FUN SIZE MAGRS aka Magrs on life

Merry Christmas! I spent my last Christmas with ' family' over two decades ago. All I remember about it is stress and worry. Would anybody show up?  Who was going to lose their temper?  Had you been thoughtful enough with your gift buying?  Had everybody spent the same amount ? Who was taking their gifts back for a refund on Boxing Day?  Nobody was much of a hugger. Most of my family would have welcomed social distancing in the 1980s and 90s. When I started working I paid for everybody to go out on Christmas Day. It was expensive but it was worth it. People tend to behave better if you're in a hotel or a restaurant. And completely surrounded by strangers.  We'd go to the Scotch Corner Hotel, just south of Darlington. It was always beautifully decorated, the staff would be wonderful (despite the fact they were having to work when everybody else had the day off) and it felt like a genuinely special occasion. Some families can fight for 364 days of the year...

My first boss was a c***. A self-confessed c***. We were making adverts for local radio stations and sometimes we'd forget to fax scripts to customers, mess up a phone number or let the wrong commercial go to air on the wrong day. And whenever something like that happened my boss would go to our Sales Director and say:  " Yes, we've f***ed up. It's a total f***ing nightmare. I'm a daft c*** ".   For him, this was completely logical: admit a mistake and call yourself the worst word imaginable - that way you could avoid a bollocking. He'd sit at his desk and nod wisely;  "What more can they do to me? I've called myself a c*** - they can't say anything worse than that. They can put a snotty letter in my personnel file but that's just a posh way of calling me a c***!"   He didn't seem to worry about getting sacked - he just wanted to make sure that nobody else got to call him a c***. To be fair, my boss said everybody was a c*** -...

Once upon a time, there were two boys who grew up in a tiny town in The Middle-of-Nowhere. They lived with their Mother and her Husband in a small house close to a stream. Their Mother was a very poorly woman who spent most of her time asleep. The Doctors would visit with big bottles of tablets, but nobody could find a cure. Their Mother slept and slept - only waking for a few minutes each day. Mother's Husband was a gruff man with a very big beard. Eventually, his beard grew so large and bushy it became impossible for him to smile or speak so he could only communicate by frowning or stamping his feet.   The boys had to be very quiet and were never allowed any friends or noisy fuss in the family home. The older child - Peter - was a very bright boy. Peter loved to read and would often carry two bags of books to and from school. He couldn't possibly read so many books in one single day, but Peter wanted everybody to know just how much he loved his books. His Mother was delighte...

In 1991 I went to Lancaster University. I'd just turned 18 and it should have been the most exciting thing in the whole world! Freedom! Staying up late! Alcohol! Sex!   (AKA: Debt! Vomit! Hangovers! Infrequent, crushing disappointments! )  But I was shit -scared. I'd only done GCSEs and A levels as a delaying tactic. I didn't want to make decisions about life or work or anything because I didn't have a clue about any of it. For a lot of people, going to University is a career move or a chance to broaden their horizons but for me it was simply a way to hold back the 'real' world.  I only knew one other person who'd been to University and he was always swanning about in a straw hat and a cricket jumper. He never really talked about life as a student but he did keep calling everything (and everybody) back home ' sooooo boring ' in a fake posh accent. Did I really want to end up like that twat? Everything else I knew about University was stuff I...

I've never kept a ' Shitlist '. But I've known plenty of people who did have ' hate-lists ', ' hit-lists ' and ' enemy lists' .    I used to teach a kid who kept a list of pupils and teachers and what they'd done to upset her. In the back of her school planner she'd write things like: Kaila -      Robbed my gel-pens Mr. A -      Spat on me when he was telling me off Tasha -      Them shoes Jordan -      Looked at me funny at dinner time Mrs P -      Total bitch In my first job we used to nominate a ' Twat of the Week ' and write their name on the office whiteboard on Friday afternoons. We could let off steam by slagging off a gobby sales rep or a rude client. But we'd have to remember to wipe their name - and the words ' Twat of the week' - off the board before we went home for the weekend. I suppose some people might keep a ' hate list ' as a motivational tool - to remind them of the doubters wh...

When I was 8 I had warts.  Lots and lots of warts. It started with a funny lump on my thumb. It was right on the joint and it looked like a bit of squashed cauliflower. I didn't think much about it. I thought it might be a scab or some dried-on dirt, so I scrubbed at it and picked at it and it bled a bit but it wouldn't budge. Then I noticed it was getting bigger. It was spreading and seemed to be three or four times the size it used to be. And then I started getting more of these funny lumps on my fingers and thumbs... Loads of my friends noticed and one of the teenagers who lived on my street started calling me names. He got all the other kids to dance around shouting ' Wart Hog! Wart Hog! Wart Hog! '  I cried and locked myself in the toilet.  I never could work out why a teenager liked to hang around with a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds; maybe he liked having people to boss around and pick on (sometimes he'd play games that involved us all going behind bushes and ta...

TRIGGER WARNING:  This blog post is about childhood mental health, depression and suicidal thoughts . A few days before my 8th Birthday I tried to throw myself off a bridge. It was a ridiculously small, low bridge over a thin trickle of water called The Burn , but at the time it made perfect sense. I wanted to die. It was a warm, sunny day in June and I was walking home from school with a couple of my friends. Back in 1981 kids could walk home on their own - I didn't know anybody who got picked up by parents, we all just streamed out of the school and down one of two paths. We didn't have any roads to cross on the way home - just The Burn . That day, I was in tears. And I couldn't actually believe what had just happened. I was in the first year Juniors (they call it Year 3 nowadays) and we'd been given our end of year exam results. I'd only gotten the SIXTH best marks in the class. Out of thirty-one kids, I was SIXTH. And that's why I couldn't face going hom...