What Is The Bechdel Test (And Why Should I Care)

I’m prostrate on the sofa watching Parks and Recreation back to back and cursing my inability to deal with hangovers.

‘The time really got away from me,’ I explain plaintively, ‘one minute it was 7pm, then 10, then boom, 4 in the morning.’

‘What did you guys get up to?’ asks Captain Tact.

‘Chatting, mostly.’

We also drank a bottle of amaretto and danced around the living room at length, singing at the tops of our voices - but I’m not ready to think about that yet.

‘What about?’

‘Social work, politics, the impact of social media on young people growing up, The Rapture’s new album...’

‘Congratulations, your conversation passed the Bechdel test.’

The Bechdel test, for those who have not come across it, is used to identify gender bias in films, telly and so on.

The test is simply to ask ‘do two or more women have a proper onscreen conversation about something other than a man?’

If the answer is yes, the show passes. Try it yourself - although 2013 arguably did better than previous years, a disconcerting amount of popular media fails.

Having said that, almost nobody in the media is representative of normal every day conversations, irrespective of gender. Film and TV characters are good or bad; intelligent or attractive. Sometimes there’s the twist that someone good was merely pretending to be horrible, or someone beautiful was actually quite intelligent, but by and large fictional characters are broadly drawn. 

I assume the reason for this is that writers don’t deal in the everyday – or not the everyday as it actually is. Fiction is supposed to provide an escape into another world, either one close to ours but better, or like ours but awful so we come out the other end going ‘golly gee, I’m sure glad I don’t live in the popular Liam Neeson film Taken!’

Either way the fictional world is not like your actual life, because why the hell would you watch that? You’re already living real life. Why would you want to watch average looking people with average real life jobs, talking about how their kids are getting on at school or cat pictures they’ve seen in the Metro? That isn’t an escape from reality, that’s rubbing it in your face.  We want a bit of excitement from our downtime, maybe romance and adventure - something to aspire to.

Whilst I absolutely agree TV and film are bad at showing realistic conversations between women, they’re often terrible at showing realistic conversations between anyone at all.  In fact, the level of unreality is so prevalent in terms of cast and content, it’s enough to make you wonder whether very beautiful people perhaps don’t have normal conversations.

Think about this. How often in your life do you see a human woman that looks like Beyonce, or Lucy Liu, or insert-other-beautiful-celebrity-of-your-choice-here?  Not often, unless you’re doing some Grade A stalking.  The beautiful ones exist in a bubble of others like them, people whose MO is to bewitch the world with their looks and do very little else (a theory supported by all episodes of 30 Rock featuring Jon Hamm).

Therefore, is it that much of stretch to suppose that the beautiful ones don’t have conversations about normal stuff? Maybe when female celebrities get drunk, they actually do spend the entire time talking about boys.  Sure, that sounds unlikely, but the tabloids would have a hard time finding ‘sources close to the star’ to reveal all her private relationship stuff if she spent her spare time bemoaning the lack of support given to Social Workers, or arguing about whether The Rapture’s new CD needs more cowbell like me and my normal looking friends. 

Perhaps TV and film consistently fails the Bechdel test because the women beautiful enough to be on TV also fail it.  After all, it can’t be because there is a perception held by the people making and paying for film and TV that audiences want to escape into a two dimensional world where women exist to talk about men, people of colour and the LGBT community exist to provide comic relief, and people with additional support needs do not exist at all.

Can it?

Ms vs Miss

‘Ooh, Ms is it?' says my pal, as if this term is in some way fancy, or an unusual one for women in their late twenties to be using.

‘Well… yeah,’ we chorus, somewhat bemused - then our paths diverge somewhat.

‘I mean, I'm not twelve,’ I scoff, whilst my sister is exclaiming ‘why the hell should I be defined by my relationship status?  My boyfriend isn't.’

On balance hers is probably the more persuasive argument, although I think mine is valid. I associate the ‘Miss’ moniker with youth, lack of life experience… innocence, I guess. That or the confirmed spinsterhood of unmarried ladies before 1950, when being single supposedly meant there was something wrong with you.  I am not a kid anymore, and as it happens I’m not single (although there are occasional FIFA filled afternoons where a halcyon pre-war existence of cats, gin and cardigans starts to look pretty good), so ‘Miss’ feels like it has nothing to do with me. 

To be honest it never crossed my mind that some of my friends might not feel the same – I made the apparently baseless assumption that everyone in my peer group was probably Ms (or Dr) by the time they finished university.*

This has not shattered my worldview, but it did make me think - not least because of the looks we got for thinking this was important.  I mean, I know it isn't going to solve world hunger, but symbolically I think the difference between Ms and Miss says a lot.

One of the main arguments in favour of Ms is gender equality – that it is a female equivalent of Mr that does not reveal anything about our relationship status.  Miss, meanwhile, automatically tells people of your unmarried status, which is irrelevant in most situations and is not the same for men.  There again, maybe you are looking for a relationship and want to be able to confirm your availability by casually waving your post in front of them (a red bill for Miss George? Ding dong), rather than flirting, or whatever it is people do at Da Club nowadays. 

I actually think that as far as titles are concerned, if you want proper gender equality then men and women ought to have the same one.  Except that would render all of them - Ms, Miss, Mrs and Mr - obsolete, so really no title at all is the more elegant solution. 

Elegant, but wildly impractical – that solution can’t be implemented overnight.  If we suddenly stopped using titles, electronic databases the world over would collapse.  You have to fill in the ‘title’ box in this job application / bank form / tax form, says the (newly anthropomorphised) system.  If you don’t, I will be forced to give you a red error message saying ‘information provided is incomplete.’  Also I will die of malnutrition, for the contents of the title box – all that tasty information on your gender and relationship status - is what sustains me. 

All of which means that at some point, you’re going to be asked which one you are and sorted into a marketing category that involves gin (Miss), washing up liquid (Mrs) or lesbian ham (Ms)  whether you like it or not. 

Unless you're a man, of course.** 

*Yes, much of my peer group completed further education – in case the title of the blog and content of previous articles hadn’t given away the fact I am white and middle class. 

** As we all know, in marketing terms a 'Mr' is into football, boobs and probably curry. 

Student Journalism

In my first year of university I signed up to work on the student paper, having read lots of advice to wannabe writers saying they must get involved with the student press to gain practice, clippings and contacts. 

Unfortunately, a couple of meetings in I discovered that many of my colleagues were pretentious and prone to navel gazing.  They also didn’t seem to have any concept of news – one thrilling expose revealed that some people *whisper* take drugs!  Whoever heard of a student experimenting with drugs?  Someone get that guy a Pulitzer, stat!

Said paper hasn’t gotten a lot better since I graduated.  Here’s an example sentence from a current column.  It is supposed to deal with issues around being a fourth year, which you might think would include stuff like stress over finals, what to do after graduation, and so on…  Not so much.

‘There is something highly satisfying about wrapping up in a multitude of layers in the morning as you leave to brave the ice cold air: dressed in my latest winter purchase – a vintage, dark blue duffel coat – over one of my favourite chunky knit sweaters (I hail from ‘the home of cashmere’), with my mum’s old University scarf looped my neck several times, and my trusty ‘I-can-walk-through-anything’ brown leather ankle boots, I feel like I can take on the world and all that it throws at me.’

Quite apart from the poor structure (seriously, full stops are totally OK), that entire paragraph says nothing of importance or even passing interest.  Dressing in layers for winter is not an insightful part of ‘the fourth year experience’, ‘the third year experience’, or any experience at all - it’s padding in the most literal sense.  Stop wasting your words and my time, unnamed student journo!

In summary, that paper was balls, so I joined the team who put together the spoof one instead.  This was how I met my other half, the enigmatic Captain Tact, who was editor at the time.  He doesn’t remember our first meeting at all, but I do.  Nervous, I walked into the pub and looked around for people that looked like they might write comedy.  I soon honed in on the table of blokes with bad hair who were having an animated discussion about the new series of Doctor Who, and my nerves evaporated.  These were my kind of people.

The spoof paper was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t the sort of stuff that was going to win us any student journalism awards.   It mainly involved making up news stories (pirates attacking halls of residence, terror lizards, unusual meat in burgers, that sort of schtick).   On balance, it probably wasn’t the sort of thing older hacks were thinking of when doling out their advice.  And anyway, we were shut down in my third year following an incident with the ORLY owl and a local curry house, a harrowing experience of censorship that would only really have been helpful if any of us had got work on Private Eye.

Having said that, I still think wannabe writers should get involved with the university press.  You might get a boyfriend out of it, after all...  Or failing that, plentiful opportunities to network with the dynamic go-getters who are the editors of the future. 

Just try not to yawn too loudly when they commission a thousand words on what to wear in intemperate weather.

Why Everyone Should Be A Polymath

I’m in the park, dressed in black, taking pictures of the city by night and congratulating myself on my creativity.  A jogger pauses to pity the sad sack so gripped by despair she’s photographing darkness itself, before taking the executive decision to give me as wide a berth as possible.

My efforts stem from a weekly photo challenge I found online, something I’m doing as part of my on-going quest to be a Renaissance Woman (in the sense of having broad interests and skills, as opposed to the more historical measurement of marrying well and popping out lots of sons).   

If you want to scrape a living in the arts in 2013, you have to be willing to turn your hand to multiple areas.  For instance, journalists increasingly have to be able to write copy for print and online, create multimedia content, and use social media to find and break stories – in addition to traditional skills like grammar, shorthand and door knocking.  And in my experience, if you’re a freelancer and want to eat, you’ll need to know how to source copywriting work and be on the books of a temp agency to boot.

The idea that it’s positive to be accomplished at several things is not new.  We surely all remember from Pride and Prejudice how women can only get on in life with ‘a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages,’ whilst Wikipedia’s bumper list of polymaths demonstrates that multifaceted humans have been around for thousands of years. Polymathery has always existed, and in a world of ever-increasing multitasking it is only becoming more prevalent.

As a general rule, I deem this A Good Thing.  Wide-ranging interests lead to cross pollination of ideas, which means more creativity.  More of that, please!  Still, you can’t do everything all of the time.  The danger with trying is that when you’re genuinely interested in several areas, you can be tempted to flit between projects without concluding any.  Let’s be clear: it’s never OK to give up on something half way, unless your arms have fallen off.  Creative work needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to a conclusion and revised within an inch of its life, and nobody else is going to put that work in for you. 

And that’s the real rub with becoming a true polymath.  You need to put in serious hours to get good at something, so gaining expertise on several things at once could take decades.  You may want to focus on one thing for a prolonged period, spending your twenties on becoming a novelist, your thirties as a director, and your forties on that astrophysics PhD.  My preferred method is to become a generalist first, splitting my hours between blogging, fiction writing, photography and my work on string theory to evolve my knowledge base over time. 

Both roads are long, but the walk will be worth it – just look at Da Vinci.  See you at the finish line...

Ich Bin Ein Berlinner

Brief highlights of our first week of backpacking excitement back in April/May 2012.  We started in Berlin, as you may have worked out from the title of the post.

Day 1 – A man called Harry shouts at me to take a picture of the Reichstag, so I do.  Apparently I am more suggestible than I thought.

It looks different in Call of Duty.

Day 2 – See a lot of gammy sculptures in the Bode Museum, and try not to cry at the Holocaust Memorial.  Later on we eat doughnuts and watch Lewis in German.  It turns out neither of us speaks German.

St Vitus in a teapot. Why is he in a teapot? That's not important right now.

Day 3 – successfully relocate from hotel in Lichtenberg to a hostel on the outskirts of Berlin.  It is decorated in lime green and populated by 15 year olds who are all very excited about the prospect of karaoke later on.  We get the hell out of there, and end up spending most of the day at the zoo. I liked the baby ocelot.

NB - this is not the baby ocelot.

Day 4 – get a phone call from the Edinburgh International Film Festival asking if I can come in for a job interview. I can’t, obviously.  I eat an enormous cake and fall into a butter coma instead.  This is the best way to experience the many museums and galleries of Berlin.

In the interests of scale, Knitted Fifth Doctor is about 5cm tall.

Day 5 – spend several hours at the Topographyof Terror, which is an amazingly thorough account of everything that happened in the Second World War – it sheds light on the actions of members of the Nazi party you haven’t necessarily heard of and is fascinatingly horrible.  We also visit Checkpoint Charlie and the Stasi Museum, because we are interested in history even if the many hipster schoolchildren cluttering up the place aren't.

Day 6 – visit the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, before heading off to Warsaw.  The non-gallery side is covered in crudely drawn cocks and declarations of love for Justin Bieber (the wall, not Warsaw).  That’s modern society for you.

Captain Tact's contribution to the Bieber Fever

Obviously we did a lot more than this during our time in Berlin, but if I told you everything I'd have to kill you - or at the very least take a fortnight off work to put it all together.  But one final thing I would like to share is this photograph from a book shop.  Yes, we visited lots of book shops even though we couldn't read any of the contents.  You wish you were as cool as us.  Anyway, we were rewarded with this, presumably invented in much the same way as Peter Andre's definition of the word 'Insania'.  Fear not, for this year's NaNoWriMo I'll be all over it like a flannel.

Backpacking Adventures

In April/May 2012, Captain Tact and I went on a backpacking adventure around bits of Europe that are not the UK.  I didn't blog about it then because I felt that spending too much time on the internet would detract from the experience, but I did write a lot when we were away.  LONGHAND.  In a NOTEBOOK.  How archaic. 

Anyway I've been looking through said notebook and I thought I might painstakingly transcribe some of the contents for the benefit of the internet.  You're welcome. 

Item 1:

Wasp tried to eat my goulash.
What a prick.

Moving House

It's been predominantly good (with a smattering of less good) but now it's time to watch classic Doctor Who in a living room elsewhere - yes, I have just moved house.  People have been asking whether I'll miss the flat after three years there.  I have penned a letter to the place in response.

Dear Flat,

Thanks for the brinners, the Lord of the Rings drinking games, the nights of nintendo and the random booze box afterparties. Thanks for seeing me through the end of the libbiray times and into a fabulous new career in freelance journalism with a heavy side order of temping. Thanks for not falling down during Snowmageddon (although it seemed like touch and go for a while) and thanks for giving me shelter to complete 12 Books in 12 Months.

(I could have done it all without you, but as it goes I didn't.  So cheers.)


Goodbye fragile windows whose panes are held in mostly by mould because the landlord refuses to replace them even though it’d add significant value to the property.

Goodbye sloping floors that are slowly and inexorably tipping towards the Water of Leith - no amount of flood prevention will stop that subsidence now.

Goodbye number 8 bus, you unreliable sod (don’t think I didn’t see you drive right past that unfortunate tourist in the pissing rain last week).
Goodbye neighbour who still blanks me after three years (unless you meet me on the communal stair, but even then you stare awkwardly at those battered trainers rather than look me in the eye).

Goodbye fridge with your broken seal and tendency to freeze anything with the audacity to get nudged towards the back (you've destroyed so much perfectly good mayonnaise, you heartless robot).

Goodbye man across the hall who communicates mainly by post-it notes and likes to spend Friday nights lovingly painting the skirting boards wearing a nifty head torch.
Goodbye hole with wires hanging out where the buzzer used to be back in about 2010.

Goodbye constant redelivery fees because the postie couldn’t access the building to deliver anything larger than a red ‘sorry you were out’ card.

Goodbye paranoid lady downstairs who thinks junkies will invade if we leave the front door ajar for even a second.

Goodbye invisible junkies masquerading as innocent passers-by.

Goodbye army of overweight daschunds owned by assorted little old ladies with too many hats.
Goodbye 10pm ice cream runs to the garage.

Goodbye, proximity to the Botanic Gardens (I hope the baby moorhen grows up big and strong).
Goodbye Tanfield gable end, with your gorgeous autumn ivy.

Goodbye daily walk past bridesmaids dress shop (although I’ll be back to check your window displays, you crazy geniuses).

I hope it all works out for you, that you get a new fridge and sealant on the roof and that one day the landlord deigns to replace the windows.  May you bring your new tenants the same highs and lows you brought us in our time together. 

I think it would be best if we didn't see each other again for a while - I need some time to heal, and I'm sure you do too - but maybe in a few months or a year or a decade we could meet up for a coffee and talk about the old times.  Maybe.

So long, and thanks for all the Bumrod.

Ali

A Whole Lotta Thwartin'

I've been having one of those weeks where life seems to be conspiring against me, and this week - as is the fashion in this day and age - I tweeted about it rather than getting on and doing something proactive.

My tweet said 'The thing where you think everything is sorted and then BAM, it isn't. Again. Seriously world, enough thwarting already.'

So far, so banal, but then someone tweeted back saying "There's a whole lotta thwartin' goin' on these days. Makes a good rock song tho."  I concur, and so I decided to have a bash at some lyrics for said song.  It's a work in progress, but this is for you, @LillyLyle.

Spoken (in the style of Ferlin Husky):

This is a song for anyone who ever have one of those weeks where
Things just didn’t seem to go your way.

Sung (also in the style of Ferlin Husky)

There’s a whole lotta thwartin’ goin’ awn
And I don’t know what to do
There’s water pourin’ through the roof n’
I’m pretty sure I failed an interview
(although I ain’t heard back yet,
 so I guess no news..
is good neeeews)
(Oooh – oohs...)

Ah’m movin’ house - or that’s the plan
But stuff keeps going wrong.
My sister’s boyfriend’s van is broke
And so I wrote this song, yeah
There’s a whole lotta thwartin’, goin’ awn.

White van men charged me 90 pounds
To drive ma stuff ‘cross town
I helped them in torrential rain
It nearly made me drown, oh
There’s a whole lotta thwartin’, goin’ awn.

Every plan I try to make
To help ma life go smooth
Is thwarted by an unseen foe
Who wants me not to move!
The milk’s gone off, my new shoes hurt
I think I’ve got a cold
My muscles ache, I broke a glass
I’m feeling really old, yeah
There’s a whole lotta thwartin’ goin’ awn.

And so the lesson I have learned
I’d like to tell to you
Life’s a thwarter, you’ll get burned
Unless you find a way
To struggle throoo – ou – ooo – ough.

(Mine’s gin).

Before the rooster crows you will deny me three times…

Do you ever go to a comedy gig and listen in mild horror as the comedian picks on audience members?  Does it make you hunker down in your seat like a small animal whose main defence mechanism when a hungry bird of prey/tiger/human turns up is to HIDE NOW?

A lot of people endeavour to sit in the middle or towards the back of gigs to make sure this won’t happen to them.  Sometimes it’s out of shyness, or perhaps because you think your answers won’t be very interesting, but let’s be honest – the main issue is that most people don’t like being made fun of.  It’s one of those things that is amusing mainly when it’s happening to someone else.

As you may have guessed I was at a comedy gig this week, and I got asked what I do.  The gig in question was Bright Club at The Stand in Edinburgh, where a load of academics try their hand at stand up.  The audience is therefore filled with people who have PHDs, or at least degrees in difficult subjects like science and maths.  Not that arts degrees aren’t difficult, exactly, but they do essentially involve reading lots of books and telling people what you thought of them with an air of authority – or that’s my experience. 

Anyway the compere at this comedy gig full of people who work much harder at university than I ever did was asking what people studied.  He’d come across a gang of neuroscientists, a couple of mathematicians, my brother (who is studying psychology), and one writer who hasn’t been published yet.  Then there was me.

“Are you a student as well?” he asked.  (I wasn’t even at the front; I was hiding behind a linguistics student who appeared on stage later as well.)  Curses, I thought, I’m not that brainy or anything, I work in an office - not a subject ripe for comedy (remember The Office has a) been done and b) wouldn’t really work as a stand-up routine). 

“I… work,” quoth I, and it turned out he was able to use that anyway – “These people work too ya know! Just because they’re students doesn’t mean they don’t work hard!” – so fair play to him, he's a seasoned pro.

But I was thinking about it afterwards, and wondering why I didn’t say I was a writer.  Now, obviously he’d already had one writer and duly taken the mick out of her for not being published yet and whatever – but ultimately it is what I do, I have been known to earn money from it, and being a temp is not really a career (unless I was as good at it as Donna Noble, but frankly who is).

I’ve concluded it might be because I’m in a bit of a slump.  I’ve had a few writing-related rejections recently – nothing too crushing, don’t get out the world’s smallest violin just yet (anyway it goes with the territory) – and epically failed to regain any semblance of writing routine since March.  I’ve missed several deadlines for submissions and performance opportunities lately and I’ve not finished anything in ages.  On returning from our epic backpacking adventure I promptly started a new temp job with more hours than the old one, started preparing to move house at the end of this month and began working on promotion for Homespun UK.

Essentially life has been getting in my way, so maybe I have been more of a temp than a writer.  This is a problem that needs to be rectified – probably through discipline and sheer force of will.  My gut reaction should not be to tell people, even comedians, that I’m an office temp instead of a journalist or a writer or an editor or a media officer.  I do all of those things and temp on the side, god damn it.  If people are going to take the mick out of me it should at least be for the right reasons.

So, identity crisis over – bring on the hours of hard work on top of a full time office job for no guaranteed reward.

Bright Club is really good by the way, you should totally go.

Bookmark This

As discussed in a previous post I am now heading off for a bit, but I have scheduled a load of stuff on the 12 Books blog to keep you entertained. The timetable is as follows:

Monday April 23^rd – Interview with Sian Bevan about Electric Tales storytelling and comedy night in Edinburgh

Wednesday April 25^th – Why I Write by John Steele

Friday April 27^th – April’s Pictonaut Challenge

Monday April 30^th – Fanfiction, a brief introduction by Seneska

Wednesday May 2^nd – The Book Blogger interviews #1 Roof Beam Reader

Friday May 4^th – How to Say Thank You Part 1 by Tracey S. Rosenberg

Monday May 7^th – How to Say Thank You Part 2 by Tracey S. Rosenberg

Wednesday May 9^th – The Book Blogger interviews #2 Tolstoy is my Cat

Friday May 11^th – Interview with Laura from Write in for Writing’s Sake

Monday May 14^th – The Politics of Book Buying by Lyndsay Wheble)

Wednesday May 16^th – The Book Blogger Interviews #3 Rob Around Books

Friday May 18^th – Feminism in Romantic Fiction (or lack thereof) by Rose McConnachie

Monday May 21^st – Young, single and free of Venereal Disease? You too could be a romantic hero... by Rose McConnachie

Wednesday May 23^rd – The Book Blogger Interviews #4 The Lit Bitch

Heart

I wrote a story for a competition on IdeasTap which had to be on the theme 'Heart'. It didn't win, which is kind of my thing, so I thought I'd stick it up here. Enjoy...

The Lady's Long Lost Love

“Oh, Dunstable,” she sighed, tracing a long tendril of golden chest fuzz with a coiffed fingernail, “let us make sweet love one last time before you leave on your perilous quest.”

“Enid,” he responded dramatically, “my dear sweet Enid, I cannot. You know I am an advocate of the moral high ground, and thus I must refuse to ravish your milky white bosoms, your tender kneecaps or your softly undulating clavicle until you consent to be my wife once and for all.”

She felt dizzy at the sternness of this ultimatum, even though she had heard it a hundred times before.

“You know I can never be your wife,” she wept, large salty tears rolling down her ample cheeks and glistening like rainbow crystals of cubic zirconia, “I vowed to my sweetheart I should never wed another, though he has long been lost and probably buried at sea.”

Dunstable frowned, his ordinarily perky moustache drooping like a sad horseshoe.

“You think he might still be alive?”

“They never recovered the body,” she whispered, her eyes aglaze with moisture as the magic of hindsight transported her back to the night of that fateful promise, and a man who was never coming back to her.

Enid pulled her pink fleecy negligee closer, shoulders shoogly at the memory of the day she received word he was missing. It had been so long – almost eighteen months – she had nearly forgotten the particulars of his freckly aspect. Of course at the time she had been plunged into black despair but then, little by little, days had begun to get brighter, until she fell headlong into Dunstable’s dependable embrace.

Dunstable knew she was riding the horns of a most furious dilemma, for whilst she truly loved him she could not break her promise to the brave childhood sweetheart who would always hold a place in her heart, just down from the aorta.

“I’m sorry my love,” he told her, full of regret, “I should not have asked you again. It was totes inapropes.”

“No,” she said with a weak smile, “it’s only natural you should feel this way. I know how men love weddings and commitment.”

“I do dream about the smell of ruffles and the flash of sweet pea in my bouquet most every night,” he agreed, “but as long as you are in my arms, I am content.”

He moved to embrace her once again, when all at once the door was thrown completely open.

“Not so fast,” said a booming voice the colour of coffee.

“Who are you?” Enid asked, even though she already knew.

“It is I, Johnny Sailorington, your long lost sweetheart!”

The owner of the voice stepped into the room. Dunstable and Enid stared at him in dismay and wonderment. The long lost Sailorington cut a dashing figure in his baseball cap and floral cravat, but gosh darn it why could he not have remained lost at sea? Now everything was quite ruined.

“Oh Johnny, where have you been all this time?” Enid asked, moving towards her erstwhile sweetheart as though propelled by a force akin to gravity, only it radiated sideways out of his belt rather than up from the ground. “I felt sure you must be dead and buried at sea, and as you know the psychic intuition of a lady is rarely wrong.”

Johnny Sailorington sighed, a deep and manly sound, and paced to the window to look out over the grey ocean. Unfortunately the sea was on the other side of the building, so he had to content himself with staring at a supermarket car park.

“Your feminine intuition was not actually far wrong,” he confessed, gazing heroically at a paper bag fluttering across the concrete outside. Crumbs of pastry scattered artistically from a hole in the side like some kind of metaphor, which all three silently agreed was oddly beautiful.

“After I went to make my fortune as a ship’s makeup artist, our vessel was captured by fierce environmental campaigners. They mistakenly thought we were evil scientists bent on creating a new strain of über tuna using bits of old whale, rather than the honest and upstanding members of the music industry we truly were.”

“So that is why there were news reports claiming the latest Pop Factor tour was a lot more highbrow than previous years,” Enid murmured.

“Indeed. The evil scientists went in our place, and forced everyone to carry out practical chemistry experiments in front of a pyrotechnic display instead of dancing and singing songs.”

“How horrible.”

“Yes. Meanwhile the environmental campaigners locked us in a metal storage container. When we finally escaped, we found all our singers had applied to go to university to learn more about science.”

“It must have been a terrible blow,” Dunstable said sympathetically.

“A little part of my soul died that day,” Johnny Sailorington confirmed. “The only thing that kept me going was the thought of returning home to my one true love – ” His voice caught on the back of his throat – “but I see now she is false. Oh, sweet Emily, how could you wrong me so?”

“I’m not Emily,” said Enid, “I’m Enid.”

Johnny Sailorington stopped staring at the car park and took her face in his hands.

“Enid?” he said. Then, “oh, I remember you from the Christmas party! You used to step out with Johnny Taylorington from Accounts. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“My loss?” she wobbled, face filling with tears again.

“Why yes,” said Johnny Sailorington, “haven’t you heard? He married the captain of the green lot and absconded to live in a Cornish commune. Terrible business. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll be off to find my Emily.”

The lovers watched him leave, a great weight lifting from their shoulders.

“Enid,” Dunstable said, “dear, sweet Enid. Now will you consent to be my bride?”

She smiled at him and took his hand in hers.

“Dunstable,” she whispered in a voice thick with love, “I think I will.”

Walking to Azerbaijan

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may be aware that I am very much pro the Eurovision Song Contest. Last year I live blogged it, and this year I had thought I would be in Eastern Europe for it – but it turns out the final is being held on May 26, two days after our triumphant return.


Before I checked the dates, however, I did have a bit of a look round Google Maps to see how feasible it would be to detour from our planned route (Germany – Poland – Czech Republic – Slovakia – Austria – Hungary – Croatia – Slovenia – Italy) to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and home of Eurovision 2012. Not very, as it turns out – Azerbaijan is a bit out of the way.

In fact, if you were to walk it from my flat in Edinburgh (because that’s something you would do), it’d take 34 days and 9 hours – assuming you walk at the pace of Google Maps (which gives you about 20-25 minutes to do a mile).

The directions are pretty extensive, although as we all know they are bound to have missed out countless mini roundabouts and pedestrian areas. Still, they do warn that the directions are in beta, and to be fair to them 3, 347 miles is a pretty large area to cover. Possibly my favourite thing is that they also warn: “Use caution – this route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.”

There aren’t any pavements on the North Sea, then?! What an outrage! I shall be writing to my MP.

I jest, of course – Google Maps knows the average person cannot walk on water. Instead they advise you to saunter down from Edinburgh to Newcastle and get a ferry to Ijmuiden, although presumably you can pace up and down the deck if you really want to keep moving. After that it’s a simple case of walking up through the Netherlands and across the top of Germany till you get to Kiel, from whence you take another ferry to Lithuania before a brisk march down through Belarus, Ukraine, part of Russia and Georgia. Then bob’s your uncle, you’re crossing the border into Azerbaijan before you can say ‘are we there yet?’

Rather brilliantly, the directions are full of things like ‘Turn right, Entering Russia.’ This is nice because it makes it sound really simple, when in actual fact the parts of Russia they are suggesting you traverse are flagged up on the Foreign Office website as amber for ‘advise against all but essential travel’, due to issues including terrorism and the political situation. Somehow I don’t think a pilgrimage in support of Englebert Humperdinck counts as essential.

Which brings me on to another point about this year’s contest; namely, was it somehow influenced by Eddie Izzard? Until recently Definite Article was my only reference point for Azerbaijan, whilst Dress to Kill provided my only knowledge about Englebert Humperdinck. Now he is representing us there, several years later. Coincidence? I think not…

Why Social Media is Good For the Mind

“I need you to read this and tell me what happened,” says my sister, thrusting a copy of Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase into my hands, “I don’t think it made sense. Although it might actually be the middle of three, which would explain it…”

Once Upon a Time I would have balked at this request.

“You want me to deliberately read a series Out Of Order?” I would have shrieked in a dramatic mixture of caps lock and italics, “What kind of MONSTER do you think I AM???!!!11”

On this occasion though, I shrug and acquiesce – not because my instinct did not tell me to read Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 first (turns out the book is the last of the set), but because I have become accustomed to reading things backwards.

“But why?” you probably aren’t bothering to shout.

The answer, dear reader, is social networking.

For those who don’t know (people based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland where the internet is regarded as black magic; and the population of China*), sites like the Facebook and the Twitter work in real time. This means that when you log in you get the most recent messages people have posted and have to work backwards to find out what everyone’s complaining about / laughing at / watching on TV. It’s sort of like being the star of your very own slightly banal detective story.

Almost everyone has had a go at social networking even if they can’t see the point of it (and indeed I realized - as I was contemplating changing to the new Facebook timeline yesterday - that I've been using that site for about seven years) - so it stands to reason this way of taking in information would begin to filter through to other walks of life like some kind of insidious metaphor. It seems only logical that as more people sign up, human perception of time and compulsion to do things in a particular order will break down ever further.

“Whaddya mean, 1, 2, 3?” we will shout at the generation of children born to us in a future where Twitter is implanted into our retinas like a nightmare Charlie Brooker had once, “this isn’t the Stone Age! What’s the matter with 3, 2, RT 2, OMG RT 2, 1?”

In this future, book series are read backwards as standard, government advice suggests Lost only be viewed from the final episode of series eighty seven, and government legislation ensures Monopoly starts with everyone bankrupt and in jail.

It may sound strange and frightening now, but by and large I think all of this is A Good Thing. Reading backwards is great exercise for the brain and helps us empathise with our dyslexic cousins, who read everything out of order all the time and are more creative human beings as a result.

Furthermore, it turns out reading Murakami the wrong way round only makes him more interesting and this is how I shall approach IQ84. To find out how that goes, join me on Twitter… (@periwinklewine)

*this is an hilarious joke at the expense of Chinese governmental restrictions which include a Facebook ban, but actually they have their own versions of these sites so it probably doesn’t apply there at all.

Toilet Wisdom

There are two kinds of drunken girls in toilets.

One is the weeper, generally crying about some sort of relationship stress (although it’s not always that, of course). She is an immutable fact of any night out. It doesn’t matter if she’s with you or if you’ve never seen her in your life, because as soon as you see the running mascara and hear that familiar hiccough of ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ you are immediately there by her side, knee deep in empathy.

This is because the second type of drunk girls in toilets are the wisest and kindest people in all the world.

“If he isn’t treating you like the PRINCESS you are,” my first toilet mentor told me through a haze of Jack Daniels and Jaegermeister, “he isn’t worth it.”

The fact she was wearing a tutu and sitting in the sink didn’t seem strange, and neither did my total lack of inhibition at telling a complete stranger about the problems in my love life. I tearfully agreed with her that I was a princess and my boyfriend was a fool as he was apparently blind to this clear and incontrovertible fact.

The other side of the coin - much as I hate to admit it - is that I was pissed and emotional, and perhaps not behaving entirely fairly towards him.

The position of toilet soothsayer is one of great power, and with great power comes the opportunity to live vicariously through others, and to give them advice based on approximately no knowledge of their situation.

“Get rid of him/her!” Toilet Girl decrees, “look at the state of you [ she means the tears and snot of abject misery rather than the inebriation ] , and where is this person that claims to be your one true love? Not here, faithfully by your side, but out there, in Da Club, blissfully unaware of your unhappiness - or worse, dismissing it as time of the month, or too much gin! Up with this you must not put!”

The trouble is, alcohol consumption throws up all sorts of underlying madness and robs you of the ability to discuss it sensibly with your partner, whilst simultaneously encouraging you to shout wildly about it in public places. Toilet wisdom does not consider such extenuating circumstances. Someone should conduct research into the number of couples that call it a day after garbled conversations between apparent kindred spirits in grotty nightclub loos.

Because I don’t spend a lot of time hanging round the men’s loos, I’m unsure if there’s a male equivalent of this fairy godmother lurking round the urinals. In my experience drunken men don’t cry as much as drunken women, so maybe they don’t need one. Or maybe their toilet guy says exactly the same thing as our toilet girl.

The last time Captain Tact came in from a booze soaked evening, he informed me I have eyes like sprouts (“with mould in the middle for the pupil”), which I understood from the delivery was meant to be complimentary. Perhaps there was a bloke in the sink saying, “for goodness sake treat her like the princess she is! Get home and deliver some vegetable-based compliments before it’s too late!”

It was a nice sentiment, however oddly phrased – and ultimately that’s what the average Toilet Mentor is trying to achieve too. She wants you to feel better about yourself and if that means ditching the person you’re with, so be it.

However, it may be worth remembering that sometimes, the person sitting in the sink of a nightclub toilet is just as addled as you.

How To Write Headlines

All news should be Yahoo news.

I only have a yahoo email account because I needed it to join Flickr, otherwise I might never have discovered the joy of Yahoo news. However, had I only known the quality of headlines the home page provided (not to mention the shockingly bad spam filters – the other week I won the Irish, Spanish and African lotteries within 24 hours of one another. Yes, the one African lottery. Because there aren’t more than fifty countries there) I would have signed up years ago.

But what has prompted me to write in praise of Yahoo news on this particular day? I’m glad you asked. It can only be the headline:

Flatworms Key to Immortality?

‘Of course not,’ you might think, but there again… it’s a headline you can’t not click.

Even though you know that this is going to be some scientific research in a university somewhere (Dr Aziz Aboobaker in Nottingham, as it happens), the moments between reading and clicking the link are magnificent in their potential.

How do they know flatworms are the key to immortality? Have the authorities uncovered an old man in a hole somewhere who thinks its 1203 and has eaten nothing but worms for centuries? And how do you test immortality, anyway? Stand someone in a bucket of worms and wait?

For me, the headline conjures up an image of a flatworm with the accent and acting prowess of Christopher Lambert in Highlander.

“Och, Docteur Aziz,” it says dramatically, “you know there can only be weun. Hoots.”

In my mind, the doctor is played by an as yet undecided Scottish actor (although if I could cast anyone at all it would be the late great Gerard Kelly, who did a fantastic villain as you’ll know if you ever saw him in Brookside) hell bent on discovering the secret of eternal life through any means necessary.

He has dedicated his life to the cause of immortality but is gradually descending deeper into madness as the secret eludes him. The film of his life starts out with the young doctor playing in the garden and finding Christopher Lambert worm, whom he decides to keep as a pet. As the film progresses we realise this young doctor was not Aziz at all, but his grandfather or great grandfather, who pass down Christopher Lambert worm through the ages. He never seems to get any older.

Aziz becomes interested in science exclusively because he wants to find out the secret of the ever youthful flatworm, but after getting his doctorate and a research position at a university, things begin to spiral out of control. Later scenes in the film include him taking a bath of flatworms, and he would also eat them in increasingly brutal and gory ways.

The Christopher Lambert worm tries to stop him from continuing his worm murders, but to no avail. Aziz kills the Christopher Lambert worm but is then distraught when he realises if the worm could be killed, it is not immortal after all. He goes on to die alone in a hovel on a hill in Italy at the age of 106, surrounded by worm related paraphernalia.

At which point the camera cuts to Christopher Lambert worm, alive and living on a beach somewhere.

You have to admit, this film has basically everything. No bearing on the actual article, of course, but even so.

And that, Dear Reader, is why I like Yahoo News.

So Unlike The Home Life of Our Own Dear Queen

Our boiler is broken again. Well, it is a day ending in ‘y’.

Said boiler had some sort of identity crisis on Tuesday and we have been without hot water ever since. A wee man came to fix it, which involved replacing a valve and a pump - that provided a basin of lukewarm water on Wednesday afternoon, but then it seems a different part of the machine took the huff, 'cause it promptly stopped working again. Cold showers and copious amounts of deodorant all round, then.

However, this situation has at least taught me something about our washing machine (there’s never a dull moment in my life, I’m sure you’ll agree).

You see, the questionable quality of all our white goods (fridge seal broken since we moved in, fire hazard toaster, had to buy our own freezer because the landlord doesn’t deem it a necessary commodity) meant we were not optimistic our washing machine would prove modern enough to have its own water-heating element. After conducting predominantly fruitless internet research throughout the week, today I ran a wash to see. It turns out the machine does in fact heat the water itself, which is very exciting, so now I do at least have clean clothes.

Of course, there is no quick way to dry said clothes (a tumble drier? You’re having a laugh) as we have no heating. This wouldn’t be so bad if I had any dry and clean undercrackers, but of course I do not – an issue which also makes it slightly more difficult to take up my friend’s kind offer of a shower at her house, 2 miles across town. What seems a pleasant forty-minute walk under ordinary circumstances seems to take on a hellish chafing aspect when completed in wet or already used necessaries.

I am therefore faced with a choice of using a hairdryer to render my laundry wearable, which will take ages and use a silly amount of electricity, or being brave and having my second ice cold shower of the week. The last cold shower did make my hair feel quite soft... but it also made me want to die inside.

The esteemed Captain Tact feels particularly resentful because this is the sort of thing that’s meant to happen to students, not responsible tax paying adults like us. Surely we are not meant to be at the mercy of other people any longer? But apparently we can’t get someone in ourselves because technically the landlord has fulfilled his contractual obligation to send someone (even if it is someone who failed to fix it and failed to come back yesterday morning as promised). Supposedly this means that if we get another guy in (one who actually sorts it out) we have to pay for it (on a Saturday, which willnae be cheap).

Of course I realise there are worse things going on in the world today, and one week without hot water is but a blip on the radar which will be forgotten in due course. But for crying out loud, one of our flatmates has absconded to Glasgow so she can have a shower there! Is this really what adult life in the decadent west is supposed to be like?! I say no. The revolution starts here.

How to Cope With Short Term Contracts

At the end of March, my current temp contract ends. Having been in the same place for a year (“I’m taking the ‘temp’ out of temporary,” I joked to my peers and oh, how we laughed), I’m a little bit on edge about what I'll do to pay the rent next. Still no joy making enough cash from pitching articles to go full time self-employed, you will be amazed to learn, and when Captain Tact signed up to my agency recently they said they’d probably be able to find him a few hours here and there, but there’s not a vast amount of stuff about and for goodness sake don’t rely on them.

The papers continue in a similar vein, which is a little insensitive given the people who have the most time to read the papers are the unemployed, nicking free wifi from outside Britain’s cafes. The Guardian is probably the worst for this – they keep conducting case studies that actually make me want to cry. The constant commentary on unemployment figures (still pretty high, who knew) is enough to strike fear into the heart of any human and I am terrified by the prospect of joining their ranks once more.

So what is my solution to impending employment tragedy? Well, I am going to leave the country. That’ll show ‘em.

As regular readers may already know, I’m not one of your London based journos whose parents can bankroll them to intern unpaid at a broadsheet for as long as it takes for someone to give ‘em a column; I’m a freelance/office temp in Scotland who struggles to get commissioning editors to reply to the most basic of queries (frinstance ‘do you accept work from freelances, Y/N?’). This means that when I say I’m leaving the country I don’t mean in order to travel around the world for a year, to spend some time writing my new book in America, or even to TEFL for a few months in Asia. Instead, my many months of scrimping and saving equate to having almost enough cash to go backpacking around mainland Europe. For a month.

Still, whilst it might not measure up in terms of distance to the travels of my friends and family (who have variously TEFLd in Thailand, Chile and China, volunteered with animals in Honduras/South Africa and orphans in Sri Lanka, not to mention worked their way round Oz, New Zealand and Canada), it’s likely to be the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. My gap year, lest we forget, was spent working for the council whilst I tried (and failed) to get work as a hack in exotic Dundee.

Captain Tact has been prevailed upon to come too, and assures me he’s looking forward to four weeks of sleeping on trains to avoid paying for hostels, walking everywhere by day to avoid paying for transport, and reading the same book four times to avoid paying extra money for the privilege of taking two books on a Ryanair flight to Berlin. It is the sort of once in a lifetime trip dreams are made of, I’m sure you will agree. I don’t know why all those pesky JSA claimants don’t just save up for an austerity gap month too.*

In the mean time, though, I will keep perusing the job adverts and crying quietly to myself. Hooray!

*other than the fact that if you tried to save up for it whilst on JSA it’d take you about twenty years.

Taking Responsibility

Yesterday I left the house wearing what turned out to be inappropriate footwear, covered in the alluring smell of Deep Heat, and with a slightly out of date microwave meal in my bag. In this manner I set myself up for A Good Day, if by ‘good’ you mean ‘irritating’.

The casual reader might think my own incompetence set me up for a fall, but I would counter that with another point – everyone is stupid except me.
Well, maybe not everyone, but a significant portion of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Of course when I say ‘deal with’, what I mean is ‘attempt to contact in vain via a third party’. The flat I currently share with three other struggling artists is ostensibly let to us by an agency, but when things go wrong they don’t send a maintenance person, they refer it to the landlord. Who does nothing.

On Monday I called about the boiler (broken for just under a month) and the downstairs intercom (broken for over a year) for the nth time. “That’s not very good is it,” said the woman on the phone sympathetically, “I’ll send an email to the landlord straight away.”

Because as we know, people are brilliant at reading and responding to emails. I’m certainly not surprised or unreasonably grateful when I come across someone who not only replies to messages but actually reads and digests the content therein. And our landlord must be the crème de la crème of those email reading people, the evidence speaks for itself! (/sarcasm, as we say here on the internet.)

Part of the reason I rang again was because I was due to despatch my sister to the local post office to pick up a third batch of Christmas shopping the postie couldn’t deliver (owing to the broken buzzer). You might argue that I shouldn’t be buying presents online when there’s only a 40/60 chance they’ll actually get delivered first time, but it’s not like I can just pop into Etsy for a look round.

There were four items to collect, but just for a giggle the Royal Mail decided they were only going to send one from the depot. The post office then claimed that I should have filled in the online redelivery form four times, one for each package.
If that were true (which it isn’t; I picked up three things after one form filling exercise only last Saturday) they should have given me four cards and four reference numbers to type in. Which I wouldn’t have done, incidentally, because the four bus trip across to the outskirts of Edinburgh to the depot - although massively inconvenient - works out cheaper.

Anyway, my inclination at this point was to shout at someone, but a) I was at work and b) finding direct contact details on the Royal Mail website is some sort of creative thinking challenge, so I filled out their generic online form. Because we all know people read emails properly and consider all the information therein…

I won’t lie, I found this un resolution unsatisfactory. So unsatisfactory that I found myself becoming the impotent emailer I previously derided, sending stiff notes first to the letting agency to follow up on Monday’s call, then the Palmolive corporation about a complaint I made several months ago.

By the time I’d made my three separate cases of mild annoyance I was so incensed that my damp feet in their inappropriate shoes dried off and the Deep Heat on my back began to work afresh, wafting round the office and putting colleagues in mind of old sports injuries.

And so it was that the annoyingness of other people helped me move on from my own cack handedness. Personal responsibility, who needs it.

Christmas Post

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas if popular high street book retailers who shall remain nameless didn’t try to sabotage their employees’ celebrations of it, am I right? Course I am.

Captain Tact has worked for The Shop That Must Not Be Named for just over three years. He is not allowed to apply for time off during December, because this is a busy period and all hands are required on deck for festive scrubbing; even though they take on an army of Christmas temps every year to manage the soapy chaos. People may not read anymore, but apparently this doesn’t stop ‘em buying shedloads* of books.

On Boxing Day.

The captain has been rota-ed on for the 26th every year he’s been there, actually, but through skill and determination has generally managed to affect a switcheroo. This time, his luck has run out. Who is rushing out to retail parks on the outskirts of cities to buy books on Boxing Day, you might ask. Did they not get a load of things to read under the tree only yesterday? I do not have an answer to this; ask me on December 26. Except don’t, because I’ll be curled up with a blanket and a book and Harry Potter 12: Myrtle’s Revenge or whatever other films they bung on.

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT BOXING DAY IS FOR.

Yes, I realise technically the New Year sales begin on Boxing Day. But I’ve been, and do you know what? They suck.

What are these amazing deals that people camp outside to nab? A pair of gold lamé jeans a size too small but it’s worth it ‘cause there’s £20 off! A new tent, even though you detest camping because you never know and this one has £35 off! Flesh coloured spike heels that will tear your feet to shrebbons, but will go with everything**!!

You know where else you can pay less for shit you don’t need or want? The internet. In the comfort of your own home, from behind a third tin of chocolate. People that are throwing themselves out into the cold instead of remaining with their loved ones and a bottle of gin are freakin’ idiots.

Now, some of those people will claim they have to get out of the house on the 26th because their relations are doing their head in. Apparently a child with a chocolate Santa stuck up its nose and an elderly aunt who smells a bit cabbagey are much more annoying than hordes of strangers deploying tactical use of the elbow as they grab for the last polyester flapper dress on the sale rail before you.

The festive cliché that families are horrible does not apply to us. Captain Tact’s dad is so adamant we don’t spend Christmas alone in our so-cold-it-makes-me-want-to-hurt-people flat that he has volunteered to do early Christmas lunch, then drive us back across the frozen wastes between Ayrshire and Edinburgh on the afternoon of the 25th so he can make this stupid shift. Meanwhile my sister, distraught at the notion of me spending Boxing Day alone with my thoughts, plans to drive down from Perthshire to whisk me into the bosom of my relations. Our carbon footprint is going to be monstrous, and all because some Scrooge in an office somewhere can’t bear the thought of missing out on two whole days of selling overpriced books to idiots.

Still, as I remember, famous book lover Jo March once threw herself onto the hearth and intoned ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’; then the next day she visited the January sales at Fort Kinnaird and indulged in retail therapy till her ears bled.

The Book Shop That Must Not Be Named is clearly doing something right.


*some.
**nothing.

Letter To The Landlord

Mysterious Landlord
Secret Lair
Somewhere

7th December 2011

Dear Mysterious Landlord,

As you may already know, I have lived in your property along with three friends since July 2009.

You know the place - the floors slope alarmingly because it’s an aging tenement gradually subsiding into the Water of Leith, the fridge leaks, the intercom is broken, the boiler is temperamental at best, and it’s colder than a penguin’s pants. Yet in spite of all that, it’s a nice flat. And at least we got rid of the mice.

Eventually.

Having said that, all the little problems are starting to irk. We have managed to adapt (visitors phone from the street when they want to come in, and we’ve attached all free standing shelves to the walls with brackets so they don’t fall), but the fact you never deal with anything means that every time a new issue appears, our goodwill stretches a little closer to breaking point.

You might think it enigmatic to force us to tell you things through a letting agency and to be referred to in hushed tones as ‘the landlord’, but the illusion is wearing thin.

Whenever we call to ask what’s being done about the thing we reported last week/month/year they feign surprise, because they referred it to you right away and you told them you’d sort it. What are you employing them for, exactly? Somebody to lie to? You do know you can talk crap to people for free, right? You don’t have to pay for the privilege. Or perhaps there’s some pleasure to be gained from watching them charge us outrageous administration fees for doing sweet FA?

The other alternative, I suppose, is that the agency haven’t passed anything on.

It is possible, then, that you don’t know the seal on the fridge door has been broken since we moved in, and that every morning we go into the kitchen to find a puddle of cold water next to it. We stopped reporting it, eventually.

You also won’t know about the buzzer, broken for over a year. Initially it was a case of replacing the button, as visitors to the building had to stick their finger in a hole full of wires to gain access. In recent months, though, it has stopped working at all. When I asked the agency (in April) if this was something we could sort ourselves as we’d been waiting an awful long time, I was told we were not allowed to do anything because it is a communal concern. That means it requires the owner – you – to liaise with the tenants of the three other flats in the building in order to sort it out.

This problem has cost us a fair whack in redelivery charges and bus fares to the royal mail depot, because although there is someone in the flat to take deliveries nearly every time, couriers and posties are unable to alert us to their presence. Fortunately two other buzzers have now met with the same fate, so we are optimistic someone else in the building (maybe the guy across the hall who professes to have seen you in the flesh) will prevail upon you to sort it out.

Of course you’ll be unaware the windows are so old you can actually feel air coming round the edges of the glass (many panes, by the way, are paper thin – check out the top left one in the right hand window of the living room. Feels like it’s going to come away in your hand, dunnit?). We’ve been fed some bollocks about the council saying you can’t replace them, but as we are all from middle class backgrounds and know how to look shit up on Google, we know this is not strictly true – you’d just have to adhere to a few rules and regulations. I’ll be honest; we have speculated in the past that you just don’t want to spend cash on re-pointing. And after all, you aren’t to know that there’s ice on the inside of the glass of a winter morning, or that we have to wear dressing gowns over several layers of clothes between November and March to keep warm even when the heating is on.

You probably don’t know our boiler has been broken for over a fortnight. Three calls to the agency resulted in a man coming after ten days or so; agreeing with my flatmate’s diagnosis that it needs a part, and vanishing off never to be seen again.

I suppose you are equally unaware what the problem is – an electrical fault, that means while we can put the heating and hot water on manually (although we can’t set it in advance for morning warmth), it can also get jammed on. To be honest, we might not mind so much at this time of year if any of the heat generated stayed in the building, but it was on for three hours the other night and the bedrooms remained at 12 – 13 degrees Celsius (about 52 Fahrenheit). In my mind, that temperature is not quite cosy enough to warrant the extra money this will add to our next energy bill.

Sir, mere words cannot express how much I am dreading another four months of feeling like I’ll never be warm again, of swearing under my breath at innocent posties, and standing in weird fridge water in the morning. The cons of renting this property now far outweigh the pros and if I had my way I would be out of here, but sadly my financial status last January was uncertain enough that I allowed your agency to force me into signing for another year. Rest assured that in June of 2012 I will be headed for Barbados, or failing that a new build with level floors, containing both sealed fridge and working intercom. Such stuff as dreams are made on, as the Bard once said.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this letter and I hope that now you are aware of the things that have been done – or not done – in your name, you will see fit to sort it the fuck out.

Kind Regards,
The Unhappy Tenant