Scarlett Says

by Scarlett Moffatt

  Checking in

  Sam is really good at getting gossip on Facebook. You can always tell when two people start dating because they like every single one of each other’s statuses, no matter how shit they are, and she always spots it. She’ll say, ‘You know James? He’s supposed to be with Lucy but he’s liked all of Kate’s photos on Facebook.’ Then a week later we’ll hear that James and Lucy have split up.

  She noticed a while back that this guy we know, who has a girlfriend, checked in at a park on Facebook. Ten minutes later this girl we know checked in there too. It’s not like it’s just around the corner and they know each other so there’s no way it was a coincidence. We chatted about that for over an hour trying to analyse what was going on.

  It’s like when people put something on Snapchat and you can see someone in the background who really shouldn’t be there. Why don’t people think? We’ve busted a few people that way too. Sam is really good at sniffing out a story. She’d be a great secret agent or journalist.

  I like a bit of celebrity gossip, and I love being the one who tells my friends when something really dramatic happens, like when a big power-couple split up. It’s cool being the one to break the news and seeing my mates’ reactions. We have a bit of a competition to see who can be first in with something really good.

  While we are never horrible and try to get on with everyone, I will hold my hands up and say that sometimes my friends and I can get a little bit bitchy when it comes to talking about what people wear. Well, one girl in particular. She lives in my town and she wears these really thick, glossy skin-coloured tights whatever the weather. Her legs look like they’re made of plastic. She used to go out with one of my friends’ husbands and I think that’s why we’re a bit mean about her. If one of us sees her, we’ll post in our Facebook group, ‘Just seen shiny tights, she was buying bread in Asda.’

  I shit you not, I saw her recently with mascara in her hair. It’s 2015. Where can you even buy hair mascara from these days? Maybe eBay? I wouldn’t be unkind if she was a nice person, but she’s not, so I’m allowed.

  Ten things you should never do on social media

  1) Write mundane tweets or statuses

  No one gives a flying monkeys if you’ve just changed your 4.5 tog duvet for a 13.5 tog #readyforwinter. That isn’t what this shit was created for.

  2) Use it as some form of Google search engine

  If you have time to write a status asking what time Tesco closes on a Sunday, you have time to type that into Google and do your bloody research yourself. Unless you’re trying to impress everyone by letting them know you’re going to Tesco?

  3) Brag

  We do not need to see everything you’ve bought or photos of your supermarket shopping. No one cares. No one. Unless they’re a food fetishist, in which case you should be on a very different website.

  4) Join in an argument

  I’m not going to say don’t start an argument, because reading people’s arguments is hilarious, but never involve yourself in someone else’s unless you know exactly what’s going on. Nine times out of ten you’ll end up being the bad guy and have to take yourself off social media temporarily because so many people are calling you a twat.

  5) Weather statuses

  #itsraining. Shit, really, Miss Marple? Thank God you told me because I can’t look out of a window myself.

  6) Stalk an ex

  Exes should be out of sight, out of mind. You’re only prolonging the pain and there will come a moment when you see him with someone else and have to drown your sorrows in sambuca.

  7) Catfish

  Stop trying to be something you’re not! It’s all very well trying to create the illusion of being a millionaire playboy/girl, but you served me in Asda last week.

  8) Check in everywhere you go

  Checking in at work/Starbucks/Wetherspoons/the loo in McDonald’s = zzzzzzz.

  9) Troll

  You wouldn’t go up to a stranger in the street and start slagging them off and shouting, ‘Hashtag slag!’ at the top of your lungs, so don’t do it while you’re hiding behind your laptop.

  10) Go hashtag crazy

  I know people who hashtag twenty things when they post a photo of themselves. There’s no need to take a photo of yourself and be like #photo #me #face #nose #hashtag. We get it.

  Twitter

  I feel like there should be some kind of helpline for Twitter addicts because my obsession is getting out of control. Sometimes I even hashtag while I’m speaking – like, ‘Hashtag awkward’ – and that is not OK.

  Twitter is mint. You just sort of start having a conversation with yourself and hope someone joins in. If someone said to me I could only have one social app, I would choose Twitter. You find out everything that’s happening because whatever is trending comes up really quickly. Sometimes you find out something is happening before it’s even in the papers or on the news. It’s also really good for spreading awareness of things. And it’s a bloody good laugh.

  I love it when people have Twitter fails and I liked the debate about whether or not that dress was blue or white that time. It didn’t really matter; it was a bloody horrible dress whatever colour it was.

  I’ve got quite a lot of followers now, which is dead flattering, but it does make me think twice about posting certain things. I don’t think there’s been anything I’ve really regretted because I do hold myself back sometimes, but I nearly posted something about being in a shitty mood the other day and I thought people would just think I was really moany. I do love ranting, though. I always rant during Celebrity Big Brother. That show gives me a lot to rant about. They go in saying they just want to really enjoy the experience and by like day three they’re crying and wiping their own faeces all over the place.

  People keep tweeting me at the moment to tell me I look like Jesy out of Little Mix. I reckon that’s because we both wear eye make-up and have dark hair. That’s it. I mean, I can see it a little bit but people are like, ‘Ooh, youse could swap heads.’

  Tweeting under the influence

  Drunk tweets are the worst. I was out the other night and I tweeted, ‘Why do you only know you’re drunk when you’re in the toilet?’ It’s so true. I was in a cubicle for about five minutes chatting to myself. Up until that point I’d thought I was quite sober.

  I thought I’d tweeted something really deep after I drank a shitload of wine once, but when I woke up the following morning it was just a load of letters and it made no sense whatsoever.

  Tweeting celebrities

  Where else can you talk to celebrities you would never usually get to interact with? I chat to Amanda Holden and Eammon Holmes sometimes, and when Jonathan Ross started following me I was like, he actually knows who I am!

  Some of my favourite people to follow are Alan Carr because he’s so funny, and Ricky Gervais because he rants constantly. Eammon Holmes is funny and doesn’t give a shit, and if someone is trending, I’ll look at their tweets and maybe start following them. I also like TheLadBible and fact-based tweeters who post random stuff.14

  When I tweet I just stick to what I’m up to and what’s on TV, mainly. But there’s one topic I always feel like I have to pipe up about because there’s so much shit being written constantly.

  People need to stop going on about the immigration crisis. It dominates headlines and it makes people hate people for no reason. I said to me dad, ‘People don’t risk their lives in tiny boats and hang on to the bottom of trucks because they’ve heard they’ll get £36.80 a week.’ People will only get in a boat if they think it’s safer than the land. What does that say? They’re willing to risk their lives in a shitty boat because it’s too dangerous to stay where they are. There are all these stories in the news all the time, and the language they use, it’s like they’re animals or insects, not people.

  I hope a crisis like that never happens in England because at the moment it feels like everyone thinks it’s not their problem. It’s the lottery of life. We’re only i
n this country because we were lucky enough to be born here, and we’ve got no more right to be safe than anyone else. We didn’t do anything to be born here, we didn’t earn it. The migrants have got families and they’re just trying to do what’s best for them. If you can’t understand that, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

  Even if 200,000 people came to the UK to seek asylum, it’s not going to ruin the country. We have space. The press make out that immigrants are coming over here and taking our money and food but that’s ridiculous. When I see an immigrant with a £1 million bonus fucking up the financial system I’ll start getting angry but until then people need to be more humane. It makes me sad that people don’t care.

  In fact, there we go, that’s my idea. We can force all the bankers to sponsor a family of immigrants fleeing the destruction of their homes as part of their bonus. It can be a rich twat tax, which will show up on their payslip with ‘the one good thing you’ve contributed to society’ written alongside it.

  I think it’s bad when people have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. They lose all sense and buy things like gold toilet seats or jewel-encrusted doorknobs. Why? I was on holiday a while back and I saw a man buy a six-litre bottle of Grey Goose between him and his mate, which was about £3,000. I’m sure he was doing it just to impress people. That’s compensating for something, that is.

  I don’t understand how nurses, who help to save lives, get paid so little, but someone who sits behind a desk watching numbers go up and down and contributes very little to society gets to be a multi-millionaire. And the thing is, they still want more. They need it to fill their empty souls. They’re greedy and they’re dickheads. End of.

  The meaning of life

  I get loads of tweets from people asking why we’re here. Like, on earth and shit. I don’t know why people think I’m some sort of philosopher. I sometimes reply and tell them we’re in a kind of Sims game and we’re being controlled. When we die we move on to the next level of the game.

  Death

  While I’m on the subject of dying, I’m not that religious or nowt but just out of sheer terror I can’t really believe that when you die that’s it. I feel like there must be somewhere you go. But I was saying that to Ava and she just said, ‘When you’re dead, that’s it, you go in the ground and you get eaten by maggots. That’s why it’s important to live your life now and make sure it’s a good one.’ And, like I’ve said, she’s nine. Honestly, they could parachute that girl in to sort out the Middle East.

  Getting older

  Thinking about death always makes me think about getting older. Not that at twenty-five I feel like I’m about to croak! But now that I am getting older, sometimes when I wake up on a Monday I still feel a little bit crap. I can definitely tell I’m not sixteen any more. When I was younger I used to put an age on everything. At twenty-three I was going to meet the love of my life, and at twenty-six I’d get married. But then you realize that life isn’t like that and you have to take it as it comes. Anyway, if I held to that schedule, it’d mean I’d basically have to really crunch the gap between meeting someone and getting married. As it stands, I’d have like four months or something. That’s not the way good decisions are made.

  I like being a bit older now, though. You do get more responsible and take things slightly more seriously because you have to, and I can’t wait to be properly old. I’m going to push my way to the front of queues and pretend I don’t know any better, and eyeball people until they get up and offer me seats on public transport.

  I’m going to be a really grumpy, fat old person. I’m going to get to a certain age and just keep eating and eating. I’m going to stop giving a shit about things. I’m going to bore the arse off my grandchildren about the good old days when you only had one dishwasher in your house and iPads weren’t made of thoughts.

  I feel old sometimes now when I try to explain dial-up internet to my little sister, and it’s only a matter of time before I start saying, ‘You don’t know you’re born.’ She doesn’t understand what videos are, and she thinks it’s crazy that we used to have to go to a shop and rent a video if we wanted to watch a film.

  I can tell I’m not sixteen any more because sometimes I get excited when plans get cancelled so I can stay in in my onesie. I’ve also started to buy a lot of candles and I’ve got tons of scatter cushions in my bedroom. I spend my money on interior design rather than wine and pizza. Well, sometimes anyway.

  My grandma Frieda is eighty-five now and she does whatever makes her happy, and literally decides when she does and doesn’t want to talk to us. She does this thing now where, if she can’t be arsed to talk to you, she closes her eyes and ignores you. I walk out thinking she’s asleep and when I come back in her eyes are wide open and she’s watching the telly. I think it’s brilliant.

  I’m not going to care what anyone thinks of me when I’m properly old. I’m going to be really honest with people. Imagine how cool it will be when you can tell someone their hair looks shit and people will make excuses for you? ‘Oh, she’s just old. She doesn’t mean it.’ I bloody will. I’ll have all my senses about me but I’ll get away with it. Even if I can still walk to the shop I’m going to get a mobility scooter and drive there. I’m going to wear American tan tights and moan constantly. I’ve got a lot to look forward to.

  Ten ways I know I’m becoming my mother

  1) I’ve started buying lots of candles and scatter cushions (and getting excited about them).

  2) I’ve started checking the weather before I go out (and taking a safety Pac-a-Mac with me).

  3) I look forward to going to bed. Ooh, is it 9 p.m. yet?

  4) I’ve started reading the Radio Times to check what’s going to happen in EastEnders even though I’ll be watching it that night.

  5) I get excited when people cancel plans for a night out. Sometimes I just want to stay in and watch The X Factor with a takeaway.

  6) I’ve started saying things like, ‘In my day you could buy a chocolate bar, a packet of crisps and a drink and get change out of 50p,’ or, ‘Remember when penny sweets still cost a penny.’

  7) When I watch a film I tend to agree with what the parents in it think/say rather than the kids.

  8) I’ve found myself choosing sensible, comfortable shoes over fashionable ones.

  9) I’ve actually started wearing my mother’s clothes.

  10) I’ve begun mumbling to myself about how much I’ve got to do in the day. ‘Argh, I’ve got a load of washing to put on and I’ve got to empty the dishwasher.’

  Working 9 till 5

  If we’re going out on a Friday night, most of the Facebook messages come through while I’m at work as it’s easier for a lot of my mates to go online when they’re at their jobs. But I prefer to switch my phone off and just concentrate on work while I’m there, so I have to catch up on everything at the end of the day. Most people assume I haven’t got a job when they message me on Twitter. I’ve had all sorts of jobs. I even worked with me mam once. If you’ve never done it before, I can tell you it’s exactly as good as you imagine it would be. I’ve been in my current job for a year, which is the longest I’ve worked anywhere. I used to last about four weeks on average before that.

  When I was really young I wanted to be a bus driver. I was obsessed with the idea until I went to secondary school, when I decided I wanted to be a geography or dance teacher. I think it’s scary that you have to try and decide what you want to do when you’re so young and your GCSE and A Level choices can kind of determine what you go on to do. Who really knows what they want to be at that age? I used to want to be a teacher and I studied it at university. I didn’t know what kind of teaching I wanted to do, and in my first year I did dance, but then I realized I didn’t want to teach kids to waft around like trees. In the second and third years I did physical education, then in my fourth year I did placements in schools. That was when I realized I didn’t really like kids.

  My first ever part-time job was
working in a newsagent’s sorting out the pick’n’mix. I got paid £3.50 an hour and had access to all the sweets I could eat. Not that they knew about the last bit. Except they do now, I suppose. (If you’re reading this, Mr and Mrs Simpson, I’m sorry, but £ 3.50 an hour?!)

  My next job was on the checkouts in Asda and that was quite funny because you got some strange characters coming by. This lady used to come in at 2 p.m. every Saturday and she’d always come to my till. I think she must have been a bit OCD because she lined up all her food alphabetically on the conveyor belt. She’d start with bread and then go on to cat food, and she’d always finish with six Wispas. When I scanned them she’d shout, ‘Can I have a Wispa, Wispa, Wispa . . .’ loads of times. She’d gradually lower the volume until she was actually whispering it. I laugh at anything anyway so it was so hard trying to keep a straight face. That was a fucking challenge.

  I had to ID people for all sorts and they used to get really pissed off with me. It wasn’t my bloody choice. A woman once threw a packet of paracetamol at my head because I told her she could only buy two boxes at a time.

  I worked on the make-up counter of a department store for a while, but I got sacked for making people too orange. When women came in to get their make-up done I always thought it was best to go a couple of shades darker, but the make-up artists weren’t that keen because they’re all about being au naturel.

  The area manager came in to check on everyone’s work one day and I’d already had a couple of disciplinaries for putting too much make-up on people. I did one woman’s make-up as a test run for her wedding and she loved it but the area manager went crazy and said her body didn’t match her face. It was pretty hard to come back from that so they gave me the boot.