The rat catcher July 30, 2009

So the pest control man from the council came to my house today to address the previously mentioned mouse problem. He was a man of about fifty, with a stained t-shirt, protruding belly and a disturbing amount of bum cleavage on show. One of those middle aged men who don’t speak to women directly but instead address all communication to their boobs. He stamped around my flat, looking in all the nooks and crannies with a gigantic torch and picking up mouse poo with his BARE HANDS and sniffing it.  Then he sat down to do some paperwork.

“Do you have children?” he asked.

“No” I replied, thinking he’d forgotten that he’d already asked this question whilst going through the tick boxes on his form. He’d asked it right after “Who will be paying the bill? and just before “Do you have any pets?” This time he followed it up with a different question. He raised his eyebrows, looked me up and down and said “Do you want any?”

Because I am kick-arse, feminista of the 21st century, I kneed him the gangoolies and demanded that he immediately leave my flat. No, no I didn’t. Instead I laughed nervously, turned slightly pink and quickly changed the subject. Surprisingly, this did not scare him enough to stop him enquiring whether I had a boyfriend or asking for my phone number.

I spent the rest of his visit alluding to a mythical boyfriend. I didn’t make him up, the rat catcher did. He kept asking if my boyfriend would go out and buy some poison, or remove dead mouse carcasses, or call up the number for pest control that he’d given me on the form. I nodded non-commitally and said “uh huh” in all the appropriate places. If I have to have a mythical boyfriend he is going to be the best mythical boyfriend in the whole world. I will name him Hans and he is a sensitive, poetic type who can also wrestle bears to the ground without breaking a sweat (because there are a lot of wild bears in Hull. And men named Hans.)

It should be noted that in the past nine months of singledom I have now been asked out precisely twice. Once by the rat catcher and once by an elderly, Lithuanian bus driver whilst I was trapped on his bus during a snowstorm. I am going to be alone forever aren’t I? Oh well, at least I’ve got Hans.

Things that are freaking me out July 28, 2009

1. This afternoon I went to the shop and bought a cucumber. In fact I splashed out and bought a whole one instead of a half. What can I say? I was feeling flush. I saweth with mine own eyes the checkout lady put it in my bag. When I got home … dun, dun dun duh…(that is the literary representation of tension building music by the way) … there was no cucumber. Either my bag harbours a hole in the space-time continuum or I am so dopey that I didn’t notice when a 40cm long vegetable made a leap for freedom out my bag and onto the floor.

2. This man.

Scary isn’t he? His name is Gareth and he is taking great pains to torture me on a regular basis. He wants me to look like the lady on the right here.

I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. Mainly because I have no idea how I would make myself that particular effervescent shade of orange. I’m also not sure what possessed me to rent a Ministry of Sound keep fit video. I HATE dance music! It’s as if I thought trying to keep up with complicated footwork whilst sweating the equivalent of Bangladesh’s annual rainfall would not be torture enough. Oh no, I up the pain by doing it to a Euro-trance re-mix of Katy Perry’s latest single.

3. In order to get through the above workout I have to scrape my hair into an unflattering ponytail/quiff combination and HOLY CRAP!! I think my forehead has doubled in size since I had my fringe cut.

It wasn’t the size of a small child before was it? Was it?

4. (Deep breath here) THERE IS A MOUSE IN MY FLAT (and exhale)

I have kind of known this for about week, when strange nibbling noises started emanating from under the floorboards, but I chose to live in denial. I told myself it was probably tap dancing fairies. Today brought the discovery of a chewed through bag of rice and several presents of mouse poo. I am now too scared to eat anything or eat from anything that has been in my kitchen. (I am not dirty. I am not dirty I am not dirty. Repeat ad nauseum until the nauseous feeling passes)

This means that I find this …

more terrifying than this…

Gareth may make me jump around like a lunatic but even he can’t make me throw away a half eaten packet of chocolate digestives.

Grizzly Sunday July 26, 2009

Beautiful song is Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear.  Beautiful images taken from Albert Lamorisse’s “La Balloon Rouge”.

Beautiful song + Beautiful video  =  Perfect start to a Sunday afternoon

I first saw this on the blog Rock Star Diaries (see blogroll on the right). You should go and have a look. It’s cooooooool – and makes me wonder whatever happened to my polaroid camera.

Guess who stayed over at mine this week? July 24, 2009

Nope, not Keanu.

No, not Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

And no not Jeremy Clarkson . Now you’re just being stupid. As if I would allow a right-wing, petrol headed numpty access to my inner sanctum.

This little man!

Please note the unprompted tilt of the head, propped up by an oh-so-professional casual lean on the hand. All at 14 months of age. This is a Derek Zoolander of the future I think we can all agree, but being fortune enough to share some of my genes, far more intelligent obviously.

My sister kindly lent me her baby so that I could see what it is like to wake up every hour throughout the night and shove a bottle of milk into a small human’s mouth. Co-incidentally this meant that my sister and brother-in-law got to experience a full nights sleep for the first time in – ooooh – about 14 months.

Despite the broken sleep me and Jed had a great time. In a bid to be crowned Super Aunty I took him for a walk and picnic in the park.  It turns out I really needn’t have bothered as the thing that made him squeal with excitement was not the rolling in the grass, having a go on the swings or seeing a giant iguana in the small animal enclosure. Oh no, what seemed to have been the highlight of his stay was this…

The washing machine! He would have sat and watched it for hours if I hadn’t have made him go outside and do ‘fun’ things. Perhaps I could have used his fascination with watching the drum go round and round to hypnotise him into pretending to be a chicken. But I wanted to see reptiles more than I wanted to watch him peck the ground with a make-believe beak.

However, now I know he’s into domestic pursuits I’ll be sure to have the chimney brushes ready next time he visits. He’s well up for it. See!

The Grand Invention of Finger Yoga July 23, 2009

So….here we go again. This is the fourth in a not so illustrious strings of blogs that I have had since 2002. My last Typepad blog has become another casualty of the current economic climate. Or to put it another way, I am too much of a skinflint to pay for it now that the weak pound has caused the monthly upkeep fee to double.  So here I am, at WordPress. Land of the freeeeeeeeeeee!!! Literally. This blog will cost me nothing. Nada. This pleases me, mainly because I know how many pairs of shoes I can get in Primark for £8.

I probably should tell you what I’ve been up to since my last post on Typepad in February but to be frank, I can’t be bothered. So instead, here is a brief summary of today’s antics.

This morning’s  plan of vigorous exercise was  scuppered by a phone call from my boss requesting my presence at school. (If anyone feels like scuppering tomorrow’s attempt I will be eternally grateful). Most of the day was then spent clambering around what is now a building site trying to envisage what my new classroom will look like when it is no longer rubble. My excitement at seeing it was tempered only by the disappointment I felt at not being  given a hard hat to wear.  I think I could totally rock builder chic.

To get to my classroom I had to walk the plank and I consider it personal victory that I did not fall flat on my face in front of the half a dozen or so builders that were milling around at the time. This is progress.

The rest of my day has been spent cursing at my laptop. For some reason the ‘f’ key is acting like it is stuck down, even though IT IS NOT and it’s making my life a living hell. I cannot log into anything because my laptop puts an ‘f’ in-between every character I type and if I stop typing it shouts ‘ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff’ at me. It’s like my laptop is being haunted by an angry old man who is hopping up and down inside it,  shaking his fist in the air and repeatedly screaming ‘fuck you’ .  Lets call him Dick.  Because he is a Dick. And let it be known that in the game of hopping up and down, fist shaking and screaming ‘fuck you’ I gave him quite a run for his money.

In the end, I found that roughly 50% of the time I could stop old Dick in his tracks by lightly pressing the ‘f’ key with one hand and typing around it. This necessitates moving my fingers into all manner of ungodly contortions. A type of finger yoga if you will.

So in short, the most noteworthy event of my day was the invention of finger yoga in order to claim victory over the imaginary little man living in my laptop.

This is going to be a long summer holiday.

Hello world! July 20, 2009

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!