Confessions of a Bad Girlfriend...

I'm presently reading Liz Jone's Diary ... how one single girl got married. Liz used to be Editor of Glamor and Marie Claire but is now the Fashion Editor of Daily Mail. I used to work in the Daily Mail and I used to sell adverts off the back of Liz Jones - "I love her - she's great blah blah blah" I'd lie. Of course I hadn't a clue who she was really. I'd a sheet with names I was expected to drop into conversation (I always raved about our Gardening columnist "his the best" I later found out he is a she. Lesson learnt - "know your product").

I only read one of her articles - it was bearable only because it mentioned her pets. I never read "You" Magazine on a Saturday (it does boost the papers sales though) because it only had English adverts (I only read newspapers and magazine for leads not enjoyment) now however "plug plug" it does have Irish adverts...

I picked up the book in the library last week only because they literally had nothing on my list of classics (yes I wrote a list) and I needed something to show for my trip (or to stop me spending money in Easons or worst Forbidden Planet on the way back home) so I went home with dating books, some chick lit, and a Dr. Phil book (see why I needed the list). To start off with I thought she's a bit like my perfect older sister who's rather fab, fashionable and has wallpaper encrusted with Swarovski crystals in her living room.

As I read on and on it dawned on me "Liz Jones ... how one single girl got married" is not a celebration of finally being part of a smug married couple after years of single living it's about how women sabotage themselves and their relationships with their needy behavior, unrealistic expectations and mind games. By Chapter 10 it was me mirrored in the pages. At first it was fun, cute similarities - she works in The Mail, owns 4 cats - one is even called Snoopy, likes guinea pigs, her boyfriend is younger and doesn't eat meat, football widow, complains at goldfish in round bowls in shops (it's distressing for them you know) and her pet hate is standing up eating without a plate (I once nearly broke up with Chris in our early years because he expected me to eat a bag of chips on a street corner in Navan - I told him it was common.)

Then I started to notice the less nice similarities - the word "negative" comes to mind and the phrase "nothing is ever good enough" or" high maintenance". We have a high divorce rate because of the Liz Jones of the world. Whilst confidence and successful her self esteem is dangerously low and therefore she should not date never mind marry. I'm only on Chapter 46 but I know she's not married anymore so it can't end well. Bridget Jones can be as dim as she likes... she's fictional...

It got me thinking about my own many bad habits. I've always viewed myself as not a saint of a girlfriend but a good solid keeper all the same! I'm starting to think I'm not that much of a keeper at all. Chris however is annoyingly a saint (except every now and then he accidently locks me in the bedroom) - he puts up with my expensive "pet rescue" complexion (I once maxed a credit card on two sick rabbits - they didn't even live...), I'll eat all the Rice Krispies and leave the box in the cupboard, I refer to him as "well trained" and say "the key is to get them young" when I boast about how he cooks and cleans dispite his daily 4 hour commute, I openly wonder if I'd prefer living alone in a bed sit furnished by Ikea, I've told him which pets and other items I'm keeping when we spilt (because no one stays with the fella they've been dating since they were 17 but yet I've pinned him down on an exact wedding date), I guess all his surprizes, I open Christmas presents early, I put Boyzone on his ipod, I'm doing something else this year for his Birthday (I'm going to Simply Red with my Dad), in general I throw a fit when I don't get "exactly" what I want (I steal all my ideas for movies) all the time (example the time he brought back Kimberly biscuits instead of Jaffa Cakes), I wake him in the middle of the night to get me a drink of water (I can't go downstairs in case there are zombies or ghosts) then complain I don't like the glass the water is in and perhaps worst of all when I'm home sick I blame him as the reason I'm in evil Dublin instead of Limerick where my friends and family and a career in radio is even though I love my job, I've plenty of friends in Dublin and seeing my Family would probably ruin our great relationship.



Chris protested all this - having read the last paragraph he says I'm being very hard on myself. I am lovely in other ways even if I'm very demanding it's worth it. Chris likes me because I'm focused, motivated, generous, intelligent and funny. That sounds more like a reason to hire me then date me. I figure I must be great in bed? I wish it was New Years so I could promise to be better behaved - I'll promise anyway.

Reading!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? 

I've a little x beside the ones I've read - most before the age of 17? Have I lost my love of reading? Or just steered away from the classics? At least it's more than 6? Joining the libraby tonight! 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -         x

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -         x

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling-X

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X

6 The Bible - There are lots of bibles... x

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -X

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell –

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - x

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - x

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy –

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller –

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - x

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -X

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger-

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell-

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - x

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll- x

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame- x

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - x

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -X

34 Emma-Jane Austen - x

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - x

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -X (

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving-

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery-X

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan-

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel-

52 Dune - Frank Herbert -

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons-

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen – x

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddonx -

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding- x

69 Midnight’s Children -

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens- x

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - x

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -

75 Ulysses - James Joyce – x hated it though?

76 The Inferno – Dante -

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola -

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-

80 Possession - AS Byatt –

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - x

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker-

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton- x

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - x

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams- x

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - X

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare- x

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -X

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo- x

 

Dribble really...

Haven’t blogged in awhile – have been busy in my own not getting nothing much done way. Quick recap on me:

 

• Went to Limerick last week to visit my sister’s lickle dog Sophie’s new puppies (very cute). Heading home again tonight til next Wednesday for another weekend of being treated like a Princess by my parents (all part of their “lure Sharon home” from Dublin plot) whilst “my friends” slag my Dublin accent shame.
• Been having really bad nightmares all the month of July and now have terrible bags under my eyes but have discovered the Cooling Eye Balm from One Cosmetics “8 hours sleep in a bottle”. It actually works!
• Back to WW’s – lost like 9 pounds. Figure I’ll gain a bit over long weekend but hi ho…
• Got started on the Buffy Season 8 comics, finished Sculduggery (kids book but I like it!) and am enjoyed TW’s Bay of the Dead.
• I got an iffy’s haircut – kinda lopsided but I don’t hate it so much now. Next time I get my hair cut I’ll just have to have an actually idea in my head of what I want.
• Really upset about Borders closing – my whole Sunday routine is up in the air now. No more strolling to blanch to spend too much time and money in Pet Stop, then Borders then Starbucks – perhaps a good thing…
• SNAILS – bleedin’ everywhere. I’m like a ninja these days avoiding them walking home – our garden has a really nice snail bush as well.
• I do love TodayFM… can’t decide if I like Facebook though.
• I officially hate RTD – argh his so rude (I hate rude people) I may well watch Supernatural as well as go to THE HUB 3 in October (yes well I hate RTD not Torchwood and I’ll never get a chance to embrace Torchwood of old again!) as GDL has been announced. This might set back my Cardiff at Christmas plan however…
• And finally do `I want one of Eve’s pup’s? Not really into small white fluffy things but aw a puppy is a puppy!

 Ps I love my new glasses?

RIP Ianto Jones

You should have seen me the last few weeks counting away the days (literally) until the 5 part series 3 of Torchwood - my one surviving and beloved TV show. I'm not one for soaps or reality TV - it's re-runs of Star Trex, Buffy, X Files and Angel or the odd box set of now defunct series like Battlestar or Firefly that I would have missed. Bit if a theme? Yes I'm a geek - I wouldn't achieve a high level of geekdom perhaps if tested but a geek all the same.

 Early last year the John Barrowman biography was given too me by someone in work. I like bio's but I didn't know who John Barrowman was. I didn't expect to get past the first chapter but strangely I intrigued. Not only was this man involved in Musical Theatre (I do love Jazz hands), on some Sci-Fi programme called Doctor Who (I do love Sci-Fi) but he was a force of nature so focused, positive and driven how could I not like him.

 Off I went to investigate Doctor Who and Captain Jack Harness. I might seem odd I didn't know too much about Doctor Who at this stage but in Ireland Doctor Who hasn't the same status as it does in the UK. In Ireland we have The Late Late Show or Bosco - only people living on the East Coast of Ireland could pick up the BBC (illegally). 

Pretty soon I was up to date on both Doctor Who and Torchwood. Torchwood in particular tipped my interest. I love Doctor Who but it's easy viewing mainly like enjoying a good Disney movie. I trust it's going to deliver. I know that they might kill Bambi's Mom but in the end that heartache will be forgotten and I'll have a nice warm fuzzy feeling. On the other hand I want the under dog Torchwood to deliver but I don't trust it will (and that’s somehow more exciting). I've thrown my hands up in disgust as much as I've punched the air with joy.

Character development in my humble opinion was always Torchwood's downfall not dodgy storylines about alien necklaces. Everyone was introduced but never explored. It was always a rush job - quickly tell loads of stories before we get cancelled. Gwen the heart of the Hub? She's the viewer's point of view? (No that’s Rose in Doctor Who?) She's caring and connected to the outside world - blah blah blah. Gwen was never the Hub's heart in fact the big mistake they made in Series 1 that made her so instantly unlikable was her affair with Owen whilst making puppy eyes at Jack. Ianto's character was more confused than complicated. He managed to catch a dinosaur on his first day yet Jack gives him a job making coffee? Cyberwoman (some people love it some people hate it) had no set up and no follow up. Jack is going to shoot Ianto for keeping his Cyberwoman girlfriend in the basement - the next time we see Ianto on screen Jack gives him a pat on the back for checking weather patterns. One minute Ianto is telling Jack his going to get revenge when he least expects it and the next his dangling a stopwatch. There simply isn't enough pieces of the puzzle for the viewer to get a clear idea of who these people are or what the want. All the relationships are strained or forced or simply misunderunderstood. In Fragments we take a step back and see how Jack recruited Tosh, Owen and Ianto. It was a show all fans loved. A simple bit of back-story can make the world of difference. Of course Tosh and Owen die the next day but it wasn't a waste. Now you cared when they died because you knew a little bit more. Killing them was harsh but fair. The show was sluggish - weighted down by too many people and subplots needing airtime. At least they went out with a bang and two amazing performances.

Watching Torchwood COE I thought WOW they've actually got the balance right. They have carefully backtracked. Gwen is better suited and better written as a kick ass action hero who’s happily married with the slight complication of a baby on the way. Bringing in Rhys for a bit of light comic relief was a stroke of genius. PC Andy though is still sadly under used. Jack is a lot darker which is great because being buried alive for a few hundred years isn't something you should take lightly. Ianto's puppy love for Jack feels genuine. (However Ianto's speech in the radio play "The Dead Line" was far superior to the "Bloody Beans" scene) The introduction of Rihanna and Alice brings a new depth to Ianto/Jack but are both pretty great characters in their own right. Ianto's Brother-in-law in fact stole the show for a brief few moments. Torchwood 3 has three members, that we are finally getting to explore, who are finally stable with great chemistry. The storyline is epic - creepy alien wants 10% of the kiddies while Torchwood is down but not out thanks too the dodgy government (the Doctor should of let Harriet Jones stay in charge we wouldn't of had a recession or 4 dead PM's and the year that never was). 

Another reason I was looking forward to this week was because I was going to see the new Harry Potter film (will post review after Irish Premier on Monday or link from my Film Blog) but that actually left me cold. I'll explain why in a tick but I'll say Torchwood cheered me up considerably after my disappointment. Then last night in my opinion RTD threw it away - he killed off Ianto. This not only made me cry buckets but also got me highly annoyed. His death was bloody useless. It hadn’t a scratch on Tosh or Owens’s death last year in terms of emotion. Jack didn’t even say I love you back? That’s so rude? Buffy was polite enough to tell Spike she loved him when he was dying to save the world?

Now we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can’t bring Ianto back to life – it’ll be silly? But how is a S4 possible with just Gwen (who people were coming around to but now will just resent her and blame her for RTD killing off Ianto) and an even darker Jack with some tag along minor characters from Children of Earth or Who rejects like Martha. It’s like your in the middle painting something and it’s going to be your best work and then someone comes in and pours black paint over it. Why start again? It’s ruined.

The one good thing was at least it affected me and everyone I know who liked the show – the last minutes of the latest Harry Potter I should of being crying like my new puppy got run down but it fell short. It was limp. Torchwood was able to deliver that heart-wrecking blow that has me talking and thinking of Torchwood the next day. It’ll go down in popular TV History with powerful scenes such as Buffy stabbing Angel and sending him to hell or Jen dying in Dawson’s Creek not because the scene was particularly good but for the love of a character.

However killing off everyone’s favorite character whilst shocking and even interesting isn’t either clever or brave. Like Ianto accompanying Jack to visit the Alien to tell them “not one single child” without a back up plan or counter threat or the common sense to run for a suit or even to open the air lock to shot it might well prove to be a fatal move. 

RIP King of Pop

I love tv and film. I've mentioned before Music is not so much my thing. My first ever memory is my Dad bringing home The Smurfs. I don't know what age I was but I remember hugging his leg and I came in just about under his knee. I thought for the majority of my very early years that my Dad knew about a secret channel on the TV that made my favourite cartoons come on (I loved the bady muppets) and I remember being gutted when I got my head around the idea of a video recorder. My Dad wasn't magic after all he was the only one who knew how to set up the video recorder. My parents owned a chain of video stores when I was a kid so I always got to see the latest films first. I started helping out there at 11 my parents couldn't stop me from going in there and soon I was nearly full time - it was my own personal play ground. When I was 6?7?8? I came across Moonwalker the first video I liked that wasn't a cartoon- no one ever rented it. I watched it over and over and over and over with my legs crossed and nose touching the screen (no wonder I now need glassse). The thing had no plot I could follow but all the dance routines had me spellbound. Moonwalker being a film got me interested in music - if it'd been a tape or on the radio I'd of paid no attention. My first CD bought a few years later was Thriller, my first concert was Michael in the RDS in 97? I even had a poster with lip gloss marks? Ugh I think my sister kissed it to be honest. I'd completely forgotten all this until I turned on Sky News to find out Michael Jackson had a heart attack and TMZ were reporting he'd died. It was a different kind of saddness then when Heath Ledger died - then I'd been in completely shock and immediately gutted but with Michael it wasn't really shock. I wasn't been the only one to predict Michael wouldn't complete the upcoming tour. Then after a few days that fact that at some point I was actually fan hit me. I listened to Thriller when my first boyfriend dumped me, my sister could moonwalk (kinda) on the fireplace, and my Dad let me think my confirmation money was enough to buy us all tickets to go see him in concert - it wasn't! my Dad got them but pretended to me I'd bought them - I probably hadn't enough to buy my own but I remember waiting in line in Empire Records in Limerick with my Dad to get them. 

Michael Jackson was really dodgy and I don't know how history will judge him but I'll just remember I was a fan lucky enough to see him live. I might buy Moonwalker if I see it.

Who were you...

Do people change much after school. I had an old school mate around for Tea at the weekend and we dragged out the old school yearbooks to try and remember some faces.

Out of 90 girls in our year about 10 girls to my horror I couldn't remember at all. The rest of faces came flooding back with juicy gossip and some long forgotten rivilary. Once we had the faces we then needed to combine who was in what group. It's amazing how much like a bad American kids tv show we had "the quiet, nerdy girls", "the beautiful, popular girls", "the edgy, gothy girls", and then you had stand out individuals "the attention seeker" and "the annoying know it all".

Those beautiful, popular girls are still that - whenever I'm out in Limerick I see them - all still one big intimating group somehow taller, slimmer and better dressed than everyone else. They were the girls who had stepped out of a sweet valley high novel with straight A's, a gorgeous boyfriend in college and who's shirt collars were always chrisp, white and prefect. The gothy girls still haven't lost their edge I see them only on facebook living their bohemia lifestyle. The rest I don't see so can only presume or imagine what they are like.

What was I? A floater I think. I could wear pink floaty tops with light coloured jeans and then pottered off to Doc's but also could wear a velvet purple corset dress with too much black eyeliner and potter off to Termites. I was more a geek than nerd and managed to get detention a lot dispite being a good student and getting on quite well with the teachers. People still describe me with the same words "cuddly","nice" or "mad?". All these descriptions I hate but most people hate tags on their personality.

I find it interesting to think of people I work with as "who were they in school" - you can spot the ringleader, the follower, the loner, the nerd, very quickly.

To Spoil or Not To Spoil

Last night at about 2am I found a blog with massive spoilers for ep.1 of S3 of Torchwood. I didn't blink and had read the whole thing in 5 seconds flat. It was one of the best spoiler experiences of my life! Torchwood (like my fav. non cancelled show) ep.1 was meant to air at Easter but the cruel BBC have been pushing and pushing it back - until (we hope) settling on July 20th (a slot you give a programme if you want it to die a horrible death may I add - what are the BBC up too?) The trailers have been brilliant so I just couldn't help myself when I found the spoilers. I never do - Bones, Ugly Betty, Battlestar G, in fact every other Torchwood Series I'd read ahead- I simply can't help myself. Would I enjoy the programme more if I didn't know the juicy gossip (and it's really juicy)? Yes.

An interesting point I learnt at sales training back with SOS - Deferred gratification or delayed gratification is the ability to wait in order to obtain something that one wants. This ability is usually considered to be a personality trait which is important for life success. Daniel Goleman has suggested that it is an important component of emotional intelligence. People who lack this trait are said to need instant gratification and may suffer from poor impulse control.

The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this concept. In the 1960s, a group of four-year olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable, and scored an average of 210 points higher on an IQ test.



I'd of ate the marshmallows...

InspiredByRebecca

Very few people in these recessionary days are inspirational. So I do have to blog quickly about my good friend Rebecca Thorn.

The majority of us mill about like giant ants all our life (and there is nothing wrong with it) commuting to 9-5 jobs to come home to our now devalued houses to watch reality TV before eventually reproducing new ants - 80% of which won't study higher level maths. A few people however are always thinking, plotting, planning and being creative will stand out from the ground. To have the self belief, patience, talent and interest to try and succeed at something outside the norm is admirable which is no doubt why the rest of us who don't have the self belief, patience, talent or a big enough interest enjoy the likes of Britian's Got Talent or The Apprentice. Part of us likes to see an ant like us succeed - while the other part of course gets out the magifying glass like in Susan Boyle's case. 

Amongst the Grasses - DesignedbyRebecca would of made an excellent reality show. How one talented woman but amateur gardener came up with an excellence garden design, submitted her entry to InBloom and was a success. Work done? Roll credits? Nah! I "helped" on one or two occassions during the 3 week dig and by help I mean I brought my hardworking boyfriend - The interesting thing I watched was as with all first timers (whether it be putting on a concert, a debate or a garden) - nothing goes to plan - when where what how is not out of a book or part of a carefully plotted to do list but an improvisation or a piece of advice acted upon. 

So I haven't spoken about the third & fouth kind of ants - I've covered the main type of ants who use facebook at work and eat a lot of ready meals and the few and far between ants on the other end of the scale who are talented and pro-active but somewhere inbetween there are ants who try to stand out for one brief minute but when it gets too hard they give up and then there are ants who try and try - again and again - and then succeed. 

So at times during the 3 week dig at Bloom amongst the grasses it rained really hard - so Rebecca and her volunteers wore rain gear, no one knew how to operate a digger so they learned, they didn't have enough plants they somehow found more, so many mini dramas one after the other and Rebecca didn't give up and just go home she finished her garden and it was bloody great. Best described as a movie set - I could imagine Kiera Knightley sitting in the garden with a nice cup of tea(in the end it was Mary Kennedy). I really had this amazing urge to run through the grasses obviously I didn't but it was calling me! Better still it was garden that taught important lessons - now you could say "wouldn't it have been boring if it'd gone smoothly and the right amount of plants had turned up". Rebecca is now armed with experience and thats a stepping stone between talent and a gold medal in the years to come if you ask me. 

Torchwood

Why does the BBc torture me so? Why are we still waiting to hear a release date for the season 3?I have a two predictions which I hope are wrong - first that either Gwen or Ianto must die and Jack must choose who he helps second that Ianto dies in a cement related incident! Teasers look gr8 - Gwen Jack Ianto with Rhys and PC Andy are a gr8 combo. I hope it starts after the apprentice finished or I'll be seriously moody.

Also pictures of John dressed as captain jack filming for Xmas was prob filming for Tonights The Night would love John or TW to be in Who again.