The worst thing

The worst thing about falling off your bike after skidding on ice is not skeetering along the icy ground on your knee. It isn't the way that your handlebar twists sideways and digs into your inner thigh (although that really smarts). Without a doubt, the worst bit is the surreal sense of embarrassment you feel after you have just shouted 'WHoAAAH!' at the top of your voice to an empty moor.

Please can I come round to your house for tea?

Gosh!

I couldn't let the demise of insangel happen without saying anything. My favourite internet home has shut up shop in a fit of pique about... what was it about? I feel quite excited! I know that the rest of the forum has migrated to the Mekong Delta site where they are all bigging it up blitz spirit style, but I am tempted not to register there and, er, try to do something more interesting instead. We'll see how long that lasts.

Doing things that are more interesting fits in quite coincidentally with my realisation that I am a completely predictable model citizen. I realised, with not some little distress, that my behaviour of late is perfectly in keeping with Maslow's heirarchy of needs. I was then informed that Maslow's model is on the GCSE Business Studies syllabus. It's one thing to have your behaviour predicted by a bearded university social scientist, but a GCSE Business Studies student? Crikey. Anyways, it's apparently all about self-actualisation today so if anyone needs me I'll be in the shed at the bottom of the garden, um, creating. Or possibly just contemplating my breasts.

Caught in a trance

Going shopping for clothes pretty much straight after night shift probably wasn't the greatest idea I've ever come up with, what with sleep deprivation being linked with staring vacantly for long periods, and having difficulty in making decisions.

I found myself in some changing rooms, wearing a bright red jumper (which was not what I had set out to find) staring at my breasts in the mirror. Wondering 'are they good breasts or bad breasts?' for quite some time. My newfound breast insecurity comes from my having lost a little bit of weight and realising, to my horror, that I might not be able to shop in Bravissimo anymore. I was always at the bottom rung of Bravissimo's scale but I fear I may have dropped a cup size and thus made my breasts, well, average, as opposed to slightly bigger than average. Of course, I should just go to the shop and have them do that twanging, looking, frowning thing that they do in lieu of measuring, but I don't want to have to hear them say 'we don't sell bras in your size'. Is that what they say? I always wonder if they have embarrassing moments where small breasted girls go in, ask for small sizes, and have to be shown the door? Do the diminutive-breasted ones get the same kind of look that a size 16 gets asking for a larger size in Tucci? A mix of pity and embarrassment? I guess I'll find out soon.

Once the breast crisis was over I had to continue to stare at the red jumper for some time, wondering if I wanted a red jumper because it's Christmas or because bright colours make me feel like I'm ten years old. So, in future, sleep first.

Book Review

My Grandma was telling me about this book that Auntie Tricia had sent her. 'Honestly Helen, it was nothing but sex.'
'Really?'
'Oh yes, it was about students and it was all just sex! I couldn't read it in the end...'
'Oh right.'
'Yes, there was this girl, well, she was a first year and she was a virgin. But then she fell in with this crowd who were second years. Well... She went to a party and met this man. He said "why don't you come back to my house for a drink?" Well, she didn't know any better. So he said "are you one of these virgins who doesn't know what it's all about?" Then he sat down on the settee, next to her. Oh! And he pulled down his pants! He got her hand, so she couldn't move it, and he put it on his... on his... his... doofer! Well...'

Some other reviews:

"The happiest, saddest, funniest, most perceptive truth about growing up since Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye."
(Over 21)

"Assured and successful…a complex story, with many ironies and surprises, but it is told with touching and unaffected simplicity…altogether a most satisfying and intelligent first novel, and something for the author to be proud of." (Financial Times)

"Warm and witty…family life most achingly bared."
(New Statesman)

A slippery slope

Imagine my delight when I received a prompt response from Marks and Spencer with a delightfully apologetic letter and £35 of gift vouchers. Naturally, like a scratchcard winner, I spent all £35 on roasted vegetable count on us lasagnes, in the hope of repeating my success several times over.

The unexpected rewards of complaining have proven rather addictive. I am not an anti-complaining type of person, but I am rather a lazy person so I tend to compose elaborate letters of complaint in my head but rarely get round to sending them. The satisfaction I got from complaining to Marks and Spencer, however, has spurred me on to address some grievances I have with Virgin Mobile and Asda. The Virgin Mobile email was quite sensible but I'm not sure that the red wine I'm sipping hasn't made my Asda complaint a little too colourful: 'Despite my having very small hands...'

Nisha in the grass

Honestly, I am a real nurse

'I feel really rough'.
'Yes, that's quite normal.'
'Why?'
'Erm, good and evil are doing battle in your body.'
'Oh, right, I thought so.'

Wow! A real-life trading standards issue!

I have never had a kit-kat that was all chocolate, or a tube of rolos without the caramel inside. I am led to believe though, by Paul Dewhurst (who is brilliant because he is the only person on my school's friends reunited site whose profile made me swear with surprise - his time in the dungeons and dragons club prepared him well for his career as an award-winning magician!), that if you send products like these back to the manufacturers you will get hampers of free stuff. His dad did it all the time apparently. My brother once found some glass in a pasta n sauce but he accidentally threw it away. Or did he get a ten pound voucher? One or the other. I did once find a hair in some cheese and was reimbursed. But a foreign body is not as exciting as a foodstuff being perfectly edible but not quite right. It's like finding the only stamp ever printed where you can see that the Queen has a moustache.

Today for my tea I thought I was having a roasted vegetable lasagne from Marks and Spencer. On my first bite I thought 'gosh, that vegetable tastes terribly like chicken. I went through quite a few vegetables in my head, trying to imagine which one could easily masquerade as a bit of chicken. None, really. 'Maybe it's bit of halloumi cheese'. Except that still wouldn't be inside a roasted vegetable lasagne, would it? Then, when every mouthful contained the vegetable which looks like, tastes like, and shares the texture of chicken I came to the astute conclusion that it was actually a chicken lasagne. I emailed them so they can send a chopper out to scoop up chicken lasagnes before innocent vegetarians eat them. Not that I am a vegetarian of course, but I'd hate to see someone else's principles violated. By which I mean, do you think they'll send me a hamper of nice things? Maybe I should also have pointed out that the roasted vegetable lasagne was in the Count on Us range, God only knows if the chicken one was. People may have been subjected to high GI index foodstuffs!

Canine porn!

The good thing about saving for the sake of buying a dog is that, every time you take your eyes off the prize and are thinking about spending some money on, um, the trainers with the pink velcro bits for instance, there are dogs all around to remind you what you're really after. On the metro yesterday, a woman sat down with a very wet-looking (well, I presume it was actually wet (I'm not aware of a fashion for using 'wet-look' gel on dogs yet), scruffy, curly-haired black dog. It was exactly the kind of big-eyed, tilted head dog that makes me want one. I gave the owner a 'what a lovely dog!' smile and she proudly beamed back. She beamed back little knowing that I was thinking 'what a lovely dog! If I punched you I could snatch it and it would be mine for ever!'

The dog was wearing a very natty pink lead which has lead to me looking at web pages for dog accessories. Promise to my future dog: although it will be an unbearable struggle, I will not dress you as another species. Well, probably not.

Last week at work, one of the consultants came across me checking out the Battersea Dogs Home website. "Could I possibly drag you away from your canine porn to talk to you about one of your patients?"

("No, get lost.")