Those were the days...

I was reminded recently of my weird childhood imagination. As the eldest, every evening I was in charge of making my dad his cheese butties for work the next day. This was back in the days before cheap cafes and Boots sandwiches. For years I stood in the kitchen making the same old cheese butties every night, with piccalilli, not too much mind! And white bread, none of that fancy stuff. To get through the monotony, I used to pretend I worked in a cafe while I was making the sandwiches. At the time I had a thing for the lead singer of The Farm Peter Hooton. Yeah I know. I lived in a small village. Men were scarce, you had to take what you could get. Anyway, in my crazed teenage mind, luscious Peter would come into my cafe quite by chance, but immediately be taken by the beautiful young lady behind the counter. He would order a sandwich. When he had been seduced by the lovely tasty sandwich he would rescue me from my life of drudgery and take me on tour with his band. Luckily for me this never happened, The Farm only had one album to speak of, the world tour wouldn't have lasted long and I would have been supporting him. Making sandwiches. For money.

I also used to pretend I was Cinderella and sweep the garage clean. My parents must have thought they were on to a winner. Or they were very good at reverse psychology to make the kids do some housework...

Brangelina - be scared be very scared!

It amazes me how Brangelina took over an entire country just so they could have their baby in privacy. They were in charge of pretty much the whole of Namibia, who catered to their every crazy celebrity whim. Most celeb mums go to an exclusive hospital in America, not Angelina. I suppose the country will now benefit from increased tourism and those buses following the celebrity trail will start up there. "And here's the hospital Angelina gave birth in...here's the shop she bought her first nappies from...and here is the tree where Brad carved the baby's name..."

When me and Mr Barbara start reproducing, I am going to have the whole of the Isle of Wight under my control. Nothing less will do. No Librarians in or out without my written permission.

Sitting, waiting, wishing

If I could be one person in the world at the moment, I would be Jack Johnson. He lives in Hawaii, spends most of his time surfing or chilling on the beach, knocks off the old million selling album every now and then, is super environmentally responsible, and everyone seems to love him. Now he has announced he's had enough of this world tour malarkey and is going home to surf. His last album, the soundtrack for Curious George ("Show me the monkey!!") was self produced and released without a record company apparently, and has sold shedloads. The man is a genius. How can you be so laidback yet set yourself up for life within a year or so of popping into the music scene? And I bet he doesn't even care about the money, he will probably give it all away to koalas or orphaned goats or something.

But if I couldn't face being a man, I'd have to be Jack Johnson's wife instead. That would be cool too. But don't tell the old man this, I think he'd have enough problems coming to terms with me being a surfer dude.

The differences between us...

My Dad rang up on Sunday and I said I'd been to a Eurovision party. He said "did you see that terrible song that won? It was awful!". I had to admit that I loved it and had bought it. This prompted him shouting through the house to my stepmum (a bit like Little Britain): "Carolyn?! Carolyn!! She only went and bought it! She likes it!" to which shrieks of disgust and outrage reverberated down the phone lines.

They liked the Lithuania entry. That godawful one where men in suits sang (very hopefully) "We are the winners! Of Eurovision! Vote for us!". Nobody did. And please Lithuania, if you enter again, don't let that fat bald man humiliate himself by dancing again. Thankyou.

I also had to sit through lunch yesterday with all the oldies I work with denouncing Lordi. I didn't tell them I bought it, they are all so narrow minded it wasn't worth it really.

In Lordi news, they are having a square named after them in Finland! I so have to visit!!

Douze points to ... LORDI!!!

OH. MY. GOD.

What a night. Lady L can't speak from screaming so much, I don't remember leaving, I forgot to vote, I spent most of the night shrieking and it's a wonder I can speak today, Miss S sure put on one hell of a party.

Lordi will now take over the world. Don't be scared.

Raaaarrrrrgggggghhhhh

What was the last song I downloaded before my credit ran out? Why, it was Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi. Oh yes.

Oh Lordi!!

Oh if the semi finals are anything to go by, Eurovision is going to be bloody brilliant!! And Lordi must win!! They were fabulous. Fire coming out of their guitars, the lead singer had wings and a Finland top hat, even the song was great! I voted for them three times, on two mobiles and the land line, to ensure they went through. But I was nearly sick when they were reading out the ten who made it to the final. Part of me thought it was all a fix and they wouldn’t be allowed to go through. But they did!! As well as that awful Lithuanian number “We are the winners of Eurovision” – subtle as Lady Librarian said. And it’s a good job me & Lady L are going to be in the same room for the actual final, I dread to think how much money all the text messages we sent cost us!

Da Vinci craze

You know, the thing that still upsets me most to this day about the Da Vinci Code is the bit where the librarian at King's College lets Tom Hanks in without an appointment and then makes him a cup of tea. In a library. Rule 1 of librarianship: you NEVER make it easy for random people who aren't supposed to use your library to get in. First of all they have to face a surly face at the equivalent of reception, then after several minutes of arguing and tutting, they are taken to see a more senior person who repeats all the points above. When they are feeling as small as absolutely possible, and possibly rethinking their urgent need to consult your material, then you have a generous change of heart and finally let them in, but only to see the book they wanted and no browsing! Rule 2 of librarianship: NO FOOD AND DRINK IN THE LIBRARY!! (The capitals are necessary). Where are all the librarians saying the book makes librarians look bad? I might start a petition. Or march outside Odeon Leicester Square (it's where all the important film schmoozers hang out, well it's that or Cannes) with a banner.

"Appalled of Hackney" speaks again

The most ridiculous accusation in the news today? That the portrayal of a crazed albino monk in the Da Vinci Code makes albinos look bad. Excuse me? Which bit of "fiction" don't these people get?! And why not say it makes monks look bad too just for the hell of it? So, in these people's minds, Donkey in Shrek means that donkeys talk and dance and date dragons? It's like saying that the portrayal of Damien in the Omen makes small boys look like evil demons. Oh. Hang on a minute, there may be a grain of truth in this after all!

Too busy for non-work related correspondence?

Ye gads, I think I am still in shock. I am "in charge" (you lucky lucky people!) of the library for the next two weeks and, I tell you, I haven't had a minute to myself for the last two days. My line manager who has a very anal grasp on all mundane library tasks, who doesn't even delegate opening envelopes, has gone on holiday leaving me to run the joint. And because of her failure to delegate AT ALL when she's here, this previously unheard of responsibility has thrown me somewhat. The days are certainly going faster and I'm sure I've lost several pounds through constant running around, but I have no time. Normally I have time to do all my work, help all the happy shoppers, and spend a good proportion of the day emailing back and forth between Lady L and Miss S. Not today. But then they haven't emailed either. Maybe today was the official "Busy at Work Day" and nobody warned me?

I can't decide whether having a Very Busy Job is a Good Thing. I know I am often bored out of my tiny mind, and scanning the BBC website obsessively every five minutes loses its appeal. And just last week I thought I was developing alzheimers. So this week just goes to prove my mind does still work, it was just bored. And I have no problem with delegating things to other people myself. Make the workers work dammit! I'm corresponding with a very important client.

Nil points

Oh we're having a party!! A Eurovision party!! Whoo hoo! I am SO excited. Miss S is the hostess with the mostess, and it's going to be great. Especially as Lordi are representing Finland. The last two Eurovision parties I went to are a bit of a blur, I can't really remember very much at all but I am assured I had a great time. Hubby refuses to accompany me and I'm trying very hard not to take this personally. What man, even if he doesn't like (god forbid) Euro-pop can't fail but to be entertained by old Terry's gentle Irish brogue? And get to drink shedloads into the bargain? He'd rather sit on his own couch by himself than come to a party. Miserable sod. And I ain't coming home neither, so he'll have to make his own breakfast while I crawl home feeling very sorry for myself. On Top of the Pops the other day our entry was on, it's a rather odd affair. A grown man rapping while grown girls dressed like schoolgirls "accidentally" flash their white knickers while leaning over old school desks. It's a perverts' dream come true and should get us a few points at least.

Two things...

...would make my life so much easier.

1) A transporter like in Star Trek. So much of my life is wasted away sitting on the same stretch of road in the same traffic queues. If I could just transport to work five minutes before I started, imagine all that free time and lying in! And holidays. No more 12 hour flights to get to a lovely sandy beach in Hawaii, report to the holiday transporter at the local station, and whoo hoo, cocktails on the beach in no time. Now I can't believe that all the spods out there (yes there are lots) haven't developed this yet. I reckon it is in use already but they won't share.

2) A composter. More likely to happen I know. Having a garden does have its down sides. The amount of times I've filled a bag with grass and leaves and stuff, then 3 days later gone to move it and there's all worms underneath!! Urgh. Worms. And slugs and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bear in there too. I had to pay a fiver to get 5 special bags that the binmen will take away. So I've been looking into composters. You stick it all in there with your onion peelings, old bills so the identity thieves won't get them, coffee granules, tea bags, and it just goes away. And you don't see the worms coz they are hidden at the bottom. Then you get lovely compost to grow roses in. If you weren't spending half your life transporting around the world that is.

I've Lost it

Series 2 of Lost has kicked off and it’s doing my head in already. 3 episodes in, and I am debating not watching it anymore. I spent half of last night’s episode torn between switching the damn TV off, and wanting to see what happens next. I think the problem is that I don’t care what happens to the characters anymore. Once it was established that they weren’t going to be rescued, what’s the point? At one point last night, Doctor Jack (who is being very cross this series) had spent the last 45 minutes shouting at everyone, been reminded about his wife who may or may not be dead, and was facing imminent death in some random unexplained disaster based on playing a scale on a bontempi organ or something equally stupid. He was VERY cross at this point and he had a gun in his hand. Why didn’t he just shoot himself? I would have considered it. Stuck on a crazy island with a load of loons whose idea of looking out for each other disappears the minute they see a yorkie? No thanks.

In series 1 they at least had some light relief. Isn’t it filmed on Hawaii? Couldn’t Jack Johnson just pop in and play them all some of his happy tunes about his favourite banana daiquiris? It would make as much sense as the plot so far.

Blaine pain

Poor old David Blaine. He failed his weird underwater stunt thing and turned into a shrivelled prune in the process. His latest feat wasn't really publicised over here so much, but oh it takes me back to the summer of 2003 when he was hanging above the Thames in a glass box. How he misjudged the people of London. He was besieged with people throwing eggs at him, waving sausages at him, whacking golf balls at him from Tower Bridge, and general rudeness. One man tried to cut the cord holding the box up. Quite a few bottoms were waved at him too. The "magical genius" was not recognised in the slightest.

Lady L made the mistake of going travelling and missing this summer of entertainment. I had to become the David Blaine London correspondent and fill her in on all the crazy shit that was going down. Me & Miss S even went along one balmy evening to see it for ourselves. It was weird. The area immediately under his box was cordoned off with burly Sky security guards operating an access policy that only seemed to apply to young blonde girls. But we really had gone to see some "poet"* (for the want of a better word) who wanted to do his stuff under the Blaine. Apparently it was supposed to be a satirical rant against him. But when we actually got there, he got stagefright and dragged his audience off to an abandoned ampitheatre where he proceeded to bore us all senseless with some weird reading aloud story. It only got amusing when he dragged one of his audience in to help, which involved ad hoc pulling down of the trousers (in an innocent way obviously). Then we were beset with the local "youf" who tried to intimidate us with their bicycles. It didn't work. It might have scared old David Blaine though.

What will he do next though, this poor misguided "illusionist"? What was wrong with sawing ladies in half, or being locked in a case then stuck with lots of knives, only to appear with a flourish at the other end of the stage riding a tiger? He's thinking too much if you ask me.

[* Ah yes I remember now, he was supposed to be a comedian but was so unfunny I had forgotten. We knew a few unfunny comedians that summer that's for sure!]

Lucky number seven

Ok after saying my love affair was over, I caught Deal or no deal yesterday and it was very exciting! Though saying that, I only caught the last 20 minutes which means you bypass all the boring stuff where the person playing talks lots about their wooden leg/poorly Grandma/dodgy car and says they want to win at least £250,000.

So, when I switched it on Morris was doing rather well. And it got better and better. Down to two boxes. One with £20,000 and one with £250,000. Oooh!! How exciting. He had box number 16. The other box was number 7. The banker offered him £101,000. He turned it down so sure he was that his box had £250,000 in it. The banker offered to let him swap the box. He turned that down on the basis that loads of people have 7 as their lucky number and that had Noel estimated they had done about 160 shows and his box had 1 and 6 as it's number (weird reasoning if you ask me).

But he was wrong!! So wrong!! But bless him, he didn't cry. Still £20,000 isn't bad. But then Noel reminded him he had turned down an extra £80,000. That's it Noel, pile it on!! Make the poor man cry like a girl.

But I knew he didn't win the jackpot. The show's are pre-recorded and it would so have been reported in the papers before they actually showed it. Like they do with Millionaire.

Poor Morris. Seven really is a lucky number.

Wot?!

Some lady was fined £75 for throwing a cheesy wotsit out of her car window today. Littering will not be tolerated in Luton it seems. I disagree with the council's reasoning. Throwing the cheesy wotsit out of the car window wasn't the problem. It seems to me that they are missing the bigger crime that was committed. WHY DID SHE THROW AWAY THE CHEESY WOTSIT??! I would NEVER throw away such a delicacy. What was wrong with it? What could possibly have driven her to such extreme measures? Was it slightly out of shape? Not cheesy enough? Too cheesy? If Miss S had anything to do with it, wasting cheese products would mean a lengthy spell in prison. I am not kidding.

Down with cheese wasters! I am talking to YOU lady.

Congratulations!!

Lady L got spliced at the weekend, and it was a fabulous affair. She looked fab, and Mr L looked very smart, and there were tears and laughter. The cake was never ending, and everyone hankered after the special cake that was for the kids only (it had smarties on the top). I saw loads of people I haven't seen for ages. At the Reception the music was brilliant and I had to download "Where's me jumper?" from the wondrous Sultans of Ping the minute I got home. I missed the Darkness though which I am very upset about. Lady L was very drunk at her Reception, something I failed to do at my own wedding, and there was dancing - including the Timewarp! - and it was all over far too quickly. What is the relationship between time spent planning a hen do or a wedding and the time the event takes when it actually happens? It's related to the leisure time vs work time ratio, and it's just not on!

No Deal

Oh my love affair with Deal or No Deal is over. I caught it again recently and it's all gone wrong. The contestants think the show is all about them. Who cares if they just got the sack or want seven grand to go kayaking with? The crazy people, like the woman who channelled her dead parents, were great entertainment, but the normal people are so dull. And they are all given 45 minutes of fame. Usually they don't win big and the banker makes them cry when they realise they turned down thousands in pursuit of the big win. And there's always some sad old bloke who has watched all the episodes and thinks he knows the formula. Then of course when it's his go, he walks away with a tenner. I've seen people go with numbers based on birthdays, the colour tops the other contestants are wearing, the position on the floor, and none of them have done very well.

But I suppose I'll still watch it. For the day that the Banker is unmasked as Mr Blobby. It will all be worth it. Blobby blooby blobby!!

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?

I hate other travellers.

On the annual trip to the folks last weekend, our train trip reinforced my belief that travelling with strangers should be avoided at all costs. Some lessons my fellow travellers should have learnt:

1. If you are going to travel on a Friday, reserve a seat. Don’t look surprised that the train is full to bursting and you don’t have anywhere to sit for the next two hours. And if you decide to plonk your suitcase in the middle of the aisle and sit on it, expect to be made to move regularly by people going to buy booze and then have to visit the toilet lots when they’ve drunk it.
2. When waiting for the train (on a Friday) and they call the platform, don’t run like a crazy person dropping all your belongings on the way and looking stupid. There won’t be any available seats.
3. When you get on the train and find the right carriage, wait till everyone has got past you before deciding to unpack REALLY slowly and put all your bags around the carriage in random places. And keep your bottom stuck in to avoid sticking it in the face of the poor passenger next to you.
4. When you get on the carriage and find someone is sitting in “your” reserved seat, make sure you check what carriage you are supposed to be in before you start an argument. You are guaranteed to be in the wrong carriage, and as far away as you could be from the right one.
5. If it is at all possible, upgrade to first class. You get free stuff and loads of room and don’t have to mix with the other idiots travelling with you.
   

Man, I feel like a woman (who shot her husband)

This song will forever be associated in my mind with this news story. You couldn’t make it up, and I wish I had been on the jury. Another news report in the paper added the details that the couple had an “experimental” sex life and the poor bloke was still wearing his blue dressing gown (but no underwear) when they found him – how erotic!

Vegetable porn

Sorry for the faint hearted among you, but here is the sweet potato that started it all. All credit must go to Mr P for taking the photo (though why he banned Miss S from buying it I will never know, presumably to allow other innocent shoppers to share in the fun) and Miss S for modelling it.

Confessions of a carrot packer

It recently came to my attention through Lady L and Miss S that I was part of a conspiracy to deprive northern England of comedy shaped vegetables. You know how it is, it brightens up your day when you take a carrot out of a bag and it looks like genitalia, or you come across a potato that looks like the pope. I used to have a summer job in a carrot factory. Depending on which line you worked on, there was a scale of carrot that had to be strictly adhered to. Marks & Spencer only had the best perfectly straight and unblemished carrots, and they had to be the same size give or take a few millimetres. The bigger supermarkets, Tesco and Sainsburys, were next down the chain; they allowed slightly bent carrots, and perhaps a bit of marking. Then right down at the bottom was Kwik Save. Anything went there, basically everything that the other supermarkets wouldn’t take. So my job was to weed out funnily shaped carrots, thereby depriving people of an unexpected giggle (well if you’re one of my friends anyway!), and in Miss S’s case pretty much a promotion! Surely one carrot tastes the same as another? But you wouldn’t believe the lengths the quality control people went to to ensure blemish free carrots. When the trend started for leaving the green bits on at the top for the posh folk, my that caused some people nightmares.

People of northern England, I apologise. If you want penis shaped vegetables, go to Kwik Save. It’ll be cheaper too. And taste just as lovely.

And as for the people who shop at Kwik Save. Why has their uncanny knack of getting a parsnip that looks like a willy or a potato with legs never come up in conversation?

I'm sorry do you think this is a doctor's?!

So maybe I was a tad too quick to declare my love for my new doctors. It was the new patients interview with the nurse this morning, she did the usual height and weight checks, asked how much we drank (think of a number, halve it...), asked if we smoked (of course not, the odd drunken social fag doesn't count) etc.

I started to worry a bit the third time she mentioned how hard it was to get an appointment at the clinic. She told hubby that he'd have to see his doctor before they can give him any insulin. This is quite important. So we asked for an appointment at reception. The next appointment is in May. May?! May!! It's March 21st today. What would happen if you were really sick? "If you're not better in a month and a half, come and see us"? Luckily being the marvellous wife I am, I had anticipated this and ordered shed loads of medicine from his old doctors. Which should keep us afloat in insulin. Unless at the actual appointment they then say it will take another 3 months to set up the repeat prescription...

Songs to wake up to

Rest of the week? Kelly bloody Clarkson - Breakaway. (There is a definite mind implantation policy going on by her record company).

This morning? A-ha - Analogue.

Oh it's going to be a good day :-)

There's a ghost in my house

One thing that wasn't on the survey when we bought the house was the ghost. Our house has a gooseberry in spectral form. Now I am sure that the ghost isn't malevolant and we don't mind it at all really. But when it tries to make me think I'm going crazy it just ain't right and I am going to have it out with the ghost and establish some AUTHORITAY! Oh yes.

So what evidence have I got for this ghost? First of all the stereo in the bedroom started switching itself on in the middle of the night. Then every time I went in the room the stereo was on. I ended up putting the volume on minimum just in case it happened in the day when we were out. And it did. I even moved the damn thing, thinking it was coz it was too close to the radiator and heat does funny things to electrical equipment you know. No change. One time hubby swore that it was actually switched off at the plug.

And things have gone missing. To date I have lost a bag full of necklaces, two pairs of scissors, a kitchen spoon thing that picks pasta up, and the lining off my coat hood. Maybe it's the Borrowers?

Then as the stereo and petty theft wasn't affecting us too much, the ghost moved to the lounge. And every Sunday without fail, it changes channels on the tv. It has happened on other days, but Sundays you can guarantee it. The remote control is usually on the floor, or on the desk, not even pointing at the tv. And it doesn't even change the channel to anything good, usually the premium "pay lots of money to watch them" movie channels or the Antiques Roadshow. This makes me suspect the old lady who lived here is our ghost. Why is she not at peace? Does she not approve of us living here? Or is it that she does approve and is just teasing us?

I am not mad.

Romeo

Ladies!! One of the world's most eligible men is newly single! Oi, get to the back of the queue, I saw him first!

Oh I jest of course. Lovely romantic old Phil Collins fell for this unfortunate lady and then dumped his poor second wife by fax. I wonder how this one went? "You're dumped" in alphabetti spaghetti at dinner time? A letter from his solicitor at breakfast time? Or maybe this is the first she's heard of it?

Phil must have someone lined up already, I can't wait to hear who it is. Hmm, who is single at the moment? Renee Zellwegger? Cher? Billie Piper?

He is rich though...if I was after a super rich sugar daddy husband who would surely die if he had an over-enthusiastic young wife I'd be straight in there.

You know you are too polite when...

...you walk into the only ladies loo in a pub to find a "lady" stood on top of the toilet snorting coke off the hand drier and you apologise.

Shakespeare is among us

So finally the world of literature has attracted one of the greats of our times who wants to tell us all about his life. In 5 books. Over 12 years. For £5 million quid. Who is this doyenne of intellectual thought who will teach us great things and make us question the world we live in? Why, no other than Wayne Rooney. What took you so long Wayne?

I imagine the first volume of the five (what do you call a series of 5 books? A cinquette?) will be something like this:

Monday: “I woke up and brushed me teeth in the special toothpaste that Colleen got me. It’s got seaweed in it and it makes me feel sick. Then I got dressed. Jones our butler had made me favourite brekkie – Lucky Charms and toast with the crusts cut off, I hate crusts. Then I got a call from Sven who wanted to tell me to stop eating so much cereal and start on the body building shakes for the World Cup build up. I don’t like them much but he wants me to be able to knock over those ‘orrible other players who think they can beat me easily”.

Tuesday: “I got up and brushed me teeth. Had a Crème Egg for brekkie, coz Colleen was out already at Lakeside shopping. Had footie training.”

Wednesday: “Went to awards ceremony after tea. Colleen made me wear a pink suit to go with her dress. Met Lionel Blair, he’s my hero.”

Thursday: “David (Beckham) called to see how I was doing. He says I’d better eat lots of eggs as well as all those shakes.”

Friday: “Watched Deal or no deal. Those poor people get really upset about a piddly 250 grand, Colleen spends that most weekends.”

And so on. How can he stretch it over 5 books? It isn't quite Lord of the Rings, and that only made it to 3. I imagine the early life will be: “I went to school, I was quite good at football, I got spotted and signed.” Of course there must be some early hardship to go through, maybe his mum couldn’t afford Adidas trainers and he had £5 ones from the local market. My life could be this exciting, do you think I could get a few million to tell my story?

I can’t wait to read them. No really.

I'd like to withdraw ALL your money please Mr Security Man.

What is going on with all the money being stolen at the moment? Since the £53 million was nicked, loads of Securitas depots and vans have been robbed. A plane in Sweden was robbed too! It's like the audacity of nicking £53 million made all the other crims go "whoo, it looks dead easy to make a quick buck, let's nick a tractor and go make ourselves rich". And ironically they usually have so far. It makes me suspicious. Either it's all the same people and they need MEGABUCKS for some dastardly scheme, or it's rival gangs who are competing with each other. Or they're trying to take the heat off the big money by making the cops investigate lots of little robberies in a cunning red herring type strategy.

Or the robbers found out that Securitas were a big bunch of frauds not guaranteed to look after our money at all, with very little security around to stop them. Hell they probably had the money lying around piled up in a big room and they spend all their days bellyflopping into it and giggling. Not likely to stop your more serious criminal mind. Not one with a tractor anyway.

I L.O.V.E. my new doctor's

I finally registered with a doctor today. I haven't been registered with a doctor close to where I live for nearly 3 years so I fully expect to be beset with some horrible illness now I have somewhere to go. My elderly neighbour recommended them, on the basis that they hadn't killed her yet. I failed 3 times at picking up new patients' forms and in the end had to beg them to post them to me. Today I went there clutching my filled in forms and I walked there in the rain. Yes I did. In the rain. Go me!

The minute I walked through their doors their computers died. Is it just me?! As it was still raining I said I'd wait and see if they could be fixed. As I was sat steaming quietly in the oh so lovely waiting room I noticed lots of things that make me heart my new doctors. They have an electronic sign that announces appointments. It makes a binging sound so everyone remembers to look up and then the sign says: "Mrs Smith! Doctor Brown! Room 1, and have a nice day now!". Ok I made up the exclamation marks and the over familiarity, but that's what it felt like. The receptionists all smiled and they even had a plant with an amusing note stuck on it. It said: "Hello. Please don't water me any more, I have plenty. Thankyou, Drowning Plant".

The people in the waiting room all seemed to be kindly looking elderly gentlemen who all looked very healthy. Cocoon anyone? Ooh apart from one man who looked a bit pale and a sly glimpse at the letter he was clutching explained it - he was in for the snip. Ouch!

I went to look at the doctor's my sister-in-law is registered with which is nearer than my new doctor's, but seriously? It looked like a crack den from the outside. And the inside wasn't much better. It was a dodgy terraced house and some of the upstairs windows had those metal screens they put on drug dens they've closed down. For the extra 10 minute walk it's worth it for smiley nurses, a talking sign, and over-watered plants! And the entertaining sight of men's faces when they know they are about to have their little willies messed with! And miracle of miracles their computers came back on and I was allowed to join the hallowed ranks.

My useless work colleague

Now I said I wouldn't swear lots about this person and I won't, but in the past couple of days work bitching with my more useful colleagues (it's the best way to get through the days) has come up with some gems:

On a general ability to help anyone. Period:

"Why don't we replace her with a cardboard cut-out. It would be more efficient and at least we could put a sign on it saying "I'm sorry there is no-one here at the moment who can help you"? "

On hearing Ms Useless is approaching a significant milestone in life:

"Well it just proves that fat people don't show their age"

"Well at least she's a year nearer retirement"

I am sure that crying with laughter at the Enquiry Desk would be frowned upon by the Great Librarian in the Sky, but sometimes it just has to come out.

The one good thing...

...about being off sick from work? Watching Deal or No Deal and seeing a crazy lady admit to the whole world that her dead parents were channeling her decisions. Genius.

Ramblings

Yesterday I composed a blog about my useless work colleague. But I've decided not to publish it as life is too short to read lots of swearing, and if I ever became famous and my identity leaked out then I'd be in big doo doo.

So today I woke up with Orson's "No tomorrow" in my head, probably courtesy of Lady Librarian who gets violent at the very thought of it. And yesterday it was more KT Tunstall, what is going on? I don't own her album, I'm starting to suspect that it's some kind of mind implant, but it won't make me buy it, oh no!

I've got drawn into watching the current series of American Idol for some bizarre reason. It's a bit mad. None of the songs they sing (apart from the classics) have made it over to these shores so I've got no idea if they're singing them well or not. And apart from 1 guy who makes me mad as he has the best rock voice and could be doing the music thing for real - WHY didn't he start a band or join a band, is American Idol really the best outlet for his talents? - they are mostly a bunch of average karaoke singers with confidence. It's weird watching all these American kids being told they are absolutely rubbish turning around and telling the judges they don't know what they're talking about. None of them think they are rubbish, just that the judges either don't know what they're talking about or that the judges have got some idea of who they want to win and they don't fit the bill. Where does all this unfounded confidence come from? Hell, I can't even sing in front of my nearest and dearest and I love singing. But I suppose I'm a repressed Brit.

Dumbass lawyers

This is the type of person who has been plaguing the poor librarians this week:

Dumbass lawyer: "Have you got 'Precedents on land law?'
Librarian: "Yes we do. What date?"
Dumbass lawyer: "It's the first of March."
Librarian: "???"

[Nb the intelligent librarian meant to say "which edition are you looking for?" but assumed the lawyer had a brain.]

Harold Marvin Llamaar

This little cutie has been landed with the best name. If I had a kitten I would call it Melvill Dewey Decimal.

Conversation on a bus #2

[2 boys this time, probably about 17. On their way into town on a Saturday night.]

Kelvin: “Oh look at me hair, it looks awful”
Shayne: “Nah mate it looks fine”
Kelvin: “Seriously, I shouldn’ ‘a left the house like this, what do I look like?”
Shayne: “You look good! Where are we goin’ first?”
Kelvin: “We’re meetin’ Shazza and Kazza and Dwayne and Stevo and that lot in the Drunken Monkey, then we’ll see where we flock”
Shayne: “Are you goin’ to Time? I ain’t goin’ to Time. There’s no way I’m goin’ to Time”
Kelvin: “No idea mate, I don’t know where we’re goin’. See where we flock to yeh?”
Shayne: “But I ain’t goin’ to Time”
Kelvin: “Seriously mate, I’ve no clue”
Shayne: “Who’s gonna be out then?”
Kelvin: “Dunno mate, probably Kez and Jez, Bazza sez he’s bringin’ his new bird Crystal and some of her mates. Might get lucky”
Shayne: “But what if they go to Time? I ain’t goin’ there”
Kelvin: “Dunno mate, if there’s girls goin’ it’ll be a laugh. See where we flock eh?”
Shayne: “Well if they go to Time I might go”
Kelvin: “Look at me hair. Seriously mate, just look at it!”

The joys of online shopping

I have discovered the joys of online ordering for food. After spending over an hour the week before fighting through trolley jams, fat people standing in the middle of the aisles, and trying to find where the food had all been moved around to, I thought “That’s it!” and got on the computer. And it was a breeze. I found everything I wanted, lots of it was on offer, and they could deliver whenever I wanted.

Day of the delivery dawned and the van pulled up about 15 minutes into the delivery slot. The man was lovely, so lovely he almost stopped for tea, and the shopping was done! It was SO exciting; we unpacked the bags going “Ooh! Look! Teabags!” and “Ooh, mushrooms! Look!” like we hadn’t actually ordered it all ourselves. Everything we wanted was there, the only substitution was alcohol so that was fine. I can drink pretty much everything.

I’ve already started my list for next time! My life is so much easier now.

Conversation on a bus

[Setting the scene: back seat of a bus, 2 girls who are 17 based on their conversation, but who looked about 45. Girl no. 1 (Carly) is upset about her forthcoming 18th birthday. Girl no. 2 (Kia) has just been bought a car for hers. They both sound like Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother]

Carly: "They wanna take me away for the weekend, but I ain't goin' if it's in this country. There ain't no point."

Kia: "But a 14 hour flight ain't no good for a weekend away, you gotta go somewhere closer. And they said they couldn't afford to go abroad."

Carly: "It ain't on Kia. They say they can't afford to take me away for the weekend somewhere worf goin' to but it's coz they hate me. I ain't sayin' nuffin but it's me 18th and they knew when I was born that someday I was gonna be 18. They say they can't afford to take me away for the weekend somewhere worf' going to but they're lyin'. They woulda saved up if they wanted to, they went to Lanzarote last year and took my bruvver and they had the money for that. They've had all me life to save up, they just spent the money on themselves."

Kia: "Yeah but I only got the car coz my parents had the money, I wouldn't 'a got it if they couldn't. You know your mum ain't got the money."

Carly: "Yeah I ain't sayin' nuffin' but she's working now."

Kia: "She only started last week."

In the ghetto?

So the Labour Government are going to create a "Minister for Social Exclusion". What sweeping powers the lucky minister will have – “I don’t like the look of you sonny jim, off to the walled ghetto that is Birmingham for you”. None of us will be safe.

Bank robbers wives!

Imagine the planning that goes into stealing almost £50 million pounds (or about 8 billion dollars, it sounds SO much more). It must take months and months of planning, scoping the joint, spying on people who work there, learning the routines of the place, getting the top criminal masterminds involved and copies of those funny blueprints of the layout that they always have in films. Then the day dawns. It goes without a hitch. Brilliant! The TV is full of reports about the heist, the amount stolen goes up every half hour, everyone is amazed at the nerve of the robbers! You are made for life, if there’s 50 people involved, that’s still a cool million each. And who knows 50 criminal masterminds who can keep a secret?

But then your wife decides to go to the bank. And pay in her share of it. And she forgot to take the wrappers off the bundle. These handily say “from Tonbridge”.

Any criminal mastermind knows you lie low for at least 3 months, you don’t go the bank and say “I’ve suddenly come into some money. Can I open a high interest account please?”

Lessons I have learned in life

1) Never go to sleep with wet hair.
2) If you buy a pair of trousers that are too long for you and fail to take them up, you will spend a lot of time tripping over your feet.
3) If you buy a pair of trousers that are too big for you, solely on the basis that they are cheap, you will spend a lot of time yanking them up.
4) Buy the right size trousers in future.
5) When you suggest going out for an evening with a man, make sure you have a full plan of action already sorted to avoid the usual “where shall we go” debates.
6) If you keep to your resolution to drink more water, you will also get lots more exercise by your extra trips to the loo.

Booky B FM

This week I have woken up with the following songs in my head:

Kelly Clarkson - Since you've been gone
KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree

I don't own either of these songs, hell I don't even like them very much. KT has a cheery riff (with me everybody..."whoo oo"..."whoo oo") and Kelly is very angsty ("grrr") but I didn't hear them on the radio or on the tv or anything. How did they get in my head overnight and what does it mean?!

New shoes?!

Too bloody right! When do you ever find two beautiful pairs of shoes at the same time and they have them in your size and everything?!

Timber!!

In the news today there was a report of a floor collapsing at an office in Manchester. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but some cad of a journalist managed to get into their report that the people were in a health and safety meeting at the time. That really made me laugh! Sad I know.

Work and wine

I think I’ve found a cure for the work time blues. Go to the pub at lunchtime and have a glass of wine. Just one. Don’t go overboard. Then the afternoon is so much better. It really is. And the best thing about it? I was at a meeting in the pub, the best venue to hold meetings I find, so I can even feel virtuous about working at the same time. Marvellous.

It's spring!

These are the first bulbs* I have ever grown. I am so proud.

[*on the phone I excitedly declared to hubbie that my bulbs were growing. He heard "boobs" instead of "bulbs" and was very disappointed when he got home and I dragged him to the garden instead of the bedroom.]

Who's gonna drive you home?

Recently I have noticed a weird thing. There have been loads of cars driving around in the dark with no headlights on. Drivers in London are scary enough when you can see them coming towards you. Normally I would flash at them to tell them (with my headlights stupid), but then if the "not being able to see where you're going" in the dark doesn't alert them, hell what would? I read something in the paper a few weeks ago and it's stuck in my head and is really putting me off getting involved with the mad drivers. In Japan (or was it Brazil?), some gang had an initiation rite where the gang members drove around with no lights on. Whichever kind samaritan flashed them to warn them was followed home and killed. They had marked themselves to the gang and were the next victims. The police had to issue a warning to people not to flash at cars with no headlights on.

Now this may be a cunning urban myth, I'm easily fooled (just ask Lady L), but it has put me off warning people just in case they are going to try and kill me. The fact that they may kill me anyway as they can't see where they're going, and I can't see them, seems irrelevant.

Me? Nuts? Discuss.

Not cool

Yeah, brown just wasn't sexy. Due to the risk of being mistaken for a depressed librarian (librarian?! Perish the thought!), I rethought the colour scheme. This is better! [Note to self: learn more html so I can make it purple instead!]

New look

Is this look just too brown?

A rant

The Nanny State has gone into overdrive this week. Banning smoking in a "kind of" way - exceptions include stadiums with open roofs, royal palaces, and army barracks. So this means that Parliament (counted as a royal palace) is exempt from the restrictions they are imposing on the rest of us. How fair is that?! The leader of the House of Commons has said that he does not expect anyone to smoke there even though they can. How many politicians do you reckon are gonig to be smoking in their offices?! Not that I smoke or want to. But it smacks of hypocrisy. The Queen can hang out of her window smoking a big old cigar and nobody could stop her.

More hypocrisy from David Cameron of the Tories emerged today. He had a little baby on Valentine's Day - aahh. He has taken the full 2 weeks of paternity leave that were recently passed by Parliament. Which would be fine, except that he voted against it when it came up for vote. If he had his way new dad's would have less time off with their new babies but when it applies to him it's fine. It makes me mad sometimes.

And don't tell my paranoid colleague, but they think they've got bird flu in France...

Bo Selecta!

Sometimes something is so ridiculous it makes you want to laugh hysterically, cry and vomit at the same time. This came to my attention today. Craig David (aka The Most Boring Man in Pop) is the star attraction at a mobile phone convention. He has been waxing lyrical about how his mobile helps him with his music. He even compared himself to Sting:

“When I was out in Asia, I was on the bullet train travelling between two different performances. I felt inspired. It was my first time in Japan and I felt a bit like in the Sting classic an Englishman in New York. I took a picture of the bullet train and the people walking on, then stored that onto my phone and linked it to the song, got back to my studio, downloaded it and it put me right back into the moment”.

Bless him. I can imagine him sitting on the train humming little ditties into a voice recorder (“I’m Craig Daviiiid”…) then going to his “studio” (read “bedroom”) to hammer them out on a little bontempi keyboard.

And how uncool is it for any kind of musician to prostitute themselves to the big mobile phone companies? I bet he got some cool freebies, but at the expense of the rest of his reputation? And do you know anyone with a Craig David ring tone on their phone?

No snogging in class!

Lord preserve us, there’s another ban on the way. Every now and then the EC or some moralistic body decides to ban something in the name of decency. The EC usually try to ban bent cucumbers or dodgy sausages, presumably on the grounds that we might get saucy ideas from looking at them? I kid you not. I have a vague memory that they also tried to ban small condoms in case they offended anyone.

Anyway, today’s papers are full of this. New guidelines want to stop kids in plays at schools from doing love scenes, in case they are exploited. Now when I was at school the raunchiest scenes our plays did were Mary kissing Joseph on the cheek in the Nativity. (Though I am convinced one of the shepherds “accidentally” on purpose brushed against one of the sheep. That wasn’t in the script). It’s ridiculous. Kids know the difference between acting and real life, and if teachers are asking them to do plays that call for sex scenes and nudity, as reported, then the teachers should be banned! Stopping pretend kisses on the grounds that kids are open to abuse is just crazy. And how else will the prettiest girl in school get together with the handsomest boy? It’s the law that they have to play Romeo and Juliet and spread the joys of budding romance round the school. I don’t remember them being required to get jiggy with it as well.

I once worked in a carrot factory in my holidays. A lot of carrots often looked rather like genitalia. Are they going to ban them next?

Quote of the day

"Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance".
King George V.

Never a truer word was spoken

Cruise news

Well the dearth of celebrity gossip surrounding TomKat has been replaced by the most bizarre rumour mongering! Yesterday the paper ran a quote from Katie saying she knew she would end up marrying Tom as “her medium told her” she would. Uh oh? And today some mag claims they will split up as soon as baby Cruise is born. Where do they get these rumours from?! Some old friend of Katie, or some man who sat in the next booth to her at the diner, knows this for gospel truth? Though we all know Katie is just a machine for the future of Scientology, a pretty face with the right genes at the right time. So it wouldn’t surprise me if she was disposed of after producing the goods. But splitting up isn’t good for PR, wouldn’t she just “disappear” into obscurity instead? They already said she would give up films to look after young “Damien”, so she could be locked up in a huge nursery somewhere until everyone forgets about her. What was that film where the bloke had his mad ex-wife locked up in the attic?

So sue me!

I think I am mental. Over the weekend in my jet lagged state, I emailed the travel agents that took all our money and tried to ruin our honeymoon, hell I'm going to name names here - Thomas Cook - to tell them how great Lastminute.com and Virgin Atlantic were this time round. This was because my unbridled joy at the smoothness of our trip made me realise how much I still hated TC, and I decided I wanted to tell them. I also emailed the others to tell them how much I hearted them.

But now I feel guilty. I don't want to check my email in case I have one from TC saying: "you are SO petty, get over it. We don't want your money anyway, and every holiday you book in the future we will be watching and try to ruin it. We have spies everywhere. We RULE the High Street".

Though if I have one from Richard Branson thanking me for my praise and offering me a free holiday on that island he owns, why, I'd be thrilled! You have to take the rough with the smooth baby!

Is this normal?

Be my Valentine?

My colleague (the one who is obsessed with bird flu and sudden death) has her birthday on Valentine’s Day. As did her predecessor. Weird. Anyway, that aside, she has decided that she wants to get married and Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to find herself a husband. She hasn’t got a boyfriend you see, and she has decided that she just wants to be married, never mind who to. And despite the possibility of sudden death at any moment, she still clings on to the romantic notion of marriage. She wants to leave her resume on the Enquiry Desk for any interested male library users (hey, she might be open to female such is her desire for wedded bliss). And oblivious to the slightly desperate vibes she is giving off, she is telling any man who stays at the desk long enough to listen. Poor girl, I don’t know why she is so fixated.

Apparently in Belgium they are doing speed dating in libraries, there is a definite market. It’s all based on what your favourite books are, and if you like someone you talk to you can arrange to meet them again – perhaps by leaving your phone number in a book? It would help the shy people, and give us librarians something else to moan about! All this lovey dovey stuff ain’t because of this in the news today. A survey claims that wedded bliss only lasts a year, then it’s all downhill till death/divorce. As I am only just over a week past the year mark, it makes me worry that I am going to wake up tomorrow morning miserable as sin and hubbie will take to sitting around in his dirty pants drinking beer and watching porn. Who commissions these surveys anyway? And who do they ask?! I’m sure it’s not all that bad, surely if you have married an idiot you would realise within the first couple of weeks? And then there’s the 7 year itch to look forward to. Honestly, are they trying to promote marriage or what?! There aren’t enough houses for everyone to be single!

The best website in the world?

I love this site. I could watch it for hours. How sad am I?

Who's the Daddy?

American tv is just mental. We caught a fair bit of it in the late afternoons when we had run out of money for the day. There's a lot of Jerry Springer style shows, Maury, Oprah, Judge Joe Brown. My highlight was a Maury show - "I am testing a man to see if he is the father of my baby". Only thing was, he was the 10th man (yes the 10TH!!!) this lady had dragged on national tv to do a paternity test on. And they showed clips of the previous 9 shows, when the men were declared not to be the daddy she threw herself to the floor and wailed and screamed. The 10th man was not the daddy. Lady declared herself to be "cursed". How many men could she have been sleeping with in a month?! She thought she was just unlucky!! Now it is very difficult to get pregnant when you're trying, the window of opportunity is very small every month. This woman must have been riding them like no-one's business. And no-one thought to tell her that maybe, just perhaps, she should have kept her legs shut?! The poor 10 men that were humiliated on tv and screamed at for not being the daddy were the ones who got the grilling. She was treated like a poor unfortunate woman who had been badly treated. I suppose they want her back for the next 10 paternity tests. Dirty old tart!!

Viva las vegas!

Some highlights of our trip to Vegas:

1) Seeing Elton John at the Colliseum in Caesar's Palace. He was amazing, and very funny, and he really doesn't like Celine Dion at all (she's also on in Vegas, sadly Barry Manilow wasn't there yet). There were lots of images of random nude women on the screen behind him, we were warned about this (some "female nudity") when we booked the tickets, the explanation was that "well this is Vegas". Oh righty. Entertainingly both hubbie and I were expecting showgirls dancing round Elton's piano, but no. He was surrounded by 4 long haired grizzly rockers instead and the nudity was all on the screen behind them. Elton didn't even take his top off.

2) The audience at the Elton John concert. They were mental. First of all there were 2 men in the row in front of us. One was very small and the other must have been well over 6ft, he reminded me of Crazy Legs Crane who used to be on the Pink Panther. Hubbie said he looked like a spider. When he sat down his knees nearly took out the person in front of him. Anyway. For the 40 minutes before Elton took to the stage, they argued and argued in hushed whispers. They were clearly having a domestic about the bottles of Bud that Crazy Legs was drinking with abandon (plastic bottles in case anyone is worrying about Elton's safety at this point). But then 2 songs in, they both bawled like big old girls, and this carried on to the end of the show. Bless.

Then there was trailer trash lady behind us. Most people had dressed up for the occasion, I mean, the tickets weren't cheap. This girl had a shellsuit on and the minute Elton started tinkling the ivories she was up on her feet whooping and hollering and singing along very badly out of tune, and at least 2 words ahead of Elton. At one point she declared very loudly, "Gee that kicked ass!". I am sure Elton was very proud.

3) Getting a VIP pass for the buffet in the MGM Grand hotel. We spent a lot of time here, it's our favourite casino. And one day Raymond who was in charge of the roulette tables, came up and gave us the pass as it was our anniversary. We weren't even staying there. It was amazing. I have never seen so much food in my life, and they even had sugar free cakes which hubbie could eat. He would have cried with joy but the 2 cakes he was stuffing in his mouth were taking up all his attention. And we got to go up the VIP line and bypass all the other people. One lady waiting in the queue said loudly to her husband, "they just walked past us all" so I looked at her and said "we've got a VIP pass". So stick it lady!

4) Winning the 1000 jackpot on the Wheel of Fortune twice!! Sadly we were only playing with quarters, but we still got nearly $300 from a $5 play. The Wheel of Fortune is great, if you're lucky you get to spin the wheel at the top of the machine, and win anything from 25 to 1000.

5) Putting our last $3 in a random machine and winning $50 back. We won so much this time round, that we must have spent the money we took with us, then the same again and then some more. On our second to last day we thought we were going to have to hit the atm machine, but then we couldn't stop winning. It was great. Not huge amounts, hubbie wanted to win the big old jackpot by this stage, but enough to keep us going for another day or so.

6) On our actual anniversary we went to a posh restaurant in the Bellagio. It was lovely. Though despite the "smart dress" requirement, it didn't stop them letting any old person in. Typically we got 4 trailer trashers sitting next to us, all blinging it and wearing shades even though it was NIGHTTIME (what is it with that?). One girl announced to the entire restaurant that "I only drink champagne dahling". I think in Vegas, you can't be sure who has got the money, most of the eccentrics are probably millionaires, so be nice to everyone!

7) Drink of choice? Long Island Ice Tea. Mmmmm......

Howdy partner

Yeehah! I'm dragging the old man to Las Vegas on Thursday (well I say dragging, you probably couldn't see him for dust such is his penchant for the old ching ching of slot machines) and I can't wait! We went last year and my one overriding memory is that we only saw a tiny percentage of all there is to see, and I am determined to see it all this time. Hell, last time (due to jet lag or something weird related to wedding stress), we never went out at night. Oh actually, we did once, to see the Blue Man Group, but that was because we had already paid for the tickets. They were mental btw, and apparently in London, go see them! Anyway, we hardly drank either, despite booze being free (yes FREE) in casinos as long as you're sticking your quarters in a machine. Being typical Brits, we didn't like to ask, admittedly being asked for ID every 5 minutes might have put the waitresses off approaching us and offering us the demon nectar. I was 30 at the time, they thought we were under 21!! Flattering but not half annoying. It was probably because we clutched our $20 notes to our bosoms like they were million dollar notes, while groups of boys who really did look about 15 were throwing hundred dollar bills to the wind on the roulette tables. Would you ask someone their age if they were making you rich? We weren't making anyone rich with our measly gambling so they picked on us. Swines.

Anyway, my problem at the moment (life is hard sweetie) is what to drink. We were on Budweisers last time and I can't drink lots of beer. I tried a cocktail in a restaurant, a Manhattan I think, and it was horrible. I'm veering to the old mainstay of JD and coke, but as it's free I want to ask for something extravagant, something with an umbrella. That will make me strangely lucky on the Wheel of Fortune and not so drunk that I fight an old dear trying to get on the same machine. What would you have to do to get thrown out of a casino?

No. 11 in my Top 10 Things to Do with £100 Million Dollars? Well, I'd put a million on red...and buy that giant flashing cowboy that's in all the tour guides.

Euro-doolally

Hubbie has been driving me crazy for the past 2 weeks with his obsession with winning the Euromillions. He says I have no imagination as I can't get excited about what I'd spend the money on. My defence is that I am not bothered about money at all, and I'd rather write a novel that got published, or become a rock star. For arguments sake though, and to prove I can, here are the Ten Things I Would Spend My Millions On.

1) Lessons in how to walk in high heels without looking drunk or crazy.

2) An en-suite swimming pool (I saw one on Superhomes and it is a must for any millionaire)

3) My own library fashioned like one at Cambridge, with spiral staircases, sliding ladders, and those green reading lamps on the tables. And my own purple book stamp. And perhaps a benevolent ghost.

4) A beetle - purple soft top with those spinning silver hubcaps, and a holder for cups of tea. And a teasmaid in the boot for emergency tea situations.

5) A big jukebox that holds all my cds and plays them in proper random order (not like Lady L's mp3 player)

6) A disco of my very own, with a sprung dancefloor, my jukebox linked to the decks, a mirrorball, and a fully stocked bar. And another floor for roller-discos. And BIG sofas on the sidelines.

7) A big house to put it all in. Somewhere in the countryside but near enough to London to visit.

8) A little olde-worlde bookshop with a cafe next door that me & my friends can run, I wouldn't want to give up work altogether, and I'd like to save them from their lives of 9-5 drudgery. But imagine all those libraries that would be bereft of librarians!

9) A Frothy Coffee maker. No! Make that an island! With a castle and eerie caves. Think the Famous Five.

10) My own beach.

Dead ringers

I know there is something wrong with my head, but 2 news articles this week have stuck themselves together in my subconscious for their startling similarity against all odds. No. 1: The poor old whale that died in the Thames after getting lost (or perhaps she was trying to speak to Tony Blair as she was spotted near Parliament). No. 2: The death of Chris Penn, funnyman actor most famous for Reservoir Dogs. They have absolutely nothing in common, except that inquests into their deaths were "inconclusive". And I suppose that reports say that Chris Penn was 21 stone when they found him. Who would have thought that he would be linked to a dead whale when he died? Not me. But maybe I'm just a sick bunny...

Stalkers alert!

I was reminded recently of my stalker incident. I had managed to blot this from my memory for a good few years, but I suppose as I still have the evidence it ain't quite gone. It wasn't all that threatening really, indeed I have had a few drinks out of the story, but it's time to out it.

I was stalked by a librarian.

It was my very first library job, back when I was young, enthusiastic, and, as it turned out, extremely naive. Just moved to the big smoke from the World's Tiniest Village (tm), boyfriend who was miles away, and I landed a job in a great little library with lovely friendly librarians who took me under their wing. I spend most lunchtimes in the pub and most afternoons on the floor. We had so much fun, the students even used to come and show us rude pictures they had found in the medical textbooks. Then one colleague who shall remain nameless, who I got on with brilliantly (maybe too well as it turned out), started being weird about my weekend visits from the boyfriend. Then stalker boy bought a flat and needed to rent out his spare room. We thought it was ideal, he wanted less rent than I paid for a bedsit slightly bigger than my belongings, and we could continue the work fun into the wee hours! Marvellous. Until he announced that boyfriend couldn't stay over. Alarm bells started ringing then, and I started to distance myself from him. But what with it being such a small library and all it wasn't hard to see he was going nuts.

Then came the letter. In my in-tray one afternoon. Seriously, it was 8 pages of tiny writing on A4 paper. 8 pages!! A4 paper!! Turns out I was leading him on, and he felt obliged to follow me round at the weekends to see the evidence that I was cheating on him. Oh-righty. And to top it all off I had apparently been flirting with all my other male colleagues too, and the students. Hell, any man who came near me. And he was going to write to my boyfriend and tell him. I actually felt sorry for him and tried to talk to him about it (I was 21, he was 34 btw). Didn't help, I had to transfer to another library in the end. I thought I saw him the other day on the street and it was really weird. I ducked into a shop just in case! He was a freak.

I've still got the letter. Just in case he does it again and actually kills the poor girl he fixates on. But then I doubt he would. Stalker librarians are tortured souls, driven by imagined slights and random events which are given bizarre significance. When they finally lose it, they just write it all down (or on their blogs, ahem...). Most people didn't even realise they were crazy stalkers. Then they retreat to their offices and sulk.

To hell with the Luddites.

"The good news is that libraries are getting £80m of lottery money. The bad news is that they can't spend it on books ".

This story came up today. Apparently they are sacrificing books for "community learning centres" - that will be internet cafes then surely? Apparently the "underprivileged" don't need books to learn from, they just need t'internet and DVD loans. Libraries don't tend to loan porn mags I suppose. They are closing loads of already established libraries that could benefit from £80m of lottery money - for arguments sake, let's say they wouldn't have to close - and couldn't they just stick a few more pcs in them instead of closing them and building new ones? And order 50 Barbara Taylor Bradfords for the shelves.

Honestly. When I win the Euromillions on Friday (yes it's still £100 mill., I wouldn't bother buying a ticket if I were you, I'm winning it), I'll open a new library. And only let people called Barbara use it. It will be a Community Centre for severely underused names. There you go. And I'll call it the "BB Centre for the Nominally Challenged".

Oh to be cultured...

Today the topics of oysters came up at the Enquiry Desk. I have no idea why. Anyway, my colleague announced to the world that she didn't like oysters. Why perchance?

"It is like drinking someone else's phlegm straight from the fridge"

Ahem. I dread to think what she makes of caviar.

Is it just me?

Do you ever get the feeling that things are not meant to be? I'm trying to register with a doctor, finally decided to be sensible instead of just blindly trusting in being healthy and not needing a doctor. So I phoned them up last week, and was told to go and collect a new patients' form. So last Wednesday afternoon I have the afternoon off and trek down to the surgery. My first lesson was that it was bloody miles away. And it was only closed for an ad hoc staff training afternoon. Damn. Then tonight they are open until 7. "Good-o", I thought, "I finish at 5, by the time we get home we should have plenty of time to nip into the doctors". I must be cursed. We were stuck in a complete random traffic gridlock for an hour and a half and got back for 7 on the dot. Just in time to miss the doctors again. Even the traffic news on the radio didn't know what had happened to cause the tailbacks. I am going to try once more, short of falling meteors, dropping down dead, or winning the Euromillions on Friday (£100 million this week, I will hire my own surgery - oh sod it, make that hospital - then) I am getting that form. Oh yes.

The lights are on but nobody's home...

Today has been very trying. I turned up to work to discover we had no lights. Our library has no natural light, what with all the lovely stained glass, but it makes it a bit like a cave. Despite health and safety concerns, the big cheese had us open as usual (I have yet to encounter a situation where we would not open as usual, including sitting in the dark with no power at all for a week). As we speak, now it is dark outside, we have a few nominal lights up and running after 7 hours of work by the sparkies. Queue a day of extremely stupid yet obvious questions from most of the people who have been in today. I have compiled a League of Stupidity.

No. 1: one bloke came up to the desk at 2.30 pm and said "is it possible you can turn the lights on as I can't see to read"

No. 2: "haven't you paid the electricity bills this month?" (ho ho) or "haven't you put 50p in the meter?" (double ho ho)

No. 3: (after wandering around looking puzzled for a while) "Is there a problem with the lights?"

No. 4: "When are the lights coming back on?" - I did consult the psychic person who lives in my head, but still had no idea. I hazarded a guess at "maybe an hour?" - standard response to any sort of failure!

How do you respond to these people without being rude?! I have given up trying to be polite, I just look at them for a while and then say "yes we have a problem with the lights". These people are supposed to be educated!!

Somebody shoot me

Angelina is having Brad's baby. So, does this mean they are going out?

January blues

Is it just me or is January just plain crap. It should be banned. I have been so bloody tired, unmotivated and looking like shit (due to the unmotivated bit) all month. December I was full of the joys of Christmas. Now it's all: get up in the dark, go home in the dark, go to bed, get up go to work. Infinity. AAGGHHH!! They should pass a law that lets people stay in bed in January if they want to. No excuses needed.

But it isn't like I haven't got anything to look forward to. In 2 weeks time I will be in Viva Las Vegas! Whoo!! Gambling my quarters away like a mad'un, going "oohh" at all the mad themed hotels, taking photos of everything that moves. Last time I was there I won $100 on a roulette table, it's not like I've got to beat it or anything, but...

Hurray I'm a girl!

Feminine. Congratulations! You scored 8! You are more Feminine than Masculine in your tastes, habits, and style. You can be sentimental at times, and you seem to be more in touch with your feelings than others. You appreciate order and balance, and you know what you like and where you are headed.

Now that's a relief, it actually seems quite realistic! Try it yourself...

Library or mental asylum?

Now I come to think about it, I haven't blogged about libraries for a good while. So to make amends I am going to tell you about our latest nutter, let's call him Crazy Eddie for anonymity's sake. Crazy Eddie first surfaced last year as a student. He stood out from the usual students immediately as law students normally wear suits, or twin sets, and all to a man/lady carry laptops and fancy briefcases. Crazy Eddie looked like a Psychology student who had entered the wrong room. Some of his other nuances?

1. Complaining. About people typing/breathing/walking too loudly in the Library. Now I certainly applaud stamping on noisy behaviour in a Library, but he takes it to extremes and makes us do his dirty work. And having to tell a Barrister that he is breathing loudly and annoying other users does not go down well. Crazy Eddie don't work well with noise. And on another entertaining occasion, he was refused access to the Library mistakenly by an evening function. The fuss was amazing, persecution complex anyone? Though it could only have happened to him.

2. Being over familiar with the Librarians. This is not a good sign. He made a point of asking us all individually what one of the other staff member's name was, and then dropped it into conversation with the unsuspecting Librarian at random moments. This led to a hilarious team "how does he know our names??" hushed conversation leading to the revelations that the sneaky bugger conned the lot of us. We had to resort to almost superhuman subterfuge to find his name out, yet, to this day, we are too scared to use it.

3. He paces alot. Sighing and huffing (this really takes the biscuit when seen with Point 1), and generally seeming at his wits' end.

4. Random chatty conversation. This is interspaced with Point 3's "do not disturb me, I am a very busy individual" persona. His last chat with me: "hello, your fella works here doesn't he?". Me: "Erm, yes" (as stalker alert goes into amber...)

5. Being a topic over lunch. Crazy Eddie is infamous and everyone knows him, mainly as he has driven them mad with stupid questions. The head honcho quite happily told us all at lunch that Crazy Eddie nearly didn't get accepted, "what with being a reformed drug addict and alcoholic". Too much information surely?! Now I have no problem with any past addictions, in fact it's nice to see someone who hasn't just got where they are coz of Daddy's money and influence around the joint. But he is also just weird.

6. Breaking everything he touches. The number of times Crazy Eddie has come up to the desk saying the computer/printer/photocopier has mysteriously broken is beyond me. He either has the mystic powers of Uri Geller with machines, or he is a jinx.

7. No life. Crazy Eddie is in the Library from morn till night. When we close he goes to another Library that opens till dawn. All weekends too. It can't be healthy, and surely no law course could set so much work?!

Now Crazy Eddie does make the place more interesting in a weird kind of way, but I think there is a very fine line between becoming a genius who astounds the legal world and plain insanity. And given the time he spends in the Library, if it's the latter then we're in line for being held ransom for weeks while he demands airlifts and pizzas and talks us all to death. Or kills us all with mice and printer attachments...

What has the world come to?

The Daily Star (don't look if you don't want to), erstwhile intellectual reading material for builders and schoolboys who look old enough, is trying to attract a young female audience. Sorry? Which bit of the Page 3 ladeez, random boob shots (celebs if possible, anyone who will get them out if not) and football news do they think we'll be flocking to buy? Heat fills the random celeb gossip of the week slot quite happily thankyou very much. Stick to what you're good at, that's what I say!

Oh if only I was a student again...

I've been on an enforced watching daytime tv break over the past few days and there has been some cracking tv on! For example, yesterday's lunchtime news:

[Cut to studio from clip]

Newslady: "I like chimps!"

Newsman: "I like them too. But chimps are a bit rude sometimes aren't they?"

Newslady: "Yes, they are like us aren't they?"

Newsman (looking flustered): "Ahem...erm...yes...ahem...they are like people...ahem...not like us particularly...ahem..."

Newslady (giggling and a bit red): "Oh yes! They're like PEOPLE!"

[Editor in headphones: "Move on for god's sake, move on! This is supposed to be an intellectual show!!!"]

Now for the life of me I can't remember what the clip was about, it was some kind of animal I'm sure but it definitely wasn't a chimp!

And on This Morning, they had 2 women jogging on treadmills in their bras, for an alleged health article on the dangers of running in non-sports bras. I took this to mean running in general, because apparently even running for the bus is bad for you (and I would definitely miss the bus if I had to duck into some bushes to put my sports bra on first). So girls say NO to running! Marvellous.

And Joe Mangel is back in Neighbours!! Who said going to work was a good thing?!

Adapting books for tv ain't gonna please everyone...

Billie Piper is apparently in the lead role of Sally Lockhart in a new adaptation of Philip Pullman's the Ruby in the Smoke. This is a really good book, one of a series set in London about Sally fighting nasty gangsters. It's a bit Nancy Drew, and I read them after the Northern Lights trilogy following a recommendation of a friend. Said friend, on hearing who was playing Sally on the tv said: "she's a bit seedy and raddled" to play her.

Poor Billie. She's not even 25 yet and is already being described that way! She does always look like she needs to wash her hair, maybe that would improve matters!

Conservatives R us

We have a Residents Association round here which publishes a Newsletter every month. I normally skim through it as it's quite amusing but this month they have excelled themselves! It is hysterical and it makes me proud I moved here! For example:

Fighting councillors.

"Both Councillors who were involved in the fisticuffs in the Town Hall have at last been demoted."

NO to Sheep!

"In September Councillors on the Planning Committee found an application concerning a rare-breed sheep farm very funny, made baa-ing noises throughout the application itself (reducing the applicant to tears) and then refused permission."

Casinos.

"We are concerned that the Council is pressing for eight regional casinos in the area. Presumably to being ruin within reach of the poorest."

RUIN! Ruin?! How dramatic!

Whoever writes this newsletter has the funniest turn of phrase, and the thought of a load of Councillors baa-ing at a poor old sheep farmer made me laugh so much it reduced me to tears. It is a monthly rant at noisy teenagers, bad drivers, people not mowing their lawns enough - you name it, they complain about it. You can subscribe to be a member for £1 a year - or £10 for life! For the sheer entertainment value I'm subscribing rightaway. Anyone with me?

Bye bye poor Mr Snowman...

Every year I buy a different version of the Magic Tree for Christmas. This little fella was this year's one and he only lasted 2 days once his snow had grown. They claimed on the box he would last for 30 days, but any kind of draught and he's had it. His clothes all fell off (they were a bit wonky anyway) and he had to be sent to Snowman Land. I don't think I've ever managed to keep these magic things unscathed for more than a day or so. Why do I bother?! I'm sure I'll get another one next year (ooh THIS year - scary!) though.