"I miss you like...you would miss your cotton wool after splitting your head open." said he.

Twoday.net, what have you done to my background?!? Bring it back! Now! *clicks fingers*

And make that white sugars, not brown. Everytime I come here, it's the same. You people should remember!


No no no no no no NO! Look what you've done. You SPILT it! How COULD you??? Bring me a serviette.

*clicks fingers again and growls menacingly*

I should be in bed right now. I really should. At the unearthly hour of eight I must stumble from my little haven of heat and sleepiness and dreams of river-hopping and guilt incarnate, and crawl down to the photo shop in town to have a passport photo of me looking bleary taken.

Apparently, the officials must soothe their worried selves and make sure I am not a terrorist. Or an illegal person smuggling illegal things. What better way than to issue a standard passport photo size? 35mm by 45mm. Fair enough, you say. But the face itself must also be a certain measurement, you gasp? Between 32mm and 36mm from chin to hairline. Or else what? Sorry, no passport for you, your face measures 38mm from top to bottom.

No tilting of the head. No smiling, let alone grinning. No hair in the face. Think what difference a few strands of rogue hair before the right eye would make. Think how much you could hide, within that one eye. A whole different personality, a whole other, non-benevolent self.

(Especially no photos accepted where the candidate has a budgie perched atop her head.)

There are two whole sides of A4 instructions on what your passport photo should and shouldn't be. Is it just me who finds this unreasonable and pernickity? Possibly.

That load off my mind, I must now attempt to sleep whilst trying to ignore my parents' noisy garden party. You think a middle aged group would obey the rules of middle-aged-ness and be practically silent, but no, these are very noisy middle-aged people, discussing love handles, of all things, and shrieking with tipsy laughter.

But promoted by women?

“Oh, and we’ve some very special features every woman should appreciate” (By this, ‘handbag cover’ is meant). Excuse me? Aside from being slightly grammatically incorrect, the patronising tone drives me up the wall. Not to mention the glaring pink sequined halter-neck top, the pink nails, the pink hairslide, the pink lipstick and eyeshadow and the very in-your-face, false silver “bling” around both wrists, and dangling from earlobe to collarbone.

Now, what’s going on here? Is Sheila’s Wheels car insurance being promoted by, God forbid, men?? Men who think all women who drive and are looking for reasonably priced car insurance are so … overall pink and cheesy?

My mother held the proffered page (from Marie Claire) to her eyes and blinked. Several times, very fast. “Is this for real?” Yes, mother, this is for real. “Car insurance for pink women? A free box of tampons when you sign the contract?“ Almost.

The whole thing is toenail-curlingly embarrassing. It really makes me cringe, you know? The ad was on TV once, and I happened to be too far away to switch it off fast enough. I couldn’t watch, I really couldn’t. I adopted the foetal position and stopped my ears against the tirade of pink ladies grinning from ear to ear and proclaiming:
“For ladies who insure their caaaaaaaaaaars
Sheila's wheels are superstaaaaaaaaars“

OK, it’s a step towards “banning sexual discrimination in the insurance market”, but next time, a little less pink? And a little less ditzy? And a less annoying ad?

Well. This is what happens when it's this hot. People don't dare step outside for fear of being overwhelmed by a wave of stifling heat and perhaps melting to meet the scorching ground with a trickle.

So, you resort to desperate measures. Such as lingering in the kitchen - just for the change, because face it, the sitting room gets boring after having spent the entire day in there devouring a 300 page book with a disappointing ending.

Once in the kitchen, you may well be tempted to peel a carrot, just for the sake of it. The carrots are there, the peeler is to hand, what could possibly be more natural than picking up the peeler and running it repetetively across a wilting carrot? Nothing, I say. To add a bit of excitement, you could think of possibly introducing the skin on your thumb to the peeler.

There is, of course, the dreaded possibility that you might find yourself standing in the kitchen, as lost as you were orginally, but with the added baggage of a peeled, soggy, sad carrot in your left hand. What to do with it? Perform a ritualistic voodoo ceremony? Chop it up, start a peeled-and-chopped-carrot collection? Peel another carrot to keep the original happy? Perhaps even name the carrots (or chunks of)? Carrot One, Carrot Two, Carrot Three...

Maybe eat the carrot? Out of pure boredom and hotness? It's a distinct possibility.

It appears the content in my blog offends some, so here it is;

Disclaimer
Characters in this blog may often be partly fictional, as may be the experiences/conversations I describe. You will find most detail in my blog as unoffensive as I can possibly make it, but you should also realise I don't always have to be 100% nice and justify it. Please note I claim nowhere to have a mature personality or a sense of humour.

Every day is an enormous struggle resisting the temptation of Wordpress. I shall not be tempted. My own little blog will do me. I do not need sleek, shiny surfaces, like Eddie does in Absolutely Fabulous, neatly tucking the cigarette packet into Patsy's indignantly folded arms. This blog is a bit like Patsy. Wordpress is a bit like Eddie's minimalistic friend. All I need now is to fashion a Patsy-esque blonde, hairsprayed quiff using html code, and we're sorted.

Once again, I go to the rescue of my father's sanity. He must somehow be convinced that my brother's tendancy to apply eyeliner is merely a sign of his wish to be conformist (and "emo", with it.) The hair flopping into the eyes is also a constant source of worry for my father:

"Your hair...DO something about it. You can't SEE anything!! Look at me...I can't see your EYES...please, have it cut, it's infecting your EYES. It's unhygenic and LOOK AT ME YOUR EYES WHERE HAVE THEY GONE THEY HAVE DISAPPEARED..."

My brother obstinately smooths his hair down further into his eyes, and peers through the thick fringe, like a mole resisting being dragged from the darkness.

"You know, most people would maybe bring strawberries up to the bedroom. It could have been cream, or yoghurt. Maybe even honey..."

A short pause. I felt him eye up the plate in distaste. A quick glance towards my chewing mouth, and he shook his head and grinned.

"But a cheese bap!! With boursin and cucumber!"

"What a turn off," he might have added silently. But what can I say? I had cravings!

Or money for working?

It struck me today that I had never before fully grasped the concept of working for money. Before now, my parents,the marvelous beings that they are, (note the lack of sarcasm) have always given me "pocket money" for just being me, and have even gone as far to increase it by a certain amount after every birthday.

So now, I find out what it's really like. Toiling away and making mistakes and being shouted at and making new friends and aching all over and being so bloody nice all the time. Just for a bit of money. One of the nicest bits, of course, is the friends, who make you feel that little bit better when something goes wrong. You have a common goal with these people, and therefore you help each other. Which is nice.

I have been forced into compulsory situations all my life (i.e. eleven long long long years of education) without an immediate reward in sight, aside from gaining knowledge - which most of my age fail to see as a reward. Therefore, I am constantly surprised when I remember that I am not doing this because I have to. I am doing this for the money! Money for doing something as loathesome as being on my feet for eight hours and smiling and spilling red wine over white skirts.

So possibly the best bit of working is, so far, calculating how much money I will recieve in five days time.

Or the free biscuit I got today, eaten illegitimately in the store cupboard, choking on crumbs when the manager walked past. Perhaps he has a sniffer dog nose, and smelt the biscuit from afar.

Me: I looked at that bebo thing you sent me. Have you completely lost the ability to type words longer than two letters without missing out the vowels?

Brother: Huh? *processes thought* Ah. Ummm...Well, we're not living in the eighteenth century any more!

Me: It's so...chav-esque. And shows a complete disregard for the English language. *tempted to say: What do they teach you in school these days?*

Brother: It's not cool to write long things. And quite frankly...I couldn't be bothered.

Me: But...Oh, forget it. *gives up*

*pause*

Brother: Can I really bore you for a minute?

Me: *sigh*

Brother: On this online skating thing, you can skate infront of the whooole world *makes vast sweeping gesture*...Not real skating. But it's ace, you can do flips and....

At this point, I lost the will to continue listening.

...but no lemon trees.

Dad: But...I don't know the colours of the rainbow!

The Boyfriend:*looks bemused* Use a mnenomic.

Dad: *laughs raucously for a long, long time and finally looks confused.* A ... what?

The Boyfriend: Like....My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets. You know...the order of planets?

Dad: The order of plants?!?! Plants have an order??

The Boyfriend: Well anyway, you have to memorise a number. Say a random number. It must be random.

Dad: 07720707...

The Boyfriend: STOP! That's your mobile number! Don't cheat!! Give four numbers.

Dad: Ah! Ok...34857 3857602 39674-27850-3

The Boyfriend: That's four numbers?

Read about my butter fingers and fear of dropping things (especially the evasive knife) here. The extent of pain I am in rules that I should curl up on my bed with a book and NOT MOVE FROM THE SPOT for the next 12 hours, so that rules out a rambly blog entry. Sorry!