My worms and I

My worms and I have had a tumultuous relationship. When we first met (they were delivered to my door), I cut the bag open and peered inside and there they all were, just pink and wriggly and innocent-looking.

O, how exciting, I thought to myself. Hundreds of teeny tiny worms, all my own.

I felt like a proud mother. “The worms arrived,” I would tell people. “They’re doing really well in school (the mud).”

Mistakenly, as described in K is for…., I thought I had ordered a home for the worms. I had not. So the worms were put in a big saucepan to live until I could work out what to do. “Worms,” I was told in my worm blurb, “do not like sunlight and will automatically burrow down into the mud.”

Brilliant, I thought, I don’t need to worry about them. They will just burrow down.

Then the evening drew in and the natural light faded. And this is when the other part of the worm blurb, which I had not read, became relevant. “Worms,” this section read, “are naturally inquisitive and like to explore.”

Ah…

This is a problem….

After an evening out seeing friends, I got in quite late. It was probably after midnight.

Let me check my babies are ok, I thought to myself, smiling happily at my new status as full time mother. I opened the door to the little back porch type area where I had left them.

They.

Were.

EVERYWHERE.

And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. I switched on the main kitchen light and saw them crawling all over the kitchen floor! A good portion had made off in the opposite direction for the outside world but in their rush to get out had, stupidly, all mashed into a little hole at once and become stuck. I couldn’t get a hold on any of them and they couldn’t move (they are still there as it is impossible to get into).

Infuriated, I gave them a real telling off whilst gathering them up.

“You were supposed to burrow, you idiots, not climb out!” I raged, stomping around in the garden with a torch, picking them up off the path before they wriggled away into the cracks between the paving stones.

I think I lost quite a lot of my children that evening.

So I put all the ones back that I could find and put foil over the top of the saucepan to stop them escaping.

When I woke up in the morning to go to work, at about 6.20am, I went downstairs, rubbing my weary eyes and going to the kettle to make tea. And of course there were worms everywhere! Of course there were. I wouldn’t expect anything less. Impatient little things. I was ordering a home for them that day. But they just had to go running off, didn’t they?!

So there I was, at 6.20am, pre-morning tea, picking worms up from off my kitchen floor. I opened the little door and looked at what had happened. They had simply been too excited to stay still and had pushed little grooves in the foil to squirm out from underneath it.

“Right! That’s it! I’m getting the clingfilm out!” I told them sternly. And sure enough, over went the clingfilm. “You can’t escape this.”

In conversation with Danda later that day, he said, “You can’t put clingfilm over! They won’t be able to breathe.”

Ah. Right. Ok. Sure. I see.

Panic! The shift couldn’t end soon enough that day and I ran home, terrified there’d be a massacre and I’d be the one with blood on my hands. There was condensation on the clingfilm and the worms were barely moving! I tore it off and poked a few.

“Come on come on come on! Please be fine. Please be fine. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. I forgot you needed to breathe, little worms! Come on, move!” After some poking and gently squeezing to resuscitate them, they started moving again, rather sluggishly. I brought them into the kitchen under the light and waited to see if they would burrow.

They did, thank god!

I then moved them into a massive bin and clingfilmed the top but poked loads of holes into it and left them in the kitchen overnight with the light on, as that was the only guaranteed way to keep them in the soil and not trying to make a run for it.

Their home arrived the next day so they were immediately transferred into it and have been there ever since. Apparently it takes a few months for my first lot of compost to be ready and mine’s not even been going a month so I’ve got a little wait before those naughty schoolchildren can prove to me that they’ve grown up to be contributing members of society.

They just chill down by the shed at the moment. I give them egg shells and vegetable peelings and they hide so I’ve not seen hardly any of them and am unsure if they’ve all died actually. But I faithfully put my vegetable peelings down there and hope for the best

🙂

P.S. I picked up the mop a few days ago to do the kitchen floor and three worms fell out!

A new year of Chat

Ok, seeing as it’s a new year, I didn’t want to get too far into it before updating you all on Chat’s latest offerings. I know you miss it if I leave it too long.

The first thing to pop up on the Silly-o-meter is a photo of a woman wrapped in foil, reading Chat, and the caption, “All that foil didn’t stop my friend enjoying her favourite mag.”

Err…… Ok….

Next is the inevitable fat story. Lou, at 48st, was told she had a BMI of 93 and must have an operation to save her from her own fat. That’s right, a BMI of 93! It should be between 18 and 25. You’re counted as obese if you are over 30! There are the obligatory photos of her in clothes which look like duvet covers for double beds and then a photo of her at ‘just’ 38st. Fabulous.

I mean, I get confused by people who are so overweight they can’t stand up or walk. At some point, one day, you noticed that you had stopped being able to get out of bed. At some point, that realisation occurred. And some small part of you must have thought, ‘O god, this is bad. Maybe I should do something about it?’ And you then, after thinking that, decided to do nothing about it. Why would you decide to do nothing? The woman in this story has a daughter. Even if she didn’t like herself enough, surely she thought of her daughter when deciding not to do anything about her weight?

The next story is called ‘Tall, dark, handsome and dangerous’ and, even without reading it properly, I can see it’s going to be quite mental. “My obsessed ex slashed my horse… I logged onto my internet dating profile….. I’d been single a few months after an eight year relationship…. He was jealous of my love for my horse, Jessie.” Yeh…. I’m not going to linger too long on that page.

Next it’s the medical pages. The best letter, by far, is called ‘Big bum!’ and is from Sandy, 34, who wants to know if buttock firming exercises will work. That’s right. Instead of just trying the bum exercises because she hates her big bum so much, she has written to Chat about it, to check whether they will work. As if she’s not capable of carrying out the basic daily functions of life unless Chat has okay-ed them first.

There is also a letter from a woman called MeLisa. I’m sorry, what’s that? Do I say me, Lisa? Is it like a normal name with ‘me’ at the front? Should I change my name to MeLaura? Or is it just Melissa with a capital L in the middle of it?

And now it’s time for the finale. The ultimate Chat story – a woman who is in love with a bus. Yes. A bus. In fact, she’s not just in love with it, she’s in a relationship with it.

She married and had three children. When her marriage broke up she realised the Routemaster bus called Ronnie, that she’d seen many times at the London Transport Museum, was who she was meant to be with!

Yep. Now her and Ronnie are in a committed relationship. “How could I ever cheat on my Ronnie?.. Our love is real,” she says. “Ronnie and I are meant to be together. Christmas Cards from friends were written, To Ash and Ronnie.”

And that is all I have to say about that story. It speaks for itself really, doesn’t it?

Top Tips, doctor’s letters and strange dolls

It’s time to check in with the crazy world of Chat again. But first, let me just mention an odd dream I had last night. I went on holiday to Marbella (I think) but I forgot to book the week off work so I was there, swimming and sunbathing, then I was flying back to England in the evenings so I could work in the morning and flying back to Marbella in the afternoons after work. Wierd.

Anyway, let’s get started. There’s a surprising lack of ‘I used to be 20 stone but now I’m not’ stories. Not one single weight loss story. Disappointing. Never fear, though! Chat never lets us down. We have instead a picture of a cat pushing another cat in a little trolley. I’m not joking. Look.

Then there’s the usual page of photos about nothing, e.g. here’s a photo of me and John from Jedward. She waited eight hours for him apparently. I’m speechless. I didn’t think anyone took then seriously enough to wait eight hours. Another photo is just of a cat asleep. The caption says ‘Here’s our little cat Tigger, he’s fallen asleep in our bed.’ Nonsense.

Top tips next. This is always a good page. One of the tips is from a woman who says she covers her oven shelves in foil to save on the washing up. Another is a woman who has the answer to one of life’s big problems. You know when you try to fill up a large bucket with water but it doesn’t fit in the sink? Well, you shall struggle no more!

Put your dustpan under the tap and direct the water down the handle and into the bucket waiting underneath.

Another lady has cut her old net curtains up and sowed the floral patterns onto her top. I mean, thanks for sharing, but I think I won’t be using that old-net-curtains tip.

There’s a really random letter on the doctors page too. Check it out.

What. On. Earth. An extra thumb!? And she’s writing to Chat about it? And then Chat are like, ‘O yeh, tie a thread around it and it will fall off.’ Something feels a bit dodgy about all this. I’m going to have a serious think next time I put anything around my finger….

Another letter says, honestly, “I have a phobia of mice. I really freak out and have to run if I see one. Can I be cured?” Now, I shouldn’t imagine that this really needs writing to Chat about. How often do you see mice in everyday life in England? I saw one in the garden ages ago and before that it must have been years. So a mouse-phobia, however serious, is not really a major setback, is it? If the intervals at which you see one are years apart. Anyway. Maybe she lives in the country and sees them all the time. Who knows.

Lastly, a woman who collects and makes wierd dolls.

She thinks they’re ‘cute’ and gives them to people for their birthdays etc. She gave one to her mother in law for Mother’s Day. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if someone gave me one of these for my birthday. Well, I do, I’d hide it somewhere no-one would see it. But I don’t know what I’d say right there in the moment, when you’ve just opened it and present-giver is looking at you, eagerly awaiting your reaction. I mean it’s fine her making and collecting them but what on earth would I do with one? I guess I’d give it a little hug and say ‘Wow, thanks, I love it. I was hoping someone would give me a little strange gothic doll thing for my birthday this year. And now, at last, my dream has come true. Thanks. You know me so well. You knew I’d love this. And I do. I really do.’

I is for…

iCHOC!

That’s right. iChoc. There is a product, a chocolate product obviously, called iChoc.

It started with iPod (did it?) which was fine. It’s a marketing thing, that’s the name they’ve come up with, that’s ok. Then there was iPhone. iPad. iTunes. iPlayer. iPhone touch. iMovie. iLife (apparently). iThis. iThat. iNonsense. And we somehow, by some jump in logic, got to iChoc.

Ok, what do all the iThings have in common? They are made by the same company and are electronic-type things. Great. I’m on board. It’s still a bit of an iOverload but iCan take it.

And then iSaw the iChocs. Are they electronic?…. Made by a computer company?… A bit new fangled and moderny?… The answer to all these is a big fat iNo. It’s just chocolate. It’s wrapped in colourful foil, pink, blue, yellow etc. On the packaging is a picture of a microphone. That’s iCheating isn’t it? Really? You can’t just take normal chocolates, see a successful marketing strategy and tag your product onto it, simply by drawing a picture of a microphone on the package. What’s ‘i’ about that?! Seriously? What’s ‘i’ about chocolate in colourful foil wrappers with a small picture of a microphone? That annoyed me, seeing that product. iRidiculous.