In my dreams of course.
Sir Alan Sugar gave me a job, not because I won the Apprentice or did a good interview. He just said, ‘You seem brainy and I do like your business suit, £4.99 from New Look was it? Oh go on then, have a job. Here’s a calculator and there’s your office, that big posh one over there with the glass table that’s on the telly.’ Continue reading
A scorching weekend in Blackpool with my bezzy mate Sam. We kicked off with the Pleasure Beach (or Pleasure Bitch, as he insisted on calling it).
He was hopping around, making impatient noises about going on The Big One. In case you don’t know, The Big One is an absolutely massive, ginormous roller coaster. It’s so big, it has its own warning light to stop aeroplanes flying into it and it can go at 80 something miles an hour. The company who made it doesn’t exist any more which begs the question, who’s going to fix it if it breaks down? A student on work experience with a tube of superglue? Continue reading
The Wild Mouse is an entity that sprang from the loins of Satan and its life force is sustained by the sadistic pleasure it gains from terrifying anyone daft enough to climb onto its rickety frame and into one of its little tin mouse cars.
Oh, it looks innocuous enough. Cute, even.
Like a roller coaster for beginners, the tiny, sugar-coloured cars bearing hand-painted mousy names like Jerry or Lulu or Minnie.
‘Ha!’ you say with chest-swelling bravado. ‘Ha. It’ll be a doddle, this.’ And you beckon to your family: ‘Come on folks, all aboard.’ They hop on, smiling, anticipating a few minutes of wholesome fun. And within about ten seconds, your well-adjusted, happy family is reduced to a blur of flailing limbs and anguished howls, barely audible over the hissing and rattling of the sadistic, Satanic creature. Continue reading
Oh chocolate. Oh my teeth.
After years of choc-scoffing, they look like something you’d find in a corner of a junk yard where a grubby geezer sells bits of houses and the broken things dead people leave behind.
‘Oh that old heap of stones with the green slime on them? Yeah, you can ‘ave them for …’ he pauses, sniffs, wipes nose on sleeve…’ Yeah, call it a fiver, mate. No, don’t touch ’em yet, they’re a health hazard. ‘ He shouts through to the back and an unenthusiastic youth slopes through the door with his finger up his nose.
‘Yeh? Wot?’
‘Give these a wipe down will ya, Dwayne?’ Hands him a stinking cloth with dog hairs stuck to it which Dwayne duly applies. Continue reading
‘S’cuse me, can you tell me where the rye bread is, please?’ I asked an assistant in Tesco this morning.
There were Barbie cakes, designer loaves with a photo of the chef on the packet, nasty white sliced bread for making pot noodle sandwiches. Everything but rye bread. Muttering bread-related curses, I found said assistant arranging brown sliced loaves on the shelf (she was doing a grand job, they looked very attractive).
‘In the next aisle,’ she said. Then, as she’d been trained, ‘I’ll show you.’ took me to the next aisle where the health food was stacked. There, teetering on top of the nuts, raisins and wheat free whatnots, was the rye bread.
‘What use is it up there?’ I spluttered. ‘It’s bread. It needs to be with all the other bread.’
‘Well it came with all this other stuff you see,’ she said slightly defensively, waving a hand at the soya drinks and the wheat-free cakes, ‘so they put it all together.’
‘But, but… surely goods should be categorised according to what they are rather than how the distributers send them out?’
By now, I was bewildered yet determined to prove my point. If there’d been a barrister’s wig and gown to hand I’d have donned them and started striding up and down, turning on my heels, interrogating and asking trick questions culminating in a triumphant, ‘I rest my case, m’lud.’
But she wasn’t playing. The defendant sought refuge in the universal supermarket shrug that says ‘Dunno, I’m only the shop assistant getting paid peanuts. They can put the bread with the flippin’ dog biscuits for all I care’ and wandered off to her bread stacking leaving me with my imaginary wig and gown, baffled and irritated. Continue reading
Vintage trams are ace. They have dim yellow light bulbs and faded patterned seats that prickle your bum when you sit down. Best of all they make a rattly noise as they go along the sea front and have a bell so the driver can talk to everyone in tram language:
A vintage tram behaving itself.
(Source: Wiki)
Dingaling! – Hey, I’m driving the tram!
Dingaling! Ding! – I’m driving the tram. You’re not. Loooo-zer.
Ding, ding. DING! – Get out of the way or I’m taking you home as sandwich filler.
But a modern trams is completely different. Although it has a bell that goes dingaling, it’s just a train on a cable. Bit boring really.
Boring to everyone except me, that is.
I fret, I sweat, I chew my nails. I lie awake at night stewing and worrying and have finally come to the appalling conclusion that I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks it’s dangerous to drive a train through a shopping centre. Continue reading
Absolute top of the list of things to do in Tallinn is the KGB Museum at the Hotel Viru. Our guide, Jana, was vivacious, animated and bursting with amusing stories about The Hotel Viru and its history.
It was built in 1972, to bring much needed tourist revenue into Estonia. It’s bright and cheerful inside now but originally the decor was dark and gloomy, even a bit scary, with that typically Soviet, austere-but-trying-to-be-grand look about it.
Finland had a job shortage at the time and the Soviets wanted some of their oil so they did a deal and Finnish workers built the hotel which is why it took two years to build, instead of 7 or 8.
There was a three week gap between hotel completion and opening. Very handy. Gave the KGB time to get in there and install their radio equipment and bugging devices on the 23rd floor – the floor that didn’t officially exist. Although every so often, somebody would helpfully write next to the buttons in the lift, ’23rd floor – KGB’ and a cleaner would be sent to scrub it off, pronto.
The public lift stopped at the 22nd floor then a secret stairway went to the non-existent 23rd floor where there was a sign on the door saying ‘Nothing in here.’ One employee did wander into the surveillance room by mistake and found himself looking at the business end of a gun. ‘Oh hi guys, what are you listening to? Anything good?’ probably wouldn’t have been what he said to the men with the head phones.
KGB office and telephones. The red one didn’t need a dial. It went straight through to Moscow.
Years ago, I lived in a block of flats in South London. Well heated, they were, with loads of rubbish left all over the place.
The cockroaches simply adored it and once word got round, they arrived in swarms. I swear the Cockroach Kingdom had their own Ideal Home Exhibition with a special display stand for those flats:
Strut your funky stuff at the South London Party Palace. A Disco every Night.
So they did.
It became second nature to tip shoes upside down before putting them on, inspect anything before picking it up and to kick the little critters off work surfaces, chairs and dinner plates. Once, in mid conversation, I absentmindedly stood up, brushed one off my friend’s shoulder and then sat down again and carried on chatting as if nothing had happened. Continue reading
This morning I got one of those scam phone calls. Bad connection. Overseas voice:
‘Good morning Ma’am, I’m phoning you from the official Windows Microsoft company. We are very concerned about problems you might be having with your Windows computer. You may have viruses and malware in your system so I will help you sort it out. Please, Ma’am, will you switch your computer on?’
Time for some fun.
Me: Malware, you say? What’s malware?
Mr Windows: Ma’am, malware is like a spy in your computer.
Me: Spies? (slight shriek) Spies in my computer? You’re telling me there’s a spy inside my computer? How did it get there?
Mr Windows: (giggling) No, Ma’am, not spies, just… Continue reading
There seems to be no shortage of beautiful hostels and cheap hotels in Tallinn. Atmospheric buildings with polished wooden floors and eccentric furniture or ultra modern clean lines with tasteful furnishings. Loads to choose from.
Then I read some of the reviews. Mostly positive but a few along these lines:
‘The rooms had a funny smell’
‘We couldn’t sleep for the noise of the nightclub next door’
The staff were vacuuming outside our door at 2 o clock in the morning’
We nearly froze to death – there were icicles hanging off the bed’
‘The manager had an ice pick in his pocket and an insane gleam in his eye’. Continue reading
