Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Person To Whom The Deep Fryer Belonged Was Ugly Sven

As certain readers of this blog are aware (Lingual Alison first and foremost among you) I have been promising for many months to post all funny utterances from Lingual Alison’s dinner parties. Because it was taking me so long I thought I should do something really spectacular with the collected quotes, and I began working on an epic poem where every alternate line was a dinner party quote and the whole thing was tied together under the umbrella theme of ancient Roman festivals. I thought it was a fucking brilliant idea, but upon reflection I concede that I probably don’t even need to tell you that actually it was crap. In case there is any doubt I’ll give you an example:

I don’t want to say goodbye talking about my father’s genetalia!
Could we instead discuss ancient Rome, and feasts like Saturnalia?

While I have to indulge in a bit of egoism, and acknowledge that rhyming “genetalia” which “Saturnalia” was rather brilliant, I am willing to note that I am probably the only person in the world who cares. Anyway one of the problems I’ve been facing is that all the quotes seem hilarious to me but I’m not sure they would make much sense to anybody else– see the title of this post for an illustration of this point. So I will give you a severely edited version of Funny Moments From The Dinner Party:

Billy (whose parents I accused of naming their son after a piece of Ikea furniture) said “I’m terrible with single digit children”. Oh how we laughed!

* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * *

Then LA (who really needs a sexier nickname I think – suggestions welcome one and all) had a Eurovision party last weekend and I was too busy eating wonderful European-themed food and drinking wine and generally having a fabulous time to bother writing down any funny things that anybody said. I vaguely remember that Bilingual Jane and I stole a Yellow Pages on the way home, and one of the European countries won the contest. Also, there were dolmades.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Farewell, Dullard Cheese Girl, Tanty Man et al

I have finally left the crazy workplace once and for all. Squish squish. Apart from not being able to blog about it anymore, the only serious downside I can think of is that the new workplace does not have a panini maker in its non-existent staff lunch room. This is going to take some getting used to because that panini maker was sometimes the only thing that got me through the day at Crazy Former Workplace. Consequently, it has risen to great heights in my estimation of Workplace Pros and Cons, to somewhere about the level of salary-sacrifice sports car.

After a mega four days alcohol free (mostly due to the fact that I am now working during normal drinking hours) I headed to the bottle shop, where I saw a half legless man who murmured to me as he hobbled past “’s good for ya”. Now when I say “half legless” I mean that he had one leg, and was moving about with the aid of crutches. While I recognise the bad taste implicit in mocking a person’s physical disability in such a way, I was completely and utterly unable to resist.

I have one small story to report from New Workplace: a customer order was sitting on the counter this week with a note on it that said “ Customer is waiting for “The Power of Now” and will collect when it arrives”. I guess Customer couldn’t wait for someone to write a book called “The Power of Next Week”.

Monday, May 4, 2009

My Toilet Smells Like Pineapple

I think I have taken this whole adult thing a bit too far; my toilet smells like a tinned pineapple. As a welcome to Bilingual Jane, I bought one of those things that you hang off the side of the toilet bowl that releases nice smells when you flush, and also some drain cleaner. I though both these products were very adult indeed. The little thing for the toilet bowl is yellow and on the packet it says it is citrus but it really does smell like pineapple: possibly tinned or perhaps even glazed. When I tipped the drain cleaner down the shower drain it smelt like wet cardboard, only very strong and extremely toxic wet cardboard. It did work though, and now the smell has gone so we are left with the waft of pineapple.

The other day I went to David Jones and looked at all the grandma clothes. I tried on several cardigans.