shortandfelly

Yup, do not want kids, think all babies are fugly as hell, and genuinely can't understand why anyone wants kids. But I still get excited when my friends tell me they're expecting, and I ask about how their kids are doing and I'm genuinely interested (and let them use me as a human climbing frame, the kids, not my friends) because they're my friends, so of course their kids are important to me by extension. But animals all the way. I have a dog and a cat. Although I don't go around telling people all about them, I just say I've got a dog, he's pretty awesome, the cat thinks he's a dog" and I only show photos if they ask. Which lots of people do 😂

I like to mix it up. Live life on the edge.

That reminds me of neighbours I had who used to take their dog to visit people in care homes to cheer them up. We always had a good chuckle as they were older than half of them 😂

I only found out recently that they grow on the same tree 🤣 I thought you got green olive trees and black olive trees. Turns out, it's just an age thing!

Yeah, that gets me too. When I was a little kid, the blokes and women who'd served were in their 60s (the ones who were very young anyway). There must have been tens of thousands of WWI vets too. We've seen the last of those go, my generation will absolutely see the last of the WWII vets go, and with the last of those, I think the world will lose something very important. Also always makes me bawl when I see those bent old men marching and thinking they were those youth we read about.

My mum is 80 in May (I'm 37). She remembers my grandad taking her to see the lamplighter and showing her all the bomb sites around London, and she remembers sweets coming off rationing. And yup, in my mind she's still 60 something. It does help that she's pretty active, always out gardening and stuff.

Well, he was born in 1926 so would have turned 18 in 1944. I feel old when I think that's now just less than half my age. I met an old boy in a military cemetery in Normandy on D-day in 2013. He'd landed a few weeks later, and he came back every year with his grandson to visit the grave of friend from his regiment. This graveyard also had lots of graves of unknown sailors, and he'd always wondered if one was his brother who had been killed on D-Day. His brother's birthday was the 6th June. 1944 was his 18th birthday. I teach 18 year olds now. They're so young.

Way under the speed limit in the 60, fast enough to get caught speeding in the 30. It makes no sense 🤣

Wait, what?! This is wild. I am now questioning everything I thought I ever knew.

I'm not returning until their politicians aren't funded by foreign countries. So, I'll probably never return.

Guy driving a car full of his male mates honked his horn at me when I stopped my bike outside my house. I pointed out he'd parked on double yellows. Anyway, we got in a round of h telling me to f*** off and me replying "just f*** off mate" very calmly 😂 I kind of wanted him to get out of his car, because facing off against a 5'1" woman when he's in a car of blokes is never going to be a good look 🤣

I had a Saturday job in a pharmacy in sixth form. I am now a university teacher on an engineering course at a red brick university.

Castrating people who intentionally drop litter? 😇

Are you sure you're not going to change your mind on that? 🤣🤣🤣

That more polite than what I say about people who use the front door 😂

I have what was traditionally a 2 up, 2 down terrace. Front door opens straight into the living room. I have a dog, muddy running shoes and bikes (and until last week when I got a new one fitted, my front door didn't even open as at some point, a previous owner had sealed it shut) so hardly want to be tramping that into my nice room!

This is one of my paranoid fears... I guess just a fear now 🤣

Yes! I spent four months in Texas during my PhD and found it so wild that you have to drive somewhere to be able to walk on a handful of specific paths. And the fact that a government shut down can result in closing national/state parks. I didn't understand how that was even possible until I went and had to drive through a ticket barrier to get in. People were so confused that we have footpaths going across fields etc all over the place, and that's not even getting onto Scottish access rights!

I have my parents' old sofa and armchair as they got new ones. We got them reupholstered. I can't remember life before either of one of them and I'm 37!

We tried trick or treating once as a kid. Doesn't really work when you live in a hamlet of about 14 houses and are the only kids 🤣 But we used to do apple bobbing and my mum would make trifles with dead spiders (fake, I hasten to add 😂) in so it was still fun.

Being single. I basically spent all but about a year from the age of 18-32 in relationships. I had a dickhead boyfriend has an undergrad (about 4 years, he's been struck off from teaching since we broke up, and I'd like to say I broke up with him!), then had a 3 and a bit year relationship with a mostly pretty decent guy but I knew for a lot of it that it just wasn't right. 3 and a bit years with a guy who I thought was The One until it just stopped working for me. I then went into a 2 and a bit year relationship with someone else (and almost 5 years on from splitting, we're still friends and his new girlfriend is absolutely lovely and they're brilliant together). I've tried online dating but either met guys who were lovely but just a bit soft (in terms of how outdoorsy they are) or knobs, and my standards are now super high because life is pretty spectacularly good on my own...with the dog and cat 🤣 I didn't think I'd be single this long because I have a lot of typically male-dominated hobbies and thought I'd meet someone, but I'm pretty good on my own and will hold out for a trooper.

Because my dad's dad was French, and half of my mum's side originate from Scotland and Ireland!

I grew up in rural Somerset and moved to Leeds for my undergrad. I loved it for the first year, and increasingly disliked it for the next four as I realised that I definitely am a country kid! I moved to Sheffield for my PhD and I'm still here nearly 15 years on.

Eugh, that's grim. I did my PhD in a dental school and lived with dental students for 2 years (definitely helped me get over being scared of the dentist). One of them decided to be a dentist after her childhood one was crap. She basically thought "I can do better than that" and that was her inspiration 🤣

I had one out a couple of years ago. Obviously it wasn't exactly pleasant, but it really wasn't as bad as I expected. I genuinely couldn't feel a thing, the horrible part was hearing my tooth creak, that was a bit grim. I did my PhD in a dental school (I'm not a dentist) which helped me get over my childhood fear of the dentist (had a good dentist, wasn't good with kids), and I just asked the guy to talk me through everything he was doing, which he did. My only advice would be stack your painkillers well for afterwards, it throbs a bit once the anaesthetic wears off. I rarely take pain relief so I'm really bad at is. I also thought I brushed my teeth very carefully, but I think I saw the blood clot go down the sink, so just brush REALLY, REALLY gently.

My childhood dentist said "here comes the magic jelly" and that was that. I was at secondary school and my friends were talking about getting braces and the injections hurting and I'd say "my dentist just had magic jelly" and then one day... BAM! I realised I'd been conned! I never even saw a flash of a needle, I genuinely had no idea there was one involved 😂 I guess there was a bit of magic jelly and he hid the syringe so you didn't see it being waved around, and he didn't mention it at all so I wasn't looking for it. He may have hated kids, but he was a good dentist.

Tbf, I'd never heard of chips and gravy until I went to university in Leeds. My dad was baffled the first time he encountered the fine delicacy that is a chip butty 😂 I'm from Somerset originally.

Yeah, I only ever have a lie in if I've got up really early for a long fell race. I don't want to waste half my weekend by sleeping in.

I like to be out with the dog before 9. Alarm usually goes off at 7:30, I tend to get out of bed a little after 8. Any later than that and I feel I've wasted half the day, especially in winter.

Boiler cover 🤣

As they said about the Sheffield Pals Battalion, "two years in the making, ten minutes in the destroying". I read a quote from a chap in the Sheffield Pals who went over the top in the Somme. He said that as far as he could see in either direction, it was just him and one other. He looked away briefly, turned back, and he was entirely on his own.