Happy nearly New Year!

I like the beginning of a new year almost as much as I like eating masses of ferrero rocher for breakfast on Christmas day morning. My reasons for this circulate mainly around the fact it is yet another excuse to get drunk on champagne, partake in synchronised midnight count-downing and watch free fireworks on TV. It's become a ritual for me to make a brand new list of new years resolutions and I also get to do a little 'mental review/imaginary award ceremony with celebrity guests' of the year I have just been through.
It's time for contemplation on the important issues such as the insane amount of clothes with sequins attached that I have acquired throughout the year and whatever will become of them, but also time to reflect on the other things like friendships I have made, my beloved enemies who make life so much more interesting and dramatic, the frog that I stood on and probably accidental murdered, the Chicken who I saved the life of to make up for the frog incident. This is the chicken...couldn't get a photo of the frog though...



The majority of my year was spent in island-limbo, highlights include being drunk, eating take-out and watching horror movies with Sarah at the bothy, drinking alcohol, house parties, sing-along with guitar in the tree house with Robyn, getting 'merry' beach drinking every other day with Sarah and Amy,gettin more drunk sneaking into a holiday cottage and eating pizzas and drinking their wine, teehee.........




having my work sell in the Scilly art exhibition, drinking wine, vodka and other alcoholic beverages, halloween celebrations, being drunk at the beach, chasing swans, swimming in the sea and exploring the islands.





So new years resolutions, since they never ever are erm, resoluted... and I always have boringly standard resolutions l've decided instead of having a list which will ultimately restrict me from doing fun things like stuffing my face and making me do horrible things like joining a fitness club, I've decided I'm going to have a New Years 'want' list. Selfish and indulgent maybe but much more fun.. My want list so far of things I plan to acquire over the course of 2011 are

A genuine crystal ball




A Tree-Castle



A glow in the dark bicycle



This exact coat and her hair too



A Kitten with a lion's mane wig



A Labrador puppy who never grows up



So they're the main things I want. Other things include a money tree, a robot butler, a starring guest role in The Simpsons, a Spanish or French boyfriend preferably someone like Louis Garrell or Gael Garcia Bernal but one who writes songs for me and brings me milkshake on demand, to dye my hair a drastically different colour like blue maybe, the perfect sailor dress, every single Disney movie on DVD, the Mr Men and Little Miss book collection, a palm tree and replica tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in my garden.
I don't ask for much.

Careers

In my lifetime so far I've had many jobs in my mere not-quite-full 23 years mostly jobs that I've never been to fussed about; Supermarkets, Clothes shops, Cafes, Call centres, Chocolate shops a Leisure spa...heck I even volunteered at a charity shop and a school just for the craic. If I didn't know any better, also taking into consideration I only escaped...I mean, graduated from an art degree last year that this is rather a lot of jobs for your average not-quite-full-23 year old. And if my employers didn't know any better (which they obviously don't) I'm rather lousy at sticking to one profession because I can't feel that passion that I think I'm meant to feel. Well as far as I know anyway. But this evening, a mere three hours ago or less, I decided the career I want.... Alternative christmas card designer! Here is an example which I made for my friend.



On top of all the festive craft activities I've been getting into recently. I also made a most excellent purchase today while mooching around Redcar town, Have a look...




isn't it just wonderful!

I'm going to give it to my friend Claire who is currently doing a seasonal job in the Lake District, it's just quite fitting for the lake district setting what with the sheep and the mountains and the clouds.

Not only does the town Redcar have a weird name but it is also a weird place. Something I noticed while walking around is that they have a lot of boarded up or disused buildings with little chance of them becoming anything of importance. The council or government whoever is in charge of these matters have tried to resolve this issue, in what appears to be an attempt to spruce up the aesthetic potential of this forlorn seaside town by spending as little money as possible. What they so cleverly have come up with is merely using a painted scene of what we can only IMAGINE Redcar would ever look like maybe in our wildest dreams. For example...



It's not quite Las Vegas but just for a second, a mere second, they certainly fooled me into thinking they'd built a nice little beach-side terrace but then my hopes and dreams were crushed when you turn around and see a man chasing after pigeons and trying to kick them in their innocent little faces.

Money saving tips to de-stress your Christmas

I have not much money whatsoever and I know you probably don't either. As we all know as Liza Minelli and that freaky little dancing man taught us, it is money that makes the world go round... or it might be love...I don't know I get confused...the point is, shopping at Topshop/man and attending some rubbish-oasis playing-indie hell-hole very Thursday night where they charge six pounds to have a sweaty, drunken,male predator grope-fest nightmare inflicted upon you is not going to help you save those pennies. So here are some tips to inspire...

• Charity shops
• Salvation army is a hidden gem on the streets of Newcastle; where else can you find a decorative taxidermied squirrel for your mantelpiece and ex-Laura Ashley florals in sizes for the morbidly obese? Not only is there an aesthetically pleasing and equally as charming curly haired boy volunteering there, the shop has limitless amounts of unwanted, soiled 90s attire perfectly suited for the modern art student who enjoys that "I'm actually really rich but I like to dress like a common person and zone out to awesome dubstep in a club that resembles the communal toilets of a homeless people hostel" look or the appearance of a plaid-shirted boy who looks like he belongs to a Pitchfork-friendly band entitled "The magical rainbow foxes" or "The Hearty fields of golden deers". On the plus side you are giving to a charity

• Only hang out with friends who are equally as skint as yourself
• "Oh, what's that 'anonymous rich friend #1? You want to take a trip to Waitrose and buy a Lindt triple chocolate layer birthday cake!? But my dear friend, it's not even your birthday! And you want to get a taxi there?! But it's literally right around the corner!...And what's that? You want to catch a train tonight to London tonight and spend your daddy's money on expensive drugs?" when encountering people like this suggest tip number 6 to them, hopefully soon enough, with a bit of luck, you'll find they either won't want to be your friend anymore or decide they feel so incredibly sorry for you and set up a charity for you out of pity.

• Get a part time job and try not to quit
• If your anything like me you will have a strong distaste towards Jeremy Kyle and you have a secret passion for home interiors, and, if your also anything like me, in your lifetime you will have wound up in mediocre minimum wage jobs which have consequentially sucked away a piece of your soul, destroyed a part of your imagination and slowly but surely eradicated your will to live. At least get a job you enjoy to fund your student lifestyle/credit card debt/Hardcore crack addiction.. on failing that try the next tip.

• Sell your pointless possessions on Ebay
• I own approximately 22 pairs of shoes. One Day a thought occured to me, you only need two pairs of shoes, three at the most. You don't need 3 pairs of converse in different colours. I'm sure there is some scenester loving vintage sucker out there who thinks it's cool to spend £25 on your smelly second hand worn out trainers.

• Make a painting and sell it
• One summer afternoon when I was a nine year old innocent in between Spice girl cover band rehearsals, my friend Kayleigh and I had a street stall in Palm Grove just outside her house. I sold a painting of a lion wearing a sunhat sitting in a tree for 50p which I used to buy an ice lolly and a bottle of panda pop from the corner shop. The person who bought it was a nice man from down the road who owned six identical Scottish Terriers. I like to envisage that man being slightly deluded enough to have the painting of the lion in a gold frame sitting above his fireplace waiting for the day that 9 year old rapscallion becomes established enough for him to auction off the painting so that him along with his six scottish terriers can afford a Disney cruise around the Atlantic.

• DIY haircuts
• Get a sober, sensible friend whom you trust with scissors to attempt this

• Stop going out, stay in and start a band
• If condemning myself to occasional viewing of X factor has taught me anything it's that you don't need to have any musical knowledge or talent whatsoever for this. you simply need imagination, conviction and numerous kitchen utensils, pots, pans etc. and various other household objects to make noise with then simply cover eagle eyed cherry's greatest hits.

store your money in a safe place a la tracy emin


Laura

Decorations

this is my tree in my room which is mine it belongs to me, it's mine and noone elses. my little tree and they are my lights too on my tree that belongs to me and only me. not you.

Christmas decorations are up. Our living room currently has been inspired by the Christmas department in BHS. My mam tends to go a bit over board with decorating and she has a penchant to pick out the tackiest possible Christmas interior decorations. I think the worst...oh, well second to the talking Santa Claus Christmas mat, is possibly a clear plastic angel which from a distant looks almost like it could be a tasteful artifact however once it starts emitting hazy flickering lights in all the colours of the spectrum in a sort of hypnotic neon glowing effect it doesn't tend to seem as tasteful as it once deceptively appeared from the other side of the living room. I don't mind though, she really goes out of her way to make our house so Christmassy that it bears resemblance to Santa's grotto. I'm slightly disappointed that she has ceased to hang mine and my brother's fantastically whimsical handmade Christmas baubles on the tree anymore, my assumption is that they would just not 'fit in quite right with the decor'.

I got back from Newcastle yesterday after visiting my friend Emma It was so much fun! It’s strange she lives with 7 girls who are like a cross between Peaches Geldof and Paris Hilton, an alien species to me. On the way to the Cluny we came across a delightful man, clearly on drugs or fuelled up on booze, who gave us his sob story about how his girlfriend was diabetic and how he needed exactly £4.80 for a mars bar and then bus fare. It’s funny that, because a similar looking man came up to me last time I was in Newcastle and desperately needed an exact amount of money for chocolate (mars bar specifically) and bus fare so he could get his not-currently present diabetic brother to a hospital. Not sure if this brother was imaginary or not. I politely suggested he go inside the pub which we were right outside of, and phone an ambulance to pick him and his girlfriend up. If she is was having some sort of low blood sugar level induced fit then I’m pretty certain the bar staff would give her something loaded with sugar.




We went to a burlesque performance…but it was sort of rubbish …. There was once a genuinely uh-mazing burlesque night in Newcastle called Jeepers Peepers (my ol’ housemate was a performer) and it was totally brilliant. It all had this really fucking awesome retro, rock-a-billy 1950s vibe but it felt really female empowered, the atmosphere at the Cluny was brilliant and thriving. Whereas this performance last night, well, first of all I was pretty annoyed at the performances they weren’t at all ‘burlesque-y’ they were pretty much just trying to appear sexy and it was more like being at a strip show than a burlesque performance. I think good burlesque, or if that’s what you advertise your night as, is meant to be tongue in cheek and completely theatrical involving parody and wild exaggerations! Not just trying to show how sexy and hot you are for men. My other criticism is the price being £10 when jeepers Peepers was literally half that and was about a bazillion times more fun, extravagant entertainment for your money’s worth. And my final annoyance was the fact the performers were TOTALLY unprofessional in that they were sitting in with the audience and practising their routine in and around where their audience was and it just made them look so lame and unprofessional. It’s like if you go to watch a play you don’t want to have the actors practising their lines in front of you! It takes away the magic of the performance. And they were just generally totally annoying and unprofessional and got in my way of me, the paying customer, trying to watch what I was paying for. Pfft.. Ok ranting over.




Jeepers Peepers Girls


SO after this, Emma and I went to the Head of Steam which is one of my favourite pubs in Newcastle, there’s nothing special about it in particular it just holds a lot of memories for me. The we went to an ‘Independent indie disco’ at World Headquarters in which the atmosphere was pretty poor, we befriended an odd man who proceeded to grab Emma and Tango dance with her. Then this got boring so we were picking out people in the club to mirror dance to them. This was highly entertaining for about fifteen minutes. Then we went back to Jesmond and drank peppermint tea and ate yummy pasta. Alsooo....

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