Jackson Pollock

Having spent a fun few minutes playing with this I have realised that one of the hardest things about this style of art is knowing when to stop. Perhaps that's why he's hailed as a genius whilst I'm merely a paint splattering idiot who inevitably ends up with a rather upsetting mess.

Giving everyone else the finger

On Sunday night, in a fit of pointless pernicketyness, I decided I couldn't bear to look at the unfastened catch on the Boy Wonder's guitar case, so I did it up myself. Instead of moving it to a more accessible position, I went rogue and approached it left handed as it lay propped on a stool, the result being that I have what would have been a blood blister, had I not managed to actually puncture the skin, in the middle of the fingertip on my left middle finger. It's one of those injuries which, whilst hardly likely to be fatal, is a lot more painful than you would expect, largely because I am so used to not having a flap of bruised skin there that I just use that part of my finger willy nilly with nary a thought to the consequences.

Another unfortunate consequence is that in my efforts to avoid further damaging said finger, I am conducting all my daily business (that's not a euphemism - I am technically doing business!) with my middle finger cocked at a jaunty angle, giving the impression that I am flipping the world a rather feeble and half hearted bird, which of course is usually more of a mental state than a physical one. Combined with my icky ring finger on my right hand I vaguely resemble a broken marionette whose finger strings have become entangled, rendering both hands odd looking and marginally more useless than normal.

Most sane or most in denial?

I've noticed that off all the blogs I read, most of the writers have a therapist, or if not an active relationship with one, at least a diagnosis of some kind which suggests that their mental health is a cause for concern occasionally. Partly I suspect that this is due to the fact that many of them live in the US, which does seem to have a more open and honest approach to the treatment of mental health problems unlike the UK where we still have to be convinced that it's not just attention seeking and fecklessness that causes us to falter under the pressure of our increasingly unwieldy expectations. But partly I suspect that there is something about the introspectiveness of assessing the way you think that either appeals to writers or leads those who otherwise would not write to contemplate capturing their thoughts in an attempt to record the processes through which their minds slink when they are left to their own devices.

I am, perhaps shortsightedly, not under the care of a mental health professional and don't feel the need for any more introspection that this blog affords me - an outlet for my thoughts, obsessions and petty annoyances that doesn't really require any outside input or feedback. Occasionally I will attack the Boy Wonder with a topic of frustration and, if he fails to deliver the response I require, I will fill in his part of the conversation as though that in any way provides an endorsement for my rantings. To his credit, he usually goes along with this charade, obligingly parroting back the lines I feed him with an admirably attempted facsimile of outrage, and fortunately this seems to suffice, for the time being, to keep my brain happy.

A Christmas challenge

The unseasonably hot end-of-September weather has seen my thoughts turn inexplicably to Christmas, and I have decided to issue myself a Christmas challenge: to embrace this year's festivities in the hope that I will actually recapture some of the magic that I used to feel as a child in the run up to the big day. That's not to say that I want in any way to take on the rigidly manic approach that my Mum has to the festive season, with an 800 piece Christmas themed dinner service and perfectly coordinated decorations which are displayed around their house in regimented order every year. But perhaps it wouldn't kill me to get out our tiny wooden Christmas tree before the 24th December, maybe even dust off the rest of our minuscule collection of decorations as well and consider doing the festive food shop in a less manic and world-hating way than has become my own personal Christmas tradition. It's a shame that the Boy Wonder and I don't really like any of the traditional festive fare such as mince pies and Christmas pudding which do admittedly make it smell like Christmas, but given that I won't be able to drink anyway, I might concede to the 'wasting' of some red wine by allowing him to mull some wine.

Party Gifts

Having been to the Gift's housewarming party this weekend, and spending the evening as the sole sober person amongst a horde of drunken youth, I have had a truly eye opening experience. Not only is the Gift a lot more ebullient when with this group of friends, but they also have some peculiar proclivities themselves. Rarely have I been encouraged to tie a clock round my neck with a tape measure just to annoy someone, but the very idea produced cheers of encouragement when undertaken with a clock which is surprisingly dear to the Gift's heart, despite the fact that it neither belongs to him, nor actually works.

I was pleased to discover that his most peculiar friend (who spent a good deal of time telling disinterested people about ways in which he claimed to be able to kill them) ended his involvement in the evening when he blew into a scented candle, spattering wax into his own face, and then passed out on the floor in the Gift's bedroom.

Despite not being drunk, I still managed to get involved in a discussion about who would make the ideal combination of porn actors in the unlikely event that the shooting of such a film should break out at the party, and promised to buy one of the attendees a bike for Christmas, thus proving a point made in an earlier post that alcohol isn't necessary for me to behave inappropriately.

I was also privy to this gem of a conversation between the Gift and one of his paler mates about the Boy Wonder and I:

Pat 'You must have seen him topless!'

The Gift 'I told you - they're not those kind of friends.'

All in all, a good time was had by all, and by being sober enough to drive the Boy Wonder and I home at around 3am we were able to avoid the point where Pat pissed in one of the girls' handbags and the sordid carrying ons which took place on the 70's style sofa later that night.

Drunk me vs sober me

Due to the recent requirement for me to give up drinking, I have been spending a lot of time around drunk people whilst sober. This has lead to the surprising discovery (although perhaps only surprising to me) that, apart from the obvious physical effects, I am about the same when drunk as when sober. Although I am aware that I do not enjoy being out of control when drunk and try to avoid getting 'falling over' intoxicated, I kind of assumed that there would be some lessening of my inhibitions when under the influence of alcohol, however it turns out that I was incorrect. I can't quite work out whether I am generally just predisposed to telling inappropriate stories regardless of whether I've been drinking, or whether my dislike of excessive drunkenness (for no more uptight reasons than that I throw up really - I realise it sounds a little like I'm some kind of temperance fanatic) means that I just have a similar approach to sharing no matter how much I've drunk. I can't work out whether that's admirable or stupid, but it's certainly an eye opener.

Me vs the Boy Wonder

Apropos of not a lot, this evening I just happened to ask the Boy Wonder if he would like to be more like me. This was not designed to be a trick question, but the speed and fervour with which he delivered his answer ('no' in case you couldn't guess) and the fact that I wouldn't even hesitate to say that I would like to be more like him made me wonder whether it would be better if we were both more like me or more like him, so I have decided to score us both according to some arbitrarily chosen criteria in the hopes of proving one of us right.

1. Innate gender-specific abilities

The Boy Wonder is blessed with a sort of elemental knowledge about things like cars, guns, planes and other traditional boy stuff, whereas I fail spectacularly on the girl-stuff front. I have only one handbag, didn't know eyeliner existed until I was about 13 and don't even like cake, therefore failing on many scores at being a girl. I do like kittens and puppies, but allergies to both make that a fairly tragic state of affairs involving red eyes and rather too much snot to be anything approaching cute.

2. Social Awkwardness

Whilst I am currently the owner of an unwanted fringe (on which more, perhaps, another time), an odd 'friendship' with the eastern European guy who sells the Big Issue outside our local Budgens and a weird village magazine delivery round due to my inability to extricate myself from awkward situations, the Boy Wonder is admirably able to sail through life without ever seeming to torture himself with the idea that he is secretly offending people who will hate him more and more with every encounter until their seething resentment causes them to break into our house and lick every item in the cutlery drawer.

3. Ability to Deal with Bugs

This is where I triumph, largely due to the Boy Wonder's hilarious and irrational fear of moths. For reasons which may well be due to some deep psychological trauma from which his memory is protecting him, he believes that moths will bite him in the face and transmit some kind of moth based disease from which he will never recover. He is also scared of cockroaches to the extent that he once declared the sighting of four cockroaches to be an 'infestation' and made me run the gauntlet of an unfamiliar side passage in the pitch dark to activate a security light which would send them scuttling back underneath the house we were living in. He claims to be 'fine' with a selection of other creepy crawlies, but rarely passes up an opportunity to get me to deal with them whilst lurking on the periphery of the room offering encouragement and keeping a safe distance. Perhaps the one downside of my awesome abilities when it comes to bugs is the fact that gardening becomes almost impossible when I have to stop and rescue every insect which might be injured during the process.

4.Ability to Exist Without External Stimulation

Sometimes the Boy Wonder will just sit and stare at a wall, thinking about nothing. I, on the other hand, require almost limitless entertainment, finding that just watching television for example is nowhere near enough for me to remain focussed without another task in hand (such as writing this post). This has some benefits in as much as I can get a lot done when I'm on form, but also some negative side effects such as my hatred of showering on the grounds that washing is nowhere near fun enough to make listening to the radio an acceptable alternative form of distraction. I should point out, I still shower once a day, I just put it off and whine about it until I absolutely have to do it, making me sound like I actively want to be a hobo with things living in my hair, whereas I actually quite like being clean but would prefer to achieve that effect whilst reading a good book.

5. Ability to Fill in Forms and Deal with Admin Tasks that Keep Our Household Running

I recently completed the application process for a new credit card, including a secondary one for the Boy Wonder. All he had to do was sign and date a form to confirm that he was aware of this. I took my eye off him for around a second, which was apparently long enough for him to sign in the wrong box and then dither uncertainly as to where to write the date. He once declared the process of buying a house as 'easy' on the grounds that his main contribution to the whole affair was pretending to read the masses of paperwork which came our way, before saying 'it looks fine to me' and writing his name wherever he thought looked most likely.

6. Ability Not to Die in Normally Non-Deadly Situations

The Boy Wonder totally kicks my arse on this one - not only has he rarely even been hospitalised, but his body apparently understands that nuts are a good source of protein and can make a delicious snack. My body on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that nuts are a threat to my wellbeing on such a scale that it's worth killing me to keep their marauding ways at bay. Not only that, but apparently it has now decided that penicillin, a drug specifically designed to treat illness, falls into the same category and warrants a similar sort of nuclear stand-off whereby it races to kill itself before the penicillin can. All this despite the fact that for the last 31 years (up to and including the last 8 weeks) it has recognised the healing properties of said antibiotics and it has only been in the last week that it's taken it's near psychotic stance on the matter.

7. Apoplectic Rage

I can barely go a day without descending into apoplectic rage about one thing or another. Recent examples include: a woman on 'Wanted Down Under' who was considering moving to Australia with her husband of four years and leaving her 14 year old daughter back in England; the book I read by Moon Unit Zappa and the reviews about it on Amazon; the fact that all store bought pesto has nuts that I can't see in it (c.f point 6); misleading use of statistics in contexts that are supposed to be educational.

The Boy Wonder works himself into a rage about things that can really easily be avoided: me saying that I have a tapeworm; people leaving the ends of their guitar strings hanging out of the tuners instead of trimming them neatly; me saying 'oui' like a French trucker when he asks me a question; the fact that our guttering keeps springing leaks and depositing water into the air bricks which ventilate the area under our house.

8. Being Ticklish

The Boy Wonder is ridiculously and entertainingly ticklish, meaning he can be completely incapacitated by a light poke to the side. I, however, quite like being tickled and am therefore impervious to retaliations, meaning that I would hold up better under interrogation by a pervy clown or feather duster, which I suppose is some sort of skill.

9. Light Footedness

Living with the Boy Wonder is like having a herd of elephants stampeding around the house, and even when he's trying to be quiet he manages to make everything in the entire house shake as though we live at the joining of tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface.

10. The Ability to Accurately Ascertain My Level of Drunkenness

In recent times, the Boy Wonder has been responsible for the following when under the influence of alcohol: three stops for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home at 3am, drunken limping and the subsequent denial thereof, pretending to be a toad (albeit a fairly poor impression which fooled nobody), and consistently telling me he's 'not that drunk' despite being clearly quite drunk. I, on the other hand, seem to tend more towards believing that I'm a lot more drunk than I am even when I am actually still in control of most of my faculties.

Totting up the results of this supremely unscientific analysis it appears that unless one of us proves to be a dab hand at the arbitrary assigning of value to any of the criteria above, it has proved a wildly inconclusive yet somewhat entertaining exercise.