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Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 February 2011

Built from the wine up...

This week has been absurd. In a bad way. The bad sort of absurd which makes you want to ram your face into a wall untill it bleeds.

First off, I was pretty darned ill. By this I mean I was forced to take more than one day out of sixth form because I could not think straight or breathe. The middle day was spent trying to navigate my drugged up and unsightly way around Birmingham city and university alone, getting quite flustered but being too proud to show it. Things I saw on that little adventure:

  • Razor points in the train toilets. Bloody ridiculous: anyone attempting some facial topiary on a train is asking for trouble and is lucky to leave with their nose still attached.
  • A full grown man reading Eclipse ashamedly on the train. He was not remotely young. He was on Eclipse which sickeningly means he'd endured the first two books (and probably in an equally public manner) - shocking.
  • Smiling at dashing sandwich dispensory staff gets you a sandwich - at standard price.
  • Nobody at Birmingham knows where the English department is; apart from myself, and I found it as a fluke.
The morning was (as I attempted to text my dad) 'a hotbed of disaster', until I orientated myself, was given a cup of tea for free, and drowned my sorrows with a bit of shopping (new coloured pencils - score!)

The afternoon was lovely however, with a spicy-spicy mexican burrito and an outline of a gorgeous and enticing looking course. Also having somehow found time to chat to the Head of Admissions and encouraged him to reconsider the A-Level I already have, which he'd overlooked. Score Two!

Came home and went straight from the station to another station: the Fire Station. Learned about weapons of torture hitherto undescribable. Anything that fires iron filings and water so fast they can cut through a man is something to be avoided I say. Came home, crashed out, wept a little, dragged myself into the next day.

Was ill until I decided I couldn't afford to miss today so went into school to find myself faced with a number of prospects:
  • Interview at Warwick which I still have yet to have any real feelings either dreadful or delighted about. Later discovered today was the deadline for the coursework and faced the pressure by churning out a commentary in two hours, sending Mr Anderson a mildly freaked out e-mail entitled 'PAINFULLY URGENT' and posting the bloody thing.
  • Art that is 'unmarkable' because frankly there's not enough of it.
  • The need to summon up some form of title and inspiration for History Coursework.
  • Chasing the world about changing the date of my exams because of aforementioned interview which, for some reason involved talking to no less than 5 people about it.
  • Nobody seeming to know anything about an essay we were most definitely set.
  • Latin certificate - yay!
This evening was a delerious haze of writing frantically, arranging, posting and drinking a nice amount of wine. Decisory factor here: wine makes my life.  ALSO, acquired Radiohead's new album and was grateful to be able to zone out to it after sending off the portfolio from hell. Every cloud, eh?

As to the situation now, I am sitting slightly drunk in full-body bunnyrabbit pajamas, lazing about and listening to Radiohead. Awesome.

Saturday, 5 February 2011

The Weekend (and all it entails).

Sooo, it's the weekend. Everyone's favourite piece of time outside of the week. A veritable haven between the exhaustion of Friday and the feet-dragging toil that is Monday morning. This weekend, I have been productive, but not in the way I ought.
Apart from experimenting with new hairstyles vis-a-Val Denton and Diana from The Years between, I have been a busy, busy thing:

This morning I had an interview with the District Commissioner and various official people about being a Scout Leader which was possibly one final check that I wasn't a paedophile. It went well, and I got a free bacon roll and cup of tea out of it. Not bad for Saturday morning.

Also went to gather materials and shiny new pens from Hobbycraft which, other than being a rip off, is the magical place where all stationary and craft materials go once they've sold out to The Man. Needed a sketchbook, and fast, so there was no real choice.

Then found out through that wonderful gossip machine, Facebook, that there was a Jumble Sale on in Blissworth. Being a sufferer of Boot Sale withdrawal, myself, I was up in arms about going. So we went, and I swear I have bought a poor-man's wardrobe in clothes, along with some books, a DVD, a bowl, some free tupperware from a woman who insisted that being a student equates to needing charity aaaand a pipe which makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes. Also some pressies for my Padre, whose birthday is on Wednesday. :)  ALL of this, I add, for under £3. Mind. Blown. Milo would definitely be proud.


Thanks, Worley.

So, as far as other plans go. Tonight is set to be an excellent Stay-In-Day-Late-Pub Therapy session, with added amusement and DVDs and Annas. Which makes me unreasonably excited, but I think I'm still riding the high of feeling like an utter thief for paying only 10/20p a piece for clothes. I love living in a village.

That is all for now, darlings, over and out, a bien tot!

Monday, 6 December 2010

Retail Therapy

This weekend I have been feeling pretty down - this led to some rather excellent retail therapy, which in turn led to my buying a very gorgeous aviator jacket of the kind I have been drooling after for quite a while. Problem being that now I am poor, and unable to buy a matching hat. Alas.

Matching hat definitely going on my Christmas list.

Additionally, this house is very cold. Despite being all bedridden and doubly duvetted-up, my hands are getting damned cold from typing.


Also, have missed Rosie's birthday - merde and a half - will have to bring in pressies tomorrow.

Even more also, read a book about racial harmony and things. I blame Climax, but also the fact that it was about a Latin teacher. Merging of interests, nom nom nom. It was quite good, actually. Hmm...

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Y'reight there, duck?

It is amazing how you can drive a few miles up the road from your home and feel almost as though you are in a different country. Yesterday I went on a work outing with my padre to Stoke which, though not very far away, seemed almost to be the heart of the North.

One attribute of the North, as I know it, is the openness of the people - by this, I mean strangers - in talking to people they don't know. As I wandered about through Hanley town centre, pulling together a few birthday gifts for chums, I was accosted by an absurd number of people about various aspects of their lives. Trapped in a lift, a woman began talking to me about retirement, and her ex-husband, another woman entered herself into a chat with me about the sun, and various others made comments so vaguely that I couldn't be sure of whether they were talking to me, or simply keeping themselves company.

While I was taking on the Great Northern Populus, Vati was sitting in a deep, underground cavern of a room, bidding in an auction and buying most of the place. I came back to a delighted, sun-faced father grinning about how cheap he was getting things for, and having entirely forgotten the size of the car we had to fit everything into. I thought I had overspent in town, but he took the entire cake drawer by spending over two grand! However, he assured me he could sell everything for more money.

A very nice lady outbid us on a lot which included (among rather more valuable things) a wade china tea caddy and which, after a short discussion of my tea obsession, she decided to gift to me. :D

Needless to say, getting things into the car was like playing tetris with rather valuable and fragile boxes of china, but we managed, eventually.

After all this, we were on the verge of driving back when:

Dee: Hey, I thought we could go back through Buxton, and see the peaks!
Me: Hey, that's a great idea padre! Let's do it!
Dee: It's a bit dark, we probably won't see anything...
Me: Yeah, let's go! We can imagine the scenery!
Dee: We could do that at home, though.
Me: We wouldn't have the same altitude ambiance!

And so we took a many-hour detour through the winding hills of the Peak District, to Buxton which was on a whole new page of the map, with great music playing and hills occurring in the sunset. It was bloody marvellous!

When we came to Buxton, there was chaos on the roads and police people everywhere, which made it doubly exciting and adventurous, and we decided to pootle on down through Ashbourne, where we stopped at a pie shop. This shop was beautiful and tucked away down some steps in a little alcove of the town, and played host to a very cheerful Eastern European chap, who made a joke about charging us £27 for a double order of our nation's famous dish!

There was also a rather rotund chap who came in after us, all Northern-like, and ordered a double order of fish with a large chips and peas which I couldn't help but suspect were just for him. I could have fit inside him, easily, three times over - and I am not a stick-figure of a woman myself!

On the way home we discussed everything from how brilliant our Desert Island Disks combos were, to religion, politics and the state of the universe ("very large", we concluded). :D

Needless to say, us phoning from Ashbourne in the dead of night to say "Hey, we took an extremely scenic route, madre!" wasn't taken very well, but all in all a smashing day!


Sunday, 10 October 2010

Entschuldigung, ich verstehe nur ein bisschen Deutsch!

Not entirely sure if I managed to spell the title right, because German language CDs don't actually tell you how to spell things - damn them! I am, however, learning! :D

In any case, I am here to tell you the story of mine and my dad's venture to Tesco's today.

[In the Fruit Section]
Him: (groping a bag of tomatoes to check their freshitude) What have you got?
Me: Baking Powder, why do I always come back to find you groping something.
Him: ...scrotum?
Me: Go away.

----

[In the Meat Section]
Me: What are your views on sausage?
Him: (as per 'Allo, 'Allo) A lovely, little sosij?
Me: A German one.
Him: Oh.

---

[In the dry-food-reduced-area]
Me: Oh my god, oh my GOD. D: Eugh.
Him: What?
Me: THAT. [points to a defrosted, OPEN packet of suppurating muscle meaty bits]
Him: [PICKS IT UP] What? Wait... is this- OH GOD IT'S LEAKING ON ME.
[collective running away]

---

[In the tea section]
Me: HEY, HEY - THIS.
Him: You don't need any mo-
Me: Look at THIS. It is HAND-ROLLED into PEARLS. It is the Stephen Fry of tea.

---

[On the way out]
Me: [drops a box]
Him: FAIL. [drives the trolley straight into a telephone]
Me: ...you were saying?