Doppelgangers and the things you overhear in the Post Office.

Now to many people Oxford is a beautiful city of dreaming spires but as we all know from watching Inspector Morse there is a dark under belly to this glorious city. Nowhere is this more obvious than the main Post Office on Giro day. (am I showing my age here by calling it Giro day? Anyway that is what it was called when I used to sign on so that is what I shall call it now!)

Usually wild horses couldn’t drag me to the main Post Office in Oxford. The place where you get to stand for your whole lunch hour or longer if you are lucky, in a huge queue with far too many loud and perspiring/expiring unique examples of humanity.
It has to be said though, Giro day does adds a whole new frisson to the experience, and let’s be brutally honest, a whole new eye watering range of aromas.

I have had a whole lifetime of experiences in that Post Office over the last year, oh yes.....

There’s been the good, in the shape of the homeless guy who fetched a chair for a frail old lady, then took a place in the queue for her, helped her to the counter when it came to be her turn and refused any kind of thank you tip from her.

There’s been the funny, from the drunk who had most of us weeping with laughter at his impromptu song and comedy act.

There’s been the scary  when they locked us in and called the police because a man in the queue decided another man looked just like someone he used to go to school with and hated back then, so promptly attacked him because of this fact. Thankfully that situation was quickly dealt with, especially as the staff had so thoughtfully locked the rest of us in the queue in with him and run for cover themselves!

Oh yes, it all goes on in the Post Office.

There has also been that wonderful time passer of listening to other peoples conversations, you do hear some cracking gossip when trapped in a queue!

 Yesterday’s however I’m not sure how to take.

To set the scene......

There were 6 people in a group in front of me in the queue. Two blokes, one large with an impressive scar on the back of his shaved head and one small. The wife/partner of the small guy, a girl of about 7 drinking the biggest can of energy drink I have ever seen in my life, a toddler in a buggy who was busy flinging anything put in his hands as far and as hard as he possibly could, and a very new baby in a pram. (Why they all felt the need to stand in the queue, rather than wait at the side whilst one queued is a mystery but there you go.)

So I was aware the wife had pulled a copy of the Oxford Mail out of her bag and that the large bloke had taken it off her. The headline yesterday was about the arrest of an 18 year old lad over the murder of a 29 year old man, killed with a single stab wound. They were all exclaiming over the article because they knew one of the people involved, to be honest I couldn’t figure out if they were friends of the murderer or friends of the victim because I hadn't fully focused on their conversation up to that point which was very lax of me! 

Large Bloke with impressive scar whilst shaking his head in disbelief
‘What I don’t get is that is says stabbed once, I mean once! Come on, I have been stabbed 17 times and slashed with a machete and I’m still here!’. 

Not much you can say to that really is there?

On the subject of not much you can say to that. I shall lighten the tone by sharing with you something that was said to me at the weekend.

 I was chatting with someone I used to work with and hadn’t seen in a while. When out of the blue they said

 ‘Do you have a sister ?’

Me ‘er yes, yes I do’

Ex-colleague ‘does she live in Bicester?’

Me ‘No she lives in Ramsgate why?’

Ex-colleague ‘Oh right, it’s just I saw this person on a bicycle in Bicester last week and she was the absolute image of you but skanky looking’  

Me ‘???’

So yes there are those who say we all have a doppelganger in this world I bet you can imagine how happy I am to know mine rides a bicycle and is skanky. 

A Veritable Social Whirl and a Few Jewels.

Yes indeed.
 I have hardly spent more than a few hours at home this week and Himself has been left home alone like poor old Cinders whilst I have been out on the town, (not that it seems to have bothered him unduly!)

Monday was Nephew Number One's end of term show and thank the lord it bore not even one ounce of resemblance to the shambles that was the last one.
It was interesting to see just how much some of the class have improved since last time, (though frankly they couldn't have got worse!) I am still very concerned that there is no vocal coach though. There were a couple of girls with astonishing voices but with no one to show them how to warm them up or how to control them I worry that they will damage them before they have a chance to grow into them.
I ate out with the nephew, my brother &  my sister in law before hand in a new Turkish restaurant in town, very good food indeed.
Also lucky for my brother and I, they had real ale on sale at the college for £2 a pint, don't mind if I do!

Tuesday, everything that could have gone wrong for me at work did. Dear lord it got to such a farcical level that if you were watching it as a sitcom you would have complained that it was too ridiculous to be believable!?!
I was more than happy to rule a line under the day and go home wimpering. A plate of fishfingers and chips and a bit of frantic tv show catching up sorted me out.
Good old I-Player.
I have been really enjoying 'White Heat' and I can't miss Holby! My one televisual weakness....

Wednesday I had lunch with an old work colleague at a very nice little pub halfway between our respective workplaces. We both had what was described as a 'homemade hamburger on a bed of bubble & squeak'. Sounds innocent enough we thought but little did we know........ because it wasn't advertised on the menu, the 'burger' was liberally dosed with chilli. Caroline asked me something just as I put a forkful in my mouth hit a chilli seed or two and that was me incapable for the next 5 minutes!
She waited very patiently whilst I cried and coughed.
I really hate it when menus don't say that things have spices or hot chillis in them. I'm not a huge fan of chillies and I certainly wouldn't have chosen the burger if I had known it was going to be that hot!

That night I let Himself take me to see 'The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists!' He really wasn't bothered about seeing it but as it was Orange Wednesday and therefore free he grudgingly came.
 I on the other hand LOVE Aardman animations so I was very excited.

It was brilliant!!! SO funny, we laughed and laughed, Himself thought it was great and probably laughed more than me, so that was alright then.
 It had a lot of slapstick humour for children but with more than usual amount of jokes for the adults, all in all great fun and now I badly want a Polly.

 
Friday night I was out down the pub with friends having broken Calista out of rehab!
There is a pub 5 minutes down the road from the mobility rehabilitation centre she is in, and as they are so pleased with her progress they were happy to let her out for a few hours as long as she was assisted. She is doing brilliantly, it was quite emotional to see her up on her feet and walking with a frame. The progress since I last saw her is just amazing. She says once she is released and off the meds she plans to have a 'Re-tox'!

Finally last night I was out for a surprise 30th birthday party, the biggest surprise was possibly the fact that the person involved was not actually 30, in fact she was not even 29 but only 28.......epic fail on the part of her fiance there I think lol.
 It was a fantastic night out. Good food, great wine and even better company, exactly what you want for a Saturday.

So let me end by sharing with you some more of the Ebay purchases that have come my way when I have ended up 'browsing whilst selling' or spending what you haven't even got yet!

  How's this for a wonderous 99p bargain? I shall get much wear from this, providing I don't let my sister get her mitts on it that is.
Brooches...........

Is that another elephant brooch I hear you cry? why yes, yes it is. For as my dear friend Soo pointed out it was Wallis Simpson herself who said
'You can never be too rich or too thin or have too many elephant brooches'.

Busy Week & The Best Jumper in the World.

So other than yesterday's shopping trip I must confess I have been buying clothes elsewhere too. Last weekend I spent the whole of Saturday afternoon gardening, quite frankly I was knackered but as there is still so much to do out there I had planned to garden on Sunday too. So I was secretly very grateful when it was cold and showery all day, so I had the excuse to come back indoors.
I decided to sort through one of my wardrobes instead which created the bag of stuff I took to the charity shop yesterday and also a pile to list on Ebay.
I do find the downside of this is that I keep going on to Ebay to check how my items are doing and then end up browsing and buying!

The two things that have arrived so far are :

This cute floral dress which sadly turned out to have a huge hole in it, thankfully I was able to fix it and it's a place where the mend isn't too obvious.

Loved this checked jumper! Another thing to wear with my beloved flanel trousers. :-)

Tuesday I was out for lunch with my friends who I used to travel into work with on the train. It was lovely to catch up and thankfully the restaurant wasn't busy because we ended up spending over 3 hours in there yapping!

Wednesday Himself whisked me off to the cinema to see 'John Carter'.

I know it is meant to have bombed at the box office but it was actually a lot better than I expected. It was over long, and I suspect in a different director's hands it could have been spectacular, but it was good despite this. I think this will end up being the kind of Disney film that is on tv every Easter/Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed family viewing at that. 

Thursday I was out for the £5 pizza deal at 'Fire and Stone' with my friends Soo and Melissa. I had a 'Melbourne' which had brie, butternut squash and pumpkin seeds on it, YUM! The restaurant was absolutely heaving and we got hoofed out just before 7pm as our table had another booking.
We headed up the road to 'The Grapes' which is known to all as the 'pre-theatre pub', basically because it is directly opposite the New Theatre!

It has just reopened after being taken over by Bath Ales. It's a listed building with lovely original wood panelling so I was interested to see what had been done inside. It all looked very nice but very sadly there was absolutely no atmosphere anymore at all. Also the ceiling was once covered in old play bills from the theatre going back many decades, these were a wonderful feature in my view and have now been removed leaving a plain white ceiling instead :-(
Hopefully the pub will bed in and get some sort of atmosphere back.

So to Friday.

I hotfooted it down to Debenhams in my lunch hour as they had started their sale and I also had a voucher to spend. Of course I spent my voucher and then some, this is me after all! It was all in the sale though so I don't feel too guilty.

First up a Henry Holland heart print playsuit that has already been cut and pinned to become a dress. I don't do playsuits, far too much hassle when you need to pee! 

carrying on the heart theme a cute blouse.

Another Henry Holland item. A lovely navy and cream jumper.

Finally I was browsing the other consessions when I found THE jumper on the sale rail in Warehouse. I did squee out loud when I saw it. Thankfully there was nobody near me when I did lol.

Behold my new best jumper in the whole world.

 

The Female is More Deadly Than the Male.......

Especially when it comes to hunting down a bargain!

Today dawned glorious and I hit the town with my Mum and my sister.

       See the steely determination in the eye?This is the face of a woman ready to shop!

After my sister had opened her belated birthday pressies and much squealing from all, we headed into town.
 Now my Mum doesn't go shopping much these days, lord only knows why!?!, but there it is, it's a mystery to me and my sis. Slightly frightening too, I mean will I lose my love for the bargain one day too??

 *shudders*

However she has trained us well, to the point where I think she was sligjhtly overwhelmed by seeing the two hardened bargain hunters she has sired in action.

To put it bluntly WE SHOPPED.

I had lugged a huge bag of stuff down to the charity shops to appease the charity shop gods so we all found a bargain or 6. I don't have pictures of her purchases but Gabs won the 'most bargains bought' crown hands down, talk about a woman on a mission!
We did do real shops too, (I bought bird food and toothpaste!) before heading home footsore and victorious to caramel cupcakes and pink fizz. :-)    

Here are my purchases.......

Nautical style jumper £4, VERY happy with this, nautical is my most comfortable look :-)

 Cute black dress for work.

 Pearl Lowe dress, new with tags £8 = result!

Polka dot dress, new with tags £6. Sorry looks a bit shapless but that is the waist ties undone and hanging down at the sides, another 'for work' purchase.

I just liked this and it was £2 so why not?

Big glass dish reduced to £1.25. It has 3 compartments so I plan to store hair clips in it. The green necklace was 49p and the earrings were my only full price purchases of the day. Coming in at £4.99, £2.99 and £2.

Mushroom dishes for Soo!

*the next bit is for Soo because she reads this blog*

Before you say anything these are a present. You can't see the price, so don't even ask! Do you want me to bring them out with me on Saturday??

Now I know I said my Mum doesn't shop much any more but she hasn't lost her touch. Before Gabs and I had even seen this my mother had it away to the till! We both would have bought it first had we had the chance!  

                                                   Still got it Mum, still got it.....

 

                                        The face of a tired but victorious shopper.

Spring has Sprung.

Firstly I must apologise to all of you in the U.K for the terrible cold miserable weather on Friday last week, that was my fault. After the glorious warm sunny weather we had had the rest of the week, I recklessly wore a lovely apple green summer dress to work and so jinxed the weather for one and all.
 I hope it makes you feel better to know I was freaking freezing!! All day!

My Parents came over on Saturday for a slightly early Mother's Day. We ate a very yummy lunch which I must confess I ran round Marks the day before buying, and then went to a local garden centre for a little plant based shopping.
Yes all my current spending has been on things for the garden which is allowable I think.

     Compost for repotting weevil infested tubs (goddamn weevils are the bane of my gardening life) and getting my tomato seeds planted up (still not done yet!).

Pansies and Polyanthus for the newly replanted tubs.

and new pots for my Azaleas.

Now some gratuitous garden shots........

The magnolia has even more blossom this year :-)

and Pumba seems to like sitting among the daffodils.

Finally you know how they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Look what I spotted in my next door but one neighbour's garden.*cue slightly fuzzy paparazzi style shot*

recognise those crows from anywhere??

oh yes, that's right, they are the exact same one's I have in my garden.

Gardening, Ladybirds and Elephants.

This weekend has been really rather gorgeous weatherwise so I knew I would probably end up in the garden for some, if not all of it. My parents gave us a flying visit on Friday night and finally brought over the patio cleaner that we had asked to borrow this time last year !?!
Bless, my Dad is very forgetful and as I am too, he kept forgetting to bring it over when they visited and I kept forgetting to ask! We got there in the end *cough*

Anyway we had a very lazy Saturday morning and then got down to the hard work of clearing everything off the patio which is huge and washing it down.

Before......

During...... (I bet you can guess from the above which of us was using the jetwasher at the time and which of us was tidying the planters?)

 After....It's still wet in this shot so will dry a little lighter still.
All in all we were very happy with the results. Now I just have to coincide with one of my Mum's visits to a garden centre so I can get some compost and new pots before I finally arrange things how I want them out there. :-)

Today I started to tidy the flowerbeds and rake some of the seemingly endless moss from the lawn, and quite frankly, I'm bleeding knackered and stiff as a board now. When did gardening become such hard work??
I suspect the answer to that is that I didn't spend anywhere near the time I should have out there last year so it has all runaway with me somewhat, bah. Here are some spring flowers bursting through two of the beds that are in dire need of attention.

Oh the shame!

Moving swiftly on.

Whilst I was out there I couldn't help but notice there seemed to be the most ridiculous amount of ladybirds everywhere. Is it just our garden they have taken refuge in or have any of you seen loads too? It seemed rather fitting as I bought myself this rather lovely Henry Holland top last week, in the sale of course!

  I know my Mother is going to explode when she sees it. Ladybirds are one of her things, she adores anything to do with them. I did check but they didn't do the top in her size, not sure she will believe me though.....

Finally ELEPHANTS!!

I bought these brooches on Ebay a while ago and keep forgetting to take a picture of them.

 Not sure about the viking ship but these came as a job lot for £3. I will clean them all up and probably keep the thistle, but the boat can go into the next charity bag.

Is it possible to have too many elephant brooches do you think?

Feeling Mellow Yellow in Bargain Booty.

An outift post from moi? now there's something you don't see every day!
Today was another interview day at work so when it comes to clothes, smart comfortable was the order of the day, the perfect opportunity to wear my bargainous from the sales Henry Holland blouse, I love Henry Holland but rarely feel I can justify the price, so sales are the way to go.

worn with my most favourite grey flannel trousers, I wear these to death  and am now starting to worry that I will actually wear them out......They were also a sales buy last year.

I decided to give my yellow brogues their first outing, thanks to Land Girl 1980 for the 'quick! brogues in the sales' tip :-)

The only thing I bought full price (yes even the undies were in the sales at M&S, and no you aren't going to see them.) were my earrings.

Whoo could I resist??