Stock racing time

Bonus point for the reference in the title, you'll need a little of the main post to piece it together.


I have a friend called Laura.  She's sweet bless her.  She is also oblivious, refuses to listen to advice, bitches constantly, and generally wonders why her life is a mess when everything seems out to get her.  Many an hour was spent in first year talking about the finer points of kitchen utensils in the classics common room with her.   In second year, I lived with her.  It did not go greatly.  She had a habit of knocking and entering my room, instead of knocking and waiting, which is an issue when you tend to sit around either naked or in boxers a lot in your room.  She also could not take a hint.  An entire 45 minute conversation was had with her sitting on the edge of my bed, me and chris lying with a duvet covering us and a very obvious trail of clothes from the door to the bed, and she at no point during the conversation realised perhaps she should come back later.  It is firmly accepted by all, that she was the cause of the 'break up' of the flat.  We were all pretty lazy, and it was a shitty place with endless problems, but it was cheap and in a great location just by St Pancras rail station, Laura made it worse; she rubbed people up the wrong way, failed to socialize with anyone in it other than me (thereby further straining both the absent relationships with the others, and the increasingly tiring relationship with me), never washed up, left hairs all over the bathroom etc...  Don't get me wrong there were good times; many a time was spent both staring at the fridge at 'the magic food hour'*, we were both insomniacs so kept each other company, loved out cheese music and once whiled away a good 4 hours on youtube listening to Lolly, Whigfield, O-Town, Spice Girls, etc...

Anyway, Laura text me the other day, asking if I wanted to meet.  I knew she'd recently got a job working in London so figured she must be finishing around the time she'd said to meet.  When I did meet her, it turns out she quit that job.  Now, granted, it was charity fundraising, which is not a job she's suited for at all, is damned hard work even for people it is suited too, and her boss was seriously hitting on her inappropriately, but she gave it up after a week, which seems typically Laura.  If it doesn't live up to expectations, not a dull office job, not a bar job, not being perved over, relatively decently paid, flexible time, decent holidays (please forward all such jobs to me), etc, she tends to give up straight away.  It was the same for essays in Uni.  We both took the same archaeology courses.  We knew nothing about archaeology, and the archaeology department refused to teach us anything about it, despite the fact our degree was supposed to include it.  She whined and bitched for 3 years about how she had no clue what to do.  I, whined and bitched for a bit, then went to the library, and read about 70 books on archaeology for my first essay.  I now understand archaeology, and even get 1's in my essays, so I clearly took the wrong subject.

This girl needs to learn to stick with things.  I've given up giving advice to her.  She's of the type of person where no matter what you proffer, she'll find some completely unrelated and hitherto unspoken exception to take to it, no matter how many times you adjust and refine your advice.  It's a waste of time and energy.  Now I just tend to nod and make an approving sympathetic noise every so often.  I'm good at that skill; I developed it young.  Truthful bitching over, she's still a friend, albeit one that I'm probably not likely to end up staying in close contact with for the rest of my life; there are a bare handful of people like that I've taken from university.  Another 2 handfuls worth that I'll talk to every once in a while; Laura probably falls into this category.  The total number probably doesn't exceed 20, possibly even 15.  My social circles have decreased massively in the past year...


The Five:  Chris, Lisa, Terence, Joel, Ryan


*The magic food hour, for those who don't know, is usually about 2am in the morning, but may strike at any time, and is a period where you are hungry, don't know what for, open the fridge, cupboards, freezer, etc, stand staring for 5 minutes, decide whatever you want, you don't have it, proceed to pace around idly for another 5 minutes, before returning back to the food stores, magically hoping something will have changed and suddenly your desires will be sated.  Rinse and repeat for a long period of time.  This tends to strike at 2am simply because most shops are shut then, and any that are open you usually can't be arsed to go to.  Magic is clearly aware of Murphy's law.