Shhhh, don't tell anyone

I'm not going to speak very loudly in case the sky falls on my head or it all stops working but - come closer - I finally have broadband. After all that shouting at people in India, it started working yesterday.

More importantly, the fault on the phone line was fixed very quickly due to the application of chocolate digestives and a cup of tea.

Railing against the fates as I was, an old friend of mine who knows about such things told me that the solution was to get someone to care. And if an engineer was required, to give them tea and biscuits and butter them up. As he has managed rather a lot of them in his time, I thought I'd give it a go. Because hey, I'd tried everything else apart from throwing things at them, so I had nothing else left to try.

So a bit of buttering up later, and voila! Here we are, zipping along the internet superhighway. And I can make phone calls too. How marvellous. Now I just have to get the home phone line sorted out and we can finally send out change of address cards about 4 months after we moved.

But please don't tell anyone the secret of tea and biscuits, nor that broadband is finally working. I'd hate for them to suddenly take it all away again and they can you know, they can.

Off to Manchester to do some Pre-Raphaelite art this afternoon with my sister and Madam.

Lucy

Zen enlightenment and BT

Regular readers will remember my painful b/band and phone situation. (The toe is better now, thanks.)

Another episode unfolded yesterday and I supposedly am now 'back with BT'. The line was working fine, then they did whatever they do with it and - guess what? - it's got a fault on it.

I'd love to go with someone else but there was a fault before this one arrived, so we couldn't. QED.

I wonder when being 'back with BT' became a euphemism for 'ranting alot at call centres in India'. But after all the pain, angst and 4am worrying (I'm not sad, I have to have the net to work, it's that simple), I've reached a new state of zen-ness about it all.

I achieved this by:
- demanding to speak to someone in the UK who knew what they were talking about
- logging it as a fault and finding out how to complain to the right place
- going for a long, hard swim, splashing lots of OAPs who were trying to keep their perms dry.
- chanting over and over in my head 'it is fixed, it is fixed, it is fixed'.

I'm now in the zone; there's no point ranting anymore, that's not going to help me. I just have to endure the state of 'being back with BT-ness' and accept that that's pretty crap however you look at it.

Maybe one day I'll look back and laugh. I tried a bit of a wry smile just then. It felt okay.

Yours on the Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment,
Lucy
PS: As you've not doubt guessed, I'm still on a slow modem, so it's either links or pictures. And I'm NOT LINKING TO BLEEDING BT!

We heart Tuna

When we moved into this house, I unpacked 19 tins of tuna. No kidding. All kinds, obviously all bought from different shops, in brine, in olive oil, in water - you name it, we had it.

We're now down to a fairly respectable 3 tins (in brine, thanks for asking).

Trouble is, I'm feeling a wee bit exposed here. It's my goto food, my fishy comfort blanket. Even if I'm OFF MY FOOD (very rare, very serious) I always eat tuna.

It does have to be tinned though. I've never eaten fresh tuna that really appealed (apart from sushi). It's a bit dry and a bit boring when cooked. Such is my deep love of the tinned stuff, those 19 tins actually felt acceptable.

As you've no doubt guessed, we do eat an enormous amount of tuna in this house. I can easily have it on toast in the breakfast (I can hear the 'yeuchs!' as I write this), in a wrap for lunch and if I'm very lucky, in a salad for tea. Well that was yesterday's menu, I needed cheering up. And we also own a commenserate amount mayo too, again in all varieties and including salad cream. They go together. I can't live without them.

I've decided not to worry about mercury poisoning. For a start, I don't want to deprive myself of this harmless addiction, secondly however remote the chance, I'll never get syphillus, and thirdly I'm going to leave my body to medical science.

They can check how much mercury I've got floating about, and if it's alot, maybe have some fun turning my arteries into thermometers. Well, it'll be nice to be useful in the latter days of global warming.

Mmm, I'm a bit peckish.
Lucy

PS: Apologies for the lack of links, I'm on a mobile modem and it's a bit slow.

Three out of three

The library came up trumps this week with some good films to watch while Dr G was away in Sweden. And at £2 each for a week too - bargain.

1) The Queen - Helen Mirren is ace, doesn't take her clothes off AT ALL and acts everyone else of the screen, with the possible exception of Micheal Sheen who plays Tony Blair. Well worth a watch.

2) The Good German - George Clooney, Toby McGuire and Kate Blanchett in old Berlin just after the 2nd world war ended. It's about the human cost of war. A deliberate film noir pastiche, quite slow but fine if you watch it in chunks and pause occ to make a cup of tea or a phone call. The old film stock from that time jars slightly against the new footage but you can see why they used it, it gives atmosphere. I really liked Clooney, who looked even more like Clark Gable in black and white, and Blanchett channels Greta Garbo's accent quite effectively. If you can't get hold of some real film noir, this makes a good substitute.

3) In Bruges - this was way funnier than I expected it to be. You get the feeling that Colin Farrell wasn't REALLY acting, just being himself. It's only slightly marred by Ralph Fiennes attempting to be as good as Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. He doesn't menace, he whines. That aside, everyone else acts their pants off, Bruges looks great, and it's a proper adult film with a real ending.

All in all, a good film week. This evening's we continue the German film festival with The Counterfeiters. Will let ya know if it's worth your time or not.

Off to mow the lawn now,
Lucy

Dumb as shoes

Last weekDr G made me laugh alot while watching a documentary about the people who cooked for Elvis, or bought food for Elvis, and ultimately (let's face facts), helped to kill Elvis. None of them had the brains to make that leap, that their actions contributed to his death. And in fact all of them were extremely proud of their food-related roles in his life, which just made it worse. They were, in Dr G's estimation, as dumb as shoes.

I laughed in that superior way that only someone with an IQ higher than everyday footwear can. Then today I came up with a new one: bewildered by keys.

I'd like to say I was being witty, coming up with another bon mot to match my husband's, but unfortunately I think karma was having a go at me for being superior. It was me, dear reader, who got confused by her own keys.

In short, this afternoon I tried to use the key for the car on the front door. I pressed the lock symbol, then stood there for a good few seconds wondering why the door wasn't locking, and why the car was beeping beside me.

It's a sobering thought to find the onset of middle age showing it's symptons so very early. I mean, my generation were never meant to get old. Live fast, die young. Continue going to music festivals even though it takes 2 weeks to get over them, keep wearing unsuitable clothes/hair styles/make up despite what Mr Mirror is telling us. All that.

The last thing I expected upon reaching 41 was that I was about to join Wogan's TOGs and be confused by my own keys on a Thursday afternoon. It was raining but really that's no excuse.

I'd better start doing Mensa exercises and learning Sudoko. I really don't want to end up as dumb as my shoes.

Lucy

Can cats get agrophobia?

Strikes me that I've not written much about what living in Holmes Chapel is like, and the contrast with Dundee is rather marked.

I was reminded of that yesterday, while wondering why t-dahl hadn't left her basket all day. That led me to question whether cats can get seasonal affective disorder (SAD for short). It has been pretty grey/grim these last few days, and as the heating pipe that runs under said basket was cold, I couldn't figure out why she didn't want to move. Mind you, I didn't either she could just have been cosy.

Just after we arrived I took the cats to the V.E.T to get their boosters. The new vet was very nice, seemed like a normal human being, until I mentioned that they hadn't really been outside much for the last 7 years. They've been house cats, apart from the odd sojourn on the lead which only worked for sag aloo. T-dahl had far too much sense to let that happen. Leads are for daft dogs, after all.

When I mentioned this, he piped up:

'Well, they could be argrophobic'.

I did my best not to laugh, mostly because I was flabbergasted.

Flabber my gast, whoever heard of an agrophobic cat? Really that has to be rubbish. Not to mention that whenever we open the door we have to shout 'incoming' as one of them tries to fly through it to reach the joys of - erm - the lawn. Well overgrown, weedy lawns are the stuff of joy if you're a house cat. Obviously.

This is the place that offers hydro therapy for dogs. And probably therapy sessions for depressed gerbils for all I know. But before I write this off as another 'cha-cha-cha-Cheshire' experience, I was wondering, can cats get agrophobia? Or SAD??

Answers on a postcard please,

Lucy

Beach envy

We just spent a brilliant weekend in Hoylake. Lovely, lovely friends who live in a beautiful house filled with light, kids, music and with arty stuff happening in nearly every room (jewellery making, sewing, painting...). All this AND there's a huge beach at the end of the road. How gorgeous is that?

There's something magical about the long view across the sea to the horizon. It never fails to calm me down and lift my spirits.

Having had my spirits lifted, the trip to the beach was only slightly marred by Missy falling over no less than 8 times, and whining, then thumping me in face with sandy hands. I won't go into how we sorted that one out because my blood temp took ages to return to normal, but suffice to say I was reminded of it all day as I couldn't get the sand out of my fillings for some time. Thank god for the long view.

I came back to Austerity Towers very disgruntled. I've always wanted to live within walking distance of a beach. And what a beach it is, nearly as good as Tentsmuir, my all-time favourite in Scotland. They did say we could visit anytime, so perhaps we could just move in... I'm a very good house guest, they'd hardly know I was there. I'd be on the beach ALL the time anyway.

I'm now wondering how to shift the house 50 miles in a seaward direction.

What's your favourite beach?

Lucy

I remember the last one

Reading the papers this week has been a sobering experience, and I remember why I didn't read them during the last recession. Not only are they full of lengthy reports about financial situations that I barely understand, they're also thoroughly depressing. Page after page after page of bad news. I'm not avoiding it, there's no way to do that. All you have to do is listen to R4 for any length of time or switch on any news bulletin and there it is: we're in a recession. I'm not going to start ranting because frankly it's pointless.

We lost three houses in the last one and barely held on to what we had with our fingertips. Luckily I wasn't around for the third one, by that time I'd gone to University so had somewhere else to live. Mum had to do a midnight flit that time and left a rather classic Habitat table that I'd dearly love to have in my kitchen now. Funny what you remember.

Anyway, what I'm waiting for is the classic 'r' avoidance that kicked in the last time: daft fashion (shoulder pads, ra-ra skirts), silly music (take your pick, it was the 80s, but Jive Bunny takes some beating), ridiculously upbeat/fluffy films (anything with the brat pack in it, I had a serious Andre McCarthy crush) and so on. That's what I focussed on the last time. And while I'm older this time around, with the usual over-40 responsibilities, I really need those distractions and I'm betting you do too.

So here's a few to be going on with:

• Heat Radio on DAB - fluffy music and celebrity gossip instead of news bulletins. There is NO bad news unless you count hearing about celebrity handbags on a regular basis. I just don't get the handbag thing.


• James Bond books - I'm reading 'From Russia with Love'; not only does everyone get to smoke with impunity, there's sex, lots of fights against those pesky Russians, and of course, brooding Bond.


• Outlandish recipes - one of my favourite blogs is Just Bento. I will probably never, ever cook anything from here. But it all looks so lovely that I drift off into a day dream of kitschy Japanese lunch boxes packed with food I'll probably never get to taste but really fancy.

Naturally I'm not advocating ignoring what's happening - heavens, would I do that? No, I'm just suggesting we balance it out with a bit of daftness and fun. Let's not be dull. Let's fiddle while Rome burns....

Yours off to find her red patent stilletos c. 1983,
Lucy

Technology and sore toes

I'm having a very challenging week.

1) BT were supposed to come last week to sort out a new line for my office. Despite being brilliant up to the point at which they were supposed to switch on the new line, it failed in true old-style BT fashion. Resulting in many, many calls to India and god knows where else.

When I got a message saying they'd cancelled everything and I'd have to start again, I kicked a kitchen cabinet so hard I've now got sore toes. And they want us to return to BT? B*llocks to that.

2) I need to replace the other house line with a new b/band and phone contract. Once again, many calls to the Utility 'useless' Warehouse by both me and the bloke that owned the house before me. Can we get this sorted between us? Well it's 2 months and counting so far...

3) The new provider I want to use told me yes, they can switch on the line without the required information from Useless Warehouse but I won't have b/band access for 7 days. Which I can't have because I work from home.

Cue ranting. In fact at this point I broke down in tears and wept.

4) It gets worse. I went to measure the mattress as we need a new bed and the tape measure snapped back and took a chunk out of my wrist.

THEN I went to the loo and the toilet seat fell off in my hands.

I've always said that I need is a personal assistant who's job it is to do all this kind of thing for me. Including helping me to the toilet as I'm obviously utterly incapable of getting that right too.

Any applications gratefully received, but be aware that this job is hugely frustrating and (occ) smelly.

Your vastly fed up blogger
Lucy

Speaking like a girl pirate

Sir and The Boy came to stay this weekend.

They bought all kinds of inappropriate birthday presents for Missy, including yet another gun thingy that fires disk as the previous one from Sir mysteriously disappeared in the move. Unfortunately I mentioned this to him and we now have another one. Funny how easily these things get lost, isn't it?

The best present def. came from her Uncle - a pirate's outfit complete with foam sword, eye patch and plastic musket. Now if I didn't know better, I'd say that Sir and The Boy really want a grandson/nephew. These toys are definitely from the boy side of the shop. It's that or being male, they don't actually 'see' the girly stuff, but pass onto whatever it is they would like to play with themselves.

Luckily Missy loved it, and has spent the weekend having mock sword fights with her Uncle, watching 'Dangermouse' and going out on her new bike. (Which is the pinkest, girliest bike I've ever seen, it not only comes with it's own doll called Molly, it also has a fluffy pink saddle. I would like to record officially that I wanted a sensible bike that but was overruled by her father and Missy (both) pouting when I showed them the one I had in mind.)

That aside, I heard them both in her bedroom discussing where the treasure was buried and it made me laugh:

'Where's the gold then?'

'I don't know, I'm a girl pirate, where do you think it is?'

Apparently girl pirates can have massive sword fights, wear eye patches and fire (fake) muskets, but they don't want to get their hands dirty by burying treasure. No comment.

Yours hoisting the Jolly Roger and teaching her daughter to dig holes,

Lucy

PS: I should like it stated that I'm not, and have never been, your heartie.