Posts (page 2)

... and anyone else who is lactose intolerant and teetotal.

Cornish Pasty

Yes, my blogging has reached new depths.  Who knew there was a cesspit at the bottom of the drain?

... or anyone else supposedly 'lactose intolerant'.

Scrumpy

... but seeing as I've opened up my outlook to see 241 unread emails and I can't find a clear space on my desk, I thought I'd defer total immersion in all things work for a few minutes.

That done, "Hello my voxy friends and neighbours" - I've brought back some rum 'n' raisin fudge for you all to enjoy - the bonus is that it is virtually fat-free.  (Arf.  Virtually - geddit?!)

A gift from St Ives

Please see email below which my friend received from her company:

"Subject: 10th Floor Kettle
Importance: High

My friend and her colleagues are, understandably, letting off considerable steam about this.

Quiet here, innit?

You should change your battery or switch to outlet power immediately to keep from losing your work.

... try these 14 simple tests.

[Apologies for the extremely lazy blogging, but these just had me crying at my desk.  Luckily no-one else is in yet.]

Test 1
Women : To prepare for pregnancy, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months.
After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children, go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself.
Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home.
Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2
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
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 12pm 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 is not as easy as it seems:
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.
3. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.

Test 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5-door wagon.
And don't think that you can leave it out on the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment and leave it there.
2. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
3. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6
Getting ready to go out:
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
15. 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
Go to the local supermarket.
Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child.
A full-grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9
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.
7. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old child.

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

Test 11
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.
4. Cover the stains with crayon.
5. How does that look?

Test 12
Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly.
Important: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy - occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet if required.
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
Start talking to an adult of your choice.
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
Put on your finest work attire.
Pick a day on which you have an important meeting. Now:
1. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
2. Stir
3. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
4. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
5. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
6. Do not change, you have no time.
7. Go directly to work

Are you a go-getter or do you wait for good things to happen to you?
Submitted by sleepybear.

I was waiting for a good QotD to come my way, but it looks like I'll have to go out and get one.

Sorry, that's not entirely fair, sleepybear - it's not as bad as some; I just wanted an excuse to shout at something and to be honest, I've been disappointed - couldn't you have asked something like,

"What is the wettest water you've ever put your hand in?"

"Tell us how you butter toast."

"How great is vox?"

"Show us how you kiss arse."

"What is the worst STD you've ever had and who gave it to you?"

"Have you been affected by suicidal thoughts recently?  Bonus question: What did you do about them?!" ?

Welcome to a week of PMT.

(Mother's Day was lovely, by the way - homemade cards, lots of glitter, two new games for the DS and lunch at Bodeans - can't do a link for some reason.  Arse.) 

I was hot.  As hot as a volcano.  In fact, I was in a volcano and I kept on jumping on rocks to get higher and higher, out of the way of the rising lava.  And I was so, so hot, but not in a sweaty way; in a dry, arid, burning way.  Whichever way I turned there was no breeze, no space to cool down and when finally I'd made it out of the volcano, I was sent back down to the bottom again, only to have to start jumping and climbing my way out again.  And while all this was happening, all I could hear was Elvis,

"You look like an angel
Walk like an angel
Talk like an angel
But I got wise,
You're the devil in disguise"

Note to self: do not play Mario on DS or watch "Lilo and Stitch" when you're ill - especially not just before you go to bed.

Since last week, I've started travelling to work by tube.  This is partly because it is faster than the bus and partly because the tube station is a longer walk and it's uphill, so I feel that the walk is contributing to my 'get fit, not fat' campaign.  Also, because I travel so early, I am guaranteed a seat, if not most of a carriage, so I'm not likely to get the panic attacks I get when I start to feel claustrophobic.

Tube travelling has changed a lot since I last used it regularly which would have been about 10 years ago.  It seems as though large amounts of money have been invested into refurbishing trains and platforms and escalators - all to the good, as far as I can tell.

When I first started using the tube by myself as a teenager, you could still smoke on the trains and they had wooden floors and the escalators were wooden.  It seems crazy now to think that smoking wasn't banned earlier and it took a disaster like the Kings Cross fire to impose restrictions.  My history is hazy and I can't be arsed to research for the purposes of this blog, but I think it used to be the case that you could smoke anywhere on the underground and then a single smoking carriage was introduced for each tube and then that was stopped and you were only allowed to smoke on the platform.

As a 'sensible' young teenager, I hated smoking and I'd taken to heart the cross-sections of black lungs we'd been shown of smokers at school.  I couldn't understand why people couldn't just have an apple instead of a cigarette - I particuarly hated it if I'd got on the smoking carriage by mistake and the tube would get stuck in the tunnel.  An announcement would come over the tannoy and say that we'd be stuck for 15 minutes and everyone would tut and light up a fag.  It was grim.

Mind you, when I started smoking, the smoking carriage became a godsend - not least because I could tell my mother that I'd got stuck on it, which is why I smelled of smoke.  Buses too - you could smoke anywhere, and then you could only smoke on the top deck and then only at the back of the top deck.  I used to love smoking on buses - especially with school friends - we'd pass around the communal cigarette, taking a drag and trying to look cool while we inadvertantly flicked ash onto each other's skirts.  And at least you could open the window.

Now there's no chance of smoking, which is just as well because despite the modernising and metalising of the underground, it still remains a tinderbox because of the drifts of Metros and London Lites that you have to wade through and scrape off your seat to sit down.  I hate those papers with a passion - I hate the people that hand them out because they're so agressive in the way that they leap around the pavement, almost hitting you with their bloody pieces of tat and then I hate the mess that's left all over the tube and the pavements.  I regularly walk into the paths of on-coming buses just to avoid my local Metro dealer.  But the journey in the morning is fine - the freebie pushers aren't out in force and the papers are neatly stacked in their stands for people to help themselves.

What I do find irritating are the constant announcements.  I'm guessing these are unique to each line or each station, as I don't hear them on the way home, but certainly at my tube station in the morning there will be an announcement to let me know how long it is until the next train, then another tell me when the train is nearly here, then another to remind me where the train is going, then when I get on the train it will tell me the next station and will do so for the rest of the journey, all the while this information is duplicated on the screens on the platform and the train and then there are other announcements for 'Ladies and Gentlemen and children of all ages' about oyster cards and the long, long or not so long list of tubes that aren't running or stations that are closed.

I guess that having these announcements are good for blind or partially sighted people with memories like goldfish, but I find them so loud and frequent and stilted and I'm trying to read and I get distracted by the appalling diction.

*bing bong*

The next train is? a southbound northern line train to? Kennington. via? Charing Cross.  The next station is? (smiley voice) Archway.  This train is? One. Minute. Away.

The next train to? Kennington. Via? Charing Cross. Is approaching.  Please stand back from the edge of the platform.

This train is for? Kennington. Via? Charing Cross.  Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

Please let the passengers off the train first.

The next station is? Kentish Town. Please change here for? Docklands light railway. And? Other overground services.

All the way to work.  Except last week I was on a tube where the annoucement was broken, so at each station all we got was, "This station is? ..." and then silence.  It was lovely, peaceful, calm and relaxing.

I remember when you used to get the drivers or the guards being cheeky chappies or chappesses with their off-the-cuff putdowns for stupid passengers that hold up the tubes by trying to keep the doors open.  Maybe they still do - it's just that I travel at such an uncivilised and sleepy time that I don't hear it any more because we're all so well behaved.  I remember that when my brother was a driver on the underground, he told me that a colleague of his (a fellow driver) used to read out the star signs from The Sun, to the delight (or not) of his passengers - I don't suppose he cared what their reaction was, stuck in his booth, he was probably just bored.  But I did used to like hearing from the driver - it felt reassuring that there was a human being driving the train. 

I suppose I just don't like the announcements these days because they are frequent to the point of constant and they're so robotic and I just long for a bit of P&Q so I can enjoy my book otherwise I may decide that fat rather than fit is the way to go and head back onto the buses.

What's your method for packing a suitcase?

Seriously?

What is the point of QotD?  I thought it was intended to inspire people who didn't know what to write to share an anecdote or two, maybe offer an insight into their lives, maybe get other people thinking, "I wonder what other people have answered to this one?" and read other people's blogs who they might not have read otherwise.

Now that there are six categories into which we can organise our posts there are five lame-o QotDs in each section, in addition to the usual main page US-centric offerings.  And if you live outside the US, don't even bother thinking about answering the political QotDs.  Oh, and if you venture by the 'culture' section, there are no fewer than 3 questions about the Super Bowl: What was your favourite part?  What is your day like on Super Bowl Sunday? and What is your favourite Super Bowl recipie?

It just seems as though the QotDs are just there for the sake of having them, with Vox's intention to build up a sort of pseudo community, so when you get to the category pages, as well as a lovely photo, you have teasers like "Pooky tells us which type of grass he likes to watch grow" or "Sindi shares with us her hilarious trip to the colonic irrigation clinic".  I'm guessing it can't be beyond the wit of someone who's getting paid to run Vox, if not to come up with their own good QotDs, at least vet the ones that get sent in.

I know that I'm one of those awful people who never suggest QotDs, but most of the time I'm so irritated by them that it just kills any motivation to create ones that aren't totally facetious.  But anyway, here are mine, for you Vox North Londoners (apologies to anyone who lives outside the A406):

Were you affected by tubes not stopping at Euston on the Charing Cross branch at the weekend?  Was it in a good way or a bad way?

Do you think the CPZ should be introduced on Hornsey Lane?

What is your favourite meal to order at Banners?  What would you do if this wasn't on the menu?

How many people were waiting for the 263 this morning?  Was this more or less than usual?

The next door's cat is missing [this is sad], What will you do to find it?