Tag Archives: friends

A Wintery Weekend At Borough Market

1 Nov

It’s a rare occurrence, but this weekend was mine and mine alone. No neatly penned scribbles in the diary, no vague plans with the girls carried away into the air when we previously parted – nothing.

Exciting. I love the thought of a free weekend spanning out across the horizon with nothing interrupting it as it drifts away, and so I went about that brilliant hobby of making last minute plans to fill my day.

On Friday evening we decided, out of the blue, to go out in Camden. There was a bite in the breeze as the season is turning, but we had great fun drinking and dancing and talking with strangers. It just goes to show that when you are with your best friend, time passes too fast and very happily. No fair weather friends, just me and my partner in crime, having fun.

My Weekend In Photos

My Weekend In Photos

On Saturday we went to Borough Market. If you are based in London and haven’t been, or ever get to London, it’s a must. Lane upon lane of food stalls, the hustle and bustle of people browsing butchers and fishmongers, and the delightful smell of food stalls whetting your appetite and tantalising your taste buds. It was so hard not to stop at the first stall and chow down on paella, but luckily we resisted as we eventually came to a hog roast stand with cracking and applesauce. Yum!! We finished wandering the market and found an independent cafe to have some tea and warm our bones before heading out into the sleet to go home.

I woke early on Sunday, as the clocks had changed and took the train home to spend the day with two poorly little girls. We had great fun making pizza faces, watching movies and playing, with the kind of clingy cuddles that only sick kids give you, when they don’t want to be out exploiting and discovering, just having cosy cuddles.

How were your weekend? Seems like an age ago now!!

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Thanks Be

25 Nov

There are times in your life when you feel the clear presence of a metaphorical crossroads. Whether you believe in destiny and fate or think that the path that you choose is your own and there are no external forces governing it is regardless; you still will have felt that you have reached a curve in the road or a sign post that allows you to sit back and take stock of your surroundings. It might be a point in your life with a friend; you stand there together hand in hand and they chose the other path. You watch them disappear off into the distance before taking those first baby steps into your future. I felt like that when my substitute older sister went home. To Australia.

I don’t know what I believe, but right now I feel that the events of the last few months can’t be just coincidence. I have always been a firm believer in the “what will be will be” mentality, and today I find myself standing at the junction ready to decide to take the high road or the low road. No one is there with me to hold my hand and reassure me, but there is a quiet calm in being able to make that decision and do what I feel is best for me.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving in America. Millions of you gathered at your tables to tuck into turkey and all the other yummy goodies on offer, and I sat in my flat and pondered my surroundings.

Yesterday I lost my job. It’s a long story but the abridged version is that the contract I work on was not renewed, and therefore from New Year’s Eve I have no position at the company I have worked in for two years. There is a weird loophole in the law whereby I can start on the 1st of January with the new company in London, but essentially my day to day life will end from then.

Yet I feel a sense of serenity. Maybe I need a life break, or a career change, or both. What I do know is that I have a lot of decisions to make and I am lucky enough to have people in my life that will help me. My housemate and sister to pick me up like a small child who has grazed her knee, the lawyer to give me an emotional crutch and legal jargon and my parents to let me know that despite what I think, everything will be OK.

New Year’s Eve has always been my favourite night of the year; granted all the parties have so much hype and are never quite as exciting, but I have always thought it to be a mentally cleansing day; a time when you can rise like a phoenix from the flames into the New Year and start afresh. I love turning the pages in a new diary and feeling like the world is my oyster, and this year will be all the more poignant. 2011 has been a year of hospital visits, arguments and break ups, but 2012 will be my year. Forget the Chinese calendar; it’s the year of Belle.

So I might be a little late to the party, but a comment from a wise man yesterday gave me food for thought, and my reason to be thankful. OK so I may have reached a point of uncertainty in a lot of strands of my life (as John Mayer, life guru would say “might be a quarter life crisis, or just a stirring in my soul”. Profound :) ) but I have had the chance to do what I love and meet people for it. I’m always overwhelmed by the little community of people I have here so I want to take the time to you all for reading, commenting and following. The stats are pretty impressive; seven hundred and ten slightly crazy people around the world get my posts in their reader as I post them, so special thanks to you lot!

With positivity and new beginnings in mind, I would love for you all to head on over to imcookingnolooking.wordpress.com this weekend. It’s our new project!! I will of course remain here on a daily basis (I wouldn’t abandon you!) but Jules and I are branching out in our quest for world domination. It’s currently a work in progress with a working title but I would love to hear your feedback. I can announce it will be called ‘Tinkering in the Kitchen’ and is intended to be a collaborative effort with some of my favourite blog friends from around the world.  If anyone wants to participate, drop me an email at laura.tinker@hotmail.co.uk. It’s going to be a whole heap of fun and with a bit of luck and a lot of graft we plan to change the face of the ‘quick’ ready meal for a healthier future.

And with that, fair reader, I bid you adieu (for today anyway!)

‘Belle xx

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Guest Post ~ Negative Nancy

21 Nov

Brooke and McKenzie have written todays guest post on friends and how different personalities have an impact on us. Read it and then head over to their blog because its jam-packed with fantastic posts about their mission to find Mr Right and the hijinks they get up to in the process.

I heart them, and I’m sure you will too.

Happy Monday :)

‘Belle xx

We are very excited to write a guest post for Tinkerbelle and although our blog is mainly about our dating and relationship mishaps, we are going to steer away from the opposite gender in this post and talk about platonic relationships. More specifically we want to share how important we think it is to maintain a positive attitude in life. After all, life is too short to waste it being miserable and trying to make others around you miserable as well, and the best memories we have are the good ones.

The Negative Nancy…

1.       Someone who commonly whines, complains, or looks at the bad side of things.

We have a friend who shall be nicknamed “Negative Nancy.” She has earned this nickname because by all definition of the word; she is a pessimist and views the glass as half empty all the time. There isn’t one day that goes by where we don’t hear from her whining or complaining about how every single thing in her life is unfair. She writes to ask how our day is but we feel that she does not even care for what answer we give because once she has your attention, she selfishly complains non-stop. She complains about everything from how much she hated her co-workers at her old job and how unhappy she is with her new job. She complains about any boyfriend she has had, her family and even daily routines like the coffee she is having and how she’s not enjoying it and how unhappy she is with her outfit choices. Because of her constant complaining, it has started to affect her daily life. Her constant Negative Nancy attitude has pushed away all of her friends and ruined her relationships. It seems that even when you try to show her some positivity she gets frustrated as if she’s happier being gloomy and wants you to sulk with her.

We had a girl’s vacation for a week to an all-inclusive resort with great food, beautiful weather, unlimited drinks at a 24 hour bar, one of which was a swim-up bar. What more could we want. The four of us were celebrating 10 years of friendship. Before going on the trip, 3 of us discussed how we were going to try to ignore Negative Nancy as much as we possibly could because by knowing her for 10 years we realized that a week with her was bound to create some issues.

It didn’t even take more than a day for Negative Nancy’s dark clouds to start looming over us. We were travelling overnight so that we would be there early in the morning an extra day of paradise.  As soon as we got in we enjoyed drinks outside, the ocean and the pools but as dinner rolled around Negative Nancy said she was feeling cranky because she was tired, to not let her gloom ruin our first day she went to bed early as we enjoyed dinner, made many new friends and went out to the clubs outside the resort. The next day when we told her about how eventful our first night was she was very upset that we did this without her. Apparently our world should’ve stopped because she was grumpy.

The negativity continued when we introduced her to the new friends we made as throughout the week she constantly criticized them and was anti-social. Out of the seven days we were there, we all can agree that we had fun with her on one day, the rest were made painful in one way or another.

There was days she was being “grumpy,” days she was being anti-social and days where she was disagreeing with the rest of us just because she was in a bad mood. We started to get more and more agitated with one another and whenever she wasn’t around was the times we were truly enjoying being on vacation. Overall, neither one of us would wish to ever go on a vacation or anything like that with her again.

That day we realized that having such a negative and selfish source in our lives would eventually start to turn us into negative and very anxious people. We then decided that we wanted to give her an intervention but where would we start? What would we say?

An idea I had was to ask her to write or talk about one positive thing a day. Or as a Christmas present I have joked about giving her a jar filled with positive things and what she should be thankful for.  We would love to give her an intervention. Bottling up so much negativity and anger cannot be good for anybody’s health emotionally and physically. As well by acting this way she is pushing away all the people who care about her as she selfishly refuses to get help and gets angry if it is offered.

What do you guys think, is an intervention necessary? What would you do if this was your friend? 

Brooke and Mckenzie

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Zumba-licious!

9 Nov

There’s a new crazy taking the country by a storm… (well it’s not a new craze, but I never have been very quick on the uptake. Facebook? Nope. Skinny jeans? I don’t think so!) Zumba! And last week, I decided to try it, with hilarious consequences.

I had heard a lot about it, as most people you talk to seem to have a mother / auntie / gran who indulges, but you rarely hear anyone of my age admitting to do it. But gym-bunny housemate Emma, who will try anything that might mean that the words ‘fun’ and ‘exercise’ can go in the same sentence, has been trying to get me to go with her.

Don’t get me wrong, this girl likes spinning, so I wasn’t convinced that when she said “it’s a right laugh” that I would agree with her. I had visions of an ambulance being called as I suffered a heart attack, and Emma perspiring elegantly while bopping about with no trouble at all.

Actually, I was pleasantly surprised. We got to the school hall that it was being held in, and she said “ooh I’m not sure about this. The other place we do it has really dim lights. Here you can see everything!” and we waited in said gym hall while a strange caretaker who reminded me of Groundskeeper Willy out of The Simpsons, perved on us. There is no pretty way of saying it, that’s what he was doing.

My first giggles started way before the class, when I made the grown up decisions (I know, check me out!) to go to the loo. I felt like the BFG. The loos in an infant school are like something out of a dolls house! It was like trying to wee in an egg cup, and I don’t think Emma could work out why there were giggles coming from my cubicle. I dried my hands on the teeny tiny paper towels and made my way out into the white light of the school hall.

And then the dancing started. And it was really fun! We salsa’ed and zumba’ed and cha cha’ed to our hearts delight.

Let’s put it this way, if I was South American, I would be really embarrassed. Shakira makes it look so easy when she wiggles her hips and winds her body seductively. That’s the vision, isn’t it? Looking like a belly dancer with flawless skin and hips like you’ve been hula hooping all your life?

The reality was a little different. Think red faces and hips like robots that needed oiling. The faster it got, the more disjointed we looked until we resembled belly dancers having fits. I laughed so hard that I tripped over my shoelaces, sending the others into fits of giggles. And it looks so easy! But it’s not. My (little amount of) natural rhythm got the moves and I looked a little more like a pro, until my brain caught up with my hips, and I lost it totally.

Despite looking like I suffered from epilepsy and having no rhythm whatsoever, we will be going back next week. Toot toot!

Have you ever been to an exercise class and felt like a right wally?

If you want to read about other disastrous (and hilarious) exercise classes that the blonde one and I have tried, read these related posts:
Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
I Can Haz Inner Peace
The One Where We Went To Aqua Aerobics

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Ooooooh… Fanceh!

8 Nov

So a week has gone since the advent of the competition and you still have 5 days to enter! I did promise I would share some of the ones that featured highly on my faves list, so in no particular order…. (plus see if you can spot the glaringly obvious Where’s Wally/Wendy in this post!).

1) Marc Spine Chilling Horror. This one dropped into my inbox and filled me with jealousy. I wish I had come up with this one, they look so cool!

2) Patricia at Aniksrunn sent me this one of one of her kids. I loved it! She’s totally rocking the dead kid. Reminds me of The Ring. Creepy!

3) Charlet at DaintyC sent me a similar one of her and one of her students, dressed as Pikachu and Luigi from Super Mario. Totally adorable.

4) One of the first up takers of the game, Kathleen sent me pictures of the entire family dressed as the Rubbles. I always preferred them to the Flintstones anyway!

5) Tori – this one I think it still sitting in my favourite spot. She sent me a pic of her darling little boy dressed as George Michael from the WHAM! Days…. This is the sort of mother I am going to be. I sincerely hope these pictures are brought out every time he brings a girlfriend home.

But do you think your fancy dress outfits are better than these guys? Were you the most fly witch on the block? (See what I did there, I’ll keep the dad jokes coming….) did your zombie look have people running for cover? Some of the more creative entries are some lads dressed as bacon, and a lady in a fridge costume, but I want to see what you’ve got!!

It’s not me judging (it’s a woman whose alter egos include Dangermouse, Wally from Where’s Wally fame and a really chavvy looking golfer) so you guys have all to play for, keep them coming! Mainly because I love the creativeness, and feel special when I get emails :)

For more information, read these related posts:
Fancy Dress Update!
Competition Alert! Who Dresses The Fanciest?

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Funny Friday ~ Hallowe’en Freaky Fun

28 Oct

What with Hallowe’en being on Monday, I thought it would be fun to make a little mischief and get you all giggling. So without further ado, please prep your sides for four of the funniest and most interesting blog writing women I know (plus moi). This had me in stitches, and I hope you all agree!

(Disclaimer… Although fabulous, we are not available for shows unless you are paying at least a million each. And then we will consider it).

Pay them a visit!

The Redneck Princess (@DoMaH64) aka Franken-rapper
Jules (@Julie_Davidoski) also known as Dracu-MC
Maggie Mae (@maggiemaesdays) – The Rappin’ Mummy
Karyn (@ KarynAPyle) also known as MC Wicked Witch.

Happy Hallowe’en everyone!

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For I Am Gullible

19 Oct

Gullible (definition) Easily led or cheated. Credulous.

I’m surprised they don’t link out to me after that; after all I am one of the most gullible people on the planet. I don’t know what it is, but hit me with some true sounding fact and I’m all over it. I would go down in history as being the worst contestant on Balderdash. I fall for anything and everything. I would like to think it is due to my trusting nature but I think it’s because I just take people at face value as I often couldn’t be bothered to think up something so elaborate.

I don’t mind being laughed at. I laugh at myself on a regular basis. Especially after some of the clangers I have fallen for.

Let me introduce you to Adam (I would give him an alias but due to his past vocalising on my blog posts, it’s a bit late for anonymity). He knew straight away that I was an easy target, and went about constructing some of the most hilarious things for me to believe. Some of them I saw right through, but the rest of them I fell for, hook, line and sinker. There are two particular ones that stick in my mind, and as I don’t seem to have a filter on what to reveal and what to keep to myself… are you sitting comfortably?

In Germany, while queuing to get our flight back home after spending the weekend in Baden Baden (so good they named it twice), Adam asks to look at my passport. I give it to him. He comments on the three letters above my country of issue, and how his are different. This is fantastic, someone who hasn’t fallen over laughing at the fact that I look like a female Harry Potter with a funny face in my passport picture! I ask why. He then proceeds to tell me this convoluted story about how his Dad is a spy (or something. I’m sure he will chip in) and that the three letters mean that if there is a terrorist attack and the police turn up at the airport, he has special clearance to be removed first as due to his family, he is a target. I look at him sceptically. He embellishes the story, giving me perfect reason to think he is telling the truth. I mean why go to all the effort otherwise? It didn’t dawn on me that if this was the truth he probably wouldn’t be shouting about it, but moving on. I literally believed this story for a good half an hour, with all the people in the queue thinking that I must be the most stupid person on earth, before he tells me the truth. I attack him with said passport, about his smug face, but in a low key way just in case passport control think I am actually assaulting him and refuse to let me back on the aircraft.

The other favourite lie was telling me that his computer was voice activated. The problem was with the developments in technology, it could have been. I’m sure my cousin once had a word programme that she talked into to help her with her dyslexia, so this one was a feasible application, or so I thought. So I ask him some questions and then feel safe in the knowledge that someone is not pulling my leg and that he has a pretty cool computer. I don’t really care as I know as much about computers as the economic climate in Cambodia, and therefore it goes completely over my head. I proceed with the next conversation. But before he goes all red and looks like he is about to explode, and has to reveal he is a massive liar.

What stories have you fallen for?

If you need more Belle related gullibility, please go back and read Tell Me Sweet Little Lies.

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I’ve Got Soul But I’m Not A Soldier

15 Oct

Some things deteriorate as they age. Salad, for example. Buy a bag of spinach and leave it in the fridge for a week and I would bet money on the fact that you won’t want to eat it. It will have produced its own liquid and gone all wilted and look gross. Same with a glass of juice. Mmmmmm, juice. Nice when you have just poured it, but two days later when you wake up in the night with a thirst like you haven’t had fluid in days, it’s not the best thing you will have ever imbibed.

But some things get better with age. Fine wines and cheeses for example (it always comes back to cheese. Me and our Emma have already planned Christmas with a cheese board). And me. I honestly think that as I get older, I get better.

Image courtesy of The Redneck Princess, a fantastic woman who supported me since one of the first days I started blogging. Surround yourself with positive people!

I think it’s because I care less. When I was younger I would stress about the finer details of everything; why did that happen? What was the outcome? Could I have changed it? Now I simply don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, when life knocks me or my faith in people is questioned I get sad, but I am tougher than I used to be. Like an old bread roll! :) I think I believe more in the path that we are on, and although you follow one signpost or another, you are still rolling with the punches of something that is already set for you. I feel that as I age I am more able to actually say what I want to say, rather than just thinking it, and if I am unhappy about a situation, I will let you know.

And I believe that honesty is the best policy. The honest truth might hurt a bit but when people say that they lied to protect the person they were lying too, they are guilty of fibbing again. A lie very rarely protects someone, just prolongs the eventuality of them finding out the truth in the first place. And a lie comes with more feeling and emotion, like a group of girls on their way off for a week in the sun. Baggage. Packed so tight that if you push it too hard, pants fly all over the place.

So people, I am back to my normal self. This constantly second guessing myself is tiring and so im going back to the me I was before my life decided to have a brief hibernate. I’m surrounding myself with the people that make me happy, and disassociating myself with the people who don’t. I’m unzipping the shell and emerging, like a pheonix from the flames. Yay! How exciting! This is starting with a weekend of yoga with Emma, seeing my mother, meeting friends for coffee, dancing in my PJs and carving pumpkins. Spending time with my sister, swimming and catching up. Bliss.

I’m back, y’all!!

‘Belle xxxx

PS…. as always, follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you want. Just sayin……

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The Norman Bates Effect

4 Oct

OK so horror films are always a bit silly aren’t they? But we watch them regardless. Amongst my group of friends, one of them regularly pipes up “Laura it’s your turn to choose the film” and I feel all smug and included. Briefly. But then it normally goes like this.

Me “How about Mermaids?”

Boys “No.”

Me “How about Cool Runnings?”

Boys “No”.

Me “How about Rush Hour? Bad Boys? Aladdin?”

Boys “No. No. Absolutely not”.

Me “This really isn’t me picking if I’m not allowed to pick. Huff.”

So this weekend, Emma was put in charge of picking the film. She chose Dawn of the Dead. In fairness, she had mistaken it for Shaun of the Dead and thought we were going to be watching a comedy about two video gamers running around trying to get to the pub and killing some amusing zombies on the way, rather than a ‘serious’ horror films about zombies, vicious biting and death. But we had to watch it anyway because by the time she had realised and we had corrected her, someone had pressed play, which is completely concrete in the living room movie rules. Sigh.

We all half-heartedly watched it for about half an hour with someone regularly piping up “Are we still watching this?” “Is it still on?” or something to that effect. Because it was ridiculous.

But it got me thinking about horror films and the effects that they have on us, as Emma watched the zombie boyfriend sucking the blood of the screaming girlfriend through her fingers, despite knowing what was going to happen. When I was younger I watched Stephen King’s IT. It was a film I was not supposed to be watching at a sleepover, and for months afterwards I didn’t walk too close to the drains in the street for fear that a menacing clown hand would poke out and grab me by the ankles. The fact that I wouldn’t fit down the drain hole was irrelevant; I did not want to be murdered by a clown, and therefore I would walk in the centre of the road, or far across on the pavement so I couldn’t be reached.

Psycho is another one. I studied the Alfred Hitchcock version at sixth form as part of my English Literature course, and I had no problems with it then. Mainly because we watched it so many times, and often with the sound off to investigate the effect of sound on an individual and how it builds up tension. But now, when my housemates are out I always go check the front door before I go in the shower, and I’m always slightly concerned that I might meet my death to a knife wielding maniac. The tension is lost slightly as I have one of those slidy shower doors and no white shower curtain, but as I have an ensuite with no lock and a bedroom with no lock, sometimes I will even go and have a shower in the girl’s bathroom so I have the option to lock the door. Crazy? Maybe. Premenstrual? Perhaps. But still, it makes me feel less expectant of imminent death.

For my twelfth birthday I had a sleepover and my mum let us rent a horror film. We rented I Know What You Did Last Summer. Bad idea. For weeks I would check my enormous wardrobe for a man in a rain mac with a fish hook in his hand before I went to bed. Luckily I had one of those beds that had another one underneath, so I didn’t have to check there for nasties.

And I still do it. I am twenty five years old, and if I have seen a horror film I will always check. We watched Insidious the other night (terrible film about possessed children) and despite being pretty sure I wasn’t being haunted by any undead kids, I still had to check my shower room for infants before watching Despicable Me to cheer us up.

But tonight, when bedding in for a girly night with my bestest, we will probably watch a horror film, freak ourselves out at the noise coming from the cupboard and then one of us will sleep in the others room to ensure that if a murderer is on the loose, there is more chance of one of us surviving and being able to avenge the death of the other one. Or something :)

Which films scared you as a child?

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Reasons To Be Cheerful

5 Aug

A girl will have different types of friends in her life, and this will never change regardless of her age, hair style or choice of partner. Men will come and go; sometimes at a rate of knots and sometimes at a leisurely pace, depending on where you are in your life. There will be births and deaths, high days and holidays, but your friends will remain consistent, like the changing of the seasons.

But there are different types of friends, aren’t there? There are the jellyfish ones, where they sneak in a sting which you don’t notice for a while, like “oh I love that dress. I have it! But a size smaller.” (“Oh I know, I like it, it’s….. B*@TCH!)” Or “you’ve lost weight!! Your wings look toned!” (“Why thank you… wings, what wings? Is she referring to my BINGO WINGS? B*@TCH!”), the ones who will go shopping with you and tell you that you look fantastic in those trousers that you are umming and aahing over, the ones that are bang on trend but you think make you look a little bit like you’ve been shoehorned into them, only for you to get home and your boyfriend laugh at you for a solid ten minutes uttering “no darling, they look great. I’m just remembering a joke from the pub”.

But then you have the other ones. The ones that are there for you in times of need, when you are crying so hard that there is snot all over their shoulder and you sound like Darth Vader, who will laugh with you once they have picked you up from falling face first in a very public place, or take you to the hospital when you have had one too many and walked into a lamp post. The ones who will support you whatever you do; fully ready to laugh with you when you reminisce, but defend your honour when necessary. The ones who are totally mental, but you love them. The ones who are ruthlessly inappropriate to the point that you laugh so much you feel a bit sick, and the ones that you would rush to their side and dust them down when their boyfriend “isn’t sure about a future”. And the ones who never change, no matter where in the world you are and who you become. The girls who stick by your side when times get tough.

So take the time to say thank you for their support. And if they are anything like my crones they’ll say “aaaaaah… stop being such a knob. Did someone interfere with your drink?!”

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