and as if that wasn't bad enough...

i then went into an all bar one to have a hair of the dog glass of white wine before the cinema and they were playing JAMES BLUNT!
which just about sums up the day, really

how shit is that?

so, hangover from hell. went in to the west end today. walking down shaftesbury ave i saw one of those 'caricature' artists. selling caricatures that basically look nothing like the famous people they are meant to represent. and he was selling a julia roberts picture. can you imagine unwrapping a present only to find that it's a really bad caricature of julia roberts. who you always thought was a really crap actress! then i went into the gap, for its '75% off sale'. and the shop smelt of farts! so i didn't stay. then i went to a certain large sports retailer (i'm not sure of libel/defamation laws on blogs so i won't name it but it's really huge and i was totally shagged by the time i got to the top floor) which was beyond bad. it had an entire floor dedicated to really naff jeans! in a sports store. then i overheard a spanish woman moaning that there was nothing in the shop except sports clothes. i felt like telling her that as this was a sports store that was probably par for the course, then again had she seen the jeans on floor one! but i was too hot and hungover and had to leave. so then i went to HMV and was totally appalled to come across a hugh grant box set. oh. my. god. can you imagine a worse present. beside the julia roberts pic, obviously.
fortunately i was meeting a friend to go the cinema so managed to avoid any further retail horrors.
happy new year.

how shit is that?

so, hangover from hell. went in to the west end today. walking down shaftesbury ave i saw one of those 'caricature' artists. selling caricatures that basically look nothing like the famous people they are meant to represent. and he was selling a julia roberts picture. can you imagine unwrapping a present only to find that it's a really bad caricature of julia roberts. who you always thought was a really crap actress! then i went into the gap, for its '75% off sale'. and the shop smelt of farts! so i didn't stay. then i went to a certain large sports retailer (i'm not sure of libel/defamation laws on blogs so i won't name it but it's really huge and i was totally shagged by the time i got to the top floor) which was beyond bad. it had an entire floor dedicated to really naff jeans! in a sports store. then i overheard a spanish woman moaning that there was nothing in the shop except sports clothes. i felt like telling her that as this was a sports store that was probably par for the course, then again had she seen the jeans on floor one! but i was too hot and hungover and had to leave. so then i went to HMV and was totally appalled to come across a hugh grant box set. oh. my. god. can you imagine a worse present. beside the julia roberts pic, obviously.
fortunately i was meeting a friend to go the cinema so managed to avoid any further retail horrors.
happy new year.

must remember

not to wear my tightest jeans to my mum's next christmas. i had a distinct muffin top going on this morning. i then had the usual journey from hell back to civilisation. i use the term loosely, of course. this is kentish town, after all. i think i witnessed the beginning of a fight on the bus back from liverpool street. there were a pair of drunks behind us and a hoodie in front of us (we were a total white middle class sandwich!). when the drunks got off the hoodie followed. i saw the beginnings of an argument but then our bus took us away.
it's taken me about 20 minutes to get into my blog today - so many passwords, so many accounts... so few brain cells left. i live in fear of one day waking up and not being able to remember any of my pins (as in pin number as most people would wrongly have it) and my passwords. sometimes i stand in front of the atm and for a split second my mind goes blank and i can't for the life of me remember what my number is.
i must rememeber my passwords, and my pins, and not to wear my tightest jeans to my mum's at christmas.
and i must remember to log onto this blog a bit earlier next time - all that faffing around means i don't have time to write anything else, and let's face it, what i have got down is hardly unmissable.
hey ho. more later

And so this is Christmas

My coldsores are now at red and angry stage, causing people to ask 'Have you been in a fight?'. This is a worry, as they ask in a tone that suggest that it's not out of the question that I might have been. Which is clearly ridiculous. People have tried to be in fights with me but I've never played ball. Fortunately no one's tried to be in a fight with me for a while. Let's hope it stays that way.
Either that or they say 'Blimey, who's been overdoing the mistletoe!', which is too crass to even dignify with a response.
It is also foggy. In England. In winter. Can you bloody well believe it? This never-before-seen-or-heard-of phenomenon of course means that public transport has been thrown into chaos. The entire Northern Line has checked itself into The Priory! Most worrying is the fact that hundreds of flights out of London have been cancelled forcing people onto the rail network, which in turn means hundreds of people trying to cram onto already fully booked trains. And I'm going to my mum's tomorrow. I swear to God if I have to stand all the way to Norfolk, having booked my ticket in OCTOBER, I may well commit festive homicide, or hari kari, depending on space.
I got my first Christmas present yesterday – 2 pairs of stripy socks and 2 bottles of wine. Perhaps I should take the latter items with me on my journey tomorrow to make it bearable if the worst case scenario does indeed pan out.
Merry effing Christmas

no such thing as a free lunch

one of the first words i learnt when i moved to spain was 'aqui', which means 'here'. the context was actually 'not here'. actually it was more 'not here you don't you filthy, theiving, miserable, foreign bastud' and i still wince slightly at the memory, even though it was a staggering 20 years ago.
the boyfriend, with whom i'd moved to barcelona, and myself had gone to sitges for the day and had ended up sitting outside a lovely beachside cafe, indulging ourselves with an ice cream sundae. very nice it was too. so there i was, just finishing my ice cream, sun in my face, all well with the world, when Mark (the boyf) gets up, says 'quick, let's go,' and proceeds to leg it! i didn't really have a choice but to follow, so off i go. my first and only ever runner. now, the 'aqui no!' bit comes a couple of hours later when, like a complete pair of idiots, we wander straight past the cafe from which we had absconded earlier! out comes a red-faced waiter waving his arm and tea towel and screaming at us ('aqui no!') before grabbing us both by the t-shirt and dragging us inside. oh the shame! and all for an ice cream.
i was reminded of this yesterday upon leaving a rather posh/exclusive restaurant where i'd just had a boozy work lunch with a pr mate (who represents said gaff, and who had arranged for us to have a freebie). there we were, merrily winding our way off home when we hear the sound of footsteps behind us and a vaguely disgruntled chap informing us that 'you haven't paid your bill!'. fortunately there was no t-shirt grabbing, and he didn't onec use the here word but i still felt that horrid flush that you get when you're caught doing something you shouldn't.
how we laughed, once we'd sorted it out!
i shan't be going there again.

cold sores…

…would anyone like one? i've got 5 and am more than happy to share. five! two top lippers, two bottom lippers and a chinner! my mouth feels how I imagine Lesley Ash or Pete Burns's must have felt post lip injections. i can't work out if it is nature's way of telling me that going out and getting smashed every night and only having 5 hours sleep isn't actually funny or clever or sophisticated and that I need an early night, or whether it is trying to tell me to smile at the world, even if it is with a mouth that is scabby, that even with a bulbous labia i am a beautful and loveable human being and that i must never forget that.
i've always been partial, i mean prone, to cold sores. one year i had 23 one after the other. which was hideous. but i've been free of them for the past couple of years, which makes this outbreak all the more grim. i feel that all people see when they look at me is 'herpes simplex'. i'd make a useless elephant man.

…that is the question

what would you do right now, if you could do anything. be anywhere. with anyone? that's the question i asked myself as i was walking into the office today. at first i drew a total blank. then i went through the go back to bed/lay down options before getting a bit more imaginative/global. Barcelona came to mind, but I'm just back from there. and Fiji, but there's a coup going on there at the mo, so probably best avoided. in the end I plumped for Sydney with my friends Geraldine and Neil (they've got a child but as this is a fantasy i can leave her with imaginary babysitter). having a cappuccino and a fruit frappe. and poached eggs, which the Australians do like no one else. Gerry would no doubt have about 9 lattes – she's obssessed with them – while Neil would have his nose buried in some airport trash novel. we once visited the stunning Fraser Island, where we were surrounded by dingos and various gorgeous nature-doc style views, and Neil spent the entire visit reading TARZAN! bless him.

'i'm not on the bus'

i saw a lollipop lady chatting away on her mobile phone today as she was accompanying children across the road. surely there must be some law against that kind of thing? if you're not allowed to be in charge of a motorcar while on a mobile surely you should avoid using one when handling a lollipop and the lives of nippers? mind you, at least the kiddies could see that she was talking into her phone (typical comments: 'I'm crossing the road, innit', 'yeah, just crossing the road', 'alright! in the road', 'not much, just crossing the road'). imagine if she'd been hands free – she would have looked like a looney chatting away to herself as she went backwards and forwards, no doubt scaring the little 'uns into jay walking a few yards up the road. i tried to give her a disapproving look as i saw myself across the road (on her crossing) but i was obviously doing a convincing invisible man impression as she looked right through me.
I'm going to practise giving people dirty looks at work just to make sure I still can.

good old days

have you noticed how some people suddenly get old after a fall? it happened to my nan. she was in her early 70s, a sprightly little thing who used to refer to the biddies in Sainsbury's as 'old dears' (she probably had a couple of years on them at least!), when she slipped on a wet drain cover on the way to my mum's. and overnight she went from being an out-and-about elderly lady to old stay-indoors curtain twitcher. now she watches so many soaps i think she's forgotten that she actually has a tv and is instead living in some weird 'emmerdale/albert sq' hinterland, interrupted by phonecalls from people purporting to be family members.
i only mention the fall as i fell arse over tit up the kerb outside my house last night. i don't know what happened (the winey supper probably had some involvement) but i suddenly found myself divebombing to the floor, generously allowing my elbow and hip to cushion the blow. fortunately i haven't turned into a curtain twitcher yet. unless of course i am actually some old granddad who spends so much time watching this soap about life in an office that the boundaries of reality and fantasy have merged, in which case, hasn't the weather been awful, and who are you and what do you want?
whatever. my hip hurts.

they haven't changed the date!

are you surrounded by people without calendars or sense of time, like i am? everyone keeps saying 'I can't believe it's already Christmas' as if some joker has decided to bring it forward by a couple of months. someone in the office just said they needed to buy their xmas cards, to which i replied that i'd already posted mine. 'you're early,' she informed me. 'it's xmas day two weeks today,' i pointed out (with the merest hint of smugness). you'd think i'd told her i'd peed in the last cup of tea i made her, by the look on her face. suffice to say, she, like many others, was labouring under the impression that this Xmas had been postponed until Feb 2009 so she still had plenty of time to get everything done. she was last seen hotfooting it to Hamley's. i shouldn't imagine she'll be back much before xmas eve.
i've finished most of my present buying, too. the only things i've still got to by are a box of chocolates for my nan (who's just come out as a Christmas hater – meaning she hates xmas rather than being a seasonal misanthropist, which she is all year round) and something little for my mum.

come fly with me

'My god, what's that? It looks like airline food!' said one of my colleagues as I sat down with the sandwiches that arrived in today's hamper delivery. (We get a lot of food, beauty stuff and random clothes sent in to the magazine.) She's right, it does look like airline food. And not of the easyJet variety either. I love airline food. I really do. I don't worry about what I eat while I'm in the air so it always feels like a treat to have bread AND butter, and creamy sauces that I'd never normally go for. Actually I just really like flying. From getting to the airport (really early so I can shop and have a drink before boarding) to sitting in the departure lounge people watching. It's hilarious what people consider adequate or appropriate to fly in. Crop tops and tracksuit bottoms. Flipflops, when it's snowing outside. Nighties. Clown outfits…
I'm always vaguely excited when I'm travelling alone and I take my seat on the plane or train. I always wonder if the man of my dreams is going to be sitting in the seat next to mine and whether we'll bond over a glass of fizz. It never happens of course. The fattest person I see while people spotting in the lounge is invariably the one holding the next boarding pass sequence number to mine.
So, what I'm eating looks like posh airline food. The same colleague also asked: 'Are you trying to up it to 20%?' The it in question is my body fat. I had it analysed today and can admit to having a mere 5%! That's the same as a McCain oven chip! My trainer was gutted – he's wobbling around with 12%!
If only I could convince my 5% to distribute itself around my body, rather than crowd round my belly life would be swell!

how long have you got?

Dear Mr Apple,
I love your ipods. In fact I've just bought my third. What I don't love is the fact that I now have to transfer all my songs from my external hard drive into my itunes. AND IT IS GOING TO TAKE ME AGES. Forget that rubbish about for ever being the amount of time it would take for a bird to move all the grains of sand from one beach to another. For ever is just about how long it will take me to upload my music library to my latest gismo. Well, I suppose it will give me something to do in the evenings now the nights have closed in.
Here is a totally non-related list of things I keep doing that I wish I wouldn't:
Sitting on the seats by the heater on the 214 to Liverpool Street.
Having jacket potato with tuna mayo for lunch - it really repeats on me.
Overestimating how long it will take me to walk to yoga – I always seem to get there about 20 minutes early.
Forgetting to take my moisturiser out with me – my face is like a turtle's at the moment.
Saying 'Bugger' all the time.

festive overhang

I'm so busy at work at the moment that I have to keep taking 'breath breaks'. These are similar to fag breaks but rather than tabs involve having to take myself off to the loo to centre myself, breathe deeply and decide which item on my to do list is more urgent. The fact that I am taking five minutes out of my oh-so-hectic schedule to update my blog says more about my ability to multitask and prioritise than anything about my workload. Anyway, the Christmas countdown has begun, and with it the onlsaught. The month ahead is set to be a blur of client lunches, friendly (read pissed) catch-up supper with mates and work functions all offset with my 'praying mantis on a treadmill' punishing gym routine. Funny choice of word, punishing. Odd to think that you (I) would actively 'treat harshly or roughly' yourself (myself) in pursuit of health, vitality and, let's be honest here, a flatter stomach. Mind you, I've never denied that I exercise for vanity and sanity in equal measure.
Which brings me on to one of my favourite rants. Other people can stuff their faces on chocolate, crisps, lard sandwiches and greazy kebabs without putting on a pound while lovely little me only has to think of a Malteser for my roll of belly flab to hang further over my trousers. And I exercise more than anyone I've ever met. I'm like the Jesus of the running machine! I jog endlessly so that others may gauge without their midriffs expanding. Think of me next time you pop a Pringle.

am i normal?

I was in the stationers today, waiting to pay for my Pritt stick (which makes me sound like I buy lots of them, which I don't). By the cash desk was a pot of enticing silver- and gold-ink pens and a pad next to them to 'try before you buy' (please excuse the inverted commas and brackets, I can't help myself). As I stood queueing I was overcome by a sudden urge to start writing filthy swear words on the pad in lovely metallic pen. I drifted off in a reverie of obscenity before the man behind the counter informed me 'only £2.99 innit'. I didn't buy one. Or scribble any incriminating rantings.
Obscenities used to figure on my Tube journey to work too. If I'd had enough of my book/Metro/Sunday supplement that I still hadn't got round to read by Thursday, I'd have a 'swear break'. This consisted of looking around the carriage and thinking of the rudest/vilest/most horrible things I could say to each person. My comments were usually based on physical attributes. I'm sure you can imagine. I used to counter this, and the potential damage it might do to my karma/aura/chances of getting into heaven/face if I forget myself and start saying things out loud, by having a 'love break' where I'd look round the carriage and think of the nicest thing I could say to everyone. Worryingly I found this much harder!
You'd never guess by looking at me that there's such a foul-mouthed monster dying to get out.

I left my liver in Barcelona

Just back from a weekend in Barcelona. I can’t quite believe I lived there for nine whole years. Going back in total tourist mode was a delight – I’d forgotten how beautiful the place is, as it’s easy to do when a city becomes the backdrop for the day-to-day whirl that is your life. It was funny to go somewhere so familiar yet so different. We did a lot of walking – a lot of the time I knew where I was going but not what I was going to find there: a city changes a phenomenal amount in 10 years. Where once there were bars selling paintstripper grade wine for a few pesetas and as much pan con tomate as you can eat there are Starbucks and foccacerias. Instead of grotty old pensiones there are boutique hotels. And tourists a gogo. (Mind you, if you’ve been to Camden recently you’ll know that for every one we export we import two of theirs).
Needless to say I consumed my own body weight in alcohol. Now, you know me – I’m good with hangovers and believe that if you are big and bad enough to go out and get messy, you are big and bad enough to get up the next day and do what it is you have to do but the one I woke up with yesterday was a killer. It was a lot bigger than the sum of the drinks that made it. My belly hurt, my brain hurt, my eyes probably would have hurt if I’d been able to find them. I felt that if only I could be sick/cry/sleep for six hours/die I’d be fine. Bizarrely it was the old hair of the dog that saved me – a mercy dash to the airport to hand over some keys to some friends who should have been in Buenos Aires (don’t ask) turned into a mini drinking session in the airport bar (called ARS!) had me feeling right as rain in no time.

man flu

So I have finally succumbed. After being sneezed over by various strangers and having breathed in lungfuls of other people’s infected pantings, I’ve got the lurgy. You know, that tired-eyes, can’t quite cope with the world about-to-be-ill feeling. Sore throat, snotty nose, dull lifeless hair and the wrong accessories. Just in time for a weekend away. Which is nice. Hopefully this is just the beginning, so with a little luck by the time I fly the day after tomorrow I should be feeling 100% awful.
I also seem to have suddenly gone into work overdrive – three issues of my magazine (www.fabricmagazine.co.uk) to get out before the Christmas break.
It’s always the same with Christmas, isn’t it? There you are laying on the beach thinking ‘I know I shouldn’t be frazzling my face like this but I look so much better with a tan and if God hadn’t wanted me to sunbathe he wouldn’t have invented chemical peels’, and the next thing you know baby Jesus is staring at you from Xmas cards in all the bloody shop and your mum keeps sending you texts saying ‘what vouchers do you want for Christmas?’!
My weekend break (to Barcelona, thanks for asking) will hopefully help me resolve my last-minute shopping issues. A ceramic here, some chocolate rocks (available only at the airport for some reason) and a Zara bargain there (or vouchers for Mum) and I should be able to join the smug ‘did it all ages ago’ masses.

Bah humbug

Just back from a hotel visit (it IS work!) surrounded by WAGs and Loadsamoney wannabes. The newspapers outside of rooms this morning said it all - a few Sunday Times(es), a lot of Daily Mails and an embarrassment (if that's not the collective noun it bloody should be) of News of the Worlds. I was on my way to the state-of-the-art gym when I saw the media selection. I did 10K in 43.07 minutes, which I was rather pleased with.
Anyway, enough of the past. Let's look at my future. More specifically what I'm going to do after finishing this post. CHRISTMAS CARDS! I know it's not even December yet, but international post deadlines seem to get earlier every year and I'm away for the next three weekends so it's now or never. I could pretend that on the odd evening that I come straight home I'll do them but I know that's a big fat lie.
So I've done my lists. Approx 40 personal (some new entries, some non movers, while a few have dropped out of the top 40 and will do the same from my address book next time I update it) and about 30 work. Now all I have to think of is what the hell to say in them. A plain old Merry Christmas, love from me just won't cut it. You have to give some kind of update/breakdown of your year/state of mind/physical wellbeing, surely. And I don't really don't have a clue what to put.
And as for actually penning them – have you seen my handwriting recently. It's gone beyond GP, beyond OAP and into the realms of ET. It's at that point where I will write something, come back to it later on and think 'what the hell does that say'. So perhaps it doesn't actually matter what I write in the cards, as no one will be able to understand it anyway. So long as I put in a smattering of legible 'great', 'really well' and 'more sex than ever's people will think all is well on Planet Short.
If you'd like me to send you a card, drop me a line, I'd hate for us to lose touch!

send in the clown

I was late home yesterday due to a 'person under a train'. When this was announced I couldn't help but picture someone hiding beneath a carriage, refusing to come out, or perhaps playing some weird game of hide and seek. Then I found myself thinking what it would be like to be a 'person under a train'. Presumably hideously painful, and potentially most undignified – obliteration isn't always achieved, apparently. What kind of thoughts go through people's minds as the death train speeds towards them? And how many potential people under trains lose their nerve at the last minute. When I finally got home I tried on my clown outfit – which I know sounds like something from a surrealist poem but is actually true, the outfit in question is for our work Christmas party. They are always fancy dress, which I hate, but that's another rant entirely. The cat was pretty freaked out by the costume – particularly the rubber mask, from behind which I was making pervy breathing noises (unintentionally).
Then I found myself wondering what the announcer would say if I went to the Tube and flung myself in the path of an oncoming tube in my party outfit!

The Sugababes were wrong – people aren't all the same!

There is a story in the news today about an amazing new discovery in the field of genetics. It seems that people aren't nearly as similar as was previously believed. Apparently rather than being less than 1% different from everyone else in our genetic make-up, the distinction is more than 10%* (*figures not precise – I was making coffee while downloading the new Damien Rice album at the time). This discovery will come as a severe blow to the religiously inclined who believe that God created them in his own image and that the only difference between them and Jesus is that they wear socks with their sandals, but slightly less alarming for people like me who sometimes have misanthropic tendencies. Next time, for example, I am woken up by the woman next door screaming blue murder at her 'loser, layabout, leach' boyfriend, rather than empathise (we're all in the same boat, we're all human, I think therefore I ohm etc etc), I can roll over and go back to sleep safe in the knowledge that 'there but for the grace of genes go I'.
Now, onto the rather more pressing matter of what to wear today,

Phlp Lrkn ws rght!

'Call me, urgent', 'Text me your office number ASAP'… Do your parents ever leave you messages like that? The first one is usually a voicemail that sounds slightly breathless and frantic. The second texted through in the middle of the night or ridiculously early in the morning. EMERGENCY you think. WHAT'S HAPPENED? WHO'S DIED? So you find a quiet spot to make the call, ready to keep it together when you're told your world's falling apart. 'Oh, hi. Just wondered what you fancied for tea when you visit' or 'hello mate! just called to say hi and see what you are up to'. The fact that your next visit is three weekends away or that, due to international time differences, you're actually just starting work, which people tend to do early on a Tuesday morning in Europe, seem irrelevant to mum and dad, with their different time frames and to do lists.
And don't even get me started on parents and txt spk!

Planet Earth

So, I got a new phone yesterday. Isn't it infuriating how some of your numbers go onto the phone memory and some onto the sim card – which means that when you change your mobile you have to find out who's where and transfer them accordingly, or risk losing them forever. My evening, therefore, was spent trying to figure out what numbers needed transfering (and who needed dumping from my phone and my world) while watching Sunday's Planet Earth. This week's episode was all about the jungle, and was full of amazing shots of funghi growing out of insects and chimps eating their brethren. One sequence that I actually put my new mobile down for involved a bird of paradise doing a mating dance. It was staggering. This little black thing suddenly puffed itself out to reveal the most dazzling blue feathers while hopping up and down in front of a thoroughly underwhelmed female (ladies, eh?).
Just as interesting, was the behind-the-scenes footage of the poor sod who actually had to spend weeks of his life in a hide waiting for the shot. Sometimes he'd be in his makeshift tent for nine hours at a stretch, just watching and waiting, waiting and watching. I was surprised that he didn't start hallucinating, mistaking a falling leaf for the female of the species, imagining that a twig was some kind of furry being.
It made me think about when I used to live abroad and I'd go and pick people up from the airport. I'd get there (usually too early, story of my life) and jostle for position by the arrival doors. And then I'd wait. And wait. And then my heart would skip and I'd think 'Oh there she is' (I'm thinking about my sister, who was my most frequent visitor), only to realise that actually, while it looked a bit like Tracy, it wasn't in fact her. Then I'd wait a bit more and it would happen again. 'Oh, goodie, here she comes', and of course that wouldn't be her either. And this would go on and on, every time the doors opened to let out more arrivees. It would eventually get to the point where my eyes and brain were so fatigued by waiting I'd look at a 70-year-old man in glasses and a zimmer frame and squeal to myself 'oh, she's arrived at last', so my heart goes out to the Planet Earth cameraman.
Anyway, it's Tuesday and cold at last.

is it just me?

Or is this Monday particularly grim. The Tube network virtually ground to a halt this morning – no reason given but it was raining, so cut them some slack. There was a bus strike and the trains were down because the rails were wet (see Tube meltdown). Not only that but they were late opening the gym. I'm normally chirpy in the mornings and always think that if you can grin on a Monday then the week can only get better, but I'm surrounded by slapped arses masquerading as faces, which is making it a real challenge. And I've just spent £60 on having a veneer stuck back on! I've started this blog (what's the difference between a blog and a blogspot?) because I was just writing a piece about a blog I enjoy, saying that I never had time to do my own, so decided to take a virtual fag break and start one. More soon.