11th September 2001

I'm sure nobody managed to escape the fact that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre or 9/11 as it's more commonly known. It's often said that you'll always remember what it is you were doing when you heard about the attacks. I kinda remember, my memory though is a bit sketchy. I know i was at home in my bedroom when my friend text me to tell me to put the news on, i can't quite remember what i was doing, clearly not watching telly, i think i may have been reading. Watching the series of events unfold was the singularly mosy distressing thing i have ever, and probably ever will witness. It was the weirdest feeling watching it, it kinda didn't feel real, but then you knew it was .. a real feeling of helplessness. Watching it i wanted to go to Iraq and defeat the Taliban myself singlehandedly. I always wonder where the people who oppose the war in Iraq were on this day, did they not see what i saw? What did they expect the Western world to do after 9/11 go 'oh those silly little extremists, always causing trouble'? War was our only option. It also bugs me when people cry out for us to withdraw our troops, granted, in an ideal world our boys wouldn't be out fighting but unfortunately it's that little bit of a necessity. We can't start a war then just leave everything in disarray, we need to finish what we start. I've many friends and relatives in the army some of whom have been in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't moan about being there, they understand it's their job and it's what needs to be done. My brother will be being deployed to Afghanistan soon. Yes, it' scary, but as i say to my mum when she worries about him, he's more likely to get hurt on a drunken night out in Chesterfield than he is in Afghan. Not that that makes her feel any better. He's going to help our boys out there make our world a safer place.

When i was about 14 i went on a school trip to New York and we spent a day at the towers, they truely were a magnificant piece or architecture, i was in awe of them. I was too scared to go up them in the lifts so i stayed on the bottom few storeys looking in the shops. I went back to the towers on the 2nd year anniversary of the attacks, i was quite keen to see the contrast between the two visits, the fact that it was a 9/11 anniversary was a coincidence, it wasn't planned. It was highly emotional, there was a massive memorial showing the names of all the victimes from that dreadful day making out the words 'never forget' it bought a tear to the most ardent of eyes. It didn't seem anything like the bustling place i visited when i was 14, it was still bustling .... with tourists .... as it was all those years ago, but as you can imagine it was much more of a sombre place ... i wonder what it's like 10 years on, i imagine not much less sombre.

I cannot begin to imagine what any of the people involved in 9/11 felt on that day or what any of their loved ones have felt in the aftermath but my heart goes out to them at this difficult time, whether it be the anniversary of that fateful day or one of the other 364 days of the year.

I have had a holiday, and I'd like to take it up professionally.

I'd not been on holiday for near on 5 years, so when i decided to go on one, as you can imagine, i was ready for it. The reason i worked on my dads market this summer was to save money so that i could go away. I went with my friend Sarah, we don't know where we wanted to go, we just knew we wanted somewhere all inclusive, somewhere hot and somewhere cheap. The place that perfectly fit this bill was Turkey. We booked to go to a little picturesque mountainous part called Ovacik near Fethiye and Hisaranu. We didn't fancy going somewhere too built up, touristy and commercialised so Ovacik was perfect.

We didn't arrive until about 4am in the morning so we didn't get to see much of our hotel, our room was pretty small, but since we only intended on sleeping and showering here we wasn't too bothered, it was clean and at that point that's all that mattered. We got up the first morning (about 4 hours after going to bed) to glorious sunshine and went for breakfast. This was one of very few times that we got up for breakfast, not necessarily because we are lazy but being a Muslim country they don't have sausages and bacon and stuff, so, for me, it was basically just toast ... although there might have been a little truth in the laziness reason, sleep definately trumps toast! The gardens and the pool area of the Destina hotel were beautiful, and the mountainous veiws were something else. That first day me and Sarah had a Turkish bath, we were exfoliated, foam massaged, and then had a face mask and oil massages. The massages were glorious, the Turkish bath part was nice although i must admit i'm wasn't keen on it being performed by a middle aged Turkish man. At one point i was laid there thinking 'arghh that exfoliator mitt is going a bit high up the thigh!' and 'yeah i think you've exfoliated my cleavage enough there love' ... the bloke was pretty harmless mind and i think i'm just that little bit of a prude.

Sarah and I are quite big fans of the vodka which is why we went for the all inclusive option, we thought even if we didn't really like the food we'd save a small fortune on the alcohol. So that first night we went to the bar for our first vodka, then i popped to the bar for a second, still drinking the first while walking past the bar Sarah decided to grab a third, i went for a fourth, this carried on since we were aware that the bar shut at 11pm and we didn't want to have to buy our drinks, we thought getting a stash in was the way to go ... BIG mistake ... one minute i went 'i'm not really feeling this vodka' and the next i'm being escourted up the stairs to our room by a Turkish man concerned with my ability, or lack thereof, to manouvre them. We were in bed for midnight, and a few hours afterwards i was that little bit sick, and Sarah was sick all the next morning, so i was lucky in a way, that i wasn't too bad the next morning. We learnt a lesson, foreign vodka is lethal! Needless to say the next night we stayed tea total and the nights after that we were a bit more cautious with the vodka!

A few days in we did the 12 Island or 'Cruise the Blues' tour. We got to stop at 4 small islands for a swim in the sea, which i loved, i love the water, i'm definately a water baby. But admitedly while swimming i was thinking of that poor bloke that got eaten by a shark on his honeymoon. We were pretty far out at sea, there must have been alsorts of creatures of the deep below our feet ... i made sure i swam near people that looked much more like shark bait than me, ahem, meatier people <3 and made sure my legs weren't down the deepest, swimming with my feet quite close to the surface .... my dramatic mind coming back into play it seems! Sunbathing on deck was gorgeous, there was a lovely breeze to make the intense Turkish sun more bareable. There was a weird photographer man onboard though that made me and Sarah pose for awful photographs on deck and then tried to get us to go back in his car after for a 'tour of his city' instead of on the coach with everybody else, like that was happening!

Even though i don't really have anything other than praise for the country, it is beautiful, one thing i wasn't keen on was the toilets, in Turkey you are not allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilets! How warped is that?! Why don't they build a few less hotels and sort out some proper sanitation? I was so glad i was sharing wth Sarah and not a boy, a boys toilet habits would not have been welcomed in my hotel room for sure! Not flushing toilet paper down the toilet was a hard habit to get into i was often going 'ooops i went all English' .... and lilos ... wtf is wrong with lilos! I thought i was dying blowing mine up, it took me one night and one morning to do, i was seriously contemplating just throwing the deflated bit of green plastic in and seeing what the chances were of me floating on that, i'm lighter than i used to be and everything! .. tip .. buy a ready blown up one.

One of the most memorable moments involved a wasp. If you know me you will know how petrified of the things i am, i once queued for almost an hour for Oblivion at Alton Towers only to run back out of the queue, weaving through people being chased by an evil little wasp. I don't do the ridiculous 'stand still and it'll go away' malarky, i do the run like a maniac so it gets away from me malarky .. and i have to run in a sporadic twisty turny way to confuse it. Anyway, Turkey wasps are big daddy wasps, i swear, near on the size of my fist, ahem, kinda. One evening we came back after a hard days sunbathing by the pool only to find one sat on our bathroom light staring at us. After freaking out like girls and a 10 minute discussion on how to get rid of it so that we don't have to sleep in the coridoor we decided the best thing to do was to arm ourselves with a lilo each and throw a flip flop at it. Sarah threw the flip flop (my flip flop) missed the wasp entirely, but of course didn't manage to miss the toilet. I'm sure the wasp was laughing at us. We'd opened the main room door hoping if we did get it to move it would fly straight out when a maid walked past to see two hysterical English girls hugging lilos as if they were a coat of armour. This maid spoke zero English, so, after a few minutes of us miming wasp (speedily flapping our arms and buzzing) she went 'oh', grabbed some tissue paper, and casual as anything killed the wasp and put it in the bin .... that night ... we were scared of the bin.

I don't know whether any of you have ever been to a Turkish market but it's an experience i recommend everyone have. It's so funny. In Turkey they have no copyright laws so the markets are full of 'genuine fakes' they do look very good, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry, Christian Dior, they have them all, and they try everything in their power to sell them to you. Giving you apple tea, flattering you, taking you by the hand and physically dragging you into their stall ... some of the lines they come out with are amazing 'cheaper than Primark!' 'cheaper than Poundland!' 'Cheaper than stealing!' 'Come and get your quality crap' 'as good as off the back of a lorry'. Sarah became 'J-Lo' and me 'Shakira' ... yeah i'm still a brunette, i think these were the only Western female celebrities that they knew. One was selling underwear and was shouting at me that i could get my 'big knickers' off him .. i think telling him i didn't wear knickers was a mistake though since i was trying to dissipate his attentions. It was a funny morning tbf, not for the meek though.

The last day we got a bit cultural and went on the Dalaman tour, we got to see the tombs where they used to bury the royalty, they were magnificant ... we also got to see giant sea tutles being fed .. i would quite like one of these as a pet ... i have a bath. We got to have a mud bath also, i can't quite decide whether i liked this or not, it was bizarre smearing yourself in mud then sunbathing until it set ... but my skin did feel pretty soft afterwards.

All in all it was a fabulous holiday, i enjoyed getting away from it all and me and Sarah had a laugh. Turkey is definately somewhere i'd visit again, probably to the same area, i don't fancy the lively resorts. I've got a nice bit of colour ... even if it is mainly the freckles! and the rest from working was sorely needed. Miss me?

a bit of pictorial eveidence that i actually went:

 View from our balcony every evening at 7pm

 The harbour we set off from for our boat tour in Fethiye

 The walk from our room to the pool

 Dalaman Tombs

Turtle Beach

Each murder is one too many

So, there is a bit if an e-campaign to try and get the death penalty reintroduced. I've had a bit of a think about this, do i think it should be reintroduced? Ultimately, no, although i can see why people do. If i lost a loved one of mine to a predatory monster i'd probably want them dead too. It could only be a positive to not have these beasts alive, them being alive always leaves the chance that might be released, and even if not, we have to pay for their existance, their TVs, their playstations, their parties... as the media would have us believe. These are the only reasons that i agree with as to why it should be reintroduced. However, for me, the reasons to not reintroduce it far outweighs the reasons to reintroduce it.

To kill someone, is the ultimate act of barbarity, these monstors never took into consideration the right to life of those they murdered, so why should we take into account the right they have to live? Because who would aminister the death? A member of the victims family? A doctor? Whoever it is, they will have killed someone, granted not in a way defined as murder, but they have still played God and taken someones life. I wouldn't like the job.


Would it deter those with murderous tendances from comitting their crimes? I can't see that it would. I don't think people just fancy murdering somebody one day because they are bored, it is either spur of the moment thing (crime of passion) or they are tapped in the head and will do what they are being compelled to do whatever their punshment if caught, they obviously have no regard for human life and this probably extends to their own. The death penalty has been used in the US for a long time, has it cut down on their murder rates? No. They still have an overwhelming amount of murders. I rememeber reading somewhere that the murder rates are, in general, lower in those states where capital punishment has been abolished.

I'm less inclined to agree with the worry that innocent people may be convicted and subsequently killed, maybe it's naive of me, but i don't think the courts would sentence people to death unless there is no doubt of their guilt. Even a slight doubt i believe would/should require the reduced sentence of life imprisonment. But granted, it's a possibilty that is there, i believe history states that innocents have been wrongly sentenced before. But with the technology we have now this shouldn't happen.

What do i think we should do with murderers? I think life should mean life, they should be locked up, solitary confinement for life, in a room with little more than a bed and toilet, with enough food and water to provide a pitiful exsistance. Death for them, in my eyes, is a cop out.

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all

My Dad’s a market trader so I’ve been exposed to markets all my life. I’ve decided to do a bit of a blog about it because I’ve been manning his stall for him recently while he’s been away, so seems apt.
My earliest memory is of ‘helping’ him on his fruit and veg stall, I must have been a tiny little girl as it was a long long time ago. I remember feeling really grown up helping to hammer the fruit boxes to the stall … I was allowed to use the hammer and nails, the actual hammer and nails, I felt like one of the adults. Inevitably one of my memories of this involves me actually managing to hammer my finger/thumb and balling my eyes out. I was young so I can’t imagine I did it with much force, but it definitely hurt. I liked it once the stall was all ready because I got to sit on a banana box with a Macdonalds Happy Meal. Or there was going to a place early in the morning, where I slept all the way in my dad’s massive van, seemed like a weird alternate universe to me because everyone was loud and wide awake, but it was dark and I was tired. But wherever it was we always had the nicest bag of toast (which is why I’ve decided it must have been early morning and not late at night). Since growing up I figured it was probably a place where he got his stock from.
My next memory is of being much older, at a guess 14/15 years old. I worked with my Dad on Gainsborough market … sorry if any of you are from there, but Gainsborough really is a dive, I felt like I was risking life every day just being there ... all the teenage boys had that exaggerated limp and the girls wore scruchies, ew. At this point we were selling household stuff, you know, bleach, shampoo, sponges, toilet rolls … glamorous stuff. I was a moody teenager at this point .. and hated it. My dad used to do the market trader shouty thing to get people to the stall, there was no way I was doing this! ‘HAVE A LOOK ROUND AT A POUND!’ … which use to bug me because there is zero sence in this sentence, it didn't cost £1 to look around, we didn't charge for looking. I got paid £20 for working from 5am til about 6/7pm, and when i decided i wanted company and took my friend Emma to help we got £10 each .... child labour surely!
Anyway, the reason for this blog is that i've been doing my Dads markets while he's been on holiday ... all on my own!! Driving a pretty large van to the markets (when i drive a teeny tiny KA) at 6am in the mornings and unloading, staying until 6pm and loading all the stock back on the van. I'm definately not built for manual labour! I did have a young lad that was supposed to help me load and unload but he was rubbish at the actual turning up stuff. My friend Sarah was a bit of a star and came to help me when she could. I quite enjoyed the actual day part because it's fabulous for people watching, you see alsorts, from chavs causing disruption, to domestics, to just people in 'oh my god what is she wearing' outfits. I also saw a man run off with a womans bag shortly followed by a security guard nonchalantly strolling back with it in hand like some modern day superhero (lol @ modern day superhero sounding like i believe that there were olden day super heroes and that they exist). Undoubtedly the weirdest thing i saw was an old man on a moblity scooter holding his legs up in the air a few inches as if he couldn't put his feet down, then he went into the library and came back out a few minutes later with some library books on the floor of the scooter with his feet resting on them. Ingenius use of library books, although i couldn't help but wonder why he didn't get something more permenant, he's only gonna have to return them in a few months.

Markets are hard work, tiring, but i have found certain aspects enjoyable, it has taught me invaluable life skills, how to handle money, how to do on the spot maths but most importantly how to deal with the general public, it's one thing to serve a customer, another to be able to banter with a complete stranger .. this i believe i'm good at, because of the markets.

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom

It's Sunday evening, i'm tired, i have Pirates of the Caribbean on in the background, noone is talking to me, i am bored.  But as well as being bored i'm feeling lazy.  So i thought i'd do a nice simple blog, one that doesn't involve too much thinking or reasoning.
I'm going to do a list of things i like ... oh that sounds rather lame.  But anyway, i've tried not to be too obvious with my list .. i mean if i put 'spending time with friends, going on holiday' ... it would give no insight into me, as, unless you are a bit of a weird, reclusive, agrophobic bizarre person, everybody likes being with their friends and having holidays.
Ok i'll stop blathering ... my list:

conversations with weird strangers
the smell of library books
the Nephew's giggle
knowing what people are thinking
unexpected texts from him
saying something purely to get a reaction
making people jump
halloween
that moment just before the cork pops when you can feel the pressure
racing for the good luck grates
kisses you remember
tying ties
ribbons
butterfly kisses
having ice
when he gives me that look
tulips
free stuff
in jokes
hats
when the hair works
visiting a new city
having a long conversation with someone with an accent, then when they are waiting for my response going 'ya what?'
lame jokes
slightly inappropriate laughter that is made worse by the trying to stifle it.
made up words

I'm sure there's many more for the list ... i will probably add to it.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional

I've always had this slight little fear of aging. Wrinkles i'm scared of, having to wear Tena Ladies i'm scared of, aches and pains i'm scared of, droopiness i'm scared of, illness i'm scared of, seeing the wrinkly bum of an old man i'm scared of (cheers Sex and The City), greying i'm scared of, starting to like lavender i'm scared of, losing family and friends i'm scared of, backache i'm scared of, WIs i'm scared of, liking ornaments i'm scared of, buying Wearthers Originals i'm scared of ... i'm most scared at the being old thing.
Ok .. what am i leading to? ..... yes, i'm still in my 20s .. but 30 i can see in the not so distant future, and today i was shopping. How does this make me feel old? Well .. i was walking towards Next in Meadowhall and i near on bumped into two teenage boys. As this happened one looked up and went 'Wow' ... i quite liked this, because tbf i was feeling a bit rough, i was tired, i'd spent all morning doing Zumba and i was hot. His mate nodded at him, but then his brain kicked in and he went 'bit old though mate' .... what? I'd have slapped them, if i wasn't pretending to have not heard ... and if they didn't look like potential happy slappers, i just tried my hardest to 'look young' as i walked away. How much is botox?
I AM NOT OLD!!!!!!!!!

Knock knock ... Who's there? .... Banana ...

Oh good evening,

Last Sunday i had an impromptu visit to the City Hall in Sheffield to see the genius that is Jimmy Carr.  Turns out if you book a couple of days before the event you can get pretty decent seats ... row D in the stalls ... who'd have thought?!
He was pretty brilliant.  But me, being the blonde i am, can't remember much of it .. no i wasn't drunk.  I just remember it being really funny.  He is King at beating down hecklers, even invites them into heckling.

So to recap on this highly informative blog post ... i went to see a comedian ... and he was funny ... oh the insight.

And i'm up at 6am tomorrow to do a car boot :( so if anyone comes across me i shall be highly grumpy.