Please remove your item from the bagging area

Shopping for lunch should not be a chore, but a pleasure.

I had opted for Tesco over Sainsbury's this lunchtime, however, which proved to be a stupid, schoolgirl error. It was traumatic.

Firstly, I embarrassed myself by setting off the alarm when I walked in. Note. I had nothing on my person except my clothes, my purse and a smile. No-one was coming out, no small midget sneaked past me, furtively clutching a Milky Bar. No. I walked in, and alarm bells rang. What a comment about the state of my life: no matter how hard I try, I always make an entrance. And it ain't pretty.

Then I have to trawl through the vegetable counters for my weekly salad purchases, while this little old guy who looked like the incarnation of Mr Magoo kept following me around the veg. stand and smiling every time I looked his way. Short of beating him around the head with a carrot or shoving a squash up his wrinkly nose or stapling his head to a marrow with a pricing gun, there was little I could do except call it a day for fresh fruit and veg and go and hide in the deep freeze under some McCain's chips for a few hours.

Note to Tesco's: Tinned Treacle Pudding is not one of the following: "Tinned soups, vegetables and meats." It is not one of the four main food groups. It belongs to the group: "Bad, Very Bad, Totally Calorific and Cavity-making." Tinned tuna, however, does not qualify for either of those two food groups and therefore does not exist in the world of Tesco employees. "Tuna? Tinned Tuna? Uhhhh...Not Sure..."

Furthermore, putting a small Krispy Kreme counter right next to the weightwatchers yoghurt and dairy section is simply barbarous.

Also, selling "fresh" pomegranate chunks that, when opened, taste like soured vodka that has been left to stand for six days in the heat, beggars belief. The taste - and some of the darn pips - will remain with me for days.

Then to proceed to the self-service checking counter. All goes well until it does not allow me to take my full shopping bag off the "bagging area" and start a new one. "Please place item in the bagging area" it says in a loud woman's voice, over and over and over. Eventually I end up talking to the machine, just as loudly. Yes. I am insane.

Then after I pay, I realise it has not charged me for something worth £5 (that's US$10 and CAN$600,023). So I ask the lady if I can re-do my shop or just pay for that one item at the same bagging counter. She is very helpful and polite - a highlight in that dark Tesco - and I put the order through for that one item. As I go to pay, the automated voice starts up again: "Please put your item in the bagging area. Please put your item in the bagging area. Please put your item in the bagging area."

By now, I am thumping the bagging area and cursing like an old sunday school teacher - vis-a-vis: "Condarn you, you little beggar", "Confounded nuisance" "Dadblamed machine." All the while the same message is booming out: "Please place your item in the bagging area."

Eventually I bang the bagging area so hard the red light starts flashing on the top of the self-service (SERVICE? HA!) area and a voice starts up: "Calling for assistance. Calling for assistance". I pull out my credit card, throw £5 cash at the attendant who has been standing there all the time, and run out of the shop like a thief.

All this for a bleeding garden salad and a lemon yoghurt.


Life sucks

Come onto MyFace. MySpace. I mean, Facebook. Whatever.

There is a new phenomenon sweeping the interweb. Actually, for people like me, it is not so new, as the under-30s were among the first to discover the addictive virtual drug that is Facecrack.

Oh yes. It is surprisingly pleasing to find out that you have more online "friends" than the school super-cow, who not only has fewer allies than you, but most of her wall posts were written by her sister. Even better - she has also become very, very fat. There may even be a hairy mole on her lip. Oh yes. There is a sense of divine retribution visible through the medium that is ArseFace.

It is also delightful to have an old acquaintance, with whom you only stopped contact for very good reasons, and not because you could not be bothered, or because he secretly hated you and your poxy jokes, suddenly nudge you out of the blue and request you to be their friend.

But the downsides are becoming ever more evident the more addicted one gets to Facecrack. Firstly, there is the random date that you had who happens to find you on the web - CURSE thy parents who did not christen thee "Sarah Brown" or "David Smith". Or, there is the guy you dated so long ago that now, you must be friends, so you send him a chipper email thinking "he can accept me as a friend". Virtual rejection can be harsh.

Secondly, there is the utter stranger who wants you to be his special friend. You don't know him, so you "explore" his own profile, to discover he's a single friend of a mutual friend who happened to like your picture. He's also likely to be the person whose list of "Top Friends" includes several busty blondes from Arkansas and Dita von Teese.

Thirdly. Oh, yes, thirdly - your personal life is centred all over the page. It's easy to "hide" what you write on other people's walls, but when your friends start scrawling on your walls, or tagging you in photos looking drunk or semi-naked in a sheep dip in Wales, that's when you have to start worrying. Your friends are no longer compartmentalised into sanitary little boxes. I don't mean sanitary towel boxes. I digress.

Fourthly - this is starting to sound like a Mennonite sermon - there is the endless line of "pokes". These started off as a little way of saying hi to the people you're semi-friends with, or people you fancied but did not like to keep writing on their walls in case they served you with a restraining order, sued the hell out of you, or - worst of all - removed you from their list of friends. So, a little Poke. Hi! How YOU doin'?

BUT NOT ANY MORE. Now you have super poke! Poke Pro! Pokemon, pig in a poke, poke-ahontas and Poke on Trent. You can now slap, tickle, throw a sheep at, high five, punch, beat someone over the head with a metal chair until they are senseless, give beer to, send a cow to and crap all over someone's face virtually.

The other day I came onto facebook and found 14 pokes, and more people lining up to throw sheep at me. Thankfully I realised that if I returned the sheep-shag to someone else, I would end up having that application automatically installed onto my profile.

Applications have to be the fifth point, moving logically on and enabling me to count without having to look at my other hand. APPLICATIONS SUCK No, worse. They blow. They blow enormous stomach-chunks. There are applications to share a happy hour cocktail! There's a Hot Rating application (someone gave me a 10 out of 10 but I still didn't want it on my profile. Thanks anyway, Mum). There's applications to show how far you have travelled in your lifetime - the more countries you visit, the higher your global percentage is. Well not if all the freaking countries you visit are tiny - Monaco, Belgium, Holland, Jamaica, Cuba and Luxembourg do not show up very well. But for the greenies out there, is there ANOTHER map application you can use to show what your travelling carbon footprint is? No, but I'd like some of those "I've visited all the big ones" show-off nark heads to have a go on one of those applications, the carbon-crunching, polar bear murdering arsewipes.

There are applications for opinion polls (which biscuit would you be and why? A: A poisoned batch that has been sent to the Facebook office). You can be in a battle between vampires and werewolves. You can get bitten by a zombie, play tag, share fortune cookies, list your favourite movies, create slideshows of your cars and have special facebook pages created for your mangy old dog. Oh Yes, there is Dogbook, catbook, hamster book and myfavouritecock book.

All of these applications sound great fun if a) you really have nothing better to do in your life b) you are under 20 c) your internet connection is fast enough and smart enough to deal with all these things.

Sixthly - over to the other hand now, I hope it doesn't get to 11 or I will have to take my shoes and socks off - there are Groups. Alan Whicker is Probably a Very Nice Man. I was at Wahiki. I am a Gimp. We Love Our Cats. We know the difference between Your and You're (because we are smart-assed little basement geeks who have no girlfriends and who wear colours that do not appear in nature). Christians Against Rich Tea Biscuits (actually, I am in that one, it is a cause I support dearly).

In retribution I have finally snapped. I think it was the invitation to join the group: "People who cannot spell my name correctly desurve (sic) to be shot" that made me want to reach into my computer, find the Facebook organiser, staple their ear to a doorpost and pussywhip them into a bleeding mass with my bare hands.

So I have created my own group: No more Groups, Applications or Events, Please, For the Love of Mercy. Yes, I appreciate the irony.

I'm not a feminist, but...

... men are definitely weird creatures. The more of them I see, the more I feel the urge to burn my protective sea-shells and throw myself under a sea-horse in protest. Emiline and Cecilia had the right idea - the only way you'll get a man's undivided attention is to either show up naked and bring beer, or create a scene in public. Or wear a Wayne Grinsky mask, but the latter only works in North American countries.
We females, contrary to male expectation, do not walk around in the nude carrying six-packs for our partner hominids, nor do we actually LIKE to create a scene in public, especially on a bad hair day, or when we've got a cold, or when we have an Ugly day, or when it's a birthday. Or when we're wearing the wrong shoes. Or have mis-matching accessories. Or are not wearing enough accessories.
So, how to get a man's undivided attention without exposing ourselves or leaping under public transport, is a problem that bugs every woman.
Let's take some case studies.
Many years ago, my mum one night woke up, wondering whether my feet were cold (*this was before I became a mermaid). She nudged my dad. "Are her feet cold?"
"I think there are two of them out there."
"Two what?"
"Two men."
With that, he rolled over and went to sleep.
A classic case of divided attention. Mum wanted to wake him up with a spurious question about my welfare, probably at 3 am, which is when she inevitably wakes up and hears "noises". And Dad wanted to sleep before going back to work the next morning. How selfish!

Talking of mum and noises... my late uncle Leo used to live with us. Every night he would come back from the theatre (he worked the West End stage scene) about 1pm. He would creep in quiet as a mouse, but mum would inevitably wake up. Every single night for eight years, she would lean over the balcony and say: "Is that you?"
Finally, he snapped. One night, she asked the question, and he replied: "No, it's a burglar and I'm stealing your marmite". I thought that was hilarious, but a bloody battle ensued, during which the offending sandwich spread bought the worst of it, along with the kitchen wall.

I've digressed. Back to my original lament. This classic case of "divided attention" has continued to bug me. Once I was on a date with a nice young man. Might have been Andrew the First. Andrew I and I were having a meal, and I had dressed up especially for the occasion. As it was my birthday, I thought that was a reasonable excuse to make an effort beyond ironing my jeans. But before I'd even got my coat off, Andrew I gave me a perfunctory glance up and down, said: "You look nice", and promptly walked over to the bar, where Wigan were playing Arsenal in a friendly. As he knows less about football than I do, and supported neither team, I felt this was an affront to the birthday girl. We stayed there all evening, the table reservation forgotten, while I munched on a celebratory bowl of onion rings.

Things have gotten worse the older I get. In the old newsroom, while trying to get my former news editor to pay attention regarding this potentially legal minefield of a story I was writing,I noticed that he was evidently on another planet from the rest of us. To us, it was one hour to press deadline. In desperation, I shouted out: "SEX". Immediately he turned his undivided attention to me, but before I could go over the story, he leant over, and whispered: "Do you think Holly is wearing suspenders?"


Then there's the late-night phone call. Girls who call boyfriends after 10 - beware. They are either watching footy highlights, or there's a Steven Segal film on. I once phoned my bloke about a problem at work, but found him distant and distracted. So I started to make stuff up to see if he was listening.

"It would not have been too bad, apart from the alien invasion."
"Oh yes, dear"
"They made the men dress up in gimp costumes and whip themselves with page proofs"
"Ummm."

"Are you actually paying attention to me"
"Pink. Definitely the pink. Or maybe red."

Turns out he was watching snooker championship highlights.... On his BLACK AND WHITE TELEVISION.

So I've got used to the fact that there's not much one can do to get a man's undivided attention. I raised this fact this weekend with dad and one of his male friends. "So all women need to do is show up naked and bring beer, eh?" I said.
Frank thought about it.
"Nah, women should just show up naked - we'll supply the beer."

Vicks Vaporub

What is it about illness that makes me flit from being all sweet and helpless, to being a sarcastic monster? One minute, I'm all cute and small. "Please may I have a cup of tea? Thank you"... in a small, tiny voice, accompanied by as cute a look as I can muster, while I've got sore, red, piggy little eyes and vicks Vaporub stuck up my nose.

The next minute, my head starts to pound with inner mental RAGE and explodes! I don't mean literally explode like the alien in Men in Black, although that would be rather amusing in meetings. It would certainly liven up someone's boring powerpoint presentation. Imagine the scenario. It's slide 78 and everyone is wanting to die. Me, I just start to go slowly red in the face.

"Did you hear anything I said, mermaid? Are you deaf?"
Nothing. Just getting more and more red.
"What's wrong with your face?"
Nothing. Maybe a vein starts to bulge on my forehead. Perhaps even my ears would twitch. I'd like to think my eyelids would flicker menacingly.
"I said, "Did you hear me?""

WHAM!

My head explodes in a violent surge of slimy grey cells and nerve endings. There's a second's pause of utter horror and silence, followed by mass vomiting. If only I could be there to see it, except my eyeball will no doubt have been spattered across the trophy cabinet or impaled on the end of someone's pencil.

Sadly my head did not explode. It did not even go slightly red. All that happened was that I sneezed violently and coughed up the insides of my lungs in my sick bed.

So from being cute and helpless and ill, I have become a grumpy old woman and am in no mood to take prisoners. Some half-baked moron wanted to be my friend on Facebook. I don't know the chap, he just said he liked my picture. It might not even be my picture. I could have just one colossal eye. I could have no head. So anyway, he won't bother me again.

I also got a "sick form" to fill in when I returned. This is something the English tend do to but Europeans don't bother to do. I remember once at primary school, the school nurse Mrs Valentine (pronounced vallotin) was tending to a gash on my forehead where the ground had jumped up to hit me. I said mournfully (for I was a precocious 8-year-old who read far too much for her own good): "I must look like a sight for sore eyes." Instead of laughing and patting me endearingly on the shoulder, as I had expected, she said: "Gracious me! The child is vain as well as stupid! You should care about what you look like on the inside, not what you look like on the outside." And I was stupid, too. For I replied: "But nobody can see my inside" and promptly got sent off to stand outside the head's office for answering back.

Had I been a cute child, who looked pretty on the outside, no doubt I would have got a lollipop. But I was a scrawny wretch and spent the afternoon in the naughty room. I always called her Mrs Valentine after that. Deliberately.

Anyway, I got a sick form. It says: "Sickness absence form". It mentions the word "sick" four times. I fill it all in and when I get to the bottom, it says: "State briefly why you were unable to come in".

FOR THE LOVE OF MERCY!!! It's a sickness form!!

"I got arrested by the MOD for wearing a beard"
"I got soap stuck in my belly button and could not come out in the rain yesterday because I started to lather up"
"I fell asleep in Ikea and got locked in"
"I was involved in a drug bust in west london"

In the end, I opted for the simple reply:

I was sick.

Within 1/2 hour, I came back to my desk to find the form back on my keyboard, STAMPED with the word: "Rejected". I resubmitted it. It now reads:

I was sick. My head exploded and it took all day to clean up.

I just don't know what to say to this

I hope you do. And I apologise for this spoiled little snot's language. She's been given a $70,000 lexis for her birthday and she starts calling her mother a bitch...!!!
Spoiled and rude!

What message would you like to leave?

Maybe it's just that I've been to too many weddings recently that I am suffering from what I call post-wishes fatigue. Perhaps I am bitter that none of those weddings have been my own, and I am merely jealous. Though if any of you had seen the groom on one occasion, there would be a petition right now outside of parliament to amend the Human Rights Act. Teeth simply should not be like that.

Post-wishes fatigue occurs when you finally get around to phoning in in order to give some money to the happy couple. Despite the fact you actually spent money getting to the wedding, buying drinks at the cash bar, possibly buying a wedding outfit and a disposable camera because you keep forgetting to take your digital one with you, darn it. (Try stapling it to your hand the night before).

Post Wishes Fatigue starts with a simple spoken pleasantry. You hear from a friend or relative that they are to tie the knot. If you are like me (female or gay), you will probably clap your hands together in a happy way and say something like: "Oh how exciting, congratulations, when is it?". If you are not like me (male or an ugly spinster), you will probably say: "Really? Are you expecting a baby.?" But we deal not with the latter, but the former.

Then of course, you spend weeks and weeks talking wedding, planning how to get to wedding, what to wear for wedding, who else is invited, what the bride/groom is wearing, blah blah blah until you know as much about the day as the bride or groom does.

The day of the wedding comes. You write a card out for the happy couple. "Wishing you every happiness in your married lives together" or some such yadda. You greet the happy couple on the day with more congratulations, you look wonderfuls and Thank you so much for inviting mes. Just when you think the smile on your face will crack you find there's a book of condolences to sign. "Dearest Princess of Hearts, you will always be with us. I will never visit Paris again in Spring without thinking of you."
I think I got barred from that wedding reception.

You stare at the book of congrats, probably slightly sozzled by then, and desperately try to think of something witty and beautiful that someone else has not said. You skim-read the other pages, probably dribbling wine and spittle over it, and of course it's all written in fountain pen, but the ink runs out while you try to use it and all you have in your bag or pocket is a chewed-up biro. And it's red. In the light of your pikey shame all you can muster is: "Wishing you all the best for your married lives together" and hoping that it's "lives" and not "life" and wondering whether you wrote that in the card as well. Not that they'd notice anyway, because you could only find half an orange crayon to write on the card with.

Skulking back to your seat, you think you can relax, but NO! Along comes a second uncle twice removed, It could be Uncle Leo, Harry or Jake, you can't remember, although you know it's not uncle Norm, who wasn't really your uncle but he hung around anyway until he disappeared "Up North" and your mum had to explain with a Barbie doll why Uncle Norm no longer visits. "Where exactly did he put the cake? Show me on the barbie... are you sure it was on your head?" Where was I?
Oh, Uncle Leo, or Harry, comes up with a video camera and shoves it into your mug and says: "Send your wishes!"

This reminds me of a funny story recently. Mum and I were in Greece for a wedding and someone came up to us with a video camera. It was late and we were not paying too much attention. He said: "Wishes.... speak wishes." Mum looked flustered for a second, before replying: "I wish I were 29 again."

So you're put on the spot and have to think of something that does not sound banal. The best one I ever heard was at the same Greek wedding where my friend Simon, glass of port in one hand and a fat cigar in the other, waded up to the lens, raised both cigar and wine, said: "Cheers" and walked off. Class.

What else can you say: "Best wishes for the future and all that, blah blah?" There simply is nothing in those old Victorian etiquette books that prepares one for this sort of enforced bonhomie. It's enough to make you eschew all friendships, tear up your phone book and take to yelling "Bah humbug" at random passers by (this works well if you live near a bus stop and can shout it out of the window without anyone seeing you. Hours of fun. Note to self - Get out more. Not to weddings. Staple note to hand so don't forget).

You think you've escaped when you get home. But no, there's the post-wedding "heck I forgot to contribute to their present/honeymoon/cosmetic surgery" moment when you fish around your bag and find the wedding invitation and gift list stuck to it with a piece of old chewing gum. So you ring up. Phew! It's not too late. How much do you want to contribute? ("what's the minimum limit on a credit card?" is not an acceptable answer, I have since discovered.) When all the details are taken, you go to thank the helpful assistant.

but wait....

"What message would you like to leave on the card?"

"There's a CARD?"

"Any message for the couple?"

Slight moment of panic.

"Um... er... best wishes for your married lives (or is it life?) together."

We have ways of making you walk

I hate urban cyclists. I really, really do. They are wretched individuals. They are smug, self-satisfied arses who think they are doing their bit for the planet by pumping sweat and methane into the air for an hour every day. They believe themselves to be better than the rest of us who prefer to use the gym and eat healthily. And I loathe them, despise them with a despite scarcely imaginable.

It's not so much the fact that they are the smuggest people on earth. It's just that normal rules do not apply to them. They believe themselves to be demi-gods, outside the laws of the road, of morality, of basic decency and fashion sense.

Laws of the road

1) Pedestrians have right of way when there's a green man.
Oh! but no! A cyclist does not give a flying fart. A cyclist can just skim out in front of you, swearing profusely at little old ladies who can't get their scottie terriers out of the way in time. This morning I ended up calling out a cyclist who decided that stopping at a red light infringed her basic human rights. I think it was an infringement of my human rights that she wanted to run me over. "Don't the rules of the road apply to you?" I called after her. "F*** off" was what I think she said, but I could not be sure as by then she was mowing down a pregnant woman while beating off a blind man with her fists.

2) Wearing the appropriate gear.
I can tolerate cyclists who make sure they are wearing helmets, reflective bands, etc etc. They are to be taken relatively seriously as they are making an effort. But it's the gimps who think they are above the law. Sour-faced hoodies wriggling in and out in the bus lanes (SLOWLY) while speaking on their mobile phones. Old people with flat caps and leather satchels. Middle-aged women in skirts. Ridiculous middle-class girls with names like Darin or Alexandra who think cycling is the new cool thing to do, so they wear three-quarter length trousers and flip-flops (for crying out loud) and wobble their way along the road (again, SLOWLY). This is exactly what is wrong with our country. 60 years ago, these children of yuppies would have been married off safely at the age of 18 and stay at home out of our way.

But no! Now they have some trite little job in PR or publishing although they probably only scraped through home economics at Uni, and now they make our lives miserable by holding up traffic. I blame Weightwatchers. That alone is responsible for half the posh totty on our roads, as it informs everything they are, although to be honest, all they do in their lives is answer phones, worry about their highlights, drink wine, feel guilty so think they should cycle to work. We are held up because of their lack of personal fulfilment. Get a life and stay off the barely-seen-a-patch-of-mud mountain bikes.
Why do they want to cycle in the bus lane anyway?

3) Cycling in a bus lane.

Simple maths.... 1 bus = 90 people. 1 cycle = 1 slow twazzock
1 bus lane = clear, except for 1 bus full of 90 people, and 1 slow twazzock on a bike
Bus is permitted to go at 50 in the bus lane.
Cyclist is managing 15
Which one will get to work quicker?

The STOAB. Of course. Why? I hear you ask.
Well, the STOAB gets in front of the bus. it slows the bus down. STOAB does not know how to cycle towards the edge of the bus lane, to enable the bus to overtake it. Or perhaps the STOAB does know, but is a freaking friends of the earth, let's hug a baby seal global warming nut who thinks that the 90 people on the bus deserve to die because they're adding to carbon build-up. I'd carbon build up such a cyclist if I met one. I'd rip off his arm, beat him around the head with it until he died, and set fire to him. That should warm the globe up by 1 degree.

Every Single Day there is ONE dumbo cyclist who barely manages the basics of velocipedia and makes me late for work. One day I really am going to snap.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Of course, it's not so bad being on the top of the bus, giving the cyclist the evil eye and hoping that he gets a puncture. But in a car.... is there anything worse than seeing some sweaty, spandex butt shoved up in your face? Unless it's a girl wearing a thong? A damp, pink, tight thong, cutting into her ample folds of flesh, while her hipster jeans are half-way down her butt? The mere sight of this would turn milk.

Why do these people not understand?
1) obey the law
2) cycle properly
3) wear proper clothing
4) nobody wears a thong to exercise.

Well, actually, last night in the gym, three of us regulars were changing away when a newby came in to get showered and changed. She whisked off her brand-new sweatpants and bent down in our faces before we could avert our eyes. All three of us cringed and one took a step back, crying out: "My eyes! My EYES! It burns, I'm blind! Aaaarrrrgggghhh." for the newby was wearing a thong - a thong.... while exercising...

I bet she was on the cycling machine...

Moral of this tale? Always, always wipe the seat before you sit down at the gym....

Why am I still single?

I went to Coq d'Argent last night for an industry shin-dig.

As I had already been ill, and had taken co-codamol a few hours earlier, I got drunk quickly, At one point I was holding a Merlot in one hand and a Champagne in the other, telling everyone in a very posh totty voice: "Oh I love a balanced diet" - finding myself so funny that I went round telling the joke over and over and laughing at it each time. Yes, I am that sad.

Cute? That should have been the end of it. But because I had flirted with a waiter earlier, he kept refilling my champers glass until I ended up falling quickly into imbecility.

I told a work colleague that if he stopped smoking and became a christian, I would do him for a tenner.

I cuddled a former employee of mine and said: "Darling, I am an urban cougar and you're on my list of fresh meat." (apparently)

I got chatted up by a handsome journo from The Sun, but all I could muster in reply by then was: "How did you break your nose? Did you play rugby?" and that was the end of that brief romance.

I then started to speak French drunkenly the entire evening, to the French waiters, to my French friend, in fact - to everyone. Eventually I stopped when one of the waiters that I was holding onto (because the floor was moving), said: "I am Portuguese."
I then tried to speak Portuguese to him.
I don't speak Portuguese at all.
He brought me some water.

Refreshed slightly, I started onto the dancefloor and staggered and reeled like an utter moron, kissed a girl - it was her fault, she basically stuck her face into mine when I was intending to air-kiss her goodbye. Deciding it was time to run far far away.... I rushed to the toilets... and vomited into my handbag in the loos at Coq d'Argent.

I had gone ostensibly for a pee, and a nice sit-down. I put my handbag on the floor next to the toilet.

Sitting there I felt a sudden surge of projectile vomit, and turned around quickly - well, I slumped randomly so I was facing the wrong way for the first hurl. It was then that I thought - in for a penny, in for a pound, and continued to blow chunks in that general direction as lifting myself up from the position I had fallen into was too hard.

Half of the champagne-fuelled spew was bouncing off the walls, running all over the floor around my knees and knickers, which were around my ankles as I had been in mid-pee when the chunder train pulled into the station. So I am kneeling in my own vom and piss in one of the poshest restaurants in the UK, shouting for huey over my bag and coat sleeve.

To cap it all, when I had sprayed myself all over with perfume to mask the smell, I fell out of the restaurant like a stinking drunken twat, managing to find my way down in the lifts, and then vommed in the street while a pr lady held my hair back off my face. She even took me home while I sobbed in her taxi saying Im Sooo sorrrrrreeeee all the way home.

I am so classy.

Useless trivia

Did you know that the Berlin wall was 26.5 miles long?
Or that polar bears were left handed?
Or that allurophobia was fear of cats?
Or that chewing ginger cures motion sickness?

Do not be afraid - I am not turning into a walking mine of useless information - at least not yet. But in the past three days, such maxims and factoids have been spurting forth from my lips like mini-arrows of smug knowingness.

It's not really my fault; I played Trivial Pursuit last sunday with a friend, a game which seemed to go on for ever as I waited for a darn piece of yellow pie. It went on so long we started to get the same questions over and over again. At first I hoped he had not noticed, but it soon became obvious that what we had embarked on was not a friendly meeting of like minds, but a bitter bout of revision. I've not revised for anything for nine years. Now suddenly I was being TESTED on what I'd learnt and not what I knew. And most of the questions were useless facts. Except one.

According to Arabian legend, which creature was the result of an assignation between a lioness and a monkey aboard Noah's Ark?

Now there's something you don't hear every day. According to Islamic tradition, Noah's Ark was a hotbed of animal lust, cross-breeding and inter-special fornication. Forget what the humans were doing; these animals were indulging in their own form of horizontal jogging, producing hybrids that became the modern-day domestic and wild creatures we know and love today. Darwin would be doing the proverbial 360 at the suggestion that Natural Selection was simply a result of animals being bored and shagging each other.

This led me down other, darker, paths than simply winning the game (of course I won). It started me thinking - what if our friendly furry friends were all the result of some 40-day bestial orgy going on while Noah and his family were eating their dinner upstairs, innocently wondering when the rain would stop?

Take the Sloth. What is that all about? Surely that's a gorilla and a dog, right? And an aardvark? Nellie the elephant and a crocodile - he sure packed her trunk. Pandas mating with hedgehogs to produce badgers...

"Hellooo baby... You have the prettiest black eyes I've ever seen."
"Why you charmer! Ow! Your prickles are sticking into me."
"That's no prickle, princess."
"Ooooh!"

The mere fact my head is warping its way along this train of thought worries me immensely. If this is what playing board games does to a person, then there should be Mental Health warnings on the box.

By the way, the answer to the question was, of course a Cat.

Excewze Mee Ay dewnt speeke yewr Ingglissh

I don't speak English any more.

That is, I always thought I did. I was brought up to pronounce my t's and never drop my h's. I got beaten up at my private school for sounding posh, until the kids realised I was from a single parent family, whereupon they beat me up for not being posh.

I remember giving a speech on the quality and importance of maintaining the grammatical order and classical pronunciation of English once at the English Speaking Union. When I got hounded down by a smart-arsed 6th Former from a competing school accusing me of lack of cosmopolitanity (yes, she thought that was a real word) I should have been warned to change before it was too late.

But now it is too late. 13 years on and I realise I do not speak in a way that others can understand. The past two weeks' worth of interaction with the general shopkeeping public around Oxford Circus has convinced me of this fact.
To wit:

1) I endeavoured to get €100 for a trip to Greece from my local high street bank, which shall remain nameless, although it has a blue eagle for a logo. So the conversation went thus:
"Could I please have €100 - I'm going to Greece"
"You want three hundred locker keys? For a safe deposit?"
What? What on earth could he have possibly thought - how???
Me (for that is who it was) "No - €100 euro please."
"€300?"
"€100 - just €100 please."

2) I went into my local bead shop to buy some bails - small silver clasps that attach crystal pendants to necklaces.
"May I please have some bails?"
"Bows?" said the lovely lassie behind the bar, a Kent girl through and through.
Me (for that is who it was) "No, Bails, please, for necklaces."
"Balls?"
"Bails. BAILS."
"Oh! said the assistant, brightening. You want BELLS."
"No" (still me). Not Bellz, Bay-ls." Thinking phonetics would help. HOW on this green earth can Bails sound like Bells? "Bails Bails Bails," I repeated like a madwoman, desperately pointing with each word to a picture in the order book. I felt like a foreigner pointing sheepishly to some unpronounceable portion of Polish sausage in a restaurant.
"Oh! You mean Ba'wls".

I did not say AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. She may have put that on the order form too and charged me for "ostrich feathers".

But the worst came at Subway. The chap had just served an entire Italian family who had as much English between them as a tree stump. All I asked was:

"Everything except the onions please."
"You want more cheese?"
"No thank you" (still me) "Just all the Salad, except the onions."
"Just onions?"
OH MY GOSH.
"NO ONIONS. Onions, no" (I said, gesticulating wildly and pointing at the offending tub of raw bulbs). "Salad, lettuce, cucumber, yes yes, Onion - no!"
Papa Italian turned round from the payment area and smiled. "She has no onion, all other yes." He beamed kindly.
"I see" said the assistant. He turned to me. "Sorry, I could not understand your accent."

If only my English teacher Mrs Smith could see me now, a sorry form of humanity, forced to drawl only inanities and relegated to a morass of incomprehension. It won't be long before I am reduced to drawing pictures of apples and showing them to the checkout girl at Sainsbury's. "A-p-p-l-e... hur hur, me speketh gud, gibber gibber..."

Of mice and men

The verse for today - You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32) has been resonating today in so many odd ways.

Firstly, you can't mention the word "truth" without another voice in your head whispering "what is truth"? Like Pilate of old, searching for a meaning, for something concrete and true, questioning what is, or is not, true has been a raison d'etre for so much of mankind since first we climbed trees, painted ourselves blue and clubbed each other over the head with a hearty "ugg". What is truth?

Can it set us free?

When so many are in prison because of the truth - the truth of human rights, of freedom of speech, of religion, of humanity - can it set us free? Maya Angelou in her writing spoke of a cage of social and educational and financial making, and yet she called herself a caged bird that could Sing, and sing from the heart. Has the knowledge of being imprisoned, and an optimistic resignation to that state, made one free? The assurance that we who are bound may be ransomed, that our spirits and our souls can never be enchained - does that truth make us free?

But after pondering this on the bus, as one does, I stepped off the 109 and onto my train, pulled out my book (Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders) and the first line my eyes glanced upon was: "He will be baffled by the truth. The mediocre always are."

Does the truth indeed enlighten us, set us free - metaphorically and/or physically? Or does it actually confuse us, binding us more closely in confusion or sorrow? Supposing our friend's husband has had an affair and we find out. The truth must be told. But in doing so - does not that lead to great heartbreak? Then we are sometimes guilty in telling the truth. Telling the truth has not set anyone free apart from our own consciences - and so we place truth at the top of our list of priorities, over and above the happy and blissful ignorance of our friends.... and yet... it is so easy to lie to help a friend... If someone has lost a person dear to them do we not tell meaningless lies to make them feel better? Are we not then guilty for lying to them? But if we were to tell the bald, ugly truth - we plunge them into deeper sorrow of spirit.

I'm not sure the truth does set us free. It comes with a price, a cost. It is of course imperative that we are honest, that we are true to our beliefs, that we speak of One who came to bring Truth and Light and Life - indeed, Jesus described Himself as The Truth (the truth being a person)... and yet yet yet it is so hard a course, so rocky a road and full of pitfalls that only the very brave must dare to be honest regardless of torment or torture. And only the very wise can tell the truth at all times without hurting others; only the very kind can add pure honesty to their virtues without causing other people to be trapped or chained up.

This morning we caught a very little mouse in the office. He was tiny - half the size of my thumb. Which is a useless description unless you have seen my thumb. Well then, he was just bigger than a 50 pence piece, with a tiny little head, miniature pink hands and feet and large black eyes fringed with delicate, twitching whiskers. Richard wanted to stamp on him but others and I objected. It ended up with me holding the little fella in a cardboard tube, and running downstairs to let him out into a nearby churchyard. I thought he would enjoy the abundant flowerpots with their profusion of covering leaves and scented blooms. He certainly seemed to be happy enough, scampering around. I felt pleased that we had set him free.

Five minutes later we heard the growl of distant thunder, swiftly crescendoing into a roar and the rain lashed down. Then I wished we had not set him free in the cold and the rain. Has his freedom come at a price? And what is the life of a little, motherless mouse worth? A slower death outside or a swift one inside the warm, waiting for the Rentokil man. What was the truth here?

bored

Bored.
Bored bored Bored bored Bored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored boredBored bored Bored bored.... the more you write it, the weirder it looks. It should almost be pronounced bor-ed.
That's how bor-ed I am.

Worst introduction to a news story this week

"Annual reports are not fit for purpose - partly because they are used for too many purposes, a survey claims."

Please someone shoot me now....

Coming in here, stealing our cats...

I've never been comfortable with the Nimby Brigade living so near to me. I've felt a prickly sensation across the back of my neck every time I passed by a local news stand bearing the legend: "More immigrants to flood the UK" - a prickly sensation that might have been cooties, but was more likely to be caused by my inner fear of racists.

Moreover, I have been pleased to see Polish delicatessens springing up over South London. The Sausages! Oh my sainted aunt Rosemary! The Sausages - great big dripping spicy rolls of proper meat and herbs and chunks of fat... and the sweetmeats! Why have you never seen a fat Polish person, if all they eat is sausages and caramel-filled pastries? Like Indians - all that amazing Ghee and Lassi and curry with deep red grease three inches thick floating on top - why aren't they fat either??? I know my waistline has grown proportionately to the number of Polish nationals that have landed on our fair shore.

All this kerfuffle about "taking our jobs"... come on, who would you rather have: a hard-working Polish builder who comes in, wipes his feet, does the job and then goes, or an English builder who comes in, looks around, sucks air through his teeth and makes tutting noises, then goes out to make a call to "Ed...Ed... yeah... how much more have we got to charge for VAT...?"; one who drinks all your coffee and leaves coffee rings on your sofa arm, while dropping biscuit crumbs down the cushions, then has to pick up strange and expensive thingies from B&Q for 5 hours and then charges you £1000 more than the estimate cost for "additional time".... And that's if he comes back from B&Q at all.... AND when you go upstairs, you find the most enormous chocolate log in your toilet that can't be flushed away unless you break it up with a rolling pin? (I am aware that there should be a question mark there, but it almost seems inappropriate).

A further idiot's guide to spotting a Nimby is if you hear someone say: "England's full"... Is it? What a ridiculous thing to say... of course it's not full - people are not falling off the edges or being pushed into ravines because there are JUST TOO MANY PEOPLE HERE. Someone mentioned that there are 4.3m people coming in - and there are 5.6 million UK expatriates around the world. We're in Credit! We're 1.3 million people cheaper...

All this I know, and yet... if my polish neighbour keeps "accidentally" letting my cat into her flat and saying to me "he can stay" (no he flaming well can't), I might have to thump on her. Get your own cat and stop stealing ours.

Ginger nuts in top secret mission to Africa

So our Spare Heir is off to Africa instead of Iraq (or is he? He could already be in Iraq for all we know. Or in Brazil) and his ginger nut is going to be a tougher one for Iraqi insurgents to crack.

The poor lad is said to be "well gutted" at being unable to take a pop at the old towel-heads; he is reported to have said it would have been a "ripping time" and that he had been looking forward to smoking the odd wad of hashish courtesy of the Marrakesh Smoke Train that chuntles through the desert every now and then.

But our very own Hardy Boy was considered too high a risk to be sent to the front line. Excuse me? The chap is a soldier, trained in the arts of war and street-brawling. A prince should be on the front line, leading his chaps into battle with a rousing cry: "God for England, Lizzie and the St. George - best pub in Kensington."

But instead he's being sent to Africa. What a disappointment for the young prince, let alone the Pakistani snipers being shipped into Iraq for the sport. He was the best target they had - they've been trained to recognise a ginger barnet at 1000 paces. Now they've only got Chris Evans to take pot shots at in London, which will be fun but hardly as satisfying.

The rationale is that Harry, being potentially our King Henry IX (no, it's NOT short for Harold) is too high profile, putting his life and the life of his fellow-soldiers in jeopardy by his presence in Iraq-land. So he's going to a quieter area - West Africa.

This is a completely irrational argument put forward by the Mod - the Moderately Obtuse Department. Firstly, Iraq is a war-torn area. Soldiers have been killed and wounded there for years. Harry's arrival there is hardly likely to intensify the probability of mortar attacks. The very fact that these young men and women are in British Uniform is putting their lives in danger. They're soldiers. That's what they've been trained to do. A soldier goes into battle to fight the fight for his country, and is prepared to lay down his life for his land.

Incidentally, this is what irritates me about the media hype every time a soldier is killed or captured. They portray it as a tragedy. It is not a tragedy. Tragic, perhaps, but not a tragedy in the dictionary definition of the word. These men and women are trained to kill or be killed. They are putting their lives on the line deliberately and selflessly so that their families and friends back home can live their lives in peace. And that is what really angered me about those muppets who strayed into Iranian waters and blubbed like babies to the media. Medically they were all treated far better than we could have imagined. And yet they readily told their Iranian capturers heaps of information. What? If these idiots had been parachuted into France pre- D-Day, and been captured by the Vichy or SS, we'd have lost the war. And the SS had much more evil ways of torturing information out of people, but the heros of WWII had far more self-respect, love for country and honour to open their mouths. They died for their ideals and went to their graves in silence. I tell you, if I ever meet any of those rat-faced weasels who were captured by the Iranians, I'll ship them back to Iran with the words: "Ahmadinejad is a gayboy" tatooed to their foreheads.

Where was I?

Oh, secondly, they tell us Harry is going off to Africa. It's TOP SECRET. That's why every paper in the country knows about it. Secret Service, my ass. About as secret as Flasher John's genitals on a hot summer day on Clapham Common. Africa offers Harry the Red far less security than he would have were he to be posted to Baghdad! It would be far easier to capture a prince in a less-defended, less high-military-profiled area like Africa than it would in Iraq. Hell, my mum could capture Harry in Africa, and she's a as subtle as as earthquake. I could capture Harry easily. Just sneak in a bottle of Jack Daniel's into the compound, with a note: "Hey, prince dude, there's more of this by the Forest entrance, and lots of beautiful dancing girls. Come along at midnight. Alone."

Of course, my motives for kidnapping the Ginger Windsor would not be quite the same as the motives purported by the tribe of Saladin. After all, he is of legal age and far cuter than his balding brother.