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!

The contents of my purse

My purse is a constant puzzle to me. There is absolutely no logic to the things I have in there. I can think of far more useful things that should be there which are instead on a shelf in the house somewhere. Let me demonstrate my point.

In my purse, there is:

An Unpaid Fare Notice from 06.06.10 at 05.57am for £2. I promised the kind bus driver I would go into a train station and pay it. I didn’t. I just kept it. Rude.

A raffle ticket with the number 56 on it. No idea.

A business card for a barrister. Do you call it a ‘business’ card?

A library membership card for Croydon Libraries. I do not live in Croydon.

A loyalty card for a frozen yoghurt place with one stamp on it.

10 air mail stickers.

A business card for a Swimming Development Manager. I’ve never contacted her.

A handwritten recipe for truffle sauce from the chef at Polpo.

A loyalty card for Waterstones with 5 stamps on it. The card expired in December 2012.

A card receipt for £52.40 for a meal I had in May. Another receipt for a haircut I got in May, one for my electric piano and one from the Post Office for a letter I posted in July. What is all that about? Why am I keeping them hanging around?

A Holland and Barratt reward card. I’ve never activated it or taken advantage of the rewards or anything. And still I carry it around.

An interesting little leaflet entitled ‘What Must I Do To Be Saved?’ that I picked up in a restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. My favourite part is about what will happen to people who commute sins of a sexual nature. The punishment will be guilt, moral destruction, heartbreak, pain, devastation… And STDs.

11 passport photos.

A little card thing saying Lawra that Ella wrote for me when she first started learning to write. She also write me one saying robt, which I think means robot. But I’m not sure why. I keep it anyway.

A peice of paper with a name and phone number that I’ve never used. I’m not even sure who Sian is.

A loyalty card for Paper Passions with 3 stamps on it. I can guarantee I’m never going to fill that up.

Three notes of Vietnamese money that I think equate to about 45p.

A cashout ticket from a casino in Arizona for the grand total of $0.01.

A small Vietnamese flag badge thing.

Three letters from friends.

A room key card for the Rodeway Inn in Northern Houston.

A business card for Livingston 350 Cab Co.

My ticket to the Paralympics.

A business card for an estate agents for a place I lived in four and a half years ago.

Two more loyalty cards to coffee places that I rarely visit. I’ll never fill those up.

My National Trust membership card.

My student card from law school that has now been invalid for a whole year.

Two locker tokens for the swimming pool.

£1.30 in 10pences.

A Canadian 1 cent.

1 euro cent.

What is all this stuff for? All these stamp cards and receipts and air mail stickers? I think I’ll just shut the purse, put it away and wait for it to sort itself out….

Things I did yesterday

1. Met baby Mia

2. Had photo fun at work

3. Made a cake of Ham House. You know. As you do.

Anyone else make their workplace out of cake yesterday?

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.

The worst photo of myself

Ok, I feel that I am at a stage in my blogging ‘career’ where I can share a few things I normally wouldn’t share with strangers. But we are no longer strangers to one another. So yesterday whilst having a nose bleed, I remembered the last time I had a nose bleed, which was during my hospital stay, post-big-scary operation.

Because what happened to me was quite unusual (they had never seen it in that hospital before), there was no ward for me really so I had just been put on a ward where there was space. I slept intermittently during the day and was awake at night, when the lady in the bed opposite me would cry out things like “Ohhhh… The squire! He’s starving to death!” in her sleep. It was a bit random. The lady next to her had bowel cancer and wore a colostomy bag and talked about not being able to go on public transport because she always had to be a few minutes away from a toilet.

This one night, I had a little nose bleed. I pressed my button for a nurse to come and got a tissue. Which the blood soaked through. Then another tissue. And another. And another. We couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t stop. Then I remembered that they give you blood-thinning medication sometimes, don’t they, if you’re lying down a lot. So that you don’t get blood clots in your legs from not moving them. And, as we saw in a previous post, I was not too keen on going for a walkies!

Thus, my nose bleed went on. And on. And on. Because my blood wouldn’t clot! Every time, I thought it would have stopped and took the tissue away, it started flooding out again. I felt like my brain might come out through my nostril if it didn’t stop.

Eventually the nurses just rolled up two of their little square spongey pad things that they use to clean wounds up with, and shoved one in each nostril and hoped that would stop it and force it to clot.

Quite amused by the whole situation, I waited until they’d cleared up and left then took a photo.

Bear in mind, I couldn’t get my enormous ten inch stapled wound down my front wet so hadn’t showered or washed my hair in about five days.

Are you ready?

Lovely, isn’t it?…….

Don’t answer that.

Kiwis, curries and rats with style

It’s that time again. Time to see what Chat has to offer this week. Once again, I am blown away by their fabulous witticisms, sprinkled throughout. For example, I open the magazine and the first thing which greets me is a photo of a pig in a picnic basket, with the caption ‘designer ham bag?’

Brilliant. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the massive photo of the pig is there, just a little sentence about how the pig looks so comfy, “there’s no way we could ‘rasher’ to go anywhere.”

And on we go, to the photos page and there are a few good ones this week. The first is a here-are-some-cupcakes-I-made photo. The second is a here’s-me-with-a-huge-plastic-ape picture. And no, I’m not kidding. Someone really thought that the world would be interested in a picture of her with a huge plastic ape. Check it out.

There are some others of dogs and cows, which aren’t even worth mentioning in any greater detail.

So onward we go, past a story about a girl who had a maggot living in her back and a story of scandal with a 9.9 shock factor (!), to the Blimey, That’s Clever page.

And what have we here today? I think my favourite might be the kiwi fruit tip. Put it in an egg cup, we’re told. And that’s it. That’s the tip. Eat a kiwi out of an egg cup. £25 they got for that.  

Maybe I’ll make up some top tips and try to get £25 from Chat. Watch this space. I’ll think some up for tomorrow.

Another of the top tips is to use toothpaste to clean your mugs if they have tea stains. While I can’t see anything initially wrong with this, it just sounds a bit dodgy, cleaning a mug with toothpaste. You’re bound to have toothpaste-tasting tea for the next few days, I reckon.

Another tip seems to be, my granddaughter chewed the straw bit off her favourite beaker, so I put a new straw in. I don’t know whether that really warrants a place on the Blimey, That’s Clever page, do you? It’s not as though, previously, people have been throwing away their children’s beakers every day with no clue how to fix it and then they open Chat, see this tip and go ‘Wow! I’ll just stick a new straw down the hole where the old straw was. That’s genius.’

Next we have some more scandal, a murder, some letters, some weight loss stories and then the baby photos page. Ahhhh, the baby photos page. Photos of babies. Doing nothing at all. Just being babies. A whole page. One is a baby on a slide, one is a baby swimming, another is a baby and a cat, one is two children smiling a bit. A whole page.

To the side of this page, we have the recipe section. Now previously, I have seen some amazing gourmet recipes that opened my eyes to a whole new world. The week they had a recipe for mushrooms on toast was a week that changed my life. This week’s recipe? Onion and potato curry.

Mmmm. Doesn’t that sound great? Onion and potatoes. In a curry. Like when you look in the fridge and you don’t have anything in so you bung together some nonsense and fill up on ice cream afterward. Mmm. Nothing-in-the-fridge curry. The ingredients? Olive oil, 4 potatoes, 2 onions, spices and mustard seeds. And the attraction in making this meal? It’s only 54p per head.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s not 54p because Chat are so great at providing good meals on a budget. It’s because there’s NOTHING IN IT.

If you want great meals on a budget, I can give you far better, go-to ingredients – squid is really cheap, people. Fry it with fennel. Re-use old bread by chopping tomatoes, adding red wine vinegar and basil and ripping your old bread up and mixing it in for a panzanella salad. If you want a curry, spend your money on some chicken and chuck it in a pan with tomatoes (tinned or fresh) and add whatever combination of spices you find in the cupboard, depending on what country’s cuisine you are chanelling.

See? All those will probably be about £1 per person but don’t resemble student food or invoke severe depression in the person who is eating it.

Anyway, back to Chat, the finale is the ‘Ratwalk models’ story on page 46. Yes, RATwalk models. You know what’s coming. It’s a story about a lady who designs and makes clothes for rats. Yes. Rats. It started with making ‘couture creations’ for her pet chihuahua, inspired by a dress worn by Penelope Cruz to the Oscars.

A few years later, business was booming, she went full time into her pet clothing designing and her friend asked her to help “raise the profile of her annual rat convention.”

Honestly, this is not a joke. It’s all true. Her friend runs a yearly rat convention.

So she designed and made the dresses. There was a fashion show with 12 of the ‘models’. Post-show, fame and fortune came her way, she got calls from everyone, even David Letterman.

The article finishes with the touching line, “After all, every single pet should feel like a star.”

That’s something we should all remember as we go on with our days today.

I hope you have learned something here.

Parcels, portals and toilet flush buttons

I know, I know. It’s been a while since I reported back on the latest Chat magazine. Well, here it is. You know I never let you go too long without doing one.

First up, there’s the photos page. Well, actually, before that there’s a real life story which has a shock factor of 10! That’s right! A ten. Very rarely will you get tens. Usually they do a 9.8 or something like that. Not usually a ten. So you know that’s big stuff.

Now to the photos page. There’s a photo of two pregnant women in the same top, the caption basically says, here’s us in the same top. Great. Another photo is a lady reading Fifty Shades of Grey. And again, that’s pretty much it. What a fascinating photo, thanks for sharing.

The tips page is quite good today. The best one is probably the one which says that if you have a fancy perfume bottle lid, don’t throw it away when you’ve finished the perfume, attach it to the toilet flush button….! This doesn’t make sense on so many levels. Let me show you.

So on the before pic, you can see that it’s one of those push-in type things. There’s nothing sticking out from it. So what did she ‘attach’ the perfume lid to. And also, all she’s really done, I think, is cover up the toilet flush button. Because now you can’t press it, because there’s a big flowery thing attached to it.

The letters page is pretty good this week. There’s a picture of a baby with a shocked look on its face. There’s nothing wrong with the photo. It’s just that that’s all it is. And that’s the photo of the week….

They must not be getting a lot of entries to this photo of the week competition….

Then there’s a bolognese sauce from a jar competition thing. They review three and tell you their favourite, which is the Sacla Dallaglio bolognese sauce. God forbid, we might suggest one makes their dinner themselves… No! Food from a jar! That’s the way forward!

Then there’s the obligatory I-used-to-be-fat-then-I-lost-weight story. Then an I-met-a-man-on-the-internet-now-we’re-getting-but-we’ve-never-met story.

Then comes the good section. The psychic section. The first story in this section is about a woman who moved into a haunted house. The proof that it was haunted? Her daughter got locked in the bathroom one day. Obviously a ghost. Obviously. No question about it.

She realised what was going on, an evil portal. Of course. So she decides to close it. You know, as one does. She gathered her archangels around her, are you ready for the good bit? Her archangels… Gabriel….. Michael…. Raphael… And METATRON! Yes. Really. Metatron. Her archangel, Metatron. I’m glad he was there for her. Phew!

Then we have the Lucky Key. This is always amazing. I touch it and good things will happen apparently. To legitimise this Lucky Key thing, there are little stories from people who touched the key and great things happened to them. Now I’m not certain what’s going on here. Have they touched the key and immediately something great happens. Or do they touch it on Thursday and by Sunday, they’ve had a bit of luck? Because I don’t think you can really say it’s the key then, can you?

When I touched the key this morning, within five minutes I got a little note through the door from the post man saying I needed to go and pick something up from the post office because it had been posted without the proper amount of stamps on it. So I need to give them £1.50 for the postage if I want my parcel.

Is that lucky? Really? Should I tell Chat about it and see if they print my story in next week’s magazine? Maybe I will. Watch this space to see if I get printed! It will say:

Laura from London got a note from the postman saying she needed to pay £1.50 to pick up her parcel, all thanks to the Lucky Key!

Checking in with Chat

It’s that time again. Time to see what entertainment Chat has for us this week. I knew it was going to be a good one when I saw this on the front cover….

False a-llama?! Amazing. So let’s start at the beginning. Page 8 is the ‘Chat to us’ page. People send in photos, which tend to be stuff like ‘This is me on holiday.’ Stuff that is of no interest to anyone apart from the people in the photo. Here is one example…

The caption basically says, this is my mum at M&M’s World in London. Great.

There’s also an old photo section, which tends to contain a black and white photo of someone – again, no interest to anyone but the sender of the photo.

Next we get a few stories of the sex-pervert and strange-disease variety. The health pages this week contain a puzzling ‘fact’.

Apparently women with gum disease take two months longer to conceive than other women. You’ve got to be kidding me! This seems like one of those odd things from years ago, that dentists used to say to make people take better care of their teeth. Like when you’re parents tell you to eat your broccoli because it will make you run faster.

“It will, honest. You’ll get loads of babies if you brush your teeth!”

How on earth did they come up with this fact? Ok, let’s find a focus group of fifty women trying to get pregnant, and as a prerequisite, we’ll have half with gum disease and half without. It’s ridiculous. Some scientific researcher must have been super bored at home to have thought up that experiment to do.

Then, a few pages later, comes the best story, in my opinion. A woman, 42, living in England has fallen in love with a man she messaged on Facebook. He is Indian, living in Delhi, and 29. Here’s how it all started.

She stumbled across someone’s page, who has Brad Pitt as his profile picture. She says she ‘followed her instinct’ and messaged him.

WHAT INSTINCT? Seriously… What instinct? What instinct can you possibly have about a profile picture of Brad Pitt? She even says that he doesn’t have any pictures or personal info on his Facebook profile. So what possible instinct could she mean? That they both like Brad Pitt and, as a result, could be a match made in virtual heaven?

Anyway, married English lady messages. Young Indian man messages back, “He’s such a great actor.” And from there, it goes from strength to strength. A quick text conversation with hubby whilst in the supermarket ends her 11 year marriage, so now she’s free. Free to be with the love of her life… O wait, apart from all those miles between them… But never fear, she is a woman on a mission! She is going to go and see him next Easter. Phew, because for a minute there I thought it was getting ridiculous. But no, she’ll be with him any day now (by now, I mean next year). She says she’s going to buy a one way ticket and stay there with him forever. Good luck to her.

Next we get a few weight loss stories, then the TV guide. A programme called Obese And Expecting promises to be interesting watching.

Lastly, we have the Facebook Photo Of The Week.

How is that a photo of the week? There are no unusual camera angles, no beautiful light beams breaking through, no high speed cheetah hunt, no nothing actually. Nothing of interest. The caption basically says, ‘This is my daughter, Georgia, smiling.’ How utterly ridiculous is that? If that deserves to be photo of the week then journalism as we know it has gone much further downhill than I’d realised.

P.S. The llama story from the front cover turns out to be a peice about a llama who’s not psychic and can’t predict football scores. Amazing.