First off, my apologies for this being my first post in almost a year- things in my life have been manic (In a good way) what with moving house, acquiring five cats…. yes that’s right, FIVE. (They will have their own post dedicated to them very soon!)
Anyhow- as it’s impossible to follow me on social media and NOT know- one of my many random, weird catchphrases is THE SHARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and referring to myself as THE SHARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On more than one occasion recently, I have been asked the origins of the quirky quip…. so many times in fact, that I decided to write this post to set the pointy, sturdy record straight!
I wasn’t familiar at all with the noble structure until one gloomy Autumn day when I was staying at a hotel with my friend, and there wasn’t a very generous choice of tv channels. We ended up watching a show about famous London buildings, to which I wasn’t paying much attention, until all of a sudden I heard, “It’a a GREAT view from The Shard!” booming out from the tv. I laughed, as to me it sounded funny for some reason, but didn’t really think more of it and soon went to bed.
Fast forward a week, when I was ordering pizza to my house, that ended up being delivered almost an hour late, and was therefore cold. Later into the evening, I received a text informing me I had a missed call from a number I did not recognise. I had no idea who would be ringing me that late on a random number, so I did what any sane, normal human being would do, and in return, sent a message containing the most irrelevant and weird text I could think of, which in this case happened to be “THE SHARD!!!!!!!!!”. The next morning I received another message from the unknown number, reading “Thanks for that- you woke me up in the middle of the night. I delivered from JustEat to your address last night”, to which I replied with, “Well you delivered me cold pizza, so now we are equal. THE SHARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. This incident was the first Shardful encounter
The next time the magnificent erected structure played a part in my fun, was when myself and my friend were walking through Shoreditch on a night out, when a very posh sounding bloke waked past with his friends. He turned to them and said “Where shall we go now?”, so once again I did what any sane, normal person would do, and announced at the top of my lungs in a rather noble, assertive manner, “TO THE SHARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. For some reason they didn’t stop to thank me for my insightful suggestion, and quickly got the hell out of there! I turned to my friend (who was as intoxicated as I was at this point) and chanted “I am….. THE SHARD!!!!!”. She replied straight back with “You are…. THE SHARD!!!!!!!!”. This was pretty much the standard of conversation for the rest of the night, and in fact the rest of the whole weekend. The Shard was evolving.
I soon began just randomly writing “THE SHARD!!!!!!!!” at the end of my social media posts, until at a photoshoot in Gloucester, I asked the photographer to take an image of me climbing a ladder, as one of my friends was planning to photoshop it onto an image of the grand pointy attraction itself, to look as though I was climbing that instead! As you can see, the picture turned out beautifully, and right at this point it became official- Emma Bryant is THE SHARD!!!!!!!
Now the phrase is a well known catchphrase of mine, and is always standing strong and erect! So to those who did want to know the meaning behind it, I hope you appreciate the full half hour it took me to sit and write all the nonsense above!!
SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!