Category Archives: Women

Curtains

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I finally got round to washing the curtains in my little study yesterday; tried to put them up today.  It wasn’t just a case of hanging the curtains though because there are some blackout curtains that hook onto them and the amount of coordination required was staggering.  It wasn’t just that though, oh no, because with curtains, comes “gathering” and this requires the combined powers of a) actually being interested and b) witchcraft.

My ex was the one who put the curtains up in the study and the living room.  In fact, one of her last acts here prior to dumping me was to bring some curtains up that she’d had made and put them up in the living room.  As if a normal person would even do such a thing!  I remember her doing some measuring and pulling on the cords that gather the curtain tops and tying them off.   She was saying stuff like, “You’ll have to learn how to do this, look, you measure this and blah blah blah”.

Yes, Ali, because, you know, my fucking world is falling apart in front of my eyes, I’ve been tortured by you for the past two months, you’ve torn my heart out and are about to fuck off with some fucking freak, of COURSE I need to know how to gather fucking curtains so they fit correctly over the fucking gap!

She was a bit like that, very domesticated.  Everything had to be perfect and clean to the point that it was almost an obsession, almost to the point of martyrdom.  Her ideal job would have been a housekeeper somewhere, her own admission and not a spiteful observation.  She’d have made a very good Mrs Danvers, only without the integrity and fidelity. 

Needless to say, I just keep on top of the housework in any sense that a normal person would.  Sometimes I don’t clean or vacuum as frequently as I should and the fact that this annoys means that I’m not quite ready to be featured on the wrong end of an episode of Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners.  

 

Pissoff

The current domestic situation is stressing me.  Having the little cat here means there is cat food, cat hair and cat litter flying around, not to mention the associated smells from the latter two.  All I can do is employ damage limitation tactics until I can give the place a thorough clean on Thursday and Friday evenings.  

It can’t wait until Saturday of course.  Of course?  Of course! My dear friend April is coming over from Canada with her daughter Sacha. And then you saw me dead. I’m so excited about having them here for a whole week, I’m actually almost paralysed.  I’ll use that excuse when April runs her fingers over my door frames to find them thick with dust.  “April, I was paralysed with excitement.  Let me beat you at crib.”

Every time April comes to visit, the weather is awful.  That’s why she’s coming in August, when there’s a really good chance that the weather will be… awful.  We’re even going up to the Lake District for a couple of days, just to maximise the chances of encountering dreadful weather.  

I need to think  of other things to do with her while she’s here.  By that, I mean things that Sacha can take part in too and things that April won’t hold me in a death lock for if I even considered attempting them. 

Sighs.

So, pleasant activities for somebody visiting Manchester will more than likely be:

  • A day out in Liverpool
  • Couple of days in the Lakes
  • A day out in York
  • Staying away from Manchester

I also need to cook for her, having promised to do so on a number of occasions before now and having failed to do so when I was visiting her and her family in 2006. 

 

Fucking weather

The weather is vile.  It is blowing a gale and it is freezing.  It being Saturday night last night, I got drunk as an act of revenge for not getting drunk on Friday night.  In my state of inebriation, I put the heating on to take the chill off (in the middle of August) and forgot to turn it off before falling into bed at 2am. I was woken by battering wind and rain at 9am this morning. My poor head was screaming at me, calling me a idiot for breaking my no drinking after midnight rule (which I always ignore).  I was hungover, dehydrated, in considerable pain and boiling hot.  

I really must start looking after myself better.  I need somebody to supervise me and look after me.  And if they know how to gather curtains?  I’ll run a bloody mile.

Mirror in the bathroom

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All I want when I go to use the toilet is a little bit of privacy.  I don’t get this at home because I’m accompanied by the little dog wherever I go.  Like Lyra’s pine marten, Pantalaimon, he is my daemon; I’m sure he feels that if he’s ever more than two metres from my ankles, his entire being will evaporate.  So when I go to the bathroom at home, he follows me, sits by my side, tries to jump on my lap, paws me, has a sniff while I wee.  If he gets a little too excited during my pre-walk call of nature, I have to pacify him with the tube from a used toilet roll, which he shreds in the time taken for me to have a wee (TMI).  Visitors to my house might think that I’m just lax in sorting out the recycling, but these things are wonderful to keep on hand for this purpose.

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Anyway, if the lack of privacy in my own bathroom makes me weep, it is nothing compared the anxiety I face when using a public toilet, particularly the one at work.  It’s one of those hideous arrangements with five interlocking cubicles.  As if assembled from flatpack furniture, these fibreboard contraptions merely separate each toilet while leaving huge gaps at the bottoms and tops.  No sound-proofing, no privacy.

I hate people hearing me when I tinkle.  The sound is amplified so much in the echoey communal bathroom.  Then there’s the possibility of gaseous escapes, or even worse.  At work, I never take a comfort break unless there is a full complement of female colleagues in my office.  This reduces the risk of one of them being in the toilet at the same time as me.  But on a floor of many offices, staffed in the majority by women of the female persuasion, there is always a high risk of there being company whenever I make a call of nature.

Today was such an occasion, but it was company of the absolute worst kind: a mirror hog.  She was there as I entered the room.  Stood in front of the mirror, brushing her short, faux-blonde hair.  For fuck’s sake.  I’d just got into work after a waste of time hospital appointment and I hadn’t “been”.  My heart sank.  I knew that I needed more than just a wee.  

Jesus.  

I gave a cursory nod, rolling my eyes in thoughts, and brushed by her to my favourite cubicle.  My old favourite cubicle (number 1) is dead to me since the flush became unreliable and the cistern’s delayed refill time became too much to bear.  I now go for number 3 because I like to use the sink opposite it when I exit.   She was stood in front of number three.  I hated her.

I entered the cubicle, locked the door and followed my usual routine of wiping over the toilet seat.  This serves two purposes: it clears up the water splashes from the previous flush and also creates a cushion in the pan to reduce tinkle noise.  As I took my seat, she entered cubicle 4 – next to me!  I wanted to kill her.  She won the wee race – obviously she didn’t care as much about me re toilet seat hygiene – and was back at the sink as I left the cubicle to wash my hands.  I glanced across to where she was occupying my favourite sink.  She had placed a makeup bag on it and was applying some whatever it was to her face.  What the fuck?  What was wrong with this bloody woman?  Why couldn’t she do this before she got to work?  

My head was raging with images of bludgeonings as I left the ladies.  This exploded into a full-blown rant when I got back to my desk.

“What the fuck is wrong with women that they have to fanny around in front of the mirror in the bathroom instead of just going in there to use the fucking toilet?  If I had my way I’d remove all mirrors from public toilets, they just encourage stupid women to preen and get in the way of people who want to use the toilet and wash their hands!”

This is particularly true on the rare occasion when I find myself “out” of an evening.  You go to a bar, find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to use the facilities, then can’t get to wash your hands because of the three-deep queue of bloody women slapping on makeup.  More often than not, they dispose of tissues (usually the last of the toilet paper) in the sink, thus blocking them for people who want to use them for their intended purpose.

The mirrors in public toilets serve no logical function, they are surplus to the main requirements of having a wee and washing your hands afterwards.  They are often harshly lit and never show anybody at their best, exposing the tiniest of flaws that make the less confident amongst us despise ourselves even more than we have to.  Why do they even exist?  If mirrors do need to be available for those who can’t go a few hours without pandering to their vanity, they should be placed well away from where normal people just want to use a toilet.  Preferably in a stinking pit of venomous snakes.

 

 

World Lazy Day

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Apparently, it’s World Lazy Day today. As if I need an excuse on a rainy Sunday.

I have housework to do. The bathroom awaits. I resent the grouting that separates the tiles. Surely there must be something better that can be used for this purpose, something that doesn’t act as a perfect habitat for the growth of mold, something that doesn’t suffer discolouration with time.

The discoloured grout gives me an excuse, as if needed, to do the bathroom in shifts: the grout is currently soaking in bleach foam. This gives me twenty or so minutes to lounge around in bed a while longer and muse about the relative merits of Cif versus Flash spray for achieving a streak-free finish and lemon freshness. Flash is easier to rinse, but it’s in the kitchen cupboard, so Cif wins out today. When I can be arsed to do it.

Pffft.

Women
Of course, having sold out on my “no telly in the bedroom” principles, I am able to watch episodes of Frasier from YouTube, which I can stream to the telly using my little Chromecast device.  With eleven series of twenty-odd episodes, most of which are available in full online, I could spend many happy days tucked up under my duvet enjoying the fast-paced dialogue and story lines that take themselves from classic British farce.

I love Roz Doyle in this show. I think that I want to marry Roz, or somebody like her, or Nigella of course. Somebody smart, funny, feminine, vivacious, irreverent, sexy.

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I don’t think women like Roz really exist, not in my world at least. When lesbians try to be smart, funny, vivacious and irreverent, we get this:

Sue Perkins

Sandi Toksvig

Ellen Degeneres

And are these women sexy?  No, not to me.  More to the point, they’re fucking annoying as fuck. I don’t know what it is about them, but it’s as if they try too hard to be something, to act a particular way… a bit cheeky maybe.  Like an over enthusiastic puppy that yaps innuendo. I guess they’re just being themselves and they’re probably very nice women; I just despair at the lack of lesbian role models who don’t conform to this stereotype.

There’s always Jodie I suppose, but I suppose normal women who happen to be gay are just that, normal.

 

Profligacy

Despite it being World Lazy Day, I nipped to the supermarket this afternoon.  I only went for some bits and ended up spending £60.  How does this happen? I even had a list in my head.  I suppose that list didn’t include a new clock for my kitchen, five packets of Pepsi Max and enough shower gel to last me three months.  Sixty pounds.  That’s a hell of a lot of money for a booze and fag-free shop.

Still, come the apocalypse, at least I’ll have a freezer full of sausages and a cupboard full of pasta to keep me going.  That’s as long as we still have gas supplies and fresh running water, so you know, not like a real apocalypse, just one where I don’t leave the house for a couple of weeks.  Watching Frasier.

 

Electric blanket

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We’ve been experiencing a relatively cold winter here in the UK. I don’t like it. The canal is almost completely frozen over.

Icy canal

This proved Rocky’s saviour yesterday as I almost threw him in it when he was being a total shit on his walk. I liked the noise the sticks made when I threw them onto the ice. I wonder what noise the dog would’ve made.

On days like today, the crisp, blue skies are beautiful, but the sun rarely gets high enough in the sky for the shadows to disappear and for the ice on the pavements to melt.

Take today for example; we had snow flurries overnight that froze to an icy sheen on the pavements by dawn. Despite wearing sensible Timberland boots with a chunky sole, I spent the day walking like a penguin with Parkinson’s disease. I have no idea why I have zero confidence when walking on slippery surfaces, but I can remember being this way for as long as I could walk – gripping onto fences, walls, my mum as I slipped and slid to school. I hate the ice. I hate things that involve me feeling unsteady on my feet such as ice skating and roller skating, and I have absolutely no desire to even attempt skiing.

Why is it then, that while I can’t walk on anything remotely slippery even in the most suitable attire, some people can stride along with full confidence on a surface resembling an ice rink while wearing stiletto boots? I couldn’t believe some of the shoes women were wearing today. Bitches. Perhaps the heel actually acts like a crampon and provides the best possible grip in such conditions. Maybe I should give them a go. I’d probably end up spinning around, pinned to the ground by one heel with the rest of me flying around in a circle of screams, torn ligaments and hair.

With it this cold, my peripheries are always icy and, by bedtime my toes are unbearably cold. I got a duck feather and down duvet for Christmas, it is lovely, but it doesn’t warm my toes particularly well. Of course, if I had a nice warm body next to me, and if the owner of that body loved me enough, they’d let me warm my toes on them. Unfortunately, I am without woman, good or otherwise, so I need to explore alternative avenues to keep me warm. One option would be to have Rocky in bed with me, but he prefers to sleep at the top of the bed next to me and I doubt he’d stay near enough to my feet under the duvet for him to be of any use. The next best option would be to invest in an electric blanket. I had the luxury of one of these when I stayed with friends in Norfolk and it was delicious! The one I had use of had a timer function so it stayed on for 75 minutes – just enough time to settle down, do a bit of reading and drop off.

Imagine the other functions that could be integrated into an electric blanket: iPod dock; massage function; alarm clock…. cattle prod! Your alarm would go off, gently at first, perhaps playing a gentle tune or waking you with a soothing massage. But if you snoozed off: DZZZZZZTZZZIPPP!!!!

I’m going to write to JML to see if they want to develop my idea along with all the other wonderful things they sell, things that look so fucking brilliant on their TV ads, but turn out to be disappointing bits of utterly useless junk when you come to have them. A bit like women, but with a battery or a plug.