Collecting - BEDM Day 12

I thought long and hard about this post and thought about ways in which I could interpret it.

I could tell you all about my first collection - my super awesome massive shelf of all things crocodile related. I'm telling you. There wasn't a figurine of a crocodile that wasn't in my sweaty mitts and part of that collection and I would take them down and dust them and re-arrange them like the strange little child I was.

I could tell you all about how nothing remains of that collection apart from two very tiny figures that I've never parted with because they were so beautiful and are enough to flood me with the memories of the original collection.

I could tell you all about how I also went through a phase of collecting those god-awful sticky-foot fuzzy bug things that companies used to give away as advertisements. I stuck them all down one side of my wardrobe and I'm not entirely sure when I grew out of them and prized them off.

I could tell you all about how I collected shed-loads of Edward Monkton cards at uni and stuck them up on my walls. I'm pretty sure I still have those somewhere actually.

I could tell you all about how I kind of now collect Royal Family memorabilia - the result of my tea party for the Royal Wedding in 2011 where I started collecting mugs for people to drink out of and found it difficult to stop.

The one mug I do have with me - a buy from Ashbourne made on the bloggers trip to Norbury Manor

I could tell you all about how I love them and that the tackier they are the harder I fall for them (Andrew and Fergie's is a favourite I have to tell you) but that they live in a box in a cupboard because my need for things to be organised and for things to have use means that I really have no idea where to put them.

Because that's what you need for a collection. A space to put it in. And that is the one thing that I don't have at the moment and when I think too hard about that my brain gets a little wappy and the emotions start leaking out my eyes and I make little whimpery noises about not having all my belongings around me and the hardships of trying to nest in a very small space.

And so I won't tell you about those collections.

Because I don't need to.

Because there's one collection that's right under my nose.

Here. This blog.

This blog which is the small, but ever-growing collection of the little events that have happened in my life. The funny anecdotes and the days out. The things that have been made and the trials that I've had making them. The time spent with family and friends and The Person. It's all right here, in one tiny internet space.

And I don't even have to spend any money or ruin the sides of my wardrobe with glue from those advertising bugs.

Bonus.

Brat attack

I will hold my hands up and say that at times I can be quite the spoilt brat. Now I don’t believe this is my fault (speaking like a true brat) and really, can you blame someone for being a brat if it’s not their fault? No. You can’t.


I was the worst of all combinations – youngest child + only child. Youngest child because, you know, I was the youngest child and everyone knows that everyone loves the youngest best. Sorry people who are older siblings, and even more sorry to those poor souls who are middle children (man you get the raw end of the deal), but everyone loves the youngest best. Only child because my siblings were much older than me (13 and 11 years) and really my formative years took place with just me rattling round the house but also because I was my Dad’s only child.

See? Not my fault I was spoilt. I had no chance.

I try not to be spoilt and most of the time I succeed, but brattishness is a hard mantle to shake. And then if people spoil me I seamlessly shift back in to brat mode and forget my place. Take for instance, the ex. He shamelessly spoilt me and I knew it and I revelled in it, and now that I’m not being treated like an overgrown Persian cat I’m a little bit bewildered.

And then, just when I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m not special and I don’t get everything I want, along came Hayley.

Remember I wrote that post about how much I love nail varnish a few weeks ago? And remember that I whined (with, some might say, a brattish intonation) that I didn’t win the giveaway because the winner was picked by a random number generator?

Hayley indulged me. She sent me a SPECIAL (yes capitals are needed) prize because I am amazing.

And it arrived in the post last week and I didn’t get a chance to photograph it before I went away and I’ve not got around to doing it until now so she’s not allowed to hate me. Also. Yes the next few pictures were taken in the kitchen which was the only place I could vaguely get some light.

As I was over enthusiastic and wrote a whole essay Hayley felt I deserved a prize all of my own and contained within the envelope of glory were the following:

- Nail varnish remover
- Cotton wool pads
- Hand and nail cream
- THREE nail varnishes. COUNT THEM
- Special tin containing special things

She’s a clever girl, with the nail varnish remover in the package I could immediately set up taking the varnish off my nails and putting on a new one, regardless of that fact that I was at work. I did contemplate trying to put all the colours on at once but went for just one, I’d show you a photo but it was removed and replaced with lilac for the wedding.

And the special tin with special things? Well that was very special because it had in it another nail varnish (cue skipping and jumping and hopping dance) in an incredibly vampy red and some eye shadow and an eye liner pencil.

Yes I know, bad photo bad photo but I'm doing my best here people!

I have revelled in my prize. I have showed it repeatedly to people, all the time crowing “I’M VERY SPECIAL. I GOT A SPECIAL PRIZE.”

And now I fear that the brat is back.

So you should just, you know, give me things.

NOW.

Thanks the Hayley!

Not quite where I thought I'd be

When I was a little girl I imagined what my life would be like. I would obviously get married and I would have the babies and I would have the house and I would have the job. My brain never went into more detail than that, I’m not one of those girls who knows what every aspect of her wedding will be like (in fact I fear that I’ll be one of those unfortunates who just looks like a twat in a big white dress) and I was never specific about how many children I would have, how big, or where, the house would be and no idea what career ladder I would be climbing.


There was only one thing fixed in my head. The age by which all this would have happened.

That age?

My late twenties.

Hmmm...

The trouble with this dream was threefold:

1. I was little! I was at an age where 40 means you’re close to your grave and in my head late twenties was pretty damn old.

2. I had the older brother and sister leading the way – they were both married and sprogged up by the time they were my age, so of course I thought it was reasonable. What I didn’t realise was that really they were the exception to the rule, my sister especially, she is Mrs Big Fancy Boss Woman, but only because she had her children pretty early on, went straight back to work and got to hop, skip and jump up the ladder in her 30s when all her fellow female colleagues were dropping out to deliver their offspring into the world.

3. I have an older Mum. She was 38 when she had me and although I love her dearly, I was conscious of having an older Mum and didn’t really like it growing up. The gap between her generation and mine just seemed so big and I know we all think our parents don’t understand us but mine really really didn’t, she was bewildered by me a little bit I think. I wanted to still be fairly young when I had my kiddywinks.

Anyway. Whatever the reasons were I think it’s easy to say that it aint gonna happen. Unless I win millions of pounds enabling me to buy my own house and pressure someone into impregnating me in the next couple of years, that childhood dream will remain just that.

And weirdly enough, I’m starting to feel ok with that. A few years ago when Mr Gym Freak and I split up I went into a complete spiral and thought that my life was over and I’d never find anyone ever again and all my chances of realising my dreams were up in smoke. But, you know, you get over it don’t you?

And then I thought I’d found it all again with the ex only, well you all know well enough, that didn’t work out and so I find myself, at 27, not in a house with a husband and a baby but in a house with a friend and two cats. I won’t lie, at first it was difficult, when I moved in to Dorothy’s I went upstairs to unpack and just stood there looking at all my shit all over this tiny double room and couldn’t believe what I’d done, I wanted to take it all back immediately.

The trouble is, the childhood me never took into consideration the notion of happiness. My brain was focused on the end products – husband, house, child – not on the feelings that went hand in hand and if I have only learned one thing over the past few years, it’s that the happiness thing is the most important.

I could have had, or come incredibly close, to having all that Tiny Me wanted. All I would have had to have done was discount my happiness. It wasn’t terrible, I could have stayed, but I knew that I couldn’t put those feelings to one side and so blew up those dreams in a puff of smoke. Like I said, I am now feeling ok about that, yes it’s sad but it isn’t the end of the world, life is carrying on and I know, I know, that me being happy is more important than some silly childhood dream.

But.

A week on Saturday I will attend the first wedding of my group of friends. I can’t wait, for one thing the pair of them have been engaged for freakin’ years, but I can’t lie, it’s made me feel a little wobbly and although I will be at the wedding just being happy for the pair of them I know that there’ll be a little part of me inside that is just ever so sad (and more than a little jealous) that it’s so far away from my grubby little mitts. This is sometimes made worse by the fact that out of the seven of our group, three are engaged, one has a baby with her partner, two live with their partners....and then there’s me. Excellent.

When I do start to feel wobbly I try to focus myself and tell myself to calm. down. It’s all fine. It’s all going to work out (no don’t ask me how I know, I put all my energy into not asking that question). You are happy, that’s what’s important. Repeat after me, “You are happy. You are happy.”

And then equilibrium is restored.

...

Until earlier this week when one of the girls who lives with her boyfriend announced that she was engaged.

Anyone got a paper bag to hand?

Hell yes this is in Hull - Part One

Can you indulge me for a couple of posts please? Can we pretend that I’m not posting a week after Bank Holiday and that instead I am a mere day late? I could be wrong, but just lately I get the feeling that my employers want me to actually work for a living. It’s incredibly inconvenient and has really gotten in the way of my blog posting duties.

So you remember Bank Holiday right? Of course you do, it was a just a day ago.

You might have picked this up by now but I love my Hull. I’m not the only one, all of us Hull citizens (do we have a name?!) are fiercely proud of our mothership. And when I say fiercely proud I mean scarily, up in your grill, proud of it. Don’t be talking shit about our city. Only we’re allowed to do that. I think it comes from being constantly under siege, we have to be proud, we have to believe that we are the greatest because if we believed everything we heard about ourselves we’d all throw ourselves in the Humber and have done with it.

I don’t know why everyone hates us but nobody wants to say anything nice about us. Like, ever. Instead people will say “You’re from Hull did you say? Oh yes don’t you have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Britain?” “Isn’t Hull the obese capital of Europe?” “Don’t you have the worst schools in the UK?” “Is it true that the streets are so vicious everyone wears stab vests?” “Didn’t you get voted number one when the Crap Towns book was first published?” (Yes. It’s a sore point.)

The main problem appears to be that there is this general impression that Hull is a not very nice place, for whatever reason, which is then perpetuated to the point where it becomes fact. You’ll get people telling you about the city who have never even been there. Bad form, people, bad form.

I am on a one woman mission to promote my city. Yes at times it is a little bit shit but I bloody love it thank you very much and you know what? Some parts of all cities are a little bit shit sometimes.

This Bank Holiday someone came to visit me and I wanted to show Hull at its very best. However with no car and with guinea pig duties pressing heavily on me I felt somewhat at a loss as to where to take them.

Inspiration came in the form of East Park. The house I grew up in backed on to it so I was there most weekends when I was growing up. It’s where I first learnt what a wallaby was. It’s where I got bitten by a goose (horrifying experience). It’s where I played bob-down tig with my Dad only didn’t bob down fast enough, leaving me with a crescent shaped scar on my forehead where his fingernail punctured my skin. Aaah happy days.

The best thing about East Park is that it has it all. Playground? Check. Animals? Check. Grassy areas. Check. Places to climb? Check. Water play area? Check.

It was the rather lucky recipient of a £6 million pot of money from the Heritage Lottery Fund a few years ago for the purposes of redevelopment and it is now a work of art. Whereas I made do with a paddling pool which would be filled up in early July and not emptied until the end of August, children now have a whole trickling river to play in complete with fountains and Archimedes Screw. Whereas I used to vainly stand at the fence, willing an animal, any animal, to come near me, I can now lean over and touch goats and point at guinea pigs and get close to the deer and wallabies.

An albino wallaby! Hello my name is awesome.

The little sweet shop on the corner that was there when I was a wee thing is still there now and you can still get a bag of duck food for 50p and go and sit near the boating lake and get attacked by ducks and geese and pigeons.

(Luckily my life changing experience of being bitten by a goose has not totally traumatised me)

You can wander amidst the gardens and you can now go to a freakin’ cafe which they built with the new money. You can clamber amongst the rocks of Khyber Pass, albeit with a little more health and safety considerations than when I was young. You can climb up some steps and see this view in front of you.

Yes. That is in Hull people.

And even more exciting than any of this is the fact that I’ve discovered that East Park has a free outdoor gym in it! I saw a BBC Breakfast segment about this a long time ago but had no idea where was one here right under my nose. So much fun and I swear, if I lived closer (another misconception is that Hull is small. It’s not. It’s freakin’ massive) I would go here. Exercise bikes, cross trainer type contraptions (which are harder work than the real thing), leg press, chest press machines. All there and available for you to use. For free. Unbelievable. You might have to fight the kids for it however, I did a fair amount of muttering that went something along the lines of “I’m not allowed to play on their swings, why do they get to go on this stuff” but I guess I should be gracious and be pleased that young people are taking an interest in being active. (God I’m such a zen master.)

All this.

For free.

Just call me Hull’s Official Ambassador.

Surrogate Mother

Just in case you were wondering (and obviously you were) I’m done with the guinea pig sitting now. My short spell as surrogate mother to the three furry wonders came to an end on Sunday and I am most relieved to say that we all made it through the experience alive.

Guinea pigs were a new realm for me. I remember wanting one when I was young only to have Mum declare that they were smelly (an accusation I have frequently heard thrown in their direction, I can confirm they do not stink. Or else my nose doesn’t work.) and I couldn’t have one but could have a hamster instead.

And so Bunty entered my life. Yes that’s correct, I named her Bunty after the weekly comic that I would get from the Newsagents next door.

I would love to paint a glorious picture for you of how I’m such a huge animal lover and really I think I am but I hated that hamster. I hated it. She was nippy and bitey and I developed a complete phobia of picking her up in case my hand fell off. My only real pleasure came from cleaning her out and giving her a nice fresh cage, only to be horrified when she messed it up (a problem I also had with the guinea pigs admittedly, can’t they be trained to use a litter box like cats? Do they really just have to crap everywhere?). Smudge and Belinda, our cats at the time, used to sit either side of her cage, watching her swing from her bars like a pirate and there would be just the teeniest, tiniest part of me that would sort of, kind of wonder what would happen if one of them got hold of her.

Bunty finally came to pass 2 long years later. I don’t really know what she died of, we came down one morning and she was lying in her cage sort of rocking/shaking and not long after that she died. I did cry, I’m not a complete heartless beast, and she was even given a full burial service, thanks to the fact that my Dad was tongue and grooving the downstairs toilet and had some spare wood to make a coffin. Bunty still (as far as I know) resides under a tree in the back garden.

I will still linger outside the cages of hamsters at Pets At Home but my favourites are really the guinea pigs, despite the way that they scurry about and try to get away from you when you desperately try to reach into the enclosure to touch them.

I am happy to report that these guinea pigs lived up to all my expectations and more. They are basically a perfect size, not too small that they creep you out but not so big that they scare the hell out of you (I must be the only person on earth to be massively a little bit scared of big rabbits). You can sit them on your lap and they won’t move and are happy to just sit there and be petted, unlike cats which will only tolerate petting for so long. All they’re really interested in is grubbing about and just being guinea pigs. Brilliant.

I have to say however that the whole cleaning out of the cage would begin to wear thing after a while. Much as I like animals I can be a bit of commitment-phobe at times, probably why I like cats so much. Guinea pigs are a commitment, you need to be there to give them their fresh stuff in the morning and change their water bottles and you need to be there at night to clear out any muck and let them have a little run around in their outdoor run. It’s kind of a big responsibility and whilst it was one I was happy to do for one week in the middle of summer, having to do it in the dark and the rain in the depths of winter doesn’t sound as appealing to be honest.

Much as I would like a guinea pig, I don’t think I’m ready for it just yet. I’d rather wait until I was a parent and let my child have one. That way I could pass cleaning and general care responsibilities on to said child and dress it up as a ‘learning experience.’

Wait a minute.

It seems strange that I’ve just said I would rather get a child before a guinea pig. Not living in reality? Me? I don’t think so.

(If you were wondering, Apple is the brown one, Blossom is the white one with evil red eyes and Poppet is the sandy coloured one and, quite frankly, my favourite. How could she not be given this picture...?!)

How very lovely my dear

This Sunday saw The Stitchettes gather together in a garden in the sun.

You see Hull isn't really all that bad you know. I know this might be hard for some of you to believe, only hearing the absolute worst stuff about us. Yes we have a poor educational record, yes we are the most obese city in the country, yes we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate, yes we have horrific levels of unemployment.*

But did you also know we have a rather thriving middle class?

Seriously. There are posh people in Hull. I should know, I'm one of them.

Just to clarify, it is fairly easy to qualify as being posh - you just don't have to have a Hull accent. This is rarer than it sounds.

The middle classes do their best to cling together, although growing up I was well out of it. I lived in the east, most certainly not middle class territory. Much of the middle class can be found in The Avenues in the west of Hull, living in the rather fabulous massive houses down the leafy tree-lined streets. My Grandparents lived there and my Dad does now.

Every year there is an event called the Open Gardens. People can elect to open their gardens for people to come and have a jolly good nosey lovely, admiring wander around. To be clear, you don't get to tramp through people's houses to do this, you enter the gardens down passageways, you don't get lucky enough to have a proper good look.

Entrance to all the gardens costs £3 and the proceeds go to charity. When I was a young thing I have memories of Grandma and Grandpa opening their garden up and rather proudly trying to show people round it. I haven't been for so many years and I think I've been missing out.

This weekend, one The Stitchette's parents were opening their garden to the hordes and we decided to set up camp and stitch away to try and raise some more money for one of The Stitchette's upcoming trip to Ghana. We sat round a table, under the shade and stitched away for a few hours, I managed to almost finish a piece I'm doing for my sister (no pictures yet I'm afraid), and I felt good.

Really really good. I felt relaxed and happy and more content than I have done in a while. Things are very up and down at the moment, hopefully everything will even out once I'm completely moved out of the flat, so until then I kind of cherish these moments when I get a sudden realisation that I really did make the right decision and really couldn't feel any happier.

And, at that precise moment, any more middle class.

*there is a chance that these 'facts' are dubious. I could have done research but quite frankly couldn't be bothered. They are definitely things we have been accused of in the past though.

PS I hope it is clear that my tongue is very much in cheek at the moment.