Back to work* (*now with added goop!)

Just to throw a spanner into the whole 'Biddy's a crap blogger' argument, I've found myself at a loose end and so decided to post another entry a mere week after the last one! And (to completely mis-quote the song) what a difference a week makes!

This time last week I was lazing around Jayne's flat in London making jokes about pink pudding and almost suffocating with hysterical laughter, now I'm sitting in my chilly spare bedroom with sixteen layers of woolies on, coughing my guts up and generally feeling very bunged up and fluey and very VERY pissed off that I have to be back at work and not live my life as a louche lady of leisure permanently.

This week is always a bit odd at work. I've worked for my company for almost seven years now and I still can't get used to doing a major stocktake in the week leading up to Christmas (it's all due to us having a head office in Finland - those wacky Finns actually start their tax year on the first of January!! The lunacy! I can't see why they can't carry over four months every year and recalculate their profits in a senseless manner like us Brits...). It basically means that my week before Christmas usually consists of counting lots and lots of very small thingies. And a great big party. Sadly, thanks to the last doctor I saw, I've got behave myself and indeed I'm going to be having a dry Christmas. (I'm being treated for gastritis which means no smoking, no alcohol, no spicy food and no caffeine.) I'm trying to be philosophical about it - in fact I'm fully intending to make the most of my sobriety by taking as many compromising photos as possible of the evening.

Fingers crossed, my crappy stomach will get well soon. If not I shall be traipsing back to the doc's in the new year. I went for an ultrasound this morning - I was being checked for gallstones, which it turns out, I don't have - and I'd forgotten just how far that lubricating jelly they use spreads! I was sitting chatting to the nurse, trying to look relaxed as I hitched up my jeans and tried to wipe the slimey goop off me. I must have used about three metres of paper towel before I finally pulled down my shirt... to find I'd missed a bloody great big smear up one side of my back.

Lovely.

As you can imagine, I was SO pleased to go back to work straight after.

Oh, and by the way - if you went for an ultrasound wearing a pair of Pink Panther knickers with 'keep your paws off' written around the waist, you'd expect a smile or a smirk off your healthcare official wouldn't you?

Just me then...

Crowded (front of) House at Wembley

Seeing as how I am currently sitting in my mate Jayne's lounge, ignoring MTV2 and playing with Shep, her trusty Mac Book (say hello Shep), I thought I'd do a bit of blogging (this seems to have turned into a bi-annual event rather than a real attempt to catalogue my life on-line - oh well...)

I've just started my second week on holiday. Much of last week was spent doing housework, feeling poorly (I'll explain why another time) and generally preparing myself for a week in the big smoke with my good friend Jayney. So far in this fortnight I've managed to see Crowded House twice (in Cardiff with Shuey's cousin Dan and at Wembley last night with Jayne) and they have been fabulous on both occasions. Tomorrow me an' Jayney are off to see them at the Albert Hall for the last gig of the tour and to say I'm looking forward to it would be like saying the Atlantic Ocean is a bit wet.

(By the way, as I'm typing, a Babyshambles video is playing on the telly - I've not seen them in action before and they've left me feeling distinctly underwhelmed. So much for the hype.)

The gig last night was hilarious. Neil Finn (God bless and love that man) encouraged everyone to get up and dance at one point and then a huge battle ensued as the security staff tried to get everyone to sit down again. The band's roadies all swarmed out to shout at security, fans shouted at security, security shouted at fans, Nick Seymour almost launched himself off the stage whilst shouting the most inventive expletives at the security who tried to move me and the people around me on (I wonder if he kisses his mother with that mouth?) and all the while the band played on. Once the ravening hoardes of Crowdies had asserted their refusal to sit down, the security did the wise thing and backed off, leaving Neil free to make sarcastic comments for the rest of the night about the highly dangerous nature of fans intent on having a bit of jig.

One bit of symmetry between the Wembley and Cardiff gigs was the fact that at both gigs I attracted the romantic attentions of VERY VERY DRUNK PEOPLE. In Cardiff I was chased out of the venue by an inebriated welsh woman who slurringly told me I had a lovely arse and a cracking pair of boobies as we were leaving. Then, during the gig last night I was repeatedly poked in the boob by a drunk australian. I'm hoping to be accosted by a shit-faced american tomorrow night and get the hat-trick.

Well, that's all from me. Enjoy the photos...

In the pink...

* dum de-dum dum the pink panther, the rinky-dinky panther, did you ever see a panther so pink...?*



Oh yes, I'm back for more pink-themed tom-foolery. I've just started my second week off work, it's five to lunchtime, I've up for four hours and I'm still in my jimjams - now that's what I call a holiday well-spent! In fact, I spent the whole of my first week off scrubbing, cleaning and clearing out my house simply so that I could do precisely sod-all this week with a guilt-free conscience! I've even decided to get up early every day this week just so that I'll have more daylight hours in which to do absolutely nothing constructive. At all. Although I might be tempted to go out later and buy some food.



So, what are the advantages of doing sod-all? Well, so far today I have learned the following things;



Rollo (the devil-cat) is very good at pretending that my partner Shuey doesn't feed him before he goes to work. This is a complete lie but he stuck to his guns, bless 'im, and hassled me for an hour and a half before I finally relented and gave him a second breakfast. (I'm thinking of re-naming him Frodo.)



That said cat also purrs like a maniac if you creep up on him and sing 'bow-chicka-wow-wow!' loudly at him (in a crappy deodorant advert stylee).



I am incapable of eating a large banana without giggling shortly after watching a dodgy gay-porn clip.







My friend Di is ace because she sent me a photo of lots of cute bottoms (thusly);



















I never realised I could be so hacked off at having missed out on going to Glastonbury. Especially as, because I thought I was going, I didn't get tickets to Saturday's Hyde Park Calling gig which featured NOT ONLY Crowded House, but also The Feeling and Peter frickin' Gabriel. What a gip.

Well, I think I may go out now and do my shopping as it appears to have stopped raining(although I am quite tempted to stay in and raid the larder for tonight's dinner. Tinned mushrooms, baked beans and porridge anyone?)

Not such a hot spot...

Waaaaaaaaaay back in January I came up with the bright idea of updating my boring old blog. Instead of my boring old black design, I tranformed it into a fabulous vista of spots and trendy hues.



And then didn't post on it for 5 months. Whoops.



So in the interests of letting anyone who may give a half a fuck about what I get up to, I've had a re-vamp.



It's pink.



Did you notice?



It's really pink.



It's like you're actually nestled inside my brain. Isn't that just the most special thought? I knew you'd like it. It's got everything you could ever wish for! It has a photo of me being very drunk and lots of pinkness and some Supernatural video links. (I haven't actually watched any of them yet but if any of them are "Wincesty" I'd like to blame Google for picking them for me!) and lots of little things that I can add so don't be surprised if I end up with more shite than writing on here! (Of course, that's assuming that what I write won't end up being shite, which let's face it, it has a very good chance of being.)



Well I'm off now to stick my head down the toilet to try to stop myself from singing "Barbie Girl" by Aqua which I've been humming for a good fifteen minutes now, ever since choosing the pink.



So much pink.



(Of course one advantage of all the pink is that I can post this...








... safe in the knowledge that Jared Padalecki blends in with my new theme.)

Yey! Go pink!!

Torchwood. God damn.

I'd like to make an announcement.

I love Russell T Davies.

I mean, REALLY love Russell T Davies.

I love him so much I'd happily kiss his bottom (except I have girl parts which I believe he's not keen on) to thank him for the Season One finale of Torchwood which I loved SO much words fail me...

That is all.

Captain Jack Harkness. What's not to love?

It's one o'clock in the morning - tra laa!

Happy Christmas one and all!

Yes, I know it's a bit late but I've spent the last three days indulging in my traditional Christmas holiday activity of being stuck in bed with the 'flu. (Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion it was only a cold but my sinuses are bunged up to buggery and if that's not a great excuse to stay in bed, I don't know what is.)

As a result of my dedicated lazing about like a slovenly slob, my body clock has decided to take the week off, which is why, despite feeling like I have a pair of Shuey's three-day old socks lurking behind my eye-sockets, I am wide-awake. At one in the morning. On a weeknight.

I've actually done SO little this week, Shuey actually tidied the lounge and cleaned the kitchen tonight (admittedly, he then kicked me out of bed so I would feed him - bless 'im!). I'm beginning to wonder actually if it was a really good idea to sit down to write this blog which proves one of my earlier theories that I only ever write my blog when I've done absolutely sod-all and am bored...

I'm so cack sometimes, I amaze myself...

Ho hum. Roll on New Year...

What's in a name?

We have a new pussycat.

He's called Rolo and from the picture here you might be tempted to think that, like his confectionery namesake, he's sweet.

Yeah...

This photo was actually taken, not during a loving snuggle on my knee but mid-way his attempts to wrestle me into submission (hence his slightly blurry head!). One week after moving in, frightened into cowering under a duvet, he's now rampaging around my house, demanding to be fed, pooping out at least three times the volume of the food we put into him and demanding attention loudly most of the time (well, when he's not ignoring us altogether, that is...). He really is the perfect pussycat!

Which brings me to this. Having not had a cat in the house for almost four years (ever since dear old Sooty shuffled off this mortal coil... *sniff!*) I'd forgotten about the way I seem to call a cat by any of a million different names. In the past week he's been referred to as: Rolo, Chucklechops, Buggerlugs, "The boy", Sweets, Snakehips, Booby, and my own personal favourite Bollo (after the gorilla in the Mighty Boosh). It's a wonder he doesn't seem to mind any of this.

As long as his food keeps coming, of course.

I'm used to going by a few names myself, of course, regularly answering to three. At work (and when I'm shouting at bank managers) I answer to my birth certificated name, Lorraine. Most everywhere else I'm plain Biddy and when hanging around with Jayne I'm just Ray (or, if you want to be accurate Raybean). Biddy is definitely the winner though. I once had a rather strange conversation with a guy who'd known me for over ten years who thought I was taking the piss when I said Biddy wasn't actually my 'proper name' and who almost fell through the floor when I showed him my driver's license.

Go figure.

I'll tell you why I'm known as Biddy. It's a bit of a shaggy dog story but here goes...

Back in the olden days when I was born (ie 1972) if you had a cesarean there was none of this epidural nonsense, you were wheeled into theatre, knocked on the head and woke up an hour later in recovery. And so it was that after I was born my mum woke up and was told by my chuffed dad that she had a new daughter. To this my mum smiled and said that she couldn't wait to see Sally. At this my dad coughed a bit and explained that he'd thought that it had been decided that I was to be called Lorraine.

Oops.

Not only that, but that he'd spent the hour my mum had spent waking up telling everyone in his phone book (all their friends and relations) that he had a baby girl called Lorraine Teresa.

Ouch.

Not surprisingly, mum was a bit pissed off as she was convinced that she'd only mentioned the name Lorraine in passing about five months previously and then dismissed it.

Whoopsie.

So as not to make dad look like a complete twat, the names stuck.

So when I was a couple of months old, on nice days mum would wheel me out into the back garden in my pram the catch some sun. If I started to cry, our next door neighbour at the time would coo over me (over the garden fence) and call me a "silly old biddy". Could it be that my mum was still pissed off about calling her bundle of joy 'Lorraine'? For whatever reason, she began to refer to me as the old biddy. Then just Biddy. Then Bid. I'm now well into my thirties and I'm still just Bid.

I sometimes thing it would be nice to change my name by deed poll to Biddy but I feel too attached to my other names to get rid of them. I could just tack Biddy on before the other two but then that would make me BLT Brumpton*.

No. Never.

I'll just stick to being called Biddy by my friends.

Fuck the bank manager.

*In a similar vein, I decided as a child that I would never marry a man with a surname beginning with the letter 'D' as that would make my initials LTD, like I'm some kind of coporation. Hmm. Not sure I should tell my dearly beloved (Mr Davies) about that...