Tag Archives: humor

Age Is But A Number

16 May

Today marks the 27th anniversary of the day I was born, a day my mother’s life became considerably more awesome. As a child I was a complete primadonna, scared of getting muddy, refusing to eat most foods and reluctant to admit that my baby sister was something that was staying around. As a 27 year old im scared of getting muddy, sure, but I will eat anything within a mile radius and am reluctant to let my little sister leave when we spend any time together. What a difference over a quarter of a century makes!

The fact that I am now 27 is a bit of an issue for me; my brain has a power struggle with things that I think I should be doing and things that I am actually doing, causing minor meltdowns when I think that I have missed something off the list. As an over achiever, I long for the days when I was at school and papers got marked, exams got scored and you knew you were bang in line with your peers. Thanks Facebook.

For example, when having a chat with my mother over the weekend I casually asked her how old she was when she met my Dad. 22. How old she was when she married him. 24 and how old she was when she had me. 26.

I then dramatically declared myself “behind the curve” and announced that I would be a spinster surrounded by cats, growing old in a hoarders house surrounded by old cardboard boxes and things that I had formed emotional relationships with for no reason other than attachment, like bin bags. Sure, I may have been watching too many of those compulsive hoarder shows, but the fear was still there. I ate a whole lot of cheese (I might be old now and my cheese choices have matured from orange square cheese to goats cheese, but cheese is still my comfort food of choice) and went back to my lovely urban flat, minus children and significant other half  to cook and clean (makes me feel calm, don’t judge) until I proudly announced that “I liked it when my flat smelt of swimming pools” and I wasn’t even joking.

My housemate (God love her) then proceeded to read me an article about things that would make me feel old, and they did. So it worked.

Capture

The main killer that took me from ‘strangely happy about the fact that I am turning 27’ to ‘wait while I go slash my wrists with my OAP bus pass” was the fact that Luke Perry, the first TV star who I was in love with in 90210, is 45. Goddamit, 45??!!!! The Backstreet Boys are also rocking their 40s, and according to this article, not too well given the hair plugs and protruding beer bellies.

If you fancy getting hit with the full list, here you go.

The moral of this story is that after a brief chat with myself where I pondered my existence, I realised that I don’t actually want to be 17 again. I had bad hair, hadn’t mastered the art of contact lenses and ……….. TEQUILA.

I rest my case.

What makes you suddenly realise you’re a grown up?

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Dear Pinterest…. It’s Not You, It’s Me

14 Apr

I’m suffering from an affliction. I feel sleepy in the day, I can’t concentrate and my eyelids need propping open with tiny little matchsticks to get through even the simplest of tasks. I haven’t had the energy or time to blog for ages, let alone organise to meet my friends,  keep up at work or call my grandparents.

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Am I stressed out? Is there something that is keeping me awake at night, causing my tiredness during the day?

No.

I’m addicted to Pinterest. And we need to break up.

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I go to bed at a reasonable time; I take my makeup off, shower, put the light off… and then spend hours trawling through humourous quotes, slow cooker recipes or awesome salad ideas to make myself eat healthier during the week. Sure, it has had a really positive effect on my waistline and I feel able to eat salads as they are no longer boring. I have pictures to send my sister when she is feeling stressed from all the work at Uni, and I have stylishly decorated my new flat with penny saving ideas so I now live in the coolest of spaces, but this is no substitute for sleep. Image Luckily my housemate caught me last week trying to leave the house with my sweater on inside out and made me change, but if I lived on my own I would have been ridiculed when I had got to work. No time for jokes!

Ive tried cutting it down but its no use. I’m going to have to go cold turkey.

Are you addicted to anything?

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Forgive Me, For I Am A Cross Dresser

13 Feb

I mean it.

F*!@ng cross.

I hate shopping. I know we have discussed this before, but I feel the need to cover old ground with this one. I HATE SHOPPING. It comes at you with alarming force (and for all those people who just happen to have a ‘spare’ outfit in the cupboard for the surprise event, I’m not a bit fan of yours right now either) suddenly you need a dress for something you have to go to this weekend, or your bra strap breaks and you have to make a non scheduled Victoria Secret stop, or your sister throws up on your boots…. it’s all the same. Sprung from nowhere like Robin Hood in the forest, you have to go.

Not THAT sort of cross dresser.....

Not THAT sort of cross dresser…..

Firstly, I’m a fan of online. Browsing through virtual shelves of sumptuous fabrics and delicately made garments is my joy de vivre. No being ram raided by some glamazon who is coveting that last size 10 you are halfheartedly looking at, or being asked every two minutes by the shop attendant if you “need any help at all?” (the answer being yes! Mental help if I have to carry on doing this) But it carries with it its limitations, in that you can’t be totally sure you havent accidently bought lycra unawares, or that you wont look like a doughnut trying to force itself into a test tube when you try it on.

Shops get the better of me. And so do playsuits. My best friend laughs at me for constantly picking up playsuits masquerading as dresses, and once I tried one on and managed to get both legs through one leg hole, before enquiring what the funny bit of fabric was and being hilariously informed by the dying shop assistant and my friend that that was in fact the other leg. Foiled by a playsuit once again!!

Secondly, I hate changing rooms. They either make you look like Halle Berry; all sinewy arms and washboard stomachs so that you purchase the item, get it home and model it for your sister who, once composed, recommends you take it back. This happens far too regularly. Or, you take your clothes off, look at yourself in the mirror in your underwear and are overcome by a sudden sense of horror. A combination of the oh-so alarming lighting and the circus house of mirrors cause a sob to rise in your throat while you speed dial your mother and beg “AM I THE ELEPHANT MAN IN DENIM??”

"The shopping is done, biiiiiitches!"

“The shopping is done, biiiiiitches!”

To make the whole thing worse. in London it doesn’t matter what day of the week or hour of the day you go, everyone else is there. Its like everyone has a pager, and as soon as I get the idea that I can’t put it off any longer and I simply must go shopping, the beeper goes off and everyone in the world springs from their sofas, puts on their shoes and hot foots it to Stratford, where I am innocently getting off the Tube, prepared to give this shopping lark that girls seem to love one more go.

Love it or hate it?

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When There’s No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

24 Oct

At first cock-crow the ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
~Theodosia Garrison

 Are you sitting comfortably, my dear? Let me tell you a story, of horror and fear….

I’m a bit of a wimp. My bedroom door is right by a door that leads downstairs, and if I go to the loo in the night I often run past the door to get back into bed, just in case the ghouls get me. As a five year old, I vividly remember being read a story by a school teacher about a monster that lived in the space created when a door was left open; the triangle between that and the wall, and now, as a twenty six year old woman, I still sleep with the door shut. Its habit, but I’m sure it has its roots in this. I hate to be able to see darker patches, it stops me from sleeping.

So this weekend, when my sister and I decided to go to the cinema we had a bit of a debate over the right film. I opted for Madagascar 3 (cartoons and penguins) but she preferred Paranormal Activity 4. You know the one, demons are let in, demons throw humans all over the place, humans in the cinema join together in terrified union, humans go home and have to sleep with the light on in case fictional tale of fear is somehow true… not my cup of tea. BUT, seeing as I am closer to thirty than twenty, I thought it was time to embrace my inner wimp and become at one with my demons (see what I did there) so I did it. I braved. To be honest, the film was rubbish and not at all scary, but I thought that about the first one. Until….

I went to Cyprus in September. On the first night I struggled to get to sleep; the heat, new environment and presence of my best friend was all alien to me, and it took a really long time to drift off. When I eventually did, I was woken by a crash that sounded like it was coming from the bathroom. I went to investigate.

Just in case you are trying to picture the scene, I wasn’t armed with anything, I was just lookin’. Not alarmed, nothing. It sounded like the noise when your shampoo gets knocked off the bath and scatters down into the tub, but when I got to the bathroom, there was nothing there. The noise was too loud to have come from an adjoining room, but despite being suitably freaked out, we went back to sleep. Pretty soon I heard the steady breathing of my friend, who had gone straight back to sleep with no concern. Could I? No, I could not.

 Because all I could think about was the bit in Paranormal Activity 1 where I had laughed. The goaty footprints. At the time, when the girl put the talc all over the floor and I joked that didn’t the devil have hooves and wasn’t this the perfect time to see goaty prints in the talc, I didn’t think it would come back to haunt me.

What-if-there-really-is-a-devil-and-its-portal-is-a-hotel-room-in-Cyprus? I panicked.

Eventually, I managed to calm myself enough to start drifting off, and just as I was about to fall asleep, I woke myself up screaming.

It had happened again.

Luckily, my best friend has the patience of a saint and managed to calm me down, but by this point I was freaking out, and ready to go sleep in the foyer of the hotel and get the first bus out to a church in the morning, to stand on some hallowed ground or whatever it is you are supposed to do when being haunted.

We finally found out what it was. The fridge had been making a horrendous humming noise, and to help me get to sleep, I had unplugged it. I left the door open to stop it from stinking our room out, not realising that it had a really small ice freezer in the top. Through the night, the ice was melting and large chunks were falling from the freezer onto the tile floors, causing the crashing noise.

Totally rational explanation.

Still slightly traumatised.

I’m looking forward to sharing some of the outfits from the Halloween party next week :)

Do you have any ridiculous stories that scared you at the time?

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Search and You Shall Find

13 Oct

I regularly skim through blog stats to see how people are finding my blog, and every now and again my eye rests on a particularly weird one. Sure, I talk about a lot of random things, but I am always slightly surprised by how the search engines direct people to me, as a resource to find out the answers to those really important, burning questions. Some are obvious, when people Google “pictures of big hairy spiders” I can understand why one of my posts on the ongoing battle between me and them comes up, as I regularly provide you with photographic evidence to ensure that you understand the severity of my situations (!) but some of them go from the sublime to the ridiculous!

So, to do my bit for the greater good, I’ll see what I can do to help out some of these people who may be lost, like a random generating agony aunt. I’m good like that. All donations of cake by way of thanks can be sent direct :)

1)      I just feel misunderstood by my hairy armpits.
Come on now Google. I may have ranted on the odd occasion about the stench of armpits on public transport, and even documented a programme about hairy armpits, but I can’t say that I am openly supportive on this issue. If you have somehow got here and feel misunderstood about your hairy armpits, then I am sorry. We don’t judge here, but you probably haven’t found a kindred spirit either.

2)      Evil chinchilla
A common concern amongst the masses. Is your chinchilla evil? Might it eat your brains when you are sleeping? I don’t have any scientific proof to back this up, but what I would say is their beady eyes make me feel like they are a bit shifty, and I wouldn’t trust them.

3)      How to make a bee
Get some honey, add water, stir. That’s right, surely?

4)      Humping for shoes
Disclaimer: Humping for shoes (hahahah) is not condoned. Reminds me of that programme called ‘Sex, Lies and Rinsing Guys’.

5)      Boob emoticon
I have boobs. I hate emoticons. Not sure how one and one got put together and directed my way, but I don’t have anything to offer this one. Although, on one day this week I couldn’t work out why I was uncomfortable. I went through the day, had lunch, went for dinner… it wasn’t till I got into the shower and struggled to get my bra off that in my tiredness that morning (in my defence, it WAS dark) I had somehow managed to put on my bra inside out, and do it up. Oh yeah, and wear it like that the whole day. What hope is there for me?

6)      Fat girls being swooped by birds
No words.

7)      And the best one … “Hubble hubble toil and trouble, I live inside my happy bubble”

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Under The Sea

4 Oct

I’m sitting here writing while listening to the waves lap on the shoreline, and the wind gently rustles the leaves on the trees above. I imagine its dusk, and as the twilight descends, the sky is turning pink and all you can see from the sand is the calm of the ocean, mimicking my mood.

I imagine? Sure. I imagine. The reality of it is that it’s well past witching hour (I’m testament to the fact that Roald Dahl was pulling my leg as a child. The BFG isn’t real, and he hasn’t come to find me. My eight year old heart lies broken) and I’m listening to the dulcet tones of the sea from an app on my iPhone. Insomnia, my old friend. I wish I could say I’ve missed you.

And what have I done in the hours your weary heads rested on your pillows? Nothing productive. I’ve plucked my eyebrows with a magnifying mirror (dangerous habit, often resulting in the accidental removal of most of my eyebrow) given myself an alternative French manicure in lilac and green, changed my duvet cover, finished my book, stared at the ceiling and pondered my life. And now I have resorted to an app with a choice of whale song, metronome, robins chirping (WTF? Don’t even ask), frogs (likewise) or the beach.

So please excuse me while I get back to pretending I’m shipwrecked- but in a cool, not-to-worry fashion rather Tom Hanks in that film that I can’t remember the title of because I’m tired, but where his best friend is a football.

It’s worse than I thought.

The problem with me is I over think things… Oooh, a parrot!! I wonder who else is on the beach…..Gah!! Just gave myself a minor heart attack by lying on the volume button and causing lapping ocean to become more monumental high tide sweeping loungers off and causing residual water damage. Oops. Must try to be more careful!! Normal volume has been resumed but I don’t think this is the app for me; it’s just making me need a wee.

Just as an aside- if anyone sees me tomorrow looking frazzled, with unbrushed hair or my clothes on inside out, make me a coffee and avert your eyes. We’ve all been there!!!

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Enough With The Oversharing

28 Sep

The world has gone crazy. Once upon a time (my mum’s era) people went to school together. They made friends, or they didn’t. Then when they left school, they either stayed friends, or they didn’t. No biggie.

I remember a teacher telling me once that statistics showed that by the time you turned 30, you would be friends with three people you went to senior school with. In a class year of over 300, that seemed like a fairly small number to me. Ah well, I thought, she’s old. What does she know?

Fast forward twelve (shudder) years from that conversation, and you’d imagine it to be true, right? People move away, people change, friendships ebb and flow with time.

Not so much. and who do we have to thank? Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, you have a lot to answer for.

In real life, we might bump into an old school friend in the supermarket when visiting the homeland, have an awkward conversation along the lines of “Hi… how are you… im good too, nice to see you” and wander back home pondering on how totally awkward that was, how you had nothing to say to them and how you hope that it never happens again. If you’re feeling particularly extreme, you might pretend to not have noticed them and make a swift exit to prevent that painfully awkward conversation in the first place.

You certainly wouldn’t ask them how they were feeling about the recent demise of their last relationship, or enquire as to what they had for lunch. And if you did, they wouldn’t be wrong in telling you, in the politest terms, to do one.

You wouldn’t go to a work colleagues house on the weekend, knock on the door and ask them what their cat has been up to today, or how their Auntie in New Zealand was doing, without so much as a “Hi, how are you?”

No? Everyone still with me???

SO DON’T *!*?@*ING DO IT ON FACEBOOK THEN!!!

It has so much to answer for. You get friend requests from people you barely spoke to, and feel obliged to accept (I don’t want them thinking im rude!!). That’s OK, as long as they share whats sharable, and keep private the things that you shouldn’t impart to the rest of the world. The odd update about Big Brother or their child is fine, and you and those people reside in relative harmony for life.

And then there’s the ones who split up with a partner, declare it to all, then follow-up with a series of posts about how their ex has moved on and they want to die, then imply that they are ACTUALLY going to top themselves, and then carry on moaning.

Some sort of rule of thumb should be adopted. If you wouldn’t march into work, announce that you are sooooooo drunk and then call your ex a whore, then don’t do it on Facebook.

Come on people. Have some dignity.

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Adulthood Isn’t What I Expected.

4 Sep

When I was 15, 26 seemed like a really long way off. I figured by the time that I got to that ripe old age I would definitely be married, have a child, and own a house.

Adulthood isn’t what I expected.

I thought that I would feel like all the women I saw on the train in the morning; poised and well put together, with matching underwear sets for each day of the week and a perfectly organised handbag full of all the daily essentials that one might need, and be able to organise my way through daily life without a hair out of place.

The reality is rather more sobering. Some days I get to work and realise that I have my underwear on inside out (this actually happens more often than you would think!), and if my bra matches me knickers then it has to be a major league event, like the Diamond Jubilee. Sometimes I can’t even find a pair of socks, let alone a pair that match. My makeup is done in the morning through a bleary smog, and by the time I get to work, having negotiated the intricate labyrinth system that we refer to as the tube, it has worn off in patches, leaving me resembling a giraffe. And don’t even get me started on the days that I have to wear tights, which normally results in me putting my toe through them and having to rush to the shops to buy a new pair.

I didn’t think I’d be still waking up on a Sunday morning with last night’s makeup on, hair all over the place and bedroom looking like a tornado had swept through, lamenting that vodka isn’t my friend and what the hell happened to everything in moderation? And my wallet, for that matter.

I didn’t think I would still warble at the top of my voice when I thought that no one else was listening, to show tunes or cartoons. Sure, it used to be a whole new world, and now its tunes from Wicked, but Defying Gravity is still hollered through my house while I am doing the hoovering.

I didn’t think that I would still be calling my mother on a regular basis with any medical emergency (or non emergency) that happens. I think ill be all grown up, and then I get a rash on my arm and I check Web MD, freak out that I have meningitis and call my mother, who calms me, tells me to roll a glass on it and concludes ‘ive probably come into contact with something scratchy. Thanks Ma!

What are you finding different to how you imagined?

*thanks to Fibronomy Awesome for inspiring this post. You can read hers here*

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My Wardrobe Has S.A.D

16 Aug

In the spirit of starting in a new office and the idea that you have the chance to reinvent yourself, I have been addressing the current state of my wardrobe, and I assure you that it’s not a pretty sight. If you can imagine a bomb going off in TK Maxx or Primark, then you are probably 90% of the way towards understanding the turmoil of the cupboard. The mantra is, if you can throw it in and shut the door in time to stop everything falling out, then you are cooking on gas.

Not my actual wardrobe.. but if I ever own a dressing gown like that, please somebody shoot me. Immediately.

The first step of this process was to actually sort out what I have in there in the first place. My bedroom is on the ground floor and has limited space, but I have a bathroom a floor up with ceiling to floor wardrobes, stuffed full of clothes. The problem is that I am too lazy in the morning, so have a back up chest of drawers that contain 10% of my wardrobe (call it ‘capsule’ if you will, I think that’s a word that fashonistas and organised people use) and tend to wear the same things every week, leaving me without a clue as to what is lurking behind the mysterious wardrobe doors.

I started a banshee like clear out, throwing everything into the room, and hanging and tidying for what felt like days, until it resembled a well organised shop offering a vast selection of wares in length order, with shoes nestled under the shortest stuff.

This threw up a new problem. It turns out that my sister is right, and all I wear is black, navy, coral, or a combination with some polka dots thrown in for good measure. Christ. My wardrobe has seasonal affective disorder. And fashion (and shopping) are not my forte’s.

I WISH.

So I went shopping with a more fashion forward friend, and tried on a gorgeous dress, which I bought. The problem is, that it came with a net skirt, and while deliberating it in the changing room I nearly caused a woman to suffer death by choking when I innocently asked my friend “but does it make me look like I’m harbouring a secret pregnancy scandal?” It apparently didn’t, so I bought it. Now it’s looking very pretty in my cupboard, but when I put it on I talk myself out of wearing it on the basis that I look like a little girl heading off to a birthday party in her finest party dress. Not a good look for a girl whose ‘glam’ look is wearing a pair of (tiny) heels with her jeans and throwing on a blazer for good measure.


And dresses come with so many conundrums, as I found today when shopping with a friend for the summer party we are going to tonight. After she bought a new dress, we headed straight to Marks and Spencer’s for girdle style hold-it-all-in pants, which would go as high as our neck and as far down as our knees, to prevent us from looking like a condoms stuffed with walnuts. It was an interesting experience. I picked up a dress style weapon of torture, dreaming that it would make me look like Gisele on a thin day, and went to try it on.

The reality of it was that I spent 20 minutes in the changing room in diving position with it round my shoulders, wondering how the hell I was going to get it off. I had visions of falling out of the changing room door in nothing but my knickers and a rubber ring of girdle stuck round my neck, for all to see and if I’m honest, the panic set in and I began to believe that I was going to be hampered with this unusual body addition for the rest of my life.

During this low point, I sympathised with the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and had to talk myself off the ledge of thinking I was going to be ostracised by society. I did eventually get it off (after sweating about a stone of weight off) and managed to give myself a nosebleed in the process.

If that’s fashion, then I will put my pyjamas on and politely decline!

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Some Of You Will Be Baffled, I Can Guarantee It

1 Aug

The word sport, in my book (it’s a dictionary) is considered a swear word. I am the fastest runner in the opposite direction to the gym, and a gold medallist in being first to the pub after work, but any actual organised sport makes me shudder. I don’t like anything that I have to do in a team, because I don’t want to disappoint the rest of the crew by dropping the bat or not hitting the ball, and when forced to take part in tennis on the Kinect in the office during the Olympics, even the automated commentary speculated on how bad ‘player 2’ was. That’s me folks!

So I wasn’t excited about the Olympics. I adopted a traditional British approach. Whinging about the sheer amount of tourists that would descend on the capital and hamper my journey to work , and bemoaning that food prices had soared to capitalise on hungry foreigners.

When a tourist coughs on the Tube and doesn’t put their hand over their mouth

But then I watched the Olympic ceremony with my American cousins, and a patriotic sports fan emerged like a butterfly from a chrysalis, having transformed from that grumpy caterpillar. I did find it a little odd (Beijing had thousands of drummers, we had sheep, some beds that lit up and at one point, E.T) but how awesome was it?! I felt proud to be eccentrically British, despite the rain and the cold, and embrace my tea drinking, jolly good fellow heritage. Although I know none of you ‘got’ Dizzee Rascal, but that’s OK.

And now? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a clue about the rules of any of these sports that I’m watching, but I kept one eye on the Equestrian events while at work yesterday, and my heart was in my mouth as I watched the men’s synchronised diving, and slightly teary as they scored a fourth.

When Mitt Romney starts bitching about London.

I clapped and cheered when we got our first gold today, and thought how fantastic Hampton Court looked as we grabbed our second. Now I’m sitting watching the men’s gymnastics, and I gather the point of this one is to stay on the horse as long as possible, do a handstand and then jump off without falling face first into the sand. And look at those arms!!

In the words of Boris Johnson,”The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go ‘zoink’ off the scale.”

Who’d have thought, I’m a sports fan after all!?

What’s your favourite Olympic sport?

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