A tiny little face on a great big head

It’s Chat time, everyone! What else do I write this blog for if not for the Chat updates? We all know the standard first page nonsense by now, right? Theres always a picture of an animal, for no apparent reason. This week it’s a fox cub.

No reason. Just a fox. Actually, one of the letters on the letters page is from a woman who says, “Thank you for the captivating photo of George the guide dog puppy, named after our new young prince.” George was another of the animal photos randomly stuck in the front page. I have looked at the photo of George the guide dog puppy and, while he is small and cute, I wouldn’t necessarily describe him as ‘captivating’. Anyway, the chat readers love the odd animal pics so who am I to poke fun?

Next, the personal-photos-that-hold-no-interest-for-anyone-else page. First up, a baby in a ball pool.

Next, a dog in a hat.

And finally, the photo I showed Danda because of the uncomfortable look on the woman’s face and he went, “Urgh!” I was like, “Why did you say urgh?” And he went, “Well, she’s got a little tiny face on a great big head. It’s wierd. Urgh.”

It is a bit wierd, right?

The next brilliant thing in Chat this week is a letter on the health pages. Have a read.

Ok, Tianna, 24, you’ve probably been getting a period for over a decade, haven’t you? And you’ve genuinely no idea how to do anything about the time it starts/stops? Do you live in a cave?

Next, a bit of nutritional advice.

Hey, all you dieters! Struggling with your weight? Can’t work out why the pounds aren’t shifting? Well, you can stop all your worrying. The answer has arrived! Eat chocolate biscuits instead of Danish pastries! Shun those vegetables and that exercise regime you’ve been trying to stick to. Certainly don’t cut out the sweets and biscuits! O no! Keep eating fatty crap, just be selective about exactly what fatty crap you’re eating and the pounds will drop off! Thank the lord for Chat. Where would our waistlines be without it?

And now, after this onslaught of amazingness, I’m just going to quickly run through the names mentioned in Chat this week.

Brandon Kevan
Lennon and Sonny (twins)
Finley Iles
Mac
Minnie Power
Kira
Tats (yep, that’s a name, apparently)
Suli Binnion (anyone else thinking bunion?)
Majella
Brogan

Lastly, there’s the guy who got loads of tattoos and renamed himself King Body Art. I have no words. No words.

I’m going to finish with a bit of financial advice today. Chat must have an advertising thing with Quidco cause they mention it a lot. Check this out.

Well, that sounds good, doesn’t it? £1000 in five years. Well! That’s brilliant. Cause it’s £200 every year. That’s at least £16.50 a month! Amazing! Tell me where to sign up! I can start saving for that trip back to Africa I’ve been planning. It’s a few grand so I’ll have it saved in about 15 years. I’ll be there in no time at all!

Getting spooked in Ham House

A few days ago, I expressed an interest in becoming a tour guide at Ham House. As luck would have it, the very next day there was a training session on how to guide the ghost tours.

I jumped at the chance so the following morning, the training was due to begin at 10am. The house is generally kept quite dark, to avoid light damage to any of the delicate things in the rooms. This makes the whole place a bit spooky. My plan was to go into the house at 9.30am and have a little look around for some ghosts while the place was still quiet and dark.

I went and stood in the chapel, where the Duke of Lauderdale’s body lay for a week after his death and where a woman dressed in black has been seen kneeling by the altar and where a handprint was found in the dust one morning, at the Duchess’ pew. I stared into the darkness and my heart beat fast and eventually I lit up my phone to scan the room for ghosties but didn’t see one.

Next I went to to the Round Gallery where, in the book I recently talked about, one of the main characters sees some ghosts. While I am not claiming this book is based on anything factual, I still thought I might come across something, given all the portraits on the wall.

Nothing.

Back downstairs, I went into the Duchess’ bedchamber. This is the room where she spent the last years of her life, ridden with gout and feeling trapped. I can’t remember the exact quote but she writes about feeling imprisoned in her beloved Ham House. There have been ghostly sightings by room guides here, who’ve been so scared by what they saw, that they have been unable to return to the house.

I lingered around, looked in the mirror, looked at the portrait of the Duchess as a young woman and waited.

Nothing.

Undeterred, I went into the White Closet, a beautiful little room that was one of the Duchess’ private closets in which she entertained only her closest friends.

As I stared at a painting of the back of Ham House and the gardens, I remembered someone saying that this painting contains most of the people at Ham House who have been seen/heard as ghosts. So I started looking for them in the painting. And I heard a noise…..

Whirrrrrrrr…..

Oo! Oo! It’s the ghosts! Through there! Up there! In the next room! I snuck along following the noise, with a beating heart, and found….

One of the staff members hoovering the floor in the Long Gallery.

Ah. Yes. Of course that was it. Silly me. Ghosts don’t whirr, everyone knows that.

I did tell him off, though, for hoovering while I’m looking for ghosts. How can they walk around or say hi to me if he’s busy hoovering them up? It takes them bloody ages to get back out of that hoover so I wouldn’t see them until much later in the day.

By this time, it was 10am and the training was starting so I went upstairs and complained about the lack of ghost sightings. We talked a lot about how a tour should run, then a few of the experienced guides did a sample tour for us around the house.

I still didn’t see any ghosts on this tour but not for lack of looking.

Anyway, the training finished and I left, clutching my notes and dreaming about being the Best Ghost Tour Guide The World Has Ever Seen, and ran into my manager from the cafe, who told me about a name scratched into the kitchen window in one of the house steward’s flats upstairs in the house.

The story is, briefly, a young man called John McFarlane was at the house. He was in love with one of the kitchen girls but she was in love with the butler. He was super distraught about it and threw himself out of one of the upstairs windows and died. But not before scratching his name into one of the window panes – John McFarlane 1790.

So we went to see this name scratched in. I was really having to restrain my excitement. People have photographed this window before and seen an orb in the photo! I attempted to take a photo of the name but my phone was like, “There is no more space for photographs on your phone.”

Humph.

So I deleted some photos to make space and tried again. Same thing. I deleted some more and eventually I got one but I couldn’t take any more. After walking through the front room into the hallway, we decided to look around upstairs.

As we approached the stairs, Sarah said to me, “There are stories of a little boy ghost on these stairs,” then she turned the light on…

And the light popped and the bulb threw itself out of the socket and it hurtled down the stairs towards us and smashed on the ground, only just missing us. I tried to photograph the smashed glass but the phone was having none of it. Sarah checked the fuse box but nothing had blown….

Make of it what you will, my friends. Make of it what you will.

I once dated a man who’s name I didn’t know

True story.

It happened about five years ago. I saw him every day when I was at work and thought he was utterly beautiful. When I was at work I had a name badge on.

For about a year, I smiled and tried to start conversations. For a year, he smiled politely but didn’t respond. Then one day I went to get some photos developed and he was standing there in the shop! Thankfully, the photos were of friends and I at a party so I looked presentable enough.

When I went to pick them up, he finally responded to my advances and chatted a little. The chatting developed over the next few months until he finally asked me to go for a drink. He’d been saying my name when talking to me for quite a while by this point. Obviously, having a name badge on made it easy for him. But by the time we were going for a drink, I realised I didn’t know his name and we had been flantering (flirty bantering) for too long for me to now ask him.

When he gave me his number he just wrote it on a peice of paper, without his name. Before our date, I tried going online to the website of the shop where he worked but there was nothing about staff names. And so I went for a drink with a man who’s name I did not know.

When the man gave me a gentle kiss goodnight at the bus stop, I still did not know his name. When I saved his phone number under ‘Man,’ I still did not know his name. When we text back and forth to arrange a second date (which we did not end up going on), I still did not know his name.

When he disappeared off the radar altogether for a year or so, then showed up back at my work needing someone to talk to and saying he’d been married and divorced in the past year and struggled with alcoholism, I still did not know his name.

When he cried a little so I took him somewhere quiet to sit and gave him a hug, I still did not know his name.

When he asked me what he needed to say to prove he was still interested (I, unfortunately, no longer was), I still did not know his name.

And now, while I’m remembering how odd that all was, I still do not know his name!

A boy I once loved

Once upon a time, when I was about 14 years old, I went to a Saturday drama group, in pursuit of my ultimate goal of being the best actress in the history of the world. Obviously.

There was a boy at this drama group, called Tommy. Tommy Sherlock. And I was obsessed. He filled my every waking thought. I thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. Ever.

The first week my friend and I went to the group, everyone was introducing themselves and he introduced himself as ‘God’. I thought this was the funniest thing I had heard anyone say in my life.

He had dark hair and blue eyes. He wore Adidas trainers and when my own trainers got too worn out, I bought the same pair that he had. He also wore those grandad socks that were fashionable for a while. The Pringle ones with diamonds on them, you know? So I wore them.

He played the lead male in a peice we worked on for a while. He had to sing at one point and of course he had a great voice. A girl called Sian played his girlfriend in the peice. I hated her. One week she wasn’t there so I stood in for her. When he pretended to put a ring on my finger, he had to touch my hand…. I wrote about it in my diary.

I thought Mrs Laura Sherlock sounded pretty good and worked out a signature I would use.

Now I’ll tell you the sum total of what I knew about him.

………..

Erm…… His name….. And what he looked like….

Erm…..

Erm….

Nope…. I got nothin’.

Seems a bit silly now.