3 posts tagged “life”
Last weekend I hosted my first proper party. Seeing as my mum had gone to Switzerland for a conference, it seemed the perfect time to ask my dad if he could vacate the premises so that I could have a ‘gathering’. Before hosting a party, two sets of nerves kick in: the first are when you are convinced that too many people will come and everything will get stolen, the second are when it gets to about the later time you recommended people arrived and suddenly you are struck with the horror that it might all be awful and no-one will bother. For the record, neither worry actually transformed itself into reality. Plenty of beverages and music meant that people were in a good mood, as did the opening of my dressing up box and the two cans of whipped cream we had bought for the occasion.
The one annoying thing about guests at parties is that they invariably will take absolutely no notice of the ‘keep out’ signs you put on, for example, your parents’ bedroom door. In this case, only one couple decided to go in there, grossing me out to a great extent but not causing any trouble. Whilst I was glad of this I was still annoyed at the blatant disregard for my rules. When a sign says ‘keep out’ it means ‘keep out’ not ‘keep out unless you are a couple who wish to have passionate sex on the bed on which I was probably conceived, not that I want to think about that’.
One definite fortunate thing was that my next-door neighbours were out, meaning that there were no complaints or threats to call the police, these said things had both happened at a party thee weekend before and I was anxious that it didn’t happen under my roof. Apparently my next-door neighbour came back somewhere near the end of the evening whilst a few people were caring for the invalids outside. Reports tell me that she merely gave them a ‘knowing and understanding’ look before entering her house and leaving us in peace. What a nice woman.
The one gross thing about the whole affair was that someone became a bit unwell on my lawn. It was raked up the next day by my dad as he was ‘raking up the moss anyway so he thought he’d get on with it’. However, this was not before we saw a bird eating it when we ourselves were also trying to eat. We were not impressed.
For the record, there was little permanent damage done. One of my doors is now hanging from its top hinges but apart from that it was merely the odd carpet stain (how I love Vanish oxi-action). So, when my dad returned home he wasn’t entirely unimpressed. The number of bottles around the place caused him some surprise I am sure, but he’d have to learn sometime. I think it was quite a success really, but if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go and fix my door.
‘Oh the stresses of modern life’ is commonly uttered phrase nowadays. On TV it features to advertise beauty products, paracetamol and, it would seem, home insurance. Everyone seems to have become fixated on this idea that modern technology has made everything far more complicated than it needs to be, and that your average nine-to-five city job must be so taxing that you’re forced to have a therapist or ‘take a break’ at a health spa. The ‘I’m so stressed’ disease seems to have also spread down the generations, first to university students, then precocious sixth formers, delusional GCSE students and even, according to the news, seven year-olds feeling the pressure of their key stage one SATs.
Indeed, I can understand. In these times of such advanced technology, healthcare available to everyone and such a stable political system it would be easy to feel as if you’d been dealt a bad hand. Not at all like our ancestors 200 years ago, working 12-hour shifts in cotton mills for next to nothing whilst having a life expectancy of around 20 due to dirty towns, lack of food and lack of healthcare. How easy must life have been for them?!
So the next time I hear anyone complain about not having time to squeeze yoga in to their weekly schedule or how much school work they’re getting, I would like to ask them to take a little look up their family tree. They would perhaps then see how lucky they really are.
I am commencing this article at 2.38am, I am up, fully awake and have absolutely no intention of going to bed for at least another hour or two. For me this is normal. I try to control myself on weekdays during term time but once the weekend, or to a greater extent the holiday, hits I suddenly become a nocturnal creature. Last night was New Year’s Eve, so naturally I wasn’t in bed until 5am, I then slept ‘till 2pm and ended up taking two hours to get ready for the day, meaning that I wasn’t out in daylight at all. The sobering thought that I am spending more time in darkness than in light has made me think that perhaps I should somehow change my waking hours to a more sociable and personally fulfilling time.
Ever the model of all things righteous, my mother seems to have her waking hours set in stone. Every weekday she gets up at 6.40am and goes to bed somewhere in between 10.45 and 11.15pm. On weekends she is lightly decadent and stays in bed until seven, but her bedtime is much the same. In her waking hours she consumes three square meals, copious amounts of water, a cup of cocoa and two hobnobs. She also gets a large amount of exercise (either cycling or brisk walking- she doesn’t do the gym) and has a lot of leisure time. Boxing day is the one exception, when her annual lie in allows her to stay in bed until 7.30 or even 8.00, although she says she feels groggy all day.
I find getting up simply horrible. Every day when my alarm goes off for school it is accompanied by screaming, weeping and cursing from the half-asleep creature curled up on the bed, namely me. Someone once said that the bed was the biggest paradox in the world ‘we greet it with reluctance but refuse to leave it when we must’. Wise words I believe. Of course, once I am in the shower I feel fine and relatively positive about the day ahead, but before that point feeling human is a severe challenge. I also seem to have become immune to my alarm, and wake up having pressed ‘snooze’ several times in my sleep.
Someone recently pointed out to me that perhaps I would feel better about getting up for school if I only went to bed earlier. I thought they were telling some kind of sick joke. My complacence and addiction to spider solitaire means that all my work gets left till very late. Apparently I’m not alone on this though, statistics show that the average teenager works better after 11pm because the house is quieter and a sense of urgency has set in. My thoughts exactly, some of my best work has been produced between the hours of 1 and 5am. For this reason, I am slightly reluctant to kick the habit.
Another reason why I am slightly hesitant to try and change my ways is that I feel it is so much a part of me. Usually I hate it when people list their negative flaws then declare that it’s ‘part of them’ so we should ‘live with it’ but I must now make an exception. Changing my waking routine would make me feel so unlike me it would just be insane. I suppose I shall just have to carry on feeling caffeinated and slothful. Oh well, at least I showed a desire to change. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch some TV- does anyone know what’s on at 4am?
