Humanity

So, many of you will know I'm home for the holidays. A few of you will know that I don't like my hometown because of a lot of the people in it. But yesterday I was in McDonalds and I heard something that was a little bit heartwarming.

I will admit, I'm the kind of person who doesn't always clean up after themselves in fast food restaurants. I do it most of the time, especially if I know the people working there, but if I've had bad service or I don't like the person who is working I will leave it for them.

Most of the time I will do it myself because there are plenty of people who don't do it and I have had to clear up after other people in order to be able to sit at a table before now. It isn't pleasant and the people who work there aren't employed to clean up after you because you're too lazy to do it yourself.

Yesterday I saw some chavs eating Happy Meals; not uncommon considering where I live. Including one I went to school with, accompanying who I can only assume was his younger brother. Upon finishing his brother put the boxes on the tray and went to pick it up. His younger brother said, in the snottiest voice I've heard out of an under 10 'But aren't they here to clean up after us?'

To which the elder brother snapped back 'No. It's nice if you do it yourself.' Well, I could have cried. This isn't something that you hear in Skem, that's not how Skem works.

Genuinely amazing moment.

Maybe it's a little sad how heartwarming I find this. Maybe I've just got such low expectations of Skem that this is absolutely amazing when it happens. But it happened, and it made me happy.

MINI NEWS: I am getting a tattoo on the 8th January. It's booked, I've designed it, and now I've told everyone I'll feel like a tit if I back out. So excited. Pictures to follow, watch this space.

Guided tour of Mini will be resuming normal service from this moment. I have my own 14mpx camera and took some photos on my mothers camera before I left uni, so let's explore the wall shall we?

This is a picture drawn of me by the lovely Danielle at the start of LVI. My skin is blue because I'm cold, my hair is red because it was back them and the boobs were only put in afterwards when I took my jumper off and stopped swamping my figure.

The text reads: To Mini. Happy Jew Day. Love Danielle.

I'm not sure if that is racist.

The unicorn covering the speech bubble was drawn by the wonderful Sammy Holden, who will be a famous artist someday and I have three Sammy Holden originals, all of which will get featured together in a different post.

As for the contents of the speech bubble... I'm not saying :)

Twitter vs. Facebook

I got an @ reply from my uncle on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. I didn't even know he was following me; I was understandably confused. After this he preceded to spam me until I got sick of it and blocked him.

Yesterday I got a friend request from a random person named Mohammed on Facebook. We had one mutual friend - a girl who always accepts friend requests from people she doesn't know.

Two forms of social networking, they can't be that different, right?

I tend to know the people I add or accept on Facebook. I tend not to know the people I follow or that follow me on Twitter. I find it works better this way.

I tend to use Facebook to stay in touch with people. Even if they're people I'm likely to see on a daily basis - my flatmates or my Fylde bar sports family. Facebook chat is cheape

r than a series of text messages, writing on people's walls is a fun way to leave a message to make someone smile and poke wars are often fun; even if they can be annoying. I tend to clear out the people I don't speak to from my friends list at regular intervals - or whenever I feel I need a change.

I tend to use Twitter to stalk celebrities. There's no other way to put it, that's what Twitter is for. That and spam. I've spoken to three of my favourite authors (@realjohngreen, @Caroline_S and @maureenjohnson) and if it wasn't for Twitter I'd have never read the books of the first two. I've had creative discussions with YouTubers who I find inspiring (@hexachordal, @blade376 and @eddplant) and even football discussions with a local radio DJ (@paulsaltysalt). I also follow Stephen Fry, but so does everyone else on twitter. I get excited when I get retweets or @ replies from people with lots of followers and I like keeping an eye on trending topics.

Thing is, when people who I usually speak to on Facebook go onto Twitter and talk to me there, it sort of freaks me out. And if someone who follows me on Twitter tried to add me on Facebook I'd likely decline their request. The two worlds shouldn't really meet.

Of course there are exceptions, but its a general rule.

There is also a huge difference in the content that I post on both. Facebook is often censored, stuff I don't mind people I am likely to encounter daily asking me about. Twitter is the o

pposite. I tweet moany crap and passive aggressive statements to nobody in particular.

The main difference in content probably comes from the fact that my parents, my flatmates and most of the guys that I find remotely attractive on Facebook aren't on Twitter. Or if they are, they're not following me. And that's the way it should stay.

Guided Tour of Mini:

You can't read it very well but it says 'All the bestest lasses are called Caroline!' I recieved it from the lovely @Caroline_S, who I mentioned earlier, when I won a competition for a signed copy of her book. It's a recent addition to the wall but it has pride of place right at the top.

P.S. This is not an invitation for people who do know me to start following me on Twitter. Please don't.

On the train home...

I hate trains.

I mean we all have some sort of disdain for public transport, a lot of the time you would rather be driving than having to share your locomotive with a bunch of strangers who would be weirdoes and there always seems to be at least one that is. But I actually hate trains.

I'm currently typing on the train. This isn't all that weird but there are people who are looking at me funny with my widescreen laptop (I get the same look in lectures, but it's the most beautiful thing I own so it doesn't bother me) perched on my knee typing away like my life depends on it. The train to Preston was hell, delayed for half an hour and nowhere to sit; worried I was running over peoples toes with my suitcase and almost not able to get off. It wouldn't have been a disaster to not be able to get off, I could have just gone straight to Wigan but I didn't pay to Wigan so I may have got in some trouble there.

I don't know what makes trains any more scary than buses. I got 4 buses a day almost every weekday for 2 years and although the thought of leaving the house to start my 1 hour commute to college filled me with dread almost every morning – it wasn't the bus part of the experience that was the negative part. Buses and trains are not that much different. Trains are actually more reliable and if they are going to be delayed you know about it in advance and usually know approximately by how much as well, something you don't get with buses. At some point I've had to run for both. They both follow pretty strict routes and trains are faster. Train drivers can't just choose to change their route and not take you where they are supposed to take you because of snow or traffic (I'm talking to you Number 3 bus driver who decided not to go to New Look and dropped us at the side of the road instead). All in all you'd think that trains would be the preferred mode of public transport.

And yet I hate them.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that 95% of the train journeys I have made have been carrying a significant amount of luggage. I did nearly run over several pairs of feet on the train from Lancaster to Preston and trying to carry a laptop in its bag along with a suitcase and a bag of stuff that wouldn't fit in the suitcase is not the easiest thing for a 5"2' woman to achieve. But I carried the same luggage from my room to the bus to get to town centre, and this wasn't as stressful. It was still stressful mind, just not as stressful. So that doesn't seem to be it either.

I was thinking about this, and all of my previous experiences with trains. If you look at my family you'd expect me to have a fear of buses rather than a fear of trains – my mother can't stand buses. But I couldn't think what it could be that induced this emotional response when it came to the thought of having to get a train on my own. In fact the first time I ever did get a train on my own I broke down crying because I didn't want to do it.

And then I remembered. I can't remember how old I was at the time, but my mum was really into cross stitch and she would go to a cross stitch and craft fair with her friend every year. And I had gotten really into cross stitch as well so I was going to the same fair. On the train. But, because I was so young I had been stupid enough not to go to the loo before we left. Needless to say, we were on the train and I was really desperate for a wee. The train toilet was out of order. We were stopping at another station before we got to Manchester but there wouldn't be enough time to get me off and into the loo. So my mum did what you could do back then with young children, took me to the train doors so I could have a wee on the platform while the train was stopped (obviously this gives you a clue as to how young I really was). The train doors closed (on my Godmother's arm if I remember rightly, because she had tried to stop them) and we were still on the platform. Our tickets, my mum's bag, all of the other stuff we had brought with us were on the train with my mum's friend. Naturally, being a young child I started to cry, I had no idea what it was that we were going to do. I was young, I didn't understand trains; I didn’t know what to do. It worked out fine; we just got on the next train and were lucky enough that nobody asked us for our tickets.

Maybe this one event has had an effect on me for the rest of my life. I do manage to get trains; I'm on one now. In fact this is my 6th in the last 6 days. But I still get a sinking feeling when I know that I have to leave the house to go and get a train somewhere. Maybe next time I get the train I'll try going somewhere where I don't need any luggage and we'll see how stressful that is. But maybe I will just be scared of trains for a while to come, but often my life is about facing fears (such as leaving my room and walking around a very slippy campus to a lecture).

Anyway, I'll be home by 5, which is when this will probably be posted because you're not actually here with me at this point. My dad is picking me up from the station but will be a bit late because he has to work, but a lift greatly reduces the stress of the journey overall because buses in Skem are much more stressful than their counterparts anywhere else I will tell you that now.

Another thing that really annoyed me was when I was on my train from Lancaster to Preston it rushed past campus. An hour after I left campus. Seems like such a waste of time and energy to be doubling back on myself, but that's just the way the world is built!

Advent calendar dilemma

When do you eat your advent calendar chocolate?

I feel like a big kid still having an advent calendar at the age of 18, but I’ve done it for the last 17 Christmases in a row so why would I stop now? I think the most childish part of it is that my mother bought me my advent calendar again.

For anybody interested, it’s a Mars one, which means it isn’t quite as good as the Cadbury one I had last year, but it is still pretty good. The window for Christmas Eve is really big as well so that’ll probably be a fun-size Mars bar I imagine.

But there is a dilemma which I face every morning when it comes to eating my advent calendar chocolate. Obviously you have to brush your teeth before you leave the house (although this doesn’t seem to be obvious to some people in my lectures, but so is life) but this will have an effect on your enjoyment of the chocolate.

The basic problem I have is: do you eat your advent calendar chocolate before or after you brush your teeth?

If you eat it before, then the taste of the chocolate gets washed away when you brush your teeth. However, if you eat it afterwards, the chocolate will taste funny. So, what do you do?

The bestest says she brushes her teeth, eats breakfast and then eats her chocolate, which seems to make sense as a logical sequence for when it comes to eating chocolate. But, I don’t eat breakfast. And I brush my teeth after breakfast if I ever get it because food gets stuck in my brace.

I still don’t know what to do in relation to eating my advent calendar chocolate and brushing my teeth. If anyone fancies giving me a solution that still allows me to have my daily December fix of chocolate in the morning before I have to go and do something else but allows me to have the most enjoyable chocolate experience that will last me the whole day.

Am I overthinking this? I should probably just eat my damn chocolate and get on with it.

365 days in 30 ways update: I received a parcel in the middle of last week, which contained a signed book by my lovely name twin Caroline Smailes. It also had a post-it-note which says ‘All the bestest lasses are called Caroline’ which now has pride of place at the top of my wall, which I will be able to resume showing you in January.

Number 24, checked off.