Thoughts I had today

Shampoo!

A friend helpfully provided me with a link to ALL Shampoo songs recorded (or so he said). Fantastic! I downloaded the lot, even the ones I already had. The live ones are (as would be expected) a little, er, ropey (ok, they’re ropey as fuck! I don’t think Shampoo ever claimed they could actually sing!). Still, hooray! Feeling a bit nostalgic now. I had a T-shirt that said POW! On it, too! And me and my best friend at uni bonded over Shampoo in the canteen queue (along with her home made Kenickie T-shirt!). Said friend disappeared into thin air years ago. We had lived together, which led to disaster, because I got a bit fed up with her alcoholic girlfriend who was around all the time. The 4am ambulance calls because said girlfriend had drunkenly slipped in the shower weren’t that fun either. Neither was the puke all over the bathroom … carpet!

Listening to Shampoo reminds me of that friend. Particularly when we got bored on a Saturday night, drank Absinthe, played Cluedo and howled and danced along to Shampoo. And Catch. And Kenickie. I miss those times. I guess I’m too old for that sort of thing now. Or my friends are. Maybe everyone is. I don’t know. Still, I miss doing random things. I can’t remember the last time when I did something really random and silly.

Work

Had the big annual feedback performance report meeting at work today. Part of this is getting written feedback from my team, peers and random people across the office. I was a bit worried about that, because I’m a notorious worrier who thinks everyone hates me. To my surprise, the feedback gave a very strange view of what I am like. Or rather, what people at work think I am like.

Approachable

This is odd. Because people who know me from outside work and have nothing to do with work (ie my friends) seem to think the opposite. I’m generally quite rubbish at meeting new people (especially in group situations) and my pathological shyness gives me an annoying aloof (sometimes arrogant, I am informed) air. But I seem to be good at hiding this at work, it’s almost like some kind of bizarre game.

Caring

My team claims I care about them. Bless. A few Good Mornings seem to go a long way. Mind you, I did not have myself down as ‘caring’. I’ve been let down so many times at work, in life and so on, that I am fucking careful as to who I care about. And it takes me quite a bit of time to be like that with newly acquired friends, because I need to assure myself I’m not wasting my time first. But then, I do think I’m very loyal to my friends (not to be confused with acquaintances), even the ones that screw up. Heck I even have some sort of loyalty to various ex-boyfriend who were less than nice to me, because I think that, some time ago, I really did care about them. I may not care as much now, but still.

Knowledgeable

This one scared me. People think I am some sort of font of all knowledge at work. All it is that I have an excellent people memory. I could probably still list all the people I went to primary school with, their first names, their last names, where they lived and what their parents did for a living. I never forget a face either. And I figured out which bits are important to remember at work. That does not mean I am interested in economics (quite the contrary!) or consumer credit. I can reel off bits of consumer law, but most of it means nothing to me at all. It’s like I am watching myself in a strange movie called Work.

Friendly

Similar thing to ‘approachable’ I suppose. Why wouldn’t I be friendly? I’m at WORK, for goodness sake. Nobody really wants to be there, but why make my work life difficult by being an arse? I have blown my top at work on several occasions (like when I yelled at my then-manager and told him that ‘I had the right to be FUCKING ANGRY if I chose to be!!!’ and ‘If that bastard is still here tomorrow, I’ll FUCKING WALK!’). People don’t seem to remember that. Good. Most of my work-related fury I save for friends, anyway. Or I sit down somewhere quite where nobody can see me, stick my walkman on really loudly, chainsmoke, kick some dustbins and return to my desk as if nothing happened.

Copes brilliantly under pressure

Again, a mere pretence. I do not cope well under pressure. Only that nobody at work knows this. Because I pretend to be perfectly fine at work. The fact I seem to have developed insomnia and find it increasingly hard to switch off outside work is something they’ll never find out. Neither will they ever find out that I actually chucked up in the loo after my last job interview, because I was so fucking nervous. Some things are better left unsaid.

My mum!

My mum sent me the annual Easter parcel. It’s stuffed with chocolate. And hay. The latter is to keep it authentic and make me feel like I’ve just been to an Easter Egg Hunt in the countryside. I wasn’t. I picked it up at the local post office. Sometimes I worry that my mum still thinks I’m eight years old. I am 28. But still, I like my Easter parcels’ contents. Sometimes I think I should see my parents more often. I go home once a year for Christmas. They visit about once a year. I know they miss me. That’s why I get a lot of postcards and newspaper clippings (look, Julia! The local paper has something about Damon Albarn in it!) sent by my dad. His postcards are works of art. He likes to cut’n’paste weird stuff onto paper. I guess me and him have a lot in common there. Much as I love my dad to pieces, I am not sure I want to be exactly like him. I’m the spitting image of him visually as it is, and we have a lot of character traits in common already, and I’m discovering more of those as the years go by. My dad always knows exactly what is going on in this fucked up little brain of mine. Which is a bit disturbing at times, because it is meant to be MY brain.