"What's that noise?" I said to my dad, planning the blog already.
"Oh nothing," he said.
"No, something."
"Okay, I'm feeding Meg."
"Meg?" I paused. "The neighbour's cat, Meg?"
"Yes," he said. "The neighbour's
male cat."
"Why're you feeding Meg?" I said nervously.
"I had some leftover chicken."
"You're feeding the neighbour's cat COOKED CHICKEN?"
"Yes."
"Is that wind I can hear?"
"Yes."
"You're outside. Oh my God. You're outside POTENTIALLY IN YOUR NIGHTCLOTHES FEEDING THE NEIGHBOUR'S CAT?"
"How'd you guess?"
"Your blood pressure's normal", the nurse said. "Now step onto the scales please."
I sighed. Why do we have to go through this fucking charade everytime I need more anti-baby pills? Sure if I do not want to get pregnant I continue to take the pills regardless of my weight, blood pressure, boob size and indeed pee colour?
"What does it say on the scales, Petal?" she said.
"48 Kilos," I said. "Same as ever."
"Actually you were a different weight last year."
"Oh right," I said, sounding deliberately unconcerned. They do think I'm anorexic afterall. "What was I then?"
"47 kilos," she said. "So well done."
She paused.
"But that's not really the kind of progress we were talking about, was it?"
What? Does she know me?
"I'm sorry?"
"When Dr. B spoke to you last summer he really meant about 5 kilos minimum."
Right. So he's spoken to her about me. Does this man have nothing better to do?
"Well I wasn't really trying. I was just eating the same as usual."
"Oh dear. I hope that was at least
some food."
"What? You know I eat a lot. I have had three meals already today."
She looked at me as if to say AND HOW MANY HAVE YOU THROWN UP?
"Just try to put on a few more kilos, dear, I know how hard it is."
I huffed. And then I changed tack.
"Okay," I said smiling. "I'll try my best."
At least I got the fucking prescription. 12 more months until we have this conversation again.
"I bought three pairs of new pants, a bra that actually fits and a new top," I said to Mike.
"Ooh okay, what're they like?"
"The pants are fun and stripey,"
"Don't you have stripey pants already?" Mike said.
"Yes. Anyway, the bra is grey with pink straps, and the top, oh the top is beautiful, it's white with ties down the side, ending at the waist."
"That's sounds nice," Mike said slowly. Then he paused. "What are the tigers like, exactly?"
I am sorry I turned off comments. It will never happen again. I was pleasantly surprised by the lovely and slightly obsessive nature of the comments :)
-----------------------------------------------------------
My horse was not a pony. It was a fully grown horse with an arse the size of Africa and fucking enormous dentures.
I needed a box to get on it. Then they arranged me into all sorts of uncomfortable positions and gave me a whip! which I would never use on poor Daisy the horse.
I got used to it after about 20 minutes. I was beautiful, sitting all tall on the horse. I was in Mallory Towers! I was Bathsheba Everdene!
I was... in a tree.
When a horse needs to eat the leaves of a tree and you are ON THE HORSE you end up IN THE TREE - WITH SPIDERS IN YOUR EARS AND LEAVES IN YOUR HAIR.
My Dad cantered past.
"Is this fucking well hurting your arse?" he panted.
I looked down at him through the leaves whilst Daisy continued to munch.
"Yes, it felt like my insides were going to fall out of my ass. Until I ended up in a tree."
"At least," he said, grimacing, "you are not bouncing on your own bollocks."
Welcome to Snibston Science Park, said the banner. This would be one of mine and my dad's Bank Holiday Things. Tomorrow is pony-trekking. I will keep you posted, but can I just say that ponies and horses? They really freak me out. Their teeth; they smile as if they've all stolen human dentures. Ridiculous.
"Two for the science park?" said the man at the desk.
"Yep," I said.
"One adult one child?"
My dad smirked. I mentally noted that I begin my training contract in mergers and acquisitions. In two years.
"I'm an adult," I said, gesturing. "Out of interest, what is the age for a child here?"
"Fifteen," he said lightly, handing me a sticker.
Cheers.
"Would you like to go to the colliery?" he said, looking at me. I stare blankly at him.
"Depends what that is," I said.
My Dad rolled his eyes. It turns out the colliery was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. But I'll come to that.
We continued around the science park, where, after my Dad realised yesterday that I think Chile is near Japan and Mozambique is in South America, I filled in the gaps in my education.
After I learnt who invented the steam train, embarrassed myself in front of an 8 year-old by not being able to list the three ingredients to make fire (isn't energy kind of a given when you have fuel and oxygen? No?), and compared my waist size to the average eighteenth-century corset (me: smaller), we assembled at 2:30 for the colliery tour.
We were halfway through the tour when I started to get edgy. We were standing outside on a strip of tarmac where they, for some reason, had laid out all the rusty machines and were GOING THROUGH HOW THEY WORKED.
After about half an hour of the revolutions per minute of the bunker, and where, exactly, the seam of the coal face relative to the shearer was and OH MY GOD SHUT UP ALREADY, I was starting to become confused. Wait, why are they pretending we're in a mine? He was seriously demonstrating with the machines and gesturing to a pretend coal face.
I turned towards my Dad. "Coal mines are underground, right?" I said to him. He looked at me, aghast.
After Incredibly Boring Lady had asked eight questions about the history of the mine and the steam train, and where, exactly, the fire would have been lit (or something), MY FATHER ASKED A QUESTION. I disowned him at that moment.
Luckily for him, he was about to disown me.
"When are we going to go down this thing, anyway?" I said.
The tour guide stared at me. "What?" he said.
"When are we going into the mine."
There was a pause. Yes, that kind of pause.
Then he smiled nervously, and Boring Woman started tittering.
"We're not going
down there," she said, glancing at her husband.
My dad covered his mouth with his hand.
What? How was I to know? Why were we re-enacting the fucking law-breaching child-killing mine ABOVE THE GROUND? Where is the fun in that?
The tour guide decided to continue with his tour despite having a clearly remedial member of the public present.
"Now this part," he said proudly, as I exhaled and become closer to throwing myself down the mine, "is the shaft itself."
And then he said the word "behold."
"The water down there is about seven feet deep. If we put a WHALE PIN [or something] in this, the water would spurt out, covering ALL OF LECIESTERSHIRE," he said.
There was a gasp of awe.
And then there was silence. As I got completely and utterly the wrong end of the stick.
"What, there are whales down there?"
Dear readers,
There's something I haven't been telling you. What things rush through your mind when someone says that. You're dying? You're having an affair? You secretly look at donkey porn?
None of those I'm afraid.
This summer began right after finals. Well actually, it began during finals. I remember when right after I went to get the pre-release exam for Hardy (do you miss me writing about Hardy?), I walked around a wood full of bluebells and put my feet into the warm blossom covering the pavement. I guess the summer really started seven days after that. After my last ever English exam, I sat in the Gun Barrells, a dingy yellow pub, with a callus on my middle finger and bags under my eyes. Me and my three closest English survivors raised our glasses, regardless of 2:1s or 2:2s, to surviving, to reading for pleasure again, to the end of an era.
The few days following the end of my degree felt like a single moment, like that feeling between thunder and lightning, or, alternatively, saying something blonde and waiting for everybody to realise. During that week-long split-second, me and my fellow survivors made cups of tea last for hours and barbecues last all night.
I remember vividly the Saturday morning one week and one day after finals. I woke up in Mike's bed. His arms were around me and my hair was sticking up. I had a fleeting thought about deadlines for jobs and reality hit me in the face. The reading all day and all night was over. So was memorising quotes. And then, in that moment, the recovery was over, and, toes curling, I saw the long road of Getting Into The Law stretching ahead of me like the number 50 bus route on a Monday morning. I had to get a 2:1. Then I had to pass the conversion. Get onto the LPC. Get into the Law Society. And get a training contract; notoriously harder than all those other things put together.
So May and June faded into a haze of application forms, business newspapers and early-evening sunbathing. I would even struggle to tell myself it was going to be worth it. I felt like my summer had been stolen. I had already lived in the library, worked in a hospital bed and cried on my tutor. I felt this was some sort of brutal punishment designed to weed out those not designed for the law. I forgot why I wanted to do it.
And then work began. And so my life became a monotonous journey of trains and buses, always with The Boring Paper, the glasses, the latte. Evenings consisted of more applications, and walking into the heated porch to find thin, grainy rejection-flavoured envelopes on my doormat.
The assessment centres started in early August. I gurgled down the phone on a telephone interview. Relieved they couldn't see my face, I swallowed and tried to ignore it. In my first assessment centre I opened my mouth to say "Ah, yes," and it came out as "arse".
I exhausted myself, contracted food poisoning and threw up on a dog.
And just after the two most strenuous, exhilerating, draining days of the whole summer, I get a call.
I have a training contract.
I have a job for 2008. My course fees are paid for, and furthermore, I am paid to study. I giggled with pure shock as I stood at the bustop in the pouring rain this afternoon. I tilted my head back and laughed and felt the raindrops fall on my nose.
Now, here's that thing I wasn't telling you.
Lawyers can't blog.
What does this mean? It means this blog now has an expiry date. 2 years. This is going to end. There will be a time where you won't click it on your Mozilla bar or on your favourites; you won't see my appalling photographs, my new haircuts, stupid things I said. Most likely, you will miss my first day of work, my first legal fuck up, my first cat, car, house, husband.
There will be a time I will not transform my worst days into laughter. I will one day soon have conversations in which I don't plan dialogue and punchlines and description.
So what can we do? I promise I will write almost every day about tampons and boyfriends and finding more white hairs, and you will read and in turn will comment and I will click your name and nose about your life.
And you will find other bloggers, and you will forget about me, but I sincerely hope nobody is as blonde or as ridiculous, and that you won't check your new blogger 12 times per day, yes, you in California, Chatsworth, I know who you are.
Until then, you had better fucking stop lurking and comment, because before I leave the blogosphere I want t-shirts, merchendise, and lots and lots of readers.
Yours,
Billygean
"I found a white hair today," I said to Mike.
"Where?"
"ON MY HEAD."
"Gill," he said, looking at me. "Your hair is dyed."
"YES. The hair was brown and the root was white."
"Where is the hair now?"
"I pulled it out," I said, noting how obsessive and weird this sounded. "But there is another."
"Show me, then," Mike said, sighing.
I knelt down in front of him and indicated the clump of hairs.
After pawing through my hair for a few moments and pretending to very seriously inspect it, Mike said "there is not a single white hair in there."
"Good," I said, going to get changed out of my suit and into my pyjamas. As is the norm.
"Gill..." Mike said a few moments later, peering into my room.
I stepped back from my mirror. "I'm not inspecting my hair," I said.
"Yeah, right," Mike said. "What's that?" he said, looking at my clenched fist.
"I pulled it out."
"The hair?"
"Yes."
"Let me see then," he said, inspecting it. After a few moments, he said it was either blonde or not a big deal because hair dye existed. Of course for
me this meant months of covering up my white hair, and wearing hats and watching it fall out onto my pillow. My heart started racing.
I snatched the hair off him and layed it across a piece of white paper, where it promtly DISAPPEARED INTO THE WHITE BACKGROUND.
"Oh my GOD," I said, feeling faint. "It's white, it's white."
"I am NOT GETTING INVOLVED IN THIS CHARADE," he said.
"IT IS THE SAME COLOUR AS THE PAPER."
"Gill, that is yellow. You have blonde hair secretly. And we all knew that."
After proclaiming he "despaired of me", he made me put the yellow/white hair into the bin and banned me from talking about it for the rest of the evening.
Yesterday, I met my sister in the city centre. She was setting up a joint bank account with husband, and would undoubtedly need some Lush therapy. Indeed, we had been waiting over an hour when husband-Rob discovered that wife-Suzanne had not yet changed her name.
"We can do it for you," I said, always glad to pretend to be a lawyer.
"You should really get it done," Rob said, nudging her.
Suzanne rolled her eyes. "I will, I will," she said.
"When?" he said.
"Soon."
"You always say that."
"I'll do it," she said. At this point I was semi-shrinking into the purple HSBC sofa.
"You were the one who wanted to get married," he said.
My eyes widened as my sister, without missing a beat, gave the best comeback I've heard in a while.
"Well," she said. "You asked."
They didn't speak much after that. But they did set up their bank account so I don't think I'll be divorcing them any time soon. Especially since I'm a loser at psychometric tests and presentations. *Bitter*.
I was then left in town; always a mistake. I headed straight for O'Neill as my feelers were instantly attracted to the 70% off sign in the window.
Little did I know 70% off would still mean a skirt was £35.
What? I know!
Luckily, it would appear I am still emaciated, as an extra small had this effect:
Yeah, that's the floor THROUGH THE GAP BETWEEN THE SKIRT AND ME.
I then morosely went home, minus a skirt, but, somehow, with Now! Magazine and some bath stuff. Yeah, that's deliberate vagueness about quantity of bath stuff, isn't it?
When I got back to my house, my Dad called me. I know, I can hear the anticipation. The amount of emails I get about my dad is rather alarming.
"Hello," he said. "I can come and fetch you now to come home for the night if you like."
"Okay."
He paused.
"I've done something a bit mad."
Oh God, I thought.
Please let it not involve girlfriends, tattoos or the neighbour's dog.I followed my Dad into the kitchen, wet from the rain. He walked slowly through to the study.
"Holy fuck," I said, looking at the ceiling.
The ceiling. There were wires hanging down, from the ceiling. The carpet was covered in sawdust. A torch was hanging up where the lights used to be. There were holes in the wall and a stepladder in the middle of the room.
"What happened here?"
"Well," he said, getting onto the stepladder. "I decided that instead of having one lightswitch controlling the two sets of lights, I'd move it. So I had to pull the wire through the ceiling to get to this switch," he said, indicating a large hole in the wall.
"So I drilled some holes in the stairs -"
"You drilled some holes in the stairs?" "Yes, you'll see," he said. "Then I fed the cable through. Problem was, the cable kept getting lost, I couldn't find it."
He paused.
"So I drilled one hole just here," he said, pointing to one of many holes in the ceiling. "In order to find it. And then I couldn't stop..."
I stared up through the ceiling. Through one hole, I could see the bath. Shaking my head, I went and sat on the sofa.
One minute later I heard my dad putting the fuse back in to turn the lights on. The burglar alarm went off.
And then, on the top of his stepladder, he got his arm stuck in the ceiling and I had to pull it out.
May I quickly draw your attention to the following, idolising post?
Red StaplerThank you, Red Stapler 23, you have made my day.
And er, also I just discovered
this post. So thank you, Piggy Hawk, you, too, have made my day.
"I'm sorry," my dad said into the phone. "Apparently your scores were too low on the assessments."
"No shit. That
was how they were assessing me," I said.
"You got 2 out of 4 on all the assessments," he said. "But it does say that even people who got threes didn't get through because of all the competition."
"Great, so I was even further off."
I don't think my dad had looked at it that way.
I opened my email inbox, thankful for a lack of power cut, and discovered two charmingly worded emails from my favourite firms. One would like to thank me for my interest in the firm but they unfortunately will not be taking my application further. Unfortunate for who?
The other, open-day people for whom I braved the razor-blade shoes, said competition was very high. Is it really? God, I never knew that. It's not like I spent hours on your form or googled you 18 times trying to find info.
Oh, and that second one? They would also like to point out, on the bottom of their email, that they're in The Times 100 Best Companies to Work For because they pay so much and are so kind to their employees.
Thanks for pointing that out whilst simulataneously refusing me entry into your assessment centre/offices in general.
Pah.
My house was in total darkness when I walked in the door. I set my ballet shoes down in the hallway and walked further in. I poked my head around the living room door and saw Nic lying on the sofa and Mike doing a semi shoulder stand on the couch. The lights were off.
I raised my eyebrows. "Please say there's a power cut."
and that you're not having an illicit affair.
"Yep," Mike said. "It's been off for half an hour now."
I had been to the Body Shop and accidentally bought candles, an(other) oil burner, and COOKIE SCENTED OIL, does this give you an indication of a) how much I seem to end up shopping after work and b) how often I must buy candles considering today's purchase was made before I knew we had a power cut?
So I was in my element, smiling and elaborately striking matches, and making Mike bring down hundreds of candles from my candle store. Incidentally, Mike, on finding said candle store, did ask me politely how many candles, exactly, I needed, why I was buying more and WHY WAS I STORING THEM IN MY UNDER-BED DRAWERS WHICH I HAVE BROKEN?
So the candles were flickering and I was pressing my hot cheek against the windowpane, looking at the trees whose leaves looked oddly navy-blue in the fading summer light. I smelt the baking cookie scents and thought about Thomas Hardy and how I wish I had a real fire and a cat.
And then I was stumped.
Can't check email for training contract responses. Can't blog. Can't read newspapers. "Can I cook?" I said.
Mike stared at me. "You know our cooker's electric, right?"
"Is it better or worse if I did know that?" I said.
Mike patted my knee sympathetically whilst I made him smell all my new oils and how you could mix them to make new ones.
"I can use my mobile, can't I?" I said.
"Er, yes," he said, looking at me incredulously.
"And I can run water?"
"Yes."
"Can I have a bath?"
"No, because the boiler's electric."
"And the boiler heats the water?"
"Yes."
"Can I make a cup of tea?"
"I am not dignifying you with answers anymore."
I got all the way to the kettle before I realised.
"Come on," I said, grabbing Mike's hand. "I need photos for my blog."
"This is ridiculous," he said. "You are so vain."
"No, all the cool bloggers have good photos of themselves."
Mike's house is perched right on the edge of suburbia. If you look out of the windows on the right of his house, you see other houses, children on bikes and a Tesco Express. If you look out to the left you see fields and dog wakers and wilderness.
The smell reminds me of holidays in France. We didn't have a lot of money so we used to go camping. Every morning I would poke my head up out of the bottom of my tent and smell the morning air. It smelt so crisp, of soil and sea, and fresh rain and suntan lotion.
Therefore, Mike's is, of course, the perfect location to take vain-blogger pictures of myself.
If only I weren't so shy.
"Stand and just look at the camera first," Mike said. We got this:
To combat the shyness we tried my back to the camera. Of course, Mike caught me adjusting my pants. Classy:
Sexy looking-down wasn't so successful either. I look bald and like my mother:
After resorting to doing ballet and some odd jungle all-fours walk, I said to Mike I felt like I should be wearing a leopard skin bikini with a rose between my teeth.
"Anything else?" he said.
And then the hair revolted:
The only way we achieved the picture on the left?
"Gill," Mike said. "Look over there."
And then he let loose.
"Meow meow meow meow," he sang. And I turned to smile at him. Perfect. Ish.
The lady in charge of Professional Trainee Loans looked at me. "Okay, we are going to need to go through your budget just to see what sort of outgoings you've got," she said.
Oh God. The Budget. "Okay," I said smiling.
"Right, let's start at the top then, how much is your rent?"
"That's one easy, £225 per month."
"Okay, and what would you say your electricy, gas etc bills are?"
I haven't the faintest idea. I have no idea who even supplies it. I decided to stall.
"What would
you say?"
"Pardon?"
"What is a normal bill?"
She stared at me. "I would say about £30 per month," she said slowly.
"Okay I'll have that one."
"Which one?"
"The thirty."
"Right," she said, exhaling loudly. "And what would you say you spend on socialising?"
Oh hell. I have an addition to eating out, red wine, the cinema, train travel... Hang on, though. Socialising is technically free. How much do I spend on talking to people? Well, not very much at all!"Five pounds per month."
"
Five pounds per month?"
"Okay, maybe ten."
"Are you sure? Do you not go out?"
That was not the illusion I was trying to create."Okay, twenty."
"That's better. It's good to go out, you know," she said, biting her bottom lip.
"I do know that."
"Okay, toiletries?"
"Does that include bath stuff?" I said quickly.
"What?"
"Well I probably spend two pounds per month on toiletries but I spend an awful lot in a shop called Lush."
"Ah, yes, Lush," she said.
What? What? Does she mean "ah, yes, I know lush and totally see where you're coming from, or "ah, yes, you're lush girl, the manager warned me about you"?
Don't ask her what she means. Do NOT ask her what she means. "We'll say thirty pounds then," I said.
"So the same as your gas and electricity bill?"
"That's right."
There was a rather long pause.
"Okay. Well that's over with. Now would you like one of our credit cards?
What? I am clearly deranged and unable to stop spending money. Why is she doing this to me? "No. No. No. That would not be good," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I don't want one, it would be fatal."
"You don't have to use it."
"But I would."
"It has a bear on it."
"Okay, I'll take it."
9:10pm: Whenever my sister or mother eats pineapples they sneeze. I never really thought I would join them in this allergic reaction as I already have "loose bowel moments" to contend with whenever I touch polos, Aftereights and, occasionally, toothpaste.
On my way home from work today I was feeling poncy and well-paid so I purchased Marks and Spencer's fresh pineapples. I ate a box. One box, not too excessive.
My tongue
It's swelling up.
MY TONGUE IS SWELLING UP. AND I HAVE A LISP.
Blogging in the face of an allergic reaction. Refresh like you've never refreshed before!
9:20: Ali has checked tongue and has confirmed it has red spots on.9:30: I hope this is as large as tongue gets. Angry wisdom tooth is not enjoying the swelling tongue.9:40: There is a SLUG IN MY MOUTH. It is OOZING OVER ONTO MY TEETH. However I still have full lung capacities and can also still swallow. Have washed offending pineapple out of mouth. 9:55: Crisis averted. Tongue is getting smaller and less tingly. Will give other pineapple pieces away. Will not eat it.00:01: Just had the following conversation with my father:
Me: I have a big tongue!
My Dad: What?
Me: I ate loads of pineapple, and it got bigger.
Dad: And?
[pause]
Me: So I sort of kept on eating, and it got even bigger!
[beat]
My Dad: You know I have a website, right?
I walked into the assessment centre, and I was the person whose name wasn't on the list. Hi.
My eyes flicked over the candidates.
2 boys, out of 30 of us. All had that dark spikey hairstyle. One looked like he wanted to be at the football. The other kept fiddling with his tie. Skinny girl, blonde French plait, wide smile. Looks like a jockey, I thought. I imagined her summering in Devon with horses. Girl with hair worn down in somewhat reluctant manner, if that's possible. Slightly boyish. Token stunning girl. Waist length brown hair. Tanned. Very nice suit that I saw in Monsoon. Well-behaved fringe.
She also, unlike me, did not pour coffee over counter.
Me? I am wild-haired girl. Glasses. Ballet dancer's walk. Very bitten fingernails. Slight geekiness concealed by girly black and pink suit.
Written exercise: Frighteningly law-based; some of the candidates having studied the question for their coursework. Someone got 74 on said coursework. I fought the urge to start talking about eighteenth-century women because they are not important or relevant nor are they directly related to, well, the real world.
Group Presentation: Fine. I said the word corporate merger. I was then smug and tried not to look it. Hoped recruiter heard and saw my name tag. Also hope she did not judge me for not having 9 middle names.
Individual Presentation: Mental note: They really
do stop you after 5 minutes. Second mental note: disadvantageous. You got that? Disadvantageous. NOT disadgkhgkhg.
Critical Thinking Exercise: May I pose a question to you, oh blog readers?
Regard this statement as true:
A muscle soother works by sinking into the skin and muscles.Does this conclusion follow logically?
A woman was giving a demonstration of the soother using a leather shoe. Does the fact that the soother sank into the leather prove that it is an effective muscle soother?I changed my yes/no answer six times. Furious rubber-using ensued.
I find out in a week. And I just found out I have another of the buggers to get through.
My Dad: Actually, can we stand?
Me: Yes... Why?
My Dad [speaking quielty]: I have a chapped bottom.
Me: What?
My Dad: I have a
chapped bottom. I chafed it.
[pause]
Me: You know I have a website, right?
After I vomited on a dog on Wednesday (and haven't I just always wanted to start a blog with that), I spent most of Wednesday evening either on the toilet, in my bed with wonderful wonderful Immodium plus or in a ball on the bathmat. I went to work on Thursday where I ate a packet of crisps and a slice of bread and was later spotted in bed by 7pm on Thursday night shaking and complaining that there was a horse trying to get out of my bowels feet first.
On Friday morning I sent my boss an incoherent text message that would have grunted if it were a phone call, saying something about vomit, my to-do list on my desk and how I was sorry I was a shit. Classy, Billygean, classy.
On Friday, therefore, I was free. Technically, anyway. I did have to be within ten metres of a toilet but this was okay. So I napped with Mike (twice), I watched an old movie, I watched and blogged about Countdown.
During the late afternoon Mike and I were spooning on my bed when we heard a group of young girls outside. I must point out here that they weren't drunk louts, or tramps, and this therefore reflects the high-quality new house situated between a family and an old man. As in, citizens. Real people.
Said girl shouted something about her "front bum", at which point my face lit up, remembering primary school where it was common knowledge that boys had willies and girls front bums. Mike wrinkled his nose, claiming he had never heard the term. And also that I was mad. I caught his eye. He looked back. We both looked at Google.
And that's how we ended up Googling "front bum". I must point out that this is quite a spectacular livelihood and if the dole paid slightly more I would seriously consider it as a valid career option.
During our Googling we came across a certain site that advertises what it calls "Vaginal Enhancement". And herein lies the point of this entire post.
This site is fantastic. It opens with:
Ugliness appearance associated with a BIG vagina
Aside from the fact that this doesn't make grammatical sense, since when did anyone associate someone's appearance with the size of their vagina? A) I haven't seen any of my friends' vaginas B) I would be horrified if they offered C) I think I would be too traumatised to form a general judgement of their wellbeing if they had showed me their vagina.
For causes of a "gaping" vagina, this site casually lists poor sexual hygiene, age, INSERTING INAPPROPRIATE OBJECTS INTO ONE'S VAGINA and of course, childbirth. Wonderfully normal then. The consequences, it says, can be grave.
"Many marriages fail because the woman has not been able to provide her partner with a tight feminine vagina."
Not just tight. But feminine. With like, eyelashes and a handbag.
Vagina Enhancement, it says, is the only option. Because
To be feminine is to have a tight well toned vagina.
This is clearly the very essence of femininity. Apparently a tight and snug vagina PROJECTS A SIGN OF FEMININITY. Yes, I can currently feel my vagina projecting right now. This can also make you sexually appealing to the opposite sex. Well, love, if you've got your legs open already you've probably done most of the work without your projecting vagina.
There are many non-surgical procedures you can do to tighten your vagina. But mostly you are supposed to stop putting things in there.
"Ah yes," was Mike's response. "I have a can of Tizer and I just don't know where to put it. I know!"
"Hello you," I said, padding into the living room.
"Mmm," Mike said, not looking up from a piece of paper covered in scribble.
"What's that?"
"Just this thing," Mike said quietly.
I moved to look over his shoulder and caught Mike's eyes.
"What thing?" I said.
He paused. "A Countdown thing."
"
A Countdown thing?""Yes, I just can't figure out the numbers that were on earlier."
"Ah," I said, fully aware Countdown was on rather a long time ago.
Half an hour later he was victorious, having figured out how to make 796 out of 4, 4, 5, 6, 3 and 5.
What am I living with?
Edit: You can see Mike's geekiness paying off here which he "just made". Isn't he annoying/wonderful?
I decided not to go to ballet tonight. I had curry today which seemed to have disagreed with me. Walking back from the train station in the rain with my newspaper flapping about, the queasiness suddenly got a lot worse. I perched on a wall and held my stomach.
I felt a bit faint and there was suddenly nothing else for it.
I threw up on a dog
How was I to know that a terrier would have his head in my curry bag?
More importantly, why do these things only happen to me?
Letter dated 31 July.
"We acknowledge receipt of your training contract application. If you do not hear anything by 31 July 2006 you are to presume your applications has been unsuccessful."
It's just mind games, isn't it?
