Symbolic Forest

Colleague M has passed on the latest news on her sister Lydia’s ghosts. The start of the story is here.

Lydia was still worried about the argumentative ghosts that are haunting her house, according to the psychic she brought in last week. She was settling down, though, and her sleep was getting easier again. Until the other night, that is.

Her daughter – who hasn’t been told about the possible ghosts – had gone away for a couple of days to visit her grandparents, and was phoning home before bedtime. They were chatting away as normal, when the daughter said:

“Who’s that talking with you?”

Lydia had the telly on; she turned the sound off. “There’s noone here,” she said, “it must have been the TV. Can you still hear them?”

“I can still hear them, Mummy,” she said.

Lydia looked around: she definitely couldn’t hear anything herself. “What do they sound like?”

“It sounds like a man and a woman, arguing.”

So now, of course, Lydia is terrified again.

Keyword noise: Colleague M, ghosts, haunted house, poltergeist, psychic.

Heard on the radio this morning: a member of the Lords claiming that gay marriage Civil Partnerships are a bad thing because they’re unpatriotic.^* This country was built, apparently, on the values of two parents, their children, and the sacrament of marriage.^**

As I’ve said before, my mother is becoming part of the Genealogy Boom, one of the thousands of people who are using the internet to research the names of their ancestors. And, one of the good things about this is that the thousands of people doing this are finding out that the typical Family Values chorus – in the past, everyone lived in a happy, stable two-parent family and the world was a Better Place – really is a load of rubbish. In the past, people didn’t divorce. That’s because they couldn’t afford to. They still had affairs, though, and multiple relationships, and children out of wedlock. Every family has tangled knots in its family tree, because the people in the past really did behave just as badly, or well, as people do today. Family Values is a political myth, and nothing more.

* I tried to look up which specific homophobic peer I was listening to, but her name isn’t listed on the Today website running order, and I don’t want to have to listen to it all again just to catch her name.

** although she claimed that even though she was describing marriage as a sacrament she didn’t mean it in a religious way.

Keyword noise: Civil Partnership, conservatism, divorce, family, gay marriage, genealogy, history, homophobia, nuclear family, social conservatism.

Colleague M’s sister Lydia is having trouble with ghosts.

No, really. I’m not making it up, and I don’t think M is either. I don’t know her sister, and I think that a lot of this story sounds a little unlikely. But Lydia’s scared, because she’s having trouble with ghosts.

The first M or I heard about it was a couple of weeks ago, when we were visiting M’s mum, and Lydia phoned up in a great panic. She’d gone to bed early, and had been drifting off to sleep, when a man whispered something in her ear. She awoke, startled and panicking; you can’t blame her, because her small daughter was the only other person in the house. Lydia was convinced – for no apparent reason – that this meant her father was dangerously ill and didn’t have long to live.

Anyway, leading up to this, Lydia and her daughter had been having a lot of trouble with things going missing. The sort of problems, in fact, that might be blamed on poltergeists. Little things would disappear, be unfindable, then mysteriously pop up in somewhere they’d only just looked in. Things would vanish from Lydia’s makeup bag, for example – and then would reappear impossibly, on top of it, even though it definitely hadn’t been there just before.^* Secondly, just recently, Lydia got a kitten. Most of the time the kitten was happy, sleepy, purry, the way kittens usually are. Surprisingly often, though, it would start hissing and yowling, the way cats do at things they don’t like – but when there was nothing at all there. After thinking about the mysterious voice for a few days, Lydia started to wonder if all these things were connected; so, she went out and found a psychic.

The psychic she brought in was, I’m told, a very experienced psychic who is an expert at sorting out This Sort Of Thing. I’m not sure how you tell, or how you find psychics – is there a psychics category in the Yellow Pages? – but anyway, the Expert Psychic came in, sniffed around the house, and told Lydia that the house was very much haunted; which was why things kept going missing, and why the cat kept hissing at empty spaces. In fact, there were two ghosts living in Lydia’s house; they had quarrelled when they were alive, and they were quarrelling now. One of them – a man – was a nice friendly ghost; the other – a woman – was not. The friendly ghost was trying to protect Lydia from the other one, which was why she’d suddenly heard a man whispering in her ear: he was trying to warn her. The non-friendly ghost, on the other hand, kept stealing things and trying to possess the cat.^** The psychic said: “I’m going to take them both away with me now – but be careful, because after a while they’ll probably come back.”

Lydia, then, is terrified. Her house has apparently been occupied by two warring ghosts who could return at any moment. At any moment, one of them might try to possess her cat, or even her daughter. Even worse, her mascara keeps going missing. As fas as she can tell, anything might happen. If anything does, I’ll try to let you know.

* I was sceptical about the significance of disappearing makeup in a house where a young girl lived; but M assures me that it wasn’t her niece doing the disappearing.

** Seriously, I’m not making any of this up. The psychic might have been, but I’m not.

Keyword noise: Colleague M, ghosts, ghost hunter, haunted house, poltergeist, psychic.

A couple of things I meant to write about this week, but didn’t get around to:

Far more teenagers self-harm than previously thought. I’d like to say that I’m surprised, but I’m not. It’s puzzling, though, why self-harm is more popular here than anywhere else. For a long time, too, I’ve been thinking about writing an essay on the connection between self-harm and masochism: why do I feel that one is legitimate and the other somehow isn’t?

Little Britain isn’t funny,^* and just repeats a list of race and class stereotypes. This is news, apparently. Being an indie-snob, I’d like to point out that I thought Little Britain was rubbish years before anyone else did – before it was ever on the telly, even. I noticed it wasn’t that funny back in the days when it was still a radio show.

* this was originally a link to a Johann Hari article which has now disappeared into the memory-hole following the controversies that hit his career rather badly. However, I originally found it this blogpost from Chris Applegate which still contains a bit of a summary.

Keyword noise: comedy, cutting, Little Britain, masochism, self harm, snob.

Something feels wrong – it’s only December 1st and I’m already feeling all seasonal. Not so seasonal that I’ve started wrapping presents or writing cards, but seasonal nevertheless. Colleague M has already started putting up Christmas decorations. Big Dave is telling everyone what he’s getting his dad, and The Manager In Charge Of The Christmas Party is spending most of her waking hours pondering over the party seating plan, shuffling names around a complex spreadsheet with everyone’s food choices listed. I’ve been exchanging emails with all the friends who are coming back here for the holiday, planning trips to the pub; and I’m not even bored of Christmas music yet. This is definitely unusual.

Keyword noise: Advent, Yuletide, Christmas, Big Dave, Colleague M, colleagues.

Last night: to the local cinema for the first time in ages, with my friend Mystery Filmgoer, to see Harry Potter and the Empire That Struck Back Goblet of Fire whilst it was still on. As I’ve not seen any of the three preceding films I wasn’t too hot on the idea of going at first; but I have recently read the book; so I thought the film would be an interesting comparison.

I didn’t like the plot structure of the book, because I thought the final rabbit-out-of-the-hat plot twist was far too unshadowed and unexpected. The film completely solves that, by actually mentioning the main Evil Villain^* more than once before the end, and adding in lots of extra clues along the way. Plus, he is definitely one of the sexiest evil villains I’ve seen for a long time.^** An awful lot of subplots were stripped out of the book, but it still feels like a very crammed film, with far too many points left unexplained. If I hadn’t read the book, I don’t think I’d have had a clue what was happening at some points.

In other ways, it’s very unbalanced. The middle act is mostly light-hearted teenage embarrasment comedy; then the ending swings completely round to gloom, darkness, and foreboding. There’s nothing happy about the ending at all; just death, destruction, and the appearance of the real Evil Villain Who Is More Evil Than Anyone Else.^***

The effects are all very, well, magical, and the design does seem very solid and well-thought. It does seem that if you’re a British wizard you’re expected to be a big fan of Victorian Gothic and the Arts and Crafts movement; and the design of Hogwarts’ bathing piers made me think more than anything of the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway. Like all British films, too, you have the fun of spotting all the usual British actors: That Bloke From The Fast Show, That Bloke From Drop The Dead Donkey, That Bloke Who You’re Sure Was Dead By Now, and Ooh, Isn’t He The Sexy One Who’s Going To Be The Next Doctor?^****

I had a good time watching it, but it’s definitely not a stand-alone film, what with the lack of explanation and the dark, anti-climatic ending. The point of which, I suppose, is that in a year’s time I will probably want to see the next one.

* I don’t mean Voldemort, I mean the chap who is his Evil Sidekick and actually does all the dirty work

** although Mystery Filmgoer disagreed loudly on this

*** “My evil overlord’s got no nose!” “How does he smell?” “Awful!!!”

**** I think Mystery Filmgoer was probably going to slap me if I called him sexy again

Keyword noise: Brighton And Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway, David Tennant, gothic, Harry Potter, J K Rowling, Victorian Gothic, film.

Christmas shopping for the second weekend running. I might not have bought any presents yet still, but I’m well stocked-up on cards now.

Stupid social worry #273: will people at the office mind when lots of them end up getting the same design of card? All the 10- or 20-card multipacks, you see, only have one or two different designs in. I’m worried that everyone at work is going to be comparing notes: “Oh, he gave you the same design as him, but I got the same one as her.” Which, clearly, is nonsense; but that doesn’t stop me worrying about it.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, Christmas cards, colleagues, anxiety.

Yesterday,^* we had the first snow of winter. When I left the house in the morning it was cold but dry; ten minutes from the office a few flakes started to appear in the air, and by the time I was inside at my desk everywhere already had a good covering.

Today, I got up, and the snow was gone. I had to go in to work again; it was the first time I’d been working out of hours, in my normal clothes,^** since the Christmas holiday week last year. The weather was cold, windy, the air clear with a hint of rain. Normal English winter weather, in other words, and with everything in combination I felt seasonal for the first time this winter – it was Just Like Christmas.

(Sleighbells, to fade.)

* When I didn’t post, as I was rushed off my feet at work – hence going in today – and had been invited round to Colleague M’s mum’s house for tea afterwards.

** Even though I spend most of my waking time at work, and I wear office clothes five days out of seven, I still think of the other clothes as my normal ones.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, ice, seasons, snow, weather, winter.

I need help.

I have no idea what to get my mother for Christmas. No clue at all.

She’s the worst person in the world to buy presents for. She doesn’t like smelly things. She doesn’t wear makeup or perfume. She’s on a strictly-controlled diet. She rarely wears jewellery. She has so many unread books and unwatched DVDs that it’ll take her a year or two to get through them all. She doesn’t like ornaments, because they complicate dusting. In other words, she’s awful when Christmas and her birthday come around.

So, any ideas?

Keyword noise: Christmas, gift ideas, gifts, presents, The Mother.

Feeling dark and downtrodden still, and nothing creative has been coming to mind. When I’m home from work, all I want to do is stretch out on the sofa and let my mind idle. When I’m at work, I’m too busy, well, working, rebuilding and reindexing database after database in desperate attempts to shave percentage points off their performance.

When I sit back and let my mind idle, there are usually a few images that float into my head by themselves. Lately, when I relax, I start thinking about yggdrasil, the tree that binds the worlds together. I’m not sure why, but it helps to remind me that everything we do is interconnected.

Keyword noise: archetype, darkness, databases, interconnection, mythology, subconsious, yggdrasil.