Bless me god damn it.....

Here is something that has bothered me for a while and I thought that it would be a good idea to get it off my chest. Whilst living in London I used to encounter an old man on the Jubilee Line who took an instant disliking to me and I have never known why.

So this guy used to walk up and down the train carriage with a cross and he would bless people. The first time that I saw him I thought “oh here we go. Another crazy. Lucky me, no doubt he will decide to hug me”. As he neared the guy opposite and I shared a look of shared amusement that he was blessing every body. When he reached me – he stopped, hesitated and then moved on to the next person without blessing me. What? Suddenly I was hurt that he had chosen not to bless me. What was wrong with me? Could he detect the devil in me or something? Should I be worried? Should I enquire to my parents as to whether or not they sold my soul to the devil as a baby for their new car? What was his problem?

 The guy opposite looked at me in pity and I am pretty sure that the person next to me edged slightly further away. Since when has someone been determined as Satan spawn by a crazy man on the tube? Needless to say I couldn’t stand the sideways looks from the other passengers and I quickly departed the train! I was ousted by a crazy man.

As time passed, I managed to convince myself that the reason he didn’t bless me was because I don’t need blessing, I don’t need help. I am all good. So I managed to move on. Recently I returned to London after living in Australia for a year and low and behold who should I encounter on the tube – the crazy man with the cross. “Yes” I thought. Finally I could see whether this time he would bless me and as he moved along the carriage harassing passengers my pulse quickened in anticipation.  He reached me, tilted his head to one side and then moved on. The fucker didn’t bless me again. It was as if he was taunting me. 

Now, I’m not one to dwell on things but if I ever see him again I am going to stand up and chase him after he passes me by and then I am going to annoy him until he blesses me. Not very mature I grant you but totally necessary. So until the time comes, I will lie in wait. My time will come, oh yes, it will come.

Was it all a dream? No unfortunately not....

Recently I was asked to recall my weirdest experience and I decided that I should write it down because I think that it is pretty frickin awesome.

So, I was living in London and every day I would make the commute from West Hampstead to Moorgate. Moorgate is a pretty busy station being in the heart of the city so it can be pretty manic with people everywhere.

One day I was in a rush and wasn’t really concentrating as I rushed through the station. I was also in the process of rolling myself a cigarette whilst trying to locate my oyster card. What can I say? I’m a multi-tasker. Anyway, I was home and dry through the barriers and made a last minute decision to exit a different way than usual. I didn’t look and before I knew it I was practically on top of a smart looking gentleman dwarf. Now, I didn’t want to crash into him – he may have thought that it was some kind of anti-dwarf attack and I didn’t want that so instead I decided to hop with both feet away from him. Needless to say, I misjudged my sideways hop and tripped over him – I never claimed to be an athlete. I tripped over a dwarf and fell flat on my face.

When I gained my composure I looked up wondering whether or not I had been in a sleep deprived state and had imagined it but alas, the guy was standing there. He offered a hand and helped me up whilst I apologised profusely. He just looked at me, smiled and said “there’s one to tell your mates” and then he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Ok, the smoke thing is a lie but he disappeared pretty sharpish.

So, I was pretty stunned but my embarrassment was confirmed by a group of young guys who were pointing and laughing. I thought about the kind dwarfs words and realised that I would indeed tell my friends but without video evidence what would be the use. I approached the station office and asked if it would be possible to review the cctv footage. When asked why, I recalled the story in disbelief to which the guard laughed, told me that there was no way I was seeing the footage but telling me that he would enjoy a look. He then slammed the door in my face. What a great guy.

Worst journey ever???

Recently I returned from a 2-week jaunt to Thailand with my brother and friend where my sole mission was to drink, dance, sunbathe and prey on unsuspecting men. I’m not claiming to be a good human as I have definitely said before and I figure that I am more than justified acting in this way, as I am newly single. So anyway, for ages I was umming and ahing over whether or not to go on the trip – I had been before and couldn’t even nearly afford it but fortunately my brother offered to foot the bill so I decided to please my parents and do the truly irresponsible thing and I finally booked it!  As I had booked it much later than my travelling companions there was zero chance of me getting on the same plane as them and that’s how I found myself booked onto a flight from Perth – Phuket which took nearly the same time as it would take to return to the UK. Probably should have realised when I booked it that this journey was not going to be for the faint hearted.

My itinery looked something like this. Perth – Bali. One hour stop over in Bali (refreshingly fast – or so I thought) and then Bali – Jakarta (only a short flight – lovely) and then Jakarta – Phuket. The major issue that I had with the journey was that I had a stop over in Jakarta for 12 hours. Rubbish.  Being me, I didn’t even take this into consideration before I left. I was blinded by the idea of drinking amphetamine-laced drinks from buckets whilst watching inebriated travellers jump through fire and nursing my hangover in crystal clear waters whilst eating my body weight in Thai green curry every day (not to be advised). However the journey proved to be a challenge in itself.

When I arrived in Bali I only had 45 minutes until my connecting flight. The queue’s to get into the country were ridiculous and would have taken close to 45 minutes alone but I was also expected to purchase a visa, clear immigration, collect my bags, sprint to the domestic terminal and then check in, clear security and board my other flight. Now to any logical person – this seems unrealistic and needless to say I was slightly panicked and the humid, sticky climate didn’t really assist with my nervous sweating. When I tried to explain my predicament to an Indonesian chap who looked official he just looked at me, tutted and pointed towards the queue. Damn him and his laid back attitude. Anyway – it all worked out fine. Somehow he was right (although he didn’t need to be so flaming cocky about it!) and I made it in time. There was a moment when I worried when instead of rechecking my bags in some man just took them from me and promised that he would put them on the right plane. Now, I just gave them to him and then freaked out for the next couple of hours that I would

 1. Arrive and my luggage would be lost and there would be a fancily dressed Indonsesian gentleman in Bali laughing his tits off at my stupidity or 

2. Would have drugs planted on me and would be arrested in Jakarta and would rot in jail for the rest of my life. Fortunately, as I am sure that you have assumed from reading this – I was ok. Talk about paranoid.

I must stress that this paranoia had been brought on that day at work when a number of my customers informed me that as a woman travelling alone I should be worried as the official people would assume that I was smuggling drugs. I mean come on! What kind of thing is that to say to a person embarking on holiday! Mean sons of bitches! They also relished in informing me that the airline that I was flying with had recently had an incident where the pilot had missed the runway. Excellent.

 Well, the fun was yet to come. I arrived in Jakarta at midnight and it was only then that the magnitude of the fact that I had to spend 12 hours there hit me. There is literally nothing at Jakarta airport apart from wooden benches and mosquitos. Fortunately, I had met a friendly German girl who was doing the same journey as me and so we camped down for the night. It wasn’t the comfiest but I had earplugs, eye-mask and valium on my side so I was a happy camper.  What seemed like only moments later I was awoken by a scream from the German girl and opened my eyes to discover that one of the Indonesian toilet cleaners who was loitering around when I fell asleep had popped his trousers down and was exposing his tiny Indonesian penis to her. What a treat! Needless to say – we shouted at him to vacate the area and to put it the hell away and what amused me was that he seemed genuinely surprised that we weren’t over the moon to wake up with penis on show. Fortunately we were together or it may not have been as funny but it definitely made sleeping again a bit harder. Every now and then he would shuffle pass pretending to sweep making sex noises! Now, I don’t know about you but cleaning certainly doesn’t make me want to make those types of noises so I can only assume that he was dropping incredibly unsubtle hints! In the end – I marched over, took his photo and shouted “POLICE” at him and looked as angry as possible whilst waggling my finger at him. He didn’t bother us again!

I eventually managed to sleep again but was again woken up by the German girl screaming because a cockroach had crawled on her. I sat up and asked if she was ok – to which she looked at me and screamed again! Not entirely the reaction I like to get when people look at me. “What’s happened to your face?” she asked me. Also, not the dream question to be asked. I rushed to the bathroom to discover that I was covered in bites and one particularly hungry fucker had bitten my eyelid and therefore I resembled Quasimodo. Awesome. Just what I wanted. The little bugger had also gone to town on my fingers (obviously the only things poking out of my sleeping bag) and I had massive swollen man hands! Sexy.

Thankfully the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful apart from a particularly feisty granny sat next to me on the plane who repeatedly elbowed me, stood on my feet and burped. What could I do? She was old – I can’t exactly do it back. Although in my sleep deprived state I wanted to. I wanted to elbow her right in the face! When I arrived in Phuket my eye and hands had luckily returned to normal size but I wasn’t so thankful for this when I was taking an early evening stroll and saw my second unwanted penis of the day. A guy, naked on his balcony. Now in normal circumstances this might be fun but this dude was most definitely in his 70’s. Not fun. Who wants to see that!

Anyway – after this journey I definitely needed a holiday and some of those buckets. Whoever decided to sell whiskey red bull and coke in a bucket is officially my hero. 

Best job title EVER!!!!

So recently I heard that the word for ‘mayor’ in German is Burgermeister. Now, frankly – this is one of the best things that I have heard in a while. I’ve never really had much interest in local politics, let alone local politics in a country that I have never visited but suddenly I’m interested. Not too worried about the language barrier – if all german words are as cool sounding then I’m sure I’ll remember them all. This is just the career direction that I needed. Finally. Don’t think anyone will be smirking when I hand them my extremely important looking, gold plated business card with ‘Burgermeister’ written on it. Maybe ‘Burgermeister’ could be written in italics …oh who knows. The possibilities are endless.

 I don’t think that there would be any need to have any contact details on it because almost certainly everyone would know where to find the ‘Burgermeister’. I’d be the Mack frickin Daddy. From what I can tell as well, the title doesn’t even require any knowledge of meat products but just to make sure I would make sure that I read up on it.

I honestly think that this is the best job title in the entire world – if you have heard any better feel free to let me know about it. I wont hold my breath. 

Duuuuude.....

Today is a sad day for me. The time has come I think – at 26 years young – to finally stop calling everyone that I meet ‘dude’.

I have reached this conclusion after noticing that I don’t discriminate – to me, everyone is a dude. This is regardless of age, sex, and status. It’s caused a fair few raised eyebrows when I’ve been serving coffee to elderly ladies and gentleman and have handed them the coffee and said ‘here you go dude’. They are quite clearly not dudes. I also don’t think that children come under this category and most definitely not middle aged men who work in I.T and whose topics of conversation revolve around RAM (whatever the fuck that is) and how excellent last nights episode of “Two and a Half Men” was. I mean the sheer fact that they think that “Two and a Half Men” is excellent is enough to prove that they are nowhere even close to being a dude. Yet – I still call them it. Its like I am addicted to calling people dude. I have dude diarrhoea.

Now, I need to confirm that I have no links to surfing, skateboarding or anything else that would allow me to use this phrase as freely as I do. I have been known to dabble with the ol’ whacky baccy but nowhere near enough to have to call everyone dude because I no longer remember their names! I just love calling people dude – it flows off the tongue perfectly and provides me with satisfaction each and every time. I kind of like to see people’s reactions when I inappropriately label them dude. The other day – I even called my boss ‘dude’. Now that is a whole other story entirely but she is not the kind of person that you call dude. I think that I can safely say with 100% certainty that no one other than me will have ever called her dude. Maybe I should see it as providing a service.

I can become “Dude Girl” – and my duty could be to go around and dish out hippy, surfer vibes to those in need. Provide good time salutations to the masses. I can even get myself a cape. Wow, my plan is coming together nicely. Fuck giving it up – I needed an aim for 2010 – I think that this is a viable option. Screw the career. Sure that this is finally going to the thing that makes my parents proud of me. What do you reckon? I must stress though that it is vital that anyone reading this not divulge my identity otherwise it would compromise the integrity of my mission. I am trusting you all.

Give Peas a Chance.....

I had such a weird dream the other day and wanted to share it. I dreamt that I was visiting the sister of my ex boyfriend from uni and when I wasn’t looking he slipped peas into the icing of my cake. How mean. I remember feeling really pissed off – I only put it down for a second and then vegetables violated my delicious Victoria sponge cake.  Now, I’m a fan of peas but not with cake. The idea is just sheer madness.

I thought that I would investigate further and looked up the significance of peas in dreams thinking that there was a possibility that it could shed some light on my psyche and help me figure a few things out. It didn’t. It said:

“To eat peas, foretells that you will, after much success, suffer a slight decrease in pleasure or wealth”

Doesn’t really tell me much but it sounds promising. I like the idea of this “much success” business – I wonder when that will happen. I wonder whether this means that I will finally achieve my life long dream of going into space or inventing the hover board? Maybe I’ll have a boat – all successful people have boats. And moonboots. Also, I think that after achieving this “much success” to suffer only a ‘slight’ decrease in pleasure or wealth is not really the end of the world. In fact I am happy with that.

So lesson learnt. Initially this dream was bad – i mean, who wants peas in their cake? But what initially seemed bad has turned out good and now I know that I am going to achieve “much success” so basically I can just chill out now until it happens. Happy days. Praise the lord for peas and thanks to my ex boyfriend for his underhand pea smuggling tactics. To think that I thought that he hated me…. 

Photographic evidence of my stare off excellence...

Now just try and tell me that you aren't quaking in your boots.