Prentice McRatcliffe

I really don't know. I managed to turn utter humiliation into comedy gold recently though, so I should really do something with them. Guess the first step would bo to be less fucking depressing. Ah well.

I don't wanna go back. I don't want to have to pretend that all the shit going on is important. I don't want to have to be charming and friendly with people. I just don't.

Probably a moment of weakness, may well pass, who knows? But I don't want to be there.

Yeah, so I don't like being back home. I was thinking about this quite a lot whilst I was walking Josh through the park. Annoyingly I couldn't get at a computer for more than two hours after that, so I'm not sure it's going to flow as well as it would have then.

It feels like failure. I was wandering round the park and looking out over Blackburn remembering first coming back from Aberdeen, and then the years that followed. At one point I was quite honestly believing it would have been better to stay rather than go to Lancaster. I think that's pretty much passed now, but the logic went something like this. Yeah, I made a mess of things at home even more so than I have at Lancaster, but at least then it was all relatively contained. If I fucked up with work, I lost a bit of money and got a bit of grief. But that was it. Instead now I'm well on my way to completely screwing up my degree at pretty much the last hurdle. This time it's hundreds of people mocking, my parents disappointed right there in public, possibly losing the job I have for next year. Actually, scratch all that. I mean, they're considerations, sure, but I think it's more if I didn't try anything big I didn't fail at anything big.

Taken so many more risks over the last few years. A lot of them have worked out well - I won the election and have the job for next year. Some of them worked out for a bit, some were just abject failures. Just the way life goes, I guess, but it's a lot easier not to have ambition, not to believe at all in at all, because then I can't let myself down. It's not just the degree stuff, obviously, applies to pretty much all parts of my life. Not that this makes it any better, but still.

Wandering round by myself, knowing I'll be wandering by myself for the forseeable future, made it somewhat more depressing.

On the other hand, it was a pleasant evening, the music was good, even if I really shouldn't have paid attention to the lyrics to It Doesn't Matter. It was a good way of passing the time, a better way than drinking myself stupid, which has been strategy for the last 2 and a half weeks. That said, at least when I'm drunk I smile ;)

FFS, I was going to take this away from the depressing for a bit, don't know why it isn't working. John had a typically entertaining way of reminding me that everyone thinks they're so diferent but basically are all the same. Can't remember it now, it was at about 5am this morning, but, you know, it's easy to fall into the whole "nobody could possibly know how I feel, it's so different for me" bollocks. I have written on here before about not wanting people to just become part of the narrative, part of "yeah, this is what happened to me before I knew you". It seems so ultimately disrespectful, and definitely not representative of how I feel.

But again John makes a good point. He's been invited to a reunion in Derby in a few weeks and wasn't sure about going. I think back to the people from Aberdeen, who I was so insistent I'd keep in touch with, who I loved so much, and who I don't contact any more. I feel proud that I talk to Marcus and Toby, even though that's basically just once a year. I think about the year I spent largely in Accy and how few of those people I know anything about at all any more. I think about friends from school. There's a bit of a reprieve here, because recently I've started talking to again. Some of them have interesting careers, political views, things that I didn't think we had in common at the time but do now. But even with them, the effort I put into talking to them is minimal. I spoke to Si Wass online earlier this week. It was a good day, Friday, for the first few hours at least.

But it's not the first time I'd seen Wass online, but the first time in ages I bothered to speak to him. Not because I don't like him or am uninterested in how his China trip is going. Just that most of the time I'm preoccupied with, you know, myself. Whether it's work, Union stuff or her, it's just more urgent to me.

I wonder if that's part of why I've been freaking out as well. Because I remember how I've done it in the past, just fallen out of touch with people, especially people who were once the most important in my life. I see how other people do it all the time, I see how transitory it all is. It's just happened quicker with her. From her, I guess I mean. Already I know so little about what is going on in her life, and it won't be long until I know nothing any more. I spend so much more time thinking about her than I do about me. Well, maybe not, but it's easily on a level. If I'm thinking about me it's mostly self-pity though ;)

Big year ahead. It isn't, objectively, difficult to pass my degree, and then I have a year helping to run the Union. Going to meet no end of new people, and I've enjoyed meeting new people recently. Different challenges, full time work, money, new people....there's so much going to be going on, and I know there'll be things I really will enjoy. But I don't see any of it as important. Or as as important, if you know what I mean. I want to be helping her, I want to know she's doing OK, I want her to care about me, I want her to be here when I walk through Corpy Park or when I come home, full stop. It feels empty here, it feels like I've thrown everything away, again.

But then I'm a melodramatic emo *nod*

The skanky Fylde women are having a wet t-shirt contest.

Outragous.

There's a pretty impressive thunder storm raging outside. Fork lightning, the whole shit. After a week of repressive heat we thought we'd go take a dignified bathe in the rain that was twatting down.

Sadly we weren't the first to think of it. Two drunken girls were swirling madly round the courtyard, several people were jeering from balconies and some twat starting playing Why Does It Always Rain On Me? by inferior indie miserablists Travis. To top it off I nearly got knocked over by some barely pubescent proto-human streaking.

This country.

I've just been watching an interesting traffic experiment where they have cut all the lights at the junction that is the start and end of Lancaster's one-way system. Apart from one stupid woman distracted by the horrific happy hardcore her Chav son must have left in the stereo it seemed to work quite well.

Yes, I have this little to do. It rules. I think it's just today that I've realised I can relax a bit now. Still got JCR stuff to do, planning for and putting on the Extrav, but other than that I'm pretty much free. Of course, I can only do things that are free, but still. People have even been getting emails and MSN conversations in the last couple of days. It's nice to remember I have friends.

Right, back to some hardcore procrastination.

I'm pretty drunk right now. Largely because I am celebrating a visit from Gary Titley MEP, the leader of Labour in the European Parliament. I planned the whole visit, and it went off perfectly. So yeah, finally I rule at something ;)

Anyway, myself and Sarah have been reading old LJ entries and reminiscing, but now she's back, so we're going to go back to reading, and you'll have to wait until post-election for a proper update. I am a candidate though. Whoop! ;)

Yeah, OK, it's been weak for years now, but occasionally you get brilliant moments that only make it into a show that has really given up. After the frankly upsetting use of Jaffa as a direct comparison to the civil war in Iraq they gave me a giggle. Teal'c inadvertantly ending up in a performance of the Vagina Monologues nearly made me wet myself.

Perhaps I should drink less ;)

What am I supposed to do with myself whilst I wait and revel in my hangover?

*snip*