Smiley Badgers and 2013

I've been blogging a bit more frequently recently that is because I don't have a lot else to do at the moment, but let me share with you some of the things I did when I had things to do. My proudest achievement was facilitating the creation of this:

a badger with a side smile cheers everyone up right?

What's even funnier than that is Dan's impression of the side smiling badger.

Last time I wrote a blog I never got round to saying what I set out to say, and again I have been distracted. Damm those smiley badgers and their powers of distraction!

So 2013 that's what I was going to chat about. 2013 is going to be the best year ever because I declare it! and because I have been super stingy my whole life but 2013 is the year we have chosen to convert money and to super fun adventure times.

Here are some of my top most stingy things I've done.

• saved 50p a day out of my lunch money all through secondary school by not drinking.
• for 2 months I lived on a budget of £5 a week for food.
• I didn't go to see Atomic Kitten when they came to my school because it cost £1
• I virtually never buy cards, I always make them - it's not because I'm thoughtful it's because I'm tight.
• When my old work told me I needed smart office trousers, I found some age 10 school uniform trousers for £2.
• I use free wallpaper samples for wrapping paper
• this year I've made my own Christmas crackers from toilet rolls
• I've had my current phone for about 3 years- it was free with a £10 top up.
• in my whole life I've had a desktop computer and 2 laptops, the combined cost of all of these is £20

I've done generous and extravagant things too but I won't list them.

But the point is I've been very careful with money my whole life, and since we've been married Dan has been working very hard commuting to a job he doesn't like in southport (by bike and train because it's the cheapist way) BUT 2013 is going to be the year of adventure and fun where we take 2 months out from working to travel by folding bikes, interail, planes, and a sailing boat through 14 different countries to Kuwait. 

It's going to be massively epic!

55 Years Left

In December I always feel a bit of nostalgia looking back on the year and thinking how grown up I am now. When I first stared this blog I thought it was absolutely unnecessary to clean your bathroom every week and now I feel a little bit guilty when it's not done once a week, that just shows how I have matured since 2009.

According to Wikipedia if I am the average woman in the uk I will live 82.1 years and therefore at 26 years and 11 months I have only 55 years left. Me and Dan would like to live in another country though, one of the countries we are considering is Lebonon but if we live there then I will only have 43 years left.

Anyway I'm not going to get sad about it, I had a midlife crisis when I was 14 and rebelled by still continuing to wear big baggy orange t-shirts and no make-up when everyone else had suddenly got "grown up." It was great to get the midlife crisis over with early though. Last year I set myself a list of things to do before I'm 30 You can see that here:
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/10-things-to-do-before-im-30.html

 and I pleased to say I did manage to do some stand up comedy

(Here is my latest: http://youtu.be/3zip2VBhL9k)

and I tried putting cheese in a glue gun. which you can view here: http://youtu.be/r9NMIJFOVDo

So all I've got left to do in the next 3 years is:

•  make a mosaic in the garden, 
• go on an amazing adventure to kuwait (which is happening in August and Sept) 
• learn to cook a proper roast, 
• Try laminating some ham (for no reason other than to see what happens.)
• and have a baby. Easy peasy lemon squeezie.

I've also achieved my list of things not to do before I'm 27

• I have not started listening to radio 4 (although someone from radio 4 was once interviewed on radio 2 and this was a bit of a moral dilema for me)
• And I have not started saving for a pension. - that was a pretty easy goal to achieve.

I've just got to focus on not buying a bread maker and not becoming a national trust member now. You may think that having goals of things you your not going to do is stupid, but you need to set yourself boundaries or you might accidently end up being someone who paints water colour dogs for a hobby. I've not even got onto what I intended to write about today I'm like a old person nattering away to nobody. Oh well I will save the rest for another day. x

Vintage of the Future

My rock and roll husband is a a gig right now (10.30 on a Tuesday night) but I have stayed in done the washing up, had a bath a made this on MS paint. In case you can't tell it's a cake stand made from a ipad a ipad mini a iphone and a ipod nano (which is by the way too small to put a cake on and therefore useless.)

You may laugh now but I'm telling you this will be all the range in 2042.

Top 10 Blog Posts Of All Time Ever

I've been writing my blog for nearly 4 years now and as I hardly ever do anything for more than 5 years, I feel the time has come to do a list of my top 10 blogs.

In 10th position the song that I wrote after I dropped a blob of blue tac down the radiator, it was an emotional time when I could only express my deep feelings of loss through song.
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/stationary-purgatory.html

In 9th position is a work of fiction dedicated to Grace Snow.
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/urban-cheese-awards.html

In 8th position a letter I wrote to my boss about a toilet based incident. I wish I actually sent it.
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/letter-to-my-boss.html

In 7th position the story of our engagment:
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/engagement-official-story.html

In 6th position the prequel to the engagment story:
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/story-of-han-and-dan.html

In 5th position is my description of the time I exchaged my own nudity for soup:
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/my-nudity-soup-exchange.html

In 4th position the tragic but heart warming story of frank and the charity Jones for stones:
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/being-frank.html

In 3rd position a very topical blog post...a letter to Tony Blair. If he'd had read this when I wrote it in 2010 then we wouldn't be having the problems we're having in Gaza right now.
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/dear-tony-blair.html

In 2nd place the blog that I think had the most pages views, the one that I wrote right after I offended a lot of people.
http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/racism-disclaimer.html

and the winner....drum roll please...........is a rap song about an annoying computer program that I used to use when I worked at the bluecoat called patron base. If this was a problem that had a wider appeal I'm sure  it would have gone platinum.

http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/patron-base-rap.html

There are lots of other good ones too and also some not so good ones. Which one is your favorite?

Kuwait trip!!

 Here are my grandparents Elspeth and Peter in 1953

This is them setting off for a very long drive to England from their home in kuwait. This is the route they took:
Kuwait- Iraq- Syria - Turkey - Greece - Macedonia -Kosovo - Montenegro - Croatia -Italy- Austria- Switzerland-  France - England.

For absolutely ever (and by this I mean approximately since 2008) Me and Dan have been talking about doing a similar trip also in a moris minor but in the other direction from England to Kuwait. One day a few years ago we got their travel diary and mapped it all out. The diary was written in quite a boring style with not much personality, but  here are 2 interesting bits I remember:
1) they only spent £40 on fuel for the whole trip!
2) My granny got touched up by a Turk.

We set a provisional date for our trip as Sept to Nov 2013 a while ago and then started looking into all the boring things you have to do before having fun these days. (I bet my grandparents didn't have to do any of this) Things like can you ship a car from Kuwait to England?  Can you sell give away or dump a car in Kuwait?  what visas do you need? How can you get around Syria/ Iraq? what insurance covers you everwhere in a 60 year old car? bla bla bla snore.

I found some answers to these questions but not really enough to make me feel confident about the trip. Much as I believe that as risk increases fun increases, I do also know that there is a point on the risk-fun graph where fun dramatically decreases and that is at the injury/death/ being totally stranded with no money point. If you look carefully at a map there really is no way to get to Kuwait from Europe without going through dangerous bits. Which is totally not fair because we thought of this idea before Syria had issues! Anyways to overcome a lot of the car related problems we have come up with this super duper new plan:

FOLDING BIKES
LYCRA
INTERAIL
HITCH HIKING
COUCH SURFING
CHEAP HOSTELS
MY DAD'S SAILING BOAT
SOME SHORT DISTANCE FLIGHTS THAT AVOID SYRIA

BOOM!

Sorry I got board with sentences there but you get the gist. Dan want's us to be able to comfortably cycle 60 miles a day, I'm not really motivated to exercise generally but if there's one thing I love it's bargainous transport (I have even been described  as a 'bargain Nazi'.) So that and sense of adventure is enough motivation for me to get into shape. I'm going to have to only take 3 or 4 outfits though and I can't even just think about which are my 3 or 4 top outfits, I'll have to think about practicalities : (  Boring! AND Dan says I'll have to wear padded crotch cycling shorts.

This is the route we will take: England- hopefully a sail boat to France- interail and bike all through europe to Turkey we haven't decided exact route yet- fly turkey to Lebanon (this is an unnecessary part of the trip but we both really want to go)- fly to Jordan (annoying that we have to fly but we can't go through Israel with an Lebanese stamp in out passports and we can't go through Syria)- go through a deserted areas of northern Saudi to reach our destination KUWAIT! and our new dates are 1st Aug - 30th Sept.

It's going to be epic!

p.s if anyone wants to live in our house rent free and just pay for bills for those dates let us know.

Dear EDF

I recently received a letter from my energy provider EDF this is a bit of what they had to say....

"Raising prices is one of the hardest decisions we have to make; especially when the economic conditions are difficult. since cutting our prices in February  we have seen a significant increase to many of the costs we incur to buy and supply energy. We have absorbed many of these for some time but an increase to residential electricity and gas prices has now become unavoidable."

Awww bless them...don't you just feel so sorry for them?! You can just imagine the CEO tossing and turning in his sleep as he thinks about all his poor but loyal customers. In case you can't tell this is sarcasm. Dan and I have a long running battle over whether sarcasm is a sin and I once tried to give up sarcasm I lasted 21 hours and many of them I was asleep or on my own. But anyway I'm not fasting sarcasm now, so I have decided to write a reply. which is best read in a soft voice over emotional music.

Dear EDF,
I was heart broken to read about the rise in energy prices, I know you must have been battling day and night over this decision. I had no idea you had been absorbing the costs in such a selfless way for so long. I fully comprehend why you must raise the prices- this burden is too big for you to carry alone. However this leaves me with the biggest dilemma of my life....should I stay with you my lovely provider, you've kept both my house and my heart warm since the beginning of my mortgage, or are these rises too much to bear? Can I trust that you will not do this again? If you are not my provider though, who will be? Is there any energy company that can be trusted? It's like a Shakespearean tragedy...for the modern age. Oh how I wish for the bountiful carefree years of the early 2000's, but alas...this tragedy is my destiny, and I will soldier on through the pain and turmoil to face this battle with or without you. (In short that means I'll probably go on one of the comparison website and if you're not in the top 3 I'll switch.)

Yours not that faithfully,
Hannah Jones.

Triathlon

My lovely husband Dan has just completed his first triathlon. Which means he paid to jump into a freezing lake swim 750 m, then cycle 31k and then run 8k up a mountain.


This is what the triathlon did to his face:

Thankfully his face went back to normal!











When he had finished this test of endurance  in the time of 3 hours 28 mins he was handed what every person in that situation needs- a complementary coaster. On one hand I admire his ability to do a race like this, but on the other hand I don't think it sounds fun. If I was doing a triathlon I would like to dry my hair after a swim in a lake and re-apply my make-up and maybe stop for a cup of tea and a nap.

I have been thinking a bit about what kind of race I could enter that I would be good at. I'm not really good at doing anything fast, I'm only good at endurance  Also I don't really have the competitive personality need for sports I'm a bit of a communist sports wise.  In year 7 I used to really annoy the boys in football by trying to always make the teams draw, even if this meant scoring home goals. I got a few like minded girls to declare they were on 'team orange' when the actual teams were yellow or red. My orange team mates had only one goal in mind  and that was to equal the score. Anyway if I was to win any race now it would have to be a 2k breast stroke swim followed by a 5k unicycle ride followed by a 1k skipping race which finished in a big house with lots of hiding places, upon finishing the skipping element of the race the competitors must find and get into the best hiding place they can. Last to be found by the judges wins. Unfortunately that race doesn't exist. My worst race would be the 100m sprint followed by a game of scrabble followed by having to do a reverse park under pressure. Dan would actually be very good at that.

On the way back from the triathlon in Snowdonia we were looking out over the coast and I said 'Every time I think England is pretty I remember we're in Wales'

The National Trust Sucks

Yesterday Dan and I decided to go for a bike ride because it was a nice day and it's good to make the best of the rare moments when we both have bikes that work. I suggested going to Speke Hall  because it's one of those places that is relatively near but I have never been to. Speke Hall is one of those big old houses from the olden days that old people like to talk about, it's owned by the national trust, that organisation that has prevented school children from fun for decades and decades. I'm not sure why but going to places like this even out of my own free will always brings out my rebellious side. I wasn't bothered about going in the house bit I just wanted to sit around in the gardens for a bit as a break before cycling back home again. However you have to pay a lot to get in, it was going to be £20 for the two of us. But I got us a big discount with my cheekyness. Here's how:

Me: hello which bits can you get in for free?

National Trust Man: The cafe and the shop.

Me: Well that's no good. Ok how much is it to get into just the gardens?

National Trust Man: £20

Me: Is it true that if you live in poor postcodes you can get in for free? Coz I live in L15 and we've had 3 crimes happen to us this year.

National Trust Man: It's not deprived areas that get in free it's areas near here.

Me: oh, we've only got a fiver.

Dan: and card.

National Trust Man: Look I'll let you in for £7 for both of you.

Me: oh ok.


So we went in and looked round the big old house from the olden days. They had a music making device from back in the day which was basically like one of those things that you turn inside a music box but on a really big scale with a massive handle. Ironically it didn't work and there was an old woman standing next to it who's job it was to press play on a tape recorder from the 90's so you could here a cassette tape recording of what it used to sound like. We looked round a load of bedrooms from the 1500's and I couldn't help making sarcastic comments about how I would plaster whole sections, and get some ikea storage in there. In one of the rooms that was described as a gentleman's room there was a huge tapestry of a river and trees and some people. I didn't think it would be the kind of thing a guy would have in his bedroom nowadays, and I wondered if there was a market for slightly racy tapestries that would appeal to young guys.

The grounds outside were beautiful but I couldn't help thinking that I'd put a massive lawn to much better use with big trampolines, a zip line, a pony and maybe a hot tub maze that you could swim round. I asked Dan what he would do with the lawn and he said he's mow a huge penis into it. We then discussed how a penis would be a perfect shape for a swimming pool because you could have two nice Jacuzzi bit's at one end and a long thin bit to swim lengths in.

Today we randomly ended up going to the slavery museum with Alex and we learnt there that the man who owned Speke Hall also owned 200 slaves and so the whole thing was basically built on slavery. It's a good job I din't really know that yesterday or I probably would have brought it up with the National Trust ticket man and got us kicked out.

Basically my message is if you enjoy a nice day out in Speke Hall you're supporting slavery, and if you are a National Trust member you are almost certainly going to hell. Night Night x

The Lakes

Hello, how are you? I hope you are well and enjoying this lovely sunny evening, but I know your not, your inside on a laptop procrastinating just like me. Oh well as you and I clearly have nothing better to do I will write down some of the recent happenings in my life and you can read them.

I've just got back from 4 days camping in the lakes. Not actually in the lakes obviously, underwater camping does not exsist yet. I was camping on grass in the lake district. The lakes are beautiful obviously that's why people go there, but they are not a place you can actually live in for long. There are no corner shops, if you want milk you have to extract it from an actual cow, and a lot of the roads don't have names. A man I met who lives in a YHA hostel still has dial up internet. On the plus side they have lots of things out of picture books like mountains and rivers and a lack of crime. But how often do you think 'I need a mountain right now', and how often do you think 'we need to buy more milk?'

Weather wise we had two good days and two bad days. One of the bad days was spent mainly in car parks and cafes and in an old lady art exhabition. I quite enjoyed that bit, not because there was any good art, I just find old ladies amusing and I think one day I would like to join a old lady artist club and I would do especially contraversial art just to see there reaction. On one of the good days we went for a really long walk with Lydia and Amber. Which included a heroic moment when Amber rescued one of my wellies that was floating down a ford we were trying to cross.

On the other good weather day we hired a tandum from a very cool campsite that has a hot tub. Unfortunatly that wasn't the campsite we were camping in. We cycled to wastwater lake and then I made the slightly irresponsible decison to swim to the other side. I based this decision on the fact I could see the other side. However there was nothing to show scale on the other side and it was a lot futher than I thought, at 3/4 of the way across I couldn't even see Dan and he could't see me. There was no way of him retriving me from the other side so I had to swim back. The whole thing probably took about an hour and a half.

On arriving back in to civerlisation we discoved our house had been broken into, which is not very civilised at all. My laptop was missing and the house had been searched through, Dan's laptop had been looked at but they obviously decided it wasn't worth it. Thankfully we don't have much worth robbing, we don't have a tv and although they did look through our board games cupboard nothing took their fancy. The police told us that PVC doors have to be made with a removable pannal in case of fire. Good one heath an saftey. There are many youtube videos showing several ways to get through PVC doors, always handy if you forget your keys/ are a criminal. We spent that evening with friends making mildly rude words in a game of bananagrams, which was very theraputic. Christians just love to go mental like that when they're angry! I spelled out Tampax, pubes and kex.

The next day Dan was very concerned that our chocolate cereal had been stolen as well lukily it was safe and sound.

Embarrasing Myself in Asda

This week I have embarrassed myself twice in asda once while I was trying to buy scissors and once while I was trying to twin my armchair.

What do you mean 'trying to twin your armchair' I here you cry....don't worry I will tell you. We have an armchair that was donated to us when we got married because when you get married everyone wants to unload their unwanted things onto you. At one point we had 2 washing mashing 2 tumble dryers a three piece sweet and 2 other sofas. I am grateful for this stuff but there is a limit to how much furniture we can fit in our house and the limit is 2 small sofas and one armchair. So we had an armchair to get rid of, and for one night only we had a van. We texted round all our friends trying to give it away and then gave up and went to the pub wear we met Katie Hunt - the girl who says yes to everything she's great. She really had no need for an armchair she lived in a shared house with an abundance of armchairs but she kindly offered to take ours because she says yes to everything.

Katie has since moved house and took her armchair with her, so every time we go and visit her or her housemates we can go and visit our armchairs' best buddy- katies' armchair. Then we decided we should twin them. We originally wanted to have a live video link between then so that anytime you were sitting in one of the armchairs you could see what was happening in the other one. However we decided against this because their were some concerns that me and Dan might get up to some chair hankie pankie that the residents of Halkyn ave did not want to see. Oh yeah and financial reasons. So we made these instead:

This is what lead to me having to explain the whole thing to the guy that works in the Asda photo department. I hope this is a craze that will catch on, there's loads of things that could be twined with other things. My mum has actually twinned her loo with a loo in somewhere like Burundi, we have a photo of their loo in our bathroom. It was a charity thing though, I think she gave the charity enough money for the loo to be built. I don't think they have a photo of our loo in their little toilet hut.

The second time I embarrassed myself in Asda was today, I kicked off a little bit. I'm not even that embarrassed actually their the ones who should be embarrassed by their ridiculous policies. Today I got ID-ed for buy these:







Kids Scissors! Can anyone else spot the bit that says 'FOR KIDS' so how stupid is it that you have to be 18 to buy them and that have to ID anyone who looks under 25. Apparently they could be used as a weapon. Please remind me that next time I go to Asda for the soul purpose of attacking someone to either bring a weapon from home or if I plan to attack someone with a weapon bought in the store remind me to take ID with me.

Art can save the world (part 2)

"Art has the power to turn people who previously egged you into your admirers" was probably the message of my previous blog...this blog is more along the lines of

"Art can save the world, if random people saying funny things to you whilst your doing art constitutes saving the world"

I have finally finished my house mural it looks like this:

Here are some funny things that passers by have said to me whilst I painted and in brackets is what I should have said back

'Are you Banksey's Mrs' (Maybe I am Banksey)

'Is this Graffiti' (It's middle class home owner's graffiti)

'Are you a little artist?' (I'm kneeling down, but I'm an adult it's my actual job it says community artist on my marriage certificate and everything.)

'Your talents being wasted' (how do you know? are you just assuming that I have some boring job and I'm doing this for fun, or are you assuming that I have another talent that I'm wasting by doing awful art instead?)

'Dat's decent girl'

'My dog can draw better than I can' (well you have a very talented dog...I did actually say that)

It was a lot of fun and I'm a little bit sad it's over but I have started a new similar project in the back garden of a lovely old Swiss couple who saw me painting this one. I'm so glad to be doing some paid art work during the summer holidays. This little commission could have all gone very wrong before it even started but thankfully the man was too Swiss to realise what was going on. I shall explain....

My husband Dan like to phone me and put on silly accents about 2 weeks ago he managed to totally fool me by phoning from his work phone and putting on an Indian accent. A few days later the Swiss man stoped me in the street and asked for my contact details. I had given out about 5 business cards whilst doing this work and everyone who took one said something like 'I'll be in contact' but a week later no one had contacted me. Then last week I was stuck in traffic when my phone went, at first I hung up but they phoned back so I answered. As soon as I heard the foreign accent I said 'Dan I know it's you, ha ha ha I'm driving phone me later.' luckily the man ignored all this and continued to talk, I was about to hang up thinking it was someone trying to sell me something, when I realised who he was.

p.s. I just spell checked this an it is amusing to discover that the spell check for this blog doesn't have the word 'blog' in it's dictionary, it suggests I mean bog.

Art can save the world

Judging by the small but lovely things that have happened in my street in the 2 or 3 hours I sat outside and painted, I have decided that art can save the world. All we need is about 10% of the population to go out and paint lovely pretty things everywhere and then everyone in the world will be happy and lovely all day.

I've decided to paint some pot plants on the front of my house which was a suggestion that came from Will Evans. This sounded like a fun low maintenance way to garden and since Dan recently cut down the rose bush in our actual garden (thinking it was a weed) I wanted to have flowers again. In my opinion the best kind of flowers are pictures of flowers, they are much less needy than real flowers.

This is what I've done on the house so far obviously I haven't "planted" any flowers in that middle pot yet. Two days ago I did the sunflower but I had to come in before it was finished because their was a fight on the street that I didn't want to get involved in. Then today lots of random passers by were lovely to me. Quite a few people stopped to complement the work, a guy that owns a coffee shop brought me out a free cup of coffee because he says he likes seeing people be creative, he also said the best thing about it was that 'I was actually doing it' which was an odd thing to say but I got what he meant. It's a shame I don't like coffee, I drank some of it anyway to be polite. I had a good chat with the post man about it, and my new Spanish next door neighbours, and a old man on a bike who said he's wife had told him to come and look. A woman also asked me if I did murals for children's nurseries so I gave her my business card and hopefully she'll get in touch.

I do proper love liverpool sometimes. Everyone talks to everyone, sometimes it's bad and people should learn to be a bit more private like this woman who walked past on the phone today shouting 'the sex was crap you cheeky c***!' But coming from a quiet village I would rather have interaction with people than be ignored.

Probably the best thing that happed today was that two kids that were about 9 or 10 came over and complemented me on my work and asked if they could do a bit, I would have let them but one kid persuaded the other that it would be boring so they walked off. The amazing thing about this is that I have seen these kids twice before and both times they were less than loveable. Once we were having tea in 'The Jam Cafe' and they came in with chips they have bought somewhere else and sat down and demanded a fork and salt and were genrally cheeky, and the second time was when they attempted to egg us. Even as they were walking towards me today one of them suggested robbing my painting stuff, but I like to think that the art inspired them to be nice for once. Who knows they might wait till I've finished and then come back and spray paint over it all. I hope not.

Racism Disclaimer

If you've just got back from a very nice day out at 'The Big Day In' (a christian social event in Coventry) that was only ruined by a girl shouting what may have sounded like a massively racist comment in front of a lot of people, I am that girl, and it didn't come out how it was meant to come out. Allow me to explain.....

After preforming a bit of stand up comedy Adaire the compare told his favourite joke 'Why does the baker have brown hands? because he kneaded a poo' I've always though this joke was a tiny bit racist because lots of people do have brown hands and it's not because they kneaded a poo. We should assume that the baker's hands weren't brown to begin with. So when Adaire started saying why did the baker have brown hands I stood up waved my arms and shouted in front of a lot of people. 'BECAUSE HE WAS ASIAN!!' It was only later that it dawned on me Adaire hadn't said 'why did the baker have brown hands? he said 'why did the baker have DIRTY hands'

embarrassed doesn't really come close. Sorry guys.

Tea

In my 20th year on planet earth I was converted to tea. (I have not previously drank an equivalent drink on another planet.) There are some peer pressure things that I refused to give into such as the unwritten rule in our secondary school that the more rolls you had in your socks the cooler you are. I'm proud that I stood up for myself on that one, but it's quite inconvenient not to like tea or coffee. Most social things happen around tea coffee or alcohol, thank goodness I like alcohol!

I had a friend in uni called Josh who loved tea passionately. He said that we couldn't be friends on a deep level until I started liking tea. We'd sometimes make bets where if I lost I had to drink tea. Which reminds me he still needs to go to tesco wearing my red prom dress. I can't remember what bet that was from but he defiantly owes me that. Anyway one day I was trying to cheer him up (I think I've actually written this on my blog before somewhere) so I downed a whole mug of tea, and shortly after I began liking tea.

From that day to this I have always been a social drinker of tea...it's great when someone invites you round for a cup of tea to be able to say yes rather than 'well I will come but can I have a hot squash?' I do genuinely like tea but I'm not addicted to it like some people. I only have it with other people. (apart from once when I was living in Palestine and Amber stapled a tea bag to a postcard for me. That was a good Yorkshire brew I had in Bethlehem that day.

However today and yesterday I have got home from work to an empty house and though 'I NEED TEA!' I think it's working with kids that makes me need it. So maybe the real addiction will start here. I feel there is a parallel between today and the day I bought a book just because I wanted to read and I bought it with real money not a book token. It's that kind of day that you have to re-assess your while life and principles.

On a completely different note I would like to wish my lovely husband a well done for his stand up routine last night it started with 'FREE TIBET FREE TIBET FREE TIBET ...when you purchase another Tibet of equal of greater value.' He also managed to accidental throw a packet of jelly into a chandelier, and as he predicted we weren't ready for that jelly.

Obese Pigs Quiver

This week at creative writing we had to write a 26 word poem that went through the alphabet. Mine makes no sense but most poetry is hard to understand so maybe it's just a really amazing poem, and maybe if it doesn't make sense to you then you're only reading it on a shallow surface level and your not understanding it as a metaphor for the collapse of the euro zone and the crumbling of capitalism as we know it.

Accidentally Becky Coper Discovered Every Family Grows High.
I Joked Kangaroos Love My Nose.
Obese Pigs Quiver.
Roap Swings Twist Under Vicious Waggling.
X-tream Yetties Zap.

The xyz bit was hard so I had to cheat with x. I wrote another one as well that ended with.
Ultra Violent Women X-pell Your Zits.

Other that writing ridiculous things, I have been ridding on ridiculous methods of transport, sometimes in ridiculous clothes.



Bex's Disney fancy dress hen do

Cannoeing to tesco with my sister

The great thing about cannoeing on the world's most ugly canal is that you get to see the reactions of locals (as well as getting to see floating t.vs.) Scally kids are always surprised and interested to see the cannoes. This time a scally asked Dan why he was doing it. Dan didn't know what to say, he told me later that it was a very existential question and he didn't know how to answer. I personally think he missed out on a great opportunity to talk about the deep questions of life with a 14 year old.

Next Door Neighbours

We have weird next door neighbours, we know every detail of their life because they are loud and our walls are thin. They are a couple with two young boys we know the names of their two unruly little boys but I'm not sure if you're allowed to say that kind of thing on the Internet so I will call them Jack and Ben. They have relationship problems and are very vocal about them, they like to smoke weed on a Friday afternoon in the garden, they have some financial problems and the lady has unresolved anger issues.

Until quite recently we had no idea what they looked liked then one day when a football appeared in our yard. It was a sunny day and we were off to the park so naturally we took the ball with us, and we were a bit blarzay about bringing it back, that is to say we left it in the park. That evening the dad and one of the boys came round to ask for the ball back, I went into the garden and shouted 'I can't see it' which wasn't a lie. We then called round all our friends to see if anyone had picked it up, luckily Cat had. We managed to retrieve it from her a few days later and throw it over the wall in a 'oh there it is' kind of a way. Since then they have been constantly throwing balls over which we normally throw back until recently when it has happened so often we think they're doing it on purpose so we haven't bothered throwing them back.

Last Monday we were walking towards our church, when a group of little scally kids started egging us. I don't want to become a ragging torrie or anything.... but if the working class have enough money to buy eggs for the soul purpose of egging then they need to be taxed more. Anyway that's just a tangent, we were walking after just being egged and there was a family of 4 walking on the same bit of pavement as us. We definatly wouldn't had reconised them if they hadn't started talking, but as soon as they opened their months we knew it was them. It was a bit like watching a tv show for a number of years and then suddenly seeing the stars. Me and Dan both thought about saying 'Hello we're you're neighbors' but we both realised that they could have replyed 'why haven't you thrown our balls back' or 'how do you know?' so we said nothing and watched them. Not in a creapy way just in a carry on walking and say nothing way. We discoved Jack and Ben are twins I'd always wondered which was older and which one I had seen when they came round. (I still don't know that cos they look alike.)

I do wonder if they reconised us, and how much they know about our lives, and if they are bloging about all our issues right now.

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.

Customer Feedback

Virgin media just emailed me to ask for feedback...at last my chance to vent years of fustration. I gave them a score of 1 for customer service and zero for chance of recomending them to a friend. when asked to explain my answers I wrote this:

"I originally gave you the score zero but then I changed it to 1 because I did eventually get to speak to a real person and I have a vague glimmer of hope that my bill problem might one day get sorted. I put 0 for how likely I am to recommend you to a friend because, straight after my conversation I was filled will frustration and had to go out for a run to calm myself down. I also posted as my facebook status 'I hate virgin media! Even more than I hate HMRC.' So it's not really just that I am 'not at all likely' to recommend a friend I'm actually actively against you as a corperation and would happily dissuade anyone from signing up for your internet packages. "

I wish I'd added that they should move their call centres to Wales because when our car got written off by an idiot and the insurace company couldn't do anything I was strangly not annoyed with them. I think that's because you can't get anoyed with a welsh person.

End of a Era

Today at the age of 26 and a quarter, I am announcing the end of a 12 year long bikini wearing era. After trying to swim a km once a week for the last 6 weeks or so I have finally decide to stop wearing my bikini that is made from triangles the size of cheese triangles. I bought a proper grown up woman's swimsuit that sucks in the tummy. It's got polka dots on it and it's pretty. I try and swim 40 lengths in 35 minutes which I feel is significant progress considering that my personal goal a few months ago was not to get my hair wet.

After believing I was 7 1/2 stone for the past decade I was a bit surprised to discover that I am actually 8 1/2 stone. Annoyingly my excuse about not weighing enough to give blood will not work anymore (you have to be 8 stone.) I got sent a letter asking me to give blood today, and that's partly what prompted buying a new swimsuit, I want to get in shape or those blood sucking leaches that are the NHS will guilt me into donating. I already became a organ donor last month but that will not satisfy them. I'm giving everything but my eyes, I know I'll be dead but I don't want someone else wandering around with my eyes after I'm gone.... that's creepy.

I definitely don't want to give up my body to science either. I don't want some first year med student poking around and laughing at my dead naked body. I wouldn't mind giving up my body for art though, I wonder if there's a form to fill in for that? I wonder if you could get paid in advance for it? I almost donated my baby teeth collection to an artist once. Then I decided not to, you never know when there will be an emergency and you'll urgently need a pot of your own baby teeth.

My Favorite Gingers

This blog is dedicated to my 2 favorite ginger friends who are both amazing Bex and Josh. (also I have a ginger sister she's nice too)

I'll start with Bex who I've know since I was born:

This is us and our snowman back in the day. We grew up as next door neighbours, until I was 6. One memory from this period was of us "running away" we decided on the cunning cover up of ''we're pretending to run away" we packed clothes and cornflakes in a big suitcase and set off for our journey after maybe 20 minutes I fell over and we had to go back for a plaster, and we must of decided not to continue the big run away plans.

When I was 6 Bex moved a few miles away but 6 months later we ended up moving to the same street as them, we started a new school together and pretended we were sisters. People genrally believed us. I actually find it hard to convince people that I'm not related to other random gingers sometimes.

We weren't as close in secondary school Bex was two school years above me, and therefore it was socially unacceptable for us to make any eye contact during school hours. Once she was in sixth form we hung out a bit more. I got a bit of street cred from getting lifts to school in her old banger car. I got the role of 'cd walkman holder' -she had one of those things that plugs into a car tape player and we always listened to 'Niccleback' or 'Puddle of mud' on the way to school.

She went away to uni and we weren't in contact much for a few years but it's quite weird how similar we have become as adults. We both share a love of climbing trees, silly games, fancy dress, traveling and setting fire to things. Last July she was my bridesmaid and this July I'm going to be her bridesmaid!!! She told me this at her surprise engagement party at the weekend... then we had a wrestle in the lotus position whilst I was wearing a monkey mask, and she accidental punched me in the face and gave me a nose bleed it was funny.

This is me and Josh:

We lived together for 2 years in uni. He taught me how to spin fire poi, I taught him unicycling, and he was the one that inspired me to do community art stuff. We had a lot of funny times together back in the day when we lived life between 10am and 2am. On Sundays we had the Sunday night question which was a deep philosophical time when we discussed things like 'Do male lady birds ever feel a bit camp?' he came out with great sentences like 'That's illegal with a capital E!' we pretty much spent our whole time on the beach or in the park I never remember it being cold or rainy in those days. One he put a life size manikin that he found in a skip in my bed.

He converted me to liking tea because he loved it so much that he said we couldn't be friends on a deep level if I didn't drink tea. One day (before I liked tea) I wanted to show him how much I respected him as a friend, but as he didn't really do hugs, I downed a whole mug of tea for his enjoyment even though I hated it. After that I gradually started to like tea.

Today Josh is setting of on a tricycle ride around Europe for a year meeting up with some circus type people in Berlin and travelling with them for a while. He's a proper legend. He has a blog too you should follow it: http://wildgooseartventures.blogspot.com/

Cheese Gun

Here is a copy of the letter I just sent to cheesestring:

Dear Cheesestring,
I had a funny thought a while ago which was ‘what would happen if you put a cheese string in a glue gun’ a couple of days ago at my friend’s cheese and wine birthday party I tried it out. Initially it didn’t really work because cheese string cheese isn’t solid enough to be pushed through a glue gun so we moulded some cheader to the right size and amazingly with a bit of poking it worked…the gun melted the cheese which could then be squirted into a cracker or whatever. All this was a silly experiment, but I actually think that the ‘cheese gun’ could be a marketable product. I think the target market would be young boys and maybe students anyone that like to have a bit of fun with their cheese really.

I realise health and safety might be an issue but I’m sure it is possible to create a hygienic low heat gun, maybe battery powered. I honestly think this could boost your sales, and I think that you would be the perfect kind of fun company to bring out such a product.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Hannah Jones.

Bath Toys

How many bath toys is too many bath toys for a couple with no children to own?

We have 12 and I think that is definatly too many. 'How did it that happen!' I here you cry, well it's not an interesting story but I will tell you anyway.

I had a plastic frog that I think was a present from ampsterdam when I was a teanager.

Then we bought our house an it came with 3 rubber ducks in a bowl of glass beeds in the bathroom.

Then we had a underwater themed fancy dress party and our friend Lydia came as a pond and left behing 3 frogs that were attached to her.

Then my sister gave us two colour changing rubber ducks and some bath disco lights that work underwater. (However they don't work underwater if they're not screwed together right)

Then Dan went and did our Asda shop and asked me if he could get me a little present, I said yes because I love presents and he came back with 3 plastic fish. I tryed to give him a look of 'I apericiate the gesture' without giving him the impression that I love that our bath is full of plastic kids toys and it is the perfect present. I have since informed him that if he has £2.50 to spend on a gift for me from asda he should go for a nail varnish.

Here ends the most borring blog I have ever written.

My Comedy Career Starts Here!

Last monday a did my first ever bit of stand up comedy, it was only for 5 minutes but the "fame" has gone to my head a bit. I did think the day after 'I could be a comedian...I already do my own self assesment tax returns and that's probably the hardest bit' I think I've realised now that when your only doing 5 minutes and the place is full of your friends and your a the only girl doing it, and it's your first time, your probably not going to get heckeled or anything. People would probably laugh anyway whatever you said.

I tryed to tweet my comedy at some comedians without much success. I've realised now that I should have asked them to retweet it instead of saying 'what do you think of this?' They're hardly going to come round and offer to be my personal comedy mentor (although they really should.) Dan said today that if I ever did get famous he'd worry that I'd go off and buy something crazy like a house made of cheese without asking him first. but what's crazy about that?! Here is my comedy clip, but you were probably there or have already seen it. Thanks for coming if you did, it was brilliant to have so many friends there.

http://youtu.be/FvTy0hasXQI

I started off talking about a dream I had where I'm a pond and a horse is drinking, me but that's a really sain dream compaired to the one I had last night. Last night a drempt that an angry guinen pig got inside my arm and stated sewing me up up on the inside. I had to keep pulling theads out of my skin and then it got even more angry and started to do the same but with metal chains, so I had to keep pulling chains out of my skin. It's probabley hard to imagain. Hopefully soon they will invent a iphone app that records your dreams and then you can upload the best ones to you tube. It would make blogging easier.

Keeping Warm

It's cold at the moment, I am not a fan. It should either be properly winter like snow and stuff or hurry up and be summer time. But fear not, I have some handy tips on keeping warm. I shall list them in order of sensibleness from 'weird but do-able' to 'nonsense'

1) I discovered yesterday that a snog with your husband/ partner/ fellow snogging enthusiast, is very nice if they have just downed a cut of hot tea .....mmmm, it's like a hot water bottle for you tongue. On the other had if they have just motor biked 30 miles in the ice stay away!

2) nose muffs -yet to catch on but a definite gap in the market.

3) I think I am building up an immunity to heat. I used to have 90% hot water baths with 10% cold water but now I go for 100% hot and I add more hot after 10 minutes. I also put boiling water in my hot water bottle even though you're apparently not meant to. I am now wanting to find a liquid that boils at around 120'c so I can be hotter for longer. I will buy a hot water bottle to the first scientist to get me some.

4) building a time machine and going back to 1985 when I was in the womb.

War Horse

I recently went to see the film 'War Horse' with my lovely husband. We find it difficult to see films together because Dan likes 'Bang bang films' and I like 'ooooh ahhh films' I don't like mushy American girly films- they are silly. I like thinky films, I don't like films where more than 3 people get shot, and I refuse to see films where people have pointy ears- I just can't empasise with them.

That's why we thought that War Horse could be a film that we both like, Dan likes war and I like horses. Other films we could see together include

machine gun turtle
door mouse massica
guinea pig genocide
or exploding puppy dogs

I quite liked the film but Dan said it had too much horse and not enough war. Just at the end as everyone was in tears he said quite loudly 'As if I could give that much of a poo about a horse! it will be glue soon'

Here is a really good illustrated review of War Horse it's much better than this blog entry.

http://thehairpin.com/2012/01/war-horse-an-illustrated-review

Stationary Purgatory

A song by Hannah Jones:

Verse 1:
I was playing with my blob of blue tac,
it rolled away from me, and I want it back,
but it went to a place where few can escape,
it's in stationary purgatory.

chorus:
Stationary Purgatory,
That is where I know my blue tac will be,
it fell down the radiator,
I hope I'll see it later,
When I rescue it from stationary purgatory.

Verse 2:
I tried to poke it out with a ruler,
I enlisted the help of my friend called Tallulah,
we poked and we prodded but we dropped the ruler,
into stationary purgatory.

8 things

1) never go to Google image search and type in 'string' if you want a picture of string I'd try 'ball of string'

2) I have renamed my bank 'Santan-dur' because they are stupid. According to their customer service people, internet banking doesn't work if you get to their homepage via google.

3) Yesterday I was teaching Aztec art to year 5s and I heard the teacher say 'good artists are ALWAYS good tidy-uppers' errrr not true! I might even argue that untidy people are more likely to be good artists.

4) I recently asked Dan what he would prefer I gave him out of a wild boar a wild hoar or a wild chore? he answered a wild chore like cutting down trees or something.

5) I dreamt about Lady Gaga's wedding dress it was quite a traditional princess style apart from it was a 2 person dress for her and her husband to wear together. They waddled down the isle facing each other like syamise twins.

6) I have recently joined twitter, I don't fully get it yet, but I was pleased when I saw this fight between Pete waterman and my Dad on BBC breakfast and was able to find Pete on twitter and tell him to back off my Dad. Unfortunately I did it wrong the first time and accidental had a go at a Chinese person. Here's the clip: http://youtu.be/0Rtgk-pIU1w

7) oh yeah the fight (and it wasn't really a fight at all) was because HS2 is going ahead despite the fact I told my MP I didn't want it. You can read about her and her hypnotic eyes here: http://thewonderingsofwibble.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-hypnotic-mp.html

8) Dan is doing some kind of computor training internet thingy called sissco, and I thought 'where have I heard that before' and then I typed sissco onto you tube and relised he is the man that sang 'The thong song.' watch the hilarious video of a black man with dyed white hair from the year 2000 here http://youtu.be/Oai1V7kaFBk

The Mighty Nokia 3310

I'm feeling a certain nostalgia for this:

11 years ago when I was 14 this was the only thing I wanted. I didn't want it for making phone calls of course, I wanted it so I could play snake on the school bus like my friend Gillian. The other side benefit was that I could text whoever I wanted without my parents knowing. I had no desire to do this before age 14 so it was invented just in time. I think a lot of things were invented just in time for me. Like the internet...I was quite a technophobe and didn't have an email address until I was 18 but who needs to use the internet before the age of 18 really? In fact I don't think under 18s should be allowed to use it. They'll only waste time on it. Anyway there was no point in using the internet for homework and stuff when Encarta 95 had all the answers to life's problems. - Oh the good old days before I knew how to copy and paste. I'd print out sheets and sheets from Encarta and cut out the paragraphs I wanted glue them to another piece of paper and draw a picture.

I miss photos two, I do love digital cameras but I feel that they have devalued photos. I liked it when you went on holiday and you had one film of 25 photos...does anyone actually need more than 25 photos of one holiday? Maybe yes if half of them have thumbs in or are just black, but that's the fun of getting photos developed, -that risk that maybe they're all rubbish. At christmas we would take a photo album with a years worth of photos to our grandparents house and sit and tell them about each picture. If they were still alive they would probabley just 'like' my photos on facebook.