Ve Have Vays of Making You Tock

This meme has been making the rounds and I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon. Well, I do have an entire chapter of my dissertation to write by tomorrow, I was begging for such an opportunity to procrastinate! Here are my questions from the lovely Brandy.

1. If you could leave a time capsule the size of a microwave that would be opened in a century, what would you put in it to represent the world now?

Hmmm. I don't know if I would be comfortable with the responsibility of representing the world. I would probably try to represent here.

Ergo, I would put in things like pieces of artwork that depict the city (I have a particular one in mind but can't find it on the whole of the world wide web! Tch.) A miniature Super Lamb Banana. The White Album. But none of these things would really translate. There is a feel about this city, maybe because it's home. My boyfriend tells a story about when he was young, being dragged around town shopping by his parents and complaining that it was boring, when his uncle told him to look up. He did and has been fascinated by the architecture of Liverpool ever since. I know it inspires a mixed reaction, but I love my accent. I love scouse boys. I love the waterfront. There are plenty of things I don't like, too. But this city has a soul, and it's the soul I love. Can you fit a soul into a microwave?

2. What was your favourite childhood toy?

When I was little, I loved books and Barbie in pretty much equal measures. None of my Barbie's were called Barbie; they all had individual names, personalities, and careers. One of my Barbie's had pink and purple streaks in her crimped hair, was called Rachel, dated 'Paul' and was in medical school. I made a stack of medical textbooks out of paper for her to carry around in a bowling bag I think I got with Ken. A denim jacket I got with a different Barbie was always 'hers'. But I think my favourite thing was the house. I got it one Christmas when I was really young, along with a bunch of furniture and a plastic mat painted up to be a garden. One day, I decided I was going to run away for some reason; I packed sandwiches, a Barbie, the Barbie bed and the plastic garden. I think I planned to run away to my grandmothers, who lived about five streets away. I was always very ambitious.

3. Why do you blog? (I'm always curious why people do...)

I started blogging because I love to write, but don't have the discipline or the belief in myself (or the talent) to write anything more solid than witterings from my daily life. I persevered with it because I enjoyed it and because it really helped me to stop writing in such an academic style. Sometimes I become disillusioned with blogging because I start to question the merits of my meagre contributions to the blogosphere. I think, who would want to read this? Is this valid? Posts like "Guess what happened today, oh my God, Alfie walked into a building, and then, then, he walked out! Insert crisis here," really don't help, but I find them cathartic. Writing a post is my way of getting these thoughts organised in my head.

I've also met some wicked people through blogging and sometimes I'll write something and will look forward to someones reaction to it. If I manage to finagle a comment out of a long time lurker, or a reluctant voice like MJ, it's a great feeling. And I actually miss people when they don't comment or don't update their own blogs for a while. I suppose that at its best, blogging makes me feel connected.

4. What's the hardest lesson you ever learned?

I'm struggling to answer this one because I don't want to sound pitiful. But in the spirit of catharsis, here it is. I'm still learning this lesson. And it's this: my voice deserves to be heard. I hate the way that sounds. I don't mean that my voice is more important than anyone elses, or that I have anything phenomenally insightful or rewarding to say. What I mean to say is, I have as much right to voice my opinion as anyone else; I matter, too. This sounds like a very generic answer, so I'll flesh it out some.

It came as a revelation to me at the age of about sixteen that instead of worrying whether someone liked me, I might want to consider whether I liked them. A revelation. When I met my boyfriend at seventeen, I fell for him because he made me feel like I was worth speaking to and spending time with - he was interested in me, what I had to say; he sought out my opinion before the opinion of others, he wanted to get to know me. Plus, he was crazily hot. I couldn't believe my luck.

I was a wallflower at school. My method of survival was to keep my head down. I still walk past people I know in the street sometimes because of this, or I don't say hello to people I went to school with, because I assume they won't remember me. Once, when I came top in an exam, the teacher didn't recognise my name and had to ask who I was. There are times when I try to be invisible, to go unnoticed. In a group, I am never the loud person. I don't fight to be heard. When I am unsure of myself, I become very softly spoken; my voice drops a few octaves mid-sentence. I can feel myself doing this, but I can't stop it. I am often talked over.

I am not a doormat, I stand up for myself and for others. Sometimes, I take this to extremes, and later, I regret it.

When I was born, the younger of my two sisters was ten years old. She resented me, and still does, because she wasn't the baby anymore. She personifies the term "middle child syndrome." I made her feel like nobody loved her anymore; I've felt like an imposition my whole life. When I talk, or sometimes just by being there, I feel like I'm imposing myself on you.

In almost every relationship or group situation, I feel expendable. Wearing my heart on my sleeve with Alfie, was one of the biggest risks I've ever taken in my life. And yet I ran into it blindly, with eagerness and almost without hesitation.

5. A dinner party for you and six people, who do you invite and why? (famous, not famous, alive or dead... you can invite whoever)

Although I am sure I would enjoy a dinner party for my nearest and dearest a whole lot more, let's plunge straight into fantasy land (I'm thinking of setting up house there permanently) and go with a cast of people I will never get to meet.

Robert Kennedy. I am really interested in the Kennedy's and the Civil Rights movement and count this man as one of my heroes.

Virginia Woolf. Anyone who can sell stream-of-consciousness writing is someone I have to meet.

Homi K. Bhabha. Is it massively geeky that I have a favourite literary theorist? Wait, don't even answer that one.

Amy Winehouse. I have to invite her! You know I'm Amy's bitch.

Oscar Wilde. A blatantly obvious choice which, I feel, requires no explanation. The man went to jail for the sake of a witty riposte. That's commitment.

Kate Winslet. Completely beautiful, down to earth, and articulate.

Voila!

I think I'm a bit slow on the uptake here and everyone has already been interviewed, but if you are interested, here are the rules:

- Leave me a comment including your email address saying, “Interview me!”

- I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all. I'm real bossy like that.

- You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
- You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

- When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Kennedy: Ich bin ein Berliner...

Translation: "I am a doughnut." (Apparently rather spurious but I still like it.)



Having been inspired by Wondy - and not for the first time! - I have uploaded some of my old Berlin pics to Flickr. Not that they'll actually give you much of an insight to the city, because they're mainly of us gurning at the camera like idiots and generally looking quite rough. We were burning the candle at both ends, staying out late and having to get up at ungodly hours in pitch dark to be dragged around on orientation trips by our tutors. It was a uni trip. I was nineteen. And looking at the pictures has made me feel all nostalgic and old. But glad that I'm not still looking quite so rough. Seriously, I know I'm pale but I don't usually look like I've just been dug up. Or at least I hope not...

You'll be glad to know we did lots of cultural things too and didn't just spend our time in American diners posing for dodgy photographs - it was an educational trip after all. We had an amazing time and I would love to go back. We stayed in Schoneberg in this completely bizarre hotel. It was luck of the draw whether you got bathroom facilities or not - some people had en suites, some people (me!) had to use the communal bathrooms and others had free-standing shower units in the middle of their rooms with glass sides, so that while one person showered, the others all had to avert their eyes. (Crazy Germans.)

We went to the dodgiest nightclub, Eden, and unbeknownst to us it was a singles night. We were all walking around with these big heart stickers with numbers on them like we were at a cattle market. Then, without much ado, a male stripper cleared the dance floor and tried to make some poor innocent girl lick cream off his todger. Funnily enough I'm not in a particular rush to go back there...

We spent a lot of time around Oranienburgerstrasse and took a trip to Wannsee, which sits rather disjointedly at the edge of a housing estate. And we really got into zipping about on the subway, visiting Checkpoint Charlie - dwarfed by big shopping centres on either side - and The New Jewish Museum, which was awesome. As well as the main exhibition, which celebrates two thousand years of Jewish history, the museum has a lower floor comprised of three different axis which cut through each other. The walls of the Axis of Exile are dotted with the names of cities around the world to which Jewish people fled the Nazi regime, whilst the Axis of Holocaust depicts the names of concentration camps.

The exhibition displays all sorts of personal objects, like tea sets, hand towels and letters, and tells you what happened to the people who owned or wrote them. It was a more human treatment of the subject and made you really see the people behind all the facts and figures you're told in class - like a personal history as well as a brutal historical event. The building also has three specifically designed spaces to represent their experiences and they try to make you interact with the history as well as observing it.

One of these spaces is called The Memory Void. Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman’s (born Tel Aviv 1932) Fallen Leaves is contained within the Memory Void. Faces which seem to shriek in horror or pain, cut from metal in different shapes and sizes, form a ghastly carpet across the void’s floor. You are encouraged to walk across the faces but when we went there was just the two of us and we couldn't bring ourselves to do it.

I'd wanted to visit there since I saw a news item about its opening and I was really pleased that I got to see it. I would've liked to have spent more time in the main exhibition than we did but we were kind of having to stick to the subject matter our project was on. But I'd recommend it to anyone because it's really powerful stuff.

Oh, and we met some nutters on the subway, too. There were these two punk kids who just shouted "Fuck you, fuck you," at us, until Rach shouted "Zwanzig Euros," back in her best German accent, and there was some barmy Irish guy ranting and raving and asking for money. He stood right among our group for ages swearing his head off and then finally got off at one of the stops. My friend breathed a huge sigh of relief and this really dignified German man leaned forward and said with a wicked smile, "A friend of yours?"

Meh, I really want to go back now. The Boyf would freakin' love it.

The One

Recently I had a conversation with someone about life's funny coincidences. We all have our own experiences of them, little twists of fate that seem perfectly random yet they reunite us with old friends or drop an opportunity into our laps. One of the first movies I went to see on a date was Sliding Doors. I really liked the concept of the movie, that just by missing a train the course of our whole lives could change. It can be a bit scary too if you think about the implications of every decision we ever make. For example, seeing that film inspired my friend Li to copy Gwyneth's hairstyle, and she looked fab. But if I had made the same decision? Now that would have been SCARY.

One of the most bizarre coincidences that ever happened to me was when I was 17. Years before, I'd picked up an old astrology book at a second hand book fair. It was full of all kinds of things, about mapping your birth chart (the position of the planets when you were born), numerology, handwriting analysis etc. The numerology section used your name and birthdate to give you an insight into your character and the possibilities for your future. Now, it's not that I'm a great believer in this sort of thing but I try to keep an open mind and mostly I just think it's a bit of fun. Ultimately, I think we all control (to a certain extent) who we are and where we're going. Anyway, a few weeks after I met the love of my life I came across the book again tucked away in a storage crate at the back of my wardrobe. I told my boyfriend about the fun, silly nights I'd had with my friends trying out all the different things in there and he asked me to tell him his future. The easiest thing to do was the numerology of his name and birthdate, so I turned to that section and got out a pen and paper. Then I noticed something and could not believe what I saw. There was no need for me to work out the numerology of my boyfriend's name. It was already in the book as the example they used to show you how to do it. My boyfriend didn't believe me and thought I was playing a trick on him at first. It's not like he has the most unusual of names, but I still think it's kind of funny that even though I didn't know it at the time, an astrology book I picked up second hand told me the name of my first love.

Pixies

Apparently, at some point I've done too much research for my essay. When I was little my mum and dad used to play a game with me to get me to eat my dinner; they'd turn away and I'd snaffle something off the plate, then they'd pretend to be shocked and I'd tell them the pixie must have eaten it. I think something similar must have been going on when I did all this research! If the pixies want to write the essay for me too I'd be more than happy. Anyway, shopping news, lets get our priorities straight! Gorgeous jade peep toe shoes have been identified. As has the cutest bikini known to man. Saving up commences! The shoes were spotted on a shopping trip in town last week. We also had lunch at the American diner where the half price jewellers used to be, it was proper nice! I'm a sucker for a good ice-creamy milkshake though. More later as I'm forcing myself to work!