In need of a laugh? You should've gone to Specsavers

When it comes to opticians, I’d like to think that I’ve seen the lot. However, my first and only eye test at Specsavers proved me wrong. It was quite the most bizarre eye examination I’ve ever had. I spent a very long time in various waiting rooms, the most entertaining of which I shared with a smartly dressed and highly charismatic young man claiming to be from Specsavers’ head office. He was in the unfortunate position of feeling very important but not being recognised by any of the branch staff. It seemed a shame to cut the conversation short when my wild-eyed optician eventually called me in. However, the specialist was also a funny man in his own right. For a start, his eyes pointed in remarkably different directions, which they are perfectly entitled to do, but it is not necessarily a reassuring quality in an eye specialist. His other outstanding quality was his kindness which he demonstrated by giving me clues when I couldn’t read the letters on his letter chart. I was actually struggling to read rather a lot of them, this is partly because of my shocking eyesight and partly because the man from the waiting room had reappeared. He was diligently miming out (utterly random) letters to me through the glass in the door (which were in no way connected to the letter chart). Every so often he would wander off (presumably to cause mischief elsewhere) but would always reappear. I’d like to say I resisted the urge to laugh out loud when I saw him. I didn’t. My mirth in no way bothered the optician who ploughed merrily on.

I stopped being amused when I was told I’d need new glasses – no aspect of my experience so far has given me the impression that any part of their system is competent to actually manufacture something complicated (such as glasses). The heretofore generally oblivious optician noticed my sadness, and demonstrated his kindness once more by trying to cheer me up: Apparently I’m a "special patient" and that’s why it will take so many attempts to get my prescription right. If that's the best reassurance they can manage my glasses are doomed.

Passive aggression like I've never seen it before

There comes a time when the girls have to leave the office, go get pizzas and  let off some steam. It's for the good of our health and stops things getting bottled up. It's fair to say that morale is pretty low in the office at the moment - we've put our hearts and souls in and now there's nothing left. What interested me was the extent to which this was beginning to show in ridiculously trivial ways, none more so than Jade, (the type of  hard working person who was probably top of every class at school). She was about to go into a [somewhat tyrannical] management meeting and so, in a kind of advance retaliation she resolved to eat as much garlic as she could. Pizza express were only too happy to oblige. We had garlic bread, garlic oil and garlic butter on our dough balls - it was great!

As anticipated, what wasn't so great was the management meeting itself. It alarmed me to hear that both of them had spent the meeting crying! Jade, because she'd been been criticised for an hour. And Martha (the boss), in case her unborn child grew up to be like Jade!

The garlic was fine, but now everyone's crying, this is getting ridiculous.

I'd be a climbing star by now but life gets in the way

My weekend got off to an amusing start on Friday night when I failed to go to bed at a sensible time. I was just settling down at 1 am when Tim (my housemate and honorary brother) came bounding in, extremely drunk, wanting a hug. He took off his trousers (as everyone knows you can't get into bed with trousers on) and jumped in. I had a hug and heard all about his evening. Then, after being allowed to play me just 1 Coldplay song (against his better judgement as there really were a great many he thought I ought to hear!) he got out of bed, realised how drunk he was, picked up his trousers, then picked up my trousers and was preparing to put them on when he caught sight of my bra, which had been put on the chair underneath them. This terrible sight filled him with horror and so he left immediately. In the morning I put on my jumper, went downstairs, and climbed into his bed to see if he was hungover yet. Luckily he was still drunk and so agreed to come climbing.
Reflecting on this trip, I definitely think that our technique is starting to improve, even if the difficulty level of walls hasn't. We've set ourselves the challenge of doing a 'blue' or 'salmon' coloured route by Christmas (they're equivalent levels). The trouble is that people tend to put on weight at Christmas time, which then makes it harder to climb walls. A healthy eating binge has been suggested in order to conquer this as soon as possible. It's either that or we could progress by turning up without hangovers on a full nights sleep. Hmm, the 'body of a god diet' starts here.

National benevolence is confusing HMRC

It’s so hard to tax my car! It’s almost as if the government don’t want me to (actually, this is probably true, then they can fine me for not having done so). It may not help that all my post comes to me via my parents' house and so has to be rerouted. This could be how I came to miss all the reminder letters. Their online service was the obvious way to renew my tax disc, but as is always the case with HMRC, I couldn't login because they (as always) had posted me some set of essential and confidential number that I couldn't find. Then on the phone I was told that the code I’d (by then) received wasn't the code I’d received (which it obviously was, as I wouldn’t have got it any other way). It was due to expire within 24 hours of the call anyway so I went to the post office to speak to a real human and they told me they couldn’t do anything unless I could prove ownership of the car. WTF?! As if I’d go to such great effort to tax someone else’s car!! What kind of crazy benevolent culture do HMRC think we live in?! It must be nice in the UK tax HQ.

Fancy dress is temporary. Unless you're from Plymouth.

One of the other things that made me laugh this weekend was Plymouth university, who decided to dress up as Native Indians. Freshers and graduates alike had all put a lot of effort in to look the part and as a group their turnout was fantastic. Actually, if anything, they had put in too much effort, as they had decided to decorate themselves with henna in order to create the right tribal effect. In the morning they found their arms, legs and (in some cases) faces were stained black and are now due to stay that way for at least a month. If only they had any skill (/modest sobriety) at applying their patterns in the first place their predicament might now be slightly better. As it is, I think there are going to be some awkward young graduates at work right now!

Henna done right. It's pretty hard for a drunken novice to emulate.

Beware Ginger Wine

Oh good god, I have woken up with a terrible hangover. It’s not the usual kind, I have no headache but just feel violently sick. There’s a (frankly quite detestable) person running around outside with a microphone calling everyone in for bacon sandwiches as part of the camp site wake up call. I don’t think I could keep one down! I blame it all on the curious ginger wine I had last night. It seemed like such a good idea at the time - a 13.5% bottle for £3.50. Last night I described it as "one part benylin and one part firework". Now I would probably summarise it as ‘spicy sugar syrup’. This tells me that it probably has an extremely unpleasant laxative quality. I really hope I’m wrong.

Here it is. Now you know what to avoid.

Not all Scientists are created equally Sexy

Last night at the university windsurfers' reunion we all dressed up as sexy scientists. The boys’ interpretation of this was to wear lab coats with alarming degrees of nothingness underneath. Christo was by far the worst as he was wearing leopard print boxers, a stick on moustache, an Einstein wig, an Anne Summers 'flogger' and a type of ladies underwear I’ve never seen or heard of before – it was like a pair of tights that were semi opaque, came up to his arm pits, had shoulder straps and no crotch (presumably to help female wearers go to the toilet – not so helpful for Christo though who found his manly parts all came through the hole, which acted like an inefficient tourniquet). The boys who had been planning to go out looking respectable almost all changed their minds when they saw Christo and so the ladies were called on to provide enough provocative items of underwear to transform them. We obliged and soon the caravan was full of, um, what had better be described as ‘alarmingly sexy scientists’. The girls meanwhile went out in little black dresses under lab coats and enjoyed the warmest, most practical, evening we’d had in a long time. It's nice to turn the tables every once in a while!

I can't show the boys out of consideration for public decency!

Argentinian cuisine : proceed with caution

After work I went to see Bill at an Argentinian restaurant called Moo on brick lane. I don't think I've ever had Argentinian food before so I was quite excited. I ordered something off the menu called Salachichi* or something like that, reassured by my trusty mantra that it's always a good sign when you can't pronounce what you're ordering, it means you're expanding your food repertoire. I was vaguely expecting something classically Argentinian that was to come with guacamole (which now I come to think about it, should have made me suspicious, but didn't). What then arrived was a VERY large sausage! It looked distinctly German (an unexpected cultural influence to be sure). The type of low grade knockwurst that could be vegetarian and you wouldn't know. I'd also misjudged the sides and ended up with both chips and mash. I can no longer remember what part of ordering unknown items off menus is sensible!

*Turns out it's called a 'Salchicha' - I looked this up in case any aficionados judged me!

The Mysterious Dorothy

When Tim (my housemate & honorary brother) and I went to ‘Dorothy’s Caribbean’ we did joke that the restaurant might be the front for some kind of shady operation because it has opaque windows. This offhand comment suddenly seemed more likely when we got inside and found that the owners of the establishment had no idea how a restaurant was supposed to work! As we walked in, the good lady herself was sat on the wrong side of the bar watching TV. It was far from obvious that we could buy food, but upon asking we were told that indeed today was the first time in 3 weeks that Dorothy was serving food, owing to the fact that the roof had been leaking. Then we learnt (unwillingly) about the history of her roof and the cultural heritage of her landlord. Tim tried to steer the conversation back on track by asking what our options were but she totally missed the point - apparently one option was a solicitor but she felt it was a bit expensive. After this, I tried again and asked (very unambiguously) what was on the menu. She looked a bit confused but offered us jerk chicken. We agreed. She then took the initiative to ask if we wanted a small portion. I asked how small is small, to which she responded by holding up a large box saying it was large. It’s tough to know how to proceed from here but somehow we did eventually get the boxes full of food. As she gave them to us she asked if we wanted them heated up. WTF who goes to a take away for cold food?! To speed the process up we said we’d do it ourselves at home and asked her how long to heat it up for. Of course she didn't know. We laughed to ourselves as we walked down the street. It was almost as though no one had ever ordered food there before. She didn't know what to do. Definitely this was the operating front for a drugs cartel. We stopped laughing when we got home and put the thing in the microwave and the possibility of food poisoning occurred to us. We re-cooked that chicken so well. Nervously giggling once more at the absent aesthetics as we dished up. But then we had a change of heart when we tasted it. Dorothy actually knew her stuff after all! It was a huge plate of very spicy Caribbean goodness and highly evident that Dorothy was a great cook. We even agreed we’d be happy to go back.


Then again, if I was going to get my mum to front my drugs cartel, I'd probably make sure she could cook too.