Pure Shores

Last night Scarf and I went to O2 Arena in Greenwich to see Steel Magnolias. In an effort to market the arena as the new place to be in SE London, they are having all sorts of events, both free and not so much. By day they have kids activities (the little brats are all on holiday here at the mo) and by night they have live music, cocktail evenings and classic films. Wednesday and Sunday nights are free movie nights. It was actually really awesome - not just the movie, but where you watch it.

They've created a beach in the centre of the building by bringing in truck loads of sand to spread over the floor, building fake palm trees complete with decorative lights and setting up deck chairs, so you can enjoy a bit of the seaside in grimy, rainy old LDN. They've hung a big screen on the wall, and voila! you have your very own "Movies at the Beach!" It reminded me a little of a drive-in. The only real similarity is that there is a big screen and it's sort of outdoors (not really, but it feels like it because it's at the beach!), but still, it took me back to a time where you listened to the fliek through tinny speakers mounted on your side mirrors and vendors came up to your windows hawking popcorn and coke. Ag please Daddy, won't you take us the drrrrrive-in.........

You can actually bring your own food and booze as well, so we're going to go again and take the guys with us next time, and have a little picnic on the beach. Check out the before and after pics.

I have finally got a new phone. Just got it now on my lunch break. My gorgeous and sleek pink Samsung U600. I just can't get any trendier. And you know, I went into Carphone Warehouse with the intention of merely checking out my options (was planning on buying the phone only after consulting the Phone God, ie Shoes), and came out with the phone and all mod cons, having paid NOTHING up front - take that, stupid online mobile contract people!!!! Ok, so I didn't get a free gift either, but I didn't have to deal with a Stupid People Situation and I didn't have to lie on my application form - the consultant did it for me! Tres stoked! I was a rather typical chick though, I have to admit..... I only went down to the Strand to pick up the photos I'd had printed for my scrapbook. Along the way, I realised I was going to be passing SheActive, and that it was high time I get a decent sports bra - the twins are slowly but surely succumbing to gravity and need a little extra help. Ok, so maybe I lied when I said I was passing SheActive - I had to make a detour of about 7 streets. I went in and bought a brand new extra super ultimate boobs-in-concrete Shock Absorber bra - because only the balls should bounce! Thanks Anna Kournikova. And then I just popped in to Carphone Warehouse to see what my options were..... and the rest is shopping history. That is how the most satisfying and successful shopping trips are done, after all. Ladies, take note. You're reading the blog of a professional here. The fact that I meant to pick up photos which were already paid for and came away having spent a total of £480, if you include all my future contract payments, is irrelevant, really. I mean, it's not like it was an impulse buy or anything. Both items are necessities! You can't class necessities as impulse buys. Therefore boyfriends are not allowed to shout about shopping trips which result in necessities. I'll let you know later if this theory actually works.

I'm feeling a little sick today. I had chinese rice stir fry for lunch - beans, bambooey type stuff, carrots and prawns, with a bit of last night's fish thrown in for good measure - could that be why, I wonder. Reading it back actually makes my stomach turn. Maybe I shouldn't be so inventive when throwing random foods together.

Looking forward to a weekend of doing nothing, except watching Grey's and playing with my new phone. Just gotta get through Neutrino and OJ's Farewell To Our House party tomorrow night - they're being evicted. This is the house where twice they have been threatened with knives to their throats by their more than slightly pyschotic neighbours, who have major objections to trance music. Ok then, loud trance music. Sometimes in the early hours of morning. And yes, more frequently than is polite. Basically, they deserved a stern telling off, or even a warning from the cops, but the neighbours' vigilante justice is taking it a mite too far. Speaking of which, we nearly had a riot on our hands last night when our African friends living on the opposite side of our block turned their music up to full volume at 11:15pm. The usually unsociable residents of Building 50 gathered as one under said offenders' balcony and took turns cussing them out as loud as they could. Our friend emerged on his balcony and stared blankly down at them. Is it un-pc to say he looked like a monkey in a zoo? It's great, in that particular flat we have a bunch of Nigerians with no social skills, and next door to them we have a family of chavs who may or may not have social skills, but who openly spurn them anyway. Between them they have fewer manners than women at the Christmas Sales. The result is a competition with various events, including: Who has the loudest music, Whose parties go on the longest, Who can get into the most violent and offensive screaming match on their balcony and Who's screaming match has the worst language, and finally Who is most likely to cause Building mutiny, resulting in our vigilante justice. Jury's still out on that one.

Under My Skin

I am so, so, so frikkin tired. Not from lack of sleep, but tired of life in general. It's nothing in particular that has made me want to curl up in a room away from everybody for 100 years, but rather an amalgamation of everything that has me feeling miserable and so exhausted I can barely make myself attend to the tasks I have to do. It's ironic really, because just a few days ago, I was saying how recently I felt like I'd broken through the suface of a lake and was gulping fresh air for the first time in a long time. Well, scratch that - I am gumpy, crotchety, fatigued, stressed and sick and tired of having to tough it out. Life should be about experiences and finding the good in things, not about toughing it out day by day just to get through it because.... well, I don't know why. Because the alternative is to be suicidal and end it all, and I'm hardly that damaged. Luckily.

Ok, so maybe there was a tiny trigger. But it's so random and insignificant, I'm ashamed to admit it. Don't ever say I don't know how to get your attention... ;-)

It was my phone. My new phone that was supposed to arrive on Tuesday this week: the pink Samsung U600, at an absolute steal, complete with free PSP (Shoes was happier that I was). We ordered it last week, and it was due to arrive two days ago. Only, it didn't. Last night, we tracked the order online and found it had been returned to sender. So we phoned Dial-A-Phone, and the following conversation ensued:

Shoes: Hi, I'm Shoes and I ordered this phone blah blah reference number blah blah and it supposed to be delivered blah blah but it says on your website it has been returned to sender.
ESP (Extremely Stupid Person): Oh yes sir, I see here that it has been returned to us.
Shoes: Erm, yes, that's what I just said. Can you tell me why?
ESP: Well, didn't you send it back?
Shoes: Uh, no, I want the phone. I ordered the phone. I paid £30 up front for the phone - why would I send it back?
ESP: I don't know sir.
Shoes: Yes, well, me neither. That is why I have called you. Why have YOU got MY phone?
ESP: Can't answer that sir. You will have to phone Royalmail.
Shoes: Ok fine, forget about why. Can you please send it back to me?
ESP: No sir.
Shoes: Why not?
ESP: Because sir. That's our policy.
Shoes: Your policy is to steal other people's phones?
ESP: No sir. Our policy is to cancel the phone contract if the phone is returned to us.
Shoes: But I didn't return it to you. It got returned by someone else, without my permission.
ESP: It doesn't matter who returned it, sir, the fact is it got reuturned.
Shoes: So you mean I can't get my phone back.
ESP: It's no longer your phone sir. It's our phone again now. If you want another phone, you will have to order another one.
Shoes: But, I've already ordered. You have all my details on file. Can't you just send that phone back to me?
ESP: No sir. You have to place a new order.
Shoes: But I don't understand. You have my details. Just send me another phone, and link the registration number with my details, which you already have.
ESP: Sorry sir, I can't do that. It's against policy. You have to order a new phone.
Shoes (straining to hear over my cries of "I'm going to fucking kill them" in the background): What about my £30? Will that carry over to my new order?
ESP: No sir. We will transfer the £30 back to you in 7 - 10 working days.
Shoes: Wait a second. If I order this phone today, you are going to charge me another £30. Then, in 7 days time, you are going to transfer £30 back to me. Have I got that right?
ESP: Yes sir, that is what we're going to do.
Shoes: Can you not see the higher intelligence of simply keeping the £30 I have paid you and sending me a new phone?
ESP: I'm afraid it's against policy sir.
Shoes (physically restraining me from ripping the phone to shreds with my bare hands): Can I just tell you something?
ESP: Yes sir, of course.
Shoes: Your policy stinks. In fact, your choice of delivery stinks too. Actually, everything about this whole mess stinks.
ESP: Thank you sir. Goodbye sir.
Shoes: *%£$!%*$^!

And so, we now have to wait and see if the £30 ever materialises before we risk ordering another phone from them. I did phone Royalmail as well, and they can't tell me either why the phone was returned to sender, but apparently that happens either at the request of the recipient (clearly not us as we never even saw the delivery guy), or if the recipient does not live at the address given. In any other case, including if the recipient is not available to sign for the package, it goes back to the depot and you are left a card explaining what has happened (we had no card). You then have three weeks in which to collect your package. They are investigating the issue after I threw a major wobbly on the phone today.

The point is, it's not the phone that matters. It's not even the Stupid People Situation. It's the fact that I can't even place an online order without everything coming to a grinding, metal-crunching halt. After the last 3 weeks, with the visa situation for Portugal and then the driver's license issue (which is sorted now, by the way), all I am asking for is just a bit of slack. Let me have an easy day. Let me just do something, and have it work right first time. Just once. Just to explain to you how chronic this is, I was supposed to be at an agency for an interview today at 1pm. As I was topping up my oyster card at the station, an alarm sounded and everyone had to evacuate. The result? I had to walk all the way to the next station to get the tube and was late for my interview. Just one thing.

It sounds funny, I know, and believe me, if I can see any good at all in anything, it's when I'm writing, because then I can add black humour to what in real life is making me cry, through complete lack of other options.

I'm just tired. I haven't had a holiday in 2 years, and I have never been this desperate to get away from my life and out of my own skin. I cannot stand to be me right now - I just want to be someone else, somewhere else, where my problems are non-existent. A place where there is no stress about a money situation that is worsening by the day; a place where finding a permanent job that I would just like, never mind the perfect job, is actually possible, rather than as likely as finding a needle in a haystack; a place where I can relax and not have to cope single-handedly with all the curveballs that life is throwing my way because somehow it all just seems to fall into my lap, and everyone else is content to leave it there. A place where I can just not be me. Just for a few days.

I realise that I'm just running on empty, and some time away from London and my life here will fill me up, and then I won't break down next time a stupid phone order goes wrong. Then I'll laugh at it, and find the funny in the frustration. It just seems like the person who used to laugh at things like that has been missing for a long time. I have drastically underestimated the need for relaxing holidays. But then again, I have never worked flat out for 2 years without one.

I know Portugal is close. But with all the drama surrounding this trip, it is testing every ounce of strength and faith that I possess, and I truly believe I have been tested enough this year. I'm on the edge of the precipice now; it's only going to take one or two more of these situations to push me over. I can't wish hard enough for the days to fly by so Portugal will arrive. G-Days is with us this weekend, so I think I'll wait for him to go back to Chippenham and then take a day off next week. It's not great, but at least I can be at home by myself, watching Grey's and not speaking to anyone, and hopefully gather just enough to see me through the next month.