Fings what I inherited

I’m going to throw some names out there-

Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson

Gerry Hall and Georgia May Jagger

Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson

Pearl and Daisy Lowe

If you’re up on your celeb knowledge you will know they are all mothers and daughters.

If you’re up on your eyesight you will also know they are all ridiculously hot.

Not oh you look quite nice when you wear that new Mac lipstick and bother to blow dry your hair hot.

I’m talking BAM! Sex in your face hot.

Mother Nature at her finest, gifting daughters model looks, gazelle-like limbs, and Disney-esque hair.

What lucky women they are to inherit such wonderful things from their mothers.

I too have a mother, and she is very beautiful and I love her, but I’m no Daisy Lowe.

I think something in the DNA must have mutated when my mother and father bred because I seemed to inherit everything that Daisy Lowe didn’t.

A small list….

HAYFEVER. As in don’t take me outside in the summer months if you expect me to stop sneezing long enough to have a conversation.

GRASS ALLERGY. Linked to the above. Picnics on the grass are great fun until someone notices the giant red welts all over my legs and reacts with a, “What the fuck is that?”

HEAT RASH. Get it every time I go on holiday and get much the same reaction as I do with the grass allergy. Clubbing in Ibiza was always fun, surrounded by tanned boho chic as I scratched madly at myself in a dark corner.

AFRO. People who don’t have a clue what I mean by this and tell me they also have a “natural wave” need to get a grip. Again, on holiday, my hair turns into a frazzled afro. My friends once dubbed me the Nutty Professor as I swanned around Puerto Banus and asked me to never leave the apartment again with my hair down.

BLINDNESS. Can’t see without sticking contact lenses in my eyes. Combine this with the hayfever and I probably mention my contact lenses about three times a day in the summer months.

BACK PROBLEMS. I can shop for about an hour tops before I start clinging on to mannequins for strength and looking like an urban Quasimodo.

PALE SKIN. I’m half Irish. My skin is naturally blue. I basically look like a ginger smurf in winter, then a crispy human prawn in the summer when I attempt to tan.

THIN HAIR. My dad is pretty damn bald, luckily I’m not, but my hair is so fine that when I twist it into a “sexy” bun, Loreal advert-style, I’m left with what looks like a small furry Malteser on the back of my head. Use a doughnut, say all the people with thick, luscious locks. Cheers, not enough hair to cover it, now kindly fuck off with your advice because you don’t know the suffering!!!!

NO WAIST. It is what is says. I have no waist. Just broad shoulders and an unusually wide rib cage which narrows to slim legs. Basically a Dairylea triangle and I’m not even edible, so what’s the point?

INVISIBLE TOES. Baby toes so small you have to keep checking they haven’t fallen off when you’re wearing flip flops. And an accompanying toenail so small you have to use a toothpick to apply varnish.

A LACK OF RHYTHM. I can’t even co-ordinate myself in an exercise class if it involves more than one move. I’m currently persuading my fiancé to hold our first dance at the wedding with me sat on a chair so he can dance around me and distract from the fact I can’t even sway to music.

UNCONTROLLABLE URGE TO CRY AT EVERYTHING ON TV. Gogglebox, athletics, Eastenders, anything. If it involves people winning, losing, dying, living, being reunited with loves ones, or falling in love, I will be right next to you with my head in a box of Kleenex. I was inconsolable this week after watching a crocodile be killed for food. “Why? Why do we eat animals? I’m turning vegetarian,” I wailed, shedding serious amounts of tears.

ARACHNOPHOBIA. Can’t even get a glass over them for fear I will put myself in striking distance. I once scrubbed my skin until it bled after a money spider landed on me. Neurosis.

FEAR OF DOGS. Depends on the dog. If they jump, lick, bite, or bark, and are bigger than a Yorkshire terrier, it’s likely I will hate them, so don’t bother laughing and telling me they’re friendly because as their owner you are bias and I already don’t trust you.

FEAR OF HORSES. Just do not come near me with a horse ever, unless I am armed.

FEAR OF PEOPLE DOING UP MY ZIPS. If I have no hands free, sure you can help do up my jacket, but stop the zip before you reach my neck otherwise we are gonna have a problem.

FEAR OF HOUSE PHONES. If you need me, ring my mobile. Can’t handle the not knowing element when I hear the dreaded tone of the house phone.

AN UGLY NEED TO WIN. Prior to ten pin bowling recently, I was caught practising my technique in the kitchen with the aid of a YouTube video. Literally anything I do gets turned into a competition. Christmas games this year ended up with most of the family wishing I would go to bed and stop sucking the fun out of it. Every point won by me was matched with fist shaking and air pounding, and every point lost was met with a pause for an official appeal and accusation of cheating. Shit went down.

I could honestly go on and on…and on.

So I would like to say, thanks mum and dad for raising me and making me such a catch!

Luckily they also passed down a brain and the art of self-deprecation so I could write this, so hey ho! It’s not all bad.

If you have to enter a bin, don’t get caught

Occasionally/too often in life I find myself in situations where it’s not possible to laugh things off or casually gloss over the awkwardness.

Sometimes in life it’s possible to trip on the pavement and smoothly style it out into a little jog.

Sometimes it’s not.

Sometimes you’re literally sat in a bin and realise there’s no way to casually jog out of it.

Let me explain, but firstly I must point out that there’s a reason I’ve only shared this Miranda-esque performance with a chosen few….it is shameful.

I moved into a lovely little flat last August. It’s on a quaint estate that’s beautifully quiet and for months I hadn’t even heard, let alone met, my neighbours.

A normal person would have perhaps knocked on their door and said hello, but not me.

As usual my first introduction was a little less conventional.

So our flats share a little communal outdoor bin shed with gigantic industrial wheelie bins inside for us to chuck out our stinking rubbish. I try very hard to avoid this job because I’ve seen Arachnophobia and I’m not stupid. I know there are a number of eight-legged bad boys in there waiting to kill me.

However on this particular day, the bin bags were letting off such a stink that it had gone beyond a tactical Febreeze of the kitchen. I was on my way out anyway, to the hairdressers incidentally. I was looking perfectly polished, because that’s what you do when you go to the hairdressers. Just in the same way you clean the house before your cleaner arrives. It’s just what you do.

I slipped on my cream coat, and at this point should add it was actually cream, that’s not just for comedy effect. I then picked up the bin bag and headed to the bin shed, with my keys in the same hand.

My bin technique involves me throwing the bag in with lightening speed, because the psychopath in me believes displaying quick reflexes will intimidate any spiders considering showing themselves.

But of course on this day I was running late for the hairdressers so things couldn’t possibly run smoothly. As I threw the rubbish in, I heard the unmistakable sound of my keys hitting the bottom of the bin. My life for a split second ended, for I instantly knew there was no quick fix. I’m not a natural problem solver, I’m a call my man, cry, and ask him what to do kind of girl.

The bin was too deep for me to reach into, so that was ruled out.

There was nothing to hand to hook them out with, so that was ruled out.

Then I spotted a rusty microwave in the corner and attempted to improvise by standing on it. However the bin was still too deep, so that was ruled out.

What happened next still haunts me.

I realised the only way to get the keys, was to turn the bin on its side. Using all of my strength I managed to turn the bin over, but the elusive keys still remained at the bottom, out of reach.

There was only one thing for it. I had to enter the bin and retrieve them or I would never make my hair appointment. Holding my breath and pinching my nose, I crouched down and waded in. Right in. As in not one part of my body was not in the bin.

And then, at that very moment, CREAK. The sound of the bin shed door opening.

Do you…

A) pretend you live there

B) pretend to speak no English

C) pretend you’re not there and just go with it when the person turns the bin the right way up with you in it

Well I went for option D after careful consideration and shuffled out to cheerfully introduce myself, minus the handshake.

Turns out the man who had walked in was my new next door neighbour, and his first words to me?

“I guess this isn’t your finest hour?”

Yep, thanks. I will take that.

I won’t confess that I wore that cream coat, covered in grime, and STINKING to the hairdressers after that. I won’t confess that when they asked to take my coat I grabbed it and shouted “NO” over-protectively, as though the label inside was Prada rather than Primark. I won’t confess that it’s hanging in my coat cupboard unwashed cos it’s dry clean only, and we all know that means Febreeze it and never pay to wash it.

Anyway moral if the story is, I am Miranda and, for a fleeting moment, I truly understood why Oscar the Grouch had such a chip on his shoulder.

Shame.