April 15, 2013 · 8:48 am

Husky-racing and other mishaps

I’m in Finland, and yesterday we went husky racing. With husky racing, one person reclines in comfort on a reindeer skin on the sledge (my friend) and one stands at the back of the sledge, furiously manning the brakes and using their body weight to steer the contraption to victory (Me).

At the front there are the huskies, whose sole purpose seems to be to run as fast as possible away from the sledge. (Obviously they are firmly attached to the sledge, which makes their valiant efforts painfully futile, and reminded me that animals really are quite stupid).

Being the driver is quite excellent- you get to wear a ridiculously warm overall-type thing, and as the tallest thing on the horizon (apart from the trees, which you should try to avoid as much as possible) feel very much like the master of all you survey (which is pretty much exclusively snow, but still). There are, however, some downsides.

Hills, for instance, require you to jump off the back of the sledge and frantically run behind it, ‘helping’ the huskies to get the bloody thing up- the wretched animals show their gratitude by immediately increasing speed, leaving you flailing in the snow behind the sledge before screwing your courage to the sticking place and hurling yourself back onto the thing.

‘Why are you panting?’ My friend asked as I thudded back onto the sledge.

Unable to draw breath to reply, I noticed at this point that the huskies were dangerously close to being sucked into the engine of the snowmobile we were following. Forgetting for the instant their recent treachery, I attempted to jump on the brakes, only for the sledge to slip out from my firm and professional grasp, and found myself on the snow, directly in the path of the incoming husky sledge. Desperate to save myself from death by a thousand tiny husky paws, I rolled to the side of the path, plunging into a snowdrift so deep it took me several minutes to re-emerge from it.
photo

Wearied yet triumphant, I made my way back to my sledge, which my friend had managed to stop by the curiously ineffective method of sitting in the same cozy position and shouting ‘Woah!’ with increasing panic. ‘I’m back!’ I announced, resuming my driver’s position. ‘Oh good!’ My friend replied. ‘Are the dogs OK?’ Speechless, I ejected my friend from her reindeer-clad throne, and enjoyed a very pleasant passage home through the endless white, the peace punctuated only by the immensely pleasing sound of my friend frantically trotting along behind us.

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April 12, 2013 · 10:23 am

My Mother and Other Animals

My Mother has recently asked me if I want to take part in a Gorilla Run- a 7km Fun Run done whilst wearing a gorilla suit.

There are several things wrong with this. The first is that my Mother is the type of woman who swims with her hair never ever touching the water, and her very expensive sunglasses firmly in place. She once got off a transatlantic flight and went straight to her beauticians. She is not the type of lady who would like to run about wearing a gorilla suit.

Looking more carefully at the Gorilla Run website, I noticed that it was a Fun Run in aid of conserving mountain gorillas, a species ‘on the verge of extinction’. I do not wish to paint my Mother in an unflattering light, but as a person whose hatred of animals has no bounds, I fear she may in fact be on the side of extinction.

I looked once again at the email my Mother had sent me and my siblings: ‘Anyone want to do this?’ it asks. I fear that this is in fact some sort of test, and sadly both me and my sister, thrilled at the idea of ‘a gorilla suit of your own which you get to keep’, have certainly failed.

In other news, if you see any lone, disorientated Gorillas running about London, please ignore Zoo warnings and Do Feed The Animals. (I’m pretty sure this is the end of popping over to Mum’s for home-cooked meals and free toothpaste).

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April 11, 2013 · 11:43 am

Angry Birdy

We have a new guest in our flat- a large stuffed toy Angry Bird, which my little sister won at Legoland.

It is only the very foolish amongst you who believe that stuffed toys are for children. Here are some of the ways that Angry Birdy (we wanted him to feel at home, so have given him this affectionate nickname) has improved our lives:

1. Sick of the wretched and soul-destroying mechanized bleep of your alarm? Wake up instead to the exhilarating bounce of Angry Birdy as he hits you on the head in the morning, thrown from the doorway of your bedroom by your helpful roommate. You can tell instantly how angry he is that day by the force with which he is hurled at your sleeping body.

2. Forgotten to do your laundry? Angry Birdy is the perfect pillow. (I am not suggesting that you should put your actual pillow into the washing machine, but do you know how gross it is not to change your pillow case regularly? Having watched several people sleeping, I can tell you for a fact how disgusting the human face is when asleep. Wash that shit immediately).

3. Suffer from a fear of confrontation? I personally do not, but have found endless mileage in holding Angry Birdy in front of my face whilst hammering on the toilet door, yelling at my little sister, ‘You won’t like me when I’m angry’, then using him as a shield when she chucks a toilet roll at me.

4. Don’t like sitting next to strangers on the tube? Simply plop Angry Birdy down on the seat next to you. Trust me, everyone will give you a very wide berth indeed. (Be sure to whisper to Angry Birdy at frequent intervals to reassure him that ‘It’s not his fault. The people are just worried about bird flu’).

5. Quickly identify which of your friends need to be pruned from the garden of friendship by simply introducing them to Angry Birdy:
a) ‘Why do you have a soft toy?’ (puzzled look, concerned expression) PRUNE
b) ‘What an awesome Angry Bird toy!’ (begins to hurl Angry Birdy around pretending he is flying) KEEP
c) ‘A real-life birdy!’ (Tries to feed toy) PRUNE AND SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION

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March 22, 2013 · 12:12 pm

How to save time/ Show people how busy you are

It’s very important to multi-task, especially for someone as busy and in-demand as myself, so I’ve come up with a few things you can do, whilst also doing other things.

1. Household chores whilst cooking.
I trialed this yesterday, when I noticed that Tescos was advising me to cook my stir-fry vegetables for 8 minutes. ‘Well,’ I thought. ‘That’s going to be pretty boring. I might as well pop out and post those letters I need to send.’

Time saved: 7 minutes
Risk to life: high. Though not to mine. To my sleeping housemate, high.

2. Talking on the phone whilst doing household chores
Before doing this, it is important to determine what level of hygenie your flatmates expect when they ask you to ‘clean the bathroom’, because frankly, if you’re on the phone, there’s a whole side of the bath that isn’t going to get cleaned, unless it accidentally gets splashed by rogue water from the bath taps. (I have written before, at length, on my hatred of baths, so personally I feel even turning the taps is really going above-and-beyond)

Time saved: unsure, as I’ve never really cleaned properly, but I’m guessing 4 hours

3. Sending emails on the toilet (number 2, number one is more for tweeting)
The added benefit of this is that you feel like one of those super-high-powered business women. You’re like Condoleezza Rice, only even more impressive, because you are also taking care of your bodaay.

Time saved: A solid 2 minutes.

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March 21, 2013 · 11:48 am

Telling tales (and how to be less boring)

‘I don’t know anyone in a successful relationship who met post-uni,’ My friend announced. ‘What about Chelsea Handler and Andre Balazs?’ I replied. (I’ve been watching endless reruns of Chelsea’s late-night chat show. I highly recommend it, she’s a hoot).

‘Um,’ My friend replied. ‘I meant in our friendship group.’ Putting aside my deeply-held belief that, seeing as I spend so much quality time with her, Chelsea Handler pretty much is in my friendship group, I tried to think about people i know in real life. Usually, I would fact-check this with my therapist, but I recently had a dream where she left me stranded with a baby, so I’m still pretty cross with her thoughtlessness about that.

I quickly realised that I probably do not listen quite as well as I could, when it occurred to me that I had very little idea when most of my friends met their boyfriends. Or, in some cases, who their boyfriends were. (That, I would like to add, is not entirely my fault. There’s a pretty quick turnover in some cases). However, as a caring and diligent friend*, I resolved to change this. Here are some helpful tips on how to make your stories less boring:

1. People have a lot going on- toilet trips, eating, staying awake, breathing etc, so remember that your anecdotes are competing with all those things, and keep them brief.

2. I personally am a huge fan of props.

3. An excellently sneaky way of getting people to listen is to substitute your actual name with the names of celebrities: So there Eddie Redmayne was, wondering why his flatmate had failed to replace the loo roll- I mean, Ryan Gosling had just left the empty roll on the holder! Who does that?

4. Some people believe that conversations follow some kind of order- that one person says something, the other responds, and so on. If you adhere to this you will simply never get to tell your great story about the time you got TWO dairy milks from the vending machine. Simply shout out.

5. If all else fails, become the type of person who listens appreciatively to other people’s stories- this has the added benefit of turning you into what I have heard described as ‘the ideal girlfriend’.**

*Factually inaccurate.*

**Under no circumstances should you do this. Continue to tell outrageously inappropriate stories, interrupt hugely and generally exist as a fully-formed sentient being.**

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March 18, 2013 · 12:16 pm

There’s something wrong with your face

There’s something wrong with your face,’ My little sister said to me at the beginning of the week. Usually, I would have ignored her, but last week my Grandmother asked why I was ‘giving her that funny look’, when all i was doing was looking at her with my eyes open, like a normal, polite sort of human being, so it hit a little harder than normal. You can tell a lot about a person from how their face looks in repose, so it has become clear to me that this is something I need to work on.

Having spent some time in front of the mirror, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. It is almost impossible to look in the mirror and truly see yourself, hindered as you are by your well-honed and automatic ‘mirror face’.

2. Looking at one’s face in repose is a frightening and unpleasant experience. Personally, most of my face seems to be taken up with an enormous forehead, though I spend much of my time frowning, which does help to reduce this (And yes, Mother, encourages wrinkles. My Mother is a one-woman mission to make me feel old. Yesterday she asked if people had started thinking of me as an old maid yet. I pointed out that I was in my twenties. ‘Your late twenties,’ She replied sadly. ‘And all alone.’)

3. Using a cotton bud dipped in sunscreen is not the most effective way to remove eye make-up.

4. My sister tells me constantly to ‘work on my googly eyes’, but I actually think my eyes are perfectly normal, if a little dilated (No, I have no idea why this is. I assume because my pupils are taking advantage of the brief moments when I am awake by taking in as much light as possible. This may be a family trait, because my little sister breathes as though she’s trying to suck as much oxygen out of the air as possible- in a sort of noisy slurping fashion. It’s deeply off-putting. My eye thing is much more elegant).
‘
Anyway, it’s not my eyes that are weird, it’s my eyebrows. But seeing as I’m mildly afraid of my eyebrow woman, I don’t see this changing anytime soon. I did experiment with an eyebrow covering fringe, but I couldn’t see anything, so that was no good.

5. If you can truly tell what a person is like by looking at their face, it may be time for me to start wearing a very low-slung baseball cap. Which would handily give both the illusion of youth (I’ve seen that Justin Bieber) and save me a great deal of money on cotton buds and eyebrow shaping.

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March 15, 2013 · 11:41 am

Confusing loos and other hatreds

Can we meet at 9.30pm?’ I asked my friend. ‘Because I’m going climbing this evening.’ My friend sent me back a rather disheartening list of instructions: Climbing?!? Don’t fall off/ get stuck/ develop vertigo/ tie yourself into a knot/ make someone else fall off/ cry.
‘
Which raised all sorts of horrible possibilities that I had certainly never seen encountered by any of the shirtless men rock climbing in the Sure adverts.

I carefully packed some shorts and a wife-beater (I got burned last week whilst wearing a wife-beater so now its the only sleeveless top I can wear), and emailed my little sister to let her know I was ready.

‘What are you wearing?’ She replied. ‘Imagine the guy in the Sure advert? Only with a wife-beater.’ My little sister emailed back quickly. ‘You know it’s an outside wall, right? You’re going to be perishing.’

In a rough list of things I hate, being cold comes 3rd:

1. When the toilets have impenetrable signs denoting ‘ladies’ or ‘gents’.

2. Fritzl
3. Being cold
4. Accidentally gulping vodka from your bedside glass after a night out. (This could be misconstrued. I wake up, hungover to hell, assume it’s water, and am unpleasantly surprised to find out it is not. No, I haven’t learnt yet).
5.This kid I was at uni with. He has literally no idea of my consistent and burning hatred for him, which I think makes the time I spend thinking evil about him all the more worthwhile and necessary.

I didn’t go climbing, and instead my little sister and I watched ‘This is 40’, the new Judd Apatow movie. Which has helped me to add number 6 to my list of hatred: women in their 40s who look better than me. Still, I’m sure all this upcoming rock-climbing will change that.

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March 14, 2013 · 11:28 am

Steak and Blowjob Day

It’s steak and blowjob day today, which confused me for a long time because it seemed like you would really have your mouth full, until I realised that the steak was for them, not you.

Which seems desperately unfair, but then I’m not much of a fan of any of these ‘Days’ which our calendar seems increasingly full of- Star Wars Day, Pi Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day etc.

Basically, I don’t like Days, with all their pomp and pressure and look-at-me sort of swagger. I like days, which let me quietly get on with the business of getting older, and seeing people without being held to some sort of flower-and-chocolate ransom.I’m not very good at remembering important dates at the best of times, although I am blessed with a Mother who is even worse- last year she called my little sister 3 times on her birthday to discuss upcoming travel arrangements, not mentioning her birthday once, even though my sister asked several times if ‘she had anything to say’.

In fact, my Mother was rather frustrated by this, and accused my sister of ‘not focusing or paying attention’; the irony of which I made sure to highlight in my subsequent email to my Mother, helpfully titled: The Day You Forgot Emma’s Birthday.

If I’m being totally frank, I’m not that big a fan of birthdays. I like my own, naturally, because I’m not dead inside, but other peoples I could do without. Christmas and Easter- that’s where I’m focusing my energies. And Thanksgiving, which may just be the perfect Day- no presents or fancy dinner reservations, no fawning on another person, all food. Which, once again means you’d have your mouth full, but somehow seems less hazardous.

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March 13, 2013 · 11:42 am

Travel less

I’m not entirely sure what the point is of New Year’s Resolutions, but I assume they are made in a flush of early-January enthusiasm, to try to ensure that the following year will be better. My New Year’s Resolution was to ‘travel more’, which sounds very glamorous and fun. It’s not, because my New Year’s Resolution was to ‘travel more in London’, which means that I now spend most of my life furiously angry at late buses or delayed tubes, merrily shoving money I don’t have into the pockets of TfL.

Equally, because of this new travelling lark, I have seen inside roughly the same number of houses as a fairly lazy estate agent. Which has opened my eyes to several things:

1. A lot of my friends are spending way too much money on liquid hand soaps. I would encourage them to do as I do, and use Fairy liquid.

It makes both economic and hygienic sense.
2. Plastering your walls with boyband posters is not ‘interior design’.

(You know who you are).
3. If you do not provide reading matter in the bathroom, you must expect people to rummage through your medicine cabinet for entertainment.
4. We get it. You made far better financial decisions than the rest of us. There’s no need to shove your beautiful-looking kitchen utensils and fancy, dishwasher-proof plates in my face.

5. I need a more comfortable sofa.

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March 12, 2013 · 12:13 pm

My little sister hates the witch-doctor

I’m back from Africa, mostly unharmed- a little burnt, a little fatter and a bird pooed on my ear whilst I was waiting for a ferry, but all in all, a smashing trip. Oh, and my little sister trapped my fingers between the car door and its window; but luckily it took her several moments to release them, figuring, as she said, ‘That I was making a fuss about nothing’.

So, some reduced mobility in my left hand, and a burning desire to inflict ill upon my little sister, but otherwise, everything is as it was before I left.

Although, naturally, I am, internally, deeply changed. This change, unfortunately, has absolutely nothing to do with Africa itself, and everything to do with my family.

‘What are we doing today?’ I asked my Grandfather sleepily over breakfast- a breakfast which, although delicious, had to be eaten in a strange contortionist position, as I attempted to remove all parts of myself from being touched by the wretched dogs, who my Grandparents fed surreptitiously from everyone’s plates.

We were going on a township tour, so my little sister was told not to wear anything ‘flashy or expensive’. (No-one bothered to give me any sartorial advice, except my little sister, who suggested that I stopped wearing tops and ‘gave in’ to the muumuu).

I liked the township tour a lot; we learnt how to play the drums, were introduced to the head homebrew maker (a lady, which made my Grandmother squeal with delight, and shout, ‘Girl Power’, whilst my little sister and I tried to disappear with embarrassment), and I sat placidly with the local witch-doctor as my little sister fumed with rage over his ‘false medicine’. (To be fair to her, he told us happily that he bought his ‘remedies’ from the supermarket. it sort of took some of the mystique out of the whole affair).

As we were leaving, we took a final look around the poorest homes- shacks, without indoor toilets or constant electricity.

‘My God,’ I said somberly to my little sister. ‘Yes, this has been so useful for you both,’ My Grandmother told us as we left. ‘Emma, now you can see your competition, medically speaking. And Lucy- you can write about this in your blog!’

My little sister and I stared at my Grandmother in confusion. Obviously, my Grandmother has never bothered to read my blog, and, given that my little sister then described it as a ‘endless diatribe about her troubles running baths of the correct temperature, or how she hates it when I put my alarm on snooze’, it is unlikely that she will now start. Which is completely fine, because I am well aware that there are lots of excellent things to read on the internet-except that I later caught her asking my little sister if she could have a copy of her dissertation, a 10,000 word project on the spread of visceral leishmaniasis through Bangladeshi sand-flies. There’s lots of great stuff out there to read that’s certainly better than this blog- but I’m pretty sure that isn’t it.

In conclusion, back from Africa physically OK, emotionally undone. But much improved on the drums.

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