Re-Apply

Ok, so I am DEFINITELY not a very diligent blogger. At all. But in my absence, a fair few developments have taken place, so perhaps it is time I re-applied myself to blogging. I so enjoy reading other peoples blogs, and my typing skills (beyond the everyday drudgery of office work) are beginning to wane. So here I go again!

The process of application is a good place to start, and a very handy link indeed. For I have bagged myself a shiny new job!! Yes! And I am very very excited about it. Not only is it near the ZOO in Clifton (sadly not inside with fluffy animals, but close enough) it is doing something worthwhile, and new, and lovely! I am going to be the Admissions Officer at The English Language Centre. Huzzah! Perhaps I shall even make a French friend who has a little apartment in Paris they will lend me every now and then. As Audrey said...

So a new adventure lies ahead. Which means of course, leaving behind a hefty chunk of a chapter in my tale so far! It's a very strange feeling moving on, after being somewhere quite so, um, 'memorable' (in every possible way) as the Jane Austen Centre. But in all seriousness, I have had a wonderful time, and four and a half years spent anywhere is enough to create a fairly powerful little heart string. And I am sure I can safely say, I will never meet a more eclectic, fabulous, bonkers and loveable group of people anywhere else. Luckily I get to take quite a few of those people along with me, in some way shape or form. However, I will be sure to leave Mr. Darcy behind...he's not really my type.

Second Timer

It seems I am not a very dilligent blogger. A post a month is probably slacking in the blogosphere, so I better jolly well get on with it. I haven't even fully explained the TITLE of my blog, let alone done any serious blogwork. Most of my blogging has also included the word blog, so all in all, must try harder. 

Anyway, to Cathy. A year or two before there was Kurt, there was Heathcliff. Or more specifically, Wuthering Heights. I first read this book when I was about 13, and it was the first proper 'literary' type book I had ever picked up (although Roald Dahl has to count as literary? And Black Beauty? Maybe not The Saddle Club books though...). Reader, for a little while it ruined me. So swept up was my little impressionable teenage soul, that I became convinced I would find myself a Heathcliff. But I wouldn't do a Cathy and sod off and marry the sop next door, no! We would roam the moors and eventually I would tame him enough for him to make me toast and such. That sounded very nice. This dream was eventually replaced by Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet, NOT Titanic I stress, and so on until eventually I found a boy who very much looked like Kurt Cobain, but behaved more like a slightly geeky Aiden Shaw from SATC with a life long Doctor Who obsession, but that's for another blog...I digress. For a while, Heathcliff was it, and I couldn't quite forgive Cathy for spurning. Like all great books though I often came back to the Heights, and each time I came away with something different, a new impression of the novel I hadn't picked up on in earlier readings. Cathy was my continual touchstone. With every reading my understanding of her developed, and I began to sympathise with her. What else could she really do but marry the sop next door? Her childhood was a difficult one to say the least; her life is continually torn apart by conflict she is always in the middle of, even as a little girl. I adore her feisty, slightly arrogant nature, the only defence a woman could arm herself with in such an environment. I still haven't quite figured her out, and this blog is not the space to do it in, especially as I don't think I ever will. but I like her, and admire her, in the same way I do Scarlett O'Hara or Emma Woodhouse. Plus, Kate Bush makes her name so damn sing-able! I have collected copies of the novel for some time now, here are a few of them with a sneaky P&P tucked in for good measure. HEATHCLIFF! IT'S ME IT'S CATHYYYY ahem, sorry...

The Fear of the Blank Page and Title Page Explanations

Oh, go on then. It seems everyone whom I think fabulous has a blog, and, as a post-post- graduate and post-student type entering a post-essay writing time of life, I don't think I can manage going cold turkey from all that tippy tappying on my keyboard quite yet, so here goes. A blog! How exciting! (Please note, my geekiness and ridiculous need to ramble on about something will NEVER include footnotes or sensible referencing of any kind. I DO NOT miss footnotes) 

My first post should probably explain the title of my blog. This took some serious consideration. Probably a bit too much consideration, but titles are important. One of the main reasons I didn't begin blogging earlier was simply because I couldn't think of a good enough title for my blog. This is clearly very silly, but as you will learn (I am assuming this will be read. Somewhere. At least once. Hi Mum...) such things will divert and hinder me. So it came to me in the shower, obviously. As I was humming and shampooing, I realised I was singing a song I hadn't heard in aaages,and the lyrics were ones which had always stuck around my head somewhere. So on I muttered...
 
'Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds...' 

These fabulous words originally come from a song called 'Plateau' by a band called the Meat Puppets. I know it from my hazy teenage days, that were largely spent swooning over Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I ADORED Kurt Cobain. I don't need to spend the rest of this ramble explaining why, many people have written much more eloquently and aptly about him, his music and his tragic demise, and I don't think I can attempt something quite so intense on my first blog entry, but I can show you where I got the line from at least. Here is a video (a video link on my first entry! Swish eh?) of the 'Unplugged' session for MTV in November 1993. The whole session demands your attention NOW if you haven't seen it before, but for the purposes if this paper, sorry, I mean blog entry, here's the song...

So, this is where the 'Illustrated Book About Birds' bit comes from. And as for the rest, well, I think this has got to be a three parter. (Suspense too! I like blogging...)