His broken jaw is very handy though; every time he winds me up, I just threaten to punch him in the face. I wouldn’t do it but he doesn’t know that and immediately shuts up.

He broke his jaw the night I came back from Edinburgh with Myke, to meet his nan for the first time.
We arrived in Edinburgh, after a NINE HOUR TRAIN RIDE, on the Wednesday. We had a quick look at everything around the station before getting into a taxi and making our way to South Queensferry.
We checked in at the Inn (we didn’t stay at a hotel) before making our way to see Myke’s nanny for a couple of hours.

I thought his nan was nice and I think she liked me too, as she invited me back for her 95th birthday, in February!

After we’d seen Myke’s nan for a couple of hours, we went back to the Inn and went to bed.
We woke up at half seven the following day because we only had one full day to see all of Edinburgh City Centre! We had our breakfast in the Inn (I had a small bowl of cereal, a small croissant and a medium coffee; Myke had some toast and a tea) before heading out to the bus stop.

We looked around the City Centre for a few hours and I took loads of photos (they’re in my Edinburgh set on Flickr, if you’re interested^{^}).
Myke was going to treat me to lunch but we had to use the toilets first, so off we went. I came out of the stall in the girl’s room and look what greeted me:

Yep - straighteners! We don’t have THOSE in OUR mall.

I came out and told Myke about my find and then we went to have our lunch; Spud-U-Like.

We did some more looking around and shopping before heading on over to something I’d been looking forward to seeing for a long, long time. And MY GOD, what a disappointment.
We thought it would be a bunch of tunnels and, oh I don’t know, DUNGEONS and that we’d get to look around quietly. Maybe there would be a few fake skellingtons hanging around and some “scary” noises.
What we got were some very-difficult-to-understand-Scottish-people doing amateur dramatics.
We entered and the first event was the whole group had to sit down on some pews while someone dressed like a judge told us off for being witches (the females) and cross-dressing (the males). And it just went downhill from there, really. The worst bit for me was when a MAN, wearing a CAPE and loads of MAKEUP and with TERRIBLE acting skills called ME “a little freak”. I laughed.
Anyway, unless you actually enjoy men in makeup and God-awful acting, then I’d recommend you don’t bother going to see the Edinburgh Dungeons. It costs £15 per person to get in and Myke and I spent the whole time thinking “Can we leave now??”.

After that little disappointment, we looked around the City Centre some more (I saw a The Gap, a Harvey Nichols AND a Louis Vuitton!), and I had my first ever Starbucks (tall, coffee-based caramel frappuccino with whipped cream - I’m now addicted) before heading back to the Inn.
We bought some fish and chips for our dinner and ate them overlooking the beach where the bones of suicide victims get washed up, which was nice. Then we headed back to Myke’s nan’s flat.

We had to leave the next day, so the rest of our trip was spent packing and sleeping and travelling.

We got back to Plymouth and I texted my mum to let her know that I was around Myke’s having my dinner and I got a text back saying that my brother’s on his way to the hospital. And you know the rest of that story already.

The day after I got back to Plymouth, my sister dragged me into town to give me my early birthday present; I was taken to The Living Art (a tattoo-shop) and was told that I will be having my first tattoo and that she was paying!
I decided that I wanted a three-leaf clover on the inside of my left wrist and it was done!

(I love it! I really liked it when I got it done but I love it more and more each day!)
After the tattooist had finished, my wrist got bandaged up and I was sent on my way.

I got home and got ready for my Line Manager’s Hen Party before meeting up with everyone at the Wetherspoon on the Barbican. I had a few drinks before going home again (wasn’t really in the mood because I felt guilty going out when my poor brother was in the hospital. Plus, I probably shouldn’t have been drinking a couple of hours after getting a tattoo…).

I think I’ll carry this on to another entry, as this one is over 1000 words long already.

Anyone remember my entry on my brother getting beaten up and stomped on, which I wrote around two years ago?

Well, I got back to Plymouth on Friday and was around Myke’s to have my dinner. I sent a text to my mum, letting her know that I was back in Plymouth and all safe and stuff and that I was around Myke’s house. I got a text back, saying “Your brother’s going hospital, he’s been attacked!”.
I rang her immediately. She said that he got attacked less than half an hour away from our house, his friends brought him back home, he’s spitting blood up everywhere and it looked like he was going to lose some teeth.

A while later, she rings me back and tells me that actually, his jaw has been broken in two places, he’s going to have to stay in for a couple of nights and he will need surgery and metal plates to hold the pieces of his jaw together.

I am absolutely livid. The attacker is part of one of the local gangs the police are supposedly “dealing with”. Well done, police; you’re doing a marvellous job!

Anyway, my brother’s doing well now. He’s still in the hospital but should be released at some point today. He’s on a lot of painkillers and will need to return to the hospital for checkups but he’ll be fine.

So, my first ever vblog and intentionally-made YouTube video:

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While I was waiting for the show to start, I took not one BUT TWO illegal photos of the stage:

(If you’re wondering why it’s so empty…it’s because we were about half an hour early for the show. :P)

Derren Brown didn’t take my soul - for those of you who are normal, he apparently takes your soul if you go up on stage with him. He must have read my mind (or smelled my fear) because whenever he threw a frisbee at the audience, it wasn’t in my direction. Woo!

I would have loved to tell you everything that happened during the show but he asked that we didn’t (in case we ruin it for someone else, I guess) but it was brilliant and I loved it. So much so, that I would totally go again and can’t wait until he does his next one!
If you’re going to be seeing this show, start getting verrrry excited!

I must admit that I was pretty disappointed when I got there though - I had gotten all dressed up^{^} and had attempted to prettify myself by wearing A LOT of makeup^{^} and almost all of the other girls there had gone in little vest or tiny tops and just generally looking quite scruffy.

By the way, you are all going to be subjected to “reviews” of all of my makeup items, since I was really impressed by most of it.

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In other news, I have something to tell you all which will hopefully make you laugh. (Everyone ELSE has laughed about it already, so you should at least have a little snicker.)

To get to the front door in work, you need to go up two steps. I was already on the first step and was about to get up to the second one when my knee suddenly “went” (ie, I suddenly and inexplicably lost all feeling from the kneecap down). I was about to fall backwards but thought that if I DID fall backwards, I’d land on my lower leg and will probably snap it on the step below me, so I threw myself forward instead. But I kinda didn’t have enough time to stretch my hands out and stop me from falling properly.
I ended up smacking my kneecap on the edge of the concrete step in front of me and banged both of my hands and MY HEAD on the front door.
I tried to get myself up but fell again, smacking my head AGAIN on the front door.
The cleaner thought I’d been knocking and answered the door to me trying to get back up.

That’s the end of the funny part.

The photo doesn’t do the blacks, blues and purples in my bruise justice - they’re MUCH brighter and more obvious in real life. It’s gotten very slightly darker since yesterday but that’s pretty much how it’s looked since I did it.
Although my leg doesn’t really “hurt” anymore, it’s really uncomfortable and stiff.
(Oh and I also managed to slice my leg a little while shaving it last night. Wonderful.)

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This post is really badly written (and I apologise!) but I was up all Monday night consoling my mother, as my sister had announced that she’s moving out and I had to go to bed really late because the shower’s broken and I had to have a bath before I went to bed (rather than a shower when I get up) and I didn’t get home until around 9pm AND it took about 45 bloody minutes to fill the tub up.

I’ll be back when I feel less sleep deprived. Or on Monday, after I’ve gotten over Derren Brown removing my soul when I go to see him Sunday night.

The other day, I watched a film called “FREAKS!”, which was released in 1932 as a horror film. It was so horrific, that it was banned in most countries. What about it was so horrific? Considering how people reacted to someone who was different back then, it was probably that it featured actual, real, “freaks”; people with missing limbs, dwarfs, siamese twins, bearded ladies and loads more. And not what happened at the end or anything.

I watched it and I thought it was great. And I really don’t know why, since the acting sucked and I could barely understand what some of the cast were saying (Prince Randian and Schlitze being the most difficult) and some of the sound was out of sync to what was happening on the screen.

I’m not going to tell you what to do but I totally think you should watch this film. It’s available on Google Video^{^} - for FREE - so you can’t even say it’ll be a waste of money if you don’t like it.

This is my list of the Plugins that I’m using on my site right now and why I use them. I’ve only listed the Plugins that actually add something to my site (improved functionality) or are useful (for example, by cutting down the amount of time I have to waste maintaining my site).

• Askimet^{^} and Bad Behavior^{^} - these work best together; Bad Behavior stops almost all spam from invading my blog. Anything that gets through is caught by Askimet and, while it’s waiting for me to decide whether or not the “spam” is actually a legit comment, it keeps it off my site.
• Broken Link Checker^{^} - I have a full time job and, I’ll admit, checking through every single page of my site, looking for broken links, is tiresome and just plain boring. That’s where this Plugin becomes very useful for me; I install this Plugin and it keeps an eye on links for me. When I open up my admin panel, I get a little message saying that “there are [x] broken links”. As well as that, it warns my visitors that a link isn’t working by putting a line through it until either I remove the link or update it.
• FeedWordPress^{^} - this Plugin works by grabbing the RSS Feeds of your chosing (Tumblr^{^}, Twitter^{^}, Flickr^{^}, Del.icio.us^{^}, etc) and displaying them as individual blog entries on your website.
  Sometimes I can’t blog from this site but I can post entries to my Tumblr account^{^} using the email function on my phone (don’t ask why I can’t just email it to my “WordPress only” email account…it’ll take too long).
• NoFollow Free^{^} - whereas most anti-nofollow Plugins will just strip nofollow from all of the links, this one can be set up so that only people who have commented on your site [x] times will have nofollow removed from their link. I don’t want to give out a free rankable link to just anyone - only my regs.
• Plugins Used Plugin^{^} - a nice, simple Plugin that lists all of the Plugins I’ve used. I don’t want or need a big nasty table taking up most of the page, telling everyone what each Plugin does; what version it is, etc.
• Search Excerpt^{^} - this improves the search function bundled with WordPress already, by showing the relevant part of the post as the excerpt.
  Without this, it would look like some of the results weren’t relevant, as you wouldn’t be able to see if I really did mention the search term within the post.
  Here’s an example for when you search for “Myke”.
• Theme Test Drive^{^} - this theme allows you - and only you - to view the new theme / layout you’re making for your site. It wasn’t until I got this Plugin that I realised just how long it was taking me to create new themes / layouts for my site.
• WordNote^{^} - this adds a little “notes” section in your Dashboard and you can use it for whatever you want. For example, right now, I have a list of posts that I would like to write out at some point and a list of things I need to do.

What are the most useful Plugins that you have installed right now?

Last Monday, I decided to install the Bad Behavior^{^} plugin after it had been recommended to me by @abledragon^{^}.

It’s worked a charm. It’s blocked over 1300 “access attempts” (spam attempts?) and only 4 have gotten past that (and they were caught by Askimet). Needless to say, I’m really impressed!

First, I watched “A Haunting In Georgia” which was totally not scary. It must have had no effect on me because I don’t really remember anything from it (I think it was about a small boy and his imaginary friend, who happened to be the ghost of an old man?).

The next episode, which was called “A Haunting In Connecticut”, was on straight after “A Haunting In Georgia”.

I watched it. By the end of the episode, I was in the furthest corner of the couch. I ended up phoning my mum and begging her to come back home.
I was 17 years old and already watched some pretty scary films in my time.

A couple of years on, I was talking to Matt and he was telling me about this really scary programme on TV which he’d seen the night before. He couldn’t remember what it was called but told me some of the stuff that happened. I recognised it as “A Haunting In Connecticut” and we laughed about how scared it made us.

A few years after that, a film has recently been released. Called “A Haunting In Connecticut” and from what I’ve read, it appears to be the film version of that TV show I watched.
Either way, Myke and I are going to watch it and I can’t wait. I just hope it IS the film version of that TV show and I hope it scares me as much now as it did then!

My sister asked Myke (in work on Saturday - they work at the same place) what egg he’d bought me for Easter and he told her that he hadn’t bought one yet. As soon as she got home from work, she told me this. It was a Saturday and I’ve worked in a shop before - I know that there’s almost no chance of buying an Easter egg the day before Easter.

I woke up on Easter thinking that he hadn’t bought me anything. The reason I was upset about it wasn’t to do with him not getting me an egg, it was the lack of thought; I was upset because I took it as he hadn’t thought to get me anything.

I also kept getting into arguments with everyone at home, which sucked.

Anyway, I went around his house around midday. When I got there, he said that he had a confession to make; he hadn’t bought me an egg. I just said “I know - Tay told me”.
He showed me what he bought me instead - a “Gold Bunny” by Lindt (which actually, I’d been going on and on about since I first saw them in the shops) and a bunny-shaped collection of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
MUCH better than a bloody egg!

We spent the rest of the day watching TV and a film (Open Season - which was really good!).
When I got home, I had managed to aquire another two Easter eggs, so I ended up with a pretty good haul.

How was everyone else’s Easter and what did you lot get up to?