Road To Nowhere

We've been invited to a housewarming at the new neighbour's tonight.

There's a bit of discord on the row just now.

Our plans for a gate to keep the thieving tykes out of our communal gardens have met with an objection from a neighbour on the end.

She thinks it will devalue her house. She is also the other side of the private road with her own gate into a perfectly well protected garden. So she isn't exposed in the way we are. She was dead sympathetic when gary got his patio heater nicked, his garage broken into. *We've got nowt to nick but a crumbling garden bench.*

When our nextdoor neighbour went round to show her the plans she had her parents there. Bit heavy handed really. Especially as they live in Gloucester.

I think she's objecting. It's her right. You can't make people think what you want them to think, but next door isn't so liberal.

So. Tonight. Will there be words said? Will we all kiss and make up?

Will I be there with a bottle of Plymouth's finest under my arm? Oh yes.

Glorious day here in Manchester and there is nothing like an early morning run with sun shining in clear, blue sky.

By the time I got to the wooded bits opposite Chorlton Water Park it must have been knocking on eight-thirty. I ran up my hill a couple of times before skirting round to gambol about down the wooded paths. The best bits.

This squirrel was sitting on a low wooden fence and thought he'd get away from me by running along it.

But I was running that way too so he ended up running beside me for about twenty feet. Very funny.

Then, five minutes later another squirrel scampered down the path in front of me.

I was beginning to wonder whether I was being lured by squirrels to some fiendish squirrel trap (that's endorphins for you!). But that didn't happen (surprise!).

And so I ran, walked and occasionally leapt home and now I've scoffed a banana smoothie I'm going to go scrub up - I always end up covered in mud somehow!

Think I'm going to go play in the garden and then maybe walk up to Didsbury. Enjoy the weather.

...like hurtling through time and space with too much stuff and not enough tea.

Nothing went to plan, other than the caretakers, bless them, moved me in as the people who were supposed to do it hadn't due to some "hadn't got the message" cock up.

In 30 minutes they had all my stuff in there. They were terrif, but then it all started to go wrong.

Even though they were supposed to test the new comms points before I got there, and I'd asked the day before that someone check, no one had. They didn't work.

It took another hour to get my phone and computer working, during which time I missed a v. imp phone call that caused me uber stress for rest of day, scrambling to meet an unforeseen deadline with considerably less time than I could have had and therefore stuck at work till 6.30pm trying to catch up with the rest of my schedule.

I had to get the lock changed because there was no spare key and in the end I resorted to chain eating crisps and drinking a can of full fat redbull.

Just for more fun I'm moving back in a few weeks once a wall has been removed and an old doorway filled in to give me another metre in width - enough space to squeeze the copywriter in with me.

Fridays are not supposed to be like this.

'Ooh, it's all good fun,' said some wag as I trotted down the corridor. 'Oh is it? is it really?'

I'm supposed to be moving at 9am. Today.

I know, but only 48 hours late.

Man has been up to assess my crates and I have organised techies so is looking hopeful... ah, the eternal optimism of the PR mind.

So I may be some time. Do use my sleeping bag, chaps. And someone feed the huskies.

I was at a work event last night.

Milling around. Smiling a lot.

Was good, actually. Nice food, muchly.

Apparently a lecturer from sports science described me as 'the dog's bollocks' to a colleague.

I'm really chuffed.

I really must learn to type.

References to 'nipping out for a diet cock' and 'sipping my diet cock' have kept me and my chums in fits of giggles for the past day now.

I know.

I should learn to type and grow up.

I was supposed to move office today.

I sit at my desk surrounded by crates.

Spent half a day yesterday feverishly packing.

Has anyone turned up to move me? No.

Has anyone answered my voicemail messages? No.

The joiner thinks I may be moving tomorrow.

Glad someone has half an idea.

I have been on two trains this weekend.

On each journey, in my carriage, has been an Australian woman with a voice somehow switched to perpetual twitter/high volume overload.

And how do they manage that thing where their voice carries forever? Maybe it's from hundreds of years of shouting across miles of sheep, I don't know, but they don't shut up and they don't say anything remotely worth over-hearing.

I'm not expecting an enlightening literary dissection of Crime and Punishment, an insightful analysis of world economic forces or even a few thoughts on Vivienne Westwood's autumn-winter collection. But no-one is interested in the time they danced to Agadoo, what they thought of the London Eye or why there aren't enough apprentices in blah's office for blah to get the job done on time on budget... all while eating a bag of crisps designed to feed a family of 32.

The girl in front of me on the way to Sheffield ate those crisps while discussing how she was going to cut something out of something else. For a whole bloody hour. I'm guessing the man she was talking/eating at was English because you couldn't hear him.

Thankfully only an hour of my life, but I could hear her over my ipod and it was on loud enough to make Lemmy's ears bleed.

I know - and thank God we are - past a world where little girls are taught to be seen and not heard. But keeping your voice down to a level that respects the needs of fellow travellers and not consuming food in a manner that resembles a front-loading washing machine on spin cycle would be appreciated.

I love Eurovision. Always have.

All those silly songs. All that cheering and colour and prancing about. Sir Terry making witty comments from his position on the moral high ground. The terrible intro people. The green room ramblings. The fake tan.

Last night's was a triumph.

The intro people wouldn't stop shouting and making fabulously over-the-top observations 'This is the most important night in the history of Europe'... 'the whole world is watching and waiting'... 'every wholesome, good-looking teenager rammed into this square, smiling like their lives depended on it, could be yours for £25 if you came here on you holidays...' *all right, I'm reading the subtext*

Best song of the night was, undoubtably Sebastien Tellier from France with an uber-cool song called Divine. It's a bit loungey, a bit Airy, ridiculously catchy.

Greece did well, with Kalomira and my Secret Combination which was some strange hybrid of Britney moves spliced with Genie in a Bottle. The lyrics suggest her secret combination is how to get into her knickers. Nice. Seemed to tickle the fancy of Europe though - it was in the lead before I fell asleep during the voting.

Nope, Russia won. With Believe. It was ok. It had the novelty value of an hysterical violinist and an ice skater with the biggest konk I've seen for a very long time.

But this is not a contest about what you sing. It's about who you know. And the Russians know the Bulkans and they're the new kids on the block and clearly they vote for each other. Why not? Everyone else does.

Our song? By some bloke called Andy Abraham. Good performance; solid, dull, unmemorable. Didn't deserve to come last - but we did.

If anything Eurovision today is a popularity contest. And in case we were wondering, with the people of the new Europe - which bears no resemblance to the one you'll recall from your geography days, unless you're 12 - we are about as popular as a burning orphanage. We are that pork chop at the Jewish wedding. Turkey did well. Israel did ok. Need I say any more?

Post-Iraq air space furore we clearly can't even rely on the French to vote for us. We are the Billy-no-mates of Europe. *Sigh...*

All in all I've had a good week in terms of getting what I want on the big stuff. The stuff over which I have no control.

Watching John Terry cry like a baby; well you don't like to gloat but...

After Manchester United’s Champions League win this week and those fab pix of our fans swapping shirts for hats with the Russian police/soldier people it's made me all glowy about football again. I've almost forgotten about Rangers.

Nice quote:

'If you were to ask what provides some meaning in life nowadays for a great many people, especially men, you could do worse than reply "Football" … Sport, and in Britain football in particular, stands in for all those noble causes – religious faith, national sovereignty, personal honour, ethnic identity – for which over the centuries, people have been prepared to go to their deaths. Sport involves tribal loyalties and rivalries, symbolic rituals, fabulous legends, iconic heroes, epic battles, aesthetic beauty, physical fulfilment, intellectual satisfaction, sublime spectaculars, and a profound sense of belonging… It is sport, not religion, which is now the opium of the people.'

Terry Eagleton (John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester; from ‘The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction’, OUP, 2007)

After having their 11th child (Chelsey Paris Britney McGuffy), a Glasgow couple decided that was enough because they could not afford a larger bed.

So the husband went to his GP and told him that he and his missus didn't want to have any more children (Wur no wantin ony mair weans, so wur no).

The doctor told him that there was a procedure called a vasectomy that could fix the problem but that it was expensive. "A less costly alternative," said the doctor, "is to go home, get a firework, put it in an empty beer can, light it then hold the can up to your ear and count to 10.

The husband said to the doctor, "Ah might no be the sharpest chisel in the shed, but Ah cannae see how pittin a firework in a beer caun next to my ear is gonnae help me no tae huv ony mair weans."

"Trust me," said the doctor.

So the couple went home, the husband lit a banger and put it in a beer can.

He held the can up to his ear and began to count: "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" ..... at which point he paused, placed the beer can between his legs and resumed counting on his other hand.

This procedure is available on the NHS and has proved to be successful in Govan, Clydebank, Paisley and some parts of Dundee and Perth

(sorry!)

What's a worse idea than capital punishment?

Reality TV!!!

Yes, really. According to a poll by the Museums and Galleries only the atom bomb rates as a worse idea.

So, will be be spared another summer of Big Brother?

Will this end the cycle of wife-swaps, teenagers go native on desert isands and whatever else is filling the screen that these days I so rarely watch?

Let's have something new. No chefs. No holidays. No decorating.

"Give us new tele. Give us new tele."

While cantering about on the moral high ground, bumping into Tentativeplotfinder and taking in the view of Great Rollright, I sometimes like to dismount and read a book.

Absolute fave for dipping into and exclaiming 'Well, I never!' is Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

As you may have noticed I am much enamoured with all things nautical. Our language is littered with little phrases referencing our seafaring past; no doubt because we didn't accrew the empire without setting sail in the world's best ships. Being an island race has distinct advantages.

'Dutch courage', for example is a naval reference to Dutch gin, which is obviously a double-world score for me. Sailors and gin - what better?

But phrase of today is: Cut of his jib - as in 'I like the cut of his jib', meaning 'I like the look of him'. Its origins refer to the cut of the jib, or the headsail, which spoke volumes about the quality or character of a vessel.

See.. utterly fascinating. I promise if you like words you'll never be bored with your Phrase and Fable.

Shame on the government if they meddle with the laws on abortion.

I didn't spend my time fighting David Alton's Bill to get kicked in the teeth by the Labour party, of all people, twenty years later.

Don't do it.

Makes me very cross!

It's gone. Cine City - or Sin City as we wags of South Manchester used to call it - has gone. It is rubble.

It's been closed for years. Years and years. Now a bulldozer has squished it.

But I remember when it was open; cute little cinema too. Had love seats up the back and I once went on a date there. With a lovely half-dutch boy. Who I phoned up and asked out and he said 'yes'. Ooh he was lovely. I was 22.

And even though it was a six-week thing and he moved back to London and sent me poetry *shut up, you philistines* and then, of course, stopped writing and I went out with other boys, Cine City has always reminded me of him. Sooty haired, dark eyed, big smile.

And now it's rubble. And it seems a bit sad. A crumbling memorial to a half-memory was one thing. It all seemed fitting and I kind of enjoyed the nostalgia. A spanking new block of flats is quite another. Will ruin it. Pah.

Either someone's invented the gin fairy or I managed to forget about a bottle of Plymouth's finest while in dissertation hysteria world.

I must have been stockpiling like Princess Margaret. It was all a bit of a blur towards the end *no, not because I was permanently tipsy, cheeky* what with the going to work, going to library, coming home, writing notes up and occassionally running into supermarkets and grabbing stuff.

Anyway, i went into spring cleaning frenzy mode on Sunday and lurking at the back of the recycling cupboard was a full, unopened bottle. Hussah!!

I've gone all snuffly rabbit now the sun's shining and the pollen's wafting about.

I don't mind but is clearly annoying Nibs.

It makes me snuffle in the night, a lot. And when I say 'snuffle' truth be told it's more like a drowning dolphin. I have woken myself up and wondered what the hell the dolphin noise was before I realised it was me, drowning in my own snot.

But however annoying it might be, sleeping next to a drowning dolphin, I only need to be rolled onto my side. I don't need to be rabbit-kicked awake. i know I'm annoying, but no one needs to be woken up like that. Mean boy.

But I have had my revenge; with all that lack of sleep I have forgotten to reset the alarm this morning.

Mwahahahahahahaha *tishoo* mwahahahahahahah!

I know I spend half my life on my high horse, cantering towards the moral high ground. It's a wonder I can breathe up here the air is so thin.

But is this fair?

Manchester isn't getting big screen showing of Manchester United v Chelsea this week.

Because of this.

And yet the city says it won't be put off hosting fixtures like this Rangers match in the future.

I realise life isn't fair, but come on!

... Or thereabouts that I last saw Gill. Until this afternoon.

What a 'like wow' moment.

We were at journo college together in Sheffield. Twenty-four years ago. I really can't get my head round the fact I have been an adult for almost a quarter of a century - it's just bizarre.

We met at Manchester Airport for coffee before she headed off to see her family as she now lives in Cyprus. Turns out she went for an interview on a newspaper there while on holiday visiting a friend, got the job and what she thought would be maybe six months or a year has turned into 15 years. Her partner went out with her too and they've made their life there.

And do you know, she looks exactly the same, just more grown up. Like a proper grown up with grown up hair and a little boy who is so blonde and stands out like a pork chop at a jewish wedding in his class photos. Very handsome though and the facsimilie of his dad.

Anyhow, it was brill to see her. We rattled through some memories and we are going to organise a reunion for next summer for our classmates - in Sheffield.

And she's invited me to Cyprus so as soon as I've more holiday leave - 'ooh, I'm going to cy-per-us..'

It's kittens a-go-go today.

This is my friend Charly's kitten.

She doesn't even have a name yet.

I think Daisy or Mimi or Lola.

Charly thinks Maisy.

What do you think?

I'm sorry - shamelessly half-inched from popbitch but, OMG..

How cute is this?

CLICK HERE

In honour of the great kevinwilson's silliness challenge I have been having a go today. At silliness.

This is actually harder than it looks. My first silly behaviour opportunity was ruined when my only meeting of the day was cancelled. I did nearly fall off my wedges tottering for the train, but I bounced back and the lovely navy nail polish on my toes escaped unscathed.

The day was a bit of a blur after that but at tea time the moment presented itself - in town I did do some very silly shopping.

I went to the music shop on Deansgate - the one with the lovely, polite staff and an entire floor full of pianos. And guess what I bought?

Clue: they must have cost a penny once upon a time and they certainly don't now but for £4 you can have soooo much fun.

Oh how the neighbours are going to love me!

And so they came... in their thousands... and they were legion...

Tales told during the day of huge Burnage pub car park turned into campsite being so over-full golf course had became overspill very funny. Visions of posh folks being miffed first fareway full of sleeping drunken Weegies all very amusing.

But I naively thought if I worked late the 100,000 Rangers supporters milling about Manchester would all be 'at the match' or watching in pubs.

No, they were still on the trains at 8pm. They were also less than happy to hear the news the screen had gone down at Piccadilly, about which their more punctual mates called to inform them.

Chaos ensued. 'There'll be a riot,' they solomnly predicted and asked each other if they knew where Albert Square was. Oddly they kept saying 'ask a Manc, ask a local' like we were all deaf or spoke a different language. As three of them were piled into the seat beside me (two standing, one perching - don't ask) I suggested they disembark with me at Oxford Road and I took them to Oxford Street and pointed them on their way.

I would like to point out that this was pretty big of me considering I do support the Hoops and could therefore qualify as being the 'Celtic fenian scum' they were later heard baying for the blood of.

Anyway, I obviously won the favour of the Gods with my generosity - and cannily not mentioning my love of Cetic at any point - by surviving to clamber aboard a 43 bus almost immediately.

News phoned in to bus to sundry students no longer so happy to 'soak up the atmosphere':
* there was indeed a riot going on in Piccadilly as screens went down
* telling crowd it is a problem at the ground will butter no parsnips when mates are phoning from Albert Sq and can see said match
* definitely ambulances
* techie van was immediately pinpointed for up-ending.

Most amusing moment was Rangers-shirted drunk moving to try to empty his bladder against the side of our bus - it was doing about 10mph at the time.

Anyway, home in one piece. Phew. Is city centre in one piece? Suspect not.

Oh, and apparently they lost 2-0. I'm saying nowt!

They have been scoffing at my rose buds.

Evil. Nasty. Vile. Hell-spawn.

Greenfly and ayphids.

And they must die.

I know it's buggering up my karma but I can't stand it. Time for chemical warfare. And so I have been charging round the garden with my spray gun, being careful to stand upwind so it does not get blown back in my face and blind me (like my mum says it can, even though she also insists chewing gum will kill you if you swallow it).

They are all dead.

Mwahahahahahahaha *this is my best evil queen of the greenfly killers cackle*

... ooh I'm going to see me girlfriends... including me best girl, Blayka. Flights booked and everything.

Me and Kirsty are running away for a few days in June to see our lovely Blayka in her home country and then bob over the border for fun by the sea. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Not that I am excited or anything. At all.

Best place to sit on the bus when it's too hot to think?

Down stairs, back seat. Right in the middle.

Make sure all the windows are open.

You get walloped by all the cool air as your bus rattles along.

Lovely.

At Oxford Road train station this morning at 10.48am, platform 2.

A trainspotter.

Lesser crested, barrel-chested.

Whipped out his notebook, scribbled down the engine no and shoved it back in his ill-fitting Littlewoods-shade of blue jeans.

Haven't seen one in ages. Must be the weather...

At 7am in the morning buses are very quiet places.

So the chirpie Scot was all the more remarkable as he bounced onto the 43 yesterday in West Didsbury looking like an explosion in a Julian Cope costume shop.

"Are you ready for the sun?" he asked the man wearing mirrored aviators whose face didn't suggest he was up for chit-chat. "Amazing isn't it. All this good weather. Four days in a row you know.

"Someone's dropped a bollock."

Clearly getting nowhere with Mr Aviators he announced to his captive audeince that there were too many good looking men down stairs and he was going upstairs.

Mostly people got on with reading their books and Metros and musing over Amy Winehouse's latest late-night run in with the paps and how anyone who is slowly morphing into a scraggy old horse can possibly live much longer, never mind support that rats nest on top of her head.

Poor lamb, it seems to be growing by the day. The girl who washes my hair at the hairdressers' reckons she keeps her drugs in there. I said I thought it was a refuge for snowy owls and red squirrels.

Right - I'm rambling. I've been for my run - glorious day that it is, I've scoffed my porridge and I'm going to check out Something for the Weekend before I scrub the mud and midges off me.

Looks like it's going to be a beautiful weekend - let's have fun out there - and Happy Birthday, Soy!

On the train tonight the bloke beside me had an mp3 player so loud I could hear it even with my ipod cranked up to max.

I can't imagine what it was like for the poor sods sat around us.

Of course I like to think I brought the tone up because I was listening to Belle and Sebastian. He was listening to some hideous handbag house drivel.

Do you get it written on the box: 'mega-annoying for anyone stood within 50 feet' or is it just a surprise add-on?

Having had an enjoyable chin-wag with TheRealLinda the other day about our mutual appreciation of two capacious gentlemen, who would have thought my idle chit-chat would present itself in the flesh?

If wasn't The Johnny Vegas in the actual flesh, but the lad was the spitting image - right down to a substantial girth that required a seat-and-a-half on the 43 bus home tonight.

Not surprisingly, at 5.40pm on a Thursday night, the half-seat he left was the only seat available, but was conspicuously empty.

Now having just written a dissertation on media obsession and size zero I have been more than vocal on the individual's right to be any size they damned well please. So I promptly climbed up on my high horse and we cantered over to the half-seat where I plonk down my backside.

Now, of course, my holier-than-thouness gets a kicking.

Firstly, there's a bar behind me digging into my arse and it's not in the slightest bit comfortable. Secondly my Mr Vegas look-a-like is getting pinker (possibly because I radiate heat like a thermo-nuclear reactor myself) and is trying to pretend he's asleep.

However, I am now stuffed because there is no way in hell I am moving as that would a) insult Mr V - or he might welcome it, I can't decide - but also (b) indicate to a bus packed to the gills that it is acceptable to move away from someone just because they are big - even though your arse is now killing you because that bar isn't getting any softer.

Mr V had the tiniest hands I've ever seen, dainty little eight-year-old's snowy-white hands, and the longest eye lashes... not that I wasn't looking for things to distract me. I saw him him sneaking a look at me a couple of times - probably wondering who the wierdo was staring intently at his hands while Crosby, Stills & Nash crooned hippy-harmonies about Our House and Helplessly Hoping on her ipod.

And just to serve me right for being such a self-righteous madam, he stayed on the bus and was still on it as I limped off and it trundled on through Northenden - 45 minutes later.

I may be walking a bit funny for a couple of days.

Before my trip to the cinema yesterday to see In Bruges I popped into Fopp records. The plan was to buy a Crosby, Stills and Nash CD (my inner hippy has been in overdrive since I saw the BBC3 documentary Byrds to the Eagles and I was missing CSN madly) but while I trawled the marked-down CDs I also spotted a Belle and Sebastian compilation. A collection of the EPs.

I nearly bought a Sons & Daughters CD, but no, Belle and Sebastian. And all those little random memories I have of B&S sprinted through my mind... Being in Glasgow. That tape Pete made me of an album that I wore to a hiss. Being round at Pauline's and listening to them incessantly. Byers Road... And then I was off, thinking about what time the film started and did I have enough time to look at the Max Mara summer collection in Kendals. (Which I did, and my it is beautiful).

While I'm in the cinema, with my phone off, a friend rings. Sandra. Haven't spoken in months. I ring her back this afternoon.

Apparently Pete's dead. Died of a heart attack around Christmas. He was 50. He'd been living in Leeds. When I knew him he lived in Manchester, latterly Chorlton, where he propped up the bar in a pub where I worked Sundays for a bit. Seem to remember he drank bottles of beck's.

Since I moved here I haven't been to Cholton much, there's no reason to. I didn't know he'd left and you know how it is with some friends, you drift apart and then you come upon each other and it's like you've never been away. I'd see Pete when I was living in Edinburgh and came down to visit Pauline. I saw him before I went to Costa Rica and Peru. And he was there when I got back. Well, that's all going to change isn't it.

So, Serendipidy. I've discovered something sad but I've also spent all afternoon walking and thinking about the nature of life, and how short it can be. And my best conclusion; probably best not to fanny about letting stuff make you miserable.

So enjoy this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_at7lEGpjg

Apparently Mr Farrell has been voted one of the sexiest men on earth.

I really just don't see it myself. I just find him... annoying.

However, that doesn't stop In Bruges being a cracking film and very funny if you're happy in the dark side. Even though Farrell's overly twitchy face made me wince sometimes, words still came out of his mouth that made me laugh.

But that is no doubt due to brilliant writing - Martin McDonagh as In Bruges' writer-director is obscenely talented. I would have been paralytic with jealousy had I not been helpless with laughter.

The story is set in Bruges, obviously, a medieval, pretty-pretty architecture city where two hitmen are sent by their boss when a job goes wrong. It's a tale of guilt, honour, love, sin and the search for redemption, all played out with lashings of wit. The scene in the brothel with the dwarf, the coke, the ecstasy and the prostitutes is pretty amusing. As was shooting the vicious little skinhead in the face with a blank. Like I say, it's got its dark side, but it's a welcome contrast to the grimm's fairytale setting.

Star of the film is Brendan Gleeson. That man is total class. Utterly convincing, massively, massively talented.

My mate Andy, who's seen In Bruges, reckons it's quite trite but I think it talks quite profoundly about the nature of forgiveness and the burden of guilt.

Anyhow, big thumbs up from me.

My beautiful garden has been much neglected this spring. Blame diss.

But today I was out pruning and tending and weeding. I sat on the edge of the bed with my toes in the dirt and pulled out tufts of grass with my bear hands for an hour or so this afternoon.

And I know you should probably wear gloves and wiggling your toes in warm earth is not the most efficient way to weed a bed, but god it felt fantastic.

Birds tweeted, the church bells rang loud enough to drown out the hum of traffic, blown on the breeze from somewhere.

And I watched two woodlice chomp their way through a seed head, and a worm swing about and an ant dash and a spider skitter - this whole other world beavering away in a few square inches of my garden.

Somehow the looming spectre of Tories taking power seemed very far away. "In the natural order soon the worms will come for thee and me," I mused, thinking about Boris Johnson and humming Ilkley Moor By Tat to myself as I sipped a lovely strong cup of Yorkshire tea. "But thee before me, eh god?!"

I have no idea what this means, but apparently by bedtime nationality is Congalese.

Anyhow, I had the best fun with this: Enjoy...

http://www.areyoubritishinbed.co.uk/areyoubritishinbed/home/

It was never like this in my day *says she, climbing up on her high horse and feeling giddy as she surveys the field from the moral high ground*

In my day you went to school and you learned stuff to get out of tip town you were living in and get a job that didn't involve a factory *my apologies if you are one of the few people left in this country who actually have a job in manufacturing - it just wasn't for me*

But blimey, if they'd been chucking chocolate about at my school I'd be a professor by now!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7379984.stm

No news from London yet then?

So who's the bloke in the far right picture then? Seem to have missed him.

Really. If the Wicked Witch of the West lived in my psyche she could not have made up my journey home this evening.

There I am, bowling through the main entrance of Bolton train station, without a care on the world, when it happens...

It has to be said I am all "gleeful girl in the city" when I bowl about.

Skipping to the train like and cheery young(ish) urbanite? Oh, f**kin no!

Some viscious/evil/monsterous/hell spawn commuter decides to wallop my left hand with their briefcase/handbag/air rifle and the upshot is my left hand is bruised to hell/buggery/sodom and gommorah.

Being a south paw, even given that Thursdays aint for a-fightin', I've been out to vote in local elections, made seafood risotto and drunk enough G&T to numb the Navy. So... hurrah for the party of my choice - pull your socks up you numpties - hussah for G&T and
hello Captain!