Am I Shaken or Stirred?

Sal and I went to see Casino Royale tonight. I can now officially consider myself a James Bond fan.

Anti-Borat

Yesterday, at work, I got a call from Vadim in Kazakhstan. His English was excellent and he has a better grasp of IPT technology than I certainly do. No tin cans on strings and travelling in ox carts pulled by buxom peasants for him.

Dear Karma,

Whatever I did, I am really sorry. I didn't mean it and will never do it again. I promise, I really really do. Now, can you please stop picking on me?

OK, so it is not really as bad as that but as I sit here with my stringy, greasy hair that has not been washed in over two days with my smelly body that has only been sponge bathed for the last two days wearing my glasses with the huge gob of superglue on the temple looking at my phone which took a ten foot swan dive yesterday, I am wondering just what I did and to whom I did it to get to this state.

Tuesday evening, I was sitting in the living room minding my own business when I heard a rather loud pop from the kitchen. I ran in to see what made the noise and found that the boiler had stopped working again. So the guy shows up today to fix it and figures out that a fuse blew. Of course, he doesn't have any so he goes to get some. He comes back 90 minutes later and puts it in. Waahheyy, the boiler is working again. I begin to dream of the world's longest hottest shower. That is until he puts the front back on and crosses some wires (or something like that) and blows the new fuse. Of course, he only bought one so off he goes again taking my shower dreams with him. Luckily he just arrived back so cross your fingers.

Yesterday morning, I was walking up the stairs at work carrying my computer with my phone balanced on it. I got to the top step, tilted my laptop and watched my phone slide off, fall ten or so feet to the tiled lobby below, bounce and break into 5 pieces. I put down my laptop, sighed loudly, walked back down the stairs, collected the pieces, snapped them back together and much like a Timex watch, my Nokia took its lickin' and kept on tickin'.

This morning, I woke up in my cold flat. Dragged my cold, dirty ass out of bed, picked up my glasses, put them on my face only to find one piece on my face and the other in my hand. Thus explaining the aforementioned superglue.

Dear Karma, please go away.

Dinner and Limping

On Saturday, Sally and I got all dolled up and went to the Oxo Tower on the South Bank to meet Laura and some friends for her 30th. It was lots of fun. It was a bit of a nightmare getting there. The reservation was for 7:00 so I left at 5:30 just as the rugby was getting out. I can't even describe the crush to get on the train. Twickenham Station now holds 85,000 people on a full capacity day not even considering all the people who come to the area for the atmosphere. Sally was supposed to meet me at Richmond and she couldn't even get on the same carriage of the train. We were at opposite ends. Everyone was staring at us because we were not wearing rugby shirts. Poor Sal had some drunk South African as to have his picture taken with him - it was an England South Africa game.

Dinner was lovely. I didn’t realise that Harvey Nichols runs the Brasserie there. Good food, great views and the prices were less than we expected. We even had a bottle of champagne. There was a table of 16 year olds next to us. Each and every one of them would have easily warranted a whole page entry on gofugyourself.

After dinner we went out on the deck to take pictures and enjoy the view. Nothing like being tacky tourists. Then we walked over to the Blackfriars pub on the other side of the river for a drink. One of Sal’s heels fell off halfway over the bridge so she spent the rest of the evening hobbling. We tried to pull the heel off the other shoe but no luck.

I think Laura enjoyed herself. She didn’t seem to stressed out but did not like people mentioning that number.

Dances With Hooves

Last night, Cat arranged for us to go see the Spanish Riding School of Vienna Lipizzaner Stallions at Wembley Arena. As she knew I would be there, HRH Queen Elizabeth II was nice enough to show up.

It was excellent, the Metropolitan Police Activity Ride went on first. They did all sorts of neat things like jumping through fire and taking off their tunics, then stirrups then saddles while riding and jumping.

The Lipizzaners then came out and they were beautiful horses. Apparently they are kept in special temperature controlled stables and fed only oat free muesli specially imported from Germany. I found the first half of the show a little slow but all the horsey people we were with were very impressed with how the horses moved. They did dressage demonstations to music and the horses were so fluid and graceful they looked as if they were dancing and skipping around the ring. In the second half, they jumped and stood on their hind legs and rode in amazingly well timed formation. All in all a cool evening.

However, I have discovered that not only am I a cultural philistine, I am an equine one as well. Actually, I am apparently just a huge saddo because I thought the coolest thing there was the cute little John Deere tractor they used to groom the special outrageously expensive sand. I just wanted to put it in my pocket and take it home.

Saturday night - dinner at the Oxo Tower for Laura's 30th birthday. Tell you all about it next week.

Character Flaw #683

I went shooping today to buy a small jokey 30th birthday present for Laura and in the process bought myself a huge expensive amber and silver bracelet. I have an almost pathological inability to a present for someone without buying one for myself. Don't get me wrong, I like buying presents for me, but the bank account - not so much.

Je Suis Tres Cultural I Am

I feel ever so posh. We went to see Sleeping Beauty by the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House last night. It was excellent. The costumes were beautiful. The dancing fantastic. It was a lovely night but it did reinforce the fact that I am a total cultural philistine. Here are some of the thoughts that flitted through my head while watching;

* Princess Aurora spent most of the show on point, I could not help wondering what her feet look like. I mean, they must be totally pointy and look like goat's hooves musn't they?
* The tutu's on the ballerinas stuck straight out and I kept thinking that they looked like the paper umbrellas you get in cocktails.
* I also wondered how much starch they have to buy to keep the skirts so stiff.

I was very impressed that I followed along with the story quite well but was a little thrown by the last act. Maybe I had a different copy of the fairy tale as a child but I don't remember Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf showing up at the end. Oh well, maybe one good fairy tale deserves another.

Thursday night - dancing horses. I will tell you all about it on Friday.

Call Me Josee

I went skating tonight. The company that Cat works for set up the ice rink at the Natural History Museum. It open tomorrow so Cat invited her friend Karen and I to go tonight for a test skate. It was a little bit warm so one end of the ice was more like a swimming pool than a skating rink. Of course, it was right there that I decided to take a spill and fall on my ass. I went to the bathroom and tried to dry myself off with the hand drier - no luck. Then I tried toilet paper - no luck. So I went back outside, leaned against the boards and had a great big sulk. After 5 or so minutes, I went back on for a few more laps.

I could blame my fall on any of the following;
- the crappy, dull, too small skates
- the 6 feet of water on top of the ice
- the tons of leaves on the ice
- the fact that I have not been on skates in 2 years
- the lumpy ice
- all the other bad skaters getting in my way
- the fact that it is actually not cold enough outside to skate
- the large glass of wine I had before getting on the ice

But really, I am just clumsy.