Oh, Baby

When I'm not complaining about the PhD and part-time work, I also sometimes manage to see my friends. "Yay!" I hear you cry. "Quit whining, woman, and tell us the other stuff!" Well, this month, I got to see my two very best friends. The ones that live in different continents - one in America, and one in Australia. These are the friends that changed my life; the women that made me who I am. They inspire, challenge, support and love me.  They've seen me through my very lowest points and celebrate with me during the best of times. They're also intelligent, hilarious, witty, generous and kind, and they're all mine. No, you can't have them. They are all mine. All...for....me.

We're at the stage now where we don't always get to stay in contact with each other as much as we would like, but we always pick up from exactly where we left off. Thank the gods for facebook and skype, but nothing beats being in the same room with them. When I knew that they were coming home, nothing but death was going to keep me at home. I would have shot the laptop and set fire to my place of work if I'd had to. Not only were my two favourite women coming home, but one of them was bringing her twin baby girls with her for their christening. I say "christening", but it was more like a gathering, and it was the reason for a mini-exodus to my friend's family house. She's from a big family, and after a shared friendship with her siblings (and more recently, her parents) for many years, they feel like my family, too. I also jumped at the chance to visit them all at home for the first time, and get a picture of me on the tractor before I left. Mission accomplished.

Meeting the twins was like meeting celebrities. I've known about them since...let's call her Fransisca....first became pregnant and discovered it was twins. I watched her get bigger on skype and facebook and sympathised with her as her pregnancy was not easy in the least. But the excitement...oh, the excitement of knowing that Fransisca and her husband had actually made human beings, and they were going to be born, was electric. For the first time, I regretted my choice of taking on the PhD because I really, really wanted to go and help. She lives in Oz, after all, and while she lives with her lovely husband...erm....Lazarou, there's only two of them. I wished I could help the adults outnumber the babies. Six hands is better than four, and all that. Moving to Oz not being an option, I had to wait for the christening to meet them and help them and hug them and kiss them.

I'm not articulate enough to communicate effectively the tidal wave of emotion that I experienced when I first saw them. It was in the early hours of a Friday morning when they were brought out from their room, in the arms of their parents, and the second I clapped eyes on Beautiful One, and then Beautiful Two, I was hooked. They were instantly the most interesting people I had ever met, and the most fun, and the most endearing. Your best friend's babies are more addictive than crack - fact. I would have foregone a week of passion with Benedict Cumberbatch for them. A week in Rome, with an Aston Martin DB9, in a five-star hotel, on sheets made from gold and silk and money in a room filled with the British Museum, while the Prima Porta statue of Augustus looked on. No thanks, Cumberbatch, I've twins to meet. Everything the babies did fascinated me. They have so much personality already; no surprises there, really. I spent the next few days watching them, trying to make them laugh, playing with them, being completely enamoured by them. I loved it. And it was during this time that I came to realise something; this is probably never going to happen for me.

There was no wailing or gnashing of teeth with this realisation; I'm vocal about not wanting to have children, and now, I feel like the places I had on reserve for children have been taken up by Beautiful One and Beautiful Two. And when my other friend who lives in America....I'm going to call her Barbara Bel Geddes...has babies, it will be the same. I'm not in a relationship. I'm not looking for one. I'm 37, and the window of time for viable fertility is getting smaller and smaller - and I can feel it. My body is changing, and it really doesn't cost me any thought (apart from being damn annoying and inconvenient) or make me despair for The Life Not Lived. It's not my style. I'm just glad to be here. Everything else is a bonus. I don't have a plan for procreation, and it's not something I ever wanted to pursue for its own sake. Now, I imagine that this blog entry could be quite different if I, like Fransisca, were married to a long-term boyfriend, but I'm not. And even then, to be honest, it would be a difficult decision to make, and there's a heavy chance that the answer would still be no.

But my word, do I love being Cool Aunt Fall Girl. I love it so much, it's been hard to think about other stuff since I came back home. It's a strange sensation, to have your primal drive for reproduction totally taken care of by your friend's babies, but that's the closest I can come to describing the experience. I am so grateful to Fransisca and Lazarou (bloody hell) for making the mammoth trip to come home and let me have time with those two little incredi-babies, and to Barbara Bel Geddes for being here too. Even if I did cry all over her. Oh wait - I cried all over a few people. Sorry guys. I will pray for more time with you, if you guys pray for me to get some decent cash together so I can come and see you. Just when I thought I couldn't love either of you more, this happens. Who's the luckiest Fall Girl in the world? I am.

In Which I Discover That My Part-Time Job Is Ruining My PhD

Ok so, if you've been reading my last few posts, you'll know that it's been tricky to balance working part-time and try to move on with my studies. Well, I've been doing some thinking, and I've realised that part-time retail work and the PhD are not compatible. I'm going to have to put some time into looking around for something more suitable, and I'm really going to have to get going on looking for funding elsewhere.

Part-time retail work sounds ideal as a part-time job, doesn't it? I certainly thought that it was a workable option. After more than a year of trying to balance both, it turns out that nothing is further from the truth. Retail is not a nice little money earner on the side. I'm sure you, dear reader, have your own experiences of what the service industry is like to work in. The petty politics, implicit bullying, power struggles, flagrant flouting of employment rights, the crap wage.....yada yada yada. You all know the drill, I'm sure. I'm blue in the face trying to explain that I am not free to cover days off at work because So-and-So needs that day to go somewhere/doss/feels like staying at home.  And "It's just for a few hours" doesn't matter. A four-hour shift might seem like nothing to anyone who isn't studying, but it is the guts of the day to a researcher. And equally, I can't say no to everything. I have to be somewhat flexible and help when I can, most especially at our busiest times. I don't mind this. I'm a conscientious person. But work is getting my best work, so to speak. Dealing with criminally rude/ignorant customers, trying to lift more than my body weight every week and dealing with all the other total nonsense that comes with retail work is starting to seriously affect everything else in my life. And no, I'm not being dramatic.

Yeah yeah, Fall Girl, I hear you say. You're repeating yourself; what's the answer? Well, the answer may lie in actually starting to make the jump between Student Who Desperately Needs A Part-Time Wage to Graduate Student Who Can Actually Cobble Together A Module To Teach At The Local College. The money would be better, the work would be directly related to my studies and there would be more flexibility. I wouldn't have to keep saying no to the really important events that happen at the university on the days I work. I'm going to have a go at applying for the most hard-won award for arts grads, the IRCHSS.  (HA! Goodbye, sanity.) The thing is, I don't feel like a PhD student. I feel like someone who works part time and sometimes gets the chance to research, and that is not a tenable situation at all. It's shit, in fact. As much as it kills me to admit this even to myself, something has to give and dear God, I do not want it to be my PhD.

I need money. I need to bring in a wage every month, end of story. The grant is not enough to live off; believe me, I've tried.  When my grant cheque does come in, it's much needed for bills. Rent, direct debits, winter clothes, all the stuff that builds up that my minimum wage can't take care of. And of course, here comes Christmas. Wonderful, fun, insanely expensive, busiest- time- at- work Christmas. I love it, but as I host Christmas for my family, I'm already getting slightly stressed out about working full time for a few weeks and trying to get Christmas dinner made. It nearly killed me last year - but that dinner was totally worth it, even if I do say so myself. It was fricking delicious. It would also be nice to see some of my friends, but I'm not hopeful. Work is way too crazy during that time, and lack of sleep or having a few drinks is not an option when I'll be in work almost every day. Ten years ago, sure, but not now. Stress does not make me the most sociable of people, either. Best to wait for the New Year.

So, I write this entry under a bit of a cloud. My plan is not working, but I'm glad to be able to recognise it. I will keep you posted of course....and could I ask for a favour? Wish me luck. I'll totally return the favour when you need it.☺

Why Julia Gillard Rules; How to Own the Opposition

Have a look at this. It is a master class on how to own the boy's club.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-09/julia-gillard-attacks-abbott-of-hypocrisy/4303634

There's a new woman in town.

MALE???

I just noticed that my profile said I was male.....



..............news to me.


Sheesh.

I can't get started

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a PhD student. Cut to montage of me, walking around generic university campus, in the Autumn, with fabulous Autumn outfit, carrying books to and fro the lecture hall.  The reality isn't quite the same.

Cut to montage of me, in my flat, wearing years-old jeans and worn t-shirt, staring at the screen blankly and beginning to panic. Cut to me, wondering what the hell is going on and who's in charge here? Surely someone must know what I'm doing? Surely this -this - isn't the process? Panicking about sounding like an idiot, worrying about my horrific lack of writing skills, being terrified by bibliography and the mountain of research that I just can't link up? I thought my everyday life would magically change. I thought that there would be some great secret I would learn; some wonderful and elegant serenity that would enter my life on acceptance to the doctoral programme. Nope.

I really, really love the premise of my PhD. I love it. I'll give a tiny hint; it involves me capitalising on my life-long love, scary stuff. That's all you're getting, by the way. But when you've spent the first year going one century previous to the one you really wanted to study, things start to get confusing. When you don't actually get to do what you thought you would, you get a bit disenchanted. When you have to deliver your work in a departmental review and you get torn to shreds, you begin to lose hope. You realise that you don't really have a bloody clue what you're doing or how you ended up at this point. You wonder when the email or letter will come that tells you that your efforts were appreciated, but this PhD business is obviously not for you - because it is hard, rigourous, arduous and quite often, boring.

I'm not anything like near enough to where I thought I'd be at this point. I've had to change the direction of my thesis and it still feels like I'm running uphill with my legs bound. There are a few reasons for this, of course.

I have to work part time or starve. I don't have unlimited funding, and time is running out for that. I work three days a week, leaving four for PhD work. Wonderful, right? And it is...it is in no way ideal, but it's not as bad as it could be. The problem is, I am usually wrecked after three days of heavy lifting, sticking a false smile on my face for 8 hours at a time and all the other tiny factors that add up to make work so tiring. Trying to get motivated to do some PhD work on those days is almost impossible. And those days are immovable from week to week. So every single week, I know exactly where I will be. It's hard to get time off and I can't afford it anyway, which leads to another problem.

Doing the same thing, day in, day out, whether for the PhD or work, can be wearing and soul destroying. There is very little variation. Both are demanding and knackering.  I don't have the funds to go anywhere or do anything special. No holidays. Big deal, really; holidays don't bother me so much. It's the gradual grinding down of my motivation and energy, which most people in Ireland are going through as well.

I am one of the luckiest  people living in Ireland today. I don't owe the bank anything more than my credit card balance, which is the smallest I could get. I don't have children that I can't afford to send to school, or college, or feed or clothe. I have not been made redundant and I don't have to work harder for less money and cope with cuts made by the government. My bills, and my needs, are small. It will be a struggle to get funding, that's a given. As I get older, it's harder and harder to keep going and balance about 20 balls in the air. All the frustrating and time-consuming stuff like house work, food shopping, bill paying and everything else, gets done by me.  But there's a kind of freedom in that I don't rely on anyone else to do what I have to do.  I like the feeling of independence and capability I get when I pay my rent, or pay off a bill, or take care of business. So what's the problem?

I'm worn out. I can't fake it till I make it, this week. There have been a few too many upheavals to my routine lately that I can't seem to get over. I had absolutely no money left after paying my rent and my bills this week. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. I don't care too much, once there's food in the fridge and the library is open.  But this time, it feels like failure on my part. Like  this is how it will always be; struggle and knock - back and struggle and knock-back, and I'm not sure any more if it's worth it.

I usually feel like this just before a renewed burst of energy. What goes up, must come down, and all that. But I'm sharing this because - well hey, that's what a blog is for, right? - I'm going to paraphrase a well-known saying. Be careful what you wish for. If you get it, you will get all the problems and difficulties that go with it too.  And you better get used to sucking up how tired you feel, or how bored, or how much you really might just want to run away as fast as your legs can carry you.

If you manage to do that, please tell me how.

"So how come a nice girl like you is single?"

"Because fuck you, that's why."


As I rapidly approach my fortieth year, I realise that there is much to celebrate.  I have a nice apartment, I'm studying for my PhD - hellish as it can be, it's pretty interesting - I have great friends, a part-time job and I've achieved quite a lot of the things I wanted to achieve. I'm looking forward to finishing my doctorate and doing a bit more travel, I might actually get around to writing that novel I've been threatening to write since age 12, and hopefully, the economic climate and a nice academic job will mean that I can finally start driving and build my own place. So, all in all, I'm a relatively happy camper. Independent, enjoying my life, still crazy after all these years.

Still, the question I am most frequently asked is "So are you doing a line with anyone? No? Would you not get yourself a nice fella?" People who ask me this question are blissfully unaware of how insulting it is. They don't mean to be insulting, of course; they're asking without thinking so they can mentally slot me into a category they're familiar with. I'm and adult woman, therefore I must have one of these three things going on:

A) Have a boyfriend

B) Be married

C) Have children


I have realised that the polite way to answer this question is not the reply I have written above - no matter how much I want to say it. I'm usually frustrated enough to say that, because the truth is that the last three years of being single have been my happiest. Ever. When I realised that my long-term relationship was not going to work, I ended it, moved back home, found a new place to live and started applying for the PhD and the grant.  I reconnected with old friends and my family and danced with joy when my application to university was accepted. (PAH!! What a naive, trusting fool I was!) As difficult, financially, as that first year of living by myself was, I loved it. I woke up every day with Aretha Franklin in my bedroom doing jazz hands and singing "Freedoooom.....Freedoooooom, woah FREEEDOOOOOOMM" from Think. Candi Staton was in the kitchen singing "Young Hearts Run Free" and winking at me while I made toast and tea in my pyjamas.

There's a very strange assumption, usually made by people in couples (in my experience) that if you are single, there is something missing. If you're single and 37, you obviously must be tearing your hair out. I've been asked all manner of very personal questions by people, innocently trying to understand or ascertain why I'm single. I'm not alone; I have a few friends who are also single, and we constantly grumble about getting the worst seating at weddings. We get the Weird Table. You know the one, it was Table 13 in The Wedding Singer. We can't sit with all our friends who are in couples - and who are all laughing uproariously - while we get stuck talking to the weird uncle who's obviously still very much a virgin at 50, who keeps looking at our cleavage and being seriously inappropriate. The worst assumption is that if you're single, you must be desperate. If you go out with your friends and some kid who just learned to shave hits on you, and you completely ignore that, as any sane woman would, you're too picky. (This recently happened. I kid you not.) And if you spurn these advances enough - advances from guys that you'd think twice about saying "hello" to, never mind sleep with) then the "problem" of being single is yours, and you're being your own worst enemy.

Trying to explain that it is your choice to be single is rarely believed, either. I choose to be single until I meet someone whom I genuinely like. Who seems like good fun. Someone who's enjoying their life, has nice manners, likes Hammer Horror films and thinks that the British Museum is a really cool place to go. That's really it. I'm not waiting for some Mr. Darcy/James Bond/Prince Charming type of fictional character. That said, I'm also not going to waste any time on guys who I know from the get-go are not going to work out for me. I'm not going to ignore all I've learned for the sake of saying that I'm going out with somebody. Not even for a really kick-ass seat at a wedding.


Not everyone is suited to being single. It can be tough, having to fend for yourself. At times, I would certainly appreciate having another pair of hands around the house, to do the cooking/housework/washing/ while I tear my hair out over PhD rewrites. It would be great to have someone else take the time to pay the bills and do the food shopping. Especially when I'm sick. But even when I was in relationships, I never had all my needs met at the exact time that I had needs. It was hard work and compromise, if memory serves, not hearts and flowers and nurture all day.


 And I know this to be an inalienable truth - I was far more lonely in the wrong relationship than I have ever been, for any amount of time, in the single years.

The Alarming Rise of the Ultra-Fuck.


I love pop music as much (if not a little more) than the next person. I'm a music whore; I need it like water. It's one of my top pleasures of life, and it's not just pop music. I was part of the grunge generation. I turned 17 in 1992, when my best going-out outfit was a pair of drainpipe jeans that I bought in a second-hand shop, a cast-off, grey wool jumper that belonged to my brother before me and had holes in it, and a cheap, rip-off pair of oxblood Doc Marten shoes. I loved that outfit. The jumper reached my knees and made me feel tiny and girly. The jeans were tight, but served more as denim leggings under the enormous jumper. The shoes, unlike the real Docs, didn't weigh a ton and I could dance about in them until sun-up. It was heaven.

Being a part of that generation means that I was privy to the influences of the women that made music from the mid-seventies and beyond. Kate Bush was, and still is, a huge part of my life. My dad used to regale me with tales about my reaction to Wuthering Heights being played on the radio when I was in my cot. I used to stand up, ramrod-straight, gasp, and shush everyone so I could hear it. Kate made incredible albums stuffed with songs about commitment phobia, science, sex, adultery and the sky, and she did it intelligence, wit and genius.  Siouxsie Sioux sang about Pompeii, other countries and beauty queens, and looked like nothing I had ever seen before. All flapper dress and heavy eye make-up, you just knew by looking at her that she had some serious opinions and could cut great dance moves. Grace Jones released Island Life, and I desperately wanted to be French.


I am forever grateful that I grew up with these icons. I'm thrilled that I never had to be subjected to the level of cold eyed, joyless ultra fuck girls that dominate popular culture and the music industry. Oh, we had 'em back then, believe me, but not at the saturation point that we have now. Of these girls, Rihanna appears to be the ring-leader. She's what I call the Ultra-Fuck. Anytime, anywhere, come on give it to me baby gi-gi-give it to me baby. Do it. Do It To Me. I'll do whatever you want because I love sex. I love sex so much, I'll sing about it as if I'm describing what it's like to pluck a chicken. I won't interject my emotions, thoughts or opinions about sex, because I am the Ultra-Fuck. I don't have pesky emotions. I have a body and that's all you need, right?

Everything is being done to Rihanna and she'll apparently love it, no matter what it is. There is no examination of the act. This is not Symphony in Blue, by Kate Bush: "The more I think about sex, the better it gets/here we have a purpose of life/good for the blood circulation/good for releasing the tension/the root of all reincarnations." The lyrics of Rude Boy don't quite measure up. Kate writes about sex as something she enjoys, appreciates and hey! It's good for your health! She's engaging with it as a woman, not as a blank canvas from the world of porn - hairless, joyless and dead-eyed. When did sex become a one-way street? When did the joy of it get removed, to be replaced with this sad, paltry, soulless nonsense? Is it based on an assumption that this is what men want? "Men" being the homogenous, amalgamous mass of football-lovers-Zoo-readers-women-haters? I asked some male friends. They're about as sick of the Ultra-Fuck girls and their ringleader as I am. Some of them have daughters and they don't like the influence of hypersexualisation on little girls who haven't quite mastered the alphabet. Some of them are not into that type of music and wouldn't watch a Rihanna video if you paid them. And some of them are Kate Bush fans.

Rihanna is not responsible for the world's ills, or the hypersexual content of pop music videos and lyrics as a whole. I get it, I know that. I would be a happy camper if she wrote about what she actually thinks about sex, or fancying people, or how you can't catch your breath when you're sitting beside someone you really, really fancy and you haven't kissed yet.  If there was some sort of exchange going on, where you could evince some kind of emotion from the music, then cool! I know that sex sells, and that's the issue that really bugs me. Rihanna is selling the type of sexual behaviour that I find the most depressing - she's disengaged. She's a body, looking for another body to hump. Most of her back catalogue seems to be about really depressing sexual encounters, where she needs a guy to "work her over" or "give it to her" or compare her to "a ride as smooth as a limousine". Why depressing? Because that's all she says. It's as if she read a lad's mag and modeled her sexual repetoire on that. Or as if she rang up Katie Price and asked for tips on how to appeal to the sort of man you wouldn't leave the dog with.

The best songs about sex and love, from Kate to Jeff Buckley to Fleetwood Mac (Tango In The Night is a crazy sexy album) communicate the frisson, the wonder, the life-affirming joy of it all. Everybody Here Wants You, by Jeff Buckley, can stop anyone with a pulse in their tracks.  Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is another; all harmony, sensuality and anticipation. So I don't buy, not for one nanosecond, that Rihanna and her ilk are empowering themselves by singing about one-way sex while wearing nothing and staring at the camera with a hardened expression.  If your albums sound like you've had a series of one-night stands after a bout of heavy drinking, then there's something missing. If your demographic is under the age of 13, it's appalling.  Like it or not, the pop girls are role models. They just are, end of. They might not like it, but they don't get to choose. I've heard the arguments that all of this can be traced back to "Like A Virgin", and of course, the seeds for all this were sown while I was still in primary school. Is the origin of hypersexualisation so important? It's happening now, in more explicit ways that most of us could have guessed at. And my exposure to Madonna consisted of MTUSA, Top of the Pops, and Smash Hits magazine. That was it. Because we didn't have MTV, or the internet, or boundless other music stations, my exposure to Madge prancing about in a wedding dress with a dude in a lion mask was minimal. No facebook, no youtube, no social media. And there is no way in hell I would have been allowed out of the house dressed as Madonna. I think my mother would still take umbrage at that now. I'm 37.

I think that things are changing. I can feel it in my waters. We've got Florence Welch, we're bound to get more girls who write pop songs about stuff and things that happen to them and loads of other bits and pieces. Girls who put on whatever they feel like, and dance about, and express joy at being alive. I'll order two big fat helpings of that, please. I'll take ten of whatever female recording artists are producing that I would be happy to see a seven-year-old lepping about to, male or female. Let's just draw a veil over the sex-bots, shall we? Let's just remove that influence that "men" only want that kind of stuff and that "women" have to comply to get a man. Let's just look at it for what it really is and walk away laughing. And stick on a Kate Bush album.