Warning, I have a scanner and I'm not afraid to use it.

[apolla]

OK, so we've had a scanner a long time. Has been in a cupboard for a pretty long time and I've been swearing I'd set it up again soon, if only to scan the pics from my adventure with zorb and her dad and sister in August. Backstory alert!! Our printer has been fucked up for a long old time, needing us to hand feed paper into it, etc. So today at Costco my mammy buys us a new printer, complete with built in scanner. The rest is not only history, but the rest of this bleeding post. I shall post my zorb pics soon, but for now:

 

So, it turns out I was born in a hospital back on 25th March 1982. This was a dark time, before iPods- nay, even before the intarweb itself! Historians claim that there were computers back in these darkest of days, however they cannot vouchsafe these claims- any evidence was destroyed in the Great Lacquer Disaster of 1985. I was a particularly charming sort of child, and while baby photos may inspire cringing and embarrassment in most people, I find that Baby!Clare is even more fabulous than the current incarnation. There is evidence to show that even at this young age, I was a sarky little bint.

Note the flatcap. No idea who it belongs to. I may have been doing an impression of a Steptoe. Yes, I do still have that bear, do you have a problem with that? Said bear lost an eye between this picture being taken and the day I put him up in the attic for safekeeping. It is probably not a coincidence that most of this time for Bear was spent in the custodianship of my little brother.

This is in our house in Hackney, which is in East London. It was, I believe, taken by my mum's cousin John who was a photographer at the time, hence no out-of-focusness. As in most pictures of children, the surprised look of being told to turn around is evident. However, that's not as amusing as the fact I genuinely believed this telephone to be the actual Batphone.

So anyway, after we got my brother Michael (he of the Bear Maiming Incident), we moved out of Hackney, with its Victorian near-slum houses, syringes in the park and shite schools. We arrived in uber-leafy Welwyn on a crisp September day in 1985 in, if I recall correctly, a blue Ford Escort. I was told not to get in the way of the moving dudes and promptly did just that. My mum put up net curtains on the patio door and I walked straight into it with an ice lolly bought from the corner shop just down the road (a place of much childhood sweetie indulgence with the 20/50p bestowed by mummies and daddies). There was never such a curtain over that door ever again.

Anyway, I went off to the local Catholic school, Holy Family, into the nursery, which was cool. One of the bestest teachers was Margaret Hirst, who my mum & dad still know from church. However, as soon as I got into 'Big School', everything unravelled. I shan't go into it but it involved the following: bullying, uncaring teachers, me becoming a withdrawn little girl, letters to the local bishop, the local bishop condeming a six year old (me) and my mother removing me from the school and putting me in the much nicer, much closer Panshanger School. It was here that I met some of the greatest people I have ever known. My very first pal was Laura Simmons, and I remember because a few days into my time there, just before the school hols, she reached around Claire Benabo in the queue to go back to class after lunch and patted me on the head. Then there was Richard Day. I don't quite remember how we became Best Friends, but we did. I think we were on the Green Table in Miss Marshall's class, so maybe there. At the time he was engaged to Jemima Diab, so I didn't quite have him to myself, but she's always been a Good Egg, so it was cool.

This is my first birthday party when at Panshanger. You'll note that I'm in a dress for once. Next to me is Richard and next to him is Natalie Hyde, who joined our class during the year this was taken. The cake is a fabulous one of the queen pony in My Little Pony- our school secretary used to make them. The year after this me and Natalie had a joint party (her birthday is quite close to mine) and she made one with marzipan girls just like us on it. Natalie's very cool, but I haven't seen her in a very long time.

So, I went on my merry way through Panshanger, which to this day is one of the happiest periods of my life. We did all kinds of mad stuff, my friends and I. We, Rich & I in particular, tended to play role-play games at lunch rather than typical 'games', although I believe I remain one of Panshanger JMI's greatest Guppie Dog players. Our all-time favourite began when we started juniors and had the entire school field to muck about in. It was called 'Ski-Boats' and was about a brother and sister who nicked all their parents' money from the atm (the wall) and ran away to an island on their ski-boats. Insert psychobabble here if you must. We also used the back corner of the field as the 'Bloody Cauldron', which was basically our little hangout for us and our pals in the 'Wirdos' (how we spelled it). I was Gonzo, he was Gonziyo and others joined in as and when they could be bothered. The Gonzo (based on my favourite Muppet rather than Hunter S Thompson) family dominated all our school artwork for years and years, and I'm fairly sure all the teachers and dinner ladies thought we were either crazy or geniuses. There are places around the area of Panshanger I still think of in terms of the Gonzos- there's a big bush thing near the roundabout I still think of as 'Gonzo Headquarters' and a tiny patch of grass on one street I still think of as the 'Gonzo Post Office'.

Definitely crazy.

Anyway, we also had this uber-cool headmaster called Mr Goodman. He was very tall, which made me feel even smaller than I was, but very nice, which was awfully important to me after the horrors of Holy Family. We called him the BFG, the Big Friendly Goodman. He was among other things, an accordionist and morris dancer and stuff, which he taught us if we wanted to. Many of us did. We did stuff at shows at Hatfield House, where Elizabeth I lived and was told she was queen. I think they filmed some of Elizabeth there, but that picture takes such liberties with history I'm not surprised if they didn't. More importantly, I worked in the cafe there for two whole days and once camped there with the Guides.

That's Laura Simmons as my partner. Check out both my cool red shoes and my funky stylings. Too cool for Morris Dancing even then. Interestingly, those uniforms were actually made by my mum. When I started in the morris dancing, the school morris dancing uniforms were horrible and old, and more importantly, there weren't any small enough for me. So my mum and a couple of other mums in the PTA decided to make some new ones in all sorts of sizes. We, being the first, got ours tailor made. Aside the three ribbons on the skirt, there are also ribbons on the side which fly about when you dance. V.v. cool. That picture was taken in the stableyard of Hatfield House, by the way. Morris dancing was so cool in our school that we used to do performances at the school discos. Then later me and Rich would rock out to U Can't Touch This, skidding around in our socks.

During my time in Teh Evil Non-Religious State School (Roughly paraphrased from Gitfaced Bishop, not my opinion), we did still go to church, just not the one affiliated with that other school, not least cos the priest there was a nasty fucker who not only gave us no support, but actively worked against us when my mum went to him for help with my school situation. Some fuckwits don't believe in helping bullied six year olds. Nice Catholic charity, Father McCoy, you evil bastard./rant. Anyway, we went to another church in town, which was much nicer and had an Irish priest called Father Eamon. He was a pretty cool bloke, and when I was nine, I did my First Holy Communion there.

Of course, Our Lady's also had a school, and while I just went there on weekends to do the learning for my First Communion, it was awfully weird to do it with a class full of people who spent the entire week together. They were nice enough, but I didn't half feel left out. However, one other girl had actually been in my class at HF and left not long after me. Another would be at secondary school, and one of the boys was in my Theatre Studies class many years later at A-Level.

Taken at the end of the First Communion mass. Note shit-eating grin on Fr. Eamon's face. Also note that, only about two hours after being put on my head, my headdress has taken a decidedly rakish tilt to it. This is typical of me, I suspect, not least because all the other girls still look pristine. Those three ladies taught us in our communion lessons and were awfully nice. Also, my godfather was there, concelebrating the mass with Fr Eamon. My mum decided that if anyone was to give me my First Communion, it would be him, so therefore it was. I remember being rather annoyed that he then gave other kids theirs too *laughs*. I presume he's not in the picture because nobody at the parish actually really knew him and they wouldn't want Random!Priest in the picture. I have a picture with him somewhere, but not to hand. Some of you may note with amusement the sheer number of Irish genes in this picture. One of the girls was even called Dara. It may be that this particular parish in the town attracted the Irish folks... there is a bar in the Family Centre after all./stereotyping. Weird coincidence: the priest who christened me back in 82, back in Hackney, is now the parish priest there. Weird, non? Not as weird as my godfather being made parish priest at the aforementioned Holy Family a few years after this picture was taken. It really happened, man. We went back there, and that is where I met the now-late Cardinal Basil Hume, who complimented me on my hairslide.

Let us skip forward a few years. I know you're bored, I also know these following years were almost uniformly shite and I can't really find any of the relevant pictures. I started at Stanborough School in September 1993 and my entire world fell apart, as I had already known it would. The things that made me fabulous at Panshanger- insanity, individuality, craziness and the like- made me an outcast at secondary school. Even then I couldn't bring myself to suppress those things to fit in, so I didn't fit in. Suffice to say there were some good times, but they were few and far between- and even fewer of those were actually at school. I didn't go to the same secondary school as Richard, for a start, and our friendship was paused until Sixth Form and has never been the same since.

That's me and Carole Archer in a science lab in one of many 'leaving pictures;. Note if you will my velvet jacket/school uniform combo- I was funky even back in 98. Also note the untucked shirt and merely scraped back hair. Also my eyes look kinda freaky. That's how blue they appear sometimes, but it doesn't show up in pics cos I usually look right into the lens and get red eye. Anyway, Carole was a good pal during the later years. We even had to share a bed on the Battlefields trip only months before this picture was taken. That's not fair on fifteen/sixteen year olds at all and was, I suspect, a cost-cutting measure. Oh, and those trousers I'm wearing aren't strictly speaking uniform- they are in fact very black Calvin Klein jeans I managed to wear for about two years before my form teacher noticed... on my last day in school uniform.

I finished GCSEs and compulsory schooling in 1998 amid much joy and the like. I had in fact, looked forward to Sixth Form since the beginning, somehow knowing that I would be reunited with Richard (who took on, in my mind, a sort of saviour quality. Once reunited with Rich, all would be well again, surely?). In WGC, we have a system among the sixth forms of the schools and college to cater to all the sixth formers in the town. So I did Theatre Studies at my friends' school and some of them did German at mine, etc. And I was reunited with Richard, briefly. Life did get better once I was reunited with him (sort of) but that wasn't really his doing- it was mine.

It is because of my time at Stanborough that I now realise that I am of my own making. I can be depressed if I want, as I was for most of the time at that school, but it is not clinical depression and I'm lucky enough to kick it if I choose. I can be happy if I want to. I can be anything I want to be, and it's only down to me. I was not happy because Richard was back in my life (roughly two minutes once a month or so hardly constitutes a friendship rekindled), I was happy because I chose to be, and Sixth Form was not an entirely happy time. If during the previous five years it was other kids having a go at me, in the Sixth Form it was the turn of my schoolfriends to do the same- not my friends who weren't at Stanborough I must hasten to add, but the ones I spent my days with. Girls can be awfully cruel, and while individually each of those girls was sweet and kind, together they made me feel fucking miserable whether they realised or not.

So I left after A-Levels and went to Lancaster. Can't find any pics from First Year, possibly cos I didn't take any. Took lots in California and can't find most. However, there are these.

This was taken when my roommates Heather, Laura,Tracy and Tracy's sister George and me went to Universal Studios up in LA. Lots of fun to be had... then there was this. Was Buffy fan at this point, so thought I'd have my picture taken with him- not sure what he's doing outside the Jurassic Park ride (great ride btw) but whatever. I do take exception to him practically licking my fucking neck, as might be noted from my body language and the fact I nearly kneed him in the bollocks after this picture was taken.

Irvine remains one of my happiest times as well. It was here that I became Best Friends with my dear Natasha. We spent literally every single day together- we ended up taking the exact same courses all three quarters. She should be sainted for putting up for me nearly every single day for nine months, not least cos she had issues of her own to be dealing with at the time. Suffice to say that she is one of the greatest people I know and I adore her.

One day towards the end of our stay, the two of us decided to go sunbathing on The Beach. Of course, being in SoCal, we had a choice of beaches, and decided to hit Laguna Beach, not least cos we got a flyer about an exhibition of John Lennon's drawings there. Two buses and an hour later, we arrived in this really wonderful town. It's very arty, full of galleries and stuff, and not nearly as OMGORANGECOUNTYRICHPEOPLE as Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar. So anyway, we sat on the beach, me slapping tons of 60+ SPF Coppertone on every five minutes because if nothing else, I'm genetically Irish and will burn at the first sign of sunshine. Natasha didn't at first, being part Romany and olive skinned. Both of us were still sunburned at the end of the day, but only one of us spent the next week in bed in agony. Poor Tasha was so burned that I couldn't even bring myself to say 'I told you so'. I'm far too kind to put pics of Fried!Natasha up on the net, so have this instead:

Laguna Beach. This is the real OC, man. Not your Ryan & Marisas, but this. I want to be back there one day, man. To me it almost looks like Venice Beach, without all the shitey buildings, skaters, tourists and stoners. That might just be me, though.

And finally, because I can't find any good pictures from Third Year or the year spent in Sunderland, I shall end with this:

This was taken on the 18th August 2004 at Cemetiere Pere-Lachaise in Paris. I know you can't see the grave very well, but it really is Jim's. This is as close as I could get cos of the Ugly Metal Fence, and even then I was leaning over it so far I had to lean some of my weight on the camera I was holding, hence the lovely fingerprint glare in the corner. Those two flowers at the very bottom of the frame, the white rose and the red rose are from me, and that's as close as I could chuck them to him without doing some sort of javelin thing. And this is as close as I will ever get to my beloved, everlasting, Dionysus, sensitive, boorish, drunken, poetic Jim.

And lastly, for being such good little girls and boys and reading all this way, I leave you with some presents.

My dear Philip, one of the greatest Irish bards of the 20th century, the greatest rock and roller Ireland has ever seen (fuck Bono) and like Jim, a man ultimately too fragile for rock and roll but too fabulous to not rock.

Also from Thin Lizzy, I have researched for many hours, days, weeks, months and years and deduced that Scott Gorham is in fact, the prettiest man ever to pick up a guitar. And that's some well conditioned hair, man. He also rocked the guitar muchly. More impressively- he didn't die from his heroin addiction. Watch and learn, my rock pretties.

With that, I really have to fuck off and have a bath before it's too late- I'm off to work experience in the morning whether my face is a balloon or not.

Comments

[krisdalooney.livejournal.com]

Check out you with your funky red shoes!!! Very cute ;)

Ooh, also, the Buzzcocks you went to see was on TV last night! (thank God for equally Buzzcock obsessed friends with TVs) So funny.:D

*hugs*