it's time

hello possums

since my last post a lot has happened.

lots of hours on planes.
lots of changes.
lots of things.
lots.

and so i have decided that a new blog is in order.
not that there is anything wrong with this one, in fact i think (apart from my slack posting..) it is quite nice

but it was started in a time of such sadness
and all that stuff is still on here
(and rightly so, because, as i wrote when i started it, hopefully the blog shows some sort of progression over the year and a bit i have been posting tales of my travels and dramas)
and i think
now
it is time for a new start.

when i first thought of this new blog idea i was actually on the treadmill at the fam's house and decided that a new blog would be like some sort of symbolic phoenix rising thing
(oh i am a drama queen in my own head sometimes)

and, dramatic or not, it's time
(to steal a slogan from an old ALP campaign somewhat revamped in the not too distant past by mark ilovegough latham..)
(not that there is anything wrong with loving gough)

so i have created a new blog

and the link is

http://www.erinpgreaves.blogspot.com/ (get it, its my name!)

as yet there is nothing on it.

perhaps i will try to post something this evening before i go out into the glasgow night

i hope you are all well and fantastic

for the last time here,
(oh i am a drama queen)

erin

xoxoxoxo

clarification possibly needed

the thing is

the last post wasn't meant to be a sad one,
or to do with home.

it was to do with moments and thoughts and experiences and feelings since i have been here, and how all those things have [terrifyingly, happily, deliciously, strangely] challenged my black and white view of the world.

- it was just a wee reflection on something i was thinking about -
(which, as i wrote in my little edit, was not necessarily bad, just tricky)
[hence the grey]

nevermind.

...

and as for you mr jones i and ii...

[for how many days can that song be stuck in my head as i walk around glasgow in the rain wishing for sunglasses so i can appear somewhat mysterious and at the same time wishing i was not so silly as to have left my coat in the house]

slight reflection on eleven months in a grey city

[some unfortunate monday night vague whimsy (in the tradition of old)]

i came to glasgow seeing the world completely in black and white.

but it seems that as the (eleven) months have passed
things have changed/shifted
(experiences times words feelings moments thoughts)
and now nothing seems black and white at all,
rather
everything is just complex and varying and tangled up shades of grey.

[which is not a bad thing, really. just trickier.]

in other news..

i (finally) moved house on sunday (which involved me driving a large van!) and now live in a lovely house with three other lovely friendly creative people (the plans for shane and i and our glam house changed somewhat and he is staying in london and i am living in a lovely sharehouse).. i will attempt to email my new address and phone number to those of you that may have the random need to be calling or mailing :) i will also attempt to stop overusing the word lovely.

i hope all is well and not too chilly

(to put things into perspective, it is the middle of summer and yet today i was wearing a cardi and my coat..although i do feel silly wearing a coat in summer, but i kept taking it off and then i just got too cold!)

xoxoxoxo

....

something is happening here and you don't know what it is

do you, mr jones?

its been so long since i've been around

two random musical interludes...

i.
i was teaching maths to a class of (tough) boys when a david gray song randomly came on the radio
and i got a bit emotional
and the boys thought it was hilarious
(one said to the other teacher in the room 'its gonna be boring here if she ever moves back to australia, there's not gonna be anyone crazy going all loopy over some song' which is possibly the closest thing to a compliment im ever going to get from said student)
and asked what the matter was
to which i (vaguely) replied
'someone put it on a tape for me once'
and now they are completely obsessed with speculating as to whom and why and what and where.
also one of them keeps telling me he's going to download it as his ringtone to 'have a laugh'.

ii.
your full name is on my itunes.
im making a cd of australian music for a friend
and there in the playlist is a song i don't listen to all that much
and it is from a cd you once made
and so there is your name all the way over here in scotland
beaming out at me from my little computer.


please excuse the randomness. one of those days im afraid.
now im off to phoebes for a sewing evening.

xoxoxoxo

midsummer evening

im feeling mixed up.
that is the best way to describe it.
mixed up like when i was 16 and kate used to always ask me if i was still dazed and confused.
mixed
up
indeed.

and this is because of so so many factors
(that are all mixed up together and thus causing the mixxy uppy feeling)

and they are generally uninteresting so i won't go into detail, but i just thought that before i write this post i should alert you my dearests to the mixedupness underpinning (oh i learnt one word from my dip ed if i learnt nothing else..) this particular post..

in other news

tonight i got home from the gym and bumped into the neighbor and my housemate in the bathroom dealing with the fact that our bath/shower is leaking (through, they discovered, years of minging mouldy mingingness behind the tiles) into the roof of the flat downstairs and is causing drips and cracks.. lovely..

at least now the neighbor is on board this whole fixing-the-mouldy-bathroom business should speed up somewhat..

but also in housing news:

i am moving!

shane (featured in those gorgeous snaps from ireland when i made him pose like a catalogue model) is moving up here from london and we are going to live in a lovely (expensive!! eek!! when compared to a. home and b. the fact that i currently live in a housing association so pay very low rent) wonderfully renovated tenement flat in a very cool area of glasgow (just off glasgow's closest thing to brunswick st) and our lives are sure to be joyous and glam!
(we made a plan when we first discussed living together that included such glam and ab-fab influenced ideas as serving guests cosmopolitans...although given the rent we may have to settle for asda home-brand asti...)

i am currently losing my mind at work. it is very strange - we are in the final week and a half before the summer holidays and so there is this summery end-of-year feeling, yet it is june.. very odd indeed.

important notice: now it is actually the next day.

just as i was typing that post my friend(who lives down the stairs) texted saying she could cut my hair right then so off i whisked and now it is the next evening (thursday) and i have cut hair (i am worried it is too short and i somewhat resemble a small child and/or mushroom..) which i also just dyed (in my leaky shower, hoping not the hear the neighbor banging on my door bc her house was flooding...) and am feeling not so mixed up.

and here i am in my house soon-not-to-be-my-house-any-longer and im sitting on my bed in summery clothes (today people were exclaiming how hot it was. it was 21. warm, sunny, sometimes rainy, definitely not hot though.) listening to johnny cash and drinking a beer. i am going through a johnny cash phase. the other day i was carving up the dancefloor (as though we were actually johnny and june themselves) with a friend to folsom prison blues. lovely.

anyway petals, this is fast turning into a rambling blog so i will post some interestingish things...

this is a link to a youtube video about glasgow 'neds' (the glasgow version of a bogan). this contains offensive language, but i have linked to it because it is exactly how my students speak and i wanted to share it - the scottish accent i have come to know is far from the one of braveheart and the like im afraid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4-r2TZdXM

this is a link to the site of the tv program 'chewin the fat' which has a very informative 'neducation' section.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/tv/chewinthefat/neds/neducation.shtml


on a less ned-esque note (although...) i discovered that the unit where i work has a blog. it is completely maintained by the ict teacher (so i have never actually looked at it until now..and i don't want to link to it bc i don't really want it linked to here either..) but has some little stories about what (some of) the kids have been doing if anyone happens to be interested..
http://www.govan-au.blogspot.com/

and finally

here are a few snaps from The Walk

lindsay, tracey and i before we walked. i look slightly like a giant.

lovely cows we walked past

the army reserves people and their bonfire at the 40 mile mark (just before it got dark and rainy)

...and speaking of rainy it has just started to pour. outside in the garden my neighbor's daughter and her friend are singing and dancing in the rain, completely soaked and in their socks!

and so i will snuggle into my doona and read some murakami (the other day a random thing happened: i was in the school library and i picked up a murakami book with the intention of borrowing it. then a guy i work with came into the library and we were looking at books and talking about ones we'd read etc and he said [without noticing i had one in my hand, and without seeing one on the shelves, as i was holding the only copy] what about murakami...) and listen to the rain on this midsummer evening...

i hope you are all well and festive and snug (and not too drained after reading this epic post about very little..)

erin

xoxoxoxo

ps. happy birthday to you for today kaffa.

pps. it is one year since i left melbourne the second time. heavens.

a walk to put even the proclaimers to shame

i walked.
oh heavens did i walk.

the fifty miles of the 'speyside 50 miles in 24 hours challenge' turned out to be secretly 54 miles, a fact that is highly tragic to discover at the 35 mile mark where you are thinking 'only fifteen to go' and some army reserves guy says to you 'great work only 20miles to go..'

for the first five miles i was thinking i'd definitely be pulling out at 30 miles, 40 max.

then the next 35 miles were really ok, we were going really well and making quite good time

and then just after the 40 mile mark it got dark.
and started raining.
and we entered the forest.
(oh raincoats, oh headlamps)

we made it to the 44 mile checkpoint and one girl we were with collapsed.
we refilled our water bottles, tracey got her foot fixed and i ate an energy bar and some tablet (scottish sugary delicious/hideousness) and then just as we were about to set off i suddenly felt like i was about to faint. so i had a quick visit to the first aid caravan where i had to lay down and the first aid guy held my legs up until i was ready to set off again.

and there we were three of us; me, tracey and a guy called davey who is the instructor from the famed circuit class the tracey and the others she knew doing the walk were from.

three of us walking very slowly in the rainy darkness where it was hard to see the little white thistle markers guiding us, going up hills, along roads and through a valley of logged and about-to-be-logged pine trees (scary).

and then tracey hit the wall.
tracey is the fittest person i know (she is the kind of person who runs to the gym, does two classes then runs home) and so for her to have hit the wall was pretty intense. she had a really sore leg from a previous injury and it had been hurting her from about the 10 mile mark and i think it had just finally pushed her over the edge. davey tried to convince her to continue to the 50 mile checkpoint but i think she was thinking that if she made it to 50 she would make herself finish and she just couldn't go another three hours of slowly and painfully stepping along. she basically had a complete melt down.
so the TA guy rescued her (after much confusion about out location - i now have little faith in the territorial army people's ability to read maps..) and it was just davey and i plodding along through the forest.

oh how sore my feet were for those last 10 miles.
i had been walking with a walking pole for the second half (don't laugh, all the cool walkers use them..) mainly to support my left knee but i ended up using it on the right because my right foot was so very sore with blisters by that point.

and on we went so very very slowly.

they say the last ten miles is mainly psychological and oh heavens were they hard.
i definitely could not have done it a year ago (or two or three).

something that interested me was that i wasn't really feeling tired.
i am almost completely tired all the time - tired to my bones, to my core, tired so i just wish i could vanish or evaporate, tired so i just want to sleep for days, tired so i just wish i could stand still and become a statue - yet i didn't feel this kind of tiredness at all during the walk, even though i was the most physically exhausted and pushed my body to the absolute limit.

and we finished.
oh i have never been so happy to see a group of army reserve men in all my life.

i really can't believe i did it.
seriously.
and i had that feeling that if i could do that walk i can do anything.
(although that feeling is on hold for a few days as my feet are so so so so sore i struggled even walking to the station this morning)
it won't be walking, but it made me realise that i can be so very determined and strong when i need to. maybe i already have been strong and determined but i just haven't believed it because i don't feel strong (if anything i feel the opposite) but maybe doing something so physically intense really made me realise i can be.

although i had that thought in my head just before as i was hanging my washing up and i thought
maybe i am ready for the shit to hit the fan
and then i ended up crying and pouring myself a glass of (speyside) whisky
so who knows.

thank you so much to everyone who texted and called me and gave me so much support
and thank you also to everyone who sponsored me

this was pretty much the craziest and most intense thing i have ever done

sorry i have written about it in the most random of snippets - i am quite tired and should prob be off to sleep so i will publish this and maybe change it tomorrow..

i hope you are all amazing

i miss you all lots

erin

xoxoxoxo

ps. i have started eating yoghurt after hating it for years. how random.

pps. today i was so grumpy and tired and sore-footed at school i was grumpy to my maths class and even said to three of them who were mucking around and not opening their books even though i had asked them to 500000 times in abt 20 mins
'if you don't open your books and start work by the time i count to five you will have to do maths work in your link (free choice) time on friday. than means no pool, no ict (their two fave activities), just maths'
hideous. i did tell them at the start that i was grumpy so i think they were really not taking me altogether too seriously. one of them still said at the end of the class 'at least you're not a strict teacher' and another student of mine who was lurking in the doorway said later 'you are so funny when you try to be angry, miss'. hrmmm.

i would walk 500 miles (cheesy and obvious scottish walking link i know but it had to be done)

oh everyone

i am freaking out ever so slightly
(more like ever so much...)

because tomorrow after school i set off to aviemore
in order to get up at a hideous hour on saturday
and, at 7am, set off on the walk-50-miles-in-24-hours Speyside Challenge..

it is for a good cause, raising money for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice
(thank you so much to all of you that have been so amazing and sponsored me - sorry i haven't emailed you yet - i have been frantic making sure i have all the ridiculous walking essentials [head lamp, energy bars, waterproof trousers for goodness sakes...] i really was overwhelmed when mum emailed me about it)
and it is such a great challenge

but i am freaking out due to the following
a)my team is made up of my friend from work who is a hardcore gym girl, her friend from the gym who has also just joined the territorial army (army reserves) (and is very into it) and me.. so even though i have been training to the full extent of my ability, i am getting that old feeling of being the dodgy one in p.e.
b)the prospect of walking for 24 hours is pretty full on. just walking. 24 hours. long.
c)this is scotland. the odds of rain rain rain are high high high.

oh the things we do...

i will write a blog sometime next week when i have (hopefully) returned and recovered

and, whenever you pause for a moment between your 4pm on saturday and your 4pm sunday think of me, still walking...

miss you all lots
and thank you so much again to everyone who has sponsored me (i was truly thinking i'd just put the money in myself!)

have a lovely weekend

erin p hillwalker
xoxoxox

ps. i always find it amusing that here they call hiking up mountains 'hillwalking'. deceiving, utterly deceiving.

pps. today as i was walking through the park on my way to work a Real Live Squirrel bounded across the path in front of me!!