If only – aka More on Vampire Myths

I realise I’ve spent a while talking about all stuff human but it’s been ages since I’ve said anything much about the world of vampires. Well, I say world, it’s probably more a windy coorner of a long-abandoned Street in a town that’s nobody ever heard in a country where nobody goes.

I talked about stuff like coffins, reflections, biting etc ages ago, back in early 2020. I meant to follow up fairly immediately. Honest. And then the rest of 2020 really kicked in. With hobnail boots. And then I forgot. And four years passed. Because they do.

Carpe Diem

No, I don’t mean “Fish of the Day”. Hahaha! I mean seizing the moment. The trouble is, actual moments feel too small to simply grab. If a vampire decides to ‘seize the day’ (sorry, that’s the proper translation of the phrase), they’d probably end up seizing a whole week. Or month, possibly. It’s like trying to grab a tomato pip out of a bowl of soup. Or that weird little fleck that always seems to end up in your drink and no matter how hard you try, it always manages to duck out of the way.

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Time passing. Yes. think that’s something right there. Ever heard a song called “Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You Think”? So I guess that’s a thing with humans too? Time passing by without realising? I know that it’s a bit of a thing when somebody says they’ll be ‘five minutes’ but they end up taking way, waaaay longer, but that’s not the same, is it? Or is it? I’d be curious to hear your (polite) opinion!

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Quick recap:

Yes to reflections, no to coffins and aargh to sunlight (though no sparkling or turning to dust). A heck no to turning into animals (I wish, though) and a who knows to the immortality thing. If I could turn into any animal though, it’d have to be a dog. Because that’s the only way I could have the last word in a conversation with the furbaby.

Or how about being able to change into a wolf?

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That’d be great if you got caught short needing the loo. I mean, you can go and cock your leg anywhere. Or pop a squat, depending on your plumbing). Nobody’s going to argue with a wolf, are they? Apart from that guy in that film who apparently punches a wolf right before the end credits roll. Except that apparently he doesn’t. Which is the only reason a lot of people went to see the film, I’m told.

But how about bats? I mean, can you imagine how handy it would be to be able to just explode into a cloud of bats whenever you got stuck in a socially stressful situation? Or a really boring conversation? Or both at the same time (it happens to me a lot) Because the ground never does open up and swallow you when you need it to. Just BAT! And you’re out of there.

I feel I’ve been shortchanged a bit on that one too.

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Why do fictional vampires get all the cool gimmicks? Nobody mentions the OCD, the generally odd habits, or the crippling social anxiety. Oh no, it’s all “I-vont-to-trink-your-blood”, or Boof! Bat storm or children of the night driving the neighbours crazy with the ‘sweet music’ they’re making.

All that enforced staying away from everyone gave me (and probably everyone else) a lot of time to think. It was quite useful, actually. For a while, it made it easier to hide. For that past year and a half, I was just another person trying to avoid the world. The only problem was, as soon as the world started opening up again, I had to think of some new excuses/reasons to avoid everyone. Especially as a lot of people starting behaving like it had never happened.

If you have any good ones, I’d love to hear them.

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Still got questions? 

Then just leave them in the comments! I will definitely answer. And it won’t take me 4 years. Honest.

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For anyone wanting to read all my rants in one place – including all-new exclusive stuff, then click below!

Volume 1 of my diary – why not start at the very beginning?

Volume 2 – more rants, musings and fairly useful advice

Volume 3 – things are afoot! The thot plickens…

Myths and Mysteries

Right. What shall we talk about today..?

I’m thinking this should probably be a part 1 kind of thing.

Actually, now might be a pretty good time for a bit of a recap. If you’re new to all this, it’ll save you time and if you’ve been with me since the beginning, then you know my tendency to repeat myself. Well, at least this time, it’ll be on purpose.

And if you want to be thorough, I’ll link in previous posts… ’cause I’m pedantic like that.

First off, let’s get the biggie out of the way.

Yes, vampires do exist. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t be here, talking to you.

Okay, so I’m technically not here. Well, not your ‘here’. I mean my ‘here’. And technically, I’m not talking. Unless you’ve got one of those cool apps that reads the text off a screen. Actually, I saw this really neat gadget the other day that you attach to glasses that’ll do exactly that – but I’m distracting myself. Terrible problem.

And I just love the dictate function on tablets and phones etc. Seek and ye shall find? Well, this is speak, and it shall type. So handy. Especially as sometimes my brain works faster than my fingers. My mouth doesn’t work as fast as my brain either, but it does go a darn sight faster than my stubby little digits.

And there I go again. I go off track more often than a dirt bike.

There are so many myths surrounding vampires. Some are spot on. Some… well, let’s just say that some people got the wrong end of the stick. I can’t believe I just said that. And some are partly true – but not for the reason you’d think.

So here are a few FAQs…

• reflections – yes, I have one. So does pretty much anything. Including the wall opposite the mirror. But I do hate mirrors, although you can chalk that one up to childhood trauma (as can about 90% of human experience).

 

• sunlight – no sizzling, fizzling or spontaneous combustion. Just a tendency to walk into things because I can’t flipping see in normal to bright sunlight. And there’s the sunburn.

Don’t forget the sunburn. I know I don’t.

 

• bites and turning – I have to admit, I’m not sure. Not really much research. I know the Monies Powers That Be will fund some glaringly obvious studies (e.g. sword-swallowing can be dangerous – who knew?!), somehow rocking up to a finance committee asking for £300,000 to go ’round biting people wouldn’t go down too well. Or it could be the best ever episode of Dragon’s Den. Not that I watch it but, you know, you hear things…

• reincarnation/one true love – faces, like history, keep repeating themselves. but I’ve only recently talked about that one, so…

 

• immortality – well, I’m still here, into my 2nd glorious century! But then, so is anyone over the age of 20…

 

• the drinking blood thing – vampires are usually portrayed as avoiding all human food… well, there’s allergies – food allergies abound. Traditionally, vampires stick to blood because trying to find food that won’t have us impersonating the Trevi Fountain is just too much of a faff.

 

• turning into animals –  have you ever noticed that the animals that vampires are supposed to turn into tend to be ones that get used as insults? Daft old bat, hound, what a dog etc. You can just imagine it, can’t you? The postman has just delivered post to the Dracula household. It’s bad enough that he’s had to traipse up a particularly precarious slope to reach the manky, gloomy old castle teetering on top of an especially treacherous precipice (someone should really call the Council). but then he knocks and for once, waits for an answer. None of this tickling the doorbell then leaving a “Sorry We Missed You” card.

And, because it’s about ten-to-sunrise o’clock, the door gets opened by the grumpy resident, who’s more interested in getting some kip than receiving all the latest offers from the local pizza parlour. He grabs his mail (including the blackout curtains he ordered from eBay), growls at the hapless postie and beats a hasty exit to avoid the oncoming daylight.

And the postman gets back to the office, exhausted from the climb (and no doubt the stumbling back down – remember precarious?), cheesed off because it’s only the start of the shift and he’s already been barked at (see where I’m going with this?). A colleague asks what’s wrong (because the postie’s colleagues are a caring lot).

“What’s wrong?” he says. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I nearly got killed delivering a parcel to that castle on top of the hill. And when I get there, some grumpy old bat answers the door, growls at me then disappears like a puff of smoke!”

“He’s a bat?!” yelps the colleague, “Then he turns into a dog and vanishes into a puff of smoke?”

And that, folks, is how rumours start.

And then the rumours become legend.

 

• sleeping in a coffin – no, but it’d be about the only way I’d ever sleep on my back. I just prefer sleeping on my side. Coffin with a stretchy lid, perhaps? Otherwise – shoulder problems. Those things aren’t very deep, and I’ve got broad shoulders. Plus I’m an awful fidget – especially when asleep. Ever seen a jumping bean? That’d be me, trying to sleep in a coffin. Plus – claustrophobia!

 

• Being invited in? It’s just manners. Picture this: someone knocks on your door. You open it. They barge in. How would you feel? Threatened? Uncomfortable?  Most people with manners will wait to be invited in. I say most… I mean the ones who have retained any sense of decorum and etiquette.  I suppose vampires just take things a step further.  There’s the tendency to extrapolate. Or, as I like to call it – overthink. So if you let a vampire in, you’re giving them carte blanche to do… well, what vampires do. Me, it’s mostly sit quietly and eat biscuits. Those nice pink wafers if you’ve got them. I like pink wafers. You see, we are asking permission not just to have that carte blanche, but to keep it handy whenever we need it. I say we…

Oops, I’ve been rambling again, haven’t I? Thanks for the patience. You’re definitely one of the better humans. This is definitely going to be a two-parter, I think.

Got a burning question? 

Then just leave it in the comments!

Ask, and I will answer. Or at least, I’ll have every intention of answering, but I might get distracted. No, I will answer. Honest. But I do get distracted… I’ll absolutely do my best. Ooh, what was tha-

 

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Here comes summer… There goes summer

Well, that’s about all I need to say, really.

‘Bye!

Joking.

Massive apologies for the absence. I’ve been cloud-chasing. An occupational necessity when you’re a vampire.  I’ve probably already mentioned this before, but the sun doesn’t affect vampires the way you see in the movies. They don’t go ‘boof!’ into a readily cleaned up pile of dust when hit by the sun (any other vamps out there, please feel free to disagree. No, wait… you can’t…).

I’ll tell you what happens. The moment the sun hits you, you feel all your energy desert you. Ever picked a sponge up from a bucket of water and watched the water simply pour out of it? Sponge = me. Water = energy. Hand = er, not sure. Could be the sun… Okay. I’ll stop that analogy right there. And it was going so well too.

The turning into dust thing is just a very handy plot device so that Van Helsing / Buffy / Blade don’t have a landfill-worth of skewered bodies to explain to the local constabulary. Nothing more. Plus it gives the excuse for some really cool SFX.

Now, normally I’d still be gone, but I’m kind of stuck here at the moment, due to a little mishap with my travelling papers. Or, as you call them in this century, my passport. I blame the Referendum. Remember that? A couple of months back everyone in this country voted whether or not we still wanted to be part of the European Union (no, don’t worry, I don’t do politics). I think it might have been more of a bluff by one of the main politicians to prove to all his mates that the country loved him bestest and it kind of blew up in his face, and everyone ran around chewing the furniture and horribly over-reacting. Sadly, some people did get burned over the whole affair. Badly. I just don’t understand you humans sometimes.

And I ended up needing a new passport.

I went to the post office the day after and announced to the rather nervous young man behind the desk that I needed to replace my passport. The look on his face was one of “Oh $*[&! I really don’t want to get involved in this!”.  I imagine if his boss had asked him to perform a rectal exam on a diarrhetic camel and sorry, they’d run out of rubber gloves, the expression would have been pretty much the same. But I got my form, took it home and had the mandatory humiliatingly appalling photos taken (yes, I do show up in pictures and video).

I filled it in, got it checked, sent it off. A whole three weeks later (with about two to go before I needed to travel!), I got a form asking me why it needed replacing. Which begs two questions.

1. If you knew you needed to know that, why didn’t you just put a question in the relevant section of the application form?
2. Three weeks? Seriously? It took that long to ask? Three weeks?

All that done, I sat back and waited. And waited. Panic… Thankfully, the department that deals with such things has discovered the recent delights of text messaging, which wonderfully allayed my fears while I awaited my precious. Which turned out to be an extremely short time in the end. Bravo.

Then they delivered it. Special delivery. Oh yes.

And I wasn’t in.

Typical.

But they did leave a lovely little card.  And I can tell you, the delivery service was so fast, the card was actually dated the following day! That’s right. The card was delivered on the 4th, but dated the 5th. Now that’s speed for you. So I rearranged delivery. I was given the delightfully concise window of between 9am and 5pm on my chosen day. Because as a vampire, naturally, I have nothing to do all day but stay indoors. Actually…

Anyway.

I was warned in the email that I would need to show identification. Luckily the lovely delivery guy didn’t press me for such stuff. Which was just as well, because the only possible i.d. I would have had was…

The passport.

So. To explain the young post office man’s apprehension. What did happen to my passport? I think he assumed my need was something to do with the Referendum result. It wasn’t.

Simply put, this is why I needed to replace my passport.

On the night of the Referendum, I decided to combine going to vote (yes, vampires can vote. We’re very modern like that) with a nice run. And it was raining. Even better. I love running in the rain. Having misplaced my voting card, I took my passport along as identification, should it be needed. It wasn’t. I got soaked. Soaked to the skin. Literally. E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. got wet.

But that wasn’t what killed my passport. Oh no.

That happened when I got home.

And I decided to put my wringing wet running kit into the washing machine.

And switched it on.

Without checking my pockets.

If only the myths about us were true. Sometimes I think it’d actually be quite useful to turn into a bat. I bet bats don’t need passports…

 

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