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?