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.