But of course, somebody wanted me out of my comfort zone…blame the Teenage Boy for this one. I guess I just wanted to see if I could.
I am feeling very, very uncomfortable right now and if I write this in one sitting I’ll be surprised.
I don’t like the aforementioned ‘cat’. In case there are any people who don’t know what I’m talking about I shall link to explain. I am now attempting to read the Wikipedia article I just linked to. I’m actually shivering from the line; “an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams”, got up to the bit about Emily Firmin and am now having to go and sit down with the Jellicle for a bit. [thirty minutes later]
I’m gritting my teeth as I read through the rhyme, I can practically hear it in my head (for reasons which will become clear later this surprises me).
The idea of it waking up absolutely terrifies me. It really bloody scares me. I’m going for another sit now.[Only fifteen minutes this time]
It’s hatred I feel when I read about the bloody mouse organ. Then I read the rhyme and I don’t like it. I’m practically in tears by the time I get to the bit which I really hate. The bit that almost has me in tears with a desperate urge to shout ‘No! Don’t!’; the words (and I don’t like in an emphatic way writing this) ‘But Emily loved him’.
[Going to go and sit down, do not like that phrase. DO NOT LIKE]
[twenty minutes]
Reading about the dyeing and everything, not a problem. Getting to the part where it turns out that it is in the Rupert Bear Museum in Canterbury makes me want to cry. I don’t really care what awards it won (but do wish to point out that I really like Oliver Postgate possibly because I have a small obsession with Ivor the Engine and to a lesser extent Noggin the Nog and to a much lesser extent The Clangers. But this post isn’t about me feeling comfortable so I’ll return to the pink coloured topic. I remember watching all of those programmes and I remember liking/loving/enjoying watching them. I do not remember Bagpuss. At all. Yet typing that name made me feel very, very unhappy. Slightly afraid, a bit nauseous and miserable. [Gone again, this time twenty minutes of strokes and kisses]
I first discovered this…reaction of mine when I was nineteen and stood in a house on Ulster Road. BBM lived there at the time and I spotted his magnets on the fridge, I couldn’t even really properly see what they were but I knew I did not want to be in the same room as it.
I don’t like Bagpuss.
I describe it as a phobia but it isn’t so much a fear reaction as a hysterical reaction of NOT LIKE. It’s very basic, I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM AS THAT. I feel upset, nauseous and tearful and occaisionally angry when I see/hear about it.
I don’t know why. Like I said, I don’t even remember watching the programme, barely what it was about. But it really, really upsets me. Certain phrases send shivers up and down my spine worse than any talk about some Cthuloid entity could do. It’s such a hind brain reaction I occasionally wonder what could have put it there. But, unusually for me, mostly in the back of my mind is the idea that I don’t want to know. It took an effort of will to write this, it’d take a massive amount to actually think about it.
Yeah, I’d say that was well out of my comfort zone.