Yes, if you know me well enough, you probably would. Last weekend, when I was coming back from visiting family, I was unfortunate enough to need to use the train 'facilities'. Without going into too much detail, upon completing my task I heard a *plop* and looked down to see that my mobile had fallen out of my back pocket and into the toilet..... I was in a bit of a quandary, having been the victim (and perpetrator) of several incidents involving water and mobile phones over the year. "Should I fish it out?" "Should I leave it there? It is down a toilet after all, and not ANY old toilet, it's a TRAIN toilet..." "It looks pretty clean, and I DO need my SIM card" "The phone is probably broken anyway and will never work again" In the end, after dithering around, I went for the plunge (so to speak) and fished the phone out, ran it under some clean water and gave it a dry off. No, of course it wasn't working....

As soon as I got home I googled "mobile phone in toilet" and discovered that I was far from the first person to drop my phone down a toilet, and that the best advice seemed to be to immerse it in a bowl of rice for three days. I couldn't really see that it would dry it out enough, but in any case I had nothing to lose. Lo and behold, three days later - perfect working order! Very surprised and pleased - definitely one to remember.

For those who don't know my catalogue of disasters with electrical equipment, read on...

#1 Took friend's drunk sister home. Drunk sister vomited all over me. Clothes and bag (and latterly discovered) mobile phone went into washing machine. VERDICT - dead phone

#2 Carried drink from kitchen to bedroom. Mobile phone and drink in same hand. Put drink on bedside table, dropped phone in drink. VERDICT - dead (and sticky) phone

#3 Went to nightclub. Fell down stairs. VERDICT - smashed and dead phone, smashed coccyx, inability to sit down for 6 months.

#4 Running for train. Fell over. VERDICT - ruined shoes, grazed elbows, smashed digital camera screen, smashed laptop screen, re-bruised coccyx. Phone ok though...

I just love Em, who is the cartoonist for The London Paper. Her stories are so true to life and always make me smile! Dog owners will know what I am talking about here:


(Click to enlarge)

I saw this in The London Paper yesterday, and I just had to share it, because it made me laugh so much on the train that people were giving me funny looks. Tres embarrassing.

It's all about so-called 'Bush-isms', the verbal gaffes that the outgoing President has made since being in office, and they are many and varied as you'll see....

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream" LA CROSSE, WISCONSIN 18 OCT 2000

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family" GREATER NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE 27 JAN 2000

"You work three jobs? Uniquely American isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that" TO A DIVORCED MOTHER OF THREE, OMAHA, NEBRASKA 4 FEB 2005

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practise their love with women all across this country" POPLAR BLUFF, MISSOURI 6 SEPT 2004

"They mis-underestimated me" RENTONVILLE, ARKANSAS 6 NOV 2000

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA 11 JAN 2000

"I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully" SAGINAW, MICHIGAN SEPT 2000

If that's not enough for you, they also showed this picture of a note written to Condoleeza Rice during a UN General Assembly meeting in September 2005: "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?"

I feel like I've saved up a whole load of annoyance since my last posting. Top of my Things That Annoy Me list are people who leave their dog's mess on the ground. OK, I own a dog, so I know that you can't always help when and where your little darling goes, but for goodness sake! It looks and smells dirty, it's unhygienic and particularly in the autumn it's well disguised by the fallen leaves in my local park I've noticed, which occasionally leads to a 'sticky shoe' situation a la Phoebe from 'Friends':

We've recently had a new pavement laid down near our flat. It looked lovely and clean, for about half a day. Then it began to get marred with dog poo, just like the old one. The local council obviously had a lightbulb moment when they stencilled the below image onto the pavement at regular intervals. Do they really envisage this having any, I mean any effect on the non-pooper-scoopers around here? It looks like a 5-year old painted it! And what's with the atrocious font choice? I'm no typographer but I'd like to hear what one of my typographery-type (?) friends has to say about it! I really can't see these poor excuses for stencils having much of a difference. In fact I'm tempted to go and paint polka dots on them one night but I'm too scared I might get arrested. Hold on, if I used chalk, which washes off, that would be ok, wouldn't it? Watch this space....

Also I'm annoyed already with the darker nights and colder weather. I feel like I've been robbed of a summer that was promised but never even arrived. I've been stood up by summer. My flip flops didn't even get a look-in. Still, look on the bright side, at least it isn't raining. Much.

However, even I have got something to be thankful for. Whilst out with a friend for dinner the other week, we toasted those commuters who have the daily grind to work on over-packed trains and tubes, allowing us lucky few to work at home, only having to bear the grunting, sweating masses on rare occasions when a meeting calls us into central London.

We were surprised by the long queues stretching out of restaurants in London. On a Wednesday of all days! No sign of the credit crunch in the dining industry then, lucky things. Shortly after that I heard the great phrase 'dead cat bounce', which was first coined about 23 years ago. It basically means a small and temporary recovery in a financial market following a large fall, the idea being that even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from a great height. Fantastic.

As my friend Tom asked me "Isn't it about time you updated your 'once-every-quarter-whether-you-need-to-or-not' blog?" Well, yes, obviously it is, since someone has actually asked.

I was going to write about my strange dream, which involved living in a mobile home at the top of the Alps, June Sarpong and a nun with a broken leg, but I can't really remember the details of that one. Instead I'll have a rant about my lovely neighbours. I'm not talking about the ones on the ground floor that play extremely loud music until 5 or 6am. Though they do at least play it loud enough that I can hear the words and sing along if I want to, and they play pop, rather than drum and bass, so that's also better than nothing I suppose, still I do draw the line at badly sung karaoke, especially at that time of the morning. Anyway, onto my 'real' rant.

It's about the neighbours below me, the ones with the small white fluffy dog that bit me and my dog when we were out a couple of weeks ago. The other night, Y and I were rudely awaken at some god-forsaken hour by the sound of crashing, banging and much shouting from the flat below. We could clearly hear such politely phrased questions as "Where's my f*@%ing money?", "Why are you touching my f*@%ing stuff?" and kind requests like "Get your hands off my f*@%ing clothes" and things being flung across the room. I was pretty close to calling the police as it sounded like a full-on bust up down there but I was too scared. Not sure what the arguement was about - Y reckons it was about drugs. If that's true, maybe I got off lightly, just being bitten by their dog.

I do like most of my neighbours really! Except the ones that wee in the lift, that's pretty gross.

Y is taking his cleaning antics outside the flat now. He wiped down the buttons in the lift with a wet-wipe, not that I minded! He also bought us a new vacuum cleaner to try to hoover up the dog hair. I arrived home to a post-it note saying

"The new hoover has arrived - yay!
Have got it out of the box, but haven't
had a chance to play with it yet.
Feel free to do some hoovering if you like."

Test 1 - Preparation
Women: To prepare for pregnancy:-

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children:-

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2 - Knowledge
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior.

Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3 - Nights
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4 - Dressing Small Children
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5 - Cars
1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6 - Going For a Walk
Wait
Go out the front door
Come back in again
Go out
Come back in again
Go out again
Walk down the front path
Walk back up it
Walk down it again
Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
Retrace your steps
Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8 - Grocery Shopping
1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9 - Feeding a 1 year-old
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10 - TV
1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11 - Mess
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor & leave it there.

Test 12 - Long Trips with Toddlers
1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly.

Important Notes:
No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.

2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13 - Conversations
1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14 - Getting ready for work
1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!

Recently I've become really self-conscious about just how much I make a remark on the weather. OK, so I'm English, I suppose I can get away with it, but I'm really aware that I'm fast becoming a prime candidate for the English 'talk about the weather' stereotype. I'm not sure that's a good thing. I've also noticed that I'm starting to take on the mannerisms of my mother, but that's for another time.

Take last Easter weekend. It snowed every day! And I'm in a big city that hardly ever sees snow. It didn't settle mind you. And the weekend before that, we had all kinds of weather - gale force winds, warm sun, drenching rain and hail.

Anyway, it's all ok now. Spring is on the way at last. Green buds on the trees, cherry blossom and the smell of the first grass cuttings of the year all mean it's just around the corner. I can't wait! Being a hater of winter it can't come soon enough for my liking. And just to prove that not only Spring, but Summer is nearly here too, I just heard the chimes of an ice-cream van down my road. So there.

I reckon I have an above average level of morbid curiosity about things, especially if they are slightly abnormal, like those deep ocean fish with the big teeth and dangly luminescent things, the elephant man or teratomas.

I watched a programme on these once, it was fascinating. A teratoma is basically a tumour that has cells in it which can grow into teeth, hair, eyeballs, jawbones or even little tiny hands. Teratoma means 'monstrous tumour'. They are also called germ cell tumours and are pretty rare.

Anyway, whilst googling away I found a link to a blog where someone has knitted one of these things. Quite amazing what people get up to in their spare time! Click here to see the blog entry - there is even a link providing you with the instructions, just in case you are taken by the urge to knit your very own teratoma one Sunday afternoon....













NB: for those with weak stomachs, I would advise against googling 'teratoma' to see what a real one looks like.

First things first, I *am* still alive (just), which is obviously good news for some-including me I think. I've obviously been leading a tres boring life though, because I've had nothing worth writing about. However, now the tables have turned! What with dreaming about my dog talking to me and losing my passport (again) I'm sure you'll all agree that it's time I blogged.

So. I went up to Edinburgh for the weekend and took my passport (for i.d. you understand, not because I thought maybe there would be passport control at the airport....honest guv). Went to the cinema, came back, packed on Sunday night, no passport. Quelle surprise! My first thought was "S*@t, I really can't afford £90 for a new passport!", closely followed by "My mum is going to kill me if she gets another call to say someone has found my passport". As the great Oscar Wilde might say "To lose one passport may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose it twice looks like carelessness." Luckily my guardian angel must be smiling down on me again because the lovely people at Cineworld picked it up and, yes, called my mum. I'm not sure if it was a wry smile or the grinding of her teeth that I could hear in her voice when she phoned me to say they had it. Perhaps I should just sellotape it to my hand next time.

As if that weren't enough, I had a very strange dream that I could all of a sudden understand exactly what my dog, Tess, was saying to me. We had a pretty good chat and it seems that she had been waiting some time for me to be able to communicate with her. Very very odd indeed.

On top of that, I just bought a new hot water bottle, (yes, I left the old one in Scotland by accident) which is lovely and furry. I must have woken up three or four times last night convinced that the warm and furry thing that my hand just brushed against was Tess, who had somehow managed to unlock her cage, open both the kitchen door and my bedroom door and climb into bed with me.... I think I might have actually stroked it a couple of times.

*sigh*

Spot the difference...