Thursday, September 28, 2006

Attack of absent-mindedness no. 10028774

Ye gods, I'm absent-minded.....
This is quite embarrassing, but I just have to share it.

I was paid £300 in cash by work, since their cheque bounced. Not feeling safe carrying this much cash down to the bank, I took £100 to pay into the bank and concealed the other £200 around my room (to foil the burglars that were going to turn up and pinch it all).

I have subsequently forgotten where I hid it.....

Admittedly I've located some. The rest.....pfft. God knows. It's going to take me ages to find it all.

Drunken ramblings of an Irishman

I am drunk again
There are too many parties going on this week
I had no idea I was popular at work (or indeed at home!) but everyone is going on about how much they are going to miss me which is very touching and makes me feel tearful because I never realise that people actually like me and am really quite amazed when they say they do (in much the same way as I'm amazed that the boy wants to go out with me)! But it has been a wonderful few days of parties and it hasn't finished yet, oh no indeed! And I had my pedicure today and it was lovely and my nails are now a vivid shade of pink and I fell asleep when the girl was doing it, it was so relaxing, and the other girl there remembered me from my old school (but I didn't remember her :-s) and I bought some jeans today which actually fit down to the bottom of my legs and I am very pleased but they were extortionately expensive compared with what normal people have to pay so that is sad. I am going to go away now and I will probably regret this post in the morning so it might disappear.....rather like my cursor has done, don't know what I did to it but it isn't there any more.....:-s shizers. Ah well, my computer will probably sort itself out by morning.
Oh dear
I am going to miss everyone at work! Especially Kate because she is lovely. :'(
Good night.[info]

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Some more stuff (and in multicolour too!)

1) Cecilia Bartoli is a f**king amazing singer
2) So is Barbara Bonney
3) So is Andreas Scholl
4) So is Emma Kirkby
(5) Yes, I have been listening to a lot of baroque arias recently)
6) Watching a snail eat is actually quite disgusting
7) The Historian is a really shit book. I feel utterly unable to bring myself to attempt to finish it
8) I'm with Stupid is actually, surprisingly (and other adverbs), quite funny
9) Bouncing cheques really are not funny
10) My socks are still acquiring holes at a ridiculous rate, so much so that I'm beginning to think there's a curse on them.....
11) Trying to buy jeans when you're long-legged and skinny is not a simple task. Oh no indeed. Buying exciting liqueurs is also not a simple task, but only because at Vom Fass there's so many to choose from, and alas only finite resources with which to buy them. I settled on chocolate, but I think I should have had the peach.....

Next week I will be:
1) Working (Monday and Tuesday)
2) Drinking (mainly Tuesday night, my leaving do)
3) Getting a pedicure (Wednesday) - *excitement!*
4) Getting my hair cut again (Thursday)
5) Pinching a lot of music (ongoing) *shifty look*
6) Going to the theatre! Wow. Shakespeare (Julius Caeser), naturally, since I live so near the RSC :D
7) Packing (ongoing). Moving! Woo and argh together.

For kicks, I pinched this off Hane and did it:

1.One book that changed your life? Con Brio by Brina Svit. It opened my mind to the possibilities of literature. I learned a whole new way of writing from reading Svit’s prose – the subtlety, the manipulation of time, the gradual exposure and clarification of characters, the small but pervasive ideas…it taught me a lot.


2. One book you have read more than once? Most of the books I have read. To name one, Spellbinder by Stephen Bowkett has some of the most real and physical prose I have ever encountered, with a glorious plotline and a host of vivid characters. If I can ever write something that good I shall die happy.


3. One book you would want on a desert island? The Encyclopaedia Britannica, or the Henry-Louis De La Grange biography of Mahler, in all its 4 enormous volumes J


4. One book that made you laugh? Spike Milligan’s autobiographies (the many volumes thereof), though they inspired many more emotions that just humour!

5. One book that made you cry? His Dark Materials left me utterly shaken and exceedingly emotional. Pullman is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful and engaging writers I have ever had the fortune to read. Also The Courage Consort, which is an unexpectedly poignant novella.


6. One book you wish had been written? A bloody dictionary for Sumerian would be a great help to me next year…..


7. One book you wish had never been written? All those billions of books where the girl finds her perfect partner after long searching and they live happily ever after, because the world is like that my arse. It puts too much pressure on people, gives unrealistic expectations and limits our acceptance that every relationship requires some compromise


8. One book you are currently reading? Sharpe’s Sword, The Three Musketeers, The Historian (crap, don’t buy it) and Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. Of the four, the second and fourth are probably the best if we’re talking literature, but I’m enjoying the Sharpe most. Very, very well written.


9. One book you have been meaning to read? Ach, so many. Fiction and non, religious, philosophy, humour, action etc ad inf. To name but one, Puckoon by the inimitable Spike Milligan has long been on my list.


10. One book which disappointed you? Countless books have fallen short of the mark, but then I am notoriously difficult to please. Most recently The Historian has really irritated me. It has a decent plotline and yet is so badly written I haven’t been able to finish it in over a month. Not good at all. Other more famous works include Harry Potter which is singularly clunky and unoriginal, The Crimson Petal and the White, The Colour of a Dog Running Away (I felt most aggrieved by that particular disappointment since the book started so promisingly!), most books by Ben Elton and Peter Pan.


11. One book which exceeded your expectations? I have to agree with Hane and say Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Also The Count of Monte Cristo was a most pleasant surprise. I had no idea that a book that old and that thick would be quite so readable, but I’d finished it in but a few days! A rare treat.

Friday, September 22, 2006




Your Heart Is Purple



For you, love is about establishing and developing a deep connection.

If it's true love, it brings you more wisdom and inner strength.



Your flirting style: Sincere



Your lucky first date: An afternoon at a tea house



Your dream lover: Is both thoughtful and expressive



What you bring to relationships: Understanding

Oh dear, I'm spending too much time online




Your Inner Muse is Euterpe



You are most like this muse of music.

While you may or may not be musical...

You love music and set life to your own personal soundrack.

And you are good at making anyone's heart sing!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Woo

George Bush being twatted. Of Joy :~D

Thursday, September 14, 2006

:O

Horror of horrors of horrors!
The Cilit Bang Remix has gone!
:'(
Life will never be the same.....

For anyone bored/interested

Have a peek at my photos from Warwick this year :D

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Headlines

Things that have happened recently:

1) The Wine Bar opened, giving me the opportunity to play with my corkscrew and to entertain small 5 year olds with the idea that there is a Borrower in my apron pocket.

2) Bromyard Folk Festival; only the Saturday but it was well worth it. I got to have a fangirl moment when Jon Boden Jon Boden!!! walked into the main tent and stood right next to me! *eek! fangirl!* Seeing Chris Stout play live was incredibly exciting too, but the best moment was when I wandered past the art centre only to hear the familiar and unmistakable strains of his fiddling. The tune he was playing was Hillswick - he was doing his sound check, and I had arrived just in time to hear the end of it. Sitting in the sunset with my cider, listening to my favourite fiddler of all time for the first time live in my life. Couldn't have been better. The moment lasted all of five minutes before I suddenly became aware of some singing. Sea shanties. How very intrusive. However, we couldn't work out where they were coming from, until one bright spark twigged that the sound was being broadcast through the tannoy system! (We were sitting in the Bromyard FC ground). Most entertaining :) Then the great man himself appeared, and borrowed a corkscrew from the sound guy so he could open some wine! (Wine! At a folk festival! How very high class.) More about the wine follows. During Chris Stout and Catriona McKay's set, the man himself got up and wandered off the stage, leaving Catriona to play a solo. She hadn't started said solo before he was back, muttering, "Have you got the keys?". He then turned to the audience and said, "The reason Catriona was going to play you a solo was so that I could go and get some more wine from the car. Unfortunately, she's got the keys! So if you could just, without the audience noticing, pass me the keys....." There followed a swift and unsubtle change, and he retreated once more to much laughter, returning with his drink.
So my idol is a wino? Well, here I shall insert the words of Snack from Father of the Pride, for no other reason than they are vaguely connected and make me laugh:
"Hey! I've taken to drinking in the afternoon, and to make it more socially acceptable I'm pretending I'm into wine!"
Anyway, that aside, there were some more humerous moments that evening. During Spiers and Boden's set, "Squeezy" John Spiers was entertaining about his local Morris side, Abingdon Morris; "They generally don't like you....." *pause to general audience amusement, before resumption* "They generally don't like you to play their tunes, they generally don't like you to dance their dances, and to be honest they generally don't like you to watch them dance the dances....."
Real comic star of the night was Vin Garbutt, humerous folk singer of Middlesborough. Who'd have thought that a heart operation could be so funny?

3) I seem to be having an odd effect on my socks. They are spontaneously (no, really) developing holes. I have gone through 7 socks so far this week (the boy is blaming me for a hole in one of his, though I think that's just him trying to wind me up). However, it gave me the excuse to purchase MORE SOCKS! when in Birmingham yesterday.

4) Speaking of Birmingham, yesterday I indulged myself, having earned a considerable amount this month. I bought a dress of a somewhat gothy style *blush* which is still absolutely goooooooooooorgeous. I may wear it tonight, in fact, for no other reason than it's there and I can. And most excitingly of all, I finally gave way to my cravings of over a year now and bought myself a rather smart waistcoat. It's the start of an inevitable slide into cross-dressing which I have been resisting for far too long. Now I merely need a suit jacket, and possibly some trousers. And a tie. And then I can go out properly dragged up. *delight*

5) This weekend turned out to be dirtier than I expected.

6) The bathroom door is sticking once more. For some as yet unexplained reason it has begun to do this every year - last year my mother was stuck in there for over an hour, prompting cries of "Oh dear, I'm stuck in the lavatory!" Father has now removed the lock, which is amusing whenever we have guests - compounding the general bemusement directed at our peculiar hot tap which turns the wrong way, causing merry confusion and much spraying of boiling water when the uninitiated attempt to turn it off.

7) For amusement value, I shall relate the tale of the boy calling last night. He rarely calls me, not out of lack of caring but through general inability to understand that I like to hear from him even if he doesn't have very much to say, so whenever he DOES unexpectedly call, I'm generally so surprised that I tend to ask immediately if he is ok. Ah well, at least I don't open the conversation with 'What's wrong?' God knows what I'd do if he bought me flowers.....Anyway, he rang me last night, just in time for the conclusion of a rather exciting and, for me, relevant Poirot episode, set in Egypt. Ahh the excitement (But they broke into the tomb by smashing the door seal!!! How could they???!!! There's a world of stuff we can learn from door seals! Bloody tomb raiders.....) However, even without his call I would have managed to miss the denoument as I was attempting to cook dinner at the same time. And thus last night I properly graduated into womanhood, as I was on the phone, watching the telly AND cooking all at the same time - the true definition of multi-tasking!

Moving on.....

Bad things that have happened this week:

Much rowing with the BQFH.
Missed most of Saturday due to argument and a large traffic jam, therefore didn't get to dance or sing.
Failed to educate boy on why women enjoy talking to their other halves and that it isn't an odd thing to call each other once or even twice a day.

Amusing things said this week:

1) Boy: "So, how was your morning?"
Me: *long protracted growl* "Fucking bitch queen from hell!"
Boy (cheerfully): "Yes, how is your mother?"

2) PC World advert: "Norton Internet Security, now half price!"
Myself and my father, in unison, "Bugger!" (having bought the full price version just days before)

3) Jonny: "It must be terrifying going out with you!"