Road trip

Darrell & I have hired a car and hit the road with a couple of rucksacks* and a guitar.

We're currently in Calgary, which is gorgeous, but I can't upload my pictures just now as I don't have my laptop with me. We're here for a couple of days, then off to Banff for a couple of nights in a log cabin before heading up to Jasper to (hopefully) do some white water rafting before the season finishes. I will no doubt blog about it properly when we return, including pictures of the (slightly scary) B&B we're currently staying in. Quick preview: lots of soft toys. LOTS.

*Well, a small suitcase and a holdall - we are in our thirties you know.

A disgrace to the sisterhood

I'm sorry, I really am. I realise that what I'm about to tell you might mean I have to hand in my membership to Womenhood United but I've been officially outshopped by a man.

Omigod but Darrell can shop. The other day we went to the West Edmonton Mall (until 2004 the largest shopping mall in world) and spent 12 hours there. Man but it is BIG. To be fair, as well as going in most (but not all!) of the shops, we also had lunch (chinese) and dinner (ribs), went to the cinema (saw Shoot 'Em Up and it is baaaaaaaaaaad), watched a sealion show, went bowling (I whooped Darrell's ass so that's one back for the girls), though we didn't have time to go to the waterpark with waterslides (and hadn't brought our cozzies so might have got arrested for indecency if we'd tried), nor did we have time to go to the theme park (yes really) or see the aquarium. But for the main bulk of the day, we did go into a million different shops. By the end, I was to be found sat on the man chairs moaning quietly and rubbing my tired legs, while Darrell zoomed round like a whirling dervish saying "Come on now, if you sit down you'll never want to get up. Let's pick up the pace!" In subsequent days he has continued this trend by spending a small fortune on hoodies, computer games and - most importantly, a very nice new guitar. Pretty much the full extent of my shopping up till now has been the garment you can see me modelling above, which they call a vest over here, but clearly it is actually a bodywarmer. And green to boot. Oh and I bought some underwear. My god I'm going crazy!

Today we're just chilling out, eating left over Mexican food - those burritos are gooood but they are filling - and playing Guitar Hero, which I wasn't bad at on the easy level but now we're using four fingers I find I'm struggling to keep up with the guitar meister...

New photos here and here.

Catching up a bit

It’s been so great seeing Megan again but we’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to blog, so sorry aboot (Canadian pronunciation) that. I’m typing this on word as I’m on the train between Vancouver & Edmonton and shall upload it as soon I get near an internet connection. I’ll give you a brief rundown of the past few days:

On 11th Sept, Megan & I checked into the HI hostel in Jericho Beach, where we had a private room, and went for dinner at the Galley Patio Bar which was cheap and cheerful but with a stunning view of the sun going down over the beach, mountains and cityscape (and yes, we did raise a toast to what would have been my 8th wedding anniversary). The following day we went on a couple of recommendations to Lynn Canyon, where we had a great mini-hike in the forest, sat for ages looking at the glacial water running through the valley and had a picnic (but not in the forest – here you gotta be BEAR AWARE!). We had dinner at a 24hr vegetarian fusion restaurant called Naam. We’re sooooo Vancouver. Next day we
drove up Highway 99 to Whistler, where the 2010 Winter Olympics is being held. As you can see, in the race to the shopping I won gold, but to be fair, Megan was a worthy runner up. The weather, it has to be said, has been stunning and we were sweltering, which was not what I expected the first time I visited a ski resort but there you go. Life’s like that, as some wise Canadian woman once said. I think it was Avril Lavigne. Later that evening we headed down to W4th (I speaka da lingo) to find some dinner and discovered our new favourite restaurant in the whole world, Fish, where we had food so good we couldn’t speak. We did make a lot of mmmmm noises though and nodded a lot too. I had the blackened trout with lemon butter and fries. Then a hop over to Capers for a lemon tart, pecan pie and coffee for dessert, next to a couple of anorexic girls talking about their treatment programme, which made us appreciate our puddings even more.

Breakfast on 14th Sept was taken at Sophie’s Cosmic Café where we enjoyed the crazy crap on the walls muchly. We did a spot of shopping, returned our rental car and headed over to the train station to pick up the VIA rail train through the Rockies to Megan’s hometown of Edmonton. As I write, we’re a few short hours away from our destination (the journey is 23 hours in total). A few observations from our journey so far are as follows:

The Rockies, as the name might suggest, rock
Mountain sheep can proffer the most disdainful expression.
Bears can be hard to spot, even when someone tries to point them out to you.
I don’t think moose actually exist. A clever marketing ploy on the part of the Canadians, I’m guessing. At least, I’ve not seen any, which is almost conclusive.
Buffalo, however, do exist and are big.
Bright sunshine without a cloud in the sky is definitely the best way to see this all.
Bring snacks when you're going on a 23 hr train journey.
Glacial water is very blue and, allegedly, very cold.
Washing and dressing in a tiny bathroom is easier than I might previously have thought.
Sleeping across two reclining seats is not.
Canada is very big and very beautiful indeed.

When we arrive in Edmonton, we will have two lovely boys waiting for us. Craig, Megan’s fiancé, and Darrell, who flew in from London yesterday for a month long visit and whom I cannot wait to see. They met up this morning and have been out buying ‘essentials’ (i.e. beer), and will be taking us out for dinner on our arrival. Life is good.

No longer alone...

Whilst I don't have too much to report from yesterday (I took a break from walking and did very little except have a MAMMOTH session on MSN Messenger), I'm very excited today because although I'm checking out of my lovely guest house (boo), Megan is flying in this afternoon to stay with me at a hostel on Jericho Beach (hurray!) Can't wait to see her. She'll be here in Vancouver with me for a few days before we head back to Edmonton by train on Friday. It's a 23 hour journey through the Rockies - supposed to be spectacular. I'm sure I'll tell you all about it.

I have decided that although there are definitely positives to travelling alone - you can go where you want when you want, don't have to justify it to anyone, can stay as long as you want and bail out if you're bored without explanation - I have found the lack of someone to say 'Oh wow, look at that!' to rather isolating. I'm a sociable creature by nature and, although I've chatted to a few people, a few possibly against their will, I think I'd prefer to share my experiences with someone. I am, of course, therefore delighted that, as well as spending the next month with Megan and her fiancé Craig, Darrell is flying out at the end of this week to bum around for a month in Edmonton with me. We will probably hire a car and do a bit of a mini-Rockies tour and Megan plans to take us up to her parents' cabin which is somewhere on a lake, where we hope very much to see the Northern Lights. Oh I just can't wait.

In other news, I've had an allergic reaction to something - no idea what - and have swollen and numb lips. Thank goodness I've not had to do any kissing this week.

Canadian wildlife

I had such a lovely day today. I went for a walk down Robson (that's Robson STREET for all my English readers) and ended up at Stanley Park, where I saw 2 raccoons! Never seen any before that I'm aware of, so I was pleasantly and probably rather ridiculously amused by them. It reminded me of an Australian girl I once knew, by the name of Arri. I was driving along with her and saw a squashed hedgehog at the side of the road, to which I said 'Awwww', or words to that effect. She asked me what I was awwwwing about, so I said I'd seen a dead hedgehog, to which she burst out laughing. Hardly an appropriate response, as pointed out. It turns out she assumed I was joking because, as everyone knew, hedgehogs don't actually exist, they are merely creatures created by, and for, cartoons and children's stories. She refused to believe my vigorous assertion that they did in fact exist, and as I couldn't ever find another hedgehog to show her, I'm pretty sure she returned to Oz still thinking I was making it all up. At least I'll now believe in raccoons.

I then visited the Vancouver Aquarium, which I'm pleased to report is excellent, and I was beyond delighted to finally see the world-famous Vancouver sea otters that have been paraded about so often on popbitch. The beluga whales were beautifully graceful, the sea lion enormous, and I must admit to being rather pleased with some of the pictures I took of the jellyfish. I love jellyfish. I want some as pets. Is that allowed? As is customary in these places, I had to exit through the gift shop, where I managed, against the odds, to convince myself I didn't actually want a soft-toy jellyfish or a sea otter backpack.

Night vision

I just dragged my sorry arse back up the Harbour Centre tower to see the view of Vancouver at night. The ticket is an all day thing and they say it's worth seeing at night too, so even though I wanted to just slob out and go to bed early (really? Me?) I thought no, you've come this far, you've got to see all there is to see.

I'm pretty glad I did.

Getting the hang of it all

Well the good news is, I do feel like I'm settling in a bit now. Today, someone approached me and asked me where Seymour and Davie was. Now, once upon a time, in the not-too-dim and distant past, I'd have wondered who Seymour and Davie were and why I should know what they were up to. But now, quick as a flash, I replied "One or two blocks down and one block over". Oh yes. If I hadn't said it in my self-consciously plummy English voice, he'd have thought I was a native, of that I've no doubt.

One thing I do need to tackle though, is my fear of small change. Let me explain. Notes, I can do. They're colourful on the whole and have the numbers written clearly on them, so I have no problem handing them over as though I've been doing it all my life. The coins, however, imbibe me with a sense of apprehension. I go to buy a coke and look into my [overfull with change after all the note usage] purse, but without taking each coin out individually, peering at it this way and that in the available light to see the value hidden somewhere within the decoration and, let's face it, looking like a numpty in the process, I can't just throw the correct change the cashier's way. The other thing that drives me mad is that uniquely North American thing of not including the tax (VAT equivalent) in the advertised price, most of the time anyway. So you go to buy something for $2.99, with $3 clutched in your sweaty palm, and the woman behind the till says "That's $3.24" (or whatever the rate is - I haven't worked it out and with my limited grasp of maths, probably never will). But then the next time you go to buy something that costs, say, $1.35, you deliberately go up with something approaching $2 just in case, and then they say "That's $1.35 please". I just don't bloody get it.

This morning I went to the Granville Island market, which was very pleasant - the food market was fab. I bought some Golden Raspberries, which are just like normal raspberries but they aren't red. Strange. But delicious. I wandered round for ages, bought some sourdough bread (yum) and then hopped on a ferry over to the main part of Vancouver again, got lost (happens to me alot but it's okay, I get where I want to be eventually) then headed over to the Harbour Centre, which has some spectacular views, which you can see in my updated photo album here. In order to get up to the viewing gallery, you go up a glass-fronted lift on the outside of the building, which ascends at one story per second. After contemplating the wisdom of this for a few seconds, I turned to the two older American women I was sharing the lift with and said "This probably isn't the moment to mention Towering Inferno, is it?" Apparently, it wasn't.

It is really Stanley's Park, isn't it?

My first lot of photos is up and you can find them here, or via my facebook account if you prefer. I went for a cycle round Stanley Park today on a slightly ridiculous pink cruiser (okay, okay, I loved it) - had set off with a load of other BUNACers but lost them in the first 5 minutes, which in fact gave me the opportunity to do it my way. Which, incidentally, involved a lot of grunting and stopping for rests. Had been planning to go out and be sociable this evening but am so bloody knackered now that I'm thinking instead of, oh, I don't know, staying in, reading my book and then going to bed. Again. I'm really so bloody predictable.

I've also got a Canadian sim card and phone number now - email me if you want me to send it to you so you can text me on occasion if you fancy - and can you believe that over here you get charged for receiving calls, as well as making them? Talk about a licence to print money!

I'm now settled into the Urban Hideaway, where I have a double room with a view of the garden all to myself, which feels like the ultimate luxury after the 4 bedded bunk-up of last night. I've spent the afternoon exploring the shops and even went to the cinema to see Sicko, the new Michael Moore film which features - much to my huge excitement - my very own Queen Charlotte's hospital and my fellow midwives Darrell Brooks & Becky Lupton! Whilst the NHS and the Canadian healthcare system are praised for their open door policies, the film provides a damning report on the American health insurance scandal which I watched open-mouthed, even finding myself crying on 3 occasions. A sharp reminder of why I never want to live in the US.

There's a pub meet tonight with all my fellow BUNACers, which I feel I should attend in order to be sociable but a) I'm still pretty tired and would rather have an early night and b) fully expect them all to be out to get trollied, which as you know, is not my bag. Maybe I'll just join them for a quick soft drink out of politeness and then take refuge in my grandmother-of-the-group status and head home for a cup of something warm and comforting. From coke to cocoa in 2 easy steps.

Busy bee

One of my room mates found out how old I am this morning. Her reaction was a picture and no mistake. I'm amazed she didn't ask me if I still had all my own teeth...

Got a busy day lined up as I've got to run for breakfast now, then to a briefing about getting a Social Insurance Number (like an NI number) so I can work here, then moving from the hostel to this guest house, then might get time to do some exploring!

Canada, eh?

After months and months of talking about (sorry, aboot) coming to Canada, I'm not sure why it's taken me so much by surprise that I'm actually here. All my many leaving do's have been lovely, great to catch up with everyone I could before I came out here, but clearly I have been very deeply in denial about, well, everything I think.

For a start, my fellow BUNAC travellers are nearly all considerably younger than me, so I already feel like their mother. The drive from the airport into town (in a yellow school bus!) was a surreal experience because I kept seeing unfamiliar things and thinking 'Oh my God I'm in Canada. I'm actually IN Canada. I'm in bloody Canada. And what's more, I'm going to be here for a really long time'. I'm normally a cool and confident traveller but am feeling distinctly odd and lost out here on my own. At least it's not long till Megan flies out from Edmonton to come and visit me!

I'm staying tonight in a (slightly musty smelling) hostel in a room with 3 of the rest of the BUNAC gang - though I'm so bloody tired I don't think the smell or company will bother me much - who are all going out for drinks and food roundabout now, but I think I'm just going to head off to bed. Did I say mother? Make that grandmother. I have already had a quick wander round Davie Village, where the hostel is located, which appears to be Vancouver's equivalent of Old Compton Street. Lots of rainbows. Lots of sex shops. Then I found this coffee shop which had free wireless internet so I rushed back to get my laptop to have a quick blog for your delight and pleasure...

Right, now I'm just too tired to write any more just now. It's only 9.15pm here, but it's 5.15 tomorrow morning in my head. Anyway, rest assured I made it here safe and sound and haven't managed to do anything stupid yet. There's still plenty of time for that.

I'm a free agent...

...because I have one of these. It's super cool, 120Gbs, fits in the palm of your hand and weighs as much as bar of dairy milk.

Mmmm. Chocolate. On that note, my friend Guy gave me a kilo of Dairy Milk as a going away present, on the condition I ate it all before I left.

3 days left. No sweat.

Two sticks on my feet, some snow and a hill...

...in Milton Keynes of all places, my feelings about which have been previously documented.

For my birthday, in preparation for spending 6 months in a ski resort, David bought me a skiing lesson at the Xscape SnoZone! which I had yesterday. Given that I can't remember ever having been in the same room as a pair of skis, let alone had them on my feet, it was a steep learning curve but in 3 hours I went from "how the hell am I supposed to move with these bloody things on my feet?" to "get me higher up this damn hill and watch me kick some powder!"

If you'd like to see how I ended up, watch this:


But if you'd like to see me fall over the first time I tried turning (and I'm guessing that you would), see here (sorry it's sideways):


I had a blast but, inevitably, my thighs are paying for it today.

Baby names - again

Remember the couple from New Zealand who wanted to call their son 4Real? NZ authorities blocked it, because numbers aren't allowed in names. So the parents have now settled on something a bit less controversial. Superman.

Sigh.

Au reservoir work

Well my last day at work didn't go quite as planned. I haven't finished my (yawn!) audit for starters, because I'm very lazy when it comes to boring data input, but I still need to finish it at some point. I can do the lion's share at home but will have to pop in to the hospital next week to tidy up. On top of this, I have a case conference (social services meeting) to go to on Monday, because it's one of my girls I've spent months working with and fighting for, so I don't want to let her down by not attending just because I've left work!

Today I was asked to meet Debbie at 1.30pm in the community office. This I did and was taken round to my 'surprise' leaving party, which was very nice, and I ate lots of food. Then I had to finish a report for the social services meeting on Monday. It took me ages, because I had a load of research to do for it, then I tried to email it to the social worker, but our email client at work is being migrated this weekend and it wouldn't let me log on. So I thought I'd photocopy a load for Monday instead. Half an hour and SIX jam clearances later, I'd failed to copy even one bloody report. I thought I'd give up and go home, so I went out to my car, only to find the sodding thing wouldn't start. It had done this the other day and I'd taken it to the garage, who said they'd sorted the problem. Obviously not. So I contacted Security and they came out to jump start me, bless their cottons. I noticed my phone had run out of battery and had a barrage of messages when I switched it on. One was from Claire, for whom I'm housesitting at present while she's in Portugal, who'd had a garbled message from her cleaner about something she couldn't understand, so she was panicking. I promised to get home asap to make sure everything was okay (which it is, it's just that the cleaner had shut the door behind her and left some documents in the house by accident). I put my car stereo in to relax me and, lo and behold, the sodding thing wouldn't do a dicky bird. Won't even switch on. No idea why. I have a CD stuck in it too.

Now I've got home I'm pissed off and bloody starving in that order, so I need to find something to eat and then syringe feed the hamster. Don't ask.

What a thriller!

Whoever came up with this idea to keep Filipino prisoners occupied was a genius.



Sentenced to 10 years, out in 5 for good rhythm.

One last thing...

oh and if I die, can I have the coffin in picture number 7 please? Very fitting.

Jordandre

Lovely to see that Jordan and Peter Andre have gone for a low-key, attention-avoiding name - Princess Tiaamii - for their new daughter.

"We've put an accent over the first A to make it more exotic and two Is at the end just to make it a bit different"

Because having parents who look like Barbie & Ken doesn't make the kid different enough, does it? Given that she narrowly avoided being called Tinkerbell, it could conceivably have been worse I suppose.

The saga comes to a close

Well.

I'm extremely mindful that my biggest fear - and the reason I raced through the latest and last Harry Potter at a fair old speed - was that someone might ruin it for me by giving me even the merest hint of what might happen and therefore I shan't be posting anything on here which could give anyone still reading (or yet to read) any clues.

All I'll say then is that I wasn't disappointed for a moment.

Big night

As you may have guessed, my internet access is, at best, sporadic. I've just been staying at my friends Sophie & Dan's while they've been on holiday* and they don't have wireless broadband (the heathens!) and I swear to God** I felt like I'd been cut off from the whole universe. Which, in a sense, I suppose I was.

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. Tonight is, as you will no doubt be aware, a momentous and long-awaited occasion. HP7: the saga comes to a close. At once both incredibly exciting and incredibly sad. I shall be collecting my copy at midnight and reading through the night, each turn of the page an intrepid journey into the unknown. I shall race to finish it, heart in mouth and hands all a-tremble, and cry when I do; of that I have no doubt. Then I'll turn to page 1 and begin again.

I shan't post any spoilers, rest assured.

*I seem to have given up on bed rating, because I keep forgetting to take pictures: sorry
**a.k.a. Silas the Hobbit

My last birth before leaving the job

Twins, first (right), boy, born in water, second (left), girl, footling breech on all fours. Me, bra showing like a hussy, very proud*.

*not of the bra showing, particularly

Tony's biggest fan

Wow. It's like me when Maggie went:

Bugger

Got knocked off my bike this evening and ended up with my leg trapped under the bike, which was under the front of a car. Can't walk on my right ankle at all, which is swollen to buggery,
though thank god there's no actual breaks (went to A&E just in case). Fella who hit me admitted liability straight away so that will make things easier.

Ouch ouch bloody ouch. I'm very cross.

Johnston freed at last

Hurray hurray hurray!

Podication

I downloaded lastest Geoff Show podcast today, as is my wont, only to discover to my absolute delight that the show recorded on my birthday was in fact podicated (the podcast equivalent of dedicated) to ME!

Okay, I can't say this was a total surprise, as I had written in to request a birthday podication a week or so ago. Still, as this is my favourite show on the radio I couldn't have been more chuffed with my endorsement. Please feel free to follow the link above to download it and hear for yourself. The podication is right at the beginning.

Thorpe Park

Today was the first time I've been to Thorpe Park for donkies*. About 12 years? And boy, has it grown up (as, evidently, have I). As I lived only 10 mins from its door, I used to go most weekends as a kid with my friend Fiona. Back in those days, the highlights were Cinema 180 (predecessor to the IMAX), the tame-by-today's-standards-but-we-thought-it-was-great Space Station Zero (roller coaster in the semi-dark), the Magic Mill (a sedantry jaunt in a boat which went past a load of dodgy fibreglass animals and pixies), Phantom Phantasia (you sat in a shell and slowly went round some 'scary' exhibits, including a skeleton ball and Henry VIII sat having dinner as his wives slowly appeared and disappeared around him - I was once chucked off this because my date, Lee Ayers, was spitting at the waxworks). But I suppose in this day and age, these things just wouldn't cut it.

Despite my nostalgia for such shoddy nonsense, the new rides are fabulous. And so they ruddy well should be for the £32 entrance fee, which left me breathless before we'd even seen a ride. Thank God I had a BOGOF voucher but even so: is it just me who is endlessly fascinated by the extent to which we're being fleeced at these things? In addition, inside the park you could buy 'Fastrack vouchers', which allowed you to jump the queue at the big rides. I have to admit, I balked at first at the thought of paying £9 more than I strictly needed to but as we were limited in the time we had there, bypassing the queues at 4 of the biggest rides was well worth the money! Oh the leisure of it all, wandering past all of the waiting crowds and waltzing pretty much straight on.

Colossus, the world's first 10 loop rollercoaster, was good. Nemesis Inferno was amazing. Tidal Wave was, as you might expect, very wet. X:/No Way Out (though, given that I'm here to blog another day, I think you can guess that there was one) was a bit weird, what with being the world's only backwards rollercoaster which takes place in the pitch black. I believe there's a reason why no one else has made one, and why we had to delay our entrance until they'd cleared up some vomit.

But Stealth. Oh but Stealth.

0-80 mph in under 2 seconds. A vertical climb to (and, naturally, descent from) 205 feet. Breathtaking isn't the word - it's so fast you don't have time to breathe. The acceleration takes place using a series of electromagnets - same as those superfast trains we're hearing all about but will probably never see in Britain - which makes it so smooth you might as well be be sat on a giant knife and wearing trousers made from butter. We paid yet another £6 each to Fastrack (about £1 for every 1.5 second of the ride) to Pole Position (i.e. the front seat) but it really was worth every penny.

Given the huge expense we'd already incurred, we didn't buy any of the pictures that we were so kindly offered by Thorpe Park for an additional extortionate fee. We decided it was cheaper to recreate them for your viewing pleasure instead.

So here is David & I on Nemesis Inferno:



Here we are coping with the massive acceleration on Stealth:


And here was us trying to avoid getting too wet on Tidal Wave:


*but this time they made me

Birthday message

Thirty bloomin' three.

Technically not yet mid-thirties. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

What's in a name?

A couple in New Zealand are fighting to be able to name their baby son 4Real. I'm not surprised, given that most of the girls I work with give their babies made up names - or conventional names spelt with random Ps, Zs and, for some reason, hyphens and apostrophes thrown in for good measure - and it was only a matter of time before numbers came into the equation. I'm slightly surprised that the NZ authorities have already had to put the kybosh on 'Satan' and 'Adolf Hitler' in the past, but what do I know? Tudor & I insisted - quite seriously - that if we had a son we would give him the middle name 'Danger', so he had a good cheesy chat-up line to use later in life. It is possibly a good thing that our relationship was never fruitful.

He is really Stanley's Dragon, isn't he?

I received in the post today a copy of Stanley's Dragon, a TV series/film I made back in, oh I don't know, 1993 or thereabouts. I hadn't realised it was out on DVD until I stumbled upon it on Amazon a few weeks back (Region 1 disc only, of course) and thought I'd order it for nostalgia purposes. I haven't seen it for about 10 years and thought I'd just check the DVD worked but, inevitably, ended up watching the whole thing. A few things struck me:

• It was ever so slightly rubbish, but in a very sweet, kids' drama kind of way
• If it had been made today, the dragon would have been CGI. I'm so glad we had a big hydraulic rubber thing to act with, it was so much nicer and - in my humble and old-fashioned opinion - looks nicer too
• I can't believe how ruddy young I look. I mean, I know I was only 19 but bloody hellfire I look like a tiny tiny child; a fetus almost*
• I'd forgotten how much fun it was to make, even if the director was a bit of a knob and the assistant director was a total total arsehole. God I hope he's not still in the business
• I found Judd Trichter on imdb.com and boy has he grown up!
• I got to drive a lorry. It was fun
• My hair looked really rubbish all the way through, but I supppose you expected this kind of thing in the 90s
• I notice that on most of the reviews on t'interweb I'm described as a 'cute junior reporter'. Hey! I'm cute!
• Nevertheless, my STARmeter on the imdb has taken me down 4% in the past week. Aw shucks

*this might be a slight exaggeration

On the move again

This afternoon I'm off to my friend & colleague Sophie's to flat sit while she's on holiday (a cruise round Turkey & Greek islands incidentally). So it's time for another bed rating.

I've been staying at my friends Cindy & Fred's house, in their daughter Jessica's room, as she's away at Cambridge. Their other daughter, Davara, is doing her A-levels at the moment (also likely to be going to Cambridge) and her to-ing & fro-ing to exams and constant revision has reminded me what it was like to be at college. Okay, that's a bit of a lie. When I did my A-levels I think the full extent of my revision was flicking through a couple of my text books while lying in the sun. I got Bs regardless, but it's probably indicative of why I didn't go to Cambridge. Mind you, I did choose dossy subjects - Theatre Studies & Communication Studies (I dropped Sociology). Anyway, here goes:

I rate it as follows:
Aesthetics - 10/10
Comfort - 9/10
Quality of sleep - 10/10
Hospitality of hosts - 10/10
Total - 39/40

Comments - Cindy, Fred & Davara couldn't have been more friendly and hospitable - I have begun to feel like one of the family and am very sorry to be leaving! Fortunately, I'll be back here next month to house sit when they go on holiday...

My Free Implants

This is total genius. I'm not sure what I love about it most; that you can 'earn' breast implants in this way, or the fact that the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) must have put in the word 'Aesthetic' very deliberately indeed.

Gagtastic

So Bernard Manning has died age 76. A tribute from his biographer, Jonathan Margolis:

He was a man of his age - and as people of his age went, he was relatively un-racist.

Gigtastic

Marillion really excelled themselves last night at The Forum. Barney is now a total convert (haha in your face). A few things I really love about my favourite band, in no particular order, are as follows:

• H (the lead singer) is always effortlessly note perfect
• Steve Rothery (guitarist) doesn't use his guitar solos to be flashy and show off, they are always simple, pure and played exactly the same every single time
• I also love the way he bows majestically at the crowd when we go wild afterwards
• Ian Moseley (drummer) always looks calm to the point of slightly distracted, despite drumming like a demon
• They often throw up little surprises at their gigs - last night Between You and Me was accompanied by a whole host of giant balloons filled with confetti which we bounced around for ages till they all burst and, in a shock move, they also played Sugar Mice. SUGAR MICE I ask you*
• Last night Mark Kelly's keyboard buggered up just before he did a big solo, so he just pointed at it, shrugged and laughed before running down to complete the solo on H's keyboard at the front
• They have enormous stamina - last night they played for 1 1/2 hours and then came back on for nearly another HOUR of encores. What modern popular beat combo would do that?
• When I see them live - and I've probably seen them around 20-odd times now - I feel such a profound and pure joy that I can't imagine being found in any other walk of life. I love them - not in a stalkery 'I think that they're my best friends' kind of a way, just in a 'they are so good at what they do, they clearly love doing it and we love them for it' kind of way
• We shall find out today if their new single Thank You Whoever You Are has made it into the top ten - fingers crossed please...
  

Boys: I salute you. Long may you continue. And can you come to Canada next year?

*I realise this will mean nothing to non-Marillion fans. But Sugar Mice was a single back in 1987, during the previous incarnation of the band when Fish was the lead singer. If you say 'isn't Fish still in the band?' I'll scream.

Review of bed #2

The second of my sojourns was spent at my friend Suzie's while she was away in Ireland.

I rate it as follows:
Aesthetics - 7/10
Comfort - 7/10
Quality of sleep - 8/10
Hospitality of hosts - 10/10
Total - 32/40

Comments - it was very light in the room so I kept waking up early, but I quite like being woken gently by natural light rather than being torn from a darkened womb-like state by a harsh alarm so that suited me just fine. Nermal the cat was delightful company. She's a special needs cat, with one too many toes (are they still toes in cats?) on each paw, who is ridiculously soppy. I discovered a great Indian takeaway round the corner who did a mean saag chicken.

My boys

Off to see Marillion again this evening, with my nephew Barney in tow despite years of him taking the piss out of me for liking such old people's music. But even The Times agrees with me that:

Contrary to received wisdom, Marillion World is not some lost kingdom of extreme naffness, just a pleasantly eccentric diversion off the mainstream musical map

He'll love it. Or I'll make him pay for his ticket.

Going straight to hell (again)

There was a great great great grandmother on This Morning this morning having a makeover who looked exactly like this:

I might have imagined the cigar.

The best things in life are free

Derren Brown & the internet. Two of my favourite things. In a happy collision, I finally managed to find somewhere to watch Messiah, Derren's exploration of whether he could fool five so-called 'experts' in subjects such as Evangelism, Spiritualism and alien abduction, into thinking he possessed genuine supernatural powers. Needless to say, they were utterly convinced when faced with Derren's awesome abilities, even though he was not necessarily demonstrating quite the abilities they thought he was.

How anyone can still believe in such nonsense after watching something like this is beyond me. Man, he is goooooood.

Marry me DB?

Sofa hopping

Well, it can happen to the best of us. For various reasons too complex to go into here, my time at my dad & step-mum's did not work out and I have moved out again which, given that my tenants are now living at my flat, leaves me without fixed abode at present. Have had various offers from nice people of comfy sofas/spare beds so I'm probably going to be doing this for the next few weeks until I head off to Canadia. At Silas' suggestion, I shall be rating the beds/sofas on which I'm sleeping and including photos so you can chart my progress*. The first bed I have borrowed, where I have been for the past 4 nights and belongs to my friend David (who gallantly took to the sofa for the duration), can be seen here:

I rate it as follows:
Aesthetics - 5/10
Comfort - 4/10
Quality of sleep - 8/10
Hospitality of hosts - 10/10
Total - 27/40

Comments - this bed had a sunken middle, which gave the slightly odd impression you were sleeping in a ship's bunk. Nevertheless, I slept remarkably well in it, mainly, I'd hazard a guess, because I knew I wasn't sleeping in my car.

As you can see, surprisingly comfort and quality of sleep do not always go hand in hand...

For the next week I will be staying at my friend Suzie's while she is on holiday in Ireland and looking after her cat, Nermal. I shall be sleeping in her cousin Sammy's bed (though I have my own sheets, duvet & pillows). I shall let you know the ratings it achieves in due course.

*Please not, this is just 'a bit of fun', in the words of Keith Barret and is not intended to cause any offence to anyone - I'm extremely grateful to all the offers of beds that I've had!

Carry On Neighbours

Could Neighbours get any funnier? Karl & Susan are over in London on holiday - where Karl has planned both a proposal (on the London Eye) and a wedding (their third together, naturally). So far during their trip, not content with bumping into Izzy (who Karl left Susan for last time they were married and is now heavily pregnant with Karl's baby, though he doesn't know he's the father!) who is having a high profile affair with a married footballer, they've also come across Emma Bunton, who found the engagement ring when it went awry, Julian Clary, who lent Izzy his mobile phone to make a call, Michael Parkinson, who happened to be wandering down the South Bank, Neil Morrissey who was the vicar who married them and Jono Coleman and Sinitta, of all people, who were roped in to be the witnesses to the wedding, which took place on a boat on the Thames (so, given that it's not legal to get married outside in England it won't be valid anyway. You'd have thought the Rev. Neil Morrissey would know that. But then, he is just an actor). Then, obviously, Izzy showed up, at which point her waters broke and she had a precipitate labour (i.e. very fast) and gave birth in the middle of the service on the boat, caught by Karl who was still unaware he was the father. Shortly afterwards of course, Susan overheard Izzy telling the footballer so she now knows but didn't tell Karl. Yet.

Laugh? I thought my waters had broken too for a moment.

Alan Johnston - alive and kicking?

Let's hope that this is proof that Alan Johnston is alive and well. It is unclear exactly when the video was recorded but assuming it's recent, let's hope negotiation for his release are swift and successful.

And here beginneth the lesson...

Talking of boycotts, just if you were in any doubt that Nestlé was still up to its old tricks, read this rather scary Guardian article about the situation in Bangladesh.

I really don't expect every one to follow my own example by being militant about refusing to buy Nestlé products (I check the brand of coffee in restaurants and won't even let hairdressers use L'Oreal shampoo on my hair) but I would urge you, when faced with a choice of buying a Nestlé product or something manufactured by someone else, please at least just consider buying the latter option? If you're not sure what products are Nestlé you can find a list here. Some of them you might find surprising - did you know Buitoni pasta and Herta hotdogs were Nestlé? San Pellegrino water? Felix cat food? They won't necessarily say Nestlé on the packaging.

If you need further convincing, it was this picture that really brought the message home to me when I first heard about the boycott a few years ago.

*And plenty of other formula-milk manufacturers of course, but Nestlé are the biggest manufacturer world-wide and still the most prolific flouter of the WHA International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes

Mars comes to its senses

Phew! One less company I have to boycott. Funnily enough, I dreamt last night that Mars had made this announcement so imagine my surprise this morning...

My flat - a tribute

It may not look much from the outside, but I really really love my flat. It felt like home from the moment the estate agent walked me through the door. The buying process was a struggle - moving house and getting divorced simultaneously cannot be recommended - but living here has been instrumental in helping me recover from the divorce. The view alone makes me smile every single day and having a boat on the lake gives me the chance to experience the wildlife - and the methane-producing algae - close up.

My neighbours are fab: Ali opposite who sweeps me off my feet at Salsa every week and his flatmate Matt who's terribly polite, despite being the quietest man in history, who hasn't said more than 5 words since I've lived here (so the complete opposite of Ali);Tom next door who still holds out hope of catching one of the lake's wily carp (no chance mate!); Caroline & Spencer below who are getting married in a typical HUGE Irish wedding (don't think Spencer knows what he's letting himself in for); Rachel who used to rent my flat before buying the flat below Ali, who lives with her cats Richard & Presley and is having a terrible year; the Japanese (Chinese? Oh, that's terrible that I'm not sure) woman whose name I don't know with the gorgeously cute children who live upstairs; the Polish couple, with Kristian the baby, who live above me and are always so friendly but hate us having barbecues; Carey who lives on the top floor and has become Caroline's drinking buddy after she happened upon us all sat in my rather large paddling pool during one our regular impromptu barbecues last summer.

I've loved living by myself - well, more recently with the cats of course - and having my own space. It didn't need any work when I moved in because Belinda & Hilton, who I bought the flat from, had done such a good job. It's open plan and spacious: they'd knocked out a couple of doorways and, having seen some of the other flats which still have the original layout, I think it was exactly the right thing to do. Buying little bargains for it, such as my dining table and chairs has been such fun - eBay is king - and I'm grateful for all the donations I received from my friends, such as my sofa from Zoe & Phillip, leather armchairs (which are now covered in claw marks goddamn it) and my bed, both from Linda & Karl. I've loved building flat pack furniture - my bed, wardrobe, two chests of drawers and a shelf unit to date - and have even (shock! horror!) kind of enjoyed keeping it clean.

So now the great 'pack up' begins. My friends Debbie & Ian move in here the weekend after next while I move to my dad & step-mother's in order to save some money for my trip. I know it's for all the right reasons, but I'm going to miss the flat soooo much. At least it's D & I who are moving in, so I know it'll be well looked after and I can still visit. They're going to be looking after the cats too, who I'm also going to miss big time. I'm trying to have as many snuggles with them now as I can to carry me through. sigh.

Game on

Well, there's no getting out of it now. Got my visa [check], booked my flight [check], cacking my pants [check].

5th September 2007, 1500 hours: Vancouver here I come.

Erm....was I missing something here?

Serbia? Our, admittedly small, Eurovision party put that way down towards the bottom of the list in all catagories: dull song, uncharismatic androgynous singer and a frankly weird performance. Even the FRENCH entry was better than that. THE FRENCH I tells ya. So so so glad to see the UK did not vote for it at all, at least we have good taste. The Greek entry (Yassou Maria) was clearly the best song and was robbed of its rightful victory. Go on, give it a little listen, you know you want to. I did like one of the comments on the Radio 2 message board (yes, I am that sad):

All the UK needs next year then is a little fat Billy Bunter-a-like to belt out a funeral march and it's in the bag.

It was the Oatlands Village Fayre yesterday, which appeared to have upped the ante since I last went, by having a stunt show, culminating in a man setting himself on fire and jumping off a 100ft high tower onto a bouncy castle, which exploded. They also had a stall where, for £2.50, you could drizzle paint onto a piece of card and then spin it, which made it look way cool. I loved it so much I now have a complete series:

So how'd we do?

A rather excellent report from The Daily Show highlighting the self-congratulatory and demonising tendencies of the American media in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings:


Oh and if you can still hear Will Ferrell starting up every time you visit my blog, I'm sorry. He's nearly off the bottom of the page now so it won't go on for much longer. Scoot down there and shut him up for me, will ya?

Bang to rights?

Just watched the Panorama programme 'Midwives Undercover', which aimed to highlight the problems in Britain's maternity units using secret filming by a journalist working as a volunteer. It was alarming stuff, but one of the problems with having a lay person looking for problem areas is that, unless you know what you're looking for, you run the risk of making an issue out of something that really isn't that big a deal and, as a result, missing the really important things.

Certainly there was a big fuss made over the fact that the journalist was asked to hold a baby's heart monitor transducer in place for a 20 minute period "without having any training at all". Now, it is certainly the case that interpreting a CTG (cardiotocograph) trace takes training and if mistakes are made, they have the potential to be catastrophic. BUT holding the transducer in place is a job more usually done by an elasticated strap. Only if the baby is in an awkward position, as presumably was the case here, do you have to angle it a bit by hand. The woman was not in labour, so it was highly unlikely that the trace would show anything requiring immediate action and the midwives were popping in to look at the trace every 10 mins or so, as they would normally have done. So is it really a major story that the volunteer was acting as an glorified bit of elastane? To my mind, it's far more appropriate that the volunteer was doing this, than the midwife who had plenty of better things to be getting on with.

The other thing that crops up time and time again, whenever anything is reported about maternity services, is the inevitable 'my baby died/had brain damage because of what they did' story. I apologise if that comes across as heartless, it's not intended to be. The fact is however that babies do die, they do get brain damaged, and whilst we should never become complacent about it, and we should of course do everything we can to prevent it, we will never be able to save every baby. I cannot comment on the two cases discussed on tonight's programme, for the obvious reason that I wasn't there and I don't have any of the details, but warning bells always ring for me when phrases such as "So & so was already having problems before they arrived on the ward" are heard. Many - if not most - cases of brain damage are due to antenatal insults, meaning that the care in labour does not directly contribute to the outcome, the damage has already been done before you get there without anyone being able to do anything about it. Proving it one way or another is often impossible though and often results in hospitals offering (substantial) out-of-court settlements to parents. Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for parents who are naturally devastated and seek to apportion blame in someone's quarter, but I also have a lot of sympathy for those involved in the care, who often did their best, with an outcome that was inevitable.

It is definitely beyond question that there is a shortage of midwives in most units though and, yes, this can contribute to the kind of problems detailed above. Much much more often, however, it contributes instead to women - or whole families - having a thoroughly miserable and rather crap experience. This may be the poor cousin of the catastrophic events we love to hear about, but if you ask me, it's a much bigger problem. Women who've had crap care are more likely to have had unnecessary interventions (expensive to the NHS, detrimental to women's bodies), develop postnatal depression, be overly anxious about subsequent pregnancies which results in more unnecessary interventions - if they go on to have any more children that is. I often wonder how many women never go on to have the families they would have wanted because they were badly treated the first time; I have a friend who is finally having her second baby now, 14 years after her first, because it's taken her this long to pick up the courage after having such a horrible time with her first.

Ah well. It's only a job, eh?

Not a member of the Breastapo

Much to my surprise, I was on the Five Live breakfast show this morning. I say much to my surprise, because I only got a call from my friend Adam, who's a BBC radio producer - though BBC radio Essex I believe - last night at about 10.30pm, asking if I'd talk about postnatal depression (PND) this morning in response to the Royal College of Midwives' statement today that PND may be twice as common as we thought it was. This is, I feel compelled to point out, after a survey of only 500 women, which is unlikely to be terribly representative, but hey. Anyway, they said they'd call this morning about 8.20am and that I'd go on air about 8.30am. Fine. I was in a study day from 8am but was happy to run out for 20 mins or so.

I got the call at 8.20am, asking for my landline number. I gave it to them and asked for 1 minute to run down to my office. This I did, haring down 2 sets of stairs, to find the phone was ringing when I got there, and when I answered it I was told that I would be put on air immediately. Thus, if you choose to 'Listen Again' to this morning's show, you may hear me struggling both for breath and for thoughts, as I had absolutely no idea what they were planning to ask me. I winged my way through it, then headed back to my study day, whereupon my colleagues asked me what we'd talked about. I had absolutely no idea. I literally couldn't remember one question. Anyway, I listened back to it just now and it didn't sound half as bad as it felt at the time so that's okay.

The Porcs kick ass

I went to see Porcupine Tree at the Forum last night. Who? you might ask. I'm sure I've mentioned them here before but just in case: they're one of my fave bands and I've given you a little (fairly poor quality - sorry) taster here:



You might notice the camera jiggling slightly as I ROCKED OUT.

Speedy laptops & broken hearts

So firstly, thanks to Silas who helped me whip my laptop into shape last night. It has been getting soooooo sloooooooooow on start up it was in danger of being broken into many many tiny little pieces, so I started by transferring all my music onto my external hard drive, freeing up a whole 15Gb! Then I ran disk cleanup and defragged it all like a good girl. Then - and this is where I became very clever indeed - I added some more RAM (giving me 496 big ones in total - which, of course, is far less impressive than it might first appear) before, finally, requesting remote assistance from Silas who checked that all my...well...bits were in order. Because I wasn't entirely sure what all my bits should look like. But anyway, he said they looked good. So that was nice.

Secondly, I can't believe that Steph & Max have split up*. I mean, come on. I know Max accidentally-on-purpose run over and killed Cameron - though he thought him to be his evil twin Robert at the time - and then got his head screwed over by Elle (Cameron's sister) who kept moving his car and baby and so on so he went a bit mad, then run off and disappeared, later sending a message to Steph via the Salvation Army to tell her to move on, after which she fell in love with her best friend Toady, who'd been there for her the whole time and did try to save her from the bad guy Guy, who shot Toady in the back and now he lives with a fragment of bullet in his spine, which might move and paralyse or kill him at any point, so when he came out of his coma he and Steph finally professed their love for each other, just before Max turned up again after having been spotted and followed by Elle, who was now very remorseful about her behaviour and and so told Janae, who had approached him and asked him to come home, which he did, which meant that Steph had to give it another go with him, what with them being married and having a child together and all that, which left Toady heartbroken. But Steph & Max've been through so much together, what with hating each other at first, and Steph heading off on a round Australia trip with some other loser bloke then coming back because she realised she loved Max (best kiss ever in a soap) , pursuading Boyd and Summer that she wasn't trying to replace their dead mum and then eloping to get married in jeans and Steph getting breast cancer and subsequently recovering, then getting pregnant with baby Charlie (the ugliest child in television), then getting the cancer back and refusing treatment until she gave birth and recovering again despite no one expecting her to.... I suspect she'll get back together with Toady which will be nice for Toady because he's very nice and has had a rough time himself, what with his wife dying on their wedding day when he crashed the car with the dodgy brakes into the sea. Anyway, I just think it's very sad. And sloppy writing.

*yes, very sorry, I am talking about Neighbours

Trying not to let the bastards grind me down

Well, this has been a challenging week. Of my current team of four midwives: Debbie is on long-term sick with a dodgy knee, unable to walk without crutches, and is awaiting surgery; Sophie is building up her hours again after being on long-term sick after some heavy duty surgery but is on two weeks annual leave at the moment; Karen only joined up 4 weeks ago but has had 1 week on annual leave and this past week has been on the Trust Induction programme (this is what you do when the infusion pump makes this horrible noise/this is how you give someone a blood transfusion without killing them/this is what you do when you suspect someone is beating their child to a pulp/when someone threatens to kill you this is who you call. All thrilling stuff) so I've been all alone this week. This basically means being on-call 24/7 for all four caseloads.

I spoke to my manager and explained I'd be on my own and asked if I could get some help with the routine daytime work so I could concentrate on on-calls and emergencies. I was told that everyone was too busy so, basically, no. The previous week I had walked in on a member of another team- let's call her 'Rita' - slagging me off for always asking for help*, so my avenues were becoming rather blocked. I managed to rearrange most of my work till the following week and get 2 immovable visits covered, would just have to do the rest when I could.

Then the carnage begun. On Sunday, my car had broken down (overheating) so on the Monday, as well as helping my mum get up to Kings Cross so she could take the train home to Yorkshire, I need to limp it over to the garage to be repaired. As a result, I couldn't do a booking that afternoon and, as no one else would cover it either, poor hopalong Debbie took a taxi in to the hospital to do it for me. I spent the day fielding calls from one of Debbie's women who was in early labour. I returned from Kings Cross to find my car had been issued with a parking ticket, despite being parked perfectly legally**. I was called in later to look after the labouring woman, who had a nice waterbirth at 5am. The birth centre (midwifery-led, low-risk unit) was jammed though and my friend Nia, who was all alone there, had a birth which had a few complications so I was helping out. Labour ward (consultant-led, high risk unit) was also packed and I somehow ended up having a HUGE stand-up in-your-face shouting match with one of the co-ordinators from there, who was unbelievably rude to me and acting like a child. I got a call at 8am from one of my girls to say her waters had broken and I finally left the hospital at about 10.30am to go round and see her. I knew I had to hand my phone to someone as she may well labour during the day but, after catching Rita (who would have been the first choice to call) slagging me off, wanted reassurance from my manager first I was doing the right thing. I called her, only to have her have a go at me, saying that of course my colleague should be covering me, she didn't know why I was calling her, I should be able to deal with this. I cried for about half an hour. I then got a call to say my car was ready to be collected so when I got home I caught a bus which took an hour after going all round the houses and dropped me half an hour's walk from the garage. I got there to find it had cost £150 and I'd been blocked in by a van. I ended up shouting at a perfectly friendly man and crying hysterically all the way home. Finally got to bed at 3pm but woke again 3 hours later.

Got called back in that night to look after the girl whose waters had broken. She was only in very early labour but she had lots of family with her who were being a nightmare and refusing to take her home. I ended up being there with them all night till 9am, before we persuaded them that at 1cm, she really needed to be at home. I then went and found the (very scary) labour ward manager, who had been complaining about me starting this row with the co-ordinator the previous night by throwing my weight around and making demands (completely untrue), so I did my best to calmly sort out the disagreement. Called Rita to take my phone for the day only to be told she'd spoken to our manager the previous evening who had said that of course they shouldn't be covering my work and that if I was off, my phone should be covered by the hospital. This completely contradicted what I'd been told the previous morning and what I'd been shouted at for even questioning. My manager of course hadn't thought to let me know this new piece information however. I left around 10am.

Got woken at 3.3opm by the birth centre saying my woman was back in and they were too busy to take her so could I come in and look after her? Errrmmmm....no actually. I explained that if they couldn't take her, she should go to the labour ward (fate worse than death in my book but I had no option). I then spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about her.

Came back in to labour ward at 10pm to take over. Her care had been somewhat shambolic but I managed to pull this back in order. The whole family were exhausted, having been awake for nigh on 72 hours, even though we'd all made it perfectly clear for the previous couple of days that she wasn't yet in active labour and the best thing they could ALL do was to get some rest, but instead the poor girl had had 4 people standing round staring at her for the whole time. No wonder the labour took so bloody long to establish. It took every ounce of my strength to remain the very epitome of calm and supportive to every last one of them. This notwithstanding, her tired and stressed mother - who kept telling me she'd had 5 children and really should have known better - ended up shouting at me that she "didn't care about the baby!" and I can't tell you how close I came to walking out. I didn't though and, despite the best efforts of the doctors and her family to interfere, she had a nice normal birth at 4am. The mother immediately backtracked and said I'd been "very brave and very patient". Managed to do a quick turnaround with the paperwork and left around 6.30am. Got to bed at 7.15am and then up again at 12pm, racing into London to meet my cousin Camilla who was over from Denmark for a couple of days and was leaving that night so only had that time to catch up. Came back from London to go to the opening night of the new Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Walton, which was guest list only and I practically fell asleep in my (free and delicious) burger. Come 8pm I was supposed to come back on call but realised I was not fit to look after a flea. Called a lovely colleague on the birth centre who agreed to take my phone that evening. Went home and slept - aaaaaaaahhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next morning I found out that my girl had gone into the high dependency unit over night with breathing difficulties, which turned out to be nothing, but if my phone had been on I'd undoubtedly have been called in. I spend the day running around trying to sort her out and fit in all the visits I hadn't been able to do all week, before heading into London to go to a friend's Hen night at The Sanctuary and FINALLY TURNING MY PHONE OFF FOR THE WEEKEND.

It might amuse you to know that, to add insult to injury, I had just finished writing this when my computer decided, for reasons best known to itself, to delete it all and I had to write it all out again.

Anyway, I can quite honestly say that if I wasn't leaving in August, I'd have handed in my notice this week. It's one thing working hard and feeling tired all the time, but quite another to have to deal with a face-full of abuse from all and sundry at the same time. Sometimes I really hate my job.

*Unsurprisingly, since I've not had a full team of six for a YEAR now and for the past 6 months have been running the team with a maximum of 3 and often only 2 midwives. What does she expect me to do?
**I appealed, supplying lots of photos as support and had an email on Friday saying it had been issued in error and had been cancelled. Finally, some good news.

You pay now bitch!

So good it hurts.

Not hydrophobic at all

Rudy is such a daft bugger. I love him.

Brookie

Yesterday, my mother & I took a quick trip on Concorde. Not that it left the ground, you understand, but it was damn good nevertheless.

Brooklands Museum has one, 30% of which was actually built there, and they've done a really good job with it. You buy a boarding pass and meet on the transfer bus for a briefing, then up into the cargo hold (tiny!) to see some information about Concorde's history and the story of this particular vessel. Then, you pass up through the cabin where there are original seats from the 70s, 80s and 90s/00s, before taking your seat at the front of the plane and experiencing a full take-off and flight experience (lasting 10 mins!) . Very good indeed and surprisingly emotional.

The rest of the museum is well worth a visit too. To my delight, I got to sit in one of Ayrton Senna's F1 cars although I am sorry to report that my hips are obviously wider than his were. A fact that the (rather advancing-in-years) museum assistant was not slow to point out, in some detail in fact, even going as far as to speculate on my dress size. Which he got wrong. The insulting way. He then tried to guess my weight, which he also managed to get spectacularly and not-a-little humiliatingly wrong. Hmmmm.

Nifty gifty?

That's it, I've bailed out. I'm sorry, I know I've let you all down, but I just couldn't hack it anymore.

I've gone back to a litter box.

Basically, a combination of Rudy's pathological fear of any kind of hole in the disc over the toilet and refusal to use it if he discovered one (or, worse, choosing alternative locations) and his penchant for trying to bury his litter to China, resulting in litter and - let's be frank - poo all over the bathroom floor every day has meant that my patience has finally waned. I'm not saying it's not a great idea to toilet train your cats, because it is, and if it was just Gertie I'm sure she'd be well away by now but Rudy's such a bloody wuss. He's sat on my lap as I type this but it's okay, he can't read. But honest to God, you should have seen the mess this morning.

Not that I've gone for any litter box. There are so many plastic monstrosities on the market - I tells ya if I had my time again I'd start up a company that produced nice and stylish products for pets rather than cheap-looking tat and stuff covered in cartoon cats and dogs that are clearly supposed to be cutsey but are actually horrendous beyond belief - but I don't want my flat to be a shrine to the cats (sorry - bad mummy) so I've gone for something a bit more...well, maybe you should decide. It looks at first glance to be an ordinary (possibly slightly rubbish) plant pot and (not too bad looking) fake plant but no! Inside is a cat toilet. Rudy took to it straight away and peed in it within minutes.

Now be honest. Is this actually quite cool, or is it unbelievably naff? I can't decide, but I think that I think it's quite a nifty solution. Either way, eBay truly is a goldmine for the weird and wonderful.

Time in a Bottle

As you may already be aware, this is one of my favourite songs of all time. Just so's you know, in case any of you are still hanging around by then, it's what I want played at my funeral. Yes, of course this version.

Russian Roulette

I like to play Russian Roulette. Not with guns, because they're illegal and I don't know where to get one, much less fire it, and I'd probably get arrested. Although if I did it with guns then I'd have to do it on telly and become famous and Derren Brown would want to meet me and obviously we'd fall in love and get married and have lots of lovely beardy children and live in a house full of stuffed animals. Sigh.

But instead, I like to play Russian Roulette with food. Every so often I'll forgo my usual brand of whatever and buy the 'basics' 'value' 'savers' 'no frills' version and see how it does. When it works, finding you only have to spend 13p on a can of chopped tomatoes in the future can be immensely gratifying. This week's purchase was Sainsbury's Basics Corn Flakes. For the record: nasty.

Did you see Baby Faced Bodybuilders on BBC3 tonight? Now I knew that body builders have long used fake tan to 'highlight' their muscle definition but it seems that nowadays they just look like something out of the Black & White Minstrel Show. You'd think the PC brigade might have something to say about that.