matt smith and a baby
I just remember thinking how disappointing other girls were, when I was a child. Not just girls: the boys, too, were a bunch of unimaginative cowards, but it was the girls I was more disappointed in because my mother had raised me on this diet of dialectics about the GREATNESS OF WOMEN and how WE CAN DO IT and all that jazz. I used to have a red t-shirt with the names of oodles of great women printed on it in white, back in the 80s, and my mother used to tell me that my name would be on there too. No pressure or anything, with your nebulous proclamations of future greatness there, mother.
But I was also raised on an unending stream of adventure stories and my peers steadfastly refused to live up to my mad expectations. If I'd known the words I'd have howled for fuck's sake at them in eye-rolling impatience as they decided on another round of House and Mummies and Daddies. The boys were no better, and besides, they wouldn't let me play because I was a girl and weird and didn't wear shoes and was therefore A Gyppo (incidentally in the opening of Caitlin Moran's book there is a scene where she is at 13 chased by boys calling her that; it is the first evidence I have ever had of someone other than me receiving that particular insult, and it's oddly warming to know that someone as cool as Caitlin Moran remembers being called "Gyppo" and having rocks chucked at her).
And ugh, the girls, what were they doing? They wouldn't explore shit with me, they wouldn't climb things, they wouldn't do bloody anything. The majority of them chickened out of the otherwise very successful War of the Sexes I, uh, orchestrated (on day two it was brought to a halt by the teachers, who were a little concerned about small squads of 7-year-olds ambushing each other and hurling our struggling prey into the stinging nettles at the top of the field, despite the explanation that as two evenly-matched forces we were fighting a WAR not engaging in anything so silly and petty as PLAYING).
Oh the point of this post is the rather whiny reminder that, with one or two exceptions who became Real Friends at various points, people never really stopped disappointing me. No imagination, in love with obedience, and increasingly these days Just Too Tired. I know I harp on about it but there is still that ugly weird badly-dressed kid inside the ugly weird badly-dressed adult and we still want to go on Adventures, both of us. Not the kind where you climb a mountain and build a monastery and Find Yourself, on account of how unfortunately I am not lost, I know exactly who and what I am, and I just want to do things. Stupid things and exciting things with stories hidden in them, wonderful things. Not for the sake of some mythical future audience but for me and my own fucking amusement.
But I'm not going to, because I am old and tired, and I can feel everything passing me by like cars that are faster and better-equipped. Like a cyclist who finds herself accidentally on the motorway. I can't keep up, I don't know where anyone else is going, and I don't want to end up stuck in the crap at the back, the traffic jam where all the idiots went to die with their fading dreams and their tiny ideas.
I was looking forward to writing the next book until recently. I think it properly got to me that no one is going to want to read it, and that if they do read it they're not going to say anything. What's the use in going full circle, back to trying to wave crayoned pictures of trees and weasels at my dear mother to get her attention, knowing full well that she's only going to listen if I politicise something trivial so that she can feel proud of her prodigiously Right On offspring. Back on the internet, where I can have a bit of a shouty feminist strop and get a nodding dog wave of agreement (and some embittered biters-back) but hold up a finger painting and it's back to a sterling view of the back of her head.
Amazing how little time changes. I knew who I Was then, I know who I am now. I knew what I wanted then, and now I apparently have to have some bigger Thing I Want when really most of what I want hasn't changed, just the means of expression. I still just want someone to tell me I did a thing and did it well, whether it's drawing a bloody cartoon fox in a raincoat or giving them an orgasm, rather than turning invisible the second you no longer feed a personal agenda.
poetrys
Trenchcoat
Crossed Wires
But I was also raised on an unending stream of adventure stories and my peers steadfastly refused to live up to my mad expectations. If I'd known the words I'd have howled for fuck's sake at them in eye-rolling impatience as they decided on another round of House and Mummies and Daddies. The boys were no better, and besides, they wouldn't let me play because I was a girl and weird and didn't wear shoes and was therefore A Gyppo (incidentally in the opening of Caitlin Moran's book there is a scene where she is at 13 chased by boys calling her that; it is the first evidence I have ever had of someone other than me receiving that particular insult, and it's oddly warming to know that someone as cool as Caitlin Moran remembers being called "Gyppo" and having rocks chucked at her).
And ugh, the girls, what were they doing? They wouldn't explore shit with me, they wouldn't climb things, they wouldn't do bloody anything. The majority of them chickened out of the otherwise very successful War of the Sexes I, uh, orchestrated (on day two it was brought to a halt by the teachers, who were a little concerned about small squads of 7-year-olds ambushing each other and hurling our struggling prey into the stinging nettles at the top of the field, despite the explanation that as two evenly-matched forces we were fighting a WAR not engaging in anything so silly and petty as PLAYING).
Oh the point of this post is the rather whiny reminder that, with one or two exceptions who became Real Friends at various points, people never really stopped disappointing me. No imagination, in love with obedience, and increasingly these days Just Too Tired. I know I harp on about it but there is still that ugly weird badly-dressed kid inside the ugly weird badly-dressed adult and we still want to go on Adventures, both of us. Not the kind where you climb a mountain and build a monastery and Find Yourself, on account of how unfortunately I am not lost, I know exactly who and what I am, and I just want to do things. Stupid things and exciting things with stories hidden in them, wonderful things. Not for the sake of some mythical future audience but for me and my own fucking amusement.
But I'm not going to, because I am old and tired, and I can feel everything passing me by like cars that are faster and better-equipped. Like a cyclist who finds herself accidentally on the motorway. I can't keep up, I don't know where anyone else is going, and I don't want to end up stuck in the crap at the back, the traffic jam where all the idiots went to die with their fading dreams and their tiny ideas.
I was looking forward to writing the next book until recently. I think it properly got to me that no one is going to want to read it, and that if they do read it they're not going to say anything. What's the use in going full circle, back to trying to wave crayoned pictures of trees and weasels at my dear mother to get her attention, knowing full well that she's only going to listen if I politicise something trivial so that she can feel proud of her prodigiously Right On offspring. Back on the internet, where I can have a bit of a shouty feminist strop and get a nodding dog wave of agreement (and some embittered biters-back) but hold up a finger painting and it's back to a sterling view of the back of her head.
Amazing how little time changes. I knew who I Was then, I know who I am now. I knew what I wanted then, and now I apparently have to have some bigger Thing I Want when really most of what I want hasn't changed, just the means of expression. I still just want someone to tell me I did a thing and did it well, whether it's drawing a bloody cartoon fox in a raincoat or giving them an orgasm, rather than turning invisible the second you no longer feed a personal agenda.
poetrys
Trenchcoat
Crossed Wires