That's the Underpath, son. We don't talk about the Underpath.

I have a problem with thinking; that is, I greatly dislike thinking. Not because I’m lazy or a genius, or that thinking is difficult or that I have so many brilliant ideas that trying to express them is painful, nothing like that. But I’m scared.

Everything in the universe is more complicated than we can see; not as in microscopic and too small for the naked eye, but too complex for the human brain to be able to process, so is simplified. For example, the ground we walk on is far more textured in colour than we can process, there is a larger gradient than we know. You might be thinking ‘well duh, we have the light/wavelength scale which proves that, we can only see a very fine range of lights’. While that’s true, this theory would state that the scale (including but not limited to things like UVA rays and gamma rays) is in fact only a fraction of light out there; just to pluck a figure out of the sky, we see about 2% or all known light for example, but all known light could only be 2% of what is actually out there, but our brains shut off those other samples, as they are too complex for our tiny little human brains to process and we would simply implode from trying. Unfortunately, my brain likes to try.

What I often wonder is what if we all see different things? So everyone knows that ‘they sky is blue’ and ‘leaves are green’ and ‘tree trunks are brown’. But what if the colour which you perceive as brown is different to the one I do? You see, how would we know if your brown was my pink, and my pink was your green? If that’s what we’ve been taught to see as the colour, a word is meaningless. We would need a totally independent intelligent life form to convert colours to algorithms and tell us what we’re seeing and confirm if they’re the same as another human. That’s the most simple of my fear-thoughts. They go on to get more complicated, such as our minds blocking and mutating different textures; what I see as a human might be someone else’s image of my alien image, we wouldn’t know because we’ve just been taught that this picture is human and this one is alien, and if we’re seeing different things then that’s just what we correlate to different sights. I feel like I’m not making sense anymore but it somewhat makes sense in my mind, if being slightly jumbled. It’s horribly confusing and I hate thinking about it because I just feel so different and isolated – no one would understand so I’ve never tried explaining it to anyone. I’m just desperately hoping someone who reads this thinks the same. I know other people think about the colour thing because of the song ‘Quiet’ from “Matilda the Musical” – I can’t explain my joy and feeling of normality the day I first heard that song.

The other thing I hate about thinking is when my thoughts grow exponentially. I start thinking about the world and think ‘wow the world is big’. Then I think about the universe, constantly expanding, and here is the first of my horrible conundrums: people think the universe is expanding and everything moving further away from everything else and go to prove this with the light/wavelength thing saying the further away it is the more red it will appear and blah blah blah, but my thoughts ask me if everything is really moving away or if everything is just getting smaller? For if everything is getting smaller, every single particle of every single thing in the universe is constantly getting smaller, we wouldn’t be able to tell for we too would be getting smaller. If the size is slowly getting sucked out of the things in the universe we wouldn’t know; obviously things would seem further away because they’re getting smaller. Space wouldn’t get smaller because space is a vacuum and has nothing, no particles, no atmosphere whatsoever, so it would just be the ‘stuff’ getting smaller, like I said, becoming further apart in proximity to each other, but not their physical placement. This would produce those same light wavelength readings as if everything is getting further apart, but no one could ever prove that, just as if someone had suggested everything getting smaller first, things moving away would never be able to be a valid theory. I hate that I have these thoughts and that no one can ever confirm them.

The next thought I get (these happen really quickly by the way, in waves of about 2 seconds, if that, and I have so many thoughts in my head that I just want to cry, it’s horrible) is that the universe is so huge and supposedly expanding constantly, what comes after it? What comes after the edge of space? You’re telling me that there is nothing else, just space, but what’s after creation? In my head I come up with lots of different explanations which momentarily pacify me- we’re in a shoe box. We’re actually tiny tiny tiny and God is sat there holding us on His lap in this box, maybe with 9 or 10 other Gods of other universes or dimensions, all going “Oh God, you’ll never believe what this one just did- they just disproved we exist!” or “Oh for God’s sake, stop trying to fly to the end of the universe, it’s never gonna happen people!”. This is enough for me, imagining these bearded guys in nighties holding their science experiments, but then I think “oh no, what comes after that?” because in my mind they’re just sat in a room. But where is the room? What comes after the room?! And then my mind zooms out into whatever happens next. What is outside the universe? Doctor Who suggested Silence, but how can there be nothing after silence? There can’t just be it, otherwise how do we exist? How are we suspended in nothing? If there is nothing after that, how is the universe expanding? Then I think ‘oh after the universe is heaven’ but WHAT COMES AFTER HEAVEN? WHAT IS HEAVEN IN? It just makes me fear life itself because I could imagine infinite things to be outside the universe or alternative dimensions, or parallel whatevers stacked on top of each other. It literally blows my mind. I can’t handle it and it makes me want to stop existing. I hate that I have the capacity to think.

The last one I’ve been struggling with is actually a really recent thing, but I don’t have any ways to explain it and it’s just plain annoying rather than scary or mind blowing. How minds work. Okay so you’ve got your brain which has your long term short term memories, sensory processing and recalling, blah blah, learnt in basic terms I’m sure at GCSE and AS psychology. I don’t have problem with the surface processes of how you remember- I’m fine with the processes and what happens when things happen and dejá vu and “glitches”, I’m fine with the fact that the left brain controls the right part of your body and is all creative and fun and your right brain controls the left side of your body and is logical and makes you want to be a lawyer. The hippocampus deals with co-ordination and the corpus-colossum joins your two brain parts. I’ve also learnt in biological terms the components of cells, and while these vary a great deal depending on the function of the cells, I know that they’re all just cells. So how the hell do they remember things? Okay so cells recognise sounds and sensory input. I mean, that’s okay to sort of grasp but once I think about memories, I don’t get how they’re stored- where are they stored? Where do your brains cells literally put the information? I think this episode of Spongebob squared (pardon the pun) the logical solutions pretty well, but of course due to scientific research of dissection and looking at physical human brains, we know this isn’t how it’s done. But how is it? Are there chests in cells with reams and reams of manuscript of your life? I mean, the information can’t just be floating around.

Another thing here that does sort of connect is that when you look at CT scans of healthy brains then look at those of dementia patients, you can see a marked difference in brain capacity – physically. Healthy brain looks like a butterfly, dementia brain looks like a butterfly someone set slightly on fire or trod on around the edges. It’s a horrible thing to see, but is a physical manifestation of the fact that you literally lose your memories. Your brain breaks down, and the memories go with it. Which means that memories are most certainly stored within the cells- BUT HOW?!

These are things that confuse me and today’s blog post title is sort of unconnected to the fact that we do process things differently as humans; I was playing Mario Kart 8 (good game, would recommend) with my brother: on one of the tracks I noticed there were very few people around but I was in 11^th place in this race which had 12 people. I hadn’t been driving badly but couldn’t see more than two players in front of me, suddenly they all came surging out of a crack in the ground and I exclaimed “Oh they went down the under path”. My brother replied about the “lower path being slower but he accidentally drove down the hole”. I kept calling it the Underpath and he mentioned how it sounds like a dark deserted place in a fantasy world.

“That’s the Underpath, son. None return where many have gone.”

Duke of Edinburgh series: How Homework Can Kill You (I Edition)

D of E, for those of you who don't know is a community based, challenge with expedition elements. It's for young people aged 15-25 and you must complete all sections of your award within 5 years. My knowledge, having completed two of the three available awards and being in the process of completing the third, is that the awards are a way to get young people today to interact within their communities and learn new skills. The four standard sections are physical, volunteering, skill and expedition, with the fifth section in the final 'Gold' award being residential.

The naming of this post refers to the danger my friends and I encountered on an expedition for D of E, an extra-curricular activity. Extra-curricular activities include homework, therefore this post will tell you how homework almost killed me.

These posts will be focusing on my expeditions, the first in this series my most dramatic expedition- Silver practice.
For your practice expedition on the silver award you have you complete one overnight and two day hikes, so we did our practice with the Bronze awards on their final. It wasn't a particularly nice day, but we motivated ourselves with songs and jokes. We noticed throughout the day that we were getting further and further behind our schedule, in spite of keeping up pace and cutting out unnecessary breaks. We were exhausting ourselves and it was beginning to rain. We furthered our depleted energy levels with goofy nicknames- the most popular and longest reigning being 'bum'ole'. By the time we got to the camp site the air was feeling miserable and we were getting rained on. Our tent went up in the drizzling English reliable' and we settled down to cook... well, Sam settled down to cook. He was perfectly happy for us to sit in the tent and eat marshmallow fluff, so that's exactly what we did. Later he and his guitar joined us and we had a soggy jamming session with fluff and Ben's legend. Jamaican ginger cake and custard comforted us for desert and we snuggled down to bed. The main reason I decided to finally write this blog post was actually due to another post I wrote where I described my PTSD-like symptoms I get when in the rain these days (which is often as I live in England). If I'm out in the open - walking down a street, between buses or in the middle of a field - and it begins to rain, I can often have a dizzying experience, including racing heart, flash backs and accelerated breathing. These symptoms have dramatically calmed since October 2010, but when I first noticed them, they could be set off by something as simple as hearing the weather-lady mention 'light drizzle'. You see those were the words our teacher used when we asked if the rain we woke up to would continue. "Oh no," she had said, "the weather reports are for 'light drizzle' but it'll stay cloudy all day."
We should have known not to trust her.

So there we were, one hour later hiking up a hilly, uneven road and hoping the wind would ease up, and a teacher roles up in her car. Winding the window down barely 2 inches she shouts that the weather 'isn't pretty'. Wow, you're in your little car with your cushiony seat and heated fans, water proofs that are waterproof and coffee cake and  you're telling us that the weather 'isn't pretty'? Okay. Now, seeing as the routes we were using weren't actually ours but the Bronze award candidate's, it didn't matter so much that we stuck rigidly to them. This was good news for us when this teacher suggested going "through the valley- the wind won't be as strong through there!" We thanked her for her help and cursed her as she drove away, safe, warm and dry because by this time we were in a torrential down pour- and I mean really bad rainfall, not just 'oh I don't want to go to school it's raining'. This was the kind of rain you couldn't possibly drive in*. Little did we know the temperature was dropping by the hour and the rain getting heavier by the minute. To us it was one continuous piss-fest in which we were apparently stuck. We sheltered on our way into the valley to discuss our options (we found a giant pot-pipe which we stood in for a few minutes deliberating). We could go back and run the risk of falling down the hill we'd just climbed on top of having to retrace our steps about 0.75km to the road our teacher took, or power on ahead through this valley and face the ever realising possibility that the wind was in fact channeling through the valley, contradicting what our teacher had said some 25 minutes previously. We took our chances and soon decided we had made the wrong decision of going ahead into the valley. We met an older couple who informed us that the latest weather report was a red alert for rain in the area we were walking, that they were going back to their car to take refuge and that we should do the same. However our teacher was now out of sight and with rules on phone use on a D of E expedition quite clear, our only options was to keep going and hope we saw another teacher at the opening of the valley. We quickly started referring to this place as the Valley of Death and began singing (by which I mean yelling but still not hearing each other) dramatic power ballads including You Never Let Go and You'll Never Walk Alone. After about 20 more minutes, we noticed an ever-forming river running through this valley, which wasn't marked on the map. We wondered whether the map was outdated, but realised that there was fresh, growing, green grass under the raging torrent and that it couldn't possibly be an everyday feature of this valley. This was when it dawned on us that we might be in trouble. For a start, the further we went into the valley, the higher the stream/river/raging-water-beast rose, and the higher it rose, the more disheartened we became. We had to keep going forward as the river had now cut us off from the path we had taken, but in order to carry on forward we had to cross over the river. There weren't any fallen branches around and the water was too deep and quick moving for us to wade through, so we were pushed along the hillside until we reached a cluster of rocks which we used to jump across the river. Now in hindsight I'm sure it was only about 1 foot deep, but it was getting pretty wide and it was absolutely gushing along through the valley. Although not terribly deep, rushing water can unbalance the best D of E-ers. This was the point at which we realised we might actually need our rubble sacks**. The issue with this was that we knew we wouldn't get out of them if we got in, as our energy levels were dropping, bags absorbing water and so becoming heavier and our team spirit hitting an all time low. Sam, our self-appointed chef, decided we needed to stop and have some food before we made the decision to abort the expedition. Ruth, our on-hand animal expert, observed that usually animals (in this case, sheep) would find a hallow to rest in until a storm blew over, but these sheep were climbing to the top of the valley, indicating the storm wasn't anywhere near done and up was the safest option, however after climbing about 25m, we came face-to-face with barbed wire fencing, preventing us from going over the top. One of our team started to panic so we found a mound of grass and rubble back near the river to sit and Sam got out a packet of New York Bagels. They were the loveliest food I've ever eaten- as I can imagine anything would be in a crisis- and we laid down our options again: we'd had to cross the river numerous times and were back on the left hand side (where we had been when the river started forming) and could see a few rocks where we could pass back over, we couldn't stay on this side as there were a good many trees and the wire fence extended down into the valley after this point; going back was totally not an option and neither was going up, so we finished our bagels and resolved to go forward and pray.
Another member of the team and I kept going by setting tiny targets- which felt like miles- "just get to that tree... great, now try to get to that bush... pull into line with that sheep... now get to that big open expanse which has a telegraph pole in the middle of it where we can hear cars in the distance". Wait, a telegraph pole... we're saved! You know those rules on phones I mentioned earlier? They state a phone can be used in an emergency to contact your supervisor. As this was a practice expedition,  we didn't have a supervisor, but were without contact numbers for our teachers. So we used Ben's GPS. And it was a very good decision, because the telegraph pole meant signal, and signal meant showing us where that distant road was, and we could see the road on the map but as we were in an expanse, didn't know which way the road actually was. We got to the road and the phone went away. We met up with a teacher who pointed us the best (safest, most populated and fastest) way to get to the finish point which was now all we cared about. We bumped into another group from a different school who informed us that we were the only school out of 8 who were expedition-ing in the area who hadn't aborted (they were on their way to meet their teachers in the school minibus). After crossing another few roads, the rain had eased considerably (though still present) and we found a group of aging walkers going to the same destination as ourselves. Thinking it was best to walk with company, we kept in the wake of these relatively experienced and apparently high-stamina walkers. It wasn't easy and at one point I almost took my shoes off, thinking it more comfortable to just walk in socks as the only purpose my shoes seemed to be serving was holding water. We walked along a legitimate river which would have been beautiful if not for our traumatized states, then reached a hill. It wasn't an easy climb and at points we had to stop but the lovely group of ridiculously fit over 50's kindly allowed us brief periods of rest.
When we reached the top of the hill, we took a look at the view below us and felt relieved that we'd made it. We were in awe, but probably more for the fact that we were still alive than the beauty (as we were informed by others around us). Waiting for our lift home was agony, as the tearoom- the only piece of civilization for seemingly miles around- refused entry to walkers and the public toilets were without toilet paper, heating or facilities for drying hands. Oh and did I mention that the previous night we discovered my water proofs were actually not water proof?
Ruth's mum picked us up (us being Ruth, Laura and myself) and had loaded the back seat with towels, bath robes and hot water bottles, and brought food and hot Ribena. I wasn't a fan of hot Ribena at this point, but it was amazing to peel off our soaked layers, snuggle into towels, blankets and warm dry seats and drink the first warm nourishment we had had since our Jamaican ginger cake and custard. Charlotte*** took a longer route to stop off at a chip shop and buy us hot, fresh chips. We nibbled these and relaxed for the next I-don't-know-how-long until we reached my house, when Sister brought my own dressing gown and some flip flops out for me to transfer from the car to the house in, but after trying and failing to use my legs, Sister gave me a piggy-back inside and I went straight upstairs for a hot bath.
The next months were filled with anticipation over our second, upcoming practice which eventually was cancelled, anxiety about wind or rain and thoughts of our final expedition. That expedition will be talked about in the next edition of my D of E series, but at our award ceremony for Silver, we found out that the weekend I just described saw 1/3 of the annual average rain fall for that area. So rather than having the rainfall spread over th course of the year, we received 30% in just two days.

And that's how I almost died doing extra-curricular activity.

*Our teacher was going at a maximum of 5mph and later she told us she'd pulled over quarter of a mile along due to the weather reports.
**For those of you who don't know, rubble sacks are bright orange, thick, plastic body-bags which are used in an emergency, for example if someone goes into shock or has a fall and needs to keep warm but can't move. they're also quite useful for keeping things dry in overnight if you're without room in your tent.
***Ruth's mum, aka the best D of E chauffeur ever.


Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are in no way affiliated with the Duke of Edinburgh organisation or charity. Experiences some individuals have on their expeditions do not reflect the nature of the activities, nor are they necessarily common in such activities. This a post about Francesca Grace Hall's personal  experience on an expedition organised by her school through the D of E program and does not represent Duke of Edinburgh awards in any way.

Christmas Glitches

I've been thinking about Christmases past recently, due to the forbearing holiday season which is fast approaching. There are a lot of memories for me surrounding the Christmas period, including many bouts of poor health in recent years (ranging from bronchitis to stomach tissue damage to the good old seasonal flu), but the first one I'd like to hone in on is when I was around 7-years-old and my sister around 9.

1. The time my parents got it wrong

Everyone has relatives who they feel obligated to buy for, just like everyone has the distant 'aunts' and 'uncles' who aren't actually related but always send a £10 voucher for something or other. In the same way, everyone- everyone- has those family members who always buy them clothes. For my family, this is my mum's youngest brother... well, his wife. My auntie, uncle and cousins can always be counted on to send us each a fashionable clothing item; whether a pinstriped shirt for my dad or pajamas for my brothers or matching dresses for me and my sister, there are always clothes for us on Christmas day from those family members. One year I remember very specifically opening some lovely pajamas from my auntie- similar to my sister's but mine were mint green and hers were baby pink. I said "Oh! Pajamas!" to which my parents replied in unison "They're quite clearly day clothes." My sister agreed and no matter how much I protested, I was backed into a corner by three adamant advocates for my auntie's choice of day clothes for our Christmas presents. There were slouchy hip-sitting trousers with pink or green, brown and yellow vertical stripes with pink and green vest-tops with embroidered cats on. I remember thinking they were the flimsiest, least secure clothes I would ever wear and was sure my auntie had picked these by mistake. Then when my parents insisted we wear them for our auntie, uncle and cousin's visit just before New Year, I was powerless to resist and begrudgingly changed from my nightie to these thin, un-winterly clothes. My auntie arrived to find me and my sister stood on a chair in the living room trying to open the french doors and exclaimed "Oh! You're still in your pajamas?" I was mortified that we were wearing matching pajamas as day clothes, fuming angry with my parents for insisting they were day clothes, yet still relatively smug that I had been right all along. I still bring it up sometimes, simply to see the look of horror-struck remembrance at the embarrassing time my parents made me and my sister wear pajamas in the day time.

2. The time my grandma got it wrong

The second Christmas memory I would like to shine a light on took place a few years later, when I thought me and my sister were old enough to stand up to our grandma when she brought us clothes and shoes to be rivaled with. Every time my grandma visits, she'll bring us (my sister and I) something she thought was most flattering in 1955. When she was younger my grandma had a real eye for fashion, due to working a fair time of her adult life as a sales assistant for Next. As a result she would be blessed with end-of-line stock as and when she pleased- which was often, the scrimper my grandma was (and still is). Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid, I know fashion is on a cycle and we're currently back to the 50's-60's with bright blocks and skater skirts and leather jackets and ankle boots. However styles are very different to specific items of clothing and when my grandma presents you with a three tiered white dress which has been sat in her wardrobe for 40 years, you'll be running for the hills faster than a relay with Mo Farah and Usain Bolt. Firstly, I was about 11 and still skinny as a rake, my ever flattering grandma- a solid size 18- hands me a size 16 dress and says "I should imagine this will still fit you if you want it". To add insult to injury the dress was a horrible should-be-white-but-washed-down-to-ecru colour. After a good 10 minutes of me ensuring her I don't suit white, she tried to force the dress on my sister, who tried to accept on my behalf out of spite, but my mum came to the rescue, insisting herself that white did not suit either of her girls as we 'couldn't keep a black top clean'. Thanks mum. This year though, my grandma had brought a bag of old shoes which had been quite the pieces in her day. Unfortunately, they weren't anymore. In spite of us telling her over and over that they would simply be thrown out, we found them after dropping her home on boxing day, mismatched and odd pairs alike, in a huge brown bag. And lo- at the bottom of the bag what do you expect we find? The dress.

3. The time Santa got it wrong

The last is about my parent's undoing at their own hands. Unfortunately, the more children you have, the more complicated the process of Christmas gifts is, especially when Santa has 3bn other children to think about, am I right? So Santa used to do an extraordinary thing- write our first initials on our presents. "Ah, how clever." you may be thinking- not clever enough though when you try to get too organised- matching wrapping paper. There must have been a glitch in the matrix or a mis-communication between my parents Santa and his elves, because as my sister and I got half way down our stockings, it became apparent that I was opening presents for her and she, presents for I. We checked the wrapping paper and sure enough, my pile consisted of 'E's and hers of 'F's. We swapped stockings and continued unwrapping, only to find the same mistake- I was once again opening things she had asked for and her unwrapping things I had asked for. We realised that Santa must have wrapped things in the wrong wrapping paper then and elf had come along and labeled the presents wrapped in my sister's allocated wrapping paper 'E' and those in my allocated wrapping paper 'F'. It was a very exhausting Christmas morning and me and my sister spent most of it trying to decide who got what and our parents helpfully suggesting what Santa might have intended for each of us- without sounding like they knew who's was who's.

At the end of the day, Christmas is about being around people to celebrate what you believe to be the meaning of Christmas and we were doing that. In fact, I'm going to put these mistakes down to the fact that we were probably getting a bit too into the holiday spirit and so got jumbled about presents and recipients, relatives and pajamas, and gifts and bin bags.

Also, if you've ever wondered how slightly dippy Christian children write their Christmas lists, check out my video here, called 'The Girl Who Prayed'.

Rainbows, Celebrating 20 Years of Care

Imagine the person you love most in the world. See them in your mind, remember what their voice sounds like, remember how it feels when you see them, if your tummy did somersaults the first time they came into your world. Think about the love you feel for them, what you would do to protect them.   Now imagine your life without them. Imagine waking up every morning to realise they're no longer in your life. That person you love more than anything, who you would do anything to protect, anything to keep safe is gone from your life and not coming back. It's not that they've walked away; they're no longer in the world. They're gone and they're not coming back.

Imagine if that was your child; the child you gave birth to, or the child you watched being born, or the child you met at the age of 4 and adopted- the miracle that someone else gave you. Imagine this: all that love you're imagining is real; all that loss you're imagining is going to be real one day; your child you're seeing in your minds eye, or are dreaming of, or will be seeing all too soon is real. And they have a life-limiting, life threatening illness and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can't wrap them in a bubble of love; you can't hold them and tell them everything is going to be alright; and you know that the possibility of you burying your own child is a very real and quite probable reality.

It's the kind of thing you hear about- but know it could never happen to you. Or you see an article in the paper and think 'oh how horrible, I'm so glad that's not happening to me'. But it happens; premature death is real, parents do outlive their children and people are left behind, missing their big brothers or little sisters. It's not a romantic story about one couple's fight to save their baby, it's the reality of doing anything you can to make your child's life a bit better in place of it being longer. Some diseases can't be fought. Some illnesses don't get healed through miracles. Some children die.

And it's horrible. It's not nice for the child, it's not nice for those left behind and it sure as hell isn't nice to watch. You wake up every day and thank some higher power that your family is still alive but then you get up and wake your 5 year old who has to get themselves ready for school whilst you wash and dress your 15 year old who hasn't walked in nearly ten years. A door isn't wide enough- your holiday get cancelled. A cold means a week in a High Dependency Unit. Treatment isn't developed, your child slips away with you watching.

Let's rewind. Imagine those feelings again, that child, those pangs of grief as you sit in a room and doctor explains in clinical terms that your child has a condition which could very well destroy them. A week later you get a phone call- "we can help". A place where your child can go, be looked after and live happily- not for good, just to give you a break. Not only does this place offer respite for your poorly child, they'll also help out with your healthy children- emotional support, fun days, opportunities they wouldn't normally get because of their disabled or ill sibling. You get these opportunities too, mind. You get breaks, emotional support and the chance to give your child a safe, happy place where they can go every now and then, make friends like them and feel normal and special simultaneously.

Well these places exist. One, very close to my heart, is Rainbow's Hospice for Children and Young People. They have helped me and my family out incredibly, giving respite care to my brother which in turn gives my parents a rest, emotional support for my other siblings, myself and parents, fabulous trips to meet various big wigs, ponies in bedrooms, emergency care, incredible facilities, fundraising nights and most importantly, giving us all a bit of hope. We're not the only family to have been helped by Rainbows; thousands of families have received support just like mine over the past 2 decades, making this year Rainbow's big TWO-ZERO. My family would not have gotten through the past 8 years without them and I want to give them a massive thank you for everything they've done for us and the other families who have visited Rainbows throughout the years. They've been there in crisis', when Josh has been in hospital, advances in his conditions, always with a smile and sometimes with latex-free glove puppets. People might think a children's hospice is a morbid idea, but honestly I think it's the happiest place on earth. Yes, many of the children who go to Rainbows will sadly pass away, but their time there being looked after and loved means more to their families than anything a hospital or school could have given them. Children's hospices aren't about dying; they're about living. They're about making the differences they can make in a child's life while they still can; they're about celebrating people's differences and helping everyone cope a little (lot) better with those; and most importantly they're about hope.

That's why they're called Rainbow's; because rainbows bring hope.

Thank you for reading. The biggest and best thing you could do now, for me, is to go to the Rainbow's website, have a little look around and if you could, please please please donate. The best cause there is in my eyes. They've done more for my family than any other charities put together and every single penny counts a massive deal towards costs of keeping Rainbows running and its residents cared for. You could even do a fundraiser- handcuff yourself to your best friend for 24 hours, do a skydive, have a cake sale, lottery, coffee morning, anything counts.

Thank you.

The Perfect Hide-er

This week's Dr Who episode was about something I've thought about my whole life. Maybe they're just hallucinations, maybe I've been been dreaming, or maybe - just maybe - there is something else there. The main focus of the episode was that evolution has perfected survival skills; hunting, defense... hiding? Because - as the script quite rightly pointed out - if there was such creature to have perfected hiding, how would we know? A main theme within this theory was people talking to themselves, which I happen to do quite a bit.

I'm not one of the world's mumblers. I have hearing problems and constantly think everyone else is mumbling, so I sure as anything don't mumble. In fact, I was once reprimanded for having a good time by a total stranger in a coffee shop because 'there are other people in the room, you know, having their own conversations, not wanting to hear yours'. Firstly, I'll explain about this story that the woman was sat right next to me and there were plenty of empty tables. The only other people in the downstairs seating area we were in, were two men at different tables with their headphones so loud I could hear the words to their music and a woman looking totally disinterested in her surroundings, buried in a book. This woman, however, had chosen to take the time out of her conversation to specifically ask me to shut up. So I most certainly am not one of the world's mumblers. I do however mumble when I'm talking to myself. Apparently.
One time when I was in year 8, my neighbour's dad gave us a lift home from school. There were 5 children in the car plus a driver, so my neighbour sat in the very back seat in the middle of his car. About 30 seconds from our homes, I glanced into the rear-view mirror, completely out of chance to see my neighbour's eyelids raised higher than I thought possible, a probably imitation of the earliest recorded duck-faces and cheeks sucked in as if impersonating a fish. He basically looked like the kid on the tangfastic advert. The face then changed; lips remained in a forward pout but angled downwards, eyebrows furrowed into his nose and cheeks tightened, as if in a smile. I then asked what he was doing and, changing his face again, he told me matter-of-factly that he always does it: just like some people talk to themselves in the mirror, he makes faces at himself.
I'm not really suggesting that there's something there with you constantly watching you pull your faces in the reflection, or listening when you tell the empty house that you're going to make a cup of tea, but there must be a reason we do it.
I personally find it embarrassing that I can't stay in a room without keeping myself company; this weekend when I was at my friend's house, I got changed into my pajamas at night in the bathroom, sang a bit of Disney, then caught my eye in the mirror. That's when my 'thing' happened. See I don't talk to myself in the mirror. Call me crazy, call me lonely, regardless of what I am, I have conversations in my head, but I say my part out loud... except I don't: I mumble. I have hypothetical conversations with real people. I hear their response inside my head, and then mumble back to them in a very thorough response. Sometimes it's a continuation of an earlier argument from the day, sometimes it's them commenting on how I look and me bouncing a conversation off that, sometimes I'm just telling them what I think. But whatever we're talking about, I'm mumbling. Now I could tell you the logical explanation of mumbling in these conversations as being: they're in my head, the sound doesn't have to travel far so I don't need to say it loudly. The real reason though is that I'm scared someone else might hear and think I'm strange. But this week's video will pretty much confirm any speculation that I'm a bit different. I was surprisingly calm though when my friend - who at the time had been waiting outside the bathroom door, drink for me in hand - asked me in the morning if I talk to myself.
"What?"
"I heard you. Last night... the toilet, mumbling."
"Oh yeah I do that a lot."
"Hmm, me too. I thought it was just me!"
"So did I until now."
So me and Meghan were happy little bunnies, having discovered the other one talks to themselves in mirrors. Well look, there is another person in that mirror and I'm hearing half a conversation in my head. If I didn't respond I don't know what would happen, but it would probably involve more medication.
The thing about mirrors and me is that I really don't like them. That's not an insecurity of me not liking how I look - heck I'm a teenager, I know we all do that. No, my personal vendetta with mirrors is that they cannot be trusted. I'd let you break a thousand mirrors before you told me honestly that you trust them. Because, really, who trusts something without a colour?
Oh yes, that's right. What colour is a mirror? Silver? That's what I thought. Look again. That mirror you've been watching yourself in day after day? There is no colour to it. It imitates you, imitates anything put in front of it - it just copies. It takes on the colour of whatever is mumbling to it. Right now I can see a lamp, the top of a door frame and some whiskey tins. No mirror though, just a frame with a reflection. I just don't understand how anything without a colour can be trusted.
Maybe that's why I whisper. Maybe the creature that's perfected hiding is right in front of you, day-in-day-out. Maybe the creature who's perfected hiding in evolution is humans. Maybe we created something that can't be seen.

OoooooooOOOOOOOooooooooO creepy. Anyway, let me know in the comments below on the ever-so-fabulous google+ whether you mumble or shout at your reflection, let me know if you come up with the colour of a mirror and definitely let me know when you trust hidden-creature-creations again.

Chapter One

It probably won't seem it, but this is actually quite a personal post. I was told a while ago that I should write a book, so I started. This is part of my first chapter. I was totally stuck on what to do for this week's blog post, and you'll well you won't actually notice that this post is out about 8 hours later than my usual release. That's because I only decided I'd release this material at about 12:30pm, as me and my brothers were on our way to Belvoir Castle. So here it is. Be gentle, it's a first draft and like I said, quite personal to me. Let me know if you think I should do a blog post to explain the importance of this post next week.

My earliest memory of Josh and I is when I was about 3 years old. My sister and I shared the largest bedroom in the new house. It was upstairs and I had just gone from my cot to a converted cot-bed. The room was largely empty- despite a rocking chair, large bookshelf, toy-storage unit and a sofa in the corner. My 'bed' had giant cushions in it with Aztec patterns on, which made up for the lack of padding in the mattress. My point is, the room was massive and Josh didn't see it often, so one day when he wasn't at school my mum had carried him upstairs and we were playing under my bed. I have no idea what game we were playing, or why we were under the bed, but I remember laughing until I couldn't breathe. The sight must have been funny when my mum walked in- half of your 8-year-old son sticking out from underneath your youngest daughter's bed; you daughter no where in sight; the sound of both of these children laughing hysterically at something you couldn't see. For some reason though, my mum took Josh downstairs and so play time was over. To this day I have no idea why she took him downstairs, but I think I remember that was the first time I'd experienced the emotion 'resentment'. Obviously as a child I didn't know what that emotion was called, but I knew it wasn't nice to feel and that I probably wasn't meant to be feeling it. But I did. And that feeling stayed with me for a long time, which I'll talk about over the next few hours, days or weeks- however long it takes you to read this.

My next memory is maybe a year or two later- I was singing to the Winnie The Pooh theme tune, but making the words up. It went something like "I love Joshie, I love Joshie, silly willy nilly old Josh my brother- I love Joshie, Josh loves me-e, silly willy nilly old Bruv". Now as a kid I was pretty impressed with myself for managing to not only put different words to a tune, but also fit the syllables in and still allow the words to make sense- which a lot of artists these days can't even do! Ever heard of the four-chord song? Look it up. Since the 1940's, popular songs have generally been comprised of the same chord progression. Now various versions of this song float around, some with G, C, D and Em, but the original, by Axis of Awesome, used E, B, C# and A. The point of these songs is that no matter how different songs may sound initially, played acoustically they would sound pretty similar. Since the melody lines for these chord progressions have now pretty much been exhausted, artists have now started blatant plagiarism without noticing. Listen to Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri, then Halo by Beyoncé. 'Remember those walls I built' and 'who do you think you are' are exactly the same tune. It's like the revelation about the alphabet and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So hearing a child below the age of 5 to being able to write at the standard of Christina Perri in 2011, anyone would be impressed. Josh certainly was, and each time I began the chorus again he burst into laughter. I didn't see what was so funny, but he did, so I kept going for a good half hour whilst our child-minder did some arts and crafts with our brother and sister- who in this time are coming across significantly more sensible than myself and Josh.

Lizzie wasn't always this calm and composed though. Each morning before school, me and Lizzie (at this time Josh was calling her Libby because it sounded 'more cheeky' according to Josh and so matched her personality better) would stand in the driveway behind the gate, and Josh would whizz around on the pavement on the other side, pretending to be a jailer- Lizzie and I were prisoners. How did we come up with this game? No clue. Why did we come up with this game? Je ne sais pas. Why were we playing it? Josh was waiting for his transport to pick him up and me and Lizzie liked to wait with him. This started when I was in year 1, Lizzie was in year 3 and Josh was in year 7. I don't know how long it went on for but I remember it happening a lot! Josh went to Chilwell Comprehensive, as it was back then, and he was taken every day by Arrow Cars- specialized transport for young people with disabilities.

In the summer holidays when we were about the same age, all four of us were quite close and we used to pretend to run holiday clubs- this must have been great for our parents; we entertained ourselves and for the most part did so without any arguments. We created Big Muvver. M.U.double-V.E.R. We even had a theme tune- again copied the melody line, from the Vimto advert at the time- V.I.M.T.O: The fruitiest word I know! If you're a similar age to me or older you'll remember the 2004 disco style the advert was sung in. If you're the same age as my parents or older, you'll remember the song D.I.S.C.O. This was the same as our Big Muvver show. Yes, we recorded it. Voice recordings. The best of spy-kit technology from the early 2000's was a voice recorder Ben had gotten for his birthday, and this was used to record various episodes. Literally. If I walked through to Josh in the next room right now and exclaimed 'What's this?!' in an animated voice, I'm sure he would respond 'Hidden contraband!!'. I can't remember too much why that episode happened, but my sister had taken one of my soft toys from my bed to start the BIG MUVVER show going that day and I sent Ben upstairs to investigate. He immediately found my toy- Blue Dolly- and thus came "What's this?! Hidden contraband!!". For the rest of the day, we sat around Ben's Dictaphone and listened to those four words repeated over and over again, each time falling into fits of giggles. I don't remember many other episodes, other than one which was almost a foreshadowing of our relationships now.

We were birds. We were flying. I think we were betting sweets on how high each of us could jump from the stairs. Our house is a dormer-bungalow, which means that it's architecturally designed as a bungalow, but the dormers are actually another floor. The stairs are built into the foundations of the house and climb the wall around one edge of the house. Our flight of stairs has a landing half way up. It's only about 4 feet from ground level and the distance from where the stairs finish to the landing is about 5 feet. I've never been good at maths, but I know there is a physics equation that can be done to work out how far that jump was. To me, at the age of 8, it was 8 stairs- which logic told me I could easily manage: one stair for each year of my life. Ben, me and my sister were always being told off for jumping the last two steps when we were coming downstairs and we never took any notice of this, so jumping a few more steps every now-and-then didn't seem like that much of a danger. I went first and did the normal hop of the last two steps. Then Lizzie as she was next in age, went from the 4th step. She managed it, landed on both feet and put her arms up in a 'v' as she'd been taught in gymnastics at school. Ben crouched on the 5th step and jumped, spread-eagled to the floor, landing like a bush baby on all-fours. Here came my second turn. I thought it over in my head a few times 'I can totally do that jump. 5 steps is nothing, they're so wimpy'. So I ran up the stairs, zipped round on my heels and ran to jump. As I was doing this, Lizzie, Ben and Josh were sat telling me that it was quite a high jump, asking if I wanted one of those big cushions from my room, telling me I didn't have to do it to prove I could jump the furthest. Let's evaluate the situation from my point of view at the age of 8- I'm the youngest. I'm the skinniest. I'm the shortest. These therefore make me the lightest. The expression 'babies bounce' had been around long before I had. I totally should have made that jump and landed without a trace of it on my body!

But of course that didn't happen.

I was carried to Ben's bed where I remained for the rest of the afternoon. A sick episode of foreshadowing by our lovely universe dictated my three siblings looking after me- fetching me drinks and snacks and making sure our parents weren't aware of my fall. At the time we probably thought I'd broken it, though even if I had we wouldn't have found out because to this day* our parents have no idea that this happened. They knew about big MUVVER being no more, but they were clueless as to the reason that this was the last episode of big MUVVER to ever take place in the Hall Family Household.


*actually, as of this day, my parents know; they overheard me reminding my brothers of it in the car on the way to Belvoir castle today. My mum was horrified, saying "how did I not know this?" and "where was I when this happened?" It reminds me of when she read this post , saying "you didn't really do this, did you? I don't remember it, I would have been there, wouldn't I?" Which will actually lead me into my next chapter. That's quite a sad chapter and again, very personal, and for that reason I don't intend to publish it unless in its book.

P.S. My parents had a lot to deal with when we were growing up.

Autism (and cats)

This blog post is going to be (totally) different to my usual post; I’ll try and make it funny because in essence, the girl I’m going to talk about is hilarious. But it’s not such a ‘funny’ topic and I don’t want to stomp around trying to own this ‘thing’ and end up offending people in the process because I’m not an expert, I just have an amazing friend in my life who has educated me further in this field of… I don’t know, field of medicine? Emotional/social health? I don’t know. Why don’t YOU tell me what category Autism falls into? Because all I can put it in is ‘variation of normal’- just like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, seriously, do not mistake this for me saying autism isn’t complex, it is. Autism is complex as shit, and it can range over such a spectrum (hence the term ‘autistic spectrum’) and it can be so mild it can go undiagnosed for years, or it can be so severe that a child can never live an independent life, stuck in a world of meltdowns and hallucinations and an inability to communicate with anybody. Autism can tear families apart, and it can bring them together. For me, autism is a twinge on my friend’s life that messes with her head, emotions and social interactions.

Meet Meghan, known to my family as ‘Meghan-with-a-h’ (the ‘h’ is pronounce [huh], not [aych]), but to me she’s Meghan or Megmoo or stinky poo, because friends give friends nicknames, that’s just a thing that friends do. Meghan is almost 16, did 2 forward rolls on Saturday night and can’t stand the colour orange. She dances ALL THE TIME, sasses her parents and swears too much. She’s awkward around people she doesn’t know and often misinterprets what people say. Her mood can be fab one day and bad the next, and her autism sometimes makes her feel things that other people don’t feel, or blocks her from feeling what other people feel.

She’s pretty normal, just normal with autism, but she is quite a complex little munchkin. She often has us laughing over the tiniest little misunderstanding. I’ve been told by her family many times that when she was little she went shopping with her sister, who told her when they got home to ‘put your new clothes on and do the cat walk for mum and dad’. So Meghan put all of her new clothes on, got down on all fours, and started meowing and purring. The other night her family and I were watching a well-known talent show and Allie (Meghan’s mum) cried at a song along with some of the judges on said talent shows’ panel. Meghan said she knew people cried at songs, but didn’t know why. She said she knows people cry for happiness and sadness, but why a song? And it’s quite true really; what is it that signals in our brains for us to cry when we find a song ‘beautiful’? Because often the song isn’t sad or happy, the notes that are played or sang are just beautiful. And that logically wouldn’t be enough to make someone cry. Sometimes I think Meghan’s autism just makes her super honest, like if someone’s feet smell, she won’t do a round-about “Hmm, should we put our shoes back on?” Or “Oh I think my feet smell,” trying to hint at other people to check their own. Meghan will just flat out say “Hey, your feet smell”. I sometimes wish I could just carry her around in my pocket so she can say things I want to say but am too self-conscious to say. Like, when people you REALLY like’s breath smells. I don’t want to offend them, but if I carried round a pocket-sized Meghan, I could just whip her out and she’d be all:

“Your breath smells.”

And they’d be all “Frankie? Who is this?”

And I’d be all “Ah she’s autistic she can’t help it… but she’s right.”

And that’s how super-Megz would save the day for us all.

Other times she’s aware of how unaware she is, like when we went to buy some drinks because there weren’t any sugar free drinks in the house; Meghan decided what drink she wanted so I told her to go up to the cashier. She stood holding her drink, so I prompted her to pass it to the check-out lady. Then Meghan put the money on the wrong side of the till so the check-out lady couldn't reach it. After I’d corrected her, Meghan walked off with her drink- without her change. Silly Meghan. After that she joked about me being her carer because she doesn’t know how to ‘do shops’.

I don’t see all of the ways autism affects her, as I’m only around for a fraction of her life, but I do see quite a lot of what we call ‘autism moments’. Like when Meghan’s hamster died -- she poked him with a pen until she realised he was dead, then made me pick him up. “Only if you carry him downstairs,” I bargained. She agreed and held her hands out… until her cold, dead hamster was lying limp and lifeless in my hands and her hands escaped behind her back -- this bit’s all okay I think. The autism comes in when she carried the hamster down to her parents, holding the deceased Yoda up in front of her and singing the funeral march. Most people are gutted when their hamsters die -- as she was. Meghan just expresses herself in slightly different ways to other people.

Another thing I mentioned in brief earlier is about how she hates the colour orange. For instance, if this font suddenly changed to orange (sorry Meghan), she’d get either angry or upset, and would probably stop reading it. She’ll avoid things that she knows are orange, or rooms she knows have orange in, and doesn’t eat carrots or oranges.

A – quite prominent – symptom of autism is love of repetition or habitual behaviour. I haven’t seen this an awful lot with Meghan, but this weekend she was at home and she knew that where she had been that day, everyone was having a sandwich for dinner. When Allie told us the plan to have burgers for dinner, Meghan point blank refused. We did try haggling and I suggested slicing the burger in half so it was thinner, like sandwich meat, then putting that between two slices of bread, but Meghan just wouldn’t okay any of the ideas- other people were having sandwiches, so she would eat a sandwich. Probably because by essence, we were making her eat a burger, but it would have been her ‘norm’ to have a sandwich. I always think of cats when people talk about habitual behaviour in autism; cats love routine, and stick to a similar one each day. My cats both have very predictable patterns of what they do each day -- just like Meghan. Cats are actually so rigid in their routine that if something changes or their routine is knocked off balance, they can be quite poorly, even sick. This is similar to the anxiety people can feel in autism when their routine changes -- and anxiety can and does make people physically sick.

Meghan makes us all laugh most of the time, but often autism is very difficult to deal with. She gets quite anxious over little things like paying for things or talking to people. Sometimes she gets anxious for no reason or gets upset or angry over very small things, and she doesn’t know why she’s overreacting. This is very common in autism, and with more severe autism or autism in younger children, this is where meltdowns come in. A meltdown is different to a tantrum in one very specific way -- a child having a tantrum will care about what happens around them, they will look for reactions and want people to notice they’re not okay and comfort them. A child having a meltdown however, will go into their own world, where the reactions or the staring or the disapproving gasps from strangers don’t matter. The world outside their immediate emotion doesn’t exist and it can be very distressing, both for the autistic person/child and their parent/carer. In these meltdowns, self-harm can often occur, both intentional and unintentional. So if you do see a child kicking and screaming in the streets and a clearly embarrassed parent, don’t immediately judge them for being unable to ‘control’ their child -- for all you know they could have autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and be unable to control themselves.

I personally have never known prejudices against people with ASD, but I know that it exists out there. The world can be a really horrible place sometimes, and I can only imagine how much harder that is with ASD, sometimes being unable to understand what and why you’re feeling the way you are. I would probably say that having such a close friend as Meghan with autism has opened my eyes to autism and how it affects people. I wasn’t a ‘stranger’ to autism; I know what it is, that it can come in lots of shapes and sizes, and that sometimes everyone displays little ‘autistic moments’. But having Meghan just makes me care more about autism, I think.

Now I did find a post once on why cats should be the autism symbols not the puzzle piece, but I can’t find it; however I can pretty much make my own argument for it.

1. Cats like routine. As I previously mentioned, habitual behaviour is both a big symptom of autism and being a cat.
2. Cats are very touch-sensitive. They like being stroked a certain way, hate getting wet and do NOT like having the base of their tail stroked. Cats also avoid some textures because of the way their brains process them, such as walking on snow. This can be likened to an autistic child crying and wailing because they stood on a piece of cucumber (which is a horrible feeling anyway) and they don’t know how to process it. Also, I think it’s quite a common symptom that people with autism (kids especially) don’t like having their hair brushed? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Like I say, I’m not an expert.
3. Cats have poor social awareness. Ever heard someone calling their cat in? Ever thought ‘they’ve been calling for 45 minutes, why is the cat not responding?’ Well cats don’t respond to their names. It’s true that certain pitches are registered better than others by cats, but they generally won’t respond to someone calling their name. This can be likened to more severe autism, where sometimes the person will make noises in response to noises, such as copying an animal’s sound, but not even blinking when their own name is called.
4.  Cats reply to sounds. I often play the call-and-response game with my cat- she meows, I meow back, etc. This can be quite common in autism (as far as I know). Because of difficulties with communication sometimes experienced in autism, it can be comforting to just copy a noise you hear; such as a meow or a bark or a moo.
5.  Cats are cautious around new people. Just like Meghan, my cats will be very quiet and nervy if a stranger comes round and will sometimes hide until they’ve gone.
6. Cats are often sensitive to sound. A major degree of autism is to do with sensory processing, and sensory includes sound. My cats hate the vacuum cleaner, lawn mower, shouting or loud laughing, just like sometimes people with autism feel anxious when there are loud sounds or bright lights- even sometimes background noise like blinds flapping in wind. 
7. Cats react differently to different colours. In the same way the Meghan hates orange, one of my cats, Tigger, loves pink. Almost as strongly as Meghan is driven away from orange, Tigger is drawn to pink. I have a bed cover which is a cartoon character with his pink tongue sticking out- Tigger would only ever sit on the pink tongue on that duvet, and always preferred his pink blanket to the identical blue one my Mum originally bought for him.
8. Cats will choose when and how they show their affections to you. A cat will always be the decider of when you get a cuddle or are allowed to stroke them, and as soon as they're finished, no more fussing or cuddling can continue. Just like with higher end autism or in younger children, often they will decide when and when not hugging/kissing or even eye contact will happen.
9. Cats stim. For those of you who don't know what stimming is, it's a repetitive motion (can be physical or vocal) which is used to express emotions. NT's (neuro-typicals/people without autism) sometimes stim, for example, I make sounds like dinosaurs and rub my hands together really fast either when I'm happy or anxious, some people fiddle with things or chew their hair when they're nervous. Cats purr when they're happy, rub their teeth against books on a bookshelf and flick their tails when they're irritated or anxious.

Anyway, please feel free to leave a comment below if you agree with the cat-autism thing, or if anything stood out to you in this article or particularly made you laugh- I always love feedback and especially if something has been particularly prominent to you.

Also, I feel like I should just pop this fact in somewhere- it’s estimated that 80% of males have diagnosable autism, it is just often so mild that it can go undiagnosed, and also because such a high percentage of males display behaviours like that, it is considered ‘just how men are’. 

This is a Perilous Path You Walk

How would you like it if you were being used every time someone interacted with you? What would you do if you found out you were only wanted for one purpose? And how would you react if by the time you discovered all of this, your purpose was realized and there was nothing at all you could do about it?
Because you see, this is a very true reality many organisms face, thousands of times a day. There is a minority out there who are used, treated like they're nothing but a stepping stone, then destroyed every time you want to undergo this one, small act of pleasure. A needless amount face peril as you sip your cup of tea.
What many of you won't realize is that as you're reading this right now, up to 100% of biscuits dunked are disconnecting from their base and falling, helplessly, into a cup of boiling tea. Dunking biscuits is a perilous path. Every time you dunk a biscuit, the biscuit fairy is in the corner of the room, whispering into the universe 'this is a perilous path you walk'. There is no escaping the biscuit fairy. She is the one who causes you so much grief, she is the one who puts out into the universe what you get back. Burn the fairy!

Or don't, because it's actually totally your fault that your biscuit just dropped into your tea. I was pining in the week for rich tea biscuits because I desperately want something that tastes heavenly when dunked in a lovely cup of tea. Reminiscing with my mum on the times when we used to have rich tea fingers, I longed for the perfect dunking biscuit -- not just a rich tea -- but a biscuit perfectly shaped to fit in any cup. The legendary rich tea finger. Which I now have! Thanks dad!
However, as previously mentioned, dunking biscuits comes at a price. Leave it in for too long when dunking, you face the possibility of it dropping into your tea, or worse, splitting down your cup running into your tea and also onto your table. If the latter happens, you're torn- do I save my table or my tea? Will my tea still be drinkable or will I be faced with biscuity-bits dancing on my tongue with every slurp and sip? Will my cup still be sticky after wiping the melty-biscuit mess from the side? In the words of my brother, "this is a perilous path you walk". So much could go wrong in this endeavor with so little you can do to negate the wrongness. The only solution viable is prevention and survival mechanisms.

Evaluation of different dunking biscuits.

The Chocolate Digestive
I've previously found grievances with chocolate digestives -- of course if the chocolate melts off into your tea, you have a sweeter cup; however I choose the amount of sugar I put in my cup because that's the sweetness I like, I do not appreciate the extra sweetness brought on by the chocolate which should be on my biscuit. Also, if I had wanted a chocolate-free biscuit I would have picked a plain digestive. I would not recommend this biscuit.

Rich Tea (circle)
This biscuit was actually originally invented for the middle class, as something to munch on between 'full course meals'. So although they weren't invented specifically for dunking, they've served quite a happy purpose. The main issue with these biscuits is that you can only dunk them when your cup is full, otherwise they probably won't fit in your cup (unless you dunk one side at a time, which changes the shape until you can fit it in your cup). The down side of these biscuits it that they're relatively weak. The up side of the down side is that because they only fit in your cup for the first few sips, you're at a relatively low risk of the biscuit splitting.

Rich Tea (fingers)
These were specifically designed with an identical flavour and texture of original rich teas, but with the specific purpose of dunking. Unfortunately, the biscuit's making is also its undoing. As terrifying as terror is, the peril hits when you're least expecting. I would only recommend this biscuit for the tea-timing experts out there. Those of you who don't leave too late to remove the biscuit from the tea, yet also don't remove the biscuit too soon, for if the biscuit is removed too soon, the biscuit is still crunchy (and that's no good!), but if left too late to be removed, the biscuit will flop and potentially drop into your tea or lap. Although these are the only biscuits specifically designed to be dunked, they are also the most dangerous, with a risk factor higher than the SPF on baby-block.

Twix Finger Straws
There was a phase around 6 years ago of heavily publicized twix-dunking. It wasn't real dunking, but had the same messy consequences; bit both ends off a twix finger, stick it in your tea and slurp through. Supposedly the biscuit's hollow nature would provide a straw for the tea to come up to your mouth, the caramel on top would flavour the tea sweeter and the chocolate apparently would stay on the biscuit. All that would actually happen is that the biscuit would become mushy by the tea being forced through, the caramel would melt on your fingers, you end up inhaling tea and bits of biscuit and the whole thing disintegrates. You're left with a messy kitchen; nasty, sticky hands and a ruined cup of tea. I hope you're happy.

Jaffa Cakes
Don't even try it.

My only other solution to the problem of biscuity tea would be to just not dunk biscuits, but that wouldn't really be fun. That's like saying, rather than risk injury, why not just stay in a safe room and do nothing, ever. It would not be a good solution! I would really like the ability to invent a device that allows you to dunk biscuits in tea without the issue of soggy biscuit at the bottom of your mug, but that's an unlikely possibility for two reasons: one, I'm too easily distracted and wouldn't be allowed in a lab because of this and two, I don't have anywhere NEAR enough money, and even if I did, I'd never make it all back as most people who choose the perilous path of dunking biscuits in tea (like myself) would simply continue to gamble on their tea's life by dunking and avoiding products (which probably don't work anyway) claiming to be the solution to all their soggy-biscuit-tea problems.

These are most of my thoughts on the matter, but feel free to leave a comment. Also, apparently Heston Blumenthal did an experiment to determine how best to eat a biscuit, and, apparently, biscuits taste better dunked.

How to Moult Your Cat

One Cat [check]
One Brush [check]

How to train your dragon- wait wrong one

How to moult your cat.


You Will Need:

1 cat
1 moulting brush
Full body armours (optional)
Elephant tranquilizers

The cat can be seen hiding
in plain site.

Step 1. Locate your cat

Your cat may sense the evil presence of help, and will most likely hide from you. Cats think they are cunning and tend to hide where they think you won’t look, for example: in a chimney hollow; behind a sofa; on a roof. Sometimes though, the cat will attempt to trick you by hiding in super obvious places like on a bench or bed. These are the places you will slip up. The cat is cunning by presenting a cute front, in an attempt to distract you from your real intention.

Don't let the cute distract you!

Cute paws at the camera lens in an
attempt to distract the moult-er

Step 2. Eyes on the prize

As mentioned in step 1, cats will attempt to blind you of your goal by being cute. Ignore the cute. This might be a good time to put your body armour on, too.


Step 3. Tranquilize the cat



Step 4. Be prepared

Your cat won’t like being moulted because they refuse help. In this way cats are similar to grandmas. Read more about that here. This has nothing at all to do with the fact that cats have a cleaning instinct and they know how to moult themselves. This is a lie. They need you to moult them. This won’t at all result in a scratchy bitey cat and a bloody slightly sore arm. They just hate being helped. They’re very independent creatures, you’ll know.

Step 5. Ready your brush

      I. Get your brush.
     II. Hold it in your hand
    III. Place on the cat’s neck
    IV. Get scratched to death “Small sharp scratch”

Step 6. Commence brushing

It might be easier to hold the cat in place as they may squirm. Here you will need two hands. I find it helps to label them (left hand is ‘L’ and right hand is ‘R’). Hold the cat with your non-writing hand; if you are ambidextrous this won’t be an issue- simply pick the hand you care less about. If you’re left-handed, this might be your means to a sticky end*. Pull the brush from the scruff of the cat’s neck to the tail base. Release.




Step 7. Repeat step 6

Repeat step 6 until either your cat wriggles free or you’re dangerously close to bleeding out filling the brush. You’ll know your brush is full because you will no longer be able to see the bristles.

Step 8. Get to hospital.

Unless you were wearing body armour, you might need medical attention. Ring an ambulance if your bleeding is serious, otherwise ring NHS direct (in England + Wales) because everyone knows how great NHS direct are. Alternatively, pour alcohol on your scratches and bind with a clean t-shirt. I think that’s what Bear Grylls does? Also, drink your own pee**.

Step 9. Don’t moult your cat

I mean, I moult my cat, but he’s more of a dog than a cat. By which I mean he’s a dog. Well, he’s a dog if you mean a dog in a cat’s body? We have a lead for him. Though last time we used it he wriggled out of it and almost killed me (with worry). He was off his lead for a good 10 seconds and it was the scariest 10 seconds of my life. Apart from the time I almost died under my brother’s bed (again there’s a blog post on that). Or the time I almost drowned… maybe I should write a post on that. Very traumatic, wouldn't like it to happen to anyone else. ANYWAY, long story short, you might want to steer clear of moulting your cat unless it’s a pedigree or really old. Or it’s a dog masquerading as a cat.



 *Disclaimer my year 9 English teacher (who would prefer not to be named) told us that left-handed people live approximately 6 years less than those who are right-handed. To my knowledge this hasn't been disproved. If you are left handed, you may wish to get an ambidextrous or right-handed friend to assist you in your cat moulting endeavor.

** This might be for dehydration. That could also be a problem depending how long you've been trying to moult your cat

Family

Family is a very important thing for a lot of people, and spending time with family- whether you get on with them or not- is vital. It's a thing a lot of people are used to- family all sitting round a table at least once a week for a meal, seeing the cousins or aunties and uncles or grandparents regularly is taken for granted. But my family is rather different. Unfortunately, we often only see each other (cousins and uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews) at celebrations or in a crisis. And I don't mean Christmas and Easter- if I saw my cousins every Christmas I would be so grateful- but unfortunately only occasions like my eldest (and quite poorly) brother's 21st birthday party or my grand-dad's 80th birthday. The last 'crisis' my family had was last year with a very unexpected car-crash. No one was critically injured but it really shook my family and we'd seen each other all well so recently for my grand dad's birthday. Since then I've seen one of my cousins and his (now) wife several times, and I think we all just realized how much we missed each other. I love seeing my cousin and his wife and my uncle and I appreciate them seeing us, too.
Recently however, my other cousins and uncle and aunt (same side) got a new puppy, and this was- amazingly- the push my family needed to prompt us seeing one another again. We'd meaning to meet up since my grand dad's birthday, but things have been so hectic as my younger cousin swims (very well, look out Rio 2016! Pow Pow!) and my uncle and aunt do a lot of hands on parenty things (think soccer-mom but more Manchester-ish) and my older cousin is currently doing a course on teaching swimming to kids with disabilities (I think?) and it's difficult to find a time when everyone's free. But as it's summer, we made the excuse of a new puppy to go over and see them.

Molly

And it was awsome.

We were going to go out for a meal together, but my cousins had been out the night before and weren't feeling up to going out twice in a row, and my grandparents couldn't come because my granddad was going with my other uncle (who we've started seeing more, recently) to see the rugby and my nanna wasn't well enough to come for a meal out. After the meal though, we went and picked my nanna up and we went off to my cousin's house. All of my mum's family live in the same neck of the woods, so it was a quick drive from my nanna's to my cousins' house. Immediately we were greeted by an excitable 16-week old pup and my younger cousin. Note I don't say little. That's because he's twice as tall as me and has flippers instead of feet. Did I mention he swims? And sleeps in a green house?
I saw my cousin's medals and trophy's for swimming (he has many a trophy and lots of very shiny medals) and we all sat in the garden and played with the dogs, and later I sat with the rabbit on my lap (who was really super soft, softer than my angora wool socks yo). The older dog was called Molly, and was constantly being hounded- no pun intended- by Amber, the tearaway toddler who doesn't know the size of her own mouth. Any toy Molly had, Amber wanted. A few times Amber managed to take a toy from Molly, so Molly would get another toy, which Amber would promtly attempt to tackle from Molly's jaw. Even when Amber already had a toy in her mouth, she would run alongside Molly, rugby tackling her for the second toy. It was madness, madness, y'all.

Amber.
I was warned I wouldn't get any
good photos, mwu-ha-ha-ha

Anyway, throwing the balls was endless entertainment for all of us (and the dogs!) especially when we would pretend to throw the ball, then when the dogs went to search, throwing the ball in the other direction and laughing at how dumb they were. When in actual fact, we humans are the dumb ones as we don't know when and how to throw balls in order for a dog to fetch. The game is called 'fetch', not 'try to make your dog look stupid and confuse it'. Stop being so cruel to your dogs, people.

Cookie

Cookie, AKA Tony, AKA Mr Rabbit, was jumping round his little run like Tigger on a fresh spring morning (my cat Tigger, not the cartoon character, although remarkable similarities in jumping height), until we took some notice of him, and I then sat with him on my lap for about 40 minutes. He was so soft and fluffy guys it was like stroking a silky cloud. Apart from where Amber had been licking him, because apparently some dogs like to lick their rabbits. No seriously, Amber really likes the rabbit. I reckon it's because they're the same size and so feel able to relate to each other's struggles, like not being able to reach the cereal on the top shelf.
By the way, who keeps cereal on the top shelf?

Anyway, it was a lovely day, and as we were driving back to my nanna's house to drop her back home, we saw an arm sticking awkwardly and waving madly out of the car in front. Then we realized it was our other cousin with his wife. It was mad. And awesome. We just totally weren't expecting to see them, as his mum has recently moved house and we know that they'd been busy helping her move, but like I said earlier they all live near each other, so it was totally believable that we'd have bumped into them like that. It just put the cherry on top of my day, because like I was saying earlier, I just love seeing them. All of them are so rad, I just wish we lived closer. Because if we lived closer to one, we'd live closer to all of them! And then we could randomly bump into each other all the time! I think I have a bit of a fairy-tale-ish perception of living close to your family. I don't care. But anyway, they got out of their car and we got out of our car and we stood around and talked for a bit and then they had to go, but it was great, it felt like the most worth while visit to anywhere ever.

And family.

The only thing I dislike about seeing my family is that it reminds me how much I miss them.

My Grandma's Badass 1-Ups Your Grandma's Badass

My family and I recently went away for a short break and during that time we got talking about inappropriate things members of our family do. Not inappropriate like flashing in public, but inappropriate like they shouldn't be doing it. Obviously I'm not condoning flashing in public places, I'm not condoning flashing anywhere, but what I'm talking about as inappropriate is more like things you've been told explicitly that you shouldn't do. Like someone with a nut allergy shoving a handful of coconut or peanuts in their mouth, or a grandma giving chocolate to their grand-child.
I'm not brilliantly sure how we got on to the subject, but at some point someone brought up my grandma and I thought her faux pars were so spectacular, they perhaps warranted their own blog post, but I guess we'll just see how this goes.
Firstly, a memory I have- and probably one of my earliest with my grandma- is when she used to come on holiday with us. A combination of my parents not being able to handle 4 children under the age of 8, one potty training and one intermittently in a wheelchair, my grandma being too old to travel and us going on holiday every year, enabled my grandma to come with us each year. For me it felt like an eternity of having my grandma holidaying with us, but I'm told that she only came for a few years. I think maybe I was just so traumatized that time stood still. This might be a slight exaggeration where your generation is concerned, depending how old you are and how much you dislike. What you have to understand about my grandma is that, like my dad, she is always right. So if my parents say 'no seafish' and she says 'seafish', chances are, you're getting seafish. This happened because my grandma used to love the nostalgia of picking muscles off of sea walls and my siblings and I thought the shells were pretty. We had no idea there were actual, live creatures inside the shells, else we probably wouldn't have picked them. But we didn't know, so we did pick them, and my grandma told us she liked to cook them and eat them. At this point my parents caught on to what she was doing with her two grand-daughter-minions lugging around three sandcastle buckets full of muscles and told her, very clearly "If you want to cook those and give yourself food poisoning, be our guest, but do not give any to our children." I've checked with my parents multiple times since then and they said it was very clear that she wasn't to give us any. They were most shocked when we informed them a few weeks ago that she had, in fact, given us the muscles regardless. But hey, she apparently cooked them properly because my parents surely would have noticed if we- or my grandma- got food poisoning.
Me and my brother were sat in the carvery with our mum at this point talking about how badly the muscles smelled. It was like the smell was ingrained in our brains- it was horrible and it lasted for hours (but apparently they were only cooked for 6 minutes?) We both remember her using a tonne of salt and practically forcing the slimy, liverishly-textured seafood down our throats.
The second memory I have of my grandma on holiday is when she decided to help my parents out by giving me and my sister our bath before bed. She used to make us cry and scream because rather than laying us back to rinse the shampoo out of our hair, she used to dump the water on top of us, both rendering us unable to see, or breathe, whilst the suds filled all the crevices of our face. This really was a traumatic experience, and when we told our parents about it she was reprimanded and told how we were usually laid down and the suds rinsed with her hands from our locks. But sure enough, next bath time she not only dumped water over our heads, she used a fucking saucepan.
Nothing says retaliation like a saucepan. Just watch Tangled. The kid uses a saucepan to defy her 'mother' and also the law, thus her real mother and father. That girl's just a badass with a saucepan. I bet they based the film off my grandma- I don't remember a saucepan in the original. In fact, I don't remember a lot of the little prettied parts of Disney's version being in the original.

While we're talking about how badass my grandma is, I should tell you the toaster story.
Same holiday as the muscles I think, at least same location, the toaster was jammed the whole duration of our holiday. There was one day we didn't leave the house the whole day because- I'm informed- my brother was in hospital and no one felt like doing anything. In the afternoon my grandma fancied a snack and a break from what I can only assume was the longest game of snakes and ladders the poor woman had ever had the misfortune of playing. She was fed up of not only having her toast burnt but also catapulted across the room so she timed thirty seconds on her watch and made my sister and I wait by the toaster. Once her watch hit 30, I pressed the 'stop' button on the toaster. My grandma, who had been waiting across the other side of the room with a plate, lifted the plate into the air and, like a ninja catching a fly, caught the toast.

Ladies and gentlemen, my grandma. *takes a bow*

Next story is her being inappropriate in a different way, similarly to the muscles incident. My aunt was always adamant her children would have no e-numbers, organic, steamed and local grown everything with no preservative and additives. And above all, they would eat no chocolate until they were old enough to make the decision to wreck their teeth themselves (I should imagine). My grandma knew this and, being her, immediately had to defile the rule and rewrite it with her own reasoning. She would take my cousin out every now and then, away from my aunt, and force feed the child chocolate buttons. She would give him as many chocolate buttons as he could hold in his chubby little additive-free cheeks, and once he'd choked them down, she'd fill him up again. Once the buttons were gone, my grandma would nicely clean him up and return him, presumably in a sugar-coma, to his doting mother who would be left none the wiser as far as my grandma was concerned. When she told my mum about the grand chocolate endeavor, my poor mother was horrified, telling her how inappropriate it was, but my grandma shook her head in denial. "He likes them! They're good for him, a bit of this and that, you know?".
So folks, if you want my grandma to do something, tell her she's not to do it under any circumstances. Tell her that doing it would be putting the fate of the universe in grave danger, and could actually re-write history, including human life ever existing on earth. She'll be instinctively drawn to doing it. Honestly, she's just programmed that way. Probably part of her genetic 'badass' makeup. She's one of the world's risk takers. She's so badass, she likes the fate of the universe hanging in the balance of just one too many chocolate buttons.
I'm not really sure what else my grandma's done that's classed as inappropriate by you civilians. She's probably robbed a bank at some point. At gun point. And got away with it. She probably has a stack of alibis for every evening, her neighbours saying 'oh no, she falls asleep every night at 7:30pm bang on when Corrie starts. She's the most peaceful neighbor ever' when really she's just placed a crash dummy there from her entrepreneurial days as a jetpack designer and tester, and is out looting the local jewelers and performing other risk-taking behaviour. I bet she's a trained skydive instructor as well.
One thing I do know though, is she wouldn't be out saving the day for children who want to play with their dolls but forgot a vital piece of kit. These days, all dolls have hair. I had a Cindy doll with hair on one of the occasions we holidayed with my grandma and had taken the doll to the beach where we had paddled together and now needed to restyle our hair- brush it an let it dry. My grandma happily handed over a hair brush when I asked, but snatched it violently back when I went to brush Cindy's hair with it. My parents could never understand why she'd been so against her 3 year old granddaughter role-playing parental responsibilities and showing a sophisticated and educated level of play at such a tender age. Same holiday, my grandma went into a grumpy stupor when she'd smashed her flask in a hurry to get her tea out. We always went to a bowls field for a pot of tea and biscuits when we went to this holiday area, but my grandma was adamant that her tea was the only stuff she wanted, and it was a really nice tartan flask with a glass insulating chamber. Unfortunately, glass is very delicate and once broken could be fatal if ingested. I later found out that it could cut your throat and drown you in your own blood if you drink from a broken glass flask. I mean, considering my grandma's risk-taking tendancies, it does surprise me that she hadn't persevered with the flask. Perhaps my parents flippantly told her to just go for it when she told them she'd smashed it. If we're going with the logic that she does the opposite of what we ask, that would also be a reasonably explanation.
Anyway, I haven't got any more badass stories of my grandma, unfortunately. Probably because they happened when I was younger and my memory is patchy from my childhood and she is an old lady now so is probably hanging her badass hat on the hook for now. I think when the time comes, she'll pull something super awesome out of the bag, but for the time being she's masquerading as a fragile lady with intermittent memory lapses, like most badasses her age. (I think it's best to keep her antics on the DL at her age, don't want the press hanging round all the time you know?)