P.S.

I forgot my gratuitous photographic boast of the day.

"Nay!" I hear you cry "Sacre Bleu, what is the world coming to? ". Well fear ye not. Here it comes.

I'm thinking happy, light, airy, feelgood-



... it's the skywalk in Toronto!

(oh you lucky ducks)

More anon.

Excitement!!

Ohhh, I'm so excited.

2 things.

1. I've booked a holiday!

Yesssss. Get paid, spend it all on a holiday: that's my mantra. Actually, technically my friends booked it for me, but we includes me, so yey! It is one whole week in March, snowboarding in the french alps- Chamrousse à precision! Boy do I wanna be slipsliding down those slopes, right right now! Plus, I'm really looking forward to seeing my pals since it's been too bloody long!

Cause for excitement, I think you'll agree. Ouis?

But maybe even more exciting is....

2. I've fallen in Love!

...with a diary. My diary. :)

Don't look at me like that- this is the genuine article! And don't you get jealous, oh blog of mine, this is the appointement recording type, you are not being userped as my thought recorder, so settle ye down.

It's A5. Black. Slim. Soft. MOLESKIN- oh yes, you're reading me right! Their monthly planner in point of fact. There's always something quite thrilling about a new diary, and it's taken me quite sometime to meet "the one" this year, but after long deliberation I have taken the plunge into a long term relationship with my handsome, moleskin planner. And the novelty of a monthly layout rather than weekly or daily, and the notion of a whole year of turning its thick cream pages, and endlessly scrawling miscellaneous notes in its perfect, intermittant lined pages is... nearly enough to send me over the edge!

So you see I have much to be gleeful about!

Imagine the pleasure I'm about to incur by writing my holiday details into my new diary....

!

More anon.

Twitching

TWITCH \ˈtwich\:
"a bodily or mental twinge, as of pain, conscience, etc.; pang." or,
"in birdwatching, to pursue and observe a rare bird"

Interesting how that second term has come to pass, wikipedia explains it as referring to the behaviour of a nervous British birdwatcher, Howard Medhurst.

The fact is I have been doing both of late.

As a closet twitcher I am now outing myself. Possibly not a genuine twitcher, down to the strictest definition, I love to run off looking for birds I haven't seen before, so they needn't really be rare. However, my current "twitch for a twitch" is genuinely rare bird driven. I have joined a couple of birdwatching sites who issue alerts to this effect, and what has taken my fancy is the notion of a King Eider Somateria spectabilis Somateria spectabilis. A genuinely beautiful bird (which also satisfies my penchant for photography), one has been spotted bobbing around the south coast of fife, at Kincraig Point.

A small hitch has come into play however. The car is in the garage for a gear box repair and may be in there all week. So my antsing to get out there and pursue the chase is going to have to be shelved until the means is re-established. Thus one of my reasons for feeling "twitchy", in the former sense of the word.

My other reason for feeling twitchy requires a little back story. I have very recently extracted myself from London residency. Having moved to London for a masters degree at Imperial College, I stayed on with a hope of starting into a career of sorts, not really knowing what else to do.

Fast forward to now and I have turned into a Londonphobe of sorts. That's probably an inappropriate term, as I don't so much have a fear of the city as just a general loathing.

Being a nature lover (something you may gather from the aforementioned bird chasing admission), the complete lack of wilderness beyond the most groomed and populous royal parks of London is a major factor. You cannot find a hill worth anything (bare in mind I'm a Scot and have been treated to a mountain filled up-bringing, not to mention the regular view of the beautiful Arthur's Seat which dominates the skyline of my hometown, Edinburgh). So I found myself getting increasingly down. Add to that a disillusionment with my career choice (TV production- cut-throat, ego filled, industry extraordinaire), increasingly few jobs (I was freelance), commutes of an hr and half each way to my last job, the overly private (read lonely) nature of living in a super busy metropolis, and a (albeit lovely) flatmate who worked abroad for 2weeks in every 8, and went home for a further one, leaving her super hyper Bengal cat, Chester, bounding around me in a most attention seeking manner- and you get a recipe for a not so happy Bex.

So now I am back in Edinburgh. Some other time I may expound further on a number of digressions which add to my unhappiness of the moment, but the fact is I am stuck, back at home with my parents, penniless, effectively social-life-less and jobless. And, having been here, sorting out my junk, clearing out the attic for some space and generally not existing in the real world, my other source of twitchiness is a need to get out there and do something at all worthwhile.

Conclusion.

My mission for the next week is to drum up a CV(or two) and start pursuing some form of work which will at least bring me back to life. So far I have earmarked 3 temping agencies for potential mundane but money making work, though I hear the temping market is fairly dry at the moment, and a couple of organisations whom I fancy trying to get something more interesting out of.

Objective one is probably the MSC. The Marine Stewardship Council are the ones who put those blue sickers on sustainably produced seafood and whose mission is to improve and make known the sustainability of commercial fishing worldwide. You know, boat to table transparancy and all that.

This is an area I have an interest in.

Thus their office on Rose Street shall be visited pronto with the hope of finding something, anything, to start sniffing around in this world of work. Their website says they accept interns sometimes, part or full time, so I shall offer myself to them in whatever manner they can possibly manage to take me and with any luck cast myself a rope ladder out of my ugly, stale rut.

OK, I shall end with the fruits of a couple of recent phototwitching trips.

First the Black Redstart, spotted half way up Berwick Law, North Berwick, Scotland. Now fondly known as "Liz".(below)



Second, the Fieldfare. A bird apparently common but not one I have come across before. This one was at Aberlady Bay, East Lothian, Scotland. (below)



And (as I admitted from my first post) since this blog is partly about showing off, I shall also stick in a picture taken in North Uist in august 2007. This one of a (flipping stunning) short eared owl mooching about in a field. (below)



The expensive product of all of these twitching missions is a longing for a bigger lens for my camera. One can but dream!

Meanwhile I'll just have to make do with twitching.

More anon.

An opening...

"Once upon a time" is a funny phrase. Who on earth came up with such a strange idea? How are we supposed to think of being "upon a time"? Certainly just using "once", which would capture the sentiment perfectly, does not quite have that same melodic ring to it. Yes, we are marking an arbitrary point, in an arbitrary construct -time- but the notion of time, as far as I understand it should not be something which is upon-able. Though I admit being "at" a time seems to allow it to be made more physical, and most things you can be "at" you can be "on" too.

Hmmm.

I think I ought not use that phrase as my opening. False start. Rewind, and rewrite...

So. Why write a blog? I have long been the type of girl to completely shun diary writing. Why on earth would I write down either my boring day to day activities or juicy, opinionated inner thoughts. Both spell out stupidity to me. My life is not that interesting and my opinions ever changing and often quite private. I have read enough books and seen enough films to know the pains incurred when such ramblings reach voyeuristic and ignorant eyes.

So I ask again, why write a blog?

Perhaps it's clarity. I do understand trying to organise ones thoughts. Minds digress and writings direct, so why not sensibly order ones thoughts in a convenient place. Though it needn't be accessible to the world, only you. And why somewhere which archives those thoughts when one could chalk them down somewhere ephemeral, which can be wiped once the sorting is sorted?

Perhaps it is practice. Writing is an infinitely useful skill. If you can phrase things with sense and wit you can go far (though obviously that is a "can" and not a "will" as my burgeoning cynicism reminds me). Indeed I should like to be able to write a good article, be articulate and work as a "a communicator" on some level. A skill necessary in almost every job ever, so probably a worthy one to cultivate. Yes, this seems to be getting closer. Sure you can do this in private to some degree, but publishing to even a couple of people, like a child submitting their homework for proofreading, is better for opinions, learning and affirmation. Yes, you should be your own council, able to criticise yourself and self-teach. But there is one factor that is always a factor. The ultimate reason to blog, and engage with any other human being.

Vanity.

There is no getting round it. There can be no other reason, all the rest are leaves on the trees. It is affirmation of existence and boastful too, and I freely (though grudgingly) admit it. For some reason I believe my thoughts and words worthy of airing and so deem myself tuned enough to join that great choir of bloggers out there for the small slice of extra existence that can gently caress my ego.

So now that that is admitted; now that the ugly cat is out of the bag and ready to strut its stuff (in your face, no less!), I believe we have an opening.

I'm ready for my solo...