There's no A in team. Well, there is, but it's not the second letter.

Words are evading me this week.

All I want is to write one little article. A few hundred words of well thought out, interesting gumph that I can send off to a magazine which would settle my conscience and make me feel like I was actually doing something worth while with my free time. Unfortunately, my brain has other ideas.

I mean for gods sake, I can't even spell.

Last night I was round the Hoff's house with a few of our friends, one of whom is playing in a badminton tournament on Saturday. Three of us are going to watch and by way of support, had the bright idea of making ourselves highly embarrassing tshirts with TEAM [his surname] and then possibly something inappropriate yet witty underneath like 'LOVES THE (shuttle)COCK'.

Anyway so there we were, gold fabric paint at the ready, and I start work on the first word. TEAM. Spelt, last time I checked, T-E-A-M.

Reggie looked over. "Jo, what are you writing on yours? I thought you were writing TEAM?"
I was confused, what's this guy on? "I am writing TEAM, look!" I replied with furrowed brow.

All five of us looked. I was not writing TEAM.

"Not only is that definitely not TEAM, that is the widest bloody 'A' I've ever seen in my life. I thought you had an English degree?" laughed everyone including the neighbours and their dogs.
"Yep. And a masters."
"And a masters! Good work, English student"

After much discussion of what to do with the wayward 'TEAM', it was made into TAME. Which then became GAME. As in "Game, Roddick!". Then I drew a shuttlecock that was flying the wrong way.

At this point, I decided to share with the group about that time in second year at uni when I confidently assured my housemates during an episode of countdown that "Oh what! This should be easy, she's got practically all 24 letters of the alphabet up there"

The reply came quickly. "Jo, there's 26 letters in the alphabet"

Maybe I should re-evaluate my career prospects, as clearly things haven't changed.

Me too, Honey. Me too.

I'm back with a bumpity bump

HULLOOO, anyone there? I'm BAACCK!

Obligatory holiday sunset photo... CHECK!

Slightly darker shade of white skin....CHECK!

Bag of smelly clothes to wash....CHECK!

More time spent horizontal than vertical... CHECK!

Devourment of every glossy magazine and celebrity weekly going, as well as two novels....CHECK!

The entire 9 days of relaxation rendered useless by one day of hellish journey home....Oh yeah, you guessed it...CHECK!

After a luuurvely 8 days sailing, sunning, drinking retsina and eating pitta bread, me, the boyfriend and his mum left the boat and the rest of his family in a port off the island of Ithaca at 6am yesterday morning.

Here is the journey in summary:

Ferry to Patra. Coach to Athens bus station. Bus to Omonia Square in the centre of Athens. Metro to a prettier area. Food. Attempt to put bags in locker. Fail. Hunt for trousers boyfriend wanted. Hunt for invisible market. Metro to airport. Plane to London. Shuttle bus to baggage reclaim. Shuttle to South Terminal. Gatwick Express to Victoria. Bus from Victoria to Wandsworth Bridge. Walk to boyfriend's house. Arrive & sleep 2am.

Here is the reality:

Such a long day spent in 40 degree heat with heavy bags, no food and dwindling patience was never going to be the ideal end to a holiday, but that's how it went. The fact is, if I'm tired, hungry and hot, I'm going to get grumpy. And feeling horrendously grumpy when accompanied by your boyfriend's mum is not the most ideal situation in the world either. I became racked by tiredness. Easyjet's seats offered no comfort on a three and a half hour night flight, and the only other option was to watch Kung Fu Panda on the fold down screen. I was reminded of how much Jack Black annoys me, chose to sleep, failed, and became horrendously grumpy again. We had to wait for my bag, and only my bag, as the other two had packed lightly and taken hand luggage whereas I'd chosen tweezers, scissors, full size moisturiser and a five pound surcharge instead. Cue more flared tempers and irritation on all sides as we tried to find a train or bus home. I buy a £17.90 Gatwick Express ticket thinking that's the plan. Apparently it's not, but now I've got one, the boyfriend and mum must follow suit too. Eek. I am sent temporarily to the doghouse.

Finally the three of us arrived home and fell into bed (not together, that would be very weird) and in the morning, when the boyfriend has gone to work after just 5 hours sleep, I check my emails. One is four days old and from an agency about a professional blogging job which they are recruiting for. Another is five days old and from my sister's company with a temporary vacancy they need to fill. I call both to enquire about the offers. Both are already taken.


I think I'd like to go back to Greece, please.

Offski

I'm off to Greece now for a spot of sailing:

Back on the 25th....

....Wah wah wahhhhhh

...Woop!

Imaginary brakes

Today was spent trawling around not one, but two...NAY...three shopping centres, in two different towns, looking for...Ha...wait for it... travel scrabble. Not Original Scrabble, not Scamble Scrabble; mini, fit in your luggage (not the hand luggage, the £5 a bag hold luggage) travel scrabble.

And do you know where I found it? The most unlikely of places, you simply never will guess!

That's where I found travel scrabble. NOWHERE.

The boyfriend, stressed at work with a million and one things on his mind other than travel scrabble, was at his most unhelpful.

"I'm having a bit of a travel scrabble problem" said I, wondering through John Lewis.
"Have you tried Argos?"
"Yep. And WH Smith, and every other shop I can think of. It's nowhere."
"Well I can't exactly help you do anything from here, can I", he replied, helpfully.
"I'm not asking for you to help me look, I'm letting you know the situation and wondering if you have any other ideas"
"Try the airport"
"That's something I can do tomorrow, yes, when we are at the airport...but oh sod it, I'll ask someone here. Bye."

Now, on this trip to hell the shopping centres, mum had decided to come with me (as, in her own words, she 'can't turn down a trip to John Lewis'. This, 20-somethings, is what we have to look forward to). I was driving, which meant my mum was the front seat passenger. I'm not sure whether it escapes her notice that there are no brakes on her side of the car, but from the way she was stomping down on the floor everytime the car in front slowed to a halt, you 'd think not.

"Mum, those brakes don't work" I said, after a gasp and a stomp from the passenger side.
"Hmmm? Oh, sorry."
"Mum - I have eyes. I can see that the car in front is breaking. You stomping on the imaginary brakes doesn't do anything. It just makes me more nervy."
"I know. Sorry"

I can't tell you how many times we have had that exact same conversation.

Actually, I can.

LOADS.

I'm going to Greece on Friday.

Two days will be spent in Athens, sweating like a fat British tourist in a hot country, then me and boyfriend will be meeting his parents on their boat for a week of sailing around the islands. I say sailing. I will mostly be lying on deck, book in one hand, sun cream in the other, attractive red blotchy heat patches and sunburn creeping over my body.

I'm preparing myself: spending more than my requisite 30seconds in the sauna in an attempt to get my body used to the heat, and booking hotels. I found one, by the way. Eventually mum said she'd help out (i.e. pay for a night) which has meant we're able to stay somewhere that doesn't offer an entrance carpet made of discarded needles or by the hour room service, if you catch my drift.

Even booking a nice hotel wasn't easy. I booked on priceline.co.uk believing it to be the cheapest room rate, then found out that it was actually more expensive than booking through the hotel itself. One firmly worded email and a phone call later, and that particular booking was cancelled so I could rebook minutes later for 20 euros less. Watch out for those pesky sites, they'll get ya. 'Best Price Promise' indeed. Pah. PAH!

Also, does anyone else hate it when you get a litttttle bit burnt, or even just a bit red on the old shoulders, and some smart arse (usually with a ravishing golden tan) goes 'Oooooooooooooooooooooooh...you've caught the sun, ouch! That looks painful!'

Have I? Does it really? You mean pasty white me has dared to get some colour and it's not the socially accepted orangey brown that the world aspires to? And they always have that really concerned look on their face; a mixture between pity and sympathy like you've just failed a test or something.

Look, tanned people. Us whitey's are perfectly aware that if we go in the sun, we'll go red. We accept that. We know. It's often not that painful. It's just a bit hot. Telling me that my face has gone the colour of a tomato will not make the situation any better. You go your colour, we'll go ours. Don't look at us like we've contracted a disease that will wipe out the tanned population unless we put some factor 30 on.

Brown is so 1990.

Ooh T Mobile, you little rascal!

"You in the shit"
"Err, why?"
"Phone bill. You been on the internet"
"Nooo...no..."
"Yes. Yes you have. The bill is £125 for your phone. £94 of that is internet."

Now, I KNEW I hadn't been on the web n walk thing on my N95 phone. Knew it. All I do every now and then is connect up via the wireless option, through the house internet or anyone elses which happens to be in range. Which is free, surely? Like a laptop, I imagined. You search for wireless internet, you find it, you connect, as long as you know the access code...it's free. Yes?

£94 says it isn't.

Ooh! I win!

The cheeky little rascals hit me with data charges or some crap... what's what about? My dad was going mental mental chicken oriental and all I could do was proclaim ignorance...BUT I HAVEN'T USED TMOBILE...I'VE USED WIRELESS! IT'S FREE! It's not free. IT'S FREE! It's not free IT'S FREEEEEE. It's not freeee.

I'm so confused. Extensive research (yahoo answers, random geek message boards, my phone booklet) tells me it should be free. I'm sure up until now it has been free as I've not been charged for it before...so what's going on? We called them up and T-mobman said 'Ah yes, that's internet charges' But we connected through the home network 'Yes but it's still using web n walk'. Anyway, so their sneaky ploy worked and now I pay £7 a month extra for the joy of internet on my phone...and they gave us 3 months free. But whatever. Shove the small print...where's the LARGE PRINT!!

What's the deal? Anyone got a Nokia N95 who knows the score?

Please advise

Confused, disgruntled and POOR, NW London xx

Today will be a constructive day

I'm not even going to sneak a look at the Jeremy Kyle show...promise...not even if I'm eating my breakfast in front of the telly and it "happens" to come on.

Mental, I got up at like 8am today (partly because the cleaner was up and banging about and dropping things. The sign of a lazy cleaner who doesn't take things off the shelf before attempting to clean it, if you ask me) and have already been super constructive.

Decided to actually not waste the £400 I spent on a feature writing course in mid June and actually, err, write some features. I'm thinking of doing one on work experience, pros, cons etc, how to make the most of it, etc, snooze, yawn, burp. I'm about to go to the library and have a sift through a press guide to get some inspiration. See? Constructive, if not all that interesting.

I've also been paid! (joke, I transferred some money from my savings account so it's a little bit like pay day for the self-unemployed) and need to get some bits for holiday (you may have missed the twitter updates on the joy of finding a cheap hotel in Athens NOT located on a side street occupied by prostitutes - all suggestions welcome)...so will attempt to do this on le cheapo today.

On the other hand I got a real craving for shoes last night and the ones I was looking at don't really fit with the whole on le cheapo idea...but there is every chance they will cure the feeling of utter uselessness I currently have residing within my largely inactive brain.


Onwards. And I'm not even being un-constructive by blogging, it's better to blog in the morning with what I'm going to do today, rather than later with all the things I didn't do.



Ipso-Facto-Geronimooooo

This doesn't make sense either

Following on from this post

Being excited to see someone in the future doesn't make sense either.

I have so far held back from posting a swift wall message correcting my good friend's grammar.

ABOUT! or LOOKING FORWARD TO! not just TO!

Bah..I'm fighting a losing battle here.

Just wondering

Here are two sentences:

"I am excited for the weekend"

"I am excited about the weekend"

I don't know why, but whenever someone says they're excited* 'for [certain event]', I never think it makes sense. Why are you excited for it? What's it doing? Do you love to see the event's happy, smiley little face? If the event's happy, are you happy too? Surely if you're excited for something, you're excited on it's behalf?

On the other hand...If you're excited about something...then it's like hell yeah, we gonna have a party and it's gonna be gooooooooooooood! That's what I'm excited about! WOOP!

I don't know. I woke up thinking about this grammatical question this morning and it's started to bug me. Am I imagining things or does being excited for something not make sense?

Help. What do you say? I always say about.

I'm confused. I shouldn't be thinking about this first thing.


*doesn't have to be excited. this is just the word I see used the most.

And another one...

Today was my the funeral of my mum's best friend. Once again we went up to Hull for the service, which was lovely. Her daughter who's a couple of years older than me did a reading and managed to get through it without crying which I was amazed at. I say this because once my uncle did a speech at my granddad's funeral and basically bawled his eyes out and cocked up big time, yabbering on about crap, then read out a list of names of family members and forgot my mum. He managed to make a speech that was meant to be about someone else, completely about him. Don't stick up for him though, he's generally an idiot, this wasn't a special occasion in that sense. After that, the thought of anyone other than a professional speaking during a funeral service always makes me nervous. This one, on the other hand, couldn't be faulted.

I seem to be going to a lot of funerals lately. I always thought that once you'd been to a few, they'd get easier and you'd almost get quite blase about the whole birth to death process. Turns out that you don't ever really get used to the fact that people are going to die no matter how much of a nice person they are, or in the case of my mum's best friend, how many stray cats, rabbits and horses they take in over the years.

It's been such an emotional day, not least because every funeral I go to reminds me of the last one. By the end of the church service, I had a snotty nose and a headache. By the end of the commital at the crematorium, the tears had made my contact lenses dry and foggy, so I couldn't see nish of the lovely food I was eating at the wake. My eyes have been welling up all day because it was so strange that this close family friend was suddenly gone, even though the cancer had been doing it's work for a few months. Seeing my mum so upset was also quite hard. They were going to book into a nursing home together when they were old and wrinkley and natter away to each other all day.

And why am I blogging all this hours later? Because my laptop came with me to Hull. There's been a spate of burglaries in my area recently; with the hot weather people were leaving their doors and windows open and local theives were taking full advantage. I pulled down my blinds, locked my windows, and instead of hiding my valuables in my house, I took them with me.

It's a nice world, isn't it?