The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall

This is a bit of a funny story. Probably, as with most stories it was funnier being there, but none-the-less ... hilarious! .. so i'm sharing. I was at the gym the other day with my friend Anne-Marie, tall, skinny, gorgeous girl, but in step aerobics it seems not so co-ordinated. We were mid-step class, most of us had got the routine down and were speeding it up. Anne lost her footing, i didn't quite see whether she tripped over the box or over thin air, but she went down. But no, it wasn't just your average 'You've Been Framed'-esque fall to the floor, she kind of steadied herself on the way down by grabbing the trousers of the girl behind her. But then decided to fall some more, still keeping hold of this poor woman's trousers ... taking them with her .. to the ground. At this point i, in hysterics, carried on with the routine that involved me turning around ... Anne, however, swears this lass had no knickers on .. of any kind. Glad i didn't see to be fair. Who goes to the gym knickerless?! ... mind you she probably could have never imagined that they'd end up round her ankles. I've never seen anyone run from the gym so quick when the class was over, this lass near on ran! Anne and I ended up leaving the gym half an hour late because we were literally bent over, crying with laughter ... made my week .. worth the monthly gym fee alone!

Some of the gems Anne came out with after the epic event:
'i felt mound'
'i saw her vagine' (actually rhyming with machine never heard it called this before).
and just as we were leaving, eventually, she screwed up her face looked at her hands and goes
'ew there's even something under my nail!'

i've told her that she's not going near me in classes again ... and that i'm going to be wearing 3 pairs of pants .. with a belt .. and a padlock.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul

Yesterday we had a psychology session at work, we did a little bit of a task that got me thinking. The basic premise is that when we are stressed we forget the simple pleasures, ones that don't particularly cost any money. These are things that stimulate the five senses. Most of our pleasures, most of the stimuli that make life worth living, are derived from our five senses. We had to close our eyes and think of our favourite things that stimulate one of our five sesnes. Taste, touch, sight, sound, smell. Just take a second, think of yours. I'm going to list some of my favourite things that stimulate my five senses (some are ones my colleagues came up with but that i agreed with so stolen).

Taste: Chocolate orange, grapes, truffles, yorkshire puddings, lipstick, Pimms.

Touch: Water, a man's hairy chest, play dough, putting your face in that pin toy we all used to have as kids, kisses.

Sight: Bustling city centres, beaches, a man in a suit, snow, tulips.

Sound: Alfie's giggle, Ed Sheeran's voice, David Bowie's voice, being told a funny story by someone who finds it so funny they can't complete what they are saying because they are finding it hard to breath from laughing.

Smell: Roast dinners, Hugo Boss, candy floss, library books, flowers.

These would all put a bit of a smile on my face, so whenever i've got the face on, i shall look at these and try and indulge in at least the one.

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching

It's that time of year again, Strictly Come Dancing is on! I've always been a bit of a Strictly geek, i've watched it from the very beginning, i know liking the reality shows isn't cool .. but i'm anything but cool. I spend most of October/November/December wishing i'd learnt to dance as a child. I'd love to learn now. I did a dance class for a few years, that i loved, which ended recently but that was girls only, i want to dance with a partner. Preferably a handsome male one. There are many dance classes about where you're partnered, but i'm scared at what the men there would be like, old? pervy? weird? Granted a weird one might suit me.

I think i might need to find a man to take myself. I'm willing to try bribary. I want to learn to do a Tango, an Argentine one. Such an intricate, sexy dance ...however, i feel my briary may have to include a lottery jackpot win. I wish men would realise that there is nothing sexier than a man that can dance (Louis Spence being an exception). Hmmph, if i looked like Ola Jordan or Kristina Rhiannof i'd have no problems finding a parner.

Dance is something we are all born with, stick on something that only vaguely resembles music and my baby nephew springs into action, wiggling around in the cutest of ways, give him 10 years and I bet the most we get out of him is a foot tap. It's not that he learnt to dance, he just knew that that was what he was supposed to do to music. So do it. Dance. Even if you resemble someone having a fit when you do, at least you will probably make someone smile (laugh) that's gotta be a good thing, surely?

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
-William W. Purkey

He who is greedy is always in want.

So this week I’ve watched a couple of the live Deal or No Deals and it has struck me how greedy people can be. The banker offers someone a reasonable sum, say £5k and the contestants react as if they’ve been offered a tripe sandwich and a signed copy of Jedward’s new book. I’d kill for £5k right now, it’d nicely buy me a second hand car, take me out of my overdraft and pay for me to have a bit of a holiday. Granted if I could choose between £5k and £250k the latter would win, but £5k for opening a few red boxes is a princely sum. I suppose it is a game, and you are supposed to play it, and we all want as much free money as possible, but it just bugs me when the smaller sums (even the red ones) count as a loss rather than a win.

Apparantly tonights estimated jackpot for the Euro Millions was £41 million, which I’d gladly be greedy and take ownership of. Isn't it funny how after all these massive jackpots £1 million seems like not much at all, you wouldn’t want to spend a penny of it, as then you wouldn’t be a millionaire! I forgot to put the lottery on tonight (as i do most weeks if i'm honest) but winning it is the only way i'll ever be monetarily rich, i've never been Miss career girl. Well, i lie, when i was at Uni i couldn't understand these girls that didn't want to work and wanted to do the whole family thing, i thought they were mental. I quickly changed my mind, not because i'm lazy, i've no qualms with working hard, i've done so for many many years and have enjoyed it. But i find the idea of a family much more fulfilling than getting to the top in a chosen career field.

Oh i went off on a tangent, surprise surprise. I started this blog while thinking about what it is i'd do if i won the lottery, i think i'd be rubbish with money, i'd have no clue what to do with it. I'd probably still catch the bus rather than take a first class flight, drink Black Tower rather than Cristal and wear New Look heels rather than Louboutins (ok i might buy a pair of Louboutins ... just 1 pair). I can imagine it takes a little while to get used to the way i have lived for the past 20ish (ahem) years.

The things i'd definately do if i won the lottery:

Pay for Alfie to have all his operations privately.
Put money in a trust fund for Alfie and Molly
Buy my flat to rent out.
Buy a house ... maybe a cottage.
Buy a car.
Make sure everyone i love was comfortable and mortgage free.
Buy Elton John tickets for the B2Net.
Visit Cuba and have a dance lesson on the beach at sunset.
Take all my friends abroad for a massive holiday.

Well .... that was a bit of a mish mash of a blog post .... when i began thinking it through it flowed so well and made so much sense in my head.

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.