Entry #20: Bug a Boo

That's almost it for April, it passed fast and I'm trying to recall what happened. One thing about April is the multitude of birthdays. Notably, I'm 6 days older than my cousin Hannah, 10 days older than Hannah from college, and Alex was born 15 days after me.

On Wednesday I went for a few drinks for Hannah's 23rd and plotted Pimm's sessions in the sun for this summer with her and her mum, it's become a recurring thing since 2005. Alex is the birthday girl today though we're not celebrating until Saturday, we'll go out somewhere in Manchester's city centre wherever the drink take us.

This week I felt increasingly frustrated at certain situations being one-sided, always being about the other person and me being treated like I'm a bad person and having to constantly defend my position. I can't abide by people bringing unrelated shit into situations, as if my life is without troubles, and the energy consumed to deal with this eventually takes its toll. I am no longer friends with Emma, she abused the friendship I offered and let me down. Last year she called me up telling me she was going to kill herself.

After that happened she apologised for doing that to me and swore she not put me in that position again. It happened again when she texted me the other Wednesday saying she felt very sucidal, and I heard nothing more from her. I expected she was playing a game with me, ignoring me to make me worry, so I decided to stand back and planned to call her a week later. I called her on Wednesday, she didn't answer. I then received a text message saying it's taken me this long to see if she's OK. Only a few text messages were exchanged, in which she saw that it was me who had done something bad rather than her.

The last text I sent said “How would you feel if I told you I really wanted to kill myself and then you had no further contact from me?” I've had no reply, so that is it. I want to be there for people, sure, but there comes a point when too much is taken from me. I have my own life to live too. I ponderered over whether to post about this because it's something negative and personal about someone, but you don't know her and it's unlikely me, her and you the reader would end up in the same room feeling uncomfortable about what you know. Unless of course you're on of my friends, but then you'd know about this anyway.

I babysat last night and watched the return of 'Allo 'Allo on BBC Two, I expected a complete episode as opposed to one intercut with documentary about the programme's history. It was nice seeing some of the cast reprise their roles, and seeing how different some of them look out of character. Carmen Silvera and Richard Marner, who played Edith Artois and Colonel Von Strohm, died in 2002 and 2004. A portion of the documentary looked at how Guy Siner's character Lieutenant Gruber was the first openly gay character on British television.

I was brought up watching this, and I remember I knew I was different like Lieutenant Gruber. I think the programme showed me it's good to be lighthearted and learn to laugh at yourself and the differences between people. I think perhaps this show is partly responsible for my liking of innuendo and wordplay. We don't get new sitcoms with as much high farce nowadays, and I think if 'Allo 'Allo were a new comedy today I doubt it would be accepted but instead dismissed for its political incorrectness and blatant utilisation of stereotypes. That said, I think it would be possible for there to be a new sitcom with high farce, frequent one-liners and gags, long story arcs, and plenty of recurring catchphrases.

In 'Allo 'Allo the painting of “The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies” by Van Clomp was a valuable piece of art equivalent in importance to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It was one of the ongoing themes through the show and was to be Colonel Von Strohm's and Captain Hans Geering's retirement after the war was over. In a case of life imitating art, the painting turned out to be rather valuable as it was sold at auction for £4,000 after being in production designer Shaun Moore's possession for 15 years.

The other night I finally did some work for the site, I added the list of blog entries which groups entries by year and month. As the entry count grows I'll develop the page further but it serves its purpose as it is for now. Looking at the list I can see I've been posting blog entries less and less frequently, but I think that is about to change. I've been holding back so there's less entries to make changes to as developments to the blogging application are implemented. I reckon this week the next thing I'll work on is how to reference people in entries.

In the previous blog incarnation a person's name was linked to a page about them. This time I'm going to have a page with everyone on and link to the part of the page about the specific person. I don't think this page will link on to the person's Web site or profiles or anything like that, again trying to find a balance about privacy. I do expect though that I'll have photographs on here in the future of all these people I mention. A high priority change is to move the navigation menu over to the sidebar and do something funky up at the top, probably various images shown on rotation — but what images I am yet to decide, obtain or create.

entry info

Entry #20, published on Monday, 30^th of April 2007 at 01:03 local time (Swatch Internet Time @043 .beats)

Returning in 2008 ;-)