Memories: Part 1

Rule Britannia is playing in my head, images of the royal family bombard my thoughts and red, blue and white cloud my mind. Well, maybe not. In fact the thought of returning to England kinda scares the shit out of me. No longer will people be polite to me in the streets. Instead I’ll be lucky if a chav spits on my shoes. No longer will I be welcomed into a shop and given immediate assistance. Instead a spotty faced youth will throw my recently purchased goods into a plastic bag and then probably into my face. And no longer will I ever place the kind of trust and love into people that I once did. Instead I will return to the bitchier, stronger willed and less patient self I used to be. Although, I am sure many people here in Japan would say that I have already started morphing into this person. Or perhaps that I have always been this person (these people are obviously my British mates…the cunts).

Although, I must exempt my friends and the Lamberts from the latter (I’d get fucking lynched as soon as I touched down at Heathrow otherwise). My love, trust and appreciation for these people will never change…no matter how much they try.

So if you don’t mind I’m gonna take a short walk down memory lane…

There are any reasons why I am looking forward to going home. Reason number one: My Old Man. My dad is the kinda guy who will always find the cheeky, slapstick humor of carry-on movies funny. Will consistently moan about any joyous occasion (Christmas, birthdays, family get togethers), and family members in general. And will never compromise his dignity or pride for anything…a long lost charm rarely found these days. Some of these annoyingly strong-willed traits have made there way onto my personality and will refuse to budge. However, throughout my temper tantrum toddler years (shocking, I know) and even worse than that my temper tantrum teenage years he has never given up on me, although I am sure he was sometimes tempted. And I did often get a swift smack round the head or a sarcastic laced butchering from him whenever I stepped out of line.

Bless my dad though. My old man was the kinda dad who would congratulate me on any small achievement. I ran the 100 meters on sports day once and won. A fucking miracle all things considered. The one and only race or sport related activity I had ever succeeded in and from then on I was “the sporty one” in the family:

At first it was complete and utter shock:

“Bloody ‘ ell Clo, you finished that race?”

“Yeah I won”

“What? You won? Always knew you were the sporty one”

Ironical statement at the time. Picture me glaring up at him from behind kohl-lined eyes and slicked back hair with the mandatory Goth bag and black hoodie….my “grebo” phase.

Then came, what can only be described as pure and utter lies:

Me kicking a ball around our back garden: “yeah…definitely the sporty one of the family is my Chloe!!”

Me running 10 meters down the road, nearly killing myself and inducing a heart attack in the process; “ Such a fast runner aint you!”

Looking back, I think he was subconsciously trying to mould me into a boy. Living in a house with three women was never going to be easy for him. My sister’s constant mood swings and teenage quirkiness. My ever loving Mothers strong presence and often madness in the house was something to behold in itself. Then there was my stubborn Grandma and her infamous Lambert poke (a lethal pinch like jab in the arm whenever we stepped out of line…bruises followed). And of course, my Aunties intolerable and often headache inducing wackiness. And lastly, little old me who started off all sweetness and light but soon turned out to be the sort of rebellious bitch straight out of a Harry Enfield sketch. Me and my sisters hormonal, teenage years were never gonna be a barrel of laughs for my poor old dad.

I have also pondered the origin of nicknames during my upbringing. Some of my friends had the sweetest ones that were bestowed upon them by there parents, particularly their fathers. Names like “princess” or “Cherubs” and “angels”, you know, flattering and often meaningful, loving names.

My nickname??? Well I was named after a bottle of booze. Turns out that after a heavy night on the red wine, my parents (probably on their 5^th bottle of vino) came across a cheap paint- stripper tasting like substance called “cloburgh”. Through jaunty laughter and hiccupping my nickname was born. Maybe my love and some might say addiction to a glass of fine tasting boxed wine was inevitable from this point on (I believe they started calling me this from about the age of 5).

Finding my parents with one too many inside their bellies would become somewhat of an anecdote. Not that they were ever steaming alcoholics….but they liked the odd glass or ten on a Friday night, or a Monday afternoon. Trying to convince my dad after he had one too many that I didn't need any help with my GCSE science revision was almost as difficult as the actual work itself. Luckily he gave up and passed out when he spent 10 minutes trying to pronounce the word “photosynthesis”.

Then there were the family photo albums. Again my friends’ families would have framed professional photos displayed all around their homes. Photos of them in their finest clothing, pulling angelic poses. Not so much in the Lambert household. Of course we would have the odd photo of us as a relatively normal looking family. But more or less they would be the mocking kind. Like me with a bounty Easter egg box on my head with the caption “egg-head”….fucking hilarious! Or my sister with a big old dunce shaped hat on her head declaring to the world what her name was and when her birthday is like some sort of retard child.

Me and my sister spent the first few years of our life living in London. Our house was tiny and our back garden even smaller. Trying to have fun in this pitiful space of land was always going to be a challenge. There are pictures of me in the heat of summer sitting in a washing up bowl. I mean…not even a paddling pool. A fat, naked toddler sitting in an inch of water, trying to have a good time. My alien-esque eyes staring into the camera, my fat behind wriggling around trying to find a comfortable position to sit for the next five hours while the water became colder and the soap suds completely diminished. Was never a water baby and as such will never be a water adult. I blame the bowl.

But ho hum. Life was good, carefree and laughter and madness was always contagious in our household. Even through the worst times, the strong and painful silence would be punctuated with laughter.

So this is just the first chapter of my nostalgic twitterings all running up to the big departure home, the return to Old Blighty and as such back into the full throes of family life. And while I will not be sitting naked in a washing up bowl (at least not after a few tequilas) I will be living with the Lamberts again. And after living by myself in a foreign land I have come to realize that you can choose your friends (fortunately) but not your ever loving, ever insane family.

The job hunt!!!

On my weekly outing to get the job paper this morning I was unavoidably hit around the face several times by a disturbing thought: I’m unemployed. That’s right…UNEMPLOYED. For a few months now I’ve been waltzing around in my little bubble thinking, “I’ve just left uni, it takes time to start a new life”. Well, that lovely state or existence that I’ve been living by was unceremoniously punched out of my brain and I have been thrown out into the cold, dark and depressing world of this never-ending job hunt. Problem is, this job hunt has been going on for far too long now and to no avail. It seems that when all the graduates left the start line to find their treats I went the wrong way round. While everyone reached the finish line clutching their prizes I was still admiring the daises or hopelessly looking in every nook and cranny to find my prize. And to make matters worse the sun is going down, the rain is beginning to pour and I’m pretty sure I can hear an ever approaching storm heading my way in the form of the credit crunch. But despite these obstacles I keep looking and clambering on. As everyone keeps telling me….”something will turn up”…..I swear if I had a pound every time someone said that phrase to me I would be a millionaire.

This current mood I was in was swiftly worsened when I had to dodge a stream of vomit carelessly strewn across the pavement followed by a heartfelt greeting at the door of my local newsagents by a group of spotty faced youths asking me for a “fag”. Oh and all of this was musically accompanied by Morrissey singing the lyrics “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” into my ears, which provided a fitting soundtrack for my current state of affairs.

Being unemployed is a funny place to be in. Well if I’m being totally honest it’s a soul destroying, tedious and exasperating hell hole to be in, but it can have its little quirks. With all the time I seem to have on my hands its inevitable that my silly little brain will work in overtime….ideas will begin to flourish, thoughts will begin to wander and all of a sudden you start to address things in life which may have previously sat on the back bench. However hard I try, I’m afraid that this is the only positive I can find out of being unemployed….oh maybe renewing my old musical affair with my saxophone and piano is another positive but trust me there is only so many times that I can play Joni Mitchell’s Blue till I start to feel…well blue.

Anyway I must dash and carry on with my hunt…if anyone can point me in the right direction I will be eternally grateful as I seem to be temporarily stuck in the worst Labyrinth of my life……the only thing that could make it worse is if David Bowie turned up in those skin tight trousers…or maybe it would somewhat improve matters.

An Ode to Public Transport

I do feel like a sentimental old fool sometimes. Occasionally (although since leaving my beloved friends in Bournemouth the word 'occasionally' should really be replaced with the word 'daily') I have these agonising pangs of grief where my eyes well up, my stomach flips and a lump forms in the back of my throat. Now, not only is this an attractive picture in itself...being all red eyed and snotty nosed...the worse thing is it regularly seems to be happening in public places. For example: Today I was journeying home on the 065 bus from Ipswich and I just started to cry. Then and there. No warning, no holding back and worse of all....no bloody escape. And do you know what it was over? I broke a nail!! Ok...ok I do realise that this was not the sole reason for me losing it on public transport...in fact unemployability, missing my friends, missing Uni, missing the freedom and being forced to grow up in what increasingly seems to be a cruel and heartless world maybe what contributed to this explosion of emotions. And of course there then came the concerned looks, the strange looks and the 'she must be on day release from the local psychiatric ward' looks. I know this may seem trivial to some people but leaving university really is an agonising experience. It’s like leaving your family behind….everyone has played a particular role in your life which helps you to be who you are today.

Anyway back to the incident at hand…..I’m sure where I was at that specific time did not help in the slightest to lighten my spirits. I shall now paint a beautiful picture depicting a typical Ipswichian Bus décor. Firstly there’s the machine itself….the bus seems to make a choking sound when it moves, every time the driver puts his foot down on the gas the bus jolts from side to side and the engine relentlessly makes a wailing sound. You know the sound that Chitty chitty bang bang makes? Well…actually……there’s no similarity whatsoever, well maybe if you replace the 1st and 3rd syllables with a sh. So, as you can imagine the engine seems to be from the middle ages which doesn’t bode well for the 50 people squeezed onto this pathetic attempt of ‘safe, public transport’. But never mind I will try and get a seat near the window, I enthusiastically try and tell myself. I perch myself on a precarious looking seat after wiping the remnants of a McDonalds lunch off it. I turn to open a window and am faced with two living nightmares: Firstly there seems to be no window…..well no window within my reach anyway. And secondly the window I seemed to be sitting next to seems to have been recently defaced. Now, when I say “defaced” I don’t use this as a poncy phrase for ‘graffiti’. In fact, I wouldn’t mind a bit of graffiti artwork on my window to stare at. No instead I was faced with…mmmmm this is gonna take some imaginary use of vocabulary. Okay, it looked like someone had wiped the whole window with PVA glue. No, wait; I have a better way to describe it. Think back to your high School days when you were forced, by some unbeknown reason, to cover your textbooks with either tacky wrapping paper or a sheet of plastic most commonly used in the grown up world for laminating stuff. Well, you know when you cover your book with that horrible plastic stuff and you don’t quite get it right and what you are left with is about 100 little air bubbles? And throughout time you start to pick these air bubbles and the book just looks as bad as it did before it was covered, if not worse? Well replace the school book with a bus window and that’s what it looked like. A really bad, child like decorating job. Which had the undesirable effect of making whoever was forced to look out of it consider possible theories of suicide.

Okay I’m sure you really do not want to hear the rest of this exciting bus story I am retelling but I will continue onto the inhabitants of the bus. Like visiting a zoo or encountering endangered animals in their natural habitat I am both fascinated and repulsed by those that travel on public transport. Firstly there are the chavs. Usually located at the back of the bus, they travel in large groups and disguise themselves in baggy sports gear and baseball caps. The theme track of the lives seems to be the latest happy hardcore anthem or a similar wailing nonsense which they insist on replaying on their mobile phones for the whole journey. Next are the young teenage mothers. They are located near the front of the bus, clutching their buggies so tight in case the bags of MK One clothing they have precariously piled on top may collapse. There doesn’t seem to be any child sitting in the pram, in fact like the MK One bags the child too is sitting in a precarious position upon the mothers lap. Then the elderly sit at the front alongside them tutting at the state of youths today while knocking out everyone around them with the overwhelming stink of lavender.

God I can’t wait to drive.

I seem to be forever baffled and a little surprised at how people behave when in public. Is it stupidity? Is it bad social ettiquette? Or is it simply what I had suspected all along.....that some people really do live in their own self contained bubble. I imagine these bubbles to be extremely small and have a limited amount of oxygen to the brain. Oh and the only form of entertainment available in this self contained space is Football, The Sun and an endless stream of music such as Basshunter or some other tuneless crap which I regularly hear blasting out of a chav mobile during the early hours of the morning.
Just the other week I was walking through Ipswich town centre carrying a handful of bags whilst talking on my mobile phone and desperately seeking out my mother within the ocean of people swimming towards me. Now, not only was this a multi-tasking nightmare in itself but I was becoming more and more aware of a tantrum brewing underneath my cool exterior. Those who know me best can sense when I might blow, but even those who are not so aware of my 'fly off the handle' tendencies can often sense it in the air. The calm before the storm. That moment of bliss where your aware that something may just turn and the current state of calm is just a short-lived dream. Anyway back to my story. As I was trying my hardest not to blow my lid something tipped me over the edge. Something so incomprehensibly inconvenient and exceptionally annoying that I felt the need to write about it. Prepare yourselves or this: Someone handed me a promotional leaflet and tried to sell me a mobile phone!! Okay I know this may not sound like a particularly outrageous incident, I mean its not like someone marched past me dressed head to toe in nazi regalia worshipping Hitler. Or a group of Satan loving Goths weren’t sacrificing a goat in front of me to Lucifer himself; in fact I’m sure to those reading this it would appear that this salesman was ‘just doing his job’ and was not harming anybody. But let me explain further, and you may begin to understand my annoyance.

And so he began obliviously talking at me about my need for a new mobile phone and the ‘new and exciting promotional phone offers available to me’. Promotional phone offers? Did I look like the type of person who, at that exact point in time was available to stand and have a chat with some spotty faced youth about promotional phone offers? Firstly, I had no hand available to grip the leaflet clutched in his gold jewellery clad hand he was extending out towards me and secondly I was quite clearly in the middle of a conversation on the exact contraption he was trying to sell to me. Now, call me stupid but surely a mobile phone salesman would realise what I was talking into. Surely he would realise that there was someone at the end of the other line. Surely he would realise that I in fact have a mobile phone and was not at all interested in his 'promotional offers'? But clearly he didn’t and continued to waffle on about mobile phones...."We have a current offer of blah blah blah......" I wasn’t listening to a single would he was saying, his charisma was non existent and it was obvious he lacked the social skills needed to interact with a monkey let alone with another human being.

With my temperature gauge rising and steam coming out of my ears I gave him the ‘death stare’. That look of evil you give to people that are pissing you off. I don’t use this stare often so when I do you know its for good reason. However, to my amazement this stare seemed to hit a brick wall. It seemed to float over him and not even interrupt the verbal diarrhoea that was spewing out of his mouth. Shocked and still unamused a made the decision to verbally express my feelings. I took a long, deep inhale of breath, counted to ten and before I could think things through in a rational and calm manner my mouth steamed ahead of me……

“………. Excuse me but I am in the middle of a conversation here, I am not interested in anything you have to sell me or anything you have to tell me about mobile phones….hang on let me finish…..I think its extremely rude to come waltzing up to me and interrupt me while I’m on the phone. So no I don’t want your leaflet…I said no, don’t put it in my bag for later because I won’t read it. I think leaflets are an awful waste of paper anyway people just chuck them on the floor or in the bin….what a bloody waste of a tree. I mean with the state the world is in at the moment……”

And I didn’t stop. And I think that if he hadn’t of told me that “he didn’t care about that and was just trying to sell me a phone” I probably would have gone on for hours. I would have covered every subject from the taste of peanut butter to the size of Gerald Depadieus nose. So, in short, I have set up this blog so all you poor folks out there can listen to the useless scribbles of my overactive imagination!