it's big and it's red

someone recently asked me to write about something that made me happy. so i did.

Happiness is sitting on the top deck of a routemaster.
Happiness is a much rarer treat than it used to be, given that ‘they’ have all but phased out London’s transport icon. Happiness can only be found in one or two parts of town these days, where once it spun round every corner.
I grew up in the small-minded suburbs, surrounded by shoe box houses and people who didn’t like me because I wasn’t like them.
The routemaster was my getaway vehicle.
It whisked me off to better things. To record shops that sold indie stuff you couldn’t get in Woolworths or Our Price. To charity shops where I could buy the kind of clothes the other kids at school would beat me up for wearing. It took me to the Tube – another exit from my miserable schoolday existence.
Happiness is sitting on the top deck of a routemaster, in the seat at the back on left. The one with more leg room and a view down the stairs. Happiness is sitting on the top deck of a routemaster looking out over the city that I used to think belonged to me.
The big red bus makes me remember more innocent times. And lazy days, when, if I timed it right and the traffic lights were in my favour I could hop off between stops virtually outside my front door. Lazy days before health and safety turned us all into the worried well, the terrified, the danger strangers.
It reminds me of the days when two people would work on buses, when there were jobs a plenty, and enough of everything to go round. The conductor would actually talk to you not just stare you out from behind glass.
It reminds me of the days of waking up to the gentle hum of milk floats and the sound of a paper boy putting the Daily Mirror through the letterbox.
The routemaster reminds me of times I was too young ever to experience. Of wars won, hard times endured but always, always, the hopefulness of travelling. To a in better place. Anywhere but here.
Happiness is sitting on the top deck of a routemaster.

cheers!

We all have at least one friend who always has one drink too many. The one who goes from vaguely jolly to that girl in the Exorcist in the space of one glass of wine. Who suddenly gets all glazy eyed and starts ranting about the state of the world, the hardships they've endured or just gets bolshy and mouthy? And then the next morning they are always slightly sheepish and start going on about how it was 'the booze talking'?
Well, my booze doesn't talk. It eats! Give me enough wine and, in the space of one glass, while that other friend is beginning to revolve their head through 360 degrees looking ever angrier, i will have morphed into the human equivalent of a Dyson hoover.
No plate is safe once sufficient units of alcohol have been consumed. Put me near a running buffet and I will soon turn it into a run out buffet – no combination of nibbles too surreal. At a friend's birthday party in the not too distant past i was found eating peanut and crisp sandwiches with ham. Really. And butter, which i normally consider devil's spawn!
And as for the low fat, healthy diet i try to follow when there is no alcohol involved? Just add booze and it goes out of the window.
I become utterly butterly with no full reflex whatsoever.
Last night was a case in point. Having begun the evening with a (very good, even if i do say so myself) margarita, we went on to fizz to celebrate brother in law's birthday before heading out to more margaritas and wine before a Mexican meal.
at said meal i managed to consume not only my own body weight in starters (which i said i didn't even want!) but all of my own main course and half of my sister's too boot (she wasn't drinking and so was fully in control of her mental and gastric faculties).
I don't know what comes over me. it's like i channel hattie jacques once the sherry comes out. Answers on a postcard please.
Did i tell you i've just come back from Chicago?
There I 1 smelt the foulest sheets i have ever come across and believe me, i've come across a few sheets in my time. these were on the sofa bed that i was meant to be sleeping on for a week. suffice to say we moved.
2 had the worst pedicure of my life. the young girl who did it managed to make me bleed TWICE! i would actually have declined the 'treatment' – she'd already given my friend the world's second worst pedicure, this time putting on and taking off toe nail varnish THREE TIMES – but the poor thing was patently terrified of her tyrannical boss who kept on shouting things at her in Slovakian, causing her to cower with tears in her eyes before grinning at me (the boss, that is) saying 'is good worker'.
my toenails are just about grown back. thank you for asking

i haven't blogged for so long that i almost forgot my username and password (i've had virtual constipation!).
speaking of passwords - i've recently switched my mobile phone network. after years of faithfulness with one provider another came along with a decent offer and no long term contract so i've defected. anyway, having set my contract up online (where else?) i was unable to pick up my voicemail so had to call their service centre:
'OK, what's your password?'
'erm, xxxxxxxxx?'
'no'
'oh, zzzzzzzzz?'
'i'm afraid not'
'is it vvvvvvvvv?
and on and on (obviously those aren't really my passwords) until i'd exhuasted all my options.
so, i may not know my own mobile phone password but there is someone in a call centre somewhere who knows all my passwords and is probably busy emptying my bank account and stealing my identity right now.
he or she may even be writing this post.
oh no!