My Year In Lists

Sports Day, Ireland

1. Sunburned gingers and students in lazy heaps as far as the eye can see

2. Over-enthusiastic teachers bouncing around in middle-aged runners and vaguely hip sportswear, heckling students in an attempt to improve participation

3. A single enormous daisy chain, usually a collaboration by unfit second years trying to avoid sprints

4. Loud complaints from those nursing sack race injuries and tug-o-war rope-burn

5. One overly competitive person who actually cares about the results of the welly throwing

6. One group of friends smugly carrying ice-cream through crowds of jealous stares

7. Commemorative permanent marker graffiti on P.E uniforms and faces alike

8. Everyone quietly mocking that one kid who runs like an injured lemur and always comes last

9. Stares of befuddlement at one teacher who is acting completely out of character

10. Friends pitted against friends in a grave battle of wits/sack race/pillow fight TO THE DEATH

11. Someone who took Soccer Skills too seriously and wound up bleeding

12. The group who spend the entire day immortalising “Sports Daii 2K12” in pictures to be tagged on Facebook as soon as they get home and commented endlessly on. (“OMG untag I’m sooo ugly!” “LMAO so funni lol!”)

13. Minimal amounts of actual exertion

Fun Things To Do With Recently Acquired Glasses Before The Novelty Wears Off

1. Stand far away from things and be startled by their clarity

2. Count the hairs on the cat

3. Stand around reading small print and things on top of people’s presses

4. Whip them off dramatically in a “Why Ms Johnson! You’re beautiful!” sort of way

5. Use them to focus the rays of the sun into your death ray

6. Use big words like oculus

7. Make people believe you know lots of things about quantum physics

8. Put them on nearby pets/house plants to make them look four times as intelligent and more likely to be the CEO of a prestigious corporation

9. Make a desperate bid for medical school before everyone realises you’re actually under-average in smartness

7 Slightly Irresponsible Reasons To Bring People Back From The Dead

1. Reanimating Gene Kelly to dance at my Debs

2. Introducing Oscar Wilde to Twitter

3. Telling Patrick Kavanagh exactly what I think of The Great Hunger

4. High fiving T.S. Eliot

5. Getting Gershwin to compose me a theme tune and follow me everywhere with a medium-sized orchestra

6. Introducing Elvis to Justin Bieber for the lulz

7. Undead celebrity undeath match

Ways In Which Smoking Will Kill You

1. Nagged to death by mass media

2. Stabbed in the gut by a giant, sentient cigarette while huddled outside a pub with fellow smokers

3. Alcoholic Russian clown who lives in your house passes out with cigar in his mouth, instantly setting his whiskey-soaked sheets alight and subsequently burning your house (and cheese shop) to the ground.

4. Accidentally suffocate inside an oversized novelty cigarette costume

5. Face blown up by a tiny heat-seeking missile launched by tiny anti-smoking terrorists

6. Death by pipe-induced classiness

7. Spontaneous combustion (usually only applies to gaseous entities who want to look like movie stars)

8. Lung disease

Boring Things On My Mind These Days (That Nobody Wants To Read About)

1. About eighty reasons why grapefruit is underrated as a citrus fruit

2. Why my graphics card hates me

3. Virtual chest hair

4. French grammar

5. If this level of grumpiness is normal, even for a prematurely middle aged hipster

6. Boring Leaving Cert miscellany

7. Boring existential crisis miscellany

8. Dreadful 80s movies

9. Increasingly fancy bath bombs

10. Broccoli

Things I Miss About The 80s Without Ever Having Lived Through Them

1. The antisocial style of dancing

2. Popular kids with enormous hair

3. Nerds turning the tables on bullies with incredible frequency and an epic soundtrack

4. When triumphant air fist pumps were cool

5. Teenagers smashing expensive cars with little regard for the consequences

6. White kids attempting early forms of breakdancing and rap, but somehow doing it adorably

7. Freeze frame movie endings

8. Synth. So much synth.

9. Unrealistically involved school principals who are wise but down to earth

10. Emotionally charged dance sequences

11. Quiet, nerdy girls and pencil-necked boys inexplicably becoming cool and popular in the space of a single uplifting transformation montage

12. Small towns coming together to save beloved slackers

13. Outdoor boomboxes

14. Spontaneous dance parties

15. Young John Cusack

16. Awkward shorts

17. Smiths-heavy mixtapes for your unrealistic crush

18 Tom Hanks’ brief affair with a mermaid

19. Dramatic outbursts when you’ve finally “had it up to HERE with this shit” and spontaneously grow a backbone

Skills I Fully Intend To Acquire At Some Point

1. Small talk with elderly strangers

2. Some level of grace so I don’t have to galumph through life like a drunken pachyderm

3. The ability to do flawless impersonations of the Welsh

4. Trumpet solos for use during awkward silences and other moments of great importance

5. The ability to turn pretentiousness into charm (I plan to badger Hugh Grant for instruction here)

6. How to crochet a decent doily, play the piano a little and waltz so I can find a husband in 1906 if I ever travel through time

7. To heal the sick through telephone so I can be charitable and lazy at the same time

8. To make those adorable macaroons you see so much of on the internet so I could feel like a credible girl blogger

9. The ability to muster enthusiasm over more than a few inconsequential things like Lush bath bombs, romantic comedies and Oscar Wilde

Aiming Low: Some Of My Fall-back Career Plans For My Vaguely Useless Degree

1. Write crappy novels in coffee shops and annoy the shit out of everyone

2. Use my semi-fluency in French to become a disillusioned McDonalds employee in Paris

3. Drop out and bum around Europe, eventually running out of money and friends and ending up as a prostitute in Heidelberg, Germany

4. Get on a terrible reality television show and become a C list celebrity, gradually succumbing to drug abuse after everyone realises I’m a twat

5. Get a local farmer with traditional values to knock me up and live a life of regret chained to the stove as a housewife on a dairy farm

6. Get a job as one of the Tweenies

7. Become a teacher and receive at least one formal complaint about my cleavage

8. Become the mistress of Prince William/a wealthy blind man and spend my days polishing cat-sized jewels and learning to love caviar

Advantages Of Suddenly Having Short(er) Hair

1. I no longer look like I’m wearing a Georgian wig

2. I’m less likely to be sucked into an oversized fan to my death

3. Old men and other people’s mothers have stopped assaulting my hair, reciting poetry to me and sighing over the old days

4. People can see my magnificent collarbones

5. Whipping my hair back and forth is less exhausting/likely to cause fatal whiplash

6. I’m less likely to have small pieces of paper/toy soldiers/Cheetos tossed into my hair from behind by hilarious pranksters

7. I sort of look cute if you squint and turn your head 45 degrees to the left

8. I can form an a capella quartet called the Bobs with three of my short-haired friends

9. Bobbing for apples is no longer the messy ordeal it once was

10. I haven’t been accidentally drafted into an Irish dancing competition in weeks

11. I now save literally euros per year on conditioner

Disney Wisdom

1. Horses can go anywhere and are incredibly wise and sarcastic

2. Any emotion warrants a musical number

3. Evil people possess very few redeeming features and it’s your moral duty to kill/mock/imprison them in order to get what you want

4. Princes are stubborn, but save their lives and they’re putty in your hands

5. The silent sidekick knows best

6. Anachronistic jokes never go out of style

7. Royalty do very little other than moon about singing, searching for true love and trying to oppose unsuitable marriages

8. Birds and other forest creatures are perfectly willing to provide back-up singing, dancing and minor housework in a pinch

9. The grumpiest character always turns out to have a heart of gold

10. True love’s first kiss is the be all and end all of everything, ever

11. Always end on a wedding/young family several years on