I wanted a picture of a famous dressmaker holding a camera today - but no luck with Vivienne Westwood or Coco Chanel... so here's a famous Taylor instead.
Songs you might find in a haberdashery shop. Unless you're in the US, where haberdashery doesn't mean sewing supplies and accessories, but means men's clothing instead. Apologies for any confusion.
A year or so back, I began to feel victimised by another prominent member of the blogging community. Not someone whose name you will ever see in the comments box on this site, but someone who is well-regarded by certain other bloggers, and who occasionally comments on a select number of the blogs I read. I began to notice that whenever I wrote a comment on one of those blogs, expressing approval of a certain artist or song, this particular individual would soon after leave their own comment, not so much rubbishing my opinion, but making it quite clear that they disagreed and that they saw no value at all in the music I liked. After a while, I attempted to deflect this with humour, leaving jokey follow-up comments about how much our tastes differed or faux apologies for inflicting my own noxious opinions on him, but my olive branch of banter was met with a wall of silence.
This is when my paranoid brain kicked into over-drive. Did this blogger really have it in for me? Were my opinions so distasteful that the very sight of my name in a comment box drove him into a rage? If he felt this way, how many other blog readers might I be offending with my awful taste in music? The least I could do was comment less on the blogs he read, so as not to upset him any further. Beyond that, I seriously considered quitting blogging altogether, or at least making my blog private and just writing it for myself... though I knew I'd miss the community and the chance to chat away in other people's comment boxes.
Paranoia is thinking and feeling like you are being threatened in some way, even if there is no evidence, or very little evidence, that you are.
Even more tellingly, they add...
Paranoid thoughts could also be exaggerated suspicions. For example, someone made a nasty comment about you once, and you believe that they are directing a hate campaign against you.
Ouch. That's right on the money, isn't it?
Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody's coming to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm running underground with the moles, digging holes
Apparently up to a third of the population experience paranoid thoughts at one time or another. Paranoia isn't an actual mental health diagnosis - not unless you respond to your paranoia in an excessive way. Clearly it's linked to low self-esteem and intrusive thoughts, both of which we've looked at here before. So it should come as no surprise that "amygdala dysfunction" is one of the key suspects in causing paranoid thoughts.
(On a side note, whenever I start a sentence with "So...", I worry that I'll anger Charity Chic, since it sticks in my mind that he doesn't approve of said practice. God, writing a blog when you're a delusional fruitcake is an absolute minefield!)
Mind tries to reassure me that what I have is mild or non-clinical paranoia, not one of the more serious forms: paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. But really, what if they're wrong? Am I paranoid to think I might have a more serious version of paranoia?
An Australian Better Health website lists the following as possible symptoms of paranoia. I'm going to try a little tick box exercise to work out just how paranoid I might be. Feel free to copy the table and play along yourself...
Generally, a person who is paranoid may:
be easily offended
✔
find it difficult to trust others
✔
not cope with any type of criticism
What are you saying?
assign harmful meanings to other people’s
remarks
What are you saying?
be always on the defensive
What are you saying?
be hostile, aggressive and argumentative
WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!?!
not be able to compromise
✖(Everything I do is a compromise.)
assume that people are talking ill of them
behind their back
✔✔✔
be overly suspicious – for example, think that
other people are lying or scheming to cheat them
✔
not be able to confide in anyone
Well, there’s you guys…
find relationships difficult
✔
consider the world to be a place of constant
threat
Isn’t it?
feel persecuted by the world at large
I’m not that important.
believe in unfounded ‘conspiracy theories’
No, I only believe in the true
ones.
Not looking good, is it?
Clearly I need to do some more work on this... next week.
In conclusion for today though, I haven't had any recent follow-up comments from my blogging bully, even after I started commenting again on the blogs he frequents. Maybe he's got bored with persecuting me... or he's too busy at the moment... or he's had a change of heart and suddenly realised that Barry Manilow is actually great. Who knows?
I am also prepared to entertain the notion that he never actually had it in for me in the first place, that it was all in my imagination, and that all the negative comments he left as a follow up to my positive ones were purely coincidental. It could just be all in my mind...
When I was in Primary School we still got a bottle of milk to drink every morning. In winter it was ice cold but in summer it was very warm and not so nice at all. I remember our teacher standing over one girl every milk time forcing her to finish her bottle of and we all had to wait as it took her a long time, going down only an 1/8th of an inch (pre-decimal times) every minute. Wouldn't happen nowadays of course - not been milk since the days of Thatcher the Snatcher and of course so many children now have intolerances to dairy.
This opened up a whole can of memory worms for me… but a couple of things first...
Kids do still get school milk – it’s just not free anymore (and not in bottles). Parents have to pay for it – unless they can’t afford, in which case it’s supplemented. Sam’s 10 now and still gets milk at school. He also drinks any leftover cartons he can get his hands on.
(Sam and his mates have likewise formed a Leftovers Club at dinner time. They make sure they’re the last in the dinner queue, then they’re more likely to be offered seconds after everyone’s finished their lunch.)
Speaking of an intolerance to dairy though, Alyson… this is exactly what I had when I was a kid. I still do, though it’s a rather odd variety of intolerance. I just can’t drink milk, especially if it’s cold. If I try, it makes me throw up. I’m fine with anything else dairy-related – cheese, yoghurt… no problem. I’m also OK with boiled milk, in certain circumstances. That’s how my mum used to serve me cereal – Weetabix, Frosties, Coco Pops etc… always with hot milk. If I tried to eat them with cold milk… bleurggghh! I’ve never been able to drink milk shakes either. Not without gipping. Sorry, Kelis. You milkshake wouldn't bring me to the yard.
I’m not sure I was aware of all this when I started Primary School, and I doubt my mum thought to mention it. On the first day of school then, out came the school milk bottles… “Drink up, children!”
My first teacher, Mrs. Kay (picture Julie Andrews, but slightly more posh) was a shrewd lady who quickly realised I couldn’t keep milk down, so she stopped offering it to me. (Saved her having to clean up her classroom every day.) When the school milk came out, I was excused.
Mrs. Tebb did not like me. That’s pretty much all I remember about her. Every other teacher at my junior school, I got on with OK. Not Mrs. Tebb though. She hated me. And maybe that’s because of what happened on the day I arrived in her class… but if so, she only brought it on herself.
“Time for your milk, children!”
“But, Mrs. Tebb, I don’t drink milk. It makes me sick.”
“Nonsense. Milk is good for you. It’s good for your teeth and your bones and your everyday health! Milk is nature’s perfect food!”
Back in 2007, Sheffield band Tiny Dancers put out their only album on the back of opening for Bob Dylan's UK tour the year before. The LP was called Free School Milk. This was their debut single, released on my 35th birthday.
How Can I Be Sure you got all the answers right yesterday? You might just be a Daydreamer. Still, I Woke Up In Love This Morning, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...
9. Little children should learn to replace the Y with IE.
Babys should be spelled with an ie.
In case you're saying "Whoooooo!?", this is the band that John 'Missing You' Waite started out in. Although they were a British band, they only had hits in the US and Australia.
Here's another one for the "Well, I never knew that" folder... the lead singer of Londonbeat was Jimmy Helms, who had a 70s hit with Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse and also sang jingles for the radio company I used to work for.
7. Sweet smelling weasels.
Jasmine is a sweet smelling flower, minks are slightly less fragrant weasels.
10. Almost like a lone cuckoo, above its nest, on a rack, surrounded by water, screaming.
OK, McMurphy was the character Jack Nicholson played in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest... so this guy almost sounds like him.
An island is surrounded by water. If it were on a rack, it would be a long island. The screams would be the sound it made as I stretched it to make this clue work.
