Ain’t no Russel Brand!

Why is it that, in every walk of life, you will generally find a self-appointed commedian or ‘funny guy’ who actually is more hurtful than anything else? One guy I know is just like this, he tries to be funny but quite often the comedic jibes have quite a sharp edge and vicious bite.

If I’m being completely honest I s’pose I find him less than amusing (to say the least) because quite a few of the jibes are directed at me. As I don’t particularly get on with this person I’m probably more sensitive than I would be if it were a friend taking the proverbial but that’s really no excuse for someone to be hurtful toward someone else.

Its like – ‘ok we get it, you think you’re funny’ but really, you ain’t no Russel Brand so give the bad jokes and cruel jibes a rest!

Not a good advocate for women drivers!

It is a truth universally acknowledged – by men at least – that being female means you can’t drive!

We’ve all heard the jokes about how rubbish women drivers are, and admittedly some of them are pretty naff – one friend of mine doesn’t believe in driving round static objects like walls, she ‘ever so gently’ cannons off them if they are in her way! But I’ve always been of the oppinion that, in general, your gender makes no difference in the driving stakes!

Yesterday however, I made a great leap foward in proving that women and cars – and car mechanics especially – simply don’t mix! Darling boyf was spending his ‘perfect’ sunday – messing around with his beloved 1961 karmann ghia. He needed a bit more space in the driveway so asked me to shift my lovely new 207 down to the bottom of the drive to give him more room…

He had the engine of the ghia ticking over at this point and if you’ve ever heard those cars then you’ll know that they make a very loud and boomy noise that is difficult to hear over. As I hopped in my car (which is still all beautiful and shiny and new-smelling – it was only ‘born’ in november last year) darling boyf started to say something so I turned the ignition on ‘one click’ so that I could wind the electric windows down and hear what he was saying. Anyway, conversation finished I put the 207 into reverse and took off the handbrake, it moved slowly back and then ground to a halt! OMG – what’s wrong with my car… its only 2 months old, just a baby, surely nothing can have gone wrong with it already? I put the car back into neutral and tried again… still no movement. I opened the door and yelled for darling boyf… ‘my car’s died… it won’t move’ I wailed…

Darling boyf sauntered down the driveway, stuck his hand inside the car and turned the ignition key… and, of course, my baby fired into life!!! ‘It helps if you actually turn on the ignition darling’ he spluttered before bursting into fits of laughter.

Never gonna live this one down, not in a million years

Its not the winning, its the taking part that counts… NOT

People always say that don’t they… “it’s not the winning, its the taking part that counts”.

Usually this pearl of wisdom - spouting from the mouth’s of mums comforting their little darlings when someone else beat them in the school annual egg-and-spoon race - is, I guess, on the whole quite right… it doesn’t matter if little katy or jimmy beat you… the race was just as much fun whether you won or not… BUT… (and yes, there’s a ’but’ – in fact its a huge one!) there are some instances when the winning IS what matters – and when the prize that you get for winning is of the utmost importance.

Last week a colleague and I got talked into attending an internal IT event at work – the idea to find out about all the techie stuff that we should be adopting in our work (yawn). So we showed up and noticed that the organisers had a competition running – an incentive to get you to go round all the different stands and actually pay attention to what was being said I s’pose. You had to fill out a questionnaire about everything you learned and the winner got an MP3 player as a prize. ‘What the heck’ we thought, we’re here so we may as well enter.

I didn’t think anymore about it until my phone rang on monday and this very polite IT guy explained that I had actually won the competition This was a source of great excitement as I have never - and I really mean never, ever - won anything in my life!! He didn’t tell me much about the prize but, hey - they’re the IT dept, surely they will know about decent MP3 players right…

WRONG… my player arrived just before I was leaving work yesterday… MP3 player… I don’t think so, it would be stretching the truth to even call this device a memory stick! I think it just about has the capacity to hold about 25 songs and runs on a AAA battery – its even been corporate branded! In fact its so bad that when I showed darling boyf when I got home he just burst out laughing

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not normally an ungrateful girl but the fact that I have never won anything before meant that I was really excited, and then to get a prize that – to put it bluntly – is complete and utter crap, means that I’m left feeling very hard done by. I can’t believe the IT guy actually had the audacity to say ‘Congratulations’ like it was someting to be pleased about. Honestly, they must have got change from a fiver when they bought it!

So anyway, to all those people who say that the prize doesn’t matter, may I just suggest that they enter the staff competitions at my work then, maybe they won’t be so disappointed!

How sad

Heard the news yesterday about the death of Heath Ledger. I was driving to the station in the morning and just caught the last of the news broadcast. How sad.

I always thought he was lovely and 10 things I hate about you and A Knight’s Tale are among my favourite films. I even remember when darling boyf was going to have his long hair cut off I took a picture of Heath Ledger into the hairdressers with us and asked them to ‘make my boyfriend look like him please’!

Its one of those occasions that, although it doesn’t affect you personally, it just makes you stop and think ‘how sad… such a waste’.

‘Freebie’ list – how do you choose yours?

I was watching Messiah on BBC1 last night (fab btw) – partly because I have loved all the other Messiah programmes but also because I really love Marc Warren and thought that two nights successive viewing would be a very good thing indeed :-) 

This has of course, got me thinking of the old dilema… would he make it onto my ‘freebie list’? You know, the list of five people that you could ‘be naughty with’ without darling boyf getting cross.

And actually, I think he would. Not necessarily based on the hair he was sporting last night – I prefer him blond – but on the whole I think Marc Warren would have to be up there, he’s got the most amazing blue eyes and there’s just something that looks – well naughty – about him!

Obviously, once you’ve thought of one you have to check to make sure that the other four on the list are still earning their place, so here goes, number two for me would have to be James Purefoy if you’ve never seen him in A Knights Tale I suggest you go and watch it immediately – it’s well worth it… sooooooooo hot!

Number three would have to be Daniel Craig… omg – the tux scene in Casino Royale… and the beach scene, and the action scenes… ok, you get the message…

Number four would be Ewan McGregor slightly more face-fuzz on this specimen but it all adds up to a very scrummy Scot – normally I don’t go for tattooed men but on Ewan, well, you can see the picture… you just would – wouldn’t you

And last – but by no means least Gerard Butler. A new addition, but after watching Ps I Love You at the cinema recently, a very worthy contender… If you haven’t seen the film yet I’d really recommend it – no idea what its about but its got this gorgeous man it it… ’nuff said

So that’s it – in no particular order, my five ‘freebies’. So come on… who’s on yours?

Who stopped the clocks?

Why is it that time always seems to go sooooooooooooooooooo slowly when you are simply desperate for it to whizz by? It’s 4.21 on a friday afternoon and I really cannot be bothered to stay at work until five but something seems to be wrong with my clock, its stopped… in fact I have a horrible suspicion that it may even be going backwards!

Its definitely a friday afternoon phenomenon, the clocks always seem to go at a normal speed for the rest of the week but on friday it all changes… it must be an evil conspiracy by the powers that be to eke that extra bit of time out of us

I’m determined not to start any work this late on in the day. I’ve organised my email (about 10 times) and reckon I can waste at least 10 minutes tidying my desk. Surely this malicious method of stopping the time on a friday afternoon should be banned under employee cruelty…

Man colds – they’re not for girls!

My boss has just sent me probably the funniest video I’ve seen in a long time.

This is just such a perfect example of what wusses men are when it comes to being ill. Don’t get me wrong, when darling boyf actually hurts himself properly – like the time he put his back out and was laid up in bed on painkillers for a week – he’s a proper brave ‘ickle soldier ;-) but when he begins to show sign of suffering ‘the man cold’ its a scene straight out of that video…

Men – don’t ya just love ‘em!

Nightmares for me tonight then…

I’ve just been browsing on the bbc news website and found this article. I’ve always been afraid of clowns ever since I can remember – I even had to scroll down the page to hide the horrible pictures on the site before I could read the article – and now its got me trying to remember what caused me to find a bit of face paint and a red nose quite so scary as a child that I still can’t stomach the sight of them as an adult.

I’ve never actually met a clown so its not from personal experience, and I’ve never watched the film It because I knew it was about clowns… so god knows what it stemmed from.

Its not only clowns though, its masks in general that I find disturbing. Venice with darling boyf was wonderful – apart from all the mask shops that the city is famous for. I’m sure I missed half the sights because I kept shutting my eyes to avoid looking at them! And my friends’ 30th masquerade party was great fun – once everyone stopped wearing the damn masks. Maybe its the fact that you can’t see a person’s true expression when they’re wearing a mask that bothers me… then again maybe its just that clowns are always smiling and something that never gets pee’d off has to be evil right?

One thing I did learn though is that my irrational fear actually has a name ‘coulrophobia’… now that’s one to add to my list of neuroses

The truth is out there… but who wants the truth!

Isn’t it great when you think you know a really big secret or a juicy bit of goss but you aren’t 100% sure if its true… You’re 99 – maybe even 99.5% convinced you’re right but there’s just that teeny element of doubt that - as well as making for fab gossip – makes you just absolutley NEED to find out whether its true or not!

At the mo, girly pals and I are convinced we know some pretty big news/gossip about someone and although this is giving us plenty to chat and giggle over is also causing us – or me at least – to morph into some kind of miss marple-esque character, looking for clues and evidence to back our suspicions up… The idea that we may, in fact, be wrong is simply not something we are willing to entertain, so great is our certainty that we are correct in our assumptions!

This is vastly entertaining to us all and – proving how much of a gossip I am – I’m willing to admit that I actually don’t really want to know the truth, ‘coz – although I’m sure we’ll be proved right – once we know then there’ll be no point in the gossip!

I’m a girl for heavens’ sake… I gossip – therefore I am!

Lack of chocolate = lack of brain cells – fact!

I’m on day 9 of my healthy-eating kick (new year resolution number 1) and I’m feeling quite proud of myself… I have only ’slipped’ a couple of times and already I feel less sluggish (apart from early in the mornings of course ) but I am a little worried that the lack of calories seem to be having an adverse effect on my brain!

I’m trying my version of weightwatchers to shift the extra pounds. My version is a lot less rigid than I imagine the ‘proper’ programme is, and I don’t have to go along to any happy-clappy classes and tell complete strangers how much I weigh… I cannot think of why anyone would want to do that! What I’m doing is just counting the points in the food that I eat and trying not to go over my allocated amount (had to be quite sneaky to get the information though – ebay is great for getting weightwatchers stuff without having to join ).

Anyway, because I’m counting the points in what I eat, I’m forcing my nearest and dearest to do the same. Darling boyf has to suffer me calculating everything he is consuming as well – mind you, being 6′ 7″ he is allowed significantly more points than me! And while chatting to little bro’ on msn yesterday and telling him how good I’m being, I worked out how many points his lunch was worth.

I didn’t think much more about it until I got a msn message flash up on my computer from little bro’ saying “what is a two-fingered kitkat?” I immediately replied “well its a kitkat with only two fingers – doh’”  honestly, what a bizarre question… it wasn’t until a message flashed back “I meant how many points!!!”  did I realise that maybe the lack of chocolate is doing something very detrimental to my intelligence levels (blush)!!