31 Days To Go

31 days to go and feeling...conflicted

So at the moment it seems that I have no idea how I feel about anything. Even the simple things, like "do I like pizza paninis or are they an unnecessary expense?" But largely, it's how I feel about the way my affections are placed. It's hard to expand without naming names but I'm sure you know how I feel because everybody has experienced this at least once. It's one of those moments that your heart releases a full scale war with your head, and while they are battling away you simply can't move on with your life. Because in my heart I can't move away, can't shake the feeling off, but in my head I know that I should, before I hurt myself and the people that genuinely care.

And therefore, today I am going to write about the most unstable part of Morbi, the furthest North that we can go, besides what could be more logical than starting from the top, and let's face it, in times like this we all need a bit of logic.

The Northern Peak: Where Ice Meets Fire

It's a trek to get to this part of the world. It takes strength and skill, and advanced provisions. But people manage it because somehow, among the fury and the chill of the North Peak, they find solace. Because no matter how intense, how mixed up their own feelings are, it cannot compare to the titanic clashes of these elements.

The ice planes stretch before you, rearing up out of nowhere and rolling down to the horizon. The North side of Morbi is mercifully the furthest away from the light and so the dazzling brilliance of the frozen liquid is bearable, just, although wise travelers will wear sun visors at all times. Great mountains of ice twist and thrust into the air, melting and freezing forever into one another until great crowns of white dominate the landscape. There is no life here. Everything is still. So very still. The silence is penetrated only by the occasional distance thuds of snow slipping from the crystal steeples, and the odd, sharp crack, like gun shot, when the weight of the world becomes too much for a more delicate area of glacier. The sky is blue, but not a blue that you or I could comprehend. It's a blue that is so very perfect that without seeing it, one cannot possibly imagine it.

There is no blemish of cloud, not even a sun, and night time comes but doesn't bring darkness. It is intense, the most intense sight you will ever see, and it is relentless. After a week of walking under that sky it will start to penetrate your mind, so that when you close your eyes to sleep you are faced, not with nothing, but with the image of that sky once more. After a month it will drive you mad.

You could wander for days on these ice planes and not see a soul. People do live here, under the ice, in tunnels like rabbit warrens carved over many thousands of years and held up by some natural phenomena that no one can truly explain, but they are shy, and lost in their own thoughts, and though they will offer a cup of something warm, and guide those that are lost both physically or mentally, they keep themselves to themselves where ever they can. This solitude does not bother those that come to the Peak. Here, you are seeking a cure that matters only to you. It's a journey that can only be taken alone.

If you walk for ten days and ten nights you will find that suddenly, this icy place with its shard like cold and unavoidable sky, shifts slightly. Things get darker, warmer, less pure, and a glow will start to appear on the horizon. You have reached the point of conflict. Here is where the fire meets the ice in a battle of flame and steam.

It will come upon you all at once, this lake of lava, spitting towers of fire miles into the air with great explosions that shake the ice land that you cling to. You'll look up from the snowy ground and before you will lay miles and miles of bubbling crimson, hotter than any liquid known to our own planet.

Somehow the heat never melts the white, but simply bites at it, licking away with tongues of flame. It screeches and whistles and throws forward hot arms of magnum which sizzle as they grab at the glacier. They leave no mark but release plumes of thick steam, engulfing the bemused traveler and leaving them drenched in warm condensation. They sky is turned black with smoke from the barrage of fire crackers shot upwards and the acrid smell of pure incalescence fills nostrils and lungs like tar.

It is here at the center of the war that you will find the answer to the question that has been tearing your soul apart. But it is dangerous. You have to look right into the lava, getting as close to the churning cauldron as possible without touching it. There, when the heat becomes unbearable and your consciousnesses begins to slip away, will peace find you. Because in a haze of steam, you will find guidance.

A wise old man once had to make a decision. He had to decide whether to leave his family, who he loved with all his being, and follow his dream of travelling the world. Or to stay with his family and give up on the fantasy that had sustained him his whole life. Looking into the flames he found the answer. Find a new dream, it told him, one that makes you feel alive and fulfilled, but includes your family, because only with them can you be truly happy. I looked into the flames, but I lent too far, and got burnt.

If you have a question that you alone cannot answer, then make the journey to the North Peak. Cross the wastelands of ice and find the battleground of the elements. Look into the steam and smoke and heat and open your mind and let the truth come. And then return to whence you came, free of the torment, but with the burden of acting on the answer. Because the answer may not always be the one you wish to hear.            

          

64 Days To Go

64 Days To Go And Feeling...Blonde

Well I decided to just go for it and dye my hair, and although it had the potential for disaster, it actually looks pretty darn good now. To make matters better, I had my two friends over and we spent the afternoon taking photos, in which I actually feel I look less aesthetically disabled than normal!
So today is a day of optimism, of new beginnings, and as such, it's time to introduce the brand new world.

Morbi Tincidunt


If you leave the Earth's atmosphere and travel West, until ahead there is nothing but light, you will have reached the edge of the universe. What lies beyond the edge, midst that endless light, is a mystery that has attracted beings since the beginning of time.
In their millions, from across the stars, come adventurers desperate to solve the secret of the light. And so it made sense for the creators, whom we shall learn more of later, to form a world to house these travellers whilst they prepared for their mission. They set on the very border a rock which grew and grew until it was just a little smaller than our own planet, and once the aesthetic settings were in place, opened it up to the universe as a sort of planet sized travel lodge. The planet, called Morbi Tincidunt, thrived, made up of populations from all sorts of species, and as more and more people arrived it grew richer and richer, until the very streets were paved with gold. But it soon became clear that anyone who ventured into the light was unlikely to return. No one knew why this was as all contact is lost the second one crosses the threshold, but it was a fact-entry into the light did not mean an exit. Soon less and less people were brave enough to face the light and visitors stopped coming. The planet was home only to the families of those who had gone before and this meant that there were few mature adults to keep the world ticking over.
The creators had to step in. It simply wasn't viable any longer, and living so close to the thing that had destroyed so many loved ones was turning the inhabitants savage. They rounded up the remaining families and moved everyone to a new planet, on the other side of the atmosphere by the darkness, in a bid to reverse the bitterness and pain the light had caused. And so the planet by the light sat empty for years.
Many, many decades later, when the families of the light explorers had all died out, something very odd happened. One by one, the missing beings began to return. They stepped out of the light on mass, unable to remember anything that had happened within. Not knowing where they were or who they were, the returned adventurers had no choice but to begin life again on Morbi Tincidunt, but they were strange, strange beings, driven mad by their lack of memory and purpose. One by one they began to kill each other off, until only a very few beings were left, less than 500. These few divided up the planet between themselves, lording over their lands in whatever style they pleased, and repopulating in ungodly ways.
The people of Morbi Tincidunt are therefore creatures not to be trusted. They are hard to judge. Some are  quick witted and selfish and cruel. Others will protect you with their lives should they take a liking to you. The planet itself contrasts just as much as its inhabitants. It is beautiful and pure, every mile is different, every inch spectacular. But it is dangerous, its a land that has known abandonment and the pain of constant light, and if you cross it, it will kill you.
Welcome to Morbi Tincidunt.    

78 days to go

78 Days To Go and Feeling Throaty... The Birth Of The Idea

Half term began in earnest today, and true to form, I feel like crap.

It seems that in the night, a painter/decorator, one with much enthusiasm but little regard for delicacy, has crept into my room and sandpapered my throat for me. Simultaneously, a wool farmer from the Yorkshire moors, desperate to shift his latest batch of average material, rammed a load of the stuffing in my ears so that my head feels like mush and everything is muffled. Thank you thrifty tradesmen, I know times are hard, but please, save this kind of breaking and entering for term time when I actually want to be stuck at home.  

Despite the muffly/throaty discomfort, I was determined to make the best of the day and so headed out of the house, sister in tow, and into the Mekkah that is the town. I had on my new body-warmer with a hood which I am informed is formally known as a Gillet (pronounced Chee-lay, rather than Gill-ett apparently) and my beret and I was on a mission. 

Today, I, Cocoa-Kobana, was going properly blonde again. I already am blonde but its dishwater blonde and its depressing to be frank, when all around me the world experiments with new colours. After a hard week full of uncertainty and essays, I felt ready for a reinvention, an embrace of change. I bought the dye (Extra light beige blonde) jumped on the bus and rode home again, ready for a whole new me.

The excitement built as I opened the packet flicked through the instructions, got all the things I needed and then BOOM. Shot down in flames were my dreams of reinvention when I saw the allergy testing section. Now I'm the kinda girl that does what she is told and so when it asked me to spend forty eight hours watching my elbow for signs of a rash, I had to submit :( So now not only do I have to wait AGES to begin liking myself, but i also am not allowed to WASH  for forty eight hours either because the taster dab mustn't be cleaned away.
So in my slightly depressed state, I began creating an idea of such AWESOME magnificence that quite frankly readers, will blow your mind.
From now to New Year, I will create a brand new world through blogs that will inspire and intrigue and excite and well...genuinely make you happy in these cold months and hard times XD
So buckle up babes, we are ready to launch. All aboard to a whole new planet that I hope will bring escape from the mundane undertones of everyday life, without the use of narcotics :P
And so, from a failed venture, comes a brilliant ADventure.
Welcome to Morbi Tincidunt.

Cocoa Kobana x

  

   

Luke warm baths: The Grimy Truth.

What is it that really stirs the emotions of even the iciest character? What one single concept has the power to destroy even the greatest leader? Yes we may whimper at donkey abuse adverts, weep at some poor undeserving celebrity trauma, but there is one issue that can bring even the butchest, angriest, roughest and toughest man or woman to tears. And that issue, my dear, dear readers, is a lukewarm bath.

There are many causes for this particular distress, one being miscalculations in the hot to cold water ratio, another, and this problem is growing in households across the country as the price of water rises, is being the last to use the bath water.

This latter problem is probably the deadliest of all. Knowing that you are expected to plunge yourself into a temperature suited more for a polar bear is bad enough, but seeing the grimy water, most likely decorated with the previous occupant’s dirty scum, scraped off their bodies’ just moments before is truly soul destroying. Often the brave will opt for the quick in and out, with just a brisk flick of the flannel here and there. But those of us who can’t bear the idea of being dirtier after the bath than we were before we got in will spend minutes, possibly hours watching the water darken and fungus grow around the edges. We are well aware of the consequences of running a fresh bath. Cries of, “Waste not want not!” and “Don’t you know there is a recession?” will rain down upon you like Pompeian ash from Mount Vesuvius, and like the ash, may just kill you. So from fear of the nagging we will tentatively place a toe in the murky depths, shudder at the clammy coolness and suspicious grit at the bottom, and quickly immerse ourselves, sometimes with tears streaming from our eyes, and moans escaping at every turn.

It is not just the quality of the water; it is the indecisiveness of the temperature. It will never be freezing, just on the tipping point, at that congealing stage. At least if it had ice floating along the top it would be refreshing, instead it leaves you feeling sticky yet shivery, and your emotions reach an all time low. Lying there, in lukewarm water, it is common for people to experience miserable epiphanies about the point of life, or rather, the non-existence of one. We can be perfectly content, jovial and even hysterical before we place our bodies into that water, but as soon as we are surrounded by that sick joke of a bathing experience, we feel positively depressed. We start to emphasise with fishes dying slowly on the pier, or the poor souls who spend their days receiving limp handshakes. We feel utterly robbed, deprived of what is rightfully ours. We know, as we sit in that watery pit, that our evening is ruined.

And why? Because someone, more than likely a particularly dirty someone, had the cheek to get in there before you. Or use up all the hot water. Or get all of the flannels wet so that they bring you no relief either. Very soon after the initial depression, the anger kicks in. “They will pay, whoever they may be, for making me suffer!” Desperately, we try to wash without getting wet (our attempts are almost always futile) and then we leap out (moaning when we find our towels have been left in a puddle on the floor) and seek the criminal. If no one is found, then we feel worse, however when we succeed, the glee is unlike anything before. Sometimes we will use violence, for instance throwing the culprit in the water that you have just exited (this is my own personal favourite punishment as the water has reached its peak of awfulness). Or perhaps we will be more subtle. For instance making their hot beverages with only mild water, or hiding the hairdryer so that they are forced to dry off slowly. The more original, the better.

“Why not take a shower?” I hear you cry. This is a classic soap-dodger response, as it shows that you do not value the beauty of a full body wash. A shower, though admittedly useful in a hurry, is not by any stretch of the imagination, a bath. Here is why. In a shower, dagger-sharp sheets of water whip your skin, and power-showers have even been known to beat people to the floor. It is impossible to wash your whole body at once, and you are forced to bend yourself into all number of positions. A bath on the other hand is luxurious and calming. You can add all sorts of bath fizzers, bubbles and confetti, and the most you’ll risk is a rash. You can place candles around a bath, and sit back and relax with a book or a drink or perhaps even both. Rubber ducks, wind up frogs and plastic boats make bath times more fun in ways that a shower never can. These facts prove that a bath should be both hygienically and morally better than a shower, however this is most definitely not the case in a second, third or fourth hand bath.

By now you would have gathered the seriousness of this situation. Across the country, bathes are becoming more and more disappointing. Nigella Lawson sums up the issue in this statement. “There is nothing worse than an under-stuffed potato, except perhaps, a lukewarm bath”. And it is on this note that I go now to run myself a bath with use of a thermometer, and barbed wire to deal with any bath-jackers. So my dear readers, I urge you to go forth and do the same, until this bath time crisis is resolved.

CocoaKobana, bath time fanatic. xx

The opening speech of glorious proportions, enough to rival Julius Caesar, no, not just rival him, enough to take him outside and give him a good old British dust up.

Hello world.
I have never done anything like this before so am unaware of the yes's and no's, the why's and wherefore's, however I'm sure general decorum is the same as in most multicultural social situations. No full frontal nudity or mention of the war.  
I decided to start a blog because I have a lot of rubbish in my head that no one I know wants to listen to, so I figured that someone out there must. Some one out there must have as much free time as me.
I finished school a few weeks ago after my summer exams and envisaged beach parties, BBQs in my garden, friends round every day, endless trips to town and ice cream induced comas. Instead, its been mainly Cash in the Attic and catching up on 8 out of 10 Cats, with some moody songs thrown in as I watch the rain pour outside and mourn the lost summer fun that should have been mine.
Still, its not all doom and gloom, I got 100% on guitar hero warrior of rock for some god awful song from a band that I have never heard of, and who therefore in my opinion should not have been classed as warriors at all, more foot soldiers or cooks.
The weather has been crazy over the past few months. I'm still peeling off the results of what falling asleep on the beach for three hours does to you from back in Easter, whilst layering up in hoodies thanks to the arctic conditions the past month has seen. Its like my body has micro climates all of its own.
As I write this to the sound of the Blondie LP floating down from our record player in the attic, I have a strange feeling of enrichment. Knowing the whole world lies before me, ready to hear my rather middle class south eastern twang, makes me feel quite excited. Not full blown nose bleed excitement, more a warm fluttering in my stomach that comes with the promise of recognition.      
A promise that will probably go up in smoky flames when it dawns on me that probably no one will want to follow a girl with a llama as her backing picture.
But until that day comes, I shall bask in the fluttering and keep writing, because at the end of the day, its this or anther four hours of Dave.
Signed CocoaKobana xx