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.

Songs

I'm crying and homesick so I thought I'd blog before I go to bed. I was watching BlogTV and Tom Milsom (http://www.youtube.com/hexachordal) and Eddplant (http://www.youtube.com/eddplant) were singing beautifully but they ended on three songs which made me blub like a little girl. Three songs that remind me of my family. They would have only needed to whack out a bit of Eminem and Rihanna to get the big 4 and send me into a spiral.

1. Time of Your Life - Green Day

I don't know why this reminds me of my mum, but it does. Its most likely the memories of us listening to it after I left high school and what a happy time in my life it was.

2. Book of Love - Peter Gabriel

I know this song from Scrubs - JD's last episode. And I always used to watch Scrubs with my dad on my free afternoons in college before he went back to work. So naturally my brain makes the link between this and my dad. Plus I blubbed like a baby at the last episode of Scrubs, so you know, classical conditioning.

3. Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's

I thought I was going to explode when I saw someone suggest this in the comments. This one reminds me of my brother. When I was doing my GCSE music in high school I sang this song for my practice performance exam in the December of my final year. My brother was supposed to play the guitar for it but he left because of serious bullying. This one made me cry the most. It always reminds me of Chris and of home and of a bad time in my life so I pretty much started crying the second the first two notes were played on the guitar.

This isn't particularly articulate. Its almost half 2 and I promised myself an early night for Tash coming up tomorrow. But this is something that happened tonight, and I wanted to remember this moment - after all, that's why I started doing this.

People in the chat said they were recording the BlogTV as well. I really hope I can find Tom and Edd's versions of these songs tomorrow morning on YouTube.

F1 baby

I have to write half a lab report for the 29th November and a 2000 word essay for the 3rd of December. What have I done today?: Watched the F1 season review on iPlayer.

This time last week Sebastian Vettel took the F1 world championship. I now have my weekends back - okay it was only every other weekend, but it was about 6 hours every other weekend - and all I have to look forward to over the winter is seeing how the driver market will take shape. The 2010 season had 18 incredibly exciting races (and one boring one) that drew to a close last Sunday with incorrect tactical decisions leading to the underdog taking the title.

The only thing is, I haven't stopped talking about it yet. Here, to people in lectures and lab classes, to the sports guys down in the bar, you name it; they're all sick of me.

My brain comprises of 85% song lyrics, 10% F1 nonsense, 3% Doctor Who trivia and 2% everything else.

And that's just who I am (I was going have my percentages not adding up to 100%, but decided against it). I don't really watch the football much anymore - saying that I only watched it when it was on BBC, ITV or Five anyway because we don't have Sky Sports - although I do still enjoy watching a good game of football regardless of who is playing; the tennis season ended months ago and I don't have time for figuring out when the athletics are on. I especially have no time for The X Factor or I'm a Celeb... but that's a whole different blog post (which I probably won't write).

Formula One is my sport (And whoever says it isn't a sport can just leave right now! How many non-athletes can withstand 5 times the force of gravity on their neck muscles and lose 3kg of sweat in an hour and a half? Get real), I strongly support certain drivers and strongly dislike others. I like watching daring overtaking manoeuvres, I pray for rain to mix up tyre decisions and strategies and it makes my Sunday (or Friday or Saturday for that matter) when someone crashes. And, no, this doesn't make me sadistic or evil - anyone who says they don't enjoy it in F1 when someone crashes is just lying, no doubt about that (for the record, its fun as long as nobody gets hurt, because then it's just scary).

(I actually have a separate twitter account for F1 tweets, so my followers don't hate me on F1 weekends. @MiniMF1 if you're interested).

Random fact of Mini's life: The computers in the Levy Lab are named after F1 drivers, which is an endless source of amusement for me. For the last two weeks I have circled the lab trying to remember where each 'driver' is and identifying which ones are my favourites (Button, Webber, Hamilton) and which ones I cannot use on pain of death (Alonso and Schumacher). Nobody else quite understands this and I guess it is a little odd, but aren't we all from time to time?

Rumour mill: I've heard that Nico Hulkenberg may be Mercedes reserve driver for 2011. Now is it just me or does this seem like a step down from the race seat and the pole position he had at Williams? Think about it.

Are you happy with where you are in life right now?

Myles Dyer (this guy again) was talking about life in his podcast - as he seems to do a lot - and I was inspired - as I seem to be a lot.

So yesterday http://dft.ba/-milesboo he asked what 5 things you would change about your life.

I couldn't help but think what I would change. And I thought maybe this could be a running thing, every 3 months I re-evaluate and see what I would like to change in my life in three month intervals.

Well, let's see if I stick to it eh?

1. Not speaking to my mum everyday - I used to check on her each night before bed and if she was still up we'd sit and chat until she was so tired she pretty much told me to f*ck off. Since I've moved out we speak most days on Skype, but it's just not the same.

2. Not living 30 seconds away from my best friend anymore - I had a huge argument with my mum once and it was just a 30 second walk up the road to a cuddle and a mug of hot chocolate with my beloved Tash. Now she's 45 minutes away by car and neither of us can drive.

3. Not being able to properly use my hand - this is a long term thing that I'm sure many of my IRL friends are sick of hearing about. I've not been able to use my right hand properly since the morning of the 29th January 2010 because it hurts between my little finger and ring finger. I'm having to try and adapt my writing style, but it's easier said than done.

4. Being unhealthy. In general I don't eat enough fruit and veg or do enough exercise and I guess it comes down to a lack of time mixed with a bit of laziness (which I'll be the first to admit). I gave up on my sponsored swim due to having no sponsors, so that won't have helped and being a student a lot of my food choices are based on how much time there is till my next lecture, what food is actually in the cupboards and how much washing up they will create, so I'm off to a very bad start. The jar of chocolate spread in the cupboard probably isn't a good idea.

5. My knees. Inevitably this was going to be on the list. It's not a serious condition - and hopefully by this time next year it should be mostly gone as the cartilage matures - but my chondromalacia patella gets worse this time of the year because of the cold weather. This usually is an excuse to go out an buy funky tights to try and keep warm but the fact of the matter is that it is painful and there isn't much I can do about it except rest with my hot water bottle (which, by the way, is never a bad thing).

I guess this list means that my life is pretty good. There isn't anything drastic in my life that needs to be changed, I'm not living somewhere I hate, I'm not surrounded by anyone that I hate and most things are just great as they stand.

One thing that would usually appear on a list like this is I would like to change my teeth. They've always been the only aspect of my physical appearance that I've been unhappy with. But my braces come off in three and a half weeks, so that's something that is already rapidly changing.

So, three months from now is the 17th February (two days before my bestest's birthday), I'll see you then for re-evaluation :)

To clarify, I'll see you before then as well, but not in this format.

My afternoon in tweets. (sort of)

I can't actually access twitter on my phone so I started texting tweets with a hashtag #libraryobservations (which I later found out didn't even make it to my twitter profile). I didn't want to link my computer up to the internet, because I'd just sit on Facebook and it would completely defeat the object of why I left my bedroom. However, these observations we're an excellent form of procrastination, which totally distracted from what I was trying to achieve by going to the library. At 20p a pop I decided to stop tweeting and instead started typing into a word document; satisfying two things – saving me money and making it look I was doing a lot of work (which seemed to be really annoying the girl sat opposite me).

For those who don't know, a tweet is a message of only 140 characters. Hashtags (# followed by a word) are used on twitter I presume to aid searching for trending topics (words or phrases that lots of people are tweeting about). Most of these weren't actually tweeted, but they are all under 140 characters (not including the timestamp, I added that for your benefit). You can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/minimarshmallow

03:37pm: Going for the @hexachordal and philosophy combination again, but in the library this time. Let's get this essay done :)

03:51pm: A guy in front of me is watching a YouTube video of a person dancing and he looks disturbingly like Tash's brother #libraryobservations

03:55pm: The Chinese girl in front of the YouTube guy has the tiniest Netbook I've ever seen #libraryobservations #notprocrastinating

04:01pm: These seats aren't very comfortable #libraryobservations

04:03pm: The girl opposite me doesn't seem to like it if I knock the table while shifting my chair #libraryobservations

04:10pm: On second thoughts, that might not be a Netbook, looks a bit like one of those mini DVD-players #libraryobservations

04:16pm: There seem to be an inadequate number of plug sockets around this place #libraryobservations

04:19pm: Orange, yellow, green and malachite… shame my essay isn't on art (#currentlylistening Indigo – Tom Milsom) #notprocrastinating

04:21pm: There are an abundance of litter bins though; and yet there seems to be a lot of litter on windowsills #libraryobservations

04:23pm: I only have three hundred words left to do #progress

04:26pm: The girl opposite me seems to be procrastinating almost as much as I am #libraryobservations

04:28pm: Favourite @hexachordal song just came on (#currentlylistening Jake's Song – Tom Milsom)

04:35pm: Just realised that if I close all of the background applications on my laptop then the battery will last longer #idiot

04:35pm: I also need the loo but last time I went in the library the toilets were awful #libraryobservations

04:37pm: Haha the girl opposite me is trying too hard to make it look like she is doing lots of work because I just started typing furiously #libraryobservations

04:38pm: Due in tomorrow and I dislike this essay. I may go home and completely reorganise what I've already written #makingthingsdifficult

04:43pm: I don't speak Chinese, but her tone makes me think that Lady Gaga is just odd in all languages #libraryobservations

05:01pm: Time to completely re-format this essay :) yay for my own idiocy and perfectionism

05:02pm: I'm sure I went to high school with him! #kitchenobservations

06:06pm: Let's not talk about hardcore porn over the kitchen table please guys #kitchenobservations

07:07pm: I skyped my dad and my best friend is there #lifeisgood

07:19pm: My dad is dissing naps and Tash is taking my side. This woman is my soulmate #marriedlife

07:39pm: "I'll hire a hot actor to be your nurse" And I get to pay for it do I Tash? #marriedlife

07:41pm: "Do me a favour, when I get old and decrepit will you put me down?" Gladly Tash, and I might not even wait till you get old. #marriedlife

08:03pm: I didn't even say anything philosophical, it was just basic logic. "Erm… we're from Skem, we don't know what logic is!" #marriedlife

08:04pm: "Isn't that what you put in your washing machine bio-logic-al" #family

08:18pm: Tash is the loudest person I know, and yet I can't hear her on Skype! "Well if you open your window…"

08:41pm: The only reason I am writing at this point is because I'm not allowed that bar of chocolate until I finish #notprocrastinating

09:43pm: I've been writing this essay with double spacing for so long I forgot what 1.15 spacing looks like!

10:30pm: When you walk into the kitchen and it smells like brownies, you know you lucked out in the flatmate department :)

10:53pm: I've hit stalemate with my essay, so I have printed a copy and I'm taking the scissors to it to try and rearrange it :)

11:09pm: I threw out a paragraph. This is going well.

I know that this post is not what you're used to. But in case you didn't notice from that ^ I'm working on an essay. Also, after deciding I didn't like the format and having an overhaul I then spent two hours and three sheets of paper trying to change it to something I liked better, before deciding to revert back to the original format.

I tweet more than I post to Facebook because my Facebook friends get a little bit annoyed if I post more than 30 updates in one afternoon. In my opinion, Twitter is made for spamming and it also helps my inner thoughts get out to a bigger audience, but at the consequence of tweets being less personal (I could write a whole post about contrasting my attitudes to Facebook and Twitter at this point, but I have an essay to write so I'll make a note about this for later).

Deadline is in 14 and a half hours. I'm still going but I should have it finished in the next hour (if I stop procrastinating on my blog that is).

HAHA I just got this twitter @reply:

@minimarshmallow Hello, need any help with your essay? You are just one click away from help! http://ow.ly/38w5g" Seriously?

Advice

Have you ever asked someone for advice about something that you've already made up your mind about?

I'm sure we've all done it at least once. But I swear I've done it at least twice in the last month.

Anyone who knows me personally (probably most of you reading this) will know that I had to change my minor earlier in the year. I had a lot of trouble with this because I just didn't know what I wanted to do and there were plenty of people pointing me in different directions that I wasn't sure I wanted to go. I ended up settling on philosophy because I had done it before. For pretty much the last 4 years in fact.

First I tried for psychology in education, because my major is in psychology so it was an obvious choice. But, because I had left it so late, the course was full. I left her my details and she said that she would email me if any places became available on the course which is when I started to look towards the philosophy department.

I got myself enrolled on philosophy, I purchased a reading pack, I caught up on half of the lectures that I'd already missed and then I received an email from the woman in psychology in education - someone had dropped out; there was room for me.

I was struck with indecision. On the one hand I had wanted to do this because it just meant more psychology and I was essentially only studying one subject instead of having to do two. But on the other hand I had spent the preceding week immersing myself back into philosophy and working extra hard to catch myself up. I guess in my head I felt that I had put in too much work to give it up and have to do the same in another subject.

But I did what I did in all situations like this, I called my mother.

I told her what had happened. I explained the two options that I now had and how far I was into my philosophy. I said that I didn't want to waste the week of extra work I had done and I definitely didn't want to do the same again; but the idea of only doing psychology was still one that was very attractive to me. My mum showed a slight bias to me changing to psychology in education.

What I hadn't told her is that I had already typed a reply to the email from the psychology in education woman which read 'It's fine I have already started another minor, feel free to give the place to another student. Thank you.' and I had just decided to consult her before I pressed send. I had pretty much already made up my mind but spoke to her about it.

I did something very similar for a much less important decision a few days ago. I pre-ordered Charlie McDonnell's album in the bundle with Alex Day's from DFTBA records (http://dft.ba/Charlie). I got the order through to the PayPal stage ready to click confirm and then consulted mum about it.

I guess it links back to what I said just before I left for uni about spontaneity (http://dft.ba/-Spontaneity). I've not quite reached the stage where I can be spontaneous. I can make my mind up about a decision very quickly, but then I will seek help to back me up.

Maybe it stems from a fear of being wrong or a fear of failing and the idea that if I consult someone on a decision and they back me up then I can apply some of the blame to them for what went wrong. (I have to stress that it is only some of the blame, after all, I had already made the decision).

And if the person I asked didn't back up my decision, well, I'd have probably moved on to someone else.

It was on an episode of Scrubs where JD asked Turk if he thought it was a good idea to do something that he had actually already done. It almost becomes a joint decision if someone is backing you up, even if that wasn't in place when you made the decision.

I guess I need an extra little push to be spontaneous.

Mini fact: I joined the pool team. Does this count? It's pretty scary because I'm largely bad at pool.

Trick or treat? (Obligatory Halloween post)

I can't remember the age at which I stopped trick-or-treating.

I remember it was the same year that my brother stopped, even though he's three years younger than I am. It's also the same year that my parents stopped giving out sweets to trick-or-treaters. We used to turn of the lights and go to the cinema to get away from them.

We live in an area where it is not unusual to have your house egged if you ignore them, but it they seem to have gotten tamer in recent years and it seems to be an unwritten Halloween rule that if the lights are off they will assume that you're not in.

I lived in the same house for 15 years. Having studied memory, I know that that is as long as I can remember. We did live in a flat before that but I wasn't old enough at that time.

When you've been going trick-or-treating on the same street for at least a decade, you learn a little something about the people that live in the same place as you. You know which ones are 'never in', you know who gives the best sweets, who is likely to trick you, who will be dressed up as well, who will give you money and even the exact house that the old man who gives you the tangerine lives in. You know which houses have different people in from last year, who has a dog and who has kids and roughly how old they are.

I didn't realise until recently that you learn something about your neighbours on Halloween that you wouldn't learn any other time of the year. It also doesn't seem to be as useful as anything you would learn any other day of the year, but the point still stands.

The last year I went trick-or-treating I went with my best friend at the time in her estate rather than my own. It's a refreshing experience when you go trick-or-treating somewhere new, and you get all new sweets and new faces but I can't help but think back and think that I should have done my last round in my own street, for the memories more than anything else, but as is life.

This year I went out with my best friend. We dressed up (like the big kids that we are at heart), and we went out clubbing and got drunk in fancy dress. My skirt was so short she spent the entire night following me around pulling it down but overall the whole experience was good.

I don't know when the shift happened. Less than half a decade ago I was dressed as a much more innocent looking; last minute, makeshift zombie; with a different best friend asking strangers for sweets and we fast forward to the 18 year old me in the shortest skirt of my life and a pair of fishnet tights and high heeled boots (which did not last all night I will tell you now).

In Mean Girls, they say that 'Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.' When does this occur? When do you stop seeing Halloween as a fun way to get free sweets and start seeing it as an 'excuse' to dress like a slut and get drunk?

I mean, from what I've seen, most people don't need an excuse.

I'm not going to go into if I think it is begging and if children should do it and some of the extreme measures I've seen mentioned regarding it (laxative chocolate so they won't call again next year) because I don't think it's worth the debate. For me Halloween has always been fun and I think that is what it will stay as.

My definition of fun has just changed considerably since I was 5.