New pecs please!

You know what Tim Henman's problem is? He needs to buff up a bit. Roger Federer is practically bursting out of his top with well toned muscles, but poor old Tim still looks like a 16 year old public schoolboy all skinny in his big flapping white shirt. He just ain't got the power of the muscle men. Send that man to the gym!

Prenups

Apparently Nicole Kidman has got her fiancee Keith to sign a prenup saying if he gets drunk or out of his head on coke he is out on his ear without a penny. She is more like Tom Cruise than I thought. I wish I'd thought of that before I got married. Failure to make me a cup of tea every morning, or hoovering the lounge at least once a week would result in serious sanctions. I so missed my opportunity.

And is Urban his real surname?

Men vs women

This week has demonstrated a lot of differences between the sexes. I like to think the fairer sex has won. I do like football and have watched most of the World Cup games so far, but I view it in a slightly different way to hubbie. He groans at dodgy passes, missed opportunities, and the other side scoring. I sit there chirping "that one's called Fred! Fred!!" or "oo he's called Kaka!" and "that one's got funny hair! Just look at it!". And our guide to the World Cup courtesy of the Guardian tells us that Nakata, the David Beckham of the Japanese team, is chief branding officer for a firm and specialises in "snack and biscuit research and development". What a job!! And he wasn't 25 stone. I would read "research" and "biscuits" as "eating biscuits" myself. This World Cup has provided lots of entertainment. (Sadly I had Japan in the work sweep and they've gone byebyes. It's back to the biscuits Nakata. I was on a course last week and they provided fig rolls. They were lovely).

For the England game tomorrow, hubbie has announced he's going to the pub. I suppose he needs some fellow men swearing at the tv, not me chirruping about hairdos and biscuits, for this one :-)

Brilliant!

I would like to meet these women. They thought it was necessary to insure themselves to cover the costs of bringing up Jesus should he decide to use their wombs for the Second Coming. How did we cope without insurance? Poor Mary and Joseph didn't think ahead obviously. Some wiley insurance agent in Nazareth would have taken their money! But go on lady, prove it!

My religious boss thinks this story was obscene. I just reckon it shows insurers take cash off any old crazy ladies who stumble through their doors. What are the odds of them paying out?!

They're here!

Conversation on the way to work this morning:

Me: Ooh look at that man, he's got something gold and shiny in his ear. What do you think it could be?"
Hubbie (without missing a beat): "He's a robot"

Yes. A robot. He didn't have a fancy hearing aid, or wireless headphones. He was a robot. Men's brains sometimes worry me.

R.I.P. TOTP

It is a very sad day indeed. The BBC has cancelled Top of the Pops. They reckon nobody watches it anymore. But it's their fault. First of all they moved it from its teatime slot on a Thursday when everyone knew it was on and watched it after their tea, to a Friday night when most people went out. Then they moved it to a Sunday night. And stuck it on BBC2. And hired the worst presenters you could find. Most people forgot when it was supposed to be on. And which channel. Or couldn't bear the cheery fake smiles. And so the Beeb's cunning ploy has worked. No longer will we have the entertainment of the latest Europop one hit wonder interspersed with the slightly perplexed "what are we doing here?" of the cool indie bands such as the Arctic Monkeys. And what will we do in years to come when we don't have TOTP2 to laugh at the funny old bands and their costumes? TOTP2 is a staple in my house.

The Beeb have got it totally wrong. They missed their opportunity. They should have got Noel Edmonds (before his Deal or No Deal success happened), Tony Blackburn, and Dave ("Hairy cornflake") Lee Travis in to revamp the show. Beards, sparkly hats and bizarre guests like Jimmy Saville would have revived the fortunes of TOTP and saved it for future generations.

Who will never know what they are missing.

Multipass

I've watched a fair bit of the World Cup, and the one thing that fascinates me is the giant security passes the managers on the bench have to wear. Seriously, they are HUGE! They are pretty much life size photos and a mysterious 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 on each badge. And a very unflattering bright green. Now I understand that security must be tight, but they might as well have made the managers carry round life size mannequins in their images.

Are England going to win? I don't know, but they make me crazy. Why is nothing ever easy for them? If they were playing the St Trinian's Girls School Under 12's football team, it would still go to the wire.

Sober and a law librarian?!

It just doesn't mix. Unfortunately for me, the annual piss up coincided with me not being allowed to drink. I thought "hey, it'll be cool, it's not all booze booze booze!". How wrong I was. The day's were full of watching heavily hungover librarians dragging their corpses to lectures, or just crawling outside to sit on lovely (apart from the lack of sand and lots of pebbles) Brighton beach opposite looking pale. Most discussions were competing "what time did YOU go to bed last night, I dragged myself out of the bar at 5am" type conversations. "Me? Oh 11.30". The evenings were fine until about 3 hours in when everyone else was wasted and running round being stupid and flirting with people they really wouldn't have looked at sober. I hope I wasn't like that last year! And they don't really cater for people who don't drink, there was water and that was it. One woman on our table one night didn't drink at all for some crazy healthy lifestyle notion and even asked for decaf coffee. I can't imagine what she did for kicks.

There were some highlights though. One night there was an Abba tribute band after dinner. They weren't that bad as Abba tribute bands go. As soon as the first chord rang out there was a stampede of aged female librarians in floral numbers pushing and shoving each other to get to the small dance area in front of the stage. And two male librarians. They were great. Much more enthusiastic than the women. One of them, in black trousers, a white shirt, black braces, and a pink feather boa (where he had got that from I would love to know), danced with amazing abandon. Pirouettes, arms wildly flapping about, crazy impromptu moves merged in with the moves the Abba girls were encouraging their audience to mimic. He deserved some kind of award.

Another was a well known creep who works for some publishing place. He is only ever spotted at social events, and will only talk to pretty girls. The Abba night he was spotted preening around the room with cuban heels on and a girl who was almost certainly coked up to the eyeballs dancing like a loon in his wake. Oh he thought he was so cool. He just wasn't. And most of the females of the profession know him of old and don't even bother making eye contact. As he gets older and older, it's just going to get sadder and sadder.

Ice creams on the beach are a definite winner at conferences. In future, they should only be held at venues with beaches. Abroad would be good too. It's Sheffield next year, the city of steel. I really ain't going to that one.

Wish me luck...

Oh Lord it's that time again. The annual Law Librarians Conference. The one that got my blog banned last year. I don't know what awaits me this time round, I just hope it isn't legs akimbo on the dance floor again...

"I'm sorry, you want to see a DOCTOR? What, THIS year?"

Doctor's receptionists. Now there's a profession that comes in way beneath estate agents, bailiffs and tax inspectors. I think they think that it is their job to stop anybody from bothering their precious doctors. Take our doctors, the ones I was so enamoured of their lovely surgery with a while back. You want an appointment less than 6 weeks (yes SIX weeks) in advance, you have to turn up on the day at 8am and join the queue of other desperate people in the hope of getting an appointment later that day. If you fail, you have to try again the next day. And the next. Skipping the middle man and going straight to A&E sounds preferable to me. If you aren't that sick, you still have to take at least half a day off. Then you feel guilty for taking a slot on the same day when someone sicker than you may have needed it. If you are really sick and have to crawl out of your house, you might as well hang on in there for the ambulance. If you ain't self cured by the time your appointment in six weeks comes round, then you can feel victorious.

There must be some evil kind of training program for wannabe receptionists. It wipes them of any kind of human characteristics and promotes repetition of phrases such as "try again tomorrow" "he can see you at a push a week on Friday for 3 minutes". I really hope I never get really sick.

My luck was kind of in...

On Saturday night we went to the dogs (for non Essex people, the greyhound races) to avoid our neighbours' Rude Staring Freak Friends. Because of the football, they were giving out free tickets on our road, saving us a good six quid on entry and a race guide. I am never one to turn down a free night out. So we went, and we were even in the posh bit! Whoo! I haven't quite figured out the difference between the posh and common bits, apart from the posh bit had richer nutters in it. The carpet was slightly cleaner, and there was a lady who came up and got your drinks and put your bets on so you never needed to move, but it was still quite shit.

My strategy for betting on the dogs is quite random. I usually blow a whole pound on each race, sadly you can't bet any less, and sometimes the names of the dogs just speak to me. I never even bother to look at their form, age, how many legs they've got etc, the favourite never wins. So my strategy for a while was dogs with names in their names, such as Big Dave, Paulee's Pal, Disco Lulu. They all to a dog came in last. The only time I won was when I picked complete random dogs and then as I bet so much money on them (!) I got about 20p back. I am still to this day upset about the time I knew a dog called Hot Chocolate was going to win, but I didn't go with my gut and put a fiver on it. It romped home, but my other choices for coming in second and third needn't have bothered turning up. Luckily for me, hubbie who thinks he is a gambling genius did less well, and he studied the guide like a proper serious gambler! I think the lesson here is: Don't gamble kids.

Our neighbours are ok (but their friends are freaks)

Yesterday our neighbours had a party. We only knew about this from eavesdropping the day before, and actually asking them outright when they put a marquee up. They didn't bother to tell us. Apparently 60 people were invited but they weren't allowed in the house and had to be in the garden. 60 people?! You'd be lucky to have elbow room in some pubs I know, never mind the garden of a 2 bed terrace.

It was the hottest day EVER, so we were out in the garden too. Put our new bbq into use and had the relatives over. Next door wasn't so noisy, not half as bad as I expected. But all the freakish people they invited stared blatantly over the fence at us every time they walked past. Seriously, we were getting complexes. They were so rude. And then someone parked across our drive. I made them move. Not that we needed to move our car, but they really take the piss. If our neighbours who are quite polite over the fence whenever we see them, had bothered to come round and say "hey, we're having a party, would you mind if our guests parked over your drive, if you need to move your car let us know?" we'd have been "yeah, of course, don't worry about it".

This is linked to a long running war of attrition with their in-laws. They are over most weekends and park on their drive so there is no room between their cars. So they all walk all over our drive to get in and out, but in the garden won't even say hello and look at us like we're weird. Again, all the neighbours needed to do was ask, but they never did. So we now employ a tactical game at the weekends, where we park the car as far over to their side as practically possible so there's no room for them to walk down the side, and then put our rubbish bags in front of the car to make it absolutely clear. Sad and pathetic I know. It never used to bother me them walking down the side of the drive. But when they all make us feel uncomfortable in our own back garden, and haven't even the decency to say hello when we say it to them, then they can take a running jump!

And as for the scary man who obviously thought he was god's gift, despite his choice of old jogging pants and a vest top that was several sizes too small for his big gut, and a loud braying voice that talked about the most boring things in the world, urrggghhhhhh stop looking at me you freak!!!