When I was a kid we lived in an MOD house, my dad worked for the Navy as a civil servant and getting the house at reduced rent was a perk of the job. It was a basic box with two large bedrooms and a 'boxroom' upstairs. The boxroom was mine. Up the stairs and turn 180 degrees and there it was. Just big enough for a chest of drawers and a single bed. Between the door and the stairs was one of those spaces that isn't quite big enough for furniture, but is too big to leave empty. Other houses had laundry hampers or tall plants there, we had my dad's wine rack. My dad tried his hand at a lot of things and one of his favourites was winemaking. He was good at it - we had a European attitude towards alcohol in my family, I've been drinking wine (albeit watered down) since I was five - and I'll never forget the elderflower wine he made. One year he experimented with fruit wines and discovered that pineapple made a good sparkling white. Only, the wine rack on the upper landing held bottles horizontally. Not the best position for sparkling wine to be stored in.

I remember I used to lie in bed and I could hear this odd noise followed a few minutes later by what sounded like a gunshot.

It was the pressure in the pineapple wine bottles building until they finally blew their tops.

I've been an horrible person to be around the past few days, every little thing has been annoying me and the pressure has been building. If I was a bottle of pineapple wine I would be causing some kid somewhere to have nightmares.

I apologise. I have been horrifically stressed about things I shouldn't be getting stressed about, and on top of that real life is conspiring to either give me pneumonia or declare myself bankrupt by the end of the month. But the bright side? I have the best friends in the world. Both online and off. Thank you all for bearing with me, for not snapping back and for slapping me down when I needed it (although not literally, cuz you know I'm a mean fighter - I use everything I can get my hands on..)

Thank you.

When I was a kid we lived in an MOD house, my dad worked for the Navy as a civil servant and getting the house at reduced rent was a perk of the job. It was a basic box with two large bedrooms and a 'boxroom' upstairs. The boxroom was mine. Up the stairs and turn 180 degrees and there it was. Just big enough for a chest of drawers and a single bed. Between the door and the stairs was one of those spaces that isn't quite big enough for furniture, but is too big to leave empty. Other houses had laundry hampers or tall plants there, we had my dad's wine rack. My dad tried his hand at a lot of things and one of his favourites was winemaking. He was good at it - we had a European attitude towards alcohol in my family, I've been drinking wine (albeit watered down) since I was five - and I'll never forget the elderflower wine he made. One year he experimented with fruit wines and discovered that pineapple made a good sparkling white. Only, the wine rack on the upper landing held bottles horizontally. Not the best position for sparkling wine to be stored in.

I remember I used to lie in bed and I could hear this odd noise followed a few minutes later by what sounded like a gunshot.

It was the pressure in the pineapple wine bottles building until they finally blew their tops.

I've been an horrible person to be around the past few days, every little thing has been annoying me and the pressure has been building. If I was a bottle of pineapple wine I would be causing some kid somewhere to have nightmares.

I apologise. I have been horrifically stressed about things I shouldn't be getting stressed about, and on top of that real life is conspiring to either give me pneumonia or declare myself bankrupt by the end of the month. But the bright side? I have the best friends in the world. Both online and off. Thank you all for bearing with me, for not snapping back and for slapping me down when I needed it (although not literally, cuz you know I'm a mean fighter - I use everything I can get my hands on..)

Thank you.