An elephant loses a balloon.

This is a test. I have given in. Grumpily.

Celebrating our last day, last night.

So. Work finished. Gray took photographs. We said goodbye to Wes (Work Experience Student) also known as "Work Experience Boy", "Evil Minion", "Trusty Slave" and "Sweetheart". Then in the evening we met 'the girls' at Castenada's for dinner, dessert and coffee before heading to the Bugsplat Hotel to see the local band.

"The girls" are;

Rose ~ gorgeous, bodacious, blonde, smart and fabulous.
She's a medical student visiting her family every holiday, oh, and she works in the shop,

Megan ~ elegant, bookish (in the best possible way) and sharp. She writes sonnets. And works in the shop, as you do in Bugsplat there not being much call for sonnet-writing.

Honey - a lovely person cursed with astonishing good looks that tend to distract people from her other qualities. Understandably ... as she is more beautiful that Salman Rushdie's wife and that's saying something because Salman Rushdie's wife's beauty was responsible for turning the great writer's brain to pudding else how can we explain "Fury"? Honey is without question Bugsplat's very own Aishwarya Rai. She used to be the Bugsplat Tourist Bureau Manager same as Trouble and she loves bellydancing same as Calypso.
Oh, yes, she also works in the shop.

Tom The Other Megan is Megan's friend and is a new addtion to our terrifying clique. Doesn't work in the shop.

We had a great time at dinner together - Tom and I just getting to know each other - she's really interesting. I looked at the table and felt so glad to be sitting with these fantastic, intelligent women. It was amazing. I am a bit scared because I know that when groups of women have these kinds of moments together where there's a group energy and it all just sparkles ... then it can end up that someone (often, me, I suggest fearfully) gets hurt. It's worth it though!

After Castenada's we walked to the Bugsplat Hotel to see the local band, and I saw Zil's Other Good Friend Nell, and Nell texted Zil to let her know I could come and pick her up which I did, taking Rose with me for company, and it was just like going out with a group of women should be - there was lots of to-ing and fro-ing and walking each other to the Ladies and rescuing each other from the overly amorous Farmer Gentlemen types and lots of mobile phones and lots and lots and lots of gossip. I found it all really exciting - you know, I was out - out for a night out. Megan was most annoyed that the "late licence" promised did not materialise and thus the evening was pretty much over at midnight, but I thought I saw a glimmer of relief as well in her amusing indignation.

We danced to at least a dozen songs, all covers but the singer is lovely, and her band very sweet and it wasn't cock rock.

All in all, a great night.

Walk and don't look back, Ms Trouble.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god how ghastly that was.

One more day of 'handover', then two more days of work, then I/we have to WALK AWAY. Don't look back!

"Handover" doesn't actually work to well as a description of what happenned today. Trouble attempted to hand something over and the new Manager managed to cleverly avoid taking it. She might not be as silly as she seems... and avoiding all responsibility for understanding how anything works is one strategy we'd never really considered for coping with this job. Hmmmmmm.
It was just awful.
Part of it is just the intense frustration of how it is ALWAYS so much harder than it need be, so much stupider and meaner than it need be. It really hit hard today.
Mrs Manky rang complaining about a guy who emailed Bugsplat Visitor Centre asking for accomodation advice two days ago and hasn't got an answer yet. Well, Mrs Manky, that would be because I haven't been at work for three days. Why's that? That's because I'm only paid for four days a week.
Why don't the volunteers answer the emails?
The volunteers? Mostly because they don't want to.
One of them is scared of computers, the other one is too busy rifling throught the files looking for something to use against me and the other one probably forgot.
I shall halve their salaries immediately.

Except of course, when I did check, there was no email. I expect Mrs Manky gave the wrong address to her mystery shopper. Oh I shall be glad to be gone.

She seems quite sweet. I think she's probably going to be nice to customers. So that's a blessing.

In which Thea is pleased with herself for no good reason whatsoever.

Yes, if you GOOGLE "Solid Mandala" and "Theft" you will see me in the comments column of RYWHM, and some Proper Literary Reviewers as well.

Not so much a walk as a stomp.

Our friend Zil was pleased to see Trouble when she clopped her way over there. Good. We like Zil. She's worth the effort. And we must be known as we truly are, by someone, or we'll have no hope at all.

We've been reading Middlesex. It's a fantastic book. Jeffry Eugenides. A heroine turns hero. Intersex. Calliope becomes Cal. Girl becomes boy, then man. It's a topic of some interest to us for many reasons, one being that some of us believe ourselves to be male. If not men, then not women either. Some who live here, like the Herrings, have no ambiguity at all - are men. We tend not to count them. They seem to be ghosts who just moved in and started bossing Mannie around. Or perhaps they came with her, in her magical bag. (It's bigger on the inside, you know.)

Trouble is currently claiming the gender 'tomboy', and admiring Poppy Brite's attitude towards the situation that she finds herself in. Trouble's a non-nonsense kind of girl-boy - likes the way that Poppy handles gender dysphoria. Knowing we could never pass as man. Knowing most of us are women, and glad to be women. And since s/he's not a man in any case, but an eight year old boy, Trouble doesn't want to bother too much with claiming pronouns or taking testosterone. Eight year old boys don't have much of that either. Still, she doesn't walk so much as stomp.

Mama Lion raised her. Well, there's an ambiguity. I never noticed that before. We always come with clues.

I wonder sometimes... maybe they were right after all - with their theories about an uber-person who knows it all, knows all about us, knows everyone of us - IS everyone of us.
All that garbage just because they can't accept a bit of difference. It's things like the clues that make me doubt myself. Who's watching all of us? Who's in charge? Is it The Machine that Viola sees - full of levers and crazy lights? Or some kind of energy field (that's what Calypso sees). Is it a soup of chopped up identities borrowed from relatives, friends, storybooks? Am I a meaningless expression of something that isn't really a person at all, just a delusion who thinks her name is Thea and knows herself to be a dark-haired lesbian? Well maybe... but if I'm a delusion, then so are you, I say, with bravado but I also fear. What if I'm really not a person? What if there's no real person? What if we're so god help me damaged somehow that we're no longer a real person? Like that crazy man in the old people's home who used to say nothing but "Come from Hamburg" and didn't even recognise his wife. Where did he go? The person he was before that's all he was? Did we have a person who has left our body? Are we just a more sophisticated kind of question?
Okay, I'm done here.
If you're still reading, I salute you.

Friends to tea.

Troy and Nadia came to tea and to watch our advance copy of "Runaway Bride".
(Did you know we are TV and Movie Award judges? *Nods firmly* That is why we watch so many things that haven't been released yet and would never come to Bugsplat anyway.)

What a great night. Great TV. Good company. Nice vegetarian food.

Friends at sea.

One friend Zil makes too many personal remarks. We hate it. It's one thing to say "that's a nice hat" or something.. it's another thing to be completely over the top in praise of beauty, tea cosy we're accidentally wearing on our head etc. etc. Like Mia, we dislike flattery, but it's not that - it's this awful feeling - Too Much Attention.
Hate it.
She also constantly asks inane questions. Where have you been today? What did you have for dinner? What will you do this afternoon? I know these are all completely socially acceptable behaviours and with The World we just play along. Probably too hard - sorry to all people like me who wonder why we make so many inane remarks - here's your answer - to fit in.

For us, with no continuous episodic memory - ie: Thea doesn't remember what Trouble had for dinner the night before - it's just not there in her head - so to answer these profoundly meaningless questions is such an ordeal - we have to immediately rush to find everyone who's been out since last night's dinner, really ~rushing!~ through our mind and quick! quick! quick! goes the sense of urgency - often completely stop being whoever we are at that point (usually Calypso who really likes our friend Zil) and stampede through a dozen or so people desperately searching for the truthful answer to the 'What did you have for dinner last night?' question, which is passed like a baton of imperative from each to each. It hurts so fucking much. It takes about 2 seconds. Aren't we clever? And then... we have the ANSWER. Hallelujah. We will pass as Normal. We get to say "Soup".

Thank Christ for that.

Trouble with Gray.

She and he were both very disappointed by the surprising outcome.

In a fair contest, for this job, Gray could only be beaten by an exceptional candidate.
And after the ordeal we went through we're finding it hard to stay open to that possibility.

We did so want all our work (esp. Trouble's) to really ~mean~ something, to hand it over to someone who cares and who won't stuff it up. It's sad.

Gray had imagined a future there too, so he's quite blue.

That's us, this chilly summer morning in Bugsplat.
You?

Attention: Ms Blackmoore.

Please continue to grace this journal with your (de) lurkiness.
And post, woman, POST.

ps. you're very pretty

The heart makes traitors of us all.

What marriages survive their nations at war?
Lovers cannot be patriots.

(Trouble)

Or it could be more like...

Romeo and Juliet.
Privacy, autonomy, secrecy. So precious. And who will be nursie to any love-struck Juliets who make the mistake of falling for someone from the wrong family?
(Shell)

It could be like loving the Magi.

Calypso fell in love with a whole family once. The sisters were so beautiful and charming. Italian anarchists. Passionate, brilliant, alive.
Maybe it could be like that.

Just Jo

Uncle Vanya.

Robert Dessaix is too clever by half.

So's Tolstoy. He said they were all alike. Driving back from Lighthouse Town I fished about in that swamp of ours where our episodic memory goes to brood and I could not find another to make a comparison. Until I got here to this chair and this screen and remembered - the Brothers V. They've got one.

A happy family. And maybe an uncle called Vanya for all I know but that's neither here nor there.

I wish I could be candid, like my friend Mia. You probably know her by her other (more real, less made up) name. She's candid. Alternatively I could be obscure in an intruiging way like my friend Stephen is. You probably know him by his other (more real, less made up) name. I'm not happy with my messy compromise. It's just a muddle.

I'm still thea.

Four-fold turn.

Feeling anxious about the future and pondering such depressing questions as:

~ have I really learnt anything at all about our condition?

~ are we at all closer to God than we were in our twenties?

we went bumbling around online (wiki-ing) and found a lady called "Bryon Katie".

Some self-help guru with an alarming haircut. Usually a dungeon brat would yell "Run, don't walk!" and get us out of there, but they weren't about.

She teaches a method of self-enquiry with four questions. Apparently.

The four questions are:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

So. I may try this out with some of my more depressing thoughts soon.

thea.
ps. I'm ashamed of myself. This is so pathetic.

Blue, green and red.

It was a wonderful night!
We had the party light on again.
Leila? Stephen? Mia?
Do you it from remember last year?
Disco crystal; blue, green and red.
(Thank you, Jenscovians!)

Megan and Rose arrived fifteen minutes shy of midnight.

Honey had already piked with an apologetic phonecall after her long day at work. I was very glad the phonecall came late in the afternoon ie: AFTER Mannie's residual middle class houseproud tendancies had already prodded her into cleaning the bathroom before Honey called. Now we have an amazingly clean bathroom. Which might not have happenned on account of Megan or Rose as they are Slobs Like Us.

~tangent~
Does the term 'slob' have its origins in racial abuse?
*googles*
Nope. Something to do with mud.
~end tangent~

~new tangent~
In the interests of rent reduction (well, actually because the landlord told him to on account of our angling for rent reduction) Gray's been moving his studio from next door into this house - so that's two large rooms worth of art and film equipment to squeeze into our (former) front bedroom. We're sleeping in the (former) guest room. I've clung with tenacity to my front room but have had to store ALL our things in there as well as a double bed for guests. So Polly HQ. is a pretty crowded bedroom - guitar, viola, violin, two wardrobes, a vivid green office chair *twirl!*, suitcases, bellydancing stuff, desk and the beautiful bed that Stan made for us twelve years ago. Books are currently kept in the hall.

The fridge is now in the little room between the kitchen and the bathroom and that has made the kitchen such a friendlier place. The telly is out of the lounge room at last! It is in this room, the former guest room. We'll put a couch in there too, and this computer will be moved out to a rather awkward spot by the hot water system and (now) the fridge.

Megan abstains from the demon drink so we had lassies together in the (now, much roomier, see above) kitchen. Cardamon is so uplifting. Megan and Rose looked beautiful.

We didn't stay long at the Bugsplat Worker's Club. Long enough to see the fireworks and to be kissed rather too many times by rather too many elderly gentlemen. Megan, who has lived in Bugsplat all her life, has perfected several amazing manoeuvres to avoid this fate. I shall need to study them carefully. Zil was there with her new man. It was lovely.

Happy New Year to you all.