Roll on the weekend!

Today is Thankful Friday, except I am not very thankful because last night I came into my kitchen to find it was raining, through the light fitting.

Eek!

To top it all off, it wasn't content with just leaking through a live electrical fitting, it also decided to come through in four other places - two of those in my bedroom.

Argh!

Not overjoyed by this but aware my neighbour was lending his flat to some friends, I went upstairs and told them about the leak. I really did try not to raise my voice and sound cross, but I was cross, so I may have failed slightly at that task.

Ho-hum...

So now I just have to hope my pleas of 'do not use the shower and please fix this leak' are adhered to on the hottest sweatiest day of the year, so I don't come home to find my ceiling down round about my ankles tonight!!

But on happier notes, I am muchly excited about the fun weekend I have ahead. NikNak is coming over for a picnc and gossip tonight and tomorrow is Gym Buddy's hen do! Whoop!

We went to the gym last night for a Legs Bums and Tums class with Web Whizz, and it was ace. Painful but excellent!

Naturally I didn't hear a word the instructor said, but I coped by copying others, which only worked if they were getting it right, which honestly was not very often!

Hopefully next week, it will all seem more familiar as I am trying not to cry with the pain as she puts us through the torturous routine – and I do this for fun don’t you know.

Lastly, I am thankful that I will also get to see Whiskey Cousin and her ma, Ha-ha-Aunt. They are coming up to watch a concert in town so I will meet them for a catch up beforehand and then go and join GBman and the Singing Swede for the football match that is the World Cup Final.

Family loyalties mean I am supporting Holland. This apparently is of no relevance to Paul the psychic Octopus who has selected Spain as the winner.

Bother!

But then, I heard that Mani the psychic parakeet has selected Holland…

So maybe there is some hope after all!

Have a great weekend everyone…

The off-side rule according to girls

Yesterday, when England were playing football and tumbleweed was blowing through the deserted office, I had the offside rule explained to me by a girl, and here’s how it went:

Imagine you are in Primark, queuing in single file. The girl in front of you doesn’t have her purse and, to your dismay you realise you don’t have yours either. A solution is that your friend towards the back of the queue is offering to throw her purse to you. You can’t queue jump until the purse has been thrown to you, but once the purse has been thrown you can quickly dodge the lass in front then confront the girl on the desk.

And, it seems, when you take condiment bottles out of the equation – the favoured bloke’s way of explaining the off-side rule – I can understand it better!

What’s most amazing about all this, is that this is yet another blog about football – anyone would think I liked this sport or something!

Anyway, I seem to have lost my writing mojo recently – perhaps it’s the World Cup consuming my brain, or perhaps I am just not feeling very inspired. I seem to have writer’s block.

And unfortunately, the only cure I know for this is to write naked with an unlit cigarette in your mouth – something I was taught by my writing tutor at university. I’ve tried it often and it really does work – although perhaps not on the packed London bus that I am travelling on this morning.

So instead, I will leave you with perhaps my finest moment during this World Cup so far…

There I was, sitting in the pub for the first match against USA surrounded by enthusiastic, emotional boys. Halfway through I turned and asked the guy next to me if the goalies were Dutch as they were wearing orange…

Ho-hum!

'Bogus' subtitles!

This morning after a news bulletin on BBC breakfast about the BP oil disaster a single word was displayed on the TV screen - bogus! As it followed a sentence about BP hoping to stop the leak by August, I couldn't help wondering if maybe the subtitler knew something we didn't, and as a result, deaf people nationwide now know that the BBC subtitler, electronic or otherwise, thinks BP's claims are bogus...

Well isn't that just food for thought!

What gets me though is the order of the news stories at the moment – everywhere, not just on the BBC. The headlines go: football, football, football; oop Budget doom and gloom; oop oil spill; oop soldiers dying in Afghanistan… now tell me – isn’t there something wrong with that order?

Now, I'm not a football lover, I never have been. And while that doesn't mean I don't recognise the importance of the World Cup for football lovers, I am still left struggling to comprehend just why this takes precedence over important news that’s actually affecting the world!

And so far what I've managed to grasp from my football-orientated friends about the World Cup, is that they'd all quite like to change their nationality to Portuguese...

Anyway, tomorrow is THE match apparently, so it's probably not a good time to try and achieve any work – I’ve even heard some companies are closing up early, and in the ones that aren’t, the Internet connections are going to crash due to the high levels of live screening and oh crap... I've managed to write an entire blog about football.

Maybe it is headline news after all!!