What was here first?

Scafell Pike and the Underwater Gnomes

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:10:00 +0000

Ah yes, Scafell Pike. Perched in the west of the Lake District, it holds the title of being Britain's highest mountain.

It may not seem like much of a mountain, especially compared to the Alps, or the Andes, but it is a mountain nonetheless. The threshold for when a hill becomes a mountain, according to Ordinance Survey maps, is precisely 609.6m (2000ft), so at 978m Scafell Pike can safely be called a mountain.

We have 317 mountains in total in the UK - did you know that? No, me neither. Just googled it. A lot more than I thought there'd be. I mean, I know there's quite a few up in Scotland, and a handful in Wales, but over 300? Really?!

Up until last September there were apparently only 316 mountains - Calf Top Hill in the Yorkshire Dales was reclassified from a hill to a mountain when it was remeasured and found to have been 2cm taller than before, meaning at 609.602m it was now 2mm over the 602.6m threshold, and now officially a mountain! I'm hoping that if I grow an extra 2cm I'll be reclassified as a Victoria's Secret Model.

Calf Top Hill - sorry - I mean mountain, in Yorkshire

But anyway, I digress. Back to Scafell Pike we go. I have climbed Scafell Pike twice, and both times the weather was what can only be described in my mother's words, as pants.

The deceiving thing about Scafell Pike is that you can't actually see it's summit at all while you're hiking it, and more often than not the ascent to the summit is hidden in a plume of misty, rainy cloudiness.

Behold the plume of misty, rainy cloudiness. This was when I climbed it back in June.

The first time I climbed it was as part of the Three Peaks challenge back in 2015. It was 4am when our team of 8 arrived by minubus, having driven 6 hours straight from Ben Nevis. Dawn was breaking slowly behind a silhouette of mountain ridges. Tiny lights moved in a line up from the base of the mountain to the summit - fellow Three Peakers who'd hiked through the night - like a line of iridescent ants. As we parked up in the minibus, there was a definite lull in energy. None of us had really slept, or eaten.

Now I know what you're thinking - how can you just forget to eat enough?

Well, very easily, I can assure you (and this is coming from a girl whose days are planned entirely around food).

Like any would-be hiker, we'd raided Tesco the day before for supplies, and I felt like I'd walked out carrying half of the shop under my arms as I panic bought everything. Will I need Pom Bears on a mountain? Yes, yes I will.

But after finishing our climb of Ben Nevis at 11pm, soaking wet from the rain, and with only 5 minutes to grab clean clothes from our bags before we had to start driving to the Lake District (all squashed together in the back of the minibus, like a textiled game of Tetris), we were more concerned with getting dry, warm, and finding a comfortable enough position to sleep in a bit of than we were with eating more than half a sandwich. I think it took me a good hour in the minubus before I stopped shivering from the cold, let alone fall asleep.

Despite the severe lack of energy, I must admit that Scafell was, surprisingly, rather enjoyable to climb. I'd never seen any scenery like it before; it was like being in a Sci-fi film, where a space ship has landed on barren wasteland and is trying to discover what life forms are there. The last half an hour to the top is just mounds and mounds of crushed boulders. The low mist clings to the rocks, seeming to absorb all sound and create an eerie stillness.

Very other-worldly

Me being me (i.e incredibly inquisitive), I decided to Google why there are so many broken bits of boulder on the mountain when I was back home, and oh my. Turns out that the mounds and mounds of rocks that make up Scafell Pike are the remnants of a volcanic eruption around 400 million years ago. So I can say that not only have I climbed a mountain, I've climbed a volcano!!! (Well, kind of).

Scafell Pike and the surrounding mountains are together called the Sca Fells - not to be confused with the neighbouring mountain Sca Fell, which at 964m makes it the second highest mountain in Britain. It's all a bit ridiculous, if you ask me. Everything sounds the same! That's like having Mount Snowdon, and then next to it one called Snow Don, all part of the Snow Dons! Who names these mountains anyway?

I'll let the namer off the hook though. Apparently Scafell Pike was never meant to be called Scafell Pike - there was a mistake once upon a time on an Ordnance Survey map, and 'The Pikes of Sca Fells' (describing all of the mountains) became 'Scafell Pike' (the tallest mountain) and no one ever corrected it, and so here we are, with lots of mountains with the same (ish) names.

The Sca fells - made up of lots of Scafells and lots of Crags.

The second time I climbed the mountain I was with a man from the army. Neither of us had a map, or a compass, or anything that would be remotely useful like a GPS tracker or a torch (which is to be expected from me - I mean, I once drove to London for work and forgot to take any clothes other than my netball kit. But him? He had no excuse for not being prepared ).

From about halfway up, there's no longer a stone-slabbed path to follow, but rather, you have to follow 'cairns' - large man-made piles of stones which act as a guide towards the summit. Easy to spot on a clear day, but nigh-on impossible in the rainy, spitty, plume of clouds.

A photo I found on the internet of a cairn on Scafell Pike and a man who looks like he was far more prepared than I was.

So it was about 3.30pm by now. The wind picked up, and it started to rain. We could now only see 1 metre in front of us due to the thick fog. The rain got heavier, and heavier, and heavier, the wind whipping it in waves into my face, trickling through my coat and down my back, and I was cold. I was soaked through from head to toe, shivering, and all I could think of was how utterly glorious a cup of tea would be right about now.

And then we realised we hadn't seen a cairn in quite a while. How long had it been - maybe twenty minutes or so? Or was it thirty? I started to panic a bit, because you're meant to see them every few minutes. I looked all around, but there was thick fog in every direction. We weren't sure which direction the summit was in, or which direction we'd just come from. Squinting in the rain, everything looked the same.

The safety bit:
There are on average 500 incidents up these mountains per year where search and rescue need to get involved, and now that I've been in that position, it's easy to see why. Lesson of the day - ~~find a better army man~~ take all the proper kit next time.

Fortunately though, we found the cairns. Of course we did, or I wouldn't be writing this post. We turned around and dragged our feet back the way we think we'd been walking. It probably took about another half an hour of walking in circles, a bit of swearing, scrambling back up rocks, more desperate thoughts about tea, and retracing our steps for what felt like an eternity, when we finally saw a cairn appearing in the foggy distance. Never has a pile of rocks looked so beautiful in my entire life. Cairns meant we were back on the path, which meant I was ONE STEP CLOSER TO TEA!

Summit selfie! A... summelfie? Smelfie?

We found the summit after our hour-long detour, and honestly, there's not much up there. I'm sure it's incredible when there's a view, but as I said, both times I've climbed it I've never seen said view. There's a big cairn in the centre which has a plaque on it, which says that summit was gifted to the National Trust in 1919 by Lord Leconfield in memory of the men who died in the Great War. A very touching memory, but firstly, how on earth do you own a mountain, and secondly, if you're going to gift it, why only gift the summit? What about the rest of it?!

'This summit of Scafell was given to the nation subject to any commoners rights placed in custody of the National Trust by Charles Henry, Baron Leconfield 1919'

Apparently back in 2015 there was great uproar when a hiker discovered some graffiti on the above cairn at the sumit And not just the standard 'Jenni woz ere' in black marker, I'm talking a full blown inscription of verses from the Emerald Tablets of Thoth - an ancient Arabic piece of work written been the 6th and 8th century AD. The graffiti-er (who actually wrote his name at the bottom, wanting credit for his work), must have taken the actual book up with him to write it out, verse by verse. And oh my, the backlash he got...

"Literary vandal defaces the summit of Scafell Pike with poetry in permanent black ink"

"Walkers demand the culprit is caught."

Hey, while I'm not condoning graffiti, if he's taken the time to write out an ancient piece of work that people wouldn't have read otherwise, then leave him be. At least if it's foggy it gives you something to actually see while you're up there.

Graffiti isn't the strangest thing to be found at the top of the mountain, though; an octopus was found at the summit in 2013 by a team who climbs the mountain regularly to litter pick, and no one knows quite how it got there. Perhaps someone left it there as a joke? A drunken bet in the pub the night before?

"Wheyy I bet you can't go to the top with.. uh... an octopus!"

I have an...inkling... this octopus didn't want to end up here. Heh.

If you think that an octopus is the strangest thing to be found in the Lake District, then think again. Back in to early 1900s, a boatman found what was called a 'Tizzie-Whizie', which although it sounds like something you could buy from Fred and George Weasley's joke shop in Diagon Alley, was actually a small animal that was allegedly part hedgehog, part squirrel and part bee.

A Tizzie-Whizie. Where are they and how can I get it to be my friend?

The one above was captured in 1906 and was apparently rushed to local photographer Louis Herbert's photographic studio in Bowness-on-Windemere. He 'calmed it down with some warm milk and morsels of ginger biscuit and took this immoral portrait of the Tizzie-Whizie before it jumped off his table and flew out of the window to freedom.

My common sense is telling me that this was a hoax, but there were hundreds ,if not thousands of people who believed it at the time - this very photo ended up on thousands and thousands of postcards in the Lake District, and there are still some holiday cottages around Windemere today called Tizzie-Whizie, as a little reminder of this strange (but obscenely cute) mythical creature.

Sorry, got sidetracked again there. Where was I? Oh yes, I was still at the summit. Yes, well it was at the summit I once again realised I hadn't eaten anything for hours and was feeling a bit low on energy (I honestly wish I could do this more in real life). I'd been to the little National Trust hut in the Wasdale car park before we started our hike, just to browse what they were selling (it was here I'd spied the cups of tea that were now the only thing keeping me going), and noticed that they were selling Kendal mint cake.

The town of Kendal is not that far from Scafell Pike, and I'd heard of the famous Kendal mint cake many times before. They sell it in shops like Cotswold Outdoors, and Milletts, and I'd heard that hikers who go up Everest often take it a a snack. So I thought I'd give it a go.

An advert for Kendal mint cake from 1953.

Warning: if you're expecting a cake (like I was), do not buy one.

It's like mixing a tube of toothpaste with granulated sugar and then putting a wrapper on it, but I doubt calling it 'Kendal Colgate sugar bar' would quite sound the same.

I took one minuscule nibble from the corner, and that was enough for me. Bleugh. Back in the bag you go!

Why is this a cake when it's clearly not cake? Was it named by the same person who named Scafell Pike, Sca Fell and the Sca Fells?!?

Though descending a mountain is usually less straining than climbing it, due to the fact you're not having to use as many muscles in your legs, I find it's actually harder - trying to avoid slipping over, for one, and the constant pressure on your kneecaps, step after step.

In my case, the third thing that made it harder was that my shoe fell apart.

This was on my first ascent of Scafell Pike during my Three Peaks Challenge in 2015. There I was, trying my best to hurriedly edge down the path without falling over (seeing as we only had 12 hours left to get to Snowdon and climb it), when suddenly I noticed that I could feel the stones under my left foot far more prominently than I could in my right.

Hmm, I thought. This feels a bit odd. I looked down at my feet, and they looked normal enough.

But lo and behold - when I turned around, I noticed that there, perched upon a step 5 metres behind me, was the sole of my shoe.

It was sitting there, like a badly behaved dog who doesn't want walkies anymore, and was most definitely unattached from the rest of the shoe which was still on the end of my foot.

I picked up the sole and it fell limp in my hand. What do I do with it? I looked around for the rest of my team and noticed most of them a good 100 yards ahead of me - too far to call for them to come back. Luckily, another of my team, a lovely French man called Guillaume (who I'm sure I pronounced his name differently/wrong every time I said it but he was far too polite to ever correct me) was also nearby.

"I zink I 'av some maskeen tape een my backpack," he'd said to me in his beautiful French accent, unclipping his bag from around his chest. I sat down and bound the sole of the shoe back to where it belonged and set off again, stepping very warily and checking every few seconds that the tape was still intact.

Held together with duct tape, though from the looks of it the left sole wasn't far away from detaching either.

With my shoes intact once more, I set off down the mountain again. When descending Scafell Pike, the one thing that makes the view so spectacular is the the lake at the bottom - Wast Water. There's a glistening sheen to it, like a vat of oil has spilt over its surface. This is due to the fact that unlike the other 15 lakes* in the Lake District, it has no oxygen in the water, meaning there's no aquatic life in the lake at all. Nothing. Which if you ask me, is a little bit creepy.

*Actually, when you look at the names of the 16 'lakes' in the lake district, only one of them is a lake - Bassenthwaite Lake. The rest are classed as 'waters' or 'tarns' or 'meres'.

Wast Water. That steep cliff carries on down at that angle all the way to the bottom of the lake.

The creepy bit
In 1976, an air-hostess named Margaret Hogg was killed by her husband, pilot Peter Hogg, for having an affair with a banker. After he killed her, he wrapped her in a carpet and drove overnight from Surrey to Wast Water, before throwing her body into the lake, where it settled at a depth of 34m.

Eight years later in 1984, a search was being conducted for another missing woman, and the body of Margaret was discovered. Because there's no oxygen in the lake, her body was perfectly preserved in a wax-like state, and along with her wedding ring on her hand which had her initials engraved (I mean come on, really Peter? You left her ring on her?), she was easily identified. Peter denied he had killed her, but was later found guilty and imprisoned for four years for manslaughter.

At 80m, it's also the deepest lake in the UK, just shy of the height of Big Ben. The water in Wastwater is supposedly much clearer at a depth of 50m than Lake Windemere is at 10m, making it the perfect place for scuba divers to practice deep water diving. It's also incredibly cold; the depth-to-surface area ratio is much greater than other lakes due to the steep sides, so the sun can't warm up the water - the average temperature is just 4 degrees C (brrrr). It's also notorious among the diving community for something rather peculiar - gnomes.

The underwater gnomes of Wast Water with a Christmas tree

For the last 15 years or so, there has been an underwater gnome garden in Wast Water. The gnomes sit at a depth of around 45m, just on the threshold of where certified divers can safely deep dive to. Police have removed the gnome gardens many times, due to the number of deaths of divers who try to find them, but they keep on reappearing. Sometimes with additions like white picket fences, or Christmas trees with tinsel and baubles.

Underwater gnome gardens aren't just popular in Wast Water - it's apparently a 'thing' amongst the diving community worldwide, and you have to be careful about rival divers stealing your gnomes to put in their own underwater gnome gardens, aka gnome gnapping!

Personally I think it's all a bit of fun - it gives the divers something to look at, after all, given that there's nothing to see but mud and a dead air hostess in a carpet.

So there you have it - now you know a bit more about Britain's highest mountain, and a few bits around it. I do plan on climbing Scafell Pike again one day actually, if only to see the view (and if you're reading this and have seen a view from the top - damn you!), but maybe in a few years' time. I might try and tackle some of the other 314 mountains in the UK first.

The End.

_____________________________________________________________________________

I do actually have another fact about the mountain but I couldn't find anywhere to fit it in, so I'm just going to plonk it here at the end and hope no one notices...

The church of St Olaf, one of the smallest churches in England, dating from around 1550. The beams are said to come from a viking longship. This wasn't the fact by the way, just some interesting info about the picture.

In the 19th century, the local Church of st Olaf's in Wasdale Head didn't have a licence to bury the dead, and so when a villager died, their body had to be taken by pony and cart over the mountain pass to St Catherine's Church some 6 miles away. One night in the early 19th century, a pony carrying a coffin took fright and ran off with the coffin, and the body was never found. The dead man's mother died a few months later, and the pony pulling the coffin bolted in the exact same place - neither were ever seen again. Rumour has it that the ghost of the pony and coffin gallop past lonely wanderers on Scafell Pike at night...

Definitely the End.

Oh, and I never got my tea by the way. By the time we got back down the mountain it was 5pm, on a Sunday, and the hut selling food and drink was closed and everyone had gone home. Picture the day you found out that Father Christmas wasn't real - that's how it felt that day. I was mortified. Bloody mortified.

Definitely definitely the End.

Abandoned London Underground - the secrets of Aldwych

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 30 May 2017 19:58:00 +0000

It was a rainy Tuesday in January 2016. The year hadn't been going well for me so far, if I'm honest, and this particular day wasn't going well either - it was one of those days where everything was going wrong, and all you want to do is shut yourself in the toilet and stay there until somebody comes to get you.

In fact, that’s exactly what I did.

My Manager Lisa noticed me scurry off, and came to find me. She knew everything that had been going on so she didn't pry. Instead, she got some tissue, helped dab mascara off my face, and offered me two tickets she'd received from the London Transport Museum to visit the abandoned London tube station, Aldwych, later that day. She wasn't much of a history buff so said she wouldn't appreciate them as much as me. I tried saying no and that I didn't want them, I had lots of work to do, yada yada, but the inner history geek in me screamed 'yes please!' long before I could even think of an excuse. And boy oh boy, am I glad that I did....

N.B In most cases, plying me with gifts (either history, prosecco or chocolate related) will most definitely cheer me up, and this case was no exception. Anyone wishing to woo me, do take note.

Myself and my colleague Dajana packed up our things, booked the afternoon off and headed to London.

In truth I'd never heard of Aldwych station before – but in honesty, not many people have. It's been closed to the public since 1994 and even then it was barely used. By the early 90s it only carried 900 people on average per day. In comparison, during weekday rush hour Waterloo tube station transports around 50,000 passengers. That's a lot.

When it opened in 1907, Aldwych was originally called 'The Strand', because it was built on the site of the old theatre, the ‘Royal Strand’. Rumour has it that the ghost of an actress is seen to wander around the empty tube tunnels at night.

In fact, it was featured on an episode of Most Haunted (link) back when Most Haunted was still a programme that people enjoyed, despite Yvette Fielding screaming more frequently than my nephew Teddy at bath time.

Most Haunted from S1 episode 14 at Aldwych - I don't know what year it was filmed, but by Yvette's hair choice I'm guessing it was a long, long time ago.

But even though Aldwych stayed open all the way up until 1994, the station was hardly used even soon after it opened in 1907. Within 10 years of being built, the Eastern platform was closed. The station was renamed from ‘The Strand’ to the current name ‘Aldwych’ because the nearby Charing Cross Station was renamed ‘The Strand’ (though they changed the name back to Charing Cross in 1979 – geez. Almost as confusing as keeping up with Cheryl Tweedy / Cole / Versini Fernandez / Payne 's surname).

Being just a small branch line off the main Piccadilly line it only made 450 round trips per day. On Sundays when the theatres were closed it didn’t make sense to keep the station open at all, and Aldwych became one of the few underground stations to close entirely on a Sunday.

But anyway, I digress. We were running very late for the tour, despite giving ourselves four hours to get to London from Bournemouth (which is usually more than enough). Our train had been delayed due to a faulty level crossing, and so when we arrived at Waterloo Station we had less than 5 minutes to travel across the city to Aldwych to meet our tour guide. I hadn't thought people actually used the phrase 'put your foot on it!' to taxi drivers when they were in a rush other than in overly-cliché films, but I can fully conclude that they do.

The entrance to Aldwych on Surrey Street. I keep thinking it says 'Piccadilly - really?'.

We arrived at Aldwych mildly clammy from running, our coats slung over our arms, searching for the rest of the tour group...but there was no one to be seen. Nothing but a small sign on the large, glazed oxblood frontage of the station . I walked up to it and saw it said 'London Transport Museum: Hidden London'. There was no handle on the door, and no doorbell (I mean, why would there be one on a tube station?) so I did what I thought was best and started knocking very, very loudly.

No answer.

So I began shouting, too.

HELLO, IS ANYONE THERE? WE'RE HERE FOR THE TOUR. LET US IN PLEASE. HELLO? IT'S VERY COLD OUTSIDE. IT IS ALSO RAINING AND WE DO NOT HAVE AN UMBRELLA. THANK YOU.

What if they had already descended down the 160 steps into the deep tube line and started the tour without us?

Luckily for us, they hadn't. A gentleman with a neatly trimmed beard came to let us in. He looked at me the way a teacher looks at a pupil who walks in 20 minutes late to class and should really explain themselves, but he saw the sodden tickets in my hand and let us through.

We emerged into a beautiful old ticket hall, full of dark wooden panels and that faint, warming musky scent you find in museums, and stood at the back of the 40-strong tour group. They were all listening to the tour guide at the front - a young woman in her late 20s who looked like she knew what she was on about because she was holding a clipboard and a pen.

We'd walked through two lifts with doors on either end in order to reach the group, and it turns out the two large wooden lifts were the two original lifts installed in 1907 and were over 100 years old. They weren't like normal lifts you get in modern buildings, either - they were big enough to fit our whole tour group in with room to spare, and are apparently the only original lifts still intact on the whole of the London Underground (and one of the many reasons the station was awarded a grade 2 listed building status in 2011). Unfortunately, it's also these two historic lifts that led to the eventual closure of the station in 1994. Sod's law, I suppose.

One of the large lifts to transport passengers down to the tracks below

There were originally 3 lift shafts built (with each shaft able to take two of these large lifts), but only 2 lifts were ever installed, meaning there are 4 ghostly, empty cavernous spaces down at platform level. Not that they’ve never been put to good use, though; the woman with the clipboard told us the music video for ‘Firestarter’ by the Prodigy was filmed in one of them.

I think I'd be just as scared to see Prodigy's Keith Flint in the abandoned station as I would if I saw the ghost

The lifts were so old the cost to replace them would have been £3 million, with an additional station refurb cost of £4 million – it just didn’t make sense to keep the station open (despite the fact that modern ticket machines had only been installed a few years earlier in 1989).

The most beautiful part of the station, in my opinion, was the deep emerald green tiles which lined the ticket hall. Every station on the London Underground has its own unique design of tiles, made specifically for each station, so these very tiles that lined the station would never be seen again, which I thought was particularly sad. Would they notice if I stole a few to put in my bathroom? Surely not.

Wouldnt' these make the perfect shower splashback?

Aldwych belongs to a small cluster of stations designed by architect Leslie Green, who'd been given the task of designing the 'last' of the tube stations, but to make them look as fancy as possible but costing as little as possible.

I'd been reading up on a blog post titled, 'If it's red, it's green', and it was only about halfway through the blog post I realised what the title was on about. The oxblood-red frontage I'd seen at Aldwych was actually a common design trait of architect Leslie Green's and features on all of his stations like Oxford Circus, Covent Garden and South Kensington.

The oxblood entrance to Oxford Street station

Apparently each station on the Underground was given a different tile design, not just to be a quirky design feature, but rather that if you were illiterate in the early 1900s when the stations were built, you could tell which station you were at by the design of the tiles. Quite ingenious, really. I wonder if the same logic was applied to Wetherspoons and their carpets?

It's not just the tiles that caught my eye, though. If you walk around the station, you can see many features from the original station showing its name clearly as ‘Strand’ – the disused eastern platform has the original tiled name still in view, though a lot of it is covered with torn, weathered posters.

The 'A' and 'N' from when Aldwych was still called 'The Strand'.

Well, I say old posters. They're not old at all. Most of the posters at the station are actually props from many of the films and TV programmes that have been shot there, such as V for Vendetta, Atonement, 28 Weeks Later, Die Another Day, The Imitation Game, Sherlock and Mr Selfridge.

Aldwych station used in 'V for Vendetta'.

A 'Bakerloo Line' sign left from when Mr Selfridge was filmed. I was a huge Mr Selfridge fan so I totally fangirled at this.

It’s still possible to get working tube trains in and out of the station via Holborn without disrupting any services to the main line, meaning that Aldwych is not only great for use on screen, but also in real life. The station is now used as a training facility for Train Operators, the Emergency Services, and also the Underground’s Emergency Response Unit. The station used for ‘Operation Forward Defence’ – the largest terrorist defence scheme ever run on the London Underground in preparation for the 2012 London Olympics.

We descended the 160 steps, were guided past the empty lift shafts and towards the blocked up Eastern platform. It was never officially used, and therefore the walls were just left unfinished – like a house that has the frame and insulation but no plasterwork. On the far wall, near the blocked up tunnel, are a patch of tiles that don’t go with the rest of the design of the station. I wandered over and stared at them for a bit, before staring back at our tour guide.

“Excuse me – yes, yes, over here. Why are these tiles here? They’re not the same as the ones in the other tunnel?”

A few people began nodding their heads and walking towards me. One of our tour guides strolled over with a ‘I was waiting for someone to ask this!’ sort of grin on his face.

“Ahh, yes. Does anyone recognise this particular design from somewhere else on the London Underground?”

In the middle of the group, a few hands slowly rose.

“Is it Piccadilly Circus?”

“Correct! Now you might ask what it’s doing here, at Aldwych. Well seeing as this particular platform was never used, it made sense for it to become as useful as possible. So when new platforms were built, or needed redecorating, what better way to test out the designs than on a real tube station. Employees could then come in and see for themselves what their new station might look like! And then just tile over it when they wanted a new design. Made perfect sense, didn’t it?” Apparently Aldwych's East platform was used to mock up designs for Victoria, Holborn, South Kensington Station, Tottenham Court Station and Bond Street.

Looking down at the actual rail lines, there was something odd about it which I couldn't quite place. As if following us around, the tour guide had appeared behind a small group of us, and began smiling in that same 'ah yes, I'm glad you've noticed this' sort of way.

"I bet you're wondering what's different, eh?" he asked. Well yes, yes I was.

"Two things to note here," he carried on. "Firstly, the third rail to the side of the main rail has porcelain conductors, which is one of the main reasons this station has it's Grade 2 status."

I looked down and couldn't for the life of me see what he was on about. All I saw was lines going up and down, just like on a normal railway line, but there were several rail enthusiasts around me who were snapping away with their cameras, saying things like "oh I can't believe I get to see real porcelain conductors in situ!" and "Really? Porcelain? I've read about these..."

I am not a rail person. I do not know what a third rail is, and all I was thinking about when they said this mysterious third rail was made of porcelain, was 'But... won't it shatter into tiny pieces?!'

N.B I am fully aware that my first job at Siemens was in Rail and that all my friends who still work there will probably read this and message me on Facebook in embarrassment saying 'I can't believe you didn't know what a third rail was?!'

Our tour guide, Arnold (that may not be his name but he looked like an Arnold and it's much easier than writing 'Tour Guide' all the time) pointed out that these tracks were the few you'll see on Underground that don't have suicide pits (or anti-suicide pits, as they should be called). They were installed on the tube in 1926 after a significant rise in suicides ever since a newspaper reported the method in 1896. Perhaps as a way to avoid the terribly written articles found in most newspapers – who knows. In any case, the simple design change meant that the pits apparently halved the amount of successful suicide attempts.

The porcelain conductors (somewhere), the third rail (also somewhere, though which one is the third one, I don't know) and no suicide pit (I can see where that one is - one of out three isn't bad).

What I found most curious, was that even though this was a disused train station and had been closed for over 20 years, there was lots of the station which was unfinished rather than simply deteriorating. Aldwych was built very late in the construction of the London Underground - almost 20 years later than the Circle Line – so by the time it was built there was already cost cutting in place and fears it would be underused. It reminds me of the time I was promised a bicycle by my parents for my 11^th birthday, and I was so looking forward to it, but when the time came on my birthday they never bought me one because they didn't think I'd use it. Heartbroken, I was. Absolutely heartbroken.

The unfinshed East platform.

Anyway, as a result, only one set of stairs and passages down to the platforms were ever completed, and only half of the platform was ever tiled. Aldwych only ever operated a short two-car shuttle train (never give it's chance to shine, was it? I feel for you, Aldwych), so the platform was only tiled up to where the little shuttle train would stop, and the rest of the platform just didn’t have the lights on - so if you were a passenger you couldn’t even tell it was unfinished, because it was just dark! That's British ingenuity for you.

It wasn’t all bad though - the station played a big part in both WW1 and WW2. In 1917 the Luftwaffe started to target London Aldwych suddenly became very useful again. But it wasn’t used for people, at first – it was rented by the National Gallery, whose Director had been worried that the water used to put out fires would damage the artifacts at the gallery. The east platform which hadn’t been used for train services since 1914 was blocked up and used as an emergency store for 300 paintings including works of Turner and Michelangelo.

Aldwych was chosen over other deep tube stations because it had very big lifts, able to take quite large pieces of art and transport them down to the deep tunnels below. Later on in the war, when the raids were at their heaviest, thousands of people took ‘unofficial’ emergency shelter at Aldwych and the other deep tube stations around the city.

I say unofficial because the government never gave permission for people to shelter there, or any of the other deep tube stations actually, but never had the need or the ability to tell people to stop.

After months of heavy bombing during the Blitz of 1940, Londoners flocked to deep tube stations for shelter each night. The government finally changed its mind, stating that Tube Stations would be organised as shelters, but only if didn’t interfere with the transport system.

But being able to use the station for shelter wasn't as good as it sounds. Conditions were extremely primitive - toilets often being buckets in the corner. But from 1940 onwards conditions started to improve. Aldwych was handed over by the government to Westminster, and was the only London Underground station given over to another authority during the war. Three tiered bunkbeds were built so that over 500 people could stay on each platform every night, and the tracks were boarded over for even more room. Tickets were issued to stop over-crowding, a canteen train was built ( "Anything from the trolley, dears?" Sorry. Harry Potter reference - couldn't resist), a library was created with over 2000 books which circulated between shelters, and there was even a health desk with free medical healthcare.

Morale was still at an all time low, though. Everyone had to be out of the shelters by 7am every morning and weren't allowed in until 7pm in the evenings. Climbing the 160 steps every day, clutching your possessions, not knowing what scene would greet you when you came out of the station, would leave everyone in a constant state of fear. The account of one man was played to us as we were taken to the platform where people sheltered: "You could smell the burning tar, this tremendous smell of burning. It seeped down through the stairwell and was all that we could smell. It was terrifying."

And so the Entertainments National Service Association was set up, it's main goal for providing entertainment and boost morale of the troops and the public. The Volunteers from ENSA performed overseas, at home, and in the shelters, however the plays and the performances weren't always to everyone's tastes. The acronym ENSA earnt the nickname 'Every Night Something Awful'.

ENSA contained many famous names, the most notable being George Fornby (Arnold assured us he was very famous, but I still had to Google him when I was on the way home, though I must admit I got the surname slightly wrong and was very impressed that he was also a world famous boxer and released a Lean-Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine ).

George Fornby - famous for the song 'When I'm cleaning windows'

Not George Fornby, and I don't know him personally so can't comment about whether he can clean windows or not

During WWII, Buckingham Palace also housed its tea sets at Aldwych (and you can only imagine how much tea the Royal Family drink), the V&A Museum stored items there, and the British Museum changed its mind on where to store the Elgin Marbles (priceless marble sculptures dating back to 447 BC which were originally part of the temple of Parthenon in Athens) and decided to jump on the bandwagon and store them at Aldwych, too. The Marbles were far too heavy for the weight restrictions on the lifts, but they were used anyway. There was a war on, what harm is a bit of rule breaking going to do anyway? Oddly enough, the building that had originally been chosen to house the marbles was bombed shortly after.

The Elgin Marbles - thank god they were stored at Aldwych, eh?

After our tour ended, we sat in Costa to escape the rain and for a while I did nothing but sit there and sip my vanilla latte. I couldn't quite take in everything I'd seen. The day started horrendously but ended up being simply incredible.

It was eye-opening, and one of those days that I will truly, never, ever forget, and I feel like I now know a little slice more of the great history of London.

No matter how strong a person you are, there will always be bad days. Putting on a brave face sometimes isn't enough. For me, nothing can make me feel better than immersing myself into a different world. Whether it's writing, or dancing, or exploring somewhere new... I can't express how important it is to know what it is that makes you tick. Or in this case, to have friends who can pick you up when you need it most (Lisa, I'm talking to you here. Thank you for the tickets).

Now... what can I discover next?

Is it too much to ask to have my neighbours say hello?

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 11:59:00 +0000

The thing I find peculiar about neighbours is the curiosity with which it brings. It is almost a right to be much nosier than you would any other collection of strangers, purely because they happen to live in a close proximity to you.

I live in a small and quaint cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Broadstone, a very well-to-do area where the local average age of residents is around 70. When I first moved here I dubbed it the ‘white picket fence’ road, because each house looks so pristine, with its white wooden porches and symmetrical windows and immaculately manicured lawns that I was half expecting the houses to be cardboard facades of some television programme, because really – who honestly has time to de-weed a lawn every single day.

It turns out that my neighbours do. I have been here for just over one year, and in that time, my neighbours opposite have never let their grass grow longer than 0.5 inches (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they measured it every morning) . They’re a married couple in their late sixties, and only wear clothes in a shade of beige or grey. I have often tried to strike conversation with this couple – the odd ‘hello’ or a ‘lovely weather, isn’t it?’ sort of comment. They never respond with anything more than a ‘mmm’ and a nod. Whenever they see me, they do one of those half-smiles, which is a regular smile whilst simultaneously trying to hide a lot of judgement. I assume their conversations behind their net-curtained kitchen windows go like this:

“Dear me, George? Look it’s that girl again. The one who never moves her wheelie bin for days after the rubbish men have been.”
“What was that dear? Sorry, just ironing my underpants, give me a moment.”
“I do hope she cleans her windows sometime soon – that bird muck has been facing our lounge for almost two months now and I simply can’t stand it. Oh, quick, she’s coming this way.” Linda promptly let’s go of the corner of the kitchen curtains and watches as I walk out to my car to retrieve something. She strains her eyes through the curtain.
“Is that a Harry Potter nightie? I’m not sure she’s even wearing a bra.”
George, in the background, places down the iron and places his hands on his hips. “I do love a fresh warm pair of pants – what was that about no bra? Oh yes, I see now. How about you fix me a tea instead darling? I need to trim the edge of the lawn again, it’s almost been 20 hours since it was last cut and I need all the energy I can get.”
“Better wait until she’s left her house or gone back to sleep – I’d rather you didn’t talk to her.”
“Good thinking darling. Shall we go watch another episode of Mastermind?”

I’m not entirely sure if their names are even Linda or George, but they look like a Linda or George. In their defence, their garden does always look immaculate. My mum once tripped and fell out of my front door because she was too busy staring at their hydrangeas, asking herself ‘how do they get the colours so vibrant?’

Over the other side of the road are the two detatched houses. They stand proud, with their garages, mocking us terraced houses over the road. There is one with a small boat and a Smart car parked outside the house, not on their driveway. I don’t like this house purely because the Smart car blocks me from getting in and out of my allocated parking space with ease. When reversing, I have to do a seven point turn to ensure I don’t smack the front of the car and reverse into a nearby tree. When I first moved into the house, I noted that the man who lives there was very angry, mostly because he had a go at my ex-boyfriend who thought he’d be nice and cut his grass while he had the lawnmower out. ‘Do not cut my grass ever again, thank you,’ he had said.

When I said the residents of my road were proud about their gardens, I was not lying in the slightest. Apparently there is a certain ‘way’ to cut grass that is different to the usual pushing forward and backwards motion which I’ve been doing all my life, and woe betide you if you try and help out your neighbour with their garden. My newest housemate accidentally drove over the corner of his garden and squashed a newly planted shrub – you should have seen his face; he was livid for weeks.

The neighbours next to him are a young family, with three children all under ten. I know this because they ride their bicycles up and down the road and round the block at such speed that you have to swerve your car to avoid them. I once saw someone crash his bike into a wall trying to avoid them as he cycled home from work. I don’t think they quite realise that they’re cycling on a real road, where real live people will be trying to get to work.

They also like to run across my front garden because it’s a shortcut for when they’re playing ‘it’, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I swung open my front door and called down the road ‘please stop running on my garden, you’ll squash my newly planted daffodils!’. I’m a keen gardener, you see, and I think it’s just plain rude to run across someone’s garden. The daffodils came up and bloomed, by the way, in case you were wondering. But if they continued to run across my garden, well... it might have been a different story.

When I talk about these neighbours though, they all seem positively delightful. I used to live in a flat in Bournemouth town centre, right on the High Street. It was an odd building to live in. I seemed to be the only ‘normal’ resident who lived there. There was ‘Poo Man’ who lived in the bedsit nearest the side entrance. Please don’t think I am calling him this purely to be mean. He earnt this name fairly, because he always had ripped trousers and poo stains over his front door. I learnt to open the main door, and sprint as fast as I could towards my flat, holding my breath. The smell emanating from his flat was nothing short of foul, and I had to wonder if he even had a sense of smell left anymore.

It was the woman who lived opposite me who I found most curious. When I had first moved there, I baked a large batch of cookies. Too many, in fact, for me on my own to eat. I boxed up two lots, one I placed upstairs outside of the door to the people who lived above me (who had their TV’s on so loud and argued so much I felt I knew them quite well), and one outside the lady opposite me. Upstairs returned the box the next day to my door with an origami swan made out of the note I had left them, which was lovely. I was always rubbish at origami and it was a lovely gesture. The woman opposite, however, had simply pushed the cookies back to my door. No note saying ‘thanks but no thanks’ – just a ‘sod off’ sort of gesture.

This was just the beginning of it, I soon realised. There were the occasional instances when I was leaving my flat, about to walk into the High Street, when she opened her front door opposite me at the exact same time. She’d see that I was there, and promptly slam it shut again. There were times when I was taking the rubbish out to the back into the large bins, and I saw her returning from the bins. Instead of continue walking towards her flat, like any normal person would, she turned down another corridor and proceeded to run away from me. As soon as I had passed the corridor, she ran towards her flat and slammed the door shut.

Perhaps I did something very wrong without realise – maybe she was allergic to cookies, and was insulted that I had tried to kill her. Perhaps she disliked my taste in welcome doormats. Or perhaps she was just scared of people. Whatever it was, I never found out the real reason, and am only hoping that she continues to run away from her neighbours.

It is odd though, isn’t it? How you can live so close to people and yet know so little about them. It would be nice to do the whole ‘hi, I see your new to the area, so here’s some sugar’ routine, like they do in films, but I’m quite sure that if you did that to anyone in England they’d be so terrified and would be convinced you’d done something to the sugar. But people want to be left alone. They want to go about their daily routines, and then go home to become a stranger, and have no one question what they do, or how they cut their grass, or what they do with their cookies – which frankly, I think is rather sad. I’d love to live on a road where everyone knew everyone, and you could all go round each other’s house for a barbeque, or to watch the Olympics, or just to have a tea and say hi.

So if you ever happen to live next door to me, please note you may receive baked goods from me at point - if you don't like them, then please just humour me and return the container back to me empty. Whether it goes in your stomach, in the bin, or in the dog is entirely your decision. In return, if you could not judge me for walking around in my pjyamas at all times of the day then that would be great.

An Unexpected Visit

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 18:42:00 +0000

'An Unexpected Visit' - a short story

She looked in the mirror at the woman who stared back at her. The bruise on her eye had not yet disappeared. She dabbed a brush into her powder which sat open on her dressing table, and began patting it onto her eye. It was still very sore, and her finger traced the whirls it made around her skin. It was a rather beautiful bruise, she thought. How the purples and pinks seeped to the surface, as if her skin was made of delicate marble.

The church bell struck. She headed out to the village hall where the village committee was meeting. She was the village treasurer, and, as a result, had to attend meetings twice a month. Her husband had pulled some strings to get her on the committee, thinking it would make him look good to have a wife interested in village events.

It was a rather dreary affair, she thought. It was run by a ghastly boss of a woman called Lesley who acted as if the villagers lived in her village. Charlotte had once made the mistake of questioning one of her suggestions, and had received such a demeaning telling-off that she decided it would be far better to keep her tongue fastened inside her mouth in future - she liked to think of it as being on a verbal diet.

Charlotte politely knocked on the door to the village hall, despite it being open, and popped her head inside the door.

"Ah, it's you. Welcome," said Lesley, in her most un-welcoming voice, not lifting her eyes off her hands where she was filing her long nails. "Sit, sit," she said, beckoning Charlotte like a dog.

Charlotte sat in her usual chair at the side of the table, mostly as it was the furthest chair from Lesley, and made the point to keep her woolen hat on; it helped the hair stay in place, hiding the worst of the bruise.

Chatter around the table was the usual; the weather, what the children had been learning at school, and how well Mrs Carrington's new baby is doing.

There were five of them on the committee in total. The only other person she tolerated was a young, timid woman who was the teacher at the primary school. In truth, she hadn't wanted to be on the committee either, but had felt rather obliged after Lesley had mentioned that the previous teacher was a central part of village life and the children 'ought to have a teacher they can look up to.'

"I think we ought to begin," chimed Lesley, clapping her hands together as if she were in a class of school children.

"If I may chip in," came a voice from the side. It was the caretaker at the school. He was a very bitter man who rarely smiled, and always wore a shirt and bow tie, which smelt of stale beer. Charlotte knew this because he insisted on moving his chair closer to her at the start of every meeting, until he was so close she could hear his heavy breathing.

"Well, Mrs Harper, if I may.. we have a new member of the committee joining us today. His family used to be benefactors to the Church quite a few years ago. He specifically requested he join us for a few weeks.”

"Ah yes," said Lesley, the corners of her mouth turned down. Charlotte quite wondered if she practiced this frown in the mirror because it seemed quite unnatural. "Yes, the Reverend mentioned it in passing when I had him round for dinner last week. Well. Where is he then? If he's late then I shan't wait for him!"

There was a timely knock at the door. A man dressed in a smart coat stepped into the stone threshold of the hall, the scuffs of his shoes echoing around the high ceilings. He was a young man, with a very strong and handsome face, like that of a brave soldier. Just the look of him made you feel like you could trust him. As he took off his hat and held it in his hands, his eyes came across Charlotte, and took in her slight figure.

"You must be James," said Lesley, peering over the top of her glasses.

"Yes, I am." He strode over to where Lesley sat. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs Harper."

"Ms Harper, actually," she reminded him. "God bless my late husband. You may sit at this chair to my left, I'll introduce the others later, I'm sure. Now, where were we…"

The meeting was as dull as the last; Lesley and the caretaker bickered profusely about whether to replace the plaque on the village well which was getting rather rusted. The caretaker insisted it was part of the history of it and the money was better spent elsewhere, whereas Lesley was adamant she didn't want her village looking tarnished with old signage.

Charlotte scribed down what was discussed, as she always did, but felt a hot gaze on her. Her eyes flicked up and sure enough, James was staring in her direction. He had a piercing stare, and seemed to be taking in everything about her, from her laced shawl, to the silver necklace that hung between her collarbones, and even the faint shadow of a bruise on her eye. Charlotte adjusted her hat to hide it.

Everyone signed the minutes at the end of the meeting, and Charlotte tucked away her fountain pen. Before anyone had said goodbye, she slipped out of the front door to head home, when suddenly a large hand grasped her thin wrist. Instinctively, she raised a hand to cover her face.

"Lottie, Lottie," said James. He released his hand and Charlotte adjusted her hat and coat. "It's me Lottie. Remember?"

She quickly glanced up at him, and turned to start walking home.

"Hey, where are you going. Don't you know who I am?" He ran ahead of her and stood in front of her.

"I know who you are, James," she replied. Her voice was a majestic as he had remembered. She took a sidestep to the left. "Now if you do excuse me I need to get back."

"Wait, wait!" James cried. "Can't we have a walk? Or go for a jam scone? I know they're you're favourite." His smile seemed to creep from his lips up through his cheeks and into his eyes. She diverted her gaze to ignore it.

"They were my favourite. I have to go."

Saturday 22nd October, 1948

"Bill said you was talkin’ to a man the other night after the meeting. 'e was 'aving his tea, and there you was in front o’ the window with a man, talking. Is this true?"

He was getting dressed, and had his belt in his hand, waiting for her reply before he put it on.

"New committee member. He was just saying hello."

"That better 'ave been it." He threaded the belt through his trousers, snatched up his hat and strode towards the bedroom door. "I'm out for the day. Make sure there's dinner on the table when I'm 'ome."

Her days usually started with a threat, so this was nothing new to her. Word always spreads fast in a small village, though she was hoping she had been short enough with James for anyone to realise they were old acquaintances.

Ten minutes after Henry left, there was a knock at the door. Charlotte ignored it. She had no one she needed to talk to, and after all, she needed to wash and dry the linen while Henry was out to make the most of the good weather. Three minutes later, however, there was another knock, this time harder.

The letterbox made a clang as something large and heavy was posted through it, landing on the cobbled stone hallway with a thud. Charlotte assumed it was for Henry, as all the post is - her husband had bribed the postman to ensure all deliveries for her were redirected to her husband first. 'Just to keep an eye on things', he had said, as if it was for her own safety.

However, as she neared the package on the floor she saw her name scrawled on the top of the brown wrapping paper. It hadn't come from the postman because there was no address on it, it had been dropped off in person. She quickly opened the front door and peered outside, but there was no one in sight.

It was a small tin box, and inside were two small items wrapped in newspaper. She unwrapped them slowly, and discovered a single scone and a small pot of blackberry jam. There was a piece of paper inside which simply had 'J' written on it.

"Oh James," she whispered.

Charlotte took it into the kitchen and sat it on the kitchen table. She hadn't been allowed a scone since she'd met Henry. He likes his women thin, bones showing and all.

'I'll just have a smell of it' she thought, and held it in her hand. It was still warm, fresh from the village bakery, and the smell trailed up her nose and down into her throat. She could almost taste it. She hadn’t eaten yet, and her small stomach grumbled, beckoning for a bite.

Charlotte decided to have a small taste of the jam. The lid popped off with ease, and she dipped in the end of her finger. It was a thick, pulpy blackberry jam, and was the sweetest thing she had tasted in years. She broke a tiny part of the scone off and dipped it into the jam - it fell apart in her mouth, crumbling into her hands as she chewed. She ripped off two other pieces and dipped each one in turn, licking her fingers after each mouthful. It was so delicious she felt like she were in heaven.

A noise outside of a bicycle bell brought her to her senses. What was she doing? She felt sick. Sick with anticipation if Henry found out, because he always found out. Sick with so much food, sick with fear, sick with memories. She ran into the garden and threw the rest of the scone into the pond for the fish to eat, and doubled over, taking deep breaths. She'd throw away the tin, and pretend it never happened. Yes, that would be it. She'd pretend nothing had happened.

Henry sat down to his dinner at six o'clock sharp, like he does every night. There was something eerie about his wife tonight. She was too attentive, she cut her food too many times, and she spoke more often than she was expected to.

After she had gone upstairs to bed, Henry began looking. He emptied her bag, went through the cupboards, and finally checked the bin – aha. He knew he would find something. He saw a scrunched up piece of paper with a J on it, and a tin box.

Sunday 23rd October 1948

James arrived at the committee meeting early, hoping to talk to Charlotte. She was sat in the back corner, wearing a a headscarf. She looked more disheveled than last time, and when he neared her, he saw her chin was a blackened-blue colour.

Charlotte saw him, and got up instantly to help make the tea. Lesley arrived and he had to sit down and make small talk with her.

What James found most peculiar about everything was everyone else's reaction - or rather, their lack of reaction. There she was, clearly in pain, clearly putting up with far more than she deserves, and no one batted an eyelid. It was as if this was the norm, as if Charlotte was always hurt, to the point where being bruise-free would cause more of a stir. Why was no one asking if she was OK?

"We have a unique opportunity which has arisen," said Lesley abruptly. Charlotte hurried back with the tea, and Lesley waited until there was complete silence, no chinks of teacups being stirred, until she continued. "The nearby town of Bottersby has asked if we would like to twin with them on their upcoming Christmas pantomime. I had a letter at the end of last week from their minister, a Reverend R Jones, and he assures me that their stage facilities are far bigger and more impressive than our own, and they also have more funding. They would provide a small bus to shuttle people to and from the village.

“This means, however, that we must investigate it first. I shan't send the whole town several miles down the road if the amenities are not up to scratch. I need one of you to visit the Church and meet Reverened Jones. He has offered dinner and an overnight stay at the Antelope Hotel."

There was silence.

"Well obviously I can't go," said Lesley, as if everyone had known she would say no this. "I have far too much to do of an evening for such trivial affairs, and my knees are not what they used to be."

"Nor mine," grumbled the caretaker, clutching his umbrella tightly which everyone knew he used as a walking stick.

"Charlotte, you should go," James said, looking at her. Her stomach fluttered hearing him say her name. "I've got to tend to my father this week, he's not well."

"I'm sorry to hear that, James. That's settled then. Charlotte is to go - I'll send a letter to your husband and to the Reverend saying that you shall visit on Thursday. Now, this plaque, Mr Drew..."

Was she allowed no say at all in the matter? Surely Henry would not allow her to be out of his sight?

Monday 24th October, 1948

Henry was clutching the letter tightly in his fist as Charlotte served breakfast.

"Bottersby. I don't know many folks there," he scorned. "'oo's going with you?" he demanded.

"No-one. I am travelling alone."

"Travelling alone! Ha! It's not safe fer a woman like you to travel alone. I'll have our Bill escort you. Fer safety."

Charlotte placed Henry's food in front of him - poached eggs and two rashers of bacon, cooked until they were so crispy they cracked as he chewed. "Thank you, how kind," she replied.

Bill Hodgkiss was, by village standards, a very sinister old man. His wife was a frail woman who rarely left the cottage, and he found it gave him a right to delight on the beauty of every other woman in the village, as if he was missing out on God's fine creations. He also happened to be Henry's right hand man, reporting to him like a student, commenting on Charlotte's whereabouts at any given opportunity. Her bicycle once received a nasty puncture near the Post Office and when the Postman came out to help her fix it, Bill had reported that 'she purposely rode into some shrapnel so she could be aided by another man and ogle at his muscles!'

Bill was also one of the few villagers who owned a motor-car, which he kept under a large cloth at the front of his house. It was a monstrous thing which made the most awful of clunking noises, but Bill assured Charlotte 'it's as safe as Sally our dear horse.' Henry watched as Charlotte climbed into the back with her travel case and Bill sat in the front, adjusting his mirrors so he could look at her.

"Bill will pick you up at 7 tomorrow morning. Don't be late. I'm sure there's some gardening you needa' be doing tomorrow."

Charlotte dipped her head. "As you wish."

The Reverend was waiting outside the Church for her as they arrived, twenty minutes later. Bill insisted on holding her delicate hand in his sweaty palm as she climbed out of the car. He left, begrudgingly, when the Reverend approached them both.

As far as Church Halls go, Bottersby Hall was the most opulent she had ever seen. Her eyes sparkled as she stepped inside, feeling like she was entering a dance hall rather than a church hall. There was a hand-painted ceiling which had clouds and cherubs and saints, and oak floorboards lined the hall, looking as pristine as the day they had been laid. For a moment she forgot why she was there, it was as if all time had stopped. She let her imagination take hold, and pictured a grand ball taking place here, wearing her finest frock, being escorted to the centre of the hall for a dance for all to see, no longer hidden in the shadows. At first she thought of Henry being on her arm, as he should be, but the image of James came into her mind, dressed in his fine livery, and suddenly he was all she could think about. Him, and her, together, with no Henry in sight, dancing and dancing late into the night, him holding her close to his body, everyone laughing and clapping and cheering as they whirled round the room - what a happy thought that was.

"It's perfect," she said to the Reverend.

“I’m glad you think so. I’ll send the paperwork to Ms Harper first thing tomorrow.”

He made her a cup of tea in the kitchenette at the back, where they politely made small talk, and he then walked her round the village, past the school, until they reached her hotel.

Dinner was at the Antelope Hotel and she had a table reserved by the window for 7.30pm. It was strange opening her travel case in a bedroom that had no trace of Henry in it, but it made her feel remarkably empowered. This was her own little slice of heaven, and she had a solitary evening where she may do as she pleased. She decided she would savour every moment of it, because it very well may be the only one she has.

She unpacked a few of her things and laid them on the dresser – her powder, a small black and white photo of her mother when she was a young girl, and a silver hairbrush with a gilded handle. It felt like home already.

With half an hour to spare before dinner, she decided to examine herself in the mirror. The bruises were beginning to fade, as if Henry couldn’t touch her here and were merely a memory for the evening. She opened her case and reached for the few bits of make-up she owned, passed down from her mother.

She entered the small restaurant on the ground floor at exactly 7.29pm. As she was shown to her table, it caught her by surprise to see a man in a smart coat already sat there.

James stood up, pulled out the chair nearest the window and waited till she was seated before he tucked it in.

She looked radiant, like a caged bird allowed to spread its wings, and James noticed the soft pink blusher on her cheekbones that gave her an air of elegance he had not seen since the first time he met her.

"I hope you don't mind me intruding," said James as he sat down.

She stifled a smile. "It appears I had no choice."

"I had to see you, Lottie," he said. He reached forward to take her hand in his but she withdrew it quickly.

"James, I can't. I'm a married woman."

"But you wish you weren't," he said.

"It is not for you to say what I do or do not wish."

He sat back in his chair, and his face changed. "What's happened to you, Lottie? You've changed."

Charlotte leant forward so that the other diners nearby couldn't hear her. She whispered, "I had to change, James. You left. You stopped replying to my letters! What was I to do? I didn't know if you had stopped loving me, or had met someone else, or.. god forbid, if you were dead. I had to let go, James. And I had done, until you recently appeared at the village hall!"

Their dinners were quietly placed in front of them, but neither of them made a move to eat them. The smell of hot sea bass crept up towards them, but their eyes were fixed on each other. Charlotte wasn't in the slightest bit hungry.

"How could you think I stopped loving you?" he asked, his voice almost a whisper. "There hasn't been a single day in the last four years I haven't thought about you. Not one day."

He reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out a small square piece of paper. When he showed it to Charlotte, she realised it was a photo of her.

"I've kept this on me ever since you gave it to me. I looked at it every night. I still do."

She felt the hairs on her arm stand up on end, a chill shiver down her spine. He loved her. After all this time, he still loved her.

They ate their meals in silence. There were so many things she wished to tell him, to ask him, but a lot of it she didn't want to know. If there was nothing that could be done, perhaps it was better not knowing.

"You look beautiful, by the way," he said, once they had finished. "You always were beautiful."

She smiled at him, and it lit up her whole face. In the few weeks he'd been back in the village, he hadn't seen her smile once. It was if she was suppressing it, not allowing herself to be happy. But this was a real smile, and it shone through her eyes. She looked dazzling.

"I have to ask," he said, breaking the silence. "Why did you ever marry Henry Marshal? I'm not saying you shouldn't have married, at all. But look how miserable you are, Lottie. I can't stand seeing you like this. You are such a beautiful, bright young woman, and here you are shut away from the world, holding your tongue like a child and being punished for trying to be yourself. Why, I'd march straight up to Henry and give him a piece of my mind, if I didn't know that he'd punish you for it, afterwards."

Charlotte gulped.

"I had to," she replied.

"I don't understand," said James.

"When my father passed away, after you'd left, he had a lot of gambling debts to his name. Debts which mother couldn't pay off. Henry paid for them, and in return, I agreed be his wife. He owns me."

James, halfway through taking a sip of his brandy, spat some of it out onto the table. "Owns you? Charlotte, you're not a slave! You can't be bought and sold like cattle!"

She shrugged her shoulders. "That’s not how he sees it."

There were a few minutes of silence, while James said nothing, but stared at Charlotte.

"Run away with me," he said.

"I can't. Henry would ma-"

"Oh forget Henry. This is about you. Your life. I can't stand to see you like this. I can make you happy."

A tear rolled down her cheek. How could he say these things to her, as if it were easy? As if she had a choice?

"I loved you, James, I truly did - and no doubt I still do - but this is my fate. I have to go."

She stood up and left the restaurant, hurrying up to her room, but James, quick on his feet, caught her on the stairs. His hand wrapped round hers, and he entwined her fingers into her small, delicate hands. She broke down in tears onto his shoulder, years of pain and guilt spilling out onto him, onto the one person she had ever loved.

He walked her up towards her bedroom, and when she finally stopped sobbing, he bent in for a kiss. She leant in slightly, so close that she could feel his hot breath on her lips, before realising what she was doing, pulling away.

“What is it? Come on Lottie, let’s have one night together. Henry will never find out. Just you and me, just like old times. What do you say?”

He reached down towards her waist, and pulled her closer to him, hearing a slight intake of breath.

“You always did amaze me, Lottie. You’re so beautiful, and yet you don’t know it. You do the strangest of things to me.” He leant into her neck and started kissing her, his hands wandering around her body.

She took a step back, and pushed him away from her.

“I can’t do this, James,” she whispered, staring at the floor.

He walked towards her and placed his hand on her cheek. In a soft voice, he said: “Of course you can – it’ll be just like old times. Remember how happy you were in my arms? I can make you that happy again tonight.”

It was very tempting, she had to admit. How hard she found to turn him down, when the lust was clearly still there between them. Some of the happiest moments of her life had been with him – would it be so wrong or so selfish to spend a night with him?

Without her permission, his left hand moved down towards her breasts, and she pulled away from him once more.

"No, James," she whispered.

"Oh come on, stop being like this. Let's go into your room."

"James, no, please."

He took the key from her hand and unlocked the door, striding towards the foot of the bed.

"Come here, beautiful," he said, his hand outstretched. Unwillingly, she took it, her heart thumping with excitement.

"You're mine for the evening," he said, but somehow, he didn't sound like James anymore. This wasn't the tender, caring man she had loved all those years ago. She felt like a piece of meat, like a trophy he wanted to gaze at for the evening before casting away. She couldn't give herself to him that easily after all the pain he'd caused her. He couldn't simply waltz back into her life and take her, like some cheap whore.

“I’m sorry James, I can’t do this," she said once more, this time more stern.

"Of course you can. I'll be gentle, honestly."

She began crying. "James, I can't. I’m pregnant. You need to leave."

Her eyes were glazed, wet from tears. There was no remorse in her eyes, no lack of certainty in her words. If she needed him to leave, if she thought her life would be easier without him, then so be it.

As he left, he kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll come back for you one day, Lottie. I promise you.”

_______________________________________________________

James Lance Glen did not keep to his word. He left the village the next day, and went back to his wife Isobel, who he had married two years previously.

Charlotte, unaware of this, named her child Henry James Marshal, and waited everyday by the letterbox for a sign that James would return. She never saw him again.

Piano in Canons Ashby

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 22:26:00 +0000

I found myself in rather an usual predicament today, whereby I had a day off and I was 200 miles from my home in Bournemouth.

The day started reasonably well. I was in a hotel having an all you can eat buffet breakfast with my colleague, Dajana, a lovely girl from Germany who was one week into her internship. We were being very professional and pointing to objects and amusing ourselves with how they're pronounced in the other language (for example they call jam 'marmalade', and have no idea what real marmalade is - it's absolutely bonkers).

It was to my great pleasure that she asked if it would be 'too much of a trouble' for me to correct her English when she talks so that she learns the language better. I was half tempted to tell her that, in fact, it would be a pleasure more than a trouble, as I so often do this to my English friends and receive smarmy 'know-it-all' remarks, so to be asked to do it freely, at will, was like I was a child and had been told I was allowed to eat ice cream for every meal of the day.

I'd worked at an event in Northampton the night before and had booked off today so that I could visit a friend in the area. Unfortunately plans had fallen through for one reason or another so I found myself in a town I didn't know with nothing to do.

Obviously, I went back to bed. I used the paper 'do not disturb' sign and hung it over the door while I starfished on the bed, feeling somewhat mischievous for still wearing my shoes. Mid-starfish I discovered there was a National Trust house about a forty minute drive from where I was, called Canons Ashby, and decided to head there for the day, if nothing else, than to be guaranteed with a good cream tea.

N.B Before you get excited, let me set it straight that there were no canons at this house, nor was it anywhere near Ashby.

I needed to detour via Tesco, though. I seem to have contracted one of those head-cold things, where you're not sneezing, nor are you coughing, but your face feels like it might fall off at any moment. Dreadful thing. I dosed up on lemsip tablets, bought a new wooly hat (I've been searching years for a good wooly hat and this is the first one I've found that hasn't made me look like I'm wearing a marshmallow), and was on my way in search of this mysterious canon-less house.

I was met in the car park by a lovely man who greeted me by bellowing 'good morning!' even though it was five past midday. It was partially spitting so he offered me a ride to the main house in his National Trust golf buggy and I felt obliged to say yes, hiding my umbrella from sight. He gave me a brief history of the property in the twenty six seconds it took to reach the house. I assumed the buggy was more for young children and the elderly but it was a fun ride nevertheless and I saved my hair getting wet, so thank you very much morning-man.

Canons Ashby is not the grandest of houses, by any means, but it still has a sense of charm about it. It was built from the remains of the medieval priory over the road following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and some of the original flagstone floor from the 12th century priory is in use in parts of the house today. The main bulk of the property used to be a farmhouse which was extended and extended until it became the fancy manor house it is today, and has been in the hands of the Dryden family for many centuries.

Canons Ashby. I borrowed this photo from the internet because it looked far prettier than anything I could have taken. Thank you, internet.

The wife of Sir Henry Dryden in the mid 19th century. I'd look that miserable, too, if someone had told me I had to pose holding a book but I wasn't allowed to read it.

Now, no matter which National Trust property you visit, you can always guarantee the same warm welcoming feeling. The people working there are so passionate to be sharing their knowledge with you; you see it in their eyes as they greet you, they are genuinely happy you walked in through the door, and you can tell that a part of them wants to point out everything in the room and shout 'LOOK AT THIS BIT', and 'ISNT THE DETAILING IN THIS TAPESTRY SIMPLY ASTOUNDING' and 'THIS IS MY FAVOURITE ITEM IN THE WHOLE HOUSE ISN'T IT MARVELOUS' but their dignity makes them hold it in slightly and reveal just tiny tit-bits of information, to which you politely nod and say 'oh really?'

N.B I can definitely see myself being one of these National Trust tour guides when I eventually retire, and I can assure you now I will not hold back on my enthusiasm in the slightest.

I thought, as is always the case, that the Library would be my favourite room in the house. It is no secret that I love books. I love reading them, naturally, but I also love looking at them. Some people think paintings are beautiful, others like sculptures, but I like books. Even when they're closed, they're beautiful. Just knowing how much adventure, how much knowledge each one holds, makes every book case filled seem so magical. I tend to buy books in almost every bookshop I go into (which is quite a lot) and I know full well I probably won't ever get round to reading them all, but they're so delightful I just have to own them. Especially the ones that look old. I'm aiming to have my own library when I'm older, you see, equipped with one of those ladders-on-wheels like in Beauty and the Beast, so I'm starting my collection now.

The Library at Canons Ashby. There were gardening tools kept in here so that anyone who borrowed a book was guilted into helping to preen the many bushes in the landscape garden.

Now, I have to mention the stairs at these manor houses. Stairs often get left out, I feel - but I take particular notice. It's only in these stately homes, where the steps are so shallow and so easy to walk up, that you realise how much of a chore regular stairs are. I seemed to float up these stairs, taking such minuscule steps in order to get to the next. One minute I'm on the ground floor, the next I'm upstairs, almost by magic; it's so effortless and it's actually rather fun, and I never thought I would describe ascending a staircase fun. So well done stately home stairs, with your fancy red carpets and carpet rails to hold the carpet in place, and decorative wooden banisters, the unsung heroes of the house. Well done, you.

Beyond the fancy stairs was a room I did not expect. Though the house was very charming, it wasn't explicitly grand, but one room had more elegance than the rest. It was the Drawing Room, and the ceiling captured me the second I saw it - a barreled vault white plastered ceiling, with a large painted crest and marble fireplace.

The ceiling in the Drawing Room - rather fancy, isn't it?

And then I spotted the grand piano.

I left the elderly couple that I had been wandering around with and walked to the front of the piano to have a look at it. The music sitting on top of it was Claire de Lune by Debussy, a piece I know rather well. I glanced up at the National Trust lady, in full conversation with the couple, hoping she'd look over to me. I did what any other English person would do, and instead of politely asking for permission to play, I over exaggerated my enthusiasm at seeing the piano. I turned the pages of the music, I kept on lifting the lid to the piano stool, I even un-latched the metronome so that it began ticking - all in the slim, vain hope that she would let me play the piano. I have never been to any manor house where they have allowed the instruments to be played by any old member of the public, nor did I ever expect to find one.

"Do you play?" she eventually asked me.

"Well, you know, a little bit here and there..." I admitted.

She gestured to the piano. "Please, do play anything you wish."

It was as if I was a child let loose in a toy store. I wasted no time in unfastening my coat and placing my bags in the corner, ready to begin playing. Was the piano stool at the right height? Would it sound too loud when I got to the forté bits in the pieces? Oh, who cares.

Me, sat the grand piano, with my 'oh my god as if this is actually happening, this is so cool' smile.

I began with Claire de Lune, as it was there, open, in front of me. However, as I started playing I felt my hands shake. I was nervous - nervous because I was playing a grand piano (which, let me assure you, is a very, very rare occurance) and was playing it in the most beautiful setting I have ever played in. It was, without a doubt, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What if I didn't do it justice? What if I messed up so badly that the woman revoked her invitation for me to play?

But no. My nerves would not get the better of me - not today. This was my moment. Life is made of little 'moments', I think - little slices of your life where all time seems to stop, where you feel so many emotions at once you wonder if it's real, where your mind takes a still photo of everything, of every little detail even down to what clothes you're wearing, just so that in years to come you'll see the imprinted image in your mind and it will be almost like you're back in that moment.

I closed the piano book in front of me, and began to play from memory. I play better from memory, because it means I could switch off my head and let my hands move freely. It was as if I was letting go and letting someone else play for me, but when I looked down at the keys it was my hands moving. Einaudi's 'I Giorni' echoed through the vaulted room, down the staircase, into the Great Hall and seeped up into the bedrooms. I could hear people in the rooms either side going 'ssh! Is that someone playing?' and then more and more people began filing in, carefully taking a seat on the fancy sofas, and I could feel them smiling at me, I could feel the happiness in the room, happy that they were sharing my moment with me.

Being perfectly honest I can't remember how long I was sat at that piano. An hour, perhaps. Maybe more. I lost track of time. Everything sad and hurtful that had been getting to me in the last few months, every bad memory, every negative feeling, was drifting away. It was as if the more I played, the happier I became, the higher I climbed away from everything, away from everyone. I lost track of where I was, of why I was in Northampton. Nothing mattered anymore. None of it. I played and I played and the piano was singing under my touch, until there were no more songs left to be played. I'd played everything I could remember, and had gone through the piano music and played everything I recognised. How I wish I could have stayed there all day, stayed all evening. I didn't want to leave the piano, to leave the glittering vebrato of the piano and the magic it installed upon all who sat in that grand Drawing Room. I wanted more than anything to stay in that moment forever. Wouldn't that have been lovely.

The room seemed eerily quiet as I took my hands off the keys and closed the lid to the piano. A hollow silence filled the room. After I put everything back, and the room had emptied, I sat with the National Trust woman on the sofa next to the piano. We sat there for ten minutes or so, neither of us saying a word, just taking everything in. It was beautiful that we could enjoy the room as it was meant to be enjoyed, as if the house was still alive.

The rest of the house was lovely, as every National Trust house is. I said goodbye to the woman and headed across the landing towards the bedrooms where am elderly gentleman was talking to a small group huddled around a wall. I learnt how the house had been rented out in the 1950s to quite eccentric characters who, unfortunately, didn't understand certain historical importance of some of the artifacts. For example, there was a tapestry in the bedroom I was in which covered a large part of the wall. It was a very old and precious tapestry, and behind it lay a door leading to a cupboard. The tenants wanted to access the cupboard, so instead of moving said tapestry, like any normal and reasonable person would, they decided to take a pair of scissors to it and cut a door-shaped hole in it. The piece cut off ended up as a blanket in their dog's basket, and the tapestry is now almost worthless.

The door-shaped hole cut into a very old and very fancy tapestry. Sigh.

The next hour was spent ambling around the house's landscaped gardens - a beautiful collection of orderly hedgerows and topiaries. I sat down in one of the sheltered garden seats and let time pass me by. There was a book next to me that had a list of all the flora and fauna in the garden, and lots of people walked up to me to glance through the book despite it being late Autumn so there were no flowers blooming, and I said hello and they said hello back, and we chatted about how dreadfully windy it was (hence me taking shelter). People are very friendly at National Trust houses, and I like that.

Admiring the view in the garden with my very crinkley jeans.

And so here I am, sat in Starbucks, next to a delightful* family of four screaming children, writing up my day. In truth, I hadn't expected to get so much enjoyment from spending the day exploring on my own, but it's funny how things like that happen.

I didn't get my cream tea in the end, by the way. I was playing piano so long that the cafe in the old stables was closing by the time I approached it, so I settled for a Toffee Nut latte from Starbucks instead.

*I say delightful, when really I mean it's children like these ones next to me who make me want to reconsider whether I actually want children.

Did you know why Poole has scallops on it's coat of arms? No, me neither.

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 11:18:00 +0000

My first grievance with the town of Poole is the name. 'Poole' is not the easiest name to say to people when describing where you live. It either comes out as Pewl, and you sound like you're trying to be posh, or it sounds like you're just talking about your dear friend, Paul.

My second is how the town is displayed on train journeys. When looking up train times, where each town is abbreviated to three letters, my journey tells me that I am travelling from London Waterloo (WAT) to Poole (POO) - as if the ticket machine is telling me it's own disgruntled opinion of the town before I venture home. I do not like thinking that I am travelling to Poo, that I will find my car parked in the Poo train station, and that I'll drive home, to my house, in Poo.

Grievances aside, I like Poole. It has a certain charm about it, like an elderly man who has many tales to tell you. Every time I go there I find out a little bit more about it - I notice one more historic building I'd never noticed was there, or I discover a different street I didn't know about.

My morning today, however, hadn't started particularly well. It was raining, for one, I was running late, and I'd accidentally drawn with pen onto my white t-shirt whilst packing my bag - but I wasn't going to let these dampen my day.

As I arrived at St James' Church in Poole Old Town, I realised I was the youngest there by about thirty years. It's Dorset Architectural Heritage week, you see - so Google had told me yesterday - and as a result, there were free historic tours taking place all over the county, many at places which were usually closed to the public. I picked a few I liked the sound of in Poole and set out for a day of learning.

Everyone around me was wearing an array of different coloured fleeces, had parka jackets in pouches hanging from their bags, and were wearing open-toed sandals. I, in contrast, was wearing denim hot pants, leggings, and a white t-shirt with pen on my boob. I felt slightly out of place, I must admit, but I was quickly assumed to be a history or architecture student, and was left to get my notebook out of my bag.

Being totally truthful, the area of Poole Old Town that St James' Church was in was an area I didn't even know existed, which was strange, really, as it's only two roads away from the High Street. But there it was, full of Georgian houses, with a regal air of tranquility about it. It was nothing short of magical, and I found my admiration for Poole was growing. Poole was suddenly more than just a few pubs on the quay - it had a life.

St James' Church, Poole

Our tour guide was the History Manager at Poole Museum and had previously lived at Poole House, a grand Georgian house opposite the church, and when he lived there in the 1980s had excavated the grounds only to discover a medieval boatyard 2 metres below the ground surface - the only medieval boatyard to have been discovered in northern Europe, in fact. Now why he decided to break apart the floor to see what was beneath it, I don't quite know. Perhaps eating his dinner one night he thought his dining room was a bit too dull and needed to instead be filled with archaeologists holding tiny spades.

Poole House, where a medieval boatyard was discovered.

West End House, opposite St James' church. I'll take it!

The original church of St James dates back to the 12th century, but the church that stands on the site today were late additions by James De Havilland, the mayor and richest tradesman of the town in the late 1400s. His father, Thomas De Havilland, had acquired the trading privileges for Poole in the 15th century, bringing a wealth of opportunities to the town. The famous actresses Olivia De Hallivand and Joan Fontane, famous for the films Gone With The Wind and Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca from the 1930s were actually descendants from the same family.

As we entered the church, I noticed the weathered Poole coat of arms in stone at the entrance. I knew that it had a dolphin in it, the 'king of the sea', but I'd never noticed the three scallops that sit above it before. They're the emblem of St James, an apostle of Jesus, apparently due the fact that when he died he was taken to the hole city of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and in a big storm his body was lost overboard, when it was recovered it was covered in scallops. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims departed on licensed ships from Poole on pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, and funnily enough, one of the ships captains who was granted a license by the King to carry pilgrims was none other then Harry Paye - the infamous Poole pirate. Quite a juxtaposition of day jobs isn't it - ferrying pilgrims by day, pillaging ships for gold by night, but each to their own.

Inside, the Church was beautiful. It wasn't as old as I'd pictured from the outside, though; our tour guide told us that it had a refit in 1819 due to prosperity from the Newfoundland Trade to the tune of £11,700 - about half a million in today's money. His exact words, which made me stifle a laugh and had to pretend I was coughing, were:' The Georgians had money, and boy did they like swagger.' The big pine columns stretching up to the vaulted ceiling, made up of 4 smaller pine columns, have been reported to be made from Newfoundland, or were masts from the very ships which sailed there. But, as rumours generally happen, they're a distortion of the truth - it was more likely that they were simply made from the same timber which is used to make the ships masts heading to Newfoundland, though I prefer the rumour. It's quite nice thinking that the ships that helped bring wealth to Poole are now inside the most important church in the town, isn't it?

Inside the church. Quite pretty, isn't it?

The original church was apparently very worn down - in 1515 an account of the church had said that there was water to the depth of 3ft found beneath to main aisle, many stone slabs were broken and needed removing, and many of the floorboards under the pews were loose. They'd tried to remove some so they wouldn't be a hazard for people to walk on, so they wouldnt kneel to pray only to lose their feet down the gaps, but on removing them, they discovered there were several coffins beneath them with nothing more than the boards covering them, and the smell that erupted up into the church was apparently so foul, so pungent, so rancid, that they decided to put the boards back and leave it exactly as it was. They'd just pave over them instead - problem solved.

There were apparently many squabbles in Church, which I found rather strange. There was me imagining prayers to be a very peaceful and calm affair, but there were reportedly lots of arguments. Families 'rented' box pews, you see, often screwing name plaques onto the door of the pew to mark their territory, and usually had them for their entire lifetimes. If a family moved away and returned back, they often wanted to have their same pew back, even if a new family had moved in. There are no box pews downstairs, but upstairs in the gallery, which we were kindly given access to, was an assortment of box pews in the most odd colour I've ever seen painted in a church - pea green. Churches are usually regal, very holy, lots of gold or red or dark wood to emphasise the opulence. This church looks more like a hospital. But, perhaps that's exactly what it was. When we asked our friendly tour guide why the pews were such a, well, interesting colour choice, he said that the mostly likely option was that it was the leftover paint from World War 1, the hospital green of the soldiers wars. Why no one has ever repainted them, I'm not sure, but it brings a sense of individuality to the church which I actually rather like. There are even holes dotted about in the pews to place small candles so people could better read their hymn books on a dark Sunday morning.

The 'hospital green' pews - look a bit strange, but quirky, don't they?

And the Church itself is made up from bits and pieces from other places. There was intricate oak panels that had come from the old St Paul's church, which is now demolished and a roundabout (though the burial ground is still under it), while large oak panelling near the alter had come from Canford Magna church, the oldest church in the area. Even the flags hanging above the pews have their fair share of history - the faded Union Jack flag hanging up was actually the very first flag to fly over Paris when France was liberated from the Nazis in 1944.

Now, the idea that I was a history student must have spread in little whispers around the group, as they wondered who that young girl on her own was, because, on no less than four occasions, I was asked in a quiet whisper what I was studying, and why I was taking notes. I was the only person there with a notebook, which I found rather odd - surely no one here could remember everything being churned out at us from our guide. So, I simply replied 'why aren't you taking notes?' to which they shrugged in a 'touché' sort of way and smiled at me. In the end, I just smiled and nodded, yes, yes I am a student - it was far easier than admitting I like doing this sort of thing, on my own, for fun - and the very sweet old couples would let me shuffle to the front in order to get better photos.

Dorchester: "Would you like tea before you're sentenced to death?"

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:04:00 +0000

It was a Monday, in August, and it was raining.

My mum and sister had come down from Essex for a long weekend to stay with me in Dorset, and, as usual, I'd made a plan of all the things we could do. All of them, however, unfortunately banked on the weather being anything on but raining. There was Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove, paddle boarding in the shallow waters around Sandbanks, exploring Monkey World...

And so, I sat, staring out the rain-specked window at the bleak, grey outside, watching the leaves of the bush in the garden patter up and down in the rain, and swiped through the results that Google was spewing out at me for 'rainy day activities in Dorset'.

Eventually, we decided that Dorchester would be a good place to head to - my Mum liked the sound of the many museums to hide from the rain and muse at various artifacts, whilst my sister, being the cake lover she is, was certain that there must be a good afternoon tea to be sought in Dorchester given the number of 'Dorchester hotels' around the country which serve such a delicious delicacy.

The rain persisted. It was the horrible, heavy rain where being outside feels like you are running through a waterfall, and makes your umbrella, which you were certain was a good umbrella, prove that actually, it is rather a shit umbrella, and you should have spent the extra fiver to get the one with the more sturdy handle. I was sporting my wellies on this particular day, and the jacket which I had worn to hike up Ben Nevis, so I felt prepared to take on such weather, and was very close to - but did not quite - splash in every puddle I came across, just because I could.

Founded by the Romans, Dorchester was originally called Durnovaria, which is, co-incidentally, also the name of a lovely little eatery in the town centre. The earliest known recordings from Dorchester are from Maiden Castle, an Iron-Age hill fort 2 miles from the town centre, dating back to around 600BC, and, in 400BC, was expanded to become the largest hill fort in Britain, no doubt in a 'my hill fort is bigger than yours' sort of way. When the Romans invaded, the fort was already in quick decline, and eventually it was left to ruin, being used for nothing more than the odd spot of farming.

The Romans, however, left a much more visible mark on the town than their Iron Age counterparts; Grade I listed ruins are left exposed and free to visit in the town centre, showing the remains of a Roman Town house divided into several rooms. As well as this, there are Roman mosaic paths lining the floor of the main hall inside the Dorset County museum. As we shook off the rain and left our umbrellas in the little umbrella stands by the door, suitably assured that no one who pays £7 to visit a museum would possibly want to steal an umbrella, I was shocked to find that we could actually walk on the Roman mosaic floor. It wasn't cordoned off at all, it wasn't behind glass for you to stick your face on, it was just there, under your feet, absorbing all the drops of rain the the dirt and stones stuck between crevices in all the thousands of shoes that walk on top of it. And actually, it was rather cool.

A little golden inscription at the edge explained how it had been moved there in 1905 from its original position near the High Street. I found that quite odd - how can one simply move a floor? Is there a magic way to move every single tile, without damaging them, which is secret to all museum staff? If that was common knowledge, then divorce settlements would be much more interesting, wouldn't they? "You can keep the house, but I'm taking the floors!"

Dorchester County Museum, complete with Roman tiled floor.

I overheard a chap with a rather large beard, who had a pen wedged behind his ear so firmly that it made me believe he put it there several years ago, has since forgotten to retrieve it, and is now part of his body in the same way his nose, or his hair, is - I naturally assumed he worked at the museum - and listened to him talking to someone about the floor.

"Well, yes, moving a floor would be rather difficult, but, you see, they actually used glue. Yes, I know, who'd have thought it to be so simple! They covered the top layer in glue, rolled out hessian fabric on top, simply 'rolled up' the mosaic floor, and when they got here inside the museum, simply un-rolled it again, un-peeled the hessian and washed off the glue! Remarkable, eh?"

The museum was a treasure chest of wonders - what initially started as a quick escape from the weather turned into 2 hours discovering facts, and learning things about things we had no idea were even things.

Being the official museum of the county, it housed a lot more precious artifacts than anywhere else in Dorset. There's even a replica of the famous Dorset author Thomas Hardy's office, where he wrote many of his most famous novels, including Tess of the D'Ubervilles, and the room itself housed all of the original contents from his office, even down to the very pen which wrote the novels! Naturally, I found it rather alarming that, whilst pressing my nose against the glass, the cello, which had been standing up on it's pointy end and balancing on the fireplace surround, mysteriously fell over, in an almighty clang, as if an invisible ghost had patted it on the neck and decided it shouldn't be perched there anymore, but should instead be on the floor. I wasn't quite sure what to do. There was no one standing around me as it happened, and so there was no one for me to turn to, with a shocked face, and remark 'how strange!' to, or say 'it wasn't me!' to. I did what any British person would do, and walked away, pretending it never happened, or that I had never been there.

I purchased a mug with a lovely quote on the back from the gift shop - it has an image of Thomas Hardy sketched on the front, with a quote from one of his poems on the back which is just delightful to read, and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that it has soon become my favourite mug, and makes me feel more like a writer when I drink out of it, almost as if Mr Thomas Hardy has made the tea for me himself and is sitting next to me, prompting me to write more, whilst playing his now-slightly-dented cello for me.

We were called from the museum, almost in perfect unison, by the grumbling of our stomachs. We had passed many pubs on the way to the museum, and so we set out in search of somewhere to have a good pub lunch on this dreary English aftrnoon.

Unfortunately for us, it seemed that every pub we came across, be it The Kings Arms, or the The Maid's Head, told us the exact same thing as we sat down and began perusing the menu.

"Oh, we're not serving food today. Thanks."
"Oh, right. But, your sign outside said food Monday to Friday?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"Well, today is Monday."
"Ah, yes, I know. But we're not serving it today."

This happened no less than three times, and the grumbling of our stomachs was getting louder and more intrusive. Was there a secret pact between all of the pubs in the town to not serve food on a Monday?

Walking down the main High Street, we spotted a sign labelled 'The Antelope', and headed towards it hoping it was yet another pub, however, on inspection, revealed it was 'The Antelope Walk' - a small cobbled arcade of quaint shops and boutiques. Inside we found a pasty shop, and I can't even begin to describe the sheer joy at finding somewhere which we could see had food to sell us. However, opposite the pasty shop was a small but modest entrance to a tea room. My sister, being the cake lover she is, eyed the sign up eagerly, and, after finding yet another food-less pub, decided this tea room would do.

The Tea Room was nothing short of spectacular. I admit, I was not expecting the extravagent interior which lay before me as we walked up the narrow stairs and were seated at a table next to the fireplace. The room was oak paneled, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and oak furniture lining the edges of the room, mostly covered in cake stands and cutlery drawers; it felt as if we were sitting down to luncheon in the manor House of a great aristocratic figure. Even the maids were dressed up in stereotypical maids outfit, as if to make the effect even more complete.

I therefore, found it quite hard to believe when I saw a stone tablet above the fireplace explain that this very tea room, where I was now slurping a banana ice cream milkshake (well, I couldn't get one without ice cream, could I?), was once a room where over 200 people were sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys.

It was 1685. The Duke of Monmouth, the bastard son of the previous King, Charles II, was trying to overthrow the current King, Charles' brother, James. It was done as it was always done in those days - with a big and bloody war.

Unfortunately, despite Monmouth being the Captain General of the English Army and having quite a number of supporters from the South West of England, he still lost the battle, and was captured, in a ditch in Ringwood in the New Forest. Not wanting him to get off 'lightly' (as if being beheaded wasn't punishment enough), King James ordered the axe to be blunted, to make it as difficult and as painful as possible to actually remove the head - quite similar, in fact, to the tale of Sir Nearly Headless Nick from Harry Potter - and it was rumoured that it took 9 blows for the head to fall completely off.

The King, James II, however, was not quite satisfied. This was his country, and he couldn't relax in his big, comfy throne if he knew that there were people out there who had tried take his throne away from him. How very dare they!

And so the King called upon his dear friend, the beloved Judge Jeffreys. The two had been pals for a while now, ever since before the King was the King. He tasked Jeffreys to make it his personal duty to punish all those who had helped Monmouth, and punish them he did, in what was called 'the Blood Assizes'. He lodged at a house on High West Street (which is now a restaurant called 'Judge Jeffreys'). In 2014, a secret underground tunnel from this house to the Oak Room was discovered, wide enough for Jeffreys and two other judges to walk shoulder to shoulder, away from prying, disapproving eyes of the public above.

The judge quickly earnt the nickname 'the hanging judge', for obvious reasons. In the past, he had been liable to accept bribery from prisoners in exchange for a pardon, and those who had no money were hung. The Assizes, however, were a different kettle of fish. Jeffreys had to prove to the King that he was ruthless, that he was a real man, that he was worthy of such a task, worthy of wearing his frilly little wig and pretty ruffled shirt.

One tale of the Judge remarks how he, in his scandalous and barbaric ways, persuaded a young girl to come to bed with him one night, on the premise that her brother, an accused prisoner, would be set free. The next day she awoke to see his body hanging by the neck from what was called in those day the Bridport Dagger. The nearby seaside town of Bridport (i.e BBCs 'Broadchurch' location) was known for its production of netting and rope, and more importantly, for the production of it's hanging rope - those who were hanged were said to have been stabbed with 'the Bridport Dagger'. Quite interesting, eh?

Bronze statues by Elizabeth Frink at the original site of the gallows in Dorchester, to remember all those who were killed.

More than 1400 prisoners in total were brought before the judge - most of them sentenced to death. Of that number, 312 were heard in the very Oakroom where we were now innocently sipping our tea, pondering which of the many cakes to eat, and out of that number, 292 were sentenced to death.

Knowing this fact threw an altogether different atmosphere on this elegant room, and made my tea taste all that bit sweeter.

There is debate about how mean Jeffreys really was - that he was no more ruthless than any other judges at the time, and that it was the King who was the mean one, and Jeffreys was simply doing his job, like anyone else would have done. It was also a well known fact that Jeffreys was suffering from rather bad kidney stones - which, is said, to be the male pain-threshold equivalent of 'giving birth', and so he often drank to rid himself of the pain, and that perhaps his mean and nasty ways were just because he was in a great deal of pain.

Karma has a way of biting people in the backside, though - four years later, during the Glorious Revolution when King James fled the country, it was reported that Jeffreys, no longer covered by the veil of safety from his regal chum, tried to follow. He had, apparently, disguised himself as a sailor, but was thwarted when a former convict who had been deported as punishment recognised him. He was sent to the Tower of London, only to die, soon after, of his Kidney Stones.

So, if you ever get the chance to visit Dorchester, I highly recommend stopping at the Oakroom for a tea, to walk through the footsteps of one of the most feared men of the 17th century.

Oh, and we had the scones, by the way, in case you were wondering. They were delicious.

What has Tutankhamun got to do with Downton Abbey?

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 13:13:00 +0000

I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I agree.

If Tutankhamun was still alive now, then Downton Abbey would undoubtedly be one of his favourite TV programmes.

And let’s face it, Downton has hooked the world. Who couldn’t be entranced by the goings on of the social elites from the 1920s, the gossip and scandals of the staff who worked below stairs, and being in awe at how much of an utter faff it must have been to wear a tuxedo to dinner every single night of the year.

"Can't we just wear jogging bottoms for dinner? One's feeling rather tired tonight."

I asked a few of my work colleagues what they thought Downton had to do with Tutankhamun, to see what they'd come up with. Most shrugged their shoulders and continued to slurp their leek and potato soup, but a few pondered the question and came up with rather sensible answers.

‘Well, most old houses have, like... well they have old Egyptian exhibits and stuff, don’t they? Is that what it is?’

Well, yes – you do find that many of the old Edwardian or Jacobean manor houses around England have exhibits displaying artifacts from ancient Egypt. Kingston Lacy, a National Trust manor house near where I live in Poole which dates back to the 16^th century, has just that. It originally fell into the hands of a handsome, young and rather confident man by the name of William John Bankes. In the mid 18^th century he made it his hobby to explore Egypt, making notes and sketches of everything he saw. In fact, his sketches were so accurate that his work has helped to understand ancient relics or monuments which have long been since lost or damaged.

William John Bankes, 1786 - 1855

Unfortunately, Bankes was also rather frivolous and apparently didn’t like wearing his trousers very often, and his voyages to Egypt soon became thwarted with scandal and debauchery. He was found guilty of an affair with a married woman, shortly followed by a libel case, and then two separate offences for homo-sexual behaviour. Which, in the 18^th century, wasn’t exactly looked upon favourably. Naturally, he was forced to quickly flee the country and pretend he’d done absolutely nothing wrong, leaving all of his relics and notebooks forgotten in a cabinet in the depth of a house, no doubt behind a pile of odd socks and old Christmas presents (you know how it is, it’s easily done).

His art collection was eventually found (and let’s hope the socks were all paired up) and the obelisk he’d swiped from the temple of Philae on his travels was left at the estate and, to this day, is still in the exact same spot. Bankes noted that on this particular obelisk, there were two famous names in Hieroglyphics, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, which, after being confirmed that this was correct and not just a drunken ‘eureka’ moment, was used alongside the world-reknowned Rosetta Stone which now resides in the British Museum in London in the eventual decipherment of Egyptian Heirogliphics. You can still see the great obelisk from Philae as you walk round the gardens at Kingston Lacy, where it is normally being perched upon by a family of pigeons, or young girls are trying to pinch the top of it for a quintessential instagram photo.

The obelisk from Philae in the gardens of Kingston Lacy, Dorset

It seems that ‘the thing to do’ in Edwardian times was to go to Egypt, whether to escape from the day-to-day toils of English life, or to rejuvenate one’s soul. It soon became the place to go for anyone who had a bit of wealth behind them; the ancient version of the Cote D’azur or Marbella. The only difference being that in Egypt you could take home local decorations and use it to furnish your own house without being told off.

The real-life location of Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, which is situated in Hampshire, is no exception to this either, housing its own Egyptian relics collection. Though it is used for filming Downton Abbey throughout the year, it is still the home and residence Lord and Lady Carnarvon, and I can’t help but have an image in my mind of them sipping a PG tips and doing a soduko in their slippers behind the camera, whilst Hugh Bonneville and Maggie Smith ever so eloquently discuss topics such as which aristocrat they’ll be inviting for luncheon.

Lord and Lady Carnarvon, the current residents of Highclere Castle

But behind the facade of Downton Abbey, there’s a lot more the Castle than meets the eye. It was originally mentioned in the Domesday book as a medieval site for the Bishops of Winchester, but from the mid 16^th century it fell into the hands of the Carnarvons.

Born in 1866, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert was the 5^th Earl of Carnarvon, and thankfully for us, was only referred to as ‘George Herbert’. He did as all Earls should, and married a charming young woman who brought a vast sum of wealth to his doors (about £50 million in today’s money – no, I can’t imagine owning that much money, either), but alas, no matter what era they live in, boys will be boys – George Herbert seemed to be more enthusiastic about racing horses and automobiles than his new wife.

He was brought before Magistrates for his reckless speeding on more than one occasion, and in one magazine he was described as terrifying cyclists and pedestrians alike by travelling ‘at speeds up to 20mph!’

Unfortunately for our poor Earl, he also had his fair few crashes, the last one leaving him close to death, and as a result, was vulnerable to the cold and the miserable English weather. He was told by Doctors that he had to take winters abroad in order to survive, and so he chose to go to Egypt where the warm air would help him recuperate.

Egypt was lovely, at first, but it soon became a bit boring, and so George decided to take up a spot of excavation to help pass the time, and it turns out that actually, he rather enjoyed it. And not just paying other people to do it for him whilst he relaxed on a chaise longue, oh no – he wanted to be down there in the dirt looking for treasure.

His first few attempts amounted to finding no more than a mummified cat, but a find is still a find! Word soon began to spread of his attempts to find lost tombs, and he was approached by Lord Cromer who introduced him to a nice chap by the name of Howard Carter. Carter was looking for a man with quite a lot of money, and George Herbert was looking for a scholar who could help him find more than a dead cat; it was a match made in heaven.

It seems that in the early 20^th Century, getting a contract to excavate on a particular plot in Egypt was down to three things: popularity, wealth and how much you’d actually discovered before. George had only found a mummified cat because he was given a rather dud site which had no more than a mummified cat in it. They can’t let just anyone dig anywhere, you know, and possibly damage ancient statues or monuments. So he and Carter carried on as they were, excavating whatever they could - the more tombs they discovered, such as the lost tombs of Queen Hapshutset and Rameses IV, the better their profile got, and the better sites they were allowed to dig at. One thing to note, however, was that our Earl, in his wise and profane ways, hadn’t thought it necessary to hire an archeologist for his digs, and so ended up damaging an important stone tablet, and professionals were quick to remark that this was “the sin of allowing amateurs to dig!”

Howard Carter and a man with a large hat pointing at a hole in the Valley of the Kings.

But the crème de la crème was the site in the New Kingdom, or better known to you and I as the Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately it was currently in the hands of a wealthy American – Theodore Davis. He was the most famous archeologist in the world, and had been excavating for over 10 years, many times with Howard Carter working alongside him. They found many clues of Tutankhamen’s tomb, such as a pit discovered in 1907 with seal impressions of King Tut, as well as another safe tomb containing funerary objects. They kept digging, and digging, but never found the tomb, and energy levels on the project were starting to fall.

But Carter, however, did not lose interest. He was in fact very interested. I imagine his conversation with Theodore went something like this:

‘So we’ve found loads of things relating to Tutankhamun, haven’t we?’ said Carter, excitedly.

‘Yes, we’re so close! We must dig more – more!’ replied Davis, his passion for finding the greatest tomb of all evident in his words. Carter sighed, and the energy in the conversation dwindled.

‘But, well…we’ve been digging for years,’ said Carter, placing his hand on Theodores shoulder. ‘I mean, you’re getting a bit old now, aren’t you?’

‘Well yes, I guess I’m not as fit as I was twenty years ago. I have noticed my knees aching far more in the mornings and eveni-‘

‘And we have looked almost everywhere, haven’t we? How can we be sure grave robbers didn’t steal everything centuries ago, and we’re just searching for nothing?’

‘I suppose, yes. You raise a very good point, Carter.’

‘I think it’s time to say enough is enough.’

‘Yes, I’d been feeling like this for a while, actually, but didn’t want to dampen your spirits – you’re such a keen young chap. However, I believe the Valley to be exhausted. I think I shall take my Winters in Florida from now on.’

‘I think that’s a good decision, sir,’ replied Carter.

Theodore Davis. Nice moustache ol' chap.

Little did Theodore realise that he and Carter had missed the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb by a mere 6 feet – he had stupidly assumed that the ancients would never have dug an entrance so far into the ground, and so, on failing to find it, he threw in his excavating towel and went off elsewhere, leaving our Earl and Carter the opportunity to snap up this prestigious site.

From 1914, Carnavon and Carter worked together to search for the Great Tomb of Tutankhamun. It was now November 4^th, 1922, and was, what the Earl had said, as the ‘last excavation he could support.’ Carter and the Earl were standing at what they hoped was the entrance of Tutankhamun’s tomb, surrounded by hoards of onlookers. Once they broke through the first sealed doorway and came across a passage filled with rubble and debris, they found another sealed doorway. There is a famous description of the moment this second doorway was breached, when a small hole, just large enough for Carter to place his candle inside, was uncovered. He reached his hand slowly inside, gripping the candle tightly, as Lord Canarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn, lay waiting eagerly beside him, the only sound was the flicker of the flame. Hot air escaped out of the room which had been sealed for over a thousand years. As Carter’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that this room beyond was not filled with rubble as he’d expected, but could in fact see glints of gold all about the room. ‘Can you see anything?’ asked Lord Carnarvon, after what felt like an eternity waiting. Carter, dumbstruck with amazement, turned to the Earl and whispered, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’

On that day, history was made. It was the single largest Egyptian excavation that had ever taken place, and fame and glory came to Highclere Castle, and the Carnarvons were front page news all over England.

Egypt would not be complete without its fair share of curses, and Tutankhamun’s tomb was no exception to this. It is said that the discovery of the tomb led to many deaths of the excavation team – though most of the ones who died were already either very elderly or very ill so whether their deaths were linked to the curse is highly debatable.

Nevertheless, no one can ignore the sudden death of our dear Earl so soon after the tomb was uncovered. Lord Carnavon was bitten by a mosquito on his cheek, and, whilst shaving, accidentally slashed the bite. It became infected, he got blood poisoning, and he died in his hotel room at the Savoy in Cairo. Not only that, but Carnarvon’s dog Susie back in England mysteriously howled dropped dead on the day of the discovery, Carter’s pet bird was eaten by a snake, the radiologist who x-rayed the mummy was found dead and the lights in Cairo had all suddenly gone out (though this was apparently a common occurrence, but still a highly suspicious co-incidence nonetheless). It was reported that when the mask was taken off Tutankhamun and examined, that he too had a legion on his cheek in the exact same place that Lord Carnarvon was bitten – could they have been mosquito bite twins?

Curses are strange things though – I mean, surely if there was such a thing as the Mummy’s Curse which befell all those who opened the tomb, then it would have been Carter who would have suffered, and not the Earl? Carter actually lived well into his sixties, hardly the sort of age for someone who was apparently ‘cursed’, but each to their own, I suppose. Perhaps he married a woman who refused to do the washing up - that in itself would be an awful curse for any man to endure.

90 years later, and talk of the curse are still going on. In January this year, it was revealedthat the beard of Tutankhamen’s mask had accidentally been broken off by one of the museum curator’s, who had been trying to adjust the lighting, and, in a sheer moment of ‘oh my god what the bloody hell am I going to do?’ had bodged it back together with the wrong kind of superglue, praying that no one else would notice.

Of course, everyone noticed. It’s the most famous mask in the world – how could anyone avoid not seeing a line of glue seeping from the beard. What I find even more alarming, however, is that the current Lady Carnarvon (who keeps a blog online about daily life at HighclereCastle – I highly recommend you read it) blogged about how she, on the day that the beard was reported to be broken off Tutankhamun’s mask, also suffered an injury in the exact same place and the Doctor also used superglue to piece her back together. If that isn’t the sheer definition of a co-incidence, then I don’t know what is.

A few weeks ago I actually went to Highclere Castle, for their annual ‘Battle Proms’ concert – a classical outdoor concert on the grounds of Highclere Castle, accompanied by cannon-fire, live cavalry displays, an aerial display from the iconic Spitfire, all topped off with fireworks. I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, felt so patriotic and proud to be British. Families were laughing and cheering, elderly couples were waltzing in the gaps on the grass as if they were back in their teen years, and the atmosphere was uplifting and inspirational. The grass was a sea of picnic baskets, jugs of Pimms, and Union Jack flags fluttering in the wind; the crowds cheered gallantly as the Spitfire flew over the iconic castle to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, and the 10,000 strong crowd was up on their feet singing Rule Britannia as the fireworks lit up the sky.

If I could have bottled that patriotic feeling, and use it whenever I’m sat in a queue of traffic on the M25, or am waiting in an over-crowded Doctor’s surgery and am cursing living in Britain, then I would. I’d make an absolute fortune.

Real books vs. E-books - The big debate

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 20 May 2014 22:56:00 +0000

I've got to admit, when the idea of an 'electronic' book came about, I wasn't impressed. "What's next, eh? Virtual food? Ha!"

I've always been a 'real book' kind of girl. I think it started from the first time I watched Beauty and the Beast and Belle is shown the Beast's not-at-all-exaggerated library. It's filled with thousands of books, and the bookcases all have those ladders-on-wheels that every child dreams of having a go on, but sadly, apparently don't exist in English libraries (I was so disappointed).

I'm sure I've seen something like this on Grand Designs

If I was on a wheely ladder I'd be throwing my arms up rejoicing too.

It was from that moment on I decided I wanted to own a house with a library, perhaps not as big as that one, but a library nonetheless.

Whenever I visit National Trust houses, it's always the library which is my favourite room. There's something enchanting about a room lined with books, and sofas and chaise-longues scattered about the room which makes you just want to curl up under a blanket and spend the afternoon sipping tea and reading. I would try it (the library at Arundel Castle was particularly beautiful) but I doubt Harold, the man who looks as old as the Castle explaining why the curtains are in fact a royal red, and not a burgundy red like the rest of the building, would approve. "It all began when the Earl's wife visited a cottage in France in the late 17th century..."

So in the last five years, I've made a personal effort to buy books instead of borrowing them in a hope to get my mini library collection off to a good start.

I've been buying books for about four years now. I currently have enough to fill one shelf.

One.

Which is better than nothing, right?

My books sit on a bookcase in the entrance hall to my flat, so as soon as you walk in the door, they're staring at you, as if to say 'hey, this girl is cultured and likes to read! And there so many different novels, she must be so clever! Notice how she has also has every one of the Harry Potter books which she may or may not have queued up for at midnight. She must be so awesome, I'm so glad she's my friend.'*

*A survey of 100 people came to these conclusions.

What books people have on their shelves says a lot about them, I think. Have a lot of books by travel writers? You want to go travelling but can't be bothered to fork out the money. Lots of historical novels? You think were born in the wrong century. Lots of cookery books? Your friends think you're a shit cook. Lots of autobiographies of celebrities? You can't read, you just like looking at the pictures of famous people when they were younger. "Ha, look. They looked as geeky as me before they earnt millions and had plastic surgery. I almost feel good about myself now."

So, what books do I own?

Lots of travel books by Bill Bryson (his brain works in the most mundane, hilarious ways)
A handful of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels which I cunningly stole from my parents when I moved out (wrote my dissertation on Terry Pratchett, so the borrowing was for, he-hem, educational reasons)
Almost every historical novel by my favourite author Phillipa Gregory (I always wish I had been born a Tudor until I think of hygiene and the severe lack of lil-lets in the 16th century)
The Hunger Games (because obviously)
And a collection of other brilliant books like 1984, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Tom Cox's 'The Good, The Bad and the Furry' all about his 6 cats (it's better than it sounds. Well, unless you don't like cats.)

Some of my books. Feel free to send me more. It's almost like donating to charity. Almost.

The big debate

There's something about owning a book. It smells like a book. It's there. It's in front of you. You can see how many pages it is and how far through you are. There are crease marks in the corners where you keep losing your bookmark and stains from where you spilt your spaghetti on it - battle scars from the epic journey from front to end.

Real book 1 - 0 E-book

I was 100% a real book girl, until I was bought an e-reader for Christmas.

I hadn't asked for one before then because I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the whole 'electronic' book idea. I didn't want to ask for one just in case one week later I ended up using it as a coaster for my tea while reading a real book.

But I was bought one, nonetheless. And I thought you know what, I'm a young whippersnapper, I can't stay behind with the times. I was ready to fully embrace it. I got a fancy case for it and entered my debit card details online, and Bob's your Uncle, I could buy books to my hearts delight! I could login on my laptop, buy a book, open my e-reader and it would automatically download (like magic, eh?)

NB: I can report that I have never used it as a coaster, but have in fact read 7 e-books on it since Christmas, in contrast to just 2 real books.

I think two particular things won me over. Firstly was the handbag ordeal. Having a book in a bag is tricky business. The corners get ruffled, the cover gets bent over when you get your purse out at Tesco, and god forbid if your water bottle lid isn't screwed on tight enough.

Secondly was the 'reading while eating a meal' situation. With a regular book, you find you have to have quite strong hand muscles in order to perform this. Your hand has to sprawl out in the most un-natural position just to hold down both sides, and if it's a heavy book, ha - good luck. You need an extra elbow in place just to hold the fat side down. From personal experience, stains are most likely to occur when page turning. It's a messy business.

Real book 1 - 2 E-book

But you can't lend e-books to anyone. Or, even better, borrow them. 'Hey, can I read your copy of The Book Thief? Thanks, I'll just take your £100 Kindle for the next two weeks. You might as well give me your iPad to borrow while you're at it, and your mobile.'

Nah. Doesn't work.

Real book 2 - 2 E-book

E-books can, and will, run out of battery. Most likely to happen in places where extreme boredom is looming, like the doctors surgery, or while you partner has control of the TV reno mote.

Real book 3 - 2 E-book

I can carry up to 1000 books on my e-reader at once. If I tried to do that with real books I'd probably give myself a hernia.

Real book 3 - 3 E-book

Waterstones is a magical wonderland of ink and book-forts.

Real book 4 -3 E-book

I can read erotic novels on the train and no one can judge me.

Real book 4 - 4 E-book

Real books make good fans when it's hot.

Real book 5 - 4 E-book

E-readers make good frisbees

Real book 5 - 5 E-book

If you're cold you can rip the pages out of a book and burn them to make a fire. So versitile.

Real book 6 - 5 E-book

E-books would make a great weapon in a fight.

Real book 6 - 6 E-book

Real books can open out to make makeshift umbrellas.

Real book 7 - 6 E-book

If you put 2 E-books face up on a table you can pretend you're David Freeman from Flight of the Navigator.

Real book 7 - 7 E-book

And so it goes on and on....

Flight of the Navigator (1986)

The outcome

So where do I stand on the whole real book vs. e-book debate?

I'm slap bang in the middle.

I like the convenience of e-books. I like that I can eat and read without getting hand-cramp. But they're not real. They're not there, and they certainly can't fill a library.

I know what will happen. I'll be the woman that owns both e-book and real book, and end up spending a bloody fortune just to get my library the way I pictured it when I was a little girl.

And I'll get my wheely-ladders if it's the last thing I do.

So... what's your opinion? E-book or real book?

Boris is a great name, don't you think?

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 09:52:00 +0000

There are some great names out there which I don't think get enough credit.

Wilbur. Horrace. Bertha. Edwina. Phyllis. Archibald. Winifred. Boris.

Take Boris for example. Boris is a great name, don't you think? It's so simple, so short, and when you whisper it it leaves a delicate popping sound on your lips like a bubble bursting.

Now here's the thing.

Whenever I see a spider, I name him Boris.

The name Boris actually means 'wolf', 'short', or 'snow leopard'. I think naming a spider not only after the Mayor of London (he slightly resembles a snow leopard, doesn't he?) but using a name that means something that is small and solitary is quite apt.

Boris the snow leopard

In my head there is only one spider in the world, called Boris, and he follows me around.

This may seem a bit strange, but for some reason it makes dealing with spiders a lot easier. I'm not scared of spiders - if I had to name my top 5 fears I doubt spiders would be in there. Heights, deep water, being forgotten, burning alive - they're all up there, but not spiders.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I love them either. When you see the big ones with the fat hairy bodies who just sit watching you, gently moving all eight legs, making you scared that at any given moment it could pounce five feet across the room into your lap and trail it's web around your legs - that thought has definitely come across my mind on more than one occasion, but I still wouldn't say I'm scared of them. There are plenty of other non-scary things with hairy legs that I wouldn't particularly like pouncing on me from me across the room; my neighbour's cat, for instance, or Susan Boyle.

SuBo - almost as scary as a spider

Spiders are, whether we like it or not, a big part of our lives. They like to hide in almost everything we humans make. Cars, houses, sheds, the box of Christmas decorations in the loft. We can't escape them. I can proudly say I've never killed a spider (not to my knowledge, anyway, though I'm sure I've probably accidentally sat on one at one point in my life). I think I get it from my mum. She has enormous respect for living creatures, something so selfless which I've always admired in her and been brought up with. If there's something which needs rescuing or moving to a plantpot, she will, whether it be a spider, a caterpillar, a moth, or a worm. Mother by day, creepy-crawly saviour by night.

So, even though I don't particularly like spiders, I don't see why they deserve to die. Why should something have it's life ended just because 'it has too many legs', or 'it looks horrible'. It didn't ask to be born a spider, just like we didn't ask to be fortunate enough to be born humans - it just happened. So I call every spider I see Boris to make them that little bit easier to deal with.

I know you're not convinced, but let me show you what I mean.

You're at a dinner party with friends. It's all going swimmingly well, until someone sees a small black shadow creep across the floor.
'Oh my god, nobody move! I think there's a spider under the table!'
'Ahhh where did it go? I fucking hate spiders!'
'Quick, someone kill it!'
'Oh don't worry guys, it's just Boris. He's probably just feeling a bit lonely. Let me go get a glass and some paper.'
'NO, JUST KILL ITTTTTTTTTT!!'

Suddenly, by naming it, you feel rather sorry for him. It almost gives him a personality, somehow making him (and for some reason I'm convinced every spider I see is male) far less terrifying.

And I realise there are lots of different kinds of spiders in the world. But to me, they're all the same one. When I see a harvester spider just hanging out in the corner of a room, I think to myself 'Oh Boris has lost a lot of weight recently, I hope he's okay'. When I see a small, fat spider in a tree I think 'Oh wow, Boris is sure feeling adventurous lately'. And when I see a little spider crawling inside my flat, I think 'Oh Boris, you must be feeling down, you're all hunched up and small today. But, you do realise you are indoors. And all the windows are closed. And the only thing going to walk through your web is my face...right?'

Boris is currently living in my car at the moment. He scared me when I saw him last week, because I hadn't realised he'd trekked all the way from my flat to my car. Not only that, but he only decided to show himself by walking across the sun visor when I was halfway on my way to work.

I must admit, Boris did freak me out a bit.

It's like getting a bee stuck in your car while driving. I wanted to bat Boris away, to tell him to stop distracting me while driving, but at the same time I didn't want him and all eight legs falling on my face, or worse, dropping onto my dress and for me to flail my arms about at the fact that there was a spider crawling up my legs and I could do sod all about it.

I keep opening the window for Boris, trying to coax him outside. He's never tempted though. He just crawls into one of those holes that I never knew existed in my car, and hides there until the next day when he makes another appearance at the most inconvenient time. He must be going through his adolescent years.

So next time you see a spider crawling in the bath, or in front of the garden shed, why not try calling him Boris? Or start calling wasps Wilbur. Or snakes Archibald. The whole country filled with terrifying small creatures with the most hilarious, vintage names. It's quite the thought, isn't it?

Oh Archibald, you so silly.

The Hallway of Mysterious Objects

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 23:04:00 +0000

I live in a building consisting of about 60 flats.

The majority of them are on the floors above me. To get to them, I have to walk through a hallway where the entrance to the bike store is and go up some stairs on the left.

But there's something strange about this hallway.

Strange thing number 1: I have never, in the 18 months of living here, seen another person in that hallway.

For a building consisting of 60 flats, averaging between 1 and 2 persons per flat, that works out that there are roughly 90 people in this building ( not including any cats, toddlers who scream at 3 in the morning because they saw a shadow of a tree on their curtain, and of course, hamsters).

But it's not just that I haven't seen anyone in this hallway which is strange.

Strange thing number 2: There are always 'things' in this hallway.

There are two entrances to my building. The side entrance is close to my flat, so I use this most days. But occasionally I'll use the front entrance to check my post and to purposely walk through this particular hallway. And every time I do, without fail, there are 'things' there. Books, CDs, old bags, plant pots...

But it get's worse.

Strange thing number 3: The objects change every day.

It's not just small objects, too. Sometimes it's swivvely office chairs which have had one too many swivvels. A bookcase. A pram. A suitcase. A dining table. And then on top of those are the smaller objects. Coasters. Coat hangers. A pair of jelly shoes from the 1990s. A Dyson Hoover. A Polly Pocket set from when she was actually pocket sized.

Awesome thing number 1: I once found an unopened box of Lindt chocolate in this hallway.

Obviously, I nabbed it. It was just after New Year so someone was most likely discarding it to start their healthy new year diet, so really, I was actually doing them a favour.

Also, whenever I've taken anything, it's been a grab and run jobby.

Not because I know I'm stealing - this stuff is clearly un-owned and up for grabs. But because knowing my luck, just as I'd pick up whatever object took my fancy, Mr Countryfile (the caretaker of my building, who acquired this nickname from me by looking remarkably like the presenter from BBCs Countryfile, albeit a little bit more weathered), would stroll around the corner and give me a jolly good telling off for being a thief (he seems to enjoy having a go at me for whatever reason he can find).

In this way I've also acquired a nifty little candle holder from there which now sits on my bookcase, as well as a handbag and several books.

But, the weird thing is, I'm not quite sure what the rules are about this hallway-free-for-all.

There are no signs or notes anywhere to explain what exactly is going on (and trust me, I've looked).

For example: Can anyone leave stuff there?

This brings me back to strange thing number 1. For the amount of 'things' that are there, and the amount of people who I have never seen there, I hold my suspicion that something strange is going on.

Is there a secret hoarder who, in the depths of night when the rest of us are asleep, empties a different part of their flat into this hallway? Is there an ex-Father Christmas of the building who delivers used gifts un-wrapped and semi broken to his favorite tenants via this corridor?

Or perhaps Mr Countryfile is forever clearing things away, getting to the end of the day after moving all the objects away from the hallway, only to wake up and find another hoard of goodies waiting for him the next day.

Whatever it is, I'm not quite sure what's going on.

And I'm not quite sure I'll ever find out.

And you know what? I think I'm okay with that.

This hallway adds a bit of mystery to my day when I'm taking out the rubbish.

It's like a really crap version of the Generation Game, trying to remember what was there yesterday or the day before and see if anything has changed. Has the microwave with a built in oven gone?!

I have many things in my flat I'd like to discard of, and have often thought about leaving them in this hallway - but until I get to the bottom of this, I think I'll just get rid of all my toot the normal way.

Charity shop.

Below: Some of the many objects I've encountered in the Hallway of Mysterious Objects. Try and contain your jealousy.

What could be in mystery hamper number 1?

OMG A LAMP WITH NO LAMPSHADE OR BULB, I'VE ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THOSE

This teddy clearly needs more practice at Hide and Seek.

A LIGHT UP FAIRY WAND. PIPPIN. LET'S GET DRUNK AND WRITE RUDE WORDS IN THE DARK.

Ah YES. The minimalist coffee table complete with stains from previous dinners is still there! My luck is in.

I bet you now wish you had your own Hallway of Mysterious Objects, eh?

The Etiquette of Buses

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 13:12:00 +0000

Three weeks ago I put my car in for it's MOT. Three weeks later, and I still haven't had it back. It failed with flying colours, needing almost everything major replacing, and being such an uncommon model of Corsa (a 1.8, apparently) finding second-hand replacement parts is proving rather difficult.

And so for the last month I've been forced to find other means of getting to work. I work about 7 miles from my rented flat in Bournemouth Town Centre. I tried cycling for a week or two, but given that this has been the wettest January since records began, that was soon out of the question. I was left with just one choice.

I had to get the bus.

Buses are very strange things, I find. They have a certain 'aura' about them which is different to other forms of transport, like trains and cars. Life seems a lot slower on a bus, and there are certain sorts of 'bus people'; people who, for some reason or another, you will only ever encounter in life whilst on a bus.

Bus People

Take, for example, the bloke with his music up too loud. He rides the bus everyday ( and occasionally the trains at weekends, when he's feeling fancy). It seems that the whole 'bus' experience is just too abominable to withstand, with it's whooshes and echoey rain splatters on the roof, and so he has to resort to letting the rest of the bus know just how much he is disliking being there by playing Skrillex loud enough for the bus driver to be tapping his fingers along.

Then there are the day shoppers. They wear and carry everything they could possibly need whilst out 'running errands', and so you'll normally find them wearing a parka jacket, bobbly hat, and pulling some sort of tartan shopping trolley. They're harmless, but occasionally smell of stale bread and/or cat wee.

And then we have the bus drivers themselves. I've personally only encountered three types in my life. The overly-happy, slightly-rounded male bus driver, who always bids you a good day even when he can clearly see you're not having a good day. The grumpy, middle-aged man who seems to have it in for school children ("I've told you three bleeding times, only ring the bell if you're actually getting off!"). And then there's the butch lesbian who looks like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. She just hates everyone.

The Journey

I was on a bus home from work the other night. It's been horrendous weather the last few days, with gale force winds and that annoying spitty-rain that isn't really rain but still makes your eyes squint.

I got on the bus, paid my fare to Mr Overly Happy Bus Driver, and found the first empty row of seats I could. Being rush hour, the bus was particularly busy, so I think I got the last one. I put by bag on my lap, because I didn't want to be that arse who reserved the seat next to them for their bags and forced other people to stand (not today, anyway). I therefore wasn't particularly bothered when, at the next stop, a woman quickly shuffled through the bus and claimed the last empty seat next to me. I soon noticed that she appeared to be on the phone, too.

The bus moved on, gently making it's occupants lurch forwards and back with every turn, and I noticed she wasn't talking in English. In fact, she wasn't really talking at all; more a constant mumble of words which sounded quite similar to a character from the Sims, except, unfortunately for me, there was no volume button.

She seemed completely unperturbed by the range of 'whirs' and 'oomphs' coming from the engine of the bus as it struggled up and down the hills of Bournemouth. I personally would have found it a bit too hard to hear and would have asked whoever it was on the other end to call me back when I was at home, but she, oh lady in the padded Adidas coat, seemed to be an expert in public transport conversing and carried on as if she was sat in a field on a lovely Summer's day, and the only thing to break the silence around her was the quiet pitter-patter of squirrels scurrying up a nearby tree.

I was trying to read the last of my book on my Kindle, which I haven't been able to put down ("The Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of The Window And Disappeared"), and, after several weeks of reading, was finally getting to the all important part of why he climbed out of the window in the first place, when all I could hear in my ear was a murmuring of words like a badly-tuned human Morse Code machine.

It was at that point I also noticed her strange arm movements. She was, at regular intervals, raising and lowering her right arm so that her hand was obscuring her mouth. Perhaps she was yawning? No, that's too long to be a yawn, I thought to myself, and the pitch of her voice isn't changing like it does mid-yawn, making you sound like you've momentarily lost your all hearing and are asking for directions to the local bank.

No, she was just sitting there, with her hand over her mouth, but talking just as loud as before. And then she'd move her hand down again. And then she'd move it up. It was most peculiar, and I couldn't fathom why she was doing it, but the frequent elbow juts in my ribs made it very hard for me to get past the sentence 'Alan Karlson in fact climbed out of his window because...'

Ths bus journey from Poole bus station to Bournemouth town square takes approximately 30 minutes on a good day, and there are various places along the way where a lot of people alight. It is general bus etiquette, I thought, that when enough people have vacated the bus for there to be plenty of other seats free, the person who has sat next to someone else generally relieves that someone else of their presence, and moves to a free seat on the other side of the bus.

I generally thought that this is what everyone does.

Apparently, this is not what everyone does.

We were about half way through the journey when, after finally learning why Alan Karlson was out of the window, I noticed the bus was a lot emptier than before. Head still down, I quickly glanced around and my thoughts were confirmed. Almost half the people had left. 'Good,' I thought, cosying into my seat, 'the mumbling lady will finally move'.

In fact, she did not move.

She continued to talk, perhaps even quicker and high pitched than before.

I tried the old English method of gently 'heh-heming', which didn't work. I knew I'd have to be a bit more obvious than that. I sat up straight, looked around me, twisting my shoulders as I did so, so that I was staring around the bus, making sure I held my gaze for slightly longer than any normal person would.

The mumbling woman noticed this, and then also looked up, joined me in twisting her shoulders and looking round the bus to see what I was looking at. She only saw empty seats, and so had no idea why I was turning around, and so got back on with her conversation. 'Strange English Lady,' she must have thought to herself.

This happened no less than four times.

It was only when we pulled into the bus station at Bournemouth Town Square and I had stood up in my seat, that she finally acknowledged it was probably time for her to move. We were, in fact, the only two people left on the entire double-decker bus, and as she got off, I noticed she brushed her coat down, as if she was annoyed my germs were still on her.

Since then, I have to admit I've always chosen to sit on the single seats near the front. The only problem I have to face then is the occasional 'bum-in-face' incident when the bus is busy. Maybe bus journeys just aren't meant for me.

Other Bus 'Things'

In between my bad experiences on buses, there are also several other things which have struck me as being particular bus-related things. Here are my top 5:

On buses, you can stare at people's hair for long lengths of time without feeling awkward. You haven't been able to do this since assemblies at school. How DO they get their hair so shiny?
Everyone on the bus is in agreement that they all, collectively, hate school children.
No matter how new a bus is, there is always one chair that squeaks. If it's the chair you're sat in, you genuinely want to keep apologising to the rest of the bus for your misbehaving and somewhat nervous seat.
Someone always has a Nokia phone from 2001 with the keypad tones left on. BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP.
Whenever someone gets on the bus and asks in their most high-pitched voice for a 'child' single, you always stare at them and judge if you think they're young enough ("Hey wait a minute - you're not young, you're just really fucking short! That's not fair!")

So, in essence, I really, really hope I get my car back soon. I think I've had my fair share of bus-ness for a while now.

The 10 Things I Learnt Watching 'Take Me Out'

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 14:51:00 +0000

1. Every week I secretly hope that one of the girls falls down the stairs.

Oh come on, I know you agree with me. Let's face it, that's the only reason we make sure we're sat down as soon as the intro music has finished playing. 30 single girls, a set of large stairs and 30 pairs of 5 inch platform heels? It's fate. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm wearing heels, anything involving a slope or steps requires me to slow down and focus 110% on where each foot is going. Add a television crew to it, and it's like watching a glamourised version of Takeshi's Castle.

Here's it happening on series 2. Pure TV gold.

2. Paddy McGuinness and his crew are clearly starting to run out of one liners.

Some of the latest being:

Let the Tool, see the Box.

Let the Shepherd see the Pie.
Let the Toad see the Hole.

At first they were clever and even I would heartily laugh at home, but now it's obvious that the ideas are running a bit thin, and the writers are looking around their home for inspiration. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions of my own:

Let the Washing Up see the Sponge.

Let the Hamster see the Ball.

Let Last Night's Cheesy Chips see the Bin.

Let the Greasy Hair see the Dry Shampoo.
Let the Window see the Bird Poo.

3. The more times you wink, the more likely you'll be to get a date. Apparently.

On Take Me Out, it's classed as flirting, and the audience 'woo' if anyone does it. If I was to do that to a guy in a bar I'd probably look like I was having a stroke. That's not a good look for anyone.

4. The more stupid you are, the more likely you are the get a date.

Not knowing the location of a town/city/country are the most common happenings ("Kent? Is that in London?"). So if you've got a degree and are considering going on the show, you'd better forget everything you know about everything and start thinking like a WAG. Bonus points for getting the name of the guy wrong, too.

5. If any guy or girl was to try any of these chat up lines in real life, they'd probably be punched in the face.

The worst one I had was a guy who came up to me and asked me to stroke his shirt. I politely asked him what the fuck he was doing and he said 'Sorry, just wondered if you thought this was boyfriend material.' Yeah. That actually happened. I'm still trying to forget it.

6. Any girl who doesn't wear a dress on the show = "WHAT ARE THEY WEARING?"

It's almost written in the rules that girls on Take Me Out have to wear the smallest, tightest, cleavage-enhancing dresses they can find. Occasionally one breaks the mould and wears a jumpsuit or a pair of shorts and a shirt. If one of them is invited out from behind their podium by Paddy (Because come one, you were too interested in seeing if they tripped up at the start to notice what they were wearing) there's a small gasp when you see they're not in fact wearing a dress. How can they not be wearing a dress? Is there something wrong with their legs? But it's okay, it's only for one episode; they're back wearing a dress the next week. Phew. Back to normal. Must have just been mix up in the dressing rooms or something.

8. Retro girls always get their lights turned off first, fact.

Oh, yes, I can see you're being individual and are rocking your own style, not conforming to the norm, with a cute 1950s quiff which is great and everything, but unfortunately no one likes that, at all. Also, where's your dress?

9. Girls turn their lights off for some of the stupidest reasons.

And they wonder why they've been single for 3 years?

"He has too many friends." So, you'd prefer someone with no social skills?

"I don't like the shoes he's wearing." I'm sure he has other shoes, love.

"He does rock climbing, and I'm scared of heights." He's not going to force you to climb a mountain just to be with him. And if he is, then he's got issues.

"He's got the same name as my dog." Well why don't you just date your dog then?
"He's a plumber, and I don't like getting my hair wet." I didn't realise he'd be using you as a wrench, but whatever floats his boat.

10. Paddy McGuinness would be the coolest Uncle in the world.

He'd be a bit too much to handle to be your dad, but seeing him at weekends and at weddings would make family get-togethers so much more fun. He'd be great for giving you some 'Paddy Love' when you lose your job or break up with your partner. Eating Sunday lunch around him would be a bit hard though.

"Uncle Paddy, can you pass the roast potatoes?"

"Let the third helping of roasties, see my fat niec-"

"No likey."

Mudlarking along the Thames

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:20:00 +0000

I was brought up by my parents to be very much in touch with nature. We lived about a two minute walk from East Beach in Shoeburyness, Essex, and on brisk, sunny mornings, we'd put on our thick coats and trainers and stroll to the beach.

In all honesty, it's not the nicest beach in the world, if it's a 'beach' you're actually looking for. The patches of sand are so few and far between that in Summer it is completely necessary to wear something on your feet at all times; unless you like walking as if the ground is laced with bear traps, that is.

This was handy for us growing up, as it happened to be at the time when jelly shoes were the height of fashion. A shoe so diverse it could be worn on hot days, on cold days with socks, on sand, in the water, and the variety of colours and glitter meant they could also be dressed up for nicer, more fancy occasions - such as school discos. They were the more popular forefathers, I do believe, of Crocs.

But East Beach isn't a beach you go to for the sand. It has an air of history about it. A 1km long defence boom built in 1944 to prevent enemy submarines entering the Thames still lies in between the public beach and the MOD site next to it, once armed with anti-aircraft guns & searchlights. All that stands today of the 1km stretch are the concrete support pillars and iron beams, which my brother and I always used to see as a competition of 'who could walk the furthest on without falling off'. It wasn't very easy; neither of us ever got very far, given that the majority of iron between the pillars was rusted and falling away, but that never stopped us, or every other child approaching the beach, trying. It was like a pre-made adventure playground on the beach - one that would never, in a million years, pass a health and safety inspection.

On the beach itself there are lines of shells and pebbles, organised neatly by the waves in which lies a wealth of small objects. Before we left the house in the morning, Mum would give each of us a small plastic sandwich bag and we'd keep it safely in our pockets. When we got down to the beach, we'd walk onto one of the lines of stones and shells and begin 'Mudlarking'.

Mudlarking is the term for beachcombing, or in my case, looking for pretty things in the sand. In the early 20th century, a Mudlark was an official and recognised occupation, but now it's much more regarded as a hobby for keen beach-amblers, or people who have seen one too many episodes of the Antiques Roadshow and fancy themselves a bit of a treasure hunter.

Shoeburyness lies at the mouth of the river Thames where it meets the North Sea. From the shore of East Beach, Kent is visible across the water, some 5 miles away, but if it's a particular foggy day all you can see is the water (and we prefer it that way - all the factories on the shoreline look terribly ugly from our side of the river and are a bit of an eyesore. Sorry, Kent, but couldn't you have put your garden there instead?)

The mud on the riverbed of the Thames is made up of anaerobic mud, meaning it can perfectly preserve whatever it absorbs for hundreds of years. Back in Victorian England, the Thames was more seen as a giant rubbish tip than a river; things which you and I might take to the charity shop nowadays, for instance, the Victiorians would simply tip over the edge into the murky waters below. As the Thames is a tidal river, twice a day new hoards of these treasures are unearthed and strewn across the shoreline from London to Essex, ready to be discovered by anyone wanting to see a slice of the history of London.

This also means that twice a day, it's possible to walk out onto the mud flaps at Shoeburyness for over a mile and look back at the Essex coastline. It's an eerie sensation, walking into a muddy abyss with no sign of civilisation in sight. You feel lost in a strange world full of crabs, seaweed and there's a pungent smell of-

Actually, it's probably better not to think what it smells of.

But it is quite a strange, almost soothing experience, and the mud takes some getting used to. It's very, well... slimy. It oozes out between your toes and farts when you try and lift your feet out of it, and god forbid if you fall over in it; I don't care what Persil says, those stains will never come out.

Every Summer when we were young, my cousins, brother and sister and I used to trek out into the mud in our swimming costumes while our parents sat on the beach and we'd try and see how far we could get. Occasionally we'd come across a patch of mud - quite similar to quick sand - where all you had to do was wiggle your hips and you'd instantly sink up to your waist in mud. My cousin Catherine once wiggled all-too-ferociously and ended up so deep (boob level) my Uncle Keith had to come out and help fish her out because we were all to scared of getting stuck too. If you got stuck up to your thighs and managed to get yourself out on your own, it was almost like you possessed an unspoken bragging right in the group for the rest of the day.

In truth, I haven't been down to East Beach in quite a while, and I rather miss it. Compared with the glory that is Bournemouth beach, it does look a bit run-down, but there's just something about it that will always capture me. Many a day I spent walking along the sand, upset with my parents for not buying me Westlife tickets for my 11th birthday, or annoyed at my sister for borrowing my Hello Kitty jumper without asking. Those were tough times, but East Beach saw me through it. I'd distract myself by sifting through the sand and seeing what goodies I could find.

The most common things anyone would encounter (other than shells and pebbles) would be pottery and glass; little white fragments of old porcelain with blue detailing painted on, and lumps of blue, green and pink glass, smoothed by years of tumbling in the water. For years we'd collect bits and bobs we'd find and take them home. They lived in various places around our house, such as on top of the microwave in the 'bits and bobs' bowl (along with hairclips, safety pins, missing buttons and various screws which have just 'appeared' over the years, their previous location still yet to be determined, but were too scared to throw away just in case they're one day needed."You never know!"). The best finds go into a Vintage printing drawer my parents have hung up on the wall in the hallway to store all their favourite nik-naks (see below), and where my mum keeps her best earrings. She's also turned many of the shells she found along the beach into earrings, too, and used to sell them at the Christmas Bazaar at our Primary School, St Georges.

Some of our best findings, including a Victorian doll's head, a fossilised sea urchin and ammonite, an old coin (circa 1910) and a shark tooth.

Better still, my parents have recently 'done up' their garden (they're trying to do up a lot of the house at the moment, as you might have gathered - it's only taken them 25 years). Given the amount of times we'd been collecting down the beach, the pile of glass, porcelain and old clay smoking pipes my mum found herself in possession of was getting somewhat ridiculous, one of her favourite phrases being 'we really ought to do something with all of this, you know'.

And what do you know, she finally did.

On my last visit from Bournemouth back to Essex, I explored the newly paved garden, and saw she'd made several different mosaics into the floor in between the slabs they'd bought from Homebase. It was delightful, looking down and knowing that everything I could see was once part of someone's life over a hundred years ago, from a smoking pipe to a possible flower vase.

And now it'll be a part of my parents lives, for many more years to come.

My mum's quite the artist, isn't she?

So next time you go to London and walk alongside the Thames, just have a think how much 'stuff' there could be lying hidden at the bottom. Who knows, you could throw a coke can into the water tomorrow (this is merely hypothetical; I'm not actually condoning it), and it could end up as part of a water feature in someone's garden in 150 years time.

The power of recycling, eh?

A very 'homely' Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 23:53:00 +0000

I think the build-up to Christmas is my favourite part of the all the festivities. It gets longer each year, and for one reason or another, it just makes people happy. German Christmas markets pop up everywhere, hot mulled wine is served in little red boots, there's the warm smell of roasted chestnuts, and Christmas is still a week or two away so the panic of 'Oh shitbollocks, I've forgotten to buy a present for Auntie Julie and I have no idea what she likes, will a soap set do?' hasn't quite set in.

Coming home for Christmas is, and always will be, one of the warmest feelings in the world. I can't quite describe what I mean, other than when I walked into the lounge in my parents' house on Christmas Eve after a 3 and a half hour drive from Bournemouth in the pouring rain, there was a part of my insides that felt like a little switch had been flicked on, and a mini hot water bottle was squidged in between my lungs and my intestines put their feet up in front of a log fire.

Since I was last home, my parents have been 'doing up the place'. On my last visit in early November, the walls of the lounge were strewn with various different wallpaper samples from B&Q, and my mum asked me to stare at each one individually with my hands cupped around it to try and imagine the whole wall in that paper. Naturally, they chose the wallpaper I advised against, but there I was, standing in the lounge, with the new wall staring back at me. And I have to admit, not listening to me was (for once) the right decision. It looked brilliant.

And even though the wallpaper was different, there was a new carpet, and several of the pictures on the wall had been switched around, it was still home. And I was delighted to see that the tree was just as I'd remembered. Now, my parents' Christmas tree is what a lot of people would call 'tacky', in that anything and everything is thrown onto the branches. The tree itself is artificial, as old as me (25 years), and looks as if some of the rows of branches just didn't want to be part of the Christmas Tree anymore, and left in search of a better life, perhaps as those fancy dead twigs people have in vases in their hallways next to the potpourri.

In actual fact, our previous cat Cleo made her best efforts every year to climb into the tree and sit on the branches, and her beady yellow eyes would glimmer through the tinsel. This was fine when she was a kitten, but as she grew older, and somewhat bigger, the branches soon began to bend under her weight, until she had to sprawl all four legs across as many branches and Christmas lights as she could just to stop herself falling through. Since then, I'm afraid the tree has never quite looked the same again. I suggested to my parents that perhaps it was time for a new tree, you know, one that didn't look like a broom was half way through getting changed into a Christmas Tree outfit after a shower. But my mum is very sentimental and hates wasting things, and assured me 'it's got another few years in it yet!'

And even though the tree does look slightly tacky, it looks homely. It wouldn't be the same without the decorations we made as children out of plasticine (including a rather fetching one of Pingu made by yours truly), a set of musical bells that play 'O Come All Ye Faithful' one bell at a time (except one bell doesn't work, and my mum can't work out for the life of her which one it is, and so hums in the gaps), knitted angels, crocheted snowflakes and old material baubles with threads loose handed down from my nan. I don't get all these trees that are colour co-ordinated, and precisely engineered to have the same tinsel-to-bauble ratio. My friend at work was bragging one day about his Christmas Tree and how orderly it looked. He even showed me a picture to demonstrate how everything was in perfect symmetrical lines, everything was the same colour, and no one was allowed to decorate the tree but him, and when he started telling me about how much he dislikes tinsel, well. I very much had to leave the conversation.

Christmas Day at our house always begins with the annual 'photo in front of the Christmas Tree'. It's normally taken in the morning, once everyone has had breakfast (usually something fancy, like a bagel), had a shower, and wearing something festive. My dad sets his SLR camera up one end of the lounge on a tripod, puts on the auto timer, and runs like a Chinese man across hot coals to quickly kneel down next to us and smile before the picture is taken. It is lovely looking back year after year at the different Christmas pictures and seeing how we've all changed. But two things to bear in mind are 1) Once a photo is taken on my dad's camera, it disappears into the deep chasm of the memory card, and no human but my dad will ever see it for years to come, and 2) he takes about 15 photos, with and without flash, so that by the time the lighting is correct our smiles have drooped, someone is blinking, and the beeper is going on the oven for the turkey to be taken out.

The two photos I took on my own camera, as I wanted to see them before 2019

The opening of presents is just as important as the taking of the Christmas picture. We move a chair next to the pile of presents and it is either my mum or dad's duty to dish them out. They're normally done one at a time, so everyone has long enough to marvel at their gift, say the relevant thank-yous, and play the game of 'who can get their wrapping paper into the rubbish bag in the middle of the room' before the next wave of presents are given out. Mum and Dad always seem to bicker over who gets to be the hander-outer of presents, as if doing so is some kind of recognition of 'parent of the year' award. Just for the record, my mum handed them out this year.

It was a particularly special Christmas this year, because it was the first time that a lot of us were actually spending Christmas Day together. In previous years, my sister Louise spent the day with her husband's family, and my brother went to his fiancée's family's house, and I usually worked in a restaurant. But this Christmas was the first one in about 5 years where I was to be at my parents' house, for the whole day, and both my brother and sister would be there too. With me living almost 200 miles away, and my brother and sister having equally busy lives, we rarely get to see each other all at the same time. On Christmas morning I could see my mum's eyes sparkle as she knew that today, for the first day in a very long time, all her children who flew the nest many years ago would all be back together again, and I wish I could have encapsulated the happiness in that moment in a picture.

Once the presents were opened and the picture was taken, I soon realised my mum apparently had invited a person who, it would seem, was very important. She referred to this person when cooking, when talking about the seating arrangements, how much they'd like to eat and drink, how long they'd like to stay for, what they'd like to watch on TV, and so on. As far as an individual goes, they seem rather selfish and a bit too snobby to be honest. For all intents and purposes, she named them 'people'.

"We want to make sure everything is ready for when people arrive"
"Well, people might not want to eat much."
"What do people want to drink? Go find out, Jennifer!"
"Have people had enough to eat? There is more in the kitchen, let me go get it"
"People can have whatever they like for dessert"

I half expected either a Royal King to stroll in and sit at the head of the table, or a hoard of 50 people to come clambering through the door. The best part was that as all 4 of us, the only ones who would be present for dinner, were in the kitchen helping my mum dish up everything into the 'good china' ( the crockery which lives in a glass cabinet and only gets used at Christmas) she still insisted on saying 'people', as if we were either invisible or going to give birth that instant to more people.

"Mum, we are the people" I quickly reminded her.
"What? Oh yes, yes, but you know what I mean..."

I left her to it and said no more as we walked into the neatly laid dining table in the conservatory, as she wondered 'one bag of brussel sprouts might not be enough, you know! What if people like brussels?' (One bag was more than enough; apparently people were too full after all.)

This was also my first Christmas in many years not as a vegetarian. It has only been about 3 months since I've started eating meat again, and so there are still many 'new things' to have; foods I haven't had in so long I've forgotten how quite exactly how they tasted. And Christmas dinner was one of them.

I'd learnt to love Quorn over the years, and in the past my Quorn Roast, which resembles the body of a small sausage dog who's died of dehydration, was good enough to keep me satisfied during Christmas dinner.

A Quorn Roast.

This year, however, turkey was back on the menu. To celebrate, my mum decided to treat us all and cook not only turkey, but gammon and duck, too. All separately of course; not one of those vile concoctions you can buy from frozen supermarkets where you buy all the birds stuffed together in one like some giant winged Russian doll. It was only after we'd all finished our second helpings that my dad, oblivious as always, asked how my vegetarian meal was, and I reminded him that I'd asked him to pass me the turkey and he'd watched me put some onto my plate, to which his reply was: 'Oh. Welcome back, then.'

After dessert, and once everyone had loosened their belts at least 2 notches, mum and dad came sniggering back to the dining table holding a stack of papers and some pencils. Before Christmas, they'd dropped off my nan at my aunt and uncle's house in Basingstoke so she could spend Christmas with them, and while they were there, my aunt and uncle had concocted a Christmas quiz. This was the very same quiz that mum and dad were now handing out. I knew the odd fact here and there about Christmas, the names of all the reindeer, the origins of Kris Kringle, what colour Father Christmas' coat used to be etc, and so was feeling semi confident, until my mum said 'Oh, Jennifer. You probably won't know very many. Sorry.'

I wasn't sure what she meant, until I looked down and saw we had to write down all the names of the Christmas number 1's along with the artists for the years stated. We were given the first letter of each word, but seeing as the majority on the sheet were before I was born in 1988, I felt like I was, to put it politely, a bit buggered.

From personal experience, Christmas songs are the very few songs where you have no idea who sings it. Other than the very famous ones like Maria Carey and Slade, very few people (including me) actually know the names of any of the songs or the artists; they're just played on repeat on the radio and in shops and you're more familiar with the tune than you are of the name. To name them is more like going 'oh, it's the one where a waitress is moaning', or 'something about Mary's child? Mary's boy child?' and 'Driving Home for Christmas by that guy who sounds like Morgan Freeman with a sore throat'.

There was some cheating involved, whereby my brother started peering over his fiancée's sheet and asking to swap answers in exchange for better cracker prizes, and then my mum was giving very obvious clues such as 'It rhymes with Miff Wichard' to anyone who was stuck. As I could have predicted, my sister won by a mile, but I got a lot more answers than I thought, especially ones such as 'Bob the Builder - Can we Fix It?' (Christmas Number 1 in 2000).

All in all, it was possibly the best Christmas I'd ever had. Because, for the first time ever, I didn't actually care about presents or food, I was just happy to be back with my family. And after all, that's what Christmas is really about, isnt it?

In fact, thinking back, I did encapsulate my mum's happiness in a photo on Christmas Day. I made her take her very first selfie.

I also decided to recreate this photo that my mum had stuck on the back of the door in the downstairs loo, along with many other highly embarrassing Christmas photos from the 1990s. My mum even had to go into the loft to find my doll Michelle and repair her face with plasters just so we could retake this photo, as for some reason, when I was 5 I liked to play the game of 'throw Michelle as high as I can in the air' over a concrete floor, and her face continued to smash and fall off, and then I'd do it all again. And don't worry, I know what you're thinking; no I haven't tried this with my hamster Pippin.

Me: 1993 vs 2013. Wearing a peplum top before it was even in fashion.

I hope everyone has as lovely a Christmas as I did. Here's to many more in the future.

That time I got wet in Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 23:24:00 +0000

It was 5am in England, we hadn't had a wink of sleep, and we were walking round the streets of Bangkok looking for something to do.

We looked up and a little man wearing a straw hat, talking from his nose.

“Tuk-tuk! You waant tuk-tuk?” He was driving what looked like a motorized shopping trolley with a flimsy roof attached. Another Tuk-Tuk zoomed past us and round the corner so fast that it went up on 2 wheels. We heard a toot of a horn and a faint ‘Soweee’.

“No thank you, we want to walk.”

We were tired, and our clothes were wringing with sweat from the humidity. After an overnight flight, the hostel wouldn’t let us into our rooms yet, and we were forced onto the streets of Bangkok for the day.

An ashy smog hung over the city, turning the city grey. Bangkok wasn’t as pleasant as I’d expected it to be, it was dark and dull and polluted. In between skyscrapers and billboards of pale Thai women, the Sky Train dominated the horizon. Giant concrete pillars emerged from the stone underbelly, plunging through the pavements like a beast’s legs. It cast a shadow on three 21-year-old girls below, who were very confused, and very lost.

We’d set off half an hour before to explore the city, and had a map of Bangkok we’d picked up from the Hostel reception held out in front of us. Our first mistake. Like piranha to its prey.

                “You no’ from here? I show you temples, 20 Baht!”
                “Oh, no thank-you; we really are ok walking.”
                “No, you come with me, I show you temples, 20 Baht!”

No-one understood that we actually wanted to walk. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to pay - 20 Baht is roughly about 50p, we just didn’t trust that we’d make it through the journey in one piece. Another Tuk-Tuk beeped as it went past, darting through a red light and narrowly missing a lorry. We folded up the map and walked into the nearest café to escape the humidity.

There was a clean rush of air as we walked in, like entering a giant fridge. We walked past a man in a dingy room cooking on a makeshift stove. Having already decided this seemed a safer bet than the fly-swarmed street vendors selling crickets on a stick, we found a table and sat down.

My insides felt confused as to whether I should be ordering breakfast, lunch or dinner, quite similar to the odd sensation of falling asleep during the day, waking up, and not knowing whether it’s 7 in the morning or 7 in the evening. I smiled as I ordered a ‘strouberries’ smoothie and a vegetable dish in sweet and sour ‘source’ from the laminated menu, and tried mouthing the words ‘no spicy’ whilst shaking my head to a baffled waitress. I've tried getting used to spicy food, I really have, but I just can't understand how you can enjoy food when your mouth and throat are burning. The waitress looked like she understood, and nodded at me.

Well, I won’t be trying that again; all she'd heard was the word ‘spicy’, hence the nodding, and I think asked the chef to add more chilli to my dish than normal . My smoothie disappeared up my straw faster than the nearby Thai family’s soup in the ‘how to throw soup in your mouth’ act that most Oriental people seem to have down to a T.

Twenty minutes and two jugs of water later, we left the café, still tired, desperately in need of a shower, and in possession of a map that was no use to us because we couldn’t for the life of us work out where we were. To the delight of some nearby Thai men, squawking broken English to us like a swarm of vultures, we flagged down the nearest Tuk-Tuk. He, along with every other local we had met, insisted we go see the Black Buddha.

“Oh yes, Black Buddha! You vay lucky, it open just today!”

What were the chances, eh? We squeezed onto the hot black seat, our knees knocking together, and sped down the road.

Five minutes later, however, we were skeptically taken down an alleyway between two shops. Our driver turned off the engine to his Tuk-Tuk, and pointed inside the gates to a small temple.

"Black Buddha," he said.

We were slightly confused when we got out and stood in front of a large, gold statue. Wasn’t it meant to be black? We got out our cameras, not wanting to miss our first opportunity to take pictures of something touristy, but were told we weren’t allowed to take photos. Our driver quickly ushered back to the Tuk-Tuk, and then took us (much to our objection) to a local gem store where we could look at rare stones being cut and crafted into jewellery, because he apparently needed to take us there to get petrol money. Something wasn’t right. We quickly walked through the gem store without purchasing anything and clambered aboard the Tuk-Tuk, demanding to be taken to the Temples we originally wanted to go to.

“No gems for fwends?” asked the driver, disappointingly.

No, we didn’t want gems, thanks. Obviously annoyed at us, our driver didn’t drop us off at the temples we asked for, but in the middle of a busy crossroads, and sped off to the next unfortunate set of tourists. Thailand, the Land of smiles, my arse.

Three hours later, we finally got back to the hostel, sweating as if we’d walked there from London. We were met in reception by our tour guide, a smiling man called Willy (his real name was Damrong, but he chose the name Willy instead because he apparently liked the film ‘Free Willy’ very much). He patted the sweat from his brow every few minutes with a small handkerchief he kept in his shirt pocket, and I half wanted to suggest he changed into shorts instead of a long-sleeve shirt and trousers.

I found a Lonely Planet guidebook on a dusty shelf after lunch, and discovered our Tuk-Tuk ride earlier was actually a well known scam, aptly known as the ‘gem scam’. Tourists, I read, are usually approached by friendly men explaining the temple they are at isn’t open:
“Closed for renovation,” they’d say.
“Buddhist national holiday.”

I think the man who had approached us was either bored, or not the brightest bulb in the box; all he said was: “No go in. Lunch.”

I would have at least been original, and assessed the stupidity of my targets, and then make up lies accordingly: “No go in, Monk’s private birthday party,” or “National Nudist Day,” or maybe perhaps, “No go in, Monk’s private nudist birthday party.”

Apparently the scam has been in effect for over 20 years, with members of the Royal Thai Police work to protect it. Well, no wonder all the locals are always so happy.

With the help of my Lonely Planet Guidebook, we later made it to the actual touristy bits, like the famous ‘Golden Mount’. Constructed in the 18^th Century, it contains over 300 steps (not what you want with severe jetlag) and a line of large mottled bells that a small child so delightfully decided to chime as I walked past. At the temple at the top, I was so exhausted I was tempted to lie down on the floor and cunningly disguise a quick nap as committed praying.

We continued to get questioned by inquisitive locals that day, like how long were we in Thailand for, and where we were going. We were, in fact, headed to Angthong, a rural town on the Noi river, 108 kilometres from Bangkok. According to my guidebook, it was formerly known as Muang Wiset Chai Chan and changed, I’m half inclined to believe, to stop Westerners sounding like they’re sneezing and more like they’re wearing sexy undergarments. As well as this, the only thing the locals said when we told them where we were headed was: “Angthong wewy wet.” It was at this point I realised that our guide was called Willy, and wondered whether this whole trip was some giant foreign orgy and we were actually the mail-order brides.

Notorious for its severe weather, parts of Angthong were apparently badly flooded, and we weren’t so sure what we were getting ourselves into.

We left Bangkok the following day in a small hippy van with brown fur seats and set off to the rural countryside, scattered with little villages and close-knit communities. With the air conditioning on full and rain splattering the windows, we could have easily been driving through the English countryside on a dismal Spring afternoon. I noticed a pink wreath of flowers dangling from the rear-view mirror, something I’d also spotted on every other vehicle we’d seen. They ward off all bad spirits, so Willy assured us. Well, in that case, I’ll buy one for my car; no more parking tickets for me.

We were to be teaching English at the local primary school for the next two weeks, staying with a host Thai family. I tried not having any expectations about their house, but admittedly I had prepared myself for living in a mud hut with no water or electricity or even a plug socket for my hairdryer. It was safe to say there was enough survival equipment in my rucksack to make an expedition to the Amazon for three weeks.

Imagine my shock then when we pulled up to a collection of large houses on a dirt track, bigger than my house back in England, all connected to a telephone pole in the centre. There was a Jeep outside, a microwave in the kitchen and, after getting used to using a hole in the ground for the last two days, noticed there was even a working toilet in the bathroom beyond. Yes, there was a god. Perhaps my nap-praying had worked after all.

Standing in the doorway to greet us were two elderly women in long floral skirts. They helped unload our suitcases from the van and stayed smiling as they went to and fro with our baggage. They were sisters, and lived alone, while their nieces and nephews lived in one of the opposite houses. On the way to the school, Willy explained it was Thai custom for all the generations of families to live together (“Wery stwong famiwee bonds”), pointing at other clustered houses as we drove past.

We arrived at the school that afternoon and were given a little tour around the school by Willy. The children were extremely friendly, and had a habit of hugging whatever body part was closest to them, namely our legs, or arms, or if you were sitting down, your face. Willy led us into each classroom, from Reception (where they were playing with building blocks), up to year 6. When we got to the year 6 classroom, we noticed there was no teacher present, and all the children were staring at us.

Now, when we signed up for this trip, we had no knowledge of teaching, and the lovely lady at the travel agents who was wearing far too much make up had assured us that we would be given lesson plans on our arrival.

There were no lesson plans, and the only English-speaking teacher in the whole school was away on holiday. Perfect. We looked at Willy, casually leaning in the doorway of the Year Six classroom with his hands in his pockets. He drew an imaginary zip across his lips. The room was silent apart from the soft hum of the ceiling fans, gently wafting the children’s black hair back and forth.

After an awkward whispering debate between the four of us (“What do you think?”, “I have no idea, I’ll go with whatever you want”, “I can’t remember what I learnt in year 6,”, “Well someone pick something!”), we settled on teaching them animals. It was relatively easy, and if we couldn’t explain it to them, we could act it out. I have to say, I didn’t expect that on my first day teaching in a Thai school I’d be parading around the room doing an impression of an elephant, while the other wrote on the board in big letters (as you can tell, I drew the short straw). But the first lesson went extremely well, the children could now say 'Ewehphant', and they couldn’t wait for us to come back tomorrow (cue more face hugs).

That night saw the heaviest rain we’d had since we’d arrived in Thailand. Cara was upstairs in the shower having what sounded like a screaming contest with the resident frog, who we discovered usually lingered around the sink (I honestly had no idea frogs could ribbet so loud?). Gaby and June were asleep, and I was lying on my mattress on the floor. Well, I say mattress. It was a block of wood with a sheet on it, really. There wasn’t that much to do in the evenings, so the four of us resided in our room and usually read magazines or talked about how much we missed English things like chocolate and cereal. I picked up my book from the floor to read it, and noticed that it was very wet. Funny, I don’t remember it being wet when I put it down…. I looked over at my bag. That was wet, too. I looked again and realised it was not only wet, but slowly floating across the room and out the door.

We were in a flood. I woke the other two up and we quickly tried to throw everything we could onto the mattresses. There was a commotion outside in the lounge, and suddenly our host lady shuffled through the ankle-deep water in sodden slippers clutching her skirt, one hand on her forehead.

“I sorry! I sorry!” she cried, picking up some of our belongings, as if all the rain was her fault. We moved our bags to a bedroom upstairs (which, we noticed, had proper beds; why we hadn’t been given this room in the first place I have no idea). The rain continued to pour for the rest of the night, and we helped scoop out as much of the water as we could from the ground floor, only for it to flow back into the house again. When the rain died off, our host lady told us to head to bed, and so we trudged upstairs to our new bedroom and I spent the next hour air-drying my book on an electric fan. Throughout all of this, Cara was still in the shower. I’m guessing the frog had won.

Turns out that the Bangkok locals really did mean it when they said Angthong was wet. In July 2011 the severe Tropical Storm Nock-Ten caused three major landslides in Southeast-Asia. Along with the monsoon season, floodwaters headed down rivers and reached the Chao Phraya watershed at the end of September, right where we were. From that day on, as we rode our bicycles to school in the morning along the riverbank, we noticed the waters were rising a considerable amount, and getting dangerously close to spilling over the top and into the unprepared village below. Everything would be destroyed. A whole community swept away in a matter of minutes.

The next day, Willy informed us we would only be teaching until lunch, and afterwards we were to follow the children to the river. There were half a dozen locals crowding round a small lorry by the side of the riverbed, and on the back of the lorry was a large mound of sand. On the floor were a handful of shovels and hundreds and hundreds of empty white sandbags.

“You help build dam!” they all shouted triumphantly at us, thrusting the shovels into our already sweating hands. The kids were excited we were helping, the teachers enthralled we were on hand to help. After half an hour of shovelling in the dense heat, our hands were throbbing, and the piles of sand in front of us looked like a never-ending mountain. Tired, we stopped for a minute and looked around; there was no sign of surrender. There were six-year-olds relentlessly dragging bags of sand as big as themselves, and my spade was stolen by a girl half my size who began shovelling a small heap by her feet. There was no talking. No whining. Only the rustle of bags and the crunch of sand underfoot. I felt ashamed. Ashamed I was ready to give up so soon while these kids endlessly fought for to save their school. If I was going to do some real good in the world, now was the time to do it. I took the spade back from the little girl and we persisted.

Our hard work paid off. Three hours and several tons of sand later, a line of sandbags stretched across the riverbank, some four high in places. We were given hot corned cob as a thank-you, getting many claps on the back and attacked by small koala-like children. Not only that, but the local television news crew had got wind that English girls were helping out the efforts, and before we knew it were being filmed and interviewed and asked if we would stay forever.

Well, probably not. Eating dinner while fanning my mouth was starting to get a little tedious. As we parked up the bicycles at the house that night our host rushed out to us and pointed to the television set inside.

“You famous! You superstars! We have big cewebwation at weekend!”
Well, maybe forever wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Taking the plunge

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 14:42:00 +0000

When I was age 10, I wanted to learn how to swim. Not just doggy paddle, I wanted to be able to swim quickly and hold my breath underwater, like a mermaid.

My friend Sarah and I were signed up to swimming lessons by our parents at the big pool near us called Warrior Square. To a 10 year old, it was enormous. The main pool looked miles long, and had a long, tiered gallery at the side where our mums could watch us swim and talk about The Bill and Casualty.

We didn't have any swimming badges, so we weren't allowed lessons in the big pool just yet. Instead, we had to join the 6 and 7 year old's in the kiddy pool, which had mosaics of starfish and whales on the walls, and was so shallow the water only came up to our thighs. But we didn't mind. The water was hotter in there.

A girl in our class at School, Nicola Gray, had a brother who was taking lessons in the big pool. He was asked by the teacher to demonstrate the breast stroke for us all. I remember looking at him in awe as he gracefully swam up and down the length of the pool, his long legs expanding like frogs, his head hovering at the same height the whole way. How did he keep it so still when his body was bobbing up and down? He had a smug look on his face as he swam, a sense of 'swimming superiority'. Well, I would too if I could swim as well as that.

It wasn't long before Sarah and I were told we were good enough to leave and have lessons in the big pool. The lessons were on the far right hand side, across the width of the pool. There were three different lanes for lessons - the further left the lane, the better the swimmer you were and the higher badges you could go for. We were introduced to our new teacher, an elderly woman called Pam who had short, white hair and wore a baggy Adidas tracksuit, and got into the water.

A few weeks later, and after getting our 200m swimming badge, a new boy wearing blue Speedos joined our lane. His name was Reese, and he had a slimy look about him. I didn't like swimming after him, because I had it in my head that he had really smelly feet, and I thought that if I was behind him, he'd make all the water smelly and I'd be swimming face first into it and all his smelly water would go into my mouth . I'd make an excuse to my teacher, like 'just re adjusting my goggles, Miss!', so that someone else would go in front of me. He wasn't very good at swimming either, and so when Sarah and I moved up to the next lane, I was glad to see he stayed put. Someone else could have his smelly water.

There was a diving pool at Warrior Square too, and as we swam up and down in our lessons, we could see other children having lessons. They'd tip toe to the edge of the springboard, wobble and flap their arms like the teacher showed them, and fall in the water. Occasionally you'd see the teacher demonstrate and do a dive with a spin from the board, and you could tell it was a good dive because hardly any splash would come off the water. We asked our mums if we could do diving lessons too, and they said yes.

My swimming costume was getting very stretched and see through and had bobbly bits all over it, so my mum took me to JD sports to get a new one ready for my new lessons. I wanted a really bright, colourful one. I found a Speedo one, which was navy blue at the bottom and faded into a sunset orange and yellow at the top. I loved it. I felt like a professional athlete wearing it, with it's racer back and sports logo.

When I tried it on at the shop, it was perfect. When I got home, I eagerly tried it on again, like any young girl does with new clothes. Except, I noticed there was a big hole in the back of it. It was part of the design, it was meant to have a big hole... but, well it worried me. When I pulled the swimming costume on and it was halfway up, my bum poked out the big hole in the back, and my sister and mum roared in fits of laughter at me. I laughed along with them, at first, but then I started to worry. What if as I dived, a rush of water would pull my swimming costume down, and my bum would be on show for everyone in the pool to see?! I didn't like my swimming costume anymore.

For my first few diving lessons, my teacher asked why I was pulling my legs up high and wrapping my arms around myself as soon as I hit the water. Even at age twelve, I felt far too embarrassed to say 'because I don't want everyone to see my big bum'.

And so without telling her why, I asked my mum to buy me a new swimming costume for Christmas. I got a dark blue one, which had normal straps, and more importantly, no gaping holes.

The first thing we learnt was a standing jump. You had to stand 6 feet away from the edge of the springboard, take 3 slow strides, jump on the spot on the end pushing your arms down, and then jump again into the water with your arms high above your head. For a simple jump, there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary arm flapping and stepping going on, but we spent two whole lessons learning how to perfect it.

"How was your diving lesson tonight Jennifer?" my mum would ask in the car on the drive home.
"Oh yeah, it was good thanks. We learnt how to jump."

I could tell she didn't think she was getting her money's worth.

But soon we learnt how to do other things. There was the pike; a jump where you bring your straightened legs gracefully infront of you, touch your toes, and then straighten your body as you enter the water. Now, I was never the most flexible child, so I never actually managed to touch my toes, or even keep my legs straight for the matter, so my pike tended to look more like a pufferfish.

Then there were three types of dive; one, where you place your hands together, bend at the hips, and simply fall into the water (I was good at this one), a normal standing dive, whereby you had to travel as little distance as possible, jumping high in the air before turning and aiming your body at the water (slightly harder to get the hang of - I always ended up at the wrong end of the pool with water up my nose), and a 'tuck-dive', where, in the middle of a normal standing dive, you'd tuck your legs like a canon ball, quick un-tuck them and then finish off the dive (the hardest of the three, mostly because I'd often forget I was doing a dive, and just do a cannon into the water and splash my teacher and drench her tracksuit bottoms. I always stood the ground that she worked in a pool, she knew she was going to get wet. It was hardly my fault.)

One of the hardest things to get to grips with was a back dive. You had to stand on the edge of the diving pool, with your heels over the edge, hands straight up in air, and bend your back the wrong way so that you landed, hands first, into the water. It was mind boggling. Just like when I was learning how to high-jump at school, and I couldn't for the life of me understand how you could run straight at the high jump bar, but end up jumping backwards over it.

At first, there were a lot of falling backwards into the water, from everyone. It seemed no one else quite understood how we were meant to do it either. In the end, our teacher used to stand next to us with her arm like a rigid horizontal pole on our backs, and make us jump over it.

All the other children before me managed it fine, and jumped over her arm into a perfect back dive. Trust me to be the one that forgets to jump over it, but instead jumps into it, and drags poor Pam and her Adidas tracksuit into the water with me.

Although she gave me quite evil stares for the next five minutes, it actually worked out well in our favour, because now she was drenched, she saw no reason why she couldn't perfectly demonstrate the back dive for us so we could see what a real one looked like (it's very hard doing a dive you've never seen before), and then even a few other fancy ones later.

Three lessons later, and we'd perfected the back dive from the side of the pool that we could do it from the springboard. This was a much stranger sensation, as it takes a few more seconds to hit the water, everything was upside down, and you had a constant fear you were going to do a loop-de-loop and accidentally knock out your front teeth on the board.

Now, I have to tell you that learning to do a dive with a spin in the middle isn't half as glamorous as it looks on television. You have to jump upright into the air, tuck in your legs quickly to make you spin round, and then as soon as my teacher yells 'NOW', un-stretch your legs into a dive pose and enter the water. The very first time I tried, I stretched out just a little bit too late, and landed hard on the waters surface on the back of my neck. Necks are not meant to be landed on. I suffered a two day migraine after that. That was not a good day.

Over the years, my diving lessons on the whole went very well. I could do everything my teacher had taught me, and do them all rather well if I'm totally honest. But unfortunately, I also discovered along the way that I had a horrible fear of heights. I hadn't really been aware of this fear before hand - I mean, I knew I didn't really like tall trees, but I'd never connected two and two together. After all, I wasn't jumping from the top of a tall tree. My teacher told me that in order to progress, I'd have to start doing proper dives from the higher boards. The ones where you have to climb steps. A lot of steps.

In truth, I managed quite a few dives from the second board. It was about 3m high and was also a springboard, and our teacher got into the habit of making us do a dive from it at the end of each lesson. Walking to the end, each step made the board wobble to and fro and when the rails either side of me stopped, I'd shuffle to the end, never taking my feet off the board. I always chose the falling dive, because it was easier to simply fall into the water than do lots of jumping and risk catapulting myself onto the hard tiled surface by the side of the pool. I didn't fancy another headache.

Once, I'm proud to say, I even jumped from the top board. I'd psyched myself up to do it all lesson; everyone else in my class had already done it, so there was no going back. A little boy in front of me called Michael walked to the edge and simply 'plopped' off the edge into the water - he made it look so easy. Well, there was no going back now. It was strange jumping from a board that was springy. I stood 6 feet away from the edge, took the three steps, did the flappy arms thing, and then finally took a step off the edge.

It was a long fall, the hairs on my arms stood on end as the air rushed past my wet skin. All I remember was that my body skewered as I fell, so that I went in at a jaunty angle and I landed with a hard 'slap' onto the waters surface. I tumbled around in the water, plummeting to the bottom of the pool with a quick 'whoosh!' Well, it hurt a bit, but I'd done it. I'd actually done it!

I was so proud of myself. I'd jumped off the top board even though I was scared of heights. But I think the thing I was most happy about at that moment was the fact that during that jump, I wasn't wearing the original swimming costume my mum had bought me.

Why turning 25 doesn't automatically make you an Adult

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 22:38:00 +0000

It was my 25th birthday yesterday. There were many 'quarter century' jokes thrown my way, and I must admit, in the weeks running up to it, I was starting to get quite anxious . On the lower side of 25, things seem a lot more relaxed. You don't have to necessarily know what you want to do with your life. It's acceptable, and almost a given, to take afternoon naps, to say words like 'sick' and 'yolo' in everyday conversation, and to spend your free time on Buzzfeed or watching videos from Dapper Laughs Fans. But as soon as the big 2-5 approaches, you feel you need to change that; start doing old grown up things like getting credit cards, getting a 9-5 job, understanding mortgage lingo and buying wine because you like the taste, and not because it's the cheapest bottle.

I graduated from University when I was 23, and within 6 months I started a good job, moved 200 miles from home and rented my own flat. All very grown up, mature things. But in my head, well... I'm still very much not grown up. Sure, I do find myself saying things like 'she should really be wearing a coat in this weather' and 'I remember when petrol was 89p per litre!', but I still feel like I'm waiting to hit the grand barrier of adulthood. Like, what age do you have to be to call yourself a woman instead of a young lady? When exactly will I look at my 31 year old brother and think of him as a man, rather than just my big, goofy brother?

When I started Secondary School, equipped with a backpack the size of a small car and a 36 pack of Crayola colouring pencils, I looked up to the girls in Year 11 thinking about how mature they looked. They had an aura about them that just said 'I know the world, and it's fucking great'. I remember thinking how awesome it would be when I was in their place, and I'd have all the worldly insights that a 16 year old would have.

Except I got to 16 and felt no different. I felt like the exact same young, naive, brace-wearing, Westlife-loving girl, except now I could buy fags if I wanted. There was no 'magic', confident feeling. I assumed it was because at 18 was 'the big one'. Yeah, that was it. When I got to 18 I'd finally be able to do really cool awesome things, like drive a car, and and go to the casino, and buy alcohol and get totally wasted, and then I'd feel like an adult!

No. That boat came and went. I turned 18, I got very drunk, and still I didn't feel like an adult.

And the older I get, the more I do it. I look at people around me, and think 'when I get to that age, I'm sure I'll have it all figured out, like they have'. But have they?

That's exactly what I thought 25 would be like. I guess I was sort of expecting to wake up, and for everything to suddenly fall into place. I thought those stupid, embarrassing things that have a habit of happening to me would stop, and I could get on with my life and learn to appreciate cheese boards, listen to Radio 4 and know the difference between a freehold and leasehold.

Well, that didn't happen. It hasn't even come close to happening. And you know what? I actually think that's okay. It's perfectly fine to still enjoy the little perks you once did as a teenager, because frankly, it makes life that little bit more fun. Who cares if I still eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, or a 12 pack of Tesco's own Yorkshire puddings. Who cares if I beg my Manager to take part in Children in Need just so I have an excuse to go to work in my pyjamas, and when I visit my parents, yes, I do still take a bag of laundry for my mum to wash and then proceed to raid the fridge. Is there anything really wrong with this?

Worst of all, I still have a god-awful habit of losing things when I'm drunk. I thought that doing the hungover 'handbag-check' in the morning would be less and less painful as I got older. Apparently not. Now that 'clutch' handbags have come into fashion, shops have made it ever easier for you to momentarily let go of your bag without the safety net of a giant strap slung round your shoulder to stop your bag, and the contents, from splaying out across the bar floor.

N.B When I was at University, I got into such a habit of losing my phone, I'd go out with it physically tied to the inside of my handbag (this tactic actually worked; if you lose things too, I'd strongly recommend).

But it does still happen, and it did happen. Last night. I went out last night for birthday drinks with some friends, got a little bit too merry, and ended up losing the worst things I could possibly lose in my handbag; the keys to my flat.

Me (centre) and friends from work

Think I was getting a bit tipsy by this point...

And so at 2am, my Landlord ( who looks remarkably like the man who presents BBC's Countryfile), was woken from what was probably a very peaceful sleep about badgers and milking cows to a slurring 25 year old with wine stains on her dress and red lipstick on her teeth, banging on his door, apologising profusely for losing her keys and begging him to use his master key to let her in. He came down from his flat upstairs in his dressing gown and slippers, shaking his fist, muttering words like 'youngsters' and 'should have a bleeding spare key' and let me in.

And I thought that was that. I had spare keys sat on my lounge windowsill, behind the cordless house phone that I only use to ring my mobile when I've lost it, so I'd use those from now on.

Except that wasn't it. My electricity in on a meter, and you have to top it up at a shop using a little key fob. That key fob happened to be attached to my lost keys. When I realised this morning that I had no key fob, I checked to see how much electricity I had left on my meter. £2.06. Which, on an average day in Winter, would last one, maybe two days.

I rang Southern Electrics to request a new key fob, only to get an answer phone message asking to call back in office hours Monday to Friday. It's Saturday today. So the possibility of me running out of electricity completely before I could even request another key fob was extremely high, and I'd probably have to have ice cream and fish fingers for breakfast when everything from my freezer slowly defrosts.

So, with my new found adulthood, I did the only thing I could think of that would be remotely useful. I went to Primark and spent £15 on candles.

So as I'm writing this blog post, I'm trying to save what little electricity I have left, am surrounded by no less than 20 candles, and my lounge smells like the inside of a fortune teller's boudoir.

So, I wish I could tell you that as you get older you figure it all out, but in my experience, you don't. You may get a better job, you may figure out what career path you want to be on, heck, you may even get into a routine of going to the gym and bragging about how many spin classes you do a week (I go to 3, heh. Get me). But you never really 'grow up'. There'll always be a part of your youthful self that you won't be able to shake, whether that will be your addiction to the Pokemon Red and Blue on your Gameboy Colour, buying a Kinder Egg just for the toy inside, or sitting down to watch the film Elf at Christmas.

And frankly, who would want to fully grow up, when you could get slippers like this for your 25th birthday and look like you have tiny rabbits hugging your feet all day long. Who doesn't want rabbit hugs?!

The comfiest, cutest slippers in the world.

Update: On Monday morning, I rang Southern Electrics, and they said they'd get a new electrics key fob delivered to my flat ASAP. And then I remembered the key to my post box was on the keys I lost on Friday...

Buggar it.

Second update: Last night, on Wednesday, I got in from the gym at about 8.45pm and my electricity had completely gone. No lights, no heat, no fridge - nothing. This wouldn't have been a problem, if I didn't have to charge my phone to make sure I had a way of waking up in the morning. My phone was at 38% battery, and is one of those phones that has a habit of losing battery simply by you looking at it. I tried calling my friends who lived nearby, but they were either out for dinner, or still at work, or not answering (phone now at 32%). So I stumbled through to my lounge, lit one of the many candles I had scattered on my table, and sat in the dark wondering what to do, being calmed ever so slightly by the aroma of winter berries.

Would one of my neighbours electricity key fobs work? Firstly, I wasn't sure if asking them would be a good call - the people who live directly around me aren't what you'd call normal residents (the one next to me is scared of people (no, really), and another nearby resident I have named 'Poo Man', for obvious reasons). Secondly, I had a gut feeling that each key fob was unique to its electricity meter.

I picked up a tea light and made my way through the bedroom, feeling like I belonged in a Charles Dickens novel and should be wearing a nightcap and slippers, and found my charger plugged in beside my bed. I stuffed it inside my coat pocket, blew out the candle, and headed back out to the main corridor.

I found a plug socket in the main corridor, near where the back door is to take out rubbish, plugged in my phone, realised I couldn't really leave it alone for an hour in a building with 60 different flats in, and so sat down on the scratchy carpet, and waited.

I had many strange looks last night. After the third time of explaining exactly why I was on the floor, I started changing the story a bit, to see what reaction I'd get.

"Lost my key fob, just charging my phone quickly, yes, yes I have already called Southern Electrics..."
"No electricity - just charging my phone!"
"No electricity, because I can't afford to pay my bills!"
"I don't even live here."
"This isn't even my phone, I just like the carpet."

An hour later, at around 10pm, my battery was nearing the top (89%), when who should walk past but the caretaker of my building, Mr Countryfile himself. He asked what flat I lived in. I sheepishly muttered '55', and I watched cogs turn in his head.

"Flat 55... 55 you say? Wait, that was you on Friday night? YOU woke me up at bleeding 2 in the morning to let you in? Why you little-"

He calmed down, eventually, after explaining my electricity situation, and I asked him about what to do about my lost pox box key. He said he had a master key and would check my post for me, and get me some new keys cut later in the week, and 'don't you dare lose these ones too!'

A few minutes later he came back with a single letter, what I assumed to be a bill. I said thanks, slumped back on the floor, and checked my phone. 91%.

Then I opened the letter, and what was there? My electricity key fob. I'd asked Southern Electrics to deliver it to my work address, because I had no access to my postbox at my flat, and they'd said yes and asked for the new delivery address, but they sent it here! It could have been sat there for days and I'd have had no idea.

But here it was, in my hand. With the smile across my face, anyone would think that I'd won the lottery. I sprinted back to my flat, registered the key fob with the meter like a re-union of a long lost brother and sister, and ran out the building and down the road to top up my electricity.

The corner shop near me that has the PayPoint where I buy electricity is a few minutes walk from my flat, in an area called the Triangle. Each time I go into this shop, the person serving me is always different, and always under 19 with various teeth missing; the sort of people who no matter how many times you explain it to them, will never be able to grasp the concept of 'there, their and they're'. Last night, there were two teenage girls, chewing gum, their hair scraped back into a messy pony tail on top of their head, reading a text aloud from one of their phones. They looked up at the counter, saw me standing there, and then looked back down to their phones.

"Oh my gahhd, I can't believe Ricky just said that? What did you say back babe?"

"He hem!" I said, clearing my throat.

"Soz, can you just wait a minu'e?" She turned back to her friend and pointed at her mobile. "I really can't believe that Chelsea, what did you say back? Don't take any shit from him, he's obviously lying about the baby, why don't yo-"

I hadn't waited 5 days to get electricity to stand and listen to the chavvy Olsen twins talking about fucking Ricky and a frigging baby. I put the key fob on the counter, got out my debit card, and said:

"£20 on here please, I'm in a hurry. Thanks."

She stashed her phone back into her pocket, snatched the key fob off the counter and started punching numbers into the till with her long, acrylic nails, her gaze not leaving mine as she did it. Stare at me all you want, but you're making me wait to get heating back, and for that, I hate you. And your hair looks bloody ridiculous, too.

Five minutes later, I was back in my flat, plugged the key fob into my meter, and a glorious '£19.96' flashed on the screen. I laughed out loud, shouted 'Pippin! Pippy! We have light!', and turned on every light and every heater in the house, just because I could.

And then turned most of them off, because, well. Saving electricity and all that.

Moral of the story: don't wear your hair in a messy bun on top of your head, you look stupid. Oh, and don't lose your keys. Yeah, that too.

How to cook in 25 easy steps

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:54:00 +0000

How did mum make it look so easy?

1. First take out the cookbook someone bought for you as a Christmas present many years ago. You know, the one you circled everything you wanted to make, but have never in the five years of owning it have got round to doing.

2. Check the fridge and cupboards to see if you have all the ingredients.

3. After discovering several of the ingredients are out of date, smell them. If you can last five seconds without screwing your face up into a ball, they're still good. If not, grab anything from the cupboard that looks remotely similar and use it in their place. No-one will ever know.

4. Start by dicing an onion and sautéing until golden brown. Every good recipe starts by sautéing some onions. Even if you are making a Victoria sponge, it will still have onions. It adds to the flavour, apparently.

5. Once the onions are golden brown, weigh out all your ingredients to the nearest milligram, and place them all in tiny little bowls like they do in Master Chef because it makes you feel like a real chef.

6. Once everything is weighed, add each ingredient one by one. The first, you'll accidentally spill all over the counter instead of getting it into the saucepan. Grab extra of this ingredient. Don't bother weighing, just pour more in bit by bit till you think you have enough. Still not enough. Just a tad more. Oh shit, too much. TOO MUCH.

7. Panic and return to the fridge. Get extra of every other ingredient to make sure your mix is still all in proportions. Add as required. At this point, there will probably be flour everywhere.

8. Let your dish simmer for fifteen minutes. Forget to set the timer on the cooker and to look at the time.

9. Time to make the sauce. Refer back to the cookbook for all the ingredients you forgot to check you had.

10. Discover that one of the vital ingredients you need you apparently don't have. But you swear you did? You remember buying it! Oh, wait... yeah, that's right. You used it to make an omelette last Tuesday. Buggar it.

11. Glance at your watch to see if you have enough time to dash to the Co-op and back before the fifteen minutes are up.

12. Wait. What fifteen minutes? How long has your dish been simmering? You forgot to set the timer didn't you, you absolute moron. Okay, well it took roughly 4 minutes to check your fridge and snapchat a picture to your friends ('LOOK AT ME COOKING, TROLOLOL'), so you have..... let's say, ten minutes left? Plenty of time. Turn the hob to low heat immediately, and make a mad dash for the door.

13. Once you've returned, getting stuck at the self-service machines for several minutes (" MY ITEMS ARE IN THE BAGGING AREA! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?") you'll find your dish to be bubbling over the edge of the pan. Take a minute to shout at the nearest available person for not watching your food like you asked. Feel free to use any of the following words too to help relieve stress: 'knob', 'codswallop', 'flipping', 'shitbuggar'.

14. Proceed to make the sauce. Check the cookbook at the measurements you'll need, before deciding that actually, you can't be bothered to weight them out. The scales are dirty anyway. Just bung it all in. It can't go much worse, right? ...Right?!

15. Turn the hob off. Find an oven-proof dish and layer it with a sheet of greaseproof paper. Pour in the mix as directed by the cookbook. It doesn't go in the dish, but instead dribbles all down the side of the saucepan and onto the floor. Don't worry, it happens to the best of us. Just try to clean it up quickly before your cat/dog/children/husband starts licking it off the floor.

16. Open the oven door and put the dish on the middle tray, placing a baking tray on the shelf below to catch any spillages. Close the door. Swear very loud when you realise you never turned the oven on (see list of words above for suggestions).

17. Turn it on with the dish still inside, adding an extra ten minutes to the cooking time to rectify this little problem.

18. After forty-five minutes, and having a bowl of cereal because you were too hungry to wait, take the dish out of the oven, where it should be crisp and golden brown. Yours will be crunchy, and more of a golden black.

19. Place it on the side and allow it to cool for ten minutes. Check back after just 3 minutes and burn the inside of your mouth when you try some.

20. Take a knife and try to slice off the burnt bits. Insist to everyone it'll be ' just fine' underneath.

21. You'll discover that it is in fact not fine underneath. Proceed to blame the oven. ("It circulates the hot air wrong!", "The timer is buggered!")

22. Scrape the contents of the dish into the bin and reach for the nearest take away menu.

23. Wash up everything immediately so no one will ever find out about this little catastrophe.

24. Repeat process in one week’s time when you decide this all happened because you were, obviously, just having an 'off day'.

25. Repeat the 24 steps above. You'll discover you weren't having an off day. You’re just a shit cook.

The girl with the musical memory

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 16:47:00 +0000

A true story

I sat next to my mum in the Church Hall as people slowly began to file past me and take their seats on that sunny Sunday afternoon. Shoe-scuffles echoed around the high ceiling, and there was only a faint murmur of greetings as Piano Teachers greeted their students. My mum looked down, and could see me silently staring down at the Show Program. I found my name, just after a boy called ‘Francis Wilton’.

            “You’ll be fine,” I heard her whisper reassuringly with a smile on her face. I could feel the warmth from her leg as she shuffled closer to hug me. The piano book ‘Cool Jazz: Volume 3’ felt like a block of ice in my hands. The pew beneath me was hard and uncomfortable, and I had to keep moving to stop going numb. Though the general atmosphere in the room is relaxed, I’d never felt so tense in my life.

            I’d always had a good musical memory. For as long as I could remember, I’d learn a piece on the piano and impress my parents by reciting it note for note with the book firmly shut. I’d even pretend I was absently-mindedly watching the television while I played, letting my fingers guide themselves over the notes by feeling their way around the piano. It wasn't so much a memory, more that I remembered the shapes my hands were meant to be in at that precise moment. If you’d had stopped me mid-piece, and asked which note I was playing, I wouldn't be able to tell you. And that, I soon was to learn, would be my downfall.

            My piano teacher was called Miss Yates. She started teaching me from a young age, an age when I was too young to understand why a woman with greying hair, wrinkles, and veins protruding from her bony hands was called Miss, instead of Mrs, Yates.

            She soon learnt of my musical memory, and started testing it. I assumed it was normal to be able to play without the music, but she assured me that it most certainly wasn't and I was in fact very gifted. At the end of each lesson she’d get me to play a piece I’d learnt from memory, and a smile erupted on her face when I finished, every time, without fault.

            And so when I was around 10, so began the concerts and shows I was to perform in without the music. I’d done it perfectly fine in my weekly lessons, so there was no reason why I shouldn't be perfectly fine in front of an audience.

            It was always in an evening in a very stuffy room at the Town Hall. The sort of room where there were carpets on the walls, each padded seat had a small microphone in front of it, and there were lots of gold plated crests around the walls. It was always a Tuesday or Wednesday after School, these concerts, as I remember telling everyone in the playground how I was to become very famous that evening.

            Imagine the smile on mine and Miss Yates’ face when half way through the concert, my name was called to perform in front of the entire Piano Teacher’s Association ( including the Governing Chairwoman, who Miss Yates referred to as HRH), and I rose from my seat, walked down the steps towards the black grand piano sat in the centre of the room, with absolutely nothing in my hands.

            “Oh bless her, she’s forgotten her music!” I’d hear someone whisper.
            “What’s she doing?!”
            “Shouldn't her Teacher run up and take her book to her?”
            “The poor thing, she must be too nervous to think!”

            The whole room sat in silence as I adjusted the piano stool to the right height, tested my wrists were in the upright position at middle C, and began to play.

            For two minutes I would imagine I was back in my lounge playing to my mum. Truth was, if I didn't think about playing but thought about something else, the notes would come naturally to me. I’d wonder what else the room was used for, or would try and guess what the person who was playing after me would look like. I felt my body swaying to and fro with every crescendo and diminuendo, staring down at my fingers as if I was watching a video of someone else playing, and was merely humming along with them.

            Before I knew it, I’d finished the piece, and there was a brief silence before the whole room erupted in applause. I’d done it.

            From then on, I was to be paraded around concert after concert, showing off my music skills. I didn't get why I was so special; I found it strange that other children had to have their music. Miss Yates got praise from the other teachers, congratulated at bringing such new young talent to the Southend music scene.

            In fact, even at that age, I could tell there was a local rivalry between teachers as to who could provide the most talented piano prodigy. I was a good contender, having played at all the major concerts in the area including one to the composer of some of my favourite piano pieces, Pam Wedgewood – she even gave me a signed copy of her book for playing ‘After Dark’ so beautifully.

            But no one could compare to one boy who made everyone lost for words. A short, plump boy who seemed inept at making normal conversation stole the show as he soon started attending concerts. Benjamin Grosvener was his name. At first, I hated him. He was better than me. After each concert, it was him that people were talking about, him that people were most excited to see.

            But then I started to see just how talented he was. It was if he understood music in a way that other people couldn't. From looking at him, as he sat on his chair next to a woman I assumed was his mum, he looked like a very shy boy, the type you’d imagine being bullied at school by the 'cool' kids, or not having many friends because the other children in his class just didn't 'get' him.

I soon understood that no matter how much I practiced I would never be able to connect with each piece the way he does. Composers started coming to Southend, writing pieces especially for Benjamin, trying to challenge him or prove that he’s not as good as he thought he was. But every time, he’d play with the same passion and faultlessness as a pianist performing at the Royal Albert Hall. He was, what my mum described as ‘something else’.

            I sat in the quiet church hall waiting to be called. I was 14 now, and had been playing in concerts for many years now. But with my growth spurt two years previously I’d also gained a whole new set of emotions I’d never experiences before; nerves.

            When I was younger, I had no care in the world when I was playing the piano. I could shut everyone else off and play as if I was on my own. I would have played to the Queen if anyone had asked me. But now… well, there were people watching. A lot of people. A lot of important people. W-what if I messed up? What would they think of me? What would my mum think of me?

            I counted down the number of performers until it was my turn. It wasn't many. My heart was pounding in my chest. I blew on my hands to cool them as they started to emit a clammy, cold sweat, imagining my wet fingers slipping off the piano keys as I went to play. I quickly examined the piece I was about to play, trying my hardest to remember the two notes I was to start on. ‘E and A flat’ I said in my head. ‘E and A flat, E and A flat, E and-‘

            “And now, let’s welcome Jennifer Ellegard.”

I looked up at the empty piano stool. My mum patted the back of my shoulder in a ‘you can do it’ sort of way, and I stood up, reluctantly leaving my piano book on the pew. We’d sat near the back of the room, so the walk to the front seemed long and drawn out.

The stool felt cold as I sat down; the piano keys unfamiliar and strange. Each piano has a different feel about it. Some play forté at the slightest touch, while others require a much more rigorous technique to get the required loudness. But this piano just didn’t feel right, and I had no chance to practice. I could feel the heat of everyone’s eyes upon me, and noticed someone eagerly checking their watch, waiting for me to start.

I lifted my heavy hands and placed my fingers on the keys. ‘E and A flat’, I reminded myself. With one last shiver from my body, I silently counted to four, and my fingers began to move of their own accord. They were playing a piece my ears recognised, but my brain was struggling to remember. I tried not to think too much about the piece. If I thought about it, I knew I would lose it. The nerves would return, and the piece will be lost.

It felt like hours had passed as the eyes and ears of the audience hung onto every note I played. I felt like they were waiting for me to slip up. As I was playing, I was quickly trying to remember what the last chord of the piece was. Normally it was there, I just played it, but for some reason I couldn't think of it. I was nearing it, getting closer bar by bar, but the notes just wouldn't come to me. Teetering on the brink of completion, my mind froze. I tried to play the chord I thought it was, but winced as a flat sound erupted from the piano. I tried another, and another, panicking as I couldn't remember anything else. But then my fingers suddenly stopped playing.

I was quickly brought back to reality. I hadn’t finished the piece. And worse, I’d played the piece wrong. I wasn’t sure which was worse. The murmurs in the crowd spread quickly, tutting and hissing, the young boys and girls laughing and jeering. I wanted to disappear, for the piano stool to open up and swallow me whole and take me far away from this Church Hall.

I took my tear-filled eyes off the piano and stared unwillingly into the crowd. A mass of disappointed faces were staring back at me. I daren’t look over at my mum, or worse, Miss Yates. What on earth were they thinking of me now?

I quietly cleared my throat, and my voice quivered.

“C-can I s-start over please?” I asked the crowd, not exactly sure who I was meant to be asking. I felt the tears starting to silently roll down my cheeks. I may have messed up, but I didn't want to leave as the girl who couldn't play. I wanted to leave as the girl who tried again.

I didn't wait for a reply, I simply turned back to the piano. The room instantly fell silent; no one was sure what to expect. Could I even remember how it started?

I lifted my hands up again, raising my wrists high so my fingertips lightly brushed the two start notes, E and A flat. I let myself listen to the song in my head for a few moments, before my hands once again began to play.

Second time round was far worse. I missed lots of the notes, my hands playing far too quickly, my feet slipping off the pedals, lengthening the wrong notes and cutting short others. But part of me had given up caring. I just want the piece to end. I let my mind think about how good it would feel once I’d finished playing, how relieved I’d feel to be sat back next to my mum, and what flavour ice cream my mum would get me from the seafront kiosk to try and make me feel better, like she always did. Before I knew it, my hands had finally played the last chord.

It was over.

A polite applause filled the church hall, and though I should have felt happy, I couldn’t help but feeling it was fake. They were just glad I’d finished playing. Without looking up, I scurried back to the pew where my mum was sat, and nuzzled straight under her arm.

“I’m s-sorry mum,” I sobbed, as ‘Alice Gray’ was called forward to play. I didn't look her in the face, I felt far too embarrassed, and ashamed. She simply hugged me tighter, the warmth from her hug comforting me , and we listened in silence as Alice played her piece note-perfect.

            Miss Yates scurried through the crowd to reach me as soon as the concert was over. She mumbled a few words of comfort, I heard something like ‘proud’, and ‘it happens’, but I wasn't really paying attention. I just wanted to go home.

            I looked at my mum, and though we were offered many times to stay for tea and biscuits, my mum politely declined and walked me to the car. As soon as I was out the door, I had no control over the tears falling from my eyes. Disappointing my mum was the worst feeling in the world. As we approached the car, I looked back at the Church Hall. I imagined the children inside being congratulated and praised, and made a silent vow to myself never to play piano in public again.

                                                          *           *           *

            In 2004, Benjamin Grosvener won the piano section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, and has since played at the Royal Albert Hall among many iconic venues, and has also performed alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, and the English Chamber Orchestra.

I refused to play the piano in front of anyone until I was 18. From then until now, at the age of 24, I can only play to someone if they are facing the other way, talking to someone else, or pretending they are on their phone. And I am very much happy with that.

Tips for applying for Grad Jobs - what Universities don't tell you

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 15:23:00 +0000

1. Learn to like coffee.

Office workers drink coffee by the gallon, and when you go to an interview, you'll probably get weird looks if you say 'you don't like coffee'. Stick 4 sugars in it and just down it. It gets better, I promise.

2. "Just be yourself!"

Wrong, don't be yourself. You're a fresh faced student who knows nothing about the real world and have never written a budget report before. Pretend to have the confidence of someone else, and you'll be fine.

3. Buy a good suit.

But more importantly, buy one that fits. I spent twenty minutes trying to convince myself I could squeeze into a size 8 skirt because 'it made my bum look better'. It might have, but it also meant I was re-adjusting it every few minutes to make sure it didn't split apart in front of everyone else in the room, and I walked as if my ankles had been taped together. This isn't a good look for anyone. Guys, make sure your Marvel Comic socks don't show when you're sat cross legged.

4. Show off your research skills by having an in-depth knowledge of the company before your interview.

But don't bring up any of the following information you may find out, as it may not get the reaction you hoped for; budget cuts, latest figures on redundancies, office affairs, what the meat in the cafeteria really is, and how much higher pay-packets the male staff get compared to women.

5. Pick your lunch wisely.

I was once on a train to London for an assessment day and had bought a spaghetti bolognaise lunch pot with me. Brilliant, a healthy meal that will fill me up so my stomach won't be rumbling all day. Wrong. It wasn't brilliant. It exploded on my suit skirt the second I opened it, and I spent the remainder of the train journey hunched over the sink in a toilet that smelt like gone-off trifle, scrubbing soap into my skirt, only to look like I'd wet myself when I left. Don't be that person. Pick a plain sandwich, or even better, don't eat anything at all.

6. Don't take a copy of your CV on paper.

Paper is old fashioned. Take it on something expensive and flashy like an iPad. It shows you already have money and want this job because you genuinely want to work there, and not because you're poor and just want to earn some goddamn money so you don't have to stay in and watch episodes of Jeremy Kyle and Homes Under The Hammer. If you can't afford an iPad, borrow one from a friend.

7. If you're male, have a shave the day before.

You'll have just enough stubble to look smart without looking like a 12 year old choir boy.

8. If you're female, wear glasses to the interview to make you look smarter.

Primark sell them for £1.50. Lenses are optional, but they genuinely make it more convincing.

9. When writing your CV, don't start it with 'CURRICULUM VITAE'.

Everyone knows what a CV is. Long words just give you more opportunities for fatal spelling mistakes.

10. Check, check and double check.

The most commonly misspelled words on CV's which I have come across are; accommodate, effect (instead of affect), personnel (instead of personal), necessary, their own name (yes, really), experience, and my own personal favourite, communication.

11. Try not to be too bothered when you don't hear back from 99% of your job applications.

Yes, it would be very useful for you to know why you didn't get the job so you don't do it again, because how the hell do you know what you're doing wrong if no one tells you. So you'll obviously keep doing whatever 'it' is, and keep getting rejected, and you'll be screaming "JUST TELL ME WHY" into your laptop. It's a vicious circle, I know. But they just won't tell you, and that's that.

12. Don't send off the same CV to every employer.

Different things will appeal to different companies. Use your brilliant research skills from point 4 to help you with this. Even better, find out their home addresses and send them your CV's directly. Bonus points for accompanying it with a Dominos pizza.

13. Make sure to include every single voluntary or charity work you've ever done.

It'll make you look like a far better person than you probably are and frankly, who doesn't like someone who helps the elderly on their days off? (Note; your own Nan does not count).

14. And lastly, when you do finally get a job, don't let your mum pack your lunch for you, especially if she still leaves notes like 'Good luck hunnypoo xxx' in your lunchbox.

You never know who might see it, and it might take until the Office Christmas Party before someone else lands a nickname more embarrassing than yours. Play it safe and buy yourself something from M&S (Hint; unless you're already wearing orange, avoid spaghetti bolognaise lunch pots; they'll get you every time).

Take your hamster to work day

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:25:00 +0000

So I took my hamster to work with me yesterday.
Because.. well, why not? Every office needs a hamster.

In truth, I have a flat inspection every 6 months just to make sure I'm being a good tenant. And... well technically speaking, my contract does say 'no pets'. Personally, I don't see what could be wrong with having a pet hamster; they don't make mess, they don't make noise, and they don't chew up your slippers and leave them stuffed behind the sofa. But still, it's better to be safe than sorry, ay? So on the day of my inspections, Pippin comes to work with me. I don't think he likes the bumpy car journeys, and he especially doesn't like it if it's raining on the way to the car! but he settles down soon enough. Here he was last time, when I originally sat in the downstairs office.

In all truth, my flat contract states a lot of things you're not allowed to do. No social gatherings, no pets, no loud televisions, no loud music, no having any sort of fun, no excessively loud voices, and my personal favourite - no musical instruments.

Which is a bit of bummer for me, as I have a piano in my flat. I somehow don't think that'd be quite as easy to lug to and from work every 6 months though....

I can only imagine they once had a very rowdy tenant who threw lots of wild parties with loud music, and gave all their friends saxophone lessons while their family of dogs howled because the television volume was turned up so high.

But for now, Pippin gets a trip to work every 6 months. Which I don't think he minds. The office floor is about 10 times the size of my flat, so he gets to actually run around in his ball instead of bump into the sofa, or the door, or my leg every 5 seconds.

It does make carrying a tray of teas and coffees to my desk a lot more interesting though.

The Writing Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:06:00 +0000

Every other Saturday I go to a Creative Writing class. I've been going for about two months now. I saw the flier in at a cafe window about 2 minutes walk from my flat, one that I'd been meaning to go into since it first opened in Summer, so I decided you know what? I'm going to do this. It was obviously meant to be.

At the end of each class we get set 'homework'. It's optional (though they do stare down their noses if you haven't written anything), and you get given the chance to read out your writing to the group and get constructive feedback.

But... well, it's quite daunting reading your work aloud. I mean, it's not just a group of strangers you're reading to, but a group of writers, some of whom have been writing their whole lives and have very strong opinions of words and syntax and character development, and whether to use comma splices or semi colons. What if they tell you that despite all your best efforts, you're just crap?

Last fortnight we were set the homework to write about 'The Writing Group'. Not about our own writing group, as we may offend someone if we accidentally describe the man who sits near us as having a 'big nose', or another woman as being 'the woman who always smells of cabbage'. We had to create our own fictional writing group, concentrating on describing the characters and bringing their personalities to life.

I had some spare time on my hands when I went to go visit my parents in Essex a few weekends ago, and so I quickly started writing, and below is what I wrote and read out to the class (note; it's unfinished)

Enjoy!

The Writing Group

My eyes scanned the room as I walked in. Sat on three sofas at the back of the cafe was the writing group. I got my notebook out of my bag and walked over to show that I was 'one of them'. A man with thick white hair and a strong beard raised his eyebrows.

"Ah, Emily! Welcome, welcome!" he said, gesturing with his arms open wide. "Come take a seat!" I looked around and spotted a space in between an elderly man and a very petite woman with a bob. She was wearing a smart black dress with kitten heels, and shuffled far over to make more room for me, as if I had a deadly disease and she'd catch it if she was too close.

I could feel the eyes on me as I sat down, placing the notebook on my lap. I too quickly observed the group while Clive carried on talking. There were about ten people, in all. A woman opposite me was scribbling down everything Clive said, nodding her head enthusiastically and laughing at precisely the right moments. She was perched on the very edge of her seat and I was quite worried that if she laughed again she'd end up on the floor.

Clive was talking about the Christmas writing competition coming up, but as I was listening I started regretted being sat where I was. A stale stench swam into my nostrils. I looked around me and spotted the culprit. Despite a roaring fire on the other side of the room, and the front windows fogged up with condensation, the old man to my right was still sat in his khaki Parker jacket, scarf and flat cap. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead.

"Derek? asked Clive, and the old man to the right of me whipped his head up as if being awakened from a trance, sending the bead of sweat onto my lap. "How did your piece last week go on erm..oh yes, on the alien abduction?"

Derek's eyes glazed over, as if he had no idea what Clive was on about.

"You know," prompted Clive, laughing slightly ,"the one you said last time you'd write after watching the latest episode of Dr Who?"

There was a moments pause. Then a deep rumbling sound echoed from Derek's throat which made the loose skin under his chin wobble. "Eughhh," he croaked, sitting upright, "din't write it. Decided I don't like aliens."

"Ah," said Clive, in a way that made me believe he doesn't like many things. "Not to worry then, I'm sure you'll feel inspired again soon enough." Derek slumped back down in the sofa with a hard thump, sending my pen onto the floor.
"Clive!" came a small voice from the corner, "I wrote a short story last weekend about a dragon, c-can I read it please?" The timid voice had come from a small boy, no older than 9, perched on an armchair to my left. His feet were swinging nervously, too short to reach the floor.

"That'd be lovely Charlie," replied Clive in a hearty, warm voice, sitting back in his chair with a large grin on his face.

Charlie put his fist to his chest to clear his throat just like he'd seen the grown-ups do on TV, and held out his story in front of him.

"Once upon a time, there was a dragon called Mavis..."

I started jotting down notes as Charlie was reading. 'Good name for a dragon' I wrote, and 'Try to take breaths in between sentences', but a woman on the edge of the group quickly caught my eye. She had her legs crossed tightly and was perched on a very high stool with her back hunched slightly, feeling awkward and being sat so high up.

But it wasn't this that made me notice her, or even her immaculate blonde hair scraped into a high bun on top of her head. It was the fact that she was checking her watch every thirty seconds, as if she didn't want to be there, or had somewhere far better to be. Her pen was twitching nervously against her small notebook, the sort you see Journalists fill with shorthand squiggles, and I soon started wondering if she had to be somewhere urgently for her job. In any case, she was now proving to be quite a distraction, sighing every time her watch showed her that it was getting closer to 8 o'clock. A few other people around the group had also noticed her impatience, glaring at her across the room. Charlie, however, carried on reading.

".. and the Prince and Princess lived happily ever after, " Charlie finished, with a smug grin plastered on his face. There was a modest clap from the group, and Charlie took a very little bow in his seat.

"Wonderful Charlie!" beamed Clive, "your teacher at school must be very proud of you." He looked briefly at the woman on her stool Lily, what did you think of that piece?"

All heads turned towards the woman on the stool, who quickly stowed away her phone into her pocket.

"Oh, sorry?" she asked pleasantly, batting her eyelashes. "Oh, his story yes, it was brilliant. Well done Charles." There were a few murmurs of agreement from the group, and Derek to my right mumbled "don't like dragons".

As I read the above piece aloud, everyone was listening intently. I'd been out the night before, and was hoping no one could tell from my slightly husky voice that I'd had a few too many glasses of wine. But nevertheless, my piece went down extremely well, and got nothing but positive remarks, and even got a few laughs from the group - something I don't think any other writer has managed when they've been reading out (N.B a lot of the writers in my group write about death, the fall of humanity and divorce.. quite morbid for a Saturday morning if you ask me, but each to their own...)

And at the end of the class, the woman in charge came over to me and said how she'd 'heard on the grapevine' I was writing and novel. After hearing what it was about, she said it sounds brilliant and wants to put me in touch with some illustrators she knows, and can't wait to read it and help me get it published, which frankly, made me happier than anything has in a long, long time.

Watch this space.

Why I both love and hate Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:37:00 +0000

Halloween has never really been a big thing for me. From a young age, my mum told me it was a very 'American' holiday. She didn't believe in trick or treating, insisting that it wasn't safe outside (which in all fairness, seeing as we lived in Essex, was probably very true).

But in the last few years I've realised just how much I missed out on. The fancy dress, the endless bags of sweets, the pumpkin carving...

When we were younger, I don't remember ever carving pumpkins. We had a ceramic one in our house which lived on top of the kitchen cupboards and came down on the morning of Halloween, and that was that. We put a candle in it, and that was Halloween. Ta-da.

As I've grown older I've tried to embrace it as best I can. Granted, that now consists of going out wearing very little, covered in blood, and drinking a lot, but I'd much rather do that than watch Halloween-related films.

I'm probably the easiest person to scare I know. Horror films are only possible if there's a light on, no one within several feet of me to make me jump, several pillows around my face, and a Disney film ready to play afterwards. And the hallway to the toilet has to have a light on, and all doors have to be open so I know no one is there.

And I have to sleep with the light on that night dontjudgeme.

I mean, how do you know all of this stuff doesn't actually exist? What if there's a serial killer on the loose? What if I get attacked on the way to the toilet by a poltergeist?! What if?!

On my drive home from work at 6pm I could already see groups of children walking from house to house in their fancy dress costumes, beaming at their little bags of sweets and practicing their best roars between houses in case the mean old lady who answered the door had nothing to give them. My mum used to give away 1ps and 2ps when she had no sweets. 'Are these chocolate coins?', they'd ask their parents as they walked away from the house, confused. 'I don't think so dear, come on, let's try the next house..'

So last night before I went out (dressed in my most imaginative Halloween outfit to date - a cat) I wanted to embrace the Halloween spirit and buy a pumpkin. I wanted to carve my very first jack-o-lantern.

When I got to Tesco they were all out of pumpkins. Three crates that came up to my waist were empty, with a little hand-written note from the staff saying 'sorry, no more :('. I lapped the store twice checking in case someone had changed their mind and left it in the exact location where they decided that actually, they didn't want it (come on, we've all done it. That packet of biscuits you put down next to the pasta, the penguin bars you left next to the orange squash, the second tin of sweetcorn you left next to bread). But there were no pumpkins anywhere. I couldn't just give up now. It was Halloween, and I wanted to carve something. I wandered around the fruit and vegetable aisle for something I could use instead... A... melon? No....A potato? Or how about...

A pineapple.

It took about 10 minutes to carve. Far easier than a pumpkin (I'm guessing?) but also a lot.. well... wetter. My carpet is now splattered with pineapple juice and I'm pretty sure my hamster Pippin got a spraying in the face. Sorry Pippin.

But I can now eat the inside of the pineapple for lunch (what the hell do you do with all that leftover pumpkin?), and in my opinion, it looks far more terrifying than a regular pumpkin.

I left it facing Pippin's cage for the night. Happy Halloween Pippin!

The 20 stages of going to the Hairdressers.

noreply@blogger.com (Jenni Alison) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 15:12:00 +0000

It's that time again. You've been avoiding it for weeks, possibly months, but you can't avoid it any longer. Your fringe is so long it looks like one massive eyebrow, and you've got so many split ends that your split ends have started getting split ends. There's no other option. You need to go to the hairdressers.

You start searching online for a decent hairdressers to go to, and suddenly remember why you never go to the hairdressers. "HOW much just for a cut?"
You scan their list to see what you want. Do you really need a blow dry? Is it really worth an extra £18?
You make an appointment, arrive at the hairdressers and immediately feel guilty for walking in with greasy, scraped back hair. STOP JUDGING ME.
The hairdressers assistant (16 years old, lots of make up, very snotty attitude, probably called Charmaine) leads you over to wash your hair. No matter if the water is burning your face, you say it's fine.
The head massage. The best part of the whole experience. If you don't get a head massage, you feel conned and want to complain about the lack of massage. Isn't that what you learn on day one of hairdressing school?
The hairdressers assistant starts combing your wet hair down in front of your face. You apologise for all the knots, assuring her that your hair 'really isn't normally this bad?'
She tries to part your hair and gets the parting all wrong. No, it's a little bit more to the left. No, that's too much. A bit less. A bit more. No back the other way. Oh just let me do it forgodsake.
The real hairdresser waltzes over, leaving a woman who's head is now covered in foils. Charmaine goes back to the reception desk and starts filing her nails. Then the hairdresser asks the dreaded question: 'So, what can I do for you today?'
"Oh erm...Well I want a cut, but not too short. Please don't cut it short. But, well... enough to get rid of the 'bad bits', so as much as it needs really. And cut the layers too please, but not too much. I'm growing it." You can feel it. She's judging you. You're one of 'those' clients.
The hairdresser looks at you. "It appears your hair is.... well, it's different lengths at the back? Have you...have you been trying to cut it yourself?" Oh God, she knows. Well it was late at night, and your hair was really winding you up, and you had some scissors, and thought it didn't really look that hard to do, and does it really matter because you can't see the back of your hair anyway....
She starts cutting and asking about if you're going on holiday this year. It's all going fine until....Wait, that feels more than an inch. Why is she cutting off more than an inch? You specifically said not short.
She gets round to the front and asks how you want it done. Shaping round the face? Layers? A fringe? "Well, I don't really have a fringe as such, I had a side fringe thing, but not really a fringe." If she wasn't judging you before, she's definitely judging you now.
The mirror from behind. The one time you get to see what your hair looks like from the back. Even if you don't like it, just nod.
Oh yes, you forgot they stole your coat and stowed it away in the basement the second you walked in.
Time to pay. Don't wince, remember you only pay this once every 6 months. What? Would I like to book an appointment for 6 weeks time? Ha. No no, I think I'll pass...
Should you leave a tip? Oh rats, you only have two 10ps and a 2p. Well that'll look more insulting than leaving nothing. And what about Charmaine, are you meant to leave her something too? The head massage wasn't even that good...
Leave the 22p and run.
Get home and look in the mirror.. Your hair is exactly the same. You vow to never go to that hairdressers again, ever.
You put your hair in a ponytail just to 'see how it looks when it's up'.
None of your friends notice. Hat time.