July 2008 Archives

Monday night. I'd just uploaded my previous post, Summer and Sat Navs, about how sunny and hot it was now, when the storm clouds gathered up above.  Directly above.  Like, right over my house.

Thunder.  Lightning.  Torrential rain.  Quite spectacular actually.  I like thunderstorms.  Well, I used to like thunderstorms.

We were standing at the front door with our dog, letting him watch the downpour in the hope it might desensitise his aquaphobia a bit (its embarrassing having a Butch Staff tiptoeing through puddles like a fairy).

Just as I was turning to go back into the house there was a MASSIVE boom like all the air had been displaced at once and a blinding flash of light.

WE'D BEEN HIT BY LIGHTNING!

The house alarm blared.  All the hairs on my arms stood on end and tingled.  I've never been so scared in my entire life. I just stood in the middle of the living room not knowing where to go to be safe.  I almost ran across to dad's house over the road because my home wasn't safe any more and my old home might be.  I didn't dare sit down because we have recliners and they're made of metal and I didn't want to be anywhere near metal. 

The dog was fine.  Hubs went into chest-beating mode and calmly dismantled the house alarm to shut it off and checked we still had a roof (we had).  Not so much a direct lightning strike but a massive surge of static electricity, but that was bad enough, more than enough.

The thunderstorm raged for hours afterwards. Every time lightning sparked across the sky I cringed and cried, "We're going to die!  We're going to die!"

We didn't.  Obviously.

This morning I went into my study and turned on my computer. I had no internet.

NO INTERNET!

It was like having an arm cut off.  No internet means no work and no contact with the outside world!  The printer/fax/scanner was dead too, and the Big Computer wouldn't work either.

Bugger.

Buggerbuggerbuggerbugger.

I rang 'Computer Guru' Son.  "We've been hit by lightning!" I cried down the phone, "And I've got no internet!"

He came over.  Replaced the fried router, fixed the house alarm, took away the Big Computer, and declared the printer to be No More.

Star!

So I now have internet again.

And a pathological terror of thunderstorms.

Wow, summer's arrived with a vengeance hasn't! Rain, rain, a bit of a cold blast, more rain, then suddenly blue skies and raging sun with no in-between bit to acclimatise us. We're like Eskimos suddenly tossed onto a Caribbean beach without warning.

So how many of you are sporting third degree burns right now? Yep, me too - I look like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Out in the street, there are many lobster-coloured people exposing acres of flesh who think suncream is for sissies (and will be screaming in agony later as they spontaneously combust).

It was hot yesterday when we went to surprise a mate who lives on The Other Side of Birmingham - aka the edge of the world for us 'southerners'. She was at some pub we'd never heard of, but fear not, we have (drum roll please) sat nav now, so we weren't going to turn into crisp corpses as we tacked our way across the West Midlands.

Marvellous little inventions aren't they, satellite navigations systems. Hubs resisted getting one for ages because he much prefers 'guessing' the way using his 'in-built compass' - it's a man thang, apparently they'll be struck by the wrath of God if they dare ask for directions or even think about consulting a map book.

It can be quite exciting getting lost, you see places that haven't witnessed humankind since the dawn of time and occasionally red-faced farmers shaking fists. Fun, unless you need to get somewhere on time, in which case domestic angst usually erupts and you have to consult the Little Book of Really Bad Expletives in order to express yourself (or, worse case scenario, the Yellow Pages for the contact details of the nearest divorce lawyers).

The first thing you have to decide with your new satellite system is what voice you'd like to guide the way. We thought an American female might be amusing, except we couldn't figure out what 'rotary' meant. "And I'm not being told what to do by a woman," Hubs huffed (as I stifled a little laugh).

You can, apparently, download Elvis Presley or Ozzy Osbourne to be your guide. I'd like Bernard Black: "I don't care where the feck you want t'go, just drive to the nearest off licence y'heathen." Or Keiffer Sutherland would be good: "Trust me, turn left." Or Gordon Brown: "Just make a U-turn and go back the way you came."

Or how about Hannibal Lector: "If you don't turn left I'm going to remove your spleen and eat it with some faver beans and a nice Chianti, ffff ffff ffff." That'd keep you on track wouldn't it.

We settled on Ken. Ken sounds rather nice and trustworthy. Ken will get us where we want to go.

Hubs programmed in The Pub We'd Never Heard Of and off we went. Mate lives in North Birmingham and we appeared to be heading due south. "Are you sure we're going the right way?" I kept saying to Hubs, to which he kept replying, "Ken knows the way, Ken will take us there."

When Ken twice said to turn left, Hubs answered (as if that isn't bad enough) by saying, "Heard you the first time, son."

Son!

Worrying.

We did get there in the end, but it's a bit like having your father in the car, beeping if you go too fast, flashing if there's speed cameras, and going all huffy if you don't follow exact directions. You half expect it to reach out and start slapping you round the face if you deviate in any way.

But the sheer joy on Hubs' face when Ken finally says 'You have reached your destination' makes up for all that.

I shall miss getting lost though.

Having to call customer services when your six month old laptop coughs up a chip and fries the power cable.

"My computer's coughed up a chip and fried the power cable," I told the customer service hotline.

Hotline, ha! Took me 10 minutes to get through to a human bean after pressing an endless series of numbers. Then, when I do finally get through, I find myself talking to Rhett Butler and he really didn't give a damn.

"What's wrong with it?" the customer service chap sighs, heavily.

"Er, power cable doesn't work."

"How do you know it doesn't work?" he sighs.

"Er, because when I plug it in it beeps and doesn't charge the battery. Bit of a giveaway really."

Today, a phonecall. From a salesman. In India.

"I would like to speak to Mrs Brummie Broad," he said, with an accent so strong it was almost a parody.

"Speaking."

"I'm calling from ... " And he launched into some spiel about banking and interest rates, getting faster and faster as he went.

"Are you trying to sell me a loan?" I asked.

Something rather interesting happened then. In his heavy accent, he got all irate and high pitched and excitable. "No, no, if you would just listen then I will tell you about - "

Excuse me? I have some strange bloke in another country on the phone telling me to listen? Oh no no no no no no.

Playtime.

2004

Saw my bus coming up the road this morning and broke into a run. Sprinting I look like a knock-kneed girly with outstretched arms and a coordination problem, which is why I don't do it in public if I can possible help it.

So there I am, racing towards the bus, watching it pull up and galloping towards it with my internal organs and bag contents (of which there are many) bouncing up and down like a sackful of maracas. Nearly there.

Like a disjointed rag doll I reach into my bag for my bus pass whilst doing a full pelt. I even threw the driver a 'thanks' smile because he's looking dead at me running down the road towards him.

And then, a whole 2 metres from the stop, the swine pulls away. I carry on smiling because I'm the optimistic type, despite all experience to the contrary. Of course he'll stop.

So there I am, gasping at the roadside with a big smile and outstretched arm waving my bus pass. And the bus driver who'd watched me run all the way down the road towards him and his bloody bus turns his head the other way and drives straight past me.

Oooooh, the rage! The anger! What would it have cost him to stop for a whole second to let me get on? Nothing. Would it have made him late? No. Isn't it his job to pick people up and drive them to their destination? Isn't that the whole point of being a bus driver, to pick people up!

Most drivers seem to indulge in some despicable game of 'How many passengers can we leave behind today?' I'm sure they have some kind of bonus scheme based on it ("And Bill wins the prize this week for letting 153 people believe they could catch his bus before he hastily drove away, and for letting a total of 29 people actually pound on his door as he pulled off looking the other way. Well done, Bill.")

We need some sort of system so we can identify buses that will or won't stop for sprinting passengers. I don't know, maybe there should be a pile of bricks at bus stops that we could use to lob at the buggers ("Oh look, a battered bus, lets not bother running for that one."). Or paint ball guns, splatter the little sods so other potential sprinters could save their breath.

Or maybe ignorant drivers could have a sunstrip across their windscreen simply reading "GIT".

But what's happened since? Read on for tales from the passenger seat in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

I've come across a rather good blog written by a Birmingham bus driver, one of the decent ones that can actually drive (yes, they exist!). As an office worker/slave who used to endure public transport on a twice-daily basis and developed quite a phobia about it, I couldn't resist the opportunity of asking the TWM driver some pertinent questions from a passenger point of view.

Scene 1: A woman's had a bad day at work - her boss is premenstrual and possibly homicidal, three colleagues are off sick and she's had to cover their work, and the IT system crashed in the middle of an urgent project. Finally extricating herself from the office, the woman wearily drags herself down Colmore Row towards the bus stop. Suddenly she spots her bus pulling up in the distance and breaks into a run. The driver clearly sees an ungainly woman sprinting directly towards him, and waits until she's just out of reach before pulling away (smiling as she stands, sweating and gasping, at the side of the road).

Question: Why do drivers do this? Are we allowed to lob heavy objects at them as they pass?

TMW Driver Answer: Oh that is so bad. I have never done this. Having said that I can understand why it could happen. The driver could be having a really bad day. The bus has a really large blind/unclear spot on the side nearest the kirb. This extends from roughly just behind the doors to about half a bus length after the back of the bus in a triangle shape. If you are running for the bus make sure that the driver can see you and that its clear that you want to catch their bus. If you can't see the driver chances are we can't see you. Lobbing heavy objects is always an option, just remember that if you break one of the windows there is a chance that you will hurt one of the passengers with the glass and the object you throw.

Scene 2: Its winter. Raining. Blowing a gale. And berluddy cold. A woman stands at a bus stop, fighting with the umbrella, finally abandoning the damn thing when she realises she can't possibly get any wetter. Lightning forks across a dark sky. She thinks she might die of hyperthermia quite soon.

Question: Why do buses pick these days to arrive 25 minutes late? Is it deliberate? Do they wait round the corner until they see you sink to your knees, screaming?

TMW Driver Answer: This ties in nicely with a post that I am writing right now about road rage. We don't just wait for this sort of thing to happen. For some strange reason when the weather is that bad everyone wants to take the car everywhere, the traffic can be 30 times worse. And there are idiots out there that like to drive faster in the wet and then are surprised when they wrap their car around a tree or lamppost. This sort of thing can and has caused massive traffic jams and the bus gets stuck like everyone else. If there were more bus lanes around and drivers respected them and drove responsibly then this wouldn't happen.

But wait, there's more. Read on for more shocking revelations. You wait ages for one to arrive, then half a dozen turn up at once ...

On my doggy walks at Jesus-what-berluddy-time in the morning, I sometimes pop into my local shop. I'd like to say I pick up a copy of the Guardian/Telegraph/Mercury, or maybe some milk, or an energy bar to keep me going, but no, I buy cigarettes.

As I walk through the door the man at the counter automatically grabs my brand from the shelf - alarming (and a sad indication of our lifestyle) that the only people who know our habits well are the Indian takeaway, the outdoor (or 'offy' as Hubs calls it), and the cigarette man. Make of this what you will.

This morning, because I was in pre-shower mode, I'd tucked my hair into a cap. In fact, a word here about my doggy walking apparel because I don't think this phenomenon should go un-noted. Whilst I'd like to totter round the area in some designer dress, a big hat and heels, as per my image of dog walking

I look more like... well, its hard to describe really, I don't think there's a word that adequately illustrates my appearance, although louche would come close (but then, so would 'eccentric'... yeah, I'm just eccentric).

I haul on random items from the wardrobe-of-shame while my head is still resting back against my shoulder blades, sound asleep. Sometimes, after I've covered the 150 miles and fall back into the house, I catch sight of myself in the hallway mirror and actually gasp out loud at my own reflection.

Jeans, of course. But not crisp, clean jeans, old ones covered in muddy paw prints of varying degrees of smudgedness and age. Sometimes I actually think to pull up the zip, but mostly I walk around south Birmingham like some sort of inadvertent flasher (don't you just hate it when that happens... you think the hordes rushing past you to work are double glancing because your dog is so well behaved or they can't believe someone can look so gorgeous so early and without makeup, but no, its because they're a bit surprised to have a clear view of what knickers you've fortunately had the foresight to put on).

T-shirt. Again, covered in paw prints and bird poo and of indeterminate colour and shape. Occasionally, if 'summer' has dropped to brass monkey temperatures, I'll pull on a freebie jacket with Wolves FC splattered all over it, usually inside out. Oh yeah, trend-setter me.

Trainers. About 173 years old, pretty sure they're supposed to be that colour, but months of walking across muddy fields has turned them into the kid of hue you only get when you mix 17 different coloured paints together. Worn with odd socks, because who can distinguish between multicoloured polka dots and black at 6.30am.

And a cap. I like my caps, I can hide under them, pull the peak over my face and just let the dog guide me without actually having to wake up. Worn with big sunglasses I'm convinced I'm the image of Victoria Beckham but closer, I suspect, to Stevie Wonder.

I also carry with me on my doggy walks a water bottle, dog treats, choke chain in case I'm suddenly and inexplicably unable to control my canine, 97 poo bags, door keys, cigarettes, lighter, a ball we never use, and some money for emergency purposes (like I have to catch the bus home or something). 'Bulging' is the word on the street.

So yes, I'm scruffy to the point of requiring charity (and possibly therapy).

So anyway, I go into my local shop and the bloke at the till beams at me, as he always does (because I'm daft enough to pay his extortionate prices). He peers at me, hiding underneath my hat, and says, "You know what you should do?"

Emigrate? I thought. Go on a diet that lasts longer than an hour and a half? Call Trinny & Susanna on an emergency helpline?

"You've got such lovely hair," he tells me, "You shouldn't hide it under a hat, you should let it down."

Three things occurred to me at this point:
1. What the fark is he going on about?
2. What the fark has it got to do with him what I do with my hairy bits?
3. He's not making a farking pass at me is he? (checked my fly wasn't open in case he thought I was being flirty).

Good mind to go in there tomorrow completely bald.

It's a bad sign when complete strangers feel obliged to give advice on my appearance.

Must try harder.

I feel I should introduce myself before continuing with my bloggy ramblings, just so you can picture me (as Catherine Zeta Jones perhaps, or Susan Sarandon, I'd like that). If you were to meet me you'd think 'Oh she's not bad for her age [if the age was somewhere around 73], she seems okay.' But don't be fooled - while I might seem perfectly presentable on the outside (if a bit scruffy), inside I struggle with the concept of normality. I blame hereditary genes, I was destined to be constantly confused.

I am a woman of indeterminate age (which usually means early forties, like really early forties, like barely forty at all, in fact let's not mention the F-word, lets just stick with 37). Three tall, drop-dead gorgeous sons who have all now abandoned me, and I'm also a grandmother (at a ridiculously young age). Married to barking mad Yorkshireman who ensures that life is never boring - a bit surreal sometimes, occasionally lung-wrenchingly hysterical, but never boring.

I used to be a city slicker in Birmingham city centre. I was quite good in my 'high-powered' job, wearing my furry pin-stripe suit and balking at the price of a Starbucks coffee, but I lacked the capacity to repeatedly stab people in the back so left in a bit of a huff, vowing never to return. I now work at home as a self-employed transcriber, merrily typing away and hoping I can:

(a) pay the bills and not end up living in a cardboard box on the corner of Colmore Row
(b) not go completely round the bend, and
(c) fight off the tax man, who's a greedy little bar steward.

Atheist, laid-back to the point of coma, and calm in a crisis because it takes me a while to figure out what's going on. I drink and smoke (sharp intake of bronchial breath as I stand up, coughing and wheezing, for my right to ingest nicotine). I'm also an insatiable bibliophile, my house is a veritable tinder-box of literature (not all of it good, in fact, a large proportion of it is snobbishly regarded as not being literature at all, but who cares, I like it).

Film buff, particularly British films, particularly comedy, particularly anything written by Richard Curtis, particularly anything with a hunky man in it. I'd list the hunky men and provide photographs, but I don't think the internet is big enough.

I used to ride motorbikes, variety of, ranging from a 50cc Honda which was bomb-proof to an imported 1000cc Virago which was a complete sod to manoeuvre and which I repeated dropped on parked cars because it was so berluddy heavy. Had to give it up when ex-husband made off with all the bike tools (along with the knowledge of how to use said tools), when I felt too old to be dodging the 'sorry mate didn't see you' cars on the A38, and when I couldn't sing Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell with any conviction any more.

I hate bad service, and I hate shopping, loathe shopping. I have no dress sense whatsoever and consequently look like a bag lady who's tried to scrub up a bit. I can't cook - not won't cook, can't cook. No sense of smell, you see. Anosmia. I don't know anything's burning until the firemen hack down my front door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. That's my excuse anyway. Fortunately, Hubs used to be a cook in the merchant navy and is brilliant in the kitchen ("Funny how you and your sister both ended up with men who could cook," said Marmee once. "Not a coincidence, mom," I told her, "We had check lists. Can he cook? Check. Tall and handsome? Check. Financially viable, own car, not hauling too much baggage behind him like Marley's chains? Check.")

Whilst I dislike the idea of growing older, I do like the fact that I've reached an age where I don't really give a crap any more. Very liberating. Means I can say what I want and people will just regard me as a mad old bat without resorting to violence. Means I can tell young men they're 'terribly handsome' because they'll never in a million years believe I'm hitting on them (even if I am). Means that I can finally release my tenuous grip on 'fashion' and just wear the clashing 70s stuff I've always favoured.

Means I can just be me without having to justify myself to anyone. Fab-ulous.

So that's me in a nutshell (emphasis on the nut). Take it or leave it, I'm not bothered, I'm used to being alone.