I want to tell a story of amazing honesty, but in order to do so I first have to confess to a secret vice of mine; I’ve become addicted to the Caffe Nero Frappe Latte In my opinion, this is far superior to any other chilled coffee product available on the market right now; I refuse to drink at Starbucks since the fiasco detailed in this post, and whilst Costa’s Iced Latte is okay every once in a while, I don’t set much store by their Frescatos - last time I had one, the ice wasn’t properly blended and the resultant mush was almost too thick and lumpy to drink. Caffe Nero, in comparison, have a perfect drink, which tastes delicious and at £2.80 is no more expensive than its competitors. (more…)

I remember quite a long time ago that someone I know posted a link to a quiz about sexuality in the JEB forums. At the time at which I took it, I was still at the stage when I wanted not only for everyone to think that I was straight, but also to be straight, and so it struck me that it might be quite cool to take it again now that I’ve relaxed a little bit

Also, I wanted a distraction because I have mislaid a French death certificate. I cannot for the life of me think what I have done with it If you saw my desk right now, you would actually struggle to see me, because I am being swallowed up by growing mountains of paper. I only have five files on the desk, which is by no means excessive, but my client has sent through printed information which is equivalent to several packets of printer paper and it’s just sort of swamping me. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I swear that yesterday I came across a French death certificate and an Italian death certificate. Now, I know they were there because I looked at them quite particularly to make sure they were death certificates, and because there were a couple of details I was initially unsure of, I contemplated whether it would be unethical to scan them in an send a copy to Babel for him to help me out. I didn’t reference them up and put them on file, however, because at that point in time I wasn’t auditing death benefits. And now that I am auditing death benefits, they have disappeared so completely that I would be tempted to believe they never existed, were it not for the fact that that would mean I had been hallucinating about foreign death certificates… Having been through all the paper on my desk once this morning, I am starting to get a little stressed about it, so the idea is that if I spend ten minutes doing something else I will calm down and then hopefully remember what I’ve done with them. So, erm, how straight am I?! (more…)

It is very much a cliche that whenever something bad happens, be it in the world or in our own lives, we human beings start to question how there can be a god. It is a very stupid, pointless line of thought to say that such-and-such a bad thing is proof that a god does not exist for if one did it would have prevented it, and I know all the arguments for why this is not the case. Free will, the presence of evil in the world, we all have our cross to bear, pray to the Lord and he will help you carry it. Etc, etc, etc. Nevertheless, it is sometimes a very tempting line of thought, one which it is easy to succumb to. Certainly, I have been finding it so since yesterday. I went to church last night with my family, but I refused to pray. If God exists, I am no longer prepared to talk to him. (more…)

Does anyone else remember reading the Hairy Maclary books when they were a small child? I can recall getting them out of the library before I was able to read, but beyond the fact that he came from Donaldson’s Dairy, I can’t remember anything about the storyline at all. In a rather tenuous link from poetry about a milkman’s dog, this post is going to be about hair. If you’re a guy, I suggest that this probably isn’t a theme which you are going to enjoy, and therefore you might be better served by going back and rereading the post on Google Maps (more…)

A colleague has just told me something so truly amazing that I feel the need to post it here in case other people don’t know about it Google have developed a free maps application which is available to download onto your mobile phone. With your phone browser, go to http://www.google.co.uk/xhtml and click on “download google maps” beneath the search box in order to be guided throught the installation process. It takes approximately two minutes to download and then, hey presto, you now have the world’s most amazing application on your mobile (more…)

This post isn’t actually really written by me; it’s more sort of written by Babel Last night he was correcting a post I had written for the JEBsite, and pulled me up on a couple of matters of grammar. He’s a little bit obsessive about grammar Anyway, one of the errors I made was something I wouldn’t even have known was an error, and so he was obliged to explain it to me in detail. I found the explanation very interesting because it was genuinely news to me, and so I thought I’d post it here; firstly, so that I don’t forget it and secondly in case I’m not the only person who didn’t know this already. (more…)

I’ve just had another really lovely weekend What I’m doing at work at the moment is totally screwed up, but inside I still feel all warm and happy, which makes a pleasant change! It all got off to a rather frustrating start, because my boyfriend was the best part of an hour late to pick me up on Saturday morning Now punctuality isn’t really his strong point, so on the basis that he told me at 11 he’d be with me at one, I was expecting him at one thirty. Nevertheless, by the time it got to one forty-five I was a little annoyed, on the grounds that his drive is just under an hour and thus if he hadn’t been abducted by aliens (forgivable reason for being late), he mustn’t have left work until the time he was supposed to be arriving When he finally arrived around two, it turned out I had maligned him by overlooking a more probable explanation; he had got lost (more…)

My Mom remarked with surprise tonight that I appear to be developing a social life! I think she was slightly bitter because my Dad has been out and about quite a bit recently too, whilst she’s been stuck at home. I haven’t been up to anything terribly exciting, but I have just been out for dinner two evenings in a row, which is fairly unusual. My boyfriend came to Birmingham this afternoon so we had lunch together, then I popped back to work for a few hours whilst he went to the library and we met up again at the end of the day. He was in such a good mood that I even managed to convince him to come to Pizza Express with me, which was rather cool (more…)

I noticed this morning that it was July. I know, I’m a little slow But to be fair, the weather is so changeable that one might be forgiven for believing it was autumn. There are two implications of the fact that it is July. Number one, I need to turn over the pages on my wall calendar so that it no longer gives random visitors to my room the impression that it is still May. Number two, that it is now six months since January and therefore perhaps time to take stock of where I am up to with my new year resolutions. I know it is six months, because I counted it on my fingers (more…)

Today has been a difficult day. If my grandmother were alive, it would have been her 80th birthday. I would rather not have dwelt on this fact, but other members of my family made it difficult to avoid. I don’t know… she died at 72 and I can’t honestly imagine how she’d be if she were 80. Would she have even wanted to live to 80? I’m not sure, the last two years of her life after the death of my grandfather can hardly have been uplifting. She wasn’t healthy enough to live to 80 anyway, she did well to make it as far as 72. Those last few years really showed me what a dreadful thing smoking can be. (more…)