Smelly bellies and bleached patios

Last Wednesday, my brother came over for a barbecue. He brought with him a copy of Chat. Is there any better present in the world? So today, I am proud to present to you, The Nonsense From Chat.

First up, a rare occurrence, a story which has been given 10 out of 10 on the shock factor scale.

And I think I know why. This woman, Jonty, has named her children Kai, Bailey, Skye and Hunter. I’m sorry, Kai and Skye? O, and friends of theirs, a couple called Lee-Anna and Liam. Lee…. Anna…. Leanne?… Whatever.

On the random photos page, there’s a lot of good stuff going on. We’ve got a picture of someone reading Chat on holiday, a picture of a baby asleep, a picture of a baby in a sunhat, a picture of a cat and, best of all, a picture of a cake someone got on their birthday, which had been made to look like a copy of Chat magazine! Epic!

Next up, we’ll visit the top tips page which, I’m sure, is your favourite. It’s certainly mine. Our first fabulous tip is to cover an old chair in a pair of jeans. It makes it look better. Apparently.

You decide.

The next tip is, basically, use a small vacuum cleaner to clean the little bits out of the bottom of your handbag. Thank you, D Thornton from Bournemouth. Where would I be without this tip?

The next tip is put bleach all over your patio to kill the weeds. Boy, do I love a bleach covered patio. The smell, the discolouration on your paving stones. What brilliant advice. Thank you, Julia Wakeford from Romford. You have improved my life immeasurably.

Lastly, stick some sea shells on your wall. Check it out.

Good, hey?

To finish off today’s look inside Chat, we’re going to briefly visit the Health pages and one letter in particular. This letter is called ‘Whiffy midriff.’ Already, you know it’s going to be amazing.

It starts with ‘My bellybutton pongs!’ Get straight to it, Ashley, aged 28. Don’t beat around the bush.

‘If I put my finger in and sniff it, there’s a smell like rotting veg!’ Ok, Ashley, 28, what… on…. earth. I’m 28 and I can tell you this for nothing. If I had a smelly bellybutton, Chat would be the last place I’d go for advice. I mean, give Google a try first, maybe? The NHS has a free helpline? Ask friends?

And what is she doing sticking her finger in her bellybutton then smelling it? Unless the bellybutton smell is so strong that she catches a whiff of it while sitting on the sofa then decides to see what’s happening, am I suppose that one day she was just eating her dinner, watching TV with her boyfriend and thought, ‘I’ll quickly smell my bellybutton.’ For no reason. And is that something we all do? Am I the stupid one here, for not jabbing my finger in my bellybutton then inhaling the resulting odours?

She finishes the letter by saying, ‘My boyfriend says he can’t smell it though.’ I bet he’s not your boyfriend anymore, is he, Ashley, 28?

“Smell my finger, darling.”

“What? Why?”

“Just smell it. Go on. Please.”

“Um, ok…. Where has it been?”

“In my bellybutton.”

“And why do I need to smell it?”

“Cause it smells like rotting veg. Don’t you think? Give it a smell. Go on. Tell me what you think.”

“Err… No. It’s fine. There’s… There’s nothing wrong with it at all. I’m just, um, going to nip out. Um. To the shops. Yeh, the shops. If I’m not back in a few days, don’t call me….”

Squirrels, dogs and cats

Well, everyone, after the last two days, I’ll bet you thought we were done with Chat. As did I. But then I found the back page story, which is generally reserved for the wackiest stories, the kind of thing which have an element of the unhinged to them. Let me remind you of other stories that have found their way to the back page.

There was the woman who knitted an entire troop of pirates and had them on her bed with her. There was the couple who got driven to their wedding in a skip. There was the woman who makes freaky zombie dolls and gives them to people as gifts. That, my friends, is the kind of story that appears on the back page.

And this week is no different. Check it out. The article is called ‘Nutty but nice.’ Clever.

Hmm. An adventure park for squirrels? What on earth can this mean?

O, ok. I get it. That’s what she means. She’s made a mini hot air balloon with some nuts in the basket so the squirrel will sit in it.

Yehhhh… She doesn’t mention having a job. That might be something to do with it.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is a squirrel in a pram on the left and a squirrel ‘cleaning windows’ on the right.

She even set up a Santa sleigh full of nuts, photographed the squirrels when they stood next to it then sent it out as her Christmas card. Hmmm.

I just… I don’t… I can’t even think what to say about this. A squirrel adventure park. Seriously, now. People get their kicks in strange ways. Maybe she should try taking up a hobby, origami perhaps?

And now, for something completely different. A Bingo Dog!

And last but not least, the Photo of the Week, a cat sitting on a table.

Cement Face, clip fan and new numbers

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, we’re entering the world of Chat again.

Before we embark on any of the actual stories, I’d just like to list some of the names mentioned in this week’s magazine. People love sending stories or pictures of their children and I fear something has happened to the new mothers of today, something called Crazy Naming. It’s like they’ve randomly picked out some letters from the dictionary and stuck them together to make a word and written it on the birth certificate. And even when fairly regular names are used, there’s a real thing for double barrelling. We must double barrel! These are just a few….

Kaly-raine
Modlen (female, by the way)
Dayton Rae
Ella-May
Amy Rose
Roman
Olivia Grace
Harley
Darcie
Willow
Sharonesme
Kimbalee
Leigh-Catherine

And with the scene set, in we go. First up, we have Concrete Face Lady.

Yep. Actual concrete. In her actual face. In fact, it was a mixture of cement, tyre sealant, mineral oil and glue. In her face. She was born a boy but lived as a transexual and wanted the plastic surgery to have womanly cheek bones and a more feminine shape to her body. The cement nonsense mixture has also been injected in her boobs, hips and bum, where they have now gone lumpy but the doctors can’t remove them because it has solidified around the  nerves, tissue and blood vessels so can’t be removed. Yeh. Being a boy doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Next up, everyone’s favourite page – the ‘Blimey! That’s clever’ page. And what have we here?

O, it’s just some settings on an oven, you’re probably thinking. Well! Let me tell you! It is not just some settings on an oven!…

Actually, yeh, it is. They had faded away so she got some more sticky numbers and stuck them on. That’s it. That’s the tip. When the numbers on your oven settings fade, put some more on.

That wasn’t really even a tip, was it? That was nonsense.

Let’s try another one.

Store your hair clips on a fan. Firstly, who has this many hair clips?! Secondly she says this clipping technique ‘stores them in one place and looks pretty.’ And looks pretty?! Really? You decide.

Lastly, this.

Keep toilet roll tubes and put wires in them with a label on. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with this, as such. But it’s not really the ground breaking life changing rocket science I’m always expecting when I look at these pages. We’ve cut down trees to produce this magazine! I need to feel there was a decent reason why we did that.

I guess the whole of Chat magazine overrides that idea.

Mystic Maisey

The other night, something quite strange and potentially supernatural happened. My first thought was, “I could write about it for Chat magazine.” Obviously. So here is the article I am planning on sending them. I thought it could be called Mystic Maisey, just because it sounds good, although the story is not about me being being mystic at all…. O well.

Mystic Maisey

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always felt that I was destined for great things. I was very aware of other possible realms and wanted to investigate the potential for supernatural activity. Once, when I was eight, my tooth fell out and when I put it under my pillow, it turned into a 50p. For me, this was proof that there were other beings sharing planet Earth with us.

Back in November 2012, I was watching television with my fellow mystic, Divining Danda. There was a sound from the kitchen that neither of us could work out. It may well have been the surround sound as one of the speakers is next to the living room door. But Danda decided to check it out anyway. He got up walked to the kitchen and stopped.

“Laura,” he called. “Come here a minute.”

I got up and went to see what was happening. At the far end of the kitchen is a light switch that you work by pulling a string. On the end of the string is a pen shaped like a golf club.

There is nothing which touches this switch and pen except the door to the garden. Neither of us had been in the kitchen or opened the door. Yet, as I looked, the pen was swinging vigorously from side to side….

And that’s when I knew it. They were hungry. There were ghosts in our kitchen and they were hungry. So occasionally, I leave out a lettuce leaf or some bread. It hasn’t been touched yet but I know they are there and they are hungry. I sensed it when I saw the pen swinging.

For now, I just hope my hungry ghosts don’t do anything more than that! If they start raiding the fridge, I’ll have to get the Ghostbusters in!

…..so what do you think? Worthy of Chat magazine? The standards are quite high so I just hope they’ll accept my story…..

The big 100!

Can you believe it? This is blog post number 100! It has been an interesting learning experience. I originally started it because I was having one of those days. We’ve all had them. I had a huge essay to write and I thought I’d take a little walk and stretch my legs before I started. I walked to the river, intending to potter to the next bridge, cross it, then return. And I walked. And I walked….

And I walked…

And walked….

And kept walking a little bit more.

And I couldn’t see any bridges. I had been out for hours. And my brain got ticking. I thought about my essay. I panicked. I’d never get it finished in time. I had no idea what to write. There was no way I’d get 4000 words out of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2006.

I had thought it’d be right up my street when I chose the question. Then I read the Act. It was not juicy and interesting. There was no gossip to be had. It was rules and regulations. Wordy ones. I worried about not finding it interesting as it meant my ‘life plan’ might be in danger. I was worried that my back-up life plan consisted of coffee making and that I’d one day be really old and grey, with rollers in my hair, and a Zimmerframe, standing behind a coffee machine, steaming milk. Forever.

I had a bit of a panic. How can I be approaching thirty and not be in charge of the world already?! I was slacking.

So, for the three and a half hours it took me to get to the next bridge (!) and the hour it took to get to a town centre on the other side, I felt pretty annoyed at myself. I couldn’t believe I’d been trundling along doing ‘not much’ for so long. And I went into a bookshop because that always makes me feel better and somehow found myself holding a book called The Happiness Project.

The author talks about being honest with yourself about the things you find fun (having a book and free time, for example) and doing things you enjoy. She is a writer and enjoys writing so she starts a blog. I thought that I’d start one aswell as I enjoy writing, although I hadn’t done any in years. I’d sort of been contemplating doing one for ages too but couldn’t think what I’d write about. And that’s how this came about.

There have been highs (getting to read Chat magazine and call it ‘research’), the have been lows (eating everything in sight during revision). There have been silly moments (the invention of the catterpony), there have been serious moments (…wait a minute…. have there?). There have been various themes (freedom, the alphabet, Chat magazine, the way we speak).

But mostly, there has been…. lots of words…. and a high proportion of nonsense.

I am proud of my nonsense. The Happiness Project book introduced me to the idea of being honest with yourself about what you’re good at and what you enjoy. And as much as I wish it were the opposite, making social commentary on the current political climate is not what I want to write about at the moment.

So, here’s to the next 100 posts! I wonder what I’ll be saying then???