Adult Fun

Clubs are playgrounds for adults? No, PLAYGROUNDS are playgrounds for adults.

The most fun I’ve had in ages was an alcohol free romp in a children’s playground. I love this kind of fun. It’s free.

Why am I not constantly running around screaming loudly whilst being chased by my adult friends? Maybe because embracing your inner child in this way, is a sure fire way to elicit their concerns.

I have started skipping again, it’s healthy and great fun. Why should kids have the monopoly on skipping? I have taken to skipping when there is a lull in Skype conversations with the fella, just to mix things up. I am trying to convince him to buy a yoyo so we can virtually play together. I mean we’ve known each other since we were 16, that’s some kind of green flag to be able to bounce up and down on beds together and have PG fun right?

It’s a shame that maintaining contact with your inner child in this way is something that is generally an indicator of waning mental health. A warning sign that you are some kind of sexual predator. After all, no self respecting or upstanding adult with no kids would own a bouncy castle unless they were a child who had wished to be big and woken up to find they were an adult. Or Michael Jackson.

I often think that’s where MJ went wrong: his insistence that his playmates be thirty years younger than him. Had he called me to Never Never Land, we could have torn that shit up; I’m talking skipping, super soakers, sack race, roller coasters, candy floss. Sadly he will never know what we could have had.

Unfortunately for me, these situations would never take place in society outside a Tom Hanks movie. If they did they’d be met with a string of character damaging lawsuits and headshaking from all sides.

These children games still exist for adults, the swings, the pogo sticks, the running; only now they are more dating metaphors or have been turned into sex toys, so we can all relive the joy of being a child with the adult bonus of bouncing up and down on each other’s private parts with the help of swings and a jump rope.

Actually it is quite unnerving that something like a swing can be turned into a sex contraption, there is something Brave New World about the parallel. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong and my love of swings was in fact erotic play. In which case, the dream is alive people.

If only there was a place adults could go for fun that wasn’t a brothel or a bar. On many a sunny afternoon, whilst hogging a swing from a sour faced child, I have looked to the skies and pictured a playground, just like a child’s, only capable of sustaining heavier body weight, with more rubber flooring for the adult who likes to drink and where being childless and wanting to join in on the fun didn’t put you on a sex offenders list.

There’s still hope someone may read this and build this place. Until then I’ll be lurking around people’s garden sets, trying to get my fine ass down a kiddy slide.

Situationships

‘Hey. Remember me?’

Every now and then a guy I’d completely forgotten about will resurface on my WhatsApp or chat.

You know the type. The ones who send a mandatory maintenance text that outwardly says ‘sup’,  but really means ‘I haven’t forgot you, we could still hook up. These never ending situationships that went nowhere have started boomeranging back in the form of monosyllabic text reminders of the fuck ton of bad choices I once made which now baffle me.

I appear to have dated an array of sexual opportunists and emotional parasites who have hoped the relationship door will be left ajar on the off chance they get locked out of a opportunity with a girl they actually like. Luckily, I can now identify a waste of time in under 10 characters. A tragic but necessary life skill. Like being able to find your way home drunk.

It took me years to realise I had to stop responding. Screw being polite. I wasn’t bitter, or in my feelings, I just didn’t want to massage the ego of some guy who was clearly getting some relationship karma coming back his way.

These men had gotten all the time out of me that they were going to. If I was going to spend anymore of my time frivolously, I’d rather waste 20 pokeballs trying to catch an angry Seadra than maintain intermittent contact with someone who lacks both common courtesy and the ability to send a witty text.

Despite this move in the right direction, I did not live happily ever after.

Much like the elusive bus that only appears when you light a cigarette, the minute you stop bothering with some guys they rematerialise with added emojis.sex-love-life-2014-10-text-from-ex-main

Really? You were thinking of me? If you want to get all nostalgic, try having a wank over your mum’s Mary Kay catalogue or watch The Goonies. Don’t assume some type of emotional vigil is being held for you by an old flame. You’re getting in touch with a practical stranger who (if they’re me) will ask you to lose their number.

I refuse to assist any more guys in any delusion that I may be the one that got away, or that I’d spent years at a window, Jane Eyre style, before wandering the moors to find them. I am not that girl. The only time I patiently wait by the window is when I have an ASOS delivery coming.

Why am I ranting about this? The Colombian. A fuckboi who didn’t want to date me then  ghosted me before disappearing completely. Until one afternoon when I got that ‘Hey’. Here’s some free advice: if you plan to resurrect a relationship via text, get a thesaurus. Only Jesus can get away with a casual ‘Hey’ and that was after just three days. I hadn’t heard from this guy in 2 years.

What followed was more monosyllabic inane small talk and thinly veiled enquiries about my relationship status which culminated in him asking me to fly out to see him in Colombia. The only response I could think of that fit was LOL. He did not take this well.He ranted on about how I obviously didn’t care and to forget he’d said anything.

Guess what? I didn’t care. He had texted me while I was happily eating Jaffa cakes in a dick free zone. His irritating wounded act ruined a perfectly lovely afternoon.

A month later I got another ‘Hey’ and a life update. Now he’d moved to Mexico and wanted to know whether there was a chance I’d be moving there, or was I still mad at him (because clearly it was my irrational female anger stopping me from uprooting my life to Mexico for a guy who was a dick). I’ve never found block and delete quicker in my life.

To the horrified male friends who have messaged to ask what the ‘poor guy’ had done wrong, allow me to clarify my position: I’ve got nothing against exes getting in touch. Just don’t do it if you were a douche who is now feeling sorry for himself. Definitely don’t interrupt a woman during biscuit time.

It’s a mobile phone, not a time machine. Move on.

Haters Gonna Hate

Why have some people got their panties in a bunch about loving Pokemon Go?

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Shout out to my fellow trainers. “When Pokemon hunting is lit”

As a Pokemon fan from way back, nothing has made me happier than the chance to update my pokedex, get out there and meet other like minded nerds.

We’re adorable.

Think of us like asexual doggers, wandering around parks and scenic routes, looking for invisible creatures, which we then get mad excited about and try to catch using our smart phones.

It’s great fun.

I’ve met people in my community, had lovely conversations and laughed with people in the sun. It’s been really interactive and in a healthy, positive way.

So why is it when a group of people look like they are having completely harmless fun, someone will come along and either a) try to ruin it b) try to take advantage of it or c) criticise it?

Yesterday a group of hackers took down the  game making it impossible to get online. Why? I don’t know, why does someone step on your transformer when you’re about to launch a stealth attack? Fuckery.

Then there have been the stories of a few opportunists who have seized on the whole excitement to mug people. Yes. Mug people.

“There’s a rare pokemon down this alleyway….Now give me your wallet.”

Ok, some users need to be more grounded in reality. But what a bummer to be reminded when you’re trying to have fun, that some jackass will do anything to spoil it.

Which brings me to kill joys.

Why does Judgy McJudgerson care how old I am and if I know what I look like?

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See? Hawt

  I look like a hot pokemon trainer. If I choose to run around my local park, smile on me like a Cheshire cat, and I’m having fun, why does it bother you? If you don’t want to play, fine. But please don’t project your misery onto me under the guise that you’re worried I’m making a fool of myself.

Guess what? I give zero fucks how I look.

I may take it a step further and go Poké hunting in my Wonder Woman costume. If this makes you uncomfortable, guess what? That’s you not me.

People need to lighten up. There are far worse things happening in the world today.

Now if you don’t mind, A Snorlax has been spotted by the duck pond.

Gotta Catch’em all!

Pokemon trainer humour at Cosmo for the Go lovers! 

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a61383/hilarious-pokemon-go-pictures/

Asian in Asia

Have passport, will travel.

It’s 7am and I have a yoga class in an hour. I woke up because of the sea. Living in London, I’ve never had the luxury of waking up to anything other than the sound of urban foxes shagging. Mexico City wasn’t much better. Although sirens were often interspliced with drunken arguments, or thumping music. I didn’t realise how much I love to wake up to the sound of the sea.

The journey to get to Koh Phangan was not as tranquil.

The first night in Bangkok was spent wandering around the Khao San road shopping and avoiding teams of men in matching wife beaters, trying to drunkenly chat up anyone in grabbing reach. People like to touch here, not just drunken Brits out on a stag. I got poked in the boob, had my tattoo stroked and was awkwardly patted by a couple of giggly vendors, who may have been at the laughing gas balloons.

The night in Bangkok was a sensory overload. Lights. Vendors. Food. Massages. Rats. One of which I had an unsettling run in with that left me contemplating how much I really needed my right foot.

It was loud and bright and dirty and seedy. I liked it.

At 5am we were abruptly woken by our panicky Thai host who thought we were going to miss our flight. She had taken the liberty of booking us a taxi that was waiting as we spoke. I don’t think I’ve got packed and ready so quickly. I silently cursed her all the way to the airport.

The journey to get to Koh Phangan was a two fold nightmare. Unlike Alex Garland’s romanticised journey through jungle, jumping off waterfalls and swimming across the island, ours was more pedestrian and disgusting. The waves were dangerously high, so our speedboat jumped along the ocean for nearly two hours. The nausea it provoked was understandable. I regretted inhaling a pork bun and chilli chicken curry on the dock before we boarded. But the real kicker was the synchronised vomiting that began to take place about 20 minutes into the journey. Smiling faces handed out pink plastic bags and tissues, then the pukefest began. It was like the story Chunk describes in The Goonies: one person barfed and everyone else just joined in. It surrounded us and we sunk into our seats hoping we wouldn’t be hit by the spray.

My body’s natural defense mechanism in situations of high stress is to shut down. Much like a possum. Only more like a narcoleptic. I pass out.

When I awoke and drowsily got off the boat there was still another journey left to make. Kerry, had warned me that transport to The Sanctuary was a mafia. It’s lucky I had her and her amazing litigation skills to get me this far.

You couldn’t get a cheaper price no matter how good you were at haggling. What was worse they had decided to hike the prices up, to make the best of all the business that was anxiously waiting. We held out for as long as we could as the surliest driver in the world bitched at our attempts to bring the price down.

It didn’t feel great having to concede and get in the back of his shitty truck. It felt less great as we were hurled about along bumpy back streets out into the middle of nowhere.

Luckily we were headed towards Sanctuary.

So this is Christmas

 

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Not this year it isn’t…

John Lewis and shiny stuff would lead most of us to believe that this is the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas can be pretty wonderful: friends you haven’t seen in years, time with family, spreading joy, giving and receiving, great food, the list goes on. This year my attitude, normally on a par with Buddy the Elf, is a bit more like the weather: lukewarm.

Christmas comes but once a year. At least that was my mantra in past years when I forced a smile when being nagged by my parents about when I was going to meet a nice boy. Or when I was being nagged about when I was going to move closer to home. Or when I was wincing at drunken shouting and trivial arguments. Or when I was joining in on the shouting. I still managed a smile because a week down the line I would be back on a plane and far away. Future conversations could be tolerated. Or at least muted.

This year Christmas feels like it is building up to be Wrestlemania. All the previously small bouts that have taken place lover the last four months will now culminate in this one off spectacular event.

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All things festive

There is no tapping out.

A chair may be employed as a last minute act of desperation.

My plan to hide in the gym was thwarted. I may no longer have any idea what day of the week it is, but most of the normal working world have been counting the sleeps until they could go out, get battered, safe in the knowledge there was no getting up at 7 am the next morning.

This is my life.

Maybe that’s why my cheer isn’t as cheery. The biggest factor in my love of Christmas was desperate relief. The winter term was the longest one at school. After seven weeks of crowd control, marking, observations and prising kids off windows and walls, I wanted to sleep for two weeks. It’s like the Eddie Murphy joke about the cracker you get offered after weeks in the desert.

Christmas was the best cracker I had ever eaten.

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Christmas Hip Hop Carousel

Every day is like Christmas now. In the sense I get to stay at home watching bad television, balancing my finances and drinking anything mulled. All I’ve been missing over the last four months was a festive hat at a jaunty angle.

The traditional Christmas dinner is also a festive selling point.

Roast potatoes, Turkey, Christmas pudding, even sprouts, there’s something about that Christmas spread. It warms the heart.

As I sit staring at the swede that will be the crowning joy in vegan Christmas, I find it hard to get excited.

My brother is an excellent cook. It will be a Vegetarian/Vegan delight. But it’s not quite Christmas this year.

I nearly went full Scrooge when Facebook asked if I wanted to see what 2015 looked like. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The Ghosts of Facebook Statuses past have helped me to gain some perspective this Christmas Eve.

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Still smiling. Kind of

This hasn’t been my worst Christmas. Not by a long shot.

There was the Christmas Air France lost all my luggage. The Christmas I lost my phone in a taxi on the way to the airport. The Christmas I nearly lost my hand and had to have surgery. Last Christmas, when  I was sent blow by blow details of how my then boyfriend liked to get down in the bedroom, and then had to spend the day comforting him.

This has been quite an uneventful festive season in retrospect.

Christmas has it’s good points. I get to make it magical for my nephew.  I stay up watching cheesy movies and playing board games with my siblings. It’s the only time of the year when I can hit reset with my parents and start afresh. I also get to see friends I love and laugh. Drunkenly.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. If I let it be.

So I’m going to get me some wine and listen to Jingle Bell Rock until the spirit of Christmas, or Christmas spirits restore me to my normally hyperactive Christmas state.
Happy holidays. Get merry. ’tis the season.

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The Choice is Yours

Making a decision doesn’t come easily to every one.

The other day I was watching Master of None when Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar came up. It has been years since I read the book. It sticks in my mind because I started it on a comedy improv night. Unsurprisingly, all the suggestions I yelled out were pretty bleak as a result. They had to work for the laughs.

The fig tree has been playing on my mind a lot. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, Esther’s life is compared to a fig tree. Each fig is a choice she could make. She envisions herself sitting below it, unable to make a choice and watching each fig drop, black and dead; no longer an option. Hardly the stuff of which improv is made of. A good metaphor nevertheless.

I was 21 or 22 when I first read the Bell Jar. My attitude to life was to just let it carry me where it may. I made my choices on a whim. I would take a bite of the closest fig. There was no painstaking decision. My life was a series of happy coincidences. Until things started to go wrong.

As I got older and the decisions carried more consequences, it just became increasingly harder. Poor decisions can age you. I repeatedly made the same poor decision with an abusive ex. When I finally made the right choice I felt a hundred years older, and had no faith in my own choices.

From then on my go to move for any choice which carried a real consequence was to survey all my friends, until someone offered up an option that seemed manageable. I would then mentally decide to defer all my future life choices to that person, hoping they would just live my life for me because I was so terrible at it.

This was not a plan.

My  decision making is non-existent in relationships. The people pleaser in me comes out then all of a sudden every decision I make revolves around making someone else happy. I’m always looking after someone else’s tree, or eating the fruit they hand to me. When you are offering that much power over your life to the wrong person it has disastrous results.

Over the years, I have met so many people that would happily micromanage my life for me, and a few that returned the decision to me. Thank you to the latter for withholding judgement, and forcing me to adult. I feel like I am doing it more now than ever.

After my last break up I was bothered that no one had warned me about the immaturity and drama that came with him. As if I could have been better informed in my decision making. Transparency wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have given him the same chance. It had been my choice to make.

It had made me laugh when he informed me that I had no right break up with him without consulting him. He didn’t seem to grasp that I was allowed to make my own decisions. Maybe because I had spent a year letting him sway all of mine.

I still hadn’t understood there was so much power in a choice.

I empathise with Esther’s anxiety about making the wrong choice. I have to remind myself it’s equally bad to randomly choose anything, or to make do with the options people give you. It’s such a fine balance. So dependent on luck.

At 35 trying to get into a writing position is hard. I get told I am brave a lot, which makes me feel like I have some kind of terminal illness. Stupidity perhaps. I am sometimes overwhelmed with panic and shake that tree hard, scrambling to see what options I have managed to shake down. But that isn’t the way I want to live life, and I calm down soon enough.

My choices are simpler these days. I am learning to have more faith in myself.

I have to just trust my tree still has a few good figs left.

Image from Zen Pencils.com Check the site for the full illustrated extract from The Bell Jar.