Bethany Black :: Post details: I guess you only live to see the lights of town.

12/02/07

I guess you only live to see the lights of town. - Categories: News - Bethany Black @ 02:52:12 pm

As my university has decided foolishly, I think, that as the top up fees that have effected universities this year mean that the average student is paying £4,000 a year for their education, they've decided that if they're paying that much money then they should get the most education out of it that they can. That they "Don't pay that much to have a reading week in the middle" on some assumption that it's value for money. I however put forward the argument that I'm not paying £4,000 a year for my education not to get the best chance I can and a week off in order to get my work done seems appropriate.

They didn't reply to my letter.

Anyway instead it's "Assignment tutorial" week as arranged by every lecturer on campus, which is essentially a week off. Though last term they messed it up and half had it on one week and the other half had it on the next week.

The reason I'm saying this is that I spent yesterday in a state of worry about whether my Sexuality and Culture Lecture had been cancelled today, because I thought I had my presentation to do today and when I woke up yesterday I realised I'd not done any of it and there still was a chance that it might be still on.

Now I'm faily useless when it comes to remembering some things, I've got a geat memory in general, bordering on the autistic for a number of things, but when I comes to getting my mobile phone charger I can't remember to do it ever. So I'm sat at my parent's house up on the moors outside Preston and Blackburn, with internet access but none of my phone numbers.

well I sat and worried about it for a minute, then did some writing, then sort of forced it to the back of my mind, because if i did that it'll go away, we all know how this works. Anyway 24 hours later and technically I should just be getting to the end of my presentation if I'm wrong. However I'm fairly sure it'll be next week.

Eventually being sat in the house was weighing on me. My cat's over at my sister's house being tormented by her 3 year-old twins. So I'm alone in a big old house on the moors and with an over active imagination like mine that becomes terrifying when it goes dark.

The night before last I went to settle down and watch Jerry Springer: The Opera, it was umming and ahh ing between that and Monster House, which one of my friends had lent me on a DVD that he'd recorded off the telly the other day, but we were concerned that the magic in the DVD might not work with the magic in my DVD Player. There's a lot of uncompatible magic out there at the moment, Michael J Dolan Britain's Favourite Funnyman(tm), maintains that it's that in an effort to bring down prices a lot of companies are bringing in cheaper wizards from Eastern Europe, and that's what's led to this strange Magic incompatibility in recent times. I'm fairly sure that he's on the money.

But that's not what I was talking about, I was about to settle down and watch some opera and realised I'd left my cigarettes in the kitchen so I went to get them. And as was discussed yesterday I keep making films up in my mind where I'm starring them and they follow the rules of the Hollywood model, so when I walked the length of a creepy house to get cigarettes having looked round the room I was in to make sure that it was empty, when I walked back in my head decided that there'd be a hooded figure in black with a slit throat that would point to me and raise it's head as the blood poured out of the gash in it's neck.

It didn't happen, but now that that seed was in my mind everywhere in the house was lurking supernatural danger.

I think this may have had something to do with earlier on in the day, On Saturday morning I woke up over at Dug's house and we decided to head on over to mine so we could use the internet. First though we had to stop off and get some milk, bread and flowers from Tesco in my home town of Chorley in Lancashire. I don't go back home that often, and between Saturday and then remembering my shopping trip on Christmas eve I can see why. Wandering round the shop, or even the town centre you start to notice that everyone looks like they have a touch of the Downs about them. Even the good looking people look like they're slightly hostile and disfigured. And in spite of the fact that we were both clean, after a ten minute Saturday shopping excursion we both felt that it was difficult to manage, and as emotionally wrong as it could be, and we both felt like we were on a come down.

Christmas Eve though should have warned me off this. It's my Birthday, and like an idiot I'd done most of my Christmas shopping and then bought something for my Nephews that cost over twice as much as I was willing to pay. Those rascals at Woolworths had put this Noddy Trainset on the same stand with a whole bunch of stuff that was half price, and after waiting an hour and a half in the queue I found out it was full price.

I know I should have said, "really? Oh sorry, I thought it was half price, ok I'll pass on that then." whereas what I did was buy it and then go and sit in my car crying for 20 minutes realising I'd wiped out my entire Christmas shopping money. So a couple of days later I went to take it back to Woolworths.

On Christmas Eve.

Whilst I was in the queue a scally girl pushing a push chair walked up and rammed the push chair into the legs of the girl about three in front of me in the queue. Apparently this was a greeting between these two as they seemed to know each other. they exchanged unpleasantries and then for some unknown reason they got into an argument over whetehr the young screaming half child half Gregg's pasty that was sat in the chair was her younger brother or own child.

this went on and I tried to stay out of it, eventually returning the train set and wandering out into Market Walk, where I saw a girl I knew from School, she'd left in the third year of High School (Yes, I went to School in England, Yes I know that by-and-large they're called Secondary Schools here, but mine was called a Highschool) to have a child. That child was now 15 and walking along side her pushing a pram of her own. So yes, I felt rather old at that point, knowing that at 28 I'm old enough to be a grandmother in my home town.

Where was I? Oh yes, I was going over to Dug's with himself and then see what he and Doley were up to. When I got there Jumanji had just started so we sat and watched that for a while, I'd forgotten Kirsten Dunst was in it, and it now seems a bit wrong to fancy her in the spiderman movies when she had the same acting style, and aside from being smaller looks pretty much the same in Jumanji when she's about 13 years old.

Disturbed I went to the KFC Drive thru in Chorlton, I should have learned from last time when they gave me the wrong thing and missed out most of our order that it was a mistake. And driving up to the "Order Here" box and telling the angry robot what I wanted I thought that in spite of his voice cutting out he'd get it right, he didn't and forgot to give me some gravy which I'd paid for. So I had to get out of the car and go and ask for it. What's the point of Drive thru if you have to get out of the car and deal with the cold harsh reality of the gleaming slightly dystopian futuristic setting of a KFC wtih bullet proof glass?

Later we went down to Bar XS with Lee Martin and Katie Mulgrew where I had a great theological discussion with Katie. When suddenly two tables away a bit of a scuffle started. There was one table of slightly scally looking people, and on the next was a table of Tristram type students, only one of their party looked like the personification of a Salford Asbo, Shameless come to life.

You don't take your dealer to the pub, you go to their pub, or their house, you don't bring them into your world, it's a business deal and nothing more. anyway this nearly started a fight and eventually they left and started arguing in the street. I got ringside seats in case it got into a fight, but oddly it didn't.

Something was up with the atmosphere that night as I ended up in a pissy mood all day. Later we went back to Lee's in Burnage, Katie argued with my sat nav for a way on the journey telling me it wouldn't know the one way system, and made me take a detour from the planned route. Before realising that the Sat Nav was right all along. She wouldn't apologise to the Sat Nav as she said it didn't have feelings. I maintain that she does and am now worried she'll deliberately get me lost at some point.

Back at Lee's John Scott and Jonathan Paylor turned up and we were having fun, just shooting the shit, until Jonathan complained about David Bowie being on the stereo, and did that singing along as if he's got something wring with his mouth saying it was shit and that Madonna's much better, and that we only listened to it because we're supposed to. I got angry and told him he was a "reprihensible cunt" when he drinks. A bit excessive I know and I apologised.

I stopped arguing, as I'm not 14 years old anymore and that sort of argument really really is childish. Madonna's better than David Bowie, it's like saying Tables are better than the concept of pity.

We left soon after.

Tonight I'm off to see Josie Long do her if.comeddie Best Newcomer Winning show at Bar XS in Fallowfield Manchester. It's fantastic I saw it at the Café Royal in Edinburgh over the summer. I love Josie Long, she's part of the reason I got into comedy. When I was a kid I always wanted to do stand-up, but thought I'd not be able to, that it was other people who did it, that I'd never be clever enough to come up with stuff to make people laugh. Then when I left school, I still wanted to and still couldn't figure out how to write material, but on top of that I looked at the comics I'd seen, they were all on TV and in their late 20's early 30's at least, and decided that I was too young, that no one would laugh at my stuff and would think I was a precocious young arse who was just showing off.

I would listen to the BBC Comedy Competition on radio 4 and at the end when they said that "If you are a comedian and would like to take part in next year's competition send a recording of your material to..." and I wanted to but had no clue about sending it off, or even where to get gigs or stage time, the only clubs I knew of where the Comedy Store and Jongleurs, and later the Brixton Comedy Club at the Hobgoblin, where I'd turned up on a number of occasions drunk and ended up cornering Bill Bailey and talking weird at him for an hour.

But that's not the story. I saw Josie win the competition and saw that she was really funny and that she was doing the sort of thing I was writing at the time and I saw that she was younger than me and I knew that I could do it.

It still took a couple of years for me to get on stage, but that was the big impetus to do it.

A couple of years ago when Stewart Lee was touring and he came to XS Malarkey's in Manchester Josie was supporting him, and I tried to explain this to her, and in the process came across as a bit of a creepy stalker. After that every time I saw her I tried to talk to her and prove that I wasn't some kind of creepy stalker, but it was like a Chinese fingertrap of creepy stalkeriness, the more I tried to prove I wasn't the more of a Creepy stalker I'd come across.

In Edinburgh over the summer I managed to get over this, and I'm really looking forward to Seeing Josie tonight. If you're free and you're in the area I'd recommend that you do the same, it's £4 for non-members, and for my money it's the best £4 you'll spend in a long long while.

Right, let's see what sort of scrapes I can get into for the rest of today.

I love you all with all my heart.

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