The Park of South.

I remember, when our family first started talking about moving house last year, we started discussing what we’d want in the new house. My sister said her own room. My mum said a bigger kitchen. My dad said an extra room to use as an office. My youngest sister wanted a garden big enough to house our trampoline. My brother just needed more space. I didn’t care. All of that sounded lovely, sure, but I didn’t want to think about what I wanted in a house. Because to do that was to admit we were moving. And if you start asking for something in particular, you are more likely to be disappointed. I said nothing when these discussions popped up.
But there was one thing I did want. Tucked away in the back of my head, there was this one tiny little part of me that just repeatedly said, “Let us move closer to South Park.”

Our new house. Everyone has their own room. A kitchen diner twice the size of our previous. An office for dad. A decent garden for the trampoline. And space, space, space. And it’s 15minutes closer to South Park. A gift.

I took a walk to the park yesterday evening. It only takes at most 10mins to get to the top of the park now. The sun was starting to set behind the trees. It cast elongated shadows across the grass. The park had a strange other-wordly feel about it. It was completely empty. From the top of the hill, the shadows cast by the trees at the edges of the park weren’t visible, and the leaves didn’t even shiver in the slight breeze, making them appear as if they had been photoshopped in on top of the strangely bright grass, reminiscent, somehow, of the main room in Willy Wonka’s factory. Seagulls with dusty-black heads strutted in pairs, their jerky movements making them seem robotic and toy like. When I saw one fly off, it did so laboriously, as if unaccustomed to the effort. Three partly deflated balloon perched, stranded, on one of the top branches of a tree. They hung like oversized, exotic fruits against the dark green.

The park has so many different… characters. Somehow. This is why I didn’t want to miss it. Give me a camera, world, and I’ll document its changing life.

Get this..!

Ohh, the sun. So many things to love!

The light! Bright, colourful and (dare I say it?) happy...
The raised levels of testosterone; the lowered sunglasses and hair flicks as the chemical love grooows.
The fake tan and the outrageous only-just-there outfits adopted by every last skinny girl out there. The sunbathing and strutting and smiling.
The topless guys playing football/frisbee in the parks. The way they constantly find ways of heading the ball in a pretty girl's direction, just for a split seconds engagement.
The uneven tan lines and patchy burns that signal too much time out in the sun.
The (often bad) music thudding out from open-top cars as they sweep by. The fact that it doesn't matter what music is playing any more, as long as it's prompting you to "do the D.A.N.C.E". The soundtrack of summer.
The screams and joy and laughter that come with the childish enjoyment of the first water fight of the year (!!)
The way you no longer have to check in your bag for an umbrella or a jumper or a scarf, in case the Spring day isn't quite as warm as you originally thought.

And the fact that even though all throughout winter the British population has been complaining of the cold and wishing for sun and warmth and summer, the minute the heat heat heat arrives, Britain asks for "Just a little bit more of a breeze"... Continue to complain that it's too hot to do anything, Britain! Meanwhile I'll get out my sunglasses and enjoy it while it's here...

S-s-s-sun.

My darling! I have abandoned you..! My creative juices have been running slow, slow, s l o o o w . . . So slow that the only creativity I have been indulging in is my doodling. And even that has not found itself up onto the blank web-page. But enough of that.

Wow, my internet is slow today as well... I blame it on the heat. That gorgeous, beautiful, saturating, soaking, sublime, (Look at that sibilance! I blame the English Bug), lovely lovely lovely, amazing, gorgeous heat. The sun has been shining all day. The heat I could never believe, not for Britain. Apparently it's going up to twenty-seven degrees tomorrow. I'm ready for it, with my sun cream and straw trilby and shorts...
Today, though, was awesome. Revision be stuffed - I spent the day lazing in the garden with a girlfriend and having a full-on water fight out front in the afternoon. What is it about the sun that brings out the childish delight in everything, and yet soaks your head with such heat that after only an hour of movement you feel like you could relax into a puddle of nothingness and stay there for the rest of the day? It's like a drug. The most natural drug around. And the only side effects are ones that come from not taking enough care ie. burns and headaches. Someone should find a way of bottling this stuff up and handing it out as a depression cure. Who needs prescription drugs with the sun on tap?

Enough of this rambling. Suffice to say...
"Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... And I'm feeling goooooood!"

Curses.

Don't talk to me. Sitting in the back of my head, a heavy blanket of resentment and pain and woeful selfpity leaks its bitter liquids into the creases of my eyes. A single word or a look askance: Your constant humour at my anger, your incompetence to complete the stupidest, tiniest task, your ability to enjoy yourself as I sit in shackling loathing. Learn how to lock the door behind you and tread quiet when you are near me.

Feel free to leave your clothes in my room; scattered about in crumpled piles of discarded journeys. And I will smile and reply sweetly with false love on my tongue and sour anger in the back of my throat when you return days later to find them gone and ask where they are. I cannot think as fast as you do. Your words and ability to mock are faster and harder and they bruise me. Flick at me with sarcasm or spit your resentful replies to my smug face and inside I'll smile at your stamps and shouts while my blood curdles into momentary hatred and scores lines in my skin. Ugly lines. That nonetheless screech to my reflection, "I've won!"
This time.

One day a fire will burn itself out in my heart and your inability to respect me will drop from my lips like dry, grey ashes. Fill my mouth with cool water to wash out the taste of the pointless, scorching coals. I am tired of this anger and lack of forgiveness. And yet my fists still hold tight to the ripped threads of former hurts, and still dip them in the blood of recent cuts only to brush the lines of "Remember last time?" across my arms, and still collect more and more as the weeks go flying by.

Bitter tears of anger. Clenched fists of resentment. Heavy headaches of self-loathing. Leave me to curse my way through these next few days. Because that'll help.

Lookit that...

A stumble! I came across this band, Tuung, during one of my tangent searches though the mazes of youtube. They have some good songs, for example Jenny Again and Bullet. Click the links and listen :)

Also, social networking websites (as they do) have just informed me that an old childhood friend is married and expecting a baby. It's a strange thought, and one that is messing with my mind rather, which is why it is here on my blog page... She doesn't look much different. Same soft face, same straight blonde hair, same upturned nose. She looks just like she did when we walked out of middle school together. It's a confusing thought. And only seems to underline my own naivety. I find myself doubting myself. This odd tightness in my throat; is that a simple strangeness at this news, or a strange desire, or only a fear for her, for myself, for those lost years? It seems that people around me are growing up too fast, too fast for me to keep up with. Hell, I don't even have a job yet!
Am I odd for my fear of change, of striding out alone, of meeting that one in these next recent (or not) years? Maybe I shouldn't even be thinking about it. It seems to me (she tells herself, as she shakes her head and directs her mind in a more concrete direction) that right now the most important thing to be worrying about is this dratted English essay...

Hobbies.

Glittering, sparkling and twinkling. They spin through my fingers and litter the carpet; tiny rainbow scraps of light bounce off the walls and flicker over my fingernails. Scarlet red. Starlight silver. Ocean and new-leaf green. Copper orange. Summer-sky and baby blue. Some joined together in separate, repeating patterns, the rest lonesome in their group vividness. So pretty.

But unfortunately my money slips through my fingers as quickly as the beads do. It's a sort of covetousness. But my hair needs cutting and mini debts need paying and bus fare needs buying, not to mention food. So it looks like I must leave my beloved beads for a while. Return to the sewing, my lovely.

I do have some rather pretty buttons...

Encouragement.

I return! A couple of weeks sleeping and eating and jewellery creating and little-soft-things sewing and forcing myself to work (ohjeezcourseworkdon'tremindmei'lldieshouldbecalledcurseworkdammitthankgoodnessit'sover) and then I venture back out onto the blank page. And I find posts by friends that I haven't read before, and doodles and drawings I've not seen. Their words on these virtual pages, musings and creations and ramblings and all, remind me of what I've missed. And their pictures and patterns make me smile. "So this is why I am here," I think, "So this is why I enjoy this." Their continuation and dedication encourage me.

Watch this space...