It's only 22 boxes but man they are addictive!

In this lovely not having to work period my father-in-law snuck a new addiction on me. There's this new quiz show called Deal or no deal hosted by my favourite tv host Noel Edmonds. Sadly Mr Blobby has yet to appear on the show, but it's only a matter of time.

Basically, the boxes have between 1p and £250,000 in them, and the person in the chair gets to choose the boxes to be opened 3 at a time hoping they get low numbers and leave the big money untouched. They also have a box with money in it which comes in at the end. After a few boxes have been opened this mystery "banker" phones up - I'm sure he's not real, it's all in Noel's head - and offers them some money hoping they'll take the Deal and not win lots from one of the boxes. It sounds mad but I am so addicted and sadly when I'm back at work I won't be home in time to see it. Please Mr BBC - put it on later!

And the first series of Lost has nearly finished and it's doing my head in. How unlucky can one planeful of people be? Now the mystery "Others" are coming to do them in and they have to hide in a skip or something, hoping the "Others" don't just lock them in and they all have to eat each other. I'm never flying again.

No I haven't got piles dear!

At our work Christmas Party over a week ago I managed to throw myself down a set of stairs. Twice. Ouch. I still maintain to this day it was the stairs' fault, I hadn't even had a glass of wine the first time. The second time might have been my fault. A colleague told me afterwards that the stairs had been polished recently and the anti-slip things weren't put back on. Uh oh? I really hurt the bottom of my spine and over a week later I can't sit down properly! Or type as I did my wrist in big time too. I must be getting old, a few years ago I did this all the time (yes drunk) and was fine!

But apart from that the party was brilliant! Our place is great, it's all free booze and food and they put a disco on too. They hire this hilarious dj who thinks he's it, but he really isn't. But he did play the Darkness for me so he isn't all that bad! And there were two punch-ups, people falling down stairs (me), people whisked off to A&E with alcohol poisoning, bloody noses from gallantly trying to catch drunken ladies who were falling over who did indeed fall over on top of said hero (not me) and lots of abandoned dancing (me, I didn't feel the pain till later that night). Happy Christmas one and all!

Bah humbug you old scrooge!

Sorry that was intended for hubby's boss. Who made him work today and tomorrow. What is it with bosses who force employees to go into work when most people are off (well me anyway!)? They know said pissed off employees will do as little as possible, leave early and hate their scrooge asses for the rest of the year. I make a policy of refusing to work for firms who don't have the whole of Christmas and New Year off. That is quite easy to do in Library Land thank goodness!

So I'm stuck at home and I'm so lethargic I'm reduced to watching MTV2 while playing Bookworm over and over - I recommend it to everyone, though I warn you now your life will be reduced to thinking of long words to try next time. Though I only play the free version, I ain't paying for it. Now who's the Scrooge? I once got a 9 letter word and it told me the free version only accepts words of 8 letters and under! The horror!

And I've got Muppets Christmas Carol to watch too, and It's a Wonderful Life which I must have had for 3 years and haven't watched yet. And I hear it's got a Librarian in it too!

Bleurgh...

Well I attacked the bar with abandon yesterday, and 1 bottle of champagne (we have 3 bottles left over from the wedding and hubby don't do fizzy), several large baileys and the odd martini later I was well and truly sozzled. And I wasn't even sick the next day. Marvellous. Onwards it is then, 6 more days of heavy drinking here I come! "BARMAN!"...

What happened to Christmas?!

I have spent weeks - literally WEEKS - waiting for Christmas. And now it's over. What happened? Scientists should investigate what happens to time when you aren't at work. It definitely goes quicker - I would say a hundred times quicker - than work time. It's Tuesday already, and I don't seem to have done anything particularly. I haven't even gorged myself silly on food because it's Christmas and you're allowed. I have started drinking at about, ooh yes, this time every day (hold on while I go to the bar) ... that's better...but never seem to get even a bit tipsy. I am going to change that today, oh yes indeedy. I think the trick is more alcohol, less mixers. Christmas Day was nice, at the in-laws, but even that went quickly. And there isn't even any good tv on, we ended up watching Indiana Jones yet again this afternoon, and the ends of a lot of films we've seen already.

Still I've got another 7 days off work yey! I think it's time to take this quality leisure time more seriously and stop lying around watching crap on tv. Whose turn is it to go to the bar?

What is it about cowboys?

Now Nicole is allegedly engaged to some country star no-one's ever heard of. This is now called "Doing a Renee". What is it about country and western singers? I know a lot about country music and I can't see it myself. My Dad took up C&W dancing when I was at a very impressionable age, and he used to leave the house with his stetson on and drive through our village kitted out in his gear. The shame. Admittedly he is bloody good, and I like to think I inherited his rhythm, he even made it into the local paper for his moves, but the music? I have endured hours and hours of C&W music when Dad used to drive me to University every other weekend after I went home for the weekend to see a feckless boy (who went on to dump me on Valentines day by a letter disguised as a card, how cruel). It's all "he left me with 7 bairns and a broken heart at Christmas" or "he loved me in the back of his station wagon or he said he did and I haven't seen him since" or even "I was brought up in the achy breaky mountains with nothing but goats for company"...

Now admittedly C&W does seem to be having a revival with good looking roughly shaven young men in tight jeans and stetsons, I can see the attraction, but Nicole? NO!! You tried rock with Lenny, you did crazy with Tom, you did super rich with Steve Bing now please pick someone out of the fame sphere, hey, even a local librarian might be the one for you?!

Squirrels!

I have come across 2 different stories covering squirrels in 2 days. And for some bizarre reason they really made me laugh. So I thought I'd share!

1) Man eating squirrel alert! (Well it won't be long...)

2) Librarian in squirrel rescue!

They're showing old people sex on primetime tv!

Urrggghhhh. It just came back to me in a flash. I never really watch Eastenders, only tuned in to see Grraaannnttt kick the shit out of everyone for 3 weeks then leave again. But the other night I accidentally caught the repeat, what can I say - it was late, I was knackered, the remote wasn't in reaching distance. And Frank "Tweacle" Butcher is back. And he was In A Hotel Room with Big Dangly Earrings Pat. !!! And they weren't admiring the view of Tower Bridge (Tower Bridge!! That's nowhere near Walford!) that's for sure.

I can't describe the rest. But if they showed that at 7.30 in the evening then the BBC should be ashamed of themselves.

There isn't even a way to spell the word I'm thinking off, but I'll have a go...

Uurrrgggghhhhh...shudderrrrrrrr...retchhhh.....aarrrggghhhhhh...

I now see the point of landlords

Who the hell thought buying a house was a good idea!? You know what it really means - it takes over your life and you spend your waking hours considering paint charts and where to stick what on the walls. Honestly. Life is too short. Tell me, what's wrong with renting a nice little place painted entirely in magnolia by your landlord, you know you'll never have to worry again. But silly me, I decided to buy a house, and I have spent most of this afternoon up and down a ladder painting the front room. Which I will be very pleased with when it's finished. But it's SUCH hard work, mainly the moving furniture around to get to the walls, covering everything in splashing distance and then manouevring said ladder round scattered furniture. Goddamn. Getting trolleyed on vodka and rolling home at bedtime was much more fun.

So I decided to avoid the magnolia route and chose a lovely shade called "Gentle Fawn". Sadly it isn't reminiscent of Bambi's bottom, it's quite like magnolia really! Damn those cunning paint sellers.

And Robbie? Please don't sue me, I'm only a librarian after all, but one day you are going to be eating your words. As Naomi Campbell found out to her cost, protesting too much is a dangerous game, and winning loads of dosh is only going to lead to blackmail you know! You should have just shrugged it off my friend.

More celeb craziness

So Brad wants to adopt Ange's kids? At what point are they finally going to admit they are a couple?! Not that anyone cares anymore, and I'm sure Jen doesn't want it rubbed in, but it has been SO obvious for ages now and they are still pretending they don't really even know each other! Celebs keeping their business private is one thing but do they really think we are all so thick that we don't know what's going on? It's a weird smug thing with them, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it annoys the living crap out of me. Just get married (if you haven't already), announce it and then we can move on...

To Kerazy Daddy Cruise! Yey!! My favourite crazy celeb is back with a vengeance! He's only gone and bought a baby scanner. Bless! Does he know he won't be needing it? Cushions don't show a great deal and Baby Cruise is merrily growing up in a top secret Scientology lab somewhere - probably Switzerland. All ready to "pop out" in a few months to Mommy and Daddy. Then Plan No. 2 can kick in, Tom's watched The Omen, he knows how it works. Kid grows up, kills a few people along the way, becomes President, kills anyone else who gets in his way, marrys a famous model, takes over the world. Then the world is doomed, all the Scientologists take off in their spaceships and leave the broken hull that was The World for Venus. You listen to me people, in 20 years you'll be wishing you had taken more notice!

Sweet dreams

Last night hubby talked in his sleep. He said (and I quote):

"It's ok. I am the devil. I am the devil in disguise"

Should I be worried that a) he thinks he is beelzebub or b) he thinks he is an elvis impersonator?

Answers by qualified shrinks welcome.

Hole in my bank account?

Today I was stood behind Nigel Planer (aka Neil from the Young Ones) at a cashpoint. He's very tall - just like on the tv! - and to reach down to the cashpoint he had to spread his legs in a comedy limbo pole move and squat down. Wasn't very - erm, the male equivalent of ladylike, stone me I can't think of the word! - anyway, made me chuckle.

He was very glum, maybe he's blown all his millions of royalties on cobblers.

Why I wish I had a chaffeur...

An event witnessed by my colleague yesterday made me for the first time ever wish I had a chauffeur. Let me explain.

Where we work there are some ridiculously posh types. Yesterday, a Rolls pulls up in the car park. A posh old chap and his trophy wife (younger by a good 20 years, blonde, immaculately groomed from spending every waking hour in the salon) are helped out of the car by their smart chaffeur all dapper in his suit and cap.

(Now you have to imagine the voice of someone posh like Stephen Fry)

""We’ll be back in an hour H" barked the man and marched off.

H?! That is SUCH a cool name. This is why I want a chauffeur, just so’s I can snap out the name "H" at every opportunity!

It’s a good enough reason isn’t it?

New glasses?

I finally bit the bullet and dragged my butt into a spectacle shop yesterday afternoon. The pair I have now are scratched to buggery and I must have been wearing them for the past 4 years. I never clean them either, imagine all the muck in between the frames and the glass. Ugh. If I’d have thought of that sooner I might have had new specs before now.

Anyway for people who don’t have to wear them, buying new glasses is a terrible TERRIBLE chore. You have to first get past the trauma of having to wear glasses at all – when I was younger my mum, (who was in charge back in those days), bought me awful giant blue framed, hexagon shaped things. Think of Deirdre Barlow and you’ll get what I’m talking about. I realise now why I never had a boyfriend at school. And don’t get me started on the poodle perm she made me have either. Anyway, once you’ve resigned yourself to having to wear them, you then have to try and find a pair that suit you, with the whole world and all the shop assistants sniggering at you when you try on a really bad pair (oh yes I’m paranoid alright).

But yesterday I must have been in a parallel universe. I tried on one pair which I immediately really liked. This never happens, I usually lose heart by the 6th pair and leg it. Who needs to see anyway? But this time I got caught by a male assistant who was camp as you like. He proceeded to take me round the whole shop trying pretty much every pair they had on, with a running commentary exclaiming "Ooh they really suit you! Ooh not those ones! Ugh DEFINITELY not those ones!” It was like Glasses Idol, we eventually narrowed it down to 6 pairs, then 3, then the ones I'd tried on first won! Hurray! And to top it all off, the runner up pair came free!

In the immortal words of John Hurt: “I can see! I can see!”.

Light relief

A man went to the doctors complaining of feeling unwell.

Doctor: "I'm sorry sir, you've got bird flu"

Man: "But doctor, what can you do to cure me?"

Doctor: "I'm sorry sir, it's untweetable".

[Nb. This is the only joke in a long line of bad jokes that has made my friends laugh. Oh yes. It's been a long haul, but it was worth it in the end]

Crazy loons want to work with me horror...

One of my colleagues is leaving next week for pastures new. Which has opened the floodgates of absolutely MENTAL people applying for her job. You wouldn't believe it if you hadn't seen the applications for yourself. Well, so far, the loons have only got as far as asking for details and an application form, and in doing so have proved themselves to be out of the running already. We should have told them not to bother filling them in. But equal ops and all that...

Apart from the usual never say die applicants that have applied for every job going here for the past 5 years with no success, the best one was a lady who said she wanted to work with us as she wanted a job she could retire from. What mental person would put that on their form? She wasn't that old, had a good 20 years or so in her yet. Unfortunately for her, one of our current librarians already has the monopoly on doing as little as absolutely possible until retirement. I want someone who is WILLING TO WORK GODDAMNIT. I'm not doing it all by myself forever!

And another lady librarian wants a challenge, to tax her brain and stimulate her mind. So cataloguing is out then. And how about checking through reams of microfiche? No? Too bad. Most library jobs, indeed any job anywhere, are made up of lots of mundane admin jobs that the saner ones of us take in our stride and get on with. This lady already said it was beneath her. And she wore an orange beret when she came in with her form. Duh duh. Next!

Age is just a number (unless you're in a leotard)...

We went to the seaside on Saturday night for an engagement party of an ex work colleague. It was very nice, and highly entertaining. He is 27, his new fiancée is 20. We didn’t know this when we went, we didn’t even know her name till we met her! So they have a do above a pub, nice room and a dj who played all the classics – Abba medleys, Grease megamix, Build Me Up (Buttercup) – guaranteed to get toes tapping. Well for us older lot anyway. Then there were lots of 20 year olds friends of the fiancée there who actually made me quite worried about the next generation. Short skirts and even shorter tops, fake blond hair, drinking weird blue concoctions, and all chain smoking. And they all had HUGE pot bellies hanging over their tops! Fabulous. I was worrying about having to spend the night with lots of glamorous young’uns, and I needn’t have worried at all, I felt super fabulous and had a great time dancing to all the classics while they all stood on the sidelines looking surly. There was also a very tall blond 20 year old who was terrifying – think Rachel Hunter mixed with Jordan - who must have been 6 months pregnant and this was sagging between her mini top and mini skirt. Lovely. And hubbie got flashed at by the sister of the intended within 2 seconds of her walking through the door – she had a top that in ordinary circumstances would have required REELS of tit tape – and she had none, no bra neither. I would have decked her an hour later the amount of rum I downed – but I decided to let it go, she wasn’t impressing anyone! And the 20 year old fiancée was very pretty, had a lovely dress and was skinny as a rake, but ruined it all by spending the night asking people if she looked fat. At one point she came up to us saying she had "breathed too much" and the zip had gone on the back of her dress. I needn’t have worried at all, they were all mad as rakes and paranoid to boot. Must be the sea air!

Hang up your dancing shoes!

Dear Madge,

Oh puhlease, you’re not Kylie Minogue, stop parading around in your smalls/leotards. Hot pants worked for Kylie, doing the same in a pink leotard isn’t working for you. You are being a bit Mr Benn with all your personality transplants – a cowgirl one day, an aged gymnast the next. What’s the next look? For all our sakes I hope it’s a sensible mother of 2 brown knee length dress, cardigan and sensible court shoes.

Christmas Blues

I LOVE Christmas. L.O.V.E. with a capital L. I am of an age to know better but I always have an advent calendar, and was THIS close to having a hissy fit when Tescos had sold out of my coveted Spongebob calendar last year. There’s none so good this year I tell you. I'm pre-ordering the Muppets Christmas Carol special edition. I have lots of sparkly lights and hanging things to festoon my usual one small room with. Now I have a whole house and garden to adorn - whoo! But I have hit one obstacle that is proving rather trying. Hubbie declares he HATES Christmas. Despite getting lots of lovely presents last year and dinner made for him by me, and as much booze as he could drink in 24 hours. I suspect this is because most pubs are closed, what is a man to do?! But he is showing signs of coming round to my way of thinking, but in a most bizarre way. After professing once again his hatred, he was captivated (like a small child/me and sparkly things) by a man size dancing reindeer in B & Q. Then yesterday, a giant Homer Simpson dressed as Father Christmas complete with blowing machine to keep him up. And he wants to buy one and have it in the corner of our front room. Much as I love him, and Christmas (not sure in which order!) I can’t let him do it. It’s not even real Santa, it’s a tacky Homer Simpson and thus is bright yellow and has a huge stomach (as does Father Xmas I grant you). So how can I accede to his weird Xmas taste without turning the house into one big grotto of tat?!

Kerazy parents take over the East Side (of London)

So as I was saying, parents…visit…gawd help us. Actually as it turned out, a pleasant weekend was had by all. And it turned out to be an “Introduction to the place you bought a house in and have lived in for several months after an afternoon’s perusal by your Dad”. There are places in my town that I never knew existed, but my parents found them on their first afternoon of browsing. Honestly, I think they would rather have spent the whole weekend looking round the shops than see me, on Sunday morning I got a call to say they were up (meanie that I am, I made them stay in a hotel, it’s best all round) but they were going round the shops (AGAIN) and would roll up at our house about lunchtime. Bless them. They even talked about moving here as they loved the shops so much. Were they in a parallel universe?

I am a bit of a snob about our town centre. On a weekend I NEVER go in unless I really have to – it’s full of Essex girlz who are really scary, all bling and very little clothing. And the shops are heaving with people trying to save 10p or something ridiculous, and fight for it. With nails. So I was forced to go in on Saturday to keep the olds happy, and you know, it wasn’t too bad at all. Suspiciously quiet and quite chav-free. And it’s only 7 weeks till Christmas. Everyone must have been at Lakeside!

They are coming to get you...

I have got the family down for the annual visit this weekend. Which will be nice. It’s starting off well as my dad, who isn’t even here yet, is keeping me highly amused with his text messaging abilities. Yesterday he texted the landline instead of my mobile. This has demonstrated something that I never knew was possible. A nice BT robot lady (a Dutch robot I think) reads out the message for you. But when you’re not expecting it, man it’s scary! I pressed the answer phone play button and this disembodied voice started saying “Hello, I am very much looking forward to seeing you soon…” I thought the aliens were finally coming for me, or some psycho serial killer/one of my husband’s exes (they are pretty much interchangeable) had tracked me down. Very strange and just a bit unsettling.

Then today he texts to say he’s on his way. He managed to pick the right phone this time. But he sent me a picture of him texting me by mistake. Bless.

What else can the weekend possibly have in store?

The joys of working with a pessimist.

I thought I was bad. Until I met someone who literally sighs with relief when they survive another week unscathed. A colleague who shall remain nameless has a fascinating habit of obsessively scanning the online papers and declaring doom to all around on a daily basis. Last week she declared on Friday that she would be dead by Monday of the bird flu. When Monday came around she sheepishly turned up for week declaring that she still felt a “bit off”. Then there was the flu for real, despite having a flu jab. Trench foot from getting wet feet. Something nasty from going to bed too early or too late. And she has planned her escape if anything particularly nasty means they have to seal London off and stop people leaving.

Yes she has actually considered her options. For a wide array of nasty things that could happen. This is a peculiar trait, and I am being hugely entertained by it. And it makes me feel so much better. I am more a take it or leave it kind of girl, if your number’s up it’s a bummer but at least you haven’t spent the better part of your life worrying about it happening. Coz it’s coming to us all eventually. Ooh I’m starting to be a portent of doom now! Quick! To the vodka…

Cluck cluck cluck...

Righto, all you selfish people out there in North London. That's it! Last night my hubbie was supposed to have his flu jab, he gets one for free as he is diabetic. So we go to the doctor's after work to find they had a mad rush in the afternoon and have no supplies left. For 2 weeks. What is it with people? The media in the UK are whipping everyone up into a frenzy and so it's everyone out for himself. Never mind all the poor old dears who are likely to cark it this winter as it's supposed to be "the bitterest winter of all time" (apart from in 1962-63 apparently thankyou father-in-law) and no-one can afford to put the heating on as British Gas have upped their prices by millions of pounds. Or the people like my hubbie who are vulnerable to things like the flu. Oh no. Everyone's rushing to have a flu jab, despite it not helping at all against bird flu, just coz the bloody media has panicked everyone.

It makes me despair. The other week people were literally at each other's throats for petrol, based on another news story loosely based on actual facts. In Tesco's at the weekend, people were fighting over supplements to the News of the World (yes really!). When the millennium was supposed to wipe out computers, people were stockpiling beans and water. What would really happen if there was any real catastrophe? I really hope that these events prove me wrong and the "human spirit"or whatever it's called kicks in and everyone helps each other out. But if the free dvd isn't in the papers I wouldn't hold your breath!

Mel Gibson is Saddam Hussain shocker!

Look at Mel Gibson!! Is he being a body double for Saddam in the box? I think we should be told. And he used to be so cute...

Big fat hairy testicles

Man it's been a long week. I'm doing the Friday night dead zone shift in the library - and there's no-one else here!! Can I close up and get home early? No chance. Someone would turn up at 2 minutes before closing and complain that we weren't open. Now the main reason for my shitty week has been a barrister. I feel guilty for being mean to him now, but he has annoyed the living daylights out of me all week. There's this really complicated legal research thing we do, and normally we might get asked to do one a day, it takes the barrister involved at least half a day, sometimes a whole day, to get through it all and it's a pain in the butt. This bloke has done 10 since Monday, 2 of them tonight on my late night when everyone knows it is the law that nobody bothers you and you can surf the net all night. And now I feel mean for being surly when he had loads of work to do! But he refused to listen to us when we tried to explain how it works and was being really arrogant. Grr. I have anger issues, I tell you.

Anyway, in my non being a stroppy librarian life, today I noticed the most unlucky street cleaner in London ever. The poor guy must have really upset his superiors. Normally they have those weird picky-up sticks for grabbing rubbish without having to touch it. And really thick gloves in case of needles or broken bottles. This guy had a bin bag and one dodgy looking glove. He looked so forlorn I wanted to rush out to my local cleaning produce shop and buy him some things to help. He didn't even get a cart! My life isn't so bad really. And I've just noticed I seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with rubbish.

It's a sign from the lord of crap!

I got home today and found a flyer from our council for a Recycling Competition!! Yes that's right, a Recycling Competition! Whoo! If you put a special sticker on your orange bag when you put it out, you stand to win a whole twenty pounds! Or even a hundred pounds once a month. This is so worth it. I am going to go through the bins at work too to make even more recycling. Oh damn, our library porter has the monopoly on that - I swear if I catch him rummaging through any more bins I'll...erm...probably mug him :-)

Bleurgh!!

In my obsession with Tom and Katie this quote came up.:

"We don't have a date yet," Tom revealed, "[But we have] big, big plans. We talk about it. I really didn't know that there were so many wedding magazines. I said, 'Are you kidding me? There are things for the flowers, the cake, the dresses' ... The thing that I love about Kate is that she's an artist, so she actually loves ribbons and she makes cards and creates art. She loves flowers, and she'll do her own floral arrangements. So it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a celebration."

She loves ribbons?! Puhlease. They'll be telling us she loves to bake cookies and that they hold beetledrives and tupperware parties next.

It's kittens!

So Katie is up the duff! How did that happen? She has allegedly been saving herself for marriage has she not? I bet her parents are thrilled. And even though Tom is the “dad”, the first thing that came to mind was that poor Katie was impregnated alien abduction style and knew nothing about it. Tom obviously has a point to prove – “It was Nicole not me!!” – and what a way to do it. It makes up for the weeks of no TomKat news, this is probably because she’s been held captive in a cave in remote Peru while the Cruise Scientology nuts decided what to do with her. It’s too late for the poor girl now! And after Nicolas Cage called his baby after Superman, do you think Tom is going to call this one Jesus? Or even L. Ron Hubbard II? I am sure he thinks his baby will be the future of mankind and they carefully vetted all the young actresses to find a suitable carrier.

You couldn’t make it up really.

Rubbish!

I am SO obsessed with recycling, it's so sad. In our old place, we had a big black plastic box that took everything pretty much so saved on bin bags and made you feel very virtuous. In the new place we have big bright orange plastic sacks that take everything apart from glass and it's great! But I am concerned. On bin days, an 80 year old man (he is so frail I want to go and help him, the day we put a million cardboard boxes out soon after we moved in I felt so guilty) has the job of taking all the bags left out and piling them into one BIG pile before the truck turns up and the young 'uns throw them in the back. But he piles the normal binbags and the orange recycling ones into one big pile. Surely they can't all be thrown in the back willy nilly? What's the point of recycling if they do that? Hmm. I think we should be told. "Dear Household Excess Produce Removal Co-ordinator..."

Oh my god, it's catching!

So after my slagging off of Dwayne and Jordan and all their clones, I found myself at 1pm last Wednesday afternoon having a fight with a 6ft builder. How did that happen? I normally don’t provoke arguments or talk to strange CRIMINALS. But this one couldn’t get away. You see, I was making my own way home and I had such trouble trying to buy my train ticket (being the good honest citizen I am, but then again my hips wouldn’t let me jump the barriers) and then when I eventually got back to my station this sleazy guy in sweatpants breezed through the barrier straight after me. I saw it happening but I was too late to pull back and let him try it on some other law-abiding person. So what to do? Normally in central London they’re long gone while you’re considering your options. But matey? He was casually sauntering along in front of me, smug as you like and I wasn’t having it. I asked him what was wrong with the ticket he had in his hand and he tried fobbing me off with some sob story about the ticket not working and not wanting to ask the guards to let him through. Then he waved the ticket at me in the pretence of being honest, and in huge bold letters it said “child”. “You’re not a child” I said, and then he started: “'Ave you got an 'usband? Get your 'usband down here and I’ll hav' it out wiv 'im”. To which he got: “I don’t need my husband to sort you out!” That did the trick. Having some 5ft and a bit librarian (and I was looking particularly librarian-y that day) shouting at him and wagging her finger vigorously to emphasise his crimes seemed to nonplus him. I don’t think he’ll be travelling without a ticket ever again. In fact it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d gone straight back to the station and begged to be allowed to pay for years of fare-dodging.

Just beware anyone with criminal tendencies. You might meet me on a sunny afternoon. Then you’ve had it.

Welcome to Essex...

So sad as it may seem, I am now an Essex girl. Not by choice you understand, but because we could afford our lovely house here. And it's not been bad round here, if you avoid the town centre on a Saturday you don't see many chavs and avoid the excesses of Essexdom. The neighbours are lovely and we have a chip shop right round the corner and about ten million takeaways send us menus every day, we have so many we could eat at a different place for about a month without repeating ourselves. So far so good. But Saturday night we were rudely awakened by a typical Essex boy/girl fight right under our window. This is how it went (you have to imagine an Essex accent, kind of like Birds of a Feather, and really loud and getting louder in the sweary bits):

Dwayne: (I didn't catch his name but this sounds about right): "Oi! Youf broken me 'eart you fuckin' slag."

Jordan: "It was a mistake Dwayne, I'm really sorry"

Dwayne: "You SLAG you big fat SLAG"

Jordan: "Aw Dwayne, I made a mistake, can't we leave it? I really really luv yah"

Dwayne: "Feck off slag"

Jordan: "Dwayne, if you leave me now I'm gonna kill meself. I mean it!"

Dwayne: "!!!"

Jordan: "Come back Dwayne! COME BACK!! AAAGGGHHHHH!!!"

Dwayne: "Oh you fuckin' slag, I'm gonna ring your mam and tell her what a slag you are"

Jordan: "No! You'd better not fone me mam, fuck off Dwayne, I never wanna see you again"

[Sound of mobile being thrown and smashing into bits by the lamppost across the road]

Jordan: "No!! Not me fone Dwayne! I love ya Dwayne!"

Man in flat across the road: "Will you two sod off?!!"

Dwayne: "Right! I'm gonna come back wiv all me mates and get you! What do ya fink you are doin' looking' at me?"

And on and on. I would love to know what happened to them and if Dwayne eventually forgave Jordan. It didn't help that as I didn't dare look out of the window, I had an image of Vicky Pollard and Eminem in my head when I was listening to them. Then we were woken up by the Beach Boys being played at full volume by the crazy lesbian next door when her mum went to church in the morning. Earplugs at the ready next weekend...

Renee update!

So my source in the US says that Kenny is gay. You would have thought Renee would have established that before marriage. Or is she such a good southern gel that she waited till the wedding night and then got quite a shock. Doesn't she watch her own (or any) movies? And what was Kenny thinking? Did he think he would "get over it", or that he'd get half her millions just from marrying her, or that she's readily agree to a marriage of convenience (a la Cruise/Kidman allegedly)? I read today that Jack White has hot-footed it to Renee to help her get over it, leaving his own hastily married wife well pissed off. I love celeb rumours, now the Tomkat camp has gone into hiding it was jolly well time someone else caused some goss.

Footpath of celebrity?

So London has now got it's own Walk of Fame. Cool huh? A chance to celebrate some of Britain's best actors and bring a bit of Hollywood glamour to London. Nah. Who did they pick? Out of all the hundreds of well-loved actors from years and years of film and tv you would have thought they'd be spoilt for choice. But Hollywood get Marlon Brando. We get Ant and Dec. Hollywood get Greta Garbo. We get Dame Edna Everage. And why do we need to copy the Walk of Fame? Nicole Kidman made it onto both, so surely (apart from the bizarre tv celebrities that get on because they have been on prime time Saturday night tv for a few months and the grannies love em'), the Walks should mirror each other? And who picks them?!

And "Avenue of the Stars" as a name? Oh puhlease. It'll be a different story in a week or two when a few drunks have visited them. More like Urinal of the Rich and Famous.

Poor old Renee...

So after 4 months of marriage and a whopping 15 days spent together, Renee Zellwegger has decided enough is enough and is getting an annulment. Of course no-one ever says why, apart from a very vague reference to "fraud", so that fans of celeb gossip can spend hours and hours trying to decide what happened. These are my theories:

a) Kenny isn't really a multi-billionaire country singer, he is a successful mime artist who mimes to huge audiences, and Renee only found out when she asked him to serenade her on honeymoon and realised he didn't have the voice of an angel at all, more a rusty nail dragged down a blackboard.

b) She is still hung up on that kerazy Jack Black of the White Stripes (or substitute Jim Carey) and only married Kenny in a fit of jealousy/trying to win him back scenario that clearly backfired.

c) She refused to give up her career and go and live in backwater Tenessee breeding loads of kids and only seeing Kenny in between his world tours.

d) He refused to be arm candy and give up his successful miming career to follow her round the world to all her premieres and wait around in dodgy cafeterias while she's off filming.

e) The "fraud" references relate to the fact that she thought she was marrying Kenny Loggins (of Footloose fame) as she was off her head on champagne and pina coladas. When she sobered up she realised her mistake.

f) He thought she could wrap her legs round her head after all that dance training for Chicago. But she couldn't.

Ooh I could go on all night! It is sad, but then at least they can afford lawyers to swiftly annul the marriage and carry on like it never happened. But at least Kenny will be a hit with the girls. And what's with the "annul" rather than "divorce"? Does that mean they never did it either?! Poor poor Renee.

Yikes I'm falling apart!

Ooh I'm having a poor few weeks since my birthday. Today I am off work with a bad back. I'm not 60!! I don't even know what I did, but it bloody hurts. I never used to suffer with anything at all, a few migraines here and there and I've always had dodgy knees. But in the past 3 weeks or so, it's been possible RSI, bad back, my eyes are getting worse I'm sure and I found a white hair! AGH! I could be being a bit Dot Cotton over all this, but is it possible to suddenly age?! Or have I been in an ageing vacuum all this time? It's quite a shock I have to tell you. I have been lucky, in my 20s the worst thing I had was a hacking cough that lasted for weeks and drove me and my housemates mad. And I was on holiday in Crete at the time it started so my poor friend was kept awake, and I must apologise to all the people on the plane home too while I think about it. But now I'm prematurely old and can barely move, there's so much to do. Now I'm forced to spend time in our new house while it's daylight (which makes things look so much worse don't you find?), the weeds are taking over the garden, the front room looks like one of those Big Yellow Storage places and my dad is threatening a visit soon too. Renting was so much easier!

On the plus side, it sounds like Britney is going to name her kid Preston. Brilliant! I'm from Preston, and it's getting tons of press at the moment - Freddie Flintoff got the freedom of Preston the other week. He was being interviewed last week and I was listening thinking, "blimey he's got a right accent on him" then realised that's what I used to sound like before I defected south. Britters might also call the kid London which is also cool. As strange celebrity baby names go, they aren't too bad. Not as bad as Apple Paltrow or Junior Andre!

I think the Woman in Black might be partly to blame for my back problems. We went on Wednesday night and I was SO scared. I've seen it twice before and read the book so theoretically I shouldn't have been scared. Oh no. I was terrified! I don't know how they do it. There's 2 actors (plus the eerie woman) and not much of a set to speak of, 3 chairs, a basket, a few old boxes and some sheets. But they make it seem so real, and it is genuinely scary. The audience were screaming every few minutes in the second half. And jumping. Which leads to poorly backs I think. But honestly, if you haven't seen it and you like scary things, go and see it. You'll be checking under the bed before you go to sleep...

Oh purlease!!

Today I have been told WAY too much information by certain acquaintances of mine. There really is no good reason to share very personal information with people you know, it puts vivid pictures in the mind that are very difficult to get rid of and frankly I can do without it. Today I have been told about birth control methods, that someone I know has caught a nasty STD off someone on the same estate (but is still going back for more) and that a friend of mine has taken up salsa dancing. The last one isn't particularly offensive but it did put a brilliant picture in my mind of flouncy sleeves and a big red flag. Oh sorry, that's bull-fighting. Almost the same thing I think!

But there is no excuse for being sat innocently on the enquiry desk only to have such filth sent to you to peruse. I am sure I am going to have nightmares tonight.

On the plus side, today we started doing library tours for new students. Ordinarily I hate them, I said several times today to anyone that would listen that I HATE LIBRARY TOURS. To be fair, we don't do that many, a couple of weeks once a day, but I've got a right thing about them. So imagine my horror when I found myself actually enjoying my tour today, and then volunteering to do another one when a lady turned up late for hers. What has got into me? The 6 lads I showed round on my proper tour were very polite, asked sensible questions, and all shook my hand when they left! Bless. I must look like an old married woman this year. Last year I got my stupidest question of my career (and he's still around!) - "has anyone ever been knifed in the head in this library? It looks like the kind of place that would". !!!!. I politely said "no I don't think so" but this bloke wants to be a lawyer? Well actually, thinking about it I suppose he's perfectly qualified being a bit (actually alot) eccentric! Another favourite is a bloke who asked us what size bag he should buy to keep all his books in, and then bought his purchase in to show us! He then proceeded to spend the next year asking us what pen/calculator/pad he should buy too and drove us all to distraction. Library users, they're all a bit odd.

Cut off in my prime?

So recently I've been suffering a bit with my wrist - early onset RSI I hear you cry, will Bookish Barbara be no more? Well, as I'm typing now it doesn't hurt a bit, but at work it really does. So being a sensible old stick, I contacted our personnel lady to see if she could suggest anything. She came over to look at my work station, and I thought I was on to a winner when she condemned my desk and said it was really rubbish and that was the root of all my problems. She also muttered the phrase "personal injury claim" so I thought: "Brilliant! She's going to sort it right out and heal my poor old wrist so I don't have to sue their arse". But no. After a promising start she said "well we can't do anything about it, so learn some keyboard shortcuts and try and be sensible about having breaks". Pft!! They won't get me a new chair with arms, but I am getting one of those cool mousemats with a gel pad in it. I had one of those before, and it was brilliant as a stress reliever, I spent most of my time messing with the gel pad, not leaning on it!

And the fact that my monitor is at an angle meaning I have to twist to use it, my desk hasn't enough room to lean my arm on flat when I'm using the mouse, and my arms are about to drop off because of it? Nada. I'm definitely going to take advantage of the advice about breaks, and when my boss asks why I'm always wandering off, I'll say it was on the advice of the personnel lady! Marvellous.

Of course, I can't really sue them as most of the time I'm on the computer I'm surfing the net or writing my blog! Dammit. Now I've got the miracles of the internet at home (yes indeedy it finally happened!) I'll have to do proper work - which incidentally does involve lots of typing - and then sue their arses!!

Birthday girls

So as it turned out, the booze-fuelled rampage round London turned into a more sedate affair. It started off with my birthday friend (a whole day older!) running into a large man as she was waving at me and paying scant attention to her immediate surroundings, she always does things like that! She'd fallen over on the way and ruined her beautiful pink shoes too so that was Bad Thing No. 2 (of the 3 things that always happen). I suppose running into a fat man isn't exactly Bad so I could substitute my failed attempt to buy new flip-flops. I found 2 pairs in Accessorise but only in wee tiny feet sizes (see Lady Librarian for this) so when I asked if they had any more I was met with a scathing "It's winter now madam". !!! Winter?! It's September people, Indian summer anyone? And Madam?! Do I look like Heidi Fleiss? Anyway, we made it unscathed to a lovely falafel place on Old Compton Street, and we got seats right opposite the Admiral Duncan pub (infamous for nail bombers sadly) - it is an amazing bright pink pub full of mustachioed men in vest tops and shorts. Kind of like Frankie Goes to Hollywood but more 2005 (they weren't all in shorts, I'm stereotyping here!). So we sat and ate big fat falafels and watched the comings and goings for a while and then Bad Thing No. 3 happened. Lady Librarian had been at work all day, (she does a 6 day week!) and the poor thing had spent the day with Bad Library Users and had the hump. Poor thing, she works way too hard and so she stayed in. That meant the person who could jolly us old ladies (on account of her being younger and knowing the cool scene better than we do) into drinking shots and dancing our socks off was no more, and so we stayed in the pub till closing and then wandered homebound. It was a good night, though less debauched than I'd planned, and my other young friend invented a great drink - gin with cranberry and apple juice. Yum. Maybe it is a sign of our age, we had seats so when someone suggested moving on to another pub we vetoed it on account of having to possibly stand up! Rock n' roll people, rock n' roll...

Speaka de Eenglish??

On Saturday night en route to the birthday do (more later) I had an entertaining encounter with a man on the tube. I don’t get the tube very often anymore and I was getting the Circle Line round from Liverpool St to Embankment. As a tube pulled up, a man asked me if it went to Victoria. I had to think about that for a second to see which way round the tube was going (imagine my horror if he’d ended up at King’s Cross instead!) and in this very short period he looked at me and said very slowly “Does … this … train … go … to … Victoria…?”. Do I look like a tourist or an idiot?! Why ask me if either is true? So I just said “yes” and scarpered up the other end of the carriage. I should have dragged out my GCSE French and babbled on at him about toilets in French to scare him off.

It’s my party and I’ll strop if I want to…

So it’s my birthday on Saturday. Me & my friend who is a whole day older than me (but who isn’t showing any signs of being any more mature!) are having our usual joint do on Saturday night but I haven’t half got the hump about it. The past few years’ dos have been great, drinking and dancing and lots of embarrassing behaviour to be frequently dragged out by our friends to humiliate us with. I think my crowning glory was the year before last when I ended up being sick at Victoria Station at 2 in the morning, much to the displeasure of the poor station cleaner who happened to be passing. And in the train. All the way home. Ick. And I think that was the day I flashed my pants at my male housemate – admittedly I was unconscious and he was carrying me to bed – but how that one lingers. Oh no, that was a different day.

Anyway, I think I’ve got the grumps because now I’m married/old (I can’t decide which one it is!) I can’t be doing silly things like that anymore. I seem to be unable to get drunk nowadays and not that I want to now I’ve ensnared my lovely husband but I used to have this weird ability to attract lots of men when out on the town. This could have been because of the short skirts, or the beer goggles, who knows, but it was good for the old self esteem. Now although I have no desire to attract anyone else (man I’ve had my fair share of odd men in my glory days), I think it’s the fact that I could. The old self esteem is a bit low, and I feel like an old housewife doomed to a life of domesticity. My life at the moment revolves around gardening and cleaning and trying to get to Ikea. I used to be famous (or is that infamous?) for stupid behaviour and spending the weekends doing stupid things. I don’t do silly at the moment. Hubby is also prevaricating (look! long word alert!) about whether to come out at all, and he is spending the day watching football (yes I am a football widow). This is a perfect excuse to go shopping methinks but instead I’m grumpy about him not spending the whole day making me breakfast in bed, feeding me chocolate cake and champagne while also peeling grapes as I lounge in the garden reading trashy novels, and providing lots of lovely surprises all day long. As Lady Librarian points out, this would never happen. He is a man and men don’t think like we do. Though as long as he makes me a cuppa I’ll be quite happy!

So I think my challenge for Saturday is to drink lots and lots of random evil alcohol and see what the night brings! I need my stupid side back! But next week I’ll be moaning about the perils of alcohol and heels I should think.

Do you want our food tester to try that sir?

Last week a funny thing happened. We went out for a meal to one of our local pubs after a very long day. I was really looking forward to it, mmm someone else can make my dinner! But it all went a bit wrong. It didn't bode well when we got in there, a whole family were in mid Jerry Springer mode, swearing at each other and threatening to leave every 5 minutes. Then when we tried to order there was a big hoo haa about whether they were still serving (this was 7.30) but they finally agreed to serve us. Then my dinner arrived. The lady who served it said they stopped serving at 8 which confused me about why we had had to argue with them in the first place. Then we were waiting for the other meal. And we waited and waited. Finally we both made a start on mine which to be honest wasn't great. How can you make chips rubbery? Then my other half swore he saw his dinner waltz past to the only other table with people sitting at it. Then just as quickly the waitress whipped it back and disappeared into the kitchen again. 2 minutes later the meal reappeared, with one corner cut off! Sorry vegetarians, it was a steak. He was so hungry he ate it anyway but I wish we'd refused it and got our money back. I bet the other person in the pub wasn't a mystery shopper testing the wares for our benefit, and the thought that he'd licked our dinner really put us off. Next time I'm not being so lazy and cooking! But what a pisser.

And another thing...

Things that have made me cross this week:
Drivers of cars like Audis and BMWs who think that they can weave in and out of traffic with no regard for other drivers. They drive me nuts. Weaving in and out of a 3 lane carriageway with everyone doing 60 mph. We had a near miss with a BMW this morning as he blithely undercut everyone using the inside lane – which last time I looked at the highway code was a no-no – as the people in the other 2 lanes weren’t going fast enough for him. If I started taking numberplates down of ar*ehole drivers I’d be down the copshop every day and they would have to ban me for using all their resources! I want to Pimp our van with one of those police ‘slow down’ signs on the back – that would scare them, if they thought we were undercover cops!

Cyclists – still making me cross. And scooter drivers. Grrr.

My windchime. I was given a lovely wooden windchime for my birthday last year. As we lived in a flat it has been languishing in the spare room, but now we’ve moved into a house I put it up in the garden. Queue lovely melodious chimes for a day or so. Then I realised I hadn’t heard it for a few days and went to investigate. The wood has stretched so much that it almost reaches the ground so the chime is on the floor! Typical.

Barristers – this week they have been mainly very very irritating.

A lady from the Times. Oh ho, this is my favourite irritating thing of the week.Yesterday at 5.45 I received a call in the Library from a plum-voiced lady (whose name I didn’t catch when she barked it at me) who said they were writing an article and needed our crest immediately. Sadly as it was that time in the evening the librarian who deals with all bizarre enquiries like this had gone for the day (and indeed weekend) and with it being August, lots of the senior staff aren’t here as it’s the only time they can get holidays as the courts are closed. I very politely explained all this and said it would have to wait till today at the very least, or next week when everyone is back. “I’m from a national newspaper, I don’t do people being on holiday” she snipped at me. Then I lost it and told her that if she decided to phone up at some random time demanding things then she obviously wasn’t going to get what she wanted. Stick your national newspaper where the sun don’t shine! Rar!

Librarians in the news (or bad press shocker!)

Well the papers this week have been full of horror stories about a SHORTAGE OF LIBRARIANS. My god. Is there a need to scare the general public with stories like this?! I found it quite entertaining to begin with, they have basically realised that by 2010 all the doddery old librarians in public libraries will have carked it and there aren’t enough new librarians to replace them. I have a few problems with this. Firstly, I know at least 2 people who are having huge problems trying to get posts in libraries, and this is mostly because all the jobs are filled by doddery old timers. So are they supposed to temp for a few years till they pop their clogs? No. Most sensible young and hip librarians are getting jobs in the city, working for law firms or big companies – they pay better for starters, have better perks and have far better career opportunities. So then of course they don’t want to go and work for some local lending library in Liverpool or wherever, well not until nearer retirement anyway!

Then this morning on the TV the BBC ran a feature on the shortage. It was absolute rubbish. They based it on a public library in Liverpool and went out on the street to ask the general public what they thought about librarians. It was awful! They all came out with the usual stereotypes that librarians were boring, wore cardigans, had their hair in buns etc etc. Then one evil South African girl said “well it isn’t a career is it? It’s just a job”. Pft! Try telling that to the people who have spent years getting qualifications – librarianship is one of the most qualified professions there is. I’ve got a degree, a postgraduate degree and chartership, A friend of mine went crazy and has 2 degrees! Admittedly, in public libraries there are the remnants of people who got their jobs when they didn’t need to be qualified, but then they have years of experience behind them. And as for boring. Well I would find working as a shop assistant (which the South African clearly was) boring, but do I slag them off?! Any job can be boring, and public library work can be less stressful than in other sectors, but you still have to have the skills to calm down an upset octogenarian as the latest Catherine Cookson is on loan already. Seriously, you need the skills of a hostage negotiator sometimes in this job.

The BBC then drafted in a PR “expert” to tell us librarians what to do to improve our image. His suggestion? Coffee shops. Uh huh. I think Borders have the monopoly on that one already, and you remember what happens to librarians when food and drink are brought into libraries don’t you?! For my part, I would love to have Trinny and Susannah glam up a bunch of nondescript library staff, that would be brilliant! But then I think some of our users here like the stern image librarians get – they get off on being told to be quiet or to go outside with their mobile phones! There’s a fine line between librarianship and S&M sometimes I think :-)

Another librarian blog!

On my way to work this morning for some sad reason my brain started thinking about librarians in books I've read recently. This was probably due to all the publicity for the Da Vinci Code at the moment but hey, good subject for a blog!

In The Time Traveller’s Wife the main character Henry thinks that a career choice of being a librarian is a very suitable job to combine with his time travelling antics. He spends a lot of time in the stacks shelving (and often naked) to avoid users when he knows he might pop off at any time. In real life they would track him down, and even if he had gone back 25 years there would still be someone wanting to know how to use the photocopier. I once knew a “librarian” (for want of a better word) who used to go off to the stacks to have a sleep. Do you think he was time travelling too? Now I do love this book, but my practical librarian mind has issues with it. Why didn’t he become an accountant? No one would have noticed if he’d disappeared. Or in the words of someone I know was it because librarianship doesn’t require any brainpower and is mindless, so when he popped up again after a time travel, he could carry on as if nothing had happened. I don’t think so!

The Da Vinci Code: this book is great because it has a librarian from King’s College Library where I used to work. However, this book is quite obviously fiction as the librarian lets someone in who ISN’T A MEMBER and then MAKES THEM A CUP OF TEA. In a library. It would never happen. Period. The mere sight of food or drink in the vicinity of books can turn even the mildest-mannered librarian into a spitting raging ball of fury. (As an aside, I think it’s hilarious that Tom Hanks (mild-mannered actor) has been assailed by crazed nuns who think he represents the anti-christ. Poor old Tom, it’s only a day-job love, you’ll be back filming worthy yet uncontroversial films soon…)

Ghostbusters: I have a special place in my heart for this film as it starts off with ghosts in a library. But did they really have to trash the joint? I think the librarians on duty at the time would have been much better placed to politely ask the offending spectres to leave, rather than bringing in the big guns and destroying the shelving. Ah yes that brings me on to The Mummy. This film infuriates me. Kooky Rachel Weisz plays a librarian who obviously wasn’t born to the job. When she knocks all the shelves down she doesn’t look remotely guilty or concerned about the fate of the books she’s destroyed. And then she decides to go off and fight supernatural beasties. Most typical librarians would choose to remain in the libraries and let the heroic types risk their necks. And I bet she was supposed to be on the issue desk!

I’m sure there’s loads more librarians in film and fiction, but my brain just died. The sad indexer part of me every now and then when I read a book with a librarian in it thinks “ooh I should start a list” but thankfully my more normal self has prevailed so far! But is this blog the beginning of my downfall?!?!

When librarians get the hump...

Grrr. Now my job isn’t stressful at all most of the time (except that one time we had a rush of 5 barristers at the desk) and I can do most of my jobs blindfolded, so there is absolutely no reason for me to have the hump. We’re on "vacation hours", there are far less people around than normal, and from today my boss is off so we can run riot. But I am so fed up. I can’t be bothered to do anything, I sit at my pc glowering, and watch the clock till it’s time to go home. Our poor users look too scared to come to the desk, usually I can have a laugh with them and they are mostly very sweet. And then I think that everyone thinks I must have had a row with the other half and that makes me even crosser!

I think in part it’s due to wanting to do stuff at home. There are a million jobs to do and no time while I’m forced to go to work to pay for it all! I’ve decided that my ideal job would be to do houses up, sell them for billions of pounds and then be able to retire in ten years or so. I love deciding what colour to paint rooms, and if I had a huge budget for expensive furnishings and gadgets it would be great! But I’m sure once I’d finished I’d want to live there and would refuse to sell it. I was watching one of those property programmes the other night, and there was this brilliant house which was an upside down house. It had a lovely courtyard and was really quirky but the couple who were looking to buy weren’t interested at all. If I had half a million quid to throw around I’d have had it.

On the plus side though, today I had to go and buy a birthday present for my sister-in-law. I got her ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ on DVD (her video has worn out she’s watched it so much!) and when I got it to the till it was cheaper than it said (I love it when that happens!) and as an added bonus I got some free stickers! I have absolutely no idea why, but they cheered me up no end.

I need some celebrity gossip to cheer me up. It’s been oh so quiet on the Cruise/Holmes front, the most exciting thing that happened this week was that Madonna fell off a horse. Come on celebs, do your stuff!

Customer service taken to extremes...

So, tomorrow a brand new lovely shiny kitchen is being delivered to our new house. (I am obsessed with all things housey or gardeney at the moment, where has my obsession with vodka and all things purple gone?!). But the company we bought it from was supposed to phone yesterday to confirm, so I called them today to check. It’s all fine, and will be delivered as expected. But as a bonus, I had a brilliant conversation with the man on the customer services helpline. He was lovely (but a bit crazed I think) and took it really personally that we hadn’t had the phone call.

Englebert: (names have been changed to protect the innocent crazed helpline operator): "Oh I am SO SO sorry, you should have had a call yesterday. I really don’t know what went wrong. PLEASE accept my apologies"

Me: "Oh that’s ok, I’m just pleased it is being delivered"

Englebert: "I mean I am SO sorry, what can have gone wrong? This is awful, you really shouldn’t have had to phone us!

Me: "No really, that’s fine"

Englebert: "It is awful that you didn't get a call. But please accept my assurances that it will be delivered tomorrow afternoon. Now, can we fit a lorry the size of a double decker bus outside your house?"

Me: "?? … Yes, I’m sure it won’t be a problem" (thinking, "what would happen if I said no?")

Englebert: "Goodo! They do drive big lorries you know."

Me: "!!!!"

And on and on and on. Bless him! It was like he’d built the kitchen himself and it broke his heart to think that his company might have upset us. Nowadays I am surprised if companies do phone/deliver when they say they will so it really wasn’t a big deal. But he definitely earns gold customer services stars from me, I might ring him again tomorrow just to definitely check it’s on the way! I just hope the kitchen comes with a big shiny ribbon on it and extra gold accessories to make up for our distress :-)

My neighbours get their comeuppance!

This has made me so so happy, and I know it’s evil. As we’re leaving our flat soon we had some people come to look at it the other night. As you may or may not know, our upstairs neighbours are the spawn of satan and have made our lives hell. They have a little girl who screams constantly, runs around with clogs on till gone midnight, and never seems to leave the house or go to school. The wife speaks very poor English and screams at the little girl in Russian (which sounds much more threatening than in English, I’m sure it’s all about kneecaps and concrete shoes). The husband is very strange too but can manage to tell us how it is (in his ideal world) in English. We share the garden and the drive, but when we moved in the husband made it very plain that he parked his car on the drive and there wasn’t room for another. And we share the back garden and washing line, but the wife (who doesn’t work and is in all week!) hogs the line all weekend so we can’t use it. And we can’t sit in the garden due to the presence of the evil little girl with toys everywhere. We have never bothered to bring this up with them as we knew we weren’t staying there for that long, and I have had enough problems with bad neighbours for a lifetime.

But anyway, the couple who want to move in are better than my wildest dreams could possible have come up with (with the exception of some chavs with a big stereo system and a rottweiler). She is 9 months pregnant, about to give birth – queue screaming baby. She also has a dog, and announced that she wanted to divide the garden up with a fence. They also want to park on the drive. Go new people!! It was all I could do not to hug them! They are a really nice couple, but unlike me, don’t take any shit. The upstairs neighbours are so getting what’s coming to them. I wish I was around to see it.

A whole week off to argue about paint!

So next week I will be mainly trying to decide what colour to paint the kitchen and the lounge. It’s really difficult when there’s another person involved, when I lived by myself I painted my bedroom with one wall lilac and the rest cream and it was lovely. Now I’ve got to agree on a colour scheme with my lovely husband. We don’t disagree a lot, but I’m sure whatever I say is nice he will say the opposite! Queue lots of pointless arguments, and I get all cross and irrational over things like kitchen cupboards and blinds. But I should enjoy it, I’ve got the opportunity to make it feel like our home and we can do whatever we want, so why stress? If it doesn’t look right we can change it. But of course I will stress. I’ll want a nice shade of cream (how exciting am I?!) and hubby will want a very slightly different shade (not obvious to the naked eye) and world war 3 will break out. So when I get back to work I hope to have a lovely kitchen and lounge that isn’t the greenish white colour it is at the moment. And still have a husband of course! Sure I will :-)

Go Lauren Bacall!!

Well she is only saying what everyone else is thinking! In these days of libel actions and litigious celebs, it’s heartening to see someone unafraid to have a right old go! I guess if I was 81 I would say it how it was too! You can always blame it on senility and get away with it (though if you’re reading this Lauren, I’m obviously not referring to you so please don’t sue me). Poor Tom Cruise seems to have dropped out of the media circus lately, how long do you think it will be before the break-up with Katie is announced due to "work pressures"? I wonder if he will respond to his slagging by Lauren, she also had a go at his ex-wife a while back too. But then Tom himself isn’t averse to random attacking of other celebs, poor old Brooke Shields must have wondered what she did to deserve that. Ooh how I love the bitchy backstabbing world that is celebville, I’m just glad I only have a ringside seat and am not in the firing line. Who will be next?

"Computer glitches" or just plain incompetence?

We finally got the keys to our lovely house at 4pm on Friday. And of course, it being me, it didn’t all go to plan. At 11.30 we called the estate agent hoping to be told that we had completed and could get into the house. No such luck. Queue calls every hour, by 3pm I was starting to think it would be Monday before we got them. Our solicitor (the monkey trained one) insisted that the money had left their account but it hadn’t reached the seller’s. So I asked the obvious question of "you did send it to the right account didn’t you?". This was met with a slight pause and "oh of course, we double checked that already" (i.e. "as soon as I get off the phone I’ll be checking that immediately") and so the money was lost in cyberspace. Then at 4pm we got the call, hurrah!! Turns out (the solicitor’s secretary probably shouldn’t have told me this) that their computers were down in the morning so the money wasn’t sent "first thing" at all and that explains why it took so long. If they’d just admitted that in the first place I wouldn’t have minded so much, at least I would have known not to have all the family down at 11.30 sitting around tapping their feet and drinking far too much coffee.

So we are house owners. And despite all the stress, tears, nervous breakdowns and arguments, it has been well worth it. It’s such a weird feeling having your own home, I’ve lived in rented flats or houses of one form or another for about 12 years, and I have never stayed anywhere longer than 2 years. (I’m not on the run from the law, I just move a lot!) So knowing that I will probably be in this house for years (well until I can face the prospect of selling – so that will be never) is a bit odd. But exciting too. There’s so much potential (and so much to be done too!) that it will take about 20 years before it’s how we want it. We have an apple tree and a runner bean rack at the end of the garden – I must be getting old, as I was so excited at the prospect of growing beans and tomatoes that I thought I might be sick! (I am ignoring the fact that I have no idea how to do this much less taming the garden itself). Long gone are the days when I got excited at the prospect of going dancing every night and being sick from vodka abuse every morning. Hellooo old age!

Rain rain rain

It’s nearly August, and it’s done nothing but rain this week. I know Lady Librarian has a theory on the weather, but I would like to make a request that the sun comes out tomorrow. This is so I can see my new house in the sunshine and not be disheartened by a gloomy empty house. Oh, and the week after next too. I will be mainly painting and/or mowing the lawn, and for one I don’t want to face a forest of grass and weeds, and I want to have a nice week off with lots of sunshine to bask in. So there. If you could fix it Mr Weatherman that would be great.

Go Sienna! Or - how to p*ss off your cheating fiancé!

Go girl! In the papers today, Sienna Miller has been spotted draped round Orlando Bloom (who clearly has a thing for blondes). Of all the men she could have picked to annoy Cheating Jude with, what a choice! Lovely Orlando, who is also British, making tons of cash in movie land, and not too bad to look at. Marvellous. Leave Jude to the nanny, they deserve each other. Orlando’s younger than Jude, and isn’t so pretentious. Though I don’t like him much with blonde hair – stay with the moody dark look Orlando!

Now all we need to do is get Katie Holmes to accidentally bump into some younger movie star – hmm, say Colin Farrell for interests’ sake, and celebrity loveland is sorted!

Pimp my Ride UK style...

Why why why?? Why take something as great as Pimp my Ride US style and bring it over here and make us all look like geeks?! I watched an episode last night and I was hiding behind my hands in horror. I can only hope they aren’t showing it in America, or we’ll all be laughing stocks. Firstly, the presenters. Xhibit is a cool guy, he can laugh at himself and the dodgy piles of metal that are presented as cars at the beginning of the show. He lets the other people do their stuff and can cope with crazed American teens throwing themselves at him. Now in the UK, we have got Westwood. Westwho?! I had only heard of him in the context that he was shot in a drive-by shooting and allegedly is a DJ. A TV presenter he ain’t. He is truly awful. Now I am sure he is very nice and in real life can be funny and entertaining. Whoever had the bright idea to have him front the show mustn’t have seen the original. Or they had a very small budget. But then, I could have done the job better. Hell, anyone could. Even my least favourite celeb, Tom Cruise.

Then we have the cars. American cars are much cooler. They have Cadillacs, dodgy monster truck type cars, and jeeps. We have Polos, Capris and Golfs. The team who do the cars up just don’t have the inspiration of their US counterparts, but then if I was faced with a dodgy Golf with it’s bumper hanging off and a load of fast food wrappers in the back, I’d be hard pressed too.

And what’s with the people having a load of rubbish in their cars? They never wash them either. They don’t deserve to be Pimped. They wouldn’t look after their new cars, in a month they’d have crashed them, covered the lovely interiors in rubbish and sold the DVD players that seem to have become standard in the Pimped cars. (Though this is standard to both US and UK versions).

And almost finally, the people being Pimped. UK teens just don’t get it. They look faintly excited at the thought of having their skips on wheels done up (presumably so they can sell them straightaway), and they just don’t do the over the top hysteria that makes the US version so funny.

And don’t get me started on Westwood’s attempts at Street. His dodgy hand signals, arm waving and attempts at cool ‘down with the kids’ slang is just embarrassing. They could at least have given him an introduction to street slang. That’s all I’m saying.

London

Well it’s weird to live in London at the moment. More bombs, but more inept bombers than last time. There’s police everywhere, cars are being stopped and searched, buses are being stopped and searched, and everytime someone reports something suspicious hordes of armed police descend on the area. I really don’t know how you deal with suicide bombers – they aren’t worried about themselves or their families, or whoever gets in their way. I like a story I heard yesterday. When Warren Street was closed off, a group of Hare Krishna’s turned up at the cordon singing and dancing but the police moved them on as it "wasn’t appropriate". Not to be blasé about what’s going on, and about the people who have been affected, but I think it’s a great way to show defiance to the people who want to blow us all up. Hiding away and being scared to go about your normal life isn’t the way forward. When your numbers up, you just have to ensure you lived life to the full and that you will be remembered.

In my normal not being bombed life, things are looking up finally. After all the aggro, incompetence and worrying, we exchanged on our house today and will collect the keys next Friday! Whoo! So here’s to a life of decorating, weekends at Homebase, and living in a hovel for the next 5 years until we can afford to do it up! Homebuying, whose idea was that? I am happy though! I can’t wait to do a Laurence Llewellyn Bowen on the place, zebra patterns and purple paint I think…

It's all gone a bit Potty

So, I won the "discussion" and am currently reading Harry Potter. It’s very good so far, a bit scary, but for the life of me I can’t remember what happened in the last one. That’s the trouble with having such a long time between books, when you know there’s one due out you should really speed read the previous books so you know what happened. Then there’s this weird psychological urge to read it as quickly as possible so you won’t find out what happens accidentally. Maybe it’s just me being a freak.

In the news before it was released, there were stories about schools banning Harry Potter events as they were likely to lead innocent young children into witchcraft and all kinds of evil doings. Honestly! Is there no room for imagination anymore? When I was young I read all kinds of books about magic and dragons and fairies (do you see them banning Enid Blyton?) and I learnt to tell the difference between fact and fiction. See - I have a brain. I know I haven’t seen any dragons out on my travels, and much as I’d like to turn my mortgage adviser into a toad, I know it’s not possible. There’s always fuddy-duddy spoilsports trying to ban everything for our own protection. They are the kind of people who run jumble sales and neighbourhood watches – mainly so they get to know what’s going on and who to demonise next – that lady who buys woolly sweaters and looks a bit shifty, she’s a witch!! Burn her!!

Hmm, do you think my current attitude is directly linked to house buying? You know, I think it just might be. When can I have my sanity and sense of humour back?

Evil pretty boys

So Jude was doing the nanny then? Oh dear. It’s very upsetting for poor old Sienna, but it does give heart to the rest of us normal people. You can be the belle of the ball, in the papers all the time for your fashion sense, acting skills and generally be the next bright young thing, and your bloke still does the nanny. Did they learn nothing from Posh & Becks? At least us normal poor people can’t afford hired help and therefore remove the temptation.

Jude does make me very cross though. If, as reported, he blamed Sienna for making a career for herself and not being there every time he wanted her, she’s better off without him. She’s too young for him anyway – he obviously couldn’t keep up with her partying! Sadie Frost gave up her acting career (I use this phrase lightly) to have his kids and look after his house, and he obviously got bored with that too. I guess no woman in her right mind would get involved with him for quite a while now, I can’t see him taking the nanny to A list parties in Hollywood. And what’s the obsession with swinging? Honestly. Who says you can have it all and be happy? If my mortgage ever gets sorted out I will cry with joy, that’s all I want from life.

Books

I’ve just finished the saddest book I’ve ever read. It made me cry standing outside Tesco’s, that’s how sad it was! I’ve been putting off reading the end as I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Well, it does end in a kind of nice way, but tragic too. I would recommend it definitely. I’ve hit on a lucky streak with good books recently. I read the Shadow of the Wind before that and it was the best book I’ve read in years, I love that book. It’s the only time I’ve wanted to own a really nice posh edition of a book just so’s I can have it on my shelf and look at it. I don’t know if it’s ruined me for the new Harry Potter.

Talking of which, I have a dilemma. My other half doesn’t read much, and as a librarian this is very upsetting and I am always buying him books I think he might like. I hit it lucky on a comic book of Hellboy, but that was mainly pictures. But he does read Harry Potter, and we have a copy preordered and it should arrive at the weekend. He wants to read it immediately, which is great. But he will take AGES to read it, and I can probably read it in a couple of days. So do I buy a second copy (and make the publishers extra super rich) or do I wait, and as a side effect learn all the story via the newspapers and people talking about it? Ooh it’s difficult. If I wasn’t such a sad librarian I would make him tear out the bits he’s read and then I’d read them after him – ooh it made me shudder just to write that! I once saw a woman on the train who did that with paperback novels. She tore out chapters as she read them. It took all my self-control not to take the book off her and tell her she wasn’t fit to read it! But then I think it was only a Mills and Boon – see my librarian standards are rubbish :-)

It's oh so quiet

So apart from a report that Tom Cruise spent £10,000 on some pasta at the weekend, it’s all been a bit quiet on the Cruise/Holmes front. I said I wasn’t bothered, but I want celebrity gossip! In Britain, the most exciting thing we have is that Brad Pitt has allegedly moved here, and in Big Brother they’re having REAL SEX (just like the Germans). Ooh, is that what it takes to get people to watch now? I haven’t watched any of this series, they should be left in the house without any TV coverage, it would be great. Celebrity Love Island? Send them all off to Fiji with pretend cameras (ideally made out of cereal packet boxes, they’re all so thick they wouldn’t notice) and leave them to it. Obviously the greedy tv executives wouldn’t make so much money, but I should think the ordinary person would be happy to pay a small fee for removal of the C list celeb that should cover loss of advertising expenses. Anyone with me?

I want to ride my bicycle?

In the wake of the bombings last week, loads of people are now cycling to work. Now this is a good thing, and environmentalists must be very happy. But most of these people have been let loose on the road without taking their cycling proficiency tests – I get a lift into work every day, it’s great. But recently driving in London is a nightmare – you have cyclists passing you on both sides of the car, and don’t get me started on scooter drivers – do L plates mean you don’t have to follow the Highway Code? It’s a miracle I haven’t seen an accident yet. They weave in and out, oblivious to other users of the road and clearly have no sense at all. Is this a safer way to travel than the tube when you haven’t got the sense you were born with?! I don’t think so. The next time some smug cyclist nearly causes us to crash and then frowns at us, I’m leaping out of the van and sticking a big stick in their spokes.

Bejeezus

Our work internet nazi software isn't working! Marvellous. So I have an unexpected opportunity to write. London is slowly getting back to normal after the awful events of last week. It was a very strange day. The internet isn't all that for up to the minute news, my parents up north knew more than I did from watching the tv. So we spent most of the morning listening to rumours which I assumed were overexaggerated (how wrong I was), and refreshing the bbc news website for updates. The bus was only round the corner, when it was confirmed the first thing I did was find my husband (who thankfully works in the same place) and hug him. Then began a round of trying to call people's mobiles until the network went down and that was it, then emailing frantically waiting for a brief reply saying "I'm fine". Everyone I know is safe.

It has put the stress of house buying into perspective now. If the house falls through, so what?

Ta ra!

Right, I've got 15 minutes left. Thoughts?

1) Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie - who cares?! By the time they finally admit they've been doing each other, no-one will look faintly surprised and possibly go "who?"

2) Film Star Boyfriends (do you know who I mean yet?!) - just say NO!! They will mess with your mind, ruin any prospective career you might have been building up (after an initial surge in popularity) and you will be seen as the "girlfriend of ..." and lose all your individuality FOREVER.

3) Did any tv station in the world show coverage of Aha and Audioslave at the Live 8 gig in Berlin? I don't think so and it's an outrage. Who wants to see Robbie Williams looking a bit podgy and Mariah Carey doing a Michael Jackson with a group of small children allegedly from Africa but more probably from Brixton? I would rather have watched Peter Kay doing Amarillo a hundred times over than that cack.

My solicitor must have been trained by monkeys

So, I'm currently in the process of trying to buy a house. One of the most stressful things you can EVER do apparently. But you put your trust into the "official" people involved - solicitors, estate agents, mortgage people (and most of your money for the next 100 years) and assume that they know their job better than you do. They must sell loads of houses in a year, and conveyancing should be a walk in the park for solicitors - easy money! Or not. So far, we haven't had much to do with the solicitor recommended by the estate agents - only two things actually. And they were both completely cocked up. Now, I'm not legally trained but I can a) add up and b) read so I caught the sneaky bugger out! Hah, I bet he was cussing me.

The first letter we got was an estimated price for his legal services - this was based on the wrong (ie much higher) house price so nearly gave me a heart attack. So I rang him up and sorted that out. Then we got the official legal report. Luckily I read it very carefully (handy tip for anyone foolish enough to try the same thing - read it all 12 times and then again for luck). He contradicted himself 3 times in the same document. So I rang him again, and got a shirty "put any concerns you have in an email". Which I did. It was great, I quoted his report at length underlining the bits that made no sense so they stood out. He must hate me! But why should we pay some legal monkey loads of money when they make such basic mistakes? I could be my own solicitor at this rate. How can I trust what he says for the very complicated legal jargon they throw at you? Initially I would have just taken his word for it - no more! I'm off to buy an Idiot's Guide to the Law of Conveyancing and thrust it at him every time he cocks up again.

A whole new world has opened up before me...

I am currently in my first ever Internet Cafe. First impressions? It smells. But at least I have access to my blog for the first time in weeks! I've been blackmailing Lady Librarian into posting for me, bless her. Yey.

And now I'm here I can't think what to write about. Tom Cruise (mindwasher of Katie Holmes) has had far too many column inches devoted to him from many sources. I think we should all just ignore him now. And then maybe he'll go back to the planet he arrived from. I actually looked at the Scientology website out of curiosity the other day - that wasn't banned at work funnily. I was a bit worried that I would be taken over via the pc and forced to join their ranks, but I seem to be ok...

What is the etiquette of using Internet cafes? This is quite a big store, and it's not too busy, so is it like men's urinals where it's rude to get too close to someone else? Do you go on a row that is empty and frown at anyone attempting to sit next to you? Do they clean the equipment ever? My keyboard has some odd stains and it's a bit sticky. Mmm. Next time I'll vet my choice of pc a bit better.

Is this the modern age?!

I don’t think so. Do you know how hard it is to find somewhere to blog in London?! I am only just starting to realise how much I took having the Internet at work for granted (and how much time I wasted on non-work things!). So, I work from 8.30 in the morning until sometime between 5 and 8 at night depending. I get half an hour for lunch and another half-hour later in the afternoon. The nearest Internet café costs £6 an hour and you can’t pay less - say if you only wanted to use it for half an hour. So unless I go after work – and at this point I only want to go home and vegetate – I’m screwed. The nearest easyinternetcafe is a good 15 minutes walk away from work, and the town I live in doesn’t have any Internet cafes at all. It makes me so mad I want to cry. But looking at easyinternet.com, it seems quite easy to set up your own shop, all you need is space the size of a bathroom and bob’s your uncle.

The scariest group in the world just came into my library.

So, I just walked into the library and spotted a man lurking by the Dictionary of National Biography. My first thoughts were "who is that weirdo and is he supposed to be in here?" Initial Librarian instincts are always defensive, from "switch that mobile phone off", to "take that three course meal out of here", to the best one in members-only libraries – "are you a member and if not how dare you walk through our portals of learning". But then in walked another 4 or 5 equally weird looking people, some of them female. At this point I started to get a bit worried. Weird things have been happening this week, pictures that have been hanging on walls quite innocently for decades have suddenly fallen off and smashed, the elastic band holding our calendar on the wall up (hooked over a drawing pin too before you ask) snapped, and there have been mysterious drafts. I’m thinking restless spirit here, though I haven’t heard of anyone dying here recently. But I digress. So, big bunch of weirdo’s – who are they and what are they doing here?! Turns out they are archivists. They’ve come to "do lunch" with our archivist – and I’ve never seen a scarier sight. They made librarians look positively normal. Sorry to any normal archivists out there, I’m sure there are some, and I know lots of weird librarians too. What would you call a group of archivists? I know a group of librarians is a shelf (or a trolley depending on if they’re in the pub at the time) – hmm, maybe a mould of archivists?

Washed out

So Glastonbury has been washed away by tidal waves and plagues of locusts. Oh dear. Those poor old posh people slumming it for the festival won't like getting their Jimmy Choos wet. If any bright spark set up a stall selling wellies (ideally pink with diamante accessories) they'd be well in. I went to Reading a few years ago with Lady Librarian and it was great. We only got soaked on the Friday night and sensibly we had packed our doc martens and parkas so we were ok. Our tent certainly didn't float away anyway! Why do people who go camping always assume it's going to be lovely weather and never pack for every weather extreme? This is Britain after all. And most people now seem to drive, so if you have a car you can pack everything you own and leave it in the boot just in case. I would. I might even sleep in it (especially if I get a bed in the back from Pimp my Ride).

Is the whole of London an audition room?

Ladies ladies. I know it's hot this week and we Londoners are always shocked and unprepared for the heat, but what's with the outfits? All the girls on the streets this morning looked like they were auditioning for Julia Roberts' part in Pretty Woman, the bit at the beginning before she met Richard Gere. Very very short skirts, stilettos and mini tops with too many straps and not enough material. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe there was a prostitute convention somewhere today. Who knows? I know I have trouble dressing for summer, I only got my legs out yesterday as it was so hot it was an emergency skirt situation. But who goes to work looking like they've been up all night on the job?! I know my boss would frog-march me to a shop to buy a big kaftan or something if I tried to come in dressed like a hanging round street corners variety of lady. She doesn't hold back if you're showing too much flesh off round here, oh no. It is in our interests though, as who wants to be responsible for a barristers' heart attack?! Or at the other end of the scale, unwanted attention from a slimeball who thinks he's it? So it's burkas all round then in my world.

Pimped

My new favourite program has to be Pimp my Ride on Mtv. I first saw it over in Paris channel-hopping and I am now beginning to be a little bit addicted. It's great. They take a skip on wheels and transform it, usually by completely rebuilding it, but they put the best things in the car - things you would never have thought you needed in a car. My all time favourite has to be a popcorn machine in the back and a sunblock dispenser in the front. They always put dvd players and tvs in the back, and on one of them they put a tv in the sun visor, obviously so the lady who owned it could watch tv and drive at the same time - is that legal in America?! The people who get pimped must be made up - they get all sorts of expensive technical stuff and things like Playstations for free - I wonder how often the cars featured on the show are subsequently broken into or stolen!? They are usually hard to miss - one was bright yellow with black stripes. I'm putting my husband's dodgy transit in for the UK version I think. I want a tea maker in the back, a bed for when we get stuck in traffic (or if our house falls through so we can live in it), a fridge, and a big framed picture of Justin from the Darkness in his famous pink and white catsuit at the back. Ooh and a cocktail cabinet would be nice.