More age does not equate to a surprise skill

So I've just tried my hand at sewing again. Turns out 15 more years of life experience ain't worth shit because I still suck at it as much as I did in the glory* days or perhaps more accurately, the days when I hadn't quite grown into my nose (this is another story). It's funny when you find yourself having weird life flashbacks, I guess that's when you realise you're definitely getting old. I had moments tonight when I found myself back in Mrs Coates' Textiles and Design class cutting crookedly, sewing crookedly and generally being useless. I'd like to think that my subconscious was trying to sabotage the fact Mrs Coates had bullied me into making 3/4 shorts (my idea – it was cool, it was the 90s afterall) with a matching waistcoat! What the fuck?! Was she trying to get me beaten up?

I would like to report I do have something to show for tonight – a kind of crooked (expected), newly shortened dress with slate coloured thread because I couldn't be bothered changing the bobbin on the sewing machine.

You can never progress out of laziness nor does skill develop with time, that's a fact.

*LIAR, I was fugly!

Food shopping hell

I remember the days when I thought going to the supermarket in my CAR, wheeling the trolley around the UNCROWDED aisles of Adelaide, having a conversation with the checkout dude/chick while THEY PACKED MY BAGS and then hopping back in my CAR to drive home was a drag. Oh, how I miss those days. How wrong I was to take this miracle for granted, for no one knows pure food shopping EVIL until they've come with me.

Weekend food shopping makes me never want to leave my house again. Weekend after weekend of food shopping makes L and I swear we'll never do it again. Yet we go back for more because we're suckers and because home delivery is for special occasions. Well, you know what, life is a special occasion and we're ruining ours with this weekly rage. You're probably thinking I'm over reacting but I'm really not. Our local shopping centre is probably the most ethnically diverse in the world. While this makes the place interesting and great for going out to eat, it also means we've got the most ethnically diverse walkers in the world. Just getting to the entrance of the supermarket means having to dodge the Asian shufflers (slow), Caribbean strutters (slow), Polish wanders (slow), Turkish grannies (extremely slow), Kurdish young families (no self awareness and slow) amongst the various teenage mums with their 3 snotty kids. Then, once you get in the supermarket, it's pretty much at full capacity. Everyone blocks the aisles with their trolleys. No one lets you through and when they do, you'll get glared at like you're in their way. After you've dodged various future criminals, you have the pleasure of lining up for an obscene amount of time, largely due to the fact you always choose the lane where the person two in front is arguing over the price of a £1 bag of frozen potato gems. When you get to the checkout, the girl there will most probably ignore you because your presence is a massive inconvenience while she's trying to flirt with Deshawn over at the next till.

However getting home is probably the most pleasurable. Between the two of you, you'll have a whole weeks worth of food that you're carrying in backpacks and also in bags. Because no one else has a car, everyone is waiting at the same bus stop trying to get on the same buses as you are. If you keep a hold of your bags, you'll lose all feeling in your hands. If you put them down on the pavement, some lady will run over them with her wheelie bag while trying to get in front of you in the line for the bus or some little shit will reverse into your eggs with their bike. When you finally get on the bus, it'll be packed and you won't be able to hold on because some fat kid whose parents don't bother teaching him manners will lean against the pole so your fingers can't wrap around it. Or, you'll have some crazy ass lady kissing her teeth at you because she wants you to move. The trouble is, there's no space to go anywhere. This however, is not her problem and she will continue to mutter under her breath until you get off. For ten hellish minutes, you'll be stuck in the doorway, teeth kisser one way, fat kid the other and from behind, someone's bag in your back. When the doors open, they do so inwards, so if you put your bags down, they get squashed by the doors if they're not picked up in time. You'll end up getting off and on the bus four times because of these fucking doors. Then you'll get home and swear you'll never do that shit again and write a blog entry to remember how bad it was.

Post 1

I can’t begin to describe how much I hate coming up with names of things. I have no idea how I’m going to be able to name my child. My one and only goldfish had a weekly name because I couldn’t make my mind up. Although, most of my problem is not indecision, it’s lack of skill. Unfortunately, coming up with names for things is something I have to do on a weekly basis. During the naming process I develop some weird thesaurus-y tourettes where I just start yelling out random words or alliterations (they’re always an easy win: Terror Train, Slaughter on the Streets). To me, the whole thing is just as a pointless exercise as spending copious amounts of time trying to choose wrapping paper: both will inevitably thrown in the bin.

I just don’t understand why people don’t like the minimalistic approach of naming things like ‘Idea 1’ or, if they want more detail, ‘The idea that involves some kind of talking panda’.

On another note, I’ve been neglecting my blog for the last couple of months. I’m severely unmotivated at the moment. Nothing I go to write seems interesting to me let alone anyone else anymore. Cynicism and apathy has truly taken over. Maybe I’ll snap out of it, I hope I will, but maybe it’s time for something new.

Snow guns

Adrenalin is the only explanation for the story I'm about to tell you. Well, that or my 2.5 kilo weights are doing way more than I thought. You know those moments when you have these blazing realisations like 'I don't know how to make fire' or 'how do you spear a fish'? Well, I realised the first time we got the car stuck in the snow while on holiday in the Cotswolds that I am so city. I have no idea how cars get out of snow. I have no idea which way wheels are supposed to be spun. And while trying to dig a wheel out of the snow with a spade for midgets, I realised I didn't really know the right snow shoveling technique either. However, I also realised none of this matters when you're in the heat of the moment. Somehow, your body just knows what to do. So picture two city kids in the middle of a dark, snowy country road. We have missed our turn off because the stupid iphone GPS blob is about 5 minutes delayed and those fold out maps are so 90's. Luke decides to do a three point turn in the middle of the road. Bad idea as the car gets stuck in the snow on a slightly downward incline on the side of the road. I decide to get out and push seeing as though I don't have my midget shovel with me. As I'm doing a rather pathetic push with the wheels spraying snow in my face, I notice the headlights of an oncoming car in the distance. Luke sees it too. He begins to doubt my strength and asks whether I know how to reverse the car. I am indignant. The stupidity of this question (as I have been driving since I was 16 and he knows this) combined with the car in the distance awakens something animalistic and hulk-like inside me. So I grunt and start pushing the car out of the snow like a fucking workhorse ploughing frozen potato fields in Communist Russia. The car is free and the three point turn is complete. It is an understatement to say I was pleased with myself.

Welcome to 2011.

Awkward work moment no. 6,899

On Wednesday night after some 'organised fun' I was standing around a man meat circle with each of the various species trying to outdo their bowling (yes, bowling) scores. Losers. Anyway, after practically beating their chests and grunting, I decided to make a joke. Now, I admit, it wasn't my funniest but it was a kind of mix of sarcasm and a joke, you know, easily pass-off-able but worthy of at least a ‘ha’. So, after the last score was grunted I then said:

‘Why don’t we just all get our cocks out?’

[INSERT 15 SECONDS OF SILENCE AND AWKWARDNESS]

It occurred to me during the canyon of conversation killer silence I had made several mistakes. The first was to assume the Neanderthals had realised they were competing in a macho bowling score showdown. They had not, in fact, amongst the circle this was probably considered ‘conversation’. The second mistake was to not quantify my joke. The third was not to laugh after the delivery to encourage a sympathetic response. I really need to work on my reaction times. Or my jokes.

Work Walk

Five minutes ago, as I walked to the toilet, it occurred to me that I was walking really oddly. As I thought about it some more and suffered various walking flashbacks, I realised: I have a work walk. AND IT’S WEIRD. Imagine, if you care to, a really upright body, swingy arms and then power walking technique legs. I don’t understand how this has come about, I don’t walk like this in normal life, at least, I don’t think I do. Or do I? It’s like my body is trying to exude some kind of exterior professionalism to make up for my day to day lack of pizzazz. Or perhaps it’s to absorb some of the impact of the wooden flooring thus helping to prevent whiplash of the poor pervs turning around at the sound of female footsteps, hoping for a hot account handler and instead getting ROBOT WOMAN.

Must find new job in a carpeted place.

A theory

I have a theory that I'm actually five years younger than I really am. Perhaps my mother got confused and it wasn't really 1981 when I was born. Perhaps she got knocked in the head while peeling a potato (she likes potatoes) and lost a couple of years. Or perhaps it was 1986 while she was peeling the potato and WHAM, got hit and then thought it was 1981. All I can say is that something isn't right. I am stunted.

Do you ever speak to someone, giggle when they say something like 'large box' and then realise they are a. an adult and b. younger than you? I constantly feel like a child and I don't know when this will ever stop. Adults know stuff. They know what certain trees are, how to get stains out of things and know about bank loans. I don't think my child is ever going to say to me 'mummy, can you name all of the actors from Beverly Hills 90210?' (the original version) and then look at me with that child-like wonder when I have answered his or her question successfully despite it being twenty years since I watched the show.

My friends are having or have already had kids and it makes me feel weird. Not weird in a bad way, more weird in a detatched way. Sure, it's geographical, I guess it's also partly because when I think about them, I think of them as teenagers. I think of how my mum would get worried about me getting in the car with them and now they're mothers themselves. It must be strange for mothers to see their children have children. I think it's more in a HA way than a 'my baby has had a baby way'. Because really, it's a cycle of payback. Whatever shit you gave to your parents, your children will quadruple it. I guess part of the weirdness is also because I left my friends in a certain way and I remember them in a certain way. It's strange because you put memories of people in boxes in your brain, but of course, life moves at an amazing speed and nothing ever stays the same. But that, of course, is not such a bad thing.

So in conclusion, I am stunted but this has been a pattern throughout my life. By the time I turned 18 and 21 the season of parties had long gone and by the time I could get my licence, I had missed the swatting up of road signs at lunchtime. Therefore, the ways of adulthood will come but not just yet. Thank fuck because I'd hate to have to buy booties over necessities like Mexican wrestling masks.

A realisation. Of what, I'm not sure.

Tonight I was trying to insert a rather large lemon up my chicken's ass. It took so much effort that I actually grunted and had to use both my body weight as well as the wall to get that sucker in.

This is how I imagine childbirth to be. Except obviously reversed.

Modern times

This is how modern shit works: make friends on the internet and then do this

Awkward conversation with an authority figure no. 57

I am playing art director seeing as though DWad is on holidays.

Yesterday, as I was checking an ad, I realised that the copy flowed over the dude's crotch. Being the subtle rose I am, I went to the designer to get this fixed using the words 'the copy is on his cock'. Being the polite Englishman, he too had noticed it but had chosen not to say anything. So together, we moved it around so the word 'download' wasn't right on top of his knob.

Onto the awkward bit.

I had to show the ad to the creative director who is pretty much like a dad. A kind dad who would probably refer to his penis as 'my winkle' or 'my wife's best friend' – that's if he'd even talk about it at all. As he was looking over it, he looked at the copy which was now resting delicately between an arm and the penis and mentioned it was quite close to his arm. Now, at this point, my brain did set an alarm off to try and handle this in a ladylike manner. However, because I was trying so hard and I had realised I had taken slightly too long to answer I said, rather loudly,

"It's like that because THE COPY WAS ON HIS COCK!!!!"

The trials of an artist

I recognise I have annoying traits. Sometimes I find my face annoying, so I feel for the people who have to look at it everyday. Apparently before I eat, I make a tutututut noise with my mouth ¬– this is no doubt in anticipation of lunch deliciousness the work canteen/Tesco offers. Then, after the afore mentioned lunch, I do another tutututut noise. This is probably my brain and mouth working in harmony, thinking about the chocolate I am going to eat at about 2:30.

But this isn’t all about me. Let’s talk about other annoying people. Like the woman in my drawing class yesterday who ‘mmmmmed’ at everything the tutor said. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING.

“I’m blind in one eye” = mmmmmmm
“Just loosen up your arm” = mmmmmmm
“Let’s do the roll call” = mmmmmmm

It was like she was trying to kill me. Then, I had to deal with the girl next to me who was squeaking her charcoal against the paper. Seriously, people should have more consideration for people (freaks) whose mouth waters and body shudders at such sounds.

And a final question to you all, if you were called Melinda, why in the hell would you prefer to be called Mindy?

Hot or not

Apparently I'm not a early adopter. When I say apparently, there's no real room for ambiguity, so let me start that again.

I'm not an early adopter.

I don't have an iphone. I don't even have a cool phone. I have a freebie that turns off all the time. Actually, I don't even have a phone contract.
I only got into pointy shoes 5 years after they were cool.
I bitched about skinny jeans for a year before filling my drawer full of them.
I refused to use predictive text until 2008 or was it 2009?
AND I STILL LOVE HOTMAIL.

I have been abused by player haters for my continued usage of this little blue wonder. Oh, I've been battered with words like 'intuitive, user friendly, accessible' and more hurtful ones like 'loser' but they're just empty promises and cutting words that do not cut me. Hotmail is da shit. It's aesthetically pleasing, it's easy to use and it happens to have all of my emails from the past 11 years.

It has suddenly occurred to me that people outside the pioneering world of advertising knows what the fuck an early adopter is. Nor do they probably care.

Oh god. I'm hotmail using, jargon dropping wanker.

Home

I think I've talked about this before, but sometimes I find myself confusing life in Australia with life in London. Sometimes I think about a biscuit or a shop and I won't be able to remember which country it was in.

It's hard to describe, but I remember for a good year of living in London, I'd always talk about Australia as being home. I'd talk about things back home, life back home, biscuits back home. I'd long for a pasty or a bottle of Solo. I'd actually physically miss these things. And then one day, home changed. I'd be returning from a holiday and suddenly, I couldn't wait to be home in London.

I've always thought it was a bad thing, a sad thing, to be a person whose home was a part of two countries, or even three or four. I always thought they felt misplaced, not quite belonging anywhere; a bit here, a bit there. I always thought I wouldn't want that to be me. But now, somehow, it is me. And I think it's ok.

A potential skill

I think I could be a human sniffer dog.

Now, before you all go trying to Google this as a potential career change for me (thanks for your support, it means a lot), there isn't such a thing. But if there was, I'd totally be leashing myself up trying to find missing children and bad smells in cars. Honestly, I have a very keen, some might say acute, sense of smell. I only wish I could put it to good use. For the skeptics out there, I'll list some of the things I have smelt before others or as a lone smeller. Before I start, let me just preface it by saying some smells might seem everyday/trivial/hey, I've smelt that before, but I'll repeat it for you again, 'smelt before others'.

* Specific butterscotch feet smell
* Burning pan handle
* Match burning off poo
* Bad smelling jeans
* Shoes off under the table
* Scalp/unwashed hair
* Fake tan users
* Sometimes my own snot (too gross?)


Skilled, right?

Knobs

I’m always reluctant to discuss work colleagues on this blog. But then again, there was The Penis and Angry Little Man, who I felt if I hadn’t mentioned them, I’d be doing you, my readers, a disservice. So I find myself once more with this quandary. I have battled and the need to share has won again. So here we go.

I am surrounded by knobs.

Honestly, I am like a moth to their knob flame. Due to my low tolerance of people, I had to check with Partner D to see if I was being harsh. He had quite rightly not informed me of their knobage upon my return from holiday incase it tarnish my view of them. Turns out they are knobs. Big ones. Big, brass, posh, brown nosing knobs. I applaud people with enough of a blindly optimistic love of advertising to have the desire to climb the ladder, but for the love of shelf wobblers, be subtle about it. Please, I have a highly sensitive advertising gag reflex.

Let me recount yesterday’s conversation with them.

Scene: I have just got into work. It’s been raining and I have an umbrella in my hand. It’s 9:30 am, official creative start time.

Me: Hi
Knobs: Hi, is it raining outside?
Me: Yep
Knobs: That’s what you get for being late.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. This would be the third time the time police have mentioned what time I get in.

Knobs.

Deep fried balls

Hello everyone,

It's me. I'm back from Italy, slightly pudgier and sporting rather weird tan marks where I decided to cleverly wipe my legs with sunscreen, kind of in a 'I've just washed my hands after going to the toilet' way.

It's always hard talking about a holiday after it has happened. Naturally people ask how it was. My conversations usually go like this:

'How was your holiday?'

'Yeah it was good thanks?' (this is the point where I make a note that they may or may not want me to expand on this)

So let's pretend you're interested in my holiday and I'll pretend like I'm good at building a cohesive and interesting story in my head that can then be filtered down and out of my mouth.

Rome is one of those places that absolutely drips with history. Around every corner, even under every footpath, history smacks you in the face or is waiting to smack you in the face if they ever get around to excavating more of it. If Paris were a woman, she would be the girl next door, if Rome were a woman, she would be a dirty blonde that probably wasn't wearing any undies.

Naples is intimidating at first. But after the initial paranoia that everyone is a pickpocket, it's got one hell of a personality. Sure, it's not as pretty as its neighbours but you come to realise that it's the slightly fat guy who has a great personality that you learn to love and who bizarrely has a rather large shoe collection on every street corner.

And then there's Pompeii, my childhood dream. I've nerdily been wanting to go there since 1992 after doing a talk where I was encouraged by my mother to dress up in Roman garb and bring a vile of sulphur for everyone to smell for dramatic effect. Truthfully, I'm lucky I didn't get beaten up for being such a brown noser. Regardless of my lack of 90's cool that I'm still waiting for, Pompeii was amazing. I prepared myself to be disappointed but I didn't have to worry about facing such lows because it was nothing but a historical high. Seriously, how can you not be thrilled by walking through a city preserved for thousands of years? And it had a brothel! You could choose your sexual positions by pointing to a picture above the door - genius! I inhaled history that day. INHALED IT. Dreams were made.

Sorrento's highlight was the locally caught fish I ate for dinner, seaside, around the corner from all the tourists.

Capri was ruined by a little something I like to call God's Piss (I just made that up actually) otherwise called rain. The good thing to come out of Capri was a fantastic in room picnic with marinated aubergine and getting to lesson 45 of French with Michel Thomas.

Sicily was not quite what I expected. But if you want to eat some amazing pizza and risotto balls, go to Chefalu on the north coast. It's a cute town with a 7/10 beach, burning sunsets and great food.

Can I tell I'm getting bored of typing?

Second wind.

Holidays are great in the fact that you want to eat everything in sight. Is 1030am too early for gelati? Hell no, have two. Holidays are not so great that after 12 days of pastries for breakfast, even the thought of custard filling only gets half an ooh. But having said, I'm definitely not complaining. Deep fried risotto balls so yummy that they stop you talking for a good two minutes. And Sicilian pizza is mind blowing - especially when it's for breakfast. Equally as delicious are crunchy filo pastry parcels filled with orange zest and ricotta.

Tired now.

Ciao.

Paris

I have muchos newsos so I’m going to feed it in as slowly as the storyline of Clark and Lois’ romance on The New Adventures of Superman.

First off, I went to Paris on the weekend.

I love Paris. I wish my mother had forced me to speak French as soon as I left the womb. It would have made me a much cuter child or at least deflected attention from the bald patch and boy looks if I was running around saying things like ‘oui maman, c’est jambon’. But unfortunately, she chose to converse with me in English and each time I go to France, my high school French gets worse and worse. Trying to dredge up lessons from 11+ years ago makes my brain feel like a sausage dog trying to walk up stairs for the first time.

I guess what I love about the city is just the feeling of oozy decadence. It’s ridiculous, rude, beautiful and proud. Walking on the white stone paths of the Luxembourg Gardens makes me feel grand. Eating a falafel in the Marais fills a hole of hunger like you wouldn’t believe. Trying to choose a cake in Laduree is almost impossible. But perhaps the most wonderful thing about it is that I can go and experience all these amazing things at the drop of a hat. I’m lucky, I know I am. For all the grey skies, rainy days and cold winters I complain about, it’s all worth it for a weekend in Paris.

Dripping

Yesterday, I likened the loss of another year of youth like the slow draining of Halal meat. Of course, I recognise the over dramatising of this inevitable situation. It’s just a birthday and I’m just another piece of aging meat. But you know, no biggie. I’ll just be over there, hanging upside down, dripping, ready to be devoured by mankind.

Sorry.

As a sign of my new found maturity (I think I might be finding it this year) I have managed to complete most things on my list. Sure, my financial awareness is still low and I’ve failed on the one dream I have (to get an article published), but hell, at least I’ve managed to make sushi.

The list for next year might perhaps be grander, more worldy and wise. It might include things like ‘clean venetian blinds’ or ‘learn correct use of apostrophes’. It might even include climbing some sort of mountain. Note, during that last sentence, I just had a brilliant, mature, go-getter thought! I’ve decided to make the list 30 things to do before 30 and goddamn it, I’m going to tick off every fucking one.

To aging and blessed meat!

Sausage swapping

I held hands with a man last night whose fingers were like uncooked sausages.

I also held hands with a man wearing a spotty neck kerchief and whose name was probably Marc.

And finally, I also held hands with a man, who, if he ever managed to have sex with someone, would afterwards stain a dozen white roses in droplets of his blood and then stand outside that someone's bedroom window pulling off each petal and licking them. Or something to that effect.

Swing dancing classes are as equally fun as they are disturbing. It's the single freak man's dream. Not only do they get to touch a real life woman, they get to touch a roomful of WOMEN. It's the ultimate excursion from porn. For someone who doesn't like being touched by strangers, let alone petal licking freaks, I had to make a conscious effort not to do 'my face'. For those who haven't seen this afore mentioned 'face', it can only be described as what your own face would look like if a stranger took a shit on your shoe, but a lot less animated. So I guess it would be, more accurately, deadpan shit on your shoe.

But back to the lessons.

The whole swing dance thing is almost literally swinging. You can go to these lessons alone or with a partner, it doesn't really matter because you end up swapping. A lot. Good for singles, good for first time women touchers, not good for those who when faced with raw sausage hands wants to vomit. With each new partner, it's such an intimate position and situation that you don't know where to look. You can't look into their eyes because that's just excruciating (especially if they're counting at you 'one, two, rock step'), so you both look at the floor, or a shoulder, anywhere to avoid that awkward moment of eye contact that inevitably happens. And then it begins again with the next call of a partner swap. But it's not all bad, it's actually quite fun, especially when you get back to the person whose hands you'd much prefer to be holding. Oh and being able to wash your hands after. Twice.

Snoozing stars

I was pretty sure my half an hour Planetarium visit this weekend was going to be the cliff notes version of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Everything (while this is a VERY interesting book, my retention rate is about 1 - err, neurons or something?). Anyway, I thought my brain might go all spongy and I'd be able to report back and tell you everything about the universe etc.

Turns out the Planetarium seats are VERY comfortable.

So much so, after noting that the whole reclining back and shooting through the night's stars was very cool, I suddenly found myself extremely sleepy. I tried blinking a lot. Moving my head around. Wiggling. Doing large, wide eyes to stop drooping.

It didn't work. I fell asleep with my mouth open as we learnt about dwarf stars and what planets we could see in that night's sky.

So disappointing. I guess I can report an astronomer with a west country lisp talking you through space is VERY soothing.