What’s Your Shoe IQ

Are you a skyscraper heel girl or do you favour the luxury of a comfortable croc? Do high heels make you weak at the knees or do they just hurt your feet? In today’s world there has never been a time where people have had a greater selection of shoe styles to create their unique personality. From shoes that are simply for walking, to shoes that you can only walk from a taxi to a door in, whatever it is you like to wear, your shoe style can reflect your personality. We review some of the shoes that explain your personality.   

1. Athletic shoes and Athletic Designed Shoes
This type of shoe is usually worn by competent girls who like to be on the go. Sporty women wear them but also people who favour comfort over style. These women are not afraid of a challenge and wouldn’t hesitate to help a friend. Direct, honest and down to earth, she will always tell you what she is thinking – but beware you may not like it!

2. Clogs.
People who wear clogs are unique and self-sufficient individuals. Independent to the core, they do not want to be a conventional or just ‘one of the crowd’. They can tend towards tom-boyishness and vastly prefer comfort over fashion. Although they do care about style they wish to be liked because of their quirky personality rather then admired for their appearance.

3. Flats.
While it’s true that flats are usually intended for street wear, they can also be worn for formal events due to their various styles. Girls who wear flats are usually comfort loving and ready for the exciting adventures life throws at them. They are essentially laid back and like to go with the flow. Low maintenance as a rule, they value friendship above everything else. But don’t let their easy going nature fool you – deep down this girl knows what she wants.  

5. Stiletto Heels
The Cindy Lauper song ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ could have been written about this type of girl. If it’s attractive and expensive, chances are this girl has it, wants it or is working towards getting it! A diva at heart, this woman likes to be treated like a lady and admired for her looks. She loves dressing up and likes everything girly. But, beware, she also likes to be in control and won’t be told what to do!

6. Sandals
Sandals are the most versatile shoe, so these girls don’t like hassle. They favour comfort over style. A lover of excitement, they like to be able to walk for miles but also look the part. Festivals and hostelling holidays are their style. For their travels they know sandals double as day and nightwear and to this practical gal, nothing makes more sense then that! But watch out these girls like to have their cake and eat it too – if they want something, nothing will stand in their way.

7. Boots.
These shoes are designed and created with one word in mind: protection. This girl may be a bit of a closed book when you first meet her but she is just playing a role. Boots are versatile which shows this girl is more flexible then you realise. In fact she definitely has two sides – the fun side and the practical side. Boots can also double as day and nightwear so just when you have her down as a stick in the mud, she is likely to surprise you with her spontaneous side. This girl likes both the country and the city and she loves to go on holidays and adventures. Deep down her home comforts are dear to her and she is not beyond having a diva moment!

8. Loafers.
These shoes are usually worn in both casual and business environments. The woman who favours the loafer has a level head. She thinks of the future and likes to plan. She is also very down to earth and is a bit of a perfectionist at heart. On the negative side she can tend towards over-organisation, having her more relaxed friends on edge with her careful planning of every detail. On the positive side, she loves her family and would do anything for them. She has a heart of gold.

9. Platform shoes and wedges. 
This girl is a bit of a hippy. She likes the summer but doesn’t find the flatness of the sandal appealing enough. Instead she likes to show off and what better way to do it then in gorgeous wedges. She may be a bit cautious however and worries sometimes about fitting in. She need not worry as everyone likes this type of girl, she just doesn’t realise it yet!

What your shoe colour says about hue…

Yellow: Yellow is the colour of the creative and artistic individual. If your favourite shoes are this colour, you have a cheerful spirit and are inclined to be intellectual, idealistic and imaginative.

Orange: Orange is the colour of heat, fire and the harvest. If orange is your favourite shoe colour, you get along well with others. You tend to be social and hate to be alone.

Green: Green reminds us of security, jealousy and camouflage. It also symbolizes new growth and increases our sense of well-being. If it’s your favourite shoe colour, you are an affectionate, loyal friend who is inclined to be frank and moral. You’re a person whose reputation is very important to you and when you start something, you finish it.
Red: Dynamic red is the colour of love, courage, anger and joy. It demands attention and helps create a cheerful atmosphere. If you prefer a red shoe, you are impulsive, athletic, sexy and given to mood swings. You are determined to experience life to its fullest.

Blue: If blue is your favourite shoe colour, you crave harmony. You are capable, sensitive and make an outstanding friend. You are cautious in your manner of dress and conscientious at whatever you’re working on.

Purple: Purple is the colour of luxury and sensuality helps release creativity. Its lavish nature is seen on religious robes and smelled in expensive perfumes. If this is your favourite shoe colour, you may think your strong, sensitive, observant personality makes you quite unique. Chances are you are artistic and enjoy being creative and glamorous. Although you confide in friends, it’s tough sometimes for them to ‘get’ you. 

Random Shoe Fact

Did you know: The size of a stiletto heel can reveal a woman’s IQ. 58 per cent of women with four or more years of further education favour sensible flatties over the kind of heels that bore holes in wooden floorboards.

Does My Face Look Big in This?

Now that summer is on its way, you’ll most likely be turning to treadmills and toning to grace those evening cocktail bars. But even if you lose the pounds, make-up mistakes could mean you could be making yourself look fatter then you really are. Don’t let all that extra work go to waste.  If you have a wide or full face, you can’t change your bone structure, short of plastic surgery. However, here are optical illusions you can employ that can make your face appear slimmer….

Big Eyes

Make your face look slimmer by making your other facial features seem bigger. For huge eyes, you need huge lashes. Be sure to apply at least two coats of mascara (choose two different brands, a lengthening and a thickening brand). Apply the lengthening brand deep into the roots of your eyelashes and stroke upwards.  Then use the thickening mascara but this time just focus on building the mascara into the outer corners of the lashes.
For your eye pencil, choose an eye pencil or eyeliner that is easy to handle and goes smoothly onto the eye area. Lining inside of the eye actually makes their shape stand out more. You can also make your eyes appear bigger by lining the inner lower rim with white pencil. Or for a big night out, splash out on fake eyelashes which when applied right, can make your eyes look huge. 

 Lips

The fuller your lips are, the slimmer your face will seem. First exfoliate your lips with a warm, wet cloth or use a lip scrub. Cayenne pepper can be used as a lip plumper but be careful it doesn’t dry out your lips. Apply a very small amount of the powder across the lips, and top with your favorite lip gloss. The cayenne will plump and colour the lips by making the blood flow increase (the same action the lip plumpers create), and the gloss will provide shine and moisture. Then line and fill in your lips with a light brown or nude lip liner pencil. Another way to make your lips appear fuller is to use a dark lip liner. Make your mouth into an ‘O’ and apply to the corners of your mouth. Using medicated lip balms, such as Carmex is great for keeping your lips soft too.

Cheeks

Cleanse, tone and moisturize your face before applying makeup. This will promote a smooth finish. Use a long-wear foundation that is suitable for your skin type. As you shadow the cheekbones with makeup, you will find that quality foundation makes a difference in how well the makeup blends and holds. Daytime makeup is generally lighter, so shadowing should be more subtle than for evening wear.

Buy a blush kit with three shades designed for shadowing and highlighting cheekbones, or choose three colors: light, medium and dark in the same hue.

Apply a layer of the darkest shade of makeup underneath the cheekbone from the outer corner of the eye toward the ear. Select the medium blush shade and sweep the color across the cheekbone, allowing it to overlap with the darker shade for a more subtle look. Then apply highlighter to the top of the cheekbone no closer than a two-finger width away from the eyes. When applying, use only one finger’s width of highlighter. Add one more brush stroke of shadow color underneath the cheekbones if needed.

Eyebrows

Remember that angles make a wide or round face appear slimmer, so keep this in mind when you are grooming your eyebrows, by emphasizing the arches of your eyebrows. Well defined eyebrows also put attention toward the center of your face, taking it away from the circumference of your face shape.

Hair

Just as clothes with horizontal stripes add the delusion of roundness, hairstyles with blunt edges can make your face look much wider than it really is. Avoid styles or cuts that have any type of strong lines. Add vertical lines to your hair through well placed highlights or lowlights. Adding height at the roots automatically minimizes the fullness of any face by adding instant length. Ask your stylist to add layers around your crown area to add height.  If your hair is naturally thin or fine use a great volume enhancing shampoo to add fullness. Add a root lift solution or volumising gel to the roots and use a brush to lift as your blow-dry.  Also updos can add instant height. When you are fixing your updo, pull out a few tendrils on either side of your face to soften your face. And avoid hair that is either too long or too short – the best length for round faces is between the jawline and the shoulders. This length elongates your face and neck creating a much slimmer appearance.

Fingers

Short stubby fingers? Never fear! Fingernails that extend ¼ of an inch past your fingertips make your fingers look a lot longer, making your hands look slimmer. Avoid the vampish reds and switch to a lighter shade of nail polish.  Bright colors stand out and bring attention to nails.  Pale shade and neutrals blend better with your skin tone, elongating your fingers. If your nails are short, lengthen them by applying nail polish on just the center portion of your nails, leaving a sliver of bare nail on either side. Either that or fake it by adding false nails.

Accessories

It’s not just your make-up. Your accessories can help you look slimmer too. Long, delicate dangling earrings create a slimming vertical line that gives the illusion of thinness.  Avoid round hoops or round shapes. Choose glasses with thin frames or styles with the thickest part along the top.  Avoid frames that place the heaviest part on the nose or those that fall below the eye socket. Wear scarves tied low round your neck.  High scarves add bulk by accentuating a horizontal line

Enneagram – Nine Types of Personality

Are you a perfectionist or are you a peacemaker? Would your friends describe you as a conformist or an individual? By analysing the Enneagram or ‘nine types’ of personality you can find out your type and use it as a method for self-understanding and self-development. See if you can recognise you and your loved ones ‘personality’ type in the following.

Type One

Characteristic role: The Reformer

Ones are serious people. They tend to be highly principled – they follow the rules and expect others to as well. They are conscientious with a strong sense of right and wrong and are essentially looking to make things better. They are always aware of the flaws in themselves, others and the situations in which they find themselves. The One’s inability to achieve the perfection they desire feeds their feelings of guilt for having fallen short, and fuels their anger. They are tense people who have a hard time relaxing and who deny themselves many of the harmless pleasures of life.

At their Best: Wise, realistic, and noble.

Celebrity Ones: Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, Emma Thompson, Julie Andrews

Type Two

Characteristic role: The Helper

Twos are warm, emotional people who care a great deal about their personal relationships and devote an enormous amount of energy to them. However, they expect to be appreciated for their efforts. They typically have problems with possessiveness and with acknowledging their own needs. Helping others makes Twos feel good about themselves and being needed makes them feel important. Because Twos are generally helping others meet their needs, they can forget to take care of their own.

At their Best: Unselfish and altruistic, they have unconditional love for others.

Celebrity Twos: Mother Teresa, Courtney Cox, Naomi Campbell, Kim Cattrall

Type Three

Characteristic role: The Achiever

Threes are self-assured, attractive, and charming. Ambitious, competent, and energetic, they can also be status-conscious and highly driven for advancement. Their need to be validated for their image often hides a deep sense of shame about who they really are, a shame they unconsciously fear will be unmasked if another gets too close. Threes are often generous and likable, but are difficult to really know. When unhealthy, their narcissism takes an ugly turn and they can become cold blooded and ruthless in the pursuit of their goals.

At their best: Self-accepting, role models who inspire others.

Celebrity Threes: Jim Carey, Tom Cruise, Madonna, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods

Type Four

Characteristic role: The Individualist

People of this personality type tend to build their identities around their perception of themselves as being somehow different or unique; they are thus self-consciously individualistic. They are emotionally honest, creative and personal but can also be moody and self-conscious. They can withhold themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity.

At their Best: Inspired and highly creative, they are able to renew themselves and transform their experiences.

Celebrity Fours: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Michael Jackson

Type Five

Characteristic role: The Investigator

Sometimes loners, people of this personality type essentially fear that they don’t have enough inner strength to face life, so they tend to retreat into the safety and security of the mind where they can mentally prepare for the world. Alert, insightful, and curious they are intelligent, well read and thoughtful and they frequently become experts in the areas that capture their interest. They can adopt an attitude of careless indifference or intellectual arrogance, which can create distance between themselves and others.

At their Best: Visionary pioneers, ahead of their time, able to see the world in an entirely new way.

Celebrity Fives: Kurt Kobain, Albert Einstein, Keanu Reeves, Stephen Hawking, Robert DeNiro

Type Six

Characteristic role: The Loyalist

People of this personality type essentially feel insecure, as though there is nothing quite steady enough to hold onto. At the core of the type Six personality is a fear or anxiety. They are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy. They foresee problems and foster cooperation, but can also become defensive, evasive, and anxious—running on stress while complaining about it. They can be cautious and indecisive, but also hasty, defiant and rebellious. They typically have problems with self-doubt and suspicion.

At their Best: internally stable and self-reliant, successfully defending themselves and others

Celebrity Sixes: Hugh Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, Judi Dench

Type Seven

Characteristic role: The Enthusiast

Sevens want their lives to be an exciting adventure. They are future oriented, restless people who are generally convinced that something better is just around the corner. Extroverted, optimistic and spontaneous, they are quick thinkers who have a great deal of energy and who make lots of plans. They tend to be extroverted, multi-talented, creative and open-minded. They can also misapply their many talents, becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness.

At their Best: they focus their talents on worthwhile goals, becoming appreciative and satisfied.

Celebrity Sevens: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Britney Spears, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Type Eight

Characteristic role: The Challenger

Eights are self-confident, strong, and assertive. They are essentially unwilling to be controlled, either by others or by their circumstances. They also tend to be domineering; their unwillingness to be controlled by others frequently manifesting in the need to control others instead. This can sometimes cause them to become confrontational and intimidating. They want a lot out of life and feel fully prepared to go out and get it. Eights typically have problems with their tempers and with allowing themselves to be vulnerable.
At their Best: self- mastering, they use their strength to improve others’ lives, becoming heroic and inspiring.

Celebrity Eights: Russell Crowe, Pink, Johnny Cash, Courtney Love, Queen Latifah

Type Nine

Characteristic role: The Peacemaker

People of this personality type essentially need peace and harmony. They tend to avoid conflict at all costs. The Nine’s desire to avoid conflict generally results in some degree of withdrawal from life, and many Nines are introverted as a result. They are accepting, trusting, creative and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They can tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness.

At their Best: All-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

Celebrity Nines: Jennifer Aniston, David Beckham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Audrey Hepburn, Renee Zellweger

Next time you’re out – please leave a tip!

Crustaceans (Crustacea) form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, barnacles and people who don’t tip.

Okay I added the last bit in myself. But having rejoined the ranks of minimum wage earners once again, I have been reminded of this lovely surviving vestige in society; the scourge that is diners and social clientele that don’t tip.
Before I begin my little moan, just let me inform – this is merely for entertainment purposes. Laughing at my new part time job (that I am doing on top of journalism to make an extra buck) makes it bearable, but I do realise how lucky I am to have the job and yatta yatta yatta, as a consequence of the current recession maybe people would indeed, sell their right kidney on the black market for it: I realise this, just so you know before I start. And also, I actually love waitressing but there are the people who make you feel stupid, even when you have a degree and a masters and have hundreds of thousands of people reading your, albeit corny, features every week. You still get the Mr Self Importants who think you’re obviously just a blonde who is carrying a few drinks on a tray. The people who don’t tip really get my goat, especially when you are smiling at them, being friendly and bringing them drinks all night. But even worse are the men with small ‘you-know-whats’  who you just KNOW want to make you feel stupid (if you are reading this men who do that – it doesn’t actually work on women like me. And yes I did GET that you were taking the piss, but no I didn’t care.) Tonight there were a bunch of German men in, who were rude to the barman and then when I brought out the drinks, I put them down on the table – and I said “12.60 please,” I then looked to the right where he had put a covert 20 right on the side of the table as I had been busy putting the drinks down. I picked it up, gave him the change and he said in possibly the patronising voice in the world “Very clever.” I smiled and then went back in. Orsehole, I thought. But it got worse. They then came inside and ordered food. After the food one of them wanted me to get him cigarettes (we don’t actually have to do that for people, there is a machine and people are meant to use it themselves) But I did anyway to be nice. I brought them back and he gave me the change which was 1 euro 40 cent. He then wanted to know if we had matches. We didn’t so I told him. But I said there was people smoking outside he could get a light from. Then he said “Oh… 2 euro tip… I give you 2 euro tip for this?” I was thinking – I can take the fucking cigarettes back you lazy bastard. But again, I just smiled and said ”The cigarettes were 8.60.” And walked of to leave his stupid brain to figure out how much he had actually given me in a tip. 

Britney - a good singer, but an even better waitress

The thing is, I am not new to this sort of a job so it’s not like I’m being precious. I have had lots of experience of which I would like to share, as I take a walk down memory lane.  
In my years, I am happy to say, I have served in a range of menial labour positions. I was inaugurated to the minimum wage ways age 15 when I took up a summer position in a local fast food joint, of the burger and the king variety. I spent three months spitting on my onion rings and having flings with boys who flipped burgers – flirting in the corridors throwing mop buckets at people and getting locked into freezers ‘as a joke’. I sprayed tables that were encircled with junkies from the nearby methadone centre, and I looked like a dork in the hat and hair net, of course.
My next job was waiting tables in Spain where I lived aged 15 -16. Once I came home so tired my dad thought I was drunk because I was slurring my words. I’d do late shifts and get up early the next morning for school. I think  my parents thought it was good for me to have my own money and I think it was too. I solemnly put it all in a jar to buy a moped but never quite saved enough.
Aged 16 I worked all summer in a cafe in Dublin city serving hot food out to tourists. I remember this was my phase of liking the band the wutang clan and other rap artists, because I proudly bought a large wutang hoodie with my wages. It was lovely and warm – I lost it somewhere years ago. I didn’t like the people there though. They were the most horrid people I ever worked with, and it ended in a very ugly way. The summer of 17 I looked after three young children every day for the summer – driving my friend Lara who moved in with me, to the stables where she worked too each morning. At the same time for two years from aged 16 -18 I minded one very cool kid every single weekend. I still call in and see him now, as he was a deadly kid - if I ever have one I want the child to be like him! Then when I moved to England aged 18, I did waitressing for weddings and events and temped in random hotels all over Derbyshire. Weird hotels with weird people working in them, the sort of people from small towns where everyone knew everyones business. Strange people, nothing like where I came from in the suburbs of a city. Odd hotels - buildings in the middle of nowhere which felt so strongly like they were haunted. You used to always get treated bad as a temp because you were always perpetually new, and the staff who worked in the places hated your guts when you turned up. I ended that job after about 6 or 7 months at a racing rally at 6am in the morning. I was serving egg and bacon to all men while wearing a horrible hair net and hat. The manager had a go at me for not having my hair clipped back properly (as in so it would look properly disgusting and not just slightly disgusting) She totally had it in for me since another time I had worked there, and was being a world class bitch, and to this day I know she was just a wagon. I remember crying in the store room  and literally saying the words ‘I just want to go home’ but by home, I didn’t mean my flat in Derby, I meant my home in Ireland. One of the manager guys from the temp firm, stared at me in a scared way as I cried in this store room in the middle of a racing track in the middle of nowhere in the midlands of England about how I wanted to go back to Ireland, and then had to phone the taxi to pick me up and bring me back to Derby city. I never went back on a job with them after that. 

The summer of 18 and 19 I worked two jobs - market research in the day 9 – 5 and in a pizza parlour at night 6 – 12. The pizza parlour job and the market research jobs both stick in my head for the wrong reasons. This was the summer where I realised, and fair enough at 19, that everyone in life wasn’t as innocent as me. In the market research job a 30 somthing year old lesbian tried to take advantage of me and in the pizza job the 60 something year old manager was a pervert who regularly tried to molest me until one day I said to my mum: I think I’m not going to go in anymore. I didn’t tell anyone why, because I felt like it might have been in my head and I felt ashamed. A few weeks later, after telling a few friends about what had happened, and seeing their reaction, I knew for certain it had not been. I did the right thing to leave. During second year of university I started the year working in a pub. It only lasted a month after the manager went away for two weeks and left an alcoholic in charge. He used to leave me to mind the pub for hours, even though I was only new. He used to also drink on the job while I cleaned around him. And then I got the sack – they said money had gone missing. I told them I had never stole in my life and was perfectly okay with maths too. I suspected the alcoholic was ripping money and had blamed the new girl aka me - so I told them what he did while they were away. They didn’t look surprised but let me go anyway. Such was life. It wasn’t long, however, (as this was pre-recession) that I had a new job. Working in an old folks home every Saturday and Sunday morning from 8am to 2 in the afternoon. This meant getting up between 6am and 630am on the weekend, after doing a whole week at uni. The old folks home was the strangest and I would say, most difficult job I ever did in some ways. It was hard physically (lifting, carrying, running around) plus I had to walk 40 mins to get there and 40 mins to get back. But it was hard emotionally too. Some days I would come in to find out one of the old people had died during the night. It would be one of the same old people I had helped out of their chair or served a bacon sandwich to just a few days previously. There was Olive a rather grumpy woman who was 100, Irene who used to always fall asleep on her tray, Vera who had returned to childhood in her head and many, many more interesting characters. I remember David was the one who shook me up the most. He had a large scar on his head and he only looked in his 50s or 60s. One day I brought him in his breakfast to see loads and loads of books on his shelf on motorcycles. I got a huge shiver down my spine as I realised what happened to his head, and a nurse confirmed it was true, he had an accident on a motorcycle decades earlier and had been in a nursing home ever since.
The summer of second to third year of university when I was 20, I worked for a man who owned his own business. He needed a summer secretary. I would cycle the 3 miles there and 3 miles back. He had an office on the side of his house and he was a nice, albeit ditzy, man in his 60s with a brilliant eye for business. He was a workaholic and completely involved with his business 365 days a year, but he was rubbish at filing. He would leave me to it most of the time, and was so trusting. He had a large fish tank in his office which I would love – and one of the fish I named after my ex boyfriend, because he looked just like him. I never took advantage of that guy’s trust - but it was difficult when he came into the office because he would just end up confusing everything! It was sad to say goodbye at the end of the summer. In third year of university I had a bit of a false start to the year working for just two months in a coffee shop. This job was pretty desperate. The working conditions weren’t the best and the management were extremely high maintenance. For 5 pounds something an hour they really wanted your blood. I was in my most stressful year of university and the hours interfered with my lectures a little. They had me making sandwiches in the kitchen for 6 hour straight shifts with no break. I eventually got fired for not putting enough salad leaves in a crayfish baguette. I was delighted to leave.

Then I got a job which was to stand me in good stead for two years part time. I got a job fliering for the largest nightclub in the city. I would do 4 nights a week, and from that got enough money to survive. The job started off being great fun, but then the cold snap of the winter set in. At the time I was living with my best friend in an especially dingy, mice infested flat in the ghetto (on the street down from us a human head had been recently found in a dustbin.) My roof had a leak when we moved in, her room got flooded when a washing machine above broke and leaked everywhere. We regularly got spiders the size of small children prowling around. We also had a stalker living upstairs and a stoner living downstairs who was growing hash plants the size of the great barrier reef in our basement.  Anyway, we couldn’t really afford heating so our flat was always cold. And when the cold snap set in, I had to stand on the streets in it. I used to put on three pairs of trousers about seven t-shirts and jumpers, a coat and then we had the red coat of the nightclub on top. I used to look like a real life eskimo – just a pair of eyes and a nose sticking out. But when it got even colder, one night I remember standing in the snow. I started to fall asleep standing up leaning against a wall, because I got that cold that I think my body was shutting down.  We got to know the homeless people - least I did. Some of them were sound. Then I’d go home to the cold flat and then take off maybe two of the layers and sleep in the rest – spending an hour trying to get the feeling back in my finger and toes before I could drop off to sleep. 
That summer I did door to door sales. It was gym memberships, and I didn’t mind this job at all. In some ways I could sell sand to a sand man, and the walking really kept me active. I used to sometimes make over a 100 euro for just 4 hours work, and I got to flirt with a gorgeous and hilariously funny Polish guy, who I would literally look forward to going to work to see. By the end of the summer we had exhausted all of the estates and the gym promotion was finished. I was tired of walking by then.

When I returned for my final and 4th year of uni, which was to be part time, I got two jobs. One, again, working for the nightclub – but this time in the cloakroom instead of outside doing the fliering. The cloakroom job had its pros and cons. The pros were that I got to be alone, got to occasionally read and play tertris on my phone and write self-pitying maudlin poetry and sometimes even knit (I knit a Christmas scarf for my mother in that cloakroom.) And the cons were that people used to get spectularly horrendified and lose their tickets and then get very agressive with me for not giving them their jackets back. Some people used to hop over the counter at me and once there was even a riot for the coats, and I had to press the panic button. I also got to see some rough old fist fights and even worse, women and the old ‘pulling hair’ fights. While I was doing that job I was also living in the worst house I ever lived in because it was SUPER damp. We had kittens at the time Willow and Gismo. They used to pee and poo everywhere so the house smelled bad, but they were adorably cute. Willow used to sleep on my pillow most nights. I only got annoyed with Willow once because he peed on my covers and then I changed them and then he got right back up and peed on the clean ones to mark his teritory. I shouted at him and put him out of my bedroom then felt really guilty cos I love animals and he was just a baby cat. I remember sticking my head under the couch a few minutes later and apologising to him profusely, luring him out with cat treats. (They have since gone back to the farm we got them from and are really happy, I went once to visit them in the countryside of Derbyshire, they were twice as fat as all the other cats on the farm because we fed them so much as kittens.) As I was saying anyway, it was the dampest house I have ever had the misfortune to even experience in my life. My room was the worst room because it was facing the edge of a row of council houses and the wind blew from that direction. I used to come home and my duvet would literally be thick with wet and damp, like it had been taken just out of the washing machine and maybe had half an hour on the line, but was still nowhere near dry. One time, I was getting a bus out of town to see a friend and I got on the bus only for my whole neck to freeze up. I was in agony and so terrified. I rang my mum in tears thinking I was having a stroke or dying or something. When I went to the doctor, it turned out it was the wet pillow I had been lying on had just caused a sever crick. In the same house we had a old man neighbour who had a gun, and a dog and used to invite us in for chats and he’d drink wine every day and when we’d go in he’d tell stories of things and people he’d shot before – he wasn’t scary though for some reason, just lonely. There were three of us in that house, and one of the girls never wanted the heating on. We were on a meter for electricty and gas and would have to go to the shop to buy it. She went mad if we had the heating on longer then to run a bath, making the damp problem ten times worse then it might have been if we’d had a little heat. One time in the dead of winter when it was minus degrees outside I remember running a bath in the freezing cold bathroom. I decided to leave on the heat for an hour to heat the bathroom too and my bedroom and I heard her go into the kitchen. She shouted to me “Have you finished with the heat?” And I suddenly felt so angry, something inside me snapped. I shouted back. “No, I haven’t. Feckin’ leave it. I’m freezing!” And I heard her walk off.
At the same time I was working in Travelodge hotel. To get there I had to walk through chav-ville and up a creepy lane where lived shopping trolleys and plastic bags and (I imagined) dead bodies and rapists too. Sometimes I ran. Other times, shadows used to creep up in the sides of my eyes when a tree rustled in the wind and it would make my heart beat fast and my head jerk round to see what it was. It didn’t help that my shifts were awkward times, either 3 – 11 at night or early in the morning when it was dark to 3.

I did reception work but I also changed sheets and cleaned rooms and had to see all the things you should never have to see that people leave behind in a hotel room. I started to do nightshifts then too, which was the worst idea ever. It was the most paranoid I have ever been in my life. At 4 or 5am my brain would go into overdrive, shadows and noises and getting freaked out by the security cameras. I was the only one in the charge of the hotel. Sometimes I used to lie in the bags of pillows and divets piled up in the back room and eat a croissante – until I realised they were 450 calories each. One time, I was so tired I locked the office door and made a bed on the floor for an hour and slept with the buzzer beside my ear in case anyone came along. Another time I got a bath in one of the rooms. But there wasn’t much room for sleeping or bathing – what with cashing up, making breakfasts, doing laundry, cleaning and emptying out bins. By 7am I would be so jaded I would suddenly be wired with awakeness. I would walk home with people going to work and feel so out of it. I’d think, I could stay awake all day but by 9am I’d be dying for bed.  One time, ten or twenty chav teenagers came into the hotel and started running up and down the corridors. They surrounded the reception and demanded a room. When I couldn’t give them one, they called me every name under the sun, and threatened me. I had to lock myself in the bathroom and call 999. When the police arrived I was too frightened to come out, until I realised there were four of them and they’d managed to get all the chavs to leave already.
That summer I was a receptionist in a top law firm in Dublin city. I swapped my hotel duds for a smart skirt and starched and ironed shirts and perfect make-up. It was a large glass building on the quays of Dublin with glass walls and mahogany desks and a wide screen TV that looped Sky News all day in the reception area. I had affidavits sworn and answered phones to people with double barrelled surnames. The rebel in me still meant I hung up on one or two of them ‘accidentally’. Once one of the partners gave out to me on the phone because I made a mistake with a meeting room booking one day. I stood up to her and then she yelled “Excuse me. WHO am I speaking to?” I said my name proudly, and then she gave me an earful anyway. When I hung up I burst into tears, because depite the bravado I was actually terrified of her. After three months of walking on eggshells in every sense of the word, I was exhausted. Me and HR manager had a meeting and we mutally agreed it wasn’t working out. He was so lovely, and when I told him I wasn’t happy that I had just done a degree in creative writing and wanted somehow to get into journalism he encouraged me to go for my dreams and wasn’t the least bit angry. Unsure what I wanted to do I went and worked part time in a sales call centre for a newspaper whose job it is to advertise goods people are selling. People would ring up, and you would take their ad – your job was to get them to pay for an ad that was bigger, more prominent and ran for longer in the paper. Apart from the odd dirty call, and the incessant horrible puppy farmers trying to put their puppies in again for sale, AGAIN – apart from the rude people and the monotony – I loved this job. I worked in a lovely team of people with an amazing supervisor who was barely older then any of us, and five or six cracking people the same age as me who made me laugh until I nearly wet myself. At the same time I took a course in full time dance. This is a sporadic choice on my behalf. It all makes sense – the creative writing and then the masters in a journalism. But dance, it doesn’t fit in. I always loved creative arts is my only excuse. I used to do singing and dancing when I was younger and in fact, my degree was creative writing and music, so there you go.
But I discovered, that although I liked to dance – I did not, by any means, love it. And definitely not enough to endure the five hours daily training we were doing – the ballet, the jazz, the contemporary and the rigourous level of fitness we had to endure. Plus, it was just not mentally challeging enough. Dance is mentally challenging in the way that you need to have good willpower, strong drive, ability to endure being alone – as most of your training is done alone, or as good as, because you aren’t talking to people while doing it. You need a good memory for moves and you need to have excellent co-ordination, also a certain amount of creativity helps. But I love words and thoughts and philosophies and facts. There was nothing to it in that respect and I was essentially bored by the whole thing. I quit the dance course two months from graduating with a certificate in dance and moved from my part time job to a full time job so I could save to do a masters in journalism, something I was now certain I wanted to do. I had done a weeks work experience in the Sunday World too that February. At the Christmas party for the sales job I had met the Christmas party of the Sunday World by chance and the managing editor had agreed to let me come in for a week. I never wanted to leave after that week, but unfortunately I had to. The next job I got was in the April of that year, when I went to work for a comedy club. No, I wasn’t the joke, although sometimes I felt like I should have been. Just when I got the job, my grandmother passed away. I was in bits. My memory was pretty bad when I started, I think because of this. When people die on me, I get very forgetful – after one of my best friends passed away when I was 20 I regularly nearly burned down the dingy flat with the mice I mentioned earlier, by leaving the grill on when I went out. Anyway, this job was run by a man who was nice but also a total control freak. By the way they are always hiring online, and the fact that I always saw new people sitting on the door after me, I suspected I was one of many who got the firing squad with the comedy club. The job was in the office dealing with an excel spreadsheet document of bookings and also on the door of the club at night. The manager made this out to be rocket science and regularly bollocked me over it. He also had a strange relationship with a girl or I suppose woman, I was 22 at the time, who was a year or two older then me. They were very close and used to go on smoke breaks together and stuff. She seemed not to be able to do any wrong, and I stongly suspected her of being a spy who may or may not have been bad mouthing me behind my back. Nevertheless, I was still blonde and 22 with at the time, a fantastic figure from all the dancing, and alot of fun in my veins so I actually didn’t care about the job that much when I was fired. Also life had been put into perspective with my grandmother leaving us too, so I think I was upset for about 20 minutes after I got fired and then was grand.
The next job I had was being a two month temp for a computer reseller company. If you drifted off to sleep when you were reading the last sentence, imagine how bored I was after working there for 2 months. If the sentence ‘I have a 3gig bit for the hp laptop with the code 4xyghgh65″ gets you excited, then go find them and work for them. I’m not going to mention their name, but ask me and honestly, I’ll tell you. It was fantastic. I used to jump up and down with excitement going in! I also had a lovely boss there, and some great co-workers. Just great. Would it be bad of me to say right here that one Tuesday afternoon near the end of the hideous temping job, I had just taken another earful from a girl to my right. I was covered in papers and files. There were files falling off the desk, my heart was palpatating and I hadn’t slept the night before because of worry. I stood up and I said to the manager “Can I speak to you for a second?” She came with me to the kitchen, the sour cow, and I said: “I’m leaving today.” So I stayed until the end of the day and then I called the temp company and told them. “Why didn’t you tell us it was a nightmare? They should have got two temps to do that workload not just one.” – “Seriously,” I told the woman. “Each girl who had been there a year or more had one account to look after. I had been left with three accounts of the girl who went away on holiday!” This was the truth. It was a travesity and most likely illegal – I was being paid 12 euro an hour and didnt have a degree in IT like the girl I had been covering for. “I’m sorry,” was all the temp lady could say. “I’m going to ring and give them an earful,” she said. But it was too late to get my job back – such was my impulsive nature. This was at the start of the recession so there were no more jobs to fall into. Two months later I started a masters in a journalism. That was like a full time job in itself – and I lived with 10 people which I loved. During the start of the masters I worked for my friend writing marketing spiel for his own business, but it fizzled out when my masters took over workload wise. Now, aged 24, after all those jobs I am finally working as a bona fide journo in the day, and love it 100%. But as I am not making enough money I need to go back to the minimum wage. Basically what I am trying to say in a convoluted way is… if waitressing is going to get me further in my choosen career by helping me through a bad financial spot, so be it. It’s worked for me so far, and not only that but I’ve had fun along the way!

When Best Friends Break Up

Like most people, I love the story of how my best friend and I met. It was in an English literature class in college. I sat down next to Jen and noticed we were reading the same book, The Bell Jar, and we were even on the same page!

Most of us remember how we first met our best friends – whether it was playing hopscotch in the street, sitting next to them in school or moving in with them in college.

But even close friends can fall out after years of enduring loyalty. Many friendships suffer a grizzly fate after an argument, crossing of love interest or change in directions. As we go through life our disposable generation renew and replenish most things around us frequently. New clothes, new house, new job and new partners – even new friends.

So what do you do when your friendship becomes so unhappy, dramatic or troublesome that you are ignoring their calls? Is the only reason you’re still friends with this person because you don’t want to hurt their feelings or incur their wrath if you ‘desert’ them? With this in mind we look over the four reasons why best friends break up…

My best friend Holly. A true friend will go to your art show and embarrass you by taking photos like a proud mother.

1. She or you said something unforgiveable

Speaking your mind is important in a friendship – no one wants to have to walk on eggshells. Some people are sensitive – while others prefer the direct approach. Some are deep thinkers, others value light hearted banter. Most friends wouldn’t say something deliberately hurtful, however, jealousy, a change in circumstances, misunderstanding and betrayal of trust can all lead to us saying things we regret. While a true friend will usually forgive anything that is said in anger – hitting too close to home might be ‘unforgiveable’.

What you can do: If you are the one who has been hurt by your friend take time to calm down before you retaliate. Giving yourself a few days to think can give you perspective. Perhaps she pointed out a flaw that is difficult for you to face. Even if you are still angry at the end of the few days you will be more inclined to look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself do you want this friend in your life? Communicate and tell her why what she said or did was hurtful. And listen to what she has to say.

If you did the talking: Apologise as soon as you can, explain yourself and then a day or two later repeat what you said. Then give her space and time to think. Time is a great healer. If she is true friend she should come back eventually.

2. She is making you unhappy

Your friends are so called because their job is to be there for you – to make you feel better when you are down and to be the voice of reason when you’ve done something stupid. A true friend should not try and make you feel bad when you are doing well. 

What you can do: If she makes snide comments about your new life out of jealousy, for example: “I like your new car, but you’re too old to drive it, “You’ve gained a few pounds” or “Oh you’re going on holiday again?” distance yourself from her – you don’t need that negativity in your life.

Friends that share your interests and encourage you to achieve are worth their weight in gold!

3. You drifted apart

Were you always this different? Is it you that has changed, or her? The reality is some friendships are formed out of convenience – but when circumstances change they fizzle out. With those you have a true bond with, this should never happen. Distance may mean you only speak once every few weeks, but with true friends, as soon as you speak again, it should be like you were never apart. 

What you can do: If you miss your friend and want her back in your life, don’t wait for her to make the effort. Take the bull by the horns and call her to arrange a get together. Be honest and tell her you miss having her around. If you realise you don’t miss her as much as you should – let it go.

4. The friendship has become one sided

You do all the running, she never makes the effort and on top of that you spend so much time counselling her, you should start charging by the hour. Her phone calls are draining you and every time you are together for an hour you get about 5 minutes of talk about you and about 55 about her.

What you can do: Friendships should be equal. Tough problems can be a lot to shoulder. If someone has an ongoing problem they need to seek professional help. You are only human – recommend them to a counsellor and stop doing all the running – a friendship should be 50/50.

Signs you need to bin an old friend

Just like with a no-good relationship, ditching a bad friendship can be difficult. Here are some signs you need to dump her…

1. You frequently let her calls go to voicemail, even when you are in a good mood and would answer to anyone else. You just don’t have the energy for her small talk!
2. She sounds pleased when you tell her about your disastrous date and doesn’t sound happy for you when you tell her your exciting news (new job, new man etc.)
3. When you go for a drink you can’t get a word in edgeways without feeling like you’re on a quiz show trying to press the buzzer before she beats you to it again about her problems.
4. You are reluctant to tell her your secrets or worries because last time you did she made you feel much worse about them.
5. You suspect she is bitching about you behind your back every chance she gets.
6. Every silence when you are together feels uncomfortable.
7. You find the need to rant to someone after ever time you see her or talk to her on the phone.