The Mutterer

I sat in class the other day, which had dwindled from 15 to 5, and once again found myself in close proximity to The Mutterer.

I say once again, but I have never actually told the international public about The Mutterer, so here is a brief explanation.

In my tutorial on a Friday afternoon, there is this guy who mutters things in a half-whisper, to himself, when the tutor is talking, when there is a DVD on, or when the mood generally strikes him.

It freaks me out.

It’s just mumblings grumblings and a lost, off-balance glint in his eyes, and I’m not paranoid, but…

Well, the only other person I’ve ‘met’ with this trait was a homeless guy. He set up camp in the trees alongside the path I used to take when I walked to school. It was the section of path that wound quickly but quietly among the paper-barks.

This guy was all very well and fine, I suppose as far as being homeless and slightly disturbed goes, and I was generally unconcerned with his mutterings and the distinct aroma that infuses the air surrounding people who wear everything they own on their back.

(It is the odour of off, bitey sweat, new bitey sweat, poverty, not uncommonly alcohol-infused bad teeth and quiet humiliation and indifference intertwined. And on occasion such as this, a distinct whiff of insanity.)

But one morning his mutterings exploded into a violent argument, with what I can only assume was a particularly provocative patch of air in the man’s general vicinity. He raged at it, and he turned as he raged, keeping his eyes on the skulking mix of offensive intangible gases, and I was lucky enough that the pace I walked matched the pace he turned, and I managed to stay directly behind him the entire time he pivoted. I doubt he would have heard me, but I’m pretty sure he would have thought I was in cahoots with the air, had I been spotted rudely breathing it in.

The crazy mutterer in my class has not had an argument with any desks as yet. However, I have primed myself to take swift evasive action, should said mutterer look like he’s even thinking of turning and plunging his biro into my eyeball.

 

The Family Splinters…

Blondie has left the building! She just turned 16 and decided she hated Mother, and she’s gone.

Mother was of course both devastated and overjoyed – a bottle of scotch (NB: may be slight exaggeration) and several blocks of chocolate (NB: see previous parenthesis) later, she was quite content to openly discuss how little she cared, how worried she was and exactly how off-limits the topic was moments from becoming.

Delilah was as happy as a pig in poo and The Blob was doing his usual ‘this is none of my business’ thing and spent the night being that boy who uses our bathroom and eats our food.

 

Internship Schminternship…

Actually, back to uni now: I discovered to my disdain that the situation at my internship had changed on Wednesday morning. Did I tell you about my internship? No?? Well then!!

I got an internship! At my local paper, in the lift-out entertainment section. My first two days (I do one day a week) introduced me to interviewing singers and the goings on in the magazine. I thought I was just getting the hang of it, when I arrived on a bleak autumn morning, and there is the entertainment editor (EE), with red-rimmed eyes, sitting in an office that can only be described as tangibly silent.

“Oh, hi Miss C,” says EE. “I’ve just found out I’ve been made redundant, so I don’t really have anything for you to do today.”

“Oh.”

It is a tense few minutes discussing the sudden dismissal that evolves into EE turning abruptly away from me and making strangled little chokey-gaspy noises, and struggling to keep her shoulders still, that provokes me, the coldest of all cold, to offer my bony shoulder.

“Uh, do you want a hug?” Miss C (I) asks with minor apparent trepidation.

EE shakes her head. “No,” she burbles, followed swiftly by a retraction in the form of a sob-strangled cried-out “Yes!”

So for yet another odd moment in my life, my bony shoulder is welcome against somebody’s tear-stained face.

EE of course got severance and by the end of the day, being so over-qualified but under-paid, EE had already received a possible job-offer.

Where does that leave me? Tenderly retitled the “Glasshouse Intern”, I am now to flit among the departments (well, a couple of them), learning the tricks of the trade in Advertorial, and sub-editing. I am thrilled, dismayed, and anxious.

And also, after the sudden demise of the over-crowded entertainment corner of the small office, loaded up with CDs I have never heard of, books I have never read, and a few random promotional t-shirts and inexplicably, a High School Musical 2 bag, cap, diary, and temporary tattoos.

GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!!

To add an all-new creep-factor to the already creepily techni-colour-saturated High School Musical paraphernalia, all the tattoos, (some disturbingly of a basket-ball-uniform-clad Zac Effron) were given extra bright blue eyes, which thanks to dodgy glitter application, have no pupils or whites.

Stick that to your arm and avoid a crowd.

But life throws curly-ones aplenty, and you know, there is so much more but being more diverse than this, I feel a separate blog entry would be appropriate. Also I am an exhausted university student and I cannot operate my eyeballs and brain simultaneously for much longer without short-circuiting.

So, just one more thing before you run screaming from your computer, if you haven’t already:

Please don’t ever, EVER mix chocolate and whiskey.