Lads? night in

Surprise, surprise I was invited to a lads night in last night. There's a small group of my friends (all male) who meet up regularly on a Thursday night in Manchester to have a couple of beers, watch a film etc but I rarely go with it being a weekday. I'd love to see various films with them (we all like SF) but I never get invited so it was a surprise that after our annual get together a week ago I was asked if I'd like to join them for a curry & DVD evening. So last night was spent drinking a very large bottle of Budweiser, stuffing myself with curry (chicken something-or-other with Afghan lime rice - yummy) and sat in front of the telly. I felt like such a fat heifer afterwards. Time to start the obligatory new year diet I think. We watched mainly DVD extras for Little Britain, Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkhaban, Looney Tunes Back in Action and LOTR: Return of the King as well as part 1 of the Farscape; Peacekeeper Wars thing. Enjoyable but by 10pm I wanted to go home - partly because I felt bloated & uncomfortable but also because I'd been in work that day & had been up early. I eventually got home about 1.30am. Had a nice lie in this morning but got up to take delivery of my Deep Space Nine DVD box set. I'd decided last night that I was going to go out for a walk today to get some exercise but so far I've only been out into town for lunch. Oh well.

Work yesterday was fun for a change. It was rather quiet so we spent most of it playing silly word games. Oh and one puzzle about buying pigs & chickens for £100 which drove me mad. I got my own back though by forwarding them an 80's lyric quiz I'd been emailed months before. My boss impressed me by getting a few of the ones I hadn't managed to answer but then it turned out her sister was ringing her from home while she was on the net & giving her the answers. Cheeky bugger ;-) I even managed to leave early which was nice.

One more silly street name to add to the list too - Barff Road in Salford. Sounds like a nice place to live.....

.....not!

Brothers eh?

Who'd have them?

This morning I opened the fridge to find a tiny, foil wrapped parcel on one of the shelves. I opened it and inside was a small morsel of left over turkey. My mum had packed us off on Boxing Day with a food parcel containing left over turkey, stuffing, xmas pud, brandy butter and her home-made mince pies. I had my turkey butties the next day but my bro only had his last night and he obviously didn't use it all as there was this chunk left in its foil in the fridge. Why????? Couldn't he have just eaten it? Or thrown it away? What did he think we could do with it? A turkey curry for a teddy bear? Turkey and ham pie for the little pixie at the end of the garden? The mind boggles.

On the plus side, I braved the drizzle to go and buy my DVD player for the princely sum of £45. Bargain.

Experimenting

Ok, male viewers of this blog may want to look away now 'cause I'm going to talk girlie things.

I've decided to experiment with my menstrual cramps this month. I've occasionally been drinking tonic water as I keep getting cramps in my feet (and no amount of searching on NHS Direct will tell me why) and the quinine in the water alleviates/prevents the cramps. So I thought why not try it with period pains? It does seem to work although the pains haven't been severe enough for me to notice a dramatic difference. So the jury is still out I'm afraid girls.

You can start reading again now guys.

I've done a very silly thing today. I was going to go to Prestwich to buy a DVD player with my xmas money but decided to go shopping in Bolton instead. I'd heard that some Fleetwood Mac albums had been re-released & remastered with bonus tracks & demos on so I thought I'd pop into our local independent record shop to find them. Alas they didn't have them but I bought a couple of Shakespears Sister singles and Tusk, which is a FM album I don't have on cd. I then decided to try HMV and found Rumours and their self titled album from around the same time both remastered etc. Unfortunately the choice of extra tracks on 'Fleetwood Mac' was a bit crap so I put it down again. And there behind it was a copy of Tusk with a whole cd full of extra stuff on. Completely forgetting that I'd already bought the original version, I got this from HMV as well as Rumours. It was only when I got home that I realised what I'd done. D'oh! So I've gone from having no copies of Tusk to having two. I'll have to go back to the indie shop to see if I can swap it for something else. If I can think of something else to get...

Barftastic

I feel rather sick. We've had our xmas dinner earlier this evening and now I've just eaten a good portion of xmas pudding with brandy butter and extra thick double cream (so thick I could cut it with a knife) and I feel a tad ill. I'm not usually like this. I've been pacing myself all weekend, being good, not over stuffing myself but the lure of the pud was too much. And now I'm paying. Blech!

Xmas afternoon & evening was spent at my mum's best friend's house with several of her family. Which was a nice change since we usually spend these few days eating and watching telly and bugger all else. Last year I was bored to death so when my mum mentioned Mu's party I told her we absolutely had to go. We all took a few things with us. Bro made a batch of his Indian chilli which people loved but didn't eat enough of so we had to bring most of it home again (oh dear! ;-) ) and mum made some puds. My contribution was a few bottles of watermelon Bacardi Breezers. The kids were already arguing when we got there but their parents managed to bundle them away watching telly for a while so they were mostly tolerable. We played Trivial Pursuit in two very large teams which went on for absolutely ages. My team captain, one of the daughters of the hostess, was just a tad too competitive. My bro was on the opposite team and is a bit of a know-it-all so he kept getting answers right, much to the annoyance of Deb. "Welcome to my life!" I thought. They won in the end but the game had been going on so long that I really didn't care as long as we could stop and do something else. In my case, rediscovering my lust for our hostess's other daughter who suggested a game of 'pin the tail on the donkey' in which she was the donkey and I was the first contestant. I didn't quite know what to read into that one. AFAIK she doesn't know I'm a 'friend of kd' but we do have mutual friends who do.... Whatever her intentions it did fuel a saucy dream later that night so I'm not complaining. When we eventually left the do it had snowed so much that everything looked so festive and pretty and for once it actually felt like Christmas.

I also discovered two bits of info yesterday. Apparently our hostess and a friend both think I'm the spitting image of Margaret Lockwood. Now its been quite a while since I saw 'The Wicked Lady' so I've just spent a few minutes trawling the net for pics. There is a vague resemblance that I can't put my finger on but I wouldn't say I'm her double or anything. Its a very flattering thing for them to say anyway.

The other, more disturbing fact was that my mum had a miscarriage between having my brother and me - something she has never previously mentioned. It was just some throw-away comment in response to a discussion at the party regarding the large age gap between bro and me. I was stunned to say the least. How could she just tell everyone at a party like that but not mention it to her own flesh and blood? Its not the first time she's done such a thing. My mum was adopted, never made a secret of it, but the couple of times I mentioned it when I was a kid she refused to talk about it. So imagine my shock when at some function or other a few years ago she was merrily telling all to a virtual stranger while I was sat right next to her!

Anyway, I don't want to end this festive post on a downer so I'll just give you a quote from the episode of Dead Ringers I've just watched. "Hello, I'm Fiona Bruce and my knickers are made of mistletoe."

Decisions...decisions...

Ooh look at popular old me! I've been invited to not one but two new years parties. One from the usual couple from the theatre and one from my brother's best mate. So, which one to go for? On the one hand, I won't know a huge amount of people at my bro's mate's party and I'll have to behave myself somewhat but any taxi fares will be halved with bro. On the other hand, the couple from the theatre throw quite good parties, I can be myself a bit more and I'll know everyone there but I'll be getting there on my own which either means an early bus or a bloody expensive taxi. I have been offered a lift home afterwards though by a lovely mate of mine (who doesn't drink). Or I could stay in but with no Most Haunted Live on what have I got to watch? Hmmmm. At the moment I'm edging towards joining the theatre crowd.

And after receiving little or no cards in the post for quite a while, I find a raft (slew? clutch?) of them behind the door when I get home. Well, four to be precise but who's counting?

Today at work I've discovered that there is a street in the North West called 'Lickers Lane' which amused me no end. I must go there and take a pic to send to Graham Norton. Or even better, steal the street sign. Bet no-one's ever done that before...

There is also a 'Mincing Lane' in Blackburn which also tickles my fancy. And a place called 'Buttock' near Burnley. Where do they get these names from? I guarantee you that any trawl of a British map will yield many a silly town name. In fact I live near a place called Nob End. No really. I once researched an article for a fanzine using a UK road atlas and my juvenile sense of humour. There was enough material for a book.

Funny ha ha

Just a compact and bijou joke or two...

Two oranges walk into a bar & one says to the other "Your round".

There's a new position in the Kama Sutra called 'The Plumber'. You wait in all day and no fucker comes.

And Trinity has a rather fabulous joke about tampons on her blog. Go on over and have a look.

Unusual food

I noticed today, whilst buying toast, that our works canteen offers a 'lip barm'. What unusual and cosmopolitan food they're offering these days. Whose lips are on the barm* exactly? Are they cows lips? (har har) Maybe I'll have one for brekkie tomorrow.

The panto went really well. Most audiences were great apart from one or two who were a bit too quiet.

"Oh no it isn't!"

silence

"Um, is it behind us?"

small voice pipes up "Yes"

Best of all were a bunch of Brownies in on the Monday night. Really taking part, shouting out at the right times but not going on for too long so we could get on with the rest of the show. And at the end as my best mate and I were duetting on 'You're Still the One' they were singing along and waving their arms. It was just like playing Wembley. Well, if Wembley was full of Brownies. And we were, like, The Spice Girls or something. Not that that's a good comparison. I mean, we can sing...

It seems strange to have my evenings back to myself again. I feel guilty that I should be doing something.

Ah who am I kidding? Its bloody great. I've been slobbing in front of the TV watching all my recorded programmes and eating Haagen Dazs. I did have my usual urge to get up and clean after watching Kim & Aggie Do America though, so I feel a little bit virtuous.

And I've been training the new girl at work all week. Two of us doing that workload. Marvellous. Poor girl will have it all to herself pretty soon though. Mwahahahahaha! Seriously though, I do feel badly that she'll be landed with it all but then I've told the bosses (numerous times) that its a two person job so if they can't be arsed getting someone in to help her then its not my problem is it? I'll offer as much help as I can but the whole reason she's been employed is to take over from me 'cause I shouldn't be doing another contractor's work. Tut. Business eh?

So, after a busy, stressful week full of emotional turmoil I'm back to my old, placid self again. Kicking back with the girls at work (one of whom got her tits out at the office party apparently - and in the Chinese Restaurant! They hadn't even got to the pub yet). See! I've missed all the works do's too. Bloody panto.

* For those in other regions a 'barm' is a bread roll/flour cake/muffin etc. Not to be confused with 'balm' which is a cream-like substance you apply to your skin eg lips. Oh, now I see...

Why am I here?

Its ten past twelve and I should be tucked up in bed dreaming of Amanda Tapping not surfing the net. I only came on here to do some internet banking (and no, that's not cockney rhyming slang) but got sucked in & started reading blogs etc.

I'll be knackered tomorrow and I need to get up early to pick up a package from the post office (my contact lenses). And my job is stressful enough at the moment without me being too tired to work as well. I've just got too much to do. Its getting to the busiest time of year work-wise now and I'm the only person doing my job. I've asked for help a few times but they give me a token 15 minutes or so then leave me to it again. I need permanent help. There's some girl supposed to be taking over my role soon but I don't know when. It can't be soon enough. I was pissed off at first when, after being told I'd be doing the same job but for a different contractor, I heard they wanted to draft in their own admin assistant and move me elsewhere but now I think they're welcome to it. I got so worked up this afternoon that once I got home I burst into tears. I just about held it together on the bus home but had a good blub the minute I got in the door. It doesn't help that my hormones are a bit all over the place at the moment either. I'm getting much more emotional than usual. And thinking of chucking it in which is not good.

Feeling sleepy now. I can hear my bed calling me.

The time has arrived

Well, almost. Tomorrow afternoon is the first performance of the panto.

Live.

With an audience.

Who've paid & everyfink.

Oo-er!

I think we're prepared and it should go smoothly barring any disasters. Like the year one of the backdrops fell to the floor (complete with heavy scaffolding pole) missing by inches two of the cast who were singing a song at the time. Like the various times the cord on the white curtain has snapped and its just been stuck at half mast through the rest of the show. Like the time one of our older cast members collapsed during the Xmas sing-along finale and we thought he'd done a Tommy Cooper.

Must remember not to say 'Macbeth'.

Oh.

Shit!