Tuesday 25 October 2011

The one left behind

Wavey is away this week for work in some far off shore. 4 whole days. It's not the first time we've been apart for 4 days, but it is the first time that he's the one doing the away and I'm the one left behind. And I have to say it's...odd. He often tells me when I'm away and I come back how quiet the house is and how dull it is when I'm not here to provide the entertainment *chuckle* And it makes me laugh in a lot of ways that I feel the way I do now, cos I lived on my own for 7 years. 7 years of going home to an empty house, cooking for one, spending evenings alone...but now, after 3 years of being with Wavey and nearly 2 living here with him, being alone is a very strange place to be.

He's right, the house is quiet. And definitely feels a bit like there's something important missing. For a guy who to the outside world is quiet and observant and sometimes a bit shy around new folk, trust me when I say the man can chit the chat. We spend a whole heap of time talking and gossiping and laughing and being daft and stupid and having lots and lots of fun. And this quiet house is most definitely not the way it usually is. 

Today is day 2, so I know it's halfway through. By tomorrow it'll be even better cos then there'll only be one day. And I'm off out for my tea tomorrow with the lovely T and then I'm meeting Fizz at the cinema to see the new SJP film that I've read really awful reviews about but I can't help it, I heart SJP the mostest and just have to see it. Plus it has Christina Hendricks in it and I heart her too. Win win...or just plain awful, we'll see and report back if you're really lucky. Happy times with my buds. 

But I tell you what, I can't wait til Thursday evening when Wavey walks back through the door...the smile on my face then will be fit to bursting!

Monday 24 October 2011

Crafty

Dizz came round to do some top-secret crafting. She made a ****** and I made a dragon fly.

For some reason Dizz laughed outrageously when I showed her the first stages. Can't imagine why.




Saturday 22 October 2011

A whole lotta nothing






This, my friends, is an empty week. A whole lotta nothing. And it's been absolutely blooming wonderful! Don't get me wrong, I love our busy lives muchly but sometimes, a whole week stretching ahead with absolutely nothing in the diary is a delicious feeling. Turned out that we still did a whole heap of stuff, but it was all on the spur of the moment with no forward planning needed. Fancy going for a swim after tea? Then lets do it. Fancy popping to the Farmers Market in town? Then lets do that too! Shall we go to the cinema tonight? Let's see how we feel after we've eaten our wild boar, ginger and leek sausages with piles of mash and yummy veggies. 

Next week we're back to the usual busy-ness, but for the rest of today and tomorrow? We'll just see what we feel like doing. Yippee-yay! 

Wednesday 19 October 2011

If one sentence summed up my average day at work...

..."a mad expense of days unspooling in the dimness in Periodicals"

I like that, I do. 

Thanks to Edmund de Waal in The Hare with Amber Eyes

Saturday 15 October 2011

Not again!


My hairdresser told me this morning that my current hair colour is in danger yet again of becoming so popular that every other person has it in the street. And apparently it's all because of this lady above. She's from The Only Way is Essex or TOWIE as it's commonly known, the latest reality tv that everyone is hooked on (doesn't even compare to my fave: Made in Chelsea). I literally wailed noooooooo. 

Last time my hair colour became really popular, I knew it was time to change when a woman got on the bus in her pyjamas and slippers with the same hair colour....there's not really a lot else you can say to that is there? 

So now what? What colour do I go now? This cannot be happening again. Why can't people be original? Bugger.

Friday 14 October 2011

Fit for superheroes

A while back I blogged about my latest shoe lust of a pair of red Nike hi-tops and how I was selling items in order to raise the funds to buy them...well after all that effort, turns out you can't get red ones anymore! And the only ones I've seen now are either black or grey (bor-ring), shiny (eep!), or like pimped up versions of them with all sorts of hideous neon colours. Ugh. So no shoes. Oh dear what is a girl to do...? 

Well first of all she can use some of the £69 I raised to buy some fancy dancy face moisturiser that cost rather a lot of money but is oh so lucious and makes my skin feel all yummy scrummy and is full of natural and organic ingredients. And then she can decide that if she can't have shoes, she can instead have a fabby new coat. A coat that is in the shape of a cape. A coat fit for superheroes! After much-o looking around to find a rather nice one, I spotted a lovely black cape coat this very evening and have just put my order in for it super speedy. Am very excited! 

I'm normally a get your hands on it straightaway type of gal but I've spent a while looking around for one of these coats cos I think the balance is tricky. Too much cape and you're in danger of looking like Batman or a fallback from the 70s and not in a good way. But this one I've picked is very laydee-like. I went for black, the safe option cos I wear a whole heap of bright colours everywhere else. It has a high collar and is double breasted and fastens with a belt. And is actually quite short, just falling nicely onto to the top of the hips (in the photos). Can't wait to get my hands on it now to model it and strut around in it to make sure it feels good, you know, that kind of thing. 

As I know this is actually coming and it's not just an image I found on the interwebby and will turn out to be unobtainable, I promise I shall post a piccie of me in said cape coat, strutting my stuff for the camera. Yippee! 

Happy weekend, lovelies!

Thursday 13 October 2011

Yuck barf eep and eek!

It's not the first time I've blogged about my fascinating (read god-awful) bus journeys and I'm sure it won't be the last but this past week has been like some kind of uber-hell for shocking bus experiences. As I'm a very kind person I thought I'd share them with you. 

First up, don't know what's going on or where all the people have come from, but what the eff? Over the summer the buses were blissfully empty, no rotten school kids, no uni students, no college peeps, hardly anyone in fact. But in the last 2 weeks it's like the people are just breeding and each bus journey the bus is more and more full. Of course the company never learns and considers putting on a double decker or better yet investing in those bendy buses that they have like everywhere else in the world. Oh no that would be too kind. Let's instead just CRAM the whole world of bus people into one teeny tiny tightly packed sardine tin. Oh happy days. 

Then let's throw in some horrible smelly boys who think it's totally okay to fart at will. And frequently so that the whole of the bus is almost gasping for breath in the toxic swill. 

Or let's cram so many people on so that the standing up peeps have nowhere to put their stuff so that Dizz gets rucksack in face all the way there...

...again the day after that one but this time a man's crotch in my face all the way there.

And speaking of the crotch area, it seems that some yack awful men seem to be confused and think that your hand holding on for dear life to the rail has been put there in life for them to blatantly rub themselves up against you as they go past *shudder shudder shudder*

And all this my friends was in just one week. I know of at least 2 other peeps I work with who have suffered similar fates and have had to email the bus company. This is seriously not on bus folk - what are you going to do about it?! I suggested at work that we all contribute some pennies and save up and buy our own bus. We can take it in turns to drive and pick everyone up on the way. It would be like every morning and every evening would be a work trip out. It'd be pretty awesome. If only *big sigh* 

There's one day left of the week which means one more bus journey (only one thank goodness as Wavey kindly picks me up from work every Friday evening like the fab blokey that he is). I can only wonder with horrified wonderment what that bus journey will bring...

Saturday 8 October 2011

Observing the observed

I'm reading a book at the moment called "Watching the English" by Kate Fox. I'm sure you can gather from the title that she is an anthropologist who spends her time going round the country into various places and watches us English folk. It's not the best book I've ever read along these lines, that would probably go to Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island" which is laugh out loud funny, even on public transport laugh out loud funny. But it is a very interesting book and I've found myself doing a fair bit of watching myself as I've worked my way through it.

Last night was a classic occasion. We were at a gig in a very small intimate venue, I was there with Wavey and my folks and there were probably about another 70-80 people there so pretty small group, hard to hide any behaviour that might be considered against the norm. First up was probably other people watching me as I did a double take when I spotted one of the upstairs people from work, totally out of context and not at all where I would have imagined he would be on a Friday night. We both did that comedy thing where we were looking around, spotted each other, did the double take shocked look thing, and then broke out into a broad smile and waved. Once the first band had finished I went over and invited him to join us as he was all on his lonesome and it seemed a bit mean to just leave him there. He came over, many hands were shaken and introductions were made, then we went into classic Kate Fox observed behaviour - the boys headed to the bar, I stood behind chatting with my ma, they came back and started talking about sport and other "manly" rock bands that might have been seen in the past. 

Next up, the second support act was a young girl with a gee-tar and she was having a LOT of trouble getting set up. Like embarrassingly awful as she stood on the stage and many gestures were made towards the sound booth and we people stood around, feeling awkward and shuffling our feet and trying to fill the terrible silence. We English, as Kate Fox has observed, really hate this kind of situation and so we fill it in an equally awkward way. I had to turn my back on her in the end which is unbelievable rude but I was mortified for her! About 20 agonising minutes later she finally got started, and we classically over compensated with very loud applause and woo-hoo-ing - don't get me wrong, she had a very pleasant sound but she really wasn't all that marvellous. But we definitely made her feel that she was to get over our embarrassment! 

The headliner (Roddy Woomble, totally brilliant and well worth checking out if you ever get a chance to see him live) came on and we all settled in for the real music to start. About 3 songs in someone started talking really really loudly at the back. I'm ok with that kind of thing as am generally so focussed on watching and listening that I don't hear what's around me, but there was one woman in front doing the silent complaining that we're famous for. She was clearly very angry with the loud folk but she didn't get up, she didn't confront them, she didn't wag her finger or tell them to shut up...no she just kept turning round and staring at them as if she could stare them into shamed silence. Which of course didn't work as loud people like that couldn't care less or they wouldn't do it in the first place. But she kept on trying and probably totally spoiled her own enjoyment of the gig in the process.

Then we reached the end of the night, when people say their goodbyes. In our little group there were a few more awkward moments where people decided if they should shake hands and did that funny putting your hand out, not sure, taking it back, trying to pretend you were going to scratch your arm or whatever.

I'm pretty certain that if Kate Fox was there last night she'd have enjoyed observing us all. Maybe we'll appear in a chapter of her next book...

Thursday 6 October 2011

Floor dilemma

Wavey and I have a cream carpet in our living room which is pretty much a really silly idea when you hear that we are both the clumsiest people in the world. It was only a matter of time before something awful happened. A few weeks ago due to an unfortunate cup placing incident a whole cup of coffee was knocked over and despite many many efforts with carpet cleaners and hoovers the stain is still there. We have no other option than to replace the carpet.

It was always kind of in the plan to do that anyway as you walk straight into the house and into the living room. And dirt from the streets get dragged in, when it snows the grit that gets stuck to our boots leaves horrendous stains, we have a coal fire, we work a lot in the garden and often have muddy feet that we don't realise we're dragging through, we have grotbag kids over and sometimes dogs too...all in all, a cream carpet was never the best option to go for. Hey ho, you live and learn. 

But now we've got the dilemma. Taking all of the above into account, how do we choose the best type of flooring that will ensure we no longer have to worry about carpet stains and spend a fortune on carpet cleaning. I reckon it breaks down into a few choices:
*Replace this carpet with another carpet but a darker colour, with maybe a pattern and a different weave to allow for regular stains and not be so obvious
*Forget the idea of carpet altogether and consider some sort of wood flooring alternative, but then it leaves us with the decision of laminate over real wood, or engineered laminate or wood equivalent...
*Turn the floor into another garden but indoors, lay a bit of lawn - would deffo save on hoovering time and could certainly prove a talking point
*Go way out there and build a porch so we can wipe our feet before we come in!  

And so I'm throwing it out there and pleading for help. What should we do folks? We've already moved the rug to cover the coffee stain but it has to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Any other suggestions that would save us some pennies? Go on, help a gal out...