Smoked paprika and marinated anchovies

I really wish the bags that the Sainsburys delivery man had left in his van, after leaving my house, had been the ones containing the smoked paprika and marinated anchovies. It would have been nicer to have said that they were missing, when ringing the helpline, rather than 'Er, I seem to be missing some sanitary towels and corned beef'.

I haven't updated for about two weeks and in that time I have had several moments of 'ooh, I might put that on my blog' including: feeling like crying at the Bonnie Prince Billy concert; feeling like crying, for entirely different reasons, at Mordern Tower; feeling like crying seeing an old man with shaky hands; feeling like crying when I saw some sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm in the street (a token of love so callously discarded!); and, giggling, hearing a young man and his mother arguing in a restaurant - you could hear his eyes rolling from the other side of the room as he hissed 'I'll have a pint of vodka please' at the waiter.

Naturally I waited until something involving the word 'sanitary towels' cropped up.

Happy Birthday Grandma

That was cheaper than a card.

Cultural highlights of the past week:

1. Brick memories. While listening to Nev Clay performing in the Head of Steam, an enormously enthusiastic fan so irritated somebody that they muttered 'anyone got a brick?' This brought a flush of pride to my face because it reminded me that I was declared the queen of lateral thinking (unofficial title) at school for being able to come up with the most uses for a brick. I had not had 'stove somebody's head in to stop them shouting out excitedly' on my list but I still won. The activity was posed in careers week. I am still looking for a job finding alternative uses for the brick so if anyone knows of any openings...

2. Seven Stories. I visited this children's literature centre where I was delighted to see genuine manuscripts of genuine books I genuinely read when I was a genuine child. Danny Champion of the World! Yippee! Etc. There was a quite touching exhibition about Allan and Janet Ahlberg. I particularly enjoyed a video of Allan doing keepie ups in his back garden. Of all the children's authors alive today, he is surely the best at keepie ups. I was also excited to see a bit of Harry Potter manuscript. It featured lots of crossings out and some kind of greeny smudge which was either a snot or some kind of terribly sophisticated, exotic, spilt foodstuff. Like avocado.

Hair egg!

Oh! I nearly forgot! I saw a massive egg made out of human hair (well, it looked very much like human hair and, after all, who would make a massive egg out of dog hair?) in the street this week. It was huge! The sort of size I imagine a huge goose egg would be, or an easter egg (but just a cheap, Cadburys Buttons one, not a £24 Lindt one - the Lindt one would also be a bad example because it would be in the shape of a massive bunny - and the hair was definitely ovoid). I tried to take a picture of it, but every time I got near someone came out of the house it was sitting outside and sort of lingered about in a way that made me unsure about whether it was Granny's sacred hair-egg or something. I didn't want to commit a grave hair-egg faux pas so I was unable to capture it for your astonishment. I was doubly upset about that because someone had been kind enough to leave an empty can of Carling next to it, offering a perfect illustration of its scale.

Fame!

It's been a few days since I've written anything. I've been really busy with the band and my vigourous new exercise programme. Phew! Most of the band work has revolved around drinking tea and wondering if we can all play jangly percussion intsruments or if that's going 'a bit too far'. I'm still trying hard with the guitar so maybe we'll have a conventional instrument involved too. We'll just have to write songs with no f's in them. One nice result of our exciting debut on myspace is that I just accidentally found a nice girl band called The Pipettes. Pipette is a lovely word, isn't it? Almost lovely enough to make a career in science seem attractive. Or to make being in an all-girl, polka-dot-shod pop band attractive. Sadly, it has stymied our 'yeah, let's all wear polka dot dresses' plan.

Other music I have 'discovered' recently includes Mogwai. I put the word discovered in inverted commas to indicate my awareness that the rest of the world has been listening to Mogwai since they were in the womb. I first heard them last Wednesday when they played at Northumbria University.

When my giving-up-buying-stuff for Lent ends - next Sunday, it will be hard to choose between buying a Mogwai LP or the Pipettes debut album. I suspect that the Pipettes might win - simply because they've only got one album so they wouldn't present me with further dilemmas. Actually, considering I didn't buy the delight pictured below (as spotted in Windows of Newcastle, priced at £179.99, only yesterday) I think I might treat myself and buy two records.



Wow. she's a beauty, eh?

Olympics here I come!

Today sees the first day of my campaign to become an olympian. I thought it might be nice to do something for being thirty and, inspired by the snowboarders on the telly, have plumped for becoming an international sports star. There are four years to go so I think I'll take one year to get myself in shape while also researching potential sports. Apparently there's a sport that involves cross-country skiing and shooting, which sounds like fun. Then I'll have a couple of years to become brilliant at the sport and get the shell suits and stuff. Ace.

While thinking about how I am now a future olympian I realised what a lovely name for a band that would be. We had been thinking about calling it 'My So Called Wife' but audience surveys have suggested that is a 'rubbish' name. So, anyway, how about 'Future Olympians'? We've got a myspace so all we need to do now is learn to play some instruments, write some songs, that kind of stuff. It's great being in a band. Yesterday when I walked to the shops I was just plain old Helen Parker. Today I held my head up high, knowing that I was Helen Parker of the Future Olympians. Brilliant.

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.

I need some space

Perhaps I'm being a little too anal (that is an official and acceptable shortening of 'anally retentive' now, isn't it?) but can everyone stop standing so horribly close to me? I seem to be spending increasing amounts of time wondering if it would be really impolite (or, indeed, a little bit Falling Down style mental) of me to turn around to people behind me in supermarket queues and ask them to take a step back. People with baskets are brushing my bum with their wires! Firstly: ouch! And, secondly: for the love of the children, WHY, GOD, WHY? What possible benefit can come from shoving wire baskets into Helen Parker's bum?

Speaking of anal, when I celebrated my twenty-ninth birthday I had a minor 'Cripes! What about all the things I haven't done that I should have done by the time I'm thirty?' crisis. So I made a list. Most of it came down to physically discomforting activities - walking up big mountains or running or daft stuff like that. And the odd bit of thing that seemed sort of rock n roll. Anyway, the great thing about turning thirty, I realised, is that I can leave it all behind and forge ahead into a new era where I don't need to be rock n roll. I think the thirties might be my kind of decade. Things that I think a person should do in their thirties are things I would like to do anyway. So much so that I don't need to write a list. But, were I to write a list, it would include such points as: being able to cook mussels in my own home (without worrying that I will poison myself), getting a dog, um, sitting about a lot.

Another great thing about crossing the line is that, were I to perform some act of physical prowess - become a world -class snowboarder say - I would not just be a world-class snowboarder, I would be a world-class snowboarder in her thirties, what an achievement.

In fact, the older you get, the easier it is to be impressive. I can't wait to be so old that people are impressed that I can walk along the street. I think I might be quite good at being old.

I'm back!

While I've been gone some things have occurred:

1. I celebrated my thirtieth birthday. On my actual birthday I was at a wedding of some strangers. I heartily recommend this as a birthday idea. To the extent that I'm thinking about emulating Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan in The Wedding Crashers. Though I won't be bedding ladies. Or wearing a suit and talking sharp. I'll just be doing the going-to-weddings-of strangers part. If anyone else is thinking that they would like to spend their birthday in this way, might I recommend that you specify certain things: a bona fide scrap between the brothers of the bride; girls in the toilets sharing conciliatory comments over unknown tragedies 'At the end of the day, all men are absolute cocks. That's the way you've got to look at it'; the venue employing an elderly butler type gent who will wander about with an accidental post-it note on his back; and, well, just general revelry.

2. I moved house. Although I have not managed to do any of the boring bits - like changing addresses, unpacking, etc. I have done all the most important bits. Like downloading the theme tune to Ski Sunday and playing it repeatedly while sliding across the living room floor.

3. I went to see Lachrymose One supporting Dawn of the Replicants and got to hear the words 'This song's about Galashiels stroke global warning'.

4. Experienced what seemed like a real emergency situation where my friend needed to escape from someone and shouted 'RUN!!!' as we left the pub. The next day I worried 'we could easily have got run over!' Nick apparently remembered events more clearly. 'Erm, it was more of a case of you running up to the pedestrian crossing, pressing the button, waiting, then running again.'

Romance isn't dead

'Tell you what, I'll have a piss, then we'll go to Morrissons'.

Once bitten, twice shy

There were interviews at work this morning, for new nurses. When I came in for my shift at one, the sister told me that they had interviewed my double.
Sister: She was like Helen Mark II, almost exactly like you.
Me: In what way?
Sister: Oh, in every way!
Me: So, when does she start?
Sister: She didn't get the job.

Something sad in the snow

Moving

Despite some cheering words last night, 'Arthur's Hill? Ya movin to Arthur's Hill from Gosforth? Ya mad. I'm homeless me right, they've offered us places in Arthur's Hill, I wouldn't tek them,' I am really looking forward to moving house!

It's going to be exciting living in a bijoux pad with Becca. I got a text from her the other day detailing some items she can offer to the household inventory: "creme brulee pots, flan dish, fondue set, rice cooker, espresso pot." So, that's all the essentials covered then.

Although I am thrilled to be moving to the late nineteen-eighties (I stole that joke from someone else so if you laughed send half of the royalties to John), I will miss a few things about Gosforth. Stuff like not worrying for my life if I want to nip to the shops after dark. Just kidding... I hope. I'll miss things like trying to avoid speaking to Gerry (Jerry?) from across the street. He's one of those people you wish you'd never got chatting to because you're never going to be actual friends and now you're stuck in stilted 'oh, just getting in from work are you?' chat. A friend who works at the same place as Gerry informs me that Gerry is now officially a verb as well as a noun: 'where've you been?' 'sorry, I got Gerried on the stairs, I thought I'd never get away!' There was a while when I didn't see Gerry for ages and when I next saw him he accused me of ignoring him. I had actually seen a man about whom I had thought 'oh, he looks like Gerry, but sort of crippled'. It turned out Gerry had had an operation. When I first arrived in the street I met Gerry on my way home from the Metro late one night. I gather I called out to him 'Don't worry, I'm not following you! I live in this street!' (he was glancing backwards with enormous amounts of paranoia, mind). Anyway, I drunkenly responded to his neighbourly chat by saying that yes, it was a nice place to live but that, no, I had not found it a particularly friendly spot. He said I should give it a chance and that there were a lot of friendly people on the street. I subsequently had two weeks of amnesia regarding this conversation. So, a week later when Gerry stopped clipping his roses and grinned at me I thought, 'what are you smiling at, you freak?' and sped off without a backward glance. Yes, I'll miss Gerry.