Ring Ring, Bananaphone!

Today, I used a banana as a phone for the sake of the Alpro Deskfest competition.

I bet my phone is more ap-PEELING than yours.

Many thanks to my colleagues Anna and Kim, who helped me take the photo! As I was trying to prod the packet of cereal into place with my banana whilst taking a sip of my mega coffee before it got cold, Kim told me, 'Tash, you're quite possibly the most bonkers person I have ever met.'

Funnily enough, this isn't the first time someone's told me this.

Karma for the Adulterous

Today, I cheated on one of my favourite stores.

I'll give you a brief bit of background: it's no secret that I'm a Lush enthusiast, and I've even worked for them before. They have amazing-smelling stuff that works and great environmental ethics. The Body Shop used to be my go-to place for things like that, but I went off them ages ago when they stopped being colourful and funky and when they were bought by the more soulless L'Oreal. Yesterday I ran out of Lush's Dream Cream, which I've been using for years to keep my idiotically sensitive skin happy.

Yesterday also saw the country get a whole load of snow, making it a good idea to not drive out further than you have to: so no driving to Lush for me. 'No big deal', I hear you say, 'just wait until next week.' Well, I would- but when I say my skin is idiotically sensitive, I mean that if I don't take care of it, it turns my life into a living hell. So today I ventured into a nearby TBS, feeling weirdly like I was being unfaithful.

I've decided that what happened next was either pure karma for straying, or that I've actually been subconsciously programmed by Lush to sabotage any TBS store that I enter (sort of like how River from Firefly is programmed to go berserk when she hears a certain song).

The very first bottle I picked up, something like this happened:

Only instead of it being neat, it was noisy and chaotic and ended with me looking very sheepish, surrounded by a rainbow of bottles rolling around my feet. To add insult to injury, a sale placard landed squarely on my head as the two sales assistants doubled up with laughter.

I'm sorry Lush, I'll never stray again.

~Fin~

Short Stories: What Makes You Get Up in the Morning?

Everyone talks to themselves in their heads now and then. Don't tell me you never have- I'm onto you.

I'm not talking about full-blown conversations all day every day, or constant internal monologues: I'm talking about those moments when you do something (or don't), and a voice deep in the recesses of your mind- your voice- says something to you like 'oh, stop being so stupid.' Or something of the like. It depends on the situation. You might even mutter it under your breath to yourself.

I tend to find myself doing it most often when I'm exercising. 'Just do another five minutes and you've reached your target.' 'Don't forget to breath, idiot!' 'What are you, some kind of weakling? I said SKIP.' (I use a skipping rope to keep fit; it's a lot more hardcore than it sounds, trust me). This morning, however, I caught myself doing it to get myself out of bed when my alarm went off.

I don't usually have problems getting out of bed- it's getting fully conscious that's the issue- but the previous evening I'd done some calculations and research to find that it'll be quite a lot longer than I thought to get my own place, so I was a bit down because of that; I'd been worrying about a bunch of other things at the same time so I was down about those worries too; I dreamed about three people from my past whom I haven't thought about in a long time and will either probably or definitely never see again, which reminded me that I miss them... and to ice the cake, it was a bloody freezing morning and my bed was all nice and warm. So when the alarm went off, I mashed the off button with my first and lay there in a self-pitying stupor.

'Get up,' my brain instructed.

'No,' I said.

'Now, or you won't get any parking spaces at work,' said my brain.

'No,' I said.

'Quit being pathetic, your problems aren't problems. Get up!'

'No.'

And then my subconscious seemed to remember something crucial about me.

'You have that new apple crumble and custard cereal to try today.'

'Ooh, yum!' I got up straight away.

I could give you several answers to the question 'what makes you get up in the morning?' Apparently, this morning, it was breakfast.

~Fin~

Afterword: Seriously, this cereal has freeze-dried custard in it. Like how an astronaut might eat it. Space. Custard. How cool is that?

Trolled by a Packet of Sweets

Today I bought some Love Hearts from the vending machine at work. They're not exactly my favourite sweet in particular, but I was desperate for sugar, and Love Hearts were the cheapest things in the machine (saving up with the aim of moving into my own flat by autumn this year has made me a bit stingier with myself).

This was the first one I pulled out of the packet:

Er. What?

Feeling like a shameful druggie, I cracked open the entire packet to see what other messages there were; I found the usual 'Be Mine' and 'Call Me' and 'Sugar Lips' etc, but I also found this one, which I found amusingly sarcastic:

A sweet for the old married couple?

Hah! I do hope there are more 'demotivational' ones out there. Reminds me of the the time I found this guy sitting in crane claw arcade machine:

All the other bears had 'I Love You', so I dubbed him the Break Up Bear.