21 DEC 09

The Lead-Up To Christmas 2009

I've neglected the blog for too long. I blame it on an overload of coursework and the fact that there's snow in the UK; we're not very good at dealing with inclement weather. Fancy the Channel Tunnel coming to a standstill the other day. Anyone would think the freezing temperatures were unexpected, but we live in Europe, not Asia, so there's no excuse! The 'Chunnel' breakdown particularly worries me because I really don't like tunnels, and the thought of being stuck in an especially long one underneath the sea really doesn't appeal very much.

Amongst all of the bad weather reports up and down the country, and the true Brits in us must be overjoyed at some real weather news(!),I have the opposite to grumble about. I've missed all the snow!!! Last year I had an excuse: I was in Malaysia. This year I'm back in the UK and there's snow EVERYWHERE, except for Dorset.

My friend, Hannah, signed off her email with a note saying she was just off out sledging in Durham, Shelley's car was converted into a giant, stationary, snowball in Kent, Lisa had to crawl back through the snow from Exeter and even Cardiff had a centimetre of lying snow this morning. Here in Dorset it's been lurking at two degrees Celcius and raining for several days with not a snowman in sight!

The lack of festive snow, coupled with complicated coursework and the fact that I'm several Christmas presents short of a completed Christmas shopping mission should, by most standards, render one fairly miserable, but I've been enjoying catching up with everyone at home and am looking forward to Christmas more than ever this year.

I'm going skiing in January. If there's no snow then I'll be really peeved...

13 DEC 09

Sunday

It’s been quite hard to accept, but it turns out that I am the ultimate Blagging Failure. I can cope with the little things (vouchers, universal freebies, student discounts), but when it comes to the real, skilful art of blagging, I’ve finally found my position at the bottom of the pile. As I spend my Sunday afternoon trying to blag writing this feature however, I realise that I have had a useful insight into the Blagger’s World, from which I’ve drawn the following conclusions:

1. Blagging should be spontaneous. Pre-planned, thoroughly thought-out blagging not only takes the fun out of it, but also verges on the borders of organised crime.
2. The victim shouldn’t be aware of The Blag. The lady at the bar almost gave over a free drink, but her manager wasn’t sympathetic to my quest. All I acquired through honesty in this respect was a safety pin from a pitying friend.
3. Blaggers need to blend in OR have the ‘gift of the gab’. If you come across as a blithering idiot dressed as a pirate you won’t get anywhere in life. Unless you’re on a pirate ship.

12 DEC 09

Saturday: The last full day of blagging.

I caught the train into London. The teenager next to me looked as if she was ready to stab/shoot/eat the next person who dared to look at her, so I refrained from divulging my new life-story, which is a shame as I’d just got a job as a trapeze artist in a travelling circus.

A group of school friends were waiting outside Pizza Hut on Oxford Street. It was a birthday, and having most definitely seen candles in a fudge cake at such an establishment before, it was time for a mild blag. I sneaked off to ‘the toilet’ and tracked down our waitress. She informed me that they had no candles and no lighter but gave me directions to the nearest supermarket. Dejected, but still hoping to make the birthday meal at least a little special, I ran off to the shop and managed to get back with candles and party hats before the drinks had arrived. It turns out that this wasn’t a huge achievement as the service was so unbelievably slow that I could have easily walked to the River Thames with a bucket, designed, built and operated my own water filtration system in the time it took to get a drink. It inexplicably took three hours to order and eat lunch but at least, I thought, there would be candles on the fudge cake.

A sorry lump of dessert did eventually arrive, with one measly, pathetic candle carelessly placed off-centre at a peculiar angle. Less than impressed, I asked if we could have the rest of the candles back, to which I was informed that the rest had been thrown away. Pizza Hut blagged my candles! I took comfort in the fact that I could potentially write and complain in the hopes of getting free pizza next time.
The afternoon was spent looking for blagging opportunities, which don’t present themselves readily on a Saturday afternoon in central London on the lead-up to Christmas, and utterly defeated I waited for the Megabus at Victoria Coach Station. The prospect of a three hour coach journey back to Cardiff tempted me into Subway and I ordered the £1.99 six inch ham ‘Sub of the Day’.
“Foot long chicken and bacon with drink, yes?” the man confirmed.
I repeated that I’d just like the Sub of the Day, if that was alright. The man nodded and prepared my order; I waved my arm in the general direction of the vegetable collection and wearily wondered what on Earth I was going to write about for this blagging article. I reached the till and found myself faced with a foot long chicken and bacon meal which consumed every last penny of loose change in my possession. I spent the coach journey pondering my lack of blagging abilities in silence.

11 DEC 09

Friday

I decided it was time to take the blagging on tour, first stop Reading. There wasn’t much blagging to be done on the train, but I tried out the ‘trick or deception’ criteria for a bit of harmless practice. The poor woman sat next to me now thinks she travelled to Reading with a trumpet-playing pet shop assistant who couldn’t think of one real pet shop in Cardiff to claim a link to. I blagged nothing from the conversation. I suppose I could really clutch at straws and say I blagged a glass of water at my brother’s house, but the fact that it was offered in a shot glass, as the only drinking receptacle without things growing in it, almost certainly nullifies any positive blag-points.

We were due to join a pirate pub crawl in the evening, but a friend of my brother had misplaced her ID card somewhere. I was just mulling over the blagging possibilities this presented for the evening, when I noticed that my brother had disappeared. Ten minutes later and he appeared at the doorway having knocked on various doors in the street and blagged a passport from a deluded and/or insane stranger a few houses down the road. He managed to do this dressed as a pirate. Amazing.

Misplacing forms of identification seemed to be one of the girl’s favoured hobbies and having rescued the passport from the floor of several bars I eventually pocketed it for safe keeping as a sort of second-hand blag.

I had a lovely chat with the girl behind one bar who agreed that I was proving to be a pretty poor blagger and offered to give me a lime and soda water. The retail price was only 15p, but beggars can’t be choosers. Sadly, the manager overheard and told me to go away. Another fail. I cheered myself up by blagging a drink from my brother, who probably owes me several anyway, and taking today’s newspaper with me. It didn’t appear to belong to anybody, and on the grounds that you can’t steal from nobody I figured it might be morally acceptable.

Our final destination was a quirky little club underneath a railway bridge. Determined to avoid the entry fee, I informed the bouncer that I’d just popped out and that the other guy said it would be fine to re-enter. It could have worked; I don’t have a particularly memorable face. It was another fail, probably not helped by the fact that the place was almost deserted on arrival, I was wielding a newspaper and dressed as a pirate.

10 DEC 09

Thursday

I confided to a friend about fears of my blagging inadequacies over a (fully paid for) coffee this afternoon. She cheered me up no end by reminding me of travelling blags we’d shared together over the years. The most successful being an evening at the Singapore Hard Rock Café. We’d only popped in to look at the guitars, but several hours later and the four of us had consumed the equivalent of over a hundred pounds worth of free drinks, and I’d sung my favourite U2 song on stage with the band that happened to be playing. The drinks came about after the bar staff discovered we could speak Bahasa Malaysia with them. The singing came about after the discovery that we weren’t paying for our drinks. Sadly, speaking Malay probably won’t help my blagging this week.

The postman delivered two small parcels whilst I was out. The first was a pretty dull, free, book entitled ‘Britain without the European Union’. The second was a waterproof book courtesy of another online offer, and is far more entertaining than the first. The author’s descriptive powers kept me amused for the rest of the afternoon. A quick example:
“I turned into a buxom nurse from a Benny Hill sketch. My breasts became two tethered zeppelins. My belly, a giant jellyfish”, Kathy Lette, ‘All Steamed Up’.
Priceless.

09 DEC 09

Wednesday

I didn’t feel like blagging today. My confidence remained shot from yesterday’s failures. I did, however, seriously need a coffee after my nine o’clock lecture and whilst locating my reward card realised that I’d previously consumed enough caffeine to claim a free hot drink. Further clarification with the coffee-man revealed that despite having always purchased the least costly option on the menu, I could in fact have any drink as my reward. I walked away with a super-mega-large hot chocolate with marshmallows, a mountain of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. They wouldn’t let me drink it in the library.

08 DEC 09

Tuesday
I got up unnecessarily early for lectures this morning and logged onto Studentbeans.com. Orders for free (albeit somewhat useless) objects were in place and the day’s blagging pressure was significantly reduced.
I thought it might be worth asking the lady in the post office to reduce the cost of my stamps for a parcel to Germany, but it wasn’t. I did manage to acquire a free Cadbury’s Flake from someone dressed as a chocolate bar in the St. David’s Centre though.

The time had come to test the part of the blagging definition that mentions deception. This was not something I felt completely comfortable with, but figured that if push came to shove then any guilt could be slyly passed from my conscience to gair rhydd. Unfortunately I was sadly lacking in inspiration, and walking up and down Queen Street too often just makes you more susceptible to being pounced on to donate £2 a month to well-meaning charities, which would be somewhat counter-productive today. I then spotted a man, whom everyone seemed to be deliberately avoiding, holding a collection of books. I composed my blagging motives and adopted nerves of steel. I approached. I talked with him about the Hare Krishna movement and managed not to buy a book. I listened to his pleas to help the homeless. I still managed not to buy a book. I started looking for an escape route, but none was forthcoming. I gave him my small change to help out his community projects and sloped off home to come to terms with my first Anti-blag. Exchanging an e-voucher for a free loaf of bread at Co-op did little to improve my mood.

06 DEC 09

It's been over a month since I last posted, and for that I can only apologise and offer excuses of too much work at the end of term, etc!

I thought this feature written for gair rhydd would be of a little interest - my week of blagging. It's in this week's issue, so if you're around Cardiff University, don't forget to pick up your copy!

Installment 1:
The Art of Blagging

To blag: “A means of obtaining something by trick or deception, to obtain something for free” (Wiktionary.org).

Monday
I have one week to test the blagging limits of this fine city. As I stepped out of the Union into the rain I felt strangely confident in my mission, and quietly smug at the prospect of a week of getting something for nothing. Well, not that quietly, I was whistling. I bumped into a fellow student on Cathays Terrace, explained my objective, and came away with a safety pin. Sometimes you have to start small.