Recently in Life in general Category

The sun came out on Sunday and most of the UK stood staring at the sky wondering what the bright spot was (some people started screaming about aliens and invasion and stuff, but their cries were drowned out by a crescendo of lawnmowers). Like three million other people, Hubs and I decided to do some gardening.

First, a trip to B&Q, where Hubs and I parted company, he to the manly power tools and me to the garden section. I was just lugging an eight foot bamboo plant into the trolley when Hubs reappeared and hissed, "Ye Gods, woman, put down that pot and step away from the plants!" He can be very firm and butch sometimes, which I admire, but in garden centres and bookshops its like water off a duck's back.

I didn't get the bamboo though, we wouldn't have got it in the car.

We were in the garden for eight hours straight, bending and shifting pots and weeding and painting everything in sight. I'm not a good painter. I'm messy. I don't mean to be, but I'm impatient to start the job and to finish it, so I'm never prepared. Consequently there was paint all over me, the garden table, every door handle in the house, all over the bathroom, and on floors inside and out.

By the time I'd painted the rocking chair and every item of wooden furniture we have - three garden benches seems a bit excessive and makes our patio look like a rest home for benches - I looked like a living work of art. I mean, the subtle clashing of colours, the bottle green and tar-black of the rocker mixed with the startling orange of 15 gallons of creosote was just inspiring. And the redness of my skin after I'd showered in turps was also impressive, perfectly depicting the Woman With Brush look I was after.

Sadly, the birds won't go on the feeder now because it's a different colour. You can actually hear them squawking 'Blimey, that's orange!' (cedar red actually, Hubs picked it, he's colour blind so probably traffic-light red doesn't blend terribly well with the environment).

Afterwards, when I crawled back into the house, the newly-acquired step machine and I glared at each other like baddies in a dusty western. One half of my brain cried, 'Gimme 100', whilst the other half screamed, 'You can bugger right off!'

There have been some complaints about a beer advertising campaign, which I actually thought was rather funny. Three people claimed it was sexist, apparently. Three people speaking on behalf of the rest of us (who got the joke) stopped the promotion!

Don't you sometimes wonder if the world has gone completely mad? I'm all for not offending people, but really, humour is taken much too seriously these days. The PC-ists have been given free rein, run and hide.

I mean, does my husband, who's colour blind, complain about Dulux paint adverts because he feels 'offended' that they're displaying colours he can't see.? He does not.

Do I, as an anosmiac (no sense of smell), feel utterly appalled at perfume adverts or food shows where they go 'oh that smells nice'? I do not.

I am, however, desperately offended by people who decide on my behalf what is or isn't considered suitable for public consumption.

Oooh I feel better now I've got that off my paint-splattered, sunburned chest.

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday, regardless of bodily pain.
Brummie Blogs: Real life with a Brummie accent - be afraid, be very afraid.
Twitter: Life in 140 characters or less.

The news has been a bit interesting recently hasn't it. Its not all doom and gloom, there are bright spots.

Take Jacqui Smith for example. Tsk, naughty girl, having it away with the fairies instead of her accountant, or whoever fixes up her figures - and fixed they certainly are. Not only does she earn a six figure salary, she also receives £157,000 for expenses. Uh huh, £157,000 just for expenses. I don't think I earn that much in my entire lifetime [counts on fingers, gets confused, gives up], pretty sure I don't.

You gotta ask yourself, if your boss said, "Oi, you can claim £157,000 in expenses on top of yer salary," wouldn't you stick everything from bath plugs to second house allowance on it? Sure you would. But even we, the commoners, the real people who don't have our head in the clouds or up our own bums, would think twice about claiming for porn films - because we couldn't stand to think of some person in Finance giggling about it and telling the whole company.

Apparently it wasn't Jacqui's fault. Oh no, no, no, Hubby did it, and Hubby was forced to make a cringingly embarrassing apology to reporters. My hubby would have simply roared, "Hey, I f***ed up, I paid it back, now p*ss off." But then, he's not a politician's husband, he's a Yorkshireman and he's got quite a gob on him.

In other news, Obama arrived on our shores. Go, baby, go! Did you see the G20 photographs? No? Snigger. You have to remind yourself that these people run our world, and then you have to remind yourself again when you watch the Queen telling them off for being rowdy:

And while we're on the subject of royalty and the Rowdy Bunch, if there was one person guaranteed to lift their foot right off the floor and wedge it straight into their mouth without a moment's hesitation, it's our dear Prince Philip. He's a hoot isn't he. I bet old Queenie cringes in terrified anticipation every time she hears him draw breath.

Apparently, the only thing the G20 summit could agree on is that the teeny-tiny French president had a hot wife.

And finally, I caught a glimpse of Jade Goody's funeral procession, although I couldn't quite understand why the whole 'event' was televised. Whilst I applaud the fact that she brought smear tests to the fore, I thought her life was perfectly encapsulated by the flowers that spelled out GRAN DAUGHTER [sic].

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday
Brummie Blogs: Hanging out there rest of time.
Brumblog on Twitter: Spewing forth there too.

Let's talk about Jordon, aka Katie Price. Nothing against her personally, good luck to her I say, but does she have to be in the news All The Berluddy Time? You can't walk passed a newsstand without seeing her face in this week's headlines. How much crisis can one person endure in their life?

"Katie Price has to be helped home at 5am after wild night out in supershort orange dress." "Katie and Peter to Split." "Katie and Peter Back Together Again." "Katie Pregnant." She's everywhere, doing everything, all the time.

In an effort to try and understand this phenomenon, I fed some misinformation to the Sunday Mercury news desk to see what would happen, and this is what they came up with:

Brummie Broad in Early Morning Scare. Brummie Broad was heard shouting by neighbours in the early hours of this morning. One neighbour, who wishes to remain anonymous, said she heard phrases like 'You want that work completed by what berluddy time?' and 'SWEETCORN TRANSCRIPTS! AGAIN!'

"It was like something from a horror movie," said the unnamed neighbour, "I thought someone was being murdered the way she was carrying on. It quite upset my Tiddles."

Brummie Broad wouldn't answer the door when we called round to confirm the disturbance, but shouted through the letterbox, "I'm busy! Bog off!"

Brummie Broad in Gas Explosion. "Well," said a close personal friend of Brummie Broad, "because she has no sense of smell, she turned on the gas grill but it didn't light, only she didn't know this. Unsure if the kitchen was full of gas, knowing only that she was hungry and wanted toast, she draped a damp bath towel over her head and stood as far back from the cooker as she could before pressing the ignition button. Fortunately there was no explosion, which makes a change, and she got her toast in the end." No one was hurt in the incident.

Brummie Broad Splits With Hubs. "Oh come on," sighed Brummie Broad, when we rang to confirm the story, "You'll be saying I'm dating Brad Pitt next. Tsk."

Brummie Broad dating Brad Pitt and David Duchovny. Brummie Broad today denied rumours that she's seeing both Brad Pitt and David Duchovny at the same time. "Really?" Brummie Broad drawled when we contacted her, "I'm a self-employed tax slave, tell me when, exactly, am I supposed to have the time?"

Later, when pressed, Brummie Broad was heard to ask, "Do you have Brad and David's telephone numbers then?"

Brummie Broad in Homicide Investigation. Police today were investigating an apparent murder at the home of Brummie Broad in Birmingham. They were called when neighbours spotted suspicious marks on the driveway.

After being interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives (men in uniform, weyhey!), Brummie Broad made a statement to waiting reporters: "There has been no murder and I am not involved in any homicide investigation. Police found nothing but the white outline of a human body painted on my driveway near the front door. The words NO SALESMEN were printed underneath. It is not a crime scene, it's a warning to canvassers."

P.S: Heat and Hello magazines, I'm available for photographs at any time (but let me know beforehand so I can vac up a bit).

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday, though sanity can't always be guaranteed.
Brummie Blogs: There rest of time, usually, if I'm not typing up berluddy sweetcorn transcripts.
Twitter: Angst sometimes coughed up there, occasionally.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to apologise for the chronic lack of anything in this week's Brummie Broad blog.

This is not due to lethargy or laziness (well, not much anyway), its just that... well, I've been a bit busy lately, what with life and work and everything.

I mean, typing is quite exhausting you know, moving all 10 fingers at the same time, and the commute from the bedroom to the study next door can be a bit stressful what with the dog's penchant (yeah, penchant) for lying in doorways.

Urgent work, deadlines, transcribing an endless series of Really Long Interviews about tinned vegetables (beyond boring), a weekend away in Wales where gasp shock horror it didn't rain, and decorating, its all taken its toll. Frankly, I'm knackered.

Plus I've given up smoking. Yes, I have given up smoking and not killed anybody... yet. I have given up smoking and Hubs, who has also given up smoking but doesn't appear to have any homicidal tendencies, has put the number of the local divorce lawyer on speed-dial, thus forcing me to behave like a (relatively) normal human bean.

So basically, like the White Rabbit in some book where nobody smoked, I haven't had time to do anything except curse cigarette companies and chew on pillows.

More wild rantings from the smoke-free zone to follow shortly.

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday, depending how bad the nicotine shakes get.
Brummie Blogs: Not there either at the moment.
Twitter: There because 140 characters or less is just about doable in my current state.

I've been watching Come Dine With Me a lot lately. I don't know why, I don't even like cooking... or rather, cooking doesn't like me.

A couple of weeks ago, inspired by CDWM, I decided to 'cook something different'. I'd been threatening to do this for quite a while, but Hubs usually managed to talk me out of it (sometimes by simply bursting into tears). This time I was determined to create a culinary feast of epic proportions.

I'd found a couple of recipes on the internet and followed the instructions To The Letter. I spent two whole hours of my life chopping and measuring and weighing and stirring, and ended up with something that resembled shite on a plate.

When I mentioned this incident on my blog, a kind person sent me an mega-simple recipe that even I couldn't muck up. Ha, yeah, okay. I replied to kind person thus:

"I've decided to stick to what I know best, which is jars and frozen things, stuff I don't actually have to make myself. I'm well into Uncle Ben's sauces at the moment. Last night I tossed a jar into a casserole (not the actual jar, I'm not that daft), threw in some pasta, frozen peas and corn, and lobbed it into the oven. Then we went to the pub (yay!). When we got back an hour later, amazingly it wasn't burnt to a crisp like most of my cooking. Edible meal! Hubs could hardly believe it, I could tell he wanted to phone people about it and maybe put a declaration in the newspaper or something."

But even I, charcoal-expert extraordinaire, can ruin a simple pasta dish. The other night, in my haste to get in the bath with Frank Skinner - great sentence, if only it were true - my only thought was to make sure the oven was lit. It's a gas cooker, probably not a wise appliance for somebody who can't smell but I like to live life on the edge. It has an electric ignition, but I also use one of those long clicky things that sparks like a flame thrower, just to make sure the Gas Is Lit. I'm very big on making sure the Gas Is Lit.

So I made sure the oven was lit and threw in the casserole. Then, having endured many gas balls crackling across the kitchen, I opened the door, checked the gas was lit, then closed the door again. Repeat several times until absolutely sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Gas Is Most Definitely Lit.

Jumped in bath with Frank (wooohoooo). An hour later, hauled my crumpled carcass out and went to check on din-dins.

Gas still lit, that's good. Casserole still cold, that's bad.

One hour on gas mark ½ does not a meal make.

"Dinner done?" Hubs asked, with that smile he only uses when trying to look happy about me cooking.

"About an hour," I said.

"I thought it only took an hour," he said, forcing the smile to stay on his face despite all the questions racing through his mind (like 'Hope its vaguely edible this time' or 'Its gonna be coal casserole again, I just know it').

"Forgot to put the cooker on a gas mark," I shrugged casually.

It's not actually my fault I can't cook. It's not just because I have no sense of smell, it's my mother, she can't cook either (I hope she never reads this!). It's clearly a genetic thang.

I have memories/nightmares from my childhood of my mother's cooking. She once made toffee apples, got us all excited about them as we waited for them to 'set'. When my sister and I were finally allowed into the kitchen, we found 12 apples on a tray with sticks in them. No toffee. The toffee had slipped off and languished stickily in the tray. We were chipping away at it for weeks.

Dad, a keen gardener, had a glut of strawberries one year. Mom thought she'd make jam with them. A big cooking session went on in the kitchen. It was like a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, all hissing steam and wooden spoons.

That strawberry jam lasted forever. Throughout my entire childhood there was this endless supply of dark red liquid that had the consistency and taste of slightly lumpy washing up liquid. We found it in our sandwiches, we found it in our bowls of ice cream, we found it on crackers and biscuits.

I still can't eat strawberry jam.

Mom once read a recipe on the side of a bran cereal box, and we endured malt loaf (made from bran cereal) for decades afterwards, and none of us even like it.

We didn't have bowls of rice pudding, we had slices on a tea plate (with a dollup of home-made jam on top).

During a bread strike mom decided to make her own loaves. They were like bricks, you could barely get a knife through them. We tried to soften it in soup, but it sank to the bottom of bowls like a rock.

I still shudder in horror whenever I think about mom's home-made bread, hacked from the loaf and spread with gloops of home-made strawberry jam. I reckon it put me off cooking for life.

That's my excuse anyway.

P.S. Love ya, Marmee. x

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday, culinary disasters allowing.
Brummie Blogs: Hanging out there avoiding the kitchen rest of time.
Twitter: Come join the madness!

I did some typing for my sister a couple of weeks ago. I obviously wouldn't accept payment for it, so she said she'd treat me to a massage.

Last week, a massage at some training college, her treat. I've never actually had a massage before and didn't really know what to expect.

I didn't like it. Nope, didn't like it at all, not one little bit.

Not only did I have to get undressed in front of some 12 year old student in what looked like a dark hospital A&E cubicle, I had to pretend I was enjoying it but not make any sounds that might be construed as 'sex noises'. It was very difficult, not least of all because I was rigid with discomfort at my semi-nakedness - it must have been like trying to massage a corpse.

The 12 year old (nice enough, but you know, she was 12!) started on my legs first, and as I gazed 'relaxed but not aroused' at the ceiling, a single clear thought entered my head; when was the last time I'd shaved my legs? While she struggled with the 'upwards' strokes, almost gasping at the effort, I figured it must have been at least a week, maybe two, and that she was probably having quite a 'rough' time down there.

Stomach area was next. Yeah, okay, you're 12, what do you know about barely-middle-age spread and home-working on a laptop and winter wobbly-bits, eh? Nothing (spit). In she went, kneading the stomach like dough, her little fingers almost disappearing up to the knuckles (I'm exaggerating of course, I'm as slim as a sylph in real life, whatever a sylph is, must look it up).

She then did something rather unexpected. She pushed a thumb into my bellybutton. Now whilst most people wouldn't find anything wrong in this, I have a Pathological Fear about bellybuttons, my bellybutton in particular - I don't want it touched, I certainly don't want it prodded by anything (argh!) and I'd much rather you just forget it even existed and stay well away.

So whilst I was squirming on the bed considering whether to (a) violently swipe her hand away as instinct dictated, or (b) jump up and run, she said, "No pulse."

"Pardon?" I squeaked (desperately trying not to scream Get your berluddy fingers out of my berluddy bellybutton, girl!)

"No pulse," she said again, "In your bellybutton. That's good."

I lifted my head to look at her, plunged up to her elbows into my navel, and said, "I'd consider not having a pulse to be a bad thing. Do you have a resuscitation team here?"

She continued to lightly pulverise the top 70 layers of flesh. "This is a really hard part," she said, "I don't like doing this movement."

The movement consisted of moving her hands up my stomach, sideways across my stomach, down the other side of my stomach, and across the bottom. A square-shape manoeuvre which did Absolutely Nothing for me. In fact, the only thing I'd felt so far was an overwhelming desire to leave.

She moved above my head, pulled down my bra straps and did some quite substantial kneading and pulling and prodding of my neck and shoulders. Several times I actually wondered if she'd rendered me paralysed. The pain was quite significant.

"Turn over," she said after a while.

I wasn't sure I could, but managed to haul my carcass like a pig on a spit, and she went to town on my back.

I'm not sure what it was she did exactly, but every now and again she'd prod the side of my spine with what felt like a knitting needle, and I involuntarily cried out 'UH!' Not 'UH!' as in 'that feels so good, do it to me some more, baby', more 'UH!' like I'd just been stabbed and didn't know how to react yet. Seriously, at least six sharp objects were plunged deep into my body, its was the weirdest feeling.

"Get dressed when you're ready," she suddenly said, stopping.

I dragged myself off that table like a woman just coming round from a major surgical operation, maybe spinal readjustment or a heart-bypass. My legs trembled as I lifted them into my jeans, and I did think about asking her to remove the knitting needles from my back before I left or if they were complementary.

"That was great," the mouth lied profusely, "I really enjoyed that, thanks."

She led me out into the reception area and said that because I'd had to wait a few minutes there would be no charge. Great, I thought.

Sis reappeared and said her massage was 'on the house' too, only she still wanted to pay. Oh, okay then.

We went up to the reception desk. "Did you have the aromatherapy massage?" another 12 year old asked me. I looked at her, shrugged, and said, "I don't know, it could have been."

"My sister has no sense of smell," said Sis, and suspicious glances abounded.

Sis, it turned out, only had huge-denomination notes in her purse, and the receptionist, of course, had no change. So I paid. For both. Including a tip comprised entirely of 20p pieces for each masseur.

My treat, apparently.

["Let me take you to the pub," Hubs said to me tonight, "My treat, bring money."]

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday, or as soon as the knitting needles are removed.
Brummie Blogs: Stiffly hanging out there rest of time.

A bit of snow and we're all panicking... or not, depending on where you work I suppose. Doesn't bother me because I don't leave the house, so I can just watch the pretty whiteness descending as I toast crumpets in front of the gas fire (because its so damned cold in the ice cavern that is my kitchen).

Proper workers had a nightmare getting to their offices this morning. I know this because I received a 'flurry' of expletive-laden emails from mates - one simply read 'FARKIN SNOW!" in size 56 font.

Some people didn't even attempt to go in. Had I been one of the 'normal' people, I wouldn't have bothered either... there's nothing fun about tramping to or from the city centre in a snowstorm - trust me, I know about these things.

Here's what I writted when I last worked in the city and the snow came:

"The annoyingly chirpy weather woman on GMTV this morning said the snow would turn to rain later, so I set out to work armed with the knowledge that the white stuff currently falling from the sky would cease and all would be well with the world once more.

Got to work, still snowing.

Went out for a faaag at 10.30, still snowing.

Midday, and its still snowing.

At 3pm large flakes are careering passed the office window with increasing regularity, and it's sticking. Memories of trudging through the snow to get home come back to haunt me with alarming vividness.

"I'm off," I tell my boss, snatching up my fur hat and coat.

"I don't blame you," she says.

And I make a run for it.

Jump on a bus. Traffic slow, but not terrible. I get out my book. We crawl up Broad Street. We slither around Five Ways Island. We hit standstill traffic by the White Swan pub and sit there for 30 minutes. Another 30 minutes to crawl up the hill to Harborne. The High Street is gridlocked with traffic struggling to stay in a straight line and not mount the pavements.

I read my book for another 20 minutes, optimistically chanting, 'We'll get home , we'll get home'.

And then the bus driver, in a rare moment of passenger communication, yells, "Everybody off. Traffic's at a standstill, can't go any further."

And the full horror of the situation hits me.

I was going to have to walk.

I pull up the collar on my Russian coat, wrap my scarf several times around my face so just my eyes show, pull my bag strap over my head, and off I go, stepping straight into the grey slush right up to my ankles.

And the slog begins. I live nowhere near Harborne. I have a trek of Captain Scott proportions ahead of me. I slither and slide passed all the gridlocked traffic like Bambi on ice. It's freezing, it's wet, it's deep, and still bloody snowing. That chirpy GMTV weathergirl needs to be taken into a room and given a damn good thrashing, the lying cow.

Onwards, along with all the other foresaken commuters fighting through the blizzards to get home. A young, skinny girl marches passed me in high stiletto boots, oblivious to the snow and strutting like she's on a catwalk - how the hell does she do that?

Onwards. A group of hooded youths swagger towards me. I stay on my straight(ish) path and so do they, clearly thinking the snow-covered hag will move out of the way for them. The hell! I've just spent nearly an hour trudging through knee high snow and black sludge, suffocated by the exhaust fumes of a thousand motionless cars, and I'm more than a little pissed off. I stomp onwards, willing to fight for the path ahead if necessary. The youths launch themselves into the snowdrift at the side of the road, and on I trudge.

And on.

And on.

I slip, I slide, but by some miracle I don't fall over. One foot in front of the other, nowhere near home, my feet and my clothes sopping wet. It all seems very surreal, but there's a soothing rhythm to the crunching of feet in snow. A woman ahead of me falls over and no less than 10 fellow trekkers rush to her aid - it's that kind of atmosphere.

I start to flag. I pull out my MP3 player and crank up Bodyrockers, the perfect snow trudging music. I like the way you mooo-oooove stomp stomp stomp.

And onwards. Forever onwards. Up a hill, down a hill, gridlocked traffic everywhere, cars skidding and sliding, buses roaring like ungainly dinosaurs. My husband calls my mobile phone to say he's stuck in the car in Quinton. The whole of Birmingham and beyond has come to a shuddering standstill.

And still it snows. And onward I plod. My bladder swells to the size of a Zeppelin balloon and I eye up potential bushes along the way, but can't bring myself to scurry behind them for relief, not with the eyes of a thousand stranded motorists all around. I just keep walking. And walking. One foot in front of the other.

I finally reach familiar surroundings, albeit colourless. It's now 5.30pm, over two hours since I raced out of my office building, over an hour since I jumped off the bus. A man walks along the path towards me, not veering to one side to let me pass. How rude! The man reaches out and takes my hand, and I'm more than a little surprised. No harm in mass camaraderie in the face of extreme hardship, but intimate groping is a definite no-no. Fortunately the gripping hand belongs to my husband, who managed to crawl home in the car and then came straight back out to search for me (star!).

Together we walk hand-in-hand, parting only to push the a neighbour's car out of the snow and for Hubs to race ahead and unlock the front door so I could shimmy wetly to the toilet.

Oh the relief! Home at last.

My Russian coat, when I peel it off, is so sodden it weighs more that I do. My black fur hat is white and stiff with snow, and my sensible Clarks shoes are swollen like sponges.

It took me more than three hours to get home tonight, risking frostbite and injury. But I did it.

I won't be doing it again."

And in fact I never did.

So I'm thinking of you all out there in the cold, harsh world, as I sit here in front of the fire working on my laptop.

All hate mail to...

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday (come rain or shine or snowstorm)
Brummie Blogs: Hiding out there rest of time.

January, month of misery brought on by chronic poverty, lack of daylight, freezing temperatures and that general post-holiday blues feeling. Yuk hoik spit.

It's also the month I lost my fizz, my oomph, my yeeehaa feeling. Don't know what happened to it, it just disappeared without a trace. Bursts of enthusiasm took to reading the newspaper, and motivation has just gave up altogether and oozed across the living room carpet like an oil slick. The dog keeps growling at it.

Also, I can't be entirely sure that my fizz, my oomph, my yeehaa feeling didn't take a companion with it.

I suspect it's made off with my sanity.

DAY 4 without Oomph

I've conducted a thorough search for my oomph over the last few days. I've looked under the bed in case it fell out during the night. I've looked in the garden in case the dog took it outside and buried it. I've even searched the kitchen, even though I'm not in there much (except to create gas explosions and carbon-coloured food).

I've advertised locally: "REWARD FOR THE RETURN OF LOST OOMPH," but nobody's yet come forward. Maybe a fiver's not enough. I'm hoping one of the neighbours will come round holding it between finger and thumb, saying 'Is this yours?' in a really sneering fashion and telling me its been wrapped around their table leg for the past week.

I imagine it shivering under a bush somewhere, lost and a bit blue looking. I visualise it tramping the cold, dark streets trying to find its way home. I leave the hallway light on at night, just in case. I'm hoping it took the door key with it. I lay out a glass of milk and biscuits before I go to bed hoping maybe Father Christmas will bring it back if there's enough incentive (well he's got nothing else to do has he).

Its quite difficult surviving without it. I'm expected to do things, like work, possibly chores, some reading, a lot of computing, but I just sigh and flop around like a limp balloon, bereft of enthusiasm or energy.

I am an empty shell of oomphlessness.

DAY 8

The last few days have been a bit odd, a bit lacking in enthusiasm-type stuff. I had a sudden surge of work and was typing my little socks off - not that typing off socks helps in any way, it's a psychological thing - then it all suddenly stopped and I was a bit stunned and felt like an extra in Shaun of the Dead for a bit... looked like one too to be honest.

Tried giving myself a pep-talk in front of the bathroom mirror, but was distracted by Husband standing behind me asking, "Why do you look like an extra in Shaun of the Dead? And what's that stuff on the floor the dog keeps barking at? And are you going to be much longer only I need to shave?"

DAY 11

I've received some information about my Oomph. Apparently its been seen in a pub in Edgbaston, slumped against the bar and telling all and sundry what a terrible life its had... ungrateful little sod. It was gone by the time I turned up with a cage and a cattle prod.

I've also received an email: "We have your Oomph. Deposit £1,000 in a plain envelope and leave it on the Floozie in the Jacuzzi by 5pm today, or the Oomph gets it."

I replied: "Having just paid my extortionate tax bill I doubt I have 1,000 pennies let alone pounds, but I do have 1,000 phrases to describe how I feel about the Inland Revenue, will that do?"

As yet, no reply.

DAY 21

Oomph is back! I found it lying face down on the bedroom floor this morning. I nudged it with my toe, hissing "And where the berluddy hell have you been?", but it just flipped me the bird. That's when I did some fancy football kick and splattered it against the wardrobe door. It's still there.

There was a note on my kitchen table: "Where's the milk and cookies?" I suspect Father Christmas brought Oomph back. This is confirmed by an unnamed source who sounded suspiciously reindeer-ish when they rang me this morning to tell me what happened.

So what happened was, Oomph was in some pub in Harborne, slagging off the customers and being offensive, when Father Christmas burst in, all ruddy faced. Rudolph had apparently tracked Oomph down because Oomph kept sending Rudolph rude messages on his mobile phone. Father Christmas wasn't pleased because he'd been getting some right earache from Rudolph about it and he was trying to rest after all the frantic festivities.

So anyway, Father Christmas grabs Oomph by the scruff of the neck - or around the neck region anyway since Oomph doesn't actually have a neck - and shook it quite firmly. "You Oomph?" FC asked, "Brummie Broad's Oomph?" Oomph promptly hurled up all over FC's snazzy Santa outfit. FC furiously tossed Oomph into an empty sack (empty because its no longer Christmas, try to keep up) and dragged it out to his sleigh, which was causing a major traffic jam on Harborne High Street.

Father Christmas brought Oomph home last night, landing his sleigh in the bog that used to be my garden and fighting his way past a comatose dog at the back door. When he let Oomph out of the bag, it ran around swearing and gesticulating, so FC told it to Get To Bed. Oomph flounced up the stairs and collapsed in a heap - or a squelch - on my bedroom floor, where I found it this morning.

So Oomph is back, although not much use at the moment. I've tried scraping it off the wardrobe door, but it clings on, screaming, "Just fark off and leave me alone! And bring me another beer!" You just can't get the oomph these days.

Until its back to full capacity, I'll just keep taking the tablets.

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday (Oomph allowing)
Brummie Blogs: Hanging out there rest of time

As the party season comes charging towards like a herd of decorated elephants, I've been reminiscing about corporate festivities from days gone by. Whilst most company events start off like the Boots advert, they usually end like a scene from The Great Escape, with employees furtively slipping out the back door and making a run for it.

In between, a lot of strange things can happen.

At one major company I worked for a young (and v.ambitious) secretary had had a brief fling with a married boss at the Crimbo party the previous year. Thinking the same would happen again this year, she sat next to him all evening like a love-sick puppy, but he pointedly ignored her. She sobbed hysterically in the toilet when she (literally) couldn't pin him down, and finally ran off into the night like Cinderella, her dreams of stratospheric social status destroyed. I have to admit, we were all just a bit pleased.

And there's always one Secretary By Day, Insatiable Slut By Night, flinging herself in wild abandonment at anything above the level of associate and ending the night hugging an empty bottle in the corner of the room with makeup smudged over her face like a Picasso painting.

I worked at one company where the receptionist was like Hitler in drag, it was like dealing with a stick of dynamite. But at the Christmas party we saw her pissed and over-emotional being tended to by one of the top-level bosses (also pissed). They sat at the dinner table, arms around each other, glaring at everyone else like they were plotting mass homicide. Very strange.

That was the party where one secretary, finding she'd left her mobile phone in the office, encouraged a couple of us to break into the building to retrieve it. Somewhat inebriated, we also raided the stationery cupboard which the receptionist guarded like a rabid Rottweiler, virtually emptying it. The atmosphere the next day was hysterically horrendous as she tried to hunt down every stolen pen and stapler with all the subtlety of Attila the Hun.

Then there was the large formal event where one of the bosses with a particularly well-honed sadistic streak decided that a game of Charades in front of the whole company would be fun for everybody. Bar steward. Our names were called out at random, and employees shuffled up to the stage like condemned prisoners to entertain upper management.

My name was called. I shook my head at the CEO wielding the microphone. "Come on," he yelled jollily. I shook my head again, firmer this time. "Get on up here," he ordered in boss-like manner." I pursed my lips (to stop me mouthing F-Off), squinted my eyes and held up my hand - hell would freeze over before I humiliated myself for their amusement.

Even worse than company parties are the department parties which, because I'm specialised in my particular sector, usually consisted of a couple of bosses, and me. One year my two bosses took me to an ultra-chic restaurant where meals were just coloured dots on large white plates - I didn't know whether to lick it or frame it. They talked shop, which was as riveting as waiting for a saucepan of potatoes to come to the boil, only for hours. I texted a work colleague: "I'm dying." She replied: "Just drink to kill the pain." It didn't help, although I certainly gave it a good go - they poured me into a taxi afterwards with me wailing about how much I loved them. Facing them the next day was pretty dire, I can tell you.

Then there's the boss's 'home parties'. I only went to one of these and, like Scarlet O'Hara, swore I'd rather have my limbs cut off with a blunt blade before attending another. It was so stuffy they only served wine (horrors) and us mere workers could barely understand the guffawing of the other guests, so it's a good job they didn't deign to speak to us. Except one.

A big rotund man wandered over to me. "And who are you?" he bellowed. "I work with Mr X," I said. "Oh, are you a partner?" "No, I'm his secretary." There was a shocked pause, then without another word he turned on his heels and walked away, clearly unwilling to waste another breath on a mere pleb. Tsk.

The best parties, of course, were the girlie ones. Off us secretaries would go at lunchtime, determined to have ourselves a good time. And we did.

Boy, did we ever.

The drinking would start around 10am, with bottles surreptitiously pulled out of bosses filing cabinets, passed underneath desks and tipped with gusto into coffee mugs. We'd start off by sneaking to the loos to tart ourselves up but, once the alcohol took hold, we noisily disappeared en masse, leaving the office empty. One boss described the noise coming out of the Ladies as a 'hollering tribe of high-pitched viragos' - we had to look up the word 'virago' and weren't sure whether to feel insulted or not (but we were too drunk to care).

Barely dressed and covered in tinsel, we strutted unsteadily down city streets whooping and jeering at any male we passed and flirting outrageously with waiters and customers at whichever restaurant had been unfortunate enough to accept us. Then the drinking would begin in earnest.

One time a very quiet secretary merely sniffed at a glass of wine and was immediately rendered legless. Slurring and cackling wildly, she rang her boss in the office and said, "You're a dick." We tried to wrestle the phone off her, but she kept stealing other phones to ring his office and hiss abuse. Oh the grovelling she had to do the day after! (She wasn't sacked... you can get away with a lot at Christmas.)

One gorgeous secretary had a massive crush on her boss, who looked exactly like Alan Carr, complete with buck teeth. We simply couldn't understand it. After a couple of drinks she wailed and howled about her unrequited love, while we all glanced at each other thinking WTF. They eventually married (and we all thought WTF).

Sometimes bosses would ring us mid-party and demand our return. Yeah, okay, whatever. Sometimes we did, pouring into the office hiccoughing and giggling and lobbing Christmas decorations at each other. Most times we didn't return until the next day, hauling our hungover carcasses to our desks and falling across them to sleep it off.

Ah those were the days. I quite miss that. Christmas festivities for me this year will consist of one mince pie on a plate next to a large tumbler of whisky, with me singing It'll Be Lonely This Christmas with the keyboard people and the talking cacti.

It's gonna be wild!

Brummie Broad: Here every Tuesday
Brummie Blogs: There rest of time