College Green
Our little jaunt to Bristol Zoo.
Lemon face.
I just can’t wait to be king move into a flat of our own and adorn it with ridiculously twee things.
(Source: from89, via queenofsunspear)
thiefree asked: Why did you choose 'Husband Honey'?
A couple of years ago I met up with some ladies I knew well, some Twitter friends and a few total strangers, one of whom eyed me with an air of distrust.
After introducing herself, she added, “I’ve heard about you. You’re my husband’s online crush. He follows you.” Flattering and scary in equal measure? Maybe.
Another friend chimed in, “Mine fancies you too! You’re on The List. God, you’re like husband honey!”
The term tickled me.
Sometimes I eat peanut butter from the jar. With my finger. I don’t think I could ever be accused of being the human equivalent of the Terry’s Chocolate Orange in Dawn French’s locked car. (Though I am quite round.)
That’s mostly it. Oh, and it kind of sounds like a twee euphemism for semen, which seems sort of apt given that I like to chat about saucy things. And I really like bees.
Anonymous asked: What is love?
Baby don’t hurt me.
Something or Nothing
We’ve all, at some point, been hurt.
Whether it’s a broken heart, bereavement, or just a cat violently trying to make a bed of your thighs, it’s safe to say that pain is a concept we’re familiar with. For some it’s a battle of endurance fanned by the flames of circumstance. For others it can be rare but shattering. Most will probably roll with the ebb and flow and generally accept the daily onslaught of customer service, coffee breaks and cunts, punctuated with moments of soaring joy and (hopefully only occasionally) crushing darkness. Pain is usually something that creeps up on us.
The tables, however, can be turned.
People who go looking for psychological pain are emotionally lazy. Lazy people can wallow in sadness, read Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, eat biscuits and pizza and get FAT with misery because it’s just easier than peeling yourself away from the computer screen and going to hunt down happiness with a gurt big butterfly net. For a long while, I was such a person. I was always so preoccupied with feeling something that I never really stopped to work out a happiness game-plan. I thought to be content was too hard for me. (As I said: lazy.) It’s only since falling in love with someone who forced me to hold a mirror up to my silly insecurities, that I realise it’s a load of bullshit.
Plenty of people drag themselves out of bed and paste a smile on their face everyday because not succumbing is awesome and the fact that you’d even try is insanely admirable. For too long I held some terrible attitudes and refused to edge even a toe outside of my miserable little biscuit-pit because I’d adjusted to the point where pain and sadness had bizarrely become a comfortable baseline. Anything better was just a bonus.
Dylan Moran once said, that hopeful potential should be left alone.
“Don’t open the door. Because it won’t be like that. There’ll be a small grey, balding cat with diarrhea, sitting on a mattress-less iron-sprung bed, looking at you with its big eyes, mewing at you. Smoking too, probably. While an emphysemic old lady in the background rolls up her pop-socks and a terrible guy, the colour of an aubergine, wearing a string vest and holding a mug of beef-tea looks at you and says ‘Errrerwgh.’ THAT’S your potential.”
It’s hard to believe now that I just couldn’t see at the time how unhealthy it was to live that way. My warm, wet, psychological spin-dryer of a brain seems to have come to the end of its melancholic cycle and I’m happy to report that my emotional range no longer resembles that of a chopstick.
Falling in love hasn’t cured me of feeling insecure. Christ, no. I’m sure most will agree that love often arrives with a myriad of alien worries packed neatly in a little suitcase labelled ‘WE COOL?’. I’m just glad I removed my head from my ass long enough to listen to a person who cares enough to call me on my crap.
So here I am, fag in one hand, gurt big butterfly net in the other with a mindset that screams, I AM ABSOLUTELY WILLING TO TRY. I might even start wearing hats at a jaunty angle. (Actually, let’s not get carried away.)
So come on Life, you cheeky sausage, let’s be having you.
I have a new notch on my bedpost of brain-skills. Now every time I’m paying for a round of drinks I’m going to begin by beckoning the bartender near with a hunched frame and a tickly finger, and in the best John Hurt voice I can muster, murmur, “I’ve got a present for you, boy”. Even if it’s a girl.
Vanilla ice cream with Easter egg shards and peanut butter dollops. Let it melt ever so slightly and then swizz it round with a spoon.
Pasg hapus!
Game of Thrones and why I love you
Boyfriend: “If it was up to me, I’d make Randyll Tarly king.”
Me: “I forgot you love him because he’s such a great warrior and stuff. A proper bastard.”
Boyfriend: “I don’t think he’s ever had a single feeling.”
Me: “I think he needed a poo once.”
My love is built upon a bedrock of crass humour and I’m absolutely fine with that.
Mango
It’s cosy under the duvet covers.
They don’t like to sleep facing each other. She cuddles up to the radiator, her muffled snores emanating from deep within the pillow. He lies near her, sprawled, a human’s width away; one arm draped over the edge of the bed, mouth ever so slightly open. A right pair of gorms, they are.
He sleeps soundly when she’s near. He doesn’t mind if the duvet falls away to expose his bare skin. He falls so deeply under the heavy blanket of slumber that he rarely feels the cold. If he does, she’ll be there to lay a warm hand across his chest; to play absent-mindedly with the soft fuzz that ever so slightly resembles Batman’s mark. She’ll tangle her fingers into his soft curls and, with warm breath, traces kisses over his cheek.
The sun rises and the shadows bend from East to North to West.
They stir. Once wakefulness resumes, they banish the distance between them. Palm to palm. Cheek to shoulder. Hip to hip.
His beard grazes her neck. Electricity courses through limbs and lips and her heart quickens in shameless pleasure. They chuckle over something or nothing and she feigns offence. His hold tightens and they playfully struggle. He soothes her once more with a graze of the neck. She falls in on herself; limp like a bad souffle. He gently molds her into his frame and mumbled sighs caress her ear.
‘This is nice,’ she yawns, sleepily.
‘I’m going to put a mango up your chuff.’
She’s facing away from him, but she can easily picture the mischievous grin that has just spread itself across his face like warm butter.
‘You’re easily the most horrific person I’ve ever met, you know that?’ she smiles.
‘I know. I’m also going to open up an umbrella inside you. To see if it’s bad luck.’
The playful struggle resumes and she laughs wildly.
‘Let me go, you dirty pervert.’
‘Nope. I like how you persistently seem to believe that you’re stronger than me, when we’ve seen on many occasions that that simply isn’t the case.’
She smiles in fair agreement and relaxes her grip. He gathers her up in his arms and rests his cheek in the crook of her neck.
They chuckle at one another, both knowing that the next ludicrous obscenity is about to punctuate the otherwise perfectly romantic atmosphere.
Mango up the chuff or not, at that moment she knows.
She just knows.
