Honey, I’m home!

Sort of, kinda, very nearly.

Charting the ongoing return of Cas (I have been very firmly, boring old Claire Louise the last month or so), I think my true personality might be pretty much back. On Thursday morning one of my lovely colleagues pointed out that I still didn’t seem like my usual self, very quiet and unengaged (which is true). Then I had a run-in with Occupational Health shortly after that converation. I don’t like Occupational Health. I do understand rationally that they have a role to play and that they are, in general, good people there to help. But I just don’t like them and every contact I have had with them has been negative. However, I had to go see them on Thursday, so go see them I did, determined to keep as open and a positive a mind as possible.

A little over an hour later I returned to the office and let fly to a rant of epic proportions.

A rant along the lines of how I had just wasted an hour of my life with a fat, supercilious, patronising cow who had insisted on prying into every aspect of my personal life and medical history stretching back to when I was 14. And yes, I did actually use those words, which earned me some respect from the new EDLO in the office. As a side note, we have a new EDLO in the office, and very nice to look at he is too. Sadly, as they all are, not single, but you can’t have everything in this world.

The same colleague who had commented on my quietness just that morning just looked at me, grinned, and said “she’s back”. And you know what, I think I am. So thank you Occy Health for giving me a reason to get mad again.

Other than that, who saw Dr Who last night?!!!!! I didn’t watch it live as I was dozing through the aftershocks of a migraine that struck out of no where at Saturday lunch time, but I could hear Moose gasping at the TV in the living room and her incredulous “No….!” as the credits rolled and the Crazy Canalman was on the phone straight after with a “NO!!!!!”. I sat down to watch the video with my morning cup of tea just now and all I have to say is “No…!” Or more crudely “fuck a duck!”

I won’t go into any spoilers but roll on next week, that’s all I can say!!!!!

Which brings us to the links. I’ve been collecting them as usual since the last roast but it looks like as far as the internet is concerned, I am not quite back to standard operating procedure, because I am still damn hard to please! The links that have made it in this week, they are great 😀

When something can make me giggle at the moment, you know it has to be good. I am SO glad this sort of thing happens to people other than me

Rarely have I come across a better description of what blogging means to me

PENGUIN!!!

With my concentration shot and my mood as black as a very black thing, I have been reading a LOT of chick-lit, regency romance, and trashy thrillers lately. You know you have been reading a LOT of books when you take the latest stack back to the library and the librarian comments on the amount and speed with which you have been devouring the books! I refuse to be embarrassed because It re-boots the mind and heart after plodding round life’s treadmill day after day… it gives us hope, energy and makes us laugh

Is the internet changing the way we think? I put this link in here with no further discussion simply because I want to be able to find it again when my brain is working and I can actually do the topic justice!

Bonekickers. As Moose queried when she heard me wailing in disbelief at the trail the other night, I am not sure if this looks so bad because I am an archaeologist, or because it just looks so bad! But it’s from the Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes people, and both of those were sheer genius (and, coincidentally didn’t have very good trails either), so can it really be as bad as it looks?!

And some movies because where would we be without some trailers?
My Best Friends Girl

Red Roses and Petrol

The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button – warning, Flash site

The Long Shots

C’est tout. I am now off to Waitrose to buy some disgustingly healthy food for next week. I hate being forced to be healthy. Silly body. *grumble*

This post is brought to you thanks to the nagging of Moose. She has elected herself Motivator-in-Chief and if I don’t blog something to show I am alive I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t start denying me cookies.

Which would be bad as I am in the middle of an inexplicable cookie craving (big, chewy American style cookies). And cucumber. Truly, I have been craving cucumber. My body is behaving very oddly at the moment.

So how am I? I am hanging in there. Things are starting to get back on an even keel but, paradoxically, I am now feeling the need to hide from the internet (this is the first time I have turned my computer on in four days!). This might in part be due to starting back at work this week. I am only doing four hours a day but I am coming home knackered! It takes more mental energy that you realise to work in a busy office, plus I haven’t totally beaten the insomnia so I am still a little behind on sleep. But everyone is being lovely and understanding, so I am starting to get back into the swing of things.

One thing I am not in the swing of is writing. My brain has turned into one big pile of mashed potato – I have the attention span of a labrador puppy and the memory retention of a brain injured goldfish. Some days I am having a hard enough time remembering my name (had to tell someone my email address over the phone today and had to read it off a business card as I couldn’t spell it from memory!), let alone stringing sentences together in a gripping narrative. I am still having ideas and the characters are starting to chatter away in my subconscious again, but I am not quite back to typing the stuff out.

Or being witty on the blog. Sorry. Normally it is easy for me, but writing this has been like pulling teeth and I know it is not really coherent or up to scratch. It will serve its purpose however: I am still here, alive and kicking, albeit a little fuzzy around the edges. I still love y’all and I will be back soon 🙂

We were watching the film Waitress the other week and both had an overwhelming urge to make pie. And to keep saying the word “pie”. Go on, say it. “Pie”. It is just such a lovely, round, tasty sounding word.

While Cas is busy saying the word “pie” over and over with a dreamy look on her face, I shall take over and tell you how I made the pie (this is Moose talking in case you’re worried Cas has suddenly developed a split personality along with everything else). The pie was made in celebration of Bright Meadow getting in the Guardian, hence the name of the pie. ^*

Ingredients

• 3/4 pack chocolate Hob Nobs
• a generous tbsp of soya spread
• a tsp of golden syrup
• 40g 70% cocoa chocolate
• 75g frozen raspberries
• 75g frozen blackberries
• a generous tsp ground ginger
• a tbsp sugar
• a tbsp cornflour
• enough custard to cover the top of the pie

Method

1. Crush the chocolate Hob Nobs
2. Melt the soya spread, golden syrup and chocolate over a low heat and mix into the crushed Hob Nobs
3. Pour into a round pie tin and press firmly to form a base and sides
4. Leave in the fridge to cool and set
5. Put the raspberries, blackberries, ginger, sugar and cornflour in a saucepan and heat gently until the fruit has softened
6. Strain the fruit into a separate dish and return the juice back to the pan
7. Add a little more sugar and reduce over a high heat until you have a thick sauce
8. Put the fruit into the prepared crust and pour the sauce over
9. Top with custard
10. Place in a preheated over at 190C/375F/Gas 5 for approx 20 minutes or until it looks and smells cooked

Tips & Notes

• Hob Nobs are an oaty biscuit – I can’t think of a direct comparison for our American readers, but a firm, crunchy, oaty cookie with a chocolate coating or chips would work just as well
• This isn’t a British “pie” – don’t get either of us started on the stupidity of some of the things referred to as “pie” in the film. It’s just tasty, let’s leave it at that
• You could use something other than soya spread if you so desired, like normal margarine
• This is delicious hot or cold. The custard doesn’t really set when it’s cooked, so if you do eat it straight from the oven as we did, be prepared for the top of your pie to run away. Once it is chilled, the custard does set

^* OK, so you caught me. I made the pie because I wanted to make pie. Cas getting mentioned in the Guardian was just a good excuse.

I am having a disturbingly intense desire to get inked again. I kid you not – some days, the desire to get another tattoo is overwhelming to the point I am reaching for my coat and front door keys. So far, what is left of my sanity has always stepped up to the plate just in time and reminded me of my personal rule: one year with a fixed idea of design and location before ANY needle touches flesh. Note I am not discounting having more ink, in fact you could probably put money on me having at least two more, but I am doubting the wisdom of getting one right now.

You see, I am depressed, and when I am depressed my self-destructive streak, never buried very deep, bursts forth and jumps up and down, shouting “look at me! look at me!!” The urge to change anything becomes overwhelming. When you cannot control what is going on inside your head, any little thing that you can influence, even a little bit, becomes precious. Hence, I would suppose, tattoos and piercings and their traditional prevalence amongst the more disaffected portions of society. With me, the first sign that things are going to hell in a handcart tends to be when I get bored with my hair, rush into the hairdresser, and go “cut it all off!!!”

Yes, the observant will have noted that I did just that a little over a month ago. Alarm bells were tinkling merrily, I assure you, it just took me a few weeks longer to acknowledge them.

Right now I am vacillating between tattoos, piercings, and continuing with the hair cutting. Tattoos really should be taken off the table. My previous tattoos have all come from places of contentment and joy – positive pieces and I want all my art to be the same. I look at my foot, or my back, and I feel a sense of pride and pleasure and remember all the good that went into the design. If I were to get a tattoo now, whilst I am sure it would be a beautiful piece, I am not sure it would be something I would want to look back on and go “oh yes, that one I got when I was having my mini-mid-twenties-crisis”. I want my tattoos to be something I have contemplated and have meaning beyond an impulse to take control.

Piercings… I could get something pierced I guess. Well, my ears at least a few more times, because I am actually a wimp and the thought of other bits getting pierced wibbles me out. Nothing against it on other people, it can look damn gorgeous, but on me… Wibbles. I have semi toyed with the idea of getting my lower lip pierced in the middle, but in all honesty I do not think it would look good on me, and I am still realistic enough to know that facial piercings are probably not going to go down wonderfully well at job interviews or in the corporate world I am looking to head into. Tattoos you can cover up to some degree. Piercings you might as well not have if you’re constantly taking them out for work. All that aside though, I am having a hard enough time adjusting to the holes I got in the new year. I love them, but I am still experimenting with the right balance of jewellery. What with the short hair and multiple holes, my usual dangly earrings just look wrong, so I am back to studs, and I am still finding the look that I am happy with. Throwing yet MORE places to put pretty bits of silver into the mix would just confuse things!

So piercing looks like it is out as well, which leaves hair cuts/colours.

Woah Nelly. Having been there before with the whole purple, grade 3 all over, psycho lesbian look, can I just say that the past has taught me caution to a certain degree with my hair. Most styles work on me and I know that short looks good, but I have to be SO careful I don’t just go to the hairdresser “get out the clippers…” Again with the having to look vaguely respectable at work. I would trust Peter, my normal hairdresser, not to go too crazy, apart from the fact I have taught him too well that he can do ANYTHING with my hair and I will trust him. I just go in, take my glasses off, and let him work his magic for however long it takes. The results are always amazing, but I am not sure I can rely on him to see beyond my impulse to “have it all off” and go “No, not this time, it’s not what you really want”.

Which leaves me where exactly in my desire to change something, anything about me and my life? It leaves me no where. I do need to get my hair trimmed but I think I am going to take Moose along with me just to make sure I don’t go crazy. The tattooist I use is a good man, and he refuses to do walk-ins, so I am more or less safe from more ink without planning. Ear piercing could happen, but that is easily rectified by letting them grow over (a waste of money, but still a blessing for bad judgement). What else is there? I am looking for new jobs, I honestly am. I sent four applications off just yesterday, but that is just applications. There is the whole interview debacle to get through before change can come in that part of my life. I could go on a trip, but that requires time, inclination and money. I could… I could…

There are so many things I know I could do. I do have options and I am so lucky that I have them. If push comes to shove, at the back of mind is always the thought that I can jack it all in and run back to hide in Somerset with my family. It is not something I want to do because that feels like admitting defeat and running away, but it IS an option.

But… None of them give me the immediate buzz of having done something demonstrable. They are all depressingly grown-up and sensible options. I don’t want to be grown-up and sensible right now. I want someone to come and wrap their arms around me and tell me it is all going to be OK and that they are going to deal with everything for me. I want to curl up on my lovely comfortable new mattress, pull the covers over my head, and wake up in a few months time with a stupendous new job, an amazing flat and brilliant new life in London, all my mental worries soothed away, Prince Charming waiting on me hand-and-foot, and a slimmer body to boot.

Can that happen please?

In light of the fact I live in the real world, I know that the above is not going to happen. Talking it through though, I think I have just found the one “change something” thing that I can go and do – I might go and get me some new spectacles tomorrow. A nice new pair of glasses, that’s what I need. Sorted.

(Yes, depression and “get out the house each day” is turning out to be VERY expensive).

You never know where an innocent link is going to land you. In my case it has landed me with a glow of self importance and a bruised hip, the latter being more related to the former than you might at first glance expect.

I woke up late this morning to a slightly buggy Twitter (get that fixed please, I’m hanging onto my sanity by some very ragged fingernails and tweeting with people is turning into a minor, but important, compulsion that is keeping me going) informing me I was in the Guardian today.

Before I go further with the main points of this post, it is time to digress slightly and talk once again about my broken body. Thanks to a bad back, I have tried pretty much every ergonomic seating option in the book, with varying degrees of success. The latest, thanks in no small part to boredom, depression, and random IM conversations, is a large, blue, bouncy gym ball. The blue bit is not important beyond helping you get a vivid mental image – the bouncy (and large) parts are.

The theory goes that sitting on the bouncy ball will (1) keep me from slouching and (2) keep me moving a little bit. Keeping moving stops the back muscles seizing up and helps to strengthen the stomach muscles at the same time. Just think, I could be blogging myself to washboard abs right now! On top of all that it is just so much fun to be sitting at your computer, idly bouncing whilst you wait for a page to load.

There is, however, a slight problem with using big, blue, bouncy balls instead of a proper seat – it is very easy to fall off them when you are shocked.

I was shocked this morning, so I am now nursing what is promising to be a rather spectacular bruise on my hip incurred when I saw Bill’s, and other, tweets, tried to jump up in surprise, got my legs caught under the desk, and ended up flat on my back on the floor. Luckily I had just finished my morning cup of tea, or it could have been so much worse and led to me trying to recoup the cost of a new keyboard from the Guardian.

I brought my copy of the Guardian and sat back at my desk with slight butterflies in my tummy to see what all the fuss was about. Why was I in the Guardian? I was pretty certain I hadn’t spoken to any journalists lately, and my life, whilst many things, is not particularly worthy of being in print. I smoothed the crackly pages out. I thumbed through the sections till I got the “Technology” pullout. I took a deep breath and turned to page four. I scanned across the page and there, in the middle right, it said “brightmeadow.co.uk” next to words I had written.

In a national newspaper, there is a link to my little blog!!! And words I had written!!!!!

The actual bit of writing itself, an excerpt from this roast, is not one I am particularly proud of. It is a few sentences I threw together because I was compiling the roast whilst in a particularly black mood, needed to introduce a link to an article in the Guardian Tech section that had made me go “hmmmm”, and I couldn’t find my inspiration or originality with a GPS locator.

We will gloss over my displeasure at my literary short comings and temporarily turn a blind eye to the fact this was printed without my knowledge, and just bask in the fact that someone up there in the Guardian thinks I am worthy of being printed in a real, honest to deity-of-choice, newspaper.

Twice. (Yes, some vanity searching turned up a previous mention).

That is twice that my words have been deemed good enough to waste ink and paper on. Wow. Heady times for Bright Meadow and CLK!

Why is this looping me out, making me giggle with girlish glee, and fall off my bouncy ball in equal measure? Firstly, because it is so unexpected. I throw links about like they are close-to-date candy at a Cadburys discount store and I do not expect anything in return. I just want people to read, share and enjoy/be irritated/made to think by the things I find each week. The Sunday Roasts started because I kept missing people off the emails I would send when I found something, and then grew because I love the interaction and discussion they always prompt. You never know where a link is going to land you.

After the surprise, it is making me think yet again about the “you never know who is reading” aspect of blogging and the internet. I know when someone links to me, I will follow that link back out of curiosity. I just never seem to think that it might be possible that it works in reverse too. Add to that, how many people are going to be linking to a (for example) Guardian article at any given time? Yes, there will be software whirring in the background, collating those inbound links, but somewhere along the way a human has to get involved and go “that comment there, let’s reprint it”. Moose got all excited that perhaps I have a secret cadre of fans in press offices around the world, eagerly waiting for the next pearls of wisdom to drop from my blog. Never one to enjoy bubble-bursting, I did have to point out the unlikelyhood of this, and explain the whole trackback/automated software thing.

Not that it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that I have a secret cadre of fans in press offices around the world, but, well, they haven’t made their presence known to date.

I am also pondering why being in a physical newspaper, even in such a small way, should be making me and those around me feel so proud? (My dad has already asked for a copy so he can frame it and brag to all and sundry, god help us all). Why should paper and ink confer more status than, say, digital columns? Things I have said have been mentioned on a couple of “other people are saying this…” sections of national and international sites. That made me go “cool”, but nothing more. This is making me go “holy hand grenades!”

Is it because, when it comes down to it, print media is physical and therefore tangible? The internet for all its wonders is ephemeral, transient, fleeting, and often times lacking in any form of editorial control. To be in newsprint; a decision was made to put those words, in that section, on that page. And then there is the reach of a physical newspaper – yes, lots of people get their news online (RSS anyone?) but significantly more flip through a newspaper each day.

Lastly, lets go back to the whole “without my knowledge” thing. The following thoughts are wooly and could go either way, because I myself feel very wooly on this topic and could go either way.

It is not a big piece, I know that. My work is currently vaguely covered by a Creative Commons license which states I am happy for reuse of my work so long as it is attributed (as this is). I might be rethinking the wisdom of this, but right now it stands. It is in the “letters” page of the paper, which is traditionally where the average person gets to have their say. All groovy. I have not been quoted out of context or vast swathes of my work reprinted without my permission.

But I never said I wanted my comments in a national paper. Yes, I commented on the Guardian article the first time around, but I made those comments on my own website. Yes, my words are in the public domain but, again, they are on my own blog. If I hadn’t included that trackback, they would be none the wiser on my opinion.

Would I be happier if they had asked my permission before printing the excerpt? Yes. Would I have given permission if they had asked? Almost certainly – if I publish it on Bright Meadow then I stand by it and, context depending, I see no reason why my work could not be reprinted. Do I expect to be asked each and every time and is it reasonable to expect this? Now there you have me. Part of me is going “of course they should damn well ask, I work hard on this blog!”. The other side of me is going “they’re not going to ask, they will just use a piece that doesn’t require them to chase – it’s not like bloggers are exactly hard to find or chary of giving their opinion”. Which way should it be? That I have no answer for.

…

To take the Guardian’s own phrase, “Comment is Free” – but you can never be sure where it will get you. In my case, it has already landed me in the letters page of a national newspaper without my knowledge. Where else will it end?