Weirdest day

Ok, magic eight ball lost in miles of government issue guttering. Go!
Together Vikkie and I stumble through the darkness, negotiating a clump of young elders and tall grasses and finally reaching the end of the gutter. By this time we are royally pissed off, wet and tired. I locate the drain but not the magic eight ball.
“Great” sighs Vikkie, “Look, it’s stuck”
I follow her pointing finger and glimpse shining black through a split in the pipe. We agree (after a short argument) that since Vikkie was the one who to get the ball in, logically it should be my job to recover it. So I kneel down in the mess of moss and guano and mud. I shove the spatula into the gutter and start ramming it up and down like a demented chimney sweep. I’m about to give up when, in a shower of yet more moss, the ball descends.
Picking it up I wipe the sludge from its surface to reveal the glowing blue window. The cube within bobs sedately displaying the words - “Ask again later”
Sometimes I am sure that God is mad at me for something.

Well there’s no rest for the wicked. The next morning I awake exhausted and aching. The late night of ball hunting (tee-hee) has done nothing to improve my mood and now I have to get up and get to work.
I catch the five o’clock bus into the nearly silent city centre and get breakfast (Hot chocolate and sugared waffle - having had a great idea to replace sleep with fat and sugar) at an all night coffee place on the corner of the street where I work. I am a cleaner; I clean an entire three floors of an office block four times a week.
In case you have never had the chance to go to university and have a “student job”, let me enlighten you as to how rewarding it is to do something you hate for almost no money, to support an education you’re not sure you even want anymore, and a lifestyle only one up from life in a cardboard box.
I polish off my breakfast secreted away in the cleaning cupboard sitting on a crate of sponges. Then I gather a bucket full of cloths, dangerous solvents and toilet rolls. I work my way through the offices, wiping phones and vacuuming. These three floors share a single toilet block, and it is here, almost three hours later, that I end my shift.
With fifteen paid minutes left to kill I look around the spotless bathroom. Well, I say spotless, what I mean is that everything that I am contracted to clean is clean. It would take an entire team of cleaners working eighteen hour shifts to make a dent in the creeping grime that hides behind everything.
I’m starting to suspect the walls in here used to be white.
Experimentally I wipe at the dingy wall, leaving a clear streak of perfect white about a foot long.
I probably should have done that somewhere that wasn’t the middle of the wall. With the semi gleeful thought of paid overtime circulating my brain I begin re-whitening the walls.
I used to be a cleaner back home, on a limited basis because of school and actually trying to have a life. I also read, and indeed still read, tarot cards over the internet for complete strangers. Being pagan apparently has the bonus of giving you certain talents to prostitute for hard cash, which is good considering the fact that you need a massive array of candles and an Indian restaurant worth of spices to exact the tiniest amount of revenge on your evil co-workers.
Not that I ever have.
Moving on from advanced bathroom blotting I begin to tackle the floor of the hallway. This is the best job so I usually save it till last, using the floor buffer and soapy scented polish to make the floor miraculously gleaming again. The soft whirr of the round buffer plate on the floor is monotonous and calming, it gives me time to think about things that aren’t work related.
I’m just sinking into a hypnotic trance like state when the buffer lurches off an uneven floor tile (reported four times but still not replaced), it jolts over its own wire and before I know it the wire tangles around my foot and the buffers polishing cushion. It yanks me to the floor where I land on my arse none too gracefully, and finally realise that I should let go of the buffer safety ignition. I release the handle and instantly the buffer stops whirring.
With shaking fingers I unwind the snare of taught wire on my ankle, then slowly ease it out of its strangle hold on the buffer. I get to my feet and notice the long me-shaped imprint on the newly polished floor.
And that’s it. That’s the moment that I snap.
Throughout school I always had this thing, something bad would happen, I’d get picked on or laughed at, and I wouldn’t cry. Then a few days or even weeks later, something small would go wrong, a pencil that wouldn’t sharpen or a dented book, and suddenly I would go hysterical.
I put the buffer away, lock up, and walk out into the street and into the park down the road. Once there I sob so hard I scare the pigeons. Tears drip down my face, my eyes swell up and my mouth convulsively turns downwards. I’m not crying about my bruised tailbone, I’m crying because I feel trapped and scared in a life I don’t want, I hate everything about it but at the same time I want it to accept me. I want all the things I reject to welcome me, to convince me that I belong.
For a long time I just sit on the bench and suffer, then I realise that if I don’t move I will just stay on that bench forever and never do anything. Getting up I begin to walk down the street, ignoring the stares of the people I walk past. What I need is a “Me day”; I had them throughout school, mostly when I was “ill”. What I need is hot chocolate, magazines and fluffy socks.
I find the entrance to the cheap-o shop on the high street and go in. There’s a food aisle consisting mainly of tins and pickled things, but eventually I find instant hot chocolate and a box of chocolates as a bonus. Adding these things to a basket I peruse the DVD shelves and throw in a film that I saw ages ago and that now costs less than the chocolate. I browse a little longer and find a book that looks pretty funny, chick-lit naturally, the kind of thing that would make my English professor sneer with contempt, but he isn’t here.
By this time I have cheered up considerably, don’t get me wrong, everything still sucks but I always feel that paradoxically, alone time allows me to deal with the world better.
I’m about to pay for my stuff, which I’ve mentally totted up to around £7.40, when I see it.
Now, there are some things that, when you buy them, you think they are going to change your life. Typically these things are wrinkle cream, weight loss pills or self help books. Nothing really changes when you buy them except your bank balance. But occasionally you buy something without even thinking about it, and it alters you forever.
“And this please”
I toss a magazine onto the pile, rounding it neatly to £9.00, and scoop the lot into my handbag.
And here it is the beginning of the present. Keep your heads propped up, it’s about to get interesting.

Oh balls! (and puns)

Right...where were we? Oh right, Vikkie had just offered to make me dinner, an event in itself. Between us we’ve tried to replicate the conversation from that evening, though it has to be said sometimes even we don’t believe we come out with this stuff.
“Really, you didn’t have to do this.” I say politely as possible with my mouth already full of chicken.
“Well, it’s the least I can do, what with you falling to pieces every five minutes since we got here.” Vikkie shrugs and dunks chips in tomato sauce with exaggerated involvement.
“Well…..at least save some energy for ordering breakfast” I smirk and take a deep relaxing sip of coke, as around us the dinner rush begins to empty out of KFC.
As a rule neither Vikkie nor any of my assorted friends really do cookery. Though I must hastily add that it is more a case of “won’t” not “can’t”. (Though I distinctly remember a rather unfortunate incident where we intended to make an offering of a hardboiled egg and between the two of us turned the simple (and doomed) task of cooking the damn thing into a circus.)
As the number of chicken pieces slowly dwindles we exhaust the various topics of essays, news from home and the gecko still at large in the showers on Vikkie’s floor. There is a slight pause as we finish our respective meals, then Vikkie, now playing with the straw wrappers, suddenly has a flash of inspiration.
“You know….” she mutters conspiringly over the collection of bones between us “You could always try a new approach”
“Such as?”
She gives a nod to the glossy print of an eight ball on the pillar at the back of the table.
“Consult the sphere of kinetic knowledge.”

If you find yourself inexplicably in Bath and on the lookout for a way to meet interesting people and discover places seedier than a budgies behind, I suggest trying to find a magic eight ball at eleven o’clock on a Friday night.
We went from Woolworths (closed) to the pound shop (open - but devoid of eight balls) right up to the supermarket, and finally started randomly going into anywhere that was still open, annoying bar staff, kebab shop employees and one busker.
Eventually we managed to find a tattoo parlour with one in the window amidst a display of novelty cigarette lighters. After a little haggling, the owner, (well, presumably the owner, though it is hard to imagine that an acne riddled fifteen year old could possess the entrepreneurial skills necessary to set up a lemonade stand, let alone an actual business.) We managed to get him to part with the ball for £18.46 and a voucher for three pounds off his next visit to KFC, for which he threw in a Jack Daniels lighter.
“Pretty decent of him really” I remark to Vikkie as she hangs out of my bedroom window.
Being who we are, naturally we couldn’t settle for just shaking the magic eight ball, instead we decided to feed it into the gutter just outside my window and so begin the longest magic eight ball roll ever. Sometimes I think life would be less surprising if I just did what normal teenagers did, get totally wasted and put ecstasy tablets in my ears (or do whatever you’re meant to do with them.)
There’s a thump and a rumble as the magic eight ball begins its descent. Vikkie slips back through the window triumphantly and does a few curtsies to an imaginary crowd. We both freeze as we come to the same thought simultaneously.
“Vikkie….where does that gutter end?”
Oh the best laid plans…..
I grab a coat from the back of the door and rush down the stairs, pausing only to snatch a plastic spatula from the draining board in the kitchen. Vikkie is already waiting for me when I reach the dark courtyard.
“What’s that for?” she asks incredulously
“In case it’s stuck” I pant, then realise that the spatula is not mine. It is also glowing eerily, a sickly yellow.
“No accounting for taste”
I tap her on the nose with the spectral spatula to get her back to the crisis in hand, though really I’ve never been able to resist the lure of a weapon and an unsuspecting victim, Video games do effect impressionable minds. Together we set off, following the dark line of the guttering around the building.

Told you. It’s a wonder we haven’t been arrested or committed in all the time we’ve been friends, we are clearly a bad influence on each other. Anyway, if you’re dying to find out what the magic eight ball said, or just really really bored, the next bit of the story that led me to Ilensay will be up soon, I can’t wait to see what you make of my breakdown over the buffing machine.

In the beginning...

Well, my adventure started in my first year at Bath Spa University, and as far as I know it’s still happening. At the moment I am waiting to take up residence on the island of Ilensay, just off the coast of Scotland. In about a month my exams for this term will be over and I will officially have completed my first whole year of uni....right before I drop out.
I haven’t told my parents yet, in fact the only person (aside from the university administrators) who knows about this is my best friend of nine years, Vikkie. I’m giving up on my English literature degree to go farm chickens on an island, and I have no idea what’s going to happen to me once I’m there.
God this is confusing me and I already know why I’m doing it. I’ll back up a bit, this is basically what happened to me four months ago, as close to the truth as I can get it.

“Please give me a sign”
I open my eyes a little and peer hopefully at the small candle floating in the sink.
Nothing
Reaching over nonchalantly I wiggle a finger in the water, trying to generate a flicker.
Nothing
Struck with sudden inspiration I consult the pocket guide to divination, is no sign a sign? Reaching the end of its short life the candle collapses into the water, extinguishing itself and becoming a flower of spent wax.
I pull my legs from beneath me and stand, yanking the plug from the sink, the wax swirls away before I can stop it and an unhealthy gurgling noise rises from the drain, followed by a litre of backed up water. I catch sight of my reflection in the spotty mirror, curly blond hair frizzing in the damp air, blue eyes reddened by tiredness and smoke.
Gathering the rest of my things in a hurry I leave the scene of the crime and manage to find the way back to my dorm room. It’s hard to imagine calling this place home, every corridor is identical and I’ve gotten lost twice in the last week alone. Its full of identical people with the same accents and the same taste in music, as if some trickster God has orchestrated it, grunge-death rap assaults me through the nearest partition. Being at university has confirmed what I had always feared; I am at heart a thirty year old woman.
When I finally identify my door in the homogenous horde (I was there for ages and it still didn’t occur to me to buy a giant plastic sign that says “Emma” on it to hang on my door – too late now) I open it to find Vikkie exactly where I left her an hour ago, watching old cartoons on my laptop and tucking into the grapes that fill the bowl on my desk. She has absently twirled her short dark hair around a glittery pencil and forgotten to remove it. My friend since I injured her with a desk at the tender age of nine, she alone remains constant.
“Any luck?” she asks, pausing the animated rooster mid rant and turning to face me.
“Nope, nothing, plus I think I blocked the sink…again.”
“Which is probably why the witch trials got started in the first place, all that broken plumbing.”
I roll my eyes at her as hard as I can without losing my balance and pluck the pencil from her hair, her pale skin flushes.
“I knew that was there.”
“Any other stationary I should know about?”
She shakes her head innocently.
“You shouldn’t be lighting candles in the dorm anyway, the alarm might go off.”
“I prefer candles for advice.” I grin wickedly “Low energy bulbs are sooo preachy.”
She shoots me a half disgusted half amused look that says “ I cannot believe you said that” followed by a grape which I catch and throw back with my natural accuracy, knocking over a pen pot. While she gathers up the spilled stationary I turn serious again.
“Look, I need some help here…clearly. After months, months! Of exams and prospecti and UCAS and deadlines and hauling all my crap over her….I cannot hate university. I cannot not want to be here, it’s just not possible.”
I fold my arms in a “that settles that gesture” then unfold them with a frown.
“But I hate it here! It’s just like being back at school, only now I have to live with the people who think I’m strange and they can steal my chocolate and use all my mugs and wake me up with vomiting and rousing choruses of “shake yo ass” at three in the morning. I’m leaving…tomorrow.”
There’s a small pause as Vikkie watches me expectantly, a grape halfway between bowl and mouth.
“The thing is…” I begin, as she rolls her eyes and swallows the grape. “I have nowhere to go, what is there other than this? Go home and be a cleaner for the rest of my life?”
I flop dejectedly onto my bed, dislodging a sheaf of essay notes and burying my face in a fuzzy purple cushion.
Over the years Vikkie has witnessed thousands of similar scenes and knows that eventually I will argue myself out and start talking about something else. Usually this is the point where she tries to move me onto a different topic.
“So….”
And fails utterly
“Maybe you should give it a little more time” she says, finally beaten into offering me advice she throws me a clump of grapes.
“I’ve already been here for months” I whine “months of communal facilities with mould and blocked sinks”
She looks pointedly at me
“And that’s another thing!” I add triumphantly “When was the last time I managed a ritual that lasted longer than a few minutes?”
“You were gone an hour!” protests Vikkie
“Only because I ignored people begging to use the loo”
“Well, like you said, you don’t have anything else to do.” She adds with an air of finality
“But is that any reason to stay?” Suddenly I’m out of rant mode and left without my insulating blanket of petty annoyances. Knocked back by my own words.
“Come on” Vikkie grabs my arm and draws me towards the door.
“I’ll make you dinner.”
So now you’ve met Vikkie (who by the way is about to have the excellent idea of rolling a magic eight ball down the guttering to make a decision for me) and you have some idea of what it felt like to be at university back then. I’ll sign off for now because I have to check up on the builders renovating the house on the island. Successful farming or no I am still going to need running water and a roof.