English Eccentrics

I'm on the bus home. I spy a man - it's not apparent at first he's a man, only when he speaks with a quite deep voice, because he's wearing a floral summer dress, pink birkenstocks, bright pink nail polish, carrying a bag with pink polka dots, a pink plastic bangle and pink plastic watch, white framed sunglasses a la Paris Hilton, and with long blonde hair streaked with Krazy Colour pink.

So there are trannies in London, I hear you say - tell us not old news. What is more unusual is that sitting across the aisle from him are his companions - a blonde woman in her early forties, and a little blond boy of about 7. The little boy, with total unself-consciousness, calls him dad. He is much more interested and excited about his new Sonic the Hedghog game than the fact that his dad is wearing a frock. Apart from the odd curious glance, nobody on the bus bats an eye.

Hurrah for the English!


In fact, this reminded me of one of my colleagues in my old job, whose boyfriend of 10 years confessed that he'd been having negative feelings about his, um, manhood... that he'd been thinking about it for some time, and that henceforth, he'd like to be addressed as Mary. As Mary, he applied for the big op through the NHS and was successful. He started taking hormones and began dressing as a woman in everyday life while he was on the waiting list.

I met Mary once when we all went to see the Buena Vista Social Club at the South Bank, and was intrigued to see that she modelled her whole self as a woman on her girlfriend, same facial expressions, mannerisms, laugh and all... it was somewhat eerie, like they were twins.

What is amazing is that my colleague, we'll call her Amanda, stuck by him (her?) 'It's still the same person that I love' she said. I thought she was truly amazing, a person in a million. Can you imagine if your other half came home and told you they wanted to change sex? Would you say 'It's alright darling, whatever you want - as long as you're happy'? Or would you run for the hills?

It also brought up interesting questions of sexual orientation - Amanda wasn't gay but her boyfriend's change of gender made her lesbian by default. When we were out for drinks one evening, someone braver at work than me asked 'Are you still having sex?' 'Oh yes,' she said.

Still, it came as no surprise when I'd left that place, I heard that Amanda had found a new boyfriend, and got married shortly afterwards. It was maybe a bit too much to ask of someone else.

Thanks, but no thanks

Chatting around the table in the beer garden with the ladies:

Annie: I've never owned a vibrator.

[Happily Married] Friend: You can have mine if you want.

be there or be sq

Singaporean Chili Crab Festival!


Illuminated Night Carnival!

Attempting Geek-fu

Open ID - worth a try?

I saw it on Jack's comment on Adrian's site. Looks handy...

To make up for the last posts...

Holiday... continued.

... continued from here:

Rachael's eyes get bigger and bigger as she's on the phone. I'm jumping up and down, going
'What? What? What?! Is it her?' But it's okay, I can hear her voice on the phone. She's alive and okay, that's all that matters.

She's been in a prison cell since 5.00 pm the day before, then taken to court, then only just been released.

She had gone to buy a raincoat in a shopping centre. It was an open plan place with different boutiques surrounding a coffee shop in the middle. She had put the coat over her arm while she went to get a coffee, before she took it to the counter to pay for it. But she's immediately surrounded by a million Spanish women, including the sales assistant, who are all accusing her of shop-lifting. (How this can be when she hasn't left the shop is still not clear.) She doesn't speak a word of Spanish (and before you judge, she speaks German English and French, so not doing too badly.) And they don't speak any English, or pretend not to. She doesn't know what's going on. It appears at first that she can just pay for the coat and go, but the sales assistant says it's too late, she's already called the police.

The police take her to the station. She is strip searched. They take away her bag, and though it's pretty cold, her scarf (in case she should hang herself with it in the cell.) They won't let her make a phone call. They give her a document with her rights in English, but then make her sign a document in Spanish. They put her in a concrete windowless cell with strip lighting and a mat on the floor in the basement of the station. She can't hear any noise from the street and can't tell what time it is or how long she's been in there. She has to be in court for the case and apparently they won't let her go in case she tries to skip the country. They tell her the case might come up in 3 days' time. She can hear her phone ringing in her bag outside the cell (me & Rachael, increasingly frantic) but they won't let her answer it, or answer it themselves.

She's moved to another jail in the morning, which is very busy, but she's the last person to be taken out of the cell to court. They take her to court in handcuffs. There's an interpreter there, but they won't let Barbara ask the interpreter any questions except to translate what is being said by the sales assistant. If she will pay a fine of 300 euros she can go. She agrees to pay the fine.

When we tell the consulate all this later, they say the police have been in breach of her human rights in not allowing her a phone call, and say they will take it up with the police.

It makes you wonder what they would do with actual terrorists. ("This would never happen in England" said Barbara. "No, in England they just shoot you in the back" said Rachael.)

Spanish police (with the honourable exception of Marian, of the local Basque force) are cunts. That is all.

What we did on our holidays.

Or, 3 go mad in San Sebastian.

UPDATE: See post above

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. I am on the phone to the hospitals, the police station and the British Consulate and German Consulate trying to track down Barbara, whilst trying to communicate in my terrible rusty Spanish. We haven’t seen or heard from her in 16 hours, she’s not answering voice messages or texts and some very dark thoughts have started to cross our minds.

It all started very promisingly. It was a beautiful evening when I arrived, they had been on the beach all day. We sat and watched fireworks in the harbour (they were having a worldwide fireworks competition every night, we liked China’s efforts the best) and had the world’s finest pinxtos and drank rose.

But the next day it rained. And rained. And rained. And didn’t stop for 3 days. Even the surfers looked miserable. We ventured out in the rain to see the turtles, rays, jellyfish and sharks in the aquarium, and made a hit & run, lightning visit to the fabulous Guggenheim in Bilbao, but by day 3 we were getting stir crazy. Barbara said she’d go to the spa for a massage. Rachael & I went shopping. We planned to meet at the apartment at 8.00 to go to dinner.

8.00 pm: Barbara not back. We text her and go to dinner.

11.00 pm: Arrive back to apartment. She’s not there. Not answering phone or texts. Phone going to voicemail. All her clothes, passport, money, bag etc are still in her room.

12.00 am: ‘Maybe she’s met someone at the spa and gone to a party or something…and her phone’s gone dead… or she’s run out of credit… It’s not like her not to be in touch though. She’s really good like that.’

1.00am: Lay in bed awake thinking about two possibilities: a) Barbara having fantastic time, pissed in club with glamorous Spanish people, not thinking about what time it is or her phone messages. B) Barbara blown into the sea, knocking head on rock and drowning, or knocked down by speeding driver, or bundled into a car and kidnapped, or or or…

2.00 am: Where the fuck is she? Have a tiny, brief insight into the hell on earth that the McCanns must be living through at the moment. Go round and round in circles – she’s fine/she’s not fine/she’s fine… I wish she’d just walk in, I wouldn’t be pissed off with her, just relieved to see her. Waking with a start every time we hear the door go in the apartment building.

3.00 am. Annie tries to spell a German name (Barbara is German) over the phone to the Spanish emergency services, and explain the situation, very tricky at this hour, after 5 years of speaking no Spanish and having had a bottle of very heavy Rioja at dinner. I seem to have located a total imbecile at the police station. ‘B for Bilbao? A for Andorra?’ he goes, on and on throughout her name… If I wasn’t so worried it would be funny. He asks how old she is. When I tell him 43, his voice changes. Clearly he thought it was some teenager who hadn’t bothered coming home. He tells us to come in and report her missing.

9.00 am British Consulate rings to check if she’s back. She’s not. There is definitely something up.

10.00 am Get in cab to police station. She seems to have disappeared. We’re trying not to think about Lucie Blackman, about Joanne Lees. We both feel sick. Rach cries. It makes me cry. We pull ourselves together to talk to the police.

11.00 am File a missing person’s report with a very nice policewoman, who is patient with my shocking Spanish. It feels very surreal to be describing her eyes, her hair, her clothes… She types it up and tells us to fax it to the British and German Consulates. In the meantime, she’ll photocopy her ID photo and post it up in the streets. That’s all for now.

12.00 pm We sit in the café next door to the police station, trying to be calm. She has vanished off the face of the earth and we’re the ones who have to deal with it. We can’t go home – the police don’t seem that bothered. No one else knows where she is. We’ll have to cancel our flights. See if we can stay longer in the apartment. Try and get in touch with her parents in Germany through the consulate. We both feel sick. Can’t believe it’s happening. It doesn’t feel real.

12.30 pm – Rachael’s phone rings.

Tell you the rest tomorrow.

Question: would you still blog if you'd won £35 million?

A: No, I would have minions to blog for me.

What would it be like to win £35 million?

1. It wouldn't change me. I would still keep the day job and go down the pub with my friends. *

2. After a brief period of buying airplanes, islands, lighting cigars with £50 notes and marrying and divorcing Hollywood sex symbols that I fancy in quick succession, I would go totally off the rails through despair at the pointless shallow pointlessness of my life and end up in the loony bin.

3. It would be a mere stepping stone towards my ultimate plan, which has always been TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION.

4. £35 million? Pah, chicken feed.


What do you reckon?


* rather poignantly, one of Ms Kelly's co-workers was quoted as saying 'I don't know what she'll do next, but we'll miss her if she goes. She's the life and soul of the admin department.'

Halp for Katy

Our Realdoc is off on her holidays it appears, alas, anybody know any blogging doctors/nurses who can advise Katy on her NHS nightmare?

PDA

Have seen 7 couples kissing passionately in the streets today. Yes, I counted.

Stop it right now, you bastards. I know you only do it to annoy me.

And if you are in a couple, dear reader, can you please refrain whilst in public?

Kthxbye.

Hangover of Damocles

Sat 11.00 am Claire's hen night, Claire's parent's gracious home. Lovely cava. Lovely ladies. Lovely garden. Lovely weather. Manicures facials reflexology massages. Lovely food. More cava. Karaoke. California Zinfandel. More karaoke. Lots of cigarettes. More California Zinfandel. More karaoke. Vodka shots. Two lies and a truth. Stagger onto sofa and know nothing more...

Awake at 9.45 am. Lo! Feel fine, right as rain... hello trees, hello clouds, hello sky! Up and at 'em. La la la, not hungover at all, it's marvellous...

... but I know from experience, it is a false dawn. All the time, the hangover is lurking above your head like the Sword of Damocles, waiting for its moment to descend. 2.00 pm is the usual time. It's 1.30 pm now...




PS: Thanks Claire! It was faaaaabulous! You're the hostess with the mostest! Can't wait to see your dress

A boring question post

But techies, it could be your chance to shine.

My McAfee PC protection is about to expire. I do not like them because they debited fifty quid from my credit card without asking for confirmation and without any warning around Christmas time when I was brokety broke, (which if I could be arsed to look into, I'm pretty sure is not legal, whether they have stored your credit card details or not.) Anybody can recommend other (just as good and hopefully cheaper) PC protection?

Resistance is useless

Okay, hands up, who's on Facebook? You're all having a big party on there without me, aren't you.

Must resist... can't resist... yet I must... but I don't want to be 'poked' by ex-colleagues... the torment!

Maturity

Finding a copy of Arkham Asylum (that you desperately wanted as a teenager) for £1.50 in a junk shop.

Not buying it, because you're not a teenager anymore.

(I still ♥ Dave Mckean though.)

Is age creeping up on you? What signs have you noticed?

I can has cheez

O, hai. Mees here.

I'M IN UR DASHBOARD, WRITIN UR BLOG POSTS.

I can has cheez?

Wait! Can't stand noiz! Must... get... out... Bad noiz hurts mees ears... O halp!!!










PS Anybody totally baffled by this post, click here

eeeeek

So I'm sitting on the sofa, watching the Simpsons, when something dark and small and very fast darts across my line of vision, underneath the table. And later on, I'm in bed on my front, just dropping off to sleep, when I can feel something scrabbling about underneath the bedstead. Sit up and turn on the light, heart beating away. Eventually it darts out, seemingly aiming for my computer hard drive, darts back underneath again. Can just about cope with it in the living room, but the bedroom is your sanctuary.

There is mees in my house. I'll never sleep again.

Sitting up blogging (with feet up on the chair) because I don't want to get back in bed. I know they don't hurt you, but it is just wrong when you can feel little beasties scampering away below the bedstead.

(What can I do about mees? I don't want to co-habit with them, but can't bear mousetraps.)

blog of the week

Ooh. Mimi (of Mimi in New York) has relocated to London & relaunched her blog. For the most infuriating but entertaining & essential blog since, well, LC's, get yourself over there pronto.



Update: She's removed the comment facility though. Shame, as reading the vitriol/praise was half the fun.

Stick it on

This weekend I am going to Stick It On. The moment of truth is on me - my musical tastes will be held up to judgement by an audience of my peers, who will either hold up big placards which say "CHOON!" in approval, and cheer and applaud and go wild, or... the dancefloor will magically empty, the tumbleweed will roll on by, and I'll have to hang myself out of shame.

Though I harbour secret fantasies of being a DJ, Stick It On makes it a bit too easy - you don't have to hunch over the decks, all cool and impressive with your headphones on, as they line everything up for you. But I'm not sure what you're meant to do - deprived of these tools of the trade, people tend to bob about looking proud and slightly foolish behind the mixing desk.

So help me out here - what killer tunes should I include in my 15 minutes of fame?