A Touching Message

Oops, I forgot I had this blog but appears that even without writing new posts, I have still had some random page views - so hello lovely audience! Also, I might caution those of you from Russia, that my statistics inform me you came here via an Emma Watson porn site (so glad I clicked on that link). Apologies if you are Russian but didn't watch the video and just wanted some bloggy goodness - or you are just now finding out that those videos of naked Hermione are actually fakes.


Anyway, on a totally unrelated note, here is an actual blog post.


Besides scrawling about four words a day of my dissertation, I have also set myself the task of doing at least half an hour of writing every evening, as I fancy myself as a best selling author à la recent chart toppers E L James or Suzanne Collins. This is actually horrifically difficult - as you can probably tell because I have resorted to writing this rubbish - and has the same effect as promising yourself you will de-mould the bin or read that article on Celtic cattle rearing. 


But do not fear, the internet will come to the rescue! A quick search for ways to get those creative juices going (ew) include describing your first kiss, writing a stream of consciousness for ten minutes without stopping and presumably without breathing, reducing a paragraph of say 200 words down to one dynamite sentence or  trying it in the bath. I think we can all agree that most things could be improved if we tried them in the bath. 


This all seems to me to be a pile of tosh and probably the kind of helpful advice that comes from people who cite Wuthering Heights as their inspiration and will land you with an 800 page damp manuscript. 


My answer was to firstly sit down and write something awful about a talking horse and then press on and attempt to write a sparkling and witty blog post. In the end all I can come up with is an (illustrated) list of some things that I would very much like to touch.

• A real sponge (that green thing up there)
• The bag that Sir Walter Raleigh's wife kept his head in for 29 years 
• A wild cow (more info here)

amiright?

• George R. R. Martin on his wedding day (thanks Tom!)
• The flannel that Michael Fassbender uses to wash to his face
• Or, indeed, Michael Fassbender
• Lava
• The world's largest marshmallow
• Poirot
• This llama's hair

Reminds me of James van der Beek

My cup runneth over

So I'm back from Germany and in the midst of trying to unpack and write essays and revise three languages and tidy up and do the dishes and wash the clothes and answer emails I realized it would be appropriate to post about stress.

I would like to take this time to channel my high school PSHE lessons. Don't worry, this isn't about our changing bodies (but if you have any questions, I am reliably informed) - we were just shown a very accurate live demonstration of the difference between pressure and stress.

Imagine if you will, two plastic cups. These cups are ordinary, white and plastic. They are also the vessels of all knowledge.

They are me and you.

Yet there is a crucial difference between them.
One of the cups is pressured.
One of the cups is stressed.

Oh, how teenage me longed to know the secret of the cups and become a master of my own stress. Having spent time at home recently, I remember just how anxious and worried I used to be - yet I would describe my adult self as laid-back and care-free. Now, this might be because I went to university and was introduced to parties and pre-drinking and zero parental supervision. However, I like to think it was because I became a master of my own cup.

You see (prepare to be patronized here), the pressured cup contains some water. The level goes up and down depending on the situation but the water is contained within.

The stressed cup is overflowing; it cannot hold such a large amount of liquid. To avoid stress you need to watch the water level of your cup.

It's been a long time since I was worried about my GCSEs and whether or not Ewan McGregor would want to marry me but I still keep an eye on my cup. That's probably why I am writing this rather than my essay right now!

Here is a picture of the two cups that I made in paint.

And here is a cute picture of a hedgehog to help you keep your water level down.

A minor rant about a citrus fruit

Lemon is just the worst flavour ever; it's not even my opinion, it's just a basic fact. Lemon sucks.

Lemon cheesecake may be alright or lemon sponge but really let's be honest, you'd so much rather be eating chocolate or strawberry mmmm. I was going to say that I think if lemon's your favourite you must be bloody stupid - but actually if you wanted to strike some sort of deal, whereby I can swap you all my rubbish lemon starbust and jellybabies then I think that would be grand.

The worst crime has got to be the sad little lemon in my gin and tonic. WHERE IS THE LIME?

To be the bottom of the citrus pile is saying something; I mean lime is hardly an earth-shattering flavour but at least it reminds me of Mexico or Cuba. Lemon reminds me of the industrial cleaner they use in hospitals to cover the stench of death.

To further illustrate how boring and useless lemon is, I have come up with some examples.

Lemon is:

• Ross Geller
• Ringo Starr
• That odd one from The Saturdays, er Vanessa?
• Princess Anne
• Gordon Brown
• Mr Blobby
• The Bountys left at the bottom of a box of Celebrations
• Crocs
• The 'mild' flavour at Nandos
• Belgium
• "Calm down dear, it's only a commercial"
• Alcohol-free beer



Spot the difference

Actually, searching for some Ross images has reminded me that he has had some funny moments. Comparing even him to a lemon might be a bit cruel (not that he would care, rolling in his millions..)

Cooking with fish

So, I'm at home right now for the Easter holidays and finding the change in company a little jarring. But I do love my parents for all their weird eccentricities, as I'm sure we all do (for our own parents, not you loving mine, jeez.)

Anyway, I have only a few stolen moments of laptop time to open a brief window on my family life.


In preparation for my trip to Germany (which I am going to milk for upcoming blog posts...) I have spent the past hour or so practising with our Big Camera. There's not much scenery to take photographs of, so I've been wandering around my house, snapping various odds and ends. Then I remembered the fish.


The fish belong to my Dad; we bought them for his birthday last year and one of them went a little bit mental and ate most of the others, earning himself the murderous alias, Evil Knievel. Understandably my Dad is super protective of his last remaining pets.

I don't know whether he heard the clicking sound of the lens and thought it was the cocking of a gun, or saw the flash and thought I had lit a match to boil them alive. Who knows what goes through our minds as we rush to protect our loved ones? Just as I was taking the first shots, he burst through the door, screaming

DON'T FLASH THE FISH, YOU'LL COOK THEM!!!!!

Anyway, it amused me no end.

Here's the little blighter by the way, just to prove that you cannot heat up a fish and the water in its tank to boiling point and sustain the heat enough to cook it, using a camera flash.

Gentleman sheep

Friday night on a bank holiday weekend may not be the best time to attract an audience for this new blog post but here goes...

Today the subject of owls came up oh so briefly in conversation with a friend. Ever in search of blogging gold, it occurred to me that owls have become quite trendy little buggers; I for one have owl earrings, an owl purse and a little fluffy owl toy on my shelf. So, here for your post-pub perusal, are my top five celebrity animals.

1. Meerkat - used to be cool, now just irritating. A Russian Ricky Gervais?
2. Penguin - the Johnny Depp of the animal world, makes anything a bit better
3. Sloth - a YouTube hit who makes it big, a hairy Justin Bieber
4. Wolf - a perennial favourite in medieval circles and now an international star due to Game of Thrones, Sean Bean
5. Micro Pig - I just wanted to post this photo:

William's Wish Wellingtons anyone?

Now I don't expect that anyone reads blogs to be told what is cool - I mean, we all know that already. So here is a more useful list of the rising stars of the animal kingdom. My advice is to pick one or two, casually drop them into conversation, download their tracks on iTunes and go and see them live in zoos before even your mum knows who they are.

1. Spectacled bear – sounds like a bear wearing glasses, what more do you want
2. Narwhal – unicorns of the sea
3. Vicuna – shaggy llama type, looks like it would be pleasant to hug
4. Proboscis monkey – perfect for hayfever adverts
5. Pozizzly  - half polar bear, half grizzly. Anyone who has put up with my rambling recently will have heard just how awesome the pozizzly is even though Wikipedia informs me they are called Pizzlys

Also big shout out to my sister who, when told about a 'wholphin', asked if it was half wolf-half dolphin. If only.

Alas, some animals will just never be cool. This brings me, finally, to the Gentleman Sheep. The poor sheep is neither sexy nor cute and, at a time when we are all munching on tasty lamb, it could do with a bit of an image boost. Making use of my amazing Paint skills, I've mocked up a sheep makeover whereby the humble pedestrian sheep takes on a new, Sherlock inspired persona:

Actually, I've just realized sheep are female. Oh dear!

Browsing

I think we might agree that the media obsesses over 'perfect' female beauty, whilst it simultaneously expresses horror at Botox and skinny models. So, I was planning an in-depth critique of such a hypocritical and unhealthy system, when I decided that there is one element of this that really needs to stop right now because it is so offensively stupid. Eyebrows.

What is it with people and their eyebrows? I just don't get it.

Sure, tan yourself mahogany and only eat cabbage for months on end - whilst clearly bonkers at least I understand the idea behind it. You want to look good or skinny or beautiful or whatever. But ladies, I implore you, leave your poor eyebrows alone.

look at those beauties

There are several things I have done in the name of research for this post:

• Spent 60 seconds trying to look at my own eyebrows without the aid of a reflective surface. 
• Discovered that eyebrows are meant to stop our gushing rivers of sweat and scalp-debris from blinding us.
• Realized that I must be the only person I know who just doesn't care about my eyebrows, or anyone else's.
• Wasted about 45 minutes on Google images trying to find some good eyebrow photos before realizing that no such thing exists.
• Typed the word eyebrow so often that it has lost all meaning. 

Because the thing is dear bald-faced Britain, as much as you might care about your own brows, nobody else does. Surely the lowest possible moment in conversation is when somebody mentions that they've changed from a Knightly to a Portman. Can you hear yourself? 

You just said the word eyebrow in an adult conversation. 

Anyway, this was all just an excuse for me to post a montage of the best eyebrows to bless this planet. A Spocktage if you will.

Check out the brows on that cat.

The answer is not 44

Apologies sexy readers if you thought this blog was going to be exclusively about bums. I'll try to post some good ones when I can but they are a rare and treasured delicacy.

But to make up for it I've got something extra good. Basically, I've solved mankind's deepest, most yearning question...

What is the meaning of life?

My (half serious) answer? To pop out some kids - the more the merrier - and fuck them up for a few years by traumatising them with the same horrors you experienced as a child. 

My reasoning is that babies are fun and older children ignore you but the in-between ages seem a wee bit dull.

My school is closing down this year and it's been on my mind quite a bit recently. I've been thinking about the different paths my friends have taken, some brilliant and batty teachers and all those ridiculous high school dramas that mattered so much you thought you would DIE. The point is, I have been feeling pretty mopy about the unfairness of the situation when I remembered this.

This was 7 years ago - how disgusting.

I suspect that most photos of girls from my school have been destroyed so that nobody in our real grown-up lives will discover that we all had to wear a BOW-TIE for at least five years. The only tiny positive fragment I could distill from such a ridiculous uniform was the possibility that I could inflict the same pain onto my children. Only now I can't (not that I would send my kids to school in Blackpool but still) and it's just another little bit of myself and a century's worth of people and history that is going to be lost. 

Anyway, to end on a positive note, I did some pretty snazzy leg work in paint and made a montage so we can all look at some famous bow tie wearers. If you can think of any more, let me know!