How to make me even angrier than I’d be if you just stuck at stealing my friends

New Kid Katie finds me immensely amusing. She keeps looking at Tana when I speak and biting her lip like she’s repressing hysterical giggles, and Tana does the same, and then they both look at me all wide-eyed and innocent.

“She went to a singin lesson last – look, what’s the o-so-funny joke here?”

“Nothing.”

“So stop laughin. She went to a singin lesson last week an came back an said there’d not bin a – what es your problem?”

“Tana, did she -?”

“Yeah.” And they giggle.

“What?”

“Why d’you keep talking in a Welsh accent for?”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah she does,” Tana says, like I can’t hear her.

“You’re not Welsh?”

“No.”

“So, why d’you -?”

“I am not puttin on an accent an I am not Welsh an you are not funny.”

“Do you hate the Welsh, then?” she asks seriously.

I stomp off to cool my head. Whenever I catch myself saying a guttural and soundly South African ‘ach mun’ she starts laughing, too. I guess it’s out of context, given she doesn’t know I’ve been brought up round my South African family so much it’s habit, but… but yeah. Hmm. Like it says on the can, that’s how to make me even angrier than I’d be if you just stuck at stealing my friends: mocking my speech. Don’t even go there. That’s my job.

Confessions of a failed Mad Pride-er

There are two things I didn’t realise weren’t common knowledge. The first, that it’s me in my avatar, isn’t particularly special. It’s only a shadow, after all. But the second is either the most important thing of all or the least, depending on how you want to see it. So, OK. I have lied to you about two things. One of them honestly isn’t important – a little bit of track-covering for the sake of any curious acquaintances of mine who might come browsing this way. The other one is the fact that Suzanne isn’t my real name. I thought that if I could make this blog say, very convincingly, that it was my name, then people coming this way who might recognise me would be put off by the conviction with which the world called me another name. Except I’ve realised that’s a pretty stupid plan now, and while I don’t intend to tell anyone my real name (unless you guess it) I think I’d rather people realised I’m not brave/foolhardy/self-confident enough to let a mental health blog out into the world using my own, Google-able name. I don’t want anyone to think I’m someone I’m not. Well – not in that way, at least.

Guest post by Hannah

It seemed appropriate to start the guest blogging season with a post by the lovely Hannah (she’s linked in the post so not in my introduction) that made me very surprised and happy when she sent it me, and is, naturally, the reason she is now ‘the lovely’ Hannah… you’ll probably guess why when you see the title. And I’d like to quickly point out that I have now talked about David Tennant so many times, people are finding my blog through searches for him. Such glad tidings!

Picture for the day: imagine Suzy being baffled by her relatives as she reaches the extent of her Afrikaans vocabulary and finds that she is not just lost in translation, she is hopelessly marooned there.

The dictionary says I’m not Welsh

I felt like writing but I think something’s clogging the place where inspiration usually flows from. So what I did, I opened my dictionary and took the first word as a topic. Like in public speaking – ten minutes to prepare your speech on ‘The Devil’s Own Work’, kind of thing.

 

And what did I get? Well, first I got ‘solenoid’, which is a physics thing (whoo!), and I did my last ever Physics exam this Wednesday, and I don’t think even I can spend a few hundred words reinterpreting ‘a coil of wire which becomes magnetised when an electric current is passed through it’ – and even if I could I wouldn’t want to. So. Ever onwards, I suppose. And thankfully, ‘solenoid’ was directly followed by ‘accent’. Phew…