Hi all, Neko here.

I’m babysitting the blog for a few days whilst our illustrious leader is away from broadband 🙂

This is really just to make sure the editing permissions are working OK, and to give you all fair warning!

Cas said I should introduce myself… I guess the best thing is to head over to my blog on the link above, that should give you some idea. I’m a fellow computing/ archaeology nut- I met Cas at uni, and we are frequent co-conspiritors of late, on diverse matters.

I don’t share her obsession with penguins, but it does not wierd me out! I might even try to write you all a roast on Sunday, there are some things that have caught me in the news….

I’m mainly going to moderate comments and zap spam though, so please just carry on as normal!

I want to tell you a story about how golf balls changed the world

The story starts on an inner city housing estate, twenty years ago. Pretty much any image you’ve got in your head right now about “inner city housing estates” is probably doing an adequate job at describing the scene. Deprivation. Vandalism. Hostility. Fear.

Then in one house at one end of the estate, one of the residents takes a chance and talks to his neighbour. They share a joke over the fence. Let their kids play together. Give the other a hand when a car fails to start on a cold winter morning. Provide a friendly cup of tea when a day hasn’t gone so good.

Fast forward to today.

Now that one end of the estate is a nice place to live. There’s little crime there. People talk to each other and they celebrate their successes and mourn their losses as a community.

One man looks beyond his street however and sees that, really, things are still pretty dire one block over and he knows there is a way to go.

As he looks out his front window most mornings, he sees a young lad walking down the street carrying a golf club. The suspicious part of him could find it easy to think what the curtain twitchers think – he’s a yob, a trouble maker, just out looking for something – someone – to bash up. He knows the kid has a reputation but few kids on the estate haven’t got a reputation. So he refuses to listen to that part of his mind and pops down the local sports store and lays out £2 on a pack of four golf balls.

Next time the young lad walks down his street, the man steps out of his front door and calls him over. “You like golf, right?”
“Love it!” the young lad’s face lights up. “I go down the playground every day and practice”.
The man hands him the pack of golf balls. “Take these. I’m not going to get the use out of them…”

And the young man walks off down the street with a grin on his face and goes to the playground to practice with balls he hasn’t had to nick off anybody. The next time he walks up the street, he gives a wave to the man. Then he stops and has a chat one morning. Later on, he brings his father over to say hello.

Now the next street over is getting to be a nicer place to live. The people talk to each other and they celebrate their successes and mourn their losses as a community.

The man looks out of his front door and sees some kids from three blocks over running down the street with a patched up football. He goes down the local sports shop and lays out £2 for a new ball.

Next time the young lads run down the street, he steps out of his front door and calls them over.
“You like football, right? My grandchildren don’t play with this any more, why don’t you have it?”

True story.

Perhaps there comes a time in every bloggers life where she needs to sit back and have a long, hard think about what she is writing and who she is writing for. I know I reached that point this past week.

I’ve said before that I don’t care about my audience, that I write for me and that still holds true. I say nothing on this blog that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face if I had to. What you read is what you get in any world, real or virtual (online I’m minus my planet-sized insecurity, but I have a crew of people offline doing their best to cure me of that).

And now I feel I have to hold my tongue.

I guess it had to happen. You get a readership that spans everyone from your father, your colleagues, your friends, to people you went to primary school with and others you have never even met, with a minister thrown in for good measure, not to mention everyone in between – commonsense dictates that you should pull a few punches. Not step outside the bounds too much. Play it nice.

Simply put, I’ve got to face the fact a fair few of the people who might end up reading Bright Meadow are going to think I’m a heathen sinner on the fast track to a firey place where all the sunblock in creation ain’t gonna help me.

Which actually is ok in a bizarre kind of way. So I’d rather not end up in whichever Circle is reserved for infidel bloggers, but I’ll accept I could be way off base with my lifestyle. I’m not going to call people on what they believe just so long as they return the courtesy and don’t outright preach to my face.

(If you just can’t restrain yourself on that score, please take it to email and not the comments – some things should be personal and telling me the way I live my life is wrong? That’s personal).

It doesn’t help that people who say I rock also think I’m going straight to hell, however they’ve made their choices along the way, same as I’ve made mine, and who is to say they are wrong? I try to live my life the best way I can just as they are living theirs. We’re just working off a different script is all.

But just because I don’t talk about my beliefs that often, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them. And at times it doesn’t mean I don’t want to reach into the computer screen and wrap my fingers round the throats of some patronising bigots who’s words I read.

But I don’t say anything.
Because I’m the friendly one.

There are times I am sickened by the people I am involved with, the people I spend time with and the things they say and do behind closed web-doors.

But I don’t say anything.
Because I’m the nice one.

My boss said it true when we were giving a presentation the other day about the work we do: it’s not the situations that get us down – it is the people who disappoint us. The narrow minded, the self absorbed and the ignorant.

Is it wrong for me to want at my little piece of the internet to be friendly, warm, welcoming, peaceful? To be a place where it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, straight, bi or interested in aliens covered in purple polka dots? Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Haven’t-Got-a-Clue, Couldn’t-Care-Less? Black, White, Purple-Polka-Dotted-Alien?

I really don’t care. Just so long as you have a nice word to say to your fellow readers, you are welcome. From the bottom of my heart I mean it. I truly cannot comprehend people who say hurtful things because they can. It escapes me. It depresses me.

Why it should be that the insignificant minority can trample my soul into the dust I do not know. The good should outweigh the bad, but it is the bad that keeps me up at night. I try to surround myself with people who make me soar and somehow the demons keep shouting down my better angels.

And I do not say anything. I do not rock boats. I sensor my own words that are screaming inside my heart because… It is who I am.

But I think there are times I should say things and I don’t because now Bright Meadow is what it is. It isn’t the place to unleash the sarcastic, vitriolic, seething beast within me. I don’t know where that place is, or even if it should exist at all, but I know it isn’t here. And just occasionally I wish that right here, right now, I could say some of the words I have bubbling up inside me.

I want to be able to fight back – to say I feel insulted, hurt, betrayed. Or to call people out for the horrendous things they say to other people – to say no, it’s not alright to say that, being a self-proclaimed cocky bastard is not clever, funny, or sexy. I want not to have to clothe my words in passive/aggressive ramblings written late at night when something has pushed me over the edge. I want not to try and say something nice about someone only to have it thrown back in my face twenty times over by the trolling element.

I want not to be in the situation where I type a response to something someone has said then hesitate over the ‘post’ button, and more often than not reach for the ‘delete’ button. Cas and Bright Meadow have built up a reputation, for better or worse and I don’t want to bring it all tumbling down around my ears because of something I said in an unguarded moment.

But why should I have to be the one who puts a gag on my tongue and my website?

We all choose our words for our audiences and the stages we talk from. It is part of being an adult and part of living in a society. Whilst I truly wouldn’t want it any other way, to borrow words from someone I’ve adored for a long time now – it’s my headspace people and I’m just letting you camp here a while. Just because I’m not saying something it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. And if I can restrain myself and refrain from ripping you a new one, why can’t you do the same?

Because I need cheering up – not only did my back totally implode over night leaving me unable to my torso or do simple things like lifting up a cup of tea without wincing, but office politics are making life nasty (damn open plan offices!) – I am going to ask y’all to do something for your beloved Cas.

I know that lots of you read the blog on at least a vaguely regular basis. I know that at least 100 of you are munching on my RSS feed fairly consistently. I expect there are lots more who read Bright Meadow the old fashioned way but I have no way in place of tracking you. But only a few of you actually comment.

So I’m asking, no begging that a few of you come out of hiding and say hello. I won’t be bribing you with prizes for the best comment (I’m too much of a Scrouge – in a cute, British way of course), but I am not above resorting to guilt…

I am in severe need of love, appreciation and an ego boost right now. So give it to me!

Oh, and this goes double for those of you who I KNOW read the blog but who have yet to say anything on it. Yes Mr Godhead, I mean you 😉

If y’all are very, very nice to me I might just tell you the tale of Baby Cas, Big Brother, and the Optimus Prime robot…

I’ve got a theory that there are two types of people in the world.

The type of person who likes to have all the mugs in their kitchen from matching (or at least coordinating) sets, and the type of person who thinks that each mug in the house should be individual and special.

Now, I’m one of the later and always have been. I think I was seven or eight before I realised that some people even HAD coordinating mugs. Even now when I go places and all the tea/coffee comes in beautifully matching cups I raise an internal eyebrow.

I mean, how are you supposed to tell which drink is yours (other than the obvious that it’s the one in front of you, I’m not that blonde)? What if I only want a small cup of tea or, conversely, need to drown my sorrows in a “bucket” as they’re termed in our family?

Matching sets are just… well, impractical. What if one gets broken? Suddenly your perfect set is a set no more and you just know you’re not going to be able to get a replacement that matches.

Plus, they are so impersonal.

My mug is my mug. It’s the perfect size, shape and weight for a cup of tea. Other mugs just aren’t the same to drink out of – when I was working in the lab, I took my favourite mug in with me because I spent so much time there. And heaven help anyone who drinks out of my mug in the office… So it’s only a cheap £1 mug from Asda with a sheep/cow on it, but it’s mine, damn it!

I’ve strayed off the point somewhat.

As I started to say, I’m working on a theory that there are two sorts of people in the world, let’s call them the “Matching” versus the “Eclectic”. This isn’t to say that one group is right whilst the other is wrong, just that the people I’ve observed tend to fall in one camp or the other and it’s fairly indicative of how they live their life in general.

And don’t even get me started on the whole mug tree debate!

Because I know y’all are a bit curious, the following is what happens when Cas is left home alone in Meadow Towers and she decides to invite illyna and Neko over to drink wine, eat pizza, and generally have a gossip session.

Because I am more than a little bit drunk right now, any typos are going to remain because, well, I don’t care.

For the record, Cas is typing this because illyna is giving Stitch a hug and drinking wine, and Neko is making shoe sculptures and documenting the whole process with the digital camera.

Mr David Tennant was an integral part of the evening, as were wikis, pole dancing, tales of newts, people meeting people, blowing shit up (this was most important) and how to speed hair growth by lying upside down.

Pictures will be uploaded tomorrow because I’m not sure any of us can remember our Flickr sign-ins!

Oh, odd socks were also deemed to be important.

Neko is going to take over the typing now…

….and now Cas has the camera, which means I will be in pictures.

I’m not sure this should be allowed. illyna thinks it is all a bad idea (but is thrusting her chest out for photo’s of her t-shirt with its great quote) so I think she does not get to be the sensible one anymore. Hurrah. Fridge pictures are now starting. If I could remember how I’d link to my dads flickr page (search on ‘bebrowed‘). He has a whole series of fridge-light pictures. I think I’m about to go steal the camera to make an ‘homage’…. illy! I demand the camera!

illyna- you type. Oh, Cas is being pictured with Stitch. Who has given up his coveting of the shoes and has gone for hugs with Cas, the hussy. And lets not forget Mr David Tennant, who we ARE going to watch, honest, once we are done being silly…

illy isn’t witty enough to type right now. I keep plying her with wine, but, well, it’s not working. I feel sad 🙁 And now Neko is doing strange yoga on the floor and I really think it is time I stopped live blogging my evening and started watching David Tennant some more.

But how cool is it that I have friends who I can live blog an evening with!

(The shoes are now going in assorted household appliances. It really is time to reclaim my camera…)

I do like shoe shopping. Oh, and yes, I am still alive.

Whilst I get my blogging self back in gear, I need your opinion on something.

Do I keep this pair of shoes or not?

They are totally impractical, insanely over priced, but they are also just so pretty. I’ve been wearing them round the flat all evening and… I love them, but I know I should take them back because I won’t get the chances to wear them… But they are so pretty!

I’m not sure if I want y’all to say “be sensible Cas, take them back!” or if I want y’all to side with my frivolous side and say “You’ve been working insanely hard lately Cas, and deserve to treat yourself”. If I am being honest here, I will admit part of the reason I am debating so hard is because I only brought these (in the green) a few days ago.

Can I really justify two pairs of expensive, frivolous (if gorgeous and actually wearable) shoes in one week?