Please stand firm, hold the handrail

A friend, who remains a good friend despite his apparent insistence on delivering painful observations, once told me over a pint that I was someone who always seemed to have loads in the pipeline, but nothing ever came to fruition. A breezy way of telling me I was full of it. It came at a time when I was trying to get out of retail and into journalism, and I assume I was telling him about a couple of opportunities that had frustratingly fizzled into nothing. Shortly after our exchange, I got my foot in the door and never looked back. I came good, I guess.

Now, sitting on a news desk in Beijing while unfamiliar characters scroll on the screens around me and contemplating the potentially staggering thought that perhaps I've been using the squat toilets the wrong way round for three months, I'm wondering if his appraisal of me was right.

I thought that by now I would have learnt enough Chinese to get by. I thought I'd be painting and sketching more, possibly doing some exercise, writing regularly. Well fine, none of us ever thought I'd do any exercise, but in general, I might not be the kind of person I thought I was - or the person I told everyone I would be. You know the one, the person who does constructive things in her spare time. The person who learns a new language. The person who dumps everything to switch countries and has a total blast, man. Oh lord, I best just say it: I THINK I'VE FAILED AT MOVING TO CHINA.

In Defence of Blogging Awk

I came across something on Twitter recently that appeared to be having the usual pop at anyone who - shock horror - may have become comfortable with social networking, rather than constantly looking around terrified that what they've just posted has suddenly fallen out of favour with the cool meedja brigade. It was along the lines of, ‘In real life, socially awkward people pretend they're normal. On Twitter, normal people pretend they're socially awkward.’

Hur hur hur. Yes. So now, all those who only ever post about the stupid shit they do every day (because they realise serious online debate is 92% twat) should check themselves for clearly ramping up their shortcomings in the hope of a few more follows. Twitter loves to identify a trend, a topic, or a group, then beat the shit out of it. Identify and condemn is a Twitter sport. Bonus points for being the first to comment or share something, more bonus points for being the first to turn it around and take the piss out of those jumping on the bandwagon, more still for being the first to hashtag 'yawnboredmoveon.' Or find something about it to spawn OUTRAGE so you can tell other people to stop spreading it, of course.

Recently, I missed the initial fuss of the BBC newsreader who had accidentally picked up a block of printer paper instead of his iPad and had to read the news while holding it, a strange and wonderful image of a seriousface journalist determined to see this random stationary situation through to the bitter end. By the time I logged on to Twitter, it was all, ‘STFU about the newsreader already *eyeroll*' Yeah, stupid, boring you for not checking your newsfeed 24/7 and commenting on a story within the minuscule time-frame of acceptability immediately thereafter.

Quarter Life Crisis?

Here is a piece wot I did wrote a few years ago. It was meant to try and demonstrate the frustrations of your average recent graduate, so while I definitely had conversations like this, we all know I'm not really a white dress kind of gal. I did have a tiered thingummy though. It just happened to be made of cheese, not cake.

You are not as handsome as you were before

K decides to use the instrumental interlude in whatever song he’s currently blasting into the microphone to shout “Ahaha tiny woman bladder!” at me as I exit our karaoke room for the 12^th time. I had already hissed at him that I am NotWell, lady code for ‘I could shit through the eye of a needle’ but the 2.8% beer must have finally had an effect on him. After around 14 bottles each. I look back to scowl, nearly bumping into the two cleaners who have taken to standing outside our booth and peering in at the laowai screeching Winehouse tracks.

At the start of the night, I’d wondered if I’d finally reached my personal pinnacle of awkwardness in this room. Our hosts for the weekend had treated us to dinner, and then, as is the Chinese way, karaoke. For around half an hour, songs wailed sadly to themselves on the screen and disco lights aggressively flashed as the three silent foreigners smiled and desperately necked weak alcohol. My skin prickled and I’d been sitting on my hands, considering completely sober singing for no reason other than embarrassment at our inability to let ourselves go when our friends just wanted to have a good time with us. The boy and I gave each other shifty glances. Mine said, "You’ve lived in China before. This is your responsibility. Pick up the mic and save me from destruction." His said, "Why are you twitching, you wide-eyed goon?"

It's not just the wardrobe, right?

In the weeks before we moved to Beijing, I found it massively frustrating attempting to condense our lives into two suitcases each, balancing essential with luxury, need versus want. Most of the time, need obviously won out, though we did agree that some of the apparently unnecessary – the PlayStation, a photo album, a couple of our favourite books – were worth the luggage space for comfort. A peculiar comfort, I’ll admit, in rowing over Ni No Kuni because he thinks I’m just a ‘button basher’ during fights, and all he wants to do is fly around on our newly acquired dragon* but a comfort nevertheless.

However the rest of the time, as my pile of ‘definitely taking to China’ grew larger, K would roll out the ‘Just buy a new one over there’ argument. And I’d always reply, in a really not-annoying whine, ‘I don’t WANT to buy a new one. I bought the one I’ve got because I LIKE it.’ Aside from the fact we’ve had to extend our overdraft three times already setting ourselves up here, my wardrobe is my wardrobe because I liked all the things in it enough to buy them.

It’s not just the wardrobe, right? Of course it’s not, and some well-bargained sex favours secured me 12 pairs of shoes anyway, the point is that it tapped into a big picture fear about moving abroad. Knocking the bricks out of the life we’ve made.

“So you’re just planning to feel awkward for a year then?”

I can still recall the exact melt-into-the-ground-cry-with-shame feeling that accidentally tugging the hand of my primary school teacher’s boyfriend provoked, after mistaking him for my dad at some school event or other when I was about six years old. I burned up about that nanosecond of nothing for a good few years afterwards. Nobody likes to look stupid. It’s not something you set out to achieve in the morning, I understand this. However, I am pathetically terrified about it and always have been. I try to avoid situations that could prove awkward. Team-building, anything with audience participation, speaking on the phone to anyone at any time. Moving to another country where I don’t speak the lan- Oh.

I’m aware other - normal - people brush things off. I know I feel stupid at times when other people wouldn’t, mainly because K tells me so. I assume other people get through life by not thinking everyone is incredibly interested in their ridiculousness. However here in Beijing, it seems someone nearly always IS checking out what the foreigner is up to. And if Person A stares at Person B for long enough, sooner or later Person B is going do something that warrants a smirk. It’s probability.

My name is Amy and I can't drive

I’m sighing loudly and crossing my legs as yet another service station shrinks into the distance behind us, and my other half is staring pointedly forward, mouth set. This is a sensible direction to stare given he’s driving us up the M1, but I know his grimace is also because he’s gearing up to utter the full stop to all of our motorway conversations. Which goes something like this: “When you drive, as many loo breaks as you desire. Until then...”

I could have been motoring to toilet freedom, to unlimited possibility, to the shops, for 11 years now. I got as far as collecting the provisional license form on my 17^th birthday, and left it in the pub. My name is Amy. I’m 28, and I can’t drive. I’d ask for a group hug, but I think I might be the only one.

How has this happened? At 17, living at home, I was happy to cope with one bus an hour if it meant I could use the lesson fee for more pressing matters - like booze to drink in club queues while waiting to get turned away for looking 12. At university, I was predictably skint and then I picked up the boy, moved to London and took the tube every day. I cope.

But now and then, while arranging festival travel with friends, or knocking over small children on the bus with my Tesco bags, suspecting a Fiat-driving youth is preparing to shout, “Bus stop w****r!” I get a twinge that I haven’t quite caught up. I'm drifting towards the rest of adulthood with a mortgage, a fiancé, a loosely termed 'career', but I am still at the mercy of unreliable public transport and expensive taxis.

If nothing else, it loses me valuable argument ground. Much in the way I whine, “You don’t understand!” to non-smokers who tut at my on-off habit, my non-driving status means I’m unable to comment on anyone’s skill or lack of. Even I know you shouldn’t sit in the middle lane assuming it’s the ‘medium’ between fast and inside, but, y’know, they’re giving me a lift.

Given I refuse to wash our heavy casserole dish as it’s “too awkward”, it’s fair to say I am scared of things that are a bit hard. Ever contrary though, things that are really hard, I seem to throw myself at with abandon. Terrified, I quit a job I hated giving myself a month to find something else, and it worked. I ended a long term relationship and jumped into a new one a week later, and that worked too. Apparently, I am a girl of extremes. I can throw a steady income down the drain, but I cannot scrub an iron pan.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to imagine myself behind the wheel as time passes, and every journey with the boy carries an unspoken accusation of laziness. But much like the giving up smoking thing, and the pile of washing up, I continually bleat, ‘I will at some point, honest!’ Erm, but not now - we have a wedding to save for. That would just be silly.

I got back tonight, and I couldn't find any Friends

I'll start with a disclaimer, nay, a warning. If you do not like long-running, award-winning, jolly American sitcom Friends or have not ever watched it, this blog post may not have much in it for you. This blog is not going to be earthshattering, important, or even well written. It's just about Friends.

Screw the journo thing of doing a pithy bit of context for the uninitiated. Friends has been on one channel or another four times a day your entire life. If you ain't a fan now, I can't change you. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't because quite frankly, we number many and we're just fine. 

Plus there's just too damned much to explain. I can say "In LONDON!" incredulously whenever I want, and the boy, the best friend and occasionally the mother (if she's taken her clarity meds) will understand the reference. Sometimes just saying any word in the same tone as "In LONDON!" works. This post may run along those lines. You might think something like, "Oh, I didn't realise the irritating precocious child actor talking to Joey in Chandler and Monica's new house was Dakota Fanning" and that's okay. Saying, "Oh, was Brad Pitt in it once then?" means you should probably stop reading now. 

So let's crack on. I am sad Friends will no longer be on free telly at a time when nothing much else is on. That when I leave work or work-related things before 10pm, there is no longer a back-up to stick on in the background as I throw myself on the sofa and force the boy to make dinner. I am sad that it will no longer be the main reason I would ever watch T4 and thus pretend to be young and hip. So I'm just going to talk it out for a bit, okay?