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Wordfeud

I’m about to complete my first game of Wordfeud with my friend Emilie. It’s one of those phone Scrabble games that are very popular at the moment. I don’t remember Scrabble ever being as addictive as this.

Anyway, Emilie is winning, which is bad because English isn’t her first language.

What’s even worse is she keeps coming out with words I’ve never heard of. Like ‘ronne’, ‘mas’ and ‘balu’. Actually, I just looked up ‘ronne’ and ‘balu’ and Dictionary.com doesn’t recognise them as words, so THANKS FOR TAKING SIDES, WORDFEUD.

One of the words Emilie played was ‘gu’. I know that there’s a brand of desserts named ‘Gü’, but that’s just a fancy play on the word ‘goo’, right?

Dictionary.com told me that ‘gu’ was an abbreviation for ‘genitourinary’, which means ‘of or pertaining to the genital and urinary organs’.

Think about that the next time you’re enjoying your posh cheesecake.

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Ow.

I pulled muscles in my neck at the gym today.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I was probably working very hard to maintain this slamming bod, so you’re not surprised I strain myself sometimes. But it wasn’t that.

It was my first session for a few weeks. I assumed that the gym would be full of New Years resolution-ers who would probably disappear after the first week of January, but it was dead as always.

I pulled that, worked out this, pumped that thing, that got harder. It was all very thorough but I knew that since I’d had a break from it, I’d probably be achey later.

When I’d had enough, I popped back into the changing room. It was empty. First thing I took off was my t-shirt. My arms were a little stiff and sweaty, so I had difficulty getting it up over my head.

So much so that I got completely trapped in it.

My arms were stuck in the air, in a t-shirt completely covering my face and head. I squirmed and wriggled but couldn’t get out.

I thought I heard someone approaching the changing room, so I panicked. I couldn’t get someone else involved in my sweaty struggle with a shirt.

I started squirming so much that I heard a seam start to tear. I considered the option of just tearing the whole shirt up to get out, but one last upward thrust got my head free and the arms came with it.

I’d survived… this time. But I was out of breath and I’d pulled muscles on both sides of my neck.

This whole gym thing is a lot of hard work.

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Bank Holiday

Bank holidays: they’re everywhere at the moment. I think today (January 2nd) is the last one for a fair while though. Anyway, this abundance of bank holidays got me thinking about one of my finest moments.

You know that feeling on a bank holiday when you want to go to a shop or something similar, but you can’t work out if it’s the kind of place that would be open? I get that all the time, even though, generally speaking, most places are open on bank holidays.

I’m saying ‘bank holiday’ a lot.

Anyway, one bank holiday, I needed to do something in town and spent a while debating whether the place I needed to go to would be open. Eventually, I decided it probably would be and trekked into Leamington town centre.

I returned an hour later, having walked to town, found that the place was closed, and walked straight home.

My dad hadn’t heard me go out.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

‘I went to town,’ I said. ‘I needed to ask at the bank about an overdraft, but they were closed!’

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘The bank were closed on a bank holiday?’

I learnt a valuable lesson that day which I have never forgotten.

CHAT

Getting my watch battery changed

  • The guy in Timpsons was struggling to get the back off my watch, and kept chattering in a thick Geordie accent.
  • Watch man: What do you do for a living?
  • Me: Haha, yeah... (six or so seconds later) ...what?
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Student Loan

This weekend, I received my first letter from Student Finance since graduating. They said that my loan was due for repayment, beginning in April. They didn’t specify the amount, but I think it’s somewhere in the region of £21,000.

I don’t actually have to pay any of it back until I’m earning over a certain amount (£15,000 a year I think). Hopefully, I will be earning that amount by this time next year, but I’m already starting to think of ways that I could avoid paying the loan off.

  • If they call me, I’ll say ‘I already paid it off! I popped one lump sum cheque in the post.’ They’ll assume there was some kind of error on their end and write off my debts.
  • I’ll try on some Derren Brown mind tricks. I’ll turn up personally to their office and confidently hand over bundles of plain paper, claiming that they’re stacks of £10,000 in £50 notes. They’ll mark my loan as paid, and only realise the money isn’t real when it’s too late.
  • I’ll deliberately never earn over £15,000 a year. I’ll find a job that pays me a salary of £14,999 and then by the time I reach fifty years old, they’ll write off my loan and I’ll finally be able to move out of my dad’s house!
  • I won’t tell them when I leave the country to start my teaching job in Japan (actually hoping this last bit happens). They’ll hunt me down and send out international assassins/debt collectors. I’ll have to go on the run like Jason Bourne, but with better fighting skills. Eventually I’ll disappear, only to reappear back in the UK and take down the Student Loans company by myself. There will be some kind of big confrontation with the evil boss man.
  • I’ll get someone to inform the Student Loans company that I am dead, then I’ll go into hiding with only a select few people knowing of the truth. Months later, these people are attacked and I have to come out of hiding to stop a terrorist plot which aimed to implicate me in the attacks. However, when the terrorists are stopped, Student Loans track me down, kidnap me, and torture me on a boat for twenty months. Any resemblance between this and season five of ‘24’, which I just finished watching, is purely coincidental.

Or, I suppose, I could just pay it back like a good boy and be thankful that I had a chance to go to university for just £21,000 instead of triple that. But that’s boring.

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tastefullyoffensive: via

tastefullyoffensive:

via

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Phase one, complete!

I got a short story published in a collection! Huzzah!

It’s a story called ‘The Lost Art of Seduction’, which I wrote for university and actually posted on here a while back. Before you ask, because everyone does, no it’s not based on a true story.

This publication is important for a number of reasons.

One: it proves to me that I am actually alright at writing, no matter what my inner critic says. It shows that, if I put my mind to it, I could make this a regular thing.

Two: Whilst I don’t get paid for the publication, it gains a tiny bit of exposure, which at this stage in my career is probably more valuable.

And three: It firmly asserts my ambition to become a writer, to myself and other people. This one is probably the most important.

This is because, I am terrible at self discipline. The fact is that The Lost Art of Seduction was a story that I enjoyed writing and wanted to get a really good mark from. Had it not been for the pressures of deadlines, the story may never even have been conceived.

Now that I am out of university, I don’t write as much as I’d like. I have to be reeeally disciplined about it. I force myself to get into mini-swings where I write a bit every day, but if I miss a day or two because of work or my super-packed social life, it’s so hard to get back into it. It’s the same with this blog; you’ll notice that I write for a short spurt, then stop for ages.

But now that I’m published, albeit just in a little magazine, loads of people know about my ambition and are really heartwarmingly encouraging about it. Even people who I haven’t spoken to in years were dropping lovely comments on facebook congratulating me.

So now I feel like I need to write, so as to not disappoint all these people who seem to be impressed by my progress and would be interested if I had anymore success.

If I suddenly said ‘You know what? Writing’s a lot of effort, I can’t be bothered’, then I’d not only let myself down, but I feel like I’ll let down lots of people! This is a good thing for me. Whilst I love to write, I often can’t be bothered. This puts the pressure on, and pressure is a valuable commodity to a lazy procrastinator like me!

Hopefully the word tap will turn back on now.

CHAT

At work

  • Paul: That walk home will do you good. You don't get any exercise otherwise do you?
  • Me: I go to the gym now! Twice a week!
  • Paul: (Pats my belly) I think you should up it to three times a week.
PHOTO

(via robdelaney)

PHOTO

(via robdelaney)