Memetastic Award: The Truth

It’s time the truth came out. A few days ago I was tagged in the Memetastic Award, for which I had to tell four lies and one truth. It was really fun trying to guess everyone else’s truths and to watch people try (and fail!) to guess mine. So, here is the honest truth:

1. I have been vegetarian for nearly 10 years, but though I never crave a sneaky sausage in the day time – despite living with a meat eating boyfriend and loving the smell of bacon – when I’m drunk I can’t resist a meat feast pizza from the local kebab shop. They do the best pizzas in the world – sober or drunk.

Lie: While it is true that I’m a vegetarian and that the kebab place does the best pizza in the world, it’s the mushroom pizza that’s my drunken snack of choice. I’ve never craved meat enough to actually eat it in the entire time I’ve been veggie.

2. Immigration officials in America thought I’d been kidnapped when I went on holiday with my aunt. I was only five and didn’t have the same surname as her. When I was asked if I knew who she was I was too scared to talk to the terrifying immigration lady.

Truth: My aunt won a competition for a family of four to go to America for the week. Her daughter was only a baby, so she did a child swap with my mum for the week and I got to go in her place. We did get through immigration, though I don’t really remember what persuaded the terrifying official to let us through!

3. I spend over £500 a year on my hair. I keep it quite short so it needs cutting every six weeks, but I also get it coloured. I don’t colour it completely – just different coloured highlights. Dark blue ones are my favourite, but they don’t stay that colour for very long. I don’t like the gray colour they go after a fortnight or so of washes!

Lie: I have had my hair short in the past, and have highlighted it (though never blue!) but I have it shoulder length now, because I really can’t be bothered with going to the hairdressers all that often. I hate going to the hairdressers… Plus, there are many things I’d rather spend £500 on than my hair.

4. I’m a bit of a movie geek and have a growing collection of movie memorabelia. My prized item is a replica of Sting, Frodo’s sword from the Lord of the Rings. It looks dead realistic (though it isn’t sharp!) and I really want to find some goblins to see if they make it glow blue…

Lie: I do like movies, but I haven’t got a house big enough for movie memorabelia – even if I did want it, which I don’t. I’ve always thought that replicas wouldn’t be that great on account of not being the real thing. I would want the actual item. And not the prop either – the actual weapon/jewel/object. I would like a sword, but if I had my choice, it wouldn’t be Sting.

5. Ever since going to South Africa on a school trip I’ve been bitten by the travel bug. I’ve been to Bulgaria, Holland, Finland and Turkey. I really want to go further afield, but since Uni I’ve not been able to afford it. Saving up for a two week trip to Brazil next year, but sticking with Europe this year.

Lie: I did go to South Africa, and I have been to Turkey (and a few other places) but I’m not much of a traveller. I like my own bed too much.

The Weekend Creation: Opposites

Visit and support this new blog hop over at Words In Sync. Here is my entry.  A poem I wrote about the long distance relationship I had with the boyfriend during my University years.

Opposites
by Liberty Gilmore, 2007

Me

sun shining on
frosty mornings
December sharp and
sprinkled with
magic and promise
no thought of
anything tangible
just this place
here and now
the distance to

You

strong and deliberate
like
industrial coffee
to rise in time for
nine hour shifts
working hard for
the future
driving there like
a train down a track
direct route to

Me

sun shining on
frosty mornings
strong and deliberate
like
December sharp and
sprinkled with
industrial coffee
to rise in time for
magic and promise
no thought of
nine hour shifts
working hard for
anything tangible
just this place
the future
driving there
here and now
the distance to
a train down a track
direct route to

You

strong and deliberate
like
sun shining on
frosty mornings
industrial coffee
to rise in time for
December sharp and
sprinkled with
nine hour shifts
working hard for
magic and promise
no thought of
the future
driving there
anything tangible
just this place
a train down a track
direct route to
here and now
the distance to

Me

Writing Workshop: Freedom

This week on the Writing Workshop we were invited to go on a word hunt. I don’t have a camera, relying instead on the poor camera capabilities of the iPhone. I love my iPhone, but seriously Apple, were you looking for inspiration from the Middle Ages when you put that camera in? I hope the latest model ones are better. Not that I can afford a latest model one…

Here is my word (excuse rubbish photo quality):

As with last week, I’m interpreting this in a fictional way, using my reccuring characters from my short story series (the entirity of which – all two posts! – can be found under the ‘Writing’ tab above) though if short stories aren’t really your thing and you’d prefer a bit of life writing my previous post could count as an interpretation of freedom – the freedom to be who you really are.

Anyway, enough waffling. Here is this week’s entry.

Freedom

by Liberty Gilmore, 29/01/11

Most teens consider a driver’s licence a ticket to freedom. So does Ava. Sort of.

Ava pulled her shoulders back as she tried to stretch out the ache developing between them. She’d been sat for almost an hour, cramped in the confines of the small Vauxhall Corsa, her learner car.

‘Take the next right,’ the examiner said, watching closely as she mirror-signal-manoeuvred.

It was nearly the end of the test. She had completed her parallel park and emergency stop. All she had to do was get back to the test centre.

‘Ahead, there are two left turnings. I want you to take the second one.’

Ava thought she recognised the street. She thought she was only two more junctions from the test centre, though she could never be sure. Trying to distinguish one concrete alley from another was something Ava had considerable trouble with. Her friends teased her terrible sense of direction but they didn’t understand. They learned streets by landmarks – a bus shelter, a shoe shop, a MacDonald’s. These things meant nothing to Ava, who saw the subtle difference in life force between one tree and the next. There wasn’t enough green in the city for her to navigate by.

She turned left. Ahead, a withered oak tree blazoned in her second sight. Dim, weak, compared to the trees of the countryside, but comparatively bright in this sea of grey. Ava let her second sight bask in the light, feeling her connection to the Earth return. As the power flooded in, the aches in her body eased.

The examiner misinterpreted her expression.

‘That’s right, home stretch now,’ he said.

He didn’t know that the mechanical car was like poison to Ava’s spirit. Contrary to some folklore, it wasn’t iron that repelled the Fey. Iron was a natural compound of the Earth, an element of nature. The Fey were a part of that nature, and couldn’t be repelled by it. But mechanical things, electronics – nature twisted into new shapes that could only have been dreamt of by man – these things made her skin crawl.

It was necessary to fit in. Those were her father’s words. Successful infiltration, acclimatisation and, eventually, progression, these were the most important things. Far more important than the discomfort caused by doing so. And Ava was a prodigy – the first second generation human infiltrator. Born in the human world, raised in it. The Court had big plans for her.

But she had to pass her driving test first. That was what humans did.

‘And pull up on the left here,’ the examiner said, writing the last few notes on his clipboard.

Ava considered trying to enchant him if he didn’t pass her. It would be breaking every rule, but worth it. If she had to spend another moment in the toxic confines of a motor vehicle she would…

‘Congratulations,’ the examiner said. ‘You’ve passed.’

Ava didn’t hang around long. After the required phonecall to Holly – mobile phones, another thing that left her feeling sick – who shrieked with delight and talked about roadtrips, Ava tucked her papers into her bag and began a soft jog towards the one place in the city she had drilled into her head. The bus stop that would take her home.

Buses were almost as bad as cars, but at least she didn’t have to concentrate on driving. With her mind free, she could stretch out her subconscious to the nearest fields. She soon recognised the energy signatures of the trees that lined the road where her stop was. Pressing the stop bell, Ava stood up and disembarked.

As the bus pulled away, the trees swayed in the breeze it created, leaning towards Ava as she stretched out a hand to greet them. Her mind instantly connected with them, rushing through the leaves, down into the trunk, through the roots, which connected her to a vast network of other plants, other trees, spreading across hundreds of miles.

Holly said that having a driver’s licence was like a little piece of plastic freedom. There were other sorts of freedom that Ava desired – freedom to live as she was, not pretend to be something else, freedom to connect with the living pulse of the Earth for more than a few stolen moments.

Infiltration, acclimatisation, progression. Her father’s mantra sounded in her head.

She could settle for the freedom of not having to drive a car again. At least for the foreseeable future.

 

Bad Behaviour

One of the great things about the boyfriend (apart from him being a sexy fireman) is I can totally be myself around him. I don’t need to be embarrassed about my quirks, or regulate my behaviour in any way around him. And neither does he around me. So, when he’s so anxious about flying the night before a holiday the only way he can release his pent-up anxiety is by doing star jumps in the kitchen, he can feel safe that I won’t laugh (much) and I know that he’ll return the favour next time I accidentally eat too many Jelly Tots and go temporarily crazier.

Recently, temperatures where we live have taken a plummet. After the big freeze in December, we’ve been experiencing relatively mild temperatures, but over the last couple of days things have been on a bit of a downward curve. Last night it was -2, a long way from the arctic -15 we were experiencing regularly a month ago, but enough to set the warning bells ringing.

Except at my house.

Last night we were driving home from dinner at my mother’s when the boyfriend decided it would probably be a good idea to put the windscreen cover on, in case he got a shout in the night. After all, nothing hampers your target to get to the fire station in 4 minutes from when the alerter goes off at 2 in the morning more than a frozen windscreen. So, while I was left to get the bags out of the car, he dashed inside to retrieve the cover from the garage.

Now, our house is less a house, more a bungalow on top of three garages, one of which is ours. The first thing you get when you walk through the door is a staircase and the garage door, which happens to open into the narrow corridor, rather than into the garage. So, in his haste to get the windscreen cover, the boyfriend inadvertently trapped me outside in the subzero temperatures.

While I was standing at the door making plaintive mewling noises, I noticed that my breath was steaming up the diamond-shaped window we have in our doorway. This, in my mind had one instant association.

So, while I was doing my best to make my breath shoot across the window in a sinister, dinosauric fashion, the boyfriend returned from his foray into the garage and opened the door to find me looking like a complete idiot.

Boyfriend: What’s wrong with your face?

Me: I was being a velociraptor.

Boyfriend: You look like a neanderthal.

I was pleased he came up with a vaguely related insult, even if he was over 64 million years out.

I tried to explain, but clearly the Jurassic Park reference was lost on him.

So, I made a complete idiot of myself in front of him, and anyone else on the estate who happened to be looking out of the window, but I wasn’t bothered. The boyfriend is wonderfully accepting of my occasionally off beat behaviour.

Besides, ten minutes later he was dancing round the living room pretending to be one of the Crab People in South Park…

Memetastic Award

1. You must proudly display the absolutely disgusting graphic that I have created for these purposes (put it in your post, you don’t have to put it in your sidebar, I think that would seriously be asking too much). It’s so bad that not only did I use COMIC SANS, but there’s even a little jumping, celebrating kitten down there at the bottom. It’s horrifying! But its presence in your award celebration is crucial to the memetastic process we’re creating here. If you need a higher resolution version… I totally have one!!

2. You must list 5 things about yourself, and 4 of them must be bold-faced lies. Just make some shit up, we’ll never know; one of them has to be true, though. Of course, nobody will ever know the difference, so we’re just on the honor system here. I trust you. Except for the 4 that you lied about, you lying bastards! But don’t go crazy trying to think of stuff, you’ll see by the example I’ve set below that we’re not really interested in quality here.

3. You must pass this award on to 5 bloggers that you either like or don’t like or don’t really have much of an opinion about. I don’t care who you pick, and nobody needs to know why. I mean, you can give a reason if you want, but I don’t really care.

4. If you fail to follow any of the above rules, I will  hunt you down and harass you incessantly until you either block me on Twitter or ban my IP address from visiting your blog. I don’t know if you can actually do that last thing, but I will become so annoying to you that you will actually go out and hire an IT professional to train you on how to ban IP addresses just so that I’ll leave you alone. I’m serious. I’m going to do these things.

5. This one isn’t actually a rule, but once you do the above, please come back here and link up to the Memetastic Hop so that I can keep track of where this thing goes.

Whoever created that graphic is right, it’s hideous. The idea, however, I find kind of funny. It appeals to my rather twisted sense of humour.

Thanks Carole Finds Her Wings for this dubious honour!

So, here are my fibs and one truth:

1. I have been vegetarian for nearly 10 years, but though I never crave a sneaky sausage in the day time – despite living with a meat eating boyfriend and loving the smell of bacon – when I’m drunk I can’t resist a meat feast pizza from the local kebab shop. They do the best pizzas in the world – sober or drunk.

2. Immigration officials in America thought I’d been kidnapped when I went on holiday with my aunt. I was only five and didn’t have the same surname as her. When I was asked if I knew who she was I was too scared to talk to the terrifying immigration lady.

3. I spend over £500 a year on my hair. I keep it quite short so it needs cutting every six weeks, but I also get it coloured. I don’t colour it completely – just different coloured highlights. Dark blue ones are my favourite, but they don’t stay that colour for very long. I don’t like the gray colour they go after a fortnight or so of washes!

4. I’m a bit of a movie geek and have a growing collection of movie memorabelia. My prized item is a replica of Sting, Frodo’s sword from the Lord of the Rings. It looks dead realistic (though it isn’t sharp!) and I really want to find some goblins to see if they make it glow blue…

5. Ever since going to South Africa on a school trip I’ve been bitten by the travel bug. I’ve been to Bulgaria, Holland, Finland and Turkey. I really want to go further afield, but since Uni I’ve not been able to afford it. Saving up for a two week trip to Brazil next year, but sticking with Europe this year.

Which one is true?

I’m tagging:

Ketch Tavern

Taylor the ‘Not a Boy’

Photoshop: Portal To Another Dimension

Ivy: Liiiiiiiib, I’m pitching a sci-fi tv series as part of my course and it would really help if I had a picture of a PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION!

Er, where to start…

Haha, it’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. Abstract always is. It’s trying to make realistic looking things that’s tricky.

So, I chatted with Ivy, who told me ‘it has to be purpley/blue’ and ‘a bit like that whispy stuff that is left behind in that Jumper film, but slightly more tangible.’ Oookay…

I have seen Jumper, but pretty much all I remember was Hayden Christensen. Who I don’t rate as an actor, but I find very attractive. Until he talks. I wasn’t paying too much attention to whispy stuff…

So, in the interest of not wasting too much time, I made a mock up in five minutes using a glitter brush and the ‘liquidise’ tool.

After sending to Ivy, who confirmed I was roughly on the right lines, I decided to have a proper go. This took about 15 minutes and was really good fun to make:

 

A little bit better than the 5 minute job! Here’s how I made it.

The Starting Point

Probably the simplest starting point ever. A black square. 500×500 in its original size to give me plenty of space to work with.

The first thing I had to do was make a second layer over the black background so later, when I start editing the colours so they go swirly and portal to another dimension-y the black stays separate and the colours stay crisp. All my editing in the following stages takes place on that second layer.

Stage 1

Once again using brushes made by the wonderful Obsidian Dawn (seriously check out their stuff, they’re amazing) this time the Glitter Brush Set, I selected a nice dark blue colour and layered three or four of the different glitter brushes over each other.

I wasn’t really trying to create any specific pattern or style as I knew later I would be blurring the whole thing into a big swirly circle, but I wanted to get lots of texture to the initial picture.

Stage 2

Next up was purple. I chose quite a bright purple, as this was meant to be sci-fi rather than calming lavender. The hearts look a bit rubbish at this stage, but I love how they turned out in the final picture.

Again, it was all about building up texture, so I used random brushes (all from the glitter set) and just printed them on in random places. I could make this again using different combinations and would get a slightly different end product, but it’s all pretty much working towards the same thing.

Stage 3

Now it was pink’s turn. Ivy only specified bluish-purple, but I added pink because it highlights the other two colours nicely. I thought it would be a bit of a dark portal, particularly against the black background, if it didn’t have a bit of pink.

Also, this is the only time I used a specific brush in a specific place. I did the random glitter attack for a couple of different brushes, then used the firework1 brush for that central burst.

Stage 4

Next I used the filter>blur>radial blur tool to turn my glitter explosion into a spinning wheel of pink and purple. I set the spin to 32 (not specifically, that’s just where it landed as I scrolled through the preview until I saw a look I liked) which gave it a soft enough blur to still have some definition, but enough so it looked nice and round. And portal-y.

I then set the history brush to the action before the radial blur so I could return just a little more definition to the portal.

Stage 5

After turning the opacity and flow of the history brush roughly half way, I started tracing round the edges to give the outside of the portal a few errant sparkles, like it was made of them and they came away at the edges.

I also gave the firework in the middle a bit more definition, trying to bring out the sense that it was something you went into. I was careful to avoid touching the very central bit, as I wanted this to remain extra swirly, like that was the most powerful bit of the portal. Or, you know, because it looks kind of cool that way.

Stage 6

Next, I turned the flow on the history brush way down to 10% and traced some lines, both straight and wavy, from the outside of the portal into the centre. You can barely see it, but I thought it made it look a bit more like something you were supposed to walk into, not just a random swirl on a page.

It’s a bit like everything is sucking into the middle now. Or at least, that was the look I was going for.

Final Stage

After that I sent it to Ivy, who said she wanted the pink toning down a bit. I used the image>adjustments>replace colour tool, selecting the bright pink in the middle and just turned down the darkness so it all went a bit more purple.

I also attacked the pink dots at the top with the blur tool, just because I didn’t like them and thought they stood out too much. They were easy to smudge into the background.

And there you have it! How to make a portal to another dimension in seven easy steps.

All photos are linked to their original file if you want to view any of the stages at full size.

Want something making? Leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

Listography: Things I Wish I Could Do

I’m not really one for memes. Because of work commitments I find it hard to post and link them on the right day and think of interesting things to say, but this one caught my eye, so I’m going to do it. Hope Kate Takes 5 doesn’t mind me popping in for one week and adding my totally ridiculous list to the mix!

Things I Wish I Could Do

1 – Move Things With My Mind

On the one hand, this trick would likely make me hugely fat. But then again, how cool would it be to move things with your mind? It’s consistently been my ‘If I had a superpower…’ since I was about 5. I’m loyal like that. It rocks over all the other superpowers. Flying? Pssht. I’d rather magic the TV remote from the other side of the room into my hand.

2 – Cook

I know, I know, I could learn. But I really don’t have the inclination. It just doesn’t interest me. Food interests me. A lot. But cooking… meh, I just get impatient. When I smell food, I just want to eat it, raw or not. Fortunately the boyfriend is a very good cook. Now if only he’d do it more often…

3 – Kung Fu

I have dealt my whole life with a debilitating lack of cool. I really really want to be able to do something cool, and kung fu is pretty far up there in the cool stakes. I mean, all that bending and kicking is pretty nifty, but to be able to use it to kick ass – that’s just amazing.

4 – Sword Fight

Similar to Kung Fu really. I think this one stems from my childish desire to be a Jedi when I grew up. This probably says a lot about what sort of child I was…

5 - Give a Good Death Stare

Many elements of my life would be considerably easier if I could perfect this one. Have been working on it and will get there one day!

A Banner For QWERTY Mum

So, after my recent experiments with Photoshop – which reminded me how much I enjoyed using it – I offered my assistance to other bloggers in the family. If they could provide me with a photo and a general idea of what they wanted, I would endeavour to make them a banner for their blogs.

First up for the photoshop treatment was QWERTY Mum. We discussed her vision whilst in the sauna at the gym, and though she was going to go away and think about it, she had mentioned a couple of photos and I found I had a spare five minutes, so I gave it a go, creating as close an approximation to what I thought she wanted. After going back and forth a few times we reached a picture we were both happy with:

The Starting Point

This is a photo taken during the preparation photoshoot for QWERTY Mum’s wedding. Both she and her husband love dancing, and have got the boyfriend and I into it too, so it seemed appropriate to use this one, which captures a sense of her grace, beauty and interests. Plus it has a nice plain-ish floor I can replicate easily when I stretch it to be banner shaped!

But mostly the first three reasons…

Stage 1

First off I flipped the picture horizontally, as I wanted the words to the left where the eye would naturally look on QWERTY Mum’s blog.

Second, I used the crop tool to trim down the height and extend the edges to make it a little more banner shaped. At this stage I wasn’t being any more specific about pixel dimensions than eye judgement. The background colour was set to the colour of the floor using the eyedropper tool.

Stage 2

Because I knew I was writing over the left side, I wasn’t too careful about replicating the floor – just using the clone stamp tool to copy it very quickly. I did copy over the second chair and the table to make the background more plain.

I then used a fading eraser to soften the edges. I also used the blur tool to blur the tiles a little bit.

Stage 3

Next I added the writing. The keyboard font I downloaded from here, the other I can’t find, but again, it was one I downloaded a long time ago, if it wasn’t one of the default photoshop fonts.

I wrote the type in white originally. To get the QWERTY to show up white against the black keys, I had to flatten the image so all layers combined (once I was happy with the positioning) then, using the colour select tool, lower the darkness of all the white to black. Then, using the history brush (set to the flatten image stage) I returned all the darkened whites to their original white, being careful to avoid the black keys. With a carefully selected size brush, I returned the letters to white, leaving the black keys as they were.

Stage 4

After Stage 3 I sent the banner to QWERTY Mum for her approval. She wanted the colour to be toned down a bit and her tagline put on. Using the colour replace tool, I selected the orange and desaturated it a little, turning the fuzziness up until the whole floor was covered evenly.

The font for th e tagline is Mom’s Typewriter, downloaded from here. Once I’d included the tagline on the picture, I had to crop the picture down at the top to make it look more symmetrical. Which I wouldn’t have had to do if I hadn’t accidentally closed the .psd file with the layers on it without saving. D’oh.

Final Stage

After a second consultation with QWERTY Mum, she said she wanted a black border and rounded corners. At this stage I thought to ask about pixel size (I learn from my mistakes!) and found my banner about 30px short in width.

To round the corners of the original picture, I created a new layer and drew a rounded rectangle shape across the picture. When I had the new shape over it perfectly, I lowered its opacity to zero and clicked paths>make selection. I then clicked edit>copy merged and pasted the newly rounded picture onto a black background that was set to the right size of 860px width, with about 30px extra height to make it symmetrical.

I repeated the process for the new picture, setting the corner radius a little higher so the corners appeared more rounded and pasting it onto a transparent background so the automatically square/rectangle photoshop file doesn’t show up beyond the nice rounded edges I’d just created!

And there you have it

EDIT: So, you can have a transparent background in photoshop, but when you upload the photo the corners are automatically turned white. How annoying. I remember having this problem before now. With a bit of shuffling, QWERTY Mum found a new layout with a solid coloured background and by using the hexadecimal code for the colour (that’s the #fffffff number – that one is white, the letters and numbers vary by colour) to find the same colour in photoshop, it was just a case of colouring the corners in to make them blend into the background when the new final photo is uploaded!

And here it is (again!):

All pictures are linked to their original images if you want to view them full size!

P.S. If anyone else would like me to make them something, leave a comment!

5 Reasons Why Firemen Aren’t Sexy (And One Why They Are)

So, the boyfriend and I are both fairly exhausted at the moment. I’ve had a busy-ish time at work, but I think it’s mostly the post-christmas slump, and the fact that I’m still going to work in the dark and driving home in the dark again, barely seeing a moment’s sunshine between. I’m not a sufferer of Seasonal Affective Disorder, but never seeing the sun but through a window does have a way of dragging you down.

Tonight was supposed to be a nice early night.

Sod’s flaming law then that tonight something large decides to burn down in the local area.

On top of the regular shift work the boyfriend does, he’s also a retained fire fighter. This means that, at any moment, his alerter could go off and he could be called to a fire. He has exactly the same level of training and responsibility as a full time fire fighter, but instead of being on shift for 12 hours, four days a week, he’s on call all day, every day, except during his regular work hours.

Ever since the boyfriend got the job, I have been supporting his heroic effort of putting out bins in town and rescuing cows from cattle grids (it’s a slow area) by doing my uttmost to dispel the fanciful myth that firemen are sexy.

So here goes.

Five Reasons Why Firemen Aren’t Sexy

1. They don’t generally have six packs and biceps

So, most of the firemen I’ve met – and I’ve met a few – are more in the realm of beer-gut than six-pack. They are great guys and fantastic at what they do. But they aren’t lookers. Most of them. (Boyfriend being the obvious exception here!)

2. They stand you up on dinner dates

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve arranged for nice meals, out or in, and the alerter has gone off, cancelling the evening before it even gets started. I don’t blame, or begrudge the boyfriend for it. That’s his job and I wholeheartedly support that. But it is annoying.

3. That ‘sexy’ suit… It stinks.

The fireman strippers wouldn’t be such a nice prospect if they smelled of burning plastic and smoke. The boyfriend brought home his flashhood once (the rest of his suit is washed by some industrial cleaning company) and I put it through the wash with my darks. And then promptly put everything back through the wash because the flashhood smelt so bad it actually made the rest of our clothes smell, over powering the washing powder smell.

4. They arrive home at ridiculous o’clock, too tired for a shower

Similar to the previous point, the boyfriend has many a time come home at 3 in the morning, needing to go to work the next day, and collapsed into bed – still perfumed with the not so sweet scent of smoke. One time our bed sheets smelled so bad they stunk the whole house out while I struggled to get everything washed and dried in our tiny flat.

5. It’s a horrible, scary job

I jest about the bins and cows because I have the good fortune to feel confident that the boyfriend rarely has to deal with worse. In a quiet, rural area, the bigger fires tend to be barns, which there’s not a lot the fireservice can do about, besides watching them burn. In over three years, the boyfriend has only a few times been to persons reported fires, or fires with gas canisters that might explode, or buildings that aren’t stable. Mostly, the serious incidents he has to deal with are car crashes.

Right now, the boyfriend is at a big fire. I looked it up online and it’s only an outhouse. I say ‘only’, it’s still a devastating event for the owner of the outhouse, but property is replaceable. The boyfriend’s job will be to watch the fire, keep it under control, but with no potential risk to life, he doesn’t have to risk his.

Which brings me to my one reason that firemen are sexy…

These men (and women) risk their lives. They are heroes. If it’s saving a cow from a cattle grid, or climbing into a burning building, they do a job that puts their bodies, their lives, at risk. They have expert training and the best equipment, but in a life and death situation that can only take you so far.

In films, in books, as much as I do have a bit of a thing for the bad boy, ultimately it’s their heroic turns that make me fall in love with them.  Heroes are totally sexy.

Now, if only my hero didn’t smell so bad…

 

♥

Making Smiles On Faces Award

Kelsey at Ketch Tavern has kindly awarded me with this Smiles award. Now, normally I get awards long after I’ve seen them doing the rounds and have consequently run out of people to send them to who haven’t already recieved one. But yay! I’ve not seen this one anywhere before, which means the chances are I can send it to a few people!

So, here are my list of people who make me smile, and why:

QWERTYmum – because I love watching all the cute videos she makes of my ickle sis and brother.

Carole Finds Her Wings – my best Uni friend and now best life friend, who I haven’t seen for ages, but can always keep up with her on her lovely blog (incidently, Miss Holland, we should probably do something soon, before Bump arrives. Running out of time!!)

Tea And Biscuits - because she’s new to blogging and one of Ivy’s oldest friends. Plus what she said about her boyfriend in her first post made me smile because I’ve known them both seperately forever (he used to be in my form at school XD) and it makes me feel (probably creepily) maternily happy to see them together.

Ivy In The Corner - Ivy’s blog does make me smile. Mostly because its often random, near-incomprehensible nature does mirror her personality absolutely perfectly.

A Calm Zoned Kid – another relative of mine, but give her some bloggy love because she’s only eight and running her very own meme, Fab Friday (which I really ought to enter, just haven’t been feeling that fabulous lately – next week Kiz!)

And of course, Ketch Tavern makes me smile, but she already has the award.