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There was once a young girl who was rather fond of cats... she acquired the name Felinebird and went about her life wandering from county to county, meeting people, miaowing excessively and searching desperately for superior quality catnip, joy, music and fine beer.
Felinebird started off her life in a picturesque Cotswolds village, in a little cottage now frequented my people who rent cottages in picturesque Cotswolds villages for fun and recreation. She spent a happy early childhood scaring her parents by seeing ghosts in her bedroom, bouncing around on toy kangaroos given to her to stop her mauling her younger brother and frequenting teddy bears picnics and maypole dances. She attended a small primary school for a short while, getting told off for holding her pen wrongly, her scissors in a cack-handed way and confounding the teachers with her premature knowledge of the alphabet and Hungry Caterpillar stories.
The First Epic Journey
Then came the first great exodus. From Oxfordshire did the Felinebird family move, all the way to sunny Cambridgeshire to live in another village, slightly less picturesque in nature, but thankfully still equipped with a fine primary school with small chairs for small people.
It was here that she tortured her parents slowly by learning the violin and did the earplug manufacturing world a big favour. Felinebird made many fine friends and played in up trees, on building sites and the local park with a big old slide. It was also in this small village that she made some horrendous fashion mistakes and got her first pair of truly hideous glasses.
There were up-sides... Felinebird's violin playing improved a little bit, and her parents allowed her to commence piano lessons (thank you John Thompson) with a big-knickered old lady whose house smelled of cabbage. She joined an orchestra and played second violin in a Haydn symphony, before which she got told off for crossing her legs, but later had "her little cotton socks" blessed by the conductor.
School life was great, with trips to Weymouth and the Isle of Wight, library quizzes in neighbouring towns and (shock horror) winning best sportswoman in her class. How things change. Felinebird liked water so much that she sploshed around in it as frequently as possible, aiming to cover her cossie entirely in pretty little ASA badges, but came a cropper when her eyesight got a bit worse and she couldn't kick-turn against walls any more for fear of cracking her skull to bits. To compensate, however, little Felinebird was the May queen, smiling her way across the village on a shire-horse drawn carriage, smiling and waving and not realising that she may look back and cringe in years to come.
Then, she became a grown up in big school... a short drive down the road in a town fond of black jeans with red patches on the backside.
She worked quite hard and played her violin some more, joining the school orchestra and winning some pretty books for being a good girl. She also bopped away at school discos, deciding that dropping extra strong mints into cans of coke gave it an extra kick, whilst donning hideous t-shirts. Then came news of the second great exodus.
The Second Pilgrimage
This was a shock to Ms Felinebird who was quite happy where she was, thank you very much. After much coersion a grand journey was made across the United Kingdom to the land of our Fathers. Well, not my father, but the spiritual home of leeks, daffodils and sheep.
From a pretty house, she made some more lovely friends and proceeded to lark about, frequenting Birds cafe and the Ogmore Vale.
School life was amusing, raiding a year 9 friend's father's drinks cabinet and writing in 'slam books' which were later buried in a top-secret location with a pact to dig them up at an undisclosed date in the future (*update - we dug them up complete and intact at a reunion in 2004. Oh how we laughed). The Levellers were the flavour of the day, as were Doc Martens and anything long, flowing, tie-dyed or hippy. Felinebird responded to the name 'Liberty' or 'Libby' for a while, and met her first lovely boyfriend, P, and indulged in bonfire night snoggings and smiles aplenty. Camping trips provided giggles, with bottles of random mixed spirits which made some people more ill than others. Felinebird was chased by cows and escaped by jumping in a river, soaking her already skanky painted boots.
She later attended popcorn poker parties, and German coffee afternoons singing songs about the case system whilst dunking bourbons in apple squash.
Life was easy, and days were sunny. Or that's how it all seems now.
In 1995, she passed some GCSEs and progressed to A-levels in '97, almost immediately regretting her choice of certain subjects which bored her to tears and introduced her to the bad habit of split-end pulling. Through her music, Felinebird joined another orchestra, playing Holst, Walton, Glinka et al in Cardiff City hall and St David's Hall in a swanky black frock, not to mention rocking the sexy Holy Cross church every Christmas and St. David's Day
It was in the sixth form that Felinebird met her boyfriend of 1 1/2 years who taught her about the joys of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. She dutifully followed 'Soft Verges' from local pub to local pub, occasionally taking time out to venture into dingy train-stationesque nightclubs and large-scale meat markets on the weekend. But things change. Felinebird had to make a break for it and venture out into the wider world, fly the nest and get her 'top quality educational experience'.
Flying the Nest
After not-a-lot of umming and aaahing, she opted for a music degree at the University of Surrey, a campus with good job prospects and a top course if you believe the hype.
Three beautiful years were spent trying not to practice the piano whilst writing rapturous essays about romanticism, algolagnia, decadence and later, the joys of Satanism in Norwegian rock. How's that for a dissertation? Felinebird met Andy who made her life a pleasure, and later a pain, but looks back with a smile at some very good times. She also met her current chums who indulged her passions for beer and giggles and later even opted (you may beg to differ ;-) to live with her in the not at all rough end of town.
She galavanted through her university life moshing around with the No Wave alternative/metal brigade, writing playlists for the radio station and later managing the station in the run-up to its relaunch as GU2.
But she never (quite) forgot the reason she was studying, and made quite a tidy profit from playing in the Well Strung quartet in such salubrious surroundings as the House of Fraser and at a strange Victorian music and literature concert, during which 'The Owl and the Pussycat' made her snigger and nearly drop her violin. She endured a year's late night rehearsals with the University Symphony and Chamber orchestras, but forfeit this great pleasure (?) for work with the Students' Union chairing the Entertainments Committee, probably rather badly now she looks back at it.
And so the years passed, Bird learned to cook to some degree, wrote a few essays, dated a variety of males and ended up in a black gown throwing her mortar board in the air outside Guildford cathedral in the Summer of 2000 and she jumped for joy at being released from the tedium of the 2500 word essay.
Felinebird assumed her first full-time role as Vice-President of the University of Surrey Students' Union and proceeded to show the world how to dress up for a laugh. She became infamous for her black leathers and later for her naughty nurses outfit, being bought for not very much in a slave auction to run around the Union in kinky outfits - all for charidee of course though, mate.
She did take her work seriously and tried hard to make life easier for societes and the RAG and International weeks successful. She also greatly enjoyed frequenting the bar on £1 a pint nights, and once regretably fell in a river. An experience she'd rather forget.
NUS conference in Blackpool made everyone snigger and fall over, as did convention in Preston. Don't even mention the Ents Conventions as they just got messy.
Trying to be Responsible!?!
All good things have to come to an end though and as her contract drew to a close she knew she'd have to try the real labour market for size. Thankfully a job fell into her lap at the last possible moment, and off Felinebird trundled into the world of financial conferencing and swanky London hotels, which allowed her plenty of opportunity for meeting up with people for drinks in otherwise unlikely venues. But the job was not to last for long. They paid her peanuts and it depressed her somewhat, forcing her to (despite the pretty surroundings and expensive lunches) look elsewhere and she soon assumed a new job as a project manager for a mobile computer training scheme.
In 2001 A happy year was spent at Fitzjohn Villas, basking in the sunlight thrown upon a funkily decorated patio, taking walks across the common and looking forward to the weekends she could spend with her new amour, lovely sexy P Kent, whom she first encountered way back in 1994. Felinebird felt that all was well with the world. Well, apart from with Mabel, her poor car who felt ill from time to time.
In the Summer of 2002 came a move of house, to the not-very-aptly-named HP Mansions, where Felinebird learned to parallel park and was forced to endure previous tenants exceptionally bad taste. Lots of beer and ciggies were consumed, an Open University Technology unit studied and another year passed by. Felinebird enjoyed a trip to Edinburgh, many many DVDs, pub outings and countryside walks and smiled more than her face could take.
Felinebird today finds herself in a palatial, well, terraced, house fit with courtyard, cellar and wooden-floored rooms with her lovely boyfriend, now fiancé. All is well enough with the world and she's in her second year working as a community learning adviser, travelling the length and breadth of two borough council areas working on community projects, family learning, aims, reports and strategies, and plenty of meetings with free biscuits. That's the life. Oh, and she got a new car, got excited, then it fell to bits. I hope that's not a metaphor for the rest of life ;-)
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