07/6/12

Bad Beetroot Day

Crazy colour hair dye type stuff in the shop….

‘I know. I’ll do a couple of funky streaks in my hair – yeh, that dark cherry red. I’ll look dead cool and trendy then.’

But the small tub of clotted blood type goo only has instructions written in Foreignish. Everything except English. Even languages that don’t exist are represented on the tiny bit of paper.

Ah. OK.

So I stumble through the French instructions, through reading glasses because they appear to have been inscribed by a small insect using a cocktail stick.

But it’s simple enough. Brush it on, leave for 15mins and rinse. Off we go then.

After 15minutes I have a cherry red streak in the hair behind my right ear.

It’s not very vivid though.

The one on the window ledge is much brighter. As is the one on the mirror, the towel and the 3 hair clips. There is also an bright trail of cherriness across my bedroom floor and the sink, the soap and our toothbrushes are pink.

My hands looked as though I’ve murdered a beetroot and then wiped them on my chest.

So now I’m doing a second streak on my fringe, watching the Dead Kennedys on Youtube and remembering doing the same thing with food colouring when I was 15.

If this is a mid-life crisis, I highly recommend it.

06/19/12

Foraging in the Fish Market, Catania, Sicily – Italy.

I had a fun rummage round the fish displays in the morning fish market in Catania, Sicily. The wares ranged from beautiful to creepy to ‘orrible.

The creatures aren’t labelled because I don’t know what most of them are. Apart from the humans. And they don’t need labelling because it’s obvious which they are – they’re the ones with legs who aren’t dead.

Continue reading →

06/13/12

Last night Alan Sugar gave me a job.

In my dreams of course.

Sir Alan Sugar gave me a job, not because I won the Apprentice or did a good interview. He just said, ‘You seem brainy and I do like your business suit, £4.99 from New Look was it? Oh go on then, have a job. Here’s a calculator and there’s your office, that big posh one over there with the glass table that’s on the telly.’ Continue reading →

05/29/12

Blood on the walls in Blackpool and I really must buy a new bra.

A scorching weekend in Blackpool with my bezzy mate Sam. We kicked off with the Pleasure Beach (or Pleasure Bitch, as he insisted on calling it).

He was hopping around, making impatient noises about going on The Big One. In case you don’t know, The Big One is an absolutely massive, ginormous roller coaster. It’s so big, it has its own warning light to stop aeroplanes flying into it and it can go at 80 something miles an hour. The company who made it doesn’t exist any more which begs the question, who’s going to fix it if it breaks down? A student on work experience with a tube of superglue? Continue reading →

05/29/12

Vintage Penny Arcade, Blackpool North Pier.

A quick whizz round the Vintage Penny Arcade, Blackpool’s North Pier:

The players in this vintage football machine were all wearing tiny, hand-knitted jumpers, sending their cuteness rating right through the roof.

…And not only did somebody go to all the trouble of knitting the tiny jumpers, somebody also painted every spectator in the football crowd in some considerable detail. I’m so glad this machine has survived and is on public display. Continue reading →

05/28/12

Wild Mouse Terror, Blackpool Pleasure Beach

The Wild Mouse is an entity that sprang from the loins of Satan and its life force is sustained by the sadistic pleasure it gains from terrifying anyone daft enough to climb onto its rickety frame and into one of its little tin mouse cars.

Oh, it looks innocuous enough. Cute, even.

Like a roller coaster for beginners, the tiny, sugar-coloured cars bearing hand-painted mousy names like Jerry or Lulu or Minnie.
‘Ha!’ you say with chest-swelling bravado. ‘Ha. It’ll be a doddle, this.’ And you beckon to your family: ‘Come on folks, all aboard.’ They hop on, smiling, anticipating a few minutes of wholesome fun. And within about ten seconds, your well-adjusted, happy family is reduced to a blur of flailing limbs and anguished howls, barely audible over the hissing and rattling of the sadistic, Satanic creature. Continue reading →

04/24/12

DIY Dentistry – Pass the Drill.

Oh chocolate. Oh my teeth.

After years of choc-scoffing, they look like something you’d find in a corner of a junk yard where a grubby geezer sells bits of houses and the broken things dead people leave behind.

‘Oh that old heap of stones with the green slime on them? Yeah, you can ‘ave them for …’ he pauses, sniffs, wipes nose on sleeve…’ Yeah, call it a fiver, mate. No, don’t touch ’em yet, they’re a health hazard. ‘ He shouts through to the back and an unenthusiastic youth slopes through the door with his finger up his nose.
‘Yeh? Wot?’
‘Give these a wipe down will ya, Dwayne?’ Hands him a stinking cloth with dog hairs stuck to it which Dwayne duly applies. Continue reading →

04/16/12

Putting the Rye Bread with the Pogo Sticks.

‘S’cuse me, can you tell me where the rye bread is, please?’ I asked an assistant in Tesco this morning.

There were Barbie cakes, designer loaves with a photo of the chef on the packet, nasty white sliced bread for making pot noodle sandwiches. Everything but rye bread. Muttering bread-related curses, I found said assistant arranging brown sliced loaves on the shelf (she was doing a grand job, they looked very attractive).
‘In the next aisle,’ she said. Then, as she’d been trained, ‘I’ll show you.’ took me to the next aisle where the health food was stacked. There, teetering on top of the nuts, raisins and wheat free whatnots, was the rye bread.
‘What use is it up there?’ I spluttered. ‘It’s bread. It needs to be with all the other bread.’
‘Well it came with all this other stuff you see,’ she said slightly defensively, waving a hand at the soya drinks and the wheat-free cakes, ‘so they put it all together.’
‘But, but… surely goods should be categorised according to what they are rather than how the distributers send them out?’

By now, I was bewildered yet determined to prove my point. If there’d been a barrister’s wig and gown to hand I’d have donned them and started striding up and down, turning on my heels, interrogating and asking trick questions culminating in a triumphant, ‘I rest my case, m’lud.’

But she wasn’t playing. The defendant sought refuge in the universal supermarket shrug that says ‘Dunno, I’m only the shop assistant getting paid peanuts. They can put the bread with the flippin’ dog biscuits for all I care’ and wandered off to her bread stacking leaving me with my imaginary wig and gown, baffled and irritated. Continue reading →

03/29/12

Trams & People Don’t Mix.

Vintage trams are ace. They have dim yellow light bulbs and faded patterned seats that prickle your bum when you sit down. Best of all they make a rattly noise as they go along the sea front and have a bell so the driver can talk to everyone in tram language:

A vintage tram behaving itself.
(Source: Wiki)

Dingaling! – Hey, I’m driving the tram!
Dingaling! Ding! – I’m driving the tram. You’re not. Loooo-zer.
Ding, ding. DING! – Get out of the way or I’m taking you home as sandwich filler.

But a modern trams is completely different. Although it has a bell that goes dingaling, it’s just a train on a cable. Bit boring really.

Boring to everyone except me, that is.

I fret, I sweat, I chew my nails. I lie awake at night stewing and worrying and have finally come to the appalling conclusion that I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks it’s dangerous to drive a train through a shopping centre. Continue reading →

03/15/12

Museum of Occupations, Tallinn, Estonia.

This small, beautifully designed museum is packed with objects from both the Soviet and Nazi occupations. Everything from political propaganda posters, everyday objects, surveillance equipment – it’s all here, down to the Lenin statues in the basement.

There are hours and hours worth of videos to watch – all brilliantly put together, charting the history of Estonia’s occupation, with footage of invading armies and interviews with ordinary people recounting their experiences. Totally addictive if you love listening to people tell stories about their lives. There’s far too much to watch and take in in one go but the videos are so captivating, it’s worth making more than one visit to the museum so you can watch all of them.

Soviet Cars