Put Your Arms Around the World

In recent weeks I've been told off several times for "throwing [my]self at fully grown men." Despite this making me sound like some sort of seductive temptress who lures married men away from their innocent, loving wives, the reality is simpler, and less sordid. Far from being cast as the femme fatale in this little skit I am, in fact, being described as childish. But, never one to take criticism too seriously (haha, yeah right) I've not let this deter me, and I'm carrying on doing my thing. Haters gonna hate and all that.

Everyone who knows me is aware that I am, when appropriate, a very tactile person. In fact, I've even written about it on this blog. It's no big secret, I like hugs. It's how I make and greet friends, how I say goodbye; it's how I show thanks, or apologise; it's how I show sympathy or tell someone that I'm sorry they're having a bad time. I even hug people to put my magical healing properties into action.

At work over the summer I made many new friends and renewed some old acquaintances. I also found in Other Dan (Fleabag Monkeyboy) someone who is as tactile and friendly as I am. Which was amazing. And, after some discussion about friends and handling interpersonal relationships, hugging became part of our daily communication. (The same can be said for Dan, who also willingly jumped on the hug wagon - often taking it a little too far...)

Seeing old friends after a long time apart has also led to much encircling of people in arms recently, as I have returned to my "spiritual home" (intellectual home? part-time home? who knows?!) in Nottingham after more than a year away. Seeing Declan and Tom led to more grasping of fully grown men into welcoming and friendly death grips/embraces in the kitchen, the street, the cinema, and the bus stop. Even Lewis, who I saw in March on a fleeting trip round Braun Town, was (willingly) subjected to a cuddle in the middle of the Clive Granger Building. Not that I had much choice; his arms are so long he'd have hugged me from the end of the corridor...
Of course, seeing Emily, Chloe and Helen, my former TEAM from Abbey Road (or what normal people call "housemates"), again after so long also called for hugs! Especially after Chloe had actually worked out who I was. However, they are not grown men, so their mention in this blog is only honorary.

Last weekend I also did my share of hugging when I wasn't being the Super Scout Translator. I spent the weekend in Viernheim with my wonderful DPSG friends, and Paul and Nicole from Potters Bar. Seeing Gabi always calls for a hug; ditto Markus, who is about as full grown and male as it gets. Other friends, who I only got to know at the weekend, were not greeted with hugs, but were still cuddled close to my healing chest upon departure, meaning I left with more hugs than I arrived with! In fact, I wasn't even the cuddliest person on the weekend trip; the two young daughters of Paul and Nicole's hosts were far cuddlier than I during my time in Viernheim last week. We were, in the most literal sense, welcomed into the bosom of the family.

There are, naturally, many people I haven't had the chance to hug recently too. The most obvious to me are members of my family, including my grandparents (and Jean, of course. She counts), Auntie Margaret, and various aunts, uncles, cousins, and Victorian swimsuit models. There are lots of friends I haven't seen for a long time, too, including most of my old Owen's pals, who I seemed to always miss seeing over the summer. I'll hug them all soon. Then of course there are the people who are too far away, such as Daniel, Doreen, Sammi, Crowdy... The list is practically endless.

So in conclusion, a good, healthy hug is perfectly OK. There is nothing bad about expressing friendship through physical contact (except in a Scout leader/Explorer context, which is sad. But Teej is 18 now at least!), so the haters can shut up. Bad haters. Don't you have something important to be doing? Like researching Charles Taylor or something? Jeez.
Of course, respecting boundaries is important, and it's a pain when someone gets all up in your grill. But in general, throwing yourself at fully grown men is a perfectly acceptable pastime. And far better than throwing yourself at, for example, brick walls. Or tubas. Or poisonous snakes.

Anyway, Rachel wants dinner, so I'd better stop writing now!

House Hunting

It's now come to that time in my life where I've had to start (and indeed conclude) a hunt for my first privately-rented property (how scary!) So, this led to me pondering the housing market and, well, just everything really.

For anyone who's interested, I am sharing as part of a group of five girls who will all be living in a two-storey house in Beeston; near the university. The property has five bedrooms, three bathroom-esque rooms (only one actually has a bath in it, the others have showers), one lounge, one dining room, one kitchen, a scrubby garden with a "bald patch" (Helen) and a "Bedroom", in which the bedroom furniture doesn't even fit. Needless to say, this will be used as an occasional overnight room for people staying (willingly or because they're unable to use their own legs...) over and (probably) a storage room.

Basically, this whole process has made me feel very grown up; primarily because I have been doing most of the dealings with the estate agents (as the one who was willing to make the phone calls on Monday) and this gives me a terrifying level of responsibility, but also because I now realise that next year I will be responsible for myself; all the payments of bills and rent will be down to me (probably not financially, but I will be in charge of organising it) and if I mess up, it will be my own fault, with no way to blame anyone else.

That's scary.

In addition, I have decided I would be a terrible estate agent. I would feel incredibly guilty for the amount of... not quite lying, but... 'smoothing over' I would need to do to sell certain properties. Did you know there's no patron saint of estate agents*? Somehow it doesn't really surprise me. (At a stretch you could say it was St Lucy, patron saint of salespeople, but I'm not sure that's the entire of the estate agent's job.)

To be honest, my main concern for next year is getting on with my housemates, who are all lovely girls. This may seem a silly thing to say, if they're all lovely girls, why would that be a concern?
Basically, because they're so lovely I'm worried that I will be the one who will annoy everyone to the point where we have an argument and they are no longer friends with me. Apparently there's meant to be someone like that in every house. I really hope we're the exception...

If it doesn't work out, I could always live in a yurt.

Emmatt update: I realised I didn't do one of these last time, so in case anyone's interested, I thought I'd let you know. Matt and I sent a lot of time together over the Christmas holidays, even though we both had a lot to do. We're both very happy that we've now (more or less) reached five months together and are making plans to see each other in a few weeks, just after my Birthday. I also hope during this time to introduce him to some of my other friends (the girls I'm living with, plus other people in my course), although he doesn't know this yet. Sorry Matt.

*P.S. Father mine, the patron saint of Bankers is St Matthew

The End of "Stuff..."?

Hello Internet folks, I am currently pondering a dilemma and I wonder if you can help. (Although, given your usual level of response to this blog, I am not holding out much hope!) It's not a big problem to be honest, quite the opposite, but it may mean the end of this blog forever...

You see, my problem is that I don't actually seem to have any problems right now.

I have a job which, although it's not the best job in the world, I'm earning money from. And sure, it's kind of boring and the pay's not as good as it could be, but any job which you can do with minimal qualifications will be boring and, given that I'm not entitled to minimum wage, I actually earn more than I would in a bar or in most shops. Plus everyone is really nice which, for me, is more important than the work itself. And it's not like I'm even just saying that; literally everyone is nice.

There's Graham, who works for "the agency" (dun dun duuuun) but is planing on going full time. Graham has been really nice to me since I started working there, but his jokes are awful! Then there's Dannii, who only works a couple of days a week, but is absolutely lovely and I always spend too much time talking to her because she's so interesting. Also prescanning is Caroline who, although she seems lovely, I haven't had much chance to get to know, but she's always so happy and smiley. In my recent job development, I've been working more closely with Mark (who wants to join the army) and Richard (who wants to be a Social Worker/Social Work teacher, but works doing whatever he can whilst he's waiting to get the job he wants.) Mark and Richard are both great guys, although they do sometimes talk a little loudly, especially about things which should probably not be repeated here. And the army. Then, of course, there's Chloe and Anya. When the Boss isn't around, Chloe and Anya effectively run the joint; they are in charge of all the admin, all the orders, paying everyone, running meetings and making sure everyone knows what's going on. They're amazing at what they do, even if I annoy them sometimes. Then there's Matt...

I think Matt deserves a paragraph to himself. As most of you will have seen, Matt is my fantastic new boyfriend. Yes, we are that nauseating couple. No, we don't mind. Yes, we know how awful we are, but it's OK because Becky, who is terrified of inter-personal relationships says we're not just that couple, because we're also funny together. Errr, yay?

So, as you see, there is nothing for me to write whiny blog posts about any more. Does this mean the end of "Stuff I Ponder"??!?!?!?!?!

Well, in a word, "no." Weird and wonderful stuff is still guaranteed to happen in my life; I'm still doing the scouting (we've got the Beach Weekend this weekend) and I'm about to head off to Uni, which should provide many an interesting story. Plus, with a boyfriend in tow, there'll even be someone to share it with!

P.S. Good luck Mark for today and tomorrow!

My New Job

PhatPocket. It's such an American name. Which makes sense, because the manager (and owner, as far as I can tell) is American. So, as many of you know, I got a new job recently. Therefore I have been pondering it.

My job itself is incredibly weird. I'm a PreScanner, which means that I arrive at 9.30 and spend five minutes or so piling books onto my desk in about six stacks, each about two foot high, then I scan them all into a computer programme or, if they're old enough not to have barcodes, I enter the ISBN number by hand. The programme tells me whether the book should be accepted by the company to sell on or not. If the book is accepted then I have to judge its condition (good, very good, acceptable, library or non-library etc.) and put it on the relevant shelf. If the books are rejected by the system, then they're thrown in the recycling (literally thrown, it's great fun) or put in a box for the School Aid charity in Africa.

Alternatively, it seems to be an actual company policy that books which would otherwise be thrown away can be taken home if we want them for ourselves.

As a first job, this is both excellent and crazy at the same time; unlike many employers, PhatPocket don't take advantage of the fact that under 22 year olds aren't required to receive minimum wage and pay everyone equally. What's more, the job is the perfect balance of sitting at a desk all day and strenuous physical exercise; every so often a new crate of books is required, or the bins have to be moved, or we have to get a new trolley to fill with books, all of which are quite laborious jobs.

Other hilarious aspects of the job include some of the stories told by my co-workers (most of which involve drinking), and the day we had a huge amount of frogs in the warehouse. Being on a farm, there is a high chance of escaping wildlife; a lamb apparently got into the warehouse in the spring. A few weeks ago I arrived at work to be told that there were baby frogs everywhere and that I should be incredibly careful where I trod. This then led to a mass exodus of tiny frogs from the warehouse to the pond and a lot of watching where I walked for the rest of the day.

Frogs apart, Margaret is the funniest thing to have happened in my time working at PhatPocket.  When conditioning the books we often find interesting and questionable things being used as bookmarks. The most notable of these was a plain brown envelope simply addressed to "Margaret". Although not that outstanding in itself, this envelope and what it has grown to represent have changed our lives forever. Margaret has become a cult figure at work; one of the men has considered leaving his wife for her and everyone has been accused of secretly being Margaret as a cunning ruse. On Friday we found an actual address for (probably a different) Margaret and we are planning to send her a letter in the near future.

There is so much more to tell you, including the 11:00 read, the collection of "That's not my..." books and how scary Mark is, but this post is becoming unbearably long and there'll be time for it all in another update on my life. Suffice to say that I am (somehow) enjoying my new, quite boring, job and I look forward to the next several weeks of my working life. Primarily because the other benefits of this new job are excellent, but more about them another time... ;)