Could someone care to explain to me what the heck this is?
For more context, this was something I spotted during my wanderings around Swindon.
The most rational explanation is that someone had a load of mannequin heads as part of a hair cutting course, but it’s still very weird.
What can you say? Only in Swindon.
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This one comes from the Alice archives, from a time when I was channel flicking and came across this beauty of a clip from the Channel 4 reality TV show, “Celebs Go Dating”. I recorded it on my phone, hence the iffy quality, but it’s still a classic.
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Alas, “the emergency Bentos” at the back of my cupboard has expired. This is indeed this is a very sad time for all…so who wants to watch me struggle to dispose of it?
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Not wanting to toot my own horn, but, I’m going to toot my own horn.
The looks staff gave me coming along with my trolley, approaching the self-service tills with thinly disguised smugness usually reserved only for the scan as you shop crowd.
I see your tiny space for basket shops and I raise you this:
(Although not going to lie, I was annoyed I couldn’t get the ice cream fully onto the scales.)
All the years of playing Tetris have clearly not been lost on me. And if you want the best words of guidance for getting staff to walk on by, wearing a face covering and buying a pack of cold relief medication will go a long way.
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Full credit goes to Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby for this cartoon (lifted from The New Yorker Magazine’s Instagram account) that I know many writers will relate to.
In my case, my “editor” tends to be my boyfriend, and he is a rubbish one. He lets me ramble, resulting in me digging a massive hole for myself and revealing myself to be the utter muppet I am (probably why he lets me do it!)
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I appreciate it’s a bit belated, considering the article was penned on 29th January, but honestly this article is quite possibly the best thing you’ll read all year.
Brought to you by local newspaper the Swindon Advertiser, “Swindon bin bag travels 15 minutes from home” follows the story of a lost recycling bag which, you guessed it, was blown away in recent storms, ending up a location that is 15 minutes away by foot.
“I expected to see an address on it for my street…but was shocked to see the Church’s name on it as that is a fair distance for it to be blown in the wind…I placed it on the railings where I found it and decided the decent thing to do was post its location so someone could inform the church where to find it.” Emma Viggers, Swindon resident
The best bit comes at the end. After an article detailing the recycling bag’s journey, we get this as a journalistic afterthought:
Meanwhile, a structure at the Abbey Stadium was also damaged.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Link to original article (and credit to Edward Burnett for originally reporting): Storm Isha: Swindon bin bag travels 15 minutes from home | Swindon Advertiser
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You know, it struck me the other day that I have this uncanny ability for calamity, like the time I tripped on a paving slab and did my noggin’ in.
Putting that to one side, an update to say things are going going better with my foot (you know, the one I tipped a mug of boiling water over). This was how it was looking before, after the skin had been taken off at a minor injuries unit and a couple of days into a course of antibiotics:
I’m intentionally leaving out photos of my swollen foot at the point boyfriend Ben dragged me into an urgent care unit.A week later after the first bandage, my foot was looking more like this:
Battling infection was a low point, alongside the accompanied pain, and balancing antibiotics with my primal need to constantly eat. (‘Take one tablet four times a day, at least one hour before food and two hours after food.” Hmm…this is going to be a truly rubbish week!’)
Comedy point was when I tried to keep my foot dry in the shower by sticking a plastic bag over my foot, held in place by a hair band. Not only did it fail within seconds, giving me a soaking bandage, I also nearly slipped in the shower.
I also realised afterwards the bag was from a Chinese takeaway I’d had the week before. I’m nothing if not true to brand.
In all the ups and downs, I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had a supportive family network around me, one which have both taken care and refused to let me out of their sight where herbal tea is concerned. It is thanks to them that I’m well on my way to feeling more myself, even if it has been a slower process than I had initially expected.
It won’t stop me drinking my beloved cups of tea (and coffee), though.
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2024 has gone swimmingly so far.
Towards the end of December 2023 I went to a pantomime (just don’t ask how many people in attendance fitted the category of aged 30 – 40…with parents). If you don’t know what pantomime is, check out this article, it does a much better job of explaining than I ever could.
Given the size of cast, it was a really production with each and everyone of the actors giving it their absolute all. The heckling from children in the audience had to be the ultimate highlight of the whole experience, with one calling out “it’s all common sense really!” as one cast member asked for help locating their ‘missing’ friends. (I don’t think they’d got the “it’s behind you!” part of the audience participation script.)
You know what isn’t fun though? Copyright claims. So you’ll have to take a photo of me stood at the base of the theatre stairs as proof we had fun.
And then boyfriend Ben and I travelled up a wedding in Darlington, a location so far north that at one stage I wasn’t sure if I was going to get altitude sickness. (Turns out there is a world beyond Birmingham, who knew!)
It was a really lovely wedding which served as a fitting end to 2023 and an area to which boyfriend Ben and I have decided we will most certainly be visiting again. Although I’m still not entirely sold by Ben’s new hat (as lovely a wedding favour as it was…)
He’s still trying to convince me.
All the above in mind, shout out to the following places:
And then…
And then, Alice decided to pull a Calamity Jane and spectacularly slip-up on a stone doorstep, bruising one side of her body.
And then, less than 24 hours later, I dropped a cup of herbal tea all over my right foot. No milk, just pure boiling water straight onto my foot. (I’ll spare you the photos of immediately after, the bandages, creams, ice packs and numerous blisters.)
Safe to say any hopes of entering into the foot modelling market are now very much scuppered. And, if anyone else says to me “just put your best foot forwards!” I swear I’m going to start charging a penalty fee.
Oh well, you know what they say, start 2024 as you mean to go on.
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I’ve been going through old video material. Some it used for assorted MHAM posts, others filmed in the moment, yet never used. (Believe it or not, even I have a version of a cutting room floor!)
After conducting an even deeper dig into the Alice archives, I’ve pulled together a compilation video of clips, both seen and unseen. Where possible, I’ve tried to piece together when content was originally filmed and overlay it into each clip. I had more than this, but at 11 minutes long I felt the video was already pushing it beyond the five minutes I’d originally planned (maybe in the future there could be a sequel).
It’s a little bit of a vanity project, but one which I hope some of you may get a chuckle out of.
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After battling a mouthful of disappointment, I just wanted to highlight how much of a travesty Jus-Rol‘s cinnamon swirls rebrand is.
In the simplest of terms, it’s awful.
For those less aware of its previous incarnations, Jus-Rol’s cinnamon swirls is a ready-to-bake product. What it offers to the market is something straightforward and quick, providing the same results of freshy made pastry, without the time and stress needed to make a batch from scratch.
To quote Jus-Rol’s website:
“Jus-Rol’s ready to bake Cinnamon Swirls are a perfectly easy way to bake your family a tasty morning treat at home. Just shape, bake and enjoy warm from the oven. The aroma will fill your kitchen with joy as they bake up.”
https://www.jusrol.co.uk/products/cinnamon-swirls
Making Jus-Rol cinnamon swirls was easy. You took it out of the tube, split the cylinder of pre-filled pastry into six and then whacked it into the oven, cooking for a defined period of time and icing once cooled.
Now the process is several steps longer and ten times worse. Instead of one pot for icing sugar, now you get two, one for the icing sugar and one for the “cinnamon filling” which looks more like chocolate spread and smells of nothing.
Even if we park the creation of needless plastic packaging, it is hard to overlook the messy complexity created by the introduction this modest little pot. Once the filling is smeared across a flat rectangle of raw pastry, the consumer then has to roll the pastry and only then cutting it into six.
Thanks to this step, the cinnamon goes absolutely everywhere. Some pieces were left drowning in brown paste, others with barely a scrap inside. Some swirls were trying to uncurl and others kept oozing.
Turns out whacking them into the oven doesn’t help much either. Cast your mind back to the picture on the Jus-Rol box and compare it to what we got.
While we can all laugh at mis-shaped pastries, it doesn’t compare to how they used to look with the old recipe.
Turns out I’m not the only one disappointed by Jus-Rol’s change in manufacturing. With an average rating of 1.1 at the time of writing, Tesco’s customers are less than impressed.
And the feedback on Jul-Rol’s Facebook page is comical.
Here’s hoping Jus-Rol listen to this feedback on and tossing aside whichever team of dingbats thought it was a good idea to implement cost-cutting, planet harming, changes to a classic.
Have you also experienced this frustration? Drop a comment below and/or contact Jus-Rol’s customer service team via their website, Jus-Rol (jusrol.co.uk)
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My Housemate's a Mermaid 