This morning, I woke up rather late, on account of staying up so late squirrelling away at this. I don't think my Instagram launch quite demonstrated how good this is! Or maybe I am biased. I have been trying to build a website for a very, very long time now. I am pleased I abandoned trying to write the whole thing in HTML and plaintext. My previous laptop couldn't handle my load ;P;P;P

Today I woke up and thought about the post. I used to get very distressed about the postal system because we relied on it, but I didn't understand how it worked, or how it worked so well! I have always loved the post but never received many letters (or letters that I have wanted to receive).

The post is a system I think many of us engage with brainlessly, like the bins... but where does it go!? I have struggled, too, with how 'the bins' work, and that has caused me some complications, mostly with an ex-partner's stepparent who managed the North American Amazon cloud and thought me stupid. I thought her soulless and spineless, so it didn't matter much, but I disliked being told off for something I thought was reasonable.

I can get very in my head about how things work. I hate not even having a basic understanding of how things work. I think it is so, so lazy.

Anyway... the post has always been reliable. Except when I am posting internationally (they never seem to arrive). Well, I posted an international letter, and I don't think it has arrived. It has been infiltrating my dream realm! I have been cursing myself. I addressed it to England and refused to recognise the 'Kingdom'. Perhaps my ideological stance has hindered me?! Life is too boring not to find hills to die on.

I have been getting a bit down about this. I would be sad to have lost that post.

I have had a friend looking after my van and home whilst I have been away. I have lent it out freely, and it has caused me a lot of hassle, drama and money. It was due its MOT (I have only lived in it for one month of this MOT year). Well, my friend who has recently been looking after it has lost the keys.

So it is parked roadside, with no MOT and no keys. My Trudie :(((

I love her so much. She saved me from another bout of homelessness, and now she is destitute. I shouldn't anthropomorphise her so much, but I do, and my little heart breaks.

Luckily, my mum has posted the V5C to this friend so they can organise a locksmith to break into her, so she (the van) can go on to fail her MOT. A sad state of affairs...

But the V5C has not arrived?! Oh no?! What?! Why?! This foolproof postal service of ours?

But maybe... oh yes! That means my international letter could still arrive, and my refusal to recognise the Kingdom has been vindicated!

But again, it makes me sad that Royal Mail is facing so many strains and delays. Recently, Royal Mail rolled out a new contract scheme. Some people got to keep their legacy pay and contracts, but many moved over to the new contracts, and resources are unbelievably stretched.

We value the post. It contains so much that is time-sensitive and otherwise, and it is yet another legacy institution crumbling under our ludicrous commitment to neoliberalism. Pumping shit into the rivers, and now we can't even be informed of this in due time because of delays in the post.

Personally, there is hope for my letters, but for everyone at Royal Mail, things do not seem as though they will ameliorate any time soon.

Snitching?

Snitches get stitches?

Yesterday evening, rather than going to work, I went to the pool. As I approached my friend, I saw a couple on one deckchair. It gave me a bit of a shock.

He was wearing budgie smugglers and was bricked. She was lying on top of him, being very intimately stroked under her swimming costume. They were probably over 50. He continued to make eye contact with me and all the other people around, who were all ogling them.

My friend and I giggled, and I started doing handstands next to them, as our lounge chairs were beside theirs, and with everyone looking, I had quite a good audience.

We eventually tired of this, got uncomfortable and left.

I said I wanted to snitch, but then I thought better of it. I had a bad experience with 'snitching' in the past.

In Year 11, I, along with about ten other people, got expelled. It started with my friend and me getting caught with a Q of weed in her locker before a sleepover. She got pulled into the headteacher's office and called me on speakerphone, saying that the headteacher wanted to speak to me.

I said, 'Fuck, is it about all the shoplifting?'

This was a faux pas on my part. I admit that. As it hadn't been about that, but it would be afterwards.

Anyway, I got interviewed after school for about three hours. Police were threatened to be called, etc. This carried on the next day at school, when it was revealed to me that the school knew the location where we smoked at lunchtimes, implicating a lot more people.

I tried to do the right thing and spread this message to my comrades so they could try to get their stories straight.

Lo and behold, the school did speak to them all, but rather than being viewed as a friend, I was turned into a foe.

EVERYONE accused me of being the snitch.

I was spat at and pushed as I walked around school, and the local gang (who are now all in prison) had publicly started to put hits on me! My firstborn is dead, apparently.

I can't even begin to communicate how challenging it was to be so misunderstood!

As I went to a grammar school, I was moved to another grammar school, and in this grammar school network, everyone knew everything.

I moved to the girls' school. The tale of me being a snitch had followed me. It was halfway through Year 11, and no one would sit with me. Teachers were talking about me before I entered classrooms. I sat alone in the toilets to eat my lunch.

I wasn't allowed out of school during the day, unlike all the other students, due to information about this gang hit. It all felt rather blown out of proportion.

Friends I had had in this school would bang their shoulders into me. People wouldn't look at me. It was a great display of pack mentality.

Anyway, eventually our statements were publicly released to everyone who was involved. My statement included me and my friend, and no one else.

I was off the hook.

And, just like that, I was welcomed back into public and social life. My life was no longer under threat. I could leave school at lunchtime.

Anyway, this experience has given me a bit of a complex about 'snitching'.

What even is this about?!

I understand not being a Judas, but this carte blanche rule against snitching? Seems like bumper-sticker politics?

I decided I would snitch because we are not comrades, and actually, it is gross to make eye contact with other people whilst heavy petting at a family pool.

I suppose the best next step would have been for me to actually approach them, but I think this whole 'mind your own business' attitude is weird and neoliberal, and I don't think the lifeguards represent the state.

Still, there is something I don't like about me snitching. Equally, I don't like being non-consensually brought into people's kinks, especially at this juncture in my life. My relationship with sex is improving, but still only theoretically.

What do you think?

I have work later, after my tit-for-tat. I will see how it goes. If it is not good, I will be taking tomorrow off and the day after, too.

It makes me sad to think about little me like that. I didn't know I was autistic at the time, and I am regularly shocked when people remark that they notice there is something a little different about me. But these people probably knew, which is why I was met with distrust and cruelty.

This is me and my friend at the first school. We actually got placed into the same secondary school because they had run out of schools to place everyone in. Not before I had to take over a month off and then learn 12 new GCSEs in six months.

This is us at the second school, all girls, which had always been my preference. She is my oldest friend now, and we live in the same country... but seldom see each other. I am so pleased we got expelled. I much preferred life at my new school, and I really loved my friends a lot, even though we were very toxic.

This is me TODAY! I still look very similar, and I am pleased I can be myself now and do not have to expend so, so much care and energy on masking! Although I still mask a lot.

goodbye,
miss hooch xx