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My Least Favourite Christmas Song

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 1 Comment

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 The Twelve 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…

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook .

10 Mythical Creatures Attending a Zoom Meeting.

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 1 Comment

Zoom meetings, both personal and professional, have become a prominent part of most people’s lives over the last year.

One of my favourite zoom meetings is a weekly writing group that I attend with some of my improv friends in Liverpool.

Improvisers are great people to write with as they are amazing at taking a base idea and expanding it into a myriad of different possibilities. This creative ‘hive mind’ is one of the things I love the most about improv as it tends to result in the creation of characters and scenarios that I never would have conceived of on my own.

A great example of this happened a couple of weeks ago when I came to the meeting with an idea for a cartoon that I wanted to run past the group. I wanted to take the character of Medusa out of ancient mythology and into modern day lockdown life by having her turn to stone after checking out her own face on zoom.

My friends assured me that the joke worked and we then went on to have a full on idea splurge about how various monsters and mythological would conduct themselves on zoom. 

I’ve included some of the results from this session below. Turns out humans aren’t the only ones struggling with communicating through online video conferencing software…

Unlike Medusa, Dracula is completely unable to check out his own face.

“Alexa, who is the fairest of them all?”

Troll doing what he does best.

Werewolf hasn’t shaved in months.

Frankenstein’s monster just wants people to hear him out.

Hades’ dog is causing mayhem in the background.

Dead man zooming.

Signal starts getting a bit dodgy once you’re past the upper atmosphere.

Mermaids have finally been accepted as part of our world.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook .

2020: A Review

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 4 Comments

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that 2020 has been the weirdest, craziest, scariest, most existentially-challenging, emotionally-draining year of my life.

A lot of bad things have happened and, at times, whilst caught in a Matrix-style existential mindset, I’ve become convinced that I’ve probably been living in an unpublished Lemony Snicket novel without being aware of it.

I mean, at least the Baudelaire kids were allowed to move between households…

The whole year has felt like an extension of that strange period between Christmas and New Year when you lose all track of time and end up eating an excessive amount of chocolate whilst engaging in a nostalgic Julie Andrews movie marathon because you’ve forgotten your purpose in life, there’s nothing else to do and at least Julie seems happy about things.

It takes one crazy year to mess with both the foundations of society and the concept time itself and it’s a bit weird to think that it’s coming to an end, almost like stepping out of some surreal alternate reality.

Months, weeks and days have melded into one another and become one long unstructured mass of time and, looking back, it’s hard to believe that I’ve achieved anything or done anything significant.

As a result, I thought it would be useful to write a post to remind myself that I have done some things this year, aside from of sitting on a sofa in my oldest tattiest hoody, staring into the existential abyss whilst stoically making my way through a family size bag of Doritos.

LIST OF 2020 ACHIEVEMENTS SOME THINGS I’VE DONE

  1. Survived 365 surreal, weird, stressful 2020 days.

2. Watched several of Boris Johnson’s ‘addressing the nation’ speeches and only considered punching the TV once or twice (exhibiting considerable emotional control).

3. Recovered from a spiraling Amazon addiction after realising that buying loads of things to help with stress (candles, incense sticks, meditation journals etc.) was only making me more stressed about the state of the high street and also the state of my bank account.

4. Managed to keep in touch with most of my friends, despite being confronted with my own face on Zoom more than I would have liked.

5. Didn’t shave my legs for the entirety of Lockdown 1.0.

6. Didn’t wear a bra for the entirety of Lockdown 1.0.

7. Briefly considered wearing a bra when going to the supermarket…

8. … and then didn’t (I’m sure that’s feminism or something… and by ‘something’ I mean extreme laziness).

9. Became closer to nature by taking lots of relaxing walks in the park.

10. Became closer to my dogs by taking several distinctly less relaxing walks in the park.

Swan was angered when Jessie made a unconsidered attempt chase it in what was potentially the most terrifying moment of my life to date.

11. Ran out of perfume and avoided buying more from Amazon by discovering a cheaper alternative.

12. Learnt to juggle (3 balls, not general life responsibilities)

13. Shaved my brother’s head and briefly considered becoming a barber. #RethinkReskillReboot

14. Resisted a sudden impulsive urge to shave my own head whilst bored and looking for something to do.

15. Briefly tried to eat more healthily to counter an increased amount of sedentary sofa time but then decided that it was a difficult time and I deserved to treat myself.

16. Did yoga like 10 times and only broke one item of furniture in the process.

17. Discovered a brand new way of burning calories.

18. Discovered a new comeback that has proved useful for whenever I get yelled at by groups of youths in the street.

19. Got bored and built a really tall tower out of used toilet rolls.

I mean, it looked a little bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa before it fell on top of me so it was basically like being on holiday.

20. Took up mindfulness and meditation and stuck with it even though my body seemed intent on conspiring against me.

21. Survived several mental breakdowns.

23. Had more time to write and draw (it may have been an awful year but at least I’ve got a few decent cartoons out of it!)

All in all, I may have entered 2020 with a fresh rush of energy and a resolve to strive to become the best version of myself that I possibly could be. And I may now be ending it by dragging a significantly less impressive version of myself towards the finish line.

But, all things considered, I reckon that is the biggest achievement I could have hoped for.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook .

I Think I Might Be A Background Character In My Own Life…

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 3 Comments

When I was younger, I used to have a very vivid imagination and spent a lot of time immersing myself in fictional worlds.

When I watched films like Lord of the Rings, I always identified with the main protagonists – I thought I’d be brave and courageous like Arogorn or Legolas or loyal and determined like Sam.

I guess I assumed that when a great crisis came along that threatened the entire world, I would grow up to be one of the heroes at the centre of the action, facing the threat head on.

However, as I’ve progressed into adulthood, I’ve come to realise that the person that I perceive myself to be doesn’t always match up with the person who I actually am in reality.

For a while now, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that I might actually be one of life’s generic background characters and, if anything, the coronavirus pandemic has served to confirm this.

Nowadays, I’ve drastically lowered my expectations.

If I were a character in Lord of the Rings, I wouldn’t be Frodo or SamWise Gamgee – I reckon I’d be one of the bog-standard Hobbits that sat on my arse in the Shire whilst shit went down, progressively making my way through multiple meals a day with no real idea of what was going on.

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This is a more accurate representation of how I’ve spent my days in this time of national crisis.

Sitting at home with my thoughts is challenging in its own way.

Whilst I may be feeling powerless to change external circumstances, at the beginning of April I decided I could still adopt the mindset of a hero and work on myself so that I would exit lockdown feeling more physically and mentally robust than when I entered it.

My childhood protagonist complex kicked in again and I had visions of myself effortlessly holding my body in strenuous yoga positions like Luke Skywalker in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.

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However, if you’ve read my previous blog post, you will know that my attempts transform myself into a zen yogic goddess weren’t particularly successful…

As the days and weeks have melded into one long strange expanse of time, my self-disapline has run off with my sanity, leaving me with a physical and mental state that more closely resemble Jabba the Hutt and that weird crazed rat creature that hangs out with him.

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My Lockdown Yoga Experience

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 8 Comments

I have been finding social isolation quite challenging mentally so I recently started doing yoga in the hope that it would help me to reduce my anxiety levels.

It is quite easy to do yoga from home – the internet is full of videos featuring yoga instuctors serenly moving their bodies into various positions whilst radiating inner calm.

Unfortunately, these yoga instructors recorded the majority of their videos before March 2020 when the future seemed as solid as their core muscles.

After two months of lockdown, I have neither the abs nor the sense of security to replicate such serenity.

For me, ‘developing a practice’ has consisted mainly of manically jerking my body through each position in a vain attempt to restore some semblance of inner zen.

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It turns out that praciticing yoga under lockdown conditions isn’t easy.

I think that yoga was probably designed to be practiced in the mountains or other areas of vast natural beauty whilst listening to the sound of the wind moving through the trees or the waves rushing up against a pebble beach.

It is slightly more difficult to conjour up a sense of profound internal peace in a 4×3 metre room in your parent’s house the middle of Liverpool to the sound of your brothers using the nearby toilet and your mum playing a particularly intense game of Words With Friends in the opposite room.

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That being said, yoga has helped me become more physically attuned to myself and more aware of how my body relates to the space around me.

However, this is predominantly because my room is too small and untidy to accomadate pretty much every single yoga move and my ability to enter into a state of seamless yogic flow is often compromised by inconviently positioned items of furniture. img_0553

I guess I hoped that my body and mind would blend together in some sort of peaceful holistic spiritual cocktail.

Unfortunately, my spiritual cocktail seems to be one of those cheap mixers you buy on a night out at uni – you’re not sure exactly what’s in it but you end up downing it anyway whilst your flatmates chant at you.

All in all, I would like to say that lockdown has transformed me into a fully fledged zen yogi but, if I’m honest, I have pretty much resorted to repeating postive mantras to myself from my favourite position of all. img_0550If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.