25 June, 2008

Torrid Tube Journey

My God, there was such a good-looking guy on the tube home yesterday! Like Colin Firth, but younger, taller and butcher. It was as much as I could do not to launch myself forward and commit inter-station pornography on him, but I confined myself to standing there primly reading the Economist, while secretly thinking, Take me, take me now! He got off at Balham too. What a wonderful place Balham is. Truly, it is the gateway to the south.

19 June, 2008

Curlyisms

LSS and I are attempting to have a conversation while Curly persistently interrupts. In the end, LSS turns to her and says sternly: "Curly! Stop interrupting. You're always talking!"

Curly responds cheerfully: "But I have so much to say!"

Later in the week:

Curly (thoughtfully): I think my shoes have feelings.
LSS: How are they feeling? Happy or sad?
Curly: This one is angry and this one is happy.

Good day at work today - I was replacing for someone who couldn't attend on an interview course. Feedback on my interview technique from the participants: relaxed, friendly, creates rapport, flows nicely, scared the shit out of us.

Good! That is just the impression I want to make on my interviewees - that they're being interviewed by a highly polished homicidal maniac.

12 June, 2008

Weekend Wobblers

I had to take the kids into Hammersmith with me on Saturday for Larry's Mandarin lesson as LSS was busy doing setup for the school fair. Unfortunately, this coincided with a time of month when I transmogrify into the Mom from Hell, instead of being the Supermom and All-round Sweetness and Light Fairy that I usually am (and not a controlling sarcastic maths-cum-Latin teacher troll, whatever LSS says). I think around the time of the unscheduled pee-pee stop at Victoria Station when the turnstile had stolen my 30p for the 2nd time and all the money was stuck in the slot and the kids were poking their heads in the way and some fat curly-haired bloke was trying to queuebarge me, I may even have called my dear offspring "morons". In the end I had to advise them that I was obviously in a foul mood and, for their own safety, it would be wisest if they did not direct any questions to me until further notice. We completed our journey down to Wandsworth on the number 44 bus in a majestic silence.

The fair went off well, but LSS also had to stay behind to strike the set, so I had to drive the kids home. I have driven this car precisely twice, the second occasion being on Saturday. I was most of the way back to Balham before I realised, using my superhuman powers of deduction, that that red circle with an exclamation mark in it on the dashboard might be subtle hint that the handbrake was on. Although I was driving like a little old lady on Mogadon, no-one amongst the notoriously impatient drivers of South London parped me - possibly because they were too busy avoiding the clouds of black smoke emitting from my brakepads.

I have adopted a slash-and-burn policy with my hair. It now looks like Anna Wintour's only not so obviously dyed (I'm sorry, Anna, please don't kill me with one of your well-aimed killer death rays from Conde Nast Towers!). Curly inspected it and announced: "You look like a Chinese girl." I rather thought that this is what I have always looked like.

Went to a "gig" last night at the Hop Cellars in Borough because the husband of Whingeing Accountant is the drummer in the band. Talked to a retired C of E vicar about their recent camping trip in the Gower. This was obviously not one of those legendary rock-and-roll gigs that go down in history, but I still enjoyed it. It's nice to be let out of my underground Mummy Accountant's steel-reinforced dungeon once in a while.

05 June, 2008

Impractical

LSS announces he has just been cold-called by the Akela of the local Cub Scout group, asking if the Cubs can come and help out at the school summer fair which LSS accidentally found himself organising a couple of months ago when he blithely said at a PTA meeting that he wouldn’t mind making a list of parents who were interested in volunteering. It’s so cute! It’s like we’re members of a community or something!

Had to explain to the kids what an Akela was. I know things like Cubs and Scouts are not very fashionable nowadays, what with all the rampaging paedophiles lurking about, and I was never a Brownie or Girl Guide myself – to which I attribute my total ineptitude in all things practical – but I would be sorry to see the day when these organisations no longer exist.

I realise I am quite paranoid about my practical ineptitude. At the course I was on in Chicago, one of the sessions involved being a pretend pit crew on a Nascar car. They tried to make me one of the gunners, but I cried off because I was sure I would screw it up or staple someone to the ground or fire a bolt through someone’s forehead. Then LSS tried to sign me up to run the candyfloss stand at the aforementioned summerfair and I cried off that too because I envisaged candyfloss disasters – whole playground draped in wisps of candyfloss like a Barbie-pink Miss Havisham’s mansion, childish digits caught in the whirling machinery etc. And then today I was thinking of signing up to do various environmental-helping-out activities at some wildfowl sanctuary and I didn’t, because I thought I would invariably manage to screw up clearing the ragwort, cutting the reedbeds etc. I realise that having acquired the few practical skills necessary to function (eg driving a car, which I do as little possible; and cooking, which I actually quite enjoy), I have spent years and years not bothering to acquire any new skills. Shocking. This is a state of affairs I must rectify.

I have no interest in operating machinery and would not care if I lived and died without ever having operated a powerdrill. However, I have a list of practical things that I have always wanted to be able to do, including:

Gardening
Keeping chickens (I have tried and tried to get SMW to do this on my behalf, but she keeps on making feeble excuses about snakes and foxes)
Knitting

Can’t do much about the chickens, until we have a garden of our own, but I have today signed up for Food Up Front, so soon I plan to be growing my own rocket. Or rather, I plan to be eating my own rocket, which LSS will have grown. No! No! Bad accountant! Stop delegating! The whole point is to do it yourself! * Sigh* Old habits die hard.

The world grows more illiterate. I saw an ad on the telly yesterday for a car that promised “less emissions” and today, the photocopier told me that there were “less than 1200 pages left” on the toner cartridge. It’s FEWER. FEWER, people! Can’t you hear that it sounds wrong? What are you doing in the communication business (alright, maybe not the photocopier people, but certainly the ad agency) if you don’t know this?

03 June, 2008

Three Days of the Condor

A major marital dispute arises over what is known in serious philosophical circles as the "Three Days of the Condor Question", which is as follows:

Girls, if you are single, attractive, living alone, sitting at home one evening, possibly thinking how long it's been since you've had sex, possibly wondering if you're ever going to have sex again, and an attractive young fellow bursts in through your window, who is not scary and is obviously not a murderous psychopath, and begs you to give him shelter overnight, would you sleep with him that night, as Faye Dunaway does with Robert Redford?

Personally, I don't find Robert Redford attractive, certainly not now, and not even then. So fill in your own hunk of manliness here.

In my opinion, it is not that implausible, if you accept the totally preposterous scenario above, that a gal in Faye Dunaway's position might actually sleep with Robert Redford, having only just met him an hour or so earlier, and without the benefit of any formal introduction.

LSS begs to differ and says I am a traitor to my sex.

I think he thinks this just because he is British. If 3 Days of the Condor were to happen in the UK, it would have to be called 3 Years of the Condor, at the end of which he would have plucked up the courage to ask her out for a drink.

Anyway, straw-poll, gals, what do you think?