Morocco

We've just been to Morocco, it was hot and fun and crazy. They speek french and arabic which I thought would be cool because I speek a little bit of arabic and Dan speeks a lot of french. Except it was attualy anoying because we had an arabic lesson on the first day and their arabic is probably about 60% different to the arabic I learnt in palestine, so Dan really easily picked up Morocan arabic and I was in a constant state of language confusion. I'd talk in a mixture of english, GCSE french and my wrong arabic. Once while we were there some arabs knocked on the door and I said 'good morning' (even though it was evening) they said some more things in arabic and I just shurugged because Dan was on the toilet and unavalible to use his language skills.

Morroco is brilliant though I love the crazy way they drive and their markets I nearly pursuaded Dan to let me buy a baby tortoise to bring back but not quite. Look how cool it is:

Since coming back I've had a lot of schools work because of the jubilee which is a celebration of  Jews belly's. I've also done a bit more stand up comedy:

http://youtu.be/MqQbL8oFN-g

My opening line was 'if I was a pig going to a furnature themed fancy dress party I'd pirce all my nipples and go as a chest-of -draws' (it's true!)

P.s Wecome Heather and Matt my two new followers, I now have 18 followers which make more popular than Jesus.

PPS I got an email saying if I don't do a thing by 31st of May then I can no longer access my blog. I hope that's not true because I couldn't do the thing.

You can't argue with a 4 year old

It is a bit of a shame, but it's defiantly true that you can't argue with a four year old. They know just enough to argue passionately that they're right, but not enough to realise their actually wrong.

I'm working with 2-5 year olds at the moment in a children's centre. By the end of next month I am hoping to have finished a big banner made from the work of children and parents, sewed together by me. The design has quite a number of things that it has to incorporate and at times it has been tricky. Yesterday I needed children's pencil drawings on paper that was 20 x 20cm I had pre cut a load of paper and just had to entice the children into doing some pencil drawing. I'm not expecting amazing stuff just vaguely representational drawing would do fine. I didn't really want scribbles.

The kids had a choice of outdoor play or pencil drawing....one kid choose pencil drawing and he was a scribbler. So when the other kids came back in I was really pleased that one boy said 'I want to draw a caravan' 'brilliant' I said and passed him the special square paper. 'This is not the size of my caravan' he said he then went over to get some A4 paper and said 'this is the size of my caravan' I tried to reason with him his caravan was clearly not A4, it was probably rectangular rather than square but as we all know as adults you can draw anything at any size, he didn't have to draw a square caravan just because he was given square paper.

In the end I gave in and gave him some A4 paper and he said 'that's what I wanted ages ago' he then drew a really good caravan that I can't use for the banner. : (

Read this IMMEDIATELY

....Don't really it's not that important. I'd say read my blog at your leisure, don't try and read it whilst driving, or mowing a lawn or whilst making jelly, or whilst trying to have an argument. Read it when your procrastinating or having a bit of time off. I hope I haven't in anyway pressurised you into reading this when there are more important things you could have been doing.

The above paragraph is something HMRC need to learn from. I came home today from a lovely trip out seeing some art with one of my best mates Rachel to find this letter saying 'PLEASE OPEN IMMEDIATELY' I was just about to press in the code on our house alarm which is the first thing I do when I get in. I think this is the kind of task that needs immediate attention because if you leave it for about 30 seconds the alarm will go off and upset the whole street.

I had a dilemma for a second, 'IMMEDIATELY' according to dictionary.com means 'without lapse of time; without delay; instantly; at once' whereas the alarm had 30 seconds before it needed seeing to. As I am not really that stupid I did the alarm first, and thank goodness I did because when I then opened the letter it contained a form that needed to be completed by 31st October so I actually have more than 6 months on that. Perhaps HMRC need to change their envelopes to say 'PLEASE OPEN SOONISH' or 'THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT ONE DAY DON'T LOOSE IT'

I wonder whether it would be possible to sue HMRC because you had some kind of accident that would have been avoided if you hadn't opened their letter with such haste. For example say you were a lion tamer and you were about to lock the lions up in their cages and then the letter came through the letter box and you rushed to open it, leaving the lions to escape, and whilst you're reading your self assessment tax form (that you have 6 months to complete) the lions pounce and rip off your arm.

Also if they want things done so quickly why are they sending it in the royal mail? Why don't they employ Olympic runners to distribute them? Or a slightly more cost effective solution...email. This is an organisation that took 5 years from the moment I told them they owed me money, to the moment it was in my bank. I don't think they have the right to tell me to do something immediately. Rant Over.

Happy New Tax Year

The Chinese have their own new year, the Jews have their own new year, I think it's time that freelancers and business owners step up and start celebrating the new tax year. As a self employed person I lead by example by putting on a new years party on 5th April. Unfortunately everyone left by 11.30 which I don't think would happen at a 'real' new years party.

Oh well, I hadn't worked out how I was going to to the count down anyway. Especially as all the clocks in our house are all a little bit wrong. I am writing this in the kitchen, and the clock says 4:11, the ipod doc says 4.22, the oven says 15:11 and my laptop says 16:15. I can't change them though because I know how much they are out by and if I change them I might forget and still allow extra time when I didn't need to or something. I was planning on writing whole new version of old langs aine which was all about tax which I would make people to sing at midnight but luckily for them I didn't get round to it.

I did however invent a lot of tax related games, my favorite was probably 'Pea 45' in this game you have 5 seconds to get 45 frozen peas from a bowl full of frozen peas to a empty bowl and how ever much you're out by you have to eat that number of frozen peas. Mike did quite well he only had to eat about 6 peas. 'Net prophets' was quite fun you had to catch old testament prophets in nets, and lets face it who doesn't enjoy that. 'Steakholder' was interesting, you had to hold a steak whilst platting a girls hair- neatest plait wins. Since I ended up being 'the girl' I was glad I had bothered to make the steaks from modroc and didn't buy real ones.

I wish I had a video of Will playing 'turnover' the game where you had to turn over as many times as possible in our bed in 30 seconds. There's something quite funny about a man wriggling around tangled in a duvet really trying hard to win when you could be far more effective just doing neat rolls back and forth like me and Katie did. I thought it might be a bit odd having everyone in our room and it wasn't really until Katie said 'this is your bed where you and Dan have sex' while that is true is doesn't mean it can't be used for tax related games as well. It's a multi purpose bed, it is also the venue for our late night improvised comedy hoedown game, and we sleep in it too.

I will leave you with a picture of Mike and Dan playing 'PAYE' (Pout As You Eat) I promised Mike I wouldn't put it on facebook. I love Danni's face in this too, she's not sitting down she attually is that little.

P.s Congratulations Joy Farrington, overall winner of the tax games, I hope you will be putting that on your C.V.

The Police

Did you know that Merseyside police are now on twitter? I'm not sure why, it's the criminals that you want to be following really isn't it? Like if whoever robbed Dan's motor bike last week had tweeted:

'just seen a bike through a cat flap of an ally gate #opportunist theaft'

then we could have tweeted back 'it's probably not worth your effort it's broken at the mo #waittillnextweek'

Maybe the police could have tweeted 'whoever robbed Dan's bike please give it back' that would have been about as effective as them knocking on a few doors about 5 days later early on a Sunday morning.

I looked on the merseyside police twitter page and they tweet stuff like:

'Merseyside Police welcomes Stoke fans to the city for today's game. We hope you have a safe and enjoyable day. Follow us for more info.'

BORRING..... I want to hear stuff like:

'just banged up another crack head and confiscated his crack #partytonight'

or 'don't panic but there's a terrorist attack going on in adsa'

or 'board so just arresting random hoodies for no reason'

I put that last one in because Dan once got stopped and questioned by the police because he was running and wearing a hood- up. The police didn't take into account that it was heavily raining. Thankfully once they heard his radio 4 voice they let him go.

Almost 5 years ago I made this pretend police poster with Joy Farrington. We posted it all over wavertree as payback for them water bombing us. We made it the day before me and Dan went on our first date. looking back I wonder if my flirting techniques were a bit strange. I'm still proud of this poster though, and I was well chuffed when Dan ripped one of the posters down and a man said 'so you're one of them are you.'

Being Frank

This is Hannah and Frank, Frank has spent most of his life trapped inside a breeze block in a builders merchants, until he was rescued by the the lovely Hannah this week. And do you know what the most tragic part of this story is?....Frank is claustrophobic. Just imagine how it would feel blocked in with hundreds of other breeze blocks, being bought and sold for as little as £1.17. The best Frank could have hoped for was to be a corner stone of an important building, but thanks to the wonderful work of volunteers like Hannah who work at 'Jones for Stones' Frank has started a new and exciting chapter of his life at our centre.

Frank says "I really love it here at 'Jones for Stones', I get to try out new activities and hang out with other people like me, yesterday I went canoeing with another rescued breeze block called Frieda, and we really hit it off, we're going to go to laser quest next week. I know times are hard but if you can spare any cash to help 'Jones for Stones' with their valuable work that would be so much appreciated by all of us"

Inside every breeze block is a frightened man woman or child just waiting to be free. If you believe that breeze blocks shouldn't be bought and sold donate to 'Jones for Stones' now or contact us about volunteering in our center. Thank you.

Google Vs My Mum

I often ponder,
who is stronger?
Google or my mum.

Who knows more?
I'm not quite sure,
but this poem has been fun.

I wondered this today when I sent my mum a text saying:

'here's a chance to prove you're better than google: when I make a meaty risotto I use a beef stock cube, but what should I use when making a fish risotto?'

she texted back 'a fish stock cube of course.'

I did not know these existed. But anyway this isn't a blog about risotto. I think I could have got the same answer, without the sarcastic 'of course' from google. So in round one I would give Google 1 and my Mum 1 ...so they are equal.

When I look back on an incident last week my mum was winning against her competitor google. I had given an invoice to a school and they said 'does it include VAT?' and I thought 'I don't know what you're on about' but I said 'yes.' Then I rang my mum and said 'what are they on about?' she told me that you don't have to register for VAT unless your turnover is £70000. I'm sure I could have found this out from google but it probably would have taken longer and might have involved downloading a PDF and for some reason I find anything written on a PDF boring. So at the end of round 2 it's Mum 2 Google 1.

I wouldn't even be writing this blog without google ...but then again if it wasn't for my mum I wouldn't be writing this blog either so the mystery continues. Maybe I will do an experiment I could live for one month without google, and then live for one month without having any contact with my mum...and I could see which I miss the most.

whilst we're on the subject of my mum... people have been asking me if the story I wrote in creative writing class is based on truth. This is the first paragraph:

'The last time I saw my mother was 15 years ago, she was only wearing a stripy thong- unless you count the fact that she was covered from head to toe in honey. She was sitting inside a giant fiber glass bee hive swinging her legs. There was an almost defining sound of buzzing coming from the loud speakers. This was apparently modern art.'

This would be hilarious if true but I should point out it's not. However she did once do a dance with a mop in front of an audience in a park in Newburry.

Happy Mother's Day Mum.