I'll be back ...

Sorry, I should explain, I've not gone anywhere.  Nor have I stopped writing; quite the opposite.  I'm finishing my first novel and as all my Raven chums will tell you, I've been in that same state of flux for the last two years.  But now events have reached the point most author's dread; editing the first draft.  Honestly, I feel like I'm climbing the north face of K2 without ropes and the more I edge towards the final chapter, the bigger hole I dig for myself.

And try as I might to crack on, I have been distracted by sport.  The Tour de France mainly and World Cup football.  Surely the best 'Coleman Balls' moment belongs to the commentator of Greece vs Ivory Coast match who asked us to have some sympathy for the lads on the pitch because of the extreme heat and humidity.  The last time I went to Athens it was 50 degrees centigrade in mid-summer, and I understand that in equatorial Ivory Coast it's regularly hotter than that and doesn't rain, ever, and in comparison, Fortaleza was quite chilly. Oh and he asked if we could sympathize with one of the lads who was playing with a dose had malaria - now that deserves a bit of compassion. I also loved the Japan vs Colombia game where we all saw Honda pass the ball to Toyota, who flicked it on to Suzuki who scored on the rebound.  I've asked Alphonse for an Aygo ... the new one, in Orange.  Maybe next year.

Tip of the Beak:  Yes, there's been birthdays and weddings, reunions and fallings out, tears and tantrums [mainly mine], retirements and several new frocks. So I hope your Summer's been hot and happy despite yesterday's torrential rain, and I will keep you posted on progress.  Should be finished around mid-September but I can't promise which year.

Raven

Mrs Voldemort

At its bucolic best the month of May provides us with a welcome respite, like a bridging loan, between a nasty winter and the promise of a summer of delights to come; perchance to barbeque.  At its worst, this May has opened with maypole dancing and fertility rites and closed with a soaking over bank holiday and a massive row in Matalan over socks.  Alphonse likes order in his sock drawer whereas mine is freeform and filled with Wolford delights.  He likes days of the week on the sides, with matching colours on the heels so they can be paired up at the end of the week and strictly nothing Homer Simpson on pain of death.  Albeit I waved him off to Birmingham this morning wearing a Wednesday and a Friday as a mark of protest.  As dawn was struggling into the upright position, Alphonse was attending a course.  Just as women of a certain age are herded into a pen called peri-menopausal, some men of Alphonse's stature become peri-retiremental and it's upsetting his biorythms.  Back to the socks.

On the way to the Matalan checkouts he picked up a bumper pack which I immediately wrestled out of his hands and secured back on the rack.  He was quite affronted for a Virgo,
"I need new socks."
"Buy them from Next like last time."
"These are cheaper." Couldn't fault his penny-pinching ways but I had spotted a hitch.
"And the elastic tops will irritate your legs then it will be my fault.  Stick with what you know."
"Forget it, I'm not going in Next today."  He meant "ever" because I bought the last pack of socks, and the ones before that. He stalked off towards the car muttering.
"I'll just wash some when we get home." And rather than use the usual cool Eco wash cycle with a quick spin, he spent two unhappy hours watching his smalls disintegrate on a boil wash.
Trying to be adult, I waved a flag of truce in the form of a large Pinot Grigio and attempted to offer up a reasonable explanation for my snappiness.
"I know I'm feisty but with all the comings and goings at work I'm even more snitty than usual. But acting out in Matalan was wrong and I'm sorry."  I added a short rundown of the previous week's pain and injustices, especially the part where I'd turned down contracted hours because they offered me less per hour than a 22 year old with no previous work experience. Okay, it was only 1p but I have principles and leaving me £3,000 p.a worse off I found particularly offensive.  Anyone would think I'm rubbish at maths. 
Still, Alphonse had a point and I listened in horror as he drove it home,
"You've not been this tetchy since you left the Body Shop. It's like living with Mrs Voldemort."  He had the decency to say it with a straight face and not call me 'old girl' at any point in the conversation.

Adding insult to injury, the previous weekend I'd had my cards read by accident.  I rocked up at a 'Tea with Spirit' event to see old friends Valerian and JeanGenii; I wanted the tea and a chat, no cake and absolutely no random predictions.  When I got there, I'd been booked in with a medium who reads Native American Power Cards so powerless to resist, I thought I'd give it a go.  In my first seven cards I'd pulled the Raven [what else?] but also a skunk and a weasel.  She [Linda] looked me in the eye and said "Something stinks.  They're trying to rob you of something and no-one's telling you the truth. If I were you, I wouldn't sign it either."  Well that told me.

So I had a lot to think over yesterday and kept a low profile against the squealing backdrop of the Monaco Grim Prix. Imagine it though, the wife of the Dark Lord, "he who must not be named"; she'd be a force of nature wouldn't she?  Tall, elegant, permanently enraged.  If the Voldemorts were real, he wouldn't dare be late home or would he? Ralph Fiennes is the voice of His Lordship and is in bold:
"Where the Hell have you been?  Not out with the Lestrange creature again?"
"Messing with some muggles darling, nothing serious."
"Well your dinner's in the wolverine."
"Never mind my sweet, I had a pie and pint in The Pickled Walnut.  Have you had a lovely day?"
"I bathed the Raven then went to Tesco where they dared to overcharge me."
"Will their boils heal quickly my love or do we have to write a letter of apology?"
"Save the letter for BT who've charged us seventy two pounds for forty two pee's worth of Friends & Family calls."
"We don't have any friends or family."
"Precisely."
"Then we'll reduce their Mumbai call centre to rubble in the morning, shall we?"
"Excellent.  Oh, and clean up after that wretched snake will you?  It's had another of next door's kittens."
Fundamentally, had the same derisory job offer been made to Mrs V, I feel she would've wrenched out her wand, aimed it full in the face of management and yelled "REDUCTO!"  I so wanted to but I'm calmer now.

Tip of the Beak: Ravens everywhere should delight in the news that Richard III's remains are to reside in Leicester Cathedral. Common sense prevails at last.

Raven

The Interview

And so the time came upon us for The Interview.  A toe-curling 30 minutes last week where the very apparatchiks I've worked with over a grim two year period, have permission to ask me questions they already know the answers to, and then argue the toss about my particular strengths and weaknesses.  I'd love to call it Kafkaesque but I've never read his works, have no real idea what it means and will stick to unpretentious words such as annoying and unnecessary given the current criminal staff shortage we are enduring.  Anyway, the management have suddenly realised that temps are running the shop, that they might actually leave for better jobs and this cannot be tolerated.  So in the dead of night, they cooked up a plan to slot us all into preferred roles hoping upon hope that all would be well again.  Trouble is, some of us don't like to be 'slotted'.

Let me take you back to last Thursday at noon when I'd not had my tuna salad for fear of a grumbling digestive system interrupting my interview; only a mere banana sustained me through the allotted half hour of torture.  I'd rigorously prepared myself for a good grilling from the Andrex Puppy, so imagine my horror to find the Fruit Bat sitting at the desk and next to her, her familiar; a woman who clutches her chest whenever she encounters me, obviously sensing my true demonic nature.  Luckily, she was writing notes and keeping time or we'd still be there having a counselling session.  It started well under the circumstances,
"I see that you've been with us for exactly two years Raven?"  Don't I know it? "And you're very versatile."
"Well I have been at work for most of my adult life, it stands to reason I've picked up something."
"Quite. And here you've been working on the wards, medical secretary and now Reception."
"Reception's only an emergency cover for an hour maximum."  It's so stressful, I have to go outside afterwards and pretend to have a cigarette, a desperate act for a lifelong non-smoker.
"Have you thought of adding Bookings to your experience?"
"I have thought about it and the answer's no."  The Fruit Bat pressed me for a fuller answer.
"I can't fit anything else into my brain. I already have two analytical jobs and a third where I type clinic letters for two days a week ..."  I had the list ready:
Gynaecology, Gastroenterology, Urology, Orthopaedic, Rheumatology, Dermatology, General Surgery [hernias] and a Plastic Surgeon, although the last one's a bit fluffy and is mainly boob jobs.


The Fruit Bat dismissed this lifelong expertise and asked me straight out if I was interested in applying for the full-time secretary/administrator role they'd cobbled together?  You have to see the job description; it's more like a management dustbin with so much other stuff in there, it made my eyes revolve like a fruit machine.  There's also the knubby issue of who's going to do the actual typing?  Ancient wisdom helped me keep my beak shut.  You see, I gave up secretarial work in 1997 and I can be that specific about it because I'd got to the top of my game and was utterly brassed-off with working for people less capable or qualified than me for half the salary.  And after a long stint on the top floor of Leicester City Council, known locally as Faulty Towers, I temped for bit and found myself working for medical insurers [PPP before they were discovered by AXA] at a business park on the edge of town, while they were interviewing for a branch administrator. What an unhappy place?  Please, thank you and professional courtesy were left at the door and ignoring anyone who wasn't a total cow to their co-workers was the daily message.  I went to the pub every lunchtime just to see a smiling face. On my final jubilant morning, I looked up to find the class bully standing at my desk saying,
"Do you have to leave today?"  I so wanted to but we also had to eat.
"Erm ... I'll ask the agency."
"Don't bother, I've spoken to them and we'd like to offer you the job. You're brilliant."  I knocked the static out of my ears. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me back the following week.  In fact, I spent a well-fed six months at M&S before I ventured into another administration role.  So why should I step down that well-trodden path again in 2014?

My interview also contained other well thought out questions regarding my strengths and weaknesses, computer skills and inside leg measurement.  We'd also been provided with a grid on which we had to indicate our preferred hours of work during the week and the Fruit Bat was somewhat nonplussed to find I'd not selected a pattern of 24x7.  She looked at me sideways,
"I see you only want to work one in four Saturdays?"
"That's right."  Other ward clerks are available.
"Wouldn't you like to start earlier, at seven perhaps? And stay later.  Four'ish?"  She's up to something.
"No. Because that means I have no life."
"Oh I like the early start, you get so much done."
"Well you do it then but don't ask me to get up at five thirty every Saturday morning."  Who's being interviewed here?
"It's only one in four."  Well you say that now but experience teaches us that once you've done a job once, you get it every chuffin' week. It came to a sticky end shortly afterwards when they asked me to do a test.  There were no right or wrong answers apparently.  And when it finally dawned that I was going to lose my two favourite days a week in the typing pool, only to be relegated to filing tracers in Medical Records, I went outside to our quiet area and had a little cry.  MoBo came out with a cuppa and put her arm round my shoulder, summoning up a pearl of wise counsel.
"Don't worry Raven."  I blew my nose on the tissue she proffered. "Give it a fortnight.  That's usually how long it takes for management to realise they've got no-one to do any work.  You'll be fine."

Tip of the Beak:  I'd better apologise to the whole cannon of chiroptera species worldwide, including the vampire variety, desmodontinae, for naming my interviewer after a fruit bat.  If you only knew the truth of the situation, you'd see what I'm up against.

Raven

 

Forty Hens & A Michael Buble Tribute Act

In the week that celebrates the 20th anniversary of Four Weddings and a Funeral, I find myself faced with the same dilemma so many women have on the starting line of 'The Wedding Season.'  Luckily, I only have one such invitation hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles and so I resolved to deal with it in the time honoured fashion; that I would spend an entire weekend shopping and if I hadn't secured anything to wear by Sunday evening, I'd wear a bin bag with stilettos and a flash handbag.  Little did I know how many of my words I'd be required to eat.

Preparing myself for the mammoth shopping spree in Nottingham*, I had to endure a few hours in The Bunker filing medical records with the bride to be, the Rota Witch.  Hiding in the racking, I heard the Andrex Puppy arrive and start a conversation regarding some contracted hours going spare every Friday night which she wants to tack on to some poor sod's weekly grind, i.e. mine.  She spoke thus,
"Well I know it's going to be difficult to fill because Fridays always are but we want someone who wouldn't mind adding another three hours to their working day."  Insert ominous pause here.
"Perhaps we could add it on to Raven's day after she's done eight hours as a medical secretary?"  I'm in the room remember. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind doing eleven hours every Friday."  To stop myself screaming, I was gnawing the corner of a medical record and will apologise to the patient some other time. In her head, it's all agreed and when that job's advertised and someone asks what I think, I hope they won't be offended by my polite rebuttal of "Over my rotting corpse!"

Next day, I skipped off the train and headed for the shops with a credit-card induced spring in my step, only to find the first of two major retail cathedrals boarded up; more importantly T K Maxx had vanished and the legend that was The Broadmarsh Centre looked like a war zone.  Undaunted, I followed the signs and found the new, massively improved branch of the US giant whose basement housed several thousands of frocks of every size, colour and fabric; surely one would fit?  That Saturday morning, I tried on thirty dresses and yes, one fit me perfectly.  A little black Ronnie Nicole number with gold sequins on the shoulders, an underneath layer that could squeeze the life out of a Gloucestershire Old Spot and when held up to the light it had a rip down the front.  The pink version in the same size didn't fit anywhere it touched and made me look like a condom with earrings.  Several hours and another retail cathedral later, I finally struggled onto the train home with some marmalade and new icing bag from Lakeland.

Stupidly, I decided I had enough energy left to try a different branch of T K Maxx, just in case they had a non-damaged LBD.  Yes, I know I've foresworn the wearing of black but in the absence of anything red, I had little choice and so took another ten frocks into the fitting rooms and am now a desperate bird.  It was hot, noisy and whiffy, unlike Nottingham with it's full-on Arctic air conditioning.  Beetroot with effort, I handed over the rejects to the girl on the fitting room door and was about to compliment her on her patience when she snapped,
"Yeah! I know! It's not you, it's our dresses that are wrong." I'll bugger off then shall I? **

Armed with little choice but to wear something from the back of the wardrobe, I was looking forward to the Hen Night Party so imagine my horror when everyone under 40 was wearing a dress and everyone over 40 was wearing a Monsoon top and leggings, as I was.  Mortified, my youthful enthusiasm evaporated and suddenly I took the walk of shame towards the bride's grannie and elderly aunts, merely because of my outfit.  How I wish I'd worn that bin bag now.  Undaunted, I had great hopes of the evening ahead mainly because the featured act was www.theultimatebuble.com.  I'm a big fan of tribute acts and can personally vouch for Nearly Dan, Bjorn Again and some bloke I saw in Portugal who was the spitting image of George Michael on stage.  He had his magnificent voice too but, later at the bar, he was a whole foot shorter and quite sexy.  Sorry George.

The Shires are notorious amongst the entertainment industry as a hard crowd and on this particular night, the audience wasn't having any of the usual romantic slush.  Oh dear me no. He'd driven all the way up from Devon and all I could see was a bloke who looked like Lee Mack in a tight suit.  Still, he ploughed on into the jazz classics and from the first chords of 'Save the last dance for me' we were all up on our feet and boogied the night away.  In the end, it was pure Buble, unmarred by the awful food and extortionate cost of drinks.  Two of the MedRecs team should be commended for their amazing jazz dancing routine and I'm looking forward to their comedy debut at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.  But surely the best act of the night was the elderly couple who were dancing a perfectly technical cha-cha-cha at the speed of a Tai Chi master regardless of whatever ultimatebuble was up to; genius.  Simmie was on her back in hysterics crying,
"We don't get entertainment like this in Slovenia." We don't normally get it this good in The Shires either.

*For Blog Followers out of the UK, Nottingham is the birthplace of Robin Hood and north East of the nest; and is so expensive to park I took the train.  For US Followers, Nottingham should not be confused with Hugh Grant's Nodding Hill as it is nowhere near London.

**I finally secured the LBD from River Island. It fits. I have shoes, it will do for the big event next weekend.  I actually found it on the floor, trampled underfoot, and when I took it to the till the girl said,
"Where did you get this?  It's really nice."  I give up.

Tip of the Beak: Thanx to Rockin' Robin who mailed me about the T K Maxx poster which dominates the entrance of my nearest branch. In their newly renovated store on the outskirts of town, they've got an even weirder picture of a bloke in a hat that someone's drawn a moustache on ... or is that his real face?  I'm not sure anymore.

Raven

 

Science Fiction or Ann Summers?

Phew!  A lot's happened since my last post and this morning I've woken up to find the Year of the Horse has galloped away with a couple of weeks of my life while I've been having acupuncture on an impinged left wing; currently defying physiotherapy and pain management injections.  The latter treatment has left me little in the way of activities except bird watching, so I've been pouring over Monica Porter's book about her sexual adventures with a whole raft of 20 year old men and, at times, have been close to hysterics. She called herself 'Raven' too and I especially love her description of herself as 'irresistible' although I'd prefer the more accurate phrase; 'Up for it!'

Oh isn't it a fantasy scenario for us oldies; passing on our knowledge and power to a youthful suitor who's all turbo charged?  Guilt free and harmless?  You could put money on at Ladbroke's that your handsome young stud wouldn't dare tell his mother what he's been up to at a weekend and you certainly won't be on his Facebook page unless he's into MIL*ing in a big way.  How do I know so much?  Well I had a fling with someone half my age too but there won't be a lucrative book deal in my story.  Having been a carer for a while, I'd been out of the dating game for far too long and found myself thinking much like Ann Reid's character in Roger Mitchell's brilliant film, The Mother.  She starts to wonder if she'll ever be kissed again and on reaching out finds Daniel Craig in her garden.  And so, resigned to singularity, I reached out and found Adamski in my IT server room. Phew again? It's hard to imagine how much passion can be expended behind a rack of multi-coloured cables but we managed it without getting sacked and in an air-conditioned environment which would rival the South Pole.  Odd that I never looked flushed when I returned to my desk.

Much groping ensued but it all came to a disappointing head after the Xmas meal when I stayed at his place with its paper thin walls and wonky toilet requiring a pair of pliers to operate the flush mechanism.  Driving home in the early hours I kidded myself that all was well.  Inside, I couldn't escape the nagging gripe in my gut that this could only end one way; badly.  True to form, we progressed from quick snog to 'Been there! Done that! Next!' in 14 days.  And by breaking all the rules, I broke my own heart right down the middle at the exact moment when he flopped next to my desk and announced,
"Hey, I've met this amazing woman online. Met up in the pub last night. Love of my life. I know she is. You'd like her."  I despised her even though I never got to meet her yet for months afterwards I felt powerless, searching the mirror for every new wrinkle or a feather out of place.  Imagine my humiliation when I found out he'd done it all for a bet. Just because he could. A couple of years later he invited me to his wedding to a completely different woman.  I didn't go but he still sent me the photos. Would you have gone or sent a gift?  No, me neither.

These days, the most excitement I can expect is the odd innuendo when flashing my knees in the lift on Thursdays and Fridays, the only days of the week I wear a skirt to work.  Mainly I'm content and staying well away from much-younger eye candy for my tattered ego's sake.  And so I was a bit startled when Alphonse  peered out from under the paper and said,
"Fancy dressing up this weekend?"  I'm a bit past bodice-ripping and my french maid's outfit went to charity years ago and although my dress sense is described by Frangipani as 'alien' I'm nowhere near as scary-looking as the mature poster lady in the T K Maxx near me.  Square silver bob, silver leather jacket; stylist on acid.  And there's no way I'm dressing up as a Carry On era nurse - what can you be thinking?  Recovering my composure, I asked what he had in mind.
"Dr Who convention.  Me Tom Baker, you Lala Ward.  National Space Centre."  It turned out that the real Lala Ward would be there and we look similar enough to be a bit creepy, so I adopted the guise of Billy Piper's Rose from the episode 'The Long Game' and dug out my red and black catsuit; with matching lippy de rigeur. What a brilliant weekend, surrounded by Daleks and Cybermen, being boiled alive in the queue for Red Dwarf autographs and again to gaze fondly at Paul McGann who then turned me into a gibbering idiot when he said "Hi."  I have photos with steam rising behind the Tardis and of Alphonse being gassed by a rocket engine igniting during tea break.  Joyfully, we rolled home like two five year olds with a crate of Thunderbirds memorabilia, a sonic screwdriver for Alphonse and a plastic model of the 8th Doctor for me.  And looking back in quiet moments, with my wing strapped to my chest, I feel genuinely sorry for Monica Porter and her toyboys; she can keep them. Who needs Ann Summers when you've got science fiction?

Tip of the Beak: I've spent the morning in The Range hunting for storage solutions, a new squirrel-proof bird feeder and a lampshade.  In the cafe upstairs, Alphonse drew my attention to the 1970s-style tannoy announcements; each repeated twice and loud enough to curdle the excellent coffee. "When my hearing finally goes" he quipped, "I'll miss all of this."

Raven

Wear Red Instead.

Yay! It's the 13th of January and I'm celebrating once more. The Twelve Days have passed, as has Epiphany and the decos are littered around the spare room waiting for me to 'Mary Poppins' them into the box.  Today also marks the end of my self-imposed embargo on blogging or writing of any kind meaning my little grey cells are rested. And like steam building up in an overfilled pressure cooker, I'm about to burst with enthusiasm. Well almost. Not writing is a cure for Writer's Block apparently although trying not to do something is psychosis-inducing in itself.  For a few days, I wandered around aimlessly readjusting the baubles on the tree to stop me going nuts. Every time I picked up a pen at work, I wanted to create rather than account and I had to force my brain to obey.  I even bought some Dr Bach Night Remedy to stop repetitive thoughts invading my sleep patterns and took a month's supply down in ten days.


On a positive note, my exile from writing meant I had more time for browsing and on Christmas Eve, I accompanied Marieceleste to the exclusive underwear emporium on Market Street. Sadly, my £10 per day budget wouldn't buy me a thong in there but we got caught up in the whirl of the place. She spent loads but after a piercing stare and the flourish of a tape measure, I was sternly informed I was wearing the wrong cup size and left empty handed. Why? Because the average pair of underwired cups on some elastic averages out at a breathtaking forty quid and I still had gifts to buy. After a whizz around Ashby Market, I dropped in on Aldi in a panic having forgotten the Panettone. Fair enough, we only have it once a year but without its soft texture and hazelnut crust, my signature dish of bread & butter pudding is pretty lacklustre. I broke my own record for a trolley dash, hoovering up some sherry, a bottle of brandy and several bottles of Prosecco to wash down our festive food. Pity none of the above alcohol could improve the mincepie-flavoured Wensleydale. Alphonse poked a noggin around his plate with a cracker to alleviate the boredom during Dr Who then turned up his beak saying,
"Can't I just have a mince pie, or cheese. Not together."  Still, the blackbirds loved it.

'Not writing' became the norm and far from developing cabin fever, I threw myself into the holidays with uncharacteristic flair, making my own bunting and brewing up six pounds of marmalade on Boxing Day instead of dragging myself to the Next sale. When I finally got to the Retail Cathedral it still had that unwashed hue reminiscent of the Souk at Hammamet and having dressed for arctic conditions when the store was superheated to ninety degrees, I made a break for the coolness of John Lewis. Except some joker had upped their heating too and, feathers off, I was down to my vest and leggin's in the appliances department. A beetroot face isn't attractive and after a mere sixty minutes I returned to the nest with fresh provisions vowing not to return until February at the earliest.

New Year's Eve was a whole day off work and a welcome respite from the aggro that seems to accompany the daily toil. I've taken to wearing earplugs so as not to hear my colleagues moaning.  While everyone has been standing around in corners having a bit of a whine, I've been mindful of the passing of very difficult year and had planned an early night with a good book until Them Next Door suggested we have a blow out curry.  And we could walk there and back to settle the naan bread a bit.  Anything rather than endure the torture of Jools Holland's Hootenanny although we were back in time to see Gary Barlow and his weird haircut, and I vaguely remember singing 'Rule the World' to the cat.

Happily, I made no real resolutions for the New Year except to wear red like Dame Helen Mirren because it suits me so much more than black.  The feathers stay of course but red has a whole different energy. And when my Epiphany came along on the 6th, it arrived from the pen of J R R Tolkein who wrote "Not everyone who wanders is lost." Well I've wandered far too long my friends and lost sight of who I really am, and this cannot go on.  So in 2014 and I hope you too will find yourself renewed before many more days have passed. Happy New Year.

Raven

The Eden Project

I really shouldn't be left alone with the local newspaper and a tax rebate. Granted, I could have spent it on a long-overdue touch-up on my roots but the enticing photograph of Eden's biomes covered in frost and the prospect of a few days away in Cornwall injected some much needed festive enthusiasm into me. I waved it at Alphonse who croaked,
"Not interested."  Fair enoughski.
"It'll be fun and cheap." I chirped.  I'd done the return trip calculations by car and the fuel cost was huge.
"Not for me it won't.  It involves shopping." His logic was flawless. With the Clarke's Shopping Village and the Bath Christmas Market featured heavily either side of St Austell, I'd need long arms and deep pockets so I booked myself on a three day treat and arranged for Them Next Door to ensure Alphonse had regular meals and a fresh litter tray while I was on tour.

I'm a coach tours novice and being a tad claustrophobic when I can't fly myself, I was hoping for an aisle seat so imagine my horror on discovering that window seat No.37 had trapped me next to a big bloke who left me with no wriggle-room. I couldn't have wished for a nicer chap who had only come along to help his elderly parents, but he had sleep apnoea and snored a lot every time we hit a motorway. So on the way from home to Market Harborough, Kettering, Wellingborough and Northampton, I developed a new form of yoga to practice in very confined spaces and cursed myself for not packing some TEDs anti-deep vein thrombosis stockings. At least there was no singing of Vera Lynne classics on the way.

Surveying my fellow travellers, I felt there would be at least one person I could bond with and joy, I found Sue and her husband Roy in the seats behind mine. Like teenage rebels, we took to using our cameras to snap everything that moved from meals, including this glorious bucket of soup and doorstep bread slathered with Cornish butter:

You won't get this on your Costa card because it was grown on the Eden Project estate and tasted like heaven, all for a fiver. Returning to our Torquay Hotel that evening, we were brimming over with The Eden Project's wonders before sitting down to a three course extravaganza that I've not witnessed since staying with my parents in a Weymouth B&B.  I was 15 at the time and in those days considered tinned grapefruit in a glass dish to be exotic.

Granted our digs weren't as bad as Fawlty Towers but purely out of disbelief, I videoed the Saniflow because the goddam thing kept me awake most of the first night.  I must pack ear plugs if I'm ever going to do this again.  Still, sleeping in a strange nest is always a bit difficult at first.  I don't allow technology in the upper reaches of the home nest unless it's an alarm clock so I found the intrusion of a television in my shoe-box sized accommodation to be a real nuisance in the dark. Although on the Sunday morning, enjoying my first cup of tea on the concrete bed, I watched a stupid film about a man who after drinking a lot of a very expensive wine imagined himself as a dog.  Sam Neill as a canine had me howling!  There was also the problem of the strong adhesive smell, apparently brought on by the management having just stuck down the flooring in the bathroom.  Helpfully, they'd opened the windows in the vain hope that I hadn't noticed. I had because my beak is very sensitive.  I also couldn't help noticing the two inch gap in the ill fitting door which looked like a light-sabre in the room when the lights were out. I really couldn't miss the huge, framed Vogue covers circa 1991 of the world's highest paid supermodels of the time adorning the walls to distract our vision from the eye-watering pattern on the carpets. Now I know Naomi Campbell hasn't looked like that for a decade.

Over the full English breakfast serving downstairs in a dungeon of a restaurant, we swopped snaps and howled at the images. Sue, giggling like a teenager, had photographed every bit of their bedroom from the mouldy patch inside the wardrobe door and the two pound coins they discovered under the bad, to the word 'DUST' written in the dust on the top of the wardrobe.  Don't ask me how or why she was up there, it had something to do with the TV remote apparently.  And what, we discussed, could improve our stay at this peculiar hotel; a polyglot of buildings with dodgy plumbing seemingly bolted to a Torquay hillside?
"A facelift?" quipped Sue.
"Closing for a year and gutting?" ventured Roy.
"An Exocet missile?"  forever optimistic Raven.

I could rattle on about our journey home but I slept through the dull bit from Torquay to the outskirts of Bath, at least until driver Barry turned off the motorway and onto some dubious B roads, obviously some kind of demonic SatNav challenge he'd not told us about.  We went through one Somerset hill village and terrified a bloke washing his car, who jumped back as our tour bus squeaked past his wing mirror.  What seemed like a lifetime later, I finally met up with Grimy and January near Bath's famous Abbey and instead of browsing the famous Christmas Market, we headed for the pub to get away from the crowds. A word to the wise if you're going this weekend, get some bovver boots because the stalls are three-deep and you'll never get to see most of it. I ended up hiding in Lakeland and filling my basket with Dr Who novelty items to keep me entertained over the festive break; along with a DIY marmalade kit for Alphonse but don't tell him yet.

Y'know, I had a lovely time and met some great folk.  I also met some real moan-a-lots too. And days later when it came to filling in the survey sheet for Diamond Holidays I was aghast at one question. "If we could improve anything, what would it be?"  My first thought was 'you could have arranged for it to snow at The Eden Project and for Bath to have more public loos.'  My written answer was honest and truthful.
"What are you asking me for?  This is your business and you should know where there's room for improvement.  Why don't you take a tour or two yourself and stop asking stupid questions?"
There, I said it.

Tip of the Beak:  Remember I mentioned a wasps nest that has been causing us some problems?  I sort of calmed down when I realised The Eden Project have a much bigger problem with such things than we ever will. Please go soon and support their charitable work. It's fabulous.