Who's the man?

I had my appraisal today. They are usually non-events, "Are you happy? We're happy. See you next year" kind of things. This time I had a major problem to discuss. I thought about it for days, wrote down the major points and how I was going to handle it. This included the phrases 'calm', 'rational', 'professional'. And what happened? The minute they asked me if there was anything else I wanted to discuss I cried. I cried and snivelled like a big girl and totally wasted my opportunity and feel like crap into the bargain. Marvellous.

St George's Day

It's St George's Day today. I woke up to a street full of flags hanging out of windows. One house had 4 flags, one in each window, which was a little scary. I never realised our street was so patriotic. It makes me a little bit proud. This would be the kind of street that had street parties back in the war, everyone sat at trestle tables waving bunting around and talking about the person up the road who's got one of those "television" things in their house. Hubby and brother-in-law (who got up super early to get his flag out before everyone else) are so patriotic they've gone off to the pub in their England tops, chests puffed out, to have a patriotic pint or seven. Then they will probably have a patriotic fight and get kicked out of the pub. Proper Englishmen they are!

The Hen Night (Part 2)

So Lady L has FINALLY got round to blogging about her hen night! Fills in a few blanks I must say. Including my failed attempt at haranguing the miserable DJ at the club to play some tracks for me. He didn't even bother to speak to me but pointed at a pen and paper where people were supposed to write their requests down. There was a slight problem with this. Being a trifle tipsy, writing was beyond me. I could just about say "Play the Darkness and Audioslave please Mr DJ, hey, no-one's dancing anyway!" but written down this came out in a scrawl across the page as "Dark...slave..."

If for some genius reason the Darkness and Audioslave did decide to become one (imagine my delight!) they would obviously call themselves Darkslave. Or DarkSlave. Grr. "Audioness" just doesn't work rock fans.

Lady L, I really didn't ask him to play Orson. But I did dance to it. I apologise. Their new song is rubbish. My Orson phase is officially over.

You're taking the piss now

The ghost in my house is really taking the michael now. Today we mowed the lawn, weeded like crazy, pruned and cleared up. This was mainly after one of our elderly neighbours said our ghost would be turning in her grave to see the state of her garden (if she was in her grave that is) (and if this was her f***ing garden! It's mine!!!) and made us feel guilty. Then I sat down with a nice glass of wine after all the exertion, and within minutes the glass had done a complete 360 degree spin in the air thus pouring the wine all over me. I was sober and sat completely still. I still can't explain it. It was weird.

It's a girl!

So hello to Suri Cruise. Is it just me or is it weird (or merely a bizarre coincidence) that Suri is an anagram of the middle letters of Cruise?! I suppose at least they had a girl. Ron or Hubbard aren't really suitable names. I don't know any famous female Scientologists - oh apart from Katie now!

And what with all the rubbish about eating placentas (with a nice chianti and fava beans natch'), silent births, no painkillers etc etc, it's actually a relief that the baby has finally been born. Good luck to her I say. She'll be needing it.

Sexy!

So Michael Douglas seduces CZJ by talking Welsh in the bedroom? I really didn't need to know that. Though I now have visions of the narrator from Ivor the Engine going "ooh Catherine, who's a big boy then? Would you like me to rub your back for you?"

Thanks for sharing Michael.

Lessons I have learned in life #2

If your other half suggests ordering pizza at 10.30 at night, do not give in.

You will feel like a big old elephant the next day and you will have had awful dreams due to all that cheese so you will be grumpy too.

A big old grumpy heffalump.

Shop till you drop

Today I had cause to be stuck in Stevenage for over two hours whiling away the time. “What shall I do?” I thought, “two hours is a long time”. “Fear not!” said my fairy godmother, “you shall be entertained for hours just by one place, and you will wish you had more time”. “What could this place be?” I cried, “to entertain for hours and hours, I cannot think of such a place!”

It was Asda.

I kid you not. It was the first shop I saw, and I mainly went in for a cup of tea and a sit down. But I was in there for the whole time, I never got bored, and I had to stop for another tea break half way through. I wonder if it is possible to live in a supermarket for any period of time. I am sure it is. You can buy your food, be entertained by books and stationery, you can even write letters and post them in the store. You can watch DVDs on the big screens in the entertainment section. You can try clothes on for hours, hell you could buy a change of clothes a day. You can eat like a king. You can plan your garden in the gardening section. You can even pull a member of staff if you are so inclined and strike up an unlikely romance in the aisles. You can go on the internet. You can stack shelves if you feel like some exercise.

For a few lonely hours it was paradise. Today Asda, tomorrow Tescos…

The Hen Night (Part 1)

So, Lady L can tell you how her hen night was. I hope she had a super time and we made it fun for her. I certainly had fun. These are some of my highlights (though they were probably lowlights for the other people involved).

1) Inappropriate tales - this may be because I don't get out so much these days, but I have an unfortunate tendency to own up to stupid things I have done. Which is fine if I picked a good time to do it. One sparkly drink in and I was admitting all sorts to bemused looks from the other hens (is the bride to be called the hen and the other girls chicks? Or are we all hens? I don't know so I will refer to us all as hens). For Lady L and Miss S this was usual. For the other hens I've never met before, probably a bit weird and WAY too much information. Ladies I apologise.

2) Insulting men who seem quite nice but have made the mistake of coming to talk to you. I attract weirdos. It's always happened and I'm used to it now. In the pub a nice man called John decided to talk to me. I didn't feel it at the time, but I must have been slightly tipsy. He asked me what I thought of his jumper. I told him he looked like a male prostitute. A bad one. He seemed quite upset but it didn't put him off.

3) Insulting drunk men in nightclubs - more random weirdos turned up in the club. They were waving around pictures of dogs. One of them came up to me with puckered lips and asked what his pulling techniques were like. I said they needed a lot of work.

It's a very good job I don't need to attract men anymore. I seem to have developed the equivalent of turret's syndrome to chat up lines:

"Hello Booky B, you seem nice. How are you?"

"You smell like shit and you look like a tramp"

"Oh. You don't want to go out on a date then?"

"Feck off!"

A tale of hen night horror...

Talking of hen night related things, my boss just told me this horror story. A girl at work has to go to a hen do in a few weeks, but it starts with pole-dancing lessons in the afternoon (I dread to think what follows in the evening). They have been told to wear high heels and shorts. As if this wasn't bad enough, another girl at work has actually been on one of these pole-dancing things (don't ask, these people are in other departments, I don't associate with them usually) (and I didn't realise this was so popular, I thought pottery classes were the in-vogue hen entertainment at the moment). It was in a room above a bar. When she went through the bar to go upstairs she thought the bar was unusually full of men for mid afternoon and there wasn't even any football on. Turns out that their pole-dancing exploits were being broadcast on a big screen down below in the bar. They didn't know until afterwards.

Librarians on hen nights are a different breed. We go to shelf stacking lessons and turn up in twin sets and pearls.

Seen on the way to work

On the door to a block of flats: "Today! Indoor Boot Sale".

Now call me crazy, but if there are no cars involved (so no car boots) and it isn't in a field at 7am on a Sunday (because it's indoors), isn't that usually called a jumble sale?

Or perhaps they were only selling boots? Boots for indoors.

Lady Librarian's hen night is a'comin...

...and I am SUPER excited! We are going drinking, dancing and staying out ALL night. I've even got the day off this week to find a fabulous outfit to wear. But it also makes me kind of sad. I haven't been dancing since my hen night, which was over a year ago. I love dancing. Why did I stop? Why don't I dance in my front room instead? It's great for the old figure too. Back in the days when I didn't have to get up at some godforsaken hour to go and earn a wage I went out dancing 3 or 4 nights a week. I was so skinny. Legs that won the "best legs on campus" at my university halls. Well I did wear bovva boots too which is akin to wearing weights strapped to your ankles. I want them back.

The best job in the world?

Never mind cake testers, florists, or chocolatiers. Yesterday I saw the Best Job in the World (tm) on my way to work. It was the grand opening of a new shop in town and they were having some balloons delivered before they opened. The balloon man turned up in his little van, and then opened the back doors, let out a huge net that was attached to the back of the van, and then sat in the back blowing the balloons up and letting them outside into the net. When the net was full, he unhooked it, closed it up and took it inside. Call me stupid but I never really thought how the balloons made it from one place to another, I assumed they were already blown up. Or the people in the shop had to do it themselves. How do you get a job like that?