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.

I don't remember yesterday...

Last night I was making a shopping list and I found a notebook that I took to Tenerife over summer. It was a very interesting read because I took it everywhere with me. I remember making waiters nervous when I sat in restaurants by the seafront taking notes. That may have been why they kept lining up free drinks for me.

Enjoy.

Lying in hospital strapped to machines on oxygen with numerous IVs in each hand:

"This never happened before I met Bill, it's all Eric's fault" - Apparently I said that. Lying in a Tenerifian private hospital somewhat pissed off that I'm in for a long recovery because APPARENTLY vampires don't actually exist and so I can't just siphon some blood off one of them. Crapola.

Reflections on being in hospital:

Two hours of my life spent thinking I was Sookie Stackhouse. So not only did I think the voices I was hearing where thought, I thought I was American, had no parents and was screwing at least one of two very hot vampires. Oh how disappointed I was to be.

Sitting by a volcanic beach contemplating nudity:

Climatising to public partial nudity the only way I know how = staring hard. Somewhat annoyed and insecure that my reaction is larger than those of the guys here. Maybe all Spaniards are celibate. I'm willing people's shorts into action just so I look normal.

How much the locals loved me:

Already renamed 'Señorita Loco' by the local locals after I invested in a particularly unbecoming hat.

Sat in a bar with small children screaming at their parents for money:

I am far too poor and humble to be around so many spoilt, whiny and rich children. When I have kids, we'll live in a trailer in Louisiana or Arkansas and a 'treat' will be a trip to WalMart where I'll buy them chocolate milk... IF THEY'RE LUCKY. Yeehaw.

The Presidente-lady of the apartment building visits:

The Presidente visited the pool today. Tempted to have a 'The Young Ones' moment and strut around in a motorcycle helmet with a baseball bat yelling 'VIVA EL PRESIDENTE!' - it's a pity I can't move.

Ruminations on the law:

One of the great things about Tenerife is the law. It's AWESOME. Hospital time aside, I've spent every night ordering drinks and being dared to down x amount of shots by bar owners. I think the USA's drinking age restriction is 21, in the UK it's 18 and here in Tenerife it's about 5.

Looked in the mirror:

Look like Frankenstein's monster's wife's second cousin-in-law. Feeling similar.

Decided bad things only happen to me when I do expensive things:

Furthermore, will not spoilt kids so that they know a good thing when they see it, unlike my mammon of a sister.

Setting affairs in order:

List of priorities:
- Have more vampire dreams
- Find purple hate
- Buy cheap but nice jewelry
- Buy stamps
- Send postcards
- Cause Cleo harm
- Get a decent night's sleep.

Must've written this in the dead of night because my handwriting is impossible:

...And on the ninth day, she arrested.

Must've missed English food:

...Ploughman's sandwich. And if you don't know what one of those is, I'm disgusted and think you should go assemble cheese, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, Branston Pickle (only the best) and a tiny splodge of mayo on some buttered brown bread and sink your teeth in. It's 400 calories of burning love.

I love myself:

Ten good things about me:

1. I am charming. Really.
2. I almost never forget to brush my teeth.
3. When I sustain blows to the head I talk funny.
4. I make the best mushroom stroganoff EVER.
5. If I freak out, I got the whole hog.
6. I don't do small injuries. At all. Ever.
7. I'm so allergic to everything at bread and water is good enough in ANY situation.
8. I can make you look skinny.
9. I can drink like a whale.
10. I'm very simple.

Oddly enough I can't remember writing any of this.

Can you smell burning?

I suspect that I am a culinary genius.

My cooking is wunderbar anyway, but it's just got even more awesomer.

Pity about the grammar, but the cooking is still good.

Anyhoo, today I may have been rushed into choosing between buying Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography or two student cookbooks.

It was close, but I now possess two tasty cookbooks. They taste GREAT.

So I'm giving you a warning, because I suspect that I will be making tasty things from now on.

And I'm afraid that I cannot do anything dynamic in this post because I am draining my laptop's precious, expensive internet fuel because my dad is hogging the computer and generally being uncooperative.

There was a moment where I thought I wouldn't be able to complete NaBloPoMo because of it. 3 days left, would've been gutting.

And I definitely need a break then or I'll be posting random crap with no real meaning every single day or something.

Ahem, yes. There you go.

Missing in action.

My sister has just totalled my laptop so I won't be around as much.

I'll finish NaBloPoMo and then I might now be back until around the 7th when I can get my laptop fixed.



My laptop has a monthly allowance on it so I don't have to pay insane amounts to use the internet but my lovely, delightful, charming sister used it all up talking to our neighbour on webcam whilst watching videos of shrieking cats (the sadist, I hate those videos) whilst I work myself into the ground, so now I have no free internet. I need to save what I've got left (not much) because I have to do research for the exams coming up on the 13th/15th of January and if I don't do that, I'll get less than a D in the exams.

If I get less than a C, Our Lord Archer will personally see to it that I get kicked out of sixth form.

I'd have to repeat the year anyway.

My sister is a dick.

So yarse... After Friday I'll be back around the 7th, because of that.

Just a head's up.

Looking backwards, reaching forwards.

Things I am looking forward to, 2010-2019

- Opening my 2010 Word Of The Day calender.

- Using my awesome diary thing.

- Getting school out of the way.

- True Blood Season 3

- Attending Lemon and Rob Pattinson's star-studded wedding.

- Earning £1000.

- Buying a new damn phone.

- Kelsi turning 16 in 2019... hahahaha...

- Moving out.

- Being old enough to buy alcohol without having my mum give me dirty looks as I do it.

- Pub crawling at 18.

- Visiting America (that's more or less sorted out now, anyway)

- The next three Southern Vampire Mysteries books (sounds bizarre but it's actually True Blood - suck it up, bitches).

- Hitting 10000 tweets on Twitter.

- Having better things to blog about.

Here's hopin'.

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.

It's like Jimi Hendrix doing adverts for WHSmiths.*

* My dad's latest metaphor (simile?) for highly unlikely events. I think "Kurt Cobain speaking for the National Health Service" is better.

I was woken up at the back-end of 12 o'clock this morning because I had to suffer a bi-annual check-up at the dentists. It all went well, though as I was walking out I mentioned to my mum that my teeth must have recovered from the knock my face got in Tenerife.

Five seconds later I was back in the chair getting a damn x-ray, only to find that I'd cracked the root of my tooth (one of the back teeth. They have deep roots so you can imagine how hard I must have landed when I fell down the stairs in order to fracture that). Then the dentist started questioning how extensive the damage was on impact and I mentioned that I have no feeling in the left side of my face now. So now I'm paraleptic or paraplegic or something. I can't remember the exact term but it means that my face is partially paralysed, possibly with a cheekbone fracture thrown in with a certain case of extensive nerve damage.

Joy.

When it first happened I blamed Eric Northman from True Blood because that was all I could remember after I had a seizure but now I just like the idea of Alexander Skarsgård owing me a favour.

Om nom nom nom.

Is it me or does he look vaguely Kurt Cobain?

What is it about me and Kurt Cobain?

Why is he so awesome?

Anyway.

I've been referred to something like a maxio-facial-spatial-reconstructional clinic to get my face fixed or something. I spaced out when I saw someone with a pork pie walk past.

Eff to mince pies. Even if I have definitely been the one eating all the pies every this year, at least 70% of all pies have been pork-related. I had the most intense pork pie on my break at work today. It was the balls. It opened up a whole new world of happiness, starshine and rainbows for me.

So my dad picked up me and my spaggy face up from work and after perhaps a minute of listening to Christmas carols he decided that fission sounded better, and then went onto say that the guy on the radio used to be the greatest revolutionary socialist speaker in the UK and was now talking about train times in Derby. Like Jimi Hendrix doing adverts for WHSmiths. That's the great thing about my dad. He looks like The Crow and comes out with even more random witty crap than me.

His awesomeness does not end there. I'm feeling oddly purposeful now because I'm listening to this band called Anti-Product who are performing at The Duchess in a couple of weeks and I'm helping to do the lights again. My dad's got me a funky little set-up that involves seeing live bands all the time.

I am in flavour country right now.

Barry White + industrial metal = I win.

I'm not even remotely listening to Barry White right now.

Not even a tiny bit.

I may have had an awesome time at Mo-Balls' house last night, with much Shloer, nibbles and Anner-made risotto (it tasted like Jesus). I may have watched Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason and then the final episodes of The Vicar Of Dibley (judge not... it's spectacular) before crashing on the floor.

I may have gotten paid and went wild in the Borders 90% off sale (so gutted it's closing) before trying on tons of clothes that didn't fit, went on a bender in HMV and came out with the following after deciding at the very last minute not to buy the Buffy The Vampire Slayer soundtrack (don't ask):

- Bridget Jones' Diary soundtrack
- Bridget Jones' Diary second soundtrack
- Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason soundtrack
- Love Actually soundtrack

Christmas rom-coms are the shit, make no mistake there.

Anyhoodle. I'd been listening to combos of Jamie Cullum, Amy Winehouse, Barry White and The Darkness all day and THEN I was thrown into The Duchess to see my one of my dad's bands (currently sitting at no. 20 in the Amazon UK singles chart) which just happens to be an industrial metal-ish affair. The urge to headbang was actually crippling. At one point I ended up working the lights and lit some of the show pretty nicely. I have never been so nervous about fucking up. Apparently I'm going to be lighting more shows from now on. Heaven help us all.

And I've just discovered that the Love Actually soundtrack has the Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) version of Christmas Is All Around.

This is going to be a very good Christmas. Hahaha...

There is nothing cute about freckles. At all. Ever.

Today I'm giving you the gift of knowledge.

You're welcome.

A few months ago Our Lord Archer was spreading (that word will never look the same again) the word about how he is OH SO MUCH better than us and that we can try REALLY FUCKING HARD if we like but WE WILL NEVER be as good as HIM.

And then he stopped abruptly to see two people in my class playing gay chicken. (love that game)

He THEN went on to say that when he was in the army, he spent his time doing much better things.

What sort of things? We asked.

He grins. It's the kind of grin you see when the person giving it is about to Break Your Soul.

"Freckles."

What's that? We all ask in awe.

"Well..." He says. "Say, for example you have a soft, brown substance on the floor..."

*A collective 'ewwwww...' goes here*

"And then you get a large flat object, put your face down here" *his face is now about 2 feet away from the floor* "and slam the large object down... and then count the freckles on your face."

We're all hanging onto his words so hard that it takes a moment for the idea to sink in.

And then...

Silence.

We all digest this.

One brave, broken soul pipes up "but then... you get... poo... on your... face."

"Yup." Our Lord Archer says without a blink.

There's a moment where we all swallow our revulsion. But he carries on: "It's best to keep your mouth closed. It's not really worth fifty points to get it in your mouth."

"..."

I think we've all learned something today.

"Fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy"

Rage Against The Machine have officially won the top spot on the Christmas singles in the UK.

Huzzah! The music charts haven't been spoon fed sappy pop ballads created by talentless televised talent contests (I hate The X Factor with a fiery passion) for once.

I spent most of the day at my brother's house today. I've discovered many things... the top four artists this Christmas (Peter Kay - hahaha -, Lady Gaga, JoeFromTheXFactor, Rage Against The Machine), just how vile drinking lager, tea and Shloer at the same time is, and also the fact that- FUCK, I left that book at my brother's again. Shee-ite.

I also made a list of my top five favourite songs this month, I know you-all are just DYING to find out...

1. Don't Fear The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

2. Breed - Nirvana

3. Rev 22.20 - Puscifer

4. Empire - Queensrÿche

5. The Cross - Within Temptation (Rachey'll love that)

Happy Sunday, whatever's left of it.

Shiny happy emptyhead

Five hours of being Smiley Cashier this morning has left me with bugger-all to write.

"I'd like to return this?"

"What is it?"

"Sellotape."

REALLY?!

Also,we have an offer on this weekend that involves fuckloads of gift vouchers, so my mind was BLOWN when I signed on to the tills at 9am and handed out nearly £200-worth of vouchers within the space of 10 minutes.

I also walked to the hospital in a blizzard, only to be sent halfway across York (to The Groves, to be fair) to get her some damn orange juice and then fell over in the most theatrical way possible. Excellent work, Nicole.

I'm worn out today. I'll be back tomorrow with tales of God only knows what because I'm going around to my brother's house for the day.

Keep... breathing...

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.

Ariba ariba!

Everyone knows I'm very passionate about my work. As in, I LOVE IT. I particularly love the shorter shifts and the times I become the manager's personal cashier maestro (oh, I got the mick taken out of me for that, I assure you). Working on the tills today I met a very nice man with a toaster.

You know, a normal day.

Nicole: Hi there!

Toaster Man: Hey! I'd like to return this toaster.

N: Ahh... broken?

TM: No, it's just too small for the bread I buy.

N: Oh you like the big crusty bread?

TM: Ahh, we get Warburtons, you know, in the blue packet?

N: Oh, me too!

TM: High five!

*high five*

N: It seriously doesn't fit in the toaster?

TM: Nope.

N: What a crappy toaster.

And then when trying to refund it I button-mash the till by accident causing the receipt to run out and the drawer to come flying forward. One of the managers laughs from across the store, I look utterly bewildered.

Fun times.

Eventually me and Toaster Man decide that Warburtons should make their own toasters, because there's no bread like Warburtons, you know?

--

Another moment not to be forgotten was when the stock manager noticed how clumsy I was. He was balancing the contents of the till drawers and I dived to get out of his way, crashed into a chair and fell over. Then I was taking the piss out of one of my... uhh, peers... and he ran at me with a ladder, I jumped back and fell over a cappuccino machine. Fun times.

--

And finally me and [redacted] were stood at the check out at closing time watching customers browsing the catalogues. [redacted] claps her hands and marches over to the customers, I tidy up the tills and can only hear [redacted] talking very loudly before looking up to see all the customers walking out in one long uniformed line.

"Uhh, are we allowed to do that?"

And then we reset the doors so people can get out but not in.

And dimmed the lights.

It's consumer-speak for GET THE FUCK OUT, WE'RE TIRED. Simple, yet effective.

--

But nothing, nothing beats serving people on the till, running off to catch their ticket and then picking their item before they've even had time to sit down. Their expressions are absolutely priceless. I am the Speedy Gonzales of the shopping world.

--

I loooove my job.

Just leave him alone 'cos the boy's bad news.

(I Want You So Hard - Eagles Of Death Metal = great song)

First of all, are you all conquering the crapness that is The X Factor by buying Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name. Christmas number one, surely! (Muthafuckeeeeeeerrrr! could be the new It's Chriiiiiiistmaaaassss!)

If you're not in on this, be in on this, immediately.

What are you still doing here? Go!

Done? Good.

This evenin' I went to see Lemon in her first play after running off to college to join the circus study performing arts and her character was a prostitute.

This is particularly hilarious because Emma happens to have enormous boobs. She puts the 'tit' in titans.

We were worrying all night that she'd fall out or bend over and we'd all be doomed but nothing happened, and she had a strategically placed feather boa to cover her up, but just as the very end she ran across the stage and me, Chez and Kirsty (one of Lemon's sisters) got an eyeful.

Five years of boob-related jokes and now I can say I've seen the light.

Me, Chez and Kirsty were in silent fits of giggled, I was gnawing on my hand to stop myself howling with laughter, Lemon was dispensing evils in our general direction.

All in all, it was a great night. Lemon is a fabulous actor/singer/dancer and I'm sure she'll go on to do great things with THE LOVE OF HER LIFE: Robert Pattinson. (I don't understand what people see in him... mostly.)

Anyhoo, I'm going to take off before the raging Twilight fans come and torch my house...

And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying fr- aww, fuck.

My favourite subject at sixth form is probably film studies. We watch films, analyse and compare them, write for a little while and then make our own films and that's more or less the whole course. The exam is just a couple of essays and there's only one exam which is great because exams make me ill (I get really bad colds when I'm stressed... I don't know either).

However, my favourite subject at school was English. I still do English but it's so wildly different that I'm no longer good at it, which makes me feel bad. (Can I get an 'awwwww...' please?)

Whilst the work's kinda crappy (bar the fact that I get to do tons of creative writing which I love) I still have insane amounts of fun in the lesson with my class.

Take today... We're studying Dubliners by James Joyce which is an insanely boring book (though the writing is pretty awesome) and we've all be been doing presentations on the short stories in them. A few months back, Evan, henceforth to be known as Smelly, put our names down to do a presentation on the last story: The Dead.

All the other stories in Dubliners are about three or four pages long, but this?

64 pages of utter boredom.

StupidbloodySmellyandhisbigmouthgonnagetmekilleditissoboring...

There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell I'd be reading the whole story.

And so after being given a date to do the presentation on, I forgot about it for a few months...

Fast forward to last night. I had a presentation to do on a text I hadn't read and I'd be telling the whole class about this story. Which I haven't read. At all.

Doooooooooooom...

The day went by fast enough, even with a psychology test and an essay to write, English came along sooner than expected. I sat around in the classroom waiting for people to filter in when someone said "I haven't actually read the story."

"Oh, no worries. Me neither." I said, hoping the teacher wasn't within earshot.

"But.. uhh... isn't it your presentation?"

"Well... yeah."

My morbid, evil-awesome friend Simon chips in. "Haha, you're fucked. Royally."

"Oh no, Simon. You're about to witness the biggest and best blag-act in the history of the known universe."

Smelly wonders in. "Hello, have you done those essays?" I ask, knowing the answer already.

"No."

"Have you done something for the presentation then?"

"THAT WAS TODAY?!"

"I TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT!"

"Yeah... last night... great timing."

The teacher walked in to see me whacking Smelly over the head with someone's notebook yelling "You're such a pain in the arse!"

At this point half of the class think that we haven't got a presentation and the news reaches the teacher's ears... She comes over to my desk and picks through my notes.

"Why are people saying you don't have a presentation?"

LieLieLieLieLie... "Oh.. uh, Evan's just despairing."

Smelly pipes up "We've got one, it's just not very good because she said-"

"NOT VERY GOOD? Don't say that. I wrote it you bell-end."

Teacher goes apeshit, yelling at Smelly for not doing his work AGAIN, and I get off lightly with a "Sorry Nicole. I know you've done the work."

She walks away and Smelly grumbles "It's like you're an angel or something."

"Dude, I am an angel as far as these people are concerned."

After a little while I'm left to do this presentation solo ("Hit it, Queenie!") because Smelly is evil. I pick my way though my notes, carefully copied and pasted from Enotes and I get a reasonable round of applause afterwards.

Teacher picks up afterwards and starts talking about epiphany and stuff and says "The only things certain in life are taxes and death."

Smelly says "Unless you live in Monacco."

Then Max Power - LEGEND - completely deadpan, says:

"You mean... people don't die in Monacco?"

Well done Max. Well done.

I think I's got punked.

I had this amazing dream this morning that I was allowed to stay in bed all day with a good book and just relaxxx... I know. Ridiculous. What kind of world do I think I live in? Sleep? Every day?! Madness!

So of course at 9.30 my stupid bloody sister and her friend woke up and started playing on the Wii really loudly, and then I hear "your sister was snoring all night".

"Shuddup, I hab a blockedeh nose-uh." And hoo boy... what a blocked nose it was. You know when you have a cold and you feel like your head is going to explode? It was like that. I try to get to sleep again when Cleo and friend go downstairs, and ten minutes later Cleo bursts in saying "Someone from work is on the phone for you".

Oh balls. I've cocked up too many times, I've done something terrible at work and having realised it or SOMETHING or else why would they call me?

"Uh... hellob?" Blocked nose - no help whatsoever.

"Hey Nicole, can you come into work today?"

First reaction: Phew...

Second reaction: So... sleepy... have to say yes... homework... will suffer...

So an hour later I was sat in the staffroom popping cold and flu capsules and fighting to keep my eyes open, and then the caffeine kicked in.

ohmygodohmygodworktodoohmygod.

Thankfully, I only cocked up twice on the tills as a result but I dropped some flat-pack shelves (those really thick ones that jut out from your walls without supports) on the foot I hurt yesterday leaving me hobbling around the shop floor accumulating pet hates as I tidied the place up:

1. People who pick up brochures and catalogues and leave them lying around on counters, seats or just the floor.

2. People who throw pens and/or draw all over the order forms, AND THEN LEAVE THEM FOR ME TO PICK UP.

3. People who hide all the pens in the catalogues.

4. People who let their kids rip up the damn leaflets.

5. People who pick stuff up and then put them down on the wrong shelves, and messily, at that.

6. People who come to the collection counter when I DID NOT SAY THEIR NUMBER, GRRR. (people who do it deliberately, that is)

7. People who judge me as trouble/unqualified because I'm so very obviously under 18.

8. People in general.

It's a vicious cycle.

Anyhoodle, I left work and trundled over to the bus stop where I found that buses don't actually run on Sundays.

Cue despair of the nth degree.

I waddled down to McDonald's and had my first Happy Meal in 10 years to ease my suffering. I can't say I missed much. (The gherkins/relish though? Top notch. I tip my proverbial hat to you cretins of the McDonald-iverse).

By the time I got home to my bro's kids I found that my nephew can crawl, my nieces are still awesome (there's that word again...) and that Ice Age 3 truly is the funniest film released this year. ("I feel... tingly." "Don't say that when you're pressed up against me!" "Not THAT kind of tingly!")

And now I'm trying to analyse a story by James Joyce for a presentation in English tomorrow (*gulp*) and revise for a test that my raving Feminist psychology/sociology teacher is making me do. Fun fun fun.

Just five more days and I can stop hitting deadlines for a little while...

Falling off the social ladder - oof, that was awful.

I'm 75% sure I've broken my foot.

We use ladders at work to reach the top shelf and some gosh-darn fool ordered something that was on the top shelf because they are mean and instantly the kind of customer I don't like picking items for. But I really shouldn't complaining about customers on the internet.

It's not the customers that I don't like, it's the tickets. Please don't Dooce me.

Anyhoo, I was at the top of the ladder and I was talking to someone, then I forgot I was stood on a ladder and stepped back and took my full weight (half a whale, give or take a horse or two) on one heel and it's been aching like a bitch ever since.

I wouldn't mind having a screwed foot if it wasn't for the fact that I already have a bum leg from summer. I don't have a good leg to stand on. I tweeked the tendon in my right knee whilst trying to limbo under an automatic garage door earlier today and now I just feel rather crap.

In other news I did more Christmas shopping today. It was AWFUL. Uno, I couldn't walk, then my wallet was raped of £30 leaving me with half of my shopping done and no money to do it with, and then I couldn't buy Anner the after dinner penises (little mint fondant-filled chocolate penises) that I wanted to get, keeping in key with our relationship's firm, penis-shaped food-related foundation with delights such as penis pasta (Bonus: Jassie's Penis Cakes), so that trip was just doomed from the start, really.

Anyhoodle, I'm going to go watch one of my favorite films now: Bridget Jones' Diary.



I was so born to be her.

Seriously. If you haven't seen this film, or the film's sequel (Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason), do so, immediately.