I got to thinking about how tense the English have become. Pinched, as my dad would say. I’ve gotten to know so many vague foreigners (by vague I mean English speaking lovelies from afar…Namely Ireland and America) and this has made me notice that the stiff upper lip of England that I am so proud of has been replaced by an array of excruciatingly tightened sphincters. We sit and pay enormous amounts of money for food that we would not choose over bangers and mash or a good shepherd’s pie. We pretend to like music, we pretend to like films, books, news items, jobs, people…so much so, that we are tightened by the day to day full time occupation of being English. It must get very tiring for those who can be bothered to keep up appearances. Today got me really thinking…what are appearances? Especially eating frois grais (however the bloody hell you spell it), sucking wine through your teeth, not trimming your ear hair because it makes you look…I dunno, profound? Intelligent? There will probably come a time when I will take out my nose ring, will consider money for printer ink to be more important than money for festival tickets, or restringing my ukulele and will actually have to care what people think of me. It’s a shame. Tainted by the norm that we have created for ourselves. Like when raindrops fail at tracing their own routes on windowpanes. They just slide innocently into an already trodden route

Deterioration

The corners of our minds are dusty. This is because, as a race, we have decided that using a mere third of our brains will quite suffice, thank you. The brain...it's such an odd thing. Scientists started around 8 years ago trying to replicate that of a rat and still haven't succeeded. All a rat does is survive. If you think of the wealth of knowledge, emotion and memory we shove into that little third. But for what? Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Dementia and even just general old age. We live a life just to forget it. I've often said I'm not afraid of dying, but what if I forget that fact? I am a hoarder of photographs, tickets, postcards because the thought of forgetting the little things in my life horrifies me, and I'm only eighteen. To forget those you love. To forget everything you have achieved. To be scared and in the dark until the day death takes pity on you. That, has to be one of the worst ways to go. We are just machines at the end of the day. Not built to outlive our guarantee, to slowly fall apart. And you can only fix a broken plate so many times before it's just shards. Off the dustpan, into the bin. Then you forget about it. You forgot it was ever there.