[February 27 2008]

Go to hell. YOUR hell, natch.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

As the Finchley Jehovah's Witnesses took a break from not having blood transfusions and waiting ever-hopefully for the end of the world they keep telling is coming any day soon, their good Christian hearts turned to the problem of how to get more mone.... I mean souls for the Baby Jesus, who is crying sad religious tears of despair because he has no jacuzzi.

What to do? Well, obviously if you want more people to give money to the Baby Jesus, you have to go where the people are so you can get hold of their money.  Oh, and you know, give them a couple of crappy pamphlets too.

So one bright spark who clearly works in photocopier sales but fancies himself as 'moving into marketing one day' (wouldn't it be funny if he got his dream job the day before Baby Jesus pulled the plug on us all?  He'd be so torn about the whole thing) made the connection that in Finchley every morning lots of people go to work on the tube.  So they've decided to spent most of their mornings hanging out on the road that leads to the underground in the hope that they can save our souls for us.  How thoughtful.

Dickheads.

They've overlooked a few crucial facts here:

1. Finchely is served by the Northern Line which makes the walk to the station every morning a blind blunder into the unknown.  Will you arrive to find 500 people on the platform?  Will there be a train in the next half hour?  Will the station be closed because somone is dead (this happens more than you'd think)?  Or will it be closed because it is a Monday and they had planned engineering work that should have finished on fucking Sunday but it never fucking does, so the fucking station is always fucking closed on a Monday morning after planned fucking engineering work? So basically compared to this start to the fucking morning who gives a fuck about the fucking Baby Jesus?
2. Not all of us Finchleyonians rise with a song in our Christian hearts at 5am for two brisk hours of contemplation about the end of the world but how we'll all be happy to go with Jesus when the time comes tomorrow/the next day/the day after that/no honest, it'll really really be the one after that, I promise....  Most of us get up the last second we have to while still having time to wash and and dress before we dash off to our shitty jobs, on trains that may or may not be running on the shitty Northern Line.  WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR LOONS ON STREET CORNERS WAVING DELUSIONAL PAMPHLETS AT US. If you want to get into that kind of shit move to fucking Glastonbury, okay?
3. If you feel you HAVE to persist with this behaviour try to ensure that the women you pick to stand on the street corners leading up to the station don't all look like depressed Mormons.  We know you think they look smart for the Lord, but they look weird.  And cold.  And Mormonish.  Like fundamentalist hookers.
4. It's first thing in the morning.  It's cold.  We're all late for work, but above all we are BRITISH-ISH.  We don't like people ramming their God down our throats ever since we stopped ruling the world and found out we couldn't ram our God down everyone else's throats.  We've never got over that and now we're in a grand old sulk about it.  And shoving your Stepford hookers in our faces every morning is not going to change that. 

So just leave us the fuck alone you God-bothering nitwits. 

Me especially.

Posted by eurotrash at 11:04 am
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[January 07 2008]

Sick of it.

I was imagining a phonecall I'm going to have tomorrow. At some point, I would say, "Well, I'm still flu-ey and achey but I haven't puked since yesterday morning, so I should be okay to come in on Wednesday without infecting anyone."

Yes, I have the norovirus which is currently either bringing Britain to its knees or just infecting a lot of people depending on which newspaper you read. Either way it's pretty fucking awful - I can tell you.

So here's the story.

Two weeks before Christmas I developed a sore throat which stubbornly refused to develop into the cold it promised to be. Typically, I finally got all snotty and coughy on Christmas Eve and spent the few days holiday I had feeling grotty. Then I went back to work, still feeling grotty. Meanwhile, my sister had developed the norovirus, but we didn't know it was called that.  I was feeling pretty smug that I'd not come down with it, while ignoring the fact that I was in work all last week while I was feeling pretty ill myself.

Then last Friday morning, when I woke up I noticed that in addition to my cold and cough, it hurt when I walked and just about every bit of my body ached. So I did the macho thing and went to work. By the time I left work (early) at 5pm I could barely hobble to the tube station, but hell, I'd spent at least seven hours in gainful employment so all was right with the world and no-one could call me a flake.

And then, predictably I began puking on Friday night and carried on throughout the weekend, while every bone in my body ached and my head split everytime I coughed. At one point I was in tears because I just couldn't bear any more pain or puke. I've had gastro-enteritis. I've had flu. I've never had the two together and I hope I never do again.

So. I last puked this morning. The advice is that you don't go to work for 48 hours after your last symptoms. That means if you just consider the vomit angle, I'm good to go on Wednesday assuming no more upchucks.

But I feel under terrible pressure to go into work tomorrow just to prove I'm not some freeloader, a point noted by a Bradford GP speaking to the Guardian:

"Very few people follow the advice of staying away from work, often due to unsympathetic bosses. But it's the worst time of year to catch it as a lot of places are understaffed due to leave and bank holidays so there is increased pressure to attend work if you can."

I was going to beat myself up about what a wimp I was to be taking tomorrow off just because I wasn't puking anymore when I realised that although my vomiting has stopped, I'm still coughing up both lungs every five minutes, I still feel nauseous and it still feels like someone is punching me in the chest every time I walk a step. I'm insanely ill and almost certainly will be tomorrow, but I'm eaten up with guilt because I won't be at work tomorrow, I'll only be able to stagger in on Wednesday when I'm ill but possibly non-infectious.

But I suppose I'll have a massive penis by then.

I think I'll sell it on e-bay.  It's no damn use to me.

Posted by eurotrash at 3:07 pm
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[December 11 2007]

Slow news day.

A few people, not least my sister, said I should say something about this excrescence from Tad Safran in The Times today.

I fell for it initially, and began composing a long blistering erudite FUCK YOU in response.

And then I got tired. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I could rip out all my body hair, get bulimic and shower four times a day while selling my hairless childlike skeletal body to pay for unneccessary dental/cosmetic surgery tomorrow, but Tad Safran would still be a dickhead I'd rather die than shag.

I think the problem with writing articles about how people make you not want to shag them, is that you overlook the possibility that said people might actually laugh/gag/cry at the very idea.

Posted by eurotrash at 4:00 pm
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[November 27 2007]

Dog Daze.

I worked on this one magazine in New York where one of the bigwigs used to bring her little rat-dog into the office all the time. 

It was called Percival, or something equally ludicrous.  We all had to pretend to think it was impossibly cute and spend a regulation ten minutes fawning over the little beast while his owner looked smug and just a tad bored at the hordes of ugly, badly-dressed commonplace minions paying our obligatory hommage. I was smiling on the outside, but I was punting the little squirt across the office, on the inside.

I grew seriously pissed off with the way all these girls in New York took their stupid little dogs everywhere and expected you to think that was adorable. I don't like or dislike dogs, I just don't give a shit about them and I hate having to put my glass of wine down in a bar and pretend I do just because some silly cow I don't know shoves her pooch in my face and will brand me some kind of child molester if I tell her to sod off.

And then of course there were the old ladies who used to push their barking rats around Bloomingdales in baby-strollers. I saw one who had two in a double-buggy once.  Words still fail me on that one.

Anyway, today as I struggled down a crowded tube platform on my way home from work IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RUSH HOUR I discovered my progress hampered by a young lady towing a ratdog right in front of me. It was so crowded I couldn't get past her, but I really needed to be up the other end of the platform to get a chance of taking my place at the back of the huddle so that I stood a chance of inching forward while five trains came and went so that I could be in the exact correct position in front of the doors to be the one person who managed to cram myself onto the sixth train, and so get home before pissing midnight.

The worst thing was that Little Miss New York kept stopping randomly, forcing me to sidestep to avoid squishing the rat. Why I bothered I don't know. I was getting more and more pissed off until LMNY rather made my day.

She put on a bit of a spurt that caught me and the dog off-guard. As I watched, she strode off, tugging on the lead but the dog, who had wandered off to the side and was looking behind, got jerked by the lead and went smash into a suitcase some marvellous tourist had left marvellously sticking out halfway across the platform.

The dog was fine, of course, and suddenly, so was I.

Posted by eurotrash at 5:51 pm
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[November 15 2007]

On reflection, I'm not keen on nostalgia.

I got the shock of my life today when an ex-boyfriend of mine walked into the place where I'm working at the moment.

He was someone I dated when I was 16, and he hasn't changed much except he looks like someone who's aged since I dated him, which was alas, quite some time ago. But he's aged pretty well. I was struck by how cute he was, and then I noticed he had that same little-boy-lost look which camouflaged the clever ruthless ambitious soul that lurked within. I dumped him during my O'levels when he got all whiny about the fact I was panicking at sitting nine exams with no revision and didn't want to kiss him all day long.  Men, huh?

He's something big in the music business now, along with half the nice middle-class North London boys I grew up with. They were all supposed to become lawyers, just like their dads, but then the 1990s happened. There must be a bunch of broken-hearted 60-something parents wondering where it all went wrong, in Hampstead Garden Suburb these days.  I mean, okay, he's a millionaire, but where's the job security?

Seeing the ex made me briefly nostalgic for HGS, where I grew up, until I remembered how much I always felt I didn't fit in there. I was always resentful that I wasn't Jewish - all the cool kids were. I still feel that way a bit today.

And of course, growing up in a millionaires' playground when you're the ill-considered spawn of drunken depressed immigrant parents made good is never easy. That's not to say we were poor (Notetoself: always REMEMBER DARFUR. Think PERSPECTIVE), but when you're 15 and you, ahem, 'have' to get your school uniform from Dickens and Jones, while all your friends get theirs from Donna Karan or whatever, well, it's comparative misery, I guess.

I couldn't wait to get out of HGS. Now I couldn't afford to get back in. Suddenly I feel the loss. Yes, yes, I'm getting old.

Anyway, as my ex shuffled his diffidently rich confident self into a meeting room, I ducked and turned away.  Not ready to face all that resentment and regret and how are you and I'm doing a lot worse than you thanks for asking.

And of course, plain fucking envy.

I very much fear I have fallen off the middle-class conveyor belt that my desperate peasant parents jammed me onto all those years ago.

But I still have the classy voice. Years of cigarettes and posh schooling defy my inner regressive chav.

My one remaining scrap of dignity.

By the way, whoever it was that joined upsaid.com and referred to me in the process - thanks. My damn subscription had run out and my bank card had been cancelled because it had been cloned by evil fuckers who were taking all my money out in Malaysia, and I was about to lose this blog, when I realised I had won 200-odd days for free because two people had been nice enough to mention me when they'd signed up.

Whoever you are, thanks awfully. Very nice of you. Seriously.

Posted by eurotrash at 4:21 pm
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[November 06 2007]

No biggie. I was just very miserable.

I haven't written for a while because I was very down indeed. After my operation, complications set in which were not only bloody and painful, but seemed to have exacerbated all the horrible things which were the reason I needed the damn procedure in the first place.

To say I was insanely fucked off is a major understatement. I was plunged into fetid pools of despair, and while I think anger can be hugely entertaining, I think utter misery is a whole different ball game - expecially when it's mine, and it's fresh and it's not about my value-for-money dead mad mother. We all have our limits, I suppose.

As various long-suffering friends of mine could tell you, when I get seriously - SERIOUSLY - hacked off, I just withdraw into myself and it's a hell of a job to force me back out again. It just feels like I don't want to have a conversation with anyone because they always bloody start by asking me how I am, and the thought of having to answer that just makes me want to cry.

Anyway, thanks to Ife throwing me a rope and tugging damn hard, I'm currently out of the fetid pools and showering myself off these days.

Back to work, which is very amusing, but more of that anon.

And thanks to everyone who emailed, by the way. It meant a lot. I really do hope I'll get around to answering one of these days. Honest.

Posted by eurotrash at 4:49 pm
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[September 24 2007]

Am I a woman or a mouse?

Tonight the new-ish chavs who've moved in across the street amused themselves YET AGAIN, by gunning their motorcycle up and down the street. Only problem is, it's a one-way street. In Finchley.

I had a number of choices:

1. Call the police to report rampant ghastly working-class people on my road indulging in coarse life-threatening practices and bad language.  Hmmm. Wouldn't sit well with my inclusive Liberal philosophy.
2. Call the police to worry about young people making potentially wrong life-choices that may lead them into danger. Yes, but I hate them. They're noisy and ugly and they dress poorly. It's not satisfying enough. I want them to feel pain because they've caused me irritation - far more important - and I loathe them because they wear hoodies in an unemployed kind of oh-you-can't-see-who-I-am kind of style, because I hear they're all criminals. When I wear a hoodie, I do it with a university degree and a sense of style. And I'm never seen in a fast food restaurant dealing drugs. You can clearly see the difference, right?
3. Speak to their parents. Not feasible. This is England. We don't indulge in that sort of intimacy, because we fear being knifed by precisely the kind of poor people who've inexplicably moved in across the road in our nicely middle-class area. I bet they drink,anyway. More than me. Ha!
   
4. Talk to them. No.They look weird and I'm old and let's face it, we all know the papers tell us they traffic Chinese cockle pickers with ultimate violence.
   
5. Hope they die nastily in a one-way bloodfest motorcycle smash-up and find God a wee bit too late and burn in hell while I eventually laugh at them from my heaven-bound detached house in a quiet village free from teenagers or poor people but with honest Nicaraguan liberal/socialist coffee pickers living just down the road in the next non-middle-class enclave. Yay!
   

Posted by eurotrash at 7:09 pm
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[September 15 2007]

Moving on up.

The op went okay. For everyone who emailed me and I didn't reply yet, well, it's because the aftermath left me with a bit to think about. But thanks, and I'll get round to answering.

If I apparently inexplicably deleted any comment of yours, it's because I've been suffering a massive spam attack - the worst I've ever had - so apologies if you got caught up in my robotic delete response. To be honest, I've had a lot of shit on my mind, but the one thing that always stuck in my anal retentive brain, was some bloke telling me I should always delete blog comment spam asap before google crawlers caught it, which meant it would somehow 'stick' on my page and attrack even more spam.

I got really upset when they spammed stuff about Julia, but hell, that really doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. It only matters in the small scheme of things that I live in, and I have to get out of that fairly soon.

Really is time to move on.

Posted by eurotrash at 7:47 pm
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[September 02 2007]

Time flies.

I've been having some spectacular anxiety dreams recently.

In one I was playing doubles tennis with an ex-boyfriend in the garden of my childhood home. I was trying to ignore him, but it was difficult because we were playing on the same team. Then I realised that I was late for Religious Education class at school and I couldn't find anyone to give me a lift and I was going to be terribly late, and I was very stressed out, so I stole a bicycle. But at least all my teeth didn't drop out, which is usually what happens at the end of my stress dreams.

Today I was mildly hampered by a veritable coach party of large slow people who got in just before me at the only corner shop not barred to me by amorous employees. I just sighed sadly and didn't even tap my foot as they took an hour to amble up the aisle and buy a matchstick each, as I'm not in the mood to rage at the moment.

Tomorrow morning is my operation, so I'm on a joyless fast right now.  I'm really rather nervous about the whole thing. Quite apart from superbugs and the danger of 'perforation' (side-effects are such a bummer), I've never had a general anaesthetic before and I'm worried I'll drift off ranting about my deepest inner fears as I lie presenting my naked undercarriage to a room full of people, who will then rootle and cut around inside me, no doubt sniggering because I have a funny looking womb or something.

I'm worried what they'll find, and I'm worried I'll get a leg eaten off by necrotising tiddleypoms, or wake up next to a loudly dying old lady in the recovery ward, but it's quite a relief to get this whole thing finally done - whatever happens.

Still, everyone has to be really nice to me for the next few days while I'm recovering. I plan to enjoy that way too much.

Fingers crossed.

Posted by eurotrash at 6:25 pm
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[August 20 2007]

Just a tiny prick.

I went the hospital again today, for my pre-admission check-up before they do whatever they're going to do to my womb next month.

It all went swimmingly, despite my unease at the hospital's governing trust recently being named one of the worst in the country for hygeine standards. If I don't write again after mid-September, you'll know I've been eaten alive by MRSA. But hey! This is the UK - at least they won't bill me for it. Probably.

After I saw a nurse I had to go and have a blood test, which meant hanging around waiting for an hour at the clinic, reading my paper. I missed three clues in The Guardian quick crossword, which annoyed me somewhat. It could be because I took cretin pills this morning, or it could have had something to do with the bloke sitting in front of me.

He's one of those people you dread sitting next to on a plane or a bus because they just won't fucking stop talking. And not just talking, but megaphoning a brainless stream of (sort-of) consciousness to all within a hundred yard radius.

I wasn't in the best of moods this morning. I had a terrible week last week, and had to pay extra on the damn bus today because out of three shops where I could have topped up my travel card - one is banned because it contains Corner Shop Man I, one was closed, and the other's top-up machine was broken. Just one of those things that makes you want to run out into the middle of traffic and scream, "ARSE!".

And then I had to listen to some ageing Nawf Landarn Diamond Geezer shouting, "ALL RIGHT LOVE! COME FOR A BLOOD TEST? YOU'RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE THEN, EH? THEY'RE A BUNCH OF BLEEDIN' VAMPIRES ROUND 'ERE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Or, "WHAT NUMBER ARE YOU THEN, DARLIN'? NUMBER 54? BLIMEY YOU'LL HAVE A BIT OF A WAIT! I'M NUMBER 23 AND I'VE BEEN HERE SINCE 1942! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Still, if our guts had bust at the hilarity of it all, I guess we were in the right place for treatment and/or superbugs. I think he thought he was somehow keeping our morale up, like the spirit of the blitz or whatever. If he'd had a piano, I'm fairly sure he'd have led us in a couple of rousing choruses of 'Roll Out the Barrel', or 'White Cliffs of Dover'.

But although parts of the hospital do remind me of a prisoner of war camp, it was only a blood test, we weren't being fucking  bombed, and even if we were, we wouldn't have been able to hear the air raid sirens over the sound of his mindless jolly shouting.

As I stood up he yelled, "GOOD LUCK SWEETHEART!". I nodded politely while I thought about ripping his intestines out with my bare hands.

Posted by eurotrash at 12:13 pm
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[August 15 2007]

Oh dear.

I went on holiday to Lyme Regis last week. It's very beautiful and stuffed full of fossils, if you like that kind of thing.

On the lovely beach, which isn't entirely rocky, I was sad to notice that shedloads of British kids are becoming American fat.

Discuss, if you can be bothered.

Also, corner shop man number two stroked my bare arm last night. It was an unprovoked attack. Now there's only one corner shop left to go to, but that should be okay because the man who runs it is always on the phone and can barely stir himself to take my money. I am comforted by his indifference.

Posted by eurotrash at 3:18 pm
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[August 01 2007]

Pick of the week.

Today I took my niece to Kew Gardens to see the chilli pepper exhibition.

It was fantastic. A beautiful English summer's day, no bastard rain for a change, and the whole run of the wonderful botanic gardens with suprisingly few irritating packs of pneumatic gum-chewing Brazilian students sauntering in front of you with a complete lack of respect for your personal space.

I felt so happy, so damn happy being there in the midst of so many natural miracles. I learned that the only animals who can't taste how fierce chillies are, are birds. They can't taste the spice, so they eat the chillies and then shit out the seeds so they can propagate. Most other animals (except us) hate the taste, so leave them alone. Now how fucking clever is that? Pure evolution. There's no way any God would have bothered to think of that.

Even Lily adored it, and it will have been added to her careful list of places she likes, which include New York, St Lucia, Cornwall, Camden Town, and Brent Cross shopping centre. She didn't take to Covent Garden at all -  not even the Tintin Shop - which I confess left me a wee bit offended. Who in their right mind could dislike the Tintin shop?

On the drive back, I decided to hate men. Leaving Kew, which I haven't been to since I was a child, I got mildly confused as to which lane I wanted to be in on Kew Bridge and wavered for all of a second, before pulling into the right-hand lane. So a white van man who'd been behind me then raced up beside me and shouted "why don't you fucking know where you're going?!" before pointedly speeding past me. Well, he didn't actually shout it at me, as my ten-year-old niece was sitting in the way with her window open. Nice.

Then, trogging round the North Circular, a couple of greasy sales reps in a BMW fed in from the left-hand, overtook me on the inside which is as dangerous as it is illegal, in order to get ONE CAR AHEAD in stop-start traffic. Woooooo! Big penises all round, boys. Then they smoked cigars and the fumes wafted into our car so we had to shut our windows. My mental machine gun made mincemeat of them.

Finally, as we crawled towards the monumental evil that is the Hanger Lane Gyratory System, I became intruiged by the car behind us, because it was also a Nissan Micra, only in a strangely perky turquoise colour, driven by an elderly man. As I waited an hour for the lights to change so that we could move three inches, my eyes strayed again to my rear view mirror, only to see the elderly driver having a jolly good rootle around in his nose. With his finger. And we are talking a JOLLY GOOD ROOTLE INDEED. At one point, I realised with horror that he was either going to eat what he'd found, or at least have a nice close look at it, and I had to look away before I gagged.

I mean, we all pick our noses, but why is it only men think they become invisible once they're in a car?

So men are pigs. But I bought a nice chilli plant at the Kew Gardens shop, so I'm going to lavish my love on that instead of humans of the male persuasion. Especially as corner shop man number two is now becoming horribly friendly and I fear it's only a matter of time before he too wishes to foist his email address upon me.

At this rate I'm going to have to open my own corner shop, just so I have somewhere to buy fags and milk in a reassuringly loveless environment.

Posted by eurotrash at 9:48 pm
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[July 30 2007]

They say there's a thin line between love and hate.

Well, that's it. I have officially terminated my relationship with my corner shop. Which is a bit of a pain, but so be it.

On Saturday morning, I took the girls (my sister, my niece and her slept-over schoolfriend) for breakfast at the local greasy spoon which recently rose from the flames of what I reckon was an insurance-makeover-necessitated burnout. Morally, I disapprove, but practically, they do a great fry-up.

After the fry-up, that was almost worth the increased insurance we shall all pay as a result, my sister went home while I indulged the girls' fashion needs at one of those cheapo local shops that does great clothes for kids, but only fat middle-aged stuff for grown-ups. Five quid for a couple of tops that will make them look like Sienna Miller, only more dignified and mature.

And then, walking home, we went past the lovelorn cornershop. And either because of bad luck or because horoscopes are real, Romeo popped out just as I was walking by. Because I'm so FUCKING POLITE AND BOY DO I HATE THAT, I said hello in response to him saying hello, and in front of two pre-teen girls, he asked me for my email adress.

The girls giggled and walked on. I got flustered. I turned as I walked past and mumbled 'not today', accompanied by some kind of indistinct wave in his general direction. And then, as I turned to walk round the corner and strangle the sniggering ten-year-olds, I smashed straight into some woman with large boobs that enveloped my face, staggered right, and lurched around the corner to the general hilarity of two children.

I shall never live this down. All hopes of corner shop love are well and truly dead, even if they were rather one-sided and nothing to do with me.

Also, I got winked at in Waitrose by a man with 'roid-infused muscles and an overdone tan today. He was wearing tiny black shorts and a black teeshirt with the words 'Personal Trainer', emblazoned on the back.

Like I had to be told.

Posted by eurotrash at 6:19 pm
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[July 22 2007]

Because of a nail. Godf'ckingdammit.

It was all because I'm a disorganised mess.

I'm reading a fantastic book at the moment. I say book, but really it's one among many that I'm reading at the same time, but it's the 'alpha' book that I'm actually paying attention to.

I always read a few books at the same time - one in the bath, one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and on one the tube or in any bar I'm in waiting for someone. The one on the tube/in the bar is usually the 'alpha' - the book I find most engrossing and the one I take with me when I go anywhere. The others tend to be re-reads, like Jane Austen or Christopher Fowler or Peter Akroyd. They're for passing the time enjoying something that once gave me pleasure and can again.

The 'alpha' is the one I'm interested in at any given time, and if it's any good, it'll become a re-read and be worthy of a place on my bookshelves instead of a bag for the charity shop.

[So, just for the record, I read the new Harry Potter yesterday and it's OK. Much better than the last two, while still not qualifying for a Nobel prize etc etc blah blah blah pretend I'm a bookblog and I actually care. It's heading for the charity shop, but without the pungent shame of a Sidney Sheldon novel.]

My 'alpha' book at the moment is one of the most joyous reads I've had in years. It's called 'A History of the World in Six Glasses', by Tom Standage. The cover blurb had Joe Queenan calling it "delightful", which sold it for me. And it is. Delightful. Reading it just fills me with glee and, well, delight, really.

I was heading out to meet the ever-true friend that is Wellsie on Thursday night and I couldn't find my damn 'alpha' book. I looked and looked and then I was getting later and later and I realised that to avoid the loonies on the tube I would have to buy a paper instead. The crucial point is that at that point, I thought it was Friday and that the local paper, the Evening Standard, would have a magazine - which would possibly get me through the outward and return journey without having to make eye contact with a loony if I read every single word of everything and did both crosswords.

I was late. Did I mention that? So I braved the corner shop Romeo. Curiously enough, when I walked in, his boss was being shown a chainsaw while Romeo was sorting papers with his back to me. This is the crucial point. If I had been able to find my book I would never have been there. If I hadn't been under the misapprehension that it was Friday, I would never have cleared my throat to get someone's attention. I would just have thrown 50p on the desk and grabbed my paper. But I didn't. I cleared my throat, because I needed someone to give me my magazine so that I wouldn't have to make eye contact with loonies on the tube in approximately five hours' time.

The owner carried on looking at the guy with the chainsaw. The man who loves me turned and pounced. And mumbled something at me, but I was distraught with beinglateness, so I didn't care. I handed him my 50p and then registered that he was talking about email.

I DON'T CARE. I'M LATE AND I DON'T LOVE YOU AND NOW I NEVER THINK I WILL.

In desperation, I asked him for the magazine. He told me it was Thursday and that he wanted to give me his email.

I DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING EMAIL. I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU BECAUSE NOW YOU HAVE BEGUN TO MAKE ME ANGRY AND FUCKED OFF AND FRUSTRATED. THE ROMANCE HAS WELL AND TRULY FUCKING GONE, PAL.

I pretended to mishear. I smiled weakly. He wanted to give me his email. I pretended to mishear.

AND THEN I GOT FUCKING ANGRY BECAUSE I DO  NOT WANT YOUR FUCKING EMAIL, I JUST WANT AN EVENING STANDARD, AND OCCASIONALLY SOME FAGS AND SOME MILK AND CHEESE AND SOMETIMES I NEED SOME CHEAP MALFUNCTIONING TINFOIL BECAUSE WAITROSE IS CLOSED, AND I DO NOT WISH TO FLIRT WITH YOU BECAUSE I ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT GOING ON IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW THAN THE GRATIFICATION OF YOUR PENIS AND/OR EMOTIONAL BEING, AND IF YOU HAD THE WISDOM OF A WOODLOUSE, YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE THAT OUT FROM MY PATHETICALLY AVOIDING BODY LANGUAGE, BUT HELL YOU'RE A MAN, SO WHY IMAGINE YOU COULD READ ANYTHING MORE CHALLENGING THAN 'ABC', LET ALONE TRANSLATE IT INTO COMPLEX EMOTIONAL SIGNALS.

I tapped my watch, mumbled something about being late, cringed appallingly and ran away.

Luckily, I got a wee bit tiddly with Iain, so the crosswords kept me loony-free and stupid for the journey home.

I'm still angry, though. At myself.

Posted by eurotrash at 7:08 pm
Six comments were posted (add / view)

[July 16 2007]

Sod you, Kipling. You have no idea what it's like to be a woman.

Today I met triumph and disaster and the consequences were unfortunately different.

Triumph was, of course, cooking. I made a kidney bean curry that not only was gorgeous, but fulfilled the requirements of:

1. My niece loves kidney beans.
2. My niece loves spicy food.
3. My sister has friends who are vegetarians and I love them enough to want to cook for them even though I despise their filthy carrot-munching, so this is a great rehearsal.
   
4. It was bloody good.
5. I added a bit of my own that made it even better. Hurrah.
6. We'll all be farting like pigs tomorrow. Which is always secretly fun, eh? Admit it.
   

Posted by eurotrash at 8:29 pm
Seventeen comments were posted (add / view)