Ariane Sherine

I forgot to blog yesterday and today. John, one of my two closest friends, has been taken to hospital having had a suspected stroke. Fortunately, they discovered he hadn’t had a stroke; unfortunately, he has some kind of kidney failure, so they’re keeping him in overnight.

So yeah: I’ve had other things on my mind. I really hope he’s going to be right as rain soon.

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

 

So I dyed my own hair for the first time on Thursday night, because I had my online funeral training course at the weekend and didn’t want to resemble a skunk-cum-badger. It was very simple indeed – I just mixed the dye and daubed it on my parting, not bothering with the grey hair underneath. This is my ‘before’ picture:

Then I had to go outside and clap for the NHS with dye all over my hair. As a friend said, I should have been clapping for Garnier instead!

The dye didn’t ‘take’ completely, meaning it didn’t cover all my greys. But it did a good enough job that I no longer felt self-conscious – and it only took half an hour and £3.99. Hurray for Laboratoires Garnier!

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

 

Another birthday today of another stunning writer friend, the supremely talented Kia Abdullah! She’s packed so much into 38 years: writing for the New York Times and the Guardian, securing a two-book deal with HarperCollins for her crime thrillers (her first, Take It Back, is currently sharing supermarket shelf space with John Grisham) and setting up travel blog Atlas and Boots with her boyfriend Peter, meaning she gets paid to travel the world (she’s been to an impressive 60 countries). Oh, and she’s just started Asian Booklist, a site promoting books by British-Asian authors. I don’t think she ever sleeps!

Happy birthday Kia-Ora. Have a great one.

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

Happy 37th birthday to my wonderful friend Emily! She’s kind and loyal, an amazing mate and a beloved aunty to Lily. She was the best woman at my wedding and also my editor at The Spectator, effectively restarting my journalistic career when she commissioned me, and always gave such generous and thoughtful feedback on my work. As well as being a great editor and friend, she’s also an extremely talented writer (you can buy her short story collection Bad Romance here) and broadcaster. Oh, and she’s stunning to boot. Some girls have all the luck!

I hope she has a birthday as lovely as she is.

Photo credit: Daily Mail

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

 

I have my funeral training course again this weekend, and we’re going to be assessed on our presentation.

Unfortunately my appearance currently resembles a badger, as I have a white stripe of undyed roots down the middle of my hair! Also, my hair is incredibly unkempt because I have no idea how to do it myself – it’s massively naturally frizzy and I usually just go to the beauty salon, but there’s no way of going right now.

My friends say badgers are cute, but I don’t really want to look like one!

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

I used to think chocolate truffles were snuffled out of the ground by pigs. I’ve never seen my daughter’s dad laugh harder than when I told him!

Inspired by this and a few other misunderstandings, I tweeted about it.

I got a few misunderstandings sent to me from my original tweet, my favourite of which was from a Chinese professor:

My friend Charlie Brooker then saw the tweet and replied to it about the KFC logo:

Excitingly, he then quote-tweeted it to his 1.2 million followers:

The misunderstandings came in thick and fast. Here are some of my favourites:

And my favourite misunderstanding of all:

I feel so much less alone now!

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.

 

 

 

Feeling very melancholy thinking that I may never see my beloved Nana again in person. The care home almost certainly won’t allow me to see her until a vaccine is found (and understandably so). The problem is that we don’t have time to wait – she’s going to be 95 next month! And she’s deteriorating a lot from lack of human contact. She’s become withdrawn and quiet again on the phone.

I miss her so much.

This post has been made possible by my awesome Patreon supporters Peter Weilgony, Ricky Steer, Charlie Brooker, Mary and Tim Fowler, Steve Richards, Alan Brookland, Mark Ormandy, Oliver Vass, Keith Bell, John Fleming, Mark Bailey, Rebekah Bennetch, Matthew Sylvester, Brian Engler, Jack Scanlan, Aragorn Strider, Lucy Spencer, Dave Nattriss, MusicalComedyGuide.com, Mark White,  Shane Jarvis, Emily Hill and Marcus P Knight.

If you enjoyed this blog, please support me on Patreon from just £1 a month and you’ll get to read a lot more of my writing.