10 things to do before I'm 30

I am almost 26... this seems like as good a time as any to write a list of things I'd like to do before I'm 30. They're not in any order.

1) Have at least one baby...I'm hoping to eventually have 2 girls and 1 boy, one them must be ginger or I'll have to keep on having children until I get a ginger one.

2) Drive to Kuwait in a Morris Minor. In memory of my grandparents who drove from Kuwait to England in a Morris Minor is 1953. I'm determined to do this even if I have to fill a lot of forms and use all my savings and come back to no job, it's got to be done.

3) Be an artist for at least 3 days a week.

4) do a some stand up comedy.

5) Laminate some ham and put a cheese string in a glue gun. (maybe as part of my stand up comedy routine.)

6) Do not give in to peer pressure... continue not to iron any of my clothes.

7) Do a mosaic on the all paving stones in the garden.

8) Always have a laugh with Dan.

9) Learn to cook a proper roast.

10) Don't become one of those couple that only hangs out with couples.

My Hypnotic MP

I recently went to visit my MP Luciana Burger. The purpose of my trip was to persuade her that HS2 is a stupid idea, and in turn she would of course persuade the world that HS2 is a stupid idea. HS2 would then be cancelled and everyone would celebrate. If you don't know what HS2 is it's a stupid idea. It's a railway line....and before you go off on one about we need better transport systems bla bla bla, yes we do but not this one this one is a stupid idea. You might be wondering why it's a stupid idea and I will tell you... it's a stupid idea because my Dad says so.

My Dad doesn't know anything about fashion, he probably couldn't name anyone who's in the top 40 music charts, he can only cook boiled eggs and this chicken stew thing, he's a very inefficient ironer, and he can't unicycle and breath at the same time.... but he does have the ability to read a lot of boring facts about HS2 and then decide it's a stupid idea and give a reasoned argument as to why and then become the official spokesperson against HS2.

So when Dan and I were last visiting my parents, Dad asked us to send an email to our MP telling them that HS2 is a stupid idea - but in grown up words, she then offered to meet me to chat about it. I tried to learn some real facts about why it is stupid, and I also decided not to mention that my Dad is the main man against HS2. It was pretty difficult to be persuasive though she's got very hypnotic eyes.

She doesn't look ugly enough to be an MP does she? I asked her what her opinions were on HS2 and she said she didn't feel very strongly either way but in general she was for it, and I found it very difficult to argue with her because she was so nice and smiley, even that photo of her is hypnotising me right now. I need to stop looking at it or I'll start writing what a good idea HS2 is.

Being an Artist

This week I did some talks about being an artist in a school I'm working in. I choose to show some of my kid art work like these from when I was 12...

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I told them that when I was 8 I wanted to be really good at something and I thought about being an olimpic gymnast but decided instead to do lots of art and keep it in a home-made folder. On the inside of the folder I wrote 'If any of this art is sold after my death I would like the money to go to a new big cage for my gerbil goliath' I was quite a forward planner for a child but not quite forward enough to realise the gerbil was likely to die first. The teacher then told the children that basically artist only make money when they die. When it came to question time a girl asked 'what museum would you like your art in when your dead?' ...that was a difficult one to answer, but not quite as difficult as the queston 'How do you make EVERYTHING?'

Ode to my Yaris

Oh little yaris born in 2003,
I cannot say how much we love thee,
I love your effective heating system,
Dan loves your insides, your cogs and pistons,
I love how you're cute and easy to park,
when you carry our canoes it's such a lark,
you can't speed coz your engine is too small,
but I wouldn't swap you for any car at all,
you took a turn for the worst,
when a ford mondao did a speedy reverse,
you were written off category D,
we considered a new car for me,
but I could't ever sell you for scrap,
the idea of that is total crap,
no other car could quite compare,
so we are getting you repaired!

Making Children Bleed

I made a child bleed today, not on purpose of course, I attually pride myself on the fact I have never purposly made a child bleed. Except when I was a child, but that's sort of allowed isn't it. I'm doing a mosaic project in a school. Mosaic sounds like one of those 'awww what a cute hobbie' kind of things that old ladies might do, but in attual fact mosaic artists are well 'ard. To get a good mosaic with any detail you really need to cut the tiles which invoved flicking tiny splinters of glass around the room. I pretty much spent all day kneeling glue and tiny shards of glass I cut my hands a couple of times and I also noticed a little red blob of blood forming on my tights. I had to have a bath when I got home to wash the glass off me. I felt like I'd spent the day rolling in that yellow fluffy stuff people put in their lofts.

I'm doing a residency in the school which is attually really fun, I've worked with all the children in the school making paper mosaics and now they are a bit involved in helping me make the big school mosaic. Today 6 children came to help me do some of the easier bit of the mosaic, the non-cutting part. I swept the whole floor before they came in but that doesn't really elimanate the chance of children hurting themselves. I had warned the teacher it was dangerous but she was still suprised when she had to take glass out of a child. I kind of thought it was enevitable, should that fail a risk assesment?

Did You Know?

Did you know that getting an MOT is not the same as going to the dentist? you can't just put it off because you don't have the money or you don't feel like it. You actually have to do it and there are consequences if you don't. And did you know that if you go to one of them silly petrol stations that you have to pay before hand and you say '£40 please' that the pump does not stop at exactly £40...and that if £41.25 worth of petrol goes into your car and then you drive off....you really should go back and pay for it, or at least make your husband go back and pay for it if you're too embarrassed to go. Especially if the car your driving isn't really your car because a total divvy has driven into your car and crushed it and then driven off.

But did you know that if you have £3.80 and a bit of spare time and the registration number of the guy who smashed your car you can type it into a website and it will tell you his address and you can go round and have a polite conversation with him about why he's such a loser.

Not having a lot of luck with cars in the last few weeks, I feel a certain nostalgia for the simpler days when I rode semi disposable bikes. At least once a year my bike would be stolen or vandalised or would die of natural causes and I'd leave it round the back of some bins in town and go out and spend £2o on a new bike off a mate. Yes there were days when I'd arrive at work wet through to my underwear and shiver all day, but I never had to fill in vehicle related forms and I think given the choice I'd rather spend a day shivering than filling in forms.

On a happier note I'm having a lot of fun doing a mosaic project in a school at the mo, a boy from year 3 even came up to me and said 'Hannah - thank you for being an artist' aww...that made me happy because even though I love being and artist, sometimes I wish I worked in Asda just for the regular money coming in. He was a really cute kid I want that type of kid when I have kids.

Tell Tale Signs

What are the tell tale signs that someone is blind? they have a dog, they don't look at you in the eye, they have a computer that speaks to them, my dissertation tutor has all these signs and yet it still took me way too long to work it out.

I am the opposite of blind, I don't mean just fully sighted I mean pictures are my primary means of communicating and I think in pictures and it annoys me when I sometimes have to explain things in words.

I emailed this guy my dissertation and it was all colour coded so that I could see what paragraphs were about what topics etc, obviously that was no use to him because he's blind but I didn't know so that's hardly my fault. I kind of should have twigged when I had a meeting with him and his dog started sniffing me. I did register that as weird that he had a dog in his office but the dog didn't look like the guide dog kind it just looked like a normal dog. Maybe my dissertation tutor was scammed when he went to get his guide dog, I mean it must be easy enough to sell a fox or a badger to a blind person and tell them it's a dog.

My tutor asked a bit about me and my dissertation I told him I'd found one good book on autism but there wasn't enough other relevant stuff. He asked what the book was and not wanting to say 'I don't know it's brown and its got a picture of a cow on the cover' I said 'I've got it here and placed it on the desk' he then asked me to read the title which I still can't remember but in Hannah English it's something like 'The book about a girl who's a wicked drawer even though she's autistic and can't talk or tie her own shoe laces' He made me read the long and boring title to him, which I read in the style of a primary school child (with lots of pauses) not on purpose I'm just a rubbish reader.

His computer made a weird babble noise which I did recognise as the same noise Dan's blind friend's computer makes, and he didn't look me in the eye but he almost did sometimes. He said I should label my paragraphs so that I could move the around more easily and I said 'that's why I colour coded them' and that's when he told me he was blind. I said I'd just worked that out which was true but I don't think he believed me.