This painted door in Funchal (Madeira) is beautiful!
Artist: Tiago Machado
Funchal’s Painted Doors
Find out more about the other painted doors which feature in the city of Funchal’s ‘Old Town’ district (Rue de Santa Maria). Click this link or enter “Painted doors Madeira” into your trusty search engine. There are some absolute beauties to be found.
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Well, seems Marlin has been enjoying himself down the local aquarium.
From the makers of Finding Nemo, “Finding Marlin…in the gentleman’s club”
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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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Please support unpaid writers, like me, by donating to my funding page:
Ko-Fi (formerly Buy Me a Coffee)
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I like doing what I do and it always makes me smile when I hear that you like it too. Presently no one pays me for my writing (be it for MHAM or freelance) and while I fully believe in the principles of hard work in an ideal world I’d like to earn a little something here and there to fund my coffee-spilling habits. The more people read my writing the more likely I am to get somewhere.
If you enjoy my work please, please, please:
- Like my Facebook page (My Housemate’s a Mermaid)
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^ I often post additional content on social media, comedy you don’t see anywhere else!
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…a massive thank you to everyone who is already a subscriber/liker/follower of My Housemate’s a Mermaid. Since I started back in 2014 your support has meant a lot to me and is the sole reason why I’ve continued doing what I do. You’re all mother-flipping awesome humans.
Before you read this blog there are three things you should know about me. 1. I like tea and coffee. 2. I love my hats and dresses. 3. My housemate is a mermaid.
Yes, you heard right.
I live in a shared house located in the fine town of Swindon (Wiltshire, England). A town renowned for its stunning beauty, charming residents, and it’s thriving young professional social scene. Hah, who am I kidding? It’s none of those things. I’ve now been here almost six months and I’ve learnt just two things. We have this guy who writes his unique take on poetry on the pavement in the town centre (aka the resident ASBO burner), and we have trains. You can leave Swindon in any number of directions on a train and get to somewhere a bit more favourable in no time at all. Cardiff, Bath, Bristol, Oxford, London, all of which take no longer than an hour 15 minutes to get to by train. A town that makes it easy for you to leave. I like to think that if Swindon was a person he/she’d be a Psychologist’s dream patient, but alas it is not. It’s a rapidly expanding town with little of architectual significance other than this piece of road engineering known as ‘the magic roundabout’
Yes, that is indeed five mini roundabouts positioned around one central roundabout.
So, that’s a pit-stop guide to Swindon. Trust me, it’s all you’ll ever need or want to know about this place, well, unless you actually live here. In my opinion Swindon’s slogan should be ‘Visit Swindon: Because lets be honest, it could be worse’. Expecting a call from the tourist board to call any day now…
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, my living arrangements. I live in a three storey shared house in Swindon. I live with four other people (making there five of us altogether), all living under the banner or pretence that we’re all ‘young professionals’. When it’s been a long day at the office it has become our thing to remind each other of this simple fact. It semi works. Four housemates to talk about and no time like the present, so lets get to it.
Becki – AKA the Shire Mermaid / Mermaid Aura
Who better to start with than the very person my blog’s title revolves around. The person who I have to thank for grabbing your attention, and adding some spice into my otherwise mundane life.
Becki works in CCTV for her day job, doing tough 12 hour shifts which are either 5am-5pm or 5pm-5am.
Job summary: monitoring CCTV cameras, providing security for buildings.
It’s a job which denies her any social life and tends to lend itself more towards a slow rather than fast pace, but it pays the bills and funds her real passion; the world of fantasy and mermaids.
When I moved into the house in August, Becki had two tails, few bikinis and a Mermaid Aura Facebook page. That was it. This winter she is currently working on building her mermaid profile, starting off by renaming herself to the Shire Mermaid. This is to reflect her well travelled background, but also to weave her way into the Lord of the Rings fandoms. I don’t know much about Lord of the Rings (yes, I know I deserve to be shunned) but the closest image I could find on google with the words ‘LOTR’ and ‘Mermaid’ was this:
That could easily be a movie poster/still for a LOTR film. I mean you tell me what’s out of place there?
I’ll pop links to her social media sites at the bottom of this post, but here’s a video of her doing a gig for a Cancer Research UK event:
So that’s Becki. She’s recently started investing more into mermaid accessories and an even better, personalised, silicone tail (her current tails are made of material). This tail from America is going to cost her something in the region of $3500. As I would say, that’s a lotta 11p noodles.
Stay tuned in the upcoming months for more information about my mermaid housemate, but for now, onto the next ‘young professional’…
Cherise – AKA the London Loather
Like me Cherise graduated from University in 2014 and like me she also moved to Swindon recently for the sake of a job. Cherice works at Nationwide head office.
Job summary: credit risk analyst for a high street bank, deciding whether or not to approve mortgage requests.
It kinda flies in the face of my university career-based rant in an earlier post, but Cherice’s job at Nationwide is a job on a graduate scheme. Her job will be secure for a year and after that who knows, she may stay at Nationwide, she may move on. Who knows.
What I do know is that she won’t be skipping back to her home city of London, she loathes the place. The traffic, the price of rent, the fact the 2010 London Riots took place just meters from her family house, there’s nothing about the city that grabs her, despite the fact it was the place she was born and raised. Given London is just over an hour away by train, you’d think she would stretch herself a little out of comfort zone and go here frequently. Nope. Ah, but I bet she studied at a London university I hear you say. No again, she went to Coventry University where she studied, wait for it, Maths (bet you weren’t expecting that).
As a fellow London hater with friends who dote on the city, I couldn’t believe my ears when Cherice told me this piece of information about herself. An instant bond was made and I saw that maybe there was hope in the world yet.
I think now is a good time to leave it here. Once again I have food in the oven, and I’ve underestimated how much there is to talk about. I have learnt something from writing this post mind and that is even Swindon can’t be summed up in one sentence. Maybe the Visit Swindon board really should get me involved with the 2015 tourist guide.
Anywho, keep your eyes open for the next post in which I’ll tell you all about my other two housemates and maybe a line or two (or three…) on yours truly. Until the next time, may your days be as light and fluffy as the jacket potato I’m about to eat.
Ps…
If you want to see more pictures/find out more about Becki, her Facebook page can be found here:
And her Twitter:
On July 16th something monumental happened. The Ukrainian Government were continuing their struggle against pro-Russian rebels, and Ben Affleck had crashed a Superman-themed party. Neither though can compare to what was going on at the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus in, oddly enough, Southampton.
At 10:45am I officially graduated from the university with a 2:1 BA (Hons) degree in History.
I walked out of the ceremony all smiles and compulsory posed photos…
However, while this development in my life story was happy and exciting, after 30 minutes the realisation of my new status started to sink in. Photos like this started to appear in the photo real:
(Mumma Bennett was not happy)
I was an actual adult now. An adult with debt to pay off, a job to find, a career to build, a life to make. All that debt and nothing to show for it but some fancy hired robes and making people call me Alice Bennett, BA.
Some say life begins at birth, others pin it on moving away from home, buying a car, or going to a club. They are all wrong. No, the start of one’s ‘life’ cannot be pinned on something we build ourselves up to. It is the sudden removal of a structure or support base that forces one to make their own choices without the help of friends or Google. That’s when our independence is finally marked and when ‘life’, as we know it, begins.
With the removal of my education the inner child was officially dead, but the adult was born. And with the birth of the new adult came the decision to create a blog three months later. Watch this space for more blog posts about my job, outside-of-work stuff, and everything else under the sun.
Hello there Mr. New World, are you ready for me?
My Housemate's a Mermaid 