The Twelve Days of Christmas is my least favourite Christmas song, mostly because it is very repetitive and, as a result, extremely catchy.
Every time I hear it being played, it manages to worm its way into my psyche, playing on repeat for hours, sometimes even days, in an incessant loop of festive merriment.
It is absolutely infuriating – nothing makes me feel more like the bastard child of Scrooge and the Grinch quite like listening to TheTwelve Days of Christmas.
I also find the lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas absolutely ridiculous.
As most of you probably know from having been subjected to the song every year, the Twelve Days of Christmas is about a person whose true love brings them a series of increasingly elaborate presents over the course of the twelve days.
These gifts include seven swans-a-swimming, six geese-a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge that comes with its own complementary pear tree.
Now, I don’t know what was considered a normal Xmas pressie in the 18th century but if someone brought me an entire flock of wildfowl, I wouldn’t be inclined to write a jovial Christmas carol about them – I’d be questioning their mental stability.
I mean, after the delivery of the initial partridge, I would be pretty confused.
On Day 3, I would be getting pretty concerned.
By the time Day 4 rocked around, I’d be looking to report my them to the RSPB.
I also think the idea of giving someone six geese and seven swans as a gift is pretty far-fetched.
Considering geese and swans tend to get pissed off whenever you go even remotely near them, I doubt they would be cooperative if someone tried to turn them into a festive offering.
In fact, as far as I’m concerned, geese and swans would make a much better Halloween present because they are absolutely bloody terrifying.
Now, I’m aware that The Twelve Days of Christmas is a beloved Christmas carol that the majority of people enjoy singing every year.
Maybe I am just bitter as I haven’t got a true love who is willing to provide me with an entire aviary’s worth of birds for Christmas.
In fact, if I’m getting anything for Christmas, it’s more likely to be an unsolicited commentary on my love life from one of my elderly relatives…
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When I was 15 years old, I had to complete a week of work experience as part of my school’s ‘student enrichment’ programme.
Initially, the prospect of doing work experience excited me.
I was eager to temporarily escape the classroom and enter into professional environment for the first time.
I envisioned myself working for the local news station or a cool hipster tech company where employees sat in bean bags instead of desk chairs.
However, my enthusiasm reduced significantly when I was placed at my local Garden Centre.
My supervisor at the Garden Centre was a guy called Alan who was relatively new to the world of work himself.
Alan was seventeen years old, had zero managerial experience and had absolutely no idea what to do with me.
After giving me some brief instructions, he handed me a t-shirt with the words ‘You Plant A Question, We’ll Grow You An Answer’ printed on the back and then made himself scarce.
I went to the bathroom, changed into the shirt and walked back out onto the shop floor.
Before long, customers that had previously been ignoring me started approaching me and asking me questions, clearly assuming that I was now a font of horticultural knowledge.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d known a single thing about plants.
However, the sum total of my gardening knowledge came from an episode of The Teletubbies I’d seen as a kid where I’d watched a man tend to his allotment through the telly in LaLa’s stomach.
As a result, I was completely unprepared to answer any of the customer’s questions.
For the first three days of my work experience, I stood awkwardly on the shop floor, dishing out dubious horticultural advice to a series of confused and dissatisfied customers.
Eventually, on Thursday, one of the managers on shift took pity on me and took me off the shop floor.
She handed me a batch of Yankee Candles that had just been delivered and asked me to arrange them into a display.
After three days of talking to customers, I relished the opportunity to do something vaguely creative so I sat happily in my own little world, experimenting with different colour arrangements and taking the lids off the candles to smell the different scents inside.
However, after a couple of hours, I was approached by an old lady who had been browsing nearby. I braced myself, expecting her to ask me a question that I didn’t know the answer to.
I was relieved, therefore, when she asked me to help her retrieve a trowel from a high shelf. Finally, I thought. A task that is within my capabilities. I can actually be useful and help this old lady fulfill her trowel-based needs.
I picked up a step-ladder and placed it next to the shelf. However, as I climbed up the ladder, I suddenly felt a bit lightheaded.
All the candle sniffing had obviously gone to my head and I swayed slightly, causing the ladder to rock dangerously.
I waved my arms about, desperately attempting to restore my balance, but to no avail.
As a result, I tipped backwards and fell directly onto a nearby cactus.
To cut a long story short, I essentially flattened a cactus with my arse.
Just in case you have never fallen off a ladder onto a cactus before, let me tell you, it is a pretty painful experience.
After I had gotten over the initial shock of the impact, I tentatively raised myself to my feet and, for a few moments, stared blankly at the plant that I had obliterated with my butt cheeks.
I wasn’t sure what to do about the state of the cactus or, for that matter, my arse.
I remembered the adverts that I’d seen on TV offering compensation for people who had had an accident at work but I’d never seen one featuring someone falling onto a cactus. I wasn’t sure if it even counted as an ‘accident at work’ but I reckoned it would be worth looking into.
At the very least, I thought I should probably report the incident to my supervisor so I handed the trowel to the old lady and went looking for Alan.
When I found him, I was still slightly traumatised by the incident. My brain wasn’t functioning properly and I couldn’t think clearly about what I was saying.
As a result, I ran up to him and the words, ‘Alan, I’ve got some pricks in my bum!’ just fell out of my mouth.
Alan was, understandably, quite taken back.
Alan gasped and looked quite worried.
I was initially quite touched by this. I thought that maybe I had underestimated him as a manager. It seemed that he really cared about my wellbeing after all…
Despite my unfortunate encounter with the cactus (RIP), I managed to get through the rest of my work experience unscathed.
The following week, me and the rest of my year group returned to school where we were asked to write a reflection about our experience in the world of work.
Needless to say, mine turned out a bit different to most other peoples’.
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A few months ago, I wrote this blog post featuring some of my diary entries from lockdown.
Following this, quite a few people messaged me to say they enjoyed the post so I decided to collate more of my pandemic diary entries into a book!
365 Days of Bummer is a first-hand account of living under coronavirus restrictions in the UK from March 2020 to March 2021 and is filled with humorous observations and relatable illustrations that will stick with you like a dodgy at-home haircut.
Topics covered in the book include working at home, exercising at home, crying at home, colouring books, bog roll, Amazon, yoga, Yoda, Boris Johnson, swans, TikTok, Shakespeare, having breakdowns, baking and having breakdowns whilst baking.
Here’s hoping that book will fly off the shelves like packets of Cushelle in March 2020 and that its pages will not be used as emergency bog roll when the next pandemic rolls around!
The book is available to buy in black and white as a paperback and also as a full – if you fancy checking it out, click on the link below!
If you’ve enjoyed my blog posts over the last few years then I would love for you to read it!
I went clubbing for the first time since lockdown last month.
I’ve never been a massive fan of clubbing.
I once got spiked in a club and spent most of the night clinging onto the wall for dear life whilst everything spun around me like some sort of intoxicated gecko.
I’m not sure at what point humanity decided that being in a darkened room, breathing in the sweat and germs of strangers whilst listening to deafening music was a recipe for a good time.
I guess the whole idea originated in those 18th century dances you see in shows like Pride & Prejudice and Poldark where the youth of the day used to go to the local manor house and have a boogie to whatever music was top of the charts back in Jane Austen times.
Back then, the whole purpose of these dances was to help eligible bachelors meet young ladies and, in that regard, I guess things haven’t changed too much, although the whole ‘courting’ aspect tends to be slightly less sophisticated nowadays…
THEN:
NOW:
I’ve never been massively into dancing either which doesn’t really do much to improve my clubbing experience.
Even as a child, I wasn’t keen on it.
I have vivid memories of being forced to do a school performance of Saturday Night in Year 4 and wishing it actually was Saturday night and I wasn’t in school being forced to dance to Wigfield.
I’m also not a very rhythmically coordinated person so dancing makes me feel quite awkward and self-conscious.
This awkwardness translates itself to my physical movements. If I had to choose, I’d say my go-to dance move is the robot and, when I say ‘the robot’, I mean a robot that’s malfunctioned and is just jerking around randomly.
The only way I can get myself past this state of crippling self-consciousness is to drink a load of alcohol.
Unfortunately, drinking a load of alcohol tends to propel me to the opposite end of the spectrum, filling me with the sudden and certain belief that I can dance incredibly well.
This is unfortunate as the effects of the alcohol tend to mean that my bodily coordination is, in fact, even worse.
Let’s put it this way, if anyone is getting down on the dance floor with me it’s because I’ve inadvertently sent them flying with a flailing limb whilst doing my best impression of John Travolta in Night Fever.
To make things worse, I am a massive lightweight and, as a result, my metabolism tends to burn through alcohol quite quickly.
Therefore, after a couple of hours of manic dancing, I tend to get quite sleepy.
At this point, I normally apologise to anyone who I may have inadvertently injured and head home to crash, although I have been known to fall asleep on the club toilet after popping in for one last end of the night pee.
Speaking of toilets, if there’s one thing I’ve missed about a night out, it’s making friends with random girls whilst waiting in the queue for the bathroom.
Now, people say a lot of things about the toxic nature of female relationships. However, as far as I’m concerned, these people haven’t experienced the sense of camaraderie that exists between girls in a nightclub toilet.
Whenever I have doubts about the nature of mankind, I sometimes think about interactions I’ve had with other girls on a night out and it helps to restore my faith in humanity.
You could come out of a cubicle, having spent the last twenty minutes leaning over the toilet, alternately spewing up the contents of your stomach and crying over the state of your love life, and you will most likely find yourself surrounded by women who still consider you to be a radiant goddess.
Let’s face it, clubbing may be pretty shit but at least you can always rely on other women to have your back when you’ve had one too many on a night out.
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When I was 10 years old, my parents took me and my brothers away to the Isle of Mull for a week.
The Isle of Mull is a remote island off the coast of Scotland renowned for its wide range of wildlife and breath-taking scenery.
My mum, in particular, was very excited about going to the Isle of Mull, seeing it as an opportunity to get away from the hustle and bustle of civilisation and immerse herself in nature.
So, in the last week of July, my parents bundled us all into the car and we set off for Scotland and, after a day of travelling, we arrived at the cottage where we were staying for the week.
Around ten minutes later, as we were unpacking the car and moving our stuff inside, it started to rain. At the time, my parents shrugged this off, assuming the rain would pass overnight.
Five days later, it was still raining.
My mum had structured the week’s activities under the assumption that we would be outside 90% of the time. However, the torrential rain made this pretty much impossible.
To make things worse, we were in a remote area and there was little to do in the nearby village. As a result, we had no option but to sit inside the cottage and wait for the rain to stop.
Whilst this was boring for us as kids, it was arguably even worse for my parents who were trapped inside with three small humans all under the age of 11.
It wasn’t long until we’d got through the books we had brought with us and were looking for something else to do. Unfortunately, we could find very little to entertain ourselves with.
The only game in the cottage was a tattered old Scrabble set that my brother found under his bed.
Now, considering my brother is dyslexic and I was an insensitive prepubescent Grammar Nazi at the time, this was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
I really was the worst.
The cottage also had a bulky TV in the corner of the living room. However, there was no satellite disk so we couldn’t get any live channels.
After some searching, we found a grand total of two movies in the cupboard underneath the TV (video cassette tapes of Annie and Alien – apparently, the owner had a niche obsession with films with 5 letter titles beginning with A…)
Our parents immediately confiscated Alien from us on the grounds that it was too scary so we were forced to settle for Annie.
Over the next three days, we watched Annie six times. After the third screening, we were getting seriously bored of the film and begged our parents to let us watch Alien instead.
Eventually, on the fourth evening, they cracked and allowed me and Robert to watch Alien with them after they had put our younger brother to bed.
Now, you might think that this was quite an irresponsible parenting decision. However, if you consider the nature of our predicament, you can’t really blame my parents for not wanting to listen to the song ‘The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow’ for the seventh time.
As the days passed and we became increasingly bored and frustrated, my Scrabble arguments with Robert continued to intensify.
Eventually, my mum confiscated the board, gave us some pens and paper and told us to play Pictionary instead.
However, this backfired when we ended up channeling our scrabble-fueled contempt for each other into artistic expression.
Following this, my mum got my dad to supervise our Pictionary games.
However, perhaps because he too was frustrated with the way the holiday was turning out, he ended up getting drawn into the in-game bickering as well.
Eventually, after days of being cooped up indoors listening to near-constant squabbling, my mum finally cracked.
As far as she was concerned, there was only one option. She had come to the Isle of Mull to be outside and have a good time and she was going to do everything in her power to make that dream a reality.
It soon became apparent that there would be no arguing with my mum so we put on our waterproofs and followed her outside for a walk, regardless of the fact that the intensity of the rain had now reached Biblical Flood levels.
Unsurprisingly, the ground was completely water logged. What had once presumably been a solid footpath, was now a quagmire, filled with mud that slipped beneath our feet and clung onto our shoes.
Fifteen minutes into the walk, Robert had fallen face first into the mud, I had lost a shoe and all five of us were wet through.
My mum, meanwhile, was desperately trying to keep morale up.
Ten minutes later, things took a distinct turn for the worse when Robert found a leech on his leg.
Catching sight of the slug-like worm latched onto my brother’s skin, my mind shot back to the parasitic creature I had watched terrorize the space crew in Alien the previous evening. I immediately assumed the worst.
Naturally, my outburst did little to help the situation.
Eventually, my Dad managed to prise the leech from Robert’s leg (all the while reassuring him that he wasn’t going to suffer the same fate as John Hurt) and threw it back into the bog.
Once the leech had been banished back from whence it came, my mum decided that it probably was best for us to head back and disinfect the bite.
By this point, my younger brother, Will, was getting pretty exhausted so my mum lifted him onto her shoulders as we trudged back towards the cottage.
Due to his extra weight, she walked more slowly and ended up at the back of the group.
After around five minutes of walking, I heard a sudden, sharp yell behind me.
I turned around, searching for the source of the sound.
I could see Will, lying on the ground, looking slightly shocked and tearful. There was, however, no sign of my mum.
I ran up to Will. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ I asked in a state on semi-panic.
Will pointed to his left, eyes wide and sincere. ‘The bog ate her’.
I followed the direction of his finger and screamed.
Something was pulling itself out of the bog, a tall, groaning figure that bore a strong resemblance to the Mud Monster in Scooby Doo.
It took me a few seconds to realise that the bog monster was my mum.
She had fallen into a deep ditch and ended up almost completely submerged in the muddy water that filled it.
At the end of the day, I guess my mum got what she wanted out of the holiday – she achieved her wish to be immersed in nature.
It just didn’t manifest itself in the way she had hoped…
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Some Words That Say What I Think 