A Clock That Does Not Work

A new addition

2012-02-22T22:34:00.001Z

So, the Jones family got a new puppy last week.

I know. Because two enormous, very lovely dogs that currently need lots of attention and affection just aren't enough. We are stupid.

Anyway. When I came home from Holly Bell's cupcake class on Sunday, he was there waiting for me.

So. What do you want to know? He's a he. We called him Bertie after Bertie Basset, because he is black and white (and we named our brown and white Dalmatian after chocolate). Yes, I am secretly thrilled that I got to name a dog after King George VI in a very good film and yes, I do call him "Bah-tee".

That is, I call him Bah-tee when I'm not calling him a little shit/bastard. Bertie is 16 weeks old and shows it. He bounds around. He winds the other dogs up by biting/sniffing/jumping on them. He hasn't been near Malty without licking Malty's penis energetically for the past three days. If you sit on the floor, he will leap on you. He likes to bite buttons and nibble at ears; he has very sharp teeth which he sinks into your hand when he's excited. He's also got very sharp claws which mean my hands and arms are covered in accidental scratches.

However, he also loves cuddles and will happily curl up in a lap, his nose tucked in the crook of your arm, and sleep for hours.

(And although he goes in any lap he likes mine the most

(Excuse how gross we look in those two photos; we'd just been exercising)

Although he jumps up on people when they come in, he's very good at going back down and he only jumps up because he wants to be close to you.

I love walking him. Over the fields I am completely happy to let him off the lead, and he always comes back. Even though we've only had him since Sunday, he always comes back.

And he's learning to sit and how to play fetch, he's getting to the point where he's sort of understanding house training, he is lovely to watch play with a ball on a rope or his soft chewy toy (he grabs it and shakes his head around), he has an adorable little bark and he makes high pitched moany noises that break my heart.

Basically, I love him.

And even though I think we are mad, I'm very glad that we got him.

Cool cakes

2012-02-13T13:16:00.003Z

You guys know I like to cook, right? Well, that love of cooking came from a love of baking. I baked cakes and biscuits for ages before I moved on to "proper food" and my cakes are (if I do say so myself) delicious.

I don't bake much any more, though. Mainly because I'm still trying to get into healthy BMI territory and eating lots of yummy cake is counter-productive to that. Until this time last week, I hadn't baked anything since 2011.

And then this week I made three birthday cakes.

The first was for the daughter of the conductor of my band and it was a bit of a disaster. My oven caught fire, I realised too late that I had no icing sugar, the condensed milk that I boiled into caramel hardened too quickly, the butter that I added to the rest to loosen it up make it bitty and the final result looked like a brain. I covered it in cocoa powder and piped "Bethan" on the top, but then it just looked like a brain covered in cocoa powder with "Bethan" written on it. Tasted good, though.

The second was for the one-year-old daughter of the beautiful woman I wrote about in this post. She originally wanted a Peppa Pig cake, but I thought that this was beyond my artistic skills (Seriously, it was). Instead I used ready-to-roll icing, chocolate buttons, sprinkles and coloured icing to make what can only be described as a masterpiece.

Well. I thought it was a masterpiece, anyway. M doesn't appear to be that pleased.

Then, yesterday, I made Garry's birthday cake. He turned 28, his favourite food in the whole wide world is birthday cake and it's a fairly crappy time for him right now, so I knew I had to make a fairly good one...

So I made him a cake with a penguin, which he has a slight phobia of, on it. I'm just that kind of awesome girlfriend.

I'm incredibly proud of this cake and how beautiful it is, which I think says something about me and my lack of artistic skill. I'm going to Holly Bell's cupcake decorating class on Sunday to review it but I think she's going to have a bit of a challenge with me.

Where I am surprised by a very rude man

2012-02-11T14:07:00.004Z

It's Thursday, about 3pm. I've been sitting upstairs in the Southbank Centre with Garry and Nick, a writer on the TV site, for about an hour. We're recording the second podcast for the site and, being honest, it isn't going well.

We pause the dictaphone and take a break. The man who has been sitting on the table next to us is wandering over hesitantly. He reminds me irresistibly of one of my friend's boyfriends, so as he walks over I catch his eye and smile at him. He sees me and speeds up towards our table.

"Excuse me, can you do me a favour?" he asks our table. Or, more specifically, he asks Nick, who is sitting next to me. Garry is opposite me and has his back to him so doesn't respond at all; the man is switching his attention between Garry's back and Nick's face, totally ignoring me. Nick doesn't appear to have understood what the man said so is just staring at him.

"Yeah, sure" I said. But I don't think the man heard me, because he's shaking his head and smiling in an almost rueful way.

"Never mind" he says, backing away. "Clearly you don't have the intelligence to cope with it". He then moves back to his table and starts packing everything up — the favour appeared to be to watch his stuff whilst he went to the loo or something.

This really, really upset me. It was so totally unexpected, and so unnecessarily rude. Am I over-reacting here? Even if he was having a bad day and our apparent failure to answer him (even though I did) was just one thing too many, he was very unkind.

I've honestly never come across something like this before. And Garry wouldn't let me call him a prick on the way out, so I've just been silently fuming about it since Thursday.

January 2012

2012-01-31T08:30:00.000Z

So. It's been an eventful start to the year.

I made five resolutions at the start of this year. I'm just giving a bit of an update as to how they're going.

1. Graduate with a 2:1
Well, I've turned up for every lecture and seminar so far, I've had my dissertation plan approved, my title has been submitted and I've finished my first section of it, which is about 1500 words. That's not bad.

2. Get a job or start freelancing
I can't really start doing this 'til I start Uni. I did show my face at a foodie event with lots of journalist people and make contacts, though. Contacts. They're supposed to be good.

3. Get to target weight
I lost 2 pounds in January. I'm cool with that. Looks like I'm not going to be at the weight I wanted to be for my birthday, but fuck it. There are more important things going on right now than the label in the back of my clothes and how quickly it goes down.

4. Read 100 books
I've read 11 books so far this year. According to Goodreads, I'm 3 books ahead. That's alright, then.

5. Write
Ooo, ooo, totally doing this! Look, there are blog posts! And there is a notebook in my bag with fiction and stuff! I'm doing okay with this one.

There's so many bad things going on around me that I can't change, but at least I'm doing what I can to improve the things I can. And changing the things I can is, quite honestly, keeping me sane at the moment.

Mental Mother

2012-01-27T10:24:00.001Z

Just admitting that something was wrong made me feel better.

So for the past two days I was...happier. I felt like I could cope a little more. Bad things kept happening but it was fine. I could cope.

Until last night.

Bit of background to why I was low originally: last week my sort-of-mother-in-law (Lynn) was causing problems at Garry's home. She had an argument with Stef, her youngest son, and decided that the sensible thing to do was call the police on him, lying and saying that he had guns in the house. I refused to stay at that house until this was sorted; I fully expected a dawn raid on the house, even after they explained she was lying, as they have to take these things seriously.

On Monday or Tuesday, Lynn was arrested. She and her friend Linda, who she met during a stint in a psychiatric hospital in 2010, had been caught vandalising the mental health facility they both attend for counselling. In turn they caused about £1000 of damage.

Garry spent most of Wednesday in the police station waiting for the police, social worker and doctor to decide what to do with her. She's been sectioned again. This time it's voluntarily but if she asks to leave they'll keep her in and forcibly section her.

This coincided with me feeling better. I don't mind it when Lynn is sectioned anymore; it's happened so much it's actually commonplace. At least I don't have to fret about her doing something to get sectioned such as going on the run (which she does a lot. We ended up going to Bangor to pick her up once).

But yesterday we had to pick up her car. I opened the door to the passenger side and there was a large plastic sandwich bag half full of pills. More pills under the seat. A crisp packet stuffed full of white powder in the glove compartment. The driver's side door pocket was full of recognisable drugs. A rucksack with screwdrivers, a sleeping bag and Whisky in the boot. A folder full of suicidal poems and hateful notes on the back seat. A list of people she wants to kill - with her poor husband who she treats abysmally and punched last Saturday at the top.

How do you cope with this? Honestly, I'm asking. I thought I'd become blasé about it but last night shook me up. Oh. And she hasn't been paying the mortgage so in a few months, unless he can get a job and move out, G will be homeless.

So here's #1 on the list of things that is making me sad but can't be changed. I want G out of there. I NEED him out of there. It's hell in his house, and the sooner his family gets away from each other the better. But to get away he needs a job that pays enough for him to support himself - his teaching doesn't do that. And there is nothing I can do here to help or change things. He's applying like mad but...nothing.

And I know that he just has to keep going but there's a time limit now. If they lose the house, that's 90% of his wage gone immediately as he teaches from there.

So...yeah. That's not exactly helping me feel happy at the moment.

A post where I whine about how much I don't want to be a whiner.

2012-01-25T15:51:00.000Z

Adrian Mole once quoted at his wife, Daisy, that "Happy people don't keep diaries". He explained that it's because they don't have anything they want to say. I think that we can modernise that quote and apply it to blogs, too — what is a blog if not a kind of a diary?

But I don't actually think this quote is true. Clearly some happy people do keep diaries. Just going down my "friends" list on the right we've got Maria, Ellie, Charlie, Sarah, Blonde and Jo(anna, not Joanne, just FYI) all keeping diaries and all being happy. Maybe not all the time, maybe not about everything, but they are writing diaries and they are generally being happy.

I like blogging. I do. And I set myself a resolution this year to write a bit more. Proper writing, I mean, rather than just sharing recipes or spewing some rubbish about what's on TV. So as well as writing more fiction, I wanted to blog more on this blog. My silly blog. My chatty-about-crap blog where I could write what I want. And as luck would have it, I'm finding that I'm overflowing with things that I want to write about on here.

But...it seems that above quote is quite applicable to me at the moment. I want to keep a diary. I have lots to write about. But...s'not happy stuff.

Okay. Um. How can I say this?

I don't want this blog, my cheery little "A Clock That Does Not Work" to become a whiny pool of crap. I don't. I don't want to write things that are whiny and sad and moany because really, who wants to read that? Things that are on the internet last forever. I don't want people to search for me, find this, read it and think that I'm just a moany brat. But that's what is happening. I write a post about how much I love walking my dogs and I end up being all sad about not being able to have that when I move later this year. I try to think of things to write about, happy things, and I am drawing blanks.

I'm not great at pretending to feel things that I don't feel. Not when I'm being me. When I'm being Kitchen Bitching or TV@The Digital Fix or She Cooks, She Eats it's fine. I slip nicely into the character I've created for them all, the character that works for them and seems to make them work, and I can play pretend I'm fine. But I can't do that with my personal twitter and I can't do that with my blog. So I either have to write sad or go quiet. And like I said, I'm not entirely sure that writing sad is the right thing to do here.

So...what do I do? There are certain things in my life that are really quite crappy and I'm sad at the moment. Sad in a way that is shitty because the things that are making me sad can either a) not be changed by anyone I have any influence over, b) not be changed at all or c) not really be defined. So, at this point I really don't know. The one thing I do have control over is how and what I write, and where.

Do I write my sad on here? Do I start a new blog, not tell anyone about it and write my sad on there? Do I start a new blog and adopt a new "character" that is basically me but happy? What do I do?

I don't want to bum everyone out. I don't want people I think of as friends to see me as pathetic because of all this whining. And believe me, I hate the whining. I don't want to be a whiner. But I can't pretend at the moment. And...I don't know what to do.

Things I'll miss when I go to London: Part One

2012-01-22T19:02:00.001Z

I write/tweet about dog walking a lot, but it's something that takes up a surprising amount of my time. When you want to change the fact that your dogs are obese and when you're trying to kick your body into feeling better and looking better, dog walking is the way to go.

I quite enjoy it, really. I suppose it helps that I am surrounded by countryside; within 30 seconds of leaving my front door my dogs are off the lead and pelting it over fields. Well. Malty (the dalmatian) is pelting it. Minnie (the labrador) is either gambling behind him or trotting happily next to me. Still too fat to run properly, bless her.

Sometimes I read a book on my iPhone, sometimes I listen to podcasts, but mostly I just walk and enjoy the silence. Sometimes, when I'm at the end of a really big field and there is no-one around but me and the dogs, it feels like I'm the only person for miles around. Which is rubbish because I can see the houses just behind the trees. But it's a nice feeling, anyway.

It's what I'm going to miss most when I move to London. My parents will still be on the end of the phone. All of my close friends who live round here (all two of 'em) will at that point have either married and moved away or will still be doing their Doctor training and won't be living here anyway. But my dogs can't talk to me on the phone and I can't go following a muddy bridle path whilst my dog races in front of me in London.

Of course, I'll still be able to walk in London. I'm sure I'll get on my trainers (walking is the only time I wear them) and go for a walk, discovering little side streets and cute little cafés, even though it'll be pavement rather than mud I'm walking on. And it'll still be a good way to get exercise, it'll still be fun and I'll still enjoy it.

But it won't be the same. When in London am I going to get the feeling of being totally and utterly alone, the only person on the planet? I'm never going to be able to bend down and ruffle Minnie's ears or watch Malty realise I've gone the way he wasn't expecting and race towards me with his ears flapping behind him.

More than anything, I'm going to miss the total detachment. I'm always someone's something — Carole's daughter, Garry's girlfriend, Katharine's university friend, writer on this or that site — and I like being able to be nothing for a while.

Falling out of love

2012-01-15T09:13:00.001Z

"You, at the back, what can you criticise about the claim 'Man thinks?'"

I glance, panic stricken, at my friend, Katharine. I know from over two years of sitting in lectures with her that there is more chance of the table answering this than her. I clear my throat nervously.

"Well, uh, we thought that...umm... Maybe...it depended on what he meant by that?" Silence. "So if he is saying that...that the defining characteristic of man over other animals is that man thinks then...then that is quite hard to criticise. But if...if he is saying that the main activity of man is thinking then we can...uh...well, it's easy to criticise. Because...because man doesn't always think, he acts on impulse sometimes and so...isn't thinking. So, in that case, man doesn't think"

There is a pause as I finish. Katharine is staring resolutely at the table. The lecturer is staring at me, but thankfully I'm sitting so far back I can't quite make out his expression. Even more thankfully, I can't see the expressions on everyone else's faces.

"When looking at the phrase 'Man thinks', you have to..." begins a boy a few rows in front of me. I breathe again (Had I been holding my breath? Well, clearly) and slump slightly.

This room is filled with people from my year. People that I've known since I started Uni. People that I've bitched about essays with, people that I've worked on presentations with, people that I've helped and been helped by.

But apart from Katharine, no-one that I've gone out for coffee with. No-one that I have, in fact, done anything at all that's extra-curricular with.

They spend their evenings in the student pub comparing philosophical-penis size. They spend their weekends sharing amusing links on the PhilSoc wall, or going paintballing and dividing themselves up by whether they are empiricists or rationalists.

They love the subject. They love the course. They argue and bicker about and discuss it constantly.

Katharine and I spend ages talking about philosophy - about theory of language, religion, how we can know things, metaethics, politics - but even though we are talking around our modules, we never really discuss the modules themselves. And whenever I contribute in a seminar/lecture, especially recently, it seems to be wrong.

After this lecture I will go to fetch my two submitted essays. They are both 2:1s. I could have almost certainly gotten a higher make in both if I'd tried, but...I don't try. I don't care.

What am I saying?

After two and a half years I'm fairly sure that I chose the wrong degree course. I love philosophy, but dislike my course. I love Warwick, but I know that there are few people I'll stay in contact with after I leave.

I'm ready for it to end. And I'm really sad to be saying that.

And calm.

2012-01-11T20:17:00.000Z

Thanks to everyone for being so kind about the ex-boyfriend situation.

I blocked him on Facebook, as that is the only method he has used to contact me for past couple of years (Even though we weren't "Friends" or anything, he just sent me messages). Strangely, it never even occurred to me to block him. I think I'd forgotten that Facebook could do that. He's the only person I've ever blocked. I've never had to before.

But, anyway. Hopefully that part of my life is over. I have slightly niggling fears that he'll one day call me, as my mobile number hasn't changed in years. He might even turn up on my doorstep...no, he wouldn't. Would he? But if he does that, I'm fully entitled to call the police, right?

Ugh.

Here's a cute photo of my friend's baby to try and counteract all the negative that's been on my blog this week.

I really wish you could delete ex-boyfriends.

2012-01-09T10:46:00.001Z

This is long, and it's personal, and I'm sorry. I needed someone to talk to about it, but I don't know how to start this conversation with anyone.

When I was 17, I made a mistake. A mistake in the form of a "relationship" with a much older man. A mistake that has come back to bite me on the arse several times a year ever since, even though he lives about 300 miles away from me and we've not been in a relationship or even in proper contact for four years.

I left the "relationship" because I was uncomfortable and unhappy. I didn't love him. I didn't even particularly like him. He can't seem to understand that. He was and is convinced that something had happened that changed my fundamental outlook on life, that changed me to the core.

He opened a private blog (so private that he told me about it. And then got shitty when I read it. Obviously) which he uses to bitch about how shit his life is, go on about how fantastic he is compared to the rest of the human race and talk about me. He sent me messages on Facebook every Christmas, every birthday, when I started a new scholastic year at University, when he "got a feeling that I wasn't okay". When I replied to the message that was worried about me telling him I was fine and explaining why he might have got the feeling I wasn't so that he would stop thinking about me, he then responded with a huffy "All I needed was an 'I'm fine'". Everything I do in this correspondance is wrong.

Christmas 2011, he sent me a FB message. I responded with a "Please stop contacting me" I didn't want, need or like to hear from him. His response? A blog post seemingly based on a half-read post of mine detailing how dull I was now, how I wasn't showing any of the insight or intelligence I used to have, how I'd given up on being happy, how I was satisfied with a mediocre relationship, how I was content to be "fine" whereas previously I'd striven for everything to be brilliant.

In a fit of anger, I (stupidly) tweeted him telling him to expect an e-mail. I didn't send the four-page rant I originally penned; I just told him that he was wrong about me, that he had no idea about my life and that I wanted him to leave me alone.

Did he leave me alone? Of course not. Cue him completely ripping into me in a series of messages that has cultivated with me, in his opinion, in turn "losing" an argument with him that I had no idea I was participating in, not being adult enough to understand my own actions and him thanking me for the final conversation as it's "cleared up a lot of things"

Though not, I'm willing to bet, that I haven't had a total change of outlook and become a crap person compared to the one I was at 17. I've just grown up from the child I was and away from him.

I was 17 when we started dating. He was 31. I may have thrown myself at him — in fact I probably did, I was lonely and desperate for attention, desperate to please — but he was an adult. He was training to be a teacher, for Pete's sake. He should have known better. He shouldn't have gone NEAR me.

And since we split up? He's been nothing but ridiculous. When we were trying to stay friends, if I didn't talk to him enough or give him my undivided attention even though I was studying for my A Levels at the time, he accused me of being a bitch and of being ridiculous. I've told him repeatedly that I didn't want to talk to him any more and he always throws his toys out of the pram.

Four years and he can't stop obsessing about the...what, eight months...that we were in contact. Four years and he can't realise that there's nothing wrong with me, that I just don't want to be with him. Now it's not that I don't want to be with him, it's that I'm ashamed I ever was.

I asked him again this Christmas to stop contacting me because I don't want him in my life and I don't want him to have any power over me. But once again, he's managed to affect me. Opening his last message this morning, I feel utterly rubbish about myself, even though I know that his latest accusations are not true and the ones he threw at me in his blog post are probably not either.

But there's always that seed of doubt...

I've had some bad exes in the past. Ones that hurt me physically, ones that controlled me emotionally. But I moved on from them, and they moved on from me. This guy, the one who has never laid a finger on me and professes to be such a nice guy? I regret him more than I could ever articulate in a thousand blog posts.

I hope he'll leave me alone now, I really do. But I can't see it happening. I don't think he'll read this, as he's decided that my blog is dull and told me that he doesn't read it any more. Of course, he could be lying. I foresee at least one other blog post about me (I don't read his blog regularly, only if I'm expecting something about me on it, but I'm not going to look at it at all anymore). I imagine once the anger has worn off this argument and he gets all mopey again, he'll be back in touch. And I really, really don't know what to do about it.

2012 so far...

2012-01-06T17:32:00.001Z

2012 has, so far, been a year of ups and downs.

I started the year with what I thought what a hangover - but no, it was a stomach bug that left me weak and unable to do anything much for a couple of days.

Then I got into a spat with an ex boyfriend after he wrote horrible things about me on his blog - there's a post about that coming.

But on the plus side, my mum was offered a job today. Only a few days a week, but in a role that looks likely to expand in a few months. After almost a year of uncertain employment, this is brilliant news.

I also took my dogs to the vet today. In autumn last year we were told quite categorically that they were both obese. My Labrador is so huge they took a photo of her so they could a before and after. But we weighed them today and the vet has reclassified them as just "overweight". Which had made me extremely happy - and means that the hours I've spent exercising them haven't gone to waste.

Finally, things seem to be going well on my little projects. Kitchen Bitching, TV@TDF and She Cooks, She Eats are all growing nicely and I keep getting lovely positive feedback.

Things are lovely. And I hope that they will keep being lovely, as I could really use some lovely in my life.

And into 2012...

2011-12-31T17:31:00.002Z

A teacher of mine once said that making New Year Resolutions was pointless and silly. They never got stuck to, and if the resolutions we're really important you would do them before New Year.

I can see his point, and in one sense I do agree. Everyone - including myself - thinks that New Year means new everything, and that just because it's a new year all the bad things about you and your life will go away or be easier to change. This is, of course, nonsense - the date is nothing more than a label we apply to make things make sense.

But I still like making resolutions. I like projects and I like having defined time frames for these projects so that I can easily map progress. The beginning and ends of years are easy times to start projects and I do tend to stick to them, whether it's to take a self portrait every day or to lose weight, once I start them.

So I am going to make some, but they are going to be more like...goals. Resolutions are plans to be better, whereas goals are there to be worked at be achieved.

1. Graduate with a 2:1
This is a pretty dull one, but a necessity. I need to graduate. I need my 2:1. The first step towards this? Start writing my dissertation. Gulp.

2. Get a job or start freelancing
Both utterly terrifying prospects. Again, a necessary one. Until I do this, I can't move to London. So, yeah. Job.

3. Get to target weight
When I first weighed at the start of this year I was 15 stone 1.5 pounds and wore and 18-20. Before all this Christmas gluttony started I weighed 11 stone 5.5 pounds. I went out on Boxing Day and bought lots of new, size 12 clothes. My first target (as in, the one I'm going to hit before I decide whether or not I need to lose more) is 10 stone 7. I want that before my birthday, which is April 10th. 14 weeks. Let's do this.

4. Read 100 books
I've always been a reader, but this has fallen behind recently. Last year I just wanted to read more; this year I'm setting a target that I can always adjust if I need to.

5. Write
This is a bit of a weird one. I write quite a lot, as yesterday's post detailed. But I don't write for no reason other than fun any more. No fiction, little blogging. So this year, I want to write more. Not entirely sure what form this goal should take - Amy suggestions?

Whether or not you make any resolution, I do hope that you have a very happy new year, and I wish you all the best for 2012 xx

2011: The End

2011-12-30T16:27:00.004Z

My first post of 2011 was making some resolutions/plans for the year.

The first thing I wanted to do was lose weight. Which, I've done. Quite well, actually.

The second was to find a new job. Did I do that? Well, I left my old job and I'm (just about) making money from writing now. So I think I can tick that off the list, too.

The third was to write a bit more. I've certainly done that — my cooking blog gained more popularity than I expected it to so I ended up writing more on that, I became a writer on and later editor of a TV site and as the year died I also became editor of another site about cooking. But fiction writing, which is what I wanted to do? Yeah, I did very little of that.

The fourth was to read more. Which I have spectacularly failed at.

The fifth was to pass my second year at University with a 2:1. I did that. Excellent.

The sixth was to be happier more. And I think I did that fairly well too.

Other things I've done this year:

Dyed my hair red, which is something I've wanted to do for roughly four years
Started dressing more exuberantly, which is something I've wanted to do since I was 14 and my then-boyfriend told me I wasn't allowed to so changed my wardrobe from pink coats and glow-in-the-dark t-shirts to jeans and jumpers
Got more and more exasperated with my parents. They're human, they're not perfect. And I realised that that's okay
Learnt that I like a lot more food than I thought I did. This has improved my quality of life enormously
Met several people that I'd only ever spoken to on Twitter before who turned out to be absolutely lovely
Decided to change my plans to live here for the rest of my life and started looking at moving to London
Racked up another year in my relationship with a very, very nice man
Starting drinking alcohol. Not a lot, but wine and gin are finding their way into my glass a lot more often than they were previously
Was voted Women of the Year at my Slimming World group. I'm proud of this: the WotY isn't someone who has lost a lot of weight (I have lost much less than other members), she's someone who is inspiring. The other members of the group said that I was friendly, positive, hard working, kind and helped them all. I think that's quite a fantastic thing to be voted and thought of.
Watched 100 new films, piggybacking on the back of Garry's 250 New Films challenge
Became more critical of myself, more aware of my faults, more aware of my positives and generally happier with myself and who I am

Good year, I feel

An unexpected letter

2011-12-06T13:12:00.001Z

So, yesterday I started a post about how I've been feeling a bit down but I'm picking myself up by focussing on small, lovely things like my new size 12 jeans, cute photos of my dogs and dancing around the house to Christmas songs. I ran out of time so didn't post it, but I intended to post today.

Then, I got an invitation to my niece's baptism in the post, and a Christmas card from my brother's family in the post.

This is the brother that last year told us we weren't allowed to talk to their family anymore because we mentioned our concerns over how the eldest daughter treated the youngest daughter (throwing knives at her and not being told off for it, for example) and because my mother expressed unhappiness with the way my brother's wife spoke to her (telling her that her opinion was worthless, for example).

We haven't spoken to them at all, aside from the odd letter from them with photos of the kids. But...now this.

Our family is not religious any more. Even when we were we were CoE rather than Mormon. We know no-one at their church apart from them, and to be honest I don't even know them after a year and a half. I don't know if they would talk to us if and when we came. I don't know if my niece wants us to come and that's why we got the invite, or if it's a test, or what.

I don't know what to do. The Christmas card just said "We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love from the Samuel family" and had a generic "round robin" attached. The invite is just the details and a photo of my niece. We've been told we're not allowed to see them, but then we're invited to a baptism. I don't understand. And I don't understand what to do. I don't know what the right thing to do is.

What do I do?

Fancy Men

2011-11-16T15:32:00.001Z

I pushed open the door of my seminar room, spotted my friend and ambled over. It was a cold morning and the sky was grey and dull, which may have been the reason for the greyness and dullness of her skin.

“Are you alright?” I asked, dumping my satchel on the desk next to her and siting down. She grunted in response, turning to face me unsmilingly. There was despair in her eyes, and I knew why.

The seminar was for Philosophy of Social Science. It was causing Katharine actual pain. Well, not even the seminar. Just the thought of the seminar. We have spent seven weeks discussing the same thing (the problem of values in the social sciences), yet I feel I know absolutely nothing on the subject. It is soul destroying.

We soon perked up, though, when Gorgeous Seminar Man walked in and announced in a voice that wouldn’t be out of place on an M&S advert that our tutor was away, so he’d be taking the seminar.

I had Gorgeous Seminar Man for Sartre last year, and he caused much discussion. He looks like he’s a male model on his day off. His black hair is just that little bit too long and styled as though he doesn’t do anything much to it (although I’m fairly sure it takes at least ten minutes). His open necked shirts/t-shirts that are tapered to show that he is broad of shoulder and narrow of waist. In the summer he’ll wear long shorts that show muscly legs; in the winter it’s jumpers that show hints of chest and arm muscle.

Basically, he’s a babe.

I don’t fancy him (shuttup, I honestly don't, he’s too pretty) but the rest of my seminar certainly did. So whilst the three boys in the class, Gorgeous Seminar Man and I were arguing about whether Sen’s ideas of meta-rankings were coherent or not, they were slack jawed and drooling.

This is a bit of a trend that I’ve noticed in my two and a half years at Uni. The boys don’t really like any of the lecturers/tutors, but the girls go absolutely nuts for pretty much all of them. We only have one female lecturer and one female seminar tutor, with the former being batshit crazy and wonderful in a way that only girls appreciate and the latter being the essence of pure evil, so it’s not surprising that the boys aren’t that interested. But why do the girls go so crazy over them?

There are some I can understand, like Gorgeous Seminar Man and the Italian, curly haired, muscled, soft voiced hunk of a man who spoke English, Italian and Greek fluently and took our first year Ancient Philosophy seminars. But then the Scottish, 30 year old Apple-geek ginger who made my best friend go giggly? Or the 21 year old hamster faced scruff who made my friend blush every time she saw him? Or the borderline psychopath lecturer who glared at us like he wanted to strip our skin from our bones whilst telling us about Descartes for an hour a week?

Is it that they’re intelligent? In positions of power? That they know so much about subjects we find interesting?

Or is it just that the boys our age on the philosophy course are so universally vile that we’ll take whatever we can get to lust after?

NaNoWriMo No More

2011-11-08T17:05:00.000Z

You may have noticed that I started doing NaNoWriMo.

And you may have noticed that I've stopped.

I have four very good reasons for this.

1) A 2500 word essay, due in next week, on the problem of value-orientated bias in the social sciences
2) A 2500 word essay, due in next week, on the problem or lack thereof of scepticism for knowledge
3) A two page exegesis, due in next week, of one of Nietzsche's aphorisms
4) A detailed dissertation plan that needs to be completed by the end of next week

I also have two very bad reasons for this.

1) What I was writing was crap.
2) A bad weekend that meant I wrote several strongly worded and very long e-mails left me in no mood for writing fiction.

I'm not too depressed about this. NaNoWriMo was just an exercise to get me writing. Which it did, but it proved that just banging out words is not me. In fact, judging by the cringeworthy TOSH I was pouring out, writing full stop may not be me.

I'm in my last year of Uni, trying to get an average of 2:1 to make sure there is some chance of me getting a job afterwards. Taking on the project of writing a whole flipping novel in a month is not sensible.

But anyway. At least your feed readers won't be spammed any more. Now, who wants to hear about Nietzsche and why he thinks art of all forms is rubbish?

NaNoWriMo — Day Four

2011-11-04T18:15:00.001Z

“College together? Really?” Poppy asked, frowning at him. “I don’t remember you”

“Oh, nice” he said, laughing. “I was in the year above you, we had the writing group together”

“Oh, of course. Well, uh, hi!” Poppy smiled nervously and he grinned back, staring intently at her. It was more than a little unnerving.

“So, now we’ve all met each other” Mark said loudly, causing everyone to turn to him in surprise. “We can start work. Downstairs is still being worked on so we can’t really do anything there, but we still need to sort upstairs out”

“Uh, upstairs?” Jay asked, looked around at the pale white walls and the blue carpet. “Is this going to, like, be part of the shop too?”

“No, up here is going to be storage and staffroom”

“Oh, yeah. ‘Cos it, like, proper doesn’t look like a PlayStop”

“No. We’re going to have stands up here” Mark strode over to the left corner of the room, waving his arms around. “On these we’ll have all the extra copies of games, because we won’t want them all on shop floor. The idea will be to have a couple of empty copies of games on shop floor, then three or four filled ones in the drawers behind the counters and the rest up here so we can just run up and get them if and when we need them. Make sense?” Everyone nodded.

“But the problem is we need to get all the stands and the games in” Ali said, walking towards the stairs. “And that’s the first thing we’re doing today. That alright with everyone?”

“Yes” they chorused, following him down. Poppy was silently calculating how many boxes of heavy stands she could carry up the stairs before she collapsed, but when they reached the landing Ali was fiddling with a huge padlock on a door she hadn’t noticed when she came upstairs. He pushed it open and they were led out onto the roof.

“Right, so me and Mark will go downstairs and start pulling the boxes out of the delivery van” Karl said as he strode over to the fire escape stairs. “Ali, you stay inside and organise where everything goes. Then Alex and you guys can all do a production line thing, right, and pass the boxes along. Cool?”

“Cool” Alex said, holding the door open and waving the five nervous looking shop assistants out. “I’ll stay here. Because it’s warm here and it’s cold out there”

Poppy stepped onto the roof. It had been raining last night and there was a lot of muddy water and leaves covering it. She glanced down at her feet. Brand new pale yellow Converse that she had bought especially for this job on Saturday. She glanced up again at everyone, opening her mouth to ask if she could stand somewhere that wasn’t going to be treading through the water, but they had already organised themselves with a nice slot right in the middle of the mud and water for her.

She sighed. Mud would come out in the wash. Right?

She was standing with Beth on her right and Jacob on her left. One by one the boxes were fed up to them and they’d pass them along to Alex, who had Gavin inside with her carrying them to where Ali wanted them. Step by step, Poppy’s shoes got muddier and muddier.

“So how did you find out about the job?” Jacob asked Poppy.

“Um, it was advertised in the Nuneaton store” she puffed, passing him a small but surprisingly heavy box. “You?”

“I’ve got a friend in the Tamworth store. Helps to have friends in high places” he said, again talking incredibly quickly. “Well, I said high places. He’s very short so spends most of his working life on a ladder so he can reach the shelves that normal sized people can reach. But to him that’s high places, right?” Jacob gave a barking laugh, taking more boxes and passing them to Alex, who was looking at him strangely. “Well, if not, he told me about the job and handed a CV and here I am” As he passed a box to Alex, he gave her a dazzling smile. “And what about you?”

“I, uh, worked here already” she said, her voice suspicious. “In another store. I’ve been there as senior sales for a few years now, this is just a bigger store”

“Oh, awesome” Jacob said, nodding. The muscles in his incredibly thin arms popped out as he took the boxes off Poppy. “Do you like it? Well, you must like it. If you like games I bet it’s great working in a place that sells them. I bet it’s like someone who likes ice-cream working in an ice-cream factory. Or someone who likes balloons working in a balloon factory. Or someone who likes crap working in Poundland.” He fired off words like he didn’t have enough time to get them out before he forgot them, the pitch going up and down wildly. “It’ll be great, who wouldn’t want to work surrounded by your favourite things? Not that these are my favourite things. But they’re pretty high up the list and I’m not sure you can work in a dinosaur factory or an Avril Lavigne shop”

“Is he real?” Alex asked, leaning around him to see Poppy. She shrugged, eyes wide.

“I have absolutely no idea. I don’t think so”

Jacob did another barking laugh, beaming to show off a line of crooked teeth. His hair was the colour of golden syrup, or at least it looked that way underneath all the hair products that were keeping it in a perfectly messed up state, but the stubble poking out from his weirdly angular chin was gingery in colour. Yet, still, his face was pleasing somehow.

Half an hour later all the boxes were in and Poppy’s feet were well and truly soaked. The bottom of her jeans were dark with muddy water, and her beautiful new shoes were covered in brown stains.

“Sorry about that” Mark said, looking at her feet. She shrugged, doing her best to pretend she didn’t care about silly things like new shoes that she’d spent the last of her savings on. “If you’d said you could have gone inside”

“No, it’s fine. Really, honestly, it’s fine. They’re just shoes, right?”

Mark gave her a look, like he knew she was lying, but dropped it. He slammed the door, which shut with a pleasing ‘thunk’, and beckoned for her to go back into the big upstairs room. It looked a lot smaller covered in boxes.

“Fucking sweet, man, good work” said Karl, nodding approvingly at everyone. “Right, first up we need to sort these out” he pointed to the long, thin boxes “As they’ve got the stands in and there’s no fucking point sorting out the games until we’ve got the stands to put them on, yeah?”

“Yeah” they chorused.

“So there’s going to be about twenty stands in all. Should take two people to sort out a stand so...yeah. Get in pairs and me and Mark will go see how the builders are doing”.

Beth and Alex immediately paired up. Poppy panicked for a second, thinking she’d be left alone, when...

“Okay. Ready. Let’s do this. Let’s go. Let’s put some stands up. And we’ll be the best stand-putters-uppeers in the world, oh yes, and the others will bow down to us in all our stand-making glory”

Jacob was standing next to her, bouncing from foot to foot and punching like a boxer warming up for a fight.

“Uh...”

“Basically” he said, stopping his bouncing and turning to face her. “Let’s put stands up”

“Okay, but I warn you, I’m crap at doing anything remotely put-togethery”

“That is fine. I shall train you and give you the ninja powers you need to undertake such a task”

“You’re a bit strange, has anyone ever told you that?”

“I thrive on it, my dear. Shall we?”

Putting together the stands was a surprisingly difficult task. Between Poppy trying to find a nail she hadn’t bitten into oblivion to use to open the boxes and then hitting herself in the face with a piece of hard metal when her hand slipped, it took a lot longer than they thought it would. By the time they’d all finished putting the stands together it was lunchtime.

“Right, hour for lunch” Karl said, working his arms into his leather jacket. “Stay here, go out, do whatever you like. Not sure what there is here, this town is fucking tiny, but you might be able to find something”

“There’s a KFC at the bottom” Alex said, putting on a black denim jacket and untucking her dark hair from the collar.

“There you go. Not sure if there’s a McDonalds, though. What kind of fucking town doesn’t have a McDonalds? But anyway, whatever. An hour. That alright?”

“Safe, blud” said Gavin. The others all made similar noises of assent and they trooped downstairs, picking their way past the builders.

When they got outside Ali, Mark and Karl all charged off together. Alex hovered around Beth and Poppy whilst Gavin, Jacob and Jay walked off on their own.

Words today: 1548

Words total: 7535/50,000

NaNoWriMo — Day Three

2011-11-03T18:33:00.004Z

(Note: It sounds like I'm being horrible and stereotypical in this one. I'm not. These people are all based on people that I've met)

“...and we’re going to be setting up the shop from scratch, so hopefully I’ll be able to get a bit more knowledge on games whilst we do that” Poppy said as the car pulled into the car park. She unbuckled her seatbelt, opened the door and swung her legs out into the night, still chattering away. “And my boss is called Mark, he’s really nice, and then I have another boss called Ali, and he’s also really nice, so it’s going to be really good I hope!”

“Ooooo, get you!” said Julie, opening her car door and going to open the boot. “Well done, love!”

“Thanks” Poppy said, grinning at both Julie and her parents. “I’m actually really excited”

“I’m not surprised. This’ll be good for you, bit of money and some people to talk to” Julie said, grabbing saxophones from the boot and handing them out to the correct people. “You’ll love it”

“And if she doesn’t, she can just leave” Karen said, swinging her clarinet onto her shoulder. “That’s what we said didn’t we, Keith”

“Aye” Poppy’s dad said, pulling his instrument and the music bag from the boot and onto his shoulders. “She’s worried about being out of her depth but it’s fine, she can just leave if she doesn’t think she knows enough”

They slammed the boot shut and walked towards the college. It was rehearsal night for the wind band they played in, but Poppy was less interested in talking about concert dates and more interested in talking about her new job. At least there would be more people to tell here.

She pushed open the door to the rehearsal room with her shoulder, standing back to let her parents and neighbour in. The college used to be a primary school many years ago; now it was old and shabby, with paint peeling off the walls and windows rattling when the wind blew too hard. They had been rehearsing here for a few years now and were used to wrapping up with extra layers and wearing their gloves to practise in winter. Didn’t do the instruments any good being so cold, though.

The conductor, a woman with a halo of frizzy malt coloured hair and eyes magnified to strange proportions by her thick glasses, was already there, going over music with the trombone player, who had been her best friend since childhood and was the single most boring person Poppy had ever met. Cathy, a blonde clarinet player with a penchant for low cut tops and karaoke was changing her reed and John, the cornet player who never spoke and just glared at them all moodily was sitting ready with his stand set up and his phone in his hand, texting. Poppy’s bubble of enthusiasm burst. She didn’t really think she could talk to any of them.

“Have you got a spare reed, Poppy, mine’s just broken...”

Poppy slung her saxophone case onto a table and snapped it open. She opened her box of reeds, pulled one out and threw it to Julie, before pulling out the pad saver from her saxophone, fitting the mouthpiece onto the neck and slotting the neck into the body. She’d been doing that for eight years now; it was quite a comforting thing. And she liked comforting things, things that she knew how to do and knew she could do well. Not like working in a shop talking about things she’d never had to or anything.

She put her stand together and carried it to her seat. She was the head of the middle of the band and sat right in the middle of everyone. Not that that meant much; there were only seven people in the band at the moment. It seems there wasn’t much of a call for wind bands nowadays.

“Right, let’s get started...” the conductor said, doling out music as everyone scrabbled to their seats. She handed Poppy the sheet of music and Poppy had to stifle a groan. Pirates of the Carribbean. A very good piece of music, but one that their band was going to absolutely slaughter. They were not a very good band.

Still, the two hours she sat there playing were very good distraction from the entire day of panic she’d had prior to that. She was going to start a new job tomorrow. A new job that meant meeting new people and doing new things and basically throwing herself out of her comfort zone as much as possible. There was a massive difference between watching Rory play Gears of War whilst bitching about how rubbish it was compared to Kirby and telling a customer, a stranger, who believed that she had in-depth gaming knowledge which console and games to buy. She had no idea what she was going to be.

She mentally rehearsed once more what she was going to wear, what time to get up, how to get to the shop and how she would say hello. It’d be fine. It’d all be fine. And she had hidden an enormous bar of Dairy Milk in her bedroom just in case it wasn’t.

Handbrake on, engine off. Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat. It’d be fine. It had to be fine.

Poppy checked her appearance in her rear view mirror for the umpteenth time and try to control her shaking hands. She could see in front of her where she had to go, the front of the shop was being ripped out and replaced with PlayStop’s and there were builders swarming round inside. She just had to actually go there.

The problem was she didn’t know anyone else who was working there and she couldn’t see Ali and Mark. It was going to be hard enough for her to stand up and drop into this situation full of scary new people; if she didn’t have someone who could hold her hand whilst she did it she’d be royally buggered.

But it was five to nine. And she had to be there for nine. So whether she liked it or not, she had to get out of the car.

She took one final deep breath, closed her eyes and pushed open the car door. Grabbed her bag, got out, locked the car and marched off towards the shop before she could really think about what she was doing. Hands clenched into fists to stop them from shaking. It was fine. She would be fine.

As she approached the shop, though, she started to panic. Even when she’d been in the car worrying she couldn’t see Ali and Mark, she assumed that they were just out of sight. But she was now standing in front of the window getting weird looks from the builders and there really was no one there that she knew. How was she supposed to get into the shop? What if they thought she wasn’t turning up? She peered into the shop again, cupping her hands round her eyes, trying to see if she could see anyone that wasn’t a builder inside.

“Y’alright?”

Poppy turned round. A stunningly beautiful man with a totally shaved head, a sleeve of tattoos on each arm and a pointy piercing in his bottom lip was standing behind her. He had a coffee in each hand and was looking at her angrily.

“Um, yes....”

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked. His voice was incredibly deep for such a tall man.

“I...I’m supposed to be working here, and, I, well, I, uh...”

“Are you Poppy?” he asked, frowning at her with incredibly dark eyebrows.

“Yes” she whimpered, slightly worried that she was going to have two cartons of boiling hot coffee thrown in her face.

“Ah, sweet, fucking A” he said. “I’m Karl, helping set the shop up. I’d shake your hand, but they’re full...”

“Oh, would you like me to carry one?”

“That would be fucking awesome, thanks” he said, handing her the cup and striding towards the front door. “Coming?”

Poppy jumped and scurried after him, through the open door and into the building site that would one day soon be a shop floor. Karl strode past her, picking his way through the debris on the floor and making his way to the back. Poppy following, smiling apologetically at the builders for her very existence.

At the back of the room was a doorway. Karl led her through this doorway into an office, then through another doorway into a kitchen. Next to the kitchen was a room filled with boxes and a doorway that led to a set of steps. Karl charged up these, leaving Poppy trying to keep up.

“How did you find out about the job?” he asked over his shoulder.

“There was an advert in the Nuneaton store window...”

“Ah, sweet. We’re all through here”

They reached the top of the stairs and went into another room, one that was as big as the entire downstairs. Ali and Mark were there, sitting on chairs and waving cheerily at her. Sitting next to them was a woman in her early 20’s with dark hair cut in a severe bob and a lot of eyeliner. Standing in front of them were another four people.

“Hell-lor!” said Mark cheerily. “Right, now we’re all here we can get introduced. I’m Mark and this is Ali – we’ve worked together in shops before, and we’ll be your manager and assistant manager. And this is Alex Ayers” he gestured towards the woman who nodded and twisted her mouth into an approximation of a smile “She’s been working at PlayStop for years, in a different store, and she’s going to be the senior sales. Which is basically between a sales-assistant-slash-shop-monkey and a assistant manager”

“This is Karl” he continued, waving his hand towards the heavily tattooed man who had let her in. “He’s manager of the Birmingham store, he’s helping us set up” Karl grinned at everyone, showing a row of perfect teeth. He really did have perfect features. He could be on a Calvin Klein advert if it wasn’t for the tattoos and piercings.

“The rest of you are all newbies, and all our shop assistants. I’ve forgotten at least two of your names, so introduce yourself whilst we decide what we want you to do”

Poppy’s eyes flicked to the four people standing in front of her. Talking to new people. Eeep.

“I’m Gavin, call me Gav” said the skinniest of them, walking towards her. He was wearing a tracksuit and his head was shaved. Combined with his skinny frame and gaunt face he looked a bit like a walking skeleton.

“Poppy” she said, holding out her hand. Gavin winked at her by way of greeting and Poppy immediately got a sense that this was not a person she’d be happy spending much time with.

The next person was utterly tiny, with an awful lot of very messy dark hair. She had a studded belt, dark eyes that were hidden by her fringe and a big smile.

“I’m Beth” she said. “I’m still at college, so I’ll only be working weekends”

“Uh, I’m Poppy” she replied. “I’ll probably be working here...uh, most of the time”

“Suh-WEET!” Beth said, grinning at her dopily. Poppy briefly wondered if she was on drugs.

The next person she approached was tall and thin, like a beanpole. He had a lip piercing, messy brown hair covered up by a cap and a beard that was startling at odds with his baby face.

“I’m...uh...Jay” he said awkwardly, his hands stuck in the pockets of his falling-down chords. “I’m doing music technology at college”

“I’m Poppy, this will be my full time job, going to University next year”

“Oh cool, what’re you gonna study?”

“Philosophy”. At this Jay pulled his head back like Poppy had gone to slap him, opened his eyes wide and nodded slowly.

“Shiiiiiit, that’s, like, deep man. Y’know?”

“Um, yes, I do kind of”. Poppy was certain that this one was on drugs. It was with a sense of relief that she turned to the last guy.

He looked like the male equivalent of Nicole Richie; he had a tiny thin body but a huge head. His jaw was chiseled, his nose was enormous and his eyes were tiny. Strangely, though, his face fit together quite nicely. He positively beamed at Poppy and bounced towards her, sticking his hand out.

“I’m Jacob, Jacob Jones, studying English at Uni, working here on weekends” he said very quickly and in the poshest accent Poppy had ever heard.

“I’m Poppy Smith” she said, smiling back tentatively and shaking his hand. He had a very firm grip.

“Uh, don’t I know you?”

“We went to college together”

Words today: 2131

Words total: 5987/50,000

NaNoWriMo — Day Two

2011-11-02T17:26:00.000Z

“So” he said as she settled herself calmly back in her chair “You’ve had a crappy day. But you’re not going to give up now, right?”

“I don’t see why not” she said, staring off to space. “I was perfectly fine doing nothing until my mum barged in”

“You were miserable”

“Yes. I was perfectly fine being miserable”

He smiled at her as she blew gently on the surface of her drink and took a sip, her tongue sneaking up to lick off the tiny chocolate moustache she gave herself whilst doing so. They were sitting by the window and the pale October light was causing her gingery hair to almost glow. Her huge grey eyes flicked from the street to him. She twisted her mouth into a grimace and shrugged theatrically.

“What am I going to do, eh?” she asked, putting her cup down on the table. “I’ve got to keep applying. You’re right. I’ve only been job searching for one day”

“Did you put your CV on Monster like you said you were going to?” he asked. She nodded vigorously.

“Yep, yep, and I said I was looking for administrative roles. No-one has gotten back to me yet, but it’s only been on there a few days”

“And the job centre website?” Poppy rolled her eyes.

“Well, I applied for everything that looked sensible, but not much is sensible. They have jobs listed with an application date of three months ago, some jobs that you click on and they just disappear, others that you call the number and they have no idea what you’re talking about”

“That’s a bit shit”

“Just a little” she smiled at him ruefully, scooping up her mug. “Don’t suppose I can get a job carrying your gardening tools or anything?”

“Not sure my bosses would be happy about paying for an apprentice to have a caddy”

“I don’t mean them to give me a job, I mean you”

“Sure, as long as you’d accept grass cuttings as payment”

“Maybe not...”

They bantered back and forth until the sun had started to set and their drinks had gone cold. Rory glanced at his watch and yawned, stretching his back by raising his long, skinny arms to the ceiling.

“We’d better go” he said. “It’s almost five, your mam will be going spare”

“She’s fine” Poppy said, lifting her mug up and peering into it. “She knows I’m getting a lift back with you”

“How do you know you’re getting a lift back with me? I didn’t offer”

“I know, but you love me, and you only live two streets away” She grinned at him, swigging down the rest of her drink and pulling her coat on. “Come on, let’s go”

They stood up to leave, Rory walking ahead slightly so he could open to door for her. Once outside they immediately zipped their coats up completely, burying their hands in their pockets to keep them warm. They fell into step naturally, walking down the street with leaves blowing around their feet.

“I suppose we can’t ignore the fact that it’s autumn now” Poppy said, squinting as wind blew in her face.

“S’bloody freezing” Rory muttered. “Hey, do you mind if I nip into PlayStop and find out when the next Call of Duty is out?”

“Yes. But only because Call of Duty is rubbish”

“Says the worlds biggest Nintendo fangirl”

They approached the tiny shop, which had a window that the phrase “Full to busting” could have been created for. The door was covered in bright posters with jagged black writing advertising trade-in deals. The window was stuffed with consoles, controllers, games and enormous stickers saying how cheap they are. Next to the door was an A-Frame that had a hand drawn poster advertising a midnight launch of the new Gears of War game. There was even a huge poster stuck in the window in front of the consoles advertising the release date for the game Rory was interested in. But that’s not what he was pointing at. He was pointing at a plain white piece of paper right in the corner, a piece of paper that had very boring black writing declaring that they were looking for staff.

“Have you applied here?”

“No” Poppy said, crouching down to examine the advert. “I didn’t even think of it”

“Why not?” he asked. She frowned up at him.

“Because PlayStop is the home of smelly, overweight teenage boys with hair they’ve dyed black, dark baggy clothes advertising scary sounding bands and a million piercings. Apart from being overweight, I am none of those things”

“Well, maybe they could do with someone who smells like vanilla and wears flowery dresses” Rory reasoned. She stood up, still frowning down at the poster. “Look, what have you got to lose? I’ve got to go in anyway, you can just ask if you can hand a CV in”

“Fine” she said, undoing the clasp on her bag and pulling out a neatly printed, folded and paperclipped CV. “Let’s do this”. And she stepped into the shop.

Five days later she was nervously smoothing her hair over her head and standing outside the PlayStop in the next town over. They’d called her the very next day to ask her for an interview, and although she couldn’t quite believe it, here she was.

She didn’t have much chance she thought as she eyed the black and yellow facade of the shop, which was again completely filled with posters and gaming items. In fact she was fairly sure that if she hadn’t have had an interview with a temping agency five minutes from the PlayStop shop, she wouldn’t have bothered turning up. But still, whilst she was here...

She glanced down at her phone, before turning it off. Three minutes before she was supposed to turn up. It was time. She took a deep breath and walked forward into the shop. Let’s do this.

It was bigger than the one in her town, and busier too. As she approached the counter she realised that there was quite a queue, and there were people behind her as well. She stepped out of the firing line nervously, not wanting to stop people from getting served as she thought that probably wasn’t a good trait in a potential employee.

“Hey there, do you need any help?”

Poppy turned round in surprise. The man speaking was a good six feet tall, four stone overweight and the owner of impressively bright blue and black hair that perfectly matched his bright blue t-shirt and baggy black jeans. Even though he looked to be in his late 20‘s, the jeans were sitting so low you could see quite a lot of his banana patterned pants. He had a beard that ran around his jawline and piercings all around the outer rim of his ears. Behind his thick rimmed glasses, though, his eyes were kind.

“We work here, I promise”

The guy next to him was a few inches shorter, several years younger and looked a lot less scary. His blonde hair stuck up all over the place and his eyelashes were so pale she thought for a moment he didn’t have any. He was also wearing a bright red Mario Kart t-shirt, which she was immediately envious of.

“My...my name is Poppy Smith, I’m here for an interview?”

“Oh, cool, that’s with us” the taller man said. He held out an enormous bear paw of a hand. “My name is Mark, and this is Ali. We’ll be the manager and assistant manager of the new store”

“New...store?” she asked.

“Yeah, didn’t they tell you? They’re opening up a new PlayStop shop in...Hinckley, I think it’s called?...and they need people to staff it. Which is where” here he gestured to her exaggeratedly, bending his knees and throwing his arms out “you come in!”

“Oh, right. I mean, cool, that’s fine” she said, smiling nervously from one to the other. They smiled back, a lot more confidently.

“Right, so shall we...?” Mark said.

“Yeah, we can’t do the interview here as there isn’t space” Ali said. He had the broadest Yorkshire accent she had ever heard. “So there’s a cafe up in the shopping centre, is it okay if we go there? You can have a coffee”

“Um, okay. I mean, yes, that’s, that’s fine” she babbled, smiling some more. She really needed to stop smiling or they were going to think she had some kind of problem.

She followed them out of the shop and across into the centre, feeling very self conscious in her black ballet pumps and brightly patterned black dress. She was stupid to think she’d get this job. Stupid.

They led her into the cafe and sat her at a table, before going off to get coffee for them all. When they came back she thanked them nervously, blowing gently on the surface and wondering if a shot of caffeine was a good idea when she was this nervous.

“So” Mark said, pulling out some papers and a pen from his bag. “You play games?”

“Um, yes” Poppy replied hesitantly. “But...only a little”

“What consoles do you have?”

“A DS, Playstation 2 and a Wii”

“And your favourite game on the Wii?”

“DeBlob. Excellent game and no-one has ever heard of it. Although I’m very partial to Mario Kart, and very jealous of your t-shirt” she said, nodding towards Ali’s chest. He smiled and plucked at it.

“I got it free at the launch of the game” he said with a big grin. His front two teeth were crooked. “You get all sorts of freebies when you work at PlayStop”

“Really?” she said, grinning back nervously.

“Really” Mark replied solemnly. “My house is full of gaming junk”

“Sounds excellent to me”

“Oh, it is”

The interview moved from gaming to the more usual interview questions — where have you worked before, tell me a situation when you’ve used initiative, what are your strengths and weaknesses, that kind of thing. After a while Poppy relaxed into it. She’d always been fine with interviews and performing before. This was just another performance. When her coffee was almost gone and she thought they’d asked everything they could, she noticed them giving each other nervous looks.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah...” Mark replied. “It’s just, I’m sorry, we’ve got to ask you this question...if you could be any character from any game, who would it be and why?”

“Link from Zelda” Poppy replied instantly. “The guy has lived in one form or another for hundreds of years. He’s been a little boy, a pirate, he uses swords, slingshots, bows and arrows, boomerangs, he rides horses and travels to different worlds and is generally full of awesome. I want to be like Link”

“Not like Princess Peach?” Ali asked, smirking slightly. Poppy gave him a look.

“Hell, no” she said. “Not unless you’re talking Princess Peach from Super Princess Peach or Super Smash Bros”

“Thanks, Poppy” they said, standing up and shaking her hand. “We’ll be in touch”

As she walked back to her car, she felt a lot more confident about her ballet pumps and bright dress.

“So how did it go?” Karen asked when she walked through the door.

“Good, for both” Poppy replied. “The temping agency are going to ring me on Monday and the gamey people said they’d be in touch” Karen smiled, nodding to show how impressed she was.

“That’s good news, then” she said. “If you can get a nice job in an office or something that would be lovely!”

“Yeah” Poppy said absently, walking into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. “Lovely...”

She’d been so completely dismissive of the gaming job when it had come up, and had really only applied to shut Rory and her mum up. But now, after having met Mark and Ali, she wasn’t so sure...

As she was fishing the teabag out with a spoon, her phone started buzzing. She dug it out of her bag and glanced at the screen. A mobile number. She answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Poppy, it’s Mark”

“Mark! Uh, hi!”

“Hi, listen, we didn’t think there was much point in waiting ‘til after the weekend. We’d like to offer you the job, starting Monday”

Poppy paused. She was starting Uni in just under a year. Could she imagine herself selling games for that long?

But on the other hand, what else did she have to do...?

“Thanks, Mark” she beamed. “That’s brilliant”

Words today: 2107

Words total: 3856/50,000

NaNoWriMo — Day One

2011-11-01T12:36:00.003Z

Prologue

It took a few instances of seeing her for him to decide that she was going to be his next project, but once he’d come to that decision he couldn’t believe that he’d ever thought it could be anyone else.

The first time he met her was at a birthday party. It was a pirate party, and her costume was magnificent. An enormous curly black wig, white silk blouse pulled in by a purple corset, tight trousers, scarlet lipstick and more eyeliner than a member of KISS on halloween. When she walked in the room, everyone stared. But she was nothing like her flamboyant costume; she spent the evening sitting nervously at the side of the room, chewing on her index fingernail and staring at everyone with wide eyes. Whenever someone came up to her she beamed and chatted away happily, but actually getting up and talking? Forget about it.

The second time he met her was at the writing group in the sixth form college they both attended. He only recognised her because of her enormous pale eyes; her gingery brown ponytail and flowery dress were a far cry from black curls and skintight trousers.

She read out a poem first, the assignment for the week. Before she started reading she cleared her throat, looked up from beneath a heavy fringe and said “I’m sorry, this is really crap. I’m not good at poetry”. She was right, it was crap. But the second thing she read out, a short story about falling in and out of love, was so good it made him burn with jealousy. He stared at this small, unassuming girl and wondered if she knew how good she was with words. Judging by her shaking hands and the way she didn’t meet anyone’s eye, he thought not.

The third time he saw her was in the library. She was on a table with three friends and, judging by the piles of French dictionaries and magazines, was working on a French essay. He hid behind a computer monitor and watched her, watched how she bit her lip whilst she covered the page in messy black handwriting and how she pulled her cardigan over her shoulders and arms even though it was a hot day. He noticed that whenever her friends asked a question about a verb or translation she could answer it immediately, but when she passed her essay to her friend to check she apologised for how bad it was. But most of all he noticed how eager she was to please her friends, how desperate she was to be liked by them.

It was that that made him decide that he was going to work on her. All that potential combined with that eagerness to please? It was like she was made for him. All he needed to do was meet her — he could own her within a month, maybe two. He didn’t know how he was going to meet her, or when or where, but he knew he would. The universe tended to work in his favour like that, and this girl felt like a big juicy gift.

He was going to own Poppy Smith. Of that, he was certain.

Chapter One

Poppy had been staring at the wall for precisely three hours, forty six minutes and eighteen seconds when the door slammed. It hadn’t been constant staring at the wall, of course — even she wasn’t that numb — but it had been fairly uninterrupted. Whenever she caught herself staring she would give herself a little shake and look back down at her book, but the words were just wiggly lines. She’d flick her eyes down the page, taking absolutely nothing in, and return to gazing at the wall in front of her. For three hours, forty six minutes and eighteen seconds.

There was absolutely nothing on the wall that merited that amount of staring, of course. Buttercream yellow wallpaper, a dado rail, a tiny painting of a house in the country that they’d once stayed in on holiday. Even if you studied every single inch of it you wouldn’t be able to justify such staring. But she wasn’t really seeing as she stared. She was numb, thinking nothing and doing nothing. The wall was nothing more than a place to rest her eyes whilst nothingness passed in front of her.

The front door slammed and she jumped. The dog that had been curled up by her feet stood up and ran to the door, tail wagging, almost getting bashed in the face when Poppy’s mother Karen opened the door and strode into the living room with her arms full of bags.

“Have you been sitting there all this time?” she asked Poppy.

“No” Poppy replied, smoothing down the pages of her book. “I got up and made a cup of tea, see!” She picked up her full cup of tea and waved it at her mother, taking a sip. It was cold.

“So you’ve been alternately sitting there and getting up to make tea since I left you four hours ago?” Karen said, dumping her bags on the table and staring at Poppy with her hands on her hips.

“Yes. And what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not like you. Usually you’re doing things, lots of things. Too many things. Since your exams finished and your friends left you’ve just been moping around”

“I’ve been reading!” Poppy protested, picking up her book and waving it at her mother.

“Yes, nothing but books that you’ve already read”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Like I said. It’s not you” Karen went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. The dog ran after her with its tail wagging, leaving Poppy sitting in the living room with her bottom lip poking out. It was the middle of October, about three months since she’d finished her A Levels and one month since her friends had all left for University. Since they’d left she’d done precisely nothing. But that was fine. Fine. It was her gap year, that’s what she was allowed to do, right?

“Why don’t you try and get a job?” Karen said, coming back into the living room with a cup of coffee clasped in her hands.

“I’ve got a job”

“Yes, two nights a week in a pub that you hate”

“It’s a job”

“It’s not what I mean, Poppy, and you know it” Karen said, exasperation seeping into her voice. “You don’t see anyone, you don’t do anything, you just mope around the house all day being miserable”

“I see Rory”

“Yeah, once or twice a week. And all you can talk about is what’s been on telly because you’ve got nothing interesting to say”

Poppy tried to glare at her mother, but couldn’t. Her poking out lip was starting to wobble and her frown was rapidly losing intensity because her eyes were filling with tears. Her mother’s annoyed expression immediately melted into one of concern.

“Oh, don’t cry, love” she said, putting her coffee down and kneeling next to Poppy’s chair. “It’s okay. I’m not saying this to be nasty, I just know you’re bored”

Poppy looked at Karen helplessly, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

“It’s just...I deferred my place at Uni so that I could go to France with Jess and then she pulled out so I couldn’t afford it and then my volunteering plans went to shit and now it just seems like everything I do is going to not work and be crap” she said, her voice raising an octave or so during the course of her speech.

“That’s rubbish and you know it” Karen said. “You had a bit of bad luck but that doesn’t mean that everything you do is going to end up crap” Poppy sniffed loudly and gazed at her dolefully. Karen laughed and put her arms round her, pulling her in for a hug.

“C’mon. You stop crying, I’ll drink my coffee and we’ll go do your CV. We can go into town one day and start handing them out, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay” Poppy said, reaching for a tissue and blowing her nose with a loud honking sound. “S’not like I have anything better to do”

“I can’t believe I wasted an entire day of reading and playing The Sims to do this shit” Poppy raged, throwing her bag down by an armchair and flopping into it angrily. Rory raised an eyebrow and took a deliberately calm sip of his coffee.

“Job hunting went well, then?”

“I swear” Poppy said, leaning forward to glare at him, her eyebrows knotted together in a tight frown “I have been in every shop, every recruitment agency and every...every flipping...every possible place to get a job in this whole damn town and no-one will hire me”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know” she sighed, leaning back and collapsing heavily into the chair. “Places don’t have jobs going, recruitment agencies don’t have much call for a 18 year old with absolutely no training in administration — although, really, how hard can it be to do bloody filing and computer stuff, I’ve been doing that since I was a kid — and, and, and...oh, I’m just crap and I’m not going to get anything and I’m going to waste my whole flipping gap year”

She scowled at her lap and Rory hid a smile. She looked like a little girl when she was in a bad mood.

“Look, you’ve only been doing this for one day, you can’t expect to get something straight away” he said reasonably.

“Yes I bloody can” she said, as unreasonably as she possibly could. “I’m smart, I’m punctual, hard working, personable, why won’t people employ me?”

“You kind of need to have an interview before you’ll get a job...”

“Oh, stop being so bloody reasonable” Poppy snapped, digging in her bag for her purse. “It’s alright for you, you’ve known you wanted to be a gardener since you were a kid”

“I’m not a gardener, I’m a Horticultural Apprentice...”

“You’re a bloody gardener, be proud of it” she said, the corners of her mouth tugging slightly into a smile. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m alright thanks” he said, watching her as she walked to the counter and ordered something with lots of chocolate and whipped cream on top. When she came back she was considerably calmer. A few minutes to calm down and a copious amount of chocolate tended to do that to her.

Words today: 1749

Total words: 1749/50,000

NaNoWriMo - the prologue

2011-10-31T09:23:00.002Z

I write a bit. Did you know that? Well, you’re reading this so you clearly do. But I write other stuff too. Stuff for the TV website and stuff for the cooking website and stuff for the occasional person who pays me to write stuff. And sometimes, just sometimes, I write fiction.

I used to write fiction a lot. It was all I wrote. Not many full stories and certainly nothing that’s ever come near to a novel, but fiction. Scenes, interactions, conversations, descriptions, that kind of thing. But that’s dried up recently.

Partly it’s due to lack of having anything at all interesting to write about, but I think it’s mainly because I write so much elsewhere. Two blogs, essays, notes, TV writing, work writing, letters and Twitter mean that I’m constantly using words. And I sometimes feel like I’ve run out of them, that I don't have any left for writing for fun.

In an attempt to rectify this, I’m going to attempt NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, in November a whole lot of people get together and bang out a novel over the course of the month. Well, I say a novel — I mean 50,000 words (1667 a day) or about 175 pages. A small novel. It’s difficult, but I’m going to bloody try it.

I don't think that this is going to create anything I could actually use. I don't even think it's the best thing to improve any writing I do. I just think I need to kick start myself, get my arse in gear and start writing again. No matter what it is I'm actually writing about.

And this is the bit where I apologise. I apologise firstly because I know that what I write is going to be a bit shit — that’s kind of the point of NaNoWriMo, it’s not about great quality it’s just about getting you actually writing. And I apologise secondly because this shit is going to be put on my blog, as I think it’s possibly the only way to make sure I actually do it.

So I’m going to be clogging up your feed readers, for a whole month, from tomorrow, with crap. Like I said, I’m sorry. You don’t actually have to read it or anything. I just want to put it out there.

Everything changes

2011-10-30T17:24:00.001Z

I'm really beginning to realise that there is absolutely no point planning things.

When I was much younger — as in, when I was under 10 — I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. I thought it would be a fantastic job, and I could go home afterwards and write brilliant books about being an exciting dolphin trainer. My dreams got slightly more realistic in my teens, and for three or four years I was convinced that I was going to become an optometrist. Until, of course, I got a crappy grade at GCSE science (B, my lowest grade. Grrr) and learnt that AS Level Chemistry made me want to tear my own eyeballs out and eat them.

When I was younger — as in, until about three years ago — I planned to remain single until I was at least 30, not have kids until I was at least 35, to live on my own in a gorgeous posh flat and be fabulous and single and date lots of men and do lots of wonderful things all on my own. And then I started dating someone because he looked dangerous and fun and thought that he would pass the time before I went to University. Two and a half years later we're still together, and it looks like the 8 and a half years left before my 30th birthday will bring marriage, a house and kids. Which is terrifying, but exciting.

And when I was a teeny bit younger — as in, until about three days ago — I was convinced that I wouldn't live in London. Ever. What was the point? The trains from my home town only take an hour, I like where I live (It's crappy and small and has four whole Greggs, but has good transport links) and for the price of rent on a room in a house share I could be paying a mortgage on a four bedroom house up here. But then I went to London and realised that I didn't just like going down there on visits, I really love it. So now I'm looking at prices and wondering if it's possible to actually...do it. And move there. And live in London.

Wise words

2011-10-23T16:48:00.000+01:00

I have a board on Pinterest called "Things I Want In Prints". I think I need to remember this one more at the moment.

And this one:

And this is alarmingly true about myself:

What do you do?

2011-10-17T19:51:00.001+01:00

What do you do when things get too much?

Not big things, just things. When you wake up and it seems too hard to get out of bed. When you have to send e-mails that are big and scary, e-mails that take you an hour to write even though you usually blast out pages and pages of words in ten minutes. When nothing looks good on you, when your hair won’t go right, when the little haven you found to work in is no longer viable because now there’s Coronation Street blasting at full volume.

When you’re late leaving the house, and when you do leave there’s no music on the radio so you switch it off and you’re alone with your thoughts and you start to worry. You worry about how much you loathe what you’re doing right now but how scared you are of doing anything else afterwards. You worry about how your luck appears to have run out, how things have suddenly gotten hard. Really, really hard. You worry about the people you’re going to meet and how they’re going to think you’re a pathetic little scummer, how they’re going to realise that you’re not worthy of speaking to them. You worry about whether they’re right, and what it says that you think they are. You’re agreeing with nasty things said about you that haven’t even been thought yet.

You worry about money — not just your own, the money of your parents and your partner. You worry about qualifications and courses of those nearest and dearest to you. You worry about the dissertation you have to write and the total lack of help you’re getting from your absent dissertation supervisor. You worry about the reading you have yet to do and why things are getting so much more difficult. More difficult than they’ve ever, ever been.

Then the sad thoughts come in a rush. The job(s) you wish with all your heart you’d gotten and the many things you’re doing that you don’t think you’re doing well enough. All the hundreds of people who are just so much better than you at everything you love. Your failings at the things you’ve wanted to do since you were a child and the things you’ve wanted to do for just a year. The friends who don’t want anything to do with you anymore. The family that doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore.

Then you get scared. You get scared of moving on, scared of staying where you are, scared of living, scared of failing. Because failure is the default setting at the moment, like you’re making up for the previous 20 years of success.

Nothing big in itself, but all small things that build up until it gets too much to cope with. By the time you get to your destination you just want to get out of the car and into the library so you can bury your head in arguments over whether animals can think or not. But you can’t. Because you were late, there is nowhere to park. You drive round campus. And again. And again. And you accidentally cut someone up because you misunderstand their signal, and you can see that they are shouting at you. And you drive round some more.

Eventually you drive to the furthest car park away and pull into a space. Your hands are shaking as you pull out your phone and send a text to your boyfriend. And his response is so kind, it’s just too much. He is so lovely and you are a wreck. It’s just...too much. You don’t think you can cope.

What do you do?

You cry until you can’t cry any more, and you wait until your eyes go back to normal. Then you wipe your face on the tissues you keep in your car, get out, go to the library and just get on with things. Because that’s all you can ever do. Just keep getting on with things. No matter how difficult, worrisome, scary or sad they may be.

Five things that I want a lot even though they probably wouldn’t be good/productive/useful

2011-10-13T18:58:00.001+01:00

1. A cat.

I want a cat. A big silver fluffy cat. I want to call it Pegasus and I want to tweet photos of it and irritate half of my followers.

2. A pair of high-waisted jeans that actually fits.

Or in fact, a pair of jeans that fits. My ones from before I was still all hugely fat are incredibly baggy on my legs, but I try and fit into any that are a size smaller and they are too small. Not entirely sure what's going on with my body. Maybe I have just lost the weight off my stomach, arms, legs etc and I still have an enormous arse?

3. A bike with a basket

I love bikes. They are pretty. I in fact have a bike that I never ride, so this really would be something I would absolutely never use or ride. But I want one.

4. This coat

It's yellow. It's beautiful. It's warm and cosy and ladylike and would fit me like a sock fits a foot. It's also £200. That's way, waaaay too much to spend on a coat when I'm fretting about spending £20 on Uni books.

5. Hair that goes right without me spending forever on it

Yesterday, I tweeted this pic of my hair, because I was having a Big Hair day.

My timeline was filled with people saying it looked nice, which was lovely. I like it when people say nice things about my hair. I just wish my hair looked like this all the time, because usually it looks like utter crap. I spend so much time worrying about my flipping hair. It if looked pretty most of the time I'd be so much happier.

I am a total wreck of a human being

2011-10-09T13:33:00.003+01:00

I wrote about how my parents were going away, Garry and I were to all extents and purposes living together for a fortnight and how I was treating this as "Husband Trials", wondering if he'd annoy the crap out of me when there was cleaning to be done and no-one else to do it.

He has actually come out really well. As in, I was brought tea in bed a few times and he woke up early to let the dogs out. We haven't annoyed each other, and although we've had one bicker it was over something we would have bickered over anything. So that's good.

I, however, have been a total nightmare.

I cook six nights out of seven when my parents are home and usually manage to do so without disaster. So why, as soon as they are out of the house, do I keep having accidents?

Garry cooked the first night. The second night I made a Sunday Dinner; I put the green beans on and wandered into the living room to write a review. I kept hearing popping sounds, but thought nothing of it. When I got back I had forgotten to put water in the pan with the beans and the popping was the beans burning. I panicked, yanked the pan off the stove and burnt my hand, so I dropped it on the counter. And have burnt a ring on the counter top, which I can't get off.

The third night I sliced my finger open on a can of tomatoes.

The fifth night I broke the can opener.

The sixth night I made a version of this and let the water soak into the rice, leaving a nasty mess of burnt rice and tomatoes at the bottom. And making my lunch right now I did the exact same thing.

Garry may have passed his husband trials, but I am totally failing my Being A Functioning Adult trials.

I'm on a handbag hunt

2011-10-05T14:20:00.001+01:00

I take photos occasionally. Did you know that? I'm not brilliant, but I'm not totally awful either. I'll never make any money out of it, but I'll hopefully have some pretty things in frames dotted around my house when I'm older.

Anyway. One of my biggest annoyances is how ugly my camera bag is. I would love to take my camera everywhere with me but I am incredibly clumsy and would probably break it if I didn't have it wrapped in protection. Carrying with me everywhere I go my hideous camera bag which fits nothing in it but my camera is, quite frankly, not going to happen.

So I started researching for pretty camera bags. And I discovered Jo Totes. And then I discovered this.

It's utterly beautiful. Everything I could ever want in a handbag, and it's got space and padding inside for a camera, spare lens and other bits and bobs.

However, it's also $87 with something like $32 delivery. That's way too much to spend on a handbag when I have to calculate whether or not I can afford a cup of tea from the cafe at university.

But then I found this — a tutorial for how to make your own camera handbag! And, as part of my ongoing mission to learn to sew, I've decided to do it. I just need to find a handbag now that I want to use it for.

Ideally, I want something as beautiful as that yellow one up there. Realistically I know that's not going to happen.

So, here's what I need/would really, really rather not compromise on:

a flat base with quite high handbag walls
sturdy material — no cloth bags, something like faux leather
a shoulder strap
something that will be big enough for me to fit in my camera, a spare lens, a purse, a bottle of water, a phone, a notebook and a lipstick
preferably under £20, but certainly no more than £30. Like I said, skint. This is budget handbag shopping

This sounds simple but it's a right sod to find. If you have any ideas please let me know. Alternatively, buy me that Jo Totes handbag in yellow and I'll love you forever.

Husband trials

2011-09-30T16:05:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow my parents are going away together for two weeks.

This is the first time since I was born they have ever gone for a long holiday without me. That’s 21 years of always having me tagging along. I think they’re quite looking forward to it, actually. But I can guarantee that they are not looking forward to it as much as me.

I love my parents, I really do. But since March, my Mum has been home pretty all day every day. As have I. This is not conductive to a good relationship. I need some time away from her.

Time away from my parents is, however, going to be more time with Garry. We see each other every day anyway, but now he’s pretty much moving into my house for two weeks and we are going to have to do absolutely everything — all cooking, all cleaning, all dog duties, all locking up, all tea making, everything. We’ve never been alone together for this amount of time before. Whilst this is something I’m very much looking forward to, it’s undeniably a wee bit daunting.

We’ve been together for two and a half years on the 21st October. That’s quite a long time for someone my age (well, I think it is anyway). We spend an awful lot of time together, so I’m not too worried about being with him as much as I will be in the next two weeks, it’s just whether or not we’ll cope with the added stress of having to run a household together.

Meh. Maybe I should consider this husband trials. See if he does half of the housework or not. We’re talking about doing things like having a dinner party and pretending to be proper grown ups. This is either going to be two weeks of playing at adulthood or the two most stressful weeks of my life. I’ll let you know.

Let's get physical, physical

2011-09-28T23:48:00.003+01:00

Recently, I've been thinking of sports or activities I'd like to do.

I want to do some kind of regular activity that isn't just walking the dogs (because let's face it, I should be doing that anyway and it's not exactly strenuous). I want something fun that I can do, for me, that's going to contribute to the whole getting-myself-healthy mission I undertook in 2011. (Three stone three and a half pounds down, one stone five pounds to go)

I tried running, but I've written at length about how that didn't work. And swimming doesn't either, for the same reasons. So I need and want something new.

I thought about trying roller derby. I love the film Whip It, and last week I was watching it and decided to google roller derby in the area. There are teams in Birmingham, which isn't that far away, so I went on eBay to try and find some skates.

When my dad came home, I was feeding the dogs. My laptop was open on the table, the eBay window wide open. He came into the kitchen.

"Are you thinking of buying roller skates?" he asked.

"Um, maybe. Yes. I think. Yes"

"Don't be an arsehole" he said shortly, and walked out. This was the response from my mother and boyfriend across the dinner table, too. Buying roller skates and doing roller derby was an arsehole thing to do. And I probably wouldn't keep up with it. And it would be a waste of the money I have so little of.

Which, fair doose to them, is all completely true. So, no more roller derby or roller skating. But I still want something else.

Kick boxing is starting to sound like a good idea. Something that will give me the opportunity to pummel the crap out of a punch bag every now and then. I have a feeling I would enjoy that quite a lot.

Or ikedo. My dad used to do ikedo, he's always said it would be go for someone as uncoordinated and clumsy as me because it teaches you how to be graceful. But finding a beginners class in my middle-of-nowhere town is difficult.

I suppose there's still squash, which Garry and I play occasionally, or something like badminton. But for both of those things you need a partner. I don't really want a partner, or a group. The whole reason I was attracted to running in the first place was that it was out of the house and I could do it on my own. I need something on my own.

Any ideas?

Are you happy?

2011-09-26T22:26:00.003+01:00

It's good advice. But what if you don't know what to change?

A hairstory lesson (bwahaha)

2011-09-14T13:48:00.001+01:00

So I went to get my hair cut looking like this:

And I came out looking like this:

But then I washed it and didn't blow dry or straighten it, because I don't, so it looked like this:

Then I dyed it red, and it looked like this:

And the dye appears to still be working and making my hair brighter, so it looks like this:

And I'm really not sure if I like it.

Stop play

2011-09-08T13:51:00.001+01:00

So, I started running. And then...I stopped.

I didn't enjoy running, but I liked the feeling afterwards. So I had every intention of doing it, of becoming one of those strange people you see running through country lanes when it's drizzling. I bought a proper sports bra, I gritted my teeth, and for about a month and a half I did it. Before I stopped.

And the only answer to why I stopped, pathetic as this is, is my mum.

My mum is in the throes of being made redundant. Whilst she is technically still employed, because her unit has closed down she has nothing to do. I am still at home from Uni and have very little money to go out and do things. We were spending all day, every day together. Whilst I love, like and respect my mum, this was too much. Especially since she was going quite insane from having nothing to do and only a few people to talk to.

Mum came running with me. She is, to use a phrase bandied about whenever she told people the new activity we'd taken up, built like a runner. Tiny thin legs, narrow shoulders, narrow hips. The only place my mum carries weight is her tummy. I am not built like a runner. Broad shouldered, broad hipped, thick legged, big chested.

Mum took to running like a duck to water. I took to running like my fat, arthritic labrador does to rivers when she's hot — gingerly and worried about the whole thing, but knowing that overall it's for the best.

I was the one who started going running. Mum tagged along, or so she said, and made me loathe the whole experience. She could do it easily. I couldn't. She could run fast. I couldn't. I was the one with the C25K app in my ear so she said she would follow me, but she didn't. I came downstairs one night to hear my father telling our neighbour all about how we had started running but how Mum found it easier because I was "hideously unfit". And I hated that I was hurting myself doing this and I was still counted as hideously unfit. And I hated that it was me who wanted to run, something that Mum had never suggested, and it became her thing.

Mum would tell me how much she loved going running with me, when I dreaded it and looked forward to days when I wouldn't have to go. When I was already in a bad mood with her, going running really wasn't helping matters. And I couldn't run on my own, because she loved it so much when I ran with her. If I'm going to run, it has to be with her or I'll hurt her feelings.

Running made me loathe myself, basically. I shouldn't feel like that about my mother, and I loathed myself for it. I loathed myself for struggling. I loathed myself for being so rubbish and feeling so fat and unattractive. I heard some boys I went to school with snigger as I walked past in my running gear, and saw the comments on Facebook about my fat arse, and loathed myself for that too. It should make me want to get fit. But I can't get fit by running. Not with Mum, anyway. And there is no way I'll be able to run without her without breaking her heart.

So...I don't run anymore. I needed to find something else to do. I started swimming, but then Mum started coming along with her friends to that which pissed me off similarly. So now I'm dog walking. It's like really, really slow running. Sort of.

Where we look at how much prettier famous ladies are than me

2011-08-30T21:20:00.001+01:00

It's time for yet another battle with my hair.

Tomorrow, I'm getting my hair cut. My fringe is past my eyes, my ends are split and it's getting to the point where I'm just sticking my hair in a headband because I can't be bothered to fight with it any more.

But now I can't decide what to do with my hair. And I have left it until tonight to try and figure out what I'm going to ask my long suffering hairdresser to do tomorrow.

I started a "Hair" board on Pinterest (my newest addiction). But it's really not helped.

This I adore, but I'm not brave enough to go that short.

This is beautiful. But my hair isn't curly enough to do that. But if it was, I would have my hair like that every day and I would be a much more fabulous person.

This makes me ache it's so pretty. But I'm not sure if that's the colour or the fact it's Christina Hendricks. I adore the woman. She is far too beautiful to be a human. I think she's either a Greek Goddess or an alien.

Karen Gillan has wonderful hair, even though it's just long and straight. I'd like to replicate this, but she has no fringe and my fringe is still there, even if it's now also able to double up as a blindfold. So if I eventually wanted this I'd have to grow the fringe out, which would mean this tomorrow:

Which is...alright. I suppose.

I was all set on that, but then I saw this...

Which looks very pretty and is on a woman who looks similar to me (Shut up, I can dream) and now I'm all confused.

One thing is for certain: I love red hair. Most of my Pinterest board is made up of red haired ladies. I'd really like to dye my hair red, Karen Gillan/Bonnie Wright/Christina Hendricks red, but can I find a hair dye that shade? Can I buggery.

The sad thing is I will probably step out of the salon tomorrow with the same boring old hairstyle that I've had for the past couple of years, feeling miserable about it because it's not what I wanted. Help me. What should I do?

Bonus pic: Here was me yesterday, going to extreme lengths to get my fringe out of my bloody eyes. This is how bad my hair can be.

When blood isn't thicker than water

2011-08-29T09:30:00.009+01:00

I don’t talk much about my second-eldest brother on here. I have done, once, but usually I keep quiet about him.

I have four brothers. I’ve never met my youngest one, and he has no interest in seeing me. Out of all of my brothers, the only one I was close to (as in the only one I saw on a regular basis) was my second eldest, Richard.

18 years older than me and going through A Levels and a degree around about the time I started school, Richard is pretty much a second father. Well. Was pretty much a second father.

He got married eight years ago, had five kids, converted from atheism to his wife’s Mormonism. We grew apart slightly — well, you would when you get a child and a mortgage and a new religion and a whole bunch of kids. Then we stopped just “growing apart” and problems arose.

I could write an entire book on what happened between Richard’s home-family and my home-family, but things came to a head late last year and now we don’t speak. At all. My father, in reaction to the things he and his wife said to my mother and I, have banned them from ever entering the house again. Not that I think that’ll happen. It was Richard who doesn’t want to talk to us. He even unfriended me on Facebook. Which sounds such a ridiculously small action in relation to how much it hurt.

I don’t really want to speak to him. In my head there are two Richards — Richard as he used to be and Richard how he is now. I didn’t even realise how much he’d changed until the day we stopped speaking, but he said and did things that day that he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing years ago. He didn’t just change in the way you’d expect a man with a new wife and kids to change. I could cope with that. Richard is now a different person entirely, and I don’t like the new man.

I can’t help but Facebook stalk his wife — or rather, the photos she puts online. The kids have grown up so much in a year. Rhys was a one year old baby the last time I saw him, almost bald and not even able to stand up on his own. Now he’s a toddler with a mop of curly hair who plays football with his brothers. Mair, my secret favourite, is older and is losing her teeth.

Photos don’t say anything. I don’t know if Tom has overcome his speech impediment and can talk yet. I don’t know if Evan has lost his habit of screaming every time something new goes by. I don’t know if Bethan still hits the kids and gets away with it or whether Richard and his wife have stopped her now. I don’t know what Rhys’s voice sounds like, or if Mair still sings in the choir. I don’t know any of this and I have no way of finding out. All I can do is look at how big they’re getting and send presents and a card to mark each birthday.

Before there would have been cake, singing happy birthday, hugs and giggles. Even if Mum and I had to bite our tongues the entire time and felt miserable for the entire visit, we would have been able to pretend to be happy and seen them smile. Now there’s nothing.

I see a few photos of Richard and his wife, too. I burn whenever I look at his wife’s face. I remember the last e-mails my “brother” sent me, e-mails which I know were at least in part written by her because I know his writing style as well as my own, and I remember the things she has said to my mother and I. And in a deep, dark part of me that I’m ashamed to admit exists, it burns that she is happy.

I burn when I look at Richard’s photos too, but it’s different. It’s hot, angry burning with his wife, but it’s a dull cold burn with him. I’m furious with him. I’m furious with him for treating my mother so badly. I’m furious with him for recently trying to con my Nana out of her house. I’m furious with him for throwing away 20 years of a relationship I stopped biting my tongue and asked that his wife didn’t make me cry. I don’t like the man my brother has become, and I don’t want to be in any kind of contact with this Richard.

But I miss my old Richard. I miss my brother. And I know that I'm never going to get him back. Even if he became the kind man he was when I was younger, the man who taught me how to be a good person and that not hurting others was the most important thing in life, he'll never be my brother. Because my brother would never have said to me the things new-Richard said to me, and I'll never be able to forgive him for it.

I thought after almost a year it would stop hurting, but it doesn’t.

Busy doing nothing

2011-08-26T13:18:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I feel like I've run out of words. I spend all day writing things — for the television website, the cooking blog, the little 500 word articles that are just about keeping my car in petrol at the moment — that when it comes to the evening and I have some free time, my words are all gone.

Not much has been happening in Amy-land. I wake up, sit at my computer, have bad TV on in the background so that I can kid myself I'm not as alone in the house as I am, tidy the kitchen and living room, cook, read or go to band, go to sleep.

It sounds like I'm sad, but I'm not. Just nothing has been really happening.

In a month and a half, Uni will start again. I will have essays and seminars and a dissertation (which I've not started reading for yet) to panic about. I'm really quite terrified as to how I'm going to fit everything in, because I barely have enough time to get everything done as it is.

I'm dreading it. But I'm also desperate for it to start. Three months is a long time to be incredibly busy doing nothing.

Something doesn't quite fit

2011-08-23T10:57:00.000+01:00

This morning I was putting off attacking the mountain of housework and writing I have to do by searching for images of 60's hairstyles on Google. As you do. One hairstyle looked promising, so I clicked through onto the website the image was taken from.

Only to be confronted with, near the top of the page, this advert.

Few things to say about this.

1) This was a webpage devoted to how to style, cut and colour thick women's hair. Not really the best place, I would think, to advertise that real cock hungry sluts are awaiting you.

2) Is that the most unfitting image ever to use to advertise cock hungry sluts? She looks like a slightly bored but happy demure bride. "Demure" and "cock hungry" aren't two phrases you'd usually put together.

3) Adverts for online sex services really need to up their game, that is the ugliest advert I have ever seen.

Disappearing Amy

2011-08-17T16:06:00.001+01:00

So, I've been losing weight since the start of this year. I've currently lost 2 stone 12 pounds, and I'm fairly confident that when I weigh in on Saturday I'll have my 3 stone award.

At class last Saturday, we have to write down the names of women/men from the class who inspired us. Those who got the most votes will be voted on in this Saturday's class to be "Woman of the Year" for our class. Whoever wins that then has the chance to be Woman of the Year for Slimming World as a whole.

And I've been nominated.

As part of this, I have to bring photos of me before I lost weight and clothes I used to wear before I lost weight with me on Saturday. I have a few skirts that only used to fit on my waist but now fall off my hips, so I'll bring them, but as for photos?

I'm still stuck in knowing that I've lost weight but not feeling it. Picking photos that show a three stone weight loss is difficult.

Plus, I look so flipping bad in all of them.

This is what I look like now (by now, I mean the past two months or so). Excuse the stupid faces in both, I have no idea what to do with my face in photos.

Whilst it's quite exciting that I've been nominated, I don't feel worthy of it. I think I look the same in the top set of photos as I do in the bottom two.

And I'm certain that I will not be voted as woman of the year for even my one group, which is bad for me as I'm ridiculously competitive.

But still. It's nice that I inspire some people.

Teeth Trouble

2011-08-16T14:43:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday, my parents both had the day off work and were cleaning all the carpets in the house.

(I wonder how many interesting/exciting blog posts start with that? Anyway)

This meant moving furniture, which meant emptying heavy cupboards. And we found some photo albums whilst emptying them, including one of a photo of me when I was about 4 years old. Apologies for the bad photo quality (taken on my phone) but...spot the difference.

I haven't really changed since I was 4 years old. That's 17 years, and quite depressing. I'm supposed to look like a grown up, not a little girl.

And I'm supposed to feel like a grown up rather than a little girl, too. Which is what makes the fact that I've spent the past five days clutching my jaws because I've had teething pains all the more annoying.

Yes, teething pains. Wisdom teeth. Ugh. You'll know all about this if you'e followed my endless bitching on Twitter, but it really hurts. It's not just in the one tooth — it's the bottom right wisdom tooth, the tooth next to that, three teeth above that tooth, my ear (GOD in my ear, I feel like I'm being stabbed), my head, my cheek and the entire lower right jaw. I feel like I've been punched in the ear and on my jawline; it feels bruised.

I usually avoid painkillers like the plague, but I've been downing them these past few days — accidentally mixing aspirin and ibuprofen on the weekend and taking way too many of both, which is really not a good idea apparently.

I went to the dentist yesterday and cried all over the nice man when he touched my gum. I then cried all over the nice dental nurse whilst he tried to get an x-ray of my teeth and cried all over myself whilst he felt my jaw. He's given me antibiotics to treat what is apparently an infection in my jaw/the right side of my head caused by the wisdom tooth, and I have to go back on Monday.

See, my bottom wisdom teeth haven't properly come through; there's a layer of gum over them. Infections get caused by yucky stuff underneath the gum. So when I go next Monday they have to take another x-ray (one they can properly take because I'll be able to open my jaw properly and my gum won't be swollen) to see if they need to take the tooth out completely or just remove the gum covering the tooth. And if they do it on one side they have to do it on the other.

ARGH.

I am terrified of needles, and both eventualities require someone sticking a needle in my gum. I'm dreading Monday.

Are people good?

2011-08-14T13:03:00.000+01:00

This time last week, I was convinced my world was going to shit.

Not entirely this time last week, actually. It was Monday night around 11:30pm. I was sitting in my living room on my own watching the news, reading Twitter and panicking. People were moving through London and Birmingham destroying things, looting for no reason that I could see other than the joy of destruction. And it scared me.

I've always believed that people are, in the main, good. I know there are and have been some pretty evil people (Hitler, Idi Amin, Gaddafi off the top of my head) but they were anomalies — something had happened to these people to make them bad, or they were flawed in some way. The default setting for humans was, I thought, good.

It was hard to remember that on Monday night.

Tuesday morning helped. Seeing photos on people cleaning up after the riots and reading about how people were helping and donating to those who had their lives destroyed in the riots restored my faith in humanity somewhat. So, some people had done awful things. A lot more were doing very good things to make up for it.

But responses from the government and the everyman and GM Police and celebrities to these riots is making me worried again. I don't have faith in the world any more. I don't think people are, by default, good any more. And I don't really know what to do with those thoughts.

Ack. I'm sorry if this didn't make sense. I'm in a lot of pain from wisdom teeth and I've accidentally overdosed on paracetamol today so I'm perhaps not writing clearly.

People are still, in the main, good...right?

I make things: A bow

2011-08-07T18:44:00.000+01:00

I have a weird body.

At last measure, my bust was 41 inches, my waist 30 inches and my hips 43 inches. I have the proportions of one of those seaside postcard ladies.

I also have ridiculously short legs, and an incredibly long body to make up for it. Standing up I'm about 5'4, but when I sit down I'm as tall as or taller than most people.

This body makes it incredibly hard to buy clothes for. After 21 years of trying, frankly I've had enough. I decided to start making my own clothes.

To do that you need to learn to sew, though. I was originally going to take classes at a college a few towns over, but it was really expensive. So when I found this E-Course by A Beautiful Mess, I jumped on it.

It has 17 different sessions. This is just the first one. I obviously can't tell you how to make the bow, as it would basically be stealing from Elsie, but here's the pictures.

I actually made it wrong. But shhh, I'll make another one and that'll be better.

What I know about children

2011-07-31T18:02:00.001+01:00

I'm not usually one to tut at children. I have a grand total of eleven nieces and nephews and various babies/toddlers that I utterly adore looking after. I know children quite well.

I know that they make noise. I know that sometimes it's impossible to stop them from making noise. I know and can tolerate if not entirely block out their inane chatter, their screaming, their screeching laughter. I find their little games and stories amusing and the conversations they have between themselves adorable.

I accept that they want to play and that usually are not allowed to, so they will probably be extra boisterous when they are allowed to do so. I know that in their playing they will probably get hurt, and this is okay and they probably won't be seriously hurt but will scream as though they are.

I know that there is nothing wrong with children behaving like this. It is natural and I am usually 100% okay with it.

That being said, if the little fuckers who have been "playing" in the street for what seems like twenty four hours a day, seven days a week since school broke up for summer do not stop making such constant, grating noise soon, I am going to murder each and every one of them*.

*this isn't true, obviously. But I am going to get very cross.

It's a sign of the times...

2011-07-28T18:07:00.000+01:00

I went swimming yesterday. The swimming itself was nothing to write home/blog posts about — I paddled up and down with my weird mix of doggy paddle and breast stroke quite happily — but the changing rooms were a bit weird.

The first weird thing I noticed was the sign in the changing cubicle:

No talc I understand, but no food and no drinks? Who the hell is getting out of swimming gear, standing naked in a cubicle and saying "Now is the PERFECT time to eat a sandwich!"

Weirder still is the one in the shower.

Hair dye?!?! Razors?! What the hell are people doing in swimming pool changing rooms nowadays?

I try a Beehive

2011-07-26T09:19:00.004+01:00

I've spoken before about my hair. When I spend hours on my hair it can look utterly gorgeous; it curls well, straightens to a sheet when I take my time over it, and will stay how I want it to.

I cannot be faffed with spending hours doing my hair. Because of this I can't have it too short (it's frizzy/wavy and so needs to be bung-into-a-ponytailable) but my long, wavy, frizzy hair isn't very nice. I look like some kind of crazy woman.

I'm constantly on the search for quick things to do with my hair that won't take hours. And I found a Beehive tutorial that looked fairly easy, and pretty.

Now, before I post pictures I want to point out that I know how... ironic? silly? ... this is, a girl called Amy wearing a Beehive. And how morbid, with Amy Winehouse's death last week. That being said...

Here is the before shot, with my frizz and my "prop" — what is actually going to form the bump of my Beehive.

Yes. That is a balled up pair of socks.

And here is the after:

But I actually prefer it with the bottom bit down...

What do you think? I think it's pretty, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be brave enough to wear it out of the house....

My future dream study

2011-07-24T12:54:00.000+01:00

I like looking at houses. I'm getting a slightly addiction to programmes such as Location, Location, Location, A House in the Country and Let's Go Look Inside Pretty Houses You Could Never Afford, Pauper! (I made the last one up, but they are mostly along that line). I've also started ~~wasting~~ spending hours browsing sites such as Zoopla, looking at houses in my area and planning what I want to buy.

I'm also finding lots of lovely new websites and blogs about making the inside of your house beautiful. And I'm learning to sew so that when I get my own house I can make it beautiful and exactly as I want it (that's a whole other post).

One of those websites is IKEA Hackers. I love IKEA. Totally and completely. I was doing the whole wandering-into-the-little-rooms-and-pretending-it's-my-house way before they did it in (500) Days of Summer. And IKEA Hackers is always utterly fantastic.

But their latest post is possibly the most fantastic thing I've ever seen. With 60 Billy bookcases, they made a library.

Want. Need. Please.

I make things: Pink spice racks

2011-07-20T20:48:00.001+01:00

Firstly, take two spice racks from IKEA and put them together. Then obtain pink spray paint.

Spray them to death. Let them dry for 20 minutes, then spray them again. Repeat, turning the spice racks round, until they're covered in paint. Then leave for 30 minutes, and leave for 24 hours to dry completely.

Whilst they are drying fully, fill your spice jars. We had bought the matching spice jars from IKEA, and we had lots of spices...

I emptied the spices into the jars, then made labels by writing on the sticky bit of white post-it notes and sticking them on the front.

They looked quite sweet in the end, actually.

Then it was just a case of sticking the spice racks to the wall. They had grooves for nails to fit in, but I used screws instead. I used an electric drill to screw through the tiles on the wall, using a slow speed at first to make sure the tiles didn't crack, and then "wiggled" the drill around to make the holes wider. Then I hammered rawl plugs into the holes, and screwed in screws until they were only poking out a little. Then it was just a case of sliding the spice racks on and bashing them on the top to make sure they were secure.

I think they look quite nice...

We re-painted the kitchen recently. The pink spice racks are to go/clash with the green/blue walls. What do you think?

Bright spot

2011-07-18T08:50:00.001+01:00

On Friday night, I went to a 60th birthday Towards the end of the night, when the dance floor had quietened down, Margaret's grandson took to the floor with his wife.

He's in the army, and was sent home just before Christmas after being caught in an explosion. Both his legs had to be amputated and one of his arms was severely injured. I remember seeing Margaret's husband sitting in our living room, his head in his hands as he told us. At that point they didn't even know if he'd survive as his injuries were so bad. But here he was at the party, in a wheelchair and smart trousers that were neatly folded underneath him.

Him and his wife were dancing to the music. With one hand he twirled her round, with the other he pushed the wheels of his chair to twist around with her. They were laughing together as they danced, enjoying themselves.

Sometimes things get me down. I mean, really get me down, to the point where I can't see the point of anything anymore. There are some people, like Margaret's grandson and his wife, who are my heroes in times like that. It would be so easy to get depressed about not having his legs, about not being able to walk. But he doesn't. He carries on, and he doesn't let the big things get him down.

If he can do that with the big things, I should definitely try harder to do it with the small things.

Goodbye, Harry

2011-07-15T12:36:00.001+01:00

“I got you a present, Amy”

My heart usually lifts at these words, but I could already see what the present was and I knew that I didn’t want it.

“But Dad...”

“Everyone else I know who’s read it said it’s brilliant. Just try it”

I frowned, but took the proffered book. If it was strange that I didn’t want a present, it was even stranger that I didn’t want a book; my nine-year-old nose was usually buried in the things. But I'd seen this book before. I'd cast my eye over it, taken in the drawing of the weird bird with the two unpleasant looking people riding it on the cover and dismissed it as silly, not something I'd want to read. Now my Dad was making me try it.

And so, settled in the back of a car, I first opened a Harry Potter book.

It was Prisoner of Azkaban, the third in the series and the recent winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year award. I can't remember how long it took me to read it, but I can remember the nagging of my Mum as I refused to stop reading it. I didn't practise any of my musical instruments. I didn't watch TV. I refused to shower, eventually agreeing that I would have a bath as long as I could read the book in the bath. Until that book was finished, absolutely everything else came second.

A travelling bookshop came to our school the next week and I used up my saved pocket money buying The Chamber of Secrets. I read it one Saturday without stopping. I begged for my parents to buy me The Philosopher's Stone as soon as I finished The Chamber of Secrets, and once I'd finished that I read all three again in order. I was awake at 6am on the day of the release of The Goblet of Fire; I got it home and read all 636 pages in a day and a half.

Harry Potter is part of my childhood. It's hard to describe the effect it had on me, the place it had in my life. It was one of the first books that made me think, one of the first books that made me feel a blistering intensity of emotion that in my quiet little life I'd never experienced before.

It helped me, too. Secondary School was hell for me, and Harry Potter was simultaneously my escape and my rescue. Hermione showed me that, despite what the other kids said, it was okay to be smart. The ending of the second film made me cry because it was so happy and my life at that point was not, but it gave me hope that no matter how bad things were they could always get better.

Harry Potter has shaped me as a person. I'm happy, if not proud, to admit this. I firmly believe that it's okay to be different, that it's okay to stand up for what you think is right even if everyone else disagrees, that it's better to do what's right rather than what's easy. It showed me that there's a difference between nice people and good people, that there's a difference between nasty people and evil people. It showed me that people aren't perfect, but that's okay.

I've always liked and been able to talk freely about Harry Potter, but at various times across my life my fondness for/obsession with it has waxed and waned. I started writing fanfiction in my last few years at secondary school. I discovered website like Mugglet and JKRowling.com that let me escape into another world for hours on end.

At the launch of the seventh book, I went down to Waterstones at midnight with two friends dressed like Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger because Waterstones advertised that they were having a party to celebrate the book's release (liars, we ended up standing out on the street dressed like that for two hours whilst our drunk friends wandered past and shouted at us).

That's me in the middle, with the drawn on freckles. Yeah.

When I finished the last book, it was the strangest feeling. It was painful. It was simultaneously happy and terribly, terribly sad. It was the end of something. I would never, ever have that feeling of having a new Harry Potter book in my hand again. It's so much easier to get excited about things when you're young, and I was able to cling onto that excitement, that blissful anticipation, as I got older. Whilst the last book was perfect for me, the perfect ending to the series, the fact that it had ended was painful.

I had the same feeling, only less so, this morning at 2:30am, sitting in a packed cinema watching the credits roll on the last new Harry Potter film I'll ever see. Although the books are and were always far more important to me than the films, the films are still a part of the whole Harry Potter world and now they were over. Like I said, it's easier to get excited about things when you're young, and it's possible to cling onto that excitement as you get older. I'm never going to have that excitement again.

I know you could argue that it's not over. I have 14 hours of films to watch and 3407 pages to read. I get to read the stories to my children, discover Harry Potter again through them. The books will always be there when I need to escape, or when I want to regain some of the feeling they gave me when I first read them, that feeling where my chest swells up and I'm happy but I want to cry at the same time. I'll always have that.

But in another way, it is. Harry Potter is over. The last straws of my childhood that I clung onto were cut at 2:30am this morning. It's beautiful and it's painful, but mostly it's inescapable.

Thank you, J.K Rowling, for the last twelve years. Thank you for the many more I have to come. Thank you for making me happy, thank you for making me sad, and thank you for Harry.

Play interrupted by...well. Snot, hacking coughs and general nastiness

2011-07-13T21:24:00.000+01:00

One of the things on my Grown-Up List was to take up running.

I started doing the Couch to 5k plan with my mum. I did it for three times a week like a good girl, until last week when I was hit by a stinking cold.

My "personal running coach" Cliff (he ran a marathon, y'know) and my darling Garry (who used to run when training for the army) quite categorically told me that running when I have a cough and can't breathe properly is not a good idea. So I didn't run for a week and a half, and started again on Monday.

Running is weird. I don't hate it, I like that it's easy to get out and quick and I've not going to go anywhere. I'm not particularly sure I like it, though. It's good for me though, I know.

At the moment I'm jogging for 90 seconds at a time. Next week I have to jog for three minutes at a time. That sounds terrifyingly long, and I'm genuinely not sure I'll be able to do it.

I make things: A Doctor Who bookmark

2011-07-12T00:03:00.000+01:00

How to make a Doctor Who bookmark.

Firstly, find a cute pattern on Etsy. Buy it, and all the materials you need, even if this includes an hour round trip to the nearest Hobbycraft.

Then, start sewing.

Get to a certain point and stall for a month because exam panic hits you full on in the face.

Then finish the entire thing in a big rush because your exams are over and you are happy that you can sit around doing essentially nothing for hours.

Wait for a couple of weeks to both shake off a cold that means you don't have the required concentration to work on a bookmark and to find the perfect fabric to back the bookmark on to.

Fold the bookmark so that you know roughly how big you want it, and cut around the outside leaving a bit of a gap.

Cut the piece of blue fabric so that you have a piece that is slightly larger/around the same size as the aida with the pattern it. Pin the pattern face down onto the side of the fabric that will face the outside on your finished bookmark.

Then, start sewing.

Realise that you have both cut the blue fabric wrongly and sewn wonky. Get in a strop. Your mother will then, if she is as wonderful as mine, unpick it and put you back on the right track. After several hours of stropping, return to bookmark and sew it properly, albeit slightly wonkily. Sew up three edges, leaving one of the smallest unsewn.

Turn the bookmark inside out, and attempt to sew up the final edge. Realise you can't sew up the final edge and throw a strop. Watch impatiently as your mother sews up the final edge, and fixes a few other bits that you have sewn incorrectly.

Rejoice in your beautiful finished bookmark. Tell your mother she is amazing, because she is.

I'm planning on making a Star Wars one next.

Women, worrying and weight: Part Two

2011-07-11T22:50:00.000+01:00

Do you remember when I wrote a post about women and how they worry about how they look when they really shouldn't?

Well, forget it.

Then go and read this, by my frankly amazing friend Chloé. She talks more sense than I ever could. Plus she's French. But speaks English fluently. And is currently doing Amazing Sciencey Things in Germany, speaking German. And she swing dances. She's just fantastic. And that post is incredible.

Second year results

2011-07-07T12:01:00.001+01:00

The one good thing about my exams this year is that I didn't have to wait long for my results. The bad thing is the results themselves.

I shouldn't complain. I got a 2:1 for my second year. But...I don't know.

I really, really thought I would have done better than I did.

Here's a breakdown:

History of Modern Philosophy: 65
Ethics I: 58
Metaphysics: 62
Phil. of Religion: 62
Wittgenstein: 64
20th Century Continental Philosophy I: 65
Contemporary Political Philosophy: 58
Average: 62.38

Which is a 2:1.

I know I'm the most ridiculous person in the entire world for being upset with a 2:1, but I am.

There is absolutely no way in hell that I'm ever, ever going to be able to get a First now. I'd have to get at least 78% next year, which means my work would have to be of publishable quality.

Can someone just slap me round the face for being an idiot and tell me that a 2:1 is still fine and I'll be on my way?

Happy talismans

2011-07-06T13:58:00.000+01:00

Newspapers hacking dead girls' phones. Death, death, and more death. Turn on the television, or the radio, or the computer, and be bombarded with horrors from around the world. There's murder, torture, rape, abduction, neglect and cruelty. Even when people aren't physically hurting each other you only have to go on Twitter to find new levels of ways people can be unkind. It's easy to feel overwhelmed — and that's without counting all the things in our day-to-day lives that make us sad.

Whilst I fully believe that the world is an amazing, beautiful and incredible place and the default setting for people is to be good, it's hard to believe that when all people ever seem to talk about is the bad. The bad things stick in your mind. The bad things seem bigger than the good, and cast darker shadows that hide the good things entirely.

This, obviously, is no way to live your life. And life is amazing. There's a whole other post on that, but it is. The only way to fight against the bad stuff is to have a ready source of equally fantastic good stuff that you can call upon in times of need.

I have lots. One is my tidy bedroom. Waking up to a tidy bedroom is one of my favourite things in the world. My bedroom is packed full of stuff — books, papers, clothes, ornaments, necklaces, photos, a porcelain doll collection, a piggybank collection — and waking up to see all of it around me, reminding me of my friends and my family and happy memories, but still looking organised and clean is a wonderful thing.

My dogs are two others. They are, quite frankly, the nicest dogs in the entire world. I love the faces my Dalmatian pulls when he sneezes. I love how my fat Labrador stretches her legs back when she gets up. I love how my Labrador will wiggle her whole body rather than just wag her tail, and I love how soft my Dalmatian's ears are.

And Minnie, bless her, always looks like she's stoned and happy when she's panting.

I have many more. Heinz Spaghetti Bolognese from a tin with toast. Episodes of Scrubs. Harry Potter books in bed. Making cupcakes with jam in the middle. Hugs. Ace of Cakes. Playing my saxophone really, really loudly. Sitting in the garden.

Tiny things make me happy. They're bright lights that I can use to fight the sad when I need to.

What makes you happy?

Women, worrying and weight

2011-07-05T10:32:00.001+01:00

If you follow me on Twitter or read either of my other blogs, you’ll know that I have been going to Slimming World since January.

I like Slimming World. I like the plan itself, which seems to be based around health rather than what makes you lose weight quickly. I like the recipes. I like the support from my eternally wonderful consultant Cathy. I like, obviously, that I’ve lost 2.5 stone and not once been hungry. But mostly, I like the people.

One woman from group, J, follows and is followed by me on Twitter. She has recently come back to group after leaving to have a baby, and is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Tall with curves like a racetrack, she has incredible copper hair, streaked with gold, that falls down her back in thick, gleaming waves. Her skin is pale and perfect, her wide eyes are the colour of deep pools in spring and whilst she is built like a Valkyrie she is amazingly graceful. She is also a well respected University lecturer and one of the kindest people I know.

As you may be able to tell from the above paragraph, I’m slightly awed by her. The first time I saw her, I was genuinely open mouthed. She is stunning. And I’m slightly stunned that, as weeks have gone by, she’s become one of my closest friends at group.

J tweeted last night that she had been to the gym. I tweeted something along the lines of that being fantastic (she's said before that she finds it hard to get out of the house so I thought a bit of encouragement would be nice) and received a reply a few minutes later that surprised me. She said she felt really, really sad.

74 direct messages later...I’m reminded once again by how much women can hurt over how they look.

J put on a lot of weight when she had a baby. However, she is all in proportion. Tall, broad shouldered and broad hipped, her waist is still tiny. She is magnificent and imposing. I want to put her in armour and plait her hair and send her into battle with a sword and a really big horse.

She doesn’t see that, though. She sees herself as having horrid arms, as being the biggest one at the gym, as not being able to taken her jacket off because of her “flabby arms” and as having cellulite so bad that you can see it through her jogging bottoms.

I sent her a string of messages and I made her cry (I think/hope in a good way). I told her how beautiful I thought she was, and that she was the one of the nicest women I know. I didn’t exactly say everything I said about her above because, let’s face it, it’s a bit weird. But I told her that I thought she was gorgeous. And what did she say back?

“You are utterly beautiful”

Me? Utterly beautiful?

I look in the mirror in my underwear and hate everything I see. I occasionally cry over how vile I am. I panic that I am 2.5 stone lighter than I was in January, yet I still look this disgusting — how bad did I look before? No matter what I wear, I think I look horrid.

And yet J, this woman who I think is practically on par with a goddess, thinks I look utterly beautiful. And she thinks she looks hideous.

...

There’s a whole lot wrong with how woman see themselves. I have no idea how to go about fixing it.

Playtime is over

2011-07-04T13:48:00.001+01:00

I open my eyes slowly. I feel warm, but I can't tell if this is because I've still got a temperature or because the room is warm. I roll over gently — it still hurts to move— to face Garry. He's sitting up, propped by pillows, reading the news on his phone.

I smile weakly at him, my eyes still heavy from sleep. He reaches forward and taps the end of my nose with his index finger. I screw up my eyes and grin.

"Morning" I say. My voice is still all throaty; with the remnants of my Welsh accent being made stronger by morning I sound quite a lot like Bonnie Tyler.

"Morning" he replies. He lifts his arm and I roll into it; a quick morning cuddle before the week has to begin.

It's been a lovely weekend. No, scrap that, it's been a delicious weekend. My parents have been away so Garry and I have been playing house; cooking, doing the shopping, watching what we've wanted to (if we've wanted to) and doing what we've wanted to. Play-acting at being grownups. Pretending that our freedom and control over our free time will be forever. Even being ill, it's been the most relaxing weekend I've had in a long time.

My parents are coming back today. We have to stop playing.

He gets his things together to leave; he has to work. I kiss him goodbye at the door and wave him off. A few hours later, I hear the crunch of gravel and know that my parents have returned home.

They come in, blisteringly sunburnt and chatting away about their friends and the party and how rude their friend's son was to her, oh, can you make us a coffee please love? And the music they went to see by the sea and my friend's daughter and how part of her music degree is learning piano but it's only really simple things and oh, we gave away Mum's iPod so can you just load up this spare one we got with all her things, even though you had to do that last week, and how they put sun lotion on and asked for it and everything and it said it was apply once stuff but it clearly hasn't worked because they're so burnt, and they think it was out of date, and then Mum telling me about how annoying my father has been all weekend and my Dad telling me all about how the bed was so uncomfortable that he had to sleep downstairs.

That was twenty five minutes ago. Dad has gone to the Doctor, Mum is watching the several hours of programs she has taped over the weekend. Physically I am in the study, wiping and synching Mum's new old iPod.

In my head I'm in my bedroom this morning, the living room last night with the roast dinner I made and the film we watched, and the millions of other tiny, totally normal, totally perfect moments from this weekend.

Weekend plans gone wrong

2011-07-03T15:12:00.000+01:00

I had such good intentions for this weekend. My parents are away so Garry and I have the house to ourselves; we were going to go running, rearrange my bedroom, go on long walks and eat delicious food.

What I didn't plan was falling ill on Thursday night with a cold/swollen gland combination that has all but paralysed me for the past few days.

It started with a sore throat on Thursday night, which woke up at 6am on Friday morning. Garry and I went to play squash (which is very fun, post on that later) and when I finished I felt very wobbly. Not just "Ooof, that was a good workout" wobbly — decidedly unwell wobbly.

I came home, fell into bed at 11:30am and awoke at 4pm. I spent the evening crying because of the pain and hobbling round try to regulate my wildly fluctuating body temperature. An entire body ache that meant Garry had to actually undress me because I couldn't lift my arms to undress myself and he had to half-carry me up the stairs because of the pain in my legs, hips and sides. Yesterday was much of the same.

Last night I went to bed at midnight and awoke at 2am. Then 2:10am. Then 2:22am. Then 2:37am. Then 2:42am. Then 2:50am. At this point I felt so poorly, hot and ill (and the dreams I was having were so bad) that I just came downstairs and watched crappy TV until 5:30am, when I stumbled back into bed and slept until 9am. Then I woke up and limped around. The body ache means I'm walking like a pensioner, the sore throat means that I'm speaking like a pensioner with a 60-a-day habit and the general feeling of crap means I'm moaning like a pensioner. Or like my Nan, anyway.

So, it's not been a particularly good weekend, really.

Fingers crossed I'll be back to my chirpy self tomorrow.

Channelin' my inner Marilyn

2011-06-30T10:02:00.005+01:00

One of the items on my Grown-Up List was to find a red lipstick that suited me.

I've been trying to do this for a good few years (the amount of discarded red lipsticks in my dresser drawer will attest to this), but I think I may have finally found one.

It's a Rimmel Lipstick, in Alarm, and it looks a little like this.

And the obligatory pouting shot...

I wore it to dinner with Garry, with a black dress that had a red flower pattern. It looked rather nice. It rubbed off as soon as I started eating though, which is something else I need to sort out...

But what do you think? Does it suit me?

(Apologies for the influx of girly posts recently. I'll be writing about running tomorrow)

What a boob

2011-06-29T22:23:00.000+01:00

I went shopping today.

I went with the purpose of buying bras. Since I started dieting I have lost 5.5 inches off my chest, so I thought it was probably best to go and get measured again.

I am very busty. This is not a brag. I dislike being busty. I dislike not being able to wear strapless dresses because strapless bras in my size (32J) are less than useless. I dislike not being able to wear strappy dresses because they tend to make me look like I’m auditioning for a “Girls Gone Wild” video, even though normal-sized ladies can wear them and look lovely. I dislike not being able to wear pussy-bow blouses or high necked jumpers. But mostly I dislike that I have to travel to buy bras; I have to go to Bravissimo as it is the only place I can get bras from.

I like Bravissimo, though. The staff there are without fail the loveliest and most helpful staff you will find in any shop in the UK. I spent 30 minutes being fit perfectly for two bras — one everyday bra and one sports bra. I shan't share photos of the bras (It's not that kind of blog. Showing you me in the sports bra would probably be okay, but then you'd be subject to my HUGE WOBBLY BELLY) but rest assured that the everyday bra is pretty and the sports bra is hilariously huge.

Oh, another thing I don't like about being busty? I bought two bras and it cost £56. Ouch.

Anyway, I also managed to find a two books that I've been interested in reading for a while and one that sounded utterly brilliant in a charity shop...

(The Crimson Petal and the White, Adrian Mole: The Prostate Years and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

And a dress from H&M that makes me look like some kind of curvaceous vixen.

Also, that dress is two sizes smaller than dress I would have previously worn. A day full of good things, I believe.

Another battle in the war with my hair

2011-06-28T14:26:00.000+01:00

At 9:30am this morning, I looked like this:

I don't bother doing my hair before going to get it cut. My hair is incredibly thick and I am incredibly lazy; I saw little point in styling it for the five minutes I would be between my house and my hairdresser.

My hairdresser is a lovely gentleman called Garry (not my boyfriend Garry, just to clarify) who has cut mine and my Mum's hair for about five years. He has three children who he dotes upon, always remembers what we talked about the last time I was there and is genuinely a decent chap.

I don't really like having my hair cut. I find it awkward having someone do something as intimate as wash my hair, even when I've known this person for years. Because I have a fringe, which always ends up growing ridiculously long between cuts, there's a good portion of the visit where I am sitting with my eyes covered up by my hair whilst someone waves 220C metal (straighteners) and sharp blades (scissors) in the proximity of my head. This is quite nerve-wracking. I also immensely dislike staring at myself for so long without the cover of my hair; I have a very strange face.

Anyway. At 11:30am this morning, I looked like this.

Fringe is back in. It prefer my hair bigger usually, but this is just how he styles it. I am totally incapable of styling my hair so it will never, ever look as straight and sleek as this again.

Let's say goodbye with a smile, dear

2011-06-27T16:51:00.001+01:00

After exams comes the loveliness.

Yesterday I went to a concert with my friend Katharine. Katharine is my best friend at University; we found each other on the first day and clung together whilst walking round the enormous labyrinth that is the Humanities building, trying to find the room that our introductory lecture was being held in. We swapped numbers so that we'd have someone else to cling to for the next few weeks, and have been clinging together ever since.

Not clinging because we didn't have anywhere else to go. Clinging because we just fit well together; both quiet, both studious, both fans of but not obsessed by philosophy, both interested in playing music and baking. We just rub along nicely together.

In first term of first year. A truly horrid photo of me

We're not obsessed with each other. We don't spend every waking second together or talking to each other. But if I ever want a chat, she's there. If I ever need someone to talk to, she's there. If I ever need someone to play flute at a concert with my band, she's there. If I ever need to vent about the other people on our course being pretentious and arrogant, she is more than there.

Christmas 2010. Cake was her Christmas present to me

We also make amazing cakes together. Look at our attempt at Helen's-originally-Delia's Malteser Cake. It was incredible.

Anyway. Yesterday we went to watch Warwick Symphony Orchestra with some of her housemates, and then to the pub after. It was the last time I'll see her for three months.

The strange thing about University is that it creates two worlds in your life; for 30 weeks of the year I eat, sleep, breathe and think University. I think of the Terrace bar, social studies cafe, lectures in S0.21, car park 15, journals, the library, the arts centre. Then suddenly there are massive gaps. For three months I won't see Katharine. We'll speak, but we live too far away to make quick visits possible and we're both going to be busy. For 30 weeks of the year she's one of the most important people in my life. It's strange when that's taken away.

Last night at the terrace bar

It's oh-so quiet

2011-06-26T13:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was my last exam. I finished in a blaze of glory, throwing more opinion into an answer than I usually express in an entire day because I had to assess something and wasn't entirely sure what anyone else thought of it. This means my answer will either be incredible or terrible.

After I finished, I came home and lay on my bed for a very long time, saying nothing. Then I went for a run, saying nothing important to my Mum who runs with me. Then I lay in a bath for a very long time, saying nothing. Then Garry and I went for a meal and I said a lot, but nothing that involved much thought. Then home to a film that involved little thought and bed.

I feel very strange at the moment. I feel simultaneously like I should be revising (once you get in that habit, it's hard to break) and like I should be doing nothing. What I should actually be doing is catching up on the enormous amount of stuff I haven't done whilst exams were on; I should be sending people things I've promise, putting away my three overflowing baskets of washing, dusting and hoovering my bedroom, writing up the 50 or so recipes I have for my cooking blog.

But what am I doing?

Lying on my bed, writing a blog post. Obviously.

"If it was me..."

2011-06-24T17:02:00.003+01:00

I’m revising. Cramming, in fact. I have one afternoon to learn three week’s worth of work. I have been on my bed for the past four hours and I can see myself being on here for many hours more.

Mum comes up the stairs. As she walks past my open door to get to her room, she glances at me and takes a deep breath.

Already, I know this isn’t going to be good. My mother has been off for a couple of weeks now and I know that the lack of being able to jabber away with other people all day means that she saves it up and unloads it on me instead. Even when I really, really couldn’t care less.

She begins. “I’ve been thinking...you know next weekend?”

I don’t respond. I don’t need to.

“We’re supposed to be going down on the Friday, but Keith isn’t getting back until the...uh...Saturday”

The “uh” isn’t a pause for thought, I should point out. It’s just a random noise she inserts into conversations.

“And Karen is in Budapest and...uh...she’s getting back on the Friday and if...uh...that...uh...was...me...I’d want....time to....get...sorted”

She is speaking in slow motion. Literally, slow motion. It’s about half speed of what she usually talks. I gaze helplessly at the pages of notes I have yet to learn.

“Right”

“So Keith...says....it’s....okay...oh, shit”

She’s in her bedroom and has knocked something over. This doesn’t stop her muffled voice going on.

“But I don’t know”

“Well why don’t you ring her and ask her?” I say distractedly. “Ask what she thinks. I’m sure if you rang her up then she’d ...”

“I just don’t want her to think that I don’t want to see her until Keith gets there. But if it was me, I’d want some time to get sorted”

“Why don’t you explain it to her? I’m sure she’ll understand”

“Mmm” She’s standing in my doorway, gazing at me. I know that there is a constant flurry of activity going on in her head; I know this because my brain is the same. It’s never still, there’s always one part creating a never-ending to-do list, another thinking about some issue or problem at home (this “thinking” takes the form of imaginary conversations usually) another commenting on the world around us (“God, this bedroom is messy, how does she live with it?”) and another singing a song as background noise. Despite this, my Mum has the most gormless expression I have ever come across, and she’s hitting me with it full beam now.

“I just know that if it was me, I’d want time to get sorted. Have a bath, do some washing, that kind of thing”

I bite my tongue for the retort I am longing to throw at her. I grip the laptop I am longing to throw at her.

“Well, just explain. I’m sure she’ll understand that”

We look at each other. For ten brilliant seconds I am certain that she’s listened to me and that finally, for the first time in weeks, we have had a conversation with a point to it. Then...

“I’ll talk to your dad about it when he gets home”

She then went downstairs and pottered around singing at the top of her voice. She does this just to fill silence, rather than put the radio on or just listen to the silence. She then comes upstairs, hands me a sheet of music and says “I would e-mail him, but that would be overkill”. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

So close to freedom

2011-06-23T15:49:00.001+01:00

This is what my list of exams and the topics I need to revise for them currently looks like.

In case you can't see very well or read backwards, the big blue writing says "FINISHED AND TAKEN". That is written next to five of my exams. Only two are left.

I have two more exams to go. One tomorrow, one Saturday. Four more hours of exams. Two more exams. TWO.

By 11:45am on Saturday, I will be free.

Then I can get back to talking sense, or at least what passes for sense in my head.

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit

2011-06-22T11:58:00.001+01:00

One of my goals on my Grown Up List is to take up running.

So on Monday I very tentatively pulled on the most hideous clothes I own, grabbed my dog, loaded up the Couch to 5K app on my iPhone and...went for it.

(There is supposed to be a photo of me here in my hideous running gear, but Blogger won't upload photos for some reason. The photo is here)

It wasn't too bad. The C25K app is supposed to ease you into it gently; this was a five minute walking warm up, then alternating between jogging for 60 seconds and walking for 90 seconds for twenty minutes. I am proud to say that I didn't cheat once; if it said to jog, I jogged. Admittedly I said "Oh, fuck" out loud on the last jogging bit and scared an old lady, but apart from that I was fine.

Malty is quite nice to run with, too. At first I kept him on a lead thinking he'd wander off, but it got to the point where he was stopping to sniff/wee and I was being jerked back when I walked off in front of him (He's a very big strong muscly dog) I let him off and he was fine — when I walked he ran around and sniffed things, but when I ran he ran alongside me.

And he was very happy for the long walk/run too. As you can see in this photo here which Blogger won't let me upload arrggggh.

So...yes. Running. Me did it! I have to do it again today, which is going to be interesting considering how my legs feel today. Rolling over in bed this morning was really not nice.

The Grown-Up List

2011-06-15T21:38:00.000+01:00

Long-term readers of this blog and the ones that have been before it will know that I utterly fail at being a functioning adult.

You can throw me into a new, scary work situation or into a seminar where I have to present or an exam and I am utterly fine. More than fine. I am competent, hard-working and actually rather good. But the train journey to get to that work situation? The lecture where I obtain notes for that seminar? The hours spent at home revising for that exam? Awful. When I have to do things for or to impress others, I am fine. Doing things to make my life easier I am awful at.

Do you know why this blog is called “A Clock That Does Not Work”? It’s from that old saying, “Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day”. It’s in reference to me being a total embarrassment of a human being, but still managing to cope.

Things cannot stay this way. I am 21. I will be graduating from University next year. I will be getting a mortgage, having a house, a job, and generally be having to look after myself. I need to grown up.

So, In my head over the past year or so, I have been compiling a list of sorts. It’s nothing definitive, and it will certainly be added to or edited as time goes on. I’m calling it my Grown Up List. I was considering starting another blog entirely to document my progress in this, but I think sticking it as a weekly round-up here will have to do. I currently have four and a half blogs. I think that’s enough.

These are all things that I need to do in order to move towards being a proper grown up.

The Grown Up List

Take up running. Or swimming, or badminton, or something. Some form of exercise that isn’t dancing on the xBox 360 or skipping.
Go through my clothes and throw out anything that doesn’t make me look utterly fabulous.
Find a red lipstick that actually suits me.
Find make-up that actually suits me.
Find a wine that I like. Occasionally drink a glass of it.
Buy a lot of beautiful vintage clothes and wear them every day.
Learn to walk in heels.
Buy a pair of heels that I could wear when there was a moderate amount of walking to be done.
Read all of Jane Austen’s books, not just Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
Sit down and think about all of my opinions and why I have them.
Debate a controversial topic with someone without bursting into tears halfway through.
Learn to control my temper.
Stop letting my hair get gross and having to hide it with a headband.
Establish a skin-care routine that isn’t just shoving some stuff on my face in the shower, mainly to use up all of the eleventy-billion products I have bought and neglected.
Get some kind of bikini line wax. I’ve never done it. I feel I should, just once.
Get in control of body hair in general, actually. I tend to forget about my legs for months on end until it looks like I’m wearing furry trousers. My eyebrows are utterly ridiculous for two weeks of the month (until a nice lady comes to my house and waxes them for me)
Get control of my head hair. Get a cut. One that suits me. Decide if I’m going to leave it natural, dye it the red I lust over or do something else entirely. Maintain whatever style I decide upon
Find a hairdresser who makes my hair looks AMAZING. This, I imagine will help with the previous goal.
Stop biting my nails. Stop, when I am in control of biting my nails, picking my nail polish off.
Buy three properly fitting bras, that I change every 6 months.
Have co-ordinating knickers to said bras. Just, y’know, white knickers for a white bra, black for a black bra. And wear them. Just in case I get hit by a bus.
Actually sit down in front of my make-up mirror to put make-up on, rather than rushing round like a loony.
Learn to blow-dry my own fricking hair properly.
Learn to control my swearing.
Find a way of drying after a shower that doesn’t involve me sitting in towels on the lid of the toilet shivering. I spend an hour drying after a shower, it’s ridiculous.
Remember to change my sheets once a week.
Go to London, on my own, without having planned every second of my journey the night before, and not get lost.

If you have any more ideas, please share them with me. I can't go on being so pathetic.

What revision is like

2011-06-13T15:45:00.000+01:00

Headaches. Worrying. Oh, the worrying.

Waking up in the middle of the night panicking. Never getting enough sleep. Wandering round in a fuzz. Resenting every second someone else takes away from me that I could be spending revising.

Crying. Snarling. Sleeping. Eating.

Wanting to help. Not even being able to help myself. Trying to hide from the panic on Twitter and the general internet. (This, by the way, is a very bad idea)

Countless cans of Diet Coke with lime. More headaches. More tablets. Wanting to sleep. Wanting it to be over. Longing for chocolate.

Wishing every stress in my life would melt away, just for two weeks.

Wishing people in my life (read: parents) would just get it and stop making everything worse.

Making lists of things I'm looking forward to. In my head on a five-minute revision break, of course. I have no time to actually write one down.

Twelve days. Six exams. If I make it through with good marks, it'll be a miracle.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips

2011-06-09T11:58:00.000+01:00

I know, I know. But it made me smile.

From tumblinfeminist.

First exam

2011-06-08T18:29:00.000+01:00

Last night at band, just as we were packing up, my Dad asked me if I was okay.

"Yeah" I replied, about as blatantly not okay as I could possibly be without sobbing and rocking back and forth with wide, empty eyes. "I just want to get home and do some revision before the exam tomorrow"

"You don't need to revise, you'll be fine" he said. "You've done enough"

"Go home, have a bath and lie in it with a glass of wine" the trombone player called to me from across the room. "You'll feel much better for it"

I didn't tell her that long baths and wine aren't my thing. Instead I went home, had a FAB lolly and then a shower with my Tesco value showergel. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Anyway. It was my first exam of my second year this morning, at 9:30am. This, of course, meant that I woke up at 5am, and every 20 minutes after that, just in case I overslept.

The exam started at 9:30am and we usually start going in at about 9:20am. So, as is the smart thing to do, I left the house and started my twenty minute journey at 8am. I ended up getting stuck in bad traffic, though, so I was only there 40 minutes early rather than the whole hour.

At one point, I was dithering at a roundabout and a cyclist overtook me, glancing at me with disdain as he whizzed past. I got past the roundabout and overtook him with a vicious, completely irrational sense of satisfaction. I felt I had won. These are the kind of wars that go on in my head.

Later I was stuck in an incredibly long queue caused by a busy A road suddenly being split up by a mini roundabout. I'm not entirely sure where the people who designed Coventry got this idea from, but it really, really doesn't work. I was gazing in fascination at a girl walking on the other side of the road (she had the most beautifully styled hair I have ever seen, but was dressed like a tramp/witch) when I saw a familiar flash of red go by.

It was the cyclist.

Thankfully, he didn't notice me. I'm not sure what I would have done if he had pulled a victorious face at me. My mental state is very fragile right now; it wouldn't take much for it to snap.

Oh, the exam? Fine, thanks. They always are, in the end, no matter how much I stress about them.

Late night revision

2011-06-06T19:46:00.000+01:00

It was 10:15pm. I and the rest of the 20th Century Continental revision class attendees had been sitting in the same room listening to the tutor talk about Sartre for the past three and a half hours. This was the last topic and we were all looking forward to going home.

"Right" he said, brushing his hair off his face. He was really working the male model look; good looking already, he was wearing knee-length shorts, black trainers and a shirt with the top three buttons undone. More than once I had caught the girls staring at him with no intention at all of listening to criticisms of the fundamental project.

"The last topic we're going to look at is love" Female ears all across the room perked up. The tutor picked up his notes and scanned them for a second.

"For Sartre, love is wanting to possess someone, but wanting to possess them as free.

Love is not tenderness and deep affection. It’s a way of gaining control of one’s being-for-others. And if you don’t believe this, you’re in bad faith. Love is not emerging of the self and the other, it’s a struggle for self identity. We want control of our objective being, our being for others. The only way we can do that is to control the others. Love is about this control"

There was a silence as this rather miserable view of love washed over us. Then the tutor exhaled and looked up.

"It would be brilliant if someone put that on a Moonpig card for Valentines Day..."

Some of us were crying with laughter. I'm not sure if that's because it really was that funny, or just because when your mind is broken you'll laugh at anything.

Da twuth, da twuth, and nuffink but da twuth

2011-05-27T08:50:00.000+01:00

I fear that the last few posts may have left you in possession of a few erroneous thoughts about me.

Firstly, you may think that I have forgotten how to write posts with a higher word count than photo count. I haven't, I promise. Photos are just easier when your brain is fried.

Secondly, you may think that I am not revising. I promise, I am revising. Slowly but surely, revising is happening.

For me, learning the stuff isn't the hard part; the hard part is making it learnable. Once I've condensed the entire book into three handwritten A4 pages, I can learn it all in half an hour and write 8 pages on it for an exam. But condensing an entire book into three handwritten A4 pages well is extremely difficult, and it is that that takes the time. And the brain power. I am exhausted at the end of a day of this.

Thirdly, you might think that I am a total idiot and not worth bothering about. That is not true. I am an idiot, certainly, but I am quite a nice idiot and I've been told I am worth bothering about so I'm assuming it's true.

Anyway. Once I have ploughed through a few more textbooks and written out a few more pages of notes, I'm sure that I will be able to write more about all the lovely and exciting things happening to me at the moment.

Until then, feel free to laugh yourself stupid at photos of me with pens for antenna. Or not. If you like.

This is what I would look like...

2011-05-26T15:43:00.000+01:00

This is what I would look like if I was an alien.

This is what I would look like with a monobrow.

This is what I would look like with a moustache.

This is what I would look like with tusks.

All the above photographs are what I look like when I'm losing my mind.

My new found specs appeal

2011-05-25T20:36:00.000+01:00

I have a thousand and two things to write about, but I keep utterly forgetting what they are.

So instead, here is a picture of my new glasses.

And here is another photo.

And another, where I am pulling a stupid smiley face.

And another one. Where I'm just being stupid.

What do you think? It's nice to actually be able to see.

Last week

2011-05-22T11:19:00.000+01:00

It was a Sunday. I was at work. My parents, I knew, were coming in later to trade in our two DSis and a bunch of games for a 3DS. I was eyeing up Lego Pirates of the Caribbean and my boss was doing bugger all, as he always does on Sunday.

The customers so far hadn’t been that bad. I’d had one pale, slightly dazed looking boy have an in-depth conversation with my co-worker about whether I was pretty or not in what I can only hope they thought was a quiet voice (The customer said yes. The co-worker said no, carrying too much weight), been called stupid twice and had to go in the back to bite my lip really hard a couple of times, but for work I was in a good mood.

When my parents came in, I was serving. A particularly difficult customer this one. He will never listen to anything I say. I usually get one of the boys to deal with him (testicles = valid opinion) but my boss was at Costa and I was the only one in.

I ended up serving a couple of people whilst my parents walked round. One was lovely, a mother and daughter who come in and I talk to about the Sims and Little Big Planet. One was not. I refused to serve someone who was clearly only about 17 for an 18 game because he didn’t have ID and received a mouthful of abuse. Then it came to serving my parents.

“He was a nice boy” my Mum said as I started checking the games were all in their cases.

“He’s not the worst” I said, scanning the games through. “I’ve had people saying they’re going to follow me home and burn down my house if I didn’t serve them”

“Really?”

“Yuhuh. I wouldn’t mind, but Wolfenstein isn’t even that good of a game”

I didn’t say that bit. But I wish I had. I’m much funnier in retrospect.

“Do you need the money?” my Dad asked.

“Well, yeah. My student loan doesn’t cover petrol, parking and rent”

“What about with this work you did, and will be doing next week?”

“...um, with that and my savings I’ve got enough for four, five, maybe six months”

My Mum looked me straight in the eye.

“So why don’t you quit?”

I looked back. My mouth opened prepared with the usual retorts — it’s hard to find places that will let you only work Sundays or odd hours in the week, at least I know this place, two and a half years experience in one place is important — and closed again.

Why didn’t I quit?

So I asked my boss about my notice period and explained that I was going to hand my notice in at some point this week, when I could get to a printer. He told me not to bother printing it out and to just write it out. So I did. And I handed it in.

And last Sunday was my last shift.

I quit.

I am no longer a (ooo, I can say it now I’ve left) Gamestation employee.

It feels like a dream. It feels unreal. It feel strange and rather wonderful.

I’ve left Gamestation.

I’ve left Gamestation.

I’VE LEFT GAMESTATION.

How I prepare for my first day at a new job

2011-05-20T16:49:00.000+01:00

Like I said, I got the e-mail about the job on the Wednesday afternoon and started on the Thursday. This didn’t leave much time for preparation.

Preparation meant:

an immediate shower and entire body scrub down with special scrubby stuff. Just in case the people I worked with were going to at any point see me naked.
a facial scrub and oil-absorbing face mask. Open pores and excess oil really hinder job performance.
a hair mask, blow dry and straighten. Usually I let my unruly mess of hair run free, occasionally with a couple of clips in it. That just was not an option. They will judge me on my hair. They will.
looking up the route on Google Maps. Looking the route up on my phone and taking screen shots of the directions and maps so that I would be fine even if the 3G didn’t work where I was going. Yes, just in case the 3G didn’t work. In London.
using Google Maps street view to look at the street, finding the very door I had to knock on. Doing the same on the previous street. Using Google Maps street view to “walk” the route from the Underground to the front door.
packing my satchel. I put in: two pieces of fruit, two cereal bars, my laptop, my laptop charger, my food diary (for my IBS I keep a food diary, I'm trying to find a trigger food), a normal notebook, two pens, a pencil, the Routeledge Guide to Wittgenstein (for train revision), my Oyster card, my purse, my glasses, a water bottle and my mini Everywhere Bag. The latter is a small make-up bag which contains: IBS medicine, paracetemol, aspirin, Clove oil, cotton buds, upset stomach tablets, Strepsils, a sweetener dispenser, hair slides, a hair brush, a hair bobble, lip balm, tissues, a powder compact, a mini hairbrush and plasters. I also want to get a mini sewing kit. I carry this shit around with me everywhere.
trying on 40% of my wardrobe with 90% of my accessories and finally settling on the dress I wear to every work situation thing ever. Interviews, first days, meetings with potential work people in a non-work situation, I wear this dress. Monday I have a potential work thing and I’ll probably wear this dress. But I’ll still try on my entire wardrobe beforehand.
check the e-mail about three hundred times to make sure that I hadn’t misread it and they were in fact offering me work.
try to get to bed early (about 10pm) but end up lying awake and/or texting and talking on the phone to people I am nervous about and actually falling asleep at about 11:30pm

By the third day I was doing this I was waking up, throwing whatever I could find into a bag and buying my fruit from a Tesco Metro round the corner. Such is life.

Love and the city

2011-05-19T09:35:00.002+01:00

Apologies for being quiet recently. On Wednesday, I received an e-mail asking me to pop down to London for a couple of days’ work. Eager to gain experience and put off revision, I leapt at the chance. Thursday morning found me sitting on a train at 7am with bleary eyes, wondering how I managed to drag myself out of bed at 6 again.

This is my second stint at working in London. As someone living in a small village outside a small town who originally came from an even smaller town in Wales, London terrifies me. It is big and it is mad and beautiful and I love it. Not to live in, y’know, because it would eat me alive, but to visit and to work in it is a wondrous place.

I love standing on the train platform at 6:50am with bleary eyes. I love finding a seat on the train and getting angry because some pompous businessman won’t shift their bag so I can sit down. I love coming out of Euston and either pouring out onto the pavement or down the escalators to the Underground. I love the confidence of knowing where I need to go, where to stand on the platform, and being alone with 800 other people and my thoughts on the escalator back up to street level.

When I’m out and about usually I have one eye on the street and the other on my phone, checking e-mails or Twitter or the news. I don’t do that in London. I can’t. How could you? There’s so much to look at. Everything is beautiful, even the ugly things, and everything is so big. I could look for a thousand years and never drink it all in.

I think my utter joy in London has been compounded by the fact that I have only ever been in two two areas I worked in — Camden and Islington — which are both quite nice, and I’ve only ever had to work in nice places with nice people. Maybe one day I’ll have to work in an utter shithole with people who make me want to cry, but maybe not. Maybe I’ll be able to keep London as my beautiful place to visit forever.

There’s nothing like four days doing something that makes your heart sing to remind you exactly what you’re revising. I could do this in the future, as my forever job, if I just get through my degree. It makes it all seem worth it.

When geeks and old lady hobbies collide

2011-05-10T10:31:00.011+01:00

When I was a wee lassie, I had a "Cross-stitch for beginners" set. I dutifully made a crappy "Home, Sweet Home" and a bookmark, got bored and ditched it.

However, a quick search on Etsy provided me with some inspiration to start again in the form of a rather spectacular pattern...

Can you tell what it is yet?

How's about now?

Ah, there we go. Much more recognisable. And with the border too! (I was bored with revision that night)

Almost finished...

Ta-dah!

I'm only posting it here because not enough people told me on Twitter it was cool. I spent a whole fricking week on this, I want recognition!

That's a joke. Sort of.

Anyway, I now have three more to make, one of which is going to Matt Smith himself. How very exciting. And I've already bought my next pattern, which is again Doctor Who related. What can I say? I'm a geek.

It's a hair mare

2011-05-09T17:13:00.000+01:00

Continuing in my theme of photo-heavy incredibly girly blog posts, I'm writing an entire post about my hair.

I have ridiculous hair. There is no better way of putting it. It's not straight, it's not curly, it's not even particularly wavy. It's not blonde, it's not brown, and it's not ginger. It's just big and all over the place and a weird light mousy colour with ginger highlights.

It wasn't always like this. When I was a baby I had hair like Shirley Temple, in perfect ringlets. But they literally just fell out overnight, and I was left with this mop:

That, pretty much, is what my hair looks like now in its natural state. And yes, that is what I look like when I laugh. Still.

That hairstyle has also been my staple for the past 16 years: as in, with a fringe. Sometimes I mix it up by having the parting to the side, but I have always had a fringe. As you can see...

Weird red/purple...and a fringe.

Long, brown and straight...with a fringe.

Weird dark blonde, with a fringe.

Reddish and super curly, with a side fringe.

Short and blonde, with a fringe.

Long and brown, with a fringe.

As you can see, I have absolutely no trouble hopping between colours and lengths. But that fringe? Never goes away. This is in the main because of one set of photos of me, at my Nan's 80th birthday party. I was 16, I had an awful hair cut (courtesy of Supercuts, who genuinely butchered my hair) and I'd decided to take random strands of said awful hair and dip them in pink hair dye. Oh, and I was fringeless. The result was this...

That is me, my parents and three of my four brothers. I look appalling in every way. But I'm not entirely sure how much of that can be blamed on the fringe.

And in fact, the only other photos I have where I am fringeless, I don't look too bad in...

Admittedly I was young (13) back in them, but still. Not too bad. Right?

Anyway. The point of this post is that I am now in a Growing Out faze. My hair is below my shoulders, pretty much in its totally natural colour, and I am growing out my fringe and my layers. I intend to wait until my fringe is a bit longer and can be made into part of my actual hair, before going to get something drastic done.

The question is, what? And that's kind of the point of this post. You've seen the pictures. What suits me? What doesn't? What should I get done?

And here, just for your delight, is my hair in its washed-about-three-hours-ago, unstyled state. Apart from my fringe being clipped back on the sides at the top, nothing has been done to it. Do I look okay without a fringe, or does my Big Huge Round Face get in the way?

Trevor and Vanessa: The Fat Pigeons

2011-05-06T17:00:00.000+01:00

A few months ago, when it was snowing all the time, I had an open discussion with my parents where they listened to and fully contemplated my views — okay, I bugged them until they agreed — about getting a bird feeder so that the birds didn't starve. As I filled the green tube up with seed and hung it from the archway in our garden where the cats couldn't get at it, I had no idea of the joy that this would bring to my family over the coming weeks.

It was slow at first. No birds were interested in our little feeder. Then suddenly, one day we saw a robin pecking away at it. We grasped at each other with giddy joy and thought that would be it. But over the next few weeks we noticed more and more birds going for the seed. We'd have two or three of them all pecking away at once. Not just robins, but what looked like sparrows, and a blackbird or two.

Nowadays it's like our garden is a host to a bird party. There's pretty much always at least two birds actually on the feeder and an abundance more in the surrounding trees. I love staring out of the window at them when I'm cooking/supposed to be revising and watching them fly about. Watching the birds and talking about them has become a bit of a passtime in my household.

But nothing, nothing will cause the Jones family to put down their cups of tea and run to the window faster than The Fat Pigeons.

These are seriously fat pigeons. They are so fat that they struggle sometimes to fly, and so big that my dogs won't go near them. They waddle around, head bobbing, pecking at anything that looks like it might be food. And they love my back garden.

The problem is, as you can probably tell from that photograph, they are way too big to fit on the feeder. Instead they either stand above it like so and scare away any other birds, or they walk around underneath it and wait for the food that the smaller birds drop.

They strut around like gangsters. I imagine that they're a husband and wife duo; maybe called Vanessa and 'Tough-Nuts' Trevor. Vanessa sits in the corner and files her pigeon toes whilst Trev goes out and harasses smaller birds to steal their food. Then he comes home and Vanessa slaps him around the beak for looking the wrong way at that perky little sparrow he flew past on the way home. He buys her a new nest to make up for it. That's what kind of pigeons they are. She's a spoilt brat and he's a dick. Not nice pigeons.

Anyway, we didn't want them terrorising the others birds, so we bought a bird feeder they could actually get on to. A deluxe bird feeder. There's a bowl of water on the top, then a tray of seed, and fat balls on the bottom.

And Trevor seems to quite like it.

Him and Vanessa ate their fill and flew off pretty quickly, anyway...

I imagine they're about to break into a bird warehouse or something. Anyone know the number for the bird police?

A call from my Nan

2011-05-05T12:58:00.000+01:00

It's about 11pm. I've been home about two hours, most of which was spent hitting the top of a can of beans with a wooden spoon because our can opener is broken. My father has just gone to bed. My mother is in hospital recovering after a minor op. I am working on my cross stitch. Everything is calm.

My mobile starts buzzing. I glance over and the number says "Witheld". Usually I don't answer witheld numbers, but at 11pm it can't be spammers, surely? I pick up and gingerly say "Hello?"

"HELLO? Is that Amy?" blasts down the phone at me. I wince.

It's Nan.

I was supposed to have called my Nan after getting home from visiting Mum in hospital, but I had forgotten. Beans and cross stitch had taken priority. It soon became clear that this phone call was some kind of punishment from God for being a horrible Granddaughter.

"Why haven't you been answering your phone?" she screamed down the phone at me. Well, I say screamed. It's hard to tell with my Nan; her voice is always three octaves higher than anyone else's, as sharp as a blast of sea spray and steeped in a ridiculously heavy Cardiff accent. "I've been up since six, I went to Carmarthen..."

"Oh, did you?"

"Yeah, I did, it was lovely, I had fish and chips and peas and a lovely time...but I came home at eight and I've been ringing and ringing and I've been so worried! and I waited until the match finished and I was ringing and ringing and ringing but I kept getting the bluddy message saying 'We're not in' and I've left loads of messages and..."

"I'm sorry Nan, we haven't had any of them"

"WELL THEY'RE THERE! I've left loads! I got my hair off on the last one and said Carole and David rather than Amy. I've been ringing and ringing and leaving bloody messages and it got to this late and I thought that you'd be back by now because I thought you might have gone out for dinner or something but then I rang and you didn't answer and I kept getting told to leave a message and I did"

"Well I'm sorry Nan, we've not heard any of the phone calls or the messages. Maybe our phone is brok..."

"Well I've been leaving them! I've been up since six, I went to Carmarthen, I wasn't going to but your mother said I should so I did. But then I came back at eight and I tried to ring and I rang and I rang and left messages but no-one answered me and I've been SO WORRIED about your mother"

"Well you don't need to be, she's fine, I promise. I've been to see her and she's alright, no problems at..."

"Oh, well, there, that's good. Only I've been up since six and I kept ringing and no-one was answering and I was getting so worried! And then I went through my book and I saw this number but it had no name or anything on it so I didn't know if it was right but I rang it and I just thought 'My God, I hope someone picks up' and I hoped it was you and to be honest I'm still not sure if it's not your mobile or..."

"...no, Nan, this is definitely my mobile number"

"Oh. Well. Right. I'll have to write your name in or something. Only I been ringing and ringing and I been SO WORRIED about you..."

After a while, I dozed off. She spent another five minutes telling me how she'd been up at six, came home at eight and had kept ringing and had been very worried about her daughter. Although clearly not worried enough to ask how she was before telling me all about her fish and chips and peas in Camarthen.

The phone call ended as it always does; with her crying for the final minute or so of the call before saying "Goodbye, Godbless" halfway through a sentence. When she cried her voice goes even more high-pitched and becomes even more grating. It's also bloody impossible to understand her.

There's a reason I don't call my Nan more often.

What I bought on my shopping trip

2011-05-03T10:56:00.000+01:00

I don't usually do this kind of thing, but I'm so very excited about what I bought yesterday that I just can't help myself.

My dad's phone had gone floopy, so dearest mother and I took it to the Apple store in Leicester. Where, by the way, we spotted Austin Healey of Leicester Tigers/Strictly Come Dancing fame.

But it's a bit of a journey to get from my sleepy little village to Leicester (read: a 45 minute drive. BUT STILL) so we decided to make the most out of it whilst we were there. Which means, of course, shopping.

Our first stop was Matalan, mainly because Mum likes it but also because I am a poor student and can afford little else. She'd seen a couple of dresses she thought I might like — although they were hideous (Clothes retailers: I KNOW that florals are "in" right now, but they actually have to be NICE florals rather than garish neon nightmares) I did manage to get a nice dress. It was made even nicer by the fact that it is two sizes smaller than I would have been buying in January. Boo-yah.

I also bought the most beautiful yet ridiculous pair of earrings I've ever seen.

Just look at them. Dangly, multi coloured, in possession of an enormous pair of googly eyes and yet still utterly gorgeous. Love love.

A few more shops were visited, as was Nandos (LOVE their mixed leaf salad), but the only other thing I actually bought from Leicester town was accessories from New Look.

These are all hair slides. I used to put flowers in my hair all the time but then the world and his wife started doing it too and it gained some rather unappealing connotations. So metal, pastel flowered hair slides will have to do.

And the owls? I was clearly having an owl day yesterday.

These remind me of the packs of earrings you'd get from Index back in the late 90s. A little four pack, designed for children, of earrings in cutesy heart or star shapes.

No? Just me then.

Anyway, these are sweet. Quirky but not as quirky as wearing a crown or a bird or an entire fruitbowl on each ear, as the other New Look earrings suggested you should do.

However, it was went we went out of the town centre to find the Next Clearance store that we struck real gold.

I'm not a particular fan of Next Clearance stores. They tend to look like jumble sales and they host the crap that Next buries underneath it's good clothes in stores that it can't sell. My mum ADORES the place, though, and anywhere we get within a twenty mile radius she has to have a nose.

It was only right when I was leaving that I spotted this beauty. Nicely cut and in beautiful, soft, heavy fabric that makes you want to swish just touching it, it was almost made for me.

Ignore my strange face and awkward pose (I have no idea how to stand in photos) and focus on that lovely dress. It makes me a happier person just to own it.

Anyway. Serious stuff coming soon. Or more likely silence as I drown in revision hell. I'll probably start seeing you again properly in July.

A right Royal weekend

2011-05-02T23:33:00.001+01:00

Whilst I understand why people were fed up of the Royal wedding, I myself was extremely excited about it.

I understand people don't like the Royals, but I really have no problem or particular love affair with them.
I understand people didn't want their money being spent on the wedding, but I'm quite happy paying to keep people safe whilst they enjoy themselves.
I understand that some people hate pomp and fuss and circumstance, but I love pomp and fuss and circumstance.
I understand that some people saw it as just two people getting married and didn't care. But I cared. I always care when two people who appear to be genuinely in love get married, and I'm always happy about it.

Friday April 29th found me alternately glued to the TV, oohing and ahing over Kate's dress (Beautiful. Anyone who channels Grace Kelly is good by me) and busying myself in the kitchen to prepare food for our street party later on.

Oh yeah. We had a street party. On our drive, which is the gravel thing in the above photo. Us and our next door neighbours cleared off the cars, everyone laid out tables and brought food, and we had a lovely, silly, drunken street party.

That's right. We had a Kate & Wills flag hanging off the BBQ. It's always a nice element to any party that the whole thing can go up in flames in seconds.

That cutie pie is Tom. He is the six month old son of one of Garry's students, Becki. He provided much of the entertainment for the party.

Okay, mainly much of my entertainment. I love kids. Genuinely adore the little buggers. Tom likes me, possibly because every time I see him I bounce him up and down, do the weird thing I can do with my tongue (fold it up like a flower) and blow raspberries. Kids like that. This one does, anyway.

Oooo, and these are the cakes I spent two days making.

The pink ones are Raspberry Trifle cupcakes — that's custard on the top, and there's a raspberry, jam and more custard inside. The ones with the creamy icing are Sticky Toffee Pudding cupcakes. The ones with the gold balls are Hot Chocolate cupcakes. They all taste amazing. Thank you, thank you, Hummingbird Bakery.

That wasn't the best bit though. LOOK AT WHAT I MADE.

That's me, looking very ugly, with my gorgeous union flag cake. I bought ready to roll icing specially to make that, and spent a whole hour swearing at my rolling pin to decorate it. Love it.

The party went on for about six hours, until most people were too drunk to continue. The nice 40 year old lady who lives opposite was telling everyone that she hasn't slept with her husband in eight months and every time she climbs on him he pushes her off; the lovely man across the road was looking like he'd quite like to end her dry spell; my Dad had gone inside and fallen asleep on the sofa in front of a war film; my neighbour Jennie had started hugging everything in sight and telling everyone how much she loved daisies. That's always a sign it's time to go home.

And the next day we had a mini party at Chubby Club, with a vicar and a bride and everything. 'tis slightly awkward that the "Bride" and "Groom" aren't married and that the Groom's wife was actually standing behind her in this photo, but y'know. Whatever.

(I'm on the left at the back. Red dress, white cardi. My mum is on the far right at the back, dressed all in blue)

Excellent few days of parties. It didn't make me proud to be British, but it did make me glad to be alive.

What did you do for the wedding?

Begging for votes

2011-04-27T17:53:00.000+01:00

So, you may want to know that I'd quite like to be a writer.

I know almost every 21 year old girl says that, but it's true. It's the only thing I've actually ever wanted to do. Sure, I've wanted to be a dolphin trainer and a chef and an optometrist and a police detective...but I've always wanted to do that and write novels on the side. As I get older, I'm doing more and more to try and make the writing thing happen.

So a few weeks ago, when I saw a competition to write a book review for Stylist magazine, I jumped right in and entered with a review of Gentlemen & Players, one of my favourite Joanne Harris novels.

And I am shortlisted.

I would very much like to win this. But the winner is decided half by the panel and half by votes...so I need votes.

Which is where you utterly fabulous people come in. Have I told you how good you look today? No? Well, you look hot. Vote for me?

Plus, if you do vote for me there is a chance you'll be able to win £100 towards books for yourself. Which is always nice.

To vote, you need to e-mail bookreviews@stylist.co.uk with the subject "Gentlemen and Players". To enter the competition, stick your name and number in the e-mail.

If you do this, I will love you forever. If you do this and get your friends to vote too, I will love them too. If you do this and try and spread the word, I will love you so much I will give you a big sloppy kiss. In a nice way.

The page itself is here, if you want to vote but not necessarily for me. But, y'know. Please vote. For me. Please.

A day at the beach

2011-04-26T10:57:00.000+01:00

Everyone needs time off now and again. Last week was a blur of revision, housework and crying and Garry decided, quite rightly, that I needed some time off. So he took me to the beach, which is only ten minutes from my house.

I imagine a few of you are going "Hang on, don't you live near Coventry, which is about as far from the beach as humanely possible?" Well, dear readers, you'd be right. I do. And the beach was actually in Meriden, which is classed as the dead centre of England. It's a Fake Beach, and it's rather lovely.

Heart Park basically took their existing enormous lake and piled an enormous load of sand near one of the edges. With the addition of a lot of stripy deckchairs, a few beach huts and a shop selling ice-cream, it makes a pretty good beach. Especially if you're a beach-starved Midlander.

Revision is a lot nicer when done lying on a towel in sand with the sun warming your face. Garry and I did little apart from lie there, eat our picnic and soak up the sun, but people around us were really getting into it. There were sandcastles, people biffing volleyballs around, people swimming, women wearing just bikinis sunbathing, everything.

Oh, and I got far, far too involved with burying Garry's feet in sand.

I don't concentrate that much on anything, ever. And Garry wasn't too impressed with his feet being buried...

Ahem.

Revision and things

2011-04-25T12:17:00.000+01:00

Things I would rather be doing than revision:

Cleaning
Cooking
Reading
Dancing
Going on long walks in the sun
Lying in the garden sleeping
Lying on my bed sleeping
Lying on a fake beach sleeping
Sleeping, in fact, anywhere
Baking ridiculous and delicious cakes
Eating
Skipping
Attempt to learn how to run without looking like a total prat
Learn to make my own clothes
Knitting
Learn to juggle
Learn to ice skate
Learn to tap dance
Play Sims
Write a truly atrocious novel
Give English lessons to a Spanish pensioner
Watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 over and over again
Gardening
Writing fanfiction
Read Wikipedia articles about the monarchy
Attempt to watch every episode of Come Dine With Me that was ever made
Cut out all the recipes I want from my cooking magazines
Sell clothes on eBay
Sell books on eBay
Sell my life on eBay

Things I would rather revise than do:

Work at the video game store

A bit of a moan

2011-04-20T12:21:00.000+01:00

At the moment, I have a lot to do.

As well as trying to cram and entire year's worth of Philosophy knowledge into a month and a half, my mother has badly hurt her arm so is not sleeping properly and her workday leaves her exhausted so it's up to me to do all of the cooking and cleaning in the house. Also I am trying to start a writing career, which means spending a fair amount of time writing stuff for my portfolio, sending e-mails to people in the hope they'll take on volunteers/freelancing and generally trying to get my shit together. AND I have a job, although that's only Sundays. And, as band secretary, I have a seemingly endless to do list for the band, and a lot of weight added to the decisions I make in the band. Oh, and I teach the junior band. And I teach a student on Wednesday nights too.

Last night, things...uh...got to me a bit.

As in I spent from 6pm to 11pm alternately feeling miserable and sobbing.

I realise I'm probably overreacting and you're all reading this going "Yeah, yeah...we've all got a lot to do, stop moaning"

Right now everything seems a bit hopeless though. There's never enough time. There's always more to do that I'm not entirely sure when I'm going to be able to do it. There's always something I've not done, or gotten wrong, and there's always a heavy sense of guilt about it. People keep telling me to stop feeling guilty but I can't.

Happier service will resume soon. I hope.

Little blog, big blog.

2011-04-13T14:12:00.000+01:00

It seems most of the popular blogs nowadays are blogs that primarily talk about fashion/beauty, with the occasional cupcake recipe thrown in.

Whilst I could do the cupcake thing with little to no effort on my part whatsoever, I don't think I'd be too good at the fashion part.

My style can be summed up as follows: Take one flowery/brightly coloured dress, add a man's cardigan, tights and ankle boots, and serve with hair that you can't be arsed to straighten properly. Go.

I'm not entirely sure that I could sustain a blog on that premise.

Popular blogs that are similar to the blogging I do — as in, not focused on anything specific, just whatever pops into my head — are either funny, charming or written by people who have self-control and sophistication. A perfect example of this is the delightful Blonde, who is everything I want to be and completely lovely with it. However Sam, Cliff and Anna all manage to have at least two of those three traits.

I am not funny. This I have established. I occasionally say things that make people laugh, but always — and this is the crucial part — when I don't actually mean to be funny. That doesn't count.

Am I charming? I don't think so. Charming conjures up some kind of twinkle, some kind of Magic Trait X that makes you slightly irresistible and interesting. I'm not irresistible, and I'm in the running for the World's Most Boring Lady award.

Self-control? Sophistication? The fact that I am dieting because I am several stones overweight shows I have no self control and I have all the sophistication of a baked bean that was squashed under the paws of a dog that's just rolled in fox poo.

I think I'm either going to have to get used to the fact that my blog will never be a successfully huge popular one or I'm going to have to start posting photos of my boobs to try and draw in some traffic.

...

I'm okay with having a small blog.

A reminder

2011-04-09T11:47:00.002+01:00

It's my birthday tomorrow.

Just reminding you.

In case you'd forgotten to get me a present.

*glares*

21! Yay!

More than a finish line...

2011-04-08T12:19:00.000+01:00

I was TOTALLY beaten to the post with this...uh, post....by Sam from A Little Bit Of Wisdom In Every Box (Do you read him? If not you should. Especially before reading the drivel that I write) and he did it a whole lot better than I'm going to do it, but I'm posting it anyway because the subject is awesome.

Cliff, who blogs over at This Is This (Again, if you don't read him you should. He's fricking brilliant) is running a marathon on Sunday. I know a lot of people run marathons, but this guy has gone from sofa to marathon in 37 weeks. That's hella impressive. He's hella impressive.

I literally cannot even begin to imagine running a marathon. I get winded running up the stairs carrying a heavy box; running for 26 miles seems an impossible feat. But whenever anyone tells Cliff that he is amazing or really fantastic for what he's doing, he plays it down with a "Oh, anyone could do this".

So, yeah. A nice guy doing a brilliant thing. He'd be sickening if he wasn't so lovely. If you fancy giving him some support, I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

And if you're feeling extra lovely, he's running it in aid of Medecins Sans Frontier, and you can donate here.

Go Cliff Go!