Hayfever season is here again.
Whee.
That is all.
Alice x
Saturday, 17 May 2014
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Two Posts In One Day: Who's A Lucky Blog, Then?
On the DOWNside: forgetting that the oven fuses when wet* means that I can't make curry tonight, as originally planned.
However, on the PLUS side: that means I get both a small pizza and 1/2 a small portion of chips in one day. And guilt free! Whee!
...All the same, me-thinks Bingo's walk tonight should involve a few hills for extra calorie burning...
Alice x
* went a bit overboard with a bleach drenched sponge determined to remove the build up of grime around the hob rims. Good idea in theory, but in practice it meant that water seeped inside and caused the downstairs electrical supply to "PING!" itself off (that is the noise it makes: "PING!"). From previous experience, it'll take around 12 hours to fully dry out and then will be A-OK and functional again.
...the REALLY annoying thing is that in-spite of all that: the grime is still as fixed in place as ever. =SIGHS=...
However, on the PLUS side: that means I get both a small pizza and 1/2 a small portion of chips in one day. And guilt free! Whee!
...All the same, me-thinks Bingo's walk tonight should involve a few hills for extra calorie burning...
Alice x
* went a bit overboard with a bleach drenched sponge determined to remove the build up of grime around the hob rims. Good idea in theory, but in practice it meant that water seeped inside and caused the downstairs electrical supply to "PING!" itself off (that is the noise it makes: "PING!"). From previous experience, it'll take around 12 hours to fully dry out and then will be A-OK and functional again.
...the REALLY annoying thing is that in-spite of all that: the grime is still as fixed in place as ever. =SIGHS=...
Right Place. Right Time.
I was on my way home from work, debating various toppings on the mini pizza I was going to order from Domino's.
As I walked, I sang to myself - as I am often want to do, although today's choice drew a few odd looks rather than the usual amused/approving smiles that I usually get* - and watched all the people going about their business, enjoying the sunshine and the sight of all the little birds flittering around and generally just feeling better than I have done in a couple of days.
As I passed by the benches that line the walkway between two sections of town, I saw that there was a woman sat on one of them. As I actually passed by the bench in question, however, and glanced across at her, I noted that she wasn't sat so much as slumped.
Then I noted that she was gasping.
I knew what it was. I'd suffered with it myself often enough. This woman was having an asthma induced panic attack. The kind that starts off as an 'Oh Dear, I Need My Inhaler And A Brief Rest' situation then for whatever reason escalates into another kind of situation; the kind where the brain stops thinking in sentences and all your thoughts get squished together into one long unending stream of panic.
It isn't easy to put into text, but to give you an idea, it looks kind of like this:
ohshitmyinhalerisn'tworkingandican'tbreathewhyisn'tmyinhalerworkingohgodican'tbreatheohgodohgodohgod...
...Yep. I know that feeling well. And I knew exactly what that woman needed.
So I did it.
I asked if she was "OK". Of course, she wasn't, and we both knew that already, but it opened up the lines of communication. It gave her the chance to shake her head and me the chance to walk over and stand next to her. And more importantly, it gave her the knowledge that there was someone there; someone ready and willing to Help.
That was it. That was what she needed. Another human being reaching out in a gesture that says "hey, you're in a bad way right now, but I'm here and I will help you if I can."
For a moment she couldn't talk and I didn't encourage her. Instead I said in a calm voice that it was OK; to take in breaths as deep and as slow as she could manage. Nodding, she did.
It took a few minutes to have any effect - when you get to that stage it always does - but the awareness that I was there was encouragement enough for her to persevere, and before too long her condition had improved enough that through gasps of breath, she was able to talk.
She explained that she had a lung condition. That it was bad right now because she had a cold. That she had tried to make it but failed and so she had sat down and tried to concentrate on breathing slowly but she couldn't do it, and it got worse and worse and she just needed somebody to stop, but until I came along it had looked as though nobody would.
As she remembered those desperate minutes alone, she began to panic all over again. A distraction was necessary so I asked her if she used an inhaler. Her breathing coming in small, painful sounded groans, she nodded; yes, she did. Good, I said, then I asked her if she had it with her. Another nod, another good from me. Then stage 3: I told her to take it out of her bag and use it.
Gratefully, she did.
One puff. Two puffs. Three. She lingered over each, which was good. Too often the feeling of loosing control of their lungs will cause an asthmatic to dash at it; pressing the plunger too hard and breathing in too quickly, which sends the dose carreening into the back of the throat with such force that it sticks there, unable to reach the lungs and worse, creating the urgent need to cough. And coughing is the very last thing an asthmatic in need of medication needs.
...Actually usually in the event of such an attack as the woman had, medical professionals would say that taking asthma medication of any kind is a Very Bad Idea, which sounds odd; dangerous, even, but in most cases it's very true (I'll explain why in another post)...
Anyway, back to the woman. She took her inhaler - and took it well - three times within a five minute period, and by the time those five minutes were up, she was as back to normal as a person with a lung condition that has a cold and has just suffered an asthma induced panic attack can be.
I offered to fetch her something to drink - Aldi's was just a few feet away - but she declined. She felt much better now, and able to carry on again. It was the cold; it had made her asthma so much worse than it normally is, and once it started she couldn't stop it.
She was embarrassed now, but relaxed when I told her that I understood. I had trigger asthma, and in the summer - when zillions of kinds of pollen, my main triggers - were around, an attack would often come out of nowhere.
I could tell she was itching for me to go now - not rudeness, just; 'we shared a crappy experience that I now want to put behind me and forget as soon as possible' - but I wanted to check two things first. The first thing was what she planned on doing now, and she answered that she was going to walk slowly to Morrison's (just across the road) and have a nice long sit down in their cafe and a cup of tea to make sure she was fully recovered. Then she was abandoning the rest of her shopping and going home to the cat. Good.
The second was whether she took other asthma medication or was the Blue One** all she had, to which she answered she used two kinds: The Blue and The Brown. I said that that was good; that the Brown would be helping the minimize the effects, but recommended talking to her doctor very soon about possibly taking a stronger one while she recovered from her cold. The Purple One, perhaps.
Another grateful smile revealed that that idea hadn't occurred to her.
I knew she needed me to leave, but still I hesitated, nervous that she might have a relapse.
Realizing this, she smiled a third time and assured me that she would be alright, truly, and that she didn't want to hold me up any longer. But she was ever so grateful, she said, to me for having stopped; she couldn't express how grateful...
And then, she cried.
It was brief, no more than a few tears escaping and rolling down her cheeks, but still it filled me with a sense of shock. I, Alice Collison, had caused a complete stranger to be so morally indebted to me - for the mere act of stopping - that she cried. Because nobody else had, and she had feared that nobody would; that the people walking past were either too absorbed by their thoughts to notice her slumped on a bench unable to breath enough to even cry out for help, or that they were either too shy or too callous to do anything about it even if they had.
One final smile passed between us and then we parted, going our separate ways. Her to Morrison's cafe and me to Iceland where I brought a bigger pizza than I had originally intended (Oh shut up. It was only one size up. And anyway, I earned it!) and a bag of sweets (...again, shut up...) before trudging off home to be greeted by an uninterested dog that barely pricked his ears at my arrival, let alone wagged his tail.
And so now here we are; with pizza and sweets eaten - and my God, they were good - and me trying to figure out what to finish this post off with and unable to come up with anything more profound than the though that; 'damn. I made a stranger cry today. By being nice...'.
=shrugs= Meh. I'll go with that.
Damn. I made a stranger cry today. By being nice...
...Go me.
Alice x
* for those interested, it was "Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me!" from the Rocky Horror Picture show.
** again, for those interested, there are 3 types of Inhaler that every asthmatic knows:
~ The Blue One: otherwise known as Ventalin (spelling?) and designed to ease mild-medium attacks.
~ The Brown One; a preventative designed to help the body strengthen itself enough to stop attacks before they start.
~ And finally the Purple One; one that no person I've talked to knows a thing about other than they only give it to you when you are v.poorly and "duuude; it's kick-ass!".
...why haven't I asked a medical professional about The Purple One, I hear you ask? Because that would involve being all mature and stuff and going in - with my mature big-girl knickers on - to have my Annual Asthma Checkup, which I have successfully avoided doing for about 3 years now. That's why.
Anyway, I know it's only doled out on special occasions (of the sickness kind) and that's its purportedly "kick-ass". That's good enough for me.
As I walked, I sang to myself - as I am often want to do, although today's choice drew a few odd looks rather than the usual amused/approving smiles that I usually get* - and watched all the people going about their business, enjoying the sunshine and the sight of all the little birds flittering around and generally just feeling better than I have done in a couple of days.
As I passed by the benches that line the walkway between two sections of town, I saw that there was a woman sat on one of them. As I actually passed by the bench in question, however, and glanced across at her, I noted that she wasn't sat so much as slumped.
Then I noted that she was gasping.
I knew what it was. I'd suffered with it myself often enough. This woman was having an asthma induced panic attack. The kind that starts off as an 'Oh Dear, I Need My Inhaler And A Brief Rest' situation then for whatever reason escalates into another kind of situation; the kind where the brain stops thinking in sentences and all your thoughts get squished together into one long unending stream of panic.
It isn't easy to put into text, but to give you an idea, it looks kind of like this:
ohshitmyinhalerisn'tworkingandican'tbreathewhyisn'tmyinhalerworkingohgodican'tbreatheohgodohgodohgod...
...Yep. I know that feeling well. And I knew exactly what that woman needed.
So I did it.
I asked if she was "OK". Of course, she wasn't, and we both knew that already, but it opened up the lines of communication. It gave her the chance to shake her head and me the chance to walk over and stand next to her. And more importantly, it gave her the knowledge that there was someone there; someone ready and willing to Help.
That was it. That was what she needed. Another human being reaching out in a gesture that says "hey, you're in a bad way right now, but I'm here and I will help you if I can."
For a moment she couldn't talk and I didn't encourage her. Instead I said in a calm voice that it was OK; to take in breaths as deep and as slow as she could manage. Nodding, she did.
It took a few minutes to have any effect - when you get to that stage it always does - but the awareness that I was there was encouragement enough for her to persevere, and before too long her condition had improved enough that through gasps of breath, she was able to talk.
She explained that she had a lung condition. That it was bad right now because she had a cold. That she had tried to make it but failed and so she had sat down and tried to concentrate on breathing slowly but she couldn't do it, and it got worse and worse and she just needed somebody to stop, but until I came along it had looked as though nobody would.
As she remembered those desperate minutes alone, she began to panic all over again. A distraction was necessary so I asked her if she used an inhaler. Her breathing coming in small, painful sounded groans, she nodded; yes, she did. Good, I said, then I asked her if she had it with her. Another nod, another good from me. Then stage 3: I told her to take it out of her bag and use it.
Gratefully, she did.
One puff. Two puffs. Three. She lingered over each, which was good. Too often the feeling of loosing control of their lungs will cause an asthmatic to dash at it; pressing the plunger too hard and breathing in too quickly, which sends the dose carreening into the back of the throat with such force that it sticks there, unable to reach the lungs and worse, creating the urgent need to cough. And coughing is the very last thing an asthmatic in need of medication needs.
...Actually usually in the event of such an attack as the woman had, medical professionals would say that taking asthma medication of any kind is a Very Bad Idea, which sounds odd; dangerous, even, but in most cases it's very true (I'll explain why in another post)...
Anyway, back to the woman. She took her inhaler - and took it well - three times within a five minute period, and by the time those five minutes were up, she was as back to normal as a person with a lung condition that has a cold and has just suffered an asthma induced panic attack can be.
I offered to fetch her something to drink - Aldi's was just a few feet away - but she declined. She felt much better now, and able to carry on again. It was the cold; it had made her asthma so much worse than it normally is, and once it started she couldn't stop it.
She was embarrassed now, but relaxed when I told her that I understood. I had trigger asthma, and in the summer - when zillions of kinds of pollen, my main triggers - were around, an attack would often come out of nowhere.
I could tell she was itching for me to go now - not rudeness, just; 'we shared a crappy experience that I now want to put behind me and forget as soon as possible' - but I wanted to check two things first. The first thing was what she planned on doing now, and she answered that she was going to walk slowly to Morrison's (just across the road) and have a nice long sit down in their cafe and a cup of tea to make sure she was fully recovered. Then she was abandoning the rest of her shopping and going home to the cat. Good.
The second was whether she took other asthma medication or was the Blue One** all she had, to which she answered she used two kinds: The Blue and The Brown. I said that that was good; that the Brown would be helping the minimize the effects, but recommended talking to her doctor very soon about possibly taking a stronger one while she recovered from her cold. The Purple One, perhaps.
Another grateful smile revealed that that idea hadn't occurred to her.
I knew she needed me to leave, but still I hesitated, nervous that she might have a relapse.
Realizing this, she smiled a third time and assured me that she would be alright, truly, and that she didn't want to hold me up any longer. But she was ever so grateful, she said, to me for having stopped; she couldn't express how grateful...
And then, she cried.
It was brief, no more than a few tears escaping and rolling down her cheeks, but still it filled me with a sense of shock. I, Alice Collison, had caused a complete stranger to be so morally indebted to me - for the mere act of stopping - that she cried. Because nobody else had, and she had feared that nobody would; that the people walking past were either too absorbed by their thoughts to notice her slumped on a bench unable to breath enough to even cry out for help, or that they were either too shy or too callous to do anything about it even if they had.
One final smile passed between us and then we parted, going our separate ways. Her to Morrison's cafe and me to Iceland where I brought a bigger pizza than I had originally intended (Oh shut up. It was only one size up. And anyway, I earned it!) and a bag of sweets (...again, shut up...) before trudging off home to be greeted by an uninterested dog that barely pricked his ears at my arrival, let alone wagged his tail.
And so now here we are; with pizza and sweets eaten - and my God, they were good - and me trying to figure out what to finish this post off with and unable to come up with anything more profound than the though that; 'damn. I made a stranger cry today. By being nice...'.
=shrugs= Meh. I'll go with that.
Damn. I made a stranger cry today. By being nice...
...Go me.
Alice x
* for those interested, it was "Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me!" from the Rocky Horror Picture show.
** again, for those interested, there are 3 types of Inhaler that every asthmatic knows:
~ The Blue One: otherwise known as Ventalin (spelling?) and designed to ease mild-medium attacks.
~ The Brown One; a preventative designed to help the body strengthen itself enough to stop attacks before they start.
~ And finally the Purple One; one that no person I've talked to knows a thing about other than they only give it to you when you are v.poorly and "duuude; it's kick-ass!".
...why haven't I asked a medical professional about The Purple One, I hear you ask? Because that would involve being all mature and stuff and going in - with my mature big-girl knickers on - to have my Annual Asthma Checkup, which I have successfully avoided doing for about 3 years now. That's why.
Anyway, I know it's only doled out on special occasions (of the sickness kind) and that's its purportedly "kick-ass". That's good enough for me.
Monday, 12 May 2014
Dear Fate:
If you could see it clear for me to win the lottery, or something, in the very near future? I would be very grateful; very grateful indeed.
Not much. A million would do. I'm not one of those greedy so-and-so's that want to win one of those massive lottery rollovers of 25 million or more; oh no. Just a million for me. That would be perfect.
...Or maybe even just a few hundred thousand; that could work. We could be frugal.
Yours in hopeful anticipation,
The exhausted and humiliated girl who after 7 days off now cannot keep up at work. At all.
Not much. A million would do. I'm not one of those greedy so-and-so's that want to win one of those massive lottery rollovers of 25 million or more; oh no. Just a million for me. That would be perfect.
...Or maybe even just a few hundred thousand; that could work. We could be frugal.
Yours in hopeful anticipation,
The exhausted and humiliated girl who after 7 days off now cannot keep up at work. At all.
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Another Productive Week Off Comes To An End.
In the past seven days my big accomplishments have been:
~ Feeding some ducks.
~ Cleaning the fridge and a few skirting boards.
~ Various visits to various people.
Most of which required little effort (other than showing up) from me.
~ The playing of four board games.
Only the first of which I won. How unfair is that?? It was my turn to pick and everything!
~ Attending a restaurant for a slap up meal, during which my laugh attracted a lot of attention*.
~ Managing to add 9 pages to one of my stories.
~ Not killing the cat.
Or yowling in her ear. Although I came perilously close to both.
...that's it.
Yep. A highly productive week, indeed.
Yep.
=nods=
Alice x
* it is a truly stupendous laugh, truly. Sort of a half donkey bray. If that donkey was on helium and a few other drugs. Not at all a pleasant sound (not that I can help it, but still) for anyone unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of it, I'll admit.
Still, I am of the firm belief that any laugh that can cause a multitude of people to stare at you with expressions a delightful mixture of amusement, astonishment, disbelief, grotesque distaste or disturbed fear (or, in the case of one open mouthed six-year-old, all of the above) is a laugh to be admired.
...Yep.
~ Feeding some ducks.
~ Cleaning the fridge and a few skirting boards.
~ Various visits to various people.
Most of which required little effort (other than showing up) from me.
~ The playing of four board games.
Only the first of which I won. How unfair is that?? It was my turn to pick and everything!
~ Attending a restaurant for a slap up meal, during which my laugh attracted a lot of attention*.
~ Managing to add 9 pages to one of my stories.
~ Not killing the cat.
Or yowling in her ear. Although I came perilously close to both.
...that's it.
Yep. A highly productive week, indeed.
Yep.
=nods=
Alice x
* it is a truly stupendous laugh, truly. Sort of a half donkey bray. If that donkey was on helium and a few other drugs. Not at all a pleasant sound (not that I can help it, but still) for anyone unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of it, I'll admit.
Still, I am of the firm belief that any laugh that can cause a multitude of people to stare at you with expressions a delightful mixture of amusement, astonishment, disbelief, grotesque distaste or disturbed fear (or, in the case of one open mouthed six-year-old, all of the above) is a laugh to be admired.
...Yep.
Another ...Why??...Dream.
It started normally enough.
Well, as my dreams go.
I was a teenager. A really thin, pretty teenager (whoot!*), on a school trip. There were seventy or so of us, sectioned off in groups of four or five. We were riding in a narrowboat**. Or, rather, there were several narrowboats, because just one couldn't contain us all, but the dream only focused on the one of them.
Fair enough. All well and good so far.
There was a bet. Or a challenge. Something like that. People were challenged to swim in the river behind the narrowboat as far as possible. The narrowboat, in between sailing its way slowly along, would stop every now and again and park up - moor - against the bank whereupon heads would be counted, which split the journey into neat little chunks. The more chunks you swam, the more prizes you got.
...Okay...
So, we - that's my group - decided to swim most of the way. We were all strong swimmers and anyway, it beat being stuck on the boat.
Glenda got in first.
Then Joey (a boy).
Then Michelle (she entered with a spectacular dive).
Then finally, me.
The water, instead of being horridly cold, was deliciously warm, and apart from the patch where we jumped in, clean and clear of mud. Glenda exclaimed in delight that there were hermit crabs wandering along the weeds at the bottom and we all put our goggles on - where had they come from? - and had a look.
Then the boat began moving, and the swim began.
So we were swimming.
It was pleasant at first, y'know; water, nice, sunshine, nice, Narrowboat put-putting away ahead of us, nice. Then we realized that the water line was dropping. Pretty soon, there was so little that in places it trickled in pathetic little lines, in others sat in puddles, and in other places there was no water at all; just sand and gravel and stones.
Shrugging, we sat down unperturbed and put on our shoes - where had they come from? - so that we could walk without snagging our skin on errant sharp pieces of stone. The boat had disappeared but we weren't worried as we knew - how?? - that it would be moored safe and sound at Didcot (a nice little town in Oxfordshire that doesn't, in fact, have a river running through it. Or a canal. Or even, so far as I know, a stream); all we had to do was walk to it...
...We started walking, and suddenly, the dream jumped. I was no longer a stunningly beautiful college student with a talent for river swimming, but a penguin (yes. A Penguin) on her way to fetch an egg.
The explanation for this was that we - our group of penguins that is - didn't lay our eggs, but had to fetch them from a secluded and secret part of a nearby forest and then bring them back to our nesting site; an enterprise (as helpfully explained by David Attenborough, who was narrating) not without risk. In fact, he told the viewers sadly, most of the group (700 this time) wouldn't survive.
So off we waddled.
First stage was up a steep bank; so steep that several penguins lost their balance and fell to their death.
Second was to cross a busy road that had hazards like ten tonne trucks thundering along it. Unsurprisingly a few more of us pegged it.
Third was another steep bank, one we had to go down, this time, rather than up. Again, it was perilously steep. Again, there were many losses.
Fourth a waddle through the woods. Fairly easy and danger free. One penguin managed to spear her head through with an errant tree branch, however.
Finally, stage five was entering the secret part of the forest to retrieve the eggs; and this turned out to be the most dangerous stage of all, because the eggs were guarded. The guards remained hidden high up in the trees and inactive until the first of the penguins was within touching distance of an egg, then sprang into life, revealing themselves to be giant, two-pronged pine needles. The uppermost tip of each needle was coated with a deadly poison, and the needles themselves were not only very angry at the intrusion and potential loss of their eggs, but highly maneuverable and skilled hunters.
At the death-by-poison-needle of the first penguin, a mad dash began and chaos ensued. We - the penguins - knew, that once we had the eggs, our chances were high. They were magical, you see.
Twenty to thirty of us made it (me among them). The second our beaks touched them, a transformation took place. Our beaks became yellow, rather than black, as did our feet. Our eyes became a milky white. Our wings lengthened and an extra set grew out from beneath them, leaving us with four in total.
Hastily, we gathered as many eggs as possible with our new and highly dexterous wings, placing them carefully in handy nearby egg boxes. Then we wrapped our lower wings across them, pinning them to our feathered chests, and to a backdrop of enraged screaming from the needle guards, took flight.
Yes, David Attenborough explained in that unutterably gorgeous voice of his; these particular penguins were special. When endowed with the magical energy given off their eggs, as well as all the other, more subtle attributes they gained, they were able to do what no other penguin could: fly.
Cool or what? I certainly thought it was. 'Whoo!' I thought: 'I'm FLYING! I have no how, because penguins can't fly, but I am! Whoo!***'
So, there we were, flying with our eggs, untouchable by the needles of death (and boy, were they mad). BUT: the safety of the nesting site had not yet been reached, and as we soared through the air a new threat became apparent. Wind. Strong wind. So strong that it was gale like in its proportions. So gale-like, in fact, that a jumbo jet would have difficulty going in a straight line against it, let alone thirty odd puny sized penguins (Emperor Penguins we weren't. Were barely bigger than a cat. A small cat, at that).
We flew hard and with all our newly acquired skills, but even so, the going was tough. Too tough for some. Many were blown off course, and not all of those many managed to get back again. Including me. Losing control, I dropped my precious cargo and span in a crazy spiral sidewards and down.
Right into the path of one of the trucks.
SQUISH.
On the plus side; a) it didn't hurt and b) the eggs were fine, saved on the wing by one of my comrades.
Also, my brain finally twigged that I was dreaming.
Now a ghost - whether a penguin, a hot co-ed swimmer, myself or someone else I wasn't sure - I meandered away from the scene of my penguin body's untimely demise wondering what I should do now, and found myself back in the original story line; this time as an interested onlooker.
The girls (including the one who had been me, or me who had been her? Bah. Anyway...) were still making their along the riverbed, though by now the waters had risen and they were wading, rather than walking.
Shrugging, I waded along with them****.
Soon they were no longer wading but properly swimming, and I found myself intertwined with the hot co-ed again, though, disconcertingly, not in the same way as before. We were no longer one, but two; her herself and me myself, somewhere inside of her, and stuck.
Grand. Just grand. My original dream's body had become my jail. The jailer, a college student.
After swimming for a while, we noticed that the right hand bank, lined with muddy gravel, now had a wall running alongside it. A very tall wall, with several holes along the bottom of it. Holes that, on close inspection, had little black penguin beaks sticking out of them.
...Yep.
Two story lines had collided.
My co-ed, with me stuck inside her, swam across to them with her friends. To their delight, they found the penguins to be sat, in their individual little holes, on nests. And those nests contained baby penguins. Two or three per nest.
There were lots of exclamations, most along the lines of "SWEEEEEEEEET!"
It was as they were about to leave that my Student Jailer noticed that one of the babies was outside of the nests in the muddy gravel and on its own. None of the penguins would allow the little thing in - we knew because Glenda tried every nest - so Student Jailer put it in her pocket, claiming that she was going to adopt it. Joey warned against it, because "dude! You'll have to chew up raw fish and shit and let it eat it out of your mouth! Gross!", but Student Jailer was adamant. She would not let this poor, innocent thing die.
The next course of action was to swim to the boat to fetch Student Jailer's purse, then head to the fish monger's, which we did. Once at the fish monger the woman behind the counter was presented with the baby penguin and asked what it needed to eat. Unfazed, the fish monger lady explained that herring was best, but as this was a very little baby, it probably hadn't had its first meal yet, which needed to comprise of the special milk produced from chewing beads (yes, beads).
Handing over the beads - which so helpfully she had in stock - she watched while Student Jailer crushed them in her teeth and the lifted the baby penguin up so that it could pick at them. Then once that was done she handed over several pounds worth of herring.
While on their way back the students were waylaid by a procession of the other students, all heading to the boat, along with one of the adults in charge of them. The Adult In Charge was incredibly miffed that they had been gone for so long, furious that a baby penguin had been acquired and outraged that Glenda, Joey, Michelle and Student Jailer had been taking part in the swimming when they had signed an agreement not to, particularly given Student Jailer's "delicate condition".
Chastened, they started walking with the others back to the boat. Michelle whispered to Student Jailer that she might have to give the baby penguin up, and Student Jailer declared hotly that they'd have to kill her first.
It was then that her hands and feet started to glow.
The other students, including Glenda Joey and Michelle, screamed and backed away and Student Jailer's breath became ragged in her chest as she observed the weird shimmering blueish haze climb from her hands along her arms, and from her feet up her legs, before converging on her chest. As it reached her heart, time seemed to stop and the surrounding area grew dim. All that was moving was Student Jailer's heart, beating slowly, slowly, slower...stopped...
...Then all that was moving was me. Up, up, and away into the stormy clouds above; higher and higher and faster and faster until everything was a jumble of grey and light and nothingness, before crashing down again with a shuddering thud, upon which I found myself inside of someone else.
This time it was a woman on a giant metal bridge. She along with several other people were there to watch a meteor shower destroy Earth (a big event that had been long looked forward to).
Anyway, there were were, waiting for the meteor shower. All well and good. Trouble was, others were also there, under the water far below the meteor watching party. Lying in wait...
Five minutes later the meteor shower began*****. And the lurking lying-in-waiters struck. With gusto. Shooting tentacles up out of the water and onto the bridge, catching hold of anything they came across and dragging whatever or whomsoever it was back down to where the owner(s) of the tentacles were waiting.
Cue, panic from the majority of the guests.
Luckily, a small group of people on that bridge were not actually guests, but Demon Hunter Extraordinaires, including the woman whose body I was currently ensconced within (cool!), and at the first hint of trouble, they threw off their disguises, drew forth their weapons - from...somewhere... - and started battling bravely.
At first, they appeared to be winning. But then! A sly tentacle caught hold of the woman and I, and sent her - with a fantastically blood curdling scream****** - towards the railings on the bridge's edge.
The other Demon Hunters rallied to her defense and managed, just, to prevent her from going over. But that left them with another problem. The tentacle was around her ankle. Once the suckers were attached, there was no way to remove them. And the grip was tightening all the time. Within seconds, the woman's ankle would be ripped through, and there was also the probability that another tentacle would be flung up before that.
They knew what they had to do. The woman knew too, and closing her eyes tightly, she nodded.
The Head Demon Hunter drew a wickedly sharp blade from his belt.
One swift thrust and it was all over. To the woman's surprise, there was no pain at all and the team watched as the tentacle slithered over the edge and fell towards the water below, taking the woman's foot with it. Another swift movement from the Head Demon Hunter saw a small black object hurtling down after it, and seconds later a massive explosion of flame engulfed the river, before pulling into itself until all that was left was a mass of bubbles seething madly. Then the bubbles lessened. Then nothing.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then a squawk attracted their attention. Turning round, they saw a penguin stood in the middle of the bridge, head on one side, watching them quizzically.
"...oh God," somebody said. "It's here. The bringer of the apocalypse*******."
'Oh, great,' I thought, wriggling uncomfortably within the now one-footed woman: 'perfect'.
A great, cold shadow fell across the bridge.
And then I woke up. With a foot that was completely numb due to a dog's head lying on it, a mouth that tasted oddly of fish, and a body drenched with sweat and in desperate need of a pee.
...Right. No more elaborate cocktails for me...
Alice x
* yeah, well, with all the dieting in the world I'll never be skinny without surgical intervention. Nor without the aid of some pretty awe inspiring magic will I ever be a teenager again. It was pretty fun to combine the two
** to those that don't know; a type of boat designed, as its name suggests, to weave its way along narrow waterways and canals
*** unlike David Attenborough, I, at least, had not expected that
**** eh, why not?
***** and very spectacularly beautiful it was, too: the Earth splintered and dissolved like a slow motion video of a balloon I had seen once popped by a pin
****** it was so great. Half of me was afraid that I did it in real life. The other half was hoping that I had
******* the bringer of an apocalypse: a small black and white penguin on a giant metal bridge. Who'd have thought?
Well, as my dreams go.
I was a teenager. A really thin, pretty teenager (whoot!*), on a school trip. There were seventy or so of us, sectioned off in groups of four or five. We were riding in a narrowboat**. Or, rather, there were several narrowboats, because just one couldn't contain us all, but the dream only focused on the one of them.
Fair enough. All well and good so far.
There was a bet. Or a challenge. Something like that. People were challenged to swim in the river behind the narrowboat as far as possible. The narrowboat, in between sailing its way slowly along, would stop every now and again and park up - moor - against the bank whereupon heads would be counted, which split the journey into neat little chunks. The more chunks you swam, the more prizes you got.
...Okay...
So, we - that's my group - decided to swim most of the way. We were all strong swimmers and anyway, it beat being stuck on the boat.
Glenda got in first.
Then Joey (a boy).
Then Michelle (she entered with a spectacular dive).
Then finally, me.
The water, instead of being horridly cold, was deliciously warm, and apart from the patch where we jumped in, clean and clear of mud. Glenda exclaimed in delight that there were hermit crabs wandering along the weeds at the bottom and we all put our goggles on - where had they come from? - and had a look.
Then the boat began moving, and the swim began.
So we were swimming.
It was pleasant at first, y'know; water, nice, sunshine, nice, Narrowboat put-putting away ahead of us, nice. Then we realized that the water line was dropping. Pretty soon, there was so little that in places it trickled in pathetic little lines, in others sat in puddles, and in other places there was no water at all; just sand and gravel and stones.
Shrugging, we sat down unperturbed and put on our shoes - where had they come from? - so that we could walk without snagging our skin on errant sharp pieces of stone. The boat had disappeared but we weren't worried as we knew - how?? - that it would be moored safe and sound at Didcot (a nice little town in Oxfordshire that doesn't, in fact, have a river running through it. Or a canal. Or even, so far as I know, a stream); all we had to do was walk to it...
...We started walking, and suddenly, the dream jumped. I was no longer a stunningly beautiful college student with a talent for river swimming, but a penguin (yes. A Penguin) on her way to fetch an egg.
The explanation for this was that we - our group of penguins that is - didn't lay our eggs, but had to fetch them from a secluded and secret part of a nearby forest and then bring them back to our nesting site; an enterprise (as helpfully explained by David Attenborough, who was narrating) not without risk. In fact, he told the viewers sadly, most of the group (700 this time) wouldn't survive.
So off we waddled.
First stage was up a steep bank; so steep that several penguins lost their balance and fell to their death.
Second was to cross a busy road that had hazards like ten tonne trucks thundering along it. Unsurprisingly a few more of us pegged it.
Third was another steep bank, one we had to go down, this time, rather than up. Again, it was perilously steep. Again, there were many losses.
Fourth a waddle through the woods. Fairly easy and danger free. One penguin managed to spear her head through with an errant tree branch, however.
Finally, stage five was entering the secret part of the forest to retrieve the eggs; and this turned out to be the most dangerous stage of all, because the eggs were guarded. The guards remained hidden high up in the trees and inactive until the first of the penguins was within touching distance of an egg, then sprang into life, revealing themselves to be giant, two-pronged pine needles. The uppermost tip of each needle was coated with a deadly poison, and the needles themselves were not only very angry at the intrusion and potential loss of their eggs, but highly maneuverable and skilled hunters.
At the death-by-poison-needle of the first penguin, a mad dash began and chaos ensued. We - the penguins - knew, that once we had the eggs, our chances were high. They were magical, you see.
Twenty to thirty of us made it (me among them). The second our beaks touched them, a transformation took place. Our beaks became yellow, rather than black, as did our feet. Our eyes became a milky white. Our wings lengthened and an extra set grew out from beneath them, leaving us with four in total.
Hastily, we gathered as many eggs as possible with our new and highly dexterous wings, placing them carefully in handy nearby egg boxes. Then we wrapped our lower wings across them, pinning them to our feathered chests, and to a backdrop of enraged screaming from the needle guards, took flight.
Yes, David Attenborough explained in that unutterably gorgeous voice of his; these particular penguins were special. When endowed with the magical energy given off their eggs, as well as all the other, more subtle attributes they gained, they were able to do what no other penguin could: fly.
Cool or what? I certainly thought it was. 'Whoo!' I thought: 'I'm FLYING! I have no how, because penguins can't fly, but I am! Whoo!***'
So, there we were, flying with our eggs, untouchable by the needles of death (and boy, were they mad). BUT: the safety of the nesting site had not yet been reached, and as we soared through the air a new threat became apparent. Wind. Strong wind. So strong that it was gale like in its proportions. So gale-like, in fact, that a jumbo jet would have difficulty going in a straight line against it, let alone thirty odd puny sized penguins (Emperor Penguins we weren't. Were barely bigger than a cat. A small cat, at that).
We flew hard and with all our newly acquired skills, but even so, the going was tough. Too tough for some. Many were blown off course, and not all of those many managed to get back again. Including me. Losing control, I dropped my precious cargo and span in a crazy spiral sidewards and down.
Right into the path of one of the trucks.
SQUISH.
On the plus side; a) it didn't hurt and b) the eggs were fine, saved on the wing by one of my comrades.
Also, my brain finally twigged that I was dreaming.
Now a ghost - whether a penguin, a hot co-ed swimmer, myself or someone else I wasn't sure - I meandered away from the scene of my penguin body's untimely demise wondering what I should do now, and found myself back in the original story line; this time as an interested onlooker.
The girls (including the one who had been me, or me who had been her? Bah. Anyway...) were still making their along the riverbed, though by now the waters had risen and they were wading, rather than walking.
Shrugging, I waded along with them****.
Soon they were no longer wading but properly swimming, and I found myself intertwined with the hot co-ed again, though, disconcertingly, not in the same way as before. We were no longer one, but two; her herself and me myself, somewhere inside of her, and stuck.
Grand. Just grand. My original dream's body had become my jail. The jailer, a college student.
After swimming for a while, we noticed that the right hand bank, lined with muddy gravel, now had a wall running alongside it. A very tall wall, with several holes along the bottom of it. Holes that, on close inspection, had little black penguin beaks sticking out of them.
...Yep.
Two story lines had collided.
My co-ed, with me stuck inside her, swam across to them with her friends. To their delight, they found the penguins to be sat, in their individual little holes, on nests. And those nests contained baby penguins. Two or three per nest.
There were lots of exclamations, most along the lines of "SWEEEEEEEEET!"
It was as they were about to leave that my Student Jailer noticed that one of the babies was outside of the nests in the muddy gravel and on its own. None of the penguins would allow the little thing in - we knew because Glenda tried every nest - so Student Jailer put it in her pocket, claiming that she was going to adopt it. Joey warned against it, because "dude! You'll have to chew up raw fish and shit and let it eat it out of your mouth! Gross!", but Student Jailer was adamant. She would not let this poor, innocent thing die.
The next course of action was to swim to the boat to fetch Student Jailer's purse, then head to the fish monger's, which we did. Once at the fish monger the woman behind the counter was presented with the baby penguin and asked what it needed to eat. Unfazed, the fish monger lady explained that herring was best, but as this was a very little baby, it probably hadn't had its first meal yet, which needed to comprise of the special milk produced from chewing beads (yes, beads).
Handing over the beads - which so helpfully she had in stock - she watched while Student Jailer crushed them in her teeth and the lifted the baby penguin up so that it could pick at them. Then once that was done she handed over several pounds worth of herring.
While on their way back the students were waylaid by a procession of the other students, all heading to the boat, along with one of the adults in charge of them. The Adult In Charge was incredibly miffed that they had been gone for so long, furious that a baby penguin had been acquired and outraged that Glenda, Joey, Michelle and Student Jailer had been taking part in the swimming when they had signed an agreement not to, particularly given Student Jailer's "delicate condition".
Chastened, they started walking with the others back to the boat. Michelle whispered to Student Jailer that she might have to give the baby penguin up, and Student Jailer declared hotly that they'd have to kill her first.
It was then that her hands and feet started to glow.
The other students, including Glenda Joey and Michelle, screamed and backed away and Student Jailer's breath became ragged in her chest as she observed the weird shimmering blueish haze climb from her hands along her arms, and from her feet up her legs, before converging on her chest. As it reached her heart, time seemed to stop and the surrounding area grew dim. All that was moving was Student Jailer's heart, beating slowly, slowly, slower...stopped...
...Then all that was moving was me. Up, up, and away into the stormy clouds above; higher and higher and faster and faster until everything was a jumble of grey and light and nothingness, before crashing down again with a shuddering thud, upon which I found myself inside of someone else.
This time it was a woman on a giant metal bridge. She along with several other people were there to watch a meteor shower destroy Earth (a big event that had been long looked forward to).
Anyway, there were were, waiting for the meteor shower. All well and good. Trouble was, others were also there, under the water far below the meteor watching party. Lying in wait...
Five minutes later the meteor shower began*****. And the lurking lying-in-waiters struck. With gusto. Shooting tentacles up out of the water and onto the bridge, catching hold of anything they came across and dragging whatever or whomsoever it was back down to where the owner(s) of the tentacles were waiting.
Cue, panic from the majority of the guests.
Luckily, a small group of people on that bridge were not actually guests, but Demon Hunter Extraordinaires, including the woman whose body I was currently ensconced within (cool!), and at the first hint of trouble, they threw off their disguises, drew forth their weapons - from...somewhere... - and started battling bravely.
At first, they appeared to be winning. But then! A sly tentacle caught hold of the woman and I, and sent her - with a fantastically blood curdling scream****** - towards the railings on the bridge's edge.
The other Demon Hunters rallied to her defense and managed, just, to prevent her from going over. But that left them with another problem. The tentacle was around her ankle. Once the suckers were attached, there was no way to remove them. And the grip was tightening all the time. Within seconds, the woman's ankle would be ripped through, and there was also the probability that another tentacle would be flung up before that.
They knew what they had to do. The woman knew too, and closing her eyes tightly, she nodded.
The Head Demon Hunter drew a wickedly sharp blade from his belt.
One swift thrust and it was all over. To the woman's surprise, there was no pain at all and the team watched as the tentacle slithered over the edge and fell towards the water below, taking the woman's foot with it. Another swift movement from the Head Demon Hunter saw a small black object hurtling down after it, and seconds later a massive explosion of flame engulfed the river, before pulling into itself until all that was left was a mass of bubbles seething madly. Then the bubbles lessened. Then nothing.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then a squawk attracted their attention. Turning round, they saw a penguin stood in the middle of the bridge, head on one side, watching them quizzically.
"...oh God," somebody said. "It's here. The bringer of the apocalypse*******."
'Oh, great,' I thought, wriggling uncomfortably within the now one-footed woman: 'perfect'.
A great, cold shadow fell across the bridge.
And then I woke up. With a foot that was completely numb due to a dog's head lying on it, a mouth that tasted oddly of fish, and a body drenched with sweat and in desperate need of a pee.
...Right. No more elaborate cocktails for me...
Alice x
* yeah, well, with all the dieting in the world I'll never be skinny without surgical intervention. Nor without the aid of some pretty awe inspiring magic will I ever be a teenager again. It was pretty fun to combine the two
** to those that don't know; a type of boat designed, as its name suggests, to weave its way along narrow waterways and canals
*** unlike David Attenborough, I, at least, had not expected that
**** eh, why not?
***** and very spectacularly beautiful it was, too: the Earth splintered and dissolved like a slow motion video of a balloon I had seen once popped by a pin
****** it was so great. Half of me was afraid that I did it in real life. The other half was hoping that I had
******* the bringer of an apocalypse: a small black and white penguin on a giant metal bridge. Who'd have thought?
Saturday, 10 May 2014
You Know What's Sad?
Watching a Celebrity Christmas Special episode of Catchphrase, aired...well, when was Christmas? December 25th. Right. Should be easy enough to work out...just under 5 months ago, that you have already watched twice before so far, simply because you find the contestants fun.
Know what is sadder?
That despite it being from 5 months ago and watching it twice, you still can't remember the majority of the catchphrases.
=sigh=
Alice x
Know what is sadder?
That despite it being from 5 months ago and watching it twice, you still can't remember the majority of the catchphrases.
=sigh=
Alice x
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