Estate Agents...

I have to admit that I have loathed estate agents from the moment I first heard the words 'and then there's our fees...', but as time goes by, they do nothing to make me like them more.

The first time I rented through an agent, my little bedsit had only two radiators, one of which was recorded as non-functional on the inventory, and the other of which I, on my first day in the flat, discovered was also not working. The toilet, I also discovered while going through the inventory, had once been screwed to the floor but, by that time, had become so rusted by the water leaking from the soil pipe that the screws were now non-descript metal pegs which did nothing to hold the fixture in place.

I let them know of these issues within forty-eight hours of moving into the property, and yet when I moved out after just under a year, nothing had been done about them - or numerous other, smaller issues - at all.

So suck it, Bairstow Eves of Nottingham, Notts, UK (a subsidiary of Countrywide lettings...).

After the end of my degree course and that tenancy, I moved back in with family, and eventually took out a joint tenancy with two family members in a house found through - despite my doubts - another estate agent.

We were actually shown the house by one of the two owners, who - as it turns out - misinformed us. The estate agents were the unlucky messengers of the news that we would not, as we had been told, have any access to the garden shed - and so precisely where we were supposed to store any tools with which to keep the garden in order (as demanded by the tenancy agreement) were unclear.

It has to be noticed that this was not the estate agent's fault. Neither was it technically their fault that every unanswered question we had for the landlord took weeks to be answered - it was simply the result of having a middle man relaying questions and answers between tenants and landlords who hadn't really grasped that the estate agent cannot answer questions that the landlord hasn't prepared them for...

So all was more-or-less well - or at least understandable - on the estate agent front (although I still disliked them on the basis of extortionate fees). Until today.

Today - the twenty-ninth of May, 2013, we received a letter which should have politely reminded us that we have previously agreed to return to property at the end of July.

Written and signed by the estate agent, it was entitled 'Notice to Vacate' and worded in such a way that - until I turned over the page and saw the pre-agreed date - I thought we were being kicked out. It was a pre-agreed date. It shouldn't be hard to word a letter in a neutral, non threatening tone, but apparently this agency's approach to landlord/tenant relations is not to try to keep both happy but to play each party off against the other and therefore prevent either from realising that they are both being charged an unthinkable amount of money for a shoddy service delivered with bad attitude and too much make-up.

So Sims Williams can bite me.

The English Language and self loathing.

As a reasonably avid user of the internet, on most days I will click onto one or more sites where people from around the world are sharing knowledge.

Which is good.

A lot of people sharing information in entomology, which is one of the many areas I follow with some interest but little know-how, are from Europe or America, possibly because my site-sampling is biased that way, but probably because the history of modern zoology is European.

This point is irrelevant.

The real point is that a majority of authorities whose words I read and occasionally respond to are not first-language English speakers, and I feel like a British tourist abroad. I carry on as I am, and assume that if I do so with enough force an volume, it will continue to work.

I can only assume that the tower of Babel was actually built in Britain. All over the web, other people use a language they don't speak to help me understand, and at least once a week, I write to people whose first language I know not to be English, and yet the very idea of writing to them in their own language seems laughable as soon as I think it.

I use all the usual excuses, of course - English is so much more convenient for everyone, English is spoken worldwide, if you go anywhere in the world and speak dutch, and to the same places and speak English, you're more likely to get your idea across in English - but all of these basically come down to the fact that the UK in general - and England in particular - has forgotten that it doesn't rule the world any more. We English are like the racist old relative in the corner of the room, who offends every thirty seconds but is harmless and a little bit pathetic and so eventually you don't even try to point it out.

It gets worse.


I found myself wanting to write back to a professor in Poland the other day because his grammar was non-standard.

Auf wiedersehen, Au revoir, Arrivederci, Żegnaj, Vaarwel, ffarwel, na shledanou, Adios, hüvasti

And Smivel. 

Distinguishing between "like a douche" and "properly", where guitar is concerned.

I collect hobbies.

As such, it was natural that eventually music would become something I dabbled in.


It started with a thumb piano (or mbira) which wasn't far off being actually in tune. You could almost coax 'my heart will go on' out of it if you didn't mind the fact that it had to transposed to a completely different key.

It progressed to the piano. A friend at school was musically insane, and currently has at least three grade eights (piano, pipe organ and voice), and I thank a grade 5 in harp. After not-so-much coaxing at all, she agreed to teach me piano. For nothing, or perhaps the pleasure of my company (which amounts to significantly less than nothing, I might add. I'm obnoxious).

Another friend was soon manipulated in teaching me a little bit of cello. The piano is more-or-less ongoing - although because of various issue with family, housemates, and then family again disliking noise, the practice has been limited, and with my being about as talented as a dead mullet, I've not progressed far. The cello has been even less successful, and I cringe when I think of how long I saved for it before the friend - upon my introducing it to her - almost immediately stopped teaching. She's almost as fickle as me.

Anyway, beyond the occasional tinkle on the piano, I let the innocent field of music alone for some time, and then, one rainy Tuesday, I got completely soaked and decided that the only solution was to spend £25 on a small, blue Ukelele.


Which brings me to the point of this little post. 

Having taken this Ukelele into town with me a few weeks later, stopping at work to see what my upcoming hours would be, I inadvertently led one of the good ladies at my workplace to believe that I was carrying a violin or other such respectable instrument, and was therefore 'Musical'. Another co-worker - a music graduate who exudes Generation Y cool from her scuffed shoes to her split ends and plays the Hammond organ in a 70s revival rock band - heard that I was musical and, on an overlapping shift, asked me about it.

I was forced to admit that I played the Ukelele, and not a 'real' instrument. She asked whether I played 'like a douche' or 'properly', and from my inarticulate response (to the effect of 'There's more than one way to play the Ukelele???') she deduced that I played it like a douche. In discovering that I did not know how to play Follow the Yellow Brick Road (I still don't, as I really don't see the point), she rescinded this statement, but it troubled me for some time.

Anyway, a month or so later, as I have indicated elsewhere, I was given a guitar. My family had a) always had guitars lying around and b) probably couldn't stand the incessant, high-pitched twang of the Ukelele any longer, so it was an obvious choice.

And I love my guitar (Penelope) quite dearly, but am loathe to play it where anyone might hear, in case I am, unknowingly, playing it like a douche. Yes, the unanswered question daunts me still - do I play like a douche? How does a douche deduce that his dabbling is douche-ish?

Finally - about three hours ago, I had a breakthrough.

Do you wonder why guitars are predominantly designed for and by right handed people, yet leave all the hard work to the left hand? 

If the answer is yes, you play like a douche.

Smivel Out. 

Life Update...

So... what's new?

A while ago I took up the Ukelele. And Shortly thereafter got a job and took part in a play... And worked over christmas... and met with a Girl (more on that later) a bit after New Years. And then I got older (nobody at work found out, and I acheived, at last, a more-or-less anonymous birthday). I was given, among other things, a Guitar.

Oh, towards the beginning of this I bought a new bike, to replace my old bike which had starting falling to pieces. A couple of weeks after buying said bike, it got a puncture. It was repaired, around about my birthday, and I started riding it to work... and then (on the 5th of April, 2013) it got nicked.

I called the police. Actually, I called the emergency number, who prompted me to call the non-emergency police number. After an extended period on hold, I was directed to the Sussex police. Who didn't answer. Eventually, I gave up, and went home, to look online. I filled in a form, sent it in, and was directed to contact the British Transport Police. Several phone calls later, I reached someone helpful. Unfortunately, they now think I am violent because I said, in reference to a known bike-thief in the village that co-workers suggested may have stolen the bike, that "I haven't found out where he lives yet. If I had, you might be getting a rather different phone-call".

This is why I hate telephones. I make too many ambiguous statements anyway, but without the context of seeing me, and therefore just hearing the voice of a twenty-three year-old white male, she assumed that I meant an assault would be being phoned in.

Had I been visible, she would have learned that I am in fact a twenty-three year-old white male weed, and therefore reached the actual meaning, which is that if I knew his address, I would be calling to say ecstatically "I've found my bike! Come and arrest a thieving man and give me my bike back! Hooray!" while remaining a safe distance from said thieving man.

Well, c'est la vie.

Anyway, I discovered shortly thereafter the benefits of retail therapy. I have a new laptop (with a 1 terabyte memory... I'm in something a lot like heaven).

And, returning to the afore-mentioned Girl, who shall remain nameless in case she, like me, Googles herself, and would therefore find out that I meant her (Her, note capital, if I'm honest).

She texted me, the other day, to let me know that a gig of awesomeness, with awesome, and some awe too, was back on. A gig by a band that, let's be honest here, I introduced Her too. And what with Her being capitalised and all, it's quite nice to know that She likes the bands that I introduced Her to, and that She is planning to - and looking forward to - going to a gig with me, to see a band that I introduced Her to.

Any comments on the friend zone will be deleted. Although who am I kidding? Nobody reads this. I'm just keeping a diary and getting a queer thrill from the notion that, unlike traditional diaries, it's actually available for everyone to see, if they bothered to look. And then I'd know that they cared.

Moving on, swiftly and without delay. I'm not psychotic.

So, anyway, this Girl having texted me, I spent time when I should have been working (and should be working now) stalking Her on facebook. With my new computer. I should note that we are actually friends on facebook, and were, I think from Her perspective as well, quite close at University.

But whether I'm stalking-ish Her or not is irrelevant. The real point is that She's written a bunch of songs, and put them on this sound-cloud thing. And they're semi-awesome at least (although in fairness, I'm bound to be skewed. She's capitalised). Unfortunately, as She's remaining nameless, I can't safely link to Her songs without Her potentially finding that Her songs have been linked to and tracking it back to here and working out that it's me writing about Her. The risk is too great.

So I listened to them, and turned momentarily into a mopey teenage girl, and then I had an epiphany.

Facebook could make a fortune blackmailing people like me who check their "just friends" friends' relationship statuses too frequently.

 That kind of tailed off, I know. Photoblog starts soon. Life will be more interesting then. And have pretty pictures of pretty things. 

Music Video and long-term blog fail...

So!

I haven't been here in a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long while, although possibly not quite that long. I doubt you give a crap, being non-existent, but it felt like I was forgetting to do something, and so I apologise. To me, mostly.

What have I done in the interim?

Well, I've bought the Avengers Boxset (six post 2000 films concerning the avengers, namely Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man II, and Avengers Assemble), The Hunger Games, The Prestige, Paul, Resident Evil Afterlife, and a bunch of other films which don't really stick in my head because they were either a) crap or b) so good that I watched them a gazillion times (5-9) and now feel like I was watching them when I came out of the womb. Which brings me to another point. I watched Les Miserables at the cinema a couple of weeks ago, and after twenty-odd minutes of thinking it was really not worth the admission, my Y chromosome degenerated and escaped in large liquid globules from my tear ducts.

The reason this is related to the womb comment is because a friend and I, in our feminised (or hyperfeminised, in her case) state, decided that children should all be born watching Les Miserables to accelerate development of the super-ego and therefore spare them from a life of regretting the things they did before they learnt that they were wrong, and allowing them instead to grow up as truly good people.

I may still feel this way.

In other news, my Y chromosome is slowly re-spawning, and I am avoiding all rom-coms, soft dramas and heart-wrenching soliloquys (i.e. any moment from either Wit or the last few pages of Othello), in order to get it up and running before there are any further threats to its existence. I'm all for breasts, so long as they are attached to the bodies of people who are not me.

Also, I may have

a) a job which I now seem to hate and (due to issues with leave) may or may not still have in a month's time.

b) done an animation of the most crappy variety ever, which can be found here , for the wonderfully twisted synth-pop track "You Can Always Come Home" from Spray (see also www.spraynet.co.uk and www.facebook.com/spraynet ). Watch it, like it, and subscribe or whatever it is you non-existent blog reader types do.

c) started re-reading one of my short-ish stories (well, 50,000 words) to see if I want to send it to publishers and say PLEASE give me money so that I can afford a new laptop. And to move back out of my family home because frankly, there's only so much more I can take before I whine. Even more.

Anyway, back to the interesting thing (the music video), the song basically takes the point of your loved ones that, when you inevitably crash and burn, they'll be there for you. Some think it's sweet, I think it's a fair analysis of the absolute lack of faith family members tend to show (but hey, when I tried living alone I accidentally set fire to my bedsit).

The video takes to obvious extrapolation from my view, which is that your loved ones privately, possibly even subconsciously, want you to fail so that you'll come back to wherever they're being there for you. Because they feel invalidated by your absence. Which could be interpreted as a touching insight into the fragility of the human ego and the importance of stability in family and peergroup situations, but the video takes it to the absurd levels of the criminally insane.

I was given way too much creative license with this.

Anyway, once again, there is a crappy animated music video to a brilliantly twisted song here, and you should watch it. As many times as possible.

EDIT - oh, and just in case you suckers can't be bothered to hover your cursor over the word "here" and discover that it's a hyperlink, here's the video. And I can't remember how to spell embed. Which is a really weird looking word (unlike weird, which everyone says looks weird, but actually has a rather pleasing shape on the page).

Bipolarity and spectrums.

Bipolar.

It's a rather self explanatory term, used to indicate that something has two distinct and - usually - opposite aspects.

It's also a diagnosis. Since the diagnosis has become popular, it seems that the word itself has suffered rather. I am, I should note, bipolar. What I am not is pathologically bipolar.

The distinction comes - as you must have known to would - in statistics. So we have to start by establishing our sample; the whole planet.

You see, to say that the whole planet is bipolar means more than that the Earth itself has both a North and South end (although being only barely off-spherical, the earth physically speaking does not really have poles... it's only because of the weather and magnetism that we can really identify the points of convergence of positively charged ions and lines of longtitude...

Where was I? Oh yes, the whole planet is bipolar. I refer here, in an intentionally confusing (and, if you think about it, rather inaccurate) manner, to the entire human population (although many of my arguments apply to a diversity of related lifeforms, too).

Humans, bags of meat, salt and water, exist in a state of "Homeostasis", and we are kept in this state by the fact that we die if we leave it. As such, evolution has prolonged the lives of humans that are better at maintaining homeostasis, with the result that we are, on the whole, now very good at it.

The only trouble about homeostasis is that it sounds as though we exist at a comfortable  "zero deviation from ideal". In practice, we're almost never actually at zero, but, should we start sprinting away from it in any given direction, the various squidgy bits (technical term) inside us pull the other way with all their might, and we spring back with almost as much speed in the opposite direction, and then back again when our body corrects for that overshoot, in ever decreasing swings of the pendulum until something else sends us rocketing off in a new direction.

This brings me to an interesting point about hormones. They come, broadly speaking, in pairs: uppers and downers. Adrenaline and Noradrenaline (or Epinephrine/Norepinephrin if you really must) are the classic example (and, more to the point, the only two that I can confidently talk about. Physiology and Pharmacology was a LONG time ago). One brings you up and, to make sure that you don't do yourself too much damage, the other one sits in its receptors and says "No. This is an intervention. You're above normal levels, and I'm not leaving until you calm down."

Except without the speaking.

The point - which was supposed to be short - is that the way our bodies are designed means that they fluctuate around the ideal, and never really get time to settle on the ideal before something else comes along and sets us off.





As a result, an awful lot of human - and wider - traits are best defined by spectrums. If you want to be statistical about it - and I really do, because it's much easier than borrowing a psychiatry word that is designed to talk about light - a magical bell curve exists for every single trait. A lot like this:






And, to anyone who wishes to point out that Microsoft Paint has a handy function where you can write words in typeface on your bitmaps, I know. But I'm at the hardcore end of the pro-choice spectrum. Labelled here as "Really odd people".

This is, by the way, a perfectly PC description, because the proper name for a bell curve is a normal curve, because it represents the distribution of a trait within a "normal" population - normally, a lot of people are normal, but it's also very normal for a smaller number of people to be odd, and an even smaller number of people to be very odd. The squiggly line in the yellow area is there to point out that there is no clear point where "normal" ends and "odd" begins.

The point - which is at the end of a very squiggly (another technical term) argument, is that for there to be a normal, there must be an odd and a really odd, and something in between.

In human traits, the things we diagnose are the "really odd", because they're either potentially dangerous (to society and/or an individual) or because we think they're really awesome and people should know that they're fanta-pants-fantastic (e.g. MENSA people).

This is why a lot of modern psychiatry scores people on a scale. Bearing in mind that I am a hypochondriac, I score:

43 on this bipolar depression test online (moderate to severe bipolar depression... but it's an online test, and like British meteorologists post Michael Fish, they tend to overstate. That's what I tell myself, anyway).

63 on the same websites depression test (severe depression).

37 on the Autism Quotient (very high).


Which are all some distance from the maximum, and some distance from the normal. Am I clinically any of these things? No. I am fully capable of carrying on functioning and, as much as I have bad days (emerging from the job centre and finding lying my head under the moving wheel of a passenger bus a comforting mental image), the chances of me harming myself or anyone else intentionally are at virtually nil.

I fall on the skinny-but-not-anorexic end of the bell-curve. (not bodywise. I fall on the healthy-weight-but-could-cut-down-on-the-starbursts end, there). If my traits were an actress, they'd be Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal - thin, but not to such an extent that you wonder if they're skipping meals.

Which brings me - finally - to my ORIGINAL point (as opposed to the many little points that have popped up the whole way through): I am bipolar, autistic, and on occasion depressed, and I wish that psychiatrists could sodding well learn that when they diagnose someone with one of these, they mean that the person is CLINICALLY or PATHOLOGICALLY bipolar, autistic, depressed, etc. ...






BECAUSE WITHOUT THAT, THEY'RE JUST ADJECTIVES. 


Adjectives that it is my human right (well... ) to use as appropriate. 

And if one more person with a Clinically/Pathologically Bipolar, Paranoid, Depressed, Autistic - or other - friend or relative gets all antsy with me for describing myself as bipolar, paranoid, depressed or autistic, I will ask for their psychiatrist's number and verbally abuse the offending doctor.

Actually I won't because I'm non-confrontational. 

To tell the truth, the majority of people who got antsy because I was "misusing" the adjectives were either a) My sister; b) people writing articles with the opposite message to this one; c) fictional characters in TV shows/films or  d) my own fictional representations of the public. So it may be that I'm attacking a straw man.   

Which is not the point.  

Je suis un volunteer... humide.

It's not in French, just so you know... and the title just means "I am a damp volunteer".

Which is true.

I've been volunteering lately... which for someone who is not naturally generous, is a big step.

And for someone who is generally a little bit scared of people (not pathologically), it's a VERY big step.

Well, not so much at Brent Lodge, the local (awesome) animal hospital. They have a fox that likes to sit in a little tree. Which is hilarious beyond compare.

As well as Brent Lodge, I've been a-volunteering at Barnardos (at least three days of actual volunteering, more than that including days going in as a volunteer and filling out the associated paperwork).

I've volunteered once at Age UK. Unlike Barnardos, they had me straight in doing stuff... which has its positives, in that you feel useful straight away, but also has its negatives, in that you're basically "Hi, I'd like to volunteer," and they're "Great, there's the toilet, there's the steamer, there's the till. Have fun!" and you're basically "AAARGH MY BRAIN IS MELTING!"

But with less teenagerish use of the word basically.

I think my feet have developed hypothermia, by the way. On the long (Well... fifteen minutes if you are a normal person, six if you're me) walk from Barnardos to the train station, there was a thunderstorm. Which was awesome.

And the puddles had begun to join up into a meta-puddle.

Which was awesome.

And I was wearing converses.

Which was less awesome.

One train ride, Pasty, asparagus cup-a-soup and flop onto bed later, and my feet are distinctly chilly.

Which is irrelevant. But then so is this entire post.


But never mind, because my brain has fallen out and I've got to fill out an application form for the Co-op AND the (only?) registration form for Age UK before tomorrow...

Nergh. I'm going to play computer games now and panic about that closer to the end of today.