‘Safe’

As a uni student, we are told to undertake several writing challenges a week which I find incredibly stimulating and love doing it. I feel it lets my creativity out more, as a writer. One task this week was to take three different texts and muddle them together somehow. So, I took the lyrics of one of my favourite songs (Eric Church: Springsteen), a transcript of the diaologue from the new Haribo Starmix advert, and of course a line from one of the best TV shows, Firefly, which I then expanded on and just used the content.

I muddled all these together and came up with taking the form/layout of lyrics, a title ‘Gold Bears’ which the head business woman with a child’s voice squeaks out to her colleague in the Haribo advert, and the content and setting of that particular Firefly episode. I thought I’d put it up on here for other people to read, critique and leave their thoughts on, whether silently or type it away on your keyboard to me. If it’s any matter, here it is:

The character with strong stature and rustic thick brown hair
Wears a maroon shirt covered with lightly coloured braces
His boots say something of menace in his walk
Like a man who knows how to reason with evil folk
When it comes to it

The other, a tall muscular man with ashen, wire-like hair
Stands apart from him, the gloves he wears ones of
Good wear and tear, designed to protect the fleshy hand
From wary destruction of what he’s handling
In this instance: cattle

The cattle roam and they rumble
About the hovercraft that these men of goodwill have captivated them inside
Like shipmen, they boast and they banter about the rickety
Structure that is the first man’s dream and home:
Its name holds up like a beaconed torch of light: Serenity

One wise, and one a mercenary type, they unite as space tradesman
Prattling around the orbits of space with their crew
Both happy, both unhappy
Their lives are located on this ship
And nowhere else

Having landed on a distant rural planet
They get set and ready for the makers they’re about to meet
That is, the makers of their privy fortune
Having not eaten actual food for weeks, they were rather peckish
‘Alas’, they thought, ‘finally some hands on a bit of wealth?!’

The first, with his bare and brawny hands, pulled the lever
And warned the second to keep clear of the cattle,
Not to get sorely trampled
The reverse door mechanically opened
Like an old time earth bound garage

The cattle stampeded out of the large gateway
Their clackaty hooves banging down hard on the floor
Out onto the dusty sandpath and into the fenced pen
Ready for them to eat and graze
And eat and graze

The mercenary type, the burly one, held a whip in his strong arms
And smacked each cattle, one by one
Eager to get them off the ship
The stench was by far enough for him

‘Y’know they walk just as easy if you lead ‘em’ the first told him
A sense of quirked amusement in his voice
The second, merely looked back at him, a gleam in his eye
‘I like smackin’ ‘em’ he protested
Whilst the first only rolled his eyes

Finally done, and with the loading deck squandered in cowpat
The two stretched their legs onto unfamiliar planet soil
The braces around the first hung tight
And the heat made him sweat through his shirt
Everything on this planet was burning

With the trade’s cash in mind
The first rotated the field
Looking for the men he desperately wanted to see
So they could give him his money
And get the hell off this planet so he could eat

You may say it falls flat at the end. I know this, but I only had 300-450 words to use up but, hey, if you’re intrigued why not watch the actual episode? This particular one is called ‘SAFE’ – it’s brilliant. You should watch it.
And, if anybody’s slightly confused over the sources I’ve used, I’ve taken the liberty of posting them up here for you just in case. All you have to do is follow the link.

• Haribo Starmix Advert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9scm3NCIH_E
• Eric Church, Springsteen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2gGXlW6wSY
• ‘I like smackin’ ’em!’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txyRpGT3ZZM

TTFN.x

Held Under Fire

As a mature, accomplished 19 year old university student, I have come home to a cold house under a seize of fire.

Currently, there are roughly 4-5 large, loud and extremely hyper 7 year olds running around the house, along the hallways, up and down the stairs; they’ve even built themselves a highly strategic fort in the living room so sofas have been moved around and I can’t get into the food cupboards. I cannot even reach my tea – so I’m saying goodbye to hot beverages and may have to resort to walking swiftly out to the shops every time I want a drink. These 7 year olds – or that is how they appear to be anyway – are in actual fact nearly grown men, around the ages of 17-19 years old.

They are incredibly loud.
They keep bursting into my bedroom, unannounced, screaming my name, and demanding I join them in their Nerfgun battle to the death. I don’t want to die today.

Despite being sold and marketed towards kids, those bullets seriously hurt if they speed headlong into say your eye.

Mal is happy though. Despite being ran through with bullets she’s taken to running round the house with them, attempting to play too.
What a right little soldier. She’s my little Browncoat.

But then they stepped on her.

Basically, this was me.

So I went crazy. She’s shut up inside my room with me now, hiding under the bed.

Mal down!

Ruh-R’oh!

Mal (my cat) is currently sat on the stairs, and going into certain rooms of the house at different intervals positively HOWLING as if in pain.

I was so worried. I took her to the vets when I found certain medical unfamiliars oozing out of her orifices and found her in the hallway crouching in what looked like very uncomfortable positions. I was seriously worried sick. I thought something must be seriously wrong.

I took her to the vets immediately! She was so quiet on the journey there – I’d never heard her make less noise! She was starting to freak me out, big time. I thought perhaps the ghost in our student house had taken hold of her and was making her little life hell. She is only five months old, so as a proud new mummy I was panic stricken. Mummies cannot have their babies upset! (Yes. I think of her as my child.)

The vet, after lots of prodding and uncomfortable poking – and a temperature check that Mal certainly did NOT appreciate – resolved the situation calmly by telling me Mal is merely in heat. 

 

SHE WANTS BABIES. SHE WANTS TO GET FRISKY WITH OTHER MALE KITTIES.
Oh, my God. Heavens. Mercy. WHAT NEXT?!

This was taken when she was just a baby!

 

I was not expecting this. My little girly… is all grown up!
Her howling is a result of her female cries for a willing mate. Well, if I have anything to do with it – and I am her mother – no willing mates will be coming near her! She is only a baby – my baby!

I can’t believe after all of that (I was expecting the vets just to give her antibiotics for a urinary tract) all she wants to do is get rather amarous with other kitties!

I
am
shocked.

Gorramin’ cat!

 

Supernatural Ghosties

Recently, our student house has become spooked with tales of ghost stories. Particularly last night when we spent almost two hours in my dark bedroom by candlelight talking about the supernatural and all that. Weird coincidences, supernatural sightings and super freaky dreams. It had us hooked.
And so lately, we are determined that in our house we have a ghost. We’re not sure if they are a friendly run-of-the-mill Casper kind of ghost, or a ‘I will haunt you to your doom’ ghost, but even so, my boyfriend and I were scared enough to run upstairs holding hands asking our youngest female room mate if we could sleep in her room for the night. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, I am ashamed to admit that that move right there is particularly wussy – even if there was a freaking ghost in our house.

If we do have a ghost, I hope he just does this

     We have not much evidence as of yet that we house a ghost in our humble abode, but we have a fair few reasons why we believe: I’ll let you read them, see what you think.

• I have frequently emerged out of my bedroom to find my key has been taken out of the lock and is on the floor. This almost always happens when nobody else is home. Once it happened at night time, and I was, well, a little freaked out.
• A few weeks ago, we were sat in the living room watching television (because we live the student life the hell up) and Mal, my kitten, came running in like a zooming spacecraft! She probably thought she was in a space shuttle like in Firefly. She suddenly ran into a standstill and arched her back up as high as she could and started hissing like crazy at something in the corner of the room. We couldn’t see it, whatever she was hissing at. But she was so freaked out. They say animals have a weird sense of these things, or whatever.
• And just today, my roommate, Sam, was about to go out… (continue down!)

I heard him muttering behind me, cursing, but I was working so left him to it. I leave him to mutter about a lot of things really. Usually, they’re not very important. But he turned around, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “No way, Emily, I am not even joking. Look at this.” He showed me a funeral director’s card that had come from his pocket.
“Yeah, so what?” I answered.
“This was in my pocket. It was not in there yesterday because I always walk with my hands in my pockets. Why the hell would I put a funeral director’s card in my pocket?”
I suggested to him that maybe he did it when he was drunk. He adamantly replied no.
“I was wearing it yesterday and it wasn’t there. And I haven’t been drunk since new year’s. I didn’t put this in here.”
We looked at each other and, well maybe because we like the heightened drama, we wailed and exclaimed “AH GHOOOOST” at each other. I’m hoping it was a roommate playing a joke on him. He went out and then rang me about five minutes later. And he said that he’d found another funeral director’s card in his trouser pocket this time.
“I kid you not,” he said. “Where the hell are these coming from?!”

     So, either it’s one of us playing a joke on him (which I really hope it is), or this house ghost has ordered him a death wish.
Creepy.

Hobbying Around

Hello! Excuse the awful, awful pun I named as a title, but I couldn’t resist.

I’ve compiled a list of hobbies I enjoy doing. Some may not be qualified as hobbies – my boyfriend is adamant that one particular thing on my list is not a hobby. I’ll just go ahead and let you guess which one that’s going to be.

1. Reading & Books:

It really muddles my mind when friends of mine claim they have “no books to their name”. How can you not have at least one book on your shelf, or in your wardrobe tucked away, under your bed, at least? Come on, at least get a dictionary. It doesn’t have to be a big one, just a little one you may have received as a going away present from school. (Nobody else’s school did that? No?)
I seriously love my books. I love them so much that I keep them in a glass cabinet so they can remain untouched by sticky mayonnaise fingers and unrelenting dust that spirals downwards to fall onto my pretty pages; they remain locked under my guard. Straight up, I full on panic if my books start to discolour and go brown.
I may be a little control-freak over them, but I don’t care. I cry if the pages get ripped.

Once, one fine lady Jeanette Winterson recited:

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”

This is ultimately how I feel.

2. Tea drinking:

Drinking tea is a passionate hobby of mine. It’s so perfect – because you can do it alongside other hobbies! Like reading! (Nudge, wink, cheeky face ;D ) I drink any tea that is on offer. When I’m at home, I drink largely peppermint tea because it tastes so good, especially out of a Spongebob Squarepants thermos flask. When I go home from university, I drink either classic caffeinated breakfast tea or herbal infusions berry tea because I always forget to bring my peppermint teabags with me.
When I go to my boyfriend’s house, I drink any tea his mother has in the cupboards, which can range from peppermint and liquorice, and lemongrass tea to deep jasmine tea. My tea hobbying has become so bad that I’ve taken to going to Tea Festivals where I can make my own teabags, and I also stash whatever teabags I can into my bag before leaving a home that isn’t my own.
Apparently, things can only get worse.

3. My Cat:

Her name is Mal and due to date she is now four iddybiddy months old and getting cheekier everyday! She is my little life companion, and I will admit that I go around the house calling her baby and giving her pretty much everything on my plate at dinner times. This photo of her was taken a couple weeks after I got her.
She is named after Malcolm Reynolds from the American sci-fi TV show Firefly. This way, she can say her name wherever she goes. If she scratches at the door, we will say, “Who is it?” and she will answer her name: “Mal!” If she’s naughty, which she so often is (came home yesterday to find the Christmas tree was on the floor, with the decorations ALSO all over the floor) we’ve taken to swearing at her like the characters from Firefly , “Gorram it, Mal!” I am sorry to those of you who aren’t Firefly fans; this may well mean complete nonsense to you!
She keeps me company throughout the days when I am off work, and cuddles me next to my head when I sleep, pillow to pillow.

5. Knitting:

It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve not yet really mastered its complexities. And I know anybody who knits will probably just laugh at that sentence because knitting is hardly so complicated. But, for me, it is 😦 I so want to knit a really cool hat or little booties for my cat. I can get so far a straight line stitch, but I’m afraid that is it. I don’t want to have to wait until I’m an old lady to begin knitting. I want to do it now! I have the wool, and I have the knitting needles. I have some really nice gold ones I picked up from a charity shop which are LUSH. But ever since my sister’s chihuahua decided to take a cheeky whizz on my lovely, baby pink ball of yarn, I have been on standby with my knitting efforts.

6. Writing:

I am a writer. I have always loved writing, and ever since I was 12 I always knew that I wanted to be an author. And I will be an author, one day, even if that only means writing a book and failing to ever get it published. I am still an author, because I have written a book. With my name creeping into more published works, my future is looking shiny. That at least, I hope. I sincerely hope. My secret worlds inside me are sometimes dull, sometimes bleak but for the best of times they are always looking bright.