The editor of The Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson, is trying to spoil my Christmas! At least he was in one of the more surreal dreams I've had recently. There I was wandering about a bus station dressed in an interstingly gothic fashion, puzzling how my ears had suddenly become pierced, when I decided to go visit a shop to buy Christmas cards. The shop had a neat system where you could go onto a computer and design your own cards that they'd print out for you. I also discovered they sold wine, curiously in a similar fashion. However before my wine got, err, printed out, the editor of The Spectator got to it so instead of the nice glass bottle of wine I was hoping for it came out as a plastic two litre bottle of lemonade. That was supposed to be the present I was taking along to the imaginary Christmas dinner party I'd been invited to. Tsk. My subconscious is obviously trying to tell me something, never trust editors of right-wing political magazines, they will turn your wine into lemonade. Or something. Still, what can you expect from such an economic libertarian and I suppose it's an improvement on the pit of snakes.

Meanwhile, in what passes for the real world, I continue to do things whilst leaving other stuff undone. On this occasion the stuff done included to compiling of various musical selections to share with my good friend bethnoir who has recently been most kind in sending me some little presents. The stuff not done generally consisted of the usual; tidying the flat, writing more poetry and talking to real people. I remain, you might say, somewhat intrigued as to the factors that apparently must affect my motivation when it comes to particular tasks. Still, I have specific plans for further useful and productive activities for tomorrow which, if completed, may take me a few small steps closer towards becoming a real person. At least I would have managed to make slightly more active use of my weekend than I have the previous two, which would be a mildly pleasing thing.

I do still find myself wondering though whether or not that particular cake may be a lie. Is my anxiety and peculiar separation from the world around me too much a part of my personality to be really rewritten? A certain price perhaps of a relatively thoughtful and creative mind, similar to the necessary separation described by Virgina Woolf in a 'Room of One's Own'? Still, I am neither literary literary genius nor, like Woolf or Plath, a woman but its interesting to note the relatively high levels of instability (one more than the actors, loads more than the artists!) apparently inherent within the writing profession. Or is there anything really there to change and is this just how the world is generally experienced? I can't tell. Still, I would like to feel generally more connected and generally more me in the world. Hopefully someday I shall. I will keep trying anyways in my own haphazard way and see what happens. Now though, if you'll excuse I must be off to bed to see if my brain might have any more in the way of surreal storylines cooked up for me. Hopefully tomorrow I shall be able to quell the angst about Christmas presents, tidying, job hunting and the myriad other things my nerves rebel at to do good things. Either way though, I do look forward to seeing you around and sharing the Traüme. (It's sort of a pun you see as 'Traüme' is the German for 'dreams' and, oh nevermind...) Good night, x.

Another bunch of dreams in which I got to taste the inevitibility of my own mortality. This time my brain engaged its creative powers to imagine how it might feel to be vapourised in giant explosion. It kind of tingles. I was on some kind of exploding starship that had apparently been caught in a time loop of sorts so that I had the fun of experiencing the unpleasant sensation of being erased from existence numerous times. Each time though I retained the memory of the previous experience and was busy puzzling how I might persuade the ship not to self-destruct but I woke before I had time to discover how this plot stolen from some popular sci-fi series or other was concluded. It was also a rather wet and windy morning too (perhaps the weather has something to do with the nightmares, I did read somewhere once that disturbing dreams are more likely in cold environments) so again it was with even more reluctance than usual that I hauled myself out of my death bed, even despite my recent incinerations.

The day itself however proved generally a pretty quiet affair, perhaps on account of the weather. For my first class of the morning only two out of six people turned up and then for the second it was only one out of six! My class of one did prove reasonably enjoyable though, allowing me to concentrate on guiding them through the intricacies of email without needing to worry about what everyone else might be doing. It also allowed me to play with the new software that we've had installed on some of the computers, Windows 7 and the latest Microsoft Office. The former seemed to involve a lot of unnecessarily large and somewhat unattractive icons though other parts looked more swishy. I only really had a quick fiddle with it though. The new Microsoft Word did look interesting though with a number of new features which could possibly make writing up university essays somewhat more straigthforward. Or possibly just pointlessly more complicated. Still, it will be a while yet before I can afford such an upgrade myself so I doubt I shall be discovering how well all those new features work for a while. Still, I should be getting to play more with Windows 7 at the Coliseum as time goes on.

After my classes I also got to play a bit more with the website, now moved to a shiny new host, not that this makes any difference to the actual maintaining of the thing. Anyways I had a couple of interesting new events to add to the calendar including it seems an exhibition of Matisse in December. Or at least I would have done had the network not then decided to break down as it often does. Fortunately I'd already uploaded all the necessary images to site by then though so I was able to log in when I got home and use them to compile the new entries. I also had to go about reconnecting some of the links which had decided to disconnect themselves in the move to the new host. One of my older entries also seems to have entirely disappeared for some reason. Unfortunately however, the tedious javascript snowflakes managed to survive the transfer! Do feel free to go have a look at my efforts should you happen to be excruciatingly bored and marvel at the newness.

My afternoon at the shop also proved to be a pretty quiet affair. I did have some customers though and we managed somewhat higher takings than were apparently acheived on Monday still I was never particularly rushed. A good portion of my time was spent wandering about an empty shop in search of something to tidy up or rearrange. I've had rather more active times. Indeed it does seem somewhat indicative of my general state of being of late. I seem to be managing to be busy yet apparently not particularly achieving very much of note. Not that my dinky little website additions and other online communications are not worthwhile things, but I yet remain far from employed, my flat remains remorselessly untidy and I have yet to finish a poem amongst various other things I feel like I ought to be doing. Perhaps I expect too much of myself, perhaps I need to work on being more confident and active. Probably a combination of both though I don't know if mine is the clearest of perspectives on the matter. Still, I can but try to me and hope I supposes. Anyways tomorrow I have a deeply uninspiring appointment at the jobcentre which I must attend in order not to starve. Otherwise the day will be mine to try and make something of. Hopefully some good things will emerge, so long as I don't die in my sleep too many times before I get there! Sweet dreams.

Waking from unpleasant nightmares about being trapped in a pit full of venomous snakes, (impressive though how the brain is capable of imagining a convincing sensation of pointy serpent fangs biting through the skin and the hot sting of lethal poison entering the veins, I mean how would it know?) I looked out the window to discover there was a considerable quantity of weather outside. The kind of morning that could lead anyone to debate the wisdom of getting up from a nice warm bed, had it not been so full of snakes. So with some degree of ambivalence I went through the morning rituals before stepping out into the wind and rains, humming as psychotically jaunty a tune as I could manage. Fortunately I managed to make it down to the Coliseum without drowning and the rains had managed to more or less wash away any disturbing echoes in my mind from my repeated deaths in my dreams.

Naturally of course when I got there I was told there was really very little for me to do today and I could possibly just go home if I wanted. Hm. Still, somehow or other I still managed to find myself enough tasks to keep me occupied until closing at five in the evening. The first of these tasks was the artistic challenge of putting up various posters about the computer room, extolling the virtues of being online and the courses that we give. This being a government funded project they all tended to be of a somewhat generic variety featuring the smiling faces of nondescript representatives of particular social groups detailing all the useful things they were able to do on the Internet. Secondly, Maureen and I trauled through the website which is supposed to help support UK Online Centres like ourselves and tried, without much success, to decipher the arcane riddles and obscure criteria that surrounded the funding grants we could apply for. It would be nice if we were able to update our ageing machines just a little, I might be able to do more interesting things with pictures on the website then and it would be nice if things didn't break so much.

Anyways, speaking of the website it seems I also managed to arrive somewhere in the middle of a small dispute about its future. It seems it had been planned, or had for some reason become necessary, to move the website to a new host. The person who currently sorts of the hosting, and had originally set up the website to begin with, had apparently offered to do this transfer for us. However the trustees seemed to have decided they had better, or rather cheaper, ideas and wanted to go with a different host. They also rather seemed to imagine that little me would be able to do all this. Probably I could work it out, but I've never actually gone about the process of arranging a webhost and FTPs and so on before, so it would take me a while and really didn't they want it all offline whilst I figured out how to work the thing or just let the nice man do it who knows about this sort of thing? I rather felt like though I'd come in halfway through the conversation with people talking about who had what and was funded by whom and such. I'm not even really sure why the webhosting has to be moved. Perhaps I should have paid more attention at earlier times when people were talking, Still, I only came as a volunteer to help teach the courses. I took on the website maintenance because I could (learning the interface on the fly) and no one else seemed to. If they expect me to do any more, well, they'd have to at least give me some time to work out how. Trying to explain what I do know about the intrcacies of website building to utterly non-technical people has its limitations too. In the end though, we managed to persuade them to go with the nice man. At least I think that's what was decided.

Anyways, at the moment the website seems to have been disappeared from the web so it seems some kind of change is afoot. It's probably a good thing its disappeared for now as, speaking of visual snow as I was in my last entry, Maureen thought it might be a great idea, whilst I was adding a new event to the calendar, (an evening with a clairvoyant, surely people should just know it was on?!) that I add some delightful Christmas affects to the website such as falling snow and so forth. Ah yes, those fantastically irritating little animations that add nothing but tedious clutter and a kitschness to an otherwise clean and straightforward website. Joy. Perhaps fortunately my skills are relatively limited so I was only able to add a very basic little bit of javascript that caused little white dots to tumble down the front page. I will entirely disown any further such additions to the website whenever it should come back online!

Eventually anyways I was able to trundle back home, fortunately the rains had stopped by then though the wind remains fairly windy even now. I spent my evening sitting, trying not to think about snakes or websites and later, watching television with some stupid glasses which provided a vague, sort of illusion of lending a small amount of extra depth to the pictures! Now I recall why the early 3D technology never really caught on in the big way that some people hoped. It was rubbish. Oh well, it was enough for a certain small amusement I suppose. I'm somewhat looking forward to seeing Udo Kier in 'Flesh For Frankenstein 3D' tomorrow! They be showing 'Friday The 13th Part II in 3D' later in the week too. Tee-hee! Now though I fear the aching in my head is trying to stage a comeback, and I'm annoyingly out of drugs, so it be time for me to slither off to bed methinks. Hopefully I shall have no more serpents in my dreams tonight and my day ahead at the shop will be nice and tranquil and migraine free. Can't say I feel too eagerly hopeful at present but we'll see. In the meanwhile, I hopes the world is being kind to everyone else. Goodnights.

I'm not entirely sure where most of today went. I spent much of in something of a squishy, migrainey daze and the evening seemed to arrive with undue haste. In such a state though I suppose that is preferable to letting the time drag and I do remember certain events occurring. At some point I was able to acquire myself a newspaper, although I've yet to read any of it, and on another I was rather unpleasantly sick. Still, it's been a long time (indeed I can't precisely remember how long) since I've actually done that and I did start to feel vaguely better afterwards although that might have been something to do with the tasty painkillers. The one other thing I can particularly remember doing today though is I was actually finally able to pay my rent. For once my landlady and I happened to be in the same place at the same time and I could scribble out a cheque for the past 18 weeks! Heh, and despite any suggestions about acquiring bank account details I don't particularly imagine I'll be paying any rent again for the rest of this year at least.

Apart from those little moments though I've not really got much idea where the day went. I imagine whatever I did it involved a lot of being slumped upon the sofa, marvelling at the visual snow and trying to avoid looking at anything too bright. Still even if I had been in much of a mood to watch TV today it didn't seem to be in much of a mood to show anything. I assume this was down to the stormy weather in the south (which turned out to be somewhat disappointingly lacking up here). For most of the day BBC 1 wasn't showing anything but a black screen which did lead to me fear I might miss the opportunity of seeing the new Dr. Who tomorrow! It seems to be back now though so hopefully my brain too will be alive enough to watch the scary space things. Still, I suppose there's always iPlayer if all else fails. Next week too of course we have the, err, excitement of Channel 4's 3D Week. Not sure if it will be the most multi-dimensional of experiences. My experiments with watching the trailers haven't produced any particularly dazzling affects. Why Channel 4 are only giving away glasses at Sainsburys, the nearest branch being a squillion miles away, is question in point. Still, I shall see if the glasses I do have will work at all, not that I'm really that interested in seeing the queen in three dimensions, although Derren Brown might be a bit more fun.

Hm, I wonder if my experiments in the third dimension might have any baring on the development of my migraine, but I imagine it's largely just down to general tiredness. It's been a few weeks since I was last struck with one anyways so I suppose it was about time I had another. Where would be after all if we failed to keep up with tradition!? Can't have a brain that actually works properly, such a thing just wouldn't be British! Well, at least it's settled down a bit and I'm not feeling quite so fuzzy and squished now. Hopefully I shall be able to wake tomorrow all bright and shiny and, umm, twinkly. Well as long as I'm alive enough to watch Dr. Who anyways, what else really matters other than that after all?! Well anywho, I hopes everyone be having themselves a pleasant weekend, I'm off to collapse in my basket again. Poke me with a stick when it starts. :)

It feels like I have finally reached the end of what has been a particularly strenous week. Or maybe that is just the affects of today. Either way I'm still glad that I can now fall over and not have to get up again for a while. At least today I just about got everything done that I had been wanting to do at the shop. The fiction section is now fully up to date after I rotated all the stock, that is taking off all the books that have been on there too long (i.e. all of them) and replacing them with new books. I'd got halfway through on Tuesday and was able to finish it off today. Admittedly since stocks are limited this meant returning much of the stock I'd taken off on Tuesday back to the shelves with new dates. Still I did make sure I put all the shiny, newer stuff on first. In an ideal world of course the books would be kept up to date constantly and, keeping on top of things, rotation would be nearly so arduous a task but then it's difficult to get the stock, or the staff. Anyways next week I shall see if I can have a go at the romance novels (which live in separate section to other fiction) and see what I can do with non-fiction. That's if I don't have to be on the till anyways. Still, for now my little books may not be in anything close to alphabetical order but they are at least all nicely up to date.

So that was pretty much how I spent my hours at the shop today. Now I finds myself to be something of a squishy brained creature, listening to winds rattling the windows. The rain seems to have stopped for now, though it's apparently forecast to be somewhat stormy this weekend. Nevermind, it's not as though I shall going off anywhere. Still I wouldn't mind being able to do certain productive things this weekend, tidying and such, but after my efforts of this week I suppose I wouldn't mind too much if I spent a good proportion of my time curled up in my basket. Whilst I'm rather too wearied to be mustering any great sense of feeling either way on the matter I did do things this week. Hm, I also don't seem to have much of the will to muster any degree of eurdition on the subject as I might of hoped when I started typing this entry either! Oh well, I suppose I shall just have to scamper off and can see if I can persuade my little head not to ache any further and allow me to find my way to sleeps. At least now it seems livejournal has a new feature in that the time for the journal entry updates itself whilst you type. So now I don't have to go through the extra task of altering the time from when I began to write to when I finished. That saves me a good few seconds! Anyways, hopes everyone has a fun weekend. Night nights.

Well I think that all went reasonably well in the end. I had a class of 5 to teach on my own today, 6 were scheduled but one of them didn't turn up. I was mildly dismayed not to find any helpful notes in the students folders as I told there might be put there but I was able to find something for them all to do with the time. Not sure precisely if anyone learned anything but everyone seemed reasonably happy when they left and no one died, so that be good! The system did have a go at being awkward from time to time. I've found that in the little quizzes that come at the end of each module, on the questions where there is more than one right answer to select, it sometimes decides for itself that they haven't chosen all the right ones, even when they quite patently have! Other difficulties tend just to revolve around things being frustratingly slow or just freezing. It's somewhat funny trying to advise people to be patient with things when it would be just about at that time with my little laptop here at home when I'd be inventing colourful new phrases to growl at the machine. Still, in the main things went ok and I might even have been vaguely helpful to my students on one or even two occasions!

One person to whom I proved rather less helpful to though was a man who came in later to use the services of the internet cafe. That really wasn't my fault. Apparently he'd been asking for a while whether we might download Photoshop, or at least the trial version, for his use on one of the computers. So the one note I did get today was to ask me whether I would download and install the thing for when he came in the afternoon. This ended up taking a little longer than expected as for some reason the computer took a while to let me log on with administrator password. So, just an hour later than planned I eventually managed to get the thing downloaded and installed. Only then did we discover that it ran excruciatingly slowly and I found out, much to my surprise, that the computers that they use at the Coliseum only have 480MB of RAM. That's even less than my laptop has and less than half of what would be required to run Photoshop. Heh, I don't think the man was too happy when he left, still not much that I could really do about it. Still I was surprised to discover the computers down there are just a little less powerful than my own slowly disintegrating 5 year old laptop. Still they are just a humble charity, and generally the computers are only used for basic internet purposes. It does though perhaps explain why things do have the tendency to freeze up whilst teaching the courses.

Oh well, you can't please everybody all of the time and I still think I did relatively well with my teaching today. Somewhat ironically though when it came to my appointment with the nice lady from Intraining she was having a few technical problems of her own so the exciting assessment as I was going to do will have to wait until my next appointment. It meant at least I could scamper home a little earlier than I had anticipated and catch up on some rests. Generally though I am relieved to have got through the day although I should perhaps prefer it if I could find myself feeling more pleased than merely relieved. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to feel properly good about something I've done rather than merely thankful I didn't destroy anything. Now of course I hope I can drag myself through one last afternoon at the shop before the weekend, rather than looking forward to the opportunity to do useful things at the shop before the weekend. Strange how whilst I know it would be more helpful to have a more positive perspective my brain yet resolutely refuses to feel it. Smrrs.

So, I'm a positive/negative, warily pleased and nervously hopeful sort of beast at the moment. Perplexing as it may be I suppose it's a not a sense that I'm entirely unsed to. One thing at least that did cause me to smile in an unalloyed fashion was the lovely gift of musics and letter that I got from my dear friend bethnoir today, so I must thank her muchly for that. Now though, besides being a wolf of mixed feelings I also be rather tired so I'm off to go curl up in my basket. Hopes everyone else is well and looking forward to a pleasant weekend. Goodnight, and I looks forward to seeing you again with the next exciting bulletin! Heh.

Smrrs. Whatever made me think it would be a good idea to suggest I come in to help with classes this morning when I didn't have to? I could have spent the time usefully tidying the flat or, perhaps more probably, with extra sleeps! Oh yes, it was because I was a nervous beast at the prospect of taking classes all by myself next morning and wanted more practice and reassurance. Eeps. Oh well, I've done a class on my own before, and that when I wasn't really expecting. Hopefully then this will go ok. I thinks I knows what I'm supposed to be doing, Maureen is going to put notes in the folders of anyone she wants to do specific things, otherwise they can get on with whatever they be doing and I can wander around and try and make helpful noises at them. Hopefully all will go well, but I still be a nervous beast.

I am rather a sleepy beast too though. I seem to have done quite a bit of works this week without particularly achieving anything. On Monday I added some new writings to the Coliseum cafe page of Network's website. Supposedly at some point the cafe's new management were going to take new pictures of the workforce and things for me to decorate the page with but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Still, I have knocked up a poster, at their request, using the pictures I had got which would, as they requested, associate the cafe with the building of the Coliseum. I also got to play with the magic laminating machine and inhale molten plastic fumes in the process! Here it be (imagine it A3 sized):



Rubbish isn't it? I was at least two minutes stitching it together in Microsoft Publisher. Still, it's roughly the layout they requested, with additional colourings by me, and they seemed happy with it. My work now adorns a little sign out on the pavement, my first public exhibition! Heh, anywho, another half-finished thing this week is my efforts organising the books at the shop. Since Brigid, our usual book lady is away in Rome at the moment I got to have a go at doing the rotation. As it turned out though we are incredibly behind with it so this entailed removing more or less every book from the shelves and replacing it with something else. I got about halfway through the fiction section until I ran out of time, and new stock. After I spent today on the till though there are now more books in store so hopefully tomorrow, assuming I don't have to do the till again, I can get the job. I dislike leaving it unfinished and disorganised. Really though we've far too many books for one person coming in one afternoon a week to keep on top of. I wouldn't mind taking command of the book department myself but my skills are required for the till and elsewhere. We are only volunteers after all. Still I would like to have the books all ordered and up to date by the end of Friday. We shall see if I get that opportunity.

Before then of course I have me some IT classes to teach and be nervous about. Then in the afternoon I'll have me another delightful appointment with the lady from 'Intraining' where I will get to do a thrilling personal assessment of excruciatingly exciting multiple choice questions. Whether any of it is going to get me any closer to finding someone who'll actually pay me to do things remains to be seen. Still, it's been a busy week and looks like it's going to continue to be. Funny how I can manage to be active and do these things when called upon by other people and yet set so often by myself I find myself sitting, thinking about things, and not doing anything. I vex and perplex and contradict myself in various ways. At the moment though I'm just a little nervous thing, hoping I shall get through all my scheduled tasks for the rest of this week so I can reach the sunny uplands of the weekend unscathed, and watch the new Dr. Who epsiode. We'll see.

Oh, and I was called by my landlady today who asked if I wasn't in during afternoons anymore since she'd been up a few times and I wasn't there. Heh, well I'm a busy puppy at the moment. I know though I haven't paid the rent in a while, still I think this is what that direct debit type thing we suggested be set up when I first moved in was for. Meh. Oh well, I'll worry about that later, I'm already more than well supplied with things to be nervous about! Hopefully at some point though I'll be able to sit down and actually feel good about doing things. I wonder at what stage I will actually satisfy myself that I have really acheived anything of real worth? Hopefully I'll find out sometime soon. For now though methinks, time for some sightly earlier than usual sleeps if I can. Hopes the world is being kind to everyone, wish me luck and hugs!

So I shamble haphazardly to the end of another dramatically pointless weekend. The degree pointlessness can perhaps be best illustrated by the fact I just spent the evening watching Die Hard 4. Well I suppose I haven't spent all time watching things explode, I have done a certain quanitiy of writing to people and reading of book but apart from that it's largely been a case of sitting, staring at things and an excessive amount of sleeping. Unfortunately my brain hasn't been in the mood for constructive activities at all, even the Guardian weekend crossword seemed to be particularly difficult this week! In theory I should now be rested, but I don't really feel it. I'm more just grumpy at myself for not doing anything really useful, like tidy the flat, write a poem or spend more than fifteen minutes outdoors. I've thought about doing all those things and more but the gap between thought and action remains large. That in itself is tiresome.

Perhaps though I expect too much of myself. My perfectionist side always imagines I should be doing things all the time and is never satisfied with the results when I do actually do things. I'm aware the stick I have to measure things against may be a little warped. Still it is a tedious thing to feel I'm not quite acting as myself even when no other people are watching. There are odd times of course, in the random variations of my moods, when I am able to poke myself into action and straightforwardly get on with those things I want and/or need to do. The bunny rabbit at the controls does occasionally slide over and let me have a go. A shame I can't just be like that all the time though. I always imagine that doing stuff and being who you are ought to be pretty well automatic. Obviously I'm mistaken, in one way or another. Well hopefully someday soon my brain will learn which way that is and perhaps do something about its reward circuitry or somesuch. I'll never be perfect, but I sure feel I could still be a lot better at this living thing.

Still I've not committed any capital crimes this weekend and whilst the flat remains a mess, I've perhaps made the worlds of one or two people marginally brighter by my little additions to them. So that's something. I should still go down and read and my electricity meter at some point though and various other things, some of which I know I'd enjoy which is the annoying thing. Oh well, tomorrow I shall be scampering down to the Coliseum so perhaps I may be able to glean some satisfaction out of adding things to Network's website which might help make me feel like more of a real and deserving human being. For now I just have a faint sliver of pain pulsing in the right corner of my brain and a somewhat weary sense of dissatisfaction. I've had plenty of sleep though. Still I suppose I shall see what changes in my mood I might be able to engineer in the week ahead. At least there's the new Dr. Who to look forward to next weekend I suppose, and that's much more sensible than Die Hard!

Well anyways, I hopes that everyone has themselves been enjoying an amusing weekend and I look forward to sharing the week ahead with you. The care and friendships does help if I sound overly grumpy, that's just me being me, not very efficiently. Heh. So anywho, off we goes then. Over to you bunny...

Ooh, sparkles! Well, I haven't really seen that many pretty twinklings in the sky this bonfire night but it was a Thursday I suppose and doubtless there will be more come the weekend which is now very nearly here. Just one more day at the shop before I can allow myself to crumple into a little heap and ignore the world for a while. Yay! Heh, well I suppose it has been a reasonably busy week even with the town relatively empty after the festivities of the week before. I shall be glad for a little time out anyways, it should allow my brain a moment off from pointlessly expending energy worrying about unnecessary things and, just maybe, try and turn my perspective and attentions to more productive matters.

Anyways, my appointment today with the lady from 'Intraining' turned out ok if largely uninspiring. A fair amount of form-filling was involved with the prospect of a further exciting assessment to come. Do you question the actual usefulness of all this tedious paperwork? Strongly Agree/Agree/Neither Agree nor Disagree... err, well anywho. Hopefully somewhere along the line something good will come out of it. The woman I saw seemed nice enough and I got through it only losing the power of human speech on a couple of occasions. I don't know if she'll have noticed. The sensations of it veritably scream in me when it happens but as to how much of it shows on the surface I really don't know. In this case I had the peculiar sense of the word I was trying to say (or the thought of the word) being almost physically lodged sideways in brain, I could get a hold of it but couldn't it drag it down the pipes. Odd. Still, I don't know whether the way I experience the world is in any way special compared to the way everyone else does. Still, whilst I have no wish for a perfectly trouble free existence, I would just like the sense that I was connected to the world and acting from my own will and choices. Well we'll see, maybe yet they'll teach me new confidence skills and I shall be able to make myself just a little more expressively myself.

For now though, I have a day at the shop to get through. Hopefully that will go reasonably smoothly with no unwanted scary things. Then I might be able to sit down, let my brain process stuffs and try and get it set for the prospect of all this new learnings. Oh, one other interesting thing of note though is apparently I seem to have made some kind of impression at the Coliseum with my swishy web programming skills. I'm told the trustees have been talking about me anyways, though whether that is anything to get particularly excited about it is really rather difficult to tell. Anyways, it just shows I'm not paranoid, people really are talking about me behind my back! Heh. Well, who knows, it would be nice one day to actually find someone who might be willing to actually pay me to do stuff. It would very much be an important step forward in what is ultimately my more important goal, becoming secure in my own value, space and skin.

Well, anywho, I hopes that everyone has themselves a nice weekend in prospect, I look forward to seeing you there...

I recently read an article that 'the EU Court of Human Rights had ruled against the use of crucifixes in Italian classrooms'. Seems like a sensible ruling to me. I mean, I know schoolchildren can be a bit unruly at times but that does seem to be taking things a little too far! The cane was was one thing... err... *ahem*

Anyways, from that bit of nonsense and onto other equally sensible things! Today at the shop was reasonably busy after the exceptional quiet of yesterday. We have new Christmas giftware in though which is a little bit scary. Christmas already?! And gifts?! I've really no idea what to be getting people this Christmas. I'm afraid all my good ideas have been used up and whilst the things in the shop are perhaps not quite so hideously tasteless as previous year's supplies have been I doubt that a miniature snow globe or photo frame surrounded meerkats is really going to appeal to my target audience. Oh well, there's more than a month to go yet and my brains have other things to obsessively worrying about at the moment.

Among those things are tomorrow's appointment with, what I imagine will be, a very nice and friendly from the 'Intraining' company. These are the people who are going to be taking over efforts from the people at the jobcentre in helping me find gainful employments. Whether anything will come out of it, well, I can but wait and see. In the meantime though my brain seems to be eagerly taking this opportunity of meeting new people as the perfect excuse for a little extra pointless anxiety. These are strange sensations, particularly since I know perfectly well there's nothing to worry about, but they remain unpleasant. It really is nonsense on stilts though. I mean the interview itself will be in a room directly above the place where this morning I've been teaching (if in a little uncertain and haphazard manner) other people how to use computers. Why doesn't my exceptionally dense brain learn not to be so nervous about these things? Stupid personality.

Oh well, after my interview I will then have to scamper off for a thrillingly tedious appointment to sign on at the jobcentre. I still have to go through that bit despite my support being given over to the other company. One of the fun idea my brain seems to be trying to invent for me to be frightened about is that either my first appointment will be of a such a duration (it's at 10, I sign on at 11:50) that I'll be late at the jobcentre or some general confusion between the two will lead me to being, err, eaten by a passing hydra or something maybe? Heh, well it's about as much sense as my fears usually make but it doesn't seem to stop me feeling them. To be fair though the jobcentre has once already managed to cancel claim for no reason, which made for a fun couple of weeks.

Hm, anyways, the purpose of this little entry, besides making that terrible joke at the beginning which I'm secretly quite pleased with, was to try in some way to point out just what nonsense on stilts these nerves of mine are. I doubt it will change much but still hopefully I'll pile up enough evidence one of these days that maybe I shall learn just a little confidence. Just enough to get by and be myself. Just enough that the little bunny rabbit that be operating the controls might actually press the buttons to which I direct it.

After pawing ineffectually at the buttons on my alarm clock several times and wondering why it wasn't turning off, I eventually woke up this morning and was decidedly confused having thought that I already had. Hm, dreaming of waking up and getting out of bed to turn off the alarm seems rather an unfair trick of my subconscious play just before I do actually wake up. I spent several minutes glaring at the clock after I woke, demanding to know why it was still playing after I had turned it off. It wasn't it's fault though, poor thing. Really though, having to wake up is effort enough without my brain trying to foolme with such games. Methinks it was rather unwilling to be woken early and so intended to have me dream my way through the day whilst it got up to whatever misceivous activities the brain does whilst we're sleeping.

Ah well, despite that somewhat faltering start I did eventually reconnect myself with the real world (at least insofar as I ever do) and made my bleary way down to the Coliseum. Fortunately as it turned out I did actualy manage to rustle up some useful things for me to do there. I thinks I might have been a bit grumpy had I got myself up for the day only to find I could have reamined in my pretend world a little longer. As it was though I was able to do quite a bit of good works updating Whitby Network's website with details of several new forthcoming events. Do go scamper over and have a look at my efforts, it almost borders on the exciting! Anyways, it was pleasing to be able to do someproductive things, and as the litttle webstats thing seems to suggest people have been viewing my posts, hopefully worthwhile and useful to someone.

So that, and a brief chance encounter with a friend made for a nicely quiet and modestly, yet pleasingly, productive day. My brain even made up somewhat for its tricks of the early morning by actually managing sustain a conversation for a little while too! Heh. It was a little strange though, after the fantastic crowds of the weekend, to see Whitby go back to the quiet state of small seaside town in winter. I suppose that will be the last of the big crowds for the year and it will all start wind down towards Christmas. The weather seems to have picked up on tha, the weekend rains having finally ushered in the cold air after an unseasonable period of mildness. Thus far though I have managed to avoid the expense of turning the heating on and just made use of an extra jumper! Still, the cold doesn't really bother me as much as the heat can. Heh, I wouldn't mind if it could hold off on the wind a bit though, it's not really the weather for long hair. Ah well, I shall just have to be careful in my wanderings along the cliff tops!

Now though the week is off and running and I shall be at the shop tomorrow. Somehow I doubt takings will quite match up to the week gone by! Still, that's probably a good thing since I remain something of a tired puppy at the moment. At least the week has begun in a reasonably quiet and cooperative way. Hopefully the rest of it will run along ovaguely similar lines. Well we shall see if my subconscious has any more games it wishes to play with me. Either way I shall continue to hope for more good things and fewer bad things, along with a decent amount of obedience from my brain. I shall find out how close I get to that soon enough and hope, in the meantime, that the week be niceand kind to all my lovely friend peoples too!

Well my weekend has gone by in what might be described as a reasonably reasonable fashion. On Friday at the shop I was fortunate enough to have someone else take over my usual duties on the till for a change so I got to play at arranging the books which is always fun! It has been an exceptionally busy week at the shop really and not just because of Goth Weekend either. Whilst the sale of what gothy stock we had collected did help boost takings much of the sales seemed to come from other things, parents buying things for children over half-term and other sales of the various tasteless, umm, I mean delightful and very reasonably priced gifts we have on offer. Ironically of course, on the day when I didn't happen to be spending all my time on the shop floor I ended up having three different sets of visitors coming to see me. Strange how these things seem to work sometimes. Heh, still I don't suppose that my cosmic timing has ever really been the greatest!

Halloween itself ended up being fairly quiet really, which I was actually quite pleased about. I did venture out for a little while into town but it was so utterly full of people it was virtually impossible to walk anywhere! Besides the goths there seemed to be an equal number of people standing around taking pictures of the goths. There were plenty of families too visiting during the school holidays and quite a number in Halloween-based fancy dress (i.e. trying and generally failing to pass themselves off as goths, snobbishly elitist as it may sound, there's a clear difference between between being gothic and just dressing up). Anyways, whilst the outdoors was rather uncomfortably crowded I was still able to spend a little time gothwatching. The Victorian look seems to be proving quite popular, as were brightly coloured hair extensions. Heartening to still see a few big hairy blokes in dresses about too, it is a pleasing thing when this little town shows it's open-minded, welcoming side. It doesn't always of course, but it's nice to see when it does! Personally though, I can't really count the Captain Jack Sparrows, Gandalfs, Highlanders, Monks, Romans and so forth as gothic, although some of those costumes were still quite impressive. It was, I suppose also Halloween as well as Goth Weekend though. As to what the large group of Father Christmases were doing roaming the streets though I remain somewhat puzzled.

Another equally impressive sight, as the dusk began to settle over the town, was a quite enormous flock of starlings all gathering together to roost for the night. It was almost as if the birds had also decided to get together for their own Whitby Goth Bird Weekend. It was a very pretty sight and took my off watching the people for a while. It was also interesting keeping a watch on the various impulses my nerves were sending to my brain with all the excitements going on. The troubling and unpleasant sensations of anxiety that always come from being around people were peculiarly off-set by the pleasure of seeing so many varied and interesting people about. It's a strange thing indeed feeling too diametrically opposed sensations at the same time, but I suppose I ought to be used to it by now really. I've still remained feeling largely outside of all the frivoloties though all through the weekend. I watched and felt it all flowing round me, something like a rock in the middle of a fast flowing stream. Still, such disconnection has ever been my personally preferred defence mechansim against overwhelming sensations. Hopefully someday soon my brain will learn that such responses are unnecessary. Anyways, I spent me a quiet night in with my newspaper and books, hiding from any annoying children that might happen to come to the door.

Sunday began in a decidedly rainy and windswept fashion. Suddenly I was able to walk through quiet streets again, or at struggle my way through quiet, storm-lashed streets anyways. This was as I shambled to go see mother and step-father, later joined by big brother and his girlfriend for tea. So it has been a rather pleasant evening really, a good portion of which was spent with a cat sprawled across my lap. It was nice to see big brother though, if even for a short period of time. I suspect that it will be Christmas in Sheffield when we see each other next but that isn't really that far off now I suppose. Still, a good evening was had, once the rains had died down and the electricity had been turned back on! Heh. Now though a regular week shambles ominously into view with all the grim inevitability of a remorseless zombie army. Presently I'm not feeling particularly eager for the week ahead, now it seems that the weather has remembered that it's supposed to be getting into winter. I suppose it doesn't help either that the tiny amount of wine I've had today has given me a somewhat squished brain. I really don't drink at all most of the time so my reaction to alcohol can be strangely unpredictable. Oh well hopefully sleep will cure that. Anyways, since the boss is away it may well be that I find myself without anything to actually do at the Coliseum tomorrow. Hm, I'll still have to wake up though and I've never really been much enamoured with that particular part of the day.

Oh well, we shall see what marvels the week ahead may yet hold I suppose. Mayhap good things and significant changes are happening in me yet and I am just not quite aware of them? Either way, hopefully the future will bring more good things and fewer bad things. Yes, that seems like a fairly reasonable thing to wish for! In the meanwhile I hopes that everyone else be well and the world be treating you kindly. My brains be just about running out of energy for any more particularly coherent writings (even by my usual rambling standards!) so for now I shall bid you all good night. Sweet dreams.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I feel like I have been busy today. In the morning I took two classes of basic computer skills on my ownsome, since Maureen is away. The second class was rather easier to deal with than the first since only two showed up for that one as opposed to six for the first one! Still, I hadn't been expecting to be doing it all on my little ownsome. I knew Maureen had been ill with a virus on Monday, but she'd said she might be there today. As it was though it was just little me directing things. I just about managed to muddle through ok though and no one died so that be positive. There were definitely certain things where I got myself a little mixed up though and I'm a ways away from being fully confident yet. As my personality seems to be though I don't know if I'll ever feel entirely comfortable doing anything. Don't know how much any of my students might have learned today but hopefully yet someday my little brain will learn its lesson.

I don't know what they're going to be doing with the other classes this week though. Maureen is now aways on holiday but as far as I know the classes are still happening. My worry is that they're imagining I'm going to be there to oversee them. Well, I'm not. I could perhaps make Friday morning but not tomorrow. Still, I've told them and they didn't seem to worry, but I don't know who is going to be overseeing things with neither of us there. Whilst the courses are web-based (http://www.myguide.gov.uk if you had any wish to see for yourself) and come with their own instructions, I don't know how well people would do without someone on hand to help when they get stuck. Hm, well hopefully I wont get anyone poking me with sticks for not showing up, and they'll get on ok without me. Such are the deeply significant little traumas I can invent for me to worry about. Still, right now I'm a bit too sleepy and lack the energy for proper angst.

My afternoon at the shop was a busy and active one indeed. There be lots of people about what with the combination of school half-terms and goth weekend. Plenty of customers to keep me busy whilst on top of that our beloved area manager putting the shop through the 'Autumn Challenge'. Essentially an assessment of the running of the shop where points were scored for things being done correctly. So I had to be on best behaviour and do all the pointless and tedious things that they seem to think is worthwhile, like asking everyone if they might like a raffle ticket and then asking them whether they might like to take a donation bag home with them along with their purchases. That's the kind of thing that would really put me off shopping somewhere (and the asking of such questions certainly sparks my nerves into exquisite discomfort) but still, we scored points for it. Points seem to be scored for the most pointless details and adhering strictly to how things are supposed to be done rather than what actually works for the shop. Surely making money for the charity is more important than the scoring of arbitrary points? Oh well, I survived and can now stop pretending that I think asking everyone to take a bag home with them is a good idea.

Anyways, in the end we managed enough points to make ourselves a silver shop! I've no real idea what that means or how far we were from being gold. Apparently we lost some points on the books being past rotation date but keeping the stock up to date requires the time and people to do it and having the stock in the first place. Besides, today we sold £100 in books and just over £700 overall. That is a busy day! Interestingly most of that didn't come from goth stuff either. Really, most of our goth stock isn't really that gothic, it's just black, and unfortunately anything that does seem vaguely pretty doesn't come in my size. Boo! Still, Goth Weekend has only barely begun now so I imagine on Friday I may well have myself an even busier afternoon. There were a few interestingly dressed folk about today, and a large, hairy bloke in a dress, but I've yet to see anything exceptionally extravagant. Plenty time to go though to look out for the most prettiful peoples.

My big brother will of course be arriving in amongst them all at some point or other. No specific plans for contact has of yet been made but no doubt I shall be seeing him at some point. Whether and how I shall be able to go out and play still remains undecided. I don't know if all my efforts of today will make any significant difference to my innate levels of confidence when it comes to the socialising thing. You'd think one day my brain might see the folly of its ways and stop inventing things to provoke unpleasantly fearful sensations and then deciding those invented sensations prove their unpleasantness. Well I don't know, I suppose I can but try and see how it goes. Hopefully good things will come, that's about all I can think of to type on the matter at the moment in my state of weariness. Hopefully good things will come and I'll be able to really feel that I may have properly earned my goth points!

Anyways, that was today, with much being active and facing of unpleasant sensations to varying degrees of success. The good news though is that tonight I should actually be able to get a reasonable amount of sleep for once! Speaking of which, methinks it be probably about time I scampered off there. Methinks, given the opportunity it now has, my brain shall take this chance to be unconscious for a fairly reasonable length of time. So, if you wants to see do come see me in my dreams. Still I do tend to be rather better at the dreaming than the living but I'm working on that. You would though always be more than welcome to visit! Night nights.

Well Get Online Day didn't turn out to be quite the Internet extravaganza I might have been anticipating. The woman I work with at the Coliseum was unwell with a virus and so went home early, not that anyone actually turned up anyways. So as it was all the exciting mugs and other pointless things we had to give out remained unclaimed. I didn't even get to wear the T-shirt I'd been promised. Oh well, the morning was not entirely wasted as I got to spend some time preparing a draft of the new website page for the Café and made a couple of rather small actual alterations to the site itself. (Can you spot the differences?!) At least I managed to do something vaguely useful anyways.

As it happened though, a few friends of mine happened to be in the Coliseum just as I was finishing so I spent a little time with them. They too though seemed to be infested with some kind of virus. It seems that almost everyone I know is coming down with something right now. As yet though I seem to have avoided infection myself, although I perhaps wouldn't mind so much coming down with a little something with a visit at the shop from our beloved area manager scheduled for Wednesday. Anywho, after chance encouter with friends I had then had chance encounter with parents which was shortly followed by chance encounter with acquaintance. These did raise my little spirits a fraction at least.

I still can't say I feel particularly eager at the prospect of this week however. Partly due to the visit of area manager which will involve having to at least pretend to be making an effort at selling Christmas hamper raffle tickets. Exactly why they seem to think making these pointless demands of their voluntary staff is something you'll have to ask to them. As it is we don't even have the poster, nor the hamper to go in the window, so why they imagine we should be selling 50 a week is anyone's guess. Ho-hum. It shouldn't particularly bother me really but unfortunately my little nerves like to play with such things and I've got plenty other stuffs for my nerves to irrationately fixate on this week for it be Halloween, and Whitby Goth Weekend with all the double-edged swordiness that usually brings.

Of course I ought to be all excited and looking forward to the prospect of Goth Weekend and a visit from big brother, and in a some corner of my brain I am. However another corner of my brain is running around with its hands in the air whilst babbling incoherently. It's all pointless and irrational and senseless I know, but that doesn't seem to stop the thoughts and feelings, it just makes me grumpy and frustrated with myself for having them. Surrounded by all these prettily dressed and nice and friendly people all I largely feel is a complete sense of illegitimacy in my place amongst them. I don't know exactly what ghastly thing my subconscious may be imagining could happen, but whatever it is it imagines it vividly! It feels unpleasant, and knowing its entirely pointless and unfounded, only serves to make me like myself even less for being so stupid. If I can spend three years behind the counter at the charity shop without disaster you'd think perhaps my brain would have learned by now that other humans need not be run away from. How is it I can do one, sometimes even like it (with occasional discomfort and maybe not always perfectly perfect but even so), but not the other? Ach! Learn stupid brain! Smrrs. Goth weekend may be just for a few days, but for living the rest of my life I needs those skills too! Well, we shall see what happens I suppose, maybe my subconscious will yet allow me out to play. Can but hope.

In the meanwhile though I be a bit of an ungraciously grumpy and, probably to some degree to due to a fair deal of my energies being unnecessarily spent on nerves, tired wolf. I have gots me a bit of a migraine too, although a curious one in that it seems to have taken up residence in a spot on the side of my head a little ways behind my left ear. Not a usual spot for my achings. Perhaps in all the confusion my brain has been tipped on its side inside my skull? It could do with some sort of reshaping. Oh well, I have done my complaining now (which is what blogs and Interwebs is for!), off to the shop tomorrow where I can get to see just what pretty goth stock we've managed to get in. Not quite so much this year I'm told (the textiles company in Scarborough that often helps gather stuffs haven't been quite so forthcoming) but maybe I'll be able to get my paws on something pretty to make me feel a bit better and less of a fraud. Time for sleeps now and hopefully a little less achy and a little more positive frame of mind in the morning. Sweet dreams.

~*~ Addendum ~*~

Hm, well it seems that with a typically unerring sense of irony my helpful ISP has decided to break down moments before I was about to press the button to submit this entry. *growls* Well, it's too late for games now. I shall have to scamper off to bed and see about posting this grumpy ramble sometime in the morning. Hopefully the morning will see the world in a bit more cooperative mood...

So I stumble wearily to the end of another week. Whilst I have been a reasonably busy creature these past few days I suppose I can't say I really feel much in the way of positive progress has come out of it. Maybe that's just the tiredness and a disobedient laptop though. Anywho, whilst the rains of Wednesday may have largely kept away the customers from the shop, the sunshine brought me a rather more active day today. In between that there has also been my continuing exploits tutoring and updating Network's website along with a largely fruitless visit to the job centre though at least the man I talked to was of the relatively friendly variety. Despite all these activities I can't really feel like I can take much concrete out of any of them and the week has also provided me with ample examples of my timidity to wave in the face of my self-esteem too. Ho-hum. Ah well, I am doing things at least and hopefully stuff will come of things eventually.

I'm rather a tired puppy now anyways, hence the lack of any grasp of specifics in my typings and general lack of eagerness. I feel I ought to write something though as it has been a few days. There have been various things that I've meant to write about these past few days but various factors, tiredness, brain, laptop, have all tended to intervene this week. I suppose like the recent increase in the quantity of my remembered dreams, that may be largely due to the variability of my sleeping patterns at the moment. The days when I do stuff at the Coliseum haven't turned out to be of a particularly fixed pattern so some days I'm up early whilst others I need not be, varying from week to week. My brain prefers a bit more of a consistent routine it would seem.

Still, I'm pretty sure that living shouldn't be quite so much effort as I yet currently find it. I still wastes a good deal of energy looking out for monsters, cursing for myself for not doing more stuff and waiting by the door until the sounds of voices in the hallway have gone away. Oh well, hopefully I shall get the hang of being me one day and guide my subconscious towards better methods of descision making. Then I can get on with proper activities like mourning the losses of my past and writing poems for three of four people to read! Hee. In the meanwhile I'm not entirely sure what I shall be getting up to this weekend. Perhaps I shall go visit my kitty, friendly fluffiness and purry pettings might be a good thing. Sleep is required now though methinks so I shall leave my gibbering ramble for now and see if I can't recuperate my energies and brainpowers a little. Hopes everyone else does have themselves an enjoyable weekend. Nights.

Woke up this morning feeling grumpy, and for some reason, with the song that features somewhat similar lyrics running about my head. Great, that's all I need to start the day, being ironically mocked by own subconscious. I'd already spent most of the night arguing with my parents who were watching some tiresome thing on TV when there was something else I wanted to be watching. It's my dream television, I should get to the choose the program! Hmpf. Anyways, it was a rather cold and dreary morning and it was with little eagerness that I got myself ready for the day. Mornings have never been my best time of the day but my body seemed particularly unwilling for this one.

Still eventually I managed to drag myself down to the Coliseum and, despite the best efforts of the wireless network that decided it wasn't going to play for a while, I actually got some small, but usefully productive things done. Apparently the overlady hadn't got back to us yet about the prospective new headline banner for the website so I spent a few hours putting together a rather more interesting looking one, which is now up on the website, at least until someone complains about it! I thought it looked quite pretty (and something of an acheivement for MS Paint!) although now I'm not sure if it might look just a little incongruous with the rest of the site. Do have a look though if you has a moment, I'd be interested in a second opinion.

Besides my little efforts in graphic design I also added, at the trustee's request, a little links section on local environmental projects. I hadn't known either of the groups before, but at least they had website. Whitby Community College seems to have done loads of climate change things with both the 10:10 Climate Change campaign, the Co-Op and others yet for some reason there wasn't a word about it on their website and their seemed little purpose linking to odd newspaper articles. Anywho, Network's website now has little more bits of shiny newness for you to go look at should you have a wish to. Hopefully it all looks reasonable.

Anyways, a little bit of creative activity did leave me feeling somewhat more perky for the rest of the day. Later though I did have myself a bit more troubling news though. Any plans that were being hatched for the family to go down to see Dad next week have been cancelled as apparently he woke up today feeling rather unwell, light-headed, seeing double and such. So what with everything that's gone on, he was taken back into to hospital. Fortunately though after various testings it seems the were unable to find any serious new cardiac problems. They think he just got some kind of virus or something, so not too great a concern, but still a little troubling even so. Heh, hopefully soon I'll be able to talk to big sister on the phone without it being about my Dad's health! Still, nothing too serious, but still a little concern.

The remainder of my dad wasn't particularly productive, though at least I can pretend I was wasting time with educational things like University Challenge! Tomorrow though I has me a day at the shop and hopefully will be able to persuade my spirits to be a little more lively than they have been of late. I managed to write me a whole four lines of poetry at the weekend, edging towards finishing a new poem (if a fairly narcisstically mournful one). Still, that was about the only thing I did at the weekend and it's getting on for nearly a year since I've finished any new writings. The thought is depressing, which is counter-productive in itself, heh. Still I try to remain hopeful that I can turn that around. If not a new poem soon then at least with the doing of creatively productive or warmly compassionate things. Still, sleep must come before that then, but I get to choose the channel this time!

At last I have the reached the weekend and may, hopefully, now allow my brain a little rest. After its efforts at the exam the past couple of days have gone by in a peculiar mixture of exhausted euphoria. They have been a relatively busy two days themselves as well. The first involved of morning of teaching and then an afternoon visit to see the kitty whilst its humans were away. Ozymandias at least did seem quite pleased to see me and it was also a pleasant thing to spend a while with furry, black kitty purring away upon my chest. It did make breathing a little more of an effort though!

Today I spent another morning teaching along with a little bit of web design. Our mysterious benefactors, that is the charity's trustees (or one of them at least) have provided a little list of what they want done with the website. Some of those tasks be more easily acheived than others, particularly since I'm having to use wordpress than an actual website designing tool, but today I was engaged in trying to design a new headline banner for the site. The font used in the current one is too 'quirky' apparently and she would like something 'more professional looking (i.e. plain and boring). Anyways, after lessons were over, I harnessed my meagre graphic design skills to create a few possible prototypes which will be sent off for assessment. Not that I could really make anything that pretty anyways since the only graphic design tool at my disposal was MS Paint. Still, fine enough to create something uninspiring, personally I think something a little more warmly colourful and welcoming would be preferable but then it's not my website.

Anyways, I then spent my afternoon at the shop selling a fair number of coats and jackets to foolish visitors who imagined Whitby would still be warm midway through October! Actually it's not been too bad recently, wet and misty but relatively mild. Today though there was a bit of chill wind coming in off the North Sea. Still, big coats tend to be somewhat pricier than your average clothing item so the shop took a reasonable amount without me being too busy a lot of the time. It did have its hectic moments, particularly when tired wolfy paws (not the most dextrous at the best of times) were attempting to wrap awkwardly shaped oranments. Still the day is done now and I am pleased to be able to have me a little time in which to rest and recuperate. Well, so long as the world behaves itself anyways, but hopefully I'll be able to have myself a relatively quiet little time.

Now though I yet find myself wondering as to whether my completing of the exam will provide any greater lessons for my brain. With the combination of accomplishment and euphoria, my spirit has been willing but the flesh has been weak. Still, this is an improvement on the usual state of affair where my spirit is unwillingly anxious and I can't really say much about the flesh! I vaguely hope that in coming weeks I may be able to do a few more useful thing, though equally I don't want to be getting myself too excited either. Oh well, I shall see I suppose and there is little brain juice at the moment for pondering the subject. For now methinks it is time to scamper off for some hopefully rejuvenating sleeps and whatever curious visions may await me in dreams. Last time I was watching a revamped new series of Call My Bluff on TV that had been disappointingly dumbed down featuring amusing video interludes and, for some reason, Snoop Dogg as one of the guests. Oh well, still better than the current incarnation of Buzzcocks anyways!

Now though it be time for sleep and dream once more before I throw my laptop at something through its stupid slowness. Heh, and since I've started doing the IT work at network there's been a fair bit of difficult with the breaking down of the wireless network and slowness of computers too! Good thing I'm not the worrying paranoid type or I might start thinking it was something to do with my presence just causing things to break down. Oh. Heh. Still, do feel free to come join me in dreams should you have a wish, I wouldn't mind the company or even snuggly hugs (and in dreams is about the only place I can really get those for the moment). Goodnight.

Well it feels like I've come to the end of a very long day, my body and my brain seem both quite used up, but the good news is the exam be done! Of course I shall have to wait a month or so before I finds out just exactly how well I did but my vague sense of it is that things went ok at least even if not quite everything went to plan. Still I was quite surprised waking up this morning to find my body and my brain in quite good spirits. Surprised that I had actually managed to fall asleep in the first place let alone that that sleep would actually be refreshing. It's more than many of my previous nights had been and a fortunate start to the day. I was still a nervous puppy as I scampered off to get the bus but certainly not so much as I had been.

Anyways, despite the roadworks the bus turned out to be entirely on time getting in to Scarborough so I had a bit more time wandering around than I anticipated, though it gave me a bit of time to read and clarify a few last details before I made my way to the venue. It was a little odd being back at a school again but I hadn't much brain space to really muse on such things. I was pleased to discover that there were about seven people there, taking various different papers, but at least my scary vision of sitting alone in a giant hall was realised. One scary thing though that was realised at the beginning was that I couldn't find my passport which I was bringing along for ID purposes. Fortunately I had other things with signatures on and a special form I could fill in but it was a bit unnerving and didn't make for the best of starts. Naturally when I got back home I discovered my passport had of course been in my bag all along having hidden itself away up inside one of the books I'd been carrying! Heh.

Still, after that little trauma I then got into the exam itself, the three hours largely passing by in a blur of scribbling. I can't now seem to remember very much of what I wrote at all, but I got all the questions done and got down all I could think of in the time so hopefully that be a good sign. The first question I did on plays went ok I think, the question was along the lines of discussing how two plays depict issues of social power or something along those lines. I believe I got in a good bit of detail on that, though I fear I may have confused the names of a couple of the characters in The Rover at one point, still I think the rest of the stuff was good. I got some good points in about Caryl Churchill's Top Girls too, and contrasted the plays to each other in the end for a conclusion. Almost an actual structured essay! Heh.

I had a little crisis, and wasted a little time, trying to choose which of the questions on poetry I ought to tackle but when I did I think it went ok. My job was discuss the statement that the differences between poets of the Romantic period were equally as strong as their similarities. I was a little vague and general on certain points I think but I think I referred to a good few poets and poems and, answered the question set, which be important too. Still, I did my best to define the the general themes of Romantic poetry and outlined some differences between 'Wordsworthian Romanticism' ('Tintern Abbey', 'Simon Lee', 'The Prelude') with 'Shelleyan Romanticism' ('Ode the West Wind', 'Mont Blanc', 'England in 1819', 'To Wordsworth') with a bit of Keats ('On the Eve of St. Agnes'), Byron ('Don Juan') thrown in along with Joanna Baillie ('A Horse and his Rider') and Anna Laetitia Barbauld ('On the Expected General Rising of the French Nation in 1792') to briefly touch on poetry by women in the Romantic period. Perhaps I wrote rather more about subject than I did specifically about form but still a fair bit of stuffs there at least.

My attempt at the third question, on works of prose, was perhaps a bit more erratic. The questions available didn't quite suit me as well, in the end I chose one asking about depictions of the limitations placed on women's self-expression in two prose works. I hadn't quite so much time left at the end so I was a bit hasty and vague. I think I ended up largely reproducing what I had written for one of my assignments during the course, comparing Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple' and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper', only in a lot more vague and generalised way than my assignment had. Any real detail of what I wrote for any of my answers though is lost to me as I was furiously scribbling right up until the last minute and had no time at the end to go back and check if what I'd written made very much sense or not! It was only at the very end that I noticed I'd done the poetry question before the prose question despite the prose questions being set out before in the paper before the ones on poetry! Still, I did one question from each section as instructed so I'm sure that wont matter.

Still, hopefully I got down enough things but nothing I can really do about it now other than wait and see what the marks say. Hopefully my handwriting wont prove too illegible to whatever poor soul is given the task of going over my scribble. I sense that the neatness may diminish rather as my writing progresses and I have to speed up to get everything in! I finished with a somewhat misshapen, ink-stained hand, aching limbs and an exhausted brain. Still also there was some faint elation there for having got the thing done. I can has a bit of a rest of now? Well, no not really since tomorrow I have a day tutoring IT classes then I have to go visit the caravan to feed the kitty! Why did I agree to these things? Heh. Oh well I can sleep through the weekend now at least! In the meantime I hopes that everyone else is good and well and I thanks you for your supportive thoughts. My thoughts of your thoughts were a great aid.

Me, anxious? Why no, all those strange squeakings you can hear are merely, err, a family of hamsters that have dropped by to, umm, borrow some carrots? Heh, well the doom has finally come to Sarnath and my exam for A210 Approaching Literature is this coming afternoon. Hopefully my little brain will have absorbed enough of the course to get me through whilst hopefully, furthermore, I shall be able to drag it out my brain in reasonably coherent fashion for my answers. Well I suppose I shall find out when I finally sit down in the hall and turn over the paper to see what questions have actually been set. Until then there is little more I can do other than go over the odd poem and vainly try to ease the flow of adrenalin in my veins to calm the nervous energy that currently suffuses my body. Hopefully though once I do finally sit down with pen in hand these symptoms will fade and I'll be able to get on with things. For now though a restful nights sleep is looking decidedly unlikely.

I managed to get through a relatively busy day at the shop in a kind of strange, semi-lucid haze. I had somewhat hoped that the work would have given my brain some time off, and it did a little, but everything was rather dreamlike, etched with the heightened senses of my nerves. Still, I'm not sure really which state is the more disagreeable, whether it be the somewhat intense symptoms that I'm currently feeling or the lower levels of alert on which I usually operate. These at least have some sense of physicality to them besides the general unease much of time tends to be characterised by. Either way though, I doubt this is to be an experience which is going to be teaching my autonomic nervous system the error of its ways but if it could still see its way just to turning things down a notch or two I would be rather greatful!

Oh well, my conscious brain will just have to do the best it can and hope that my subconscious cooperates. Time now I think to scamper off and, if not to sleep, then at least to try some breathing exercises to rein myself in a bit and ease the various symptoms presently assailing me, both unpleasant and peculiar. They are at least not quite so overwhelming presently as I have been at certain points in the week so hopefully I shall manage. I'll do what I can anyways. Wish me luck and confidence and I'll see you on the other side!

It was something of a surprise, though a reassuring one, to actually get a phonecall from my Dad yesterday. He sounded much like Dad, which be a good sign, although somewhat hard to tell exactly. Still he's out of hospital and apparently has no long term damage so that be reassuring. He also talked about possibly choosing to retire sooner than when he gets to retirement age next year, which sounds like a good idea to me and seems to suggest that this stroke not so long after the heart attack has had some affect. I'd far rather be seeing him enjoying his gardening than the thought of going through anything like this again! Anyways, there was also a though of the family (that is me, brother and sister) going down to visit later in the months so I imagine things may be discussed then. For now though at besides some small affects on his speech (so small as to be entirely unnoticeable in our conversation) he sounds well and upbeat and Dad-ish, so that be good.

He did talk a bit about having difficulties in finding words and how strange it was. Apparently, as part of the tests, they asked him to list the months of the year in reverse and he went through December, November and yet as much as he knew there was an October between November and December he couldn't get it come. I was somewhat struck myself by the apparently similarity to that and things I sometimes experience, in my anxiety, trying to talk to people and suddenly finding the words not there. I don't know if the phenomena are in any particular way really related, but still I can understand that sort of unsettling strangeness quite well. Anyways, this weekend he'll be having a few more tests at the hospital to see how much of the warfarin he's absorbing, but he sounds well at least so hopefully will be able to go on with living for some time yet.

Anyways, in the meanwhile today I've been making some efforts at revision in preparation for my exam next week. Things have been going ok, when I've not been thinking about Dad I've been veering between mild anxiety at the challenge and, err, abject terror! Heh, but hopefully I can do ok. It's somewhat that reading through the materials that the bells being rung in my mind seem to be of a relatively familiar tone. Still I suppose I'll only really know how much of it has been absorbed when I finally sits down at the desk and actually see what the questions that have been set are. I would rather have liked the time to be a little more immersed in my studies than I generally found I was able to be over the year but hopefully enough of it will have been taken in. Time will tell I suppose.

I do also wonder whether, however I may do, my brain itself might take any lessons from it. I love reading and writing and other things yet I still require a push not to runaway from them (and even just for pleasure, not just in terms of the effort of study). As much as I have said it over and over before it remains the issue so I'll say it again. I should like my brain to learn that it can actually enjoy the things it enjoys and that this has its own rewards. Well anyways, I'm all a bit too sleepy now to be delving too deeply into the intricancies of my own tangled brain. Broadly speaking though, I would just rather appreciate it if the words would be there and remain so.

Still, now methinks it's time I was off to confront my dreams, intent on looking them straight in the eye and demanding they stop beating around the bush with lions in the house, picnics with Stephen Fry and so on and actually tell me what they really mean for once. Well it might work. Worth a try anyways. In the meanwhile I hopes everyone be enjoying a pleasant weekend. Night night.