At first I was afraid.....I was petrified

...then I realized my singing was likely to leave ALL the other people, infinitely more afraid.. but all that is later...

After my good sleep in which Cirque du Soleil cast trampolining on my bed, would not have arisen me from my slumber, I awoke very refreshed..

SO what else is one to do in the north of Scotland on a Saturday, but of course go to Inverness and buy clothes? Dur!. I am quite possibly the best and certainly the most traveled customer of a gent's clothes shop in Inverness called Poshaac. I think it means "sharp dressed man" in a particular Asian language and believe me, when you look like a small elephant, all that rubbish about "clothes do not maketh the man" is a load of old bollox. some of us need all the help we can get!

Once again, the Beverly Hillbillies crammed into my mother's merc convertible and off we went. I left my mum & Charlie to go shopping in "Emelda Marcos World" while I dragged my poor father to Poshaac with me and spent 87 hours trying on the entire store. I only went in to return a pair of jeans but managed to come out with a Paul Smith bag, John Richmond Jeans and an Etienne Ozeki shirt, not to mention a very warm Egg Card!

Met up with the girls. Charlie had managed to buy more than me so she got one of my looks!, then lunch in M&S before heading home. So far so good... oh how naive we were are we drove, how messy the evening would become.

Part of my main reason for coming up on this trip, was to see my dearest friend Dianne who is 6 months pregnant. Being the good friend i am, I needed to see her to (a) remind her she was now fat and (b) check out her husband-to-be - again (well I didn't get a good enough look the first time).. At the same time my friends Cameron & Nigel invited us to join a 40th birthday at a local hotel so we all agreed to meet there for a small glass of water and a dry ryvita (ahem) and having already wolfed down a slab of my mum's home made lasagne which could easily have stopped the Titanic from sinking, that's really all I was able for.

None the less, Charlie and I arrived, tipped a bucket of G&T's or in my case JD&C down our throats until the shock of the pineapple & cheese on sticks buffet was a distant blur. After a boogie or two, they announced karaoke was about to start.

Oh dear.. At this point I need to say I am one of those people who is terrified of singing, despite being told I actually have a decent voice. Alas I am also one of those people who once they have sung their first song, trying to remove the microphone from my hand is akin to removing a fillet steak from a starving rabbid dog, so after my one flaky start, I was extremely non-plussed to find the limelight being hogged by the guy who owned the karaoke kit. How rude!

So by 1am it was back to Cam's house for more drink where we put the world to wrongs and by 4:45am I fell into bed extremely content that i'd had the folloiwng plus points to the day

1) No horrid calls from my ex
2) No nasty texts from my ex
3) A nice text from "Kev, the guy I mentioned yesterday who after reflecting on the whole "my ex" thing, decided perhaps I wasn't the one to blame after all.
4) I have nice new purchases
5) I had drunk a quantity of Jack Daniels which would boost Mr Daniel's share price and had no hangover!

All in all.. a good day.

Time-check: 5am. Oh god, I've been wearing my DKNY underwear back to front all day. What a spacker!

and sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

some people....

...really get on my tits!

Yesterday was a another mad dash.. get "fever-boy" ready for his interview, pack my bag for Scotland - another easier-said-than-done task. So as to avoid any hold-luggage, I use only a small cabin bag which as yet only seems to have "reverse tardis" qualities... ie after 2 socks and an iPod its bursting at the seams!.. ok so I leave the peach bridesmaids dress and all the tiaras - I doubt i'll get to wear them much up there anyway and my mother will only "tut"

So cab arrives (do you really think I was going to take luggage on a humid tube train? - I think not). My housemate comes with us and all 3 set off into the city, like The Beverly Hillbillies except in Hugo Boss

I'm the last drop (how rude!) and I get to work... easy day.... am so excited about getting on that plane that nothing will spoil it (yeah right).. Even meeting my ex (see the "Exit pursued by a bear" entry in this blog, way back at the very first entry - http://theblondandi.blogspot.com) isn't going to bring me down. he wants to see me to give me something - better be a letter of apology and not a bomb! - ok bad taste given recent events

The first delivery from my batch of new laptops arrives... mmm sexy.. I can see I will get no work done today now.. time to play - I mean set up.. cough ahem...

I have a quick coffee outside with Wayne from next door - he is SO cute, thats a story for another entry... I decide its best that Dusty (my ex) doesn't come to the office to drop off this "whatever it is" or he may make a scene and humiliate me.. NO WAY!. I text him and say we'll meet in Starbucks

{This is paragraph 6. Remember for later :) - We meet.. and to cut a long story short, more because I can feel my heckles rising, he blurts out what he has to say, a combination of "I think I still love you but you were to blame".. nice double whammy that. As usual, he manages to extract information from me that's best left alone and has subsequently managed to piss off more people I either care about or were a new friend that I was cultivating a relationship with. Fortunately for me, the friends know what he's like and its water off a ducks back. Perhaps the same may not be said for all, but right now, thats not my problem any more.

Taxi arrives to pick me up at 4:45 (see above re traveling with luggage) and I head for Victoria. I'm there before Charlie (she is probably buying more shoes) and I have to remember not to run with a bag in case i'm shot at by the police. I seem to be stalked by a man dressed as a Cornish Pastie who is giving out leaflets (note to self, NEVER EVER complain about my job again)

Charlie finally arrives and we board the nearest 1st class carriage. Now, you don't know much about Charlie yet but you will in Blogs to come... She is a very English lady with very strong views somewhere to the right of Attila the hun. This combined with being the opposite of a shy retiring wall flower, makes her a bit of a force to behold. As a result, most straight men are terrified of her. SO anyway, we board the train, she sees a piece of luggage unattended and rightfully asks the entire carriage "whose bag is this"?.. Despite being Scottish, I become very very English, blush and try to shush her up. By now a man outside the train has banged on the window to indicate the bag is his. She then proceeds to lecture him (through the glass) on how stupid this is during the heightened security. I, of course am now 3 foot high and mortified with shame. I've already legged it through the connecting door to the other carriage, where I hide in a seat. Needless to say she follows through all smiley as ever, good deed done for the day and wiping the blood off her hands.

The journey is great. non stop train, non stop check-ng as I printed our boarding cards at home, through fast-track security and into the exec lounge. 4 large bloody marys and a mound of sandwiches later i'm ready for bed.

After a slight 30 min delay on the tarmac because Inverness is low priority on the take off slots as usual, we depart. What a cramped flight! it was so full!

at this point I need to stop my blog.. my mother is bellowing up the stairs that my breakfast is ready... ahh the home life!.. more later

ahh thats better.. so we land, get through to my home town, drop, unpack and have a drink thrust into our hands within 10 minutes - all is well....

UNTIL... the texts started arriving from one of the guys mentioned in the conversation way back in paragraph 6, we'll call him Kev for now. It intimated that i had been less than discreet about given conversations which simply wasn't true. As usual, a titbit was turned into a feast in true dramatic style. I am now angry. Net result, said guy thinks its best we no longer communicate. Normally at this point i would pester him till he fully understood the truth but you know what?.... bollocks. I have a lot of really close friends who love me. If someone chooses to believe the tat that can spew from someone else's mouth because it has more dramatic clout to it, then their issue.

It was now late and the combination of the mamoth, well not so much "Bloody Mary" as "Jesus Fucking Christ Mary!" (50/50 vodka/tomato juice) i'd had in the airport lounge, the G&T on the plane and the rather ample JD&C my dad had poured me, kicked off the slumber mode...

I slept like a baby on night-nurse (and by that i don't mean Baby Jane Hudson! - how rude)

The High Life...

...no its not that wonderful airline comedy featuring Alan Cummings, although sometimes my life does playout like a desperate pantomime but that's another story...

annnyhoo

so what a busy 24 hours... having left work yesterday to rush home, switch into full Bree VanDeKamp mode, get the dining room ready for a residents meeting AND wonderwoman spin into something presentable so as to gracefully drape over a chaise-long ready for a young man who was coming to visit me from Manchester.

well it didn't pan out exactly like that .. . I rushed out of here late..(quell frickin surprise), I board the mobile steam rooms, Northern an Jubilee and arrive home looking like the love child of Bernard Manning & Rose West... oh and for those of you under 35, that's NOT a good look.

So I meet little ... well lets call him Matt for the purposes of anonymity. He's cute despite him claiming that his friends say he looks like Eddie Izzard!.. we get to mine, order a takeaway as my fridge made Old Mother Hubbards cupboard look like a fully stocked european hypermarket - I swear there was an echo!

Matt obediently watches TV, plays with his laptop, reads and generally takes up no room at all. I on the other hand am now just out of the shower, robe hanging off one shoulder, Phillis Diller Hair, a mouthful of shredded beef with chilli + chopsticks hanging out of my mouth, tripping over the guest cats, answering the door to the residents ready for the meeting and kinda NOT ready. Matt casually flicks the pages of my latest T3 and I curse his serenity

So, all that goes well, meeting meeting meeting, chat chat chat, ok now get out of my house so I can flirt with boy wonder on the couch.. thanks goodbye, ooh nasty blouse!, oops did I think that out loud?

Matt decides that from my MGM library of 40 million DVD's he would like to watch Clue. Yes Clue, the 80's comedy starring Tim Curry, Madeline Khan, Lesley Anne-Warren, Christop..... oh sorry, you don't give a rats ass do you?.. Now don't get me wrong, I've nothing against the film. The scene where "The Singin Telegram" girls get blown away just CANNOT pass without a belly-laugh, but it must be the 19th time I've seen it (inc ALL the endings).. SO we watch...

In the time it takes from "bang" to "whodunit" he has developed a fever and I spend the night in bed hugging a small human shaped blast furnace.. nice!

Time-check: 2am - phone call from my mate Dave.. drunk.. looking for a bar where he can put a credit card behind. "The number you require is.... and that will be 80p you git!"

snuggle up to blast furnace again, well, rather the only bit of him that seems tepid by comparison (schtumm - say no more) ;-)

Time check: 3am- phone receives picture video message... I'm too drowsy by this point to lift my arm and drift off..

Thursday 28th July 2005

a day like so many others.. Having decided last night i was going to try and "get back into that early morning gym thing" (yeah man), i of course overslept and woke up too late for a work out. Determined not to be a total failure i managed to get to the Torture Palace in time for a swim.

No time for a steam today (bum!), so with my Waitrose strawberry, banana & yougurt smoothie in my hand and a semi smug grin at having achieved something by 8:30am, i headed off to the DLR, then the tube (since when did Janette Krankie work on the Northern line btw?)

If i'm brutally honest, and i do promise to try to be, or whats the point, i have done absolutley bugger all today. I am not in the mood.. All i can think of is getting on that plane to Scotland tomorrow after work... home..family.... friends....(one of them 6 months pregnant), and lots of rest and alcohol.. ahh

Ok so its 1:48pm and i've eaten some M&S healthy salad with chicken strips and a balsamic dressing.. bloody buggery pumkin seeds and bollocky sunflower seeds sprinkled ont top...how lucky am i?.. jeeez i could murder a whopper (although the least said about that at lunch time, the better! ;-) - All i can say, this bloody new "me" better start showing results fast, and i don't mean i want to see the Beechgrove garden hanging out my hoop later with all this foliage i'm eating! -

Ahh..my very good friend Mr Tourette (well thats not his name of course, but with what i'll write about him over the coming months potentially at best pissing him off, and at worst landing him inside, i feel its best we'll just refer to him as that or MT for short), .. he'd be so proud of me. Little does he know, i'm still so hungry i may just put parmesan on my own arm & chew it off...

In the beginning...

Wow, what a title.. I knew I should have been a copywriter.

So what's a 'wrong side of 30' year old, Scottish bloke got to say about himself?

Well still not having limbered up to a state where I am ready to pour out my innermost feelings, I guess the first few entries will be pretty "safe". I've already told my friends they are likely to feature in this and if they want pseudonyms to supply them now before issuing me with libel writs after the event coz I know I won't be holding back once I get going....

Yes indeed the names will be change to protect the innocent, the guilty, and in some cases, the down-right filthy!

So... down to business...

The first one

This isn't really a blog entry

I just wanna play with the format and see how it looks


COme back later