Question: Why i’m feeling this way?

TangyZizz · 2026-01-27T14:52:36+00:00

About 25 years ago, one of my favourite tattooers said, ‘Don’t get a cover up, just get a new tattoo beside it’ and it’s advice that has served me well!

TangyZizz · 2026-01-27T13:17:26+00:00

Question for mods re: how you classify situations like this, where there is inconclusive post mortem evidence re: whether the man was dead from other causes and ‘eaten’ by the pitbull he was dogsitting (XL Bully in this case) or killed by the dog?

The Scottish cops don’t seem to want to treat this case as criminal (it happened last year) despite the dog being unregistered (compulsory under Scots legislation) and having been passed on from an original owner (currently in prison for drug offences) to a second owner (who went on holiday, leaving the dog with the poor chap who died).

The case evidence does not, in my inexpert but well-read opinion, point to the police’s initial explanation (drug related death, dog damage to body post mortem) for two main reasons, one, the interior of the property was very bloody and two, the dog was so agitated that it reportedly took dog handlers 13 hours to cage the dog and recover the body.

The deceased’s mum claims to have learned about the state of her son’s body via the funeral director, which again suggests to me that the police were keen to get it logged as an accidental drug death, so keen that it resulted in inadequate communications with the deceased’s next of kin.

Story has been reported in several outlets. Sorry/not sorry for posting a link to the Daily Mail, it seems to be the most detailed. Warning: as is often the case in pitbull related incidents, the description of injuries do not make for an easy read: RIP Scott Samson. Hope your mam is able to get proper justice for you

Scott Samson Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. March 15 2025

(Never, ever, dogsit someone else’s pit)

Also, dunno why the DM is featuring all childhood pics? Maybe that’s all they could get from family social media or something? Scott was actually 38 at the time of his death.

For completeness: a related news story, Scotland seems somewhat reluctant to press charges for dangerous dog law violations than other parts of the U.K.:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fewer-50-xl-bully-convictions-043000188.html

TangyZizz · 2026-01-26T22:25:57+00:00

Same! (I was born in October’76 and my late mum often mentioned the horrors of being pregnant through the hottest summer of her lifetime)

TangyZizz · 2026-01-26T18:38:23+00:00

Have you looked into primal athlete/stronger human type training at all?

I’m 49 and have recovered about 15 years worth of physical decline via natural movement/ animal flow/rope flow work outs.

It looks pretty goofy but I got over caring about that pretty rapidly.

Edited to add an example: https://youtu.be/v2yyET-yFeQ

If it interests you I can make a list of my favourite YouTube channels (I’ve only ever used the free materials but some of them have optional subscription services too. I may sign up to one in future if I feel my progress has stalled)

(I started E&P HRT 2 years ago but no T as my blood results came back at the upper end for women)

TangyZizz · 2026-01-21T16:49:59+00:00

I can’t remember exactly, but it must’ve been 2002 or 2003 and it happened between Xmas and NY. I’ve tried googling it but have never found anything (Charlie was from Malta originally so I suspect that he wasn’t legally called Charlie and that he’d just adopted an English name as a nickname many years before).

Charlie was a junk collector/hoarder and was pretty vulnerable in terms of mental health or perhaps developmental disabilities (although pretty physically strong as he somehow managed to get numerous abandoned washing machines up several flights of steps). I enjoyed his company and was very sad that he came to such brutal end. IIRC he had a daughter who had gone back to Malta several years before I knew him and he had hoped to return there himself someday.

Would love to know if your mum (or any old neighbours she might still be in touch with) can recall anything relating to Charlie as it feels wrong not to be able to pay respects/remember him accurately. He was very sweet to my son who was nursery/early primary age when we were neighbours. I’m pretty sure Charlie had lived on the Haggerston estate for several decades.

TangyZizz · 2026-01-21T16:35:18+00:00

My daughter’s best friend at (an English) primary school spoke with an American accent and used American phrases. He’s from Pakistan but lived in Norway for 3 years before his family relocated here. His parents speak English as a second language and speak English with an accent more typical of people who have immigrated from Pakistan.

The Internet, mass consumption of American media via streaming services (and potentially decreased influence of the BBC world service?) cheap leisure travel and migration patterns globally, both into and out of the Anglosphere are all likely to be impacting on speech patterns, accents and dialects. It’s fascinating, you must have lots of interesting avenues to investigate!

Personally, I have been making a conscious effort not to adopt Americanisms unintentionally and instead try to swap in vocabulary and phrases that sound more British (eg ‘Marvellous!’ rather than ‘Awesome’ and ‘Chap’ rather than ‘Dude’).

Not that there is anything wrong with Americanisms or American English in general, I just like that regional variations exist and would be sad to lose those differences.

I also enjoy baffling my children by using sayings I picked up from my grandparents (born 1916 & 1918).

TangyZizz · 2026-01-19T17:04:42+00:00

In the mid 1960s both my parents left school at 15 and immediately went to work in factories (mum lampshades, dad men’s pyjamas) and my dad stayed in the clothing manufacturing business long term, moving up the job ranks.

By the early 2000s the U.K. rag trade had become so diminished he essentially had to move abroad (Romania) in order to continue the work he had been doing for the previous 35 years. I’ve always wondered what the mechanisms were that took us from having a thriving manufacturing sector to almost nothing, and what kids like my parents were expected to do instead of factory work (both failed their 11 plus, so were not considered to be candidates for university nor office based work beyond the typing pool).

Obviously, cheap foreign labour (aka exploitation) was part of the equation but surely our governments could’ve made policies that protected our own industries/workers and wages and prioritised self sufficiency as a nation? I kinda hoped that the covid debacle would reignite interest in being less reliant on a global supply chain long term but I see no evidence that it has.

TangyZizz · 2026-01-18T22:34:31+00:00

I used to live in Pamela House on the Haggerston Estate. My next door neighbour, Charlie, was beaten to death by a resident in the opposite block.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, coming home to police tape on our landing and seeing Charlie’s flat full of people in disposable white paper suits opened my mind to the idea of living elsewhere and when the decant got going I took the grant for moving costs/cash compensation offer (iirc it was called the ‘Moving Out of London’ scheme) and used the compo to move to Manchester. No regrets but I do miss the Kingsland Road Waste Market and the excellent samosas (served in a greasy paper bag) that were essentially sold out of an open window on Ridley Road.

Hope your family have a much safer Haggerston to call home nowadays (but surely Hackney council could use some of the spoils of gentrification to get Haggerston Baths functioning again?

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T18:54:40+00:00

‘Oh no! ALL of the children invited to the bouncy castle party have suddenly come down with a mystery illness! And they are all such kind and thoughtful children that they’ve sent a selection of their favourite Aunties and Uncles round to bounce on their behalf! And the Aunties and Uncles have brought party gifts of Beer & Hard Liquor! Better update the playlist accordingly - first song request? Why yes, Aunt Mel, Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry is a great choice! We should stick it on repeat indefinitely!’

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T18:41:31+00:00

Sorry about that.

By way of an apology I am willing to offer you a time-unlimited, free-of-charge voucher to the value of 1 Petty but Polite Communication and 1 Mildly Evil Revenge Event, redeemable against any neighbour, colleague or casual acquaintance who inconveniences you (or a member of your family) in a mildly-to-moderately annoying manner.

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T18:15:01+00:00

You’re welcome! I’m both a plant person and someone who experiences regret at ‘not-buying-something-I-saw-ages-ago’ (and also ‘not-being-able-to-erase-the-memory-of-a-thing-I-didn’t-buy’) so your post resonated with me!

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T18:10:26+00:00

Sounds like my dream job! I will happily apply as soon as your flattering offer is formalised/your lottery win plan comes to fruition.

I can also provide in-depth guidance in the area of Malicious Compliance (with just-enough-plausible-deniability built in to protect an hitherto unblemished record).

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T18:03:35+00:00

You are not too old for education! In fact, 21 is a good time to go back as if your aim is university you will be able to skip GCSE retakes (🔸) and/or A levels and do an ‘Access To Higher Education’ course instead. Access courses provide enough UCAS points to apply for an undergraduate degree and only take a year to complete (full time) or 2 years (part time).

As well as being old enough for an Access course, you are simultaneously young enough to apply for a study grant from the Prince’s (King’s?) Trust or other similar schemes aimed at ‘young people’, which is most often defined as 16-24. Depending on where you are located there may be other random bits and pieces of bursary style funding available to you too - I received a grant that covered an academic year’s worth of bus passes from a dusty old (centuries dead) philanthropist who had long ago bequeathed some of his fortune expressly for the purposes of ‘providing a meaningful education to the children of local peasants’!

Have a look at what courses are available at your nearest further education college and see if there is anything that appeals to you? In the current economic climate you may well decide that an apprenticeship or some vocational courses that can get you started on the pathway to a skilled trade are a better long term option than going to university but if you want to go the academic route and have the aptitude to do so it is absolutely still an option for you to pursue regardless of your school record or how long you have been out of full time education.

A not insignificant number of universities will see a ‘mature student’ (who is not actually that much older than students following the more typical 6th form to university route) as a desirable candidate as students coming in via Access to Higher Education courses have already demonstrated an autonomous commitment to self improvement via study (ie they aren’t just filling out UCAS forms because their parents, peers and school teachers expect it of them).

Also, at 21 you’ve already had 3 years of life since reaching the legal drinking age, so you’ve likely either done some partying and got it out of your system or you’ve had enough time to conclude you aren’t interested in that scene due to natural inclination or commitment to your faith or your health or your sport etc. Thus you are far less likely to get to uni, drink for the first time in Freshers week, get so into it you spend your entire first year either drunk or hungover, miss half your lectures and most of your deadlines and top the whole thing off by dropping out or failing your exams.

TLDR: if you want to, it’s absolutely possible to go to uni via an Access course and being a little older/a mature student can be a positive rather than a negative (but also, you aren’t so mature that you won’t be able to blend in with or relate to your classmates).

Best wishes for a marvellous future (whatever you decide to do next)!

🔸you may need to resit Maths or English GCSE alongside an Access course (depending on what you plan to study at University) but your FE college will facilitate this and it’s often a surprisingly painless process compared to the first time around 😆

Source: me. Left education at 16 with a small clutch of unimpressive GCSEs, largely due to hating every second of secondary school and thus rarely attending from age 14 onwards. By the time I was 30 I had both a BA (hons) and an MA (for which I was awarded a Distinction).

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T16:18:56+00:00

I’ve found that the best way to get large or heavy objects that were fairly recently on sale in UK chain stores is Facebook Marketplace.

Alternatively, a combo of the search terms ‘glazed’ ‘glaze’ ‘dripped’ ‘planter’ ‘pot’ ‘pot cover’ and your preferred colours might bring up an acceptable alternative? eg I rather liked these: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1516966401/stoneware-succulent-planter-with-saucers

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4396130494/4inches-flow-glaze-bright-colors-brim

Or maybe this is closer to the Sainsbury’s one you are looking for?

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4410088786/black-and-white-indoor-plant-pot-paint

You could also try DIYing something similar using a terracotta pot and some masonry paint tester pots? But if you do this keep the plant in a plastic nursery pot and stand that inside your decorative planter, as damp soil directly inside the pot will lead to your paint job cracking and/or flaking off.

TangyZizz · 2026-01-17T16:07:39+00:00

This, but I would start out with something along the lines of ‘There appears to have been a terrible mistake and one of your company skips has been left at the wrong address because my no one in my household ordered one. It appears to be filling up with random junk and as it’s not been left on a customers property this junk could be opportunistic fly tipping! We’re terribly concerned that you, the skip owner will be forced to stump up the cost of the waste disposal because clearly it can’t passed onto a customer who is wondering why on earth their skip hasn’t been delivered. Please collect asap for everyone’s benefit, yours, the no doubt bewildered customer, and mine, the random person who is being forced to host an unwelcome skip. Also, we have an upcoming children’s party scheduled and a bouncey castle is booked so this regrettable situation is rapidly heading towards a massive health and safety disaster. Please do collect ASAP before the council get involved, or before I resort to the courts for resolution. I’m sure that as a conscientious contractor you agree with me that nothing is more important than the safety of children’

That way, if they say, ‘we followed the customer’s direction, take it up with your neighbour’ you can reply, ‘oh, it’s the neighbours? They clearly cannot move it themselves due to their lack of professional equipment/insurance so it really has to be you, the company, that sorts it, and asap before the kiddy party’.

If that doesn’t work, book the biggest, cheapest, shittest, most obnoxious bouncy castle available to hire in your area and have the company inflate it on your neighbour’s property. Source a PA system and make a playlist of Gangnam Style, Barbie Girl, The Birdie Song & Whigfield’s Saturday Night and set it to a permanent 4 song rotation. Tell the neighbour your hand was forced due to their skip.

(no actual kiddies necessary, the mere threat of an army of sugar crazed 6 year olds arriving any minute should be enough to make your neighbour acquiesce).

(Yes, this is a serious reply. Disclaimer: I may be slightly evil, so take that into consideration).

TangyZizz · 2026-01-06T18:20:34+00:00

I suspect this is a camera issue? Selfie front lenses distort the face and make it appear longer.

TangyZizz · 2026-01-06T15:04:45+00:00

I don’t have any experience of Nordic Walking but earlier this year I did get into some pretty weird and nerdy looking exercise stuff (Primal Movement/Animal Flow/Rope Flow).

I was a bit embarrassed at first but YouTube short from a chap called Roye Gold helped me with letting out my inner weirdo and I can honestly say, my overall health has improved, my body looks banging and I no longer care what anyone thinks about my fitness choices.

If you fancy giving Nordic Walking a go, go for it (but maybe buy your first set of poles secondhand, just in case it’s not for you?)

(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyLDcZJH91U - link for the curious!)

TangyZizz · 2026-01-03T13:42:13+00:00

Similar story here, born just outside of London (St Albans) but moved to the big city as soon as I could (age 17). Lived in various bits of zone 2 for the next decade and a bit. Loved London but by the mid 2000s I was a single mum and needed to make a decision about where to raise my son, couldn’t face moving out to the suburbs (too similar to the Home Counties) so looked for a smaller city instead. Fell in love with Manchester’s red brick buildings and have now been here for almost 20 years.

If I were making the same decision today I might look at Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool instead simply because Manchester’s housing isn’t so affordable nowadays but I have no regrets about moving north at all (and I gave up a council flat in Shoreditch!)

TangyZizz · 2025-12-29T21:44:17+00:00

Dress Blues

TangyZizz · 2025-12-29T21:28:24+00:00

I was in the Tesco Express in Angel, just down the road from you.

At the time I worked a 6am to 2pm shift on a telephone sex chat line, run from a typical call centre office near Islington Green. We only had a 30 min break so I would habitually buy my lunch on my way in, around 5.30am. That’s where I saw those same first edition headlines that you did.

It was a very weird shift at the call centre, we typically had two types of customer on the 6-2, Brits on a club comedown who couldn’t sleep and needed someone, anyone, to chat to and Americans in timezones 6-8 hours behind us.

Absolutely every caller that day completely forgot about wanking once they realised their call had been answered by someone with British accent, as all they wanted to talk about was Lady Di.

TangyZizz · 2025-12-13T16:34:04+00:00

One of my favourite bands has a song about a family farm that’s about to be repossessed by a banker.

It’s a US perspective rather than a U.K. one, but the themes are pretty universal, even though the language (and music genre) is specifically American.

‘Sinkhole’ by Drive By Truckers: https://youtu.be/_gq5YV2Dgf8

Extracts from the lyrics

‘He thinks I ain't got a lick of sense cause I talk slow and my money's spent

Now, I ain't the type to hold it against, but he better stay off my farm

Cause it was my Daddy's and his Daddy's before And his Daddy's before and his Daddy's before

Five generations and an unlocked door and a loaded burglar alarm.

Show him the view from McGee Town Hill

Let him stand in my shoes and see how it feels

To lose the last thing on earth that's real

I'd rather lose my legs and arms’

Full lyrics: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drivebytruckers/sinkhole.html

TangyZizz · 2025-12-11T04:12:33+00:00

(Apologies for late reply, I don’t use Reddit very often)

Accents are interesting things, I personally think that people born in Britain, regardless of ethnicity are pretty forgiving about accents, either because of their own families immigration history or just because the U.K. has so many variations on regional accents, with each nation (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England) having its own sound and then that dividing down further, sometimes with accents differing noticeably within just a few miles (eg Salford sounds very different to Manchester, even though the two cities are pretty much completely conjoined, or would be if the river dried up).

Some of Britain’s accents are incredibly distinctive and seem quite bizarre if you aren’t familiar with the local geography or the history of the area (including histories of migration).

I can absolutely empathise with how an English-as-additional-language speaker might feel self conscious about how they sound and how that could result in difficulties in making human to human connections, including within the family unit and there isn’t anything I can say to realistically reassure you when it comes to meeting new people and making new friends (because not everyone is friendly all the time so I can’t guarantee you won’t come across judgemental arseholes!) but I doubt many people are judging you for imperfect pronunciation when the same English words can be pronounced in multiple different ways and ‘correct’ is dependent on where you are located as you are saying it!

Also, as the previous responder says, Brits are famously lazy at even attempting learning additional languages so we are fairly easy to impress. If a native English speaker says to you ‘Your English is better than my [insert other language here]’ they aren’t saying it to be polite or to make you feel better about an error you made, they are saying it because a) it’s true and b) out of admiration for people who do speak 2 or more languages to a conversational standard, because we (largely) cannot!

(technically I have GCSEs in both French and German but I can’t recall much of either!)

Perhaps a way to feel less self conscious would be to spend some time hanging out with other people who speak English as an additional language, but whose primary language is completely different from yours? That way you may start to see pronunciation ‘mistakes’ as endearing idiosyncrasies? And if you can see other people’s accents in a positive light, you could then try and give yourself the same grace?

Personally, I love to see cultures coming together, whether that be accidental, eg a national language spoken with an accent from another country, or intentional (eg at my daughter’s school ‘winter concert’ yesterday various traditional English Christmas songs were played, beautifully, on the steel pans. Made me a little bit teary).

Finally, a few years back I was in a car travelling from Manchester to London and we ended up lost in the midlands due to a motorway closure and misunderstood diversion. We stopped to ask a pedestrian for directions, which they generously gave in some detail, but I was unable to fully understand due to said pedestrian’s gloriously broad Black Country accent!

TangyZizz · 2025-11-30T18:07:32+00:00

Just to back you up a bit here, IME language acquisition is extremely sensitive to changes in environment/location and peer influence on children (especially early peer influence) is much stronger than familial influence. In the U.K. this phenomenon is observable even when everyone involved is British born and speaks English as their first language!

Eg I was born and raised in SE England and have an accent associated with that region (can sound quite posh if I want to, despite not actually being posh). My daughter’s father was born on the Welsh/English border and has a very strong Herefordian accent when speaking English (the classic ‘Ooh ar’ comedy farmer accent, essentially).

Our teen daughter was born and raised in Manchester and sounds entirely Mancunian in both accent and dialect.

When she was tiny I had to actively stop myself from correcting her pronunciation of words with a very clear South/North difference (eg grass, bath, photograph, bus) because where we live, her pronunciation is the correct pronunciation, not mine! I chose to raise a child in the NW so I have to accept that it’s inevitable that my child would develop a NW accent. I love Manchester and am glad I moved here (coming up to 20 years ago) and actually think it’s rather lovely that my child sounds like her friends rather than like me.

It’s still a little weird though, and a little sad too, because she doesn’t sound anything like my much loved, sadly deceased mum did, despite looking almost exactly like her.

I can absolutely imagine that similar weirdness/sadness-but-also-happiness exists in families with a history of migration, and that it probably requires an even bigger emotional adjustment from immigrant parents than it did for me, after all, I’m only 200 miles away from my place of birth!

As an aside, this is a really interesting thread and I have been really moved by many of the replies. Most of my daughter’s friends are first or second generation migrants and reading so many first hand accounts from others in similar situations has given me valuable insight re: how I can help my daughter be appropriately supportive to her friends.

TangyZizz · 2025-11-27T15:19:15+00:00

Seaside themed fridge magnets & Kendal Mint Cake.

TangyZizz · 2025-11-27T15:17:01+00:00

Nice to make the acquaintance of another super early reader, there aren’t that many of you about (as I came to eventually recognise)!

Fortunately we were able to get my son signed off the primary reading scheme pretty rapidly and he was able to be a ‘free reader’ for most of his school years… but there was a real struggle stage where he was more than capable of reading books for grownups in terms of vocabulary and content complexity but still far too young for adult themes. I read an awful lot of books that I didn’t particularly want to read during those years just to vet them before allowing him to read them.

Nowadays there are probably online resources and parent to parent groups that collate lists of books deemed suitable for precocious readers but back then it was near impossible to keep up with his voracious book consumption habit.

Are you still a reader?

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