My Mo-Fo of Motherboard

Dear Readers! My laptop is dead: dead, I tells ya. And, let me tell you, it's the last computer I ever buy from Dell. I've written a poem about it:

Dell
Can go to hell
Can Dell
Dell smells

I'm going to send it to them and see if I get a refund.

In the meantime, can anyone else give me a few hundred quid so that I can get a new laptop? Please?

Retirement

It was a crisp November day, as my colleague and I took her dog for its daily lunchtime stroll around the paddocks. There was a chill in the air, the first taste of ice on the breeze this winter and the morning frost had not yet quite managed to melt; the ground was still crunchy under foot and our welly-clad feet still manged to produce a spring in our steps. Me, my colleague and her small, yappy-type dog were in good spirits as we set off to explore the paddocks and say hello to our favourite horses.

But before the walk had begun in earnest we were stopped in our tracks. I stood on the path, frozen to the spot, as a large beige object on the ground only a few metres to my left caught my attention; Kirsten was similarly rooted to the spot squinting at something a good 20 metres away on the path ahead. "Look!", I said, slightly shocked and disturbed, pointing to the left. "No, you look!", she said, pointing at the path ahead with rising panic in her voice. And thus it was that our gazes shifted focus, and I stared at her dead horse whilst she stared at mine.

We stared backwards and forwards at the shapes, then looked at each other: "Is it ...?", "yes", "it's not just sleeping?", "No, it's very much no longer with us, I'm afraid". "Ah".

I still stared at its belly for a while, the naive 10 year old in me wanting to see signs of breathing. But I think even 10 year old Becky had enough equine knowledge to know that horses don't sleep like that during the day, and are certainly not allowed to have power naps in the middle of a path. They were very much ex-horses. They were no more; they had kicked the bucket, ceased to exist.

We opted for a different walking path, deciding it was time to meet some new horsey friends...


(PS. Ryan: I was going to call this blog Sigourney Weaver - geddit?)

Form-Filling-In

Anyone who has known me for even the shortest length of time is probably aware of the fact that I'm not very good at filling in forms. There's something about the whole process, about being asked to tick boxes and write my opinion in a confined amount of paper-space, that makes me want to misbehave.


Example 1: Cambridge, First Term, English Lecture Hall: Our first lecture series was sadly over, finishing a couple of weeks earlier than the others. Mo and I had particularly enjoyed the lectures because they were given by someone we thought was rather dishy. At the end of the final lecture, we were given a feedback form to fill in. Under 'other comments', I wrote "Dr X rocks! I would really, really like to bake him some shortbread". I handed in the form, and thought nothing more of it. Well, nothing more until we went to a different lecture of Dr X's. As we marched in and took our seats, he sat there with a bemused grin on his face. Before the lecture started he told the entire hall what had been written on the form. "Some lecturers - younger lecturers", he lamented, "get given phone numbers. I get the offer of shortbread. But, whoever wrote it, I just wanted to let them know that I love shortbread and it can be left any time in my pigeon hole at college any time." I went scarlet. But biscuits then became a major theme in my lecture feedback forms: I rewarded a young lecturer who had done some good medieval translation classes with Foxes' Classics, declared that my favourite lecturer of all should be given chocolate Hobnobs and derided my least favourite with an offering of stale custard creams.



Fast-forward to last week. The worst of all form-filling-ins- my visa application form! Ouchies! I put it off and put it off until J finally sat me down, handed me the form and the pen and sat with me until I had finished it. Then I left it with him to post. Luckily, for both of us, he checked it before he sent it because under the section about our marriage I had confidently ticked a box to say we were legally separated! Thankfully, I ticked the no box when asked if domestic violence had occurred (even though it has - he constantly pokes me and insists on kissing me when he's just had tinned mackerel on toast). I had also put my Mum's passport details under my dad's date of birth. Well, it's so easy to get confused with these things, isn't it?


So, basically, the entrance clearance officer was very close to receiving a visa application from a dyslexic mentalist who had already separated from the husband she was supposed to be accompanying. BUT as part of the application process, they have asked for evidence of how we support each other, and I think this is a case in point. He covered up my mistakes, laughed at my lapse of sanity and was still proud of me for finally filling the form in. I couldn't really ask for a more supportive husband, could I? And I support him by making him feel needed, by making him feel cleverer than me and giving him something to laugh at. Maybe I should have written that on the form!

Only Julie

Mad Irish Julie came to stay at the weekend. I was going to write a pen picture of her for the blog, a tribute to her madness and Irishness, if you like. I was going to start lots of sentences with the words “Only Julie…”, as in “only Julie could get locked in a flamingo enclosure of the local zoo after a guided tour for the diplomatic corps, and have to expose her knickers to other diplomats when climbing over the fence”, or “only Julie could blame outrageous dinner party behaviour on an overdose of cough mixture” or maybe “Only Julie would have to spend a brief but memorable period of her working life baking cakes in public as part of a department store window display”, and so on (and, believe me, there would have been lots of stories to keep me going).

Then, the day after her departure, I made a discovery in the shower! There I was, minding my own business, and washing my hair, when I spotted the dim outlines of some pots on the shower windowsill. Not wearing my glasses in the shower (for that would be foolish, dear readers), I had to lean right forward until the pots were a few centimetres from my face. Behold! Clarins pots!! One pot of day time moisturiser and one of night time cream!! I didn’t get my hopes up. I thought they must have been empties, left there by James on one of our panic house cleary-uppies prior to people coming to view (the house is for sale, you see!). So I gingerly opened one of them. Full to the brim!! Still not wanting to get my hopes up, I later asked Sally if they were hers. She looked at me and sighed: “Becky, I can’t afford Clarins”. Well, me and her both, sunshine!

Then I realised. Only Julie would realise that two pots of Clarins moisturiser are all that is needed to make an impoverished ex-student in badly-paid employment feel like a princess – a well-moisturised and age-defying princess! I love Mad Irish Julie. For not only is she Mad, and slightly Irish, but she is also a magic fairy who bestows expensive face cream upon the needy! And I didn’t realise just how needy I was until I found the treasure she had wondrously left behind...

Breaking news!!!!!!!

The perilous journey home from work, in the darkest


Update: I apologise for the interrupted post. You may have found this blog rather dull of late, but half way through last night's entry (so to speak), I was, in fact, kidnapped by aliens. Anal probes, the works. I have now been returned and am sitting at home with tin foil around my head so that they can't continue to read my thoughts. And people think life in the wilds of Norfolk is dull - imagine!!!!