I've got a feeling, if I sing this loud enough...

Is it me or did 2009 go REALLY fast?

Seems like maybe last month that I was singing along to Muse's Knights Of Cydonia as Big Ben went BONG (it actually does go BONG, have you seen the Twitter page?).

You'd think the year would have dragged on longer just because I spent most of it doing nothing but schoolwork. What have I done this year?

1. I finished school at last.

2. I started sixth form (oh noooes!!).

3. I turned 16.

4. I got a job.

5. I brain-damaged myself.

6. I kept all my New Year's Resolutions because I didn't really have any.

That's more or less all I did this year.

The Noughties was actually a totally shit decade for the UK because we had the Seven/Seven terrorist attacks, the economy slipped into the shitter, Robin Hood got cancelled on the BBC, High School Musical was unleashed and other terrible, inhumane things probably happened too.

According to The Daily Mail 2010 will be better which basically means the rest of us a fucked. I hate that newspaper.

My spidey-senses are telling me that tonight will be a night to forget, and my planner is telling me that I am not going to get all my homework done in time and that I'm going to fail my exams and get kicked out of sixth form, then I'll lose my job and then I'll be murdered.

Excellent year coming up.

But, I get spend it with people like Hooker, Mo-Balls, Lemon, Anner, Smelly, Buff, Lil AB and the Rugrats so it could actually be the stuff of awesome.

Happy New Year: eat, drink and be merry.

All that for a chocolate orange.

You may or may not know of the Chrimbo tradition of buying Terry's Chocolate oranges for everyone and their mothers regardless of whether they died twenty years ago or not.



Fig. 1 - A Terry's Chocolate Orange in it's prime.

It's something we do every year in the UK. I currently have three of these delights in my bedroom.

Today at work we were selling them for 25p as opposed to the usual £3-something and within ten minutes of arriving we noticed something... wrong...

The ticket machine was going apeshit, firing out reservations BY THE HUNDREDS of Terry's Chocolate Oranges.

We eventually realised that the system had cocked up and allowed people to reserve MANY more than we actually had in stock.

This was the beginning of the end...

Today I had my longest shift yet and it was an early morning. Everyone was hungover (or still slightly drunk, bless 'em) and generally dying, myself included.

The day was littered with "My friend phoned and said Argos were selling chocolate oranges?" "I'm sorry but we've sold out." "But I made a reservation!" "I can only apologise, the system allowed more reservations than we had in stock." "I don't believe that for a second! It's your staff! You've taken all the chocolate oranges." "Well you can speak to my manager if you like..." "Well it is VERY suspicious that it only happened in this branch." "Like I say, I can only apologise but we have no more chocolate oranges." "Right. I want a refund." "You haven't bought anything." "I- This is a bloody disgrace." "Sorry."

By the end of the day I was THIS close to snapping at the customers. Why do they have a go at ME?! I didn't even buy any damned chocolate oranges. But it happened anyway. I got yelled at over and over for a solid seven hours throughout the day by different people with a common goal...

It was like the search for the golden ticket or something. People are so greedy.

I was sorta glad to go home. You get a heavy dose of 'people' when you work in retail.

Buuuut, I'm back, front and centre at 12 o'clock tomorrow, and 10 o'clock the next day.

Keep calm and carry on.

This post is meant to be about Christmas.

I'm the worst neighbour in the world. My neighbours may be crazy and senile and scarily devout but they haven't come calling on me with a shotgun yet, perhaps because they are crazy and senile and scarily devout, but if I were them, I'd've ended myself a long time ago.

Instead, my neighbours much have heard me singing along to Barry White's "You're The First, The Last, My Everything" at 5am last week and interpreted thusly: They bought me a diary a la Bridget Jones for Christmas.

I LOVE YOU, YOU CRAZY OLD JOSSERS!

Seriously though, they're pretty great, even when they're inexplicably putting bricks in flowerpots.



The stone age must have been a pretty quirky time to be alive if this is any reflection.

For Christmas I got a lighter, a deck of cards and a fugload of alcohol, so I'm assuming my parents want me to start up a poker den of some variety.

Christmas dinner... Oh my God. I'll never look at a cheesecake again as long as I live. We meant to have pigs in blankets but we didn't have enough bacon so my sister cut it all up and wrapped up the sausages again. In the end we had pigs in flannels.

We drove to my grandma's... Had the shock of my life. I fell asleep with my neck in a funny position, and then woke up to my mum and sister yelling so I jerked awake, thinking we were going to crash or something. The jerk made my neck twist weirdly, my legs went tingly and all because a rabbit ran out in front of the car. It made a horrible popping noise as the car went over it.

On the way back home it rained like hell and the roads sheeted over with ice. It was pretty epic.

And now I'm here, drinking coca cola mixed with Cherry Sourz (it tastes like LIFE) and counting down the hours until I have to get up for work. Six hours left.

Hope you all had a fab Christmas and I'll invite you round for a game of poker once I've learnt how to stop sucking so hard at it.*

*The last time I played poker I won, but it wasn't because I was awesome at the game, it was because I'm so bad at it the stars aligned and caused a paradox.

A maths lesson.

Today:

Mince pies eaten - 0

Pork pies eaten - 5.5

Hours of sleep - 4

Hours spent shopping for food - 2

Hours spent wrapping Christmas presents - 4.5

Money spent on alcohol for everyone - £25.98

Money spent on alcohol for self - £22.48

Units of alcohol consumed thus far - 5

Minutes before I fall asleep - 4

= Merry Christmas.

In other words, it's really fecking cold.

Allow me to demonstrate in pictures what the past 24 hours have been like...

Fig. 1


Fig. 2


Fig. 3


Fig. 4


Fig. 5

Fig. 1 - Yesterday's 'Oooh, snow! Bit cold isn't it?"
Fig. 2 - Walking home in the snow, blizzards and general bollock-freezing conditions.
Fig. 3 - Epic rigger boots that kept my feet uncharacteristically toasty. Sadly have no grip despite having steel toe caps, distressed leather and other signs of being HARDCORE. Being designed for oil rigs might also have given me the impression that they'd at least put up some defense against the snow, but NO, I fell flat on my arse twice instead.
Fig. 4 - Nearing school... Thought this was a pretty nice scene.
Fig. 5 - A side street near my house. Salters didn't bother to clear it so it was rather nice/horrendous to walk down.

And apparently it's going to get worse and carry on snowing until Monday.

Lemme just stress that it is FREEZING COLD, as in, MY HAIR FROZE TO MY HEAD THIS MORNING.

That bad.

I can't wait.

(In other news, I got my contract at work extended. Woop!)

On Christmas cheer.

York puts up the Christmas decorations at the end of October. Halloween mix-ups lead to a Zombie Santa knocking at my door for sweets once - excellent statement, kiddo.

Anyhoo, at school we wait until the 1st of December to put up the decorations, but I'm known to've been singing Christmas songs since early May (hey, Slade is timeless).

Tonight is the sixth form Christmas party (no booze = no fun = no Nicole present), and today we were all sat in the common room sticking Guns N' Roses posters and the like to the walls (go Year 13, go!) when very suddenly...

IT'S SNOWIIIIIING!

There was pause enough for everyone to stop what they were doing, pull up the blinds, turn down the music and look out of the window, and then a cheer went up.

People were dancing, pushing up all the blinds, wearing tinsel, hugging, cheering, and then the speakers threw out Mariah Carey like never before.

SNOW!

We don't get snow here much, but when we do it's a big deal. Especially in the lower school. We'd had a few flakes of sleet-ish stuff this morning and the year sevens went apeshit, but now? Actually flakes of white snow and stuff. I wasn't sure it'd settle but Will AWESOMEFACE Torgerson, our unofficial wrong-75%-of-the-time-and-so-still-kinda-reliable weatherman said that it'll snow through til 8am tomorrow. And then I got home to see the whole of Yorkshire is on a severe weather warning (CODE RED, WEAR A COAT - England stops for no snowman, big or small).

Another thing is that you always now it's Christmas in the UK if the Coca Cola advert has been on TV. There's a Facebook group for it as well. It's a BIG. DEAL. if the Coca Cola advert comes on.

However, one sure way to kill the Christmas spirit (somewhat literally) is as follows.

1. Make a chocolate Santa, rap it up in Santa-looking foil with a ribbon and bell around the waist.

2. Put a stonking great sticker on the bottom reading "WARNING: BELL AND RIBBON REPRESENT CHOKING HAZARD".

3. Leave poor customer wondering what part of Christmas choking to death symbolises.

4. Allow customer to weep over the realisation that it must be the number of cold turkey sandwich-related deaths each Christmas.

5. See to it that customer becomes disaffected and becomes a whole different level of cold turkey in time for Christmas.

Learn from Whittards' mistakes, people.

And I just totally forgot that I have a bottle of WKD next to me. Weird night.

I always remember Christmas shopping for walking around town in the dark in my school uniform, looking around for presents for everyone whilst freezing my nads off.

Different this year... It didn't get dark so quickly, I don't wear a school uniform anymore and I wasn't shopping for everyone.

There are only four friends I'm buying Christmas presents for this year: Lemon, Hooker, Anner and Mo-Balls. I lovelovelove shopping for these guys. On my birthday I dragged Lemon around town with me and bought her lots and lots of stuff which left her despairing over how much I'd spent on her (to be fair I bought stuff for Mo-Balls, Anner and Hooker as well). I went clothes shopping with Hooker and discovered that yes, shopping with a gay is a rare delicacy, but shopping for a gay is an absolutely Nightmare with a capital N, even if he's only half a gay.

Mo-Balls is especially hard to shop for because she's like... vintage and stuff, and likes strange things like old opera glasses and garters (her dad bought her boyfriend a garter a few months ago for The Rocky Horror Picture Show - très amusant) so I asked her and got THE most ambiguous reply ever: "Just get me something cheap from the Borders closing down sale."

Excuse me for a moment... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Ahem.

I trecked across down in the fog and cold for two hours and found lots of little things for other people, but Mo-Balls? No. I ended up heading towards Cath Kidson, which is a big mistake if you are on my somewhat limited budget.

Cath Kidson... Very twee, quite nice and most of all very expensive. The first time I went past I stopped myself before I went in, but then I decided I might as well take a look...

Tiny weeny rubber ducks - £4.99 (normal price, 75p, tops.)
Strange tacky hair clip - £7.99 (I've had people give me them for free on the market)
A single hair bobble - £6.50 (Normal price, 30p for 20)

What the hell is wrong with that place?

And of course I couldn't have a shopping trip without having a run-in with the staff of one store or another...

Imagine the scene: Scruffy teenager stood in Cath Kidson - high-end, v.plush shop - with hoodie bought on sale at H&M, jeans that were bought in the UK's equivalent of WalMart and are now ripped and worn beyond repair, shoes that are faded and scuffed and a bag that has definitely seen better days. The staff - pretty, primped and straight-laced twentysomethings who had a humour bypass at birth and have a silver spoon rammed up their arse. One of the clerks sees me looking at a flowery tape measure and sniffs. My eyes narrow, she goes bug-eyed. I put down the tape measure, bury my hands in my hoodie, scowl like I mean it and say "I wouldn't be here if I was buying for myself."

The lady doesn't even try to look apologetic. Stuck up bitch.

And I have a full day of working in a shop and extra Christmas shopping tomorrow to cause more problems. Yippee...

I don't want a lot of Christmas... no, really. I mean it this time.

Christmas is going to be gluuum this year. I spend most of my work hours around awesome things like stacks and stacks of shiny toys and games and TVs and consoles and.. umm... full body waxing kits and I give customers all these fabulous things and I know that they are going to have a massively better Christmas than me because even with my staff discount, I can't afford squat.

Bah humbug, all I do around Christmas is worry about money and torment my brother, but even he is going to Paris this Christmas, the bastard.

Anyhoo, in the interest of saving money (I have £20 to buy presents for all my friends and family this year - fail) this is what I want for Christmas:

- Word of the day calendar: because seriously, those things are awesome and Our Lord Archer is forever telling me to expand my vocabulary because I'm working class and I can't let the middle class win by out-smarting me or something.

- Awesome keyring: My keys are currently the nosiest set of keys ever, with a digital photo frame, two keys, two huge Nightwish keyrings and a USB stick. The colour is all wrong. I want a REALLY BRIGHT KEYRING.

- More photo frames: I have this amazing five-panel one that Lemon got me for my birthday and now that it's filled with pictures of me, Anner, Mo-Balls, Lemon and Hooker (alternative name for BFF Main Gay.5) it sits around on my shelf and winks awesomeness at me.

- The Resistance by Muse: I've been waiting to be able to afford this album for three months = TOO LONG.

- Lots of AAA batteries: My MP3 player chews through these in minutes.

- A deck of cards: I'm forever borrowing other people's cards.

Bonus: The strength to withstand my ASSHOLE SISTER for another year.

No worries, I think she might get better with time.

Anyhoo, I have to go to my primary school's Christmas fair before heading down to The Duchess for muchos music and drink, so I'll be off now.

Happy Friday, peeps!