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Life advice: How to take a compliment

12/04/2015 by Charlotte 2 Comments

If you’re lucky then from time to time compliments will happen.

Somebody might say they like your dress, or your new lunchbox or your selection of scented deodorant, and it’ll all be very nice for everybody involved.

But for those who have – at some stage in their lives – experienced some of the more unfortunate types of comments that can be made about a person’s appearance or existence, compliments can be a hard thing to comprehend.

When you’ve taught yourself to be permanently on guard, ready to play verbal karate against anybody who happens to dislike your shoes or your hair or some other crucial life choice apparently open to public scrutiny, a genuine compliment can take you by surprise. And, as a result, you are constantly at risk of taking a chop at any innocent dude who tells you that they think you have good taste in nail varnish or trainer socks, because you automatically assume they’re out to get you.

On my list of strengths you would see: a keen eye for pun opportunities; ability to remember everybody in the world’s birthday and thus make them think that I am a stalker/identity thief; and a permanent, unfaltering openness to dessert. And on the weaknesses list, among many others, would be: extremely limited willingness to participate in sporting activities (AKA laziness), heavy dependency on crisps; and an inability to accept a compliment without making (often sh*t) jokes. It’s like an illness, for which the cure is just to stop it.

So here’s how I intend to do that:

Step one: Remember that compliments are not traps
Contrary to popular school playground opinion, life is not actually a race to see who can say the nastiest thing about another person the quickest. And compliments don’t just exist to lure you into a false sense of security before hitting you hard in the face with the fact that actually, no, your eye make-up doesn’t look exceptionally even today, it looks like you put your mascara wand into the mouth of a dog and told it to poke you in the eye.

But this can be hard to remember, so those of us in verbal karate mode are always ready with an insult for ourselves just in case, such as these:

“Hey Charlotte, I like the new fringe!

Ah yes, whatever takes the focus off my face, eh?! (*This one doesn’t even work. A fringe does the precise opposite, FYI.)”

“Very strong handbag choice, lady!

Oh this? It was so cheap they basically paid me to take it off the premises! “

“Ooh have you caught the sun?

Nah, I think I kept my face in the oven too long when I was poking at some salmon I’d accidentally cremated last night – woops!”

…whilst the other person looks on, wondering if you’ve either gone mad, or perhaps you just didn’t hear them properly when they said they liked your hair/bag/face/voice and maybe they should write it down for you next time to be sure.

Step two: Remember that accepting a compliment doesn’t make you horrendously full of yourself

People don’t compliment you so that they can be outraged at your acceptance of their words. They don’t say “Well, aren’t you good at making a casserole!” so that they can then bitch amongst chums later about how arrogant it was of you to believe that they did indeed enjoy the way that you merged meat with vegetables and [whatever the liquid that goes into a casserole is] for their enjoyment. That would be a very strange way to live your life. Now, of course, it is possible to overdo it – don’t stop them mid-sentence to call and tell your mum, or to change your twitter handle to @COOKOFTHECENTURY – but beyond that you are allowed to just believe nice words when they’re said to you.

Step three: Just say thank you and carry on with your day
Yep. That’s it. Simple, eh?

Learning to accept compliments – and that the whole world isn’t trying to bring you down, one joke about your taste in necklaces at a time – is all part of our journey to becoming a truly confident human. Being an adult means having the freedom to – as much as possible – only spend time with people who bring us joy so, rather than constantly having to keep our arms up to fend off nastiness, we can let them rest by our sides, only raising up for a hug or a high five or take a well-earned slice of cake.

And it leaves our marvellously quick minds free for more useful activities, like playing along with Countdown or spotting opportunities to make a good pun.

Because life’s far too short to miss out on too many of those.

How to look after an extremely hungover person

22/03/2015 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

With a long term relationship comes appreciation than some events are non-negotiable.

Birthdays are one, Monday, Wednesday and Friday episodes of Coronation Street are another, and the Six Nations also manages to make its way onto the list, whether I like it or not (spoiler: I do not).

But I don’t grudge the fun that comes with it, on account of my overall life intention to not be a dick about harmless things (with the exception of all the things about which I give myself permission to be a dick, namely: poor customer service, people wearing shoes in my house, and any occasion when I’m feeling a bit overtired).Sure, having life arranged around relentless games of rugby for a number of weekends straight (I’ve lost count, does it go on for 21 or 22 weeks?) is a little inconvenient socially speaking – the games tend to kick off around the sort of time when I particularly like to step out for lunch or change the bed, but these things can be rearranged. I am a reasonable person. Also I’ve learnt that it’s possible to eat lunch whilst watching rugby which makes it a 100% more interesting pastime.

But mainly I just don’t partake, I do other things, I see friends, I read a book, I stare into the abyss – I’m very good at keeping myself entertained. But what I do get involved with is with the side effect of relentless rugby and sporting celebrations, and inevitable all day drinking. The hangover. A condition which, if I may say so, I am exceptional at caring for. There’s basically six steps to it:

STEP ONE: Prepare the ground

Buy up all the ibuprofen, Lucozade, eggs, meat-based breakfast goods and sugary sweets you can get your paws on but, CRUCIALLY, keep them out of reach until the following day, otherwise you could find everything has disappeared in a post-party-time midnight feast, and then you’ll have to leave the house to buy more things and nobody likes leaving the house.

STEP TWO: Turn off your alarm clock
No, not for him, he’d sleep right through that bad boy. Hell, he wouldn’t wake up if you shouted “Rugby has been cancelled forever! Apparently you can pass the ball forwards after all and the whole game has been called into question!” (Ok fine, he might, but mainly because he’d be wowed into consciousness by my exceptional rugby knowledge). No, this is for you. Have a good sleep, you’ll need your energy for all the kind caring you’re about to do.

STEP THREE: Remember, the fact that this was all self-inflicted is irrelevant

You know what you feel like when you’re ill? You know, pathetic, delicate, like all you want is to be tucked in and fed drinkable yogurt through a straw? Well, a hungover person is very similar, except replace ‘tucked in’ with ‘left the hell alone on the sofa in front of the TV under a blanket’ and ‘drinkable yogurt’ with ’50 different types of fluids because I JUST CAN’T DECIDE WHAT I WANT MY HEAD HURTS’. So behave accordingly. Best stock up on glasses in advance.

STEP FOUR: Keep it down

The problem with looking after a hungover person is that it’s a bit dull. They’re not great conversationalists in this state, and ideally they’d like nothing more than total peace and quiet. But if you’re not also recovering from a booze-fest, you might find yourself feeling a bit restless. So, sure, pop on an episode of Corrie, but keep the volume down low. Just the sound of the theme tune could be enough to finish a person off.

STEP FIVE: Use motivational phrases to boost morale when things get tough

A hungover day is like a metaphor for life. Sometimes you wake up and think everything’s going to be OK and then before you’ve even got down the stairs you realise that you can’t even remember where you left your shoes last night or if you remembered to shut the front door. So morale is going to dip from time to time, and it’s up to you to keep everybody motivated. My go-to words of support are: “You’re doing so well – I reckon you’re through the worst of it now!” and “If anybody can beat this, it’s you – just do nothing, you’re ace at that!” I recommend going for heartfelt but with just a little edge, for your own personal amusement.

STEP SIX: Reap the benefits of your kindness

One day it will be your turn. You’ll step out of an evening, sup on two or maybe even three mojitos and you’ll find yourself regretting all that mint and crushed ice (and probably the rum) come the following morning, and you’ll welcome a little TLC with open arms. You too will want to have a variety of drinks and snacks to choose from, and somebody there to reassure you that, no, life will not always feel this way – the universe isn’t really going to punish you forever for having the audacity to have fun – and you will reap the benefits of the exceptional standards of hangover care you’ve set.

If an event must come around every year then we might as well make it as pleasant-a-part of the calendar as possible, rather than just two months of sighing and stomping off upstairs and muttering about ‘never disappearing to the pub all afternoon to watch my programmes!’

Ok, fine, I said that once. It’s not my fault they don’t show Coronation Street in bars. But if they did, I’d be there. And I might find myself taking up that hangover care a little sooner than I thought.

Relationship advice: How NOT to have an argument

19/10/2014 by Charlotte 2 Comments

Everybody thinks they know how to argue. And then they move in with somebody and find out that they don’t.

I thought he and I were different. We don’t like confrontation, I thought, so we’ll just sort everything out like reasonable human beings, forgetting that I am not a reasonable human being.

And although it’s true that we don’t like confrontation (who does?), I do like a clean house, a tidy bedroom and to live with a human being who realises that if you’re not in a room, you should TURN THE FLAMING LIGHT OFF. He, on the other hand, likes the precise opposite, so we had no choice but to exchange just a few cross words to ensure we’d both survive cohabitation.

And I know now that I did it all wrong. Although we survived the process, sometimes I wonder how. So to save everybody else the trouble, I thought I’d share what I learnt: here’s how not to have an argument. Let this be a lesson to you.

Lots and lots and lots of sighing

Next time I update the ‘Other interests’ section of my CV, I’m going to add ‘passive aggression’. My first tactic for addressing my frustration when I found that he had failed to change a toilet roll/not emptied the bin/left yet another pair of boxer shorts on the bathroom floor (is it intended as a gift? You know, like when a cat brings you a dead mouse or something?) was to sigh over and over again in the hope that the increase in condensation in the flat would alert him to his errors. It didn’t work.

When asked what’s wrong, say “Nothing”

When the sighing got so excessive that I was at risk of hyperventilating, he would give in and ask what was wrong. And instead of just explaining “Your inability to grate cheese on the kitchen worktops without it look like a bale of hay has just exploded in the house,” I just said ‘Nothing’ and assumed that he would know that what I really meant was LOADS. Yeah, that didn’t work either.

Start talking to yourself

This is probably the most absurd stage in the passive aggression journey. At the end of my ridiculous tether after he’d refused to decipher the precise meaning of my sighs and clearly coded ‘Nothing’, I resolved to just start talking to myself in the hope that he would finally catch on. It’s very easy, all you do is stomp about whilst tidying the house muttering the following under your breath:

“Well hello there pair of pants, how very nice of you to come and sit right there in the middle of the bathroom floor! I guess I’ll just pick you up myself, shall I? Hmmm?!”

or, for the ultimate in being a complete twerp, start thanking yourself:

“Oh thank you, Charlotte! How kind of you to clean up all my sh*t! Yes you do have MUPPET tattooed on your forehead and may I say how well it goes with your eyes. Your big muppet eyes.”

He didn’t bite. He just sat and watched, baffled as to why he had ever agreed to move in with such a complete lunatic.

When forced to explain what is the matter, completely lose your sh*t and all perspective about what you were originally cross about

Eventually after one to two hours of the aforementioned arsing about, he would finally ask me to just say what the matter was. And I’d have wound myself up SO much by that point that I would just start blurting out expletives whilst pointing at the fridge or the bin like a mad person. I’d be apoplectic with rage and yet I wouldn’t really be sure why. His original crime – for example, eating all of the chocolate orange my grandma had bought for me, or talking during Coronation Street – had escalated to such an extent that I’d lost all ability to articulate myself. We’d both just have to retire to different rooms for a bit whilst I gathered myself, and he played X-Box until I was ready to start behaving like a normal human. What a bloody palaver.

BUT HERE’S WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

Just calmly mentioned that something was bothering me, explained why and, as is the rule for everything in life, tried not to behave like a total dick. Who knew?

Well, now you do and thankfully so do I. Otherwise there’s no way we’d have made it this far. If only somebody had told me all this before we’d moved in together, I’d have spent a lot less time being severely out of breath.

Oh well. *sighs*