Pip Says

ninjahedgehog asked: I have two questions: 1) Did you ring the mobile number? I could have/may have some fun with that and 2) How, oh how did you find that picture again??

Hello darling, no they wouldn’t answer after my last email but feel free to have as much fun as you like with it, personally I wrote it on a few suspect toilet cubicles. Do let me know if they pick up. xxx

How to deal with Scams: Fight bullshit with bullshit.

Now darlings, who would like to come forward and admit to falling for the various interweb scams that curse our inboxes on a seemingly hourly basis. I thought not. There must be some of you though who haven’t quite adapted to the Skynet-is-on-the-horizon digital age and believe they really have won the Spanish lottery they don’t remember entering. Surely though it is safe to assume that if you are on tumblr most of you have reasonable grasp of the world wide web and are probably posey, media darlings fannying around with a macchiato to boot. 

 Spare a thought for the less digitally competent for a moment, yes I understand this is breaking a habit of a lifetime dear narcissists’, as these scams do continue to dupe people less accustomed to living out their entire life on the internet. During a routine flat hunt on Gumtree, I found one flat seemingly too good to be true, still, ever the delusional optimist I decided to enquire. What ended up occurring was that I had found the most laughable scammers this side of Craiglist, so being somewhat of a chronic piss taker, I decided to have a little fun with it. Hell, I even decided to throw in a pretend life partner seeing as we are currently residing in the land of make believe and kids, he is bang tidy. Word.

 This is the first response I received to my flat enquiry from ‘Cindy’.

 From: cindy.water@live.com
To: misspip@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff

Thanks for the reply and the sincere interest you have in my flat. I spoke with my lawyer on phone just now concerning your stay in my flat and we both agreed to have you in my flat as long as you’ll take good care of my flat as how it is. However, it is unfortunate that my past bitter experience of inviting people to come and view or reserve my flat without any form of confirmation of their financial ability and not keeping up to time as at when scheduled, has brought about great loss to me. I have traveled all the way from Ireland to take some interested candidates round my flat because that’s where i work with M. Gould (Scunthorpe) Ltd.

Some outside tenants do not have the money to pay the rent and yet they disturb the landlord to arrange a viewing with their friend or relative who are in Cardiff, also some do not meet up with the appointments which has led to the dismissal of some landlords in office by their employers.

Henceforth, my lawyer and i have decided to carry out a simple test on financial ability to pay for my rent before coming for viewing. I would not ask you to send your bank statement. At least 1 month rent and security deposit which is £ 400 which is refundable after your 1 month stay in my flat, would be required from you to transfer through Western union money transfer agent to your trusted friend or relative in UK premises.

Once you have done this, scan the receipt to me and if you do not have scanner, you may write out the details on the receipt as i will send it to my lawyer to verify if it’s truly genuine and available in your friend’s custody, after verification, then we can proceed for the viewing and you can as well tell your friend or partner to pick up the money and also, i will refund back to you the cost of transfer when we meet.

I look forward to reading from you soon.

Regards
Mr/Mrs Water

Now, Cindy love this is the oldest Western union scam in the world cup cake, where is the originality, the creative flair? This is just lazy scamming darling; i’ve read more convincing Tory candidate manifestos. Below is my first response to these jokers.

 
From: misspip@hotmail.com
To: cindy.water@live.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff


Dearest Cindy,

Many thanks for your response. I am sorry to hear of your plight concerning people’s financial dishonesty (people can be such scammers right?) How very interesting that you work for M.Gould, I told my partner about this, as I informed him that we would have very respectable landlords for a change but instead of gratitude he is once again finding something to complain about and he started being a whiney little bitch that he couldn’t find an Ireland office for M.Gould. The tiresome idiot even went to the trouble of phoning them up bless him, he is ever so paranoid and was informed that they have no Ireland office and indeed no employee under the name Cindy Water, I assured the company obviously that this must be some sort of mistake and gave them your email address in order to sort the matter out. I’m sorry to say your employers seem most incompetent if they can’t even recognise an employee’s name for the love of Christ.

Of course we will comply with your request for a bank statement and deposit, yet again my other half insisted on passing this email on to our lawyers to make sure things are done on the straight and narrow and our lawyer had the audacity to suggest that this was a fraudulent email and not to provide any personal information, as in his word’s “No landlord would expect a deposit to be paid without a tenant even seeing the property.” The cheek of the man! I informed him that it must be a real email and a real flat as you had attached a very nice picture of you and your frankly rather scumptious husband. I certainly don’t pay my lawyer to think for god sake, I am intelligent enough to spot a scam.

My idiot lawyer it seems is just as paranoid as my partner as he contacted the cyber crimes unit and their clearly deranged head of department has informed me that he is tracking the IP of your email address. I demanded that the police stop their pointless investigation and pointed out that you are a sincere landlord and had even sent me pictures of the property and therefore it could not possibly be a scam, gosh the filth are so willing to assume that everyone’s a criminal, it saddens my Christian heart I’ll tell you.

In order to put my partner’s tragically simple mind at rest could we have your lawyer’s contact details so that he can speak to him and stop this incessant whining, at least till he is distracted by some high definition midget porn.

Kind regards,

Pip


Poor Cindy seems oblivious that I am taking the piss somewhat and even responds to me, the poor lamb.

 From: cindy.water@live.com

To: misspip@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff

Thanks for getting back to me. I wouldn’t want you to get me wrong, the idea of making a confirmation of your financial ability is not only my idea, my lawyer and i decided to use that process and i can’t violate my lawyer procedure. I am a God fearing woman and i am not after your money. I have my own work and i earn enough money for my family and also to help the less privilege.

However, i didn’t want to collect any money from you as long as you have not sign a contract neither have i taken you round my flat. All what i request of you is to transfer the deposit to someone close to you through Western union money transfer agent , once you’ve done that, you get back to me with a scan copy of the transfer receipt so that i can forward it to my lawyer to confirm if the transfer is valid.

After the confirmation might have been made by my lawyer, i will ask you to tell you friend to pick up the money and schedule a convenient day for the viewing. If eventually you don’t want to proceed with the rent, i promise to return the cost of the transfer without any deduction.You can call my husband for further discussion +447031824567

I look forward to reading from you soon.
Regards
Mr/Mrs Water

Ok, so dumplings guess who turns up in a Google images search? Our friend Cindy and her beloved. On a Sperm Donor’s website in America no less. Smooth Here is my final reply, as you know, I have a job and shit.

From: misspip@hotmail.com
To: cindy.water@live.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff

Dear Cindy,

Of course you are honest, I myself am I very good judge of character, I am also a righteous woman of god and can totally empathise. In fact my most favourite verse is Matthew 8:28-34
“When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

I thought it sort of sounded like hooded youths of biblical times getting their ruddy arses kicked my god almighty. I love how god is all loving and forgiving and shit yet can also be badass when he needs to bring the smack down, don’t you?

Anyway I digress; of course your solicitor is only doing his job. I did try and explain this to my solicitor who is quite adamant that he wants the name of your solicitor, his firm’s name and his contact number as he is still bloody adamant that you are a con artist and that getting myself to transfer money to a friend’s account though a Western Union agent is “absurd” and that you would use the information given to somehow rob me of all my money. He said that’s how “criminals” work. How outrageous and slanderous I told him, of course your not criminals, criminals don’t use Gumtree, it’s a website for nice people selling broken TV’s and offering “night time hours only” type jobs.

The swine even went as far as to suggest that you would not keep your promise to return my hard earned money and the poor deluded fellow said that “business transactions are not founded on promises from people you have only dealt with via email.” What a suspicious bellend, what an awful thing to say, of course you would return my money , as you clearly stated you are not after my money and I always believe everything strangers tell me in emails, if it’s on the internet than it must be true. It’s the internet for Christ sake.

To be honest my sanctimonious partner has not helped matters, he is in cahoots with the damn solicitor and continues in his paranoia bless his wretched soul. In fact do you know he was on Google last night and found the picture of you and your husband that you had so kindly emailed us, on the Internet. I said well that’s marvelous, obviously our prospective landlords are very important people to turn up in a Google images search. He became quite hysterical and showed me that your picture was on a sperm donors website in America, in fact here is the link http://www.spermdonorsinc.com/Couples.html

My other half seemed to believe that you had just copied this picture from this website and were fraudulently using it as part of some elaborate email scam. I assured him that you were just a nice well-travelled, probably infertile couple who obviously were on the lookout for some high quality sperm and there was nothing to worry about. There is nothing shameful in that, in fact I think you were most brave in putting your picture on a sperm donors website, that takes gumption my friend. Something my partner and idiot solicitor are obviously lacking.

To put my partner’s deluded mind at rest I once again respectfully request that you send your lawyer’s name, his firm and contact details so that my solicitor can speak to him. My rude solicitor keeps saying he doesn’t wish to ring your “thieving, scamming make-believe husband” on a mobile number and is requesting contact details for your lawyer. Also those insufferable douchebags at the cyber crime investigation unit have taken the number you kindly provided, not to worry though I’m sure they will give up when I send them a picture of you and your husband on a sperm donors website proving you are in fact a real couple. Your picture is on the Internet for the love of baby Jesus, how could you not be a real couple? I sometimes think the country is going to the wall with such a paranoid and deluded police force.
Kind regards,

Pip

Sadly ‘Cindy’ failed to respond, but hopefully this will serve as a warning sugarplums. If it is too good to be true, then it definitely, probably is. So don’t fall for scams kids, stick to porn. You know where you are with porn.

‘Cindy’ and Husband. Original picture is on http://www.spermdonorsinc.com/Couples.html

Debenhams, allow me to explain my fury.

Dear Debenhams,

 I am writing to you to express my utter contempt for your pitiful organisation. Let me explain my fury. I made the unwise decision to sign up for a Debenhams store card several months ago to take advantage of some offers you were running at the time especially for the chosen ones i.e. The Debenhams card holders.

 Your seventeen-year-old sales girl signed me up with the usual disinterested glaze of a teenager desperate to finish work and start downing tequilas in Vodka Revolution. I walked away smug, swinging my carrier bags safe in the knowledge that I would pay off a certain amount every month as long as the zero per cent interest offer lasted and thus not incur your hideous APR charges that if left unpaid would probably equal the amount of the UK’s national debt.

 What I was not expecting Debenhams, was having the simple task of paying one’s card turned into a ridiculous farce whereby any attempt on my part to pay off the balance was denied by your good selves and the resulting conversations with your call centre staff regarding this matter, representative of a piss poor sitcom, somewhere in the region of “How I met your mother”, only more shit.

 Upon discovering I could not pay my balance I was told by some nuclear orange coloured sales girl in your Cardiff store that it was “nothing to do with Debenhams you’ll have to call the helpline yeah?” I of course was surprised to learn that a Debenhams store card has nothing to do with Debenhams. I of course being a responsible consumer I thought it appropriate to immediately inform the ‘duty manager’ at Debenhams that day that his staff were peddling a store card that apparently had nothing to do with said store.  The duty manager far from being overwhelmed with gratitude gave the sort of world-weary response of a retail worker that has scrapped an NVQ in ‘customer care’ and whose only hope of progression involved tossing off the fat regional manager in the back of the delivery bay. He informed me with a look of mild hopelessness, “Yeah I know, it’s shit isn’t it?”

 I was advised to call your call centre at a ludicrous personal cost to me in order to resolve the matter as apparently there is no other conceivable way of contacting Debenhams, oh wait not Debenhams, as the card has nothing to do with them, so in actual fact I had to contact some unknown entity regarding my Debenhams card. After almost 25 minutes of unbearable trumpet music I was put through to none other than an Indian call centre, so it would seem that my Debenhams card has nothing to do with Debenhams but a lot to do with Bangalore.

 Please don’t confuse my all consuming hatred for your inadequate call centre staff with casual racism, I am a Guardian reading, latte drinking liberal and have nothing personally against an Indian workforce, but I am sure if the roles were reversed and an Indian national were to phone an Indian retailer and get put through to let’s say Kerry Katona, they too would surely despair and quite possibly strangle themselves with the phone line. 

After being reassured by someone 4000 miles away that my call was of great importance to them and that I should now be able to make online payments to my store card, I found that oh shock horror, nothing had been sorted at all, it’s almost as if someone thousands of miles away, sitting in a 38 degree un-air conditioned shack on the equivalent of 3 pence a day doesn’t give a tiny rat’s ass about my ability to manage my store card online.

 And so Debenhams the next few months basically involves me repeatedly attempting to pay off my card online, being denied access with no explanation, then having to phone Mumbai, being fobbed off by disinterested foreigners and then having to get a bus to a wretched Debenhams to pay a payment in store even though the card has nothing to do with Debenhams.

Only this month I could not get to Debenhams as I have an impracticality known to most of us as a ‘job’ that prevents me from making unnecessary trips to department stores. Imagine my disgust when I was then charged a £12 ‘late payment fee’ due to your damned website, as if I was some common catalogue crazed fishwife whore who just had to get the latest Nikey trainers for Braydon in order to keep up with that Charmaine next door who has a pair of Uggs and a flatscreen.

 Your call centre staff were of course most unhelpful when I called to demand a refund of the £12 and any request to speak to a supervisor resulted in an almost immediate loss of fluency in English and then a prompt disconnection. Clearly relocating customer services overseas has been an unprecedented success.

So what now Debenhams? I think you’ll find that I have paid off the card in its entirety, the card has been melted in the microwave and I shall be taking my custom elsewhere, in fact across the street from my local Debenhams and straight through the doors of BHS. You know where you are with BHS, sure it’s a bit mumsy with it’s emerald greet cardigans but you know what, they just seem to employ a slightly better class of cretins that yourselves.

Yours unfaithfully,

Pip

Warning! Facebook may induce severe narcissism

Sugarplums I realised today that I had finally been indoctrinated into the new world order when it dawned on me that I was talking to someone on Facebook about our current Skype conversation that was taking place, whilst texing another friend about “that bitch on Twitter”. So traumatizing was this realisation I had to locate the emergency Hungarian Ouzo I had been saving for such a digital meltdown. I realise once again I am raving.

I am of course raving about how I have come to live my life through the damned book of face, which is exactly what that smug, shit bag overlord Zuckerberg wanted. I ‘like’, poke, update and I stalk my poor unsuspecting friends like a sinister, digital peeping tom gleefully picking through the wreckage of your car crash life.

Now don’t get any ideas above your station. Most of you are boring. With your sanitised “just had a lush sandwich” pithy updates, that is if I haven’t already unsubscribed from your yawn-a-minute mundaity. What I love more than anything is the textbook narcissists’ who live out their endless dramas via Facebook.

 Everyone has them on their friend’s list and if you don’t, chances are it’s you.  The shameless, the desperate, the spurned exes and the down right mentalists. You provide me with hours of entertainment with your relationship nuclear fallouts, bitching, backstabbing, gossip, outright contempt and passive aggressive updates. Oh I could literally spend until the end of time drinking neat vodka and pissing myself silly over it. 

 I’m not sure what depths of the human psyche are plunged when writing, “As far as I’m concerned you’re just another picture to burn LMAO”. Why make this shit public? I mean, surely nothing says “I am over you” like a burning bag of dog shit on a doorstep. Where is the creativity? Where is the conviction? If you have issues to sort out, here’s a novel idea, do it face-to-face retard. Actually don’t, if you all stopped living out your soap opera online, that’s like my week nights gone, hell I might have to like, go outside and stuff.

 Over the years I have seen marriages spectacularly hit the wall, people spew bile over their so-called friends, enough passive aggressive won’t-mention-any-names psychotic babble, incorrectly spelt threats of violence and the fucking absurd, “Just went to fart in the dog’s face and shat myself”. I myself am in awe of human behaviour as it is, but Facebook is a different keyboard warrior level of insanity all together. Remember dumplings, vague, passive aggressive status updates do not replace the intensive therapy sessions you clearly require.

 Of course the flip side to the drama kids are those schooled in the Alastair Campbell style of online spin doctor, so terrified of appearing to have anything remotely like a personality they will do just about anything to avoid damage to brand ‘me’. These are the dullards who I assume only let something go to digital print if it’s been signed off by the dark lord himself. The first rule of online PR of course darlings is to promptly untag yourself from unsavoury ‘Misbehaviour Wednesday @ Oceana’ pictures, post only tedious updates about your dog/cat/screaming infant/love of Jesus. You can even go to the extraordinary lengths of hiding the fact you are in a relationship lest your significant other posts that unflattering picture of you that time after the darts, face down on the kitchen floor covered in your own vomit. Relationships are all about damage control these days’ dears. I would go as far as to unfriend your wife to err on the side of caution if I were you, bitches be crazy and all that.

The sanitary status brigade obviously are no where near as much fun though, I certainly don’t log on for your whiter than white bullcrap, I’m here for the “Gemma went from being married into an open relationship” or my all time favourite, “Gave a guy a hand job for a bacon and egg McMuffin, does that make me a whore?”

 Whilst I do enjoy the freak show enormously, it’s not such a laugh when you weirdos try and involve me in your circus. Don’t drag me into your online shit storms, darling I am merely a spectator, I will fling feces, but not on the interwebs. Call me old fashioned but piss me off and I would rather slap you silly than pen “Bitches you don’t know what I’m made off, you know who you are” Or other such moronic drivel. That’s just how I roll. I don’t want to be a holier than thou pissant, but don’t live out your dime a dozen psychotic episodes on my wall please, I in no way want to be associated with your special brand of mental, some of us have an image to maintain and shit.

 *After all Pip’s friends sued her for ‘deformation of character’ Pip deleted her Facebook and can be found living in a bin by the Gabalfa interchange trying to teach rats how to dance the Charleston*

Job Specification: No personality required

I never thought I’d be the one to say it, but never work with kids if you want to keep some semblance of privacy and indeed free speech. No, darlings I haven’t been at the gin again, I am talking about the tragic state of affairs that has befallen common sense. Let me not open another bottle of gin and explain.

 A friend of mine has had numerous run-ins as it were with ‘the man’ for daring to have a personality and life out of the work place. Now I realise for some of you this is a frightening new concept so I’ll try and explain my blue sky thinking as if I was speaking to a confused toddler.

 When I, or indeed anyone else, are not working we should be free within the obvious limits of the law and a healthy dose of common sense, be allowed to think, act and behave as we wish. A simple idea, but in this bat shit crazy new world order it is not as straightforward as you might hope. 

 My friend who happens to work with young people, has fallen foul of his employer’s hysterical over reaction to ‘safeguarding the children from the nasty predatory adults’ on several occasions, for what I consider to be non issues. Friend in question has simply written blog posts and has twitter updates, which may be contradictory from the ‘we all live in a yellow submarine’ image his employers wish to project. They are not sexist, racist, ageist or any other ‘ism’ you or Amnesty can conjure up. He simply has opinions that may or may not offend/defame/upset his employers, or bizarrely any children he works with which may or may not Google him one day because they have literally run out of shit to do. He is no threat to your little darlings other than he may hold a viewpoint that may differ from little Jimmy’s wide-eyed Narnia-like imagining of the world. Well Jimmy, it’s time to wake up to the big bad world, this shit is gonna get real.

 I realise I may not be entirely making sense, but the ironic thing is I can’t really go into details for fear that I may land said friend into yet more trouble as his employers appear to be currently using 1984 as a handbook. What I can tell you is that these particular blog posts and musings were over 6 months old; kids this means that employers were actively looking for something to be offended by. That’s right, We now live in a world where employers will look you up with the intention of smacking you the shit down if you dare deviate away from the staff manual at any times.

 I know what you are thinking, ‘Holy bargain booze Batman, I better Google myself and see what shit I have to bury before my employer realizes I’m like an actual person and shit.’ Darlings I fear unless you are willing to sell a portion of your soul to Lucifer in exchange for the services of Max Clifford, I suspect it is already too late.  Disturbing reports have reached this writer’s ears that employers, too lazy or retarded to Google you, are simply now just asking for your Facebook/Twitter login and password. That’s right, Your grim, weasel faced line manager wants to see pictures of you that time you vomited all down your see through New Look dress and your so called friends decided to write “I am a penis” on your face before tagging you in 148 photos in an album entitled “Wasted LMFAO”.

Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m screwed. Don’t think anyone will look too kindly on the “Tenerife Massive 2010” album where we thought it would be hilarious to have a yogurt photoshoot at 4am. Don’t ask.

 The point that employers are spectacularly missing is that what I do outside of work, within reason, should have no bearing on me as an employee. I have an amoeba like ability to split into two Pip’s, there is sensible, hardworking, ‘responsible Pip’ who takes her job super duper seriously, then there is the more fun ‘weekend Pip’, who hid her bra in a pub and made her friends, and the not so amused bar staff, have a ‘scavenger hunt’ for said bra. Did I do this in work time? No. Does this bring down the reputation of future employers? No. Does this make me any less of a hardworking employee, when I’m actually in bloody work? No.

 I am fortunate enough to operate under the radar by not posting/blogging/bitching under my real name beyond Facebook in the outer rim of the interwebs, therefore avoiding detection by ready-to-be-offended potential employers.  I realise that in many ways this is somewhat cowardly on my part, I should stand proudly by my drunken, incoherent rants. Sadly my little chickadees this isn’t the world we live in as I have been assured by the many pointless and coma-inducing trainings and meetings I attend, all designed to strike the fear of Thor into anyone who dares post a upside -down pole-dancing-in-Oceana picture on Facey B.

I value the work I do and therefore bitterly comply with da rulez as such, as well you know, a girl’s gotta eat right? My middle finger to the man is in posting regular bitch fests under a pseudo name, like some mad, blonde, babbling underground resistance of one.

 So, in the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, what the fuck is up with this shit then? Well, the only possibly solution I fear is to delete your entire Facebook, deactive your Twitter, Tumblr, Linked in, Google+ and any other outlet where you might express a slither of independent thought or shade of personality not cleared by management, in fact to be on the safe side you should probably staple your face shut and be done with it. 

*Shortly after this piece was written Pip went underground and can defiantly not be found in hiding in the local coffee shop drinking latte and throwing suggestive looks at the staff*

Pip vs Halfords: Give me my dream pink bike or else!

Those who know me know I care not for retailers. Especially not retailers who fail on promises to deliver dream pink bikes.

Dear Halfords,

I am writing to you as your levels of customer service have reached breath taking new lows, if that was at all possible. Clearly I am having a mental health crisis as I thought it a sound decision to purchase a bike from your good selves after being reassured by the power of advertising that you are somehow experts in all things bike.

This obviously was my first error. I went to your store to enquire about bikes. The staff though seemingly sleepwalking in store, reminiscent of ‘Night of the Living Dead’, seemed pleasant enough despite being a bit vacant in the way most overworked, underpaid retail staff are and the young man who helped me choose a bike answered my questions to a reasonably satisfactory level. So perhaps I had made the right choice after all and I reserved a bike in store to be picked up at a later date.

With the bike ordered I was assured by a Halfords staff member that I would receive a call from Halfords to inform me when the bike was ready. A few days went past with no phone call, so as a naïve consumer I could only deduce that extra care and attention was being put into building my dream pink bike and that I would be contacted in due course.

However, patience obviously is not a virtue and I found myself ringing up to enquire about my purchase.

A rather harried man answered the phone in the somewhat dramatic manner of a junior doctor who is exhausted after a 17 hour A&E shift, not a middle aged man who has sold car air fresheners all day. This rather impatient man seemed to imagine he was talking to a retarded person and spoke to me r a t h e r   s l o w l y as if he were somehow afraid my medication would wear off any moment. I do not appreciate being addressed in the same manner as an unstable outpatient, especially when trying to establish when a bike is available for collection, surely a reasonable request?

I explained that I had been informed that I would receive a phone call when my bike was ready at which your staff member seemed incredulous at the very suggestion. “ Neither myself or any of my staff would have said that”. Now, I’m not sure how high up the Halfords management level this fellow is and how decorated with NVQ’s he might be, but I thought you should be aware he claims to speak for the entire Halfords staff team as if they are all some sort of pre programmed robotic entities, incapable of independent thought or deviating away from the Halfords staff handbook. Further more, he sternly reminded me that collecting my bike on the “right day” was a “legally binding contract” and presumably by the tone of his voice, not adhering to this watertight legal requirement was going to have some serious implications. Evidently someone has watched to many re runs of LA Law.

Funnily enough I do not relish the implication that I am a fantasist and firmly informed the overlord of Halfords that this conversation had indeed taken place and I described the young man who had promised me the phone call. Far from being full of remorse at his condemnation of a customer, his astonishing response was “oh you must have spoken to the work experience boy”. I’m afraid you will have to narrow that down massively as the vast majority of staff look like seventeen year old gormless ‘work experience boys’, who slowly shift their sorry selves around the shop floor, resigned to a life in retail after failing every GCSE except RE.

I wonder if this work experience boy even realises he is probably accountable for a multitude of customer service sins. I imagine it’s probably a company policy in the manual. “If in doubt blame any error, customer service failure or gross misconduct on the work experience kid”. I wonder if they are even allowed names?

After hastily being told I could pick my bike up anytime and a prompt disconnection, I felt compelled to inform the powers that be that as soon as my bike is collected that Halfords can expect themselves to be on my list of retailers whose services I no longer require.

Not so kind regards,

Pip

Travel-induced-schizophrenia. It’s a real condition. Probably.

Like all the best things in life, it began in a bar. My love affair with travelling that is, not my love of all things vodka based. If my memory serves me right, I was 16 at a holiday campsite in France, probably eyeing up the blonde lifeguard and the scruffy, pissed, Geordie barman was discussing quitting his job in the Haven holiday park bar and moving to Norway to pick fruit or something equally as ridiculous. 

My adolescent ears pricked up and attention was diverted from blondie flexing his biceps, how on earth can you just up sticks and move to bloody Norway I thought? Adults are supposed to do something shit with spread sheets and get married to someone they can barely tolerate, so the story goes. This adult, if you could call him that, appeared devoid of any responsibilities, worries and indeed a hairbrush. Kids, this is how I met my friend Greg, one summer in a holiday camp bar in France, a piss head, travelling, Geordie barman became my hero and everything I wanted to be.

Travel, meeting new people and having new experiences and a lot of Jack Daniels was the way to happiness Greg assured me, probably after 12 pints. “No one ever said, I wish I spent more time in the office on their deathbed”, was his favourite mantra. Over the past 11 years I have seen Greg travel to countless countries, work abroad, come back, live in a Caravan, buy a bar in Spain, consider selling the bar, plan to walk to Rome, abandon that plan, try to persuade me sneak aboard the Orient Express, “We’ll just pretend to be foreign if they catch us”, and countless other ridiculous schemes and plans, always without a care, always with a smile.

Over the years, I have tried to catch up with Greg, I’ve worked abroad, travelled, come back, travelled again, caught Cholera, come home, been miserable, gone away again, come back, planned new escapes etc. The only difference between us is that something always pulls me back. Whereas Greg continues on, seemingly never looking back, I constantly look back, to the friends I miss, family I have and teenagers I work with as a youth worker. I feel confident now that I suffer from travel-induced-schizophrenic, which is a real condition, probably, and not something I made up after 12 Bacardi Breezers at all.

Travel schizophrenia, I explained confidently to bemused friends, happens because I lead an almost double existence. There is the Pip that wants to escape to foreign lands, jump into the Mekong river, chase a bear in Yosemite national park yelling “it’s Winnie the pooh”, get banned, for life no less, from a Thai strip club, jump the barriers in Gard du Nord station and be pursued by French Military Police. Then there is the Pip, who wants to be at home surrounded by her ridiculous friends, drinking Smirnoff out of a bicycle pump, having a tea towel dance competition and start a conga line in Revolution bar. Then there are my equally as amusing family, who never fail to be unfailingly blunt and honest on a wide variety of topics, including my hair, which my sister recently described as a “Nylon wig”.

I can never seem to reconcile the two of us though. When I am away, I think of home and the familiarity and security given to me by friends and family and when I’m home I can’t stop thinking about boarding the next flight out of here. I swear I’m going bat shit crazy with it all, it’s ruining my ability to make plans here, ‘in case I’m away’, it’s equally ruining my ability to go away, as I keep thinking ‘but I’ll miss Sian’s birthday’ or ‘the wine fair is in London that week’.

 Factor in the constant question of when I will “Settle down” from everyone and I’m frankly surprised I’m as normal as I am. To me, settling down right now feels a lot like giving up. There are so many places I haven’t seen, bars I haven’t been thrown out of, airports I haven’t slept in and it’s all out there, just in reach and yet not quite in my grasp. I think it’s the freedom I crave more than anything, the unashamed freedom of going where you like, doing what you like and answering to no one but the road. I can never be truly free though; I can’t seem to break the invisible bonds that tie me to the people I love and the places I cherish back home, to lose them I think would be to lose myself, or some cod shite philosophy bollocks like that.

 Whenever I feel to overwhelming urge to jet off again I remember that there is only so long you can keep taking the piss and buggering off before your loved ones tire of your constant need to be away. There are only so many travel snaps you can bore people with, Birthdays you can miss, and goodbyes you can have before people give up on you. I have somehow lucked out as I have fantastic, friends and family who have tolerated my travelling, and indeed my erratic behaviour, for years and I hope they continue to do so. Believe me, I need you far more than you need this small, blonde mentalist.

So what’s the answer? Truth is, I don’t really have one. Whether I’m home or away I feel like I’m living half a life. The rational part of me knows that these two states of being can’t really co-exist. I can’t be here and travelling carefree round South America for months on end. The more sensible friends I have ask, very fairly, why I can’t just “go on holiday” and be happy at that? An entirely reasonable question and yet anyone who has the damned travel bug knows you are never really satisfied with a 2 week holiday once a year, as inevitably means spending the remaining 50 weeks of the year not on holiday, mostly sulking drinking latte.

I have tried explaining how I feel to friends and family but fail miserably, mostly because I can’t really explain it to myself, let alone anyone else. It just feels like I’m always worried I’m missing something out there when I’m here and when I’m away, inevitably I’m always missing someone back home. So what now you ask? Well darling reader, at the moment I’m freelancing, picking and choosing when I work and hopefully this will give me the ability to split my time between being here and having my adventures. This isn’t as easy as it sounds and I’m still trying to work it all out. Because of the erratic nature of my life I’ve recently been accused of “avoiding life” but I don’t think it’s about avoidance, I think it’s about trying to live life how I choose and what makes me happy. I don’t have the constraints that others might, I don’t have a husband, a mortgage, kids, financial commitments, a normal life as such and the selfish part of me wants to keep living my life for me for as long as I am able to, or indeed until George Clooney comes to his senses. 

I guess in time I’ll figure it out, but for now I can mostly be found browsing STA Travel, defiantly not booking a flight. Honest.