Disclaimer: I promise this will not turn into a job blog. But as I’m angling for a new one at the moment, I’m just letting off a bit of steam.

When attempting to get hired in retail, the two weasel-words that are guaranteed to get a potential employer’s attention are, nauseatingly, “Customer service” This is a nice way of saying:

If a customer comes in and behaves like a complete horse’s arse, under no circumstances will you tell them to take a long walk of a short pier. Instead you will smile and apologise repeatedly for whatever incompetancy you are guilty of and offer to anoint their dirty feet with precious oils.

I feel that I acquitted myself well in my interview yesterday. The people who were doing the interviewing were friendly, shy and bookish and recognised the inherent ridiculousness of asking me questions like:

“Why do you want to work here?”

Right answer: I’m an avid reader. I love working with other people and enjoy uniting a customer with the right book.

Wrong answer: Because I work in a tiny box all by myself and am going a bit peculiar for want of intelligent conversation. But that girl at the till when I came in…I won’t be working with her, right? Cause, like, she give me some serious evils when I brought in my application. I feel, like, you know, I’m a good judge of character and she seems like a real bitch right off the bat.

“Can you give an example of when you’ve given good customer service?”

Right answer: Last week, a woman came in looking for jewelry for herself and her bridal party. Due to my in-depth stock knowledge, I was able to find all of the right pieces for both her and her bridesmaids. She was very pleased and I was glad to have been able to find her everything she needed.

Wrong answer: I find stuff for people. But man, we have this one lady who comes in and she’s all like, “Fix my shit” and I’m all like, “It’ll be two weeks” and she gets in my face like, “I need it tomorrow!” and I go, “I’ll just go get my magic wand” and she gets all “Uh, uh, I wanna talk to your manager.” Jeez, some people.

“What duties and responsibilities did you have at your last bookstore?”

Right answer: I was responsible for the children’s section. I engaged in customer service. I met with trade reps to purchase new titles. I engaged in customer service. I assisted customers both in the shop and on the phone with inquiries. And did I mention the customer service?

Wrong answer: I picked up mostly trodden on and unsellable books that the little bastards dropped on the floor and then did a Mexican hat dance on. I got yelled at for stuff that my manager forgot cause he was too busy smoking weed out back with the stock boy. And I had to find titles for total brain donors who came in and were like, “I saw this great book in the paper the other day. It had a blue cover. Do you have it?” Wankers.

So, until next Tuesday, I’ll have to wonder if my right answers were right enough.

Auto-suggest in the location bar of an Internet browser can be a blessing or a curse. Fabulous if you can’t remember the name of a cool site you found yesterday, not so fabulous if someone’s looking over your shoulder and the last site beginning with “H” that you looked at was http://www.herpeshomecure.com. Here’s a fun, although somewhat time consuming meme I got from Defective Yeti. Click on the link below to do your own! To find your URL ABCs, simply type “a” into the location bar and copy the first URL it suggests. Repeat 25 more times with different letters.

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for abstinenceonly.com - Sometimes funny things completely broadside you when you’re not expecting it. I just about broke my chair on this one.
• B is for baphomatty.com -An artist who’s work is both dark and lovely.
• C is for cantrell.org.uk/david/ - Erm, hi David. I don’t know you or how I got to your blog, but hi anyhow.
• D is for danielmartindiaz.com - Some quite extrodinary, dark art infused with bucketfuls of religious symbolism.
• E is for ebay.com - I worship at the alter of e-commerce.
• F is for fatface.com - I’m not actually a surfer, but they tend to wear more comfortable clothes than the rest of us.
• G is for garthnix.com - Author of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, one of the best bits of fantasy to surface in recent years.
• H is for http://tinyurl.com/7erha I would like to thank LawGirl for my extremely fun e-card. I have no doubt that the things we’d get up to on a girl’s night would not be suitable for a Hallmark greeting card.
• I is for imdb.com - Very few actually have SUBSCRIPTIONS to magazines like “People” or “Hello!” But EVERYBODY READS THEM AT THE DENTISTS WITH GREAT RELISH. No one likes to admit to enjoying a bit of upstairs scandal, but we all do. IMDB is not only a great argument settler (”No, it WAS that guy from “The Fifth Element”! I TOLD you.”) but it also provides a daily dose of skank for those of us with inquiring and embarassed minds.
• J is for jasminewatson.com - An extremely talented jeweler who did all of the accessory work on “Lord of the Rings”, “Xena” and “Hercules”. The Rock Star and I went to see the LOTR exhibition when it came to the London Science Museum and her pieces were just as beautiful close up as on the big screen. Mmmm, shiny.
• K is for kermitage.com - A muppet fan site. It owns.
• L is for lifeway.com/tlw/ - In my quick travels of “abstinence” sites, this one came up as one of the scariest.
• M is for makepovertyhistory.org - Donations please. Cause you’re all a bunch of good guys.
• N is for namecheap.com - A great US domain registration site. Why pay over $20 for something that doesn’t, you know, actually exist?
• O is for oddpla.net - I was kind of hoping this was going to come up. In this freelance writer’s spare time, she has created a rather engaging soap opera using her very unusual doll collection. Definitely work checking out.
• P is for parrishrelics.com - Another lady jeweler doing stunning work. Boston based.
• Q is for quotes-r-us.org/ - A site some friends of mine from college maintain, containing a data base of stuff we say that gets repeated to us years later and makes us want to kill people for not forgetting it.
• R is for rfbooth.com - Blog and home of the famous mat despoiler himself, Dr. Booth.
• S is for sephora.com - Erm…this looks like a shop full of smelly, expensive things. I have not delved further.
• T is for theonion.com - The only news that’s fit to print.
• U is for http://tinyurl.com/dqz7b - If sir is in the market for a new mobile, may I offer a humble suggestion? Unless sir is in love the idea of being plagued by constant beeping due to two unbelievablely useless buttons positioned on the side of a phone, may I steer sir away from a Motorolla? I would not blame sir for throwing his handset into traffic on the event of such a purchase.
• V is for viewlondon.co.uk - Okay, you caught me. I was looking for the address of a sex shop. But it was for that post that I wrote about sex toys! Honest!
• W is for whatwouldjesusdo.com - Just curious. Funny enough, this site doesn’t actually have the answer to the question.
• X is for xe.com/ucc - Existing between two currencies is not easy, but this site makes it way easier. This is where I find out how much cheaper I can buy stuff just about anywhere else than where I live.
• Y is for youstay.com/YSLiveHTML/index.asp - A sincerely useless hotel/B+B search facility.
• Z is for zoofur.com/thor.html - It’s our old buddy, Thor. Fear the phallus.

In light of what I hope is a job windfall, I thought I take a page out of Forbes.com and find out what the top ten career killers were. This is mildly ludicrous for me as I’ve never had anything that anyone could term “a career” and don’t ever plan to start, thank you very much. I want to listen to rock and roll, make shiny things and have babies for the rest of my life, so a career can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. But, in the interests of fun, I thought perhaps I could shoehorn my current working situation into the dictates set down by Moneybags Magazine.

“Know What’s Expected”

Have a pulse. Have full use of extremities. Count to 10. Know the difference between purple and yellow. Know not to ever use the phrase “Boy Howdy!” for any reason.

“Money Isn’t Everything”- “Don’t create the impression that you’re working just for a paycheck.”

Ah, but it is, and I am. Why else would I have subjected myself to 2 years in a small, cinderblock box full of shiny with a boss who’s paranoid enough to pay £50 a month in terrorism insurance?

“Leave Gossip to the Supermarket Tabloids”

Me- OMG, you’ll never guess what.

Me- What? I’m dying to know!

Me- My boss is a psychotic passive aggressive and my co-worker could give Coronation Street a run for it’s money in the personal drama stakes! Plus, she’s stalking me!

Me- No way!

Me- Way.

Customer- Am I interrupting something?

Me- I cannot even tell you how much you aren’t.

“Flubbing Deadlines”

Most of you know that I live on a boat. But there are three kinds of people who live on boats. There are simply those who are forced to live on a boat due to stupidly high area house prices, retired folk who spend all of their time boodling up and down the canals and talking about their grandchildren and then there are “lifestylers”. If you’ve ever walked along the canal, you’ve seen them. Dreadlocks, piercings, batiqued clothing, battered hats with feathers in them, all in boats that look like they were used in the Hundred Years War for kennelling Irish Wolfhounds. There’s also usually some fairly pungent smelling smoke drifting out of the windows.

“Galetea, WTF does this have to do with flubbing deadlines?”

Patience, gentle reader. It’s just my “style”.

“Whatever.”

Being a shop that sells delicate, shiny things, we also have to be ready to REPAIR delicate shiny things when people apparently give them to their pets to play with.

“I don’t know HOW it broke. I was just wearing it and it fell off!”

“Um, there are some teeth marks in it.”

The guy who does our repairs for us is a “lifestyler”. We can tell people their shiny will be ready in two weeks till we’re blue in the face, but it’s my belief that he often gets so high he can’t find his way out of the boat.

“Cubicle Etiquette Counts”

The whole SHOP is a cubicle. I’ve never really tested the limits of Ms. Personality’s patience with Dilbert calendars or anything.

“Isolation Leaves You Vulnerable”

Isolation keeps me sane.

The Infiltrator- I’m so lonely since I cheated on my husband. I want a night out. Is your husband gigging tonight? Where? Wouldn’t it be fun if I came along?

Me- I’m not going to the gig. I never go to gigs. I like to sit at home in the dark.

“Don’t Climb Ego Mountain”

Without my Id ropes and Superego carabiners, I wouldn’t dream of it.

“Don’t Take Credit For Other’s Work”

Customer- This has been repaired terribly! It’s even more bent than it was before!

Me- I think my boss did it.

“Office Romance Invites Catastrophe”

A deafening silence.

Blogapotamus Rex is within spitting distance of release from Purgatory. Apart from an interview, which I hope is a formality, and what I imagine is going to be an uncomfortable conversation with Ms. Personality, I think I just might have a new job. So if anyone has any good karma to spare on Thursday, sending it my way in a brown paper envelope would be much appreciated!

While perusing the charmingly named blog, “Fuck Everything” I came across a link to a site that everyone who’s tired of this pedantic “silver ring thing” should have a look at. Seriously. Have a look. But wait until your boss is on the other side of the room, because the photo demonstrations, especially the one with the hot dog, are probably enough to get you fired. Those of you who work from the comfort of your own living room, open away and have a good guffaw.

I’ve got nothing against pledges of assistance, especially when it comes to young teenagers, but I DEFINITELY object to using Jesus as a poster boy and setting up a small merchandising empire around the concept.

At least two things you might not know about the Abstinence movement:

–On the “Silver Ring Thing” site, I was particularly interested in the bit in the Q&A section covering “Second Virginity.”

“We address this question in the Second Virginity message which speaks directly to the issues and problems that sexually active students have encountered. We recognize the fact that many students who attend the SRT are, or have been, sexually active and they need to know if it is possible to begin again. The answer is YES YOU CAN START OVER and, in fact, for this reason many students attend our program. ”

It’s some wicked powerful mojo that can enact a spontaneous revirginization. “Sure kid, give me 15 bucks for this silver piece of crap and you can have your cherry back.”

True Love Waits. And waits. And waits.

–”Until you are married, sexual purity means saying no to sexual intercourse, oral sex, and even sexual touching. It means saying no to a physical relationship that causes you to be “turned on” sexually. It means not looking at pornography or pictures that feed sexual thoughts. “

And in our webstore, we have a wide variety of flagellum and spiked chastity belts. And you know this means deleting that web bookmark to the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, don’t you, you cheeky little wanker?

Spring doth bloom with grace and ease,
And everything doth make me sneeze.
And suff’ring from the season’s kiss,
It’s a fucking shame my backyard doth look like this.

I would like to meet the evolutionary bright spark that invented allergies. I’d like to meet that abhorrent gene in a dark corner of the electron microscope slide and torture it with a pair of very sharp tweezers.

Okay, so spring comes, right? A time of blossoming, renewal and awakening after the long, dark months of cold. And some little bastard hiding out in the human genetic structure decides to become super sensitive to EVERYTHING THAT’S NATURALLY FLOATING THROUGH THE AIR. How does THAT constitute survival of the fittest? How is one supposed to shag with abandon with streaming eyes and a runny nose? It certainly decreases your chances of finding a partner without the aid of a brown paper bag.

The interesting thing to me is the way that we’ve come up with of TREATING these ailments. I’m not sure if this is hugely popular anymore, but when I was younger, I got allergy shots, because cleverly, I am allergic to DUST. (Stay away from THAT if you can. Human beings are walking dust factories, so it presents some interesting philosophical questions that I am, in fact, allergic to myself.) The serum in the bottles started out nearly clear, but after nearly a year of weekly shots, the liquid was almost black. To treat an allergy, you must expose yourself to it. Who was the first person to test THAT theory?

Pioneering Scientist: So, you’re allergic to cats, right?

Brave Volunteer: Horribly. I sneeze, break out in hives and my face swells up.

Pioneering Scientist: Okay, this might sound a bit wacky, but here, meet Fluffy.

Brave Volunteer: ACK! Achoo! (sound of face inflating)

Pioneering Scientist: Maybe I need to think this through.

Nowadays we have fancy pants drugs called antihistamines that block the nasty chemicals that cause the narrowing of air passageways.

Pioneering scientist: Okay, this might sound a bit wacky, but swallow this.

Brave Volunteer: Bite me.

Just a quick Bump update. These kind of things are almost too embarassing to relate. Almost. I only do it because sometimes it hard for me to tell the difference between people laughing with me or at me.

I have a fat lip. I’m sure that people probably think The Rock Star beats me. Like when I fell against the edge of the bathroom cabinet and ended up with a bruise as big as New Hampshire on my ass: I went to the gym and noticed some concerned glances being thrown my way. “That poor thing,” I knew they were thinking, “I can’t imagine WHY women stay with men like that.” I wish I could have stood up on one of the changing benches and set the record straight (after putting my pants on) so that everyone would know that I’m just a complete spanner that hasn’t learned to walk properly yet. They probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. “Yes, dear,” they’d say, “Of COURSE you fell down the stairs.” NO! I REALLY DID FALL DOWN THE STAIRS! I’M A TOTAL GIMP!

At any rate, while walking through the supermarket, with my arms full of groceries, (why a basket didn’t occur to me, I don’t know) I picked up a gallon jug of squash. Trying to rebalance, I lightly tossed the bottle in the air to get a better grip on the handle and ended up hitting myself in the mouth really rather hard. I was so embarassed, I didn’t even say “Ow.” when my lip exploded. I met The Rock Star by the till. “What happened to you?” was his incredulous greeting.

Soft drinks can be dangerous. Handle with care.

I have to admit to a small tinge of jealousy today. The Girl has gotten into drama school.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really hugely happy for, and very proud of The Girl. It takes a huge amount of determination to get through the audition process without becoming a nervous, incontinent wreck, and she obviously had the bollocks to get through it. But it definitely drove home the point for me that it’s probably something I’ll never do.

I’m a card carrying member of the Useless Degree Society. (“Member since 1998. Rejoicing in Knowledge You Will Never Use.”) I graduated with a BA in Theatre and a minor in Communications. (Feel free to laugh in anyone’s face if they ever have the gall to sound snotty about having a communications degree. Chances are they don’t any more idea of what their degree means than you do.) I was ready to do the starving artist bit, I really was. And for a good few summers during my university career, I even got to put “actor” in the Occupation bracket of my tax forms. But then, after moving to the UK, I had an absolutely shattering realization.

I don’t really have a performance personality. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. They’re like supremely practiced swordsman, darting and dallying with words; anything you throw out, they can parry. They’ll get up in front of anyone and do absolutely anything. It should have occurred to me earlier, really, when I proved to be not really all that great at improv. Here’s what a good improv scene should sound like:

Actor 1: I’m just a pebble, lying on the beach.

Actor 2: Pleased to meet you, pebble, I’m a rhinoceros.

Okay, it’s not a GREAT improv scene, but you get the picture. Here’s what one with me sounded like:

Actor 1: I’m just a pebble, lying on the beach.

Me: Um….okay. That’s kind of weird.

At any rate, it just didn’t work out. I think, despite being an ESFP, I’m actually quite introverted and inhibited despite throwing my bra on stage at the Rock Star once in a particularly rough pub. I suppose I’ll just have to settle for “being artistic.”

To drown my sorrows, I’ll do my old favorite, My Top Five Theatre Moments of all Time. (inspired just a little bit by Izzle Pfaff)

5. All the Queen’s Men- Let me first say, I came out of this moment a lot less embarrassed than some other people. My senior year, I played Andromache in a rather wordy anti-war play called “Tiger At the Gates”. The moment can be attributed to a small carpentry mishap when a bench that I had been sitting down on just FINE, thank you very much, for the last 6 performances, suddenly gave way, and I ended up on my ass. One of the background guys, a friend of mine who I’ll call The Mexican, rushed, in character, to my aid. “My Queen! Let me help you up!” Unfortunately for The Mexican, his costume (basically a skirt) was a little too short for him and the entire audience was, from that moment on, in no doubt that he did indeed wear tighty-whiteys. (“Dude,” said one of the other background guys later, “Did you not think about wearing bike shorts or something underneath?” The Mexican had not considered this option.)

4. Cat Wrangling- I did some time backstage as well, helping out a friend with his senior performance piece called “The Strangest Kind of Romance.” This piece required the use of a cat. I don’t remember the discussions leading up to the decision to use a real, live cat, but I can’t imagine I was part of them, because if I had been, I think I know what my counsel would have been, especially as I was the one who actually had to be in CONTROL of the cat when it was not making it’s stage debut. However, determined to use a real, live cat my friend WAS. Anyone who has ever met a real, live cat can probably imagine it’s reaction to being in a play, so I won’t go into that. Suffice to say there that the band-aid box was empty at the end of just about every rehearsal. The people who LOANED us this cat gave us some animal tranquilizer for the performance. “She only needs half a pill,” they said. So the day of the performance rolls around. Cat is given her half pill. We wait. Cat doesn’t really seem a whole lot calmer. Friend decides to give cat WHOLE pill and another half. The Rest of Us are not really sure about this course of action, but it’s time for Curtain Up.

Ragdoll cats are a great breed. They’re completely pliant and go limp when you pick them up. The cat in question was NOT a Ragdoll, but as I was standing backstage with it, it was certainly exhibiting similar characteristics. I picked it up by it’s armpits and it looked like a big, fuzzy, unconscious sack of flour. One of the lines in the play ended up being an involuntary audience laugh riot. “Look at how she stares at me!” complains the cat-owner’s girlfriend, “Like one jealous woman to another!” The cat, at the time was nearly upside down with it’s eyes crossed and tongue hanging out. I honestly thought we’d killed it, but it seemed okay, albeit with a hell of a hangover, post show. Before I get lots of hate mail, let me just say, IT WASN’T MY IDEA TO DRUG THE CAT INTO OBILVION. I LOVE CATS. Thank you.

3. Cross-gartering- Anyone who’s ever read “Twelfth Night” will recognise the famous scene in which the steward, Malvolio, thinking he’s caught the attentions of the Countess Olivia, comes before her wearing a fashion she hates (cross gartering) and a color she detests. (yellow) In a touring summer theatre production, I played Olivia opposite an exceptional comic actor who loved to try to break me on stage. His “reveal” was care of a pair of Velcro stripper pants which not only revealed cross gartered, yellow legs, but a pair of yellow, smiley face boxer shorts. I had tears in my eyes on opening night from biting my tongue. His totally uncalled for pelvic thrusting in my direction didn’t help.

2. Full Moon- The same actor and I starred in our first major college production together in “High Tor”, a rather bad play by Maxwell Anderson. At the end of the play, our characters kissed and stared off stage left at the “beautiful sunset” which was, in fact, the entire cast, with their pants down around their ankles.

1. My proudest ever stage moment- Moliere’s “The Imaginary Cuckhold”. All in rhyming verse. I was playing Martine, wife of the main character, Sganarelle. Our “house” was a large, beautifully painted flat, suspended from cables attached to one of the batons in the rigging. Halfway through our final performance, both cables mysteriously let go, bringing the whole thing down. There was deadly silence.

I don’t know where it came from, but I blurted out,

“Oh my goodness Sganarelle,
Look at that; our house just fell.”

I nearly got a standing ovation in the middle of the show.

Perhaps I could have made it after all.

Part two, in honor of Marathon Day in London.

Time alarm clocks went off: 5 am. Painful for all involved, but at least everyone except the Rock Star could look forward to a day of NOT running 26 miles.

Time of departure: 6.20 am

Number of completely jammy parking spaces acquired: 1. Someone who had been to London on marathon Sunday last year whispered in our collective ears of a legendary space that we somehow managed to find and steal. I’d tell you where it is, but I’d have to kill you afterwards. Let’s just put it this way: The Queen shouldn’t leave her bathroom curtains open.

Number of railway stations that couldn’t have been more inconveniently closed: 1. The Rock Star, while trying to reach the start of the marathon in Greenwich, discovered that one of the major stations in his route calculations, Charing Cross, was closed. This involved a rather complex rerouting and he ended up at the start feeling probably more knackered than one should when one has 26 miles ahead of them.

Resolve to live in St. James Park full time during the summer months without detection by groundskeepers: High. 7.20 on a Sunday morning is not exactly prime time in the park. We were, in fact the only people there apart from a couple of guys with plastic bags on their feet who look like they DO live there full time. The sun was out, all of the trees were in full bloom, the ducks, geese, swans and pelicans were all drifting around in the glittering lakes, exchanging pleasantries…stunning.

Distance from jammy parking space to London Bridge: 3.65 miles. It was a gorgeous morning and we enjoyed seeing the city as we’d never seen it before; completely empty. But I was beginning to have the first inklings that I’d chosen the wrong shoes.

Encounters with the Mob: 1. While sitting in a small café in Tower Hill, the manager of the restaurant who was holding court with I guy that I can only guess was Tom Hagen, made many fatuous references to having someone killed. The staff was obviously terrified of this guy and made many deferential bowings and scrapings in his general direction. I told Boy Racer that we might want to think about asking for the check before someone came in to whack Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey.

Celebrities glimpsed: 2. Well, 2 that actually do anything useful for a living. Paula Radcliffe came zooming by much faster than we were expecting and Matthew Pinchot ended up starting one of the races for children that began as we were making our way to our vantage point.

Useless celebrities glimpsed: 1. Jimmy Savile on the back of a truck. Maybe they were finally hauling him away.

Celebrities that had a wazz on national TV: 1. “Well, I hope the nation forgives me,” Paula Radcliffe commented, “but I really had to go.”

People shouted at: Lots. For those who have never attended a marathon, lots of runners have their names written on their apparel so they can be easily encouraged by the crowd. Those who HAVEN’T written their names often compensate by wearing silly costumes. It was rather surreal. “Go, Adam! Go, Jane! Er…Go, Batman! Go Entirely Blue Guy!”

First glimpse of the Rock Star: about 11.30 am, just over Tower Bridge. His bumlasershttp://www.bumlasers.com”>Bumlasers> t-shirt was visible as he came yomping toward us. (For those of you that sponsored him with that particular stipulation, we’ll have photographic evidence on line shortly, so now you gotta pay up! HA!) (For everyone else, it’s just a convenient mild curse that the Rock Star came up with that kind of caught on.)Distance from London Bridge to jammy parking space: 3,460 miles.

The Rock Star and I are bumpkins. We both grew up in the country. We like trees and grass and not having people urinate in the grate below our bedroom window. But occasionally, we like a little foray into the urban wilderness of London. Here are a few statistics that I compiled on our little journey today:

Time on train on the way down: 1 hour. We live 30 minutes away, but apparently there was a “signal problem” somewhere that caused us to move at a speed that could have easily been matched by The Rock Star’s Nan on her Zimmer frame.

Number of harassed mothers in our carriage: Two that I could see easily, one whose distress was played out only inches from our face. I hope, that when I have children, I can put off taking them into the city until they’re old enough to buy ME dinner.

Number of drunken twats in our carriage: 2. You know you’re in for a long ride when, at 2 in the afternoon, two guys clad in Burberry get on, each clutching a can of Stella in both hands.

Amount paid to relieve my bladder at Euston Station: 20p. I’m not sure where this cash is going, but at least one stall looked as if it had been the scene of a rather gruesome homicide.

Record number of pamphlets offered to me personally along Oxford Street from one end to the other: 26. Today, luckily, only 5 pamphlet pushers threw themselves in my path.

Number of Japanese tourists in Top Shop: 284,953.

Distance you have to throw a stone before hitting a Starbucks: approximately 10 ft.

Number of hairy rockers encountered: 1. (2 if you count The Rock Star, but he’s kind of a given, really. We’re talking surplus hairy rockers, here.)

Pints of cider consumed: 1 ½.

Number of accidents caused in the pub: 1. My circulation is notoriously bad. Even on warm days, I sometimes have pretty cold hands, let alone when I’ve been sitting outside for over 40 minutes. To manoeuvre my way through a very crowded pub on a Friday evening, I touched a girl on the back (which was bare, by the way) to let her know I was behind her and obviously, she was somewhat surprised by the chilliness of my digits, because she literally yelped and threw what looked to be Campari and soda all over the guy she was talking to. Oopsie. Exit stage left.

Number of fast food meals consumed: 2. Blarg.

Amount paid to relieve my bladder at Euston Station: Another 20p. Previous visit’s murder scene had been discreetly removed.

Time on train on the way back: 40 minutes.

Number of tired bumpkins: 2.