Motors, Meals, Meetings
2007-05-07, 9:52 p.m.
Hallo Everypeeps!What better way to spend the last remnants of a Bank Holiday Monday than perched on the very edge of BFs big studio chair, typing on a keyboard which is really too far away from me and reading what Ive written on a screen which is too high up and gives me a big ole headache every time I have to look up at it?
Its been a funny couple of days.
Thursday night I was out on the town with the visiting dignitaries. That makes it sound quite good, doesn�t it? In actual fact I was in a crummy restaurant with a load of people Id normally cross the street to avoid, eating a disgusting meal, NOT drinking (as I was driving) and wearing a very short dress which, I swear, wasn�t that short when I left the house! Got sat next to Toast again. ��..
Sorry, had a little break there to go and look at BFs big fat whitlow on his thumb. Its now a delightful vista of black, yellow and purple. He�s gone to sit in the garden where I can�t prod it. He�s such a spoily-sport.
Anyway. The food at the restaurant was just rubbish. It�s a very old established place and I swear they�ve not altered their menu in forty years. Everything�s so heavy and overdone and�.well, its like if your nan invited you to dinner and decided to �go a bit swanky�. You know what I mean. My nan was a great cook � if she stuck to stews, roasts, pies, stuff like that. Let her loose on a cream sauce and your guts would never be the same again. I had the salade tricolore � hard to fuck that up? Nope. The avocado was CRUNCHY, the tomatoes just tasted of water and the mozzarella was flaccid and mushy. The main course was crab in garlic butter. Sounds delish. Try serving it with Boiled potatoes, cauliflower cheese, mange tout and mashed swede. That�ll pretty much render it inedible. And for dessert? A cr�me caramel with a thick, slightly crispy skin on the bottom and large bubbles throughout. *sigh*
Next morning Toast and I compared notes on the crappyness of the meal � joined at one point by Twat who said his chicken dish tasted like �It had orange squash poured on it� � and decided not to go there again. Even on expenses.
Felt decidedly liverish all day Friday, which wasn�t good as I was supposed to be going out en famille in the evening for our Special Engagement Dinner, hosted by my parents and therefore not to be taken lightly.
Went straight to bed when I got in from work � thought a half hour snooze might make me feel a bit less like puking. I�d been in bed about twenty minutes when I heard an almighty rumpus from downstairs and BF shouting �Stepfie! Your car! Your Car!�.
My car, it appears, is possessed.
When I got myself together enough to scramble outside, my car was in the middle of the street surrounded by bits of broken fence and dazed looking neighbours.
My first thought was �Fuck. I forgot to put the hand brake on and now BFs gonna KILL ME.� And I ran into the road, unlocked the door and jumped into the car. The hand brake was ON.
The car had reversed itself across my driveway, missing BFs car, had veered to the left and smashed down a sizeable portion of fence (missing the corner post which would surely have stove the back of the car right in) and then reversed itself off our neighbours� drive and into the road.
Whilst the fence has certainly suffered a bit (one fence post yanked out of its concrete and one snapped off at ground level) the car is totally unmarked. Here�s a photo so you can see how unlikely that was to happen. My car is bottom left, BFs bottom right and you can see how my car went through the fence and out of next doors driveway into the road.
Totally bizarre. Once Id calmed down enough to see that there were no children trapped underneath the wheels and nothing requiring a complicated (and unlikely-sounding!) insurance claim, I guessed that the handbrake cable must�ve snapped. I drove back onto my drive and just let the car roll back in neutral. Once it was moving smoothly, I pulled on the handbrake. The car stopped immediately. Nothing wrong with it at all.
Like I said. My car�s possessed.
Went out to dinner. It was nice to have all the family on one place for a couple of hours although I didn�t get much chance to speak to my brother as he is a miserable bastard was at the other end of the table. Had delicious lobster tagliatelle. And here we all are:
Round the table clockwise from bottom left: BF, Jooj, Mater, Treacle, BiL, Sort-of-sister-in-law L, StepfordBro, Pater, Sis, Me.
Also, Treac got to pour beer from on of those GIANT beer tap thingies which necessitate standing on a chair (if you�re 7):
It wasn�t until the following LUNCHTIME that Mater realized she had been overcharged (she picked up the tab for the whole lot, bless her) and had to go back and see the manager. Luckily, we know the owners so there was no problem for her to get back the �69 ($140) overcharge. The only problem, of course, is HOW THE FUCK DIDN�T SHE NOTICE FOR TWELVE HOURS? I mean, overcharge me 69p and I�ll let it slide, �6.90 and I might phone and moan at you but SIXTY NINE QUID!! It was, I think, a genuine mistake, an incorrect decimal point in the adding up but, holy hell, my mother�s richer than I thought if the bill can be �69 more than it should have and she didn�t bat an eyelid.
Saturday was mostly a doing nothing kind of day so nothing to report there.
BF, in his infinite wisdom has found me my first pupil for Vocal Coaching, so I had to have Slavey over on Sunday to try out my lesson plan on her. Im pleased to say it seemed to go quite well � Slavey is a good pupil, but also a good mate, so she helped me out with bits I might need to improve on before I get my REAL pupil on Thursday. Im feeling a lot more confident about my ability to teach now and Ive told the pupil that she can have the first few lessons for free til I get my hand in a bit.
BF has found me some midi files to work with and given me a quick crash course on Cubase. I managed to find some old teaching documents in the garage and, with a bit of retyping, I think I can pass them off as my own. Fingers crossed!
Tomorrow is the first part of the appeal hearing for Jooj�s contested senior school place. Shagnasty and I are going together. I am hoping to not have to say anything at all, as I am really not convinced we should be going through with it. Jooj is quite happy to go to the local (lower profile) school around the corner, but Shagnsty is intent of securing her a place at the other school. There�s 26 children applying for places at a school which is already oversubscribed. Ive talked to some of the other parents and they all have much better cases for being awarded a place than we do. If we get a place and they don�t I will feel like such a fraud.
If the appeal gets thrown out tomorrow at the end of stage 1, then we wont have to go back. If the panel decides that the LEA needs to provide more places, then we have to go back on Wednesday and argue our case. I am hoping that we fall at the first fence and I wont have to go through Stage 2 � with Shagnasty and all his fantastic persuasive powers (as I recall, this involves shouting, wagging his finger and pacing up and down. Oh, and having the final word and then refusing to listen to anything else, no matter how well thought out the argument is.). I cant fucking well wait.