New stuff now please

Anyone here old enough to remember the original Miama Vice TV show? I saw it on reruns, I think, when I was in my teens. The final scene of the proper big end-of-everything finale stuck with me and I’ve never known why. But every now and then I think of it and it makes me wonder.

It was the scene where Tubbs asks Crockett where he’s going to go next. And Crockett says: “Somewhere further south. Somewhere the water’s warm, the drinks are cold and I don’t know the names of the players.”

We never did find out if he made it, or what happened to Tubbs back in the big bad Bronx. But that feeling of needing to have a fresh situation, to be in a fresh environment where you need to learn or assimilate all over again… I think that’s always stuck with me.

When I was in my early twenties I took a holiday to Hong Kong, mainly to see the sights but also to see the international film festival. It was awesome, and alien, and everything that I needed at that point in my life. I felt like I wasn’t done discovering, that there was more to see, to try, to experience there. Within a year I had passed a CELTA teaching certificate and got 6 months teaching experience under my belt, so I headed back to HK with a suitcase and a one week bed-only booking at a YHA hostel. I got jobs, I got visas, I learnt about the way of life, I went to uni to learn Cantonese… it was a dream.

But all dreams must end. After eleven years out there I was beginning to get bored. I was feeling the drag of the constant changes in visas, the sniping by bosses and the general crowdedness of the city. I made the monumental mistake of leaving HK to return to England. At the time it seemed like a good idea - doesn’t it always? But if I had sat down and weighed everything up, I would have taken a 2 or 3 month break, back-packed around southeast Asia, had a change. And when I had wanted to return to something familiar and routine, it would have been HK. That’s what should have happened. But didn’t.

Instead I returned to the UK and spent time assimilating to the foreign place it had become. People were smaller, more parochial, tiny-minded. Everything was too far apart and public transport was shocking. Food was expensive, rent-related bills a joke. And all my friends and found-family were still in HK. In one fell swoop I had cut myself off from normality, comfortable familiarity, and my favourite people. I lost it all. And it was my fault.

After a stint in the south of England, it came to pass that my job was up for redundancy. There was nothing like-for-like so I was free to take the redundancy payoff and run. I had a choice - go back to HK where I felt I belonged, or try somewhere else. Money not being my friend, I opted for Manchester, the place I had been born but never lived in. And so I hauled my arse 300 miles up the country and started again. I was in a city again, with bright lights, places open till late, neons and crowds and excitement. It didn’t have my friends, it didn’t have my circle: I had done it to myself again. I had cut myself off from everything familiar and everyone I liked.

I’ve been here coming up to 2 years now, and every day I regret leaving HK when I did. That was 7 years ago, and I’m still thinking about that. I still miss the lifestyle, the people, the place itself. But I can never go back (due to a little bit of back-stabbing that I’ve already been over) and even if I could, it wouldn’t be the same place. It’s moved on without me, and I should follow its example.

Sometimes I think about other places I could go to. But it’s a circular argument - if I go to a fresh country to start learning all over again, my friends will still be in HK and England. But if I don’t go somewhere else, what am I doing here? Treading water because I have bills to pay because I’m treading water because I have bills to pay?

You know how people say you need a third place - you have home, you have work, and you need another place that’s not either of those things, so you can recharge from the other two? I’ve tried a few different third places over the course of my life - martial arts, writing fiction, archery, going to the pictures. And while I still have an interest in all of these, it’s writing fiction that’s always been the main one. I cannot seem to get my own original fiction published for love nor money, so I continue with where I got started - fan fiction. I still watch movies and TV, I still end up with muses and I still write the further adventures of these characters. I get reviews and emails, I get thank yous and requests, and this fills a void that getting countless agent rejections have made (and continue to feed).

My third place then - writing - could be done anywhere. I did some of my best work on a repurposed Mahjong table in my spare room in HK. I’ve done some new stuff, for new fandoms, in my old shared house in Manchester and a completely new fandom, muse and story at this flat I moved into just now. I’m doing more writing than ever before, for the things I like and want to expand upon. I could take it anywhere with me, as I have Billy II my MacBook Air within reach at all times, and connected to SugarSync to back me up on a constant save basis.

All I need is somewhere to go, but it feels like the world is shrinking and my best bet is Mars. I’ve missed the Mars One programme and I’m too old, so that’s out. Maybe there truly is nowhere left. Maybe I’m oversimplifying and there are tonnes of places I could yet still find on Earth.

Maybe I just need to go further south, where the water is warm, the drinks are cold, and I don’t know the names of the players.

Now that would be a good place to start.

Meet-ups

I moved to Manchester a little over a year ago. All my friends are in the South or in other countries. This can make you feel somewhat frustrated; you want to go do that thing you like but the people who would have gone with you are not here. Logical choice, then: go on your own or find other people to go with.

I’ve been going on my own for a year. It’s comfortable, and nice, and agreeable to be able to do what you want when you want without constraints. But, as any writer or reader will tell you, conflict causes plot. Without conflict you have no story.

I joined a meet-up app. It lists tonnes and tonnes of interest groups you can join - crocheting, hiking, learning another language, brunch for chats and bants, movies - anything where you need more than one person to make it a thing.

Anyone who knows me also knows that as an INTJ I don’t choose to mix with people because they are People©, and I don’t like People©. Like K says, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it”. However, when you aren’t beholden to anyone else, you can choose to go see a movie but when you wake up and it’s cold outside, you choose to sack it off as a bad job because, well, you can.

I’m also not good at plans. I mean, I can make plans and I can stick to them, but only when it’s at work or with someone else involved - because if there’s one thing I try to achieve it’s to do what I say I will. If I tell you a project will be ready for Friday, then it’ll be ready for Friday. If I tell you I’ll sort something by 4pm, then I’ll sort it by 4pm. However, when I tell myself I’m going to watch a movie on Saturday, I get to that point 2 hours before it starts, check the bus timetable, and then decide I can’t be arsed. I back out. Because at that moment when I made the plan, I believed I was going to follow it through. But now I’m bored and restless, now I can’t make myself do it.

I joined the app. I found a movie club. I like movies a lot and it’s my escape, so why not? However, every movie that has come up as a group + social meet-up afterwards has been a film I’ve either already seen or have no wish to see. Cinema tickets are relatively cheap in the city centre (£5 at the Vue, Printworks, or £6 at Odeon Great Northern, compared to my old Cineworld Poole of £10.95) so I can get an all-day bus ticket and a film for the same price as a cinema ticket where I used to live. Down there I had a Cineworld Unlimited card, so for about £17.50 a month I could see a boundless amount of movies. I only had to watch 2 a month and I’d saved money. However up here, when the tickets are £5-£6, there’s no point getting an Odeon card for £20 a month - and especially as half the time the foreign language films I want are only on at the Vue, not Odeon anyway.

I digress.

I joined the app and finally, yesterday, I made myself go to one. We saw Knives Out, the Rian Johnson comedy whodunnit, which wasn’t really a comedy and not actually a whodunnit - review in another post. Afterwards we went to the official rendez-vous bar; the organiser reserves tables for us and we pile in and drink, dissect the movie or just get pie and chat about other things entirely.

As a format, it’s a great concept. It’s like renting friends for the night - and then when you find the same people turn up to each movie, they aren’t rent-a-friends but actual movie going friends. And eventually, you’ve accomplished things to solve the problem you first started out with: you now have friends you can call to see films or do something else related, and you still get to see films and talk about them with people who share your want to do so.

That was my first meet-up and I’m calling it a success. While it was brass monkey weather outside, and the bus ride home gave me shoulder/neck problems because I hunched into my three layers plus a weather-proof jacket and scarf, the day was a success and I find myself actually looking forward to the next one. It’s probably next Saturday, so it’s all good.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. Now to do all the usual Sunday things like cleaning, the washing and making work dinners for the coming week.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and lube.

Dual Permanence

Object permanence is knowing that objects continue to exist whether you can see them or not (or notice them with any of the senses). Young kids don’t have this yet, which is why they think Peek-A-Boo is the greatest thing ever. As you get older, you develop new ways of displaying object (or abstract) permanence - you know your job is still there even though this is not your rota’d or contracted day to work; you know everyone else is having to work their retail job on a Bank Holiday even though you’re going to spend the day in the garden hoping it doesn’t rain on your barbecue; you know where to find a petrol station because it’s always in the same place; you’re developing existential dread because you’re painfully aware that the climate crisis is killing everything while everyone pretends not to notice but you know it’s there waiting - the list goes on.

What about other things? What about places you’ve lived, the way of life or the feeling of being there?

If you’ve ever seen another post on this blog then you’ll know I used to live in Hong Kong. I was there for eleven years. I came back close to six years ago, and yet I can’t seem to shake the idea that this new life is permanent and it’s HK that’s ended for me.

I left for various reasons - I needed to get out, I needed a change, I needed something new. I thought I needed to get back to Blighty and relax in open spaces and enjoy the idea of working after simply flashing the HR department my passport, not sitting through interviews over and over and finally getting a work visa after weeks of struggle (other people’s experiences may vary).

However now I look at it, perhaps I just needed an extended break. I’m one of those people who work and work and don’t look up from my desk, so for three years in a row my boss had to remind me that I had holiday left and I had to take it before the end of the year, as I couldn’t carry them over. I think that may have contributed to me feeling stifled and trapped, irritated at everyone around me when it wasn’t their fault. When I rocked up back in England, it was all empty spaces, deep breaths, crystal blue, freezing skies and a month of unemployment until I could find something.

Something unwound in me. Something was gone - the frustration, the irritation, the wanting to punch the next person who jabbed me in the eye with an umbrella or trod on my foot trying to cut me off at a pedestrian intersection. I was slowly but surely letting it all go. Compounding that was the feeling that, due to being unemployed, I could just sleep an hour more, go for a walk when I wanted, enjoy the fact that I could eat late or early or whenever I wanted to go to the kitchen, and not rush around work times or frantic schedules. Yes, I was relaxing and getting used to be able to spread out again.

But over the next few years I was also immersed in the cold weather, the grey skies and freezing rain, the tepid environment and insipid, boring outlooks of people who thought driving twenty miles was a long way. Conversations I shrank from willingly; most people around me had been born and grown up in the same village or town, and had been to a city maybe once even though they owned a car. They were Small Town People, and there’s nothing wrong with that - if you’re also a Small Town Person. I don’t think I am - I realised I was bored of the tiny fishbowl I’d landed myself in and now I needed the open sea.

When my role at work was made redundant and there was no other company vacancy like-for-like they could offer me, it meant I was free to take redundancy without penalty and I could literally do anything I wanted.

The choice became obvious: back to Hong Kong, or new adventures in Manchester, England.

My friends on all sides of every ocean were quick to point out that they thought of me as an explorer, and therefore going back to somewhere I’d already been was a waste of time. I should head to Manchester, the place I was born but never really spent any time in. Live there, have fun there, see the bright lights and all-night places, go to the international events and have the chance to enjoy the multi-cultural diversity of a major city.

I did. I went through all the sorting and packing all over again - the same as I had done every time I moved to a new flat in HK. I packed my entire life into about nine cardboard boxes and hired a removals company to get them and all my furniture to Manchester. And here I am, living on the outskirts but close enough to the city so that my rent is a little lower but I can still get on a bus (a bus! The public transport works! And half of it all is electric!) to go into the proper city. There’s a Chinatown and proper shops, an eclectic mix of Boho, yuppy, down to earth, just getting by and loving life. The shops stay open when the streetlamps come on, there’s buses until midnight and trams all day and free buses to major points around the city. There’s weird and wonderful eateries and bars, allowances for all kinds of dietary requirements and faiths, there’s a welcoming vibe of just wanting everyone to sit in the same sun and drink, or eat, or listen to music or read their textbooks or holiday novels or after-work comics. When it rains people put on their coats and carry on.

It’s refreshing, it’s a sprawling yet connected place of stuff to do and things to see. There are guided walks if you want to get to know the place, there are apps for proper quiet plods around the city by yourself, there are literally so many things to do that I’ve been out about 70% of all weekends in the past ten months I’ve been here, and I’ve still barely scratched the surface.

This is what I wanted, right? This is how it should have been since the first day I got back to England, right?
Then why do I still feel like HK is just around the next corner of the street I’m on? Why does it feel like when you’re texting someone who lives 5,000 miles away but you talk so often it’s like they’re just in the next room? Why is it, when I’m watching an HK drama (I’m currently on Apple Colada) and see them walk past one of my old flats, I wonder why I didn’t see them filming when I was to-ing and fro-ing, and then I realise it’s because I don’t live there? And that’s the thing - it’s always “I don’t live there”, not “I don’t live there any more”.

Someone asked me for directions in the city a few weeks back, for a place I should know in Manchester. But before I could think I said “which one?”. Then I realised there is> only one in Manchester - the other I know is in Hong Kong. Why am I doing this when I’ve been here since November 2018 and it really should have sunk in by now that I’m here, this is where I live, this is what life is now. I’m normally pretty good at adapting to things - I got used to HK in about twelve months, I adjusted back to the UK in about the same. But perhaps I just did the superficial surviving, not an actual adjustment. I stopped calculating what items were in HK dollars as UK pounds became real to me again. I started carrying a fleece around again, knowing that the weather would only feel like eighteen degrees C when the sun was out, and as soon as it hit 4pm the temperature would start to fall off until it was barely eleven degrees by 9pm.

Perhaps I didn’t do the real adjustment; my head is still over here, I think, and to some degree so is my heart. This comes as a shock to me, as I really didn’t think I had a heart.

I know the HK I miss so bad I can taste it is gone, and it’s never coming back. It was Hong Kong between about 2006 - 2012. By the time I left in 2013, I thought I was over the place. But I think it’s like when you’re cooking and you pick up a scalding pan - it burns you and you curse about it, but years later you look at the scar and you miss the cooking part that it reminds you of. It’s like there’s an invisible, indelible mark of HK stamped on me somewhere and I’m only now realising it’s even here. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get rid of it - and I’m not even sure a day will come when I want to.

What do I do about it? The easy answer is just to return to HK. But I can’t do that, due to money, and a certain immigration case that’s been cleared but will always hang around my neck like a millstone, thanks to a certain person who is dead to me. If I won the lottery tomorrow then I would certainly try to find a way to return in time. But let’s be real here - people like me don’t win the lottery, and I will never be in a financial position to leave this country and relocate again. It’s Manchester or nothing, which is why I’m doing my best here.

I hang around Chinatown more than I should, causing me to hold onto the feeling that HK is here, just out of sight round a corner. It’s object permanence for an entire territory of Southeast Asia, and I don’t know how I’ve managed it but it’s a real place that lives in my head alongside Manchester and therefore I’m still connected to it.

I had cause to rewatch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s pilot episode recently. And one part that I never really understood the last dozen or so times I’ve seen it stuck out to me. Well, more like poked me in the eye in painful realisation. When confronted by aliens who do not understand linear time, Starfleet Commander Ben Sisko struggles to explain that humans do the best they can day by day, because they can’t say for sure what will happen next. But the aliens are confused; if that’s true, why does he often think about and get sad over one particular memory? He is brought back to the same awful scene in his life and over and over, but when he demands to know why they keep showing it to him, they say in all innocence that they don’t control it - he brings them back to it. “You exist here,” they say, and “this is not linear.” He accepts this is true - and that a part of him will always exist in that awful moment.

I have no awful moments in HK, even including the day I was officially detained by HK Immigration (very politely and completely by the book, I might add) for forty-eight hours pending an official criminal investigation that I later completely cleared of. I have no reason to get stuck on one memory as Sisko did. Instead I think a part of me will always exist in those happy and not so happy times in HK - a conglomeration of my life there, everything rolled into one ball so that everything is touching everything else all at the same time. I can’t tease it out, I can’t separate any part of it from another, and I think that’s where anything up to half of me exists. They are memories, but they’re alive. When I’m in Manchester Chinatown and I chat with a waiter about living in Kennedy Town, we talk like we’re both still there. When we express support for the current protesters, it’s as if we’re about to attend protests and hand out bottles of water to them from the shadows in silent solidarity. But we’re not there, we’re nowhere near there - so why does it feel like we are?

Is this object permanence or just old age?

Wonton of good food

A poor pun, I know. But hey, I’m not a stand-up comedian.

Here’s basically another recipe I use - it started out as a scrapbook cutting and I’ve scribbled updates and changes to it ever since, so this is the first time I’m actually writing it out so that the damn thing’s legible.

Wonton Soup

Ingredients:

2 litres boiling water
2 chicken stock pots
1 veg Oxo cube
Shaoxing cooking wine
Soy sauce
Toasted sesame oil (from a brand like Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Lotus root - about 4 large slices
Chinese leaf - 3 good size leaves
Choi sum / similar green leafy veg - one stalk plus leaves
Chinese mushrooms (soaked in cold water for 20 mins first)
Couple of small pinches of fine ground black pepper
Wontons - 8 to 10, from frozen
Vermicelli - 2 half handfuls

How to make it taste good:

Mushrooms first because they take the longest: put them in cold water and make sure they stay under the surface for 20 minutes.
Get a LARGE pan / cooking pot - this makes a lot.
Boil the water (I pour it in from the kettle because I’m lazy and can’t be arsed to wait) and add in the 2 chicken stock pots and the veg Oxo cube. Make sure it all dissolves properly.
Put the lotus root in first and bring to the boil - lotus root can be hard and needs time to soften.
Chop the leafy veg roughly (large pieces) and throw it in. Add like half a teaspoon of the toasted sesame oil and soy sauce (a little soy sauce goes a very long way). Add the pepper.
Keep it simmering and put in the vermicelli. Drain the mushrooms properly, maybe give them an extra rinse, and throw them in whole.
Add the wontons and then 2 tablespoons (yes, tablespoons) of Shaoxing cooking wine.
Let it simmer for about 5 minutes - make sure it’s stirred properly the whole time. Turn it on a low heat for about another 10 minutes to make sure the wontons are properly cooked through (especially if you used them frozen like I do).
And that’s it - remember it’s very watery soup so it’ll be bloody hot for the first 10 minutes after you’ve put it into a bowl. Then eat it!

I make a huge batch because I can then dip in and eat as much as I want over the whole weekend, but obviously halve or quarter this if you don’t want it to last that long.

Sorted. Peach and lube everyone.

Recipe of the week

I never cook. I can, I just don’t enjoy it. Other people love the chemistry of it or the fun of the process or producing something epic over the space of a few hours. Me? I can’t be arsed.

Now I have a new job though, making dinner to take with me is different. Normally I’ll make up a batch of rice and a batch of meat, veg and sauce and then just tip a bit into a tupperware box every night ready to take in the next day. This has worked fine so far, except sometimes what I’m eating isn’t the most inspiring of foods.
I dug out a very old cookbook - barely a book, more of a collection of oddities I’ve gathered along the way. The one recipe that’s blown my socks off this week is:

Black Bean Beef and Rice

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of sesame oil (I use Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either 5 cloves of garlic or 2 tablespoons of ‘lazy’ ready-made garlic
2 tablespoons of grated ginger
2 tablespoons of black bean sauce with garlic (I use Amoy or Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either strips of sirloin steak or steak mince - 1lb (450 grams)
2 tablespoons of Shaosing rice cooking wine
1 green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
150ml beef stock (Oxo!)
Light soy sauce
Cornflour (2 tablespoons, blended with 5 tablespoons of cold water)
Rice - I prefer red ‘cargo’ rice but you can use jasmine or brown

How to make it taste good:

Rice first as we’re all multi-taskers here. I have a rice cooker so I just pour in 2 small cups of rice per person and add boiling water, a tablespoon of cumin seeds and a sparrow’s gobful of olive oil. Stick it on to cook as this could take 20 - 35 mins and the black bean beef bit will only take about 30.

Get all your other stuff done - chop and slice and mix everything ready.

Use a wok or a large pan (preferably non-stick). Slap in the sesame oil. When it gets hot enough to look like it’s smoking, throw in the garlic and ginger. Fry this for a few seconds, then whack in all the meat. If it’s mince, make sure it separates properly or you get chunks.

Glob the black bean sauce in and make sure you stir it around to try to spread it evenly through the meat. When the steak / mince is looking less red and more brown, pour in the Shaosing rice cooking wine.

Then you lump in the peppers and the stock. Boil it for about 1 minute, then add in soy sauce as strong as you like (go easy; a little goes a long way). Once it’s all mixed in and bubbling nicely, add in the mixed cornflour and stir it in to make sure it thickens evenly. Give it like a minute, then turn off the heat - you’re done.

Serve it straight away on the rice, or in a serving dish next to your little rice bowl. Ta-da!

For my next trick, I shall attempt another recipe once I’ve cherry-picked it from my scrapbook of notes.

Soopytwist, everyone.

Wait for the wheel

This blog goes round in circles. I don’t mean literally; that would be ridiculous. No, this blog swings between packed-with-reviews to cowboy-movie-tumbleweeds seemingly in perpetuity. At the moment it’s tumbleweeds; I can’t get anything written because there’s one massive thing blocking out everything else. It’s like a lunar eclipse, with my hopes of getting any other subject down on virtual paper playing the part of the sun.

However, in the wise words of Zhaan, we must wait for the wheel. At the moment all I can see is the moon right in the way of the sun I want, but eclipses can’t last forever and at some point the moon has to shift. One day I will get to see what’s behind it, but at the moment it’s a constant annoyance.

A while ago I lived in Hong Kong and for the final 2 years I was in a state of constant anger. It bubbled under the surface, so that as I walked around the streets I could feel I was hoping someone would give me an excuse to smack them or at least lay into them verbally. I needed a release of anger, a cloudburst every so often, to keep it in check. This blog was my outlet.

I did move away from HK and back to the UK. After a few months I realised the anger was gone. Everything was as it had been a few years before, when I was a much more level-headed person and emotions were thankfully relegated to mostly subtle bemusement at the world.

I’ve been back 5 years now. And up until a few months ago, everything was pretty copacetic.

Well I say everything. What I mean was the important things - my home life, my friends, the availability of things I wanted or needed. My job was ok but nothing to write home about. However it afforded me a car, a flat, and means to go out if I chose. The flat wasn’t in the best of areas as I couldn’t walk down to a watering hole for free, but it wasn’t too far from other things I needed and in fact a 10-screen cinema was 10 minutes walk away (hence the constant movie reviews here).

And then my company made my role redundant. The company was bought and head office already had a perfectly good payroll department for all of their acquired companies. My role was obsolete and I was fine with that; it was a unique role within the company so when I chose not to take any of the other open roles (none of which had any relation to payroll or my qualifications), I got the usual statutory redundancy settlement. I felt it was time to move on, time to find something new.

And so I moved 220 miles up the country to where I had begun. As a person, I mean. My family moved out of Manchester long before I started school and barely spent any time there when I was growing up. I mean, we had the usual summer holiday jaunts to see relatives etc. and to shop, but that was it.

I now share a house within the Greater Manchester area and that is the current cause of the rising tide of anger once again. Like the same wheel that sees this blog oscillate between loved and lost, I’m nearing the same state of repressed anger that I experienced toward the end of my HK tenure. A home is a place you should feel comfortable in, where you can relax and be yourself. I cannot do that here and I doubt I ever will. As it turns out, this is the first housemate I’ve shared with whom I just don’t gel with and can’t seem to make myself gel with.

The logical half of me knows that only half of this is my fault. However, half a solution is not a solution by definition, so the obvious choice it to leave. This means I have to wait until I have the requisite amount of time served under this landlord so that I have the right references to be able to move.

This time next year I look forward to having a place to myself. It’ll be closer to work as well and I’m really enjoying it there; they have plans for me and I have plans for them, so it’s all good.

I knew I could never rent a place here without sharing this time round - I was between jobs (even though I had a contract for my new job as well as the copy of the redundancy statement proving I could support myself completely for 3 months) and between addresses, so basically I was a legal leper until I was established on the electoral roll and utilities etc.

Incidentally, the person who was paid by us to change all these details for us actually did cock-all, so it was a good job I went to the government website and updated my own electoral roll details.

It’s a waiting game, I realise that. It doesn’t help that I have a holiday to HK coming up and I know for 6 months after I get back I’ll be missing the place more than I did the last time I visited. It still feels like where I was happiest, and I still miss it every day. Manchester is a pretty good substitute for now, but at some point I will decide it’s time to move on again, simply because it’s not HK. I don’t know how many times I will go through this cycle until I realise I should just go back to HK, but I already know I can’t get back in through visa channels as they actively keep people like me out.

And so it goes.

Space

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

You may recognise that quote from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

I’ve been spoilt, really. I’ve had a few flatmates when living abroad, and we got on fine. I can’t think of any moments where we didn’t just get on with it. I moved back to the UK and lived with my sister a bit. Then I moved out and lived on the first floor of a converted bungalow, so that the only thing I shared with the downstairs landlord was the kitchen. This again was fine - separate everything, use of the kitchen whenever, and again, we got on fine. We were both very singular people. He liked playing on his PS4 and I liked watching whatever I wanted whenever I wanted on telly. I think the only problem we had was that twice in 4 years I forgot the rent (he only took cash and there were no ATMs near me as it was in the middle of Bumblefuck Nowhereville). However, cash in hand and a case of beer in apology later and he was happy again.

Now I’ve moved and sharing with a new person and I’m beginning to realise how stifling sharing can be when the person you’re sharing with thinks you’re living together, not just sharing a house.

Things to take into account: I’m a very singular person. I’m an INTJ. I’m introverted. I like long stretches of time by myself. In fact I like Alone Time more than people full stop. After a long day of working with people who are very friendly and like to get on with others through the medium of chat, I just want quiet time to myself because (1) I’m all talked out and (2) I’m all people’d out.

When I arrive home however, it seems I have to engage in the human ritual of explaining how my day was at work (which cannot be interesting to anyone else, bearing in mind I work in payroll) and then to listen to someone else’s day at work (see above point - not interested in the slightest. I think the only time I could be interested in someone’s day at work is if they worked for NASA).

Eating in peace is a physical impossibility - apparently you need to explain what you’re cooking and how at each step. And then when you just want to sit down and eat, you’re expected to do it in the shared living space (front room) and continue talking or share some telly. Except no-one else likes the kind of telly I want to watch (and am trying to catch up on) so I end up wasting my night watching something we can both see (without spoilers for shows we both watch but we’re at different points in a series, for example, or some series I’ve already seen but they haven’t had the chance yet and I have the boxed set).

This is mostly me, I know that. I’m not used to sharing my time once I get home from work because I’ve never had to. I’ve either lived alone or lived with a flatmate who’s as independent as I am and doesn’t need me. This has always suited me very well. Now I just have to get used to living how it is. I’m not happy about it, but it’s a trade-off. I can’t afford a place by myself and I can’t give up this house as my flatmate can’t either. A deal is a deal, and it’s done.

I am exploring reasons to just stay out of the house after work - don’t ask me about the whole ‘going to a club’ fiasco, because I don’t have the energy and to be honest I don’t know what else I expected from that conversation. Suffice it to say, I have to get out of the house more. This does not help my problems of (1) having Alone Time or (2) catching up on the TV I’m trying to watch, but it does at least alleviate the feeling of oppressiveness when at home.

Case in point: I’m in bed and it’s 11am on a day off. Reason I’m in bed typing this and not using the table in the front room or the dining table in the kitchen, with a pot of tea? Because Housemate is downstairs (they never seem to go out) and once they start talking at me I won’t get anything done. I’ll need my massive headphones on to drown out whatever they’re doing and I’ll be seen as anti-social - and interruptions happen whether I put up the most obvious of social cues or not. And then, here in bed, I get a message on my phone: "are you awake and are you alright?" How about you go find something else to think about besides me - I neither need nor enjoy being checked on every time I don't appear in the front room, for fuck's sake. If they could just understand that I don’t share a house to be social, I share a house to have a home I can relax in, and at the moment I can’t even do that, I’m sure things would be different.

But like I said, I can’t afford a place by myself and I can’t leave them high and dry with a new place when they can’t either.

And that’s probably more than is fit to print, but hey, I need to get this out.

“You people are so tiny. And petty.”

Couldn’t resist a Thor quote, there. Well strictly speaking it’s from The Avengers, but Thor said it so whatever. And it sums up what I've been thinking about the last place I lived, so it's all good.

I’ve moved. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I now live in the Republic of Mancunia and I’m slowly getting used to things. I shall expound upon these things thus:

Artics - them great huge things as haul all your shit up and down the motorways? They’re called wagons.

Tea - as in, do you want a cup of one - are now exclusively referred to as ‘a brew’ at all times, not just when you’re tired or hung over.

Big light - as in the ceiling light in the room - is still called the Big Light. I’m thanking my grandparents for calling it that early on in my childhood.

“Are you right?” - I am now fully justified in saying this, as it’s how it’s said up here. Because that’s normal, so everyone who’s been telling me it’s been wrong for the past decade or so that I can remember is actually and in every way wrong. So there.

The drive to work - now only 30 mins, not 60, and actually it’s easier when your part of the M60 is the bit other people don’t know exists. Love you, junctions 22 to 24.

However, that being said, some people use the motorway like it’s a tiny A road through the arse end of nowhere and that’s just dangerous. Please start doing more than 45 mph in the (otherwise empty) inside lane, fuckwits.

The people at work - capable of higher awareness yet tempered with a kindness for absolute strangers that is both baffling and a wonderful thing. I’m almost beginning to see what the Doctor sees in humans. Almost. I mean, they put on a buffet with a superlatively broad array of choices to cater for people with religious or biological food needs without thinking twice - that is so hard to get across to most people, but near a city it’s almost second-nature. It’s great.

At the same time they’re not just nice to your face then talking shit about you once you’re not in the room; if they have a problem they’ll tell you. They’ll just be careful how they say it. It’s refreshing.

It reminds me of why I wanted to move to be within city limits in the first place. I’m nowhere near the centre, but at least I’m within its range, so I still get the ripple effects without having to be in the expensive postcodes.

And on that note, I’m off to see what’s on the 2 cinemas near me this weekend.

Peach and lube, people - peach and bloody lube.

Move along home

We all want to be somewhere we can’t. A new job, a holiday, your bed. For me it’s Hong Kong.

For those of you just joining us, I lived there for 11 years. Then, due to my gradually increasing dissatisfaction with the political struggles, work visa problems, and money, I returned to England. I adjusted all over again - the cold weather, the stodgy food, the moaning people (fuck me, but the people), the expensive money, the slower pace, the whole Brexit palava. For the first few months I had shoulder and neck problems; I returned in October and it was cold, and try as I might I couldn’t stop myself from unconsciously hunching against the lack of constant bone-warming humidity. I also did the thing where you convert all prices into something that makes sense in your head; a £10 cinema ticket was $110 to me so I could figure if that was good or not. As time went by I unlearnt to do these things and I had pretty much been assimilated to Blighty again.

However - movies; music; city life… All these things were missing and were missed. I kept up with Eason Chan’s new albums, with Donnie Yen’s new films, with news of Andy Lau Tak-Wah and his horse-riding accident. I discovered the TVB box that lets you watch HK TV (kind of like a Sky box for overseas subscribers), the band ToNick and their awesome sound, the growing political unrest and the HKFP’s efforts to keep the news open to all.

The one thing I couldn’t have was the city life back. Where I live now it’s basically a sleepy hollow, made up of people who obsess about the tiny things because they’ve never seen bigger ones. They’re small town people, and while that’s ok and fine for them, I find it very limiting. It’s talking to people who not only fail to realise that not everyone’s right handed, but have literally never heard of countries whose newspapers and popular press write/print right to left, top to bottom, because that’s the formal way to write. It’s chatting with these people who think that going vegan is bad for you, and when I say that Buddhists have been doing it for thousands of years and most of them seemed ok, they’re surprised. It’s recounting the story of the night you and your mate went out and got hammered at the bar, closed it at 4am by dancing on the table, setting fire to the noodles in 7-11 (I am still absolutely sure there was no mention of water in any of those instructions) on the munchies detour home, strolling back to the flat with a couple of coppers who found us fascinating - and they think this is something you’ve made up. No mate, you say patiently, that was par for the course pretty much one random Friday night a month.

So I want to be somewhere I cannot be - Hong Kong of 2013. It’s gone, and nothing will bring it back. My choice now is stay where I am or find a new city, one where I can work by simply flashing a passport. Somewhere fun, and vibrant, and alive - and preferably cheaper to live where I am now.

When it’s all concrete I’ll let you in on it. For now though, I’m checking Zoopla and RightMove, and I’m making lists and checking ‘em twice. Moving is tricky to be sure, but it’s a damn sight better than staying out here in Bumblefuck Nowhereville, waiting for something vaguely exciting to happen.

Soopytwist.