You is well funny!

I have always looked on the bright side of things. My sense of humour is wacky and I have been called eccentric, nicely mad and well funny. One memorable comment from a student I was teaching many years ago was.
‘You is well funny, you should be on the telly.’
Yes, well… There have been times that it could seriously have gotten me into trouble.
I have already recounted many funny episodes in my life but believe me for every one that I have told you there are a million others. So, here we go, sit down, get comfy and those cheeky ones can bugger off now. It all began with this morning, well, in theory on Thursday when my friend Marie, and yes Marie, this is your entire fault, gave me an early birthday card. She asked me to open it right away and of course I did. There is always the vague hope that there might be a cheque inside. There wasn’t, just in case you wondered. I think she must have forgotten to put it in. Hopefully when she reads this, she’ll pop it in the post. On arrival home, I showed Andrew my card which was a lovely lookalike picture of my cat Bendy. Where she is going with this, you are asking. Don’t deny it, because I heard you. The card was then placed on the book shelf. I did notice Andrew’s newly purchased tax disc but that is really the only time I recall seeing it. It is at this point that I have to claim total ignorance at whatever followed because I honestly cannot remember. I blame hormones myself, mine that is, not Andrew’s. It is a miracle of nature that I am still having periods actually but that is probably another post altogether. But while we are on the subject of periods I would just like to raise the question, why are sanitary towels not free? Did I ask for periods? More importantly did I ask for them to go on forever? Did I ask to make history? No. I spent over nine pounds on sanitary protection the other day. I think the NHS should supply them; after all they supply condoms don’t they? It’s all one and the same thing surely? But I transgress as usual. The next day he asks have I seen his tax disc. I admitted I had but that was the night before. He insists I have lost it, I insist I haven’t. Andrew finally finds it in the recycle bin, folded neatly and inside the envelope clearly marked Lynda which originally housed my card. I mean, honestly what is going on? How did I do that? More importantly when did I do that? And most importantly of all, why did I do it?
My question to you is this. Am I clearly mad, or can this all be blamed on hormones?

I have been known to trudge round Marks and Spencer for over an hour, pack my shopping, ask for the collect by car option, accept my number disc and then drive all the way home, get indoors and then realise I am still holding the disc and my shopping is still at the store.

I’m the part medical receptionist who politely argues with the patient who comes to collect a prescription.
Patient, mumbling:

‘I’ve come to collect my prescription.’

Me:

What’s your name?

Patient: Whispers

‘Joe Smith’

Me, looks for prescription can’t find it. Ten minutes of me asking when was it requested and trying to trace it, I suddenly come to the realisation that it must be a controlled drug and the script is somewhere safe. I search in the relevant place but no prescription. Joe Smith, mumbles his name again and fidgets uncomfortably. I again ask him what it was for in the hope it will give me an idea where to look. He shifts about again and whispers something I don’t catch. He finally reveals it is a private script. Ah, why didn’t he say that in the beginning? With a flourish I produce his prescription which he grabs and quickly exits.

‘What was that all about?’

asks my fellow worker.

‘Oh, nothing,’

I respond.
Well, how was I know his prescription was for Viagra?

I really hate to hurt people’s feelings and that can go as far as our local milkman. Rather than telling him we didn’t want him anymore, I said I now had lactose intolerance and couldn’t drink milk. He was so sympathetic and helpful that I found myself accepting his offer of lactose free milk and yoghurt. Andrew’s face when seeing them in the fridge was quite a picture.

I am even polite to obscene phone callers. One once phoned and asked if I wasn’t too busy would I talk to him while he w***ed himself off. I apologised, saying I was in the middle of the ironing. I mean, who does that?

I have left my handbag in a shopping trolley and driven home.

Left the house, locked the front door while leaving the back door wide open.

Slept in the summer-house when Andrew was away working because there was a spider in the bedroom. Because we do not have a back entrance I had to leave the backdoor unlocked all night, so I could get back into the house in the morning… (shush) don’t tell Andrew.

I have unbuttoned my skirt while travelling on a coach only to forget to button up again. Yes, you’ve guessed it. While running along Oxford Street to catch a connecting bus I ended up with my skirt around my ankles.

I’m the woman who gets a tampon stuck and has to have it surgically removed, oh yes, that’s me…

I have also attempted to get into a car that looks very like mine for about ten minutes until I finally spot the baby seat and remember I don’t have a baby. Thank god, the car wasn’t alarmed.

I find I am out of control whenever I hear Irish music. When walking through the grounds of Blenheim palace and hearing ‘Lord of the dance’ I break into an Irish jig.

Like a good wife I prepare dinner early and put everything in the slow cooker and then potter off to write. It is only when Andrew arrives home at 6.30 that I realise I had plugged in the toaster instead of the slow cooker. No dinner!

I have handed over my NHS employee smart code to policeman when stopped in my car, thinking it is my driving licence (well they are both pink!) and been told I can go. (Obviously they mistake me for a Doctor. Understandable.)
I send text message to the wrong people… Seriously, this can be quite dire.

Now, you are all going to tell me how similar things happen to you every day aren’t you? Or are you just going to tell me.
‘You is well funny!’

You have 72 hours to shoot the computer…

A few weeks ago our internet connection died. If I had known the hassles that were ahead of us I seriously think I would have emigrated to Australia or something. Oh, it surely wasn’t that bad, I hear you say. Oh, trust me, it was worse. But as usual I digress. So let me go back to the beginning. It all began on a Sunday night about three weeks ago. Andrew was trying to get his server onto something called a cloud. Now, don’t ask for any more information on that. Suffice it to say that he runs a business from his office and had some concerns about his personal server going down so that particular evening he was attempting to get it onto a cloud. Not a cloud in the sky you understand, although for as much as I know about it, it could well have been in the sky. Again I digress. Trust me, the server, cloud and everything else is really unimportant in this story. The next day we both toddled off to work. Well, I toddled anyway. I only work a few hours in the morning at a health centre and believe me a few hours working for the NHS is still a few hours too many. Andrew doesn’t work for the NHS and therefore works more than a few hours and is far more important than me. I left work and travelled miserably to Sainsbury’s, as you do and fought my way around the aisles. I knew exactly what I wanted but nothing goes to plan does it? It seemed something had blown up that morning so their freezer department wasn’t working properly and for some reason it affected their spit roast chickens. I did query the connection but no one seemed to know what it was. I quickly re-arranged dinner in my head and headed for the fish counter. Finally, I got to the tills where the queues were a mile long. Eventually I reach the till and am faced with twenty questions.
‘Hello, how are you? Would you like bags for your goods?’
Actually no, I thought I would carry the whole trolley load in my skirt! Or better still in a basket on my head.
Of course I want bags. But before I can answer…
‘Do you have your own bags? Do you need help packing?’
No, I don’t have my own bags and no I don’t need help packing. I mean, do I look helpless. Before you ask, I have sex three times a week, or more if I am lucky. Of course, he didn’t ask about my sex life but you know how it is? And yes I have a club card but I forgot it and no I don’t need to complete a form for a replacement as it is just at home. What an ungrateful woman you think. Well, yes, but I just want to get home and I know they are only doing their job. But really, if you have more than three things in your trolley, then obviously you need bags, right?
Next comes the bit that makes me cringe and bite my tongue. Along the conveyer with a thump come my apples followed by my pears. The bag of flour splits slightly as it is thrown along and the lady behind me gasps. Oh no, I now have to say something and then he will ring the bell and then I will wait forever for someone to get another bag. I sigh and push it into my bag. I really do not have the time. I pay and smile when he tells me to enjoy my nice things, like I have just bought an iPad rather than Mackerel and salad. Ah well… I drive home, lumber inside with my shopping and put the kettle on. Now, you can tell that already I am not in the mood for anything more dramatic than perhaps the teabag splitting. No luck for me. I realise the answer phone is bleeping like crazy and the skype phone is flashing like mad and there is a loud screeching coming from Andrew’s office. I feel an overwhelming temptation to flee while there is still time. I enter the office warily and prepare myself for the horrors that await me. I fight the temptation to scream. The computers are consistently rebooting themselves in an effort to re-establish connection and the answer machine is flashing menacingly at me. Poor Bendy quakes behind me and attempts a purr but it comes out a bit shaky. I listen to the messages with a sinking heart. Andrew’s customers can’t access the server. I phone Andrew and pop two painkillers in case. Pre-empting a headache is always a good idea I find.
‘Not to worry,’ says my calm husband. ‘It’s probably the router. I’ll sort it out when I get home.’
Andrew arrives home at about six and by ten thirty we still have no internet connection. We have a new router though which doesn’t work and irate customers who cannot access what they need. We phone BT. Well, we actually phone India, which is the same thing. We think the woman tells us it is the router. Now, I am not being racist here when I say we cannot understand her. It is just a fact, we simply can’t understand her accent, or the man who follows her, or the woman who follows him. Andrew consistently tells her it isn’t the router to which she responds.
‘Good, we agree it is router.’
Hello, are you talking to us?
We finally give up and phone our internet provider. There is a thirty minute wait. Forty five minutes later someone answers and thirty minutes later after we have turned the router on and off several times we are told the problem will be logged.
‘Someone will contact you in 72 hours. In the meantime should your connection resume please contact us.’
’72 hours,’ I repeat in a strangled voice. We don’t own a television, I want to shout. What are we supposed to do? For God’s sake, you can’t leave us for 72 hours. What are we going to do? How will I get onto Facebook? Andrew slaps me round the face and I calm down. (Obviously he didn’t slap me round the face but it sounds dramatic doesn’t it?
So, we wait 72 hours. During that time I buy a dongle which doesn’t work, or at least it does but it cost me £5 just to surf Amazon for ten minutes and five of those minutes is spent waiting to get into Amazon in the first place. Andrew suggests we use his Android phone as connection. So we do and this takes 10 mins to get into the web page and just as I order a book and go to pay, it times out. How did I ever cope in the days when we had only BT phones and no internet? Can you remember what you did when there was no internet? Anyway, as usual I digress. So, finally one afternoon 72 years later, whoops I mean hours later. It probably just felt like years. Anyway many hours later, they text Andrew at work who then in turn texts me and asks would I like to phone them as I may get the connection back. Even with a thumping headache this sounds good to me. Never again, do you hear me, never ever again, at least not with a thumping headache. The guy is named Mark and this is how it went.

‘Hello, how are you?’ Asks Mark.
‘Fine,’ replies I.
‘I need to go through the router settings with you.’
‘But we have done that already.’
‘I have nothing to say it has been done already.’
Lesson number one, do not argue with them because…
‘Well, I assure you we did.’
Phone goes dead. Now, I am not saying they do this on purpose. I mean why would they? With a thumping head I redial and wait fifteen minutes. While we wait, let me tell you something about Andrew’s office. No, better still have a look at Andrew’s office. (the picture below is just one part of the office but it would have to be the bit where the router is kept)

Now, believe it or not he knows exactly where everything is in here. And believe it or not, I don’t! I fumble around all the papers trying to find the old router. I then fall over objects as I try to plug things in while the whole time Bendy who has picked up the atmosphere is meowing around me and trying to get the airing cupboard door open with his paw.

Bendy hides in cupboard

‘Mark speaking, how can I help?’
‘We got cut off.’
Silence. Oh no!!
‘Are you there, are you there,’ I scream, slightly hysterically.
He politely gives me a web page address to type in. I start typing.
‘Are you in?’
‘Not yet.’
Was that a tut I heard?
‘This lap top is a bit slow. Ah, here we go, it says there is no internet connection.’
Surprise surprise. In fact he does sound surprised.
‘Are you certain?’
Why is it I now feel like hanging up? Finally I get into the settings and they are in Italian. I tell him this and he coughs nervously and then begins telling me to type things in but I haven’t got a clue where to type them.
‘Why is it in Italian?’
‘I don’t know’ I reply honestly.
‘Are all your settings in Italian?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s obviously the problem.’
‘What is?’
‘The fact it is in Italian. The best thing to do now is turn your router off, wait a few hours and then turn it on again. It should be okay now we have reset it.’
A few hours? Why does everything take hours with these people, what is wrong with minutes?
‘But, we have done that already and…’
‘The best thing is to wait until your husband gets home. He can phone us this evening.’
Wait till the husband gets home! Oh, do I see red, or do I see red? I stand up angrily, fall over the cat and curse. The phone goes dead. I am so livid I want to sue them. It has been four days now and so far all we have done is buy new routers and turn them on and off. Where is the engineer that everyone talks about? I decide it may be best to leave it to the husband. In fact, neither of us do anything and the next day it is back on. Of course it goes off again a week later but I really don’t want to put you through all that again. You will be pleased to know that after another 72 hours, copious amounts of Valium, a study clear out and a tranquilised cat, we finally got an engineer down who discovered our eighty year old wiring had gone rotten. But of course, we all know, it really is the router…

Dog food and Jude Law (a fable)

Time to come clean I think. All that skulking around the fish counter and pretending I am buying crab sticks when my eyes are clearly on something else has got to stop. I am close to becoming a menopausal woman for goodness sake. No, you’re not, I hear your cry. Oh, all right then, I’m not. But I will one day and then all this madness will have to stop. So what is it that has me behaving in the manner of a mad woman when visiting my local supermarket. Who or what is it, that drives me to buy twelve tins of dog food when I don’t own a dog? Or has me so demented that I enter the place wearing sunglasses, even when it is raining, in the manner of a celebrity so no one can see the desire in my eyes? It is Jude Law of course. Or more to the point the Jude Law look-alike clubcard man, otherwise known as Frank. I admit to even being tempted to drop by late at night in my P.Js such is my addiction. I see you holding your hands up in horror. I have tried to get this under control you understand. But Valium and counselling have had little or no effect. It all started last summer when I popped in to buy some bog roll. Jude Law accosted me at the door and amidst much swooning and patting of my hair I signed away my life. Well, it felt like that. I actually signed up for a clubcard and have not looked back. I also bought three lots of bog roll as they were triple points as well as 8 packs of crab sticks, also triple points (we don’t eat crab sticks, however we do use bog roll). I went back two days later and Jude Law commented on how nice my hair looked.
‘Oh, I just washed it,’ I shrugged. Well, that is Cheryl, the hairdresser had washed and blow dried it the day before, after highlighting and trimming it of course. But he didn’t need to know that. He showed me the special offers with double clubcard points and would you believe I couldn’t find my clubcard and we had to do the whole registration thing again. That was the day I came home with twelve tins of dog food and four lots of Denture Fixative. We don’t own either dog or dentures.
I am getting into serious hot water now. Today I saw that triple points are on I mean, we just don’t do Durex. We JUST don’t okay. But I was staring at them so closely that I did attract a few odd looks. Then, I saw that cat food has an offer. Now, how do I explain to Jude Law about the cat? Do I say the dog went to doggy heaven in the sky and in no time flat I replaced him with a cat? I mean it would kill two birds with one stone, if you get my drift. I would be rid of the dog and Bendy would at last get some real food instead of those mangy mice he keeps catching. Or do I just go cold turkey and cure myself of this disgraceful habit? I could of course say the cat is my neighbours. Well Bendy does spend a lot of time next door. Okay, okay, just a thought. Perhaps I can put myself on a withdrawal programme. Yes, that’s what I will do. Anyway must go, it’s national chocolate week and we need some chocolate and I could have sworn they were on offer.

What is the hatter with me!!

Indeed what is the hatter with me? Of course, I realise we all say things back to front sometimes. I feel quite certain that I am not the only person who has run for a bus whilst wearing a boob tube only to come face to face, or in my case boob to face with the bus driver! I am certain that I am not the only woman to wander around searching for her glasses while having them on. Or am I? Is it a rarity to return your library books along with one of your own books? I know you will all tell me it is quite common. And just as I finally convinced myself that what happened to me last Friday was not in the least bit unusual, convincing myself, in fact, that it was all down to hormones. After all they have been leading me a merry dance hadn’t they? Then my lovely husband Andrew commented that he thought I was stark staring mad!
‘Mad, that’s what you are. Stark, staring, mad.’
OK, maybe he didn’t use those exact words but I knew what he meant. Of course, I headed straight for the fridge and felt better almost right away. Well, after consuming two toffee yogurts with some honey followed by a Marks and Spencer meringue and half a box of left-over chocolates. So, what happened last Friday? OK, seeing as you’re twisting my arm, I shall tell you. Now, where should I begin? It started off fine enough. I have had plenty of time at home to get most things done and have not felt in the least stressed. Heaven knows why I am saying all this. In my defense I should be thinking of some excuse at least.
Friday is a special day in the Cook household. All sorts of weird and wonderful things go on here. Don’t you just wish you were me? I pop to the supermarket to buy something special for dinner. It is the end of the week, after all. Then I drop into the local video hire shop and rent two DVDs for us to watch that evening. And of course, the Pièce de résistance, the special treat food. Chocolate biscuits, savoury crackers and wine. Oh, yes, we know how to live, do Andrew and I. This particular Friday I seemed to have more time than usual. I popped into the town library. I hadn’t been there for some time and was impressed at the improvements that had been made and browsed the DVDs on offer and then looked at the books. Finally I headed for the counter, except there wasn’t one. I mean, there used to be one but now there isn’t one any more. It had just gone. How can a library be a library if you can’t check your books out? Then, I spotted it. A self-service, checkout counter. Oh no! It isn’t that I hate using these things. I just hate using them for the first time, even more so today when I have a stack of books and not a clue how to now safely leave the library with them without setting off all kinds of alarms. Any thought I had of stealing them are quickly dismissed. Instead, I stand, trying to look incognito while studying the borrowers as they use the new-fangled dangled check out. I convince myself if an eighty year old can do it, so can I. Not so. After a considerable amount of embarrassed fumbling I get the eighty year old to assist me and vow never to return. Relieved to be out of there I head to the supermarket. At least I know how to check out my goods there. Everything goes very well and I take my purchases to the till, pay and leave. I quickly pack the bags into the car as I sense someone waiting for my space. I dutifully take my trolley back and drive home with the radio blaring. I have DVDs, a nice dinner, delicious treats and the sun is shining. Back home, Andrew helps me unpack the goods and I make some tea and begin preparing lunch.
‘Did you get my text?’ asks Andrew, innocently.
‘Oh, did you send me one?’ Asks me stupidly. Obviously he did, or he wouldn’t be asking me if I received it.
‘I’ll check my phone,’ I say confidently walking into the lounge to fetch my handbag which is NOT on the table. I lean lazily across the arm of the chair for it but it ISN’T there either.
‘Is my bag in the kitchen?’ I shout, unconcerned.
‘No,’ answers Andrew in a wary voice as he obviously awaits my explosion,
‘Stupid, I must have left it In the car,’ I say cheerfully, strolling outside.
It ISN’T there. Good heavens, it isn’t there! My hand bag has disappeared!
I rush inside.
‘Oh my god, I must have left my bag in the shopping trolley.’
Andrew stares at me.
‘But you brought the shopping home, how could you have left it in the trolley?’ he says accusingly and I immediately want the floor to open up and swallow me.
‘Well, I pack the shopping and leave the handbag in the trolley. So when I went to put the trolley back in the trolley park I must have left it in it.’
He looks at me stupidly.
‘But that is a crazy thing to do. Why would you do that?’
I grab the phone and beg him to look up the number on the internet.
He makes a huffing sound.
‘You’re mad you are.’ He states, walking upstairs to his computer. Meanwhile a nice man answers the phone at Sainsbury’s.
‘Oh, hello, I am so sorry. I think I must be losing the plot,’ I stammer, thinking if I sound helpless he will most certainly say.
‘Oh, that handbag, yes we have it.’
‘I think I left my handbag in a shopping trolley.’
He doesn’t laugh. Is that a good or bad sign?
‘What does it look like?’
Doesn’t he know what a shopping trolley looks like? There are enough of them. Oh, of course, he means the handbag.
My mind goes blank. Why can’t I remember what my handbag looks like? Why is it I can only think of the credit cards in there and my Blackberry and driving licence and oh god, a spare pair of knickers!
‘It’s black,’ I hear myself saying. Well, that narrows it down doesn’t it? NOT. He sighs,
‘Oh, oh,’ I say, suddenly remembering. ‘It has Harrods on it.’
Oh god, do I now sound snooty?
‘Ah, yes we have it.’
My heart leaps and my legs stop trembling.
‘You’ll need to bring some identification, obviously.’
Well, obviously!
‘A passport would be good.’
I hang up and fly upstairs to Andrew.
‘They have it. I have to go back. See you in twenty minutes.’
I dash to the car and drive off, music blaring, and thinking how honest people are. It is as I am very near that I realise that I had forgotten the passport. I curse and feel like crying. What is the hatter with me? I park the car and spot the letter I had received from the DVLA when receiving my tax disc. I grab it and march up to customer services and thrust it in the man’s face before he can speak.
‘I left my handbag in a trolley and inside is a matching card to this,’ I say holding up my arm and shoving my radio iodine tag in his face. He steps back horrified. At last, my radio iodine treatment comes into its own.
‘What’s that for?’ he squeals.
‘Oh. It’s nothing really. You are quite safe. I am just a little bit radioactive. Oh, yes that’s my bag.’ I say spotting it on the counter.
Thankfully he has forgotten about the passport ID and almost throws the bag at me. I rush outside checking it frantically and then let out a deep sigh. Everything is there. Nothing missing. If only the same could be said about my head.

“I’m entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are…”