Friday the Thirteenth

So Friday The Thirteenth has come and gone with no massively inauspicious occurrence to denote it. Except that one more ominous day spent mooching around doing nothing, moodling around eating everything, has probably taken me one step closer to a meltdown of epic scales, considering I’m just about two weeks away from exams. So maybe yesterday was a little inauspicious after all. I don’t know what it is, I just can’t find the motivation to get on with it and I know that this really isn’t who I am. Or was, at least. I’ve never had a problem with exams and I actually wish I was spending every last second of my time buried in my books, working day and night to get the grades – any ideas on how to jump-start the engine?

So what have I been doing with my time? Very good question...the answer to which will be... reading. A lot. But reading a book of the wrong sort entirely. I bought ‘After the Party’ subsequent to being stared square in the face, tube stop after tube stop, by 200” x 80” posters advertising its release. It’s been a good buy though and I’d definitely recommend a read. My mum had to prise me away from it with much difficulty on many-a-occasion because it was (cliché, I know) just too good to put down. The only other time I remember that happening was with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Mum bought it the day it released and I picked it up the minute I sat in the car after school not to put it down until I’d finished at 11pm (a bit late on a school night for an 11 year old, no?) After the Party is (again, and yes I’m a bit ashamed to admit it) another chick-flick type tale in genre, but what I love about it is that Jem, the main character, embodies something every girl can relate to. She is a little piece of every girl. Though she set out to live life with the sole purpose of enjoying every moment of it, she now finds herself trapped in a life of routines and responsibilities, baby-sick and burdens as a suburban mum of two. The passage of time has made a new woman of her, one that she and her partner no longer recognise. The beauty of the story lays with two people’s honesty though – their unchanged love for one another and their desire to work things out against all odds. It’s an engaging read and you’ll be hard-pushed to avoid a mild ache in your heart as you witness their disintegrating relationship. It’s a novel that doesn’t belittle human emotion, whittling away lost love as ‘one of those things in life’. Nor does it denigrate the emptiness in a woman’s heart when she loses a baby. Just because we all deal with all of this all the time, it doesn’t make it any easier to take. And it’s refreshing to read a novel with the time to acknowledge so. I think I’ve waffled on enough for now, and I hope Lisa Jewell will pay me a tidy little sum for dedicating so much blog space to promoting her latest novel. So I think that pretty much summed up my Friday (exciting life I lead huh?!), the highlight probably a rather well turned out potato gratin for dinner and a box of chocolates that dad bought home to cheer up “his little girl”.

I had a ridiculously early start today, 5am to be exact, and work was well... work was manic. We like it when it’s busy – busy is good, but it’s getting a little annoying to arrive at work and ten minutes later have tour group guests wander in looking for breakfast that isn’t meant to be ready for another 50 minutes yet. Only they don’t exactly talk much English so I don’t have any choice but to get some food out, FAST. Work’s good though. It’s a laugh. And the people are... well, hospitable considering they work in the hospitality industry lol. We can have a joke and it takes my mind off things that I shouldn’t really be thinking about. A rather odd story caught my ear whilst tidying up in the bar today - in what is deemed to be a literal application of the Sharia principle “an eye for an eye”, Iran is set to blind a man with acid after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him. Now, I can’t say I know an awful lot about Sharia but naturally I rushed to Google it as soon as I got home. Sharia law, or any system of justice for that matter, I don’t think can be deemed as right or wrong. A certain people’s system of justice reflects their respective, prevalent philosophical values. Many will support the view that indeed, when he suffers what he inflicted onto another, justice will be done. Speaking entirely for myself though, I don’t believe two wrongs can ever make a right. And to wrong another as they have wronged me will be to leave no difference between the two of us. Right?

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