Night shift

My partner on night shift was a chap who takes his career (as opposed to his job, if you see what I mean) terribly seriously. I imagine that he has a Dad's Army style map, with advancing pins and arrows and what-not, up in his garage where he plans his assault on the nursing world. 'Stage four: chief nursing officer, stage five: world domination!' He always asks me what my plans are and is disappointed that I don't have any. 'To become rich and famous through a talent I haven't yet discovered' is not a good career plan, apparently. Last night, as usual, he was asking me searching questions. 'Do you not worry that you're stagnating here?' I considered pointing out to him that I had spent the afternoon talking to a stranger on the internet, pretending to be a middle-aged American school teacher, largely because Monk had finished and I didn't want to get up off the sofa. 'Does that seem like the actions of a person with a career plan? No? Leave me alone, I'm trying to stagnate.'

Then he went for his break and I wrote a story about a piece of oddly placed dog pooh that I have been keeping an eye on for a few weeks.

Oh no!

My brother read my blog and now he is aware of the parental greeting card battle he is threatening war: ' I shall now begin my search for a birthday card so excellent, ie insulting, that Dad will have it on the wall before September 15^th.' Ha! Schoolboy error John! Mum's birthday is the 14th of September - Dad's isn't til December. Gosh, this is going to be an easy fight.

I'm sort of wondering if John might have an advantage living in the metropolis. Does London have magic laughter spray birthday cards yet? They will do soon, no doubt. Damn. I may have to be the first Parker child Olympian instead. Yeah.

Mother's Day

I have found, this year, that the cards on offer for Mother's Day are unusually saccharine. I suppose they do normally have a 'I Love You Mum' theme, but I have always preferred the 'You're a Rubbish Cook Mum!' or 'You Have Poor Parenting Skills and Cannot Cut Hair' sort of cards. After ten minutes of pulling 'ew, spew!' faces in Fenwicks Mother's Day section I decided to just look for a randomly insulting card in the 'blank for own message' rack. Hurrah! I found one insulting Mother's knitting skills.

A card saying how lovely Mum is would no doubt raise a smile, but would it get on the toilet wall with the other funny cards? No, it would not. And, in the most extreme case of sibling rivalry, I like to keep check that I have more cards on the hallowed toilet wall than my brother has. I don't think that my brother is actually aware of this competition and I suspect he wouldn't care if he was aware. But I care! I must be triumphant! I felt quite embarrassed by this insane level of competition until, after I commented on his mum having a very similar toilet wall card display, Nick said 'yeah, I bought most of them'. Ha! Melon seller! I mean, oh, you do that too?

Earl Grey and cheese scones

This morning I am mostly enjoying Earl Grey. His ghost lives in our house and he's terribly tactile. Um, no, I meant the tea really. I don't very often fancy a cup of Earl Grey, but when I do. Mmm, just the ticket. Unless there have been seizmic changes in Wylam, I can tell you that Chris Jacobson's mum only ever has Earl Grey. This leads me to believe that she must feel a little bit like a Victorian lady every morning.

I briefly wondered if the aforementioned lady might come across my comments on her tea preferences via the magic of Google. Then I remembered that she probably likes to think of her role as Chris' mum as somewhat secondary to her role as herself. My excessive self-googling has not extended to me checking for references to 'Brenda's daughter' yet (though, obviously, I will have to do so now).

I am also enjoying a cheese scone. That's because I'm Brenda's daughter. While Jonathan Opposite-desk-to-me's mum used to make extraordinarily popular caramel slices for school party occasions, Brenda Parker was devoted to the art of the cheese scone. I used to be slightly embarrassed by this. Basically because cheese scones are savoury and therefore not quite as good as things that are sweet. Sorry mum, you make great cheese scones. Much better than these Morrissons ones. Although yours are rarely on two-for-one. At least I wasn't the girl who brought in pease pudding sandwiches. I remember being utterly confused by that. 'But pease pudding isn't a thing - it's a thing that goes with a thing... isn't it?' Luckily Brenda was there to hush me and tell me that sometimes people are too poor to afford the thing, so they just have to have the thing that goes with the thing. And the teacher was there to say 'mmm, these pease pudding sandwiches are delicious!' 'Liar!' I thought at the time, though now I wouldn't mind one since pease pudding is obviously a nicer version of hummous.

Statistics! I love 'em!

I love the statistics because they let me know where I stand in the world.

I am second best at wanting to be brilliant

I am second best at crabsticks

I am fifth best at abused socks

I am ninth best at having "10 reasons to love"

I am eleventh best at "funny adjectives"

(Edited to say: only hours later I am no good at all at having "10 reasons to love" and have slumped to the 23rd best at "funny adjectives". Sob.)

Self-denial

My mother is disappointed that I haven't retained any of the important parts of my Catholic heritage - like praying and believing in God (but not so much that I'm bold enough to decapitalise him/her!). It only adds to her confusion that I cling so determinedly to the less important aspects of Catholicism - self-denial, guilt, and hanging Mary icon pictures on the wall.

My favourite bit of self-denial is Lent. It's a million times better than New Year's Resolutions because it only lasts for forty days (and forty nights). Whoop! Anyway, this year I have given up buying stuff for Lent. Major things that have not been bought because it's Lent include: cds/records/ um, cassettes, books, clothes, excessively nice anythings, kitchen hardware (so whoever accidentally took home my lunchbox from work please return it asap - I can't buy another one!). The effect of not being able to buy things is obviously making me want to buy things more than ever before but I am staying strong! A bracelet made of lego-men can wait til after Easter!

One major challenge presented itself yesterday when I was early for the cinema (free ticket so ya boo sucks fault-pickers!). To kill a bit of time, me and Becca went into Waterstones. A Dan Rhodes book that I have never read caught my eye. Well, it didn't really catch my eye until I went to see if it was there, looked along the R's and tried not to be distracted by the larger amount of shelf space given to someone called Will Rhode. Anyway, it is a collection of 101 stories, called Anthropology. In an attempt to kill time I started to read the book and got through about ten of the very succinct tales. I was itching to take it away with me. Then I was thinking about how far away Easter is. Then I was thinking about who I could persuade to buy it for me. It struck me, I read ten stories in five minutes... if I read a further ten stories every time I pop into town I can get the whole book read by Easter. For free!

So, please don't anyone go and buy the last copy of Anthropology from the Grey Street Waterstones. Oh, and don't go and tell Dan Rhodes that making short stories really short makes them easy to steal. Cause I love him. Well, not the real him (just in case you know him and you're thinking 'he never buys a round - he's a bell-end!'), just his short, short story writing persona. (Which is not to say that I ever come across any evidence to suggest that Dan Rhodes is a bell-end or in any way unlovable - it's just that I don't know him, so I couldn't say.)

How does sound work?

I've been working in the outpatients clinic this week. Which in some ways has been good: working similar hours to the rest of the world and having little involvement with the faeces of others, for instance. In other ways though, it has been bad: having to cope with change and discover the pros and cons of which toilet to use. On the ward there are a few toilets for staff use, one of which is tucked away behind several closed doors, offering privacy and quiet. In the clinic I do my blood-taking and responding to requests with blank expressions in a little room off a corridor. The room I work in is two doors away from the toilet and I never, ever hear what people are up to in there. Off the same corridor there is a large waiting room with a telly in the corner. And the telly is always turned on. Although I never hear people on the toilet, when I go to the toilet I can actually hear a person sighing in the waiting room. I don't understand it. I don't think they can hear me, even though I can hear them. I assume they can't hear me on the toilet. I hope they can't hear me on the toilet.

Unfortunately, I think they probably could hear when I had to flush the toilet three times. Ah! So, that's why the little sign was stuck on the engaged symbol! Because it was broken. Perhaps 'out of order' might have been a less subtle way of saying 'do not use the toilet'. Do you think you would want to receive a vaccination or have your blood taken by someone who, in your mistaken view, has enormously large, three flush poohs?

My new (old) record player

As I bought my first record at the age of nine (Stevie Wonder - I just called to say I love you) it could be said to be a little late to get my first record player at age thirty. I was an incredibly bright nine year old but didn't have the vision to foresee the invention of the compact disc. Anyway, luckily for my burgeoning record collection, I now have a proper record player. I'm a little concerned that it has a thing attached called the 'earthing prong'. That sounds like a device that, were it to come loose, could kill us all.

Aside from the worries about fire safety, it's all good, clean fun. I have two types of record. Ones that I have bought in the last couple of years and ones that I bought between the ages of nine and thirteen. Both types are very enjoyable but I am getting a pleasant dose of nostalgia from the latter group. Does anyone remember 'Wanted' by Halo James? No, I thought not. Circle by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians? I nearly cried. Beautiful.

I'm a bit drunk. I never do this when I'm a bit drunk. My sentences go short. Good night.

School days are not the best days of your life

Why did I forget how much I hate studying? On a three year cycle I forget how much I hate the stress of deadlines, embark on a course of study and then remember the horror!

When I started an Open University creative writing course recently I intended to keep it a secret. This way, i imagined, I would receive such encouragement from my tutor that I would go on to write my best-selling novel and the first you lot would know of all this would be when I walked into the pub and announced that Steven Spielberg had bought the film rights to Barius Banesh - a philosophical novel about a mystical wandering minstrel.

I have to write a story based on a guitar or a broken plate or a hand or something... by the 10th of March! And I haven't started! And I need a shower! And I need to pay the rent! And, and, and, and, and... waaaaah!

n.b. It's still going to be brilliant, of course.