My Top Five Favourite Blogs/Websites

My favourite stop offs in internetland for funnies, giggles and good reads!

5. Random Acts of Reality

www.randomreality.blogware.com

The blog that inspired the writing of Blood, Sweat and Tea and More Blood, Sweat and Tea, by Brian Kellett, better known as Tom Reynolds.

This is a running commentary of things he saw and experienced whilst working for the London Ambulance Service. It’s often funny, always truthful and at times heart wrenchingly sad but truly fascinating. Also very worthwhile reading both his books, I couldn’t put them down! Sadly since leaving the LAS he has closed this blog but continues to write and amuse me with his insights at his new site.

www.briankellett.net

I also recommend as very worthwhile checking this one out.

4. Failblog

www.failblog.org

Photo based website, with everything from dumb construction, to Failbook, to the worst tattoos ever seen by man. This is definitely worth checking out and regularly updated with new pics on all of the connected blogs. Plus you can also submit your own which gives it another side to amuse you! You’ll suddenly notice how critical you can become of your friend’s stupid Facebook statuses and the like...!

3. The Darwin Awards

www.darwinawards.com

The tagline to this website is “The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honouring those who accidentally remove themselves from it...”

Stories of some truly stupid ways in which people have managed to kill themselves, plus a great archive of “urban legends” in a similar vein. The Bricklayer, although an urban legend, is quite possibly one of the funniest things I have ever read and I couldn’t finish reading it out loud at first because I was crying with laughter!

2. Sleep Talkin’ Man

www.sleeptalkman.blogspot.com

Man talks in sleep, says really bizarre things, wife spends half her nights unable to sleep giggling at what he’s saying. Solution, buys voice activated recorder and posts the transcript and recording onto a blog to share with the world.

Sometimes rude, often irreverent and always seriously funny!

1. Hyperbole and a Half

www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

Largely stories from the author’s childhood, absolutely hilarious and punctuated with the best bad drawings I’ve ever seen. Always has me in stitches and she’s working on a book at the moment which I cannot wait to read!

One suggestion, start with either “The Party” or “God of Cake”, both of which can reduce me to hiccupping, giggling tears of laughter every single time I read either of them!

True Friendship

If you're lucky there are people in your life to which time is irrelevant. You can be apart for months or years at a time and yet when you see each other it's like no time has passed at all, you just pick up where you left off without so much as missing a beat.
I am one of the lucky ones that I am blessed to have such friends in my life, something for which I will be eternally grateful.

When I got married last year I had three bridesmaids to stand with me and my maid of honour. All who mean a huge amount to me. One of which I hadn't seen or spoken to in years, and yet she still stood tall on the most important day of my life like she had never been anywhere else. She is, and always will be, a true friend. We've not seen each other since and I still know when I see her next no time will have passed in our friendship.

And then in September this year I was honoured to stand by a friend and promise to always be there for her daughter, as her godmother. It'd been almost four years since I saw her and her husband and son last as they now live in the US, and my first reaction upon seeing her was to drop everything I was carrying to run across the room and hug her tightly. That day we laughed, cried and talked together and it will always remain in my memory as a testament to our friendship that time nor distance can change us.

Then there was tonight. I've been out tonight with a friend who lives in South Africa, who I've not seen in the best part of two years, and who's first reaction to me wasn't awkward or strange but simply a hug and the acknowledgement of affection regardless of time or space. We've spent the evening catching up on the good, the bad, and the ugly and I left to go home with the sense of gratitude that he is here for one more week and I will see him at least once more before he flies off again. 

If you're as lucky as me to have these sorts of people in your life, hold them tight. They're worth so much and they should know it.

Growing Old, But Not Convinced About The Graceful Bit...

Since entering the painful era of my life, also known as my thirties, I seem to notice more things that just make me feel old.

The tune that comes on the radio that elicits the comment that "the original was so much better" is a great example. And to be fair nothing makes you feel old quite like the horrified look on a kid's face that their latest favourite track is a cover of one I listened to as a kid, I mean I'm just like soooo old duuuude!
Okay, the fact that saying "duuuuude" still makes me think of Ninja Turtles and Bill and Ted is NOT doing wonders for my "young" quota..! Still makes me grin though!

Situations like the one I'm currently in are just as bad. As I write this I'm sat on the Underground listening to a spotty ginger teen trying to impress a girl by boasting about his drinking escapades over the weekend. "I did like so many Jaeggerbombs that I can't even tell you what the hangover was like, and I can't remember what time we stopped!"
Ugh kid, seriously?! For starters you shouldn't even be getting hangovers at your age, you're like twelve! Us old feckers are the ones bemoaning how much worse hangovers get with age because we remember how we used to bounce straight back!
Also, if you have EVER got within so much as a sniff of a Jaeggerbomb I'll be truly amazed. No way would you get served at a bar, and your continuing proclamations of how you "don't even need ID" lead me to the masterful conclusion that you are underage. I mean Sherlock Holmes would've struggled with that and yet my deductions are sound I believe...!

When did we grow out of these dumbass boasts of alcoholic prowess? Oh that's right, we didn't... Maybe we're not getting that old after all!

Still the reality is there that time marches on and keeps it in it's unbreakable grip. Though I did stumble across one great logic that helps. People in their eighties now still love and listen to the same music they did in their youth. Which means that one day when I'm eighty the same logic will apply. I'll be the happy house and trance granny, with a side order of G 'n R! Rock on grandma!!

Everything Must (n't) Go?

Everyone likes a sale right? And one of the stores in my town that I regularly see running a sale is Dreams, the bed place.

One evening recently whilst walking home I saw this sign in the window of said shop.

Well that's handy thinks I, it's half six in the evening and I'm not the only one who comes back from town at this time by any stretch of the imagination, so it's great they're thinking of that.

Looking closer I found that the shop seemed remarkably empty for the last night of a sale, even if it's not the biggest town. With my curiosity piqued I investigated further and found this sign attached to the door itself.

Ummmm, what?! So let me get this straight. You have a sale that you're massively promoting that finishes today at eight, and you're open until six...? FAIL!!!

They may be good with beds, but their logic? Not so hot there...