WOT?

JULY

Thursday 2

Last month one foul-mouthed neighbour was chased out of the grove by my partner wielding a baseball bat, another neighbour took it upon himself to remove 16 foot of my privet hedge with the intention of driving his car into his garden across my driveway, and Small Son’s teenage angst is turning my hair grey.

I’d like this month to be quiet.  Really quiet.  I want every single one of my neighbours to go on holiday for four weeks and return nice, civilised people.  I want my ex-husband to say, “Hey, no hard feelings, here’s your money back, keep the house … oh, and by the way, I won the lottery before the divorce came through, here’s your half.”  (Yes, I know, really going overboard now, but this is my fantasy, let me dream a little). 

I want all these things.  I want them a lot. 

Wonder if I’ll get them. 

Or some. 

Or one. 

Just one!

Friday 2

Nothing has changed regarding my destroyed hedge since the last blog entry … I still haven’t seen hide nor hair of my neighbours (no apologies, no explanations, no bottles of wine left on my doorstep to say sorry, nothing). 

Their car hasn’t been seen since ‘the incident’ .. until this morning.  I noticed it parked in the grove as I left for work (yes, there is space in the grove for it, which makes the destruction of my hedge all the more pointless).  As soon as I saw it I thought, I hope they’re not going to drive across my driveway into their garden.  If they do, there’s going to be serious trouble. 

But anyway, life goes on, and I’m not a miserable person, I don’t dwell on negatives.  I’m genetically happy and optimistic and nothing (bar divorce, dog deaths and parental illness) knocks me down for long.  So I’m concentrating on the good parts in my life - fabulous partner, great kids (post-teenager), nice house and garden.  And nice job too.  I used to be a full time mother, now I’m a secretary!  I stop short sometimes and look at my life and think, jeez, I’ve come a long way. 

This morning I was preparing a meeting room for a seminar and then ‘meeting and greeting’ delegates from all over the country (confidently cracking jokes when I used to be so shy and quiet).  I had one of those ‘moments’ when I smiled and thought, ‘This is me! Who’d have thought!’.

From stay-at-home mother to city centre secretary in four and a half years - that’s pretty good. 

[UPDATE: My neighbour refused, in the end, to buy, replace, put up or pay for a new fence to cover the gash where my privet hedge used to be, we had to do it ourselves.]

The Brummie Accent

Wednesday 14

So, I've been buying sandwiches for lunch all week.  Went to sandwich bar not renown for the cerebral abilities of its staff today:

Me: "White baquette with special tuna filling please"
Girl: "Brown baquette?"
Me: "No, white"
Girl: She gets brown
Me: "That's brown"
Girl: "Didn't you want brown?”
Me: "No, I wanted white."
Girl: "And what would you like on it?"
Me: "The special tuna filling please."
Girl: "The what?"
Me: "The special tuna filling."
Girl: "Tuna?”
Me: (picks up menu list on top of counter and shows her the big red letters that spell out 'Special Tuna Filling')
Girl:  "Oh, you want that?"
Me: "Yes.  Please.  If you wouldn't mind."
Girl: has to wait her turn to get to sandwich fillings.  After 10 seconds she turns to me and says, "Was it the cheese you wanted?"
Me: "No! Tuna!”

This isn't rocket science!

Thursday 15

I've had my PDR.  It wasn’t too bad – boring, but bearable.

One secretary had her PDR in the boardroom - her boss said, "I'll sit at one end of the table and shout 'You're bloody useless,' and you can sit at the other end and shout, 'What?'

Now that’s what I call an interesting PDR.

Friday 16

Visited my dad, who is recovering from his heart operation so well he doesn't have to see a consultant now for another 12 months (brilliant!).  "I have to take Warfarin," dad said, "I don't mind, but one of the side effects is I keep scuttling around the edge of the room all the time" (Warfarin is also used as rat poison).  Funny man.

And talking of funny, my partner was helping someone out with a job vacancy letter and came up with this:

Deer Cir Madam
I ave seen yoor job int paper an I am rite interasted in appliin for it
I ammn a rite gud wurker an wurk rite ard  ,all day if yu wont to.
I am compitent compatant no I am rite gud ont computor an no me way rooond tinternet.
I wuud be rite glad to cum fort interview.
I can maak a rite gud cup of tea An if anywun cums ito offis  oo shunt be ,I can shout rite lowd at em EHHYOO, WHAT THE FUK ARE YOU DOOIN ERE. An they wood be fritened off
Oh an I Can speek that forin stuff like wot they doo ere
I ope tu ere from yu rite suun
Lots of luv …

Saturday 17

My sister came.  She's a terrible driver. She got stopped by the police this morning for crashing a red light and cutting someone up at a traffic island.  The policeman let her off with the words, "Your driving's appalling, woman, get it sorted."  "Good job he didn't start following me five minutes earlier," my sister told me, "I was on the mobile phone and smoking a cigarette then."

Sun 19

My partner and I went off on our weekly canal cycle ride and this time Middle Son came with us.  I was a bit nervous as MS uses his bike a lot and I worried that the men-types would get all competitive and leave me behind.  They didn’t.  Middle Son thinks our pace is a bit slow (“I can’t built up a rhythm cos you two keep stopping to admire the view or take photos all the time,” he whinged), but we’re old and, hey, what’s the rush?

Go home, discover my hedge-trashing neighbour has a stolen car smashed through his back garden.  Its taken down his fence (oh the irony!). 

Car removed and neighbour fixes his fence THE SAME DAY (arsehole!)

Try to persuade Small Son to come with us to the Bull Ring Shopping Centre (I've more chance of discovering alien artefacts in the back garden).   Middle Son come and the three of us go and, because we all want different things (DVDs, clothes for Small Sons birthday tomorrow, stuff for Middle Son’s impending cycling holiday) we keep losing each other and spend most of the time tracking each other down.

Sunday evening, ironing work clothes and whingeing about work the next day.

Monday  19

Small Son’s birthday!  He’s 19!  He’s been almost human lately, making the effort to talk to us and even smiles occasionally, which is nice.  Could it be that teenage angst is finally nearing an end?  I certainly hope so, though I fear its already too late for my gibbering sanity.

Middle Son leaves for cycling holiday in Cornwall with friends.  He’s sold stuff on ebay and asks me to post it for him.  He gives me small parcel …. and a boxed keyboard!  Keyboard not even wrapped, so I have to haul it to work with me, wrap it, label it and spend HALF my lunch hour standing in a queue in the post office. 

I ring my local police station to ask after developments on my neighbours criminal damage on my privet hedge.  The officer assigned to my ‘case’ and tells me he was thinking of coming to arrest neighbour on Saturday (“We’ll bring him in and see what he’s got to say for himself,” he tells me).  Heart drops, stomach shrivels - I’m going to have someone arrested!  Needless to say, hedge-destroying neighbour still hasn’t spoken to us (as in apologise or query cost of new fence or even offer money). 

Tuesday 20

Two articles from the METRO newspaper today proving that the British sense of humour is being beaten to death:

“A TV advert for soft drink Irn-Bru has been criticised by watchdogs for mocking transsexuals.  It shows children singing with their mother at the piano before she ends the song ‘even though I used to be a man’.  Viewers then see the mother I the bathroom whistling cheerfully while shaving her lathered face.  Seventeen viewers complained that the advert made fun of transsexuals.  Ofcom ruled the shaving scene breached the Advertising Standards Code.” 
[It may have breached the code but it was a bloody funny advert!]

“Arnie upsets gays with ‘girlie men’ attack
Arnold Schwarzenegger received a political battering yesterday for making allegedly anti-gay comments.  “If they don’t have the guts to come up here in front of you … I call them girlie men.”  The girlie men remark comes from a sketch on the popular US variety show in which two body builders mock less muscular men.  Democrats said the remarks insulted women and gays.” 
[Its only a matter of time before heterosexuals are upset by just about everything and nobody dares laugh at anything in case someone’s offended!  Be afraid, be very afraid.]

Wednesday 21

Manage to get a window seat on the bus going home tonight.  Sitting in my usual semi-coma state when I notice something drop off the window onto my arm.  It’s a pollen-laded bumble bee roughly the size of a domestic cat.  I make a kind of ‘oooooh’ sound and the bloke sitting next to me immediately jumps up (attacks bumble bee with rolled up newspaper? pulls me from the jaws/sting of death? gets everyone to stand behind him while he fights it single-handedly?).  He moves to another seat. 

As there’s no more seats left to move to, I ease the bumble bee back onto the window hoping it will just go away.  It promptly drops into my lap again.  I jump up with another, louder ‘OOOOOOOH’ sound.  I can feel the eyes of every passenger upon me.  The bumble bee smacks back onto the window.  I ponder for four splits of a second; run? stay? fight? kill it?  I make a half hearted attempt to persuade it out of the window using my bulging handbag but its having none of it.  So, exasperated, I pull my lunchbox out of my bag, hold the box up to the window, flick the bumble bee into it using the lid and put the box back in my bag.

Sorted.

Friday 23

I’m going to mention this even though I try not to log ‘negative’ things on Brummie Blogs (and I'm not a negative person).  There’s a good reason why.

I’ve had a LONG run of bad luck with my neighbours lately (see this).  First one neighbour calls me a ‘name’ (not the first time he’s done this, only this time my Partner was around and chased him out of the grove with a baseball bat).  Then my other neighbour cuts down 16feet of my privet hedge without permission (we’re still waiting for the police to turn up on that one). 

Then some teenage neighbours lacking in normal social skills started making sarcastic comments every time they saw us (which we ignored or laughed at - hard to take teenagers seriously when you’ve had three of your own but, like Chinese water torture, it starts to get to you after a while).   These girls are openly selling drugs from their house and one of the neighbours has obviously ‘shopped them’ … these girls clearly think it was us.  Yesterday, when I walked to the bus stop, one of the girls was there.  She turned, looked at me and laughed nastily, nodding her head saying, “We’ll see, we’ll see” in a kind of menacing way.  What we’ll ‘see’ I’m not sure, nor am I sure if I’m supposed to feel intimidated by a girl who looks about 12, but it was a bit embarrassing in front of the other people waiting at the bus stop. 

Oddly, this incident (along with all the others) really got to me and I searched the net for info on how to deal with it.  And that’s the reason for mentioning the negativity, so I could mention something positive … this site, Neighbours from Hell in Britain - absolutely brilliant, especially the forums (join, its free and its worth it).  If you’re having problems with neighbours, THIS is the place to go for help and information.  And if you think your situation is bad, read what others have to put up with - certainly puts things into perspective where privet hedges and sarcastic teenagers are concerned.

Monday 26

Early morning at my house is usually pretty straightforward.  My Partner leaps out of bed at some godforsaken hour (usually pre-dawn), gets ready for work and slams the front door shut to wake me.  I allow gravity to pull me out of bed (i.e. I roll off the mattress and hit the floor, the shock and pain of which wakes me), get ready for work, shout up the stairs to wake Small Son up, and leave.  Small Son then staggers downstairs like a zombie (eyes blank, mouth wide open … “the lights are on but there’s no-one home” syndrome), gets ready for work and roars off in his car like a Harrier Jump Jet executing an emergency take off.  Middle Son (if he’s home) stays in bed until the morning has pretty much coughed its last and fallen into ‘pm’ time.

This morning was different.  My Partner’s on a First Aid course this week (he has his own CPR dummy - no, not me!), so he doesn’t have to get up until gone 7am - which throws the delicate balance into complete chaos.  I got up late and scrambled frantically to get to the shower before my partner.  Small Son emerges from his pit and huffs that there’s already a queue outside the bathroom door.  Then, because he’s off to Oxford for the day to visit friends, Middle Son is seen in early daylight.  So all four of us are now late and rushing around the house like headless chickens on speed.

Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, the washing machine repair man arrives out of the blue at 7.35am (having failed to turn up for two previous appointments). So now the four of us are running around trying not to trip over the man sprawled out on the kitchen floor.

Fun.

Also fun  ... this.

Tuesday 27

“The Bus Stop” (a rant)

My morning bus stop is next to a grass verge on which the house residents park their cars.  In order to get their cars off the grass and onto the road, they have to reverse into the crowd of people waiting at the bus stop.  It’s annoying since we’re not asked to move, the cars simply sit there revving their engines until we shift out of the way (we have to guess which direction they’ll be reversing so sometimes its a bit like a Monty Python sketch with people shuffling en masse one way and then the other).  Some of the cars then drive all the way down the pavement (only luck preventing pedestrian death along the way) until they gets to a slopey bit which will ease the car gently onto the road.

If the grass verge is already full of cars, they park on the pavement all around the bus stop so when the bus (eventually) comes, you have to jump up and down to get noticed by the driver and then skirt around the mass car park to reach the bus.

This morning one of the cars had obviously vacated the grass verge early, but it came back to have a second go at the waiting passengers.  This car barely slowed down as it shot up a slopey bit and roared passed the pedestrians with mere inches separating them. 

I’m thinking of starting a collection from my fellow passengers in order to purchase one of those police ‘stingers’.

Wednesday 28

After a long talk with my partner we decided not to legally pursue my neighbour for damages to my privet hedge because:

 
(a) we’re not sure we can be bothered
(b) the police still haven’t turned up
(c) the hedge was destroyed in ignorance rather than maliciously (see Neighbours From Hell for malicious!)
(d) we can rise above it, and
(e) it’s just a hedge! 

It also gives us the perfect excuse never to talk to them again, and that’s worth more than the £77 we paid for the replacement fence. 

It also occurred to me (after the all-day event of him erecting a single fence panel in his back garden after the dumped car episode) that he may have deliberately made himself scarce on the day we erected our fence because he’s quite obviously incapable of such things.

As Oscar Wilde said, “Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”

Thursday 29

I feel like a film star walking into work every morning.  Sensors detect my movement and turn the office lights on, so its like arriving at a movie premier - I can’t help but sashay a little (and imagine an applauding crowd all cheering my name, and an announcer excitedly saying, “And here she is, folks! Just arriving for another exciting day at work.”)

Whatever it takes to get you through.

Friday 30

The summer sales have started!  It’s still July and they’re trying to flog us winter coats!  Amazing!

What I want to know is, all the summer sales have racks of clothes all under size 12.  Size 8, size 10, I even spotted a size 6 today (I’m sorry, but is anyone on the planet a size 6?).  You’d think shops would realise that the reason these clothes are in a sale is because they don’t fit anyone.  Marilyn Monroe was a size 16, most normal sized women are size 16 (myself included).  Putting size 6-10 on the racks isn’t doing our egos any good at all. 

And how come a size 16 dress in one shop is so tight it makes me look like shrink wrapped sausage, yet in another shop size 16 is big enough to act as a tent for my entire family for a week’s camping holiday in Devon?

And, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like shopping.  If I’m miserable, shopping isn’t my ideal remedy … in fact, its quite the opposite.  Who in their right minds would, if they’re already feeling miserable, willingly endure a stint in a changing room with clothes that are barely a close approximation to the size on the label.  If it doesn’t go passed the knees or over the boobs, it ain’t no size 16!

Saturday 31

The Yorkshire Run.  Takes three hours to drive up M1 because of heavy holiday traffic and a plethora of accidents.  Finally pull up outside Small Kids house.  There’s nobody in (surprise surprise).  Partner rings house phone (no answer) and everyone’s mobile phones (switched off).  I can’t begin to tell you how amusing all this is.  The Ex-wife rings a short while later.  “Have you come to see the kids?” she asks excitedly, “Only they’re on holiday, I told you they were on holiday [from school we thought, the ex neglected to elaborate further].  “We’re on our way to Wales,” she cries, “We’re just coming up to Liverpool now.” (!!!!)   

Difficult to comment on this without using expletives.

Despite this, we have a great time with Big Kids, their partners and granddaughter, who take us to Shibden Park for a massive picnic.  Thoroughly enjoyable.  Arrive home 8pm knackered.