Barring alien invasion or anything truly exciting happening today I think it’s safe to say that I can review 2007 as ‘fair to middling’. Yep, there has been some truly horrible bits and, yet, some bloody marvellous moments too. It’s all balanced out in the end. Of course, didn’t think I’d be back at my parents at the close of the year, but I have a job I enjoy and no work related stress going on. Can’t complain.

Had you asked me yesterday, ooo, complain? I was doing the whole mumbling under my breath, grinding of my teeth bit. It was not pleasant. It was mostly to do with the totally lack of internet. For those of you who didn’t see my Twitters, the broadband died 10 days ago. It died at the same time as the new TV was installed but I chalked that up to coincidence (yeah, right) and moved right on to swearing about Virgin Media instead. The tech guy on the phone was completely unhelpful as they always are and gave me no alternative way of getting online. He also told me that Firefox was not compatible with Virgin broadband, and that I should use Internet Explorer. When I advised him I was using a Mac, he still insisted that I needed Internet Explorer. That was the moment I knew, I just knew, that I was completely screwed.

After a 30 minute phone call he told me that he would send out an engineer…

In 10 days.

I mean, I know it’s the holidays and probably their busiest time but seriously?! 10 days?! I then released the anger and frustration I had been holding onto an, well, vented about how that really didn’t work for me and how on earth was I supposed to get through the Christmas period without onlineyness. He muttered something about not being able to do anything else and I begged him to take me through what the tech would check and do and I would check and do. Then he got all official about unofficial installations and basically you bugger about with our equipment and ooo there’ll be trouble… I dropped into sulk mode and Twittered from my mobile.

Fast forward to today (Yes, Christmas happened and it was lovely and the usual and TV was great. Yes… Doctor Who… Am not saying anything about it. Just allow me this:

and I’ll move on.)

Yes, today…

The technician shows up, complete with those plastic things over his work boots, and after about two minutes he tutted and pointed out the main cable coming into the building had been unplugged and re-plugged into an isolator on the cable feeder. He explained that whoever had installed the TV was obviously a muppet (I would like to point out that this is my word and not one that a representative of Virgin would ever use to describe an installer-monkey (actually that’s insulting to monkeys (sorry monkeys)) from the fecking useless company that installed the TV. I mean there was ABSOLUTELY NO NEED for him to even touch the cable connections. Pulling out the scart connection and replugging it in. That’s installing the TV. Oh, and pressing automatic retune. Please tell me why oh why he had to fiddle with wires that had nothing to do with the job he was doing?

Oh, wait. HE. Man. Male. Balls.

No no no no no no no NO.

I am not ending 2007 on a men are useless rant. i refuse to. Because men are lovel, wonderful creatures who I will never understand.

And short of the blinding hangover I am bound to have in the morning I think I have tomorrow’s post.

Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve. I hope you have fun in whatever you are doing to celebrate the turning of the year. I have a bottle of Southern Comfort and Jools Holland’s Hootenanny in my future.

Love you all!

Today is one of those potentially annoying posts. But, my barely thought out blog, my rules.

My school year is all turning the big 3 oh, but we’re still kids right? I mean grown up stuff doesn’t really exist or happen for us yet right? But… well, one of the sweetest guys in the world has just become a Daddy, and has photos on his Facebook profile which made me all tear-y and my Mum drift into a awwww… realm. Huge congratulations Marc!

And my ol’ friend from 100 thousand years ago gets married in the new year, and I can think of very few who deserve the good times ahead as much as she. Massive congratulations Emy and Jon!

People’s lives moving forwards. It used to send me into a self obsessed funk but now I am just happy for them - does this mean I am growing up too? Oh no…

Speaking of growing up…

Today I was left on my own at work today for a few hours. I mean, other people were in the building but on other floors squirreled away in their own offices. I was flyin’ solo, Cap’n! And it felt good - I felt like there was trust and responsibilities and all that good stuff… And I just got on with it. There was one sticky moment but I handled it with my usual amount of grace and, well, the building didn’t burn down, there was no riots, and all the filing is still alphabetical… Can I call it? Yes, I’m going to…. It was a success!

In other news, I am really worried about my cat. She injured her tail a while ago, losing feeling in the end of it. The vet said it was fine - just to watch an make sure she didn’t trap it in anything. Well, something must have happened… about an hour ago it fell off… leaving about 5mm of bone exposed… Mum is being all calm about it while I am all for calling the emergency vet. She has had a number of bad falls recently. We kind of laugh about it, as she will just fall off arms of chairs and the sofa… anything she is sleeping or sitting on, and it is funny to see… but her balance is going fast and her confidence, which used to show in her leaps and bounds, is disappearing in a cloud of hesitancy.

I was, until about five minutes ago, hopping all over the internet looking for answers but am only succeeding in scaring myself stupid. Hopefully, an appointment will be available tomorrow and hopefully Mum will react appropriately. God, I hope I am just freaking out over nothing!

One more day and then holiday and time to catch up on blog reading… and sleeping!

I know it’s amazingly boring listenign to me dribble on about being ill.  But that and work (which I can’t talk about) are pretty much all that I’ve got going on at the moment.

I came home today and fell asleep in the chair.  Except for a little emailing I am finding it very hard to concentrate on anything real.  I saw a girl I knew very well in the street a couple of days ago -she told me some good news and then had to run off as she was late for a thing.  As she walked away she shouted back, ‘Add me on Facebook!’. Now, that would be a genius idea if I could remember what her name was.

I’ve been trying syllables out in my head… Seeeeee….arrrrrr….geeeee….miiiiii….loooooo….zaaaaa…. in the hope that one of them will jump out and trigger some memory.  I have looked through the old diaries in the vague hope that I was writing at that time.  I wasn’t…

I feel really bad about this!  She was really important to me!  I remember her daughters name and where her Mum comes from and about how she feels about her religion and lots of details, but nothing that will bring the Search number under 500+.  I even hunted through a mutual friend’s friend list to try and gain some inspiration but nothing.  It’s making me wonder what, and who, else I have forgotten over the years.  Maybe I should just start writing everything down again.

My old diaries are full of ‘details’.  Times and places and people’s full names and the exact way someone looked and sounded when they said the exact words I have written on the page.  Now they are full of vague feelings and random thoughts.  It’s gone from Realism to Impressionism in just a few short (well very very very long) years, via a sideshow of Minimalism.  It’s a whole history of Art - wonder what they will look like when I reach the Cubist or Surrealist part of my life?

Yep, that would be one too many cough lozenges.

This post is going to end up talking about one of two things - the mucus flowing from my body, being told to go home from work and saying no or how fantastic Spooks was.

I’ll skip the mucus bit because even I don’t want to know about it, and the being told to go home bit went like this:

“If you’re ill go home.”
“Not ill. Fine.”
“Okay…”

And Spooks (apparently called MI-5 in the US) was genius. Genius I tell you! For those of you who haven’t seen it yet don’t worry I’m not going to give anything away. I’m just going to say in an overexcited girly way - OMG! The end!!!!! (Yes, it warrants that many exclamation points… oh, and these!!!!!!) And Holy God, when is season 7? For those who have seen it - the bit with y’know and oojamaflip when you find out that doodaa is y’know - wow, huh?!

So, the post isn’t going to be about any of those things. It’s about the news that Peter Jackson is going to produce - not direct - produce two films based on The Hobbit! To be released in 2010 and 2011. Director to be named soon presumably! And the news that Radio 1 has backed down on their decision to edit out the ‘bad’ words from Fairytale of New York when they play it (because “some members of the audience might find it offensive” - who the hell?!) presumably because the song has been played on every other radio and TV station in the country… Oh yeah, and the Beeb’s iPlayer is finally available for non-sheep er… non-Windows users.

Right I’m all news out and my nose is running again. I promise SWEAR etc etc that I will read your blogs soon. Bloglines is now showing 1173… and that’s just on the blogs I read regularly!

Today was a day when it was both good and bad to be around me. Well, actually bloody marvellous and absolutely gross is a closer description.

The bloody marvellous was that today I could barely speak and completely lost my voice at one point. I generally do the British/Monty Python )let’s face it - it’s all the same) thing at this point… ‘What? What? Leg fallen off? Arm hanging on by skin alone and I have a cannon ball sized hole in my torso? It’s barely a scratch - lt’s get on with it!’ But today I was thinking duvet, cup of fruit tea and DVDs.

But the whole job money Mum yelling at me (Miss a day of work because you’ve got a sore throat and a cough? Who do you think you are?) thing overwhelmed that and I dragged my ass out of bed and coughed my way downstairs.

Then the gross bit started. I started to make a cat/furball type noise complete with convulsions and the flem expulsion started. This went on most of the day. Periods of absolute silence (good) followed by Gollum on acid.

Pleasant.

My voice has once again retreated into the depths of my head and I am swallowing large amounts of lozenges to kick start it for tomorrow (this caused a funny bit today as I had one too many of them and started to sound drunk… that’s when I noticed the words ‘local anaesthetic’ on the box).

This annoys me as I have had my first audio commenter! Dan the man the man with the plan Dan left this little beauty today. Now I had pledged (probably not publicly) that any audio comment left would get replied by the same medium (I can’t say that about video as for some ungodly reason it doesn’t work via iSight!). I could have left a message today but at the moment am alternating between Mariah Carey and Barry White… and not in a good way.

I really should have known what kind of day it was going to be when I saw the nearly-dead magpie in the road.

Oh and sorry about the not visiting/commenting.  Am being rubbish at the moment but have put aside all time before and after Spooks tomorrow for the catch up…  Love you all.

There are one or two things which I have to see or do every year before Christmas changes from a thing that is coming ‘eventually’ to an ‘actuality’. The first indication is usually the Coca-Cola Christmas ad - the ‘Holidays are Coming’ one with the lights and the trucks and snow and all that.
Next is hearing ‘the greatest Christmas song ever’ - The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s ‘Fairytale of New York’ and third is attending the Christingle at St Michael’s, my local church.

For those of you who don’t know a Christingle is an orange (to symbolise the world) with a red ribbon round it (blood of Christ) , a candle stuck in the top (light of Christ) and four cocktails sticks with sweets on them (fruits of the Earth/four seasons). They are given out during the service, which is basically one long advert for The Children’s Society, in return for a donation.

The kids at the attached school are given Christingle candles to fill full of money which they bring with them, the adults are handed envelopes with a Gift Aid form on it (usually triggering a mass panic as no one ever brings a pen… except… cough… me). There are a couple of hymns, a sermon (advert) and a few prayers thanking God that we are not like the one’s that need help. (I get very cynical in services a this time of the year. I can’t help it.). And then the vicar points his finger severely and tells everyone to behave properly as candles pretty but painful.

It’s been done a million times before and, for those of us who have been going regularly, you can walk through it with a blindfold. This year, however, things were a little off. The sheet music for the first hymn had gone walkabouts so there was no accompaniment and the vicar had to ask for ‘help’ to get people singing. I’ll admit, it’s one I didn’t know… and when asked, only one person (in the almost full church) thought she knew it… and she was a ‘bit wobbly’. Here’s a suggestion - chose a song all the kids will know - there are plenty of Advent Carol’s out there about candles and light that are popular… I mean other than the extremely annoying Shine Jesus Shine that you love to torture us with every bloody year!

And then the microphone’s in the church appeared to be on the fritz. It was very very quiet and THEN EXTREMELY LOUD AND then back to normal all the way through. There was an element of ‘piss up in a brewery, you couldn’t organise’ about the whole thing. It was a real shame because I rely on these things to get me in the Christmas mood, which, because of a number of things I am finding it really hard to do.

So now I am hoping that shopping will do it.

It’s either shopping or drinking.

One of them has to work! And isn’t that a shame when the church, the one place I would expect to fill me with a little Christmas enthusiasm, has totally failed?

One of the things about the job I am doing is I get to read reports and hear about, straight from the horse’s mouth sometimes, the horrible things people do to one another. It’s a situation I’ve never really found myself in before.  I mean, you hear stuff on the news or are many degrees of separation removed from what x has done to y who did z to their kid but never have I had to be in a situation where I have come face to face with x or y.

I always wondered what I would do in such a situation.  Part of me thought I would, you know, give ‘em what for, let them know how disgusting they were, tell them exactly what was wrong with them and direct them towards the nearest bridge to jump off - which I realised I would never do because, well, I’m far too much of a chicken to and when people are that disgusting what would me telling them that they are accomplish (other than me getting a smack in the mouth?)

There was another part of me that  thought I was too jaded to get upset about things like that.  I was both surprised and relieved to find out that this wasn’t the case.

Some nights I have come home and just wanted to cry.  I have had to wipe away a tear of sympathy or anger at work too, and sometimes it can be difficult to get through typing up the reports.  But you just have to get on with it and that’s all I have to do.  The people I have respect for are the counsellors, the social workers, the mediators, the solicitors and… well x and y’s family members who don’t do z to them when it all comes out.

I don’t even know why I’m mentioning it today - just feeling a bit wibbly…  A bit over-emotional about things.  This is what I get for watching The Neverending Story.

I have now started my Christmas shopping!  Hurrah!  Yes, today was a payday.  I spent money on… things for… people… that may or may not read this so… WAIT UNTIL CHRISTMAS DAY PEOPLE!

Okay, today is a good day - not just because of the shopping but mainly because I have the night to myself!  The parents are at another Christmas do and my brother is at a panto.  I just watched the Ugly Betty/ Betty White episode (and loved it) and am now watching all The West Wing I can… followed by a DVD or two…  I am eating in front of the TV and drinking a Magners, watching stuff I like on TV - God, I love living on my own and must sort out moving as soon as… well… I can afford to!

sdihpk;[opn

Oh, that was the cat’s contribution.  I put my Mac on my knee and she is demanding attention… and I am a sucker for it!

Last night I went to a Christmas Do I wasn’t really looking forward to. I had tried to come up with reasons why I shouldn’t go, and even hatched several fiendish plans to prevent me from attending but none of them worked (including trying to get someone to break my leg). I got home from work, did the ‘Nothing to Wear’ dance and then went ending up wearing, what I realised later, the same skirt I wore last year and a v neck top… with a hole in it. Genius. Yes, I wore heels which were deeply uncomfortable for the first half of the night, then came the dancing and they were okay again. Uncomfortable sitting down, fine standing up - magic shoes!

Dad has pathological fear of being late so, as usual, we were the first ones to arrive at Bistro French - the front door wasn’t open and there was no one around. This led to a really awkward ‘Are we sure it’s this place, this time, this day?’ conversation and then the door opened. The staff were still setting up. So we did the only thing that you can do in a situation like that - ordered a round of drinks (which were very reasonably priced) and kept them coming. It was another 15minutes before anyone else from our party arrived.

The time we were supposed to be sitting down for dinner was 7.30… the time the ‘not terrible, but not great - y’know fairly standard food’ arrived was closer to 9pm. By that time I was hungry enough to eat the table leg and so pretty much ate whatever was in front of me. I think that’s how they get away with such a standard menu.

The background music for the first two thirds of the night was what I can only assume was a fairly average CD on repeat… with no Christmas tunes. But you could barely hear it anyway as the place was almost full.

And then the lights dimmed and the DJ put the usual affair on, with Christmas tunes and the dancing on the tables started. This is what the Bistro is known for and their tables are reinforced purely for this. I kept my feet on the ground, to ‘keep Mum company’ but mostly because I am terrified of heights. Yes, even when it’s only 3 foot off the ground…

Anyway, watching the ‘cool’ and ‘trendy’ sing along to ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ while sidestepping was pretty funny.

But then, the live band came on and everything improved. Dramatically. The Deadbeats (who are anything but) are a cover band who did everything from Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now to Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music to The Fratelli’s Chelsea Dagger to Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child of Mine. And did them well. No, not well… they were bleedin’ fantastic.

I turned into a teeny bopping groupie type - singing and dancing like mad and screaming, cheering, clapping. There was a small voice in the back of my head reminding me that I had work in the morning where I have to speak and I would regret all these vocal extremes but, pah, I was having a gooooooood time. The whole evening would have been brilliant if they had come on earlier but had the DJ been on after them he would have had to step his game up massively to not bring the mood crashing down.

Today, though, all day, my knees have been killing me. That can be explained easily - heels and dancing like a crazy person. But why, oh why, do my thumbs hurt?

I am being forced to go to a work do - that isn’t mine.  I don’t wanna!  And I’m being forced to put proper clothes on and look as if I am enjoying myself but all I want to do is climb into bed and stay there.

And I have nothing to wear.  I can do casual or office. That’s it.  I have one ‘out’ dress and it is bright red, sleeveless and makes me look like I have am keeping a sack of potatoes in it.

My little black dress is failing me today as well.

And my hair is a mess - shall drag a brush through it, put some earrings on and hope for the best.  And my tights have just laddered.

Right, black pants and a top - safe, dependable.

Now, for the important question - heels or comfy flats?

Will update when I get back.