Tag Archive for 'grandad'

[lyg10] between euphoria and the afterglow;

Published on November 27, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Don’t laugh. When Tommy Sheridan was a proper, honest-to-God politician he was a good sort, the only one who’d make time for student journalists after parliamentary debates and give them quotes for their assignments. Which they would then fail for giving too much of a socialist slant rather than a balanced viewpoint!

26th March 2004
Expediency demands that my creativity be sucked out of me and ploughed into ever-more-worthy pursuits than this record of my thoughts. While the thrill of speaking to Tommy Sheridan – a real-live-honest-to-God-politician! – in my capacity as a student journalist the other day reminded me of what I am in this for, the reality is hours spent hunched over a laptop. I fruitlessly search the Internet for a gem of worthwhile information, try to pull an argument from thin air and make up cups of coffee so strong I describe them to my flatmate Pam, with a wry smile, as “poisonous”.

That bloody Microsoft paperclip mocks my discomfort at every turn. It occurs to me now that I don’t actually remember ever being discharged from physiotherapy – I can’t just have stopped going, can I? A combination of childhood bad posture, years of heavy backpacks, a life spent latterly almost entirely in front of a computer screen and a hell of a lot of stress has fucked my back up, given me the most incredibly tense neck muscles you could possibly imagine and the delightful aftereffect of hellish migraines every couple of days if I don’t get enough sleep. The thing is, whether it’s what Ian jokingly calls ‘the Edinburgh time difference’ or something else entirely, my body’s notion of what constitutes enough sleep has changed dramaticaly since last year. I remember when I was writing my first dissertation, chatting to friends on other continents until two in the morning and then getting up at eight to catch them before they went to bed and get started on my work before the day was too old. I feel so out of my own personal loop here, and perhaps my exhaustion is a direct result of that displacement.

I don’t know. I’m trying to combat the discomfort by taking regular breaks, talking to my mum on the phone or watching the news lying on the floor and trying to keep my back straight. Fairy lights, believe it or not, are an excellent relaxation tool. Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling until my mind brings itself back into focus. I have scented candles which help too. I was using lavender incense, but I had to leave my bedroom window open for a full day afterwards before it stopped smelling like a brothel in here.

The Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley’s Live at Sin-e is absolute genius, and has been keeping me company during some of those breaks. I turn it up loud enough to drown out Edinburgh: the roadworks, the drunken teenagers spilling out of dirty nightclubs at three o’clock in the morning and the zoo that is Block 123. With the reality of this plane of something resembling but not-quite existence all but melted away, I could almost be there and then in New York with him.

I was back home on Mothers’ Day and we sat and played some old cassette tapes; the songs of people long gone – or long grown from four-year-old me and my two-year-old brother in a tuneless rendition of “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma”. My mother and I both welled up as we heard Grandma and Grandad duetting on an old lovesong through the static of my first-ever tape recorder, the one that ended up in the kitchen when I got the threeCDautochangerfivespeaker monstrosity my sister was relieved to discover I’d be leaving at home.

There’s something sacred about those voices kept for posterity on tape. The people behind them are gone, or changed – one a sweet-scented, curly-haired memory of mini Mars Bars, Lego and little dolls in the bathroom named after the grandchildren. The other is so much older now, but he can still hold a tune – not so long ago on a Sunday visit I asked him to sing for me, and he did.

I think that’s how you know the people you love are never really gone – their afterimages remain, a smile permanently burned on your retina or a song on the tip of your tongue. It’s Ross in the picture on my wardrobe, the one I showed Seymour when he saw me in Edinburgh and he couldn’t get over how young we looked. It’s my grandparents, still in love and harmonising on tape. And it’s Jeff Buckley, and the art that was his legacy to a world he spent so little time in.

And with that – tangential even for me – I’d better get this essay printed out and head up the hill. I have birthday presents to buy today for Very Special People, I do.

i taught myself how to grow old;

Published on November 12, 2007 in a little more personal and travellin'. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

110 of 365

Our bus set off at about ten minutes to eleven. Just as we left Aviemore the driver pulled into a layby, and at first we all wondered what was wrong. “Er… two minute silence,” the driver said awkwardly, and I stared out of the window at the cars streaking by and wondered what was so important that they weren’t doing the same.

Somewhere, somebody was crying.

And when we started moving again I said to Jay how strange it was going to be for the generation after ours, who’ll lack the immediacy of connection that we whose grandparents fought in those wars have with Armistice Day. For my high school history project I turned in a report based on the vivid recollections of my Grandad, who was a flight lieutenant in Madagascar, and his friend who wrote the novels on the bookshelves whose cracked and faded dustjackets I’d always dismissed as something boring and irrelevant. Instead they were war stories, inscribed to a dear friend. It was the most eye-opening and fascinating night of a my young life.

“Actually,” Jay said, “my grandparents didn’t fight either; they were too young.” Then I remembered something my mother said once: about how she was a child of peacetime, born as World War II faded into memory. Vietnam and the conflicts of the 60s seemed so remote in a world without 24-hour television news, and it wasn’t until the Falklands conflict in the year of my birth that the world changed. Our generation and the next might never be free from the shadow of war in a world seemingly perpetually on the edge of meltdown; and that’s why Armistice Day should never pass unrecognised – even once the last of the white-haired veterans have gone.

Other thoughts from the window of a blue-and-yellow Citylink: our driver gets into a fight with a passenger seemingly disgruntled that the bus has shown up early. He’s there though; isn’t that the main thing? I don’t think any of us really understand what’s going on and who am I to judge: it’s not as if, should you miss the bus in one of these rocky little villages there’ll be another one along in a minute. I get a taste of my own anyway on Sunday night: 45 minutes in the freezing cold, my breath crystallising in the air as I wonder if the number 9 is ever going to show and if my dad’s steak pie will still be warm when I get there. And so I take photographs through greasy windows and stare – as my eyes grow too heavy even for the new Douglas Coupland – as we speed through the beautiful wilderness of the Cairngorms and through towns hewn from the rock itself, it would seem, towards the glass and plastic and neon of home.

PS If you were on another planet yesterday and didn’t hear the squeals when I found out: THE MOUNTAIN GOATS ARE COMING TO GLASGOW. And it’s a special Yuletide show, put on by these lovely people, with mulled wine and roast chestnuts and lots of other lovely people on stage. You should come, not least because the last.fm event listing is slowly beginning to collapse under the weight of mine and Alan’s combined hysteria, but only if we like you.

PHOTO: Day 110.

what frenzy has of late posessed the brain…;

Published on February 2, 2006 in a little more personal, mmm... food and music. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

In which reference is made to Lis’ musical nazi tendencies.

LOLA: I’m liking the Mountain Goats but can’t remember if that’s good or worthy of having rocks thrown at my head?
ME: It’s better than good. Twin Human Highway Flares is the greatest lovesong ever written. After Sk8er Boi, obv.
LOLA: See I’ve always preferred I’m With You. I guess I’m just not a hardcore Avril fan like you.

Simon from Cocteau Twins messaged me on MySpace telling me that my taste was wonderful. He obviously never read as far down as McFly in my list of favourite bands.

There’s nothing like reading the Metro in the morning to give you a severe case of blog envy. Parsons the lobster makes much more worthwhile reading than pasted text conversations of no interest to anybody other than myself, or how I would have cried myself to sleep again last night without the chorus of Reconstruction Site; or that boy who’s getting rather good at making me smile.

I miss my Grandad. It’s been one heck of a year, and I can’t get over how many of the little fundamantal things have changed. I suppose time passing is always going to be marked a little more dramatically when there’s a baby getting bigger every day in the picture.

I moan about my worthlessness as a blogger every so often, but even Poynter is getting in on the act today.

There’s a new girl at drama, Natasha. She looks like me without a fringe, a Monsoon account card and a layer of Urban Decay’s finest (speaking of which, I’m quite pleased with myself for finding my absolute favourite discontinued lipgloss for £2.99 on eBay) and she thinks I am hillarious. This is only to be encouraged by passing notes on Hello Kitty paper during alto practice.

Smash Hits folds. End of an era. Although I always preferred Live & Kicking magazine.

Pizza, Irn Bru and Haribo for lunch. The stuff of kings.

The MySpace pervs have switched to female. That’s the second one in as many days. Quite an interesting development. I hold you entirely responsible, Ms Amber ;)

she lives for the written word//and people come second or possibly third;

Published on December 19, 2005 in a little more personal and aff the telly. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

On the face of it, things aren’t too bad right now. I mean I’ve got a decent job, I know who my friends are and, with the right make-up, you can cover up a multitude of wintertime imperfections. Maybe my mood is just waiting until the shitty catalogue of disaster that was 2005 is over with to lift. Two weeks – only three working days – to go.

It’s been too long since I had some grand Plan as a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing with myself next year, but I couldn’t bear it if it was more of the same.

The whole Nana Moon storyline in Eastenders only serves to remind me that this is going to be our first Christmas without my wee Grandad. I miss him.

Listen to me! It’s not all doom and gloom you know – most importantly, my Christmas shopping is nearly all done! I got half of it done in my lunch hour on Friday and most of the rest of it on Friday afternoon. Leaving it all until the last minute really isn’t so bad – when you know roughly what you have to buy you can tackle it like a girl on a mission and save yourself a lot of aimless meandering. I’ve also been trying to keep my application of the usual present-buying rule – one for you, one for me – to the bare minimum.

Now to brave the scary queues at the post office and get these cards sent…

RIP John Spencer.