the rosemoirs

I have this fear of telegraph poles, and I’ve been planning out a short story based on it, but I thought that in the mean time I’d tell you all about my actual fear, and how it came about.

It was 2007 and I was on my way into work. It was stormy, and the wind was terrible. The bus stop was about half a mile away and I was walking as fast as I could, desperate to get out of the weather as soon as possible. There was a wooden telegraph pole ahead, and as I walked it looked like it was moving. It’s not, I told myself, it’s just because I’m walking fast. I was practically running, it was just my eyes playing a trick on me. But as I got closer the more it looked like it was swaying in the wind. I started to question whether it was my eyes, or if it was really, actually, moving. So I stopped, just to be sure. And the moment that I stopped was the moment that I knew for certain. Yes, it had been moving, and now it was falling.

It landed about two inches from my feet. I had only been stopped about a second, and I was literally a second from where it fell.

Now, every time I walk under a telegraph pole or a street light I think I can see it moving. The closer I get the more it looks like it’s falling, and I know it’s not, but I swear I really can see them move. And I have this moment of fear when I walk underneath where I can pretty much feel the heavy wood hit my back and it’s weight forces me to the ground, pinning me down. I have to close my eyes and gallop past, hold my breath and hope for the best. It. Wont. Fall. I tell myself. And as I get past it I don’t slow down straight away. I look behind me as I walk quickly away, judging the height of the pole versus the distance between me and it.

Some poles are worse than others. My current worst two are close to my house, and I will sometimes cross the road just to avoid walking too close to them. After all if I’m further from it, and it starts to fall, then I’ll have more time to jump out of its path.

It’s not the kind of fear that stops me from doing stuff, I don’t avoid walking under them completely, I grit my teeth and get on with it. We all have to do things in life we don’t like, and for me one of those things is walking under telegraph poles.

At the time of writing this she has 30 million views on this you tube video and 966,671 fans on face book. We love Susan Boyle. Or, more precisely, we love the idea that its not too late, our time might still come.
A guy in his 40’s, with a waist size similar to his age, once told me that every time he kicks a football in the park part of him still thinks there’s a chance that he might get discovered, and end up playing for Liverpool. We all have our private little daydreams. It’s that bit of hope in us that makes us spend £1 on a lottery ticket even though we know that the odds are against us, and that little bit of excitement when we try out a new hobby for the first time because we might just be a natural.
We all want to be special, and if never-been-kissed Susan Boyle can be a singing star, then what can the rest of us do?

After my amazing nanowrimo success last year I’ve decided to try my luck at script frenzy. 100 pages of script, 30 days? Easy. Or not so much.
I’m not as dedicated as I was last time. I’m not at it every day, getting my word count done before anything else. I’m doing it in fits and starts, and doing loads when I do, but still, it’s not the same. I wonder if it’s because the 3.3 pages a day is an easier target than 1,667 words? I’m behind at the moment but I know that if I plug away for two hours I’ll be up to date and then some. Nano wasn’t like that, with nano if I got a day behind it would take a lot more to catch up.
Anyway, the important thing: I think I’m going to finish it. I think I’m going to get to the 100 pages. I just need to keep my focus.

Being a southerner living in Liverpool for the past 7 and a half years I still occasionally find myself being misunderstood, or misunderstanding someone else. A big problem being the whole lunch and dinner issue.

I, usually, eat three meals a day. breakfast, lunch and dinner. Scott, however, has breakfast, dinner and tea. So earlier on I’m talking about what I’m going to make for dinner, and he’s all screwing his face up “that, for dinner, really?”. Yes, really, for I was talking about the evening meal. So we’re trying to work out who is right and who is wrong (this is very important- far more important than what we’re having for dinner and what we call it) and we realise- what you call lunch/dinner depends on what you ate. If you went to the canteen you had a school dinner, prepared and served to you by a nice cheery dinner lady. However, I ate a packed lunch, that my mum had lovingly made and placed in a lunch box.
Maybe it’s not as much of a north/south thing as I thought it was?