Am I Dreaming of a White Christmas? No.

I personally would love a heat wave over Christmas. Of course it would mean that climate change has become irreversible and the apocalypse would be nigh but snow sucks- lets face it.

It may look pretty but really it is just disruptive and dangerous. It may look perfect when you settled and warm inside the house and don't have to walk down the steepest hill in Birmingham to get to uni every day. Being fairly unsteady on my feet at the best of times I've already fallen over spectacularly and hurt myself.

I know the idea of a White Christmas has a special place in the Western pysche but its a complete fallacy. It comes from the Victorian idealisation of Christmas, starting with Dickens and continuing ever since then up until the modern age with things like Christmas cards depicting Robins hopping around on snow kissed ground and every Christmas movie or TV special ending with all the characters standing up at the sky in starry eyed wonder like they've never seen it falling before.

The truth is that through out the twentieth century it only snowed twice on Christmas day and even though we've had cover in recent years all it does is cause chaos like the story of that pub last year where the customers got 'snowed in' for three days between Christmas and New Year and 'had to' drink everything in stock.

Ok, so that probably wasn't too much of a hardship.

I think the desire for a White Christmas goes back to wanting to be a kid again,especially around this time of year. Snow used to mean sledging, snow ball fights and days off school for most people so to combine this with Christmas where hopefully you don't have to go anywhere and your house is heated properly I suppose it's to recapture some of the magic. However, I've never met anyone where this actually works so why do we continue to put ourselves through it?

The first few Christmases I remember didn't involve a lot of snow. Although contrary to popular belief, Northern California is not that warm in December it was still pleasant enough to not be sitting typing with your hands looking slightly blue like right now (and the heating is turned up as far as it'll go)and although they have a bad track record with a lot of things; the Americans still do Christmas better. So to me, over commercialisation and sentimentatlity, watching the San Francisco Ballet doing the Nutcracker and random heat waves are what I call Christmas.

So maybe I'm a victim of Christmas nostalgia as well as the rest of the world but I would still appreciate it if I could walk outside my house without getting bruised black and blue or developing frostbite.

Christmas...there are only 24 shopping days left! Please shoot me now.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the build up to Christmas. The parties, the Doctor Who Christmas special, the fact that its the 25 days of the year when its socially acceptable to listen to Mariah Carey but as I get older and older I find myself turning more and more into a Grinch.

 However, it’s not because my heart is too sizes too small it’s more that the whole process has lost its shine.

I know you’re supposed to wake up on Christmas Day full of excitement and expectation but I’ve always found it rather boring. I’m grateful for the presents that I receive but I can’t help but think that I don’t really need them and my parents can’t really afford to give them to me. Maybe I’m just getting less and less materialistic as I get older but I’ve never really seen the point in gift giving if its just used as a mechanism to wrangle something expensive out of my parents that you’d be too tight to buy yourself. I always struggle to write a Christmas list for my family (my younger sister on the other hand has no difficulty) because I can’t really think of things that I really want. I have an Amazon/Topshop wish list as long as your arm but I can’t quite bring myself to actually request anything from anyone.  I’ve always thought that the satisfaction of getting something you want is partly how you get it and I’ve always liked buying things with my own money. Then again I’ve always wanted to be ridiculously independent.

 I do like giving gifts- to selected people of course. I’m not sure why really considering that most of the year I’m not a particularly generous person, maybe I’m just the embodiment of the mawkish cliché they always try to ram down your throat about the importance of giving at this time of year....I doubt it.

 Then there is the food. I’m a sort of vegetarian (sort of) and hate eating meat as does my mother so there goes the whole concept of Christmas lunch. I’ve never exactly been a big foodie anyway and on Christmas Day I’d be perfectly happy with a sandwich which probably sounds horrifically sad. I just don’t understand people’s desire to eat so much they feel sick. Having said that I do love Christmas cake and Mince Pies.

 Snow looks pretty whilst it swishing outside your window but in an old, badly heated student house frostbite isn’t so appealing. This time of year always depresses me because I hate how dark, gloomy and cold everything gets. It because its the metaphorical ‘death’ stage of the natural cycle so therefore everything is so lifeless and dull. I don’t see what’s so magical and cosy about that. Then of course there is the fact that the snow in Birmingham is so pathetic that it’ll snow overnight, melt during the morning and refreeze as ice as soon as it gets dark so someone who is of a more clumsy persuasion (i.e. me) will slip and break their neck. I haven't broken anything (touch wood) but I definitely have a few bruises.

I don’t hate Christmas at all, I guess I’m just incredibly jaded about the whole thing, as each year passes it just gets further and further away from the fun and excitement of Christmas when I was six or seven. Of course, when I was six or seven I was celebrating Christmas in California where there was a lot less chance of slipping on ice.

I have no idea if this post makes sense, its late and I can feel a cold coming (another thing I hate about this weather). Maybe I should give this stream-of-consciousness style another think.

Who said Plagarism never paid off...

http://www.redbrickonline.co.uk/news/compensation-payout-for-lost-exam-papers/

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2010/10/28/compensation-for-university-of-birmingham-students-as-exam-papers-are-lost-in-the-post-97319-27555292/

Seem familiar. I actually think its quite flattering really. 

Bonfire Night...

...I haven't written for a while, its been a hectic month and this is a few days out of date but oh well.

I've always found Bonfire Night a little bit peculiar. Not necessarily in a bad way but I do think its odd that thousands of people gather on mass to cheer and celebrate an effigy being burned. Yes, I suppose its a celebration of the triumph of democracy over religious extremism but it is still a bit weird if you really think about it. Its a recreation of a incredibly horrific death and considering as a  society we get in a moral panic if someone tries to potray it on TV after the watershed, it seems weird that such a practice is viewed as a perfect family event.

I'm not saying its a bad thing or that it should be stopped, its actually quite enjoyable (even though its far too cold) and I love the fireworks. Its merely an observation...and I highly doubt that celebrating the fact that parliament didn't fall its going to be too popular for people after the past couple of years in the media that MPs have had.

I also think there is so amusingly British about celebrating failure even if success would have through the entire country into anarchy.

Note to Self: Stop Navel Gazing.

I've had a funny few days. As I have been welcomed to the world of a second year Arts student I've found that instead of finding my free time liberating, I have simply found it boring.

I know I should be doing something productive and go apply for more part time jobs to heal the gaping wound in my bank balance that Tanzania inflicted but once you get stuck on the boredom and procrastination path,its hard to get off. Especially considering, not only will no-one employ, they won't acknowledge that I've even applied for a job. Of course, this is partly due to everyone looking for any kind of employment and our modern job market where you practically need a MA to wait tables.

In my relentless hours of sitting around doing nothing, I've had time to ponder my future and realise just how screwed I really am. I have no idea, really, about what I want to do with my life; I thought I did but now I'm not so sure and even if I ever do it is highly unlikely that I'll ever get it. I probably will not have the money or the luck. All I know so far is what I don't want and it is looking like all that I'm going to have to settle for. Which is frankly just depressing and almost encourages me to do something incredibly reckless and follow a stupid romantic fantasy of leaving uni to run away to Paris, get a job as a waitress and ride around the Left Bank on a moped with a hot Parisian artist.

Because things like that always happen.

 

 I also got to thinking about this whilst I was watching the new series of the Apprentice and although the kind of crap they came out with defied all previous examples of proverbial prattishness, you have got to admire their tenacity.

I highly doubt I'll ever have the courage to introduce myself as 'Caroline Mortimer- The Brand'; of course I'd never have the stupidity either but that's a moot point. Maybe they are the kind of people that get ahead in life (though I have no idea in that case why they want to work for Amstrad) and I should try taking a few more risks so that my future will look a little less bleak.

I really need to get a life.

Cavegirl reporting...

For the past week I have been living in the Dark Ages...metaphorically speaking of course. Despite being equipped with electricity, ridiculous amounts of free time and a functioning laptop I lack the vital necessity of the internet.

 Its weird how much we rely on the internet and utterly fundamental to our lives it has become. I am not even a particularily technology dependent person; I do not have internet on my phone (or I do but I have no idea how to turn it on), I could go a week at a time without using the internet in Tanzania without batting an eyelid and I didn't get Facebook till just before university. Yet despite this, I find my self going ten minutes up to uni several times a day because I can't do anything on my laptop except watch the O.C. ad nauseam.

I can't use Skype; so I can't call my parents (terrible I know), I can't use Spotify properly (I can only use the music that is already on my itunes- what is the point of that) and my automatic file backup won't back up without an internet connection. Whenever I used this things before, I didn't even know I was connected to the internet necessarily.

It wasn't till I was five that I even used a computer for the first time, I was about nine when I worked out how to use the old style dial-up internet, was around eleven before we got broadband and almost nineteen when I got my own laptop. Its amazing how in the past ten years our entire lives have begun to revolve around being connected to the outside world 24/7 and how cut off we feel without it. I have, on several occasions, watched old TV shows and films where characters are trying to find something or work something out and in a moment of huge stupidity, wondered why they can't just google it.

I'm not saying our dependence is a bad thing because it a sign of humankind's progress but I do wonder sometimes how I've got to this point where I cannot cope without being connected to the web constantly. I had a life before Facebook and was perfectly capable of managing my social life yet now I resent having to text people to meet up. I hate having to walk 5 minutes up the road to the library to check my emails and I've had to go cold turkey on my iplayer addiction.

There is much point to this post I suppose, its more a sense of reflection on how sad and pathetic I am to be so dependent on something that I probably could live without and did so up until a few years ago. Its amazing how something so much in the background and disrupt your life so irrevocably when its gone.

Guess Who's Back....

I have returned from my summer in Tanzania in case you hadn't already noticed and I am currently sitting in my bedroom in Harrogate watching my already light tan fade in the face of a tepid Yorkshire September. I'm looking forward to getting back to Birmingham so I can start doing something again. I'm not very good at not going crazy when my mind isn't occupied.

I have no work to do, my friends from Harrogate are in Scotland and I have no money. I'm not normally one to sit around and feel sorry for myself but the gloomy, grey weather has put me in a bad mood.

I don't need to go back to Tanzania but if the weather could come to visit for a while that would be nice.

I tried booking train tickets up to Glasgow for the weekend to see my friends but with the collusion of the well known axis of evil that is the Pope and National Rail, I cannot book a train ticket under £35 (with a railcard) unless it leaves either early in the morning or late in the evening and connects via Leeds, Manchester and sometimes even Preston (I am not entirely convinced I known where that is) for the very reasonable price of £30.

Its not all bad though, its nice to be home and catch up with British television, Western food and hot showers. Maybe after the co-codamol I took for my headache half an hour ago kicks in and I actually get to Glasgow and back, I may stop being such a miserable cow.

Here's hoping.

I did try to make this blog post sound positive, but as you can see it didn't really work.

And I'm off...

Tomorrow, I'll be flying off to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and will stay there for 7 weeks. My bags are (nearly) packed, I've started taking my ridiculously expensive malaria tablets and I'm running around trying to get the last few things sorted before I leave.

Until then, this blog will be on hiatus and you can follow what I get up to at:

http://carolineintanzania2010.blogspot.com/

So until September 22nd, goodbye!

The Obligatory World Cup Post

(Disclaimer: I do not pretend to know anything about football)

Congratulations Spain. Although Holland was one of ‘my’ teams since the beginning, after the 7th man got booked I thought they were aiming for the full set of yellow cards. Still I’m not going to dwell on the performance of particular teams and instead going to tell you what I’ve noticed during this world cup.

First of all there are awards to go to the players with the best names: Kevin and Jerome Prince-Boateng (Ghana and Germany) come in a close joint second with Giovanni van Bronckhurst of the Netherlands (purely because his name is Giovanni) but the winner is: Julio Cesar of Brazil for a name with an unfortunate historical precedent (by the way, I know its pronounced Hulio but it still works).

Then there is the award for the best quote of the World Cup which goes to my mother who said suddenly towards the end of the Uruguay-Holland game ‘Oh its a number board- I thought Hublot was playing in a lot of games’.

Stupidest moment: me not realising until the England-Germany game that the man I thought was Michael Owen was in fact Steven Gerrard.

Now onto my theory about the skill of teams like Spain and the South Americans in particular but this also can include people like France and Portugal. Take a look at these players:

 :Carles Puyol (Spain)

:Diego Forlan (Uruguay)








  Both supposedly good football players (or so I’m told- I’m no expert) but what else do they have in common? Ridiculously stupid, long hair. Now what is the significance of them both having a hairstyle that was best left in the seventies I hear you ask? Well, it seems to me that of the top teams in the world only one has players that don’t sport long hair as far as I’m aware (Germany) and during the high point of his career David Beckham had famously wavy locks. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that football players must be like Samson; their strength comes from their hair. After reaching a certain skill level they can progress to wearing an Alice-band; a symbolic halo of footballing achievement. Break it and you break their hold over international football.

Now look at the England players:

:Wayne Rooney

:Frank Lampard

:Steven Gerrard (who does slightly resemble Michael Owen if you squint a bit)









  Notice anything they have in common; short hair. Maybe during their winter off they should consider a new look. By 2014 they should be unstoppable.

Tweet Much?

Twitter is a funny thing. I’ve been a member since November and have even occasionally logged on but have not exactly been an avid ‘tweeter’ shall we say. I’ve never really seen the point unless you’re a business or newspaper promoting something or revolutionaries trying to contact each other when the government has closed all other methods of communication. I’ve always taken the ‘He who tweets is a...’ well I’m sure you can guess what goes there but I try to avoid profanity on the internet.

When I first heard about people who ‘tweet’, I always saw them as self-involved and pretentious, giving the world the most mundane details of their lives when it was highly likely that the world doesn’t care.

I personally don’t see the ubiquitous presence of technology in modern everyday life as too much of a problem. I don’t believe those dire warnings that instant messaging and email are preventing the world communicating face to face. However there is a limit to its usefulness if you really think about; sure its great to let your friends know how you’re doing every now and again but do they really need a blow by blow account of every menial part of every day of your life?

However over the past few days, I have found myself drawn in by this weird little world of cyber sound bites from people I don’t know. It’s odd how things could suddenly become addictive. Its a similar thing with Facebook, I didn’t join until the beginning of 2009 because I really didn’t see what the fuss was all about but now I check my Facebook at several times a day if I’m around a computer. There is no real point to it, it just has become a habit and I honestly couldn’t tell you why it is so...absorbing.

I do see the merit in Facebook as a way to keep in touch with your friends but with Twitter you are just one of a faceless mass of people so where is the social part of this type of social networking? You could see Twitter as another platform for posting a Facebook update without annoying your friends by clogging up their news feeds and looking incredibly sad as if you have nothing better to do all day except sit refreshing Facebook every five minutes. Yet still, have we got to the point collectively as a society where we are sad enough to spend our entire lives on Twitter.

Well, it remains to be seen if I can be converted. As I’m only beginning to use Twitter properly it may be a while before I truly understand its purpose. Still you can follow me on Twitter if you like at CJMortimer if you think I will have anything remotely interesting to say.

As for the people I’m following; the Guardian and the Independent, the cast of Glee and rather randomly the English language Twitter account of the Kremlin. I suppose I’ve never know what the Kremlin was up to without Twitter so I guess I should be grateful. Then again, I now know what the Kremlin want me to believe they’re up to when its likely that even most Russians don’t know the truth.

I should add that to the list of what Twitter is good for: propaganda.

Unasema Kiingereza?

I’m learning Swahili. Or at least trying too. In preparation for my trip to Tanzania at the beginning of August, I have been given a list of key phrases that I can use there over the course of 7 weeks. So far I’ve learnt how to say ‘thank you very much’ and ‘chicken’. Which I’m sure will become very handy considering I’m a vegetarian and ornithophobic. Still it’s a start.

Apparently the older you get the lower you’re capacity to understand new languages and although I have yet to turn twenty, I already feel like its harder to learn Swahili than it was to learn French when I was 11 despite Swahili being a comparatively simpler language. Of course I’m not forced to stick in a room learning Swahili with a teacher breathing down my neck forcing me to concentrate. Not that, that particular tactic my teachers employed worked during my GCSE French lessons though.

I got an A though so all’s well as that ends well I guess.

I have always loved languages though, even though I always hated double French on a Monday morning. To me they’re part of the mysticism of other cultures that always seem so much more interesting than the boring Anglophone world. They say you can’t truly understand a culture till you speak its language; it’s like some sort of code that once you break it, a whole world is unlocked and you can see things from the perspective of people who were previously alien to you. I’ve always been interested in other people’s cultures because they were so much outside the normal English world that I was stuck in. Maybe its part of the fact that I’m one of those people that spends their life wanting to be somewhere else; the grass is always greener after all.

Whatever the reason, I have always tried to buck the stereotype of British people abroad that we believe everyone can speak English- just at a few decibels higher than typical conversation. It is not an urban myth by any stretch of the imagination; I have seen it right in front of my own eyes and subsequently developed a slightly lower opinion of England as a whole. I speak passable French and Italian and a little bit of Japanese from studying it this past year but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a linguistic expert. Nevertheless, I have always tried to learn as much of a language as I possibly can before I visit a new place because I think not only is it rude not to, you miss out on the culture of a place a little bit by not being able to experience it through the eyes of the people who created it. Of course this is easier said than done and despite my best efforts its not going in. Maybe its because the nice weather has distracted me, maybe I’m just lazy but I can’t quite bring myself to sit down and wait for the words to go into my brain.

Not that necessarily they would go in. I remember in around Year 9, several of my friends went to Poland on a Music trip and they were given a one hour crash course in conversational Polish in which all any of them managed to pick up was ‘I like dancing’.

Lubię tańca, in case you were wondering.

Similarly I ‘studied’ Mandarin for a grand total of six hours during my Easter 2008 trip to China and apart from a few isolated phrases for greeting people, saying please and thank you etc, etc I can now only really say ‘I love you’ (Wo ai ni). That brings the number of languages I can say that in up to eight.
Of course, if I concentrate I will be able to master the sheet of useful phrases I’ve been given before I get to Tanzania but considering how tongue tied I get trying to speak foreign languages I’ll probably still get laughed at.

Either way, I’m screwed.

(The title means ‘Do you speak English?’ in Swahili by the way).

And so I face the final curtain...for the summer at least...

So here we come to the end of another year. A lot has changed. I’m writing this in my bedroom during my last night in student halls of residence before I head up back up North tomorrow.

Everyone around me has been waxing on and on in the past few weeks about how fast the year has gone and how sad they are to leave, but I find myself in a strange position. As the year progressed it always seem to be going so fast but when I look back on September it seems so strange that it was only 9 months ago. It seems so strange that my whole life revolved around Harrogate a year ago when now Birmingham is as much my home as Harrogate is. Harrogate will always be ‘home’ to me as long as my parents live there but Birmingham is where I live and in the space of a few months it has started to become the answer to the question ‘where are you from’ when I’m not in Harrogate or Birmingham. When my parents leave Harrogate it may be the only place I call home, until I leave again and find somewhere else.

I think this is in part due to my upbringing and the fact that throughout my childhood I never stayed in one place long enough for it to be considered my true ‘home’ and also partly because of the ‘wherever I lay my hat’ nomadic outlook I’ve inherited that seems to be a Mortimer family trait, but now that I face not returning to Birmingham for three months, it seems oddly alien as if I’m visiting family for an extended period of time rather than going home. Harrogate has become a series of living memories; I visited my old 6th form for a reference from my former Head of Year during my Easter break when school was still in session and it was the most surreal experience of my life. Seeing everyone milling around, sitting in the places I used to sit, talking to the people I knew from the year below dragged up all the memories of the previous year of when I just to feel so comfortable and I was hit by the incredible feeling that I didn’t belong there anymore; this was my place but it isn’t anymore. When I returned to Birmingham, I was thrown into the stress of exams and didn’t really stop to think much about how much I’d gotten used to my surroundings, but after everything had ended and all I had was time, I began to reflect on how university life had become the new normal. I speak to my non-Birmingham friends about MOMDs, Gatecrasher and Redbrick forgetting they won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, when I was last in Harrogate I was frustrated that the local co-op was twice the distance on foot as the Costcutter here so I couldn’t run out for a snack and the idea that I don’t have to take any books out of the library or write an essay is practically frightening. It is weird how in the space of less than a year, my life is so radically different and I’ve barely noticed.

Perhaps this is why I’m sad to leave for the summer. I wasn’t that sad to leave Harrogate; I was one of the few people amongst my friends that didn’t cry, because it felt that it was the right time to go. I had lived there for ten years, longer than I’d ever lived anywhere else, but there was nothing new; I’d already seen everything, done everything and experienced everything I could there (to be honest I think I’d done that by the time I was 16) and it was beginning to feel like the waiting room I was stuck in whilst I waited for my life to begin. I’m not going to cry now that I’m leaving because its only for the summer but there is no excited anticipation about leaving Brum; I’m not done here yet. This is why I have mixed feelings about moving to Selly Oak and a few of my friends graduating. I’m looking forward to moving on and I feel myself getting sick of halls the way I got sick of Harrogate but I’ve only just got used to this new lifestyle, the fact that its changing again feels a little daunting. Next year will be different from this year and undoubtedly a year from now I will be sitting in my room in Selly Oak pondering how remarkable it was that I was only an innocent little fresher a year ago as my life is so different, part of me wants it all to stop and everything to remain the same for a little longer but the more mature, realistic side is looking forward to a new lifestyle.

Change is a fun thing and people react to it different, I would say I always handle it quite well; I’m not really one for tears and nostalgia, I don’t even have photos of anyone from Harrogate in my room; this is the first time when I’ve really started to look back. My life has certainly changed for the better and more than just my surroundings has changed, I’m closer to the mature, confident grown up that I pretend to be than I was when I came here...or at least I’m getting there. People think that moving and finding a new place to belong is abrupt and instantaneous but although your address may change over the course of a day, your affiliation to a place or the lifestyle you build around it takes time. It has a tendency to sneak up on you when you least expect it and before you know it, you can’t imagine living your life any other way.

So till September Birmingham...then we can back to raising hell.

Here we go again...

...So like many a self-important student with too much time on their hands before me, I have started a blog where I intend to ramble on about a variety of topics that I’ll pretend to be well informed on.

I have done some blogging in the past, never with much success, but I have always failed to feel much enthusiasm for it. It’s because I still recoil slightly at the thought of sharing so much personal information with people I’ve never met before, I even struggle to do that with the friends I’ve had for years. Blogging in part, is part of the beguiling internet trend in the last 10 years where people assume other people care about every facet of their menial lives or that they have a right to know about other peoples’. Then again, I’ve always been a notoriously private person. Also, I think what I’ve written in the past has been a little...flat. It has mostly centred around politics, a subject I’m passionate about but I still seem detached somehow because there is no flair or spark of humanity in it. Or something like that. Maybe I’m just not a very good writer.

I have always been a little reserved when it comes to expressing feelings or even alluding to the fact that I have them; I think it comes from the surprising amount of natural shyness and self-consciousness that I have been trying to get over for years. However, as of today I’m turning over a new leaf... or at least I’m going to try.

I don’t know exactly what I will write about, it’ll probably remain focused on politics but I might make room to ramble about my philosophical moments, but I’ll try to be more open and engaging and should probably start by explaining the title. ‘Pretty Vacant’ is a song by the Sex Pistols (though you should really already know that) and I did not choose it just to seem edgy and cool, there is a story behind it. I was told when I was a little girl that this song was ‘my song’ because it so accurately described me and my slightly ditzy nature.
‘We so pretty, oh so pretty, we’re pretty vacant’.

Parents can be so mean sometimes.

So that was something personal. Not bearing deep into my soul personal but it should give the internet population (or at least the small selection reading this) an insight into my character. It’s a start.