Stardom and changing dress sense

I now work for the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, which is an address not an organisation. I actually work for the government in one of the ill-reputed quangos.

Part of my job is taking and inflatable observatory to Primary Schools to tell them all about the stars. Fun? Yes. Weird? A bit.

I have an office too now, which is a first and am required to wear clothes bought in Marks and Spencer that invariably say Chino on them. I was surprised to find out that dressing nicely costs considerably less than the jeans and hoody combo I've been wearing up until now.

Learning curves

Today I watched an eighteen year old hack into someone's email account, change their password and adopt it as their own. Along the way he had a brief chat to someone called Rodreigo in Krakow, Poland and bought his friend an ipod using this poor person's amazon account. He managed to get into that through a password stored in one of their old emails.

This was all in the fifteen minutes we were waiting for the teacher to turn up to class. Scribing.. what a job. Afcab didn't turn up again, so i left shortly after the teacher arrived. He turned up for the next class, but then felt sick after about 45mins and i have another afternoon to myself.

Notes written today = 0
Total notes written to date = 1 x A4 side (two large diagrams of where to place the address on a formal letter)

My first day at school

You don't really want to forget your timetable and your phone so you can't find out your timetable. You don't really want to get lost a few times. You definately don't want to get a copy of the time table to find out that it was the wrong one and you're 45mins late for the most important class.

You especially wouldn't want all this to happen if you were actually there, not for yourself, but to assist Afcab a deaf student.

But actually all these things did happen. My first day working for Afcab, was totally one of those nightmare experiences that should only happen when you are asleep, so the blow is cushioned over all by your incedibly comfortable bed. It was when i got to somewhere in the building where every door seemed to say on it, "To enter here, you must wear protective clothing," that the panic pot started to boil over. I couldn't even find a pay phone to phone Lucia to find out the room number.

Gosh. But weirdly and incedibly, although it was quite awful, it wasn't terrible. Does that make sense?

Afcab didn't even turn up for his first class and i sat there with the sixteen to eighteen year olds and learned how to write a formal letter. I eventually did find him later on and it all worked out...kind of.

The college is a bit of a joke, it's mostly about going on MSN and playing those games where you run around and shoot people form the perspective of the guy holding the gun. Somehow it made me want to be a teacher.

Religious Tourism

I met a woman the other day who described herself as a religious tourist. She's the half Lebonese half Scottish daughter of a strick Muslim, who can't seem to get away from Born Again Christians. She says they turn up everywhere she goes. Some of them have become good friends of hers. She affectionately refers to them as HER Christians. It was with the glee of a seven year old boy who'd won a chocolate bar in drawing competition that i told her that I too was a Born Again Christian. She said I'd slipped under her radar. I took that, somehow, as a compliment.

It was Jesus who made up the phrase Born Again. It was us who took it and capitalised it. Now, in America especially, it has all these political connetations I'm pretty certain Jesus never intended. I think he meant: It's a big deal to follow me. You become my child and it's permanent.

Lucia and I have been engaging in religious tourism of our own. Church shopping. Swooping in collecting welcome packs and friendly strangers as we go. Singing the same songs with different people. Everyone loving Jesus in their own particualr way. It's kind of fascinating and a bit horrifying. Lucia said she felt like you shouldn't be allowed to choose your church. It's like trying to choose your family. Imagine you held some sort of Pop Idol auditions for your prospective family. They had to succeed in categories such as: Style of singing, age, sex, background and of course theological persuasion. It would be a farce.

Additional job

I got another job today! Now i have two.

I think I've got it. It depends whether Afcab liked me or not. I think he did. Afcab is the student i will be supporting in his computing classes. I'll be writing notes, clarifying things etc, because he is deaf. He is an amazing lipreader. It's like some strange power.

[Interlude: have you seen the kid in X-men whose special skill is changing the channel on TV by blinking. How much does that suck as an X-man skill. "Storm, she controls the weather, pretty awesome. Xavier, he reads minds. I pretty much change channels." That would not come off well at X-men speed dating.]

The most amazing thing is that Afcab he has a thick scottish accent. How does that work? I have so many questions like how far away can he read lips? Can he "hear" my accent?

I'll keep you posted.

The IKEA nesting instinct

This is a list of things I care about now, but in all honesty I really wish I didn't;

1. Ornamental fire surrounds.
2. Interest rates.
3. Whether that lampshade is cool, or just kind of odd.
4. Things in general, matching.

Seriously i walked into someone's house the other day and the first thing i said was: What a lovely fireplace. I shouldn't even be using the word 'lovely' for a start. I barely knew them.

Apples

I've never been a big fan of apples.

I found out why. I am defective. It's impossible for me eat an apple without causing myself an undue amount of pain. My mouth is simply the wrong shape.

Top teeth in. okay.
bottom teeth...no, lip is in the way. Uh oh, press against lip...ahhhhhh.

Bottom teeth in. Top teeth, sliding mercilessly past, unable to grasp on.

I asked Lucia for some training, but all she shouted was "Take smaller bites."

I tried taking smaller bites. It would take me four years at that rate.

Top teeth in, bottom lip held back, using free hand. Bottom teeth kind of in....top teeth in toooo far, hard cold apple rubbing against gums. ahhhh.... Pull Pull Pull. Wow, large chunk of apple in mouth..Semi success.

I think after the whole Garden of Eden incident God rethought the the whole mouth design and what he came up with was my mouth. I can eat any other fruit with out even the beginnings of a problem, but for the safety of humanity, apples are out.

The Apple. Caused the downfall of humanity. Still widely available in supermarkets.

Being Ill

The world started to spin or i started to notice that it always had been spinning. I woke up in a pool of my own sweat, my body on fire and on ice at once. It could only mean one thing...i was sick. I spent the rest of the night trying to get the motivation to vomit. The motivation never came and by the morning there was nothing left in my stomach so i spent twenty delightful minutes dry retching into the white porcelin. I believe the delerium had set in by then, becuase i spent at least ten of those minutes intermitently cleaning the stupid toilet. You never really notice how dirty they are until you are on your hands and knees in front of it.

I spent the next four whole days in bed. I had a fever which seared my eyeballs everytime i blinked. I was genuinely suprised not to hear the sizzle of my tears violently evaporating as my skin touched them. Exhaling through my nose, when i could, felt like two tiny hairdryers had been shoved somewhere up into my nasal cavity, switched on and left to melt themselves to destruction. After day two i worked out what i had to do when the wave of fever crashed in. Sit up flannel, containing ice on head, knees uncovered (essential) and eating ice as fast as i could.

I felt drunk on the delerium. But not drunk in an at-the-pub with your friends sort of way. More like drunk at your gran's house. I didn't want to feel drunk. I didn't want to be fixated on the most rediculous things for hours on end. For example how many people groups in the world end in "-ese". e.g. Chinese. The answer is ten by the way. Good luck. Or the number fifteen thousand. I couldn't get rid of that one for a day and a half.

I'm pretty sure I'd be dead by now if it wasn't for Lucia.

I rang NHS 24. This is called a waste of time. Though we did have a bit of a laugh when the woman told me to put my chin on my chest. I was trying to do it with my mouth closed. Which doesn't work at all for me. I think i must have a small chin.

Householding

Look everyone it's me and Lucia in our flat. This was the very second day after we moved in. The photo stars a wine bottle which was given to us by the shop Lucia worked in in Elie. As I remember it was quite nice. Also in shot you can see our fine bare floorboards, dating all the was back to one hundred years ago when the flat was built. A sharp contrast to the futon we are sitting on which was constructed not more than an hour previously.

Owning a flat is a bit weird. A foot or so below my feet is a ceiling belonging to Mr Caves, a really rather nice man who is a history teacher. Directly in front of me not more than two metres is a wall, which is painted and cared for on one side by us and on the other by someone else entirely. A man named Erol. Perhaps about twelve metres behind me is a similar wall which we share with Dave and Elaine. Above me is the roof space, which I'm told, everyone shares, even the people in the flats way down on the bottom and not even in the stairwell.

So I'm trying to work out exactly what we just spent £145 000 on.

Air.

Space.

We are living in a very expensive gap. Not the one with all the trendy clothes you feel a little bit guilty about buying because they were probably made in a sweat shop. Not a sweet shop, which would be altogether more acceptable. But a common-or-garden GAP.

Next time you're in a large open sapce take a glance about fifty or sixty feet up into the air and imagine a large rectangular cuboid 20m x 4m x 8m. That's what we own. (all measurments are approximate and do not form part of the contract of sale)

Do come and visit.

Things you shouldn't think about while...

...Cleaning the toilets at Starbucks.

1. The faces of all the customers you have served that day, knowing that it was one of them who didn't feel too well and made that mess.

2. How much you've spent on your education.

3. Revenge.