Daylight Savings Owes Me An Hour Of Sleep and other boring adventures

After recently having a clear out, clothes are creeping back in. I sent 5 bin bags home with my lovely Dot who passed them on to someone (after taking some nice stuff for herself) where they were taken to a church event where homeless/low income families can pick out new clothes for themselves. It's a really brilliant idea considering much of the stuff given is probably unworn with tags on. I know some of mine was.

Not sure what it says about me that my mum, grandma, grandad and grandma's cousin in law all rifle through my cast-offs. I like to think they have tremendous taste.


There's suddenly a lot of glorious 70s vintage in charity shops/on ebay/at fairs and I'm very happy. I was quite excited to hear the 70s were back in so next month I could get some twice-worn items at lovely low low/Mary Portas'd slightly too high but it's for charity so call it punishment tax for buying too much stuff prices but it's all sort of crocheted trousers and mustard yellow so I'll probably give that one a miss. Silently amused by all the crap 60s fancy dress costumes that seem to be listed as "true vintage" on eBay at present. I found a onesie with a cat on and it's incredibly difficult not to bid. I also know that all onesies in the world are taller than me and the legs trail at least a whole foot behind me so baby Jesus please grant the strength to leave it I'm very sorry for not waving leaves in the rain whilst being splashed by lorries yesterday.

I've been watching Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie all weekend and it is my current most favourite thing. Kathy Burke is a genius and Linda la Hughes is absolutely my current style hero

Please tell me that this is floating around the BBC costume department somewhere I need it in my life and will wear it every day just to annoy everyone. 

Ah well. It was a good weekend. I bought this ridiculous belt for the princely sum of a whole pound. 

Polly has reclaimed the chair once more, the perfect place to sit and judge people walking past the house.

I made some more blondies. Once again they looked horrible but didn't sit around long enough to cool. I live with cake locusts. I recently discovered the secret joys of kale. I feel as an obnoxious vegetarian of 8 years I should have eaten kale before but it sounded horrifying. The only good thing about adulthood (except legal drinking) is discovering that you can cook vegetables in ways that don't involve boiling to death. And spices exist! It's disgraceful that as a country we colonised and destroyed half the world, stole their spices and don't even use them. Hooray for garlic roasted kale. 

On a final note, the museum on Sunday afternoon was lovely. Although it was super quiet/boring a lovely group of old men who told me they were having some "top lads banter." They took some pictures on their iPad with some military headwear and I could hear them laughing all the way round. The one adorable child made up for all the other horrifying ones that visit. If I was undecided about having children before volunteering with them, I've made my mind up. No thank you.

Poland

Poland is a beautiful country. It was warmer than the UK, there was lots of adorable nuns, roller skaters and pretty buildings. Everything is cheap, the transport is efficient but there's no sort of queueing system which I find emotionally distressing and the diet is too meat-based for my liking. If I ever move there I'll have to sharpen my elbows and live solely on pierogi ruskie (dumplings), pretzels, zapiekanka (baguettes with cheese and mushrooms, so good) and wimberries (the only place I can find them is Saddleworth Moor which is horrifying) 

We arrived at the hotel past midnight. I immediately put my pyjamas on then went wandering the streets of Krakow in search of a 24 hour shop selling vodka.

The visit to Auschwitz was a bizarre experience. I didn't take many photos as they don't allow photography inside the barracks. Naturally, people ignore this. 

It wasn't as upsetting as I anticipated. The blue skies and chatter of hundreds of visitors made it difficult to picture the horrors. I suspect that there's been a gradual desensitisation towards these sorts of atrocities as we watch them unfold on the news every day. 

Although initially unaffected, I'm now haunted slightly by what I saw. 7 tonnes of human hair, glass cabinets full of suitcases, baby clothes, glasses, shoes, mobility aids and shoe polish. The entire building dedicated to evidence documents, blueprints of building plans as Holocaust denial is so rife. The prison cell of Maximillian Kolbe, a Francisan who martyred himself. 10 men would be selected for execution as punishment for escape or attempted escape of a prisoner. Maximillian volunteered himself for execution to save the life of Franciszek Gajowniczek. He was starved for two weeks before finally being injected with phenol. He was canonised in 1982. But the very worst was the gas chamber. Dark and damp smelling, the images of suffering were made real by scratches on the wall, only to suddenly find yourself stood on the tracks leading into a crematorium. The thought of the condemned being robbed of their possessions to be sent back to Germany, tortured and used "efficiently without waste" is horrifying. Felt socks made of human hair, soap made of human fat, gold bars composed of gold teeth, ashes used as fertiliser or dumped in a pond. 

Later that evening we went out for a meal. We found the most ridiculously massive pizzas and a karaoke bar; I had many cocktails, far too much vodka, sang far too loudly both in the bar and in the street with the busker who played Wonderwall for the pisshead Mancs and got lost on my own in the centre of Krakow in the middle of the night in search of a shop to buy some juice and was guided back to the hotel by my friends singing Where Is The Love far too loudly. 

We were woken at the crack of half 9 being told we had half an hour to pack, get ready and leave for Schindler's factory. The half hour walk took more than an hour, my feet were blistered gently to death (I am considering amputation, it is that painful to walk, let alone put on shoes and go outside) and I ended up about 40 miles behind everyone else, dragging my coat along the floor as it was so warm, being tripped over by dog walkers on roller skates, elbowed by a nun and being stared at. Presumably admiring my new favourite dress/possible love of my life purchased from the beautiful and generally amazing Vix from Stockport vintage fair, which is not at all a surprise. 

(sidenote: what colour is this dress? Everyone says it's orange but I think it's pink. The eye hospital doctor said something about colourblind but I didn't listen because I wanted to know whether I'm dying or going blind. The answer is "not yet" which is not all that reassuring. Turns out I'm not just terrible at making my clothes match after all though. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

Schindler's factory was really interesting although I bombed through as we had so little time and certain tourists were getting on my nerves. No offence to all the millions of lovely people who travel but as someone who works with tourists as well as occasionally is a tourist I can confirm that there's a small group of very stereotypical (piss annoying) citizens of a certain country. Mentioning no names. 

I had a lot of top bantz with my pals, got two wimberry muffins and some vodka at the airport on the way home, enough cheap cigs to keep Mother Murphy happy and I still only know one Polish word (sklep which means shop to everyone who never goes outside) and I can't wait to go back for more embarrassing English drunkard shenanigans incredible history.

Eclipse

Got home from Poland last night, I'll have to blog about that later when I've recovered from minor vodka poisoning.

I'm skiving college and watching the eclipse in the back garden and it's freezing. I've got my cool little glasses on.

I do vaguely remember the 1999 eclipse. Apparently it was better. Still, I'm not disappointed even though everyone else was although I'm incredibly easily pleased. I'm happy, it's an odd contrast to earlier in the week.

And I hope my neighbours were fond of my dramatic rendition of Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

Busy doing nothing.

I've been so busy ignoring all the work. ALL OF IT.
I've managed to acquire 85 now CDs and I'm slowly going through and deleting all the songs I hate before I condemn them to never be listened to on my iPod.

I made blondies. They were terrible.

I went to hospital. I'm colour blind. How exciting.

I must go now and write about things I don't really care about.