Smidge

This has to be advertising for Lego – doesnt it?

A giant lego man has washed up on Brighton Beach, supposably from Holland (this is now thought to be tit for tat after one washed up there with the words “no real than you are”)

giant lego man….

love it

kx

I never though that I would find her.

Actually I thought that she would find me. For some reason I though that I would get a knock on the door and she would be just standing there. It’s never happened, i’m still expecting it though, although the postman now thinks I fancy him.

I got an email about a year ago from someone who said she knew her. Yes, knew her, in that she was dead. Died 2 years ago in fact. My half brother died the year before from a drug overdose. However I still have a younger half sister. Well that is what she said. She never replied to my email back.

I’ve posted messages on hundreds of forums over the years, my email address keeps going out of date, and each message is a good record of how I was feeling at the time.

Take this one; I was 18 at the time.

“looking for ——– ——, i just want to talk to you, I don’t want to hurt you”.

I don’t think I was thinking straight, it actually makes me seem like a stalker.

I’m older now; it’s probably 10 years since I began hearing the knock at the door. I tell myself that the search is for the sake of my future kids. That I need to know if i’ve inherited more than just brown hair, brown eyes and a short stature. However, if i’m honest to myself, it because I want to see someone who looks like me, that when I look in their eyes i see someone who is part of me looking back. I’ve never wanted to be a famous face. Actually without it sounding like a cheesy cliché, i’ve just wanted to be a recognisable face to someone.

I wonder sometimes if there is anyone else out there who feels like me. So I go back on the forums and read other peoples messages. They all seem so sad. So many people looking for their missing links. I think reading the forums is my dirty secret. I’m always thinking that I will recognise someone on there, that i could help them where I never been helped. That I could be the missing link. But like my story, I never can help. There are just too many people out there looking for someone.

I’ve called this ‘search search survive’, after the Tricky song. The next line of the song goes: say you’re lucky alive.

Kx

Things i’ve liked this week (some of them rather a lot…check you lovely lucas)

- Pics of Edward James Olmos by Camels and Chocolate– swoon. When oh when will BSG be back on our screens? Whine, moan, whine*.

(*Ok, I know it’s making a return in January before someone goes off and Google’s it, plus there is a TV movie coming out next year….with another of my favourites Dean Stockwell)

- This blog – i’m in love with my best friend maybe it’s because everyone is raving about it but I need something to read when i’ve exhausted the 80 of you I have on my reader.

- That it’s snowed in London and it hasn’t here in Edinburgh yet. Its fecking freezing tho and my new cape (despite being in Grazia magazine this week as a Halloween must have) just doesn’t keep out the cold as well as it should.

- ‘Its life Jim’ getting all angry with Myleen Klass. You go girl. Girls who show off in bikini shoots should have no place on a fashion show about ‘real’ beauty.

- That I’ve finally got into Spooks. But I hate they killed off Adam (Rupert Penry-Jones, phroawwww). I was in love already and so it seems was nutty cow. I am being consoled by thoughts of Richard Armitage as lovely Lucas – what tattoos! Plus I have 7 series to catch up on, more than I have to with Entourage.

- How cute these Halloween kids costumes are. I still need a costume for Halloween on Friday… any ideas?

- Getting an extra hour in bed last Sunday….the whole day felt longer and more luxurious. Although it hasn’t got through to my cat yet and that his usual waking me up for breakfast is now a whole hour earlier than it used to be (is that right? I was 6 am this morning anyway and he used to wake me up at 7)

Oh and a question to you cat owners out there… do you think that cats purposely lick their noses so they are especially wet when they stick them in your face to wake you up?

Mwah

Kx

Ordinary things have been given a magical makeover. The showers that drown me and make my feet squelch make the granite pavements sparkle with dancing light. The blue skies captured over the city are windswept and wild, leaves are soggy underfoot and scarves whip in the wind.

Autumn frames pictures everywhere I look.

Autumn brings the changing of the clocks – the harbinger of the season of navel gazing, of pasta, of potatoes, of sticky toffee pudding warm from the oven. I pinch two inches and complain im getting fat. I’m drained from forcing my way along the high street in the stinging rain. I know im going to catch the flu. I wish I could hibernate until the bluebells return.

Winter is coming.

Small things matter. The fire on when I get home. Bangers and mash after a wild walk along the beach. Realising just how many herbs and spices go into making your own mulled wine and still buying them, as it has to be just right. Arguing about who is going to cook Christmas dinner. And wash up. Watching the lights go on in the trees, Christmas markets and wooden toys. Of Hogmanay ceilidhs to come, kilts to be worn, sequins to buy.

Small things matter when the nights get dark and the waiting for the New Year begins, small things matter as I wait to start afresh in spring.

Whilst I’m writing something a little more substantial, here is a round up of my weekend, my favourite posts, odd happenings, things to cheer me up on a Monday.

—————–

Best text message of the weekend…

“Hi I won pumpkin comp! 35lb! 1st woman to win!”

– from my mother after beating my dad at pumpkin growing for the first time. This will never top the fact my father once ended up on ‘Page 3’ of the UK Sun newspaper (a horrible tabloid) next to the topless lady with the headline “Hopper’s Whopper” (our surname is Hopper) after stuffing his pumpkin full of lead piping and getting caught.

——————

Most random happening

Whilst taking photos of the River Clyde in Glasgow, I was passed by one of the city’s many riverside ‘derelicts’. Now i’m used to getting abuse when i’m out with my camera, but I was surprised when she calmly walked down to the waters edge, took out a chicken, held it up in the air and started to swing it round her head.

Voodoo on the banks of the Clyde. A long way from Haiti.

I didn’t go near. Although im sure her curse would have worked better if the chicken wasn’t 1) dead already and 2) not still in the packaging from Tesco’s where she had bought it.

Here she is about to get her chicken out of the bag…swing it round her head and i’ve just been told, dump it in the Clyde. The salmon will be getting a feast….

Here is a recipe she could have used instead…

——————-

Brit Bloggers

Btw I’ve joined Brit Bloggers – all you British bloggers out there, get your asses in gear and head over. Thanks to Nutty Cow and Crazy Brit Heaven for pointing this out.

——————-

My favourite recent posts

Willy chat in Cocktober by Sanity Optional…

Real Real Real life from an anonymous poster over at Um Now what?. What would you do?

How disgusting Rach is to her husband in Dirty Divorce

A love letter to rain by the best named blogger in the business – Catspuke

Sassy K – the shih-tzu agony aunt with an attitude problem by Slynnro

———————-

And finally

I just booked a 6 month anniversary night away for next month. How sweet are we?

Off to the Poppies Hotel in Callander. Tartan tat land, but oh so beautiful.

Who needs Paris?

See you later in the week.

Mwah

Kx

I change, things change, and there are a few more of you out there reading me than there were before, so i’ve decided to update what was 101 very inane facts about me, to the 10 actual things you need to know…

1. Firstly I’m wee (Scottish for ‘small’). That’s four foot 11 inches tall (1.5 meters). It’s the first thing anyone notices about me, so from an internet-you-cant-see-me kind of way I guess it’s the first thing you should know. Description wise I have dark hair, brown eyes, and i’m a size UK 8. Basically i’m a midget all over. I look like a pixie. My boyfriend is also small; we make a very cute midget pixie couple. I’m also a tomboy and rarely wear make up. In fact I often forget I have it on and smear it all over my face in a childlike manner.

2. Secondly I love to travel. Whether that’s just something touristy or to far flung places I have itchy feet to get out and about. I’ve moved to one of my favourite places in the world – Edinburgh – and I have made it my home for the last 12 years and I think the only place ill move to will be somewhere abroad. I’m scared of having put down roots. I hope to do it soon, sell the house and just head off into the sunset…

That’s why this blog is called wee-travellings… geddit?

3. Job wise I’m a town planner, have been for 6 years now. I mainly focus on waterfront development. I’m interested in architecture, cities, density and urban life. I work in a man’s world and I admittedly it can be tough. Sometimes I think I should just go back to working in a bar. Apart from my job, I also help run a website about clubbing in Edinburgh – http://www.eccf.co.uk/. I’ve helped to raise over 22 grand for the Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital through ECCF. I still love going clubbing despite the fact i’m 30.

4. I’m generally a bit sickly; i’ve suffered from a fecked up stomach for the last 10 years and have under gone far too many camera tests for my liking. I’m currently on a new medication which means I have to give up alcohol. i have also been told i have to give up smoking. Gulp. I also get bouts of insomnia quite regularly which can lead to some random blog posting.

5. Relationship wise it’s a mixed bag. I got married when I was 22. We got engaged after 6 weeks, married a year later and separated 6 months after that. So far we have taken 8 years to get divorced. One reason i’ve not done it is that i’m scared someone might propose to me again (I know, I know, but I think he may have done). It was on my to do list for 2008, but may have to be a new years resolution at this rate. I met the matching midget in May this year and it’s going swimmingly so far. But its still scary, I’ve walked away from my life twice. I’ve made a new start twice. I’m not sure I can do it again.

6. I’ve no children, but I am broody. It’s not very strong as I know i’m not really ready for a family yet. But i’m getting on you know, I guess ill have to do it soon or later and i’m too old and weak to lift a baby. Good job my man is younger than me…

7. The first book I ever learnt to read was called I am adopted. I was adopted at 7 weeks old and have always known. My parents didn’t hide it from me. They have a daughter of their own who is a year younger than me. Despite the fact I struggled with it for years Id be proud to adopt a child. I believe in nurture rather than nature.

8. I have a number of weird habits. I don’t like sitting with my back to the door but I have to watch people coming and going. I people watch religiously. I can only walk on the left. (It comes from my mum’s habit of the same thing. We fight when we have to walk together and will swap sides simultaneously) but I have to sleep on the right. No idea where this comes from. I also frequently trip up stairs. I think it’s because i’m partially deaf in my right ear and it makes me unbalanced.

9. I’m not massively spiritual (I was born a catholic, brought up protestant) but I have read tarot cards for 15 years. My ex boyfriend used to call me a witch as i’m pretty accurate with them. I did cards professionally for a year but I got migraines so had to stop. Now I just do them for friends over a glass of wine or three. I also get night terrors in houses where there is a history of strange goings on. I’m not physic but they certainly like to disturb my sleep.

10. I was bullied relentlessly in high school and unfortunately I now take great pleasure in hearing about my bullies failing in life. I wish I didn’t, but it’s some kind of sick revenge thing for years of self doubt. I can’t believe I admitted that.

Mwah

Kx

P.s, if you are new, please say hi…!

Over the last 4 years of blogging i’ve increasingly refrained from regaling you of my weekend exploits (in the past i’ve done it here, here, and here – worth looking at for the comedy factor alone) and to be honest the tales of me drunk for the 10th weekend in a row don’t make me come across as well, classy*.

But, in the spirit of saying goodbye to drinking and having laughed at Alice’s and Brandy’s tales of drinking mishaps this morning**, I decided to share my latest (and one of the greatest) embarrassing incidents.

This was the day a dining table made me sick. Yes a dining table.

It all started out innocently enough. Friday night girls night out.

Now, being gregarious girls*** who normally haunt a small house music and after party circuit, between us we’d pretty much worn out the supply of eligible men. For the want of a better word, they were on the hunt for different meat. (I was window shopping only and being oldest, the mum of the group).

So, we’d made an effort, bought frocks, high heals, dressed up, we were hitting the new town, we needed to be elegant, stylish, chic, refined and all that jazz.

We’ll we tried.

After a couple of warm up drinks at home we hit 99 Hanover Street and after a couple of bottles of wine between us, a bright spark amongst decided that we should indulge in that student shot of choice, the Jager Bomb. It’s at this point things get a little hazy.

The next thing I remember clearly is being in a different bar called Bramble being handed their signature cocktail (obviously called the bramble). But as the Jager bomb hit faded, the fog lifted and I began to happily slurp on life giving gin, I realised with absolute horror that my brand new Nokia N96 mobile phone (which I had just got that day) had disappeared.

Hot footing back to 99 Hanover Street it as fast as my new heals could carry me, I was praying no-one would have noticed a 300 quid phone left on a busy bar table and nicked it.

Who was I kidding?

But, someone must have been smiling down on me as some heaven sent person had handed it in at the bar for me. Now, the bar-cutie I had been winding up whist buying the jager bombs earlier (or so he told me, this is officially in a black spot) refused to let me have my phone back until we did a shot of tequila together. I hate tequila. It bounces. But I must have been pissed (despite the fog lifting) as I did it. Fast.

It was at this point that I realised my mistake. I quickly lost the ability to see, walk, talk, and stand. I was a disgrace. The boyfriend had to be called, woken up, dragged out of his bed, and drive across town to come and pick me up. I was so bad I even had to be left in the charge of a very nice bouncer who didn’t laugh too hard at my predicament until the boy came and fished me off the street corner.

As I said, tequila always makes a re-appearance, it was lucky I managed to yell “STOP” in time or I would have never made it home without a car cleaning bill. Of course I had to do it right in front of a poor unsuspecting dog walker who had to watch me classily lean out of the boys flashy coupe and puke in the street.

And then I had to mouth off abusively about him ‘perving’.

On a pukey, messy girl. Of course.

Oh, but It didn’t stop there.

Morning comes and i’ve dragged my sorry ass out of my boyfriend’s bed to get a lift home. Now he shares a modern apartment with his dad and they are still furnishing. That morning their new dining table had been delivered. As I heard my name called by the boyfriend’s dad I shakily walked into to the lounge to compliment it (very fancy) I felt another wave of nausea hit me.

In the middle of the sentence “its lovel…..” I had to smack my hand over my face and make a dash for the toilet, leaving my boyfriends dad looking after me in disgust as the sound of more alcohol hit the porcelain. The boyfriend valiantly carried on talking about the seat cushion colours as nothing had happened.

You would think i’m 16. i’m not. I’m 30.

I proceeded to spent the rest of the day wrapped around the toliet. Classy.

Kxx

*I’m honestly in awe of you out there that minute every day lived, drink drunk, pound lost or man pulled, but even though I am not anonymous, I’m more likely to hold back for fear of, well, i’m not sure, but formal ‘outing’ is one of them.

**at first I though we’d all had a particularly heavy weekend, or it was a full moon until I discovered Ben has been organising a worst hangover competition

***that’s gregarious not sluts

Oh don’t be a Jonze and follow my lead…

Food has always been a matter of obsession in my family. I’m not talking about the cooking or appreciation of it (which we all do well) but an underlying current of fear of being or getting fat.

With one bulimic and one anorexic in the family (and a dad obsessed with eating bananas) as a child I was glad I had no rogue food-fixated blood lines and a wonderful metabolism that could cope with an addiction to Yorkshire puddings which often verged in the double digits. I used to watch my sister eat two bites of tuna fish on a rice cracker for dinner for the 5th day in a row and I would scoff down another biscuit as to say, feck you food – you aren’t getting me…

I must have taunted the chocolate gods one too many times, because at 19 years old I turned out to be completely wrong. I developed only what could be described as a fucked up stomach.

Over the years i’ve been told I might have bowel cancer, crone’s disease or I might be a celiac along with a having a cyst, an ulcer, or even a hernia . To date I’ve had 6 sets of blood tests, two colonoscopies (full and half), a colposcopy, a laparoscopy and most recently whilst under heavy sedation I rejected an upper endoscopy despite 2 doctors holding me down.

I’m not a good patient anymore.

Stress, worry and I have become really close. As have me and my loo. Oh and my bed. As has the boy with the contents of my bowels at any one time.

But today, actually at 10.30am this morning, we had a breakthrough. After taking another two needles of blood from my arm that left me feeling a little woozy, I was handed the magic piece of paper that contained a possible solution, that would get me back to work, to stop me from throwing up, to get rid of my yo-yoing weight and 6 month pregant swelling stomach.

But the solution? Ah! there is always a catch.

Its a tablet that means I can no longer drink alcohol.

Humph.

Now that’s gonna take some getting used to…

Kx

In this modern age, opening doors, picking up pocket handkerchiefs and kissing ladies hands are best left to the octogenarians and those with a fetish for role playing games. We are led to believe that we girls should be glad that chivalry is dead. No longer are women to be offered the seat, believed not to understand money and therefore never to pay or suggest double dutch.

So after a night out squired by two modern men in the Edinburgh’s snooty and expensive West End you’d expect to come home with your wallet and your feet smarting.

(For non Edinburghers, the West End is not for the shark-finned cubric zirconia wearing boys of George Street but their fathers supporting their investment on their date’s chest. And their confidence shattering dates are 10 years younger than me. )

Luckily, Sunday nights find the Armani suits tucked up in bed after a long day on the golf course which leaves the plush red banquets of the newly refurbished and boutiquified Rutland Hotel to our lesser behinds. So there was no fighting with a 200 pound ruddy nosed hedgefunder (living on his credit card these days) for a seat to rest my new 4 inch heals.

I’d been having a crafty cigarette when my drink was ordered by the boy’s dad – fyi – no grey, younger than my dad, nice watch, great shoes, good catch, recently separated (sorry boy!) so the weight of the wine list prices was no matter to me just yet as it was my round next. But I waited and waited and my round didn’t come. So I got out my purse and proceeded to climb down off my banquet but as I wobbled on my vertiginous heals I was stayed by a strict, but gentle, “I don’t like women to pay”.

I didn’t argue, but I did chew my lip as I tried to think how I could berate this man for his outdated chivalrous ways. But the words didn’t come and I meekly accepted another glass of sauvignon blanc and vowed id slip the money to the boy to pay next**. I couldn’t be seen not to be paying my way.

But as the drinks flowed and the stories of gentlemanly dating in his youth poured out, I saw the the symmetry between my boy and his dad. I saw where the boy who gets out of bed to feed my cat at 6am, who fetches me a hot water bottle, who always makes his mum a cup of tea, who walks first, who has manners, had come from and I began to regret our feminist ways.

Chivalry may inspire a fear for the return of the dark ages, that it is sexist and deserves our contempt. But by telling men that such behaviour is not acceptable could we actually lose a lot more than we think?

Kx

*This should be entitled “should chivalry be dead?” but I like how our most tactful of monarchs HRH Prince Phillip puts it.
**I did pay for the taxi home though; he was too drunk by this point to notice.