"Today I accidentally let a meth addict use my ukulele as an ashtray."

Fairly self-explanatory? No? Ok, apparently this one needs further elaboration.

Jenny Lawson, wonderful and strange, offered a copy of her book to a random commenter on her blog. "What should you comment about?  Anything.  Your favorite toe.  The pet names of your body parts.  How many glass eyeballs you think a normal person uses in a lifetime.  The number of bodies you can fit under your bed.  It’s totally up to you," she said, and so...

I was showing a friend around Cardiff yesterday. She's recently moved to this fair city, and I wanted to show her everything exciting and good that it has to offer. We swung by the Cardiff Fashion Quarter to introduce her to my lovely and talented friend Laura Pickering, who recommended that we wander around Bute Park, seeing as how it was such a lovely day.

It was such a lovely day, guys.

At some point, I got my ukulele out in a quiet area and started strumming one of the few I know by heart. A woman approached us. Now, I'm woefully naive at the best of times, but even I know that someone who's walking unsteadily, missing teeth, and alarmingly thin is either an addict or a zombie. (From that perspective, this story could have gone far worse for me.)

She opened with "You can't play." I smiled politely and said something self-deprecating, probably "I know I'm not very good, but -"
"Let me have a go."
So, I took a gamble, thinking she'd take refusal as an insult and hoping that she'd get bored fairly quickly. Above all, I hoped she didn't smash it. (Spoilers: if she'd smashed it, I wouldn't be writing this - I'd be cackling madly on the news while a man in a suit said "my client has no comment at this time" to the cameras.)

She twanged the A-string, pulling it out of tune, and shakily tapped her cigarette ash into the body of the uke.

Now, my friend, as she's pointed out to me, has lived in London and dealt with worse. God bless her, I don't know how she had the fortitude, but she stood straight away to ask for - and then take - my uke back. And she had to fight for it, too.

The woman struggled with her and called her a fat bitch a few times, while my friend said "would you please leave us alone," politely but firmly. She eventually did walk off, and I went to a music shop to buy the uke some strings as an apology. I should have known better. I am sometimes, as I said, woefully naive.



So, that's that! I apologise for the long period of silence. I got scared away from my blog because of something I can't talk about, and in all honesty I only came back because this one was too long to tweet. But there it is, Tony. She left, everyone's fine, and my friend reassured me that I should forget about it, so I think I will.

Cool internet things

+Anthony Ashfield Well heck dang, look what I can do! +Paul Roth holla.

This year we've had several apocalypses, and they've all ended with the same thing: sarcasm on twitter. But then, as sarcasm on twitter is the first response to any death, maybe they are one and the same, and we've all  already gone to the big snark in the sky.

I have been watching so many Let's Plays lately. I blame +Michael Fruen. Mike, look at this tomfoolery:

You guys, I practically wept with laughter when I first saw this. It's like pixellated Monty Python. It's sublime. 

I will be back with proper Crimbletide greetings when... I remember.

Dear Family:

I can't make it home for Christmas, and maybe for that reason I'm thinking about you guys so much.

Esther, thank you so much for the presents! I've had so many comments on my cute new bag, it's insane. Guys, look:

it is ALL THE COLOURS

HOW CUTE is that? I'm delighted.

Michael, I've been watching your Minecraft Let's Plays with John and I'm really wishing we could hang out, and that you could teach me the basics of that dang game. I know I'm late getting into it. I'm late getting into everything. You remember how long it took me to discover (let alone finish) Portal? Too long.

Judi, it means that world to me that you came up to visit. I had a really great time shopping with you, and I miss y'all a lot less now as a result of that day. Also, I love my badass new reversible skirt (again, CHECK IT).

Look 1...

Look 2! Aww yiss

Naomi, I don't think you read this. You might not even know about it. Maybe it's better this way. But I should tell you that, in my dream last night, you had the most awesome Scottish accent. You were talking to me about how Ran was coping with sharing Michael's bedroom. :|

Mum, in the aforementioned dream, you started a fire in a bin to try to clear your sinuses. Important note: do not do this. It did not end well.

Give my love to Dad; I'll call soon.

I haven't decided yet whether your presents will go ahead of me in the post, or whether they'll come down with me in January. Which means, probably the latter (you know what I'm like). But rest assured I've been thinking of you all, and I hope you have a very special Christmas.

P.S. Uncle Steve, have a very happy birthday! John, Paul, I wanna hang out with you guys soon. Julia, I think you're partially responsible for my life-long love of purple.

P.P.S. Cousins on my dad's side, of which there are many: every time I find out what you've been up to lately, I get all smug because I'm related to awesome people. Keep kicking your various kinds of ass.

P.P.P.S. Nanny, thanks for recognising me even with purple hair. Granddad, thanks for looking after her. I know you won't read this, but I love you both.

Love?

There are very few people in my life that I would do anything for. There are a few people who ask me out for coffee or whatever. Those two groups never seem to overlap.

One way to put it is that my standards are too high, although I'm not the type to have a check list. I just want to know I've got a connection with somebody. A physical, mental, chemical attraction to them, and them to me.

I don't think that's impossible. I think some people get it. A partner to go through life with, somebody who reminds them every day that they're capable of great things and great love.

I don't know. Some days I believe that that's an option, but never for long before my cynicism stirs from its den and says "It's very improbable, you know." Well, yes, maybe it is. But improbable happens. It does. I've seen it.

From a distance.

I think.

Frisky and Mannish and poems and hair

So! Yes! Hello! What wonderful and exciting things can I tell you about?

I saw Frisky and Mannish perform last week. They are truly legends in the making: Frisky can do justice to any female vocalist you care to name, and Mannish has such incredible range, in every musical sense. They're both skilled performers, and have an incredible dynamic. It's a thoroughly enjoyable thing, to see that kind of natural partnership: people whose thoughts and signals bounce off each other so flawlessly. Here is a video they made: Kate Bush sung in the style of Kate Nash. It's called Kate Bash, because of course it is. I feel like I might have shared this video before? I can't recall. In any case.

   

Here is a picture of my face in proximity to their faces:

It was as profoundly awkward as it looks

I don't know what else to tell you, other than that life continues and my poetry has all but ground to a halt. I really thought that having a creatively undemanding job would spur me to write in my free time, but honestly, I have just about enough mental energy to jot down draft after draft without ever finding the time or drive to work them into something.
I mean, take this for example:

So I said goodbye. What else could I do?
And me and the sea oh we both waved to you,
well no wonder it's blue.

That could be an actual song (not a good one, mind you, just a me one), if I just got my dang act together and finished it. I need to spend some quality time with my ukulele when I get my day off. I'm getting all of three minutes a day in which to practise, so I'm slipping backwards from "incompetent" to "an affront to ears."

My hair is getting beyond silly. My roots have grown out beyond the point where a hat can successfully cover it, which is due to being very impoverished for a long time, and then very busy recently. I still want to get along to Guy Christian - probably their new salon in the bay! - to get something done with it. Just as soon as I decide what that is.

Hair is a mystery, man. I mean, they say it grows back, but who wants to take that risk, you know?

Product review: mum, don't read this one

The world post- the invention of the internet is a strange one. You can be famous for a week, reviled for a month, and can meet all your heroes at peculiar conventions. One of the other oddities, one that applies to me today, is that sometimes people think your opinions matter just because you write a crummy blog. Hooray!

As a result, I have been sent, by the very generous Adam of Strawberry Blushes, a women's sex toy to review. At this juncture, I'd like to ask anyone not comfortable with the idea of that to skip this post - I'll be back to normal for the next one. Thanks.

Before I tell you what I picked from the site, here's a bit of background information: Ben Wa balls have been used for centuries to help stimulate women, either during sex or throughout the course of the day. It's thought that Japanese geisha used to use them, hence the alternate name "geisha balls."

They serve as more of a prolonged tease than a masturbation aid, so the aim with them isn't to orgasm. In fact, one of their uses is to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, in much the same way as kegel exercises do.

I bought some a few years ago. I liked them, but found them quite tricky to use, to be honest - they were small enough to slip out sometimes, and the feeling of them clicking against each other takes a bit of getting used to!

Anyway. Fastforward to now: I selected a product called "Girly Giggle Balls" to review. They're a bit bigger, because there are traditional metal balls inside the outer layer. Take a look at that outer layer, by the way. It looks interesting in the "tickly soft pink" colour that I chose - I can only imagine how I'd have felt faced with the "daunting black" option. (It's probably not labelled as that, but come on. Look at 'em!)

If I wanted to insert a morningstar I'd - no. When would I ever want that.

So yes, I chose the less intimidating ones. They were delivered quickly and in discreet packaging, so that ticked all the boxes.

My first issue was that there was no real product information on the packaging. You're told that they're made of "soft and nubbly jelly," which isn't very specific - and it does matter, because you're not supposed to use silicone-based lube with silicone toys. Because it might dissolve the surface and make them feel sticky to the touch (thanks, Wikipedia!). Luckily, the Strawberry Blushes website has a lot of information on it - what they're made of (PVC), their size (1.5"), what they do, how to use them... I mean, I know it sounds obvious, 'put them in;' but a helpful reminder to lie down and relax really wouldn't go amiss.

Because, boy, these aren't the same as my old ben wa balls.

They are bigger. And pricklier. And I really think you'd benefit from being pretty turned on before you even started, which I wasn't.

As I mentioned above, the idea is that the movement of the two balls against each other is intended to gently and continuously stimulate throughout the day as you go about your normal life, but the size of these ones means that they just don't do that. Not for me, anyway. It's not better than the alternative of them slipping out sometimes, because I'm pretty sure they're not toning any muscles. Keeping them in is not an effort. Taking them out, however, requires patience and careful positioning. They're not uncomfortable while they're in, but nor are they erotic, just - present, in much the same way as a mooncup (and, oh boy, I need to write a mooncup review one of these days).

In the absence of any product instructions, I thought I'd write some of my own so that anyone curious can repeat the experiment.

HOW TO USE GIRLY GIGGLE BALLS: instructions for use

1. Lie back on your bed and slowly - SLOWLY - insert the first ball.
2. Take a breather. Try to internally adjust yourself so that there's more room.
3. Insert ball two and sit up - slowly.
4. Question what you're doing with your life.
5. Wonder why you didn't just take up your hot friend on his perfectly reasonable offer.
6. Later, squat and pull the string to take them out - slowly, for the love of god, slowly - and wash them, taking extra care with the string because it looks like it's made of the same stuff as bathroom light-pulls and you've seen how grubby they can get.
7. Have a cup of tea, and try to think of the least undignified way to describe the experience.

TL;DR:

Appearance: 2/5

Ease of use: 2/5

Effectiveness: 0/5

Would I recommend them to a friend: maybe, if they'd annoyed me in some way. Maybe by oversharing. I can't think of any other way it would come up in conversation.

YM, as ever, MV.

This has been interesting, anyway! Next time, I think I'll get something else. Maybe a new vibe. Maybe something showerproof.

Presenting my findings: the dream journal

When I moved house a few months ago, walking out on a flooded basement and an angry landlord, I started keeping a dream journal. I've written and tagged 53 entries now, and while that isn't much, I've learned something interesting: my subconscious is a strange and twisty place. Some things are frankly baffling (why couldn't I remember if that millipede was my sister?), while other themes seem to be marked in flashing neon lights. "PAY ATTENTION TO THIS, IT IS IMPORTANT!"

Some of the recurring themes aren't that surprising, considering. The dreams where I have someone to cuddle up to; the dreams where I explore unfamiliar rooms with secret doors. The ones about packing (moving, unpacking, realising I've left things behind) in particular: they're reflections of my literal circumstances, as I've had to move my belongings into and out of storage on three separate occasions for reasons too tedious to list here. Those I get.

What I didn't expect, however, was the water. Water is everywhere in my dreams; flooding from the taps in a church's bathroom, filling my mouth, crashing in a big tsunami wave over an entire civilisation. I've stood in a rising tide, sailed a ship over a waterfall, and pissed off a river goddess. One in five dreams of mine features water in a big way.

Another one that took me by surprise is that - look, I'll apologise in advance, because it's going to make me sound excessively egotistical, but - I rescue people. I've led my friends down to a bomb shelter during an air raid; I've swatted bats away with a big stick while we fled a haunted house; I've even tried to get plasticine monsters out of a factory without them being seen (or mangled by machinery).

I don't know why this is. I've mentally linked it to my brief stint as a youth leader, but it's fun to think of what it might be preparing me for. Not that dreams foretell the future, I don't believe that; but perhaps by thinking of myself as 'someone who leads others out of danger' I'm making it more likely that I'll have the balls to do it for real if the time ever comes.

There's not many nightmares, as a whole. There's the occasional nightmarish side-quest, though. For example, I did recently took a brief detour from a fairly standard dream about my ex and secret rooms to face down these guys:

So, ya know, THAT was horrendous. Did you know that, if you blink, they can come through sheet glass without breaking it? Well, in my dream, they can.

I don't know what these dreams tell you about me (aside from more than you ever wanted to know), but I'm going to keep writing them down for now. I wonder what else I'll learn.

P.S. One dream I logged goes as follows:

Was in a room with about 5 other people. Dylan Moran was going through some material, and had wandered into really personal stuff. Hard to tell if it was still part of the routine or not; he seemed really sad. "You know I'm starting to realise my dad wasn't a very nice person. You know something's wrong when you have to explain to vampires how awful your dad is."

I've never seen Dylan Moran live, but I want to tell him everything's going to be ok.

P.P.S. Oh, I did see Ross Noble live the other day though! You know how I got turned into a fairy over the summer? (Oh man I just realised I never told you about that. I'll write about it soon.) Well I found these on the way to the gig, and took it as a sign...

Birthdings

I was not going to celebrate my birthday. I was playing it cool. I always do, at first. It's a lowering of my own expectations, really, because I'm never convinced that anyone else is going to remember.

I promise this post gets less wallowy. Bear with me.

har! har!

Having a birthday in October, for a kid who grew up as bookish and introverted as I did, meant that people at school often hadn't had time to get to know me when my birthday rolled around. September kids probably have it even worse.

In my first year at uni, my first birthday away from home, I quietly mentioned my birthday to the three people I knew by name; and I got a surprised "Ah! Really? Happy birthday! ... So are you doing anything for it?" to which I answered No, no. Not really.

So, nothing happened.

It's my own fault; I'm bad at making things happen. For my 18th birthday, my friends demanded that we go to Pizza Hut at least, because I wasn't planning to do anything at all.

Since coming to Cardiff, though, things have picked up speed. I'm not the wallflower I once was, and I'm lucky enough to have friends who'll grab hold of the most tenuous excuses imaginable for a fancy-dress shindig. I love them, I love them (fancy-dress shindigs AND my friends; but I mostly meant my friends. I would not trade the wonderful, talented, gorgeous people in my life for anything, not even a kawasaki ninja, and LOOK how frakkin' pretty they are:

Are we still parentheses? We are. Sorry).

Yesterday, despite being in work all day, I was remembered by a great many people. As soon as midnight hit, Sean Solle got the first HBD greeting in, and the following 24 hours saw a whole bunch of people on twitter and facebook and even tumblr wishing me a merry one. Some of them barely know me, or were reminded by facebook, but every single one made me smile and feel valued. That kind of positivity really adds up over the course of a day!

And, to top it all, the very kind family I live with (whose generosity I can't begin to deserve) bought me a book on Graffiti - one I don't already own! It looks great, the pictures are grouped by area rather than by artist which is so cool bec- er, anyway - and a birthday cake.

And AND, the people I'm training with at work bought me cards and chocolates because they are insanely lovely. INSANELY. Get this: the lady who trained me for the first two weeks remembered that my short story has been published by the UK Zombie Defence League, looked the UKZDL up, found my blog along the way, discovered that Lindt Lindor are my favourite chocolates, got me some, and made me promise not to share them.

SERIOUSLY.

like -

I can't even -

That's lovely on a scale I never expected to encounter in a work environment. Dilbert did not prepare me for this. How are you supposed to respond? Anywhere else I'd have given her the biggest bearhug on record, because seriously, that's above and beyond the contractually-obliged Happy Birthday, but instead I just rambled and thanked for a bit and grinned my way throughout training for the rest of the day.

Also, a girl I met on a bus and befriended the heck out of lent me the first Harry Dresden book, so I've got that going for me too.

Just - keep up the good work, universe. This is all very very adequate.

Time

I'm not good enough. The list of things I would change about myself are as long as the phone book, and decidedly less interesting to read (and to write. As a favour to both of us, I will not enumerate them here). Ultimately, it's the length of the list that proved the biggest obstacle to my self-improvment; I get paralysed by the indecision. What's the biggest problem? What's the most urgent one? What needs long-term improvement? I have no idea. I hate lists.

I've always thought the "kid in a candy store" analogy didn't really encompass that moment: the moment when the kid clutches onto mum's skirt and hides their face because this is too many everythings.

I have, however, made a huge leap forward: I've targeted the one area that I really need to work on, and it's time management.

I've always been terrible at it. For the past 15 years, it's been the reason that I got incredibly creative with my excuses for having not done my homework. Remember this blog post? Of course you don't; it was seven freaking years ago (almost to the day), but it was by no means an isolated incident. Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?

Maybe it's hereditary. My own family was habitually late everywhere. Memories of school mornings are a blur of stress and hurrying, trying to remember where in the chaos my shoes were.

One of the side effects of this perpetual lateness was that I am extremely paranoid about travel time. I am currently getting to work about an hour early in the mornings, just because the journey home sometimes takes a couple of hours. It's hard to calm myself down enough to actually leave home later in the morning. I prefer being early anyway, I tell myself. I don't get told off for being too early. I go for walks instead; mentally calculating and recalculating that, since it took ten minutes to get this far, I should allow twenty to go back. It doesn't make a lot of sense, I know.

Oh yes, that's a new development: work. I work full time in a call centre now; 36 hours a week, or thereabouts. So far I've had two weeks of training in customer service. I won't get paid until a month from now, due to fluctuations in the mysterious forces that govern administration. That's sad. I wanted money for my birthday this coming Tuesday. I'm deferring my celebrations until I am ludicrously wealthy a month from now. (This is my first full-time job; it will feel like affluence beyond reason to me!)

So my job isn't paying me yet, but what it is doing is forcing me to think harder about how I'm spending my time. If I want to catch up with friends, I can meet up with them in town for a couple of hours in the evening, or we can plan something on the weekend. That's it. No more spending a couple of days at a mate's house just because we've gotten addicted to a new cartoon. No more spending all day on tumblr, unless I've actively decided that that is what I need to do that day. (Sometimes that is what I need. Sometimes I crave the mental space to bumblebee around the internet, alighting on a topic for only so long as it takes my fancy.)

In other exciting (to me) news, a short story I wrote has been accepted for publication by the UK Zombie Defense League! I'll let you all know when it's out. I'm planning to buy the paperback and show it to everyone I pass for a month or two.

Here follows a miniature list of things I have been doing lately, in what I'll generously call my "hiatus":

• visited my family on the beautiful Isle of Wight
• saw Frankie Boyle perform, thanks to my lovely twitter-friend Meryl
• went to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm again
• discovered Gravity Falls and decided that Mabel is my soul twin
• the other stuff that I've already told you.

A few photos I've taken recently:

Judi, my big sister, who is crazy pretty and doesn't even know it

I finally managed to reattempt this after losing an SD card a few years back!

A helium princess. Blurry, but just about perfect.

To round things off and reward you for reading my witterings, here is a story told by Neil Gaiman, in which his family are more terribly late than mine ever were:

Might you be a feminist?

The other day, my friend and I slipped into one of our recurring conversations about feminism. Prompted by a couple of recent incidents (oh hey I forgot this one), we got talking about the label, and whether it's positive or negative, and what the implications are.

It's one of the subjects I get passionate about. After getting into the swing of my argument for a minute or two, I had to rein myself in, and I think I ended our conversation with "er but if you don't identify as a feminist I should probably stop telling you that you are one."

My friend is very aware of the way the world is. He knows that sexism exists, that women experience the world differently than men, that some aspects of the systems we live within are unfair and / or oppressive. However he rejects the word "feminist" because, in his mind, it reads as "man-hating female supremacist." (He's had some bad experiences with feminists in the past; what can I say.)

My good friend Paul has just written a blog post about this subject. He didn't formerly identify as a feminist, but now he does. It's an interesting read, and highlights a very important point: that's it's ok, even good, to let your views evolve. To change your mind about what you are, and what words mean. Labelling oneself is a flawed system, no doubt, but it's how the world knows what you stand for. I stand alongside those who believe in equality. I am a feminist. And I think perhaps it's even possible to be a feminist and not know it.

These pictures are via the spectacular ohdeargodwhy.