Friday 7th July

I keep reading in the Standard's Hot Tickets magazine their weekly interview with various famous people called "My London" - where the celebrity names a place for a series of headings - and every time I read it, I think about answering it myself. But it's doubtful I'm going to achieve a degree of fame to warrant them interviewing me for the magazine, so I'm going to shamelessly rip them off and answer it on here *beam* Then if I ever *do* get famous enough for a real interview, I can compare the answers and see if celebrity has changed me, tee hee.

My London

Living: Colindale, in the depths of zone 4
Eating: Wagamama, Oriental City round the corner from my house, Crazy Salads, but mostly toasted sandwiches at home
Drinking: Everywhere?! University of London Union (ULU) for cheapness; Little Havana for cocktails; Break for the Border for a change; Clerys Clock in Colindale for laziness
Dancing: Any of the above bars when trashed. Voulez Vous, Heaven, my bedroom. I must be getting old because I hardly ever go clubbing anymore
Exercising: Frisbee on the playing fields between Colindale and Burnt Oak (*scrape* - that was the bottom of the barrel)
Working: Kilburn
Learning: School of Slavonic and East European Studies - SSEES - and at work, which is like a sociology or psychology project all by itself
Dressing: Ha! I don't shop for clothes, it's too depressing. Shoes from the DM place on Covent Garden; hair slides from Claire's
Walking The foresty part of Hampstead Heath; anywhere it's raining
Rummaging: My favourite pastime! Second hand shops on the Golders Green Road, where everyone is rich. Any bookshop in the city. The useless-crap-shops in Burnt Oak
Romance: What? What's that? Oh yeah, I remember. The wooden thing on my bedroom wall, even if it is a little out of date now
Escaping: Inside London - a bus journey to anywhere: hassle-free time to sit and watch things pass you by whilst annoying people with your personal stereo. Outside - anywhere coastal. Shortly, Las Vegas
Collecting: Memories
Inspiring: London Aquarium for tranquility; the houses on Finchley Road for ambition; SSEES for pride; my garden for a small sense of security
Dreaming: Alexandra Palace - without a doubt the most breathtaking and inspiring view of London - all those millions of lives spread out in front of you: a guaranteed head straightener
Avoiding: The Edexcel building on Russell Square for bad memories; Leicester Square and Oxford Street for the crowds

I think I will miss the city when I'm not here anymore. There's *always* something new to see. But then, it's been an ambition of mine to see the "graveyard" of old casino signs they have in the desert outside Las Vegas ever since I first saw it as the backdrop for a fashion shoot in a magazine when I was 13, and it seems that the city is considering changing it around and making it into an official museum, which just won't be the same. So, I'll follow a different dream for a while and come back to London when I've exhausted it.

What a knackering week at work! I've been on 7.30am-4pm shifts since Monday - and I have another three to go before I have any time off *sigh* But I'm going to Portsmouth for my time off, so it isn't all bad. I'm rounding up the troops and we're going to go to 80s cheese night at 5th Avenue, woo hoo. I digress - work was actually quit fun because I was rostered on with the same 2 people every day and we ended up having a right laugh. On Wednesday some bloke recorded his description whilst, um, how shall I say it - in the throes of passion? You could hear the other guy in the background gruffly commenting, "Yeah, you like that, don't you boy?" which was enough to set me on the edge of hysterics for the rest of the day, if not the week. It's become a bit of a catchphrase now. Today I caught a paedophile and another guy in his sister's underwear; yesterday I caught 3 people into "family fun" and someone into animals. These people never cease to amaze me. My monthly stats came out and I am almost top of the monitors for typing voiceboxes, and comfortably just above middle for actual monitoring. So it's all good.

We ended up having a bit of a discussion about blokes in their sisters' knickers today, because I gave a graphic description of what I would do to my brother if I ever caught him in my underwear (shudder) and Martin wanted to know why it would bother me (but he was only teasing - I think - I hope). Then Peter, the Australian supervisor who doesn't usually say much (at least not to me) said, "What would happen if I wore your underwear and then walked in on your brother who was also wearing your underwear, and he decked me for wearing his sister's underwear and then you walked in on the two of us, both still wearing your underwear?"

I'm going to be in therapy for years.

Sunday 16th July

OK, it is evident that all my student claims about students working just as hard as everyone else were, in fact, untrue, since now that I am working fulltime I only have time for weekly updates. I spend the rest of my time doing mundane boring adult things like cleaning my house, watching the news, doing laundry, going to Asda and making gooseberry jam in the nude (the gooseberries needed using up and all my clothes were in the wash OK!). At the moment I'm working nights, and surprisingly I get a lot more done. Like yesterday, I did all that stuff *and* wash my hair *and* made a new CD *and* I didn't wake up until 4pm. Well, that's not quite true. I woke up at 11am when the phone rang but I had only been asleep for 3 hours. I was so sound asleep I picked up the phone and mumbled "Er....um....good morning...er...um....Virtual Universe" into it (that's the name of the company I work for) and whoever was on the other end hung up in confusion. I must remember that one for getting rid of unwanted callers. But that's what I call asleep - I'm in bed, in my house, yet when the phone rings and I pick it up, I still think I'm at work. Hmmm, unusual. Even more freaky - when I woke up at 4pm, I'd just had a horrible nightmare in which Six out of that old TV show Blossom murdered the Thug in a dress shop in Portsmouth while I watched and then I got really hysterically upset and told Lisa, who owned the dress shop, and she told me to turn myself into the police. No, no, no, NOBODY tell me what it means, I have drawn my own conclusions and I *don't* want to know *beam*

First night on's always the hardest, I was falling asleep Friday night until Wayne turned to air conditioning up and aimed it straight at me. Even drinking my cups of tar, as they are affectionately known to my colleagues - instant coffee made with 4 spoons of granules, 1 of sugar and no milk - didn't make much difference, apart from giving me the shakes after the 4th cup. The good thing is that there are loads of voiceboxes to type and I must have reached my monthly quota already.

Yesterday as I said, I washed my hair, but I didn't have enough time left to dry it, so I tied it up in pigtails and ran out of the house. More fool me. I don't know why - I personally don't think I become suddenly gorgeous with my hair school-girl style - but no fewer than 5 blokes tried to chat me up on the way to or from work. And they were all weird. I mean, why? Do I have "slut" tattooed on my forehead? Do I have a sign on my back saying, "Hit on me! I sleep with weirdoes!"? Do I have a permanent red light floating somewhere above my head? Did somebody put my picture in the classified section of the Evening Standard bearing the caption, "Hey! Are you too ugly/smelly/freakish to get laid? I'M YOUR GIRL!"? NO! Yet still they swarm. One bloke overtook me on the street this morning and said, "thankyou", completely ignoring the fact I had neither slowed down nor deviated from my path to let him pass. Then when I acknowledged him with a half nod, he stopped dead in front of me and asked me my name. He was number 5, and he doesn't know how close he came to being socked one. The worst part of it is that when I ignore them or turn them down, they always look really offended or pissed off. But, I mean, if some bloke comes up to you at the bus stop, and he's about 45 with a 3 day old beard and he smells of dog and old lager and dried sweat and he's too drunk to walk straight and it's only 7am, and he says to you, "Come back to my house", you're hardly going to say yes, are you? I'm not going to say, "OH YES please, I'd love to get repeatedly raped and the fact that I'd pass out from the smell before getting close enough to hit you, let alone snog you, is completely beside the point". *Shudder* yergh, it's hard to be this sexy *grin*

I spent a very happy 3 days in Portsmouth this week, for my mum's graduation. I made it into the local paper! Terrible picture, but it saves having to tell everyone my classmark. They made me get up at 8am and I was all cat-allergy-swollen but well, fame at last. I hung out with Caroline on Tuesday night and her bloke (for want of a better term) and Bob, who was in our Young Enterprise group 6 years ago. We had the best time, we sat on Castle Hill for about 3 hours smoking cigarettes and laughing a lot. She gave me some ideas for Bunnyland which you may well be seeing very soon. Then on Wednesday she joined Leila, Graham and I in the Hogshead for a few before we popped down to 5th Avenue for 80s night, which was also a lot of fun. Except that in the Hogshead, I was tempted away from my usual brand of fizzy, weak cider to a far-superior, still, more appley version. More fool me. It was about twice the strength and I drank 4 pints of it, so I was pretty hammered by the time we got to the club. It was an ace night, they played all the amazing cheesy music but I got steadily drunker until my dance moves started to incorporate flicking helpless strangers in the face with my hair. *hang head* poor Graham....I did apologise and he was kind enough to say it didn't matter although I had been "a bit uncontrollable". He brought along this bloke he'd met from the internet. I had my suspicions about where exactly - I thought it must be from some dodgy newsgroup when he wouldn't tell me - and sure enough, Kylie Minogue *grin* bless. A good time was had by all, I think, although I lost my tights somewhere along the way (NO! I think I took them off because I was hot) and I woke up in the morning with a pounding headache. Either I'm getting old or it was drinking that cider - hopefully the latter, I really don't want to start getting hangovers.

Anyway, it was very restorative. For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say that I didn't want to come back to London so soon. But here I am! And off to work I go.

Wednesday 19th July

In the words of Stalin, that great mass murdering paranoid communist, I am quite "dizzy with success." However, I should point out that when Stalin used the word, he was referring to the success of the Soviet policy of collectivising millions of farmers, destroying the private land ownership promised by the revolution and creating a famine in which millions of people died. For my part, my success if rather more - of a success, really. I can promise you this much - it will not lead to the deaths of millions from starvation in the Ukraine, that's for sure.

It's not one big thing, really, more of lots of little good things. I've got 2 days off work, for a start. All the songs I have searched Napster for in the past 3 days have not only been there, but have downloaded first time, without crashing, at a decent speed. Sue Bailey, one of my closest friends at uni until she was forced to postpone her studies because of her back injury, rang me up the other day and offered to store all my kitchen stuff when I go away which is amazingly helpful of her. Dru agreed to babysit my computer if I can find a way of getting it to Bristol. I got a postcard from the Thug in Korea and I didn't even ask for one (no, I'm not reading anything into it - it's just nice to know people do think about me). It's sunny outside. I got an email from my dad saying he read in the paper that there is a shortage of skilled workers in Las Vegas - particularly cooks - and that when this new casino opens next month it will have 26 restaurants in it, and he is networking furiously on my behalf, so job prospects look much more favourable. I got a 2:1 - did I say that already? Maybe. I've filled the car for Blackpool for my birthday by inviting Allen (although the car hire place already took their dosh - the gits - so I am 239 quid over my Visa card limit *choke* but nevermind) Caz just rang me up and said (1) that she was going to come and see me some time and (2) that she'd bumped into Shara, one of our closest mates in my last years in Portsmouth who I'd lost touch with, whilst out shopping, and exchanged phone numbers. And to cap it all, I'm meeting a boy tomorrow to go and see Mission: Impossible 2. Yes, a real bloke! Admittedly yet ANOTHER bloke from the internet. But, well, old habits die hard.

So, I'm as happy as Stalin after dekulakisation. Happier, in fact, as I'm not having to murder all of the people in my political party because I'm afraid they're going to assassinate me (I hope no Russian history experts examine this too closely since I'm spanning an entire decade of Stalinism and relating it all to one quote from the beginning, it's not very accurate). I'm all full of the joys of history now, because I just finished reading "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. Couldn't put it down. It's set in a parallel world, where the Germans won WW2, and it really was one of the best things I've read in ages. In fact, the best thing I've read since I read "Archangel", also by Robert Harris, about the secret love child of Stalin raised in the backwoods of Siberia. Robert Harris, he da man.

The one cloud on the horizen is the demise of my poor phone. Yep, I should have known I'd jinx myself - just last week I was thinking how amazing it was that I had managed to keep something for 11 whole months without breaking it or losing it or having it nicked, especially something I never leave the house with. Then on Monday night I got to work and examined my phone, only to discover that I had bashed it whilst in my bag, or something, and cracked the screen. So now I have no display - no text messaging, no phone book, no alarm, no changing the ring tone, no finding out the notes which makes up the current ring tone (Willo the Wisp, natch) which means I'll have to guess if I ever program it into another phone. Gah. It's just typical that my phone should break a mere month before I was going to have it put on pay-as-you-go so I could have the same number when I cam back from the States. Now I have to buy a new handset. I'm *almost* sorry I didn't insure it, but not quite.

But, well, everything else is pretty good, so that's cool. Last night at work I had to monitor the female callers, good grief, I could not stop laughing. One bloke asked this girl if she had a vibrator - she said she did, but the batteries were flat. So he had her go get her hair dryer, put it on the coldest setting and blow cold air onto various parts of her anatomy. I nearly choked from laughing so much. Then this other guy was having a discussion with one of the girls about the size of her breasts -
Girl: I'd have them reduced to a 36C if it was my choice
Weirdo: No, not smaller, go bigger, bigger (gasp)
Girl: What size would you like me to get done?
Weirdo: Double H
(Me: *shudder*) Girl: OK, I've had the implants, now I'm a 36HH
Weirdo: Are they really big and sore?
Girl: Yeah, they're really uncomfortable, they're too big....
Weirdo: Would you like to have a breast reduction?
Girl: Would you like me to have a breast reduction?
Weirdo: No (pant pant) but have one anyway (gasp)
Girl: OK, I've had them reduced to a DD
Weirdo: Tell me about the scars and how sore they are
Girl: They're all scarred and sore and now there's milk dripping out of them
(Me: clinging to chair to keep from falling over laughing)
Weirdo: Oooohhhhooooo, oh, tell me more, tell me again (sigh sigh pant pant)
Girl: There's milk dripping out of the nipples and down onto the floor and (etc etc)
Weirdo: (interrupts about 10 seconds later) OK [insert name of girl here] I've come now, bye! (click)

I was highly amused. The job is a permanent learning curve