Blogging It Forward!

In honour of Annie at Retrotype, I am hastily joining the 'blog it forward' day.

Annie chose me! I am so chuffed (note to US readers, thats charmed and puffed up = proud.) Check her blog - redesigned, relocated and super smooth. She has a dry sense of humour and is annoyingly good at this - so while I'm sucking up, dear Annie, how do you fancy redesigning my blog, or at least teaching me (in-words-of-one-sy-lla-ble---durr) how you sussed all the links and pretties and technical stuff? I have such a mental block with all this. Seriously, if you didn't get here from there, pop over there from here.

I am too dumb to work out how to snaffle the lovely 'Blog it Forward' button without giving it it's own post, but if you can get your post in while its still the 19th, then Annie has that and you can lift it from there I guess, or follow it back to it's root. Apart from Retrotype, then, (thoroughly recommended) here are a few blogs definitely worth a peep:

Ella Michelle's 'Occasionally Glamorous Results of a Misused Youth'. EM has a dry (almost caustic) sense of humour, no airs and graces whatsoever, her feet firmly on the ground and is FUNNY. How else can I describe her? I imagine a good night out with her would involve finding some back street dive playing really good live music, shouting things like 'going to the loo' at each other over the noise, all night and walking back at gone 2am pissed as newts and singing. I don't often say that I'd like to go out and get rat faced with a woman, but this girl sounds like a daredevil. If you ever watched the old TV show Cybill, I would imagine Ella to be the perfect accomplice if you had your own Doctor Dick to see to. Muahahaha (evil laugh.)

I Wasn't Always Like This. This is Kim's blog. Don't believe her, she is as funny as her stories of growing up - I wish I could find the link to the wedding dress item, I laughed til I cried. Word of warning, do NOT tell her she ought to be published. Oh we all know its blatantly true, but she can't see it and goes off pointing out less raucous, more poetic blogs to try and prove her point. Another word of warning, herniated bloggers should probably avoid this one - you might damage something if you laugh too much.

63 Days. This is a complete change of tone. Don't even go here if you have traumas of your own and are liable to be triggered. Remember the story of summer camps where the kids were abused? Pictures of starved American children, thoroughly mistreated? This is one girl's story. Lets just say that malnutrition wasn't the only form of abuse going on. Its riveting but awful reading, a real condemnation and an incredibly brave work. If you read it you'll get hooked, needing to know what happened next and if/how she coped.

Present Simple! Last but not least BadAunt, who is lovely. She is a New Zealand girl teaching English in Japan and coming up against all sorts of cultural, erm, nuances, both official and unofficial. A funny, educated, heartwarming and interesting blog that I make sure to read on a very regular basis.