I swear to you that if I hear Sean Kingston’s ‘Beautiful Girl’ one more goddam time I will be just as suicidal as his song keeps harping on about. Or maybe homicidal, I just haven’t decided which yet.
Of course I can’t stop humming it and the lyrics won’t stop circling in my head..the next twenty-four hours will be interesting..
With things being a bit crazy for me right now I thought I would make things even more crazy by booking a last moment trip to Brugge in Belgium for the bank holiday weekend. I took the Eurostar which was a first for me and honestly, apart from a bit of concern in getting the connecting trains in Brussels and a stupid bitch opposite me on the whole journey over it was pretty painless. If you know anything about me then you know how easily unintended hilarity can ensue when I plan anything but nope not this time! I am one step closer to becoming a functional member of human society!
I cannot express how much I fell in love with Brugge. There are many reasons why I did, one of the main being it afforded me a rare chance to take a moment out of myself, out of my head which is so full of..stuff..take a moment to just sit and stare as everyone rushes by pointing in awe and wonder, and for once I can join in on the sheer magic of it all, to pause just for a second..before it all comes rushing back so noisily.
If it were a person I would predict many a dirty weekend in my future but alas it is not. Everywhere you go there are millions of chocolate shops.. waffle shops..and coffee which was perhaps the best coffee this side of ever. Million of horse drawn carriages, bicycles and cobbled streets plus the added extra of some crazy bell ringing in the famous bell tower meant that the place was incredibly quaint and endearing. Ok so it was fucking expensive to do anything other than walk and live on bread and water but I stuck to the budget I had alloted myself somehow and still managed to eat myself to an early death.
The trip gave me a good chance to test out the capabilities of my camera and test I did..I managed a gig of photos and videos somehow but it turns out that most of the videos feature some fantastic scenery but with me cracking up every two seconds during the narration after I stumbled and triped my way round the English language. No budding documentary making in my future I sense.
I also developed a slight envy fuelled hate of the Flemish speaking Belgians who can flip between 5 languages at the drop of a hat and are *fluent* in all of them. I had to order more strawberries and cream laden waffles to comfort myself from this envy.
I am currently sat in a deckchair (the new furniture isn’t here yet) in my sister’s new house ‘borrowing’ my wireless internets from my very kind neighbours. I am so very grateful to them because they provided me with a distraction from the horrible post-break depression I get after every trip.
It’s probably not worth speaking to me until I have gotten past the deep sighing and sulking stage which has arisen because I can no longer throw myself out of the hotel and into the warm loving arms of a waffle house.
I have my brothers wedding to look forward to this weekend. Once all my bridesmaid duties have been completed I plan on spending the rest of my time at the bottom of a bottle of champagne or 5 and trying to pull sensible faces for all the photographs being planned. Wish me luck!
The other day I was running some errands in town while it was raining heavily and because I felt no need to get my stupidly baggy jeans even more wet I ducked into a tiny coffee shop I hadn’t noticed before.
I actually don’t tend to frequent coffee shops all that much because I object to paying over the odds for something I can make equally as well at home. I know the atmosphere isn’t the same but unless I have a mac book, or a compilation of haiku poetry with which I can sit in the corner while alternately looking up into the distance and sighing wistfully I feel out of place. It’s like they know I don’t read poetry, own an Apple product or *always* drink fair trade and for this they want to cut me. I better not tell them I’m a former vegetarian..
Anyway, I took my turn in the queue and the lady before me placed her order of ‘double tall, extra hot, half decaf hazelnut soy skim latte with added foam’ and immediately my brain flat lined in much the same manner as if I had just opened the Sunday Times crossword before being fully awake.
I think secretly, in the coffee shops around the world, there is a little competition running for the customer with the most ostentatious order and I’m waiting for the bells to ring, lights to flash and for confetti to fall from the ceiling but alas this lady must not be the winner today because the baristas bored expression remained unchanged as she notes down the order. She then looks up at me with the simple raised eyebrow indicating it is now my turn to see what I can throw at her and once I have pulled my mind back from wondering if the previous order consisted of an actual, comprehensible sentence I mumble.. ‘err, latte please, big..’ I simply didn’t have enough time to concoct my own lengthy order to try my hand at winning the prize.
My next order will not be so easy I fully intend on going back in the near future and asking for a 6 inch tall, 60 degree c, quarter decaf latte with slightly off-dusk white foam made from beans which have been ground by the hooves of unicorns. With fries.
When one of our housemates moved out she left behind a dvd player which I vaguely remember her saying it didn’t work. Because she was even more techno-tarded than me I thought it maybe didn’t work because of a blown fuse or I would maybe need to rewire the plug to get it working and then we could utilize it in the kitchen.
So I plug it in and press the magical on button and I could hear some whirring sounds from within..I bend a little closer to make sure that the sounds are coming from the player and not from any of the other electrical equipment nearby and juuuust as I get close BANG! (no the dirt isn’t gone Mr. Scott) the player explodes. Right next to my ear. I am hoping the ringing will subside very soon.
I didn’t actually know dvd players could explode but I have the say the smoke and sparks were very impressive..and scary.
Chalk that up on the list of things I have exploded, right alongside Vacuum cleaner, microwave and grass cutter (I am taking odds on what is going to be next so get your bets in).
I was also going to test the random digi-box I found at the back of our cupboard of crap this morning but you know what, I think I might just throw that away without any testing.
Newtons third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This was also the theme adopted by the Mint credit card adverts which held that for every intelligent act carried out by one person there would be an equally stupid act carried out by another in order to restore the ‘clever-dumb’ balance.
For me it would seem that I have own little clever-dumb balance going on within, I perform something which might be viewed as marginally intelligent and then shortly after I restore the balance by carrying out something which could only be classed as monumentally stupid.
This morning I stumbled into the bathroom to carry out my cleansing ritual. Shower and face wash complete I move onto the teeth cleaning and it’s not until I stick the tooth brush into my mouth and begin to brush that I realise that it was not tooth paste that I had put on my brush rather it was my St Ives Exfoliating face scrub. Which tastes of apricot and another flavor which could quite possibly be classified as ass. It has lots of tiny little grainy bits to produce ’smooth, radiant healthy skin’. Grainy bits which I then spent an hour trying to wash from my mouth and I am still convinced I can feel in there giving me some kick ass smooth and radiant gums.
I hope my dentist will be pleased how seriously I take the health of my gums when I have my appointment in a couple of weeks.
It is also the last time I will ever leave my toothpaste and face wash next to each other on the counter, consider it a lesson learned.
A few weeks back I took on a new job. A job which involved me actually leaving the house in clothes other than jeans and hold lengthy conversations with people..what on earth was I thinking? Actually it’s pretty simple. I like money..it enables me to buy ice cream and so long as I have ice cream then everything is ok with the world, so, in order to support my 99 habit I got off of my ass and into the world of house selling.
Most of the people I deal with are very much of the yuppy London crowd who have more money than sense and like to throw round phrases such as ‘one is looking for a house in the vicinity, would one happen to have anything available?’ which makes me want to stand very still and hope their vision is based on movement. This weekend it was a pleasant change to see a little old man fight his way through the office door with his bags and take a seat at my desk. I was the only one in at the time so I prepared to launch into my usual spiel when he stopped me dead with one line:
You young ones ought to watch what you eat, I didn’t when I was your age and I ended up with terrible constipation..took eight doctors to poke around and sort out the problem..too many pies see..now I am as regular as clockwork, twice a day!
The actual words are burned into my long term memory simply because they prompted me to face the biggest internal battle since the invitation for my brothers wedding gave me the choice of either lemon meringue pie or profiteroles for the sweet (Why wasn’t there a tick box for both!!?), the immature eight year old in me wanted to crawl under my desk and cry with laughter but I obviously had to maintain a poker face so I opted for the sympathy approach and promised him I would be certain to be more careful with what I put into my digestive system starting right now. He lingered for about half an hour telling me and a colleague who had come back all about the history of the area and how the parish church does meals which would rival that of any top restaurant before gathering up his bags, thanking us for our time and walking off into the high street with nary a word about houses spoken.
I very much love random conversations when you are least expecting them and never in my thoughts of what the day may hold did I think I would receive details on a persons digestive frequency. I hope he is back next week to brighten up my days. It was also perhaps the best way to open a conversation ever and so I stored it away in my brain thinking that perhaps one day I may also wonder into an office, sit down at the desk and tell the girl behind it allll about my digestive system..I think I have about another 50 years before I can get a tally chart in the old folks home of how many we could get away with by using the senile old person routine, it is very effective you know.
But then..thinking about the little chair dance I performed when I finally got facebook working on the work computers I think I may already be halfway there..especially since there were about 4 people walking by to witness my chair dancing skills.
Oh and finally, Rhys launched Fair Review on Friday which is a project where people are encouraged to take an active interest in the blogging community by reviewing other blogs in the directory rather than just sit around mindlessly linking. Now go forth and investigate the goodness people of the Internet.
