Smellymellyflipflop

The flight from Heathrow to Belfast tonight was seriously chocca with turbulance from take-off to landing. Fantastic! I think the bloke next to me needed some new pants! Remember when I was terrified of flying? My how things change!

The insomnia monster has me. I'm tired but my brain just won't turn off! Time to resort to hot milk. Which, incidentally, never works because by the time you've overheated the milk in the microwave and had to clean it all up you're more awake than you were before you even started.

I couldn't even last 48 hours - I've registered on the next OU course already.  I haven't even finished my 'got-through-my-3rd-year-and-MST209' celebratory bottle of wine yet and I've gone and signed up to a short science course to do until the my next maths one starts in January.  Some people are addicted to alcohol but me...?  I'm addicted to the Open University.  Until January (which will be pure maths or statistics, I can't decide) I'm going to do a short course about forensic science.  How cool is that?! 

So, anyway, you might be wondering how the exam went on Friday.  Then again you might not.  I didn't have another 'polo-rolling-down-the-desk' incident this year.  Instead I had the 'fruit-pastilles-on-the-floor' incident.  Followed by a 'how do I fill out the front pages?' conflab with one of the ancient invigilators.

Me:   "Do I write down ALL the numbers of the questions I've answered here?"
Him:  "Yes"
Me:   "Are you sure?"
Him:   "Yes"
Me:   "It's just that there are only enough boxes here to write ten down.  But there are, like, 30 to answer in the exam"
Him:  "Oh.  Er.  Erm"

A super helpful man.  He was the same chap I had an argument with last year over the location of my paperclip.  We didn't have the same ding-dong this year though.  Oh no.  This year he got a bit huffy because I'd attached my question paper (which you have to write answers in)  to the rest of the answerbooks with a split pin instead of a paperclip.  "Why have you done that?  You have to attach the question paper with a paperclip" says he.  "Er because we had to write answers in it so techincally it's an answerbook also....".  "Oh".  And he walked away.  I totally won this year's argument.  Oh yeah!  Rock on!  OU Invigilator 1, Addicted Studier 1.  Best of three old man, best of three.

So this weekend was strange with no assignments to do, no books to read and no revision to cram into my brain.  It was very odd.  I will confess I spent the majority of it wearing PJs and getting up to date with Grey's Anatomy.  Oh and watching episodes of 'Medium' whilst drinking copious amounts of tea.  It was excessively lazy, maginally enjoyable but, more than anything else, dull.  So monumentally dull that I am almost glad to be going back to work tomorrow.  Almost.  Because I spent the week shoving differential equations, vector calculus and the suchlike into my short-term memory - getting up for 9am everyday and studying until the evening - I don't much feel like I had any time off.  I am ready for some holiday now!  Somewhere hot and sunny.  With sandy beaches.  If only!

Good luck to anyone taking the OU MST209 exam this morning! I've woken up a bundle of nerves. A week of solid revision finally at an end. Today is scary, a whole year's work boiling down to just three hours of frantic writing. I keep saying to myself it doesn't matter because I almost quit halfway through the year so haven't lost anything by trying. But the truth is that now I've finally gotten to the end of this year's course I don't want all that blood, sweat and tears to amount to nothing. So, here goes.

I learnt today that you can freeze bananas and they turn out ok! I told that newly-learnt fact to a chum and he said 'well, yeah...'. Am I the only person not to find this out before now?! Really though, does it defrost ok? I must try it out, see what happens. At some point. When I actually have a working freezer. So actually that banana-based fact was a bit pointless since I can't actually freeze one. Hm.

I was reading ‘Take a Break’ (14th May 2009, Issue 19) and came across something slightly peculiar.  This lady had written in to say that she had burnt one side of some oven gloves but really liked them and wanted to keep them.  So she cut them in half, put a silk rose inside each mitt and, er, stuck them on her garden fence.  Erm.  WHY???

I was in Paignton today, by the pier (which, incidentally, has little bearing on the event), and I had a lovely fresh warm ring donut in my hand.  I turned round to exclaim to my companions with shock “they’re charging 20p to use the toilets now?!?!” and then some cheeky sodding seagull pinched the donut from my hand!  Fecking thing!  The foreign students standing close by learned some new helpful English phrases:

• “F*cking seagulls” – they may find they’ll use this phrase themselves at regular points during their stay in Torbay
• “The b*stard seagull stole my donut!” – as above, but only if they have a donut
• “We need guns and we need to shoot the f*ckers.  F*cking vermin!” – depending on which country they’re from they could perhaps help out with said gun acquisition

Needless to say, I was quite upset to lose my ridiculously over-priced donut.  And do you know why they attack members of the public?  Because holiday makers think it’s super brilliant to feed the seagulls.  Despite signs asking them not to.  I’m not about to rant on about holiday makers because, well, they’re an important part of our local economy blah blah blah.  But, please, DON’T FEED THE FRIGGIN SEAGULLS!

So, anyway, let’s discuss this 20p toilet charge.  I’m flabbergasted.  Paignton is full of crinkly visitors – though I suppose maybe some of those will have purchased RADAR keys.

Doris:  “Oh Beryl I’m busting to spend a penny but I don’t have 20 on me!  What’ll I do?”.

Beryl:  “Cross those legs and go back at the hotel dear.”

Doris:  “Oooooo.”  <At this point Doris would hop if only she didn’t rely on a walking stick>.

Beryl:  <Secretly sniggering because she secretly has a RADAR key but isn’t telling Doris that since she has been flirting with Daniel, the dashing fellow who is also on their coach trip despite Beryl declaring that she’d seen him first hands off>

We’ll have ladies in their crochet cardies desperate to pee all over the place!  Or what about the children?:

Thomas (5 years old):  “Mum I wanna wee”

Thomas’ Mum:  “I’m not spending 20p on a piddle!  Here drop your shorts and do it on the side of the road behind this ‘ere car wheel.”

I guess one could protest “why should I have to pay for the piddles and poos of holiday makers through my council tax?” and, in fact, they have a point.  BUT we pay for the toilets - can’t they give local residents tokens or something?  A yearly pee allowance, for example.  When they were talking about charging for using loos on Ryanair aircraft I panicked that the cost of a flight would increase somewhat for me!  We’re talking about, what, £1 an event?  So for me that’d be at least £2 on the outward journey alone – and that’s only on an hour-long trip!  Imagine if it was a three-hour jobbie!  I’d need a loan!  I reckon I should apply to work for those people who do '”The Loo of the Year” awards thing.  I know a thing or two about toilets me!  HA!

AND ANOTHER THING.  Apparently the big-wigs want to stop calling Torbay ‘Torbay’.  They want to just call it ‘The English Riviera’.  Sure it’s already referred to as that anyway but, well, it’s TORBAY!  What an utterly ridiculous suggestion.  Although looking at Torquay alone they might as well rename it "’Town With No Shops”.

 

This work by http://smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com.

Stupid moment of the week has to be during take off from Birmingham Airport.  Just as the plane was hurtling down the runway I smelt some kind of ‘burnt’ smell and started to frantically look around me to see if anyone else could smell it too, using my “sniff-sniff-what’s-that-smell-can-you-smell-that-smell-can-you-can-you?” face.  The climb was very bumpy and I thought “oh no, this time it’s really it isn’t it???”.  Then it dawned on me.  Someone was eating a packet of BBQ crisps.  Ehem.

This work by http://smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com.

This apartment is Spider Hell.  Well, more like hell for me and heaven for them.  That is, of course, until I spy them and either unceremoniously chuck them outside with much flapping (more on that later) or spray them with this rather stinking insect killer and, well, to be blunt, kill them.  I hate killing them though, it seems so mean.  It’s not their fault they chose the wrong place to live is it?  The other day I came home to a giant one on the floor.  By my feet.  I did manage to put a glass over it (in this instance, had I of sprayed it, it would have run VERY FAST with its GIANT LEGS).  So anyway, I had it trapped under the glass for a while before realising that I would actually have to do something with it.  The day before I had actually dragged a chum home from work to deposit two spiders, trapped under glasses, out of the window.  And the day before that a different friend saved the day.  But this time I didn’t think I could be rescued.  In order to make things more, um, bearable, I named the spider Maurice.  Why Maurice?  I have no idea.  It just seemed like a nice friendly name for a scary black-legged-big-bodied BEAST.  So as I tried to get a piece of paper under the glass I chatted to ‘Maurice’.  "I’m sorry Maurice, you’re just going to have to go.  I hope you understand.  You can’t live here It’s nothing personal, I just, well, if I’m brutally honest, I just don’t like you.  I know I don’t actually know you and have judged you on appearances but, well, I just don’t like you.  It’s just how it goes…. sorry”.  And so on and so forth, one can imagine I’m sure.  It was all going swimmingly.  I managed to get the paper under the glass.  And the cardboard under the paper under the glass.  And another piece of cardboard under the piece of cardboard under the piece of paper under the glass.  And it was good and I declared “Phew!  Now that wasn’t so bad was it Maurice?”. 

But then I made the mistake of realising that putting a giant black spider on a piece of bright white paper wasn’t exactly the clever thing to do.  Although, in fact, looking at it was quite possibly the most stupid thing to have done.  But I thought I was such a brave hero I could handle having a quick peek.  BUT NO.  So the short walk out of the flat and to the furthest flowerbed involved chanting “I can do this, it’s ok, I can do this, I can, I can, don’t look, oh God, I can, oh God, don’t look don’t look” whilst deep breathing ala giving-birth stylie.  Had anyone of looked out of their window at that point and seen me I think they’d have thought me in labour.

Still, it’s gone.  Somewhere.  And I’ve seen heaps of smaller spiders since which doesn’t bode well because they’re the sort that grow BIG and SCARY.  I wish my woodlice would drive them away.  Now that would solve the whole problem.

This work by http://smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at smellymellyflipflop.spaces.live.com.