The Mousehole

[raven]

Having lived in the Mousehole for almost a week now, I probably ought to have written down something about the experience before now, but stuff - canoes, mathematics, babies with hats - keeps intervening.

Firstly, the Mousehole is a small, pretty house in East Oxford, inhabited by me, chiasmata, sebastienne, an itinerant and tolerant Frenchman named Pierre, and shimgray has more or less been living here for a week in the capacity of Man With Hammer. (The great problem with living in a queer feminist socialist commune is that you occasionally need someone to pin up your rainbow flags for you. And change your lightbulbs. As women of a certain political persuasion, we could of course have done these things for ourselves. But he seemed to enjoy it, and the flag is very well hammered.) Slowly, slowly, the place is becoming home; we're in the process of getting the contract drawn up, which is complicated, and I probably need bookshelves in my room before I can quite relax. At the moment the books are everywhere unorganised and are making me twitch a bit.

Secondly, thank you all for your many kitten-naming responses. We shall have our kitten in three weeks once it's weaned, and it shall be named Harriet. (My original suggestion, I would like to point out, was in fact Harriet Taylor Mill - because I had said, look at me, be proud I didn't demand we name the cat Socrates, or Mill, or Plato, and.... yes.)

Thirdly. People have been visiting us all week, and it's been very nice indeed. jacinthsong came to stay, and that was lovely; she was here for three days and we drank wine and ate lots of delicious vegetarian food and watched a programme on Channel 4 entitled "The Perfect Vagina". It was... hideous. There was surgery. At one point Laura and Katie and I were all sitting with our legs crossed whilst Shim whimpered in my lap. Yeah. After that we mostly drank, and recounted the story the following day in the manner of Vietnam veterans, to foreverdirt and footnoteplato, who had come with cake. We made them more risotto - with a brief interlude for playing with our food - and ate a lot of cake and drank yet more wine. Wine has been a theme, this week.

Actually, the theme this week has been a mixture of things that seem terribly grown-up and mature, like the contract, and a job interview on Thursday morning up at the business park, and the letting agency demanding a witness for the signing of forms (shimgray stepped up to the plate, signed his name as a respectable member of society and thoroughly perturbed the agency, who wanted to know why he was listed as "tenant's partner" but not the partner of any of the actual relevant tenants, it all got very complicated very fast) and things that are not at all grown-up and feel strangely transient, like wine and the coming and going of people, and Thursday evening, idyllic and sunny by Hinskey Lake, with a box of home-made tiffin and everyone taking it in turns to jump barefoot into the canoe. It felt like an Arthur Ransome novel, and doubly strange that it was the same day as that job interview, and again, the admixture of perpetual summer holidays and future-ghasts.

In brief, I guess, everything is quietly good, but I can't relax very easily. I am more and more frightened that I won't get a training contract, and more and more convinced that I am an intellectual fraud; I can't tell all these people that yes, employ me, I am the best person for the job, because I don't believe that myself. (It doesn't help that my parents are still of the opinion that I'm a confirmed failure. I keep having stiff and stilted conversations with them in which we avoid the white elephant in the room. It's very depressing.) A return of the unspecified neuralgia is possibly related; I am back on the codeine after a brief holiday. Opiates, lest we forget, are really great.

Tomorrow, we're going to the zoo. I am looking forward to this with childish intensity. There will be elephants. Also, I am looking forward to August being over. It's humid and unexciting and the worst month of the year.

Comments

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

I saw that documentary, and was... yes. Horrified. Why would someone inflict unnecessary surgery on their genitals? As someone who's experienced horrific stabbing neuralgic pains in their crotch for a year I cannot fathom someone CHOOSING that pain for themselves. ARGH. *hides*

Also, though, would not have willingly had blue goop thrown over me to make a mould of my vulva. "Just because a man lives in Brighton doesn't make him gay, you know," was my thought throughout that piece.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I felt really sorry for the girl who was having it done; I mean, how miserable must she have been, to think this was the only way forward? Poor thing.

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

On a different note - hurrah, going to the zoo! It's such fun.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Oh, it sounds lovely! Houses are amazing. Especially when you start furnishing them.

--OH GOD IONA WHEN DID WE BECOME ADULTS?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I DON'T KNOW, OHGOD LEIGH, I DON'T KNOW. I bought a bookshelf (http://shimgray.livejournal.com/212784.html#cutid1)! It was really awesome!

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

"The great problem with living in a queer feminist socialist commune is that you occasionally need someone to pin up your rainbow flags for you."

This is probably the best thing i have ever read... :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes. Comedic but true.

[tau_sigma]

You are not an intellectual fraud. Not at all. But I know just how hard it is to believe that, I have the same problem myself. This:

I can't tell all these people that yes, employ me, I am the best person for the job, because I don't believe that myself.

is exactly how I feel about applying for jobs in the future. And it's terrifying. But there are an awful lot of people out there more stupid than us, and not in an intellectual way, in an utterly lacking in common sense, or possibly morals, or generally less employable way.

Yay opiates, and yay elephants. *hugs*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Yeah. It's hard, isn't it? This lovely post-degree life crisis that I and so many people seem to be having. I don't know. We shall soldier on. In the meantime, hurrah for opiates and elephants and indeed you as well, my dear.