I haven't lost my mind, its all backed up on disc somewhere

I have lost my mind, I've just been in denial

Monday 1

Because I’m anosmic, and because I’ve blown the kitchen up a couple of times, I’m a teeny bit paranoid about gas appliances.  I get through a battery a week in the cooker because I keep my finger pressed on the ignition button all the way through cooking, just to be sure.  Obviously I get my gas fire serviced every year.

Today, the gas man cometh.  He’s proper Corgi registered or whatever it is they call it now, a ‘professional’.

Pah!

Talk about pither.  I could have made a gas fire using the contents of my rubbish bin in the time it took him to get the cover off the thing.

“Oh,” he said, ominously, “I’ve never done one of these before.”

“What?” I gasped, “A Cannon?”

“Yeah.”

Oh.  My.  God.

The oh-my-godding continued throughout his stay.  He couldn’t get the cover off, then he couldn’t get the heating elements out, then he couldn’t get them back in again in the right order (they’re all the same!). 

Then the ignition wouldn’t work.  “How do you normally light it?” he asked.

“Erm, well we generally just turn the knob.”

“Doesn’t appear to be working,” he said.

Faaaantastic.

 “Will you be alright not to use it for a bit?” he asked as he finally started packing his tools away.

“It’s November!” I cried, pulling the blanket tighter around my frozen shoulders as the dog shivered in his bed.

He didn’t screw the front cover back on the fire, just left it hanging there, and he’d broken the ignition bit - he said it was ‘old and corroded’ but it wasn’t.  He said he’d be back when he’d ordered a new ignition.  I didn’t doubt this because (a) I hadn’t paid him, (b) I have a loud-mouthed Yorkshireman to hand, and (c) he left his computer cover here… no fix, no cover.

We’re lighting it with an electric ignition now, very carefully so the front cover doesn’t fall off.

Should have followed the maxim ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t bloody touch it!’

Tuesday 2

I work at home.  I get phonecalls.  Lots of phonecalls.  From salesmen.  Mostly from India.  They interrupt my working day, force me to break out of my transcribing bubble and get up out of my Ikea chair.  They rarely get my name right, just a close approximation of it.  I get annoyed.

So I play.  If they want to waste my time, I’ll waste theirs.

I just took one.  “Hello, can I speak to Mrs Frumpfingers?”

“Yes,” said I, “I’ll just get her for you.”

I put the phone down.  I accentuated plodding footsteps across the laminate floor in my study.  I yelled “MOM!  MOM, THERE’S A MAN ON THE PHONE FOR YOU!  I THINK ITS THAT MAN YOU WENT OUT WITH LAST NIGHT, THE ONE THAT GOT YOU DRUNK AND MADE YOU DO THINGS TO HIM, THE ONE THAT YOU REPORTED TO THE POLICE.  OR IT MIGHT BE THE POLICE CALLING BACK.  MOM?”

I picked up the phone.  Surprisingly, the salesman was still there.  “She’s just coming,” I said, “She’s just putting the dog back in his cage and letting the python out.  She won’t be a minute.”

I put the phone down again.  Stared out of the window.  Hummed a bit.  Inspected my nails.  “MOM!” I screeched, “ARE YOU COMING MOM?”  I wobbled my Ikea chair noisily, then screamed “OH MY GOD, WHAT’S THAT BLOOD?  WHERE’S ALL THAT BLOOD COMING FROM, MOM?  SPEAK TO ME, MOM!”

Needless to say, when I picked up the phone again the salesman had gone.

I’m thinking I might be phoneline sexpert next time, that’ll be fun.  I can hardly wait!

Wednesday 3

Hubs rang the gas man this morning.  “When are you coming t’fix t’fire you broke?” he bawled.  Soon, apparently.

The study door broke today.  I was downstairs, just supping my first cup of Wake!-Up! coffee when I heard a pounding upstairs.  As I’m still quite jumpy from the ‘incident’ the other night (where something thundered noisily up and down our stairs and then rapped on the wall), I almost ran out of the house to my dad’s across the road in my dressing gown.  But didn’t.

“WASSUP?” I screamed, hoping it was Hubs and not a load of demons climbing down out of my loft.

“Study door’s stuck,” Hub yelled back.

“Oh don’t be ridiculous,” I huffed, joining him.

The door was, indeed, stuck.  The metal bit in the handle thing had broke or summat.  Anyway, the handle wouldn’t turn and we couldn’t get into the study.

“But my earphones are in there!” I cried, “I can’t work without earphones!”

After a moment’s thought (none of which included thoughts of screwdrivers), Hubs promptly kicked the door in.  Yeah, he just raised a foot and belted it.  Nearly did his back in.

As it was 7.05am, I can only hope that the sound of splintered wood woke the nosey, interfering woman next door.

Thursday 4

Okay, so America’s had their mid-term thingies and it turns out they don’t like Obama much any more.  So here’s what I propose.  You’ve seen the TV programme Wife Swap?  Let’s do a Leader Swap.  We’ll take Obama and you can have a BOGOF deal with Ant and Dec Cameron and Clegg.  Waddaya say?

On the subject of which, Hubs just showed me this and it totally cracked me up…

Friday 5

Gas man came back - coincidentally on Bonfire Night.  Sniggering, I left him with Hubs while I legged it upstairs to hide out in my study.  ‘Why did you leave it like that?’ I heard Hubs bawl, followed by ‘It wasn’t broke when you came though was it!’

We won’t be using him again.  I doubt if he’d come back anyway (snigger).

[Update: Just discovered the knob on the fire is broke.  Tsk.  You just can’t get the service these days can you!]

Anyway, its Friday, so watch this, its proper good…

Now watch this…

Brought to you by Fastfinger’s Fantastic Friday Fun Inc.

Saturday 6

We’ve been without a car now for almost a week (A WEEK!) on account of something technical that happened to the radiator which meant it peed a lot, which apparently isn’t a good thing.  Its been in a garage* awaiting repair for several days now.  Its quite surprising how lack of transport can invoke cabin fever so quickly.

So, yesterday afternoon, we were bored.  Yeah, us, bored… almost unheard of.  While I was wailing ‘I’m bored’, I spied Hubs’ new hat, bought on impulse from Merry Hell recently.  ‘Let’s do a photo shoot,’ I said.

Hubs was a tad stunned, but he’s a game kind of chap and agreed, not realising that it involved some heavy furniture moving.  ‘Why are we moving heavy furniture?’ he asked at one point.  ‘You’ll see,’ I said, mysteriously.

We shifted the table, and three chairs, and then hauled the two-seater sofa across the room.  What we were left with (after we’d vacced and dusted the skirting boards and removed a big picture and a clock) was a Blank Wall.

We raced upstairs to get changed.  Well, I raced upstairs, Hubs followed behind saying ‘What’s going on?’

‘You’ll see.’

I made him put on a suit.  And tie.  I put on a suit.  And a tie.  Then we donned matching trilbies.  And sunglasses.  And, on the spur of the moment, Hubs rooted amongst the dust on top of the wardrobe and brought out the guns he uses to shoot the rats resident underneath our garden shed.

Using a tripod bought for £1.99 from Amazon (after we’d seen it for £29.99 in Currys), we took some photos.  We posed and giggled, and giggled some more.  Had an absolute blast.  And this is what we produced.

It's Bonnie and Clyde!

That done, a call from Middle Son, who was coming up to attend a family party at Sis’s house.  Middle Son is a research scientist working for a big science company in Bristol.  Despite this incredible brain power, he finds it difficult to make arrangements to get from a local train station to our house without involving me (car-less) and his brother (not car-less).  He ended up waiting in a pub for an hour for a lift instead of catching a bus.  Go figure!  (Love ya, MS x)

Anyway, the party was good.  After being stuck in the house together for almost a week, Hubs was thrilled to have other people to talk to, and promptly yakked everyone to death.  I once again hid a large animal skull in Nephew’s bed (“Who would do something like that?” he complained last time – I’m buying him The Godfather DVD for Crimbo).

A group of us literally fell into a taxi afterwards, and were harangued all the way home by the taxi driver (who clearly didn’t want to be a taxi driver) for ‘messing with his microphone’.  We were all too drunk to care as we played with a little button on the roof.

Desperately hungover this morning, Hubs’ family came down from Yorkshire for a visit (four adults, two children, plus Middle Son... and then Marmee and Sis popped in, and later Ex-Husband - the walls of my house bulged).  Feeling that Yet Another Trip to The Cadbury Shop down t’road simply wouldn’t hack it with the Yorkies any more, we thought we’d show them the delights of Birmingham city centre.  Except we didn’t have a car.  So we thought jumping on a train would be the easiest thing.

Pah!

The local train had three carriages, which were already filled to bursting point, and an entire platform of people struggled to get on like they were competing for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.  We had a pushchair, which made the event that much more exciting.

At one point, on the packed, standing-room-only, air-less journey into the city, a woman poked me harshly in the back and cried ‘Excuse me!’ because she obviously felt she deserved more space.  I turned my head as best I could to face her, lasered her with my bulging eyeballs and, in my best Shakespearean voice, cried ‘If I could move, I would!’  Shut her up.

Birmingham was packed, absolutely berluddy heaving with people.  Apparently there was a football match on somewhere, so all the Yorkie Visitors saw was a mass congregation of Brummies… and a clay policeman statue on New Street (who was actually pretty brilliant).

Back home, Hubs rather marvelously served up a full Sunday dinner for 9 people… no mean feat!  And very nice it was too.

We were in bed by 8.30pm, absolutely cream-crackered.

Great day, though.

[* The garage where our car currently resides is Small Son's workplace.  We figured we might get some kind of priority, being relatives and all.  Apparently not.  I've warned Small Son that he's in danger of being crossed off The Christmas List if we don't get it back soon, and if we have to wait much longer he'll not only be written out of my will too but he'll also have to find a nice convalescence home for me and Hubs to recover from our enforced home-boundness.]

Sunday 7

I have gossip.  Yeah.  Proper gossip too.  About a Famous Person.  See if you can guess who it is.

Hubs’  young granddaughter is so pretty and has such talent that she takes part in TV commercials, amongst other things.  She did one recently for a Big Supermarket.   At least, she would have done it if the ‘star of the show’ hadn’t been such a knob.

When he eventually turned up his car pulled up right in front of his trailer and he ran the three steps into it so he wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.  Everyone waited.  And waited.  Eventually someone came out of the trailer and said ‘He’d like a little space’.  They waited some more.

When he finally deigned to start filming, he ran to the car parked three steps from his trailer and was driven 20 yards to the cameras.

By this time, granddaughter had reached her legal time limit and couldn’t take part, which was a huge disappointment for her. 

I was quite surprised because the Person In Question comes across as quite down-to-earth.  His slapdash cooking style appeals to me, and I like the fact that he’s trying to get more people to cook (although I hate that he doesn’t peel garlic).

Just goes to show, you can never tell about these famous people can you.

Reminds me of the time, many years ago, when I went to a writer's convention (I used to write short stories for magazines).  A certain well-known author was there, cha cha cha, holding court.  I won't give his name, [*cough* Diogenes], but he favoured wearing old-fashioned clothing.  I asked someone to get his autograph for me.  The someone went over with a piece of paper.  The author turned to look at me, smiled, and then scribbled on the piece of paper.

It was his phone number! 

CURRENT MONTH