BIG FAT YEAR OF THE YEAR
Out of all the years I’ve had (and by now, I’ve had a fair few of them), I must admit that 2011 was probably one of the best. It had a few downs, but none that didn’t make an excellent facebook status. HERE IS WOT ‘APPENED (cheers faceyb for reminding me what happened).
January
It was shortly after new year that I went from this:
to this:
Despite being convinced I looked like a menopausal woman, it’s grown on me (literally). I looked like a lesbian for a while, but, hey, nothing’s new. I returned to university after a rather pleasing Christmas break, and began what seemed to be an entire term of ridiculous costumes, the first of which involved me creating a cardboard barbecue and wearing it to a night out where all the girls were in bikinis. The housing list for second year was released the first week back and there was a mad scramble to find somewhere to live that wasn’t owned by a paedophile. After being let down by a hideous old woman who, in retrospect, would have been a nightmare to have as a landlady, we found The Boar Shack. It may well now be a pit of disease and despair, but back then it was the nicest thing, ever. And it may well be, once we’ve cleaned it up for once.
February
February bought the glory I had been seeking for many years. I finally got the recognition I deserved for my hilariously funny tampon joke, at the university quiz night. I won’t ruin it, in case I ever get the opportunity to retell it at parties, but I’ll just repeat what my head of sixth form guessed the punchline to be when I accidentally started telling it to a bus full of pupils on a school trip: “Are they all… stuck up… somewhere?” (answer: correct). Although I was not there to witness the entire bar erupt with laughter with the retelling of this joke, I have been assured that I am now The Funniest Person in East Anglia. I was awarded two tickets to an LCR night as a prize, which led to one of the more interesting nights of my university career. For some reason, the university had decided to put on an event called ‘The A-List’, which has been discussed many times since, and the only conclusion I can come to is that it is trying to be deliberately misleading. How on earth were we meant to know that ‘The A-List’ did not refer to a fancy dress theme involving dressing up as celebrities. Thus, dressing up ironically as a pair of tramps didn’t have nearly the desired effect we expected it to. We just looked like, well, a pair of tramps at a social event. The night took an unexpected twist when a hat was stolen, resulting in two girls dressed as homeless men accosting strapping young lads and demanding they be frisked. We weren’t even that drunk.
February also brought one of my personal nerdy highlights. A Harry Potter themed night. I was like an unstoppable bludger of excitement that evening. I spent an entire week not doing any work and painstakingly recreating the Marauder’s Map. It was a sight to behold, as were the majority of the other students who turned up. I believe that it was at this point in my university career that I knew I’d ended up at the right place. After completing a game of The Goblet of Fire in which the bludger was crafted from a bulb of garlic, we joined what seemed to be a secret society of students whose childhoods had been split like Horcruxes into seven parts. The number of obscure costumes was astonishing. I nearly kissed a girl dressed as Dolores Umbridge. I may have also threatened the poor boy in charge of the Sorting Hat that if he didn’t put me in Hufflepuff I’d cry. I wore my badge with honour for the rest of the evening.
March
March began on a slightly sour note, with my terrifyingly hairy Turkish flatmate accusing me of stealing his chocolate milk from the fridge. I still maintain my innocence. It soon picked up with a trip to Nottingham, and upon my return, Wombats night, which, if you weren’t there, I can’t even begin to describe in a way that will do it justice. All I can possibly say is that it’s a good job I didn’t have to eat off the table in flat 17. St. Patrick’s Day and the Costumes No One Cared About brought bitter disappointment when no one batted an eyelid that Father Ted and Seamus Finnegan turned up at the student bar.
March was the month that I returned home to my flat to find twenty highly unattractive girls from the University of Essex sitting in our kitchen in tiny shorts, and refused to let them use my toilet once they had started drinking. I’ll be honest, this was mostly due to being terrified of the ringleader who, out of all of them, should definitely not have been wearing shorts. Or retrieving items from the floor in said shorts. I made a hasty exit from the flat and spent the evening brandishing an incense stick as I walked around campus in a drunken haze. Towards the end of the month I awoke with a traffic cone in a Gryffindor robe with an anatomically correct picture of a vagina and the words ‘Rebecca Arcturus Black’ looming down at me whilst I slept. She’s still in my garage. I’m waiting for the next ‘Norwich traffic cone amnesty’ to go and give her back to the police. I hope they like her.
April
In April I fulfilled my 10-year-old dreams of seeing S Club 7 another time. Unfortunately, there were only three of them. And Paul has been on the cream cakes. And Jo’s a bona fide racist. But Bradley was still the same, and that’s what matters. I went out afterwards, and can’t remember what happened for the rest of the night, but woke up the next day and had to finish a piece of coursework I’d forgotten to do whilst still drunk, and then run across campus in my clothing from the night before to hand it in. I returned home from university for the Easter holidays and had an incredibly pleasing time in the sun. I spent sunny days locked inside the house playing The Sims, and did absolutely no revision whatsoever. I was coerced into spending a day on my father’s boat, whereupon I cried like a baby whenever it went faster than two miles per hour (or knots. Maybe knots. I don’t know) after my father informed me that contrary to what he’d been telling me my entire life, yachts can capsize. Brilliant. We arrived at the pontoon where it’s moored fifteen minutes after the taxi service to dry land stopped running, and were forced to ride one at a time in a half-inflated dinghy with a broken motor to the shore. Whilst carrying an electrical torch. Without a life jacket. In the dark. I have no pictures of this because I was too busy singing my favourite songs in my head so that they’d be the last things I heard before I died. Really. I spent the day of the Royal Wedding at a friend’s house where she put on a tea party. I managed to persuade my friends to let me watch the ceremony three times before they turned it off and made me lose Monopoly.
May
I spent the most of May pretending to do revision at university whilst watching all my friends finish their exams and get drunk. Despite promising myself that I’d do at least six hours per day, this turned into six hours of procrastination followed by a break, followed by consuming several bottles of wine. One night the furniture in my resident tutor’s room was rearranged and the ensuing chaos involved his friend ‘Flipcup’ charging downstairs with a box of eggs ready to seek revenge. What ensued was a hostage situation and security were called (one of the many times a fluorecent outline loomed at the door followed by silence, then denial, then the begrudging handover of campus cards and the inevitable ‘disciplinary meeting’). My last memory of May was going to the bar completely convinced that I was Definitely Not Going Out, and magically finding myself in the LCR with a vagazzle drawn on my face. The ‘Only Way is Essex’ night turned out not to attract those with a penchant for hilarious costumes, but the slags of Norwich. I again spent a night being stared at in confusion by everyone apart from a girl dressed as a bottle of fake tan who confronted us with relief that there was someone else with a sense of humour in da club.
June
The first two weeks of June were taken up with revision for two exams I was convinced I would fail, after two months of doing not very much. This was relatively uneventful apart from the time I threw up a footlong Subway all over a set of Cognitive Psychology notes on my desk the day before my exam. The night of my final exam (all of which I passed by some miracle) I was accosted in the VIP section of a club I’d managed to worm my way into by a girl who started crying at me because she was apparently ‘too dry’ to have sex with the boy she’d loved since freshers’ week. After barking at her to “Get a life… and get some lube”, I left the club, too late to get a bus home, and picked my way through the streets of Norwich at 5am with a motley crew of drunk people and glass embedded in my feet. There was one week left of term after my exams finished, which I spent in a state of permanent inebriation. I may have dressed up as Jean Valjean at some point, too.
On my penultimate night as a UEA fresher, I was escorted home in a security van by staff who had caught a few of us swimming in the lake. Despite my brilliant plan that “we should tell them we were having an orgy in the bushes… that’s why we’re so wet”, they saw through the swimming costumes and towels and were not impressed. The last laugh was on them, however, when we discovered that the most enthusiastic of the security guards had a penchant for pop songs based on Cornish folklore. God bless youtube. I spent the rest of June at home googling the scientific chances of one becoming impregnated from ‘second base’ (nil, if one uses their pinky finger) and rescuing my boyfriend from being thrusted upon in a swimming pool by an American girl with the loudest voice in the South East.
July
I spent all of July in Maidenhead, which was an absolute delight. I was awarded 69.66 overall for my first year (which was adjusted to 70.91 in the Autumn when they remarked a paper, which made me far too smug for my own good). I sang with my old choir in a remembrance concert, which made me realise how much I missed sounding like a dying cat on stage and vowing to actually go to choir at university in the next year. Ever the one to follow the crowd, my father appeared in my bedroom one evening, full of pride that he’d managed to hack into the voicemails of various family members.
August
On the first of August I returned (via all the one-track, deserted, back roads in the east of England) to Norwich to move into the house we had found in January. This was far too exciting for words, and we marked this momentous occasion by purchasing Arsehole, the most horrible thing in the most horrible shop in Norwich.
I then went on holiday to Fethiye in Turkey. I spent most of the holiday eating and drinking until I had to be rolled off the plane, and my father was caught naked atop the lifeguard tower by some burly Turkish security guards. This was after we had watched the ‘entertainment’ that evening, which consisted of a woman dressed as a wind-up doll dancing to a techno remix of Wuthering Heights, and an absurd ‘dictator dance’ which featured Gaddafi, Stalin and various other nice blokes dancing to ‘Go West’. Towards the end of August I was thrown out of the worst (and only) club in Maidenhead for reasons that I blamed on the fact that it was a fascist, homophobic establishment. I was so incensed that I fell over on the way home and had a piece of pavement wedged in my knee for a few weeks afterwards. I turned 21 at the end of August and spent my party being far too drunk and far too horrible. A change from being twenty, then.
September
I returned to Norwich again, and spent the next couple of weeks doing not very much, until I went to Alton Towers for the weekend. This involved a couple more buffets and some rides on which I managed to produce some very unladylike language in the presence of children. Back in Norwich again (this time for good, I promise), the house parties started and I spent much of the month constantly working out which Disney characters I would most likely have sex with (King Triton, Sully from Monsters Inc., Woody from Toy Story and Mufasa, if you’re wondering. Which you’re probably not, because I’ve probably mentioned it before). Term began, and 9am Monday mornings turned out to not be so bad.
October
In October, I dressed in another highly unflattering costume. I was aiming for innocent schoolboy. Despite being asked for ‘a slice of your Dairylea’, I was referred to mainly as Miss Trunchbull for the entirety of the evening. I carried around a Postman Pat lunchbox and insisted my vodka was poured into the accompanying flask. Nothing but classy, this one.
I went on a road trip to Manchester for an engagement party which, despite culminating in an argument over whether Daniel and Katie were acceptable baby names (they are not), was highly enjoyable. The bits that I can remember, anyway.
This month, I also managed to look like a monk and a fat aunt in the same night.
I dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West for the first time since I was sixteen. I wore elements of the original costume (including the jacket that I pilfered from the costume cupboard), and walked around with a green tinge for the rest of the week, despite having a late-night shower with Samara from The Ring. I thought it was a good costume. Unfortunately the people whose house party I arrived at believed I’d gone as Jay-Z. I wish I made a convincing rapper, however I’m too middle class for my own good.
November
I spent most of November attempting to keep up with the demands of second year (which, I suppose, paid off, with an all-access membership card to The First Club) and crying at Frankie Coccozza attempting to be a teenage Pete Doherty. A high point of the month was waking up in a pile of my own vomit (“I didn’t have any soup- oh.” after a particularly exuberant game of the Goblet of Fire. NEVER AGAIN (I probably will). I returned once more to Nottingham, a city I hate slightly less each time I go. I also missed my train to get to London to go and see Frank Turner for the nine billionth time, which involved me driving home in record time, having a hasty roast dinner, being driven up to Hammersmith, missing the last tube, waiting for signings outside the stage door, finally giving up, only to be offered tickets to the aftershow party which I had to decline, and then catching a bus before waiting in a sub-zero Paddington station in the early hours of the morning before finding the fastest way back home (lol) to Norwich in the morning. It was worth it, though. Frank’s always worth it.
December
December began with the music society’s Christmas performance, which can only be described as a complete shambles. It was highly amusing, however, and we spent the rest of the term informing the president how nice his face is. It’s really nice. I celebrated my four year anniversary with da boyf, and we spent the day making Christmas decorations for the house before eating far too much in the evening.
The rest of the first half of December was filled with hair-tearing over exciting topics such as brain scans and physiognomy, until I finally, triumphantly, handed in the worst pieces of work I have ever completed in my life (one was made out of tissue paper and fuzzy felt. For my degree. I kid you not). That evening we had a Very Successful House Party, aided by my rocket fuel punch. It’s a good job I celebrated when I did, because two days later I found myself in hospital with an appendix that wouldn’t fuck off and leave me alone, and had to be sliced open. MY experiences with general anaesthesia left a lot to be desired, however made life a lot more interesting for the nurses. The stitches have more or less healed, although my pride upon waking with an entire breast exposed for all to see, has not.
December finished with a lot of food, and a fair bit of alcohol (my mother confiscated my brother’s bottle of Jagermeister at a middle-class Christmas gathering because he was making a ‘spectacle’).
Well, that was my year. It was a pretty good one. I wrote a list of new-year’s resolutions when I was drunk the other night. I have given up making resolutions I know I will not be able to keep, so I decided to only make myself continue doing things I was already doing. When I was inebriated, I promised myself I will:
Keep doing well at university with a minimal amount of effort
Keep being far too amusing for my own good
Keep using obscure Harry Potter references in everyday conversation
Keep being not pregnant
I think I can manage.
Well, I ain’t been on here in a while, have I?
I should probably write something. Instead I’m going to post something I found on my old myspace page, that I wrote in early 2007. 4 and a half years ago seems like such a long time, but thinking back, it seems like only yesterday I was 16.
I seem to spend my entire existence complaining about how depressing getting older is, how I’ve got to actually do something with my life sometime soon, how I ‘JUST WANNA GO BACK TO FIRST YEAAAAAAAR’, but if I think realistically, I’ve never been so bloody happy in my life. Uni’s wicked. My friends are ace. Love my boyfriend. I’ve got the best family in the whole of existence, and you know what? I feel good about myself. I’m never going to be a beauty queen, or the next Einstein, and I’ve finally had to accept that I’m never going to be able to find my way around without a satnav, but you know what? I’m happy. I’m so very, very happy. Bad things still happen to me (I’ve got an essay coming back today and I’m convinced I’m going to get the same mark as my temperature was this morning… 39), but I can overcome them, and I know that whatever happens to me, I can live. And I will live. I can pick myself up again and say “well, that didn’t work out. I’ll try again tomorrow”.
Is it really possible to completely recover from a mental illness? Four and a half years ago, I would never have believed it. Even two years ago, when I was technically a normally-functioning member of society, I still had the same negative processes scratching away at my self esteem and outlook on the world, and still found that life just wasn’t as easy as it seemed to be for everyone else. I couldn’t have possibly entertained the idea that there was a side to the world that wasn’t shit-smelling and full of hatred. I’d seen the dark side of the world, and how on earth is one meant to go back to a life where the world isn’t your enemy after you’ve seen how it ‘really’ is?
If you’d asked me how I did it, I’d just have to give you the phone number of the woman who saved me. She didn’t have to pull me away from the verge of a motorway, or remove the pill-packet from my hand like they do in the movies, but she changed the way I felt about myself and about the world. If I had to recount anything I said to her or she said to me in any of those weekly sessions, I’d find it difficult. Maybe I’ve repressed it. All I know is that I am now a changed person, and I am now finally, fantastically happy. I know what it’s like, and I know the other side. I know just how close the other side is, and I can remember it, as much as I’ve tried to forget about those worst months. I could never begin to imagine the lives of war veterans, but the way in which I remember Life With Depression is similar to how I imagine they might. I have repressed so many of those dark days, that upon recounting my life to a housemate, I couldn’t provide any sort of coherent timeline, but I remember the feelings. The colours, the smells, the noises. I also remember months and months of feeling absolutely nothing, which is perhaps the most frightening of all.
Which leads me to this piece of writing. I always remember my 16-year-old self as a highly troubled, frightened young person who could not write poetry for shit. I have laughed and I have cried over some of the old crap I used to put on my myspace page. It’s awful, but it really is the best insight into my mind at the time. One piece stuck out from the others, though. I genuinely don’t think this piece of writing is all that bad for a teenager (well, compared to the others), and it scares me how sad I was at the time that I could only entertain happiness as some unachievable dream. But mostly I can sit and read it and think, ‘you know what? The greatest gift is happiness, and it’s my birthday every day’.
‘The Greatest Gift’
If I had tried to write this a year ago, I’d probably be saying something very different to what I am about to say now. However, the events of the past year or so have turned me into a completely different person, and so I am sharing my new outlook on life as I feel it is more significant and poignant than ever. I believe that above all else, the greatest gift in life is happiness. Some might argue that happiness is caused every second through other wonderful things, such as friends, family, places and possessions, but to me it has become the rarest gem of emotion out of any.
Quoting one of my favourite songs of all time (aptly named ‘Amie’ by Damien Rice), ‘you know when you’ve found it, there’s something I’ve learned, ‘cause you feel it when they take it away’, I believe that in the idle and innocent days of our childhood, we never really learn what happiness is and how great a gift it can be. Happiness is a mixture of all the little things that make the big picture seem a vibrant crescendo of hope and vitality. It’s the enticing jingle of the ice cream van on a warm summer’s evening, the moments shared between the closest of friends and comforting nights spent in front of a crackling fire with the ones you love the most.
Imagine, perhaps, that one day, a thick rain cloud descended around you and sucked all the technicolour splendour from the world, turning it into one dismal, monochrome fog. You start to wonder how life can change so drastically before your eyes without you even noticing the journey. The world revolves in the same way, people do the same things, life carries on how it always did but inside the alarm bells are screaming and deep down, you know it’s not quite right.
The normal Amy wouldn’t cry when her hairdryer wouldn’t turn on, the normal Amy wouldn’t lie awake at night being tormented by the demons that turn her into a different person in the daytime. Then again, the normal Amy isn’t shrouded by darkness wherever she goes. Nor does she keep a pair of scissors in her schoolbag to help her get through the day.
It’s fair to say my life has become nothing less than a hurricane of extreme emotions. I spend weeks being tossed around like a leaf in a storm whilst people encourage me to ‘stop whinging’ and to ‘be happy for once’. Once in a blue moon the clouds part and I find myself deliriously happy to be able to spend a day soaking up the optimism of the sun’s rays, yet night falls once more and again I am caught in the downpour. It seems like I spend a year in a gloomy haze waiting for the Christmas day when things are alright and I can finally be myself again.
Some might argue that the greatest gift anyone can receive is life, for life is the sole thing that keeps us alive. However, a lack of happiness causes life to become futile as living seems like one inconvenience after another. There is never a bright spot on the horizon to aim for, and you seem to spend your life chasing your tail in the search for even a moment’s contentment.
Happiness is the thing that can take depression and show it who the boss is. Happiness can make even the darkest of days seem like the first snowdrop of spring. Happiness plays such a major role in many peoples’ lives, yet when someone like me experiences it; it becomes a rare gift that is cherished until the last drop like a fine vintage wine.
I would like to be able to say that I have sought and found happiness, and it is now an integral part of my everyday life; however it isn’t as easy as that. Some could argue that I found happiness in a bottle, where it is commonly described as Prozac. Whilst this softens the bad days so they are merely an overcast sky above, I believe the only true kind of happiness is the type that one stumbles upon unexpectedly. It cannot be created using pills and potions, but through experiences, emotions and the people you share your world with. To have a moment of pure, natural happiness is the greatest gift of all.
Vocation, Vocation, Vocation?
Since being a child, I’ve changed my mind over and over again as to what I want to do with my life. When all the children in primary school were adamant they were going to be the next Spice Girl, or a ‘fashion model’, I told my year five teacher I was going to be an astronomer. However, since then my interests have, ahem, shifted. The only knowledge of the night sky I have these days is my ability to replicate the stages of the lunar cycle using an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes. I’ve never really had anything that I’ve latched onto particularly strongly regarding careers, and it’s beginning to get concerning.
I was in year seven when, having been spurred on by a science teacher who thought I was god’s gift to biology (to be fair, my cornflake-box plant cell was outstanding), I decided I wanted to be a GP. I convinced my parents that I was definitely, absolutely going to be one. And then I realised that I was not, infact, talented at science. Or mathematics. Which was a slight issue in the road to becoming a doctor, I suppose. Plus there was my aversion to anything particularly disgusting body-wise. Don’t get me wrong, I was never the type of student who fled the classroom at the very mention of the word ‘dissection’, but I refuse to watch medical documentaries that involve skin lacerations, burns, infections or anything along those lines. So that was out.
I then decided that English was probably where my strengths laid. I was always quite good at it (I think my ability to bullshit my way through most assignments and exams helped me to a certain degree). I also used to pretend to be scared of the dark, and insist that my bedroom door was left widely open all night with the hall landing light on so that I could read my beloved but terrible childrens’ books into the early hours of the morning. However, my issue with English was, well, what could I do with it? I could have been an English teacher, but I resented the students in my class who were arseholes, and the idea of marking the same pieces of work over and over and over again bored me to tears. Furthermore, whilst I liked both writing and reading books, I didn’t like writing about reading books, which somewhat narrows down one’s choices with regard to further study into English.
So, what else was I OK at? I used to be fairly good at history (up until sixth form, when I decided that the British Empire was a waste of bloody time, and I could probably just turn up to the exam and make some shit up about something and it’d turn out fine… apparently I was wrong there), but apart from a fascination with the Holocaust, I didn’t have any kind of love for it. I was good at Media Studies (to the point that I think my year 11 English teacher, who was the head of Media Studies at the school almost kissed me when it was clear that one of her A Level students was not taking the subject as a doss), but there was no chance in hell I was going to do a degree in it because, well, I wanted a job. Plus, whilst I was good at it, I don’t really like watching films that much. I love documentaries, and the occasional TV series, but I don’t think I could have just focused on those things. Plus my dad, who works in marketing and who used to look at who to hire for relevant jobs, said I’d be better off doing a degree such as English or History. So hmph.
It was at this point in my life that something shifted. There was the BREAKDOWN OF EPIC PROPORTIONS, and then it became clear that I had to do something that made me happy. It was at this point that I was sort of forced into studying Psychology. They couldn’t fit Media Studies into the timetable at my new school, so I figured I’d give it a go, and I could drop it if I really didn’t like it. Perhaps being ill had changed my brain somewhat, but I think I’d always been interested in it, but just hadn’t realised that it was an actual ‘thing’. I’ve always been fascinated with people. Even when I was younger I used to be interested in the dynamics of relationships, and about characters in the books I was reading as opposed to the story lines. I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much as I do now if it wasn’t for one of my teachers in the subject who was one of the people who completely changed my outlook on both myself and the world (she’s probably completely unaware of it, and probably doesn’t remember me). She was a champion for the underdog, and for making sure that above all, her students were happy and safe. I told her I was going to change the world one day, and she didn’t laugh in my face, which is quite an achievement. I decided I wanted to study Psychology further, and do something to be able to change something. Even if it was small. It turns out I’m pretty good at the subject, too, which probably has something to do with how much I enjoy it. So, here I am. Just about finishing my first year, and if I don’t mess up my exams too badly, with a chance of attaining an overall first (or at least 2:1) for the year.
But what now? I thought, at the beginning of this year, that I wanted to go and work in the prison service. I’ve always been fascinated by serial killers (OK, first the Holocaust. Now serial killers. I promise I’m not that weird, honestly) and the really bad criminals, the ones most people would want to lock up forever. I just don’t know how much I want to help them, though. Or whether I’d want to be responsible for deciding what happens to a lot of the inmates. I’d really like to do criminal profiling, the kind of psychologist that works with the police. But it seems that everything I want to do everyone else wants to do, too.
I suppose I could teach. Except I don’t know if I’d actually be a good teacher. However, the number of Psychology graduates who end up teaching is astounding. There will come a point where the world doesn’t need any more Psychology teachers, and I have a feeling it will be sooner rather than later. Plus, there’s nothing worse than a bad teacher, and I suppose you don’t really know if you don’t try, but I don’t want to do a half-hearted job at anything. And I don’t think I’d be able to deal with people in my class who didn’t enjoy the subject as much as I did. So, something else? Clinical Psychology’s a no-go. I have learned in the past that I can’t be anyone else’s psychologist. Occupational Psychology? Human resources? Middle-management for the rest of my boring, mundane life? Perhaps I’ll just be an astronomer.
Or, fuck it, I’ll take the easy way out. Housewife it is.
I’m going to actually start adding to this properly…
Once I’ve worked out something amusing to say. My brain is dying a huge, lab-report induced fiery death at the moment. The funniest thing I’ve seen all week is ‘My Jeans’. God help me.
WHAT DA FAK?
WHY ARE PEOPLE COOKING IN THE KITCHEN?
It is Seven Thirty AM. I haven’t been to sleep yet (which probably clouds my judgement somewhat… I love insomnia, it’s the best). There is a full-on feast occurring. I went into the kitchen at 6.30am to refill my water bottle. What do I spy? Oh, only one of my flatmates removing the bones from a very odd looking fish. Frankly, I was shocked. Not that she was cooking at such a ridiculous time in the morning. I’m used to that. What shocked me most was that she actually removed the bones this time.
I think living in this flat has made me xenophobic. If you see me with a copy of the Daily Fail, please do not be alarmed. I’m One Of Them now.
These are always a bad, bad idea.
People it’s really not a good idea to have a bit of a crush on.
I pride myself on being quite a normal human being. I like normal things. I engage in (on the whole) normal behaviour. And normal people have embarrassing crushes. Yes, I have a completely wonderful boyfriend who, to my knowledge, has never murdered anyone. However, in another place or time, things might’ve been different. I have comprised a list of the (mostly) people I think it’s probably assumed I shouldn’t have the hots for.
Charles I
Check out the flowing locks of hair. And the deep, soulful eyes. I like his creative facial hair as well. Clearly, Charlie’s got style. I think he has a hint of the Derren Brown to him. He looks like the type who would have douchebag hair and a penchant for really tight jeans and weird indie-folk bands with instruments fashioned from shoeboxes and bits of broken glass if he existed today, so I’m kind of glad he’s stuck in the 1600s. I can pretend he’s not that much of a dickhead. So yeah, he’s missing his head now, but a bit of superglue and that fantastic ruffle and I wouldn’t know the difference. Probably.
Martin Bryant
I’m the type of lady who, in thirty years time when I’m sad and alone, will inevitably write to prisoners and get married to them. And Martin’s top of my list. 35 life sentences mean nothing to me. He has a bit of boyish innocence going on, which I suppose is probably quite accurate given he has an IQ of 66. He’s like a small puppy with silky ears. And a rifle.
Simba
I’ve always said that if he was human, Simba would be really, really hot. I don’t think I even need to elaborate.
Ted Bundy
Apparently he had a penchant for female university students. Too bad he’s dead, or we could have made some kind of arrangement. I know he’s a charming psychopath, and I’d have probably ended up in a wood somewhere with most of my limbs ingested by wild boar, but at least I’d have tried. Granted, he wasn’t looking too hot towards the end of his life, but I guess that’s what a few years in prison will do to a man. Sigh.
This guy
Hitler had a fine taste in man. Or perhaps I’m just a bit of a Nazi (see Martin Bryant, and also my boyfriend for reference). Either way, I appreciate his mannschaft. Herrherrherr.
… I’m going to be quiet now before I say anything else that might alienate me from the rest of society forever.
