Category Archives: The Oddities

The Return Of Dirty Harry

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True love has yet to strike for my old mucker Harry.

He appears to be back on the market – or in the window of the local hardware store again, at any rate.

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His original criteria requested someone who is good-looking, with personality AND style. This time, he’s lowered his expectations slightly.

But style isn’t something he will compromise on, citing his need for a ‘special friend’ who can ‘put it together for any occasion’!

Just where is Harry planning on taking this elusive – yet stylish, good-looking and charismatic – companion?

I’m tempted to give him a bell.

The Curse Of The Free Garlic Bread

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You know those people who love to ‘know’ people in hotels and restaurants – who greet the maitre d’ like a long-lost friend and air kiss the waiters on both cheeks, in the hope of a free glass of prosecco and a table in the window?

I’m not one of those people.

I just want to go to a restaurant, eat a meal and depart quietly, without having to hug or kiss anyone – least of all the waiter.

The husband is even worse than me: he hates fuss. So much so that he has stopped staying at ’boutique’ hotels for fear of busybody bell boys and an over-zealous concierge. One of his pet hates is being escorted to his room and being shown how to operate the curtains, TV and light fixtures (usually in painstaking detail), followed by the ensuing awkwardness of whether one should tip them or not.

In his advancing years, he has begun to relish the anonymity of a large hotel where he can relax FUSS FREE, without a simpering waiter loitering in the background, or being forced to make small talk over breakfast with the owners of some quaint B’n’B.

But there is one Italian restaurant that we go to where we do happen to ‘know’ the manager. He’s a genuinely lovely guy – the husband of a friend of a friend. And as we all know, there’s always a perk to knowing the manager…

In our case, that perk comes in the form of… a free garlic bread.

The Garlic Bread Saga began some time ago when there was a group of four of us and I attempted to order a half tomato/ half cheese garlic bread. What actually arrived, was a half tomato/ half cheese AND tomato garlic bread. Oh no!

‘Not to worry, madam, one half tomato/ half JUST cheese garlic bread coming up…’

From that day on, every time we visited the Italian, a half tomato/ half JUST cheese garlic bread would magically appear on our table, with a knowing wink from our manager friend over yonder.

The problem is that the garlic bread is huge – and extremely garlicky. And while it’s great for a table of four, when it’s just the husband and I, it’s a bit of an undertaking.

But because it’s a gift, it would be rude to leave it – so we dutifully chomp our way through it on every visit, making a mental note to keep at least a metre away from anyone we come into contact with the next day.

Recently, I went to the Italian with my friend Abi. Abi began studying the starters.

‘I think there’s a free garlic bread coming,’ I whispered.

‘What?’ she said.

‘He usually brings one over – half tomato/ half just cheese…’

We waited a while but there was no sign of the garlic bread.

That’s the problem with regular freebies: you kind of come to expect them.

The waiter came over. We decided to order a garlic bread anyway – just tomato (Abi’s not keen on the cheese).

But after our waiter had gone, another waiter came bearing down on us carrying… a huge garlic bread.

A big FUSS ensued: Waiter 1 consulted waiter 2, who then had to go and find our friend the manager, who then had to go and speak to the disgruntled chef, who didn’t look best pleased but decided that now he had cooked two garlic breads, we might as well have both of them… It was garlicky, carb-fuelled madness.

And we hadn’t even got to our main course.

On my most recent visit with the husband, I decided to tackle The Garlic Bread Saga head on. There was no sign of our manager friend. We also happened to have a new waiter, who appeared rather surly.

‘I was just wondering if we could have smaller garlic bread to start,’ I said.

‘We can do it on a smaller base but you’ll still have to pay for a full-sized one,’ he sneered.

He obviously didn’t know that were garlic bread royalty around here.

‘Fine,’ I said, wearily.

I just didn’t want any FUSS.

The Golden Ticket

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I once had a glamorous job as a showbiz reporter-cum-girl about town, trawling the hottest haunts of London and writing about vacuous celebrities. I met them all – from the dregs of lollygagger Dean Gaffney and omnipresent Calum Best, to the A-list highs of pearly-toothed Tom Cruise and scowling Madonna.

My champagne lifestyle was the envy of many; the reality quite different. Most evenings would be spent shivering on the edge of the red carpet at one of the twice-weekly film premieres – cheek to jowl with pushy journos – or standing awkwardly in a darkened night club, deciding how best to broach the subject of Alan Partridge’s penchant for lapdancers. Many a night I cut a forlorn figure – scampering home across Waterloo Bridge, picking up a reduced sandwich from Tesco to supplement my canape diet, and then riding the No. 77 bus home. It was the best and worst of times.

So, when I received a phonecall to tell me that I had ‘won’ two tickets to the VIP opening of the new beauty salon down the road, I think it’s fair to say I was a little underwhelmed – grateful, of course but let’s just say, it wasn’t the highlight of my yearly calendar.

But the organiser of the tickets had other ideas. First, he explained in the phonecall that this really was a VIP event – so VIP that even the beauty salon owner’s friends and family hadn’t made it onto the guestlist. Really? I felt like one of the golden ticket winners at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Next, I received a text checking that I was definitely coming. Of course. What else could be more important at 6.30pm on a Wednesday evening?

The next text wanted to know which of my friends I was going to bring with me. I consulted my ever-depleting ‘friends who might be free on a Wed evening’ list. Friend 1 – baby to look after; Friend 2 – ditto; Friend 3 – temporarily absconded down South; Friend 4 – packing to move house. This left Friend 5 – recently acquired new puppy but willing to abandon dog duty to accompany me to this ultra-exclusive opening.

But when I texted the organiser with the name of my friend, this was his reply:

‘Oh, *insert name of friend*, okay… Can I just remind you that you are both representing *insert name of local residents’ association* so you will need to be on your best behaviour. The dress code is smart/casual by the way’.

Best behaviour? Smart/casual? Seriously? What kind of tomfoolery was he expecting from a 30-something teacher and a respected homeware designer? Turning up in matching Vicky Pollard tracksuits, bad-mouthing the beauty products, and hustling the guests?

Wednesday came and when I finally swept through the hallowed doors of this much-vaunted event, I had an insane urge to really do something bad. Should I open up my large tote and sweep a whole shelf of nail polishes straight into it, when no-one was looking? Should I drink all the champagne, start emptying the goody bags out of the back door, and make off with all the freebies into the night (actually, I have done that before – the goody bags, that is. Maybe he had a point!)?

Instead, I plumped for stealing an extra cupcake on exit (one for me, one for the husband) and attempting to balance them on my knee as I drove home – yet still managing to get fresh cream all over the steering wheel.

So much for VIP. But it beats catching the bus with my Tesco reduced sandwich any night.

Gym Buddies

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The gym is rapidly becoming a no-go area. After my close encounter with a former flame the other week, I seem to have made the acquaintance of another character who I’m avoiding with equal determination.

My new friend – let’s call him Big Grey Man – first made an appearance when I was queuing for a post-swim, pre-work coffee. Me: flustered and late as usual; Him: big and grey – and overly eager to chat.

‘We meet again…’ he said, as I approached the coffee queue. I actually turned around to look behind me, so convinced I was that he couldn’t be talking to me. He was.

It transpired that we had also been queuing for a coffee together the week before (quelle surprise!), and exchanged the very smallest of pleasantries – an encounter so inconsequential that I had completely forgotten it had ever happened. Obviously he hadn’t.

And so began one of those awkward conversations, where I try hard not to engage with him on any level (short monotone sentences usually do the trick), and he tries his hardest to keep up the patter. I feel a little mean because Big Grey Man is perfectly pleasant. But I have a rule about the gym: I don’t believe in communicating with anyone whilst there. I just want to get in, do 30 lengths in the pool, and exit – all with minimum human interaction.

This was tested about two years ago when I was reluctantly befriended by Lipo Liza – a woman who regularly had several pints of fat removed from her stomach and thighs, and seemed hellbent on sharing the details of this gruesome procedure with me – at 6.30 in the morning. It wasn’t just her thighs that got airtime though: I knew all about her job (she hated it), mother (hated her), ex-boyfriend (hated him) and many other details which I would not want to inflict upon you. Luckily, her newly-thinned thighs led her to new-found love and she moved somewhere down South, finally leaving me in peace.

Another strange specimen at the gym is Mad Army Woman. You know those people who like to Make A Scene at the gym by huffing and puffing loudly, pacing up and down and doing exaggerated stretches? She’s one of them. While the rest of the morning swimmers are quietly getting on with their lengths, she’s busy doing her own peculiar routine, which as far as I can see involves angrily striding up and down the pool in a full wet suit (she’s about the size of a small bungalow), pausing to eat half a banana, taking two controlled swigs of Lucozade and then – bizarrely – circling the jacuzzi in figures of eight, thrashing through the water in an exaggerated army march. It’s quite frightening.

Back to my new friend though…

Big Grey Man: We obviously have the same routine!

Me (feigning interest in the coffee menu): Hmm…

Big Grey Man: I didn’t see you last week though?

Me: My car broke down.

Big Grey Man: Really? What was wrong with it?

Me (yawn): The alternator. (Yawn. Yawn.)

You get the idea.

I finally managed to escape but as was crossing the car park, there he was – honking his horn and waving manically.

I hoped that my interaction with him would be limited to the pre-work coffee queue. But when I went down to the pool this week, lo and behold, he was there – sat in the jacuzzi, beaming like a mentalist and waving at me (again!). Crazily, he was chatting to Mad Army Woman (who appeared to be on stage seven of her drill: Stop circling jacuzzi for three minutes and eat second half of banana). They both seemed to be staring at me. Big Grey Man waved again.

What next? Inviting me to join them in the jacuzzi? Chatting to me in the steam room? (attempting to strike up a conversation in the steam room is strictly taboo in my eyes).

At least Lipo Liza had entertaining stories in her quest to fight the flab. Big Grey Man offers nothing but big greyness and Mad Army Woman nothing but drill-sergeant lunacy. I didn’t want to be part of their weird jacuzzi club.

I dunked my head under the water and swam away – with a little theatrical splash of my own.

Belligerent Bill

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After locking horns with SuDick and my weary battles with Greenclaws, it probably won’t come as a surprise that I’ve entered a cold war with another of my tiresome neighbours; I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m the problem.

Bill from Apartment 2 is one of those ‘I’m-alright-Jack’ characters, who is perfectly pleasant when you bump onto him in the corridors but underneath his friendly facade, lurks a selfish and mean-spirited man.

Bill and I were muddling along quite well (with a neighbourly wave here and there) until one evening the husband accidentally parked in Bill’s parking spot rather than our own (if you knew The Husband and his acute absent-mindedness, this is a perfectly plausible mistake).

The next morning we found a note on our car saying: ‘NEVER PARK HERE AGAIN’. I was a bit taken aback. The mask of friendly Bill had slipped.

Outside our apartments, there is an unofficial parking bay which people occasionally use if they’re too lazy to park in the proper car park down the hill. Bill, in particularly, was a regular user. However, at a recent residents’ meeting we collectively agreed that we shouldn’t park there as it was causing an obstruction to others.

Initially, Bill took this new rule very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that if anyone ever parked in that spot, he would leave one of his NEVER PARK HERE notes on the offending vehicle. Like SuDick, he was another retiree with too much time on his hands (and a seemingly never-ending supply of post-it notes).

A month or two elapsed – until, to my amazement, Bill started parking back in the very spot himself. I couldn’t believe it. Talk about double standards.

It was time for some payback.

Spotting his car there one morning, I scampered rapidly back into our apartment, grabbed a post-it note of my own and wrote: DO NOT PARK HERE.

‘Ha ha! A taste of your own medicine, Bill,’ I thought, as I gleefully slapped it on his windscreen, before heading down the hill to clamber in my own legally-parked vehicle.

However, as I drove back up from the car park… Oh no! Bill was there – standing by his car and brandishing my note, a look of pure rage etched upon his ruddy face. I attempted to maintain an air of superior indifference as I beetled past. But we both knew I had been caught red-handed.

I thought nothing else of the incident until I returned home that night and found my post-it note back slapped on my front door for all to see, with a new message scrawled on the bottom.

‘GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT’.

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The cheeky swine. I was furious. And in my fury, hastily bashed out the following email:

Dear Bill,

I’m assuming it was you who left a post-it note on my front door today stating: ‘Get your facts right’ regarding your obstructive parking on the driveway this morning.
I’m not sure what facts I need to ‘get right’. Did we not have a new rule not to park up against the side of the building, which we all agreed to adhere to at the last residents’ meeting? In fact, I have noted other occasions when your car has been parked there in the last fortnight.
What is even more baffling is that you regularly leave ‘Do not park here’ notes to other drivers parked in that very same spot. I’ve seen you attaching them, in fact, in little clear plastic sandwich bags tied onto the driver’s door handle.
This to me, seems to be the ultimate act of hypocrisy; clearly one rule for you and a different rule for everyone else.
Please don’t bother me with more silly messages. Perhaps you could just put into practice what you regularly preach.
Kind regards,
Katy
Apt 3

Seconds after hitting the ‘send’ button, I regretted it. It was a bit strong, I thought anxiously. Even The Husband (bcc’d in) was shocked by my venom.

I spent the next few weeks skulking down the corridor and tiptoeing to my car, hoping never to bump into angry Bill again.

Until one morning, I hopped in my car and was just plodding up the drive when the engine suddenly cut out. I just about managed to pull over. I turned the key. The engine coughed slightly and then nothing… I had broken down.

And worse still, I was now parked myself in the illegal parking space! Surely this could not be happening.

With a heavy heart, I had no choice but to abandon the car for the whole day, with a giant note pinned on the windscreen stating: CAR BROKEN DOWN. AWAITING RECOVERY.

I could just imagine Bill’s smug smile when he saw my sad, malfunctioning vehicle occupying the much-maligned spot – before being carted off to the garage.

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Bill had won.

And he didn’t need a post-it note to tell me.

The Ex-Files

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Bumping into an ex-boyfriend you haven’t seen for 10 years is never fun. But when you leap out of bed, stumble to the gym with scarecrow hair, a sunburnt nose, completely sans make-up, and come face to face with them at 8am on a Saturday morning, it’s about as bad as it can get.

I always imagine the ideal ‘ex encounter’ might involve some sort of glamorous rooftop bar. Me – immaculately turned out, clinking glasses of Veuve and laughing animatedly with a hunky Gosling-alike (sorry husband). Him – Dejected and haggard, rueing the day he let his one chance of true love slip through his fingers…

My encounter yesterday couldn’t have been further from this. Bleary-eyed and channelling the just-dragged-through-a-hedgerow look, I was wearily waiting at the reception desk to resolve a problem with my faulty gym pass, when he came strolling through the door. It’s not that there’s any animosity there – it’s just, like with all exes, in my mind he had quietly disappeared and died some time ago.

Given that I was staring gormlessly at him for a good few seconds as he advanced towards me, I could have done the ‘mature’ thing: smiled in faux delight and indulged in some completely pointless pleasantries, trying furiously to ignore the fact that I looked like a porridge-faced bag lady, with a nose like Rudolph.

But that would have been far too sensible.

So instead, I hastily swivelled around and fixed my eyes somewhere on the wall behind the receptionist, as she finished her agonisingly-slow phone conversation. There we both were, the ex and I, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the wittering receptionist and studiously ignoring each other. His gym pass, it transpired, had stopped working too. What are the chances?

I spent the rest of the gym session skulking around, desperate not to bump into him, before scurrying back to my car and resolving never to go to the gym on a Saturday morning again.

Dirty Harry

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If you’re looking for love, then look no further than the window of our local hardware store…

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I love that Harry’s chosen lady has to be good-looking, have personality AND style (and if they can offer some spelling lessons that would be a bonus for old Haz).

Bless Harry. He’s not one to commit too early either, preferring an occasional luncheon to a regular dinner. Wouldn’t want to impinge on his boys’ nights out, I bet.

Still, he says he only CAN be interesting.

And does anyone know what OHC stands for? A quick Google came up with two possibilities: Over-Head Camshaft or Outer Hair Cells, neither of which sound particularly appealing.

I bet Harry’s phone won’t stop ringing… not that you would even get to speak to him (the old bean’s screening his calls!)

But maybe I spoke too soon…

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Who needs match.com when you can find romance like this? As Dirty Harry himself might say: ‘Go ahead, make my day…’

Let Them Eat Cake

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It started with a simple lemon drizzle. I bought a few ingredients, threw them into a mixer and marvelled at the simplicity of it all. If there’s one way of garnering instant gratification with colleagues and loved ones alike, it’s presenting them with a homebaked cake.

And so began The Great Baking Obsession of 2012. I went from having never baked a cake in my life, to attempting several creations in one night alone.

For several months last year, this cake-making frenzy escalated to worrying heights. Most evenings saw me careering manically around the kitchen, head-to-toe in flour, with one hawk-like eye fixed permanently on the oven.

When The Husband arrived home from work, and tentatively enquired as to where his dinner might be, I would yell: ‘Dinner?! Can’t you see I’m up to my EYEBALLS here!’, whilst furiously whisking eggs like a deranged Mary Berry.

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Carrot cake, banana nut, raspberry and passionfruit… my great bake-off continued to be met with glee by both my workmates in the staff room, and the husband’s cake-loving colleagues.

I was, what women’s magazines would dub, an ‘office feeder’: taking some sort of perverse pleasure in fattening up my fellow teachers with cal-horrific muffins, yet eschewing the cakes myself and smugly pecking on my porridge. As the compliments rolled in, I would mutter modestly, ‘It was nothing, really. I just threw a few ingredients together and… voila!’ – all said with a sanctimonious bat of the hand.

I was flying high on waves of gratitude, ever-hungry for appreciation of my newest creation. I thought I was the new Nigella.

Then one morning, I left my latest offering on the staff room table unattended. When I came down a little late for break time, some of my gluttonous colleagues had already helped themselves, wolfing down the coffee and walnut cake without so much as a crumb-spluttering mumble of thanks.

My cakes were no longer being appreciated.

Worse still, it was The Husband’s birthday the following day, and with it the expectation from his workmates that I would be creating ‘something special’. He had already put in a request for a Victoria Sponge, his favourite.

Wearily, I trudged down to Waitrose to procure the necessary ingredients. It had been a long day. The cake obsession was beginning to wane. Just as I was reaching down to pick up a bag of flour, I spotted it: a perfectly-formed Victoria Sponge, winking at me from behind the glass counter. Resistance was futile.

Arriving home, I removed it from its pink Waitrose packaging, poked at it a bit to give it more of a ‘home-baked’ look, and packed birthday boy off to work with it the very next day, passing it off as my own creation.

His workmates declared it ‘delicious’… ‘the best yet’, no less!

It was nothing really, I claimed. (No, really – just a simple drive up the road to the supermarket).

They wanted more but it was already too late. Overnight, the baking obsession had ended, leaving me with a couple of extra inches on the waist line, a burnt out blender, and a ludicrous amount of cake tins.

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Let them eat cake.

But next time, I’m going to Waitrose.

Nutty Neighbours

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Every apartment block has a nosy neighbour: someone who casts an overly-watchful eye over the daily comings and goings – and we have our very own curtain twitchers in the form of… Susan and Dick.

Susan and Dick are a retired couple who moved into our apartment block with seemingly only one purpose in life: complaining. Susan is a twittery sparrow of a lady, with darting eyes and an accusatory scare. Prone to odd bursts of jittery laughter, she permanently scans the entrance gate of the apartments from her perch in the window. Poor Dick is a world-weary packhorse – placid and obedient – clearly worn down over the years by hen-pecking Sue.

When I walk past their window, I have this ridiculously childish urge to yell: ‘Sue loves Dickkkk!’.

This curmudgeonly couple take Neighbourhood Watch to a whole level. Susan knows the car registration of each and every resident – and their visitors. When she isn’t peering out of the window, she is firing off angry emails to the management company, complaining of noise, bins, squirrels, door mechanisms, and many, many other mundanities. Only last week, I spotted her measuring the communal entrance door, with a tape measure. Goodness knows why.

Deflated Dick seems to spend the winter shovelling snow and gritting the car park, complaining bitterly about the lack of support from other residents. One of his favourite pastimes is to Google neighbours to discover more about them. Nothing delights him more than finding out the occupation and workplace of a new resident. ‘Did you know the blonde girl in Apartment 4 works in PR?’ (Let’s hope he doesn’t google me!).

When we first moved in, the husband and I were very much in favour with SuDick. Basically, we nodded and smiled in all the right places, tutted in agreement about whoever dared to leave the gate to the bin compound swinging in the wind, rallied round to help Dick with his snow shovelling. But it was only a matter of time before our delicate relationship broke down. And broke down, it did…

Approximately a year ago, SuDick mooted the idea of having a carpet installed in the main entrance outside their apartment, claiming that the clip-clopping heels at night were interrupting their sleep. Initially, we were sympathetic and agreeable. That was, until we discovered that they didn’t just want to carpet outside their own apartment; they wanted to smother the whole apartment block in carpet, covering the perfectly nice wooden flooring – all at a cost of several thousand pounds.

Unbeknown to SuDick, I began a stealth campaign to veto the carpet, approaching residents one by one to join the boycott. It was risky. And when Susan got wind of my renegade carpet gang, she sent me a terse email, accusing me of causing ‘dissension among residents’.

We haven’t spoken since.

But there’s more fun to come. Bird-twitcher Dick has been leaving nuts out for his sparrows, which pest control claim are attracting pesky squirrels. The nuts, they say, have to stop. Oh dear.

I’m already building up to sending an ‘all residents’ email with the subject title: DICK’S NUTS ARE CAUSING A NUISANCE…