Where is Milly?

If you are wondering where MillyToast is (as she hasn’t written in here since September 2009) please send her an email to MillyToast@mac.com and she will give you a link to her current blog.

I passed my Test, ‘Where’s my ASDA voucher?’

Today I popped in to Learn Direct’s office in town to sit my English Proficiency Level 2 test.

Having completed the suggested ‘Brush up on English’ online course I felt ready to sit the test and claim the advertised ASDA £25 voucher about which I had learned from a piece of paper stuck on the door a few weeks ago. However, having passed my test with a score of 97% and sticking out my hand for the voucher I was told ‘Oh that finished at the end of August.’  Today you may note, is the 1st of September. Do you think I feel cheated?

I said nothing at all but my facial expression must have been effective as the Learn Direct tutor said he would ’speak to his boss’ when she gets back from her holidays. I should jolly well think so too!

What shall I do next?

OK, here’e the problem, let’s see if anyone else has any good ideas on what I ought to do next.

I live in a house that i like in a town that I don’t like. I have too much stuff to fit into a smaller space. I would like to go back home to London but properties there cost more than here so I wouldn’t have enough space for my stuff. Plus… I have a cat who has a job at the local hairdressers and I don’t want to mess up his life.

My mother needs to move out of her ginormous flat with ginormous amounts of stuff. She wants to spend about twice what my house is worth which is about half the price of the one she is selling. She has too much stuff to put into a place that is half the size of the one she has. She wants to live in a teeny weeny place but she doesn’t want to get rid of anything. She can’t decide whether to come up here to the town that I hate but my siste loves or stay in London or go to the seaside. She reckons she has five years left of life to go and although she is independent now she does not look forward to having a bedbath offered by any of us.

Everyone else in the family has told her that on no account must she live with me.

Answers on a postcard please.

I anticipate that I have about three months left before I go completely mad.

Bookbinder Man found in King’s Cross

I popped down to London for a few days for a meeting. I stayed with my mother for the first part, in her upside down world of lunches at 9 in the evening and I got into trouble for sending an email to work colleaues at 1.30 in tbe morning but it was only teatime for me. They were worried about my work/life balance I suppose but if they really cared they would give me more freedom wouldn’t they.

This post is to tell you a little story about my meeting with Bookbinder Man which took place on my last evening in London. I was staying in a hotel in King’s Cross red light district. If I go down for a meeting I do stay with my mother but always insist on at least one hotel night. I like the adventure of it. I always choose a cheap room. Usually I stay in Pembridge Square, Notting Hill Gate but my favourite hotel didn’t have a vacancy for me this time so I thought I would give King’s Cross a go, not having stayed there since a night at the Violet Hotel in the 1970s under circumstances I will tell you about another day.

It was raining in a tropical way when I arrived at the European hotel in Argyle square. For a change, I was not too laden with luggage having jettisoned my wheeled monstrosity at my mother’s on the way to my meeting in Wokingham. It was in such a state that I couldn’t possibly produce it at the laboratory where the meeting was to take place. It smelt dreadful, having been targeted by the nether part of Bert the cat before I left. Please don’t blame Bert as he is the result of some well intended but misguided upbringing by his original family who subsequently gave up on him and let me take him on.

My reception at the hotel desk was not exactly delightful so they lose marks on that but the room itself was pleasant enough for the price and the view from the window (which opened very easily but disturbingly had no lock on it) was superb. I was looking out on a beautiful London square complete with very large plane trees in full leaf. The surrounding houses, albeit mostly converted into cheap hotels, were all georgian with little wrought iron balconies. It was a perfect London view.

I went for a walk about as the rain had cleared up. This area is crowned by the magnificent sight of St Pancras Railway Station. I cannot think of a building more beautiful than this although admittedly I have not yet visited the Giza pyramids. I went inside to see how it has been converted as an international terminal. I was a little disappointed in the main platform area but cheered up the following day when I eventually found out how to get to the shopping level which had lots of organic type fooderies and an exciting area of disembarkation where I was able to watch reunions in a variety of languages. I was moved by the sight of all the hugging and kissing and genuine warmth of people meeting friends.

Upstairs, is a huge sculpture of a couple greeting each other. It’s very dramatic and it reminded me of a 1930s style rather than a couple of this era. I didn’t like though that the glass canopy wrought iron had been painted in a bright white or possibly it was pale blue. It looked much cleaner and brighter than before but for me had lost it’s gothic impact. I once spent an entire day with my art school class at this station. I drew the same canopy and brooding archways in thick black chalk and created something quite menacing. It doesn’t look anything like it now. Outside of course is untouched and as always.

After that I wanted to eat something using my expenses allocation of £20. I discovered an Ethiopian restaurant that I wanted to try but it was full to the brim and the waitress said No. I will try there another time. Thoughts entered my head which challenged me regarding my preconceptions. For instance ‘Ethiopians eat?’ and ‘Ethiopians have recipes?’. I am not alone in this as when I mentioned it yesterday to a boy collecting for Africa in a raining Harrogate street, he looked equally shocked and said ‘They wouldn’t be eating in Ethiopia’.

Opposite the restaurant I was approached by a King’s Cross girl who asked me to ‘help her out’ in her bid to reach a £5 goal. Which I did of course. I who have no money of my own that doesn’t truly belong to creditors, have a policy that if I have a bean in my pocket I will give it to a person who asks for it but this can only happen once per day and not if I am on my way to the supermarket to buy food for my animals. I know she was probably going to spend it on something dodgy but that’s not for me to worry about and for me it is the personal contact that counts. Eye contact and half a hug is usually what I offer as long as they don’t look like that would be something they would rather reject. I read an article once where someone said that the worst thing was to be ignored by all the hundreds of people who walk by when you are sitting on the street just asking for a bit of help. Oh yes, I have just been reading a lot of stuff about sufism and apparently the worst thing you can do is mention that you have helped someone so by rights I should delete this whole paragraph but I won’t because it is part of my description of my trip so you will need to forgive me for that and anyway, who said I was a sufi?

I then found an Italian restaurant to spend my allocation. How guilty could I feel sitting in there with all those people outside who could do with that £20? Business as it is though, it’s eat it or lose it so I managed to eat £17.99 worth of food and left the rest as a tip. Sitting next to me on either side were single gentlemen eating alone. Business men travelling like myself. After I had eaten I got talking to the one on my right hand side. He worked for the bookbinding business and hailed from Dundee I think he said. It was good to talk so we went for a drink in his favourite local pub. The pub was of an Eastenders the TV soap type and was pleasant enough. I promised my new friend I would put him in my blog as a gift for reading it. Hello Dave, thanks for reading my blog.

Sleeping at your desk / in a meeting / whilst talking to your boss…

Top searches to reach my blog have changed from ‘Dragon Poo’ to permutations on ‘How to avoid sleeping at your desk’. What does this mean? I am not sure what the social life/work balance gurus would have to say on the matter but I do think I need to give these readers something a bit more helpful than telling them that I have been known to slump at my desk.

I would like to say that I have found a remedy for the problem which is obviously shared by so many. I am not able to follow my own advice since I have sunk so low that I do not have enough motivational power to accellerate such a shift but my senses detect the primary cause to be lack of stimulation. In other words, it is caused by unfulfilling occupation. So, the remedy would therefore be to get out of the job and get yourself somewhere else.

The difficulty is that once it gets to the point of slumping, it is nearly impossible to find the motivation to escape. One needs help. I need help. Somebody help me please.

How about… we all get together and form a buddy help scheme to keep each other motivated enough to execute our escape plans effectively? If you have found my post by searching with words like ‘how to avoid sleeping at my desk’ why not let me know and we can all keep each other going going going until we are gone?

The book that travelled to be with me

Yesterday, I went to my favourite secondhand bookshop here in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. I was looking for a copy of any book by Idries Shah. I had been led to this through reading two books by his son, Tahir Shah. In the course of reading these books I learnt that his father was Idries, of whom I had heard previously, and I learnt something about sufism and storytelling.

The bookship is small but crammed full of books and is the kind of place you can expect to find treasures. One feels sure that the bookseller doesn’t know they are lurking there. I usually settle down on the floor to peruse the lower shelves. In the wintertime it is extremely cold and I have to be very careful not to stay too long or I can get asthmatic. Yesterday was a hot day though so I was free to enjoy my visit to the full.

I searched for the books in the esoteric section and the theology section. No luck. Not a single one of the thirty books written by Idries Shah was to be found on that visit. It was time for me to go back to the office, my lunch break almost finished, when I spied an old book entitled ‘The Philosophies and Religions of India’. I picked it up as I thought it might have a section on Sufis. It looked interesting so I checked at the front to see how much it would be, usually pencilled in on the flyleaf. It was only 2.50 which I thought was very reasonable for an interesting hard back book printed in 1908 and smelling delicious. I then noticed that the previous owner had written her name and address. In copperplate handwriting using a blue ink fountain pen, she had written:

Miss S. Lambourn, 15 Kingsley Road, South Harrow, Middx.

I froze.

This is where I lived for the first eleven years of my life. It is a small house in a suburb of London. The opposite end of the country. Here was a book that belonged to someone who lived in our family’s house before we did. My mother moved there in 1947 with her first baby, my sister. My family lived there until 1967. I loved the house and always felt a special affinity with it.

Now I have to read the book from cover to cover. There must be some reason it came here to find me mustn’t there?

Post Office Fiesta

Our local main post office is a fusty stuffy claustrophobic space at the best of times. I chose to join the queue at lunchtime today, a Saturday. The usual accumulation of dusty carpets and busy shoppers was complemented today by an aroma reminiscient of the morning after a particularly debauched party. The unique smell of old lettuce permeated the queue.

The post office queue never felt so long. Being told shortly towards the end of the long wait that customers were very welcome to partake of free tapas food on the other side of the envelope display shelves, did not cause my taste buds to tingle with delight.

Despite being told that the food on offer was from the lovely tapas bar up the road did not help me to change my mind. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

The sight of the counter ladies dressed as flamenco dancers was really quite disturbing.

How to break my leg

If you want to break my leg, just keep ringing me on the phone and don’t give me enough time to run down the stairs to get there before letting the answerphone kick in and then leave a message saying ‘Oh my god you are still not home!’.

This has happened three times this evening. The last time was in the pitch dark. Next time I am not going to react OK?

I am definitely not going to spend my evening sitting next to the phone. Good Grief.

The Dangers of Wonder-Woman

I know I shouldn’t laugh but this really cheered me up today.

I had just left MacDonalds clutching my little hamburger when I spotted a piece of paper that had fallen out of a bin. It was covered in handwriting so I whisked it up and popped in my bag, just in case it might prove interesting.

Strange behaviour I know but I have gathered some wondeful morsels in this way. It can be an insight into a stranger’s mind, and with no chance of knowing who it is I can justify to myself the naughtiness of reading other people’s notes. Anyway, it makes up for losing my diary by leaving it in a phone box one day.

Handwriting is a little used medium these days so I was excited by this but decided not to look at it until I was well away from the scene in case I was spotted. Then I forgot all about it until home time when I discovered it in my bag. It has surpassed my expectations in delicious content and although I feel very very mean I cannot resist sharing it with you. After all, the likelihoods of you identifying who wrote this, or even being the person who wrote this are extremely slim. I have anonymised the real names by using asterisks.

Read this and feel for the person who wrote it. It made me so much appreciate the relatively stress free day I have had in comparison.

‘ J***** I had to put this note into your flat letter-box J**** I have gone sick from work after you caught me dropping my underpants in the works room when watching the final ever episode of Wonder-Woman on digital TV. I beg you J***** not to tell the girls at work about Wonder-Woman as they would make fun of me.

I do like Wonder-Woman but what I did was stupid. In this episode there was a special appearance by The Riddler who was proving to be more than a match for Wonder-Woman. When you caught me J***** The Riddler was on the verge of defeating Wonder-Woman.

I will give you 50 quid to keep quiet. If interested, my number is 07*********

I am 20 next week. Please J****** do not ruin it over Wonder-Woman.

K******* ‘

Awwww!!!!!! Don’t you just feel for K? I hope he doesn’t give any dosh to J as I fear that could turn into a lucrative long term blackmail and anyway, who could keep a straight face?

Football Golf and Stockings

Haha sorry, I just put that heading to get you in here! I’m not really going to write about football, golf or indeed stockings.