Raised on a diet of broken biscuits

I'm on my own in the library (I finally ran out of excuses not to do the Wednesday late). I am on a diet. I will not open these.

I will also not open these -

And I most certainly will not be opening these -

Yep. They are the biscuits we have in our library office. And you thought it was all 'sssh' and no fun, ey?

03/03/06 **BISCUIT UPDATE** After promising myself one of the yummy Cadburys biscuits when they were opened (thinking they would be opened after my diet had finished) I can confirm that I am now eating an Orange Chocolate Crunch. I realise this is breaking my diet, but they were opened yesterday whilst I was off sick, and HALF THE TIN has gone already, half the tin!! I'm on holiday next week, and at this rate they'll have polished them off and eaten the tin no doubt, by the time I am back, so I'm taking my chance now. I can also confirm the biscuit is yummy!

How may points for a ....

So, as nobody likes a fat bride (see below) and more importantly as none of my clothes fit (again) and after astonishingly both losing and putting back on a stone in 18 months, I'm back on the old diet.

Now, when I diet I do it the Weight Watchers way (other ways of losing-and-putting-a-stone-on-in-18-month diets are available). After years of attending WW meetings with my mum, I know the points system inside out. Yes, I know points is very 5 years ago, but the new ways of working things out scare the hell out of me. I am a WW luddite. I am also a human WW reference book. Seriously, ask me the amount of points in an anything, and I know. With the exception of meat & fish I know that points value of everything. Hummus? Why, that would be full fat 1.5pts a tablespoon, 1pt a tablespoon for low-fat. Avacado? Thanks for asking, 3pts for half a medium size avacado (love the precise science!). So far, so good. I lost 4lbs this week. Okay, that's 4lb of the 6lb I put on over christmas, but that's really not the point.

And the best thing about the WW points system? I can hoard my points and 'spend' them on booze! Hooray for being drunk as a skunk whilst on a diet! (That's me on a diet, not the skunk).

And I'm not at all jealous of this lucky little guy. Nope, not even one tiny little bit.

Here comes the bride

So, after ten years of saying over and over and over again how we are "never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER getting married", we're getting married. This has taken most of our family & friends by complete suprise, including those I'd told that we were thinking of it. I must say, more fun than actually deciding to get married or planning the whole thing has been telling people we're getting married.

Ways I have told people we're getting married:
1. Telling my mum and dad (who had no idea what we were planning) in a packed restuarant.
Me: "Guess what we're doing for our anniversary next year?"
My dad: "Getting married"
Me: (in a What? You weren't supposed to guess! voice) "Yes!"
My mum "Eeeeeeeeeee" (and other high pitched excited noises).
My dad: "I said the least likely thing I could think of!"

2. Dropping it casually into the middle of an email about other people's quite frankly crazy wedding planning. They had sent out pre-invite reminders (no, I have no idea what they are either) for their wedding in November 2006, in December 2005 and I just couldn't resist putting "I mean, my and Mr L are getting married in April and we haven't even told anybody yet" into the middle of an email. I got a "What?!!" and a "Sorry?" in reply.

3. Dropping it casually into conversation about dieting
Mrs D "we're eating heathily, but we're not really dieting"
Me "oh, we need to go on a diet, 'cus we're getting married in April, and no-one likes a fat bride"

4. Dropping it casually into a conversation about people visiting us
My bestest friend "And of course, we're visint you Easter weekend"
Me "Well, you could visit us that weekend, or you could come down two weeks later and then you can come to our wedding as well"
My bestest friend "What? Are you getting married for real?"
Me "Yes!"
My bestest friend "Is it real? Is it really real? Really, really, really real?"

5. Breaking the news to my ex-colleagues, who, the whole year I worked with them had to listen to me moan about weddings in general and say how I was "never, ever, ever, ever times a billion" getting married.
Me (after rather a lot of wine, for dutch courage purposes) "Ooh, you can hire this pub for a party. That's good, 'cus I'm on the look-out for a room to hire for our wedding celebrations"
Them "What wedding celebrations?"
Me (covering head for any abuse/punches that might come my way) "We're getting married, don't shout at me!"

Thankfully everyone has been really pleased, and we've had none of the "I told you so"s that we expected. I don't think I'm being a wedding bore (reason to not get married # 567) but if I am, please let me know, I'd hate to be one of those brides who can only talk about the wedding (reason to not get married #245).

Speaking of genius...

Three things people have said to me at work in the last month...

1. Woman filling in library application form - "What country is this?". What? Let's just be glad she knew her name.

2. Woman on a Saturday library tour - "So, are you only open Monday to Friday?". Actual answer "Errr, no, we're open on a Saturday as well". In my head answer "No, we're closed, all these people here working are actors". Alternative in my head answer "Yes, and this is all a dream, a dream, a dream...".

3. Man sitting in library. That's in the library. "Are you open?" Actual answer (a very snappy) "Yes!". In my head answer "No. We're closed. That's why you couldn't get through the locked door".

Another story about too tight trousers

I've decided to give up the annual pre-christmas diet. Maybe 'give up' isn't the phrase I should be using, as not eating biscuits between 11am - 7pm yesterday doesn't really qualify as a diet, does it?

Anyway, this years solution will be to go shopping after work tonight and buying a pair of the next size up trousers. That way I can eat what the hell I like, and my clothes will still be a bit loose, therefore creating the illusion of thinness.

Pure genius, that's what I am.

Card Humbug!

Why, oh why, oh why, oh why card manufacturers of Great Britain?

In the name of all things festive, why?

Why do you insist on making your christmas cards for family members so goddamn nauseating? All I want, if it's not too much to ask, is a card that says "Merry Christmas Dad" or "Happy New Year Sister". And what do you give me? "I'm glad that your my special daddy" or "To my special sister" or "I've already had my christmas wish come true, I've got you as my (insert blood relative of choice here)". And don't get me started on "To my mum and her fella", "You're like a dad to me", "To my special sister and her fiancee" (who is presumably just plan ordinary). What the hell is that all about? Do you have any idea how hard it is, as a child of non-divorced parents to buy christmas cards?

Just stop it. Oh, and while you're at it, people do still have birthdays in December you know, so maybe next year, leave a few birthday cards around. Cus they can tell when you've scratched 'Christmas' off and scribbled in 'Birthday' over the top. Trust me.

You know you should get out more, when...

...you get very excited at being given an Executive Room by mistake at a librarians conference.

Return of the killer librarian

I know, I know. I'm just not blogging as much as I used to. I've decided that this is because I no longer work in the thick of it in central London. And by "in the thick of it" I mean "amongst the freaks". Seriously. You work in central London and everyday your commute involves at least three incidents that no normal person would put up with/hang around long enought to watch. But because you work in central London, you are in your London Frame Of Mind, and so anything goes.

I mention this becuase on Tuesday I was off to a conference in Oxford (woo-hoo!) and so had to go in to London to get a train. There I was, still in my Suburby Frame Of Mind, taking everything in, looking in shop windows, walking at a normal pace, having a little daydream, and do you know what? I almost got killed! Shoved out of the way by sharpened elbows, scowled at by all and run over by peoples STUPID wheely cases. One woman who ran her case into my leg and then over my foot, turned round to me and said "Don't put your foot there!". What? Here where I've been standing for the last 15 minutes with the rest of Paddington Station managing to avoid my quite frankly tiny feet? I'm sorry how inconsiderate of me, you OLD BAG.

I decided that I had better switch up a gear, and by the time I got on my train 20 minutes later I had shoved, tutted, walked everywhere purposefully and at speed and kiCked a few wheely suitcases out of the way. Mwa ha haaa!

Ah, it's good to be back!

Dear Mrs Ritchie,

or can I call you Madonna? I love your new single, it's the best thing that you've done in a long while, it rocks. I suspect this is largely down to the excellent 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' sample, however I'll let this pass, 'cus it makes me want to dance like a crazy lady. And 10/10 for the Saturday Night Fever meets Agadoo arm movement at the the end of the vid. Inspired.

I have a comment to make about this song however. Would it have hurt you to have gotten a leotard that wasn't so high cut in the leg area for the video? Really, you are the same age as Mr L.'s mother. Put it away dear.

Yours, learning to dance in new killer heels,

Lady Librarian.

P.S. Really, put it away.

Shoe porn

Well if you can't buy yourself these to celebrate a) coming home with holiday spending money left and b) your friends 30th upcoming birthday, when can you?

I'm wearing them right now. With my pink p'jamas. Foxy or what?

What I did on my holidays...

Day One: Woo-hoo! Look at me all not scared of flying! Hypnotherapy rocks! The weather? Sunny and warm.The accomodation? Why, it's the skanky Hospedaria Verde Esperança. On several websites it says that this Guest House was renovated in November 2004. Hmm, usually when you "renovate" you do things like, oh I don't know...put locks on the doors, fill in cracks in the wall, remove newspapers with a date of July 2004 from the wardrobe, make sure the kitchen you provide has a working fridge, and hey! call me crazy, but a cooker as well. What they mean is, this place had new windows in November 2004.
Day Two: Ah, a relaxing start to the day with a lie-in before climbing literally hundreds of hills whilst out and about in Lisbon. I now have the not very attractive calf muscles of a mountain goat.
Day Three: Zoo! You gotta love the Zoo. A day that includes wobbly cable cars and a kiss each from a sealion. What more do you need from a holiday?
Day Four: Turns out the bites we have aren't from mosquitos, but bed bugs. Mr L wakes in the middle of the night to find the blighters fat and full of his blood. Gross. When we ask to change rooms we are roundly ignored by the "Hotel" owner, who even turns down the chambermaids request to change the bloody sheets (I'm not swearing, I mean the red stuff).
Day Five: Ooh, itchy itchy ITCHY. Also, rainy rainy RAINY. We go to the biggest aquarium in The Universe (or Europe, one of the two). We see lots of fish, cute sea otters and get shoved out of the way several times by an incredibly rude French family. (Rude, or stupid. One of the two. Probably both.)
Day Six: I.T.C.H.Y. That's itchy will a capital everything. Today we say a fond "F*ck You" to the Skanky Hospedaria Verde Esperança and head to the coast and a new hotel. Mmm, 4 star hotels, gotta love 'em. Cascais, lovely town, shame about the rain.
Day Seven: Buffet breakfast, rain, 4 star hotel.
Day Eight: Ditto. I don't think God knows we're on holiday. Or he hates us big time.
Day Nine: Train to Porto. In England to get on a long distance train with a ticket costing less than £1,000,000 you have to buy it 67 weeks in advance on the internet and travel in the middle of the night, standing on one leg, wearing stripey socks with a companion called Fred. In Portugal you ask for tickets an hour before the train leaves, and it costs 17.00 Euros. I have no idea how much 17 Euros really is, but it just sounds cheap, doesn't it?
Day Ten: Portuguese bank holiday. Everything shut. Even stuff that says it will be open. It's still raining by the way.
Day Eleven: Across the river to the Port warehouses. Free port at every turn and super steep hills. And yet we returned home with nothing broken. A miracle. It's still raining.
Day Twelve: Continuing this years series of Comedy Related Injuries (TM) I slip in the shower. I do what any normal person would do and grab hold of the shower curtain to steady myself. The shower curtain rail is in no way fixed to the wall, it is just ledged against the tiles. Really. Two seconds later I land flat bang on my bum with the shower curtain and rail over my head for good measure. Ouch. Although it did make me laugh and cry at the same time, which is always impressive.
Day Thirteen: On the way to the airport, the sun comes back out. Oh, ha ha HA.

Devil woman

I'd like to take a moment or two to thank the woman that drove her car through a huge puddle/small lake on my way to the hypnotherapy dude yesterday, soaking me from the waist down and covering me in enough muddy water that my fabulous (as announced by lovely waiter in wagamamas) coat now needs dry cleaning. You evil, evil BITCH. This is a tamer version of what I actually shouted at her.

Two things about this really annoyed me. One - the three cars in front of her had actually slowed down and swerved out of the way of the puddle, and I saw her deliberately swerve into it, and two, she was a woman, now from a man I could almost kinda understand it, but from a woman? I hope your children turn out fat and ugly and that you never find another pair of comfortable shoes as long as you live, you rotten old hag.

Holiday (preparation) from hell

What was my favourite part of my 'relaxing' day off yesterday? Was it discovering that even though I thought I'd finished my freelance work, I actually had another two hours worth left to do? Realising that you need to buy your Euros a bit sooner than the day before you travel? Being soaked on my way to hypnotherapy and having to lie in soggy trousers whilst trying to conjure up positive thoughts about flying?

No, it was the bit when I ordered my holiday money, only to find out that if you order over £500 on a debit card with this company, you will automatically be classed as a 'fraud alert'. Now, this is great, it's actually nice and reassuring to know that if some scoundrel had made off with my purse, they wouldn't be able to jet off to Fiji with a suitcase full of dollars before it was too late to catch them. My gripe is - why the hell didn't this company put a disclaimer on their website?When I spoke to the call centre, they said very matter of factly that "it happens all the time". So why no warning? This would have saved me the nuisance of having my card turned down in shops later that day, and a visit to the bank, and a call to the fraud hotline to sort it all out. And we still have no holiday money!

The wrong trousers

Every Saturday to distract myself from the fact that I am at work, I buy myself lunch from Eat. Mmmm, they do the yummiest everything, ever. Every week I walk in there and look the three cheese and caramalised onion sandwich in the eye and say "Oh no my little calorific friend, I'm going for one of your healthier relatives" and I usually have something involving roasted veg and it is (as are all their sandwiches) divine.

Last Saturday my alarm didn't go off, so I woke up thirty minutes before I needed to leave the house. This is the second time that this has happened in recent weeks, and quite frankly if the clock wasn't from Queenstown NZ, I'd be taking it back all in a huff. Anyway, come lunchtime I was staaaaaaaaarving, which as those who know me know, is not an unusual occurrence. I am always hungry. But Saturday I was hungry AND grumpy, on account of me not actually being awake yet. So I looked at that cheese sandwich, and I thought "oh yes, your time has come". So I brought it, and I ate it. Then I ate some crisps. Then I ate a mango & greek yogurt thing. Then I had to phone home to get Mr Librarian to bring me some, ahem, more comfortable trousers when he came to meet me from work. You see, we were going to a birthday party and I didn't really want to have to go with my trousers open, just to be able to breathe.

There's an old family story about my mum, who after returning home from a particularly delicious and large meal out, undid her trousers to make things a bit less painful in the midrif area. It wasn't until she undid the trousers that she realised it wasn't her clothes that were tight, it was her skin. Saturday was one of those 'skin too tight' moments for me.

And the moral of this story? Don't be such a pig Lady Librarian. Lesson learnt. I'm back to the healthy boys this week. Or maybe I should just carry a spare pair of bigger trousers at all times?....

Note to self #2

Stop going out drinking the night before you are teaching. People want information, just not from someone who smells like a wino.

Note to self #1

When roads have "hill" in the name, it's there for a reason.

They're playing our song

Oh, Bookish Barbara, Andrew W.K. 'Party Hard' is on tv. I'm sorry to tell you, but this reminds me of you! Remember when we saw them at Reading? Oh, such happy memories.

I actually have no idea what I'm watching, but it seems to be some kind of cruel joke chart, in which Good Charlotte 'lifestyles of the rich and the famous' is higher up a 'rock' chart than R.A.T.M. 'killing in the name of'. I think it may well be tv from the world of Just Plain Wrong.

R.A.T.M.? Why, Bookish Barbara, remember when we went to see Audioslave record 'cochise' for kids tv? And we were so excited that we got a bit drunk before we went, and then we worried that we wouldn't be let in? And remember how we made everyone we know watch the tv programme over and over until they agreed they could see us? Ah, happy days. No freakin' way! Super spookily, Audioslave have just come on tv! It's the cochise video! Ooh, I need a lie down, too much rock for someone who has to go to work in the morning.

Living for the weekend?

No, I'm living for Monday when I get to see Hard-fi for free. Why free I hear you ask? Why, because I'm on the GUEST LIST!!!!! (Yes, that does justify capital letters, bold type and plenty of !)

This is the second time in my life I've been on a bands guest list, (this is the first) and it makes me so disproportionately happy! I did a little jig when I found out. It makes me feel special, and yes, I am going to be stopping strangers in the street and telling them, and yes, I am going to be going on and on and on about it for at least the next six months.

Why you shouldn't talk to strangers

Last week I went to speak to a group of GPs and other community staff about the services that the library I work in can offer, and in particular my amazing training sessions (how modest of me). The talk was as productive as it gets, people hear the word library and switch off, but just as I was about to write the day off, I had a super journey back to work.

I get to the bus stop and there's a bus pulling away. There's one woman waiting "You just missed one" she said "Ah, always the way" I said. I thought maybe that was it, a few pleasantaries with a fellow bus-stopper, but no. In the space of the next two minutes here are some of the things I learnt about this lady;

1. Her mum is in her 80's and has always smoked.
2. The lady herself has never smoked, and hates the smell of cigarettes.
3. She plays darts on a Wednesday.
4. She had lived in this part of London all her life until last year.
5. Her oldest son is disabled and still lives at home.
6. She has one other son, he doesn't live at home.
7. Her mum has her old mobile phone.
8. The lady is always forgetting her mobile phone.
9. Her husband had tickets to the test match the next day.

And with that last remark, she got on a bus and sped away, leaving me to wonder if I'd been out in the sun a bit too long and had imagined it all.

Shoes, glorious shoes

My feet are shrinking! Now, this would be a cause for concern at the best of times however this is not the first time that this has happened to me. When I was 14 I had (UK) size 5 feet, sometimes even a six. Cut to four years later and I was wearing 4's. Which was weird, but I like it. I like having small feet, call me a shoe snob, but I just think shoes look better on small feet. Ah, who am I kidding? I think shoes look better on my feet.

Yesterday I went shopping to spend the new wages that were burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to get some new work trousers (the pair that I have now are disgraceful, I've worn them so much the pinstripe has worn off!) and a couple of work tops, but most importantly a pair of new dancing shoes for my fake birthday. Shoes to go dancing in, you understand, not magic dancing shoes like Lisa Simpson gets when she discovers that she can't dance.

So I tried on a pair of fabulous heels in Debenhams, the only pair left, and they were a 4! These shoes were perfect, turquiose blue with a peep-toe and a full ankle, a 2 inch heel, and they were reduced from £40 to £9.45 - extra perfect. I tried them on, they fit! Until I started to walk in them, and they kept slipping off my heel. Like when you wear your mum's shoes when you play dress-up. "Dammit" I thought "I bet some sneaky size five has tried to ram their feet into these 4's just to get a bargain, and they've stretched them. Grr." So I left them where I found them, tried not to cry, and carried on with my shopping.

I found a pair of flats that I liked in Clarks. I tried the 4's on. Too big. Hmm. Suspicious. Also, the most uncomfortable shoes I've ever tried on, (and I have tried a lot of shoes on in my 28 years)there's no way that these babies would ever get comfy. (Yes, Clarks, what's that all about? You're making your shoes a bit cheaper, and they look great, but I can't remember the last time any of your shoes were comfortable - sort it out!). Then I try on a pair of gold, ankle strap, strappy sandals from Next. Too big! If it wasn't for the ankle strap they would've been off my feet flying across the shop in seconds.

So, it must be me. Three pairs of shoes, from three very different shops, all too big. And I just can't bring myself to buy a smaller size. Because 4 = cute and ladylike, 3 = small child weirdo feet.