Goodness, I’m such a caveman. Or perhaps that should be cavekitty. Whatever. I’ve just nommed a can of meatballs in tomato sauce, using a mini combat knife as cutlery. I couldn’t get the ones in gravy, which is a pity because I prefer those ones. Still, tomato is nice enough. Fills a hole, which is really all one can ask.

Whoo! I’m going back to college. I’ll be wholeheartedly honest, it’s a prospect that excites me and also terrifies me. It excites me because of the new learning opportunities. I’m always up for learning a new skill. It terrifies me because I haven’t been around people that aren’t friends for a very long time. I’ve not been in college for... About six years, possibly more.

I met some pretty cool folk in college. My friends, Jan, Antz and Graham, were three of the best people I’ve met and exactly what I needed at the time. Since then, Antz did a lot of community work, helping people and spreading the word of music to young people who may not have been able to play an instrument otherwise. He died two years ago in an accident. Jan has drifted between unemployment and employment, doing cleaning jobs and looking after her family. She was the oldest of us and we called her Maw. We still do, actually. Graham... He’s an unknown quantity. He kinda just fucked off, to fuck knows where and then Antz discovered him ages ago on Facebook. Of course, Graham doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, so doesn’t really keep in contact with folk.

I know I’ll never meet people like that again. We were our own wee band of misfits, going about our days, getting stoned. Having a blast really, but I think it’s time I grew up. Graham has a family, Jan has a steady boyfriend and I... Well, I’d rather not tell you about my living situation or anything like that, so I won’t.

It’s funny, but Amy must know when I’m feeling down. She is pretty perceptive. I’m sure you’ll remember Amy, my ghost. I’ve talked about her in a few writings. Yes, Amy, the ghost in my Random Moment series (more on that momentarily) was based on my Amy. There I was, laying down to sleep, feeling sad, and then I smelled this smell. I knew it wasn’t a smell from this dimension, so my mind automatically turned to Amy. The smell was tangerine shower gel from The Body Shop, Amy’s favourite. She draped her arm around me and I felt the faint sensation of her warm breath on my neck. Her hair was soft and silky, and had a whiff of strawberries coming from it. In that moment, as she hugged me, I could feel myself comforted and relaxing and I felt Amy smiling as I relaxed.

So, I suppose you want to know about the Random Moment stories. If you’ve been following them, you’ll know that I left them at a cliffhanger. Well, that’s how it ends. You see, it isn’t that my inspiration for the story has dried up or that I don’t know where to take it, but rather that those stories wrote themselves. They took on a will of their own and I was just the instrument by which they manifested. Once I got to a certain point, they stopped communicating with me, so now I’m not writing them. I could force them, but that’d be bad. There’s nothing worse than a forced story, is there?

I haven’t sat and rambled like this for ages, I’d forgotten how good it feels to just let go. Just to sit here and write and have no idea where something is going, or even if it’s going anywhere. It’s true that I haven’t been in the mood to write recently. I’ve had a lot of vital life crap going on and when life takes over, your hobbies tend to take a back seat. The thing that seems to have spurred me back into action, is fixing my bass. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed using my hands and making things, you see. Writing combines using my hands and creating, so it’s a win-win situation. Of course, the thing that really started me fixing my bass was my brother.

He has been out of action for a couple of weeks. He broke his arm, so he couldn’t keep doing his woodworking. He wants to be a joiner when he leaves school, so he’s getting plenty of practice. Seeing him having so much fun and seeing him doing something that he enjoys, made me remember the thrill I used to get when writing. I’ll tell you, right now, I’m pretty thrilled. So, I’ve basically gone from restoring my bass, to making jewellery, to writing.

The jewellery making is why I’m going back to college. I can’t remember why I wanted to make jewellery, but one of the motivations was money. It isn’t purely about the money, most of it is just because I enjoy doing it.

I really thought I’d enjoy fixing computers, but they don’t impassion me the way they used to. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m still a computer geek, I always will be, but there’s nothing really exciting about them any more. I probably haven’t found anything exciting about them, right enough, but I say if you’re bored and can’t rekindle the magic, you might as well move on. I wasn’t making any money from it and it just seemed futile.

I still love electronics, though. I can’t help it, it’s just something from my childhood. Something about electronic devices just makes me feel good. I remember when I was younger, I’d wait for something to break and then take it apart. I always wanted things to break, so I could take them apart and see what laid underneath the shiny exterior. Heck, sometimes I’d just take the damned things apart, just to look inside. By the time I was 15, I was soldering for a hobby. I probably should have dialled that back a wee bit. I had terrible nosebleeds, some were because of the solder, some because of my terrible sinuses.

I looked into cosmetic surgery the other week. I’m not dissatisfied with the shape of my nose or anything, but rather the function of it. Or rather the malfunction of it. As mentioned before, I suffer from nosebleeds. Not as much any more. Generally these days if I have one, it’ll be a side effect of stress. They still annoy me, though. I really dislike my nose. My nostrils feel as if they’re collapsing, so I can’t exactly get a good enough breath, so I have to breathe through my mouth. That leads to the pain of halitosis, a pseudo medical condition that was made up by the makers of Listerine, the inventors of the very first mouthwash, which was originally used to sterilise surgical instruments. Anyway, I brush my teeth and that gets rid of the halitosis, so not so bad. The worst of it is not being able to breathe through my nose properly, so I looked into getting the nasal canal widened. Lemme just say: Rhinoplasty, ouch! Fuck that. They’d have to break my nose, insert cartilage to widen it and then re-set the nose. I think I’d rather breathe the way I do because that kind of surgery carries a pretty high risk.

I’m no stranger to risks, but with my health, I tend not to take risks these days. Aria helped me be more health conscious. Before I met her, I drank a lot (at the weekend, anyway, but also if I went out for a drink. Not that I was a mad alkie, but when there was drink going, I’d have it), I smoked a lot, I swore a lot and I just ate a lot of the wrong things. Now I’ve cut down on my drinking, cut the fags out completely, but I’m still as profane as ever. I don’t give a fuck about that.

Well, I’ve rambled on for quite a while now, and my fingers are getting tired. I’ve also got to take a nap before Skyping with Aria, so I think I’ll end this here. I wish those damned birds would shut up. Time to put the big light off and put the colour changing LED bulb on.

Kittylove
Andrew =^.^=

Written on 1/7/14, edited 2/7/14