How to Make Friends and Influence People

Blow up three round balloons, quite firmly


Push a small cloth bag of marbles into each balloon making sure that the ends of the bag hang out below the rim of the balloon and tie-off the ends of the balloon and marble bag into one knot. Don't question this, just do it, The balloon might burst the first couple of times you try it, but eventually it will work

Tear a newspaper of your choice into strips (I favour the Financial, Sunday or Oban Times)

Fill washing-up bowl (or bucket) with tepid water

Dip the newspaper strips into the water and then apply to the surface of a balloon

Make sure each balloon is completely covered in paper with no gaps except for a small (tiny) circular space around the knot of each balloon

When this first layer is drying, apply a second layer. Repeat until you have good coverage

If you want to cheat and use Copydex, I won't tell on you

When the paper shell is dry and hard to the touch (could mean sitting up all night watching, touch-testing and re-testing), stick a pin through it popping the balloon, but crucially you must hold onto the knotted bit that's sticking out and make sure you don't lose it up into the brain cavity area

Next you need to paint a face on one side (or both sides if you want two-faced friends) of the shell and add a wig, make-up, facial hair or jewellery as desired

Take a pillow and sew to each of the four corners an arm or leg (tights (colour of your choice) stuffed with scrunched up newspaper)

Tie a ribbon around the bit of the balloon and bag sticking out and feed and re-feed the two ends of that ribbon through a circular bit of cleaned washing-up bottle that you cut up earlier even though I forgot to tell you because you are so smart that you anticipated you would need a neck bit and I might forget until now

Safety pin the ribbon and the plastic neck to the middle top of the pillow

You have now made a new friend.

Repeat until you have 3 (or more if required - not recommended, they can pair up and leave you alone, but with 3 there'll always be one left over for you to talk to) new friends

Name them (I named mine Keanu Reeves, Drew Barrymore and David Foster Wallace, for example)

Put Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show on and let them know you're just popping out for a while (ask them if they need anything while you're out, he/she/they is your friends and maybe feeling vulnerable and new at the moment) (and they are naked, which is why you are going out anyway)

Buy capsule wardrobes - casual, formal and at home lounging around vestments, including underwear and shoes. Definitely hats, too - for each

Spend a few hours getting to know each other a little then set off for a caravan holiday on the South-West coast of Scotland (you will have to do the driving, and pack the car and make the picnic, but they won't need pee-stops on the way)

Enjoy your holiday

PS: Don't forget to take them home with you (unless you have a huge argument or you decide your first attempts weren't that great and fancy making new ones when you get home again, in which case you could leave them artfully posed around the caravan for the next occupants to find and maybe have more luck with than you did)

Not too far from the truth

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I hate bagpipes

I hate bagpipes. I'd rather listen to someone screaming for an hour. If I stood on the hill behind my house and screamed very loudly every summer Sunday evening between 7 - 8pm someone would complain, I'm sure. When that bastard bagpiper does it, it's all "culture", "heritage", "tradition", "stirring".

It's very horrible. Are we listening to the same thing?

I had assumed everyone else really hated bagpipe music too and they were just pretending because it was the right thing to do, like with beer or Mozart, but no. I've got into enough Highland taxis now to know they actually listen to the stuff of their own free will. Incomprehensible.

*

Yul Bryner is better than bagpipes.

(pic stolen from erin o'brien's blog)

What does it feel like?

I've been studying Psychometrics with the OU and last week my exam result arrived. (78% so yay!). I love exams, always have. It's the element of surprise that I like - what will the questions be? how well can I answer them? what result will I get? They feel like works of art, creative experiences. Even if I don't know the stuff very well or care less.

This was the first ever where I sat down and just blanked. Totally empty head, nothingness, very scary.

I'd booked into a swanky hotel for two nights before the exam and just read and read, so felt exceptionally well-prepared. I even sat in the ante-room and while the other candidates poured over last minute notes, I just sipped my water and gazed out of the window, smugly. Then, after asking to sit at a new desk because mine was too wobbly and slowly and calmly filling in all the admin bits and opening the question paper to decide which ones to do and in which order, I just freaked. Suddenly ALL the names and dates I'd learned vanished, I couldn't remember the difference between key concepts, the hands on the clock were spinning, whizzing round. I looked around the room and everyone else was scribbling away.

I felt like putting my hand up and asking them to stop while I pulled myself together, I seriously considered it. It took about 10 minutes which seemed like ten seconds and ten hours at the same time.

I told myself to relax, close the booklet, take some deep breathes, think about the sea lapping on the shore under August moonlight, blah, blah, blah. "It's not fucking working. Aaarrggh!". Tried looking for my favourite topic and making notes. Still nothing. After twenty minutes I'd resigned myself to failure. I picked the first question on the paper and just started writing, anything I could think of connected with the topic whether it answered the question or not. When fifteen minutes was passed I stopped and started on question 2. Twenty minutes later, number 3. Somewhere in the process my head must have come back online because that result is good, but the shock of blanking threw me and I've been convinced that if I'd passed it would be by a mark or two at most.

I used to wonder what happened when your mind goes 'completely blank', why people screamed when they saw dead bodies, how they knew they were really in love. Now I'm wondering what it feels like to be an actual grown-up entitled insider adult lady.

Why do some people make you laugh and others don't?

Emma, who lives in Llanwrst, AnnieRhiannon territory but I'm sure they don't know each other, makes me laugh till I cry. Nine years ago our first coversation went something like this, "Your shoes are no good for standing and walking around in", "Hello", "Hello. Change your shoes", "OK", "Good, what's your name? I'm Emma".

If I overheard other people having our conversations I'd shake my head dismissively and coolly leave the room - we spend entire evenings chatting on the phone, saying not very much about anything, but taking the Ss out of everything we ay, (Jeu Chrit upertar, The Penninular War, ing a ong of ixpence), randomly using trigger words to set off the FBI phone taps, having the ritual conversation about Simon Cowell, Simon Callow, Matthew and Harry Corbett that makes us laugh so much that we can barely breathe enough to splutter out the last line, "What's that you say, Sooty?".

We don't like the same music, TV programmes or films or books, or fancy the same people (well, Brad used to be a given before he went off with Angelina) or have the same politics or moral values or similar experiences or expectations of life, and, apart from Phoenix Nights, the same things don't make us laugh. But we can easily spend 5 hours on the phone or 3 weeks sharing a hotel room without a cross word or a moment's uncomfortable silence.

Every year or so we meet up to go on holiday together. This evening I was looking at some of the photos we've taken in various places and there seems to be a disproportionate number of pictures of private investigators' offices.

And, signs.

Life as cure for broken hearts and dead souls

Yesterday I had lunch with an ex-colleague, who, since we became ex-s, has become a friend. She's a wonderful woman who lives life to the full more than almost anyone else I know. She did more last week than I've done since 2002. This weekend for instance she's off with her family and friends to Sea Bangor 2007, a maritime festival in Northern Ireland. They'll dress, painstakingly authentically, as pirates, re-enact some pirating on real tall ships using actual cannons and generally have a good time. Last weekend she played viola in an orchestra visit to the Isle of Coll, (Inner Hebridean island), next week it's a dance workshop in preparation for a Regency themed ball, after throwing a barbeque for some visiting Russian friends and taking her son to auditions for Junior Mastermind. And running her own very successful translation service.

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I'm exhausted just typing it. How do people become such wonderfully free spirits that they can let go of their lives so easily in order to live them so fully? It's made me think about how tightly I've been holding on to the details of my life in recent years.

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Nick reminded me of the Unbearable Lightness of Being. The gist, for me, being that life has no value, weight or meaning other than that which we construct or accept for it ourselves.

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So, in the spirit of living a bit more freely I've accepted her invitation to a commemoration of the 1745 Battle of Prestonpans at Holyrood, Edinburgh in September. I have to make a dress from a contemporary pattern and materials, learn to dance a la mode and get into character as a comely whore (don't know which'll be the most taxing). Two days of partying and carousing and being on display, meeting new people and generally letting go.

.

I've never done anything like this before and I already feel inspired to try more and more new things until I start to forget to remember to hold onto the life I have and to live the life I could have if I let myself, again.

Dream a little dream

For 12 weeks a year I get fantastic full-colour film quality dreams.

This week (Bye then!) I was in a boat without sails going round in circles planning to sail around the UK and wondering whether to (Yup, OK seeya, call ya soon) head off northwards, or to go down the West side first then save rounding the top till, (ciao bella) till the end.

Then I got out of the boat and was standing in the harbour and this enormous whale erupted from the water and just kept on rising higher and higher till it was as big as the hill behind it. I was afeared that when it crashed back down all the water would empty out of the bay. As it began to sink down I could see the water coming in slow motion so I turned my back on it, hunched my shoulders and put my hood up. But when it came it wasn't too bad after all.

Then I had (oo just you and me, then?) a round black box in my left hand and I had to open it up and shake out all the crabs of different sizes that had been splashed out of the water. The biggest (bye?) fell on its back and I had to turn it over so it could scuttle away. Hum. Um.

The next night I took a trip back to the place where I grew up .....

PS:Chris van Nus are you avoiding me?!

Which department? Lost and Stolen, please. Hello, you've lost or stolen my money and I'd like it back.

'We're very busy at the moment.....We're experiencing excess levels of busyness just now.....We're inundated with unexpected levels of business.....No time to talk, busy busy busy.'

I DON'T CARE. I'd just like my life-savings back, please.

Went to my favourite Building Society in April to ask about moving my savings from another bank to them.

Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy, smoke me a kipper It'll be done by breakfast they said. Well, to be fair they said it would take a couple of weeks. I filled in the forms there and then and came home feeling very pleased with myself - modern women in control of her own finances, chasing the interest rate dragon and catching the financial tiger by the tail.

Two weeks later a letter from the old bank arrives to say my account is closed and a cheque has been sent to the new Building Society.

Great, no problemo methinks. (Did think, do they actually really still send physical paper cheques through the post? They do, apparently. How quaint.)

Waited another couple of weeks for paperwork from new place to arrive, but it didn't. Called in to local branch who chased it up and said they had not trace of it. At all. I walked at a somewhat brisk pace over to the branch of the old Bank and asked them for confirmation that it had been 'put in the post'. It had, nothing more they could do. Although, they did do nothing very helpfully and politely.

Fleet o' foot back to the new building society - they'd need to try to trace the cheque, could I go back to the old bank and find out when they'd posted it, what the exact amount was and get the cheque number? Please?

"Why don't I just sit here in your nice comfortable offices and you phone them and get all the info you need while I wait?"

So we did. They found the cheque. Hurrah! But, it was in a backlog pile as high as a kite and they were very very busy and they'd get round to processing it in due course and I'd have to be patient and not make a fuss otherwise it might go back to the bottom of the pile again. Really. No, not really, but maybe. "Come back in 5-7 working days." 9 workings days later it's still in the 'to be processed pile'.

Am turning lime and moss and sage and jade and my clothes are bursting at the seams, "I want my money, I want my money" "Be patient we are very busy" "That's not my problem, (only as it turns out, it is, but still), I just want my money. I've been waiting 5 weeks"

OO it makes me so mad that they make millions, billions, caerphillions in profit but won't spend a few thousand on a temp or two to help catch up with the backlog. When I started complaining directly to Head Office one of the operators agreed that the processing staff were equally pissed off for exactly that reason. And racking up a series of complaints from the "plenty of customers in your position".

After being a patient, reasonable, polite and good girl and getting nowhere I got quite short, and grumpy, cross and rude and got somewhere. We have a Deadline for Action agreed.

I need a chunk of the cash for a professional course that I have pay for NOW, and if I miss the deadline, the next session is 2008. Obviously I can sue for loss of earnings which will be way more than these savings, but how will I value the lost year of professional experience that I can't experience until I've completed this course? Maybe I should hope they don't make the 4.45pm Monday deadline we've agreed for sorting this out. I could take a couple of years off to explore the desert regions of the world and ride to Petra on horseback, camp out beneath the stars on the Steppes, go Walkabout or open a small beer shack / tea room / strip joint / bookstore / tattoo parlour on the edge of the Mohave.

Damn their possible efficiency in the nick of time.

Roflmao funny

Don't know where these came from originally, but to me via Jax (thanks)

"These are metaphors from actual GCSE (school exam, usually taken at 16yrs) essays...

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19 p.m.at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr.on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP, Leader of the House of Commons, in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.

She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall."

Rapture

From the Crockatt and Powell Bookshop blogspot: Tuesday, June 05, 2007, via "(thanks Marie for the link)" originally designd by QuizFarm.com, (breath), and inspired by various Facebook rantings, selected responses to Tim Footman's Comment is Free, Ian Paisley Junior at Nick here and now, godhatesfags (UK version)

What kind of atheist are you?

Agnostic 83% Apathetic Atheist 75% Spiritual Atheist 67% Scientific Atheist 58% Theist 33% Militant Atheist 25% Angry Atheist 25%

Hubristic 100%.

"You scored as Agnostic, Agnostics consider the possibility that they may be wrong about God's existence, no matter which side of the fence they stand on. Always willing to evaluate objectively the most ridiculous proof, nevertheless, these guys are skeptics to the Nth degree."

They had me at Hello, but then just kept on talking.

e by gum

Walked into my kitchen this afternoon, door to the garden wide open, sun shinning happily in the sky. Picked up Sunday's paper and today's junk mail and stepped outside to Blue Bin them.

I could hear the beat of Ickythump, the fab new White Stripes single, playing on next door's radio.....dum, dumdumdumdum, dum dum, dum, dumdumdumdum, dum dum......

Walked back into the kitchen humming.......la, lalalala, la la.....

Next door neighbour comes out into his garden whistling......whoo, whoowhoowhoowhoo, whoo whoo......

Just one of those lovely moments

I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear

Just lost half my blog. Much 'hilarity' and swearing crimes against humanity later.....

Lord Justice Richards has been charged with exposing himself in public on commuter trains. Wonder if he'll use the Pickles defence. Having been the flashee on a number of occasions, can I just say that unless I approach you, shake you warmly by the hand and ask, "Please will you show me your genitals in a public place?", I'm not asking for it.

Badges of honour go to -

The man who lived in the house behind ours whose garden backed onto ours - from the window of his daughters' bedroom. Not once but several times. He'd just appear naked, up close to the window and fiddle away.

I used to gaze out of the window as a young teenager, the first time made me cry. Then I'd just leave till he went away. One night I had 2 friends over and I waited alone, as bait, then they popped out at the opportune moment. He never showed after that.

At the tome I had no cognisance at all of the wider implications. The man next door to him did it once or twice, too. But by that stage I was older and bored more easily.

Walking in high heels and a wraparound pencil skirt along the banks of the canal at night (so, yes, asking-for-it) when I first got to Uni. He walked alongside me and provided a running soundtrack while I kept my eyes front and played cool and unaffected.

Beneath my balcony on holiday at sunset. Twas so romantic, post-modern serenading. Again it was all my fault for gazing out over the seascape and not noticing him going at it 12' below. Tut.

Walking across another Uni campus with a new friend, a group of teenage boys get them out and push us against a wall and fondle us, till I slap one and tell them to step back from the Mad Kick Boxer Lady. The worst thing about that was that the other girl was devastated and said nothing like that had ever happened to her before. I felt guilty, as though my walking boots, jeans and kagool were silently signalling asking-for-it without my awareness.

In my late twenties, and finally well educated in the ways of man, and woman, a young shaver, no more than 14, performs with gusto "you want me dontcha? you want this, love? d'ya wanna suck me? come 'ere, come 'ere" Hmm. Think I said something like "You'll catch your death of cold out there, son". Not brilliant, but I am not going to agonise over the quality of my Flasher put downs any more. It was suburban tea-time on a fairly main residential street with houses well set back from the road, long driveways, he was just inside a gateway.

How grateful was I when a stranger approached me on a platform with a small bunch of flowers? Even when he explained that his girlfriend hadn't turned up so that meant she was never coming back, so I might as well have them. It was still an improvement.