No I Will Not Grow Up, Mum

The other day, I told my mum that I wanted to run away from New York and go back home, because the city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and my job is massive pile of corporate EW. She told me to grit my teeth and get used to it; there’s nothing actually badly wrong, it’s not forever and, in all fairness, I’ve had it pretty cushtie up 'til now - I have to grow up and face the real world some time.

This is all, ostensibly, true. I can’t give one factual, unemotional reason as to why I should definitely be at home right now and not in my blazer and pencil skirt in my central midtown job. In fact, saying that I’ve had it cushtie up until now implies that my current situation is a decrease in circumstances, which it most certainly is not. Career-wise, I have gone from speaking to graduates on the phone about library buildings and to eccentric London folk about old coins, to speaking to executives and directors of an array of international companies about … well nothing much. Their chat is shit. And this is where dear mother, at the risk of sounding like a bad teenage record stuck at 1968, I have to disagree with your sage advice. I will not grow up, and as for ‘the real world’, well that’s just a ridiculous concept that icky people like David Cameron and George Osborne use in suspect rhetoric about union strikes and NHS cuts. It’s a semantic device employed by people when they want to make an opposite point of view look absurd. I mean, nothing could undermine the notion of reality more really, than the implication that there’s a second, superior and intangible universe operating within wider society, that only people that hate their jobs are a part of. I’ll continue in my blissful muggle ways if you don’t mind.

When I first arrived in the states, before I found a house, I was staying in hostels. In these places a high number of my dorm-buddies were permanent travellers, who at 23, 26, 28 had not yet ‘settled down’, and had no plans to. I’m not advocating this as a permanent lifestyle, and I doubt they would either, but my point is they were still adults. They still had an amazing amount of experience under their belts, and all taught me loads. And they were very, very happy. Despite the fact that I am and adult, I’m also young, and it’s almost inevitable that I’m going to make mistakes. Although, I think that’s what you’re meant to say after you’ve made a mistake. It’s probably not the same to use it as justification for doing something that you’re pretty sure is going to turn out later to be a mistake. Which seems to be what I do. I’ve let myself skip school, drink too much, smoke, treat boys badly, jump of high things and so much more, purely by saying to myself before-hand ‘well, we all make mistakes!’ in the same off-hand tone someone might say ‘well, it is fair-trade!’ to justify spending £5 on a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. There might have to be a cut-off point one day. This may not be a practicable system for life. 

It’s funny really that I’m feeling so homesick for England and tired of New York, because there’s probably something of an American influence at play in my sudden, sentimental desire to drop everything and run. It’s not very reminiscent of the British stiff upper lip; the culture that I miss so much. Ironically, it’s probably in part the Romantic, openly emotional side of American culture having an effect on me that’s made me frank, sincere and dramatic enough to see upping and leaving the country as a viable option.

And, in all fairness, I can’t say I’ve been putting maximum effort into fitting in. Being Englishly reserved and reasonably unwilling to talk to strangers is a general handicap, but it’s one that I’ve not been particularly active in trying to rectify. A slightly moody, reclusive version of myself is emerging, one that doesn’t have very much interest at all in making friends in this ludicrous city, where no one has a washing machine or t.v. but nearly everyone has a really small dog which they actually carry around in a bag (I know, I thought it was only Paris Hilton too). But if that’s what it’s doing to me, why should I make the effort to stay? I’m a nicer person in England. So yes, it’s all on me. I do not blame you, New York City, but I want to come home. The corporate environment is no place for a girl like me. And if I’m going to do something I later regret, now is the time. Sylvia Plath ditched it all in, and she did alright …

oh, wait …  

My Summer in Lists

In the interest of providing some background to stuff to come, I thought I would begin by briefly bringing you all up to speed on the last couple of months through the medium of LISTS.

WHERE I HAVE BEEN IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      Birmingham, UK

2)      St Albans, UK

3)      East Williamsburg, BROOKLYN

4)      Harlem, MANHATTAN

5)      Bushwick, BROOKLYN

6)      Bed-Stuy, BROOKLYN

7)      Back to Bushwick

(Pheew!)

WHAT I HAVE DONE IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      Sat my second year university exams

2)      Passed my second year university exams

3)      Said many a goodbye (tearier and more slurred than I had perhaps hoped for)

4)      Made many and introduction

5)      Been made to leave my first NY apartment by my once Vegas bouncer ex-karate champion landlord

6)      Seen the Manhattan skyline light up the night from many a Brooklyn roof.

7)      Spat water/thrown cans/paper off many a Brooklyn roof

8)      Stuck my head over the edge of many a Brooklyn roof

9)      Run away from a pitbull

10)   Started work at BritishAmerican Business’ snazzy offices on the 20^th floor of a midtown building

11)   Had my laptop, camera, ipod and headphones stolen

12)   Got the subway into town and got sushi at 2am

13)   Found a new apartment which is nice and the landlord seems to be allowing me to stay (touch wood)

14)   Stood on a fire escape and sung Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, the Beatles and Frank Turner loudly into the Brooklyn night, because England keeps my bones. (And we have the best music).

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT IN THE LAST FOUR MONTHS

1)      I have the most fantastic friends in the world.
I mean, I can only really say that with authority over the bits that I’ve travelled. But from ET to GMT, they’re the best.

2)      Despite having a ‘postal service’, American’s don’t understand the noun ‘post’. You can post some mail, but mail some post and they won’t have a clue what you just did.

3)      I will never, ever be ‘street’

4)      Having a padlock on your bag is of no use if you don’t put your valuables in it

5)      Having nothing of value is strangely liberating

6)      I will always need my mummy. 

THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW I WOULD MISS FOUR MONTHS AGO

1)      Cadbury chocolate.
I never bought the stuff, but it was nice seeing it there in the shops. Hersheys looks grim.

2)      Spray deodorant.
It exists, but just doesn’t seem to be a very big thing. There’s not much of it in the shops. Apparently hygiene products in a spray can is weird over here,  but cheese? Perfectly usual.

3)      English misery.
People here are positive, friendly, confident and enthusiastic all the time.
It’s fucking tiring. A bit of cynicism and negativity wouldn’t go amiss, dudes, you're making me uncomfortable.

THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ACHIEVED WHEN I LEAVE

1)      Be able to speak Spanish

2)      Be able to play the guitar

3)      Be able to pull off wearing a cap

First Post

Hi.

So, after about three months of planning to do it, I’m finally getting this blog started, and I’m going to get this thing off the ground with a BANG. As you can gauge from this, I’m a very impulsive and action driven person, so let’s get straight to the exciting stuff.

…

 I have to begin with some expectation management.

What not to expect from my blog:

1) Travel notes
What?? I know. I called this blog ‘travelnotes’ and, given that I recently moved from my home in a quiet London suburb to that beautiful, insomnia-prone disaster filmset, Lady New York City, it would make sense for this to be a blog documenting my travels. However obvious interpretation created by my move is nothing more than a happy coincidence. A nice double entendre. Looking through my pieces from this summer, and thinking about how to connect them together, I realized that the theme connecting everything seemed to be travel. Travelnotes is so called because most of the content was and will be written on various forms of transport. A lot of what I will be posting up here soon is stuff I wrote when I didn’t have a computer. It has been written on park benches, trains, buses and planes, going from London, to Birmingham to Edinburgh to St Albans to the U.S. of A. So by travelnotes, I mean it in a much more immediate and literal sense than just things that have happened to me ‘on the road’. It’s stuff I’ve thought about while in motion, outside of my home, and in limbo. The opposite of location-based writing I suppose. So I guess, in effect, the exact opposite of travel writing.

2) Narrative 

So most of the postings will be writing taken from my notebooks.  I use lots of notebooks. I pick one up in the morning, write in it in the day, put it down, and will almost definitely pick up a different one the next morning. This pattern has carried on for as long as I can remember.  So flicking through the pages, things written in consecutive days will rarely be in the same book, let alone next to each other.  When I open my notebook to start writing, I don’t fill them up page by page. I tend to open at a random page. This started because a lot of the time I write starter bits to go back to later, so I’d skip pages to leave room for pieces to be added to. But it’s kind of just how I roll now, whether I need to leave space or not. So my notebooks are basically tatty doodle pads with pages of unconnected writings, scribbles out, stars, moved paragraphs, several versions of the same paragraph, and pen and pencil smudges. And blog will probably resemble that structure pretty closely, mainly because that's pretty much the structure of my brain too. And tying all that stuff together and putting it in order is not a job I’m willing to do. It's why I'll never write a beautiful novel. Who needs linearity anyway?

So yeah, no travel notes and no distinct order or timeframe.  I’ve heard it said around that location and narrative are pretty central things to good writing, so I thought it was probably important to make people aware of their absence here. Happy Reading :)