What gives?

Okay, so, that guy called. I met him at a party three weeks ago, he asked for my number, I gave it to him. He didn’t call, so I deleted the number. Then he calls yesterday at 5pm. Is this a new thing? I was still working on the ‘if a guy doesn’t call within three days he’s not going to call. Ever’ assumption. I left the number on my phone for a whole week to be on the safe side, but nothing. So what's he thinking?
‘Oh, I really would like to go on a date with that girl - I'll leave it three weeks and then call at 5 in the afternoon on a random Thursday’??
Hmm. Does this mean he’s really shy and a slow starter, or all the other girls whose numbers he took blew him out and now he’s finally getting around to me? He is Australian – maybe they do things differently over there…who knows, but what the hell, I’m in.

I was surprised to hear from him, and I have a really busy weekend lined up (thank god – didn’t want to give the impression I had been staring at my phone since the party), so I couldn’t work out when we could meet up, and told him I’d get back to him later. By the time I got in from work, he’d texted me to say he’d changed his plans so he could meet up with me sooner rather than later. I thought: he’s keen. According to S, by seeming unavailable on the phone, I’d instantly made myself more attractive to him, because guys are perverse like that. Obviously I’m not going to overanalyse this too much…and to cut a long story short, I have a date with him on Saturday night.

So, what to wear, what to wear? My initial plan is to go with the pink heels, and plan the rest of the outfit around them. Next up, wrack brain for flirting skills; they’re in there somewhere. I’ll let you know if I find them.

My name is...

…Just and I am addicted to crosswords. At first I was just doing one every other day, you know, or helping my flatmates finish their own crosswords. It was under control. Or at least I thought it was. But then I found I was buying the paper every day, and not for the news. Sure, I read the cartoons on the way to the crossword page, but even though they are often highly topical, it isn’t the same. I buy it at midday and then do the crossword in my lunch hour; if I don’t finish it by the end of lunch, I just carry on doing it, covertly, of course. So, I’m neglecting work, and sometimes, more seriously, even running out of time to blog on my work pc.

I only recently got over my addiction to glossy magazines, and part of my reason for quitting them was how expensive they were. Comparatively speaking, I know crosswords seem like a harmless, victimless addiction, but I figured out yesterday that in buying the paper every day, I am spending more than I was on magazines. That’s money that could be feeding my shoe addiction, people. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say my crossword obsession is taking over. And I can’t stop…and I don’t want to.

In honour of confessing to my less than thrilling hobby (next time, to even things up, I’ll do a post about my more, er, extreme pastimes; reading and crochet, I mean, um, surfing and bungee, just being the tip of the iceberg), here are some teasers to ponder over/drive you crazy:

What is a ‘ginnel’?
What item of clothing does the term ‘keks’ refer to?
If I said I was potless or peppered, what would I be lacking?

I’ll get back to you with the answers later…when I’ve finished the crossword.

Don't go to see Dark Water

You will be disappointed. I promise you that. It starts well, has an engaging middle, builds lots of tension, and then the end descends into melodrama and the surreal. Also, I was waiting throughout the whole film for Pete Postlethwaite/Dougray Scott/Tim Roth to actually be put to some use. As it is all three of these actors were utterly wasted – with all of their storylines going nowhere and their motivation a mystery. Jennifer Connelly wasn’t bad in the lead, but really all she had to do was look thin, pale and upset for nearly 2 hours. The child actors were incredibly cute, and, in all honesty, acted everyone else off the screen, but I’m not saying it was a challenge for them.

Oh, and does it rain on Roosevelt Island all the time? And is it really as grim as the film made out? It looked like a place where people would go once they had lost all hope. The view from Jennifer Connelly’s apartment in the film was the scariest part as far as I was concerned.

Maybe the original Japanese version is just as bizarre at the end, but I’m guessing it is a hell of a lot scarier, which is what I was hoping for. I was in the mood for a REALLY SCARY film, dammit, and Dark Water did not deliver. Has anyone seen The Skeleton Key yet? Don’t ruin it for me, but is it scary? And I mean having-to-sleep-with-the-lights on scary? It’s had good reviews, but so did wishy-washy Dark Water (did you see what I did there?).

A low-down dirty shame

Just imagine how embarrassed those would-be suicide bombers must be feeling today? Sheesh. Not only do they fail to kill themselves in the name of fuck only knows who, thereby forgoing their seven virgins in paradise (one for every day of the week?), they also fail to kill anyone else. Oh, they must be kicking themselves. One of them was even chased by a bunch of commuters who tried to rugby-tackle him to the ground (how brave were they?). Bunch of amateurs – you can just imagine the other terrorists sneering at them – they blew up the detonators instead of the bombs – rookie mistake or what? Then they left loads of forensic evidence behind – the fools.

I’m so sick of all this shit.

An apple a day

Isn't it dreamy? It's my I-deserve-a-treat new necklace. Other ways I have chosen to justify this purchase come under the following reasons:
I've not had a foreign holiday this year (so far); I've been wearing the same old necklace for years (kinda); I had to do something to mark the fact that the bank sorted the loan out; It's so pretty; It'll go with everything (really); it's kind of a late-birthday-present-to-myself (from myself); you can never have too much jewellery; and last but not least, it's all ebay's fault.

Damn you, ebay.

I love the bank

You won’t hear me say that very often, so make the most of it. Normally, like everyone else, I hate the bank. Hate it with a vengeance. But today, I love the bank, because they have *finally*, after a record-breaking amount of red tape, managed to sort out my loan and refinance it so I could pay off the (biggest) credit card, and my overdraft and still have enough money left over to fritter away on luxuries, like food and travelcards. I’d got to the point where I had been hacking away at the ice in the freezer, trying to extract a pack of frozen sausages, only to find they were out of date. It was a bitter moment, as my hands were pretty much numb by that stage, and the ice seemed to simply close in again once the pack had been removed, and I hadn't the energy to try to retrieve the mini pizza I had glimpsed in the right-hand corner. I briefly considered risking cooking them, but then came to my senses; why add food poisoning to my woes? So I’ve been surviving on Jacobs Thai bites and Baby-bel lites – they’re a meal in themselves, honest. I’m thrilled the money is in today, since all I have left is a loaf of stale bread, a calorie-free pot of Greek yoghurt, which I must have bought in a moment of madness, and some olives marinated in cumin and orange oil...Obviously, I wouldn’t have starved, but it wouldn’t have been pleasant.

I checked the balance on the internet this morning, and I was overjoyed, but also surprised, because I only returned the forms on Tuesday, and I had visions of the forms sitting quietly in someone’s in-tray for who knows how long/being used to balance a wonky desk/accidentally shredded/etc. So today I love the bank, and I’m going shopping after work. The sales are on. I may or may not buy food…

Aaargh

Mini rant time. Okay. This is going to be short and not so sweet. Not to generalise wildly, but men, really – what’s wrong with them? I mean, really? It’s a rhetorical question – there aren’t enough hours in the day for the answer to that one.

If you aren’t going to call a girl, then don’t ask for her number. Got that? DON’T. ASK. FOR. HER. NUMBER. It actually makes sense when you think about it, and will save memory space on your phone for, say, take-away restaurants, or your mum.

Aaargh. When he asked for my number, I wasn’t even that bothered – I was flattered, and thought, ‘ooh, he’s actually quite hot, okay then’. So, even though my life does not depend on me getting that call, the knowledge that he has my number and the possibility of him calling has me glancing at my phone at increasingly regular intervals, ‘just in case’. Sheesh.

But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not bothered, as I said…and I have plenty of places to go and people to see. So, you know, whatever.

What's scarier?

One big, fat spider in the corner of the room, about the size of a fair-sized frog, but who appears to be minding its own business, OR roughly 20-30 teensy, tiny spiders that appear to be marching in some strange formation up your curtains?

The correct answer is B. I came in quite late the other night, and was just getting ready to go to bed. I went over to draw my curtains, and saw what looked like a straw-coloured ant determinedly making its way up the curtain. I then recoiled in horror as I noticed that it was not alone. There was loads of them, baby spiders - I couldn’t see where they’d come from, nor could I fathom where exactly they were going or what their purpose was. I was also wondering, if these are babies, where’s the ‘mama’? I was trying to stay calm about this – I don’t have a spider phobia per se, but when you are being invaded, it’s a different matter. I tried to rationalise it – perhaps they would make their way to the top of the curtain and then crawl out of the window? Maybe they would find a hole in the skirting board and be out of sight, out of mind? As I was pondering this, one of them swung from the curtain onto the wall, and with others following its example, it proceeded to make its way to my lampshade and abseiled from there onto my bed.

That’s when I started to hyperventilate. Visions of them advancing between the sheets, into the sacristy of my wardrobe and into my shoe-boxes galvanised me into action. Like the true, independent woman that I am, I called my Mum. The lateness of the hour made her instantly think that something was seriously wrong.
‘I’ve got…um, spiders’ I told her, in a tremulous voice. She understood. She told me to go the shop, buy some bug killing spray and then nuke the little buggers. Filled with (shaky) resolve, I ran to the corner shop. The only bug killer they had was for ants, but I figured it was worth a try. I came back and used pretty much half a can. I’m not sure if they actually found the spray poisonous or that I was spraying so heavily that they merely drowned in it. Nevertheless, I got ‘em all. By this time I was having trouble breathing again, not to mention feeling somewhat light-headed, having inhaled the bug spray. I then realised I’d probably covered my bedspread and the clothes on my chair, and well, everything with bug spray. One of my flatmates was away that night so she told me to sleep in her room. Feeling twitchy and scratchy despite the major killing spree with the Raid, I decided to take a shower and wash my hair. It was probably about 2.30am in the morning when I sank gratefully onto her bed, having first inspected it thoroughly for bugs, and fell asleep.

My ordeal was not over though. I awoke the next day to find that my damp hair had somehow managed to make the colour run on my flatmate’s (obviously very cheap and non-colourfast) pillow case. It is a pale pink cover set, and my damp hair had caused the pigmentation to go a strange, deep purple colour. Who has non-colourfast sheets?? For the love of god. So not only does my room still reek of Raid, despite me washing everything several times over, it also looks like I’m going to have to shell out for a new cover set. Aaargh.

Still, the spiders are dead, and they’ve not come back. Yet.

'............'

I want to say something, but at the same time, I'm not at all sure what to say. The words do not come easily to express how I feel about what happened here on Thursday. I feel lucky that no-one I know was directly affected, lucky that when I left the house to go to work they had already closed the tube, so I got on a bus that got stopped at Sloane Square, and lucky that the worse thing that happened to me that day was having to walk a long way in the wrong shoes. I got home fine, but there are so many who didn't. They slowed the city down for a few hours, killed at least 50 people, injured at least 700. Senseless. Depressing. Frustrating. Incomprehensible. It feels weird and surreal. I never expected it to feel so surreal. Stood outside a Hi-Fi shop window on the Kings Road, watching the raw news footage over and over without sound, the strapline on the screen reading 'London bombings'. It didn't feel real - it just wasn't sinking in, because it was so hard for everyone to get their heads round. And now, a couple of days later, the more it sinks in, the worse it feels.

But.

Less than 24 hours later, the tube was back up, the buses were back on and Londoners were doing what we do best: getting on with it.

They're back

Oh no. My flatmates were away last week, so I had the place to myself. Yes, 7 glorious days of uninterrupted bliss. Regular readers will know that I consider my flatmates to be both clinically insane and highly irritating, not to mention freakish in the extreme. So their return does not fill me with joy, especially as I was anticipating the ‘hil-ar-ious’ tales of their holiday in Spain. Basically, they’re the kind of people who relish the fact that they ate the ‘full English’ breakfast, replete with the ubiquitous baked beans, EVERY DAY.

The Tall One was back first. She launched into a story about the Elvis impersonator they had seen at the hotel, which seemed to go on for days, and then told me she had done some sketching whilst on the beach. It’s all my own fault – I feign interest you see, for a quiet life. She showed me her sketches. Of topless women. On the beach. Deep, deep denial there.

After the excitement of that, and the thrilling running commentary on which clothes she had worn, which she would have to handwash etc., – here’s a heads up: if I walk away from you whilst you are talking, you can stop. If I say, loudly, that I am actually watching the tennis on tv, then turn the sound up, you can stop. As I was saying, after that, she returned to her usual routine of talking constantly about herself, and making a lot of noise wherever she happens to be in the flat. I usually try to tune her out, but sometimes, it’s just impossible. Like last night. We were watching tv, and she was drinking her duty-free quadruple X strength vodka, I was focusing on the tv program, but then there was an ad break, and I could hear a clicking sound. I looked round and she was biting her nails and chewing them and then spitting them out, into the ashtray. Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad to you. Maybe I'm just being picky. But I couldn’t not notice it then – it was there, the movement, in the corner of my eye, just on the edge of my field of vision. And it didn’t stop. Well, not until she fell asleep/passed out and started snoring. Loudly. She snores like a man. An overweight man aged about 65, I’d say. I’ve been in this predicament before, so knowing she wouldn’t wake up, I adjusted her head to stop the snoring, and left her where she was. I’ve got to get out of there. The Short One is due back today…

You can just tell

Today is going to be one of those l-o-n-g days. I can feel it.

Still, at least I had a good weekend. Dancing on Friday night, followed by a Saturday cocktail of lounging around, tennis and a little bit of Live 8...though I had to turn it off when Madonna came on and jumped on the glory wagon by holding onto that African girl's hand. I'd been practically crying when Bob Geldof told the story of how she survived and then brought her on stage - it was an amazing moment. Then her Madge comes on stage, starts hugging the girl, who probably didn't know her from Adam, and didn't speak any English, so god knows what she made of the freaky blonde lady with the vice-like grip. I was thinking, 'any moment now, they'll escort the lovely African girl off the stage, and maintain the dignity of the event', but Madonna held onto her and started singing 'Like a Prayer' - I was embarrassed for them both. At least she was only on for 3 songs. I thought Razorlight ripped it up all right though - they rocked!

Luckily, the cringe-fest that was Madonna's appearance didn't ruin my appetite completely, as I was going out to dinner with the Supremely Healthy One. We went to Tas, a fabulous Turkish restaurant in Waterloo, and the food was just beyond compare - really, try it out. Plus, I got to eat ALL the bread without feeling guilty, since Sho doesn't eat wheat anymore. Result. However, the food was not the only memorable thing about our visit to Tas. There was a hen party in there, and at about the time they were tucking into their desserts, a stripper turned up. Our first clue was that the gentle tinkling background music was replaced by a booming Ricky Martin track and lots of shreiking. We turned to see a guy dressed like an officer, Richard Gere stylee, and he picked up the bride to be and her friends went nuts, taking photos on their phones and whooping hysterically. It was diverting, but you know, seen one stripper, seen 'em all (fyi though, this guy was hot, despite the fact that he was wearing a thong). We turned our attention back to the food, but then Sho told me a horrifying story that I just have to share with you. I'm still horrified by it. Even now.

Back in the eighties, you may remember there was a male stripping troupe, a sensation, if you will, called The Chippendales. I never saw them personally, but apparently, a major feature of their act was the finale, when they ripped off their velcroed jockstraps and hurled them at the hordes of screaming women in the audience. Call me crazy, but you wouldn't catch me screaming over a guy's knickers - but different strokes. Anyway, this story goes that a friend of a friend of Sho's (this is NOT an urban myth, honest), was in the crowd and one of the jockstraps hit her square in the eye. That's bad enough, right? A few days later, she notices some irritation round her eye area. Little raised bumps. She's thinking, maybe it's an allergic reaction to the squinned latex. She goes to the Docs, and he tells her she has CRABS in her EYE. They were like, nesting in her EYEBROW. It doesn't get much more horrifying than that, does it?