» The Dark

The dark, the ring and the scared shitless
Going back a few years now I did something truly evil in the dark and I have still not had my apology accepted.

After spending a lovely boozy night out with my friend Ana we had made it back to her flat in the wee hours of the morning a little how shall we say, inebriated and in a bit of a silly mood.

Zigzagging up her garden path Ana was at the front door struggling with her keys while I wandered up to the living room window and spied her hubby and his mates all crashed out on the sofas watching a film. I proceeded to wave manically at the guys expecting one of them to notice me and let us in – this didn’t happen. It was then I realised they couldn’t see me through the window as it was so dark outside so I did what any sensible well-adjusted grownup would do and pulled faces at them and stuck my fingers up, Ana hearing my hysterical giggles staggered over and joined in.

After a few minutes I stopped being a dick and noticed what they were watching on the TV, it was The Ring. Ahaahahahaaaaa thought I – bloody brilliant! Seeing as I had seen the film already I knew roughly how far they were into it and I realised that in about 5 minutes time the phone would ring on the screen. I rummaged crazily for my mobile whilst filling in Ana on my dastardly plan.

The second the phone appeared on the screen and we could just about hear it ringing through the window I frantically rang Ana’s other half and we prayed that he had his mobile phone near him… he did. We watched with glee as all the guys started giggling nervously and pointed at his phone. He picked it up, pressed the call button and I put on my best spooky voice and whispered ‘In seven days you will die’ I then hung up the phone and me and Ana threw ourselves against the window in unison, scaring the shit out of every guy in the room and making them produce high pitch squeals that would make a 4 year old girl proud!!

It goes down in history as being the most successful prank I have every played to this day and if mentioned around the boys it always receives the same response – ‘we knew it was you, I wasn’t scared’… sure, sure! Mwah ha haaaa!
(Mon 27th Jul 2009, 17:06, More)

» IT Support

The Mug.
My old IT Manager was a great bloke. His name was Chris and he was an avid Arsenal supporter, he commuted to Salisbury from London everyday and was always perky and happy to help - I assume he was always perky because of the vast amount of coffee he consumed on a daily basis, and that swiftly brings me onto his coffee mug. As Chris was a monster Arsenal supporter, he had a monster Arsenal mug; this thing was HUGE and you usually knew what desk he was working at when you saw THE MUG. Now about a month after the mug had been introduced it started going walkabout. Due to its gargantuan size some of the guys in the office had taken a shine to it so started stealing it from the kitchen in the mornings and using it themselves… this made Chris rather upset.

Sorting out my computer one afternoon I asked Chris where his mug was, he told me someone in the phones office had it. I asked him if it pissed him off that people kept taking it and he said it was driving him nuts but he didn’t want any confrontation about it - he was actually considering buying a replacement. I thought that was ridiculous and told him as much and said he should just tell the guys to buy their own sodding mugs and take it back. He pondered this suggestion, said he would have a think and sulked off back to his cupboard. The next day I came back in from lunch to the sound of raised voices in the phones office. I wandered in to find Chris holding his mug triumphantly in the air laying into a guy called Steve. Chris was going ballistic at him. Spit flying freely from his open mouth, eyeballs bulging, forehead reddening, finally he stormed off out of the office slamming the door behind him. I asked what had just happened and everyone started telling me how Chris had just snapped at Steve because he found him drinking out of his beloved mug. Feeling very guilty I snuck back to my desk and hid.

Five minutes later I received an email from Chris… Subject heading: Thank you. Feeling highly embarrassed I opened up the email and read what Chris had to say. Turns out he had taken my advice. He had pulled Steve to the side earlier in the day and asked him if he wouldn’t mind telling people not to use his mug anymore… Steve agreed but decided that the guys probably wouldn't listen to him either and hatched a plan for Chris to go mental at him in front of everyone, thus nailing the point home that Chris was a bad ass and not to be fucked with. Well it bloody worked, and office gossip as it was, by the end of the week the accounts team had been told that Chris had apparently beaten Steve in the face with his mug and verbally bashed everyone in the office. From then on no one took his mug and it was always clean and in the cupboard when Chris wanted it. :)
(Fri 25th Sep 2009, 11:56, More)

» The most childish thing you've done as an adult

Lego Pirate Dreams
Picture the scene. Its Christmas day, I’m huddled under the tree with my older sister and there is only one present left. It’s big and it’s marked up for the both of us and it’s from the big red jolly man himself. We give one another a knowing look… Lego. It has to be the Lego pirate ship! Over the months leading up to Christmas we had banged on about nothing else, we wanted the pirate ship and that was all there was to it.

Tearing open the colourful wrapping paper, our eyes filled with glee, we saw… we saw… LEGOOOO! Only… no… this can’t be right… its… some sort of hospital and a police station… wha…? Obviously we were happy and we were lucky to get anything for Christmas, we weren’t ungrateful little bastards, but we still craved the pirate ship.

Speed up 15 years later (wavy lines) and I’m being dragged around Bluewater by my mother and sister. My mums in a craft shop and has settled in for the long haul and I’m craving sweets so I wander off to find something exciting… instead of sweets I find the Lego Store. Even though I’m supposed to be an adult I wander in anyway, grinning from ear to ear at all the lovely things on display. Looking around… then I see it. THE NEW AND IMPROVED, BEAUTIFULLY BIG, IT’S THE LEGO PIRATE SHIP!!! ‘Holy Shit’ I whisper and run out of the store to find my sister. Barely able to string a sentence together I grab her arm and pull her into the store pointing frantically at the ship. Her reaction is similar to mine and we danced around the store arm in arm singing ‘yippeeeee’. There is a problem though… the bastard thing is £80!! £80!!! No wonder my parents didn’t get it for us as kids. But then I remember - I’m a grown up and I have a credit card, so I pull the box off the shelf, wink at my sister, march over to the counter and pay for the bad boy!

That night we sat at the dining room table drinking copious amounts of Jack Daniels and put together the ship which we had wanted 15 years for. It was truly fun and I would highly recommend searching out the lost toys of your youth and sharing the fun with your family and friends, next on my list… a Mr Frosty! :D
(Mon 21st Sep 2009, 11:35, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

Rugby vs Cartoons
Rugby. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching the occasional game now I am a grown up, but when I was little I bloody hated it. Whenever my dad was at home it seemed like the rugby was on. I’d tear home from school, lunchbox swinging in the breeze, eager to watch Daffy Duck call someone ‘despicable’ but when I got to the living room the result would usually be the same - my dad levitating above the sofa screaming ‘GO ON MY SON’ at the telly while a man ran on some mud with the weirdest-shaped ball I’d ever seen. I just didn’t get the fascination so would do the usual kid thing and hang around whining ‘daaaaaad, can I watch cartooooooooons pleaseeee’… ‘how long does this go on for’… ‘can I have chips for tea tonight, daaaaaad’. That poor man, I feel quite bad about it now but I was a kid and it was my job to complain – surely!?

Anyhoo, one particular day I started up my moaning and my dad did something different. Instead of turning up the tv or clamping his hands to his ears to block out my howls, he put the tv on mute and asked me to come and sit with him on the sofa. He gave me a hug, took the tv off mute and proceeded to point out players on the screen. He sat with me and explained the entirety of the sport; who each player was, their position, what their job was etc. I sat with him for the whole game, to me it seemed like it went on for hours, but for the first time they were enjoyable hours. My dads always been a man of few words so to hear him talk at length about anything was pretty gosh darn impressive to me so I sat and listened intently.

After the game he told me that he would be playing rugby in a week or so and asked if I wanted to come and see him. I was actually excited at the concept of watching my dad be the man with the ball so I agreed and my mother took me, my older sister and my younger brother to watch my dad play rugby for the RAF vs NAVY match. I don’t remember much of what happened that day, other than it being bloody cold on the sidelines in the rain but every time my dad ran past me I cheered with all the might I could muster so he knew that I cared.

It’s a shame I didn’t retain all the information he taught me on that day, but I like to think a little bit of it hung around as now I can happily watch a game without feeling like I’m missing out on cartoons!
(Thu 15th Oct 2009, 16:52, More)

» I'm your biggest Fan

When I was a tiny flim of a flam...
...I was not your average little girl. While other girls would busy themselves playing with dolls and begging their parents to let them have their ears pierced I was at the bottom of the garden, digging mainly. What was I digging for you might ask… STUFF! I would dig for freedom, I would dig for liberty, I would just plain dig for the love of digging my friends!!

From a young age I wanted more than anything else in the world to find a dinosaur, obviously not understanding that a small garden on a RAF base in Bedfordshire was probably not the best place in the world to search.

Anyhoo, eventually the time came for us to move from the base and we shifted from Bedfordshire to Cambridgeshire so my dad could join the Police force. I was 7 and while I was of course sad to leave my friends behind I was also looking forward to the possibility of a new dig site - woo.

We had moved into a new build home which I later found out was built on top of land which was once a massive dairy farm. Once we arrived I grabbed a trowel and in a matter of days I had dug up most of the back garden and scoured all of the gravel drive looking for fossils, of which there were lots. I had also, much to my mothers horror, dug up half the bones from a cow and found a mouse skull, I was in heaven and things were only going to get better.

Starting at my new school I had pretty much told everyone about my digging habits and brought in my collection of misc boney/stoney crap to share with all those around me on our Nature Table. At the end of term I had a lot to carry home and struggled out the gate with bursting bags. It was raining and I had managed to fall over and drop my bag on the floor. Hearing the thud I knew I had broken my prize possession, a massive cow bone (I can't for the life of me remember what it was now - I think it was a femur bone) I sat on the floor and cried. I noticed a car pull up alongside me and my headmistress got out, she picked me off the floor and asked what was wrong. I sobbed and told her about the bone breaking. She got up and tapped on the window of the car. A man got out and introduced himself as Mr Howe.

It turned out Mr Howe worked at a museum in Peterborough and was a curator, he was very interested to see what I had in the bag. He asked if he could borrow my findings and bring them back after the weekend. I let him go and was dusted off and sent on my way. The following week my headmistress asked me to come to her office where she gave me a letter, it was from her husband and he had painstakingly drawn around each stone and explained in full detail, where they had come from, how old they were, what sort of fossil was imbedded etc. he had also managed to glue my bone back together again, and you could hardly tell it was broken. I was amazed and from that day on Mr Howe was my hero! I visited him at the museum in Peterborough and I would send him anything I found. He would always reply with beautiful letters, written with elegant swooping text explaining what I had ‘discovered’. He really did make me feel like an adventurer.

Sadly Mr Howe is no longer with us, he died of cancer when I was 10 and with him went my dream of becoming an archaeologist/geologist. I still have the letters and treasure them to this day, he will always be a hero to me, simply because he took the time to show an interest in me and never once treated me like a child.
(Fri 17th Apr 2009, 14:07, More)