Five things that happen during SATS week

SATS week, where small plimsoll-wearing people who still struggle opening their own yogurts – no hate – are assessed by several academic papers to determine their intelligence. Some children find themselves in an abundance of self-doubt and worry where others simply enjoy the chance to challenge teachers on how often they can go to the toilet and fake a brutal cough attack. It’s different for everyone but a few things are a given…

1. The mascot

Forget the stress of your nagging teachers, selecting the correct mascot – that your parents would agree to let you take in – was vital. Maybe a teddy or a shiny rock but it’s a given that some cocky boy would bring in their football trophy – this is probably still his only achievement today, don’t worry kids the flash bastard doesn’t win forever. 

2. The elbows

The-elbow people, these  kids will be prefects, these kids will either be loathed by teachers because their parents are a bloody nightmare or absolutely loved because they do as they’re told and hand their homework in on time. But anyway, these are the kids that manage to cover up their entire paper booklet with their arms. They have trust issues, maybe since their best mate didn’t pick them as a partner in PE but either way they won’t even let you catch a glimpse of the date and you best believe they’ll be demanding extra paper.

3. Bitesize

This place was the holy grail – right up into GCSE science but I’m not too vocal about that. If there was something that you needed to learn, be tested on, revise then you BITESIZE-IT, BITCH. There was no greater thrill than getting home and watching Mona The Vampire then smashing out a 10/10 result on a Bitesize quiz – maybe because it was the tenth time you did the same quiz but you felt the epitome of intelligence at this point.

4. The papers

This was a time where the word ‘literacy’ was used instead of English and Maths was ‘numeracy’ and tracing paper was supposed to act like a weapon in battle. But all you actually did was fuck-up the drawing of a stupid shape and have an extra bit of paper by your side to remind you. I never wanted to see a net of a shape again in my life nor did I want to think about food chains. And I most definitely wanted the ringing in my head of my teacher saying “the answers are all there” to stop, WHERE, MATE, WHERE?

5. Day-dreaming

All my young mind could dream of was these absolute weirdos popping in for the afternoon…

…but no, I had to focus on how the fuck to use one of these things.

Good luck to all the small plimsoll-wearing humans around the world taking their SATS, try your best and one day you’ll exist in a world of trust where you can cut your Frube with a pair of scissors and you can get all the golden-time in the world. 

Eight struggles of being blonde or ‘blonde’

When you have blonde hair you appear to take on a blonde personality too. Apparently we’re great fun (that’s true) but there’s also many struggles that come with being a blonde and that’s not just the assumption we know how to bend and snap.

Addicted to being blonder. This is definitely a thing, you get some highlights and you love it. You then get more and more highlights. And soon you look like Draco Malfoy – without the wizardry, just very dry and damaged hair.

Sick of stereotyping – ‘practice on a blonde and marry a brunette’, LET’S GET SOME HAIR EQUALITY UP IN HERE. They’re the idiot if they use hair colour to decide their life choices, not the blondes. And let’s face it, the real hilarity is how many blondes does it take to laugh at their shit jokes?

Being aligned as the bitch in every film *except Reese Witherspoon and Kate Hudson, these ladies were a step towards a blonde revolution.* If you’re blonde, you’re suddenly the bleach bitch. Your hair is porous and your personality resembles that of a homeware employee. Only sweet and innocent non-blondes get the happy ending. The blondes are the mistake, the cheaters and have a prominent ‘slut’ tag.

Twelve struggles of a food fanatic

Food, glorious food, this song depicts truth that is both factual and emotional, talk about ‘swag’ and ‘baes’ all you like, songs about food are more relatable. However, all singing, sang and done, a foodie faces several daily problems #halfproblemsnotpuddings.

1. All you think about is food. You go to sleep thinking about breakfast, you eat breakfast thinking about lunch and you eat lunch thinking about dinner. And all this thinking makes you hungry.

2. It’s the reason you’re sad. You’re sad because you’re craving a food and even when you have the desired food, you’re sad again because you haven’t thought of a name for the food-baby.

3. Impatience at its best. You’re the kind of person that’ll need a snack for the agonising two minutes you wait for something that’s heating up in the microwave. Your second favourite question in the world is ‘when is dinner’ – the first being ‘what’s for dinner’, of course.

4. Enduring a lack of sympathy. It’s absolutely possible to be a complete bitch because you’re hungry. People who aren’t crazy about food don’t seem to understand you can NEED Haribos and you NEED 20 chicken nuggets. I hate the blatant ignorance of those people.

5. People misunderstand the ‘order for yourself’ rule. A love for food means you’re great at ordering and often this generates high levels of jealousy. ‘Ooo that looks nice’, yes my dear, that’s why I ordered it now keep your clammy hands off and tuck into your poor decision. 

Annoying advice people love to give

Life is full of clichés (I think that’s one in itself) and advice but a lot of it is, well, shit. My favourite cliché is ‘don’t regret what once made you happy’ and I agree with this with almost all of my heart because regret doesn’t get you anywhere and happiness does. But people need to stop saying it after every mistake you make or you’ll be a big mess crying in your bikini saying “well that 20 nuggets share box made me happy last week.” *cries and uploads scenery picture instead to Instagram*

Irritating and mostly useless advice:

“He’s being mean because he likes you” – this very advice is why women have a thing for horrible men. You’ll probably get told this in primary school, so encourage your daughter just to throat-punch* boys that are mean to her, not assume that he likes her. Take this advice right into adulthood, if he’s mean to you then he’s just a dick, he doesn’t fancy you. But if he BANTERS with you, then marry him, obviously.

*just a joke, I do not condone the encouragement of throat punching (in general).

“Just be yourself” – WELL, myself is the same person that is unemployed, single and a little bit dim. Never be afraid to be yourself, yourself is the best kind of self but in some situations, be less yourself, just a tiny bit. Like in a job interview, you may be full of banter but save that for the work party once you get the job.

“Think of the money” – the universal saying for ‘your job is shit’. Quite frankly, thinking of the money is actually a terrible idea because it’s quite depressing to realise you’ve worked a full day that’ll transfer into a Nandos and a packet of skittles.