Merry Christmas, have a pineapple

So my Christmas was lovely :) I spent Christmas day with my Grandparents in Wales, who are the funniest people with regards to presents that I have ever met. My Gran is a big fan of just passing on anything she doesn't want/need/use on a regular basis, and so we not only came away with a pile of Christmas presents for each of us, but also:

1. A shredder that has been living behind a chair in the living room for a year or so due to fear of technology ("we don't like anything we're not used to")


2. 2 apples, 2 plums and 1 pineapple out of a fruit basket given to them the day before by a neighbour. The pineapple seemed a source of great distress as my Gran had no idea how to cut it open and so seemed quite afraid of it.


3. Half their Christmas decorations.

Sadly, however, we did not bring this happy little thing home as it is still hanging on their little white tree.

I believe it's a white lion, with a bright red mouth and spots drawn on with pen, dressed as santa, complete with beard. If you have seen a cooler (or more bizarre) Christmas decoration, I would like to see it.

The rest of my Christmas was spent watching a lot of TV whilst munching on a chocolate orange :)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

My Gramps used to sing that, not just at Christmas time but whenever he felt like it :)

I like geese :)

Anyway, although I haven't seen any geese, I know Christmas is coming up because me and Makaela spent the evening at the panto dress rehearsal tonight. It was extremely nice to be able to sit and munch upon chocolate whilst giving the occasional wise-sounding piece of advice rather than rushing around worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong. We also did some reminiscing and I am looking forward to a possible girly evening over Christmas where we can do lots of old-panto watching :D

Since I last wrote on here I have done rather a lot, including visiting Louise and Chloe and Rachel and also seeing Kat and Byatt back in Bristol which was loveeeellly. I had such good times on both weekends away :)
Now I am mainly working and getting into a Christmassy mood. We have a Christmas tree at work and people are discovering I can draw which is fun as I spent 10 minutes today doing a biro drawing of the chef who is fascinated by it :D Oh and on Tuesday I am literally getting paid to draw (or paint as it were) as when I went into school to collect my artwork and certificates Ms Dyer told me she'd pay me a little bit of money to film me doing a watercolour painting step-by-step and explaining it blue peter style! So as creepy and bizarre as that sounds I am a little pleased to be getting some more money.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at Christmas although the fact that I'm moving to Kenya for 6 months in January is kind of taking over a lot of Christmas thoughts! It's only a month to go now and I'm just getting hold of the rest of my stuff to take. I am ordering my flipflops over the internet because apparently English shops decided that if my toes freeze in normal shoes in December, flipflops are not the way to go.

A down side of getting ready is that I continually feel ill as I am getting weekly jabs that make you feel as if you have the flu. So that's not too great but if it stops me getting Hepatitus B in Kenya then that's fine by me :D

I love my girlies

Chloe said: "We don't need to have scored a goal in football to be allowed to have a group hug :)"

And I felt this photo was appropriate:

Just because :)

When a waitress says "Thank you! Have a good afternoon!" in a cheery voice, they actually mean "Leave a tip or I will cry"

I loved my customers yesterday :) One man gave me a £5 tip just for me, and another offered to buy me a drink (the refusal of which got me the cash value of that drink). Another table tipped us a £10 note which we stared at in disbelief.

Today, not so much. I got £1.48 in total and yelled at by Hamimi, the chef, for leaving food sitting on the counter for 10 minutes because I was basically running the entire restaurant on my own, and about a billion customers appeared at the same time, the assistant manager having hidden in the freezer to do a stock count.

Work has now taken over so much of my life but I have a kind of depressing acceptance of that now. When I'm there I actually enjoy it. It's just when I get home and realise I'm spending so little time doing other enjoyable things that I get upset.

Other than work this week I spent quite a bit of time at Will's house on Monday and Tuesday playing cribbage and making some very tasty toffee apples, then on Wednesday a lot of us went to see James Bond which was good but had too many car chases for my brain, which zones out after about five seconds of action, to deal with.

Me and Makaela went shopping on Friday and tried out Starbucks' festive drinks which were very very very nice :) I saw the Henleaze fireworks on Saturday evening as well with my Dad and Ilana which were awesome, I love them, and I got far less wet than when we saw the downs ones and I was soaked through 5 layers of clothing.

Oh and I was happy as I finished a painting this week that I've been doing for ages:



Guess who it is :)

Ranting is bad

For about a minute this post was a huge rant about Orange customer services because they are being totally useless, but then I realised that that was boring and pointless. Sadly, I then realised I couldn't delete the post. So, I am forced to actually update properly to get rid of it :P

I spent a lovely last couple of days at my Nan's farm, where it was freezing but really beautiful and autumnal. She taught me how to make proper scones (as opposed to some brick-like items I'd made the previous weekend) and then we made some gingerbread people for my little cousins :D I spent most of the time down there sitting next to the fire or rayburn with the dog and chatting with Nanny which was really really nice :)

Time runs faster than an ostrich on roller-skates

In 10 weeks and 2 days time I will be in Kenya. I have no idea how we got this far through the year.

I've just returned from a 2 day training course with the company I'm going to Kenya with, which was really really fun :) I met all the people I'm going with and they all seemed lovely, we spent so much time laughing, although I understand how those at uni feel a little bit more now as it was weird meeting new people who know very little about you and who don't record every stupid thing you say! Somehow I actually ended up with the group of girls who were most into drinking; after all the training stuff was over last night we went to the 'bar' on the site where we were and our table of glasses was most impressive (I contributed a pint of pear cider and a packet of malteasers to this compared to their multiple vodkas and shots and WKDs). One of the girls had actually brought Twister which we played in the bar, it was hilarious :D

I am a little worried though as they were kind of repeatedly saying everyone else was going to hate them for being the party girls and getting up to tons of stuff they shouldn't (although they do seem to have morals!) and I don't fancy being hated for somehow getting a reputation like that without doing anything! So with that in mind I left the game of twister at the point that some creepy 30 year old men joined in, clearly only with the objective of eyeing up the girls, and went to chat to other people who were going who I think were a little wary of the group of girls I'd managed to make friends with! I found that these people were equally lovely and not quite so keen to allow middle-aged-men to chat them up (they had had quite a bit to drink by this point) and so chatted to them until we went to bed :) How I ended up in the group that would be considered the 'cool' group if we were still in secondary school I don't quite know but they do seem very nice! I'm hoping to keep a more relaxed position when we actually go out to Kenya though as I don't want to immediately become bound to only a few of the people I'm going with. There's about 15 of us going (and only 2 guys, 1 of whom I spent quite a while debating if he was gay!)

Other than the people everything else was very cool too, I know so much more about what it's going to be like now :) Kenya sounds amazing, you can visit an elephant orphanage and play football with the baby elephants and there's even a place you can ride and race ostriches! It sounds like I'll have quite a bit of time off to explore so I'm really looking forward to that.

Unfortunately we also had a 1.5 hour talk on Things That Want To Bite You, including snakes, rabid dogs, malaria-carrying-mosquitoes, bed bugs and sea urchins that like to stick their spikes in your feet. Apparently one of the guys who went out last time actually caught malaria despite taking all the tablets to prevent it. So I have returned far more excited and far more nervous than before! (not helped by the fact that the classes are generally 50+ children and I have to actually try and impart knowledge to them).

Other than that my last week has included making a tasty looking cake with Will and Makaela (involving a lot of chocolate and buttercream icing), a bit of pubbage/drinks at Josh's house, 'choreographing' a fairly hideous dance for the pantomime with Charlotte, and a very good evening at Charlotte's where we watched a BBC Children's video at 1 in the morning :D I now have the Spider In The Bath theme tune in my head.

We're getting a new mop-head at work

That is pretty much the extent of my excitement most days, hence why I don't update often. My blog would probably read

Day 1: "I worked. The head of the mop fell off. I had to touch it and it smells."

Day 2: "Head of mop fell off again. It rained. I got wet. Ross says we're getting a new mop."

Day 3: "New mop hasn't arrived. Have lost all friends due to lack of interesting blog/life. It rained."

But anyway, other than work I have done several awesome things this week. Guides was fun because my guides are lovely and the little ones are so cute and we played an amusing game of murder in the dark that basically consisted of 20 girls standing in a pitch-black room screaming for 15 minutes. So I went away with a grin on my face :D Dressing up at rangers was funny as always, we have actually started a ranger trend of leaping off tables in stupid outfits because we've got the younger ones doing it too. Aren't we cool :D

Me, Charlotte, Will and Dobson also went to visit Kitty on Saturday which was really nice, it was lovely to spend the day with her and we had tons of fun in London visiting Harrods, the Science Museum and Kitty's House. We also found an AMAZING H&M where I could possibly have bought every single scarf, but after about half an hour we realised Will and Dobson might shoot us if we spent any longer in there so moved on.

Ooh and I also talked to Louise yesterday which was lovely :) She said she enjoys my blog so I've been encouraged.

Beehive Hats and Girly Shopping Trips

I have had a very nice girly week :) On Tuesday evening me, Charlotte and Mak did some cake baking (all coincidentally dressed in very large, scruffy but comfy clothing) and ranger-scarf-knitting (it's changed colour and is journeying between mine and Makaela's houses!) and then some cake decorating on the Wednesday which was much fun :D

We also had a lovely sleepover at Charlotte's on Friday night (where the infamous beehive hat made an appearance, hence the title) with lots of LIDL chocolate and laughing at the outfits mothers dress you in when you are a child. Then Saturday morning we went on a very successful shopping trip to Cabot Circus.

I also chatted to Katharine and Chloe yesterday evening which was soooooo nice after not speaking for so long. I totally miss all of the girls though, it is very bizarre only having three of us around (and being outnumbered by guys for once)

Oh, and phone-wise I now have two phones, neither of which will send texts (despite countless phone calls to indian call centres about this issue). If anyone needs to contact me, my new number is 07531512453 but hopefully this'll change back to my old one later this week.

I shall leave you on the note that Charlotte's beehive hat is surprisingly comfy (but also very easy to forget you have on, so beware!)

Yeahhh phone-ness :P

Armed with wellies and my hoodie I went for an explore on the downs this morning at a time only considered decent by Kitty and after much wandering around and circling benches repeatedly (attracting the gaze of a creepy guy in a white van), I FOUND MY PHONE :D

I still need a new one as I doubt spending 12 hours on the downs has done anything for my phone's pathetic texting ability but I am glad to have it back :)

And now, with soggy jeans and frizzy hair, I should do some work.

Lack of Phone-ness

I dropped my phone on the downs somewhere :( As it was a bit useless and only sent and recieved texts when it felt like it, I'm not overly annoyed, but I'd still rather I had it back. I also now feel a stupid sense of sentimental attachment to it and feel bad for abandoning it on the downs :P Poor phoney.

I might go look for it tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I now definately need to buy a new phone.

Eaten by work

How did my jobs absorb my life? And what happened to the concept of a weekend? I have no days off until next Saturday. Urgggh.

Not that I should complain as my BRINC website work is paying me very well (especially considering I'm sitting around writing this whilst 'working') and is probably going to fund my trip rather than the silly waitressing shifts I'm doing. I've been sent down to work at Cabot Circus twice now and the novelty is wearing off; I don't like it down there. It's dull because the restaurant is so big that you get assigned a particular task to take care of so end up doing a smaller variety of stuff. Plus there's enormous queues the whole time so you never get to stop.


Haven't been doing much other than work. I had an awesome day in Bath (and Gotherington) with Claire on Monday but am now left with a Claire-shaped hole in my life which sucks.



On a happier note, I am full of chocolate and apple rings (I can't go into Cabot Circus without buying something from the stall selling chocolate covered fruit and nuts now), it's vaguely sunny, I get to do some art this evening whilst adulting at panto and I might have some post from Chloe sometime.
:)

Why, when you put something important in a safe place, are you more likely to lose it?

Just spent ages looking for the i-pod cable thingy which I remembered putting in a 'safe place' but couldn't remember where that safe place was. I guess it's kind of metaphorical also (yes I have just scared away Will by using a long word :P)

Anyway, I am off to waitress for the first time in about a week now, feel pretty ill but I'm weirdly glad about that as I want to prove to my manager that I did have a vaguely genuine reason for being off work. People have also been requesting that I make up some more of those friendship things about people, so I think I will use the time to do that.

This week has left me wishing for a routine as everything has just been unsettled. I miss everyone who's gone away and am determined now to write lots of letters and arrange lots of visits so it doesn't feel like they've gone away.

I have no idea how to finish this now. Hmm. I'm going to go off to work and test out Charlotte's parallel parking guide.

I think this parking probably rivals mine in awfulness

This made me laugh:

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx/?mkt=en-GB&vid=fd16d7aa-ce14-4c37-a925-c1ce6e81f76d&from=today&ocid=today&wa=wsignin1.0

:P

A guide to our friendship group

I've been thinking over the last few days, what with all these leaving events making me feel sad, how well and how much everyone knows each other in our friendship group, and so what it will be like when we're all spread over the country and then the world.

And, out of boredom at work, I have compiled a list of things that we all just naturally understand about each other that any outsider may be confused with.


If Chloe stares at you for a long period of time, ignore it but perhaps wave a hand in front of her face if you want anything you say to be heard.

If Josh looks less than happy when recieving a birthday present from you, it is not personal.


Anything Dobson tells you that seems slightly unbelievable should be treated with suspicion (this particularly applies if he has been drinking or your name is Kitty).



Charlotte will often burst out into song at random intervals, and more often than not these songs will be from High School Musical. If she begins to cry at points when everyone else is laughing, you know that the joke probably involved some mention of something sexual or politically incorrect that on some basic level Charlotte found funny, but knows she really shouldn't have.


Kitty, knives (or spoons for that matter) and Josh should not be within a 10 metre radius of each other at any one point.

Claire can eat as many biscuits as you put in front of her and will always be up for ASDA cookie trips.

Byatt will always insist that he can walk at 4 times the speed that is physically possible.

Katharine + Daddy-Long-Legs is not a good combination.

Makaela's grey bag never has been, and never will be, in once piece.

Any phone conversation with Tom in which you manage to get him to say a word that has more than 1 syllable is a great success.

Sasha is Louise's scooter and should be treated with respect.

Katharine is lost to the world as soon as Strictly Come Dancing is on TV, and no social event should be planned that overlaps with neighbours-o-clock.

If all the girls suddenly say something excitedly at once in high pitched voices, it is probably a line from FRIENDS.

And finally, Will is of course unquestionably masculine, and his relationship with Dave is nothing but heterosexual.

NO MONEY

So I just phoned the insurance company Charlotte's working for to ask about the job I applied for, and they told me I need 12 months customer service experience! How on earth did Charlotte get the job then?

So that's my hope of actually raising anywhere near enough money for Kenya gone :(
URGHHHHHH

and then dream-chloe said to dream-kitty...

We had a funnnnny girly sleepover :D

Dream-chloe was a little harsh on dream-kitty, but Real-Life-Chloe said she had a blog, hence why I have started one also.

Hopefully if I make it to Kenya I will be able to update it from there and hear what everyone else is up to.