• The work's Crimbo Party

• CHRISTMAS (25th)

• SERIOUSLY long holiday (17 days!!!)

Thursday 1

A hospital appointment.  Not fun, you’d think, but fear makes me incapable of proper speech, I just talk in quips (my theory being, make em laugh, then make a run for it).

“Any abdominal scars?” the consultant’s assistant asked me.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” I said.

“Weren’t you sterilised?” said my sister (who came with me for moral support and, clearly, memory backup).

“Oh yeah,” I said, “Forgot about that.”

“And didn’t you have an ovary removed a few years ago?” sister added.

“Don't know where the scar for that is,” I said, looking down, wondering if perhaps I should start counting scars in the bath or something.

“Was it keyhole surgery?” asked the assistant.

“Not sure, I was unconscious at the time.  I do remember telling some doctor bloke that if he operated on my super-sensitive navel I’d hunt him down and remove his testicles.”

“So you have a scar on your navel?”

“No, and somewhere a doctor still has his testicles.”

As the assistant wiped her eyes, she asked, “What was the name of the doctor?”

“Zhivago?” I shrugged.

We went through to the examination room.

So I’m behind the curtain, doing my impersonation of a frog about to be dissected and wondering if a horizontal CanCan would be in bad taste, when the consultant comes in.  Lovely bloke.  He glances round the curtain to see if I’m ready yet, then asks my sister who she is. 

“I’m her sister,” says my sister.

“Oh,” said the consultant, “You don’t look similar.”

“How would you know?” I said through the curtain.  “You didn’t look at my face.”

It all turned out alright in the end, not the death sentence I was expecting.  I left the hospital in a state of euphoria, just as it started bucketing down with rain and hail, whipped up by gale force winds. 

“Where’s the car?” I screamed at my sister, staring through the sheets of water at the MASSIVE car park.

“Erm,” she screamed back.

“Argh!  Don’t say ‘erm’, say where the car is before we drown!”

“I think it’s over there.”

It wasn’t.  We were drenched by the time we did eventually find it.  So, to warm up and to celebrate, we went to the pub.  At 4 o’clock in the afternoon!  Roaring fire, pint of Stella, and Death sobbing soggily in a corner with his scythe going rusty.

Great stuff.                                                                                            

Tuesday 6

Shopping at lunchtime in Birmingham city centre.  Not appealing at the best of times, but especially horrific this close to Christmas – it’s a jungle out there! 

I’d psyched myself up for 48 hours beforehand, prepared a list and emailed my boss: “Can I have an early lunch, I have to go to Argos!!!”  He replied: “Fine.  It will be busy!!!”  I emailed back: “I’m not afraid, I have a cattle prod.”

I wished.  At the crack of dawn when bleary-eyed shop assistants crank open the doors, you might stand a chance of survival with minimum injuries.  But at midday the world and its mother have had time to get up, have a coffee and a fag and pour into the city wearing tracksuits and trainers.

The place was heaving with people who clearly have All The Time In The World (get a bloody job!).  Hoards of screaming kids were being bawled at by their mothers, pensioners risked life and limb tottering along with walking sticks, and pushchairs came at you like formations of Primark laden tanks. 

The profanities start three steps from the office door.  In the Pallasades I nearly windmilled my arms screaming, “Out of the way! Woman on one hour lunch break coming through!”

Argos was like watching people wade through treacle weighed down by Marley’s chains, a veritable hive of inactivity in slow motion.  My number came up and I stood there, waiting at the collection desk, staring at my item mere inches away from my grasp.  “Number 147?” the assistants shout, then they stand waiting for interminable minutes until they see number 147 break through the ranks of baying customers before putting down item number 147 and picking up number 153.

Woolworths was worse.  Picked the shortest queue then watched as all the other queues disappeared at the speed of light.  At my check-out, a new assistant without a clue.  All well and good getting more staff to cover the Christmas rush, but do they have to train them at peak times when I’m standing there clutching my Ferrero Rocher for the office Secret Santa?

Next, an Xbox game for Small Son.  Walked into game shop and three assistants glanced at me with “Aged woman without a clue alert!” expressions.  I managed to hunt one down and gasp “Help!” and he rolled his eyes.  Rolled his eyes!  Hey, foetus, can you do a Powerpoint presentation and script from scratch in 30 minutes flat with your boss breathing down your neck and the computer crashing every time you press Enter?  No, thought not.

By the time I got back to the office I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown and had only 6 bags instead of the planned 19.

Which means I’ll have to do it all again!

ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Thursday 8

After the kind of secrecy that could teach Area 51 a thing or two, the table plan for the office party was circulated.  Excited cries of “Ooooh, I’m with you, Cheryl,” echoed around the office.

I looked for my name on the list.  Wouldn’t ya just know it, I’m being stuck with a load of people I don’t know.

I envisaged fun times ahead!

I had a bit of a whinge – as in, “That’s it, I’m not going, I'm incapable of making small talk with people I've never met before.”

I was moved to another table.

Which opened the sluice gates for a tribe of hysterical secretaries to descend upon Head Secretary, all of them crying, “But I wanna sit with Beryl!”

Tsk, there’s just no pleasing some people.

Friday 9

THE OFFICE PARTY!

There was a fancy dress theme to this year’s Crimbo do and, amazingly, quite a few people made the effort to dress up in pointy collars, platform shoes and afro wigs.  I just wore the stuff I use to garden in, minus the straw hat of course and with a few dippy hippy accessories – quite worrying how easy it was actually (a definite candidate for What Not To Wear, methinks). 

Some girls said they weren’t really dressing up, put on a white belt with matching earrings and necklace and were transformed into the very image of Mary Quant.  How do they do that?

Welcome drinks at the hotel entrance in ‘corporate colours’ that looked as if they would glow in the dark – all the blue ones went because they were the ones with the alcohol in.

Free bar.  Yay, copious amounts of diet coke for me (it was only lunch-time – one sniff of alcohol before 6pm and I’m asleep, boring old cow).  For others, the perfect excuse to get Absolutely Bladdered, which they did, quite quickly.  Lives were at risk on the dance floor after dinner – all waving arms, juddering legs and the kind of break-dancing that shouldn’t be attempted after puberty. 

A music quiz.  Me (tanked up on caffeine): never heard of it, can’t remember it, er excuse me I wasn’t actually born then.  Redemption: two notes of Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell and I was a winner.  “You know Meatloaf?” a young trainee asked me, aghast.  “Child,” I said, “I’ve lived Meatloaf.  I’ve had motorbikes, husbands, sons and a tattoo.”  You’d have thought I was the anti-Christ the way they looked at me.

5pm, all over.  A huge (drunken) group staggered off to Brindleyplace, I caught the bus.  Wearing my long flowered skirt, sandals (in December) and enough beads to start up my own branch of Catholicism.

Got stuck in the worst of the rush hour traffic, but with Bodyrockers in my ears and 15 gallons of diet Coke (plus a sneaky double brandy) in my body, I really didn’t care.

Saturday 10

Hangover? A hangover!  From what? An overdose of soft drinks?  How unfair.

But then, when I thought about it, there was the welcome drink (blue) which had alcohol in it (pure alcohol?)  Then I had another one which was ‘left over’ and I didn’t want it to go to waste.  And yes, I did have 175 glasses of coke, but three (or possibly seven) of those came with brandy.  And then there were the vodka jellies, but how strong could they be?  Don’t know how many of those I had, but by the end of the afternoon you could have easily stuck me to the wall.

I should have twigged I was slightly inebriated when I started telling people how much I loved them, how fantastic they were, how I really (slurp) really (burp) admired them.

No wonder I didn’t mind the hour’s journey home on the bus in rush hour traffic, I was bladdered!  And passengers weren’t looking at me because I was dressed 30 years out of date but because I was covered in jelly, hiccoughing and pulling bits of balloon and party poppers off my face.

The cure for hangovers is NOT shopping in Birmingham city centre for Christmas presents on a Saturday.  But that’s exactly what we did.
   

I had a comprehensive list (carried round with me since the end of August), plans of where to go, what to buy, how much to spend and the best places to go if I needed to throw up or pass out. 

My Partner walked into one shop and calmly bought gift vouchers.  Men can get away with that.  They can also get away with just uttering one word for entire shopping trips.

I held up random items and asked, “Do you think - ?”

“Yes.”

“Would so-and-so - ?”

“Yes.”

“Should I - ?”

“Yes.”

Amassed an obscene amount of carrier bags, survived the crowds, resisted the urge to attack anyone or throw self down in the middle of Corporation Street and throw a toddler tantrum, then came home.

Slept.  Pretty much all afternoon.  Disturbed only by a caller at the door, three phonecalls and some bloody dog out the back who was half a bark away from being clobbered with a bedside lamp before its owner screeched at it and took it indoors.

Sunday 11

Something very odd happened tonight.  I was just getting out of the bath when I heard this noise, kind of like someone flicking a thick elastic band.  Snap.  I got as far as thinking “What - ?” before the calf muscles in my leg bunched up to the size of a cherry tomatoe.
 

Oh, the pain!
 

I wailed (as you do) and my Partner immediately launched into Boss Mode, treating me like one of his big burley Black Country blokes at work, which went down like a lead balloon with the woman he professes to love.  So we argued about his lack of sympathy/understanding/empathy/concern and I stormed off up the stairs – well, not ‘stormed’ exactly, more like staggered crab-like, pain-filled and whinging miserably.

Suffered for a couple of hours thinking it might be cramp, then rang the NHS Helpline, who said they’d ring me back.  Just passed midnight, they did, and said it sounded like I’d snapped my Achilles Tendon and had to go to hospital straight away so they could stretch it back again (ugh).

12.30am, Selly Oak Hospital Accident and Emergency Department, which was full of odd-types, discarded medical equipment and splashes of blood on the floor!  “Happy birthday,” I muttered to my Partner (who was still sulking about being called an insensitive brute with bully-boy tactics).

Waited ages, despite the fact that there was no-one else in the waiting room.  Finally, a schoolboy doctor who clearly hadn’t slept for several days made me straddle a chair like something out of a porn movie so he could molest my calves.  “Not Achilles Tendon,” he said, “You’ve pulled a muscle.”

Pulled a muscle?  I couldn’t put my foot on the floor, my calf was now half its normal size and I was in screaming agony, and it was merely a ‘pulled muscle’?!  He offered muscle relaxant tablets, I thought he needed them more than I did.

2.30am, home again.

Went to sleep dreaming my leg was being cut off with a rusty saw.

Monday 12

Hobbled to my doctor’s surgery with the aid of a walking stick, two extra-strong painkillers and an agonised expression.  “Is it an emergency?” the receptionist asked.  “No,” I told her, “I always walk like this.”

Finally got in to see a doctor.  “You’ve torn your calf muscles,” he said, which sounded much better than a mere pulled one.  “Week off work.”

“A week?” I cried, “But we’re so busy, and it’s my last week, there’s so much to do.”  Fool.
 

“Well I’ll give you a ‘sick note’ until Thursday and see if you feel well enough for work then,” he said.

“No, no,” I spluttered, “If you think I need a week off to recover, that’s what I’ll do.”

Phew, good recovery.

So now I’m at home, hobbling around, everything taking ages to do because I can’t walk properly, even going up the stairs is like a major event that needs careful planning.

But it’s worth all the pain just to start my Christmas holidays a week early.

Yeah!

P.S: Happy Birthday to Steve, who I love despite him having the bedside charm of a sadistic psychopath.

Tuesday 13

Time.  I have time.  Oodles and aeons of glorious, fabulous time.  I can painfully limp around doing all those jobs I never usually have time for – wrapping Christmas presents, surfing the internet, reading, surfing t'internet and more reading.

Oh I could get used to this very easily.  Freed from corporate slavery.  My life back again.  Not rushing round like a headless chicken trying to fit everything in or sitting for interminable hours in rush hour traffic hoping the bus driver won’t kill us all.  And not feeling bloody knackered by 6pm.

S’great.

Only problem is, as I’m now effectively house-bound, I’m not actually doing anything worth blogging about (unless you particularly want to know about the antics of the squirrels in my garden, who I now have time to watch).

So I’ll just have to write about non-working-day thangs instead.

Brace yerselves.

Wednesday 14

IRONY – a non-working-day thang.

Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis that's battered and frayed by teenage-angst, Small Son has now become a fully-fledged adult.  Responsible.  Communicative.  Funny.  And bloody handsome too.  I’m dead proud – and extremely relieved.

He’s been living with his girlfriend now for just over a year (right next door), and I think he’s learned a lot about Real Life away from the protective realms of home.  I suspect it’s been a bit of an eye opener for him.

Sometimes, when we’re chatting, he’ll say something that forces me to keep my face expressionless whilst biting firmly on my tongue. 

“So-and-so is just so bad with money,” he’ll say.  This is the Son who once took out a loan to pay off all his debts and blew the lot on a new engine for an old car.

“My [girlfriend’s brother] keeps wearing my socks and underpants!” he complained bitterly.  My Partner had to physically clamp a hand over his mouth when he heard this – he suffered enormous loss from his own underwear drawer when Small Son was around.

“My girlfriend is just so messy,” he keeps saying.  And I have to resist the urge to remind him that his bedroom once contained 15 mugs, 12 plates and an assortment of cutlery, all liberally coated in green mould, along with six weeks worth of dirty washing, all of it on his floor.

“I keep tidying the house up, and they keep messing it up again.”  Oh the hours I spent following Small Son’s chaos around the house, day after day after day.  I knew where he’d been, what he’d done and what he’d eaten just from the mess he left behind.

But the prize for screaming irony goes to a text message I received on my mobile phone last week.  My Partner and I had watched a television programme about house security and how to improve it, and promptly hid all our door keys so that burglars wouldn’t have an easy exit.  The following day I was late for work and rushed out the house.  Later came the text message: “All very good hiding door keys but waste of time when you leave the back door unlocked!”  Yes, there was even an exclamation mark.

This from a son who used to regularly abandon the house with all doors and windows wide open when there was nobody else home.  And now he was telling me off.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?  Its like pa-a-ants on someone else’s bum.  It’s a messy house when the cleaning you’ve done.  It’s a load of debt when there should have been none.  And who would have thought, he listened.

Thursday 15

My Partner came home from work tonight and found me clinging to the living room walls.  “Cabin fever,” I told him, so he prised me off and took me out for a pint at our favourite pub.

Isn’t the outside world big.  Forgot to take my walking stick, though, so hobbled into the pub with my Partner holding onto me like a security guard might ‘assist’ a shoplifter, with me going Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! with every step (actually, it was more like Ouch! Crappy leg! Ouch! Bloody thing! Ouch! Stupid muscles! et al).

Worth it though.  Best pint of Stella I’ve ever had.

Friday 16

Right, time to be brave and face up to those who hate me the most.

My abandoned work colleagues.

As I’d already booked next week off as part of my Christmas holidays, today was officially my last day at work.  I had to go in with my doctors note and to drop off  Crimbo pressies for everyone.

It seemed like I’d been away for months instead of mere days.  I anticipated a frosty reception from my fellow secretaries who’d had to cover my work all week, but they were surprisingly pleased to see me.  One ran off to distribute all my crimbo pressies for me as I clearly couldn't hobble to the other side of the office myself - absolute star.

Phew!

I was quite touched.  I work with a bunch of genuinely nice people.

Who I won't see again until January 3rd 2006.

Thursday 22

As it doesn’t appear I’ll have any time between hobbling around shopping for food, visiting, limping into shops in search of gadgets I’d never normally buy (including a brand new laptop yay!), more shopping for food, wrapping, drinking, slobbing, reading, surfing and buying yet more food, I’d like to wish the following people who regularly read my blog a very Merry Christmas and a Splendid New Year:

Shades of Grey, Mick in Bradford, new arrival Ben, Sane Scientist, Andy, Susie2 and Kev (Arbroath) – yo dudes, thanks for all the comments and for keeping me amused with your websites!

Roddy – who’s email address I don’t have at home but hopefully you’ll read this … enjoy the cycling, I’ll let you know when/if I’m up for a 50 mile bike ride!!

Bill – I have a stock of ‘proper’ jelly should you ever need any sending over J

Pat – have a good one.

And copious Crimbo greetings to the following anonymous readers:

Whoever it is from the Guardian Unlimited Online who keeps popping back– after much consideration I have decided that I’m ready for fame and impossible wealth should you wish to ‘discover’ me - please make cheques payable to ….

Someone from NASA in Houston, Texas, no less – any jobs going for a Son with a master’s degree in Astrophysics (available from June 2006)?

The folks from various universities, including New York!  Academic greetings to y’all.

A body from Springvale, Maine – if you’re Stephen King, would you mind reading one of my manuscripts? Thanks.

For your reading pleasure during the long, dark months of winter, here’s my Christmas gift to you … some interesting websites:

An impossibly addictive game that starts off with you saying, “This looks boring, oh, hang on, I got one” and thirteen hours later you’re still playing it.

Some American has gone one further than simply decorating his house – his lights perform to music.  Absolutely fantastic (and something I may try on my shed next year).

And yes, I’m biased, but this still makes me laugh now … Partner Does Christmas Dinner!

This … because its still damn good (and Christopher Walken is GORGEOUS even if he can’t dance).

A webcam in Newquay … just because.  [If anyone knows of a live streaming webcam of Birmingham, let me know … in the meantime, some pretty nifty aerial views of Brum]

See you on the 'other side' with a brand new Brummie Blogs website, all jazzed up and sophisticated (I hope).

Thursday 29 - is it Thursday? I've lost track of time!

All that build-up to Christmas Day, the running around, the planning, the buying (oh the buying!).  And then the overwhelming excitement of Christmas morning as you open your presents (yes, I’m still a child at heart, but isn’t everyone).

And then … then … it’s all over.  So much effort for such a small amount of time.  There’s something very sad about post-present opening, it signals the end of the glorious anticipation.  I went all bah humbug and decided that, next year, I’m getting a normal sized grocery instead of giving Asda most of my monthly salary, and donating money to charity instead of buying presents (that went down well with the Sons!). 

Ate too much - wrapping myself in a towel yesterday I was mortally afraid I was starting to resemble Bubbles Devere (instead of what I normally look like phnar phnar).  Drank too much – Boxing Day was a blur of party games and alcohol.  But mostly we just Chilled and had the annual discussion about how we can Give Up Work and regain control of our lives … its not looking good.  As abject poverty doesn’t appeal to either of us (or our children), we decided to treat work like a game, a form of entertainment – in future we shall only say two things at work: “Computer says no,” and “Am I bovvered? Do you fink I’m bovvered?  I’m not bovvered.”  Should be fun.

Crimbo highlights include:

• Taking Small Son and his Girlfriend to the hospital for an antenatal checkup, and seeing my grandchild on a scan for the first time.  I have to admit I went all drippy, but managed to not embarrass the pants off Small Son by sobbing uncontrollably.  (Girlfriend has a navel bar which she had to take out for the scan – I nearly passed out).
   
• Middle Son coming home from university and completely taking over our study – plugging in his tower, removing our monitor, shifting furniture around to his comfort specifications and scattering his course work all over the place.  Sadly, he no longer slaps his thighs like a drum kit, although he still searches the contents of the fridge with alarming regularity.
   
• Big Son paying a flying visit with his girlfriend, who informed us that they’re planning to spend next Christmas with us.  News to me, I don’t actually remember inviting her!  To me Christmas Day is sacrosanct – apart from immediate family, nobody gets in, and nobody gets out.
   
• Checking my online bank statement and finding it empty, which was a bit of a shock.  Greenpeace (to whom I donate £5 every month) actually removed £500 from my account!  Did I panic?  No, I just laughed in a I'm-not-going-to-panic-yet way.  I informed the bank and they reimbursed it immediately (Lloyds TSB, join ‘em, they’re good)
   
• Watching every single episode of Little Britain.  “Yeah I know,” “I’m a laydee” and “Computer says no,” have now become part of our everyday vocabulary.  And we’re not alone … I rang work to ask if a parcel had been delivered for me and the receptionist said, “Computer says no.”
   
• My Partner took up painting and did a rather fabulous picture in oils.  He left it on the stand to dry.  When I went to bed that night I walked passed it and had the urge to run my finger over its texture.  How was I supposed to know it takes days for oils to dry!!!  Fortunately I managed to stop myself dragging the finger over the entire (wet) painting and just left a fingerprint, right in the middle, a veritable blot on the landscape.  I stood there, staring at it in horror for a few moments, wondering if I should rub it off or paint over it (think Mr Bean’s Whistler’s Mother).  In the end I just left it.  Next morning he said, “Someone’s left a fingerprint on my painting.”  “Oh,” said I, “That was … er … [could I blame an absent son? ghosts? burglars?] ... it was [cringe] me.”  Turns out that Middle Son had done the same too, only he had the foresight and intelligence to touch the edge where it wasn’t noticed.  
   
• My Partner watching The Joy of Painting he’d videotaped decades earlier – a man with large hair painting and mumbling for 30 minutes, I’ve never seen anything so funny.
   

There's only 4 more days of glorious freedom left before [cue dramatic music] we have to go back to work (argh!!!).  Substantial donations to my Paypal account (whatawaytoearnalivingatyahoodotcodotuk) gratefully accepted should anyone wish to subsidise my life of joyous leisure.

Now go forth and celebrate the New Year in fabulous style.