Left to right: Me one year ago, Me last weekend
Today is my 24th birthday, and honestly I feel really unprepared this year. Normally as soon as Christmas is over I start planning for my birthday, and I always have some sort of plan. This year however I have nothing. To be honest a lot of it was down to how I have been really struggling with my mental health, and seriously haven't even been motivated to do anything interesting. Tim did take me to Cardiff for my birthday last weekend, posts on that will be going up later in the month! As for today we are going out for a posh meal together, and then later in the week I am going out for a meal with my family, so it's not really as if we are doing nothing for my birthday.
To celebrate my 24th, I thought I would share with you 24 memories (some good, some bad) from my life so far, in no particular order...
- One of my most vivid memories is the day that my brother had an epileptic fit. It was summer, I must have been about 7/8, and my dad was looking after us, I was outside riding my bike with a friend and an ambulance pulled up at the end of the close. They wound down the window to ask for directions, and the address they gave was for my house, so I immediately panicked. They rushed in and I remember that my dad wouldn't let me in, and watched through the letterbox. It was such a surreal day... thankfully everything turned out OK though!
- One of my favourite things that we used to do at School every Easter was to paint eggs. There was a contest every year where you could paint eggs as your favourite characters from books/TV etc. and there were always prizes for the best. I just remember making these with my mum and it was always so fun.
- When I was four my sister was born, when mum brought her home my first question was 'Where is my baby brother?', because my parents had really wanted a boy, and even made me waste a birthday wish on one. It wasn't for another two years that I finally got my baby brother.
- I went to a Church of England primary school as such we celebrated all of the major Christian holidays, one of my favourites was Christingle, because we would spend a whole afternoon making oranges with little skewers of sweets on and a candle on top. Instead of concentrating on making as many as possible, I spent my time eyeing up what everyone else was doing and sussing out which one had the most sweets. This was so that later, at the church service, I could pick up the one with the most sweeties!
- McDonald's birthday parties... I must have had a least four of them, and all it involved was trying to hide in the upstairs area of our local McDonald's playing hide and seek. By the time they actually got a proper party room I was too old for it, and resented them.
- When I was about 6/7 my parents took us all to Disneyland Paris, I was ecstatic. My dad took me on the ghost train a.k.a Phantom Manor, it seriously terrified me. So much so that my teeth started chattering, much like Scooby Doo's, and they wouldn't stop for like an hour afterwards.
- Also during that Paris trip my dad and I started to climb the Eiffel tower, whilst my mum stayed at the bottom with my brother and sister. When we got about half way up dad said, 'Let's get back down, your mum's probably getting cold', so I never got to climb to the top. I think my dad was just scared of heights...
- When I was younger I overheard my mum talking to a friend and they swore, I copied them, and this resulted in my mum shutting me in the garden as punishment, in the dark, and I'm still afraid of the dark...
- Back in my childhood one of mums great friends lived only across the road with her daughter, who still remains one of my best friends. One day we were in her back garden, mum and her had a few drinks, and we were eating ice cream. In their tipsy state our mothers were pouring ice cream sauce into our mouths, this resulted in us getting covered. So my mum decide's she'll run us a bath at our house. I used to have a MASSIVE crate of bath toys, and mum tips it into the bath, and with the toys is a giant spider, so we both scream and get out, and won't get back in until my mum fishes the spider out, which she had to do, whilst drunk...
- In Primary school we always did a nativity play, one year when we had a new teacher they decided to do a 'proper' nativity, it was a play which I believe was called, 'Give thanks to the Angel' and revolved around how the angel was the most important part of Christmas and the Nativity story. Everyone in school wanted to be the angel, but I got chosen, and I was super smug about it!
- One time Me and my mum were watching TV downstairs and my sister was awfully quiet upstairs, so my mum went to check on her. Mum called down to me to come to the bottom of the stairs, and she made my sister show me what she had done. She'd gotten into my 'play make up' and made herself look like a clown, she cried so hard that I couldn't be mad.
- My brother used to have terrible anxiety/travel sickness, and he would always be sick in the car. Mum would make him have a carrier bag in his lap to be sick in, and me and my sister would always scramble to get out the car if he was going to be sick... it was so annoying because he would always do it at the most inappropriate time, thankfully he grew out of it.
- I was bullied a lot in Secondary school, like most people right? Anyhow one time this girl poured a whole pot of yogurt on my head and I had to walk right through the busiest part of the school to get to the teachers lounge. It was the most embarrassing thing ever.
- My childhood dog, Sadie, used to have what we called, 'a funny five minutes' where she was zoom around the living room. She also liked to pull out socks off of our feet, which always made us giggle when we were kids. She was the best dog ever.
- When I was in year 9 I had a fight with a girl from my village. A lot of people had been gossiping and fuelling both sides, telling her I had said things which I hadn't and vice versa, anyway it culminated in her hitting me. So I flew off of a bench at her and we were rolling around on the floor hitting each other. We got in pretty big trouble because potential head teachers were visiting that day.
- I used to be best friends with the vicars daughter, and I'd always go over there to play and stay for dinner. Much to my mother's dismay I repeated a lot of dirty jokes that I overheard at home to the vicar. He was pretty cool about it though, and even found them funny!
- In my younger days we always used to holiday at Butlins in Minehead, and I had a mega crush on a red coat called, 'Shiny Shaun', my parents still taunt me about this.
- In year 10/11 I was a 'Bus Prefect' which meant I oversaw everyone on my bus journey home, and made sure no one got bullied etc. This privilege got revoked however when a year 7 boy at the front of the bus was getting bullied by all of the other year 7's, so I moved him to the back of the bus with me. He clearly wasn't happy with this and his mother complained to the school because I should have moved the boy who was bullying him. Even if I had removed the one main bully the others would have carried on bullying him... I couldn't win.
- When I was applying for university, the head of our sixth-form wrote my reference to the universities, due to a very personal issue that was going on at the time (outside of school). When he gave me a copy to read I was so angry and upset because there were several spelling mistakes in it... I genuinely cried for the rest of the day and thought he had ruined my chances of going to Uni. Thankfully that wasn't the case.
- At university, out at my first social for the student radio station I tried to out-drink a second year. It was pub golf so we had to have a certain drink at each bar, and drink in a certain number of swigs to hit 'par'. This guy kept shouting fresher at me so I said to him if I beat him at pub golf, then he could never call me a fresher again. I was doing so well, then in the second to last pub I threw up. It's the only time I have ever thrown up in the toilets of a pub/bar, and honestly it was the worst, I was so ill that night.
- My graduation day was one of my proudest moments, but at the same time it was SO boring. Sitting through a graduation ceremony takes serious patience. Oh and the guy calling our names pronounced my name wrong... despite me telling the ushers how it was pronounced...
- I once got an after school detention for drinking beer on the bus journey home, I had one sip. I literally had the worst luck with getting caught out for things like this.
- I once turned up for a Lady Gaga concert a whole day before the actual date of the concert. For some reason myself (and my boyfriend at the time) were so sure it was on a Wednesday night, so we got ready and my dad drove us all the way up there. When we got to the gate the guy informed us the concert wasn't until the next day, needless to say my dad was really pissed, and I felt like a right muppet.
- I went on a Spanish Exchange trip when I was in year 9/10, and we visited a monastery, and did a Tai Chi class. Whilst we were doing some breathing exercises my friend had a really funny turn and became faint. A teacher and instructor took her and I aside and we got to me what I believe they called the 'head llama' of the monastery. He told my friend to close her eyes and picture him if she ever felt faint ever again. I was thinking, 'well this is a load of bollocks' and he turned to me, looked me deep in the eyes, and said, 'and you also'. I was convinced that he had just read my mind...
