My dad rang my Great Grandma on her 97th birthday yesterday. My dad asked her what she had been doing recently, and she said that she hadn’t left the house for 18 months and that she was waiting to die.

Usually, there is a moment of shocking realism when you hear of situations like this, especially if it comes from family; but we didn’t have that. Dad didn’t cry, and he only looked vaguely upset. None of us were particularly alarmed. The disparity of her situation was so obvious, and it has been for some years.

She lies on a bed all day with nothing to do and nobody to talk to and she isn’t allowed to answer the door. She lives alone and her short-sight vision has gone so she can’t even watch tv.

It’s hard to imagine the loneliness, the boredom, the helplessness, that you must feel in that situation.

anywill:

wish i had a girlfriend some nights..

I went to the premier of my uncle’s first film last night, ’Elfie Hopkins’, a quirky horror film he produced. You could tell it was made on a low budget; but in a way it’s cool quirky Britishness made up for it. Ray Winstone was a West Country butcher and Jaime Winstone, the protagonist, was a weed-smoking, hippie-clothed, cockney-accented, teenage outcast living in the country, investigating a suspected family of canibals.

At the VIP afterparty, there was a lot of paparazzi following me about. I told Ray (oh yeah, we’re on first name terms now. and what?) about how often this happened to me and how I usually dealt with the attention that came with being a glamourous VIP. In all seriousness, Raymondo is a complete legend and had the exact cockney banter you’d expect. He was completely normal, not up himself at all, telling funny stories and anecdotes. He said that the last time he met my Grandma on the set of ‘Henry VIII’, she’d said “you’re not going to play him like that are you? That was shite!” Glad to know she doesn’t restrict her refreshing crudeness to family events.

On the tube, on the way home, I got the same feeling as when I met Ray; people are just people. This was easy to see with the mix of shirts and ties, dissappointed Arsenal fans and high-heeled girls on their way out, all on a Picadilly line train to St. Pancras. These were all different people, with different jobs, wealthiness and different plans for the evening, but were all on a grubby tube, cramped against a stranger. The world is full of people who were pretty much the same as you when children, they just went through different life experiences. It doesn’t matter that they are celebrity or well known; at the end of the day they are just people. Even Rihanna uses the underground for her O2 gigs.

However, this intelectual insight didn’t stop me being pathetically star struck the whole night. C’est la vie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNcWik8_LKs

I started this blog firstly to see if I was any good at it, and secondly to see if I actually enjoy writing. Turns out I do. I don’t know whether it’s because it’s a cool way to say what you’re thinking, or just because I really like taking the piss out of my mates. Either way, it’s always cool to create something you’re proud of.

Two months ago I did this three hour journalism workshop at Uni. I didnt really like it, it was way too intense. In the workshop, you were given a limited amount of time to write this article, and new information was shoved down your throat every 5 minutes like it would be in a “live news room”. It was way to stressful. I like to be able to develop ideas and actually think about what I’m writing and I didn’t get the chance to do that.

I also didn’t like the superficiality of it. It was all about tricking the reader into reading your piece. It was so fake and misleading. I don’t want to write like that; I want to write about stuff that matters and things that people genuinely find interesting. I want people to want to read what I’m writing, not be tricked into it through a deceitful, eyegrabbing headline or overdramatic description.

I’ve used the word ‘I’ a lot in this. Never good; soz. Self-righteous prick.

so true. so me.

The coolest man on the plannet, closely followed by Samuel L Jackson, Will Smith, and Donald Glover. Wish I was black.

when drunk makes you feel like The fucking Man.

Came back from uni on Saturday and met up with family. We’re the really cool type of family that play boardgames  (not just at Christmas - we’re hardcore gamers). The latest boardgame sensation to rock the Wiggs household is Pointless.
As every uni student knows, the gameshow Pointless is the modern-day Countdown; the perfect piece of afternoon procrastination for every uni student. Anyways, we got the boardgame version.

For those who don’t know, its basically the opposite of Family Fortunes - a question is answered by 100 people and your team have to find the answer that fewest (or none) of the 100 thought of. The team with the least points at the end wins.

For example, one question was to name a footballer who had scored over 100 Premier League goals. Me and dad were right in our element here. Mum and nan were looking bemused to my left, and to my right I heard my brother say to my auntie, “so… d’you know any football players?” We had this round in the bag.
Evidently not. Turns out our answer of Paul Scholes was too obscure; so obscure that it was wrong. Turns out the mugs who struggled to even name a footballer won the round with Frank Lampard. Extremely embarrassing times! Dan’s still rubbing it in today.

Despite this setback, me and dad managed to reach the head-to-head final versus my uncle and grandad. The question was on Mr. Men; the team who answered with the most obscure Mr. Men character would win.
My grandad couldn’t even wrap his head around the concept of a Mr. Men, so his contribution was completely absent. My uncle however, knows his Mr. Men well and answered with Mr. Forgetful. 6 points - Good call. We really had to pull something out of the bag to beat that…

Jack Benjamin Wiggs only goes and plucks Mr. Worry from the top drawer! BOOM! 4 points. Sit down Wiggs family. Winners.

Just like to add a little disclaimer: when the Wiggs family meet up, we don’t just sit around and play boardgames. Our social skills are far superior to this. We watch the evening news together sometimes.