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.

Say it with a card

After finding these little beauties via Just Jenn I have decided to write to Ken to demand that they become compulsory and free in London. I would buy some for myself, but I would get through about 500 packs a week.

Three little things

that cheered me up on the way home from work last night:

1. My mp3 player behaving when on random and choosing (amongst others) Veruca Salt 'Seether', Maximo Park 'Graffiti' and Hell is for Heroes 'You drove me to it', excellent choice little music buddy! Glad to hear the days of Random=Manic Street Preachers are over.
2. Seeing two sisters wearing the same outfit - they were in their 60's! Fashion faux-pas, psychic sister powers, or just uncanny co-ordination? We'll never know...
3. The lights turning to red almost straight away at the crossing by the hospital, I usually have to wait about five minutes!

They're off!

Today is the 1st September, which means it's Day One of Adam and Marty's trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. "So what?" I hear you ask. So, they're doing it by cyclo. Which is just crazy. Infact, it's Crazy with a Big C. They're not doing this for fun, oh no. They're doing it to raise money for KOTO which is the main venture of the Australian charity Street Voices. KOTO trains street kids in the hospitality industry so that they have the skills to get stable jobs, to give them a decent future. Which is just bloody brilliant!

Follow their adventure, and if you can donate some, please do. If you've ever visited Vietnam I'm sure you'll want to help, and if you haven't visited, you really should!

Happy birthday to me?

Two of my bestest friends have birthdays this weekend. I know, I know, I keep meaning to audition my friends so I have their birthdays spread throughout the year. I currently have availability for new potential friends with birthdays in February, May, June and July.

Apart from having to think of two present ideas so close together (oh, the brain ache!), my main problem with them being born a day apart is that they always have a 'do' and I get so involved in their preparations, I start to think it's my birthday too. I am aging twice as fast as everyone else! I'm three years younger and two years older than these guys!

Queuin' in the rain

I suppose I should've blogged about the Foos gig before now, but to be honest a week on and I'm still so over excitable that there's a strong chance that the blog, as much as I want to give an objective view of the evenings entertainment, I just know that it will come out as "IlovethefoosIlovethemIlovethemIlovethem" or something very similar. Let's just say that Oh My God They Rocked.

The one thing that marred my super evening was losing my umbrella. And not in the usual getting off the bus and realising you left it behind way. Oh no. Last Wednesday it rained all day in London. And I mean all day. None of that "Oh, quick! It's stopped raining for five minutes I can nip to the shop without fear of drowning" kinda days. Non. Stop. Rain. All. Day.

So as we reach the front of the queue, we noticed a whole load of umbrellas on the pavement outside, including a few big golfing umbrellas (Foo Fighters gigs/playing golf - hey, I know I'm always getting those two mixed up!). We didn't think anything about it, other than "Wow, what a lot of umbrellas". So we get inside and this 'security girl' says I can't take my umbrella in. I ask "Why?" she says "No umbrellas". So, enlightened by her super explaining skills I put my brolly back in my bag before going to queue to pick up my tickets, I'll dispose of my brolly once I have those tickets in my grubby little mits. Anyway, security girl grabs me by the elbow to tell me that I have to give my umbrella to "that girl over there", I said (okay, maybe not in the nicest tone of voice, but she was seriously pissing me off) "I'm going to get my tickets first" and she said something about "that girl over there" again, and to cut a long story short I abandoned my brolly! They weren't even letting people take them to the cloakrooms, you had to leave them behind the box office counter! Yeah, right, I'm going to come after the gig , along with everyone else, and explain what my umbrella looks like! "No, not that pink stripey one, it's more, erm, well..." Can you imagine?

Gigs are getting stupider and stupider. And I'm sure that there's no coincidence that the rules at gigs have got more bizarre and the ticket prices have gotten extortionate ever since a well know brand of 'lager' (and I use the term lightly) started sponsoring most of the venues in London. In the past month I have been told that I can't have a (plastic) bottle of water with a lid on incase I throw it, but they were still serving beer and alcopops in glass bottles to the person next to me. I can't take my umbrella in for no good reason, other than I'm sure it greatly amused someone somewhere. (It wasn't me!)

Con Yo Toke Lark Mey Surry?*

The BBC are doing a series on dialect at the moment. You can't turn on the tv/radio/internet without hearing some intellectual with a cut-glass accent going on about how "quaint" and "super" regional dialects are.

I'm from Stoke-on-Trent originally, and although I don't have a strong accent, to most people's amusement I'll usually come out with some phrase or word that no-one else has ever heard of on a regular basis. I love different words and sayings and so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites with y'all. (Y'all being one of them). Robbie Williams is from Stoke, so I sound a bit like that. Only in a female voice. And without the singing.

Black over Bill's mothers - this means that there are dark rain clouds on the horizon, headin' your way. And not where Richey Benaud was staying during the 1993 ashes series, which is what my friend thought when he said the phrase. He said "It's looking black over Bill's mothers", she said "Ooh, do you think that's where he's staying, with Bill's mother?" I said - well actually I said nothing, but I did fall off the chair with laughter.

Mard/Mardie - this site says has the definition "spoiled, marred, spoiled child" but it's used for everything, people who are feeling a bit sorry for themselves are "feeling a bit mardie".

Nesh - someone who is a bit soft, but also someone who feels the cold easily (eg me!). In the winter I am totally nesh.

Summat - my mum's favourite! I was always being told off for saying "summat" instead of something.

Duck - a term of affection "Ow at duck?" (How are you dear?) which confuses the hell out of anyone who moves to the area. You can spot a Staffordshire Uni fresher by the look of bewilderment on their face, wondering why the bus driver just called them "duck"?

And the famous "Cos kick a bo agin a wo an' 'ead it til it bosses?". Next time you see Robbie in the street, you just ask him that.


* Can you talk like me, son?