Mike and Katie and Snails

This post is mainly dedicated to the lovely Mike and Katie our close friends who have just got married.

It's also dedicated to our new friends Brian and Tracey who are plastecine snails that we made a couple of days ago.

Katie and Mike are a totally brilliant couple, they were totally brilliant as individual people so it's only logical that they are brilliant together. My favourite thing about Katie is that she says yes to everything which means she's always up for fun times/ helping you grout a mosaic/ agreeing to have an armchair you're trying to get rid of. I asked Dan (who knows Mike a bit better) what his favourite thing about Mike was and he said "he's honest, he's funny and he cares about his friends a lot."So they are just a couple of the great things about Katie and Mike.

We wanted to get them a nice wedding present.  When we got married, Katie asked me 'if you could have anything in the world what would you want?' I thought about the time we had a lot of fun messing about on someone's canoe recently and without a lot of thought to practicalities said 'canoes' because I didn't think it would actually result in all our friends chipping in and breaking a van in the process of buying us two enormous canoes. This is them in our garden.

 There was no way we could top that, but I decided to make them a handmade present all the same, it took me a very long time to make this thing and I was still making it on the morning of their wedding day. I didn't leave myself much time to wrap it well. In fact it was just wrapped in cardboard with a mixture of gaffa and electrical tape. It looked a proper mess, and it wasn't as if I could hide it way behind the other presents as it was A1 sized. We took it to the reception venue, using it as an umbrella, only to discover that we were in charge of taking all the presents home, so actually I could have just left it at home and wrapped it better.

Dan was the best man, I was 'wag of best man and Grace sayer' which is a really important role. The grace sayer bit came about because just before we got married Katie said she loves saying grace (of course she does- she loves everything) So I said she could say grace at our wedding, and she decided to return the favour although it was only decided 5 minutes before grace.

 Will Evans introduced the grace and told everyone to bow their heads. It was then a bit embarrassing when the microphone didn't work, and I did what a lot of people do to test a microphone, which is say 'hello' in a slightly awkward way, at that point the microphone did work. Everyone who had bowed their heads looked up at me in an odd way. I think they thought that was the beginning of my prayer, but Katie said she thought I was about to start some impromtu stand up.

Anyway it was a super brilliant wedding, I wish them a lifetime of happiness and I hope we stay lifelong friends. 

But that's enough about Katie and Mike, what about Brian and Tracey our new plastecine snail friends with appalling midlands accents? Click Here to see a very short clip of them that we made using stop frame animation. We want to make a proper little film with them but we are looking for ideas. 

Happy New Year.

Low budget ways to entertain yourself

Hello friends and possibly stalkers.
Last time I blogged I was talking about all the things we could possibly do with our lives now that we're back from the big trip that even I am bored of mentioning now. We have not managed to achieve any of the big exciting things I mentioned yet but here are some of the lower budget weirder things we have been doing:

1) leaving all our skype friends video messages from 'Pablo' and 'Sandra'

2) T-rex tidying - doing normal everyday chores with our arms in the t-rex position i.e. tiny arms.  It makes the chores a lot more challenging but it's also a lot more fun.

3) Having date night which involved going to home bargains to spend a pound each. I got 500g of fake liquorice allsorts. The great thing about liquorice is that so many people hate it, so even though I've offered to share with a couple of people they've all said no.  (that's not the only thing we did on our date night we also had a meal in that new Lebanese place on bold St)

4) Singing 'Mancunian way' to the tune of 'arabian nights' (from Aladdin) last night whilst on  the mancunian way.

5)  Inventing a game that's already been invented. The game we invented, we called 'tilepix'

Everyone has 2 minutes to make one of the words on the cards from 25 tiles.

So for example this is quite clearly a giraffe. This game was born out of my rebellious way of playing bananagrams.  I can never win in spelling games so I just tried to make pictures from the letter tiles instead.

I decided to make 10 of them to start with to give away as presents or sell. But because it takes soooo long to make each game, particularly the box lid, I'm not going to make more than the 10 I've already made. If you want one I have only about 3 left to sell and they are £12. I emailed a games company with the idea and they told me a very similar game called 'squint' already exists. Mine's loads better though.

6) Making up jokes. I've just been in a comedy competition. I was the only girl out of 18 people, and I thought that might give me an extra edge but then a 13 year old entered and was actually really funny. The only way I can compete with that is if I was a dancing puppy or something. Dan helped me make up some new jokes about Movember for my set and I also had some new material on eskimo muslims. Here's me performing it:

Llama or Lodger?

Since coming back from our big trip we are not really sure what to do with our lives. Before going our goals for the next 5 years were to have a baby and move to a different country probably in that order. One of the places we were both quite excited about going to on our big trip was Lebanon. We wondered whether this might be the place for us because I really like arab culture, they speak French and Arabic and Dan speaks French and I speak a tiny bit of arabic. They have mountains and beaches and although it's majority muslim it's ok to be a christian, and as with most countries the weather is better than here. But we weren't that bothered about it after going. It was cool I'm glad we went but I won't be disappointed if I never go again.

Since getting back from our trip I've stared to feel a lot more settled in Liverpool, I'm appreciating all the great things about being here like all our friends that are here and we have electricity. (in Lebanon there were constant power cuts, there were 3 hours a day of timetabled power cuts and extra ones on top of that, and we were living in one of the best places in the country for electricity.)

So if we're going to stay here for the foreseeable future...(which I'm not saying we definitely are) What shall we do with our lives? Here are some options we have discussed in the month since getting back.

1) Buy a big house to and get 2 or 3 lodgers. There's this really great one that we've seen with 5 massive bedrooms, 2 big reception rooms 2 bathrooms a utility room and a study... really nicely done up and ready to move into for £135000. I doubt we'd be able to get a mortgage on that amount but we kind of nearly might be able to when Dan gets a job. This is the smaller of the 2 reception rooms:

One downside is we'd probably get shot living in that area. Check it out here

2) Have a baby, that old classic... it's a very popular choice for people at our kind of age and stage in life, a little mainstream but I'm sure we'll give it a go sooner or later.

3) Foster a child, I would like to do this one day probably not in the next 5 years but it's not the most crazy idea on this list.

4) Get into bee keeping. This is Dan's idea, our friend Jenn Haith has just been on a bee keeping course and now owns several thousand bees. Apparently you can do this course for free if you're on Jobseekers and Dan loves a freebie.

5) Get a kitten. It's hard to decide on this one. The pros are cuteness and the cons are cat hair, cat litter, the smell of cat food, vets bills, cat hairs, and our cat suffocating our future baby. We just need to decide how important cuteness is in our lives.

6) Join the circus. I'm not joking, we've been invited by Josh Simpson of Wild Goose arts to join him for however long we want next summer to teach circus stuff in eastern Europe. If you're interested check it out

This is me and Josh in our student days hanging out on stilts.

7) Become a comedienne...I'm going to try and do a few more gigs and see what happens. The main thing attracting me to this career is the fact that as I'm already self employed it would be no extra paperwork to become a comedian. I've written a few new jokes since getting back from my trip my favourite one is about eskimo-muslims.

8) Get a llama, probably the least serious of these suggestions but there are some second hand llamas for sale locally, if you want them don't let me stop you. They're here.

So there are some of the options, most of them require Dan to find some employment first. (he quit his job to do the trip) Maybe we should put it to a vote.

Our Movies

I recently said on facebook that I would stop chatting on about our trip.... I will after this one last post. I was planning to write 4 blogs about our trip one for each quarter...so far I've written 2 about the first quarter and then I started writing the second one but now I'm giving up. I've tried to do a bit too many method of documentation all at once: Photos, a postcard from each place, paper diaries, and a film in 4 parts. I'm sick of hearing about it! So here are the films and accompanying advert which I am quite proud of, and hence forth I shall blog about our life post trip which is a pretty confusing time right now.

The advert

Film 1 England to Switzerland

Film 2 Switzerland to Macedonia

Film 3 Macedonia to Lebanon

Film 4 Lebanon to Kuwait

Southampton to Geneva

Hello, if you have checked my blog thinking I might have written stuff about our 2 month trip to Kuwait, you will have been disappointed. Blame Google. I tried logging on to my blog in other countries and they had to send me a text with a code so I could confirm I am me, the problem was I choose to leave my phone in England.

Anyway I last blogged on day 4 of our trip just before I left England, so today I will blog about the first quarter of our trip using extracts from our diary. I'm also making a film about it which I will put on the internet soon.

Day 5 Sailing to the Isle of Wight in my Dad's boat

Day 6 

"at around 6.30am we saw some kind of cargo ship that came into the 'boats that might hit us' category  We woke Dad up (as we had been instructed to do) and we watched the boat with special binoculus that tell you what angle the boat is sailing at. Obviously it didn't hit us I probably would have mentioned that sooner." Han

Day 7

"The highlight of the day was quite possibly when we rode up the lock with a few bigger boats. We were alongside a trawler with a good sized catch and as they discarded some fish which were too small we snagged 6 for tea."  Dan

Day 8 - Dad dropped us off on the seine which was a tricky manoeuvre depicted below, and we began a 3 day cycle to Paris.

Day 9- The day we ate cereal without bowls, outside a shop. (and cycled 50 miles)

Day 10 -

"We are staying with Dan's Aunty Beatrice who lives in a very posh area right in the centre of Paris. When we arrived she got out some sandwich stuff for lunch and like a typical french person she had 5 different kinds of cheese and none of them were cheddar or cheese triangle. I aspire to be like that one day." Han

Day 11-

 I met up with my french exchange partner Morgane who I hadn't seen since I was 15. This time we were actually able to communicate with each other via Dan.

Day 12- 

We went up the Eiffel tower and then headed south to Dijon by train. The Eiffel tower is really only a half built tourist attraction in my opinion. All those stairs and no Helta- skelta what's that all about?

Day 13- 60 miles

Day 14 (crossing the swiss/ french boarder in the alps)

"The downhill was without a doubt the greatest hill I have ever been on. About 2km down there was a bend and the most incredible view. Massive Alps with snow on top towered behind the lake." - Dan

Day 15 (Lake Geneva)

"We also went on a pedalo and I swam, and by "Swam" I mean played around in the water jumping and twisting like a dolphin on crack" Han

And here ends the first Quarter of our trip I'll write more soon.

Setting Off

Hello.... you may think of today as Friday 2nd of August but Dan and I are have now set of on our adventure and are only referring to days by their numbers. Today is day 4 (a rest day) Here are a few things that have happened since day 1.

Here we are with our lovely 10 year old next door neighbour a minute before we set off. If you look carefully you might be able to see a banana attached precariously to my pannier. Unfortunately that banana fell off somewhere along Lawrence or Earl road.

We got the ferry across the Mersey something we have never done before in 8 years of living in Liverpool. We then cycled 35 miles south to Dans grandparents house in Malpas, Cheshire. On the way we passed the cutest poster ever!

Please everyone be vigilant for what I'm assuming is a a black cat. Here is Dan with his English Grandparents.

Impressive beard isn't it. 

So that was day 1, very pleasant....unlike day 2, when after 15 miles of cycling in the rain Dan said "and now we join the canal tow path so no more hills and a nice direct route all the way to Birmingham." He wasn't so jolly after a few miles of walking our bikes through this:

After hoping it would get better for a long time we eventually abandoned the canal route and cycled in the A41 towards Wolverhampton for ages and ages, and then joined a much better tow path that connected Wolverhampton with Birmingham. In total we cycled 69.2 miles that day at the absolutely rubbish average speed of 6 miles an hour. (we normally do about 10 mph) I can't say we were the best company when we arrived at my sister Jo's house. I won't scare you with a picture of my face but here are my feet.

Day 3 was a much more pleasant 22 miles to my parents house near Coventry although unfortunately my bum had not fully recovered from the day before, so instead of the first 10 miles being pain free like they normally are, my bum hurt immediately. Today we have been resting and tomorrow we're off to the isle of wight, by car and boat (car's are cheating I know)  By about midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning we'll be in France and Dan will have got through day 7 the day he's most worried about. 

10 Trip FAQs

Hello....lots of people are asking the us the same questions at the moment. We don't mind at all but I thought I'd write 10 FAQs as my last blog before we leave. (Sorry if you're bored of hearing about it)

1) When are you leaving?
Tomorrow!! by bike from our house. It will be 30th July 2013 exactly 60 years after my grandparents left for their trip. Here they are having a picnic in the desert:

2) Where are you going?
Kuwait (via England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan)

If you're not sure where Kuwait is it's here between Iraq and Saudi.

You may have noticed that 'Turkey-Lebanon-Jordan-Kuwait' isn't really a route. That's the annoying thing about the middle east too many countries that your mum (and the foreign office) won't let you go to. When my grandparents did the same trip in 1953 they happily drove through Iraq and Syria which is sort of the sensible way geographically. We have just picked the countries we wanted to go to and are flying over the bad ones...that's partly why we couldn't go by car like we wanted to originally.

So we're flying over Syria to Lebanon (which is totally not fair because we had this idea before Syria was a mess) and then we're annoying flying to Jordan because Lebanon and Jordan don't quite join up and although I would love to go through Israel and palestine to get there, the Lebanon/ Israel boarder
has been closed since 2006 and you can only go to one of those places on any one passport. The last bit Jordan to Kuwait...I kind of don't mind avoiding Iraq and Saudi. They're not the most welcoming of countries. In fact when we were considering going through Saudi we read on a Saudi website 'Saudi Arabia will remain a great nation as long as it is difficult for foreigners to enter'

That was a long answer sorry.

3) How far will you cycle in a day?
We decided 60 miles should be the maximum per day a  while ago, then I did a test ride that was 60 miles and I thought I was capable of doing it if I had a hour break after 30 miles and a minuets break every 10 miles. Until a few days ago I was thinking we'd have a few 60 mile days but mostly cycling days would be 40 or 50 miles. Last night Dan showed me the GPS computer program with the routes mapped and almost all of them were between 60 and 70 miles.....I'm not quite sure how that happened!

4) How long are you away for?
2 months I think we arrive back in Britain on 29th Sept. We won't really be functioning members of society until October.

5) What are you doing with your house?
2 guys Joe and Adam are living in it.

6) How much luggage will you take?
one pannier bag and one small ruck sack each. I'm not even taking conditioner : (

7) Where are you staying, are you camping?
We can't really camp because then we'd have to take a tent and a mattress and sleeping bags ect so we're staying in a mixture of friends and family's houses, my dad's boat, Couch surfing (staying with strangers from the internet) cheap hostels, and 2 nice hotels (in Venice and Kuwait)

8) What are you doing about work?
I'm self employed so I can kind of take time off, also because I wonk in school there isn't any work in August anyway so I'm only missing a month. Dan has quit his job....he hated it anyway partly because he spent 3 hours a day commuting. On Friday he qualified as a life guard so he'll be looking for work in local swimming pools whilst trying to do more creatively interesting things like writing a book with our friend Ian.

9) What are you most looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to all of it really, but particularly Macedonia, Lebanon and Jordan. But I'm mostly looking forward to the fact that I will be away from everyday life having an adventure with my best friend Dan. awww.

10) What are you most scared of/ worried about?
Day 15 -Lons-le Saunier to Geneva! 70 miles of cycling through the alps with a 7000 foot incline. (in case you didn't know we don't have super amazing bikes we have folding bikes with little wheels and mine doesn't work in gear 1.) At the end of that we have to find a couch surfers house and try and be polite guests in a stranger's home. I also worry about missing planes or not being allowed onto trains with bikes and stuff.

Dan is least looking forward to Day 7- Isle of wight to Le Havre it's 20 hours of wobbling around on a 7 meter long boat...if the winds in the wrong direction it will be longer. Last time we crossed the channel in that boat he was sick about 10 times. He said he's rather cycle for 20 hours than sail for 20 hours. These is our sailing faces:

Thanks for reading. xx

P.s if you want to keep in contact we will be using twitter, email and facebook, maybe skype, I will write a few blogs but mainly we're keeping a paper diary. We will not be using our phones.

The Bet (part 2)

So since writing my last blog about my new bet, it seems that pretty much everyone wants to try and have as many ginger children as possible. Which is a big slap in the face to Katie Hopkins a "celebrity" that Helen Bradley told me to google after my last post. Katie Hopkins is a horrible snobbish woman who once tweeted

'Ginger babies. Like a baby. Just so much harder to love'

If that's the case why do so many people want to take part in the who can have the most ginger babies by 2028 bet?

Here are all the people who after reading my last blog want in:

 In the already parents category there's my mum (Sue) who has 2 of of 3 ginger children, and likes to boast that she is winning already. I guess technically she is but  if me or Jo (pictured below) go grey or die or dye by 2028 then she's not got much of a chance. She has set the bar high though if you're only planning on having two children I wouldn't bother entering into the ginger bet. p.s She's entering with my Dad obviously.

 Next in the parent category is Steph and Nick and Baby Benedict, although neither Steph or Nick are ginger, Ben (our godson) is looking more ginger every time I see him, and they're planning on having 4 children so in with a very good chance.

So in the couples category there's us and Katie and Mike as stated in the previous blog. 

And then in the singles category there is:

 Joe Fred....who has a ginger mum.

 Hazel Jurd who also has a ginger mum.

Helen Bradley...not a ginger but a massive fancier of ginger men.

Lydia Palmer and Danni McGuinness Both gingers in their own right.

The advantage of being single at this stage in the competition is that you can choose a partner who's going to give you most chance of winning. I was thinking after we've finished this bet in 2028 maybe we could go for most ginger grandchildren in 2058 say? Me and Helen already have vague plans to share a grandchild anyway. (we did try to become sisters in law but it would have meant at least one of us marring someone we didn't love) so if she has a couple of ginger kids this would be a double bonus for me. 

The small print:

• To answer Rachel's question only biological children count. 
• The ginger must be natural, however if you are a natural ginger and you dye your hair anther colour you are a traitor to the race and are permanently disqualified as an individual.
• winner is the couple with the most ginger children on 1st January 2028.
• Entrants are all those photographed above plus their future partners and children.
• The competition is now closed no one else can enter but other people can take bets on who will win.
• Losers which are defined as anyone photographed above and their families excluding the one winning family.
• If there are two winners with equal amounts of ginger children a gingerness scale will be drawn (sort of like litmus paper but with shades of ginger)
• All losing families must dye their whole families hair ginger.

A New Bet

I recently made a new bet which will expire in 15 years time. Me and Katie Hunt are having a competition. who can have the most ginger children (with our partners Mike and Dan.) The loser has to dye their hair and all of their families hair ginger.

I think our chances of winning are fairly even as I am the most ginger out of the 4 of us but Dan is the least ginger...as in he's not at all ginger. Katie has light brown/dark blond hair and Mike is a bit ginger especially in the beard. The bet isn't proportional depending on what percentage of our children are ginger, its just who has the most gingers.

Yesterday I was explaining the deal to Joe Fred and he expressed an intrest on getting in on the bet. He has dark hair but his mum is ginger so he's got a bit of recessive ginger going on. Joe has the slight disadvantage that he is currently single but he does have until 2028 to work on that.

So who's your money on? Here are the candidates:

P.s sorry to totally embarrass you all and also steel photos of you. Not the kind of sorry that means I'll never do it again. The 'a bit sorry but I'm still doing it' kind of sorry. If it makes you feel better I did purposefully put an embarrassing picture of me in it too.

Germans

In my life I have met at least 8 Germans, apart from that time I went to Germany and was surrounded by them. From these 8 Germans 3 of which I knew from my gap year to palestine, and 5 of which have been recent couch suffers I have put together these statistics:

100% of Germans speek brilliant english.

100% of germans are nice people.

87.5% of Germans are female.

100% of germans would not rob an English stranger when given the chance.

25% of Germans have a dislike of a food that I believe is essential to your diet ie cheese, pasta or meat

100% of germans like travelling.

at least 37.5% of Germans don't know how to set a burglar alarm.

37.5% of Germans have lived in Beit Jala (a suburb of bethlehem)

62.5% of Germans have ridden the 86 bus down Smithdown road.

25% of Germans do not think curtains are necessary.

at least 25% of Germans prefere Liverpool to Manchester.

62.5 % of Germans have been to Scotland.

25% of Germans have been to the outer Hebrides in April (and enjoyed nice weather there!)

37.5% of Germans have been to the wirral, although a third of those did it by accidentally getting on the wrong bus.

12.5 % of Germans have shared a t-shirt with me. As in we both wore it at the same time.

Sick Trip Party

Sick

Today was probably the most pleasant experience I've ever had of being sick. (except possibly milky baby sick times) Obviously it wasn't pleasant, being sick never is, but if I had to relive one of my being sick experiences again it would be today's. I was at work teaching willow sculpture to year 5 and it was the beginning of lunch but children were still working on their sculptures, I felt fine until about 5 minutes leading up to it. I dismissed the class, was sick in the staff toilet and then felt almost totally fine, ate some lunch and carried on with my day.

That's totally the way to do it when you're self employed. You've got to just man up and get on with it. I decided there's no point going home, if I was going to be sick again I might as well do it in school rather than in my car while driving home. Last time I told myself to man up was when I was getting into and extremely hot bath and I couldn't be bothered to put anymore cold water in. Dan said 'if anything I needed to woman up' when I asked what he meant by that he say 'you should dither more, and go out for cups of tea and natter more' I'm probably a bit too decisive and focused. I'll work on that...or maybe I won't ,who knows maybe I'll invite a friend out for cupper and we can have a good old natter about the whole thing and not really come to any conclusions.

Trip

In other news our trip plans are coming together we now have our whole trip planned out day by day, we have panniers for our bikes and geeky T-shirts that match the colours of our bikes. You should totally follow us in twitter we have invented our own hash tag: #2q8

Here is an embarrassing picture of us next to our foldy bikes wearing our T-shirts:

I ordered mine too big by accident because I got confused by american sizes, but vista print are going to send me a new smaller one for free because I complained. I'm pretty good at complaining.... I got a free second ice cream from sefton park at the weekend because I complained that my first one was horrible.


Party

If you read my previous blog I mentioned Joe Fred's no electriciy party was coming up. It was one of the best parties I've ever been to. I'd post a photo but no cameras were allowed. I sculpted this snail at the party though:

I made this while there was a fire on one side of me and Alex playing the cello on the other side of me. From a health and saftey point of view it was one of the most dangerous parties I'd ever been to, with  two slightly out of control fires, alcohol, hammers and chissels, lots of people in a very tight space, and no lights. Also if things did get out of hand no one would be able to phone the fire brigade, because phones were banned. Oh well - we all know that as risk increases fun increases up until that critcal injury/ death point of course then fun dramatically decreases. Unless you're in heaven jumping into chocolate waterfalls and stuff.

Giving Up

Today I have decided to give up on my new years resolution of only buying 3 items of clothing this year. I decided I would get more enjoyment out of breaking the goal than keeping it. My heart wasn't really in it.

I decided to do it in the first place because my mum said she was giving up buying clothes altogether this year because she didn't need any new ones, and I felt that I didn't need many I had a lot of winter jumpers and stuff, but I did need a few more t-shirts so that is why I decided 3 items was enough and I thought I would get all t - shirts. Then I bough a hoodie and a dress so I only had one item left to buy and that really should of been a t-shirt.

Then I bought some padded cycling shorts which I decided didn't count because they were horrible but necessary. Then the zip on my coat broke, and I also decided that instead of taking muslim appropriate clothes all the way though Europe to Istanbul on my trip that it would be better off to save on weight and wear strappy tops all through Europe and buy a couple of covering up things in turkey ready for the middle east part of our big adventure. Also right now I'm not poor enough to stick to my principles. I can do it when I have to, like once I lived on £5 a week food and bought no clothes but right now I don't have to so I'm giving up giving things up.

Other things I've given up in life are the clarinet, my MA, gymnastics and ballet and drama. Out of those things I only regret gymnastics.

This is me wearing my new coat last night:

I recently read a book called the moneyless man, about a man (Mark Boyle) who lived without money for a year, he lived in a caravan and cycled everywhere and ate stuff he grew or food that supermarkets were throwing out. He was all about swapping his skills for things, and community living and stuff. It was quite inspiring but he was a bit to into the environment for my liking. I could never do that challenge...that's quite obvious as I can even go a year without buying more than 3 items of clothes. The one thing I massively disagreed with was when he started chatting on about women and how they should get through their time of the month in a environmentally friendly way. I don't want to go a huge feminist rant .....but I'll bleed on whatever I want to bleed on thanks Mark.

Money isn't all bad, in my opinion it's actually quite a convenient way of swapping things. For example I did a mosaic workshop on in a school thursday which paid for the coat a bought on saturday. How annoying would it have been if I had to take all my mosaic stuff into the coat shop and force the woman who sold me the coat to make a mosaic with me instead of giving her the money? I don't think she'd be down with that.

Me an Joe Fred who has also read this book have been discussing what year long challenges would be interesting, I don't think we're going to try any of them any time soon but here are our ideas:

Buy clothes only from charity shops.

spend 6 hours a day outside.

make something everyday.

live with only 50 items e.g 10 items of clothes 5 items of entertainment, 7 cooking and eating implements, 1 transport device etc ect

Joe is having a no electricity party next week. There are no cameras allowed so I will be documenting the party in the style of a court room artist, and I'm going to bring along all my sculpture stuff so that anyone who wants can make a breeze block sculpture. This is Frank who I made about a year ago:

Procrastinate with me!

Hello....I'm putting off doing borring jobs right now you probably are too, I think 99% of people on the internet at anyone time are procrastinating. So here are some things that have been going on in my life.

1) I went sailing.... I would tell you about it, but I've made a video of the highlights with my super cool underwater camera. It's the first time I've used it in real water ie not the bath. As my Dad keeps pointing out there's not a lot of sailing in it, but the best bits about sailing holidays are the rope swings, and the swimming and the bbqs. Check out my Dad's special boat bbq. In case you're wondering why the boat isn't in the sea...it was low tide... when the water came back we sailed off again.

2) We are having our first ever couch surfer to stay tonight. If you don't know couch surfing is a website that you sign up to and make a profile about yourself, and then you can go and stay with random people for free when you travel (which is what we will be doing on our big trip) but for now we are having a few random people stay with us.

3) Last night Dan told me he loved me so much that if I was a bit of poo on his shoe he wouldn't scrape me off. Aww true love. To be fair to him just before he said that I said that if he was a boggie I wouldn't flick him.

4) Dan decided to run to work this morning! What a mental man I have married. He's not going all the way to southport he's getting the train as well but he's still mental.

5) I did a bit more stand up on monday which included me revealing my new invention 'The He-wee.' If a she-wee makes weeing more easy for women (that is a real product) then the he-wee makes weeing more difficult for men. It really is an amazing product. To hear a bit more about it and see a prototype watch this. A few days ago Dan asked me what I wanted to do for quality time together at the weekend and I answered 'film a advert for the he-wee.' That was not his idea of quality time. I wonder what normal people do with their lives.

Dan's Birthday

Tuesday 30th April was Dan's birthday he was 27 and therfore officially moved from his mid twenties to his late 20s. When I say officially I really mean 'by my definition.' I organised a lovely surprise for him because I'm lovely. Although Dan tells me that when you do something nice for someone you shouldn't say things like 'I saved you the best chocolates because I'm lovely' you should say 'I've saved you the best chocolates because YOU'RE lovely.' I'm working on that.

Anyways I booked a surprise night in a hotel followed by a go karting experience, the hotel had a swimming pool, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and gym, and would probably be a lovely hotel to stay at when all their building work is finished. They said as we were leaving, that next time we come it will all be ready, seeing as we are not particularly planning on coming again I can only guess that it may never be ready. We came drove from coventry where we'd be visiting my sister to the hotel in chester.

WARNING: This next bit is a tangent: My sister Sarah was doing a fundraiser for her gap year this weekend, I preformed some of my comedy while everyone else did musical things. Sarah- who is about 60% more middle class than me has a friend that plays the harp. That harp playing friend (Jo Lloyd) is about 178% more middle class than me. There was a super cute bit to the evening when a five year old girl wanted to dance to the harp with my friend Doug and he couldn't really say no, so he just got up and danced with her at the front infront of everyone.

I started my comedy with the joke:

'I controversially wore a tie yesterday...I suppose you're wondering why that was so controversial is it because your a girl. No it's because I saw a man from Thailand  shoot him, skinned him, made a coat and then wore it. so it was a little controversial.'

It was met with a mixed response.  I'm not going to tell you the joke that went down really well because I will preform it at mello mello on 13th May and you should come! (end of tangent)

We tried to get the most out of the hotel experience by using everything that was free to us, as soon as we got there we used the pool and steam room. Then we went out for a meal had a bath...(the bath was enormous.) The next morning instead of having a leisurely lie in like you would normally do on a day off, we got up at 8 and went to the gym. I've only been to a gym once on my life, I've even written a blog dissing exercise bikes, but I'll do anything that's free. While the normal gym users did half an hour or so on one machine,  I made use of all of the exercise mashines including the hola hoop within half an hour. Then we went for our big breakfast where we stuffed our faces and also stole 2 cinnamon roles wrapped in a napkin for later.

I then had another bath just for kicks and we left (with all the free shampoo etc) at precisely 11am which was their kicking out time. On the way out I remembered we needed water for the day so I got the receptionists to fill up our water bottles. (Dan was too embarrassed to ask.) She told me they actually have still and sparkling water on tap so it's all free - and she didn't just mean she wouldn't charge us, I think she actually thought it was free. I'm not an economics expert but I do know that even normal tap water is not free.

Right it's time for me to have a hot squash and go to bed. Night x

Wibble on the Ribble

Hello fello internet users,
today I plan to tell you of all the brilliant scientific benefits of Zumba. Not because I actually believe them, but because I know it will really annoy my husband who thinks that Zumba is the most lowly form of exercise a person can take. Basically I started doing Zumba a few months ago because my friend Danni has become an instructor. Before I started Zumba the furthest I had ever cycled in one go was about 10 miles however after a few weeks of Zumba I have managed to cycle 60 miles! If that isn't scientific proof of the power of Zumba then I don't know what is. From this information I can conclude that 45 minutes a week of Zumba increases your fitness levels by 600%.

Dan would probably point out that the time I cycled 30 miles and the time I cycled 40 miles helped in my training to cycle 60 miles, but we all know that Zumba increases your fitness levels by 600%. I cycled from Dan's work near Southport to a friend's house in Clitheroe and bac,k through the Ribble valley. Hence the title. (If you don't know why my nik name is Wibble btw you can read about it in my first ever blog. )

The cycle took 3 hours each way. Half way there I had to go on a little cycle track that goes under the M6... if you don't know which bit of the M6 I mean it's the bit that looks like a uterus:

If I was the kind of conceptual artist that had a lot of money, I would paint the whole thing pink and make women dress in giant egg costumes and stand on the roundabouts (apart from 1 egg-woman who could stand on the preston by pass.) Then I would make hundreds of cars in the shape of sperm have a northbound race to the egg woman. Who ever won the race would win a date with that woman.

So I got to my friend Hazel's house and just lay on her floor and ate for 2 and half hours before heading back. I can't decide if I'm a great friend because I cycled for 6 hours to visit her, or if I'm a stingy friend who wanted to skimp on petrol money, maybe both. On the way back I saw a couple of cute shetland ponies and I wanted to stroke them so I tempted them with an apricot jam covered crumpet which seemed to do the trick.

p.s Right now I am putting of doing my accounts. Last year my laptop was stolen so it was a massive hassle to do my tax return with no invoices. My mum had to come up and help me after we had done it she set me up a new excel sheet for this tax year so I could put in the info as I went along and it could never be lost because it's on dropbox. So I made a real effort to put in all the borring information like sales figures, petrol millage, material costs etc. A few days ago I was adding the final numbers into my 2012-13 spred sheet as it was the end of the year. I had just finished and was very happy with myself and the fact that dropbox means I can never loose anything. It turns out that's not true. If you delete everything and then press 'save' it is lost. 

Don't even ask.  : (

How not to ask out women

• Obtain their number by imoral possibly illegal ways.
• Don't obtain basic facts like what they look like, what age they are or whether they are single.
• Ask them out by text.

People who work in builders merchants are seriously woman deprived! I discovered this a while ago after I occasionally went to this one to get breeze blocks for sculpture. Here is one I made called Frank:

You can read about him and his adventures here.

So that is the reason that I sometimes go to a builders merchants. I have a big project coming up after the easter hols teaching sculpture to 55 year 5 and 6 children so I needed to order some blocks which I did over the phone this morning. I then got a text from a guy introducing himself as 'the guy with the blocks' To start with he was asking me about if I could make a sculpture of his son....I said I could give it a go, but it probably wouldn't be recognisable as his son. I said I would charge £10 an hour and it would take about 6 hours. Then he said what's your name? and I said Hannah what's your name? and then he sent this ridiculous text:

"It's Richard luv so we're talking about 60 pound any chance of you throwin a dinner date in too han"

ewwww! I repleyed:

"I'm married so no. You've kind of made it weird now"

He hasn't texted back...phew. I'm not sure if he made the whole thing about him wanting a sculpture up now, but it's safe to say I won't be sculpting his son.

What I find amusing about this man is that as we only spoke on the phone, the only thing he knows about me is my name and the fact that I'm female. As you can't tell a lot by a name, his only real criteria is female. I was tempted to say "yes I'll go on a date with you" and then pay the ugliest actor I could find to go on a date and fart and pick her nose all the way through the meal.

Entrepreneurs

Yesterday I went to a Entrepreneurs conference....That doesn't sound like the kind of thing I would do does it? but I did it because:

•  I was invited by a friend who I assumed would be coming but actually didn't go,
•  I didn't have much else to do. 
• There was a speaker who had access to a lazer.
•  It was free and you got a free drink.
•  I think I could be an entrepreneur if I wanted to, I just probably don't want to.

There were lots of speakers from different organisations, mainly ones to do with helping people start new businesses. The first thing the first speaker said was that entrepreneurs are a different breed of person, they work harder than the average 9 to 5 worker, and their job is their life.  Well if that's the case I want to be the opposite of an entrepreneur e.g someone who works less hard than a 9 to 5 person, where there's more to life than my job.

I've always wondered about that Dolly Parton song 'working 9 till 5.' What is she trying to say? Is she complaining? because I think they are actually very reasonable working hours. My husband works 8.30 till 5 with a total of 3 hours commuting each day, and only half an hour for lunch, and he hasn't written a moaning song about it.

So anyway this woman talked for half an hour about how they help people become entrepreneurs and in that time she said the word 'entrepreneur' about 5000 times.

She also said 'our website is literally www. entrepreneurcountry.com' I'm so glad she didn't tell us that metaphorically or I might not have been able to work it out.

At the end there was a question time and I asked how they made their money....she didn't enjoy answering that one but the man sitting next to me said 'good question'

The man sitting next to me had a handle bar moustache and when I asked him what he did he said he was working on getting the internet off laptops and phones and into the 'real world.' I asked for an example, and he said he has a bubble machine in his workplace and when you tweet his work twitter account bubbles come out. How very useful. He has also invented a chicken feeder that emails the owner when it's getting empty....Frigging look outside your window you lazy chicken keepers!! I'm a great believer in keeping the internet inside a box that isn't constantly accessible. Theres nothing you can do with an ipad that you can't do better with paper and pencils. Like wouldn't you totally have prefered it if you had received this blog post by hand written postcard? I would have done little doodles of unimpressed chickens and everything.

Anyway the man with the lazer said I could come to a 'making day' in his shared studio space thing and I can see the lazer and the 3D printer and stuff. I thought all printers were 3D or else how could you put paper inside them? but it turns out this printer can print 3D things.

Art, Kids and Comedy

Art, Kids and Comedy are some of my favourite things which is lucky because I teach art to kids and I am a amateur comedian. I've just given myself the amateur comedian title right now on account of the fact I have preformed comedy 6 times and I have 2 more times on the pipeline.

Kids are great, the reason is because they say funny things all the time without knowing it. Which means as a amateur comedian, you can just use the stuff they say as material, and they probably won't try and sue you. I can't wait till I have my own kids who will obviously be hilarious the whole time, and this hilarity will make our whole family rich an famous, as we tour the world in our magnificent sparkly comedy tour bus.

Last week I was teaching kids about colour mixing and I was saying how blue is a primary colour which means you can't make it you have to buy it. A kid said 'the people in the shop must know how to make it though' as if I'd just forgotten how you mix blue. I really wish I knew how they did make blue paint. I guess I could google it, but then there would be no mystery left in the world.

This week in art we have been learning about portraits, I made a PowerPoint of some famous ones from the Mona Lisa in 1503 to a portrait of the Queen by Lucian Freud in 2001. So far I have showed this PowerPoint to 3 classes of 7 to 9 year olds, and they're reactions have been very simular: Frida Kahlo's 1938 self portrait is hilarious...well she does have a mono-brow.

But the majority of the discussion was about Andy Warhols 1962 Marilyn Monroe print.

The comment made by two children in two different classes was 'I've seen this at Pontins'. When I told them that the Marilyn picture wasn't even a painting and he didn't even do it himself they were outraged and chanted 'cheater' 'cheater'. Then a kid asked why Lucian Freud had painted the queen with a crumpled face.

I have been making my own art recently... or rather I have been mocking video art through the medium of video art. Is it art? is it comedy? is it film-making at it's finest? Or is it a mental woman hoovering the face of her husband? Who can tell.  I hope it wins the Tunner prize and a Baffta, and some kind of comedy award.

http://youtu.be/n8tkFcf3VaQ