Internet! Internet! OMG INTERNET!

I've got internet! Wheeeee! No this isn't some kind of alternate reality timey-wimey situation of me having turned into the sort of person who points at the sky when a plane goes overhead (mind you, did a fair bit of that when Trainboy was little and obsessed with helicopters). Basically, due to no money, we have had No Internet for over a week. And it was horrible.

Now I'm quite old. I spent my teens and my twenties in a world where they Hadn't Invented the Internet, and I didn't die or anything. There were books. There was going to one club and picking up a load of flyers at the end of the night inviting you to other clubs of a similar nature. There was the phone to huddle over for hours wittering aimlessly at my friends with only periodic interruptions from one or other parent reminding me that they might want to use the phone as well. There was keeping a diary and pretending to be reluctant to let other people read it.

But these days, having No Internet is miserable, alienating, almost crippling. You don't know what anyone else is doing, even if they mean to tell you, because you can't get at your email, or your Facebook. You haven't got an almost-instant answer to any weird question your offspring hurl at you. You can't work out the way to get from one side of London to the other on buses (because you can't afford to go by train) without roaming round every suburb you ever heard of.

Thank fuck for internet cafes. Particularly the cheap rubbish one up the road, who see me stumble through the doors and whip out the portable disc thingy all ready for me, now that they have had a week of me whining that none of their in-situ disc drivers work.

Mind you, internet cafes are getting... well, does anyone remember when they were really EXCITING? And you could get cappucinos and cupcakes and even a beer or two while you logged onto Usenet or sent a tentative E-Mail to a friend on the other side of the world? These days you have to step over the pitbulls to get to a terminal,and generally sit between someone negotiating the full horror of an online loan company's interest rate or someone trying to word a drug-selling ad that won't get them chucked off Ebay.

Time for a bit of feminism

You have been warned, well you will have been warned if you read the introductory bit, that this blog might sometimes smell of feminism. If the possibility bothers you then feel free to fuck off. And not come back.

I would also like to observe good online manners here and advise that the following might be distressing, so if you are sensitive (and I am going to use the phrase Trigger Warning), you might want to skip this post and maybe read the funny ones instead. Here's a harmless picture if you need to hop off the page quickly.

Anyway, in the light of the Mumsnet We Believe You campaign
(I would link but I am stupid tonight and can't make links work)
Here's some thoughts about rape, and rape myths.

I haven't been raped. Yet. One in four women have, which means it might happen before I die. Not having been raped yet doesn't mean I'm better, smarter, tougher than those women who have. Nor does it mean I'm uglier. I've just been luckier so far. I haven't met a rapist.
I've gone out, worn skimpy clothes and heels, got apocalyptically drunk and walked home alone. I've been lucky, I didn't meet a rapist.
I've crashed out at house parties surrounded by drunk men, but they weren't rapists.
I've snogged men, danced with them, laughed with them, invited them into my home and let them stay over despite only having known them a couple of hours, but they haven't been rapists.
I've started having sex with men, realised I haven't got a condom, or I feel sick, or for whatever reason I just don't want to carry on, so I've asked them to stop, and they've stopped. Because they were not rapists.

If I had, at any point over the years, been raped, it wouldn't have been because of anything I did or didn't do. It would have been because a man who was present at the time was a rapist.

One in four women will be raped at some point. That doesn't mean one in four men are rapists. Most men are not rapists, but rapists don't do it just the once because they 'got carried away' or they 'misread the signals' or because of anything the woman said or did. That minority of men who rape are rapists, and they will do it again and again and again. Because they are rapists, and all the shame attached to rape belongs to THEM and not those they hurt. They are the Epic Fails of humanity and a blight on the world.

So if you were unlucky enough to meet one of them, it was not your fault. I believe you. You did nothing wrong, you were just unlucky enough to find yourself in the presence of a rapist.

Lolloping Hungover

Ohh. Woah. Bah. Urrp! Plod, plod, plod, CLANG dagadydagadydagady goes yet another gate on springs. I've always been quite good at finding jobs that can be done with a hangover. Even when I had the Proper Job, hangovers tended to feature; I remember once the Office Blokes dissing one of their number for having taken a day off sick with his hangover. I joined in the dissing, up until one of them said, 'and if YOU didn't come in with a hangover we'd never see you!' I resented this slight on my character and said so.
'No, I mean I admire you,' said the bloke, rather anxiously. 'You come in and do your work even when you can't get your eyes open.'

I consider that I am in fact, fairly ROCK, though less so as I get older, so the high-consumption nights are a lot fewer (and let's not go into last night, which involved lots of Aspalls, vigorous jumping about and, er, there may have been an indiscretion. But I can't quite remember. Well, I think I remember administering a kiss, but what I can't remember is whether the recipient was pleased or utterly appalled.)

But actually, leafleting is not a bad hangover cure. All that fresh air, and the undemanding rhythm of in the gate, up the path, open the letterbox, shove in the leaflet... slowly but steadily I start to feel more human. Even without having had the time or the money for one of these.

And there's definitely a couple of cans in the fridge for when I get home.

Territory and Time Passing

I've hopped about in the course of my life, so I have never been really, deeply, counter-evolutionarily obsessed with any particular geographic zone. It's nice to be comfortably familiar with where you live, of course - knowing where the bus stop or the station or the open-all-night shop is. That's good. Knowing the best pub/cafe/lovely view is, that's also pretty good.
But it changes. Right now, in what is current home territory, they are ripping our local park to bits.

Even though I know it's part of the Greater Improvement, and I love the idea of the river being brought back to the surface and all that, seeing the climbing frame and the slide smashed to buggery did make me feel a bit sad. (And necessitate quite a lot of bright brisk talking to Trainboy along the lines of Ending Is Better Than Mending and all that...)

But tonight I went to an old patch of mine, Tottenham Court Road. Where I used to roam fearlessly (and pissed) a few years back. And now they've knocked half of it down and redirected the rest, and I bumbled about in the road all buffeted and bemused and *touristy*. And *OLD* person up from the provinces.

Don't like it. The rest of the world should reset to MY default.

Weather and my wardrobe

Obviously, in a job like this, you are a lot more aware of the weather and have to be aware of the weather. I'm not long back home from an evening round (for Fatty the food-hating client) conducted in a swirling white hell, and having found out that the wonderful new rubbery things that are supposed to stop arse/pavement interface in cold weather do not actually fit over my wellies at all.
Still, over the last couple of years of streetwalking jobs, I have acquired various useful items, such as waterproof trousers that remind me I used to be a bit of a pervert (they are black and shiny and smell funny), lots of extra-thick socks, and last winter I purchased a trapper hat because I thought it might make me look vaguely steampunk as well as keeping my head warm.
Yeah, one of these.

Remembering the time I bought what I thought was a wonderfully stylish black PVC vintage raincoat at a festival and leapt about reckoning I was rocking a Cool Girl Secret Agent appearance, only to be told by Chopwimp that I 'look like Wicked Uncle Ernie out of Tommy' (I sold that coat for 10 times what I paid for it on Ebay, by the way, so who's looking wicked now?) I put the hat on and got the comment in myself: so much for steampunk, I am in fact channelling John McRirick.

Living with Doom

When I go to bed at night I sometimes hope I might die. Then the debt collectors won't be able to get me. I wake up some mornings disappointed that I have woken up. At the same time I don't want to be dead. I don't want to miss all the nice things there might be in the future. More importantly, I don't want to do that to Trainboy. I don't want him to wake up in the morning and find his mother dead, I don't want him frightened and bewildered, no breakfast, no Mum telling him to get dressed, the loss of his home... I used to worry almost obsessively when Trainboy was a baby that I might die in the night or fall down the stairs and break my neck and he would be alone in the house, unfed, unchanged... At least I know he is now big enough to seek help if something does happen to me. He is old enough to run next door, to grab the phone and dial 999, I need no longer torment myself with visions of him starving in his cot.
Visions of us starving together in the streets are a bit more frequent, though. And the constant awareness of having no money, having defaulted on all the debts and not paid the rent, having promised to pay rent and debts but having been caught out again by creditors plundering the bank account in the wrong order... I think the dying in the night out of sheer stress is becoming likelier by the day.
What's the good of a blog if you can't just rant on it at random?

House Envy now very acute.

I used to consider myself someone not interested in houses, really. You have to live somewhere, and as long as where I live is not rat-infested or next door to a crack den, I wouldn't really care. At the same time, I am an architect's daughter and have always had spells of House Envy on spying a beautiful building. When I first started working for Mr Kite, looking at houses and flats was part of the job; I would have to write down descriptions of any dwelling-place that might be of use or interest.

Obviously some did not tempt me that much.

But some houses, some roads, filled me with longings. Sunray glass, curved bays, 1920s flat roofs or Art Deco curves... it's the suburban classics that I love.
At present, delivering leaflets for a variety of concerns rather than specifically estate-agentery, I have to assess a road on the demographics, and the sort of demographics all the clients want tend towards the sort of pseudo-tudo, leaded lights, pointless litte round windows and stuff that makes me wince at the unfairness of a world where I can't live somewhere like that.

I mean, something that incorporates the spirit of this would do...

And at present, the sort of house I dream of has never looked further away. Trainboy and I are about to be booted out of our uninspiring early-Victorian terrace, and due to my horrible credit rating and low income, we are probably going to end up in some ropey mid-60s tower block, or living above a kebab shop rather than the clean-lined, well-proportioned middle class home that I'd love. Maybe I should just learn to deliver leaflets faster...