Happy New Year

Christmas is over, the New Year has begun and the days are getting longer by a millisecond each day. Only stinking oul' January to get through now and all will be good. I hate January. It's a cold bleak month. The buzz from Christmas and New Year has worn off, we're skint, it's cold, and dark and everyone's already broken their New Year's resolutions by the first week and feeling like shit. February's not much better but at least it's short.

On a brighter note, Christmas was lovely. After I had the stress of doing everything lastminute.com (buying, wrapping and delivering presents and packing up until half an hour before leaving for the airport), I just relaxed at Jamie's mum's house watching Santa movie after Santa movie and eating sweets. It was strange though, my first Christmas away from home. I had a surreal experience at the airport. When going through security there was a man in front of me just about to walk through the metal detector. The secuirty lady asked him to wait and asked me to walk through first. Even though I didn't bleep she asked me to hold my arms out to be searched. As she did so she said to me Ok I'm going to search you there's no need to stand there looking like I'm doing something to you.

Bam! I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. It made my face turn red and I nearly laughed in her face. Then I thought it was so real and familiar that it probably wasn't deja vu but that she had probably said the exact same thing to me the last time I went through security at Aldergrove. I can't be certain but it was just such a strange sensation. Especially because my reaction to her comment felt so vividly familiar. My reaction was to just stand there being searched and dumbfounded as to why she would even say this in the first place. Did I look like she was doing something to me? It wasn't just what she said but her tone of voice when saying it. She probably says it to everyone she searches because she's fed up with the whole lesbian stereotype that female airport security only do their job to cop a feel of women's tits*

Anyway, she freaked my mind a little bit just because of the feeling of deja vu. I almost wanted to go back and ask her if she says that to a lot of people she searches. But I didn't, so I was left wondering.

It was nice being back in Stoke. As much as I hate the place it's like a second home to me. I saw Gravy Dave and Miss C, I saw Pirate John and Captain Tor. Tor is still going on about Nelly's spicy chicken wings being the best he ever tasted and he promises next time he's over he will be cooking for Nelly. I thought about going to visit Santa in his grotto at the Potteries shopping centre but I couldn't tell if it was still free. The fact that the queue was significantly shorter than when I worked ther suggested it probably cost money. I was reading an article about the cost of visiting Santa in shopping centres in Norn Iron just before Christmas. The average cost was around 6 pounds to visit Santa but a lot were 10 pounds. A couple were free but the child got no present and you had to bring your own camera. The most expensive was the Castlecout centre in Belfast, costing 20 pounds per child to visit Santa. Crazy. Scary. Obscene. Anyway, there endeth my Christmas rant.





*Ok so maybe I'm making this sterotype up but I'm sure someone once told me that. Anyway, I'm a sociology student, I don't believe in stereotypes so this doll just annoyed me in assuming that I might believe in sterotypes.