No This Isn’t Beirut: I Always Live Like This…
March 1, 2010
Way, way back in July of 2008, 2 years after moving into my current house, after the inevitable collapse of my relationship, I posted about my propensity for living in organised chaos. That only a strict housekeeper, preferably of Eastern European descent, could tame my wild and lackadaisical ways, and keep things neat and tidy, in a manner to which I very much wanted to become accustomed.
This is a picture of my living room on the day I moved in:
10:47am Not even a stray cat hair fluttering across the floor...
And this a picture taken 5 minutes later:
10:52am I know I put the car keys down somewhere...
I know it’s subtle, but if you look really hard, there are a few differences between the pictures. Whose abandoned Pepsi can is that for one thing?
You leave one little piece of junk mail unattended whilst you turn your back and next thing you know you’re living in a war-torn wasteland strewn with remote controllers, random Christmas puddings and empty mobile phone boxes, and trying to make chicken curry in an empty shoebox and drinking your martini’s out of an old pickle jar.
I try to defend my right to live like a bag lady (mostly to my mother btw) by pointing out that even within chaos there is order, even if it is way down at a microscopic level…or probably quantum level in the case of my spare room. I stand by the maths, and I know where of I speak – I’ve read Jurassic Park more than 20 times.
You maybe forgiven at this juncture for thinking that I am given to hyperbole. Let me stretch out my right arm, whilst sat here typing on my laptop at the dining table, and tell you what I touch.
An almost empty plastic bottle, half a roll of Christmas wrapping paper, a small book about Champagne, a Lidl flyer, an asthma inhaler, a DVD box set of The X-Files season four and an empty mobile phone box.
And I barely had to stretch for that.
I should be embarrassed. I am embarrassed. I have friends coming around tomorrow afternoon (early tomorrow afternoon), which means, having just finished my night shift, I have to put my bone-bastard-idle arse into gear and tidy.
Cleaning is easy. I can keep things clean. A long micro-fibre duster, a bottle of Flash, a squirt of bleach and a lot of hot water (having wood floors can be a blessing).
I just can’t pick up after myself. Somehow I struggle with the simple task of putting things away.
If this column eventually lies idle for more than 12 months, someone should probably call the emergency services, it’s likely I will have been buried in a landslide of books, magazines and Star Trek memorabilia.
Magda, wo sind sie?
I’m starting to wonder if I might have criminal potential as a serial arsonist. I’m quite fond of the US television show, Criminal Minds, which for those of you not in the know if about the Behavioural Analysis unit of the Eff Bee Eye. One of things the things seem to look for, when checking the histories of potential serial arsonist/serial killer profiles, are series of small unexplained fires occurring around the alleged offender, and recently I seem to have been at the scene of several.
There was the candle on the sideboard, which somehow inadvertently shifted position and ended up directly underneath the wooden blind, which of course began to heat up and smoke. Thanks to a swift intervention disaster was averted.
Which also leads to wonder if I have a hero complex well…
Then there was the car…’hmm this engine smells hot…’
‘hmm there’s a warning light on the dashboard…’
‘hmm there’s smoke from coming under the bonnet…’
‘argh! Flames!’
That didn’t end well, hence why I no longer drive a Toyota.
And then there was the shower incident.
‘Gosh’ I thought, ‘This shower is getting very steamy’ as I lathered my hair, and then turned around to be greeted by smoke and melting plastic emanating from my electric shower.
A ruined shower was by no means the worst that that day had to throw at me. In order to finish my ablutions, I drew a bath and tried to lower myself gently into it.
It was like trying to stuff a haggis into a loaf tin. It was never going to end well. A tsunami swelled at both ends of the tub and cascaded over the sides.
Still, I rinsed my hair and threw down a few towels.
I then dried my hair, pulled on a shirt and headed downstairs. Yeah, funny thing about water how it can trickle downwards and all that.
I hit the third step from the bottom, which was wet, and did a dramatic somersault and landed face down in a puddle with my left ar twisted out at a mosst unusual angle whilst chunks of artex from the ceiling landed on my head.
Fires, floods…I’m just waiting for plagues and famines next…
Of all the men in all the world…I’ve never had one from Swindon…
January 22, 2010
”Your Heathcliff quality cannot be found
In places where I’ve looked around,
Like Swindon.”
~Excerpt from ‘To Her Coy Master’ by Carole Bound 1972
There are no James May’s in Swindon. I found one similar (sans shaggy long hair) a couple of years ago from Reading (or was it Cheltenham?). Long before I knew who James May was but when I was well into my middle-aged men period. Sadly he had the personality of a piece of MDF and was about as interesting. Looks indeed are not everything, but he did wear a jumper well.
There are no Matthew Fox’s in Swindon either for that matter. There are plenty of urban foxes, but I’ve yet to meet a native Swindoo male who uses moisturiser simply because he’s ‘worth it’. Or who cultivates the fine art of facial hair so that it doesn’t just look unshaven and rough but manages to achieve just the right level of sexy*.
*for further studies see also Holloway, Josh
Maybe my standards are just set too high, after all if all the men out there are looking for Angelina Jolie or Scarlett Johansson, I’m screwed since I have more of a Dawn French thing going on. I’ve dated plenty of men and boys in my 36 years…but it just dawned on me today, that I’ve never dated a man from Swindon. Lived in Swindon? Yes. But Swindon born and bred? Never.
What is wrong with Swindon men?
“I can’t read and I can’t write
But that don’t even matter
Coz I comes from Wiltshire
And I can drives a tractor”
~Local proverb circa 1975 best spoken with a thick West Country accent
I was born in 1972 in the Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*), but I was raised in a small town west of Swindon called Wootton Bassett by parents who had emigrated from even further south, Cornwall. Therefore whilst I fulfil the criteria for a Swindonian from the circumstances of my birth, one is not a native Swindoo, by virtue of not having generations of relatives in Swindon and never having lived there for the first 20 years of my life.
Of course the fact that you can stand on the Wootton Bassett side of the M4 motorway junction 16 and lob a tennis ball across it quite easily and have it land in Swindon on the opposite side is neither here nor there. As long as the junction remains, Wootton Bassett will never be a part of Swindon.
Thus my exposure to the Swindon male was exceedingly limited until I turned 16. Although I was to deny myself the opportunity to investigate these strange and mysterious creatures close up in their native habitat by opting to stay at my comprehensive school’s sixth form (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) to complete my A levels rather than go with several friends to Swindon College. A move I was to regret much later in life when I attended the Regent’s Circus College (don’t go looking for it, they’re going to pull it down*) as a mature student.
Once I reached the 6th form I was to begin my dating adventures in earnest. But not one boy that I was to date hailed from Swindon. A couple of them lived in Swindon (a place as exotic to me as Kazakhstan) and many forays were made into ‘town’ to the night clubs or to hang out at Steve’s comic book shop above Harry’s video shack. But the ones I dated who lived in Swindon came from distant places like Oxford and Dundee.
Somehow, during my formative years, I never met a Swindoo male who asked me out on a date. I lived in the country and they were in the town and n’er the twain should meet. Plus I had an instinctive hatred of nightclubs.
I have always hated dancing (from the years of forced ballroom dancing to the clinging slow dances of my early adulthood) and believe Mr Darcy said it best when he claimed that “every savage can dance”.
Plus one tended to stick to the floors of the nightclubs (of which there were three – Brunel Rooms, Hardings and Level 3. The names have changed over the years but the floors still haven’t been cleaned apparently). And the drinks were over priced, the music loud and the women paraded and the men trawled as if it were a cattle market.
Wootton Bassett had a night club, called Charlies, which was over the shopping arcade (200 yards of bakers, cobblers and haberdasheries). Charlies was a room of approximately twenty square feet. I went there once. I didn’t dance. And I didn’t pull.
Then there was the year of self-imposed exile where I went to live in Bath (and didn’t date at all) to be followed by the bright lights of the Wiltshire Constabulary (Swindon Central to be precise, although don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) beckoning to me.
I was young, I was fit, and I had hair down to my bum. I was fending off the advances with an exemplary knowledge of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a two-tone Austin Metro, enough to disturb even the most persistent of admirers.
Still, nights out with the girls (and the boys) were spent in the desperate nightclubs of Swindon. I remember one night chatting with a really cute guy, short dark hair, and blue eyes. And I thought, finally, a Swindoo male I am attracted to. And then he told me to come by the McDonalds drive-thru anytime and he’d give me a free burger.
I was never going to meet my ideal mate at a nightclub in Swindon (or anywhere else for that matter), so I stopped going.
From that point on I exclusively dated police officers (from varying departments and of various ranks). Not one of them had been born in Swindon. And they all, in one way or another, turned out to be bastards of the highest order.
I really wanted to just find a nice local guy but now I was in a position to clearly see what nature had brought forth with her native sons.
Bad hygiene, bad posture, bad teeth, and a serious lack of brain matter. I once remember a lad trying to chat me up by proudly exclaiming that he had ‘only ever read one book’ and it was ‘quite good. A bit like a film with words.’
But the voice, the voice was the most annoying thing…every statement was followed with the word ‘right’.
“You listening to me, right?”
“Do you want a drink, right?”
All in a light west country accent that invariably meant dropped h’s, t’s and a yokel twang redolent of those native to Bristol (yes I know James May is from Bristol but he no more has a Bristol accent, than I have a Swindon one).
And then my days of dating were no more. I settled down in Swindon itself with the man who was to be my partner for 12 years. He came from Oxford. I moved to the West Swindon Police Station (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) and decided to go back to college part time as a mature student to do A levels in film and media studies.
At last, complete exposure to the boys I had missed out on in my youth. There was I, an early thirty something, in a classroom of 17 and 18 year olds. Fabulous. Here were boys who knew how to moisturise, what hair product was for and had gleaming white smiles even Richard Hammond would be envious of.
As I got to know them, I was to learn that these Greek beauties (as Oscar Wilde would have considered them) were not native to the town that was now my home. In fact the ‘local’ students, and there were two of them (this was a very small class) had distinct body odours and wore anoraks with a fur trim, a style which I had not seen since the late seventies.
Time had not improved the Swindoo male. Two generations on and the town was still producing either Adrian Mole or lager swilling football hooligans.
Circa 2005 I was suddenly single again. Rather stupidly I rushed into dating at the earliest opportunity and had two very unsuccessful dates, which included Mr MDF from Cheltenham (through a dating agency *hangs head in shame*) and a friend of a friend from somewhere exotic like Chichester.
Both were disasters. I wasn’t interested and they were duller than the toes of my work shoes. I had to accept that the single life was the way forward.
So is there a conclusion that can be reached from this self-indulgent and overly dramatic rendition of my dating days?
Should it be that I should give Swindon men a chance? That having dated from a gene pool that covers the length of Britain, I should be looking closer to home?
I’ve skimmed the dating sites, I’ve looked at the police profiles, I’ve even eyed a barista or two in Starbucks, but invariably the native Swindon son is found wanting. Right?
Wrong. I am not afraid to put my hand up and admit that clearly the fault lies with me. An exemplary knowledge of Star Trek, a legacy of crappy cars and an arse that clearly indicated (even at my thinnest) that it was only a matter of years before it would begin spreading.
There are great guys in Swindon, heck I’m certain there are great guys in virtually every town. If we haven’t found one girls, it’s probably because they’re smart enough to avoid us!
*One wonders where they will put my memorial plaque in 2172a.d
Alone In A Godless Universe And Out Of Viognier
January 10, 2010
So it’s been a while. No excuses, no apologies…I come at you this new year with a new attitude and outlook. No more false starts and promises. When it happens, I will blog it, when it doesn’t, I will make it up.
Having been bed-ridden and snow-bound for best part of week it’s nice to finally come at the day feeling alive and revitalised. No more hacking cough and watching a lung bungee up from the depths of my chest to twack the cat on the nose and dive back down again. Hands down the best thing about living in a mid-terrace when you’re sick is being able to keep all the neighbours awake at night. That’s payback for all those 3 o’clock in the morning domestics you keep having.
I wouldn’t mind having been ill except for the fact that I had two flu jabs this year and I still ended up flat on my back in a fevered ennui thinking that the cat was Donald Duck and viewing everything in shades of blue and yellow.
Anyway the fever broke and I ventured outside yesterday for the first time in a week. After brushing the snow from my car, where some wag had amusingly attempted to carve the word “TIT” across my windscreen in the ice (do they teach children nothing these days? You pee on snow if you want to leave a message surely?) I sallied forth across the crunching ice to the local supermarket for a few supplies.
At this point I will mention that having climbed from the death bed I discovered that my internet connection had died and was therefore cut off from such essential suppliers as wine merchants and delivered groceries, otherwise I would’ve burrowed back into my duvet like a tick in a bear’s ear and you wouldn’t seen me again until April.
I digress.
On arriving at aforementioned supermarche I discovered that I had inadvertently travelled back through time and space and was trying to shop in cold war Russia.
Carole makes another inspired purchase from the Sainsburys "Be Good To Yourself Because No Other Bugger Gives A Shit" range.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to beat an old woman and a cute gay couple to death with my recycled carrier bag in order to aquire the last 2l bottle of Cravendale semi.
I worry that should the weather get any worse I may have to fall back on Ray Mears survival skills and fashion a casserole made from my £3 artificial Asda Christmas tree, some silk flowers and roasted haunch of Siamese.
I may have inadvertently shut Lily outside in the snow for a little too long...
A Siamese who, I should point out, has scarcely poked her nose out of the door in the past fortnight and instead spends her day pressed firmly up against the bedroom radiator, the heat from which wafts the occasional furry fart out into the room and thereon unto the rest of the house. A delightfully beefy bouquet replacing my cinnamon scented candles. Mmm piquant!
I am firmly of the opinion today that the snow has done it’s worst, that I shall soon be able to dig out my recycling box and walk down my garden path without breaking my neck.
Of course this will not stop me from following the sound advice often given to motorists at this time of year, therefore stop me in my motor vehicle at anytime and you will find me armed with torch, blanket and flask of soup…gazpacho anyone?
“If I could work my will.” Said Scrooge, indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly though his heart. He should!”
~A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
It’s fashionable, lets be honest, to be all bah humbuggy at this time of year. It’s trendy to be grumpy and cross about the Christmas festivities, after all everybody loves a Scrooge. We all like to chuckle at the office miser who grumbles into his beard about queues and fairy lights and how it’s all so commercial. We accept and applaud the people who don’t want to pollute the environment by sending Christmas cards, and instead buy a three-legged goat for some poor people in Rotherham that they’ve never met.
Well sorry to buck the trend.
I love Christmas.
I do. And no, I’m not a practising Christian, or any religion of note. And I’m not going to try and covert you Ebenezer thinkers by droning piously on about Pagan Yuletide and the winter solstice. I’m not going to drag religion into it at all.
I’m celebrating the end of the year and the fantasticness of the season that is winter. With it’s dark evenings and foggy frozen nights. The persistent salt-laden spray, that is kicked up from the road and clings resolutely to your windscreen. A season of flu jabs and runny noses and harassed shoppers wrapped up like Eskimos as they race from shop to shop, buying up mince pies, pieces of gammon and huge truckles of Stilton for fear that the shops will run dry and they will be left stranded over the brief holiday season with nary a clove-studded Satsuma to cleave unto.
I love sparkling fairy lights and cold noses. I like seeing my friends and family over the holidays and giving them stuff. Stuff they want, stuff they don’t. All of it wrapped and ribboned to within an inch of its life. I spend all year looking forward to my Christmas dinner and listening to my father say “Turkey? How fowl.” five times before someone acknowledges his witty epithet. I salivate at the thought of sprouts that have been boiling on the hob since August and look forward to liberally lacing the bread sauce, the gravy, in fact anything that’s in a serving bowl or dish, with alcohol.
Yule regret putting your spouts on in August
I dream of shovelling nuts into my face like a starving squirrel and knocking back the Croft Original whilst my mother says “Could you at least try sipping the next one.” I embrace the reading of the cracker jokes with gusto, usually replacing it with an inappropriate or, worse still, an even less funny joke of my own devising, par example, what’s green and sings?*
I like curling up in an armchair and watching the Dr Who Christmas special, whilst scoffing Christmas pudding or sherry trifle piled high with cream that is liberally laced with, yes you guessed it, more alcohol. I giggle, not unlike someone who is slightly tipsy, when I hear the distinctive rustle of the tin foil as one of the family cats launches a stealth attack on the turkey carcass. And I whole-heartedly embrace the ritual of helping my mother wash the dishes after dinner, singing carols and waiting for the moment when father emerges from his post-dinner nap muttering “I was going to help your mother with those.” Thirty-six years Dad, and I’m still drying the Christmas dinner dishes.
And yes, I’m not going to deny it, I like getting presents. I still believe in Father Christmas. He fills my stocking every year and eats the mince pie and drinks the glass of milk that’s been left out. I’ve sent him my letter with this year’s list of demands requests and I’m optimistic that this will be year I get the Lamborghini Gallardo and Matthew Fox, draped in ribbons and carefully placed under a tree that looks like Christmas threw up on it.
If I don’t, I’m happy to settle for the second best thing any girl could get from Father Christmas…his list of the boys who were naughty.
*Elvis Parsley
Celebrity Cat Crushes
November 12, 2008
Don’t be fooled by the title. I don’t have a celebrity cat. Neither does a celebrity have a crush on my cat. Well not that I know about. What I do have is a cat with a celebrity crush.
Actually I have two. Cats with crushes on celebs that is.
I wonder if this is something that they’ve inherited from me. That the constantly changing pictures on the refrigerator door and calendars adorning the kitchen wall have given them some kind of notion to follow me in my admiration of numerous famous masculine forms.
Beanie was the first. When she was young she had a thing for Geraldo Rivera. I think it was the facial hair. And bless her she’s always been a bit short-sighted and, well, we’ve always considered Beanie to be a bit touched, in the nicest possible way.
I suspect she just thought he was a very big tom cat with nice long whiskers. When Geraldo was on (not that I was going through a faze of watching bad day time American talk shows or anything at the time) she would sit on the couch and gaze at the TV.
Of course she could’ve just been gazing into space, but it seemed a little too coincidental. And there was purring.
My stint of watching such shows did not last long and Beanie retreated back under the radiator behind the curtains, her Geraldo moment all but forgotten.
Lily likes Lost. Actually I think she likes Sawyer which is something of a contentious point between us since I am decidedly on Team Jack. Hell I’ll be on any team Matthew Fox is on.
The Josh Holloway thing started with the Davidoff advertisement I think, and grew from there. It became particularly annoying when she would gaze smugly at me with those slightly crossed blue eyes whenever Matthew Fox would appear for L’Oreal, telling us how he was worth it.
“Look at Josh,” her loud vocalisations seemed to say “He strips off his clothes and dives into cold water. Your man moisturises.”
I think, once again, it comes down to the hair. Or possibly the sarcasm. Lily is the kind of cat that would find Sawyer’s witticisms amusing.
I have been worried of late however, since Lost has been off the air, that both of my girls have acquired a new and some what questionable taste. I can only put it like this: Jeremy Clarkson has a peculiar affect on my pussies.
I don’t know if it’s the curly hair, the middle-aged paunch, or the constant blue jeans. Whether it’s the pathological hatred of anyone not British, the shouting or just the sheer fact he is a colossus. There is something about him that Lily and Beanie find fascinating.
All I know is, when I’m trying to watch Top Gear, there’s usually a cat butt or two waving in the direction of the TV screen: tails up, purrs at high revs and a worrying number of un-neutered tom cats lining up on the back fence.
Have They Still Got An Awful Lot Of Coffee in Brazil?
July 23, 2008
“Way down among Brazilians
Coffee beans grow by the billions
So they’ve got to find those extra cups to fill
They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil”Music and Lyrics by Bob Hilliard, Dick Milles
Well according to Wikipedia the short answer is yes. There is still an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. 2.59 million metric tons in 2006 say the figures.
Which is nothing short of good news for us coffee lovers.
Can you imagine if coffee were like fuel? Queues of angry shoppers, frustrated book-buyers and desperate morning commuters, lined up outside Starbucks and Costa Coffee, waving their travel mugs and complaining about the rising price of beans and VAT.
A perculatory panic.
Whether you have a black Americano or a half-fat, decaf latte with a shot, a caramel Macchiato (dessert) or, like me, the coffee of the day, served black, hot and in a mug you could take a bath in, coffee is the stimulant of choice.
Tea just doesn’t cut it when you crave that caffeine hit.
Where I work we have free coffee from automated vending machines. It tastes as if there is a cigarette butt loitering at the bottom of the plastic cup, but it’s free so no one is complaining. Well I am, but no one listens to me.
This of course leads to another problem with coffee. As an ex-smoker of some two years standing, when I have a mug of coffee in my left hand, I become frustrated as to what to do with my right (answers on a postcard please, diagrams welcome). I never miss smoking quite as much as I do when I have coffee in front of me.
Ah how I miss standing in the garden at 5.30 in the morning, a cup of instant in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other…good times.
As far as instants go, I have to say my choice has been, for several years now, Nescafe’s Alta Rica. It’s a good store cupboard staple.
I find things harder when it comes to choosing my fresh coffee though.
I actually have a bit of a penchant for Tim Horton’s coffee. For those not in the know, Tim Horton’s is Canada’s own Starbucks. The original blend is smooth and mellow (much like the Canadians) and cries out for an accompanying doughnut (something with a maple glaze). I rely heavily on imports from my best friend.
It has to be said, I am not the best coffee brewer in the world, but Tim rarely lets me down.
Of course I have to admit that I’ve cut back a lot on my coffee consumption recently. Too many extra shots in my mug have started to make me a little twitchy, I blame it on age.
In fact, and don’t go spreading this around, I’ve been known not to order coffee at all and to go for a Chai tea instead.
A heinous crime I know. But I’m quite sure the coffee trade will survive without my regular contributions.
I’m not sure where this article is going, other than a colleague suggested the title to me, and I really liked it.
Coffee is fuel for the mind but, unlike that which is rising well above the rate of inflation, it’s not going to run out anytime soon.
I shall leave you with one final thought, not an original one I’ll grant, but you can’t talk about coffee and not take this one parting shot:
I like my coffee like I like my men – ground up and in the freezer.
WANTED: Cat-loving German housekeeper called Magda – cake baking skills and liberal views on pornography a must.
July 3, 2008
It has to be said that I am, no matter how you try and look at it, deeply disorganised.
“A place for everything and everything in its place” has never really held much sway with me…it’s more a case of “a place for everything but that has something else in its place and the thing from the place has been left lying around on the coffee table for four weeks”.
When you live with someone else, as I did for many years, part of your personality is repressed. Not by you, but by the other member(s) of your household.
My partner would, for example, tidy up after me. If I left a book on the table or a DVD in the player, or even an empty glass by the bedside, it would duly be removed and put in its rightful place.
Eventually I became accustomed to his anal tidying habits and although I never learned to adhere to them, plenty of moaning and nagging persuaded me to at least make an effort to pick up after myself.
I moved into my own house two years ago this month. My spare room is still half full of unpacked boxes and my desktop computer remains in bubble-wrap shoved away in a corner.
As I type this on my blood-stained laptop (seriously, don’t ask) I am surrounded by detritus – junk mail, important mail, computer hardware, video games, books, magazines, notebooks, pens, a pile of exercise books from my first two years of secondary school.
Crap breeds crap. Leave one item alone and untouched on the floor and three days later you will have a pile of objects that includes t-shirts, mobile phone boxes and blank CD’s.
All because there’s no one to make me put it away when I’ve finished using it. Common sense and a need for natural order and balance do not apply here. I am a filth wizard.
This is why I need a housekeeper. I need to be looked after. Not by a man, not in a co-dependant relationship kind of way. But in a firm, matronly manner.
She will be called Magda and she will have grey hair in a bun and large bosom to which she will clasp Lily and call her “meine liebchen”. She will feed me and clean my house and force to pick up after myself. My work shirts will be starched and my shoes will be shined.
Imagine coming home to the smell of baking lebkuchen and warm apple strudel, the scent of orange wood polish and gingerbread in the air. No clutter, mail neatly piled on the table ready to be sorted through. A tidy office where paperwork has a home and important files are easily accessible. Bed made, laundry done, cats fed and loved. I have a dream, and this is it.
Of course back in reality I can barely afford to put petrol in the car never mind hiring a full time household staff member. But all this disappears in a puff of wasted logic whilst I stare vacantly at the dusty television screen, feet on cluttered table and plastic glass of wine in hand.
Actually I do have real wine glasses again, temporarily, but that is a whole other story. This one is about my need for German dictatorship and unconditional love.
No one else is going to be able to stand my mess unless I pay them to. Hence why I shall never co-habit again and also why I am teaching my cats German.
Dear Diary, today I had an egg for my breakfast…
July 1, 2008
I was born in 1972 on the anniversary of the Titanic hitting that iceberg and the Donner Party departing on their (unintentional) gastronomic adventure. An auspicious date you must agree.
I was raised on a diet of old radio comedies and tinned mince with carrot, which probably explains an awful lot that my therapist couldn’t.
I live in Swindon and have no intention of moving anywhere else. And when I say in my bio that where I live is usually on fire, I mean that I live next to a play area where the equipment goes up in flames every four weeks. I’m also a stone’s throw from a subway that is a favourite dumping ground for burning Domino’s pizza mopeds. And then there was the chap a couple of streets over who blew up his flat whilst cooking garlic bread. Or it may have been heroin. Garlic bread is probably a little too exotic for where I live.
But what, I hear you sigh, is the purpose of this blog? Well I simply wanted to put my mark on the internet. Much like a wild animal marking its territory, I am urinating over cyberspace in the hope that some random tom might pick up my scent and join me in some caterwauling.
Actually I’m just trying to get into the habit of writing on a regular basis about things that might actually interest people. Either that or I’m just being another self-indulgent vapid blog whore.
Probably the latter.
Anyway here you will find writings on such topics as black cat sightings, the time I was probably abducted by aliens, German housekeepers, celebrity cat crushes and pubic hair.
All you really need to know is that I am currently single. I am not Bridget Jones, nor do I aspire to be. I am very, very fond of the male form in all its glory and I drive far too fast, as the points on my licence will attest.
And also James May owes me a fiver.
