Years ago, when I was a fully functional, reasonably mentally stable member of the human race I used to work in an office around 15 miles away from home. This meant a walk from my place of residence, embarking on a train, disembarking at the location and walking aside a vaguely terrifying main road to the office. At home time it was pretty much the same, just in reverse obviously. Some people used to complain about the commute, others used it as a chance to catch up on their reading, others would sit silently slugging down enough caffeine to allow them to speak to fellow colleagues without biting their heads off – to be honest, if nothing else it was a fascinating study of human behaviour really.
And me? I actually quite enjoyed it; the people watching, the chit chat over the plastic tables, the finding out if your ticket was going to get checked and if it wasn’t, moaning about buying a season ticket and having it ignored (before the introduction of barriers of course). There was also the ‘who can read the free newspaper quick enough to get to the cartoons and horoscopes before the end of the journey’ race which generally ended with a friend of mine nodding sagely and saying ‘Hmm, yeah, Nemi was good today I guess’. One thing that always fascinated me was the way people act on a train, the sort of etiquette that exists. I don’t know what it is like in more densely populated areas like London but in Edinburgh there seemed to be a system where, for some annoying reason, every time anyone got on the train they would immediately congregate around the doorway – despite the fact that there were oodles of free seats on which there were no people, feet, bags or books. Now, it’s easier to get off if you’re near the doorway, I get it but it is not for EVERYBODY ELSE WHO HAS TO STRUGGLE THROUGH THE THRONG OF PEOPLE TO GET OFF!!!! I am particularly annoyed about this as it caused me to miss my stop on more than four occasions. Perhaps I’m just too polite to shout ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!’ and I should be more assertive but in the same way, I was trying to maintain the stress free environment, not causing a fuss, observing some sort of unspoken etiquette. After watching this happen for approximately six years I started being more outspoken about it but always was eyed by fellow commuters to not complain, to keep the peace. It was particularly frustrating for people with bikes as trying to insert a bike onto a train through a group of people in the doorway, all steadfastly studying their newspapers, is no small feat. It wasn’t a lack of intelligence, the people in the doorway were often chatting amiably about complicated tasks at work and so I can only guess it is either a lack of common sense, a furious desire to be the first one off the train as if it were a race or a phenomena not yet revealed to me.
Then there was the Train Nemesis. Bear with me, this one is a bit esoteric but after travelling on any mode of transport for any length of time (in this case trains, or it would be Bus Nemesis wouldn’t it?) you start to develop an intense dislike for a particular commuter for no real reason at all. It’s an odd phenomena, it could be the noisy way the person eats across the table from you, it could be the person who always tries to hog your favourite seat or it could be someone who is pretending to read a high brow book but clearly not actually reading it as it takes them 3 years and in this time they open it and then stare out of the window holding it up so people can see just how damn smart they are! Sorry, got a bit carried away there. It could be the person who talks loudly enough to prevent anyone from reading or they could be talking about the most banal stuff that you feel like shouting at them or moving seats, but you can’t as their voice seems to resonate around the whole carriage! For a friend of mine, his Train Nemesis seemed to join his path to the train station and each time he would try to race past the man who became known as ‘The Running Man’. This seemed to happen every day and my friend often couldn’t work out how the man always seemed to get ahead of him and so he would hurry too. It seemed to intensely annoy him to the point of competition. I daresay that onlookers would have mentally noted them as ‘The Running Men’ due to this :) For me it was the ‘Man Who Always Tries To Steal My Seat’. Every day I would hurry down to the train station and TMWATTSMS would be waiting on the platform, looking nonchalant but he knew what he was doing, waiting to pounce! When the train arrived everyone would surge towards the train door. Being small it was usually easy to manoeuvre my way into the crowd and sometimes people would let me on the train first and I would coolly walk through the door, thanking people, before hurrying desperately to the seat next to ‘The Bunny Window’ (More about this later), in the corner with the table seats. Occasionally he would smile or scowl but always his expression read ‘you won today, but soon I will be victorious!’. Sometimes I think he would get on the stop before just too annoy me and as I didn’t see him at the station I would think ‘haha! The seat is mine!’ but then I’d clamber onto the busy train only to realise he was sprawled out in MY seat, eating a muffin!!! A Muffin!!! His eyes saying ‘You have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch me out’ – and presumably he had. It was a weird thing, a sort of dislike for somebody due to no real basis at all, it would fester within you. You would never actually do anything about said nemesis but they were always there.
Then there were the Train Guardians. These are people whom are so regular in their daily commute that, if you don’t see them, you know that you are late for the train. For me it was ‘The Tall Man’, ‘Lady with the Beret’ and ‘The Twins who aren’t really Twins’. Basically I would leave my flat and 9 times out of 10 I would pass a tall stern looking grey haired man whom would wear a jacket or carry it along with an umbrella – the closer he was to my flat when I passed him, the later I was for the train. Then, further along the journey I would cross paths with ‘Lady with the Beret’ who would generally be hurrying and I didn’t stand a chance of catching up with her but just seeing her was comforting, no train missed yet. Then, just before the train station there was the tv shop that always had breakfast TV on with a clock on screen – anything after 8:10am and it was Game Over, 30 minutes wait minimum, mostly in the cold to catch the next train. Finally on the journey there were two girls who seemed to go to school near the train station, they looked so alike you would briefly think they were twins but up close they looked little like each other really. Again, the further away you saw ‘The Twins who aren’t really Twins’ from the train station, the more chance you had of missing the train. It was pretty foolproof really, even if one failed you, you always had a backup Train Guardian. I am not sure what these people were like in real life, I hope they’re lovely people, but they kept me on the right track train time wise and for that I wish to publicly thank them.
The aforementioned ‘Bunny Seat’ was a seat next to a window adjacent to the possible sighting of bunnies next to the track, generally to make the journey more pleasant it was important to observe a series of games, one of which was animal spotting. For example, in a part of Fife, it appeared that someone had released a pet rabbit into the wild population and this meant that as well as the usual brown wild bunnies, some of them were pure black and a mix of brown and black so it was interesting to try and spot as many types of bunny as possible. Then there were the occasional deer that frequented the fields surrounding the station and so spotting one was always good. There was the heron that sat patiently near a pool of water near one of the stations, but only on some occasions. There were seals in the pool at the Deep Sea World Centre that you could spot while crossing the Forth Rail Bridge (I called one of the seals ‘Pancake’, I’m not sure why, it just ensured that he had a name I could call him). Generally spotting any animal would generally send me into a smile of delight and I would feel like the journey was somehow more worth it that just going to and from work.
I always found the journey into work slightly more difficult than the journey back, mainly because I’m not a morning person. Some people can just leap out of bed, ready for the day. For me, it seems to take roughly four hours after waking to gain any semblance of normality. Sometimes getting the train would be a monumental struggle in the mornings due to my sensitivity to and lack thereof caffeine. A friend of mine and I had a signal, if he hadn’t had his coffee and therefore did not want to speak to me he would simply nod almost imperceptibly and continue listening to his MP3 player and I knew instantly not to chirpily attempt to make conversation. On the few occasions I tried to be cheery in this situation it was met with either a steely glare or a ‘Hello’ through gritted teeth. On the mornings in which coffee had been, or was currently being consumed, generally he would be in good spirits and we would have a jolly chat. The only thing is, as I regularly got on the train with a few people I knew, if I was having a bad morning I’m just way too polite to ignore anyone so I would attempt to manoeuvre myself onto the part of the train where no one I knew would be. This invariably backfired though as there would be someone whose car had broken down and had to take the train that day and would be hugely chirpy while I would smile weakly and try to forcibly wake myself up by will alone.
One thing I always found funny was when random commuters would become heavily involved in the conversation a friend and I were sharing that they would almost involuntarily join in. For example, my now husband and I were discussing cartoons or some such thing when my husband said ‘Apparently the cartoon character Goofy was meant to be a cow, not a dog’. I asked him what he was talking about, or words to that effect, and said that I thought he was a dog. Husband then said he had read somewhere that Goofy was meant to be a cow, at which point the commuter in front of us put down his paper and said ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just crap! He’s a dog!’. We then entered a full debate with the man regarding the species of a cartoon character until we almost agreed to meet the man the next day to see who was right! I once saw a lady lean across the aisle and tell a fellow passenger that her boyfriend sounded like a jerk and she should dump him as the girl had been trying to make a decision for most of the journey between noisy sobs.
We used to have the most entertaining chats on the train and another friend of mine used to produce things from his pocket on a fairly random basis – he once had a pipe in his pocket even though he didn’t smoke, it was huge too, proper Sherlock Holmes style. He also got on the train one day and produced balloons from his pocket which he proceeded to blow up and we had fun batting them around the carriage much to the probable chagrin of the other passengers. One balloon seemed to escape at every station we stopped!
When I stayed in San Diego for six weeks several years ago I struck up a good rapport with the hotel shuttle drivers Wayne and Felicia. Felicia drove the bus to the office I was frequenting in the morning via a few stops in La Jolla and we got on famously. We chatted about all sorts of things and she even took me out to see the sights in her car on the one day that I actually managed to get away from work. Wayne drove the evening bus back from the office and he had an amazing sense of humour – a man with a firm twinkle in his eye who seemed to love the complexities of language whom I regularly confused with both my accent and some of my words – I’m afraid he may have learned a few more swear words from me during my time there. I used to wait for him to come back from taking hotel guests to various locations in the late evening on breaks from my computer and we’d sit and chat in the smoking area (that’s when I was a regular smoker that is). Wayne and Felicia made my daily commute so much fun, without them I would have probably sat in silence the whole way to and from work. I think Wayne even had us all singing on the bus at one point! Happy days!
Let’s face it, you have to keep yourself amused on routine trips. The thing is, I’ve always been able to settle happily on a train or bus for long journeys. Apparently as a very small child I liked nothing more than to sit in my pushchair and watch the world go by and I would scream if I had to get out of it. Don’t worry, I don’t scream these days if I have to get off a train/bus – that would be impolite to other passengers.
But what of my fellow passengers, what do they do to ease situations for people around them? One thing that infuriates me is the ‘despite the fact that there are no other seats free on this train and you are standing, I’m still going to put my bag/feet/guitar/Laptop etc on the seat so you can’t sit down’. One man actually tutted loudly at me for politely asking him to move his feet and when he did he kicked me hard in the shin to express his disgust. I don’t wish to be melodramatic but that kick hurt like crazy – I have since read that there is some sort of nerve in your shin that if kicked will generally make the person collapse due to the pain – so there, it hurt!
It’s like some people get onto the train and mark their territory, they invade the space provided and don’t allow other people to invade their space, like a virus – they set up home in their seat and it becomes theirs. Like a virus they are sneezed out at various different stations and resolve to make things more uncomfortable for people for asking them to move their bag.
I’ve found a way of preventing people from sitting anywhere near you that doesn’t involve creating a literal stink – gleaned from Jasper Carrott I believe – when people are getting on the train, as they pass you, smile as widely as you can. This, also like a virus, spreads throughout the train the general consensus that you’re probably going to engage them in some sort of conversation and you will more often than not be avoided at all costs.
I was looking forward to hopefully getting back to work in the near future and joining the commute again then I remembered the cold winter days, stuck in the snow, shivering waiting for the trsin. Or having the trains cancelled in summer as the rails are too hot. Perhaps I’ll just work from home :)
Thursday 28 July 2011
Tuesday 26 July 2011
“I wish to register a complaint!”
Recently I had to assist my Dad in writing a letter of complaint to a particular company regarding a product he had bought. Despite him attempting to return the product he was still being charged for something that he wasn’t using and hadn’t actually wanted in the first place. It’s complicated and I won’t name the company but we found that on searching the company’s website last year, there was no email address to complain and the only ways to communicate with them was through writing a letter and sending it through the post or phoning the company which, on the one occasion he did phone them, cost around £7 and it was only a short call and didn’t solve the problem.
Eventually, after several months, we found that there was an email address available to which the query could be sent. I set to work constructing an email to send to the company, it took around an hour to write the huge mail containing all of the necessary information and explaining the anxiety this had caused. This got me thinking about the nature of complaint.
It’s not often that I feel the need to complain to companies, TV shows or people but I do find myself saying “There’ll be letters!” at certain things on the TV as I have the expectation that people will hit Twitter, Facebook, the internet in general to air their grievances against particular things. I would say generally that very little on the TV offends me, occasionally I might think something is inappropriate for the time of day etc but on the whole I don’t feel the urge to write an email/post a message if something offends me. Perhaps my desire to complain is directly correlated to the amount of energy and time I think it will take to write the complaint or how much money it will cost to complain (phone call costs, price of a stamp etc). A scientist could probably construct an equation in which this could be expressed but I more than likely wouldn’t understand it and would have to have it explained to me.
For example, I believe it was last year that I was watching the X Factor, it was probably the final as I only ever seem to get around to watching reality shows at the Final – apart from Masterchef, I really like Masterchef. Anyway, the Christina Aguilera performance with the burlesque dancers was on and I looked up from whatever I was doing and my first thought was ‘That’s quite raunchy for this time of night!’. For anyone who didn’t see it, it mainly consisted of scantily clad women generally writhing around, thrusting their hips and straddling chairs. Perhaps I’m doing it a disservice; it was quite enjoyable and sensual but maybe more of an adult nature. The outfits weren’t really the problem, you could see women in lingerie on billboards, shop posters etc, it was more the sexual nature of the dancing really. I remember thinking ‘Ooh, there’ll be letters!’ as I thought of someone reaching for the Basildon Bond and their best fountain pen after spluttering over their cup of tea (I’m not sure why I get this image in my head to express someone being offended!). The thing is that, there were letters, or rather emails I suspect to the X Factor expressing outrage – I understand that the complaints reached into the thousands. Now, I have to admit that I did think it was perhaps a tad raunchy for pre-watershed viewing and I’m not exactly a prude but what did I do about my offended sensibilities?
Nothing, absolutely nothing – unless you count saying to my husband ‘There’ll be letters’.
The funny thing is, despite being mildly shocked, I still continued to watch said performance – whether it was to see if it got any worse or if it was just because I couldn’t stop watching it, like watching a terrible drama unfolding I literally couldn’t tear my eyes away. I didn’t switch it off – why? I’ve asked myself this question, maybe I wanted more to complain about mentally or to say that I had seen it (although it was undoubtedly going to end up on YouTube) some part of me wanted to have seen it when it happened, a spectator to what was probably going to be causing some outrage on Twitter even as I watched. Is this human nature or am I a damaged individual? Actually, don’t answer that :) Perhaps if I had kids and they were watching it I may have felt more outraged at their exposure to a performance like that but I would have probably switched it off or sent the kids out of the room until it was over. This is an area I will address if and when it ever occurs I suppose.
In the olden days, complaining seemed to involve writing a letter to the necessary party, expressing extreme offence to the material (or as Hugh Laurie in ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ once said “I'm going to write a stiff letter. A very stiff letter. On cardboard. And I shall post it too! ” ). There was, and still is I believe a show on TV where viewers would write in about various programs and complain and their letters were read out on the TV. I often wondered to where you would write if you took offence to something in the complaints program. Answers on a postcard please...
Anyway, my point is that, being so enraged by something on TV, you could go and write a letter and post it to the relevant party and then you had to wait for a reply. The interesting thing about this is that, apart from the actual writing of the letter, there is very little instant gratification in this - having your complaint recognised and acknowledged by the party – there is a wait. I mean, the fact that you are so annoyed by something that you put pen to paper, it must be serious – right? Now, with the birth of the internet and social networking sites it is possible to complain almost immediately to whomever you choose without the, probably advisable, cooling off period. We are passionate creatures us humans and, judging by the responses on internet forums of varying natures, some people perhaps don’t cool off and calm down before they send a potentially inflammatory remark without thinking. With the internet and social networking sites there is a sense of instant gratification – if you don’t like a TV show you can often post a message on the site of the show, the director, the actors etc and frequently get a response quickly; even if the response isn’t from the person themselves, a like minded individual responding seems instant gratification enough at times. To know you’re not alone in your thinking.
I suppose in the modern age we are used to having more power and control than we used to. In the past, when complaining by letter you didn’t know how many other people had complained or if the person didn’t reply you didn’t know if your complaint had been read or if anything had come of it and you could pursue it further but let’s be honest, most people may have thought about their complaint and considered it not worth the time and energy to continue it at that point. Also, when you wrote a letter of complaint it wasn’t immediately mocked or supported by lots of other people, whipping people up into a frenzy. Nowadays we are encouraged to vote for people online/by phone, vote people off reality tv shows, wherever you are, whatever your opinion – we want to hear from you!
There are billions of people in the world and it’s fairly likely that every individual will have an individual opinion on everything. In the past, it was perhaps more difficult to get opinions across to large amounts of people, now everyone who has access to the internet has a voice. Everyone should have their say, free speech and all that, and most people do but with instant posting on social networking sites it is all too easy to make a throwaway comment or create something that can create an enormous amount of controversy.
An example of this is the song ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black. You know, the YouTube sensation? I hadn’t heard it but from the comments I had read about it I half expected some sort of song about something hugely offensive with an accompanying horrific video. Some people were praising it, which is nice, but there were a large amount of people who tore into her – one allegedly suggesting she should harm herself and die! To be honest, I was almost afraid to view the video as my expectations were terrifying. I really have no idea why the video produced so much vitriol, to me it just seemed like a pop video by a young girl singing about how she was looking forward to the weekend and that she was waiting for the bus. I thought I had viewed the wrong video. In my humble opinion dear reader, it wasn’t the greatest song or video I have ever heard or seen but it was certainly catchy. I can’t imagine feeling so irate by the song that I would email or tweet the singer to express such bitterness towards her. People put allsorts of stuff up on You Tube, surely that’s the point of it – to express yourself to the world. Obviously not everyone is going to agree with the opinions expressed by everyone but to personally attack a girl for wanting to be in a pop video and show the world seems a tad harsh. What gives someone the right to publicly insult a young girl for doing something she wanted to do that seemed fairly harmless. Did I miss something? Did she do something heinous?
But then again, everyone has an opinion and should be able to express it so perhaps it was just people expressing their opinion – there’s probably no need to be overtly cruel though.
One set of complaints that actually surprised me recently was the flurry of complaints over Fiona Bruce reading the news with a pair of glasses on. As a fellow bespectacled girlie I know how sucky it is when you want to wear your contact lenses but have an eye infection so you have to wear glasses, but for people to say that she shouldn’t have been reading the news in her glasses seems so ludicrous! (In my opinion). Admittedly I noticed she was wearing glasses and thought ‘Hmm, does she usually wear glasses?’ but I sort of ignored that and got on with the business of watching the news. Apparently there was a bout of comments on Twitter saying she looked “awful”, criticising her appearance and some saying she should have stayed at home if she was ill. I mean, what do you think about that? So it’s openly ok to criticise someone’s appearance publicly but if that were to go on in other places would it be classed as ‘bullying’?
The thing is, there’s often no happy medium, if you express yourself you risk ridicule but if things are censored or cut out then there is uproar! Our rights are being violated by not allowing us to see something! It’s political correctness gone mad people shout. So what is the solution? There is always someone who is going to take offence at something and perhaps it’s up to us to sit down, consider our complaint, think of the consequences of venting our spleen and if we still feel it is a valid complaint, go ahead and let rip.
As for me, frankly if something on TV offends me I tend to switch it over and watch something else, I’ve got enough to worry about mentally without getting worked up over something that either doesn’t interest me or in the grand scheme of things isn’t that important. If I do find something massively offensive, trust me, I will write a letter, write an email and make my voice heard but until that time comes I will continue my viewing pleasure and I undoubtedly will be caused to utter my well worn phrase ‘There’ll be letters’ :)
Eventually, after several months, we found that there was an email address available to which the query could be sent. I set to work constructing an email to send to the company, it took around an hour to write the huge mail containing all of the necessary information and explaining the anxiety this had caused. This got me thinking about the nature of complaint.
It’s not often that I feel the need to complain to companies, TV shows or people but I do find myself saying “There’ll be letters!” at certain things on the TV as I have the expectation that people will hit Twitter, Facebook, the internet in general to air their grievances against particular things. I would say generally that very little on the TV offends me, occasionally I might think something is inappropriate for the time of day etc but on the whole I don’t feel the urge to write an email/post a message if something offends me. Perhaps my desire to complain is directly correlated to the amount of energy and time I think it will take to write the complaint or how much money it will cost to complain (phone call costs, price of a stamp etc). A scientist could probably construct an equation in which this could be expressed but I more than likely wouldn’t understand it and would have to have it explained to me.
For example, I believe it was last year that I was watching the X Factor, it was probably the final as I only ever seem to get around to watching reality shows at the Final – apart from Masterchef, I really like Masterchef. Anyway, the Christina Aguilera performance with the burlesque dancers was on and I looked up from whatever I was doing and my first thought was ‘That’s quite raunchy for this time of night!’. For anyone who didn’t see it, it mainly consisted of scantily clad women generally writhing around, thrusting their hips and straddling chairs. Perhaps I’m doing it a disservice; it was quite enjoyable and sensual but maybe more of an adult nature. The outfits weren’t really the problem, you could see women in lingerie on billboards, shop posters etc, it was more the sexual nature of the dancing really. I remember thinking ‘Ooh, there’ll be letters!’ as I thought of someone reaching for the Basildon Bond and their best fountain pen after spluttering over their cup of tea (I’m not sure why I get this image in my head to express someone being offended!). The thing is that, there were letters, or rather emails I suspect to the X Factor expressing outrage – I understand that the complaints reached into the thousands. Now, I have to admit that I did think it was perhaps a tad raunchy for pre-watershed viewing and I’m not exactly a prude but what did I do about my offended sensibilities?
Nothing, absolutely nothing – unless you count saying to my husband ‘There’ll be letters’.
The funny thing is, despite being mildly shocked, I still continued to watch said performance – whether it was to see if it got any worse or if it was just because I couldn’t stop watching it, like watching a terrible drama unfolding I literally couldn’t tear my eyes away. I didn’t switch it off – why? I’ve asked myself this question, maybe I wanted more to complain about mentally or to say that I had seen it (although it was undoubtedly going to end up on YouTube) some part of me wanted to have seen it when it happened, a spectator to what was probably going to be causing some outrage on Twitter even as I watched. Is this human nature or am I a damaged individual? Actually, don’t answer that :) Perhaps if I had kids and they were watching it I may have felt more outraged at their exposure to a performance like that but I would have probably switched it off or sent the kids out of the room until it was over. This is an area I will address if and when it ever occurs I suppose.
In the olden days, complaining seemed to involve writing a letter to the necessary party, expressing extreme offence to the material (or as Hugh Laurie in ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ once said “I'm going to write a stiff letter. A very stiff letter. On cardboard. And I shall post it too! ” ). There was, and still is I believe a show on TV where viewers would write in about various programs and complain and their letters were read out on the TV. I often wondered to where you would write if you took offence to something in the complaints program. Answers on a postcard please...
Anyway, my point is that, being so enraged by something on TV, you could go and write a letter and post it to the relevant party and then you had to wait for a reply. The interesting thing about this is that, apart from the actual writing of the letter, there is very little instant gratification in this - having your complaint recognised and acknowledged by the party – there is a wait. I mean, the fact that you are so annoyed by something that you put pen to paper, it must be serious – right? Now, with the birth of the internet and social networking sites it is possible to complain almost immediately to whomever you choose without the, probably advisable, cooling off period. We are passionate creatures us humans and, judging by the responses on internet forums of varying natures, some people perhaps don’t cool off and calm down before they send a potentially inflammatory remark without thinking. With the internet and social networking sites there is a sense of instant gratification – if you don’t like a TV show you can often post a message on the site of the show, the director, the actors etc and frequently get a response quickly; even if the response isn’t from the person themselves, a like minded individual responding seems instant gratification enough at times. To know you’re not alone in your thinking.
I suppose in the modern age we are used to having more power and control than we used to. In the past, when complaining by letter you didn’t know how many other people had complained or if the person didn’t reply you didn’t know if your complaint had been read or if anything had come of it and you could pursue it further but let’s be honest, most people may have thought about their complaint and considered it not worth the time and energy to continue it at that point. Also, when you wrote a letter of complaint it wasn’t immediately mocked or supported by lots of other people, whipping people up into a frenzy. Nowadays we are encouraged to vote for people online/by phone, vote people off reality tv shows, wherever you are, whatever your opinion – we want to hear from you!
There are billions of people in the world and it’s fairly likely that every individual will have an individual opinion on everything. In the past, it was perhaps more difficult to get opinions across to large amounts of people, now everyone who has access to the internet has a voice. Everyone should have their say, free speech and all that, and most people do but with instant posting on social networking sites it is all too easy to make a throwaway comment or create something that can create an enormous amount of controversy.
An example of this is the song ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black. You know, the YouTube sensation? I hadn’t heard it but from the comments I had read about it I half expected some sort of song about something hugely offensive with an accompanying horrific video. Some people were praising it, which is nice, but there were a large amount of people who tore into her – one allegedly suggesting she should harm herself and die! To be honest, I was almost afraid to view the video as my expectations were terrifying. I really have no idea why the video produced so much vitriol, to me it just seemed like a pop video by a young girl singing about how she was looking forward to the weekend and that she was waiting for the bus. I thought I had viewed the wrong video. In my humble opinion dear reader, it wasn’t the greatest song or video I have ever heard or seen but it was certainly catchy. I can’t imagine feeling so irate by the song that I would email or tweet the singer to express such bitterness towards her. People put allsorts of stuff up on You Tube, surely that’s the point of it – to express yourself to the world. Obviously not everyone is going to agree with the opinions expressed by everyone but to personally attack a girl for wanting to be in a pop video and show the world seems a tad harsh. What gives someone the right to publicly insult a young girl for doing something she wanted to do that seemed fairly harmless. Did I miss something? Did she do something heinous?
But then again, everyone has an opinion and should be able to express it so perhaps it was just people expressing their opinion – there’s probably no need to be overtly cruel though.
One set of complaints that actually surprised me recently was the flurry of complaints over Fiona Bruce reading the news with a pair of glasses on. As a fellow bespectacled girlie I know how sucky it is when you want to wear your contact lenses but have an eye infection so you have to wear glasses, but for people to say that she shouldn’t have been reading the news in her glasses seems so ludicrous! (In my opinion). Admittedly I noticed she was wearing glasses and thought ‘Hmm, does she usually wear glasses?’ but I sort of ignored that and got on with the business of watching the news. Apparently there was a bout of comments on Twitter saying she looked “awful”, criticising her appearance and some saying she should have stayed at home if she was ill. I mean, what do you think about that? So it’s openly ok to criticise someone’s appearance publicly but if that were to go on in other places would it be classed as ‘bullying’?
The thing is, there’s often no happy medium, if you express yourself you risk ridicule but if things are censored or cut out then there is uproar! Our rights are being violated by not allowing us to see something! It’s political correctness gone mad people shout. So what is the solution? There is always someone who is going to take offence at something and perhaps it’s up to us to sit down, consider our complaint, think of the consequences of venting our spleen and if we still feel it is a valid complaint, go ahead and let rip.
As for me, frankly if something on TV offends me I tend to switch it over and watch something else, I’ve got enough to worry about mentally without getting worked up over something that either doesn’t interest me or in the grand scheme of things isn’t that important. If I do find something massively offensive, trust me, I will write a letter, write an email and make my voice heard but until that time comes I will continue my viewing pleasure and I undoubtedly will be caused to utter my well worn phrase ‘There’ll be letters’ :)
Monday 25 July 2011
A First Time for Everything
Recently I spent a little time in hospital and, in a room with about four other women all of whom seemed to be making some sort of noise, unsurprisingly I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t slept well since I was about 14 so in order to try and get any sleep at all I did something that I have been doing to induce sleep for around 20 years – I attempted to recall lists of things. Over the years this has involved attempting to remember the names of everyone I have ever known, the entire cast of Eastenders (with their real life names for bonus points), the name of every book I have ever read etc. This largely works, however there was that tricky night where I ended up texting a friend of mine at around 3am asking him the name of a woman from The Bill whose name positively escaped me and was actually preventing me from sleeping.
Anyway, my usual tricks weren’t working so I attempted to relax while thinking of the first times in my life – the first memory I remember having, my first boyfriend, my first day at school etc – these memories actually surprised me as there were many times I remembered in vivid details when ordinarily if someone asked me if I remember my first alcoholic drink or something similar I would say yes but never really analyse the memory.
The first memory I have is being chased around the play dough table with Janine Robinson by Mark Smith in the nursery. Admittedly this is an odd first memory really – I don’t actually remember starting nursery but I do remember throwing back my head and laughing uproariously as Mark shouted ‘RRRAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!’ as he chased Janine and me around and around the small circular table. I remember the play dough, the smell of it and the look of the table and as I run it in my head I can almost be back there – around 3 and a half years old, without a care in the world.
I remembered the first birthday I could remember with any real clarity. I was 8, I remember the huge card I got that unfolded to reveal a huge number 8. We went to a car boot sale and, as I have always had an attraction to shiny things, I managed to convince my dad to buy me a pair of rainbow coloured earrings from a stall. My Mum, Dad, sister and me went to Redcar and I remember my Dad singing along to ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon (I’m not old enough to remember it from first release being that it was 16 years before my birth, my dad liked old music). I remember staring at those beautiful earrings, glistening different colours in the sunlight. I remember my dad taking us into a cafe and telling me I could have anything from the menu, ice cream, knickerbocker glory, sundae etc but I said that what I really wanted was a glass of milk!
I remember my first kiss. I was around 14 and I was with my first boyfriend. I was teasing him by saying I had written about him in my diary and I was holding the diary pressed against my chest, smiling and telling him that he wasn’t going to get to read what I had written. I remember his blue eyes sparkling and he leaned forward as if to retrieve the diary from me but instead he kissed me. The funny thing is that I remember thinking at the time ‘Oh! My first kiss! This is amazing! I’m having my first kiss!’ while in the meantime I was probably sitting motionlessly with my eyes wide open and my mouth not moving a great deal and once I realised that I was doing this I started to think ‘Oh smooth, now he’ll think you’re a bad kisser!’ while not realising that this was probably causing me to be more motionless. My boyfriend didn’t seem to mind and we went out for around 5 months after that so I can’t have been that bad a kisser :)
I think that the first time you do most things falls into a series of categories - either it doesn’t matter, is terrifying or exciting...or a combination of the latter two. The first time for things can be life changing. For example, the first time I rather foolishly smoked a cigarette led to a 10 year smoking addiction, that was pretty life changing and trying to reverse it and wean myself from that addiction was life changing too. Strange that I remember my first cigarette but I don’t remember my last cigarette around four years ago.
I remember the first concert I ever went to, it was Neil Finn at the auditorium in Glasgow. I remember how beautiful his voice was; flowing over the audience like smooth warm chocolate and tears flowed down my cheeks, not because I was sad but because I was happy. I felt alive, the first time I had sat in the same room as a man whose music I had admired for so long. I was in my twenties and I had never been to a concert before so my boyfriend at the time arranged the tickets and it was a wonderful night.
I was a picky eater as a child and I think I drove my mum to distraction by not wanting to eat anything expect potatoes, she even had to tell me that a piece of cheese was ‘orange chocolate’ once in order to get me to eat it! I remember going to a friends house and having my first meal with another family – I’m actually ashamed to admit it but I think I probably just sat there looking at the strange-to-me food such as lamb, carrots etc while hot wet tears dripped down my face; scared to eat the food as I had never really lived to eat, only ate to live and wouldn’t try anything new. I remember my boyfriends mum convincing me to try a little chicken kiev when i was around 18 and finding that it was the most wonderfully sumptuous thing I had ever tasted and that I shouldn’t really be frightened of trying new foods.
My first day at university was a prominent memory too. I was living away from home for the first time, not only from home but far from home – well 150 miles or so but it felt like a long way for a small town girl who hadn’t really left her hometown much. I had to go into a huge hall to matriculate and while waiting in the queue I got talking to a man who would become a part of my life to this day. He told me his name but on seeing his matriculation form his first name was different. I was upset as I thought he had given me a false name just to get rid of me but it merely turned out to be a misunderstanding and that he preferred to be known by his middle name. I think I actually accused him of giving a false name before he laughed and explained – he probably thought I was nuts.
As I explained before, I came from a small town and I had never been to Scotland before coming to university in Edinburgh so my boyfriend at the time agreed to drive me up to Scotland beforehand to show me how beautiful it was. Now, you have to understand that I was a naive young girl who only had experience of Scotland from TV shows (Supergran springs to mind), Billy Connelly and the cartoon ‘The Family Ness’. Also, it didn’t help that people had told me that haggis were real animals and that highland cows didn’t exist but were other cows dressed up for the tourists. As you can imagine, my expectations of Scotland such as everyone wearing kilts, bagpipe players on every corner, haggis running around hills with two legs shorter than the others etc were somewhat different to reality. Ignorance I know but I moved up to Scotland 15 years ago and I love it – even if I do sometimes think it would be nice to see more men in kilts :)
I remember my first ride on a steam train. I was about 18 and my boyfriend at the time, whom I had only been seeing for a few days, drove me far into the North Yorkshire moors without telling me exactly where we were going. To be honest I was pretty scared, despite him constantly reassuring me it was a surprise and everything was ok I still considered making a run for it when he stopped the car! We walked down to a small railway station where a steam train was waiting. We travelled from Grosmont to Pickering and it was exhilarating – hearing the actual ‘choo choo’ of the train as the wheels clacked along the track, steam billowing from the chimney as we moved along at a leisurely pace. I put my head out of the window to get a better look and was in awe – it was amazing! It would have been more amazing had I not pulled my head back inside the old fashioned carriage only to find that my face was covered in soot and dirt causing my boyfriend to howl with laughter!
I remember my first taste of champagne, having never had it before and discussing this with a good friend of mine many years ago he gave me a bottle of champagne and told me to enjoy it as I should enjoy the finer things in life. I was so touched, the bubbly liquid tickled my nose as I drank it in special champagne flutes I bought for that very occasion and I raised my glass to him that New Years Eve for giving me a taste of the good life.
Many years ago a friend of mine saw that there was to be a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Edinburgh at the Usher Hall and as it was my favourite he asked me if I would like to go. It was a chance to dress up, I’ve always been a little tomboyish and I very rarely get dressed up – mainly due to looking like ‘a bag of rags’ in no matter what I wear. I had lost a lot of weight and was about a size 8 at the time, I bought a beautiful floaty deep purple dress and a new pair of shoes. I pinned up my hair and for the first time, probably ever, I actually looked ladylike! I remember leaving work and making my way to the pub to meet my friend beforehand, I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, hoping I oozed sophistication. I suspect in real life I looked a complete fright but I prefer to think I looked ok :) My friend was dressed in a suit and looked very smart, we made our way grandly to the Usher Hall. I clattered up the smooth steps to the hall in my flowing gown, holding the arm of my friend. The music was wonderful, so beautiful and again I think I probably shed tears due to simply feeling so emotional. At the end of the night I flopped onto my bed at home, sighing happily that for one night I actually looked like a lady.
Some firsts in life are just incredible. I remember trying on exactly two wedding dresses before finding that the third was the most perfect dress I had ever seen and it was even in my size – it was pretty much exactly the same design I was looking for, it even had sleeves with tiny glass buttons. I remember the first kiss as a married couple and the first time I signed my name using my married name – yep, you guessed it, I accidently signed it with my maiden name – d’oh!
I also got to thinking about some things that I haven’t done such as go to a festival, see Egypt, watch ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, become a published writer etc. Even though I wasn’t critically ill or anything, just very poorly, it seemed that during my hospital stay my life truly passed before my eyes...
...Or it could have just been the medication they gave me that made me remember all this stuff :)
Anyway, my usual tricks weren’t working so I attempted to relax while thinking of the first times in my life – the first memory I remember having, my first boyfriend, my first day at school etc – these memories actually surprised me as there were many times I remembered in vivid details when ordinarily if someone asked me if I remember my first alcoholic drink or something similar I would say yes but never really analyse the memory.
The first memory I have is being chased around the play dough table with Janine Robinson by Mark Smith in the nursery. Admittedly this is an odd first memory really – I don’t actually remember starting nursery but I do remember throwing back my head and laughing uproariously as Mark shouted ‘RRRAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!’ as he chased Janine and me around and around the small circular table. I remember the play dough, the smell of it and the look of the table and as I run it in my head I can almost be back there – around 3 and a half years old, without a care in the world.
I remembered the first birthday I could remember with any real clarity. I was 8, I remember the huge card I got that unfolded to reveal a huge number 8. We went to a car boot sale and, as I have always had an attraction to shiny things, I managed to convince my dad to buy me a pair of rainbow coloured earrings from a stall. My Mum, Dad, sister and me went to Redcar and I remember my Dad singing along to ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon (I’m not old enough to remember it from first release being that it was 16 years before my birth, my dad liked old music). I remember staring at those beautiful earrings, glistening different colours in the sunlight. I remember my dad taking us into a cafe and telling me I could have anything from the menu, ice cream, knickerbocker glory, sundae etc but I said that what I really wanted was a glass of milk!
I remember my first kiss. I was around 14 and I was with my first boyfriend. I was teasing him by saying I had written about him in my diary and I was holding the diary pressed against my chest, smiling and telling him that he wasn’t going to get to read what I had written. I remember his blue eyes sparkling and he leaned forward as if to retrieve the diary from me but instead he kissed me. The funny thing is that I remember thinking at the time ‘Oh! My first kiss! This is amazing! I’m having my first kiss!’ while in the meantime I was probably sitting motionlessly with my eyes wide open and my mouth not moving a great deal and once I realised that I was doing this I started to think ‘Oh smooth, now he’ll think you’re a bad kisser!’ while not realising that this was probably causing me to be more motionless. My boyfriend didn’t seem to mind and we went out for around 5 months after that so I can’t have been that bad a kisser :)
I think that the first time you do most things falls into a series of categories - either it doesn’t matter, is terrifying or exciting...or a combination of the latter two. The first time for things can be life changing. For example, the first time I rather foolishly smoked a cigarette led to a 10 year smoking addiction, that was pretty life changing and trying to reverse it and wean myself from that addiction was life changing too. Strange that I remember my first cigarette but I don’t remember my last cigarette around four years ago.
I remember the first concert I ever went to, it was Neil Finn at the auditorium in Glasgow. I remember how beautiful his voice was; flowing over the audience like smooth warm chocolate and tears flowed down my cheeks, not because I was sad but because I was happy. I felt alive, the first time I had sat in the same room as a man whose music I had admired for so long. I was in my twenties and I had never been to a concert before so my boyfriend at the time arranged the tickets and it was a wonderful night.
I was a picky eater as a child and I think I drove my mum to distraction by not wanting to eat anything expect potatoes, she even had to tell me that a piece of cheese was ‘orange chocolate’ once in order to get me to eat it! I remember going to a friends house and having my first meal with another family – I’m actually ashamed to admit it but I think I probably just sat there looking at the strange-to-me food such as lamb, carrots etc while hot wet tears dripped down my face; scared to eat the food as I had never really lived to eat, only ate to live and wouldn’t try anything new. I remember my boyfriends mum convincing me to try a little chicken kiev when i was around 18 and finding that it was the most wonderfully sumptuous thing I had ever tasted and that I shouldn’t really be frightened of trying new foods.
My first day at university was a prominent memory too. I was living away from home for the first time, not only from home but far from home – well 150 miles or so but it felt like a long way for a small town girl who hadn’t really left her hometown much. I had to go into a huge hall to matriculate and while waiting in the queue I got talking to a man who would become a part of my life to this day. He told me his name but on seeing his matriculation form his first name was different. I was upset as I thought he had given me a false name just to get rid of me but it merely turned out to be a misunderstanding and that he preferred to be known by his middle name. I think I actually accused him of giving a false name before he laughed and explained – he probably thought I was nuts.
As I explained before, I came from a small town and I had never been to Scotland before coming to university in Edinburgh so my boyfriend at the time agreed to drive me up to Scotland beforehand to show me how beautiful it was. Now, you have to understand that I was a naive young girl who only had experience of Scotland from TV shows (Supergran springs to mind), Billy Connelly and the cartoon ‘The Family Ness’. Also, it didn’t help that people had told me that haggis were real animals and that highland cows didn’t exist but were other cows dressed up for the tourists. As you can imagine, my expectations of Scotland such as everyone wearing kilts, bagpipe players on every corner, haggis running around hills with two legs shorter than the others etc were somewhat different to reality. Ignorance I know but I moved up to Scotland 15 years ago and I love it – even if I do sometimes think it would be nice to see more men in kilts :)
I remember my first ride on a steam train. I was about 18 and my boyfriend at the time, whom I had only been seeing for a few days, drove me far into the North Yorkshire moors without telling me exactly where we were going. To be honest I was pretty scared, despite him constantly reassuring me it was a surprise and everything was ok I still considered making a run for it when he stopped the car! We walked down to a small railway station where a steam train was waiting. We travelled from Grosmont to Pickering and it was exhilarating – hearing the actual ‘choo choo’ of the train as the wheels clacked along the track, steam billowing from the chimney as we moved along at a leisurely pace. I put my head out of the window to get a better look and was in awe – it was amazing! It would have been more amazing had I not pulled my head back inside the old fashioned carriage only to find that my face was covered in soot and dirt causing my boyfriend to howl with laughter!
I remember my first taste of champagne, having never had it before and discussing this with a good friend of mine many years ago he gave me a bottle of champagne and told me to enjoy it as I should enjoy the finer things in life. I was so touched, the bubbly liquid tickled my nose as I drank it in special champagne flutes I bought for that very occasion and I raised my glass to him that New Years Eve for giving me a taste of the good life.
Many years ago a friend of mine saw that there was to be a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Edinburgh at the Usher Hall and as it was my favourite he asked me if I would like to go. It was a chance to dress up, I’ve always been a little tomboyish and I very rarely get dressed up – mainly due to looking like ‘a bag of rags’ in no matter what I wear. I had lost a lot of weight and was about a size 8 at the time, I bought a beautiful floaty deep purple dress and a new pair of shoes. I pinned up my hair and for the first time, probably ever, I actually looked ladylike! I remember leaving work and making my way to the pub to meet my friend beforehand, I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, hoping I oozed sophistication. I suspect in real life I looked a complete fright but I prefer to think I looked ok :) My friend was dressed in a suit and looked very smart, we made our way grandly to the Usher Hall. I clattered up the smooth steps to the hall in my flowing gown, holding the arm of my friend. The music was wonderful, so beautiful and again I think I probably shed tears due to simply feeling so emotional. At the end of the night I flopped onto my bed at home, sighing happily that for one night I actually looked like a lady.
Some firsts in life are just incredible. I remember trying on exactly two wedding dresses before finding that the third was the most perfect dress I had ever seen and it was even in my size – it was pretty much exactly the same design I was looking for, it even had sleeves with tiny glass buttons. I remember the first kiss as a married couple and the first time I signed my name using my married name – yep, you guessed it, I accidently signed it with my maiden name – d’oh!
I also got to thinking about some things that I haven’t done such as go to a festival, see Egypt, watch ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, become a published writer etc. Even though I wasn’t critically ill or anything, just very poorly, it seemed that during my hospital stay my life truly passed before my eyes...
...Or it could have just been the medication they gave me that made me remember all this stuff :)
Friday 15 July 2011
The Female Sex...and the City
I have started watching ‘Sex and the City’ recently…I know, I’m about ten years later than everyone else. The thing is, I have been ill recently and at the moment I can’t leave home alone as I am so dizzy that I fall over. Due to my inability to go out alone, I have been pursuing my favourite pastime – watching TV – and I seem to have gotten hooked on the dazzling lifestyle and tales of the glamorous women in ‘Sex and the City’. The thing that stopped me from watching it before was that every time I switched it on, Kim Catrall was invariably in some state of undress and I got bored and annoyed with that pretty quickly so I didn’t feel like watching it. However, as Comedy Central has started showing it during the day, the need to remove large amounts of the sex has been necessary and this actually has encouraged me to watch it.
I’ve been watching two half hour episodes about three times a week, lapping up the luxurious yet troubled loves of the four female leads. I have cried over the Carrie and Big situation, laughed at Samantha’s sexual exploits (the ones they can show at that time of day), aahhhed at Charlotte’s sweetness and felt sorry for Miranda and her success driving men away. In watching this I have seen their many dalliances with the opposite sex but the thing that is largely forgotten is – how do you go about finding a close female friend?
I’ve known lots of women in my life and been friends with many of them but I’ve never reached that level of friendship with a woman where we trust each other implicitly and can share everything. For years I blamed this on not being a girly girl, but I am deep down.
I’m a woman, I like the same things as many women but I’ve never been able to successfully hold down a deep and meaningful friendship with a woman. So, whereas the ladies in ‘Sex and the City’ are seeking perfect relationships with men, I desperately crave a successful friendship with a woman. I have a successful relationship with a man – my husband – we love each other, we don’t play pointless games with each other, we say what we mean, we communicate well and trust each other completely. I can honestly say that I have found a great man. Yet still, my search to find a woman who likes me and with whom I can have a close friendship eludes me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with lots of women and there are many women that I care about a great deal but I can never seem to build up the level of closeness that other people have with their friends. When I see my female friends in photos in a bar or somewhere on holiday, looking so happy and having a great time – I wonder why I can’t do the same.
Whenever I go out with a group of women we dance and have fun but I invariably feel that I am less liked or not as fun as the other women and this makes me feel inferior and useless and I end up feeling depressed. I find it so hard to make women like me and to get on well with women.
I never seem to have had the same problem with men. I’ve managed to forge good and close friendships with men throughout my life and my closest friends are men – this has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Over the years friendships with men have often culminated in relationships and thankfully I have stayed friends with the majority of my exes but it is sometimes difficult to be friends with men without things getting complicated. A friend of mine once told me that it is difficult for a man and woman to be friends, particularly when the woman has feelings for the man. His reasoning was that if a man and woman are friends and the man has feelings for the woman but the woman does not reciprocate, the man is likely to just stay friends without trying anything once he knows. Apparently if a man and woman are friends and the woman has feelings for the man, even if the man doesn’t reciprocate the feelings he is still likely to go for it while the opportunity is there. I’m not sure if this is always the case but it does seem to have occurred in my life at least once.
I have a few male friends with whom I have shared friendship without any sexual overtones and these are the friendships that have lasted and been some of the most trusting. I find it difficult to trust people in general and there are few people I trust wholly.
As with the girls in ‘Sex and the City’ sometimes you want to have a frank conversation with someone about how something made you feel – a sexual experience, a passionate moment and obviously it is great to have a woman to share those thoughts with. When you don’t have a close female friend this is a bit of pain as if you talk about these things to your male friends they often don’t want to hear details like that, or if they do you worry they might get the wrong idea. It is also not always enormously appropriate to talk about past experiences with your current partner so where do you turn?
When I was a kid, so disliked by girls was I that a group of them followed me home once spitting all over the back of my coat as I walked. My mam was disgusted by the sight of my spit covered coat on my return home and desperately tried to find out who did it. Whenever I became friends with women I seemed to get picked on and as I was a very sensitive child this upset me greatly. In my adult life, so disliked was I by the girls in a hair salon that I worked, one of the girls locked me on the roof and shut the fire escape door so I couldn’t get back in. Men don’t seem to have ever picked on me the way women have. I'm not tarring all women with the same brush, perhaps I've just been too scared to get to know women better due to worrying they might hurt me.
Back in my youth I had a boyfriend, who will remain nameless to spare their privacy, whom I cared about a great deal. After going out for a period of time he told me it was over – I was devastated, overly dramatic about it in hindsight but devastated nonetheless. Anyway, I had a close friend whom I called to discuss it with and she was very comforting. A few days later I phoned her again and she said she had seen my ex. I laughed and said ‘He didn’t ask you out did he?’ the line went silent. The silence was deafening and ominous and in a squeaky voice I said ‘Did he?’. She sighed and admitted that he had asked her out and that she had said yes. I remember slamming the phone down at some point and I remember how I felt. To be fair, she used to go out with him before me and they had always been close but it felt at the time like a major betrayal. Now this happened twenty years ago and when it really comes down to it, it was all part of life’s rich tapestry and if I hadn’t gone through that and everything else subsequent to this then my life may have been very different and so I am glad I went through it but at the time it really hurt.
The problem is that I have never been able to get the worry out of my head that if I am good friends with a woman that my partner may fall for them or vice versa and perhaps I have been pushing women away as friends because of this fear. As you all know, I have a ridiculously high level of perceived fear daily and perhaps I have shunned the idea of having a women as a friend due to a fear blown out of all proportion.
This is likely as when I was a kid, the people I shared most of my time and friendship with was my lovely cousins – Sam, Kim and Kendra – and my lovely sister – Shell - and we all got on great, all girls together. We didn't have boyfriends then so the worries were not an issue for me. Even then though I never really felt I was good enough due to my own self esteem issues and I so desperately wanted everyone to like me. Desperation is never a good thing and has led me to sabotaging more than one friendship with my desire to be liked. It can come across as a tad clingy.
At primary school I had a wonderful female friend with whom I spent a lot of time, I felt she really understood me and I adored her. To this day I still feel very fondly towards her and probably always will. The problem was that when we got to secondary school we were sometimes in different classes and didn’t get to see each other as much. She made friends easily while I struggled and I became so jealous of her other friends that I must have seemed positively possessive which does not come across well and is more likely to force the person away from you more than anything else. I’d never felt anything like that before, especially at the tender age of 12 and it affected me greatly. I was confused and miserable that I couldn’t make friends as easily and felt like I didn’t truly belong anywhere. I think most teenagers feel like this at some point but I just felt bereft. I made friends eventually but it was hard. Then my parents divorced and I lived with my Dad.
I found it easier to be friends with men, to a certain extent men didn’t care what I looked like or what I said and it was fun to be as lewd as possible without other women calling me a ‘slapper’.
As I got older I started wondering if my awkwardness of being friends with women was due to me maybe being attracted to women. I liked the look of women’s bottoms as they walked down the street and a few lesbians had made overtures towards me and I wondered if this was my big realization. Was I finding it difficult to talk to women as I was attracted to them? I’ve thought about it many times over the years and there are a lot of really beautiful women out there but being with a woman just isn’t something that I’m attracted to. To be honest I’ve always wanted to kiss another woman, mainly just to see what it feels like, but I am more attracted to men than women and regardless of a small amount of curiosity it appears that I am completely heterosexual. On one occasion I was in a bar on the dancefloor and a pretty looking woman danced next to me, closer and closer and she was smiling at me in a way that invited me closer. Over her shoulder I could see my friends Jamie and Caitriona urging me on, knowing as they did my now legendary desire to kiss a woman to see what it felt like but I completely bottled out and within minutes the woman was lip locked with another woman! There goes my first and last opportunity to kiss a woman.
The problem definitely lies with me as, whenever I am with a woman anywhere – be it a bar, at work, a café etc – I just feel that they are better than me, more of a woman, smarter, prettier, more intelligent and I just end up feeling bad about myself no matter what they say to make me feel better.
Or it could be, as a friend said to me recently, maybe I just haven’t met the right woman yet? Or maybe I am just self sabotaging my female friendships out of fear?
Regardless of the reason, I hope my female friends will understand when I say that I want close friendships with women, but is anyone willing to put up with me to get there?
I’ve been watching two half hour episodes about three times a week, lapping up the luxurious yet troubled loves of the four female leads. I have cried over the Carrie and Big situation, laughed at Samantha’s sexual exploits (the ones they can show at that time of day), aahhhed at Charlotte’s sweetness and felt sorry for Miranda and her success driving men away. In watching this I have seen their many dalliances with the opposite sex but the thing that is largely forgotten is – how do you go about finding a close female friend?
I’ve known lots of women in my life and been friends with many of them but I’ve never reached that level of friendship with a woman where we trust each other implicitly and can share everything. For years I blamed this on not being a girly girl, but I am deep down.
I’m a woman, I like the same things as many women but I’ve never been able to successfully hold down a deep and meaningful friendship with a woman. So, whereas the ladies in ‘Sex and the City’ are seeking perfect relationships with men, I desperately crave a successful friendship with a woman. I have a successful relationship with a man – my husband – we love each other, we don’t play pointless games with each other, we say what we mean, we communicate well and trust each other completely. I can honestly say that I have found a great man. Yet still, my search to find a woman who likes me and with whom I can have a close friendship eludes me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with lots of women and there are many women that I care about a great deal but I can never seem to build up the level of closeness that other people have with their friends. When I see my female friends in photos in a bar or somewhere on holiday, looking so happy and having a great time – I wonder why I can’t do the same.
Whenever I go out with a group of women we dance and have fun but I invariably feel that I am less liked or not as fun as the other women and this makes me feel inferior and useless and I end up feeling depressed. I find it so hard to make women like me and to get on well with women.
I never seem to have had the same problem with men. I’ve managed to forge good and close friendships with men throughout my life and my closest friends are men – this has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Over the years friendships with men have often culminated in relationships and thankfully I have stayed friends with the majority of my exes but it is sometimes difficult to be friends with men without things getting complicated. A friend of mine once told me that it is difficult for a man and woman to be friends, particularly when the woman has feelings for the man. His reasoning was that if a man and woman are friends and the man has feelings for the woman but the woman does not reciprocate, the man is likely to just stay friends without trying anything once he knows. Apparently if a man and woman are friends and the woman has feelings for the man, even if the man doesn’t reciprocate the feelings he is still likely to go for it while the opportunity is there. I’m not sure if this is always the case but it does seem to have occurred in my life at least once.
I have a few male friends with whom I have shared friendship without any sexual overtones and these are the friendships that have lasted and been some of the most trusting. I find it difficult to trust people in general and there are few people I trust wholly.
As with the girls in ‘Sex and the City’ sometimes you want to have a frank conversation with someone about how something made you feel – a sexual experience, a passionate moment and obviously it is great to have a woman to share those thoughts with. When you don’t have a close female friend this is a bit of pain as if you talk about these things to your male friends they often don’t want to hear details like that, or if they do you worry they might get the wrong idea. It is also not always enormously appropriate to talk about past experiences with your current partner so where do you turn?
When I was a kid, so disliked by girls was I that a group of them followed me home once spitting all over the back of my coat as I walked. My mam was disgusted by the sight of my spit covered coat on my return home and desperately tried to find out who did it. Whenever I became friends with women I seemed to get picked on and as I was a very sensitive child this upset me greatly. In my adult life, so disliked was I by the girls in a hair salon that I worked, one of the girls locked me on the roof and shut the fire escape door so I couldn’t get back in. Men don’t seem to have ever picked on me the way women have. I'm not tarring all women with the same brush, perhaps I've just been too scared to get to know women better due to worrying they might hurt me.
Back in my youth I had a boyfriend, who will remain nameless to spare their privacy, whom I cared about a great deal. After going out for a period of time he told me it was over – I was devastated, overly dramatic about it in hindsight but devastated nonetheless. Anyway, I had a close friend whom I called to discuss it with and she was very comforting. A few days later I phoned her again and she said she had seen my ex. I laughed and said ‘He didn’t ask you out did he?’ the line went silent. The silence was deafening and ominous and in a squeaky voice I said ‘Did he?’. She sighed and admitted that he had asked her out and that she had said yes. I remember slamming the phone down at some point and I remember how I felt. To be fair, she used to go out with him before me and they had always been close but it felt at the time like a major betrayal. Now this happened twenty years ago and when it really comes down to it, it was all part of life’s rich tapestry and if I hadn’t gone through that and everything else subsequent to this then my life may have been very different and so I am glad I went through it but at the time it really hurt.
The problem is that I have never been able to get the worry out of my head that if I am good friends with a woman that my partner may fall for them or vice versa and perhaps I have been pushing women away as friends because of this fear. As you all know, I have a ridiculously high level of perceived fear daily and perhaps I have shunned the idea of having a women as a friend due to a fear blown out of all proportion.
This is likely as when I was a kid, the people I shared most of my time and friendship with was my lovely cousins – Sam, Kim and Kendra – and my lovely sister – Shell - and we all got on great, all girls together. We didn't have boyfriends then so the worries were not an issue for me. Even then though I never really felt I was good enough due to my own self esteem issues and I so desperately wanted everyone to like me. Desperation is never a good thing and has led me to sabotaging more than one friendship with my desire to be liked. It can come across as a tad clingy.
At primary school I had a wonderful female friend with whom I spent a lot of time, I felt she really understood me and I adored her. To this day I still feel very fondly towards her and probably always will. The problem was that when we got to secondary school we were sometimes in different classes and didn’t get to see each other as much. She made friends easily while I struggled and I became so jealous of her other friends that I must have seemed positively possessive which does not come across well and is more likely to force the person away from you more than anything else. I’d never felt anything like that before, especially at the tender age of 12 and it affected me greatly. I was confused and miserable that I couldn’t make friends as easily and felt like I didn’t truly belong anywhere. I think most teenagers feel like this at some point but I just felt bereft. I made friends eventually but it was hard. Then my parents divorced and I lived with my Dad.
I found it easier to be friends with men, to a certain extent men didn’t care what I looked like or what I said and it was fun to be as lewd as possible without other women calling me a ‘slapper’.
As I got older I started wondering if my awkwardness of being friends with women was due to me maybe being attracted to women. I liked the look of women’s bottoms as they walked down the street and a few lesbians had made overtures towards me and I wondered if this was my big realization. Was I finding it difficult to talk to women as I was attracted to them? I’ve thought about it many times over the years and there are a lot of really beautiful women out there but being with a woman just isn’t something that I’m attracted to. To be honest I’ve always wanted to kiss another woman, mainly just to see what it feels like, but I am more attracted to men than women and regardless of a small amount of curiosity it appears that I am completely heterosexual. On one occasion I was in a bar on the dancefloor and a pretty looking woman danced next to me, closer and closer and she was smiling at me in a way that invited me closer. Over her shoulder I could see my friends Jamie and Caitriona urging me on, knowing as they did my now legendary desire to kiss a woman to see what it felt like but I completely bottled out and within minutes the woman was lip locked with another woman! There goes my first and last opportunity to kiss a woman.
The problem definitely lies with me as, whenever I am with a woman anywhere – be it a bar, at work, a café etc – I just feel that they are better than me, more of a woman, smarter, prettier, more intelligent and I just end up feeling bad about myself no matter what they say to make me feel better.
Or it could be, as a friend said to me recently, maybe I just haven’t met the right woman yet? Or maybe I am just self sabotaging my female friendships out of fear?
Regardless of the reason, I hope my female friends will understand when I say that I want close friendships with women, but is anyone willing to put up with me to get there?
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