December 23, 2024
Chicago 12, Melborne City, USA
Dear Diary

This Week I…..

Oooh look, we’re a day early! I figured a) Christmas Eve is a bit like a Sunday, and b) No one will give a crap about reading about my astonishingly exciting week on Christmas Day.

To be honest I suspect no one really gives a crap on Christmas Eve either, but now I’ve committed to this weekly update lark I don’t want to leave a big week-long hole in the story of my life.

Also, some really amazing things happened this week (not really, sorry)

Actually, this week I…..

Dyed my hair

See, I told you, REALLY amazing things. Doing my roots isn’t normally worthy of a whole section all to itself. This time, however, something happened which has added another page to the already fairly huge dossier of reasons that I am going to have to move house and find new neighbours.

I live on a fairly quiet residential city street. The kind of street where the neighbours nod politely but we’re not friends. We don’t pop round for tea and if I needed a cup of sugar I would go to the corner shop, or wait till tomorrow to bake whatever unlikely cake I’m making (has sugar ever really been needed THAT urgently?)

So, I brushed the bleach onto my roots. Then I peered out of my window and there was no one on the street, so I decided to risk opening my door and taking the single step it would require to pop the dye box in the bin.

I opened the front door to find my next door neighbour stood on her doorstep unlocking theĀ front door and was forced to have a polite conversation about Christmas Trees while I looked like this.

I was mortified.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of posting a photograph of my hilarious mid bleach hair on the internet where everyone can see it when I was embarrassed to be seen by one person outside. But we’re all friends here, right?

Played my last Roller Derby game of the year

This one took a lot of emotional energy! Our last game of the year is always intraleague. 2 teams made up of skaters from within our league. It’s a fun friendly game and a perfect end to the year.

This year we’d had a lot of skaters drop out due to injury and illness, and I woke up on Sunday morning to be told that I was now going to be a primary Jammer for the team. The Jammer is the points scorer, it’s a tough position to play when all the other people on track are basically trying to kill you and I have a bit of a mental block about it. When I do it I like to be tricked into it!

So I spent the entire morning trying to control the butterflies in my stomach and the slightly shaky hands and generally being a big old dramatic wuss about the whole thing. My whole team was lovely and promised to look after me. Then an hour before the game one of our other skaters was able to play and they didn’t need me to jam after all. I was relieved, but then a little disappointed. I had, after all, already done the REALLY hard bit, which was spending all morning worrying about it.

Next year I vow to be less of a wuss about it.

We lost the game this time, but it was a hella lot of fun.

Witnessed a marriage proposal

In possibly the most adorable end to a Roller Derby game ever, 2 of my team mates, DaniHell and Vixen Mortar got engaged on track.

There was a whole elaborate set up requiring the secret involvement of all the refs and half of the skaters, and it made my eyes very sweaty (not tears, definitely sweat).

Photo courtesy of Near the Coast

Won a pub quiz

Well, ok, we didn’t win, we came third, but we still got a prize!

Everytime we do the leagues fundraising pub quiz we come one place outside the prizes. Not this time though, oh no! This time we came third and headed home with a bottle of Prosecco!

It’s all thanks to me knowing who Matthew Hopkins was (The Witchfinder General) though to be honest that just made up for my inability to remember a line in “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”, a song that will now haunt me for the rest of my life.

Took a day trip

You know how you don’t really realise how much you needed a break until you actually take one? Well that kind of happened on Wednesday. It wasn’t even a break really. We had to go to Ipswich to buy some stuff. While we were there we had a nice wander round and ate a Christmas burger in Wetherspoons. It was nice and even though I then had to come home and do a whole days work in 4 hours before I could have dinner it was like a breath of fresh air.

I didn’t realise how stressed I’d let myself get, thankfully all it took was a burger to chill me out.

Bought the best mince pies

For nearly 6 weeks I have been walking past the signs in the window of Iceland proclaiming their mince pies to be the best mince pies in all the world.

I finally gave in to the pressure and bought a box. They taste like mince pies. Very nice mince pies, but I’m not sure they live up to the hype if I’m honest.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas! See you on the other side!

xx