Strictly sad

I’ve just read in the news that John Sergeant has pulled out of this years’ Stricly Come Dancing and I have to admit that I think its really sad that poor old ‘Sergeant Charming’ feels like he has to do this

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t by any stretch of the imagination think he should still be in the competition – I personally think he should have been voted off a good couple of weeks ago but I think its really horrible that he obviously feels so bad about the situation that he feels he has to pull out! When all’s said and done it isn’t John’s fault that he’s been kept in the competition week after week and I would bet money that the people who voted for him last week simply to spite the judges (apparently a survey of 3,000 viewers found that 53% of those who backed John did so to rile Craig and co.!) are feeling pretty bad now – their ‘champion’ is leaving the show this weekend anyway and has been pretty much ‘forced’ to leave in a really horrid way.

I can totally understand why John has chosen to ‘gracefully withdraw’ but I do feel its a shame that he didn’t get to leave under the traditional rules of the show. Here’s to you John – a true gent!

Ps. Christine or Jodie to win. Yay

Kristina and her 'Sergeant Charming'

My guilty secret…

I was listening to the radio on the way back from the shops and happened to catch the lunchtime news. Apparently there has been another statement released about the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand/Radio 2 debarcle and it left me wondering WHY is this still such a hot – or even interesting – topic? 

Everyone with a pulse must have heard about the incident at the time… Yes, they were naughty boys, Yes, they should have gotten their wrists slapped, and Yes, it shouldn’t happen again… but really – is it still news!

The reason this is bugging me now is that I happen to find Russell Brand very very funny and I’m a bit peeved that liking him has somehow turned into something akin to a dirty habit… something that I should not admit to without expecting glances of dismay or outrage! There definitely seems (to me at least) to be a bit of bias against Brand too, he seems to be the one whose come out of this worse but surely JR is just as much to blame… In fact the idiot that approved the broadcasting of the show is, in my eyes at least, the mayor culprit!

But anyway, the upshot of this is that my ‘amusement’ of Brand’s style of humour is having to be hidden away… I even found myself the other night switching the tv over in the middle of Ponderland, just so as darling boyf wouldn’t know I was ‘giving in’ to my dirty, guilty habbit. Not that darling boyf even cares what I watch, I’m just so used to now ‘not admitting’ that I like RB to save myself from the disapproving glances cast about whenever the whole escapade is mentioned, that I turned the channel over without thinking…

In fact you could go so far as to say that RB has replaced chocolate as my naughty passion… something that I am happy to induldge in in the privacy of my own home but not to admit to in public! One the plus side its probably less fattening!

Wishing the ground would open up…

Ever been in a situation where you wish the ground would just open and swallow you up… I have – about an hour ago infact…

I had to do a quick trip to the shops to get some last minute bits for my mum’s 60th ‘do’ tonight but when I went to pay – at the very full till with a queue of at least a million behind me – my card was rejected!!! WTF…

Now I KNOW there’s money in there – and the reason I know this is that it was refused last night in a resaturant too and when I phoned up the bank to find out why I was told that it was ‘just a bit of extra security’ and ‘not to worry about it’. Well if that’s the case then why in god’s name is it happeneing again today? (Actually it was not refused as such – it just came up with a request for authorisation but rather than cause a delay I just paid with another card.)

At least last night in the restaurant though it was quiet… Not today – oohh noooo.. today it was bloody heaving in the shop and I had to stand there for 15 sodding minutes while the assistant fannied around with my card before then asking me to go to the cash point and pay with proper money!!! How f***ing humiliating. I can never EVER go in there again. I left red-faced with embarassement feeling like a criminal – nice way to spend your lunchbreak eh?

Anyway, so I called the bank again and was told that the reason it was refused this time was that it was still waiting on the authorisation request activated last night… Apparently once these ‘requests’ are in the system the only way to get your card working again is to phone up the fraud unit and get it cleared.  Well ok – that’s no problem and at least I now know what to do but it would have been really useful if the stupid cow on the phone last night would have let me into that little secret!

Customer services in my bank obviously leaves a HELL of a lot to be desired!!!!

C’est la vie – but not happy about it!

Am feeling very grumpy today I keep getting stupid emails from the events office at work inviting me to lots of jolly excursions over the next couple of months but I really wish they’d bugger off as I’m not very happy with them at all!

A couple of months ago an email came round promoting a weekend jaunt to Paris. The deal was that you travel on Eurostar to Paris on the Friday morning, have most of friday, all saturday and most of sunday in Paris and then get the Eurostar back on Sunday evening, all this for a bargin price of £145. Great, I thought, a nice weekend break for myself and darling boyf before the hecticness that is the festive season starts in earnest

I happily paid the £50 deposit and then started planning what we would do and see in ‘gai paris’. However, about a month ago we got an email saying that, owing to the fire in the Eurostar tunnel at the beginning of september, we would now be travelling by ferry from Dover! Huh!!! They only advertisised this trip AFTER the fire and sold it as a Eurostar trip… Also when they took the deposits they impressed upon us that this was ‘non-refundable’ as it was being used to secure the Eurostar tickets yet I’m now being told that Eurostar aren’t taking any bookings…! My cheque has deffo been cashed so where the blinkin’ heck has my 50 quid gone if its not bought me 2 rail tickets! Seems like there is something dodgy here…

So anyway, I emailed the events office asking for more details. Don’t get me wrong – its not that I’ve got an aversion to ferrys or anything like that, but even I know that the journey down to Dover, over the channel and then from Calais to Paris is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than just hopping on the train in London and alighting in the middle of the french capital… How long are we actually supposed to get in Paris now? Timing-wise it looked like we’d get to the hotel early friday evening and have to leave mid-afternoon on sunday, so our trip had shrunk from 3 days/2 nights to 2 nights/1 day!!! Not so good value now!

I therefore asked that, if we decided not to go anymore, could we have our deposit back – seeing as it had been taken to secure the Eurostar tickets and the fact that we weren’t going on that anymore should ‘negate’ the non-refundable situation…? After not hearing anything for over a week a generic email went round apologising and saying that due to the amount of complaints received they had decided to cancel the trip. Fair enough, it wasn’t good value anymore anyway so what did they expect, but the bit that really pee’d me off was the final par that said we were not actually entitled to our deposit back as alternative transport had been offered… eh?… That would be like me advertising to sell, say, an 8-bedroom mansion, taking a deposit of £100,000 for it and then saying “Oh, actually I don’t own that mansion but I can sell you a 3-bed semi, however if you decide you don’t want the semi, you can’t have your desposit back as I did offer you another property!”

The reasoning apparently was that the deposit had been used to secure the hotel instead – NOT what it said in the contract guys!!! Luckily, thanks to the stirling work of our events officer, we have been promised our deposits back… but that was 3 weeks ago and so far – no money!!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way blaming our events office… I’m blaming the actions of the company that was organising the trip in the first place – seem like a bunch of cowboys to me!

So anyway, back to my original statement, while I’m STILL waiting to get my 50 quid back I would really appreciate NOT hearing from the bloody events office about the great trips they have planned for the next couple of months… Grrrrr… Talk about rubbing salt in the wound!

A smashing time…

A few days late admittedly but I just wanted to say a huge thanks to my mate CK for hosting the ‘funnest’ bonfire event ever last weekend…

When I first got her email about a piano-smashing bonfire party I have to admit I did think she was having a bit of a funny turn… the idea of drunken maniacs wielding sledgehammers in the dark and then burning the remains seemed more appropriate for Halloween than Bonfire night, but the enthusiasm demonstrated by darling boyf as soon as I mentioned the invite (he started planning how to weld viking horns onto his sledgehammer!!!) meant that I was in no doubt that we’d certainly be joining in the mayhem.

And mayhem it was… but mayhem in a bloody-good-fun kinda way Firstly we had piano massacre number 1 and I’ve never seen such pent-up agression displayed at a bonfire party before… I think it only took about a minute before one of the sledghammers was in pieces. The worrying thing here is that CK’s other half then produced a lump hammer as a replacement… hmmm, one sledgehammer-wielding-nutter with no control over the weight of the thing he/she’s hurling around and another, even more insane person, crawling around the feet of the sledgehammer-wielder, hiting bits of wood with a tiny lump hammer… A&E anyone!

Once the piano was in bits the next challenge was to post all the pieces through a letterbox-sized hole in an old door and on to the awaiting bonfire… this seemed to be the safe bit so I was more than happy to muck in – that was until one of the guys decided it was a good idea to ‘help’ by standing on the other side of the door and pulling at the bits of wood I was pushing through… That idea works great unless you’ve managed to get your bracelet strap caught around the piece of wood and find yourself being pulled through the door with the old wood! I still have the bruises!!!

We then had a break from the pianos for some scrummy chilli and lots of fireworks. This sounds harmless untill I tell you that the fireworks seemed even drunker than half the guests – in so far as they couldn’t seem to stand upright and on one memorable occasion fired off horizonatally into the spectators… I’ve never seen so many men run away so quickly! Oh, and I was also convinced that Monkey – who seemed to be the official ‘firework-lighterer’ - was going to do himself a severe injury with the sparklers he decided to carry around in his back pocket!

Piano massacre number 2 I pretty much missed… I was hiding my eyes… I simply couldn’t bear to watch as one of girls smashing around with the sledgehammer missed the head of another girl using the lump hammer by about 0.5 millimeters!!! At this point CK’s health and safety regs had well and truly flown out of the window methinks!

So, all in all a fabby night. Lots of fireworks, alcohol, good food, and hilarity. Oh and sledghammers of course… Thanks CK – see you for the next one!

Quick update - CK’s now posted the vid of the night’s escapades… click here for a look