girlofprey

The Backstreet Boys did a beautiful social distancing version of I Want It That Way.

Also, the other night Youtube recommended me an Architectural Digest tour of David Harbour's flat, which I watched (it was too cluttered, but I like the bathroom), and then at the end it showed a reel of other people in the series, including one man that turned out to be Lenny Kravitz, and I'm straight?

Had an...altercation? With a homeless man today. At least I assume he was homeless, maybe he was just a drunk. I was coming out of Leeds train station, and I saw a woman I often see there selling the Big Issue. An Asian woman, middle-aged, shorter than me, who wears a headscarf. A white man was leaning over her, obviously shouting at her, although I had my headphones in and couldn't hear what was being said. But she was gesturing for him to go away, and leaning back away from him, and frankly I could guess. So I took my headphones out. Watched for a moment. Then after a moment asked him - because he was the closest to me - if everything was all right. At which point I realised how drunk he was, because he could barely seem to focus on me and what I was saying. He asked me if I had any spare change. I said no and went to walk away, but looked back at the woman before I did to see if she was alright, and realised he was following me as I walked away. He asked me if I had any spare change again. Then it was my turn. He asked me where I was from. I told him I wasn't going to tell him that. He repeated the question, either trying to intimidate me by asking about where I lived or this was going to turn into a rant about England and immigrants. Little does he or anyone else know that despite how white I am, I'm actually quite recently descended from immigrants. I asked him why he wanted to know, and said I wasn't going to answer him, and said the same thing when he repeated the question. Then he looked me in the eyes and said "you're confident, aren't you?".

Then there were a few more questions. Where did I live? He mentioned that my hair was going grey already, and asked me how old I was. He held up his plastic bottle like a microphone, as though he was interviewing me. He wavered forward with his hand, and I told him not to touch me. He laughed repeated it back mockingly. Finally I said I was going to leave, because I had to get to work - a little nastily. He asked me where I worked. I said I wasn't going to tell him that and turned to walk away. And felt something on the back of my arm. He'd tapped me on the back of my arm with the bottle as I was going to walk away. So I turned back and asked him if he'd touched me. He smiled and said "yeah". I asked him again, did you just touch me, and he smiled and said "yeah". So I went back into the train station to go get the British Transport Police, because oh my God. As I went he started calling "no, I didn't, no, I didn't". But I wasn't fucking having it at that point. Unfortunately, the BTP I'd seen in the train station on the way out seemed to be dealing with another incident (???!!?), but I managed to speak to one officer and tell her roughly what had happened, and she said she'd go check it out. By the time I got back out there, the guy had gone, and the Big Issue woman gestured which way he'd gone off. It was a different direction from the way I was going off to work, so I just told her I'd spoken to the police, they might come out and ask her about it, and that I was really sorry for his behaviour, and then I left.

Except I didn't leave it just there, obviously - mentally, I mean. It was the last I saw of him, but I was still checking behind me all the way to work in case he was following me, and then when I left work I was tense about going through the same train station doors again, and then I was checking behind me all the way home. Because I am OCD and paranoid and anxious. And it's bullshit that people like that just think they can get their own way by intimidating you - like if they scare you, they can just keep doing what they're doing and you won't stop them or challenge them, and even if anyone comes to question them it's like "oh, well she didn't tell me to stop - she just backed off! I didn't know I was upsetting her." And it's bullshit that it kind of works, because it ruined my day, I was anxious and checking behind me for the rest of the day, and I'm sure he'd love that if he knew about it. I'm a little anxious about going through the train station again tomorrow, but it's got to be done. And the Big Issue woman can't exactly not be there, she has to be there to work. And it's just bullshit. I even know that he's too much of a coward, and either too drunk or possibly brain-damaged to do anything I wasn't aware of, but even so it's stressful. And I haven't spoken to anyone at work about it, or my parents, because I don't want to be kind of told I was more or less asking for it, and shouldn't have said anything.

But that makes two women in a week I've seen men just randomly yelling at in public, for whatever power trip or balm to their own low self-esteem they wanted. I can't tell if things are getting worse, in a society sense, or I just happen to have seen this stuff these particular times. But fuck.

I love Tom Hardy:

Dragon Age 2 is so dull. SO DULL. I am into Act 3 now, and I don't care, all the care I previously had went away. And all my companions are dicks, I literally hate asking them for help, and I know it's because game 2 is all about Politics and Fantastic Racism, but aksnldcmclndlanj. Where is the part where they say "You're right, Hawke. You're beautiful and amazing and ALWAYS RIGHT, I will stop being such a dick now"? WHERE IS THE PART WHERE I CAN CHANGE THEIR PERSONALITIES TO SUIT MY WHIMS, I'm PRETTY SURE I get that option in most RPGs nowadays. Is that the ending? Is a big party with cake and everyone realises the error of their ways? Are the errors of their ways still to come in the story, and THEN maybe they'll have a change of heart over it? Because I don't care. I no longer care. I hope most of them die. After they've finished helping me in fights and stuff. Pretty much the only companions I care about are Varric and Anders, but my relationship with Varric is going nowhere since all we ever discuss are the stories he tells about me (AND I CAN'T TELL HIM I LOVE HIM), and Anders is going weird. I'm pretty sure I mostly only love Anders because my PC from Dragon Age Origins recruited him, and she would LOVE HIM, no matter what he did. Barring a few things, obviously. Ugh. I hate Templars, but I'm pretty sure they're going to give me a reason to hate mages shortly. And every other quest is basically a fetch quest, where my basic reward is a bit of money and a 'tick' next to the quest in my journal.

It's fine. It's perfectly fine. I'm just really bored.

In other news, people are saying Livejournal is no longer sending comment notifications, is that true? It sucks if it is true. I'm assuming I will get a 'notification' on the home page, or my journal, if you comment on this post. If not things are going to get a lot more complicated around here.

I have also been watching Springwatch, this week and last week, as I attempt to do every year. I love Springwatch. And I love Michaela Strachan now she has calmed down and stopped trying to do cheesy jokes and wacky presenting all the time. I have to assume either the others told her to calm down, or she found a genuine love for nature, or - in a way that is sad but perhaps for the best - she witnessed one too many 'tragedies', like entire nests of cute chicks being eaten by weasels, and it soothed her manic soul. In any case, she's a lot better nowadays. And I seem to be detecting a frisson of sexual tension between her and Chris Packham on the show. If not, they're still really lovely with the way she makes him laugh despite himself all the time.

And while watching Springwatch, I saw the presenters make a few comments suggesting cuckoos were getting really rare in Britain nowadays. Which made me lucky, I suppose, since on Tuesday my mum and I took my ON to a local nature reserve, Fairburn Ings, and totally heard one in the woods. Result.

I also had to go see a woman from the Jobcentre on Wednesday. It was the Disability Advisor, and it was just a routine checking in type of thing, but it was a new woman because the previous woman retired, so I decided I should go in and meet her face-to-face, and I was a little bit anxious about it. But she turned out to be really nice, I explained everything I was doing and everything I wasn't doing, and a bunch of things I was waiting to hear about, and she suggested a new website I could look at for volunteering opportunities, and a new service I could go to for therapy once my current counselling is finished, and that was it. It all went pretty smoothly and she'll check in with me again in three months. Hurrah.

Also, you know what I don't understand? When you see the same actor over and over again in roles where they are meant to be not very attractive and kind of creepy, but they use actors that are obviously incredibly attractive in a slightly odd way. The main person I am thinking of is Harry Kershaw, who looks like this:


(from microsite.bournemouth.ac.uk)

See what I mean? I guess that's what they mean by "TV ugly". They mean not ugly. I feel like I want to follow Harry Kershaw's career, in the hopes of one day seeing him in a thing where they treat him as as attractive as he is. Apparently he was in Skyfall. As "Q's assistant", which was probably the most forgettable role ever. Still. Maybe it means he is moving into Hollywood, and will have massive success in the future. Tom Hiddleston managed.

Also I really hate the changes Youtube have made to their site. Just so everyone knows.