An explanation for my irrelevance/ a rant about the internet.

I’ve been neglecting blogging as a lot of things going on in my life involve other people, and their issues. However much they may matter to me, I’m not going to write about them in public out of respect for them. Sometimes I wish that I blogged anonymously, and I’m even considering starting up something new and totally anonymous, where I can rant on about everything with no consequences or people getting upset. It’s probably be easier if I was one of those people who are paranoid about giving out any smidgen of personal information on the internet. Perhaps if I’d started using the internet three years or so later than I did, when the ‘risks’ of being online were just starting to be publicised, I wouldn’t be so blasé about throwing around my phone number or what train station I live near or what university I go to.

This brings me around to something else I’ve been thinking about. I remember in an English class in what must have been year ten, we had to create a poster or leaflet (I can’t remember which), that warned people about the dangers of the internet, and laughing about the information we were told to include because it seemed so irrelevant to me. The idea of being so worried about someone stalking me or kidnapping me- these were apparently the main threats, rather than identity theft or anything like that- that I shouldn’t give my real name or age seemed hilarious to me. After all, this was the time when to start a conversation on aim, it was perfectly respectable to say ‘hi, asl?’ to someone you’d seen on a forum or message board. My friends were shocked, and I was shocked that people were actually that worried.

Perhaps I should worry more? I mean, how easy would it be for someone to turn up at wherever I am? In fact, I’d probably be more flattered that I had a fan, rather than totally freaked out that someone knew so much about me. Some of my friends are still shocked that I have no qualms about giving my phone number to my online friends. I remember when I started meeting people online, at least two of them were convinced that I’d be dead the next morning. Coincidentally, I concocted a story that they were a friend-of-a-friend for my mother at the time (which has a basis of truth in some cases), but she now knows that hasn’t always been the case. Nowadays, I can’t be bothered with that- she doesn’t care that I’ve been to devmeets, or that I’m fine with meeting people in real life that I know online.

To be honest, I think people worry too much. All one seems to hear in the news is how someone girl has met up with a guy she met on myspace and he turned out to be forty and then he raped her oh my god. One thing which always strikes me as stupid in these situations is how the fact that he’s forty rather than sixteen didn’t ring alarm bells. I’m sure that at fifteen, I was intelligent enough to realise that if someone looks twenty five years older than whatever fake photo they’ve been showing me, there’s probably something suspicious going on. Do they not teach anything in schools? From when I was a tiny kid, we were taught about “stranger danger”- don’t get into cars with people you don’t know, and so on. Surely that translates to “don’t go wandering off down dark alleys with a person who is quite clearly not who they’ve been saying they are”.

If one listens to the media, it’s easy to get the impression that everyone on the internet is either a naive fifteen year old kid, a pervert, or an identity thief. The latest trend seems to be to watch over your kid’s shoulder every time they go anywhere near a computer. Fair enough, it’s probably appropriate to monitor sites when you’ve got a ten year old, but when teenagers are almost certainly old enough to deal with some things themselves. A friend of mine was using filtered internet (AOL parental controls, as I remember) until they were seventeen. In my mind, there’s more danger just walking down the street. I’ve met more dodgy people in real life than I ever have online. Rather than making parents and children paranoid, wouldn’t it be better to simply say “look, you’re responsible for yourself on here. If some idiot is saying things you don’t like, block them.”, than kicking up a fuss and forcing teenagers not to put any hint of personal information anywhere on the internet?

A quick search for ‘dangers of the internet’ gave me 847,000 results, and each site is more ridiculous than the next. It’s giving me a headache, although I’m now curious as to just how much I could find out about myself online.

Houses and tea, mainly.

Today has involved more house-hunting and frustrations regarding this. My first lecture on a Monday is Latin, which I almost always miss. However, today I was intending to attend as I had to go and look at a house afterwards, and if I was going to wake up early, I may as well do it properly. Anyway, I managed to sleep through two full hours of ringing alarm clocks, only to be woken by my phone ringing, the thought ‘Things are ringing’ being the first thing on my mind. I had not only missed Latin, but was now late to meet my future-housemates to go and visit our prospective ‘home’, one of whom had just woken me by calling to see where I was. I threw on some clothes (only carefully coordinated as I wore them last night) and hurried to meet them, sadly too late. We therefore had no option but to visit later in the day.

I now had hours to kill, however, so managed to get quite a lot done. I need to start waking up in the mornings, so I can actually achieve more in a day, I think. So, I went to Tescos, to buy some just-restocked fruit, vegetables and smoothie, then tidied my room. It’s harder than you imagine to manoeuvre apples into a plastic bag while holding a basket and talking on the phone, although I enjoyed my early-chat with Matt. At two, I went to my lecture, which was taught by a small woman with big patterns and glasses. At first, I thought that she’d be annoying (this is what I get for judging by looks alone!), but it was actually quite interesting, if a little intense. She mainly discussed Roman ‘histories’ and ‘historians’, and the characteristics and problems of them. I feel that I’m going to enjoy this term- so much of it seems to be literary based, as opposed to the very date-and-event orientated first term. The only thing which spoilt the lecture was an absolutely disgusting cup of tea which I had the misfortune to drink.

I swear that Tetley is the most god-awful company for tea, and I cannot understand why it is so widespread. “Everyone’s cup of tea”? Psh! The only flavour which I can bear is mint, which is honestly pretty hard to go wrong with. Pre-university, my first Tetley experience was at the French side of the Channel Tunnel. I ordered a cup of green tea after a long car-journey, expecting something refreshing. I get a little ill in cars anyway, and so I wasn’t in the best of moods. I took a gulp of the tea and half-gagged, resisting the urge to spit the tea back into the cup. What I had drunk was not dissimilar to how I imagine taking a bite out a herb-garden and swilling it around my mouth with lukewarm water would taste like. It was unpleasant and lingering, and I have had my suspicions about Tetley since then. Today, I ordered an Earl Grey tea from a café on campus. I was expecting Twinings, as in the café I usually frequent, although they have Tetley ‘normal’ tea and herbal teas, they stock Twinings Earl Grey (and right too!). Anyway, I was given a cup with the ominous blue double tag sticking out from it. However, I expected it to be drinkable. Again, no. It was possibly the worst cup of tea that is intended to be drunk without milk I have ever tasted. It was like a vaguely fragrant PG Tips or so on. It is my theory that if you have to add milk and sugar to tea, it is solely to disguise the taste, and there if no reason, therefore, to want to drink it. It left me feeling ill.

Back to my this-and-then-this account. After my lecture, I was dragged to find the resources room by a friend from my course, Cordelia, and I in turn dragged her away to play DDR. This killed a rather pleasant, albeit exhausting hour, and I arrived at my room only to find out that in fifteen minutes or so, I would have to go and look at the house which I had been late for earlier. So, I dashed off to the bus stop, only to miss two buses due to delays and people forgetting their money. The house itself seemed good to me- it’s cheap, in a really convenient location, and in good condition. All the rooms bar the bathroom are large, especially the gigantic bedroom upstairs which I have my eye on. Although some parts seem a little cold and old, I think it would be an okay place to live. However, the people I’m going to be living with, especially one girl, don’t seem to agree. I’m not going to go on about it, but I had a headache and having to trail through house after house trying to find one which pleases everyone isn’t my idea of fun. Yes, we could find something great, but equally likely, that we’ll lose this one and have to take somewhere a lot worse. We’ve agreed to sleep on it and talk about it tomorrow, and I’m largely going to withdraw from the decision. I’ll be content with somewhere with all the facilities, fairly large rooms and in a convenient location. I do think, however, that certain people need to accept that it is student housing. We’re not looking at mansions. I also resented the fact that one of them described terraced houses as being ‘council housing’. Not everyone lives in a large house somewhere in the countryside, I’m afraid. In fact, the end-of-terrace house that my family own in London is probably worth at least 3/4 of whatever her family own in whatever village they come from. I must say that one of the things I have found about Warwick is how the majority of people seem to come from fairly to wealthy backgrounds, but that is a rant for another day.

Now I shall go back to my fiction. I’m reading ‘Walking on Glass’ by Ian Banks at the moment. I’m getting through books like anything at the moment, which I believe is a good sign.

RAIN

The worst thing about living in the Midlands at the moment, is the rain. I swear that rain in London was never so cold or so piercing. After my disastrous Latin exam, I went to look at another house, this time in Earlsdon, a suburb of Coventry. Although we were first thinking of Leamington, Earlsdon seems a more sensible place to live, as it’s only a fifteen minute bus ride into the university, or into the centre of Coventry, there are more houses available there, and it’s cheaper. Anyway, as before, no contact number was available for the people who live there now, so we were told to just turn up and hope that someone was in- not the best plan on a rainy Friday morning, in my opinion. After trudging about in the rain for a few minutes, we found the house. It looks nice from the outside- red brick and white paint and terraced, and in pretty good condition. Unfortunately, nobody was in, which made the £2.50 bus ticket an expensive waste of half an hour. As usual, my clothes weren’t suited to the weather; my too-long jeans managed to get soaked up to the knee, and my Vans were soaked through as well.

Of course, this didn’t make my mood much better- I’d woken with a headache, and despite taking painkillers, it stayed throughout most of the day. The Latin test, which I have already described as disastrous, didn’t go well somewhat due to this. Despite revising the night before, I had managed to forget almost everything, leaving me struggling with all of the questions. Not to mention that I was relying upon a translation to boost my marks, and every question, bar a few short sentences were grammar questions. It seems ridiculous to me- the entire point of learning Latin is so you can read it, so why not have a reading exercise or translation on the test? I understand why grammar is so important, but I can’t seem to learn it. Anyway, I’m not going to go on about it here, as I’ve spent enough time stressing about it anyway. I’m going to put effort into learning it, and take some kind of revision course in the Easter holidays, and hope that is enough to bring me up to speed.

Anyway, I must get to Tesco. I’ve somehow managed to lose my second baking tray of the year.

Novels and memories.

One of the things I hate the most, and yet treasure the most, are the random memories that one gets from doing something simple and stupid. In this case, I mean memories of relationships that aren’t now relevant, whether it’s a friendship which no longer exists or a memory of when you were in love with someone and they were in love with you. To some degree, I think it epitomises the term ‘bittersweet’ (something which I hate saying, because it’s flung around so much, and I like the images it conjures). It just feels so… stupid… at the time- to be suddenly reminded of filling out crosswords online, and wish, just for a second, that the person could be there to hold you and to supply the answers you don’t know. I simultaneously wish that I didn’t get these sudden vivid flashes of what I (we) had, and cherish them.

I don’t even know how to put into words the myriad emotions they bring up, and the complicated nature of the way I want them and don’t. As I said before, I think I’m losing my knack for writing, and today, for living to a normal schedule. It would be nice to drop into a world of paperback novels and M&S chocolate biscuits and of sitting with my feet on the windowsill and telephone calls from people I care about and distance from everything brutally real and complicated. This is how I’ve been living the past few days, thoroughly engrossed in ‘Middlesex’, which I would recommend to anyone. Maybe I’ll post a review once the novel has sunk in a bit
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lost

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of my time thinking. Sometimes I talk about these things, but other times they’re too obscure and flighty and sometimes just too precious to be put down in words, either here or in my writing. I haven’t updated since the 21st of December, and I haven’t written for a long time before that. I worry that I can’t call myself a writer because I don’t write any more. I know that I used to be one, but now… if I get an idea, I scribble it down, and I think about it, but transforming all these violent or elegant imaginings into sentences and paragraphs seems irrelevant and, quite often, impossible. I’m worried that if I don’t write, I’ll forget how to somehow. Already, when I do create something it seems trite and like I’ve regressed. I’m terrified that I’ll never be able to create as I did. Perhaps this is growing up- losing all your interest in other people, losing all your imagination, losing all your ‘free time’, losing all your incentives to do something that doesn’t really have a specific or useful purpose.

I’m going to try, though. As I said, I’ve started to think about things again, and by that, I don’t mean dwelling on relationships which didn’t work out or work for an essay. I need to be careful- I need to stop thinking of consequences and do what will make me happy/interesting. Tomorrow, I shall wander by myself, and I’ll leave my iPod’s battery flat, and I’ll let my mind wander, and hopefully, just hopefully, I’ll want to write. I won’t be afraid of writing because I’m afraid that I will be rubbish at it.

I think I’m going to try to update this blog every day as well. I was tempted to start a diary today, but even though I wrote one for years before I started to blog, I’m not sure if I could write a private one for myself, and have a public one here. I am tempted to say ‘fuck it’, and make this my diary. Not making it private, or secret, but writing whatever I want with no care for the consequences, no care for who might read this. Of course, it’s easy to say that, but people who I might be writing about would read this (one person in particular, and a few others who seem to be becoming something fairly important in my life). Sometimes, there are things which one doesn’t want others to know- not only because it may upset them or change their feelings, but also for one’s own protection. I’ve found that leaving yourself open to hurt ends in you getting hurt- it’s simple really.

Oh. I’m all over the place today, and these drinks aren’t helping one bit.

Today, I haven’t really done much. I collected one of the two essays which I handed in before Christmas and ended up rushing, and surprisingly, I got a 2:1 in it. This seems to be the mark I get, however much effort I put in, which is a silly thing to say, considering that I probably ended up doing the same amount of work on each, just with one being pushed into a much shorter time-scale. I’m pleased with it, though, but I intend to work harder on the next essays which I get given. At least now, I hopefully won’t be moping around. Other than that, I have spent a lot of time on the phone today, mainly to Matt. I also went, with my flatmate, Natasha to see the two girls who we’ll be living with next year, Claire and Hannah, to talk about the house, and so on. They seem to be nice people, and I get along with them pretty well, and next year should be fun. It will be nice not to be living in halls, to be honest. This doesn’t feel like home, whatever I do to it, and the temporary nature of living here is difficult to forget. I think it will be an interesting process, looking for a house, and living ‘by myself’.