Three years!

Everything’s changing. Three years spent in a strange city. 1095 days studying an utterly useless degree. 156 weeks and seven house moves. Thousands of minutes lost to the M1, journeys made for love. Three years have passed and I’ve forgotten the person who came here. Who was she? Idealistic, judgemental, desperate to change the world and pretending not to care about whether she was accepted. She cared. Sometimes.

Do you ever get the feeling that time is slipping away? Last night I put my head on a soft pillow in a damp room. I was afraid in my unfamiliar surroundings. I woke this morning and three years had passed. In my drawers is the evidence of my time; lecture notes, free crap collected from freshers’ week, a scrap of paper with my poker debts scribbled on it, a photograph of some guys jumping off a platoon into an ice cold lake, a half eaten bag of pistachio nuts. I should probably throw them away. All my possessions are dog-eared, bearing the evidence of countless hours spent boxing up and loading into the back of a vandalised hatchback. The books I arrived with, symbols of a girl making a statement about who she was and what she believed, have been placed alongside Haruki Murakami, Madame Bovary and The Women’s Room. The initial collection of CDs, a close minded catalogue of punk, ska and hardcore from the last three decades, have had to share shelf space with Calexico, Brahms, Neil Young and Fairport Convention. My pots and pans bear the battle scars of kitchen catastrophes and experimentation. I leave here a distinctly better cook.

Last night I went to a gig. I looked around at the faces that have become known to me over the last three years. A pint of cider in hand, I mused about the legacy I would leave on the Leeds scene. A half hearted attempt at promoting, the memory of my drunken dancing, awkward conversations without the aid of alcohol, DIY punch, singalong sessions, standing alone and resenting myself for not being funny, or at least engaging. Chris, who is she again? The girl from London? The posh punk? She was alright.

Perhaps a hint of melancholy haunts this column. My final house move has sabotaged my summer. A flooded kitchen, an incompetent fool of a landlord who I’m pretty sure has Munchausen’s, bed bugs making their home in my personal space and rotting meat in a pan left by previous tenants are all contenders for most annoying aspect. It smelled really really bad. I dreamt about a summer spent lying on our patio. I would be reading Crime and Punishment or On the Road. I would sup Sam Smiths, eat noodles and tofu, and toss my housemates the odd witticism. Pushing the sun glasses to the tip of my nose, I’d cock an eye brow and roll my eyes at the choice of record spinning on the player. In ultra fantasy Haruki Murakami would be there and we’d discuss literature, cats and David Bowie. But that just wouldn’t happen. Instead, I work 8.30am until 5pm. I get home exhausted mentally. My body has sagged into the shape of someone who sits on a computer all day. My brain is fuzzy. My job is to come up with ideas for television, but sitting at a computer for eight and a half hours is the most un-stimulating environment for creativity, so it’s hard to fulfil my role. To illustrate the point: I recently pitched an idea for a series about the history of the parking meter. I’m not joking. Recently I’ve taken to downloading episodes of House to watch in breaks, but House time now reigns over all thoughts. To entertain myself I like to imagine what Dr House would do in a situation. When contemplating what to have for lunch I give the contents of the fridge a differential diagnosis. Dr Chase thinks I should have a tomato and avocado salad, but Dr Foreman thinks instant noodles would be better. Dr Cameron is struggling to reach a decision, but she limps in with an offering of soup and bread. Dr House tells them all they’re idiots and tells me to make pasta instead. Time moves quite slowly. When I tell people I work in television production they appear to find it really exciting, as if my life is glamorous. Errrr.....

I work with a guy who does battle re-enactments at the weekend and used to work in television shopping. He once told me that miners would never go into the pit if they saw a girl with red hair on their way to work. Apparently it was a potent sign that something terrible would befall them. His sister, a flame haired beauty, used to check her watch and then make herself visible at the entrance to their house as the men walked past. What a bitch! Anyway, what a baby I am, complaining about working full time as if my life is hard. It’s not. I realise how lucky I am, but in that realisation I don’t forfeit all rights to complain about how dull a life can be sometimes. The weight of hours wasted compresses my mind so that I go ‘home’ and lay on a sofa drained and immobile. I lose all enthusiasm to leave the house and mix with society as I have no thoughts left. I lost them all to watching people on You Tube and reading the racist, moronic comments underneath. The pleasures of cooking and reading have been lost because my tired mind has no desire for creativity or intellectual stimulation, by this point it only understands the moving image.

Three years have passed and I’m a different person. 1095 days making amazing friends. 156 weeks not wasted, but wanting more. Thousands of minutes and I’ve learned a lot about laughing, loving, despairing humankind and making cheesy statements like ‘laughing and loving’. I’m gone, but I’m not forgotten.

Chris 12oh5
slowergherkin@hotmail.com

End notes:
- From September until June 2008 I will be living amongst the Austrians in the city of Graz. Think of me, write to me, come and share a drink with me.
- I am absolutely loving the film ‘Lives of Others’ at the moment.
- I love you, Pitza Canos. I love you, Slips Deli. I love you, Angel Inn. Franchise in Austria?
- Hail! The Ergs!

Distracted mind / crap sites I find...

I went to Edward Boyle library today.

I was truly believing that considering my complete lack of productivity when at home, largely due to…Snacks, the vacuous, time stealing void that is the internet, Neighbours, excessively long lunch preparation time, my phone, this book called ‘Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?’ – No man, it’s not just you, and other innocuous distractions littering my room that do not fall into the category of work…I might find some solace in the oasis of calm that is that time-honoured institute of academia, the Library. Alas, I thought I was going to the esteemed location of brain-improvement, but I must be mistaken, for I found myself in a wooden cage, gazing desperately out of the window as they construct a noisy, modern monstrosity outside. I do not object to building new facilities, anyone who has been skewered between the library stacks that move would agree that more space can be a good thing. But why oh why must luminous men cut metal in my cochlea when I am trying to absorb the mine field that is media law? Obviously I missed the e-mail saying “Miss Dixon, we know how much you want to royally cock-up your finals, so we have decided to build new stuff in the vicinity of your studies for the duration of that period.” Cheers.

I am easily distracted and I wager that I am not alone in this. Seriously, Edward Boyle desk scribes, a poll on whether fat or thin girls are better in bed? As if the moron writing that crap is ever going to convince anyone to have sex with him. Anyway, I digress. According to an American survey the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, excluding lunch and scheduled break-time. When employers determine your pay they take this fact into consideration. Taking their greedy capitalist logic into consideration, I guess that means we are never required to be diligent and efficient because they are paying us wages that reflect the assumption that we won’t be.

Anyone who has ever seen the film Office Space – join me now! Take a bat to the photocopiers! Slash the tyres of the noisy trucks! Or, non-incitement to violence suggestions could include making work spaces less bloody dull. The hum of air conditioning, the tap-tapping of a woman’s manicured nails on a desk, the mind-numbing boredom of looking at a computer screen all day, these things are desired to send you slowly to madness. This can be the only explanation for women like Prescott’s dirty diary lady and the whole Bill Clinton cigar incident. Either that or I’ve got politics all wrong.

To go off on a minor tangent, I came up with a hypothesis today which should explain patterns in our behaviour. ‘Adults’, which I am surely not, often complain about how young people are becoming less intelligent and academic life is consequently becoming easier to tailor to this new generation of idiots. I propose this; The Internet is to blame. Theoretically it should be a positive force, an educative tool which democratises social and class structures. We have been granted a role in shaping what we watch, what makes us laugh, influencing how politicians should behave and so on. These are powerful suggestions, except there is one problem, that being that the internet is full of shit. I clicked and entered the World Wide Web with good intentions this sunny afternoon. I had a cup of tea to the left of me and my notebook to the right. I just attempted to read Baudrillard, an insane yet pretty amazing cultural theorist. I think to myself that I would like to know more about this man, so I go to the number one democratic knowledge site, Wikipedia. Within twenty minutes I am on a page telling me things like: “The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 calibre machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards.” I don’t know how I got here. One minute I was filling my brain with knowledge, reaching to the utopian ideal of intelligence and happiness, expanding my horizons, yaddi yaddi yadda. The next I know, I am filling my brain with junk and texting my friends things like, “No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple” and “The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.”

Don’t even get me started on Facebook.

Or Myspace.

Get back to work.

STI - why oh why?

I have bacterial vaginosis. I have syphilis. I am pretty sure I have bird flu, maybe even MRSA. I have every disease I have read about in the last twelve months. Why? Have I been recklessly promiscuous? Begging doctors to treat me with dirty gloves? Spent an extended period of time in Bernard Matthews chicken processing plant? None of the above, unless they took place in a haze of LSD.

This recent bout of hypochondria was inspired by my housemate - The brave bastard teaches sex education to kids. As if explaining the finer points of the erection to under fifteens wasn’t quite heinous enough, he opened the booklet on a page of photographs of STIs. Penises with cauliflower growths on them, pussing shafts, ulcerated lips, warts and a picture of a vagina which had the description of ‘cottage cheese-like discharge’ underneath. I am never eating again. All this would have been of no concern to me had I closed the book in horror, but much like a car crash or any interview with David Beckham (seriously, mate, get elocution lessons) I had to forge ahead in this new area of my education.

I suffer from thrush very occasionally. Yeah, you heard. It’s not embarrassing because almost everyone gets it. Especially those ladies sporting the skinny jeans who have a penchant for the big B (bread, that is) and have lots of sex (HA! who’s laughing now). Everyone has thrush, but in some people it gets aggravated by environmental factors and then BAM, there’s a riot in your pants. Incidentally, while we are discussing thrush – you love it – you can treat it DIY style at home with some natural yogurt, which is messy, or garlic wrapped in gauze, which hurts like HELL. Not full-proof, but much cheaper than the rip-off chemist options. Fact.

Anyway, other than trying to make you feel mildly uncomfortable, there is a reason I am writing this. I flicked through the book to read about thrush and low and behold, I caught sight of descriptions of other vaginal and penile weirdness. Loads of the horrible diseases referenced ‘tiredness’, ‘a general feeling of being unwell’ and ‘irritated genitals’ as symptoms. The vagueness of such symptoms had me self-diagnosing myself with every one of them. My friend likened it to when you are at the doctors and the NHS posters are asking you things like ‘Do you have a foot?’ You nod to yourself, gripped with fear, ‘then you have AIDS!’ it screams. Obviously, they aren’t that extreme, but the posters have convinced me I’m a diabetic with high blood pressure, a little bit pregnant and I definitely need to quit smoking, even though I don’t actually smoke and I find it about as appealing as sucking a car exhaust. And so on.

I am sure there is nothing more irritating to a doctor than the worried well, the net-doctor using screwbags who come in convinced they have bowel cancer when really a dodgy stomach from eating dirty kebabs (they are made with rats and dogs, surely) is the only problem. However, in this age of casual and often drunken sex, you could do well to remember that one in ten women under twenty four have Chlamydia, but don’t actually know about it. It’s worth noting that this is scary shit considering it can make you infertile. I realise you are spending your university years trying hard not to start spawning, or at least, I hope you are, but it is not an exciting prospect. Five out of six cases of Gonorrhoea have no symptoms, although when you know about it…you, uh, know about it. Considering these facts it really is worth getting screened. A boy and I have been together for going on three years now, but not too long ago the doctor thought he might have Chlamydia. This was a complete misdiagnosis, but I went to get screened anyway. Not so pleasant an experience and no lollypop at the end, but I did have the piece of mind that neither of us are infecting each other. You might not be concerned, perhaps you have not slept with many people, but the frightening STI book tells me that by the time you are on your tenth sexual partner you are partaking in the exchange of twelve million peoples’ germs. TWELVE MILLION DIFFERENT GERMS. Pass me the condoms, please.

Woof Woof

I’m 21 in less than a week. This is unfortunate because I’ve not yet finished my novel. I’ve not poked a Tory in the eye, or eaten the odd looking white vegetable from the shop on the corner. I haven’t met Jon Bon Jovi, or taken acid. I haven’t even managed to go to 97% of the clubs in Leeds, but I reckon that’s a good thing.

Every day I am confronted with people who have achieved amazing things. The guy who is swimming the length of the Amazon, Jane Tomlinson cycling across America with terminal cancer…Even my sports teacher at school was one of the first women to row solo across the Atlantic. My chronic mediocrity is apparent whenever I leave the house. The adverts telling me I could have the most beautiful skin, the best hair colour, the best smelling farts…Whatever. I have decided to embrace my overwhelming average-ness. I can be the first person to be unfazed by my unimportance. By their scale of achievements, the best thing I have done is watch Point Break for the hundredth time last night, although that film is a masterful piece of cinema so I have no shame.

Part of our culture is set goals, targets to be realised within a certain time frame. Even University asks you to fill out bullshit forms about what you want to achieve from your module by the end of the term. Ummm…learned something? Passed it? Not spent every waking minute sitting in the lecture theatre wishing I was at home cutting my nails? Is this really necessary? I dread graduation and the inevitability of at least temporarily working some ridiculous job in which someone in a suit asks me to jump through hoops. Exhausted, saddled with debt, listening to a motivational speaker, probably hung-over I say ‘Woof!’

I write to-do lists. Things I can tick off during the week and add some order to my disorganised life. A to-do list works well for me - keeping things small and simple. I’m not sure underneath ‘Call my brother’ and ‘Do the shopping’ I could write ‘Alleviate world debt’. I don’t think it works quite like that. School, the media, University – all of them – have perpetuated a standardized version of success. I, like many people, had the maverick teacher who refused to teach the syllabus for my history A-level. I didn’t come out with the best grade in the country, but I still remember his inspirational classes and the important parts of history. The rest of my spoon-fed education sits cobwebbed and forgotten in the recesses of my mind. Consequently I have started categorizing things by my own standard of success. Not to take anything away from the Tomlinsons of this world, but my current achievements stand at writing an essay for a law module without any help from anyone. Law is like Mormonism – I don’t know what the hell they are on about. It might not be scaling Mount Everest and I’m sure law students could write it with the ten thousand page media law tome tied behind their backs, but it means something to me.

I’m tired of people setting standards by which to measure others. The little things we do, like picking someone’s books up when they drop them, managing to recycle 50% of your rubbish, quitting your job and choosing to work as a street cleaner so you can spend more time at home with your partner who has cancer. These things rank high on my list. They might not get the highest grades or the most recognition, but I’d rather go for a beer with them than Mr Universe himself, Hollywood star, namesake of the stadium in Graz, Austria, Governor of California and potential next President of the US… Hasta La Vista standardized targets.

Being posh, or something...

I’m posh, apparently. From what I now understand, if you speak properly - that is, sound your‘t’, refer to ‘so and so and I’ rather than ‘me and so and so’ – you are posh. There’s no hiding it. You can put down your Times and your cup of Ecuadorian fair trade coffee and join me. Us posh kids should stick together, right? Up until now I was under the impression that Boris Johnson was the definition of posh. Prince Charles. Anyone who went to Eton. Anyone who starts a sentence, “The third time I travelled in Bali…” These people are posh. They can’t boil an egg, they think Sub Dub is something the navy are trained to do and they don’t find Curb Your Enthusiasm funny because they find themselves in those awkward situations all the time.

Before I went to secondary school I had the dirtiest South London accent you can imagine, you know waddaye mean? Safe safe. Somehow, over the course of a few years at my school, my accent changed into something new. No one in my family talks like me, so I can only blame the school and the public speaking competitions I regularly partook in. When I first moved to Leeds I was slightly self-conscious of my accent, so I found myself reverting back to old-style Dixon, who formerly only came out when I was pissed, angry, or both. Old style Dixon is coarse, intimidating and excruciating to listen to. Listening to her motor on about ‘fings’ and ‘finking’ would set your teeth on edge. You would want to leap forward and pinch her tongue between thumb and fore finger. If she says ‘free’ instead of ‘three’ one more time you will rip the damn thing out.

I come from a village in South West London called Claygate. Note how I refer to it as South West London and not Surrey, where it truly lies. I got so irritated by people making assumptions about my life when they heard the word ‘Surrey’ that I erased it from my credentials. Notable events that happened in Claygate included Cliff Richard turning on the village Christmas lights each year. Sometimes they filmed The Bill in nearest town, Kingston. This lush Greater London utopia was somewhat blighted by a rapist that attacked girls in the woods for several years, so we couldn’t play there and had to hang out in town and torpedo Lambrini instead. Not a royal upbringing, but not a bad one either.

As I have become more comfortable in Leeds, I have let ‘posh Dixon’ out in little bursts. Since earning the moniker of ‘poshest person I have ever met’ from a friend from Newcastle, I have noticed myself playing up to it. I’m not ashamed of speaking well, or wanting people to respect my intellect more than my body. Plus, for the last two years I have been living with one of the ‘poshest’ people that I have ever met. This is a guy who can slip the word ‘rambunctious’ into conversation and have no one bat an eye lid. He is ‘posh’ in the best sense of the word. He is polite, well spoken and intelligent. The kind of person your parents would lock in the basement for fear of some other girl snaring this prime marriage material. He is not spoilt, pretentious or particularly wealthy – characteristics I would previously have thought denoted poshness.

Our culture is determined to label and compartmentalise people. We have to fit a band into a musical genre and if a band is described to us that does not fit into our favoured genres, we dismiss them. The irony of this type of pigeonholing is never clearer to me than in the punk scene. I can’t even count the number of punks I know that work child care and mental health. Is that what you were expecting? Human beings can be the most surprising of animals. I get a real kick out of toying with peoples’ expectations, making them think twice about the hippy, punk, feminist, whatever, box they have put me in. Why don’t you? Assimilation is boring.

Valentines Day is a load of crap...

My partner lives in Brighton. For those of you accustomed to the blustery Northern coast, I have to tell you; Brighton is infinitely cooler than Leeds. Beach parties, vegetarians galore, friendly people and Snooper’s Paradise are just a handful of reasons. However, other than really expensive pints, there is another major downside to this utopia-on-sea. In case you didn’t know already I’m afraid I’m going to have to break the news to you. Brighton is not in my bed. I wish Brighton was in my bed. If it was, I could close the door to my cold room in Leeds, get under the covers and find a boy, a beach and barbeque-flavoured Linda McCartney sausages nestled amongst the cotton…

…Oh right! So, it’s Valentines Day coming up. This comes as great news for capitalists, unimaginative boyfriends/girlfriends and CATS. The rest of us sigh with indifference and go about our lives. Or do we? A friend of the Chris Dixon house has reported that in the Union there was a workshop for people to make their own V-Day cards. At a cost of £3.50 you could presumably spend the afternoon with other artistically-challenged students and cut’n’paste together. If that’s not romance, I don’t know what is. I have a problem with this (does this surprise you?) for several reasons. First of all, the cost. £3.50? If you are going to make a cheap card, why not do what I do for my ever-so-lucky friends and cut up old copies of the New Statesman and stick onto scrap paper. Nothing says I love you like George Bush’s head on a dog’s body. It will inevitably be smeared with grease from the fried tofu sandwich I was almost certainly consuming while constructing, but it’s part of the charm. Secondly, what exactly are the qualifications of the host of this event? Surely the reason that you have opted for the home made card approach is because you thought it would be more personal than the selection of “Hey, Luv, get yer tits out!” cards available at the local newsagents. How exactly are you going to tap into this personalised creativity with some geezer wearing a brown sack turned zen-pyjama outfit breathing down your neck. “Feel the love, feel the passion…” He oozes as he massages your temples. Your pritt stick and plastic scissors pause mid-air. The door is just out of your grasp.

According to Mori four times as many men as women feel pressurised by their partner into giving a card or gift on Valentines Day and a third of women are indifferent to the day. We have created this mess ourselves! The men feel panicked into splashing out because they think the women care, but actually the women don’t really give a toss. And those who do care only care because the media and the card companies and the four-times-as-many men make them think they should. Or are they just stating indifference because it is increasingly fashionable to be anti-valentines day? If we are not careful we will end up like our wacky American cousins who are expected to spend $13.70 billion on Valentines Day this year. What on earth could they possibly be buying?

It’s familiar ground to argue that you don’t really need a calendar to tell you when you love someone. If you are not telling them or letting it show on most days then why exactly are you bothering? Orchestrated ‘love day’ is about as appealing as arriving home to find John Prescott reclining naked on your sofa. It will never be clean again. Organised love seems too much like organised fun. How often do you sit around with your mates saying, “Let’s have fun at exactly 8pm on Thursday night”? Organised fun makes me think of days at school when you were allowed to play bingo in French as a treat (um, why exactly am I here? I may be thirteen but I’m not stupid…), or when a sports teacher was off sick so they teamed you up to play rounders with boys who fail to grasp the concept of playing for fun. You miss the ball and the next thing you know you’re twenty and still talking about it. Oh.

HHeH

Car Chaos

Having a car brings you bad luck. A friend of the Chris Dixon house was beaten up by her neighbour for parking in her ‘spot’- ‘spot’ in this case denoting an area on the road in front of crazy lady’s house. The woman tried to break into her car before punching her in the face and then getting her mates to lie to the police. All because of a 6ft patch of cement. Has the world gone mad? Other evidence of cars bringing you bad luck includes me nearly getting run over today while riding my bike. Some dick in a fancy car turned right at the lights by the business school at the same time I was going straight across. Anyone over the age of five knows that if you’re turning against the traffic you have to wait until the oncoming traffic has stopped before you turn. Not this arsehole. She turned without even looking because cyclists don’t count, don’t you know? Then she starts hammering on the horn because she blatantly feels guilty about being such a shocking driver. I gave her the finger and rode on. What does this have to do with bad luck relating to the owning of cars, I hear you ask? I just know there was some kind of divine retribution happening when the idiot motorist tried to end my life today.

In this country we love cars. The average Briton travels 6815 miles each year, four fifths of which is by car. By contrast to this our walking distances have fallen by 20% since the 1980s. Link to obesity, anyone? I have met people who live within walking distance to a gym yet drive there. This is the cultural norm. If the whole point is getting fit, surely jogging or power walking there would be getting more value for money? Those of you wanting to shrink your waistlines should be aware that people who live in the suburbs, where car ownership is highest, weigh 2.7kg more than those living in city centres, where people tend to use public transport, feet and bikes a lot more.

It is rare that I agree with anything Ken Livingstone says (come on, the guy likened a journalist to a concentration camp guard. This was highly offensive, particularly as the journo had already said he was Jewish) but the Mayor of London did something good with his life when he famously called SUV drivers ‘complete idiots’. Only 5% of SUVs are ever driven off road, not to mention that the occupants of a vehicle hit by an SUV are 27 times more likely to be killed than the occupants of a normal car. I’m glad they are getting taxed more and they have to pay more to park if they are fortunate enough to live in the borough of Richmond. Setting aside the fact they are expensive, petrol-guzzling killing machines for a second, does a school mum who collects her little darlings from the suburbs in a giant Cherokee realise she looks like a complete prat?

Going back to the car and the attempted cyclist assassination this morning, I realised that people are just afraid. Sitting behind screens makes people feel protected because they don’t have to mix with the great unwashed. This is even truer for someone who climbs into a giant machine to drive to the supermarket. They know they will do pretty well in an accident, so sod the people they squash on the way. Engaging with your local environment is the only way to cure this fear. You can’t beat cycling on a sunny day, wind in your hair, leaving the pedestrians, and often the cars, in the dust. It will do wonders for your attitude…and maybe inspire a bit of cyclist rage.

*All the statistics used in the column were from a book called ‘A Good Life’ by Leo Hickman.