Happy Halloween!

"Mwa-ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa... ooh, hang about, I feel a bit peaky... "

Today I learned...

... that the smiling, splashing, bikini'd 'lovelies' frolicking in the surf and generally enjoying warm weather in any 'phew, what a scorcher' style stories are invariably lap dancers from Bournemouth who've been paid £50.

And there's me thinking they really were students who'd nipped down the beach for a refreshing dip before performing a salute to the sun and jogging back to their halls of residence to continue studying Plato.

I feel so... so... used.

Of course, it wasn't at all obvious...



"Well Destinee, this certainly beats wafting your lady bits near some bloke's leary face as a way to earn a fast buck, doesn't it!"

"Oh Melodee, you're right! I could sit here all day. But if I don't go and retrieve my nipple-tassels from the dry cleaners, I won't have time to Mr Sheen my pole."

Good point, well made

Overheard at work:

"Who wouldn't want to live in a promiscuious society? Who the f*ck are these people?"

You stole all my money

I've been playing google image games again as I don't have time to post...

This is what you get if you search for 'you stole all my money'.

Blinder.

I have nothing to say today except...

... it is 7.35pm, and I am still at work.

I was just toying with the idea of having dinner in the canteen, but think I shall head home and dine alone on a ready-meal for one.

I know what you're thinking. It begins with 'L', and ends in 'oser'.

Why does(n't) it always rain on me?

It was really, really raining this morning. The sort of weather best described as 'f*cking p*ssing down'. As I splashed to the station, chavvy commuters sprinted inside, shielded from the downpour by umbrellas and newspapers.

Nobody strode to the end of the platform to get on at the Waterloo end, but huddled like miserable cattle under the shelter, misty breath curling. The view from the steamy windows on the muggy train was further distorted by torrents of water streaming down the sides of the carriage. More people crammed in, station by station, with frizzy hair, wet magazines, splatted glasses, smudged mascara.

By the time we got to Waterloo the rain was still hammering on the roof, splashing through the window, pooling by the tracks. Mindful of my rain-sponge of a coat and lack of umbrella, I ran into Tie Rack and shelled out a tenner for a micro-brolly.

Down in the Jubilee line train, warming, steaming commuters dripped onto the floor and fogged the windows. Two stops later, I emerged from the escalators, ready to smugly unfurl my new umbrella against the angry sky.

Except it had stopped raining. Huge grey clouds hurried away to reveal patches of brilliant blue.

Why did it do that? How unfair! I have been lugging the same £1.99 Primark brolly around for two years. When I finally can't find it and get a snazzy new one barely bigger than my bloody iPod, it stops raining. It ALWAYS rains on me. If it's going to rain for two minutes in one day, it will be the two minutes I decide to pop out for a paper.

But now it hasn't rained all day. The umbrella is sheathed and untested. By the look of it, there isn't enough fabric in there to shield Nicole Richie from a pigeon poo. But I want to play with my new umbrella! I can't even go and provoke the chav children to attack me with their Turbo Nutter Bastard Supa Soakers, because, as announced by the barrage of bangs last night, firework season is upon us, and now they will be preoccupied with hurling rockets at cats until well into January.

Huh.

Only two-six-four

Cottage cheese, I just want to say this to you.

It is good of you to be cheese, yet also so low in fat.

It amazes me how I can eat a whole big tub of you, and that's only 264 calories. Man, that's pretty special.

And I love the fact that sometimes, if I want, you have chunks of pineapple in, or garlic and herb.

But cottage cheese, I need to get this off my chest. To be honest, I hope you never read it.

I am sick of looking at you. I am tired of lifting you into my mouth on bread, or ryvita, or whatever. I don't know if I can face another day staring down at your pasty, watery, timid and amazingly low-cal little chunks of whey.

You know what I wish? I wish you were buttery mashed potato, mixed in with peas and chunks of sausage, and covered with gravy. Why, out of all the weird foods to be low-cal, is it you?

You know what? I love you really. Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. I'm sorry.

iHave realised...

... that the song you want to listen to isn't necessarily your favourite song.

Also that carrying your favourite songs around with you in a sexy shiny pod thing means you listen to them far too much, sometimes without even noticing. Which is a bit of a shame.

What I would like to know is where can one download an array of catchy-chorused, quite good tracks that one had forgotten about rather liking a few years ago and remind one of good friends, great parties, old flames, painting the bathroom etc.

Additionally, I have learned that the if you own an iPod, you can surreptitiously check your make-up or whether you have something in your teeth simply by leaning over your handbag.

Bahhh, course I didn't

Of course I didn't go, are you crazy? I could hear the sound of car tyres sucking over wet tarmac outside this morning, it was pretty much still dark when I woke up. It wasn't still dark after I went back to sleep and woke up again, but it certainly was grey. And grey creeping around the edges of the blinds and into my little sanctuary ain't going to get me strapped into my running shoes.

(Of course, neither will gold creeping around the edges of the blinds. Urgh, sunshine. Hot)

Good news for my studiously ignored state of physical health though - I found out today that I am being given a proper contract at work, and don't have to f*ck around with the self-employed nonsense anymore. A proper contract has many benefits such as healthcare and a pension yada yada yada and oooh! £5 a month gym membership! Obviously I will not be allowed to apply for this until I have been working under the new contract for three months, but the dumbbells (or whatever the hell it is one lugs about in these places) are in my sights! I can go running inside! Actually, I can't imagine anything worse, but it's certainly less dangerous than running through gangs of local chavs dressed in not-hip leisure wear.

Going less

I have not been running jogging going faster for ages now. Ages. I had a bit a complicated summer, and to be honest, I really didn't feel like it. So I didn't do it. Hah, exercise! Argue your way out of that, bitch!

But everything is kind of OK now, so I have no reason not to go. I was hoping I would feel like it again once the oppressiveness of summer had died away. By oppressiveness of summer, I mean the heat - which may make one *whispers* perspire and also the riotous chav children who are not at school. As they are not at school, they launch rubbish from a nearby skip at passers-by between the hours of 6am and 2am. Even if I got up at 3.30am for a cool and speedy turn around the block, I didn't really fancy stumbling over a giant cardboard carpet roll and twisting my ankle. And, of course, 2-6 is when all the murderers are out, so that would just be stupid.

Another reason I couldn't possibly go running is I CAN'T STAND HAVING HAIR IN MY FACE, GRRR and my hairdresser decided to hack me a new chunk of fringe a few weeks ago. While I do like it and its eighties retro-ness, it is not really conducive to the running jogging going faster. In a bid to ready myself for the end of the sticky summer months and the resumption of exercise, I drove myself to the nearest Claire's Accessories to purchase a what I believe is known as a 'headband'. I swear, squatting on the floor of that terrible, sweaty little tat grotto, rummaging maniacally through the myriad of ghastly nylon creations that constituted 'headbands', searching for anything, anything, that one could place on one's 29-year-old head without fear of social exclusion was one of the most horrifying ten minutes of this summer. Why do they not have air-conditioning in that shop? Why? I had sweat ON MY UPPER LIP. I was so distressed I had to buy a new tiara and wear it all the way home.

So now I have a 'headband', and I am certainly feeling like I am mostly made up of the pasty, white insides of the chips that I had for lunch. Urgh. Squidgy.

So, must go faster again. I have admitted this to the internet in an attempt to shame myself into getting up a little bit earlier (nooooooooo!), grabbing my walkman, and half-heartedly bouncing around the block for twenty minutes.

Please feel free to heap scorn upon me if I check back in tomorrow and didn't go. Although I do have an early meeting, hmmmm......

Blogging do's and don'ts

DO
Update your blog regularly

DON'T
Log onto blogger at work, get distracted by your birthday holiday pics that have been uploaded onto your birthday iPod, and only remember you are logged on to blogger when your boss walks past, looks at the screen and says: "Are you blogging?"

DO
Reply "No, of course not" and smile inanely. Works like a charm. Possibly

DON'T
Post that thing you were going to post yesterday about how the Jubilee line exit at Waterloo smelled really strongly of fresh tomatoes on toast. You may be desperate for things to post at the moment, but nobody cares about that.

Maybe it was bruschetta?

DO
Use lists, do's and don'ts etc to motivate yourself to write

DON'T
Convince yourself that just because you could smell tomatoes on toast, and then later you could smell rosehip and vanilla teabags when you totally weren't near any, it means you have a brain tumour

DO
Remember to congratulate Drew on joining the lofty heights of Londonist. Get in!

DON'T
Sit in a darkened room, starkly lit by a clapped-out old monitor, the pale green glow from the Londonist website throwing hideous shadows across the twisted snarl of jealously chiselled into your furious face

I'm back!

Jolly busy at work, but just stumbled across this on t'net and thought I would share.