Back to the old school...

Yesterday, whilst congregating and gossiping around the kettle in the office kitchen with several of my regular kettle-attendees for the umpteenth time that day (don't tell my boss), it struck me that the workplace is not unlike school. And the more I thought about it, the more comparisons I could make. Maybe I've seen Mean Girls too many many times.

School: The classy house-block loos were the place to bitch every break time.
Office: We meet in the kitchen to gossip several times a day.

School: Passing notes to friends in classes when bored about who we fancy.
Office: Write chain emails to equally bored colleagues about anything.

School: If you didn't do your homework your teacher shouted at you and put you on detention.
Office: Miss a deadline and your boss yells at you; you then have a silent cry in the toilets.

School: Sit at several desks throughout the day, often covered in graffiti and chewing gum.
Office: Sit at a desk. A very messy one with an overflowing in-tray.

School: Spend pocket money on make-up, clothes, junk you don't need and nights out.
Office: Spend payslip on make-up, clothes, junk you don't need, nights out and the bills.

School: Have lunch in the cafeteria with your mates. Moan when the bell goes for lessons again.
Office: Have lunch in the cafe with your pals. Moan when you can only manage a half-hour break.

School: Complaining to your PE teacher that you had terrible cramps would never get you out of cross country.
Office: Complaining about period pains in an office full of women gets you off nothing.

School: Watch new episodes of 'Friends'.
Office: Watch the endless repeats of old 'Friends' episodes on E4.

School: Reading magazines by stealth - under desks, behind textbooks etc - and giggling at the problem pages.
Office: Reading Digital Spy and Heatworld online, and closing the screen when someone important walks past. Forward on the articles with the celebrity shock-factor.

And the sad thing is, that after seven years of school and sixth form, four of uni and three of full-time work so far... I'm just as unmotivated now as I was then. And just as clumsy. At school I'd often walk into doors, fall off seats and drop things. Today, I'm well know for being completely unable to text-and-walk; frequently sit down where there is no seat; and yesterday I tripped over someone's bin and was caught by a quick-witted colleague who exclaimed very loudly that I'd just 'kicked the bucket.' Sigh.

That Sunday night feeling (on a Monday)...

Well, it's finally happened. It usually happens at about ten o'clock on a Sunday night actually, but because of the Bank Holiday, it's just hit me now. At least I bought myself another day. Yes, I'm back at work tomorrow. Can you tell I'm really pleased about it? There really is something about that horrible Sunday night feeling that makes you want to throw yourself into the nearest line of traffic just so you don't have to go back into work. Or wish that your Dad was a multi-millionaire so you could become an heiress. I'm sure I could find better ways to use up my time than Paris Hilton.

I had a lovely day today, as well. I feel like I've seen my gal pals quite a lot this week and done a lot of catching up. We took a trip into town and tried out a new restaurant we'd all been dying to go to (where they just do starters and desserts, the aptly-named Starters and Puds); and had a nice relaxing chat over a bottle of wine. Then I got home and spoilt it all by stewing over what's waiting in my in-tray for me, and what I need to sort out and whether my desk is even more littered with paper than it was before I left on my jollies last week. And whether or not my work wardrobe is all clean. And where the hell is my security pass? Is my phone charged up? More, importantly, is my iPod?? (This has been difficult as somehow the docking station seems to have broken. I take no responsibility for it.)

But anyway, I have to try and put all this out of my mind otherwise I'll be pacing about all night or having terrible work-related dreams. (Please say you've had them too; I don't want to be the only one who dreamt that the pile of papers consuming their desk toppled over and buried them alive in a paper avalanche. Or maybe you've had the one where there was a work-related emergency which caused you to wake up in a cold sweat - and promptly check your Outlook remotely? No? Perhaps I should take more time off.)

Ho hum, at least it's a four-day week. Roll on Friday night.

Nuclear cocktails and red hair...

You can't beat a good cocktail. Especially half-price ones on a Thursday night. Which is the conclusion myself and some gal pals reached this week when we took our twenty-something nostalgia out in our kitten heels to the former haunt of our seventeen-year-old-selves. They'd cut the cocktail menu in half since we were last there (or were we now just old enough to know what we liked to drink instead of working our way down the whole menu?) but we still managed to quaff our way through several bizarrely-titled tipples.

It would have been rude not to have twice as many since they were half price anyway, was our philosophy. So, after several Caribbean Romances; Total Knock-Outs; a few of that old staple - Sex on the Beach; and a one whose name I forget but was a rather strange radioactive-glowing-green Incredible Hulk colour, we consequently spent the night cackling in the corner like the Witches of Eastwick reminiscing about the ridiculous fashions we used to sport in the very same bar almost a decade previous, planning to take a trip together and generally having a good old gossip about things I couldn't possibly repeat. Friday morning I woke up - mercifully still on holiday - with a headache only fizzy tablets can cure and thirst like no other.

Still, I had an appointment to keep and since my hair has taken on a life of its own and turned into rabbit-hutch hay over the past few weeks, I wasn't about to miss it. Plus I fancied a change of colour. My hair's been the colour of stringy dull rat tails for too long. Wasn't sure what yet, perhaps inspiration would hit me in the stylist's chair. It did. Not only am I very pleased that the straw-like quality has disappeared, but the length has been halved and I now have a swept fringe. Plus I'm chestnutty-red. And don't have to get up specially an hour earlier in the mornings now to wash and straighten my tresses. Anything that gives me an extra hour in bed is fine by me.

Maybe I should rename this 'the indecisive musings of a blasé partial-redhead?' Not so catchy? Yeah, well, it'll probably wash out soon anyway.

Shake, rattle and norimaki rolls...

I'm on holiday from work this week. It's great. I don't have to worry about staying up late on a school night and dragging myself in the next morning to face my colleagues, looking like Wurzel Gummidge's lesser known sister crossed with the corpse bride, oh no. (For those of you who don't remember Wurzel Gummidge, he was a scarecrow. And quite a freaky one at that.) I'm just frightening my Other Half with that guise on a daily basis instead of my co-workers. Being a lady of leisure has many fringe benefits. There's the lie-ins, time to potter and the knowledge that you can go anywhere and do anything (or not - but it's nice to have the option).

Going out during the day and laughing and pointing at people who have to work is near the top of the list of pluses, though. But so is going out to eat. Oh yes, lunch somewhere lovely without having to plumb for a Boots Meal Deal, and without looking at the clock on your phone every two minutes and wondering if you have time to finish and make it back in time for the weekly team meeting. Which is why my good self and The Other Half decided upon a leisurely meander around town in the sunshine followed by some sushi. And I'll stop you there - that's not a euphemism. Sadly, the world and his dog were conspiring against us.

Mishap #1 - no parking spaces. Not a major issue, but we got dizzy going round and round the multi-storey. Mishap #2 - when we did finally find a space, the heavens opened as we left the car. I did not plan ahead and bring a brolly. Mishap #3 - umbrella-less, my hair began to frizz and both our jeans were soaked up to the flamin' knee. Mishap #4 - long queue at sushi place. Seems a lot of people had the same idea as us to avoid said rain. Mishap #5 - chef warfare. This is the one we really couldn't have planned for. A heated argument erupts in the open-plan kitchen. A plate of norimaki rolls crashes to the floor. Something whizzes past our heads. Then we feel the dreaded splat. We look at each other. Two waitresses look at us with open jaws. Both of us resemble abstract expressionist artists let loose in the studio. Except the canvas was our shirts and the paint was hoi-sin sauce.

Maybe this is my karma because I laugh and point at people who have to go to work. Anyway. I'm off to wash the gloop off my already rain-sodden jeans. Think I might have been better off at work today. And I definitely need to sort my hair out.

Lipstick Jungle or American Psycho...

New books. I love the smell of new books. Almost as much as I love choosing them in the bookshop. Examining the titles and poring over the covers; picking up ones that sound interesting or just plain bizarre; thumbing through the pages breathing in that first intoxicating aroma of the characters and storylines. Unfortunately, these days my bookshop of convenience has become the internet, and reading user comments and glancing at star ratings is du jour. Saying that, it's not so bad. There's still that thrill of new books arriving through the post and hitting the doormat, waiting for you to open them. And you can order stuff at work when you're bored and nobody is looking. Bonus.

I started reading Candace Bushnell's 'Lipstick Jungle' a wee while ago. I liked 'Sex and the City' but 'Trading Up' was a bit irritating...however I thought I'd give 'Lipstick Jungle' a chance as it was all pretty and girly and had a cocktail on the front, and also happened to come free with the copy of Cosmo I'd picked up in the supermarket which promised 'a great summer read' and had the intriguing guide to becoming 'a sex goddess in 9 steps' on the cover. I really shouldn't have bothered. The one-dimensional vacuous characters are like older, bitter, harsher and less amusing versions of the SATC girls. I just didn't care about the plot. There are only so many fashion shows and champagne parties you can read about. At least in SATC, it was funny. And the crap characters all have rubbish names. Victory Ford, anyone? Sounds like a commemorative car. So, I gave up after a few chapters and started reading my old friend 'American Psycho' again. But I've been itching for something new to read- new characters to love, so online I went.

Amazon's personalised recommendations always make me giggle. 'You once bought a cookery book, so you might be interested in this, 'Build Your own Garden Shed' - that kind of thing. Hmm. But this time they seemed to get it right, suggesting authors along the lines I was looking. Bret Easton Ellis was in my head. I loved 'American Psycho' so much, but haven't actually read any of his other stuff. And they looked appealing enough. After a few minutes of dithering I plumbed for 'Less Than Zero' and 'The Rules of Attraction.' Plus a DVD of Parenthood to take me up to the free delivery limit. Don't judge.

Sorted. New books to read by Saturday. Fantastic. I could do with a reading day. Wrong! Even though I was up early yesterday and listening out for the postman especially, I still managed to miss him. Turns out the flamin' doorbell is kaput and the little Royal Mail note pushed through the door says not to bother collecting my package from the depot for 48 hrs. Now not only do I not have anything to read - but 'Lipstick Jungle' is glaring at me from the shelf. It's my own fault. I shouldn't buy magazines for the free books. Particularly magazines whose covers proudly display bold statements like 'Climb the Career Ladder - Fast' alongside 'How to Knit Your Own Lingerie'.

Pyjamas plus alcohol and Sundays equals...

Hangover TV. I'm not going to lie that I don't watch it occasionally. OK, I watch it quite a lot. But so do you, don't kid yourself. Especially on Sundays when T4 have that delightful and yet soul-destroying mix of all the pretty people in Hollyoaks, Friends and - throughout the summer months - repeats of Big Brother you didn't watch on Friday as you were too busy polishing off that bottle of Tia Maria. Oh, was that just me?

A recent conversation with a friend resulted in us hatching a half-arsed plan to launch our own TV channel that would constantly stream the hangover-TV shows that we and everyone our age would want to watch. You know the stuff, that TV gold of yesteryear that they never show anymore. All the children's TV favourites you used to race home from school to watch Andi Peters and Ed the Duck in the Broom Cupboard present. We even had potential advertisers worked out, and how we would need to bring in extra revenue. (Yes, we really were that bored.)

My friend's hangover-TV choices were very male-centric (and included some stuff I had to Google - Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, anyone?) while mine were the typical girly ones you'd expect, so we had a nice balance. Is there a point to all this then? Well, no, not really. But when Hollyoaks was on again this morning I was thinking about how hangover TV actually WOULD be so much better if you could watch all the things you loved decades ago, rather than the tangled love-lives of people in a Chester suburb who don't even have the decency to sport Chester accents. So this brings me to my very first list, and feel free to add or amend to it if you so wish.

My Top 10 80s Children's TV shows I Would Like to See on TV Again (catchy, eh?)

He-Man and She-Ra (you can't have one without the other)

Ah, the twins of Eternia and Etheria and their bad haircuts. You'd have thought Prince Adam would have stopped his mother from giving him a bob beyond the age of 5, but he didn't seem to mind. What I loved about He-Man was his direct-to-camera morals at the end of each story. And there was something a little bit seedy about She-Ra. Maybe it was her boots. Or her skirt.

Maid Marian and Her Merry Men
Maaaaaariaaaaaan! Robin Hood was a big Jessie and and Maid Marian was a tomboy. Tony Robinson hadn't started digging up fields at this point and minced about as the Sheriff with a band of lunatic guardsmen. That giant dude who always pops up in British films and TV shows as village idiots popped up as one of the Great Unwashed merry men.

Round the Twist
Set in a haunted lighthouse on the Aussie coast where 3 kids solve mysteries with a fantastic theme tune and really, really weird stories...does anyone remember the one with the phantom seagull with rubies for eyes who poohed on the kids so much they looked like walking marshmallow men?

Fun House
There's a bit of an urban myth around my hometown that a friend of a friend went on this and won. Pat Sharp displayed the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) mullet this side of Limahl and kids ran amok in ball pools, with go-carts, gunge and all sorts. I wonder what happened to Melanie and Martina?

Jem and the Holograms
For obvious reasons (my name, in case you haven't worked it out) I was ALWAYS Jem whenever we acted this out in the playground. We often had some trouble recruiting a willing boy to play Rio though, and it's only looking back now that I wish I could have been one of the Misfits instead of Jem. Their music really was better.

Knightmare
Yes, it's really geeky and the effects are rubbish now but did you never wonder how they did it then? Or if they really were walking through a dungeon towards a door trying to avoid a gatekeeper with an axe on one side and a stick of dynamite about to go off on the other?

Stoppit and Tidyup
I'm sure Terry Wogan voiced these little critters. I don't remember all of them but 'Eat Your Greens' and the two bees, 'Bee-Have' and 'Bee-Quiet' stick out for some reason. I have a friend whose sister drew Stoppit and Tidyup on a t-shirt using Fluffit pens for her. Remember those? They made 3d designs on your clothes after you heated the drawings up with a hairdryer. Mine never worked.

The Moomins
A very bizarre cartoon. Think they were Polish? Anyway, white hippos who wear aprons and top hats and live in a lighthouse in Moomin Valley with a kangaroo and an annoying brat named Little Mai. There was one very creepy episode where they were all trying to fight a big hill with eyes who froze everyone around her.

Eerie, Indiana
The American version of Round the Twist in a way, with a very young Omri Katz (the one from Hocus Pocus - the guy who lit the Black Flame Candle) and his mate solving mysteries and having bizarre encounters with urban legends in the weirdo-filled town of Eerie.

Thundercats
Another one with a fantastic theme tune. They just don't make theme tunes like this anymore. I'm still slightly disturbed that the main character shares his name with waterproof kitchen flooring, however. Mummra was a very bad baddie and all the boys in my class had a slightly wrong crush on Cheetara in her leopard-print leotard.

A special mention goes to The Poddington Peas. Simply because I have been known to break out into a chorus of the Poddington song and frighten onlookers. Ooh, this could lead to a separate post about 80s toys. I'll make a note of that...

Dear Diary...

How do.

I'm new to this whole blogging malarkey and not entirely sure why I set one up or who it's for, to be perfectly honest. I used to keep a diary when I was a teenager - and recently rediscovered what a huge mess of angst and calamity they were - but gave up on it all when I hit my twenties and became too lazy (and started my working life properly, which sometimes equates to the same thing). I suppose this will be the new-improved version of those diaries. But of course, down the line I may decide that this is all a bit too egotistical for me and never write another post again.

So, why am I feeling the need to document my so-called life now, then? Well, my reasons are three-fold:

1. I'm growing more forgetful as I approach the dreaded late-twenties.
2. My life becomes more like a car-crash or bad BBC sitcom every day and if I don't laugh about it, I'll cry.
3. By writing things down I can hopefully get stuff straight in my head because, as you may come to see, I'm one of the most indecisive people I know and change my mind constantly about everything.

That's something you should know about me straight off. My indecisiveness. Don't be surprised if the next time you visit this blog it looks completely different (if I haven't bored you enough already, that is). Hmm, what else do you need to know about me? The main bits are up in my profile box. Ooh, another thing though - I ramble on a lot. Turn back now while you still have the chance if you're adverse to witterers. And I rant. Often about nothing.

As well as wittering on about my daily mundanities I think I'll be including some posts about the flicks I've been watching. Which can be a lot. I'm a film graduate and have been in love with film since the age of 3 when I first saw Ghostbusters and decided I wanted to catch ghosts for a living. Consequently, there's a library of film twaddle and trivia in my head so I may infer some of that on here too. Oh, and lists. I like lists. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, as a first post this is pretty rubbish so I'll leave it at that and get back to my pjs. What a rock n roll Saturday night.