Diary of a Suburban Squeen

OK, is it stupid to be *this* scared about QMing for pack holiday at the weekend? I'm sorting out the shopping list, and there's just so much to get, and so many to cook for (thank god we've only got a fraction of the Brownies, frankly, or my brain would melt), and I'm a bit worried that it's all going to go hideously wrong, because although I can cope with a few people, I've never catered for nearly 20 at a go, not for proper meals, anyway, and it's a bit terrifying. Well, no. Quite a lot terrifying, frankly. And underneath I rationally think it's probably going to be fine, and if it goes a bit pear-shaped, well, so be it, and it's not like the Brownies are going to starve. And Katie will be there to act the part of anti-kitchen-spaz when need be. But still. Yes. Scared. And I've worked out to the slice how much bread we'll need, and exactly how much fruit, and logically how much fruit juice etc, and then I add a bit more for safety's sake, but I don't really trust the end result, which is ABSURD because if there's one thing I *can* do, it's basic arithmatic. Oh, Xanthe, please don't hate me if I fuck it all up. And don't worry, because it probly will all be fine. Because see above re me being quite stupid.

The crap thing about Oxbridge is that it’s such a notable achievement to get in (for most people), such an important mark in one’s career in life, that leaving becomes an equally – if not more – important mark. It’s such a defining thing. Most of the time I don’t care that I didn’t graduate from university, because I bop around in my life and it’s quite jolly, and I think that generally I made the right decision at the time. But God, I do regret it sometimes. And I think it’s mostly in a melancholy, sentimental kind of way, because I wanted so desperately to go, and because the concept of ‘Oxford’ had been such a part of what I read and so forth, but I wish that I could have experienced Oxford the way they do in books, and as so many people seem to do in real life, rather than as I did, which was mostly mulching around being fabulously depressed and living in some sort of crazy dreamworld bubble type thing. And I read books or articles that interest me, or see a play, or watch a TV programme, and I have such a yearning to study it, but I *don’t* and I know that I never will, because I never seem to quite want it enough to do anything about it, and any attempts at independent study have been abject failures, because I have no self-discipline. If I hadn’t been depressed, would I have managed to graduate? I don’t know. I certainly had the brains for it – even at my most self-loathing, I never really doubt that (except for that one time, Xanthe!) – but I don’t know if I had the commitment. I think I probably would have done, out of habit if nothing else. I’d have got a second class degree, probably a 2.ii, because I’ve always been a bit lazy, and known that if I’d really worked hard, I could have got a First. But I went a bit mad and sort of lost touch with reality, and that was that.

Posner lives alone in a cottage he has renovated himself, has an allotment, and periodic breakdowns. He haunts the local library… and has a host of friends, though only on the internet and none in his right name, or even gender. He has long since stopped asking himself where it went wrong.

I may stop listening to The History Boys now. It is depressing me ever so slightly.

ETA - Sorry to keep banging on about this time after time. Still, that's sort of the point. It's hard to let it go completely. Pants.

Something interesting happened today. Well, interesting is probably stretching it a little.

Yesterday, I made about a million hip cards for patients. This involves cutting things up, sellotaping them, laminating them, and cutting around the finished product. My Blue Peter instincts were out in full force. So, I made these cards. And they turned out more or less OK. And I showed them to Claudia and Priscilla. And they both waxed lyrical about how well I’d done them. They got quite enthused about it.

Thing is, I didn’t think they were *that* good. I look at them, and all I can see is the slightly wonky lines that *should* be straight, and inconsistencies in the depth of the borders, and where I went round the corner in a way that isn’t a perfect quarter-circle.

I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, particularly. Cuz, you know, lazy and quite crap. This is, sadly, no secret. But it makes me think of my fundamental problem with life. Which is this:

I’m good at most things; good enough to know that I’m not good enough at any of them.

And OK, that’s not exactly the worst problem to have in the world. But it’s a bit crap, nonetheless, because I know that nothing I do is as good as lots of people could do. (And yes, my grammar is talking a bit of a swan dive here.) I’m gifted academically, but not particularly brilliant at any given subject. I play the flute reasonably well, but on an objective scale I’m rubbish; I can cook and bake well but not *really* well… there’s just a constant list of things that I’m not *really* good at. And it sounds *so* much like I love myself if I talk about it, because yes, I can do lots of things better than lots of people, but I don’t really care, because I know that I’m never going to be the best at anything. Is this making *any* sense at all? Probably not. I probably sound like a complete tit. As per. Oh, arse.

(NB – Have tagged this as slight mental instability just because it fits best there, not because I’m *overly* woeful about this – it is, after all, nothing new.)

Antoinette is driving me fucking insane. It can't be good, working somewhere where, for the past three years, you have regularly wanted to smack one of your colleagues...

Well, this was a shit morning. I got to the station in plenty of time to discover that both the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines were partially suspended. For those who are not completely au fait with the tube, basically the only way for me to get from Preston Road to London Bridge with any kind of directness is, er, by the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines. So, I took the northbound train to Harrow-on-the-Hill, with the cunning intention of taking a mainline train straight to Marylebone, only one didn’t come, so I thought it might be wiser to take a southbound Met train to Baker Street and faff around a bit down there (also in the hope that the Jubilee line would get its act together). Well, that worked, but at Baker Street I couldn’t actually get on the Bakerloo platform, so had to walk to Regents Park to get the southbound Bakerloo. My cunning plan at that stage was to change at Waterloo, where the Jubilee line was supposed to resume southbound service, but it occurred to me that that was in fact a Bad Plan as everyone and his dog would be getting on plus inevitable huge delays. So I changed at Charing Cross instead and got the mainline train to London Bridge. And only 45 minutes late. Golly.

So having gone through all that palaver (and telephoning the centre where I was supposed to start my training course at 9.30), I shopped up at MSH only to be told that the course I was supposed to be on in fact started yesterday. So I had to go away. All hugely embarrassing. I want to go and cry in a toilet. I was quite tempted just to skive work completely, but that would be a Naughty Thing To Do, so I didn’t. But I stopped off at Starbucks on the way, on the basis that I damned well deserve nice breakfasty things.

I hate London Underground.