Pip Says

What Spam doll means to me - YouTube

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:10:38 +0100

You have read the blog. Now be horrified by the video.

You can't choose your family, but you can make a life size doll of your friend.

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:56:00 +0100

Now then my little dumplings, today’s ‘listen with mother’, is on the topic of ‘friwendship’. Yes, the notion makes me want to regurgitate my Chardonnay too. It seems that on this slow march towards death we need to acquire other human beings to share in the tedium that is often referred to as ‘life’ by the more optimistic.

It may surprise a few of you that I have managed to con people into being my ‘friwends’ now I know too much about them for them to ever entertain the notion of leaving me and so over the years a coalition of the insane has formed, with my and my chums bound together mostly from our school days, nostalgia and a vague notion of being responsible for each other, like a group of AA survivors.

They say the mentally disturbed always find each other and I like to believe our quirky bunch of social rejects holds this ideal true. This is indeed a group of people who upon running out of wine, decided it best to drive to Belgium to ‘pick some up’.

So what has sparked this meandering thought process? Well darlings I am currently having a mid life crisis and doing what all bourgeois libels do, travel to ‘find myself’. Turns out I can be found passed out in bars all over the world. And on this voyage of self discovery I have been carrying an A4 picture of my friend’s face. I realise you are probably sober reading this and might require some context. A few years ago our friend Spam met a girl, moved to America and married her. The official line is that we were so upset by his leaving that we made a life size doll of him, with his face on it, that we would take to parties and the like and tag in photos, so that somehow Spam was still a part of our group. I’ll give you a minute to digest that.

So tickled were we by our own hilarity that the bloody doll took on a life of it’s own. It had it’s own Facebook page, outfits and we had Spam masks for special occasions. For Spam’s wedding reception we even made a video about the doll we made of him interviewing friends, co-workers and bewildered civilians. Spam’s lovely wife watched with a look of unrestrained horror. I realise now this is how you in fact judge sanity, whether you accept a life size doll or not. This bat shit crazy phenomena grew and grew to include taking a picture of Spam wherever we went. So now ironically Spam’s face has been to Halong Bay in Vietnam twice, but the real Spam hasn’t.

And so this slow descent into madness has been going on for several years only now I find myself in the United States, with a Spam face in my bag on the way to meet the real Spam. I am travelling over 900 miles off route to give my friend his own face. This has clearly sparked some kind of ephiany, or perhaps an inevitable mental breakdown as I found myself in a jazz bar in New Orleans having a ‘what does it all mean?’ meltdown at 4am.

You see sugar lumps I always looked to the doll as a force higher than myself, the doll was a symbol of friendship, the glue that somehow held the madness together, that no matter what crap life threw at us, no matter what ridiculous situations we found ourselves in, we would all remain friends. So tightly have we held on to this belief that we have missed the obvious. It was never about Spam, this has been about our refusal to grow up and give reality a chance.

Our merry band of morons has always prided itself on being outside the mainstream, so giddy with our own ridiculousness, we refer to outsiders as ‘civilians’. In school we made an alternative, and frankly wildly libellous newsletter that looked exactly like the real school news letter, only ours was full of updates on various teachers struggle with alcoholism.
It’s all well and good when you are 18, but fast forward 10 years and we still drink bars dry and sing ‘you can go your own way’ into a shoe, we go to Thailand and are shot at by the Thai mafia, we go camping and fall face first into a fire, and when we aren’t drinking to excess, making the bar staff have a scavenger hunt for my bra, or chasing after people years younger than us, we are carrying around a bloody life size doll. It has to end.

Now I never thought I would be the one championing reality but the fact is, we made the blasted doll because Spam shocked us all by daring to grow up. He is married with two children now whilst we still carrying on like we are 15 and skipping class to down pints in the Fox and Hounds. How the actual Jesus Christ we got served in our school uniforms, still provides hours of debate and speculation.

With this sobering realisation, I am travelling to Michigan tomorrow to give Spam his face back and put an end to this. As a friendship group we have changed over time with people moving abroad and new additions recruited, the biggest change of all is that we are all hurtling towards our thirties at a speed none of us anticipated.

Still, as we are forced into an adulthood we never wanted I hope we never disband for good. It’s rare you find a group that has stood the test of time and can still count on each other in times of crisis. Like all drinking all your Virgin wine club before the month is up. Maybe instead we can face up to the fact we are supposed to be grown ups a little more and with that in mind I shall even try to address Spam by his real name tomorrow. Captain James T Ham the boy tailor.

Travel wankers, think on your sins.

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:13:00 +0100

Hello darlings, am making a temporary return from a long hiatus as I am currently suffering from a mental health issue known as ‘backpacking’. In my wisdom I have decided to do the middle class thing of ‘finding myself’, largely by spending a disgusting amount of money I don’t have, dragging a 23 kilo backpack full of shit I don’t need, to meet other backpackers that I can barely tolerate.

Almost six bloody months into this farce, I believe I have created a nifty little guide how to not be what I fondly refer to as a ‘travel wanker’. Let me enlighten you my little land bound sugar lumps.

1. Don’t dress like a douchebag

For some perculiar reason upon arriving in Thailand/South America/India my fellow travellers appear to bin their Jack Wills hoodies in favour of the down and out, beaded, bearded, elephant trousers, wanker look. I’m not sure what part of the human psyche deems it appropriate to immediately start growing dread locks and donning 27 beaded anklets upon arriving in a third world country. I mean, do you dress like a homeless crack addict back in Blighty? Doubt you rocked up to your internship at Daddy’s office sporting a nose ring and luminous green harem pants. Sort your shit out.

2. No one wants to read your travel blog

I mean Jesus of the Christ can you imagine anything more excruciatingly dull? Thanks to the world wide webs, any idiot backpacker with a sporadic wifi signal in a mud hut can now post yawn-a-minute mundanity about their ‘adventures so far’. Here’s a hint morons, doing an organised bus tour of New Zealand South Island is about as adventurous as having a rummage around your own pants. Yes, yes it’s all very special to you and you alone, but there will be time enough when you have burnt out your credit card to literally bore the bejesus out of everyone back home with your hilarious ‘mis adventures’ without putting this crap online. Trust me, even your parents think this shit is dull and how they ever spawned such a cretin? Bill Bryson you ain’t.

Don’t play the most travelled game

Inevitable travelling alone means that you sometimes have to converse with fellow human beings so as to maintain some sense of normality. For those of us travelling alone especially, there are frankly yawning chasms of absolutely-fucking-nothing in between traipsing around yet another tourist hell hole with 13,000 other gawping travel wankers, wondering how the actual Christ it came to this? When you are forced from sheer, crushing loneliness to interact with fellow, inevitably Western Europeans, on your travels, the back packers code appears to dictate that you have to be have had a better time than your fellow traveller, your experience has got to somehow be more life affirming, shit your soul out better. If it’s not, what is the point in any of this? What am I doing here? Why would anyone chose to stay in a 2 dollar a night, shit hole of a hostel surrounded by public school wanktards on a “gap yar”. When finding yourself in this position, I can personally guarantee that literally no one cares about how you once trekked across Cambodia with just 5 bucks and a ‘wing and a prayer’, everyone is more concerned with where the next shag is coming from, how much the local beer is in pound sterling and how can I get hold of some Xanax for this upcoming 67 hour bus journey?

You are not here to save the locals

For those of us on the path less backpacked, it’s easy to listen to a U2 live album and develop an intolerable Jesus complex when traipsing round some third world country. Trust me when I say this though, when on the poverty tourism route, posing with confused, semi starved locals for your photography project about their ‘plight’ is completely self serving and indeed pointless. Turns out, you can’t eat pity.
What’s even less helpful is when you rock up in Bondi beach clad in your orange robes, with your ridiculous henna tattoos, lecturing the rest of us about poverty, spirituality and how you had that epiphany that may or may not have occurred round about the time you dropped all those E’s on a beach in Shi Lanka. He’s some free advice, if you do want to help these people, donate to a charity on the area, so people who actually know what they are doing can make a difference, stick to what you are best at treacle, which is losing every single wet t-shirt competition on the East Coast of Australia and crying yourself into a box- wine-induced coma of shame, you waste of humanity.

Hostels are holding pens for the mentally disturbed

Who in their right mind chooses to stay in a un air conditioned, grimy, prison style room with 27 other people, to suffer the indignity of sleeping in a bloody bunk bed? Broke backpackers, that’s who, in both the cash and the soul. Also Lonely Planet has brainwashed us all that we need to meet and ‘share our experiences’ and god forbid our ‘feelings’ with other travellers. Jesus wept.
If you do insist on sharing my personal space with me here are are few things to keep in mind. If you do have sex, or any sort of fornication in the bunk bed above me, I can and indeed will, provide a running commentary. And I promise you it will not be flattering in any way. If you snore, I will kill you in your sleep. Just because we are sharing a room does not mean I want to talk with you about your university plans/travel plans/ex boyfriend/what does it all mean? In any way shape or form. Touch my wine and it will be the last thing you ever touch. I reserve the right to construct a bunk bed fort whenever I like. With absolutely no notice.

No, I do not want to hear you play guitar

Anyone travelling with a musical instrument should be deported immediately in my opinion. Also if you dare bust out a ukulele, I will insert it where no medical professional will ever be able to retrieve it. Fact.

Half moon aftermath!

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 04:03:30 +0000

Half moon aftermath!

Travel in Asia is so mental that even buses need an ‘oh...

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:00:25 +0000

Travel in Asia is so mental that even buses need an ‘oh shit’ handle you can grip on to for dear life!

Chain emails: Forward them and I’ll rip your sorry face off.

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:37:00 +0100

Darlings, darlings, darlings, I am back from a temporary hiatus/Gin induced coma to bring you my petty and wildly out of proportion hatred of chain mail and the morons that inexplicably send it to me. Gather round. What was once the scourge of poor Nana’s letter box is now the plague of my blasted inbox. It seems that the tradition chain letter of yonder has had a technological makeover since the arrival of the Interwebs and is now able to penetrate the most secure of inboxes and even appear on our Facebook pages? This, shockingly enough, is because the perpetrators of these wretched chain e-mails are none other than our so-called ‘friends’. I can guarantee you dumplings as I furiously type this, my guerning moron mates are wasting what I presume passes for a ‘life’ these days, forwarding me questionable emails from the outer rim of internet stupidity such as ‘LoL cats’, notification of wining the Spanish lottery (which presumably Spain itself could really do with winning right now) and my personal favourite, greetings from Mr Oswald from the Bank of Nigeria promising me a pony made of people’s dreams that shits out gold bars if only I could transfer a few G’s though the scammer preferred Western Union.

Jesus wept right? Surely any three year old who is vaguely competent on the CBeebies website can see through this spurious horseshite, so why forward it to people who presumably are higher up the intellectual food chain than you? I mean, it’s one thing having the IQ of a Gregg’s chicken bake, but to actually smear your naivety all over the internet like some wide eyed, useless sack of piss is quite another. I would like to reach out to my friends and explain to them patiently, wine in hand, sporting a ‘Listen with Mother’ tone, that just because an email says that if you don’t forward it to 845 people in less than an hour Saville will climb through your window and promise to ‘fix it real nice’ whilst you pretend to sleep, doesn’t mean it’s true my poor, confused darlings. I mean, honest to fuckity Christ why do it? This endless stream of nonsensical shite causes problems for all of us. I am sure I am not the only one who in-between sleeping off a hangover at work, wakens to resume your sexually explicit emails with Jamie from accounts, only to discover your damn inbox is locked down tighter than Guantanamo as a result of bursting at the seams with chain mail, or has seen an entire office network in lock down because some simpleton has forwarded an e-mail requesting ‘help and understanding for pigeons with aids’ to the entire building, causing computergeddon and giving the social rejects in I.T an early aneurism.

The introduction of antisocial networking sites had only made the bloody problem worse, as I now have to scroll through endless viral “share if you will pray for her survival” Google image lifted pictures of dying kids. Now I hate to be the heartless bitch to break it to you but unfortunately sick children are in no way healed by Facebook. I know dumplings, what a terrifying world we live in where problems can’t be solved ‘liking’ pictures that your questionable friends post. Someone should set up a Facebook group about this fucking travesty immediately. We can call it ‘Like if you’re a waste of humanity’.

Also, to the fishwife, mumsnet, brigade who post poems about chid abuse all over their Face ache. “Written by an abused child, it breaks my heart” Seriously? Are you having some kind of mental health crisis? Can we actually call ourselves higher beings a this stage if we believe a four year old who has tragically been abused has actually sat down and eloquently written a 300 word poignant poem in Iambic pentameter and then distributed it furiously over the internet? I honestly wonder if these people should be allowed to have unsupervised access to the internet.

Another chain mail steaming pile of codshite which are passed on more than herpes are the ‘dangerous virus’ e-mails. This is your bog standard bullshit where you are warned of the ‘rapture cometh’ for the internet in the form of computer crashing viruses of ‘The Matrix’ style proportions coming your way and urge you to pass on the e-mail to easily led family and friends. So reality check here sugar lumps, what does the sender imagine will happen if they pass on this ‘warning’. Is your computer somehow protected from digital Armageddon because you forwarded on an email? If you do, i’m afraid there a no hope for you, you are not going to survive the digital age, much less when the robots eventually take over. Imagine I am saying this is a very slow, enunciated voice if it makes it easier, if there is a virus going around, no matter how many chain e-mails you idiots fire off, the only thing that will protect your computer is wildly overpriced anti-virus software, not forwarding a pseudo-techn

Working with kids: Any idiot can do that right?

Sun, 20 May 2012 17:26:32 +0100

Working with kids, It’s the line of work every fucker has an ill informed opinion on. Tell people you work with kids and chances are they’ll tell you how to do your job. I know teachers will feel my pain as I have witnessed them being told time and time again by opinionated douche bags such cod shite wank as how teaching is ‘making learning come alive’ but they have far too many holidays and are no good piss takers who are no less than entirely responsible for the state of the education system.

By some quirk of fate, I’ve somehow slipped the net and have been allowed to work with children of varying ages over the years. It is without a doubt the most infuriating yet rewarding paradox of a job I’ve ever had. I’ve mostly been a youth worker; which involves running projects and activities, exchanges and programmes for da’ youth. Piece of piss right? Wrong. May I invite you darlings to attempt to persuade hooded youth who proclaim to be “Gangstaz innit braaap”, not to burn out that Fiesta but instead to participate in a community bike ride. It’s a fucking hard sell that’s what it is. There’s an Apprentice task for you Lord Sugar.

People don’t really understand what I do and that’s largely because I don’t really understand what it is exactly that I do. As a youth and community worker you are not a teacher, a social worker, a parent or indeed ‘the filth’, ergo, you can’t make these kids do anything. You have to use a combination of Jedi mind control and general bamboozlement to persuade kids that kayaking is like way more fun than crack yeah?

Now don’t get me wrong, compared to being chained to a desk, my job is fun. Unlike so many people, I do actually enjoy going to work rather than rocking back and forth in a corner contemplating swallowing a coat hanger just to avoid the office. I get to take willful, irrational, often bat shit crazy teenagers on a range of activities and experiences and learning opportunities, in the hope that you can help them develop into the adults I know they can be. The problem for me has rarely been the kids I work with, more the so-called adults around them. Adults, who I’ve witnessed, neglect these kids, abuse them, let them down, or sometimes just plain don’t give a shit. It’s an actual nightmare to convince a kid that you aren’t just another useless adult who views them as an annoyance, a problem, or a threat. My job generally involves coaxing wayward teenagers to believe that they matter, their voice is being heard and you want to help them, even when they don’t always what to help themselves.

People are generally unsatisfied with this explanation and I have been offered all sorts of sage advice and frankly laughable opinions on the subject of my job over the years. I can’t imagine what possesses people? I would hardly tell an accountant how do their job, “Add column A to column B and then repeatedly slam your face into a wall in despair.

I’ve had people look down on what I do; which I can handle, what drives me wild is when people look down on the kids I work with. These are the clueless morons who tell me the kids I work with are “Underclass”, “Scum” and “Not worth it”. How on earth can we expect kids to learn to ‘respect their elders’ when this is the respect they get back? I’m not naïve, yes darlings there are bad kids out there, but then there are also equally bad adults sweet cheeks. The difference being that many of them get to put on a suit and call themselves a stock broker.

I’ve even been impolitely informed that these kids need a “firm hand”, what in the name of Thor does that even mean? That sounds like the sort of thing that gets you swiftly placed on a register. Other pearls of wisdom include “They should all be locked up”, “Send them all to Afghanistan”, “Bring back the cane”. When people aren’t lifting their diatribes straight out of the Daily Mail they will also be informing you that should get a “real job” or there is “No progression” in what you do.

I for one would be prepared to take your opinions more seriously if you were to dismount your high horse and actually experience an area of work you claim to have such an in depth and specialised knowledge of. Why not take some time out of your ‘real job’ and come and show me how it’s done? Let’s do out-reach work together and try and engage with and help the hard to reach youth, the poor, the disenfranchised, the drug takers, the jobless, the violent and unpredictable ones. I thought not.

Now pumpkins, for all my wild hyperbole it’s not all an outtake from Shameless fear not. I’ve met some amazing kids over the years that have taken it upon themselves to look after me, as I am, according to 15 year olds, “too ridiculous to exist”. I do like to teach the youth responsibility and what better way to learn than look after a ludicrous adult I ask?

In fact, I am more than happy to accept constructive criticism and a general curiosity about what it is I do, I will frankly provide all the information you require in exchange for a latte and a cookie. All I ask is a slither of understanding on your part, if it’s not too much trouble dumplings. Understand that it’s hard to quantify what effect you have on kids and whether you are really helping them. Kids aren’t a financial product; you can’t pull up a spreadsheet and demonstrate that due to Dwayne’s recent NVQ in ‘MCing’ his stock has gone up by 165.07 points. I’m surely not the only youth worker lying awake at night, drinking Lambrini out the bottle, crippled by self-doubt at my effectiveness. All I can do is try and help kids in my own misguided way and pray to Thor I don’t cock it up along the way. To the haters, I extend an invitation, show me how it’s done then. I eagerly await your wisdom.

Not all that wander are lost…..

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:34:51 +0100

Not all that wander are lost…..

Feelings and shit: Bitches be crazy

Sun, 06 May 2012 17:23:17 +0100

Oh ladies, ladies, ladies, you crazy emotional vampires you, sucking the very joy from existence with your tearful man woes. Once a pillar of sanity in this mad world girls all around me appear to be all consumed by what their ‘man’ wants. Yes these are the bitter ramblings of a future spinster surrounded by dying cats but at least hear me out hoes.

Alarming stories have been coming to this troubled writer of girls who’s entire existence appears to be based on what ridiculous, bimbo rag Cosmo would undoubtedly describe as ‘how best to please your man’. These are the girls unable to make a decision without “ringing and checking” first with their beloved, will wait in all Saturday night before the realisation hits that no, he’s not calling you tragic harpie, he’s gone out on the lash. Then, inevitably you, the long suffering friend, gets that special call at 4am with barely comprehensibly hysterical sobs of “He’s leaving me, I don’t understand why is he’s leaving me? I only went through his emails twice and hacked his Facebook? Why has he gone? Why? Why? Why?” Oh why indeed.

Ladies, it’s a fairly basic concept, if you pin all your hopes and dreams on someone else, chances are they will shit over said dreams without so much as a backward glance. Now before I get the bleating of, “No, no bitter singleton, I’m married with kids”, I’m not talking about you suckers, you have made that marital bed and now you’ve got to not get laid in it. I’m talking about girls who are in the first flush of romance, you know, the vomit inducing stage “I’ve got you a puppy to show you my wuv”, one before reality comes to slap you round the face like a flaccid cock.

Now, being an emotional retard I struggle to comprehend how you can surrender you wants, hopes, dreams and desires just to please some douche bag? I’ve seen girls ditch friends, change jobs, give up hobbies they love and dreams they have because they are apparently incompatible with what their other half wants. Over the years I’ve also tragically witnessed girls being told by the so-called love of their life, who to see, where to go, what to wear, how to behave and bizarrely what brand of bloody contraceptive pill to take. This is a bit bat shit crazy for my liking, sacrificing your happiness just to please someone else is never going to work out in the long term and you don’t want to be some bitter, mad bitch trying to work out how to bury that no good bastard under the patio without the filth finding out.

For those of you lucky enough to be allowed to have friends, I’m frankly not sure how helpful we can be at this stage, “Adam says he is working late at the office, do you think he’s with another woman?” confides your wide eyed, bunny boiler waiting to happen friend. How on earth do you respond to this? The truth maybe? Fucking hell amateur, are you insane? Girls in wuv don’t want the truth; girls want ego stroking, reassurance and downright lies. “Adam? No he would never leave you, well not again anyway, not after the unfortunate incident with his secretary, the photocopier and the anal beads, he almost got fired”. Knowing full well that ‘Adam’ is about as trustworthy as an estate agent, you still smile beautifully and lie through gritted teeth because you know honesty is about as welcome as a floater in a hot tub.

So dumplings this of course means week after week you feign interest as your friend puts on her brave Princess Diana face and announces through a tsunami of tears and snot that this is “definitely his final chance”, forgetting that he has already had 27 final chances and you stopped really giving a tiny shit after the first 2.

“But I, I, I love him soooo much, I, I can’t i-i-i-i-magine life without him” you poor, confused darlings tremble. I know, there, there, but here’s the 411 sugar lumps, he can live without you and your incessant whining. Fact. Now, blokes feel free to wade right on in here, but I don’t imagine many of you spend your evenings alternating between Facebook stalking, willing the phone to ring, throwing said phone against the wall when it doesn’t and desperately trying to piece phone back together so you can leave 47 increasingly abusive answer phone messages. And if you do, you are a disgrace to your gender.

I know I’m being harsh my little treasures but it’s about time us ladies had a freaking wake up call. Isn’t it time we start putting our wants and needs first for a change? Let’s just take a tiny second to think about what makes us happy and the things we want and lets do this shit. Now, what I propose is putting on your sluttiest dress, that’s right, the one that barely covers your Jack Johnson, switch off your phone, haul ass to the bar, order 14 Gin and tonics and leave your beloved at home for a change wondering where you are and what time you and your drunk ass will roll in. Darlings you know it makes sense, let’s do this for the womankind and take one for the team. Who is with me bitches?

Finally discovered Instagram and I’m loving it!

Tue, 01 May 2012 18:42:43 +0100

Finally discovered Instagram and I’m loving it!

Well, that’s my evening sorted then.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:09:53 +0100

Well, that’s my evening sorted then.

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??

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:20:49 +0100

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.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:52:01 +0100

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.

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:16:36 +0100

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

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:59:00 +0100

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*

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame..."

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 08:56:21 +0100

“What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don’t want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don’t want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”

- Jeanette Winterson

Job Specification: No personality required

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:07:28 +0100

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!

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:30:06 +0100

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.

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:48:00 +0100

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.

If this was my Valentines Day gift I would shit my heart out...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:21:49 +0000

If this was my Valentines Day gift I would shit my heart out with excitement.