a week of nothing!

2007-10-21, 7:23 p.m.
Another WHOLE WEEK gone!

Interminable fatigue has curtailed my dairying of late but here I am, Sunday afternoon, still awake and actually able to scribe a few words without nodding off! Marvellous.

Work and rehearsals are taking up pretty much all of my time at the mo, which is my excuse and I�m sticking to it�but I guess there are a still one or two things which I can tell you about.

Poor old Slavey�s been off sick all week with a throat infection. Being pregnant, the poor cow can only take the occasional paracetamol, and not the huge barrage of mixed drugs normally available to the slightly-but-not-lifethreateneningly ill, ie whisky with honey and lemon juice, massive amounts of super strength pain killers and anti-inflammatories, icepoles, beechams powders, tyrozets, dequadin spray and lockets. Actually, I�m sure she could probably have some of those�..but not the fun ones.

That�s made my working week a little shitty as I�ve had to cover all her work whilst attending forty squillion meetings and doing my own work too. Meh. I�ve organised myself a temp for next week just in case Slavey�s still ill, but in truth I�m keeping the temp even if Slavey does come back. I fancy having a little Java-wallah at my disposal, even if it is just core hours.

The great and the good (ie the Top Brass) of Twat Inc are all off on a week-long corporate strategy�thingie next week. Whilst I care not one iota what they get up to whilst they�re there, it can mean only ONE thing for me. NO MEETINGS NEXT WEEK UNLESS I SCHEDULE THEM MYSELF.

I�m not a great scheduler of meetings. In happier times (ie when Twat Inc ran like the anachronistic cess-pool of inefficiency it truly was) I had a notice pinned to my�.my�.what ARE those fabric-covered �garden fences� which run between two adjoining �workspaces� called? Desk fences? Privacy approximators (cos they sure as hell only offer the amount of privacy one might expect from an 8� high bit of upholstered chipboard!)? Anyways. I digress. The notice said:

Are you lonely? Do you work on your own? Do you hate having to make decisions? Then hold a meeting!!! You can get to see other people, sleep in peace, offload decisions, feel important and impress (or bore) your colleagues - and all in work time!!! Meetings - the practical alternative to work!!!

When Toast�s New Model Army was formed, they made me take it down. Apparently it was �inappropriate�. Or �too close to the truth�. I always get those two muddled up.
Tuesday I had a day off scheduled cos Jooj was getting her first brace fitted. If I was a conscientious type I would�ve just taken a half day and then gone back to work to fill in for Slavey, but, its been a while since I had a day off and hell, she IS my kid, and well, I do actually love her a bit. It took us an hour and a quarter to drive the 17 miles between here and Portsmouth which didn�t put me in the best of moods. When we got there the ortho was running an hour behind so we just sat on little plastic chairs in a crowded holding area while Jooj made me laugh loads about the celebs in the waiting room magazines. A picture of Amy Winehouse�s enormous head and teeny stick legs had both of us screeching with delight and involved some fairly convoluted equations on how much bigger her hair could get before her legs were unable to support its weight and snapped like the ballet shoe shod twiglets they resembled. Of course, we did have to do (seated) impressions of this actually happening. Well, it passes the time. Jooj told me a particularly lurid story about a teacher at her old school who had run away with a janitor and then�get THIS! A teenage boy who was sitting opposite leaned across and said �I went to that school�. He didn�t say it to me. He said it to Jooj. A BOY spoke to JOOJ!!!!! Directly, and without the phrase �can you kick our ball back� being uttered first! Jooj had the good grace to go puce with embarrassment, of course. AND sink right down in her seat. But the boy just wouldn�t let it go! He volunteered a few bits of information of his own and then ASKED JOOJ�s OPINION!!!!!!

When we got outside (a hundred years later) I naturally went straight into �You Luuuuuuv him, that�s your BOYfriend, you want to kiiiiiiisss him you want to huuuuug him, you think he�s SEHHHHHHKseeee� and making Kevin Turvey faces until she said �Mum. Shut. Up� which is all the proof I needed. Maybe he�ll be there when she goes back for her checkup��

Oh, yeh. The braces. Jooj got braces. The traintrack ones. They don�t hurt nearly as much as everyone said they would and she IS able to speak and she IS able to eat�.Not apples, obviously. Or nachos. Or spareribs. Or corn on the cob. Guess we�ll be eating a whole heap of shepherds pie for the next 18 months.

The orthodontist is a cunt. Jooj�s been there 6 times now but he still, despite having the Patient Record Card IN HIS HAND, cant get her name right. He looked right at it in the waiting room and then called out a different name. I could understand this if Jooj�s name WAS actually Jooj, cos that would be a bit unusual. But it isn�t. It�s a normal, easy to say, name. Its not spelled funny like those Irish names with a whole shedload of Bs and Hs in which sound like Vs � yeh, Siobhan and Niamh � you know what Im talking about! And you two � Aislinn and Roisin, over there! You�re not much better!

In the end I said �Her name�s not Joon, its Jooj�.I have told you before. Its on the card.� The orthodontist is Greek Cypriot. He has a long and complicated name. The sort that people must get wrong all the time. Perhaps he�s just getting his own back. Next time we go, Im gonna call him by his proper big long dumbass name�and Im gonna pronounce it in the proper Greek Cypriot accenty way. That�ll fuck him up. Im pretty sure he poked Jooj in the gums a few extra times to piss me off. As we left he was writing something on the card. Probably �Mother is a complete bitch. Poke child hard in the gums with variety of metal pokey instrument things. Heh heh heh�.

By the time we left it was lunchtime. Jooj wanted soup. I wasn�t sure where we could get soup without going home. Id promised Id take her out to lunch but if we ended up somewhere where there was no soup on the menu (or *horror* �freaky soup�, like chestnut and marrowfat pea, or stilton and okra or one of those stupid chilled cucumber ones), I could envisage sighing and misery abounding. So we went to Asda, where they serve tomato soup which has surely come out of a packet. With soft white bread. For 99p. Delicious. Jooj had a giant slice of Victoria sponge cake (which, I am told, has medicinal properties) for dessert. I declined cos�.I have lost half a STOOOOOOOONNNE!!!!! Yay me! (for overseas readers, half a stone is 7lbs or about 3.5kg).

After lunch, the bright lights of primark beckoned. There were new tops to be bought (hers)(also with medicinal properties it appears! Jooj cheered up considerably with the thought of getting one top � two tops produced veritable paroxysms of joy!) and underwear (mine) to be laughed at. Sadly she is now at the age where she knows that a lurex black and silver bra and thong with giant pink chiffon tie-up bits�probably isn�t gonna get worn under a work suit. I am slightly unnerved by my child knowing that�umm�knowing�ummm�well, a whole LOAD of things actually but particularly that I buy underwear which is clearly not for the purpose underwear is usually for ie to stop your boobs jiggling about in an out of control way and to give you something to stick your sanny to. She and Treac already find the idea of thongs totally preposterous. Why would ANYONE want to wear knickers with built-in wedgie capacity? Its beyond them.

Had a bit of a moment in Legends, which is a kind of Goth shop. Jooj likes to go there cos it makes her feel grown up. I like to go there cos they sell stripper shoes and little net tutus which I can SURELY find a use for come Christmas time. Jooj likes to try out her mantra �C�nIhavethis?C�nIhavethis?C�nIhavethis?� whilst indiscriminately pointing to bits of unsuitable clothing. I think she�s hoping one day I will get distracted by the PVC corsets *waggles eyebrows* and say �Yes� without thinking and then she�ll have GOT me. The floor length vampire cape with matching bondage trousers will be in a carrier bag before I can say �over my dead body� � which, I guess, would be an appropriate time for her to wear it.

She tried a slightly different tack this time, by saying �This is nice, isn�t it mum?� which is more likely to get a yes out of me�then she�d swing in with the �C�nIhave it?� dead quick while I was still admitting that yes, it was indeed, a very beautiful net and leather ballgown embroidered with winged skulls.

The final straw was �Look at this lovely top, mum�, �Yes. Very nice�. �C�nIhave it?� �NO!!!!���� �why not?��.(slightly exasperated)�Cos your father will go apeshit �king CRAYZEEEE, you derrbrain���..�Well, DUH, yerself! Im not gonna wear it at HIS HOUSE, am I?!�

It was time to go.

My one night off from rehearsing this week was Thursday. Following on from Treac�s escapades with the aerodynamic properties of jars of cherries (ie none. Precipitating their journey to the tiled kitchen floor in rather more hurried fashion than, say, a glider, or a feather, or a balloon), Jooj decided it might be fun to repeat the exercise (whilst reaching for a tea cup) with a bottle of extra dry vermouth. KerSMASH! Just at the exact moment that my singing pupil arrived. Luckily she is a mum too and so was totally non-plussed by my swearing and overenthusiastic bollocking of assorted offspring. Needless to say, my martinis have been a little�..ummm�..gin-heavy the last few days.

BF came into the studio to help me record my pupil singing Minnie Ripperton�s �Lovin� You�. Bless her, my poor pupil squirmed and went red and was totally embarrassed by the whole thing. When we played it back it sounded pretty much shit. In tune. But shit.

While I was explaining to her that she shouldn�t worry about how she sounded�.BF was getting busy with the compression and the autotune and the reverb and the normalizing and the double tracking. None of that really makes much noise whilst its being done so she got a BIG shock when we played it back to her about twenty minutes later. It sounded GREAT! She just sat with her mouth open. Then I explained that there is not a single singer in the top 40 who hasn�t had at least SOME of that stuff done to their vocal before it gets to the shelves of HMV. We�ve promised to burn her a cd that she can take home � I think her husband thinks its stupid that she should take vocal coaching lessons at 42. She�s not even in a band or anything. He, of course, IS in a band. He plays bass. Its obviously not stupid for him to do so�as he is a man. And therefore cool. Or maybe not.

Also on Thursday, I went to Salisbury for the grand re-opening (after refurb) of one of our clients. I stood outside the door in my very stylish (and colour coordinated to the client�s corporate colours!) Quinn and Donnelly suit, smiling broadly for the nice man from the local newspaper while a visiting dignitary cut the ribbon. I remembered to hold my stomach in.

I have a week left of rehearsals � the play opens on 29th. The Friday and Saturday are already sold out. That makes it sound really cool but it is only a tiny studio theatre � barely 50 seats. Ive finally managed to get a handle on the lines�but Im struggling with the crying now! I think its cos Im concentrating so hard on not forgetting what I have to say � when I was using the book I didn�t have to think about what to say next, so it was easy to dredge the tears up. I need to do a bit more work on the words so that they�re second nature to me, and then the crying�ll come back, Im sure.

Friday was a weird day as I finally got rid of Capt Skiver. After 17 years of sitting on his arse, sleeping the afternoons away and chatting through the mornings, I have finally been able to get him made redundant after only four years of trying! He got a half decent payoff and the gift of a PC from the company for his contribution to�contribution to�.well�Im sure he contributed to SOMETHING! I signed his card and put a tenner in the collection envelope. At least �9.36 of that tenner was guilt money. Being the instrument of his undoing and all that. At the end of the day I couldn�t face going into the office and saying goodbye. See what a fabulous corporate bitch-face I am!

Later
S
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