July
The July swear diary will be quite a short entry. This is because I failed to make any notes during the month of July and have (partly through laziness and partly through busyness) failed to put pen to paper until 12 September! I didn't make notes as the month went by because for the first 21 days on July I was incredibly busy preparing for the launch of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition.
Too Stressed To Swear...
In a similar way to the month of June, I actually refrained from swearing because I could not cope with the extra workload created by each outburst. Even though the stress made me want to swear on MANY occasions, I always thought that, in the long run, it was best not to.
Reaching A Century...
The first things I want to mention in this entry are actually items which were accidentally left out of the June entry, beginning with a little snippet of data. On 18th June 2005 I reached my 100th swear of the year! Interestingly enough it fell almost exactly half way through the project. This fact got me thinking whether the next 6 months of the project should, could or would produce an equal quantity. In fact, I decided today (12th September) that it should. As a way of encouraging more swears out of me and to have a more natural way of speaking I have decided to challenge myself to reach a total of 200 words by the end of the year.
The Challenge Is On...
Given that it is now September and that there where only a handful of swears in both July and August I am going to have to get my act together. This means I need to produce an average of 21¼ swear words a month for September, October, November and December to reach my goal! Will the number of swears pick up towards the end of the year as exponentially as they tapered off at the start? We can only wait and see…
Frustrating Incidents...
Now I thought I'd just touch on two of the most frustrating incidents to occur in July which did cause outbursts: The first incident, on 5th July 2005, was largely considered to be the worst day of the year, until the London bombings happened two days later and put everything back into perspective.
Caught On Camera...
But still, it was a pretty stressful day. It was the day that I was scheduled film my Daily Data Logger films for use in my installation at Angel Row Gallery. I had booked a TV studio for the day, so only had a limited time to film everything. First it took over two hours to set up the lighting which didn’t help matters. When eventually we got filming I began to realise how rehearsing my lines beforehand would have been a useful thing to do. As it got hotter and hotter under the studio lights and the layers of my red nylon tracksuit, things went from bad to worse… Too many re-takes to remember, time was ticking on and then suddenly I snapped - Whilst stumbling for the 5th time on the line ‘to calculate the average time spent sleeping’, I came out with ‘ to calculate the muther-fucking time’. Of course I had caught this sorry incident on camera and only jotted down exactly what I’d said whilst reviewing the footage during editing a day later. You won’t be surprised to hear that the clip below didn’t make it into the final version.
Wedding Upset...
The second incident of frustration occurred on 30th July and was a result of trip on Central Trains from Nottingham to Manchester. I believe that this was the second swear this year to have been a direct consequence of travelling on Central Trains and at least the fourth of travelling on trains in general.
This was however by far the worst to date. We were travelling to Manchester to attend Adele and Edward’s wedding which had been scheduled for 4pm. We had planned to arrive at 2:45pm, to check in at our hotel, to get changed and to leisurely stroll to the town hall for the ceremony. Central Trains, however, had other plans. Firstly our train broke down before it even left Nottingham. We were all herded off it and on to a replacement which left half an hour later than planned. Already now cutting it fine, we proceeded to crawl at a snail’s pace all the way to Manchester. We finally arrived at Piccadilly just after 3:45pm! A fair amount of cursing had already occurred as we dawdled through the Peak district.
We ran full throttle to the hotel on Portland Street, where we were left with precisely four minutes to change into our glad-rags and to leg it to the town hall. We rocked up a bit sweaty but in one piece and miraculously only two minutes late, a matter of seconds before the doors closed and the bride to be made her entrance... phew!
August Swear Diary >
Too Stressed To Swear...
In a similar way to the month of June, I actually refrained from swearing because I could not cope with the extra workload created by each outburst. Even though the stress made me want to swear on MANY occasions, I always thought that, in the long run, it was best not to.
Reaching A Century...
The first things I want to mention in this entry are actually items which were accidentally left out of the June entry, beginning with a little snippet of data. On 18th June 2005 I reached my 100th swear of the year! Interestingly enough it fell almost exactly half way through the project. This fact got me thinking whether the next 6 months of the project should, could or would produce an equal quantity. In fact, I decided today (12th September) that it should. As a way of encouraging more swears out of me and to have a more natural way of speaking I have decided to challenge myself to reach a total of 200 words by the end of the year.
The Challenge Is On...
Given that it is now September and that there where only a handful of swears in both July and August I am going to have to get my act together. This means I need to produce an average of 21¼ swear words a month for September, October, November and December to reach my goal! Will the number of swears pick up towards the end of the year as exponentially as they tapered off at the start? We can only wait and see…
Frustrating Incidents...
Now I thought I'd just touch on two of the most frustrating incidents to occur in July which did cause outbursts: The first incident, on 5th July 2005, was largely considered to be the worst day of the year, until the London bombings happened two days later and put everything back into perspective.
Caught On Camera...
But still, it was a pretty stressful day. It was the day that I was scheduled film my Daily Data Logger films for use in my installation at Angel Row Gallery. I had booked a TV studio for the day, so only had a limited time to film everything. First it took over two hours to set up the lighting which didn’t help matters. When eventually we got filming I began to realise how rehearsing my lines beforehand would have been a useful thing to do. As it got hotter and hotter under the studio lights and the layers of my red nylon tracksuit, things went from bad to worse… Too many re-takes to remember, time was ticking on and then suddenly I snapped - Whilst stumbling for the 5th time on the line ‘to calculate the average time spent sleeping’, I came out with ‘ to calculate the muther-fucking time’. Of course I had caught this sorry incident on camera and only jotted down exactly what I’d said whilst reviewing the footage during editing a day later. You won’t be surprised to hear that the clip below didn’t make it into the final version.
Wedding Upset...
The second incident of frustration occurred on 30th July and was a result of trip on Central Trains from Nottingham to Manchester. I believe that this was the second swear this year to have been a direct consequence of travelling on Central Trains and at least the fourth of travelling on trains in general.
This was however by far the worst to date. We were travelling to Manchester to attend Adele and Edward’s wedding which had been scheduled for 4pm. We had planned to arrive at 2:45pm, to check in at our hotel, to get changed and to leisurely stroll to the town hall for the ceremony. Central Trains, however, had other plans. Firstly our train broke down before it even left Nottingham. We were all herded off it and on to a replacement which left half an hour later than planned. Already now cutting it fine, we proceeded to crawl at a snail’s pace all the way to Manchester. We finally arrived at Piccadilly just after 3:45pm! A fair amount of cursing had already occurred as we dawdled through the Peak district.
We ran full throttle to the hotel on Portland Street, where we were left with precisely four minutes to change into our glad-rags and to leg it to the town hall. We rocked up a bit sweaty but in one piece and miraculously only two minutes late, a matter of seconds before the doors closed and the bride to be made her entrance... phew!
August Swear Diary >
