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.