Office Troll

Of Poo And Xanax

We are having the house re-wired at the moment and it's been a month since the electrician started. He's a complete muppet and I won't bore you with the details of every single annoyance that I've had to put up with, save for the grossest one: the guy must have a bowel problem, because EVERY single time we come home from work we find, you guessed it, SKIDMARKS in the toilet bowl. Now, I am a reasonable person. I'm also - and perhaps this will come as a surprise to you - a generally nice person. I have made sure there are teabags in the kitchen even if I don't drink tea and I buy milk even if I only use soya. I have told him to help himself to the Coke in the fridge. And I understand that the guy might need to use the loo. But skidmarks? Every goddamn day? What IS wrong with him? And most importantly, can he not clean up after himself? There's a toilet brush by the W.C. There are several bottles of detergents of all sorts. There are even rubber gloves if he's too squeamish to go anywhere near his own poo.

So last night, when I got home at 9.00 PM after a few drinks and found out from my Other Half that once again, the muppet had left poo streaks in our toilet, I understandably lost it. I'd had enough. Within minutes my heart was pounding and I dread to think what my blood pressure must have been. I reached for the Xanax - the liquid version, which I keep for the emergencies when I just can't wait for a pill to reach my bloodstream - shook a few drops out of the bottle haphazardly into a glass of water and then waited for calm to descend.

Only nothing seemed to happen. Nothing. And to make things worse, my Other Half was happily watching TV, dealing with the situation with his typical attitude of laissez faire - annoyed yes, but not ready to go to war about anything. This, in turn, infuriated me even more. I decided to ring my pharmacist (and Xanax supplier) sister and have a proper freakout on the phone instead. She advised me to take some more Xanax: that was an emergency after all. So there I was, sitting on my bed, ranting, like a madwoman, wrapped in a towel, phone cradled under my ear, trying to shake some drops out of the suicide-proof Xanax bottle, but nothing was coming out. Nothing!

My sister  tried to direct me: 'turn it upside down', 'wait for a bubble of air to form', 'give it a shake' then 'try again'. Goddammit. I was just about to go and get my nail scissors to take off the rubber cap and down the whole blasted thing in one guaranteed overdose, when finally the grapefruit juice-flavoured potion started to drip into the glass of water. Halleluiah.

I had a peaceful, dreamless, night. I needed it.

This morning, I rang my project manager at the building company and told her about the poo. She was horrified but grateful that I had told her - I don't think a pooing electrician would do much good to he company's reputation.And you know what? I feel better for taking control. Hopefully in two more working days the muppet will be gone from my house, and I'll be able to use my bathroom without having to decontaminate it first.

The Skirt: A New Hope

uThis is going to be a frivolous, shallow post, so avert your eyes now if you think you are going to be offended.

It's a day for celebration, Ladies & Gentlemen, because I have stumbled across a shop selling the most beautiful skirts, dresses and corsets you are ever likely to see.  I will spare you another rant against the current fashion of shapeless smocks and leggins (a crime agains the hourglass shape) - you've had enough of that here. However the purchase of my new skirt has to be recorded for posterity.  Here it is - in its full glory - satin, purple, fishtail cut.  It cost me a fortune but what's a £100 when I know that I'll be wearing it all the time? The CPW (Cost Per Wear) will be minimal.  I know this for a fact, as my black Oasis skirt (of a similar cut) is now such a favourite of mine that when I take it to the dry cleaners I lose sleep at the thought of it being lost or damaged until it's ready for collection.

The skirt has already been modelled to a 'front row' experts i.e. Laura and Sharon.  After they assured me that I don't need a bigger size (satin can cause the much dreaded 'sausage effect' if worn too tight), I couldn't help jumping up and down a few times in absolute joy, especially at the thought of actually visiting the shop when I'm in London next Friday. As I was doing that, our regular Albanian builder, who was once again fixing something in our building, walked past and joined the celebration, not really knowing what was going on but enjoying the atmosphere nonetheless.

So maybe, just maybe, there is hope for people like me who don't want to be dressed by mysogynous gay men who want to reduce women to poor copies of adolescent boys (minus the 'bits', which is, I suspect, why they hate us). Maybe in time I will discover other fabulous shops full of beautiful, flattering clothes where no leggings nor smocks are allowed.  And maybe I'll walk into the Tardis and be catapulted into the 40s...when heels were always high and stockings always had a seam.  Nice dream...

Wading Through The Deluge

As soon as I leave the house, it starts to rain really really heavily.  By the time I've got to the end of my road, it's absolutely pouring down.  I have an umbrella but it's not helping that much.  I hesitate, wondering if I should run back home and wait until it stops.  But in the end I decide to keep going, thinking that it will be over in a matter of minutes.  It won't.

By the time I'm walking down the hill, a torrent of water is running alongside the pavement.  I'm trying to walk as fast as I can, until I have to virtually stop because a fat woman and her daughter are occluding my way, as they do every single morning, without fail.  The fat woman is clearly trying to get some exercise by walking her kid to school.  This is all very well, but they walk at snail pace, which not only burns hardly any calories (deluded fool), but also becomes extremely annoying when you're behind them, as together the pair take up the whole pavement (admittedly it's mostly the mother) and it always takes me a lot 'excuse me's and wasted time to get past them. 

I finally manage to squeeze through them and I am literally legging it down the hill, when a car driving over the growing torrent drenches me in filthy water.  At that point I really lose it and I turn round and shout 'COCK SUCKERS!!!'in the car's direction.  But as I do that, I realise that the fat woman and kid have by then caught up with me and must have heard my outburst.  Now, I don't normally swear in front of children, but I'd forgotten there was one behind me and anyway, when you're soaked through the bone and about to drown in flood water, manners go out of the window.  I am sure the fat woman is mouthing something at me but I have my headphones in and I am not going to take them off to get a lecture from her about giving the good example to her moronic child. So I ignore her and walk on, as more and more water seems to pour out from the sky.

The Morning News

My Friday morning starts well when the satellite dish stops working in the bad weather and I am deprived of my daily dose of morning news. Mind you, I've been Eamonn Holmes-less for weeks now.  It's bad enough on Fridays in general, when Eamonn flies back to Northern Ireland to spend the weekend with his family.  But as soon as the school holidays start in his neck of the woods, Eamonn disappears altogether and I'm left with Lorna Dunkley on Sky (personality bypass), the populistic, child-centric sofa of GMTV (with no Fiona, also on a school holidays hiatus), or, worse of all, those dim-wits at BBC Breakfast.  Now, that is a programme that doesn't even pretend to be about the News anymore,rather it's an endless stream of idiocy and lame jokes from its astonishingly irritating presenters.  I can't believe I have to pay a licence fee for the BBC to feed me such dumb, patronising trash on a daily basis, when all I want to hear is some goddamn news.

Mornings are just not the same without Eamonn. God I hate school holidays.

The Easter Monday Blues

The Easter break is finally over and so is my annual bout of the Easter Monday Blues. The hazy sunshine, the neighbours doing DIY, the hordes of day trippers, the happy little families on their happy little days out, taking over all the parking spaces and invading the pool at David Lloyds.

Now the sky is grey, I'm back at work, I had about 5 hours'sleep (Warcraft) and the phones keep ringing, but in a morbid emo sort of way, I'm almost enjoying it.

The Women's Room

[SERIOUS POST ALERT!]

I was reading an article on The Guardian last night about the re-issue of Marylin French' seminal feminist novel The Women's Room.  I read it when I was at university, back in the days when I wouldn't have put up with being groped by The Big Boss.  The cover says 'This is a book that changes lives' and it does: never again will I take my freedom for granted , nor my right to go out there and make a living, without having to ask a man's permission.  And I will never cease to be grateful to the women who fought to give me the right to decide whether I want to be a mother or not - the very rights which are now being undermined, some 30 years later, by the increasingly powerful right-wing religious lobbies. (see Heather's excellent article on this subject)

Feminism has become a dirty word for most young women and with pornography gradually seeping into mainstream culture and influencing the way women are expected to look and behave, I sometimes wonder if, as a society, we are going backwards.  But after all it is up to women to pick and choose what messages they are going to listen to, what values they are prepared to buy into.  We don't  have to try and look like porn stars. We don't have to be distracted by diets, fashion and celebrity worship so that we aren't alert enough to notice that we are still paid less than men, that convictions for rape are still low and that it's becoming increasingly difficult to have access to abortions all over the so-called 'modern' western world.

But hey, it's not all doom and gloom.  We can even find a positive message buried in the depths of pop culture:

The shoes on my feet
I've bought it
The clothes I'm wearing
I've bought it
The rock I'm rockin'
I've bought it
'Cause I depend on me
If I wanted the watch you're wearin'
I'll buy it
The house I live in
I've bought it
The car I'm driving
I've bought it
I depend on me
(I depend on me)

All the women who are independent
Throw your hands up at me
All the honeys who makin' money
Throw your hands up at me
All the mommas who profit dollas
Throw your hands up at me
All the ladies who truly feel me
Throw your hands up at me

From Destiny's Child, 'Independent Women'

On Fashion (guys, feel free to look elsewhere)

This post is for my female readers - I know you are not sheep.

You might remember the tears of joy I wept when, a few months ago, I finally managed to find the perfect pair of boots. Well I had another of those moments yesterday, when I found THE PERFECT SKIRT. It's black, it's satin, it's slinky, it's got a black tulle lining at the bottom and it's incredibly flattering on the derriere.  It's also expensive but as Dinah, the Captain's secretary, points out, in terms of C.P.W. (cost per wear) is going to be very good value as it's a classic. I will be wearing it for years.

Thank God, because this year I'm really struggling to find clothes I like.  Have you seen what's out in the shops? Round neck tunics, 60's mini dresses cut like sacks, smocks previously only seen in Mothercare.  Will someone tell me what's going on? Fashion has gone insane. All this "boho" Sienna Miller layering crap.  Dresses with leggins, footless tights, Colonel Ghaddafi scarves, plastic jewellery: can you imagine Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Gina Lollobrigida wearing any of that? What's happened to elegance? Jesus.  I sound like my mother.

But why oh why do we all have to look the same?  Will someone please tell me?

"When I went to school/ In Olympia/ Everybody was the same/ We looked the same/ We talked the same...we even fucked the same" [Hole, "Rockstar"]