she's got red lipstick and a bright pair of shoes

I fucking love my course sometimes. Gimpy Brian may well be a gimp, but all is forgiven because I just saw Amazing Grace. Well, I say 'just saw', I've been home for four hours but Juanita only *just* got off MSN. Also, apologies if this post is slightly wanky and doesn't really make sense, but it's basically my notes for discussion in our seminars. If I was in York, I'd be writing this on post-its, but I foolishly left them there because I thought I wouldn't need them... Like my Peep Show DVDs and my hairdryer.

( Righteous anger is HOT beyond all belief )

Whoops, sorry, ranty rant rant. Awesome film.

Also, yesterday I went to Manchester to see my Wifey Louise templa_otmena and I saw 300 at the IMAX. Lord. And Sunshine tomorrow! And Will Arnett is in Blades Of Glory!

Ooh, and the Last King Of Scotland soundtrack is immense. When we were dricing to Preston to the pictures (all that, and it's coming to Sowwie next week anyway. Grrrr.) I had it on my iPod and it was sunny and it reminded me of that early sequence where he's on the bus looking at all the scenery. I mean, Lancashire is hardly Uganda, but it was nice.

Mmm, today's been a rather strange one. I had a bit of a funny turn after speaking to Mum and Jo, mainly because I feel like I haven't seen any of my family for ages. I mean, I missed my nana's 80th birthday, and literally everybody else in my ginormous Irish family was there. It's really down to a combination of bastard fucking circumstances; namely my passport debacle and the ensuing lack of international travel capability, my Friday seminar at stupid o'clock that I can't get out of, my lack of plane-related funds and numerous academic crises. And I hate that my seeing everyone keeps getting put off, and I hate that the one time everyone's together I can't make it, and I hate that I missed seeing my Nana dance like a Munchkin and my 14 year old cousin Owen get completely wankered on cider.

And then, when I think about my Irish family, it makes me think about the ways that being half-Irish impacts me, and the way I react to certain things, and the way Mum sounds on the phone when she's talking to Ireland. I remember realising that the majority of people in the UK weren't Catholic, and it made me feel a bit odd, like I was part of an actual minority. And then when we did Northern Ireland in Politics, I would get so angry when these completely fucking English dicks like Nazi Peter would start mouthing off about British Sovereignty when they had absolutely no idea about oppression and persecution and political injustice and what it felt like not to be a part of your own country. And everything that I feel is so much more acute when it comes to my mum. I didn't work out until a couple of years ago that she came to London in 1973, at the height of The Troubles, when she was younger than I am now. She used to get spat at in the street. And it makes me so angry when people say that the UK is a tolerant and multicultural society, because we are nowhere near there yet. There's so much resentment simmering away under the surface, on all sides, and it's getting worse and worse. And I don't understand the concept of British national pride. At all. What is there to be proud of, exactly? Ooh, colonialism, that was fun. Remember that time we decided we had the right to run other countries and use them for trade and get them to fight our wars? I'd rather be a revolutionary than a bully. Perhaps a demented rant at 1 AM isn't the best way to vent all this stuff, but whatever.

I don't know, it just feels like I'm connected to there, and I always will be. The last time I was over, we took a driving tour, and I stood on these cliffs on the West Coast, looking out over the Atlantic, and it felt so much like home it was ridiculous. And I'm probably just romanticising this, the way that I romanticise everything about my life when I write it down, because if I didn't I'd go insane with the fucking blah-ness of it all.

Also, my use of an icon of the most iconic British monarch ever in a post dealing mostly with my Irish identity? That's irony, man. Plus Cate Blanchett wins at life.