• Crap weather

• Pancake Day (8th)

• Rain

• Valentines Day (14th)

• More rain

• A 28 day month (so, in effect, you're getting paid the same for doing less ... at last, a break!)

WARNING: This blog has been rated 18.  Strong asterixes are used throughout (but doesn't contain scenes of a sexual nature, which will be a relief to everyone!).  Viewer discretion is advised.

My Partner was telling me about one of the blokes he works with who has a bit of a short fuse when it comes to management hassling him in the warehouse.  Throwing out a straight arm, he yells, "F**k off!  Go on!  Just f**k off and leave me alone to get on with it."  Then he throws down his hard hat, picks hat up again, and skims it through the air.  My Partner says whenever you see the hard hat skimming across the warehouse, you know this bloke is being hassled by management.

I work in an office, where everyone's terribly polite to each other even if they get on each others nerves.  So I want this bloke to come in and teach us how to deal with stress Black Country Way.  I'll book a meeting room.  I'll even provide lunch.  And he can demonstrate to us how to do the straight arm fling and say 'F**k off' in a really menacing manner.

An office, full of people all screaming F**k Off!

What fun!

January and February, hate 'em.  Dark, miserable, everything such an effort.  I used to think I suffered from that SAD syndrome thing, but all the symptoms disappeared once my ex-husband and I separated.  Strange that.

Anyway, I'm working on a new writing project.  I booked Monday, Thursday and Friday off work to get stuck into it (a two day working week, fab!).  I'm fired up with enthusiasm and typing for 12 hours a day.  Why do I do it?  It's an illness.  And I love it.  And because, as Manuel Onamuno said, "Only he who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible."

We got talking about other good film lines, which got us talking about famous lines said with a Birmingham or Yorkshire accent.  So, for your listening pleasure (and having struggled to convert WAV files to MP3s), I give you our rendition of:

Please note I don't actually speak like this.  But my Partner does.  If enough people complain that these don't work, I'll take them off and cross "sound file expert" off my CV.

And talking of sound files, guess which films these are from (no cheating):

More here.  Including this, and this.

Sunday 6

Its Valentine’s Day a week tomorrow.  All you men-types out there, don’t forget, and DON’T get the love of your life a card like this unless you particularly want a black eye and packed suitcases.

On my way into work this morning I spotted a soldier in desert combats standing outside a cream coloured building.  As I walked passed, I thought, “I can still see you”. 

Well, I thought it was funny.

Lunch with my sister (who was only 10 minutes late).  We went for coffee.  I don’t drink coffee, which explains why I’m currently vibrating at my desk and feeling more awake than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

Sis suggested we swap jobs for a week.  Interesting concept.  My sister’s a midwife.  If I did her job I’d spend most of my time sobbing, “Ugh, that’s so disgusting!” and “Just push, it’ll come out eventually!”.  My sister, faced with an office full of stressed-out people, would no doubt urge them to breathe deeply and stay calm whilst taking their pulse and prescribing Prozac.

Any tv producers out there, get in touch.

Pancake day.  But no pancakes.  Because my Partner doesn’t like them and there are no longer any kids to cook them for.  And they’re fattening anyway.  So we didn’t have any.  We had grown-up chilli con carne instead.

Sniff.

I’m in charge of stationery ordering at work, which can sometimes be a bit of a pain.  As I’m struggling to reach a deadline and typing my socks off , somebody wanders over and says, “Can you order me some staples”, or “There’s no notepads left” (when I know there’s thousands of them so I have to leave my work and show them where they are). 

Last Wednesday someone asked for fold back clips - they was “desperate” for them.  I was too busy to order them, and I was off on Thursday and Friday (not smelly off, just off work).  On Monday, I was up to my eyeballs in paperwork and studiously avoiding said person.  Tuesday, I finally managed to quickly order stationery but couldn’t avoid the desperate person any longer, they kept asking me about these flipping fold back clips - they copped me in the lift, again by the photocopier, and even came over to my desk to enquire about their ETA.  “They’re ordered!” I said, “They’ll be here tomorrow!”  Later that day, an email: “When will they be delivered?”

Pah!

Today, they arrived.  I opened up the boxes, took out what I thought were the damn fold back clips.  Only they weren’t fold back clips.  I’d ordered the wrong thing.  I was now lumbered with hundreds of bulldog clips (an entirely different thing altogether).

I couldn't stop laughing.

The desperate person is no longer speaking to me.

Work has been coming at me from all sides, all of it urgent (wouldn’t ya know). Luckily I have three smiley-faced stress balls bought specially for this purpose from ebay. So, in the middle of typing out a letter roughly the length of War and Peace, I started squeezing one, idly throwing it from hand to hand (yeah, no handed typing - I was ‘on a break’). Then I picked up another and started tossing both of them. Then I picked up the third and tried juggling. Concentrating on keeping them all in the air at once certainly got rid of my stress.

I had to stop when both my bosses noticed that their 'busy' secretary was juggling bright yellow balls at her desk.

This is fab (thanks to Nannacat).  And this is probably the most raw and interesting poem/lyric I've read in a long time [may cause offence].

Played all day.  Bloody great.

My Partner finally decided to make the squirrel feeding box I’ve been hankering after for months, and went to buy the wood.  As he stood in the shop admiring the wood (it’s a man thang)  he got talking to the bloke next to him and mentioned he was building a squirrel box.  The bloke laughed and said he was buying wood to keep the squirrels out of his roof.  How spooky is that?

I was laptopping when he walked through the house carrying a plank of wood.  He disappeared out back.  I heard buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz a few times and then he waltzed back into the house with the completed box.  A masterpiece.  With speed like that we can start out own cottage industry and give up corporate slavery forever!

Each bus trip is like a miniature soap opera every day - The West Midlands Travellers, coming to a remote cable channel near you.  On Friday, the bus was crammed full of schoolkids who had obviously been consuming too much coffee or too many e-numbers - they were hyper!  It was like being on a school trip. 

The girl I hip butted across the seat so I could sit down continued to screech at the girl in the seat behind.  “What lessons you got today?”, “Did you see what Kylie was wearing yesterday?” (some people actually called their kids Kylie?!).  Then came the climax.  “Do you know how small my bus ticket was yesterday?  Do you want to see how big it is today?”  Honestly, I was on the edge of my seat.  She suddenly screamed (right down my ear) “Do you want to go and write on all the [steamed up] windows?”  These girls were 12, I’m pretty sure I got over my window writing stage at around six.  I shifted into the space she left.  A passenger got on and sat beside me.  The girl came back and howled, “She’s sitting in my seat!”  I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue.

On today’s episode of WMT (and every bloody day), Snot Man.  I have never known anyone make so much 'personal' noise.  One day I’m going to throw a massive box of tissues at his sniffing, snot-shifting head, followed by a family size pack of Sudafed and a note about bus etiquette.

Then there’s Bristol Man.  Makes a phonecall every morning.  Talks very loud about “Piers coming down from Leeds,” and “Yes, I’ll be dressed up to the eyeballs and using my best sword” (the mind boggles).  Everyone on the 8am bus to Birmingham city centre knows where Bristol Man is going on holiday this year, where he’s been in previous years, and how many people he has coming to stay this weekend.

Also, Fake-Book-Reading Man.  Sits there every morning engrossed in a hefty literary novel.  I sat behind him once and marveled at his speed reading - a page was turned every 10 seconds or so!  Then I noticed that he never moved his left thumb, which obscured the text.  So he's not really reading at all, the old faker! 

Tune in for tomorrow’s episode of The West Midland Travellers - I bet, like me, you can hardly wait!

P.S. Valentine's Day.  I got my Partner a cute little card slightly larger than a postage stamp which relayed all my innermost thoughts in three little words.  My Partner got me a card roughly the size of a barn door.  He's never going to let me live it down.

The West Midlands Travellers, Episode 2: the Nutters Express.  I swear, they were out in force today.  Young bloke sitting on the top deck tonight yelling furiously into his mobile phone, something about being at court for access to his kids and how he’s going to have them taken off his “slutty, drug-taking bitching whore” of a wife (and they say romance is dead).  “You should have heard the c**tishness that came out of her mouth,” he screeched, which made me wince (pretty sure that’s not in the Oxford English Dictionary).  He kept saying he really needed an “Effin fag … effin spliff … effin drink, man.”  Personally I felt a tranquiliser dart would have been more appropriate. 

Then the phonecall ends and we all breathe a sigh of relief.  Bloke pounds on window, shouting at the rush hour traffic, “Get out of the effin way, you c**ts.”  Then his phone rings again and we all roll our eyeballs.  “Yeah,” he bawls, “I’m pretty effin sure I’m okay for effin anti-depressants, but I could do with more effin Valium.”  Couldn’t we all. 

When he moved to get off, the bus lurched and he almost fell onto the lap of a young woman who actually screamed out loud in alarm - 27 passengers were poised to beat the crap out of him, but he just effin laughed, effing apologised and got off the effin bus.

So the effin bloke gets off and a foreign pensioner of the Polish variety gets on.  Most of us experienced travelers are familiar with the pensioner - he’s the one who once loudly declared to a good-humoured drunk that “All Brummies are thick, absolutely, totally thick”, which went down real well with the busload of Brummies.  Today, he just mumbled a lot and reprimanded the driver for being a “dick behind a wheel” (which I can’t say many of us disagreed with).  He didn’t request assistance when he got off at his stop, he bawled, “Well come on then, one of you, you can see I need some help!”  Bloody amazed one of them didn’t just push him.

The joys!

Three things today:

1.         As it’s the school half term, the city centre is plagued by hyperactive children and frazzled-looking parents.  I stood at a kerbside today waiting to cross the road at lunch, and a young family stood next to me.  “Now you stand still and don’t you dare move until I tell you to,” yelled the man.  I turned to him and said, “Even I’m too scared to move now.”  The kids gawped up at me, and so did the adults.  People just don’t get me sometimes.

2.         Papershop.  There’s a magazine called … and get this … “I’m Pregnant!”.  Too subtle!  Claims it’s the only magazine you’ll ever need.  With that title, it’ll even inform your husband/partner/parents for you (just leave on coffee table and vacate the premises in the case of the latter).  I have to admit I almost bought it just for the entertainment value of leaving it lying around my house.

3.         I’m on a health kick at the moment.  Brown bread (the stuff we’ve been buying in wild abandonment is, I discovered last night, flipping £1.22 - for a LOAF of BREAD!).  And fruit.  Lots of fruit.  Five pieces a day they tell you.  I’m managing three, and that’s MORE than enough.  What does fruit do when eaten?  It ferments.  And what happens when fruit ferments?  It gives off gas.  Nuff said.

This is just HYSTERICALLY funny and we're DEFINITELY doing this on our next long-distance trip:

Tired of speeding tickets?

Want to open up spaces between you and the cars around you?

Step 1. Tie these balloons to your car

Step 2. Drive VERY FAST

Step 3. Watch people freak out.

Step 4. Tell the nice officer you thought they were real.

This is specially for my Partner :)

Trust me, girls, I'm on the lookout for a similar picture of Christian Slater's, Richard Gere's and David Duchovny's bottoms - jointly or separately, I'm not fussed. 

This month's going fast, isn't it.  They just fly by, one after the other until, suddenly, whole decades have passed and you've barely noticed.  One minute you're wearing flares, platforms and massive pointy collars, the next minute you've been lured into corporate slavery and wear pin-striped suits and talk with a  posh voice on the phone (well, as posh as Brummie gets).  Scary, very scary.

Whilst contemplating my impending mid-life crisis (if I have the time to indulge in one), I wrote a list of all the things I want to do before I finally skid into the gates of heaven with a fag in one hand and a large glass of whisky in the other.

Ride through the Grand Canyon on a horse wearing full cowboy getup screaming "Yee haa" a lot.
Ride through the Grand Canyon on a Harley Davidson, Easy Rider style.
Gawp in amazement at the pyramids.
Gawp in amazement at New York (whilst protectively clutching handbag against muggers).
Have time to believe in fairies and UFOs again (okay, that might be a sign of impending senility).
Go on a massive road trip.

Yeah!

Oh, I’m famous. I forgot to mention. I was on the front page of the Birmingham Post newspaper on Friday. Well, the bus I was traveling on was. You can just make me out - three pixels on the top deck.

The city centre was gridlocked because scaffolding fell off a big building on Hollway Circus. They closed all the major roads around it, so rush hour traffic was bottle-necked down the only alternative route, Broad Street. It was like pushing boulders through treacle.  I could actually feel myself getting older.

I left work at 4.30pm because I had a 5.40pm doctors appointment. Plenty of time, I thought. Yeah, right. After crawling through the gridlock we eventually hit ‘the open road’. Only our bus driver was obviously traumatised by events, or new and unsure of the route, or else too young to know how to drive a bus at all. Whilst I’m bouncing up and down on my seat hissing "Come on!" through gritted teeth, he doesn’t get out of second gear and slows down at least a mile before each bus stop. You have no idea of the kind of stress slow travelling puts you under.

Arrived docs 5.55pm, spluttering apologies (I hate being late). I then waited 20 minutes. Sometimes punctuality just ain’t worth the effort!

Later I hear that a bus collided with a car at Five Ways Island. My bus number! Could have been the same bus I was on. Wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

The excitement never ends!

A newish guard at the gatehouse to our building insists, every single morning, on checking my security pass.  Rain or shine, force 10 gale or snow, he rushes, grinning, out of his little box and asks to see my pass.  So not only do I have to take off my gloves and delve into my bag, but once I get it out he asks me to remove it from its holder so he can see it properly.

I mean, I don’t look anything like a terrorist or a criminal (apart from the six inch gash down my face and the tattoos on my knuckles, of course) and I don’t have a particularly non-descript face (not with that six inch gash). And this morning, other people walked in with me and he didn’t ask to see their passes. So he’s just picking on me. The swine.

So I’m gonna get him. Next time I’m gonna stand up for my rights and say, "Hey, back off, you’ve seen me and my bloody pass 375 times, go get your kicks elsewhere. Mate."

Me and my knuckle dusters are ready for him.

I did a stupid thing this morning.  11am I was hungry.  Someone had brought in vegetable samosas and I ate one.  Spices, on an empty stomach, not good.  Result, instant migraine.  Had to leave work - someone had to check I had everything with me before I left because I couldn't actually see anything ("Just point me towards the door and I'll be fine.").  At the bus stop, I was forced to asked a pensioner what number bus was heading our way because I could only see half of it (and not the half with the number on).  Managed to get home without throwing up, passing out or indulging in a panic attack when the bus took a detour because Will Smith was on Broad Street.

Some people think migraines are just headaches.  Oh no no no.  A migraine is where the blood vessels to the brain suddenly shrink, causing flickering zig-zag vision which causes nausea.  If bright pink tablets aren't consumed immediately, intolerable pain follows.  This is the bit where you literally forget your own name, the names of your children and the name of the planet you're currently leaving.   If bright pink tablets are consumed, you merely end up a dribbling zombie (but at least you know who you are).  So no, a migraine is not a headache. 

Just in case you were wondering.

Woke with a headache, which is nothing (pah, headaches).  Also stiff neck where the blood vessels are trying to work out what thickness they're supposed to be, and every time I cough or sneeze my brain swells to ten times its normal size (I'm sure my eyes bulge).

Pay day.  Money goes in to bank and, without any interaction from me whatsoever, it all goes out again.  In fact, at the end of the month, I usually owe the bank money … still can’t figure that one out.

Anyway, who cares about poverty and the scruffiness of my attire … its Friday.  Friday!  And what happens on a Friday?  Only the four most important events of the week. 

(1) Bath (not my first of the week, obviously, but the one with the most time to indulge in the most bubblebath);
(2) Booze (whisky, yeah);  
(3) My Partner's magnificent curry, and
(4) A good film (Road Kill, which was brill).

 Love it love it love it.

Last week we ordered two dining chairs from a rather dodgy group of individuals in a market in Northfield.  We only popped in for a quick look, and suddenly they were upon us, insisting they could order whatever we wanted.  We told them we wanted two black dining chairs (apparently as rare as alien artifacts).  “Yes, yes,” they said, “We order those.”  They showed us the chairs in the catalogue.  Silver chairs.  “No,” said I, as my Partner rolled his eyeballs, “Black chairs.”  “Yes, yes, we order.” 

It all got terribly complicated after that - there were black chairs in the catalogue but they came in sets of four.  “You buy four,” they said.  “But I only want two.”  “No, no, you buy four..”  “No, I’ll buy two and you sell two in your shop.”  The man shook his head.  We turned to leave.  The man almost had a stroke.  “Okay, you buy two, come collect Saturday.”  We paid a small deposit and left.

Today we went to collect the chairs, except the people we dealt with last week weren’t there.  Instead, an unkempt man in a corner working on a laptop who didn’t even look up when we walked in.  We told him about the chairs.  He gave us a mock surprise look that had my Partner rolling his eyeballs again and me edging towards the exit doors.  They hadn’t been ordered by the ‘incompetents’ he’d left to run his shop last week, yadda yadda yadda.  He said they’d be delivered next Saturday.

We may try again next week.  Or we might decide that life is way too short and do something less boring instead

My sister rear-ended another car last week.  This week she took it to KwikFit because the brakes had gone - and I mean gone.  “Do you think bumping into another car affected my brakes?” she asked the Kwikfit bloke, who looked at her oddly and said, “No, I think it was the brakes that caused the bump.”  “Do you think I could claim on the insurance for the brakes?” she persisted.  “Bumping the front of your car doesn’t usually affect the back brakes, love,” he said. 

Yesterday my sister came for a visit and mentioned she couldn’t get the car bonnet open because it was bent (which was caused by the bump).  My Partner and Small Son immediately got interested, went outside to ‘check it out’.  Lots of banging noises were heard, and then they came back inside and declared the bonnet fixed - they’d jumped up and down on it to straighten it out.  Saved her a bomb in KwikFit fees and gave me a supreme sense of pride (my men, fixing things, sigh).

I might email my bosses with this tomorrow:

It's Monday.

Nuff said.

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