2010 was weird and wonderful in equal measure. As I lost my mobility and personal freedom, I gained Twitter and blogging. Twitter gave me company and self-esteem through a horrible year, I have even made real-life friends through it, “tweeting up” locally and in Derby. Blogging kept me sane and allowed me to explore writing styles and share my sense of humour in bigger doses than I could do on Twitter (sorry about that 🙂 ).
The Eurovision and World Cup gave me the best laughs of the year as I was inspired to make avatar pictures to represent each country. Eurovison night itself was a massive challenge as I had to change profile picture 25 times!
Eurovision Avatars!
World Cup Avatars
Throughout the year I raised awareness for many different causes. I got myself into a LOT of trouble with my local MP who “outed” my real name, much to my dismay. I really like being Humphrey! Then, in November I won two Twitter awards, which I am incredibly proud of.
I also cried a lot, more than I have done since I lost my father to cancer. I cried through sheer self-pity, pain, frustration, anger and loss. Coming to terms with a disability is one of the hardest battles I have ever had to face. I am still dealing with it, every time I look at my feet in the bath I imagine how they will look with their scars and shorter big toes ( first operation is 25th January *shudder*) . I love my feet! Always so proud of them, with their elegantly sloping toes and dainty nails. I think I will have them tattooed with flowers when the surgeon has worked his magic, to cover the scars and make them pretty again : )
Not much else happened through the year, I had a couple of dates, annoyed some people, lost two cats, gained another who is my darling : )
Jasmine & Pickles
So, yup! That’s just about it..
Here’s to 2011, may it be filled with knowledge, wonder, laughter, moustaches, love, excitement and joy!
Someone take the hanger out of my mouth, I haven’t stopped grinning since last night’s Golden Twits awards show. I am SO proud of my two awards, Pictures and Private Individual, which were both voted for by YOU LOT, which means far more to me than if I had won a “voted for by Judges” one.
I’d thought on Monday that I may have won something as the hosts emailed me to confirm they would “really, really like it” if I could go along. So then I had a real dilemma as to whether to attend or not. The journey to London alone was daunting, without the thought of sitting through the show itself. So, after badgering the lovely hosts into promising to look after me properly, I bought my ticket : )
What to wear?? Do I go as “Humphrey”, “Ms Cushion” or plain old me? I picked a bit of everything in the end!
Although I had dreaded the journey, I thoroughly enjoyed driving through the London streets, passing all my old haunts of yesteryear. I used to work in the “Old Smoke” and had forgotten my absolute love for the place. I also got to see my first “Barclay’s bike” !
Met by the lovely @Feisty_Onion and @Jaloopa23, we went in and down the stairs to the basement of Bar 1920, Great Sutton St. The bar is long and narrow,with seating mostly around the walls. There isn’t a stage as such so the organisers had set up a screen with a microphone in front, at the far end of the room. I read some of your tweets but pity the poor, poor comedian a little.. not only did he have an audience made up of US.. Tweeters who are lucky enough to read the most up-to-date, side-splitting and tea-spitting-out jokes on Twitter every day but he was also battling with no stage and the audience spread over a long, noisy space. (I do think he was a little mis-cast though as his material depended heavily on finding drug abuse and Canadians funny.. )
Some men were evicted from their seats next to the “stage” so that I didn’t have to move far to make a pratt of myself accept the awards – I know I said recently “nobody puts Humph in the corner” but I was really grateful to be put, although it stopped me socializing 😦 I was hoping to have a chat with fellow “public” winner @Konnolsky’s erm, “representative”, who was suspiciously Konnolsky-like but his secret is safe with me.. best offer for his pic? ; )
A live stream was set up, if it was recorded and be available for me to link to I ‘ll do so but it hasn’t appeared anywhere yet. Probably just as well as I think my first “140 character acceptance speech” went down fairly well (although only a handful of people in the bar “got it”, I read out the #TwitterJokeTrial tweet – what a rebel!) but my second was disastrous.. I hadn’t banked on winning twice! I waffled on about thanking my manager, hairdresser, costume designer, photographer etc.. but as nobody really had a clue who I am or what I “do”, it went down even worse than the first one!
Until the footage is available, this is a pretty good version of how I looked whilst accepting my award ; ) (ht @dickmandrake )
Part of my “award” is that I am now a BRAT (British Academy of Twits)… which means that I get to vote as a Judge next year : ) Maybe I can add B.R.A.T after my name as Doctor’s do? Its funny, my dear old Dad often called me a brat and a twit, I expect he is looking down laughing now in the knowledge that his prophecy was fulfilled ; )
I hope that I can also have some input into the event itself next year as I think it would have been much improved by a larger audience and more information about each nominee or winner. Most of the awards were to business people, not “ordinary” tweeters like me and @Konnolsky and I suspect that the £23 ticket price put a lot of tweeters off of attending. I’m not complaining though, we were well looked after and given free drinks tokens (even though I was on the coke!)
My Drinkies..
Not my drinkies..
( Spot the Knob)
Although I crawled along for an extra hour on the M1 on the way home that should have been spent in bed and I’m in pain today, all things considered I’m glad I went – I’ve never won anything before in my life and didn’t have @DianaInHeaven’s excuse not to attend.. . I got to laugh a few lovely hours away with my favourite root vegetable (@Feisty_Onion) and I have my awards and a big goofy smile. Thank you SO much Twitter, you made an old bag very happy 😀
For full details of the awards and winners, visit the Golden Twits website : )
Mshumphreycushion's Blog 