London - a lament

I miss cold, crisp mornings when commuters fall on icy platforms and hot chocolate warms you right down to your toes.

I miss rainy days when the pavements flood and you get home with wet socks.

I miss sushi.

I miss St Paul’s churchyard and lazy lunch hours spent there.

I miss Camden Market.

I miss half flat Pepsi at KFC and Daffodils blooming in April.

I miss tube buskers and the dude at Liverpool Street Station that can’t really play guitar.

I miss Highgate Cemetery.

I miss central heating and my brilliant hairdresser Emma.

I miss Superdrug, the DLR and off licenses.

I miss the Cosmopolitan and Glamour, free samples and Pret.

I miss toblerone, the poundshop and New Look.

I miss my friend Stephanie and our long emailed chats (thanks for the letters though Steph).

I miss how my wrist aches at the beginning of winter.

I miss what passes for English Spring when there’s still frost on the ground.

I miss the cold. I especially miss the English cold.

I miss public transport, my books and CSI Sundays.

I miss having my nails done, colouring my hair whatever the hell colour I want and tattoo parlours.

I miss t-shirts that fit, stylish coats and red double decker buses.

I miss sav & chips, my puffa jacket and my duck down duvet.

I miss barbequing in Crystal Palace park, drinking cider under a tree and using the Su-Ria and Hennie establishment when nature called.

I miss having king prawn fried rice on Fridays after work, eating Cheerios out of the box and having time to myself.

I miss being able to do what I want, when I want.

I miss sherbert fountains.

I miss rainy days spent in bed reading all sorts of amazing books, old and new.

I miss the spritzer girls at Debenham’s perfume counter.

I miss bagels, cinnamon & oat cookies and 5 pack tights.

I miss chicken kievs, gammon with pineapple and Burger King Whoppers.

I miss shaking along on the DLR towards Bank, listening to my Ipod on full whack.

I miss reliable internet connections, online shopping and post that actually arrives.

I miss buying make up, M&S knickers and good quality handbags.

I miss my handmade fuchsia-pink leather cashmere-lined gloves. 

I miss the smell of my flat when I come home from work.

I miss affordable DVD’s, gadgets, magazines and BOOKS!!!

I miss being able to buy carrot batons, blueberries and delicious, almost black cherries.

I miss the daily mail.

I miss M&S’s chocolate milk, spaghetti carbonara & mac & cheese.

I miss the walks from work with Sash to Liverpool Street Station.

I miss being in charge of birthday, leaving, new-baby and congratulations whip rounds, and deciding on gifts for said recipients.

I miss amazing wrapping paper, envelopes and stationary at Paperchase.

I miss boxing day sales, mince pies and mulled wine.

I miss grit on pavements, patterned wellies and black cabs.

I miss dog walkers, ignorant pedestrians and self service ticket machines.

I miss the bus rides home, getting a seat on the train and Pimm’s & lemonade.

I think, in short, it’s obvious to say I pretty much miss EVERYTHING of London.

Stalker, stalker burning bright....

Following on from Matchmade in hell, I’ve recently been faced with a new dilemma, my mam very cleverly disclosed some personal information (which I’m very secure about) to some woman at church’s son.

Previously when she’d asked me if I’d wanted to meet this person, I was still in a relationship (albeit a long distance one) and rather politely declined.

So fast-forward six months, and some random person starts messaging me asking me how I am, what I’m doing and what I’m looking for in a relationship. Seriously, WTF?

Now as far as I’m aware I haven’t signed up for speed dating of any description, nor have I written any personal information in a public restroom or made up flyers.  He volunteers the following information, he’s ten years older than me, he’s got 2 teenage daughters half my age and has been divorced 4 years.  Oh, and he’s tired of being lonely.

From two messages I can deduce the following: he can’t spell, seriously can’t spell. He’s overly needy and clingy and is a complete doormat.  There’s compromise, and then there’s doormat.

The thing with me is, I become increasingly arctic when I don’t like someone. I don’t talk to strangers (self esteem issues), and when forced to converse with people I don’t know and especially don’t like (after invasion of such privacy as my phone number) I actually become feral, never mind arctic.

You get one word answers if lucky, or I simply don’t reply. I will only not reply if I’ve told you in no uncertain terms that I’m not interested. I will say, listen, we’re different people, I’ve come to realize from our exchange of messages that we have nothing in common. All the very best for the future (thanks Hennie for this very diplomatic suggestion).

I don’t think that’s rude, unfriendly or that I think I’m better than this person. I’ve simply established that we have nothing in common. Children are not a joy to me (he tells me I should have children, they’re a joy, and would no doubt have offered his services). I don’t have any, nor do I particularly want any. That’s my choice, and my prerogative. The world has enough people as it is. No one is going to cry and scream if I don’t go forth and multiply.

In the exchange of messages I discover to my horror that he knows where I work, where I live and wants to bring me a birthday gift, I don’t go round buying people stuff that I don’t know. That’s just weird. It may seem like a kind gesture, but I told the lady and the dentist’s office that it was my birthday, and she only said happy birthday for tomorrow.  She’s a nice lady. She didn’t buy me a gift.

At work it’s reached a point where I’ve asked our receptionist to screen all my calls, visitors and I’m tempted to say open my post. I feel I have to leopard crawl on the veranda at work when leaving for home, wear a disguise or just yank a paper bag over my head.

One of the things that really annoyed me is that when I asked my mam if she’d parted with my phone number she flat out told me no. She didn’t have a clue who it was, but I should give him a chance.

Now what sort of drivel is that? He might be an axe murderer. My body parts could end up in suitcases in ponds or something for the love of all that’s good and holy.  Give him a chance my eye.

Day two of weird messaging dawns. I haven’t replied to anything and just before we go home I get a message. What’re you doing? I work 5 days a week. What do you think I’m doing?!?

At this point it’s annoyance more than anything. That my mam thinks so little of me that she’ll want me to date just about anyone. Her that always moans I date people too old for me (2 years age difference is too old) wants me to date someone 10 years my senior, with 2 children in tow.  And this fool that keeps messaging me (and by this time declares he thinks he loves me).

I now approach my oracle, my second opinion, my go to guy and my life long friend, I give him the basic low down, tell him I don’t want to be rude but I’ve had enough. He comes up with a rather tame, diplomatic response which I dish out to the abovementioned fool.

Not ten minutes later I get another message, Oh, I was thinking I’ll take you out to dinner, or I could come to your house, we could rent a DVD, we could order take out. You can choose.

People, I am shocked, horrified, scared, and now damn right angry. 

My house is my place of Zen, it’s where I go to relax, be me, not wear make-up, poodle round in my pj’s and eat cereal out of the box. I have to trust you implicitly before I invite you to my house.  To now just invite yourself round, imply I want your company when I’ve told you no, is just freaking me out. Seriously freaking me out.

This might all be seriously amusing to some, but it has caused a massive uproar in our house, my mam refusing to see the error of her ways and calling me ungrateful, a snob and always unhappy.

I’m not the five year old with ants in my pants anymore, and by Jove I’m going to say when something displeases me.

My only option apart from swearing and being seriously unpleasant to this guy is to move him to the ignore list on my phone.  Having done that he sends his mam round to my mam’s place of work to enquire as to why I’m not answering my phone. What man of almost 40 sends his mam round to deal with his issues?

No, I haven’t fallen down a well, contracted amnesia (sadly) or had my brain cut out by aliens.  I am simply not interested. It happens. We’ve all been rejected. Move on.

I’m a great believer of Karma, and that it catches up to you at some point in life, hence I don’t want to be horrible to someone when they’ve been thrust into a situation (or have they?), funny how that’s only just dawned on me now as I wrote it. The bugger was in on it all along!

Ooh boy. I’ve been duped. I feel so used.....

Moving on (see, relatively easy). I now have every reason to be feral and arctic should he contact me again, don’t I?  Hell hath no fury like a redhead duped...

P.S. The troll has now started calling my place of work. Everyone is on high alert and I carry a taser in my bag.....

Childhood trauma

Many of us have childhood recollections of events that have somehow shaped, scarred, scared of taught us. I myself am fortunate to have many of these recollections, good and bad.

On Friday (06/07/2012) I turned a whole 28. I’m proud to say I still have my own teeth, bladder control and memory intact. I put on quite a spread of Friday and by the time I left work everyone was feeling rather full and in some cases nauseous.
The food was temporarily stored in my cubbyhole of an office until I carted it all outside on our picnic bench so my fellow workers could enjoy (which they did).

At no point has any food been dropped, or left in the office over the weekend.

I arrive at my desk this morning to a desk literally crawling with ants. The little blighters are everywhere, and now due to my innate sense of paranoia I can feel them walking on various body parts. I’ve swept them aside, I’ve brushed them to the floor with bits of paper, I took off my shoe in desperation and whacked a few hundred of them in the hope that they’ll all go away to no avail.

Finally I managed to procure a can of bug dope and liberally sprayed it everywhere, but they still keep on coming. Even through the lake of poisonous goo now coating everything.

Now I know Disney or Fox or Pixar or whoever the hell else tried to make ants all cuddly and person-like but they’re not.  One of my very traumatic childhood recollections involved ants, and to this day I cannot for the life of me stand them, especially if there are hundreds of them crawling over everything, including my cling-filmed lunch.

Many, many moons ago we lived in the old Transvaal as my father was busy with his traindriver training and it was closer to college, I could be wrong on certain facts. At the age of four we moved back to my current hometown as my mam was pregnant with my brother and my parents had decided that the city was no place to raise a family.

I remember the epic adventure it was to move house, how exciting and wonderful it was to run through an empty house and play with empty boxes, tape and bubble wrap. My first real road trip was the house moving experience and my dad and I did the long journey to the new place alone. My mam had gone on ahead to get the new house sorted and settled in.

So we arrive at the new house, and it’s not as big as our previous house. My grandparents weren’t as close as they used to be, but still. New house, new adventures. I turned five in that new house, we had an orange tree in the back garden and at one point our dog ran away. Strange what you can recollect from childhood, even as an adult.  Oh, I also locked the keys in the car once. After being told not to play in said car.



One Saturday afternoon while my father was pottering away in the garage I’d decided to do a spot of gardening. I’m not sure what I thought I knew about gardening but I knew that we had empty flower beds and that made me sad.

So, watering-can in hand I make a thorough muddy mess of the empty flower beds, yank out some of the neighbours flowers protruding from the fence and plonk them in our flower beds. Needless to say they weren’t going to grow and had already started to wilt by the time I’d done my gardening, but it made my five year old heart incredibly happy.

I’m sitting there, quietly, keeping myself entertained (which I’m still very apt at doing) when all of a sudden a massive stinging pain engulfs me. My legs and bum are on fire. I don’t know where it’s coming from or if it’s divine punishment for taking some of the neighbours flowers but it’s agony.

I do a mad dash around the house several times, screaming and crying as I go. My father in a state of panic (welding helmet still on his head) comes barreling out of the garage and runs behind me until he finally catches up to me.

What’s the matter he asks all out of breath.

Daddy, everything’s on fire!!!  Everything!!!!

Where he asks?

Just there in our front yard I yank up my dress and indicate where “everywhere” is. To his utter amazement and horror he finds himself faced with a dilemma, does he laugh as I’m covered in red ants, or does he help me put the fire out?

Decision made he starts my helping me brush off the offending ants, and through much babbling and tears I explain that I’d done nothing wrong and had just sat over there gardening.

I’m sure he tried to explain that I might’ve sat on an ant nest or that I was a threat in some way, but I’d had enough. As soon as the agony had subsided I filled up my watering-can (which I’d flung in the neighbours hedge) and sought out every single ant’s nest I could find, and then very merrily proceeded to flood it.

I’m not sure at age five you’re aware of the concept of revenge, but it must be ingrained in our DNA dating back to prehistoric times. 

To this day I still don’t garden, like ants or wear dresses for outside functions.