You are Gorgeous!

Two years ago today, Charles and I met at a tango workshop. I arrived a few minutes late and, as I walked into the room, about 10 or 12 people were stood in a circle introducing themselves. I quickly slipped into a space and glanced around the circle to see whether I knew anyone who was there.

As I looked to my left my eyes alighted on Charles… and my jaw clanged to the floor. “Phwor, you are GORGEOUS!” were the first words I ever spoke to him (albeit silently, in my head!).

Happy anniversary Charlie-boy!

The Most Embarrassing Moment Ever in the Whole History of the World

After a good couple of months of decorating, sorting out and ‘house-doctoring’ I put my flat on the market last Friday. There are a few more things that I could still do to make the flat more saleable but I’ve had enough now, I just want to sell the thing and get on with finding somewhere nice to live with Charles.

As part of a final push, yesterday evening I cut back my forsythia bush which has lately started doing beanstalk impressions, trying to conquer the garden with its long, sneaky branches. Tempting fate, but not seriously expecting any flat viewers just yet, I left all the cut branches in a pile on the patio ready to pick up and throw away tonight. Also a large pile of clothes in the bedroom, and a toppling mountain of ‘to do pile’ junk on one of the dining chairs… again, to pick up tonight. I should have expected it I suppose, but dang it if the estate agent didn’t ring me with a viewer for 4.30pm – the exact time I get home from work, so no time for tidying up my crap before their arrival. Aargh!

In desperation I snuck away from work 15 minutes early. I will have to grovel an apology to Boss Number 1 tomorrow, as she was watching me leave through the glass wall of her office, powerless to say anything to me due to being in a meeting with someone at the time! At least it meant she couldn’t say no!

I zoomed down the motorway, screeching to a halt outside my flat at 4.10pm. Phew, 20 minutes to go. Slam the car door – run indoors – throw bags in a heap on the floor – oh no, that’s not good, pick them up again and throw them into the wardrobe – throw pile of clothes willynilly on top of the bags – jam the wardrobe door shut to stop everything falling out – put away washed dishes, crish crash – heave forsythia branches over the wall – stuff several piles of junk into the drawer under the bed. OK, ready now? – whoops, the flat smells of cleaning fluid and paint, not very welcoming – run around spraying perfume, then again with the coffee grinder, grinding it in every room and trying to waft the nice coffee smell about.

All finished, just in time. Bzzzzt! The door buzzer sounded.

The estate agent ushered in a very sweet and slightly effeminate man with glasses and a shiny bald head. We all shook hands and I took both men outside to see the garden. I went into raptures about how the sun shines right into the garden in the afternoons, how it is a Summer haven, blah blah, buy the damn flat, and then I sat myself down on the settee to let the estate agent do his job around the rest of the flat.

I listened as they walked around each room.

In the kitchen I could hear them opening cupboards. Oh god no, I didn’t think to tidy up inside the cupboards, that’s not good!

It got worse. In the bedroom the estate agent, not content with just pointing out the fitted wardrobes, slid open the wardrobe door to show Viewing Man the pile of crap I had just thrown in there. At least it didn’t all fall out on top of him, but why on earth do estate agents have to open cupboards? Do they not realise that’s where people store their junk?!

They moved into the bathroom.

“Here we have the airing cupboard,” said smoothie estate agent man, creaking open the door to show Viewing Man inside. Oh nooo! I cringed, picturing my blow up man (a Secret Santa Christmas present from work last year) waving up at them from the floor of the airing cupboard. Not quite what you want a potential buyer to see in your home!

And then…

“… and you can see there’s good storage under the sink with a cupboard here too…”

NOOO, DEAR GOD NOOOOOO! DON’T SHOW HIM UNDER THERE!! THERE’S A BIN FULL OF USED SANITARY TOWELS IN THERE!!!!

Oh the horror of it! Oh the total, cringing shame of an estate agent showing someone your used sanitary products!

Paris With Mickey Mouse

I’ve been planning a holiday to Disneyland Paris with my friend Sarah for a while now. It took us ages – months in fact – to sort out dates, and then days on the internet comparing all the options and prices for hotels and trains on various websites before I finally booked everything. But today Sarah’s cheque for her half of the costs arrived in the post, accompanied by a letter written on Mickey Mouse paper, and it suddenly all seems official now!

I feel I should point out that neither me nor Sarah are 7 years old, nor are we taking any children with us to legitimise our visit. But for some reason we have both always wanted to go to Disneyland, so off we are going!

A Winter's Day

Brrr! It’s cold today. I’ve got the beginnings of a sore throat and a cough, and I think it’s time to start buying my Winter wardrobe… oh wait, it’s mid August, I should be in a bikini.

What on earth is up with the weather this year?!

Brrrr rrrrr rrrr!!

Just answer the damn question!

Getting Charles to commit to a decision can sometimes be a very difficult thing.

His’ friend Madge emailed us to ask if we wanted to join her for some early music concerts in the South Bank Centre during September. What a nice offer! Being well-organised girls, Madge and I very quickly sorted out that:
Madge = concerts A and B
Me = concert A
… and we waited for Charles’ reply.

Count me in for whatever you two are doing, he emailed.

Erm…. Okay! Given that we both wanted to do different things, that didn’t help much!

We tried again. This time I offered to go along to concert B, too, if Charles particularly wanted to see that one – perhaps that would make the decision easier for him. This, I felt, was rather nice of me as I really wasn't keen on the lady singer who, judging from the sound clips on the website, is pretty shrieky and made me want to put my fingers in my ears. So…. did he want to go to concert B? Was I going to have to buy earplugs?

A new email pinged up in my inbox. I opened it and read Charles’ reply.

Hey, I'll come along to anything you two judge to be good.

Strewth! Madge (totally giving up on Charles’ ability to communicate and bypassing him completely) emailed me to ask whether I preferred her just to book concert A for us all, or whether it would be OK to book concert B too.

I replied that I preferred just the first one – however, we should wait until Charles answered in case he wanted to try out the weird shrieking lady as well. With some misgivings I bashed off yet another email to Charles.

Do you want to come to concert B or not?!

I am now sitting here, waiting with bated breath for Charles’ reply – and thinking that I really should have made the decision for him when I was given the opportunity! I can see this going on all day!

UPDATE:

OK, I'll just do the first one only.

Hoo-blinking-ray!

Too Much Tidying

As part of my preparation for selling the flat I’m spending every evening tidying and sorting and clearing up, moving all extraneous matter and clutter out to the garage.

I’m hindered by the fact that I can’t make myself just sweep everything up into a big bag and bung that in the garage. Being a Monica-type-person, I have to sort everything into themed piles and stack each pile neatly into an appropriate box (after pondering for half an hour over which pile and then which box each item should go into). It takes me days just to sort through one small heap of stuff! The perils of having an over-organising brain!

Charles said recently that he thinks I spend my evenings reading celebrity magazines and watching TV. If only he knew! The sad fact is that what really fills up my evenings is cleaning, sorting, oranising, tidying, planning… I just can’t sit down until everything around the house is done (which it never is so I never sit down!). I think the reason I generally sleep so solidly is that I go to bed so flipping exhausted! On the odd occasion that I do decide to have an hour with a book before bed I can’t enjoy it because of the self-imposed guilt guilt guilt! You see, I have this rather stupid idea that, if I can just get to the point where all (and I mean ALL) the useful things are done and out of the way, then, and only then, can I allow myself to relax and do fun things with my evenings. But of course there is always something useful that could be done if I look hard enough.

I’m actually really looking forward to a year in a rented place with Charles. I will still have to get things like shopping and cleaning and laundry out of the way before I can allow myself to switch off, but there will be no need to paint a wall, or run up a pair of curtains, or shop for bookshelves, or tidy the garage… all that can wait until we buy somewhere of our own. Instead I am going to enjoy reading books and creating art. Hey, my life will be fun!

Kitchen Garden

When me and Charles eventually buy our own place, hopefully in about a year’s time, we both want to have a little kitchen garden. Charles likes plucking mint leaves from the little plant I got him to put in cold drinks, and I want to grow tomatoes and peppers and herbs, and eat them freshly picked. In my ideal world I'd have chickens too, for fresh eggs, and a goat for milk, but I don't think Richmond Council would be too happy with that one!

But they can't stop us having our cloth cat!!

Wasps and Babies

Charles and I were invited to a tango party in south London this afternoon. I was a little bit nervous about going. I dithered about it for ages the night before, and then again when I woke up in the morning, and very nearly chickened out altogether. I’m never good in social, chit-chatty situations. I become frozen up with shyness and go into ‘awkward’ mode where I sit in a corner examining my shoelaces and trying to pretend I don’t exist. (God, I’m such fun!) However, I seem to be becoming a bit of a hermit lately, so I kicked myself up the bum and sternly told myself to get out there and talk to some people for once.

Decision made, off we went. We had a good drive to south London. The sun was unexpectedly shining, there was little traffic, it was very pleasant. We parked the car and found the house where the party was being held. Up the footpath we went. Charles rang the doorbell and quickly backed away, pushing me in front of him.
“You go first.”
“No way, you go first!” I scuttled around behind him again.
“It might not be the right house.”
“I know, that's why you have to go first, I’m a wuss!”
(We’re so grown up!)

He was the one in front as the door opened (ha!) and we were ushered down a long, mirrored hallway and into the kitchen. My eyes immediately skipped past all the people and alighted on a huge spread of food. Mmm! It all looked droolingly gorgeous – strange cheeses, sliced pears, various types of bread, huge bowls containing salads of every description – foodstuffs that it wouldn’t have occurred to me to put with each other, such as aubergine, courgette and roasted tomato salad. I could feel myself salivating wildly! I suddenly decided that there is actually an advantage to not really knowing many people at a party – you don’t have to say hello to anybody and you can just dive straight into the grub! Wahey – piggy heaven! However, after managing to grab a plate and fork, my cunning plan was thwarted by the fact that the kitchen was quite narrow and, whichever way I dodged and ducked, there was always some large bloke in between me and the food. Crap! In the end I had to patiently chew on some bread and houmous, which were the only items I could reach, until Charles had finished saying all his hellos (unlike me, he actually speaks to people!) – and he pushed a swathe through the crowd for us to move down the kitchen to the rest of the food and the garden.

Neither of us had realised that it was going to be a tango party. When two of the men started slotting wooden boards together in the garden to make a floor to dance on, we both looked at each other – we hadn’t brought our tango shoes! Oh no! Charles was in sandals, I was in sandals. Everyone else seemed to be better prepared and people began appearing outside shod variously in dance trainers and high heels.

The first couple to begin dancing were really good and we happily settled down to watch them. Not so happy, though, was the woman’s little son who must have been about 2 years old. He looked on in horror. What on earth was his mother doing leaving him alone at the side of the garden in order to go and do strange bodily things with this strange man?! It just wasn’t right!
“Mummeeee!” he wailed.
Mummy ignored him. She was enjoying her dance!
“Mummeee! Mummeee!”
Very fittingly, the singer on the record was crooning something in Spanish that sounded like ‘mommy’ so they had quite a duet going on. Another couple began dancing too.
“Mummeeeeee!”

In his distress the little boy started to toddle onto the wooden floor and was in danger of being mowed down by the dancers, so Charles very sensibly picked him up and sat him on his knee. This seemed to calm him down a bit. Eventually Mummy finished her dance and went off in search of a drink, so the little boy slid off Charles' knee to follow her, obviously very relieved that his mother was acting normally once more.

But, oh no – much to his dismay, she was out again a few minutes later with another partner, and again left him at the edge of the dance floor.
“Mummeee!” he wailed in disbelief.

Charles had by now wandered off to talk to someone, so this time I proffered my own lap and gave the little boy a cuddle whilst he looked on at the dancing. He settled down again immediately, but - hmmm, a child on my lap? Not a good idea! I’m so broody at the moment that all anyone has to do is point a small child in my direction and I'm guaranteed to end up running to the nearest loo to have a cry...

Sure enough, I could feel my throat tightening and my eyes filling up. Oh gawd, don't cry now you silly bat! I had visions of suddenly finding myself the centre of a concerned group of party guests, all patting my hands, clucking, and passing me tissues, whilst they tried to find out what dreadful thing was upsetting me - and I was sure that pointing at the little boy and squeaking, "It's a baybeee!" would just leave everyone thoroughly confused!

Sniff, gulp. How to distract myself… how to distract myself…

Distraction came in the form of a wasp up my skirt! When I felt the tickly insect feet crawling up my thigh I almost launched the poor child across the garden! Luckily he landed the right way up (albeit with a loud thump) and he ran off into the kitchen in search of someone less freaky whilst I frantically flapped my clothes about to try and get the wasp to come out. I have a wasp phobia so, when I say ‘frantically’, that is a weeny bit of an understatement. Jiggling about like a hula dancer on speed, I shrieked, "There's a wasp up my skirt! Ooooeee, there’s a wasp up my skirt!”
Everyone looked at me as though I was slightly bonkers.
“A wasp? Oh that's alright,” said someone, calmly.
Alright??! No it bloody isn't ALRIGHT, it's a WASP!! And it's just an inch away from my lady-bits!!! I flapped some more and the wasp fell out of my skirt and onto the patio, then flew off looking somewhat dazed.

Phroo, adventure over! That was scary! I was very wary of wasps for the rest of the afternoon. I sat there clutching my skirt tightly around my legs to make sure there would be no gaps for exploratory insects, every hair on my body twangingly alert for the slightest sign of another little waspy footstep or a little waspy breath.

In spite of the endless swarms of killer wasps that kept trying to land on me, and in spite of our inappropriate footwear, Charles and I managed to have a few nice dances together. I’ve been having a break from tango lately as I found I just wasn’t enjoying it in the way that I used to. I had begun to dread the Friday milongas coming around instead of looking forward to them and, when my calf muscle went ping and detached itself whilst I was running in Richmond Park one day, followed soon afterwards by someone spiking my foot with their stiletto heel during the Tango Extravaganza, which left me with broken foot bones, I decided that enough was enough - I just wasn’t meant to be tangoing right now and it was time for a break!

Today though, for the first time in ages, I actually enjoyed dancing! Charles danced in his socks, I danced in my sandals; we tripped over the joins in the boards or fell off the edge of the floor; we dodged the crab apple tree and the wasps – but none of that mattered, it was all just a really nice experience! I’m thinking now that maybe my tango break should come to an end soon. Perhaps I just need to find a way of making tango fun again? How I do that I’m not quite sure yet, but watch this space!

Channel Flicking

I was made to watch The One Show today on BBC1. Sulkily. I actually wanted to watch Jeeves and Wooster which is far more entertaining.

My friend Abdul is in a choir who apparently were going to be featured singing on the show and he gets a wee bit grumpy if you don’t show interest in everything he does – he never lets you hear the end of it! I think he feels that a ‘real friend’ would be eager to look at anything to do with him, in the way that over-keen parents have to turn up to every football match their child plays, every school performance, every ballet lesson. He keeps trying to make me listen to his choir, inviting me to every performance and complaining when I say no, and he even once expected me to buy a copy of the Times just to read a mention of the choir.

What he doesn’t get is that it’s not actually about him at all – I just don’t like the choir, I think they sound totally crap! ‘Cacophonous’ is the most apt word I can think of. It’s one of those choirs where anybody can pay to be a member and therefore singing ability doesn’t come into it – and, boy, can you tell!

This particular television show had even less to recommend it to me because the choir were going to be singing a song about redheads and how hard they have it in life, poor dears – not something I have any sympathy for, as I think there are far worse crosses to bear than a hair colour! Hey, if you don’t like it, dye it!

Anyway, in order not to get told off for not taking an interest, I decided that my best policy would be to watch Jeeves and Wooster but flick back to BBC1 every minute or two to see the choir when they came on. However, in the end my flicking came to nothing. Half an hour of grumpily back and forth (because of course the redhead article came on at the very end of the programme, typical) and I flicked back from Jeeves and Wooster to hear Bonnie Langford saying she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, she never had a problem with her red hair. Yay Bonnie!

So all that flicking and missing Jeeves and Wooster witticisms was for nothing as I had missed the choir altogether.

Actually, maybe that’s a good thing!!

A Happy Face

Facebook is my Happy Place.

I can watch pretty coloured fish swimming about in my aquarium. I can go into my art gallery and look at all the beautiful pictures that I have put up there. I can get the weather forecast and read the news headlines. I can read Dilbert cartoons. I can look at my world travel map and reminisce about where I've been and plan all the nice places I still want to see.

And I can click on a picture of a hamster and make the poor creature vibrate, which for some reason has me in stitches!