The reason I have opened today’s post with an old photo of Bon Scott smiling through the agony of a badly infected testicle that you can practically hear straining against the seam of those skin-tight grey jeans is…. sorry, I’ve completely lost my train of thought.
well hello
Oh yeah. Something to do with an idea I had for one of my wig assessments. Any man out there willing to let me apply mascara to his chest hair to achieve the look? Get in touch via my contact page. I’ll make you look cool, promise.
This being-in-a-new-city-and-not-knowing-many-locals-well-enough-to-ask-if-they’ll-let-me-paint-their-bare-bodies situation is going to quickly become a problem for me at college. All I ever had to do in Oban was pull a ‘having a creative idea’ face and BAM, everyone’s volunteering to get naked, painted and photographed. Where are you, Glasgow exhibitionists?
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for. Remember what happened when I put an ad on Gumtree looking for a flat-share? Yeah.
Anyhoo. Here are some other rock-god chests I wouldn’t mind painting, since I’m feeling particularly self indulgent today.
Reckless Love, who I shall be seeing next Thursday with Carissa – we are returning to the scene of last year’s crime…
Jettblack. When you google images of them, two pictures of me come up, which pleases me immensely. Lick lick.
Alright, that’s enough of that. We’ve got a lot to cover today.
Autumn’s here. Next week it will be October. I’m a little shit-scared of how fast time is galloping by.
I feel both settled and still very new in Glasgow. The very first time I arrived here in March 2008, I had a budget of £15 per day – £2 for food (Subway 6-inch of the day), £13 for my hostel bed which included breakfast, and dinner was a row of chocolate from the enormous stockpile I had bought in Belgium.
There is something about having absolutely no money that is kind of liberating. I mean, it fucking sucks, but it simplifies things. I walked and walked and walked around, day and night. I ‘saved’ all the free museums and art galleries for shit-weather days, and just walked the rest of the time. I would sleep in until right before free breakfast ended, so I wouldn’t be awake for too long burning calories and getting hungry. Late at night I would sit in my bunk writing, watching the others in my 14-bed dorm, wishing I was travelling with a big group of friends like they all seemed to be, wishing I knew where to go and what to do.
Everyone I spoke to raved about Edinburgh. Nobody seemed to think that Glasgow was up to much. I didn’t necessarily agree but after nearly 2 weeks walking and walking and walking around, I thought I could probably justify forking out for a bus to Edinburgh to see what all the fuss was about. There began a chain of events that lead me to running the backpackers’ hostel in Oban for 5 years, but that’s another story for another time.
What I didn’t immediately realise was that I’d developed quite a good relationship with Glasgow in this formative period of my early backpacking days. I didn’t have a head full of shit about how dangerous Glasgow was, so it didn’t occur to me to feel unsafe cruising the mean streets on my own in the middle of the night. I think I have always been reasonably sensible so I wasn’t going anywhere actually dodgy at night, but in retrospect I think the whole experience would have been different, and ruined, if I had been scared.
Instead, I felt Glasgow’s friendliness, I felt like it was a good place to be if you weren’t from here. People heard my accent and were interested. I was a young woman travelling alone so people went out of their way to make sure I was ok. I got invited into people’s homes for cups of tea and to look in their old family photo albums. They wrote down their addresses so I could send them postcards from wherever I went next. No one stabbed me, and I was never even offered heroin.
Glasgow is my Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Glasgow is my hooker with a heart of gold, my rough diamond. Glasgow’s reputation might not be the best, but you have to cop a feel for yourself, make your own mind up.
And do you think I can get the effing gif of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in The Diamond Necklace Scene to work? Gah!
Anyway, here I am again, back where I first started my Scottish adventure five and a half years ago. My budget is about the same again, but the new job I start tomorrow will hopefully have LOTS of overtime and put an end to all this being-broke bullshit. It’s really cramping my style.
Are you still reading? Good for you. This week at college!
Kim Kardashian-style kontouring!
Saoirse kontoured to within an inch of her life
and just to think, most people try to get their makeup to match their skin tone and NOT leave a streaky brown tide mark around their jaw.
Wig work!
Ashleigh rocking the 90s-kids-TV-presenter look
She would have been the coolest girl at my high school in 1998
not pubes, just another wig sitting in front of the mirror
… and posing, bitches.
So here’s AC/DC with their 1980 hit, You Shook Me All Night Long, because it’s Friday. I know this flog has attracted the attention of many classic rock puritans internationally who are going to light up the whole internet with bitter posts about how you can’t have a photo of Bon Scott’s crotch one minute, and be signing off with a Brian Johnson hit the next, but all I can say is bite me. Also, AC/DC are Australian*. Ha!
Happy Friday, lovers Xx
*No one in Scotland likes hearing this truth.
digital imologue 