh Festivals. Because they’re almost here already.

I noticed that Richard Bloomfield^* has already started to put up on his site a list of the best stuff to go and see. I never have a clue what I want to see at the Festival, which is why I usually end up staying in and grumbling about the tourists getting in my way all the time. I’m tempted to make my own list, of events I might like, and tell you that they’re all rubbish. “Don’t go and see The Show That Caitlin Really Wants To See Show, it’s awful. You’d have more fun if you poured buckets of cold penguin spit over yourself.” That way, the word gets around, and I get to sit on my own watching the show and laughing evilly at my cunning plan. Afterwards, I get the bonus of telling everyone: “it’s really good, where were you?” and being all smug when it becomes a cult West End hit or whatever.

OK, I’m not really that evil. Laziness is more my thing; not bothering to go. Do penguins spit, anyway?

* Update, October 14th 2022: The link this originally went to is now very, very dead; and although there are other bloggers called Richard Bloomfield on the internet, I’m not 100% which is the former Edinburgh one.

Keyword noise: Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

I went outside today, but it was not a good idea. It was 8 hours ago, and I’ve been in sneezing fits ever since. Bloody hayfever.

Keyword noise: hayfever.

I haven’t been feeling very good lately. Pretty depressed. Very depressed, in fact.

Then, last night, I was drifting off to sleep whilst listening to the midnight news, and I started smiling and softly crying. Because this was on the radio.

Keyword noise: depression, news, trans, transgender.

… but the boss has decided to go away for a few days, and he’s the only one with the keys. So, the office itself is empty, and I have to just keep an eye on things from afar.

I’ve started recognising some of the same people I pass every day on the way to work, as I’m walking through the Meadows. Today, the Lesbian Couple were crossing Melville Drive at the same time as me, but I didn’t see the Girl With Cute Pink Trainers.

I did see lots of men in black suits and white bow ties, so i think it must be graduation week at the university. They all looked so well-groomed and confident. My graduation, I just looked like me. The photos are awful; they’re up on my parents’ wall right next to my dad’s graduation ones.

Walking through the Meadows every day plays hell with my hay fever. It feels like insects everywhere trying to crawl inside my nose and eyes and ears and scratching the back of my throat. Not nice. I wish it didn’t happen, and I could have summers without my nose gumming up, and sneezing all the time. I’ve been sleeping awfully because every time I lay down my sinuses just fill up with goo.

Keyword noise: work, hayfever, Edinburgh, people watching.

Today, work is just fixing my own stupid mistakes again. All morning, so far. Why is it always on Mondays, too? Grrr.

Still, noone has sent me any emails telling me I’m incompetant for several days now, which has to be a good sign.

Keyword noise: work.

This morning, on the way to work, I was listening to the first Saint Etienne album, and I suddenly thought: “Eeep, this music is over ten years old”.

It was a bit of a shock, really. I can cope with the idea that stuff from the seventies, or the early eighties, is old. But the music I was listening to when I was a teenager, when I first started to get into pop music—that’s still modern, isn’t it?

I had a similar sort of feeling the other night, at the B&S gig, when they sang the line: “It’s 1995: the girls are just friends.” Bloody hell, that’s seven years ago! I tend to forget that it’s over five years since I first bought one of their albums, and Sinister’s fifth birthday in a couple of months.

I guess all this just means I’m old now. Still, I’m hopefully going to see a friend in London at the weekend, and he’s sufficiently older than me (5 years? something like that) to make me feel like a wee kid still.

Update, 14^th October 2022: I’m not sure what I would have made, when I wrote this, of the idea that 19 years later I’d finally get to see Saint Etienne live and they’d still be including the song the title of this post is taken from in their setlist—although Sarah did need a crib-sheet for the lyrics to that particular one.

Keyword noise: music, Saint Etienne, Belle & Sebastian.

Sunday, about 12. I’m relaxing in the bath, thinking vaguely about shaving my legs, when the phone rings. Arrrgh.

It is, of course, Work, asking why website xxx is no longer working and can I do something about it. Yesterday, I went into the office to fix things which I shouldn’t have messed up—I should have spotted that changing Z would break innumerable other things, and I should have warned the boss not to go ahead with it. But I didn’t, because I hadn’t bothered to fully investigate the way the servers had been set up, so I didn’t realise it would happen. I feel like the extra in Dilbert who won an award for spending days of overtime fixing her own mistakes.

In other news, i went to the Belle and Sebastian gig in Glasgow on Thursday and had a damn good time. It wasn’t their best gig, but it was a lot better than the last one I saw them at, in Edinburgh. Nobody was dancing much, so I jumped up and down a bit.

Keyword noise: work, music, live music, Belle and Sebastian.

Hunting around for stuff this morning, I managed to find an old Auteurs album, on tape, that I hadn’t listened to for years. I put it on whilst walking to work. Ooh, it’s just like being a teenager again.

Keyword noise: music, The Auteurs.

I don’t wear much jewellery. Never have. I take after my mother, who who only wears her wedding ring and has never even had her ears pierced.

The other week—after wandering round the city with The Friend From The Suburbs looking for presents for The Australian because he’s going back to Australia—I bought a ring. Nothing special, just a polished stone ring from the National Museum shop. I’ve been wearing it most of the time since I bought it.

I’ve noticed—when I wake up in the morning now, without it on—that I’ve started to realise more when it’s missing that when it’s there. It’s becoming a part of my body-image. When I wake up in the morning, hand underneath my pillows, I have a negative spot on my left middle finger, where there is something missing. I didn’t think a change like that to my mental maps could happen so fast.

In other body-image news: walking through my local shopping centre today, I suddenly realised just how mirrored its interior is. And I hate it. I don’t want to have to see myself all the time.

Oh, last night’s dream: a race of space aliens were living in Holyrood Park, which is just by my flat (see above). They were silver-coloured, a bit like Cybermen but fatter and more organic. I would look up at the cliffs, and they would be stood on the edge (see below) waving at me. They wanted me to go back to their home planet with them; they said I would be worshipped or something; but it was all a big plot and I managed to run away.

Keyword noise: Edinburgh, shopping, jewellery, Holyrood Park, dreams.