Taking on a street gang with a paper mache crab

Before I start this story, I would like you to click Here.

There. Now you have the soundtrack to this story.
I had this song firmly entrenched in my head as I was walking down City rd yesterday evening. I was whistling it and laughing to myself because I was holding this giant paper mache 'crab' that I'd made earlier for Jack.

It's a long story as to why this crab came into existence but the bottom line is that it existed. It was big, colourful, stuffed full of food, and I was laughing and whistling as I was carrying it down the street. I was completely in a world of my own.

Then I noticed two boys in front of me. They couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 and my initial thought was:
'Gross, he must have been pissing in the street' cause one of the boys had his belt out of his jeans and was swinging it back and forth. My next thought; 'He should probably be careful with that thing. He could hurt someone if he swung that hard enough'.
My next observation was that the boy next to him was holding a CHAIR (the fact that I didn't notice this instantly just further proves how far into my hilarious, happy fairytale world I'd sunk (you aaaaaare, a cinemaaaaa)
'Why is he holding a chair? are they playing some sort of game?'

Then I looked behind me.

Behind me was about fifteen other boys, all were holding their belts, chairs, broomsticks...all menacingly approaching these two kids and I realised I'd just been whistling loudly, holding my stupid big crab, being like... 'whoops! 'scuse me there! pardon me! Coming through!' and walked straight through a mini chav street gang turf war.

The whole thing had attracted the attention of all the passersby. A crowd had formed. Everyone was keeping their distance, but watching intently. Everyone except me of course.

I'd like to think I added a certain light heartedness to the mood. I'd also like to thank the scummy younger generation of chavs for refraining from continuing their fight to allow the whistling, dancing crab lady to walk through peacefully without beating my brains into the gutter.

Wales #4 Hairdresser Strife

Visiting a hairdresser is always...ALWAYS a traumatic experience for me. 
No matter how carefully I plan out what I want done before hand, the tomboy in me just gets totally intimidated as soon as I sit in the plush leather chair and have the weird bib thing put around my neck. 

Seriously, I genuinely start sweating profusely. Sometimes I even shake. In fact, my fear of the hairdresser is so intense that I hold off as long as humanly possible. Once waiting two years before going in for a cut.


And it ends with me gesturing vaguely at my head being like...

'I kinda just...want you to like... y'know. Cut it???'

No matter how hard I try, it always comes out apologetic. 

And then I feel obligated to agree with everything they do. 

'Are these layers short enough?'

'Oh yes. Yes, yes. Of course'

'And your fringe? Is this okay?'

'Yes, yes, yes. All good thanks'

'The end result? Good? Yes?'

'OOOOHHHH YESSSSS. Thank you!!!!'

Because seriously... what am I going to say to the woman who has the next three months of my social standing held in the shiny scissors in her right hand? 

'No! What are you THINKING? STOP! STOP NOW. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOPPPP!!!!!!'

Who's to say she's not going to get hugely offended and then start cutting big chunks out of my head? And to be honest. She's finished it now. What am I supposed to say. Sorry no? Fix it? I don't like it? When I gave her NO direction to start with?

The last time I went to get my hair cut I hated it so much I ended up going home and taking a pair of scissors to my own hair. 

BIG MISTAKE.

It's taken about 3 months for my chopping extravaganza to grow itself out to the point where I can finally set it free from a bun and wear it out in public. 

My most recent hairdresser disaster was when I decided to go to a hairdresser here in Wales and get my hair dip dyed. I wanted it to look like this. 

It does not.

In fact. Not only does it not look like this at ALL and has been a total waste of my £35, SOMEHOW ( I noticed last night) my pubes have gone ginger. What the actual fuck?

Hair dressers.

Not. Even. Once.

Wales #3 The Bingo Girl Diaries

I've started this particular entry so many times and have always pulled up short. It's about my job (of course it HAS to be about my job) but I honestly don't really know how to describe it. Either the job itself or how I feel about it.

So here goes. The accumulation of 17 years of study, a Bachelor in Communication Studies and a Masters in International Relations has led me to this.

I work at Rileys, which is a pool and snooker club. They have membership cards and a bar that I sometimes work at. But mostly I'm just the bingo girl. 
Don't misunderstand me here. I don't get to spin the ball cage and pull out a ping pong ball with a number on it. There's no microphone and witty repertoire for each number to memorise. I literally just print off a little ticket with numbers on it, and these numbers come up on the t.v. screens every 5 minutes or so.

It's alright guys. You can stop being so jealous of my high flying - multi layered career. 

It's actually the weirdest job in the world. Sometimes the place is packed, other times it's dead empty. If there are only two old men in the back corner playing snooker and neither of them want to buy a tickets... well... that's my next 4 hours sorted out. 

In this weird way... I'm kinda just really enjoying myself. There are a lot of regulars who come in and so in that sense it's turned out to be the best place to be for my first few weeks starting off in a few city because I've got to know a lot of faces. I've found myself walking down the street in Cardiff and bumping into people I know already. On my birthday I went out with some friends who came up from London, ended up bumping into a couple of the regular students who come into Rileys who knew it was my birthday and bought me drinks! 

So... a brief summary of the 'Regulars'

1. The Indians:

They're a bit chavvy, a bit 'lad-dy' and are there, never fail, every night. It's their 'local' and they alternate between being amazing at pool, playing the poker machines and proposing to me.

2. The Veterans:

The old men who have been coming in to play snooker there with their 6 buddies for the past 25 years. It was one of these many groups of veterans who come in who asked me the other night 'So, do you actually do anything or do you just walk around putting people off their snooker games for a living?' It definitely knocked any potential chip I'd been developing off my shoulders...

3. The Students:

Definitely the most fun. The people my own age recognise that a job (even a fairly useless and strange one like this one) is money, and money provides a place to live and means to enjoy oneself  They don't judge it, they just accept it, and often they'll buy a bingo ticket from me out of pity.

The manager has been amazing. When I waltzed in for the interview; bankaccount-less, home-less and largely uncontactable she basically said to me, "tell me how many hours you need, when you need them and how much you want to work. I'll sort it all out for you".
Somehow this woman turned bingo ticket selling into a full time job and since then that's pretty much what I've been up to this entire time...

...Of course I'm joking. I've done a lot of exploring already, gone out on the town a fair bit, caught myself already picking up the Welsh-isms and saying some of the really stupid sentences that they use here with complete sincerity. I've made a heap of friends. I have extensive travel plans which include Scotland and Ireland, and I'm planning a weekend Castle exploring extravaganza. 

Many more stories to come! Promise! :)
For now, I remain,
your humble bingo girl.

Risk It.

The temptation to put it away into the 'Dreams' folder is always a shadow on my shoulder. 

That there is too much involved, that the rate of failure is exponentially higher than that of success, that heartbreak (or worse, soulbreak) is an inevitability, that you need to stop being such a child, stop gypsying around, stop ignoring facts, be smart, when are you going to get a real job?

But something innate and organic inside me keeps insisting that Atlas doesn't really have a clue what he's doing. That the world is growing smaller. That how things were in our heads when we were children (of how things would be and how things should be) (the siren call of the picket fence) only have the power over our reality that we give them to potential to be.

So risk it.

Being foiled by your inability to be fearless... is frustrating.

And in our hunt to find success, we've forgotten one thing.

There is no such thing as failure.

Surrendering to the worst case scenario makes it all the more sweeter; will move your story from a 80c Kindle tale to a meaty thing people want to hold, want to curl up with in front of a fire and READ; will give you depth of character and scars of heart that no pirate ever had. The things you'll see will be burned on your retina irreparably, the things you'll hear will make the buzzing in your ears louder than any concert. 

Fuck you picket fence. 

Let your heart be swollen by the anguish of impossibility - because impossible love is what Fairy Tales are made out of and can inspire a millennia. Be reckless beyond good reason. Be charitable outside of your means. Scare yourself into living. Throwing your soul whole heartedly into the stupid option. Accept it. Embrace it. Chase it. 

Something other than what you've assumed all your life is what you're missing. This is it. You've found it, grasp it with two hands and don't let go; even if it means losing your hands in the process.

Wales #2. Dodging puddles – and bullets.

I’ve always felt that a large part of whatever little charm I possess is my naïveté and underlying assumption that the people I meet are good people. It’s not something I’m ashamed of…but it’s not always something I’m proud of either because I end up looking like a fool.

Take yesterday for example.

I somehow found myself agreeing to a shady waitressing job, being assured that it’s normal in the UK for waitresses to receive 2 pounds under the minimum wage, cash in hand, and that I’d be the only one working there – along with the boss and his brother. It wasn’t until I got home (after accepting a MUCH more legit job elsewhere) and I talked to my friend Carrie-Anne who was like… 

‘erm…Elyse, that’s SO illegal’ 

that I realized they’d blatantly taken advantage of my foreigner status and naturally trusting personality.

'...oh yeeeeah'

When I told a friend about this he said to me that I needed to go re-watch ‘Taken’. And it’s true.

The first time I watched that movie I had to pause it and call for backup after the first 20 minutes. I was shaking so hard, was so traumatized… because that girl flouncing innocently around Europe was me, and my dad is awesome - but he's no Liam Neeson.

I'm not writing this story to have anyone worry about me btw. This blog has just become a space for stories about my life and inevitably the things I learn along the way. Yesterday was a wake up call because everything has been going so well here so far. It's honestly seemed like a dream land.

So yes. The bright side to the story is that I ended up getting a really awesome job at a pub in Cardiff, the ladies who own it are incredibly friendly and on top of all that, I'm probably going to be renting my own room by the end of next week within walking distance of one of my best friends. All this within 5 days after I gave myself a timeline/budget of 2 months to try to get myself settled over here. It's been amazing. My original plan wasn't even to stay in Wales but this is how it seems to be working out! I was meant to go to England but, when you think about it... what's so great about England anyway? I mean...really, only their flag's a big plus ;)

Nonchalant Castles (and 3 other British things)

I've been in Britain for less than 48hrs and here are some of my observations so far

1. Nonchalant Castles.

For me, an Australian with such measly national history, a castle is a big deal. I could sit and look at it all day - let alone how long I would take to explore inside. The architecture, the history, the people who once lived there... uuurrrghhh...I just really, really love castles. 

So catching the bus from England to Wales was a serious experience for me. I'd be looking out one window at a village going past, and then suddenly, I'd look over out the other one and...

BAM. Castle.

And they're not even like... a big deal. I saw a small farm house on a paddock, and then in the backyard, literally about 10 metres from the backdoor, was this ruin of a tower. It's like the people in the house were just like... yeah, we have a piece of history older than your entire country in our backyard...so what? 

Something like that in Australia would be a national landmark but here they're just casually scattered around. 

2. No one does ugly like the British men do ugly.

I don't know exactly why. But some British men just really make an art form of being kinda ugly. Of course, there are ugly people everywhere, and on that same note, everyone is beautiful to someone. But I think people understand what I mean when I say that there is a certain type of British man who is just very...well... British. 

3. Christmas would be better if it was cold.

There are still Christmas decorations up here and it's awesome. There's nothing more you want to see when it's cold and windy than a street with its trees lit up with fairy lights. I'm in Cardiff at the moment and the city still has its Christmas markets up. They're selling mulled wine and hot cider on the streets, cooking big bratwurst sausages on an open fire and letting the smell waft through the cold air of the shopping square. It's perfect. I never thought we were but it's true - we in Australia are missing out, not to mention that everything tastes better when it's cold outside too

4. I will never get tired of cobbled streets.

I don't care if I keep tripping over them, or had to painfully lug my suitcases over them for miles... All I have to do is look back over my shoulder at the street I just passed through and I'm like.... ahhhhh.

The Tale of the Pigs Head

The Story of the Pigs Head.

For my 21^st Birthday party I had a Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones theme. We went all out: costumes, themed drinks, decorations, dace paint, celtic music… the whole shebang.

Including a pigs head as decoration in the center of the table.

The party was amazing. I completely underestimated JUST how hysterical I would get seeing all my friends rock up dressed as my ultimate favourite characters from my ultimate favourite movies. The pigs head completely topped it off though and made the whole thing seem so… real.

Anyway. The next day involved a massive clean up etc and I remember mum saying halfway through…

‘Did someone grab the pigs head?’

And my dad, clearly replying.

‘Yep. I did’.

So… you’d think that would be it right? Like… Pigs head officially taken care of?

The next day was 37 degrees and I was home alone. I spent the entire day vegged out in front of the T.V and when Mum got home that afternoon her first words at the front door were.

‘Euurgh… what is that smell?’

I got up and went outside to investigate.

Now that she’d mentioned it, the stench was impossible to ignore. We went on a hunt and it didn’t take us long to discover the source. The pigs head. It had been left, wrapped up in a big plastic bag (which was now dripping) in the full heat of the sun and was letting off the filthiest, most putrid reek anyone has ever encountered. It even had maggots.

So.

I had to lift the dripping bag (dripping with WHAT exactly? Pig juice?) put it into several more bags to stem the flow. Then we got straight into the car, I was hanging out the window initially, trying to hold the pigs head as far away from me as physically possible. 

But it was SO heavy. A big hunk of boar head! So eventually I had to SIT WITH THIS THING ON MY LAP until we made it to the dump.

Which wasn’t open.

So mum and I illegally dumped it and sped away.