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.