The empire on which the sun never rises

Trade Me. I remember why I stopped listing items a while ago. It was because I was getting annoyed with people asking silly questions and expecting bargain basement prices so they could sell stuff on at their boutique stores. And being slack about payment. But most of all it was because of the shocking lack of interest my GLORIOUS 1970s gear received. Things are moving slowly at present, much as in every other aspect of my life. Everything is so utterly depressing. All my friends moving away. All 3 of them that is. Living with younger flatmates who are already more confident and able than I ever will be, or perhaps that is the advantage of not yet realising how futile it all is. Undiplomatic as it is, I often wish my parents had been sterilised. How fortunate I am to have been born in an era with unprecedented opportunities to moan. Online, I could vlog, blog or podcast my own special blend of disgruntlement. The jury is out on whether that is any better or worse than using online resources to create wish-fulfilment fiction. I guess before the internet people had moaning hotlines, before that Party lines, and maybe before that they clustered around the radio listening to someone moaning. Lord Haw Haw perhaps. The creative might have tried a few 12 bar blues. Still earlier and they could just libel each other in the paper; what fantastic fun that must have been!
Maybe I need a diversion off-line. One that I can manage even though the early starts I am enduring just compounds my bad moods. So, how about bringing back coded messages in the personals columns in the ODT. The thrill of trying to break the code and get the gossip will liven up my days no end. I may live vicariously because lord knows nothing ever happens to me, except the occasional shouted insult enlivening my walk home. That's usually someone driving by. I can generally hold in my pedestrian rage even in the face of bad Dunedin driving.
Presumably driving in larger cities is of a higher standard than that in Dunedin, so that is one reason to try to get out of here. But then, wouldn't I just be moving to become even more boring and insignificant elsewhere? Is it possible? Could I be more of a depresso hermit than I already am? It's this kind of thought that makes me wish I could be part of a colonising power. Can't make it at home? Go and be superior to another race even while you don't measure up to your own society.

Come home to a roaring fire

Its been a day of trials and tribulations. From the hilarity of realising catalogue search terminals were blocking access to nursury rhyme cds (I suspect they filter out the profane "Hickory Dickory Dock" songs; not to mention "Hey Diddle Diddle") to the drama of lift doors closing too quickly. The moment that will most stick with me, however, is a woman calling us all primitive because one has to show proof of address to get a library card.
Thats the thing that really gets me. These people go overseas, get back and then feel all superior and sophistimicated because they chavved it up in ye olde Englande. Any chance, and there they are, trying to wedge the fact they were overseas into conversation. Whats this phone number? Oh, I gave you my INTERNATIONAL calling details, in case the library wants to phone about overdue messages from its love nest in Borneo.
In general, the people who are most brazen about their international travel are the ones who have been to the most tedious of places, proliferating like fungi in the grottos and kiwi ghettos of London. They probably show interminable slide shows of their castle visiting, night clubbing, and carry fond memories of Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals with them to this day. Harrods would have been a must see, and you better believe they saw the changing of the guard.
Travel is wasted on these people, they should have given the ticket to me.
At last I would become the International Superbitch I am destined to be.