Wednesday 8th May

Not quite in my new, permanent location yet - although my beloved machine will probably find itself moved at the weekend; the broadband is arriving on Tuesday (priorities, you see, it's all about priorities....the glass is falling out of the windows but we'll have cable television and a permanent internet connection). Thenceforth, Bunnyland will be 100% live, 100% of the time (except when I forget to feed the meter and the electricity goes off). Maybe I'll get a web cam going, and you can all spend 20 hours a day staring at a blue wall, and the other four watching me fecklessly picking my nose and fiddling with my contact lens, a la Big Brother.

Mr Z and I moved my stuff out of storage on Monday with the aid of the old school minibus, a mustard monstrosity with a broken seat belt and a large hole in the floor. Still, it did the job, and my stuff is now moved for good - well, most of it. Have been unpacking bits and pieces, Mr Z keeps pulling things out and exclaiming over the pointlessness of keeping them but I'm sure I had my reasons at the time. Mind you, some things I am wondering about (one black shoe and half a packet of plastic bendy straws, anyone?). Spent a blissful afternoon yesterday (wasn't working but more on that all in good time) reading through old magazines and sorting through the hundreds of buttons I, ahem, inherited from my last residence. I'm planning to do something crafty with them although as yet I'm not sure exactly what. Mr Z is slowly developing a haunted look.

The house is still standing, although as we've started pulling down the built in furniture I am wondering how. The built in bed in the soon-to-be computer room (aka the blue room) was in places glued, in places screwed, and in places nailed to the floor, while the adjoining wardrobe unit is screwed to the wall, nailed and screwed and glued to the bed, and attached to the ceiling with coach bolts. I can safely say that if armageddon came, the wardrobe would still be standing. Come this Saturday it won't be, mind you - although behind it is a wall not painted in the same shade as the rest of the room (dark blue) and without skirting, but resplendent with large holes in the plaster at floor level. It's been a bit of a revelation, and now mistaking. We're going to take out much of the built in wardrobe (MFI, thankfully, and not DIY)in the main bedroom this weekend - it's got a shelf unit running above where the bed was, which is sagging disconcertingly in the centre and pulling away from the wall. I'd be in a permanent panic about the whole lot dropping on my face as I slept, although presumably it would only improve matters....for the house, I mean, not me *grin*

Finished my temp job last week at the financial advisers, was NOT SORRY because there was so much infighting and niggly nit picking and general back stabbiness and it was not at all a nice atmosphere to work in. Getting sniped at for using a printer without asking? Please. What did they want me to do, copy the stuff off the screen by hand? They gave a glowing report back to the agency, naturally *preen*, and I had yesterday off, but I'm doing data entry for the British Transport Police for the rest of the week. Nobody can say my working life isn't varied...

Following the discovery of my site by some regulars at the Tree, I feel I had better write about them some more this week, although truth be told, there is more to write about this week anyway. Trouble at the Tree is like buses - nothing for ages, and then it all comes at once, on one night, and then turns back into the affable, friendly, smoky, murky hole (joke...JOKE! don't bar me) we all know and love. As the ditty goes, "I'd like to be, in the Cherry Tree, with a pint of 'ucking Stella in me gob" or the goal or something - presumably that's a yokelism because I can't quite make out what Wheeler is catterwhauling over the feedback from his guitar. Anyway, Saturday night, Steve (Yul Brynner) and me'Julie had a beach party, they had Richie's inflatable shark over the pool table and a surf board up and karaoke and all sorts of things; I put on flip flops, a skirt, a vest and a head scarf for the occasion and Yul wore shorts and a loud shirt; Martin the barman/chef went all out with a cockleshell bra, a grass skirt and some rather fetching lei. Even Mr Z made the small concession of wearing a pair of spectacular 80s sunglasses, and looked truly Weird Science-esque. The atmosphere was almost as good as the night before when Yul played all his dodgy records, I had my bottle of red, and a lovely evening ensued, although it got interestinger as it wore on.

Mad Dave started it off, dancing on a bench; no-one was watching so he decided to get up on the table, slipped on the beer, put his elbow through the window and fell between the two tables, breaking one. Glasses, beer, fag ends went everywhere, he got up with a bloody nose declaring forthcoming sobriety and a wish to develop a passion for bingo. At this point the new barmaid, Kerry, who had cried off work with a face like a car crash but stayed in the bar drinking and looking vacant all evening, hooked up with some long haired lover (she's from Liverpool so that almost works) and spent much of the evening talking to him and his mates, presumably about the boyfriend she was blaming for her face because as she tried to leave with the long haired lover and her boyfriend turned up, in the words of Matt, it all turned incredibly sour. The boyfriend, Lurch, was not impressed. Kerry retreated behind the bar, whereupon Lurch rang the police to report the theft of his mobile phone, which she had. She then disappeared for about five minutes, came back, talked in monosyllables to Char and I in the ladies and then had an epileptic fit on the floor. An ambulance was called.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the pub, some dodgy bird with a lit cigarette was doing her bit for all those people who died in Jaws by having a go at Richie's inflatable shark, whereupon Richie had a go at her, whereupon she had a go back, whereupon all Richie's mates - Summers, Ben, um...don't shoot me for not mentioning you, I'm no good with names - strapping young fellow me lads the lot of them, had a go right back, and lo, a fight ensued, and there was much yelling and gnashing of teeth, much threatening of violence and - worse - barring, and much rubber necking by punters who were not at all involved but like watching a good fight, has anybody got any popcorn, and what's this girl doing lying on the floor shaking at the other end of the bar?

Anyway, that all went outside, an ambulance turned up for Kerry and eventually took her and Lurch to the hospital (nobody was much in favour of Lurch being there but if he'd stayed he would have been as braindead as his namesake by the time the foaming angry types of Oldland had finished with him, and anyway we heard some things latterly that made us all wonder about the other side of the coin, and Kerry hasn't been back yet); a parallel ambulance turned up for another boy who was fitting across the road, there was some sort of fight outside and then the police turned up, and some bloke started hassling Char about money for the fag machine.

Now, I only drink once in a blue moon (you older readers might be guffawing at that but it's a bit of a new leaf with this slimming thing) - and what a night to choose for my bottle of wine! I was so busy trying to be with it that I didn't realise I was actually quite out of it until I got home and went to bed. What a night! Yul and me'Julie were not happy bunnies by the end of it; Ben was fizzing with unspent violence and broke his shell necklace all over the floor. He gets quote of the night for his account of a conversation with one of the barred kiddies that turned up at the barbecue that afternoon (at least, I think that's when it was - I got a bit confused) - anyway, it went something like
Quarry: I'm going to blow up this pub!
Ben: Well, I'm going to punch you
Quarry: I'm going to come and blow up your house man, safe, innit, aye (or something)
Ben: Well, I'm still going to punch you
Quarry: I'm going to shoot you
Ben: Guess what! I'm going to punch you....WHACK!

Amusing, to say the least. Unfortunately Summers jumped on his foot and broke it the next day so he could not accompany Mr Z, Char, Yul, me'Julie, me and most of the rest of the Cherry Tree massssseeeeffff (safe) to the foam party in town the next day. We had a fab time, Mr Z danced like a 70s rock star all night and various of the Tree got off with their girlfriends and/or Natalie all evening, whilst Richie danced drunkenly and I soberly to all those classics like Incredible and Born Slippy and Insomnia...I was surprised really, they don't seem to be playing music much different from when I was going "dahn Fiff" or to the cheesier clubs of Hertfordshire twice a week, five, six, seven years ago. Makes me feel old.

All that dancing thankfully counteracted the greasy kebab bread, handful of chips and bites of cheeseburger I filched out of Mr Z's bag on the way home. We stopped in Kingswood town centre for food, kiddies streaming out of Chasers nightclub (as was) and getting into scraps with their mates, vicious bastards every one. The girls were worse than the blokes - one girl went sprawling past the car, leaving her shoes in the middle of the road, while another kept flinging her handbag down for effect, and a couple of others got into a nasty looking fight at a suitable distance from where we were parked. Nice to know this all happens closer to my new home than my current one, ho hum....but anyway, yes, the junk. I avoided sins like the plague for Monday and most of Tuesday, and came away from my weigh in this week with a two and a half pound weight loss, and I am very proud to say I have now reached my three stone award - three stone and half a pound, the be precise. I officially weigh roughly what I did when I left school (I was sketchy about my weight then, as I think most fat people are). So that makes it the Diet - day 220: 42 and a half pounds lighter. Can't believe it's been so long, it seems like only yesterday I was gloomily throwing out all my treats and buying in the first of many bags of lentils.

Thursday 16th May

We're finally moved in. All of my stuff is stacked in boxes and bags in the spare room; Mr Z has yet to move most of his stuff (due to space limitations): we're loathe to put things away until we've decorated (look at that, I'm already using the royal we and we've only been living there for six days). The new front and back doors were installed on Saturday, thus making the place secure enough to live in (the front doors were a single glazed sliding affair, lockable from the inside only by a little metal pole one pushed into a hole). Mr Z put in a few hours' hard graft pulling out all the old built in furniture in the afternoon to make way for the bed. The main bedroom was dominated by some grubby, nicotine stained, MFI, MDF wardrobes, with a fetching cupboard unit running across the top of the wall over the space for the bed, which was bowed in the middle and looking scarily rickety. Mr Z spent about half an hour carefully unscrewing the first piece from the wall and from it's neighbours, before gently lifting it down and placing it on the floor. At this point, one of the builders doing the double glazing come upstairs to see what was occurring. "Taking all this down, are you?" he said, putting a hand up to shake the remaining cupboards as a test to their durability, whereupon the whole lot teetered forwards and fell with a crash to the floor.

"Well, that's that job done then," he commented before retreating to his windows, leaving Mr Z in a cloud of dust and with nothing left to do but haul the stuff downstairs.

After he'd taken all that out, he had to rip the carpet up on account of the fact that it was cut to fit the room WITH the wardrobes in place - a curious feature which is repeated in at least three other rooms in the house. Additionally, the previous owners didn't see the point in decorating behind the wardrobes. Therefore, in the main bedroom we have a fetching combination of flock-style wallpaper painted bright turquoise, peeled off in places (I just couldn't cope - luckily they were not as good at gluing up wallpaper as they were at gluing up wardrobes and beds), and bare wall, resplendent with mould and dried on cobwebs, with creaky, bare floorboards and a couple of nicotine-stained MFI, MDF wardrobes (since we had to have somewhere to put our clothes). In the middle of all this is our brand new bed with its brand new duvet and brand new bedding. It looks a bit odd - but it's comfortable in the extreme. I can't wait to have a lie in in it.

Similarly, in the back bedroom we have a combination of dark blue walls with a peeling border (I just wanted to see how well it was stuck down) and patches of bright yellow with green splodges where the furniture had been against the wall. In line with the minimalist chic vein, this room also has bare boards, although in places they are painted white, for some reason, as though somebody had rested something on them before spraypainting it. Neither room has skirting board around much of the walls, so there are big gaps in the plaster as well as holes further up from the built in furniture legacy. The toilet and soil pipe needs replacing, as does the bath apparently, although we have the best shower in the universe - even better than Father Hand's - which will be even better once I have cleaned the mouldy gunge off the pipes and thrown the shower curtain out. When they replace the soil pipe and do the windows at the back, they'll need to re-render the whole of the outside of the back of the house, which will then need repainting, and the dining room needs replastering, as the plaster if lifting away from the brickwork, apparently.

But we've prioritised - most important things first. Hence, on Tuesday Telewest came round and put in a phone, a cable modem and cable television. Our back bedroom, with its funny floorboards, is crammed full of computer equipment, which makes it easily the warmest room in the house, and Mr Z and I spent much of last night vying for bandwidth (he won, of course, with Quake, but once I've sorted out a download list he might not find it so easy). When I'm not doing that, I am reclining in my chair and watching the endless reruns of American TV shows such as Friends and Sex and the City and Ally McBeal and ER on the cable television. Bliss. Can see myself becoming quite the television junkie again if I'm not careful. But I swear now, I will not be tempted to sit up until 4am watching the housemates on Big Brother 3 sleeping.

The nicest thing about finally having moved in the sense of my own space. I can go and sit in the back garden and have a cigarette without fear of recrimination. I can walk around in a state of undress and play music at high volume. I can cook whenever I like, eat wherever I like and I don't have to wash up because that's Mr Z's job (we worked out a deal - he does that and the rubbish, I do the rest). Indeed, on Tuesday night Father Z was round taking up the floorboards so that we could lay the cable into the back bedroom. As he came through the front door with a bunch of tools in his hands, I settled into my chair with my pasta and leeks. He gaped (not without humour) and pointed at the dining room. "There's the table, go and eat there!" he said. I too gaped, and gesticulated with my fork. "There's the front door," I said, "now get out!"

Of course it was only a humourous exchange but I refuse to be curbed.

Well, after all my ranting about the state of the British Music Industry and the Americans having more taste than to buy into the Pop Idol culture and blah blah blah, the unthinkable has happened - the Americans have bought into the Pop Idol culture, literally. I hear that thousands of hopefuls have been queueing on the streets of New York for the chance to be on the American version of the show, which features that judge with the trousers people were always talking about who was really horrible - Simon something? Also, apparently Rik Waller, the lardball who Simon Meanie kicked off the show because he was quote "too fat to ever make it in show business" unquote, and who subsequently released a cover of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" which the media cruelly suggested he was singing about a massive cake, is auditioning for the American version of the show just to spite Simon Meanie (you see: it's amazing how much of this bollocks I pick up considering I have no interest in it whatsoever). Oooh, how spiteful. I bet Simon Meanie is quaking in his infamous trousers. Of course, it has nothing to do with Rik Waller not wanting to admit that the horse he is flogging is well and truly dead. It has nothing to do with him wanting to make another bid for stardom in a country where fat people are more acceptable - or, to put it another way, where victimisation of fat people is wholly unacceptable.

I hope the American television network that optioned Pop Idol has prepared some watertight contracts to protect itself from being sued by hopefuls who get slagged off viciously by Simon Meanie, or who fail to make it into the finalists, or who fail to have a top 10 hit with a bad cover version. Something I've been marvelling at lately - everywhere, people are saying in apparent surprise of various chart acts (Atomic Kitten springs to mind) "They can actually sing". SHOCK HORROR! A pop act that can actually hold a note, harmonise, stay in the right key?! Whatever next?!! I know this might be a bit radical but how about - a pop act that can read music, play its own instruments, write its own songs? (I know Kylie Minogue doesn't write her own songs, but she's old school and thus exempt from this rant). Why is it so shocking that people who are employed to sing can actually sing? Because the record companies are signing muppets with voices like the nocturnal melodies of a cat fight because they are thin/muscly, blonde, can dance in time and photograph well. The new pre-requisite of pop stardom - look good in a magazine spread and we'll do the rest. Had your larynx removed? No problem! You won't be tempted to sing instead of lip synching....

Anyway, enough of that rant. All I seem to do these days is rant about something or other. I'm going to put in something about somebody else's rant now, because I found it amusing, and it ties in quite well with the Americans buying Pop Idol thing. The Weakest Link has been axed from American screens because ratings are falling, and Anne Robinson has been out calling Americans stupid. Here's what she had to say:

America, You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye! "On one US show I asked a young soap star how many minutes there were in half an hour," Anne says, wearily. "And she said 60. I saw George Bush at a benefit concert actually waving at Stevie Wonder," she says, incredulously. "Someone had to tell him 'he can't see you'." Anne wanted to mention the incident on a US chat show but, post- September 11, criticising Dubya was deemed unpatriotic. "Suddenly, you couldn't say anything about him. Before September 11, I remember asking on TV if Bush knew where Europe was. Then suddenly, you had to act as if he was Einstein." She does, however, have a kind word for Bill Clinton. "I think he did womankind a great favour. He proved that giving your boss a blow job in the photocopying cupboard is not dating. Nor is it clever. Throughout history, the disappointment of women is that they are attracted to power."
Anne has become what US media circles call "a break-out personality". She is in talks over a potential US chat show, Anne Talks Tough. NBC, the US network that makes Weakest Link in America, has also bought up Test The Nation [Another quiz headed by Anne Robinson]. "Of course, the real test will be whether Americans can concentrate for an hour," says Anne, lapsing into her old ways. Last year she upset Americans by declaring that few US citizens knew anywhere outside of Idaho - and she despairs of her Stateside contestants.
"You can always tell Texans," she says. "They wear big, bright, multi- coloured sweaters. Every time I see one, I think God's made another rainbow. Then you get the clean-shaven Right-wing Christian types. The Jews on our team are always laughing at them saying: 'He wouldn't have let us hide in his attic.'" Does she think Americans are definitively more stupid than the Brits? "You have to remember that only five per cent of Americans have passports," she says. "That explains a lot..."

Taken from the Daily Mirror website, May 16th (WEBSITE, please note - I didn't buy the paper - I found the article through a fantastic little news site called NewsNow which was brought to my attention by the Intranet at my new workplace.)

Well, that lot made me chuckle and no mistake. Not all Americans are stupid...it's like here, when people watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and everybody thinks they can do better until they get on television under the lights with Chris Tarrant eyeballing them and they're trying to think about the question but what they're REALLY thinking is, "I can't believe you really exposed Prince Edward's wife's tits." Well, maybe not, but you get my point. Lots of Americans really are that stupid, of course, and she's right about the Texans ("We're proud to be Texans - we're proud to be Americans, until we can secede"), and definitely right about Wubya - I don't even need to rant about him anymore, you all know the score. I must dig out my stupid things that Wubya said (yes, I know it should be Dubya, it's not a typo - I think Wubya sounds dumber and is therefore more apt) and put them on here again, some of them were screamers. I'm not on my home machine right now though so I can't give any ready examples.

I read with interest today a report about Congress examining the possibility that the US government did not heed adequate warnings of the September 11th attacks - another clue in their desperate search for someone or something tangible and punishable to blame (Osama not being around, a scapegoat must be fattened).

Ari Fleischer, press secretary for the White House, has suggested that one of the reasons the hijackers were armed with box cutters and "plastic" knives (that was knew to me, I wasn't aware they were plastic, why was that not reported in the media at the time I wonder? Possibly because they weren't plastic? Of course, they're all melted and fused with WTC rubble now so there's no proving it either way) to "get around America's system of protecting against hijackers." System, there was a system? "Appropriate agencies were informed" of the possibility of an attack, it seems, but in a classic playground-style, "Um, conceded but *squirm* *squirm* *squirm*" statement, the CIA said the following:

The CIA would not confirm what it told Bush, but the agency said the issue of bin Laden's attempting an airline hijacking was among a number of terrorist methods raised to U.S. government officials at the time. But there was no information that suggested hijackers would crash planes into American landmarks and there was no mention of a date, a CIA official said.

Bush knew? Not that he's clever enough to personally act on it, but still, scapegoats and so on....Bush knew? Yes, I know, no date and no mention of landmarks - but that's like saying ice cream with no chocolate sauce and no sprinkles - at least you have the foundation to work with....Bush knew what was going to happen? Fantastic news. With any luck it'll bury him at the next election, if the rumours spread far enough to reach the depths of the deep south trailer parks where people pump CFCs into the atmosphere ignorant of the pack ice melting and the plight of the polar bears, where they practice shooting their pistols dreaming of the day a real Arab terrorist will be theirs for the killing and never leave their birthstate, where they celebrate the tax cuts and ignore the rest of the legislation - the drilling in Alaska and so on. Surely if the faith Bush's core supporters have in him can be shaken, the next election will have more favourable results and the US can go back to being the good guys? Because I get the feeling that as Wubya's reign progresses, international popular opinion will slip, and yet I also get the feeling that he's still got a decent core of supporters who love his unilateralist policies, and it'll take a lot to shake them. I don't know if he'll be too bothered if he gets dumped - Daddy Bush was only in for one term, after all, had his war and then retreated into an uneasy retirement blighted by animated ridicule from the Simpsons.

But as his term progresses, America continues to be responsible for 40% of the world's pollution. When nasty clouds of potentially lethal pollutants appeared near one of its power stations in Ohio recently, rather than clean it up or stop whatever it was doing that was producing these, it bought the nearest village, Cheshire, so it can continue to pollute but not get sued - ie, ruin the planet, but protect the villagers because we don't want another Erin Brockovich fiasco. It gets 55% of its electricity from coal burning stations and 25% from nuclear power stations, the waste of which will be left untreated (because that's not the American way) and buried in a cave on a fault line in the South West. It's the arrogance that gets me. "We're not signing Kyoto," they say, "it would endanger American jobs and the economy. We're examining alternative forms of energy, but we're not committing to it." American jobs and the economy, my arse. More like, it would endanger the profits of the big fuel companies that funded Wubya's campaign (wind and water being for the most part free, costs of electricity would go down, n'est ce pas?), and they won't be there for him to fight for a second term. Land of the Free and Home of the Brave? Do me a favour.

Oooooh, I could crush a grape.

If you want to read the rest of that article about Wubya and the prior knowledge, go hereabouts. For a wonderful selection of articles on many aspects of Bush's America, including Alaskan drilling projects and the obesity issue, go here. Both of those are Guardian Online sites, and they really are rather good. I have been lucky enough to land myself a nice job with internet access at a solicitors for the next four weeks - not only have I had s light pay increase but my new employers spent all day on Monday training me to use their legal software which is standard to the industry, apparently, and might therefore prove to be quite a valuable skill. Thus far I haven't used it more than half a dozen times, as my office junior position (I'm feeling a bit old for being an office junior these days) involves more filing, envelope stuffing and er, filing than anything else - although yesterday I got to write a letter. Everybody's very friendly, the 11th floor office in the centre of Bristol has fantastic, panoramic, citywide views and a desk fan on every desk - great for achieving a uniform distribution of paper on the floor. Best of all, all computers are wired into the web and I get to read the news headlines as I file. Hence all the ranting. This has been a fantastically long entry so far, I have been writing it for two hours. I still have things to say, unfortunately, but I'll split it up a bit.

Thursday 16th May - a bit later than the previous entry

There, that's better, now you won't all feel like you're reading some endless entry that will never end. I really must stop ranting about American politics, I don't know enough about it (although probably more than the average American) and it's taking up all this space. Go and read the Guardian articles if you have time - they're really good, especially the obesity one and the breakdown of Wubya's foreign policy record.

Happily, I am not obese...well, almost. I'm getting there, anyway. We're at the Diet - Day 228 now, and this past week I lost another pound. I had hoped for more, of course, but there were these biscuits at the training on Monday afternoon and I had to eat them to keep myself alert, and I've been eating later in the day and stuff, so I suppose it'll do. Next week maybe I'll do a bit better. As the summer's coming I feel a lot better - not as *moist* as I usually do when it's hot - and my thinner clothes are fitting, or on the verge of fitting. Yvonne, one of the ladies at class, said last night she could really see I'd lost weight from around my middle, although I think that's probably a combination of the weight loss and the fact I'm not wearing baggy t-shirts anymore. Still, I shall continue to persevere. The new house is further away from things so hopefully I'll get more exercise from walking all over the place. Sadly the Tree is just a little bit too far to walk, so I will either have to learn to drive or start spending money on taxis, if there are any to be had. Yul, Ben, Mr Z and I sat up til gone midnight ringing round taxi firms last Saturday in a desperate bid to find Char a cab that would arrive before 2am, and we did not succeed. Still, I suppose if one had the foresight to book a taxi in advance instead of just trusting to luck or Yul's sobriety, one would not have such a problem.

One more thing. I love the new Yorkie "It's not for birds" advertising campaign. I think it's MARVELLOUS. When Mr Z and I were in Bristol city centre a couple of weeks ago and the Yorkie girls were handing out chocolate to men exclusively, I was delighted. I did not, like some other sour pusses, write in to the Bristol Evening Post to complain about the campaign being sexist. Apparently, the woman in question had asked for a free sample but been refused on the grounds that she was a woman. I think it's extremely brave marketing to aim a chocolate brand at men when traditionally chocolate is marketed to women, and I say, snaps to Yorkie, and suck it up you bitter women who are griping because they didn't get something for nothing. Women get free samples all the time from magazines and suchlike, and there are countless advertising campaigns based on the stupidity of men (such as the current one for where the stupid man in normal sunglasses gets hit by a frisbee thrown by the smart woman who paid extra for her polarising lenses) or their alienisation from women.

Still, people will complain if they see a loophole, I suppose. It's lucky we're not in America or there'd be a group action against Nestle by women who felt they'd had their civil liberties curbed, like that boy who is being prosecuted for sending instant messages. Go here to read a newspaper article about the Yorkie campaign, again from the Guardian - this one came up no Google when I was searching for the Yorkie site. The Yorkie site is, I think, hereabouts but I can't get into it to poke around, unfortunately. Rich down the Tree has some excellent "Not For Girls" Yorkie stickers on his bike that he got out of Loaded or some such magazine, I'm hoping there's other merchandise. A t-shirt with the slogan on it would leave nobody in doubt about my sexuality, after all, ha ha.

My jokes are getting weaker. Did you hear, for example, about the man with two left feet who went into a shoe shop and bought a pair of flip flips? I thought you might have done.

I'll just go away now, then.

Tuesday 21st May

Received a bit of a boost today when the Human Resources department at my week-old workplace rang me through the departmental HR representative, a loudly-spoken, loudly-dressed and very helpful South African lady. "Sally!" said the HR lady, brightly. "Your boss was on the phone yesterday telling me how efficient and wonderful you are, and I wondered if you were looking for full time work?"

Well, of course I was flattered but I had to say no. I don't know why nobody has figured it out yet - the reason that I am so good at my temp jobs (and I don't mean to sound conceited but I am good at what I am doing) is because I am overqualified for them, whilst the average applicant for the position of office junior is a school leaver who is vaguely aware of the existence of something called Excel and will be able to put away two dozen files in the right places if given a whole afternoon in which to do it. I wouldn't apply for this job full time not matter how financially regarding, because it's basically boring because it doesn't challenge me. So, no, I don't think I'll be taking an office junior job on quite yet. I mean, there's only a certain length of time you can cope with being treated like a moron. Anyway it was very sweet of them, and this is a lovely place to work, although my boss gets a bit stressed on account of her only being here three mornings a week and always having a workload to rival Svengali Erriiccssoonn's (or whatever his name is).

Yesterday, for example, she ran over after the staff meeting and said something along the lines of, "Sally I've got some work for you to do well it's copy typing mainly you do that I imagine well I want this typed like this with this here and that there and underline here here and well just underline where I have and then do this with lines here and a tick here and a space here and put this at the top and I want this form updated like this and those updates added to this form and that form and then this form and I want that form updated here five different times in slightly different ways each time and I'm going at 1 so if it's not done by then email it to me at home which is this address and if there's a problem call me here which is this number and and and and...." at which point she walked away, possibly still muttering. I think the woman must have to breathe through her eyes, bless her.

Anyway, it was interesting doing all that because I had to do some things in Word I'd never done before which led to a lot of vocal (but not profane, I hasten to add) computer abuse but eventually I prevailed and produced some beautifully turned out forms which I imagine is what prompted the praise. It's not really rocket science, just knowing where to look for the things you might need. And to everybody who exclaims about how clever I am, etc etc, I'm always itching to say, "It's my job, why are you surprised that I can do it?!"

My boss suggested in an emailed instruction to update one of the pieces I produced yesterday that, if I could not add lines to the document in Word, I might take a pen and a ruler and "(very neatly!)" draw them in myself. That produced a bit of a silent chuckle, although honestly, after trying to get those damn lines to line up all morning it seemed a tempting proposition. For all of two seconds.

Mr Z and I are settling into our new place very well, thankyou. He went away on a wild boys weekend to Newquay at the weekend (skittles tournament) thus leaving me alone in the house. He is not yet well-versed with the functionings of my alarm clock and so, rather than turning it off on Friday, merely let it time out, which meant that it went off at 7.15am on Saturday morning, much to my disgust. Once awake I was too hot and so stumbled to the boiler and flicked the most obvious off switch, which happened to be the switch which turned the entire unit off, and then stumbled back to bed, only to be woken three hours later by a burglar. Well, actually it was the postman forcing a magazine through the front door but it sounded like a burglar. I worried about the boiler for a while but there was hot water once I'd put it back on so I stopped being concerned and went to play with the cable modem. Unfortunately - and here's some advice for girlies everywhere - boilers are meant to be never turned off (goodness knows what happens in a power cut) as all the water gets sucked out of the radiators, creating a void which will eventually lead to the radiators having to be bled. Luckily, I don't think that's happened to OUR radiators (although I got a stern talking to from Mr Z) although I was a bit worried when I got up yesterday morning and the radiators were all cold. However, Mr Z solved the mystery that very afternoon - since I'd turned all the power to the boiler off, the clock had stopped and was running 3 hours behind, which meant that the heating would have come on at around about the time he left for work.

Well, if he will leave me alone to cope with all this man stuff for the weekend.....

Wednesday 29th May

Thought for the day - I wonder if, in the same way that I say, "They'll have abolished the state pension by the time I'm old enough to claim it", Prince William says, "They'll have abolished the monarchy by the time it's my turn to reign." That would be a bit gutting for him, I can imagine - going through all those years of dodging cameras and pretending you don't smoke or drink or fancy Britney Spears so that you can maintain a regal image ready for when you are king, and then BAM! the rug is snatched from under you and you realise it was all a big waste of time. Not that I can see the monarchy being abolished any time soon - they're like national pets, mascots, figureheads. It would be like Jon abolishing Garfield, or the Simpsons abolishing Santa's Little Helper. I think the majority of society is still monarchist, even if it's only a slight majority.

With the impending Golden Jubilee double bank holiday, all things Royal and British have been splashed liberally around - lots of Union Jacks and St George's flags and portraits of the Queen, souvenir magazines, plates, cups, teapots and other assorted tat. I'm not sure if our new street is having a street party or something; personally I was planning to stay home, repot some plants, scrape some wallpaper, unpack some things, maybe do some gardening if the weather's nice (and let's face it, it won't be). At first I was a bit put out about it, since I have to use my hard-won holiday on the bank holidays, but now I'm quite looking forward to it. God save the Queen, &c. Even she didn't think she'd make it this far, hence lots of events in 1992 for her Ruby Jubilee. Charles, at 55, must be fed up with waiting by now.

Spent a very pleasant weekend along the south coast, in Portsmouth on Friday night to take in a movie with Mother Hand ("About a Boy" - one of the funniest films I have seen in a long time, wonderfully acted, very appreciative of Nick Hornby's writing &c. &c.) and then in the Brighton area all day Saturday for a bell ringing tour. You might be thinking that that's very anorakky of me but to be honest I had a fab time, despite having to get up at 6.45am. Eight towers, two pubs, a lovely meal in good company... I returned home after 11pm very tired and with sore hands, but I got a lot of practice in. Spent much of the day calling Richard and Sadie's youngest Natasha even though her name is Rebecca - the last time I went on a tower outing, Natasha was Rebecca's age (2). With another one on the way, I'm going to be even more confused next year.

While I was away, Mr Z and Father Z ripped out the old, leaky toilet and replaced it with a shiny new one, which flushes properly and doesn't require a frying pan wedged under the cistern to catch the water. Glad I was away for this because apparently the odour left something to be desired. So that's one less thing to worry about, although currently there is no seat of any description. Mr Z is shopping around for a particular design, involving barbed wire. The debate still rages over whether we should have a bath with a shower over it or just a shower cubicle, with myself firmly in the former camp and being pushed further that way every day by Father Z's vehement argument for the latter. Since it's not his bathroom, I am starting to resent it just a little. I know I don't have very many baths, but I like to have the option. Mind you, thinking of conceding the bath in return for the sparkly blue paint I picked out for the bathroom, which Mr Z has vetoed. Ah, such domesticity.

The Diet - Day 241. Last week I gained half a pound, which was a bit disappointing but not that surprising, since I spent the previous weekend eating like a dustbin. Even though I picked good stuff - fruit, yoghurts &c. - It just goes to show that you can have too much of a good thing. Weighing in tonight, and not sure how it's going to go, since I spent the latter days of last week eating all the treats I had in the house so I would no longer be tempted and then had a steak with fried onions and banoffee pie on Saturday night. Shouldn't have counted the sins really, because they weren't as high as I thought they would be (suspect I could have been slightly more honest) and now I have been given false hope. Still, have been positively angelic since Sunday so you never know. It could go both ways.

Following all those links to in my entries this month, I have cobbled together a bit of a links page which will take the form of a monthly hotlist. So if you get bored with reading all this drivel and fancy reading something else, or doing some virtual midget tossing or testing your IQ or any one of a number of things, then check it out. Man. Safe.

Thursday 30th May

Thought for the day - I really should have applied to be a housemate on Big Brother 3. Much as I detest the format, the potential for exhibitionism is appealing. More than that, however, I think the Big Brother household is the only place in England that will prove immune to that all-encompassing media circus that is The World Cup. As Union Jacks for the Jubilee are being flown all over the country, St George crosses are equally abundant, along with any number of hats, banners, shirts, red and white face paints and other patriotic paraphernalia. Why bother, I wonder? It did make me laugh when Beckham broke his foot and suddenly the media were tearing their clothes, cutting their hair and generally lamenting, all because of the tiny, fractured bone. "Britain's World Cup Hopes Dashed!" they wailed. Clever, really. Britain had very little chance of winning in the first place - Beckham's foot is just a nice get out clause. Poor old Becks. He got blamed for our failure in the World Cup 96. Now there's every likelihood he'll be implicated in the loss of this year's tournament.

I look back with fondness at the 1996 tournament. It began as I ended my first year at university and flew to the USA on Camp America's ticket to work with young girl scouts in the backwoods of Wisconsin - so far from civilisation, we couldn't get a signal on the television. The only World Cup news I had was an email from Gitboy, my then boyfriend. "I suppose you've heard about how that stupid Spice Girl's boyfriend lost us the World Cup", it snarled. No, I hadn't - I had been blissfully ignorant, far from the madding crowd, the insane excitement catalysed by a small white ball. I spent the summer learning the rules for Ultimate Frisbee, rowing children across lakes in search of leeches with life jackets, and practising my death defying life leaps.

I expect my proximity to this year's World Cup, however, or more accurately to its broadcast, will gradually suck me in, particularly if we make it past the first round (and I even I am prepared to admit that's a good possibility). If we get to the final (ha!) I fully expect I shall be seated in the Tree, cheering my overpaid compatriots on as they sweat across a field in the Far East in pursuit of a cow's stomach. I suppose I'll have to eat my words if we win, but I don't think there's much likelihood of that. But if we get to the final I might take a day off work to watch it, purely because I have to use my holidays up somehow between now and August (they accrue rather more quickly that I thought) and because I would like to enjoy the novelty of a pint at 7am, even if it is only a pint of soda and lime.

You can just tell it's going to be a summer for crazes, as Big Brother 3 gathers momentum, with such mundane things as housemates being chastised for wearing their shoes in the bathroom making it into even the broadsheets. What is the world coming to? Well, I suppose it sells papers. One of my online friends was complaining bitterly about the show the other night. "They were playing this game where they all got blindfolded and then they had to guess which housemate was kissing them," he explained. "The coverage on E4 was crap - they didn't get any of the action". Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I hear they have a, hrm, horizontally challenged lady on this series. I have heard lots of rude comments on the radio about her eating all the food and all the Maltesers and so on and so forth, which I think is scandalous. Fat people eat too much, it's true (in most cases). But the implication was that this woman would be depriving her housemates, and/or stealing the food....that doesn't seem fair to me. Just because one eats too much, does not mean one is without the usual scruples and morals. But fat people are easy targets for ridicule - basically, your size is something that ultimately you alone have control over (in most cases &c.) and if you're going to be fat, you sort of have to put up with it, because while it might not be politically correct to laugh at fat people, it's certainly more acceptable than laughing at other easy targets.

(I lost 2lbs this week, by the way (it's day 242) so I am even as I type becoming a smaller target).

Talking of acceptable targets for ridicule makes me think of an incident in the Tree a while back, when Mr Z was in Newquay for the skittles tournament (which his team won, by the way, so he came home with a shiny gold medal). Martin, he of cockleshell bra fame, invited me to join the crowd that consisted of his girlfriend Vicky, her brother Matt, his ex George and assorted other friends, again I'm not good with names so I won't attempt a list (they all call me Mr Z's missus anyway, apart from one who called me "Sophie" (Mr Z's ex) much to my tooth-gnashing horror). One of their number, who DOES NOT SMOKE (at least, not when his girlfriend is in close proximity), started making some tastless jokes about Lockerbie. They were pretty tasteless, but no more so than the spate of jokes that came out of the wake of the World Trade Centre disaster. In themselves, they weren't actually that funny, but we were all laughing fit to cry about previously told jokes, and in the context they just made us, or maybe I should say me, laugh harder. Anyway, the funny bit about this story was this non-smoker's girlfriend, who looked at him in horrified disgust, exclaiming his name and giving him The Look. I immediately bowed my head and attempted not to laugh, having been on the wrong side of this girl since a shambolic party (previously reported here in June 2001), but it was just impossible not to snigger behind my hand. Well, I suppose you had to be there to understand the funny side, but she just would not let up, kept giving him The Look until everybody was subdued and the atmosphere began to verge on the funereal and Martin shrugged at me and mouthed sorry, as if apologising for the non-smoker's behaviour when in actual fact I thought the girlfriend's behaviour worse. Public scoldings? Banning him from smoking? They should just break up now and get it over with.

So says I, Aunty Sally