Roll on Christmas

Why is it that people are so annoying?  On Sunday morning I went in to work early, mostly to tidy up from a very busy Saturday.  After being there for nearly four hours it became almost time for the customers to be let in.  Over the course of the 4 hours many people had tried the doors.  What toyshops are open at 8.15 am on a weekday, never mind a Sunday?  Really, who would expect a shop at 9.20am  on a Sunday, containing me in my scruffiest day off  clothes and wearing my headphones, to be open?  So eventually we got to 10 minutes before opening time, the staff arrived.  We went to open the door to let them in and people started doing the pushing thing trying to come in.  We pointed out that we were just letting the staff in, and we would be open soon.

When we actually did open one annoying woman in particular tried to push into the shop before the doors were even open.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I tend to wait until the staff have actually opened the doors before I enter!  Even worse, the same woman then took a gentle stroll at the slowest amble I have ever seen, and I walk everywhere slowly!  It's just fucking rude!

Over the past week we have also had a woman buy stuff and then return it 4 minutes later, which I think might be a new record!

Roll on Christmas…

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Pete, where are you Pete?

It is so frustrating. You know when you meet someone and get on straight away? I met a guy in Glasgow like that; he managed my local video shop. After living there for about 2 years we got chatting one day and I realised we had a lot to talk about. I feel a little like I stalked him for a while there. It was during a period of what you might call boredom. I could probably call it depression and get 6 months off work but that is what whiny bitches do! We hung out in the shop a couple times a week for a couple hours at a time, shooting the shit about all sorts of things. I really liked Pete, except that now sadly I think we have lost contact, even in this day and age of Facebook, myspace and Twitter. You see, the problem is, his name is not Pete. It is Patrick, and I have spent so long thinking of him as just Pete, and being back in York for 3 years now, I am ashamed to admit I have forgotten his surname! I know it was Mc-something (cliché I know!) but I don’t have any way of finding him. The video shop closed down before I left and he was about to move house and job as I left. So now what? I have tried searching through Facebook, but what am I supposed to do? Look for everyone called Pete in Glasgow? I suspect that might be a long search!
I was thinking about him today, seems a shame to lose track of someone I really liked. Maybe I will carry on my search…maybe I will accept that that friendship might be over; maybe my life will be just a little sadder.
I realise that none of my friends here ever met Pete, but in a way he was a really close friend, and I miss spending all those hours just mooching and fighting about films with him.

Slowly writing...

Some of you reading this will have suffered from the same thing. I don’t like using the term ‘Writer’s Block’. Mostly because I’m not blocked, I’m just a bit lazy. I sit down every so often to write, only to find a thousand other things to do instead. Many people cleverer than me have told their versions of procrastinating, checking emails, updating your facebook status, tidying your desk, deleting stuff from the hard drive, all that stuff.
I’m not suffering from any kind of brain freeze, it is just that some of the things I want to write about don’t work quite so well on paper as they do out loud. I started a post for this blog telling an old story, but about ¾ of the way through it I realised it just doesn’t have the same impact on paper. So I stopped.
I have a couple of great ideas circulating, but that is all they are doing at the moment. I’m struggling to motivate myself. I’m even struggling with my novel, which I have never struggled with. I went back to re-edit it, and I realised there is quite a lot I don’t like. Which sucks.
So next up on my writing slate are, in no particular order:

Nunja’s
Untitled Queen’s Fantasy Script
Captain Hellbeard’s World Of Wonder
More blogging
Untitled family drama in the ‘hood/ghetto
A Certain Little Smile (my novel)

So, if anyone feels the urge to help, or prod me in the right direction, pick a project and feel free.
In the meantime, I’ll go back to watching the Wire, which is my procrastination of choice at the moment. Expect some influence to show, certainly in my slowly formulating family drama. It may feature an Omar or a Bubbles, but either way it will be dark and gritty! Go me…

Until next time….

Stories

There are stories you can tell, and stories you can’t. I have stories that I love to tell, but I can only tell them to certain people. There will be stories which are never told to my girlfriend for example, and some stories never told to my mum. There is some crossover in these stories as you might expect! They are the stories that will one day be stag night stories, or tall tales told in the pub among old men.
There are stories it is safe to tell most people, like the time we went to see Kid Rock and slept in the station managers office at King’s Cross. I love telling that story. Or the time Kerry and I broke the rock bench and almost died laughing at breakfast. Stories it is safe to tell most people.
There are stories you can only tell to the people in them, because they make fuck all sense to anyone else. You could ask maybe 3 people about Julian’s loafers and socks and have them understand. But those 3 people will always smile at the memory.
I share some great memories with a couple of people who probably take as much delight in sharing them as I do. Tales of driving across America in a van with one gear, freewheeling down hills to cool off the engine. Tales of lifting fridges, of staying up all night to stop the kids sneaking out, tales of random underwear runs onto sleeping peoples beds. These are some of my favourite memories; maybe sometime they will be shared.
There are stories you can tell work colleagues, and stories you can tell a certain group of friends. Some of the best stories will remain untold until they are forgotten, or finally find an audience. For me most of that audience may never exist, relegated to people who read the odd story I write, or those who read this blog.
I will hopefully filter these stories into versions suitable for reading; those that I think may be of interest to more than the people in them, or that work generally as anecdotes.
Like many people I have some great memories which are destined to stay memories and never be told to anyone, for whatever reason…