Folks, I’d like to introduce you to the new man in my life:
It’s Terry, the slack jawed yokel!
Handsome brute, isn’t he?
Don’t you just LOVE his hat?
Weird thing, though… when I was editing these photos, I noticed something strange reflected in Terry’s glasses. Something… spooky…
I’m scared. Hold me.
(P.S. As you might have noticed, I changed the layout again. I did this myself, and haven’t quite finished tweaking it yet, so apologies for anything that doesn’t work properly – I will get round to it!)
Tagged halloween, Terry
Caught some grief from a falling leaf
As she tumbled down to the dirty ground
Said I shoulda put her back there if I could
But everyone needs a better day
And I’m trying to find me a better way
To get from the things I do to the things I should
~ Counting Crows, All My Friends
Just a few random photos taken on a run last week. You can tell from the fact that I was able to stop and take photos during a run that I was doing a lot more walking than running: my running schedule has been totally out of whack for most of this year, and by that I mean “I’ve hardly ever been doing it, and the people at the gym have forgotten what I look like”. I have lots of excuses why this has been the case, of course, but that’s exactly what they are: excuses. Now that we’re on the long, slow slide towards winter, though, I’m going to do my best to get out more often (I say that every week), if only to make sure I get as much sunlight as I possibly can. I know I joke about hating winter, but I genuinely get really depressed by the lack of light at this time of year, and the sad lamp doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, so I’m hoping some fresh air and exercise will. Even although my town looks a bit like a prison camp:
I’m always impressed by how Instagram filters can make things that are really very dull and dreary look beautiful. Someone should make Instagram filters for you EYES, seriously. Just think how popular they’d be!
When I was a kid, we used to call these things “Itchy Coos”:
We’d open them up and put the seeds down people’s clothes. It was ace. Terry tells me that, round here, they called them “Itchy Poos“. Which is just WRONG, really.
Also on my walk run, I found this mysterious piece of paper on the ground, and obviously I had to stop and investigate it, because it could totally have been a treasure map, or had some dark secret contained within it. Isn’t that always the way of it? It was for Nancy Drew. And the Famous Five.
I saw it as a prison at the foot of some mountains, and thought it was an interesting insight into how the children from this town view the place. Then Terry pointed out that it’s actually a submarine surrounded by OMGSHARKS. Which isn’t an insight into anything, really, but is still pretty cool. I mean, that’s a LOT of sharks, you guys!
In other news, as the clocks went back on Sunday morning, I downloaded a “countdown” app for my phone, which informs me that there are 143 dark days to get through until the clocks move forward again. DAMN. I wish I could just hibernate…
Tagged running
A few years ago, a group of students discovered a blog in a creepy old cabin in the woods.
Of course, they read it.
They couldn’t really make head nor tail of it, though. It was just a crazy, incoherent jumble of words and images: a dress here, a pair of shoes there, a random act of stupidity here, there and everywhere… So they shrugged, and went off to do something else.
A few minutes after they finished reading, however, the phone rang.
“One week,” said a mysterious voice on the other end.
And sure enough, one week later…
…
Absolutely nothing happened.
Because blogs don’t have that kind of power, stupid, only horror movies have that kind of power. Have I taught you nothing here?
So, for Halloween Part 1 I decided to pay homage to The Scariest Movie I Have Ever Seen, a.k.a. The Ring. Well, it was either Sadako/Samara from The Ring, or it was That Old Woman from Insidious . If I’d chosen to go as T.O.W., though, I would have actually have had to LOOK at That Old Woman again, in order to get inspiration for the costume, and… I’m not ever looking at That Old Woman again, and you can’t make me. Also, to be Samara, all I needed was a black wig (eBay) and a white nightgown (my mum), et voila!
The Ring (and yes, I’ve seen the Japanese version, before you all start) was the first film to seriously freak me out. After watching it, I didn’t sleep properly for approximately three years, because every time I closed my eyes, I would imagine Samara standing at the bottom of the bed, and I would want to die. The movie was also responsible for making me frightened of a) televisions and b) phones. (OK, I’d ALWAYS been a bit frightened of phones, but The Ring took it to new levels.) Even now, I only have to THINK about certain sequences from that movie, and I will freak the hell out.
So, what do you do when there’s a character from a movie who seriously scares you, folks? Why, you dress as her for Halloween, of course! And then you spend the entire evening avoiding mirrors, because every time you catch sight of yourself, you almost die of fear. Awesome!
Anyway, raging fear aside, the party was lots of fun (thanks to Nicky and Barry for being our hosts once again!) and everyone looked fantastic. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “We don’t really care about your crappy outfit, Amber, we just want to see Terry’s costume!” Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while longer. You see, we have another Halloween party to attend this Saturday, and while I’m wearing something different this time (you can only get me into a shapeless white nightgown once), Terry will be wearing the same costume he wore this week. I know the hosts of the next party read this blog from time to time (Hi Steven and Lindsay!) and I don’t want to spoil the, er, impact of Terry’s outfit for them, so I’ll post his photos on Saturday, before we go. I’m sure you’ll all be on the edge of your seats.
To make up for that crushing blow, however, here is Rubin’s “costume”:
And you can deny it all you like, but if the phone rings shortly after you finish reading this, you’re going to be scared.
And you should be.
ONE. WEEK.
Tagged halloween, scary movies
As some of you know, I have something of an obsession with ghost stories and horror movies, and in the run up to Halloween, Terry and I have been immersing ourselves in some classic horror, courtesy of the Hitchcock back catalogue, and also a couple of more modern movies (The Orphanage and [Rec], both of which I recommend if you enjoy not being able to sleep at night). When we watch these movies, we sometimes joke about The Signs That You Are Probably in a Horror Movie. There are lots of these: for instance…
1. You find yourself alone in a multi-story car park in the dead of night = you are probably in a horror movie.
2. You discover you are the only guest in a decrepit old motel, by the side of a lonely highway = you are probably in a horror movie.
3. There is a small, creepy child, who watches you silently = you are probably in a horror movie.
4. You are in a mental asylum/orphanage/deserted mansion/corn field = almost definitely in a horror movie.
5. The phone rings, but there is no one there = you are probably in a horror movie, but you may also simply be being telmarketed, so be wary of this one.
6. You hear strange sounds from the attic/basement, but decide not to investigate until you are in the house alone one night = dude, you are IN A HORROR MOVIE, FFS! You also kind of deserve whatever is about to happen to you, because seriously? The basement at night? Have you learned NOTHING from the horror genre?
There are, of course, many more things I could add to this list, but there is one particularly important one, which I discovered on Sunday night:
7. It’s the week before Halloween, and you find yourself in an underground street which was mysteriously abandoned a couple of hundred years ago, and which is now hailed as one of the most haunted places in the city. Why are you there? Because you got a Groupon offer for a ghostwalk, of course, and you totally failed to take into account the fact that you are an absolute WUSS when it comes to these things: d’oh!
So, yes, on Sunday night, Terry and I headed into Edinburgh for a tour of the “haunted” vaults under the city. These vaults were home to some of Edinburgh’s poorest and most desperate characters until, as I said, they were mysteriously abandoned and bricked up. No one knows why this happened, except for the fact that, oh yeah, probably something to do with the poltergeist, ghosts, and various evil demons that live there, yeah?
We’ve actually done a few of the various Edinburgh ghost tours, and only one of them seriously scared me (and, er, still scares me to this day, actually), so I wasn’t really worried about this tour… until the moment we got ready to step inside the vaults.
“Does anyone have difficulty breathing, or suffer from heart problems?” our guide asked cheerfully. “Only, sometimes people faint or have heart attacks in these vaults, so if you think you’re going to die, just give me a shout, OK?”
Of course, I DON’T suffer from any health problems of this sort at all… until someone tells me I’m about to do something that would exacerbate any of these conditions, and then I instantly can’t breathe and think I’m having a heart attack. So that was how I felt as I stepped inside the creepy old underground street: basically, as if I would not be leaving there alive.
“OK,” said the tour guide, placing her torch under her face in classic “creepy” fashion. “Couple of things. You see this long, spooky corridor we’re standing in? The one which fades to blackness at either end, with God knows what lurking in the shadows?”
We all nodded.
“This corridor is haunted,” said the tour guide. “So if, for instance, you feel a small, icy hand creep into yours, don’t worry! It’s just a child who was killed here a couple of hundred years ago: just give him a little squeeze back, to reassure him!”
Oh. My. God.
I should probably point out here that just as I do not have breathing difficulties until I’m warned I might experience them, I don’t actually believe in ghosts until I’m told I might just feel some small icy fingers creep inside mine. And then I kind of freak the hell out, because, seriously? You want ME to reassure the GHOST? Oh hell to the no. At this point I stepped closer to Terry, grabbed his coat with both hands (sorry, icy fingers! No room for you here!) and sent out what I hoped were “Get your icy fingers away from me!” vibes.
The icy fingers, however, were to be the least of my worries. As we walked around the caverns under the city, hearing the tales of all of the terrible, terrible things that had happened inside them, and of the many, many ghosts that are said to haunt them, I became uncomfortably aware of the fact that no matter how quickly Terry and I tried to walk, we always seemed to be at the very back of the group. This meant that there was a comfortingly large group of people, there was ME, and then there was pitch darkness, lots of haunted caverns, and a whole population of GHOSTIES. So that was a happy thought. In fact, at times I couldn’t even concentrate on what the guide was saying, I was so busy craning my neck round to see if there was anything approaching from the darkness beyond. In this fashion, I managed to work myself into quite the fever pitch of nerves, go me!
Next, the guide showed us a room which is used today as a temple by members of the Wiccan church. “This room isn’t the one they originally chose as their temple, though,” said our guide. Apparently the original room had so terrified the members of the church, who would frequently emerge from it covered in scratches which they couldn’t explain, or feel like they were being choked by some unseen presence, that they had asked to move to a room closer to the exit. “When they moved,” the guide explained, “They told us never, ever to take tour groups into the original room, because it was too dangerous. So let’s go there now!”
It was at that point that I realised I was in a horror movie. And what was worse, it was one of those modern horrors which are set around Halloween, and involve hapless tourists who just think it’s all part of the “show” when the redhead at the back is suddenly attacked by a demon and spirited away, never to be seen again. Crap.
We all shuffled into the Room of Evil, which contained a stone circle, placed there by the Wiccans, before they were scared away.
(Love the expression on the guy at the far left of the photo. That’s pretty much how I looked, too…)
“This room is full of Evil,” intoned the tour guide. “The evil originates in THAT corner of the room!”
She pointed to me at this point. Awesome.
“Now, however, the evil is believed to be trapped inside the stone circle,” continued the guide, going on to explain that tourists have passed out inside the circle, have thrown up inside the circle, have emerged from the circle covered in scratches… the list goes on.
“Does anyone want to stand inside the circle?” she asked. “Because if you do, just wait until I’m out of the room, because it makes me nervous watching it.”
Then she left, and I prepared to leave too, because, seriously, it’s not like anyone was going to ACTUALLY stand inside the circle, was it?
Oh.
“Take my photo,” said Terry. And, of course, I got out the camera, and IT WOULDN’T WORK. Probably because of THE EVIL. And by now, everyone else had left (except for one other guy, who may or may not have been the devil, actually, and not part of the tour group at all, because now I come to think of it, that was the only time I remember seeing him on the tour. Hmmm. Also, he was dressed in 18th century costume?*), so now I’m standing in the pitch dark, in the Room O’Evil in a haunted underground cavern, with my husband standing inside the Stone Circle of Doom, alongside whatever it is that lives there.
“Terry,” I said. “We are SO in a horror movie right now. Also, you are SO going to die.”
(He’s still alive. So far.)
We caught up with the rest of the group, and, of course, once again, I was right at the back, and totally defenceless against the evil beings that would surely be coming for us. “At least I have Terry to hold onto,” I thought. This thought comforted me, until…
“For the final room, I want everyone to split into two groups,” said the guide. “Men on the left of the room, women on the right.”
AAAAAARGGGGHHH.
“DO. NOT. LEAVE. ME.” I hissed at Terry. But, of course, he left me, and I found myself standing with a group of women I didn’t know (and, thus, couldn’t reasonably expect to cling onto), with me YET AGAIN at the very back of the group, with lots of creepy darkness behind me. And I’m making light of all of this, but I was seriously terrified. Like, I’m-going-to-cry-if-this-doesn’t-end-soon terrified. I am not proud to admit it, but I was a WRECK, seriously.
“This room has a poltergeist in it!” our guide told us. “He likes to attack women!”
And then I died.
OK, I didn’t. I waited until she switched off the ONLY LIGHT IN THE PLACE and we were plunged into darkness: a darkness so complete that I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face, or the people standing around me. And as I stood there, listening to the tales of horror being told by the guide, I became convinced that I was alone: that when the light came back on, I would be the only person in the room… OR WOULD I?
(The fact that I could still hear the guide speaking should obviously have clued me in to the fact that I was not, in fact, alone. But it didn’t. Because I am a stupid girl, who should stay away from the haunted caverns at nightfall.)
And THEN I died.
I will say no more about What Happened in That Room, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who actually goes on the tour. I will, however, say that it was all very well done, and if you enjoy a good scare, I can highly recommend it. (The tour company’s website is here, should you want to check it out.) Please don’t allow the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep properly ever since (not even joking, here) put you off.
And I’m sure the mysterious noises we keep hearing from the attic now have absolutely nothing to do with Terry’s decision to stand inside the stone circle. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life… does it?
(*No he wasn’t.)
Well, hello, ’tis I, your redheaded blogger-friend, who hasn’t actually updated her blog in WEEKS, but who still expects you all to be faithfully reading along, even although you probably unsubscribed weeks ago, and are only here now because I kept tweeting the link, and you eventually just clicked on it to shut me up. Bloggers, eh?
I didn’t actually intend to disappear for so long: it’s been a really hectic couple of weeks, though, which culminated at the weekend with this:
That’s my dad (on vocals), my uncle (on guitar) and my cousin (on drums), all being rock stars. Of course, my family have always been rock stars as far as I’m concerned, but back in the 70s, my dad and uncle (who’s my mum’s brother) played in a band together: a band which had assumed almost mythical status in my mind, so much had I heard about it. Although I’d heard all about those days, however, I’d never actually seen the band perform, because by the time I was born, they’d split up, leaving only one fuzzy audio recording, and a whole lot of stories. A few years later, my uncle and aunt moved to Canada, the bass player moved to Texas… basically, there was never really a time when everyone was in the same country at the same time, so a reunion had never been possible.
Until this weekend.
A few months ago, it was decided that the time was right for the great band reunion. A venue was found, flights were booked, people flew in from their various countries, including my cousin, (who I last saw when he was five), who was standing in for the original drummer, who hadn’t been well, and wasn’t sure he’d be able to perform. As it turned out, he did manage to do a couple of songs after all, so the band was reunited, and I finally got to see them.
They. Were. Amazing.
Seriously: I’ve heard my dad sing, obviously, and I’ve seen my uncle play guitar. I’ve never seen them on stage, performing as a band, though, and pretty much as soon as my dad took to the stage, I started filling up. He was absolutely amazing: I was so proud, and only a tiny bit emotional. OK, a big bit emotional. In a good way, though.
I also took the opportunity to wear Dress # 74. Because, you know, none of the other 73 dresses I own would do, apparently.
(I had literally about two minutes to take some photos for Shoeperwoman before our taxi arrived, so of course every single one of them came out blurry. I’ve bumped up the contrast in a bid to distract you with my extreme pallor, so… er, let’s just pretend that worked, OK? While we’re at it, let’s also pretend I don’t have that random piece of hair sticking out the side of my head. Your co-operation in this matter is greatly appreciated…)
This particular dress was actually free, because I bought it with some River Island vouchers I won. Free dresses totally don’t count, do they?
Also:
My uncle and aunt went to Paris last week, and I asked them to pop into Ladurée and get me some OMGMACRONS, so I could be a giant fashion blogger cliché and take a photo of them for my blog. I feel like I finally fit in now, only not really. They were pretty damn tasty, though, let me tell you.
Anyway: it was a fantastic night, and we got to catch up with lots of friends and family we haven’t seen for a while, which made it even better. Now we just have to persuade them all to do it again sometime…
Tagged dresses
As those of you who follow me on Twitter already know, yesterday afternoon I was on my way to the kitchen when I happened to glance out of the front window just in time to see this guy wandering across the road:
Luckily, there was only one car trying to drive down the aforementioned road at the time, and its driver had spotted our little spiky friend and was patiently waiting for him to get out of his path. The hedgehog didn’t seem to want to do that, though, so I called for Terry, and the two of us headed out to help.
Cute, isn’t he? (The hedgehog, I mean, not Terry. Although Terry, if you’re reading this, you are ALSO cute.)
He had been headed straight for our house, but given that we’re not running a Hedgehog Hostel – or a Hogstal, as it shall henceforth be known – we figured he was lost, and, well, we didn’t really know what to do about that. We couldn’t just leave him in the middle of the road, though, so Terry ran and got an old towel (which, yes, was binned afterwards) and carefully picked him up:
And then I totally DIED of the cute, because OMG, lookit his little hands!
(The whole time we were outside the house, by the way, we could hear Rubin barking his head off inside. It was as if he somehow KNEW we were entertaining a rival animal on the property…)
“Can we keep him, Terry, can we keep him, please can we keep him?” I said. But Terry is a big ol’ meanie, so he carried the hedgehog into the woods and deposited him in a safe place.
“But how did you KNOW it was safe?” I said, later that night, when even I had got bored with repeatedly asking “Do you think the hedgehog will be OK? Are you sure? How about now?” But I was worried. I mean, he’d been headed right for the house. Maybe he… KNEW something? Or was supposed to be meeting someone there? Or… yeah, I have no idea what business a hedgehog could have with my house, to be honest, but you never know, people, you never know.
Terry pooh-poohed these ideas of mine, though, so we settled down to enjoy our Friday evening. Later that night, however, we heard Rubin barking frantically in the garden. It was his special, “Timmy’s down the well,” bark, so we headed out to see what he’d found, and…
Mama hedehog had come looking for her baby. Or perhaps had come to be revenged on us for taking her baby into the woods. Are you scared? Because I am.
(That’s not a white stripe on its back, by the way. I thought it was too when I took the photo and looked back at it on the camera, but it was actually just some weird effect of the flash…)
(When Terry got outside, he caught Rubin just about to pee on this poor hedgehog. I mean, SERIOUSLY….)
(He managed to stop him just in time.)
(I’ll stop with the parentheses now.)
(Or maybe I’ll just keep doing it, to annoy you? No? OK…)
So, of course, now I’m worried that the Big Hedehog had come looking for the Little Hedgehog. And that, having failed to find it – BECAUSE WE CARRIED IT OFF TO THE WOODS – it will, I don’t know, pine to death? And that our names will be MUD now amongst the hedgehog fraternity. For this reason, I hung around in the dark garden for much longer than was really necessary, until the hedgehog crossed into our neighbour’s garden and disappeared into a flower bed. It didn’t SEEM to be annoyed with us, but as I said: you never know, do you?
I hope they’re both OK. And that they haven’t put some powerful curse upon us for our actions that day. Because hedgehog curses are THE WORST, seriously.
(I really hope they come back for another visit, though…)
It was a rainy day in Majorca.
Terry and I were on our first ever holiday together: a late break we’d been saving up for all year, and which we’d been enjoying every second of. As the holiday drew to a close, however, the September weather started to set in, and we woke that morning to grey skies and drizzly rain: not the best weather for our planned boat trip that day.
Standing on the dockside, wearing Terry’s sweater, which came halfway down my thighs, I remember feeling sorry for myself, and thinking that a little bit of rain on my holiday was just about the worst thing ever. It was mid-morning, Spanish time. In New York, the dawn had just started to break.
The boat trip was a mistake: the seas were choppy, throwing up waves as big as the boat. We clung onto the back of the boat, making jokes about Titanic, but secretly wondering how the little catamaran could stay upright. We got back to shore feeling lucky to be alive.
The sky didn’t clear until later that evening. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant near the shore, and walked down onto the beach to take pictures of the sunset. On the way back, walking along a tourist street I stopped at a newsstand to read the headlines and joke with Terry that while I, ace reporter that I was, was on holiday, the biggest story in my living memory would probably go down. I was working for a newspaper at the time, and it so happened that my colleague, who worked for our larger, sister title, was going on holiday at the same time as me. Ian was one of those fiercely ambitious young journalists: the ones who don’t even flinch at the idea of doing a “death knock” and who only take days off if they’re forced to, because they’re terrifed they’ll miss something.
This was the first holiday Ian had taken in years, and he’d been strong-armed into it by his girlfriend. He was absolutely convinced that something big would happen while he was gone. “I’ll be wandering around Lake Como and the biggest news story in the world will happen somewhere else!” he kept saying. “I just know it!” I stopped at that newsstand, and I told Terry about Ian, and the biggest news story in the world. And then we walked around the corner, and there it was: the biggest news story in the world had been unfolding for the past few hours. We hadn’t even known.
Around that corner was a cafe, and in the back of that cafe was a TV. It was just a small screen, and yet people were crowding around it, jostling for position. At first I assumed it was a football match: there had been some kind of tournament on that week, and we’d seen lots of crowds around TV screens, all cheering for their teams and drinking beer. This seemed different, though. There was something about the still silence of this crowd that made the back of my neck prick with fear, so I walked over to see what they were looking at, while Terry, who had left his glasses in the hotel and couldn’t have seen anyway, strolled along looking in the nearby shops.
I found a place in the crowd and stood on my toes to see the screen.
CNN. Pictures of fire and smoke. A city street with people running, screaming, covered in what looked like ash. “What is this?” I asked the man standing next to me, who shrugged, and didn’t speak English. “What’s happening?” I honestly didn’t think it was real. I thought it was some kind of fake newsreel, or a scene from a movie. For some reason I thought of War of the Worlds, and people running out of their homes thinking it was real. This seemed real, but it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be, because the more I watched, the more the city seemed to resemble New York, and things like this – whatever this was – just didn’t happen there.
On the screen, more clouds of smoke, more people running. “What IS this?” I asked again. Then a rolling headline appeared on the screen: ”New York declares State of Emergency. Washington declares State of Emergency.”
“Terry!” I shouted. “You need to come over here: something really bad has happened…”
We stood and watched the pictures, me reading out the text as it flashed up. In the footage they were showing, the towers were still standing. When we found out that a plane had hit one (and at that point, we thought it was just one plane, one tower), I, with my fear of flying, thought that was bad enough. I will never forget the next line which flashed up on the screen:
“Both towers collapsed following the impact.”
I really didn’t believe it. I didn’t think it was possible. “That can’t be right, can it?” I asked Terry. “Even if a plane did hit them, they wouldn’t fall? Would they?” But Terry thought that yes, that could, theoretically be possible. “If it was a large enough plane,” he said, “Then yes, I guess it could happen.”
I ran for the phones. My cellphone, typically, was back at the hotel, but there was a bank of pay phones near the cafe, and I had this compulsion to speak to my parents – to have this thing that was happening confirmed by someone I knew. And, more than that, I think I had the same compulsion we all did on that day, to make contact with the people we loved, and know that they were OK. The payphones, however, were all coin or credit only, and I had only notes. So we jumped in a taxi and sped back to the hotel to call home. I remember the taxi driver was listening to a football match on the radio, and I wondered if I should tap him on the shoulder and say, “Look, you obviously haven’t heard…” but I still didn’t really believe it. Terry and I held hands in silence. “The thing is,” said Terry, “If this is true, then it isn’t just an act of terrorism- it’s an act of war.” My stomach didn’t stop churning all the way home.
Back at the hotel, we sat out on the balcony while I called my parents. As I listened to the phone ring out hundreds of miles away, I thought about how stupid I was going to sound, calling to ask if the World Trade Center had collapsed. Because it COULD NOT BE TRUE. I didn’t really think it was until my mum picked up the phone, and I could tell by the tone of her voice the instant she knew it was me. “Oh, sweetheart…” she said. And all of a sudden it was real.
I spoke to her for twenty minutes, relaying the information to Terry. We found out that there hadn’t been one plane, but four. That they had been commercial flights, not, as we had initially assumed, a light aircraft gone astray. That they had managed to hit the Pentagon. I will never forget the look on Terry’s face when I told him that – it was complete horror and disbelief. We found out that another plane had come down in Pennsylvania, that all flights in and out of the US had been grounded.
I thought the world was ending.
I mean that literally. It actually felt to me like the world was ending. I can still think back to it and remember that feeling: I don’t think I’ve ever felt so panicked in my life. And there we were, on our little, quiet Spanish island, looking at the sky and half expecting to see a plane come roaring out of it, heading straight at us. It was like that, in the aftermath. No one knew what would happen next, where the next attack would come from, or who it would hit. And the fact that this had happened in New York, in Washington, in Pennsylvania, seemed to open up the possibility of it happening anywhere. Nowhere felt safe. Anything could happen.
* * *
The next morning was cloudy, and we were glad of it. It would’ve felt wrong, somehow, to have enjoyed the sunshine on September 12th, 2001. Instead, we found a cafe which was showing CNN and we sat there all day, watching the planes slam into the towers over and over again, watching the towers fall. We didn’t want to see it, but we couldn’t look away. When we finished our cups of coffee, the waiters just let us sit there. It was the most surreal couple of days of my life, and when it was over, we got on a plane, and we flew home, and I cried in the darkness somewhere above Europe at the sheer terror of being in the sky at the end of the world.
* * *
Even now I can’t believe it happened. I can’t believe that the world ever managed to return to some semblance of normality. That night, and that week, it felt like it never would. I couldn’t imagine a future after what had happened. I just couldn’t imagine how the world would pick itself up and dust itself off and go on as before. And of course, it did, and it didn’t. Things continued as they always had, but everything was different.
I didn’t ever get to see the World Trade Center. But I’m thinking of it today, and every year on this day. I’m thinking of those who died there, and who died in Washington, and on United Airlines Flight 93. Of all of the men and women who’ve died in the ten years since September 11, 2001, because of what happened on that day. So I apologise for adding to what I’m sure will be a long list of posts like this today, but it just didn’t seem right to write about anything else.
In other news:
I learned how to use a hair donut to create a variation on my Messy Bunhead. And it only took me my entire life!
I know, I know: for someone who professes not to be a Hair Person, I’m certainly managing to crank out the ol’ hair posts recently hmm? This is quite a big deal for me, though, because it brings the total number of hairstyles I can do up to three. Actually, I tell a lie: it brings it up to four:
Five if you count the fishtail braid, which I ALSO learned to do, but didn’t take a photo of.
FIVE HAIRSTYLES, people! This time last year, I only had ONE!
I hope you’ll all buy my new book, by the way: Amber’s Adventures in Messy Bunland. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, except the rabbit hole is the Internet, and the bottle with the “drink me” label turns out to be WINE…
Some other stuff I did when I wasn’t busy fighting bad guys:
I wore things that are stripey and things that have bows on them. Sometimes I wore them at the same time. It’s an exciting life, and no mistake.
I drank a lot of coffee from my new mug:
(I have a Shoeperwoman one too. They are ace.)
I watched Terry juggle:
I was going to make a crude joke about balls here, but I’ll leave that up to you, OK?
I discovered that my dad is Made of Magic:
And so are these shoes:
(Disclosure: Shoes c/o Sarenza. SELLOUT.)
I became dangerously addicted to Sims Social on Facebook:
(Yes, my Sim is wearing the same top I’m wearing in photo #3. I like to be coordinated.)
I can give it up any time, though. I have to finish building my new extension first, though.
We had some friends round for a little get-together:
This photo wasn’t actually taken that day, though, so it’s purely here for illustrative purposes. I don’t put photos of my friends on my blog, or even talk about them much, because they are imaginary I don’t want to infringe on their privacy or anything, but they do exist, and it was good to see them, and be able to talk about something other than people ripping me off on the internet. Although, obviously I DID talk quite a lot about people trying to rip me off on the internet. Sorry, guys.
As for Rubin, here is how he has been dealing with recent events:
I wish I was him sometimes, I really do.
(I know: the headline of this post made you think it was going to be something interesting, and it just turned out to be another one of those Instagram posts. Sorry, chickpeas. And sorry for calling you “chickpeas”, too.)
P.S. I also begged people to vote for me in the River Island Style Competition, which was supposed to end yesterday, but which is apparently still going on, and I have no idea why. I’m currently in second place, but there’s only three votes in it, and if you don’t go and vote for me rightthisverysecond, I will probably drop to third, the world will instantly end, and it will ALL BE YOUR FAULT. And all you had to do to stop it was to click here and then like the photo.
P.P.S. And I re-opened my Formspring account, for as long as it takes for the shop-related questions to start rolling in. Probably a couple of hours, then.
Way back in the day, when this was all still fields and I used to “blog” over at Livejournal (only we didn’t call it “blogging” then – at least, not without the inverted commas – we just called it “journalling”. Ah, t’was a more innocent age!), I used to follow the A Day of My Life in Pictures community, where people would basically, well, document a day of their lives in pictures, d’uh. I found it really fascinating to get these little insights into the minutiae of other people’s lives, right down to the seeing what type of shampoo they used, and what they ate for lunch. In fact, those little insights are what made me get interested in blogs in general: I just loved the fact that I could be sitting there, at my desk in central Scotland, and get a glimpse of what it might be like to be a mother of five in the Midwest, or an 18-year-old in Japan, or whatever. And so my love of blogging was born.
As it happens, not much has been happening in my life of late, which is why there haven’t been too many posts here lately. Or, you know, none at all. Last week, though, I thought it would be fun to document this not-very-much that happens, in a tribute to the ADIML community, and I decided to do it using the blogger’s favourite medium: the Instagram photo. (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s fashionable to sneer at Instagram users, but I like it, and it’s easier than lugging around a DSLR all day. And I promise there are no photos of cupcakes or macarons. I’m not THAT much of a blogging cliche. Yet.) “Because people will TOTALLY want to see photos of not-very-much happening!” I thought, excitedly. “In fact, I will wait for a day on which absolutely nothing happens and I am basically just stuck in the house all day with the dog, and then I will do it!”
That day was Sunday. Here’s what it looked like.
* * *
Sunday, August 7th, in the year of our Lord, 2011. I’m woken early, by the sound of Terry swearing and muttering to himself in the hall. And also by the scent of Indian food cooking, for some reason.
Terry enters the room, and informs me that Rubin has peed on his bed in the night (Rubin’s bed, that is. Not Terry’s bed. Because that would mean Rubin had peed on MY bed in the night, and that would mean he had peed on US. And this would be a very different post, let me tell you.), and then leaves. Awesome! Welcome to Sunday morning! Welcome to… MY LIFE.
(Actually, Rubin peeing the bed in the night ceased to be A Thing some years ago, so I can only assume he decided to reprise the trick on this particular morning because he knew this was the day I was going to be documenting, and he wanted it to be as awkward as possible. The little git.)
Luckily for me, Terry has cleaned Rubin, and cleaned the bed, and now he’s off to Perth, to go white water rafting. I’m not going because I hate cold water, rafts, danger, DEATH, getting up early on a Sunday morning, and any activity which forces me to wear a wetsuit. Instead, I am anticipating a nice, long lie, and a relaxing Sunday at home. But it is not to be, because right after Terry leaves, I take the photo at the top of the page, to document my “waking up”, and instantly notice that weird, red mark on the side of my jaw.
What IS that weird red mark on the side of my jaw, I wonder? Why is it there? Am I dying?
I get out of bed and head to the bathroom, to examine what I can only describe as … a weird, red mark on my jaw. I am dying, obviously. It is some bizarre kind of skin condition, a signifier of Certain Death. This day I have chosen to document in pictures… it will be my LAST DAY ON EARTH.
DUH!
DUH!
DUUUUUHHHHHHHH!
Oh, hai, hypochondria! Long time no see!
I walk dispiritedly back to the bedroom, a condemned woman. When I open the door, I discover that someone has made himself right at home in my absence:
(This picture was not posed. That’s actually how I found him.)
“Rubin,” I tell him, “I am dying. I have a weird red mark on the side of my jaw. I have Weird Red Mark On Side of Jaw Disease, and even if I survive today, I will have to abandon my Day in Pictures thing, because as soon as I post that first one, people will comment and say that, OMG, their Great Aunt Ethel woke up with a weird red mark on her jaw this one time, and she totally died.”
“That’s really interesting, Amber,” says Rubin, but I’d like some of that Indian food I can smell, do you think we could do something about that?”
And you know, Rubin is right. The house DOES smell strongly of Indian food, which is weird, because that’s not normally what we eat for breakfast. I follow the smell downstairs, to solve the mystery. I discover a couple of clues in the kitchen:
Exhibit A: dirty dishes, sink full of. Exhibit B: onion bhajis, six of.
There is no sign of the food itself, so I assume it is either inside Terry’s belly, or en-route to Perth. Strange.
(Note: in fairness to Terry, I should point out that he wouldn’t normally go out and leave dishes in the sink or rubbish on the counter. He just didn’t have time to clean because of the whole “Rubin peeing on his bed” fiasco. On balance, I’d much rather clean a couple of not-very-dirty plates than Rubin’s backside and bed. Thanks, Terry.)
So I let Rubin out onto the garden, where it has been raining now for forty days and forty nights, as prophesied by all of that rain we got on S. Swithin’s Day.
“Er, no thanks,” says Rubin. “YOU can go and pee in the rain if you want: I’ll just stick to peeing on my bed, if it’s all the same to you.” He doesn’t like the rain.
I make coffee.
And I have a look in the fridge to see what there is to eat. Here is the only thing that was in the fridge:
Those are two melons propping it up, just to give you an idea of scale. My in-laws brought it back from their visit to the Cadbury factory in Birmingham last week. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when Terry walked in with it.
OK, it wasn’t the ONLY thing in the fridge. There was also wine. But I figured it was a little early for wine, considering. I mean, here is the time on the oven as I was making my coffee:
OMFG! It is ten o’clock AT NIGHT! I have missed the whole day! I have either slept through it, or… or ALIENS HAVE KIDNAPPED ME AND BROUGHT ME BACK, AND NOW I WILL BE LIKE FALLON IN DYNASTY THAT TIME AND NO ONE WILL EVER BELIEVE ME OMG. ALSO, THAT WILL EXPLAIN THE WEIRD MARK ON MY FACE.
Oh no, wait: the clock is just at the wrong time. It’s not 22:40. Actually, it’s not even 10:40. I think it may have been around 10am? Maybe? Possibly? But hey, it’s Sunday, who cares, right?
I take my coffee and chocolate upstairs and settle down to check my email, comments, etc, and also to frantically Google the phrase “Weird red mark on jaw, totally nothing to worry about, really common”.
I’ve only been doing this for a couple of minutes (which is all it takes, incidentally, to establish that yes, I AM DYING), when I am disturbed by Rubin barking. His bark has that particular tone to it which I, being able to speak fluent Rubinman, am able to translate as, “Hello, I am barking because I want to sit in the window. Please place me there immediately, so that I may sit there, king of all I survey, and totally freak the hell out if I see so much as a BIRD land in the street.”
Sure enough:
I have no choice but to obey. I am, after all, but a helpless minion, he, my furry overlord:
Yes, he is badly needing to be groomed. He’s looking particularly scruffy in these because he did eventually go out in the rain, albeit grudgingly. Also because he’d PEED HIS OWN BED, and probably his own self, too. GOD.
I tool around on the internet for a while and start writing this post. I would have taken a photo of me writing this post, but I think that would be taking “self-referential” to a new low, don’t you? Anyway, I’m sure you can all imagine what I looked like writing this post, can’t you? (When you do, please imagine me looking a bit like Angelina Jolie, thanks. On no account imagine me wearing a ratty old dressing gown, with uncombed hair, and a weird red mark on my jaw.)
I also did this:
Eyelash dye. Best thing ever for the fair of lash. (Also, 45 days MY ASS. I mean, maybe if your lashes don’t ever grow? I have to do mine every couple of weeks, though, or I end up with blonde roots. On my eyelashes.)
After that, I think, “Screw it, I’m going back to bed.” Shut up, it was Sunday. And I am dying, according to Dr Google (SHOULDBESTRUCKOFF). But first: MOAR COFFEE. And then, some relaxin’:
I’m reading The Secret Garden. I like to read children’s books when I’m dying, they help calm me down. That particular chapter was called “THA MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME.” Seriously.
At this point, I kind of gave up on the photos for a while. “Hate the stupid Day of My Life in Pictures,” I thought. “Who will read it, anyway? NO ONE, that’s who will read it. Giving up now.” I also did that thing where I lost my phone, and had to call myself to find out where it was. It was in the bathroom, naturally.
Anyway, I did some cleaning up around the house, fed the dog, and fed myself, cleverly creating a small meal out of Things I Found in the Fridge or Thereabouts. Turns out you can make a pretty good lunch out of two melons, a huge bar of chocolate, WINE and half a tub of spreadable cheese. WHO KNEW? Then I worked for a while, and honestly, I bet you’re glad I’d decided to stop taking photos at this point because it would just have been dozens of photos of me either sitting at my desk or cleaning the floors, and that would be even MORE boring than the kind of rubbish that usually passes for “a blog post” around here. Oh, and I brushed the dog. I really wasn’t joking about The Boring, was I?
Then I decided I should at least try to finish what I’d started. “Follow through, Amber,” I told myself. “Complete the project! Or people will think you didn’t even get dressed all day!”
(Top prize for “Least Flattering Camera Angle Ever”, huh?)
Let the record show that I was, in fact, dressed by this point, and had been for quite some time. On with the show…
At this point, I had planned to take Rubin for a nice, long walk. But it was pouring, and both Rubin and I HATE THAT, so I thew a ball around the house for him instead, to give him some exercise, and he looked at me as if I was mad and asked to be put back up in the window. It was around about then that the day pretty much turned from Not-Very-Funday-Sunday into Bleak, Rained-In, Kinda Depressing Sunday. I felt about as happy as… well, as a wet weekend, basically. And with nothing left to do but stare desolately out of the window at the rain, my thoughts turned to Terry, careering wildly down a waterfall in a rubber dinghy, on a day on which the MET Office had put part of Scotland under a severe weather warning.
I decided to start a Vigil.
I laid out my guidelines on How To Hold A Vigil way back in the mists of time here. For today’s vigil, I decide to add an extra step, which I call “taking a shower”.
I know what you’re thinking: AT LAST. Who waits until mid-afternoon before showering? Well, not me, normally, but in my defence, the dog was the only living being who’d seen me at this point, and Terry and I were planning on going out to dinner, so I figured showering later would mean my hair wouldn’t turn limp and greasy until halfway through the main course, as opposed to a few hours before we even left the house.
Obviously I couldn’t document the ACTUAL shower, so these photos are intended to represent The Shower and Its Immediate Aftermath.
I’ve got all my ducks in a row, boom boom! I’m here all week, folks…
(Aside: it’s totally weird to me that I had to watermark a photo of a contact lens case. But I just know that if I don’t, someone will steal it and claim that it’s THEIR contact lens case, or that they ARE the contact lens case or something. And that… well, it wouldn’t really make much difference to me, to be honest, but I’ve become completely bloody-minded about this now, so if you steal my prechus contact lens photo I WILL CUT YOU. I forgot to watermark some of the other photos, though, so take the one of the dirty dishes if you want.)
Anyway. I’m barely out of the shower, when:
Terry’s home, Terry’s home! And is ALIVE! He is NOT floating face-down in a river, his limp body battered by the rocks! Encouraged by this news, I prepare myself to face the outside world:
I discover that I am able to cover up the weird jaw mark with makeup. This doesn’t make me feel any less like I’m going to die.
(I also discover that Instagram has a self-portrait setting. It makes my face look weird, but my skin look remarkable free of strange jaw marks. )
“It just looks like a bruise,” Says Terry, as if there’s nothing AT ALL strange about waking up with a bruise on your jaw that you don’t remember acquiring. I am not reassured.
It’s time for me to get changed. What would you wear to walk the cobbled streets of Edinburgh in the rain, readers? Because I would wear suede, stiletto-heeled sandals:
(Carvela, c/o Sarenza)
I’d also wear a green dress, but then, that goes without saying.
(Dorothy Perkins, c/o yours truly.)
OK, ya got me: that one wasn’t an Instagram photo. Let’s just pretend it was.
Let’s also pretend that bit of my fringe isn’t sticking out awkwardly, m’kay?
We get into the car and head for the city:
It was just after taking this photo that the migraine hit. Terry was telling me about his white water rafting, I turned to look at him, and.., his head had been replaced by a huge, jagged circle. Awesome! I completed the rest of the journey with only about 50% of my vision. It’s a good job I wasn’t driving, hey?
I could’ve taken better photos of Edinburgh. If I had actually been able to see it, that is.
Now, I’m fairly lucky when it comes to migraines. I get the aura, but I don’t normally get the killer headache after it, so while there have been exceptions to that rule, most of the time I can start functioning normally again once the aura disappears. Or as normally as I ever function, anyway.
(NOTE: Yes, I have seen a doctor about my migraines. They’ve been the same since I was 18, and they are 100%, ordinary migraines. They are not the sign of a brain tumour. Yes, I have asked. No, I don’t want to hear about Great Aunt Ethel, and how she had migraines JUSTLIKETHAT, but it turned out to be a brain tumour, and she’s dead now.)
Happily, this was one of those times, and by the time we reached our restaurant, I was feeling about 90% normal. And then, a short while later, I felt 95% normal, AND with a belly full of Chinese food.
And this, my friends, is where I will leave you (“THANK GOD!” I hear you say. “I thought she was going to go on all night, and document brushing her teeth and taking her makeup off!”), because I don’t like taking photos in restuarants, and also because, well, I totally forgot about it after that. Suffice to say that we had a great meal, we made it home, and I am still alive today, although I’m no further forward in working out what the weird mark is. (It has almost disappeared now. That has to be a good sign, surely?)
THE END.
While I was in L.A. (Yeah, yeah, it’s another one of THOSE posts: just stick it out though and I’ll start talking about something NOT connected to my holiday, I promise) we were driving along the freeway one day, when the traffic suddenly slowed because of a truck’s cargo, which had apparently spilled onto the road.
As we drew closer to the obstruction,I glanced out of the window to see what, exactly, it was that was littering the highway and forcing the traffic to go from the thrilling speed of 15mph, down to about 5mph.
It was teddy bears.
Lots of them. Hundreds, maybe. They were little, tiny, multicoloured teddy bears, they were all over the freeway, being run over by the cars and, actually, their small stature and brightly coloured fur reminded me a lot of my own Pinky:
who you will, of course, all remember from this post, because you have obsessively read through my archives and are totally up to date on the subject of Soft Toys I Have Known. In which case, you are obviously one of my parents: hi, folks!
(Oh, God, see, I know you’re not actually going to click that link, so now I feel like I have to explain why I, a grown-adult, feel the need to own a small pink rabbit. IT’S A STRESS TOY, OK? Because I’m scared of flying, I take it on flights with me, and any time the plane is taking off, or landing, or going through turbulence, or just flying along, minding its own business, I squeeze Pinky tightly in my hand, and it makes me feel calmer. Or at least, it used to: these days I tend to spend the duration of the flight freaking out and going, “OMG WHERE IS PINKY I HAVE LOST PINKY!” and that’s sometimes even more stressful than the flights were without him. In fact, just a few minutes ago, I had to stop writing this and get up to go and check that Pinky was safely stowed in the drawer I left him in when we got back from California. Stress bustin’: UR doin it rong!)
The teddy bears, as I said, were scattered across several lanes of traffic, being run over by cars and trucks and honestly, it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. (I know, sheltered life, huh?) I just can’t stand to see a stuffed animal in distress. In fact, my parents still have a large white bear my mum and I once found in a puddle when we were walking Chico one day, and which I insisted on bringing home and washing. And then we all stood in a circle around it going, “Well, what will we do with it? I dunno, what do YOU think we should do with it?” And no one could think of anything we could do with a large white bear*, so it ended up in my parents’ attic, and it remains there to this day. I like to think it’s happier as an Attic Bear than it would be as a Puddle Bear. It would probably be happier still if I gave it to a charity shop and some kid got it and loved it. I would do that, but how would I know it wouldn’t end up in the wrong hands, like, a bear farm or something? HOW WOULD I KNOW?
(*It was a stuffed bear, obviously. If I’d found a REAL bear in a puddle, I probably wouldn’t have brought it home and put it in the washing machine, but you never know.)
Anwyay. Teddies. On the freeway.
Those teddies on the freeway, they tugged at my heartstrings. So I yelled at my dad to stop the car and, of course, he yelled back that I was an idiot, and that he wasn’t going to pull over so I could run around an eight lane highway, picking up stuffed bears. We drove on. We left those teddies far behind, but I couldn’t get them out of my mind.
But things were to get worse, teddy-wise.
The next day, we visited Santa Monica, and there, on the roof of a building next to the pier, I saw this:
Yes, it’s one of L.A.’s army of homeless bears: those poor, forgotten toys who have been sent out into the world to fend for themselves.
Some just can’t take the pressure:
Others turn to drink:
(Yes, that’s Spongebob. He went to Hollywood to find fame: instead he just found the bottom of a bottle. It’s a sad scene, and one that’s repeated all over the city, if you just know where to look.)
Welcome to the seedy underbelly of L.A., folks: the part the tourists don’t get to see.
When we left L.A., I thought I’d left this teddy underworld far behind me. I was wrong, though, because when I was out running last week, what should I stumble upon, just lying on the footpath?
A lost lion. Now THERE’S something you don’t see every day, huh?
“At last!” I thought. “At last I have the opportunity to do something good for the lost teddies of the world: the teddies on the freeway. For I will take this lost lion home with me, and I will give him to Rubin, and he will be loved. Well, he will be chewed, and thrown around a bit, but it’ll be almost the same as being loved!”
So I picked up the little lion, and I ran on, his little yellow and blue legs dangling from my hand. I must’ve looked like an absolute idiot, out jogging with a stuffed animal in my hand. In fact, I must’ve looked even stupider than I look sitting on an aircraft with a stuffed animal in my hand, now I come to think of it. But I ran on, determined to save at least one of the lost teddies of the world, and every time I passed someone I gave them a look that was supposed to signifiy, “Oh, hai! I see you’re looking at the stuffed lion in my hand! Why, I found it abandoned on the footpath back yonder, and I am taking it home to my dog! Because THAT’S not weird!”
I think people knew what I meant. Either that or they just thought I was demented.
As I ran, though, I started to worry. This lion was clean, and by the way he’d been sitting on the path, I figured he’d been dropped, rather than abandoned. What if he was some child’s cherished toy? What if that child came back looking for him, and he was gone: handed over to Rubin, to be treated with the disrespect Rubin reserves for all members of the stuffed toy fraternity? WHAT IF?
I was worried. And I HAD been worried about the lion, but now I was worried about the nameless child who loved the lion. (The title of my first book: “People Who Love Lions Too Much”.) How would I feel, I asked myself, if it was Ted who had been lost?
Or, er, ET?
I would be heartbroken. Inconsolable.
So I turned around, and I ran all the way back to where I’d found the lion. And now I had a new dilemma. I had to leave him somewhere he would be safe: somewhere his true owner would be able to find him, but random passers-by wouldn’t notice him and take him. Er, like I had, I mean.
In the end, I found him a safe place in the undergrowth. Next to a can of beer, actually. And I turned around, and I ran home, and I left that little lion behind.
That night it rained.
In fact, it poured. There was even thunder.
There was more thunder, and more rain, the next day too. And the next night.
“The little lion will be out in the elements,” I fretted to Terry, as we were on our way home from my parents’ house, where we’d had dinner. “It will be lying there all alone in the rain! IT’S A TRAGEDY OF SUCH EPIC PROPORTIONS I MAY NEVER GET OVER IT!”
Terry said nothing, but a few minutes later he silently pulled into a car park near my running route, and parked the car. “What are we doing here?” I asked. “It’s dark, and it’s raining. Are you mad?”
“We’re going to get the little lion, of course,” said Terry. And that’s why Terry deserves a medal. Because he went back with me, under cover of darkness, and in the pouring rain (We did have an umbrella in the car, thankfully, and it was only a very short walk. But still.) to look for the little lion.
It was gone.
I like to think the child who owned it came back for it. I like to think that child was overjoyed to find his beloved companion safe and sound, although possibly slightly drunk. I like to think I did the right thing.
But sometimes, in the dead of the night, I worry that there’s a little stuffed lion out there somewhere, all alone…
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