Why ....

do people get off a train / escalator / out of a lift and just stand there blocking every-one else's way?


is it that I can wear a black skirt all day and spill nothing down it, but put on a white one and I throw my breakfast all over it?


do I meet no-one I know when I go out looking pretty damn smart (IMO) yet bump into loads of people when I nip out looking a real mess?


do I always seem to have to stop at the pedestrian crossing lights some joker has set off and then walked away from?


can I sleep like a baby when eldest son is at University but as soon as he comes home and goes out in the evening I'm up all night in a state of high anxiety until he's tucked up safely?

do all the members of my family always want to use the computer when I want to?

I have always had a bit of a thing about bags - and now a whole new outlet has opened up to me - the eco friendly bag for life. I have so many of the things that I am in danger of creating my own personal environmental disaster.

I have an impressive stock of supermarket plastic bags for life - mainly due to the fact that everytime I go to the shops I leave them in the boot of my car - so then have to buy a few more as I don't want to be seen with those evil normal carriers.

But my main problem is the canvas / cotton bags. If I see a new design I can't resist getting it. I was at work the other day when some-one came in with one from their local co-op. Not a store that was local to me but at lunch time off I went (in my car - never mind the carbon footprint) on the pretence of buying a sandwich. Another one to add to the collection.

I queued, in the rain, for ten minutes for a bag that was being given away at my local shopping centre. I bought a very special one for a friend's birthday and I had to speak severely to myself to give it to her as I was so keen on keeping it for myself.

Today I saw the bag of bags - canvas - not advertising anything - decorated with green flowers - I couldn't quite pluck up the courage to ask the owner where she got it from - but one thing's for sure - I WANT THAT BAG.

The men folk are watching a film about robots. They tried to tell me what was happening but it was all too confusing and anyway the whole film seemed to be in the dark and I couldn't see what was going on. They assured me there was some love interest (my key criteria for sticking with a film) but then let slip it was man with robot who only lives for 4 years - or some such nonsense.

Thursday night TV is poor. I usually get by because Wednesday is extra good and the video has been working overtime. But yesterday was silly champions league football so that messed things up. Football is going to mess up next Wednesday's telly too. Got to remember to watch the Apprentice on Tuesday instead. That will really throw the routine.

The Apprentice is best thing on telly at the moment. What I do find baffling - with this and other programmes - is that they don't seem to have watched the series before. For example - yesterday they were making an advert - previous series they were doing a similar thing and I seem to remember that the ones before fell foul of making an ad where no-one knew what was being advertised. Another programme - How To Look Good Naked - at the end of the programme Gok gets them walking down a catwalk in some shopping centre - and taking off their clothes. What a shocker - er no - that's precisely what they did in the last series.

Anyway - I'm putting a 50p bet on Lucinda to win. She'll probably get fired next week now I said that.

Ever the sucker for a new weight loss / body toning idea (apart from actually eating less that is), I ordered myself a pair of "toning flip flops".


This footwear was going to have a radical effect on the shape of my legs, as well as help burn loads of calories - just by walking around in them. Couldn't be easier.


I was so excited when they arrived - but slightly alarmed by the warning label saying not to wear for too long on the first outing due to their dramatic effects.


So off I went on a short walk to run them in. I hobbled home 15 minutes later having rubbed the most enormous blisters on both feet. This was not the dramatic effect I was expecting.


They are now sitting across the room looking at me - another white elephant in a long line I fear...

The lift at work is very small - it claims to fit 9 people - but frankly I wouldn't want to be stuck in there with more than 4 others. And I speak from experience having spent an hour stuck there this afternoon.

It all started off like a really good idea. A group of people were visiting the office for the first time. We'd had a good meeting and I said I'd take them upstairs to see the other office before they went off to catch their train. There was a short debate about whether they had time to do this - but decided they had - little knowing that the quick trip up the lift was going to take up the rest of the afternoon.

Now I'm no lover of confined spaces so when the lift jolted and ground to a halt I was about to lose it -until one of the others in there with me said she was scared - so I decided to keep calm and let her lose it instead. I rang the alarm - three times - then got through to a dialing tone and guess what - hold music. A disengaged voice told me I was third in the queue. Not quite the reassuring words I wanted to hear to be honest. Finally a human answered.

"We're stuck in the lift" I said. "Stuck in a lift" they said, amazed. It was as if I'd been put through to a wrong number. Eventually, after being passed onto some else they took the details down and said they would get an engineer to come. I asked them how long this would take and was told to call back in 5 minutes. We couldn't get through to them again.

Fortunately, one of my fellow captives had a mobile on her. So we rang our colleagues and they called the fire brigade. After about 30 minutes of captivity we could hear the sirens wailing. They were marvellous. Fortunately we were almost on a floor so they prised open the outside doors and managed to open the main doors enough to pass through cups of water and reassuring words. One chirpy fellow asked if we could squeeze through the two inch gap. Not at the moment, we said, but leave us here for a couple of weeks and we'll try.

By this time, 45 minutes into the ordeal, we were sensing freedom in sight and started to get hysterical. Photo's were taken - I took a good one of fellow captives, one took an interesting shot of partly opened lift doors.

Then in the way many things end, things had to get worse before they could get better. The lift engineer turned up, assured us all would be fine - then made the ceiling fall down. We later found out he had to stand on the lift to press some button or other. We did a bit of hysterical screaming, lift door opened and nice fireman lifted us to safety.

It's the stairs for me in future..

What a let down..

When I opened the post this morning I'd got a catalogue for Letterbox - a lovely company that sells all kinds of things for babies and young children. Not the sort of thing I am interested in with two teenage children, but I thought that with all this target marketing companies do, perhaps I am not as old as I feel.

So off I go to work with an extra spring in my step.

I took the catalogue with me as some of the people I work with do have young families. So there I am boasting that at least the marketing department of this particular company think there's life in the old girl yet, when one dear colleague points out that perhaps they thought I'd be interested for my grandchildren!!

I've made a new best friend.

We have just got a new computer and it's down to me to set it up. Things got off to a shaky start when I thought they hadn't supplied the right cable to link the old monitor with the new base unit. A bit of rummaging in the box and I found it.

Then had to link up broadband. Sounds easy - what happened to plug and play?

First call to the ISP helpline told me I needed a new disc to set up my modem. This would be sent to me. Three days (and some very annoyed members of my family) later it arrived and I was sent off to set it up. It didn't work. So I rang the helpline again. Got a very nice man on the other end of the phone who patiently talked me through the process. I say patiently - it took 45 minutes to sort out. But finally all was working - hurrah!

Silly old me thinks that if it works once it will work again. Wrong. On phone again - and after pressing about 38 buttons to get the right option I get the same nice man again. Oh said me I think I spoke to you yesterday. I could hear him sigh - yes I think you did. He tried to palm me off onto the internet help options but I had none of it!

Think he may be booking leave for the rest of the week...

Stop the pigeon

Can't believe I haven't posted since October but that's another story.

This weekend the RSPB are asking people to take part in a survey of garden birds. The task is to count how many birds visit your garden in one hour. Obviously to count them you need to know what you are looking at - but as the daughter and sister of keen bird watchers I thought I had a better than average chance of doing some spotting.

Approaching this in the same way as any new venture, I thought I would start off with a shopping trip - so went to the local garden centre to stock up on bird food / seed stuff to attract loads of birds. I put this out in hanging feeder things, left it for an hour for the attracting part to start work and then sat down in the conservatory for the big count. Decided against the binoculars (garden only 10 feet long) and rare bird identifier book - could write down descriptions and search for identity later.

In the space of an hour I saw three birds - a black one, a robin and a pigeon...