The Buddy System
My sister and I are on a bit of a scary movie kick at the moment. We're both a bit rubbish when it comes to watching supernatural stuff, so we decided to watch them together, in broad daylight, to support each other - Our own little twilight zone team.
So we started with the Conjuring set, and moved on to Paranormal Activity. I know what you hardcore scary film guys are going to say: "Not that scary..." Right? But to us, they are bloody frightening.
To protect ourselves from the forces of darkness that would inevitably crawl out of our TV screens, or set up shop in our cellars while we had our backs turned (It has more impact to say 'basements' but we live in England, and she's a huge fan of Made in Chelsea, so it won't wash...) we created the buddy system:
1) Never, ever, check out an unexplained noise in an empty room of your house unattended. Just don't do it.
2) When the lights randomly go out for no reason, grab your buddy. Locate your nearest exit if you can, but do not let go of your buddy.
3) All creepy looking dolls must be burned on a pyre. You must watch the dolls burn and bury the ashes in the presence of a priest. Don't just throw it away, that's silly. This also applies to puppets and fire engine toys (See Conjuring 2 for reference. Anything featuring the crooked man must also go).
5) Any teepee tents must be dismantled at the end of the playing day - preferably while the sun is still up.
4) If you purchase a Ouija board in order to communicate with what could well be a creaky floorboard, you're a twat, and the creaky floorboard demon will eat you. You are removed from the buddy system with immediate effect. This puts your buddy in danger too, so double twat points for you.
It works. We feel safer, we feel prepared, we feel ready to tackle the forces of evil. The gin helps too, but hey, liquid courage...
This system has blossomed from us buddying up on a number of things. We both have small babies and any new mum can tell you, that shizz gets hard. So we set aside Fridays to attempt to clean each others houses, give each other moral support, and congratulate each other that we kept the tiny humans alive for another week. Again, as new mums will tell you, babies rarely agree with set hours for cleaning, so it doesn't always pan out, especially given the fact that our babies like to set each other off. It did, more often than not, lead to us saying 'feck it', buying a packet of Hobnobs and getting our teeth stuck into a movie box set. So much so, that the cleaning tends to play a minor role in our Fun Fridays now. It's way more fun to play with the babies anyway.
My sister is my biggest buddy. She's seen me through a hell of a lot - especially this past year. I remember when Meelie Moo (soz kid, the nickname has stuck) was about 3 weeks old and I rang her in floods of tears. Curt was so tired from the whole lack of kidney thing (Pre-dialysis) he was sleeping through all the night feeds and I was holding everything together about as successfully as PVA glue fixes planes. She hopped straight in the car and came over. She walked in, plonked herself down and said "Your only job is not to kill your child. She's alive, so you're doing fine." That was the moment Fun Fridays was born, and it's all because of her.
I genuinely think I might have gone insane if it wasn't for my sister, and this is the fuel behind my advice to everyone this week... Get yourself a buddy. You can't have mine, she's taken, but find one. We can't do it all on our own, and we shouldn't have to. Besides, gin-cidents are funnier when they happen with someone you love <3.
