Monumentally Frustrated: In LiveJournal Form

I fancy a change.

moscow_olympics.

THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
MISTAH MELLER HE LIKE NEW BAND

I've begun eating my own words and I have finally decided to confess my liking for The Long Blondes. They're playing the Academy in October. Anyone fancy coming with me?

Ulysses trudges along at a slow / steady pace. I'm now on page 575 out of 732 which means there's 157 pages remaining. God! That isn't a lot. I'll be so bloody chuffed when I've finished this. I don't ever recall spending such a long time on a book, apart from Paradise Lost. Saying that though, the minute I've finished this, I'll give it a tap and probably a hug for the amount of time I've devoted to it. It's certainly become a bit of a friend during my lonely hours at home and in town.

I came across a great website whilst shirking off any prospect of booking in iPods or phoning customers to apologise for them being on hold for twenty five minutes, by looking at this: http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/ulysses/index.htm

It's all how I pictured it in the book. When I get my pay cheque later this month, I'm going to scourer for cheap flights to Dublin, even if it means I have to go on my own. I might meet an Irish lovely over there, and decide never to return. I doubt it. Perhaps just stay there for a couple of nights in a cheap bed and breakfast or a youth hostel.

In fact, from looking at a hostel website, I might just have been introduced to the world of hosteling. Tokyo for £17 a night? I might get saving, now.

I dropped off a CV at two places whilst in town yesterday: Fopp and Waterstones. I can't imagine they'll get back to me. I'd jump in sheer, unadulterated joy if either (particularly Fopp) give me an interview, never mind a job.

It's really funny when you're watching Trainspotting on FilmFour with the subtitles on, and this appears on screen whilst Renton is sat on a toilet in 'The worst toilet in Scotland':

1945-2006

My Grandma (my Dad's mum) is the most conservative person I have ever known. She displays union flags in her bedroom window 365 days a year; her views on immigration and multi-culturalism are on par with Enoch Powell; has pictures of the royal family, as well as other royalphernalia (is that a word? I doubt it) such as Diana and Prince Charles depicted on various thimbles; and a picture she took of the Queen Mother whilst down at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday years ago.

Anyway, she has just phoned me up to ask how I am, as my family are currently holidaying in Spain for a week, and I have been entrusted in minding the house and the pets. She asked how I was, if I had enough food, and that my Dad has just phoned her to say that tomorrow, they're going to visit Gibraltar. However, she also said:

'Don't have any orgies, unless you invite me'.

Scared.

I say that Ulysses hasn't got me cowering, well, it's inflicted a couple of blows on me this evening. It takes about five minutes simply to read one page, and by the time you get to the end, you realise you don't understand what the fuck it means. So, you go back and do it again, and by this point, a vicious circle has developed. Still, I'm approaching page 400 now, which means only 336 pages left, and these next 130 look fantastic, as it takes the form of a play layout. I think this section is mirrored on Circe.

I wish I had a Circe in my life at the moment to entice me to bed. Because I'm not going back to London, Helen and I have called the relationship off, although we remain extremely good / best friends, but it is a shame, and I do think about her a lot - I still have a picture of her in my Paperchase frame, and when someone's in an expensive Paperchase frame, they must have meant something. Well, she still does mean something. No need for the past tense there.

I think I prepared myself for it for some time, as I flittered between going and not going back, so I was half ready for the consequences. Still, it didn't stop last Tuesday being extremely upsetting after returning from London the day before. It felt as if I'd disappointed so many people, including myself. But, I'm still happy with the decision, and I should be going to see Helen sometime soon in Nottingham before she moves to London herself to become a journalist.

I, meanwhile, cannot wait to enter the road of becoming a journalist, and probably writing stories on village fetes, and the mighty feud of Troy. Troy being the A6, 192 bus route; the Trojans being Stagecoach; and UK North being the Greeks, with a trusty Polish mentalist bus driver being Odysseus, fooling the Trojans by decorating his own bus like a Stagecoach R reg lo-liner, fooling Stagecoach, and winning the battle of the A6. I fucking hate Stagecoach.

I don't know what book to read next. I plan on ordering a load, alongside some DVDs and maybe even a knocked down Platinum edition of Pro Evolution Soccer 5 off Amazon this week, as I've finally been paid. PAID, I TELL THEE! I bought a few DVDs yesterday which included:

- Totally Bill Hicks
- Yes Minister (Series 2)
- Apocalypse Now

All DVDs I've been meaning to buy for sometime. Bought a pair of cords and a shirt as well, which I will wear tomorrow when off out t'Retro Bar. Again.

I've been reading this for the past two or three weeks now:



Safe to say however, that I am not yet the cowering individual in the ring. Suffice to say, I'm actually making significant progress. Well, it's steady. Considering I've been working full time hours and I'm more than half way, I'm quite proud of myself. I can imagine I've read more than probably 65% (is that a conservative estimate?) of the people who have it on their bookshelf. I'm up to the section where Bloom has just had his intriguing encounter with Gerty Macdowell, and is the section loosely based on Nausicaa from The Odyssey.

I get paid on Friday, which is something I'm looking forward to a lot. Mainly because it's the first time in nearly a year since I've actually earned money through working, rather than through student loans and relying on my overdraft. So, a sense of achievement has come about, and I've constructed a list of various books which I want to buy, as well as DVDs and the like. Could do with some boxer shorts and socks as well. I'll Primark those, I think.

Does anyone know how to use 'whom' properly? An anonymous poster accosted me for not using it properly, yet from what I've seen and read, I think I'm using it correctly. This is one of the pains of not being taught grammar at school, I think. To be honest, I don't even think whom is that widely used anymore, apart from in formal settings or like me, you try and be a pedantic, annoying little bastard fucking cunt. Why are people pedantic, I wonder? Is it to try and enact a sense of superiority? Is it a yearning to try and retain rules and order? Are we all secretly inside wanting to become police officers, and wait until someone slips up before cuffing them on their grammar? Are the people who are pedants just projecting their own lack of control within their on lives onto something they feel they have control over? I think even the most literate of people argue over it.

Comments like that of anon always really bother me, which I guess is why the person made it in the first place. Especially when he/she/they mentioned that UCL should have alerted me to it. Well sonny, they didn't. And neither did secondary school or college. I' am however always a pain in the arse when I see something spelt incorrectly or just doesn't seem right. I even saw a bit of graffiti on the wall in O?? (the question marks were upside down, and the bar is called Odd) and inserted a comma with my pen last night. Why in God's name (a comment the anon actually said) do that? There must be something missing in my life. A life, perhaps.

The bar I went to last night with sijui_sasa is actually fantastic, and could become my regular haunt, I think. I don't know why it's that fantastic, but it is. There's plenty of room to sit outside, they serve good beer, and the bar staff seemed very friendly, which is always a huge plus whenever you go out into a bar in the Northern Quarter. They also have very comfortable leather seats as well. The thing I've always found with leather seats is that they can make you slouch, and then the minute you get up, it's as if your back has been kicked in the side. However, I'm glad to say that that didn't happen. Maybe I've got knotted muscles.

So, I have now definitely left London behind me. I have been emailing my Departmental Tutor all day today, who has been exceptionally understanding and empathetic. Instead, it looks as if I'm going to the desirable, highly commended educational institution of..... Salford:

http://www.salford.ac.uk/course-finder/course/1300

It looks absolutely fantastic. I've been on the phone to them this morning, and it seems they will give me the credit for the English units automatically because of completing the first year at UCL. The journalism modules sound brilliant, where I can learn shorthand and journalistic law. In the second year, I can study Cinema and Psychoanalysis which sounds right up my street, and can also do Broadcast Journalism. Third year includes the likes of British Theatre, Modernist and Post Modern literature and Music Journalism. Chances are I would have done the majority of the reading needed before I do the English units I want anyway.

Whilst Salford is in no way near as prestigious, and unlike UCL, I won't be able to attain a detailed picture of the whole meta-narrative of English Literature, I can attempt to fill some of the gaps. The vocational element, alongside the academic English side, look as if they fuse together brilliantly.

For the first time in a very long time, I actually feel excited about going into education, rather than dreading going into university to sit through a seminar with a bunch of precocious idiots, of whom most of them effervesce such an arrogant and over-confident air, it was enough to make me either cry, or run to the toilet. At least at Salford, I can do what I like to do: write. But, also study what I want to do. This course will give me much more control over my learning, and after ramming myself with prestigious institutions over the past two years via the flirting with Oxford and the year at UCL, I'm willing to come down to somewhere which gives me the time to hold a good part-time job, go to gigs and other events I desire to attend regularly (and actually write and practice writing about them, and to perfect a skill which otherwise I've felt I've not had the time to do), and to have lots of time to actually read for leisure, as well as for an academic environment.

Yes, I've definitely made the right decision. Although I say this now...

Does anyone fancy Retro Bar this evening?

Today I went back to the necropolis / metropolis / dystopia / utopia / ________ of London to try and find somewhere to live. And to be frank, it's not my insecurity that's playing havoc again (well, it's contributing), it's the fact that I'm simply not going to be able to afford to live there.

I will need to get a job which will stop me from doing anything else enjoyable from going out in the evenings to simply going to an art gallery. All my time would be taken up with working and studying. I would be working to exist there, not to enjoy being down there. My family simply cannot afford to be giving hand outs (which I don't want). The amount of time I would have to work would mean my degree would suffer. Not working would mean I couldn't live in London. It's a lose / lose situation. It's certainly not a case of making sacrifices either. With or without sacrifices, I wouldn't be able to live down there.

I've been toting it up in my head. There's a place I saw today for around £115 a week. Then I'd have around £25 food a week, along with internet; phone and other bills, and it mounts up. Couple this with things like a TV license and home insurance, it gets too much. I think it's almost certain that I won't be returning to London in September unless I come across a lot of money.

I have looked at transferring to University of Manchester, but they said no instantly. I'm not going to bother with them again. The amount of begging emails and phone calls I've given them over the past two years borders on humiliation, and I intend on it happening no longer. My Mum spoke to a careers advisor at the school she works, and half an hour later, came back with a list of universities that would have me if I wanted to transfer. Manchester Metropolitan would take me, as would Salford. I'm going to look into Liverpool tomorrow I think.

I still contemplate whether English is the right course for me anyway. I still think about doing a Film Studies course, or a course in Journalism, but whilst I would enjoy them both, would they be worth the paper they're written on? To be honest, I don't think that would matter. I've always said to myself that I go to university to achieve a mature, knowledgeable mind, which is balanced and intelligent.

I think in the Blair era, it doesn't pay to be in the middle: to be lower middle class. Well, when it comes to education, anyway. It's all or nothing. The difference between a few hundred pounds out of the collective parents pay packet, determines how someone goes through three years at university. It's not as if I'm a hardship case - far from it. Being on the periphery or the border of one class to another doesn't pay. When it comes to university, this is just one of many boundaries I'll have to deal with.