Blind drunk.....

Came home from work yesterday, smell of stale alcohol, and yes, shards of green glass all over the kitchen and sparkling wine dripping from every surface.

Twice?

What is going on?

I've put the other bottles in the fridge, it's not worth getting blinded by Prosecco.

Fizz - Bang

 I woke up in the middle of the night last night, to the sound of a small explosion.

I did what any sensible person would do in that situation.

Rolled over and went back to sleep.

This morning, when I went into the kitchen, bleary eyed and aiming for the kettle, I noticed water on the kitchen  surfaces.  Looking up, I saw water drips on the ceiling.  Remembering the explosion, I started to wonder whether my water tank on the floor above had burst.

After a bit of modest detective work (it was a bit early for that sort of thing really, but I did my best), I discovered that a bottle of bubbly, left over from the house warming party that had been stored on top of the wall unit, had burst.  It was actually champagne dripping off the ceiling.  

This is the second alcoholic explosion I have suffered in recent months.  The other one was a very alarming bang, when the small can of tonic I had left in the deep freeze to chill, then forgot about, burst. In so doing, it blasted open the freezer and flew across the floor.  My friend and I thought someone had broken in, and had to hold hands to summon up the courage to investigate.

Quite nice to know you can still do that as an adult, hold hands for moral support.

The Ice-cream man comes again

After a particularly long day at work, I was nearly home and saw the aforementioned ice-cream van driving down my road, blaring 'Oh, oh Antonio' again.

There was something reassuring about the worn, gaudy pink livery, until I read it.

'One lick and you'll come again'.

I'm going to laugh every time I hear those chimes now.

Manna on Wheels

Ah.....  Here I am at last.  Sitting in my (new) back garden, in the early evening sunshine.

I was listening to the birds singing earlier, when their call was rudely interrupted by an ice-cream van blaring out, 'Oh, oh Antonio, he sells ice-cream' on ultra-amplified chimes.  It reminded me of a very elderly lady I nursed a few decades ago (am I really old enough to say that sort of thing?  Help).  She was very frail and lay in her hospital bed staring at the ceiling, all the while singing, 'Oh, oh Antonio'.  During one particularly dull shift she taught me all the words.

Anyway, I felt a bit annoyed with the van, and was relieved when it went away.  After a few more minutes, I could here the dulcet tones of 'Antonio' a few streets away to the right, then after a little longer, more muted and further round to the left.

I remembered where I grew up was on a main road, so we never had the benefit of an ice-cream van, and I was jealous of my friends who lived in side-streets where this vehicle of dreams would appear randomly,  dispensing treats.

As I fell into a slightly depressed moment of nostalgia, I noticed some ants worrying around the patio.  They zig-zagged around, looking for something more interesting than the next bit of paving stone.

To one side of the garden, a bee landed on a flower a little too weak to support it, and the stem sagged, forming a rather pleasing parabola (the maths degree evidently wasn't a complete waste of time). The bee bungied along with it, and hung on in there.

I realised we were all looking for manna.

At last!

It happened.

 It really happened.

I had a list of jobs to do, but realised NONE OF THEM WERE URGENT, and LAY ON THE SETTEE STARING AT THE CEILING to enjoy the moment. 

Burning Money

I've moved and I'm in!  Hooray!

I'm having stuff done, like you do when you move. 

Today I had to go to the bank to get a large dollop of cash to pay for it.  Having queued for ages at two different desks, I finally got to the teller (regular readers will remember that I am not keen on queuing in banks).  He had processed my account, and was just reaching for the notes, when the fire alarm went off.  We exchanged a look.  Mine was of acute panic,  his was of supreme empathy.  He tried, he really did.  His hands were on the notes, but a manager was ushering me out of the doors.  I looked round, arms straining for the desk, akin to a male passenger on the Titanic reaching out for a lifeboat.  I was unceremoniously left on the pavement as they locked the doors. 

Not knowing how long the fire was going to burn (although there was an absence of both smoke and fire engines),  I went to another bank to do other stuff I needed to do, then to another one for yet more stuff (I have power of attorney for an aging relative - I do not have money in this many banks).  At the third bank, they asked for identification.  I reached into my handbag for my passport.

It wasn't there.

It had been there earlier.

Now it wasn't.

'Is this really how my day is panning out?', I thought in despair.

Eventually I remembered the man in Barclays had probably left it on the photocopier, so I hurried back.  It was there, thank goodness.  I was also now back in the right place to regain entry to the bank that had my money on the counter.  The same teller was there, as I queued up again.  We exchanged another look, of smiling relief.

So apart from all that, rain running through into my newly decorated living room, the small matter of a live wire in the upstairs ceiling (how much had I paid for that electrical survey?), and British Gas making it as difficult as possible (unbelievably difficult actually) to register with a new meter reading, life is pretty good.

In fact, I have had a sudden, unexpected attack of happiness.  Probably due to getting my sound system up and running with an ancient party compilation CD.  Time for a dance around, swirling my arms in the air.

Lucky no one can see me.

On Being Stubborn

I've been showing the 'sinister' weed letter around at work today.  I think I got off lightly.  One person knew someone who had had abuse graffitied over the whole of the front of their house.

When I got home, the contrary and stubborn parts of me (these friends make an appearance every so often) went to the garden shed, got out the fork and started WEEDING THE BACK GARDEN!

Take that you 'RESIDENTS'!

On Being Weedy

Yesterday evening, getting home from an eleven hour day, I picked up the letter lying on the doormat. It was addressed to, 'The Occupier', with my address, and had a franked stamp, having been sent through the post. Nothing unusual there, although somehow my antennae were wiggling. The lettering looked a bit angry. On opening, a sheet of A4 paper that had been roughly cut across the top came out, with' the following: 'Dear Neighbour' then, 'PLEASE COULD YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE UNSIGHTLY WEEDS AT THE FRONT OF YOUR PROPERTY. Many thanks from the Residents.' I was aware that I am temporarily living in a road where parking in one of the (public use) bays outside anyone else's house is considered a crime deserving of public execution, and you get asked to 'move on' by rather sad, bored people, who all have garages anyway. I hadn't realised there was also a type of 'Weed Watch' going on as well. It was of some concern that the 'residents' must have walked past my house to get to the postbox, presumably too scared to walk up my front path in case they were identified, although they might have been alarmed that the triffids would turn on them. What is particularly galling about this is that, apart from the fact it is essentially an anonymous letter, in the last few months the front of the house has been considerably improved. I have had a huge ivy plant removed, sagging soffit boards replaced and have done a spot of painting. I've also planted pots with the exciting promise of 'growing my own bouquet'. In fact, I had admired the green shoots on my way in last night. I hadn't noticed the weeds at all. These weeds, I should point out, grow in a very small border, along the pavement side, and aren't really very tall either. I was a) perplexed that anyone should be disturbed by their presence and b) that they send a slightly intimidating anonymous letter about them. Being a bit stubborn, it made me absolutely determined not to pull them out. In fact I am going to get a sign made, to stick in the border next to them saying something along the lines of, 'I am weedy, and proud'. Fortunately I move out on Friday, not a day too soon.

Fitting for a Glove

I have been exploring the concept of gardening lately. This involves pulling up a lot of nettles. I was bold about this, wearing what looked like a robust pair of gardening gloves, in reassuring, sensible grey. I was somewhat annoyed to be stung quite aggressively by a nettle, and my fingers were throbbing inside the so called protective outer wear. The stings hurt like I had forgotten they could (been about thirty years since the last sting), then my fingers swelled up and went all itchy.

I was reminded of my oven gloves, hand crafted by an ancient relation who died about twenty years ago. The gloves were, and still are, too thin. Every time I get something out of the oven, I risk taking a layer of skin off my hands. Twenty years of this seems a bit daft. I have finally decided to treat myself to new oven gloves, packed full of some new lining that could fend off the sort of heat Red Adaire faces daily. I will also buy some gardening gloves that could roar with laughter at those cactii you see in the distance in Road Runner cartoons. The ones that keep repeating when he runs anywhere...... that was so disappointing in cartoons. I felt cheated.

Just like I feel cheated by my oven and gardening gloves.

Dangling by my dongle

I've got a brand spanking new laptop.

If only I had a broadband connection to go with it.....

I've been wrestling with a dongle.

Life was better before I discovered this device.

I don't claim to be clever with computers - oh no. But when I paid £10 of my hard earned cash, I had misread the advertising blurb that appeared to promise that my £10would give me internet access for a month.

'Bit pricey' I thought, but worth it to be able to fully connect to the world and so I made my first premium rate phone call on my mobile.

How naive am I?

I watched a TV programme about Sandhurst (fascinating why anyone would want to be shouted at and treated like dirt for nine months and then risk having their limbs blown off, and incredible to hear a General bemoaning the problems caused by trainees when their conscience about possibly having to kill people got in the way).

When I got up the next morning and tried to connect, my dongle wasn't playing. Another expensive premium rate phone call later, I was made to feel very dim indeed when it was explained I had bought a giga something, and that I had to use it up within a month.

I protested it had only lasted a day, and it was again explained that I had paid
for this giga thing, not a month's usage, but the employees's English wasn't great and my hearing isn't great, so it took a while to get to that point. A while on a premium rate phone call from a mobile remember (no landline either, life has been a bit frustrating lately).

It was quite a good TV programme, but not £10's worth. I grudgingly had to pay another £15 to be connected again, and this time will make sure to only use it for e-mail and blogging.

The strange thing is, that having got the computer going, it thinks we are in Austin, Texas, that it is six hours ago, and that we are basking in a balmy 76 degrees, rather than wet, cold April in England.

The dongle thing is way too complicated, but if I am indeed in 76 degrees in America that would be worth £10.

Meeting myself coming the other way........

I am now settled into my temporary home, while I wait to move again, this happens to be in the town I grew up in. It makes things a bit weird. Around every corner there seems to be a memory waiting to re-ignite; the road where I rode on the back of my mate's bicycle, legs sticking out sideways, while she peddalled hard to get us both to wherever we were going; the site of the old chip shop where another friend worked and had to wear a headscarf so she didn't smell of chip fat when she got home; the house I grew up in, looking as austere and unwelcoming as ever it did; the Indian restaurant, where as a five year old, I would order chips, Cocoa Cola and ice cream to avoid eating that funny food that made my mouth hurt.

Paradoxically things that have changed stand out, as do the things that have stayed the same.

Through all this I can feel my brain trying to rewire the hard wiring of old memories.

At times it is like I'm meeting myself coming the other way.

I am Rock Chick

Yeah baby!

My house is nearly empty.

I am rattling around.

Less people, less furniture, less stuff.

A lot less stuff.

It feels good.

Apart from my bed and piano, the only functioning equipment left set up is the stereo. By some fluke of subliminal organisation, my CDs are also still visible.

And one of the best things about this house is the very thick basement walls. They are really thick, thick like a castle.

This means you can turn the volume and bass up to deliriously high levels.

So while I was feeling a bit grim, finding out just what had fallen behind the washing machine over the last decade, I remembered that I could be doing it all to music.

Then I saw it.

Led Zeppelin.

Hadn't listened to it for years.

Yes, it was loud.

Yes it was brilliant.

It was more brilliant than I remembered it being, probably because everything since has been feeble dross in comparison.

I could fling cobweb covered wall tiles and pots of paint over my shoulder, as if they were television sets out of hotel windows.

It was harder to be so dramatic with the odd socks, but I tried anyway.

When it was all over, there was the cup of tea, and a sing along to 'Stairway to Heaven' between sips.

Proper music. Does what it says on the tin.

Mouse Traps - The Bad News

I went to my mother's house today to pick up the post and (as I convinced myself) to check the empty mousetraps.

They were meant to be empty, they really were.

It was VERY spooky to go into an empty house, and peer round the kitchen door, to see the bedraggled corpse of an adult mouse, pinned by its neck, next to the washing machine. The second trap was empty.

I'm not usually squeamish, having seen rats and other enchanting wildlife in India, but something about this poor rodent sent shivers all through me. I stood in the hall, wondering whether to drive all the way home again to fetch a son or two to help, but decided that would be daft.

I stood for a bit longer, thinking I could leave it and hope the carpet fitters coming a few days later would deal with it, but would that be fair?

Probably not.

I stood for a bit longer in the hall, feeling all creepy.

And slightly foolish.

I stood with that sensation for many minutes. Then decided I had to take charge of the situation. I was an adult, I could do this sort of thing.

Then I waited some more.

Finally, I put on my Marigolds and hesitantly took a bin liner out of my bag. I planned to cover the corpse with the bin liner, then scoop up the offending creature so the bag turned inside out round it, then I would run for the front door (left open for speed) and head for the wheelie bin.

The tactic worked, but with little electric shock sensations running up my spine, as I felt the limpness of the body through the gloves. I ran through the house with a silent scream (although I have to confess, it might not have been totally silent)and made it to the wheelie bin.

I couldn't get out of the house fast enough after that, which is sad as I am supposed to be moving in on Friday - and we all know that there is never, ever, only one mouse in a house.

Help.

Shopping - not as much fun as it used to be

Life's been rather stressful lately. I'm expecting to move house, to a very small place. This means I've been sifting through 16 years of family bits and pieces and trying to get rid of quite a lot of furniture. It's been interesting - I realised that I need to handle every single item in the house, and make a decision about each one. I've been doing well, there have been numerous trips to the dump, two local charity shops stocked almost entirely with our things, and Freecycle devotees have been coming round regularly to dismantle wardrobes and shelves. As well as all this, my mother's house, which I let on her behalf, has (for complicated reasons I won't go into here) required complete refurbishment. So I have been project managing that and doing runs to the dump and so on for her house as well. This has coincided with the busiest time of year at work. No peace for the wicked, as they say.

This decluttering of my life has been liberating. I was very surprised to find the only thing I felt slightly traumatised about getting rid of was the family collection of about a cubic metre of Lego. I started to sift through it, meaning to take only a small box of the more interesting bricks and little people to keep, but as I started to put to one side spacecraft engine parts and gears, I realised I couldn't let it go. Weird. It's not like I'm going to sit and build a spaceship or pirate island any time soon (although that might be quite soothing, thinking about it).

All this sorting and removing and clearing and decision making has meant there is no point in my buying more material possessions. Instead, yesterday on a shopping trip, I ended up in an ironmonger buying flea powder and mouse traps. Not for myself I hasten to add, but for my mother's house (the last tenants weren't the sort of people you would have back in a hurry - astonishingly, one was a student health visitor). It's not the same as the sort of shopping trip where you can do a 'show and tell' when you get home.

The bad news is that now I have to go to my mother's house and set the mousetraps and squirt the flea powder everywhere. I feel very sorry for the mice (who I am rather fond of) but as friend pointed out, I can't use a humane trap, as between visits the poor little creatures would starve slowly, which we decided would be worse. I was tempted by the sonic repelling machine, but as the house has new windows, there is no where for them to escape, so they would end up being driven mad. Life is full of difficult choices at the moment, the mode for murdering mice, and whether to keep a Lego shark and octopus.

I wonder whether the shark would like a trip into outer space?

I hope the sale goes through now, otherwise I am going to be rattling around in a large, and mainly empty, house.

Freecycle is brilliant by the way, and the people who have been coming round seem to be really good types, who I have enjoyed meeting.

Missing the Point

Two things in the press recently have surprised me by the missing comment.

One is the problem with the PIP breast implants. Why do so many women, bored of buying handbags, feel the need to remortgage their houses, just to have bigger breasts? And not even normal looking breasts, but some male fantasy, cartoon objects that resemble beach balls rather than the real thing. It also amazes me that people can be stupid enough to think you can have that much silicone inside your body cavity and not eventually encounter serious problems - although some cosmetic surgeons are obviously guilty of misleading the easily lead. Am I also the only person to feel angry that these women with more money than sense, go and have this done to themselves privately and then when it goes wrong, expect the NHS to sort it out? The scans, the operation time, the potential cost to the nation of this pure vanity is alarming. The really worrying thing is that it can only be a matter of time before the NHS will be picking up the tab from the botox time bomb too.

The other thing that defies belief is the photograph of (allegedly)US Marines urinating on their (allegedly) Taliban victims. Everyone is up in arms about how inhumane this is. No one seems to query the inhumanity of the killing in the first place. The act of urinating on the bodies is incomprehensively seen as something far worse than the shooting of the men in the first place.

I'm confused. All reason seems to be lost.

* everyone has been very keen to make sure it is 'allegedly' US Marines, I have yet to see anyone else put in the 'allegedly' for the Taliban corpses where the presence of a beard seems unquestionable evidence.

Boat with a View

I had a wonderful new experience yesterday. One of those moments where everything feels calm and well placed. It was on the way back from the Skiff Club 'Santa Skiff' - a lovely day out on the Thames in traditional, wooden rowing boats. The boats were decorated with tinsel and the crews dressed to match. Our insides were warmed with mulled wine to get us going on the frosty morning. Our insides continued to be warmed as we stopped at each conveniently placed pub on the Thames, until we reached our destination for lunch. Come to think of it, there was a lot of 'warming' of insides before lunch, luckily there are no yard arms on rowing boats to complicate things.

Lunch was one of those good ones, where it gets dark before you leave. Five of us were in our boat for the return journey, and I rather envied the chap lying in the bow (pointy end) as I did some of the hard work rowing. When someone suggested a changeover, I managed to swap into the coverted horizontal position (not an officially recognised skiffing place) and found that Nirvana was waiting for me. I confess, the drink might have had something to do with it by that point.

So I'm lying on the bottom of the boat, head into the pointy bit but propped comfortably on a ruck sack. The boat is sitting lower in the water than usual due to the number of occupants. The water is rather disconcertingly close to my nose, but gives the vantage of seeing across the Thames at an angle not usually enjoyed by vertical beings. There is a full moon with occasional cloudscapes passing by. There are stars. There are the intermittent silhouettes of moorhens, or the luminous glow of a swan. The blades are dipping in and out - I hadn't noticed before the deep throated swooshing as they shove blocks of water out of the way. The boat thrumped with the movement, and well oiled boards creaked as the rowers slowly cantilevered back and forth. There was the muffled clicking of leather buttons on thole as the blades helped to feather themselves. From the other end of the boat, the soft sound of conversation drifted into the night.

All this was going on as the tops of the trees went past the stars in freeze-frame animation. I was being gently rocked to sleep in my watery bed.

It all looked and felt wonderful.

It doesn't get much better.

It really doesn't.

Another Christmas Note

You know the festive season is really here when you find yourself navigating round the pools of sick to get to work. The latest offering would have been helpful to any detective trying to find where the accused had walked. Repeated puddles, with necklaces of milky bile joining them together. You could be certain it was the same person as the contents of each contained the same 'signature' items of regurgitated food.

As Christmas is approaching, I decided to start finding presents and went for a jolly day out with a friend. We stopped for coffee in a ghastly, global conglomerate. There were long queues, screaming children waiting for Santa and somewhat strangely, 'Merry Costa' slogans adorning the walls.

This morning there was a disturbing article in the paper about how some white women inject illegal chemicals to become darker skinned, and how some darker skinned women use creams containing mercury (yes, mercury) and steroids to look paler. The article frequently referred to types of coffee to describe their skin tones.

The woman were so keen to achieve, I think it was 'golden cappuccino' that the threat to their long term well-being, or scarring, didn't alarm them at all.

It's all about excess isn't it? Drink until you vomit (seemingly not even considered an unusual pastime anymore) spend more than you can really afford, while being excessively obsessed about how you look.

Merry Costa indeed.

More on Christmas Confusion

It's still sunny, and now it's late November.

That's confusing.

It might explain what I heard when I went shopping this morning.

In a side street a busker was sawing through 'Summertime' which intermingled awkwardly, in certain parts of the high street, with 'Jingle Bells' played by a youth band. I resisted an urge to pop back for my recorder and join in with an early Easter rendition of 'There is a Green Hill'.

The nightmare teddies with encephalitis are back in the shopping mall, nodding with equal enthusiasm at everyone and no-one. The ghastly mall was festooned with over-sized Ali-Baba inspired baubles and ribbons. Harassed parents were trying to jam double buggies with screaming children past shop displays of 'Rockin' Santa'.

Something odd happened in all this chaos though - I found myself buying Christmas presents - which I wasn't planning to do until December started properly.

Just goes to show, the hard sell really does work, however much you think you can avoid it.

Christmas is coming - already?

I was horrified to see a pub down the road had put out an advert, 'Office Christmas parties, book now!'.

It's September.

It's still reasonably sunny.

Children have only just gone back to school. I so don't want to be thinking about Christmas yet.

It also made me have a 'miserable git' moment about office Christmas parties in restaurants or pubs. There seems to be a new 'tradition' that every office in the land is expected to book a Christmas dinner in a local haunt. These venues try to induce panic in us all that if we don't book the venue in September, we might be the only employees not to be able to celebrated Christmas.

In my experience, there is very little 'celebratory' in these dos. A restaurant that usually comfortably seats 50, squeezes in 100. One example of this in our local town meant that every time someone wanted to go to use the facilities, half those assembled had to rise to allow them to get past. Repeating the movement again on their return. What with all the drinking going on, this made the event start to feel more like musical bumps than a pleasant meal. The restaurants also seem to have trouble catering for several large parties at the same time, in spite of choosing what you want three months previously (which you would think would enable them to get organised). This ends up manifesting itself as one end of the table finishing their dessert, while the other end is still awaiting the starter. Any hope of conversation is quashed by the loudspeakers treating everyone to a medley (what an awful word, what an awful concept) of festive songs, usually including 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer'.

All this is then capped by trying to divide the bill 50 ways, with those that drank tap water subsidising those that drank their way through the wine cellar. And let us also not forget that all this 'fun' has to be experienced while wearing a paper hat that will, inevitably, drop into your gravy at some point.

Let's have a ban on parties that are no fun. Let's have a ban of any mention of Christmas before 1st December!

The Balaclava

From my youth, the balaclava is inextricably linked to things like The Beano, snowmen and my brother’s acne (looking all the more dramatic framed by the ribs of beige wool). Even aged about five, I knew the balaclava was the ultimate in ‘uncool’. My hatred of the garment was only matched by those thick, slightly yellow vests, which caused angst in PE lessons, where the better off children had snowy white, thin ones.

Yes, generations of children have railed against an army of mothers pulling lovingly hand-knitted balaclavas firmly down over their ears on a chilly morning with the mantra, ‘you know you’ll get poorly if you don’t wear it’.

How times have changed. I’ve just read about a youth being in danger of being arrested for the wearing of a balaclava. In fact, the very last thing a mother wants her adolescent child to be seen in is, the balaclava.

What about all those rioters who have had grommets put in their ear-drums, problems with sinuses, toothache? Are the police in danger of being taken to the European Court of Human Rights for causing outbreaks of ear, nose and throat diseases by outlawing this, almost mythical, healing item of clothing?

Perhaps we can end the cycle of violence in our society by once again getting mums knitting with that thick, itchy wool and insisting their wayward teenager can’t go out without keeping their ears warm. This will quickly render the balaclava once again the item of dread, and our streets will be safe.