Payday!

It's payday tomorrow and our payslips came round today. HR in their infinite ineptness have given me an hour more overtime than I actually worked last month (woowoo!) and my 12 extra hours mean that for the first time this year, I can actually withdraw the amount of money that I'd ideally like each week. Yaaaaay! June is going to be a goooood month.

Life just sucks sometimes

This evening, as I walked home from the gym, I tripped on the edge of one of the many (many many) uneven paving slabs that cover the pavements of our beautiful but rather unsafe town. After a few steps of lurching forward attempting to stay upright, the inevitable happened and I sprawled across the floor in a highly undiginified and embarrassing fashion. I've only scraped my hands and knees and didn't cause any bleeding or bruising, so I'm outwardly fine, but in the few minutes after it happened I felt the lump form in my throat and the tears pricking my eyes, and I knew that however happy and independent I may be, what I needed most in the world at that moment was someone to wrap their arms around me and make the world melt away. I was reminded, quite painfully, that there's no feeling like being hugged tightly by someone who really loves you. Life just sucks sometimes.

Scary

I just randomly clicked through to my profile (to remind myself of what it said!) and found that it's been viewed a quite staggering 800 times. This worries me a lot. Who are all those people? When I'm jotting down my random drivel I often forget that people are actually going to read it - I tend to write with an audience of about ten in mind, and sometimes it's just for me as a way of recording events so that I can look back on them in the future and remember what my life was like. I've started wondering just who's out there, following the little mundanities of my life! Anyway, you are all of course very welcome, and quite frankly if you're making it through everything without falling asleep then well done to you - and feel free to comment if you like!

On the telly again

Yes folks, the lovely Juicy and I are on Songs of Praise again this Sunday (27th May) at 5.10pm. The programme was recorded at Coventry Cathedral on Easter Monday, and we also recorded a further programme for September at the same time so you haven't seen the last of us yet! This recording was in some ways more interesting than the Stratford one, as we saw Diane Louise Jordan doing her pieces to camera (she looked very pretty with amazingly high heels) and we also saw the interview they did with Graham Kendrick although sadly we couldn't hear it as they were having some issues with the speakers. Anyway, look out for us tomorrow night: we were near the front on the right-hand side as you look from the front to the back of the church. I was pretending to be a soprano so listen out for some very squeaky top Fs in one of the descants! I'm definitely not designed to sing up there which is unfortunate as Berlioz appeared to think I am and has given me many Es and Fs and indeed F#s and Gs to sing in the Te Deum. But that's another story.

This weekend has been highly productive so far. I've had a driving lesson, been to the gym, been to Tesco, cleaned and done the laundry. I'm now listening to Sibelius through my lovely headphones and will have to stop typing soon so I can conduct the ending and cry a little bit, and then later I'm going to drink wine with the lovely Raquel and watch people who "could be Joseph" try to impress The Lord himself (daaaaaaa, da da da da daaaaaa) on telly. Hopefully tomorrow will also be just as productive if I can actually motivate myself to write this project plan. I seem to have lots of motivation in general at the moment so it should be ok.

Right, I'm going to conduct! Make sure you watch BBC1 at 5.10 tomorrow.

If Carlsberg made news...

MY DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOURS ARE MOVING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is quite possibly one of the best things I've ever heard. No more drunk people and loud music at 4am, because as of 11th June the flat is officially to let. Sometimes good things do happen to good people.

In other news, I really do have quite fantastic eye lashes. If only my mascara wasn't 2 years old, they might actually look good when I get dressed up to go out.

I love The Fratellis.

The joy of singing (again)

Last night's Chorus rehearsal reminded me just how much I love singing. We had a fabulous stand-in conductor who made us laugh, worked us hard and got a lovely sound out of us, and we had some wonderful music to sing courtesy of Berlioz. The concert is going to be another great one with this and the Rachmaninov. Sometimes I leave Chorus feeling tired and down, wondering why I gave up my evening, but when we have music this good and rehearsals this fun I walk out buzzing, on a real high. Music is still the best artform in the world, and being able to make music is one of life's joys. I'm still feeling cheerful the next day at 8.27am - now that's something!

Puddings

James Martin should not be allowed to present a programme on puddings when I'm trying to be good. Every week I sit and watch him whip up the most gorgeous creations, and every week my stomach demands that I fill it with sweet things. I've resisted well so far but it's so difficult! The chocolate orange cheesecake tonight was like pudding porn. I...want...chocolate...

Fantastic weekend

Having looked forward to it so much, I'm happy to report that my weekend definitely lived up to expectations. My journey went really well and I connected with the bus I was aiming for despite both my trains running slightly late, and I even arrived home before the rain started. I made pudding, laid the table and prepared the other ingredients for the evening, before putting The Fratellis on the CD player and dancing round the living room for an hour while looking forward to the day when I have a detached house of my own. Mum and dad arrived home on time and dad was very surprised and pleased to see me which was lovely. I then made moussaka and put it in the oven, mum made a pint of Pimms and dad opened presents while we all giggled mightily. Then dinner was served, and very yummy it was too as was the champagne and gorgeous dessert wine. We all got brilliantly drunk and spent the whole evening laughing - just another perfect family day. Plus I got to watch last week's Dr Who that I'd taped so had the bonus of David Tennant running about in a DJ!

Saturday was a lazy day, then after mum and dad had gone to the theatre I had a G&T, microwaved the remaining moussaka, cracked open a bottle of wine and watched Any Dream Will Do followed by the Eurovision Song Contest. It was a thoroughly excellent year (and a lot more memorable than last year!) despite the block voting, although I do feel the shiny silver monument to camp that was the Ukrainian entry should have won. Terry was also on top form. My only error of the evening was deciding in my slightly tipsy state that consuming all the remaining chocolate pudding would be a good idea, something for which my stomach has still not quite forgiven me.

On Sunday I got up at 10 and enjoyed a large roast dinner and rhubarb crumble for lunch (this may also have contributed to my general internal woes) before a very easy journey home. I was in such a good mood that even going back to work didn't seem too bad. All weekends should be as excellent as this.

Eurovision review

So, ladies and gents, the spectacular festival of camp that is Eurovision is over for another year, and I feel that the main events of the evening can best be summed up by the legend that is Sir Terence of Wogan.

On one of the video links: "They're going to hurl themselves into the icy water. They do a lot of this in Finland...and there's a lot of deaths".

On Georgia: "They've got cossack dancers, and there will be sword fighting later. Hurrah".

On Sweden: "An androgynous lad with an interesting line in metallic chest hair". He wasn't lying.

On France: "Gosh, wasn't that awful". Again, an accurate observation. I can't believe they got the same number of points as us.

On Russia: "Now I don't know about you, but I can remember when all Russian girls had moustaches and looked like Kruschev's mother".

Other acts of note were the German swing group, the scary lesbians of Serbia (who won - how?!) and the jaw droppingly special Ukrainians who were definitely robbed.

The evening then moved on to the interval act. "You don't often see this. A man swallowing a flourescent tube".

We then had the voting. On the Ukraine - "Are those your own teeth, dear?". On Russia - "Good evening, Mrs Putin". And on the UK - "It's Fern Cotton! Heavens, I know her! I know that girl".

Finally, the Serbians emerged to sing their winning song, clutching various random paraphernalia. "Is that a traditional Serbian cucumber you've got there, my man?"

A truly special evening as always. I'll leave the final word to Terry - "It's been a wonderful wonderful evening. I mean, not musically of course". Brilliant.

Looking forward

I seem to be looking forward to something all the time at the moment. This time, however, it's only to this weekend which for me begins on Friday when I have the day off work. My fantastic dad is going to be 53, so after my driving lesson I'm heading over to Bewdley armed with ingredients, brownies and strawberries (for the Pimms, naturally) to give him a birthday surprise. He and mum are in Norfolk this week and are returning home at about 5pm, by which time I will have ballooned the living room, made pudding and prepared everything else for the meal I'm going to cook for us all. Mum has got the Pimms, champagne and posh crisps ready (Pimms and posh crisps are compulsory pre-special dinner consumption between the months of May and September in our house!) and hopefully dad will be well and truly surprised to see me. I'm so looking forward to a lovely evening in with lots of fun and laughter, and I'm even feeling confident about cooking as it's all stuff I can prepare in advance. I'm making asparagus with smoked salmon to start, moussaka and Greek salad for main course and then chocolate truffle cake for pudding, and I'm also despatching dad back to Swansea with a big batch of brownies for him to scoff over the next week or so. I can't wait!

Other things to look forward to this weekend are getting two nights of uninterrupted sleep (my neighbours are pulling a delightful new trick of waking me up every Friday and Saturday night at the moment) and of course the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday. Mum and dad are going out to the theatre and I could have gone with them, but I'd much rather sit at home with a bottle of wine and some delightfully cheesy Euro-pop than watch Chekhov in Stratford, so that's what I plan to do. In an exciting new progression from last year, I aim to do my best to remain upright and conscious throughout the entire event! I'll let you know how it goes.

All that remains now is to get through another day at work, have fun at Chorus and then bake brownies at 10pm tomorrow night (as one does) and Friday will be here! Woo and indeed yay.

Sheer brilliance

At 9.36 this evening, during frame 13 of the world snooker final, Clive Everton actually used the phrase, "And that's a bad miss". Fantastic.

Some errors have occurred

This morning I decided to dye my hair. I wanted to go back towards my natural dark brown, but still keeping a hint of red. I therefore bought a colour described on the box as Deep Reddish Brown, assuming that this would give me – well, deep reddish brown hair. How wrong I was. It appears that the people at Garnier have lied to me. Yes, it’s dark. Yes, there are hints of red. However, the overall impression is one of…purple. I suppose you could just about get away with calling it dark brown with purple iridescence, but when I look in the mirror I just see purple. I have purple hair.

This is not however the end of my problems. When I’ve previously gone red, I’ve managed to get colour all over my forehead which has come off as soon as I’ve washed the dye out of my hair. However, this evil purple stuff seems to be a lot stronger and more persistent. I therefore now closely resemble Mikhail Gorbachev.

I have PURPLE HAIR! Someone help me!

EDIT: It probably doesn't look so purple from a distance. To be fair, in some lights it has looked brownish red. But in general, the overall impression I'm still getting is brownish purple. Ah well. At least it's dark!

A Juicy text

Can anyone shed any light on this?

"Drinky pants! Up p a fast! Sexy fox! Rah."

If anyone has any sort of clue, do let me know...


We love you Juicy, oh yes we do!