Butterflies

Charles gave me a present of some little butterfly pins for my cork noticeboard. They are so cute! He does give good presents.

Hopi

I’ve just had hopi ear candling done on my ears. Incredibly relaxing, but a little weird! Basically the therapist sticks a candle in your ear and lights it, and you lie there for 10 minutes while it burns down, at which point she takes the candle stub out and turns you over to do the other ear. It is supposed to massage your ear drum and relax you - worked for me.

Now I have very hot ears (come and warm your hands in front of my orifices, my dear!).

Facebook

I have a new obsession – Facebook! My brother has a MySpace page and it’s kind of like that but oh so much better. MySpace seems messier somehow and a bit pointless, it made me want to run away. But not Facebook – I have to go into it about a hundred times a day and fiddle with it and see what my friends have been up to. It’s fun!

When I first joined Facebook a couple of weeks ago my only friendship link was Charles. Every time I logged on I read the comment 'You have 1 friend' - that sounded so pitiful! Ditto when it said 'You have just two entries on your wall' (which is the space where people write you messages). Does it really have to use the word just?! Basically Facebook thinks I’m a pathetic Norma No-Mates!

But as of today I am up to 11 whole friends! (This sounded not too bad until I went into some of those friends and saw numbers like 43 and 56 – blimey, I don't think I even know 56 people!)

Supermarket Sweep

I read in a magazine that if you eat two eggs for breakfast it fills you up all day and then you don’t eat any crap. Worth a try! I duly hardboiled two eggs as I got ready for work this morning and stuffed them into my bag to take to work along with my lunch. Result? Hey, it works! My morning eggs with a carrot and orange smoothie kept me filled up right until lunchtime… and then I couldn’t even eat all my lunch! Woo hoo! Easy diet!

Then along came this evening. I was an hour late leaving work, due to a crappy meeting, then stopped off at the garage to pump some air into my car tyres. So by the time I’d done all that it was way past my normal tea time and I was pretty damn hungry. Hmm, I thought - I know, I’ll pop into Tesco and get some ice cream to take home for my tea.

Silly me! Why oh why do I never learn that I mustn’t – under any circumstances – go into a supermarket when I am hungry?

I came out with…

3 packs of daal
6 chapatis
Pack of Cadburys cake bars
A bag of 13 chewy cookies
Salmon and cream cheese sandwich filling (even though I never make sandwiches)
6 eggs
A pack of roasted root vegetables
A tin of spaghetti
Brie cheese
Mashed potato
2 tubs of ice cream
8 chocolate brownies
A sushi box
A tube of Pringles (and I don’t even like crisps!)

Grooh! Going to be offloading a whole heap of crap food to everyone at work tomorrow!

The Army's Way of Caring

Charles emailed me to tell me he’d done a good poo! How nice, I’m so pleased he shared that!!!

* * *

On the television at the moment there are a couple of army recruitment adverts doing the rounds - 'adventure mechanic' for the boys and 'saviour nurse' for the girls. I saw one today and it was the biggest load of army propaganda bollocks ever! A woman (to emphasise the feminine, caring aspect of course!) dressed in camouflage trousers is doing something with a group of sweet-looking, well-behaved children (no young yobs swearing and chucking rocks at her here!) when a hysterical mother carries her injured and bleeding child into scene. Capable and caring army woman instantly drops everything and runs to rescue the little boy, concerned look writ across her face. Then the army recruitment line flashes across the television screen saying hey this is what the army is all about.

Yeah, right - because caring people go into a job where you learn how to shoot people dead, to bomb them, to gas them, to blow them up with tanks and with landmines, to knife them and hurl grenades at them, to murder and maim (and where you unofficially learn how to beat them up, torture them and rape their women)… where the actual purpose of your job is to kill people! That’s soooo much more caring and humanitarian than, say, being a doctor or a teacher or a community worker!

Celebrity Lookalikes

Me

I found this on the internet. You upload a photo of your face to the website, then it shows you some pictures of celebrities that look just like you. That’s the theory, anyway! I tried it with a few different photos of me and it wasn't amazingly accurate – it repeatedly gave me Mariah Carey (well, maybe on a good day, and with a bit of plastic surgery!) but mostly it seemed to think I’m Chinese! Oh, and I also look like Eric Idle. Great!

Clear Out

Raj came round this evening. He likes to read my Heat magazine (though would never admit it) so he read out bits of article to me whilst I cleared out the hall cupboard. I do love a good cupboard sort out, you always discover things… this time I found paint pots and brushes and they are now sitting out waiting for me to use them. Raj was planning to fly me to France on Sunday in his little stripey plane but, the weather being as blowy as it is, I think I will paint some walls instead.

Let Me Eat Cake!

This evening Charles and I joined his friend Madge for a concert in St George’s, Hanover Square. The music itself was unremarkable – nice enough, but not really worth travelling into London for – and I spent the evening fidgeting about on my hard pew to try and ease my throbbing backache, and wondering how soon the concert would be over so that we could go home. (Being the strange person that I am, however, I was also pleased to be there because I felt very cultured spending my evening listening to classical music in a church. Work that one out!)

My tummy was rumbling when we came out and I had the happy idea of saying goodbye to Madge and settling down at a nice, cosy table in a dark restaurant corner to canoodle romantically with Charles over coffee and cake before going home. A nice way to end a civilised evening, I felt. Unfortunately I didn’t communicate this very well to Charles.

“Is there somewhere near here that we could get something to eat?” I whispered invitingly into his ear.

“Yes, sure!” he said, looking pleased – then invited Madge along to eat as well. I suppose I should have expected that one, it’s only polite. But suddenly they were discussing entire meals rather than snack-ettes of cake:

“Do you fancy a curry?” Charles asked me.

“Um – god no!” I wanted a ten minute canoodle then home to bed, not an hour’s solid eating followed by rushing to catch the last train.

“What about a pizza?”

“No, not really!”

Giving up on me he looked at Madge. “Hey, I know a place that does good pitta breads and it’s really cheap too, shall we go there?”

“Sure!” she said… and I suddenly found myself being trotted halfway across London, up dark roads and down dingy alleyways to the bright lights and sleaze of late night Soho. Charles and Madge walked along chatting to each other and I brought up the rear, thinking, “Eh? Where we going? Where’s my cake? SOHO?!!”

Eventually Charles led us into a kind of MacDonalds-with-pitta bread place. All I can say is – dear god! The place was a post-pub Yob Land, packed with groups of drunken people milling about in search of a kebab. It was brightly lit by fluorescent strip lighting, the wipe-clean, plastic tables were all crammed together so tightly that once you managed to squash yourself into a seat you were pinned there indefinitely until the person behind you decided to move their chair, and the place had a grotty, take-away feel to it. As a bloke drunkenly dropped his coast on my head, my cosy vision of romance and cake floated away into the night like a pretty and unobtainable bubble, and burst into nothingness with a pathetically small pop. This place wasn’t at all what I had in mind – no canoodling, no nice atmosphere – and no cake! I really must learn that Charles doesn’t do telepathy and that I need to spell things out for him!

Last week, when Charles had visited this very place with another friend, he had been full of moans about what an awful, sleazy place his friend had taken him to. But now he was obviously having a change of heart because he eagerly tried to convince me how good the place was. Or maybe he was just hungry.

“It’s really cheap!” he said, “and look how much food you get for your money. And you can go back and fill up your pitta bread as often as you like – for free!”

Hmm, yes, because of course I’d want three extra helpings of crap!

Looking around the café… restaurant… eaterie – whatever you want to call it – I thought I’m obviously missing something. Charles liked this place (at least, this week he did), so did Madge, and so did his other friend last week. So, apparently, did all the drunk people. But I could honestly think of no reason to ever come near the place except for sheer starvation of Ethiopian proportions. And even then I’d rather eat my handbag.

I think I must just be a snob (although I prefer to call myself ‘someone with taste’!).

How Useful!

In my building at work there is a brand new meeting room. It looks fabulous. It has a shiny new table in the middle of the room. It has lots of brand new, cushiony chairs, still in their plastic wrappers. It has a cosy armchair in one corner, and some nice, lush plants to add ambience. It couldn't be more perfect!

A carefully typed notice has been taped to the door, which reads:
'For health and safety reasons this room should not be used for any meetings.'

Why?

Girlie topic alert! (Boys, feel free to click away now!)

Why is it that, when you’re pre-menstrual... one minute you haven’t got the energy to get your fat arse off the sofa, there is just a vacant space where your brain used to be, you are feeling tearful, tired and downright grumpy… but then as soon as you scarf down a big bar of chocolate (well, OK, two!) it suddenly all goes away? Suddenly your brain is working again and you're capable of having a thought outside of "Myeurgh, I'm sooo miserable!" Suddenly you’re bouncing around the flat, feeling perky, and looking for exciting things to do (hoovering anyone?). Suddenly your grumps have gone walkies and you’re grinning at everyone on the TV as though they were real people...

It's odd! But yay for chocolate!