I might start writing in this thing quite often; I am doing an art/personal-development ‘let’s all wank off trees’ course (not defensive at all) and so I’ve started doing *things* again; things that don’t directly impact on my career or are on my things to do list; things that are *good for my soul*. (Since the last time I wrote here I think I might have come to half understand the SEMI COLON (said in a big booming voice), do tell me if I have the hang of it at all, I am quite slipshod in my regard for punctuation)

The bird who wrote the book (the course lives in a book, it’s called The Artists Way) doesn’t tell you what things might be good for your specific soul, she tells you to make a list of things you like doing. I did this first in a group and although I thought I was being brutally honest (dirty sex with boys with pretty eyes/ reading Viz on the toilet) I realised I was probably trying to make an impression, so I did another list at home that was genuinely honest. As such I have been doing a lot of lovely things like having a chucky egg* and watching the rain; reading a Moomins book in a sequined dress; doing the dishes with no top on and sunglasses while SHOUTING Starlight Express and doing pretend hip hop in my flatmate’s hat. Today I painted a picture. It is meant to be a sunset, it kinda looks like anxiety, and one bit looks like a duck’s face straight on, but my hands and jeans are pleasantly covered in paint and I think the people on the bus will be impressed. (I sort of expected this fridge to be here by now).

 
It started to feel a bit indulgent to be spending my time doing what feels like the-things-you-do-while-you’re-gently-recovering-from-a-nervous-breakdown, so I thought I’d try to separate the things I like that are indulgent from those that are actually enriching. List 1 was floppy, overweight, knackered, content and slightly narky, and all about immediate gratification that isn’t even that gratifying: watching repeats of family guy I’ve seen so many times they make my eyes feel threadbare; staying in bed all day fantasizing about running away to ‘London’ (not the real London, a kind of Oliver twist fantasy I have in my head); playing Mario kart till I’m sick on myself; walking round the Arndale till I’m sick on myself; eating kinder-egg-sticks till I’m sick on myself, drinking till I’m sick on myself ETC. The enriching list on the other hand got a bit dickhead-preachy; I am very unlikely to go jogging/ meditate / read war and peace / go a year without falling over in the street, and I am definitely not going to join a gym, – I am essentially a cross between a 7 yr old little sister who wants to stick her minge in a moomin and a men-behaving-badly flatmate who want to stick her minge in a minge, so we’re going for medium term gratification that has a little bit of immediate gratification in it (I know, I know, grow up Hagan, NO!) this means in the next few weeks I shall be going to gay-line-dancing; buying some roller-skates; going rock belly dancing; going to rainbow rhythms (for all you peep show fans); writing some of the backed up poems that are sick of hanging about as ideas and want to be real; starting that play (maybe) and looking into opportunities to stick my minge in a moomin (or a minge). And writing this blog.

 
During this week (week 4 of the course) we are not meant to do any reading. I don’t really read all that much, I only really read: a)(as we already know) Viz on my own toilet,  b) grown up books on other people’s toilets and  c) things about the plague when I’m ill,  plus stupid cat-obsessed, punctuation pedant facebook and twitter, so I decided to reinterpret the bird who wrote the book and, while I am depriving myself of books and the internet, I’ve swapped her depriving myself of reading-Viz-on-the-toilet for depriving myself of booze and porn, because I think that’s my version of what she means (you give up your main distractions and you end up doing different, better stuff),  plus if I give up reading Viz on the toilet I don’t think I’m suddenly going to start doing other amazingly fruitful things on the toilet, but maybe that’s just my resistance. Anyway what that means is that I am now going to break the rules by posting this. I’ll never be head girl. Hrumpf.

 
If anyone is hanging on the edge of the seat about the whole fridge issue – it isn’t here and it is now past the deadline of the fridge and so it must be coming tomorrow which is a big ball-ache, I am going to go leather the landlord with my fists now (i.e. text him a polite thing WITHOUT any kisses on it), also in case you want to know, curry mile (I live on curry mile now kids, it’s fucking loud) has just erupted, there must be some football on. I’m heading to my friend Conor’s now and having to go out in a mad headscarf because I have 4 tonnes of hair dye on my head and I SHALL GET BATTERED BY HOOLIGANS (i.e. have a nice chat with a boy about what football is happening at the bus stop).

By the way, my semi-colon whim doesn’t mean I’m now into grammar and punctuation in case any of you have been waiting to pounce and teach me stuff. Hold it in. Go and bully a dyslexic on facebook instead.

Very Important Footnote.
*A chucky egg is (possibly a scouse device, or maybe just northern) a cup with a soft boiled egg and buttered bread all mashed up together in, with lots of salt. It cures all ills. Except for real ills that are biological. It goes cold quickly. It goes well with sequined dresses and is good for fleetingly distracting you from free floating shame.

I want to do it but I’m working on the day it’s on so I’m going to go to John Ryland’s and do it by myself there. I was going to do it at home but you know what it’s like doing anything at home, you always end up watching Come Dine With Me or doing a quiz on facebook to fid out what type of bagel you are and feeling that lazy procrastination guilt that isn’t quite painful enough to get you off your arse (clove oil helps, oh no that’s toothache). Plus I like John Ryland’s, it feels chunky and important and appropriate, even though I did get a right telling off in there once for leaving a treasure trail for my friend (it was a really good treasure trail, the security man said it made the place look scruffy and weird. Then he looked at me. “I don’t see the problem with scruffy and weird Sir”. Cue big flirty Hagan grin. Cue Jackie out on her ear.)

Obviously the stuff that came to me first when I thought about it ‘A room to say goodbye in’ was grief. Most of my friends are at least 30 now and by our age it seems most of us have at least one parent we can’t quite talk about without choking up/being overly scously defensive/gritting our teeth and coping realllly hard and mine’s my Dad, but to be honest if I give myself 45 minutes I can see myself adamantly ignoring the grief thing till the last 3 minutes then writing the word dad in tiny 7yr old girl letters on the corner of a page then running away. Not. Good. At. Grief. (yet). But clearly there’s lots of other stuff to say goodbye to; old silly coping mechanisms that are no longer useful, homes, friends, abilities and places, and all that stuff you do in your twenties to make sure you well and truly get in the way of your own life (I’ve just turned 30 and decided to get over myself, it’s liberating, liberating and embarrassing), some things I’d like to kick up the arse on their way out and some I’d hold tight for a minute before letting them go.

Possibly, having a 45min limit on it may tackle the whole issue of people’s high radar for being self indulgent and wanky (in the same way that scousers have to try not to wear shell suits and have perms, artists have a fear of being wanky). I’m definitely in that category of people who go on about not taking life to seriously and if I can add the words fuck and cunt to a sentence to roughen them up a bit I feel much more comfortable. It’s possibly a working class thing. It’s probably a British thing. But it’s definitely a thing. It can be hard to get the balance right on self indulgence and ignoring yourself. I tend try to head for gumption: a down to earth level of practicality that doesn’t ignore my own actual needs, like a mum who tells you to get on with it but gives you a knee squeeze when you need it. I’ve had my Susan Jeffers phase, I’ve had my Buddhist phase, I’ve had my romanticize the fraggles phase (oh hang on, no that’s the one I’m in now), sometimes you just have to get out of your own way and get on with life, and sometimes sitting in a room figuring yourself out for 45 minutes is a good idea, anyway, I’m going to do it, if anyone else is too then drop me an email if you fancy chatting about it, possibly making something together or a workshop or…something.

A Room to Say Goodbye In.
Saturday 11th June
Contact Theatre
ring 0161 274 0600 to book a 45 min slot

The mistress of Funky Nails looked like a friend of mine who in turn looks like one of my cats (the one who would suit stilettos and a wig), and we spoke at length in an enjoyable tangenting, spirally manner about wide necked t-shirts, hangovers, hairdye, boyfriends who can drive versus boyfriends who can’t, then she put some gunk on my face and covered it in cling film. I had constructed my face-care lie on the way there; if she asked what my skincare routine was I would say I used Boots own brand vitamin E range, which is sort of true because I’ve seen it and I know the bottles are beige.  She didn’t ask, she talked rubbish instead, I liked her a lot. I liked her also for the following reasons: as the soothing music played she dropped some stuff on the floor with a big clangy clang, she was a bit rubbish at working the CD player, and she forgot to massage my second arm and hand. I like people who are a bit rubbish. It could be because then I feel like I’m allowed to be a bit rubbish, but I think it’s mainly because being a bit rubbish is really ordinary and human. People falling up the stairs, I like that, or my mum saying her ‘h’s too much when she’s trying to be posh, or one of my friends who can’t spell her own middle name, I like people with one leg shorter than the other, who are puffed up with delirious pride the one minute then crumbled into dust the next. Wonky people.

I get to have some further face-attention soon when I go to have a second cataract operation, and yes, ok, yes, yes, I hope the surgeon is not wonky, I like people who are a bit rubbish and I’m delighted that they put gunk on my face and have conversations with me, but I don’t want one in charge of my eyeballs, wielding a little eyeball knife. And no matter how rubbish I am when I go into the operation, that does not allow that the surgeon can be equally rubbish, even if I fall up the stairs on the way in. All hail wonky people, but don’t let them have knives.

Right, I’m off to persuade the cat to massage my other arm now, I feel asymmetrical. See you tomorrow.

Perhaps I have grown up (oh dear God), or maybe the medication has started to work, maybe now I’ll fit nicely into the world and be – content, not heart-stoppingly happy or toe-twistingly depressed, but just… content. Well! I don’t like it! Not one bit. I’m bored to tears, I’m baulking on beige, I want my sparkling dreams of bagladies knitting the future with their own hair back.

So, lazy plan no. 1 is – find a new procrastination that ISN’T in the realms of come dine with me, hence, start a blog.

In other words: Hello.