A Curious Girl: Have you missed these random anecdotes?

Damn sales techniques. I usually go buy an ice-cream during longer breaks at work. Today I went and asked for a scoop of mint choc chip, in a cone. Brisk, business-like, they know what I want. It's the best way for good service. Only the man said, "You can have another scoop for fifty pence."

He'd suckered me. I always buy one scoop. That's all I really need, it's nice, not overly indulgent, but very satisfying.

"You know, when you put it like that, it sounds really good."

He then gives me a spiel, which I know is total rubbish, about how it's such good value to get a extra scoop for fifty pence. It really is rubbish, because they could probably charge me fifty pence for the whole thing and then still make a profit. But he's put the idea into my brain now. Another scoop. For not much more money. I want another scoop!!

Mint choc chip, incidentally, is great when it's insanely hot, because mint tastes so cold. It's a relief just taking a bite.

Work is going all right. I am much more sure of myself in the job now, so things aren't too bad. Aaaw, it was so sweet... someone told a waiter that he gave the best service they'd ever had. Later on I talked to this guy and he was all stressed because everything else had gone wrong. *sigh* The thing is, I don't think it's as bad as he thinks it is. Lee, one of the assistant managers, has a habit of pointing out every little fault (the waiter, Chris, was stressing because he forgot to lay cutlery out! *Gasp* Shock horror!). I know because after one of my long shifts he told me I had better make sure that the till was completely balanced. My till was twenty pence short. Russel, the other assistant manager, by comparison doesn't really care if three pounds is missing. In any case, Angelina, who I was working with today, said she'd resign if they ever made her pay for missing money. I totally agree, but she only has one shift a week. I think that the others - Ruth, Sarah, Philotte and me - would all rather pay for twenty pounds missing than lose the job. The really ridiculous thing is, someone could have just made a computer error (I did once) and there would be no missing money at all!! And the other dumb thing is, anyone behind the bar who knew what they were doing could come and steal cash from your till whilst you were doing something, and you'd never know.

Thanks Alice for your guestbook message! Good to hear from you, I always like to hear your response to things, even when I don't know if I agree! Do you have a source for that story (timbers on Mt. Ararat)? It seems they took an awful long time to find these timbers. One of the things that troubles me most about the Ark story, is why did God have to use a flood in the first place? Why kill off all those animals? If he'd wanted, he could have just struck people dead, like in the plague on the first-borns. The thing about the Sodom and Gomorrah story is that people always major on the 'gay' thing. I mean, raping angels is a terrible crime, but the whole bit where Lot offered his daughters, as if that would be preferable... well. Beyond belief. What I don't understand is why God apparently has such a problem with gay people. OK, so it's not 'natural' but I'm not intending on going naked or eating meat raw any time soon. Lust, rape and paedophilia are all wrong - and these can be linked with homosexuality, but are much more often committed by heterosexuals! To me, God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah because they were gay is the equivalent of him destroying them because they liked to eat bacon... Sorry for the ranting :) But that's what I think...

Sez. Thank you for your warning - I don't think 'Conversations with God' is necessarily a 'Christian' book anyway. I haven't encountered it in the Christian bookshop, to be honest I think it would cause too much of a stir :) I wouldn't worry too much about me reading incorrect books, in the end I'm obstinate and will soon enough believe whatever I want to believe. Awful but true... ;) The best thing university has taught me is to be skeptical about absolutely everything. Not in a stupid way ("I love you..." "Oh really?") but by questioning everything you learn, and taking nothing for granted. One of my most treasure remarks from lectures is my lecturer saying how he and a colleague wrote to a top science journal (I think it was 'Nature') about an article, and "told them it was a pile of s***. Not in those words, obviously." I think the reading is not the problem. The problem is people not thinking.

Rebekah - thank you! Such a nice message. But by the time I post this message, we've chatted on msn. Good to talk to you :)

I was thinking recently, about the ever mysterious shyness I occasionally suffer from. I'm much much better than I was, but I still have a little fear, a little awkwardness. I've become so good at hiding it that people are astonished at its existence.

Of all things, I was reminded of a stupid nickname a boy at school called me. Pinocchio. My nose might be a millimetre longer than average, but it's not impressively long. The people who sat on the same table as me in my year 5 class liked to sing the theme tune to that awful cartoon, P - I - N - O - double C - H - I - O spells Pinocchio! I reflect on how utterly stupid this is whilst sorting sauce jars. In fact, I sing F - I - N - O - double C - H - I - O spells Finocchio... that's the Italian for 'fennel' :) It helps me remember how to pronounce it. It seems strange, even at the time the stupid insult didn't really matter. That was because I was fairly confident my nose was perfectly normal :) So I wondered whether there was something that had an effect. I vaguely remembered a girl in my class, around the same time remarking, "Cor, ain't she got a hideous laugh!" I was hurt. But I never felt embarrassed to laugh. I connected (and probably correctly) that people who mocked my facial features or my laugh were not doing so because they were particularly sub-standard. They were doing it because they had a problem with me. If someone likes you, they don't make fun of the way you look or silly things you can't change. It wasn't so much the names, it was the fact that they had marked me out - not one of us. This has happened a lot.

Something which I think happened with various people making fun of me etc is that I began to distrust popular people. Sounds stupid. But to my mind, these popular people, these people who fit in seamlessly... they were the ones who made me feel like an outcast. I instantly trust anyone who's weird (partly explains why Matthew is my boyfriend :) ) because to some extent, I trust that they know how I feel. But it's silly. Why be so guarded? In those days, I knew that my nose and my laugh were no cause for embarrassment. Today I know that who I am is no cause for embarrassment. So why have fear? In any case, the people who still have that childish idiocy need to grow up.

Speaking of which (this entry will be bits of everything :) ) the other day I went out, all in black (as Lucius Malfoy once said, "Evil is wearing black in summer. Seems stupid, looks bloody awesome." *winks*) to go downtown and as I hate having the sun in my eyes, I grabbed my straw hat I bought in Scarborough. Which, by the way, is also black. Aaah, monochrome...

I met three girls going the other way. I briefly glanced at them - oh yes, gold jewellery and skimpy tops are still in fashion. Fair enough... (Skimpy tops are good in this heat, but chunky gold jewellery is horrible. Just my opinion, though.)

They looked at me, saw the black ensemble, and one remarked, "Like your hat. It's really groovy." Her wording suggested scorn. I thanked her graciously (I like my hat!) and moved on. "Where did you get it?" one yelled back at me. I think they yelled some other derisive things, I couldn't really hear - from their expressions, I could tell the intent. They moved on, laughing at apparently having caught one of those Sweaties* in their natural habitat. There was a time when that sort of behaviour would have made me intimidated and upset. This ridiculous parody just made me laugh. Perhaps my hat was silly. It only cost me one pound fifty in a seaside shop and it was doing its job admirably. But three girls about five years younger than me were not going to convince me of my fashion error. I wanted to grab them and tell them just how silly they had been. That number one, the world would not fall apart tomorrow if they went out looking a little different from everyone else. That number two, I was happy with my hat and myself, and their mocking only amused me. And number three, I'm flattered by the use of such a 'sixties' word as 'groovy'. If I wasn't celibate, I might make quite a reasonable hippy, you know :)

* Sweaties, by their own definition, are Indie-Rock loving semi-Goths who like hooded sweaters with their favourite Indie/Goth band on it. Sweaties by the definition of the sorts of people who wear chunky gold jewellery because everyone else does, are people who go out wearing black. Hence a boy once called me a Sweaty and then rethought, I assume once he saw that above my black jeans, I was wearing lilac. "SWEATY!! Oh, you're not a Sweaty." Beats me.

Random word for today: Senescence

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