Mrs Robinson

At least I've stuck to at least one of my resolutions...

More feathers

Check me out with my plumage.

In other news, I am craving white bread and I can't hear a damn thing because my ears have decided to go on strike. I fear there may be serious blockage (don't click on that link unless you have a strong stomach). I am also tired all the damn time, a fact which I foolishly shared with my mother who has now scared me with tales of hereditary thyroid problems.

But none of this matters, because I am wearing feathers and I am about to go and learn a bunch of sea shanties (whether I will be able to sing with blocked ears is another matter).

Typical efficiency

Cast your minds back, my children. I went on holiday to Portugal in June of last year and returned, tanned and relaxed, to Clerkenwell Towers - only to be hijacked by the following conversation with my boss:

Boss: Just to let you know, our financial controller is leaving.
Me:  Oh, that's a shame! When's he off?
Boss:  The day after tomorrow.
Me:  Wow. Who are you getting to cover his job?
Boss: ......
Me:  It's me, isn't it?

I was told it would be only for a month or so, while they looked for a replacement.

The new financial controller started last week.

Ha.

I gave him the best handover I could, bearing in mind that (a) I only had about 30mins handover myself, back in June, and (b) I'm an actor, not an accountant, dammit. However, I've managed not to run the company to the wall in the SIX FRICKIN' MONTHS that I've been doing the finances so it can't be too difficult... Or can it? Because this guy has been to my desk four times already today, asking the most basic questions. I am beginning to wonder whether he lied at his interview because he seems to know nothing. I don't think he even knows how Excel spreadsheets work.

But I don't care. I am filing this under Not My Problem Anymore, Friendo.

Plink, plink, fizz

Some more resolutions, because you can never have enough Resolve in January (as in the hangover cure. See how I play with words? They are my special, shiny toys. Dance, words, dance for me!).

So, as well as the things listed in my previous post, I also resolve to:

• Sing more often. Y'know, just generally have a bit of a warble now and then. Round the house, like. Maybe in the street. I've been singing at my desk today, and nobody seems to have noticed. I'm going to a British Folk Singing workshop next week, and I'm hoping to learn a few shanties with which to alarm my colleagues.
• Get over my infatuation with David Tennant. He is appearing in my dreams far more than is decent, and it's started to make me late for work. They also always seem to have a strange, melancholy quality to them which put me in an odd mood for the rest of the day. Strangely, in last night's dream David Tennant morphed into the equally tall Joe Cornish from the Adam & Joe Show, which leads me neatly onto my next resolution...
  
• Get a message read out in 'Text the Nation' section of Adam & Joe's 6Music show. It's the best thing on the radio at the moment. TRUFACT. Their show is the reason Trilby and I never get anything done on a Saturday morning, because we spend it in bed, listening to their show while eating toast and laughing our heads off.
• Do something with 'The Bottle Shop'. Because I've left it alone for so long that it's started to get embarrassing. Maybe I should get myself a new notebook. Or maybe I should just stop spending all my time buying art prints from Etsy and actually write something. Anything.

Merry New Year!

Urgh. It's 1:15pm and I'm awake. I'm actually dressed in something that doesn't have stains on. I'm wearing shoes, not slippers. Worst of all, I'm back at work. Fortunately, as if to offset the First Day Depression, Fate got her act together and delivered my blue feathered hairband direct to my desk this morning. Huzzah. Nothing staves off the blues like blue feathers in your hair. See how happy I look?

Feathers

Another thing that is making me happy is my brand new iPod (thank you, Father Christmas. By which, of course, I mean Mum and Dad. Though I actually had to order it off Amazon myself and get it sent to the family home, so my Mum could wrap it. Christmas Spirit: RIP). My God, it rocks like Gibraltar. I never knew how much joy there was to be had in watching the 'What's Opera, Doc?' episode of Bugs Bunny on the bus to work. Also, the Genius function is, appropriately enough, genius - as demonstrated on New Year's Eve, where it created the ultimate 80s playlist and turned my dining room into a disco. There were Kate Bush impressions, apparently. But more about that later.

So, Christmas. Trilby and I have vowed that this is the last one we are going to spend apart, because we missed each other far too much this year. I spent mine back home in Cheshire, with my Dad making me endless cups of tea and my Mum alternating between (inadvertently) guilt-tripping me about my weight and feeding me enough meat and cake that by Boxing Day I felt like I'd swallowed a small car. A typical Christmas, then. The talk was mainly of my sister's forthcoming nuptials, which isn't until September but which seems to have taken over everybody's lives. I am going to be the sort-of-kind-of-bridesmaid, but I can choose my own dress. No pink taffeta for me, thankyou Jeebus. I am also going to be the one sorting out the hen night, so suggestions on a postcard please.

Reading back that last paragraph, I've realised I sound as if I had a miserable time. I really didn't. We went to a hilariously shonky panto in Crewe, had singalongs when we did the dishes (even my Dad, who never sings due to having a voice like a cracked bell), played Jenga during Christmas dinner (because laughter helps digestion, probably) and I got drunk far too much and played my ukelele to anyone who would listen. It was lovely, it really was. And next year I'll get to share it with Trilby. Yayness.

But if Christmas was lovely, then New Year's Eve was a huge bag of terrific. After spending the last four NYE's in Belfast, we decided to spend this one at home. At first, we were just going to have a quiet dinner party, with the godson and family, and a couple of other friends. But then we started seeing people in the run-up to Christmas, and after a few drinks the phrase, "We're having a little bit of a party on New Year, you're more than welcome to come..." would be heard, and before we knew it there were about fifteen people coming and our idea of a quiet dinner party went out of the window. So we decided to make it a proper party and we had a huge buffet (the remnants of which are still in the fridge, five days later), industrial quantities of fizz, and lots of silly dancing courtesy of the iPod's Genius function. And a pinata shaped like a guitar, with the face of Chad from Nickelback taped to it. Naturally. But best of all were the Chinese fire lanterns at midnight, which I bought because our back garden is too small for fireworks. And thank goodness I did, because it was just so beautiful to see them gliding, bright and silent, up into the freezing night like wishes. They beat boring old fireworks into a cocked hat.

So, 2009. The last year of the Noughties. Thank God. I hate that expression, "Noughties". Partly because it sounds infantile. But mainly because I use the word "naughties" to refer to kinky sex, as in "getting up to naughties", and so for the past nine years whenever someone has referred to the decade as the Noughties I have fleetingly thought about watersports, or felching, or pooplay. Ick. By the way, did you know that in German sexshops they have entire sections devoted to pooplay, and the title of this section is "Kaviar". Yummy. I think I'll pass next time a German offers me some beluga.

I got distracted there, sorry. Where was I? Oh yes, 2009. A brand shiny new year to play with. How exciting! As is traditional, I have come up with some resolutions, some of which I intend to keep and some of which are patently just pipe dreams. Drum roll, please:

• Do not drink until May, for health (i.e. regenerating liver) and aesthetic (i.e. not looking like Samu in my sister's wedding photos) reasons. Now, I'm fairly sure I can do this, as I managed it in 2007. But it ain't going to be easy. However, the last six months have gone by in a wine-sodden haze, so a period of enforced sobriety will probably come as a nice change. And a change is as good as a rest, etc. etc.
• Wear more feathers. Because feathers make a girl happy. I've already made a strong start on this one, and intend to build on it in the future.
  
• Learn to make home furnishings. I've cheated a bit here, because I booked courses in curtain-making and fabric manipulation back in December, so unless I fall into a coma tomorrow then I should have this particular box ticked by the end of the month.
• Set up my own shop on Etsy. Making what, I don't know. But I've got a whole year to figure it out.
  
• Practice my accordion more. As opposed to picking it up for five minutes before I go to my class.
  
• Have more sex. I know this was one of last year's resolutions, but if I may reiterate: YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SEX.
• Most importantly: leave this dead-end, no-good, hell-on-sticks excuse for a job and train to become a primary school teacher. This is of course very dependent upon the Institute of Education or the London Met accepting my application. But once they do, Clerkenwell Towers won't see me for dust.

Happy New Year, mes amis.

Moan moan moan

So I've been sitting here feeling a bit weepy today, for a variety of reasons which I shall now self-indulgently list for your reading pleasure:

1. I got knocked over in the street this morning. By a pedestrian. I was crossing the road at the traffic lights, and a woman ran straight into me, bashing my nose and knocking me to the ground. She was very apologetic, and helped me up and took me over to the pavement and checked that I was okay. My knees were wet and my nose hurt. Then, to add insult to injury, while being administered to by the woman, the bus she had been running for drove through a puddle and soaked the back of my legs. What a wonderful way to start the day.

2. I spent the first two days of this week doing classroom experience at a primary school. It was challenging and exhausting and totally brilliant, and just re-emphasised how much I want to be a teacher. Then I had to come back to Clerkenwell Towers. Which just re-emphasised how much I fucking loathe this job.

3. My neck hurts. I trapped a nerve in it last week, and despite the speedy application of some miraculous acupuncture from my friendly physiotherapist (thank God for BUPA) it still aches. I want to go and lie down, preferably somewhere with an orthopaedic pillow to hand.

4. I dreamt I was pregnant last night, and it was really lovely (I also dreamt that I was wearing my dressing gown while having my hair done, retro-style, but I'm not sure that's so relevant). I'm thinking about being pregnant a lot at the moment. And I find myself looking at small children rather too longingly. Basically, I want a baby, and soon thankyouplease. But I can't have one, not yet. Trilby has to finish his PGCE and get himself a teaching job, then I need to do my PGCE and get a teaching job as well, and then I need to stay in that job for at least a year in order to qualify for maternity leave. And somewhere in there I'd quite like to squeeze in a wedding. All very sensible. But my body is screaming "Get pregnant! Get pregnant now! Fuck the consequences! It'll be wonderful! Go on!" Damn my traitorous hormones.

Blah blah, moan moan. I got a bit fed up with feeling low, so I went on Etsy and bought this to cheer myself up:

Feather

And just in case blue feathers on my head don't do the trick, I'm going to go down to the Christmas market on Whitecross Street and throw mulled wine and mince pies down my neck until I feel better.

I just couldn't elf myself...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I just couldn't elf myself...

I am surrounded by retarded men-children

Having gone into one of the unisex loos here at (the principally male) Clerkenwell Towers, only to be once again greeted by a sanitary bin overflowing with paper hand towels, I decided that there was only one course of action: the sarcastic email.

To: Clerkenwell Towers

Subject: Unisex toilets, use thereof

Dear all

 

I know unisex toilets are a very modern thing, on a par with female emancipation and the internet, and as such some of you gentlemen may never have encountered a sanitary waste bin before.

For all you innocents, let me make it clear: the white bins in the toilets are for the disposal of feminine hygiene products ONLY. Please do not stuff used hand towels, used toilet roll tubes or plastic wrappers in them – use the grey bins for general waste. Putting it baldly, if you’re not on your period then you shouldn’t be using the white bins.

 

Guys, I’m sorry but the white bins are only for the girls. Deal with it.

 

Gx

Lord alive, I hate this job.

QotD: Out of the Blue

Tell us how you met your significant other.
Submitted by Luda

Oh, you've heard it all before.

I still find it very difficult to get over the sheer randomness of it, though. That I should meet somebody who is just so right, who I fall in love with a little bit more every day, who ticks all my boxes (including some boxes that I didn't even know needed ticking), in an alley next to a crumbling old church, on a night when I wasn't expecting to be out at a party, let alone The Party where I met The One.

If I think too hard about it, I get a little scared.

Did I fall asleep and wake up in December?

Erm... I just looked out of the window and it's snowing. Not mimsy London snow either, the sort that looks like the city has a bad case of dandruff. Real, honest-to-goodness, Santa-Claus-is-coming-to-town SNOW. What is going on? Holy hell, it's only October. Things are getting mighty screwy around these parts.

On a totally unrelated note, I would advise anyone who is intending on making a stroganoff in the near future to look closely at the labels of their spice jars. DO NOT, whatever you do, assume that pot of red powder is paprika without also first considering the possibility that it may well be extra hot chilli powder.

If anyone wants me, I shall be in the toilet. Or possibly cramming snow into my mouth.

Behind the door of Butterworth & Rosenburg, solicitors...

...is a story about a man who ran away.

And that is where I spent my lunch hour having an immersive, interactive experience that was a little bit 'Adventure Game', a little bit 'Knightmare' (remember that?), and which ended with me standing, arms outstretched, crucified in a position of repentence while a story of betrayal and regret coalesced around me.

Man, I love London. And I love pervasive gaming and mysterious links that, when clicked on, end up taking you to strange new worlds that lurk unseen just off Great Eastern Street.