Ever had a head so full of stuff that you can’t get any of it out? That’s where I am at the moment. If I ever do get to the point that I can blog it however, it will be entirely inappropriate for such a forum; so, I guess the only thing I can tell you is that I’ve had my hair cut...
I do love having my hair cut – me and Andrew have a lovely natter about life, love and everything really and he does a stonkingly good cut and blow dry to boot. I’ve got a bouncy, curly thing going on at the moment which feels fab – my hair bounces as I walk! It’s a bit like that girly thing of swirling around in a long skirt – a very feminine, yummy feeling. He’s really good. I can’t do this style myself, but then I guess (apart from the good cutting technique) that’s what I pay him for! That, and the fact that he knows I’m a tight bird and that he needs to cut it in a way which means I only have to get it cut once every four months!
The haircut was followed by the dangerous walk back to the tube past 3 shoe shops. Unfortunately I’m in love again. Dark red suede, ¾ length, black 3” heel. £175. The worst thing is that the one on display was a size 4 – it would have been rude not to try it on! So I tried it on, I took it off; I stroked it so that the nap was lying all in the right direction, placed it back on the shelf and stepped away. Sigh …
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Saturday, October 22, 2005
What a lazy day.
The shopping is done, 3 loads of washing are done – although half of that had to be done at the launderette as the washer (which we only seem to have had for 5 minutes) started emptying water all over the floor during the washing cycle. Lunch was made and I even got as far as considering my next move on the Pension front - I haven’t actually signed any paperwork yet but at least I’ve read it …
Then round about 5pm I kind of ran out of steam and I’m afraid I abandoned thoughts of wading my way through the ironing and decided to treat myself to a luxurious soak in the bath with my favourite Fenjal bath stuff, candles, a spot of music and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a thoroughly decadent half hour and happily managed without reaching the pruney stage. The trouble with a soak in the bath however, is that I never manage to get going again. Consequently I’ve spent the evening curled up in my jim jams watching Strictly Come Dancing and thinking that if Jim’ll Fix It was still on, I’d write in and ask to be able to partner Anton Du Beke – but then I never got to get dressed up and sit in one of the boxes on The Good Old Days which is what I wrote and asked to do last time (I was young!!), so chances are I wouldn’t get to get dressed up and dance with Anton either …
Any road up, the pile of shirts that’s still there waiting to be ironed is just going to have to wait until tomorrow morning …
Night, night.
Then round about 5pm I kind of ran out of steam and I’m afraid I abandoned thoughts of wading my way through the ironing and decided to treat myself to a luxurious soak in the bath with my favourite Fenjal bath stuff, candles, a spot of music and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a thoroughly decadent half hour and happily managed without reaching the pruney stage. The trouble with a soak in the bath however, is that I never manage to get going again. Consequently I’ve spent the evening curled up in my jim jams watching Strictly Come Dancing and thinking that if Jim’ll Fix It was still on, I’d write in and ask to be able to partner Anton Du Beke – but then I never got to get dressed up and sit in one of the boxes on The Good Old Days which is what I wrote and asked to do last time (I was young!!), so chances are I wouldn’t get to get dressed up and dance with Anton either …
Any road up, the pile of shirts that’s still there waiting to be ironed is just going to have to wait until tomorrow morning …
Night, night.
There's nothing for it ...
I left my comb at home yesterday by accident, so at lunchtime embarked on a quest to buy another one in order to reign in my increasingly wild mop of hair. My mobile rang:
Caller: What are you up to?
Me: I’m in Boots
Caller: What colour?
Am I known for having a lot of boots or something???? I think I may need to buy more shoes to redress the balance … I like this idea!
Caller: What are you up to?
Me: I’m in Boots
Caller: What colour?
Am I known for having a lot of boots or something???? I think I may need to buy more shoes to redress the balance … I like this idea!
Friday, October 21, 2005
Works of fiction
Since I started my new job I've been mainly travelling by car. This is great from the perspective of not being reliant on public transport, which is a pain in South London at best of times, but it also means I both get to listen to music in the car & hear the news. Previously I left the house without having heard any news, I would then work all day - never having time to dip into www.bbc.co.uk like many colleagues I've had seemed to find time for - and by the time I got home I'd have missed the early evening news and had fallen asleep by the time the 10pm news came on (why did they have to change it from 9pm?). I guess you could argue that I could listen to the radio while getting ready for work, but I've just never been able to get ready & listen to radio simultaneously. There's always so much to do: shower, breakfast, make packed lunch, decide what to wear, tame the hair (losing battle at the moment!), put my face on etc, etc. If I had the news on as well I know I would get distracted and never make the deadline. So anyway, the upshot is that travelling in the car means that I now have a vague notion of what is going on in the world, and that I get to listen to music. Marvellous stuff. So what's the downside?
I never get to read anymore and I really miss it! In the 5 day gap I had between finishing my old job and starting the new I enjoyed a day to myself going down the Thames to Greenwich. It was a lovely day, I saw the sights, I talked to random tourists, got a wee picnic from M&S, found one of those bookstores which are always closing down and bought a very mixed bag of books for 50p each. That was 3.5 months ago and I haven't finished a single one of them. If I'd still been going to work on the bus I would have bought another 2 bags by now.
In fact the only work of fiction I've read recently is the timetable for the 196 at my bus stop. This is demonstrated by the fact that I decided against the car this morning, to enable me a trip to the HITW after work, and missed my train in spite of allowing 25 minutes to wait for bus which is purported to come every 10 -12 minutes ... I'm now going to be 30 minutes late for work (no lunch break for me ...) and the worst part about it is that I forgot the damn book I laid out to enjoy on the journey.
I never get to read anymore and I really miss it! In the 5 day gap I had between finishing my old job and starting the new I enjoyed a day to myself going down the Thames to Greenwich. It was a lovely day, I saw the sights, I talked to random tourists, got a wee picnic from M&S, found one of those bookstores which are always closing down and bought a very mixed bag of books for 50p each. That was 3.5 months ago and I haven't finished a single one of them. If I'd still been going to work on the bus I would have bought another 2 bags by now.
In fact the only work of fiction I've read recently is the timetable for the 196 at my bus stop. This is demonstrated by the fact that I decided against the car this morning, to enable me a trip to the HITW after work, and missed my train in spite of allowing 25 minutes to wait for bus which is purported to come every 10 -12 minutes ... I'm now going to be 30 minutes late for work (no lunch break for me ...) and the worst part about it is that I forgot the damn book I laid out to enjoy on the journey.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Ugh ...
Sadly the lurgy has well and truly taken hold. I’ve been up since 3am with a cracking headache, sore throat and the beginnings of a chesty cough. The tissues haven’t been pressed into action yet, but I fear that it is only a matter of time … I think now is a good time for me to re-record my outgoing voicemail message as my voice has now dropped a couple of octaves and sounds a bit Rula Lenska! Hey, I don’t sound sexy very often, so I reckon I should grab the opportunity while I can!
... and the birthday goes on!
Well the week started with a trip to the seaside with Pepps to have an implementation meeting with a client. Actually managing to get on the train to Poole felt like a day’s work in itself. I was up on time but left the house late so I decided to be clever and drive part way as I had missed the bus that would get me to Waterloo by 0830. I then got stuck in hideous traffic so decided to drive back and get the next bus. I missed the bus. I drove further down the route but ended up abandoning the car and catching whichever random bus I could that was heading in the right direction. Once on the bus I rang Pepps to say that there was no way I was going to be at Waterloo by 0830 (it was 0800 by now and I was less than a mile from home having been traveling for 45 minutes). Pepps says “Neither am I darling. I’ve been traveling for an hour and I’m still in bloody Clapham!” I immediately felt much less stressed! Anyway, to cut a terribly boring story short we rendezvous’d on Platform 9 at Clapham Junction, caught the first train heading in the right direction and miraculously got to the meeting bang on time.
The meeting was a good one. We got taken to lunch, which included enough “curly fries” to feed a small army. I declined to eat them as my instinct was that anything unnatural as a curly fry has got to be covered in crap of some sort of another (see page 6 of this link). We caught a glimpse of the sea, had a wicked hot chocolate in a very seedy teashop, nearly missed our train back to Clapham, treated ourselves to a warm G&T (no ice …), had a fascinating chat about shoes, wet wipes, tupperware and a shared love of Lakeland Plastics catalogues (said conversation was punctuated by strange random sounds from the woman across the aisle who we think was talking in Russian under her breath …), sighed in resigned acceptance as the train sailed through Clapham Junction and eventually wended our way home from Waterloo!
Tuesday started early with lovely presents and cards and moved on to hours staring at project plans and specifications; it’s a shame us grown ups with no annual leave left have to work on our birthdays ... However, the day took a turn for the better when at 4pm there were more cards, presents and special wheat free cake courtesy of the office, plus a glass of fizz courtesy of me! I wasn’t sure how the ‘alcohol in the office’ thing would go down but as it happens it was a resounding success and I think a new tradition has been started. Now all I need to do is persuade the company to foot the bill and gently introduce the notion of vodka tomatoes on special occasions and mulled wine before Christmas lunch and I’ll know I’ve really made my mark! The evening was spent at home with a lovely Bolognese and ice cream courtesy of TH and 2 episodes of “Waking the Dead” on video.
Wednesday saw dinner with Lou in Clapham plus another card and a present – a beautiful sparkly and girlie handbag.
I have no idea when I might be able to use it – come on, someone invite me to a ‘do’ which requires wearing my favourite slinky black dress and my new gorgeous handbag! We had no idea where we were going to eat, so walked up and down Northcote Road checking out all the restaurants and bars. We discarded places like the Slug and Lettuce and All Bar One which were rammed and noisy and just as we were heading back for an expensive Argentinean steak restaurant we spotted what looked at first glance like a wine bar. Closer inspection revealed it to be an Italian restaurant and remarkably seemed to have stuff on the menu which catered for siblings with different restrictive diets. It was also being frequented by more ‘mature’ customers who looked like they were out for the purposes of eating good food rather than just ‘out’, if you see what I mean. Well, we weren’t disappointed. I’m quite difficult to please on the eating out front but this really was a case of yum yum.
Thursday saw my 3 month review in my new job and happily my probationary period has officially been signed off and I received lovely feedback from my boss about my achievements so far. Actually I’ve been feeling good about the job over the last few weeks – I finally feel in control and that I’m winding up to being able to operate at the pace I’m used to, which is important to me, and it was good to have outside validation of my feelings by my boss saying good things about me too. The evening was spent at Darbucka with TH and Catster at Steve’s Peel Day gig. I’ve never been to Darbucka before and I love it! What a lovely venue. The gig was really good too; I’ve not heard Calamateur before and really enjoyed him, Steve was on good form – I really must buy one of his CDs - and what we saw of Rise was also really cool. Fortunately the darkness disguised the fact that I nodded off at one point … What can I say? Steve’s music is just so soothing and relaxing, and that combined with the fact that I’ve been out pretty much every night for a week and am, frankly, getting too old for that, meant that at one point I was gradually sliding off my cushion and disappearing under the table! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear all of Rise because being old and sensible meant that we ran to get the last train back to where the car was parked at the shark pad (well I guess its Catster’s pad now really …)
Friday dawned with the unhappy realisation that I’m coming down with some ‘orrible lurgy (hardly surprising as everyone seems to have it at the moment) so I’m now stocked up with Echinacea, vitamin C and zinc, Night Nurse and a good supply of non-scratchy tissues, which will hopefully see me through a weekend visit from the parentals and back into another week at work.
The Menu
Garlic olives to die for; a shared plate of melt in the mouth parma ham, roast artichoke and truffle oil; chicken stuffed with mushrooms, in mascarpone cheese & peppercorn sauce and broccoli; all accompanied by a wonderfully smooth in the mouth montepulciano.
The meeting was a good one. We got taken to lunch, which included enough “curly fries” to feed a small army. I declined to eat them as my instinct was that anything unnatural as a curly fry has got to be covered in crap of some sort of another (see page 6 of this link). We caught a glimpse of the sea, had a wicked hot chocolate in a very seedy teashop, nearly missed our train back to Clapham, treated ourselves to a warm G&T (no ice …), had a fascinating chat about shoes, wet wipes, tupperware and a shared love of Lakeland Plastics catalogues (said conversation was punctuated by strange random sounds from the woman across the aisle who we think was talking in Russian under her breath …), sighed in resigned acceptance as the train sailed through Clapham Junction and eventually wended our way home from Waterloo!
Tuesday started early with lovely presents and cards and moved on to hours staring at project plans and specifications; it’s a shame us grown ups with no annual leave left have to work on our birthdays ... However, the day took a turn for the better when at 4pm there were more cards, presents and special wheat free cake courtesy of the office, plus a glass of fizz courtesy of me! I wasn’t sure how the ‘alcohol in the office’ thing would go down but as it happens it was a resounding success and I think a new tradition has been started. Now all I need to do is persuade the company to foot the bill and gently introduce the notion of vodka tomatoes on special occasions and mulled wine before Christmas lunch and I’ll know I’ve really made my mark! The evening was spent at home with a lovely Bolognese and ice cream courtesy of TH and 2 episodes of “Waking the Dead” on video.
Wednesday saw dinner with Lou in Clapham plus another card and a present – a beautiful sparkly and girlie handbag.
I have no idea when I might be able to use it – come on, someone invite me to a ‘do’ which requires wearing my favourite slinky black dress and my new gorgeous handbag! We had no idea where we were going to eat, so walked up and down Northcote Road checking out all the restaurants and bars. We discarded places like the Slug and Lettuce and All Bar One which were rammed and noisy and just as we were heading back for an expensive Argentinean steak restaurant we spotted what looked at first glance like a wine bar. Closer inspection revealed it to be an Italian restaurant and remarkably seemed to have stuff on the menu which catered for siblings with different restrictive diets. It was also being frequented by more ‘mature’ customers who looked like they were out for the purposes of eating good food rather than just ‘out’, if you see what I mean. Well, we weren’t disappointed. I’m quite difficult to please on the eating out front but this really was a case of yum yum.
Thursday saw my 3 month review in my new job and happily my probationary period has officially been signed off and I received lovely feedback from my boss about my achievements so far. Actually I’ve been feeling good about the job over the last few weeks – I finally feel in control and that I’m winding up to being able to operate at the pace I’m used to, which is important to me, and it was good to have outside validation of my feelings by my boss saying good things about me too. The evening was spent at Darbucka with TH and Catster at Steve’s Peel Day gig. I’ve never been to Darbucka before and I love it! What a lovely venue. The gig was really good too; I’ve not heard Calamateur before and really enjoyed him, Steve was on good form – I really must buy one of his CDs - and what we saw of Rise was also really cool. Fortunately the darkness disguised the fact that I nodded off at one point … What can I say? Steve’s music is just so soothing and relaxing, and that combined with the fact that I’ve been out pretty much every night for a week and am, frankly, getting too old for that, meant that at one point I was gradually sliding off my cushion and disappearing under the table! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear all of Rise because being old and sensible meant that we ran to get the last train back to where the car was parked at the shark pad (well I guess its Catster’s pad now really …)
Friday dawned with the unhappy realisation that I’m coming down with some ‘orrible lurgy (hardly surprising as everyone seems to have it at the moment) so I’m now stocked up with Echinacea, vitamin C and zinc, Night Nurse and a good supply of non-scratchy tissues, which will hopefully see me through a weekend visit from the parentals and back into another week at work.
The Menu
Garlic olives to die for; a shared plate of melt in the mouth parma ham, roast artichoke and truffle oil; chicken stuffed with mushrooms, in mascarpone cheese & peppercorn sauce and broccoli; all accompanied by a wonderfully smooth in the mouth montepulciano.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
A "no time to blog" digest
Friday: an evening of tables reserved for the occasion, chips, Pino Grigio from my new mug which is now being kept behind the bar for me whenever I go in- such a classy bird!, chips, good company, chips, lip gloss comparisons (George’s is not as chocolatey as mine apparently, though the debate was quite split on that), chips, discussions on the Vorderman scale (don’t ask …) and a late journey home.
Saturday: an early start (well of course, it’s Saturday!), the weekend’s chores packed into a manic 5 hours, before heading off to Brighton to see Bill Bailey at the Dome. Very, very funny night and a good choice of birthday treat for myself!
Sunday: a lie in – marvellous stuff! I slept all the way until 8am, can’t remember the last time I did that. A day spent with TH’s family, a visit to friends and their new baby followed by cheese and wine on returning home.
Phew! Back to work in the morning …
Saturday: an early start (well of course, it’s Saturday!), the weekend’s chores packed into a manic 5 hours, before heading off to Brighton to see Bill Bailey at the Dome. Very, very funny night and a good choice of birthday treat for myself!
Sunday: a lie in – marvellous stuff! I slept all the way until 8am, can’t remember the last time I did that. A day spent with TH’s family, a visit to friends and their new baby followed by cheese and wine on returning home.
Phew! Back to work in the morning …
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Hold up!
They really do! The last time I encountered hold ups they really were a case of fall downs ... However, two things appear to have happened since my last experience
Either way, my record on the falling down undies front has been much better of late and I'm pleased to say that there is no sign of falling down today. In fact they're holding up magnificently under the pressure of charging around to get to the station for the 7.39 and the subsequent stamping of feet when I arrived with 2 minutes to spare only to hear an announcement that it had been cancelled ... Aaarrgghhh!
- My legs must have got fatter (for those who know me, yes honestly!) and
- They use a much better rubbery stuff at the top which clings to the skin. I'm sure that previously it wasn't as clingy, because last time I tried them my usual immaculate presentation (I wish) was marred by my Nora Batty ankles!
Either way, my record on the falling down undies front has been much better of late and I'm pleased to say that there is no sign of falling down today. In fact they're holding up magnificently under the pressure of charging around to get to the station for the 7.39 and the subsequent stamping of feet when I arrived with 2 minutes to spare only to hear an announcement that it had been cancelled ... Aaarrgghhh!
Sunday, October 02, 2005
A week of firsts
It’s been a busy old week. I’ve had a big implementation this week; well it was supposed to Go Live last week, but what with wasting 3 weeks trying to working out what I was supposed to be delivering, having a key member of staff (essentially the only resource I had) announce they were leaving the company just as the project came on line, having to do meetings and specs that I shouldn’t have been doing etc, the week’s contingency I had built in to the already impossibly tight but non-negotiable timeline kind of evaporated … Anyway, Go Live happened 3 days late but was very enjoyable in a twisted way! It was almost like running an event again – me in the middle being mission control with a group of people who very quickly metamorphosed into a real team in a way that I’m not sure has happened before. (Maybe that’s just me being big headed!) We’re going to need a serious de-brief on the project – lots of lessons to be learned and all that, but I feel that we’ve got a good team and we’re in a good position to build on it for the next disastrous project already on the horizon. One more difficult and haphazard project to go and then after that all the projects will have been mine from the start so there are lots of new procedures and working practices to put in place and existing processes to get used etc.
This week also saw my first Salsa class. I’ve been banging on about this for months and I finally got round to it this week. It was quite funny really. I was immediately transported back to school when in the 6th form we were forced to have ballroom dancing lessons with the boys from the grammar school. The girls would line up along one side of the school hall, boys down the other and Mrs Isaac and Mr Blah (can’t remember his name – he was very light on his feet but had terrible bad breath!) would demonstrate the waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, polka or whatever and then we’d have to have a go. It all felt fairly disastrous at the time – thoroughly embarrassing and all that – but if it came to it I could probably still manage to fluff my way through a waltz or a foxtrot with a guy that knew what he was doing.
OK, so the Salsa class was full of adults and not spotty teenagers and everyone was there by choice but there were still many sweaty palms and a bunch of beginners desperately staring at their feet like they would up and run off if they weren’t kept in sight at all times, and heaven forbid that you should make eye contact with your partner!
The teacher of the beginners’ group was a nice enough woman, very encouraging and all that but she began by counting 123567123567 right from the beginning with no explanation of why. What happened to 4 and 8? Well I know what happened to them – being a musician obviously helps – but for me the whole 123..567.. thing isn’t really something I think about; if you’re musical and feel the beat, you know which beat you’re on without counting. However I’m not sure everyone else in the beginners class realised where 4 and 8 were … It was about 25 minutes in before the teacher explained that you rest on 4 and 8, so it wasn’t until after then that a couple of the blokes who were having trouble with the concept that the “next foot” you use has to be the one that you’re not currently standing on otherwise you fall over, cottoned on that they didn’t just go from 3 to 5 and 7 back to 1. Happily after this realisation there was much less treading on toes!
I guess the problem is that I’m not quite a beginner, but I’m also not good enough to be in with the intermediates. However, I know that I must do my scales and arpeggios in order to be able to play the cool stuff I want to … Sorry, I mean I must practice my mambo, rumba, turn, open out and crossover steps before I can do the fun looking stuff. I also must remember that I must not lead … ;-)
I’ll go back I reckon, but it would be nice to have someone to go with as everyone else there was with someone they knew. However, TH categorically doesn’t do dancing, so if I want to do it, it’ll have to be on my own. I’ve started so I’ll finish!
Friday saw Kenny Young and the Eggplants via a swift one in the HITW. I’ve been trying to get to see them for years and this was the first year I managed not to be working, hurrah! TH came too and it was great fun (apart from a really ropey white wine and soda, apparently BB asked for a single malt and was given a Bells!) They did all my favourites, Eddie’s Apartment, Rambo goes Shopping and Earl the Squirrel and I got a lovely complimentary eggplant badger (sorry badge!) and an eggplant T shirt into the bargain. A girl can never have too many band t shirts to wear as nighties!
The menu
Dinner (Sat): Organic chicken breast in a mushroom and stilton cream sauce with steamed organic carrots, broccoli and peas; followed by Belgian Chocolate ice cream laced with a wee bit of Muscat …
This week also saw my first Salsa class. I’ve been banging on about this for months and I finally got round to it this week. It was quite funny really. I was immediately transported back to school when in the 6th form we were forced to have ballroom dancing lessons with the boys from the grammar school. The girls would line up along one side of the school hall, boys down the other and Mrs Isaac and Mr Blah (can’t remember his name – he was very light on his feet but had terrible bad breath!) would demonstrate the waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, polka or whatever and then we’d have to have a go. It all felt fairly disastrous at the time – thoroughly embarrassing and all that – but if it came to it I could probably still manage to fluff my way through a waltz or a foxtrot with a guy that knew what he was doing.
OK, so the Salsa class was full of adults and not spotty teenagers and everyone was there by choice but there were still many sweaty palms and a bunch of beginners desperately staring at their feet like they would up and run off if they weren’t kept in sight at all times, and heaven forbid that you should make eye contact with your partner!
The teacher of the beginners’ group was a nice enough woman, very encouraging and all that but she began by counting 123567123567 right from the beginning with no explanation of why. What happened to 4 and 8? Well I know what happened to them – being a musician obviously helps – but for me the whole 123..567.. thing isn’t really something I think about; if you’re musical and feel the beat, you know which beat you’re on without counting. However I’m not sure everyone else in the beginners class realised where 4 and 8 were … It was about 25 minutes in before the teacher explained that you rest on 4 and 8, so it wasn’t until after then that a couple of the blokes who were having trouble with the concept that the “next foot” you use has to be the one that you’re not currently standing on otherwise you fall over, cottoned on that they didn’t just go from 3 to 5 and 7 back to 1. Happily after this realisation there was much less treading on toes!
I guess the problem is that I’m not quite a beginner, but I’m also not good enough to be in with the intermediates. However, I know that I must do my scales and arpeggios in order to be able to play the cool stuff I want to … Sorry, I mean I must practice my mambo, rumba, turn, open out and crossover steps before I can do the fun looking stuff. I also must remember that I must not lead … ;-)
I’ll go back I reckon, but it would be nice to have someone to go with as everyone else there was with someone they knew. However, TH categorically doesn’t do dancing, so if I want to do it, it’ll have to be on my own. I’ve started so I’ll finish!
Friday saw Kenny Young and the Eggplants via a swift one in the HITW. I’ve been trying to get to see them for years and this was the first year I managed not to be working, hurrah! TH came too and it was great fun (apart from a really ropey white wine and soda, apparently BB asked for a single malt and was given a Bells!) They did all my favourites, Eddie’s Apartment, Rambo goes Shopping and Earl the Squirrel and I got a lovely complimentary eggplant badger (sorry badge!) and an eggplant T shirt into the bargain. A girl can never have too many band t shirts to wear as nighties!
The menu
Dinner (Sat): Organic chicken breast in a mushroom and stilton cream sauce with steamed organic carrots, broccoli and peas; followed by Belgian Chocolate ice cream laced with a wee bit of Muscat …
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