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…)

Bad geography!

I just went to the bank to try and sort out some holiday currency. I was aware it was a slightly complicated order, because I needed a large amount of Euros as well as some smaller amounts of Hungarian Forints and Slovak Koruna. I didn’t, however, think that such a proposition should be beyond the capability of Lloyds TSB.

The girl working at the counter would benefit from a few lessons in Geography. Fair enough, I don’t expect her to know the currency of Hungary, but after I’ve told her that it’s forints, I don’t expect to be contradicted and told that actually it’s Euros. Erm, no. It isn’t. Really. (more…)

The day after my appraisal was never going to be a good day. I actually felt okay yesterday, probably because I still had the adrenaline and was elated to have survived the ordeal relatively unscathed. But today I woke up feeling miserable and proceeded to feel increasingly miserable as the hours ticked by. I thought anti-depressants were supposed to stop me feeling like this. Perhaps I absentmindedly took two hayfever tablets this morning instead (more…)

At the moment, I am suffering from a particularly bad bout of hayfever (pause for readers to make a sympathetic aaaah). I am also suffering from an annoying little cold (pause for readers to make a bigger, more sympathetic aaaaah) The upside, however, is that I have rediscovered a love of honey

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