A Bright Blonde

The Adventures of an EasyRoommate - Part 4

2012-02-23T10:46:00.009Z

This is the story of how my housemates and I all came to be living together in London. I decided to tell the story as my friend, housemate and sister-I-never-had Sam turned 30 this week and I realised I literally wouldn't be where I am without her. These stories are all true but told entirely from my point of view so somewhat biased. There will be more stories to follow in the days ahead but here is part four.

(read part one here , part two here and part three here) It all began with Sam...

Dating

So with four hot single girls living in the house it was inevitable that the dating banter would be hilarious. Kerry had initially decided she would be best to try hanging out at Halfords on a Saturday afternoon to find a manly man but soon resorted, like the rest of the girls to online dating.

One day all the girls were sitting in their pyjamas logged into the dating site and comparing which men they had been chatting to when every girl got the same message from one guy. So each girl typed back an identical message just to mess with his poor head! Most days some guy would message at least two of the girls obviously not knowing they were friends. One particular morning Erin and Kerry were talking about how they had both been chatting to someone called Mike. Of course it turned out to be the same person. Erin happily stepped aside and was delighted she did as he turned out to be into swinging. That’s too much even for Kerry & Erin. (Well for Erin anyway…)

Online dating is in equal measure entertaining and disappointing, some men have great banter, some ask you whether you’d rather be a one-armed ninja or have a herd of hamsters follow you around for the rest of your life. Few are worth actually meeting.

Sam went on a variety of dates sometimes travelling for hours just to see a boy and accidentally missing the last train home (school-girl-error) Perhaps the worst date was when she met a guy and realised pretty quickly that he wasn’t for her. After their first drink he nipped to the gents and while he was in there Sam began thinking about how to get out of spending the evening with him. She was wondering if she could do a runner and trying to gauge, if she left at that moment would he be likely to walk out of the gents and catch her? She realised he’d been a while so checked the time on her phone and noticed a text from him apologising for walking out and saying that he wasn’t interested!

Horrified and annoyed that he’d beaten her to it, Sam texted the girls to tell them to get dressed up as they were going out on the town. Who needs a man?

The Kitten

There was one boy that Sam thought was ok for about half of their two month romance. In the end it fizzled out because he pretended his Mum had died (so only a little bit mental then). But while they were dating he was looking after a friend’s kitten, Lilly. Sam is a huge cat lover as misses Alfie all the time even though he prefers living with Sue, so she was over the moon to spend the evening with him and the kitten one night. The next morning the kitten wasn’t quite herself so Sam offered to take her to the Vet. Long-story-short is that Sam was left with a £180 bill to cremate the now dead kitten and the task of telling the ‘arsehole’ (as we refer to him nowadays) that his friend’s kitten was now in kitten heaven. You just couldn’t make this kinda stuff up!

Things That Go Bump in the Night

One day Erin and Kerry were in the house and began to feel irritated by a constant and annoying sound. It was quite distant and hard to describe but as time went on it became more and more difficult to ignore it. Eventually Erin and Kerry went on a hunt around the house to work out what the noise was. Room by room they quietly progressed through the 3 floors of the house stopping in each room and listening carefully… eventually they stepped into Sam’s room and could hear the noise a little more clearly than in any other room. As they stood in the room and focussed on the noise they began to giggle as both their eyes rested on the bottom drawer of Sam’s bedside table. They looked at each other trying to work out which of them was going to be brave enough to stick their hand in and turn it off…

Dirty 30’s

So now all the girls are officially into their Dirty Thirties. Sam thought her twenties were filthy but the girls have a sneaking suspicion that things are only going to get madder and badder at the Castle.

Who cares that they could all technically be Grannies by now? (Thanks to Kerry for pointing that one out) The fact is that the four girls are relatively young, free and most importantly - single!

The chances of them meeting someone awesome enough to give up their crazy single life for are slim but that’s no reason to stop looking.

It’s expected that the stories will continue to get more ridiculous, the situations they find themselves in will be more unbelievable but every single moment will be fun and in time they will come to be known as…

These stories will continue
There will be chapters more to come
Things will be adventurous
But most importantly they’ll be fun

Some would call them ‘Easy’

With a steady queue of boys
But don’t be fooled by this
As they much prefer their toys

‘Easy Roommate’ is the website
Its how these girls began to meet
They’d have ignored each other
Simply passing in the street

The adventures of these four good friends

Will be told for years ahead
Rather than look for Prince Charming
They’ll live together forever instead

Those who know them, will enjoy

The future stories as they’re told
As these four crazy ‘Easy’ girls
Will be friends until they’re old

But no matter how the tales unfold

This is how it all began
For the story will always start the same
Once upon a time, there was a girl called Sam…

To be continued some time in the future...

...

The Adventures of an EasyRoommate - Part 3

2012-02-20T15:52:00.005Z

This is the story of how my housemates and I all came to be living together in London. I decided to tell the story as my friend, housemate and sister-I-never-had Sam turned 30 at the weekend and I realised I literally wouldn't be where I am without her. These stories are all true but told entirely from my point of view so somewhat biased. There will be more stories to follow in the days ahead but here is part three.

(read part one here and part two here) It all began with Sam...

The Princesses

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago

Four little princesses, wished to live on this quaint Road

A row of pretty castles, all spacious and unique

With high ceilings and shutters, so nobody can peek

Four equally large bedrooms, two rooms in which to bathe

An enormous lounge and kitchen, to party the nights away

A garden full of sunshine, and monuments in stone

A place to entertain their friends, a place to call their home

From cold and frosty Scotland, Princess Erin brought her ware

Shoes, handbags and necklaces, and bows for in her hair

Princess Sam travelled from Hampshire, with her crazy blonde afro

Her mass of coloured dresses, and a love of pink vino

From Essex Princess Kerry, moved into the grand west wing
We all know she has great dance moves, but that she cannot sing

One Princess was born English, then move to Australia

Michelle can drink and dance till dawn, and loves Spanish Rioja

Cocktails at the ready, the dancing shoes are on
They sing to all the classics, and often make up their own songs

They’ll be there for each other, when sick they’ll hold back the hair

And when the clock strikes midnight, they’ll help each other up the stairs

There will be lots of antics, lots of frogs out there to kiss

The parties in the castle, you would be crazy to miss!

Now they wish to celebrate, another year of fun for each Princess

All beautiful and well-to-do… except when in a drunken mess!

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

The Housewarming party was planned and the excitement grew. On the evening Jagerbombs were being drunk before 7pm and the girls all had their glad rags on. As guests began to arrive the champagne and wine flowed. The party got busier, louder and more drunken as one hour rolled into the next. After showing someone into the front door it is alleged that Erin spotted the neighbours had a pizza delivery arriving and apparently invited them through to join the party. She denies any knowledge of this as when she met some strange boys on the dance floor (a.k.a. the kitchen) and was introduced to her neighbours she wondered how they had come to be invited. It was only a little embarrassing when she asked who invited them and they said she had.

Fear not, if they felt unwelcome then things were about to change for the better when Sam decided to give one of them an evening he wouldn’t forget. In her bedroom they were enjoying themselves when Sally knocked on the bedroom door and he jumped up to hide in the wardrobe. Sam asked incredulously what the hell he was doing. He told her that he thought he ought to hide. Sam screamed “Why? It’s not my Mother!” At this point she began to wonder if the reason we didn’t know these young neighbours was because they were in fact the sons of the couple that lived there and maybe the reason they were never there was because they were in boarding school. Oh dear…

Home Sick

That first summer Erin and Sam had a fabulous holiday to Sam’s Dad’s house in Mallorca where they drank copious amounts of wine, ate their own body weight in Langoustine, lay in the scorching sunshine for days reading book, after book, after book and enjoyed exhilarating days on John’s boat out on the Med.

One night they had such a good evening that they decided they wanted to have a midnight swim. Moon bathing is very in fashion you know. So after some swimming around with wine glasses in hand they got bored with the top pool and decided to head down to the lower pool. Erin had definitely eaten a bad prawn that night and all of a sudden she was (a little bit) sick all over herself.

Sam promised never to tell a soul but threatens to from time to time so Erin has decided to tell everyone about it herself and aims not to do that on future trips to the sunshine!

Dancing The Night Away

Speaking of having lots to drink… The Castle comes with its own wine cellar and every month a little man in a big van turns up to offload the wine delivery. Every time he comes the girls pretend they are having a party that night so they don’t look like the alcoholics they are.

Most of the wine is consumed while dancing around the kitchen till the early hours of the morning with the music on full blast. Erin sings the bloody Little Mermaid Song (again!), Kerry says F*ck a lot and wraps herself in cling-film, Sam grinds up and down like she’s on a pogo stick, Michelle swings round the pole which was luckily there as part of the structure of the house and the honorary housemate, Sam’s sister Kristie, mostly dances around in her pants with slices of woollen cake down her top like huge nipples.

It’s all incredibly civilised though they are thinking of getting some curtains as the neighbours have started to look at them funny in the street. (…and not the one’s from next door who would have good reason!)

Trapped

One Saturday morning Sam was in bed when she heard a distant cry and someone calling her name… “Sam… are you there Sam? Help, anyone HELP!!” Sam woke from her slumber and realised it wasn’t a dream. She could hear someone calling for help. She tried to work out where the cry was coming from and soon realised it was coming from outside her 2^nd floor window and it sounded like Erin. “Erin is that you?” Sam shouted back. “Yes” screamed Erin. “Thank goodness you’re home, I’m trapped in the shower!” Sam went running downstairs to find the bathroom door locked and Erin shouting from inside that she was trapped in the shower cubicle. Sam ran out to the garden to look through the window. There was Erin in the cubicle, naked and freezing and totally trapped. The bars on the basement level window meant there was no way for Erin to get out other than to try to free herself from the cubicle and she asked Sam to pass something through the bars for her to stand on. Sam ran off to find something narrow enough to pass through and came back with a bottle of lemonade. “What the HELL am I supposed to do with that” screeched Erin? Sam wasn’t sure. Eventually a Sam found the ladder and wedged it horizontally through the bars for Erin to crawl along like a tightrope on all fours, naked. It was a sight Sam had never seen before and hoped she would never have to see again.

To be continued... read part 4 here!

...

The Adventures of an EasyRoommate - Part 2

2012-02-18T10:29:00.002Z

This is the story of how my housemates and I all came to be living together in London. I decided to tell the story as my friend, housemate and sister-I-never-had Sam turns 30 today and I realised I literally wouldn't be where I am without her. These stories are all true but told entirely from my point of view so somewhat biased. There will be more stories to follow in the days ahead but here is part two

(read part one here) It all began with Sam...

The Ball is Rolling

A few weeks later Erin found a room in a house in Balham and told Sam that when another room came up then she could move in. Soon after that Erin came home one evening to find that the agent (who, annoyingly, also lived at the house) had had a girl round to view a room that was newly available and said that she thought the girl would be calling the office at 10am the next morning to take the room. She seemed delighted but Erin was furious… that was NOT going to happen… Erin rushed upstairs to call Sam and left her messages with clear instructions to call the agent when they opened at 10am on the dot the following morning and take the room. There was no time for her to view it but Erin insisted Sam should trust her and just take it. Upon going back down to the lounge the agent who lived there said she was so pleased that the girl was likely to take it as she would get the commission for showing her the room. Ooops… Erin felt a little bit bad that she was sneakily whipping the room from under her nose but all is fair in love and war and Sam and Erin needed to live together! So the following day Sam called and said she’d take the room. The agent was confused why she would take it without viewing but Sam insisted. A deal was struck and the lease agreed! Sam said she would come round the next night to see the room.

The Great Pretenders

Sam and Erin had now conspired against a girl who lived in the house so they could not admit to having communicated about the room. They therefore decided to pretend not to be friends already. The doorbell rang and Sam and her friend Sally were shown into the house to see the room. Everyone was introduced and Sam and Erin, rather unprepared without a full dress rehearsal mumbled about recognising each other from a speed flat mating event they’d both been to and how it was such a coincidence that they now found themselves in the same house. What are the chances? Erin showed Sam around the house and sneakily gave her back the shoes she’d left on the night of burnt bacon and sickness. The deed was done. Sam and Erin were now officially housemates and they couldn’t be happier!

The Balham House

Sam had moved into the room with its own back door and found that having the occasional male visitor at her back door was actually rather pleasant. On occasion she was tempted to get it on with one or two of our male housemates but stopped at tongue action. The other male housemates were only interested in back door action, sadly not with Sam’s back door but rather with each other’s…

A year was spent living in the Balham house with a variety of housemates including the Hungarian couple who often ate a whole loaf of bread dipped in egg in one sitting and once made a cake that resembled a pile of crap. An English boy called Egg who had an ugly girlfriend and a Canadian / Polish gay couple who forced us all to get drunk daily. A French man who had access to ketamine in case you had a horse that needed tranquilised and a Spanish couple who were only a little scared of Erin as she roared around the kitchen trying to explain what a dinosaur was to the girl who spoke no English. There was a Slovakian girl who screamed like she was being murdered every time Man U scored a goal and a girl who complained hearing Erin opening the drawers in her bedroom which only made Erin open them and close them more - just for the sheer hell of it.

Kerry Joins the Gang

A friend of Erin’s then began looking for a new place to stay. She was looking for a room to enable her to move out of her marital home and begin divorce proceedings against ‘Frank the Plank.’ Erin went with her to view a place in Balham but when asked if she had any hobbies Kerry said “no not really” when asked what she liked to do of an evening she said “come home, put my dressing gown on and watch TV”. WEIRDLY they didn’t seem that keen to have her move in and she realised that now was probably the worst time in the world to try to sell herself as a potential housemate. Erin suggested she move into the house as they wouldn’t mind her if she was boring and because a room was becoming available which almost any weirdo might have moved into… Thankfully Kerry decided it was the best option of a bad bunch and she has turned out to be FAR from boring to live with!

Finding Our Castle

That summer the girls decided that they wanted to find a house of their own and began looking at places all around Balham and Clapham. The list of criteria was lengthy and included a few essentials; 4 equal sized bedrooms, at least 2 bathrooms, large living space, large kitchen, gas central heating, a sunny garden, on a lovely street and with a maximum 10min walk to the tube station. Frustratingly the hunt for a new home was rather similar to the last time. They found that agents said they understood but rarely did. They viewed some houses with beautiful roof terraces but horrific rooms, some great houses but on industrial type streets, some with bedrooms the sickly colour of toothpaste and some that were so unequally sized that the girls would literally have to have a mud smeared catfight to decide who got the biggest en-suite room and who got left with the room not large enough to store the a 10^th of their shoes. Then one agent suggested they viewed a house slightly out of the area they had chosen. Uncertainly the girls agreed mostly to stop the agent pestering them. As soon as they arrived at the housed they were smitten. It ticked every single box. They could imagine drinking Pimms on the lawn, having barbeques on hot sunny days and cooking big roast dinners for friends in the huge kitchen. They immediately knew that this big house on Turret Grove was the Castle these three Princesses had been looking for. All that was left to do was find a fourth roommate.

Looking for a Fourth Housemate

Finding someone to live with is difficult. You get only a few moments to speak to each viewer and ask any relevant questions. It could be compared to speed dating except at the end of house viewings you actually invite someone to move into your house and live with you. It seems rather ridiculous. The girls literally had hundreds of responses to the advert and people came round in 15minute intervals. There was a girl that brought her parents who thought the house was perfect and were delighted she had found it. Sadly the girls weren’t remotely sure she was interesting enough for them to live with. Then there was the girl who was 19 and desperately wanted to move in but the girls knew that a 19year old would be far too naïve to live with and that they would surely ruin her 20’s. There was a girl who said she loved it and messaged before she’d even got to the end of the street to say she’d take it. Erm…. think not.

Michelle is Mad Enough

As Erin showed an awful Eastern European, ginger girl around the house trying to make small talk despite not being remotely interested in picking her, Sam showed a girl called Michelle around and they seemed to get along really well. After she left Erin asked Sam what Michelle was like and she said “well I told her about the butt-plug and she laughed”. Erin stared at Sam in disbelief, speechless.

Turns out Michelle found Sam’s story about a guy asking her to dance around the room with a butt-plug in hilarious and so Sam was now sure that she was ‘the one’. Since Kerry wasn’t home for the viewing the girls invited her back round that night to meet her. They told Michelle to bring a bottle… she brought 3.

A few bottles of wine later and they were googling to see what the hell a butt-plug really was as none of them had seen one and Sam had turned down the one offer she’d had to try one. The atmosphere was easy and the girls had already become firm friends. They all agreed Michelle was the perfect new roommate and the fourth resident of the Castle had been found.

To be continued... read part 3 here!

.

The Adventures of an EasyRoommate - Part 1

2012-02-17T18:59:00.007Z

This is the story of how my housemates and I all came to be living together in London. I decided to tell the story as my friend, housemate and sister-I-never-had Sam turns 30 tomorrow and I realised I literally wouldn't be where I am without her. These stories are all true but told entirely from my point of view so somewhat biased. There will be more stories to follow in the days ahead but here is part one. It all began with Sam...

Samderella

Once upon a time, (what seems like a long, long time ago) there was a girl called Sam. She was living in a beautiful house that was spacious, comfortable and an excellent financial investment but as with every story that begins this way… there was a down side.

She was stuck living with a pretty rubbish ex-boyfriend so despite living a life of relative luxury, poor Sam was miserable. Scrubbing the floors and ironing was all she had to entertain herself and this made Sam feel sad. She had room to store all her multi coloured shoes but she could only dream of going to parties to dance in them. She had closet space for all her beautiful dresses but no invitations to VIP events that would enable her to wear them. She felt dismal as one gloomy day rolled into the next.

Sam no longer wanted to live in the countryside like a middle-aged woman. She wanted to live the London high life and decided to begin her search for somewhere new and exciting to live.

www.easyroommate.com

Now finding somewhere nice to live is not easy and in London it is a terribly difficult task. Sam had an idea that she’d like to move to Balham as her friend Sally lived there. So she began looking online for places around Balham and found a website that not only offered rooms but the opportunity to ‘buddy up’ with other people also looking for somewhere to live.

This wonderful site was called ‘easyroommate.com’ and she knew immediately (because she too was an easy roommate) that this was the place to find herself the perfect easy roommate.

Sam created her profile ensuring she had pretty photos and spoke about her interests. Then she began to search… she emailed countless (hundreds of) people asking and at one embarrassing stage begging them to be her roommate but they were either too easy or not easy enough. Being easy isn’t easy you know…

Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush

Then one day a girl replied to one of her emails. She seemed reasonably normal and liked wine. Sam felt very positive about this girl and they began communicating through the website. The girl was called Erin and she suggested they meet up at a ‘Speed Flat Mating’ event. Yes, these types of events really do exist. They thought that this was a good way to meet to see if they got along. If they did then they could see if there were any other fabulous people that could also ‘buddy up’ with them and if they didn’t then they could see if there were other more normal people to ‘buddy up’ with.

The day before they were due to meet, Erin suggested that if they were to get along fabulously then it might be a good idea to spend the next day viewing houses. Since Sam lived so far out in the country Erin suggested she stay at her current flat in Balham so told Sam to bring her toothbrush.

This was a spur of the moment suggestion and both girls began to wonder if it was a bit weird to meet a stranger and already be planning to stay the night. What if one of them was a murderer? Or worse… a lesbian.

Erin - Better Late Than Never

They had agreed in advance what they wanted to drink so whoever was there first could order the drinks and grab a table. Sam bought the wine and G&T when she arrived and looked uncertainly around the bar. In the corner she spotted a blonde girl and if she squinted her eyes she looked like she could be Erin so Sam strolled over and introduced herself asking if the girl was Erin. She wasn’t. Sam apologised and headed back to her perch at the bar. 10minutes later Erin walked in flustered from her delayed tube journey and over the moon to see a double G&T waiting for her. It was immediate, there was no awkward moment, they got on brilliantly straight away and as the alcohol flowed so too did the laughs.

The Hunt for other Roommates Begins

A couple of hours later they remembered they were meant to be there for the ‘Speed Flat Mating’ so agreed they would go in search of another room mate for the house they were still to find. They went up to the registration desk to get themselves a badge. If you have a room to rent your badge says ‘I have a room’ and details the location and price. If you need a room your badge says ‘I need a room’ and details the location you want and your budget. The man on the desk asked if we had a room or were looking for a room. Somewhat confused after 5 double G&Ts Erin advised that they were looking for a room. She was swiftly nudged by Sam who corrected that they had a room to rent. The next question was – Where was it? Both Sam and Erin mumbled that their ‘made-up’ house was between Clapham South and Balham and agreed that was roughly right. Then they were asked how much it was per month. Unprepared for this interrogation they looked at each other rather bemused whilst trying to work out how much a room would cost. After some umming and ahhhing they agreed on £650 per month with literally no clue if that was right. The badges were written up and presented to them to wear and they were now officially allowed to mingle.

Mousy Librarians and Imaginary Rooms

These events are a real mix of people. Fabulous people like Erin and Sam and some really weird people. One girl that got speaking to them was surely a librarian and was as timid and mousy as can be. She looked like the most boring girl in the room so when she asked if £650 included bills or not Sam and Erin glanced at her badge which said her budget was £650 and they immediately said in unison ‘not including’ the girl looked down-hearted and said she could maybe stretch her budget a little and asked how big the room was. Sam and Erin were on the same wavelength and stepped apart to hold their hands out to show the size of their tiny imaginary room. The girl asked if it fitted a double bed and they said unfortunately not and when she asked if there was a lot of natural light Sam apologised and said sadly there wasn’t even a window. At last the girl conceded that this perhaps wasn’t the room for her and moved on. Phew!

The Search for a New Home Begins

They didn’t find another roommate that night so Sam and Erin headed back to Erin’s flat and made bacon rolls, managing to set the fire alarms off burning the bacon then danced around the kitchen drinking more wine for an hour…

When Erin eventually went to bed Sam spent the night on Erin’s sofa. (Or more accurately being sick in Erin’s bathroom) The following day they went house hunting. The excitement was overwhelming and they imagined finding their dream home and living happily ever after. After viewing 6 places the excitement started to wear off and they began to wonder if they would find what they were looking for. Then they met an agent who said they had ‘just the place’ and off they went to view it. Apparently it was in the midst of being refurbished, had 4 bedrooms and a garden. It sounded perfect. Looking round the house it seemed like it had potential until they got to what the agent had referred to as the garden. It was a 1mx4m length of space for sure but it wasn’t a garden. Erin and Sam looked at each other incredulously and realised that this really wasn’t going to be as easy as they had thought.

To be continued... read part 2 here!

...

My Favourite Stalker

2012-02-08T23:19:00.014Z

Sitting on the train as it trundles through the countryside, the ever darkening sky mirrors how sad I feel. Black trees silhouetted against a dark turquoise sky whizz by in a blur. I am trying to remember exactly when I first got that email from a stranger who got in touch to ask me to pose for photos.

It sounds seedy now. Well actually it sounded seedy at the time too. Back then she was a budding young photographer who said in the email that she was looking for someone photogenic to photograph and wanted also to assure me she wasn't a lesbian.

I remember getting her Facebook message and clicking on the link she had sent me to her Flickr account to see her work. Flicking through her self-portraits I could see she was very talented and that she wasn't afraid to express herself through her art, be it clothed or unclothed!

My friend told me to ignore it as it might be from a weirdo. But as usual I stuck by my rule of saying ‘Yes’ to everything so I messaged her back as I was flattered and as you know I never say 'No' when someone suggests I do something wacky!

I was worried that she’d want me to pose naked or that ‘she’ might in fact be a ‘he’ pretending to be a ‘she’.

Joanne and I began chatting and agreed we should meet up. We agreed it should be a public place as one or both of us could be an axe murderer. It does happen you know.

We went out for lunch in a little country village near to where she lives. It was a bit like I’d imagined meeting a blind date would be and I guessed it would be somewhat awkward. I was wrong, it wasn’t. We had a lovely lunch then a few drinks and then she suggested going to meet her husband, dad and friends in a local bar. We had a really lovely night and as I headed home I knew I’d met a new friend.

Joanne was juggling studying photography at college with a hugely hectic family life. She had a fabulous husband and two utterly beautiful children, a huge fluffy German Shepherd dog and an ever increasing and decreasing number of cats. Sometimes due to new litters arriving and sometimes due to kittens being run over and squished in the driveway, sadly they were not traffic savvy.

I did pose for Joanne on a few occasions for college but that was never really the main focus for us. We had so much fun together. She is ridiculously funny and ‘calls a spade a spade’. I’d go out to their house for the weekend and we’d eat, drink and take crazy photographs of ourselves. As time went on her photographic skills were honed to capture images wonderfully and her post-production editing was in itself hugely artistic. She photographed things in a way that others simply couldn’t and once she qualified and set up her business the demand for her work grew and grew… and grew. She began photographing weddings and parties, new born babies and children, couples and make-overs and all this was always intertwined with some wonderful self-portraiture. On Flickr she was becoming quite renowned (some might say infamous) and was soon featuring in books, articles and even on bands album covers. I always found her work so inspiring and longed to have her skills.

One time I was at her house for a night out and we partied in her local town with her friends and sister, went to watch her Husband’s band play then continued the party back at hers. In the morning her husband needed a lift into town to pick up his car so I threw clothes on and dropped him off. On arriving back at the house Joanne was showered and dressed and suggested we go out for lunch. Rather the taking the time to get showered I piled on another layer of make-up. Sprayed a ton more hairspray into my hair and chucked on a red and white striped dress. You might be noticing that I love red & white stripes! After lunch we decided to take a self-portrait and headed back to the house where we created this image of us holding each other’s heads. It was so much fun to do and I think it sums us up beautifully. We are both totally off our heads.

Joanne is someone I have always envied as much as I admire her. If I had her talent I’d be the happiest girl in the world yet I think her talent could only ever work the way it does with her. Her personality is what makes her both a genius in her field and an artist in her own right. Being entirely humble about that and somewhat in denial makes her a friend and someone that those around her couldn’t live without. I absolutely love this girl.

When I moved to London she was so supportive. Of course she asked me time and time again to move back and said she missed me but that’s because it’s the nice thing to say at the same time she was always telling me to follow my dreams. So when she called to tell me that her husband had been offered a job in Perth, Australia I was truly over the moon for them. I was surprised as Joanne is a home bird, she has a really fabulous family and the best bunch of friends you could wish for. If I’m honest I’d have said she was one of those people that you never think would move away and I think a part of her thought she was one of those people too. Which made telling everyone in her life that she was going to move to the other side of the planet all the more traumatic for her.

Telling the brides she had booked in for the year ahead that she could no longer do their photos upset her hugely and I knew if I had been one of those brides I would have been absolutely gutted to have been lucky enough to book her then unlucky enough that she was moving away before my wedding.

Telling her Parents, Sisters, In-laws, Family and Friends was perhaps the toughest thing she’s ever done. Even tougher than unexpectedly delivering her sister’s baby! I suppose many people asked them if not begged them to reconsider but my friend Joanne and her husband have ambition in their soul. They both have talent and they both have dreams and an adventure like this might scare them both but it is the challenge they both crave. Their beautiful children are just like them and as sad as they were to leave their friends the excitement of their new life must be thrilling. I was 6 when I moved to a new town. Albeit I only moved 2 hours away but the thought of starting a new school and making new friends was terrifying. Looking back I realise now that it was the best thing my parents ever did for me. So for that reason I’m full of admiration for my friends for grabbing this opportunity and running with it. After all, if it doesn’t work their whole life is waiting for them back in Scotland… most of it secretly hoping they hate Australia and come back within the month. It can then be considered a long holiday and everyone can forget about that crazy idea they once had about moving. If you think about it like that then they really couldn’t say ‘no’ to going. After all if they didn’t go they would always have wondered.

I’d seen them at Christmas when home in Scotland and said my goodbyes then. I’d cried as I hugged them all goodbye, I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I walked away. I’d then gone back to Scotland for my Grannies 93rd Birthday last weekend and had planned not to intrude on their last weekend saying goodbye to all their family. On Sunday I saw Joanne had said on Facebook that any friends that were free could join them in their local country pub for a final farewell drink. Well of course I was going to go. Walking into the bar to join their leaving drinks I felt a bit sick, seeing all their friends and family together made me realise how lucky they all are to have each other and how lucky I am to be a little part of their world. Having people like these in my life makes me incredibly proud and I hope they have a truly wonderful time in their new adventure down under.

How pleased I am that Joanne once stumbled across my Facebook page, that she decided to message me and that I didn’t ignore the message from some weird Facebook stalker. How pleased I am that we met up and got on so well, that she turned out to be one of the best friends I have ever had and that her family and all her friends have become such a valuable little part of my life. How pleased I am to know people who will take a chance no matter how much it hurts in case it turns out to be fabulous. How pleased I am to now have an excuse to save up for a trip to Oz and an excuse at long last to totally diet my ass off for a bikini body to-die-for when I go to visit.

Sitting on the train as it trundles through the countryside, the ever darkening sky mirrors how sad I feel but as I think about my wonderful friends and the adventure they are about to embark upon I feel just a little bit better…

Good luck my dear stalker Thank you for becoming my friend. x

Photograph and Editing by Joanne / Haggis Chick / Amara Ritchie Photography. Creative and hungover input from Erin / The Bright Blonde.

The World Changed

2012-01-21T12:55:00.010Z

At this moment 7 years ago I was blissfully unaware that my world was about to crash around me but it had already happened. The world had changed and my life would be sadder every day because of it, I just didn’t know it yet.

13 days earlier we were celebrating Mum & Dad’s silver anniversary. My brother & I threw a surprise party and 180 people came. It was fabulous. All our family & friends were there. People Mum & Dad hadn’t seen for years came, people came from all over the country. It was a brilliant night and such a surprise for them. We all enjoyed it. I didn’t have a professional photographer at the party so have only got snaps taken by other people on pretty crappy cameras but who cares about the quality of the shot? The most important thing is that the moments were captured.

3 months previously it had just come to me one day that we should throw them a party. I can’t even remember the exact moment, I just remember saying to my Brother that I thought it was about time we threw a party for Mum & Dad as over the years they’ve had hundreds if not thousands of parties so maybe it would be nice to have one that was all about them.

My brother agreed enthusiastically and the plan had begun. We had a venue in mind immediately and the date was available there. We asked a family friend who’s a well known after dinner speaker do a speech about them, all our musical family members performed different songs and party pieces about them and I created a photo slide show to play on a big screen, it was a great night. My best friend and her boyfriend videoed the whole event too.

In the days after the party my Mum wrote a thank you letter to every guest and she couldn’t stop smiling at the memories of how much fun it had been. She’d had an absolute ball and so had Dad. My brother and I were pretty chuffed with ourselves and revelled in the glory of our good work! The following week or so was great, we spent loads of time together as a family and on the 20th January my auntie flew home from America where she works for the Foreign office, she’s probably a spy but she says she’s not! ;-) She couldn’t make it home for the date of the party so came back as soon after that as she could to see the family - which was the 20th.

As our auntie had arrived that night my brother, my granny & I were all at Mum & Dad’s to see her and we had a great night. We cooked haggis and my brother played his guitar for everyone. It was really unusual for my brother to be off work on a Thursday night but amazingly that had ended up being his night off that week so we had a lovely relaxed family evening together. I took my brother, granny & auntie home so we all left the house at the same time, kissing Mum & Dad goodbye.

The next day, late in the morning the phone on my desk rang and my Dad told me to come home immediately. I asked why on earth I’d have to come to the house in the middle of the day and he said something was wrong. It was Mum. I immediately panicked. I asked him what was wrong and he just said “please come home” my boss had come out of his office when he’d seen my face and as I gathered my bag and coat I told him what my Dad had said. He tried to reassure me that things were probably ok but I know my Dad. He’s not a worrier and he was worried on the phone, I’d never heard him sound like that and I knew something was terribly wrong.

The fear that was building in my stomach was sickening. The panic running through me was terrifying and as I got in my car the tears were streaming down my face. I am not religious. In fact I would say I’m pretty much the opposite of religious but I talked out loud the whole way home begging and pleading for it not to be anything too bad. A thousand scenarios were possible, I couldn’t work out what I hoped. I drove quite slowly home. I normally drive quite fast but I was very aware that if I crashed then it would take me EVEN longer to get home so I drove carefully. I don’t think I wanted to hear what I was about to be told.

I walked to the front door and my Dad opened it before I got there and in the vestibule he told me Mum had died. I couldn’t believe that it could be true. She was there in the house last night, we were all together. She was 48.

I wanted to know where she was but he said she was gone. In the living room my brother and my auntie were already standing waiting on me. We couldn’t believe what was happening and just stood there in tears.

It transpired that Mum had gone for a bath at some point after we had left. Dad had gone to bed & gone to sleep then in the morning when his alarm went off he stepped out of bed and into water. The whole house was flooded. He went to the bathroom and found Mum in the bath. He tried frantically to resuscitate her but she was gone. The bath had been running all night and overflowed all over the house.

When the ambulance and police arrived they asked if they could call anyone for him. He didn’t want my brother or me to come to the house when it was flooded and the emergency services were all still there. They asked if there was any other family he would want and it dawned on him that his big sister had arrived the night before and was at his Mums. The police sent a car to collect her and on the worst day of my Dads life his big sister was there to help pull him through it. As a diplomat she’s been awarded an MBE for her work in Iran during the gulf war and hostage situations and is known to be fantastic in a crisis. There is no-one better that could have been there to keep my Dad from falling apart, to have the house back in a reasonable shape before my brother and I even arrived home and to be there to make the endless supply of tea we were all going to need.

We waited two weeks for the post mortem results and in the end we found she had a genetic heart condition we didn’t know about. Apparently she had a cardiac event of some sort in the bath. Had she been in bed it would probably have just knocked her out and she’d most likely have been unaware of it but because she was in the bath when it happened she slipped under the water. The hot tap was running when it had happened so it had continued to run all night long. There is a huge sense of ‘what if’ but there is nothing we can do to change any of it.

We opted for a humanist ceremony in a lovely hotel and had her buried in Dunfermline in the grave next to her Mum. At the service my dad spoke about her, my brother sang “If tomorrow never comes” I said a few words and my uncle played my Mums favourite song “After the ball is over” It’s a beautiful song about a lost love and she had told us she wanted it played at her funeral. We thought that would be decades away when she had said it.

On her gravestone my Dad had the words of Robert Burns engraved - "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever, Ae farewell, alas forever."

The whole poem is:

Ae fond kiss and then we sever,
Ae farewell alas forever,
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy:
Naething could resist my Nancy!
For to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Fare-thee-weel thou first and fairest,
Fare-thee-weel thou best and dearest,
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure,

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never parted --
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Ae fond kiss and then we sever,
Ae farewell alas, forever.
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

I love the line that says (in Scottish dialect) had they never met then they’d never have been parted and would never be so broken hearted. This is so true. The pain you feel and the hurt caused by losing someone is so great because you cared for them so much. The price you pay for having that wonderful person in your life is the pain you feel when they go. I don’t wish away a moment of the pain as I wouldn’t swap a moment with my Mum. If the price I pay for having her is the hurt I feel having lost her then so be it. My brother and I are luckier than anyone we know as she was our Mum. She was the best Mum in the world and I’m proud every day. I just hope I can go on to make her as proud of me.

In some ways I guess the stars were just alligned in a way that meant it was her time to go. We're lucky in the sense that there isn't much left unsaid. Everyone who loved her got to spend time with her and have such fun in the days before she died and on the worst day of my Dads life, his big sister, who hasn't lived in this country for over 30 years and only comes home once a year at most, had arrived here the night before and was there to pick up the pieces for us all. We are strong as a family because Mum made us that way. We talk about her all the time. We laugh about her and we cry about her. But we never forget her, not for a moment.

Enjoy the moments you have when life is good as around the corner a new challenge is waiting in the wings. I miss you Mum. I will try to make you proud. 7 years today doesn’t feel real. I’m so lucky to have all my amazing friends and family to ensure you live on in our memories forever. This is the last time we were photographed together as a family, I treasure these memories.

Please do me a huge favour - hug your Mum today and tell her you love her. If you can't hug her then call her and tell her. Text her, skype her, email her. Anything is better than sitting on your own wishing more than anything in the whole world that you could have just one more moment with her. One more chance to hug her when she was wearing her towelling dressing gown and you could bury your face in it while she held you. One more moment just to smell her, hear her laugh or see her smile. It's been 7 years and in some ways it feels like only yesterday since I saw her, in other ways it feels like a lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMmtBgMaF5I

I love you and will miss you always. Thank you Mum - for everything.
x

Going Ever So Slightly Gaga (Blondeness Example #2)

2012-01-11T22:19:00.007Z

How It Began

Rushing from the station to the O2 arena in a packed crowd is an unpleasant experience at the best of times. When you are running late to meet someone and you know there is a free bar waiting for you the urge to barge people out of the way is, unsurprisingly, stronger than ever. Dutchess Roz and I were most definitely in a rush!

When a girl stopped us, we presumed she was selling something, filling in a questionnaire or trying to get money from us for charity. None of which we were interested in doing at that moment. So we politely said ‘no thanks’ and pushed on towards the entrance. The girl said she was offering a make-over and we continued to say ‘no thanks’ she was quite persistent and said they were offering the chance to have a personal trainer, gym membership and a nutritionist as well as a make-over including clothes, extensions and everything else needed to create a whole new look. She said that they were going to take the regime of a celebrity and prove that with access to all the same treatments anyone could look that good. She said they would be working with the trainers who worked with the stars themselves!

We asked which celebrity they were talking about and she said “well, what celebrity would I like to be made over to look like?” I have such a low level of interest in celebrities that I couldn’t even think of one. It’s just not ‘me’ to have much interest in celebrity life so I stood there with Roz pondering it for a minute then she suggested Gwen Stefani in the ‘No Doubt’ years… I admit that look really appealed to me so I said that I’d be delighted to be made over to look like Gwen. I used to love her songs “I’m just a girl” and “Don’t speak”

Roz and I thought about it and said “ok, this sounds interesting!” I mean… when someone offers you a free make-over it sounds good. (…too good to be true… too good to be true… someone remind me in future it’s too good to be true…) So I gave the girl from the production company my email address. Roz was about to give hers too when she said they were only looking for people who were looking to drop a couple of dress sizes. OUCH! Slim-as-slim-can-be Roz obviously wasn’t what they were looking for then. So it must be my fat ass that was what they needed. Excellent, how much more insulted could I feel? But here was a case of good timing - as the week before I had two bad experiences; one of a girl offering me her seat on the tube as she thought I was pregnant and one of my skirt splitting right up the back at work which meant me having to make my way home across London with my rear end on full display. That’s another story.

After that we carried on into see the show we were now even later for. We had a great night and Roz had her first ‘fan’ experience where a girl recognised her from reading her blog and we were really excited about that! The next day I got an email from the production company asking me to fill in a form.

The Application

I filled in the form with the details of what I liked about Gwen Stefani’s style and why I like her look, attached a photo or me and emailed it off. I did wonder if I was mad and asked the girls at the office but we all agreed there was nothing to lose except a few extra lbs.

The production company were really friendly and said they wanted to arrange a Skype call to discuss it all further. After that I then got a call saying that unfortunately they weren’t going to be doing Gwen Stefani but they still really wanted me to be involved. They said they instead wanted to make me over to be Lady Gaga! Oh dear god. I was about to say ‘no way’ when I realised she is super skinny and I thought, ‘oh what the hell’ Gwen / Gaga. Tomato / Tomato.

On the Skype call they asked me loads of questions about my lifestyle, my regime, my diet and so on. I told them I’d put on a bit of weight since moving to London as I’m out most nights socialising, eating rich meals or eating really late. Then they asked me how long I’d been a fan of Lady Gaga. “em… since Tuesday when you told me I was a fan of Lady Gaga!” Geez are you kidding me?

Of course I started doubting things at this stage. I should have heard the alarm bells but I have this crazy rule of saying YES to everything thinking that you ought to try everything once. I always tell myself that I need to try things and not to be afraid of failing. I have lived that way all my life and it didn’t occur to me that this should be any different so I ignored any doubts I had.

Then they asked me to send in a home video about me and wanted me to talk about how much of a Gaga fan I am, dance around to her music and sing her songs. At that request I decided that was it, there was no way I was doing that. Not least because I don’t own any of her music and haven’t got a clue what the words are to any of her songs. I told my friend Tee that I was forgetting about it but she is super creative and said ‘hey why not do a video in a tongue-in-cheek / semi-p*ss-take fashion?’ She said all the others would be sending in serious videos and mine could be quirky and represent me properly. I thought it might be a giggle so we pranced around the house making a video and sent it off the next day – my 15mins of YouTube fame… which you’ll be delighted to know you can see at the bottom of this post.

Please watch it - it will explain a lot - like how I learned to respect Gaga more while pondering how to make this video and realised that she encourages everyone to be who they want to be... I actually have to admit that I love that.

They said they loved the video and wanted me to come along to an audition. I wasn’t interested in auditioning for anything but they were really lovely and said it would be fun, they said it was just a chance to meet all the other girls and that 3 of us were to be picked so I had a really good chance. Once again I decided I had to try it. I was living in London, I should take the opportunity to do weird crazy stuff and I figured I might meet some nice people.

Deciding what to wear to the audition was a nightmare. The production company said I should dress as Gaga, practice something to do with Gaga and/or bring Gaga props. WTF? I was stumped. What the hell was I supposed to do? I decided against going as Gaga and instead wore my favourite dress (which just so happens to be the red & white striped one I’m wearing on the main page of my blog!) I realised I might be the odd one out and look like I’d made no effort so I ordered a gaga-style hair bow made from hair from eBay and voila my outfit was complete.

The Audition

When I arrived a lot of the production crew knew me and said Hi. A girl that had arrived at the same time was confused how they all knew me so I said they must have watched my video. “What video?” she asked. That’s when I began to realise some people had had lots of contact with the production company like me and others had apparently just replied to an ad they’d seen and come along to the audition. After we were all there we were trooped outside to queue in a somewhat Xfactor style with lots of cheering and waving. I again thought this wasn’t quite what I wanted to be doing but I’d been swept away with the madness and before I knew it I’d met Liane (aka: Beyoncé) in the queue. She was lovely and we had a laugh about the madness of it all. Once we got inside I met Wendy. Wendy is the greatest girl and she was there as a Gaga too. She looked as confused as I was to be there amongst the Katy Perry’s, Beyoncé’s, Brittney’s, Cheryl’s and Rihanna’s. We got talking and for a while sat staring in a general state of confusion at what was going on around us. We managed to slip out at lunch time for some ‘fresh air’ and went straight to a local restaurant where we ate Italian food and drank huge glasses of wine dressed in our crazy outfits much to the bemused delight of the staff and other patrons. We discussed not going back and said we thought it was ridiculous and that we didn’t want to be involved. But what turned out to be even more ridiculous was that Wendy had applied to do the Katy Perry regime. Apparently they had too many Katy Perry’s so they asked her to be a Gaga!! We laughed and laughed when we realised we’d both been asked to be Gaga’s when neither of us were fans! We were enjoying ourselves now and decided to go back to the rest of the audition as we thought it would be fun and were enjoying the craziness of it all.

When we got back we realised that some people had come a LONG way for this ‘opportunity’ one girl had been ‘spotted’ on the street like me a couple of months previously but had only been in London on holiday. So when she got the email inviting her to the audition she FLEW BACK TO THE UK FROM CALIFORNIA!!!! Poor girl. She had no idea that some people were there just to fill up the auditions and sadly she looked like she may be one of them! They weren’t likely to pay for her to live in London for 8 weeks now were they?

That afternoon I met Hel who was older than anyone else there and dressed like some sort of dominatrix in the worst leather jacket I’d ever seen. She had no makeup on but should have and a squirt of perfume would have covered the smell of cigarette smoke. I also met Heather who had a weird sort of American accent despite being entirely Welsh. I think she’d been to the states on holiday once and picked it up, which I hear some people are prone to. And she said ‘like’ more times in a sentence than I could be bothered counting. She also spoke a lot about her boob job that she told us went terribly wrong as if to explain why they were totally lop-sided and at one point said she probably wouldn't get picked for the show as she already looked so much like Lady Gaga there would be very little they could do to her. Wendy, Louise and I almost fell off our chairs laughing at that point. I also met another girl called Suzy, she was a lovely girl and talked about her little boy and was convinced she had the same eyes as Lady Gaga. And last but by no means least we met Louise who was 100% Gaga! She was awesome, from the moment I’d seen her while we were still standing in the queue I’d thought she maybe was Lady Gaga so I knew she was the winner already.

They made us dance and said they needed us to do some Gaga moves. Since I’m not a gaga fan I was utterly confused and looked like I was dancing in a nightclub at 3am waiting for a friend to stop snogging some boy so we could just go home. I twirled and boogied and one of the judges said I looked too happy and that I needed more Gaga attitude. JESUS I don’t want to be here!!!! It then occurred to me that I’d seen her do a move that I can only describe as her putting her hands in the air, fingers bent and spread like big paws and then doing a movement that resembled The Twist. So yes, I started twisting on camera with my hands up like monster hands. I was JUST like Gaga. Honestly.

We gathered that day one was all about whittling the people at the audition down to 6 to go through to the next day of auditions. Unsurprisingly as there were only 6 Gaga’s there we all got through. Wendy and I discussed not coming back the next day but we were having a giggle together and Louise was lovely too so we all thought… why not?! The fact that Hel even got through should have made me realise then that it was only about good TV. Oh how blind I was.

So the next day we all turned up again and the ~~humiliation~~ fun continued. We had to dance more and pitch to the judges about why we deserved to be made over into Gaga and win the prize. PRIZE? What prize, I thought the make-over was the prize. Oh no I was wrong. There was a prize after all! Turns out the prize we were all competing for was a contract with an agency to be a Lady Gaga look-a-like. I was even more confused by now for many reasons with the main ones being;

1. I have a proper job and I don’t have time to be a look-a-like.

2. I can’t think of anything worse than having to pretend to be someone else

3. I look ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE LADY GAGA! (which I’d have thought might have mattered… No?)

I had no idea what to say but I wanted all they'd promised like the gym membership. I wanted a personal trainer. I wanted a personalised diet. I wanted the motivation, I wanted the teeth whitening and I wanted the hair extensions.

Suzy told the judges that her eyes were why she had potential. Hel seemed to think they could do plastic surgery despite that being a different show. Wendy was sweet and talked about her husband and came across really well. Heather told them that Gaga followed her on twitter and had used one of her photos of herself as the inspiration for her album cover despite the judge pointing out that it was actually an 80’s album that inspired her. I on the other hand told them I was colourful and had begun wearing less colourful clothes since getting a little heavier. Then it was Louise’s turn and she cried. Damn it I should have cried.

At the end of the auditions the winners were announced and Louise got in (thank god or the show would have made no sense) Heather got in and I got in. I was gutted Wendy didn’t and in retrospect I wish she had instead of me… sorry Wendy! Haha!

The Filming Begins

So the next day we went to a photo shoot and were told to stand in our underwear and squeeze and wobble all our fat bits. (Where were those alarm bells? I must have been ignoring them)

Then they came to my house to ‘recreate’ my audition video as they said it was really good but not of a good enough quality for sound etc. (Sorry Tee – filmmaker extraordinaire I think its perfect quality!) So they filmed me talking, recreated the dancing and singing and then ordered me a pizza to eat so they could film me eating it. Free pizza is free pizza and I thought - if I’m going to be starving for weeks I may as well eat it. They then asked me to pretend to eat my lunch on Clapham Common to show my normal routine (which is slightly weird as I’d never venture all the way to Clapham Common in my 1hour lunch break but I went with it) Finally we went to a bar that I’ve never been to before to show me drinking wine with my friends. Of course a free bottle of wine attracted the girls so we had a giggle but it wasn’t an accurate representation of my life. Just the scenes they wanted for the show. Interestingly as the production team were leaving the bar they brought out my contract to sign. I was asked to sign it there and then. I didn’t have time to read through the 11 pages nor take note of any of the details but signed my life away regardless. Good lesson in there somewhere.

The next filming day was to meet the personal trainer and the nutritionist. I was really looking forward to this as have friends back in Scotland who are personal trainers and nutritionists and I was looking forward to getting a regime designed for me to drop the weight and tone up all the right places and a diet plan that would work with my needs.

Then I asked my hairdresser to cut my hair just before it and in a moment of braveness asked her to cut it even shorter. The result was I looked terrible which was no reflection on my awesome hairdresser at all! Sorry Karen for making you cut it so short!

Nutrition

The nutritionist brought out a tray containing ‘a usual days food for me’ it all looked pretty damn good but had a whole camembert on it and 3 absolutely huge glasses of wine (which would have been at least a bottle) and apparently I consumed thousands of calories a day more than I should. Thousands? Is she mental or just not good with maths? I realise she is neither as she is a true professional but let’s be honest I’d be obese if I did. I’m not super skinny but I’m not THAT bad! Where on earth were these figures coming from?

Fitness

Then it actually managed to get worse. We had to dress in tutus to meet the personal trainer. What part of a black tutu is ‘Gaga style’ I do not know but then again I’ve no idea about any of her style. The trainer had never worked with Gaga so that was a surprise (or not if you really think about it) as we’d been led to believe this would be the chance to meet their actual trainers. The funniest part of this was when the production team asked him to describe a move and say we’d be learning this move as it was one that Gaga does in a particular video. He tried and got it wrong so they told him again and he said ‘he wasn’t happy having words put in his mouth and wasn’t comfortable referring to Lady Gaga at all’ WHAT? None of us are happy referring to Lady Gaga! Arrghhhhh!!! I actually really respected him a lot for that cause none of us had been brave enough to say it. All this might sound bad enough but I was then handed an A4 piece of paper with some faded drawings on it showing a dozen exercises that I couldn’t have made out the arms or legs of, it was like someone had traced them. I thought they were maybe joking. I asked when we’d be seeing him again and was told I wouldn’t be – that was it. I asked about gym membership and was told they’d be in touch about that but nothing had been arranged. The trainer himself was a great guy and I’m sure fabulous at his job but he simply wasn’t going to be working WITH us in the way I had thought.

Realisation

I got home and was utterly gutted at how badly it had all turned out. I was disappointed beyond belief that I’d given up so much of my own time, ~~wasted~~ used my holidays from work for filming days and made what can only be described as a total fool of myself on TV for THIS?

By then I knew the next stage was them filming me exercising, filming me out and about pretending to be Lady Gaga and learning a dance routine. For what? I’ll tell you what for… a contract to be a look-a-like as someone I don’t look anything like. (Ah, at long last, there go the alarm bells… loud and clear!!)

I waited a week then after 8 days, when I still hadn’t heard from them I sent them an email to express my disappointment and formally withdraw from the show. I still couldn’t believe I’d been convinced to get involved. I said that I understood that they had the right to use any footage they had of me to date.

I got an email last week telling me the show was to be aired tonight. I don’t have Sky TV so I thought I couldn’t even watch it but a friend helped me out so I could watch it from behind the sofa while I cringed at how embarrassing it was. I’ve told practically no-one I know about it as I’m utterly mortified for not realising what I was getting into (so much for me thinking I’m sometimes bright then…) but I’ve realised that it’s going to be out there now. I’m ok with that, it’s fine as I reveal more of myself on this blog than I did on this crazy TV show so I’ve nothing to lose.

For the Record

I’ve heard that the ‘Twitterati’ are calling all the participants “fat wannabes”. I must use this opportunity to utterly disagree. Every girl I met was amazing. They are all funny, gorgeous girls who applied for a weight loss / make-over show and found themselves somehow and rather inexplicably competing to become a look-a-like. Everyone had different motivations to take part in a weight loss programme because everyone gained weight for different reasons. Interestingly my 'profile' on the official website said I comfort ate cause I missed friends and family back home since moving to London. Despite those words NEVER having crossed my lips I am somehow being quoted as having said it. It's not that I don’t miss you all back home but I don’t miss you enough to want to move back and I certainly don’t miss you in a way that makes me want to eat food to ‘comfort’ myself, that is ridiculous! I gained weight because I work long hours and lead a very hectic and wonderfully busy life which means I often eat on the run and sometimes eat so late that I literally eat dinner and get into bed. Oh and on the profile, they made my job title up too.

Anyway… I’ve always said I have no problem being judged. People judge me all the time, people judge me without knowing me. That’s ok. In fact I have even coined my own quote which is ‘judgemental people are both lucky enough to have never been in the situation and stupid enough to think they never will be” I think this sums up how I feel about anyone that has anything non-constructive to say about the show. It’s a great show, it’s full of great people and if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. It’s not rocket science people, it’s that simple.

The team at the production company are awesome, they were brilliant fun to work with and I really enjoyed what time I spent with them all. If I hadn’t felt so incredibly uncomfortable referring to Lady Gaga all the time and the prize had been nothing to do with having to be Gaga on a regular basis (which let’s be honest... I couldn’t have won even if I'd wanted to) then the whole experience might have been ok and in fact it probably would have been quite good fun. They are a great team, they make funny TV and were all so lovely to work with, we did laugh a lot and I’ve no problem with someone taking the p*ss out of me, I can laugh at myself too. But if I’d known what I was getting into then I’d have either decided not to do it or gone in with eyes open and thrown myself whole heartedly into the madness of it all. If you fancy becoming a look-a-like and they go onto produce another series then definitely do it as you may well have the time of your life. The fact remains that I was not approached to be on a look-a-like show and I am not a Lady Gaga fan. I have never in my life wanted to be a Lady Gaga look-a-like and I am therefore, in many ways, misrepresented by this production but more than anything I wish they had just been clearer from the start about what I should expect. But then that’s not what makes good TV is it?

I've recently had the pleasure of seeing myself on TV adverts, in newspapers and in magazines advertising the show - "Bigger Than Lady Gaga!” - one was a double page spread with the huge headline 'Absolutely Flabulous' Hmmmm... I thought to myself, how flucking flabulous it is to be flamous!!

All these reasons bring me to feel inclined to use my blog in my usual way, as therapy to rant and offload things that I would otherwise carry around with me emotionally and be burdened with. I would rant openly online but according to the contract I signed and the email they sent all the participants a few hours before the show aired, I am not allowed to say anything about the programme on any social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter (which of course also means I’m not allowed to use examples to defend myself). Nor am I allowed to do any interviews relating to the show, which is fine as I really don’t want to. I will of course honour the contract and I will not comment about the show on a social networking site. Instead, since this is not a social network, I have posted this in my own little place on the world-wide-web. This way, if no-one reads it, that’s ok because as with every other story I tell on here - the only thing that matters is telling my story at all.

And So…

Congratulations to all the winners and to every girl that took part from application to transformation. As for the other two Gaga’s - Louise makes an awesome Gaga. She is perfect for it and is an amazing performer who will be hugely successful. She also has all the right levels of madness to pull it off so I’m sure she’ll be super popular with bookings! I hear Heather has now changed her name to something like Daisy Dior and is a playboy TV girl which she is likely to be proud of so we’re all going up in the world… Yay, go us!!!! Woohoo!!! Seriously though, I’m over the moon to have met all of you! It’s meeting you all that has made me realise that once again I was right to give it a go. I’ve made some good friends, all bound together by an experience we have shared and I have learned a huge number of lessons. It might not have been what I expected but if I hadn’t tried I’d have always wondered…

The definition of Gaga made me smile…

Gaga

adj. Informal

1. Silly; crazy.

2. Completely absorbed, infatuated, or excited: They were gaga over the rock group's new album

3. Senile; doddering.

(French, old fool, gaga)

Throughout this process I may have gone ever-so-slightly gaga… but obviously never ended up “Bigger Than Lady Gaga!” Thankfully I’m still just me, blonde and making regular ~~bad~~ questionable decisions.

(If you’re interested in seeing my application video for the show it is here… which I tried to do as tongue-in-cheek as possible with the help of the ever talented Miss Tee! and even if I do say so myself it's bloody funny!)

Thanks for reading.... PS I'm kind of a Lady Gaga fan now! x

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnI02iyk34Q&feature=mh_lolz&list=HL1311170634

Then It Dawned On Me

2011-12-19T11:56:00.002Z

I remember the exact moment when it dawned on me. The realisation was both terrifying and exhilarating.

He was on the other side of the locked bathroom door, he was hammering and screaming at me to talk to him, demanding my attention. The music blared at a truly deafening volume. I silently cried and sank down under the water, my eyes closed, the noise dropping to a low thudding from the beat of the music and the untimely booming on the bathroom door. I lay there, holding my breath, wondering if I could wish it all away.

The album I’d had to buy myself for Christmas three days previously (since he had no inspiration and no idea what I would like) was playing full blast and as the Black Eyed Peas blared “Shut up… just shut up, shut up” I wished he would shut up, I wished he would shut up and go away and I wished someone else would say the words I had just decided had to be said…

I want a divorce.

By the time the album had finished the house was silent. I stepped out of the bath and unlocked the door. He’d gone out, neither of us were ready to talk about it. He knew and I knew.

I think I knew on the morning of our wedding. If we hadn’t had so many members of our families come from abroad for the wedding I don’t think I’d have gone. My best friend tried to say something but I gave her a look that she knew meant there was no point in her trying to talk me out of it, she’s been my best friend since we were 6, she knew I was too stubborn to change my mind. I had to prove that I had been right about him and I had to prove that everyone else had been wrong. Marrying him was the only way to do it.

I went to my Mum and Dad’s house (who had thankfully forgiven me for running away to be with him in my teens) and Mum told me that I had to go back and talk to him. He wasn’t just a boyfriend, he was my husband and that’s what married people do, they talk.

“Yes Mum” I wanted to say “but that’s all we do” I of course didn’t say anything to her but my frustrations were real. My husband and I would’ve been as well sleeping in separate houses never mind separate beds. There was no spark between us, there had never been any definite physical spark between us. There was no passion. I was 22 and we’d been together 5.5years. We’d been married for 1.5 of those and suddenly none of it made sense to me anymore. At the time it was like living in a confusing nightmare, in retrospect it was much simpler. I’d grown up.

I went home to talk but he still wasn’t back. By midnight he was still out and I knew he was at the pub. He was always at the pub. I was his taxi, sometimes he’d call and say he’d be ready for a lift at 7. I’d turn up and he’s say he wasn’t ready and to come back in an hour. I’d drive home again and before I left to go back he would often phone to say he and his friends had just bought a room for the night so they could get the residents bar and not have to go home at all. I would sit by myself and wonder what I was meant to do. I guess he gave me too much time to wonder what I should do as it began to dawn on me that I really didn’t need to put up with this lonely life.

I remember one day we were in the car and he said his Mum wanted to know when we were having a baby. We’d been married over a year and she thought it was time. (I would have been as well marrying his mother as she was in charge, or more accurately he would have been as well marrying her, that would have suited them both, neither one could do any wrong in the others eyes.) This wasnt the first time we'd had this discussion. He had previously countered my argument of not wanting to give up my career by saying his Mum had offered to care for the child while I went back to work. I was horrified at the prospect and instead of biting my tongue I had told him that since his mother couldn't even do joined up writing I was hardly likely to have her raise my child. He didnt take that well. So since the conversation had cropped up yet again I offered another excuse - that I didnt want to have a baby when I’d be stuck at home by myself all the time. He looked at me like I was stupid and said obviously if we had a baby he’d be home more often! I replied that it shouldn’t take the novelty of a baby for him to want to be home and that I used to be that novelty. He smiled and said "yeah and that soon wore off". I sat there feeling so bad about myself and said in that case we wouldn’t be planning a family any time soon. The car was stopped at traffic lights and he started shouting about how difficult I was being and then opened the car door and got out. He stormed off down the road and when the traffic lights turned to green I had to get out the car and walk round to the passenger side to close the door before I could drive off. The other drivers just looked at me with pity.

We were stale and neither one of us cared enough to want to fix it. There was nothing horrendously wrong. Some people have marriages like this and live happily ever after but I wanted real passion. I wanted someone I could share my life with. I wanted to be married to my best friend and my lover. I wanted to have children with someone I could trust to be there through everything life would throw at us and I wanted to be able to laugh with someone till we were old together and looking back on a life well lived and a marriage full of love, passion and happiness with someone I could genuinely say had been my soul mate.

When I looked at him I saw someone that the 17yr old me could fall for. The now 22yr old me didn’t like what she saw. I’d missed my late teens and early twenties being in a relationship with someone when these were the years I should have been young, single and carefree. I hadn’t realised that any aspect of my life could be better. Through work, some people had started to encourage me to challenge myself in my career more and suddenly I was beginning to feel more motivated. As I began to feel more motivated I opened my eyes properly for the first time and saw that I could have so much more passion in my life, there were new people in my life who made me feel more alive than I’d ever felt and ever could feel in my life with my husband. I was so confused but I couldn’t risk my life stagnating with a man who wasn’t the ‘one’ after all.

I’d been wrong all those years before. I didn’t know how to begin a new life on my own, I didn’t know how he would cope if I left him, but I knew that only I could live my life and I would do whatever it took to ensure I made the right choices for a change. If he had to be hurt for me to do it then I would have to hurt him. It was either hurt him or live a life of regret. I could handle hurting him a bit, after all, he never gave up anything for me, he never put me first, he never cared if I was content and certainly never cared if I was satisfied. Where as, I had put him to the top of my priority list from the day we met. Then it dawned on me... it all suddenly felt like a huge mistake.

I waited at the house for hours and eventually I went to the spare bed and waited for him to come home. When he did he was drunk and he brought his brother and sister with him. When they realised I was in they stormed up the stairs and his sister dragged me out of the bed in only my underwear and I was told on no uncertain terms that if I didn’t love her brother anymore I could get out of his house. HIS house!? It was then that things well and truly kicked off. This house was mine too, I paid half of everything! I was furious but it was 3 against 1 and his evil sister laid into me physically and horrifyingly, happily. I was defenceless and realised it was better to give in than to suffer more of her punches. I turned to my husband and begged him to make her stop, his reply was ‘she's my sister’ I was told if I didnt get dressed and leave I would be thrown out into the driveway in my underwear so grabbing the clothes I could reach I was thrown out of my house in the middle of the night while he screamed at me to get a lawyer. I couldn’t believe it.

Admittedly I didn’t believe I wanted to save our marriage but I was willing to talk about it. I went to my brothers flat and he looked after me, calmed me down, wiped my tears and sat with me till I eventually slept. The next morning I arrived on my parents door step and told them they’d been right all along. He wasn’t for me. I was sorry for everything I’d put them through and I needed them. They were glad, my Dad was especially delighted. It was all summed up rather beautifully when later that day his parents turned up at my parents house to see how my family were coping with what I'd done! I was flaberghasted and told them that their viscuous bitch of a daughter had thrown me out in the middle of the night. His mother stated that 'she might be vicious but she's not a bitch' and there I had it. A mother-in-law that couldnt event spot whether the adjective or the noun was the most offensive word in a sentance.

My Dad had a leasing agent sorting out a flat for me within days. I got a lawyer on the case, I just wanted out. In the end I took the dog and some of the money I put into the house which I’d inherited from my Grandmother. I didn’t want his money, I just wanted my life back.

In the coming months my husband would beg me to give it another go, he offered to move away from his family and said he knew his Mum was a big problem but I couldn’t forget the moment he left his sister to do whatever she wanted to me. I couldn’t forgive him and I couldn’t ever trust him to defend me, so all the underlying feelings that he simply didn’t love me enough had been proved. It was over.

The only things that had kept me there so long were the fact I really wanted to have a home and a husband and children at some point in my life and by walking away from my beautiful house in the graveyard (another story!!) and my husband I was sacrificing this almost guaranteed future. I might never find it. I might miss my chance and the closest thing to children I might ever have will be my amazing nieces and nephews but that’s a risk I'm willing to take. A life well lived albeit it alone is more appealing to me than a life trapped in a loveless, sexless and friendless relationship. That's not living.

We still pass each other from time to time, we walk right on by as if we’re strangers. He’s bursting with bitterness and resentment, I feel nothing. Next week it will be 8 years since the day I lay in the bath listening to the lyrics of this song and every time I hear it I can feel the funny feeling in my stomach of knowing that it was now or never, either stick with it, or admit it wasn’t for me and get out. I am glad every single day that I had the strength to walk away. Staying would have been the easy option and my life would have been unfulfilling, of that I can be certain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRzMtlZjXpU&ob=av3e

Delightfully Exhausted

2011-12-13T17:11:00.001Z

Recently I have been busier than I’ve ever been but I really am delightfully exhausted. I joined the company I work for in May and have been working my ass off ever since. I won a national award in October because my boss thinks I’m rather awesome and then the company put me on a residential course for the last few weeks to learn even more about the industry and boy did I learn a LOT!

However I didn’t have a laptop with me as mine broke the day before I left so here you have my poor excuse for not posting in the blog for FAR too long, sorry. I realise I could have pre-written some stuff and set it to post in my absence but I hadn’t set that up and anything I’d pre-written was still on my laptop which broke and I wasn’t about to borrow my bosses laptop to write anything like my blog posts up on it. We get on fantastically but there are something’s he wouldn’t want to know.

So I’m now back in London and have almost every night fully booked with nights out till January! I have 6 nights out in two weeks just with different work events and the main Winter Party isn’t even till January – these are just the departmental ones! Not to mention the parties with friends. We threw a house party the other week and it was amazing, we had 50+ people there and people were partying till 6am. Our neighbours luckily came and one got together with one of my housemates so at least they were part of the crowd making the noise and not complaining about it! I also had a ball last weekend which I curled my hair for… I apparently make an excellent Marilynn Monroe look-a-like though don’t get me started on being a look-a-like. That’s another story altogether!

I seem to be out all the time at the moment. Last week our work had a night out and had a £3,000.00 budget to spend, somehow I ended up in charge of spending it (which is a job I don’t mind having!) and at 10.50pm I checked the balance and we’d only spent £1,500.00! Of course you might think this was a good thing that the company wasn’t going to spend so much but it was actually a £3,000.00 MINIMUM spend in this venue so we absolutely had to drink another £1,500.00 of drink or we’d just lose the money and that would have been unbearable. So we began ordering more and more expensive wine. I then ordered 10 jugs of cocktails and 20 espresso martini’s (I’m told I drank at least 5 of them) at quarter past midnight we still had £750 to spend and only 15mins left to spend it. I’ve never had such a dilemma in my life… I resorted to ordering Bottles of Pink Pommery Champagne and when we had only a few minutes left and £300 STILL to spend before the bar closed we ordered two bottles of £145 Dom Perignon. When they asked how many glasses we needed we just said, give us straws!

In the taxi going home my wonderful colleague and friend Tee could tell I was feeling queasy but the Director who lives near us seemed oblivious. He helped me out of the taxi, carried my bags to the door, opened my front door for me and was chatting about what a great night it had been when Tee had the sense to drag him back to the taxi before I had the chance to throw up all over him. I thankfully made it to the bathroom in time but that really was a terrible waste of good champagne…

I think I’m burning the candle at both ends. In fact I know I am as my friends keep telling me this but I happen to enjoy burning this candle in this way even if the metaphorical dripping wax is currently my dripping nose. I have a head cold which is threatening to ruin a night out tonight but I won’t let it. My boss has brought me countless glasses of water today to ensure I make it to tonight’s clients drinks where I’ve been told he will educate me on the delights of the Rose Champagne he is raving about. I am looking forward to it though I’m not looking forward to tomorrow… not just because a hangover is sure to follow tonight’s antics but that I have an event (with wine) to go to at lunch time tomorrow followed by a dinner and even more drinks tomorrow night at a restaurant that has Zebra and chocolate covered scorpions on the menu… not sure how likely that will be to cure a hangover but we shall see.

Free as a Bird

2011-10-23T17:51:00.011+01:00

I take my freedom for granted. I remembered this week that I am the master of my own destiny and I should feel very lucky for that. I don’t have to answer to anyone, I don’t have to be anyone I don’t want to be and I am in full control of my own future.

In my life I have committed to relationships, businesses, friendships and even crazy TV programmes (another story) and although I try to live by the theory of saying ‘Yes to everything’ I have been careful to remember one rule in all of this. The result has been that I’ve ultimately walked away from those relationships, businesses, friendship and thankfully the crazy TV programme. Each time I got to a point where it dawned on me that I’d forgotten my own most important rule…

’If it’s not fun, don’t do it’

Someone (who I’ll come back to at another time)once said that he thought I ran away from things when they didn’t go my way but in truth if I lose interest in something then as far as I am concerned there is simply nothing more to be said.

This week I flew across the peak district in a glider, thousands of feet above the hills. I felt like a bird, soaring through the sky and had a moment of clarity where I realised as I’ve realised before and forgotten, that life is really simple. It’s not about the constraints of this life but about being able cast off the shackles and set off on a new adventure.

By the summer of 2009 I’d been going out with a boy for about 20months. He was my best friend and I thought the world of him. When we’d met a couple of years before I had been chatting to him for a while in a club one night and he offered to walk me home as he lived quite nearby. On the walk home I asked him what he did and he said ‘you know what I do’ I worried that maybe I hadn’t been listening to him as intently as I thought I had. I was, at that time actively seeking a handy man so had he said he was a plumber, a joiner or an electrician I would have noted that immediately. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember him saying what he did for a living or I’d have given this a mental tick or a cross. Surely.

I apologised and said I really couldn’t remember if he’d told me what he did. He said he played football and I said ‘No I mean for a job, what do you do?’ he smiled and told me that was what he did for a living, played football. I looked at him incredulously and asked if he was serious, when he said yes I was utterly disappointed and he said later that it was written all over my face. I was entirely unimpressed and to be honest really thought it was a shame as I wasn’t interested in dating a footballer.

A few months later he got in touch and asked me out. We began dating and he seemed to be a really great guy. He was bought by another team in the January transfer window and moved to a football club in England.

In the sleepy little village he moved to he set up a lovely home in a gorgeous rented house, mid terrace in a quaint street with a big Aga, wood burning stoves and chandeliers. All very shabby-chic.

I drove the 5 hours there and the 5 hours back every other weekend depending on where his team were playing. If it was a geographically local ‘away’ game I’d go down that weekend too. So I spent 10 hours a week most weeks driving to see him. At the time I thought it was worth every moment as we had a lovely life there and we planned that I’d move down in the summer of 2009. We looked at places to buy down there and soon found a beautiful old apartment just a few doors from a couple we were good friends with there. It had huge rooms, large windows and was oozing potential. I got to work with the architect designing all the walls to come down, new partitions to go in, searching for the perfect kitchen and an antique roll top bath. There was a room that was perfect as a study and we half joked that it would make a great nursery too. (Oh how I look back and wonder how much he was taking the p*ss out of me with that talk) I began to lessen the work I was doing for my clients back in Scotland and began to wind down the new work I was taking on. I was happy to tell all that I’d be moving to England when the summer came and had begun to look at jobs in the area or ways to continue working for myself there.

We would speak on the phone every day when I was in Scotland, for hours at a time. One day I was on Facebook chat when I called him and he was online on Facebook chat too. We were chatting away on the phone but he seemed distracted. You know when you’re speaking to someone on the phone and when you ask them a question they kind of ‘um’ and ‘ah’ whilst trying to form an answer and it’s clear that they are trying to do something else at the same time. Alarm bells began to ring. Admittedly they rang distantly like a church on a far-away hillside, I could hear them but it wasn’t like a fire alarm going off in my head. I think this can safely be described as intuition. I asked him if he was busy and again he half-heartedly said ‘no, I’m not doing anything else’. Being a 5 hour drive apart you learn to ‘read’ each other on the phone really well so I could hear the lie in his voice and I don’t know why I did it but as I sat there on the phone to him, with Facebook open on my laptop on my knee - I opened another window in my internet browser and logged in as him. As soon as I did it my heart began to pound like it was jumping out of my chest.

I realised I shouldn’t log into his Facebook but I knew his password and I knew he had just told a lie to me. It rolled off his tongue in a rather innocent and what would otherwise have been a sincere sentence. ‘No, I’m not doing anything else’. That was all he said but those 6 easy words were dripping in falsehood and I just knew it.

As I sat there his Facebook chat pinged up on my screen as if I were him and I saw the thread of conversation that had been going back and forth between him and Nicola. Ah, the girl from the gym.

Their chat had begun fairly normally with ‘what are you up to’ ‘watching tv, you?’ type thing but slowly got down to him telling her she was fit and had the nicest body he’d every ogled. I felt physically sick as I read them chatting to each other and my brain raced with what on earth to do. Should I tell him I was reading this? No that would be showing my hand too soon. Then he’d just change his password - so I said nothing. I wanted to give myself time to convince myself that this was innocent.

The following weeks were hell. I read his text messages, I read his emails, I waited till he logged in online and immediately logged into read their chat to each other. One time when I was driving south to visit him I couldn’t go all 5 hours without checking so stopped at a service station, went into buy a cup of tea and sat using their free wi-fi to log in and check.

He was a terrible liar. One time when I was down I found a gift bag under his passenger seat that said Happy Birthday as it had been his birthday the month before and asked him who gave it to him and he became immediately flustered and said it must have been my Aunts from when she visited a few weeks previously. When I asked why my Aunt would have left an empty happy birthday gift bag in his car he reacted like a mad man furiously saying ‘I don’t know, do I, how would I know?’ It was a really strange reaction and his face showed his brain trying frantically to work out an answer. Sadly the one he came up with was weak and nowhere close to convincing me.

He’d been injured so wasn’t playing and was spending all his time in physio and at the gym. He’d had some surgery in the spring and had been hugely down about not playing but he was on the mend and I hoped that he was perhaps short tempered because of this and nothing else.

One time I asked about her, mentioning that I saw he’d become friends with her on Facebook and I asked who she was, he said she was the girl from the gym, I said she was pretty and he said she had a fit body but a face like a pig. This caught me off guard as I didn’t expect him to say something about how unattractive she was facially. Maybe I was wrong about there being anything between them.

One week I wasn’t meant to be going to England to visit him as I had plans in Scotland but my plans in Scotland changed and all the other girls from the club (yes, the WAGs) had asked me to come down to go out with them as a surprise! So that Friday I drove down to surprise him. He wasn’t at the house when I arrived so I drove to the flat ‘we’ were doing up and I rang the bell. He came down to the main front door and the look on his face was a mixture of disappointment and horror that I was there. I said ‘surprise!’ he asked what I was doing there and I said I’d come down to surprise him and he said ‘you shouldn’t have bothered’ I was standing on the doorstep of the flat I was meant to be moving into in a matter of weeks, I had surprised him with a visit and he said I shouldn’t have bothered. He’d have been as well slapping me across the face, it was just as sharp an impact.

He pulled the door shut behind him and walked to his car. I followed on behind and got into my car and followed him back to the house. Driving behind him I could swear he was talking on his hands free phone as he drove. I drove the 5mins to the house wondering why he hadn’t gone back up the stairs to lock the front door of the flat. Unless he’d pulled it shut behind him when he came to answer the door. But why would he lock the door behind him just to answer the main front door. Of course the only reason my brain would offer was that she was in the flat and I’d just ruined whatever plans they had for the night and indeed the weekend.

I tried so many times in those next few weeks to give him the chance to tell me what was wrong. I got more and more paranoid and would lie in bed watching him sleep as silent tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t work out what had changed him other than being injured and depressed about being unable to play. There must be more to it.

Then came the day the team played a game which could lead to a place in the play-offs that would get them into the Premier league. It was a crucial game and relied not only on the result of their match but on the results of the matches of those around them on the league table. The stadium was packed and the atmosphere was electric. We had people all around us that were listening to radios to hear the scores of the other significant games and everyone was beyond excited. I’d never experienced anything like it and I sat in the stand with his Mum & Dad. He wasn’t playing and he wasn’t happy - but that’s football. After nearly 15years playing you’d have thought he’d be used to the low’s and manage not to sulk so much but he wasn’t used to it. He was like a spoilt child not getting his way and it was hugely unattractive.

The game came to a frenzied end that culminated in the team getting through to the play-offs, I was jumping around and hugging strangers in the stands as the fans invaded the pitch, it was like a wave of ecstatic people flooding the pitch and I had never seen anything like it! After the pitch was cleared we were all invited down to the pitch by the manager, it was exciting, press everywhere and deafening applause. The manager gathered the players to do a lap of honour to applaud the fans. The squad set off round the pitch and I realised he was still standing with his Mum and Dad, I told him he better hurry up and join them and he said he wasn’t going. Confused I asked what he was talking about and he said he didn’t feel part of it as he’d been injured for most of the season. I said that he’d played in 8 games at the beginning of the season that had earned the team a dozen points or so which they may not have achieved had he not been there. So what if he’d been injured the rest of the season? The game on that amazing day only mattered by 1 single point so any involvement he had was of course valuable. But he didn’t agree and said he didn’t feel part of it. I then said that whether he felt part of it or not he had to at least see that he owed it to the fans to do the lap of honour to applaud them as they had paid his wages all year despite him sitting on the bench feeling sorry for himself. He just stood on the pitch with his hands in his pockets sulking.

As he then headed off to the press call, I headed back to the car with his Mum and Dad and as I sat there in the driving seat with them in the back I asked them why he was like that and his mum said it was really difficult for him. DIFFICULT? He is doing his dream job, hell he’s doing every little boys dream job. He has a healthy family, he has a great home, a fast car, earns a small fortune every week whether he sets foot on the pitch or not (enough to have £100K in the bank!) and has a totally awesome girlfriend. What the hell is difficult about his life? The fact even his parents couldn’t see it meant he really wouldn’t ever believe anyone else telling him his life was great.

That evening we headed out with the team for a celebratory meal and after good food and many drinks one of the wives of another player asked him when I was moving down. I was sitting at the other end of the table but my ears tuned in immediately as did those of my now close friends. Our conversations slowed while he answered her. He said ‘she will move down when I’m ready as I don’t want to rush into anything and don’t want to be hurt after being so hurt when my marriage broke down before’ I sat my wine glass down on the table as my hand began to shake and my heart sank so low I felt like it had hit the floor. I realised in that moment that he didn’t care for me. He’d lied again as he didn’t think I was listening. I knew he wasn’t hurt when his marriage broke down. His wife had been heartbroken, I still don’t know exactly what went wrong with their relationship but it was common knowledge in our city that it was all his decision and she had been entirely devastated. So the fact that he just made out like he had been hurt was not only a lie but it was a badly constructed excuse for him not being ready for me to move down. I had already told all my family I was moving. My clients all knew I was moving and I’d been winding down the work I was doing for them. I’d worked so hard renovating our new home so that it was just perfect for us and I had thought we had a future. In that moment I knew there was no future.

I chanted my mantra in my head, ‘If it’s not fun, don’t do it’ it was a simple rule but it was an essential one to live by.

My worries about him cheating on me with the girl from the gym were almost insignificant in comparison to the fact that he simply wasn’t a great guy. He was actually a horrible, selfish man who I no longer wanted in my life. I heard the words clearly in my head ‘it’s time to go home’ I stood up from the table and said goodbye to the girls and walked out of the restaurant. As I walked down the street the girls all rushed out after me. I said that was it, I was leaving him for good and the interesting thing was that they all agreed with me. They said he didn’t deserve me and I was doing exactly the right thing. They knew it and I knew it. He swaggered out of the restaurant and followed me back to the house. I couldn’t drive back yet as had had a couple of glasses of wine so I got into bed in one of the spare rooms and he spent an hour or so asking what the hell was wrong with me. Eventually he went to his room and fell asleep while I cried myself into a state of exhaustion and relief. I woke really early and tip-toed around the house packing up all my belongings and piling them at the front door. I realised then that he had double locked the front door and I couldn’t get out. I found a spare back door key that he hadn’t thought to take and as I began moving things to the back door he appeared down the stairs and said he didn’t want me to go, we needed to talk. I asked him to unlock the front door and he refused so I began carrying my first load along the pathways and back lanes of the street out onto the main street and all the way round the block to where my car was parked. He didn’t help. Eventually I was packed and I drove off with him standing on the road looking after me. I wasn’t upset anymore. I’d cried too many tears for him and I was more relieved than anything.

I got back to Scotland and knew I’d done the right thing. I still knew something had been going on though and no matter how little I cared for him I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I was just so sure that my instincts had been right.

I logged into his email and read an email from her saying she’d forgotten the code words they’d agreed on. I smiled as I realised how pathetic their subterfuge and attempts to conceal their affair had been. I was to glad to know my instincts were good.

A while later one of my good friends said it was now common knowledge that he was seeing the girl from the gym and that none of the girls were interested in befriending her. She was spending her time at the apartment I’d renovated and my friend who lives a couple of doors away was being quite the opposite of nice to her no matter how hard she tried to make friends.

I then heard that the club manager had banned him from bringing her to the Christmas party as he was furious that a girl from the clubs official gym had begun a relationship with a player who had been in a happy relationship. So he didn’t go to the event either. Was nice to hear that his boss had thought we were happy, even if he hadn’t.

All the girls I was still friends with hated her as it was now clear I’d been right all along. I was still good friends with a few of the girls and in fact I went back to visit them all. One time I stayed with one of the couples I was friends with, the guy was the goal keeper and he had apparently said to the goalkeeper in the changing room that day that he’d heard I was back in town to see the girls and said he wondered where I was staying. I wish I’d seen his face when the goalkeeper said ‘yeah, she’s back in town and she’d staying at my house for the weekend!’

When we were together I had helped him get his house in Scotland rented out and had moved some furniture out if it for him and had paid to put it into storage. When we split I'd said if he wanted it back to take it immediately but if he didn’t then I'd keep it and continue paying the storage. After 6months of storage he got in touch to ask for it back so I sent him the bill for the storage and was so furious with him for having the cheek to ask for a couple of cheap sofas back that I also detailed the cost of 40 return trips at £100 petrol per trip = £4,000. The 10+hours per fortnight spent driving at my hourly rate. Interior design consultancy fee's for my work on the apartment he knew I'd never move into, the commission for sourcing him a tenant and managing the move at a usual estate agency rate and a number of other small costs. The total was over £20,000. I wanted to prove the point that I had committed my all to being with him and he never gave me the love I deserved or any half share of the money I spent to be with him since he could hardly ever come to Scotland as he rarely got two consecutive days off. He'd once given me £500 and paid for a cheap holiday booked about 48hrs in advance of us going. Really no comparison to what I spent and ironic since he earned such a vast amount and I reduced my hours to part time to allow me to travel back and forth. More fool me. Of course he told me to keep the sofa's. Which I didnt really want so I gave them to my brother. I didnt want a penny of his money but I wanted him to know I thought he was tight with his cash and entirely selfish. I think he got the idea!

A year or so later he moved back to Scotland to play for a different team and she moved with him. I hear they are still together. He tries to contact my friends from time to time and they laugh it off now. He did have a fabulous life when he had all my friends and family in his life. I hope she is worth it. If he still tries to keep in touch with my friends then maybe something is still missing from his life.

I hear he’s injured and out of action again and all I can say to her is ‘Thank You’. From the bottom of my heart - Thank You. Had you not pursued my boyfriend I could have been stuck with the most negative and selfish man I have ever met. I didn’t see it for a long time but she helped to push things to a head and I got out at the right time. He was tight with money, crap in bed and never ever put me first. He will be hugely depressed when his age or injury finally puts an end to his football career and she will be left with a ‘has been’ who was never that great in the first place. What a miserable life that will become.

I’m free as a bird now, I will never settle for second best like I nearly did with him and gliding and soaring like a bird across the hills this week I was reminded how lucky I am to be in charge of my own destiny. I have made many choices in my life, some worked out well, some not so much but I have learned so much I could never wish to change a thing. I have no ill feeling towards you. I’m free and happy. You have nothing I wish I had.

You waltz around thinking you're the cat that got the cream. Little do you know it's sour cream.

Good luck Nicola. I really mean that, good luck x

The video of my take off and the view from the sky!

The Dating Game - Online

2011-10-03T11:18:00.010+01:00

I decided to set up an online dating profile to see if I could find a gorgeous, funny, sexy man. Last night, after only 6 weeks I officially gave up, threw in the towel and called it a day.

I thought I’d write a rather thorough profile. Perhaps this was my downfall. As you know, I love a list so I wrote my profile in list format, as follows;

Likes:

•             Lists! (can you tell)
•             Ambitious people who believe the world is their oyster
•             Shellfish and seafood in general
•             Exercise (we have a love-hate relationship)
•             Good red or cold crisp white with chacuterie
•             Yorkshire puddings by the dozen with a full roast dinner
•             Bargains at the shops - I am the queen of bargains
•             Shabby chic furniture - either pre-prepared or just shabby so I can make it chic!
•             Chocolate that has been in the freezer (or at least the fridge!)
•             Driving fast with the roof down and music up - singing along like no-one is watching
•             A good book in front of a coal fire - ideally when it's snowing outside
•             Steak Tartare - tried it for the first time at my 30th and I LOVE it!
•             People who are bi-lingual (It’s on my 'to do' list)
•             Spread sheets
•             Quirkiness
•             Having my back and neck tickled
•             People who get my sometimes sarcastic sense of humour and are funny back
•             Multi-coloured flowers
•             Walking on the sunny side of the road
•             Ornamental Stag's heads
•             Sunbathing with a book and a drink full of ice-cubes
•             Going home to Scotland and finding nothing has changed
•             Laughing till you cry
•             Huge family parties
•             Southern Irish accents
•             Painting people with umbrellas as I can’t paint faces!
•             Having frogs in my garden
•             People who can play the guitar and sing (well)
•             Talking for hours about absolutely nothing
•             Spending time with friends and family
•             Having a view of water be it lake, river or sea
•             Taking photographs
•             The idea of living in the countryside one day in a cottage with a stream running through the garden (ok I’ll stop now as becoming wistful)

Dislikes:
•             People who title their messages just 'Hi'
•             Married Men (even if you're in an open marriage - I know I'm soooo old-fashioned)
•             Selfish people
•             Overly-religious people
•             Exercise (we have a love-hate relationship)
•             People who take more than 30mins to get ready
•             People that don't 'move right inside the carriages'
•             People who are always late to meet up
•             Carnations
•             Drugs
•             Very strong colloquial accents
•             People who moan about their lives, if you don’t like it, change it.
•             People who never give things ago, if you don’t try you'll never know!
•             Bad teeth, I can’t stand bad teeth, sorry!
•             People who call me Hun - in Scotland Huns are Rangers Fans and I'm not one
•             People who are happy to live on benefits
•             Smoking, can't stand it so if you do then I'm not into you
•             Hairy shoulders
•             The fact that the handrail on the tube escalator sometimes moves slower than the stairs do. It's really, really annoying to have your hand on the handrail and without moving it, it gets further and further away from you. I know you'll try it now!
•             People who stick their tongues out in photo's
•             People who change plans at the last minute affecting everyone else’s plans
•             Tattoo sleeves & tattoos in general unless you're hot enough to get away with it
•             Spelling mistakes and bad grammar (they're, there and their are not the same)
•             Text Speak – sorry, txt spk - it's not for email, ever! And if I give you my number (which statistically speaking is unlikely on a ratio of 'times asked for' Vs 'times given') I don't do texts that way either.
•             Voicemail, I never listen to it and often don’t read emails so don’t be offended if you don’t hear from me, it's just me and I’ve probably not read it yet!
•             People who send msgs on dating sites with sh*t loads of questions including, would you prefer to be a ninja with one arm or have 12 guinea pigs follow you around for the rest of your life. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Don't contact me if you are one of those men, I have neither the time nor the inclination to respond to such messages.

So once I was happy with my lists I sat back and waited. Within seconds the messages began flowing into my inbox. I have had hundreds of messages some have been from very nice guys but there have been a few crackers…

MrT*****r
“your an umpalumpa. your so short. its lovely”

Well where do I begin with that one? Inability to spell ‘you’re’ along with what I can only label a genuine insult all in one badly-punctuated sentence. Wait till I grab my coat MrT you’ve pulled.

P*****j
“If you was a burger you'd be a mcgorgeous ;) haha xx”

I have a complete hatred for the use of ‘was’ in such an incorrect manner and cannot believe any man thought this was a good line to use on his first communication despite its grease-coated complimentary nature.

D***********r

“Tried to come up with something funny and witty but then realised im not that funny and have no wit... ha ha”

How could I resist such a great intro?

L****1

“Hi missblonde!
I'm afraid I have a confession to make... I love you.
At least I think I do...”

Loser

I*****9
“Marry me?? “

Thanks but no thanks, weirdly.

J***8

“Hi hun,lovely pics..fancy a chat sometime?
Im gay and just looking for friends
xx”

Am I on the wrong site?

B*****k

“I've wasted 2 minutes of my life reading your f??king profile with all your likes and dislikes. That makes you on your way to being a murderer. Nevertheless you are most definitely as hot as they come.”

Aw, romance is NOT dead after all.

H*********5

“Before you mention that my profile says I’m married I will tell you that my wife knows about this as I have a very high sex drive and she understands that I need to meet other woman to satisfy my needs. I’d love to meet up with you.”

Your poor, poor, stupid wife. You arrogant w*nker.

G*****s

“I know you’re not looking for a girl but wanted to tell you I think you’re really pretty and if you were interested in meeting a girl then to get in touch x!"

Well, you’ve got me thinking to be honest! Haha!

M******n
Hey I can do 46 press-ups care to chat?

Is it just me or is 46 press-ups not that much to boast about?

H************3

“So in a bid to get your attention and ask a question that i hope is slightly different to all the others that you have received.....would you rather have a left arm that was 5ft long, or be followed around by 18 chickens for the rest of your life? The chickens are indestructable BUT will lay eggs. Discuss”

Eh… let’s not discuss. What the hell!?

And then came along a man who seems to love lists as much as I do… (don’t feel obliged to read every part of the list, it’s really not worth it)

T******m

Hi MissBlonde who likes lists and spread sheets (obviously),

I've never seen you before so welcome on POF. Hope you'll like the site and you'll manage to survive through the flow of e-mails you get ;-)
Mark my words; it will start being mental soon.

So before your mailbox explode under the "Hi how are you?", today, to provide a bit of entertainment, I give you the craziest things to do in an elevator…I found this last week.
Thought it was brilliant LOL Think about it the next time you’re in one ;-)
---------------------------------------------------------------- CRAZIEST THINGS TO DO IN AN ELEVATOR:

1) When there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder and then pretend it wasn't you.
2) Push the buttons and pretend they give you a shock. Smile, and go back for more.
3) Ask if you can push the buttons for other people, but push the wrong ones.
4) Call the Psychic Hotline from your cell phone and ask if they know what floor you're on.
5) Hold the doors open and say you're waiting for your friend. After awhile, let the doors close and say, "Hi Greg. How's your day been?"
6) Drop a pen and wait until someone reaches to help pick it up, then scream, "That's mine!"
7) Bring a camera and take pictures of everyone in the elevator.
8) Move your desk in to the elevator and whenever someone gets on, ask if they have an appointment.
9) Lay down a Twister mat and ask people if they'd like to play.
10) Leave a box in the corner, and when someone gets on ask them if they hear something ticking.
11) Pretend you are a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exit with the passengers.
12) Ask, "Did you feel that?"
13) Stand really close to someone, sniffing them occasionally.
14) When the doors close, announce to the others, "It's okay. Don't panic, they open up again."
15) Swat at flies that don't exist.
16) Tell people that you can see their aura.
17) Call out, "Group hug!" then enforce it.
18) Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering "Shut up, all of you, just shut up!"
19) Crack open your briefcase or purse, and while peering inside, ask, "Got enough air in there?"
20) Stand silently and motionless in the corner, facing the wall, without getting off.
21) Stare at another passenger for a while, then announce in horror, "You're one of THEM!" and back away slowly. 22) Wear a puppet on your hand and use it to talk to the other passengers.
23) Listen to the elevator walls with your stethoscope.
24) Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
25) Grinning, stare at another passenger for a while, and then announce, "I have new socks on."
26) Draw a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers, "This is my personal space." ----------------------------------------------------------------
I hope all of these made you smile…and oh and let me start a fun conversation...
Would you rather be a pirate or a dinosaur? And why?
Looking forward to read your essay on the topic: entertain me ;-)
Have a good evening young lady,
xx

And when I didn’t respond to that message within 2 days, because it was too dull an email to warrant me taking the time to respond as I do have a bloody life! He emailed me again!

T******m

Hi Blondie Your profile is a bit empty, you don’t seem like much of a talker...but hey, I’m still sending a message to see what happens.
Anyway, how is your mailbox? Crawling under messages?
It will take you all night long to read them and you'll be tired for work tomorrow?

Well, good news then: here I come to save you!
Tonight I give you the 12 best excuses for falling asleep at your desk; you’ll find them very useful tomorrow morning.
----------------------------------------------------------------
12 BEST EXCUSES FOR FALLING ASLEEP AT YOUR DESK:

1) They told me at the blood bank that this might happen.
2) This is just a 15 minute power nap like they raved about in the last time-management course you sent me to.
3) Whew! Guess I left the top off of the Liquid Paper.
4) I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm.
5) This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people.
6) I was testing the keyboard for drool resistance.
7) I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work-related stress. Are you discriminating against people who practice yoga? 8) Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem.
9) The coffee machine is broken...
10) Someone must have put decaf in the wrong pot.
11) I wasn't sleeping. I was trying to pick up a contact lens without my hands.
12) Amen
----------------------------------------------------------------
Personally, I think number 2 is a killer one. Number 8 works pretty well as well. But I leave it to you; you can even mix and match and create your own combinations!

Aww…I sent you a first e-mail once and you didn’t reply to my awesome question…no-no, I didn’t ask how you are; you’re fine…and you’ve already been asked 30 times today! I know; I get the same e-mails from uninteresting 45+ years old women! It’s seriously getting on my nerves. Anyway, that was my awesome question:

Would you rather be a pirate or a dinosaur? And why?
Come on…entertain me! Show me how fun, interesting and crazy you can be
I’m looking forward to your funny answer :-D
xx
PS: I’m just trying to entertain and know you a bit. In case, you don’t want me to write to you anymore; please click "block user" under this e-mail, on the right. Thanks.

Forget clicking ‘block user’ instead I clicked ‘delete my account’

This was fun boys but it’s not for me, I’m going back to the old fashioned way!

Forget Me Not

2011-09-20T17:11:00.006+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTLlkcnDl7k

Forget Me Not, Lucie Silvas

Forget me not, I ask of you
Wherever your life takes you to
And if we never meet again
Think of me every now and then

We had just one day to recall
Now all I want is something more
Than just a fading memory
Left wondering what could have been.

Isn't it a shame, that when timing's all wrong
You're doing what you never meant to,
There's always something that prevents you.
Well I believe in fate, it had to happen this way
But it always leaves me wondering whether...
In another life we'd be together.
We should feel lucky we can say... we've always got yesterday

And as I leave it all behind
You're still emblazoned in my mind
And for that very special day
Nobody loved me in that way

Forget me not, I ask of you
Wherever your life takes you to
And if we never meet again
Think of me every now and then

They say you should have no regrets. I am inclined to agree and yet I feel that there are things in my life which I am so very sorry about.

I knew a truly wonderful French man. He was by far the most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on. We would talk for hours and his voice would drive me wild with desire. (Even if he were only telling me a recipe for onion soup, his accent was... so French!)

We would go dancing and he would insist I wore my red shoes, as they were the perfect ones, in his opinion. I would wear swirly dresses so that when we danced we would look like art. People would stop to watch us as we danced and he would smile at me and laugh as he spun me effortlessly around the dance floor, before pulling me firmly against him, looking so deeply into my eyes that I was sure he was seeing my soul.

We had not even kissed but that was the thrill of it. The anticipation was like a feast. We wanted to enjoy every moment and we knew that once the first bite had been taken then it would inevitably come to an end all too soon. We just enjoyed the moment as we couldn’t help but know there was something wonderful between us. Something they write books and songs about.

He had to go abroad with work for a few months so I bought him a tiny silver ladybird token. With it came a card that read "In countless cultures across the world, if a ladybird lands on you, you will be blessed with good luck. This handmade silver token enables you to carry that luck with you wherever you go - and always remember the person who gave it to you"

I wrapped it and labeled it with a note of the words to a lovely song by Lucie Silvas

“Forget me not, I ask of you
Wherever your life takes you to
And if we never meet again
Think of me every now and then”

When he was abroad with work he would write me long emails and texts in French, which due to my terrible French would leave me frustrated for hours while I translated them.

He would call me from some far off place in the world and ask me to look at the moon at a time when we both could see it. He would whisper in French how much he needed and wanted me and we would promise each other, as we drifted to sleep on different continents, that we would dream the same dream that night. In the dream we were together on a moonlit hill dancing into the early hours till either passion or exhaustion would finish us. I slept happy and I think he did too.

Then one late December day, a friend called to tell me there had been an accident. A terrible accident and he had died. I remember sitting in silence trying to understand. I closed my eyes and wished he would call me to reassure me that this was a terrible misunderstanding. I was at a loss. My beautiful French frog would never again tell me how much he missed my petit nez. I was devastated. As tears streamed down my cheeks I realised that just like the song we would never meet again. Our dreams for the future were now just my own thoughts and memories. I put my red dancing shoes into my cupboard never to be worn again.

I should have grieved endlessly, thrown myself on his grave and worn black for the rest of time... but alas I was not to be afforded this luxury, I would not even attend his funeral.

For the grief was not mine to carry, it was his wife’s.

I will miss him always. I am sorry.

Don't Talk To Me (How To Ruin Someone's Day - Example #1)

2011-09-12T15:43:00.009+01:00

I’m on the tube, happily minding my own business. I have squeezed into the third sardine can that pulled into the North bound Northern Line platform at Clapham Common station. Sometimes I've waited for more than ten trains to go past without being able to squeeze on. I actually had a little cry on the platform that particular day when the eleventh tube pulled in - it didn’t make any difference – don’t bother trying it, not a damn soul cares. I’m happily reading my Stylist magazine before my mind wonders off on what I need to do this week as I have a huge ‘To do’ list. I write lists for absolutely everything and I’m trying to prioritise the things I must do. I am renowned for making lists and today is no different:

1. Arrange flights to Scotland to empty the house before renting it out

2.     Arrange van hire to drive things down to London
3.     Arrange flights for my best friends 30^th birthday weekend
4.     Arrange flights for Christmas trip home
5.     Look into whether I have enough holidays left to do all this
6.     Strip and repaint some wooden furniture at home one night this week
7.     Find the tweed jacket I need more than anything else but which seems to have sold out in the shops
8.     Call about 10 people I’ve not been in touch with for far too long
9.     Wrap presents for my niece & nephews who I’m visiting this weekend
10. Pick up train tickets for Friday
11. Argue with the guy at the shoe repair shop to get my shoes back despite having lost the ticket
12. Em… what else…

“Excuse me…” I barely noticed that she had spoken.

I tend to assume these days that people aren’t talking to me. On the tube people are rarely talking to you. “Excuse me… em Excuse me” she says again, I glance up at this persistent woman’s voice and find she is looking at me, I glance around and conclude that she is also talking to me. She is going to ask where my dress is from, I smile. People always stop to ask me where my clothes or accessories are from. I think I have an approachable face because people just talk to me. Complete strangers just talk to me, I’m especially good at attracting the weirdo’s.

I’m looking at the woman who has spoken to me and in my head I’m wondering… when she asks me where my dress is from, since she is looking at it so closely, if I’ll tell her the burgundy smock dress is from the shop we affectionately refer to as Primani. (I say affectionately as I do actually love it, though the clothes do remind me that children are no good at stitching, especially buttons) For a split second I wonder if my dress might be tucked into my underwear. This has happened on too many occasions for my liking so I quickly run my hand round myself to check as she says “I wondered if you wanted a seat, are you pregnant?”

AM I WHAT?

I look at her in silence, I can’t believe she’s just said it out loud. She is aware that my pupils are focusing in on her like a bird of prey in the moment it spots a tasty morsel scampering through the undergrowth. I can see her brain working to calculate the likelihood of her having made a grave error of judgement. How long had she wondered whether to ask? Did she ponder the outcome of a negative response or did she just say it without thinking. I immediately conclude that she is one of only three things.

1. A genuinely good person who is trying to do a good deed and failing
2. Blind (though she lacks stick or dog so I’m not going to consider that a serious option)
3. A Bitch who takes secret pleasure in offending poor unsuspecting people like me

As I’m looking at her I cannot help but think she is number 3. She is smiling but it’s now changed into an uncertain smile. She then says, “sorry I don’t mean to offend you” (I’m not offended I’m just imagining whipping a huge frying pan out of my back pocket and whacking you in the face with it but my expression must give this away) “…it’s maybe just the way your dress is sitting but I wondered if you were pregnant and wanted my seat?”

The guy next to me looks me up and down and sniggers. See - he can see I’m not with child. I’m with crispy aromatic duck and large glasses of white wine followed by vanilla slices more often than government guidelines might recommend but I’m not with child! I can assure you if I was I’d be one of the clever ones who wear one of those ‘baby on board’ underground badges. I have considered getting myself a badge just to get a seat but it would be weird if I bumped into someone I knew, especially my Boss. I’d have to pretend I thought it said ‘babe on board’ or something and at this point I obviously don’t look like a babe on board. I look like a pregnant woman in need of a seat.

I focus my thoughts and calmly say “No, are you?” She, looks away, apologises and goes rather red. Despite wishing to stare at her in disgust for the remainder of the journey I avert my eyes to read my magazine while breathing in as much as possible to hold in my tummy. I’m also wondering how much I actually weigh and trying to calculate how long I could go without eating. I estimate about an hour as I begin a new list...

1. Find trainers
2. Think about joining a gym
3. Eat less yorkshire puddings
Slim down and tone up will be my new aim. I do not relish the thought. Oh now I’m thinking about relish…. on a burger… mmm…

In retrospect I realise that the biggest mistake in this whole situation was made by me. I should have just taken the damn seat when she offered it. Note to self – will not make that mistake again.

Just Shoot Me

2011-09-04T00:54:00.003+01:00

I was just seventeen but If you see me acting this way again please... just shoot me.

I deserve to only have daughters who stay teenagers for the rest of their lives just to make my life a misery.

At 16, I was getting good at lying to my parents in order to get out and go into bars and nightclubs in town. My friends were all doing the same thing, we’d all tell our parents we were at the others house that night and as our parents didn’t know each other well enough we got away with it. Of course we couldn’t turn up at any of our houses after town so we had built a network of ‘cool people’ they weren’t particularly nice people, but cool in our eyes because they had a flat!

I remember one night meeting some guys in the bar of the hotel where I worked and them asking if my friends and I were going out that night, I said yes, we were going to a bar in town and did they want to join us, they said that would be great. One of them knew us from the hotel and asked if my friend and I had a flat together, I laughed and said I was only just turning 17 and still lived with my parents. They both looked at each other and laughed. One said ‘I think you may have just ruined your own night out…’ seems the other guy was the head doorman at the bar I’d just mentioned and of course you have to be 18 to get in. My face fell and he smiled and said it was ok, he wouldn’t say anything and in fact did my friend and I want him to pick us up on his way into work… I agreed with enthusiasm.

That night my Mum and Dad were on the front lawn watering the hanging baskets and the doorman arrived is his huge convertible yellow car. My father stomped up the stairs to my room where my friend and I were frantically getting ready and looked at me in disgust… “There’s a gorilla at the door, I assume it’s for you” he said as he thumped back down the stairs. We didn’t care; we were getting into the bar without having to go through the rigmarole of pretending to get your ID out of your bag when you had none. In fact we were never going to have to do that again and with a whole year to go before we were 18 this was fabulous news! Life was good.

In the summer before I started my final year at school I met a boy. Well to be fair he was nearly 6 years older than my 17 years and so at almost 23, he was a man. He was handsome, an engineer AND he drove a BMW. He asked me out for lunch one day and then dinner that same night. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve so I lied to them. We got on really well and he was interesting. All the boys at school were still on bikes and not yet passed their driving tests so being picked up from school in a BMW was even cooler than any of my friends could imagine. Oh and to top it all off he had a flat in the very centre of town. There was no way he could be any cooler. Some of my friends were jealous. Some of my friends looked worried. Looking back now I can see which ones I should have listened to.

I suddenly felt older than I was but I couldn’t help it. While my friends were sitting in their houses on a school night doing homework and watching ‘Friends’, I was being taken out for champagne and oysters in the fanciest restaurants in the city. He was taking me on shopping trips and buying me clothes and jewellery. He wanted to take me away for a weekend and I told my parents I was going. They said no.

What…? I wasn’t having that. I was 17 (and a half) and I had been old enough to leave home and get married for 18 months now (you can marry at 16 in Scotland) so there was no way they could stop me going away for one weekend with my boyfriend. They begged to differ and the battle commenced.

I’d been seeing him for 3 months but I loved him. (Bearing in mind that this was as good as I thought life could get so I loved him as much as my 17year old self could love someone) The arguments at home got worse and worse and more and more frequent. I was frustrated. I was furious. I was a teenager full of hormonal lack of reasoning and I was fast reaching the point of no return.

Then one day as we were just chilling at his flat he said he wanted me to marry him. Aaaahhhhhhhh, O.M.G. I was shocked, excited, over the moon. (Of course a dozen years down the line, I’d have said ‘ask me again when you’ve made more of an effort to make this the most romantic moment of my life’ but back then… ) I jumped for joy and said ‘yes’.

We went to the best jeweller in town and he bought me a ring. I was 17 and had a two grand ring on my finger. I’d done well. I was pleased with myself. Weirdly my parents didn’t think so. They hit the roof. My mum begged me to wait till I was finished school, begged me to wait till we’d been together longer, begged me to just be her little girl for a little while longer. I didn’t want to. I said ‘No’ she said she wouldn’t let us be engaged so soon. I said ‘Fine, if they didn’t like it, tough’

We’d been together for 3 months and I packed a bag and moved into his flat. The aftermath was messy, my parents were devastated, and my brother wanted my old room. I had a flat in town and now I was one of the cool people. Oh yes, life was good.

My parents didn’t speak to me for 2 years. I was having ball. Their hearts were broken. It’s not that I didn’t care, I simply couldn’t see how much I was hurting them. We sorted things out in the end and I went on to marry him 4 years to the day from our very first date. But the rest is another story altogether.

Looking back I can see how cruel it was to just up and leave with no discussion, no compromise. They were my parents and they deserved so much more from me. They forgave me but to be truthful I'm not sure I can forgive myself.

I ought to water it down!

2011-08-27T22:57:00.002+01:00

I regularly tell myself prior to a night out to remember to drink water in between drinks. To be honest I don't think I've EVER remembered to do this.

I have some mad friends and of course in Scotland we're renowned for our drinking ability, my ability to drink is not in question... it's my ability to find my way home that I'm worrying about especially since moving to London. I should have realised this a while ago but I've almost always ended up waking up safe and sound in my own bed (phew!) …almost always.

Apart from falling asleep on the last tube and waking up a couple of times in Morden, which is NOT where I live, I've managed to get home ok in London. I sometimes find myself wandering across Trafalgar Square stopping at the bus stops and trying to work out which bus will take me somewhere near home but if I'm honest I still find it magical being in London at night, all lit up and still bustling.

A long time ago, many years back I was out one night with friends, we were in Amadeus in Aberdeen - oh yes, and back in the day it was THEE place to go, now it's a derelict building but that's not relevant to this story. It was my turn to buy a round of drinks and we decided to get a shot. The girls said they would have Sambuca, so off I went to the bar.

Upon reaching the bar and fighting my way through the crowd, 10 people deep. I waved over a girl from my Uni course who served me straight away, good news! But she said that bar didn’t have any Sambuca left, bad news.

I could see across the heads of people to the other bars in the club and the queues were as bad if not worse at the other bars and I had no friend on the other bars to serve me first, so she suggested tequila instead. Ok, tequila it is, I order 4. She brings me 4 doubles for the price of the 4 singles. More good news I hear you say... I thought so too... at the time.

I make my way back through the crowd to the girls with the drinks only to be met with shaking heads and them insisting they 'don't do tequila' so they say they’re happy to queue again at another bar. Fair enough. Waste not want not. Bottoms up. Down the hatch. Good night. (You did add up correctly that that was 4 double tequila’s in one go… )

From the moment I said 'oh what the hell I'll drink them' I have a memory blank. The next thing I know I'm waking up in a room I do not recognise. I'm in a bed that is not mine, in a T-shirt that doesn't belong to me.

I can barely lift my head from the pillow and cannot work out where I am. I see a glass of water on the bedside table and a basin laid next to the bed (just in case) I think I fell back asleep, that's how worried I was!. Sometime later I wake again - I stumble, crawl and drag myself across the room to the window. The sunlight is stabbing my brain. As I cross the room I see my clothes are neatly folded in a corner and the confusion continues. I look out the window and the scene seems somewhat familiar yet different somehow. I lie down on the floor next to the window to try to work it out while I'm shivering and confused. I lie there for a while. The silence is continually drowned out by the bass drum in my head trying to punch my eyeballs out from inside my skull. I wonder how I can be in so much pain yet still be alive. Maybe I'm not.

In a small moment of clarity it dawns on me that the garden I can see from the window is in fact my own garden, but from above. I must be floating. Either that or I really am dead and surely if I was dead my head wouldn't hurt this much. I lie there for a long time pondering this with my head in my hands. Then at last I smile as I register that I must be in the apartment upstairs from my own. The apartment owned by a very nice woman, a very nice, lesbian woman to be precise.

So I’ve woken up in the bed of my lesbian neighbour.

I manage to find my way to the bathroom, crawling most of the way, which interestingly is in a different location to my apartment downstairs! So that was confusing me further. I haul myself up to the basin and stare at myself in the mirror. My mascara is all down my face, I have mud on my hands and I'm wearing one of my neighbours T-shirts. I have no memory of anything, least of all getting changed! I check underneath the T-shirt. Nope not a stitch. This is worrying.

I wash my face, lean my head down and cup my hands under the cold running tap and drink as much water as I can before heading back through to the bedroom. There is a note next to the bed which I’d not yet seen saying she’s had to go to work but to help myself to anything I need and use the phone if I need to get a key from someone. I realise then that I don’t have my bag at all so no phone, keys, purse or anything.

I sit there wondering how I came to be there but can remember absolutely nothing! I called my Mum to get a key and spent the rest of the day in my flat wondering what on earth had happened. That night I was on the phone to my friend trying to piece together the events when the doorbell rang. I peeked through the blinds and didn’t recognise the man. I looked again and saw he was holding my handbag!! So I sheepishly went to the door and found him smiling at me. He asked if I was feeling rough and held up the bag for me! Turns out he was the taxi driver who had brought me home and when he went to get back in his taxi for tonight’s shift he found my bag under the seat! What an absolutely lovely man! He filled me in on the journey home and I thanked him for getting me home, paid him what was in the purse in the bag which was more than the journey had been and he headed back to his car!

So the only gaps I hadn't filled in were the events after getting out of the taxi. I could have asked my neighbour but after sneaking up the stairs and leaving a huge box of chocolates and a thank you card I avoided her for ever more!

You'd have thought it would have encouraged me to drink less. But it didn’t. After all in Scotland it's considered by many to be a national past-time!

I don't want the world to see me, cause I don't think that they'd understand...

2011-08-23T17:30:00.040+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmsClQ1H0ME

And I don't want the world to see me,
Cause I don't think that they'd understand,
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming,
Or the moments of truth in your lies,
When everything feels like the movies,
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive.

And I don't want the world to see me,
Cause I don't think that they'd understand,
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

^ GooGoo Dolls – I don’t want the world to see me.

This is a song I absolutely adore and it sums up how I feel today.

I feel like I’m taking a risk by revealing too much of my emotional self but I have nothing to hide. I am who I am. If you never know me that’s ok and if you do know me then you know I have no issues with telling people about my life.

I have always been an extrovert and happy to be the center of attention. As a child my family would have lots of parties and I was always expected to stand up and perform, this began with ‘twinkle twinkle’ or ‘I’m a little teapot’ style nursery rhymes and developed into me fully choreographing entire productions in our garden with travelling rugs thrown over the washing line as stage curtains and garden tables as the stage. My brother and I did once put on a tap dancing show on our neighbours corrugated metal garage roof until the neighbours put a stop to that. The acoustics were great so that was a shame.

Most Saturday nights were a party in our house, mainly because our house was suited to having lots of guests. It wasn’t a mansion or anything but my parents worked incredibly hard to provide a fabulous home ensuring a magical childhood for my brother and me.

My family are very musical so we had one room dedicated to the instruments of the house, the piano, various amplifiers and microphones, about a dozen guitars, drums, percussion of all shapes and sizes and a tambourine for me as I’m the one who has no musical ability what-so-ever. As technology progressed so did our parties and we later bought a full PA system and mixing desk to handle the music at the house, it’s no surprise that our neighbours either love us for throwing fabulous parties they can easily stumble home from or hate us because they have no sense of humour or fun and are generally miserable people.

So coming from a family that encouraged me as a child, to get up on stage to speak in front of a crowd or perform some ditty at any given opportunity, no-one should be surprised that, as an adult I still have an urge to present myself to the world. This blog seems like as good a place as any to do that.

Sometimes I do feel as if "I don't want the world to see me" but then again where would be the fun in that....

The Windscreen (Blondeness - Example #1)

2011-08-21T23:31:00.008+01:00

It’s an icy cold day and I’m excited as I pack up the car with the required portion of my shoe collection, items which I’ll need for the weekend, a few bags of gifts for the kids and some flowers and wine for my two great friends. I’m off to my favourite leafy and affluent suburb of Glasgow for the weekend.

This couple have been two of my closest friends since 2002. How we met is another story altogether but I am part of their family and they are part of mine.

They now have three children aged 7, 4 & 2 and I am their mad Auntie! They are one of the best and most important aspects of my life and I love them all dearly.

I often head to theirs for a weekend of late nights of good food (in fact amazing food, these people can cook!!) good wine and so many laughs, followed by early mornings (5am… is apparently not the middle of the night you know…) with the kids playing, baking, cuddling, dancing, singing, painting and whatever else is on the schedule for the weekend!

The drive from my old house was 2.5hrs, though this is depending on traffic, as Michael McIntyre said, you really shouldn’t travel on a Friday. Friday’s are generally worse as I might not leave Aberdeen till the afternoon then hit early rush hour in Dundee, mid rush hour around Perth and Stirling and the late part of the rush hour trying to get through Glasgow, over the Kingston Bridge and out to their lovely little town. I can’t put a figure on how many times I’ve driven this road to see them, if I have gone 10 times a year then it must be 90 times but I’ve certainly gone more often.

The car is packed, the iPod and iTrip are in the car, I’ve brought a bottle of juice so I don’t need to stop (once on the road I just want to get there!) I filled up with fuel earlier that day and a full tank will get me to theirs and back again so I think I’m organised.

I get my seatbelt back off and run back into the house no more than 3 times for my camera, then again for the wine which I left next to the front door so I wouldn’t forget it and a final time to check I locked the back door which, now I think about it I never opened, so my panic was uncalled for but better to have checked!
This compulsion to go back and check things is genetic I believe. As a child we’d spend weekends and school holidays visiting our family in Dunfermline where we had lived till I was 6. We would get as far as Portlethen (10 mins south) or on a bad day Stonehaven (15 mins south) when my Mum would look to my Dad and say… “eh… we might need to go back…” and my Dad would roll his eyes and ask what she’d forgotten this time. We’d about turn and head back to the house normally to check that my Mum had turned off her curling tongs or the iron. And as my Mum got out of the car back at the house, I would sheepishly ask her to also check that the hamster cage was closed properly… I’d been worrying about it since we’d turned off the bottom of the road but my Dad wouldn’t have turned back for my hamster, my Mum on the other hand was the love of his life and if she wanted to go back, so be it.

So I think I have everything, I sit in the car and mentally run through my list, though obviously I’ve written a physical list too with each day clearly listed as Friday (travelling), Saturday Day, Saturday Night, Sunday Day etc detailing every outfit from underwear to the matching accessories. If I’m really clever I can take only one pair of jeans and wear different coloured items with it each day but to be honest that’s not any fun and what’s a few extra bags of clothes in the back of my mini, which doesn’t have a boot big enough to hold my handbag, never mind a weekend away bag. Under these daily outfit lists there is an extra list beneath with items I need in general such as pyjamas, camera, camera charger, phone charger, book and hairbrush. (…don’t worry I don’t forget my toothbrush, it’s on the toiletries list)

I have everything I’m sure of it. I agree with myself not to worry about it if I don’t have everything and haven’t thought of all scenarios, I mean what’s the worst that can happen…?

Just before passing my favourite tree almost an hour south, I’ll tell you about that another time, the salt from the road had made my windscreen so cloudy I could barely see, I push the windscreen wash button a few more times but it seems I’ve used all of it. I push on and peer through the windscreen but it’s like peering through milk and not even skimmed milk. More like full fat milk.

As my favourite tree approaches (I know this as I can still see out of my side windows) I decide I must pull into the next lay-by. I get out the car and look at the screen which is white. I go the boot and find a fabulous collection of umbrellas, two neatly folded travelling rugs, 3 folders of business cards from networking events, a pair of shoes I’d forgotten I’d ever owned (so this felt like my lucky day) and 3 blank notepads (you never know when you’ll need a list)

I am freezing so get back in the car and wonder what to do. I’m rather stuck. Then it occurs to me that I’ve brought liquids with me after all, oh yay! All is not lost!
I look in the bag and see the bottle of Chateau Neuf De Pap (£19) and a bottle of lemon Fanta (79p) so I unscrew the lid of the Fanta, reach down to pop the bonnet and get out of the car. The traffic is whizzing by me and I smile as I pour my lemon Fanta into the windscreen wash part of the engine and replace the cap, slam the bonnet shut and get back into my nice warm car.

(If any of you are cringing yet then obviously you have more sense than me)

I push the button and a squirt hits the windscreen and the wipers wipe it clean. Ah... I can see perfectly, I set off again.

Only moments later the windscreen, as expected starts to get cloudy again (why the hell does this even happen? Anyone that can explain – please do!) So I press the button again and another squirt hits the screen. The wipers wipe well initially back and forth but only once when they then stutter and jump across the screen leaving the windscreen a stripy mess of white.

Hmmmm… I press the button again. Nothing. No little squirt. No movement from the wipers. I’m driving along through the milky screen again with a rather confused look on my face. I turn down my speakers so I can think clearly, this is not the time to be singing my heart out on the motorway, this needs my attention.
I am now almost at Dundee and decide to carry on, get to the first petrol station I come to and get some water there. I drive so slowly a granny in an electric buggy might have overtaken me if there were one of those mad grannies on the road that day. I’m annoyed with myself. Partly because I have made the error of not filling up the windscreen wash in the first place, partly because I thought Fanta would work and partly because I can’t think that anyone has EVER overtaken ME on this road before. I drive fast, I love driving fast, on a good day I’ve managed to cut the 2.5 hrs to their house to 1.75 hours and even my sat nav (who I endeavor to beat on every occasion) didn’t see that coming.

I make it to Dundee and get to the petrol station on the junction with the Kingsway. I open the bonnet and the windscreen wash thingy and fill it with lovely, fresh, clean water! I get back in the car and push the button. Nothing.

I decide to call my friend whose house I’m going to, he’s a man, and he’ll know what to do. He doesn’t answer his mobile so I can him at work, Strathclyde police don’t normally get calls from random girls like me but he knows me too well and I expect he sat at his desk with his head in his hands wondering what kind of influence I really am on his sensitive offspring. He had no good advice for me other than to keep going and try splashing water on the screen at every opportunity. So I buy numerous large bottles of Evian from the garage and wash my screen properly by hand before setting off again.

The journey from Dundee to their house should take about 1.5 hrs I believe on this night it took me 3. Three hours is a long time to ponder your own stupidity and I spent it talking out loud at myself and calling myself more names than I had realised I knew and then I realised who’s fault this really was.

It was Ainsley Harriot’s.

That annoying TV ‘chef/presenter’ guy had educated me sub-consciously in his adverts that, and I quote ‘citrus fruits are nature’s cleansers’ I’d clearly seen him squirt ACTUAL lemon juice out of a lemon and onto a surface to clean it on one of his ads to show how Fairy 'lemon zest' would work. I had seen this ad a few times and it made me think the product looked natural, fresh and cleansing.

On one of my 20 following lay-by stops to hand wash my windscreen I inspected the empty bottle which I had previously discarded in the back seat and found, unbelievably that there isn’t even any effing lemon in lemon Fanta. It’s all sugar and when your engine is hot and therefore the windscreen wash thingy is rather warm inside your bonnet and you fill it with a sugary substance it apparently turns to syrup. Well I never…

Once I arrived at the house my friend handed me a large glass of red wine as I walked in the door and left me to relax into the madness of their wonderful house with his beautiful wife and their beautiful children while he took the kettle of boiling water out to my car to clear out the pipes. It was freezing out there but he didn’t complain. He’s come to expect craziness from having me in his life and he just smiles! Which is lucky as this was not the first example and would not be the last example of my blondeness.

The Beginning and The End

2011-08-12T23:54:00.003+01:00

Life is a funny thing. Some people have a bad life but they manage to live it well. Some people have a good life and appreciate every moment. Then there are the unlucky ones, those who actually have had quite a good life but don’t even realise it.

What a waste it is to live every day wishing things were good and every day missing the good things that are all around you.

I used to live in a graveyard but that in itself is another story… I would spend my evenings wandering amongst beautiful monuments to lives that had existed long ago. The people who would have visited these graves were long gone too and all that remained was a stone, engraved with words to sum up all that they were. They rarely told more than their name and age and I wondered why that’s all that is left to be said about the life that they lived. Maybe, by writing down the stories of my life, the highs and the lows, the laughs and the tears, there will be more to it than a piece of etched granite. I know you live on in the memories and hearts of those who knew you but in the grand scheme of things that doesn’t seem long enough.

In my first 30 years I’ve learned so much that I feel it would be a shame not to try to share it, if nothing else, at least it will be recorded for posterity and if I ever get amnesia it will be a simple way to piece my life back together. So I’m going to begin to tell my story, in no particular order. I will jump from the present to the past, to the future and back again and it will be up to the reader to piece it together - but I had to start somewhere, somewhere significant enough to warrant the first page of my story.

So I will begin my story at the very end because it’s the only sure thing in this life. I’ve been having a think about what I would like written on my gravestone - preferably green granite, please note. Although gravestones might be digital in the future with links to YouTube and FaceBook I will presume for the sake of ensuring this story makes sense that they are still carved from stone. I don’t need it to say much, my name I guess to keep with tradition and the relevant dates, ideally incredibly far apart! If there are any significant people in my life at that point I’m sure they will be mentioned where appropriate. At this stage in my life I am many things but those I am most proud of are; Daughter, Sister, Grand Daughter, Niece, Cousin, Fairy God Mother and most importantly, Friend. Other than that I think I’d like to keep it simple. In years to come, many decades from now, some people who see my stone will read it and think nothing of it. Some will wonder what it means but wander on by and some clever people might look it up on Google, unless Google will be as old-fashioned as a typewriter by then. Those that do look into it will find the stories of my life.

Because it shall read “Here lies The Bright Blonde”