It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

Share five things you can't do anymore.

1. Eat more than 1 bag of sweets, or all of one large bag of sweets.  
Every now and again I forgot I'm 26 and no longer have the constitution of a 10 year old; attempting to eat in the same way I once did tends to make me feel very sick, and very grumpy.  Most recently I tried to eat a whole pack of 'Xtremely Sour Apple Chewits' and had to stop after two.  It's kind of sad.

2. Watch Disney cartoons.
Until relatively recently I still enjoyed the 'magic' of the odd Disney movie; providing I was in the right mood.  I downloaded a couple of classics (Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid) not so long ago and not only was I completely uninspired, I was bored stupid. Not to mention feeling a little angry my childhood included such dross.  I've been aware of the feminist failings of Disney for many years, of course, but not the absolute absence of any content in the movies.  I remember them as being...pretty.  They just seem ugly now.

3. Engage in internet 'debate'
I used to enjoy making my point, then making the same point again with slightly different wording, then again....and getting nowhere but not actually getting angry about it.  It was like flexing my debate muscles without any fear of failure.  Now I feel a rush of fury and frustration when something I say, on twitter perhaps, invites a stranger to start up an argument - usually all in capital letters - with me.  I have a two reply limit and then I leave it and feel a little soured toward the internet for it.  I think I'm getting old.

4. Choose to go without the internet for a day
I can *do* it, if there isn't an alternative, or an option to get online, or it's a challenge, or it's a requirement, I can absolutely go without.  I just can't make myself say "today, I will not use the internet".  When I was younger it was tv that I had exactly the same things to say about it, now I can take or leave the tv, but not the interwebs.  Sad, very sad, but true.

5. Spend an entire night just drinking lager.
Even if I could power through the vomiting after pint 3, I would DIE. That's really all there is to say about it.

Name 3 hugely popular movies that you've never seen.
1. The Godfather Trilogy - I really want to watch it but I hesitate on two counts; what if I don't like it? and; it requires effort and a three-movie-commitment. I'm just not sure I have it in me.
2. Star Wars Triology (i.e. the originals) - I borrowed them from a friend years ago, got to the bit where R2D2 and C3PO are driving/walking across the desert and, bored to tears, I turned it off. I'm a Star Trek girl and always will be.
3. Alien Trashy sci-fi is normally my bag but somehow I've just...missed it.

What kind of car do you drive?
A 1998 Ford Fiesta Zetec Ghia.  It's old and getting to be a bit quirky but it's comfortable, reliable and bloody fast for it's size and age.  It does me just fine.  I've had it since 2006 when I finished University for the first time.  My parents generously bought it for me so I could get to work in a nearby town and it has lived here in the East Midlands ever since where my Mum has taken custodianship for it whilst I was living in different parts of the country.  Before I moved back we were discussing selling it as it's age is against it as was the fact I wasn't driving it, now I'm back it cheerfully darts me about the countryside and ensures that when life is getting me down I can always go downtown.

I fantasise about buying a new Fiesta (a zetec again, naturally), I also fantasise about buying an Audi R8 (drove behind one again tonight, recognised it's arse from miles back, in the dark) but that's no more likely to happen than the new Fiesta.

The end.

Share your father's advice.

You can't always call a spade a spade.

I used to get mighty pissed off at school when I would tell my female friends they were being...well, teenage girls.  I've always been quite straightforward and never particularly interested in gossiping about boys/hair/make-up/other friends, I had a tendency to try and resolve situations by being unrelentingly logical and practical - it rarely went down well.

This also applied to people who said stupid stuff, I tend to like to tell them it's stupid.  Not for being malicious just for...stating what the situation is.

Over the years biting my lip has become a hard acquired skill.  I think it's worth it, on the whole; fewer arguments.  More frustration perhaps, in the short term at least. 


Went to look at a new build house today, it was available on shared ownership so I would only have had to have a mortgage for 25% of the value (25% = £27,500) and pay rent on the rest - £191 a month - which I could afford on top of mortgage repayments.  I found it on a property site a week ago.  Mentally, I'd already moved in. I so want to unpack the boxes which currently rest in the attic.  I want to do my food shopping (I pay my parents board on top of rent, they shop early on Saturday morning, I eat the food that turns up in the cupboards), plan a weeks meals and live at the pace I choose - rather than existing next to the unrelenting routine of my parents.  I want to own a house. I want to paint the walls in the holidays from work.  I want to buy bits and pieces from Ikea to furnish it.  I want to adopt two cats (April and Socks from Lincoln Cat Care) and I want to live my life as I wish - that's not here.

Unfortunately, the 4 available shared ownership houses, I was told upon arrival, have already gone, and I can submit an application and be on the waiting list but it was implied that I wouldn't be the top of the waiting list - it'd take a lot of people's applications to fall through before I'd get one.  I still looked around - it was everything I hoped it would be from the photos I'd seen online - completely perfect.  I can see myself living there.  Which is fatal, really.

A week's reprise from how I felt when I wrote this entry, but I feel myself plummeting back there.  I have already looked at other shared ownership properties and not only is 25% a rarity, they are also almost universally flats and without the spacious rooms that this house had.



Friend S, with the brain injury from the car crash, is still recovering.  Spoke to him on the phone for an hour or so tonight and he tried to tell me two separate things he told me last time I saw him - something he never used to do, he's always had an excellent memory.  He also wrote a reply to my facebook status which, whilst I understood and saw the joke he was trying to make, was in no way expressed with his usual verbal dexterity and flair.  Keep encouraging him to be patient as he's very frustrated by getting tired doing normal day-to-day things and everyone telling him to go slowly.  But I'm actually getting impatient for him to be back to normal.  Terrified he will have lost some of his easy intellect and confidence of expression.

List 5 things you hate that everyone else in the world seems to love

1. Coffee; love the smell.  Hate the taste.  And I so *want* to like it; there are so many fabulously exciting variations out there and so frequently I stand in a coffee shop and gaze in awe at the array of coffees and flavours for the same on offer.  But coffee does now and always has, made me pull a face and quietly put the cup down and push it away.  I simply do not like it.

2. Soaps;  Eastenders, Corrie, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks; just no.  I cannot bear the melodrama.  I think they are particularly awful in how they suck you in; 'but I can't miss [insert soap name here] I need to know what happens to [insert character name here]!!!' without ever giving any real narrative resolution, the characters are merely left lurching from one crisis to the next.  I appreciate that that is why soaps are considered to be 'like life' but frankly, life is enough like life for me without sitting through 3 hours or more of the same on tv.

3. Roast dinners; as a lacto-ovo vegetarian the core of the roast dinner is obviously off the menu, but of course vege alternatives are available.  However, even when I did eat meat I didn't like roast dinners.  I think roast potatoes are an abomination (perfectly tasty inside, why inflict that awful skin on them?) and there are no vegetables typically associated with roast dinners that I actually like when they are cooked; peas, carrots, cabbage, broad beans, runner beans? All better raw.  Flash boiling of cauliflower and broccoli is also the only way I'll eat it, rather than the traditional 'boiled for 4 hours' approach of the a-typical Sunday roast.  As for parsnips? Better left where they grow.  Don't even get me started on the horror that is gravy.

I'll take a curry over a roast any day of the week; particularly Sunday.

4. Horror movies; I watch and have watched them, naturally.  But aside from the ones which have an aspect of psychological intrigue and depth I simply do not see their appeal or why people feel able to qualify themselves as 'horror fan(s)'.  Gory slasher movies with no sense of irony or self awareness are simply dull dull dull to me.  Beyond the 'yuck' factor of some of these movies I remain unmoved; unless I laugh - which I did with Silence of the Lambs, much to the chagrin of my friend who adored that film and proudly sat me down to watch this 'brilliant' film.  

By the by, I have no objection whatsoever to horror scenes within the context of a movie of a different genre; sci-fi, drama, action, thriller - all fine, I just need the extra facet to have any inclination to sit through such scenes.

5. Putting photos of myself in black and white on facebook; seriously, we all know you either set your camera to black and white before taking them all, or edited them after taking and before uploading.  I hate that 'oh ho ho don't I look FABULOUS? What, it's in black and white? I didn't even notice! I look like this all the time though, not just in black in white!'

We all know you come in glorious technicolor and we all know why those photos are in black and white.  Take pictures on a night out by all means, but don't spend 2 hours snapping/reviewing/deleting to get 'spontaneous' photos in black and white.  Goddamnit.




And a reminder; help me out for another day;

>Tell me something, anything (within decent reason) you would like to see and I'll take a photo. The inside of my wardrobe, a street sign that contains the letter "q", a red haired man...whatever. Send me on a scavenger hunt.

>Ask me a question, any question, and I'll answer. Want to know what kind of toothpaste I use? I'll tell you. Want to know what the inside my glove box looks like? I'll show you. If you'd rather send the question via private message than on a comment below, knock yourself out.

Day 3; Write a story in six words. Allow only six minutes, now....go!

The day civilisation ended, I danced.