You can't polish a turd.....fact!

So…I’m a little bit crap. At most things. Good friend Sa and I can be heard to remark that the phrase ‘you can’t polish a turd’ is made for us. Sa uses it to describe her physical appearance (which let me say right now, is not in the least bit turd-like. She always looks lovely). But me, I reckon I can apply it to almost everything I do…

See this cup of coffee balanced precariously on is saucer, ready to spill over at any moment…?

 That’s my cup of coffee from a very lovely afternoon in Clifton this weekend. (C was not impressed about having to buy me a coffee in the bar. ‘Seriously Michelle, a coffee?? I have NEVER ordered a coffee in a bar in my life before’). What the photo illustrates to me is my overriding crap-ness (after C pointed it out to me obviously – I love a good analogy….or whatever it is in picture form…). It’s not on the saucer properly, it’s about to fall over and it’s all a bit, well dribbly and rubbish-looking. It just sums up the fact that, no matter how hard I try, everything I do is tinged (sometimes everso slightly, but it’s always there) with a bit of crap.

Here’s an example….I wrote about the hell that is the Yearbook photo a few blogs ago. Well the photos came back. This is what I looked like.

I’m not joking. Jabba the Hutt (for those of you who aren't Return of the Jedi fans). Despite my very best efforts and all the compliments of the day, I still look slightly (well quite a lot really) crap when a camera is shoved in my face. Spectacularly un-photogenic is the polite way of putting it I believe. (To add insult to injury, the Yearbook is proofed by my line-manager. I asked, well begged really, for me to be allowed to replace the Jabba-like photograph with one that I can actually bear to look at. The answer was a resounding no. Brilliant).

I also spend a large proportion of my day twiddling (is that even a word?) with my hair. I do it when I’m driving, in meetings (very professional), watching TV, chatting with friends….pretty much all of my waking time. I have no idea why I do it – I’ve always done it. Always. The result sometimes though is that I have weird bits of hair sticking up. Or that I get a massive knot that I can’t untangle. None of this looks good – the actual activity nor the end result.

It’s not just my appearance that is turd-like. The things I do day-to-day are also pretty rubbish. Like enrolling for the next stage in my degree, but forgetting to actually complete the registration process. Or being told that as I’d messed up too many times, the OU has put me on an alert system….meaning that if I mess up again, I will never, ever be able to study with them again. (The petulant teenaged streak in me is desperate to put this to the test…!)

And there’s more:
I’ve lost a little (loads more to go but it’s all in the right direction) weight recently and was paying for some huge Lego monstrosity in an extremely busy Tesco when my jeans fell down. Not a little bit down, but halfway-down-my-arse down. Black see-through knickers on display for all to see. (In truth I was part horrified, part delighted!)
I drive a Corsa. It’s a sweet little car and I’ve had it a little less than three years. In that time, I’ve lost two wing mirrors (neither was my fault. Honest), created £600 worth of damage by scraping the side of my car on a wall whilst trying to park and now I have a passenger door that doesn’t open from the inside (this does not create a good first impression – believe me). Could happen to anyone? Maybe. But it all happens to me.

Do you get the picture? I could go on for ages about this – but it’s depressing.

And do you know what? I sort of like that I’m a bit crap. I like to think that my ditzy inner-self is one of my endearing qualities. No one likes a show-off do they? No-one likes someone who’s utterly perfect all the time.
So, I may look a bit sh1t sometimes (especially in photos!), I may twiddle with my hair and tie it in knots. I may spill stuff in restaurants and walk into things. And I may have to get out of my car, just to walk round and let you out of the passenger side. But so what? I’m embracing the crap-ness.....and maybe even highlighting it....!

After all, as someone pointed out to me recently;

You can’t polish a turd…..but you can put glitter on it J