From the makers of That’s When the Cleaning Fumes Got to Me, I present me, cleaning the microwave with equally questionable methods.
If it’s not the fact I forgot to turn the mircowave off (apparently it’s not safe), it’s the realisation afterwards of the potential effects those fumes were having on me.
But still, at least the microwave is clean now.
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Some of the photos and posts that I wanted to write for My Housemate’s a Mermaid, but didn’t quite have enough material (pictorial and verbal) to fill.
Deleted MHAM Posts From the Cutting Room Floor
2. When I stayed up so late that I ended up watching a much younger Nicky Campbell presenting a Top of the Pops episode from 1990
Some people had more fun than others.
I continued to watch it, even when this was played from the UK top twenty for the week.
3. How very surreal my office was when I went back to empty my locker
4. My sister’s attempts with one of those packet face masks from South Korea
It ripped off a load of skin, but not a lot else.
5. Squeak, the cat, being rebellious
6. The time I saw my old/favourite History lecturer from University on the BBC and I absolutely lost my cool
I mean, WITH LUCY WORSLEY!!
7. The time I found this in a shop and it perked up my mood
(But not enough that I bought it.)
8. The generous gin measures down the local pub
9. The generous measures of lunch portions while living with family
10. The thinking behind this at the Travel Lodge Hotel in York
It was in the foyer for several days…
11. A post detailing the contents of my bookshelf
12. Everything about this account that started following me on Twitter
How did it take you to spot that’s a semi naked woman?
13. A post on me rekindling my creative mojo during the pandemic
14. The importance of good friends who call-out when you have really bad body odour
15. The ‘what the fudge-ness’ of this targeted advert
Yes, I did tap the link and yes, I am still getting adverts for werewolf fan-fiction as a result.
16. Lockdown birthdays
17. The large number of self-published books with Covid themes
18. The other strange things being self-published
Although I am still a bit in love with the title of this book.
19. My attempts to have a massive clear-out
…which were ultimately foiled by a mixture of procrastination / charity shops being closed / Bubble the cat.
So there you go, a snippet of how much gets filtered before making it onto this website. What can I say? You get what you pay for.
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Candles, erosion excitement and a scurvy-inducing diet, we’ve got all the reasons (and more) why I’ve quite possibly still yet to become one half of a “smug couple”.
Why Alice is Still Single…Probably
First Things First
(But I am also attracted to that part of YouTube.)
I’ve Made My Memory Foam Bed, and it Serves me Well
I live where I live and do what I do. And before you give me that Sliding Doors baloney, “if only you’d taken that fictional job somewhere else, then maybe things would be different”, I mean, sure but…
A) Not God.
B) There are loads of amazing things I’d have missed out on.
C) I lived in London for a year and guess what? Despite getting my bag stuck in the Tube countless times and missing countless more trains altogether, John Hannah still didn’t show up and I’m still not Gwyneth Paltrow.
(But at least my accent isn’t that grating.)
My Cooking is Beyond Questionable
Case in point, I routinely eat leftover Chinese with pasta. I call it “East Meets West” (no, really, I do).
I know what you’re thinking and yes, I am the kind of girl who brings a stapler and a rack of business cards to dinner (and you thought the Chinese was hot stuff).
As a rule of thumb, the dishes I cook involve three ingredients. E.g. scrambled eggs: eggs (no milk), bread, butter for bread. Soup: tin of soup, bread, butter for bread. Chips, fish fingers, peas.
I also routinely snack on dry cream crackers.
#NoShame
I’m Not in the Market of Being Someone I’m Not
I’m so out of habit with makeup I barely wear it nowadays. The idea of putting all this stuff on my face to create something to satisfy everyone but me just doesn’t do anything for me (you can’t see your own face after all).
Looking at this from a positive angle, this is presently the worst I’m ever going to get:
*Well, excluding when I’m chilling out in the back of Shoreditch clubs.
Moving on…
Everything Excites Me…But Men
Things like having David Nicholls, author of One Day, like my Tweet:
(Reason .5 for staying single – I like using words like golly)
I also like seeing the effects of coastal erosion on tiny pebbles:
Longshore drift is a thing y’all.
Even these socks with one of my favourite Picasso paintings, they got me excited:
I didn’t even care they only were available in a men’s size. Why? Because I’m now the proud owner of Picasso socks. Duh.
It doesn’t take much to get me excited, but on the downside, it doesn’t take much to get me excited. I don’t need a guy to be the *sole* provider of my joy…unless you have Picasso socks. And yes, pun intended.
I Have Awesome Friends
Granted, things are a smidge surreal at the moment, but I still have my girl (and guy) friends. And if I can’t meet up with them in real life, I still can connect with them digitally.
Dressing up and dancing around my bedroom, it’s like the teenage years I never had. Back when I was too busy wearing jeans and playing about with hair straighteners and knives.
Oh, Cotswolds, you do crack me up.
Nb, that was taken on my eighteenth birthday. Disney need to do a rerun of that film, 13 Going on 30.
We’ll call it 30 Going on 13, and it’ll be 90 minutes of me struggling to comprehend water installations in urban environments:
Ten years on and I’m still trying to work them out.
Hmm, I think we’ve gone a bit off topic somewhere around here. What were we discussing, again? Oh yeah, why I’m single.
Me, Myself and I; We’ve got Our Own Thaang Going on
*cough*
This is How I Dress
This is How I React to Confusing Things
I Already Have an Interim Solution, and it’s a Candle
I can’t quite fathom how Glade have done this, but I swear this candle smells like a ‘best of’ man collection. It’s kinda musky and has a nice cologne-like secondary smell. I think it’s a honey and chocolate combo.
I can’t share the smell, but trust me, it’s solid. And no, I’m not backing down on this.
And Then There Are the Creeps
Ooh! Bear with, just got a new match.
Right, let’s open this up…
Ah.
In Summary
Your best bet is to cook me something with four ingredients, invest in quirky socks and dip yourself in molten wax.
Guess what? I’m eighteen years old in that one too.
I need to get into teen movies. Where is my non-existent agent?
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Following the huge popularity over my previous post on the topic of Papa Bennett’s polytunnel/allotment (Dad’s Polytunnel), I decided to drop on by to give an update on how things were progressing as of October 2020.
Papa B was busy at the time I wanted to film this, so I didn’t have his services to help document the changes. But still, it’s only a couple of plants, how hard can it be?
Yeah. I think the cat had a better idea of what was going on (and she’s a cat).
Thankfully, Mumma B showed up to provide from subtle guidance. And you know my Mum, she was incredibly patient and by no means frustrated by my lack of knowledge…
I think we can agree that going forward we’d be better off asking the cat to tend to the plants.
That said, at least the raspberries are coming out alright (Papa B asked me to include this as proof he can grow more than six. Sorry, Dad).
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Just a quick reminder that I’m still here, earning tumbleweed from my writing (well, actually, tumbleweed would at least be something…)
A big, big thank you to those who have donated so far (you lovely people know who you are). For those less aware, I have an active donation page called Buy Me A Coffee, a platform which helps creatives get money doing what they love and keep producing content for their fans.
If not for me and my coffee spilling antics, it’s worth checking out to discover some hidden gems from people across the world.
I’m always reviewing the page and just recently added two funky new extras you can buy as a one-off. Check out the website to find out more.
Thank you in advance!
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This isn’t a sponsored post. Support an unpaid writer like me by donating to my funding page: Buy Me A Coffee
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I’m not gonna lie, times are tough. Working from home, cat bum in my face as I try to juggle conference calls with a window that washes me out (aka looking like a knock-off Second Coming of Biblical proportions).
It’s easy to shrug it all off, make out we’re invincible. Likewise, it’s also very easy to blame ourselves for the things we cannot help.
I discovered the video below via a work colleague and it massively helped improve my understanding on resilience. That actually, part of my general fatigue was an over exhaustion of trying to be strong and hold myself to my own high standards. After watching I slashed back on the social media and have started making moves to reduce time wastage on unproductive activities.
(So FYI, that’s why I deleted you from Facebook or left your group. Honestly, you really are better following my Facebook page. I update it more often.)
Anyway, here is the video. Give it a watch, I’d be interested to know your thoughts and reactions. Would you take a different approach to the personal impact of 2020 if you’d had the chance to make different choices?
The moral of the story? We all need to be more like my pet cat.
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Mumma B needed some help laminating a sign the other week. Me, with my years of office administrative experience, I jumped at the chance to do something useful* (*that doesn’t involve cleaning). I mean, it was just one piece of paper than needed feeding through the machine, how hard could it be?
Ah.
So it turns out these things can, on rare occasion, get stuck inside laminators and wrap around the hot rollers to such an extent this happens. What the manual doesn’t say is that nine times out of ten the person who does this is an absolute muppet (as per Mumma B’s summary of events).
Hours later and after Papa B had taken the whole laminator machine apart we finally managed to retrieve the item. That said, I don’t even think the UK’s strongest man winner could stretch this out, it’s that much of a concertina.
You know what? I think I’m going to stick to writing.
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This isn’t a sponsored post, but you can support by buying me a coffee
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Wow, so that was 2019! That was a decade! What have we learned in that time?
a) Politicians still lie
b) The dating world is still a mess
c) I’m still incapable of getting through a coffee without spilling its contents everywhere
d) Through consumption of c. 50 gallons of coffee and tea at the start of the decade, I not only like, but have developed a mild addiction to hot caffeinated drinks.
Progress!
While my blog has only been going for five years (sor-ry for living in the dark all that time), I thought it would be a great time for a little 2019 quiz on the MHAM stats! Yayyyy! (Look, I’m working to a £0 budget here.)
Those are you questions. Ready? (Stop giving me that look.)
Your time starts…now!
Ooh I feel as excited as an East German portraying Russian culture in the 1970s!
(Just me then?)
Rightyo, let’s do this.
Question 1) How many views did the blog get in 2019?
Answer – 11, 332 (put into context, that’s 31.04 views a day!)
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Question 2) How many comments did the blog receive?
Answer – 6
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Question 3) – Which five individual blog posts obtained the most views? (Nb this excludes views on the homepage and page tabs)
Answer – In order…
The Morning I Re-evaluated my Relationships with Men – 373 views
A Very British Complaint Letter to Cadburys Chocolate – 350 views
The Cat’s Guide to Christmas – 248 views
The Time I Discovered I was a Dominatrix…At Speed Dating – 170 views
While You’re Here – 166 views (I’ll discount this as it’s a self promotion piece)
Five Minute Review: What the F*** is Normal?! By Francesca Martinez – 140 views
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Question 4) How many countries, globally, did blog viewers come from?
Answer – 84 (including six views from an area referred to only as ‘European Union’)
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Question 5) Name the five countries who ranked 5th – 10th in the view list
Answer – In order… Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada, Spain
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Question 6) Name five African countries who viewed the blog in 2019
Answer – Any of the below:
Now wasn’t that fun? Here’s to the year and decade ahead! While I’ve written this blog post I’ve successfully managed to uncork my first wine bottle. Depending on who you are, this is either the greatest human triumph of the decade (so far) or something that makes you worried for the future state of what ‘success’ looks like in the years to come. Either way, I have wine, so…
Here’s to the roaring twenties, version 2.0
Alright? I’m Bubble. Bubble the cat.
You may wonder why my owners would give a name like Bubble to a male cat. Well, my sister is called Squeak (Bubble and Squeak, get it?) And all the stupid humans thought I was a girl until the vets confirmed differently. It’s not a name I’m particularly fond of and, as a result, I have spent my entire life in a constant sulk, excluding the times I shout at the humans to feed me.
Like a lot of men I like to work out, only I can’t get to the gym on account of being a cat so spend most of my free time doing the next best thing; sleeping in a gym bag.
And trust me ladies, it shows.
I’m sexy and I know it.
Anyway, this human thing called Christmas is coming up and while I’ve tried to hide from it…
…it has finally caught up with me. I wasn’t even going to do presents this year (thinking about the environment, y’know?) But then I walked in one day and found my sister had already started wrapping up gifts.
So really I didn’t have a choice. Luckily I don’t have many others to buy for (my advice if you’re looking to become a self-reliant, anti-social git? Become a cat). I just needed to get something for my annoying sister, even if she does always steal the best sleeping spots in the house.
I took inspiration from my humans and first went for a dig around the cupboards, see if there was anything from past year’s of Christmas shopping I could give her.
But had no joy. Then I took to the online shops but kept getting messed up suggestions like this:
(I think one of those humans has been using my browser to search for dodgy products again.)
There was no other option, I’d have to hit the high street. I hopped on the roof of the next family cab into town and away I went.
The first thing that struck me was the weird customs humans have for celebrating what is meant to be a happy time of year. If they’re not advertising surreal…
…Then they’re hanging and impaling little elf people in some kind of pagan ritual.
It’s no wonder you’re all fat alcoholics. You actually decorate your homes with these!
Then again, after seeing this I have a new found respect for the miracle of the Virgin birth.
And why is this woman’s face all over bags of crisps? Is this what you humans would call ‘the height of your career?’
(And if you think I’m being mean just remember, I’m a cat. It’s what we do.)
When it came to shopping for Christmas presents, I didn’t know where to start. Luckily, many of the shops displayed their wares in a way that was perfect for the average bloke applying a scatter gun/panic buy approach to gifting.
A little bit too generic female for my sister who happens to like her fur coat very much. Instead I went to the male default #2, a nice new perfume.
Or maybe not.
I popped into a book shop because I know Squeak the cat likes to read a light weight novel or two. I was instantly drawn to a title that looked like it could have been written by the human in my family who writes for that blog, the one they call Alice. It just screamed her style of writing.
And then I read the blurb and felt less convinced. I mean, the average writing quality was on par with Alice’s, but the plot development was anything but.
I mean it’s completely unbelievable…it’s obvious that Daisy is sleeping with Greg (that’s why he keeps vanishing) and the Goose is mad because it’s Greg’s jilted lover. I’m a male cat and I can see that. Humans don’t half write some rubbish when they’re trying to pull sales or views.
In the same shop there was also this book:
(One of the humans I was with said to Alice, “hey, Alice! They wrote a book about you trying to get a life!” And she said, “hey, India! They wrote a sequel where I hit you with that very book!”)
To be fair to the human called India, Alice does have a tendency to hang out in coffee shops by herself and woman-spread everywhere.
She likes to think it makes her look smart, I think it’s just to cover up the fact that she’s constantly spilling good coffee.
Like a lot of humans, she’d buy just about anything that’s coffee-branded.
(If you had to look twice before spotting it, you’ve got a problem.)
On another note, I’m not sure what image you big humans are trying to suggest to little humans when you give them dolls with drugged up eyes.
In the same way that I don’t fully get the need to take the Every Love Matters campaign to the extremes of inanimate objects.
(I did try to tell her that her companion didn’t seem interested, but she told me to tinsel off – hah, and you thought Cats have no sense of poor humour…)
And as for this…
…You humans are alright with making your spawn think they’re being spied upon but I just happen to walk in on you taking a shower and suddenly it’s completely unacceptable? Your species is seriously messed up.
But then I saw this and I restored my faith in the tat you humans gift each other:
I’ll have ten please…for myself.
And this made me laugh:
It’s a physical chocolate replica of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin isn’t physical, it’s a virtual currency! Sadly however no one in the store seemed to get the joke. It’s as if people shopping in Poundland for Christmas presents don’t dwell on that level of humour.
God, you humans don’t have produce some weird looking babies? At least kittens are fluffy, but you guys decide to put the strangest looking ones on jigsaw puzzles! Why?
And what the hell is this?!
Have people literally turned to gifting c**p to each other? No wonder people have started donating money to the Slippers for Donkeys campaign or whatever far out animal charities exist nowadays.
When did the Grinch get sold into human-creature trafficking? Asking on behalf of a friend.
It’s a niche market, granted, but humanity really has lost its heart if it can’t cough up £1 to help.
Jesus Christ! What is this?!
Why would you even entertain the thought of inviting this into your house? It’s flipping scary!
It was around this time that I gave up with Christmas shopping. The final straw came when, after hours of searching, the one and only thing I thought I could gift my feline sister, a nice new outfit, well it turned out to be out of stock in her size. Typical!
I give up. I knew I should have picked something from the National Trust’s Christmas store when I had the chance.
All this shopping for Christmas presents just takes too much time!
Sod it, this year I’ll just wrap myself up and be my sister’s Christmas pressie, because lets be honest, family is the best damn thing you can have.
Great, so that’s Christmas settled. Now I can crack on with watching some high-quality festive films, ones which in my view were robbed of Oscar nominations…
…And deal with more pressing matters. How do I get this human to move out of my spot?
(Special thanks to the members of my immediate family for making this post possible by constantly spamming my WhatsApp feed with cat photos.)
It’s my birthday and I’ll have wine with my McDonald’s if I want to! A quiet in ahead of the Christmas craziness – new blog posts coming soon!
I’ll also bake for my team if I want to, even if ‘baking’ means staying up until crazy o’clock the night before to get it made to my demanding standards.
(The team valued it, I made two batches and they devoured both on a day. I was even told it posed a risk to productivity because it was so good.)
So yeah, go me. Go me and my baking and my wine-sipping awesomeness. Whoop.
My Housemate's a Mermaid 