The big clean-up

Phase One..................................complete.

And I even have time to post this blog before my guest arrives...yay me! I have a clean and tidy house...it's amazing what the threat of having someone to stay can do! It is also amazing that I haven't died from dust inhalation in the process!

So, it is now spick and span :o) I didn't actually know what that phrase meant, so I looked it up in my Dictionary of Idioms (don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me? Doncha?). It goes like this:

"It was only in the mid nineteenth century that spick and span came to mean 'tidy, clean and orderly'. Formerly the phrase was spick and span-new, equivalent to brand new.

The phrase has its origins in an Icelandic word spannyr, itself compounded from span (a chip of wood) and nyr (new). The sense was 'as new as a shaving freshly cut from the block'. Middle English had the expression span-new. Chaucer uses the phrase in Troylus and Cryseyde: 'This take was aie span-newe to begin.'

Spick (spike or nail) was added to form the extended expression in the sixteenth century.

See also: in apple-pie order, brand new."

Ok...I know you really cared to read that, but this is MY space here! Tee hee. Blummin' annoying lots of italics though. I certainly have never heard the phrase 'in apple pie [why the hyphen?] order'...must be American I reckon.

Phase Two, when I can be arsed (don't hold your breath!) is to 'Life Laundry' the junk room I have now created in my front bedroom...I really don't need all this stuff! Most of it's been sitting in boxes since I moved in over 2 years ago, so it's hardly in frequent usage!

Until Phase Two is complete, do not...I repeat DO NOT...open the bedroom cupboard! There is serious risk of death from avalanche! It's actually not that bad, courtesy of the aforementioned junk room.

But my house, even with these failings, has never been cleaner or tidier...well, certainly not since I've lived in it anyway! I just hope I can maintain it...or at least not let it get as bad as it was! I have even invited people over for the first time in I really can't remember how long!

Now that Phase One is complete it may actually be possible to start getting some work done on the house itself (which, as you may recall from my previous bloggings, is something of a tumbledown shack in need of its fair share of renovations...damn you Kirstie Allsopp and your wily ways...when I saw this house I saw potential...I just didn't realise that I didn't have any!). Where to start on that is a whole other question! But the prospect of actually being able to live in my house, rather than merely kind of squat, is a pleasing one.

Phase Three? Taking over the world! Mwahahahaha!

More of the same...

"Come into my world, I've got to show, show, show you"...it's too scary here alone!

This blog has been sitting here with that much written for about 3 days on my computer screen! I am hardly Miss Motivation at the moment! It is Sunday and, in my opinion, Sundays are incredibly boring, so I thought I'd have a bash at actually writing something! Beware though peeps that this one is something of an epic monster-blog!

It's been another one of my vagabond weekends. I went out Friday night...Rock and Doris (the local lesbian night...make that the only lesbian night! Something which I would normally avoid like the plage, but Doris is actually rather good and always has bands on). Really enjoyed the band this time actually (Drei...who are playing at the Egypt Cottage tonight along with the fabuloso Lake Me for anyone that's interested) and I thought that the singer lady sounded like Alison Russell out of Po' Girl, which has to be a good thing! Anyway...I got drunk, mostly sitting in the same place like I was on my throne and waiting for people to come to talk to me...which, amazingly, they did! So I did quite a bit of drinking, quite a bit of chatting, and then, after we'd left there, quite a bit of crying, confiding and feeling sorry for myself! And I hadn't even touched the gin I'd secretly stashed in my bag!

Thank you to Sue for being a wonderful friend...it's amazed me recently how wrongly you can interpret those who you think you can and can't rely on. People I thought would be there no matter what have barely been seen for dust, those I have had a more casual friendship with have really come out of the woodwork and helped they wouldn't believe how much! And that includes you Soobaloo!

So, I got home from Sue's at about 5.30pm yesterday...again with no sleep at all and in the previous evening's make-up and clothes! I had to do the walk of shame (only for the lack of any actual shame!) back to Gateshead, where I somehow kept my battered body awake until stupid o'clock this morning. I have now slept, but I'm not sure it's affected the (in)sanity much! I am (generally) managing to get my sleeping into a bit more of a pattern lately, which is a relief... it's just a shame that pattern involves initially getting to sleep around 3.30am and waking around 5.30am! Great for my future prospects of holding down my job!

I shall warn those of you out there who actually read these things now...this is likely to be another of my epic blogs about pretty much nothing at all! Oh, I've already done that haven't I? My uber-blogging seems to know no bounds when I actually get started; well, I want to make each visit worth my while! In my usual slightly anal and certainly very procrastinatory way, I have kept some notes on stuff I want to rant about...and from the overview I have I can reassure you that it's just a load of codswallop (do you know the story of that word? The theory goes that it's all about a Mr Codd, who invented a bottle with a marble in the neck, which had to be pushed in to open the bottle and get to the contents. He made soft drinks. Wallop was a term for beer, so any beer that was a bit like piss-watter, i.e. not very strong, was referred to as 'Codswallop', or a bit rubbish...and this part of the rant wasn't even planned! Oh dear, I think it's going to grow exponentially as I go...we could be here some time!).

Shall we get the critiques of new (to me) tv programmes out of the way first? Just as a way of reassuring everyone that my time is being spent productively! (Omigod...I am ready to cry...I had typed about an hour's worth of rant beyond here and the screen's just refreshed itself all on its own and lost it all! I shall try my best to remember...because it actually wasn't really all that worth remembering...but I just know that I'm going to get that niggling feeling, when I'm done, that it sounded better the first time round!). Anyway, onwards and upwards!

The first is a kids' programme called 'Stupid'.It is like the freaky bastard son of Why Don't You? and that strange thing that used to be on Channel 4 with small children dancing around in make-up...Kiddiepops or whatever it was called. The premise is basically little peeps trying to do some Catherine Tate-esque sketch show. It really is Stupid, just unfortunately not in a very good way! Give me Art Attack instead any day! The occasional surreal almost Boosh-ism though, which I suppose can't be knocked! Following that came Raven, which looked a bit like Knightmare (that show was so ace!), only not so good, and had children in Crystal Maze / Fort Boyard / twatty Dungeons and Dragons-stylee role-play mode. My brain is seriously atrophying...I worry about kids these days...don't know they're born...all this was fields etc. etc.

On to (vaguely) more adult viewing, again (as per a previous blog) in the form of Hollyoaks, which recently has seen a mother walking in on her 15 year old daughter, who she didn't even know was pregnant, giving birth on the kitchen floor. Genius...or maybe just a little way short of subtlety eh? We are also being treated to a storyline about a young and pretty gayboy...note that he is 17 however, and therefore legal for all the poofs out there to be perving over of a hungover Sunday morning...methinks that may have been rather carefully planned! Anyway, this young man's sister had just bought him tickets to go and see Dolly Parton...and he was dissing Dolly! Do you think I should write to Offtel, or whoever it is that polices such things?? How very dare he! I am sure, however, that the fact that I myself am due to go and see Dolly in just over a week should be enough to keep me all perky and chipper...bring it on!

Unbelievably it's just deleted itself again! Only this time I had copied this far into a blank e-mail message (I don't have Word, or I'd just do it all there to start of with and avoid all of this palaver!). So, for the third time now I am going to have my rant about Rick Waller (do you think my computer's trying to tell me something?). He was on Never Mind the Buzzcocks recently sporting new long hair and a rather fetching facial 'do'...and looking like a cross between an ex-flatmate of mine and a lass that used to, rather disconcertingly, fancy me (yes, it does happen occasionally!). Also on the same show was the gentleman who plays Robin Hood in the new tv series (apparently...that is something which I have never seen!), who looks exactly like Dave, the lovely drumming boy from Fickle Brink, and Rotherham's finest! Like separated at birth alike...on a par with Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Beadle and Clive Anderson and their short little arms, creepy hands and no necks! Only Dave doesn't seem to have any of these afflictions (fortunately!) and therefore maybe it's not such a good analogy!

While we are on a South Yorkshire tip, I was pondering again on Rusby-shaped matters and smiling at her flat Barnsley vowels when she sings. And she seems like such a canny lass...why is it that no-one I've ever met who comes from Barnsley (ok, so it's not that many people) has ever even heard of her? Barnsley should be proud enough to want to erect a statue! All of the people whom I have had the pleasure to meet who hail from Barnsley have, unfortunately, been knobheads...to be fair, most of of them have been on the gay scene in Newcastle which, in general, seems to be replete with imbeciles! Obviously save for my lovely friends who might be out there reading this of course! Anyway, I was reminded of a 'lovely' couple, who we shall call Keith and Kim for those were their names, who I once met in The End.

At one point in the conversation, I kid you not (and I don't even need to paraphrase for effect...this is as out of the horse herself's mouth!), Kim asked me, "So are you gay or are you normal?"!! What the fuck? So I replied that "I am gay AND normal" (ok, so the 'normal' bit of that may be taking some slight liberties with the truth, but I was trying to prove a point!). Kim then piped up in response with, "Oh, so you're bi then?". I give up!

Ok, two further meditations on televisual entertainment and then we are done...with that topic at least (you really thought you were going to get off that lightly?). The first is simply to say that I am loving the new Guinness ad...the one with the hands. For those of you who have not yet been lucky enough to catch it, it can be seen at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQDjynOzgCk

The other is for Jules...just so I don't get told off for my omissions (note O-missions and not E-missions!) this time around! Imagine if you really could get Kirstie Allsopp (complete with rather dapper yellow jacket) from a vending machine! Put that tongue away please Jules!

Actually, I lie...I have two more adverts to comment on before I am quite done with this. Anyone looking for more philosophical rantings and artistic and critical analyses really would be best off someplace else! I need to talk about the Picture Loans ad (I am squirming a little just from having to use their name, thus potentially spreading the word about their products!)...I just need to get it off my chest! I'm sure you know the one...with the 'Geordie' (written like that on purpose...that accent is so fake and patronising!) wife saying "That's greeeeat!" and "Josh, Dad's found ya scoo-ah"! Hate it; please remove it from our screens!

The other is the Pilgrim's Choice...Choice on toast...macaroni Choice one. It makes me feel sick every time they say that (almost like that one for Otex ear drops, with the images of disintegrating ear wax...I have to turn away from the screen! Yeurch! Everybody now..."Footsteps on the dancefloor (Remind me baby of you), Eardrops in my eyes". Tee hee). I seriously want to hire a hitwoman (jobs for the girls!) to track down the team behind thinking that concept up! I don't know why it makes me feel so sick, but it's when they say 'choice' in place of 'cheese'...I can't stand it...I feel the same way about that as I do about words like moist and poignant and the name Phoebe, where the vowels are all up next to each other (and which I have mentioned before, so I will not digress into further for now!). I do often wonder if I am not slightly autistic spectrum! Lol...shut it you cheeky ones in the back. 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time' seemed perfectly reasonable to me in places! Chortle. Although not the maths-y bits! I do think that, if you start to analyse too closely, everybody has something diagnosable in them...like OCD...that seems quite prevalent; OCD-isms anyway, for those that can actually be arsed to worry about one thing that much!

Back, briefly, to the words and vowels thing again. The French are bad for that, with words like soeur...don't get me wrong, French is a beautiful language, and one that I used to have mastered really rather well, but at which my prowess is now all too rusty! But, anyway...French women...yum (although perhaps often a bit thin)! And expat British women in France...I still think of you every day you know. But I try to only let myself think for so long, as otherwise it just hurts too much that I can't have you in my life...which is more my fault than anyone else's. You are beautiful and for you I would give up the world I know and love you so hard!

For anyone reading this I am digressing, of course, into rather risque emotional territory...something which I have sworn against. It is ok though, as Ms Expat will never read this and so I am safe! My failings in the use of the French language were recently proved by a somewhat melancholy message to the woman above...it didn't even mean what I'd intended it to mean...doh! And that's when I've done really well and haven't contacted her in yonks and yonks...you can't wish things into being. But damn you insomnia and the texts you make me send! My final comment here flies straight in the face of what a certain Mr Dando had to say...I don't just want a bit part in your life; I can't handle it that way, so it's just easier to (try to) cut all ties.

Speaking of foreign affairs, I'm starting to panic a little about being able to get annual leave from work for Krakow (I hope I'm back at work by then!!), because I haven't been there to book it in. I totally need a break away somewhere and a bit of a refresher, so cross your fingers for me! And it would be a lovely bonus if Polish women are as hot as Czechoslovakian women...I refer specifically to Barbara Nedeljakova who was in the film Hostel. Yum! I'll do without the consequences though thanks! She is, however, a bit thin...but I'm sure I could feed her up a bit...I can think of several ways of giving her the munchies! Snigger.

I was thinking the other day, courtesy of some (relatively) artsy and highbrow viewing material (no, that doesn't mean porn...it actually means some documentary / interview thingy with Gilbert and George about their Tate Modern exhibition!) about what would make a lovely date...or more like weekend away really. Saturday would be brunch and people-watching in Covent Garden, before heading to the Gilbert and George exhibition then taking a walk, hand in hand, along the Thames. If there was time we could maybe take in a show that evening, before finding a bite to eat and heading out to somewhere slightly shady such as Heaven. When we got back to the hotel we would spend the night learning each other before heading out for some fresh(ish) Sunday air on Hayward's Heath...and swimming and sunbathing there if it's warm, kissing and laughing in the sun. Sunday night it's back home and spending the evening lazing, cuddling and listening to music, before falling asleep in each other's arms with our eyes shut so tightly against the weekend coming to an end! There is currently no other person to make up this 'we', so I'm just being a soppy old romantic really! Equally lovely would be finding some country cottage to hide away in...come on ladies, get those offers flooding in!

And in the somewhat disconnected travels of my brain, back to talking about tv adverts we go! Figure that link! Have you seen the one for smoked pork sausage?? The voice over man is talking in a voice that sounds like he's trying to be a bit sexy. In my personal opinion, sex and sausage do not a match make, so it just makes me feel a bit queasy! On so many levels. So, no thanks mister, I don't want your sausage! I feel so strongly about this that I might actually get a t-shirt made up that says 'Sausages Aren't Sexy'! Top that! Seriously...for those of you who are of slightly more advanced years than me, and who never had the late 80s pleasure of watching the marvellous film that is Teen Witch, check out the song 'Top That' on YouTube...thoroughly classy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYoaqVbJoR8

Now that is entertainment! And has got to be better than the shite that the airwaves are being filled with nowadays...BBC3 had a programme on the other day (which, sadly, I didn't manage to catch!) that was actually called 'Help! My Dog's As Fat As Me'! I am, however, loving how dirty watching Countdown whilst being off work makes me feel! And I can kid myself that I'm keeping my brain active. Really it's just to gawp at the strange, orange, plastic people and the nerds! Fnar. Suzie Dent, of Dictionary Corner fame, is also clearly very naughty...sod you and your obvious stylings Ms Vorderman, I'd rather plump for the filth concealed behind that nerdy librarian facade! I really do need to be getting back to work before the rot sets in irretrievably...I really don't know how people do this long-term! To me it seems that it insidiously destroys both the mind and the soul (the body's already fooked!).

Ok, so finally we are at the tying up loose ends part of this blog. Firstly I shall mention Martha Tilston...check her out on MySpace...I'm willing to forgive a great deal for a lass that has an album called 'Bimbling', so I'll merrily put up with a few dodgy, binty lyrics...sounds quite pretty if you ignore that. The other music-themed thing is Josh Pyke...he's playing at the Academy on Monday and I'm gutted I won't get to go and see him because I already have tickets to see Faithless the same night. Which I'm rather nervous about, given that I don't dance! The other thing I missed that sounded like it was worth checking out was Robodisco at Moot (which I haven't been to since it isn't The Stout Fiddler any more):

www.myspace.com/robodisco2007

Right, I think that really is it...if there are any competitions for longest blog about nothing in history, please let me have the details!

Currently reading: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

Currently listening to: The Waifs...The Wailin' Jennys (simply courtesy of that being what came next...anyway, nice segue, so thanks iTunes!)...Fiona Apple...Flaming Lips...Erykah Badu...Ben E. King...Ben Harper...I have been here some time and listened to quite a lot...and now it isn't even Sunday any more (so I'm afraid you have also missed the Egypt Cottage gig I mentioned earlier by now!)!

Currently washing with: Original Source Tea Tree and Mint Shower...I love minty things..yum!

Ok, so I'm not reading, listening, washing, watching and typing all at the same time, but this blog has taken me so long to put up that have done all of these things and more!

Currently flapping over: Getting my house tidy (-er) in time for the weekend...I found out yesterday I'm to have a house guest...aargh! Unfortunately, however, the internal panic has not yet translated into action and here I am sitting at my computer! As Katy said...I am the queen of procrastination! Does anyone have a number for Kim and Aggie??

Blogging is such vanity and self-indulgence isn't it? xxxx

Current Mood: Oh so many whizzing past all too fast!

Currently listening to...

...'Same Jeans' by The View. It is annoyingly catchy. Which I'm sure means that eventually I'll just find it annoying...but, to be fair, DARE still isn't yet..! For now I'm loving it.

It makes me want to wiggle...not dance I hasten to add! I quote the Right Hon. Paul Daniels MC in saying, "I like it...not a lot"! MC, in this case, standing for 'Middlesbrough Celebrity'...there are but few and their number includes at least one of Reeves and Mortimer (I forget which one...Bob maybe?), Chris Rea (of Rea's Ice-cream Parlour fame), erm...Roy 'Chubby' Brown (oh you make me so proud!). And speaking of Royston Vasey (for that, those of you who didn't know, is the aforementioned's actual name)...why are The League of Gentlemen now so crap? I'm so disappointed in them...TV series 1 and 2...genius! Christmas Special...you're really making me laugh. Series 3 and it's only funny intermittently and the dvd-release live shows...seriously, just don't bother! And let's not start on that film! Anyway, I didn't come here to rant. Or to talk about 'famous' people from Middlesbrough (I SO think they should get Paul Daniels out into that Celebrity Jungle! He was having dinner in 'Central Park' restaurant in the Boro one night when we were there. He was bald. And teeny tiny. And had a car parked outside with the personalised registration plate MAG1C...I shit you not!). Although, before I get off that subject entirely, I shall just mention none other than THE Journey South for all you lovely gayboys out there in Blogland! And Wizbit.

The rest of them just never got out. Of Middlesbrough. Shame that.

So... visit Boro; 'tis a wonderful, welcoming place! Altogether now...and a 1, and a 2 and..."We are Teesside [please note the second 's'!], We're the future, we're the light"! Anyone remember that tripe?

Slightly better is 'Same Jeans' by The View (or just 'View' apparently in trendy MySpace land). It makes me want to use the word 'jaunty'! And we're back to where we started.

Thank you and goodnight.

Current mood: Wearing a yellow sweater and thinking of sunshine :o)